The New Yorker - April 06, 2020

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PRICE $8.99 APRIL 6, 2020

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THE NEW YORKER
THE HEALTH ISSUE
APRIL 6, 2020
4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

11 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Trump vs. science, by Steve Coll; ventilator drive; soup kitchen;
Alex Jones’s bogus cures; home front; gun sales; streaming comedy.
CORONAVIRUS CHRONICLES
Siddhartha Mukherjee 18 The One and the Many
Why quantifying the process of infection is crucial.
COMIC STRIP
Emily Flake 21 “‘ Parent’ as a Verb: Quarantine Edition”
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Cora Frazier 23 Fear of Missing Out
ANNALS OF MEDICINE
Eyal Press 24 A Deadly Principle
Cervical cancer and Alabama’s Medicaid policy.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Rachel Aviv 32 Dancer in the Dark
An artistic passion turns lethal.
SHOWCASE
Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao 42 Testing Times
LETTER FROM YANGQUAN
Jiayang Fan 44 The Friendship and Love Hospital
China’s struggles with end-of-life care.
SKETCHBOOK
Roz Chast 51 “Home Sweet Home (So Far)”
FICTION
George Saunders 54 “Love Letter”
THE CRITICS
A CRITIC AT LARGE
Elizabeth Kolbert 58 How pandemics shape human history.
BOOKS
Jill Lepore 62 Loneliness studied.
Sheila Heti 65 The letters of Tove Jansson.
67 Briefly Noted
Hilton Als 70 The poetry of Carolyn Forché.
THE THEATRE
Alexandra Schwartz 75 With venues dark, performances move online.
MUSICAL EVENTS
Alex Ross 78 “Sweet Land,” and outdoor opera interrupted.
POP MUSIC
Hua Hsu 80 Yaeji’s atmospheric dance music.
POEMS
Beth Bachmann 36 “Mask”
José Antonio Rodríguez 48 “Shelter”
COVER
Chris Ware “Bedtime”
DRAWINGS Barbara Smaller, Amy Hwang, P. C. Vey, Harry Bliss and Steve Martin, Brendan Loper, Justin Sheen,
Edward Steed, Sofia Warren, Tom Chitty, Joe Dator, John O’Brien, Teresa Burns Parkhurst SPOTS Richard McGuire
CONTRIBUTORS
Rachel Aviv (“Dancer in the Dark,” p. 32) Eyal Press (“A Deadly Principle,” p. 24),
is a staff writer and was a 2019 national the author of “Beautiful Souls,” is a
fellow at New America. Puffin Foundation writing fellow at the
Type Media Center and a past recipient
Siddhartha Mukherjee (“The One and of the James Aronson Award for Social
the Many,” p. 18) is the author of “The Justice Journalism.
Emperor of All Maladies,” for which
Not all our he won a Pulitzer Prize. His latest book Beth Bachmann (Poem, p. 36) is the au-
is “The Gene.” thor of three books of poetry: “Temper,”
award-winning “Do Not Rise,” and “CEASE.”
Jiayang Fan (“The Friendship and Love
writing can Hospital,” p. 44) became a staff writer George Saunders (Fiction, p. 54) first
in 2016. Her reporting has appeared in contributed to The New Yorker in 1992.
be found The New Yorker since 2010. His latest book, “Lincoln in the Bardo,”
won the 2017 Man Booker Prize.
in these pages. Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao (Showcase, p. 42),
a photographer, specializes in large-for- Elizabeth Kolbert (A Critic at Large,
mat color photos of New York City. He p. 58) has been a staff writer since 1999.
is the author of “Habitat 7,” “Coney Her book “The Sixth Extinction” won
Island,” and “Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao: the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.
New York.”
José Antonio Rodríguez (Poem, p. 48)
Sheila Heti (Books, p. 65) is the author mostly recently published the poetry
of, most recently, “Motherhood.” She collection “This American Autopsy”
lives in Toronto. and the memoir “House Built on Ashes.”
Chris Ware (Cover), an artist and a writer, Liana Finck (Sketchpad, p. 15) is a New
published the graphic novel “Rusty Yorker cartoonist. Her latest book is
Brown” last year. “Excuse Me.”
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2 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020
THE MAIL Your
causes.
DISTURBING THE PEACE election and sharing “banned books”
As was true for Peter Hessler, the Peace

with a colleague, arose from the cracks
in the Chinese Communist system. But,
Your
Corps was a formative experience in my as China experts such as Elizabeth Econ charitable gift.
life and helped make me the person that omy have observed, Xi has strengthened
Your
I am today (“Broken Bonds,” March the system, to the extent that finding
16th). During my posting in Guayaquil, those gaps is illadvised, even danger
Ecuador, where I worked in community ous, for foreigners. Hessler does ac
development from 1965 to 1967, the pro
gram showed me—a smalltown ideal
knowledge that Chinese citizens today
“are often more tolerant and aware” de
legacy.
ist with no idea what to do with my spite the Great Firewall’s being “more
life—that my vocation was to teach. Be sophisticated than ever,” but, by attrib
fore I returned to the United States, a uting the Peace Corps’s closure largely
community leader told me that they never to antiChina sentiment in the U.S., he
understood why we came there, why we doesn’t fully reckon with the fact that
stayed, and, now, why we were leaving. Xi’s China may no longer be among the
The truth is, I wanted to be part of some “interested countries,” willing to at least
thing bigger than myself and to come tacitly accept the Corps’s mission.
home a better person. Learning Span Jacob Pagano
ish and living abroad indisputably en Los Angeles, Calif.
hanced my fiftyyear career in education.
I am appalled by the roles that Sen As a Peace Corps volunteer who served
ators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott played in China from 2012 to 2014 and who later
in closing the Peace Corps’s China pro worked as the China Desk Officer at the
gram. Americans are gaining more than Peace Corps headquarters, in Washing
they realize with the Peace Corps, which ton, D.C., from 2015 to 2017, I read Hess
has produced not only knowledgeable ler’s piece as a eulogy for Peace Corps
teachers but also business leaders, social China. My “microhistory,” to use Hess
entrepreneurs, civil servants, journalists, ler’s term, with China covered the rise of
and policymakers. Just compare the Peace Xi Jinping, the Umbrella Revolution, in
Corps’s China budget for 2018, $4.2 mil Hong Kong, and a remarkable reduction
lion, with the nearly one trillion dollars in rural Chinese poverty, including among Together, we can
spent so far on the conflict in Afghan most of my collegeage students. It also
istan, and then compare the results. comprised meeting and marrying my
transform your
Margot Kinsey Jones Chinese wife, returning to a United States commitment
New York City where many children learn Mandarin in
school, and watching dozens of teams to making a
I sympathize with Hessler’s concern re race dragon boats on the Potomac. The difference into a
garding the exit of the Peace Corps from Corps’s work with China will likely ap
China, but I was surprised that he did pear even more precious in hindsight: a lasting legacy.
not write more explicitly about Xi Jin radical collaboration of Chinese and
ping, whose rise signalled a key geopo American public servants who believed
litical shift and further limited the kinds in development through bilateral educa Contact Jane Wilton at
of liberties that Hessler found integral tion and exchange, even amid difficult (212) 686-0010 x363
to his experience. I studied in China as political and economic circumstances.
a highschool student in 2012. When I Russell Evans or giving@nyct-cfi.org
returned, five years later, I was struck by Arlington, Va. www.giveto.nyc
the changes affecting foreigners and lo
cals alike, from a concerted campaign •
of ideological guidance in universities Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
to a notable increase in censorship. The address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
memorable incidents that Hessler re [email protected]. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
counts, such as showing his class an ab any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
sentee ballot for the 1996 Presidential of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 3

In an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, New York City museums, galleries, theatres,
music venues, cinemas, and restaurants have closed. Here’s a selection of culture to be found online and streaming.
APRIL 1 – 7, 2020
GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
Like all museums in New York City, MOMA is closed until further notice. But you can still see eighty-
four thousand pieces from its collection online at MOMA.org. “All in One” (above), from 2016, is
by the gifted photographer Aïda Muluneh, who left her native Ethiopia as a young child and later
got her start taking pictures for the Washington Post. A decade ago, Muluneh returned home to
Addis Ababa, where she divides her time between making art and her work as a photojournalist.
1
MUSIC
seller (by jazz standards) and jump-started the
seventies fusion movement, which continues
Ferne Geliebte.” His carefully modulated tone
color, gorgeous from first to last, inhabits the
Selections to listen to online. to inspire artists of all genres, was a testament narrator’s wistfulness and builds patiently to a
to Davis’s instinctual cunning. Now, fifty years climax. Goerne’s pianist, Jan Lisiecki, an inter-
after its initial release, the record still sounds national soloist, shows off a bit at the keyboard,
Thomas Adès: wild, its mashup of minimalist funk, maximal- filling in some of the action that the singer
ist textures, and slashing improvisation daring smooths over with his luscious legato.—O.Z.
“Adès Conducts Adès” and dangerous. It’s taken as long for adven-
CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL Thomas Adès wrote turous musicians to truly come to grips with
the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra for the album’s audacious aesthetic of throwing it Jon Hassell: “Vernal Equinox”
the pianist Kirill Gerstein, and the composer against the wall and seeing if it sticks. “Bitches AMBIENT The composer Jon Hassell has long
himself conducted the Boston Symphony Or- Brew,” offensive title and all, remains the es- referred to his music as “Fourth World”—an
chestra in the work’s world première, last year. sence of disturbing beauty.—Steve Futterman amalgam of Indian classical music (he studied
This live recording captures the zany energy with the vocalist Pandit Pran Nath), Miles
of Adès’s composition, which at times sounds Davis’s electric explorations in the seven-
like the spontaneous revolt of a lounge pia- Brian Eno / Roger Eno: ties, and Burundi percussion. Listening to
nist spinning off on his own trajectory. Adès his début album, “Vernal Equinox,” from 1977,
modernizes rather than reinvents the concerto “Mixing Colours” which was recently reissued on his own label,
form. The score calls for the pianist to play in AMBIENT For decades, Brian Eno, the visionary Ndeya, it’s startling just how fully formed his
running octaves, as tradition dictates, but, in known for coining the term “ambient music,” signature blend was upon arrival. Hassell’s
the second movement, the octaves stumble on has collaborated with his younger brother, the heavily processed trumpet weaves through be-
tone clusters that Adès has sprinkled in their pianist Roger Eno. Last week, they released guiling electronic drones like a snake through
way. It’s reverential, cheeky, and lots of fun. their first joint album, “Mixing Colours,” which a velvet-lined maze; occasionally, his playing
This release pairs the concerto with Adès’s compiles fifteen years of what Roger has called evokes an elephant stampede in some far-off
“Totentanz” (“Dance of Death”), a setting of “a back-and-forth conversation” that unfolded mist. There’s a rapturous sense of stasis here,
an anonymous German text that accompanied as they traded swatches of sound and filtered broken up by captivating details—talking
a fifteenth-century frieze that was destroyed by music through each other’s imagination. The drums, shards of birdsong, the chattering
Allied bombing in the Second World War. The tension between Roger’s ornate keys and Brian’s insects of the album’s two-minute coda—that
whole orchestra seems to heave itself forward parsimonious, tonally driven production results slip into the foreground.—Michaelangelo Matos
in a broken minuet as Death (the impressive in sketches that are muted yet lucid, like the
baritone Mark Stone) calls upon a large cast of iciest shades on a paint palette.—Julyssa Lopez
characters (all portrayed by the game mezzo- Shabaka and the Ancestors:
soprano Christianne Stotijn) to join him in a
final, fateful dance.—Oussama Zahr Matthias Goerne: “We Are Sent Here by History”
JAZZ “We Are Sent Here by History”—a new
“Beethoven Songs” album by Shabaka and the Ancestors, a South
Brooklyn Rider: “Healing Modes” ART SONGS Beethoven’s vocal music is some- African ensemble led by the British-Barba-
CHAMBER MUSIC “Healing Modes,” the newest times criticized for the instrumental quality dian saxophonist and clarinettist Shabaka
album by the adventuresome string quartet of its melodies—that is, it doesn’t account for Hutchings—is meant to sound apocalyptic.
Brooklyn Rider, is based on a program the a singer’s need to breathe—but that problem Thematically, it centers on the idea that sys-
group refined in concerts during the past few doesn’t present itself in Matthias Goerne’s tems and institutions built on inequality are
years, but its core theme—the interconnec- new album. With his dark, luxuriant timbre intrinsically built to fail; musically, it encap-
tion of music and healthfulness—could not and capacious breath support, the German sulates the disquiet formed in the wake of such
possibly be more relevant or necessary than baritone presents an assortment of Beethoven collapse. The lyrics both soothe and challenge,
it is currently. In a season awash with now lieder that culminates in the song cycle “An die the drumming rises and falls like a pulse, and
postponed events intended to celebrate the
two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of Bee-
thoven’s birth, this collection is inspired by INDIE POP
the third movement of the composer’s String
Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, a luminous hymn
conveying his thankfulness after he recovered Half Waif’s new album, “The Care-
from a life-threatening illness, in 1825. The
quartet’s five movements are interwoven with taker,” evokes the stifling feeling of
five newly commissioned works that explore wanting to force time forward and
complementary notions. Reena Esmail and charge into a future that’s nebulous
Gabriela Lena Frank, like Beethoven, ex-
pressively recall personal maladies overcome; and perpetually out of reach. Her
Matana Roberts and Caroline Shaw address voice, almost on the verge of breaking,
the U.S.-Mexico border conflict and the Syr- pierces through baroque choral loops
ian refugee crisis, respectively, as afflictions
of the body politic; Du Yun turns inward and on “Ordinary Talk” as she describes
OPPOSITE: PHOTOGRAPH BY AÏDA MULUNEH / COURTESY
outward at once, evoking the societal stigma quotidian moments imbued with dull
of mental illness. The concept proves sound: pain: “Sitting in the dark, dreaming
the juxtapositions are illuminating, the play-
ing persuasive, and the timing almost impos- up a song, crying in my coffee.” Later,
MOMA; RIGHT: ILLUSTRATION BY PING ZHU
sibly serendipitous.—Steve Smith on “In August,” she recounts a slowly

passing year and wonders, “Am I
Miles Davis: “Bitches Brew” meant to find some strength in me,
JAZZ If Miles Davis was looking for a commer- hidden where I’ll never see it?” These
cial breakthrough with his 1970 album “Bitches songs inadvertently speak to a period
Brew,” he certainly went about it backward.
Assembling a sprawling crew of players, he set of uncertainty and isolation, and,
off loose musical sketches that were ultimately though they’re weighty, Half Waif ’s
edited to tracks stretching as long as twenty- sombre elegance reflects the steely-
seven minutes—not exactly the best way to
finagle oneself onto the mainstream airwaves. eyed strength of a person who might
That “Bitches Brew” turned out to be a best- just get through it.—Julyssa Lopez
‘Dy-no-mite!’ when life was good and ‘I am
PODCAST DEPT. not a crook’ when life was bad.” The bike trip,
inconceivable to rational beings today, did
happen—and, we discover, played startlingly
different roles in the lives of his long-lost
companions. Goldstein’s sensibility, which
leavens the heaviness as stories unfold, seems
to say, We’re all a bit absurd, and so is the
world; let’s confront and enjoy the absurdity
together. When the existential realizations
come, they hit like a knockout.—Sarah Larson
“In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg”

This podcast, a weekly BBC Radio 4 program
beloved in the U.K. since 1998, consists of con-
versations between its bluff, no-nonsense host
and three thoughtful academics about some
worthy cultural or historical subject—George
Sand, solar wind, the siege of Paris, the Gin
Craze. Bragg dives right in: “Hello, ‘Four
Quartets’ is T. S. Eliot’s last great poem”;
“Hello, Germaine de Staël was born in Paris
in 1766, where her father was finance minister
to Louis XVI and her mother held dazzling
salons.” (Barrelling ahead, he says things like
“Let’s zoom in on Pushkin.”) For American
podcast enthusiasts, “In Our Time” can make
for a refreshing change of pace: no self-effac-
Listening to others’ voices can feel like a lifeline to sanity during so- ing narrative intimacy, no inventive sound
cial isolation—especially in podcasts that connect but don’t depress. design, no artfully revealed surprises, no keep-
“Over the Road,” from Radiotopia and Overdrive magazine, is rich with ing up with current events. Listening to it
provides a welcome perspective—like reading
the sounds of Jake brakes, truck stops, wildcatters, and harmonica as it
1
a classic novel, it’s escapist but edifying, and
immerses listeners in the history and the culture of long-haul trucking. exactly what we need.—S.L.
It’s hosted by the smooth-voiced Paul (Long Haul Paul) Marhoefer,
a forty-year veteran of “pulling reefers—loads of lettuce, pork loins,
watermelons—food, that is,” across the country, “out there with the ART
cow trucks, the chicken haulers, the hopper bottoms laden with grain,
rolling through the nameless fields of the great alone.” (He’s also a Farah Al Qasimi
writer.) In a COVID-19-era update, Marhoefer checks in, from a dairy When the Public Art Fund asked this Emi-
run in Florida, to reassure listeners about the supply chain. “We’re still rati photographer to conceive of a public-art
project for outdoor spaces usually reserved
trucking out here,” he says.—Sarah Larson for advertisements around New York City, she
came up with “Back and Forth Disco,” a series
of effervescent color pictures taken in immi-
the reeds cry out—their improvisations an the dark, synthy hues of eighties pop. Material grant neighborhoods across the five boroughs.
embodiment of real-world uncertainty. An possessions and success contrast with the open Whether she is documenting a chandelier in a
album conceptualized, in Hutchings’s words, wound of a breakup, creating a tension that Yemeni-owned bodega in Ridgewood, Queens,
as “a meditation on the fact of our coming ex- takes shape in the swirling, cinematic expanse of or two men in a Palestinian-run barbershop
tinction as a species” and “a reflection from the songs from “Hardest to Love” to “Faith.” In the in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Qasimi puts a jubi-
ruins” is either right on time or an unwelcome album’s final moments, he beautifully executes lant spin on living between cultures. Qasimi
prophecy, depending on one’s perspective. Still, his staple party trick: “I keep telling myself I typically conceals a subject’s identity within
there is something refreshingly honest about don’t need it anymore,” he wails over an electric her compositions, a device that feels like a
1
hope wrestling with doom and something lib- bed of reverb, blurring the line between love tender gesture of discretion, even protection,
erating about getting lost in music that doesn’t and vice until it—and he—disappears.—B.Y. in a city where private lives (until recently) so
seek answers or grasp for calm. Shabaka and often play out in public. In the elegant portrait
the Ancestors instead give voice to the urgency “Woman in Leopard Print,” a sylph in a chic
of chaos, calling on each of us to raise from the hijab turns away from the camera and toward
ashes a better future for all.—Briana Younger PODCASTS a mirrored compact, which reflects one of her
eyes back at the viewer. The frame within
the frame recalls the cropped, mascara-laden
The Weeknd: “After Hours” “Heavyweight” eye in Man Ray’s famous Surrealist picture
One of the biggest challenges the
POP / R. & B. Hosted and produced by the gently funny “Tears.” Images of Qasimi’s newest photo-
Weeknd has faced is also a prison of his own Jonathan Goldstein, “Heavyweight” provides graphs, the series “Funhouse,” are online (at
making. His début mixtape, “House of Bal- the pleasures of reflecting on the past without helenaanrather.com), and the Public Art Fund
loons,” from 2011—an anonymous, coke-riddled the burdens of thinking about oneself—or recently added a video interview about “Back
ILLUSTRATION BY ROSE WONG
haze of pleasure and self-loathing—helped to the present. It solves mysteries of an unusual and Forth Disco” to its Web site.—Andrea K.
deconstruct notions of R. & B. and reorient the genre: about the moment in a person’s life Scott (publicartfund.org)
genre around mood. Such inclinations have since when everything changed. Often, it involves a
been at odds with the splashy, Max Martin-pro- reunion. In a fourth-season episode, Goldstein
duced version of the singer, whose upbeat disco introduces us to a man who, as a ten-year-old, “The Dinner Party”
pop doesn’t render angst quite as effectively. in 1974, embarked on a three-day bike trip, For homeschool instructors developing a femi-
“After Hours,” the Weeknd’s fourth and latest across two states, with three friends—un- nist-history curriculum on the fly, the Brooklyn
album, finds his most solid ground between the supervised. “Ah, the seventies,” he says, as Museum provides a no-nonsense resource with
two modes, all echoes and heartbreak caked in funky flute music plays. “All of us crying out its digital presentation of Judy Chicago’s mon-

umental installation “The Dinner Party,” from presence of the husband-and-wife camera- the sudden appearance of a gigantic monster,
1974-79. (The piece is on permanent view at the and-sound team (Shanna Collins and Patrick which wreaks havoc in Seoul for only a few
museum, which is temporarily closed.) Its tri- Fugit). For good measure, the fictional scenes minutes every day. The connection between
angular banquet table, set for thirty-nine illus- are ingeniously interwoven with footage from Gloria’s story and the monster’s is too good
trious guests, is awe-inspiring in person, its the- the actual documentary series. The result is a to spoil; its metaphorical power brings a fu-
atrical grandeur heightened by the handcrafted kaleidoscopic merging of fact and speculation riously clarifying insight to Gloria’s troubles
intricacies of its ceramic plates and needlework that exposes the mighty emotional upheavals and portrays them as the woes of humanity
elements. A brigade of volunteer china painters inherent in the cinéma-vérité process and in at large. The trope has a long setup, but it’s
and embroiderers worked to realize Chicago’s the era at large.—Richard Brody (Streaming on worth it—and Hathaway’s self-transformative,
distinctly vulvar designs for her place settings, Amazon, iTunes, and other services.) forceful performance brings Vigalondo’s strong
which were infamously eyebrow-raising at the idea to life. Released in 2016.—R.B. (Streaming
time, and their palpable labor is part of the on Hulu and other services.)
magic. But online viewing has its advantages, Colossal
too. You can read detailed biographies of the The director Nacho Vigalondo’s wildly imagi-
epoch-spanning women Chicago envisioned native mashup of a self-discovery drama and a Emma.
at her table—figures as varied as Hatshepsut, sci-fi monster thriller is giddy yet substantial. Anya Taylor-Joy, who made such an impact
Hildegard of Bingen, Sojourner Truth, and Anne Hathaway plays Gloria, a hard-drink- in “The Witch” (2015), stars in a slightly dif-
Georgia O’Keeffe. Then, of course, there is the ing New York blogger whose boyfriend (Dan ferent costume drama, one with improved
fascinating life of the artist herself. Chicago Stevens) throws her out of his apartment. She interior décor and less demonic possession.
has long been a lightning rod for impassioned retreats to her late parents’ empty house in In this new adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel,
feminist conversations about inclusion, repre- her rustic home town, bumps into a childhood Taylor-Joy plays Emma Woodhouse, whose
sentation, and art-making, which should be of friend (Jason Sudeikis), gets a part-time job matchmaking causes no end of trouble. Mia
interest to all students of “herstory.”—Johanna in the bar he owns, and tries to take stock of Goth is Harriet Smith, the malleable innocent
Fateman (brooklynmuseum.org) her life. Then she and the world are gripped by whom Emma endeavors to link with a range of
Queer Zine Archive Project

As virtual galleries spring up overnight, this ONLINE MONOLOGUES
nonprofit archive, maintained in Milwaukee, is
well into its second decade as a searchable data-
base and browsable reading room. Self-pub-
lished art books, agitprop, D.I.Y. instruction,
erotica, poetry, fiction—and anything else you
could conceivably photocopy—are all repre-
sented. The earliest work you can view is the
substantial typewritten and hand-illustrated
Spanish-language Somos No. 2, from 1974, by
the Homosexual Liberation Front of Argen-
tina; among the newer uploads is From Sheytls
to Yarmulkes, from 2015, by Sammi Siegel, a
color cut-and-paste zine about the particular
challenges faced by trans Jews. In between
are classics of queercore, such as seven is-
sues of the wickedly funny J.D.s, distributed
from 1985 to circa 1990, by the Toronto punk
legends G. B. Jones (known for her lesbian
reimagining of Tom of Finland’s œuvre) and
the filmmaker Bruce LaBruce; missives from
the riot-grrrl movement; and ephemera from
the AIDS crisis, including a 1997 Sex Panic!
pamphlet. (The influential and beloved art
historian Douglas Crimp, who died last year,
is listed as an author of the latter.) Almost any
1
search term you enter will deliver both laughs
and lessons in mutual aid.—J.F. (qzap.org)
What is theatre without a live audience? We’re about to find out. With
MOVIES shows grounded, artists and theatre companies are finding inventive ways
to adapt. The 24 Hour Plays, which specializes in short works that are
Cinema Verite written and produced in a daylong time frame, sprang into action earlier
Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini di- this month. On the evening of March 16, twenty actors were paired with
rected this exhilarating and insightful drama,
from 2011, about the production, in the early twenty playwrights. Each writer had until 9 A.M. the next morning to
nineteen-seventies, of the twelve-hour PBS write an original monologue, which an actor then self-recorded by that
documentary series “An American Family.” It’s
ILLUSTRATION BY ANTONIO SORTINO
night. In “A Story of Survival,” by David Lindsay-Abaire, Rachel Dratch

a feast of performance, starring James Gan-
dolfini as the producer Craig Gilbert, who re- plays a beauty vlogger who recounts her feud over the last bottle of hand
cruits the solidly middle-class Loud family, of sanitizer at Costco. In Christopher Oscar Peña’s “we were dazzling once,”
Santa Barbara, California—Pat (Diane Lane), Hugh Dancy is a poetic soul leaving an account of his last relationship
Bill (Tim Robbins), and their five adolescent
children—for his project. As Gilbert discovers before the apocalypse. Tavi Gevinson plays a high-strung Reiki instructor
and displays conflict between Bill and the in “Live, Laugh, Life,” by Jenny Rachel Weiner. And, in Jesse Eisenberg’s
eldest Loud son, Lance (Thomas Dekker), “An Immodest Proposal,” Richard Kind plays himself, an actor with an
who is gay and preparing to move to New
York, his own involvement with the family end-of-days proposition: “Hollywood, I’d like to play a Gentile.” All
sparks added tension, as does the constant twenty videos are up at 24hourplays.com.—Michael Schulman
unsuitable men: a minister (Josh O’Connor), the movie colony’s heartthrob—numbering booming Internet startup, but her long work-
a bounder (Callum Turner), and a wealthy among her conquests the killer himself, Sir days are straining her marriage to Matt (An-
neighbor, Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn), who Leopold Sartori, a producer (played by Wal- ders Holm), a stay-at-home dad. Into Jules’s
has other designs in mind. The film, directed ter Matthau with unctuous swagger and an stylish Red Hook offices skips a fairy godfather
by Autumn de Wilde from a screenplay by uproarious Hungarian accent). A series of named Ben (Robert De Niro), a retired execu-
Eleanor Catton, undergoes a notable change: subplots regarding diaries, scripts, and forth- tive and lonely widower who’s a “senior intern.”
initially smart, silly, primped, and somewhat coming movies suggests that the stories cooked Jules, under pressure from investors, increas-
pleased with itself, it grows more serious as up—and lived out—in the bedrooms and the ingly relies on the wise, discreet, and admiring
time goes on. The fact that the heroine follows boardrooms, the mansions and the yachts, volunteer, who becomes a key presence in both
the same arc in her acquisition of wisdom is are the very ones coming soon to the public’s her business and her household. For all its
no coincidence. With Bill Nighy as Emma’s screens. Minnelli embeds melodramas of sex- nostalgic riffs about styles and virtues forged
nervous father.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in ual identity in the ribaldry, turns a riotous before the Age of Aquarius, the movie’s real
our issue of 3/2/20.) (Streaming on Amazon and nocturnal car chase from comedy to horror, subject is the sentimental union of seeming
other services, and on video on demand.) and brings in a snooping detective to evoke enemies, the disruptive young entrepreneur
the lurid tones of a film noir.—R.B. (Streaming and the old-school company man. Meyers,
on Amazon, Vudu, and other services.) an insider’s insider, dispenses her vision of
Goodbye Charlie feminism—and of independence—via the man
Vincente Minnelli’s extravagant inside-Hol- in the gray flannel suit.—R.B. (Streaming on
lywood comedy, from 1964, based on a play The Intern Amazon, iTunes, and other services.)
by George Axelrod, is a fantasy of life and This earnest, effusive haut-bourgeois fantasy,
death. Debbie Reynolds stars as the female by the writer and director Nancy Meyers, runs
reincarnation of a philandering male screen- roughshod over rational skepticism with the The Rest I Make Up
writer who was killed by his lover’s husband. force of life experience. It’s set in the overlap Michelle Memran’s intimate and exhilarating
She discloses her identity only to the writer’s of two generations of Brooklyn business- documentary portrait, from 2018, of the play-
best friend (Tony Curtis) and quickly becomes people. Jules (Anne Hathaway) has built a wright María Irene Fornés unfolds the details
of their decade-plus collaboration in ample,
illuminating discussions between the duo.
Fornés, a crucial theatrical innovator since
WHAT TO STREAM the nineteen-sixties, speaks of her unbridled
self-revelations to the camera, which she calls
“her beloved”—and it certainly loves her back.
She exerts the hypnotic force of stardom, and
her offhanded yet urgent remarks resound with
life-tested literary authority. But tragedy is
built in from the start: Fornés’s bouts of mem-
ory loss prove to be the onset of Alzheimer’s
disease. Though her perception and imagina-
tion remain vivid and vital, she can no longer
recall recent activities—such as a hearty visit
to her native Cuba, which Memran films. The
movie sketches the background of Fornés’s
remarkable life and career with interviews
and archival footage, while highlighting her
enduring creative inspiration on the wing, long
after the end of her playwriting career.—R.B.
(Streaming on Women Make Movies and Kanopy.)
Story of a Love Affair

In his first feature, from 1950, Michelangelo
Antonioni dramatized the power of mass
culture and business—and the bourgeoisie,
who controlled those spheres of activity and
embodied their values. An aging, wealthy
Milan industrialist hires a detective to inves-
tigate the past of his young wife, Paola (Lucia
The annual New Directors/New Films series, which would have run Bosè). When her former lover, Guido (Mas-
through April 5, has introduced New Yorkers to many great discoveries simo Girotti), contacts her about the detec-
since its founding, in 1972, including “Slacker,” Richard Linklater’s sec- tive’s inquiry, the pampered and restless Paola
reignites their romance. Antonioni captures
ond feature, which screened there in 1991 (and is streaming on Amazon, their passion with architectural precision; he
YouTube, and other services). It’s a brilliant roundelay of idiosyncratic presses his lovers into hard-edged corporate
connections between students, ex-students, and eccentrics in Austin, and domestic spaces by way of graphically
etched, high-contrast camerawork that em-
Texas, where Linklater lived; he even plays the first of these characters, phasizes the coldly thrilling modernism of
appearing in a bravura three-minute take in which he tells a cabdriver tall buildings, progressive urbanism, and
about his strange dreams of alternate universes. The film presents the avant-garde design. In Bosè, he found just
the actress to embody that style’s dark allure.
teeming weirdness of daily life in Austin as a swarm of individual alterna- She shares the sleek sculptural power of the
tives, each spinning wildly out of control and crashing into one another’s world that Paola inhabits, wearing the sharply
active fantasies to unleash vast creative energy. The overarching theme is angled artifices of high fashion as if made for
TCD / PROD.DB / ALAMY
them and evoking, with a coolly glowing still-
1
paranoia—many of the characters deliver hectic monologues about ne- ness, fire encased in marble. In Italian.—R.B.
farious official coverups and deceptions, or lash out with absurd violence. (Streaming on Amazon and Kanopy.)
Linklater presents the breezy comedy of casual wandering and easy chat
as the artistic ferment of local bands and filmmakers—and as a critique of For more reviews, visit
a country that’s desperately disconnected from its people.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town

From Le Crocodile, an elegant chicken cacciatore, and fresh ravioli) to
new Williamsburg brasserie that I re- go, but who’s to say for how long?
viewed just weeks ago, I ordered the It seems increasingly untenable,
roast chicken that had helped make the and unsafe, to expect restaurants to
1
place an instant hit, now served at room keep themselves afloat. Last Tuesday, a
temperature as part of a family-style group of New York’s top restaurateurs,
meal, along with a creamy potato-leek including Tom Colicchio and Danny
TABLES FOR TWO soup, the fixings for a celery-and-Stilton Meyer, wrote a joint Op-Ed in the Times
salad, a leek gratin, and chocolate-chip describing the massive aid needed to
Takeout and Delivery cookies. I got a chicken pot pie, too, the prevent their industry from crumbling.
dark-meat-and-wild-mushroom filling Takeout, they explained, is “barely
Last week, like many New Yorkers, I cooked but the pastry raw; after ninety enough to keep anyone employed, given
tried to support a few of the restaurants minutes in the oven, it turned golden the costs of rent and insurance for sit-
I love by ordering takeout and delivery. and made my kitchen smell like Heaven. down restaurants. Our economic model
As of March 17, all restaurants in the It was comfort food, bar none, but the requires people in seats.”
city had been banned from serving cus- courier who delivered it wore latex gloves Restaurants, and the people who
tomers in their dining rooms, and, and a mask. Just a few days later, Le work in and around them, are essen-
though many had closed completely, Crocodile closed its kitchen completely, tial to the fabric and the functioning
PHOTOGRAPH BY COREY OLSEN FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
some were scrambling to adapt, now fearful for the safety of its staff. I waited, of New York, and of society. In recent
with skeleton crews. I was impressed by eagerly but patiently (unlike the takeout days, some have converted into make-
the creativity of their fallback plans, and crowds that have reportedly been mob- shift soup kitchens, providing meals to
grateful to be eating food that afforded bing the sidewalk outside the usually eat- the countless servers, bartenders, bussers,
me fleeting respite from worry. But each in-only Italian restaurant Carbone), for a dishwashers, and cooks who find them-
meal felt like a distress signal from a shipment from MáLà Project, a Chinese selves suddenly without paychecks. Eric
marooned ship. restaurant that normally specializes in Sze, the chef and co-owner of 886, a
Roberta’s, the beloved Bushwick piz- dry pot but had started offering a selec- Taiwanese restaurant in the East Village,
zeria, delivered D.I.Y. meal kits: balls of tion of “Quarantine Foods,” including started his career in college, with a one-
oiled pizza dough with tomato sauce and jarred sauces and fresh noodles. Then I man company called Scallion Foods,
mozzarella; fresh tagliatelle with oxtail got an e-mail: “We will no longer be able biking beef-noodle-soup kits across
ragù and gremolata bread crumbs. From to fulfill any takeout and delivery orders.” Manhattan. In the past two weeks, he’s
Cote, an upscale Korean restaurant in the I’ll be rationing a precious loaf of returned to his roots, working largely
Flatiron district, I ordered a magnum of sesame sourdough baked by Adam Le- alone to make bento boxes with braised
Beaujolais and a “steak care package”: onti, whose restaurant Leonti was the pork belly or five-spice tofu in addition
four aged rib eyes, raw, with detailed in- best on the Upper West Side before its to soup. They’re still available, in limited
structions for how to cook them, plus untimely closure, earlier this year. Just quantity, for pickup and delivery, but
pungent ssamjang, a custom salt mix, and prior to the shutdown, he was set to open most of the food he’s cooking, funded
an array of banchan, including kimchi and a new place, Sofia’s Panificio e Vino, in by donations, is going to hospitals, to
crunchy pickled chayote squash. A roll of Little Italy. At the moment, you can get feed their lionhearted staffs.
toilet paper was also tucked into the box. his superlative loaves (plus minestrone, —Hannah Goldfield
Caring for someone with
Alzheimer’s isn’t easy.
Reaching us is.
If you care for someone with Alzheimer’s disease, memory loss or dementia, you are not alone.
We’re here day or night — whenever you need us — offering reliable information and support.
Free 24/7 Helpline: 800.272.3900

Alzheimer’s and Dementia Caregiver Center: alz.org/care
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT to strike the country in a century. Yet ing in the right-wing media. He said
UNSCIENTIFIC METHOD his conduct typified his leadership as that, to revitalize the economy, he would
the crisis has intensified: his dependency like to lift travel restrictions and reopen
n March 18th, researchers in France on Fox News for ideas and message am- workplaces across the country within
O circulated a study about the prom-
ising experimental use of hydroxychlo-
plification, his unshakable belief in his
own genius, and his understandable con-
weeks, perhaps by Easter, which is on
April 12th, because, as he put it repeat-
roquine, an anti-malaria drug, in com- cern that his reëlection may be in dan- edly, “we can’t let the cure be worse than
bination with azithromycin, an antibiotic, ger if he does not soon discover a way the problem.”
as a treatment for the disease caused by to vanquish COVID-19 and reverse its Public-health experts immediately
the coronavirus. The study was neither devastation of the economy. warned against such a reversal of social-
randomized nor peer-reviewed, and New York City now faces a “trou- distancing rules. “The virus will surge,
other scientists soon criticized its meth- bling and astronomical” increase in cases, many will fall ill, and there will be more
odology. But Tucker Carlson, on Fox according to Governor Andrew Cuomo, deaths,” William Schaffner, a specialist
News, highlighted the work. The next and the emergency is overwhelming in preventive medicine at Vanderbilt
day, President Trump promoted hy- hospitals, straining drug and equipment University, told the Times. When a re-
droxychloroquine’s “very, very encour- supplies, and threatening to cause a porter asked the President whether any
aging early results.” He added, men- shortage of ventilators. The grim course of the “doctors on your team” had ad-
tioning another unproven therapy, “I of events in the city is a “canary in the vised him that a hasty reopening was
think it could be, based on what I see, coal mine” for the rest of the country, “the right path to pursue,” he replied, “If
it could be a game changer.” Cuomo said, and leaders elsewhere must it were up to the doctors, they may say,
At a White House press briefing on take decisive action lest they, too, be- ‘Let’s keep it shut down . . . let’s keep it
March 20th, a reporter asked Anthony come inundated. Trump, though, spent shut for a couple of years.’” Public-health
Fauci, the director of the National In- much of last week promoting a con- specialists have said no such thing; they
stitute of Allergy and Infectious Dis- trarian gambit that has been percolat- have spoken of a conditions-based ap-
eases, whether hydroxychloroquine proach (“You don’t make the timeline,
could be effective in treating covid-19. the virus makes the timeline,” Fauci has
“The answer is no,” Fauci said, before said), while advising that, to save the
yielding the microphone to Trump, who most lives, local leaders must wait to lift
countered, “May work, may not. I feel restrictions in their areas until the data
good about it. That’s all it is, just a feel- show that the virus has stopped spread-
ing, you know, smart guy.” A few days ing. Trump said that any loosening of
later, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, rules he might seek around the coun-
the director-general of the World try—he mentioned Nebraska and Idaho
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA
Health Organization, said, “Using un- as possible sites—would be “based on

tested drugs without the right evidence hard facts and data,” but he also said that
could raise false hope and even do more he chose Easter as a target date because
harm than good.” he “just thought it was a beautiful time.”
Trump’s quackery was at once eccen- It is true, as Trump also argued, that
tric and terrifying—a reminder, if one enormous job losses and an all but cer-
was needed, of his scorn for rigorous tain recession caused by the pandemic
science, even amid the worst pandemic will harm many vulnerable Americans,
and claim lives, as ill people without the “LameStream Media” for reporting The journal Science asked Fauci why
health insurance, for example, forgo care such forecasts, calling the press “the dom- he doesn’t step in when the President
or struggle to get it at stressed clinics inant force in trying to get me to keep makes false statements in the briefings.
and hospitals. Yet, at least in the short our Country closed as long as possible “I can’t jump in front of the microphone
term, over-all mortality rates fall during in the hope that it will be detrimental and push him down,” he said. Ameri-
recessions; the reasons for this aren’t to my election success.” Last Wednes- ca’s public-health system is fragmented
fully clear, but social scientists think they day, after Mitt Romney, the only Repub- and market-driven, conditions that only
may include the public-health benefits lican who voted to convict the President, compound the challenge of quashing
of a decrease in pollution, as a result of on a charge of abuse of power, during COVID-19. In the Trump era, however,
the slowing economy. In any event, the the Senate impeachment trial, announced decentralization has a benefit: the Pres-
case the President made for hurrying that he had tested negative for COVID- ident is not solely in charge, and in the
an economic revival against the advice 19, Trump tweeted mockingly, “I’m so months ahead governors and mayors
of scientists was morally odious; it sug- happy I can barely speak.” At the White will continue to shape the odds of life
gested that large numbers of otherwise House briefings, surrounded by the sorts or death for great numbers of Ameri-
avoidable deaths might have to be ac- of civil servants and experts he habitu- cans. Last week, Trump reviewed the
cepted as the price of job creation. ally disdains, Trump has adapted awk- possibilities for quarantine in New York
Public-health officials spoke frankly wardly to the role of solemn unifier. City, his ravaged home town. He ram-
to the press about the catastrophic pros- When he leaves the podium to tweet bled about the stock exchange (“It’s in-
pects of the President’s Easter folly. nonsense at his perceived enemies, he at credible what they can do”), before going
(“President Trump will have blood on least provides his opponents among the on to pledge, “If we open up, and when
his hands,” Keith Martin, the director country’s homebound, screen-addled, we open up . . . we’re giving the gover-
of the Consortium of Universities for and anxious citizenry with a galvanizing nors a lot of leeway” to decide how this
Global Health, told the Times.) Trump dose of his immutable obnoxiousness—a should be done. We can only hope so.
responded on Twitter by lashing out at splash of the old new normal. —Steve Coll
ALL HANDS ON DECK DEPT. production, and to design an open-source mobilizing equipment that functions
MACGYVERING plan for a cheap and simple emergency similarly to ventilators (like anesthesia
ventilator that hospitals can use. As in- machines). Fenton has also recruited law-
spiration, he reminded everyone that the yers, in the hope that, should a solid de-
Apollo 13 astronauts created a carbon-di- sign emerge from the project, mass pro-
oxide scrubber from spare parts. duction of these ventilators—and their
Fenton is not a doctor; he’s a block- use in hospitals—won’t be stalled by reg-
chain activist. But, in 2019, his son had ulators such as the F.D.A. And he has
e need more ventilators. COVID- back-to-back brain surgeries, and he recalled on “engineers, builders, and Mac-
W 19 attacks the lungs; ventilators
help you breathe when you’re no longer
calls the neurosurgeons using a torque
wrench to fasten pins into his son’s skull,
Gyver types who can build a legit ven-
tilator” out of “Home Depot type parts.”
able to do so on your own. There are and several bags of sand to keep his son’s Most of the volunteers are MacGyver
around a hundred and seventy thousand head still on the hospital bed. “These were types. Or they’re MacGruber types claim-
ventilators in the United States, but, ac- two major surgeries,” Fenton said. “And ing to be MacGyver types—online, it can
cording to worst-case estimates, some they’re talking about how much sand to be hard to tell the difference. Two weeks
nine hundred and sixty thousand people put in this thing.” The surgeons hadn’t ago, a man named Paul Côté, whose spe-
will soon need one. “Ventilators are to this run out of normal materials; for this pro- cialties include 3-D modelling and com-
war what missiles were to World War II,” cedure, those were the normal materials. putational fluid dynamics, asked, “Could
Governor Andrew Cuomo said recently. The takeaway? Doctors are comfortable a simple water-electrolysis device work
In this war, the civilians have not been using weird tools and archaic methods, as a makeshift oxygen concentrator?”
rationing (see: empty toilet-paper aisles; even outside the context of an emergency. “Risk of explosion from hydrogen,”
the rush on oat milk; the L.A. Times The Ventilator Project’s three hun- a former tech engineer named Mark
headline “ ‘We’ve Never Sold Out of Pork dred and fifty volunteers do most of their Proffitt replied. The next week, Proffitt
Butt Before’”). But Rosie the Riveter isn’t brainstorming on the chat app Slack. A made another contribution: he posted a
gone—she’s just working from home. few proposals: repurposing CPAP ma- YouTube video titled “Ultra-Jank Ven-
The other day, Bruce Fenton, of Ports- chines (sleep-apnea masks) as ventila- tilator,” in which a constantly cursing
mouth, New Hampshire, posted a call tors, rigging single ventilators to treat Canadian man shows off his glorified
for volunteers on the Web site Medium. multiple patients, and using grounded gravity bong. (“Might be more peaceful
He was leading something called the airplanes as treatment facilities, in order to suffocate than have that thing hooked
Ventilator Project—a crowdsourced effort to take advantage of the overhead oxy- to you,” one person commented.)
to address the shortage. The project’s two gen masks. Many participants are med- How janky is too janky, in an emer-
goals, Fenton wrote, were to help exist- ical professionals, such as Stuart Solo- gency? “Doctors aren’t stupid,” Fenton
ing ventilator manufacturers ramp up mon, a Stanford anesthesiologist who is said. “They’re not going to use some junk
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ventilator unless they need to. Hopefully day, including holidays, for thirty-eight changed so fast, some of the potatoes
it won’t be junk. Maybe it’ll be half as years. A major fire in the church in 1990 they sent us were already peeled.”
effective as a normal ventilator, but that’s didn’t stop it, nor did September 11th By ten-fifteen, the line stretched to
a heck of a lot better than no ventilator.” or Superstorm Sandy. It has never Twenty-eighth Street, around the cor-
One promising idea is to return to missed a day. Lately, the serving sta- ner, and down the long block between
the old-school ventilators of the past. tion has been moved outdoors, to the Ninth Avenue and Eighth. A soup-
Current designs are more sophisticated church’s front gate, on Ninth Avenue, kitchen employee in a jacket of high-vis-
than necessary for treating the average near West Twenty-eighth Street. The ibility green was walking along the line
COVID-19 patient, and extremely diffi- menu still offers a hot meal but pack- and urging those waiting to maintain
cult to produce in, say, a Tesla factory. aged in a to-go sack with recyclable spaces of six feet between one another.
Dave Empey is a respiratory therapist dishes, which are the biggest expense They complied, reluctantly, but some-
who has worked with ventilators since at the moment. how the line kept re-compressing it-
the seventies, before battery backups, In non-pandemic times, the serv- self. A strange, almost taxicab-less ver-
digital displays, and remote monitoring. ers and other helpers include fifty or sion of traffic went by on Ninth—de-
He wrote, “In my opinion it’s possible sixty volunteers. Many of these are re- livery trucks, police tow trucks, police
to pare down these design requirements.” tirees, and to keep them safe the soup cars, home-health-care-worker vans,
“Anyone have experience with the kitchen has told most not to come almost empty buses. Now and then a
Harry Diamond Labs ‘emergency army in. Now all the preparation, serving, dog-walker, masked or swathed in a
respirator’?” Alex Izvorski, a biomedical cleanup, and security is done by a core scarf, passed. The dogs, unconcerned,
engineer, asked, referring to a sixties-era group of about fourteen soup-kitchen were enjoying the sunny day. At ten-
controlled-pressure ventilator. “I’m try- staff and select volunteers, who wear thirty, lunch service started. The guests
ing to get one of the engineering proto- gloves, wash their hands a lot, and prac- (as the soup kitchen refers to them)
types—from a museum, of all places.” tice “physical distancing.” The Rever- were admitted to the serving station
Fenton is sure that the group will be end Dr. Anna Pearson, the church’s one at a time, like travellers in airport
able to build more ventilators, whether rector and head of the soup kitchen, security. Opening their lunch sacks,
of vintage design or fashioned out of vac- told a visitor, “We don’t call it ‘social they began to eat standing on the side-
uum-cleaner bags. (A team in Italy has distancing,’ because what we offer here walk or leaning against the Citi Bike
been successful in hacking snorkelling is not only food, it’s a human connec- stands, or they crossed to the court-
gear; five hundred patients are now using tion, even when we must stay physi- yard of a public building across the
it to breathe.) But, as is the case with Bit- cally farther apart.” street and sat on benches by a statue
coin, Fenton anticipates a “last-mile prob- Early on a recent morning, the sun of a soldier in the First World War.
lem.” “Let’s say we build twenty thou- came down the city’s canyons, hitting Michael Ottley, the soup kitchen’s
sand ventilators in a World War II-style the white blooms of the pear trees be- C.O.O., stood watching. “We’re doing
effort,” he said. “It could come down to, hind the church. Construction work- about eight hundred meals a day right
O.K., who is physically at the hospital to ers walked west from the subway stops now,” he said. “We may have to in-
take delivery?” Or, “How does a doctor and kept going, to the under-construc- crease that as more people lose their
know that it’s O.K. to use these ventila- tion buildings bordering the Hudson jobs. At any time, we’re ready to go to
tors? Do you print a piece of paper say- River, and soon the cranes started a thousand a day, or higher.” Christo-
ing ‘This has emergency F.D.A. approval’ swinging against the blue sky and the pher Molinari stepped outside to join
and stamp it on each one?” He went on, elevators on tracks outside the build- him, along with Ginger Pierce, a vol-
“Can a doctor train up on this equipment ings’ steel frameworks were going unteer, who was the executive chef at
in an hour?” And what if there are enough up and down. By eight o’clock, most Jams, a farm-to-table restaurant on
ventilators, but not enough doctors to of the staff had shown up, and some Fifty-eighth Street, until it recently
1
operate them? What will we do then? were preparing that day’s entrée— shut down. Reverend Pearson is con-
—Tyler Foggatt baked ham with sweet potato. Seagulls cerned that in a bad economy donors
shrieked as they swirled overhead might get nervous and the soup kitch-
HOT MEAL DEPT. toward the river. First in line, by the en’s funding might go dry. “But we, the
STILL OPEN church gate, a man in two hooded coats staff, are in it to stay,” Molinari said.
sat with his back against the fence, “This is a great place. As other soup
knees up, reading the News. White vans kitchens have closed, Holy Apostles is
and box trucks pulled to the curb on the last light still on. Without us, a lot
Ninth Avenue and unloaded crates of our guests would probably fall by
of broccoli and olive oil. Christopher the wayside. We’re not going to let that
Molinari, the head chef and culinary happen.” On the avenue, masked and
eople still have to eat. The soup manager, said, “When all the restau- gloved delivery people from upscale
P kitchen at the Church of the Holy
Apostles, the largest in the city, still
rants started closing, some sent us their
leftover supplies, and we’re still im-
grocery stores went pedalling by, tow-
ing trailers piled with green-and-yel-
feeds lunch to many of the hungriest provising menus from what we got. low plastic bins.
among us, as it has done every week- The food-service situation in the city —Ian Frazier
1
DEPT. OF SNAKE OIL SKETCHPAD BY LIANA FINCK
PREPPING FOR PROFIT
n March 6th, government officials

O in Austin, Texas, cancelled South
by Southwest, because of COVID-19. Al-
though the cancellation would surely
save lives, it would also, the festival’s or-
ganizers said in a statement, take a toll
on “hundreds of small businesses.” But
at least one small business in Austin did
not let the crisis go to waste. Infowars is
a group of Web sites—a “news” blog,
audio and video feeds, an online store—
founded by Alex Jones, the nation’s most
prolific disinformation agent who does
not hold elective office. (One of Jones’s
most prominent fans, Donald Trump,
once told him, on air, “Your reputation is
amazing.”) In a video broadcast the day
after South by Southwest was called off,
Jones and a guest speculated that the
reason was not concern for public safety
but rather a “psy-op”—a psychological
operation to sow panic and consolidate
government power. “Controlling people
is a stopgap,” Jones said. “But having
antivirals, getting your immune system
healthy—that is the answer. And, yes,
folks, we sell great antivirals.”
Jones is best known for his paranoid
rants, which have brought him some rev-
enue in the form of online ads, but he
makes most of his income as a snake-oil
salesman. The Infowars store sells hun-
dreds of products, from “nutraceuticals”
to “tactical pens” to “survival food” (dried
beans and the like, perfect for stocking
a bunker). For the past few weeks, nearly
every food item has been sold out. A
note on the site read, “Our expanded
team is focusing on and will deliver the
tens of thousands of orders already in
our queue as we work diligently through
this national emergency together.”
Many of Jones’s “health and wellness”
products contain colloidal silver: SuperSil-
ver Whitening Toothpaste, SuperSilver
Wound Dressing Gel, ABL Nano Sil-
ver Gargle. Colloidal silver has only one
known effect on the body—if you take
too much of it, your skin might turn blue.
Still, disaster-prepper types have long
“miniscule font size makes it unlikely The resulting rush was, for her, unprec-
that potential customers will read or even edented. She was out of ARs and .308
see the disclaimer.” rifles. A few shotguns remained, and she
Days later, a new disclaimer appeared, told shoppers that they could saw them
this one in a non-minuscule font: “The off, to a legal length. “Obama didn’t even
products sold on this site are not intended bring in these numbers,” Bales said.
for use in the cure, treatment, prevention, At noon, a woman in her sixties came
or mitigation of any disease, including in. She wore plastic gloves and had a
the novel coronavirus.” Near the dis- scarf wrapped around her face, and she
claimer, however, was a link to products traced a wide arc around the only other
such as a “Build the Wall, Protect Texas” non-employee in the store. “I’ve been
T-shirt, George Washington socks (“We doing this since the beginning of March,”
need to broadcast true Americana every- she said, referring to her protective gear.
where we go to shut down globalist cen- “I don’t feel sick at all. I’m self-quaran-
sorship”), and bottles of ABL Nano Sil- tining.” She left her house only for es-
ver Gargle (sold out, wait list available). sential activities. This was one. “I’m buy-
Alex Jones “This is the plan, folks,” Jones said. “They ing a gun,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”
plan on, if they’ve fluoridated you and She went on, “My son was a little
touted it as a cure for viral ailments, from vaccinated you and stunned you and mes- upset about it.” (He preferred his bow
H.I.V. to the common cold. “This stuff merized you with the TV and put you in and arrow.) “I’m old and I live alone,
kills the whole SARS-corona family at a trance, on killing you.” Meanwhile, and we don’t know if there’s going to
point-blank range,” Jones said in a live “they” were determined “to make sure be civil unrest. The world is not the
stream on March 10th. “It kills every you don’t learn about the known antivi- same.” She added, “It didn’t have to be
virus.” This is not true. On March 6th, rals that are in the environment.” this way.” Unlike many of the shop’s
the F.D.A. had issued an open letter, “He has added a new disclaimer, but regulars, she was no fan of Trump: “He’s
warning, “There currently are no vac- he hasn’t stopped selling the products,” a divider all the way. First he said, ‘Five
cines, pills, potions, lotions, lozenges or James said. “We are still in contact with people have died, big deal.’ Now he’s
other prescription or over-the-counter his lawyers, and, at a certain point, if they saying, ‘I always knew it’d be danger-
products available to treat or cure corona- refuse to comply with our order, then ous.’ ” Talk turned to Portland. “It’s a
virus disease.” Jones was only one of many enough is enough.” Meaning what? ghost town,” a young woman said. Her
opportunists advertising bogus corona- “Meaning we hit them with an array of name was Rosemary, and she was help-
virus cures. Jim Bakker, the televangelist, violations, we issue subpoenas, and we ing Bales out, since the restaurant where
was also selling a colloidal-silver gel; on could haul them to court,” she said. “My she waited tables had closed.
Facebook, Vivify Holistic Clinic adver- advice to Mr. Jones and any other scam- “I don’t like to go in cities anymore,
tised a “very strong boneset tea.” mers out there would be to heed our anyway,” the customer said.
Although the Infowars studio is in warnings, because, when we go to court, “But these rumors about them put-
1
Texas, none of that state’s officials did we have a pretty high success rate.” ting this country in full lockdown are
anything to derail Jones’s sales pitch. But —Andrew Marantz inaccurate,” Rosemary said. “It’s a scare
since Infowars content is viewable wher- tactic. It’s not like all of a sudden we’re
ever people have Internet, including New OREGON POSTCARD gonna wake up one day and everyone is
York, this state’s consumer-protection SHOPPING TRIP sick and the whole world is ending.”
laws apply. “Whenever there’s height- “I don’t know,” the customer said. “The
ened fear and hysteria, we start to see exponential growth is happening.”
scammers,” Letitia James, New York’s at- “If anything, we’re definitely repop-
torney general, said recently. “We see ulating, if nobody is at work,” Rosemary
stores around Brooklyn selling hand san- said cheerily. “We won’t have a shortage
itizer for eighty dollars a bottle. We see of humans, that’s for sure.”
people setting up fake charities—phish- here was no complimentary hand Bales helped her customer choose a
ing attempts, essentially. We see medical
scams—Web sites that have a magic cure.
T sanitizer for the concerned custom-
ers of Gorge Guns, in Hood River, Or-
weapon. (“Pick three,” the customer told
her.) As Bales rummaged around, the
We have a responsibility to take action egon, on a recent Friday. Erika Bales, the customer said, “I’m going to have a sol-
against anything that is putting New shop’s twenty-nine-year-old owner, wasn’t dier train me. A friend of my son’s.” Bales
Yorkers in danger.” worried about the virus. “I figure, just let returned with the first option. “A .22
James instructed Lisa Landau, the nature take its course,” she said. Her cus- Mag,” she said. “Holds thirty rounds.”
chief of her office’s health-care bureau, tomers were less nonchalant. Bales, who The customer peered at the gun.
to send Jones a cease-and-desist letter. had a neat manicure and a number of “It’s a Kel-Tec PMR-30,” Bales said.
In a footnote, Landau acknowledged that tattoos, said that, days earlier, people had “I like the color of it,” the customer
the Infowars site did include some vague begun realizing that “everyone’s buying said. “It’s not black.” She picked it up.
verbiage disclaiming liability, but that its things and everything’s gonna be gone.” “It feels good. And it’s got a safety. I’m
going to take this one. You’ve got ammo
for it, right?” Bales nodded and noted a
1
MAKING DO DEPT.
silence of a studio without an audience.
“So dystopian! So, when my audience just
REMOTE
few of the gun’s features. “As long as can’t contain their laughter . . .” She used
you’re accurate, it’ll do damage,” she said. her phone to cue a tinny laugh track.
“This is just going to be for close “It, uh, it clearly sounds electronic,”
range,” the customer said. “In my house. Lillie called from the tech booth.
If it happens.” (Asked what “it” was, she “Oh, that’s the whole point,” Siskind
said, “In two months, if the cities are replied brightly.
starving, they’re gonna come out. And I Siskind’s good cheer is representative.
understand that.”) Bales piled boxes of hree days after the Lower East Side “Everyone’s pretty game,” Lillie said.
ammunition on the counter. “I’ll take
them all,” the customer said. She ducked
T venue Caveat closed its doors to the
public, Sarah Rose Siskind stood alone
“We’re an experimental space, so this is
what our performers do. We have this
outside to get her wallet from the car. on its stage, preparing for an audience little three-camera setup. We play with
“I think she’s a liberal,” Bales said, she couldn’t see. With comedy clubs across new formats and new things, and live
once the door closed. “There’s so many the city shutting down, Caveat’s co- streaming is something we’ve wanted to
coming in. First-time-gun-owner liber- founder Ben Lillie became one of the do—we’ve just never had a reason to pull
als. I’ve probably seen ten this week. It’s first to attempt streaming shows online. the trigger. So, here we go!”
so funny, because I hope it just turns Siskind, the guinea pig for this approach, Onstage, Siskind chatted with one of
them on to liking the Second Amend- was making some last-minute changes the academics set to appear on her show,
ment. I mean, the Constitution was cre- to her act. “Caveat has a license to play whom she had called for a remote sound
ated for a reason. To protect us.” copyrighted music in the theatre, but not check. “Last night I watched ‘Contagion,’”
The customer returned. The bill was on a live stream—and my show is built she confessed. “It’s the worst thing to
almost entirely around copyrighted watch, but everything else is not interesting
music,” she explained. She gave a wry to me. I watched ‘The Omega Man’ be-
smile and brandished a ukulele. “I pretty fore that. I’m just making my way through
much know three songs, and they’re all the list.” She sighed and ducked behind
sad, so . . .” the abandoned bar, emerging with a beer.
“ ‘Losing My Religion’ sounds great “I was hoping that this show would be
on a ukulele,” Lillie said. He headed to- something familiar, you know? Something
ward the tech booth at the back of the kind of off topic from corona.” But, with
theatre, passing shelves full of skulls, am- half an hour to go, technical difficulties
monites, and planetary models. Caveat, still loomed: she noted the sputtering
which opened in 2017, styles itself as a projector and made a diplomatic reference
hub for “smart entertainment,” and the to a certain demographic whose mem-
fact that many of its performers are re- bers were struggling to navigate Zoom.
searchers or science educators by day “The boomers?” the academic asked.
proved useful in drawing up an action “I was trying to say boomers, but I
plan for the pandemic. One show, “Doc- couldn’t bring myself to say it,” Siskind
tors Without Boundaries,” is m.c.’d by replied. “I feel bad making fun of them,
E.R. physicians who now find themselves given the coronavirus. They’re having a
on the front lines of New York’s corona- tough time!”
nearly seven hundred dollars, including virus response. When its co-host Andres She continued to call remote guests,
electronic ear protection and sixteen boxes Mallipudi began to show symptoms of finalizing her lineup. After some trou-
of bullets. She could come back and pick Covid-19 but remained determined to bleshooting, Lillie reappeared.
up the gun once her digital background participate remotely, the club realized the “There is no way we’re going to get
check cleared. The customer asked, “If I broadcast could be a model for all events through this without insane levels of
don’t get approved, what happens?” going forward. Lillie, who lives two doors mistakes,” Siskind told him, smiling.
“You already got approved,” Bales down, can come into the space as needed, “It’s endearingly we’re-all-making-
said, glancing at a computer, with some but he said he wouldn’t ask a performer shit-up-because-of-coronavirus!” he said.
surprise. to do the same, especially if doing so re- They tapped elbows.
“O.K.! Can I take it?” quired taking public transportation. Minutes before airtime, the lights
“Yeah. Some people go through fast.” Siskind also lives nearby. She’s done dimmed. “This way, I can pretend there
The new gun owner asked if there standup at a number of local clubs, but are people in the audience—they just
was a shooting range nearby. She asked Caveat was the only one, by then, that hate me, and they’re being super quiet,”
if she needed a concealed-carry permit. had moved online—perhaps in part be- Siskind said. “So, much better!” She cra-
She asked how to carry the gun out. “I cause of the challenges posed by remote dled her ukulele, plucked the opening
can’t believe this!” she said, stepping into comedy. “Steve Colbert’s monologue was chords of Lady Gaga’s “Angel Down,”
the world with her brand-new gun. the creepiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” and started to sing.
—Charles Bethea she said, laughing as she recalled the eerie —Alex Barasch
involved taking matter from a smallpox
CORONAVIRUS CHRONICLES patient’s pustule—a snake pit of live
virus—and applying it to the pricked
skin of an uninfected person, then cov-
ering the spot with a linen rag.
The Indian practitioners of tika had
likely learned it from Arabic physicians,
who had learned it from the Chinese.
As early as 1100, medical healers in China
had realized that those who survived
smallpox did not catch the illness again
(survivors of the disease were enlisted
to take care of new victims), and in-
ferred that the exposure of the body to
an illness protected it from future in-
stances of that illness. Chinese doctors
would grind smallpox scabs into a pow-
der and insufflate it into a child’s nos-
tril with a long silver pipe.
Vaccination with live virus was a
tightrope walk: if the amount of viral
inoculum in the powder was too great,
the child would succumb to a full-
fledged version of the disease—a disas-
ter that occurred perhaps one in a hun-
dred times. If all went well, the child
would have a mild experience of the
disease, and be immunized for life. By
the seventeen-hundreds, the practice
had spread throughout the Arab world.
In the seventeen-sixties, women in
Sudan practiced tishteree el jidderee (“buy-
ing the pox”): one mother haggling with
The One and the Many another over how many of a sick child’s
ripe pustules she would buy for her own
son or daughter. It was an exquisitely
We’ve counted the viral spread across peoples; we need to count it within people. measured art: the most astute traditional
healers recognized the lesions that were
BY SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE likely to yield just enough viral mate-
rial, but not too much. The European
name for the disease, variola, comes from
n the third week of February, as the contract it, and dampen the fury of a the Latin for “spotted” or “pimpled.”
I COVID-19 epidemic was still flaring
in China, I arrived in Kolkata, India. I
pox epidemic.
The shrine was a small structure
The process of immunizing against the
pox was called “variolation.”
woke up to a sweltering morning—the within a temple a few blocks from Kol- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the
black kites outside my hotel room were kata Medical College. Inside, there was wife of the British Ambassador to Con-
circling upward, lifted by the warming a figurine of the goddess, sitting on a stantinople, had herself been stricken
currents of air—and I went to visit a donkey and carrying her jar of cooling by the disease, in 1715, leaving her per-
shrine to the goddess Shitala. Her name liquid—the way she has been depicted fect skin pitted with scars. Later, in the
means “the cool one”; as the myth has for a millennium. The temple was two Turkish countryside, she witnessed the
it, she arose from the cold ashes of a hundred and fifty years old, the atten- practice of variolation, and wrote to her
sacrificial fire. The heat that she is sup- dant informed me. That would date it friends in wonder, describing the work
posed to diffuse is not just the fury of to around the time when accounts first of one specialist: “The old woman comes
summer that hits the city in mid-June appeared of a mysterious sect of Brah- with a nut-shell full of the matter of
but also the inner heat of inflammation. mans wandering up and down the Gan- the best sort of small-pox, and asks what
She is meant to protect children from getic plain to popularize the practice of vein you please to have opened,” where-
smallpox, heal the pain of those who tika, an early effort at inoculation. This upon she “puts into the vein as much
matter as can lie upon the head of her
Measurement will help identify factors affecting the severity of COVID-19 cases. needle.” Patients retired to bed for a
18 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXANDER GLANDIEN
couple of days with a fever, and, Lady a particularly striking online simulation, system. Yet similar patterns have been
Montagu noted, emerged remarkably in which people in a city were depicted observed with other viruses.
unscathed. “They have very rarely above as dots moving freely in space—unin- And, immunologically, that’s not sur-
twenty or thirty in their faces, which fected ones in gray, infected ones in red prising. If your system is able to combat
never mark; and in eight days’ time they (then shifting to pink, as immunity was viral replication with some efficiency—
are as well as before their illness.” She acquired). Each time a red dot touched owing to your age, your genetics, and
reported that thousands safely under- a gray dot, the infection was transmit- other indices of immune competence—
went the operation every year, and that ted. With no intervention, the whole you’ll have a lower set point. Could a
the disease had largely been contained field of dots steadily turned from gray lower initial exposure, as with children
in the region. “You may believe I am to red. Social distancing and isolation treated with tika, also lead to a lower set
well satisfied of the safety of this exper- kept the dots from knocking into one point? Faced with a smaller challenge,
iment,” she added, “since I intend to try another, and slowed the spread of red the immune system could have a greater
it on my dear little son.” Her son never across the screen. chance of controlling the pathogen. In
got the pox. This was a bird’s-eye view of a virus contrast, if you’re inundated with mul-
radiating through a population, seen as tiple high-dose exposures, the swiftly
n the centuries since Lady Montagu an “on-off ” phenomenon. The doctor replicating invader could gain ground
I marvelled at the efficacy of inocula-
tion, we’ve made unimaginable discov-
and medical researcher in me—as a grad-
uate student, I was trained in viral im-
that the immune system might be hard-
pressed to reconquer.
eries in the biology and epidemiology of munology—wanted to know what was
infectious disease, and yet the COVID-19 going on within the dots. How much n ingenious study on the relation-
pandemic poses no shortage of puzzles.
Why did it spread like wildfire in Italy,
virus was in that red dot? How fast was
it replicating in this dot? How was the
A ship between the intensity of viral
exposure and infectivity in human be-
thousands of miles from its initial epi- exposure—the “touch time”—related to ings comes from a team at the Fred
center, in Wuhan, while India appears the chance of transmission? How long Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
so far to have largely been spared? What did a red dot remain red—that is, how and the University of Washington, in
animal species transmitted the original did an individual’s infectiousness change Seattle. In 2018, an epidemiologist and
infection to humans? over time? And what was the severity statistician named Bryan Mayer joined
But three questions deserve partic- of disease in each case? a group of physicians and biologists who
ular attention, because their answers What we’ve learned about other vi- were researching a problem that seemed,
could change the way we isolate, treat, ruses—including the ones that cause on its face, almost impossible to tackle.
and manage patients. First, what can we AIDS, SARS, and smallpox—suggests a Mayer, who is in his mid-thirties, is soft-
learn about the “dose-response curve” more complex view of the disease, its spoken and precise: he uses words care-
for the initial infection—that is, can we rate of progression, and strategies for fully, and speaks in long, slow sentences.
quantify the increase in the risk of in- containment. In the nineteen-nineties, “Even as a graduate student, I was in-
fection as people are exposed to higher as researchers learned to measure how terested in the idea of a dose of a virus
doses of the virus? Second, is there a re- much H.I.V. was in a patient’s blood, a or a pathogen,” he told me. “But the
lationship between that initial “dose” of distinct pattern emerged. After an infec- problem is that the initial dose is often
virus and the severity of the disease— tion, the virus count in the blood would impossible to capture, because you only
that is, does more exposure result in rise to a zenith, known as “peak viremia,” know a person is infected after he or
graver illness? And, third, are there quan- and patients with the highest peak vire- she has been infected.” Most infectious
titative measures of how the virus be- mia typically became sicker sooner; they diseases can only be viewed in a rear-
haves in infected patients (e.g., the peak were least able to resist the virus. Even view mirror: by the time a patient be-
of your body’s viral load, the patterns of more predictive than the peak viral load comes a patient, that critical moment
its rise and fall) that predict the sever- was the so-called set point—the level at of transmission has already passed.
ity of their illness and how infectious which someone’s virus count settled after But the researchers found an unusual
they are to others? So far, in the early its initial peak. It represented a dynamic resource: a cohort of new mothers and
phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, we equilibrium that was reached between their children in Kampala, Uganda. A
have been measuring the spread of the the virus and its human host. People with few years earlier, a pediatrician named
virus across people. As the pace of the a high set point tended to progress more Soren Gantt and a team of doctors ex-
pandemic escalates, we also need to start rapidly to AIDS; people with a low set amined these women, and asked them
measuring the virus within people. point frequently proved to be “slow pro- to provide oral swabs for a year. Then
Most epidemiologists, given the pau- gressors.” The viral load—a continuum, they measured how much the women
city of data, have been forced to model not a binary value—helped predict the shed a virus called HHV-6, which is
the spread of the new coronavirus as if nature, course, and transmissibility of the usually spread through oral secretions
it were a binary phenomenon: individ- disease. To be sure, every virus has its to an infant after birth, and which causes
uals are either exposed or unexposed, own personality, and H.I.V. has traits fever and a red whole-body rash. It was
infected or uninfected, symptomatic pa- that make viral load especially revealing: now possible to investigate how the
tients or asymptomatic carriers. Re- it causes a chronic infection, and one that amount of virus-shedding—the “dose”
cently, the Washington Post published specifically targets cells of the immune of exposure—affected the likelihood of
a newborn infant becoming infected. were initially exposed? At least two E.R. tween the intensity of exposure and the
Gantt, Mayer, and their colleagues had doctors in the United States, both on the intensity of subsequent disease is seen
devised a way to eavesdrop on the dy front lines of the pandemic, have also in measles research. “I want to empha
namics of the transmission of a hu fallen critically ill; one of them, in Wash size that measles and COVID19 are
man viral infection from the very start. ington State, is only in his forties. To go different diseases caused by very differ
“Our data confirmed that there’s a dose by available data from Wuhan and Italy, ent viruses with different behaviors,”
response relationship in viral transmis healthcare workers don’t necessarily have Rik de Swart, a virologist at Erasmus
sions for HHV6,” Mayer told me. “The a higher fatality rate, but do they suffer, University, in Rotterdam, cautioned when
more virus you shed, the more likely disproportionately, from the most severe we spoke, “but in measles there are
you are to infect others.” He’d managed forms of the disease? “We know the high several clear indications that the sever
to turn around the rearview mirror of mortality in older people,” Peter Hotez, ity of illness relates to the dose of ex
epidemiology. an infectiousdisease specialist and vac posure. And it makes immunological
There’s another aspect of transmis cine scientist at Baylor College of Med sense, because the interaction between
sion and disease, however: the host im icine, told CNN. “But, for reasons that the virus and the immune system is a
mune response. Viral attack and the we don’t understand, frontline health race in time. It’s a race between the virus
immune system’s defense are two op care workers are at great risk for serious finding enough target cells to replicate
posing forces, constantly at odds. The illness despite their younger age.” and the antiviral response aiming to
Russian immunologist Ilya Metchni Some suggestive research has been eliminate the virus. If you give the virus
koff, working in the early nineteenhun done with other viruses. In animal mod a head start with a large dose, you get
dreds,described the phenomenon as els of influenza, it’s possible to precisely higher viremia, more dissemination,
“the struggle”—or Kampf, in German quantify exposure intensity, and mice higher infection, and worse disease.”
editions of his work. Metchnikoff imag who were given higher doses of certain He described a study from 1994 in
ined an ongoing battle between mi influenza viruses developed a more se which researchers gave monkeys differ
crobe and immunity. The Kampf was a vere form of the disease. Yet the degree ent doses of the measles virus and found
matter of ground gained or lost. What of correlation between dose and disease that higher infection doses were associ
was the total “force” of the microbial severity varied widely from one strain ated with earlier peaks in viremia. In
presence? What host factors—genet of the flu to the next. (Curiously, in one human beings, de Swart added, the best
ics, prior exposure, baseline immune study a higher initial load of respiratory evidence comes from studies in sub
competence—were limiting the micro syncytial virus, which can cause pneu Saharan Africa. “If you acquire measles
bial invasion? And then: was the initial monia, especially in young children, cor through household contacts, where the
equilibrium tipped toward the virus, or related negatively with severe disease— density and dose of exposure is the high
toward the host? although another study suggests that est—you might be sharing a bed with an
the correlation is positive with toddlers, infected child—then you typically have
hat raises the second question— the most affected patient population.) a higher risk of developing more severe
T does a larger viral “dose” result in
more severe disease? It’s impossible to
What sparse evidence we have about
coronaviruses suggests that they may
illness,” he said. “If a child contracts the
disease through playground or casual con
erase from one’s memory the image of follow the pattern seen in influenza. In tact, the disease is usually less severe.”
Li Wenliang, the thirtythreeyearold a 2004 study of the coronavirus that I discussed this aspect of infection
Chinese ophthalmologist who sounded causes SARS, a cousin of the one that with the Harvard virologist and immu
the alarm on the first COVID19 cases, causes COVID19, a team from Hong nologist Dan Barouch, whose lab is
in his final illness; a photograph shows Kong found that a higher initial load among those that are working toward
him crimsonfaced, sweating, and strug of virus—measured in the nasopharynx, a vaccine against SARSCoV2, the virus
gling to breathe in a face mask, shortly the cavity in the deep part of your throat that causes COVID19. He told me that
before his death. Then there’s the un above your palate—was correlated with ongoing studies with macaques are in
expected death of Xia Sisi, a twenty a more severe respiratory illness. Nearly vestigating the relationship between the
nineyearold doctor from Union Jiang all the SARS patients who came in ini initial dose of the sarsCoV2 viral in
bei Hospital of Wuhan, who had a tially with a low or undetectable level oculum and the amount of virus in lung
twoyearold child and, the Times re of virus in the nasopharynx were found secretions at a later time. He believes
ported, loved Sichuan hot pot. Another at a twomonth followup to be still that there may be a correlation. “If we
Chinese healthcare worker, a twenty alive. Those with the highest level had extended this logic to humans, we would
nineyearold nurse in Wuhan, fell so a twenty to fortypercent mortality expect a similar relationship,” he said.
critically ill that she started hallucinat rate. This pattern held true regardless “And, logically, the larger amount of
ing; later, she would describe herself as of a patient’s age, underlying conditions, virus should trigger more severe disease
“walking on the edge of death.” and the like. Research into another acute by prompting a brisker inflammatory
Could the striking severity of their viral illness, CrimeanCongo hemor response. But that is still speculative.
disease—twenty and thirtyyearolds rhagic fever, reached a similar conclu The relationship between initial viral
with covid19 generally experience a sion: the more virus you had at the start, dose and severity remains to be seen.”
selflimited, flulike illness—be correlated the more likely you were to die. To answer the third question—whether
with the amount of virus to which they Perhaps the strongest association be we can track a COVID19 patient’s viral
COMIC STRIP BY EMILY FLAKE

load in a way that helps us predict the who work with radiation. Using radia- fection, have become immune to SARS-
course of the disease—we’ll need more tion dosimetry, we quantify someone’s CoV-2, and are no longer contagious.
quantitative research into SARS-CoV-2 total exposure, and we set limits on it. Such people must meet two criteria:
counts within patients. One unpublished We already know how critical it is for they must have a measured absence of
German study has measured viral loads doctors and nurses to limit exposure viral shedding, and they must have signs
on oral swabs taken of both symptom- to the coronavirus by using protective of persistent immunity in their blood
atic and asymptomatic individuals. Ini- equipment (masks, gloves, gowns). But (something readily determined by an
tially, it was reported that patients who for health-care workers on the front lines antibody test). As the Chinese discov-
experienced no symptoms had slightly of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in ered with smallpox in the twelfth cen-
higher loads than those who fell ill. The places where protective equipment is tury, such individuals—especially those
results were curious. But at the time scarce, we might also keep track of total who are health-care workers—are of
only seven patients had been studied. exposure, and put in place viral-dosim- particular value to medicine: barring any
Sandra Ciesek, the director of the In- etry controls, so that one individual can decay in immunity, they can generally
stitute of Medical Virology, in Frank- avoid repeated interactions with some tend to the sickest patients without get-
furt, who was running the study, told set of highly contagious patients. ting sick themselves.
me that no significant differences be- Establishing a relationship between My clinical practice is in oncology.
tween the two groups emerged as a larger dose and disease severity could, in turn, Measurement and enumeration are the
patient population began to be sampled. affect patient care. If we could identify mainstays of medicine for people in my
“In swabs, we don’t know of a correla- pre-symptomatic patients who were field: the size of a tumor, the number
tion,” she informed me. The problem likely exposed to the highest doses of of metastases, the exact shrinkage of a
with measuring viral loads in a swab is viruses—someone cohabitating or so- malignant mass after chemotherapy. We
that it is “affected by preanalytic factors, cializing with multiple sick family mem- talk about “risk stratification” (catego-
such as the way in which the swab is bers (as with the close-knit Fusco fam- rizing patients according to health sta-
taken,” she added. Oral swabs are no- ily of Freehold, New Jersey, which has tus) and the “stratification of response”
toriously affected by small variations in had four deaths), or a nurse exposed to (categorizing patients according to their
how they’re done. “But a correlation a set of patients shedding large amounts response to treatment). I am able to
with severe disease may well be true for of the virus—we might predict a more spend half an hour or more with every
the viral load in blood.” Joshua Schiffer, severe experience of the disease, and give patient to describe risk, explain how a
a clinical virologist at the Fred Hutchin- them priority when it came to limited remission is measured, and carefully de-
son Center, and a co-author of the medical resources, so that they could be vise a clinical plan.
HHV-6 study, reports that more strin- treated faster, earlier, or more intensively. A pandemic, by contrast, goes hand
gent nasal-swabbing methods for a range And, finally, the care of COVID-19 in hand with panic. Chaos reigns. Ital-
of respiratory viruses have yielded con- patients could change if we began to ian doctors are hanging I.V. drips on
sistent, reliable viral-load counts, and track virus counts. These parameters makeshift poles for patients lying on
that these loads have generally tracked could be gauged using fairly inexpen- makeshift cots in makeshift wards. Mea-
well with disease symptoms and pro- sive and easily available laboratory meth- surement—viral-load testing—can seem
gression. In a paper published online by ods. Imagine a two-step process: first, like an improbable indulgence under
The Lancet Infectious Diseases in March, identifying infected patients, and then such circumstances. But this crisis will
researchers at the University of Hong quantifying viral loads in nasal or respi- require that we stratify and assess risk,
Kong and Nanchang University reported ratory secretions, particularly in patients and deploy dwindling resources in the
that viral loads in nasopharyngeal swabs who are likely to require the highest most effective manner.
from a group of patients with severe level of treatment. Correlating virus The word “epidemiology” is derived
COVID-19 were sixty times higher, on counts and therapeutic measures with from “epi” and “demos”—“above the
average, than the loads among patients outcomes might result in different strat- people.” It is the science of aggregation,
with a mild form of the disease. egies of care or isolation. the science of the many. Yet it works
The value of a quantitative approach most effectively when it moves in step
s the virus continues to cyclone applies to clinical studies as well. Clin- with medicine, the science of the one.
A across the world, we will begin to
find quantitative answers to these ques-
ical drug trials are typically more infor-
mative when run on subjects who aren’t
On the morning I visited the Shitala
shrine in Kolkata, the goddess of by-
tions of how exposure intensity and sub- yet critical; once the subjects have reached gone population-decimating epidemics
sequent viral loads relate to the clinical that stage, any therapy might be too lit- was also serving as the personal god-
course of COVID-19. We will supplement tle, too late. And if the disease course in dess of a mother who had brought a
the bird’s-eye view with the worm’s-eye such patients is followed using viral-load child with a weeklong fever. To win the
view. How will these insights change metrics, rather than by tracking symp- Kampf against COVID-19, it’s essential
the way we manage patients, hospitals, toms alone, the effect of a drug in differ- to trace the course of the virus as it moves
and populations? ent trials can be compared more easily through populations. But it’s equally es-
Start with the relationship between and accurately. sential to measure its course within a
exposure intensity and infection. Think, We will also want to be able to iden- single patient. The one becomes the
for a moment, of how we monitor those tify people who have recovered from in- many. Count both; both count. 
way, I’ll know that someone, some-
SHOUTS & MURMURS where, is having a Google Hangout
without me.
If I sit on the edge of the tub tell-
ing myself to be brave, I’ll miss stand-
ing at the window, looking down at
the street, and thinking that one good
thing about not having a dog to walk
is that I don’t have to touch as many
doorknobs. And who knows when I’ll
get another opportunity to take a selfie
with that dog from sixty yards away?
If I maintain my public image by
choosing a fly outfit, walking down the
street with confidence, and looking
into the dark windows of shuttered
restaurants, then I’ll miss ordering the
“It” cocktail to go at my favorite bar
in a Styrofoam cup.
And if I go to the grocery store to
wander the aisles of canned food which
have nothing left but artichokes in a
jar and dented cans of pearl onions I’ll
miss Skyping with my friend while we
say over and over, “This is so crazy,”
and maybe this is the one time some-
one really cool shows up to that.
I would sit at the dining-room table
with a thermometer in my mouth for
the second time today, but I’d hate to
miss listening to my partner negotiate
Fear of Missing Out airline refunds, especially since it’s

spring break.
And if I call my primary-care phy-
BY CORA FRAZIER sician to ask if my cough is corona-
virus-related I’ll miss the tri-daily
bannister sanitation, and I already
f I don’t go into the living room, I my desk against a different wall to responded to that event on Facebook
I will miss my partner talking on the
phone to surgeons who are cancelling
create a sense that I have left the room
in the past ten hours, I’m missing being
as “interested.” And if I go to my
primary-care physician’s office in
elective surgeries. And if I do go into inside all my friends’ homes while they Manhattan for a test I’ll miss watch-
the living room I’ll miss what’s hap- reposition their desks against another ing another hour of a dystopian show
pening in this room—namely, waiting wall to create a sense that they’ve left that used to scare me when I could
for a Zoom link to load. the room in the past ten hours, and I still leave the house without wearing
And if I go to the kettle-boiling didn’t go to that yesterday, either. latex gloves.
event in the kitchen I’ll miss the squir- I’ve already committed to squeezing And if I test positive for the virus
rel hopping around on the fire es- inside our storage space for the next and go to a hospital I’ll miss lying on
cape, and you can never predict when half hour to recount the number of a hospital bed in a gymnasium. And
that will happen again. But if I watch toilet-paper rolls. The only thing is, if I go to a gymnasium I’ll miss the
the squirrel I’ll miss our social plan then I’ll miss crouching in the living while-supplies-last pop-up shop of
for the foreseeable future: sitting on room and picking my own hairs off disinfecting wipes. And if I recover
the couch wearing noise-cancelling the carpet in order to create a sense from the coronavirus then I’ll miss
headphones. of control over the uncontrollable. being injected with the new vaccine.
If I stand at my windowsill anxiety- It can be so hard to judge what re- But if I don’t get the new vaccine
stroking the leaves of my plant, I’ll ally is better for your health: a more then I’ll get the coronavirus. So it’s
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
miss whatever is going on in my closet, intense workout of jumping up and really hard to judge what the best
and I’ve never been there before and down in place in front of your stove move is.
I’ve been meaning to go. or a more relaxed workout of floor Honestly, sometimes I just want to
And while I’m here, repositioning yoga poses beneath your bed. Either stay home and do nothing at all. 
down. Since then, Anniston’s popula-
ANNALS OF MEDICINE tion has shrunk, and the poverty rate
has risen to nearly thirty per cent. Car-
ter sometimes considered moving else-
where, but her options were limited.
At the time she started working at Com-
fort Keepers, she was divorced and had
four children, three of whom still lived
at home. Between rent, utilities, and
providing for her family’s needs, her in-
come was stretched far too thin to pay
for health insurance.
In dozens of states, Carter would
have qualified for Medicaid, particularly
after the passage of the 2010 Affordable
Care Act, which extended Medicaid
benefits to all households earning up
to a hundred and thirty-eight per cent
of the poverty line. But in 2014, when
Medicaid expansion took hold, Alabama
and twenty-four other states, almost all
of which had Republican-led legisla-
tures, opted out; that year, Robert Bent-
ley, then the state’s governor, argued that
it would burden taxpayers and foster
“dependency on government.” In Ala-
bama, as in much of the South, the
Affordable Care Act was derisively called
Obamacare, and was attacked as a waste-
ful government program that showered
benefits on undeserving recipients. In
2016, Donald Trump tweeted that Hil-
lary Clinton “wants Obamacare for il-
A Deadly Principle legal immigrants.” More recently, Jeff

Sessions, who is running for his former
Alabama Senate seat, aired a campaign
Alabama refuses to expand Medicaid. Now a preventable cancer is on the rise. ad accusing Democrats of plotting to
provide “free health care for illegal im-
BY EYAL PRESS migrants.” In fact, undocumented im-
migrants are ineligible for Medicaid,
but it’s not hard to imagine how such
ne winter day in 2016, Tonya Car- care for seniors. She liked the job, which a claim might arouse indignation among
O ter felt a sharp pain in her lower
back. In the months that followed, the
involved tending to elderly people who
required assistance with personal care
poor voters in Alabama, where the in-
come requirements for Medicaid are
pain grew more frequent and more and such chores as cooking and clean- more stringent than in any state except
diffuse, running down the back of her ing. Carter was a dedicated caretaker, Texas. In a family of four, a parent qual-
legs when she was sitting, and flaring sometimes fixing homemade corn bread ifies for benefits only if the household
up when she lay on the sofa in her liv- and turnip greens for her clients. Her income is less than three hundred and
ing room at night. A devout Christian, salary was low: eight dollars an hour, ninety-three dollars a month—roughly
Carter prayed that God, whom she re- without benefits. “That’s good for eighteen per cent of the poverty line.
ferred to as “my ultimate physician,” around here,” said Carter, who lives in Carter had gone years without a rou-
would make the pain go away. It didn’t Anniston, a small city in northeastern tine checkup; she hadn’t seen a gyne-
go away. She would have gone to see Alabama with a troubled racial his- cologist in more than a decade. As the
an actual doctor, she told me recently, tory—in 1961, a Freedom Riders bus months passed, her mind raced with
but it was beyond her financial means. was firebombed by a local mob—and theories about what might be wrong.
Carter worked for Comfort Keep- an uncertain future. In 1999, a nearby Maybe she had kidney stones, or en-
ers, a company that provides in-home U.S. Army base, Fort McClellan, closed dometriosis. The pain spread through
her abdomen and her pelvic area, and
Cervical cancer disproportionately affects poor women and women of color. she began to bleed after intercourse. “It
24 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY CHLOE CUSHMAN
was just out of nowhere, and it was con- tributing to the proliferation of a dis- government have contributed to the
tinuous,” she said. ease that disproportionately affects poor trend, but another major factor is Ala-
At work, Carter ducked into the women and women of color.The Human bama’s refusal to expand Medicaid. For
bathroom whenever the pain grew Rights Watch report found that Ala- years, the emergency rooms of rural
unbearable, hoping that her absence bama women without medical insurance hospitals have been inundated with
wouldn’t be noticed. After one such ep- routinely delayed getting care, “which, poor, uninsured patients. Hospitals often
isode, she emerged to discover that her for some, meant that gynecological can- receive no compensation for treating
client, an elderly man, had walked out- cers weren’t found until symptoms de- these patients, which lowers their op-
side and fallen. Although the man was veloped to more advanced stages.” erating margins and fuels what the
not seriously injured, she was mortified The Alabama Department of Pub- Chartis Center for Rural Health has
by the incident. lic Health does operate a few programs called a “closure crisis.” In February, the
By the summer, Carter was suffer- that encourage prevention, including organization reported that the eight
ing so acutely that she finally sought one that provides free screening for cer- states with the highest number of rural-
medical care. The cause of her distress, vical cancer. But, because the program hospital closures since 2010 had all de-
she learned, was cervical cancer. Recently, has a small budget and little funding clined to expand Medicaid.
a nurse informed her that the disease for outreach, many poor women are Carter’s fiancé, Patrick Poore, a soft-
had advanced to Stage IV B: it had spread unaware that it exists. Human Rights spoken man wearing rimless glasses and
to her ovaries and other internal organs, Watch found that only eighteen per a Crimson Tide sweatshirt, had driven
and was considered terminal. Under Al- cent of eligible women were using the her to the appointment. Afterward, they
abama law, now that she was sick, she program. invited me to lunch. They told me that
qualified for Medicaid. Tonya Carter, overwhelmed by pain, they’d prayed together that morning,
eventually visited a clinic in downtown hoping for some good news. As Car-
century ago, cervical cancer was Anniston which caters to low-income ter’s condition worsened, she had to tell
A the deadliest form of cancer among
women in the United States. Since then,
people. She was discharged without
receiving any diagnostic tests. “They
Comfort Keepers that she was too sick
to work; as a result she lost her main
the prevalence and the lethality of the didn’t even check my vitals,” she told source of income.
disease have declined dramatically. The me. The doctor, who criticized her for The one thing that she no longer had
widespread use of Pap smears has al- not having a gynecologist, said, almost to pay for was medical care. The irony
lowed doctors to detect abnormalities in passing, “Why haven’t you contacted was not lost on her. “It took me having
earlier. And in 2006 the F.D.A. ap- the health department?” She said noth- cancer to get some assistance,” she said.
proved the use of the human papillo- ing about free screenings. After visit- “If I was going to yearly checkups, it could
mavirus, or H.P.V., vaccine, which can ing the clinic, Carter called her county have been caught way before. If I’d had
protect women from the most danger- health department, and learned of the the means, the insurance, prior to that,
ous strains of the virus. Cervical can- state’s screening program. By the time then it would have been prevented.”
cer typically results from H.P.V. infec- she got a test, the cancer had spread. Carter wondered how much longer
tions that are transmitted sexually. I met Carter on a damp, overcast she would be around to care for her chil-
Cervical cancer is now viewed by morning in December, a few weeks after dren, including her youngest daughter,
most physicians as preventable, and in she received the diagnosis of Stage IV B a seventeen-year-old who has diabetes.
more affluent parts of the country it is cancer. She had invited me to accom- “There are days when I’m depressed,”
correspondingly rare. But in the poorer pany her to a CT scan at an outpatient she said. “I worry about my children, and
pockets of less wealthy states it remains clinic. She is forty-eight, with pale-blue what their life would be like if I wasn’t
disturbingly common. According to eyes and a diffident manner. Her scalp there.” Tears pooled in her eyes. Carter
the American Cancer Society, more was bare, from multiple rounds of che- then told me that she and Patrick, whom
than four thousand women in this motherapy, and her short-term mem- she began dating a few years ago, were
country will die from the disease this ory was spotty—“chemo brain,” she in love, but that he was hesitant to marry
year. Women who develop cervical can- called it. The drugs had made her so fa- someone who was terminally ill. “I want
cer in Alabama are more likely to die tigued that it was hard for her to get to know what it’s like to be married with
than their counterparts in any other out of bed in the morning. him—to have a life with him,” she said,
state—and in recent years Alabama’s Nevertheless, Carter had forced her- her voice thick with grief. “And I don’t
mortality rate has been rising. self to wake up early that day; like all know if that’s gonna happen.”
In 2018, Human Rights Watch her cancer-related medical appoint-
published a report identifying some of ments, the CT scan took place sixty n Tuscaloosa, I met thirty-eight-year-
the reasons for Alabama’s outlier sta-
tus. Sex education is not mandated in
miles west of Anniston, at a clinic near
Birmingham. Since 2010, fourteen hos-
I old Laquisha Brant, who received a
diagnosis of cervical cancer in 2019. She
the public schools, which may help to pitals in the state, more than half of lives in a Section 8 apartment with a
explain why the state ranks low in them in rural areas, have closed, forc- grime-stained entrance and bare walls.
H.P.V.-vaccination rates. In small towns ing women to make long treks to get Before Brant learned that she had can-
and rural areas, the number of doctors care. Corporate consolidation and low cer, she was married and had a job at
and medical facilities has fallen, con- reimbursement rates from the federal a nursing home. She was now too weak
to work, her marriage had unravelled, since recurrences were “more often le- it encourages sexual activity. Pierce told
and she was surviving on a combina- thal than not.” me that she’s been going “door to door,”
tion of public subsidies and assistance Pierce has been fighting for years to trying to persuade pediatricians to push
from the Laura Crandall Brown Foun- get Americans to change their approach back when families resist vaccinating.
dation—a nonprofit, based in Birming- to cervical cancer. A South Carolina It was difficult work, she said, not least
ham, that offers financial support to native, she first witnessed the link be- because two dozen counties in Alabama
women with gynecologic cancer. “It’s tween poverty and the disease while she had no pediatricians, which meant that
like my whole life had to stop,” she told was in medical school. As part of her she had to “track down family-medicine
me, over lunch at a Red Lobster. She residency, she worked in an outreach doctors,” who are less likely to offer
listed other things she’d lost: her hair, clinic in Cape Town, South Africa. The vaccinations in the first place. She also
her eyebrows, her vigor, her appetite. clinic’s director, Lynette Denny, had set had to treat the gravely ill women who
One bright spot was her doctor, who, up examination rooms in shipping con- flowed into her clinic “like the tide.” On
she said, had helped her through the tainers, so that impoverished women Christmas Eve, she’d attended to a young
most difficult phases of her treatment. living in remote townships could be woman in her mid-twenties as she died
“She cried with me,” Brant said. But, screened for cervical cancer; in devel- of cervical cancer. Pierce informed the
though she was hopeful that her final oping countries, the disease remains one woman’s parents and siblings, who rushed
chemotherapy treatment, in early De- of the leading causes of women’s death. to the intensive-care unit to say good-
cember, would put her cancer in remis- Denny urged Pierce to provide similar bye. Everyone in the room was sobbing,
sion, she was unsure whether she could services for vulnerable women in her Pierce recalled. Even when cervical can-
continue to get follow-up care, since a own community. In 2012, Pierce and cer was caught at an early stage, she said,
nurse had called her recently to inform a colleague launched an organization the standard treatment was “a horror”—
her that her Medicaid was being cut called Cervical Cancer-Free South Car- weeks of intensive radiation that caused
off. Jennifer Young Pierce, a gynecologic olina, and also helped run a mobile-clinic aneurysms, sexual dysfunction, infertil-
oncologist in Mobile, told me that al- outreach unit that dispatched an R.V. ity, and scarring. “There are days when
though low-income people with breast to rural areas to offer Pap smears. I feel like we are on the front lines of
or cervical cancer qualify for Medi- A few years ago, a friend recruited an epidemic that nobody wants to talk
caid, the benefits were often discon- Pierce to come to Alabama, where the about,” she told me.
tinued once the disease went into re- cervical-cancer problem was even worse. Along with increasing vaccination
mission. “It’s ‘Good news, you’re cancer- She now runs the Cancer Control and rates, broadening access to health care
free!’—and then they drop you like a Prevention program at the Mitchell Can- is an obvious way to fix the problem.
hot potato,” Pierce said. More than sixty cer Institute, in Mobile. One of her mis- But, in much of the South, a surprising
per cent of cervical-cancer recurrences sions, she told me, was to educate other number of the poor and working-class
take place in the two years after an ini- doctors in the state about the H.P.V. people who would benefit from chang-
tial round of treatment has been com- vaccine, which many pediatricians in Al- ing the system are opposed to doing so.
pleted. Any lapse in coverage could abama recommend halfheartedly, per- A few years ago, Jonathan Metzl, a psy-
have dire consequences, Pierce said, haps accepting the unfounded view that chiatrist and sociologist at Vanderbilt,
began organizing focus-group discus-
sions near churches and low-income
housing projects in Tennessee, which,
like Alabama, had refused to expand
Medicaid under the Affordable Care
Act. At one such meeting, in Nashville,
a group of working-class white men
were invited to talk about the health-
care system. Many of the participants—
amputees, men with oxygen cannisters—
were in visibly poor health. Some ac-
knowledged having to rely on various
forms of assistance to deal with their
ailments. “I would be dead without Med-
icaid or the V.A.,” one man said. But,
when Metzl asked about the role of
“government” and about programs such
as the Affordable Care Act, a man com-
plained that people on welfare with “ten
and twelve kids” were abusing the sys-
tem. Another claimed that “illegal moth-
ertruckers” received all the benefits, and
“He can’t play this game, because I’m playing Only Child.” that ordinary Americans were subsidiz-
ing them. A flurry of complaints about think that, unlike the working-class men generate a net surplus of nine hundred
Mexican immigrants followed, prompt- quoted in Metzl’s study, she believed and thirty-five million dollars. Becker
ing one man to say, “We’re starting to that the government has a responsibil- told me recently that he had expected
sound like Donald Trump.” ity to care for people who cannot afford his study to inspire “some debate” in the
In 2019, Metzl published a book, to pay for health insurance. When Car- Alabama legislature. “That never hap-
“Dying of Whiteness,” in which he ar- ter and I met, she told me how opti- pened,” he said. Perhaps this was be-
gued that people who voiced such views, mistic she’d been when she first heard cause many of the voters in Alabama
fuelled by racial animosity and “the toxic about the A.C.A. “I was so excited,” she who stood to benefit most from Med-
effects of dogma,” ended up supporting said. “I was hoping that it would benefit icaid expansion kept backing politicians
policies that put their own lives at risk. me.”Then she went online who opposed it. As I dis-
“No way I want my tax dollars paying and learned that the cheap- covered, Tonya Carter was
for Mexicans or welfare queens,” a white est plan cost hundreds of one of those voters. Al-
former cabdriver suffering from termi- dollars a month—far more though she didn’t consider
nal liver disease told him. “Ain’t no way than she could afford. Her herself to be a political per-
I would ever support Obamacare, or enthusiasm gave way to son, she told me that in the
sign up for it. I would rather die.” A bitterness. “What came out 2016 Presidential election
growing body of evidence suggests that of Obama’s mouth?” she she voted for Donald Trump,
clinging to such beliefs has indeed short- said. “ ‘Every citizen will who is intent on overturn-
ened lives. States that expanded Med- have insurance.’ And it ing the Affordable Care Act.
icaid under the Affordable Care Act failed. To me, it failed, and “I had my reasons,” Car-
have seen reductions in mortality from I’m pretty sure there are ter said of her vote. Trump
kidney failure and cardiovascular dis- other people in my shoes who feel like is a businessman who, she figured, could
ease, along with an increase in early-stage it failed.” “help the economy, maybe make a differ-
cancer diagnoses. They have also seen But Carter did not fully comprehend ence.” I asked her if this had happened
lower rates of infant and maternal mor- why the Affordable Care Act had “failed” in Anniston. “Not yet,” she replied.
tality. A study published last July by the in Alabama. She didn’t realize that, in She then mentioned another reason
National Bureau of Economic Research the three dozen states that have ex- that she supported Trump. It really both-
estimated that, from 2014 through 2017, panded Medicaid since 2014, the law ered her that “foreigners” could come
states that expanded Medicaid saved had made it possible for millions of to America and “get free health care,
the lives of more than nineteen thou- low-income people to get insurance at free assistance in living, food stamps,”
sand adults between the ages of fifty- no cost. When I mentioned this, she while many U.S. citizens were denied
five and sixty-four alone. In the states looked surprised and distraught. “It’s these things. “It’s not right when you
that rejected expansion, the researchers pretty upsetting to hear,” she said. She are born here, and you pay taxes, and
concluded, fifteen and a half thousand was even more perturbed to hear that you work your tail off your whole en-
lives were lost. a common reason cited by politicians tire life, and you still can’t get health
The data, though striking, may not for rejecting Medicaid expansion was a insurance,” she said. “But a foreigner
be enough to loosen the hold of racial desire to avoid burdening taxpayers. “I can cross the border and they instantly
resentment. As Metzl and others have wonder what those people who don’t get their needs met.” She paused. “That’s
pointed out, states where benefits are want their taxes to be raised—what if one reason why I voted for Trump. I
scarce are precisely where this kind of they had a loved one in my shoes?” she don’t think it’s right.”
anger is most likely to flourish. Since said. “What’s the cost of giving the cit- Jim Carnes, a health-policy expert at
the early two-thousands, the journalist izens of Alabama insurance versus al- Alabama Arise, an antipoverty organi-
Thomas Frank and other writers have lowing us to die?” zation, told me that expanding Medi-
argued that Republicans, by harnessing According to a study conducted by caid would provide coverage for roughly
such frustrations, have repeatedly per- David Becker, an economist at the Uni- three hundred and forty thousand ad-
suaded many working-class citizens to versity of Alabama at Birmingham, ex- ditional Alabamians. About half of the
vote against their economic interests. panding Medicaid would by now have newly insured would be low-income
Metzl contends that Republicans have cost Alabama seven hundred and sev- whites. Carnes doubted that this was
been just as adept at getting lower- enty-one million dollars—a figure that common knowledge among white Al-
income whites to vote against their “bi- reflects both treatment costs and admin- abamians, given the deeply ingrained
ological self-interests.” istrative expenses. But Becker calculated popular association of public benefits
Tonya Carter, of Anniston, told me that, even with the federal matching rate with poor African-Americans and La-
that she didn’t follow politics closely— for new Medicaid enrollees starting to tino immigrants. Robyn Hyden, the ex-
her fate, she liked to say, was in God’s fall in 2017, these costs would be more ecutive director of Alabama Arise, told
hands. But, in our initial phone conver- than offset by folding existing state pro- me that early in her career, when she was
sation, she said that if she had been able grams into Medicaid, and also by levy- an organizer in northern Alabama, she
to get insurance through the Affordable ing taxes on the billions of Medicaid tried to educate low-income people
Care Act she surely would not have de- dollars spent in Alabama. Indeed, he be- about health care and the Affordable
veloped advanced cancer. This made me lieved that expanding Medicaid would Care Act. “When you actually talk to
had abnormal Paps didn’t return for fol-
low-up procedures. “Compliance is a big
problem,” he said. But Stevens, who grew
up poor, added that he understood why
women in the Black Belt sometimes
failed to make it to appointments. Getting
a colposcopy cost several hundred dollars,
which patients without coverage often
couldn’t afford, and many patients had
to drive long distances to reach his office.
He opened a red folder on his desk and
pulled out a pamphlet comparing Ala-
bama’s rural counties in 1980 and in 2019.
In the 1980 map, forty-five of the fifty-
four rural counties had hospitals that
provided obstetric services. In the 2019
map, just sixteen did. This, too, was a
product of Alabama’s refusal to expand
Medicaid, which led rural hospitals to
cut essential services in order to avoid
going out of business. Stevens pointed
to several counties surrounding Selma:
“ You knew I was a cat lady before you married me.” Wilcox, Chilton, Lowndes. “None of
these counties have any ob-gyn cover-
age,” he said.
• • Dallas County, where Selma is situ-
ated, once had three hospitals. Today, the
people about the policy, it’s very popular” are almost twice as likely as white Vaughan Regional Medical Center is the
among both liberals and conservatives, women to die if they develop the disease. only one that remains open. When Ste-
she said. “But, in general, people don’t Experts attribute this to racial discrim- vens first joined its staff, he was one of
come into the room knowing about ination that is embedded in the health- seven ob-gyns. He now had just one col-
it. They’ve heard a partisan message care system and to the likelihood that, league, Shawnequa Brown, who first vis-
about it.” when African-Americans do receive ited Selma to attend a nephew’s high-
care, it is often of lower quality. The school graduation. In 2018, she came back
roadening access to health care in Human Rights Watch report notes that, to serve as a medical provider, because,
B such states as Tennessee and Ala-
bama would not, of course, benefit whites
“even when Black women with cervical
cancer earn as much as white women,
she told me, “there’s such a need.” One
factor driving the need was episodic
alone. A few days before meeting Tonya they are still at higher risk of death health-care coverage. Many women in
Carter, I drove to the Vaughan Regional from the disease.” the area would see a doctor while preg-
Medical Center, in Selma, in the heart Among the physicians quoted in the nant, because they qualified for Medi-
of Alabama’s Black Belt. Named origi- report was William Michael Stevens, caid, but stop going when coverage was
nally for its rich, dark topsoil, the Black an ob-gyn who runs the women’s-health withdrawn. “Once they’re no longer hav-
Belt was once dotted with cotton fields clinic at the Vaughan Regional Med- ing children, they just don’t get checked,”
and slave plantations. During the civil- ical Center. In the report, Stevens de- Brown said. Another problem was a
rights movement, it was a center of po- scribed the case of a woman in her lack of education, which sometimes led
litical ferment. More recently, the region twenties who had come to see him be- women to think that they’d been given
has become known for the staggering cause she was bleeding after intercourse. cancer screenings even though they
poverty among its majority-African- She had gone to the emergency room hadn’t. “I’ll ask a patient, ‘When was your
American residents. In 2017, Philip Alston, three times, but had not received a pel- last Pap smear?’” Brown said. The pa-
the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on extreme vic exam on any of the visits. She hadn’t tient would say, “Oh, I had one at the
poverty and human rights, visited the undergone a Pap smear in years. When emergency room.” Then Brown would
Black Belt, and saw raw sewage being he performed an exam, he discovered check and discover that the procedure
dumped outside homes in rural areas; he that she had advanced cervical cancer. was actually a speculum exam, which
told a local reporter that he had never “There’s been several cases like that,” does not screen for cancer.
seen such deprivation in the First World. Stevens said when I visited him, in his Isabel Scarinci, a behavioral psychol-
The rural counties in the Black Belt cluttered office, on the fourth floor of ogist at the University of Alabama’s Di-
were the focus of the Human Rights the hospital. In his view, the medical sys- vision of Preventive Medicine, said that,
Watch report on cervical cancer. As the tem was not always to blame. Sometimes among poor women, a lack of education
report noted, black women in Alabama patients who had gone to screenings and was sometimes compounded by a sense
Not actual patients.
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©2019 GSK or licensor.

BLMJRNA190012 November 2019
Produced in USA.
of resignation. “Women may think, If I scribed her waning energy and a mount- Gunter told the nurses, “I’m dying—I’m
find out I have cancer, how can I deal ing sense that there might not be “many bleeding out.” After twelve hours of
with it?” she said. Scarinci is one of the more tomorrows.” A few weeks later, waiting and a series of examinations,
leaders of the Deep South Network for Ford told me, her mother died. she was transferred by ambulance to
Cancer Control, which trains local vol- Children and Women’s Hospital, where
unteers who work to reduce rates of dis- ne day, I met a woman named Lacie a gynecologic oncologist performed a
ease in low-income minority communities.
Shortly after visiting the hospital in
O Gunter, a single mother with two
young daughters who lives in a housing
biopsy, under anesthesia, and initiated
instant radiation. Later, Gunter learned
Selma, I drove thirty miles northwest to complex in West Mobile. A few years that she had advanced cervical cancer.
Marion, a small town in Perry County, ago, she began feeling pain in her side. By the time I met Gunter, in No-
to visit a nonprofit called Sowing Seeds When the pain grew excruciating, she vember of last year, she had undergone
of Hope, which works with Deep South started showing up at the nearest emer- months of chemotherapy and radiation
Network volunteers. Housed at the end gency room, hoping to see a doctor. She’d treatment. She was hopeful that the
of a rutted dirt path, it operated every- been on Medicaid when she gave birth cancer would go into remission, but she
thing from a weekly hypertension clinic to her younger daughter, five years ago, knew that, if it did, she could once again
to a child-screening program for vision but when she presented her Medicaid be without insurance. “I’m terrified,”
problems. Its executive director, a nurse card she was informed that her coverage she told me.
named Frances Ford, described these had lapsed. She told me that, at these Her physician was Jennifer Pierce,
services as “Band-Aids” in a county where E.R. visits, she was never given a Pap the gynecologic oncologist, who was on
more than one in three people were poor. smear or encouraged to get a cancer call at Children and Women’s Hospital
We walked to a low-slung building on screening. (None of the women with on the day that Gunter was brought in.
the other side of the dirt path: the Perry cervical cancer I interviewed in Alabama Pierce said that Gunter had been lucky.
County Health Department. While had been aware of the free screenings.) “A patient who is hemorrhaging from
there, we spoke with Pilar Murphy, a Gunter did receive plenty of judgmen- cervical cancer without appropriate med-
pharmacist, who catalogued the obsta- tal looks, from nurses who saw her ad- ical care absolutely could die—quickly,”
cles patients faced. “Some of it is trans- dress, and her bad teeth, and assumed she told me. Pierce explained why Gun-
portation, some of it is funds,” she said. that she was an alcoholic or a dope ad- ter’s illness should never have advanced
“Some of it is just knowing how to tra- dict. In fact, she does not drink or do so far. One missed opportunity came in
verse through the health-care system.” drugs. “I’d say, ‘I’ve never done drugs 2010, when Gunter, at the age of twenty-
I asked Murphy how much of a differ- in my life—please help me,’” she said. one, gave birth to her first daughter: she
ence it would make if Alabama expanded “They did not believe me.” could have been administered the H.P.V.
Medicaid. “It would be huge,” she said. Gunter eventually stopped seeking vaccine during that hospital visit. Then
She described the case of a sixty-two- care. Early one morning, at around two- there was the period after Gunter’s Med-
year-old man with a history of cancer thirty, she woke up in writhing pain. icaid lapsed, when she stopped getting
and diabetes who had recently lost his When she went to the bathroom, she checkups or seeing a doctor.
medical insurance. Murphy had helped saw that she was bleeding. After taking Gunter is thirty-one, with dark-
him find low-cost options for his diabe- her older daughter to school, she set off brown hair and a weary gaze. Like Tonya
tes medication, but the man still had to Carter, she told me that she is not a po-
pay out of pocket for follow-up care, and litical person, but she grew angry when
was consequently avoiding doctor visits. recalling how she felt during her visits
After we chatted with Murphy, Ford to the E.R. “Had they just given me one
took me on a tour of Perry County and chance to explain the type of pain I was
drove past some of the rudimentary local in, had someone just done one simple
housing—trailers coated in rust, shacks exam, they would have found it,” she
missing doors and windows. We pulled fumed. “I was not treated like I was even
up to an attractive red brick building a person, really.” Gunter told me that
set behind a metal fence and a line of she still woke up every morning to braid
trees: the former local hospital. Ford for her mother’s house to drop off her her daughters’ hair, but she worried that
had been advocating for Perry County younger daughter, thinking that she her physical limitations might cause
to open a new one—she understood how could then head to the hospital. But on them to suffer. Before getting cancer,
difficult it could be for poorer residents the way to her mother’s house she began she’d hoped to be trained as a welder;
to drive several hours to see a special- feeling light-headed. She pulled into a now she wasn’t healthy enough to begin
ist. After her own mother learned that Dollar Store, where she bought some searching for a job. “I wake up and I’m
she had cervical cancer, in 1980, she Tylenol and went into the bathroom to in pain, I go to sleep and I’m in pain,”
had been forced to drive all the way to try to stanch the bleeding, which had she said. “I’m stuck—I’ve got girls to
Birmingham for care. In the car, Ford got heavier. From the parking lot, she take care of, and I don’t have very much
reached into her coat pocket and handed called her parents and told them that help.” A proud Alabamian who told me
me a letter that her mother had writ- she needed help. Her father picked her that there was no other place she wanted
ten. Addressed to her children, it de- up and drove her to the emergency room. to live, she expressed frustration about
another thing: when people in Alabama
talked about protecting “life,” it always
seemed to be about unborn babies, and
never about poor women like her. “That
bothers me to my core,” she said.
To Gunter, this smacked of hypoc
risy. But it was also possible to see Ala
bama’s strict antiabortion laws as con
sistent with the state’s general lack of
concern for the health and wellbeing of
poor women. “In Alabama, we have one
of the highest maternalmortality rates
in the country,” Jennifer Pierce told me.
“It is more lethal to be black and pregnant
in Alabama than in some poor countries.”
Pierce and other activists have had
some success in their fight against cer
vical cancer. Since 2010, the proportion
of adolescents in Alabama receiving a
dose of the H.P.V. vaccine has increased
from fortysix to sixtyfive per cent, and
there are signs that opposition to the
Affordable Care Act has begun to soften.
“It’s a function of distance from the “Just because they all work from home now doesn’t
Obama Administration,” Jim Carnes, mean I don’t still keep an eye on them.”
of Alabama Arise, told me. It was also
a function of Alabama officials seeing
health indicators in other states improve
• •
while their own population suffered and
rural hospitals slid further into crisis. lished an oped in the Birmingham News try, even though cases of ovarian cancer
Cervical cancer was just one aspect of arguing that, given the threat posed by are slightly less common in the state
the problem: a vascular surgeon in Mont the pandemic, “now is the time to finish than in the U.S. as a whole.
gomery described to me a similar pat Medicaid expansion in Alabama.” These findings may not move Ivey,
tern with heart disease. People sought One person who has yet to come who, in 2018, proposed establishing a
medical attention only during a heart around to this position, at least publicly, work requirement for the small portion
attack, or after developing extensive vas is Kay Ivey, Alabama’s Republican gov of parents and caregivers in Alabama
cular disease. Such delays put lives at ernor. Ivey, who has the authority to sign who receive Medicaid, forcing poor peo
risk and, the surgeon pointed out, also a rule change that would expand the ple who must care for a child or a dis
drove up the cost of care. program, declined to comment for this abled adult to find jobs or lose their
In the past few years, a number of article. But she is surely aware that many benefits. (The proposal remains before
conservative states that had initially op people in her state lack health care. Ivey the state legislature.) But Ivey, who is
posed the Affordable Care Act, includ grew up in Wilcox, a county in the Black seventyfive, has since had some health
ing Virginia and Louisiana, have reversed Belt which, a few years ago, had to scram problems that may have deepened her
course and expanded Medicaid. Edward ble to prevent its only hospital from clos appreciation of how essential access to
Partridge, a gynecologic oncologist and ing. Last year, she was among the elected medical care can be. Last August, during
a former director of the University of officials who received a copy of a report a routine medical exam—the kind of
Alabama’s Comprehensive Cancer Cen issued by the Alabama Study Commis checkup that women without insurance
ter, believes that this will soon happen sion for Gynecologic Cancers, a coali usually go without—a doctor discovered
in Alabama. When I asked him why, tion of medical specialists, administra a small malignancy in her lung. Fortu
Partridge, who is a Republican, said, “It’s tors, and survivors appointed by the nately for her, the cancer was detected
insanity—how long can insanity last?” Alabama legislature and the state’s gov early, and treated immediately, with ste
J. David McCormack, the C.E.O. of the ernor. The report contained some star reotactic body radiation therapy, at a
Vaughan Regional Medical Center, the tling passages. “Cervical cancer is almost stateoftheart oncology center in
last remaining hospital in Selma, told entirely preventable and yet in Alabama Montgomery. In January, scans revealed
me, “I’m a conservative person. But we’ve there are areas where women are dying that Ivey was cancerfree. “I am pro
got to do Medicaid expansion.” The at a rate similar to that of developing foundly grateful for this good news,” she
spread of COVID19 further imperils the nations,” it noted. It also pointed out announced, thanking God, her “dedi
state’s healthcare system. On March that Alabama has the thirdhighest ovar cated team of physicians,” and “the good
24th, David Becker, the economist, pub iancancer mortality rate in the coun people of our great state.” 
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Dancer in the Dark

Sharon Stern devoted herself to an art form. Did her mentor lead her down a dangerous path?
BY RACHEL AVIV
haron Stern arrived at Naropa Uni- on us. I don’t think we expected to be Kan is based in Japan, where he stud-
S versity, the first Buddhist-inspired

university in America, with a port-
folio of glamorous head shots. She had
as moved as we were.” The M.F.A. pro-
gram existed, he said, at the intersection
of postmodernism and Buddhism. “It
ied with Tatsumi Hijikata, one of two
choreographers credited with establish-
ing Butoh as a distinct art form, in the
a heart-shaped face and a guileless smile. was about saying, ‘We are going to kill nineteen-fifties. It was originally called
She was twenty-eight and had recently off these old dualisms, like light and ankoku butoh, the “dance of darkness.”
married Todd Siegel, whom her friends dark, good and bad, dirty and clean, and Hijikata’s choreography was asymmet-
all described as the perfect husband. start to sit with things as they really are.’” rical, erotic, and halting, requiring in-
Naropa, which was founded in Boulder, At Naropa, Sharon became self-con- tense muscular control, and it often had
Colorado, in 1974, by a former Buddhist scious about the ways in which she had an undertone of dread. In one of his most
monk, has three meditation halls that always used her strengths—charisma, famous performances, “Story of Small-
students visit throughout the day. “You warmth, an intuitive capacity to please— pox,” Hijikata appeared onstage hunched
are encouraged to let go of habitual pat- as crutches. She had once felt that the over, looking feeble and diseased. He
terns of thought, feeling, and action and ingredients of a fulfilling life were fairly made barely perceptible movements. The
to continually refresh your experience, straightforward. “All I wanted is to be audience heard the sound of wind and
viewing yourself and the world anew,” married to Todd and be a mother,” she the cawing of crows.
read the welcome letter from the dean of said. But that path felt increasingly stale. Hijikata, who was influenced by
students. Sharon, who was in the mas- She was working on “re-integrating, re- French Surrealism, taught his appren-
ter’s program in contemporary perfor- patterning, re-structuring,” she wrote to tices to understand Butoh as inseparable
mance, had spent several years acting in a high-school friend. In her school note- from daily life. According to the Butoh
community theatre in Miami, but she book, she instructed herself to “contem- scholar Caitlin Coker, he and his stu-
wasn’t sure where the work was leading. plate uncertainty” every morning. She dents ate together—“There was even
In her journal and notes, she assessed her wondered if she should project a quieter Butoh in eating a meal,” one dancer
flaws: she was “overly excitable”; her work presence. “Maybe I have the need to talk said—and he trained them to relin-
could be “cheesy”; she was “not enough so much in class and offer so much of quish the idea of individual expression.
of a leader”; her sense of self was “defined my opinion because I don’t actually take One former apprentice, Waguri Yukio,
by who wants me.” the time to process things on my own,” said that Hijikata received phone calls
She had grown up in a high-rise in she wrote. In the margins of “The Es- from parents saying, “Give me back my
a part of North Miami where people sential Chögyam Trungpa,” a book of daughter.” But Hijikata used to say, “The
dress for the beach even when they are teachings by the founder of Naropa, she person who is kidnapped will become
miles away. Her father, Tibor, an Israeli wrote, “Can we practice meditation w/o the most skilled.”
diamond dealer, had teased her on the being afraid of the foreignness?” One of Sharon’s classmates said that
rare occasions when she didn’t get all In her first semester, in 2007, she took he remembers the day that “Butoh sud-
A’s. “You disturbed the straight line,” he a class with Katsura Kan, a guest artist denly made sense to her.” Kan asked the
told her. She went to a Jewish day school, at Naropa and one of the world’s most students to imagine that ants were crawl-
where her drama teacher, Lillian An- prominent choreographers and instruc- ing up their limbs and taking over their
dron, described her as “Ms. Popularity, tors of Butoh, a postmodern Japanese bodies, an exercise designed to help them
Ms. Congeniality.” Her nickname was dance form. A sinewy, youthful fifty- find new vocabularies for physical ex-
Sharoni, and when she wrote it she dot- nine-year-old with a shaved head, Kan pression. After the class, Sharon curled
ted the “i” by sketching a tiny flower. was polite and somewhat remote. He up on the floor and began crying. “Until
She had thrived in a culture that by her had studied Zen Buddhism for three then, it was as if there had only been this
mid-twenties she saw as shallow and decades, and he gave clipped, heavily small corner of her own psychology that
spiritually arid. accented instructions that sounded like she felt comfortable with—the weather
Benjamin Stuber, a classmate at Na- koans. “To seek the door to the neutral was always sunny there,” the classmate
ropa, told me, “For the more ambitious, is to approach transformation,” he told said. “In actor training, we think of that
type-A students in the class—and I in- the students. Stuber, in his notebook, as blockage. But from then she stopped
clude Sharoni in that group—the spir- wrote, “Butoh begins with the aban- fighting it. She was willing to transform.”
itual side of Naropa kind of snuck up donment of self.” At the end of the semester, Kan chose
In Butoh, a Buddhist-influenced Japanese dance, performers are often encouraged to surrender parts of the self.
ILLUSTRATION BY LEONARDO SANTAMARIA THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 33
six students to perform a work he had ence and counter-transference.” He was in both Buddhism and art. “She didn’t
choreographed. Like nearly all Butoh impressed by Sharon’s openness to new want us to fall into the trap of trying
dances, the movement was slow, medi- experience, which, he said, reminded him to please someone, of losing ourselves
tative, and quiet, close to the floor. The of the “tender heart of the warrior” that on the path,” Sharon’s friend Kathryn
students wore white paint on their bod- Chögyam Trungpa, Naropa’s founder, Ross said. In class, Dilley asked her stu-
ies and faces. Sharon performed a duet describes in one of his teachings. “The dents to experiment with taking differ-
with Stuber, who recalled, “There was a strongest warrior is not the one who ent degrees of influence from one an-
lot of rolling and twisting, and our bod- wears layers of armor,” Stuber said, “but other. “You learn to become aware of
ies kept going round and round like we the one who puts down her sword and the other person’s power in the room,”
were some sort of ball. It was about being shield, takes off her armor, and opens Dilley told me. “And, rather than mir-
in this place where identity is still mu- her heart—she is the brave one.” roring, to make choices.”
table.” After the performance, he remem- The Japanese tradition of artistic
bers, Todd Siegel told him, “I couldn’t ll artistic mentorship requires a mentorship doesn’t easily translate to
tell which one of you was my wife.”
For her thesis project, Sharon decided
A certain level of devotion and imi-
tation, but in choreography the influence
American culture. Because of Kan’s sta-
tus in Butoh circles, he was referred to
to create a Butoh-inspired piece “about tends to be more literal. One body is as a sensei, or master. “If you are a sen-
the road to emptiness,” as she described taking direction from another. The critic sei, you have a responsibility that is more
it in her journal. She wanted to work on André Lepecki describes choreography communal or familial than a teacher
“entering the darker places of myself, as “a body snatcher.” The dancer, he would take on in the United States,”
fearlessly.” She asked Kan for guidance writes, is “nothing more than a faithful Heyward Bracey, an American dancer
on Buddhist views of aging, disease, and executor of the designs of the absent, who studied with Kan in Japan, said. “It
death. “I want to have a serious conver- remote, perhaps dead, yet haunting requires a deeper level of trust, a more
sation with you about this,” she told him. power of the master’s will.” evolved bond.” The teacher’s guidance
Stuber said that it wouldn’t have sur- Barbara Dilley, Sharon’s adviser at often extends beyond the level of craft.
prised him if Sharon had developed a Naropa and the founder of the school’s Vangeline, the director of the New York
crush on Kan. “I had a little crush on dance-and-movement program, often Butoh Institute and the author of a forth-
him, too,” he said. “We talked a lot about spoke with students about the impor- coming book about Butoh, told me,
mentorship in the arts, about transfer- tance of questioning the role of the guru, “When a Japanese Butoh teacher comes
to the West, they may start emphasiz-
ing that the student needs to be less ego-
centric, less individualistic. When an ad-
mired teacher suggests that the student’s
values are in question, how does that
affect her sense of identity? What hap-
pens in that cognitive dissonance?”
Sharon worried that her movements
weren’t authentic enough. “Am I really a
butoh dancer or is this the ultimate in
seeking validation and support from the
outside?” she wrote in her journal. She
asked for Kan’s help in trying to “escape
this father mother voice inside.” Although
he encouraged her to be less competi-
tive, she couldn’t shake the desire to be
the best—his “number one student.”
After Sharon graduated, in 2009, she
helped Kan stage a performance called
“Luminous Emptiness,” an adaptation
of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, cre-
ated by Naropa students. She was so
committed to the work—“This is what
I expect from you,” she e-mailed him,
“to take up all my time!”—that he asked
her to be an assistant choreographer of
his dance company, Katsura Kan & Sal-
timbanques. She taught his choreogra-
phy to the other performers and danced
with him. In an interview with the Boul-
“Encourage or discourage?” der Daily Camera, she said, “I haven’t
found any other form so far in my life the year, they had separated. Kan wrote from her identity, which suddenly seems
that I feel so connected to in a pro- Sharon, “Let’s keep seeking together till false, a cultural construction. According
found, cuts-across-cultures-and-bound- end of life? Or more?” to traditional Buddhist doctrine, recog-
aries way.” nizing the insipidness of our existence
When her parents came to see her n most contemporary art, it can seem is a step toward liberation; in confront-
dance in Boulder, they were taken aback.
Sharon’s mother, Hana, is an Israeli im-
I a little regressive, or at least unfash-
ionable, to associate art with spiritual
ing the vanity of ordinary life, we gain
the resolve to relinquish our attachment
migrant who has her own diamond-jew- practice, but in Butoh mastery of the to worldly things. But, in the past fifty
elry line and radiates “protective femi- dance is often contingent on being years, as Buddhism has been decontex-
nine energy,” as Sharon once wrote. able to surrender parts of tualized in the West, this
When I met Hana, she was wearing a the self. Sharon told Kan insight has often been over-
diamond ring about the size of a quar- that she was working to looked. Instead, meditative
ter, and a diamond Star of David around find “the strength to re- practices have been repack-
her neck; her blond hair was in a white ject society and the past aged as a road to wellness.
scrunchie. I asked Hana if she consid- and everything that I think Willoughby Britton, a
ered Sharon a seeker, and she told me, has been real until now.” professor of psychiatry at
“Of course she was seeking—for more She had an excellent work Brown University, believes
perfection.” But Butoh struck Hana as ethic, which she applied that the popular represen-
a wrong turn. “I don’t see where the art to the paradoxical ambi- tations of meditation as a
is here,” she told Sharon. Tibor said, “It tion of freeing herself from “warm bath,” a universally
was a terrible shock. The dancers were the grip of the self. “Just salutary activity, don’t en-
crawling on the floor and suffering.” stay empty,” she wrote in her journal. compass the broad range of reactions to
Sharon told her parents, “We are not “Believe in nothing / emptiness / void.” meditation. For the past decade, as part
here to please the audience.” When another Butoh dancer, Jeremy of a research project called the Varieties
In early 2011, Kan invited Sharon to Williams, saw Sharon in New York in of Contemplative Experience, Britton
join him as his dancing partner on a tour February, 2011, he was struck by how and her husband, Jared Lindahl, also a
through the U.S. and South America. deeply she had become immersed in the professor at Brown, have been catalogu-
When she performed a duet with Kan form. “Sharoni was enamored of Butoh ing the challenges that people experience
in Seattle, the Seattle Times observed, not just as an aesthetic but as a percep- in the process. In a recent paper in the
“The two performers did indeed seem tual shift,” he said. “I remember her ask- Journal of Consciousness Studies, they doc-
to be on a voyage.” She told a friend that ing me, ‘Don’t you just want to stay in ument the ways meditation can lead to
she and Kan, who was married, “fit to- that Butoh space all the time?’ And I changes in sense of self, including the
gether like a hand in a glove.” They shared was, like, ‘No, I don’t. When I’m doing “dissolution of the personality structures
a room together during the tour, as Kan Butoh, it disrupts my relationship to the that support the ‘story of me’”—an ex-
sometimes did with other dancers. Kan everyday, material world, and I can’t perience that many found distressing and
said that their relationship was never move through the world that way.’” even disabling. One meditator told them,
sexual, but Sheri Brown, who danced in Butoh performers often describe the “It basically felt like whatever personal-
Kan’s company and became close with necessity of becoming empty vessels. In ity I thought I had before just disinte-
Sharon, said that it seemed clear there an essay in the “Routledge Companion grated. And it wasn’t an expansive disin-
was a sexual element to their dynamic. to Butoh Performance,” Shinichi Iova- tegration into unity or bliss or anything
She told me, “Dancers will say, ‘O.K., Koga wrote that he learned to “erase like that. It was a disintegration into dust.”
the body is a canvas, and it doesn’t have myself so that I could dance.” Butoh, Another said, “I would look at other peo-
to be sexual—how do we view it from he said, “yanked the ‘me’ out of me.” ple and interact with people, and they
other perspectives?’ But, basically, in a The Swedish Butoh performer Susanna would say regular things, like ‘Oh, I like
lot of Kan’s choreography, especially with Åkerlund described how the dance that type of ice cream’ or ‘Oh, I like that
Sharoni, the dancers were topless.” Brown brought her into an altered state of con- thing.’ And I remember hearing that, and
told Sharon, “‘I know you are attracted sciousness. “My hands are not hands, I’m, like, ‘Wait, how do you know that?
to him and that’s beautiful, but I think my face not face, my feet not feet,” she How do you know what you like and dis-
it would be really messy if anything hap- wrote. “The space inside of me and the like? How do you know who you are?’”
pens.’ Sharoni pretty much promised space around me are one and the same.” Others explained that the boundary be-
that she wouldn’t sleep with him.” But, Through Butoh, some dancers come tween themselves and their surroundings
later, Sharon suggested to Brown that to see their sense of self as illusory, an dissolved. A person who felt as if he no
this promise had been broken. understanding that reflects the Buddhist longer existed kept asking his teacher,
Just seeing Kan’s handwriting on a ideas intrinsic in Japanese culture. Bud- “Tell me what I look like.”
scrap of paper, Sharon told him in an dhist religious texts acknowledge that These sorts of selfless states might
e-mail, made her realize “I have not yet this awareness can invite psychic dis- be likened to what Western psychiatrists
mastered my attachments in life.” She tress—a state that some Buddhist mas- call depersonalization, a condition in
pulled away from Todd, who had been ters have called “falling into emptiness.” which people feel that they have become
supportive of her career; by the end of The person may become disconnected observers, detached from their own body
and thoughts. But Robert Sharf, a pro-
fessor of Buddhist studies at the Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley, told me, MASK
“The depersonalization to which Bud-
dhists aspire is not supposed to result in During our self-isolation, you send me collages
dysfunctional alienation. The dissolution of God’s blown animals, breathed into, heated
of the ego is meant to occur within an
institutional and ideological framework and shaped like glass. Our skin is full of holes
that helps one make sense of the expe- for oil and sweat. When I whisper, Breathe me in,
rience. Nowadays, people who become
depressed or depersonalized through I mean all of me—the scent of my flesh, but also me,
secularized meditation practices don’t my god, the beginning of the fulfillment of this desire.
have access to the conceptual resources
and social structures to help them han- In a mask, you can be whoever I want you to be, king
dle what is happening to them.” or dog: muse comes from muzzle, to track your kill.
Mauricio Sierra-Siegert, a psychia-
trist who spent fifteen years working in The plague doctors wore masks in the shape of a bird,
the Depersonalisation Research Unit at the beak filled with fresh clippings: juniper, rose, clove.
the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s Col-
lege London, told me that a frequent The mask is a type of respirator, meaning breathe again,
topic of conversation among colleagues which is how we’ve managed to stay alive all these years.
was whether “spiritual enlightenment
resembled the state of depersonaliza- Through the glass eyes, they could examine the body
tion.” Sierra-Siegert, who has practiced they could not touch with their bare hands.
Zen Buddhism for thirty years and is
now a professor at Colegiatura Colom- Breath can be both instinctive and controlled.
biana, in Medellín, has observed that Matisse’s most famous cutout is “Blue Nude II,”
cultural expectations appear to shape the
degree to which people experience de- a woman who appears to be made of parts, but who
personalization as a source of distress. was scissored instead from a single sheet of paper.
When he moved from London to Co-
lombia, he said, he was surprised to dis- —Beth Bachmann
cover that although some of his patients
felt that their selves weren’t real, they
did not seem to be suffering from this those are the source of suffering, it can together, and Mizrahi found her friend
observation the way that his London require a much greater change, and be disconnected and emotionally blunted.
patients were. “They didn’t experience more destabilizing, for someone from a She was thinner than Mizrahi had ever
it as a symptom—it was not why they very goal-oriented, identity-oriented seen her. She had been fasting. Sharon
had come to me,” he said. He believes society.” Britton added, “I think that peo- felt she was too large, Kan said, com-
that the disparity arises from the fact ple underestimate how difficult it is to pared with the other dancers. He urged
that Colombian culture is less individ- change your culture in terms of lived ex- her to eat more, telling her that in Butoh
ualistic. “If you feel like you are your own perience. You can’t just decide ‘I am going “you make your weakness into dance.”
island—if you are entirely identified with to reform my psyche and being accord- Maureen Momo Freehill, an Ameri-
your own story and image—then the ing to another culture’s definition.’” can Butoh dancer, told me that when she
experience of becoming depersonalized trained for several years in Japan, she, too,
will be more threatening,” he said. n the summer of 2011, Sharon per- found herself restricting what she ate.
Britton told me that she had assumed
that meditators with a history of psy-
I formed in São Paulo with Kan and
his company. Thabatta Mizrahi, a close
Her size, she said, came to feel like yet
another imposing aspect of her Ameri-
chiatric troubles would be the ones in childhood friend who lives in Brazil, can identity. “My self-referencing just be-
her study most vulnerable to breakdown. came to the performance. Sharon danced came so obvious,” she said. “It was: what
Instead, she found that those most likely alone, topless, with her long brown hair do I want, I’m the one, it’s about me.”
to become distressed were people like so wild that it looked like a tent. She Mizrahi was troubled by the way that
Sharon, overachievers with a high level repeatedly started to lift herself off the Sharon spoke about Kan. “Admiration
of ambition and drive. “In the transmis- floor, only to fall back again. “When I is good, it’s healthy, it’s motivating,” she
sion of Buddhism to the contemporary used to watch her perform, there was later wrote her in an e-mail, but not when
West, we are not starting from similar always a little bit of Sharon in the char- we “lose sight of who we are.” Mizrahi
baselines,” Lindahl said. “When you are acters she would play,” Mizrahi told me. sensed that it wasn’t Kan’s personality to
trying to undercut certain features of “But this time I couldn’t find her.” which Sharon was drawn but the fact
selfhood, because you’ve been told that Mizrahi and Sharon spent three days that he “embodied this art form, and she
had to make sacrifices to continue gain- psychiatric ward of Bispebjerg Hospi- itual space in which “you cross over into
ing knowledge from her mentor.” At the tal. When Kan came to the hospital, he a different dimension, and you’re not
end of the visit, as Sharon stood at Miz- said, two police officers told him that sure if you’re playing the instrument or
rahi’s door, she suddenly took a lighter Sharon’s parents had reported that he the instrument is playing you,” Lillian
tone. “I know you think I look too skinny, had kidnapped her. “I will go out with said. “That’s what all of us want. But
but do I look good?” Sharon asked. all my strength to make sure that you we hope we do it in a way that is healthy.”
“I was, like, of all the things, that’s come back to your country and family,” Sharon’s father demanded that she
what you’re worried about?” Mizrahi Tibor wrote Sharon in an e-mail. “I have cut off contact with Kan, but she con-
said. Later, she wondered if what Sha- no other choice, but to go after your tinued communicating with him. Kan
ron had really been asking was “Do you master and his reputation.” To Kan, he joked, “I will be your personal psycho-
still see me?” wrote, “I will hunt you down if you stay therapist.” He seemed to believe that
Sharon’s parents also expressed con- in touch with my daughter.” dancing could be her medicine. He liked
cern that her personality was changing. Sharon’s parents flew to Copenha- to imagine the day, he told me, when
“Since you met him and follow his teach- gen and took her back to Miami. A few ill people might seek help from a cho-
ing, you have lost your identity,” Tibor weeks later, Kan wrote Sharon an e-mail reographer. If a married couple had a
wrote in an e-mail. Tibor is jovial, out- clarifying the terms of their relation- crisis in their relationship, he said, “they
going, and commanding; one has the ship: “My love has limitation, we only can go to the choreographer and make
sense, when talking to him, of being can share the creation on the stage.” In a duet,” rather than getting divorced.
slightly, though not unpleasantly, pum- Miami, Sharon saw a psychiatrist, who Just as the Sterns supposed that a form
melled. He wrote Sharon impetuous gave her a diagnosis of depression and of art was the problem, Kan assumed
e-mails (“all this for a sick dance, that prescribed her an antidepressant and an that it could be the solution.
hardly anyone shows interest”), followed antipsychotic, but she took the medica- Kan told Sharon that she needed to
by apologies and expressions of love. tions inconsistently. Although Sharon’s focus on her recovery and could not per-
Kan cautioned Sharon about adopt- family and childhood friends said that form with him until she was stable. “If
ing his life style. “I think this is a bit she’d never previously shown signs of you don’t want me anymore—on any
too much for you I apologize because depression, her Butoh colleagues said level, don’t feel you owe me anything,”
you have your history your world your that she’d spoken about her struggles she wrote him in an e-mail. “You’ve given
family,” he wrote. He explained that, with it. She began seeing a psychologist, me so much already.” In her journal, she
since he had become a Butoh dancer, Eli Levy, who knew her family. It was wrote that she needed to “accept the in-
in 1979, he’d resigned himself to the pos- clear to Levy that finding Butoh had evitable truth that nothing lasts.”
sibility of ending up “lying stone dead been Sharon’s “eureka moment,” he said. But in February, 2012, she went to
somewhere by the side of the road.” His “I think she believed the dance itself was San Francisco for one of Kan’s work-
goal was modest: to survive as an avant- a release from the ills of society.” shops, though she had not been explic-
garde artist. Sharon often went swing When she wasn’t dancing, though, itly invited. She was able to dance for
dancing at night, and Kan seemed puz- she seemed to absorb the world’s sor- periods of time with intense concentra-
zled by her attraction to “social dance— rows too completely. Her friend Tracey- tion, but then her focus abruptly broke.
dance that is entertainment.” He told Ann Jarrett-Peña, who knew Sharon Once, she was in the middle of a con-
me, “Creation is not about entertain- from swing dancing, said that, when they versation with Kan when she saw a bus
ing. Creation is very painful.” discussed acts of police brutality in Egypt, out of the corner of her eye; she ran
Sharon was not dissuaded. “Do you Sharon seemed physically pained; it was away and jumped onto it. A dancer at
think I have more respect for money as if there were no protective boundary the workshop said that previously she’d
and ‘comfort’ than for LOVE and art?” between herself and others. Sharon began had probing conversations with Sharon
she wrote him. “Butoh is my jour- to ask Jarrett-Peña, who is black, about about trying to push beyond the limits
ney . . . through you. Big ship, small ship, her experiences of racism. Jarrett-Peña’s of identity and ego. Now the dancer
stormy sea or quiet sea. I was never so husband, Martin Peña, said, “We kept wondered if Sharon had “gone under
clear about something in my life.” telling her, ‘Sharon, you can’t feel this the radar, in terms of her deterioration.”
guilty for other people’s acts of violence.’” She noticed that Sharon had “started
n August, 2011, a month after the trip Sharon’s acting teacher, Lillian An- to talk in faltering English, almost like
I to Brazil, Sharon went to Copenha-
gen with Kan for a performance called
dron, said that when Sharon visited her
she seemed like an “automaton.” An-
she was Japanese. My guess is she was
merging with Kan.”
“100 Dancers.” Artists from around the dron and her husband, Michael, run a In e-mails, Sharon began referring
world took over the public spaces of the Jewish community theatre in North to herself in the third person. “What is
city. Kan said that, after the performance, Miami Beach where Sharon had per- advice, like used to give to Sharoni,” she
Sharon disappeared. Hours later, she was formed after college. Having directed asked Kan. “I am only trying to find out
found in a church shouting, “Coming her for years, they were acquainted with the ‘way’ for Sharoni.” She envied Jap-
up! A hundred dancers!” She seemed all her facial expressions, but on this anese dancers who were closer to “the
not to realize that the dance had ended. visit they didn’t recognize her gestures. original Butoh essence,” she wrote. She
She was so disruptive that the police It was clear to them that Sharon had began learning Japanese; she told Kan
were called, and she was admitted to the been reaching for that creative and spir- that she was trying to be less expressive
and wordy. She found it essential to A week later, Kan learned that Sha- argued that “having a skill which war-
work on “killing off ” “old ways of see- ron had killed herself in Florida by us- rants admiration hardly makes one the
ing”—a process she approached with a ing a helium kit. At first, Kan was con- master of another adult.” To challenge
kind of violence. “It felt like she was vinced that her suicide was merely a Tibor’s allegations, he compiled hun-
frantically running toward it,” Lisa rumor. When he finally understood that dreds of e-mails between him and Sha-
Adeva Samoy, a Naropa classmate, said. it was true, he took a vow of silence for ron, but, not understanding the U.S.
Sharon seemed to have a disrupted forty-nine days, the amount of time, court system, he missed deadlines and
sense of what is known in philosophi- according to some Buddhists, required failed to follow proper procedure for
cal literature as “ipseity”—the taken-for- for the deceased to transition from one submitting evidence. At a hearing in
granted feeling that we inhabit our own life to the next. After Sharon’s death, 2017, Kan participated by telephone. A
experiences. The psycholo- Sheri Brown, the Butoh Japanese translator was in the court-
gist Louis Sass, the author dancer from Kan’s company, room, but he couldn’t keep up with
of “Madness and Modern- said that she revisited notes Kan. “He’s saying a lot,” the judge, Mily
ism,” told me that he has she had taken while study- Rodriguez-Powell, said. “What is he
become increasingly atten- ing with him. “One quote saying?”
tive to the possibility that I had written down was Kan said that he wanted to tes-
meditative and contempla- ‘You must suicide yourself.’ tify, but Rodriguez-Powell told him he
tive experiences might have I think what he meant was would need a notary, to swear him in.
the potential, for some vul- kill your ego. Let go.” But, “Right now?” Kan asked.
nerable people, to foster an she said, she began to won- “Right now,” Rodriguez-Powell said.
erosion of the first-person der, “Without a guiding “This is the hearing now.”
perspective. Of course, bi- star, to what end are we los- “Right now it’s 1 a.m. in Japan,”
ology and a history of trauma can pre- ing the ego? There has to be a path, Kan said. “I’m the only one person in
dispose people to breakdowns, but he some rules to hold on to.” On social the room.”
believes that certain kinds of meditation media, the Sterns and some of Sharon’s Kan was not allowed to testify. When
can sometimes be a trigger, disembed- friends accused Kan of being complicit he had the chance to cross-examine
ding people from the social frameworks in her death. “Your devotee is gone,” Tibor Stern, the only question he could
integral to daily existence. A person be- Lisa Adeva Samoy wrote on Kan’s Face- come up with was “Why do you lie?”
comes unhinged from “the cultural sur- book page. “Did you take everything “Sir, that’s not an appropriate ques-
round—not only from mythic and reli- she gave?” tion,” Rodriguez-Powell told him. “Do
gious meanings,” he writes, “but also you have any practical question con-
from the habits and tacit framework n May, 2014, Kan was walking into cerning this case to ask Mr. Stern?”
assumptions that normally guide our
everyday cognitive activity and ways of
I an arts studio in Bangkok when a
man holding a thick manila folder asked
He asked Stern why he let Sharon
travel to Brazil, shortly before her
behaving.” (One of the meditators infor his signature. Kan signed, assuming death. “You are the one who protect
terviewed in Britton and Lindahl’s Va- it was a package delivery. Then the man her, not me.”
rieties of Contemplative Experience proj- told him, “This is a complaint against “We tried to avoid travelling,” Stern
ect told them that, after reading a paper you pending in the Broward County said, “but the constant force of his in-
by Sass about ipseity and schizophrenia, Circuit Court,” in Florida. fluence on my daughter . . . overcame
he thought, Fuck, I have schizophrenia.) The complaint had been filed by every effort.” He characterized Butoh
In April, 2012, Sharon decided at the Tibor Stern, alleging that Kan was the as a “conception of body and mind, lose
last minute to fly alone to Fortaleza, “direct proximate, legal cause of Stern’s your ego, your identity.” He added, “It
Brazil, for a Butoh workshop, though death.” Tibor accused him of “exploit- is a cult.”
Kan had urged her not to go without ing his superior position as Stern’s Kan tried to argue that Broward
a friend. Once there, she wrote Kan teacher, by stripping Stern of her free County had no jurisdiction over a Jap-
with a question: “Yesterday came up will, under the pretense that such deg- anese citizen who had never been there.
with the idea that butoh is about de- radation was necessary in order to allow But in April, 2018, Rodriguez-Powell
constructing body/ego, etc.” She added, her to attain levels of enlightenment ruled against him, because, she wrote,
“So the question arises what happens which would allow Stern to become a when Sharon was in Florida Kan had
AFTER the deconstruction of your body/ great Butoh performance artist.” Skyped with her and sent her numer-
mind/ego?” Kan responded by telling Kan has never been to Florida. At ous e-mails “with knowledge that he
her that “Butoh is not just simply de- first, he tried to ignore the case. But, he was interfering with her care.” She sin-
construction body/ego, etc.” He sug- said, other Butoh dancers told him, “You gled out an e-mail in which Kan had
gested that she revisit the teachings of need to fight this. It’s not good for the responded to a despairing message from
Hijikata, the co-founder of Butoh, who art form.” Sharon when she was in Brazil by tell-
had described Butoh as “human reha- He hired a lawyer, until he saw the ing her to “continue her research ‘in an-
bilitation,” a form for protecting one- invoice. Then he represented himself. other world.’” (In fact, in the e-mail, Kan
self from and protesting the alienation In a motion written with the help of commended her for teaching Brazilian
of contemporary society. the Butoh dancer Heyward Bracey, he students and said, “Continue your re-
search who you are in another world male power struggle between one pa- ter for sending text messages and mak-
can be more deep than USA.”) triarch, Sharoni’s father, and another ing a phone call to her boyfriend urg-
Throughout the case, Kan rejected patriarch, Kan. Sharoni, the person, was ing him to kill himself; not long afterward,
Tibor’s characterization of Butoh as a never really acknowledged in that space.” a Boston College student was indicted
dance that teaches people to “wallow in for the same crime, because prosecutors
the darkness of their soul.” He explained istorically, suicide has been one of said she sent her boyfriend abusive text
that darkness has different connotations
in Japan than it does in Judeo-Christian
H the few kinds of death for which
someone else cannot be blamed. It didn’t
messages that prompted his suicide.
Criminal courts are increasingly willing
traditions, in which darkness is equated matter what provoked a person’s despair— to see suicide as a kind of social process,
with sin. His definition of dark, he said, committing suicide was seen as a crime, and the suicidal person as a victim. Civil
was “nobody knows yet.” William Ma- a self-contained and autonomous deci- courts, too, have been taking more seri-
rotti, a professor of modern Japanese sion that eclipsed whatever wrongful acts ously the argument that people in po-
history at U.C.L.A., said that, in the had led to it. The suicidal person was sitions of power—prison and school offi-
context of postmodern Japanese art, guilty of “invading the prerogative of the cials, psychiatrists, coercive partners—can
references to darkness should be under- Almighty, and rushing into his immedi- be responsible for the deaths of those
stood as part of an “argument about ate presence uncalled for,” the eighteenth- who need guidance or protection. The
art and the state.” He went on, “Art is century English jurist Sir William Black- impulse to commit suicide does not al-
in a zone of darkness and indetermi- stone wrote. Carried into the American ways manifest like a germ in the body—
nacy, and then there is light, which is colonies, this view of suicide has had a it can also be shaped by teachers, by be-
basically the government: prosecutors, lingering influence on U.S. law. As late lief systems, by communities.
police, bureaucrats.They try to nail down as the nineteen-sixties, several states listed The writer Andrew Solomon ob-
and define the creative unknown and in suicide as a crime. serves that the catastrophe of suicide is
that process kill it.” In recent years, though, courts have “not only the loss of someone, but the
Wrongful-death cases often turn into begun accepting that people are more loss of the chance to persuade that per-
a battle between experts, and Kan didn’t interconnected than the laws surround- son to act differently, the loss of the
have the money to challenge the testi- ing suicide acknowledge. In 2017, Mi- chance to connect.” The lawsuit against
mony of Tibor’s expert, Eli Levy, the chelle Carter, a Massachusetts woman, Kan took that loss and enlarged it into
psychologist who treated Sharon before was convicted of involuntary manslaugh- a kind of evil fairy tale. Tibor Stern has
she died. Levy, who had seen Sharon
for fourteen sessions, acknowledged
that, initially, Kan had helped her to
“believe in herself, to express herself . . .
to see how beautiful she was in the in-
side and outside.” But, over time, he
said, Sharon “essentially stopped being
who she was and became a full imita-
tion of what he wanted her to be.”
In March, 2019, after Tibor filed a
motion for partial summary judgment,
there was a final hearing. For fourteen
minutes, Kan said, he repeatedly called
the number for the court—he had evi-
dence from other Butoh dancers that he
intended to present—but no one picked
up. When he eventually got through, the
hearing was over and the ruling had al-
ready been made: Kan was liable for the
suicide of his student. (Tibor Stern de-
cided not to pursue damages. “He doesn’t
have a dollar to his name,” he said.) Kan
told me that the ruling showed that “the
court doesn’t understand avant-garde
art—the judge believes that art must be
in pursuit of something beautiful.” But,
he said, “an artist is looking for the next
day’s beauty, not this day’s beauty.”
Bracey, the Butoh dancer who helped
Kan draft his responses to the lawsuit,
characterized the case as “this strange “How much farther away from it all will we be going?”
founded an organization called Fami- sight is perhaps not so far from the terized Tibor Stern’s attacks on Kan as
lies Against Cult Teachings (fact), Buddha’s teaching that our striving is a “modern-day witch hunt” that preyed
which he runs out of a one-story brick the cause of suffering. on “prejudices and fear of the unknown.”
office building near the Sterns’ house. Nathan Montgomery, a Butoh teacher
Whenever Kan is invited to perform an’s career in the United States ap- with whom Sharon studied in Boulder,
somewhere, Stern e-mails the organiz-
ers of the event saying that Kan killed
K pears to be over. FACT was so suc-
cessful in its campaign against him that
said that her death, and the family’s re-
sponse, contributed to his decision to
his daughter. “I never thought that it he is rarely invited to perform in Amer- leave Boulder and to take a break from
was possible to lose a child to a hostile ican theatres and schools. He still trav- teaching Butoh. “It stopped me in my
outside force like this,” he told me. But els to other parts of the world, but the tracks,” he said. “If I guide people into
mental illness can look like a hostile accusations trail him. “This Butoh ‘teacher’ dark new places that they hadn’t explored
outside force, too. Brainwashing may uses his position for his own personal before—which is a big part of the work
be a fitting metaphor for what it feels selfish gain and pleasure,” Tibor wrote to that I do—what is my responsibility as
like to become profoundly depressed. a performance space in Kyoto, in 2018. a teacher?” He wondered “whether Jap-
In the past two decades, the suicide “It is incumbent upon your company to anese Butoh can ever really even happen
rate in America has increased by thir- terminate any involvement with Katsura in a Western body,” he said. “As dancers,
ty-three per cent—the rate is the high- Kan,” a “support specialist” from FACT we physically redefine ourselves through
est since the Second World War—but wrote to the directors of a venue in Fin- our teachers, but what’s tricky is when
there have been few advances in under- land. When the director of a performance we take on a form that is so deeply rooted
standing how to prevent this sort of space in Cuernavaca, Mexico, didn’t re- in a different cultural tradition, and the
death. A review of forty years of stud- spond to messages, in 2017, another FACT narrative is not our narrative.”
ies in the journal PLOS One, in 2016, representative wrote, “If we don’t hear Butoh is easy to scapegoat: it explores
concluded that a reliable method of iden- from you soon, we will be contacting the the “very roots of anguish,” as a French
tifying who might commit suicide “re- ministry and all related gov agencies.” In critic once put it. But a few dancers
mains elusive.” Ninety-five per cent of most of its correspondence, FACT at- thought that Sharon would have dete-
people who had been identified in stud- tached two anonymous “victim letters,” riorated no matter what genre of dance
ies as most likely to kill themselves did as they were titled, from Butoh dancers. she had chosen. “Have you seen ‘Black
not do so. Half of the people who com- But the letters were vague. One described Swan’?” a Butoh dancer asked me. The
mitted suicide had been classified as low the difficulty of finding trustworthy men- heroine, a ballerina with a feverish level
risk. The authors wrote, “The extent of tors. The other referred to Kan as a mon- of ambition, inhabits her role too deeply
this uncertainty is profound.” In “The ster and said she identified with Sharon: and has a nervous breakdown. (Tibor
Savage God,” a book about suicide, the “We both desired the same thing. Cre- Stern, too, occasionally invoked the
English writer A. Alvarez observed that ative fulfillment.” themes of “Black Swan.” “I don’t blame
explanations for suicide are almost never Vangeline, the founder of the New you,” he wrote Sharon a few months
sufficient. They are “like a trivial border York Butoh Institute, said that after before she died. “You just wanted to
incident which triggers off a major war. Sharon’s death she reëxamined encoun- dance to perfection.”)
The real motives which impel a man to ters earlier in her career. She’d studied When I spoke with Kathryn Ross,
take his own life are elsewhere; they be- Sharon’s friend from Naropa, she re-
long to the internal world, devious, con- marked that she was staring at a small
tradictory, labyrinthine.” gold enamelled treasure box that Sharon
Perhaps it is a category error to place had given her. A few days earlier, when
the burden of solving suicide on psy- I first e-mailed Ross, she had realized
chiatry; the wish to end one’s life can that she was wearing Sharon’s red hooded
be as much a spiritual, social, or exis- wool coat. It occurred to her that for years
tential crisis as a medical one. The study Sharon had been giving away her belong-
of suicide is still defined, to a great de- ings—a warning sign of suicide.
gree, by the sociologist Émile Durkheim, Ross wishes that Sharon had had a
who argued, in “Suicide,” from 1897, that with a Butoh master who “dispensed more nurturing mentor who could have
the most prevalent type of suicide in personal and spiritual advice as though reminded her, “As part of this Butoh
Western society was “anomic suicide”—a he were an authority on the subject of process, you are questioning everything
response to social upheavals that caused life itself,” she wrote in an essay on her about yourself, but remember that you
people to become disconnected from Web site. At the time, she interpreted need some basic sense of self.” She won-
their community’s values and norms. her resistance to him as a personal fail- dered if Sharon would have taken a
Their desires and aspirations go un- ure. But, she told me, “Kan was not one different path had she devoted herself
checked, and they suffer from “over- of those teachers whom I felt was pos- to Barbara Dilley, her thesis adviser,
weening ambition,” creating a state of ing as a spiritual master. I personally rather than Kan. Dilley told me she rec-
perpetual dissatisfaction. “Inextinguish- never saw that behavior with him.” In ommends that “students hang out on
able thirst is constantly renewed tor- an affidavit submitted to the Broward the outskirts of a practice or devotional
ture,” Durkheim wrote. Durkheim’s in- County court, in 2018, she had charac- community for five or ten years and re-
ally observe what is going on before they
commit to becoming a student.” Ross
remembers Dilley instructing her stu-
dents to walk across the room carrying
water in silver spoons, to help them in-
ternalize the Buddhist concept “not too
tight, not too loose.” Ross interpreted
the lesson as “If you are grasping some-
thing too tightly, you will destroy it.”
he first time Kan and I spoke, on

T Skype, he told me, “I’m not expect-
ing only good things about me. You can
criticize me. Just make good work.” He
spent hours systematically forwarding
me the contents of his Yahoo in-box. I
asked him by e-mail if he’d come closer
to understanding the reasons for Sha-
ron’s death, and he wrote me, “I reply
your answer took more than 6 hours as
my English is not skillful” and enclosed “I wish we had an in-ground moat.”
a numbered list of possible reasons for
her suicide, including her fasting, the col-
lapse of her marriage, and the death of
• •
her dog—a car ran over the dog three
weeks before Sharon died. He did not was a child he had decided to kill him- an aesthetic value. And yet, when he
shy away from pointing out Sharon’s self, after he was caught shoplifting from elaborated on his anger—“It’s a very
weaknesses. “One side of Sharoni is too a store. He pressed a knife to his stom- complex emotion, I think,” he told me—
egoistic,” he told me, adding that Sha- ach—but it hurt, so he put the knife his tone felt compassionate. “I hope the
ron struggled as she tried to distance her- down. The way he told stories gave me truth from my heart can reach her,” he
self from a family that was “attracted to the sense that there was an important went on. “Because I couldn’t help her. I
the diamond.” truth to be gleaned, if I thought about should have more strongly cared about
When I asked him if he regretted his words carefully enough, but after a her. This emotion of anger is not only
crossing professional boundaries with while I realized that he was more or less to her. It is to myself—to myself.”
her, the language barrier felt insurmount- cycling through various thoughts he’d Days before Sharon died, she wrote
able; he had trouble with the word had about suicide over the years. He Kan, “Thank you for all your important
“boundary,” interpreting it in terms of didn’t understand, but he was trying to lessons, even when they were wrong.”
movement and the importance of push- be helpful. There was almost a kind of She was “escaping,” she wrote, and might
ing one’s body and mind to the edge nobility in his encyclopedic candidness. find more beauty in “another lifetime if
and beyond. He also said, “In a sense I He said he wanted to gain more clar- it exists at all.” Only later, Kan told me,
love her,” adding that “she’s a very lovely ity by going to Sharon’s grave. He had did he realize that she was saying good-
woman, and she’s very attractive, and been avoiding Florida during the court bye. “This is my real regret and my sad-
she has a very nice instinct for creation.” proceedings—visiting the state would ness,” he said. “I regret not being able to
But he explained that he usually had a undermine his argument that Broward notice the loneliness inside of her mind.”
few disciples at a time and shared this County didn’t have jurisdiction over Sharon’s colleagues worried that her
kind of intimacy with all of them. “In him—but, he told me, “now that I can death could prevent young dancers from
Japan the teaching style is face to face, step in Florida, I want to accuse her, ac- finding an art form that might be life-
hand to hand,” he told me. He had dis- tually. Without permission, how can affirming for them—an outcome that
couraged Sharon from separating from you suicide? I’m not comfortable. I want they felt was in conflict with Sharon’s
Todd, he said: “I think he is actually the to just yell, ‘You are an egoist.’” wishes. In some ways, suicide is the an-
perfect man.” I asked if he meant for his comment tithesis of the lessons she was absorb-
In two different conversations, Kan to sound cold. “How can I say, ‘Rest in ing: it requires the belief that the pres-
told the same story, unprompted, about peace,’ and give the flowers on the grave?” ent moment, and all the excruciating
a train conductor in Japan who was so he responded. “This is acting. I don’t emotions it contains, is permanent; that
ashamed that his train arrived five min- like acting.” Usually, people suppress the story of one’s identity is fixed. “Most
utes late that he killed himself. “This is their anger, or disguise it in the form of stories I create in my mind are untrue,”
very much Japanese society,” he told me. more palatable emotions, but his disre- Sharon had once reminded herself in
“It’s very tight. Responsibility is very gard for social convention appeared to her journal. “Pain can be transmitted
strong.” He also told me that when he be a point of personal pride as well as instead of obliterated.” 
SHOWCASE BY JEFF CHIEN-HSING LIAO
March 23rd: The wait for COVID-19 tests at Elmhurst Hospital. Queens had the most confirmed coronavirus cases of any
borough, and its hospitals are among the most overtaxed in the city.
LETTER FROM YANGQUAN
The Friendship and

Love Hospital
As Chinese society transforms itself, can it still care for the dying?
BY JIAYANG FAN
u Zhixia discovered the lump became so ravaged that she was almost
M in her left breast on an un-

seasonably warm night in
March of 2014. At twenty-seven, she
unrecognizable. When her son was taken
to visit, he had to be prompted to call
her Mother.
was strong and healthy, and hadn’t seen Shanxi is in the heart of China’s coal
a doctor since giving birth to her son, country, and has disproportionately high
Xuan, two years before. But her mother, rates of esophageal and lung cancer.
Sulin, told her not to take chances and Zhixia was only five months old when
marched her to their local hospital, in her father, a farmer, died of esophageal
Pingding, a small city in the province cancer. (Sulin remarried, but her second
of Shanxi. A doctor conducted a swift husband succumbed to lung cancer.)
examination and wrote a prescription. Still, Zhixia grew up to be a sunny, op-
“Doesn’t she need a scan?” Sulin asked. timistic woman. Moonfaced, with high
“No need!” the doctor responded. “The cheekbones, she liked to say that she
medication will be enough.” met her father whenever she looked in
Zhixia dutifully took the pills, but the mirror. She quit school after sev-
after a few months the lump was still enth grade and worked various jobs to
there, so Sulin accompanied her to a help support the family. When she was
hospital in Yangquan, a nearby indus- twenty-five, she met her husband, a coal
trial city of 1.5 million people. The doc- miner named Zhang Wei.
tors said that she needed immediate sur- Three years into Zhixia’s illness, in
gery. As is typical with dire diagnoses the spring of 2017, Wei felt a pain in his
in China, they did not tell Zhixia that back so severe that he couldn’t lift up
she had breast cancer, informing only their son. He didn’t go to a doctor: car-
her mother. Sulin, in turn, assured her ing for Zhixia left little time, and he
daughter that the growth was benign. figured that he’d hurt himself while
After the operation, a biopsy revealed swimming. Two weeks later, the pain
that the cancer had spread. The doctors was so bad that he couldn’t get out of
put Zhixia on a course of chemother- bed. When he finally went to a doctor,
apy, and she was hospitalized for sev- he was informed that he had a blood
eral weeks. A year later, the cancer disorder. The doctor, who suspected late-
returned, and the doctor who had pre- stage leukemia, told him to check in to
scribed the chemo remarked casually the hospital right away. Wei said that
that if they had followed it up with ra- he needed to keep working, to pay for
diation the outcome might have been his wife’s treatment.
better. Sulin wanted to know why they Wei died on a brisk fall day, three
hadn’t done that, but she felt too intim- months later. What pained Zhixia the
idated to say anything. most was knowing that he had been
In the next three years, Zhixia had alone at the end. His mother was too
four more long stays in the hospital, distraught to enter his hospital room,
emerging frailer each time. The cost of his father had been at work in the coal
her treatments, a hundred thousand mines, Zhixia had been receiving an-
yuan (almost fifteen thousand dollars), other round of chemo, and her own
plunged the family into financial crisis. mother was busy caring for Xuan. In the
The cancer progressed to her lymph days after, Zhixia told her mother, “Please
nodes, her lungs, her bones. Her body don’t let me die.” By then, she knew that Hospice remains an unfamiliar concept in
China, where there are strong taboos against discussing death and where end-of-life care has long been a family matter.
ILLUSTRATION BY JUN CEN THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 45
she had cancer: her father-in-law, who ities are concentrated in cities. Health- Yangquan, where he encountered an ul-
was illiterate, had inadvertently let her care costs have risen sharply in recent trasound machine for the first time, and
see one of her medical reports. years, and Chinese patients must navigate was amazed. “In Eastern medicine, there
Zhixia’s doctors told Sulin to begin a byzantine system of government cov- is so much interpretation and guesswork,”
thinking about funeral arrangements. erage. Most people have basic insurance, he said. “But with ultrasound you could
In desperation, she started asking around but anything beyond routine care usually actually see inside a patient’s body.” After
about other medical facilities, and a requires steep out-of-pocket payments. scraping together enough money to buy
neighbor told her about a man named The early stages of the coronavirus a machine, he started operating a clinic
Li Youquan, who had opened a small pandemic brought to light some of the out of his house, near the village where
private hospital on the outskirts of dysfunctions of China’s medical system, he was born. Charging a couple of dol-
Yangquan. Its name was Yangquan including underinvestment in primary- lars per scan, he found that there was
You’ai Hospital—you’ai means “friend- care clinics and overreliance on huge, good money to be made detecting tu-
ship and love”—and it had a unit de- rigidly bureaucratic urban hospitals. But, mors and pregnancies.
voted to hospice care, a concept still un- if the coronavirus exposed the country’s At the time, in the early nineties, Deng
familiar in China. health-care challenges in their most Xiaoping’s market reforms had been
Few cultures relish talking about acute form, the quieter crisis in end-of- opening state-run services to private en-
death, but in China the subject remains life care reveals a chronic underlying terprise. The Communists had estab-
taboo. Mentioning it is considered so condition, whose symptoms are at once lished near-universal health care, which,
unlucky that dying people are often re- brutally economic and deeply cultural. though often rudimentary, increased the
luctant to discuss arrangements with Prosperity and medical advances have average life expectancy from thirty-five,
their families or even to make wills. transformed the way Chinese people in 1949, to sixty-nine, in 1990. Under the
(Last year, “The Farewell,” an Ameri- live, but they have done little to address economic reforms, however, hospitals
can film about a Chinese family that the question of how they should die. were allowed to ramp up what they
uses a wedding as an excuse to gather charged for their services, and govern-
around a terminally ill grandmother i Youquan named the Friendship ment health-care spending shrank. The
without arousing her suspicions, was a
breakout hit in the West, but it was
L and Love Hospital for an earlier it-
eration, which was founded, like most
process was anything but linear—during
a crackdown on unlicensed operators,
largely ignored in China, where such of China’s first hospitals, by Western Li’s clinic was closed and his machine
stories are commonplace.) As a result, missionaries. American representatives confiscated—but the burden of cost con-
fewer than a hundred and fifty institu- of the Church of the Brethren arrived tinued to shift toward patients, and the
tions specialize in end-of-life care, in a in the area in 1910, and their hospital gap between standards of care in the cit-
country where nearly twenty per cent trained generations of doctors and ies and those in the hinterlands widened.
of the population—a quarter of a bil- nurses. It closed not long before the Li spent the next decade working at
lion people—is sixty or older. The U.S., Communists came to power, in 1949, state clinics, until, in 2005, he saw an-
with some seventy million people over and expelled foreign missionaries. But, other chance to launch an entrepreneur-
sixty, has more than fifty-five hundred as Li told me when I visited him last ial venture. In the aftermath of the SARS
such institutions. summer, almost everything in China epidemic, the government embarked on
In China, the family has tradition- the country’s most ambitious health-
ally provided care for the vulnerable: care reforms in more than a generation,
“Raise a child against old age; stockpile in part to address the rural-urban di-
grain against famine,” one proverb coun- vide. Li built the Friendship and Love
sels. Confucian expectations of filial piety Hospital on a plot of undeveloped land
remain strong, but for most Chinese next to his home. Initially, there were
they have become increasingly difficult only twenty beds. “I knew I wanted to
to fulfill. Dizzying economic expansion offer something that other, bigger hos-
has made China’s population ever more pitals didn’t,” Li told me. “But I hadn’t
mobile, and the one-child policy, in force really figured out what that was.” Still,
from 1979 to 2015, means that many adults runs in cycles: “Sooner or later, what the business thrived, and, five years later,
have no siblings with whom to share the was banned will be reborn.” in 2010, he decided to hold a celebra-
burden of caring for relatives. Hundreds Li is a sturdily built man in his early tion for the centennial of his hospital’s
of millions of workers who have moved fifties, with alert eyes set in a frank, ex- missionary namesake. It had occurred
to the country’s booming cities cannot pressive face, and he comes from a fam- to him that publicizing the institution’s
do much more for aging parents back ily of farmers. His route to providing American roots might attract invest-
in remote villages than wire whatever palliative care was a circuitous one. In ment and expertise from the U.S. The
money they can spare. the late eighties, he attended a vocational thought prompted him to send e-mails
Rural areas also lack adequate pub- school that specialized in traditional Chi- to various organizations associated with
lic-health services. Close to half the pop- nese medicine. After graduating, he left missionary work.
ulation lives in the countryside, but about traditional medicine behind and did an One of these e-mails reached Li
eighty per cent of China’s medical facil- internship at the largest hospital in Ruoxia, a recent graduate of a Lutheran
seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. She was
struck by the coincidences: she, too, was
from the Yangquan area; she had writ-
ten a master’s thesis on the heritage of
Christian communities in Shanxi; and
her husband, an American anthropolo-
gist, had written his doctoral thesis on
the rituals of aging and filial piety in
rural China. Ruoxia had been volunteer-
ing at a nursing home in Iowa—she later
worked at a hospice—and, as she cor-
responded with Li Youquan, she started
to think about the lack of such services
back home. “To die seems so private, but
the process is embedded in a larger sys-
tem,” she told me. In China, death was
met first with denial and then with sto-
icism. “But in a hospice death is accepted,
so its trauma is slightly eased,” she said.
In 2012, she and her husband moved to “He survived nuclear Armageddon. But he doesn’t like to talk about it.”
Yangquan, so that she could introduce
hospice care to Li’s hospital. • •
At Friendship and Love, Ruoxia
began hiring a team to act as social work-
ers, both for the hospital’s resident pa- heard of the word ‘hospice,’” Meiying ing, she became delirious, and thought
tients and for discharged patients fac- said. “But, with our regular visits to our that she heard ghosts on the other side
ing their final days at home. She led dying members, that’s what we were of the wall. Still, she had no thought of
workshops on family support and be- trying to do, in our clumsy way.” giving up. “Why aren’t they treating the
reavement counselling, and handed out Ruoxia’s hospice unit was unusual source of my illness?” she fumed to her
translations of American writing on the enough to seem suspect to conservatively mother when her doctors focussed on
subjects. Sometimes she asked team minded people. Early on, when the hos- her bedsores. “They should be trying to
members to write letters to themselves pital registered with Shanxi’s Civil Affairs fix that first!”
or their loved ones to practice commu- Bureau, the officials were particularly After Zhixia’s experiences in other
nicating difficult emotions. Her recruits concerned about what the unit would be hospitals, the work of Ruoxia’s team
were women from the countryside, most called, and Ruoxia had to come up with seemed strange to her. She was perplexed
of whom had first come to the hospi- a name that was suitably euphemistic. that the social workers talked so much
tal to care for dying relatives. Few of She knew that phrases like “hospice care” about her feelings rather than about her
them had finished high school, but they and “palliative care” wouldn’t do, but even disease. But their unusual methods were
could do simple health-aide tasks and “comfort care” was judged to hint too not always unwelcome. Instead of ex-
instruct patients and families on the im- aggressively at a failure of treatment. amining her, Ruoxia offered to wash her
portance of hygiene. Just as important, Eventually, the government settled on hair, and, when Ruoxia mentioned her
the women understood the people they Elder Navigation Center. “The bureau- young daughter, Zhixia took out her
helped. They spoke the same dialect, crats don’t even know sometimes why phone to show off pictures of her son.
shared the same outlook, knew the local they are so resistant to try new things,” When Ruoxia arrived bearing nutri-
customs, and had an intuitive sense of Ruoxia told me with a bitter laugh. “Usu- tional shakes and cartons of yogurt,
how best to broach the subject of dying. ally, they just know it’s safer.” Zhixia suggested, with a weak smile, that
One of the first team members was perhaps her mother could eat them: “Her
Liu Meiying, a cancer survivor in her y the time Zhixia arrived at Friend- belly is my belly, her heart my heart.”
early sixties. After receiving her diag-
nosis, more than twenty years ago, she’d
B ship and Love, last April, cancer-
ous growths were compressing her spine
One morning, a few days into Zhixia’s
stay, Meiying got a text message from
quit her job at a factory and joined a to the point where she could no longer her: “Auntie. Urgent! I need to talk to
fledgling patient-support group in feel the lower half of her body. She ex- you!”When Meiying saw the time stamp
Yangquan. The group, known as the perienced severe nausea—even spoon- on the message—4 A.M.—she feared
South Mountain Anti-Cancer Club, fuls of porridge were hard to keep the worst and rushed over to the hos-
offered support that was rare at the time, down—and had lost so much weight pital. “Are you feeling O.K.?” she asked
arranging outings and gatherings where that her emaciated frame seemed lost breathlessly when she got there. But
members could talk about treatment in the hospital’s striped pajamas. Pain Zhixia seemed better than usual and
options and the day-to-day impact of from ulcers in her mouth kept her from greeted her with a bright smile.
their illness. “Back then, no one had ever sleeping. Sometimes, early in the morn- Sulin was in the room, too, fussing
over her daughter. As soon as Sulin left,
to get some breakfast in the cafeteria,
Zhixia lowered her voice and said, “Can SHELTER
you help me with a task, big sister?” She
told Meiying about something that she’d Don’t misunderstand me, I love a good poem
just read on her phone. Constantly think- Like half my Facebook friends, one that transports you
ing about how she might rescue her fam- To a corner of the soul you didn’t know was there
ily from the financial hole into which Because you couldn’t find the precise metaphor,
her illness had sunk them, she’d come Even if you felt it, like that time my parents saw
across a government-assistance scheme A local news story of an older woman asking for help
that claimed to help those in dire need. With an ailing husband, and I volunteered to drive them
She wanted Meiying to help her apply. To the address onscreen, a neighborhood
“My mom is strong, but I don’t think she I’d never driven through, though it looked familiar
realizes how impossible our money sit- With its usual poverty: a few leaning boards called a house
uation will be,” Zhixia confided. And inside the woman from the news in half-light
Meiying nodded and promised to do Thanking us for the comforters in our hands and pointing
her best. She was happy to help, and felt To a foldout chair where we could place them
satisfaction that Zhixia was opening up Before introducing us to her husband, a scraggly beard
more and more to her and the other Beneath a crinkled blanket on a cot right there
aides. On the way out, Meiying ran into In what would have been the living room, groaning
Sulin, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed. In the muted manner of those who know this is
She hadn’t gone to breakfast after all but As good as it’ll get, the woman’s non-stop small talk
was just waiting there in the corridor, About “So it is, life’s a struggle” and “Please stay awhile”
unable to leave her daughter. When Sulin And “Take a seat,” as if we were long-missed relatives,
moved to go back in, Meiying put a hand All this in Spanish, though I translate it here
gently on her shoulder and told her that Because I want to reach the widest audience
it would do her good to get some break- And not burden the monolingual English reader
fast. “I’ll stay with Zhixia for as long as When they’ve already gifted me their time by reading this,
you need,” she said. Which I’ll call a poem, one that my parents can’t read,
As they only speak Spanish with that poor Mexican lilt of apology
arly one morning last June, I accom- Which kept them from interrupting the woman, a Spanish
E panied Meiying on a visit to a pa-
tient everyone called Brother Zhang, who
suffered from advanced cirrhosis of the visit them,” Meiying murmured. Zhang she sees. Until he was in his mid-fifties,
liver. Brother Zhang lived in a remote boasted that he could still haul a respect- he had never stepped inside a hospital,
part of the countryside where his family able amount of corn on his back. I be- and rarely thought about his body as any-
had farmed corn for generations. As we lieved him; he had the wiry strength of thing more than a machine from which
drove north out of Yangquan, the indus- a frail person made strong by circumstance. he needed to extract as much work as
trial cityscape gave way to squat, sagging Zhang lived alone. His wife had left possible. But one day, five years ago, he
houses of weathered brick. Brown-gold him years ago, and his two sons rarely had coughed up enough blood to soak
cliffs composed of Shanxi’s distinctive visited: the older son was a coal miner, an entire handkerchief. When he visited
sandy loess soil punctuated fields of mil- with a family of his own; the younger, the First People’s Hospital, in Yangquan,
let and sorghum. An hour later, we got in his late twenties, suffered from men- he was told that an operation was re-
out of the car and walked the last mile, tal illness and usually stayed with rela- quired, to biopsy a tumor on his spleen.
up a hilly dirt path and then on broken tives. Zhang took us inside the single He could not afford it, and, besides, there
stone steps enmeshed in roots. Brother room that served as his living quarters. would be no one to care for him while
Zhang’s house was what is known in the The bare stone walls arched overhead, he recovered. Seeking a second opinion,
region as a yaodong, or cave home—a like those of a wine cellar. A bulky old he ventured to Taiyuan, the provincial
courtyard arrangement of vaulted rooms TV set was pushed up against his bed, capital, but the verdict was the same. In
carved into the loess hillside. on which all his earthly possessions were the past three years, Zhang has twice
Zhang, a lean stalk of a man with a piled. Meiying noticed a pack of ciga- stayed at Friendship and Love to receive
hawkish, wind-parched face, came out rettes and playfully chided him, but intravenous infusions. The second time,
to greet us. Though his gait was some- Zhang said, with a grin, that, at this he checked himself out early, against his
times unsteady, he moved about the point, smoking was probably keeping doctor’s orders. It was harvest season, and
premises quickly, showing me his well, him alive rather than killing him. Zhang had no one else to reap his corn.
a giant millstone, a barn where he’d once When I asked Zhang about his health, I noticed a pair of faded calendars,
kept donkeys, and herbs and peppers he had trouble explaining the details of years out of date, hanging above Zhang’s
hanging to dry under the lintel of a door- his condition, something that Meiying bed. One featured the face of President
way. “It means something when city folk told me is common among the people Xi Jinping. The other showed that of
tioned that her daughter lives in Bei-
jing, seven hundred miles away, and is
a mother herself. “When I look at my
patients now, immobile in bed, I think
I’ve kept but rarely use, though I did that moment about myself and what my future will
When I kept telling my mother “We have to go” look like,” she said.
With an almost impolite urgency, because I couldn’t bear
One more minute in that near-replica of the room of my childhood, ne day during my stay in Yang-
Even as the woman said “He seems to be in such a hurry”
And my mother smiled, making excuses as we turned to leave,
O quan, Li Youquan and I drove two
hours to Taiyuan, to visit Shanxi Tumor
While I bemoaned my parents’ passive politeness Hospital, the province’s largest hospital
So common in the Mexican in America, though by then and one of the first in China to special-
I was already a grad student in upstate New York ize in cancer care. In its vast atrium,
And down in South Texas for the winter break amid a sea of red banners bearing so-
Between semesters of reading Adichie and Alexie cialist slogans, there was a no-smoking
And risking words together to find something sign and a poster warning of the link
Like the point of this, some search for the reason between smoking and cancer. Nearby, a
For the speaker’s love of poems, that pull man sat staring at his phone, a lit ciga-
Of the written word as artifact, as a kind of tool rette dangling from his mouth. In China,
Against the sometimes overwhelming sadness about all of it— the messages on posters are sometimes
Including the fact that some of us it seems will never be allowed a better guide to what is not happen-
The time and energy to sit with a poem, like them ing than to what is. Other signs referred
In that illusion of shelter, though perhaps to anti-corruption policies and stipu-
They were closer to poetry’s pursuit, that edge of oblivion lated grave penalties for bribery and
Where words begin becoming insufficient—the woman profiteering in health-care settings. But,
With her frantic speech beseeching us and the man in a dimly lit stairwell, there were phone
Extending his bony hand out, as if from the cot itself, numbers and notes scribbled on a con-
The tremor of it trying to say something that sounded crete wall, advertising the services of
Like a greeting, that sounded like a plea. people who could falsify almost any kind
of medical paperwork—patient records,
—José Antonio Rodríguez diagnoses, prescriptions, bills.
Shi Lizhen had told me that, in ad-
dition to outright corruption, there were
Jesus. Some Christians had given him down. The senselessness of suicide, as he many gray areas. Doctors at public hos-
the calendar a few years ago, he said, desperately clung to life, baffled him. pitals receive paltry remuneration for pa-
promising that Jesus could save him. “Life might be short and brutal, but the tient consultations but much more when
Zhang started attending their meetings. point is to survive,” he said. they order major procedures. As a result,
“But Jesus did not cure me,” he said At the end of our visit, he gave Mei- surgeries are suspiciously common. For
scornfully, adding that the Christians ying a bag of plums that he had picked hospitals, drug sales are an important
were no help at all with obtaining med- from his own trees. After we left, Mei- revenue stream, so overprescription is
ication or I.V. infusions, or with harvest- ying observed that Brother Zhang’s case rife. Shi sometimes encounters patients
ing the crops in his absence. “If neither was not unusual. As people moved where who are fully recovered but are still being
Jesus nor his followers could do those the work was, the only people left in the prescribed medication. She discreetly
basic chores, what are they good for?” villages were the very old, the very young, suggests that they ignore their prescrip-
Our visit unfolded almost like a so- and the disabled. Shi Lizhen, the head tions, but they usually tell her that they
cial call, but Meiying slipped in ques- nurse of the geriatric department at the are afraid of offending the doctors. “So
tions about the things she’d come to check first hospital Zhang visited, told me that we reach a compromise,” she said. “The
up on. Zhang admitted that he still had when she started working, more than patient buys the medicine, so that the
trouble keeping food down. She asked thirty years ago, elderly patients typi- doctor gets paid, but they’ll just take it
after his younger son, who had recently cally had six or seven children, two or home instead of using it.”
been threatening suicide. Meiying had three of whom could devote themselves In Taiyuan, Li and I went to the
done what she could to help, getting in entirely to their parents’ care. Those days Shanxi hospital’s residential compound
touch with the son on WeChat and tell- were gone, and the hospital’s resources to visit his friend Song Jianguo, the for-
ing him not to do anything rash. She were so scarce that they couldn’t take mer head of the hospital’s respiratory de-
advised Zhang to focus on taking care inpatients who didn’t have around-the- partment. Song, who was in his early six-
of himself, but his son’s problems and clock caregivers. Some patients hired ties, had just retired, after having received
other family disputes agitated him. Every health aides, but many were too embar- a diagnosis of Stage IV stomach cancer.
so often, he picked up his cigarettes and rassed to ask their children to help with Greeting us at the door of his apartment
then, with a glance at Meiying, put them the cost. Shi, who is fifty-seven, men- in pajamas and slippers, he explained
that he had just finished a round of che- After reading a chapter about faith, cancer. In the last days of his life, the
motherapy. He had sharp cheekbones Cuihe asked Zhixia what she thought man became obsessed with clearing his
and exuded a placid, scholarly air. In his the passage was about. “I guess it’s about name of the political crimes of which
left nostril was a thin nasogastric tube. the relationship between a parent and he’d been accused. Li, desperate to give
When I apologized for bringing up a child, about love and our attitudes to him peace of mind, eventually came up
end-of-life care, Song laughed dryly. love,” she said, and then added, “It’s with a lie, saying that he had persuaded
“It’s a subject we should talk about more about death, too. I think I will die soon.” authorities to expunge the charges. Li
openly in this country,” he said, point- Cuihe asked if she was afraid of death. told me that he has never forgotten the
ing out that, even in a hospital of this In Zhixia’s five years as a cancer patient, way the dying professor grabbed his
scale, there was no consistent palliative no one had ever asked her that. “When arm in gratitude. The Party’s exonera-
care. Again, distorted incentives were the pain overwhelms me, I’m not afraid,” tion, Li realized, was “his only medi-
part of the problem: doctors earned far Zhixia said. “I just want it to stop so badly cine and salvation.”
less for prescribing pain medication than that, if death can take away the pain, I “Dying is not the scary part,” Li told
for ordering chemotherapy or surgery. almost prefer it.” She let out a ragged me, as we sat in a conference room at
There were cultural factors, too. Many breath and tried to sit up. “What do you the hospital. “It’s the uncertainty, the
patients in severe pain were wary of opi- think death is?” Cuihe asked softly. Zhixia anxiety, of feeling utterly out of control.”
oids, which they associated with addic- thought for a moment and, with Cuihe’s His facility houses about three hundred
tion, and China’s newfound wealth in- help, sipped water through a straw. “I patients, and, throughout the years, hos-
spired unrealistic expectations. “There’s don’t know,” she responded. “Lately, I’ve pital personnel have visited from all over
this very optimistic idea that, if we spend been thinking about time passing, and the country to observe how it functions.
enough, diseases will be cured at the what time is like after death. When I’m The staff ’s daily check-ins with patients
rate that new skyscrapers are built and suffering, every second feels like a year.” are focussed less on medical requirements
bullet-train tracks are laid,” Song said. Zhixia tried to smile, but parting her than on soothing anxieties and foster-
“But that’s not how the human body chapped lips made them bleed. ing a sense of connection. When Li
works.” Richer patients couldn’t accept Later, Meiying, who was Zhixia’s fa- showed me around, we came across a
that money wouldn’t guarantee survival, vorite aide, asked if Zhixia had told her late-stage-Alzheimer’s patient making
and those who couldn’t afford treat- son about her illness. “He knows noth- her way down a corridor, clutching the
ments, he said, “sometimes jump from ing,” Zhixia replied. She said that she’d railing affixed to a wall. She had to work
their window to spare their family the been taking as many pictures with him a substitute factory shift, she explained
burden of caretaking and the expense.” as she could, and had organized her and urgently, because her daughter was out
Song took a shallow, labored breath. her husband’s medical records so that sick. “Your daughter is very lucky to have
He worried that a deepening distrust when her son was old enough he could such an able mother,” Li gently replied.
of doctors was undermining end-of-life read them. As Zhixia spoke, she started Li noted that, despite Songtang’s suc-
discussions: “It’s impossible when the to cry, but muffled her sobs so as not to cess, not many places have replicated its
patient or the patient’s family is think- disturb her mother, who had nodded model. “Hospice care is not economi-
ing at every turn, Oh, is the doctor say- off in a chair next to her bed. She told cally prudent,” he said. “People who de-
ing there’s nothing we can do because Meiying that she’d thought about writ- rive the most benefit from it don’t live
that’s really the case or because he doesn’t ing a letter to her son, but worried that long enough to advocate for it. And the
think he’ll earn enough to be worth his she wouldn’t be able to express what she sense of cultural taboo about death de-
effort?” Song adjusted his nasal tube. felt. “It’s O.K. to keep it simple,” Mei- ters the living from promoting it.” The
“Everyone should know what’s coming. ying said, and suggested that it might facility has had to move a dozen times
When that day comes, we have to know be even better to talk to the boy directly. because of complaints from its neigh-
the difference between giving up and “The way you speak to him is what he bors; once, protesters who blamed the
letting go.” will remember years from now.” hospice for bringing a curse on the neigh-
borhood smashed its windows.
ne day in May, at Friendship and he oldest hospice in China, Song- An avid collector of antiques, Li
O Love, Zhixia was visited by one of
the aides, a woman in her fifties named
T tang Care Hospital, opened in Bei-
jing in 1987. Its founder, Li Songtang,
proudly pointed out how the hospital
building incorporated many pieces of
Cuihe, a former kitchen worker in a now in his seventies, likes to recount Qing-dynasty architecture. He started
restaurant who had come to work in the how he came to realize that the dying salvaging these in the nineties, when Bei-
hospital after her mother had been a had needs beyond the merely medical. jing’s construction boom indiscriminately
patient there. After chatting for a bit, During the Cultural Revolution, he was razed pagodas and temples. “Chinese so-
Cuihe read aloud from a book about sent, as a seventeen-year-old, to Inner ciety is caught between the old and the
Mother Teresa. When Cuihe mentioned Mongolia, to work as one of the “bare- new paradigms,” Li reflected. “It hasn’t
that she and the others had been read- foot doctors,” whom the Communists decided what it wants to discard and
ing it in a training workshop, Zhixia dispatched to provide basic care in un- what it wants to import.” As he spoke,
said, “I didn’t like school, so I don’t know derdeveloped communities. There he he took long drags from a cigarette.
very much.” Cuihe smiled and said that met an exiled professor from Beijing, Smoking was a habit he’d picked up in
she hadn’t had much schooling, either. who was terminally ill with stomach his teens, to cope with the stresses of
SKETCHBOOK BY ROZ CHAST

couraged migration to urban centers,
generating unprecedented prosperity but
also depriving the elderly of a social safety
net. Not for nothing does Confucian
ism see the faults of a child as reflect
ing the failures of the parents.
Li Ruoxia, the leader of the hospice
unit at Friendship and Love, believes
that, these days, an obsession with filial
piety usually does more harm than good.
“The consideration here isn’t necessar
ily the wellbeing of the parent but the
reputation of the child,” she told me.
“It’s the performance of filial piety.” It
isn’t unusual for more money to be spent
on elaborate funerals than on making
patients comfortable in their final days,
“We met in Purgatory, and I think we’re going and several doctors told me that people
to try to make it work long distance.” often ask them to keep their ailing par
ents alive for the sake of their retire
ment checks. Ruoxia’s recruits often
• • found themselves in the middle of
fraught situations. One man told Mei
being a barefoot doctor, but he told me that the most unbearable way to die is ying about a safe where he kept his life
that he wasn’t worried about cancer. “We to be deprived of the ability to breathe. savings. “That made his children and
all carry cancer within us,” he said. “It’s As was customary at the time, she had grandchildren very nervous,” she re
relentless checkups at predatory hospi often told white lies to terminal patients called. “I told them that if they were
tals that actually kill you.” about their true diagnoses and had seen gentler with the old man he might not
I toured a number of other upscale them brought again and again to the feel like they were just waiting for him
facilities in Beijing and began to won E.R. to receive oxygen, only to suffer to die so they could have his money.”
der how my mother, back in New York, through their last days in half gasps. So The unit’s slogan is “Start the con
would fare in such places. For almost a now, at Golden Heights, I raised the versation!” because, Ruoxia explained,
decade, she has suffered from A.L.S., subject of donotresuscitate orders, ex “in Chinese families, there’s sometimes
the fatal neurodegenerative disease that plaining to my guide that my mother this expectation that, if you really care
causes progressive, and eventually total, would prefer comfort care to extraordi about someone, you can intuit what they
paralysis. In Beijing, a publicist led me nary measures. She assured me that if want without them asking.” Recently,
around a facility called Golden Heights— my mother were in crisis she would be though, the unit has experienced com
its interior a riot of floral chintz and gild taken to the E.R. “But what if she signs munication failures of its own. Its mem
ing—and told me that its clientele in a document specifying that she does not bers conceived of themselves as a kind
cluded the business élite and retired TV want to be resuscitated?” I asked. With of family. “Once I am trusted, I become
stars. There was a gym, a calligraphy an expression of serene forbearance, the the goto person for a family member,”
room, PingPong tables, a grand piano, woman began shaking her head before Meiying said. “I can’t abandon them
and a “nostalgia room” filled with old I could finish the question. “It’s our job when I’ve worked so hard to allow them
calendars, enamel basins, and a black to save her life,” she insisted, adding, by to let me in.” Ruoxia, however, believed
andwhite TV from the eighties. A bro way of explanation, “Our goal at Golden that they should be observing clearer
chure detailed some of the costs: a de Heights is to be humane, which means boundaries between the professional
posit of a hundred thousand yuan (fifteen that we will do everything we can to and the personal. “If their commitment
thousand dollars) and a room charge save her.” to their job is completely contingent on
that started at ten thousand yuan a their feelings about me, how do we, as
month. Standard health aides could be nder Xi Jinping, the Communist an organization, grow into something
hired for twenty thousand yuan a month,
but employing people capable of caring
U Party has tried to restore the cen
trality of Confucian thought to national
bigger?” she said.
Tensions escalated when Cuihe—
for someone with latestage A.L.S. life, including the importance of filial who was the designated nutritionist, on
would cost much more. piety. In 2013 it issued the Elderly Rights account of her restaurant experience—
My mother and I had had conversa Law, which threatened legal conse suggested that, instead of preparing pa
tions, while she could still speak, about quences for children who did not visit tients’ meals in the hospital kitchen, it
what was to come. Back in China, she’d their parents. The legislation was met would be easier if she cooked them at
been a doctor herself, a pulmonologist with widespread derision. It was gov home. Ruoxia asked Cuihe to sign a
in an Army hospital, and she told me ernment policy, after all, that had en liability waiver making clear that the
food’s preparation had not been subject ment robs people of the ability to make eaten a little more soup than usual.
to hospital inspection. Cuihe was deeply meaningful choices, infantilizing them When Meiying asked about her bed-
insulted. “Does she think I’m trying to to the point where they no longer feel sores, Sulin lifted her daughter on her
poison the patients?” she said, relating responsible even for the choices that they side to reveal a lesion on her back the
the story to me months afterward. For do make. Sophia Zhang, a gerontologist shade of a darkening banana.
Ruoxia, the piece of paper was just a at Peking University, told me that Chi- I followed Sulin into the kitchen,
matter of protocol. For Cuihe, it was a nese doctors are uniquely positioned to where she was preparing scallion pan-
sign of personal distrust. see how decades of volatile and violent cakes for us and porridge for Zhixia.
The way that care work distorts politics have left their marks on individ- While we waited for the water to boil, I
boundaries was all too familiar to me. uals. “People who were very poor in their asked her about her plans for the future.
After my mother’s diagnosis, I moved youth can finally eat to their hearts’ con- “Zhixia specified that she wants to be
her from Connecticut, where she lived tent,” she said. “To them, three meals of cremated rather than buried,” she said.
alone, to New York, where I worked and fatty pork and unlimited liquor and no “She doesn’t want to be bitten by the
lived. I found a two-bedroom apartment need to do backbreaking labor is the bugs underground.” Her eyes reddened
in an accessible building and hired home good life. They feel betrayed when I say as she spoke, and I gently clarified that
aides to care for her when I was at work. that they need to curb those appetites.” I meant her own future: What about her
I planned her daily schedule, her meals, The idea of dying with dignity is pre- old age? Sulin paused and looked up
her physical therapy, and vacations to mised on the idea that there is a differ- from the stone floor. She told me that,
places she had always wanted to visit ence between the quality of life and its for the past five years, she had not thought
but could not afford. length. “That’s a profound shift for a about anything but her daughter. Out-
My therapist told me, “It’s like you generation of people entering their old side, an old man wandered into the court-
two are so enmeshed that you share a age, for many of whom life has been just yard and squatted down to drink from
psychic world.” I tried to explain that, about collective survival,” Zhang told me. a faucet. It was Zhixia’s father-in-law.
though the situation might seem un- The ability to take stock of one’s life and “He’s half deaf, and his wife passed away
healthy, I was fulfilling an important make choices about its final stage re- not long ago,” Sulin told me. “This house
duty. In Chinese, 孝, the character for quires the kind of power and responsi- is his, or Zhixia and I wouldn’t have a
xiao, the Confucian concept of filial bility that most Chinese have never had. place to live. But, if I wasn’t here, he
piety, is made up of part of the charac- wouldn’t have a cook. We are a misshapen
ter for “old” above the character for t the beginning of May, Zhixia family—two white-haired parents rais-
“child,” as if the latter were carrying the
former. In previous generations, to care
A asked to go home. When I visited
her the next month, with Meiying and
ing an orphan.” She smiled dryly as she
said this, but then gave a heaving sob. “I
for one’s parents in their old age was Cuihe, both of them told me that none know I’ve already sewn her funeral
not a choice but a given. My actions of the doctors had expected her to sur- clothes, but I don’t actually believe she’ll
were predicated on a Chinese concep- vive more than a week after being dis- die,” she said. “I just can’t believe it.”
tion that individuals live in the service charged. “It says something about the Zhixia hung on for seventeen more
of the larger, unified entity: the family. body’s desperation to live,” Meiying ob- days. She died on a July morning, with
Still, my mother often strenuously served quietly. her mother and son by her side. By then,
protested against my efforts. It was all so Zhixia’s room was a shrine to her she couldn’t recognize them, or speak,
much fuss and so expensive, and I think son, its walls plastered with gold-and- swallow, or close her eyes. But the June
that she didn’t want to believe that her day when I saw her had been a “good
decline would come so quickly—prepa- day,” according to Sulin. Sunlight was
ration made real an eventuality she was streaming through an open window, and
still half hoping might not arrive. When it was possible to imagine a string of sum-
I overrode her, I thought of myself not mer days stretching on forever. Zhixia
as defying her wishes but as guiding her wanted only to talk about a math test her
toward her true desires. To do what she son had recently aced, the cucumbers and
asked rather than what I thought she the tomatoes that had ripened in the yard
wanted would have been the real dere- outside, and a romance novel that she
liction of duty. It took a long time for me was reading on her phone. Sulin tried to
to see that, as her body was gradually red achievement certificates; a table and usher us into the kitchen to eat the pan-
robbed of mobility, my wholesale reno- a dresser were crowded with framed cakes while they were still hot, but Zhixia’s
vation of her life might be depriving her photographs of a boy with Zhixia’s wide, eyes suddenly flickered wide open. “No,
of something that she was just beginning high cheeks. When we came in, Zhixia please, don’t let me be alone,” she said.
to value at life’s end: her autonomy. was propped up on cushions, swiping Everyone stopped, but it was Meiying
I thought of this again when I was at on her phone. Her feet were swollen, who climbed onto the bed, bending down
the luxurious Beijing nursing home that and her hip bones protruded sharply close to Zhixia’s face. “You are not alone,”
could cater to residents’ every desire ex- from underneath a thick cotton blan- she said, stroking Zhixia’s arm with fin-
cept the desire to one day end their suffer- ket. Sulin, her mother, eagerly reported gertips so light that they seemed barely
ing. A paternalistic system of govern- that, in the past two days, Zhixia had to graze skin. “Not for a second.” 
FICTION
54 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY RODRIGO CORRAL

ebruary 22, 202_. feel he would be much help. At this phone to ring and announce that a cer-
F Dear Robbie,
Got your e-mail, kid. Sorry for
handwriting in reply. Not sure e-mail-
point. In his prime, he was, yes, a prince
of a guy striding into a courthouse, but
he is not now the man he was. He op-
tain baby (you) had been born, or that
day when all of us hiked out at Point
Lobos. Those baby deer, the extremely
ing is the best move, considering the posed, perhaps too energetically, the loud seal, your sister’s scarf drifting
topic, but, of course (you being nearly D.O.J. review/ouster of sitting judges down, down to that black, briny boul-
six foot now, your mother says?), that’s and endured much abuse in the press der, the replacement you so generously
up to you, dear, although, you know: and his property was defaced and he bought her in Monterey, how pleased
strange times. was briefly detained and these days, you made her with your kindness. Those
Beautiful day here. A flock of geese from what I have heard, is mostly just things were real. That is what (that is
just now came in low over the deck, puttering around his yard, keeping his all) one gets. This other stuff is real
and your grandmother and I, holding views to himself. only to the extent that it interferes with
the bright-blue mugs you kindly sent Where is J. now? Do you know? those moments.
at Christmas, did simultaneous hip State facility or fed? That may matter. Now, you may say (I can hear you
swivels as they zinged off toward Ros- I expect “they” (loyalists) would (with saying it and see the look on your face
ley and, I expect, an easy meal on the the power of the courts now behind as you do) that this incident with J. is
golf course there. them) say that although J. is a citizen, an interference. I respect that. But, as
Forgive my use of initials in what she forfeited certain rights and privi- your grandfather, I beg you not to un-
follows. Would not wish to cause fur- leges by declining to offer the requested derestimate the power/danger of this
ther difficulties for G., M., or J. (good info on G. & M. You may recall R. & moment. Perhaps I haven’t told you this
folks all, we very much enjoyed meet- K., friends of ours, who gave you, for yet: in the early days, I wrote two let-
ing them when you stopped by last your fifth (sixth?) birthday, that bronze ters to the editor of the local rag, one
Easter), should this get sidetracked and Lincoln bank? They are loyalists, still overwrought, the other comic. Nei-
read by someone other than you. in touch, and that is the sort of logic ther had any effect. Those who agreed
I think you are right regarding G. they follow. A guy over in Bremerton with me agreed with me; those who
That ship has sailed. Best to let that befriended a guy at the gym and they did not remained unpersuaded. After
go. M., per your explanation, does not would go on runs together and so forth, a third attempt was rejected, I found
lack proper paperwork but did know, and the first guy, after declining to myself pulled over, up near the house,
all the while, that G. did lack it, yes? comment on what he knew of his for no reason I could discern. The cop
And did nothing about that? Am not friend’s voting past, suddenly found he (nice guy, just a kid, really, from my
suggesting, of course, that she should could no longer register his work ve- perspective) asked what I did all day.
have. But, putting ourselves into “their” hicle (he was a florist, so this proved Did I have any hobbies? I said no.
heads—as I think, these days, it is problematic). R. & K.’s take on this: a He said, Some of us heard you like to
prudent to try to do—we might ask, person is “no patriot” if he refuses to type. I sat in my car, looking over at
Why didn’t M. (again, according to answer a “simple question” from his his large, pale arm. His face was the
them, to their way of thinking) do “own homeland government.” face of a kid. His arm, though, was the
what she “should” have done, by let- That is where we find ourselves. arm of a man.
ting someone in authority know about You asked if you are supposed to How would you know about that?
G.? Since being here is “a privilege stand by and watch your friend’s life I said.
and not a right.” Are we or are we not be ruined. Have a good night, sir, he said. Stay
(as I have grown sick of hearing) “a Two answers: one as a citizen, the off the computer.
nation of laws”? other as a grandfather. Good Lord, his stupidity and bulk
Even as they change the laws con- (You have turned to me in what there in the darkness, the metallic
stantly to suit their own beliefs! must be a difficult time and I am try- clanking from his belt area, the palpa-
Believe me, I am as disgusted as you ing to be frank.) ble certainty he seemed to feel regard-
are with all this. As a citizen: I can, of course, under- ing his cause, a cause I cannot begin,
But the world, in my (ancient) ex- stand why a young (intelligent, good- even at this late date, to get my head
perience, sometimes moves off in a cer- looking) person (perpetual delight to around, or view from within, so to speak.
tain direction and, having moved, being know, I might add) would feel that it I do not want you anywhere near,
so large and inscrutable, cannot be re- is his duty to “do something” on be- or under the sway of, that sort of per-
called to its previous, better state, and half of his friend J. son, ever.
so, in this current situation, it behooves But what, exactly?
us, I would say, to think as they think, That is the question. feel here a need to address the last
as well as we can manage, to avoid as
much unpleasantness and future harm
When you reach a certain age, you
see that time is all we have. By which
I part of your e-mail, which (I want
to assure you) did not upset me or “hurt
as possible. I mean, moments like those overhead my feelings.” No. When you reach my
But, of course, you were writing, re- geese this morning, and watching your age, and if you are lucky enough to have
ally, to ask about J. Yes, am still in touch mother be born, and sitting at the din- a grandson like you (stellar), you will
with the lawyer you mentioned. Don’t ing-room table here waiting for the know that nothing that that grandson
could say could ever hurt your feelings, (While some of them applaud his au- extremity, to mobilize or to be as fo-
and, in fact, I am so touched that you dacity.) He takes a third dump, on the cussed and energized as I can see, in
thought to write me in your time of table, and still no one throws him out. retrospect, we would have needed to
need and be so direct and even (I admit At that point, the sky has become the be. We were not prepared to drop ev-
it) somewhat rough with me. limit in terms of future dumps. erything in defense of a system that
Seen in retrospect, yes: I have re- So, although your grandmother and was, to us, like oxygen: used constantly,
grets. There was a certain critical pe- I, during this critical period, often said, never noted. We were spoiled, I think I
riod. I see that now. During that pe- you know, “Someone should arrange a am trying to say. As were those on the
riod, your grandmother and I were march” or “Those f___ing Republican other side: willing to tear it all down
doing, every night, a jigsaw puzzle each, senators,” we soon grew weary of hear- because they had been so thoroughly
at that dining-room table I know you ing ourselves saying those things and, nourished by the vacuous plenty in
know well, we were planning to have to avoid being old people emptily re- which we all lived, a bountiful condi-
the kitchen redone, were in the midst peating ourselves, stopped saying those tion that allowed people to thrive and
of having the walls out in the yard re- things, and did our puzzles and so forth, opine and swagger around like kings
built at great expense, I was experienc- waiting for the election. and queens while remaining ignorant
ing the first intimations of the dental I’m speaking here of the second, not of their own history.
issues I know you have heard so much the third (of the son), which, being a What would you have had me do?
(too much?) about. Every night, as we total sham, didn’t hurt (surprise) as much. What would you have done? I know
sat across from each other, doing those Post-election, doing new puzzles what you will say: you would have
puzzles, from the TV in the next room (mine a difficult sort of Catskills sum- fought. But how? How would you have
blared this litany of things that had mer scene), noting those early par- fought? Would you have called your
never before happened, that we could dons (which, by the time they were senator? (In those days, you could still,
never have imagined happening, that granted, we’d been well prepared to at least, record your feeble message on
were now happening, and the only re- expect, and tolerate), and then that a senator’s answering machine with-
sponse from the TV pundits was a wry, deluge of pardons (each making way out reprisal, but you might as well have
satirical smugness that assumed, as we for the next), and the celebratory ver- been singing or whistling or passing
assumed, that those things could and bal nonsense accompanying the par- wind into it for all the good it did.)
would soon be undone and that all dons (to which, again, we were, by this Well, we did that. We called, we wrote
would return to normal—that some time, somewhat inured), and the tar- letters. Would you have given money
adult or adults would arrive, as they geting of judges, and the incidents in to certain people running for office?
had always arrived in the past, to set Reno and Lowell, and the investiga- We did that as well. Would you have
things right. It did not seem (and please tions into pundits, and the casting marched? For some reason, there were
destroy this letter after you have read aside of term limits, we still did not suddenly no marches. Organized a
it) that someone so clownish could dis- really believe in the thing that was march? Then and now, I did not and
rupt something so noble and time- happening. Birds still burst out of the do not know how to arrange a march.
tested and seemingly strong, that had trees and so forth. I was still working full time. This den-
been with us literally every day of our I feel I am disappointing you. tal thing had just begun. That rather
lives. We had taken, in other words, a I just want to say that history, when occupies the mind. You know where
profound gift for granted. Did not it arrives, may not look as you expect, we live: would you have had me go
know the gift was a fluke, a chimera, based on the reading of history books. down to Waterville and harangue the
a wonderful accident of consensus and officials there? They were all in agree-
mutual understanding. ment with us. At that time. Would you
Because this destruction was ema- have armed yourself ? I would not and
nating from such an inept source, who will not, and I do not believe you would,
seemed (at that time) merely comi- either. I hope not. By that, all is lost.
cally thuggish, who seemed to know
so little about what he was disrupting, et me, at the end, return to the be-
and because life was going on, and be-
cause every day he/they burst through
L ginning. I advise and implore you:
stay out of this business with J. Your
some new gate of propriety, we soon involvement will not help (especially
found that no genuine outrage was Things in there are always so clear. if you don’t know where they have
available to us anymore. If you’ll allow One knows exactly what one would taken her, fed or state) and may, in
me a crude metaphor (as I’m sure you, have done. fact, hurt. I hope I do not offend if I
the King of las Bromas de Fartos, will): Your grandmother and I (and many here use the phrase “empty gesture.”
a guy comes into a dinner party, takes others) would have had to be more Not only would J.’s situation be made
a dump on the rug in the living room. extreme people than we were, during worse, so might that of your mother,
The guests get all excited, yell in pro- that critical period, to have done what- father, sister, grandmother, grandfa-
test. He takes a second dump. The ever it was we should have been doing. ther, etc., etc. Part of the complication
guests feel, Well, yelling didn’t help. And our lives had not prepared us for is that you are not alone in this.
I want you well. I want you some-
day to be an old fart yourself, writing
a (too) long letter to a (beloved) grand-
son. In this world, we speak much of
courage and not, I feel, enough about
discretion and caution. I know how
that will sound to you. Let it be. I have
lived this long and have the right.
It occurs to me only now that you
and J. may be more than just friends.
That, if the case, would, I know,
(must) complicate the matter.
I had, last night, a vivid dream of
those days, of that critical, pre-election
period. I was sitting across from your
grandmother, she at work on her puz-
zle (puppies and kittens), I on mine
(gnomes in trees), and suddenly we
saw, in a flash, things as they were, that
is, we realized that this was the criti-
cal moment. We looked at each other
across the table with such freshness, if
I may say it that way, such love for each
other and for our country, the country
in which we had lived our whole lives,
the many roads, hills, lakes, malls, by-
ways, villages we had known and moved
about and around in so freely.
How precious and dear it all seemed.
Your grandmother stood, with that
decisiveness I know you know.
“Let us think of what we must do,”
she said.
Then I woke. There in bed, I felt,
for a brief instant, that it was that
time again and not this time. Lying
there, I found myself wondering, for
the first time in a long while, not What
should I have done? but What might
I yet do?
I came back to myself, gradually. It
was sad. A sad moment. To be, once
again, in a time and place where action
was not possible.
• •
I wish with all my heart that we
could have passed it on to you intact. way back to normalcy, with your help I feel I have made my preference
I do. That is, now, not to be. That re- and the help of those like you. clear, above. I say what follows not to
gret I will take to my grave. Wisdom, In this, you are, and I am, I hope, encourage. But: we have money (not
now, amounts to making such intelli- like cave people, sheltering a small, re- much, but some) set aside. Should push
gent accommodations as we can. I am maining trace of fire through a dark come to shove. I am finding it hard to
not saying stick your head in the sand. period. advise you. Please let us know what you
J. made a choice. I respect her for it. But please know that I understand are inclined to do, as we find that this
And yet. No one is calling on you to how hard it must be to stay silent and (you) is all that we now can think of.
do anything. You are, in my view, doing inactive if, in fact, J. was more than just With much love, more than you can
much good simply by rising in the a friend. She is a lovely person and I re- know,
morning, being as present and kind as call her crossing our yard with her par- GPa. 
possible, keeping sanity alive in the ticular grace and brio, swinging your car
world, so that, someday, when (if ) this keys on that long silver chain, her dog NEWYORKER.COM
thing passes, the country may find its (Whiskey?) running there beside her. George Saunders on politics and the future.

THE CRITICS
The Spread
How pandemics shape human history.
BY ELIZABETH KOLBERT
hat’s often referred to as made peace with the Persians, overhauled tory that included a great deal of what
W the first pandemic began

in the city of Pelusium, near
modern-day Port Said, in northeastern
the Eastern Empire’s fiscal administra-
tion, and built the Hagia Sophia.
As the plague raged, it fell to Justin-
had been Justinian’s empire, along with
the Arabian Peninsula. Much of West-
ern Europe, meanwhile, had come under
Egypt, in the year 541. According to the ian, in Procopius’ words, to “make pro- the control of the Franks. Rome had been
historian Procopius, who was alive at vision for the trouble.” The Emperor reduced to about thirty thousand people,
the time, the “pestilence” spread both paid for the bodies of the abandoned roughly the population of present-day
west, toward Alexandria, and east, to- and the destitute to be buried. Even so, Mamaroneck. Was the pestilence partly
ward Palestine. Then it kept on going. it was impossible to keep up; the death responsible? If so, history is written not
In his view, it seemed to move almost toll was too high. (Procopius thought it only by men but also by microbes.
consciously, “as if fearing lest some cor- reached more than ten thousand a day,
ner of the earth might escape it.” though no one is sure if this is accurate.) ust as there are many ways for mi-
The earliest symptom of the pesti-
lence was fever. Often, Procopius ob-
John of Ephesus, another contemporary
of Justinian’s, wrote that “nobody would
J crobes to infect a body, there are many
ways for epidemics to play out in the
served, this was so mild that it did not go out of doors without a tag upon which body politic. Epidemics can be short-
“afford any suspicion of danger.” But, his name was written,” in case he was lived or protracted, or, like the Justini-
within a few days, victims developed the suddenly stricken. Eventually, bodies anic plague, recurrent. Often, they part-
classic symptoms of bubonic plague— were just tossed into fortifications at the ner with war; sometimes the pairing
lumps, or buboes, in their groin and under edge of the city. favors the aggressor, sometimes the ag-
their arms. The suffering at that point The plague hit the powerless and the gressed. Epidemic diseases can become
was terrible; some people went into a powerful alike. Justinian himself con- endemic, which is to say constantly pres-
coma, others into violent delirium. Many tracted it. Among the lucky, he survived. ent, only to become epidemic again when
vomited blood. Those who attended to His rule, however, never really recovered. they’re carried to a new region or when
the sick “were in a state of constant ex- In the years leading up to 542, Justini- conditions change.
haustion,” Procopius noted. “For this an’s generals had reconquered much of To this last category belongs small-
reason everybody pitied them no less the western part of the Roman Empire pox, dubbed the speckled monster, which
than the sufferers.” No one could pre- from the Goths, the Vandals, and other may have killed more than a billion
dict who was going to perish and who assorted barbarians. After 542, the Em- people before it was eradicated, in the
would pull through. peror struggled to recruit soldiers and mid-twentieth century. No one knows
In early 542, the plague struck Con- to pay them. The territories that his gen- exactly where smallpox originated; the
stantinople. At that time, the city was the erals had subdued began to revolt. The virus—part of the genus that includes
capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, plague reached the city of Rome in 543, cowpox, camelpox, and monkeypox—
which was led by the Emperor Justinian. and seems to have made it all the way is believed to have first infected hu-
A recent assessment calls Justinian “one to Britain by 544. It broke out again in mans around the time that people began
of the greatest statesmen who ever lived.” Constantinople in 558, a third time in domesticating animals. Signs of small-
Another historian describes the first part 573, and yet again in 586. pox have been found in Egyptian mum-
of his reign—he ruled for almost forty The Justinianic plague, as it became mies, including Ramses V, who died in
years—as “a flurry of action virtually unknown, didn’t burn itself out until 750. 1157 B.C. The Romans seem to have
paralleled in Roman history.” In the fifteen By that point, there was a new world picked up the pox near present-day Bagh-
years before the pestilence reached the order. A powerful new religion, Islam, dad, when they went to fight one of their
capital, Justinian codified Roman law, had arisen, and its followers ruled terri- many enemies, the Parthians, in 162. The
FRITZ GORO / THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION / GETTY; OPPOSITE: SERGE BLOCH
Just as there are many ways for microbes to infect a body, there are many ways for epidemics to affect the body politic.
Roman physician Galen reported that pleased Our Lord to bestow a pestilence what’s become known as the “second
those who came down with the new dis- of smallpox among the said Indians, and plague pandemic.” As with the first, the
ease suffered a rash that was “ulcerated it does not cease.” From Hispaniola, second pandemic worked its havoc fit-
in most cases and totally dry.” (The ep- smallpox spread to Puerto Rico. Within fully. Plague would spread, then abate,
idemic is sometimes referred to as the two years, it had reached the Aztec cap- only to flare up again.
Plague of Galen.) Marcus Aurelius, the ital of Tenochtitlán, in what’s now Mex- During one such flareup, in the fif-
last of the so-called Five Good Emper- ico City, a development that allowed teenth century, the Venetians erected
ors, who died in 180, may also have been Hernán Cortés to conquer the capital, lazarettos—or isolation wards—on out-
a smallpox victim. in 1521. A Spanish priest wrote, “In many lying islands, where they forced arriv-
By the fifteenth century, as Joshua S. places it happened that everyone in a ing ships to dock. The Venetians be-
Loomis reports in “Epidemics: The Im- house died, and, as it was impossible to lieved that by airing out the ships they
pact of Germs and Their Power Over bury the great number of dead, they were dissipating plague-causing vapors.
Humanity” (Praeger), smallpox had be- pulled down the houses over them.” If the theory was off base, the results
come endemic throughout Europe and Smallpox seems to have reached the were still salubrious; forty days gave the
Asia, meaning that most people were Incan Empire before the Spaniards did; plague time enough to kill infected rats
probably exposed to it at some point in the infection raced from one settlement and sailors. Snowden, a professor emer-
their lives. Over all, the fatality rate was to the next faster than the conquistado- itus at Yale, calls such measures one of
a terrifying thirty per cent, but among res could travel. the first forms of “institutionalized pub-
young children it was much higher— It’s impossible to say how many peo- lic health” and argues that they helped
more than ninety per cent in some places. ple died in the first New World pan- legitimatize the “accretion of power” by
Loomis, a professor of biology at East demic, both because the records are the modern state.
Stroudsburg University, writes that the sketchy and because Europeans also There’s a good deal of debate about
danger was so grave that “parents would brought with them so many other “vir- why the second pandemic finally ended;
commonly wait to name their children gin soil” diseases, including measles, ty- one of the last major outbreaks in Eu-
until after they had survived smallpox.” phoid, and diphtheria. In all, the im- rope occurred in Marseille in 1720. But,
Anyone who made it through acquired ported microbes probably killed tens of whether efforts at control were effective
permanent immunity (though many millions of people. “The discovery of or not, they often provoked, as Snowden
were left blind or horribly scarred). This America was followed by possibly the puts it, “evasion, resistance, and riot.”
dynamic meant that every generation greatest demographic disaster in the Public-health measures ran up against
or so there was a major outbreak, as the history of the world,” William M. De- religion and tradition, as, of course, they
number of people who had managed to nevan, a professor emeritus at the Uni- still do. The fear of being separated from
avoid getting infected as children slowly versity of Wisconsin-Madison, has writ- loved ones prompted many families to
rose. It also meant, as Loomis rather ten. This disaster changed the course of conceal cases. And, in fact, those charged
cavalierly observes, that Europeans en- history not just in Europe and the Amer- with enforcing the rules often had lit-
joyed a major advantage as they “began icas but also in Africa: faced with a labor tle interest in protecting the public.
exploring distant lands and interacting shortage, the Spanish increasingly turned Consider the case of cholera. In the
with native populations.” to the slave trade. ranks of dread diseases, cholera might
Alfred W. Crosby, the historian who come in third, after the plague and small-
coined the phrase “the Columbian Ex- he word “quarantine” comes from pox. Cholera is caused by a comma-
change,” also coined the term “virgin soil
epidemic,” defined as one in which “the
T the Italian quaranta, meaning “forty.”
As Frank M. Snowden explains in “Ep-
shaped bacterium, Vibrio cholerae, and
for most of human history it was re-
populations at risk have had no previ- idemics and Society: From the Black stricted to the Ganges Delta. Then, in
ous contact with the diseases that strike Death to the Present” (Yale), the prac- the eighteen-hundreds, steamships and
them and are therefore immunologi- tice of quarantine originated long before colonialism sent Vibrio cholerae travel-
cally almost defenseless.” The first “vir- people understood what, exactly, they ling. The first cholera pandemic broke
gin soil epidemic” in the Americas—or, were trying to contain, and the period out in 1817 near Calcutta. It moved over-
to use another one of Crosby’s formula- of forty days was chosen not for medi- land to modern-day Thailand and by
tions, “the first New World pandemic”— cal reasons but for scriptural ones, “as ship to Oman, whence it was carried
began toward the end of 1518. That year, both the Old and New Testaments make down to Zanzibar. The second cholera
someone, presumably from Spain, car- multiple references to the number forty pandemic began in 1829, once again in
ried smallpox to Hispaniola. This was a in the context of purification: the forty India. It wound its way through Russia
quarter of a century after Columbus ran days and forty nights of the flood in into Europe and from there to the
aground on the island, and the native Genesis, the forty years of the Israelites United States.
Taíno population had already been much wandering in the wilderness . . . and the In contrast to plague and small-
reduced.The speckled monster laid waste forty days of Lent.” pox, which made few class distinctions,
to those who remained. Two friars, writ- The earliest formal quarantines were cholera, which is spread via contami-
ing to the King of Spain, Charles I, in a response to the Black Death, which, nated food or water, is primarily a dis-
early 1519, reported that a third of the between 1347 and 1351, killed something ease of urban slums. When the second
island’s inhabitants were stricken: “It has like a third of Europe and ushered in pandemic struck Russia, Tsar Nicholas I
established strict quarantines. These thus, in a roundabout sort of way, chol lence—they had, it was said, poisoned
may have slowed the spiral of spread, era helped “set the stage” for the Rus the wells—and offered them a choice:
but they did nothing to help those al sian Revolution. convert or die. Half opted for the former.
ready infected. The situation, accord On February 14, 1349, the rest “were
ing to Loomis, was exacerbated by health he seventh cholera pandemic began rounded up, taken to the Jewish ceme
officials who indiscriminately threw to
gether cholera victims and people suffer
T in 1961, on the Indonesian island of
Sulawesi. During the next decade, it
tery, and burned alive.” Pope Clement VI
issued papal bulls pointing out that Jews,
ing from other ailments. It was rumored spread to India, the Soviet Union, and too, were dying from the plague, and that
that doctors were purposefully trying several nations in Africa. There were no it wouldn’t make sense for them to poi
to kill off the sick. In the spring of 1831, mass outbreaks for the next quarter cen son themselves, but this doesn’t seem to
riots broke out in St. Petersburg. One tury, but then one hit Peru in 1991, claim have made much difference. In 1349,
demonstrator returning from a melee ing thirtyfive hundred lives; another Jewish communities in Frankfurt, Mainz,
reported that a doctor had “got a cou outbreak, in what is now the Democratic and Cologne were wiped out. To escape
pl’ve rocks in the neck; he sure won’t Republic of the Congo, in 1994, claimed the violence, Jews migrated en masse to
forget us for a long time.” The follow twelve thousand. Poland and Russia, permanently altering
ing spring, cholera riots broke out in By most accounts, the seventh pan the demography of Europe.
Liverpool. Once again, doctors were demic is ongoing. In October, 2010, chol Whenever disaster strikes, like right
the main targets; they were accused of era broke out in rural Haiti, then quickly about now, it’s tempting to look to the
poisoning cholera victims and turning spread to PortauPrince and other major past for guidance on what to do or, al
them blue. (Cholera has been called cities. This was nine months after a mag ternatively, what not to do. It has been
the “blue death” because those suffer nitude7.0 earthquake had devastated the almost fifteen hundred years since the
ing from the disease can get so dehy country. Rumors began to circulate that Justinianic plague, and, what with plague,
drated that their skin becomes slate the source of the outbreak was a base smallpox, cholera, influenza, polio, mea
colored.) Similar riots broke out in that housed United Nations peacekeep sles, malaria, and typhus, there are an ep
Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Dublin. ing troops from Nepal. Riots occurred idemic number of epidemics to reflect on.
In 1883, during the fifth cholera pan in the city of CapHaïtien; at least two The trouble is that, for all the com
demic, the German physician Robert people were killed, and flights carrying mon patterns that emerge, there are at
Koch established the cause of the dis aid to the country were suspended. For least as many confounding variations.
ease by isolating the Vibrio cholerae bac years, the U.N. denied that its troops had During the cholera riots, people blamed
terium. The following year, the pan brought cholera to Haiti, but it eventu not outsiders but insiders; it was doctors
demic hit Naples. The city dispatched ally admitted that the rumors were true. and government officials who were tar
inspectors to confiscate suspect pro Since the outbreak began, eight hundred geted. Smallpox helped the Spanish con
duce. It also sent out disinfection squads, thousand Haitians have been sickened quer the Aztec and Incan Empires, but
which arrived at the city’s tenements and nearly ten thousand have died. other diseases helped defeat colonial pow
with guns drawn. Neapolitans were, Epidemics are, by their very nature, ers. During the Haitian Revolution, for
understandably, skeptical of both the divisive. The neighbor you might, in bet example, Napoleon tried to retake the
inspectors and the squads. They re ter times, turn to for help becomes a pos French colony, in 1802, with some fifty
sponded with an impressive sense of thousand men. So many of his soldiers
humor, if not necessarily a keen under died from yellow fever that, after a year,
standing of epidemiology. Demonstra he gave up on the attempt, and also de
tors showed up at city hall with bas cided to sell the Louisiana Territory to
kets of overripe figs and melons. They the Americans.
proceeded, Snowden writes, “to con Even the mathematics of outbreaks
sume the forbidden fruit in enormous varies dramatically from case to case. As
quantities while those who watched Adam Kucharski, a professor at the Lon
applauded and bet on which binger don School of Hygiene & Tropical Med
would eat the most.” icine and the author of “The Rules of
Eight years later, while the fifth pan sible source of infection. The rituals of Contagion” (forthcoming in the U.S. from
demic raged on, one of the most vio daily life become opportunities for trans Basic Books), points out, the differences
lent cholera riots broke out in what’s mission; the authorities enforcing quar depend on such factors as the mode of
now the Ukrainian city of Donetsk. antine become agents of oppression. Time transmission, the length of time an indi
Scores of shops were looted, and homes and time again throughout history, peo vidual is contagious, and the social net
and businesses were burned. The au ple have blamed outsiders for outbreaks. works that each disease exploits. “There’s
thorities in St. Petersburg responded to (On occasion, as in the case of the U.N. a saying in my field: ‘if you’ve seen one
the violence by cracking down on work peacekeeping troops, they’ve been right.) pandemic, you’ve seen . . . one pandemic,’”
ers accused of promoting “lawlessness.” Snowden recounts the story of what hap he writes. Among the few predictions
According to Loomis, the crackdown pened to the Jews of Strasbourg during about COVID19 that it seems safe to make
prompted more civil unrest, which in the Black Death. Local officials decided at this point is that it will become the
turn prompted more repression, and, that they were responsible for the pesti subject of many histories of its own. 
had learned about the social attach-
BOOKS ments of primates from Abraham Bart-
lett, the superintendent of the Zoolog-
ical Society of London:
Many kinds of monkeys, as I am assured
by the keepers in the Zoological Gardens, de-
light in fondling and being fondled by each
other, and by persons to whom they are at-
tached. Mr. Bartlett has described to me the
behavior of two chimpanzees, rather older an-
imals than those generally imported into this
country, when they were first brought together.
They sat opposite, touching each other with
their much protruded lips; and the one put his
hand on the shoulder of the other. They then
mutually folded each other in their arms. Af-
terwards they stood up, each with one arm on
the shoulder of the other, lifted up their heads,
opened their mouths, and yelled with delight.
Mr. and Miss Chimpanzee, in Phil-

adelphia, were two of only four chim-
panzees in America, and when she died
human observers mourned her loss,
but, above all, they remarked on the
behavior of her companion. For a long
time, they reported, he tried in vain to
rouse her. Then he “went into a frenzy
of grief.” This paroxysm accorded en-
tirely with what Darwin had described
in humans: “Persons suffering from ex-
cessive grief often seek relief by vio-
lent and almost frantic movements.”
The bereaved chimpanzee began to
pull out the hair from his head. He
The Isolation Ward wailed, making a sound the zookeeper

had never heard before: Hah-ah-ah-
ah-ah. “His cries were heard over the
On loneliness. entire garden. He dashed himself
against the bars of the cage and butted
BY JILL LEPORE his head upon the hard-wood bottom,
and when this burst of grief was ended
he poked his head under the straw in
he female chimpanzee at the Phil- bands of half a dozen and build plat- one corner and moaned as if his heart
T adelphia Zoological Garden died
of complications from a cold early in
forms among the branches, out of
boughs and leaves, on which they sleep.”
would break.”
Nothing quite like this had ever
the morning of December 27, 1878. “Miss But in Philadelphia, in the monkey been recorded. Superintendent Brown
Chimpanzee,” according to news re- house, where it was just the two of them, prepared a scholarly article, “Grief in
ports, died “while receiving the atten- they had become “accustomed to sleep the Chimpanzee.” Even long after the
tions of her companion.” Both she and at night in each other’s arms on a blan- death of the female, Brown reported,
that companion, a four-year-old male, ket on the floor,” clutching each other, the male “invariably slept on a cross-
had been born near the Gabon River, desperately, achingly, through the long, beam at the top of the cage, returning
in West Africa; they had arrived in cold night. to inherited habit, and showing, prob-
Philadelphia in April, together. “These The Philadelphia Zoological Gar- ably, that the apprehension of unseen
Apes can be captured only when young,” den was the first zoo in the United dangers has been heightened by his
the zoo superintendent, Arthur E. States. It opened in 1874, two years after sense of loneliness.”
Brown, explained, and they are gener- Charles Darwin published “The Ex- Loneliness is grief, distended. Peo-
ally taken only one or two at a time. In pression of the Emotions in Man and ple are primates, and even more socia-
the wild, “they live together in small Animals,” in which he related what he ble than chimpanzees. We hunger for
intimacy. We wither without it. And
Solitude and seclusion are different from loneliness, a state of profound distress. yet, long before the present pandemic,
62 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY FRANCESCO CICCOLELLA
with its forced isolation and social dis- has been tested by anthropologists at “To be at home is to be known,” he
tancing, humans had begun building the University of Oxford, who have writes. Home can be anywhere. Human
their own monkey houses. Before mod- traced its origins back fifty-two mil- societies are so intricate that people
ern times, very few human beings lived lion years, to the very first primates. have meaningful, intimate ties of all
alone. Slowly, beginning not much more Primates need to belong to an intimate kinds, with all sorts of groups of other
than a century ago, that changed. In social group, a family or a band, in order people, even across distances. You can
the United States, more than one in to survive; this is especially true for hu- feel at home with friends, or at work,
four people now lives alone; in some mans (humans you don’t know might or in a college dining hall, or at church,
parts of the country, especially big cit- very well kill you, which is a problem or in Yankee Stadium, or at your neigh-
ies, that percentage is much higher. You not shared by most other primates). borhood bar. Loneliness is the feeling
can live alone without being lonely, and Separated from the group—either find- that no place is home. “In community
you can be lonely without living alone, ing yourself alone or finding yourself after community,” Murthy writes, “I
but the two are closely tied together, among a group of people who do not met lonely people who felt homeless
which makes lockdowns, sheltering in know and understand you—triggers a even though they had a roof over their
place, that much harder to bear. Lone- fight-or-flight response. Cacioppo ar- heads.” Maybe what people experienc-
liness, it seems unnecessary to say, is gued that your body understands being ing loneliness and people experiencing
terrible for your health. In 2017 and alone, or being with strangers, as an homelessness both need are homes with
2018, the former U.S. Surgeon General emergency. “Over millennia, this hy- other humans who love them and need
Vivek H. Murthy declared an “epi- pervigilance in response to isolation be- them, and to know they are needed by
demic of loneliness,” and the U.K. ap- came embedded in our nervous system them in societies that care about them.
pointed a Minister of Loneliness. To to produce the anxiety we associate with That’s not a policy agenda. That’s an
diagnose this condition, doctors at loneliness,” Murthy writes. We breathe indictment of modern life.
U.C.L.A. devised a Loneliness Scale. fast, our heart races, our blood pressure In “A Biography of Loneliness: The
Do you often, sometimes, rarely, or rises, we don’t sleep. We act fearful, de- History of an Emotion” (Oxford), the
never feel these ways? fensive, and self-involved, all of which British historian Fay Bound Alberti
I am unhappy doing so many things alone. drive away people who might actually defines loneliness as “a conscious, cog-
I have nobody to talk to. want to help, and tend to stop lonely nitive feeling of estrangement or so-
I cannot tolerate being so alone. people from doing what would benefit cial separation from meaningful oth-
I feel as if nobody really understands me. them most: reaching out to others. ers,” and she objects to the idea that
I am no longer close to anyone. The loneliness epidemic, in this sense, it’s universal, transhistorical, and the
There is no one I can turn to.
is rather like the obesity epidemic. Evo- source of all that ails us. She argues
I feel isolated from others.
lutionarily speaking, panicking while that the condition really didn’t exist
In the age of quarantine, does one dis- being alone, like finding high-calorie before the nineteenth century, at least
ease produce another? foods irresistible, is highly adaptive, not in a chronic form. It’s not that peo-
but, more recently, in a world where ple—widows and widowers, in partic-
“ L oneliness” is a vogue term, and
like all vogue terms it’s a cover
laws (mostly) prevent us from killing
one another, we need to work with
ular, and the very poor, the sick, and
the outcast—weren’t lonely; it’s that,
for all sorts of things most people would strangers every day, and the problem is since it wasn’t possible to survive with-
rather not name and have no idea how more likely to be too much high-calo- out living among other people, and
to fix. Plenty of people like to be alone. rie food rather than too little. These without being bonded to other people,
I myself love to be alone. But solitude drives backfire. by ties of affection and loyalty and ob-
and seclusion, which are the things I Loneliness, Murthy argues, lies be- ligation, loneliness was a passing ex-
love, are different from loneliness, which hind a host of problems—anxiety, vi- perience. Monarchs probably were
is a thing I hate. Loneliness is a state olence, trauma, crime, suicide, depres- lonely, chronically. (Hey, it’s lonely at
of profound distress. Neuroscientists sion, political apathy, and even political the top!) But, for most ordinary peo-
identify loneliness as a state of hyper- polarization. Murthy writes with com- ple, daily living involved such intricate
vigilance whose origins lie among passion, but his everything-can-be- webs of dependence and exchange—
our primate ancestors and in our own reduced-to-loneliness argument is hard and shared shelter—that to be chron-
hunter-gatherer past. Much of the re- to swallow, not least because much of ically or desperately lonely was to be
search in this field was led by John Ca- what he has to say about loneliness was dying. The word “loneliness” very sel-
cioppo, at the Center for Cognitive and said about homelessness in the nine- dom appears in English before about
Social Neuroscience, at the University teen-eighties, when “homelessness” was 1800. Robinson Crusoe was alone, but
of Chicago. Cacioppo, who died in 2018, the vogue term—a word somehow eas- never lonely. One exception is “Ham-
was known as Dr. Loneliness. In the ier to say than “poverty”—and saying let”: Ophelia suffers from “loneliness”;
new book “Together: The Healing it didn’t help. (Since then, the number then she drowns herself.
Power of Human Connection in a of homeless Americans has increased.) Modern loneliness, in Alberti’s view,
Sometimes Lonely World” (Harper Curiously, Murthy often conflates the is the child of capitalism and secular-
Wave), Murthy explains how Caciop- two, explaining loneliness as feeling ism. “Many of the divisions and hier-
po’s evolutionary theory of loneliness homeless. To belong is to feel at home. archies that have developed since the
eighteenth century—between self and are not lonely are so terrified of lone- I would have said that I had become
world, individual and community, pub- liness that they shun the lonely, afraid “my own person.” I lasted only two
lic and private—have been naturalized that the condition might be contagious. months. I didn’t like watching televi-
through the politics and philosophy of And people who are lonely are them- sion alone, and also I didn’t have a tele-
individualism,” she writes. “Is it any selves so horrified by what they are ex- vision, and this, if not the golden age
coincidence that a language of loneli- periencing that they become secretive of television, was the golden age of
ness emerged at the same time?” It is and self-obsessed—“it produces the “The Simpsons,” so I started watching
not a coincidence. The rise of privacy, sad conviction that nobody else has ex- television with the person who lived
itself a product of market capitalism— perienced or ever will sense what they in the apartment next door. I moved
privacy being something that you buy— are experiencing or have experienced,” in with him, and then I married him.
is a driver of loneliness. So is individ- Fromm-Reichmann wrote. One trag- This experience might not fit so well
ualism, which you also have to pay for. edy of loneliness is that lonely people into the story Klinenberg tells; he ar-
Alberti’s book is a cultural history (she can’t see that lots of people feel the gues that networked technologies of
offers an anodyne reading of “Wuther- same way they do. communication, beginning with the
ing Heights,” for instance, and another “During the past half century, our telephone’s widespread adoption, in the
of the letters of Sylvia Plath). But the species has embarked on a remarkable nineteen-fifties, helped make living
social history is more interesting, and social experiment,” the sociologist Eric alone possible. Radio, television, Inter-
there the scholarship demonstrates that Klinenberg wrote in “Going Solo: The net, social media: we can feel at home
whatever epidemic of loneliness can be Extraordinary Rise and Surprising online. Or not. Robert Putnam’s in-
said to exist is very closely associated Appeal of Living Alone,” from 2012. fluential book about the decline of
with living alone. Whether living alone “For the first time in human history, American community ties, “Bowling
makes people lonely or whether people great numbers of people—at all ages, Alone,” came out in 2000, four years
live alone because they’re lonely might in all places, of every political persua- before the launch of Facebook, which
seem to be harder to say, but the pre- sion—have begun settling down as monetized loneliness. Some people say
ponderance of the evidence supports singletons.” Klinenberg considers this that the success of social media was a
the former: it is the force of history, not to be, in large part, a triumph; more product of an epidemic of loneliness;
the exertion of choice, that leads peo- plausibly, it is a disaster. Beginning in some people say it was a contributor
ple to live alone. This is a problem for the nineteen-sixties, the percentage of to it; some people say it’s the only rem-
people trying to fight an epidemic of single-person households grew at a edy for it. Connect! Disconnect! The
loneliness, because the force of history much steeper rate, driven by a high Economist declared loneliness to be “the
is relentless. divorce rate, a still-falling birth rate, leprosy of the 21st century.” The epi-
and longer lifespans over all. (After demic only grew.
efore the twentieth century, ac- the rise of the nuclear family, the old This is not a peculiarly American
B cording to the best longitudinal
demographic studies, about five per
began to reside alone, with women
typically outliving their husbands.) A
phenomenon. Living alone, while com-
mon in the United States, is more com-
cent of all households (or about one medical literature on loneliness began mon in many other parts of the world,
per cent of the world population) con- to emerge in the nineteen-eighties, including Scandinavia, Japan, Germany,
sisted of just one person. That figure at the same time that policymakers France, the U.K., Australia, and Can-
began rising around 1910, driven by ur- became concerned with, and named, ada, and it’s on the rise in China, India,
banization, the decline of live-in ser- “homelessness,” which is a far more and Brazil. Living alone works best in
vants, a declining birth rate, and the dire condition than being a single-per- nations with strong social supports. It
replacement of the traditional, multi- son household: to be homeless is to be works worst in places like the United
generational family with the nuclear a household that does not hold a house. States. It is best to have not only an
family. By the time David Riesman Cacioppo began his research in the Internet but a social safety net.
published “The Lonely Crowd,” in 1950, nineteen-nineties, even as humans were Then the great, global confinement
nine per cent of all households con- building a network of computers, to began: enforced isolation, social dis-
sisted of a single person. In 1959, psy- connect us all. Klinenberg, who grad- tancing, shutdowns, lockdowns, a
chiatry discovered loneliness, in a sub- uated from college in 1993, is particu- human but inhuman zoological gar-
tle essay by the German analyst Frieda larly interested in people who chose den. Zoom is better than nothing. But
Fromm-Reichmann. “Loneliness seems to live alone right about then. for how long? And what about the mo-
to be such a painful, frightening expe- I suppose I was one of them. I tried ment your connection crashes: the panic,
rience that people will do practically living alone when I was twenty-five, the last tie severed? It is a terrible, fright-
everything to avoid it,” she wrote. She, because it seemed important to me, the ful experiment, a test of the human ca-
too, shrank in horror from its contem- way owning a piece of furniture that I pacity to bear loneliness. Do you pull
plation. “The longing for interpersonal did not find on the street seemed im- out your hair? Do you dash yourself
intimacy stays with every human being portant to me, as a sign that I had come against the walls of your cage? Do you,
from infancy through life,” she wrote, of age, could pay rent without sublet- locked inside, thrash and cry and moan?
“and there is no human being who is ting a sublet. I could afford to buy pri- Sometimes, rarely, or never? More today
not threatened by its loss.” People who vacy, I might say now, but then I’m sure than yesterday? 
image: gentle, cultivated, enraptured
BOOKS child of nature.”
The work of being a public figure
was neatly summed up, for her, in the
never-ending burdens of correspon-
dence. Her short story “Messages,” pub-
lished near the end of her life, is com-
posed of snippets of letters she received:
Hi my name is Olavi. You write well but
last time you didn’t make a happy ending. Why
do you do this?
We look forward to your valued reply soon-

est concerning Moomin motifs on toilet paper
in pastel shades
Hi! We’re three girls in a mad rush with our

essays about you could you help us by saying
in just a few words how you started writing and
why and what life means to you and then a mes-
sage to young people you know the kind of
thing. Thanks in advance
Dear Miss Jansson, You must understand

that the only way I can earn a living are pan-
holders with Moomin figures which I design
myself and make in the kitchen without any paid
help at present. How would 6% be for a start
Several pages of this is charming;

forty years’ worth would have been wea-
rying. Yet, as the sole emissary of her
fictional world, Jansson felt the need
to be gracious. In 1948, after she had
published the first couple of Moomin
Rooms of Her Own books, but before anyone was demand-

ing her approval of Moomin oven mitts,
she already had opinions about the du-
The letters of Tove Jansson. ties of fame. Jansson’s younger brother
Lars (whom she called Lasse) had
BY SHEILA HETI mailed some unsolicited poetry to Dor-
othy Parker, who never responded. In
a letter to a friend, Jansson was offended
n the nineteen-fifties and sixties, were the subject of nine best-selling on his behalf: “If I was the Great
I one of the most famous cartoonists
in the world was a lesbian artist who
books and a daily comic strip that ran
for twenty years.
Woman, and received some (really quite
good) love poems from a young man
lived on a remote island off the coast Jansson travelled frequently to con- in Finland . . . in my own language with
of Finland. Tove Jansson had the sta- duct her duties as the ambassador of an adoring dedication, I’d damn well
tus of a beloved cultural icon—adored Moominvalley, mingling at parties send a few lines in reply.” She would
by children, celebrated by adults. Be- where businessmen wore Moomin ties. not be that sort of Great Woman.
fore her death, in 2001, at the age of In 1963, she wrote home, from the midst But, then, what sort? Twenty years
eighty-six, Jansson produced paintings, of professional obligations in Stock- after Jansson’s death, we now have a
novels, children’s books, magazine cov- holm, “I was woken by another TV record of the joys—and strains—of a
ers, political cartoons, greeting cards, crew wanting a comment on the cul- lifetime of correspondence. “Letters
librettos, and much more. But most of tural situation. . . . I’ve still got masses from Tove” (University of Minnesota),
Jansson’s fans arrived by way of the to sort out with family and cousins and a four-hundred-and-eighty-page vol-
Moomins, a friendly species of her in- children’s culture reps and translators ume, edited by Boel Westin and Helen
vention—rotund white creatures that and art galleries. . . . I’m feeling pretty Svensson and translated by Sarah Death,
look a little like upright hippos, and cocky but also trying to maintain my includes dispatches to her family,
friends, and lovers. The selection be-
The Finnish artist recorded the joys—and strains—of being a cultural icon. gins during her days as an art student
in Stockholm and culminates in the show, to disappointing reviews. Months than a hundred newspapers around the
early nineteen-eighties, when her let- later, Jansson wrote unhappily about globe. There was a television show in
ter writing (though not her work) her work in a journal, “Too many can- Sweden, an anime series in Japan, and,
appears to have stopped. Along with vases are ‘able,’ or forced, or ‘artificial.’ . . . of course, a deluge of merchandise: “trin-
Westin’s “Tove Jansson: Life, Art, My greatest asset should be painting, kets and marzipan and candles,” cups
Words” (2014), a comprehensive En- but either it is failing or I am failing.” and dishes, even menstrual pads. Jans-
glish-language biography of Jansson, It was during these turbulent cre- son replied to her new fans with the
these letters offer the most complete ative years that Jansson invented the same warmth and wonder that distin-
portrait of the artist to date. They show Moomins, a close-knit family made up guished the Moomin world. A two-
a person who is increasingly selective of the boyish Moomintroll, the oblig- page, illustrated letter to a child named
about which parts of herself she will ing and practical Moominmamma, the Ruth, from 1967, reads, in part:
share with whom. She writes to most adventure-seeking Moominpappa, and
of her correspondents in the mode of Moomintroll’s pretty and vain girlfriend, There might be quite a lot of trolls in Ire-
a traveller, awake to her surroundings Snork Maiden, along with an auxiliary land, I’ve heard? Here, they’re all hibernat-
ing. . . . Soon, I’ll start waiting for spring.
and the world. With only a few does cast of non-Moomin friends. They live Then, I go on to my island in the Finnish Gulf,
she expose her inner life, and, once she together in peaceful, verdant Moomin- a tiny one with no trees or bushes—only rock
becomes Finland’s beloved “Moomin- valley, but frequently venture beyond and wild flowers. And big, beautiful storms.
mamma,” she shares her artistic strug- its borders. Jansson wrote to a friend You would love it!
gles with nobody. that the characters had taken shape
“when I was feeling depressed and What accounts for the popularity of
J ansson was born in Helsinki in
1914, the eldest of three children in
scared of the bombing and wanted to
get away from my gloomy thoughts to
her enigmatic characters? For one thing,
Jansson’s intelligent intimacy and humor,
a Swedish-speaking family (a minority something else entirely. . . . I crept into which suffuses the books and her let-
in Finland). Her father was a charis- an unbelievable world where everything ters. She wasn’t drawn to nihilism, like
matic sculptor and her mother a suc- was natural and benign—and possible.” many postwar artists, or to any Freud-
cessful illustrator. “Home and studio But she seemed, initially, to doubt inspired movements, with their sugges-
were one,” as Westin writes in her bi- the worth of her escapist pleasure, and tive, anarchic dreamscapes. In a letter,
ography, “with no clear distinction be- she put the drawings aside for years. she deemed Surrealism “seductive but,
tween work and family life.” When she Much later, Jansson recalled that, during for me, without potential for develop-
was still quite young, Tove began help- the war, “one’s work stood still; it felt ment. A gown so sensational one can
ing her mother with her many com- completely pointless to try to create only wear it for a single season.” Instead,
missions. She noted in her diaries, “I pictures.” In 1945, at a friend’s urging, she created a reassuring world with a
want to be a wild thing, not an artist.” she finally published the stories and moral code, and characters with prob-
At twenty-three, Jansson left home drawings as a book, “The Moomins lems much like our own. The Moomins
to study painting in Paris, where she and the Great Flood.” Illustrated with are not so much cute as strangely fa-
soon enrolled at the École des Beaux- line drawings and sepia paintings, the miliar, as though Jansson happened to
Arts. Her yearning, detailed letters to story is fascinating for how un-escap- look in a new direction and find these
her family express her disappointment ist it seems: Moomintroll and his mother tender and serious fellow-creatures, who
with the school and its irrelevant as- wander through a perilous landscape, had been with us all along.
signments: “This time for instance it’s hungry and cold, searching for Moomin-
‘Moses strikes the rock’ and ‘People wait-
ing for a bus.’ We have four days to get
pappa. Jansson’s next book, “Comet in
Moominland” (1946), continues in the
“ L etters from Tove” is organized
not by chronology but by corre-
it done.” After two weeks, she quit the same anxious vein; this time, the loom- spondent, with a chapter devoted to
school, complaining to her mother that ing threat is from outer space. Still, if each of Jansson’s most meaningful in-
“Beaux Arts was a place for having fun her stories contain some of the harsh- terlocutors. This has the illuminating
or hoping for the Prix de Rome, and ness of life, they always end happily, effect, for readers, of retelling the same
possibly one gleaned some superficial with a joyous return to Moominvalley, story from many angles. Of all her cor-
technique to use in disguising one’s me- family and friends all safe. respondents, the person Jansson re-
diocre talents.” Jansson transferred to a The Moomins were an immediate vealed herself to most thoroughly was
PREVIOUS PAGE: © MOOMIN CHARACTERS™
smaller atelier, run by a more radical hit. One critic praised Jansson as “an the Russian-Jewish photographer Eva
Swiss artist who, learning of her defec- artist with two native languages”— Konikoff. The two met when Jansson
tion, “went quite pale at the thought of words and images. A decade after “The was in her twenties, and they travelled
the terrible danger I’d escaped from.” Great Flood,” by which point three in the same Helsinki artistic circles
After leaving school, with the Sec- more Moomin books had appeared, she until 1941, when Konikoff fled to the
ond World War unfolding, she strug- was asked by the London Evening News United States, and their correspondence
gled to complete what she hoped would to turn the comic into a daily strip. Jans- began. Jansson’s letters reach their lyr-
be a masterwork: a psychologically tense, son was proud and relieved: “Perma- ical and emotional heights during the
large-scale oil portrait of her family. But nent employment—the first time in my war years, when she was in her middle
the painting was exhibited, in a group life.” The Moomins spread to more to late twenties. They are poetic and
full of dread: “I lie here looking at the
birch tree outside my window, which
rustles like a thousand silk petticoats— BRIEFLY NOTED
the sea is a greeny-black and the first
rain has arrived,” while in the forest are The Precipice, by Toby Ord (Hachette). In a book that seems
“big burnt areas left by those airborne made for the present moment, Ord, a moral philosopher, ex-
oafs and their firebombs. . . . The planes amines and seeks to quantify existential risk—the looming
come roaring in over our heads on a threats that might someday wipe out humanity. There’s good
daily basis, like death’s black cross in news (it’s exceedingly unlikely that a star will blunder through
the heavens.” our solar system and “disrupt planetary orbits, causing the Earth
When a boyfriend of Jansson’s, Tapsa, to freeze or boil or even crash into another planet”) and bad
came home on a brief, much antici- (climate change is dire, though bioengineered pathogens, re-
pated leave from the front, he visited a leased by evildoers or laboratory accidents, might prove a speed-
mistress who was “big and platinum ier scourge). Still, there are ample proposals for risk mitigation,
blonde and very made-up and seemed and readers may find the sections that argue for why humanity
kind and pathetic,” a description that deserves saving, and why we’re equipped to face the challenges,
somehow evokes a Moomin. Hours even more arresting than the array of potential cataclysms.
later, in bed, after an evening alone with
Tapsa, Jansson tried to summon a feel- The Magical Language of Others, by E. J. Koh (Tin House).
ing of love, but the ongoing stress of This memoir relates the stories of four generations of women
the war—political arguments with her in Koh’s family, tracing the ways that language binds them
father, one of her brothers off fighting, together. When Koh was a teen-ager in California, in the
the hateful anti-Semitic slogans— two-thousands, her parents returned to Korea, and her mother
weighed heavily on her. In a letter to sent a string of letters—forty-nine in all—back to her daugh-
Konikoff, she recounts being suddenly ter. Translations of these dispatches, filled with the music of
repelled by Tapsa: Korean-inflected English, alternate with accounts of tectonic
shifts in Koh’s life. While she is studying in Japan, memo-
Everything that makes me not want to get
married came back to me, all the men I’ve seen ries of a Japanese-speaking grandmother who witnessed the
through and despised. . . . I see what will hap- Jeju Island massacre compel Koh to learn the language, be-
pen to my Painting if I get married. Because friending local shopkeepers and salarymen as she does. “They
when all is said and done I have in me all those sat next to me, watered me with conversation,” she writes.
inherited female instincts for solace, admira- “You cannot cook a grain of rice by itself.”
tion, submission, self-sacrifice. Either a bad
painter or a bad wife. And if I become a “good”
wife, then his work will be more important The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf ). The 2008
than mine, my intellect be subordinate to his, financial crisis becomes, in this panoramic novel, a platform
I shall bear him children, children to be killed for questions about self-reinvention and the ruptures of modern
in future wars! And at the same time I shall society. At the story’s center are the Canadian half siblings Paul,
see through it all, and know that I acted against
everything I believed in. an addict and would-be musician, and Vincent, a resourceful
woman of many permutations: bartender, assistant cook on a
A breakthrough in an artist’s life container ship, and girlfriend of a Bernie Madoff-like investor,
often corresponds with a breakthrough whose wealth, neurotic accomplices, and downfall illustrate the
in her art, and so it was for Jansson. In strange webs in “the kingdom of money.” While Vincent’s
1946, the year after the first Moomin search for purpose propels the novel, its subjects are pleasingly
book had appeared, her brother Lars omnivorous, ranging from the logistics of global shipping to a
introduced her to the theatre director fraudster’s elaborate prison fantasies of a “counterlife.”
Vivica Bandler. “I saw a tall aristocratic
girl with a prominent nose, thick straight Then the Fish Swallowed Him, by Amir Ahmadi Arian (Har-
eyebrows and a defiantly Jewish mouth,” perVia). The English-language début of a celebrated Iranian
Jansson writes. “She is blind in one eye, writer and translator, this novel follows a middle-aged bus
but the other is clear, dark, penetrat- driver, Yunus, who is imprisoned after he is falsely accused
ing.” And, although Jansson had a boy- of helping organize a union strike with the aid of the C.I.A.
friend and Bandler was married, they and Mossad. For twenty-five years, Yunus has led an austere
began an affair. She describes experi- life; his closest relationships are with Tehran’s crowded, smoggy
encing love with a woman for the first streets, the routes of which he envisages while trapped in his
time: cell. Despite his tepid participation in the strike, Yunus en-
dures torture and solitary confinement, as well as an apoca-
It came as such a huge surprise. Like find-
ing a new and wondrous room in an old house lypse-obsessed and unsettlingly charismatic interrogator—a
one thought one knew from top to bottom. depiction of how abstract political machinations crystallize
Just stepping straight in, and not being able into absurd, capricious violence.
to fathom how one had never known it ex- sleep in peace, the narrator ends up acters themselves. It was a subtle realm
isted. . . . I’m finally experiencing myself as a huddled on the wet deck of the ship, that must have been satisfying to ex-
woman where love is concerned, it’s bringing draped in his overcoat, when an old plore. As her fiction became more in-
me peace and ecstasy for the first time.
woman appears above him, whisper- terior and autobiographical, Jansson’s
To Konikoff, Jansson writes that she ing, “I’ll show you some photos of my letters seem to have become more su-
“never for a moment saw anything un- son. This is what Herbert looked like perficial. She sent far fewer of them,
natural” in her desire, and, although when he was four.” Humans are such funnelling her introspections into one
the affair ended, a longtime friendship needy creatures! stream, not two.
and a theatrical collaboration eventu- Jansson wrote “The True Deceiver,”
ally emerged from it. Jansson returned his short story belongs to the sec- one of her greatest novels, when she
to her boyfriend, Atos, and, in a letter
the following year, awkwardly proposed
T ond half of Jansson’s creative life.
In 1959, after seven years and more than
was in her late sixties. Riveting, origi-
nal, and strange, it concerns Anna
to him that they marry: “It wouldn’t ten thousand drawings, she abandoned Aemelin, a writer and illustrator of chil-
change our way of life, I don’t think. If the Moomin strip, handing it over to dren’s books, who lives alone and whose
you don’t want to, we can talk about her brother Lars. (A beautiful, com- life is infiltrated—for better and worse—
something else when you get back.” plete collection of Jansson’s cartoons by Katri, a mysterious loner, who be-
The marriage never occurred, and, six was published by Drawn & Quarterly, haves at once like an assistant and a
years after the affair with Bandler, Jans- in 2014.) Jansson wrote to a friend about grifter. Anna has been endowed with
son, still reminiscing in letters to Kon- ending the daily comics, “I never spare Jansson’s preoccupation with maintain-
ikoff, writes that “the happiest and most them a thought now it’s over. I’ve coming an image—that performance as a
genuine course for me would be to go pletely drawn a line under all that. Just “gentle, cultivated, enraptured child of
over to the ghost side.” as you wouldn’t want to think back on nature.” To this end, she has a system
Jansson’s most profound relation- a time you had toothache.” In the early for organizing the many fan letters she
ships were with women, and her let- seventies, after the death of her mother, receives from her child readers:
ters to friends were far more intimate she turned to fiction for adults. She
Pile A was from the very young, who ex-
even than her letters to her beloved wrote five novels; a memoir, “Sculptor’s pressed their admiration in pictures, mostly
Atos. In 1956, she met Tuulikki Pietilä Daughter”; and many short stories drawings of bunny rabbits. If there was a writ-
(“Tooti”), a prolific graphic artist and (some of which were posthumously col- ten message, the child’s mother had written it.
engraver. They would remain partners lected by New York Review Books in Pile B contained requests that were often ur-
for forty-five years, until Jansson’s death. “The Woman Who Borrowed Mem- gent, especially with regard to birthdays. Pile C
was what Anna called the Sad Cases pile, and
But, as Westin and Svensson put it, ories”). Her overwhelming Moomin these letters required great care and reflection.
“anyone who lived with Tove Jansson duties never abated, and she all but gave
also had to live with her family.” Her up writing for children. Katri suggests that Anna use a form
mother, nicknamed Ham, stayed with Remnants of Jansson’s early style are letter to deal with the deluge, but Anna
Jansson on and off. Even as a teen-ager, preserved in her more mature work. protests. What if siblings, or children
preparing to go away to school, Jans- Her later novels—“The True Deceiver” in the same class, compared? When
son had worried about her mother. (1982) and “Fair Play” (1989)—are ep- Katri proposes enlisting a secretary,
In a letter from 1961, she describes the isodic, as if producing comics had Anna is infuriated: “It’s me they’re ask-
stress of managing both Tooti and Ham trained her imagination in a certain ing, not anyone else . . . !” Katri tells her
in their “all-female household.” She felt not to sentimentalize her correspon-
that it had become impossible to please dents simply because they are young,
one without displeasing the other, and and their letters awkward and mis-
during a time of intense strife she wrote spelled. “I have gradually learned that
to a friend, “Sometimes I think I hate everyone, absolutely everyone of every
them both and it makes me feel ill.” size, is out to get something,” Katri
One of Jansson’s short stories, “Trav- says. This may be the most cynical line
elling Light,” from 1987, explores the in any of Jansson’s novels. It is as though
fantasy of being liberated from the the Great Woman saw, in her fiction,
endless demands of other people. It at least, something true about what an-
begins with a ship leaving the shore. form. She created characters, then imates the exchange between an artist
“I wish I could describe the enormous turned them around in a variety of sit- and her fans. The artist wants to be
relief I felt when they finally pulled up uations, with the cartoonist’s confidence seen as the figure she is striving to be;
the gangway!” the narrator says. But that the empty white spaces between the fan simply wants to be seen. Anna
soon he finds himself roped into con- chapters would be rich and evocative. finally gives Katri the task of replying
versation with a stranger, who begins But she also plumbed a new kind of to the children, but later chastises her
“holding forth about his misunder- darkness: the tangible menaces of her for not doing a good enough job:
stood childhood”; even worse, the two cartoon worlds—forests, seas, the in-
men turn out to be cabinmates. Des- finitude of the cosmos—now took shape She put her hand on the pile of letters and
perate to get away from everyone and within the unruly depths of the char- declared, “More affection! Bigger writing!

And talk about my own cat: describe it, talk
about it . . .”
“But you don’t have a cat.”
“That doesn’t matter. The whole point is
to give them a nice letter . . . You have to learn
how it’s done. But I wonder if you can. I al-
most think you don’t like them.”
Katri shrugged her shoulders and smiled
her quick wolfish smile. “Neither do you,”
she said.
T o avoid the bombardments of the

world—to find someplace where
the performance could end—Jansson
sought out the pleasures of seclusion.
In Helsinki, she retreated to her stu-
dio, where she “couldn’t be bothered to
sweep up” and a “veil of tobacco smoke”
covered the room. In the summers, she
lived in small, rustic houses on a series
of remote islands in the Gulf of Fin-
land: as a child, with family or friends;
later, alone or with Pietilä. One sum-
mer, Jansson wrote to her joyfully about
an island storm:
The family got all worked up and took de-
light in disaster as usual. Lasse and I rushed • •
round looking at the breakers, the usual wa-
terfalls started up and the inlet turned into a
torrent. Before we knew it the water was up pans of hot water on the ground outside. Then Much of Jansson’s later fiction ex-
to the sauna and there was the usual boat busi- we do our own private thing until dinner, which pands this idea of contentment. Love,
ness, ropes tangling in all directions. . . . The we eat sometime in the middle of the day, our
floor started floating away. The outer cellar
for her, is premised on a delicate bal-
noses in our books. We get on with our work. . . .
was full of frantic frogs and the waves brought We don’t talk much. And so the days pass in ance between the reliable presence of
the full chaos of Sjöberg breaking over us. . . . blessed tranquility. another person and the freedom to
We felt so sorry for you, missing out on the inhabit one’s private universe. Unlike
ghastly majesty of it all, but you wait and see, Even in the city, the couple preserved the intrusive letter writers in “Mes-
we’re bound to get even bigger and better
storms on this island.
a distance within their intimacy; they sages,” who demand a presentation of
kept separate apartments, joined by an the self, genuine companionship
“The Summer Book,” her first novel, is attic corridor through which they vis- shields the self, allowing one’s interi-
constructed around this idyll. A grand- ited each other every day. ority to deepen; this is the alchemy of
mother and granddaughter roam a tiny As a young artist, Jansson built her true mutuality. In “Fair Play,” a novel
island, absorbed in a world made up of narratives around an idealized notion that is loosely based on Jansson and
their own thoughts and adventures, and of home: her creatures ventured out Pietilä’s relationship, Mari, a writer,
their connection with each other. on their own, but some sense of safety and Jonna, an artist, live and work in
On her islands, Jansson’s many con- followed them everywhere, an assur- side-by-side studios. Jonna receives
trary aspects—the self that valued sol- ance of a familial love that left them an award that will take her to Paris,
itude and the self that valued friend- to enjoy their solitude, rather than fear to a studio “meant for her use alone.”
ship; the self that loved adventure and it. In “Comet in Moominland,” Sniff, Worried about leaving Mari behind,
the self that loved routine—were eas- a mouselike creature, is off exploring she is unsure whether to accept. She
ily made one. In a letter, Jansson de- new terrain with a friend. He finds nervously justifies herself, explaining
scribes waking up early with Pietilä, himself at the mouth of a vast, empty “the importance of illustration, the
“always simultaneously though we sleep cavern, and addresses his companion: painstaking labor, the concentration”
in separate beds.” They lie together in “Don’t disturb me,” said Sniff solemnly. needed to do one’s best work. But Mari
the mornings and listen to the radio; “This is the biggest moment of my life so far, finds herself unafraid of the prospect:
Jansson lets out the cat, makes coffee, and it’s my first cave.” He smoothed the sand
reads novels. Later, she walks along with his tail and sighed. “I shall live here for- A daring thought was taking shape in her
the beach and brings in the wood: ever,” he thought. “I shall put up little shelves mind. She began to anticipate a solitude of her
and dig a sleeping-hole in the sand, and have own, peaceful and full of possibility. She felt
a lamp burning in the evenings. And perhaps something close to exhilaration, of a kind that
We rarely clean the house and only have I’ll make a rope ladder so that I can go up to people can permit themselves when they are
the occasional wash, with much brouhaha and the roof and look at the sea.” blessed with love. 

that “poetry makes nothing happen,”
BOOKS we equate political poetry with mo-
mentum and a kind of galvanizing
sound—a cry of victory in a world hell-
bent on oppression and darkness.
It’s precisely the absence of those easy
markers—the triumph of good over evil,
truth lighting the way—that makes the
poet and activist Carolyn Forché’s work
chilling and unique. For a large part of
her career, Forché, who is now sixty-nine,
has been characterized as a political poet.
Which she is, though she prefers the
term “poetry of witness.” Her poems ask
again and again, What can we do with
what we see and live through? They help
us to consider our memories of Ausch-
witz or an image of immigrants drowned
in the Rio Grande. In our deeply bifur-
cated world, Forché’s best writing en-
gages in a kind of dialectic, one in which
the truth of experience burns as brightly
as the author’s intuition and imagina-
tion. Her poetry and her fascinating 2019
memoir, “What You Have Heard Is True,”
which describes her time in El Salvador
shortly before and during the civil war
there, are filled with refugees, the dis-
possessed, and survivors, acutely observed
in public places, near bodies of water, in
garbage dumps. These are people Forché
is desperate not to forget. Nor can she
forget the young woman she once was,
Voices Carry a woman who, as she told Jonathan Cott,

for his 1987 book, “Visions and Voices,”
“wasn’t equipped to see or analyze the
Carolyn Forché’s education in looking. world.” Of her travels in El Salvador, she
said to Cott:
BY HILTON ALS
My perceptions were very distorted—and
I’m even talking about visual perception. I
would notice things in very general terms, but
n a 1961 interview, the great mod- ered the work fundamentally dishon-
I ernist poet Marianne Moore ex-
pressed ambivalence about her popu-
est. “After it had been published,” he
said, “I came to the line ‘We must love
there were certain things I would fail to see.
I would always marvel at the wealthy women
in the suburbs of San Salvador—women play-
lar 1943 antiwar verse, “In Distrust of one another or die’ and said to myself: ing canasta all day—and I spent many hours
Merits.” “As form, what has it?” Moore ‘That’s a damned lie! We must die any- talking to them. They did not see poverty, it
didn’t exist for them. First of all, they never
said. “It is just a protest—disjointed, way!’” Implicit in Auden’s and Moore’s went outside the capital city, but even in the
exclamatory. . . . First this thought and self-criticism is their aversion not only
MARSHA BOSTON / COURTESY CAROLYN FORCHÉ
city they could go through a street in a car and

then that.” Moore was not the first au- to the declarative but to the general— not see the mother who had made a nest in
thor to question what you might call to the poet’s “I” taking on the mantle rubber tires for her babies. . . .
her reactive voice. W. H. Auden fa- of “we.” And yet the English-language Now, as to what I didn’t see: I was once
driving past rows of cotton fields—all I could
mously turned his back on his poem reader is particularly attuned to that see on either side of the highway for miles was
“September 1, 1939,” written on the oc- kind of broad rhetoric, which can be cotton fields, and it was dusty and hot, and I
casion of Germany’s invasion of Po- found in poems ranging from Alfred was rolling along thinking about something in
land—“All I have is a voice /To undo Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the my usual way, which is the way that has been
the folded lie . . . / We must love one Light Brigade” to Maya Angelou’s “Still nurtured in this country. But I didn’t see be-
tween the rows, where there were women and
another or die”—because he consid- I Rise,” because, despite Auden’s claim children, emaciated, in a stupor, because pes-
ticide planes had swept over and dropped chem-
Forché, in California, in 1977. Her poems ask what we can do with what we see. icals all over them, and they were coughing

and lethargic from those poisonous clouds . . . schoolyard stones in the hand of a corpse, then teaching in Ann Arbor, Michi-
There they were, and I hadn’t seen them. I had pebble from Baudelaire’s oui, gan, near where Forché grew up, wrote
only seen cotton and soil between cotton plants, stone of the mind within us back to the burgeoning writer, suggest-
and a hot sky—I saw the thing endlessly and carried from one silence to another . . .
aesthetically, I saw it in a certain spatial way. stone from the tunnel lined with bones, ing, first, that she include more of her
So I had to be taught to look and to remem- lava of a city’s entombment, stones own philosophy in her writing, and,
ber and to think about what I was seeing. . . . chipped from lighthouse, cell wall, second, that she read Anna Akhma-
[W]e Americans . . . tend to register per- scriptorium, tova. This was another turning point
ceptions without codifying them in any polit- paving stones from the hands of those who for Forché. She was moved not only by
ical, historical, or social way. There’s no sense rose against the army,
of what creates or contributes to or who benefits stones where the bells had fallen, where the Akhmatova’s spare, dissident “Requiem”
from a situation. And I’m not talking about a bridges were blown . . . but by how, under Stalinist rule, Akhma-
prescriptive political ideology now . . . [but] a all earth a quarry, all life a labor, stone- tova had largely composed the poem
process of understanding. faced, stone-drunk in her mind and, with help from some
with hope that this assemblage of rubble, friends, memorized it to avoid com-
taken together, would become
In order to understand what Forché a shrine or holy place, an ossuary, immov- mitting anything to paper—an act that,
is doing on the page, you have to look able and sacred according to Akhmatova’s biographer
between the rows of type, and see what like the stone that marked the path of the Amanda Haight, was possible only “if
she leaves in the white space of your sun as it entered the human dawn. one was convinced of the absolute im-
imagination. You have to rejigger, if not portance and necessity of poetry.” All
jettison entirely, your ideas or precon- aith has been part of Forché’s story of this—Brodsky’s sense that his voca-
ceptions about political writing and
about what makes a poem. Forché’s
F from the beginning. Born in 1950,
she is the oldest of seven children. Her
tion was a gift from God, the fleeting
smile of a woman who’d asked Akhma-
stately stanzas—her writing is never working-class religious Catholic par- tova if she could describe the horror of
hurried—are the work of a literary re- ents, Louise and Michael, a tool-and- the Yezhov terror (Akhmatova’s an-
porter, Gloria Emerson as filtered die maker, raised their brood in Farm- swer: “I can”)—began to change Forché.
through the eyes of Elizabeth Bishop ington, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. In her essay for “Poetry of Witness,”
or Grace Paley. Free of jingoism but not When Forché was about nine, her she writes:
of moral gravity, Forché’s work ques- mother, whom she has described as a
As I was still in my early twenties and ed-
tions—when it does question—how to feminist, suggested that her bright, ucated in the United States, I hadn’t thought
be or to become a thinking, caring, com- bookish daughter entertain herself by of poetry in these terms. I had not yet encoun-
municating adult. Taken together, composing a poem. To show her how, tered evil in anything resembling this form,
Forché’s five books of verse—the most Louise dusted off an old textbook— and had not yet, therefore, imagined the im-
recent, “In the Lateness of the World” she had attended college for two years press of extremity upon the poetic imagina-
tion, nor conceived of our relation to others
(Penguin Press), was published in before marrying—and explained to Car- as one of infinite obligation: to stand with them
March—are about action: memory as olyn what meter was and taught her in the hour of need, even abject and destitute,
action, vision and writing as action. She the importance of stresses. Forché was in supplication and without need of response.
asks us to consider the sometimes un- instantly taken by the poetic form. “I If it were so—if description were possible, of
recognized, though always felt, ways in began to work in iambic pentameter the world and its sufferings, then the response
would be that smile, or rather something re-
which power inserts itself into our lives because I didn’t know there was any- sembling it.
and to think about how we can move thing else,” she told Cott. “Writing was
forward with what we know. History— simply the reverie that I recorded.” Those concerns—the desire to stand
with its construction and its destruc- While the surreal horror of the Viet- with others, and to describe who we are
tion—is at the heart of “In the Late- nam War was still a daily reality, Forché and what we suffer—come to the fore-
ness of the World.” In “Museum of completed a bachelor’s degree in inter- front in Forché’s accomplished first book
Stones,” the first poem in the book, national relations at Michigan State of poems, “Gathering the Tribes,” which
Forché’s delicate but hawklike observa- University in 1972, and a master’s of won the Yale Series of Younger Poets
tions show us the broken dreams and fine arts at Bowling Green State Uni- prize in 1975. The book’s emotional focus,
false idols that are left in the wake of versity three years later. In an essay for as Stanley Kunitz, who judged the con-
violence, folly, and time. She also shows her essential 2014 anthology, “Poetry test, observed in his foreword, is on kin-
how to pick our way through that de- of Witness: The Tradition in English, ship: “Love of people, love of place.”“Gath-
tritus to search for clues as to who we 1500-2001,” co-edited with the scholar ering the Tribes” is a book about
were or might have been: Duncan Wu, Forché relates how, in her traces—the ghostly matrilineal lines
These are your stones, assembled in match- early twenties, she read excerpts from leading to and away from the poet—
box and tin, the transcript of the 1964 trial, in Len- and her still developing womanhood; it
collected from roadside, culvert, and ingrad, of the Russian-born poet Jo- is also about voices, and the dominant
viaduct, seph Brodsky—Soviet officials weren’t voice in the book is that of Forché’s Slo-
battlefield, threshing floor, basilica, thrilled by his assertion, among other vakian grandmother, Anna. Part of the
abattoir—
stones, loosened by tanks in the streets, things, that it was God who gave him exquisite tension of the collection comes
from a city whose earliest map was drawn the authority to be a poet—and sent from Forché’s effort to inhabit her grand-
in ink on linen, him some poems. Brodsky, who was mother as a young woman in Eastern
less, move more? That when people
are gone we are free to make them up,
out of longing, grief, or imagination?
Forché writes:
Last night a woman not alive
came to my bedside, a black skirt, black
reboso. She touched
my blankets, sang like wind
in a crack, saw
that my eyes were open.
She went to the kitchen
without footsteps,
rattled pans, sang ma-he-yo
Ma-he-yo until morning.
n a recent interview with Chard de-

I Niord, Forché recalls that after “Gath-
ering the Tribes” came out she was teach-
ing at San Diego State University. Her
spirits were low. But then her life took
a turn. Through a colleague, she met and
became friends with Maya Flakoll, who
was the daughter of the Nicaraguan-Sal-
vadoran poet Claribel Alegría. In the
nineteen-fifties and sixties, Alegría had
belonged to a group of writers called la
generación comprometida (“the commit-
ted generation”)—artists who agitated
for political change. By the time Forché
• • met her, in the summer of 1977, Alegría
was living in exile in Mallorca, writing
extraordinary poems, which Flakoll en-
Europe, moving from one unsettled her grandmother to come back from couraged Forché, who had been study-
world to the next. From “What It Cost”: death to answer those questions: ing French and Spanish, to translate.
“Flowers from the Volcano” is one of the
In the pink tintype earliest hours, Grandma, come back, I forgot
we were moved out of Kiev. How much lard for these rolls poems Forché subsequently translated:
Grey pelts to our necks smelling
as cold as in Wakhan on the dunged straw. Think you can put yourself in the ground Fourteen volcanos rise
Asleep with fog in our mouths. Like plain potatoes and grow in Ohio? in my remembered country
I am damn sick of getting fat like you in my mythical country.
We ate the chunks bobbing in soup, Fourteen volcanos of foliage and stone
someone thinking it excrement, and drank Think you can lie through your Slovak? where strange clouds hold back
bad vodka poured over black breads. . . . the screech of a homeless bird.
But the dead take their recipes—and Who said that my country was green?
We were young, It is more red, more gray, more violent:
the children ate flesh
their secrets—with them. That’s one
Izalco roars, taking more lives.
pulled from pyres. thing we hold against them. Along with Eternal Chacmol collects blood,
Mothers wrapped dead babies our grief. One hears a bit of Sylvia Plath’s the gray orphans
in blankets and carried them. brilliant and brittle accusatory tone here, the volcano spitting bright lava
though Plath would never have felt, let and the dead guerrillero
As we will never know what it means, and the thousand betrayed faces,
we will know what it cost.
alone expressed, the anticipatory joy
the children who are watching
that Forché feels about the possibility so they can tell of it.
While the voice in these often com- of becoming her grandmother: “But I’m Not one kingdom was left us.
pact poems is solid, definite, Forché’s glad I’ll look when I’m old/Like a gypsy One by one they fell
perspective can shift from line to line: dusha hauling milk.” through all the Americas.
these poems are about consciousness as Toward the end of the book, we find
an active experience. The most exciting the poem “Mientras Dure Vida, Sobra Despite her sensitivity to the work,
investigations in “Gathering the Tribes” el Tiempo”—“Memory becomes very Forché didn’t think that she could ac-
involve identity: Who was Anna? What deep, weighs more, moves less.” If that’s complish the task, in large part because
was it like to be her? Or to be Carolyn? true (and it seems to be for Forché), is she didn’t know enough about the world
In “The Morning Baking,” Forché asks it possible that words, by contrast, weigh that Alegría’s poems grew out of. She
knew nothing about Central America what she didn’t know about El Salva- The colonel returned with a sack used to bring
or about the forces that were pushing dor and its relationship to “the Amer- groceries home. He spilled many human ears
El Salvador toward civil war. Sitting icas” could have filled a book. And it on the table. They were like dried peach halves.
There is no other way to say this. He took one
with Alegría and her friends on the did, along with all that Forché discov- of them in his hands, shook it in our faces,
older poet’s terrace in Mallorca, Forché ered there, as she worked in conjunc- dropped it into a water glass. It came alive
began to understand how personal the tion with Archbishop Óscar Romero, there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As
political could be. In her memoir, For- in his efforts to stop social injustice, tor- for the rights of anyone, tell your people they
ché writes: ture, and other forms of brutality. can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to
the floor with his arm and held the last of his
From childhood, I had experienced bouts
Forché’s 1981 collection, “The Coun- wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no?
of depression, and my mother had also suffered try Between Us,” bears witness not only he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught
this during her child-raising years. I would find to what she saw in El Salvador but to this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the
her in her room sometimes, crying and staring the broader U.S.-backed oppression in floor were pressed to the ground.
at nothing. She told me that I would under- Latin America. The book is a master-
stand when I was older . . . In my own life, this
darkness descended always unexpectedly. . . .
piece of poetry and of resistance. Nev- When “The Country Between Us”
Something could, at times, push against it. ertheless, it was rejected by several pub- was rejected by the first publisher it was
Work did, and also the urge to do something lishers. What had happened to the young sent to, Margaret Atwood, another older
in the face of some wrongdoing or injustice woman who could embody her grand- writer Forché admired, insisted that she
inflicted against another, and this urge swelled mother and write about family? Why not give up on the book. Eventually, it
during the conversations on the terrace in Mal-
lorca that summer, as I sat on the edge of the
hadn’t she stayed in that territory of was published by Harper & Row, and
circle taking things in, until, toward the end, dreams and domesticity? In “The Coun- it wasn’t long before prominent jour-
I also worked at being invisible, because it try Between Us,” Forché was a different nalists, following the escalating trou-
seemed, from what I understood from these poet—one remade by knowledge and bles in El Salvador, were mentioning
conversations, that injustices of a political na- by a need to tell the truth about where Forché in their columns as a source on
ture were not historical accidents, and that
most injustices in Latin America were sup-
she was from. And the place Forché was the situation. As she told deNiord, she
ported or made possible by the United States, from now wasn’t just Michigan, or Cal- found this confusing:
or that was my impression. One of the visit- ifornia, or the past, but corrupt El Sal-
I was surprised that my work was being
ing writers had even responded to my plain- vador, a country where scenes such as read as political poetry. I wondered what was
tive question regarding ways I might get in- the one she laid out with poetic care and meant by that. I knew that “political” was a
volved with something like: There is nothing
you can do, my dear. Change your government.
reportorial clarity in her 1978 prose poem pejorative term, but I didn’t know what they
“The Colonel” could take place: meant, because in El Salvador if you’re polit-
Enjoy your summer.
ical, you go to meetings every night, you’re
What you have heard is true. I was in his in a political party, you follow orders, you are
Of course, this condescending re- house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and in a disciplined, structured, political group.
mark conveyed not only anti-“ugly sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went In the United States, as far as I could tell, it
American” sentiment but the margin- out for the night. There were daily papers, pet meant something loosely oppositional to the
alization that many women experience dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The status quo. “Political” was a label, affixed to
when it comes to activism: they are sup- moon swung bare on its black cord over the people who variously brought to light any-
house. On the television was a cop show. It was thing that seemed to contend with domi-
posed to cook the meals and bear the in English. Broken bottles were embedded in nant thinking.
children while the men do the “real” the walls around the house to scoop the knee-
work. The examples of Akhmatova and caps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace. Part of what keeps “The Country
Alegría had taught Forché to be alert On the windows there were gratings like those Between Us” powerful to this day is that
to the chauvinism in that non-idea. Still, we learn what “political” means to us as
after returning to San Diego, Forché Forché discovers it for herself. Yet, de-
was at a loss as to how to become more spite the support of many other writ-
actively involved in a situation she was ers, including Joyce Carol Oates, who
just beginning to learn about. What did praised “The Country Between Us” in
it mean for Alegría and others to live the Times—“One feels that the poet has
in exile? What did it mean not to have earned her bleak and wintry vision”—
a home or be at home? One day, Forché the collection wasn’t greeted with open
was visited by Alegría’s nephew Leonel arms. Forché was accused of doing some-
Gómez Vides, who invited her to join thing—reporting—that was not part of
him in El Salvador—to bear witness, in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, her role as a poet. (The essayist Eliot
good wine, a gold bell was on the table for call-
as an artist, to what was happening there. ing the maid. The maid brought green man- Weinberger called it “revolutionary tour-
As Forché recounts in “What You Have goes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I ism.”) But what is the role of the poet?
Heard Is True,” the meeting with Vides enjoyed the country. There was a brief com- Are writers responsible to some degree
and her decision to journey, alone, to El mercial in Spanish. His wife took everything for the world they inhabit? These were
Salvador had a hallucinatory quality: at away. There was some talk then of how diffi- questions that Forché was undoubtedly,
cult it had become to govern. The parrot said
the invitation of a man she didn’t know, hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut if indirectly, putting to other writers, as,
she was going to live, at least for a time, up, and pushed himself from the table. My along with other brilliant poets, includ-
in a country she didn’t know. Indeed, friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. ing Adrienne Rich, June Jordan, and
The Sunday Archive Newsletter Audre Lorde, she was carving out a quiet protest against the atrocities of the last
place for poetry that not only spoke of century and insists that “even the most bro-
the self but connected to the world. ken life can be restored to its moments.” In
such lines, Forché’s persona—unflinching wit-
ness and eloquent mourner—prevails, but in
n the years after “The Country Between
I Us” came out, Forché connected to the
world in a variety of ways, some deeply
the centerpiece of the collection, “On Earth,”
her obsessive documentation of inhuman-
ity overwhelms her best lyric instincts. . . .
personal. In 1980, she met the photogra- [A]nd . . . the poem’s collage of horrifying
imagery feels gratuitous more often than it
pher Harry Mattison, whom she married
Dig into in the winter of 1984. Mattison worked
for Time, in South Africa, where, even-
does inspired.
Forché’s strongest critics seem to
stories from tually, the couple came under government

scrutiny for violating the Group Areas
Act; that is, for sharing a home with a
agree on this: that she, with her vari-
ous intensities, can be “too much.” But
isn’t the world too much? Toni Morri-
our 95-year person of color. (Their landlord reported
them.) As the situation escalated, Forché
son once observed that there is no such
thing as bigger than life: life is big.
became pregnant, and she and Mattison Forché, in her profoundly ambitious
archive. left South Africa so that she could de-
liver the baby in relative safety. Her son
work, aims to capture that bigness, line
by line. In “In the Lateness of the
and only child, Sean Christophe Matti- World,” one feels the poet cresting a
son, was born a few weeks after the cou- wave—a new wave that will crash onto
ple arrived in Paris, where they stayed for new lands and unexplored territories.
almost a year. Being a mother and mak- To read the book straight through is to
ing a family are, of course, essential themes see connections between her earlier
in Forché’s third collection, “The Angel work and her new poems because, by
of History” (1994), in which she writes looking at the world, she has made a
about the resonance of disasters, such as world, one in which her past is as pres-
Hiroshima and the Holocaust, but also ent as her future.
about the ways in which the members of In “The Boatman,” a poem about
one generation can be affected by the refugees in Italy, one hears echoes of
gravity of what the preceding generation “The Colonel”—“We were thirty-one
left behind to nourish them—or not. The souls, he said, in the gray-sick of sea / in
extraordinary title poem begins: a cold rubber boat, rising and falling in
There are times when the child seems
our filth.” But in the book’s final poem,
delicate, as if he had not yet crossed into “What Comes,” Forché takes apart the
the world. thought and thus the language that
When French was the secret music of the sent her to the page in the first place,
street, the café, the train, my own a dialectical world littered with yeses
receded and became intimacy and
sleep.
and nos and her mother and Anna
In the world it was the language of Akhmatova and Claribel Alegría and
Classic New Yorker pieces, propaganda, the agreed-upon lie, and it all the women and the mess and the
bound me to beauty of identity in between, which
delivered to your in-box itself, demanding of my life an are given shape by the care and disci-
explanation.
every weekend with the When my son was born I became mortal.
pline of poetry and the desire to speak.
Sunday Archive newsletter. And yet, as much as life takes, it gives,
Forché’s role as a mother—the moral including the poet’s voice and its myr-
Sign up at newyorker.com/ barometer against which all children iad possibilities, among them how to
sundaynewsletter measure themselves—is important, render silence:
though not overwhelming, in the col-
lection “Blue Hour,” from 2003. With to speak is not yet to have spoken.
this book, the poet encountered the same the not-yet of a white realm of nothing
left
criticism as with “The Country Between neither for itself nor another
Us”: What was personal? What was po- a no-longer already there, along with the
litical? And how could the reader rec- arrival of what has been
oncile the two? A Briefly Noted review light and the reverse of light . . .
in this magazine said: you have yourself within you
yourself, you have her, and there is
The uncertainty of an individual’s sur- nothing
vival at any given point in history informs that cannot be seen
the first part of this volume, which mounts a open then to the coming of what comes 

suddenly theatreless world, is how diffi
THE THEATRE cult theatre is to replace. The mecha
nism—bodies doing things in front of
other bodies—is too basic. (Or bodies
cavorting with other bodies, as the case
may be; among this season’s now sus
pended offerings was Taylor Mac’s new
play, “The Fre,” in which the audience
was seated in a ball pit.) You can tape
theatre and stream it, for which I am
hugely grateful, not least because it gives
more people access to shows. But what
you watch through this method is in
evitably only a facsimile of the real thing.
It’s like eating a food that you can smell
but not taste.
I hope it doesn’t sound too pre
maturely elegiac to say that one of the
things I miss about going to the the
atre is the going: leaving home, trav
elling, with a sense of purpose, to a
specific place at an appointed hour. I
miss threading my way through the ob
stacle course of Times Square, secretly
proud of my agility. And I miss being
part of an audience, one soul among
many. I even miss the reliable, infuri
ating madness of other people. Dear
Elderly Sir, who inexplicably texted
throughout “Greater Clements”: I may
not think highly of you personally,
but I hope you’re doing all right. Dear
Madam, whose chromatic, flutelike
Screen Time snoring during the first act of “The Fer

ryman” led to an intraaisle shushing
war the likes of which I have never heard
Performers on lockdown turn to their smartphones. before or since: my best wishes to you.
To the tweens who packed together in
BY ALEXANDRA SCHWARTZ a line around the block, just before the
advent of social distancing, for a pre
view of “Six”: your energy was infec
ine days, which feel like nine weeks, Lear” in quarantine when the plague tious, I hope only in the figurative sense.
N have gone by, as of this writing,
since Broadway went dark and New
forced the Globe to close, in the sum
mer of 1606. (A comforting thought, if
Please stay home.
Theatre artists and technicians are
York’s theatres closed their doors. By you happen to be both a genius and out of work right now, which spells ter
the time you read this, it may well feel good at focussing in times of existen rible anxiety and financial distress. It
like nine years. The suddenness with tial crisis.) During the Second World also means that creative people are try
which the city’s performance ecosys War, London initially shut its theatres ing to find creative things to do. If there
tem has vanished defies comprehen and cinemas—“a masterstroke of un is one silver lining to this crisis, it’s that
sion—it’s as if the Great Barrier Reef imaginative stupidity,” George Bernard it hit in the age of the smartphone, when
had died overnight. Grasping for com Shaw called the decision—only to re performance is everywhere. So we find
parison, we have to look well beyond open many of them when it became our perspective shifted. The ratio is now
the proximate disasters of Hurricane clear that morale needed boosting. But one to one: me watching you, my screen
Sandy and 9/11, when, ultimately, the keeping calm and carrying on is not in to yours. Glamour? Mystique? Polish?
shows went resolutely on. There’s been the pandemic playbook. We are our Shine? No, no, no, and no. But who
some optimistic speculation online as own threat. The enemy is within. needs them? This is a time for the cur
to whether Shakespeare wrote “King What’s immediately apparent, in a tain to be pulled back.
Instagram Live, previously a place
Instagram Live has been repurposed as a cabaret, abuzz with performing artists. for celebrities to offer the public slick
ILLUSTRATION BY GOLDEN COSMOS THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 75
glimpses into their worlds, has been re- like getting stuck on a FaceTime call away from this cursed planet, but the
purposed as a cabaret, abuzz with per- between the famous: cute at first, then question is whether the aliens will
forming artists doing what they can for a little boring, but endearingly nerdy, have her. “What I would contribute to
us from their living rooms. Patti Smith with Channel Thirteen fund-raiser- your galaxy?” she asks, chewing her
and her daughter Jesse Paris Smith style energy. lip. “Well . . . I am enthusiastic. And
squeezed together to serenade their fol- It must be hard to make original I . . . think that’s an important quality
lowers through the screen. The sublime work under these conditions of general on any team.” In just four minutes, Ire-
jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant, menace, but some performers are per- land, with her big, distant, unreadable
with Sullivan Fortner on the piano, gave severing. The best I’ve seen in the past eyes and expressive mouth, sketches a
an impromptu concert; it looked as week was produced by the 24 Hour portrait of a woman who wants noth-
though the pair were performing for Plays, an organization whose regular ing more than to trade in her known
their own pleasure, which, in turn, bol- stunt involves putting together plays life and surrender to the intoxicating
stered ours. Rosie O’Donnell raised and musicals that are written, rehearsed, unknown. “Honestly, I’m afraid the
money for the Actors Fund by chat- and performed in the space of a single world is burning,” she says. “And it’s
ting, via video stream, with other per- day. On Instagram, the group has been not that I’m afraid of dying or even
formers, including Cynthia Erivo, Patti hosting a series of “viral monologues”: catching fire. I just don’t want to watch.”
LuPone, Idina Menzel, and Chita Ri- new, very short pieces that were com- Part of the pleasure of the 24 Hour
vera. LuPone showed off her jukebox. missioned from homebound playwrights viral monologues lies in seeing what ac-
Andrew Lloyd Webber sang “Happy and performed by homebound actors. tors do when left to their own devices,
Birthday” to Stephen Sondheim; Ste- The first installment, still available for far from the smoothing, sculpting hand
phen Sondheim sang “Happy Birth- viewing, was posted on March 17th. of a director. The selfie-video format
day” to Andrew Lloyd Webber while No surprise that the subject most on has the feel of an audition tape, an al-
vigorously washing his hands. Alan the minds of the playwrights was di- lusion that the great Richard Kind
Menken, at a piano stationed in front saster. In a monologue by Lily Padilla, makes explicit in a quick, clever mono-
of a grandfather clock, performed a ca- Marin Ireland, playing a dissolute young logue by Jesse Eisenberg, in which Kind
reer-skimming medley that ended, on teacher, delivers, directly into a phone asks Hollywood to cast him against
the nose, with “A Whole New World,” camera, what we soon realize is an ap- type, for once, as a Gentile. In a piece
from “Aladdin.” The lighting was reas- plication to be abducted by extraterres- by Stephen Adly Guirgis called “L.A.
suringly awful. Watching these bits was trials. She’s ready to be beamed up and Yoga Motherfuckers,” Andre Royo sits
in a car and launches into a disgrun-
tled, hilariously unhinged rant about
civility and “these Bernie bros and their
Bernie hos,” who appear to have chased
him out of a yoga class after he ex-
pressed support for Joe Biden. A coro-
navirus joke falls flat, but it’s good to
see playwrights bringing new charac-
ters into the world to respond, in the
moment, to the same things that we’re
responding to. Free from motive, free
of the harness of plot, they flicker briefly
alive to share these strange times with
us and then disappear, but not without
leaving a mysterious, human trace.
n good times, we want performance

I to shake us and stir us, to horrify or
delight, to rouse, to make us feel strong
things. Daily living can dull the senses
(including the moral one), and we ask
the theatre to help us sharpen them
again. But in a time of fear and strained
feeling, when we are thinking non-stop
about our welfare and its connection to
other people, it’s comfort that we want.
That’s why, while watching the 24 Hour
viral monologues, I thought of one of
“I’m going to be vacuuming, if you want to go into the my preferred forms of digital direct
farthest room and start asking me questions.” address, the soft-spoken parallel uni-
verse of the Internet genre called ASMR. remesque. Click and click and click;
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ASMR is the name given to a physical ace made by women for one another.
sensation, without known neurological The women of ASMR see themselves
cause, of gentle and pervasive pleasure. as caregivers, unofficial tenders to their
The name, which is short for “autono- fellow video watchers’ mental health,
mous sensory meridian response,” sug- and, as totally nuts as that seems, they’re
gests some scientific authority that is not altogether wrong.
as yet unfounded. No one knows what What the best ASMRtists—as they
this thing is, or which neurons fire in are, of course, called—have figured out
the heads of the people who flock in is that virtual reality does not have to
droves to old Bob Ross videos on You- rely on fancy technology. They are Your Anniversary
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kind of sustained tingling that begins ful ASMR practitioners make canny
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the limbs, a bit like the tickling that have come to define the genre’s narra-
leads up to a sneeze. It’s as if a tiny hand tive conventions. Digital role-plays,
has reached through the ear canal to which dominate ASMR-land, require
deftly, tenderly, brush the surface of the the implication of a dialogue between
brain with a feather. The shoulders relax; the ASMRtist and you, the person being
the jaw loosens. The feeling is induced attended to—at the salon, or the shoe
by certain stimuli, or, in the language store, or whatever medical office you
of the large Internet subculture of peo- might visit to get an ear cleaning or a
ple who make videos to elicit an ASMR procedure, popular with ASMRtists,
response in others, “triggers.”The sound that is called, rather sinisterly, “a cranial
of whispering and that of a low, calm nerve exam.” There are numerous vid-
voice are popular triggers, as are “mouth eos in which an interlocutor “listens”
noises”: the light smack of lips parting, and responds as you speak about the
the clack of a hard consonant born at hard day you just had. Your participa-
the back of the throat, the slur of the tion is not actually required; just sit
tongue sliding along the palate. Hun- back, relax, and enjoy the sympathy.
dreds of ASMR videos on YouTube A form that aims to soothe anxiety
show women tapping and scratching and calm the mind, to transmit physi-
long, manicured nails against counter- cal sensation without touch, seems made
tops and makeup cases and the covers for our frightening, contactless moment.
of hardback books.There are paper-crin- The other day, I went to YouTube, and
kling videos, and videos in which women typed in “ASMR coronavirus.” Sure
(it is usually, but not always, women; enough, up popped video after video.
the genre has a bias toward a maternal, Some of them were pretty weird, even
nurturing tone) pop bubble wrap, or by the conventions of the genre; a Bra-
plunge their fingers into bowls filled zilian ASMRtist bouncing a rubber
with buttons or M&M’s, or scatter and ball made to look like a molecule of
stroke the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I COVID-19 is perhaps not to everyone’s
have listened to someone count in a taste. I am right now being “examined”
slow whisper from one to a hundred in by ASMR Darling, an ASMRtist with
German, for no other reason than that nearly two and a half million subscrib-
it seemed soothing at the time. ers. She is wearing a lab coat and a face
Can this get a little creepy? Sure it mask and is saying, in the softest tone
can. I had thought that fixed notions possible, that she is about to take a nasal
of the eternal feminine were pretty much swab to test for the virus. It’s scary and
dead, and yet the band of young women soothing at the same time. In the world
who practice ASMR tend to take her that she’s created, we can all get the care
as their guide. It can all get a bit ha- we need. 
cumstances. Chaotic, conflicted, impla-
MUSICAL EVENTS cably honest, it unfurled a narrative that
dismantled its own ideological under-
pinnings and exposed its own lies.
“Hopscotch” and “Sweet Land” both
emanated from the potent theatrical sen-
sibility of the director Yuval Sharon, who
founded the Industry, in 2010. He has a
singular flair for staging work in open-
air spaces, letting landscapes become part
of the drama. The setting for “Sweet
Land” was the Los Angeles State His-
toric Park—a patch of green in a con-
crete expanse, hemmed in by freeways,
the L.A. River, and a light-rail line.
During the performances, which began
in the evening, trains would periodically
clatter by, with perplexed commuters
peering out the windows. The image of
a train hurtling into the dark is an ele-
mental trope of American myth; in “Sweet
Land,” myth merged with the grimy rou-
tine of the everyday. As in “Hopscotch,”
but in a much more unsettling way, the
border between stage and city disappeared.
he program for “Sweet Land” in-

T cluded a “Land Acknowledgment.”
Julia Bogany, of the Gabrieleno Tongva
San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians,
wrote, “We, the Indigenous People, the
Traditional Caretakers of this landscape,
are the direct descendants of the First
Midnight Trains People who formed our lands, our worlds

during creation time. We have always
been here.” One aim of “Sweet Land” is
The outdoor opera “Sweet Land” summons ghosts of Los Angeles history. to give voice to the Tongva people, who
once thrived in the Los Angeles Basin.
BY ALEX ROSS At the same time, the opera reserves its
right to fantasize on historical themes.
A cryptic prologue, titled “Contact,” por-
n 2015, the Los Angeles-based theatre with me as long as I remember anything. trays the first encounter between groups
I company the Industry mounted “Hop-
scotch,” an outdoor, mobile, multi-com-
It was a waking dream of a city, and I
keep wishing I could have it back.
called the Arrivals and the Hosts—es-
sentially, colonists and indigenous tribes.
poser opera of staggering logistical com- In February and March, the Indus- Sharon and his co-director, the Na-
plexity and transporting, almost delirious try presented a new opera, “Sweet Land,” tive American artist Cannupa Hanska
beauty. It unfolded like a magical-real- its most ambitious venture since “Hop- Luger, chose not to let any one perspec-
ist fable in which the experience of the scotch.” The vibe was stranger and tive dominate the proceedings. Two cre-
observer becomes part of the story. Cer- darker, bordering on nightmarish. The ative teams produced the music and the
tain of its images—a trumpeter playing title has a bitterly ironic ring: the work text: the Chinese-American composer
at the top of a water tower, with a trom- tells of lands plundered, peoples mur- Du Yun worked with the writer Aja
bonist on a distant rooftop answering dered, cultures appropriated. My reac- Couchois Duncan; Raven Chacon, a
him; a soprano, in a red dress, gliding tion was undoubtedly conditioned by composer of Navajo background, was
along the cast-iron walkways of the Brad- the encroaching coronavirus pandemic, paired with the poet Douglas Kearney.
bury Building’s famed atrium; another which soon shut down American pub- There are two distinct narrative com-
soprano singing while riding in a Jeep lic life. Yet “Sweet Land” would have ponents, “Feast” and “Train,” each en-
along the Los Angeles River—will stay been a punch in the gut under any cir- sconced in its own roundhouse venue.
After the prologue, which takes place
Yuval Sharon has a singular flair for staging work in open-air spaces. in bleachers overlooking the park, the
78 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY WESLEY ALLSBROOK
sullivan + associates
A R C H I T E C T S
audience is divided in half, with one mosphere, as if the city had wafted away
group sent to “Feast” and the other to into wilderness. The sonic textures of
“Train”; only by attending “Sweet Land” “Train” sometimes become dense to the
twice could you see both. The struc- point of incoherence, but Du Yun pro-
martha’s vineyard
tures were built for the occasion, under vides a thunderous climax in the form
the direction of the theatre designer of bulldozing drones, pounding ostinato,
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew. and blasts of electric-guitar feedback.
“Feast” depicts what happens imme- Between the two parts of “Feast” and
diately after the Arrivals make their ap- “Train,” the audiences leave their ven-
pearance. It is loosely based on the in- ues to see an outdoor interlude called
teraction between the Pilgrims of “The Crossroads.” A trio of singers evoke
Caring for
©2020 KENDAL
Plymouth Colony and local peoples— ancient spirits: Carmina Escobar and
an initial period of peace and mutual as-
sistance followed by aggression on the
Micaela Tobin jointly played the trick-
ster Coyote, and Sharon Chohi Kim was the earth.
part of the settlers. A warm, welcoming the monster Wiindigo. The costumes, Discover a retirement community with
atmosphere, signalled by dozens of lit designed by Luger and E. B. Brooks, an emphasis on sustainability where
candles, dissipates when an Arrival combine folkloric and surrealist features: the pure beauty of nature is nurtured.
named Jimmy Gin declares, “God gave brightly colored woollen garments,
us dominion over everything,” and threat- masses of fur, animal heads. The music,
ens Makwa, a young woman of the tribe. partly improvised, wavers between un- 1.800.548.9469 EQUAL HOUSING
OPPORTUNITY
Weapons are drawn, and the Arrivals earthly ululation and piercing lyricism. kao.kendal.org/environment
seem to retreat.The second part of “Feast” Throughout the scene, a sprinkler sys-
is a kind of erasure of the first, present- tem is operating in an adjoining field,
ing history as the victors tell it. Makwa and images of horses, deer, and buffalo
is being married off to Jimmy Gin, along- are projected onto the spray of water— ADVERTISEMENT
side a Thanksgiving-style feast. She pro- ghosts of the land as it once was.
tests in vain as the ceremony proceeds. At the end, the full audience reassem-
“Who wants seconds?” someone cries. bles in the bleachers to witness “Echoes
“Train” is a tale of industrialization and Expulsions,” a harrowing epilogue
and brutalization. The language of mis- of protest and lament. Unseen singers
sionary conquest and Manifest Desti- tell of the dark side of L.A. history: sto-
ny—“The Word of God is the Hand ries of enslaved indigenous children, of
of God”—intersects with scenes of an- the Chinese massacre of 1871, of a Latina
imal slaughter, work-gang labor, and
mob violence. Doors rumble back and
woman undergoing involuntary steril-
ization. A youthful figure crawls around WHAT’S
THE
forth on casters, conjuring a real, or met- a construction site at the corner of the
aphorical, speeding train. In the second park—perhaps scavenging for food, per-
BIG
part, that bloodshed is forgotten as the haps digging for the truth. Trains trun-
society gives in to consumerism and dle by; fire engines scream across the
IDEA?
self-gratification. A percussion-heavy North Broadway Bridge, in the distance.
chamber orchestra is positioned at the A chill descends, and not just because it
center of the roundhouse, with the au- can get cold at night in L.A.
dience arrayed in a circle surrounding The coronavirus shutdown cut short
it and the performers racing around the “Sweet Land” in the middle of its run. Small space
space’s outer rim. Smaller, nonprofit groups like the In- has big rewards.
Du Yun and Raven Chacon, the co- dustry are already reeling because of the
composers, prove to be a good match. crisis; some may not come back. The
Both draw on a wide spectrum of mu- Industry is trying to recoup lost reve-
sical techniques, from the folk-primeval nue by offering a video of “Sweet Land”
to the experimental. Chacon brings to for sale online. Cameras cannot capture
bear his understanding of Native Amer- the eerie power of the event, but the
ican musical traditions: in the latter half zooming lens picks out details that I
of “Feast,” he creates a mesmerizing mul- missed live: subtitles projected on bill-
ticultural counterpoint, blending Mak- boards like spectral graffiti, the image TO FIND OUT MORE, CONTACT
wa’s sorrowful arias of remembrance with of a deer flickering across the bridge.
JILLIAN GENET
the sinuous cantilena of Host spirits and The video was made after the cancel- 305.520.5159
blocky four-part hymns sung by the Ar- lation of the show, when the city was [email protected]
rivals. Shimmers and flecks of instru- closing up. The last train that passes
mental sound establish a wide-open at- through is almost empty. 
perfectly into English—the seemingly
POP MUSIC mellow, nagging lilt of Mandarin, for
example, might actually communicate
desperate yearning. These different
emotional registers have become more
familiar to us all. As K-pop becomes
a global force, it trains listeners from
around the world in how to hear
anew. You don’t need to understand
Korean to luxuriate in the music’s
extravagant approach to melodrama,
the liberating effects of the ecstatic
and the garish.
Yaeji, whose real name is Kathy Lee,
was born in Queens in 1993. Her fam-
ily moved to Long Island, and then to
Atlanta, before settling in South Korea.
In 2011, she returned to the United
States to study at Carnegie Mellon,
where she became immersed in dance
music. She began making tracks and
d.j.’ing for the college radio station,
occasionally uploading songs to Sound-
Cloud. She followed “New York 93”
with two great EPs, which fleshed out
her cute, almost miniaturized fusion
of vocal house and Asian pop. She cov-
ered Drake’s house-tinged R. & B. hit
“Passionfruit,” replacing the original’s
wounded machismo with a kind of
tender resilience. As increasingly hap-
pens these days, she moved relatively
quickly from posting music for free
online to playing festivals such as
The Right Time Coachella. Her songs continued to

toggle between moments of twee in-
timacy and the collectivizing throb of
Yaeji’s dance music throws us back to a communal way of life. the dance floor. “Raingurl,” a track
from 2017, alternates between soupy
BY HUA HSU house rhythms and ethereal synths,
as Yaeji describes timidly walking
into the club: “Mother Russia in my
hen I first heard “New York 93,” tambourines arrive, snapping every- cup / And my glasses fogging up / Oh
W by the Korean-American d.j.
and producer Yaeji, it felt like some-
thing into place, you’re like confidants.
And then it abruptly comes to a close.
yeah, hey dawg, hey, what’s up.”
The mixtape “ What We Drew
thing I’d waited for my whole life, only Much of the way in which we hear 우리가 그려왔던,” which comes out
I’d never known to want it. The track, the world derives from how we grew this week, is her first release on XL
released by Godmode Records in 2016, up. Listening to Yaeji, I realized that Recordings. “Thanks to the ones that
begins with the faint outlines of a the rhythms and cadences of various walk alongside me / I can continue on,”
house tune—an echo of an echo, as Asian languages, spoken at home or she sings in Korean on the title track.
synth pulses, bass kicks, and occasional in friends’ houses, at restaurants or on There’s more of a soaring, strident qual-
drip-drops all hint at a euphoric an- Asian TV stations, were part of how ity to her voice than on her early songs,
them that takes its sweet time to peak. I came to hear the world. These were which often evoked a fuzzy, A.S.M.R.-
Yaeji whispers softly over the track, voices that I occasionally tried to tune like feeling. “The things I drew,” she
humming a singsong of English and out. But they conveyed feelings and continues, “I’ve created that world/With
Korean, as though she’s beckoning you formalities, expressions of affection the people I love.”
closer to tell a secret. By the time that and angst, that didn’t always translate It wasn’t until Yaeji began getting
acclaim in the Korean press that her
The d.j. and producer’s songs evoke going out and sweating alongside strangers. parents, who live in Seoul, truly under-
80 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY REBEKKA DUNLAP
stood what she did. Her success has gested a future I wanted to see bloom. career on the go. But, for the time
brought her around the world, and the I initially mistook the title “New being, none of us is going anywhere.
effects are apparent on “What We Drew York 93” for some nostalgic tip of the Listening to music hasn’t brought
우리가 그려왔던,” which is full of hat to a golden age of the city’s hip- me much comfort lately, because it re-
new collaborations with artists from hop and club scenes; in fact, it is sim- minds me that the past seems impos-
the United States and Asia. “Money ply the place and year of her birth. sibly far away, and the future prom-
Can’t Buy,” featuring the Brooklyn rap- Musical revolutions are experienced ises only uncertainty. Being present is
per Nappy Nina, is like a hip-hop track anew each time young people happen no longer a choice, the stuff of med-
put together on an assembly line, all across something they haven’t heard itation or wellness. It’s a condition of
bleeps, drill sounds, and sprays of ma- before. Last fall, Yaeji threw a party life. Listening to Yaeji alone last week,
chine exhaust. “Sit in a circle and look that she called “Elancia,” an attempt the highs somehow felt higher, and
at each other and reminisce how we to recall the days when she began rav- the silly parts seemed even sillier. “In-
got to meet each other / Laugh with ing in New York, in the early part of troverse from an introvert,” G.L.A.M.
each other and show one another what the past decade—many years after what raps on “Spell 주문,” which feels like
it’s like to share love with each other,” people often presume to be the city’s a scaled-down K-pop anthem; it gets
Yaeji chants in English. creative peak. It’s easy to get hung up funnier the more I listen to it. The
There’s a sketchbook quality to on whether a sound or a style is truly lush synths that announce “My Imag-
“What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던,” original—or whether the brash new ination 상상” sound even dreamier.
straying from the straight-ahead house generation just suffers from historical “What I wanna do/ Eat rice and soup,”
rhythms of her initial singles. The amnesia. Yet the original part, the feel- Yaeji raps in Korean on “Money Can’t
electro-thump of “In the Mirror ing that propels young artists forward, Buy.” “What I wanna have / Money
거울” moves toward moody, head- is that of discovery. can’t buy.”
banging territory; “These Days 요즘” It’s been odd to listen to “What When you engage with art or mu-
is like an excursion into dub-jazz, an We Drew 우리가 그려왔던” in the sic, you are exploring someone else’s
unravelling steady beat serenaded past couple of weeks, as calls to iso- imagination. It’s never yours, even if
by a distant, almost ghostly saxo- late ourselves have grown increasingly you’re the one who made it. It’s a gift,
phone. Other tracks can feel frivo- urgent. Yaeji’s music is about the op- a secret that’s passed among those who
lous, as if she were pressing Record posite of “social distancing”: going out, care, changing the texture of existence,
simply to capture a fleeting moment. idly basking in the brilliance of your maybe in minuscule ways. There’s
On “Free Interlude,” the rappers Lil friends, sweating alongside strangers. nothing better than listening to mu-
Fayo, Trenchcoat, and Sweet Pea trade In our lowest moments, the thing that sic with strangers—dancing, sharing
somewhat nonsensical verses. (“A makes life meaningful is the realiza- amazement, scanning faces to see if
church has a steeple / I like all sorts tion that those who came before us you’re the only one in this moment.
of people/Every type of person/Dim- found meaning, and endured. For Afterward, life no longer sounds the
ples, I have several.”) It sounds as many, that idea becomes clearest in same. For now, these songs by a young
though you’ve arrived too late to share the presence of others. Yaeji’s music Korean-American woman telling us
in the joke. has always been about communion about the world she sees—a world
and friendship, portals into other pos- brought into being with friends, goof-
first heard Yaeji in 2016, during sible time lines around the globe. And ing around in a studio or sweating to-
I a time when going outside, let
alone going out, was still a matter of
that’s precisely what makes it such a
tease right now. “What We Drew
gether on a dance floor—are about
some bygone way of life, or simply a
personal choice. Her songs, slip- 우리가 그려왔던” is a collection of reminder of what awaits, as long as
streams of language and feeling, sug- drafts and sketches, glimpses into a you can wait. 
THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2020 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST
Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose
three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by John Klossner,
must be received by Sunday, April 5th. The finalists in the March 23rd contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the April 20th issue. Anyone age thirteen
or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.
THIS WEEK’S CONTEST
“ ”
..........................................................................................................................
THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION
“When you wear a baseball cap, everyone knows

you’re just covering a bald spot.”
Lauren Rose Linett, Los Angeles, Calif.
“Just be glad I didn’t come here when I had a ponytail.” “Looks like you’re already familiar with the side effects.”
Tyler Stradling, Mesa, Ariz. Madeline Wolfson, Brooklyn, N.Y.
“Could you trim the sides but leave it feathered on top?”

Ben Long, New York City
Swedish design with a green soul
BE THE
IN COLOURFUL
Morning on
the lily fields
“Chandi” dress
with intarsia
and silver
thread $ 159
Stockholm | Est. 1976
SHOP ONLINE • ORDER A CATALOGUE
www.gudrunsjoden.com

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©J&JCI 2020

PRICE $8.99 APRIL 6, 2020

When John heard that conventional radiation would take six

John’s CyberKnife treatment took just five brief appointments

Mineola • 1.866.WINTHROP • nyuwinthrop.org

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science, history, and evolutionary don’t have a home? Eliza Griswold

As was true for Peter Hessler, the Peace

THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 3

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

sibly serendipitous.—Steve Smith on “In August,” she recounts a slowly

“In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg”

6 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020

Queer Zine Archive Project

night. In “A Story of Survival,” by David Lindsay-Abaire, Rachel Dratch

Story of a Love Aﬀair

them and evoking, with a coolly glowing still-

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Health Organization, said, “Using un- as possible sites—would be “based on

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n March 6th, government oﬃcials

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Fear of Missing Out airline refunds, especially since it’s

A Deadly Principle legal immigrants.” More recently, Jeﬀ

Trademarks are owned by or licensed to the GSK group of companies.

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Dancer in the Dark

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THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 51

54 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY RODRIGO CORRAL

THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 57

W the ﬁrst pandemic began

Mr. and Miss Chimpanzee, in Phil-

The Isolation Ward wailed, making a sound the zookeeper

We look forward to your valued reply soon-

Hi! We’re three girls in a mad rush with our

Dear Miss Jansson, You must understand

Several pages of this is charming;

Rooms of Her Own books, but before anyone was demand-

68 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020

T o avoid the bombardments of the

THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020 69

Voices Carry a woman who, as she told Jonathan Cott,

city they could go through a street in a car and

70 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020

Ma-he-yo until morning.

n a recent interview with Chard de-

Forché’s strongest critics seem to

stories from tually, the couple came under government

74 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2020

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n good times, we want performance

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