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THERE WERE THOSE WHO BELIEVED

THE BODY COULD NEVER FIGHT CANCER.

NEVER SAY NEVER.

Today, researchers are using immunotherapy treatments to stimulate

the body’s immune system to destroy invading cancer cells.
Welcome to the future of medicine. For all of us.
 THE MIND ISSUE
APRIL 2, 2018

6 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

23 THE TALK OF THE TOWN

David Remnick on Facebook’s lack of judgment;
an anti-harassment app; Wes Anderson’s trash;
a spy drama’s end; sweating out your worth.
BRAVE NEW WORLD DEPT.
Joshua Rothman 30 As Real as It Gets
When V.R. lets you see yourself from without.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Jack Handey 37 How the Neighborhood Has Changed
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Margaret Talbot 38 Dirty Politics
Scott Pruitt’s war on the E.P.A.
LETTER FROM ST. THOMAS
Rachel Aviv 52 The Edge of Identity
The mystery of a woman’s disappearances.
ANNALS OF THOUGHT
Larissa MacFarquhar 62 Mind Expander
A philosopher asks where we begin and end.
FICTION
Sam Allingham 74 “The Intermediate Class”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
Gary Greenberg 84 Leslie Jamison examines writers as drinkers.
86 Briefly Noted
Laura Miller 90 Christine Mangan’s “Tangerine.”
THE ART WORLD
Peter Schjeldahl 92 Sculptures of the body, redefined by color.
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 94 “Unsane” and “Gemini.”
POEMS
C. L. O’Dell 43 “How Forever Works”
Jane Shore 70 “Who Knows One”
COVER
Christoph Niemann “Trompe-l’Oeil”

DRAWINGS Tom Toro, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Zachary Kanin, Roz Chast, Mick Stevens, Paul Noth, Alex Gregory,
Charlie Hankin, Sara Lautman, Tom Chitty, P. C. Vey, Seth Fleishman, Pia Guerra, Frank Cotham, Peter Kuper, Glen Baxter,
Jason Adam Katzenstein, Joe Dator, David Sipress, Carolita Johnson, Julia Suits SPOTS Christoph Niemann
 YOUR PASSIONS.
OUR EXPERTISE.
CONTRIBUTORS
Making Margaret Talbot (“Dirty Politics,” p. 38) Larissa MacFarquhar (“Mind Expander,”

New York has been a staf writer at The New Yorker

since 2004.
p. 62), a staf writer and the author of
“Strangers Drowning,” is an Emerson

Better Joshua Rothman (“As Real as It Gets,”

Fellow at New America.

for All p. 30) is the magazine’s archive editor

and a frequent contributor to newyor-
Gary Greenberg (Books, p. 84), a con-
tributing editor at Harper’s, is a prac-

New ker.com. ticing psychotherapist and the author

of “The Book of Woe: The DSM and

Yorkers Jane Shore (Poem, p. 70) published her

latest book, “That Said: New and Se-
lected Poems,” in 2012.
the Unmaking of Psychiatry.”

Rachel Aviv (“The Edge of Identity,”

p. 52) won the 2015 Scripps Howard
Jeffrey Toobin (The Talk of the Town, Award for “Your Son Is Deceased,”
p. 28) most recently published “Amer- her story on police shootings, which
ican Heiress: The Wild Saga of the appeared in the magazine.
Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty
Hearst.” Christoph Niemann (Cover) most re-
The New York cently published “Conversations,” with
Community Trust Laura Miller (Books, p. 90), the author Nicholas Blechman, and “Souvenir.”
can help you start of “The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s
a charitable fund Adventures in Narnia,” is a books and Sarah Larson (The Talk of the Town,
THATlTSYOURTIMELINE culture columnist at Slate. p. 26) is a staf writer. Her column, Pod-
giving level and cast Dept., appears weekly on newyor-
personal interests.
Jack Handey (Shouts & Murmurs, ker.com.
p. 37) has contributed to The New Yorker
WE’RE HERE TO HELP YOU
since 1987. He has written several humor Sam Allingham (Fiction, p. 74) is the au-
books, including, most recently, “Please thor of the story collection “The Great
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2 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
 ADRIAN PIPER:
A SYNTHESIS OF INTUITIONS, 1965–2016
Member Previews Mar 28–30
Opens Mar 31

Adrian Piper. Safe #1–4. 1990. Mixed-media installation.

Screenprinted text on four black-and-white photographs, mounted
on foam core and afixed to the corners of a room, with audio.
Detail: #1 of 4. Collection Adrian Piper Research Archive. Foundation
The exhibition is made possible by Hyundai Card. Berlin. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin
 THE MAIL
READING THE DOSSIER knows, passports are submitted and gence agencies or as a conscience-driven
stamped at the entry point into the citizen of the world in order to find
Jane Mayer is alarmed about Russian zone, and, once you’re in, you can move much evidence in her reporting of an
meddling in the 2016 Presidential elec- throughout it without passport checks. ego-driven actor who possesses confir-
tion, yet she seems unconcerned that A lack of a stamp cannot prove that mation bias and becomes more and
Christopher Steele, a British citizen, Cohen was not in Prague. more panicked when no one seems to
was able to meet privately with oi- Marshall Winn be listening—which might describe a
cials in the United States government Greenville, S.C. lot of us in the age of Trump.
in an attempt to stop a candidate from Joe R. Struble
being elected (“The Man Behind the I wish that Mayer would address a ques- Rochester, N.Y.
Dossier,” March 12th). Why is Russian tion that has been obvious to me from 1
interference shocking but anti-Trump the start: Has James Comey been com- REDDIT AND FREE SPEECH
skulduggery by a well-connected, re- promised? He did more to damage Hil-
tired British intelligence oicer accept- lary Clinton’s campaign (and thereby Andrew Marantz’s article about Red-
able? If the Russians are scheming for- to accomplish Vladimir Putin’s goal) dit’s eforts to detoxify the Internet was
eigners, then Steele must be one, too. than anyone else. In spite of the Boy educational, but his focus on the bad
Hope Leman Scout persona that Comey cultivates, subreddits was disappointing and pre-
Corvallis, Ore. he violated Department of Justice pol- dictable (“Antisocial Media,” March
icy by speaking out—against Clinton— 19th). I spend a lot of time on Reddit,
In pinochle, holding trump cards late in the last days before the election. And enchanted by its never-ending stream
in the game often leads to a win. James it turns out that the concerns about of original, high-quality material, and
Comey, as the F.B.I. director in Octo- which he spoke are baseless. Cui bono? I’ve never encountered the toxic content
ber, 2016, had a trump card for each Trump and Putin. And now Mayer has he describes. I couldn’t recognize the site
candidate, but chose to play only one added even more troubling informa- from his article. Marantz’s bias becomes
of them. Mayer’s summary of the Steele tion: at the same time that Comey was most evident in his treatment of the so-
dossier and how it fits into the intel- making public announcements about cial experiment called r/Place; he seems
ligence surrounding Russia’s incursion Clinton, he was failing to react to Steele’s almost disappointed by the lack of swas-
into the election paints a clear picture dossier or to alert the public about Rus- tikas in the final image. I think your
of why voters should have seen both sian interference. We can’t aford not to readers deserve a follow-up piece focus-
cards on the table, or none at all. ask whom Comey is loyal to. sing on the positive aspects of Reddit.
Hugh Cavanaugh Gwen Spivey Eric Holmberg
Alameda, Calif. Tallahassee, Fla. San Anselmo, Calif.

I am a Democrat, and I can see beyond It would seem that Robert Mueller is Marantz gives the impression that free
the Trump scandal to my own party’s facing a dilemma: Should he indict speech on the Internet has failed in a
sins. What is the diference between Donald Trump, Jr., and Jared Kushner fundamental way. Instead, I would sug-
the importance of the Russia investi- separately, before indicting Trump, or gest that anonymous free speech on
gation and that of the ongoing one con- indict them all at once? Wait until No- the Internet is what has failed, and the
cerning the Clinton Foundation? I’d vember, to see how the elections turn problem wouldn’t be that diicult to
like to learn about the rest of the peo- out? Indict the whole family under RICO fix. Insuring that each comment comes
ple working from the sidelines, on be- statutes, as a criminal organization, like from one person with a verifiable e-mail
half of Democrats and Republicans alike. the Gambino family? (The New Yorker address and only one account on each
Susan McHale has reported on many of the family’s platform doesn’t seem like an infringe-
Greenwich, Conn. other dealings, and there is more to be ment of anybody’s rights. Speak your
explored, such as Kushner’s shady loans.) mind freely, but own up to it.
Mayer relates Steele’s claim that The indictments are likely coming. The Bill Pieper
Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael question is when and how. Sacramento, Calif.
Cohen, went to Prague to pay of Rus- George Magakis, Jr.
sian operatives in order to cover up Norristown, Pa. •
Russia’s hacking operation. She writes Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
that Cohen “denies that he’s ever set Mayer did her best to keep Steele’s address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
foot in Prague, and has produced his credibility in play, but one need not see [email protected]. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
passport to prove it.” But, as anyone him either as a part of powerful anti- any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
who travels around the Schengen Area Russia and anti-Trump U.S. intelli- of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

4 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018

 MARCH 28 – APRIL 3, 2018

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

“Spring is like a perhaps hand,” E. E. Cummings wrote. Sure enough, this year, on the second oicial day
of spring, New Yorkers were dealt a big maybe-not, when the fourth nor’easter of March arrived. Mean-
while, at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Japanese pink pussy willows were already afuzz; soon, the
cherry trees will begin to blossom. But, whatever the conditions are like outside, visitors to the Steinhardt
Conservatory’s Desert Pavilion (pictured above) are guaranteed a stint of warm weather.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PARI DUKOVIC

 polished direction, the structure is too pat and the
characterizations too streamlined, but the play ex-

THE THEATRE pertly indicts the people most likely to applaud it.
(Mitzi E. Newhouse, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200.)

1 Dido of Idaho
My Fair Lady Auden said it best: about sufering they were never
OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS Lerner and Loewe’s classic 1956 musical returns wrong, the Old Masters. Abby Rosebrock’s tragi-
to Broadway, in a Lincoln Center Theatre re- comedy draws its title and setup from Virgil’s
Between the World and Me vival directed by Bartlett Sher and starring Lau- doomed queen of Carthage, spurned lover of Ae-
A multimedia theatrical reading of Ta-Nehisi ren Ambrose, Harry Hadden-Paton, and Diana neas. Nora (Layla Khosh) is a boozy musicologist
Coates’s book about living as a black man in Amer- Rigg. (Vivian Beaumont, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239- hopelessly entangled with Michael (Curran Con-
ica, conceived by Kamilah Forbes and featuring 6200. In previews.) nor), a poet and professor married to a homily-
music by Jason Moran. (Apollo Theatre, 253 W. 125th spouting former beauty-pageant contestant (Rose-
St. 800-745-3000. April 2-3.) Saint Joan brock). As Nora’s romantic life violently unravels,
Condola Rashad plays Joan of Arc in the George she is sent reeling back to her haunted past with
Bobbie Clearly Bernard Shaw drama, revived by Manhattan The- her disapproving, evangelical mother (Dalia Davi).
In Alex Lubischer’s comedy, directed by Will atre Club and directed by Daniel Sullivan. (Sam- Propelled by ferocious and often funny dialogue,
Davis for Roundabout Underground, the residents uel J. Friedman, 261 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200. Pre- the play ofers a study in the varieties of modern
of a Nebraska town tell the story of a murder in a views begin April 3.) alienated womanhood. But it too often withdraws
cornield two years earlier. (Black Box, Harold and from the potential richness of its contrasting char-
Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 W. 46th St. The Seafarer acter portraits and devolves into a confused pas-
212-719-1300. In previews. Opens April 3.) Matthew Broderick stars in Ciarán O’Reilly’s re- tiche of genre and tone—part parody of self-help
vival of the Conor McPherson drama, in which a culture, part gothic fantasy, and part celebration
Carousel stranger arrives at a Dublin home during a Christ- of #MeToo feminism. (Ensemble Studio Theatre,
Jack O’Brien directs a revival of the classic Rod- mas Eve poker game. (Irish Repertory, 132 W. 22nd 545 W. 52nd St. ensemblestudiotheatre.org.)
gers and Hammerstein musical, starring Joshua St. 212-727-2737. Previews begin March 30.)
Henry, Jessie Mueller, and Renée Fleming. (Im- Frozen
perial, 249 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) Summer The Disney juggernaut takes its inevitable vic-
Des McAnuf directs a musical based on the life tory lap on Broadway, directed by Michael Gran-
Children of a Lesser God and work of the disco queen Donna Summer, dage. In the northern land of Arendelle, Princess
Joshua Jackson and Lauren Ridlof play a teacher with three actresses—LaChanze, Ariana DeBose, Anna (the winning Patti Murin, a skilled come-
and a deaf custodian who meet at a school for and Storm Lever—sharing the title role. (Lunt- dian) is estranged from her older sister, Elsa (the
the deaf, in Kenny Leon’s revival of the 1980 ro- Fontanne, 205 W. 46th St. 877-250-2929. In previews.) silver-voiced Caissie Levy), whose magic powers
mantic drama by Mark Medof. (Studio 54, at 254 to turn things to ice are hidden from Anna after a
W. 54th St. 212-239-6200. In previews.) This Flat Earth childhood accident. The rudimentary projections
Lindsey Ferrentino’s new play, directed by Re- and slow-moving ice sets are an unfortunate down-
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts becca Taichman, follows two thirteen-year-olds in grade from the animation, and most of the dozen
One and Two a seaside town that has suddenly become the focus new songs added by the original songwriters, Kris-
J. K. Rowling’s tale picks up nineteen years after of national attention. (Playwrights Horizons, 416 ten Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, are un-
the novels end, in this play by Jack Thorne, staged W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. In previews.) remarkable. But the show has its attractions: the
by John Tifany in two installments. (Lyric, 214 fantastic diverse cast (including Jelani Alladin,
W. 43rd St. 877-250-2929. In previews.) Three Tall Women adorable as the strapping ice-monger Kristof);
Glenda Jackson, Laurie Metcalf, and Alison Pill Elsa’s electric costume change at the climax of
The Iceman Cometh portray the same woman at diferent ages in Edward “Let It Go,” still the most persistent earworm of
Denzel Washington stars in George C. Wolfe’s Albee’s play, which won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for the Disney œuvre; and the hilarious second-act
revival of the Eugene O’Neill drama, set in a Drama. Joe Mantello directs. (Golden, 252 W. 45th number “Hygge,” about the Scandinavian con-
Greenwich Village saloon populated by dead- St. 212-239-6200. In previews. Opens March 29.) cept of coziness, complete with a sauna-themed
end dreamers. (Jacobs, 242 W. 45th St. 212-239- kick line. (St. James, 246 W. 44th St. 866-870-2717.)
6200. In previews.) Travesties
The Roundabout imports Patrick Marber’s Me- Harry Clarke
The Lucky Ones nier Chocolate Factory revival of the Tom Stop- David Cale’s louche one-man drama is back for a
The folk duo the Bengsons composed this pard comedy, in which an old man recalls his en- return engagement produced by Audible, which
semi-autobiographical musical about family trag- counters with James Joyce, Lenin, and the artist has also released it as an audio play. But there’s
edy and teen-age passion; Anne Kaufman directs Tristan Tzara in 1917 Zurich. (American Airlines good reason to see it in person: namely, Billy
the Ars Nova production. (Connelly, 220 E. 4th St. Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300. Previews Crudup’s full-bodied performance as the title
212-352-3101. In previews. Opens March 31.) begin March 29.) character (and multiple other people). Harry
Clarke doesn’t exist—he’s the invention of one
Mean Girls 1 Philip Brugglestein, a shy, queer boy from the
This musical version of the teen comedy has songs NOW PLAYING Midwest who discovers his conidence, and his
by Jef Richmond and Nell Benjamin, direction seductive powers, in the form of a Cockney alter
by Casey Nicholaw, and a book by Tina Fey, who Admissions ego. Harry worms his way into the life of a hand-
updated her 2004 screenplay. (August Wilson, 245 One of the squirmiest plays of the season, Joshua some stranger, with funny, sexy, and devastating
W. 52nd St. 877-250-2929. In previews.) Harmon’s prickly comedy congratulates the lib- results. Cale’s script has the tidy structure—and
eral bona ides of its audience, then uses those the mounting implausibilities—of a three-act
Miss You Like Hell same values to blackjack them. At a leafy board- screenplay. But, like Harry, its sleekness belies
Daphne Rubin-Vega plays an undocumented im- ing school in rural New Hampshire, the admis- a more troubled tale about the psychic costs of
migrant with an estranged sixteen-year-old daugh- sions director, Sherri (Jessica Hecht, typically passing, whether as a gay man in a straight world
ter in this new musical by Quiara Alegría Hudes excellent), and the headmaster, Bill (Andrew Gar- or as an Ohio sissy whose truest self turns out to
and Erin McKeown, directed by Lear deBessonet. man), have successfully increased diversity. But be a swinging Londoner. (Minetta Lane Theatre,
(Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555. In previews.) when their own son, Charlie (Ben Edelman), is de- 18 Minetta Lane. 800-745-3000.)
nied early admission to Yale, while his biracial best
Mlima’s Tale friend is accepted, the family has to reckon with The Low Road
Lynn Nottage’s new play, directed by Jo Bonney, what they’re willing to sacriice for their princi- The theatre where “Hamilton” was born presents
traces the journey of an elephant (Sahr Ngaujah) ples. (Spoiler: not much.) As Charlie says, “You’re the anti-“Hamilton”: Bruce Norris’s lengthy but
stuck in the international ivory trade. (Public, 425 happy to make the world a better place, as long as propulsive picaresque, which follows the mis-
Lafayette St. 212-967-7555. In previews.) it doesn’t cost you anything.” Under Daniel Aukin’s adventures of a decidedly unlovable antihero in

THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 7

 THE THEATRE

late-eighteenth-century America. Jim Trewitt

(Chris Perfetti) single-mindedly applies free-
market principles to every predicament, to the
great misfortune of all those he encounters. Di-
rected with aplomb by Michael Greif, in its U.S.
début—it was previously mounted in London, in
2013—the play is performed by a perfectly cast en-
semble of eighteen. Norris’s script methodically,
hilariously, and, in the most pointed moments of
a consistently dagger-sharp show, self-relexively
punctures any impulse to seek inspiration from
the origin story of the United States, particularly
its homegrown, contagious strain of ingeniously
exploitative capitalism. It’s sort of like an exas-
perated leftist’s version of Voltaire’s “Candide,” if
it had been rewritten with the speciically Ameri-
can dark-comic cynicism of Nathanael West. The
wigs, by J. Jared Janas and Dave Bova, are out-
standing. (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555.)

My Brilliant Divorce
A young woman is whisked away by a dashing
man, who later dumps her for a newer model. Can
she rebuild her sense of self in middle age, and
learn to ly on her own? (Yes, she can.) It’s a fa-
miliar story, and Geraldine Aron gives it a famil-
iar treatment in this solo play, directed by Aedín
Moloney. Melissa Gilbert has a warm presence as
Rachel, tamping down the character’s neurotic,
clueless side. But the role is an agglomeration of
clichés—and still not as tired as that of Rachel’s
overbearing Jewish mother, who regularly in-
tervenes to nag her daughter about the road not
taken. During three years, Rachel enters the dat-
ing marketplace, buys her irst vibrator, and be-
comes an Airbnb host. She has made it through,
just as we knew she would. (New Ohio, 154 Chris-
topher St. 866-811-4111.)

Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story

It’s 1908, and two young Romanian Jews (Chris
Weatherstone and Mary Fay Coady) meet while
awaiting medical inspection before entering Can-
ada. So begins the darkly funny and moving true
story of the playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s
great-grandparents. Much of what follows takes
the form of a neo-klezmer musical, with instru-
mentation ranging from banjo and accordion to
megaphone. Ben Caplan, a high-energy folk vir-
tuoso with a leonine beard, supplies the gravelly
vocals and narration. The show’s self-aware and
ironic title derives from a dog-whistle term (“old
stock”) used to set apart Canadians whose families
arrived generations ago from more recent arriv-
als. Even if some of the symbolism is too on the
nose (the set is a converted shipping container),
it is hard to imagine a more apt time for a pro-
duction with so clear a moral center. (59E59, at
59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200.)
1 ALSO NOTABLE

The Amateurs Vineyard. Through March 29. • Amy

and the Orphans Laura Pels. • Angels in America
Neil Simon. • Bright Colors and Bold Patterns
SoHo Playhouse. • Escape to Margaritaville Mar-
quis. • Good for Otto Pershing Square Signa-
ture Center. • Is God Is SoHo Rep. Through March
31. • Jerry Springer—The Opera Pershing Square
Signature Center. Through April 1. • Kings Public.
Through April 1. • Later Life Clurman. • Lobby Hero
Helen Hayes. • Once on This Island Circle in the
Square. • Rocktopia Broadway Theatre. • Three
Small Irish Masterpieces Irish Repertory. • Three
Wise Guys Beckett. • The Winter’s Tale Polonsky
Shakespeare Center. • Yerma Park Avenue Armory.

8 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018

“ THE HOTTEST SNOW ON BROADWAY!” – VANITY FAIR

“A BRILLIANT SPECTACLE,
as jaw-dropping as it is poignant.”
– VARIETY

“THE MESSAGE IS CLEAR:

LOVE WINS.”
– THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

“DISNEY’S STRUCK GOLD!

Sumptuous sets, gorgeous costumes and
plenty of special effects to wow the audience.”
– NEW YORK POST

“‘LET IT GO’ IS A SHOWSTOPPER

IF EVER THERE WAS ONE.” – THE NEW YORK TIMES

“DROP EVERYTHING AND RESERVE SEATS NOW!” – O MAGAZINE

St. James Theatre | FrozenTheMusical.com

 DANCE
great. You put a black garbage bag under
water, it looks great. Cotton balls, not so
good. But feathers, great.”
He knew he needed music for the
show that was now taking shape in his
mind. He finally settled on Berlioz’s
“Symphonie Fantastique.” He named
his show after Berlioz’s piece and
premièred it in the basement theatre of
the performance complex called HERE,
on Dominick Street. Hitherto a storage
facility, the space was spifed up with the
financial help of Twist’s grandmother
and named after her. It is the Dorothy B.
Williams Theatre.
On March 29, in honor of its twen-
tieth anniversary, “Symphonie Fan-
tastique” is being revived at HERE, for
a twelve-week run. The show has just
about everything: sparkles, like fairy dust;
blue disks that bump into each other,
like who the hell are you; skinny, hatted
things that look like enoki mushrooms
growing upside down. Twice I’m sure I
saw an egg frying in a pan. There is also
something whirling in a circle, like an
enraged doughnut; then, marvellously, a
black thing flying across a bronze-
colored sun.
It is known that Berlioz included in
his “Symphonie” a motif representing an
Irish actress he was obsessed with, Har-
riet Smithson. Where, in the goings on
in this tank, is Harriet? I don’t know.
Twist will not do Harriet identifications.
All he will say is that Harriet is always
Aquacade did it.” One day, twenty years ago, Twist white. And again and again as the show
was walking down his block, and he saw progresses we see a tiny white thing, in
Basil Twist’s underwater puppet show,
a ten-gallon fish tank that someone had the shape of Robin Hood’s hat, sailing
“Symphonie Fantastique,” returns.
put out for the garbage collectors. It had serenely through. Is that you, Harriet?
Most people, when they think of pup- a crack in it. “ ‘Hmm,’ I said, and I lugged After the performance, the five pup-
pets, are put in mind of the sock puppet it home, and I covered the crack with peteers will invite you backstage to tell
that their third-grade teacher brought duct tape, and I filled the thing with you how it all works. Wear your galoshes.
into class to tell them to brush their water. I put a piece of silk on the end of And reserve early. When the show
teeth. Much harder to learn is a mario- a coat hanger, and I dragged it through premièred, the Wall Street Journal said it
nette, such as Howdy Doody, which is the water. It looked fantastic.” Twist had was New York’s hottest ticket outside
ILLUSTRATION BY ARIEL DAVIS

operated, on strings, from high above the just received his first grant, a thousand “The Lion King.” This year’s incarnation
puppet’s head. dollars, from the Jim Henson Founda- may be hotter still. The tank has grown
But until recently there was probably tion. So he went out and bought the to a thousand gallons, and there will be
no such thing as an abstract puppet. “Or, biggest fish tank he could find, and live music: the excellent pianist Chris-
if there was,” the forty-eight-year-old started sticking other things into it. “Al- topher O’Riley playing Liszt’s arrange-
master puppeteer Basil Twist says, “there most everything,” he says, “when you put ment of “Symphonie Fantastique.”
weren’t that many. That’s kind of why I it under water, is transformed and looks —Joan Acocella
10 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
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 DANCE

Davalois Fearon
Earlier this year, the East Village institution for-
merly known as Performance Space 122 unveiled its
new theatres at the top of its original building (and
changed its name to the more generic Performance
ART
Space New York). Its old stage on the second loor 1
was taken over by the venerable theatre collective neighborhood. (Though the buildings were already
Mabou Mines, which can now present other artists. MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES slated for demolition, the artist was nonetheless crit-
Among the initial crop is Fearon, a budding chore- icized for helping to destroy them.) This essential
ographer still best known as a standout dancer with Metropolitan Museum retrospective is jam-packed with photographs and
Stephen Petronio. Her “Time to Talk” is a multidis- “William Eggleston: Los Alamos” ilms documenting these and other projects, such as
ciplinary piece that addresses, rather didactically, “It’s as if red is at war with all the other colors,” reads Matta-Clark’s hybrid of “happening” and restaurant,
racial bias in academia and dance. (Mabou Mines, one of the quotes by Eggleston that visitors encoun- FOOD. Especially noteworthy, given the context,
First Ave. at 9th St. 866-811-4111. March 27-29.) ter among seventy dye-transfer photographs in this are stunning pictures of big square holes cut in the
stunning exhibition. The portfolio, which was named loors of abandoned buildings in the South Bronx,
Joanna Kotze for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New both a powerful critique of the deliberate devalua-
In her 2015 piece “Find Yourself Here,” Kotze put Mexico, is being exhibited in its entirety in New tion of real estate in marginalized neighborhoods
visual artists—including her husband, Jonathan York for the irst time. The images—of landscapes and a memorial to derelict beauty. Through April 8.
Allen—onstage and made them move. The result both verdant and desolate, decrepit architecture, and
was eccentric and mostly fun. Her new work, “What the found poetry of roadside signage—were printed Morgan Library and Museum
Will We Be Like When We Get There,” continues in 2002, from negatives shot between 1965 and 1974, “Peter Hujar: Speed of Life”
in an interdisciplinary mode, with the gawky cho- in the Mississippi Delta region (where the photog- Hujar, who died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987,
reographer joined by Allen, the articulate dancer rapher lives) and on road trips to Las Vegas and Los at the age of ifty-three, was among the greatest of
Netta Yerushalmy, and the composer Ryan Seaton. Angeles, among other locations. Car upholstery ap- all American photographers and has had, by far, the
In-progress performances of the work have sug- pears as slick and bright as fresh blood; Coca-Cola most confusing reputation. This dazzling retrospec-
gested smart, kooky kids playing in a junk pile. ads, ketchup bottles on a fast-food counter, and Val- tive of a hundred and sixty-four pictures, curated by
The potential for exciting spontaneity is there, but entine’s Day decorations in a supermarket window Joel Smith, airms Hujar’s excellence while, if any-
so is the danger of idling. (New York Live Arts, 219 lend the scenes a hyperreal intensity. Through May 28. thing, complicating his history. The works range
W. 19th St. 212-924-0077. March 28-31.) across the genres of portraiture, nudes, cityscape,
Museum of Modern Art and still-life—the stillest of all from the catacombs
Anna Sperber “Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in of Palermo, Italy, shot in 1963. The inest are por-
Sperber’s formalism can be dutiful and lacking in Brazil” traits, not only of people but of cows, sheep, and,
urgency, but not when her aggressive streak kicks Some artists are so iconic they’re known by only one most notably, an individual goose, with an eagerly
in. So there’s something promising in the setup for name: Brancusi, Léger, Tarsila. Wait, who? Tarsila coniding mien. The quality of Hujar’s prints, tend-
“Wealth from the Salt Seas,” which has the chore- do Amaral is so famous in her native Brazil that, for- ing to sumptuous blacks and simmering grays, trans-
ographer whipping weighty electrical cables into ty-three years after her death, a motif from one of her ixes. He was a darkroom master, maintaining tech-
waves. It sounds like a badass ribbon dance. The paintings helped close out the 2016 Rio de Janeiro nical standards for which he got scant credit except
composer and experimental vocalist Gelsey Bell Olympics. That chimerical landscape, “Setting Sun,” among certain cognoscenti. He never hatched a sig-
is on hand to help make powerful vibrations. (The from 1929, hangs now in the artist’s irst-ever mu- nature look to rival those of more celebrated elders
Chocolate Factory, 5-49 49th Ave., Long Island City. seum exhibition in the United States. Paintings are who inluenced him (Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus)
866-811-4111. March 28-31.) the main event here, notably Tarsila’s perversely pro- or those of younger peers who learned from him
portioned nudes, including “Abaporu,” made in 1928. (Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin). His pictures
Annie Wilson / “At Home with the Humorless Seated in a stripped-down landscape—green ground, share, in place of a style, an unfailing rigor that can
Bastard” a greener saguaro, blue sky, and a lemon-yellow disk only be experienced, not described. Through May 20.
In her eccentric one-woman show, the Philadelphia- that splits the diference between lower and sun—a
based choreographer and performance artist plays igure is portrayed in the pose of a thinker, with a Museum of the Moving Image
with the conventional relationship between viewer tiny head resting on a spindly arm and a monstrously “The Game: The Game”
and performer. Wilson climbs into a tub onstage, swollen foot, as if the intellect were dwarfed by the In a previous project, the multimedia artist An-
soaks in glitter, invites audience members to dance body’s sensations. The painting’s brazenly tropical gela Washko staged feminist interventions in the
with her, and orchestrates a sing-along, all in the modernism inspired the poet Oswald de Andrade online multiplayer game World of Warcraft, a vir-
name of creating a moment of intimacy among to write the “Manifesto of Anthropophagy,” a call to tual space rife with misogynistic trolling. Here, she
strangers. (JACK, 505½ Waverly Ave., Brooklyn. cannibalize foreign inluences, which resounded in presents an interactive video derived from a per-
jackny.org. March 29-31.) Brazilian culture for decades. This sublimely weird vasive real-life game. Players seated at a station,
show is an eye-opening corrective to an art history headphones on, ind themselves in the role of easy
Basil Twist / “Symphonie Fantastique” that has treated key chapters—those that aren’t Eu- prey: a young woman at a bar, awaiting a late friend.
This musical puppet extravaganza, which premièred rocentric—as if they were written in invisible ink. Washko culled her dialogue from the instructional
twenty years ago, put the puppeteer Basil Twist on As Andrade wrote in his manifesto, “Joy is the de- materials of six so-called seduction coaches, or pickup
the map; he has since gone on to work on Broad- cisive test.” Through June 3. artists, who ofer techniques for inept straight men
way, in opera, and in the movies. To Berlioz’s fan- looking to score, so to speak. These experts are the
tastical score, Twist’s puppeteers create a world Bronx Museum basis for her game’s aggressive characters, whose
out of bits of fabric, plastic, and tinsel, all moving “Gordon Matta-Clark” come-ons are by turns entertaining, irritating, and
in mesmerizing slow motion inside a giant tank The SoHo-reared son of two artists (the Chilean Ro- harrowing. A soundtrack by the experimental band
illed with water. Not to be missed. (HERE, 145 berto Matta and the American Anna Louise Clark), Xiu Xiu heightens the anxiety provoked by their
Sixth Ave., near Spring St. 866-811-4111. March 29- Matta-Clark was a self-described “anarchitect” who high-pressure tactics, while Washko’s simple, gritty
April 1 and April 3. Through June 17.) made daring interventions in urban environments design, constructed from digitally manipulated cyan-
until his untimely death, in 1978, at the age of thir- otypes, captures the lurid light and close quarters of
“Works & Process” / Nederlands Dans Theatre ty-ive. For his 1975 project “Day’s End,” the artist a barroom. In her ingenious reconstruction of com-
Long known as the house of Hans van Manen ilmed himself cutting a half-moon shape from the plex social encounters, there is no standard measure
and Jiří Kylián, this world-class Dutch contempo- front of an abandoned warehouse on a Manhattan for winning. Instead, players, while navigating the
rary-dance troupe has in recent decades been dom- pier, with the aid of pulleys and a chainsaw. He de- game’s multiple-choice menus, are ofered insight
inated by the work of the choreographic duo Paul scribed the results as a “sun-and-water temple,” but into a pickup artist’s warped reasoning, and given the
Lightfoot and Sol León. Here, company mem- worship was cut short when the police arrived with chance to redo an evening gone wrong. Through April 1.
bers perform excerpts of their pieces “Shoot the an arrest warrant. One high point here is an exten-
Moon” (2006) and “Singulière Odysée” (2017), sive photographic archive of subway graiti and the Rubin Museum of Art
and there will be a discussion with the choreogra- controversial “Conical Intersect,” also performed “Chitra Ganesh: The Scorpion Gesture”
phers. (Guggenheim Museum, Fifth Ave. at 89th St. in 1975, for which Matta-Clark cut pieces out of the The Brooklyn artist’s new animations ingeniously
212-423-3575. March 31.) façades of two historic houses in Paris’s Les Halles combine her own drawings and watercolors with his-

12 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018

 ART

torical imagery, peppering the journeys of bodhi- scenes and portraits captures New York’s demi- that mean nothing and so much. Take “Seagulls
sattvas with contemporary pop-culture references. monde of the nineteen-seventies and eighties in Kitchen,” a portrait of two strangers, a man
Five of these pieces are installed on the museum’s from a warm and impromptu perspective. Among and a woman who allowed Lawson to shoot them
second and third loors amid its collection of Hi- Gottfried’s coöperative subjects were Brooklyn as lovers. The title refers to a wall decoration, the
malayan art, elements of which appear in her psy- beachgoers, Harlem gospel singers, and disco-era kind of sweet ornament that, were the tableau real,
chedelic sequences of spinning mandalas and fall- clubbers, as well as underground icons and interna- would almost certainly be accompanied by a story.
ing lotus lowers. (Ganesh’s works are activated, tional celebrities. A shot of the transgender activist The couple prom pose, the man plaiting his hands
as if by magic, when viewers approach.) In “Rain- and performer Marsha P. Johnson shows her posing over her soft torso. Tattoos on oiled brown skin
bow Body,” a cave, which also appears in a nearby with a wide smile in the middle of the street. Diana are reminders of prior lives, food on the shelf of
painting of Mandarava, is illed with people in 3-D Ross, standing by a wall and dressed to blend in, the present one. Flickers of the couple’s person-
glasses, watching as the guru-deity attains enlight- likewise beams for the camera. Gottfried, who died alities are awakened and then drowned out by the
enment. “Silhouette in the Graveyard” is projected last year, at the age of sixty-six, also photographed eye that placed these subjects just so. Through April
behind a glass case containing a small sculpture of those closest to her. One of the show’s high points 7. (Sikkema Jenkins, 530 W. 22nd St. 212-929-2262.)
Maitreya, from late-eighteenth-century Mongolia, is “Mommie Kissing Bubbie on Delancey Street,”
for a cleverly dioramalike efect. Prophesied to ar- from 1979, which celebrates two generations of her 1
rive during an apocalyptic crisis, the bodhisattva Jewish immigrant family in an unguarded moment GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN
is seen here against Ganesh’s montage, which in- on the Lower East Side. Through April 28. (Cooney,
cludes footage of global catastrophes and political 508 W. 26th St. 212-255-8158.) Jacolby Satterwhite
protests, from the Women’s March to Black Lives Pick up a pink glow-stick bracelet on your way into
Matter. Through Nov. 4. Deana Lawson “Blessed Avenue,” Satterwhite’s impressive début
A viewer looking too quickly at the saturated im- with the gallery. A large screen bisects the black-
1 ages, displayed in large gold frames, in Lawson’s walled space, playing a hallucinatory video—a
GALLERIES—UPTOWN irst solo show in New York City might think that Boschian sci-i tableau—which attests to the artist’s
they were found family photographs. The scenes command of digital animation and 3-D-modelling
Allan Kaprow look natural, arranged in lived-in kitchens and liv- software. In the endless simulated shot, dancers and
Kaprow is best known for inventing “happenings,” ing rooms, and yet, in their organization, distantly S & M performers populate a gay mega-club, a maze of
a term he coined sixty years ago in the essay “The painterly. (The artist counts acrylic nails, Notori- fragmented machinery apparently adrift in space. The
Legacy of Jackson Pollock.” But he started out as a ous B.I.G., and her mother as inspirations; one may dystopian scene has a surprisingly poignant twist: the
painter, as this museum-quality show makes sen- also detect the manipulated vérité of Lorna Simp- action is set to an electronic soundtrack created from
sationally clear. Several mid-ifties views of the son, Philip Kwame Apagya, and Lauren Green- cassette tapes of the artist’s mother, singing a capella.
George Washington Bridge, portraying both the ield as inluences.) Lawson proudly appropri- In the accompanying installation, a conceptual bou-
bridge and the sky with bars of glowing color, may ates a popular black aesthetic, absorbing modes tique, the artist hawks afordable items from pill or-
bring to mind the early realist work of Piet Mon- as varied as those found in old issues of Jet and in ganizers to tambourines, all printed with dashed-of
drian. Two “action collages” from the same period, hip-hop souvenirs; she has a knack for identify- drawings and charming, handwritten notes. Through
incorporating jagged pieces of foil and fabric, are ing the strangely potent components of interiors May 6. (Brown, 291 Grand St. 212-627-5258.)
nearly transcendental in their exuberance. A series
of colorful, vigorously impastoed portraits push
against formal limits with strange cropping. By the
nineteen-seventies, Kaprow was making extremely
simple charcoal drawings of lines and circles, in-
MANUSCRIPTS DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY/

spired by Zen breathing exercises. The energy of

the assembled works is so consistently restless that
it suggests an artist for whom one medium alone
GIFT OF ROBERT GARRETT, 1942: ISLAMIC MANUSCRIPTS, GARRETT NO. 79G/© PRINCETON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

would never suice. As Kaprow inscribed on the

stretcher bars of his 1955 canvas “Standing Nude
Against Red and White Stripes,” “I will always
be a painter. Of sorts.” Through April 7. (Hauser &
Wirth, 32 E. 69th St. 212-794-4970.)

“Kiss Off”
This eighteen-person meditation on a Hall-
mark-worthy theme (the subject of kisses in art)
steers clear of schmalz, thanks to the smarts of its
curator, Francesco Bonami. It opens with a 1970
lithograph of undulating red lipstick marks, made
by the experimental ilmmaker Joyce Weiland while
she sang “O Canada.” The work hangs next to the
show’s title piece, “Kiss Of,” made a year later (in
Canada) by Vito Acconci (1940-2017), who ap-
plied lipstick to his mouth, kissed his hand, and
transferred the marks to a lithography stone. The
show closes with another game of compare and
contrast. In Francis Picabia’s strange, brightly col-
ored “Couple de Monstres,” from 1925-27, lovers
are seen in an embrace. Nearby, in Felix Gonzalez-
Torres’s heartrending untitled sculpture, two rings
of silver-plated brass hang side by side on a wall,
so close that they appear fused together—but, in
fact, they’re not touching at all. Through April 14.
(Luxembourg & Dayan, 64 E. 77th St. 212-452-4646.)
1 GALLERIES—CHELSEA

Arlene Gottfried “Iskander Fights Against the Russians,” a rare Persian manuscript folio from 1562, is
Aptly titled “A Lifetime of Wandering,” this post- on view in “Romance and Reason: Islamic Transformations of the Classical Past,” at
humous exhibition of the photographer’s street the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, at New York University.

THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 13

 MOVIES

Hu Bo’s only feature, “An Elephant Sitting Still,” screening in New Directors/New Films, depicts high-school students confronting gangland violence.

Social Studies girl who is having an afair with the sense of a suspended time in which his-
school’s vice-dean and fears the release tory, culture, beauty, and even memory seem
Two new films showing historical forces
of an incriminating video; a small-time erased, is among the greatest recent films.
in local action have New York premières.
criminal whose afair with a woman re- The director Khalik Allah’s documen-
This year’s edition of New Directors/New sults in her boyfriend’s suicide; and an tary “Black Mother” (April 4 and April 7)
Films, held March 28-April 8 at Film elderly man whose son is forcing him out pursues a similarly grand idea in a briefer
Society of Lincoln Center and MOMA, of his apartment and into a nursing home. span. Allah, a New Yorker, films residents
ofers the U.S. première of a movie, “An Most of the scenes run five minutes or of Jamaica, his mother’s home country—
Elephant Sitting Still,” that should be- more, composed in long takes that follow prostitutes and street people, merchants
come an enduring classic—albeit one that a restless array of characters through and members of the clergy (including the
arrives shadowed by tragedy. It’s the sole apartments and corridors, alleys and filmmaker’s grandfather, a minister)—
feature by the director Hu Bo, who, after courtyards, train stations and industrial with a diverse and collage-like artistry.
completing it, committed suicide, at the wastelands—but the kinetic cinematog- Mixing media (including 8-mm. and
age of twenty-nine, in October, 2017. raphy (by Fan Chao) freezes into tense, 16-mm. film and several video formats)
Hu’s vast ambition is suggested by painterly tableaux of bitter confrontations and editing with a free hand, desynchro-
his film’s three-hour-and-fifty-minute pregnant with violence. Hu’s characters nizing image and sound and using slow
running time. (It screens April 1 and rarely miss a chance to inflict emotional motion, Allah meshes personal experi-
April 8.) With its distinctive and hard- and physical pain on one another, and the ence and portraiture with myth and fan-
forged drama, style, and mood, it presents movie’s relentless cruelty is a mark of its tasy, religion and politics, to consider the
a comprehensive, diagnostic cross-section tacitly political fury. There’s nothing arch exaltation and the degradation of women
of China’s grave civic maladies and their or artificial about Hu’s drastic distensions in Jamaican culture—and the very idea
intimate, agonized expressions. The story of cinematic time; his volatile silences and of black motherhood. In the movie’s main
COURTESY REDIANCE FILMS

is centered on a day in the lives of four wild outbursts unflinchingly reveal the thread, which follows one woman’s preg-
residents of run-down apartment build- raw survivalism, feral aggression, selfish nancy through to the birth of her child,
ings in a decaying industrial region: a depravity, and poisonous rage of a society Allah fuses cultural and scientific obser-
high-school boy who accidentally kills a abused by brute force and ruthless in- vations into a warily hopeful vision of
bully in a stairwell fight and flees the diference and yielding to despair. “An endurance and progress.
victim’s brother, a gangster; a high-school Elephant Sitting Still,” with its chilling —Richard Brody

14 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018

 MOVIES
1 OPENING art into a brisk sixty-nine-minute roundelay of as will the glow of famous names in the cast list.
chance meetings and intimate confrontations. Those voicing the mutts include Bryan Cranston,
Gemini Reviewed this week in The Current Cin- It’s set amid—and was actually ilmed at—the Liev Schreiber, Scarlett Johansson, Jef Gold-
ema. Opening March 30. (In limited release.) • Love 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where a young Ko- blum, Tilda Swinton, and, of course, Bill Mur-
After Love Russell Harbaugh directed this drama, rean woman named Jeon Manhee (Kim Min- ray.—A.L. (3/26/18) (In wide release.)
which he co-wrote with Eric Mendelsohn, about hee) is ired from her job as a ilm-sales assistant
two sons who, with their mother, are coping with after a one-night stand with a director named So Ismael’s Ghosts
the death of their father. Starring Chris O’Dowd, Wansoo (Jung Jin-young), who, unbeknownst to The director Arnaud Desplechin mines his
James Adomian, and Andie MacDowell. Open- her, is the boyfriend of her boss, Nam Yanghye earlier ilms and his cultural obsessions for a
ing March 30. (In limited release.) • Ready Player (Chang Mi-hee). Stuck in Cannes with noth- formidable trove of narrative complications,
One Steven Spielberg directed this adaptation ing to do, Manhee befriends Claire (Isabelle which he lings into the script with admirable
of Ernest Cline’s science-iction novel, about a Huppert), a teacher from Paris, who’s there as abandon but without directorial audacity to
teen-ager (Tye Sheridan) who goes on a hunt a tourist. Claire wanders around with her Po- match. His longtime alter ego, Mathieu Amal-
for a treasure hidden in a virtual-reality game. laroid camera, taking pictures of everyone she ric, plays Ismael Vuillard, a fortysomething Paris-
Co-starring Olivia Cooke and Ben Mendelsohn. meets—including Wansoo and Yanghye—and un- based director who’s long been in mourning for
Opening March 29. (In wide release.) intentionally sparking uncomfortable reunions. his wife, Carlotta Bloom (Marion Cotillard), who
Hong distills vast emotional crises and creative vanished two decades ago. He is only now begin-
1 self-recognitions into confessional monologues, ning a new relationship, with the astrophysicist
NOW PLAYING pugnacious discussions, and luminous aphorisms. Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg), but, in a “Ver-
His tightrope-long takes of scenes ilmed in set- tigo”-inspired twist, Carlotta suddenly shows
Le Bonheur tings ranging from the picturesque to the banal up and wants to start over. There are also sub-
The happiness alluded to in the title of Agnès (restaurants and apartments, café terraces, Med- plots involving Carlotta’s father, Henri (László
Varda’s 1965 drama of adultery in a working-class iterranean beaches) have an intricate dramatic Szabó), a director who’s a Jewish veteran of the
Paris suburb stings with whiplash irony. A hand- construction, replete with glittering asides and French Resistance as well as Ismael’s mentor, and
some couple, François and Thérèse (played by the wondrous coincidences, to rival that of a Hol- Ismael’s brother, Ivan (Louis Garrel), a diplo-
real-life couple Jean-Claude and Claire Drouot), lywood classic. In English and Korean.—R.B. mat, whom Ismael turns into the character of a
and their two young children (the actors’ own) (In limited release.) spy in a new movie that he’s struggling to in-
live a life of old-fashioned sweetness. He’s a cab- ish. (Clips from the ilm-within-a-ilm are scat-
inetmaker, she’s a dressmaker; their sex life is The Death of Stalin tered throughout.) Desplechin’s sense of style is
active, and their social life is heartwarming. But A scurrilous farce from Armando Iannucci, the merely illustrative—at its best, it’s faux Trufaut.
François falls hard for a pert, uninhibited postal creator of “Veep.” It is set in 1953, at a pivotal His storytelling engine is in overdrive, throw-
clerk (Marie-France Boyer), bringing drastic point in the Soviet Union; Stalin (Adrian Mc- ing of aphoristic sparks and melodramatic heat,
change to the domestic order. Varda ills her Loughlin) dies at his dacha, outside Moscow, and but the ilm hardly gets moving until, inally,
frames with riots of nature and color, like Bon- an unseemly tussle to succeed him gets under he meshes antic comedy, family passion, and
nard paintings come to life, and with an erotic way. The pretenders range from the cautious mortal reckonings in a mad sprint to the inish
intimacy to match, choreographing physical pas- but ambitious Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) to line.—R.B. (In limited release.)
sion with unabashed but formally controlled de- the feebly fumbling Malenkov (Jefrey Tam-
light. She also brings abstract forces into view bor) to, most pitiless of all, Beria (Simon Rus- Love, Simon
with tactile vigor, ofering a sensual sociology sell Beale), the head of the N.K.V.D. The movie Greg Berlanti, the talented guru behind a slew
of family and workplace rituals. Meanwhile, her looks on with scorn as these three, plus the rest of superhero television shows, directs this com-
witty visual allusions to ilms by her male New of Stalin’s inner circle, who have walked for so ing-of-age story, about a closeted gay teen named
Wave contemporaries serve as both tributes and long in the shadow of fear, jostle for power and Simon (empathetically played by Nick Robin-
critiques. In French.—Richard Brody (Museum of try not to make the wrong move. The language son) who’s being blackmailed by a schoolmate
the Moving Image, March 31-April 1, and streaming.) is profane, the history inaccurate, and the tone while nurturing a crush on an anonymous e-mail
never less than derisive; even the state funeral pen pal. The coming-out story difers from that
Born in Flames is an occasion for little more than muttered con- of most gay-themed ilms: it has a light, glossy
Lizzie Borden’s ierce and trenchant political spiracy and slapstick. No wonder Iannucci’s ilm touch and is izzy without being snarky. Simon’s
fantasy, from 1983, is set in New York ten years has been banned in Russia. Yet the comic outrage struggles to be himself with friends and family
after a second American revolution, peaceful yet seems to it the madness of the times that he de- capture the fear and joy inherent in the process;
thorough, which has brought about democratic scribes, and Beale’s Beria, in particular, crawls Berlanti peppers the soundtrack with an upbeat
socialism and sparked new conlicts centered on from the blackness of the humor as a creature playlist that recalls John Hughes’s ilms, giving
race and gender. Two underground feminist radio of genuine evil. With Michael Palin, as Molo- the romantic comedy a cozy veneer. The self-
stations are in competition—one led by Honey tov, and Jason Isaacs, majestically thuggish, as assured performances—by a cast that includes
(played by the actress of the same name), a black Marshal Zhukov.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel, as Simon’s
woman who considers the revolution unfulilled, our issue of 3/19/18.) (In limited release.) parents, and Katherine Langford, as his best
and another by the white lesbian musician Isa- friend—plant the honeyed yet carefully consid-
belle (Adele Bertei), whose activism is cultural. Isle of Dogs ered high-school romance on irm emotional
Meanwhile, the vigilante Women’s Army patrols The geographical restlessness of Wes Anderson ground. Adapted by the screenwriters Eliza-
the city by bicycle, a government employment is unabated. Having ventured to India for “The beth Berger and Isaac Aptaker from Becky Al-
program leads to riots, and three female journal- Darjeeling Limited” (2007) and to a vanished bertalli’s novel “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens
ists (one of whom is played by Kathryn Bigelow) Mitteleuropa for “The Grand Budapest Hotel” Agenda.”—Bruce Diones (In wide release.)
report on divisions within the socialist move- (2014), he now turns his attention to Japan, and
ment. After an activist (Jean Satterield) dies in to the nonexistent city of Megasaki. Thanks to its Personal Problems
police custody, the feminist theoretician Zella despotic mayor, the canine population, laid low This nearly three-hour melodrama, from 1980,
Wylie (played by the activist and writer Flo Ken- by sickness, is transported en masse to a garbage- directed by Bill Gunn and written by Ishmael
nedy) calls for direct action to get the message out illed island of the coast. One of the exiles used Reed, is centered on one New York couple, John-
in the only way that matters—on television. Bor- to belong to the mayor’s young ward, who sets nie Mae Brown (Vertamae Grosvenor) and her
den’s exhilarating, freely assembled story stages of to save his treasured pet; the rest of the dogs, husband, Charles (Walter Cotton), who live in
news reports, documentary sequences, and sur- meanwhile, plot their cunning rebellion and their a small but pleasant apartment in the West For-
veillance footage alongside tough action scenes return to a civilized life on the mainland. The ties, which they share uneasily with Charles’s el-
and musical numbers; her violent vision is both movie is Anderson’s irst animated feature since derly father (Jim Wright), and, soon, with John-
ideologically complex and chilling.—R.B. (IFC “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009); once again, he works nie Mae’s stepbrother (Thommie Blackwell) and
Center, March 30-31, and streaming.) in stop-motion—his ideal medium, some will say, his wife (Andrea W. Hunt), who are leeing legal
for it demands and rewards the taking of ininite trouble in California. Shooting in video on a tiny
Claire’s Camera pains. The movie’s environmental theme feels budget, Gunn captures a wide range of charac-
The South Korean director Hong Sang-soo con- like a new departure, but the overspill of gags, ters and conlicts in images of a frankly expres-
denses a grand melodrama of work, love, and both visual and verbal, will be familiar to fans, sive analytical variety. He and Reed pursue a

THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 15

 MOVIES

far-reaching domesticity: the Browns, like their zona frontier of this 1957 Western. As the di-
Dig deeper. friends and family, are black, and the movie is
deeply imbued with the forces of history and
rector, Delmer Daves, moves in for his closeups,
the stagecoach runs headlong into the noto-
public policy, including the cultural heritage of rious outlaw Ben Wade (Glenn Ford) and his
Think harder. the South, the fear of police brutality, and the
menace of incarceration. Johnnie Mae, an emer-
men, who commit robbery and murder in front
of the rancher Dan Evans (Van Helin) and his
gency-room nurse at Harlem Hospital, confronts two sons. Evans hesitates to play the hero, but,
See further. the violence of a poor and segregated neighbor-
hood and brings her troubled thoughts home
when Wade is captured, the stage-line owner of-
fers a reward to any man who will bring him to
with her. The movie’s panoramic cityscapes teem the nearest railroad stop and load him onto the
with the gritty details of emotional life: romance Yuma train, and Evans steps up. Daves narrows
and chores, hope and despair and loss, bitter the focus to these deadly companions, locked
resentments and rowdy reckonings with mortal- in a hotel room as Evans waits for the train and
ity.—R.B. (Metrograph.) Wade waits for the rest of his gang to save him.
The compositions evoke a kind of open-air claus-
Red Sparrow trophobia, whether in overhead shots that pin
An everyday tale of a Russian ballerina who be- the characters in the landscape or in tableaux of
ANNALS OF DIPLOMACY
comes a secret agent, using sex as her weapon of men, women, and children staving of the chaos
TRUMP, PUTIN, AND THE choice. Why the ilm is not entitled “The Nut- of the wide-open spaces with their weary fences
NEW COLD WAR cracker” is beyond comprehension. In the course and weathered towns. Based on a story by El-
of the story, adapted by Justin Haythe from the more Leonard.—Michael Sragow (MOMA, March
What lay behind Russia’s interference in the
2016 election—and what lies ahead? novel by Jason Matthews, some characters are 29, and streaming.)
required to remove their clothes, but, by way of
By Evan Osnos, David Remnick, Joshua Yaffa
MARCH 6, 2017 ISSUE
compensation, they get to put on nice thick Rus- Tomb Raider
sian accents. The heroine is Dominika Egorova Yet another chapter in the exploits of Lara Croft,
(Jennifer Lawrence), who quits the Bolshoi with a who must be running out of tombs to raid. In
broken leg and, on the advice of her uncle Vanya two earlier ilms, she was played by Angelina
(Matthias Schoenaerts), enters a secluded school, Jolie, but the role now passes to Alicia Vikander,
where a fearsome teacher (Charlotte Rampling) who, though equally allergic to fear, seems more
trains young men and women to seduce for the grounded and less fantastical. Her task, in the
motherland. Dominika is let loose on an Amer- new movie, is irst to show that she can ride a bi-
ican, Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), who, far from cycle around London at considerable speed, and
being unsuspecting, sees exactly what game she then to trace the movements of her father (Dom-
is playing and sets about recruiting her as a spy inic West). He disappeared seven years ago, as he
for the C.I.A. The plot, though thorny, conceals sought the inal resting place of Himiko, a leg-
few surprises, and Dominika, beautiful yet often endary Japanese queen. The mission takes Lara
blank, remains a cipher without quite deepen- to Hong Kong, where she embarks across a thun-
ing into an enigma. The director is Francis Law- derous sea with a drunken sailor (Daniel Wu) in
rence, who seems curiously eager to crank up the search of an unindable island. This she inds.
physical unpleasantness, perhaps in the hope Already in residence is Vogel (Walton Goggins),
that we will mistake it for thrills. With Jeremy wicked but highly unfrightening, who, like the
Irons.—A.L. (3/12/18) (In wide release.) Crofts, has his eye on the buried prize, the hunt
for which consumes the last—and the least en-
Roxanne Roxanne gaging—phase of the story. For most of the ilm,
This tough-minded, pain-streaked bio-pic about the director, Roar Uthaug, makes brisk attempts
Lolita Shanté Gooden—who, as Roxanne Shanté, to refresh the weary tropes of the saga, but
became a leading rapper, in 1984, at the age of the climactic challenge is almost indistinguish-
fourteen—is anchored by Chanté Adams’s ierce able from a video game. With Kristin Scott
yet wrenchingly vulnerable lead performance. Thomas.—A.L. (3/26/18) (In wide release.)
The writer and director Michael Larnell’s dra-
is the best way to stay on top matization of Shanté’s story is centered in her A Wrinkle in Time
of news and culture every day, Queensbridge neighborhood, where, as a school- Ava DuVernay’s direction of this adaptation of
girl, she was already celebrated as the local rap Madeleine L’Engle’s classic novel captures the
and the magazine each week. champion. Her home life is shaken when her original work’s sense of exhilaration and wonder,
The app includes all magazine mother, Peggy (Nia Long), a hardworking dis- but the script (by Jennifer Lee and Jef Stock-
ciplinarian, is bilked out of a down payment on well) eliminates the book’s most idiosyncratic as-
a new home by her boyfriend (Curtiss Cook) pects and intricate world-building. Storm Reid
news and a nearly unlimited and starts drinking. Meanwhile, a neighbor and stars as Meg Murry, a tween who, with her little
supply of cartoons. d.j. (Kevin Phillips) records Shanté for fun and brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), and
makes her famous overnight. Her career takes her friend Calvin (Levi Miller), goes on an inter-
of, but she never sees the money; at the same galactic adventure in search of her father (Chris
time, Shanté gets involved with Cross (Maher- Pine), a scientist who has been missing for four
shala Ali), a suave middle-aged drug dealer who years. Guided by three women with superpow-
treats her romantically—and then violently. Lar- ers—Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), Mrs.
nell gathers a wide cast of vital actors for a bus- Who (Mindy Kaling), and Mrs. Which (Oprah
tling series of incidents that veer quickly from Winfrey)—the children face exotic creatures in
the sentimental to the shattering. Though the strange new places and challenge colossal forces
movie ofers little societal context, it resounds of evil. Above all, Meg learns to confront—and
with revelations of brutal realms run by ruthless to derive strength from—her stiled pain. Du-
men and shows why Shanté, like many women Vernay highlights Reid’s steadfast and masklike
in show business, left her career too early.—R.B. performance in intense closeups and realizes el-
(In limited release and on Netlix.) ements of fantasy with verve, purpose, and some
giddily psychedelic imagery. Nonetheless, the
3:10 to Yuma story’s emotional moments and delightful de-
and iPhone The simple and beautiful opening sequence—a tails only vaguely cohere. With Gugu Mbatha-
stagecoach following the wheel ruts of a one- Raw, as Meg and Charles Wallace’s mother, also
track route—crystallizes the melancholy Ari- a scientist.—R.B. (In wide release.)

16 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018

 becomes a dizzying tangle of limbs, hair, and
earrings, tethered only by a microphone cord.

NIGHT LIFE The band supports the Flex, who visit from the
U.K. to host a rip-fest in East Williamsburg’s
industrial outskirts. (Sunnyvale, 1031 Grand St.,
1 Brooklyn. 347-987-3971. March 30.)
have phased into nostalgia fodder, the subject
ROCK AND POP of oral histories and podcast roundtables. But Laraaji
Hammond, Jr., who served as the band’s gui- In a world of meditation, yoga, and veganism,
Musicians and night-club proprietors lead tarist, has resolved to keep contributing to his- New Age music occupies an odd slot, at once
complicated lives; it’s advisable to check tory rather than become it. Since surviving the ubiquitous and invisible. Laraaji, born Edward
in advance to conirm engagements. band’s well-documented struggles with sub- Larry Gordon, in Philadelphia, was discov-
stance abuse, he has released a handful of solo ered by Brian Eno while playing in Washington
Ashanti and Ja Rule albums that retain the signature pep and free- Square Park, and was soon releasing spacious,
Local radio stations have been promoting this wheeling edge of the Strokes’ most beloved ma- trancelike compositions with the storied pro-
reunion concert for weeks, with good reason. terial. “Whether we’re just fucking around or ducer, contributing to Eno’s “Ambient 3: Day
As the marquee artists of the music executive feeling it out . . . it’s just a moment away,” he of Radiance,” in 1980. His music sat on shelves,
Irv Gotti’s Murder Inc. Records, Ashanti and Ja sings on “Far Away Truths,” from his most re- largely unnoticed by the buying public, for the
Rule released dozens of smash singles and col- cent album, “Francis Trouble”—the record is a next two decades. But these days Laraaji is en-
laborations at the turn of the century, changing low-stakes look at what could have been, and joying a bit of a cult resurgence, playing sets
the everyday sound of pop and urban radio in what still is. (Brooklyn Steel, 319 Frost St., Wil- for the inluential Boiler Room party series
their wake. Their pairing was an exercise in in- liamsburg. 888-929-7849. March 28.) and gaining new fans through well-curated re-
version: Rule was willing to bend his gruf voice issues on respected labels like Stones Throw
into big melodies, and Ashanti’s everywoman Krimewatch and Warp. On the heels of a new reissue, “Vi-
themes ofset her vocal glamour. The formula Dig up this New York band’s small releases, and sion Songs, Vol. 1,” which arrived in January,
worked time and again; ifteen years later, their the irst thing you’ll notice is the hand-drawn, Laraaji stages an intimate live performance at
run of hits has settled into quasi-classic status, shadowy gumshoe that stalks its album art and National Sawdust. (80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. 646-
providing the shout-along section of wedding tour merchandise. Krimewatch favors the darker 779-8455. March 30.)
playlists across the country. This homecoming corners of the city’s hardcore history; the band
show promises to be as much of a family gath- members settled on their name not only as an MIKE
ering. (Kings Theatre, 1027 Flatbush Ave., Brook- excuse to use the neighborhood-watch image This clear-eyed young rapper from the Bronx
lyn. kingstheatre.com. March 30.) but also as a nod to the nineteen-eighties hard- (by way of London) is a breath of fresh air in a
core band Krakdown. Rhylli, on vocal duty, ires humid room. He has been self-releasing dense
DJ Manny and Boylan of couplets in Japanese and English, and has lo-i rap since 2015, littered with gooey pro-
Teklife is a d.j.-and-producer collective that has a searing live presence—onstage, she quickly duction and deeply personal anecdotes about
carried the Chicago footwork subgenre beyond
the city’s borders. The scene is an extension of
Chicago’s formative house music of the nine-
teen-eighties: breakneck soul loops and speed-
ing drums make up the footwork sound, de-
signed to coincide with quick, technical dance
steps. Teklife was founded in the skating rinks
of Chicago in the early aughts by DJ Rashad
and DJ Spinn, and the group has since gained
members across the globe, self-releasing EPs,
videos, and merchandise while touring. When
DJ Rashad passed away, in 2014, the crew’s am-
bitions to make their local sound universally
known took on new resonance. Two Teklife
mainstays, DJ Manny, a protégé of Rashad’s,
and Boylan, making his New York début, man
the sound system at H0l0, an under-the-radar
venue in Ridgewood. (1090 Wyckof Ave., Queens.
h0l0.nyc. March 30.)

Hanni El Khatib
This scuz-punk singer writes songs that KEXP
dreams are made of. While serving as a cre-
ative director for the apparel line HUF, the
San Francisco skateboarder began noodling
with recording, producing a few demos that
were received strongly enough to land a modest
label deal. His proile rose with some well-con-
ceived covers, including “You Rascal You” and “I
Got a Thing,” and his bluesy art-rock sound—
part Jack White, part Ezra Koenig—was seized
upon by ilmmakers and advertisers. Last year,
El Khatib released a double album, “Savage
Times”; throughout the record, the son of a Pal-
estinian father and a Filipino mother takes aim
at the world around him, exploring new political
and biographical themes. (Rough Trade, 64 N. 9th
St., Brooklyn. roughtradenyc.com. March 30.)

Albert Hammond, Jr.

The Strokes, and the era of shaggy Big Apple
rock they sparked at the dawn of the aughts,
 NIGHT LIFE

school, work, family, and everyday life. Last swinging for all they were worth back in the
year, MIKE delivered the album “May God forties—but they’ve been few and far between.
Bless Your Hustle,” something of a late-adoles- DIVA, under the intrepid direction of the
cence thesis statement presented via internal drummer Sherrie Maricle, has nurtured out-
rhyme, its name inspired by the words of ad- standing women jazz musicians for a quarter
vice and encouragement his mother would ofer century now, proving that novelty has nothing
him over the phone. MIKE counts brainy peers to do with this crack ensemble’s success. The
like Earl Sweatshirt and Wiki as fans, as well as band couldn’t have picked a better social mo-
a contingent of city kids who identify with his ment to celebrate its longevity. (Dizzy’s Club
slow approach to fast surroundings. He opens Coca-Cola, Broadway at 60th St. 212-258-9595.
for the chameleonic D.I.Y. songwriter Amen March 28-April 1.)
Dunes. (Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N. 6th
St., Brooklyn. 718-486-5400. March 31.) Michael Feinstein
Feinstein is going to have to walk a very ine line
Justin Strauss as he celebrates the sexist, boozing, and crass-as-
Strauss signed to Chris Blackwell’s proliic Is- they-wanted-to-be kings of the Rat Pack: Frank
land Records in the mid-seventies at just sev- Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. It’s
enteen, as a member of the pop band Milk ‘N’ fortunate that each was a masterly singer who
Cookies. Since then, he’s jockeyed through four embraced some of the most durable standards
decades of the city’s dance halls, from the Mudd still heard today. Feinstein will be supported
Club to the Tunnel and Life, while earning more by the Tedd Firth Big Band and joined by guest
than two hundred production credits and col- singers including Clint Holmes. (Appel Room,
laborating with artists like the B-52s, Luther Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th St. 212-
Vandross, and Sergio Mendez—all fair game for 721-6500. March 28-29.)
the night’s set. Strauss co-headlines at Output
with the dance-punk outit Chk Chk Chk. (74 Scott Wendholt and Adam Kolker
Wythe Ave., Brooklyn. outputclub.com. March 29.) A snarling bass-and-drum team is all this lean
and feisty foursome needs to ofset the author-
1 ity of its front-line horns, the trumpeter Wend-
JAZZ AND STANDARDS holt and the saxophonist Kolker. The joined-
at-the-hip rhythm section of Victor Lewis, on
George Colligan drums, and Ugonna Okegwo, on bass, provides
If Colligan’s name doesn’t ring a bell, his face the horsepower. (Smalls, 183 W. 10th St. 212-252-
and incisive playing may: the resourceful pia- 5091. March 30-31.)
nist has been working behind Cassandra Wil-
son, Ravi Coltrane, and any number of central Martin Wind
jazz igures for the past three decades. Lead- His ingers racing efortlessly over the strings
ing a trio here, he calls on the drummer Lenny of his bass, Wind has displayed his remarkable
White and one of his renowned former employ- chops with the many prominent mainstream
ers, the bassist Buster Williams. (Smoke, 2751 jazz artists who have been lucky enough to snag
Broadway, between 105th and 106th Sts. 212-864- him for a gig or recording. Wind’s new album,
6662. March 29.) “Light Blue,” features his own compositions and
some of the musicians who will be heard along-
The DIVA Jazz Orchestra’s 25th side him here, including Anat Cohen, on clari-
Anniversary Celebration net; Ingrid Jensen, on trumpet; and Scott Robin-
All-female big bands are nothing new—the son, on saxophone. (Jazz at Kitano, 66 Park Ave.,
International Sweethearts of Rhythm were at 38th St. 212-885-7119. March 30-31.)

ILLUSTRATION BY ALLISON FILICE

An under-heralded forefather of both ambient and New Age music, Laraaji reëmerged this year with
“Vision Songs, Vol. 1,” a collection of tracks originally self-released, on cassette tapes, in 1984.

18 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018

 CLASSICAL MUSIC
SPRING
FLING

Music by Dmitri Kourliandski, Marina Khorkova, and Alexander Khubeev, at National Sawdust.

Rites of Spring talent of the Philharmonic’s chosen

group of composers, which includes
A new crop of talented young composers
Denis Khorov, Marina Khorkova, Al-
emerges from Russia.
exander Khubeev, Dmitri Kourliandski,
In the last years of the Soviet Union, and Nikolay Popov. They might be
the music of three Russian compos- surprised, though, at how deeply most
ers—Alfred Schnittke, Edison Deni- of these musicians have buried what
sov, and Sofia Gubaidulina—occupied Westerners may think of as the national
the world’s concert stages with the style of Romanticism, which goes back
same prestige and regularity as that of to Glinka and Tchaikovsky. Russia’s
their great predecessors, Shostakovich young composers, it seems, are busily
and Prokofiev. Now only Gubaidulina adapting to their own ends the extreme-
is left as a major figure, and many sounds techniques of such contempo-
music-minded Americans may have rary masters as Helmut Lachenmann,
thought that, in Russia, new music, much like their coevals in New York Kelli O’Hara in Così fan tutte
along with democracy, was becoming and Western Europe.
a lost cause. A soulful sort of Russian darkness,
But this is not the truth, as musi- however, remains. (Khorov’s “Barcarolle”
cians from the New York Philharmonic hints just a little at Rachmaninof.) For
will prove on April 2, when the orches- sheer ambition, the most impressive of
tra presents the last of its “Contact!” piece will likely be Khubeev’s “Ghost r,
concerts—a contemporary-music series of Dystopia,” a mini-symphony of in-
begun by the orchestra’s former music strumental squeaks, groans, and body e
director, Alan Gilbert—at Williams- slams initiated by a conductor whose
burg’s National Sawdust. (New-music pants, shirt, and gloves will be attached
activities will remain vibrant under the to a series of sound-producing plastic
ILLUSTRATION BY ROMAN MURADOV

incoming music director, Jaap van Zwe- boxes. More subtle is Popov’s “Nibiru
den.) Hosting the event is the popular 20/13,” a work of musical science-fiction,
composer and conductor Esa-Pekka in which video elements complement
Salonen, with Gerard McBurney, an a cunningly crafted hodgepodge of both
acknowledged authority on Russian electronica and string-quartet gestures,
and Soviet music and culture, consult- making for a vision of Armageddon
ing on the program. that’s almost whimsical in tone.
Listeners will be impressed by the —Russell Platt
 by Eric Lyon. Subsequent events feature composi-
tions by members of the polystylistic string quar-

CLASSICAL MUSIC tet the Rhythm Method, and a mix of meditative

pieces by John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Tony Con-
rad, and Zach Layton. March 28-30 at 8. (Roulette,
1 509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn. roulette.org.)
and Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto (with Tomer
OPERA Gewirtzman) are followed by a beloved New York “Composer Portrait”: Christopher Cerrone
staple, Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony. April 2 Cerrone, whose spare, sometimes haunting pieces
Metropolitan Opera at 8. (Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800.) have won him a fair degree of millennial renown, is
Visually enchanting yet musically thin, Phelim Mc- the subject of the latest of Miller Theatre’s portrait
Dermott’s new production of “Così Fan Tutte” sets 1 concerts. Third Coast Percussion and the mezzo-
the opera in a carnival-like milieu that evokes Coney RECITALS soprano Rachel Calloway are on hand to deliver
Island in the nineteen-ifties, complete with sword a world première (“A Natural History of Vacant
swallowers and bearded ladies; he replaces the com- Christian Tetzlaff Lots”) and two other works from the past decade.
plicated sexual politics embedded in Mozart and Da The violinist, a musician of keen insight and full March 29 at 8. (Columbia University, Broadway at
Ponte’s masterpiece with a mood of cheery and win- technical command, has spent his life with the music 116th St. 212-854-7799.)
some nostalgia. Christopher Maltman, a well-trav- of Bach. This week, he brings his interpretations of
elled baritone, is a inely sinister Don Alfonso, and four of the Solo Sonatas and Partitas to Alice Tully András Schiff
Kelli O’Hara, the magnetic Broadway star who takes Hall. March 28 at 7:30. (212-721-6500.) The magniicent pianist is known not only for his
the role of Despina, makes up what she lacks in capacious programs but for his moral courage, hav-
vocal color with abundant comic charm. Among String Orchestra of Brooklyn: “String Theories” ing spoken out forcefully against the political di-
the artists who portray the quartet of young lov- This community-minded ensemble mounts its an- rection of his native Hungary. His program revels
ers, Serena Mali, who brings singing of sustained nual “String Theories” concert series, devoted to in the German classics: works by Mendelssohn,
power and seamless elegance to the part of Dorabella, twenty-irst-century repertoire. Opening night Beethoven (the Sonata No. 24 in F-Sharp Major),
stands out best; David Robertson conducts. March 31 showcases the scintillating violin duo String Noise Brahms (the Piano Pieces, Op. 76, and the Fanta-
at 1. • At seventy-seven, Plácido Domingo contin- and Greg Saunier, the drummer for the art-rock sies, Op. 116), and Bach. April 3 at 8. (Carnegie Hall.
ues to defy conventional wisdom and seemingly time band Deerhoof, in ferocious, punk-infused music 212-247-7800.)
itself as he takes on another Verdi baritone role—
his eleventh in nine years—in this season’s revival
of “Luisa Miller,” a bucolic tragedy based on Schil-
ler’s play “Love and Intrigue.” The Met lanks him
with two superlative artists—Sonya Yoncheva and
Piotr Beczala—in the lead roles; Bertrand de Billy.
March 29 and April 2 at 7:30. • Also playing: Franco
Zeirelli’s crowd-pleasing production of Puccini’s
ABOVE & BEYOND
“Turandot” is back, with a cast that includes Mar-
tina Serain, Marcelo Álvarez, Guanqun Yu, and Al-
exander Tsymbalyuk; Marco Armiliato. March 28 at
7:30 and March 31 at 8:30. • A revival of Mary Zim-
merman’s staging of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammer-
moor” features the skillful coloratura soprano Olga
Peretyatko-Mariotti, as Lucia, and Vittorio Grigolo,
as the volatile lover who drives her to insanity; Ro-
berto Abbado. March 30 at 8 and April 3 at 7:30. (Met-
ropolitan Opera House. 212-362-6000.)

Bavarian State Opera: “Der Rosenkavalier”

The lyrical and orchestrational opulence of Richard Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival “Mountain Landscape” and folk compositions, such
Strauss’s ifth opera lends itself well to a concert set- Held annually in New York City, this Easter gather- as Grandma Moses’s joyful “Hurrah for Christmas.”
ting. Kirill Petrenko leads the forces of Munich’s dis- ing has long symbolized the holiday’s blend of theol- (York Ave. at 72nd St. 212-606-7000.) • “Is the sun the
tinguished resident company and a cast that includes ogy, pageantry, and whimsy. In the mid-nineteenth essence of blackness? Or is blackness the essence
Adrianne Pieczonka, Angela Brower, Hanna-Elisa- century, St. Patrick’s Cathedral began displaying of the sun?” Malcolm X asks in a 1950 letter, now
beth Müller, Peter Rose, and Lawrence Brownlee. loral arrangements at its Easter services, and high- included in Swann’s March 29 auction of printed
March 29 at 7. (Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800.) society female parishioners followed suit, brightening and manuscript African-Americana. (Malcolm X
their church apparel accordingly; soon, the stroll from had recently embraced Islam and was still puzzling
1 the cathedral down Fifth Avenue became a lamboy- out his new identity.) It goes under the gavel along
ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES ant showcase of bonnets, ribbons, and loral prints. with other items documenting black life in Amer-
This Easter morning, participants will march in head- ica, including a letter from a Georgia slave to his
Bavarian State Orchestra wear featuring elaborate models of the skyline, live mother, held at another plantation, and the papers
Not to be confused with the renowned Bavarian animals, and countless other outlandish ornaments, of an eighteenth-century Pennsylvania abolition-
Radio Orchestra, this ensemble, which is the orches- in keeping with the parade’s spirit of one-upmanship. ist, David Redick. (104 E. 25th St. 212-254-4710.)
tra of the equally lofty Bavarian State Opera, comes As the poet Rosyrie Schulman declared in this mag-
to Carnegie Hall under the command of Kirill Pet- azine, in 1946, “This year I’m being diferent / (My 1
renko, who will become chief conductor of the Ber- heart is set upon it) / I’m going to wear a ribbon / READINGS AND TALKS
lin Philharmonic next year. Their program ofers With a touch of bonnet on it.” (49th St. at Fifth Ave.,
two chunks of rich Romantic repertory: the Brahms marching up to 57th St. April 1 at 10 A.M.) Brooklyn Public Library
ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO AMARGO

Double Concerto (with the violinist Julia Fischer and Cecile Richards, the daughter of the former Texas
the cellist Daniel Müller-Schott) and Tchaikovsky’s 1 governor Ann Richards, served as the president of
“Manfred” Symphony. March 28 at 8. (212-247-7800.) AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for
more than a decade, before stepping down in Jan-
Juilliard Orchestra The sale of American art at Sotheby’s on March uary. In a new memoir, “Make Trouble,” she out-
David Robertson, ably conducting “Così Fan Tutte” 28 features a sampler of paintings that empha- lines a life devoted to activism and the ongoing
at the Met, leads the Juilliard School’s lagship en- sizes stylistic diversity—and optimistic similar- march toward gender equality. She will discuss her
semble in three works, two of which are by Euro- ity. Genteel scenes like Childe Hassam’s “Old Mul- experience on the front lines of the ight for wom-
pean composers but all of which were written in ford House, East Hampton” are ofered alongside en’s rights at this talk and book signing. (10 Grand
America. Ives’s “Three Places in New England” Romantic Western views like Albert Bierstadt’s Army Plaza, Brooklyn. April 3 at 7:30.)

20 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018

 FßD & DRINK

TABLES FOR TWO dehydrated malt vinegar. It is not currently

1 BAR TAB
Simon & the Whale on the menu, but this party had put in a
special request, and she’d see if there was
23 Lexington Ave. (212-475-1924)
any left over. There was; the bouquet, in
Gabriel Stulman, who has opened some a ceramic vase, was as striking as a sculp-
of the city’s most beloved restaurants—the ture and remarkably satisfying, like salt-
Little Owl, Joseph Leonard, Fedora— and-vinegar potato chips plucked from
named his latest, Simon & the Whale, the sea.
Lovers Rock
after his young son, who is passionate Otherwise, though, I felt a bit like a 419 Tompkins Ave., Brooklyn (347-915-0325)
about those awe-inspiring creatures of the child who had misgauged her wrapped
Every weekend from the irst whispers of
deep. If there’s a thematic connection to Christmas presents. My hopes for the warmth in spring to the last mild day in fall,
draw, it’s that at night the dining room, Milanese—that the collar of a pig would the patio of this Bed-Stuy cocktail spot, named
in the swanky new Freehand Hotel, is as prove as tender as that of a fish—were after a romantic subgenre of reggae, is a sprawl
of naked limbs. Inside, crowded bodies about
dark and exciting as an aquarium, with dashed by a too-thick, gristly piece of meat as diverse as the neighborhood itself squeeze
romantic lighting just barely illuminating in an appealing-looking but undersalted past one another in the little dance space be-
PHOTOGRAPH BY WILL WARASILA FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE

the dramatic Arts and Crafts-inspired shell of bread crumbs. The beautiful whole tween the back door and the bar, half of them
angling for someone new to match their
décor by the design firm Roman & Wil- fish for two was overwhelmed by its ac- rhythm, the other half trying not to spill their
liams, heavy on custom woodwork, oceanic- cessories—couscous, almonds, Brussels glasses of rum or mezcal on their way to fresh
blue tiles, and warm metals. It has the sprouts, charred carrots, and mandarin- air. The mood is decidedly more subdued in
late winter, but, a few weeks ago, a man wear-
glow—and the early buzz—of a place to orange segments—and priced at an inex- ing a black turban and a necklace of wooden
be, and people lucky enough to have won plicable eighty dollars. A few things were beads went in search of a light and found a tall
tables scan each other’s faces searchingly, wonderful, including the black-bass crudo, blond woman lounging on a bench outside. She
was nursing a Painkiller—a fruity rum cocktail
as if to say, “Are you somebody?” with its perfect little packages of raw fish, served with a wedge of pineapple. “I used to
The menu ofers dishes that sound coconut milk, and sheets of crispy rice drink these like water when I lived in the Ca-
delicious and cleverly unusual in the way topped with togarashi. I’d eat the crusty ribbean,” she said. “It’s a holiday in your
mouth.” A few nights later, the d.j. stared con-
that the current moment demands—pork roasted-barley black bread—which has all cernedly at her laptop and started playing a
collar Milanese with apricot mostarda; the nutty, caramelized appeal of burnt toast reggae version of “I Wanna Sex You Up,” as a
apple confit with parsnip sponge cake and without the bitterness, and a delightful young patron with an overstufed leopard-print
tote chatted with her friends. One of them, a
sunchoke cream—and many that center hint of anise—every day. But the accom- Ghanaian man, remarked, “The playlist is
on seafood. On a recent evening, I panying taramasalata, a classic Greek dip amazing.” “I know,” she replied. “I’m Shazam-
watched, mouth agape, as a nearby table made with fish roe, was remarkably bland, ing it!” She sipped her drink and recalled, “My
roommate made out with a Rastafarian guy
was presented with what looked like a and seemed, like too many things at here. He was, like, ‘Love is all you need, you’re
pot of desiccated calla lilies. It was fish Simon & the Whale, chosen primarily for beautiful, you have a beautiful soul’—that kind
chicharrón, a server explained, giant its visual efect: it’s millennial pink. (En- of shit. He was a fucking asshole.” Her spirits
brightened a moment later. “SZA,” she said,
sheaths of sea-bass skin deep fried until trées $18-$80.) gesturing into the air as the song changed. “I
crackly, then coated in salt, pepper, and —Hannah Goldfield love this.”—Neima Jahromi

THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 21

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 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT whose dark utterances on Fox News have candidate, Trump spoke the startling
ACCOUNT SETTINGS heightened fears that Trump might yet truth when he declared, “I could stand
fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel, in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot
hen it comes to the phenomenon and spark a constitutional crisis. Finally, somebody and I wouldn’t lose any vot-
W of Donald Trump, you have to
give him this: sanctimony is not fore-
on Thursday Trump sent the financial
markets plunging with his threats of a
ers, O.K.? It’s, like, incredible.” Yes, it is.
The most significant Trump-adjacent
most among his sins. He provokes no trade war and finished the day by firing scandal of the week, the one involving
moral disappointment, because he cre- his national-security adviser, Lieutenant Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining or-
ates no moral expectations. Just as his General H. R. McMaster, and replacing ganization financed by the conservative
business career was characterized by him with the most incendiary choice Mercer family, has indeed forced a moral
Mob-connected cronies, racial bias, ag- imaginable––John Bolton, the U.N. Am- reckoning. But it is not a reckoning in
grieved contractors, dubious partners, bassador under George W. Bush. And Washington; it is centered, instead, in
byzantine lawsuits, and tabloid sensa- one other thing: John Dowd, one of the Menlo Park, California.
tion, his Presidency dispenses with eth- President’s lawyers in the Russia inquiry, From the early days of Silicon Val-
ical pretense. Human rights in foreign quit because his client insisted on a more ley’s Internet-era revolution, as engineers,
afairs, compassion for the disadvantaged aggressive legal strategy. “I love the Pres- designers, and financiers began to rec-
in domestic afairs, and truth in public ident,” Dowd said, betraying no irony to ognize the potential of their inventions,
statements are objects only of disdain. the Times. “I wish him the best of luck. sanctimony was a distinct feature of the
Recent days have been typical. The I think he has a really good case.” revolutionists. The young innovators of
President spoke on the telephone with In the current Administration, it was Silicon Valley were not like the largely
Vladimir Putin about his reëlection last just another week. Trump, whose most amoral barons of industry and finance.
Tuesday, and, despite the counsel of his prominent character trait is shameless- They were visionaries of virtue. Google
national-security advisers (“DO NOT CON- ness, sufers little damage among his core adopted the slogan “Don’t Be Evil” (which
GRATULATE,” they wrote, noting the cur- supporters for his daily trespasses. As a morphed into “Do the Right Thing”).
rent tension in relations), he conveyed These young innovators were creating a
his kudos anyway. No mention was made seamlessly “connected” world; they were
of the evidence of cyber-meddling in the empowering the dispossessed with their
2016 campaign or of the use on British tools and platforms. If you expressed any
soil of chemical weapons to poison ene- doubts about the inherent goodness of
mies of the Kremlin. At the same time, technology, you didn’t “get it.” And to
the President faced an array of sordid ac- fail to get it was to be gloomy, a Lud-
cusations, in court and in the press—from dite, and three-quarters dead.
a former Playmate and from a former The era of sanctimony has, in the past
pornographic-film actress, both of whom few years, given way to a dawning skep-
ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL

sought release from the contracts that ticism. Even as Alphabet, Amazon, Apple,
had silenced them; and from a former and Facebook continue to reap immense
contestant on “The Apprentice,” his re- riches, they have faced questions that
ality-television show, who had spoken of could not be answered with flippant dec-
being sexually harassed by Trump, and larations of rectitude: Is Google the Stan-
was now suing him for defamation. He dard Oil of search engines, a monopoly
also took the time to hire a conspiracy- best broken up? Does Apple, which has
minded attorney named Joseph diGenova, a valuation nearly three times greater
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 23
than ExxonMobil’s, exploit factory work- Christopher Wylie, one of the founders Debate over what to do about Cam-
ers in China? Why is Facebook—“the of Cambridge Analytica, told the Times. bridge Analytica’s exploitation of Face-
biggest surveillance-based enterprise in “Cambridge Analytica was supposed to book was also intense; its lawyers and its
the history of mankind,” in the memo- be the arsenal of weapons to fight that P.R. team have argued for minimal trans-
rable phrase of the critic and novelist culture war.” (Wylie left the firm in 2014 parency. Sandy Parakilas, a former op-
John Lanchester—allowed to exploit the and is now regarded as the main whis- erations manager on the platform team
work of “content creators” while doing tle-blower against it.) Just as congratu- at Facebook, is among those who say
so little to reward them financially? Does lating autocrats on their election victo- that Zuckerberg ought to testify before
the company care that its algorithms ries is nothing new, Cambridge Analyt- Congress and accept external oversight
have helped create an informational eco- ica did not invent data harvesting for mechanisms to prevent such exploita-
system that, with its feeds and filter bub- political gain. But, as the news reports tion. Zuckerberg, in his first public state-
bles, has done much to intensify raw par- make plain, it got hold of the data in par- ment since the Cambridge Analytica
tisanship? What does Silicon Valley in- ticularly deceptive ways. The entire op- scandal broke, apologized and promised
tend to do about the disparities of race eration is now said to be under scrutiny to further restrict access to users’ data,
and gender in its ranks? What is the cost by Robert Mueller’s investigators. and to make it easier for users to learn
of our obsession with the digital devices The question is whether the barons which apps have access to their infor-
in our palms––the cost in attention, ci- of Silicon Valley can move beyond rit- mation, allowing, “There’s more to do,
vility, and moment-to-moment con- ual statements of regret and assurance and we need to step up and do it.”
sciousness? The triumphs and wonders to a genuine self-accounting. In Novem- What we’ve learned from the scan-
of the Internet age have been obvious; ber, 2016, when Facebook was first pre- dals that have beset Silicon Valley of late
the answers to such questions less so. sented with evidence that its platform is what we learned from the scandals that
Careful reporting by the Times, and had been exploited by Russian hackers beset the Catholic Church: a self-pro-
by the Observer, in the U.K., has now to Trump’s advantage, Mark Zuckerberg, tective assumption of righteousness can
revealed how Cambridge Analytica serene and arrogant, dismissed the sug- make it harder to acknowledge and con-
“scraped” information from as many as gestion as “pretty crazy.” As Nicholas front patterns of abuse. With great power
fifty million unwitting Facebook users in Thompson and Fred Vogelstein write, comes great responsibility. Except, as the
order to help the Trump campaign. This in Wired, it took Zuckerberg at least a current tenant of 1600 Pennsylvania Av-
was a scam with global intent. “They year to fully acknowledge Facebook’s role enue reminds us, when it doesn’t.
want to fight a culture war in America,” in the election drama and take action. —David Remnick

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS there to learn about Callisto, an online the gathering, she sent what she termed
PREDATOR APP nonprofit startup that seeks to leverage “a message to our brothers in the work-
the power of tech to fight sexual harass- place,” which was read aloud by Floren-
ment and assault. Using Callisto, a vic- cia Lozano, an actress and a founding
tim can create a secure, time-stamped member of the LAByrinth Theatre. “If
record of her assault, a so-called “infor- men are wearing a scarlet ‘H’ for harass-
mation escrow.” Should another victim ment right now, and feeling public shame,
report the same assailant, a Callisto op- know that women have been wearing
n a week in which Stormy Daniels erative will then discreetly ofer to con- scarlet ‘A’s since time immemorial,”
Imous
could plausibly be called the most fa-
actress in America, and with the
nect the victims with each other, so that,
with strength in numbers, they can de-
Lozano read. Eve Ensler, the author of
“The Vagina Monologues,” also sent
nation awaiting revelations about the cide how to proceed, whether by con- word, via Winter Miller, a playwright,
private predilections of the serial sexual fronting their attacker, making a report who read aloud, “It is critical the theatre
harasser in the White House, it seemed to the police, or contacting the press. Cal- world takes these steps so that we move
grimly appropriate that, on a recent eve- listo aims to function something like the from policing patriarchy to dismantling
ning, a group of theatre professionals in “Shitty Media Men” list, but without the it.” Miller also had a message from Glo-
New York would gather to discuss ways transparency and the vulnerability of a ria Steinem: “It still takes more than one
that their own industry might combat Google doc. The service launched two woman accusing the same man of the
more routine manifestations of sexual years ago, and has been adopted by thir- same criminal behavior.”
transgression. teen colleges across the country, among The C.E.O. and founder of Callisto,
Julia Jordan, the treasurer of the Dra- them Stanford, Pomona, and U.S.C. The Jess Ladd, and her chief technology oicer,
matists Guild and the executive director purpose of the New York meeting was Anjana Rajan, had flown in from Silicon
of the Lilly Awards, welcomed a full house to discuss ways in which the theatre busi- Valley to make a presentation. Ladd began
at the A.R.T./New York Theatres, on ness might become the first noncolle- with a personal story, about how, after
West Fifty-third Street, by heralding “a giate industry to adopt the tool as a way taking part in her high school’s produc-
tool to remove serial predators from our of keeping tabs on predators. tion of “The Vagina Monologues,” she
workplaces.” The assembled performers, The playwright Sarah Ruhl was a was labelled a “sex nerd,” only to have her
writers, and other creative types were supporter; although she could not be at first sexual experience in college be an
24 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
assault by a friend. She enumerated the ship to dogs,” Schreiber said. Anderson
reasons that victims like her often don’t
1
BEST FRIENDS DEPT.
sacrifices some moments of comedy, he
BOY MEETS DOG
report assault—shame, fear, a wish not to added, “in exchange for something more
ruin the assailant’s life. “But why victims emotional, which is a risk to any artist.”
do report is fairly consistent, and the No. 1 Spots and Atari, seen together in flash-
reason they do report is to protect oth- back, communicate through soulful whis-
ers, to protect their community,” she said. tling and special dog-and-master trans-
There were questions: How much lation headsets. (“Moshi moshi.” “I can
does it cost to use Callisto? (Forty dol- ast week, the New York première of hear you, Master Atari.”) In real life,
lars per person annually, which Ladd
hoped would be borne by unions, not
L the new Wes Anderson movie, “Isle
of Dogs,” a stop-motion love story be-
Rankin and Schreiber are friendly but
less familiar; they first met last month,
individuals. “Less than a Netflix sub- tween man and beast set on a fantasti- at the Berlin Film Festival. In midtown,
scription,” she said.) How many matches cal garbage-covered island in the Japa- they contemplated their puppets, a flufy
of ofenders would trigger Callisto? nese archipelago, brought several of its spotted hound and a freckled boy with
(Two.) How does Callisto insure that its stars to town. On a blizzardy Wednes- a black eye. Rankin, who is bilingual and
data are not compromised? (Encryption.) day, the movie’s boy hero, Atari Kobayashi lives in Vancouver with his parents, first
Will Callisto cross industries? (Yes. “It (Koyu Rankin, age eleven), and his be- saw Atari when he visited the studio in
will be one shared system,” Ladd said. loved bodyguard dog, Spots Kobayashi London. “I didn’t imagine him to have
“Which means that if somebody starts (Liev Schreiber, age fifty)—met in a mid- all those bruises and scratches,” Rankin
this behavior in college, and they con- town hotel suite, along with the head of said. And he’d anticipated “like, normal
tinue it in grad school, and they continue the film’s puppet department, Andy Gent, pilot clothing.” Atari’s flight suit, which
it when they go to one industry, and they of London, who has worked with An- Anderson designed, is silver, with spe-
continue it when they go to another, their cial pockets for a key and a dog biscuit.
track record follows them.” Bleak chuck- “They went for more of an astronaut
les ensued.) Will Callisto retain the re- vibe, didn’t they,” Schreiber said.
ports submitted by victims who may no Gent said, “When Wes saw that fab-
longer be enrolled in the service? (“Don’t ric, he said, ‘So Ziggy Stardust!’ ”
tell anybody, but yes,” Ladd said.) “I was going to say! It looks like a
Exactly how Callisto might be used as Japanese David Bowie,” Schreiber said.
a way of keeping tabs on an industry as A dog owner (“a rescue from Hurricane
decentralized as the theatre business was Harvey, a terrier mix. I think there is
something that still needed to be worked some wire-haired dachshund. I think
out. Tonya Pinkins, an actor, noted that there might be some Chihuahua”),
ASCAP, the music-licensing organization, Schreiber is in tune with the dog within.
has an algorithm for figuring out royal- “I’m a world-class dog guy,” he said. “I
ties—could something similar be adopted do a great dog voice. Sadly, Wes wants
by theatrical institutions to cover the cost a very naturalistic read from the actors,
of Callisto? “Yeah,” Ladd said, looking and he generally, in my opinion, looks
slightly alarmed. “We’d probably need you for actors who are somewhere on the pe-
all to create that algorithm.” (Last week, Koyu Rankin and Liev Schreiber riphery of deep neuroses.” At home, he
after the meeting, the Actors’ Equity As- said, he talks in his dog voice “constantly.”
sociation Council voted against adopting derson since “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Atop The film used some thousand mod-
Callisto for its members.) One of the few two pedestals stood a tidy series of man- els: five hundred dogs and five hundred
men present asked whether there were made alpha dogs, with tags reading humans. Gent described the dog-making
protections in place to guard against trolls “CHIEF,” “REX,” “BOSS,” and so on. Each process, from early modelling (“what I’d
or 4chan dudes messing with the system was the size of a young Chihuahua. call the Giacometti-like sculpt—very
and submitting false reports. Rajan said The puppets, by design, look noble quick and thumby”) to final fur. “All of
that the service was built to encourage and haggard; life on Trash Island isn’t these guys have got Teddy-bear alpaca
accountability; she hoped that “if you are easy. After a suspicious outbreak of dog mohair fur that’s dyed into their various
using this maliciously, you would stop and flu in Megasaki City, dogs have been ban- colors, and then it’s shaved of of the
say, I’m abusing a product that’s meant to ished and are fending for themselves, backing and glued onto ladies’ tights,”
help people.” But, given the example set scrounging for food among maggots and he said. The puppets are small but heavy,
by the bad actors currently dominating toxic waste. Into this landscape flies the like paperweights. “Inside, they’re like
the national stage, it seemed best not to brave orphan Atari, who has hijacked a steam engines,” Gent said. “All hard metal
rely on hope as a guard against “particu- puddle jumper in order to search for Spots. working parts.”
larly shitty guys,” as the questioner called It’s a bumpy arrival, and he speaks un- “You remember the Terminator movie
them. “Yes, we are designing for that use translated Japanese, but Chief and Co. when Schwarzenegger’s skin comes of?”
case,” Rajan acknowledged, wearily. are committed to helping him out. The Schreiber said. “It’s that much metal fabri-
—Rebecca Mead movie gets at “the depth of our relation- cation in there. You can feel the skeleton
26 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
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and the ribs.” He explored Spots’s snout. premièred, five years ago, it had the cheery show about a marriage,” Keri Russell, who
“The lips, the mouth”—he bared the teeth, glow of the eighties—the cars were boxy, plays Elizabeth, said. “And that’s what
pointy and plentiful—“the ears. Everything the computers clunky, and it was always people have been relating to for all these
is designed to articulate independently.” morning in America. “The computers are years.” What has given “The Americans”
Anderson entered, looking pleased, so old that we can’t get any of them to an especially piquant charge is the evolv-
in a blue pinwale-corduroy suit, a plaid work anymore,” Matthew Rhys, who stars ing reversal of traditional gender roles. In
shirt, and a knitted pink necktie. He talked as the husband, Philip Jennings, said recent seasons, Philip has retreated from
about the movie’s influences, cinematic during a reception at the Newseum. “Any- the world of derring-do, embracing in-
and garbagey; “Isle of Dogs” revels in ref- thing you see on the screens is put on stead a simpering self-help doctrine em-
use as much as previous Anderson films during post-production.” blematic of the era, while Elizabeth has
revelled in funiculars and bellhop hats. The real surprise from “The Amer- turned into an ever more remorseless as-
“We have very organized garbage in the icans” has been how topical the show sassin. Marital strife ensues.
movie,” Anderson said. “I don’t know why turned out to be, notwithstanding its Shooting for the final season ended
I thought garbage was a good idea. I al- primitive mobile phones and references only a few weeks ago, and the cast still
ways liked ‘Fat Albert’—they were in a to Robert Bork’s Supreme Court confir- seemed to be coming to terms with say-
dump. I liked ‘Sanford and Son,’ where mation hearings. Five years ago, the no- ing goodbye to their long-term alter
he sells junk. I always liked Oscar the tion of Russians trying to dictate what egos. Rhys and Russell, who are an
Grouch, who lived in a garbage can. goes on in Washington looked merely of-camera couple as well, have never
There’s a bit of Oscar in these dogs.” quaint. Joe Weisberg, the creator of the visited Russia, but said that they may
“A little bit, ‘Fat Albert’ was this post- series (and a former C.I.A. operative), someday decide to make a trip there.
apocalyptic thing,” Schreiber said. insists that he wasn’t anticipating the Noah Emmerich, who plays the dolt-
“That’s right. Like a natural land- controversies surrounding the 2016 elec- ish F.B.I. agent Stan Beeman, may even
scape, but man-made. It’s not controlled tion when he came up with the idea for miss viewers berating him on the street
by man, exactly, it’s just put out there.” the show. (The story is loosely based on
“It also feels evocative to me in terms several families of Soviet sleeper agents
of Kurosawa—the landscapes of detri- who were arrested in 2010 after having
tus,” Schreiber said. “A beach of tires, a lived in the United States for many years.)
mountain of bottles. There’s something “The idea behind the series was to
wonderful about that.” look at the whole concept of ‘the enemy,’”
As the movie proceeds, forces of good, Weisberg said at the première. “Let’s
in the form of plucky dogs, kids, and sci- look at the worst of them—the K.G.B.—
entists—one voiced by, and named after, and humanize them. That depended on
Yoko Ono—begin to gather steam against the show taking place in a time removed
the forces of anti-dog political corruption. from the thick of the Cold War. The
Does Rankin remember what Atari was fact that the Cold War is back actually
saying in his rousing Japanese-language complicates the story for us. People ask
speeches? No—he was eight when he re- us how we were so prescient. We weren’t
corded them. But Anderson, who wrote prescient. We were the opposite of pre-
them, does. “ ‘I turn my back on man- scient.” As Joel Fields, who is a co-show-
kind! You are all my dogs!’ ” Anderson runner with Weisberg, put it, “There
said. “He’s giving up on the adults, I guess.” was a point when the world seemed to
—Sarah Larson be moving toward unity and under- Keri Russell
1 standing after the Cold War. Everyone
TIME CAPSULE was going to join in the shared pursuit for his ongoing failure to catch the spies
RUSSIA REDUX of the capitalist ideal. That was the per- right under his nose. “ ‘I know, I know,’
spective when we started.” But now, the I tell them,” he said. “ ‘I’ve seen the
scale of the current scandals engulfing show, too.’” Holly Taylor, who plays the
the Trump Administration dwarfs the Jenningses’ daughter (and apprentice
individual eforts of the Jennings fam- spy), Paige, said, “I started this show
ily. “Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube when I was fourteen, and now I’m
make Philip and Elizabeth look small- twenty. It feels like my whole life.”
ven the weather was starting to turn time,” Fields said. Perhaps because Rhys, in real life,
E Russian in Washington last week, as
the creators and cast of “The Americans”
As any fan of “The Americans”
knows—and several hundred of them
speaks with a brogue from his native
Wales, he appears most ready to move
rolled into town to celebrate the launch braved the weather for a screening of the on. Russell seems more ambivalent
of the show’s final season on FX. When new season’s first episode, which will be about leaving her character behind. (At
the series, a period piece about a family broadcast on March 28th—the real ap- a minimum, the couple is unlikely to
of spies from the Soviet Union living under peal of the series rests on its domestic, have such a convenient gig again. They
deep cover as ordinary suburbanites, rather than its geopolitical, drama. “It’s a would ride their bikes from their house
28 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
in Brooklyn to the set, near the Go-
wanus Canal.) “Elizabeth is strong and
sexy and powerful,” Russell said. “I don’t
think I’ll miss killing so many people.
But I’d still like to scare them.”
—Jefrey Toobin
1
COMMERCE DEPT.
LOOSE CHANGE

he names of the newest crypto-

T currencies betray the increasing
desperation pooling in this sector of
the economy: Jesus Coin, Bananacoin,
TrumpCoin, PutinCoin, titcoin, potcoin,
and, yes, Ponzicoin. The new exercise app “George is a deep thinker, but his thoughts rarely come to the surface.”
Sweatcoin is not exactly a cryptocurrency;
it tallies the footfalls you make outdoors • •
and rewards you with one sweatcoin for
every thousand and fifty steps. It then bitcoin. But he was turned down at the inches. If you’re down in the Poconos
allows you to use this digital currency to Lean Crust pizzeria, Greene Avenue for the weekend, give me a call.”
purchase items on the app’s Web site. Market, and the Fresh Garden market. Frustrated, the correspondent listed
Hoping to convert his daily consti- An employee at Mirai Wellness Nail his sweatcoin purchases on the oFree
tutional into cash, a correspondent re- and Spa, on Fulton Street, sounded in- app, which helps users barter or give
cently amassed more than a hundred trigued by the idea of being paid in sweat- away possessions. Shortly after posting
sweatcoins by walking around New York, coins but said that she would have to a subscription to an online magazine
and then investigated what he could get an O.K. from her manager, who was called Minimalism Life, he received a
reap from his labors. At the Gap, when not around. The correspondent ofered, message from a young female swapper.
a clerk ringing up the correspondent’s “I could also just walk in a circle around The two met in the lobby of a midtown
purchase asked, “Do you have a Gap the spa for an hour.” oice building so that the correspon-
card?,” the correspondent said, “No, but The computer power needed to cre- dent could pick up the two items he’d
I have sweatcoin.” The clerk furrowed ate a bitcoin requires as much electric- selected from her oFree page: a one-volt
his brow and demanded legitimate cur- ity as the average American household USB car-phone charger and an iPhone
rency. A cashier at Astor Place Hair- uses in two years, but the only burnout charger. When the young woman saw
stylists was impressed by the concept, from sweatcoin was the correspondent’s the correspondent frowning at the mask-
when it was explained to him (“Sounds good will. He decided to pursue an al- ing tape that held the iPhone charger’s
like a million-dollar idea”), but was un- ternative route: he would use his sweat- frayed cable together, she said, “Some-
willing to accept sweatcoins as payment coins to buy products on the app, and times it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
for a haircut. then try to sell them. Undeterred, the correspondent headed
The correspondent upped his sales- “Products” is a generous word. Many to Canal Street, where he tried to sell
manship. He told a Uniqlo employee, of the things available for sale on the his new possessions. Focussing his eforts
“Sweatcoin is great if you want to get of site are trial memberships in other health on the brand-new USB car-phone char-
the grid and give big banks the finger.” To apps or gift cards for compression stock- ger (value: a dollar), he told several vend-
a Lululemon salesperson, he said, “I ings. The correspondent used sweatcoins ers, “ ‘USB’ means ‘you save big.’”
thought you guys and Sweatcoin might to buy some of these items (gift cards After six turndowns, one vender took
be in cahoots, because you’re both based for Barbell athletic wear and Charmz the charger in his hand and ofered the
in the production of sweat.” At SoulCy- bracelets, a week of online classes from correspondent twenty-five cents. Sold.
cle, he argued, “When you think of all the OfCourse), and then put them up for As the vender reached into his cash reg-
low-down things people have done for sale on Craigslist. There were no nib- ister for a quarter, he caught sight of the
money through the ages, Sweatcoin seems bles, apart from a strange phone mes- iPhone charger and its unsexy masking
so much more wholesome.” No takers. sage: “I saw your thing on Craigslist. It tape. He wrinkled his nose. “Also for
The correspondent then crossed the said the Poconos. I do like what I’ve sale,” the correspondent said. “For a buyer
river to the Brooklyn neighborhood of read. You’re a bigger woman, I’m a smaller who likes a challenge.”
Fort Greene, where several stores accept guy. I weigh one-forty, I’m five feet nine —Henry Alford
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 29
 “proto-fascist.” Metzinger considered
BRAVE NEW WORLD DEPT. himself a radical—he had waist-length
hair, and was proud to have been tear-
gassed while protesting the U.S. mili-
tary—but also a rationalist. Immersing
himself in the work of the Anglophone
philosophers, he’d eventually become
convinced that his soul was made by his
brain. He was, therefore, doubly shocked
by his out-of-body experience, which
had seemed irrevocably real. Could ma-
terialism be wrong? Could conscious-
ness exist immaterially, outside of the
body? He admonished himself: “How
arrogant I have been!”
Metzinger began reading about out-
of-body experiences. He learned that
between eight and fifteen per cent of
the population reports having had an
“O.B.E.”—perhaps during the night, or
after surgery—and that, for millennia,
people have seen in such experiences ev-
idence for various mystical theories of
the soul. (Many religious traditions hold
that there is a “subtle body,” or immate-
rial version of the self, capable of travel-
ling through space.) Meanwhile, on oc-
casional evenings, he floated around his
room. One night, he tried to use the light
switch (it didn’t work); he decided to fly
through the window and visit his girl-
friend, but woke up instead. Metzinger
began experimenting on himself. Fol-

As Real as It Gets lowing the advice of New Age “astral

travellers,” he stopped drinking liquids
at noon, stared at a glass of water in his
Are we already living in virtual reality? kitchen, and then slept with salt in his
cheek, hoping to travel back to the glass
BY JOSHUA ROTHMAN at night. Before a minor surgery, he per-
suaded his anesthesiologist to alter his
medication so that he could wake up
homas Metzinger had his first out- alize that the breathing had been his. early enough to experience the efects of
T of-body experience when he was
nineteen. He was on a ten-week med-
At the time, in the early nineteen-
eighties, Metzinger was a philosophy stu-
the drug ketamine, which is famous for
inducing out-of-body experiences. The
itation retreat in the Westerwald, a dent researching the mind-body prob- salt had no efect, and the ketamine re-
mountainous area near his home, in lem at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe- sulted in hours of unpleasant phantas-
Frankfurt. After a long day of yoga and Universität. During the postwar years, magoric hallucinations. Metzinger could
meditation, he had a slice of cake and Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer find no way to produce O.B.E.s on de-
fell asleep. Then he awoke, feeling an had made the university’s Institute for So- mand, or to study them systematically.
itch on his back. He tried to scratch it, cial Research—the Frankfurt School—a In 1983, the psychologist Philip
but couldn’t—his arm seemed para- center of neo-Marxist thought, and the Johnson-Laird had published a book
lyzed. He tried to force the arm to move, campus remained a politically radical called “Mental Models,” in which he ar-
and, somehow, this shifted him up and place. In Britain and America, philoso- gued that people often think not by ap-
out of his body, so that he seemed to phers, computer scientists, psychologists, plying logical rules but by manipulating
be floating above himself. Gazing out and neuroscientists were working to- models of the world in their minds. If
into the room, he was both amazed and gether to reconceive the mind as a purely you want to know whether a rug will go
afraid. He heard someone else breath- physical system created by the brain. with your sofa, you don’t deduce the an-
ing and, in a panic, looked around for In Metzinger’s department, such theo- swer—you imagine it, by moving furni-
an intruder. Only much later did he re- ries were denounced as anti-human and ture around on a mental stage set. During
30 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL ZENDER
a heated dinner conversation in Tübin- nitive scientists Bigna Lenggenhager (
- )
gen, the psychologist Susan Blackmore, and Tej Tadi, they created a virtual-reality
who had studied O.B.E.s, suggested to system designed to induce O.B.E.-like
Metzinger that he hadn’t actually floated episodes. In 2005, Metzinger put on a
around his room: “You were probably virtual-reality head-mounted display—a
moving around your mental map, in your headset containing a pair of screens, one
world model,” she said. “No fucking way!” for each eye, which together produce
Metzinger remembers thinking. “These the illusion of a 3-D world. Inside, he
experiences are too realistic!” Later, he saw his own body, facing away from him,
decided that Blackmore was right. Hav- standing in a room. (It was being filmed
ing read Johnson-Laird, he’d begun to by a camera placed six feet behind him.)
wonder whether reality, as we experi- He watched as Lenggenhager stroked
ence it, might be a mental stage set—a its back. Metzinger could feel the strok-
representation of the world, rather than ing, but the body to which it was hap-
the world itself. Having an O.B.E. could pening seemed to be situated in front
be like visiting the set at night, when it of him. He felt a strange sensation, as
wasn’t being used. Metzinger started to though he were drifting in space, or
think about how such a model might be being stretched between the two bod-
constructed. Some internal mental sys- ies. He wanted to jump entirely into the
tem must function as an invisible, un- body before him, but couldn’t. He seemed
conscious set dresser, making an itch feel marooned outside of himself. It wasn’t
like an itch, coloring the sky blue and quite an out-of-body experience, but it
the grass green. was proof that, using computer technol-
As Metzinger developed these ideas, ogy, the self-model could easily be ma-
he also had fewer out-of-body experi- nipulated. A new area of research had
ences. Eventually, they ceased altogether; been created: virtual embodiment. FIRESTONE AND PARSON
he set the subject aside and became an From 2010 through 2015, the virtual- 30 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02116
(617) 266-1858 • www.firestoneandparson.com
eminent philosopher of mind. Then, in reality researchers Mel Slater and Mavi
2003, he heard from a Swiss neuroscien- Sanchez-Vives worked with Metzinger
tist named Olaf Blanke, who had learned and Blanke, in a fourteen-partner E.U.-
how to give people out-of-body experi- funded project called Virtual Embodi-
ences when they were fully awake. While ment and Robotic Re-Embodiment.
treating a forty-three-year-old woman Their labs, in Barcelona, used immersive
with epilepsy, Blanke had applied elec- virtual reality to manipulate the body
trical current to a particular area of her models of research subjects, convincing
brain, and she had the experience of float- them that the bodies they possessed in
ing upward and looking down at her own V.R. were their own. (Slater and Sanchez-
body. Blanke had found many related il- Vives are married; they met at a V.R. work-
lusions. Stimulating another location in shop, in 2001.) “We have the illusion that
the brain created the impression of a our body model is very stable, but that’s
doppelgänger standing across the room; only because we’ve never encountered
stimulating a third created the “sense of anything else,” Sanchez-Vives said. Peo-
a presence”—the feeling that someone ple who are extremely aware of their bod-
was hovering nearby, just out of sight. ies—dancers, athletes, yogis—can find
Unsure how to interpret these results, the adoption of a virtual body diicult,
Blanke had searched the literature and because they have trouble “letting go.”
come across some papers by Metzinger. “But the more you do it the easier it be-
They took the idea of mental models to comes. After you’ve experienced it once,
its logical conclusion. It isn’t just that we twice, you click into it.” In the past few
live inside a model of the external world, years, Slater, Sanchez-Vives, and other
Metzinger wrote. We also live inside virtual-embodiment researchers have dis-
models of our own bodies, minds, and covered therapeutic and educational uses
selves. These “self-models” don’t always for the technology. Meanwhile, Met-
reflect reality, and they can be adjusted zinger, along with the philosopher Mi-
in illogical ways. They can, for example, chael Madary, has drafted a virtual-real-
portray a self that exists outside of the ity “code of ethics” focussed on embod-
body—an O.B.E. iment, which he believes makes V.R.
Metzinger and Blanke set about hack- fundamentally diferent from all other
ing the self-model. Along with the cog- media. Embodied virtual experience, the
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 31
philosophers write, can change us pro- and when I leaned into the mirror to going the embodiment process, report
foundly. It can afect us in ways we barely make eye contact with myself my face fewer such epiphanies.
understand, redefining “the very relation- was planar and cartoonish. Like a vam- Slater, a slight, soft-spoken English-
ship we have to our own minds.” pire’s, my body cast no shadow. man in his sixties with a youthful, amazed
To my right, I heard the sound of demeanor—he could be an especially
s soon as virtual reality became work- keys in a door. I turned and saw a hall- placid incarnation of the Doctor, in “Doc-
A able, in the early nineteen-eighties,
researchers imagined creating vivid, de-
way. At the end of it, a man entered, with
dark hair and a beige sweater.
tor Who”—walked me to the campus
cofee bar. At a table by the window, he
tailed, hallucinogenic worlds. In the mem- “You fat cow,” he said, in a low voice. tried to explain how virtual embodiment
oir “Dawn of the New Everything,” the “Would it hurt to put on something nice?” might efect such changes. “No one really
V.R. pioneer Jaron Lanier recalls evan- He began walking toward me. I looked understands what this technology is and
gelizing the technology by describing a at myself in the mirror. “Look at me!” how it can be used,” he said. “On some
virtual two-hundred-foot-tall amethyst he shouted. He walked up to a dresser, level, the brain doesn’t know the difer-
octopus with an opening in its head; in- saw my cell phone, and threw it against ence between real reality and virtual re-
side would be a furry cave with a bed the wall. ality. And a character on a 2-D screen is
that hugs you while you sleep. (“Virtual I watched, merely interested. It was completely diferent from one that’s your
reality tugs at the soul because it answers obvious that he was a virtual person; I height and looks you in the eye.”
the cries of childhood,” Lanier writes.) was no more intimidated by him than With a team of various collaborators,
Later, the “Matrix” movies imagined a I would be by an image on a screen. Slater and Sanchez-Vives have created
virtual world so accurate as to be indis- Then he got closer, and closer still, in- many other-body simulations; they show
tinguishable from real life. Today’s most vading my personal space. In real life, how inhabiting a new virtual body can
advanced V.R. video games conjure vi- I’m tall, but I found myself craning my produce meaningful psychological shifts.
sually rich space stations (Lone Echo), neck to look up at him. As he loomed In one study, participants are re-embodied
deserts (Arizona Sunshine), and rock over me, gazing into my eyes, I leaned as a little girl. Surrounded by a stufed
faces (The Climb). The goal is to con- away and held my breath. I could sense bear, a rocking horse, and other toys, they
vince you that you are somewhere else. my heart racing, my chest tightening, watch as their mother sternly demands
Virtual embodiment has a diferent and sweat breaking out on my temples. a cleaner room. Afterward, on psycho-
goal: convincing you that you are some- I felt physically threatened, as though logical tests, they associate themselves
one else. This doesn’t require fancy graph- my actual body were in danger. “This with more childlike characteristics.
ics. Instead, it calls for tracking hard- isn’t real,” I told myself. Still, I felt afraid. (When I tried it, under the supervision
ware—which allows your virtual body to Since 2011, the regional government of the V.R. researcher Domna Banakou,
accurately mirror the movements of your of Catalonia has collaborated with the I was astonished by my small size, and
real head, feet, and hands—and a few lab to use this simulation in rehabilita- by the intimidating, Olympian height
minutes of guided, Tai Chi-like move- tion programs for abusive men. In a con- from which the mother addressed me.)
ment before a virtual mirror. In Slater’s trolled study performed in Sanchez- In another, white participants spend
lab, at the Universitat de Barcelona, I put Vives’s lab by the psychologist Sofia Sein- around ten minutes in the body of a vir-
on a V.R. headset and looked into such feld, and recently published in Nature tual black person, learning Tai Chi. Af-
a mirror to see the body of a young woman Scientific Reports, the men who experi- terward, their scores on a test designed
wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and enced the simulation got to reveal unconscious racial bias shift
ballet flats. When I moved, significantly better at rec- significantly. “These efects happen fast,
she moved. ognizing fear in the faces and seem to last,” Slater said. A week
“You’re going to see a of women. (Domestic abus- later, the white participants still had less
number of floating spheres, ers tend to be deficient in racist attitudes. (The racial-bias results
and you have to touch this regard.) In the past have been replicated several times in Bar-
them,” Guillermo Irureta- three years, hundreds more celona, and also by a second team, in
goyena, a software devel- abusive men have experi- London.) Embodied simulations seem
oper, said. enced the simulation out- to slip beneath the cognitive threshold,
A few colorful balls ap- side the lab, as part of a afecting the associative, unconscious parts
peared near my hands and larger rehabilitation pro- of the mind. “It’s directly experiential,”
feet, and I moved my limbs to touch gram. Preliminary data, which Sanchez- Slater said. “It’s not ‘I know.’ It’s ‘I am.’ ”
them. The spheres disappeared, and new Vives and Slater are hesitant to publish Slater envisages salubrious, even
ones took their place. After I touched because of the small sample size, suggest beatific ways of learning through virtual
the new spheres, Iruretagoyena explained that the men’s recidivism rates are lower. embodiment. “Imagine if you’re afraid of
that the “embodiment phase” was com- (“I felt identified with my ex-wife,” one public speaking. Now you can experience
plete—I had tricked my brain into think- man recalled. “I thought he was going being embodied as Angelina Jolie and
ing that the virtual limbs were mine. My to hit me, so I covered my face with one giving a speech in front of thousands of
virtual self didn’t feel particularly real. of my hands,” another said.) Men who cheering people,” he said. (The confi-
The quality of the virtual world was on have merely watched a video, or experi- dence you feel while embodied as Jolie
a par with a nineteen-nineties video game, enced a V.R. simulation without under- would, he thinks, follow you back into
32 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
your own body.) In 2015, for an art ex-
hibit at the Centre de Cultura Contem-
porània de Barcelona, Slater’s team built
a virtual reality in which participants lived
together on a psychedelic tropical island,
embodied as elegant humanoids remi-
niscent of the blue Na’vi, from “Avatar.”
In the course of an hour and a half, their
virtual bodies grew old and died; after
death, the participants reviewed their vir-
tual lives in a flashback, then floated up-
ward into a tunnel of white light. When
they took of their headsets, they watched,
on a screen, as their island compatriots
built a memorial to them. People who
have near-death experiences emerge with
new ideas about the meaning of life; Sla-
ter’s lab is studying whether virtual death
might have a similar efect. “We were
trying to play with the implicit idea that
there could be immortality, and that this “We’ve given it a great deal of thought and we decided we’re
life is a virtual life—as though, after we going to give in to everything you want at all times.”
die, we take of our headsets and are on
another plane,” he said. • •
Virtual embodiment isn’t always up-
lifting. In 2015, the video-game company
Capcom released Kitchen, a virtual-reality to as “the dark triad”: narcissism, Machi- life, “the most ordinary surface, cheap
horror scenario in which the player is avellianism, and psychopathy. He fears wood or plain dirt, is bejeweled in in-
tied to a chair while a deranged woman the efects of a V.R. “Westworld.” finite detail for a short while.” As we
plunges a knife into his thigh. In the V.R. “It’s inevitable what’s going to hap- walked, I was spellbound by pine nee-
game Surgeon Simulator, players use pen,” Slater said, over cofee. “There’s dles and by the texture of concrete. I mar-
power drills, bone saws, and other tools going to be a moral panic around V.R. velled at the Escher-like dimensionality
to vivisect a humanoid alien that writhes as it spreads and spreads, just as there was of a stairway, and at the snowflakes that
in pain on the operating table. As in most with comics, with television. It’s going to had begun to drift among the palm trees.
V.R. video games, players in Kitchen and be the root of every evil, and there’s going Inside, I followed Slater up a flight
Surgeon Simulator move in fanciful ways to be a huge campaign against it. I hope of stairs. On the landing, we passed a
and are, at best, semi-embodied. Even the companies realize this, because they tall humanoid robot with expressive
so, in the book “Experience on Demand,” have to be prepared for it.” Slater, who eyes; its metal skeleton was visible be-
Jeremy Bailenson, a leading V.R.-em- led the Virtual Embodiment and Ro- neath white plastic skin. In a nearby
bodiment researcher at Stanford, reports botic Re-Embodiment project and, with lab, Laura Aymerich, a psychologist,
that after performing a virtual vivisec- the other researchers, worked with and Sameer Kishore, a roboticist, helped
tion he “simply felt bad. Responsible. I Metzinger on the V.R. code of ethics, me into a skintight Velcro suit covered
had used my hands to do violence.” Push- thinks some caution is justified: “Virtual in white plastic dots. I put on head-
ing a Punch or Shoot button on a game reality is going to be quite widespread, phones and a V.R. headset. The head-
controller and watching the results on a and in the home. And although it’s been phones were silent, and the headset
screen, he writes, is “an entirely diferent around in more or less the form it is now was dark. For a few minutes, I stood
experience” from playing an immersive, for thirty, forty years, with head-mounted there, alone with my thoughts.
first-person V.R. game in which you use displays, and so forth, there’s nobody who’s “Sorry,” Kishore said. “Technical
your virtual arms and hands to strike or spent hours and hours, week after week, diiculties.”
stab an opponent, or to aim a gun at him month after month, in virtual reality. No- Then the headset activated, and I
and pull the trigger. In their V.R. code body knows what’s going to happen.” appeared to be on the landing, by the
of ethics, Metzinger and Madary predict After our cofee, Slater walked me stairs outside the lab. I was looking
that the “risk of users sufering psycho- back to the lab. It was an unusually cold through the eyes and hearing through
logical trauma will steadily increase as day, and the campus was hushed and the ears of the robot. Kishore wheeled
V.R. technology advances.” Metzinger empty. Jaron Lanier writes in his mem- a small standing mirror into position so
believes that virtual killing and sexual vi- oir that the best part of V.R. comes after that I could see myself. To my surprise,
olence should be prohibited. He also wor- you remove the headset: having been im- my face—the robot’s face—was now lit
ries about scenarios that encourage the mersed in a comparatively flat computer- from within and glowing blue.
character traits that psychologists refer generated world, one finds that, in real The robot’s movements tracked mine;
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 33
I moved my robotic arms up and down, In the eighteenth century, the philos- pects of our experience which we take
and my head from side to side. When I opher George Berkeley argued that re- to be real are actually “complex forms of
looked to my left, I saw Slater, standing ality was all in our minds. Samuel John- virtual reality” created by our brains.
by the stairs; when I looked to my right, son had no patience for this idea; he Imagine that you are sitting in the
I could see through a window to the declared, “I refute it thus!” and kicked a cockpit of an airplane, surrounded by in-
courtyard, where snowflakes floated. stone. Two centuries later, the poet Rich- struments and controls. It’s a futuristic
There was a slight lag between my head ard Wilbur wrote a rejoinder: cockpit, with no windows; where the
movements and the robot’s, and when I windshield would be, a computer displays
Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your
perceived it I felt half-embodied, as if I’d bones:
the landscape. Using this cockpit, you
had too much to drink. But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones. can pilot your plane with ease. Still, there
“The visual aspect of it is strong, but are questions you are unable to answer.
the sensorimotor aspect of it is conflict- “It’s not real, but it doesn’t matter,” Exactly what kind of plane are you flying?
ing,” Kishore said. “If you’re trying to Slater said, watching me. “In some sense, (It could be a Boeing 777 or an Airbus
move your head and it doesn’t move, that it’s a real experience.” A380.) How accurate is the landscape on
leads to a break in the feeling of embod- the screen? (Perhaps night-vision soft-
iment.” I was only half paying attention; o Thomas Metzinger, a phrase like ware has turned night to day.) When you
I was transfixed by the robot’s metal
hands, which seemed to move when I
T “real experience” is a riddle to be
solved. Now sixty, he resembles a Ger-
throttle up the engines, you feel a rum-
bling and hear a roar. Does this mean the
willed them to. With both my heads, I man Steve Jobs, with short, steel-gray plane is accelerating—or could those
nodded. hair, architectural glasses, and a stern, efects have been simulated? Both sce-
Aymerich appeared in my field of sculptural face; sleek and fit, he has the narios might be true. You could be using a
view. “High five!” she said. We high- formidable, watchful serenity of some- flight simulator to fly a real plane. This, in
fived. She crossed over to my other one who has meditated twice a day for Metzinger’s view, is how we live our lives.
side. “Now shake hands,” she said. We forty-one years. “I have a long story to The instruments in an airplane cock-
shook. Because there was no way for tell,” he said, in a gentle German accent. pit report on pitch, yaw, speed, fuel,
sensation to travel from the robot’s “I think that, in the human self-model, altitude, engine status, and so on. Our
hands to mine, the handshake was a there are many layers. Some layers are human instruments report on more
purely visual experience. Aymerich transparent, like your bodily perceptions, complicated variables. They tell us about
walked away, then returned, holding which seem absolutely real. You just physical facts: the status of our bodies
up my coat. “Reach out and touch your look”—he gestured toward a chair next and limbs. But they also report on men-
jacket,” she said. Slowly, I extended my to us—“and the chair is there. Others tal states: on what we are sensing, feel-
arm, watching as my metal fingers are opaque, like our cognitive layer. When ing, and thinking; on our intentions,
moved toward the fabric. When they we’re thinking, we know that our thoughts knowledge, and memories; on where
reached it, I was startled by a tingling are internal mental constructs, which and who we are. You might wonder
sensation in my fingertips—a phan- could be true or false.” As a philosopher, who is sitting in the cockpit, controlling
tom touch. Metzinger’s method has been to see if everything. Metzinger thinks that no
“I feel something,” I said. I concen- the transparent can be made opaque. In one is sitting there. “We” are the in-
trated on the feeling. It was really there—a books such as “Being No One” and “The struments, and our sense of selfhood
warm, swirling electricity. Ego Tunnel,” he aims to show that as- is the sum of their readouts. On the
instrument panel, there is a light with
a label that says “Pilot Present.” When
the light is on, we are self-conscious;
we experience being in the cockpit and
monitoring the instruments. It’s easy
to assume that, while you’re awake, this
light is always on. In fact, it’s frequently
of—during daydreams, during much
of our mental life, which is largely au-
tomatic and unconscious—and the
plane still flies.
Two facts about the cockpit are of spe-
cial importance. The first is that although
the cockpit controls the airplane, it is not
itself an airplane. It’s only a simulation—a
model—of a larger, more complex, and
very diferent machine. The implication
of this fact is that the stories we tell about
what happens in the cockpit—“I pulled
“I, for one, enjoy paying my taxes.” up on the stick”; “I touched my jacket”—
are very diferent from the reality of what throw the dice harder!” He believes that self. These models are maintained by the
is happening to the system as a whole. many experiences of being in control are mind in such a way that their constructed
The second fact, harder to grasp, is that similarly illusory, including experiences nature is invisible. But it can sometimes
we cannot see the cockpit. Even as we in which we seem to control our own be made visible, and then—to a degree—
consult its models of the outer and inner minds. Brain imaging, for example, shows the models can be changed. Something
worlds, we don’t experience ourselves as that our thoughts begin before we’re aware about this discovery is deflating: it turns
doing so; we experience ourselves as sim- of having them. But, Metzinger said, “if out that we are less substantial than we
ply existing. “You cannot recognize your a thought crosses the boundary from un- thought. Yet it can also be invigorating
self-model as a model,” Metzinger writes, consciousness to consciousness, we feel, to understand the constructed, provi-
in “Being No One.” “It is transparent: ‘I caused this thought.’ ” The sensation sional nature of experience. Our percep-
you look right through it. You don’t see of causing our own thoughts tions of the world and the
it. But you see with it.” Our mental mod- is also just another feature self feel real—how could
els of reality are like V.R. headsets that of the self-model—a phan- they feel otherwise?—but
we don’t know we are wearing. Through tom sensation conjured we can come to understand
them, we experience our own inner lives when a readout, labelled our own role in the creation
and have inner sensations that feel as “thinking,” switches from of their apparent realness.
solid as stone. But in truth: “of ” to “on.” If you sufer “The compensation of grow-
Nobody ever was or had a self. All that ever from schizophrenia, this ing old,” Virginia Woolf
existed were conscious self-models that could readout may be deactivated writes, in “Mrs. Dalloway,”
not be recognized as models. . . . You are such inappropriately, and you may is that, while “the passions
a system right now. . . . As you read these sen- feel that someone else is remain as strong as ever,” we
tences, you constantly confuse yourself with the causing your thoughts. “The mind has gain “the power which adds the supreme
content of the self-model activated by your brain.
to explain to itself how it works,” he said, flavour to existence,—the power of tak-
When I first encountered the ideas spreading his hands. ing hold of experience, of turning it
in “Being No One,” many years ago, I Lately, Metzinger has been thinking around, slowly, in the light.”
thought I understood them. I had read about his own experience as a medita-
about amputees who feel the presence tor. At the center of the meditative ex-
of “phantom limbs,” and it made sense
to think that this was because their body
perience is the exercise and cultivation
of mental autonomy: when the medita-
Ithentimes
embodied virtual reality, it’s some-
possible to glimpse yourself as
virtual object you really are. In Sla-
models were out of synch with reality. I tor’s mind wanders, he notices and ar- ter’s lab, two psychologists, Solène Ney-
accepted that the same could be true of rests that process, gently returning his ret and Tania Johnston, helped me into
our inner states—just as a person with- mental focus to his breath. “The mind a V.R. headset. The day before, I had
out an arm can experience its presence, says, ‘I am now re-directing the flash- been scanned by an imaging system; now,
so a person without free will might ex- light of my attention to this,’ ” Metzinger inside the virtual world, I looked into
perience using it because her “self-model” said. “But the thought ‘I am redirecting the virtual mirror to see a virtual version
includes the idea of making choices. And my mind-wandering’ might itself be an- of myself, wearing my clothes: blue shirt,
yet it wasn’t until I visited Slater’s lab other inner story.” He leaned back in his gray jeans, brown boots.
that the full force of these ideas struck chair and laughed. “It might be that the “I need you to think of a personal prob-
me. While embodied as a robot, I had spiritual endeavor for liberation or de- lem that is causing a bit of distress in
felt a phantom touch—a real-seeming tachment can lead to new illusions.” your life,” Neyret said, while I went
product of my body model—and this He looked at me reassuringly. “This through a few embodiment exercises.
had unnerved me. But wasn’t I feeling doesn’t mean that nothing is real,” he “You will explain the problem to Freud.
phantom touches all the time? When- said. “It doesn’t mean that this is the Ma- Then, when you finish speaking, you will
ever I experienced an emotion, had a trix—the simulation is running on some press this button”—she guided my hand
thought, or made a choice, wasn’t I in- hardware. But it does mean that you are to a controller—“and you will enter
teracting with a fiction, a story that my not the model. You are the whole system— Freud’s body. Listen carefully to yourself,
self-model was telling me about an in- the physical, biological organism in which and try to give yourself some advice.”
finitely stranger, perhaps impersonal pro- the self-model is rendered, including its The virtual world shifted. I was sit-
cess unfolding in my brain? My inner body, its social relationships, and its brain. ting at a desk in an expansive, glass-
world was virtual, too. The model is just a part of that system.” walled house. Outside, wildflowers punc-
In a Frankfurt cake shop—“They say The “I” we experience is smaller than, tuated a sunlit lawn. Across from me,
this is where Adorno took the women and diferent from, the totality of who behind his own desk, sat Sigmund Freud.
he seduced; many historical conversa- and what we are. There was a large red light on my desk.
tions happened here!”—Metzinger teased It turns out that we do, in this sense, It turned green.
out the implications of this view of ex- possess subtle bodies; we also inhabit sub- I paused, uncertain how to begin. “My
istence. “Do you know what an ‘illusion tle selves. While a person exists, he feels mother is in a nursing home, and when
of control’ is?” he asked, mischievously. that he knows the world and himself di- I get updates from people who visit her
“If people are asked to throw dice, and rectly. In fact, he experiences a model of I feel guilty,” I said.
their task is to throw a high number, they the world and inhabits a model of him- I pushed the button, and the world
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 35
shifted again. Now I was Freud. I looked Oliva—attached small vibrating motors brow furrowed. “An interesting possibil-
down at myself—white shirt, gray suit— to my wrists and ankles. Inside the V.R. ity is that the whole distinction between
and, in a nearby mirror, inspected my headset, I saw a virtual room, with a cofee real and unreal is misguided.” He ges-
beard. Across from me, behind a desk, table and a working fireplace. In the vir- tured toward the flame of the candle on
sat my avatar, wearing a blue shirt, gray tual mirror in front of me, I saw an un- the table between us. “In Buddhist meta-
jeans, and brown boots. He opened his settling image: a man in a black Velcro physics, there is the idea of ‘emptiness.’
mouth, then closed it. He settled his suit, his eyes hidden behind a black V.R. To realize the emptiness of things is to
hands in his lap and looked at them. headset. This was me, as I existed in the say, ‘This is neither real nor nonexistent.’
“My mother is in a nursing home, real world. Our perception of the candle refers to
and when I get updates from people who “You’ll see some shapes on the cofee something real, in the real world. But this
visit her I feel guilty,” he said, in my voice. table,” Bourdin said. “Trace them with candle—the one we see—it’s mental con-
Watching him, I felt fascination, cu- your feet.” tent. And yet it’s also not true that the
riosity, and pity. Was that me? He seemed I heard the clicking of a computer experience, the model in our minds, is
like another person—a stranger. “Why mouse. Shapes like hieroglyphs appeared unreal. It’s ‘empty.’ ‘Empty’ may have been
do you feel guilty?” I asked, as Freud. on the table, and I traced them. their way of saying that it’s just a virtual
I pushed the button. Now I was sit- “Next, you’ll see some bouncing model. ‘Emptiness’ could be ‘virtuality.’ ”
ting across the desk from Freud. I watched spheres,” Oliva said. The mouse clicked, Listening, I rubbed the fabric of my
as he watched me, cocking his head. “Why and small blue spheres began dancing jacket between my fingers. The jacket
do you feel guilty?” he asked. His voice around my body. Thanks to the motors, was real, as were my fingers. But the exact
was strange—older and lower than mine. I felt them, light and soft, when they feeling of the jacket between them, which
“Because I live far away,” I said, as me. touched me. existed, solid but cloudy in my mind—
I pushed the button. “Try moving your arms and legs,” Oliva perhaps that was empty.
“Why do you live far away?” I asked, said. I did, and the spheres followed. Metzinger had ordered Persian cofee,
as Freud. “Is there a good reason?” For a few minutes, I sat enjoying my and it arrived on an ornate silver tray.
Soon, I fell into a rhythm. Freud and strange surroundings. Then, without Between the tiny, elegant cups, nearly
I talked for about twenty minutes. He warning, my point of view began to move. overflowing with cofee, were dates
was insightful; he said things that I’d I was pulling backward, out of myself. dusted with sugar. Our waitress gave us
never said to myself, in ordinary life. First, I saw the back of my head, and instructions in German. “Danke schön,”
When I took of the headset, I was moved. then my body from behind. I began drift- Metzinger said. “She says to have a date,
I wanted to tell myself, “Good talk.” From ing toward the ceiling. From there, I then to have a sip of cofee, because that
his perspective, I’d seemed diferent: sad- looked down at my body in its chair, sur- contrasts the bitterness with the sweet-
der, more ordinary and comprehensible. rounded by swirling spheres. In my mind, ness.” I tried a date, brushed the sugar
I told myself to remember that version silence reigned. No thoughts were equal from my fingers, and sipped my cofee.
of me. to the experience. I didn’t feel that I had She was right.
I looked up to see Slater, standing left my body; I felt that my body had It was getting late, and we set out for
with Neyret and Johnston. “I think it ac- left me. When I took of the headset, a stroll in the park. As we walked,
cesses aspects of yourself that you’ve re- Slater and Bourdin were watching me. Metzinger wondered how virtual reality,
pressed,” he said. “How was it?” Slater asked. by changing how we experience ourselves,
“It changes completely the judg- “I don’t know,” I said. might influence religion and art. “Could
ment you usually apply to your inter- “How do you feel?” Bourdin asked. you experience your sense of self as
nal thoughts,” Neyret said. “Weird,” I said. empty?” he asked. “As in, there’s no self
“It’s because you’re physically outside “Some people have really strong ex- there—no control? In my own life, I find
of yourself, and you see yourself and hear periences,” Bourdin said. “There’s shout- states like this tend to have a beginning
yourself talking,” Slater said. “Your nat- ing. They grab the chair.” He paused. “I and an end.” A smile broke through the
ural instinct, when you see someone in think it gives you the implicit idea that severity of his expression. He laughed.
front of you describing a problem, is to you can separate your body from your “You know, the coolest thing in Mel Slat-
help them. The fact that it’s you is kind soul. It’s about the fear of death.” er’s lab—I was sitting in a room in V.R.
of irrelevant.” I nodded, cradling the headset in There was a crackling fire, a big mirror.
“I didn’t feel like I was talking to my- my hands. And they hadn’t switched the avatar on.
self,” I said. “It felt like a real conversa- And I looked down, and there was no
tion. How can that be?” n Frankfurt, over lunch at a Persian body. The chair was empty. I liked that!”
“Maybe we can have many selves,”
Slater said, raising an eyebrow.
Iperiences
restaurant, I described my virtual ex-
to Metzinger. I wanted to know
The park was still and beautiful. It
had rained the night before, and the sandy
Before arriving in Barcelona, I had if they had been real. Had my virtual- paths were wet. The sun was low, and
asked Slater and Sanchez-Vives if I might reality O.B.E. been a real experience? our footsteps crunched on the sand. A
try a virtual out-of-body experience. Later What about the sensation of touching boy rode his bicycle through a puddle;
that day, in another part of the lab, I sat my jacket? Had it been real? we heard the water lapping. I felt tired
in a chair while three researchers—Pierre “It’s a big question, when the word and excited—full of ideas. The sky was
Bourdin, Itsaso Barberia, and Ramon ‘real’ makes sense,” Metzinger said. His blue. The grass was green. 
36 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
 and loud motorcycles back in those
SHOUTS & MURMURS days. Now there’s just a constant ring-
ing noise.
You’re seeing bigger and bigger ce-
lebrities today. Years ago, I saw Paul
McCartney walking down the street.
Then I saw Sir Paul McCartney. And
last week I saw King Paul McCartney.
Some things have stayed the same.
The corner drugstore is still there, al-
though it has since relocated to the
middle of the block. Nazi Books is still
open; old Gerhard still greets custom-
ers with a friendly “Heil Hitler.” Lo-
cals still flock to Daylight-Mugging
Park, with its famous statue of Sir Ar-
thur Daylight-Mugging. And Whap-
pie’s still exists, although to this day no
one knows what they sell or do.
But many places have succumbed
to the wrecking ball, including, oddly
enough, the local wrecking-ball com-
pany. People were horrified when the
old Chesterton Hotel was torn down,
because guests were still staying there
at the time.
For the most part, the changes to
the neighborhood have been for the
better. Crime is down, even petty
crime—at least, that’s what I read in
my neighbor’s newspaper. In the old
days, you always had to look over your
shoulder, in case you were being fol-
lowed by some nut. Today, you can look
How the Neighborhood straight ahead, and maybe even call out
to the person walking in front of you,

Has Changed asking him where he’s going and where

he got that shirt.
But I do miss some things from be-
BY JACK HANDEY fore. The waitress at the café would call
you “sugar” or “hon,” and the panhan-
dler would call you “buddy.” Nowadays,
ver there, in the basement of that garbage go bobbing by. Now the river I don’t think they even know your name.
O building, there used to be a Mafia
torture chamber. All night long, you’d
is full of kayakers.
The fish market is gone. And it’s no
There are plenty of shops where you
can buy a fancy, expensive cupcake, but
hear yells and screams. Now it’s a bar great loss. The fish were very skinny where can you go in and have some-
catering to college students. On that and had dead eyes. Today, it’s a mod- one pull your hat down over your eyes?
corner, there was a junk yard. Old cars elling agency. One thing is certain: the neighbor-
were torn to shreds, and the shreds On the roof of that building there, hood will continue to change. One day,
were compacted into big blocks. Today, an old man kept a bunch of pigeons. far in the future, people will walk around
it’s an art gallery. Today, the whole building is owned by with handheld “rain protectors.” Taxis
You used to see bums pushing gro- Goldman Sachs. will zoom down the streets at breath-
cery carts down the street all the time. Public urination, and even defeca- taking speeds, using loud sonic blast-
And when you saw what was in a cart tion, were common in that alleyway. ers to clear other vehicles out of the
you’d think, Man, why is he keeping Now it’s a dog run. That store used to way. Strange aliens from distant worlds,
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ

that? Today, there are lots of parents be Madame Xeno’s Fortune-Telling with diferently shaped eyes and intel-
with strollers. Service, but it closed after the roof un- ligence surpassing ours, may own and
Over on the Hudson River, it was expectedly caved in. operate our corner bodegas.
common to see mounds of worthless There were lots of blaring sirens I hope I am around to see it. 
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 37
 A REPORTER AT LARGE

Dirty Politics
Scott Pruitt’s E.P.A. is giving even ostentatious polluters a reprieve.
BY MARGARET TALBOT

O
ne afternoon last April, Scott engagements with representatives of
Pruitt, the administrator of the the industries he regulates. He has met
Environmental Protection only a handful of times with environ-
Agency, travelled to the Harvey Mine, mental groups.
in Sycamore, Pennsylvania, to declare At the Harvey mine, Pruitt wore a
that the agency had a new direction, solid-red tie and, on his lapel, an
which he called “Back to Basics.” It was American-flag pin; he briefly put on a
an unusual place for the nation’s chief white hard hat inscribed with the
steward of clean air, land, and water to phrase “Make America Great Again.”
set out a policy agenda. Consol Energy, He delivered his remarks in a sterile,
the owner of the Harvey facility, which fluorescent-lit room, a contrast with
is part of the largest underground coal- the audience, which was filled with
mining complex in North America, has miners in coal-dusted uniforms. He
been fined repeatedly by the E.P.A. for spoke in a precise staccato that was
violations; in 2016, it had to pay three softened by the light Southern accent
million dollars for having discharged of his native Kentucky. In the speech,
contaminated wastewater into the Ohio which Pruitt gave before touring the
River and its tributaries. Past E.P.A. mine, he said, “I’m looking forward to
administrators have spoken of creating puttin’ on those suits you’ve got on,
jobs as a welcome potential by-product goin’ down, and checkin’ it out and havin’
of the agency’s work, especially if they fun doing so.” He joked that whoever
are green jobs, but creating or protect- said you can’t have your cake and eat
ing energy jobs is not supposed to be it, too, didn’t know “what you’re sup-
the mission—protecting human health posed to do with cake.” He insisted that
and the environment is. As the speech you could, in fact, roll back regulations
that Pruitt gave at the mine demon- on industries like coal while taking care
strated, he seems to have these priori- of the environment. But he did not point
ties reversed. out that, as many economists have in-
Pruitt, who is forty-nine, looked dicated, the availability of cheap nat-
cheerful, as he generally does at public ural gas has done more to eliminate
appearances. (He declined my requests coal jobs than environmental regula-
for an interview.) Unlike many people tions have. (A month earlier, Bloomberg
who have joined the chaotic Trump News had reported that Consol planned
Administration, he seems unconflicted to sell of, or otherwise terminate, its
about his new role, his ideological and coal businesses, in order to focus on
career goals fitting together as neatly extracting natural gas.)
as Lego blocks. The former attorney It’s an open secret in Washington
general of Oklahoma, Pruitt ascended that Pruitt would like to become At-
PHOTOGRAPH: SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY (MAN)

politically by fighting one regulation torney General if President Trump fires

after another. In his first year at the Jef Sessions, and at the E.P.A. he often
E.P.A., he has proposed repealing or sounds like he’s trying out for that post,
delaying more than thirty significant repeating a set of talking points, honed
environmental rules. In February, when in conservative legal circles, about the
the White House announced its inten- dangers of “federal overreach.” In Penn-
tion to reduce the E.P.A.’s budget by sylvania, Pruitt told the miners, and a
twenty-five per cent—one of the larg- contingent of corporate executives, that
est cuts for any federal agency—Pruitt “the days of our agency declaring war
made no objections. His schedule is on your industry are over.” He went on,
dominated by meetings and speaking “It’s not right for government to do William Ruckelshaus, who ran the E.P.A.
38 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL SAHRE
under Nixon and Reagan, said that Pruitt and his top staf “don’t fundamentally agree with the mission of the agency.”
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 39
that.” Many of his comments that day islation that was last amended in 1990. he noticed that the water level in the
sounded like rallying cries. “You guys Pruitt and his admirers call this ap- ponds was rapidly dropping, as though
are a handsome crew!” he declared. “The proach “E.P.A. originalism”—a nod to someone had opened a bathtub drain.
cavalry’s on the way!” the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin A sixty-year-old pipe leading under
Scalia, and his reading of the Constitu- the ponds to the river had collapsed. By
n June, Pruitt joined Trump in the tion. The idea is that Pruitt is sticking the time Duke Energy engineers sealed
Iannounced
White House Rose Garden as Trump
that the United States was
to “traditional” priorities, such as clean-
ing up Superfund sites and contaminated
the pipe, nearly seventy miles of the Dan
River had been fouled with coal ash laden
withdrawing from the Paris climate ac- drinking-water supplies, rather than fo- with arsenic, lead, mercury, and selenium.
cord. Although there is a consensus cussing on newer and broader environ- The river, ordinarily a greenish-brown
among scientists that human activity is mental threats, such as climate change. color, now resembled milky tea, and a
causing climate change, Pruitt is skepti- One problem with “E.P.A. original- drab sludge slathered its banks. Amy
cal of this view; unlike Trump, who has ism” is that neither our scientific knowl- Adams, an organizer with a group called
called global warming a “hoax” created edge nor the environment itself remains Appalachian Voices, who went down the
by the Chinese, Pruitt expresses his dis- static. Rivers no longer catch fire, as the river in a kayak after the spill, recalls nav-
sent with deliberate mildness. Last Cuyahoga, in Ohio, did repeatedly in igating through “oozing sandbars of slag.”
March, he told CNBC, “Measuring with the fifties and sixties; the skies over Los The Dan provides the drinking water
precision human activity on the climate Angeles are no longer choked with brown for half a dozen communities in North
is something very challenging to do.” He smog; acid rain is no longer the threat Carolina and Virginia. According to the
went on, “I would not agree that it’s a it was to rivers, lakes, and wildlife; gas- E.P.A., pollutants in coal-ash wastewater
primary contributor to the global warm- oline for cars is no longer made with can cause “severe health and environmen-
ing that we see. But we don’t know that lead, which damages children’s brain de- tal problems in the form of cancer and
yet. We need to continue to debate, con- velopment. This progress was achieved, non-cancer risks in humans, lowered I.Q.
tinue the review and analysis.” The in no small part, because of the discre- among children, and deformities and
E.P.A., he has said, will commence a “red tion that the E.P.A. has used to inter- reproductive harm in fish and wildlife.”
team–blue team” review of climate-change pret laws as new ecological challenges, Coal ash is one of the most prevalent
science that puts “experts in a room and and new scientific understandings, arise. forms of industrial waste. Although it
lets them debate.” Every year, advancements in toxicology, can be recycled to make concrete and
At an event hosted by the Federalist technology, and epidemiology suggest other products, or stored in landfills far
Society in November, Pruitt said, “I’ve new remedies. Ruckelshaus told me that from waterways, it is more typically mixed
been asking the question lately, ‘What is it is self-defeating to insist on binding with water to create a slurry, then sluiced
true environmentalism?’ . . . From my per- all environmental policy to the science into holes in the ground. The holes are
spective, it’s environmental stewardship, of the past. He said, “We’ve cleaned up often unlined and adjacent to rivers, be-
not prohibition.” He added, “We have a lot of pollution—the air is much bet- cause steam electric plants need to be
been blessed, as a country, with tremen- ter, though we have three times the num- near bodies of water. Frank Holleman,
dous natural resources.” Previous E.P.A. ber of autos on the road. While you see an attorney with the Southern Environ-
administrators, he said, had promoted an pictures of Beijing—that doesn’t hap- mental Law Center, said, “It’s about the
inflexible philosophy of “Do not touch.” pen here anymore. Americans have the most primitive way you can imagine to
The agency was established in 1970, impression that because the smell-touch- deal with industrial waste.”
by President Richard Nixon. William and-see kind of pollution is gone, or not The Dan River spill was the result of
Ruckelshaus, its first administrator, who as intense, that we’ve dealt with the prob- neglect: Duke Energy engineers had rec-
also led the E.P.A. under Ronald Rea- lem for good. But the environment is ommended installing video cameras, at
gan, told me, “My principal concern is something you have to stay everlastingly a cost of twenty thousand dollars, to mon-
that Pruitt and the people he’s hired to at. Or it gets worse again.” itor pipe corrosion, but they were ig-
work with him don’t fundamentally agree nored. In 2015, Duke Energy subsidiar-
with the mission of the agency. They nder Pruitt, even the dirtiest forms ies pleaded guilty to nine misdemeanor
seem more concerned about costs asso-
ciated with regulations.” Myron Ebell,
U of pollution are getting a reprieve.
On February 2, 2014, as much as thirty-
violations of the Clean Water Act, in-
cluding the unlawful discharging of coal
a climate-change skeptic who headed nine thousand tons of coal ash began ash, and paid a sixty-eight-million-
Trump’s transition team for the agency, spilling into the Dan River from a Duke dollar criminal fine, plus thirty-four mil-
praised Pruitt for concentrating on “the Energy power plant in Eden, North Car- lion to fund environmental conservation.
E.P.A.’s statutory responsibilities” and olina. Like many utilities, the Dan River Other coal-ash ponds have caused
for “dropping many discretionary activ- Steam Station had recently transitioned even bigger calamities. In 2008, a dike at
ities that have taken up more and more from coal combustion to natural gas, a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant
of the E.P.A.’s budget and staf time in which is cheaper. But the plant still had gave way, releasing more than a million
recent years.” Pruitt argues that every waste ponds containing more than a mil- tons of coal ash, and contaminating two
E.P.A. action should be specifically lion tons of coal ash; the ponds were sep- rivers. The T.V.A. has spent about a bil-
grounded in a federal statute such as the arated from the river by an earthen dam. lion dollars cleaning up the mess. Ken-
Clean Air Act—fifty-four-year-old leg- When a guard made his rounds that day, neth Kopocis, a former senior E.P.A.
40 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
oicial, told me that it was hard to think
of a more foolish policy than allowing
coal-ash ponds to remain next to rivers:
“They are going to fail. And when they
do they create disasters that imperil
drinking water and human health, and
cost hundreds of millions of dollars to
clean up.” Even when coal-ash ponds
don’t fail spectacularly, they leak toxins
into groundwater. Avner Vengosh, of
Duke University, uses geochemical trac-
ers to help identify coal-ash contami-
nants, and a research team led by him
has found evidence of leaking in all
twenty-two ponds that it has examined.
Recent technological changes have
caused the wastewater produced by coal-
fired power plants to become even more
toxic. Some of the worst wastewater is
discharged by “wet scrubbers,” which re-
move pollutants from smokestack emis-
sions. Holleman, the attorney at the
Southern Environmental Law Center,
said, “I like to say they’re using twenty-
first-century technology to take pollut-
ants out of the air and thirteenth-century
technology to put it in the water. But • •
someone told me I was insulting the thir-
teenth century.”
Coal-fired power plants are often old mistakes.” (The T.V.A., appealing “The rule was very weak,” Peter Har-
found in rural, low-income areas, some the decision, has proposed to do just that: rison, an attorney with Earthjustice, a
of which rely on private wells. Walnut cover the pond with concrete.) conservation organization, said. “Still,
Tree is a predominantly African-Amer- Although Pruitt argues that the E.P.A. this industry was so far above the law
ican community near another Duke En- has become too hasty and radical in its that there were no federal regulations at
ergy power station in North Carolina. responses, it agonized over the coal-ash all before 2014. It was left to states, and
For years, coal ash from the Belews problem for years, to the point that en- many of them went out of their way to
Creek Steam Station fell like snow on vironmental groups sued it for inaction. exempt coal ash from their rules. In that
the town’s modest houses and back-yard In 2014, the agency finally issued a reg- sense, it was an improvement.” Frank
vegetable gardens. Kids wrote their ulation—one that was hardly extreme. Holleman told me, “E.P.A.’s rule wasn’t
names in the ash that blanketed their Kopocis, the former E.P.A. oicial, said the most stringent, but at least it estab-
parents’ cars and corroded the paint. that the agency “worked very hard to lis- lished some minimum national stan-
David Hairston, a Walnut Tree resident ten to industry’s concerns.” The rule did dards.” He went on, “Utilities are the
turned activist, told me, “A lot of these not mandate that power-plant operators most powerful political force in the state
people can’t aford to move. The resale close coal-ash ponds (though it specified capitals, so state enforcement agencies
value is no good.” A 2007 study pre- how this could be done safely). Instead, are always very reluctant to require them
pared for the E.P.A. found that people it laid out requirements for lining them, to do anything.”
living near coal-ash disposal sites face monitoring groundwater, and conduct- In 2015, a much stronger regulation,
an increased risk of developing cancer. ing structural-stability assessments. E.P.A. the Eluent Limitations Guidelines rule,
Although utility companies know that regulators did not classify coal ash as haz- set new caps on the amount of toxic met-
coal-ash ponds pose enormous liability ardous waste, a step that would have trig- als and other harmful contaminants that
risks, they often delay removing them gered stricter policy, largely because they coal-fired steam electric power plants
until they are sued by environmentalists. wanted to make it easier for power com- could sluice into ponds or discharge into
Last summer, after one such lawsuit, a panies to sell the ash for recycling. The waterways. (Under the Clean Water
federal district court ordered the T.V.A. new rule didn’t apply to ponds on sites Act, plants can apply to the E.P.A. for
to remove the ash from an unlined four- where power was no longer being pro- permits to discharge some wastewater.)
hundred-and-seventy-six-acre pond ad- duced, even though they are just as likely These limits hadn’t been revised since
jacent to the Cumberland River. Judge to leak, and it was “self-implementing,” the early eighties, and advances in water
Waverly Crenshaw declared that the meaning that if companies didn’t com- treatment had made it much easier, and
T.V.A. must stop covering over “decades- ply the only redress was a lawsuit. cheaper, to extract toxic metals. Elizabeth
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 41
Southerland, who worked on the Eluent On March 1st, Pruitt announced a gerous place to be.” Trump, he added,
Limitations Guidelines, served in the proposal for a new coal-ash rule that would be “more abusive to the Consti-
E.P.A.’s Oice of Water until July, when would supplant all Obama-era regula- tution than Barack Obama.”
she resigned. She told me that power tions. An agency announcement prom- For Pruitt, this was saying something,
plants that adopted new extraction tech- ised that this approach would “save the because after being elected Oklahoma’s
nology could drain coal-ash ponds for a utility sector up to a hundred million attorney general, in 2010, he had spent
relatively low cost, by treating the pond dollars per year in compliance costs.” much of his time battling Obama. In
water, jettisoning the liquid, and send- Among other changes, Pruitt’s rule al- 2014, George F. Will described Pruitt,
ing the remaining ash to landfills or re- lows each state to decide how compa- admiringly, as “one of the Obama Ad-
cycling centers. “This was a classic case nies must remediate spills and leaks, how ministration’s most tenacious tormen-
where addressing pollution at the source often they must test for groundwater tors.” A year later, the magazine Gov-
is orders of magnitude less expensive contamination, and where they may place erning noted, “Whenever states go to
than dealing with it once it’s been re- coal-ash ponds. Pruitt said that the new court against the Obama Administra-
leased into the environment,” Souther- rule allows states to “incorporate flexi- tion, the chances are that Pruitt is some-
land said. The E.L.G. rule gave power bilities.” The rule added boron to the list how involved.”
companies eight years to comply. The of chemicals that must be monitored, Scott Pruitt was born in Danville, in
industry might not have been enthusi- which pleased environmentalists, but central Kentucky, and grew up in Lex-
astic, but it was prepared. Southerland told me that the other ington. His father owned steak houses,
Companies also had a financial in- changes efectively undermined “all the and his mother was a homemaker. He
centive: demand for recycled coal ash protective processes in the 2015 rule,” be- graduated from a small Christian school
was high. Because there are few such cause “most states will undoubtedly in Kentucky, Georgetown College; in
recycling facilities in the U.S., concrete choose” weaker standards. Even worse, 1990, he moved to Oklahoma to attend
manufacturers have been importing coal the agency’s detailed proposal for the law school, at the University of Tulsa,
ash from China, India, and Poland. A new rule states that it also plans to con- and stayed on after getting his degree.
recent report from the Carolinas Ready sider allowing power plants to imple- Oklahoma voters first got to know him
Mixed Concrete Association concluded ment their own compliance programs, as a state senator from Broken Arrow, a
that the market “was greatly under- which would operate “without the in- Tulsa suburb. He served two terms, and
served.” Duke Energy is storing more tervention of a permitting authority.” was a member of the American Legis-
than a hundred and fifty million tons No wonder the mood at a recent lative Exchange Council, or alec, a con-
of coal ash in North Carolina alone. meeting of the American Coal Ash As- servative organization that drafts model
Building new recycling facilities could sociation, in Sarasota, Florida, was so legislation, with backing from Koch In-
create new jobs. upbeat. The luncheon speaker was Alex dustries and other corporate donors. In
Trump, in his campaign, promised Epstein, an Ayn Rand devotee who runs 2003, he told Governing that alec “puts
to rebuild the coal industry. At one point, a think tank called the Center for In- legislators and companies together, and
he told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that dustrial Progress. His talk, “The Moral they create policy collectively.”
he planned to eliminate what he’d once Case for Fossil Fuels,” ran long, but the Kenneth Corn, a former Democratic
called “the Department of Employment audience didn’t seem to mind. People state senator who served alongside
Prevention,” saying, “We’re going to laughed appreciatively when he showed Pruitt, described him as “very ambi-
have little tidbits left, but we’re going a video of himself wearing an “I ƆFos- tious, and always sort of running for
to take a tremendous amount out.” Soon sil Fuels” T-shirt at a climate-change something else.” Pruitt was firmly op-
after Pruitt became the head of the march in New York City. Lisa Evans, posed to abortion, and a leader in a Re-
E.P.A., he announced that the agency an Earthjustice attorney, attended the publican efort to put limits on work-
would “reconsider” the E.L.G. rule. He conference. “The atmosphere was confi- ers’ compensation. He sponsored a bill
said that he was “implementing Presi- dent to the point of snarkiness,” she that would require drug tests for work-
dent Trump’s vision of being good stew- said. “It was, like, ‘We are getting a new ers who sufered on-the-job injuries or
ards of our natural resources, while not rule, and we wrote the playbook for the accidents resulting in damage to an em-
developing regulations that hurt our E.P.A. on it.’” ployer’s property. Workers’-compensa-
economy and kill jobs.” tion reform didn’t pass until the Re-
In September, Pruitt responded to ruitt was not an early enthusiast for publicans took over the State Senate,
petitions from a lobbying organization,
the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group,
P Trump. He advised Jeb Bush in the
primaries, and in a February, 2016, radio
in 2008, after Pruitt had moved on. Still,
Corn said, “Scott helped shape the Re-
and a power company called A.E.S. interview—recently discovered by a publican message on that issue. And it
Puerto Rico, which complained that even watchdog group called Documented— helped him raise money later.”  
the weak 2014 coal-ash rule was causing he said of Trump, “He has tendencies In 2003, after an unsuccessful run for
“adverse impacts on coal-fired genera- that we see in emerging countries around Congress, Pruitt bought a share in a
tion,” because of “the excessive costs of the world, where he goes to the dis- Triple-A baseball team, the Oklahoma
compliance.” Pruitt agreed that it was afected, those individuals, and says, City RedHawks. To buy the RedHawks,
“in the public interest” to reconsider the ‘Look, you give me power and I will give Pruitt—at that time a thirty-five-year-old
2014 rule as well. voice to your concerns.’ And that’s a dan- state senator with a salary of $38,400—
42 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
 derson, the A.C.L.U. attorney who ar-
gued the other side of the case, recalled
HOW FOREVER WORKS that Pruitt borrowed the “scripts of con-
servative think tanks.” Henderson con-
The soft tick of snow tinued, “They kept fighting the challenge
landing in its own body— as though it were an atheist or an agnos-
what was left of time. tic who was suing, and as though it were
a First Amendment case. But our lead
It then took every voice plaintif was a Baptist minister!”
to the ground with it. On other occasions, Pruitt lost when
In a way it listened to me he set aside his commitment to state sov-
but also took me down. ereignty. In 2014, Oklahoma joined five
other farm states to challenge a Califor-
However the world nia law requiring that eggs sold there
remembered us, come from chickens kept in cages big
it did so quietly, inside enough to let them extend their wings.
a dying memory. Love me Pruitt disparaged the law, saying, “It’s al-
most like having a cage that’s air-condi-
anyway. tioned, and they can do yoga.” A district-
court judge in California dismissed the
—C. L. O’Dell lawsuit. In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court
declined to hear a case that Pruitt and
Nebraska’s attorney general, Doug Pe-
partnered with Robert Funk, the founder “to be born,” to keep and bear arms, to terson, had brought against Colorado for
of an employment-agency company and decline health insurance, to “drive a car legalizing marijuana. The Justices ofered
a prominent Republican donor. Pruitt diferent than the one Washington thinks no comments, but it seems likely that
and Funk bought the RedHawks for a you should drive,” and to reject “confis- the majority didn’t see how the law was
reported $11.5 million, breaking the re- catory environmental regulations based Oklahoma’s or Nebraska’s business, even
cord for a minor-league team, and sold on junk science.” When he spoke at a if they are Colorado’s neighbors.
it in 2010, for an undisclosed profit. 2014 alec meeting, he looked genial as In 2011, Pruitt filed a lawsuit chal-
As a co-owner of the RedHawks, he stood at the lectern and peered over lenging the Afordable Care Act, rely-
Pruitt frequently showed up on local his reading glasses, but his rhetoric was ing on arguments about states’ rights
media to promote the team. He and his martial: thanks to Obama Administra- generated by the Cato Institute. He got
wife, Marlyn, lived with their children, tion regulations, Pruitt told the audience, a favorable ruling from a district court
McKenna and Cade, in Broken Arrow, Americans were “in the midst of a con- in Oklahoma, but the Supreme Court
where they belonged to the First Bap- stitutional crisis.” upheld the law. However, in February,
tist Church, a congregation with its own These aggressive stances resonated in 2016, Pruitt shared in a noteworthy suc-
YouTube channel and live-streaming ser- deep-red Oklahoma, and he handily de- cess at the Supreme Court. In a 5–4 de-
vices. Politico recently reported that in feated his Democratic opponent. Pruitt cision, the Justices issued a stay on en-
2005, when Pruitt was interviewed by a was reëlected four years later, and he forcing the Clean Power Plan, siding
Tulsa radio station, he remarked that began building a national profile. He was with Pruitt and twenty-eight other state
there weren’t “suicient scientific facts twice elected president of the Republi- attorneys general (and dozens of indus-
to establish the theory of evolution.” can Attorneys General Association, an try lawyers). The Clean Power Plan,
Keith Gaddie, a political scientist at organization that attracts corporate do- championed by Obama, requires states
the University of Oklahoma, said that nations from ExxonMobil, the Ameri- to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from
in those years Pruitt was “a very positive, can Petroleum Institute, and other enti- electric power plants—the largest source
guy-next-door type.” But in 2010 he ran ties that he is now in charge of regulat- of such emissions. Pruitt and other op-
for attorney general as a “hard-edged, ing at the E.P.A. ponents argued that the law was based
Tea Party-type guy.” Pruitt cast himself He created a new “federalism unit” in on an overly expansive reading of the
as a warrior for state sovereignty, and as the attorney general’s oice, intended to Clean Air Act. As the E.P.A. adminis-
a champion of religious liberty. He liked combat “systemic overreach” by the fed- trator, Pruitt has promised to repeal it.
to talk about a 1997 trip that he’d taken eral government. As attorney general, he In general, though, Pruitt’s track
to Romania, on a Baptist mission. He’d was notably litigious, but in his most record in suing the E.P.A., which he did
learned that, under Communism, Chris- high-profile lawsuits he did not often fourteen times, was spotty. When the
tians had been free to worship in churches, prevail. In 2015, he defended the place- agency rejected Oklahoma’s plan for re-
but not elsewhere in public. Such op- ment of a monument to the Ten Com- ducing emissions of sulfur dioxide, a com-
pression was imminent in this country, mandments on the statehouse grounds. ponent of smog, because it wasn’t strin-
he warned. His campaign literature cited The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled gent enough, Pruitt sued, contending that
liberties that he would uphold: the right against Pruitt, by a 7–2 vote. Brady Hen- the E.P.A. had usurped Oklahoma’s
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 43
 withheld the text of these speeches.)
In private meetings, Pruitt had many
opportunities to hear about how coal-
ash regulations were irking some en-
ergy companies. On March 9, 2017, Pruitt
met with Lynn Good, the C.E.O. of
Duke Energy, at a Hilton hotel in Hous-
ton, to talk about “Duke Energy’s pol-
icy priorities.” In April, he had lunch at
Equinox, a Washington restaurant, with
executives from Alabama Power. In May,
a month after Pruitt announced that
the agency would reconsider the 2015
Eluent Limitations Guidelines rule,
he had a call with Good to discuss coal
ash. Immediately afterward, he met with
another coal executive, and then with
the Congressional Coal Caucus. Pruitt’s
decision to “reconsider” the 2014 rule
“Well, this is getting us exactly nowhere.” soon followed.
William Reilly, the E.P.A. adminis-
trator under President George H. W.
• • Bush, told me, “I had a good reputation
with industry—I was on the board of
authority. An appellate court ruled the energy industry was sometimes star- DuPont after E.P.A. But you’re sup-
against him, and the Supreme Court tling. Four years ago, Eric Lipton, of posed to meet with everybody. And to
declined to hear the case. Half of the the Times, revealed that a letter Pruitt not know what environmentalists are
legal actions that Pruitt joined against once sent to E.P.A. regulators, com- signalling as problems—that’s unwise.
the E.P.A. have been either dismissed plaining that they had overestimated Industry is unlikely to be the source of
on jurisdictional grounds or declined how much pollution new oil wells were information about developing environ-
on substantive ones. Several of the law- producing in Oklahoma, had been cop- mental problems.”
suits are ongoing. (He has recused him- ied, nearly word for word, from a draft Elizabeth Southerland, the E.P.A.
self from lawsuits against the agency in supplied by Devon Energy. William F. oicial who helped write the Eluent
which Oklahoma is involved. Two of Whitsitt, who then directed govern- Limitations Guidelines rule, tried to talk
them are named “Oklahoma ex rel. ment relations at Devon, praised the to Pruitt and his political staf about her
Pruitt v. E.P.A.”) letter as “outstanding.” thinking. She found the experience be-
Pruitt knew that the odds were against wildering. By the time she and her team
him: courts generally defer to federal hen Pruitt came to the E.P.A., briefed Pruitt, he had already put out a
agencies and their expertise. But even
legal defeats could serve his political am-
W he broke with agency practice
by refusing to release his schedule in
press release deriding the regulation as
“costly.” Still, she had hope. Career E.P.A.
bitions. David Blatt, the head of the Okla- advance or his calendar of meetings employees tend to be data-oriented types
homa Policy Institute, said, “In Okla- after the fact. In response to scores of with a sometimes naïve belief in the per-
homa from 2008 to 2016, the antipathy lawsuits brought by environmental and suasive powers of science. “He did not
toward the Obama Administration was government-transparency groups, he tell us what he was hearing from indus-
so great here that just by saying you were gave in—a bit. He began posting a cal- try,” Southerland said. “He did not de-
standing up to the Administration it was endar online, but it generally did not bate with us, or indicate any leaning one
going to be a victory.” divulge the subjects of his meetings or way or another. He just sat there.” She
In suing the E.P.A., Pruitt and other the names of attendees. Even this par- went on, “In the past, administrators
state attorneys general usually partnered tial view of his schedule, however, re- would say, ‘I’m hearing from this indus-
with industry litigants. Many of the cor- vealed how radically Pruitt had tilted try this or that,’ and then you could rebut
porations involved—such as Murray in a business-oriented direction. The it or say, ‘I have to get back to you.’ But
Energy and Southern Company—had administrator’s traditional array of meet- we could never really get a feel in all this
donated to his campaigns or to aili- ings with environmental or public-health briefing process for why he must not be
ated super pacs. The co-chair of Pruitt’s groups had been almost entirely replaced believing what we were saying.”
2014 reëlection campaign was Harold by speeches to corporate groups, such It’s not surprising that Trump’s E.P.A.
Hamm, the billionaire C.E.O. of the as the Louisiana Chemical Association, has targeted Obama-era initiatives and
oil-and-natural-gas company Continen- and private meetings with represen- rules with the word “coal” in them. But
tal Resources. tatives of fossil-fuel companies and some Pruitt rollbacks don’t seem to fit
In Oklahoma, Pruitt’s obeisance to other regulated concerns. (Pruitt has into any broader conservative agenda:
44 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
they don’t grant significantly more dis- ducer of gliders, Fitzgerald. Last year, going one. But such delays have usually
cretion to the states, or seem likely to Fitzgerald, which is based in Tennes- lasted only a month or so, according to
create many jobs. They seem like favors see, hosted a campaign event for Trump. Rena Steinzor, a University of Maryland
to specific industries or companies. In May, Pruitt met with the company’s law professor who studies the practice.
In November, Pruitt proposed the re- founder and C.E.O., Tommy Fitzger- Pruitt’s delays are uncommonly long, she
peal of an Obama-era rule that imposed ald. Two months later, Fitzgerald and said, and he generally doesn’t give “cred-
Clean Air Act emissions standards on two glider dealers wrote a letter to Pruitt ible reasons why changes are necessary.” 
glider vehicles—heavy-duty trucks that contending that the agency lacked the Federal agencies are supposed to abide
pair new cabs and chassis with older, authority to regulate gliders under the by the Administrative Procedure Act of
dirtier engines. Gliders are slightly Clean Air Act, because “the engine, 1946, to insure that the work informing
cheaper than all-new trucks, in part be- transmission, and typically the rear axle” new regulations is transparent, reasoned,
cause they aren’t equipped with modern are “not new.” and not overly politicized. Bethany Davis
pollution controls. They make up only Pruitt soon announced that the E.P.A. Noll, an environmental lawyer at the
five per cent of the heavy-duty-truck would reconsider the rule, and precisely N.Y.U. Institute for Policy Integrity, said,
fleet, but they emit a disproportionate echoed Fitzgerald’s claim that gliders “It’s also so you don’t have agencies turn-
amount of dangerous pollution. Steve fell into a regulatory gray area because ing on a dime in response to an elec-
Silverman, a former E.P.A. attorney, who they contained “new and used” compo- tion.” Courts hold agencies to the “arbi-
retired in January, worked on the glider nents. Silverman, the former E.P.A. at- trary and capricious” standard: to rescind
rule. “We’re not talking only about green- torney, said that this is “just wrong.” In a regulation, they must demonstrate
house gases,” he said. “These trucks put the Clean Air Act, Congress defined a sound reasoning tied to a factual record.
out diesel particulate matter, a human- “new motor vehicle” as one for which William Buzbee, a professor at the
lung carcinogen.” In 2016, an agency anal- the title “has never been transferred to Georgetown University Law Center,
ysis concluded that gliders produce al- an ultimate purchaser.” Moreover, Sil- pointed out that the 1946 law protects
most three hundred thousand tons of verman said, “the E.P.A. has explicit au- businesses, too: “Oftentimes, industries
nitrogen-oxide pollution a year, along thority to regulate emissions from re- have invested in new technology and
with nearly eight thousand tons of diesel- built diesel engines.” practices already, figuring out ways to do
particulate pollution. Agency scientists Pruitt’s rollbacks have already been well under a new regime. So unsettling
estimate that a single year of glider pol- contested in court. The Trump Admin- business expectations is a huge cost. One
lution causes as many as sixteen hundred istration’s favored shortcut—suspend- company might like it, but that doesn’t
premature deaths. ing the enforcement of a rule while it’s mean it’s good for American business or
At a public hearing in December, being “reconsidered”—is proving vul- the economy over all.”
environmental and public-health nerable to challenges. In June, 2016, Gina In July, the Court of Appeals for the
groups such as the American Lung McCarthy, Obama’s second E.P.A. ad- Washington, D.C., Circuit ordered the
Association sent representatives to ministrator, issued a rule, under the E.P.A. to lift its stay on the methane
speak for keeping the rule. That was Clean Air Act, requiring energy com- rule. An agency can reconsider regula-
expected. But so did Volvo Group panies to fix any leaks—or, in the po- tions, the court said, but must enforce
North America, which produces both etic regulatory language, “fugitive emis- them while doing so.
Volvo and Mack trucks. Susan Alt, sions”—of methane, a greenhouse gas. The following month, Pruitt backed
Volvo North America’s vice-president An industry alliance peti- of a decision to stay a 2015
of public afairs, testified that the pro- tioned for reconsideration. regulation on ozone, after
posed repeal “makes a mockery of the On June 5, 2017, two days sixteen states sued the
massive investments we’ve made to de- after companies were sup- agency. Court challenges
velop low-emission-compliant tech- posed to begin monitoring brought by environmental
nology.” The American Trucking As- methane leaks, Pruitt an- groups or states are pend-
sociation also testified against a repeal. nounced that the E.P.A. ing on several other stays,
Bob Nuss, whom the association named would be reconsidering as- and seventeen states have
the 2017 Truck Dealer of the Year, flew pects of the rule, and would filed suits over his inten-
at his own expense from Minnesota to stay enforcement for ninety tion to rescind the Clean
Washington, D.C., to attend the hear- days. On June 16th, the Power Plan. It seems likely
ing. Nuss said, “I told them, ‘Maybe agency announced that it would extend that Pruitt’s E.P.A. will lose at least some
it’s only five per cent of the trucks, but that stay for two years, and “look broadly of these cases. But, even if Pruitt must
how would we all feel if five per cent at the entire 2016 rule.” Six environmen- reinstate several rules, he’ll have rewarded
of the trucks didn’t have to stop for a tal groups filed suit, arguing that all the certain key industries—and Trump con-
school bus or obey the speed limit?’ industry groups’ complaints “actually stituents—by allowing them to post-
Sneaking around, avoiding emissions were raised (and extensively deliberated) pone installing potentially costly new
compliance, filling the air with soot— during the comment period.” technologies, and to keep polluting in
it’s just not right.” It’s not uncommon for a new Presi- the meantime.
The strongest support for rescind- dent’s Administration to try to freeze en- A willingness to fight in court also
ing the rule comes from the largest pro- forcement of rules put in place by an out- allows Pruitt to project decisive vigor, a
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 45
quality that he associates with the Pres- that states could assume much more re- yelled, “Scott Pruitt, you’re fucking up
ident. In an October interview with the sponsibility for environmental protec- the environment!”
Daily Signal, a Web site of the Heritage tion. “That’s where E.P.A. came from in Former and current E.P.A. employ-
Foundation, Pruitt said that Trump was the first place,” he said. “I started out in ees told me that the tightened security
“full of action,” adding, “He wants re- environmental government, in Indiana, has contributed to a tense atmosphere.
sults. That’s what the American people and we had a few very weak statutes. But One employee said that she’d been sharply
want. . . . That’s what he’s done his whole states were competing for industry. Gov- reprimanded after a security camera
life. I seek every day, and I mean this sin- ernor Wallace took out ads in the Indi- caught her in a trivial act of rebellion—
cerely, to bless him. I want to bless him anapolis paper, saying, basically, ‘Come turning around a poster that touted
and the decisions he’s making.” on down to Alabama—we don’t care Pruitt’s “Back to Basics” campaign. She
what you put in the water!’” Ruckelshaus had been ofended by the poster’s impli-
ruitt may parrot Trump’s views, but continued, “The state programs are more cation that “we hadn’t been fulfilling the
P he has a far more polished manner.
In public appearances, he’s well spoken
powerful now, because they have federal
backup. You don’t want to dismantle
agency’s mission all these years.”
On March 28, 2017, when Trump
and unflaggingly polite. When conser- this—we’ll be back where we started, came to E.P.A. headquarters to an-
vative journalists prod him to snipe at with a race to the bottom.” nounce that his Administration would
the E.P.A.’s “lifelong bureaucrats,” he overturn Obama-era regulations on
chuckles and declines the bait. In an in- ruitt’s performance has been so skill- greenhouse-gas emissions, the staf re-
terview with a Fort Worth radio station,
Pruitt described the E.P.A.’s career em-
P fully calibrated that the rumors he
might be named Attorney General—
ceived an e-mail with the subject line
“Our Big Day Today.” To many stafers,
ployees as “hardworking folks” who, in even if he’s stoked them himself—seem it sounded like jeering. Michael Cox,
the Obama years, had lost “their mis- plausible. It’s also been said that he might an E.P.A. climate-change adviser, quit
sion.” He told the Daily Signal that he return to Oklahoma to run for Jim In- four days later, after writing a letter to
was talking to career employees about hofe’s Senate seat in 2020. (Inhofe, a Pruitt: “Who is ‘our’ referring to? Was
“the rule of law and process and feder- flamboyant climate-change denier who it the many E.P.A. career staf that
alism,” but emphasized that he was lis- once brandished a snowball on the Sen- worked for years developing the work
tening to them, too. ate floor to demonstrate that the planet that was rescinded or revoked?”
As administrator, Pruitt has become couldn’t possibly be getting warmer, is It later emerged that Cox was one of
adept at presenting his views with bland eighty-three.) Pruitt’s relentless promo- dozens of E.P.A. employees being mon-
jargon. He defends his frequent meet- tion of the American fossil-fuel indus- itored by Allan Blutstein, a lawyer for
ings with industry representatives as time try—he recently travelled to Morocco Definers Public Afairs, an opposition-
spent with “stakeholders who care about to promote exports of liquefied natural research firm with conservative clients.
outcomes.” (And he describes them as gas—might well help him raise money Blutstein submitted Freedom of Infor-
“farmers and ranchers,” not as “fossil-fuel for a Senate bid, or for a Presidential mation Act requests for all of Cox’s work
lobbyists.”) He touts “fuel diversity,” ex- run in 2024. correspondence. (Mother Jones reported
plaining, “It’s not the job of the E.P.A. For all his dad-next-door afability, that the E.P.A. had also contracted with
to say to the utility company in any state Pruitt has been more secretive and Definers to perform “media monitoring”
of the country, ‘You should choose re- security-conscious than previous ad- services. The agency subsequently can-
newables over natural gas or coal.’ . . . ministrators, in ways that have left ca- celled the contract, which was worth a
We need more choices, not less.” And reer stafers feeling alienated. He has a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.)
Pruitt has adopted a favored term of the round-the-clock security detail—the Cox said of Definers’ work, “It seemed
anti-regulatory right, “coöperative fed- first E.P.A. administrator to have one. kind of petty to go after a low-level bu-
eralism”: putting more of the onus for He has installed a soundproof phone reaucrat like me.”
environmental rule-making and enforce- booth in his oice, at a cost of forty-three Christine Todd Whitman, the Re-
ment on states. thousand dollars. Longtime employees publican former governor of New Jer-
Many E.P.A. employees told me that told me that it has become extremely sey, served as E.P.A. administrator from
they’d been engaging in coöperative fed- diicult to enter the administrator’s 2001 to 2003, under George W. Bush.
eralism for years. John O’Grady, the pres- oice. In December, The Hill reported “The morale at the agency now is not
ident of the union that represents agency that the E.P.A. had paid three thousand good,” she told me. “The private tele-
workers, said, “We’re partners with states, dollars to a security firm to “sweep for phone booth? There’s a secure facility
tribes, municipalities. We provide them covert/illegal surveillance devices.” Pruitt elsewhere in the building already. This
with enforcement and funding, and we told Bloomberg News that these mea- conveys the message ‘I’m talking all the
sometimes act like the gorilla in the closet sures had been dictated by threats against time about things you can’t know about.’
when needed—when a state is negoti- him and his family. He recently came It’s a collaborative agency—you need to
ating with resistant parties.” But, he under criticism for flying first class; the interact with career staf. Are there tree
added, “most of the states are operating Administration defended him by citing huggers at the agency who didn’t vote
under budget constraints—they can’t do “extremely rude” comments from econ- for Trump? Uh, yes. I can tell you, there
it on their own.” William Ruckelshaus, omy-class passengers, including an in- were a whole lot who didn’t vote for
the former E.P.A. administrator, doubts dividual at the Atlanta airport who had George W. Bush. But, as long as they
46 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
believed you wanted to protect human page titled “Complying with President You have to have that line at the front
health and the environment, they were Trump’s Executive Order on Energy In- of your mind now. You have to be think-
with you, even if you wanted to go about dependence.” An e-mail thread that was ing, What am I going to do? Put it in
it a diferent way.” subsequently released, in response to a writing? Go to my manager? Walk away,
A former senior legal stafer told me, FOIA request by the Environmental De- lose my job?”
“It’s been such a big hit on morale, the fense Fund, shows that Pruitt requested Others talked about the unease of
politicals not asking us questions—‘What’s these changes. (On April 5th, a senior sitting at their desks with less and less
it going to mean if this regulation doesn’t adviser to Pruitt, Lincoln Ferguson, had to do. In August, a report by the non-
go into efect? We want your experience e-mailed another adviser, “How close partisan Environmental Integrity Proj-
to be part of the decision.’ For career staf, are we to launching this on the website? ect showed that Trump’s E.P.A. was
it’s a dilemma. If you haven’t been asked, The Administrator would like it to go pursuing significantly fewer enforce-
and you speak up anyway—‘You’re going up ASAP.”) ment cases against companies for vi-
to lose in court if you try this,’ ‘The pub- Renée Dagseth, who worked on the olating pollution laws. John O’Grady,
lic is going to react negatively’—that can program that informed communities the union president, told me, “En-
easily translate into ‘Don’t talk to this about toxic leaks, left the E.P.A. last forcement action keeps people hon-
person anymore.’” summer. “Senior career management est. It’s like cops on the highway—
Others spoke about senior manag- seems to be frozen out of decision- they can’t stop ever ybody who’s
ers telling subordinates that, in order to making,” she said. “We’re trying to do speeding, but if you know they stop
protect grants and other programs, they the work while waiting for the floor to some people you slow down. Also, if
should expunge such words as “climate drop out. And to be led by people who they’re not out there doing inspec-
change” from the paper trail. And stafers have made it really clear that they don’t tions, we’re not generating data about
found that the word “sustainability” have respect for that mission is demor- industries. I don’t think this Admin-
aroused suspicion among Trump ap- alizing. And I think intentionally so. istration would get rid of E.P.A.—
pointees. A senior stafer said, “ ‘Cli- The plan for ‘red’ and ‘blue’ teams to there would be too much of an out-
mate’ doesn’t surprise me, but ‘sustain- debate climate change? This isn’t some cry—but they could muzzle it enough
ability’? That’s a term that’s used broadly, game show! We’re talking about the that it will be there but not there.”
across countries, industries, communi- survival of the planet.” Other E.P.A. employees said they
ties.” The stafer noted, “I worked on Another senior stafer noted, “Peo- were upset that Pruitt has suspended
the same issues under the Bush Ad- ple have diferent approaches: Do you a long-standing practice at the agency:
ministration. There was a lot more em- ride it out? Wait till you have some re- settling deadline lawsuits. The statutes
phasis on industry-government part- ally hard evidence on something very undergirding E.P.A. policies—the
nerships, but everybody got it on political? Most people have a red line. Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act,
sustainability.”
Soon after Trump took oice, envi-
ronmentalists started worrying that
climate-change information would be
purged from government Web sites. A
group of researchers formed the Envi-
ronmental Data & Governance Initia-
tive, in part to track any such alterations.
So far, these haven’t been comprehen-
sive. If you type “E.P.A.” and “climate
change” into Google, you can still find
a lot of valid information, but many
blunt statements about global warming
(“The science is clear—greenhouse-gas
emissions from all sources must de-
crease”) have been deleted. An E.P.A.
program called Climate Ready Water
Utilities has been renamed Creating
Resilient Water Utilities.
Pruitt clearly ordered many of these
language changes. On April 28th, the
day before the People’s Climate March
in Washington, D.C., anyone searching
E.P.A. pages for information about cli-
mate change found the message “This
page is being updated.” A search for the
Clean Power Plan redirected users to a “I ask you, are these the salmon trousers of a sane man?”
and the Toxic Substances Control career E.P.A. lawyers who have a code task force to promote “expeditious re-
Act—typically set out time frames for of ethics. They would view that state- mediation” and the “revitalization of prop-
making rules or taking action. The ment as incredibly insulting.” erties across the country.” He named Al-
agency often doesn’t meet these dead- bert (Kell) Kelly, the former chairman
lines, because it tends to move pains- he one environmental problem that of the Oklahoma-based SpiritBank, to
takingly and solicits commentary from
industries, environmentalists, and the
T Pruitt has consistently pledged to
approach more aggressively is “revitaliz-
head it. In July, the task force issued a
report, but did not release minutes or
general public. Anyone with a stake in ing contaminated land.” The Superfund reference materials—the persnickety doc-
the matter can sue to enforce the dead- program is the favorite child—the umentation that usually accompanies
line. The agency has settled hundreds Ivanka—of the Trump Administration’s government reports. Jef Ruch, the head
of such cases, because, as Jayni Hein, E.P.A. Pruitt has promised to restore of an organization called Public Em-
a professor of administrative law at the the program to “its rightful place at the ployees for Environmental Responsibil-
N.Y.U. Institute for Policy Integrity, center of the agency’s mission.” In a re- ity, made a FOIA request for documen-
told me, “they know they’d likely lose cent interview with Fox Business, Pruitt tation of the task force’s deliberations,
if it went to court.” Settlements forced couched this shift in moral terms: “The and was told that none had been found.
the endlessly deliberated coal-ash rules agency the last several years has used “They’re asking us to believe the report
to be enacted. regulatory power to weaponize against was an immaculate conception,” he said.
In the past few years, conservative certain sectors of our economy, as op- The report barely mentions public
critics of regulation have targeted what posed to . . . cleaning up a Superfund health, instead stressing the “redevelop-
they call “sue-and-settle.” A 2013 Cham- site in St. Louis.” ment” of sites. Although redevelopment
ber of Commerce report argues that Pruitt has complained that cleanups has always been seen as an ancillary
the practice produces “rulemaking in can drag on for years, even decades, and benefit of remediating toxic-waste sites,
secret” and “private agreements,” cir- he is right. Superfund has been around human health and environmental pro-
cumvents Congress, and costs taxpay- since 1980, and though nearly four hun- tection were the original priorities. Jus-
ers dearly in legal fees. That year, at a dred hazardous-waste sites have been tin Pidot, a law professor at the Univer-
meeting of ALEC, in Oklahoma City, cleaned up, many have languished, and sity of Denver, who formerly represented
Pruitt addressed a workshop sponsored new sites are designated every year. Cur- the E.P.A. at the Department of Justice,
by Koch Industries. The subject of his rently, more than thirteen hundred sites said, “If you put too much emphasis on
speech, according to an e-mail even- are on the list. In 1995, Congress let lapse redevelopment, you risk focussing not
tually released by the Oklahoma attor- the tax on chemical and petroleum com- on the sites that are the most dangerous
ney general’s oice, was “state primacy panies which funnelled money into Su- but the ones that some developer can
in oil and gas regulation and the EPA’s perfund, and now the E.P.A. often must use most easily.” Pidot noted that the re-
sue & settle modus operandi.” sue companies to pay for the removal of port supported “monitored natural at-
In October, Pruitt issued an agency the toxic waste they have left behind. tenuation”—seeing if pollution dissipates
directive ending the practice, saying that But many sites are “orphaned”—fouled on its own—and giving companies “tech-
past settlements “appeared to be the re- by parties that have long been bankrupt nical impracticability waivers.” He said,
sult of collusion with outside groups.” or can’t be identified. “ ‘Impracticability’ is a pretty squishy
He added, “E.P.A. will not resolve lit- The sites can present nightmarish word—it’s not ‘feasibility.’ If a responsi-
igation through backroom deals with challenges. At the West Lake Landfill ble party says, ‘Yes, we could remove that
any type of special-interest complex, in a Missouri sub- toxic waste, but it’s going to be expen-
group.” Given Pruitt’s fre- urb of St. Louis, a “smol- sive,’ is that ‘impracticable’?”
quent private meetings with dering event” has been Lee Ann Smith, a community activ-
industry representatives, burning for years under a ist who lives near a Superfund site in
this struck many E.P.A. landfill. The fire is adjacent Asheville, North Carolina, said, “Our
stafers as hypocritical. to another landfill, which concern is some of these companies will
F if t y-se ven former contains radioactive waste get a really good deal on these toxic-
E.P.A. attorneys wrote a let- from the Manhattan Proj- waste sites, and, instead of removing the
ter of protest, saying that ect. Dawn Chapman, a local waste, they’ll cap it in place with con-
Pruitt had provided “no ev- resident, who co-founded crete and put a shopping center or a
idence to substantiate” the a group called Just Moms school on it, and you’ll still have all those
claim that ending sue-and-settle would to raise awareness of the site, told me, toxins there—and the potential to poi-
save money. The agency would simply “The smell is unbearable. Some days, son people.”
end up in court more, with all the atten- parts of the ground collapse and you will Smith was among a dozen Super-
dant expenses. see smoke and steam coming out.” West fund-site activists who met with Kelly
Nicole Cantello, an attorney in the Lake has been a Superfund site since in late January. Pruitt stopped in to re-
E.P.A.’s Chicago oice, who spoke to 1990, but remediation has been delayed assure everyone that human health, not
me as a representative of the union, by decades of scientific assessment and redevelopment, remained Superfund’s
said, “He calls the practice ‘collusion’! internal agency debate. top priority. If so, Kelly was an odd choice
You can imagine what that means for In May, Pruitt created a Superfund for the program. He has no background
48 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
in environmental science, and his record
as a banker is hardly unblemished. In
July, the F.D.I.C. fined him a hundred
and twenty-five thousand dollars and
banned him from banking, citing his
“unfitness to serve.” (The F.D.I.C. did
not detail specific charges.) William
Black, a law professor at the University
of Kansas whose expertise is banking
law, told me that such a ban is unusual.
In 2009, SpiritBank received thirty mil-
lion dollars from the Troubled Asset
Relief Program; it has paid back only a
fraction of that amount. A loan from
SpiritBank allowed Pruitt to buy the
RedHawks baseball team. (The E.P.A.
declined to make Kelly available for an “For someone who’s supposed to be omniscient, I’ve noticed
interview. But Pruitt’s chief of staf, Ryan he calls all the new guys ‘buddy.’”
Jackson, provided me with a statement
asserting that Kelly never took “any ac-
tion which threatened the bank.”) • •
Pruitt and Kelly have treated the Su-
perfund initiative like an election cam- tal activist. Young said of Pruitt, “He which are much harder to clean up. And
paign, shaking hands with local activists had a firm handshake, looked me in what about the thirteen hundred or so
and making promises. Some sites have the eye, and said he’d have a decision sites that hadn’t grabbed Pruitt’s atten-
obviously been chosen, in part, to shore on how they were going to proceed by tion? Gibbs urged Kelly to support a
up Trump’s appeal in red states. Dawn the time Oklahoma beats Texas in foot- Senate bill, introduced by Cory Booker,
Chapman and her Just Moms co-founder, ball, which we had a laugh about.”Three the New Jersey Democrat, that would
Karen Nickel, were impressed when Kelly days before the Sooners-Longhorns restore the industry tax that once amassed
visited Missouri in June and had a forty- game, the E.P.A. came out with an am- money for Superfund. Kelly and Pruitt
five-minute listening session with resi- bitious plan to remove the waste. (The have not voiced any support for it.
dents. He gave them his cell-phone num- Sooners won.) Young recalls Pruitt say- At the same time that Pruitt has been
ber. In February, the E.P.A. announced ing, “This is something tangible we pledging to clean up some Superfund
that the Missouri site would be partly can do for the American people.” sites, he has been dismantling important
excavated, at a cost to the liable compa- It’s important to clean up “tangible” Superfund regulations. In December, he
nies of two hundred and thirty-six mil- sludge in Texas, Missouri, and elsewhere. announced that he would eliminate a
lion dollars. Chapman was grateful to But many E.P.A. stafers believe that 2016 rule requiring hard-rock-mining
Pruitt, though she realized that other en- Pruitt is giving priority to eforts that operations, such as gold, silver, and lead
vironmentalists might find this baling. can be the basis for a before-and-after mines, to provide evidence that they had
“If your kid was in the middle of the commercial, while ignoring bigger eco- the financial resources to clean up any
street and a car was barrelling at him, logical threats. Unlike a Superfund site, toxic messes that they created. The rule
you wouldn’t care who jumped out and global warming can’t be fixed before 2020. came about after environmental groups
saved him,” she said. “That’s where we Lois Gibbs is sometimes called the sued the E.P.A. over “heap-leach” min-
are at this point. Scott Pruitt was the one “mother of the Superfund.” As a young ing, in which cyanide is used to extract
to step out, grab the kid, and jump to housewife living in upstate New York, gold from open pits. Multiple companies
the other side of the road.” in the seventies, she helped draw atten- using this method had caused vast con-
Pruitt has visited East Chicago, In- tion to a toxic-waste dump in her neigh- taminations, then declared bankruptcy
diana, and also the San Jacinto waste borhood, Love Canal. Gibbs, who or sheltered assets. The 1980 Superfund
pits, outside Houston—dumping founded an organization called the Cen- law states that polluters, not taxpayers,
grounds for dioxins and other toxic ter for Health, Environment, and Jus- must pay for remediation of disaster sites.
chemicals. The pits were declared a tice, has met with Kelly several times. In late January, when Lois Gibbs spoke
Superfund site in 2008; in 2011, the She was discomfited by the way he and with Pruitt at the meeting with Super-
E.P.A. put a temporary cap over the his team were running Superfund “like fund activists, she asked him what he’d
waste. But in August the cap leaked it’s their own small business—not part do if money for cleanups ran short. He
during Hurricane Harvey, and the of an agency with other stafers.” told her he’d find the funds, but didn’t
agency soon discovered elevated dioxin In December, the E.P.A. named explain how. In an e-mail to me, she re-
levels in an adjacent river. Pruitt vis- twenty-one sites that would get “imme- called, “I asked if he was opposed to the
ited the site in September and met diate and intense attention.” Gibbs wor- polluter-pays-fees tax, and he said he
with Jackie Young, a local environmen- ried that only a few are orphaned sites, would never turn down more money—
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 49
but didn’t come out and say he supported teeth-clenching city traic. In one test- and nitrogen oxides into water and car-
it. Doublespeak.” ing area, employees can raise the tem- bon dioxide) and electronic fuel injec-
In February, Pruitt visited a silver- perature to ninety-five degrees Fahren- tion (to improve fuel eiciency and pro-
and-gold mine in Nevada, where he heit and crank up the car’s A.C., or duce cleaner exhaust).
discussed the repeal of the financial- lower the temperature to twenty de- There were other benefits down the
assurance law, telling miners that the grees, simulating a frosty morning in line. Catalytic converters hastened the
E.P.A. would no longer be “weapon- New Hampshire. removal of lead from gasoline, because
ized” against them. In a statement, he John German, an engineer who has lead made the converters malfunction.
said that the 2016 rule imposed “an worked for Chrysler and Toyota as well Fuel injection, which relied on electronic
undue burden on this important sector as at the E.P.A. lab, and who is now a sensors, expedited the computerization
of the American economy.” After one senior fellow at a nonprofit called the of cars, which made them cleaner and
heap-leach calamity, in which toxic International Council on Clean Trans- more eicient. Joseph Somers, a retired
runof from a gold mine in Colorado portation, told me, “The E.P.A. lab engineer who worked at the Ann Arbor
trashed the surrounding watershed and really is the gold standard internation- lab for four decades, told me that, be-
farmland, a local resident, Ignacio Ro- ally.” In recent years, lab engineers cause of these innovations, “about five
driguez, told a reporter, “They got the helped prove that Volkswagen had hundred current-model-year vehicles
gold and we got the shaft.” rigged some of its diesel cars so that emit what a single 1970 model did.”
Elizabeth Southerland, the former emissions controls kicked in only under In 1974, a top Chrysler engineer
E.P.A. oicial, said, “Pruitt’s repeal of laboratory conditions, and were emit- warned a Senate committee that new
rules, failure to enforce rules, and weak- ting as much as forty times more ni- emissions standards would essentially
ening of rules will result in him creating trogen oxide in real-world driving. In “outlaw” station wagons and large se-
many new Superfund sites.” 2017, the company was ordered to pay dans. But the car companies adapted,
$2.8 billion in criminal fines. and were happy when their large sedans

IcarsnE.P.A.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, there is an
lab stocked with new-model
and trucks. Since 1971, scientists at
In the early seventies, the E.P.A.,
operating under the Clean Air Act,
began requiring car manufacturers to
got better as well as cleaner. “Things
that were controversial, once they worked,
were widely accepted,” Somers said.
the lab have been testing new vehicles sharply reduce emissions. Some regu- The auto industry came to rely on
to insure that updated emissions stan- lations were designed to be “technol- E.P.A. protocols. The lab, which de-
dards are achievable, and that manufac- ogy forcing”: high-eiciency vehicles signed its own technologies and com-
turers are meeting them. They put the did not yet exist, but regulators expected ponents to help reduce emissions, now
vehicles on big metal rolls—treadmills the auto industry to get creative under holds sixty patents. Gay MacGregor,
for cars—and assess their engines and pressure. Technology forcing was con- until recently a senior policy adviser at
their fuel emissions. The lab has devel- troversial, but it worked. Car manufac- the lab, said, “Because the regs are based
oped tests that simulate myriad driving turers developed the catalytic converter on data and research, and the people in
conditions, from open highway to (to transform harmful hydrocarbons the industry are also engineers and sci-
entists, you can come to an agreement
on data a lot of the time.”
John German told me that the E.P.A.
devised a way to make cost assessments
that were more accurate and transpar-
ent. The lab began consulting with spe-
cialists who can “take a car apart, right
down to the screws,” and tabulate the
exact price of making a particular change.
Now, German said, “it’s hard for the
manufacturers to argue about the costs.”
The lab also assesses the efects of
multiple innovations. German said, “If
you take a single technology and a sin-
gle vehicle, it’s pretty easy to figure out
what the eiciency is, but what if you
combine technologies? This one gets
you three per cent, this one five. If you
put ’em together, do you get eight, or
are there overlaps in benefits, so you
only get six?” At a rally outside the lab
in May, Margo Oge, who headed the
E.P.A.’s oice of transportation and air
“Get dressed and sculpt something already.” quality from 1994 to 2012, said that the
facility “has done more to reduce emis- ing hasty” about the process. Indeed, where. (The French President, Emman-
sions and air pollution than any other” the latest research had suggested that uel Macron, recently awarded thirteen
lab in the country. meeting the target would be cheaper research grants to U.S.-based climate
In the Trump Administration’s orig- than the E.P.A. had predicted. The scientists, and invited them to relocate
inal budget blueprint, over-all E.P.A. agency’s goals did not even require the to France.) “I have a leaden feeling in
funding was to be cut by thirty-one per development of electric cars. In the my soul about what’s happening,” Mc-
cent. The budget of the division that meantime, the U.K. and France had Cargar said. “We put a huge amount of
houses the Ann Arbor lab was to be re- announced that no diesel or gasoline work into analyzing this and creating
duced from a hundred and eight mil- vehicles would be sold there by 2040, these regulations.”
lion dollars to seventy-six million. India had promised to go electric by Thousands and thousands of pages,
In July, the House Appropriations 2030, and China had cre- somebody interjected. Ten
Committee settled on a much smaller ated stringent new goals years. Millions of dollars.
over-all cut for the agency—6.5 per for the production of elec- “And now we get this
cent. But, according to an analysis by tric and hybrid vehicles. President in there who’s say-
the Environmental Protection Net- McCarthy said it was ing, ‘We’re just going to look
work, a group of E.P.A. alumni who “heartbreaking” to watch at it all again.’ What for?”
monitor changes under Pruitt, the agen- Pruitt “undo so much” Jane Armstrong, who
cy’s budget, adjusted for inflation, was when “climate change is had been the lab’s director
already lower than it had been since so clearly happening.” of compliance, working
1986, so even the House proposal rep- closely with auto manufac-
resents an alarming reduction. Last ne crisp evening in turers, said, “The best and
May, Representative Debbie Dingell,
a Michigan Democrat, said of the lab,
O October, I went to a meeting of
about a dozen current and former lab
the brightest come here. If you dumb
down the agency, how do you keep re-
“This is a national treasure, and we will employees that Gay MacGregor was cruiting the best?”
not let them destroy it.” Gay MacGre- hosting at her Ann Arbor apartment. She and a few others remembered
gor retired so that she could organize Everybody sat in a circle in her living weathering the two years, during the
a group to defend it. She felt that, even room, drinking beers. People who still Reagan Administration, when the
if funding were restored, the lab’s work worked at the lab asked not to be agency was run by Anne Gorsuch, a
on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions named. In the past, they said, it had conservative state legislator from Col-
remained vulnerable under Pruitt’s been easy to bring reporters to the lab. orado (and the mother of the Supreme
leadership. But it was diicult under Pruitt. (My Court Justice Neil Gorsuch). Those
MacGregor’s fear was soon realized. request to visit the lab was declined.) years were the only precedent to Pruitt’s
In August, Pruitt announced that the It was an odd evening, with these tenure. Gorsuch had cut enforcement,
E.P.A. would be “reopening” the ques- earnest government engineers and econ- accommodated polluters, and antago-
tion of whether the latest clean-car stan- omists gathered in a kind of samizdat nized career staf. She resigned after
dards—which mandate that auto man- bunker. Most had known each other for being held in contempt of Congress,
ufacturers achieve an average fuel years. Somebody mentioned the bushy for refusing to comply with a corrup-
eiciency of 54.5 miles per gallon by sideburns they’d had when they joined tion investigation targeting a Super-
2025—are feasible. Those standards, es- the lab, in the seventies. Another per- fund administrator.
tablished under the Obama Adminis- son brought up the engineer Joseph William Ruckelshaus, whom Rea-
tration, were aimed at cutting greenhouse- Somers’s photographic memory. gan had brought back to the agency after
gas emissions and reducing oil depen- “He remembers my first car,” one Gorsuch’s departure, restored morale.
dence. The rule required the agency to guy said. He established transparency in deci-
conduct a midterm evaluation of how “That brown Vega!” Somers said. sion-making, and he conveyed respect
things were going; it did so in 2016, and “See? I didn’t even remember that.” for career employees. In a speech, he de-
determined that the standards remained Soon, though, the tone grew serious. clared, “There is no finer group of pub-
within reach. Jim McCargar had come to the E.P.A. lic servants in this country.”The E.P.A.’s
That November, Gina McCarthy, the in 1983, and during his years at the agency mission, he said, was “transcendent.”
E.P.A. administrator at the time, opened he turned to climate science. As an un- Somers said, “I’ve had about twelve
up a monthlong public comment period dergrad at Harvard, McCargar had people call me asking what was it like
for the midterm evaluation. When Pruitt started out majoring in physics and as- then—what should they do? My advice
took over, multiple automobile trade as- tronomy, but while hitchhiking across is ‘Stay, if you can.’”
sociations complained that the comment the country one summer he’d got caught One of the engineers said that it
period had been rushed, and that the re- up in the environmental movement and might take a while to “rebuild capacity”
quirements were onerous. Pruitt an- switched to biology. Now, he said, a lot after Pruitt. But it would be done. The
nounced a “robust review of emissions of young scientists coming out of school public, he reminded everyone, “is ex-
standards.”  wanted to work on climate change. If pecting us to protect the planet.” He
McCarthy told me she remained the E.P.A. lost its edge in climate sci- said, “Pruitt is a temporary interloper.
confident that there was “literally noth- ence, the young talent would go else- We are the real agency.” 
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 51
 LETTER FROM ST. THOMAS

The Edge of Identity

Hannah Upp goes missing for weeks at a time, losing her sense of self. Can she still be found?
BY RACHEL AVIV

H
annah Upp had been missing nection. Five of her friends used the same hydration, and a severe sunburn on the
for nearly two weeks when she phrase when describing her: “She lights left side of her body, and her condition
was seen at the Apple Store in up the room.” A friend told the News rapidly improved. Four friends came to
midtown Manhattan. Her friends, most reporter, “Everyone you talk to is going the hospital that afternoon. Manuel
of them her former classmates from Bryn to say she is their closest friend. She has Ramirez, her roommate, said, “She saw
Mawr, had posted a thousand flyers about no barriers. She was raised to trust and me and smiled and said something like
her disappearance on signposts and at care for everyone, and she did.” ‘I hope they release me soon, because I
subway stations and bus stops. It was Two days after Hannah was seen at have to set up my classroom.’ She clearly
September, 2008, and Hannah, a middle- the Apple Store, she was spotted at a didn’t get that three weeks had passed.”
school teacher at Thurgood Marshall Starbucks in SoHo. By the time the po- Later that day, the police inter-
Academy, a public school in Harlem, lice arrived, she had walked out the back viewed Hannah privately. Barbara stood
hadn’t shown up for the first day of door. The police recorded sightings of outside the room. “I could hear her
school. Her roommate had found her her at five New York Sports Clubs, all trying to respond to their questions—
wallet, passport, MetroCard, and cell of them near midtown, where the de- she was really working at it, trying to
phone in her purse, on the floor of her tective on the case presumed she had give them what they wanted—but she
bedroom. The News reported, “Teacher, gone to shower. In an article about her didn’t have any explanation.” Her last
23, Disappears Into Thin Air.” disappearance, the Times wrote, “It was memory was of taking a run in River-
A detective asked Hannah’s mother, as if the city had simply opened wide side Park, near her apartment, the day
Barbara Bellus, to come to the Thirti- and swallowed her whole.” that she went missing.
eth Precinct, in Harlem, to view the On September 16th, the twentieth Barbara, a United Methodist pastor,
Apple Store surveillance footage. Bar- day she’d been missing, the captain of slept in a chair beside Hannah’s hospi-
bara watched a woman wearing a sports a Staten Island ferry saw a woman’s tal bed. In the middle of the night, Han-
bra and running shorts, her brown hair body bobbing in the water near Rob- nah jolted awake. “I was at a lighthouse,”
pulled into a high ponytail, ascend the bins Reef, a rocky outcropping with a she said, then immediately fell asleep
staircase in the store. A man stopped lighthouse south of the Statue of Lib- again. In the morning, when Barbara
her and asked if she was the missing erty. Two deckhands steered a rescue asked about the lighthouse, Hannah
teacher in the news. Barbara said, “I could boat toward the body, which was float- said that she had no memory of it.
see her blow of what he was saying, and ing face down. “I honestly thought she
I knew instantly it was her—it was all was dead,” one of the men said. A deck- annah was transferred to a psy-
her. She has this characteristic gesture.
It’s, like, ‘Oh, no, no, don’t you worry.
hand lifted her ankles, and the other
picked up her shoulders. She took a
H chiatric unit run by Columbia
University Medical Center. She under-
You know me, I’m fine.’” Another cam- gasp of air and began crying. went a series of brain-imaging tests,
era had captured Hannah using one of The woman was taken to Richmond but the doctors couldn’t find any neu-
the store’s laptops to log in to her Gmail University Medical Center, on Staten rological condition that would cause
account. She looked at the screen for a Island. For three weeks, her own biog- her to forget her identity. They con-
second before walking away. raphy had been inaccessible to her, but cluded that the episode was psycho-
The sighting was celebrated by Han- when the medical staf asked her ques- logical in nature. As soon as she was
nah’s friends, many of whom were camp- tions she was suddenly able to tell them lifted from the river, she remembered
ing out at her apartment. They made that her name was Hannah and to give all the details of her life prior to her
maps of the city’s parks, splitting them them her mother’s phone number. Bar- disappearance.
into quadrants, and sent groups to look bara arrived within an hour. (Hannah’s She was given a diagnosis of disso-
in the woods and on running paths and father was living in India, where he ciative fugue, a rare condition in which
under benches. taught at a seminary; her brother, a Navy people lose access to their autobiograph-
According to the Myers-Briggs per- oicer, was stationed in Japan.) Barbara ical memory and personal identity, oc-
sonality test, which Hannah often ref- said that Hannah looked “both sun- casionally adopting a new one, and may
erenced, she was an E.N.F.P.: Extraverted burned and pale, like she’d been pulled abruptly embark on a long journey. The
Intuitive Feeling Perceiving, a personal- behind a boat for three weeks.” The first state is typically triggered by trauma—
ity type that describes exuberant ideal- thing she said was “Why am I wet?” often sexual or physical abuse, a com-
ists looking for deeper meaning and con- She was treated for hypothermia, de- bat experience, or exposure to a natural
52 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
PHOTOGRAPH: JOHN J. MEYER/COURTESY BARBARA BELLUS (WOMAN)

“Hannah gives so much to other people that at a certain point there is literally nothing left,” a friend said.
ILLUSTRATION BY CRISTIANA COUCEIRO THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 53
 they had been sexually abused as chil-
dren, but he ultimately concluded that
their memories were fantasies. He pro-
posed that unacceptable wishes were re-
pressed into the unconscious, and that
traces of them resurfaced in people’s
fantasy lives. Theorists of dissociation
disagreed, arguing that some events were
so traumatic that, afterward, the mind
was unable to develop as an integrated
whole. The French philosopher and psy-
chologist Pierre Janet, who developed
the first formal theory of dissociation,
in 1889, wrote, “Personal unity, identity,
and initiative are not primitive charac-
teristics of psychological life. They are
incomplete results acquired with dii-
culty after long work, and they remain
very fragile.” After Freud’s success, Jan-
et’s work fell into obscurity.
Cases of dissociation had a whif of
“Take us to your most inluential power couple.” the mystical, and doctors tended to stay
away from them. Dozens of articles
from the turn of the twentieth century,
• • published in the Times, recount mirac-
ulous, inexplicable transformations: a
disaster—or by an unbearable internal plated changing her name. But, her Minnesota reverend, missing for a
conflict. Philippe Tissié, one of the first friend Piyali Bhattacharya said, “she ul- month, realized that he had travelled
psychiatrists to study fugue, character- timately decided—and she was very across the county and enlisted in the
ized it as a kind of self-exile. In 1901, he clear on this—that she did not want to Navy, “though never before in his life
wrote, “The legend of the Wandering run away from who Hannah Upp was.” had he even gazed on the ocean”; a
Jew has become a reality, proved by nu- One of the psychiatrists on Colum- professor thought to have drowned was
merous observations of patients or un- bia’s psychiatric unit, Aaron Krasner, discovered, three years later, using a
balanced persons who sufer from an now a professor of clinical psychiatry at new name and working as a dishwasher;
imperious need to walk, on and on.” Yale, described the comments in the a deacon in New Jersey woke up and
Hannah was hypnotized, to see if she news as “very condemning and discred- “realized the room he has occupied for
could recall a traumatic event that trig- iting. I think this speaks to the rage that more than a year was strange to him”
gered her fugue, but she couldn’t re- dissociative conditions incur in certain and his Bible was marked with some-
member anything unusual. Hannah and people. There is an inefable quality to one else’s name. He had been missing
her mother, father, and brother said that dissociative cases. They challenge a con- for four years.
as a young child she hadn’t endured any- ventional understanding of reality.” He The most famous American fugue
thing that they considered trauma. Han- told me that he was troubled by the nar- patient was Ansel Bourne, a preacher
nah’s roommate, Ramirez, said that, rowness of medical literature on these who, in 1887, left his home in Rhode Is-
when he visited her on the psychiatric states; there are no medications that land with a vague sense that he had
unit, “she was her normal, upbeat, funny specifically target the problem. “Disso- fallen from “the path of duty.” He trav-
self. I remember her rattling of all these ciative fugue is the rare bird of dissoci- elled to Norristown, Pennsylvania, two
possibilities: ‘Was I in a hit-and-run? ation, but dissociation as a phenome- hundred and forty miles away, and
Was I mugged? Was I assaulted?’” The non is very common,” he said. “I think opened a shop selling stationery and
beginning of the school year was always as a field we have not done our due dil- candy. He went by the name Albert
stressful—her students struggled with igence, in part because the phenome- Brown. His neighbors found his behav-
problems, such as hunger and unstable non is so frightening. It’s terrifying to ior perfectly normal. Two months after
housing, that she couldn’t address within think that we are all vulnerable to a lapse leaving home, he knocked on his land-
the confines of her classroom—but her in selfhood.” lord’s door and asked, “Where am I?”
colleagues had the same dilemmas. The philosopher and psychologist
In the hospital, Hannah read the reud explored dissociative states in William James ofered to treat him by
news articles about her disappearance
and the comments from readers, some
F his early writings, but the phenom-
enon did not fit easily into his sweep-
using hypnosis to “run the two person-
alities into one, and make the memo-
of whom accused her of staging it. She ing theory of human behavior. Most of ries continuous.” But the two identities
was so embarrassed that she contem- the dissociative patients he saw said that could not be merged. Bourne returned
54 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
to his wife in Rhode Island with al- nah’s condition lay at the “edges of take a question like that and turn it
most no memories of his life as Albert. knowledge,” and she didn’t want to in on herself and think about it and
In an essay that James wrote shortly impose false connections. The more come out the other end being a difer-
before treating Bourne, he argued that she read about fugue, the less she felt ent person.” Bhattacharya went on,
science would advance more rapidly she understood it. Hannah’s father, “She knew she was loving and open-
if more attention were devoted to un- David Upp, wrote in an e-mail, “I sus- hearted, but beyond that I think she
classifiable cases—“wild facts” that pect they will need a new paradigm, had zero idea of who she actually was.
threaten a “closed and completed sys- before Fugues can fit ANY theories.” She wanted to give herself over to
tem of truth.” Understanding splits in He suggested that “magical realism someone or some idea.”
consciousness, he wrote, is “of the most comes closer” than any current psycho- In the spring of her sophomore year,
urgent importance for the comprehen- logical theory, and said that one of Han- Barbara said, Hannah called her, cry-
sion of our nature.” nah’s favorite authors is Isabel Allende. ing, after going to a talk by Beth Stroud,
But, in the decades after Bourne’s “Perhaps a book like ‘El Plan Infinito’?” a United Methodist minister who was
disappearance, the study of dissociation he wrote. The book’s hero spends de- defrocked after telling her congrega-
largely vanished. The prevailing schools cades wrestling with the teachings of tion that she was in a relationship with
in psychology and psychiatry—behav- his father, who, like Upp, became an a woman. “Hannah was troubled that
iorism and psychoanalysis—adopted itinerant preacher. something that she’d thought was part
models of the mind that were incom- As a child, Hannah was “the prin- of her faith was cruel,” Barbara said.
patible with the concept. Then, in the cess of her church,” as a friend described By her junior year, Hannah was dating
nineteen-eighties, several thousand peo- her. She grew up in Japanese-Ameri- a woman.
ple claimed that, having been abused as can churches in Oregon, where her par- Although she found herself drawn
children, they had developed multiple ents served as pastors. (Both of her par- to Quakerism, she still travelled with
selves. The public responded to these ents are American, but Barbara taught her father at least once a year in what-
stories much as it had to the surge of in Japan and is fluent in Japanese.) ever part of the world he was teaching.
dissociative cases at the turn of the cen- When she was young, her parents’ per- Her friend Hannah Wood wondered
tury: this sort of mental experience was spectives on theology sharply diverged. what it meant for Hannah to “swallow
considered too eerie and counterintui- Upp characterized himself with the a part of herself down while she was
tive to believe. Whatever truth there phrase homo unius libri, “man of the travelling,” but Hannah always spoke
was to the condition was lost as hyper- one book.” In monthly newsletters sent fondly of her father. Her friends liked
bolic stories circulated in the media: to colleagues, congregants, and friends, to joke that she resided in “Hannah
tales of feuding selves and elaborate acts he argued that “there is no such human Land.” Her friend Amy Scott said, “She
of sexual abuse, such as torture by sa- as a natural homosexual.” He urged his lives in this separate place where there
tanic cults. The legacy of that time is readers to “fully support Biblical Mo- are butterflies and birds, and they fol-
that people with similarly radical alter- rality and to oppose any compromise low her around. Everything is good and
ations of self are viewed with distrust. with sexual deviance/perversion.” everyone is happy, and there’s no con-
Richard Loewenstein, the medical Barbara filed for divorce when Han- flict, ever.”
director of the Trauma Disorders Pro- nah was fifteen. Upp moved abroad
gram at Sheppard Pratt, in Towson, and taught the Gospel, often to indig- annah thought that her fugue
Maryland, may have worked with more
fugue patients than any other psychia-
enous tribes, in Fiji, Palau, Guam,
Malta, India, Zimbabwe, Guyana, and
H may have begun with a liminal
phase: there were two days when she
trist in the country. He said that mod- the Philippines, where he now lives in slept in her apartment but communi-
ern psychiatry and psychology still fail a one-room house in a remote village. cated with no one. Her bank records
to “pay much attention to the self or to In 2007, Barbara took a leave from her showed that she had gone to a movie
the complexities of subjectivity.” When position as a pastor and moved to Pen- in Times Square which she had no
he encounters people in fugues, often dle Hill, a Quaker retreat outside Phil- memory of seeing.
in emergency rooms, he finds it nearly adelphia. She and Upp stopped speak- During the weeks that Hannah spent
impossible to treat them in that state. ing to each other. wandering, her family believes that she
He said that, in conversation, “there’s a Hannah was a creationist when she understood on some level that people
quality of them running away from arrived at Bryn Mawr, and she joined were searching for her. “She character-
whatever you are trying to ask them. If the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, ized her recollections of that time as
you begin to hold on to them and try an evangelical campus ministry. Her just being continually roaming,” her
to get them to stay in one place, they friend Piyali Bhattacharya, who was brother Dan said. “We think that maybe
go—they’re gone.” raised Hindu, once asked Hannah, she had this sense that she was being
“Do you think I’m going to Hell?” She hunted and didn’t know why.”
he first time I spoke with Han- said that Hannah began crying. “Han- A few months before her disappear-
T nah’s mother, early this year, she
told me it was important that an arti-
nah lost it. She couldn’t answer the
question. Whereas another person
ance, Hannah and a friend had gone
to a meeting for “freegans,” a group
cle about her daughter’s experience “let might try to defend her beliefs, Han- that tries to minimize its consumption
it stay a mystery.” She felt that Han- nah is the kind of person who would of resources, and they’d visited grocery
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 55
stores on the Upper East Side, collect- departed. Barbara said, “Something knees on its rocks. She slept there the
ing discarded food. Dan said that the about that powerful ritual registered.” following day, long enough to get a sun-
family believed Hannah “remembered Based on the condition of her body burn. Then she returned to the water.
what she’d learned on the tour and was the day she was found, she and her
eating perfectly good food that the family concluded that she had been at hattacharya said that when she and
stores were not able to legally sell the
next day. She seemed to have access to
the floating-lantern ceremony and,
three days later, had returned to the
B Hannah spoke about the experi-
ence they often lapsed into silence. “It
those memories. Even if she didn’t un- pier and entered the water. Barbara felt like the words we have in the En-
derstand why at that time, she gravi- said, “Maybe when Hannah was get- glish language were not suicient to de-
tated to places that were familiar.” ting alarmed or upset because people scribe this,” Bhattacharya said. Hannah
Dan met with the captain of the kept saying her name, it felt more com- saw a few therapists, but found conver-
Staten Island ferry and analyzed the fortable to go back to that place.” sations with her friends more helpful.
currents in the Hudson River. They It is likely that Hannah spent the She described the mental-health sys-
surmised that Hannah must have en- night in the river. She later checked tem as dogmatic and overly attached to
tered the river in lower Manhattan be- the lunar calendar and was able to its diagnostic models. She felt as if her
fore the tide took her south. Hannah confirm her memory that there had experiences had to be reshaped to fit
and Dan walked along the piers down- been a full moon that night. Her skin within the diagnoses. Barbara said that
town, and when they got to Pier 40, a showed signs of prolonged immersion. Hannah told her, “If people want to
former marine terminal on the west Barbara said that Hannah vaguely re- spend a lot more time figuring out what
end of Houston Street, Hannah told membered “holding on to the hull of set this of, they can, but I’m not going
him that the place felt familiar. She a barge—she may have wanted some to spend the rest of my life focussing
remembered lights floating on the rest—and then she realized that she on it.” Barbara found the same tenden-
water. was being sucked toward the propel- cies within psychiatry as she had in the
Dan learned that there had been a ler, which is a very dangerous thing, so church: an emphasis on what she de-
Japanese floating-lantern ceremony on she swam away.” It was as if her body, scribed as “the letter of the law, rather
the pier on September 11th, to honor undirected by what we typically con- than the spirit of it.” She didn’t think it
the victims of the World Trade Cen- ceive of as consciousness, were still in- “left room for the reality of individual
ter attacks. As a child, Hannah had tent on survival. unique experience.”
danced in an annual Obon festival, Hannah and her family concluded Hannah’s fugue seemed to fit what
which has a floating-lantern ceremony, that she either swam to or was washed Etzel Cardeña, a professor of psychol-
the lights representing the souls of the up onto Robbins Reef. She scraped her ogy at Lund University, in Sweden, de-
scribes as “anomalous psychological ex-
perience.” Cardeña has published a
textbook on phenomena that “fall be-
tween the cracks of the house built by
contemporary mainstream psychology.”
He told me, “In our culture, we have a
nice narrative that personality is stable.
That is a fiction. When a person enters
a fugue and becomes someone else—or
isn’t there—it’s an exaggerated version
of the way we all are.”
Cardeña has done research on al-
tered states of consciousness in reli-
gious practice, and he found that some
people who would otherwise be given
a diagnosis of dissociative disorder have
been able to channel their tendencies
into rituals of spirit possession, trance,
speaking in tongues, or intimate expe-
riences of God. He said, “There is a
cultural context for surrendering them-
selves. It’s not about getting rid of the
dissociative state so much as giving it
a syntax, a coherence, a social func-
tion.” In an article in the journal Spir-
itus, T. M. Luhrmann, a Stanford an-
“ Yes, the Uncatchable Cat Burglar is a great nickname—but can thropologist who studies religion and
I suggest you combine it with running away?” psychiatry, suggests that there is a
“shared psychological mechanism” in
dissociation and evangelical worship:
the capacity to withdraw from the ev-
eryday and become entirely absorbed
by interior experience. “Trance-like re-
sponses to great distress have occurred
throughout history and across culture,”
she writes.
Nearly all the medical literature sug-
gests that people in fugue states adopt
new identities, but Barbara said that, for
Hannah, “it was more like the complete
absence of identity,” a kind of “danger-
ous nothingness.” None of Hannah’s
friends or family had ever seen her in a
fugue state, beyond the surveillance foot-
age from the Apple Store. Barbara said,
“Nothing we know indicates that she
built a new identity—unless she did and
it was lost when she came back.”
David Spiegel, a professor of psychi-
atry at Stanford who has spent his ca- “Now that you’ve met all the people who could easily replace you, I’d like
reer studying dissociation, told me that you to meet the person who is actually going to replace you.”
he’d never heard of someone navigat-
ing the world without something that
resembles an identity. “It may be sparse,
• •
with far less structure or detail to it, but
I don’t know if you can be a function- wrote, “It’s an honor to fold your laun- had seen Hannah walking quickly in
ing human without something that dry or crawl under your bed, for, you the wrong direction. Hannah’s mother
passes for a self,” he said. “You need see, that’s what community is all about!” and friends from Pendle Hill drove to
some kind of orientation for under- Her friend Hannah Herklotz said that Maryland and looked for her in the
standing who you are and what you are Hannah was so attentive to other peo- woods and put up flyers around town.
doing here.” ple’s needs that it sometimes felt im- They discovered that she hadn’t slept
possible to reciprocate. “You’d come at her apartment the night before. In
little more than a year after her out of a two-hour conversation that the previous twenty-four hours, no one
A disappearance, Hannah left New
York, joining Barbara at Pendle Hill.
you’d feel was incredibly deep, and you’d
feel heard and known and seen, and
had talked to her.
The next day, at 10:30 P.M., Bar-
Sometimes called Mecca for Quakers, then you’d realize later: she didn’t tell bara received a call from an unknown
the institution was founded in 1930 as me a thing about herself.” number. “All she said was ‘Mom?’ ”
a retreat for people of all religions. Han- After working at Pendle Hill for Barbara said. Hannah had found her-
nah worked in the kitchen and attended three years, Hannah was hired as a self in a dirty creek in a residential
daily meetings for worship, a half hour teaching assistant at a Montessori school area in Wheaton, Maryland, a mile
of silence. for underserved children in Kensing- and a half from her school. There was
Quaker practice operates according ton, Maryland. She was drawn to Maria a shopping cart beside her. Barbara’s
to the premise that a single person can- Montessori’s notion of an “education housemate at the time, Jennifer Beer,
not see the entire truth, and the peo- capable of saving humanity”: by pro- recalled that Hannah “regathered her-
ple at Pendle Hill never asked Han- tecting the autonomy of children, so- self instantly—it was sort of like her
nah for answers about her disappearance. ciety would become more loving, peace- soul getting sucked back in.” Hannah
Patrick Roesle, an intern at Pendle Hill ful, and unified. Roesle said, “She flung walked to the closest commercial area
whom Hannah dated there, said that herself—all of her weight—into learn- and borrowed a stranger’s phone. She
he viewed the episode as a “freak acci- ing Montessori, internalizing Montes- realized that she had been walking for
dent.” He believed that “Hannah gives sori, loving Montessori.” more than two days.
so much to other people that at a cer- On the morning of Hannah’s first Later, Hannah reviewed the text
tain point there is literally nothing left, day of class, Barbara got a phone call messages she’d sent the day that she
and she departs from herself.” When from the police. They told her that disappeared. “We could see in the texts
friends had celebratory occasions or Hannah’s purse, wallet, and cell phone where she had made that transition,”
setbacks, however minor, she would had been found on a wooded footpath Barbara said. “She could remember
write them cards by hand. To a friend in Kensington. A colleague reported sending some of the texts, but then
at Pendle Hill who broke an arm, she that as she was driving to school she there came a point where she said, ‘I
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 57
don’t remember writing any of this.’” to have the freedom to make choices.” line, dislodged by the storm, smacked
Barbara said that after each fugue Hannah moved to the east end of the roof.
she felt a kind of “awe at where Han- St. Thomas, away from the docks for The next morning, the island had
nah had been.” The ancient Greeks had cruise ships, which bring tens of thou- turned brown, the trees stripped of their
two words for time: kronos, chronolog- sands of tourists to the island every leaves. Suzanne Carlson, a reporter at
ical time, and kairos, which is often week. She could see the British Virgin the Virgin Islands Daily News, told me,
translated as “the right time” and can- Islands from the balcony of her apart- “I heard a lot of people say, ‘This is it—
not be measured. Barbara said, “I imag- ment, which she called her “island pal- St. Thomas is over.’ ” Hannah texted
ined her as having entered more fully ace.” A parent of one of her students friends that she was safe but the island
into kairos—the appointed time, the described her as a “modern-day Mary was devastated. “I don’t recognize any-
fullness of time. There’s a suspension Poppins.” The head of the school, Mi- thing,” she wrote.
of certainty.” chael Bornn, said, “Whenever a par- Since her 2008 fugue, Hannah’s
Hannah’s friends were struck by the ent showed up for a tour, we took them roommate from New York, Manuel
similarities between her two disappear- to Hannah’s classroom.” Ramirez, had used a code phrase to
ances. In both instances, she had dis- After a year of teaching, the school check up on her. After her first disap-
appeared at the beginning of the school paid for her to take summer classes at pearance, they had made fun of an ABC
year, after travelling with her father. a Montessori training center in Port- News story that characterized her as a
David Upp had pondered whether the land, Oregon, so that she could even- “friendly vegetarian who constantly ex-
vacations had been a trigger for her, tually become certified and lead her perimented with new dishes.” After
but he wasn’t satisfied with that expla- own class. One of the school’s direc- the storm, Ramirez texted her “friendly
nation. “Travel? That’s just ‘what we tors, Norma Bolinger, said, “She totally vegetarian.” Hannah wrote back, “I like
do,’” he wrote me. “Hannah and I have absorbed the Montessori theory, to the to try new dishes.”
been to twenty-five nations together, point where I could see her becoming Six days after the storm, Hannah
so it is ‘normal’ not disruptive.” In an a mover and shaker in politics and try- drove to the house of an ex-boyfriend,
article for Bryn Mawr Now, a campus ing to get Montessori into all schools Joe Spallino, a scuba instructor, and
newsletter, Hannah had once described globally.” Hannah made a pilgrimage saw that his belongings were gone.
the “violent surprise” and loneliness of to Maria Montessori’s grave, on the Hannah learned from his landlord
returning home from a trip to Ghana. Dutch coast. Bhattacharya said, “It was that he had rushed to the marina to
“I thought I was coming ‘home,’ but Hannah’s new church. There’s a book; get on one of the “mercy ships” giv-
was surprised at the longing for a new there are rules. If you follow the rules, ing people free rides of the island.
place that had grown so comfortable,” good things happen to good people. Hurricane Maria, another Category 5
she wrote. Her desire to worship never left her.” storm, was forecast to hit the island
In both fugues, she had been drawn In St. Thomas, she attended a few the following week.
to water. Her friend Amy Scott said, meetings devoted to the Bahá’í faith, a Hannah drove to the marina to say
“The way she describes it is she finds Persian religion that teaches the unity goodbye. Spallino was waiting to board
herself in a body of water and realizes and equality of all people, but she was a cruise ship to Puerto Rico, and they
who she is.” put of by what she saw as the commu- talked for several hours. Spallino said,
nity’s negative judgment of nontradi- “I kind of jokingly asked, ‘What if
annah returned to her job within tional families. She saw a therapist on you come along?’ She thought about
H a few days. The following year, she
was hired as a teaching assistant for
the island, but she put more stock in
tending to her physical health. She
it and said that, in reality, she wouldn’t
want to.”
preschoolers at a Montessori school in swam in the ocean nearly every day, be- After Hannah left the marina, she
St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. coming so strong that she could reach never used her phone again. The next
When she disclosed her condition, the cays more than two miles away. “She day, she helped Norma Bolinger pre-
administrators at the school were warm found the world underwater just so pare the school for Hurricane Maria
and accepting. She joked with friends peaceful and so magical,” Scott said. by taking pictures of the walls. Bolinger
that she was moving to paradise. “Her solace was always the majesty of said, “She responded to everything I
After the Maryland disappearance, the island.” asked with ‘Yes, Norma.’ ‘Yes, Norma.’
Barbara said that friends asked her, ‘Yes, Norma.’ Which normally wasn’t
“Couldn’t you put a chip in her, like you urricane Irma hit St. Thomas on her tone of voice to me. Hannah was
would in a schnauzer?” The police in
Maryland had proposed using the type
H September 6, 2017, a week after
Hannah began her fourth year of teach-
not a ‘yes’ sort of person. If you asked
her to do something, she would want
of ankle bracelet designed for people ing. That summer, she had completed to know why.”
who are under house arrest. “She didn’t her Montessori degree. She and her That night, Hannah’s three room-
want to pursue it—she refused to be roommates huddled in the laundry mates told her that they were all try-
defined by this—and I chose to honor room of their apartment. The wind ing to leave the island. One of them,
her decision,” Barbara said. “I had to reached a hundred and eighty-five miles Leslie Bunnell, said that Hannah told
be clear that I’m not living my daugh- an hour, shattering one of their win- her, “I’m staying—that’s where my
ter’s life—she’s living it, and she needed dows. With each new gust, a power heart is. School is going to be the first
58 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
 • •

step toward normality for these kids.” exacerbated deep divisions on the is- St. Croix or Miami without I.D. and
The next morning, Hannah said that land—some people could leave, while integrated into a community of dis-
she was heading to school, and a others had no means to travel and no- placed people. “Even if she doesn’t have
roommate watched her get in her car. where to go—and Hannah’s family and a grip on her past, she’s still Hannah,
She never showed up at the school. friends felt self-conscious about the and she’s probably doing what she can
The following day, there was a fac- fact that they were searching “for one to be of service to the people around
ulty meeting, and she wasn’t there. white gal in a sea of troubles and sufer- her,” Roesle, her ex-boyfriend, said.
Her friend Maggie Guzman called ing,” as one put it. Hannah Wood said, “Even if she’s not
Hannah’s closest friends, on the is- After three days, they had to call aware that she’s herself, she’s a very
land and in the States, but no one had of the search to prepare for Hurri- charming person. If someone was in-
spoken to her for three days. It was cane Maria, which brought heavy rain clined to do a good deed, she’d be the
the same time of year as her previous to the island. When the storm sub- kind of person who would persuade
two fugues, and they told Guzman to sided, an E.M.T. named Jacob Brad- someone to do it.”
search near the water. ley, who had set up a makeshift emer-
Guzman and other friends started gency-medical-services station on the fter her first fugue, Hannah gave
with Hannah’s favorite beach, Sap-
phire, where she often snorkeled. Near
island, organized another search. If
Hannah had drowned, her body would
A her mother “Traveling with Pome-
granates: A Mother-Daughter Story,”
the water, there was a small bar that likely float to the surface within a few a memoir framed as a modern version
served hamburgers and mimosas. On days. Bradley circled the island and of the myth of Persephone and De-
a stool, they found Hannah’s sundress, all its cays in a rescue boat and also meter. Hannah rarely spoke about her
her sandals, and her car keys. Work- canvassed the airport, the homeless fugue, but Barbara was touched by
ers said that they had discovered the shelters, the beaches, and the hospi- what she felt was an allusion to the
belongings in the sand when they were tals, and interviewed captains who experience. Demeter searches the earth
clearing debris from the storm. Han- came in and out of the island’s mari- for her daughter, Persephone, who has
nah’s car was in the parking lot. In- nas. He went to the morgue and looked been taken into the underworld. “I re-
side were her purse, wallet, passport, at ten unclaimed bodies. None of them member reading that Persephone falls
and cell phone. were Hannah. into an abyss, and that just hit some-
Given Hannah’s strength as a swim- Hannah’s friends developed a range thing close to my heart,” Barbara said.
mer, her friends assumed that she could of theories for what had happened, all Even when Persephone is saved, Hades
survive for several days in the water. of which they acknowledged were un- requires that she return to the under-
By boat, they searched the shoreline likely. But her survival in New York had world for a portion of each year. With
and a small island nearby, where the been improbable, too. One friend from each fugue, Barbara found more so-
current might have taken her. The Coast St. Thomas said, “There are pockets of lace in what she described as “the pri-
Guard sent three helicopters. Her communities in the bush, and she could mal archetype of the daughter de-
friends also checked the manifests of be living there.” Others thought that scending and the mother seeking her,
people evacuated on mercy ships, but Hannah, who is fluent in Spanish, might whatever that takes.”
her name wasn’t listed. The storm had have got on a boat to Puerto Rico or After Bradley’s search failed to turn
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 59
up any bodies, Barbara’s clearness derstand her last known interactions. But, Barbara added, “we don’t gener-
committee, a group of Quakers ap- Barbara believed that this fugue, too, ally get so literal about it as to charge
pointed to guide someone facing a di- may have started with a prelude in of into the briny deep or the creek.”
lemma, bought her a one-way ticket to which Hannah was still home and She said that, one day, shortly be-
St. Thomas. She asked the Red Cross communicating with people in a ru- fore she filed for divorce, she, too, had
if she could do volunteer work in ex- dimentary way, without encoding the entered a kind of dissociative state, in
change for a bed. “I didn’t want to take interactions into memory. part, she believes, in response to a
up precious resources,” she said. The Barbara called Richard Loewen- medication that she had just started
Red Cross put her in touch with the stein, the psychiatrist who specializes taking. She had been on her way to
owner of the Windward Passage Hotel, in fugues, and was struck by his con- teach a class, at a United Methodist
in downtown St. Thomas, which was viction that dissociative fugues are or- church, about the women who wor-
providing rooms to recovery workers ganized and purposeful, operating ac- shipped at the church at Corinth. The
and hotel employees who had lost their cording to some internal logic. The women’s existence is recorded only
homes in the storms. person’s thinking is dominated by a because Paul admonished them for
Barbara arrived on the island on “single idea that symbolizes or con- preaching and prophesying in public.
November 21st, more than two months denses (or both) several important ideas “The husband is the head of his wife,”
after Hannah disappeared. Her room and emotions,” Loewenstein writes. he wrote.
looked out on the part of the harbor Barbara tried to imagine what The last thing Barbara remembered
where seaplanes take of. The cruise thought could be motivating her was driving south on the highway. She
ships had begun to return, and the daughter to journey to water. She con- found herself beside the Willamette
businesses devoted to their passen- templated the symbolism of baptism. River. “Why did I go to the water?” she
gers—on a street behind the hotel “One rises from the water reborn,” asked. “I do remember feeling comfort
were Dynasty Dazzlers, Ballerina Jew- she said. But, in the United Method- finding myself there.” She sat in her
elers, Jewels Forever, and a dozen other ist tradition in which Hannah was car for several hours. “I had lost the
jewelry stores—were reopening. raised, believers are not required to be ability to understand categories,” she
Barbara is constitutionally optimis- fully immersed. Barbara also consid- said. “I no longer had a chronological
tic, and she tried to cast away the idea ered the imagery of creation in the measure of time. I no longer experi-
of negative outcomes. She drove Han- Old Testament. “The water is a vast enced myself in a specific place. I didn’t
nah’s car—a black Suzuki, whose back chaos, formless—a void,” she said. have an understanding of the mecha-
window had been blown out by Hur- “Could it be a kind of metaphor for nisms by which this world fits together.”
ricane Irma—and went to Hannah’s the primeval chaos out of which cre- After several hours, she drove home.
favorite beaches, restaurants, and ation comes?” The description in Gen- She said, “I fully came to when I saw
shops. “I do have the sense sometimes esis reads, “Now the earth was form- my children’s faces, and I thought, Oh,
that she’s around any corner,” Barbara less and empty, darkness was over the my God—they’re worried.”
told me. She talked to Hannah’s surface of the deep, and the spirit of
friends and colleagues, trying to un- God was hovering over the waters.” he front-desk manager of the
T Windward Passage Hotel, Vedora
Small, is a middle-aged mother from
St. Thomas whose home was destroyed
in the storm and who lives in a room
on the same floor of the hotel as Bar-
bara. She often lies in bed at night won-
dering where Hannah could be. “I know
St. Thomas is a small place and it looks
simple,” Small told me. “But you can
live here for years and I don’t see you
and you don’t see me.”
Small took Barbara to shelters and
abandoned buildings where people
who are homeless or mentally dis-
turbed often turn up. On the island,
there are only thirty-two beds for psy-
chiatric patients—the shortage is so
severe that a judge recently ordered a
mentally ill man to live in his pickup
truck—and a large number of people
are chronically adrift. After the storms,
“All I can tell you is they ran it by some focus groups and more people joined their ranks. Bar-
now we’re the three little pugs.” bara was repeatedly directed to the
same circuit of buildings: a night club The woman was thin and had acne, remaining motionless long after it had
downtown that had been the site of and her light-brown hair was in a bun. ended. For much of the sermon, she
several crimes, a car wash on a side Her eyes were a striking sea green. gazed at the temple’s domed ceiling.
street near Frenchtown, and a house Barbara reached the top of the stairs The rabbi’s words were punctuated by
where people from the car wash al- a minute later, and told George that frogs chirping outside the open door.
ways told her to go. It was owned by it was not Hannah. The woman was At the end of the service, we were
a man who was rarely home. Under shouting about police accountability— all asked to stand in a circle and greet
his door, Barbara slipped a flyer with she said that she needed George’s the person next to us. There were about
Hannah’s face on it that warned she badge number. George went to release twenty people there, most of them
“may not know who she is.” the handcufs, and Barbara touched wearing shorts and sandals. Barbara
When I visited these sites with Bar- the woman’s shoulder and apologized introduced herself to a blond woman,
bara, people who were drunk, high, over and over. She explained that she a tourist, and explained why she was
or unhinged seemed to engage with was searching for her daughter. The on the island. The woman said, auto-
reality for long enough to tell her that woman had seen the flyers for Han- matically, “That’s terrible.”
they were praying for her. One woman, nah. She told Barbara, “I wish I were After the service, Barbara and I went
who was struggling to stay upright, told her for you.” to dinner, and she seemed unusually
Barbara, “I love you, you will find her— An emergency call came over deflated. “There’s a whole range of
even if she’s dead, you’re still going to George’s radio, but Barbara was re- how people deal with the unknown,”
find her.” A woman who worked at a luctant to leave. She was moved by the she said. Hannah’s father told me in
farm on the Estate Bordeaux, a former woman’s compassion and wondered if an e-mail, “I am sure that Hannah is
sugar plantation, said that she under- her mother was looking for her, too. alive . . . but I do not know IF she
stood why someone might forget her After she returned to the hotel, she is ‘Safe in the Arms of Jesus’ or IF she
identity during the storm. “There was wished she could go back and help the is still walking around on this earth
a lot of trauma,” she said softly. “It woman somehow. She realized that in with the rest of us.”
cracked things wide open.” A man mak- the time it had taken to drive to the When Barbara feels impatient for
ing hamburgers at the bar at Sapphire building and climb to the top she had an answer, she reminds herself of a
told Barbara that a few people had conditioned herself to fully accept a Quaker adage: “Live up to the light
drowned near the beach in the past. daughter who would find herself in thou hast, and more will be granted
“I don’t think she went out into the such surroundings. “That sort of gift thee.” The quest for her daughter—she
water,” he said. “Everything that goes is at the heart of religion,” she told me. described it as “navigating the realms
out comes back this way. She would “To love your neighbor as yourself. To of the watery unknown”—seemed to
have washed up already.” love that woman as I love Hannah.” have also become a kind of end in it-
Every few weeks, there was another self. She and Hannah have always been
sighting. It was often the same women: arbara went to a number of reli- close, but she felt she was accessing
a white teacher at a diferent private
school on the island, or an older, home-
B gious services on the island, in-
cluding at the Reformed church, at the
new facets of her daughter’s experience.
“Sometimes, when I come to the end
less woman from Massachusetts who Methodist church, and at the island’s of the day, I just have to take some deep
panhandled in an open-air mall near only Jewish temple, built in 1833 by breaths, remember the things I heard,
the marina. Spanish and Portuguese settlers. It is and be grateful for them and let them
On January 23rd, two caseworkers one of the oldest synagogues in the go,” she told me. “I have to realize that
at the Bethlehem House Shelter for the Western Hemisphere. Barbara started no matter how much I know about her,
Homeless, in downtown St. Thomas, going to services every Sabbath, and no matter how much more I learn,
reported that they had just seen Han- described the synagogue as an “unlikely there’s still a mystery.”
nah at an abandoned building where spiritual home in the wilderness.” The Hannah’s two closest friends told
people often smoked crack. Barbara tile floor of the temple was covered in me that they wondered if Barbara would
and a detective from the Virgin Is- sand; according to legend, the sand stay on the island forever. She often
lands Police Department, Albion symbolized the desert in which the Is- described phases of her life using the
George, drove to a peach-colored, raelites wandered for forty years. word “journey,” and the search for her
crumbling three-story structure close On a recent Sabbath, the rabbi, a daughter had taken on a new dimen-
to Market Square, a produce market transplant from Chevy Chase, Mary- sion: she was connecting with the many
that was once the site of some of the land, warmly welcomed Barbara. He lost women on the island who were
largest slave auctions in the world. had added Hannah’s name to the list not Hannah. “I need to be here, and I
They climbed a steep flight of con- of people whose recovery the congre- trust I’ll know when I need to be back
crete steps with no railings. Detective gation prayed for every week. By most home,” she told me. She felt that she
George reached the third floor and counts, Hannah is one of five people was still piecing together clues and con-
saw the woman. “I thought, My God, still missing in the Virgin Islands in nections. She quoted a line from an
that’s her,” he told me. “My heart was the wake of the storms. When the rabbi Emily Dickinson poem, one of her fa-
beating. I grabbed her right away and recited the prayer for healing, Barbara vorites: “Not knowing when the dawn
handcufed her.” closed her eyes and bowed her head, will come / I open every door.” 
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 61
 ANNALS OF THOUGHT

Mind Expander
Andy Clark believes that your thinking isn’t all in your head.
BY LARISSA MACFARQUHAR

W
here does the mind end nitive scientist at the University of ternal device into his most intimate
and the world begin? Is Edinburgh, believes that there is no self, and the connections only prolif-
the mind locked inside its important diference between Inga erate from there.
skull, sealed in with skin, or does it and Otto, memory and notebook. He In Clark’s opinion, this is an excel-
expand outward, merging with things believes that the mind extends into lent thing. The more devices and ob-
and places and other minds that it the world and is regularly entangled jects there are available to foster bet-
thinks with? What if there are objects with a whole range of devices. But ter ways of thinking, the happier he
outside—a pen and paper, a phone— this isn’t really a factual claim; clearly, is. He loves, for instance, the uncanny
that serve the same function as parts you can make a case either way. No, cleverness of online-shopping algo-
of the brain, enabling it to calculate it’s more a way of thinking about what rithms that propose future purchases.
or remember? You might say that those sort of creature a human is. Clark re- He was the last fan of Google Glass.
are obviously not part of the mind, jects the idea that a person is com- He dreams of a future in which his
because they aren’t in the head, but plete in himself, shut in against the refrigerator will order milk, his shirt
that would be to beg the question. So outside, in no need of help. will monitor his mood and heart rate,
are they or aren’t they? How is it that human thought is and some kind of neurophone con-
Consider a woman named Inga, so deeply diferent from that of other nected to his cochlear nerve and a mi-
who wants to go to the Museum of animals, even though our brains can crophone implanted in his jaw will
Modern Art in New York City. She be quite similar? The diference is due, make calling people as easy as saying
consults her memory, recalls that the he believes, to our heightened ability hello. One day, he lost his laptop, and
museum is on Fifty-third Street, and to incorporate props and tools into felt so disoriented and enfeebled that
of she goes. Now consider Otto, an our thinking, to use them to think it was as if he’d had a stroke. But this
Alzheimer’s patient. Otto carries a thoughts we could never have other- didn’t make him regret his reliance on
notebook with him everywhere, in wise. If we do not see this, he writes, devices, any more than he regretted
which he writes down information it is only because we are in the grip having a frontal lobe because it could
that he thinks he’ll need. His mem- of a prejudice—“that whatever mat- possibly be damaged.
ory is quite bad now, so he uses the ters about my mind must depend solely The idea of an extended mind has
notebook constantly, looking up facts on what goes on inside my own bio- itself extended far beyond philosophy,
or jotting down new ones. One day, logical skin-bag, inside the ancient which is why Clark is now, in his early
he, too, decides to go to MoMA, and, fortress of skin and skull.” sixties, one of the most-cited philos-
knowing that his notebook contains One problem with his Otto exam- ophers alive. His idea has inspired re-
the address, he looks it up. ple, Clark thinks, is that it can sug- search in the various disciplines in the
Before Inga consulted her mem- gest that a mind becomes extended area of cognitive science (neuroscience,
ory or Otto his notebook, neither one only when the ordinary brain isn’t psychology, linguistics, A.I., robotics)
of them had the address “Fifty-third working as it should and needs a sup- and in distant fields beyond. Some ar-
Street” consciously in mind; but both plement—something like a hearing cheologists now say that when they
would have said, if asked, that they aid for cognition. This in turn sug- dig up the remains of lost civilizations
knew where the museum was—in the gests that a person whose mind is they are not just reconstructing objects
way that if you ask someone if she deeply linked to devices must be a but reconstructing minds. Some mu-
knows the time she will say yes, and medical patient or else a rare, strange, sicologists say that playing an instru-
then look at her watch. So what’s the hybrid creature out of science fic- ment involves incorporating an object
diference? You might say that, whereas tion—a cyborg. But in fact, he thinks, into thought and emotion, and that to
Inga always has access to her mem- we are all cyborgs, in the most natu- listen to music is to enter into a larger
ory, Otto doesn’t always have access ral way. Without the stimulus of the cognitive system comprised of many
to his notebook. He doesn’t bring it world, an infant could not learn to objects and many people.
into the shower, and can’t read it in hear or see, and a brain develops and Clark not only rejects the idea of a
the dark. But Inga doesn’t always have rewires itself in response to its envi- sealed-of self—he dislikes it. He is a
access to her memory, either—she ronment throughout its life. Any social animal: an eager collaborator,
doesn’t when she’s asleep, or drunk. human who uses language to think a convener of groups. The story he
Andy Clark, a philosopher and cog- with has already incorporated an ex- tells of his thinking life is crowded
62 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
Clark says that our minds extend out into the world, incorporating tools and other minds in order to think.
PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY ALMA HASER THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 63
with other people: talks he’s been to, the “Space Oddity” period. Even at sciousness can seem like a merely sur-
papers he’s read, colleagues he’s met, the oice, his shirts are heroic, psy- face phenomenon, a user interface that
talks they’ve been to, papers they’ve chedelic, the shirts of a man who trusts obscures the real works below.
read. Their lives and ideas are inex- the world, their efect muted only
tricable from his. His doors are open, slightly by his black hoodie, black jeans, hirty years ago, Clark heard about
his borders undefended. It is perhaps
because he is this sort of person that
and black boots. When he agreed,
somewhat reluctantly, to take on the
T the work of a Soviet psychologist
named Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky had
he both welcomed the extended mind administrative role of department chair, written about how children learn with
and perceived it in the first place. It ten years ago, he made up for it by the help of various kinds of scafold-
is clear to him that the way you un- treating himself to a large, comic-book- ing from the world outside—the help
derstand yourself and your relation to style, undersea-themed tattoo. of a teacher, the physical support of a
the world is not just a matter of ar- Cognitive science addresses phil- parent. Clark started musing about the
guments: your life’s experiences con- osophical questions—What is a mind? ways in which even adult thought was
struct what you expect and want to What is the mind’s relationship to often scafolded by things outside the
be true. the body? How do we perceive and head. There were many kinds of think-
make sense of the outside world?— ing that weren’t possible without a pen
lark seeks fusion with the world but through empirical research rather and paper, or the digital equivalent—
C in everything he does. Most of
his cars—a 1965 Triumph Herald, a
than through reasoning alone. Clark
was drawn to it because he’s not the
complex mathematical calculations,
for instance. Writing prose was usu-
1968 Ford Thunderbird, a 1971 MG sort of philosopher who just stays in ally a matter of looping back and forth
Midget, among others—have been his oice and contemplates; he likes between screen or paper and mind:
convertibles. “On a sunny day, or just to visit labs and think about experi- writing something down, reading it
a non-rainy day, I feel trapped in a car ments. He doesn’t conduct experi- over, thinking again, writing again.
if I can’t get rid of the roof,” he says. ments himself; he sees his role as The process of drawing a picture was
“Though I fear that you always look gathering ideas from diferent places similar. The more he thought about
a bit of a plonker with the top down, and coming up with a larger theoret- these examples, the more it seemed to
so it’s important to choose cars that ical framework in which they all fit him that to call such external devices
are quirky rather than flashy.” He loves together. In physics, there are both “scafolding” was to underestimate
electronic music, and one of his fa- experimental and theoretical physi- their importance. They were, in fact,
vorite things to do is go dancing. “I cists, but there are fewer theoretical integral components of certain kinds
love the steamy, sweaty vibe of a hard- neuroscientists or psychologists—you of thought. And so, if thinking ex-
techno club,” he says, “the way you have to do experiments, for the most tended outside the brain, then the
can get totally lost in a sea of light, part, or you can’t get a job. So in cog- mind did, too.
flesh, and music.” Anyone who has nitive science this is a role that phi- He wrote a paper titled “Mind &
gone clubbing with him can see that losophers can play. World: Breaching the Plastic Fron-
he feels the line between himself and Most people, he realizes, tend tier,” and gave it to David Chalmers,
everything else to be very thin. “After to identify their selves with their who was then a young postdoctoral
a few drinks, Andy’s personality to- conscious minds. That’s reasonable fellow. Chalmers was taken with the
tally opens up,” David enough; after all, that idea, and gave the paper back scrib-
Chalmers, a philosopher is the self they know bled all over with notes, pushing Clark,
at N.Y.U., says. “In that about. But there is so among other things, to expand his
moment, he is just so much more to cognition notion of cognition not only to inan-
sweet and so lovable, and than that: the vast, silent imate objects but to people as well.
he does kind of merge cavern of underground “You need a nifty name for your po-
with the world—every- mental machinery, with sition,” Chalmers wrote. “ ‘Coupled
thing is wonderful, ev- its tubes and synapses externalism’? Or ‘ The Extended
erything is great! I think and electric impulses, so Mind’ . . . or something along those
of that as his genuine na- many unconscious sys- lines.” Clark liked Chalmers’s com-
ture, and the sober, re- tems and connections ments, and they decided to rewrite the
served version during the day is just and tricks and deeply grooved path- article together. They worked so closely
a proto version that is waiting for this ways that form the pulsing substrate that the finished product was, they
true essence to be unlocked.” of the self. It is those primal mecha- both felt, a nice example of extended
Clark is tall and spindly and moves nisms, the wiring and plumbing of cognition in itself. They called it “The
in a hoppy, twitchy way, like a shore- cognition, that he has spent most of Extended Mind,” by Andy Clark and
bird. His hair is a kind of punk mul- his career investigating. When you David Chalmers; a note explained that
let—spiky and gray on top, pink and think about all that fundamental the authors were listed in order of
a bit longer in the back. He likes cos- stuf—some ancient and shared with degree of belief in the paper’s thesis.
tumes—he recently appeared at a other mammals and distant ancestors, When the paper first circulated, in
birthday party as David Bowie from some idiosyncratic and new—con- 1995, many found it outlandish. But,
64 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
as the years passed, and better devices
became available, and people started
relying on their smartphones to bol-
ster or replace more and more mental
functions, Clark noticed that the idea
of an extended mind had come to seem
almost obvious. The paper became the
most-cited philosophy paper of its de-
cade. The philosopher Ned Block likes
to say that the extended-mind thesis
was false in 1995 but is true now.
After the paper was published, Clark
began thinking that the extended mind
had ethical dimensions as well. If a
person’s thought was intimately linked
to her surroundings, then destroying
a person’s surroundings could be as
damaging and reprehensible as a bodily
attack. If certain kinds of thought re-
quired devices like paper and pens,
then the kind of poverty that precluded
them looked as debilitating as a brain “Why, I think he’s trying to impress you.”
lesion. Moreover, by emphasizing how
thoroughly everyone was dependent
on the structure of his or her world, it
• •
showed how disabled people who were
dependent on things like ramps were embodiment and social complexity.” Irena, to have an implant put in her
no diferent from anybody else. Some He did not feel the need to become arm as well, creating the first purely
theorists had argued that disability was a cyborg in a literal way—for the mo- electronic communication between
often a feature less of a person than of ment, he was content with detach- two human nervous systems. It could
a built environment that failed to take able, non-penetrative devices. What work over the Internet. It was the first
some needs into account; the extended- mattered for the merging of self and step, he claimed, toward telepathy.
mind thesis showed how clearly this world was the incorporation of a thing Many people found Warwick ex-
was so. into cognition, not into a body. But tremely annoying, a bufoonish pub-
Clark recognized that there could he was fascinated by Kevin Warwick, licity seeker, but Clark loved his cy-
be problems with a cyborg existence. a professor in the Department of Cy- borgian ambition, his desire to merge
The same algorithms that were so bernetics at the University of Read- inside and out, even more profoundly
helpful in recommending music could ing, who had acquired the nickname than they were merged already. He was
intrude in creepy ways, and a world Captain Cyborg. Warwick had im- particularly drawn to Warwick’s idea
in which minds were constantly merg- planted a silicon chip in his left arm of electronically mediated intimacy.
ing was also one that threatened to which emitted radio signals that How much farther could it be taken?
destroy privacy altogether. But maybe caused doors in his oice to open and he wondered. How intimate could two
that would be a good thing, he close and lights and heaters to switch people get? Could two brains be con-
thought—maybe privacy was mostly on and of as he moved around. It felt nected in such a way as to coördinate
secrecy, and the airing of secrets would to Warwick that he had become one some joint activity, such as dancing?
make human variety so visible that it with his small world, part of a har- It seemed distinctly possible. After all,
would come to be more accepted. moniously synchronized larger sys- the brain already consisted of two
“As the lives of the populace become tem, and the feeling was so pleasant hemispheres linked by a dense bridge
more visible, our work-a-day morals that when it came time to remove the of neurons. And brains were known to
and expectations need to change and implant he found it hard to let go. be amazingly plastic, even late in life.
shift,” he wrote. “As the realm of the Later, in New York, by means of “Who knows,” he wrote, “what new
truly private contracts, as I think it another, more complex implant in his skilled forms of interpersonal and neu-
must, the public space in any truly arm, Warwick connected the nerve roelectronic harmony may emerge?”
democratic country needs to become fibres in his wrist and hand to a com-
more liberal and open-hearted.” puter. Over the Internet, he was able lark lives on two upper stories of
He was optimistic that things would
work out in the end. “Where some
to control a robot hand back in Read-
ing, and even to feel things that the
C a big old Edinburgh row house
with his partner, Alexa Morcom, a
fear disembodiment and social isola- robot hand was touching. Encour- cognitive neuroscientist who studies
tion,” he wrote, “I anticipate multiple aged, Warwick persuaded his wife, memory. He was delighted to discover,
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 65
when he first met Morcom’s parents, there and doesn’t get much out of it. their work personalities are quite
that her great-uncle was Christopher He is not really the emptiness type. diferent.
Morcom, the first love of Alan Tur- He loves stuf—he welcomes it into “I tend to be a bit of a critic,” Mor-
ing, one of the founders of computer his mind and into his house. He loves com said.
science. Clark and Morcom have filled technology, and he loves old things, “You’re more of a critic than me.”
their apartment with a riot of small and he loves old technology most of “In my field, there’s a lot of big
plastic objects—“Star Trek” action all. His favorite movie is “Brazil”—a ideas, but I’m more the person that
figures, action figures in tiny tutus, romantic tale set in a future auto- comes along and wants to test them
mini robots, bigger robots, Daleks from mated by such endearingly retrograde and see if they’re useful.”
“Doctor Who,” dolls, manikin torsos, technology as pneumatic tubes and “I think I’m more of a synergizer,”
as well as shelves and shelves of old mechanical breakfast-makers. Once, Clark said. “I like to see a bunch of
records and DVDs. In the hall is a years ago, he gave a talk in Los Ala- things and see how they might fit to-
grandfather clock with a Barbie sit- mos and was taken to the Black Hole, gether into a story, and the more bits
ting behind glass where the clock face a store that sold defunct scientific of human experience that story can
used to be, and on either side of the equipment that had been bought in touch the more I’m going to like it.
television in the living room is a pair bulk from the National Laboratory But I think that’s how science works:
of manikin legs. Behind the sofa stands by the store’s owner, a nuclear-weap- some people need to run with a thing
a nearly life-size palm tree, made of ons technician turned peace activist. to see where they can take it; other
strings of green lights, which used to Clark was dazzled by the merchan- people need to be skeptical and push
stand next to Clark’s beloved Jacuzzi dise—“heavyweight first-generation back against them. I’m the one who
when he lived in Bloomington, teach- calculating machinery . . . cathode-ray picks it up and runs with it.” He tends
ing at Indiana University. He knew tubes . . . gray, heavy, metal boxes to get along with people who criti-
that he wouldn’t have a Jacuzzi in Ed- (rather like oice filing cabinets) with cized his ideas. After all, he’s grateful
inburgh, so he brought the tree home enormous single red buttons, labeled that they were writing about his work.
to remind him of it. EMERGENCY.” He bought as much as “Without your critics, you’ve not
On the stair landing between the he could carry, including, he remem- got a career,” he said.
two floors is an incongruous gesture bered later, “two black boxes full of “Exactly,” Morcom said. “It means
to emptiness—a Buddha head and a inscrutable, but wisely glowing, valve nobody’s paying attention to you.
few stones. Morcom meditates regu- electronics.” Whereas in science there’s a whole
larly and goes on meditation retreats. Fortunately for Clark, Morcom row going on about criticizing peo-
Clark has tried meditation a couple shares his taste in home décor, and ple in public. The number of times
of times, but he finds that he just sits she, too, is an adventurous dresser. But that I’ve seen people give talks and
people are thinking, That’s bollocks,
absolute shit data, and no one brings
it up.”
Clark grew up in a working-class
neighborhood in South London. His
father was a policeman who loved
mathematics; his mother was a house-
wife who wrote poems and articles
for the local paper. Clark was the first
in his family to go to university. The
idea came up only because a priest
suggested it; his father thought cus-
toms and excise would be a sound ca-
reer choice. As a kid, he spent most
of his time reading Marvel comics.
He was less interested in reading or-
dinary fiction; he didn’t find, as some
people do, that writing called up im-
ages in his mind, whereas with com-
ics all the bright pictures he could
want were right out there on the page.
When he went to university, at Stir-
ling, in Scotland, he planned to study
French literature—he’d quite enjoyed
reading Sartre and Camus in high
“If she loats, she’s a witch. If she sinks, maybe she had school—but once there he got drawn
a point about women’s rights.” into philosophy. He found that he was
good at logic, and, when it dawned ine minds freed from their ordinary, mates and food. A mind’s first task,
on him that philosophy was some- meaty bodies, but GOFAI felt a bit too in other words, was to control a body.
thing you could actually do for a liv- intellectual, a bit too high up. The The idea of pure thought was biolog-
ing, he went on to get his Ph.D., in symbolic A.I. systems were powerful, ically incoherent: cognition was al-
philosophy of mind, while living in but they were also quite brittle—if ways embodied. In the early days of
London, with a couple of people who some small thing went wrong, they A.I., intelligence had for the most
sold the Socialist Worker, in a grotty didn’t work at all. Then, a couple of part been talked about as the ability
flat on the Isle of Dogs. years later, in the mid-eighties, he to do things that A.I. researchers
After he finished his Ph.D., in the heard about a new approach to A.I. found hard, like proving theorems
early nineteen-eighties, he got a job called connectionism. Connectionists and playing chess. Things that small
as a temporary lecturer at Glasgow took a diferent tack, by attempting children found easy, such as walking
University, where he taught arguments to simulate the way that millions of around without bumping into walls,
for the existence of God. It wasn’t re- neurons, each of which was very sim- or telling the diference between a
ally his thing, the existence of God, ple and responded only to its imme- stufed animal and a table, were not
but that was the opening there was. diate neighbors, combined in the thought of as requiring any interest-
Meanwhile, he taught a night class brain to produce complex cognition. ing sort of intelligence at all. But then
on the mind and artificial intelligence, Instead of programming an artificial some researchers started to build ro-
and began to read about what became neural network with symbolic knowl- bots, and they discovered that pro-
known later as GOFAI—Good Old edge, a language that was complete gramming childlike skills like walking
Fashioned A.I. GOFAI created a kind from the get-go, the idea was to see was actually extremely diicult—
of machine intelligence by program- if artificial networks could learn, a lit- harder than chess.
ming computers with a knowledge tle at a time, building on very simple
base of symbols, and algorithms to beginnings. And, indeed, the new n the mid-nineteen-nineties, when
manipulate them. GOFAI had proved
quite successful at solving certain sorts
neural networks appeared to be much
more flexible and robust than the
Iversity
he was teaching at Washington Uni-
in St. Louis, Clark decided that
of problems—problems requiring logic symbolic systems had been—they he, too, needed a few robots to think
and precision, the kind that humans could survive damage and noise. And with. He had always loved robots—
tended to find diicult. But it was because they worked simultaneously the uncanniness of a machine that be-
very distant from the cognition you along multiple parallel paths, instead haved like something alive. The ro-
might find in a real animal. Humans of in one orderly serial, they were bots he had were very simple and easy
could do logic problems, but usually much faster. to program: they looked like little
only with the help of tools, like pen The artificial networks seemed doughnuts on wheels. But, when it
and paper. He began to wonder closer to human cognition than GOFAI came to robots, simplicity was not al-
whether GOFAI had made a funda- was, and at first Clark found that very ways a bad thing. In fact, the unex-
mental error, mistaking what a tool- exciting. But despite the early hopes pected virtue of simplicity was one of
using mind could do for the cogni- of the connectionist programmers the the most important lessons that had
tion of a brain alone. results were disappointing. “Where emerged from robotics.
At the time, the discrepancy be- are the artificial minds promised by Some years before, Clark had
tween symbolic A.I. and animal cog- 1950s science fiction and 1960s sci- watched old black-and-white films of
nition didn’t necessarily seem like an ence journalism?” he wrote. “Why are Elmer and Elsie, two small robots that
issue. GOFAI people weren’t trying to even the best of our ‘intelligent’ arti- an American inventor named William
build animals—they were trying to facts still so unspeakably, terminally Grey Walter had built in the nine-
build intelligence. The thought was dumb? One possibility is that we sim- teen-forties out of vacuum tubes, mo-
that the mind was a kind of software ply misconstrued the nature of intel- tors, and gears from old gas meters.
program, and the body and the brain ligence itself. We imagined mind as Elmer and Elsie were about the size of
were just hardware, so there was no a kind of logical reasoning device cou- tortoises, and moved slowly, like tor-
reason in principle that cognition pled with a store of explicit data—a toises; he designed a tortoise-shaped
couldn’t be reproduced on a diferent kind of combination logic machine shell that accentuated the resemblance,
kind of hardware—on a silicon-based and filing cabinet.” He suspected that leaving only a light-sensor head sticking
machine, say, rather than on carbon- much of A.I. was marshalling the in- out of the top. The little robots had a
based flesh. For this purpose, you didn’t creasing power and abilities of com- limited repertoire of behaviors: they
need all the other equipment that came puters and steering them determinedly were programmed to move toward
with animals—arms, legs, lungs, heart. in the wrong direction. light, and, when they bumped into an
Lurking behind this thesis was the He came to believe that if you were obstacle, to move about in random di-
mostly unspoken hope that if you could going to figure out how intelligence rections until they found a way for-
upload a mind onto a computer then worked you had always to remember ward. But although they were mechan-
that mind could be preserved and its the particular tasks for which it had ically simple, they were surprisingly
owner would not die. evolved in the first place: running unpredictable. Because the world that
Clark found it liberating to imag- away from predators and toward Walter put them in was complicated,
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 67
their behavior was complicated. They it was heading toward. It would make that seemed to him to describe how
seemed like animals. It felt natural to no plans. It would simply encounter the mind, even as conventionally un-
use anthropomorphic terms for what the world and react. derstood, did not stay passively distant
they were doing: searching, hesitating, Robots like Allen, and Elmer and from the world but reached out into
recoiling, running away. Elsie before it, seemed to Clark to it. It was called predictive processing.
Later, robots became far more com- represent a fundamentally diferent Traditionally, perception was
plex. In the nineteen-sixties, a group idea of the mind. Watching them fum- thought to work from the bottom up.
at Stanford built a human-size robot ble about, pursuing their simple mis- The eyes, for instance, might take in
named Shakey, which could move sions, he recognized that cognition a variety of visual signals, which re-
around an obstacle course and per- was not the dictates of a high-level solved into shapes and colors and di-
form an assigned task, such as push- central planner perched in a skull cock- mensions and distances, and this sen-
ing a block from one room to another. pit, directing the activities of the body sory information made its way up,
Shakey was equipped with a camera below. Central planning was too cum- reaching higher and higher levels of
and controlled by a remote computer bersome, too slow to respond to the understanding, until the thing in front
that had been preprogrammed with body’s emergencies. Cognition was a of you was determined by the brain
a complete two-dimensional map of network of partly independent tricks to be a door, or a cup. This inductive
Shakey’s world. Whereas Elmer and and strategies that had evolved one account sounded very logical and sen-
Elsie set forth in ignorance and re- by one to address various bodily needs. sible. But there were all sorts of per-
acted in a few simple ways to what- Movement, even in A.I., was not just ceptual oddities that it could not make
ever obstacle they encountered, Shakey a lower, practical function that could sense of—common optical illusions
planned its journey carefully, one step be grafted, at a later stage, onto ab- that nearly everyone was prone to.
at a time. After it moved a short dis- stract reason. The line between action Why, when you saw a hollow mask
tance, or encountered a block, it would and thought was more blurry than from the inner, concave side, did it
stand perfectly still for several min- it seemed. A creature didn’t think nonetheless look convex, like a face?
utes while its computer brain, assim- in order to move: it just moved, and Or, when one image was placed in
ilating the positioning information by moving it discovered the world front of your right eye—a closeup face,
fed to it by the camera, calculated its that then formed the content of its say—and a very diferent image, such
next move. Shakey was more intelli- thoughts. as a house, was simultaneously placed
gent than Elmer and Elsie, but also in front of your left eye, why did you
more rigid, and infinitely slower. It he world is a cacophony of not perceive both images, since you
did not behave like an animal at all.
An animal that stopped for five min-
T screeches and honks and hums
and stinks and sweetness and reds and
were seeing both of them? Why, in-
stead, did you perceive first one, then
utes to calculate its next move was a grays and blues and yellows and rect- the other, as though the brain were so
dead animal. angles and polyhedrons and weird ir- afronted by the preposterous, impos-
In St. Louis, Clark started reading regular shapes of all sorts and cold sible sight of a face and a house that
around in robotics. He discovered an surfaces and slippery, oily ones and seemed to be the same size and exist
Australian roboticist at M.I.T. named soft, squishy ones and sharp points in the same place at once that it made
Rodney Brooks who had been think- and edges; but somehow all of this sense of the situation by ofering up
ing along the same lines as he had: resolves crisply into an orderly land- only one at a time?
maybe trying to install a ready-made scape of three-dimensional objects It appeared that the brain had ideas
higher intelligence was misguided. whose qualities we remember and of its own about what the world was
Maybe the way to go was building an whose uses we understand. How does like, and what made sense and what
intelligence that developed gradually, this happen? The brain, after all, can- didn’t, and those ideas could override
as in children—seeing and walking not see, or hear, or smell, or touch. It what the eyes (and other sensory or-
first. Perhaps intelligence of many has a few remote devices—the eyes gans) were telling it. Perception did
kinds, even the sort that solved theo- and ears and nose, the hands farther not, then, simply work from the bot-
rems and played chess, emerged from away, the skin—that bring it infor- tom up; it worked first from the top
the most basic skills—perception, mation from the world outside. But down. What you saw was not just a
motor control. While constructing a these devices by themselves only trans- signal from the eye, say, but a combi-
robot that he called Allen, Brooks de- mit the cacophony; they cannot make nation of that signal and the brain’s
cided that the best way to build its sense of it. own ideas about what it expected to
cognition box was to scrap it altogether. To some people, perception—the see, and sometimes the brain’s expec-
Allen was more complex than Elmer transmitting of all the sensory noise tations took over altogether. How could
and Elsie. It was controlled by three from the world—seemed the natural it be that some people saw a dress as
objectives—avoid obstacles, wander boundary between world and mind. white and gold while others saw the
randomly, seek distance—layered in a Clark had already questioned this same dress as blue and black? Brains
hierarchy, such that the higher could boundary with his theory of the ex- did not perceive color straightfor-
override the lower. But Allen would tended mind. Then, in the early aughts, wardly: an experienced brain knew
not know, as Shakey had known, what he heard about a theory of perception that an object would look darker and
68 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
less vivid in shade than in the sun, and
so adjusted its perception of the “true”
color based on what it judged to be
the object’s situation. (Psychologists
speculate that a brain’s assumptions
about color may be set by whether
a person spends more time in day-
light or artificial light.) Perception,
then, was not passive and objective but
active and subjective. It was, in a way,
a brain-generated hallucination: one
influenced by reality, but a hallucina-
tion nonetheless.
This top-down account of percep-
tion had, in fact, been around for more
than two hundred years. Immanuel
Kant suggested that the mind made
sense of the complicated sensory world
by means of innate mental concepts.
And an account similar to predictive
processing was proposed in the eigh-
teen-sixties by the Prussian physicist
Hermann von Helmholtz. When
Helmholtz was a child, in Potsdam,
he walked past a church and saw tiny
figures standing in the the belfry; he
thought they were dolls, and asked his
mother to reach up and get them for
him: he did not yet understand the
the concept of distance, and how it made
things look smaller. When he was older,
his brain incorporated that knowledge
into its unconscious understanding of the
the world—into a set of expectations,
or “priors,” distilled from its experi-
ence—an understanding so basic that
it became a lens through which he
couldn’t help but see.
Being prey to some optical tricks— • •
such as the hollow-mask illusion, or
not noticing when a little word like and also more prone to delusions that all that, and it had to do it very quickly,
“the” gets repeated, as it was three their own actions are caused by out- or its body would die—fall into a hole,
times in the previous paragraph— side forces. walk into a fire, be eaten.
is a price worth paying for a brain So what did the brain do? It fo-
whose controlling expectations make ne major diiculty with percep- cussed on the most urgent or worry-
reliable sense of the world. Some
schizophrenic and autistic people are
O tion, Clark realized, was that there
was far too much sensory signal con-
ing or puzzling facts: those which in-
dicated something unexpected. Instead
strikingly less susceptible to the hol- tinuously coming in to assimilate it all. of taking in a whole scene afresh each
low-mask illusion: their brains do not The mind had to choose. And it was moment, as if it had never encoun-
so easily dismiss sensory information not in the business of gathering data tered anything like it before, the brain
that is unlikely to be true. There are for its own sake: the original point of focussed on the news: what was difer-
parallel diferences with other senses perceiving the world was to help a crea- ent, what had changed, what it didn’t
as well. When neurotypical people ture survive in it. For the purpose of expect. The brain predicted that ev-
touch themselves, it feels less force- survival, what was needed was not a erything would remain as it was, or
ful than an identical touch from an- complete picture of the world but a would change in foreseeable ways, and
other person, because the brain ex- useful one—one that guided action. A when that didn’t happen error signals
pects it—which is why it’s hard to brain needed to know whether some- resulted. As long as the predictions
tickle yourself. Schizophrenics are thing was normal or strange, helpful were correct, there was no news. But
better able to tickle themselves— or dangerous. The brain had to infer if the signals appeared to contradict
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 69
 WHO KNOWS ONE

Who knows One. I know One. Who? What? Where? When? Why?
One is God for God is One— Four the phases of the moon.
The only One in Heaven and on earth. Three the bones inside the ear.
Two eyes—the better to see you with, my dear.
Who knows two. I know two. One is God for God is One—
Two are the irst two: Adam and Eve. There’s only one to a customer.
One is God for God is One—
It takes one to know one. Who knows seven. I know seven.
Seven the year of the seven-year itch.
Who knows three. I know three. Six the paper anniversary.
Bad things always come in threes. Asked if he did it, he pleaded the Fifth.
Two trees grew in the Garden of Eden. Four are my absent wisdom teeth.
One is God for God is One— Three is the three in the third degree.
One rotten apple spoils the barrel. Two can play that game.
One is God for God is One—
Who knows four. I know four. Public Enemy No. 1.
What were you doing on all fours?
Three’s the hearts in a ménage à trois. Who knows eight. I know eight.
Two’s the jump ropes in double Dutch. The Beatles’ “Eight Days a Week.”
One is God for God is One— Wrath is the seventh of the deadly sins.
One good turn deserves another. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
He lost it all in ive-card stud.
Who knows five. I know ive. Four bits in a nibble equals half a byte.
Five is the ive in “Slaughterhouse-Five.” Three is the beginning, middle, and end.
Four is Egypt’s plague of flies. Two are the graves in the family plot.
Three the Stooges on TV. One is God for God is One—
Two the two-faced lie he told. The only one in a hole in one.
One is God for God is One—
One hand washes the other. Who knows nine. I know nine.
Nine are the lives of an average cat.
Who knows six. I know six. Eight is the day of circumcision.
Six are the wives of Henry VIII. Seven the locks on Samson’s head.

the predictions—there is a large dog trustworthy in the past; and sometimes He wrote a book on the subject titled
on your sofa (you do not own a dog)— the information coming from the eyes “Surfing Uncertainty,” and surfing was
prediction-error signals arose, and the wasn’t reliable. Should it update its his metaphor for life: yes, the waves
brain did its best to figure out, as priors based on the new information? that the ocean threw up at you could
quickly as possible, what was going (There is a dog on the sofa—right be wild and cold and dangerous, but if
on. (The dog is actually a crumpled there!) Or should it reject the infor- you surfed over and over again, and
blanket.) This process was not only mation on the ground that it seemed went with the waves instead of resist-
fast but also cheap—it saved on neu- highly likely to be wrong? (Dogs don’t ing them, and trusted that you would
ral bandwidth, because it took on only just appear out of nowhere inside be O.K., you could leave your self-
the information it needed—which apartments.) What the brain needed conscious mind behind and feel a joy-
made sense from the point of view of to do was figure out how probable it ful sense of oneness with the world.
a creature trying to survive. was that this particular prior was cor- Clark saw the theory of predictive
But figuring out how to combine rect, and how probable it was that the processing through the scrim of his
top-down predictions and bottom-up new sensory information was correct, optimistic personality. But it’s not ob-
signals was not always easy. When pre- and crunch those two probabilities vious that a theory emphasizing the
diction-error signals arose, the brain together to come up with an answer. uncertainty of perception—the way
had to weigh two competing accounts To Clark, predictive processing de- that the brain has to infer what is out-
of what was happening: the prediction scribed how mind, body, and world side rather than straightforwardly tak-
and the new information. Which were continuously interacting, in a way ing it in—is a theory of oneness. To
should it trust? Its priors, which had that was mostly so fluid and smoothly another philosopher who had taken
generated the prediction, had proved synchronized as to remain unconscious. an interest in predictive processing—
70 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
 Six the sense I wish I had. Who knows twelve. I know twelve.
Five the ive in nickeled-and-dimed. Twelve are the face cards in a deck.
Four cold feet in the double bed. Eleven are the thieves in “Ocean’s Eleven.”
Three’s a crowd. Take a deep breath and count to ten.
Two’s company. It takes nine tailors to make a man.
One is God for God is One— Eight are the people on Noah’s ark.
The only one in a one-night stand. Seven are the hues in a rainbow’s arc.
Six is . . . I can’t remember what.
Who knows ten. I know ten. Five the rivers of the Underworld.
I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole. Four the rivers of Paradise.
She dressed to the nines. Three on a match.
Fellini’s “8½.” It takes two to tango.
Seven the times the bride circles the groom. One is God for God is One—
Six the number perfect in itself. In one ear and out the other.
She daubed her wrists with Chanel No. 5.
Love is just a four-letter word. Who knows thirteen. I know thirteen.
Three is as phony as a three-dollar bill. Thirteen is the skyscraper’s missing floor.
Two is the two in doubletalk. Twelve are the men who walked on the moon.
One is God for God is One— At the eleventh hour, his life was spared.
There’s one born every minute. Do not covet your neighbor’s ass.
Nine are the circles of Dante’s Hell.
Who knows eleven. I know eleven. Eight is the game of crazy eights.
Eleven are the stars in Joseph’s dream. The phone was busy 24/7.
Ten is the Roman numeral X. They deep-sixed their love afair.
Possession is nine-tenths of the law. The ive-o’clock shadow on your face.
Ininity’s a sideways igure eight. Four is putting two and two together.
Seven long years Jacob had to wait. Three is the eternal triangle.
Six is the Lover’s Tarot card. Two plays second iddle.
Five is indivisible. Two minus one equals one.
Four, cruel April. One is one all alone.
Three witches in “the Scottish play.” You were my one and only one—
Two is the two of “I and Thou.” The only one whose number’s up.
One is God for God is One—
One in the hand is worth two in the bush. —Jane Shore

Jakob Hohwy, who taught at Monash ing ourselves, withdrawing, and trying they’re all characterized by the inter-
University, in Melbourne—the theory to figure out what is happening. Some- nal model losing its robustness. One
emphasized, on the contrary, how very thing that is very familiar to a lot of per cent of us have schizophrenia, ten
diicult it was for the brain to under- people, certainly myself, is social anx- per cent depression, and then there is
stand things outside itself. Clark saw iety. We are trying to infer hidden autism. The server crashes more often
the brain as travelling light, taking in causes—other people’s thoughts—from than we think.”
only the news, only what it needed for their behavior, but they are hidden in-
its next move; but Hohwy saw how
much heavy mental equipment was
necessary to process even the briefest
side other people’s skulls, so the infer-
ence is very hard. A lot of us are con-
stantly wondering, Did I ofend that
Iwhatncle2008, Clark came across an arti-
in New Scientist that described
purported to be a unified theory
glance or touch. He wrote an essay for person? Do they like me? What are of the brain. The theory involved the
a forthcoming book titled “Andy Clark they thinking? Did I understand their predictive-processing ideas that he’d
and His Critics,” in which he proposed intentions?” To Clark, the most no- already been thinking about, but it was
a counter-metaphor to Clark’s joyful ticeable thing about the mind was the broader, explaining not just cognition
surfer: Nosferatu. The brain was like way its understandings were so often and perception but also action with a
a vampire, shut in a coin. swift and perfectly tailored to the single mechanism. Clark learned that
“A lot of us feel that we are not very body’s needs; Hohwy noticed how this new theory had been conceived
much in tune with the world,” Hohwy often things went wrong. “I think a by a University College London pro-
says. “The world hits us and we don’t lot about mental illness,” he says. “We fessor, Karl Friston, the most-cited
know what to do with the sensory input forget what a high per cent of us have neuroscientist in the world. Friston
we get. We are constantly second-guess- some mental illness or other, and had invented a statistical technique
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 71
for analyzing brain activity in neuro- mathematics people didn’t understand nals to the muscle telling it that the
imaging experiments, but he regarded him, either. Reading groups and dis- arm is not moving; the muscle resolves
neuroimaging as his day job: he spent cussions had been organized in uni- this uncomfortable situation by caus-
his weekends contemplating theoreti- versities from New York to Melbourne ing the arm to move, thus rendering
cal neurobiology. Friston called his with the mission of understanding the brain’s prediction correct.
idea the free-energy principle. Free Friston’s free-energy principle, only to To Clark, the incorporation of
energy, as Friston defined it, was disband, inevitably, in failure. The im- bodily action into predictive process-
roughly equivalent to what Clark possibility of understanding Friston had ing’s mind-world loops made sense.
called prediction error; and the brain’s become an online meme. An artificial- But he was leery of the theory’s all-
need to minimize free energy, or min- intelligence scholar who taught at encompassing ambition. Friston was
imize prediction error, Friston be- Northwestern posted an article titled not content to formulate a theory of
lieved, drove everything the brain did. “How to Read Karl Friston (in the the human brain; he had applied his
Clark and Friston met and started original Greek).” Somebody started a principle to animals, even plants. Ever
talking. Previously, Friston had done Twitter account, “Farl Kriston,” that since he was a child, he said, he had
most of his conceptual thinking on began, in its first few months, by tweet- felt “an obsessional drive to integra-
Sundays, alone in his oice—a room ing impenetrable quotes from Friston tion and simplification”: he was ini-
on Queen Square, furnished in the himself—“In what follows, we assume tially drawn not to neuroscience but
manner of M’s oice in a James Bond that the imperative to maximise model to mathematics and physics. Clark, on
film (a standing globe, a cocktail table evidence is a (possibly tautological) the other hand, was attached to a view
with several champagne flutes on it, a truism”—before degenerating, HAL- of the world, derived from evolution-
hanging tapestry, a sofa draped with a style, into desperate gibberish (“I am, ary biology, that saw life as a messy,
shawl). He had no connection to the whatever I think I am. If I wasn’t, why ad-hoc business, patched together bit
philosophical end of cognitive science. would I think I am?”). by bit over the eons, one system on top
“Until I met Andy,” he wrote later, “I Friston’s free-energy principle was of another, with lots of redundancy
did not really understand philosophy. particularly exciting to Clark, however, and clutter along the way. Simplicity
I knew it was a good thing; like the because it seemed to link predictive did not attract him. He was also sus-
national parks, poetry, village fetes, his- processing to his earlier thinking about picious of it—it didn’t smell to him
tory—and other nice things that en- embodied cognition (the way that like the right answer.
rich our life. However, I never really thinking had evolved for and with the The basic problem, Clark thought,
understood its (scientific) purpose.” body). Friston believed that minimiz- was that he was a scrufy, while Fris-
But Friston had begun to realize ing prediction error—roughly the same ton was a neat. Clark loved variety and
that he was not very good at explain- as minimizing free energy—caused the profusion and abundance. It wasn’t just
ing himself. He had tried, but nobody body to act. True, this account of bodily that he believed that it was true that
understood him. Psychologists and action sounded a bit peculiar. How does living creatures were patched-together
neuroscientists couldn’t understand the brain cause an arm to move? It pre- bags of tricks—he also liked things that
him because they didn’t have the math- dicts that the arm is moving. Proprio- way. Friston’s arguments had been pull-
ematics—that couldn’t be helped. But ceptive sensors issue frantic error sig- ing him toward simplicity—he was
now prepared to entertain the idea that
predictive processing was a high-level
neat system that orchestrated biolog-
ical scruiness below. But he was never
going to like elegance the way that
Friston did. Clark told Friston that
Friston was, in temperament, like the
austere philosopher W. V. O. Quine.
Friston had never heard of Quine, so
Clark explained that Quine had once
said, of what he considered to be an
unnecessarily complicated idea, that
its “overpopulated universe is in many
ways unlovely. It ofends the aesthetic
sense of us who have a taste for des-
ert landscapes.”

riston’s account of action—predict-

F ing that your arm will move in order
to make it move—sounded less pecu-
liar if the term “prediction” were taken
“That reminds me of the thing I was going to say next regardless.” less literally. A prediction in the Fris-
tonian sense was not a guess about the became very interested. He sought out with its arms and its legs and its neu-
future; it was something more like a people who knew more about Freud ronal brain. He had come far enough
projection—a concept through which than he did, and co-wrote several pa- that he had now to confront a ques-
the brain understood the world. This pers elaborating on the connection. tion: If cognition was a deeply animal
concept could be a hypothesis about Freud’s version of free energy (he business, then how far could artificial
what was going on; or it could be an used the same term) was similar to his intelligence go?
imagined scenario—a fantasy. The brain notion of excitation: an uncomfortably He knew that the roboticist Rod-
imagined the arm moving, pictured the stimulating psychic energy, which the ney Brooks had recently begun to ques-
arm moving, and, through the force of nervous system sought to discharge. tion a core assumption of the whole
that fantasy, it caused the arm to ac- “Accumulation of excitement,” he wrote A.I. project: that minds could be built
tually move. Of course, sometimes re- in “The Interpretation of Dreams,” “is of machines. Brooks speculated that
ality did not coöperate: sometimes an perceived as pain and . . . the diminu- one of the reasons A.I. systems and ro-
arm was paralyzed, or caught in the tion of the excitement is perceived as bots appeared to hit a ceiling at a cer-
jaws of a bear. In that case, the brain pleasure.” The urge to discharge the tain level of complexity was that they
would be forced to deal with the pre- free energy was what drove a person were built of the wrong stuf—that
diction errors by overriding its hope- to act—to move around, to seek sex, maybe the fact that robots were not
ful prediction and conceding that, in to work. Friston’s version of free en- flesh made more of a diference than
this case, at least, the sensory informa- ergy—prediction error—could sound he’d realized. Clark couldn’t decide what
tion was correct, and the arm really at first as if it were all about cognition, he thought about this. On the one hand,
wasn’t moving. just as Freud’s version could sound at he was no longer a machine function-
The idea of a fantasy sounded first as if it were all about sex, but at alist, exactly: he no longer believed that
oddly Freudian in the context of neu- root they were both about survival. the mind was just a kind of software
roscience, but the connection between Minimizing prediction error, in other that could run on hardware of various
the free-energy principle and Freud words, was much bigger than it sorts. On the other hand, he didn’t be-
was one that Friston himself had been sounded. When the brain strove to lieve, and didn’t want to believe, that a
pursuing of late, ever since Christoph minimize prediction error, it was not mind could be constructed only out of
Mathys, a young neuroscientist from just trying to reduce its uncertainty soft biological tissue. He was too com-
Zurich, had arrived to work in his lab. about what was going on in the world; mitted to the idea of the extended
After Mathys had been there for six it was struggling to resolve the con- mind—to the prospect of brain-machine
months, Friston found out by accident tradictions between fantasy and real- combinations, to the glorious cyborg
that he was training as a psychoana- ity—ideally by making reality more future—to give it up.
lyst on the side. Mathys hadn’t men- like fantasy. The brain had to do two In a way, though, the structure of
tioned this—it wasn’t the first thing things in order to survive: it had to the brain itself had some of the qual-
you brought up among neuroscien- impel its body to get what it needed, ities that attracted him to the extended-
tists. But it turned out that one rea- and it had to form an understanding mind view in the first place: it was not
son Mathys had come to the lab in of the world that was realistic enough one indivisible thing but millions
the first place was that he had per- to guide it in doing so. Free energy of quasi-independent things, which
ceived a deep resemblance between was the force that drove both. worked seamlessly together while each
the Freudian model of the mind and had a kind of existence of its own.
Friston’s free-energy principle, and erhaps because Clark has been “There’s something very interesting
had realized that there was a histori-
cal link between the two.
P working so closely with a neuro-
scientist, he has moved quite far from
about life,” Clark says, “which is that
we do seem to be built of system upon
Mathys knew that Helmholtz’s the- where he started in cognitive science system upon system. The smallest sys-
ory of unconscious inference—origi- in the early nineteen-eighties, taking tems are the individual cells, which
nating in his childhood experience of an interest in A.I. “I was very much on have an awful lot of their own little in-
seeing doll-like figures in a belfry— the machine-functionalism side back telligence, if you like—they take care
was a precursor of Friston’s theory of in those days,” he says. “I thought that of themselves, they have their own
perception; and he knew that Freud mind and intelligence were quite high- things to do. Maybe there’s a great
had been influenced by Helmholtz, too. level abstract achievements where hav- flexibility in being built out of all these
(Soon after arriving in London, Ma- ing the right low-level structures in little bits of stuf that have their own
thys visited Freud’s final home, in place didn’t really matter.” Each step capacities to protect and organize
Hampstead, and was thrilled to spot a he took, from symbolic A.I. to connec- themselves. I’ve become more and more
copy of Helmholtz’s handbook on phys- tionism, from connectionism to em- open to the idea that some of the fun-
iological optics on a shelf right above bodied cognition, and now to predic- damental features of life really are im-
the famous couch.) Mathys mentioned tive processing, took him farther away portant to understanding how our
to Friston the similarity between his from the idea of cognition as a disem- mind is possible. I didn’t use to think
free-energy principle and Freud’s bodied language and toward thinking that. I used to think that you could
model, and said that they had a com- of it as fundamentally shaped by the start about halfway up and get every-
mon ancestor in Helmholtz. Friston particular structure of its animal body, thing you needed.” 
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 73
74 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY BLEXBOLEX
 FICTION

The Intermediate Class

BY SAM ALLINGHAM

hen Kiril arrived at Room 2C to be in a foul mood about it, arms five feet tall. She took the last empty
W for the first time that Wednes-
day evening, he was surprised to hear
crossed tight above his potbelly.
The class was more diverse than
seat at the table and looked down at
her hands, as if wondering how these
a piano ringing out from behind the Kiril had expected. “Why would you tiny fingers could produce such beau-
classroom wall. It was early summer, want to spend time with old house- tiful music.
and the community center was almost wives?” his mother had asked, when The man took his place at the white-
empty; the children’s camp had been he’d suggested spending three hun- board. “I see we have a few new faces,”
dismissed hours earlier, and in the si- dred dollars on a German course. he said. “So let me explain the rules.”
lence the clustered chords seemed “Lazy American housewives” was what He pointed to a bell in the middle of
dense and significant, like church bells. she’d meant: the kind with too much the table. “When I ring this bell, we will
He was already late, but he paused for time and money on their hands. Kiril no longer speak English. If anyone speaks
a moment, listening. All day he’d de- would enjoy telling her she’d been English, I will act as if I don’t under-
bated backing out at the last minute, mistaken. stand. This forces us to take risks with
though the course was prepaid. Even She’d never approved of his taking our German—to experiment together.”
now, his hand on the doorknob, he German in college. He was majoring The three women shared a know-
felt a slight urge to run. But the mu- in computer science, a practical course ing look. Clearly they had great faith
sic was too intriguing. It drew him of study, and had no time to waste. Be- in the teacher. The sunburned man,
through the door. sides, he already had the gift of native however, seemed terrified, while the
He was disappointed, upon enter- English: that sprawling, absurd lan- man with the airy smile went on smil-
ing, to find that there was no piano: guage she’d spent half her life trying ing, heedless of danger. Kiril decided
just a whiteboard, a long table, and to learn. But Kiril had always loved to follow his lead, though his own smile
four students arrayed around it. The German, which had a name for every- was forced. He had never been very
class turned to him, and suddenly his thing. One morning, at the beginning good at appearing relaxed.
disappointment seemed foolish—for of class, the professor had brought in The teacher rang the bell. Immedi-
what business would he have in a an illustrated dictionary with the parts ately the atmosphere changed. The stu-
music class? of animals, plants, and various machines dents rose to attention, serious faces
“Is this Intermediate German?” he written auf Deutsch. He still remem- trained on the board.
asked. bered the picture of a car, deconstructed, “We will introduce ourselves,” the
“That’s right,” a woman with a close- every piston and lever lovingly iden- teacher said, in German. “We will talk a
cropped Afro said. “You new?” tified. English seemed fuzzy in com- little about the things we do in our free
“Yes,” Kiril replied. “I mean, I took parison: a wide blanket, full of holes. time. We know this word, yes? ‘Free time’?”
a class before. But not here.” He heard the piano again, pealing He wrote the word on the board:
He chose a seat in the middle of the through the adjoining wall. The sound Freizeit. He was calmer in German,
table: near enough to see the board, was enormous, as though reverberating less buoyant. He spoke slowly, with a
but far enough not to seem overeager. in a concert hall much larger than any certain sombre attention, like a kinder-
A pale, thin woman sat next to the community center could contain. The garten teacher explaining the tragic
woman with the Afro, her arms cov- music stopped abruptly—a major chord, facts of life.
ered with angular tattoos. “The teach- dying away—and a door opened, hid- He pointed at Kiril. “You first,
er’s great,” she said. “We had him for den behind the whiteboard. A man and perhaps?”
Beginning.” a woman emerged, holding sheet music Kiril cocked his head to the right
“Twice,” the woman with the Afro to their chests. and looked up at the ceiling: a nervous
added. “Thank you, Claire,” the man said. habit his mother referred to as calling
On the other side of the table sat a “What a treat.” He wore a khaki work on God. She felt he did it more often
Latino man about Kiril’s age, early thir- shirt and pants that zipped at the knee. than was necessary.
ties, with an open smile that was ei- His beard was silver, but he walked on “I have name of Kiril,” he said, too
ther optimistic or mildly deranged. the balls of his feet, bouncing from left quickly. “Kiril is me.”
Next to him, in the corner farthest from to right. The class smiled, happy to forgive his
the board, sat a white man in his fifties. The woman looked a bit older than mistakes—all except the sunburned man
He was badly sunburned, and seemed Kiril, and was extremely short: barely in the corner, who had the sour expres-
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 75
sion of someone lost and unwilling to far, the smile never leaving his face. every Sunday. When my son became
ask for directions. His grammar was excellent, but his older, to the church he did not go. He
“I am Kiril,” he said, more slowly pronunciation was of, and the pale says he is busy, but the church is not
this time. woman had trouble understanding his long, and the spirit is forever. In his
Everyone said hello. question. Or maybe, Kiril thought, the free time my son reads books, and is
“Now, Kiril,” the teacher said. “Tell question was simply too complicated. not trouble. But there is trouble in his
us what you like to do in your free time.” The teacher jumped into the fray. spirit, and I worry. However, this week
Several images flashed in his mind’s “‘Why’ is a diicult word,” he said.“‘What,’ a good thing happened. This Sunday
eye: his mother, bent over a sewing ma- yes. ‘Who,’ yes, and ‘Where.’ These are he comes with me to the church again.
chine; a scene from a film in which a better, maybe, in the beginning.” Many churchmen cried. My son feels
monster rose from a tunnel and dangled The Latino man shrugged. He seemed him good in the spirit, so I am happy.
a frightened man in his claws; Spruce to disagree about the relative merits of And I hope it will last a long time.”
Hill Park after a thunderstorm, dappled “why.” The class clapped enthusiastically.
rain on light-green leaves. “We will continue with you,” the “Let us write some words,” the teacher
“I am running,” he said. “I am run- teacher said, pointing in the Latino man’s said. “We will write ‘church,’ and ‘parish-
ning sometimes, but not far. I am run- direction. ioner,’ and then—very complicat-
ning in the park.” “I am called Alejandro,” he said, squar- ed—‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ and even ‘brain’!
“What kind of park?” the teacher ing his shoulders. “It is a pleasure to meet Yes, words can be complicated.”
asked. you.” The teacher stepped back from the
He thought of the muddy bowl Kiril felt envious of Alejandro’s easy board and gazed for a moment, transfixed.
where the dogs played, the sound of dignity, as if he had a lifetime’s experi- “Now, class,” he said, returning to
laughter, and the scent of marijuana, ence talking to strangers. himself. “Let us thank Wanda for her
wafting from beneath the trees. He “Yes, this is good,” the teacher said. essay.”
never smoked marijuana, but he loved “This is very polite. And in your free The class thanked Wanda.
the smell: herbal and rich in his over- time?” “Now we will talk about our work
active lungs. “I watch the trains,” the man said. life,” the teacher said, writing the word
“I like very much the park,” he said. “On a nice day, I drive to watch the big on the board: Arbeitsleben.
“It is dark and cool, and in the park there trains go to the city. Sometimes on Sun- They had been warned about this
are dogs and people and flowers and days I am the train driver for the small subject in advance, and Kiril had
trees.” train. I wear the hat, I drive the people. prepared a few vocabulary words the
The girl who played the piano mur- There is nature on the left. There are night before at the kitchen table, while
mured wordlessly. Perhaps she had sim- trees and flowers, and once there was a his mother caught up on alterations:
ilar feelings. fox. It is for to look at nature, the train. network, Netzwerk; user interface,
Kiril began to relax. “And . . . the I drive it myself or with one person. But Benutzeroberfläche.
park . . . is not . . .” Finally the correct myself is very good. I drive the train for “We will start with Alejandro,” the
word came to him. “Crowded.” three hours, three hours long, and it is teacher said. “Alejandro, what is inter-
“It sounds like a beautiful park,” the very good to me.” esting about your ‘work life’?”
teacher said. “Now we will continue.” After he’d finished, there was a long “Thank you for asking,” Alejandro
It was the sunburned man’s turn. “I silence. said.
is Arthur,” he said. The efort made his “Now we will ask Alejandro ques- “You are welcome,” the teacher said.
face grow even redder. He ofered no tions,” the teacher said. “Yes, this is very polite.”
further information. “Where does the train go?” the woman “I am a driver,” Alejandro said. “I am
The teacher pointed to the thin girl with the Afro asked. always driving.”
with the tattoos. Alejandro smiled again, this time shyly, “Ah, Alejandro,” the teacher said,
“I am Morgan,” the girl said, with as if remembering a secret pleasure. pointing at the board. “This conversa-
only slight hesitation. “In my free time “It goes round and round,” he said. tion is about our work life, not our free
I play the guitar.” The class clapped politely. time.”
“Very good,” the teacher said, turn- “It is my work life,” Alejandro insisted.
ing to the class. “Now we will ask Mor- he woman with the Afro was called “I am the driver.”
gan some questions.”
“What kind of music do you play?”
T Wanda. The following week, at the
teacher’s request, she presented an essay
“You are always the driver?” the teacher
asked. He rubbed his eyes.
the woman with the Afro asked. Her on the subject of “My Family.”The essay “For my work life also I am driving,”
German was stif and precise: nothing was meant to demonstrate the past tense. Alejandro continued. “In my free time I
like the casual warmth of her English. Wanda stood before the class with a am driving the train, but in my work life
“I play the slow, sad music,” Morgan piece of paper and read it aloud, her I am driving the truck.”
said. voice firm and slightly clinical. The teacher gave a nervous giggle.
“Why do you play slow and sad “My son is a polite child,” she began. Alejandro’s smiling insistence seemed
music?” the Latino man asked, from “When he was young, to the church to unnerve him. “Why do you enjoy
across the table. He had been quiet so he went. Our family goes to the church driving so much, Alejandro?”
76 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
 For the first time, irritation flashed in
Alejandro’s calm gaze. “You said ‘why’ is
too diicult,” he said. “Is it too diicult
or not?”
The teacher paused, taken aback. “Yes.
Perhaps ‘where’ is better. Where do you
drive the truck?”
Now Alejandro appeared sad. “I go
round and round,” he said.
Kiril was impressed by the range of
Alejandro’s emotions. He himself some-
times felt trapped in a single mood: a
kind of pressurized worry, marbled
with sadness, through which flecks of
pleasure were visible during certain
parts of the day—mostly in the eve-
ning, when the sun set over the gabled
Victorians near the park, edging them
with fire.
“Perhaps it is time for a break,” the
teacher said.
He rang the bell, and he and Claire
disappeared through the hidden door.
Music rippled from behind the wall.
Kiril was aware of the air in the room,
the currents within it like water. He
looked at Arthur, but Arthur pretended “Do you want me to seat you in the ‘Had sex this morning’
not to see him, glaring into space. He section or the ‘Had a fight this morning’ section?”
looked at Alejandro, and the man’s smile
deepened, becoming more complex.
Kiril wondered if he had seen Alejan-
• •
dro in the neighborhood before, while
he was doing errands for his mother, or from a movie Kiril had once seen on wanderings: under the tall sycamores,
visiting one of his cousins who lived in cable: the captain of an ancient vessel, through the loose blue stones.
the warren-like streets south of the park. fated to sink. “Why do you run?” Alejandro asked,
If he saw him again, he would raise his “I live with my mother,” Kiril told softly, as if aware that he was breaking
hand in friendship. Alejandro. “It is pleasant, but the house the rules.
The door behind the whiteboard is small. Too small, sometimes. I have “I do not know,” Kiril said. “Let me
opened, and Claire and the teacher to go out.” think.”
emerged. “To the park,” Alejandro said. “You He was not used to expressing these
“Wonderful, just wonderful.” The run in the park.” sorts of feelings. As a child, he might
teacher turned to the class. “That was Kiril was happy he remembered; it have talked to his mother about them,
Schubert’s ‘Fantasy for Four Hands.’ ” made him more comfortable. He didn’t or even to God, but now that he was
The students nodded, but only auto- consider it shameful, living with his an adult, alone in bed at night, the si-
matically. The title of the piece meant mother. Many of his cousins were in the lence lay heavy on his stomach and
nothing to them. same situation, and even those who were his lungs.
“Now we will have pair conversation.” married or lived alone saw nothing odd “I am running because there is a pain
The teacher cracked his knuckles. about it. It was a matter of respect, of in my head,” he said. “My eyes hurt with
Kiril was afraid he would be forced being a dutiful son. Still, it wasn’t some- work and there is a head pain. Then I
into a pair with Arthur, who continued thing he would ordinarily share with a am running and there is no head pain.
scowling at his phone long after class stranger. Especially in fall, the best season, the
had resumed. It was a great relief to be “Yes,” he said. “I am in the park run- season that is the best. The cool season,
placed with Alejandro instead. ning. And it is cool and not crowded, with many birds.”
The teacher wrote the subject on and there are flowers and trees.” “I see,” Alejandro said. “It is clear. I
the board: “My Home Life.” As the Alejandro smiled and closed his eyes, like fall also.”
students talked, he sat by the window the vision blooming in his mind. The Here they had exhausted the appro-
and looked out at the damp green night park was only a few blocks from the com- priate words.
with an expression of melancholic at- munity center. Perhaps they had passed “Where do you live?” Kiril asked. He
traction. He looked like the captain each other at some point during their had to force himself to use the casual
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 77
du. Sometimes, when he searched for ing, and dreaming in a fever. On Sun- sonal; the students shifted in their seats.
German, Russian came to him instead, day we both felt better, and so we did Claire did not laugh. “My boyfriend
and he reverted to the patterns of child- such interesting things as reading, will not buy me a piano,” she said,
hood. “Always be respectful to strang- drinking tea, and sweeping the dusty evenly, refusing to echo the teacher’s
ers,” his mother told him. “You’re not house. I was worried. I asked my boy- emotions.
the sort of person who can aford to friend if my life was a little boring. My The teacher nodded sadly, as if this
be impolite.” boyfriend is a serious person. He news confirmed sad truths about life
Alejandro sighed. “I am living with thought for a long time. He told me that he generally chose to forget. Kiril
men who are not so good,” he said. that everybody’s life is a little boring, wondered if the teacher’s duets with
“Fight-men.” if you write it down.” Claire were the sweetest part of his
“That is a little bad,” Kiril said, though The essay seemed to confuse the week: something to look forward to,
he didn’t fully understand. students. They searched on otherwise unremarkable evenings.
“Let us come back to the the teacher’s eyes for an Maybe in solitary moments he imag-
table,” the teacher said. “We explanation. Kiril, how- ined her small hands dancing across
will read a poem about a ever, found it clear and the keys.
miller, a brook, and a wa- precise. It seemed to ex- “The piano is a very expensive in-
terwheel. It is an old poem, press fundamental truths strument,” the teacher said, finally. On
but it has words that will be about existence. the board he wrote, Ein Klavier ist ein
helpful for you to know.” The teacher clapped. sehr teures Instrument.
The c lass read the “It is a complicated es- The class wrote the sentence down
poem out loud, one stu- say!” he said. “It is a little dutifully, with the exception of Claire,
dent at a time. Kiril re- komisch. Let us write some who already knew all about it.
membered it from somewhere: some of the words. We say ‘cough,’ ‘coughed,’ “And where is Alejandro?” the
distant fluorescent classroom, shaded ‘has coughed.’ We say ‘dream,’ ‘dreamt,’ teacher asked. “The man who is always
with humiliation. When it was Ale- ‘has dreamt.’ We say ‘shake,’ ‘shook,’ driving.”
jandro’s turn, he read carefully and ‘has shaken.’ ” “Alejandro is not here,” Kiril said.
fluently, as if he understood the po- He wrote on the board in wide, He had noticed Alejandro’s absence
em’s meaning, though it was from the looping arcs, then stopped to exam- as soon as class began, and as the min-
eighteenth century: a time of simple ine his handiwork. He frowned, as if utes ticked by his disappointment had
emotions, travelling handymen, and troubled by the images such words grown ever larger, until he had a hard
light flickering on water. Perhaps in implied. time focussing on the discussion. Wanda
another time Alejandro would have “Did you not play piano this week, and Morgan were already paired, Claire
been this miller, Kiril thought. He Claire?” he asked. “That would be and the teacher were always disappear-
would have wandered the woods, ever interesting.” ing behind the wall, and Arthur re-
hopeful, eyes dazzled by sudden flashes “No,” Claire said, with a resigned pelled all human contact. Kiril had
of sunlight. expression. hoped that, of all of them, Alejandro
“No?” the teacher asked. “You did might become his friend.
he following week, they discussed not play? Or playing the piano is not “Alejandro is a good student,” Wanda
T where they liked to go on vaca-
tion: the shore, the mountains, abroad.
interesting?”
“I do not have piano.”
said, clearly and with perfect pronun-
ciation. “His German is very good, de-
When the discussion was over, it was The teacher seemed lost. “You do spite his accent.”
Claire’s turn to read an essay in front not have a piano?” Kiril wondered if she had practiced
of the class. “A piano is very expensive, and my lines like these at home, about each of
“My essay is titled ‘An Interesting house is small.” them: Arthur learns very slowly. Kiril
Week,’” she said, and began to read. “Ah, but you should have a piano,” speaks too quickly, he is nervous. It seemed
Kiril had come to enjoy the calm the teacher said. “You play so well. Your unfair to talk like this, behind some-
commitment of her voice, the way the boyfriend can buy you a piano.” one’s back.
others leaned in to hear it. She wore “My boyfriend?” Claire stifled a “But having an accent all of us!” he
large glasses—perhaps, Kiril thought, laugh. said, his voice a shade too loud. “It is
to magnify her tiny eyes. The teacher seemed momentarily natural, and he speaks well and he asks
“I wanted to have an exciting week,” shaken, though Kiril couldn’t under- good questions. He is a very good stu-
she said, “in order to write an essay the stand why. Perhaps he was afraid of dent, the best!”
class would find interesting. But on losing control of the conversation. Now the students looked afraid, as
Friday my boyfriend was sick, and I “Yes, as a gift,” he insisted. “Because if he had threatened them. Kiril was
was only able to do such interesting you play so well.” filled with remorse.
things as travelling to the pharmacy Perhaps the teacher meant it as a “I am sorry,” he said. “I am making
and taking his temperature. Then on joke, but something about the inten- many mistakes.”
Saturday I became sick, and did such sity of his voice suggested otherwise. “It is my fault,” the teacher said. “Let
interesting things as coughing, shak- The discussion was becoming too per- us not speak of Alejandro. Probably he
78 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
 How Jesus Became God
Taught by Professor Bart D. Ehrman
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL
LECTURE TITLES

1. Jesus—The Man Who Became God

TIME O
ED F 2. Greco-Roman Gods Who Became Human
IT

FE
LIM
3. Humans as Gods in the Greco-Roman World

R
4. Gods Who Were Human in Ancient Judaism
5. Ancient Jews Who Were Gods
6. The Life and Teachings of Jesus

12
O RD 7. Did Jesus Think He Was God?
RI

L
ER
BY A P 8. The Death of Jesus—Historical Certainties
9. Jesus’s Death—What Historians Can’t Know
10. The Resurrection—What Historians Can’t Know
11. What History Reveals about the Resurrection
12. The Disciples’ Visions of Jesus
13. Jesus’s Exaltation—Earliest Christian Views
14. The Backward Movement of Christology
15. Paul’s View—Christ’s Elevated Divinity
16. John’s View—The Word Made Human
17. Was Christ Human? The Docetic View
18. The Divided Christ of the Separationists
19. Christ’s Dual Nature—Proto-Orthodoxy
20. The Birth of the Trinity
21. The Arian Controversy
22. The Conversion of Constantine
23. The Council of Nicea
24. Once Jesus Became God

Uncover the Extraordinary

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is sick. He is taking a sick day. There for him to appear, the way in high school “Now we will do a short exercise,”
is a word for this.” he had waited for far-fetched things to the teacher said. “We will say a few
He wrote it on the board: Krankentag. break up the tedium: sudden snow- sentences about what led us to learn
“Yes, that is good,” he said, stepping storms, a citywide blackout, subtle vari- German.”
back. “If you use this word, you will ations on the end of the world. In the Wanda consulted her notes. “There
sound like a native speaker.” meantime, he paired up with other stu- is a man at my church who studies the
The class wrote the word down. dents: with Wanda for “My Childhood,” piano,” she said. “He plays and sings a
with Morgan for “My Student Life.” diferent kind of music. I didn’t know
fter that day, Claire and the teacher He was glad that he was not paired the words. It was in a diferent language.
A no longer played the piano to-
gether. During the next class, while
with Claire. He found her quiet
precision intimidating, and preferred
It was German, he said. It was so, so
beautiful music.”
Morgan read a halting essay about her to watch her from the other side of “Very good, Wanda,” the teacher said.
political activism—“I am walking the room. “They said it was too expensive,”
against the government; I am walking It was the middle of July now: their Wanda went on, disregarding her notes.
with many others to the large building second-to-last class. Kiril was disap- “But the money is mine, and I will
of the government, holding hands”— pointed that the course would soon be spend it. Some people do not under-
Kiril watched Claire out of the corner over. Not because it had been partic- stand. Because of small minds.”
of his eye. Whenever Morgan spoke an ularly helpful—his German was im- Suddenly, Claire began to speak: halt-
unfamiliar word, Claire wrote it down proving only slowly—but because he ingly, at first, as if Wanda’s story had
in her notebook. Later, during the break, felt as if an opportunity had been lost. woken her from a nap. It seemed to
newly bereft of music, she checked these Sometimes, as they stumbled through Kiril that she had become more tenta-
words against an online dictionary, clar- conversations about their parents and tive as the class went on—not because
ifying their gender and their endings their pets, he felt like a person in a her German was deteriorating but be-
and making small corrections. The dream who hears a party happening cause the emotions she wanted to de-
teacher played in the other room, alone, in a nearby house. His legs are frozen; scribe were becoming more complex.
the pieces softer, more restrained. if only he could float through the win- “I am like Wanda,” she said. “But
Alejandro did not come to the next dow, like a piece of colored paper, and I was the one who played the piano.
class, or the one after that. Kiril waited slip at last into the living world. I knew the words, but I wanted to
know them better. I thought . . . that
if I knew them better . . . I would feel
diferently. And then . . . I did. And
it was diferent . . . than I thought it
would be. And then time went by,
a long time, and then I didn’t play the
piano.”
While Claire talked, the teacher
stared at the ceiling. When she was
finished, he rubbed his eyes.
“We will turn to the essay,” he said.
“Arthur is worried about his grammar,
so we will help him. He will read
a sentence, and we will correct him.
Then I will write the sentence on the
board.”
Arthur got slowly to his feet. “The
title of my essay is ‘My Wife,’” he said.
Arthur hardly ever spoke, and yet
his German had improved the most,
Kiril thought. Not that he realized
it—he was fixated on his mistakes.
“My wife is German,” Arthur began.
“My wife in the Army is meeting.”
“I met my wife in the Army,” Wanda
said. “It is correct.”
“I was in Germany,” Arthur contin-
ued. “She is the East.”
“She lives in the East,” Kiril corrected.
“I’m going to ask you a series of scary questions. When I’m done, “She is from the East,” Morgan said.
let’s see if you can guess why I’m asking them.” “She is from East Germany.”
 The teacher wrote the corrections on It is there every day, all the time, when place? Would she become happy there,
the board, bouncing from foot to foot. you speak! I promise, it is not so far given time?
Only when his hands were moving did away!” Kiril didn’t feel that he had the right
he seem truly happy. He stopped and leaned against the to ask any of these questions, now that
“In the East they speak German,” Ar- desk. Kiril wished the teacher could class was over. Instead, they talked
thur said. “In the East they do not speak be calmer, less concerned with the about the teacher’s sudden outburst.
English. But we have this language.” emotions of others. But he supposed “He tries so hard,” Claire said. “But
Here Arthur mumbled, as if refin- that was the way teachers always were. he’s a bit ridiculous, isn’t he? I can’t imag-
ing the words like rough rocks in his Their satisfaction hinged on the lives ine the pay is good.”
mouth. of strangers. Kiril couldn’t disagree, and yet he
“Secret,” he managed, after a while. “Are you healthy?” Arthur asked the felt the urge to defend the teacher. The
“Secret.” teacher. world they had built together seemed
“Is it a secret language?” Claire asked. The teacher stared at him blankly. a fragile, tenuous thing; one stray word
Kiril found himself staring at Claire. “Are you all right?” Claire asked. and it might collapse entirely—and in
He tried to turn away, for the sake of “Yes,” the teacher said. Blinking, he a week it would be over, no matter how
politeness and to follow the exercise, stood up straight again, and forced a well they behaved.
but his eyes were drawn back each laugh. “I am only a little tired.” The trolley was coming down the
time she spoke, to her odd, self- He wrote it on the board—Ich bin nur hill. Kiril wanted to tell Claire some-
satisfied smile. She seemed to be aware ein bisschen müde—but the class was too thing before it arrived. He wanted to
of some joke the rest of them couldn’t shocked to copy it down. explain that he was nothing like the
grasp. “Next week is our last class,” the teacher, that he was not a ridiculous
“Yes, thank you,” Arthur said. “We teacher informed them. “We will all person, though he might seem so,
have a secret language. In the old.” bring something to eat. Please write a in that awkward little room. He had a
“A long time ago,” Claire said. The food you will bring on the list. It is nice mother he loved, even if she was
phrase stirred her. She smiled thinly. if it is homemade, but it is not neces- old-fashioned and stif; he had cous-
Arthur sighed. “We have a secret a sary. People are busy.” ins whom he saw every weekend;
long time ago.” He passed the list. “Please write friends from school with whom he
“And now?” Wanda asked. down one dish you think everyone went to movies and bars; women he
“And now?” Arthur echoed. The essay will like,” it read, in English. Kiril dated from time to time, without form-
slipped from his hands and fell to the wrote down “pierogies,” as he always ing long-term attachments; a job that
floor, and he cursed. did when someone asked him to rep- paid well, where he was respected, even
“Perhaps it would be better to move resent his culture. The women at his essential. He had a full life, a full world.
on,” the teacher suggested. mother’s church sold them, in order But why would she care? To her, he
Arthur did not pick up the paper. to save the Orthodox orphans in dis- didn’t exist beyond the boundaries of
“I want to speak to my wife, but not tant countries. the classroom; and the same was true
in German,” he said, voice trembling. of her, for him, for everyone. Still, he
“I want to speak to my wife in Ger- hen the class left the commu- wanted to tell her: not about loneli-
man,” Wanda corrected.
“No!” Arthur’s voice was suddenly
W nity center, the air was wet and
heavy. It had rained, or else it was
ness, exactly, but about a strange feel-
ing that sometimes came over him,
gruf, almost barking. “I want to speak going to rain—Kiril wasn’t sure which. now that he was taking the German
to my wife not in German.” With little ringing sounds of friend- class. He would be riding the subway,
Claire murmured, “You want the se- ship, the students scattered like drops or walking in the park, and the faces
cret language.” of water. Wanda and Morgan walked that appeared before him seemed less
“Yes,” Arthur said. “This is better. But west, while Arthur fell into a car with like strangers locked in silence than
it is so, so speaking diicult.” a rusted roof and roared away. That like people who might ofer him their
Claire nodded. “It is perhaps im- left Claire and Kiril alone at the trol- secrets, if given a small room, a white-
possible.” ley stop, which was confusing. Claire board, a friendly teacher. On the trol-
“Yes,” Arthur replied. “It is far away had never waited at the trolley stop ley ride home, the windows were full
and diicult.” before. of other people’s lives.
“It is not so diicult,” Wanda said, “Change of plans?” he asked. The trolley stopped, folding its ac-
strictly, as if chastising a lazy child. “I’ve moved,” Claire replied. cordion doors. They climbed on board.
“It is not so diicult,” Kiril agreed— This brought up a host of ques- “You must be tired,” Kiril told her.
though of course it was the most dii- tions. Had she and her boyfriend “I’ll leave you to your book.”
cult thing in the world. moved together, or had she left him, He could feel the formality of his
“No,” the teacher cried, in sudden striking out on her own? Why had English. He wished he had the cour-
anguish. “It is not impossible! Two she decided to move at the height of age to speak to her only in German,
people who speak a language well will summer, when the air could be so hot here in public, no matter who might
come one day to the ‘secret language.’ and heavy you hardly knew how to overhear.
It is not so diferent from what we do. breathe? Was she happy in her new She smiled. Perhaps she knew what
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 81
 “Now, Alejandro,” the teacher said.
“We will talk about our language goals.
For example: Claire, what is your goal?”
“I will read poetry,” Claire said, “and
write my komischen stories.”
They gave their goals to Alejandro,
one by one. Kiril would listen to Ger-
man songs as he ran in the park. Ar-
thur would ask his wife about her day.
Wanda would learn the lyrics to the
old songs the man in her church had
played for her.
“You see how it is done, Alejandro,”
the teacher said.
“It is complicated,” Alejandro said.
“This is the last class,” the teacher
said. “Try, please.”
“I am having a hard time with
friends,” Alejandro began. He spoke
more slowly than Kiril remembered,
more stily. Perhaps his jaw was in-
jured. “I am trying to talk to people in
many languages. But people do not
talk. I am thinking they are strict; they
are too strict, and then they become
“That can’t be good.” angry. I am thinking I will take a class
and we will talk to each other in the
class and it will be easier. I am think-
• • ing we will say what we must say, and
we will be friends. But we do not make
he was thinking, for she replied in Ger- peared in the doorway. His shirt was friends, because language is strict and
man. “Yes,” she said. “My voice is tired.” torn, and Kiril thought he could see we do not understand diicult things.
“Ja, natürlich.” He smiled at the the yellow outline of a bruise at the When you do not understand, you get
words, flowing so easily from his mouth. edge of his right eye socket. angry. It is natural. How can you un-
“Tschüss.” The teacher tried to mask his sur- derstand when things are strict? You
“Tschüss,” she replied, and took her prise. “Alejandro, hello,” he said. “It is cannot understand!”
seat. good to see you.” “You can understand,” Wanda said.
He sat a few rows behind her and “It is very nice to see you as well,” “Although it is strict, you a little un-
looked out the window, toward the Alejandro said. “I would like to apol- derstand.”
Victorian homes that faced the park ogize for my long absence.” “You understand only small things!”
and, above them, the purple crown of “It is no problem,” the teacher re- Alejandro said. His hands were balled
the sky. He knew that she was look- plied. “We are glad you are back. This into fists, and the fists were trembling.
ing, too, lines of German echoing in is our final class party. We are talking “There is no point, the weather, there
her head, until the last echoes faded, about our language goals and practic- is no point, the weekend! My goal is
replaced by the music of daily life: over- ing our future tense. We are appreci- real talking! My goal is friends! But
heard complaints; lyrics from the sum- ating how much we learned together.” it is so hard to talk in the work life,
mer’s hip-hop hits; the sound of the “Yes, we learned a lot,” Alejandro said. the home life. And where are the
conductor, naming the streets he trav- “Happy we are to have Alejandro friends?”
elled every day, round and round. back,” Kiril said, though what he re- “There are friends,” Kiril insisted.
It was easy to drift back into it, like ally felt was a sense of foreboding. It Something had gone wrong, though
a dream that lasted for years. When was as if they were moving backward he didn’t know where, exactly. They
Kiril looked up again, Claire was gone. in time, becoming more innocent and were all so willing; you’d think they
less skilled. would have learned something.
n their last night together, twenty “We are all very happy,” Wanda said. Claire laughed quietly. “This is a lit-
O minutes after the class had
started—after they had drunk a little
The teacher got up and poured Ale-
jandro a glass of beer.
tle komisch.”
“Please, stop,” the teacher said, rais-
of the dark beer the teacher had brought, “Thank you very much,” Alejandro ing his hands. “Please, let us have a lit-
after they had agreed to talk one last said, taking a sip. “The beer is pleas- tle pause.”
time in German only—Alejandro ap- ing to me.” He rang the bell.
82 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
 “I’m sorry,” he said to them, in En- he is strong, in his voice. You would know
glish. “But there are limitations. We don’t it, even if you did not understand.”
have much time, and then there are the “I understand,” Claire said. “It is clear.”
varying language levels. Oh, you’re right, Kiril doubted that anyone could hear
Alejandro, it’s too stif, it’s too strict, too her, other than him. She was very close,
expensive—and it’s not enough. But we on his right, though she barely came
have to do something, don’t we? Isn’t to his shoulder. She seemed to belong
something better than nothing?” in this other room, with the piano. He
“Jesus Christ,” Arthur said. “This could hardly believe they had once
class is three hundred dollars.” talked on the trolley, shuttling down
“Yes, the money,” the teacher said. the tracks like a clumsy, mechanical
“And I only get half. But no—let’s not. beetle. He was ashamed of how proud
That’s the shallow way.” he had been, to speak to her.
“Easy for you to say,” Arthur said. “And now the demon arrives, the
“I am sorry,” Alejandro said. “I was Demon King,” the teacher said, switch-
inappropriate before. I spoke too ing to English. “And he wants to take
quickly. I understand you better now.” the little boy to the land of the dead.
“Do you?” the teacher asked. “I don’t You can hear it: his voice is seductive.”
even understand me.” “I’m leaving,” Arthur yelled. “I
The class stared blankly. Kiril would wasted my damn money.”
have liked to speak up, to let the teacher “Go ahead and leave, then,” Wanda
know he agreed with him, and that he hissed.
forgave him everything—and yet it Arthur crossed his arms tighter,
wasn’t the sort of thing he would say, helpless in his anger.
in any language. The teacher played faster now,
“Please,” the teacher said. “Please switching back to German. “The boy
come with me. I wanted to give you all is afraid, but the father cannot hear what
a treat, on the last day. I wanted to do the Demon King is saying. And now the What a Beautiful World...
something special.” melody is too bright, like when someone
He led them behind the whiteboard talks without listening. That is how the
and through the hidden door. On the man talks. And then the boy says that
other side of the wall was a small au- the Demon King is hurting him, caus-
ditorium, with a grand piano set up on ing him pain. Listen: here is how it
a stage. There were no seats, only a host sounds.”
of unused air-conditioners lying in rows, He played for a minute without
covered with plastic cases. Kiril real- speaking: high, bitter chords, like some-
ized, suddenly, what a cool, lush sum- one breaking ice with a hammer.
mer it had been so far. One never no- “That is the wind again,” Claire said.
ticed the soothing parts of life. They “I can hear it.” 1-800-548-9469
passed like afternoon hours, like breath. Kiril felt a pleasurable pain move kao.kendal.org/environment
The teacher went to the piano and up his spine. He thought of cool wind
lifted the keyboard cover. “You need in the branches in Herbst: the season
something underneath the language,” with the correct name, but only in
he said. “Something to hold on to.” English.
Now he switched to German. “I am Now the song was over, the ice-
playing the piano,” he said, pressing the chords fading to silence.
keys. “I am playing some Schubert: ‘Der “I do not need to tell you what hap-
Erlkönig.’ You can hear it? Here is the pens,” the teacher said. “You know.”
horse, in the left hand. You can hear it, “The boy dies,” Wanda said.
yes? You understand ?” “Natürlich,” Claire said, the last, clus-
Claire closed her eyes. “I can hear it.” tered consonant a whisper.
“What is this horseshit?” Arthur “But it is so, so beautiful,” Kiril said.
asked. The teacher nodded. He closed the
“This is his music,” Alejandro replied. cover. From outside came the sound of
The teacher played faster. “And now sudden rain. 
the wind is rising. And now we are hear-
ing the boy, who is frightened. You know NEWYORKER.COM
he is frightened because he sounds fright- Sam Allingham on the complications of learn-
ened. And here is the father. You can hear ing a language.

THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 83

 THE CRITICS

BOOKS

Whiskey and Ink

The stories that writers tell us—and themselves—about drinking.

BY GARY GREENBERG

J ack London started drinking at age

five, plunging his face into a bucket
because he figured women would sway
the country to Prohibition, which he
were being implored to “addict them-
selves to a particular flocke.” But in the
of beer he was carrying to his father and favored on the ground that if a man next century people grew suspicious of
lapping it up; he spent the afternoon with his “gorgeous constitution” could turning themselves over to others;
lying sick under a tree. As a teen-ager, be rendered a slave to John Barleycorn, Thomas Jeferson, in a letter to a friend,
he drank prodigiously, got into fights, merely by repeated exposure, then no from 1789, explained his refusal to join
and sufered epic hangovers. At least one was safe. the Federalist Party thus: “Such an ad-
once, he combined all three activities, Reading “John Barleycorn” a century diction is the last degradation of a free
downing whiskey “like so much medi- after it was published, one is tempted and moral agent.” He told his corre-
cine” somewhere south of Oakland (“I to conclude that London was a terri- spondent that he had in mind not only
think the place was Haywards. It may ble sot, and to wonder how he couldn’t the Federalists but “any party of men
have been San Leandro or Niles”), brawl- recognize his own bluster as further ev- whatever in religion, in philosophy, in
ing on the train back to the city, and idence of the problem he swore he didn’t politics, or in any thing else where I was
ending up . . . well, it’s not entirely clear, have. But, then, it was a few decades capable of thinking for myself.”
but he came to, the next night, in a before “denial” entered the lexicon as a Thirty years or so after Jeferson
strange boarding house, after seventeen sign of alcoholism—and in other ways wrote his letter, Thomas De Quincey
hours in a “comatose condition.” London was remarkably prescient. In connected this idea about addiction to
By the time London wrote down suggesting that alcoholism was a chem- his experience with drugs. In “Confes-
these recollections, in “John Barley- ical condition marked by irresistible sions of an English Opium-Eater,” he
corn,” published in 1913, he was both a craving, he anticipated the transforma- argued that what made his dependency
famous writer and an every-day drinker, tion of our understanding of addiction monstrous was not the visions it in-
although he generally held of from from a defect of character into a dis- duced—which were sublime as well as
booze until he’d met his thousand-word ease, and recognized the reason that it terrifying—but, rather, what he would
daily quota. But he was not, he tells us would remain, at best, an uneasy hy- later call “the tyranny of opium.” Pick
again and again, an alcoholic. “I was brid of the moral and the medical. up any of the thousands of recovery
never a drunkard, and I have not re- Chemistry may indeed lie behind al- memoirs that have been written since
formed,” he writes in the last chapter. coholism, but its hallmark symptom is De Quincey kicked of the genre and
Because he lacked any “organic, chem- not liver failure or hypertension or any you are likely to find at its heart this
ical predisposition to alcohol,” he was other physical debility. It is, as London notion of addiction: that it is an evil be-
always able to “drink when I wanted, recognized, a moral problem: the in- cause it robs us of self-determination.
refrain when I wanted,” and remained ability to control desire, and thus to di- Whatever its other depredations, addic-
“thoroughly the master of John Bar- rect the course of one’s own life. One tion alicts modern people in a way
leycorn.” With one fateful exception: a might even say that the pathology is specific to our time. It renders us un-
period, shortly after he returned from political: the surrender of the will to a able to dive into our deeps, discover
a failed attempt to sail around the world, form of tyranny. what we want, and fashion out of that
when he found himself “in the heart Such servitude is the root meaning desire a unique life story in which we
ABOVE: GUIDO SCARABOTTOLO

and deeps of me, desirous of alcohol.” of the word “addiction.” In ancient Rome, achieve it.
After twenty-five years of drinking, “I an addictus was someone made over to
had the craving at last, and it was mas-
tering me.” The loss of control was only
another, as a debt slave to a creditor. The
word’s connotations have not always
“ Y earning is our most powerful nar-
rative engine, and addiction is
temporary, he claims, but it so unnerved been purely negative—as late as the sev- one of its dialects,” Leslie Jamison writes
him that he became a sufragist—not enteenth century, according to the Ox- in “The Recovering: Intoxication and
out of a concern for equal rights, but ford English Dictionary, “true bishops” Its Aftermath” (Little, Brown). It’s a
84 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
A story about addiction “is always a story that has already been told,” Leslie Jamison writes in “The Recovering.”
ILLUSTRATION BY MATT DORFMAN THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 85
 vernacular that people—who “are noth-
BRIEFLY NOTED ing if not multiple vectors of desire”—
sometimes adopt when the attempt to
wrestle those multifarious forces into a
Anatomy of a Genocide, by Omer Bartov (Simon & Schuster). coherent self proves too much. “The Re-
Between 1941 and 1944, Polish and Ukrainian inhabitants of covering” is about Jamison’s familiarity
the small town of Buczacz helped German occupying forces with that language and about the many
kill more than ten thousand Jews. The communities had lived writers who have spoken it before her.
side by side for centuries, but Bartov, a noted Holocaust his- Jamison also recounts the stories of peo-
torian whose mother grew up in the town, shows that this ple she meets, especially in the twelve-
shared history, which involved competing narratives of vic- step groups she joins. With these nested
timhood, often provoked neighbors to turn on one another narratives, she expands the world of her
without remorse. His remarkable archival work produces an book in a bid to overcome the essential
account that is finely detailed. Some people provided shelter limitation of the recovery genre—that,
to strangers; some of the Jewish élite saved their own kin by as she acknowledges from the outset, a
betraying other Jews. Haunting photographs punctuate the story about addiction “is always a story
text: a row of exhumed bodies, German oicers playing cards that has already been told,” one that
and drinking schnapps, survivors erecting a memorial. comes down “to the same demolished
and reductive and recycled core: Desire.
Time Pieces, by John Banville (Knopf ). This “quasi-memoir” Use. Repeat.” Addiction makes not just
takes the form of an amble through Dublin, celebrating the for clichéd writing but for a clichéd life:
city’s parks, canals, pubs, and stately Georgian architecture. it is a narrative-deficit disorder.
Banville, who has largely ignored Dublin in his literary fic- Before Jamison was an alcoholic, she
tion, is attuned to the city’s cultural history, and lived for a had anorexia, but these two alictions,
time in the same building as Yeats’s daughter, the painter she concludes, are not as diferent as
Anne Butler Yeats. His writing is most evocative at personal they might seem. “Starving myself meant
moments, such as when he tells of a childhood crush who resisting an endless longing and drink-
lived upstairs from his aunt: “I used to dally longingly in the ing meant submitting to it,” she writes.
dingy hallway, with its smell of stewed tea and the stink of So, too, with love, or at least her wish
‘slops,’ hoping for a glimpse of the inviolable beloved as she to be loved. “My desire to be wanted
came thundering down the stairs in her big school shoes.” was like something physically gushing
out of me—need need need—and it dis-
The Last Man Who Knew Everything, by David N. Schwartz gusted me, this broken spigot I’d be-
(Basic). In 1942, the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi conducted come. A man telling me he wanted to
the world’s first nuclear chain reaction. In this biography, fuck me, whispering it into my ear, it
Schwartz laments the dwindling public profile of the man was like a sip of whiskey.”
whose work “set the agenda for postwar physics for decades Men, food, drink: she’s only trying
to come.” Born in Rome in 1901, Fermi was a “celebrity of the to satiate “the wild animal of need.” To
fascist regime” who nonetheless married a Jewish woman. In be John Barleycorn’s subject is always
1938, after receiving a Nobel Prize, he fled, ending up in the to know what to do when the animal
United States. Schwartz marvels that Fermi, working when growls—give it a drink. That drink had
it was still possible to “master all of physics,” did so “across other rewards: intoxication, extremity,
all subdisciplines of the field—astrophysics, nuclear physics, and the feeling that drinking “plunged
particle physics, condensed matter physics, even geophysics.” me into a darkness that seemed like
honesty . . . as if the bright surfaces of
Victorians Undone, by Kathryn Hughes ( Johns Hopkins). In the world were all false and the desper-
provocative studies of five Victorians—some eminent, some ate drunk space underground was where
merely notorious—Hughes addresses a “hole in the bi- the truth lived.” It’s easy to see how ir-
ographical text where arms, legs, breasts and bellies should resistible this efect would be to a writer
have been.” While others might skirt genteelly over Charles like Jamison, whose spelunking often
Darwin’s scaly skin, George Eliot’s thick right hand, and seems as compulsive as it is revelatory.
the dismembered parts of Fanny Adams (an eight-year-old Beyond fuel for truth-seeking, booze
murdered in 1867), Hughes dives in. We meet Queen Vic- also provided her what it had given to
toria as a “sex-mad teenager,” angry at her mother and London: membership in a club to which
spreading scandalous rumors about one of her mother’s she badly wanted to belong—in her
ladies-in-waiting. The tales are entertaining, but Hughes’s case, the fraternity of writers, especially
real achievement is historical—amounting to a new under- those who gathered at the Iowa Writ-
standing of, as she puts it, “what it meant to be a human ers’ Workshop, which she attended when
animal in the nineteenth century.” she was twenty-one.
86 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
 “The myths of Iowa City drinking deemed him, and he did not want any- as the Big Book, lists no author on its
ran like subterranean rivers beneath the one, including himself, to be deluded title page, and it is written in the first
drinking we were doing,” she writes. It into thinking that it had, or that it could. person plural, as if by a management
was a place haunted more than most by The addict’s life, Jamison says, committee. This collective voice sounds
the ghosts of famous alcoholic writers. “thwarts the impulse to narrate self- much like mid-century American striv-
There was “Raymond Carver and John awareness as salvation” by turning the ers who found their careers derailed by
Cheever tire-squealing through early- writer into an unreliable narrator of her drink, their go-to virtues—determina-
morning grocery-store parking lots to own life. It’s a point she illustrates most tion, diligence, hard work—no match
restock their liquor stash; John Berry- vividly with “A Drunkard,” Elizabeth for their craving, and their lives teeter-
man opening bar tabs on Dubuque Street Bishop’s poem about a childhood inci- ing toward “the annihilation of all
and ranting about Whitman till dawn, dent in which her mother was handing things worth while.” The Big Book de-
playing chess and leaving his bishops out food to the victims of a fire. “I was votes one chapter to “the wives of men
vulnerable; Denis Johnson getting drunk terribly thirsty but mama didn’t hear / me who drink too much” and another to
at the Vine and writing short stories calling her,” Bishop writes. The next day, “agnostics,” whose “biased and unrea-
about getting drunk at the Vine.” back at the scene of the fire, she finds a sonable” devotion to the “God of Rea-
Some of the Iowans—Carver and stocking in the debris and shows it of son” prevented them from seeing that
Johnson, for instance—managed to stop to her mother, who chastises her for God was “as much a fact as we were.”
drinking and keep writing. Others drank picking it up. She goes on: Otherwise, the book seems targeted
to the bitter, and often premature, end. directly and unabashedly at white,
(A 1967 Life profile of Berryman valo- But since that night, that day, that reprimand churchgoing, middle-class American
I have suffered from abnormal thirst—
rized “whisky and ink” as the essential I swear it’s true—and by the age
men—no accident, since to the extent
fluids of his life. Five years later, he of twenty or twenty-one I had begun that the book was written by a specific
threw himself of a Minneapolis bridge.) to drink, & drink—I can’t get enough. person it was by Bill Wilson, a white
They all made the same mistake, Jami- businessman who finally achieved so-
son thinks, the same one she once made: It’s a good story, Jamison says—“that briety when he fell in with the Oxford
believing that “the drama of enthrall- thirst might rise from an abiding long- Group, a Protestant sect that embraced
ment” was “something worth writing ing for the one who would not come, group confession of moral failure as a
about.” Inevitably, the drama falls short. that hunger becomes constitutional in kind of storytelling that can lead to
Thrall becomes subjection, and the beast the shadow of absence or departure”— salvation.
turns out to be not so much contained and it may be comforting to those who None of that prevented Jamison from
as imprisoned. “Drinking,” she writes, believe that this kind of story will re- feeling “seen through and chord-struck”
“is a thwarted flight into transcendence, deem us from our own history. But when she first encountered the Big Book.
like a dog, chained to a post, barking Bishop does not want us to think that She was in Iowa City for the second
at the sky.” she is released by this epiphany, and she time, working at a bakery while her boy-
None of Jamison’s literary exemplars ends the poem with a jarring confes- friend attended the Writers’ Workshop.
howl at the sky as furiously as Don Bir- sion: “As you must have noticed, I’m She had tried twice to stop drinking,
nam, the writer-protagonist of Charles half drunk now . . . / And all I’m telling but resisted going to A.A. meetings “be-
Jackson’s best-selling 1944 novel, “The you may be a lie.” Whatever tale she cause it seemed like an irrevocable
Lost Weekend.” He hurls himself against has fashioned, it is inadequate to the threshold.” Finally, with her relation-
the walls of his alcoholism with mighty simple fact of her abnormal thirst. ship on the line—and having developed
force but never breaks through. At the Chained to alcohol, she can only bark a heart condition that required medi-
end, he crawls into bed with a drink, at the sky. cation rendered inefective by alcohol—
thinking, “No telling what might hap- “It had long since ceased to matter she walked in. Attending meetings
pen next time but why worry about that?” Why,” Don Birnam thinks near the end meant learning a new dialect: cliché.
Hollywood had diferent ideas: when of his lost weekend. “You were a drunk; Jamison bridled at the Big Book’s lev-
the movie version came out, the follow- that’s all there was to it. You drank; pe- elling platitudes, not only for their aes-
ing year, it ended with Birnam drop- riod.” Tell the most comprehensive and thetic ofenses but because of the sen-
ping his cigarette into his whiskey and glittering story you can about it, your timent that allowed them to become
rolling a fresh sheet of paper into his addiction still won’t loose its grip on the watchwords of the recovering life—
typewriter, ready to begin writing the you. The sheer brute fact of it is the only that addiction makes no exceptions for
story we’d just seen. Jackson hated the one that matters. There’s nothing beau- individuals, so slogans apply equally to
film for this, because it implied “that I tiful or transcendent about that story, all. A.A.’s “insistence that we were all
overcame my drink-problem by writ- and you are not its author. the same . . . was basically a way of say-
ing a book about it & thus getting it ing fuck you to my entire value system,”
out of my system.” Indeed, after the suc- either are you the author of the she writes. “My whole life I’d been taught
cess of “The Lost Weekend,” Jackson
continued to drink on and of until he
N story that, according to Jamison
and millions of others, may set you
that something was good because it was
original—that singularity was the driv-
died, from a barbiturate overdose, at the free—nor, evidently, is anyone else. “Al- ing engine of value.”
age of sixty-five. Writing had not re- coholics Anonymous,” better known Even so, the Big Book resonated with
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 87
 would be like to get drunk with these
women, only to find that “the din and
revelry of that impossible night was like
noise from another room, something
muled behind a door.” She’s not sure
that she can hold out until what she
finds in the A.A. rooms is as attractive
to her as whatever is going on behind
that door—or as whatever goes on in
her own singular head.
Other recovering writers have strug-
gled with the same worry. Charles Jack-
son described his time in A.A. as “years
of a kind of grey, bleak, empty well-
being” consisting of “apathy, spiritless-
ness, blank sobriety, and a vegetable
health.” Recovery, especially recovery
achieved through and buttressed by slo-
ganeering, may not fire the imagina-
• • tion after all, at least not in the way a
writer needs. The expectation that re-
her, as it does with so many others, most he must to prevent annihilation—stop nunciation will pay of in inspiration,
likely because it ofers an accurate phe- drinking forever. Jamison realizes, is only a version of the
nomenology of alcoholism: the bend- But the Big Book’s beef with will larger “contract logic” by which we
ers and their aftermath, the endless cycle power is not limited to its inability to live—the idea that if we just figure our-
of craving and slaking, the bobbing and free us from addiction, nor are addicts selves out we will be rewarded. That
weaving of the alcoholic determined to uniquely lacking in it. If alcohol, or any expectation, she concludes, “involved
maintain the fiction that he remains other drug, is enough to blow us so di- its own tyrannical authorial impulse—I
John Barleycorn’s master. The book also sastrously of course, then free will must will write the script, and God will make
grants alcoholics company, and its not be all it’s cracked up to be. “Any life it come true.”
first-person-plural voice assures them run on self-will can hardly be a success,” Sobriety does not uphold its end of
that they are alicted with one of the the Big Book says. The trouble with al- the bargain. But, as Jamison discovers,
myriad illnesses to which all of us are cohol lies not in the bottle or in our or- it provides something better: “relief from
vulnerable. As a doctor informs readers ganic chemicals but in ourselves, and not my own plotline.” Stilling the tyranni-
in an introductory chapter, alcoholism in our individual constitutions but in the cal authorial impulse, it gains salvific
is not the result of a character defect misbegotten conception of self under force, transmuting cliché into liturgy.
but the “manifestation of an allergy” that which each of us labors: that we must “Submitting myself to the clichés of re-
makes people uniquely unable to con- be the authors of our own life stories. covery was another way of submitting
trol their drinking. We all sufer from these high expecta- to its rituals—gathering in basements,
That theory, or any theory that ad- tions, alcoholics no more or less than holding hands in circles,” Jamison writes.
diction is a disease in the conventional anyone else. But they have encountered “There was something illuminating,
sense—a form of sufering with a bio- the limits of self-will in a particularly something even like prayer, in accept-
logical cause—remains theoretical. dire way. The cure is to get over them- ing truths that seemed too simple to
Strong familial links have been estab- selves, to become anonymous. contain me.”
lished, and there are diferences in brain As consolation, the Big Book ofers Addiction may rob us of autonomy,
chemistry between addicts and nonad- “release from care, boredom and but to slip its chains is not to be free of
dicts, but these remain correlational, and worry. . . . Your imagination will be fired. all constraints. What the A.A. version
plausibly the result of addiction rather Life will mean something at last.” For of recovery ofers is an alternative to the
than its cause. As metaphor, though, the Jamison, this consolation, at least at modern idea that we must fashion our
disease model works: addiction makes first, seemed inadequate. “I could re- lives out of self-knowledge. “I’d come
non-negotiable demands, as any illness member sweating straight rum onto to worship self-awareness,” Jamison
does; the addict must face the fact that my sheets, kissing a man at dawn with writes, and this “brand of secular hu-
he can’t bargain with alcoholism any coke crackling through my veins, get- manism” has its own misguided slogan:
more than he can bargain with cancer. ting woozy on a lawn full of fireflies. “Know thyself, and act accordingly.” But
“Human resources, as marshaled by the That was living,” she thinks as she at- “what if you reversed this? Act, and know
will,” as the Big Book says, are not tends a “sober ladies’ night” in Iowa. thyself diferently. Showing up for a meet-
enough to overcome it, and only when “This night was several kinds of casse- ing, for a ritual, for a conversation—this
the addict realizes this and turns his life role.” After an evening of parlor games, was an act that could be true no mat-
over to a higher power can he do what she finds herself wondering what it ter what you felt as you were doing it.
88 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
Doing something without knowing if to the contrast between her way with like buprenorphine for opiate addic-
you believed it—that was proof of sin- words and theirs, or between her tal- tion, and serves to justify various cru-
cerity, rather than its absence.” Or, as ents as a memoirist and as a reporter. elties of the drug war: the court-ordered
the A.A. slogan goes, “Fake it till you But, although she interrogates herself drug testing that often lands illicit-drug
make it.” Leaping into the A.A. ocean, relentlessly, she seems content to let users in prison, the obstruction of needle-
Jamison finally finds a way of disappear- her subjects rest in their “practiced nar- exchange programs, the unavailability
ing without destroying herself. rative grooves.” And when she does of Narcan for first responders. Even
question one of them the result is a jar- then, Jamison does not confront the
r so she says. Despite itself, her ring reinforcement of the A.A. ideol- way that this inflexibility arises from
O book tells a diferent story. Not
about her sobriety—about how hard-
ogy, one that seems to come at the sub-
ject’s expense.
the foundation of A.A. doctrine: not
merely the belief in abstinence but the
won it was, how necessary to her sur- Gwen—Jamison changed the names suspicion of autonomy that is embed-
vival as both a writer and a woman— of the interviewees—was a Seneca ded in the idea of turning our lives over
but about the value of a story that isn’t House patient who went on to become to a higher power.
unique at all. Jamison is concerned from its director, and who, in the midst of A.A. has ridden to hegemony on
the outset that her book will not escape trying to get insurance accreditation for some of our strongest cultural winds:
“the tedious architecture and tawdry the facility, and organizing her son’s Protestantism, self-improvement, ab-
self-congratulation of a redemption wedding, became overwhelmed and stemiousness, scientism. Its ofer of
story”—that it will, in short, be boring. broke down in tears at work. It hap- fellowship in a fraternal order of the
She needn’t have worried; such is her pened only the one time, Gwen tells wounded gains appeal as injury increas-
command of metaphor and assonance Jamison, but she came to work shortly ingly becomes the polestar of identity.
that she could rivet a reader with a trea- afterward to find a group intervention The “tyranny of abstinence,” as Jami-
tise on toast. We perhaps have no writer awaiting her. Many years later, it still son calls it, has surely saved many ad-
better on the subject of psychic sufer- smarts, this insistence that her tears dicts; it beats blackouts and wrecked
ing and its consolations. signified a disease that had among its lives hands down. ( Jack London con-
But the book does flag, tellingly if symptoms her inability to know she was tinued drinking until his death, at age
briefly, when, near the end, she turns sick—and for which the only cure was forty, just three years after “John Bar-
the story over to fellow-addicts, in par- more rehab. Jamison ofers a diagnosis leycorn” was published, and possibly
ticular four people she tracks down of Gwen’s ongoing resentment: “It was the result of an overdose of the mor-
who had once passed through Seneca clear that there were certain kinds of phine he was taking for his kidney dis-
House, a “rag tag rehab” established in vulnerability that Gwen had readily ad- ease.) But it’s still tyranny, and tyrants
the nineteen-seventies in a converted mitted into her narrative . . . and other thrive on cliché, on language that de-
motel on the banks of the Potomac kinds she hadn’t fully metabolized.” But clares itself beyond questioning.
River in Maryland. As she talks with maybe what Gwen had failed to me- It may be instructive that the cure
them, more than forty years after they tabolize was an injustice meted out by for addiction is to trade in one tyrant
got sober, “the ghosts of old dramas set her friends and colleagues, who were for another. Tyrannies seem to be on
up shop in the banality of the present, convinced that her passion was patho- the march; this may reflect a yearning
in living rooms and cofee shops: mem- logical. Denial may not be a river in for something outside ourselves, some-
ories of hair stringy with vomit, nights Egypt, as the A.A. catch- thing to relieve us of the
in jail, crack in White Plains, white phrase goes, but it can be a burden of fashioning our
lightning in Monrovia, children driven way to shut people up when own plotlines out of the
over bridges during blackouts.” Jami- their story ventures outside thin air of our lives, or of
son sees the danger that these stories those formal constraints. sorting out the competing
pose to her project—that they will fall Jamison is not blind to stories that increasingly are
flat where her own story (and those of the ideological implications falling on us like a poisoned
the writers she takes up) soars. As if to of the twelve-step logic, rain. Our narrative engines
prepare us, she explains that even if a the way that it forces ev- may not be up to the task
story has been “polished by repetition, eryone to read from the of making sense of our
whittled into artifact—that doesn’t same script. Indeed, she’s yearnings, and we may find
mean it doesn’t also hold truth.” It may preoccupied with it, but largely as an ourselves unyoked from them, and
be predictable, but in this sense the re- aesthetic problem; it’s not until an au- leashed to someone else’s. In the mean-
covery story provides only “a series of thor’s note at the end of the book that time, the irreducible stories of individ-
generative formal constraints.” she explicitly connects that ideology to uals, such as the one Jamison tells about
Accompanying Jamison on her flight deeper problems with our understand- herself—the great and prickly autobi-
to discover those constraints is thrill- ing of sufering. In the note, she points ographies of addicts struggling to un-
ing, if often harrowing. But the stories out that A.A.’s insistence on universal derstand their thrall and teaching us
of others seem to weigh her down, and abstinence—not just from the problem about ourselves in ways beyond what
the tedium she fears begins to find its drug but from all drugs—has interfered they intend—may be the best balm
way into the book. Perhaps this is due with medication-assisted treatments against our inadequacy that we have. 
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 89
 influence is Daphne du Maurier, who
BOOKS translated the motifs of “Jane Eyre” into
a set of twentieth-century-ready tropes
with her masterpiece, “Rebecca,” a novel
that, like the woman who wrote it, has
been critically underrated and popularly
adored since its publication, in 1938.
“Tangerine” is no “Rebecca,” but, for a
certain type of reader, it recollects the
host of novels that “Rebecca” inspired,
the sort of book—written, perhaps, by
Phyllis A. Whitney, Dorothy Eden, or
some other now forgotten best-selling
author—that a bored thirteen-year-old
might find on the shelves of a sleepy
suburban branch library, bound in the
waxy-feeling buckram of special library
editions and with the title stamped on
the spine in white Gothic Bold type.
Although these books seemed to be read
mostly by middle-aged ladies who used
needlepoint bookmarks, for a certain
generation of girl readers they provided
a palatable introduction to “grownup”
fiction in the same way that science fic-
tion did for many of their male coun-
terparts. In the pages of these books,
you could find handsome men who were
also (sometimes) wicked, and marriages
that did not amount to happily ever
after. At the high end, the genre was
called “romantic suspense,” and at the
low end—drugstore paperbacks on

You’re Too Much whose covers distressed women in night-

gowns cowered before big, spooky
houses—the novels were “gothics.”
Nothing succeeds like excess in Christine Mangan’s “Tangerine.” Mangan is described in her author’s
biography as having written a thesis on
BY LAURA MILLER eighteenth-century gothic fiction, but
that is a diferent literary genre from its
mid-twentieth-century pulp namesake,
he pleasure of reading novels comes roccan doorstep. Also unannounced is more inclined to the supernatural and
T in assorted flavors, and one of them,
certainly, is nostalgia. This is the craving
Lucy’s plan to pry Alice out of her mar-
riage and carry her of for a series of
the grotesque, and more closely related
to horror. “Tangerine” flaunts a mélange
satisfied by Christine Mangan’s début, globe-trotting escapades like the ones of influences, none of them particularly
“Tangerine” (Ecco), the story of two the two of them imagined together back gothic in the traditional sense. The ex-
women, former college roommates, who in their clapboard house in Vermont. otic period setting harks back to the
are reunited in Tangier in 1956. Alice “Tangerine” is full of allusions to other vicarious wanderlust of romantic sus-
Shipley, psychologically fragile since the books and writers. Lucy grills the glad- pense: Whitney set her novels in Santa
deaths of her parents in a house fire when handing John about the Brontë sisters Fe, Japan, and other picturesque locales.
she was an adolescent, is married to John, at the bar to which he drags the two This novel’s chapters alternate between
who does something vaguely secretive women on the day she arrives in Tan- the first-person perspective of Alice, who
for “the government.” Lucy Mason, a gier. Shirley Jackson, whose husband, is established early on as being prone,
scholarship girl who bonded with Alice Stanley Edgar Hyman, taught at Ben- when anxious, to hallucinate “strange
as a fellow-orphan during their fresh- nington, is referred to during a campus wispy apparitions,” and that of Lucy,
man year at Bennington College, has flashback. The novel employs devices whose obsession with her former room-
ditched her job typing manuscripts for borrowed from Patricia Highsmith’s mate seems unhealthy. Because Alice has
a publisher in New York and appeared books, those ruthless tales of unstable, such a faltering grip on reality and Lucy
without advance notice on Alice’s Mo- swappable identity. But the prevailing willfully denies reality, both make for
90 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY ELENI KALORKOTI
unreliable narrators—a common device she observes to Lucy, “and I’m afraid that will be disappointed. . . . This is Africa,
in the currently hot publishing genre of I don’t generally fit the description.” Lucy, after all.” It’s a line that could be plausi-
psychological suspense (Gillian Flynn’s on the other hand, dives in, sightseeing bly delivered only by Sydney Greenstreet.
“Gone Girl,” Paula Hawkins’s “The Girl and roaming the souks, “considering and “Tangerine” is undeniably hokey. The
on the Train”). Add to this the novel’s haggling.” She wears Capris, frequents first few chapters ladle on the foreshad-
focus on an engulfing and possibly toxic cafés, and hangs out at the foreign book- owing, with portentous references to
friendship between two women—Elena store, befriending Youssef, a local man, “what had happened in the cold, wintry
Ferrante territory—and “Tangerine,” de- even though John warns her that he has Green Mountains of Vermont” on “that
spite its old-fashioned aspects, seems a reputation for grifting tourists. From terrible night”—the cause, evidently, of
very much on trend. Youssef, Lucy receives confirmation of an estrangement between Lucy and Alice.
“Tangerine” works best when Man- what she has come to suspect since she Alice, Lucy thinks, moves like “a caged
gan juggles the untrustworthiness of her glimpsed John in a bar, running his hand and frightened bird.” Hearts pound,
two narrators, writing and then rewrit- up a dark-haired woman’s thigh: he is breath catches in throats, gazes are pen-
ing their history together. Lucy remem- having an afair. This, she believes, is the etrating, panic comes in a rising tide. But
bers their first couple of years at Ben- wedge that she needs to drive husband these clichés do not detract from the en-
nington as an idyll of hot chocolate by and wife apart, but it won’t be easy; the joyment the novel ofers; they are, par-
the fireplace and dreams of gallivanting profligate John depends on the income adoxically, part of its charm. “Tangerine”
in Paris and Budapest, but Alice’s recol- the couple receives from Alice’s family is not a book about real people and how
lections are more uncertain. After Alice trust. The romantic triangle that forms they feel or behave but a book about
began dating a boy from a neighboring the kernel of the novel, a juicy melo- other books, and a few old movies, a con-
school, Lucy’s behavior grew, in her drama cast against the sultry, stylish im- coction of familiar yet also reliably fun
view, bizarre. One day, Alice came home agery of North Africa in the fifties, is fictional gestures.
to find Lucy dressed in Alice’s clothes, surely what led Hollywood to acquire Reading it reminded me of an evening
“everything, from head to toe.” This the film rights to it, with Scarlett Johans- a few years ago when I talked a friend
confirmed Alice’s growing discomfort son attached to star. into watching the 1942 Bette Davis vehi-
with their claustrophobic intimacy, and cle “Now, Voyager.” I’d looked forward to
freaked her out. Later, Lucy remembers movie can rely on Tangier itself to sharing it with her, but her response was
the same incident as a pathetic attempt
to seek comfort in the kind of closeness
A provide the atmosphere. For a novel
that leans so heavily on its setting, “Tan-
bemused. What, she asked, could I pos-
sibly see in a film so preposterous and
from which Alice had begun to retract. gerine” rarely succeeds at evoking more stylized, so retrograde? I was stumped,
Alice also remembers a day when Lucy of Tangier than its heat, its humidity (or unable to explain the delight I take in the
appeared wearing Alice’s mother’s charm dust), its “confined and chaotic streets,” movie’s glossy nonsense, in Davis’s make-
bracelet, insisting that it was hers, a gift and its sweet mint tea. This, the novel’s over from a meek frump bullied by her
from her own mother. But then, the fol- biggest weakness, is largely a failing of mother into a slim, chic siren, gazing out
lowing day, Lucy behaved normally again, Mangan’s prose, which tends to be gen- at a sparkling sea with Paul Henreid from
claiming that she hadn’t seen the brace- eral rather than specific, lofty rather than the deck of an ocean liner bound for Rio
let since Alice last wore it and promis- grounded, received rather than observed. de Janeiro. What could be more idiosyn-
ing to help her look for it. Alice herself Whether Lucy or Alice is narrating, cratic than my fondness for the very as-
can’t be sure if she remembers any of this Mangan’s diction has the archaic gentil- pects of the film that someone else could
correctly, and nothing Lucy recounts ity of someone incorrectly imagining legitimately complain about: its naked,
from that period even remotely suggests how previous generations thought and conventional wish fulfillment, its fe-
that she’d do anything so cruel and alien- spoke. The novel’s action takes place as tishization of self-sacrifice, and Davis’s
ating to the girl she adores. Each woman Morocco gains its independence from fiercely mannered performance?
recalls feeling incomplete or insuicient France, an event that John, despite his Let me try again: It’s the fierceness
without the other. “I coveted the easy sympathy for the cause, flippantly char- itself, the gusto with which banal human
way she had, and I desired that: her way acterizes as “The natives are getting rest- problems—an awful mother or a phi-
of being. I wanted it for my own,” Alice less, my dear.” The conversation in this landering husband, adulterous longings
remembers. She believes that the prox- scene has the artificial quality of dialogue or a schoolgirl crush—are heightened
imity of Lucy gives her self-confidence. from a forties Hollywood film. (“Oh, into glamour and tragedy, that is the soul
And even the bolder Lucy remarks, of don’t talk about it like that,” Alice pro- of melodrama. “Tangerine” is over the
Alice, “Without her, my own sense of tests.) John’s remark is meant to peg him top, but it is also endearing and even im-
self had wavered.” as insensitive, but that’s all that the mo- pressive in the force of its determination
Lucy is right about Alice’s miserable mentous change in the nation’s status is to conjure a life more exciting than most
marriage, even if Alice hesitates to admit for “Tangerine”: a distant, colorful back- lives are. It’s not Tangier that the novel
it at first. John loves Tangier, but Alice drop providing thematic echoes of the summons but the desire for Tangier, less
does not. She almost never leaves their intrigue on center stage. When Lucy first a city than a blurry reverie of romance
flat, overwhelmed by the North African meets Youssef, he tells her, “If you are and adventure. It requires readers already
heat and light, and by the city’s crowds. looking for a place that makes sense, I infected with such daydreams, but when
“Tangier seems to attract a certain type,” feel I must provide this warning—you it finds them it will be just the ticket. 
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 91
 sophically base and socially uncouth. But
THE ART WORLD the show’s blizzard of ideas drifts in so
many directions, variously philosophical
and political and historical, that it doesn’t
come down much of anywhere.
To contemplate the displayed works
is to fight of regarding them as discur-
sive illustrations. (On my first visit to
“Like Life,” I was politely redirected by
a press oicer from my commenced ram-
ble to the prescribed sequence—which,
on my second visit, I made a point of
viewing in reverse.) You may disagree,
relishing an efect, at once scholarly and
populist, like that of a TED talk. Any-
how, go see. The show is a cornucopia
with something, or many things, for ev-
eryone. As a curatorial phenomenon, it
may well establish a model for attendance-
hungry museums, never mind ingrate
aesthetes like me.
Seven thematic sections, or chapters,
segment “Like Life.” Each incorporates
both old and new works to address some

Living Color issue, per the Met’s press release, of “gen-

der, race, class, sexuality, and religion over
seven hundred years.” For the record, the
The bodies on display in the Met Breuer’s sculpture show. sections are titled “The Presumption of
White,” “Likeness,” “Desire for Life,”
BY PETER SCHJELDAHL “Proxy Figures,” “Layered Realities,”
“Figuring Flesh,” and “Between Life and
Art.” I lack both the space and the heart
“L iBody,”
ke Life: Sculpture, Color, and the
at the Met Breuer, is a
common in medieval churches, dwindled
to the margins of vulgar use, such as in
to paraphrase the respective analyses,
which for the most part are cogent but
mind-blowing show in good and, while carnivals and religious processions, and feel really on target only for lesser works,
not bad, pestiferous ways: hypercharged decorative embellishment, as with ce- which derive their content more from
with sensation and glutted with instruc- ramic figurines. The error was widely rec- the collective bias of their times and places
tion. I am torn between praising it as vi- ognized by the eighteenth century, but than from the individual character of
sionary (and also a great deal of fun, the rule of chaste monochrome persisted their makers. Good art is irreducible to
what with entertainments including a well into modern times, even as modern- attitudes, and great art demolishes them.
voluble animatronic savant) and report- ism suppressed figurative imagery. (In Those distinctions come hard in the
ing it as a mugging to the taste police. the nineteen-sixties, the critic Clement show, which does maintain fairly lofty
I guess I’ll do both. A hundred and Greenberg, acting as the executor of the standards of quality but logically needn’t.
twenty-seven almost exclusively Euro- estate of David Smith, removed paint “Likeness” could smoothly extend its em-
pean and American renditions of human from some of the great sculptor’s abstract brace to Madame Tussauds, and “Desire
bodies, from very old to recent and from works, thinking thereby to improve for Life” and “Between Life and Art”
COURTESY ESTATE OF DUANE HANSON/VAGA, NEW YORK

masterpieces to curios, elaborate the the- them—a scandal germane to the present might comfortably confer at any of the
sis that colored figurative sculpture has occasion, though not cited.) Why? crowd-pleasing commercial exhibitions
been unjustly bastardized ever since the Lord knows the show’s curators, led of flayed and plasticized actual corpses,
Renaissance canonized a mistake made by the Met’s Sheena Wagstaf and Luke often in action poses, that have travelled
during its excited revival of antiquity. Syson, go into that question, with edi- the world in recent years. Hints toward
The whiteness of surviving Greek and fying wall texts and erudite catalogue es- the latter include the remarkably grisly
Roman marbles, their original poly- says. The answer may come down to a “Anatomical Venus”—an anonymous
chromy lost, became de rigueur for resilient compound, in élite culture, of Italian creation, from 1780-85, of a lovely
Western three-dimensional figuration Platonic idealism and run-of-the-mill damsel laid wide open from throat to
in subsequent centuries. snobbery. Color—apart from its proper crotch—and the “ ‘Auto-Icon’ of Jeremy
Painted sculpture, which had been sphere in painting—was deemed philo- Bentham” (1832). On a chair, the realis-
tic figure—wax-faced, jauntily clothed,
“Housewife,” from 1969-70, is one of Duane Hanson’s hyperrealistic tableaux. sporting a cane—contains the British
92 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018
utilitarian philosopher’s skeleton. (Ben- now sixty-five years old, brings to figu-
tham had willed his seated burial for rea- rative sculpture: investing deadpan real-
sons that included not wanting to be ab- ism with an aura of timeless form. Any
sent from meetings at University College subject will do for him—the represen-
London, which has lent it to the show.) tation of a collision-wrecked car is among
Great works on hand—by which I his major works—but bodies hone his
mean ones that, like them or not, last- point. I take this to involve a profound
ingly transcend the types of their form understanding of Greek classicism as the
and style—range from an anonymous obsolescence-proof and unbetterable
German’s “Nellingen Crucifix” (1430-35) compromise of observed realities and
and Donatello’s “Bust of Niccolò da Uz- dreamed ideals. The girl’s whiteness, at
zano” (from the fourteen-thirties) to Jef once a color and a refusal of color, isn’t
Koons’s “Michael Jackson and Bubbles” just a quality. It’s an intended subject for-
(1988) and Charles Ray’s “Aluminum tuitously anticipating that of the show,
Girl” (2003). You won’t forget the deep one to be considered along with the sub-
wound in the side of the crucifix’s ema- tly generalized features of her face and
ciated Jesus, emitting gore and sur- body—machined from a solid block of
rounded by a blue bruise. The artist left metal, in a process that took Ray years
God’s share in mortal agony as little to to complete. She stands, as we do, flat
the imagination as wood and paint could on the floor, but feels as remote as the
communicate. Nor is it easy to shake of moon. Rather than a kind of art, the JOHN-CHRISTIAN.COM
the canny glitz of Koons’s porcelain singer work strikes me as art defined, not a whit .
and monkey. The Met curators have less nor more than art can be.
staged a visual coup by pairing it with a “Like Life” is beautifully installed, I
fabulous Meissen porcelain figure group, should report, and its selections breathe Basil Twist’s
“The Judgment of Paris” (circa 1762), but connoisseurship, albeit of a committee-
the kinship is shallow. Outrageous lux- negotiated sort. The works convince as
ury is only one element in Koons’s mas- probably the best of what could be ob-
terly fusion of Pop content and mini- tained in categories of statue, relief, tab- Tickets at HERE.org
malist aesthetics, which prophesied and leau, funerary figure, reliquary, portrait,
still authorizes the cultural aplomb of altered mannequin, lay figure (a jointed
our reconstituted, remorselessly ongo- wooden model used by an artist), deco-
ing gilded age. rative element, doll, and the odd avant-
My favorites are the Donatello and gardist conceptual whatsit, deployed in
the Ray. The former may have been based combinations to substantiate themes and
on a death mask of its eponymous Flor- traditions. The efect is rather forensic—
entine politician, but no livelier material creations as symptoms, in service to
object exists. Life-size, the subject turns knowledge more than to experience.
his head upward on his sinewy neck with But you could be like me and sift the
a hooded gaze that seems mildly inter- contents to curate your own show. Mine
ested, slightly supercilious, and ripe with prominently includes, alongside the
a thought that is an instant short of pieces I’ve already mentioned, works by
being spoken. I imagine him seated and Edgar Degas (“Like Life” might justly
attending to someone, standing, whose be picketed were it lacking “The Little
measure he has taken. The colors of the Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer,” modelled
face, which feel irradiated by the light circa 1880 and cast in 1922), Augustus
that falls on it, are so unusual in Do- Saint-Gaudens (poignant busts in white
natello’s known body of work that some marble and in pigmented wax, made
have questioned the attribution. But we in the mid-eighteen-nineties to memo-
would know, and revere, the name of rialize the deceased young wife of a pa-
anyone else so accomplished; and Don- tron), Auguste Rodin (the uncanny glass
atello was notably unconstrained by sty- “Mask of Hanako,” depicting the face
listic consistency. of a Japanese actress, from 1911), and
I had an admittedly crazy sense, when Duane Hanson (from 1969-70 and 1984,
encountering the white-painted life-size hyperrealistic tableaux, starring a frowsy
nude “Aluminum Girl,” that it both stands working-class housewife and a weary
apart from and is equivalent in signifi- housepainter, that curiously become ever
cance to the whole rest of the show.That’s more afecting as their period looks re-
a magic that the Los Angeles artist Ray, cede in time). Now, your turn. ♦
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 93
 Valentini (Claire Foy). Anyone with a
THE CURRENT CINEMA name like that can kiss goodbye to a
quiet life, yet that is what Sawyer has
pursued, by moving to an unfamiliar
city and getting a job as an analyst in
a bank. Sufering from panic attacks (a
Tinder date goes wretchedly wrong),
Sawyer seeks help—nothing special, a
brief consultation during her lunch
hour—at Highland Creek, a mental-
health facility. She is asked to com-
plete a form, and, if the movie has a
message to impart, it is this: always
read the fine print. Unwittingly, though
voluntarily, Sawyer has agreed to be
committed. She’s detained for only a
day, but her protests are so militant that
her stay is lengthened to a week. She
winds up stuck in a padded cell, and
the color of the padding, not a clinical
white but an inky blue, somehow ag-
gravates her ordeal, and stains it with
the hue of a bad dream.

Unusual Suspects But could it all be a dream, or a de-

lusion, and how weary are we of mov-
ies that persist in asking that question?
“Unsane” and “Gemini.” It seemed hokey enough in 1930, in
“The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case,” at
BY ANTHONY LANE the end of which our heroes awake from
a violent struggle. (The man they wres-
tle with, incidentally, enters dressed as
here is a lovely photograph of result would be a rolling expanse of a woman and brandishing a knife. Now
T James Mason and Eva Marie Saint
on the set of “North by Northwest”
fine-grained images, filling the audi-
ence’s gaze. Such beauty could be sum-
you know what Norman Bates watched
as a kid.) One lurid recent example is
(1959). They are clad for the auction moned by the beast. Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” (2010),
scene; he wears a pale-gray suit, and And so to the news that Steven So- which is set in an asylum for the crim-
her dress is rich in roses. He holds her derbergh, never one to shy from exper- inally insane, and Soderbergh, like
lightly by the arm, smiling, as she stands imentation, filmed his latest work, “Un- Scorsese, delights in the narrative op-
behind the camera on which the se- sane,” on an iPhone 7 Plus—on three portunities that are aforded by men-
quence will be filmed. And what a for- iPhones, in fact. (Not that he is the tal illness. More viewers than ever will
midable beast that camera is: as big as first to go down this route; Sean Baker be discomforted by that delight, not
a motorbike but far less streamlined, used an earlier-model iPhone, in 2015, least because of what triggers Sawyer’s
bearing on its broad flank the legend to make “Tangerine.”) The practical terror: in her former place of residence,
“VistaVision”—the wide-screen for- benefits of carrying your main creative she was stalked by a man named David
mat in which Hitchcock also shot “To tool around in your breast pocket are Strine ( Joshua Leonard), against whom
Catch a Thief ” (1955), “The Man who fairly clear; “Unsane” was reportedly she obtained a court order, and now
Knew Too Much” (1956), and “Vertigo” shot in just over a week. In interviews, she believes that he has come to High-
(1958). James Wong Howe, a king Soderbergh has rhapsodized over this land Creek as a nurse, with the specific
among cinematographers, used Vista- liberating method, and sworn to em- aim of tormenting her afresh.
Vision on “The Rose Tattoo” (1955), ploy it on projects to come. “I think Claire Foy emerges with credit from
and there’s a portrait of him with a this is the future,” he says, describing this farrago. If you have found fame by
similar camera, which towers above the look of the movie as “velvet.” You portraying the Queen of England, as
him on its wheeled crane, and which could have fooled me. I found it as Foy has done in two seasons of “The
he holds by a cable, as if leading a ve- coarse as canvas, though you have to Queen,” there are few more efective
lociraptor through Jurassic Park. Howe, admire Soderbergh for adding a new ways of changing your tune than by
like Hitchcock, knew that the cum- vista to his vision. playing a young American woman with
bersome efort was worthwhile, for the “Unsane” tells the story of Sawyer a dirty modern mouth and a mind un-
schooled in regal stoicism. Is the emo-
In Steven Soderbergh’s film, Claire Foy plays a woman pursued by her fears. tional refrain of “Unsane,” though, any
94 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY MANSHEN LO
less constricting? In the role of Saw- by paranoia. A Western might do the ing brings a killing, or, at any rate, a cryp-
yer, Foy gets to yell, to fidget, and to trick. I can just imagine Soderbergh tic death. Jill, when questioned by a de-
fight—and, in a moment of primal re- saddling up and trotting of to Mon- tective ( John Cho), asks if she is under
lease denied to Her Majesty, to stab ument Valley, a pair of iPhones tucked arrest. He replies, “Not yet.”
someone in the neck with a sharpened into his holsters. Come sundown, The sour ghost that broods over
spoon. Yet all these deeds are little more though, with the coyotes beginning to “Gemini” is Nicholas Ray’s “In a Lonely
than variations on the theme of a dam- howl, where do you plug the charger? Place” (1950). One of the darkest trib-
sel in severe distress. The performance utes ever paid to L.A., it stars Hum-
that lingers, once the tale is told, is that fter the jitters of “Unsane,” the phrey Bogart as a Hollywood screen-
of Jay Pharoah as Nate, a fellow-patient
on Sawyer’s ward, who has furtively
A mood that settles on “Gemini,”
dopey and unrushed, is a relief. Aaron
writer who, like Jill, is suspected of a
capital crime, in the wake of a long and
kept hold of his cell phone (she was Katz’s film is set in Los Angeles, where talkative evening. His lip-curling scorn
deprived of hers), and who lends the Jill (Lola Kirke) is the personal assis- for the sins of his own soul, and for the
film an understated calm. Nate thinks tant to a movie star called Heather (Zoë business that sucked it dry, is echoed
that Highland Creek is running a murky Kravitz). For anyone raised on old- here, though largely by the minor char-
racket, and a serious movie about men- school notions of service, Jill’s job—part acters: “I’ve got to get out of this poi-
tal disorder and the insurance business valet, part sidekick, and part confidante— sonous town before I murder some-
would be ten times clammier and more isn’t always easy to figure out. Bertie one,” Greg says, and Heather’s agent,
disturbing than “Unsane.” For now, we Wooster, for example, rarely went back Jamie (Michelle Forbes), tells Jill, with
have to be content with passing hints. to Jeeves’s apartment for a glass of crystalline candor, “I know that you
In the end, it won’t be as a medical St-Germain topped up with Mello Yello, and I kind of hate each other, but I ac-
thriller that this movie will be judged, and I’m pretty sure that Don Quixote, tually quite like you.” Jill herself, on the
but as a showcase for the new technol- whatever his true feelings, never mur- other hand, is a far less curdled cre-
ogy, and it’s certainly got the creden- mured “I love you” to Sancho Panza as ation, devoid of sneers. The role is
tials. Soderbergh armed his iPhone they drifted of to sleep. hardly flattering; most of the time, she
with three lenses, and it’s one of them, Jill’s initial task, as the film gets going, wears big jeans and a baggy gray top,
an 18-mm. wide-angle, that predomi- is to do the dirty work. She must go into while sporting the haircut from hell—
nates in “Unsane,” extending the depth a restaurant, where a director named brown bangs cut straight across, as if
of field and elasticizing the world so Greg (Nelson Franklin) awaits, and break by a six-year-old with blunt scissors.
that it reflects the distorted conscious- the news to him that Heather is pulling At one point, in need of camouflage,
ness of Sawyer—or, if you prefer, rig- out of his next project. Greg is unamused. she dyes the tresses blond but keeps
ging the physical evidence to fit the From here, the two women mosey the style. Talk about unsane. Kirke,
plot. A hand, lying close to the cam- around—indulging a superfan, fending however, who made such an impact, in
era, is the size of a giant’s paw, and so of paparazzi, driving to and fro, doing “Mistress America” (2015), requires no
frequently do people’s faces loom and karaoke, and ending up at Heather’s disguise; she is sphinxlike enough as it
swell before us that I feared an out- house. Amid the moseying, you sense is. The cracking of the mystery, at the
break of mumps. A little of this mis- that the night, with its noirish, narco- conclusion of “Gemini,” is daft and un-
shaping, to be honest, goes a long way, leptic glow, could go awry at any second, satisfying, but no matter. The case of
and it could be argued that smartphones especially when a pistol is produced. Lola Kirke remains unsolved. 
won’t really prove their worth, on the (“How many movies have I shot a gun
big screen, until they can fulfill more in?” Heather says, as if that were any NEWYORKER.COM
sober duties, showing sights unwarped kind of training.) Sure enough, the morn- Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 2, 2018 95

 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 P. C. Vey,
must be received by Sunday, April 1st. The finalists in the March 19th contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the April 16th 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

“I can’t control the volume—the only thing

I can do is open the windows.”
Rebecca Gluskin, Brooklyn, N.Y.

“I see the radiator’s Baroque again.” “O.K., but he is going to have to check that bag.”
Alan C. Duncan, Cleveland, Ohio Bridget Fahrland, Portland, Ore.

“The hard part was transposing from C major to Fahrenheit.”

Clair Cheer, Pacific Grove, Calif.
 JIM ZACHARY MATT ANDREW
PARSONS QUINTO BOMER RANNELLS
CHARLIE ROBIN BRIAN MICHAEL BENJAMIN TUC
CARVER DE JESÚS HUTCHISON WASHINGTON WATKINS

DIRECTED BY JOE MANTELLO

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