The New Yorker March 024

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99 MARCH 4, 2024
MARCH 4, 2024
4 GOINGS ON
7 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
David Remnick on Russia and Navalny;
diving the Hudson; an exoneree libretto;
fashionable mammals; overheard at the Armory.
U.S. JOURNAL
Jay Caspian Kang 12 Identity Crisis
The professor whose Native ancestry proved false.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Ian Frazier 19 E-Mails from the Dems
ANNALS OF CRIME
Ian Urbina 20 Invisible Workers
Inside North Korea’s forced-labor program in China.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Kathryn Schulz 26 Starburst
Are we ready for a solar-storm disaster?
LETTER FROM THE WEST BANK
Shane Bauer 36 The Dispossessed
Israeli settlers’ escalating violence against Palestinians.
FICTION
Thomas Korsgaard 46 “The Spit of Him”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
Anthony Lane 52 Can Byron be saved from the Byronic?
57 Briefly Noted
Maggie Doherty 59 The long adolescence of Carson McCullers.
ON TELEVISION
Inkoo Kang 64 “Shōgun.”
THE THEATRE
Helen Shaw 66 A revival of Dominique Morisseau’s “Sunset Baby.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Justin Chang 68 “About Dry Grasses.”
POEMS
Joy Harjo 32 “Eat”
Hala Alyan 48 “Light Ghazal”
COVER
Victoria Tentler-Krylov “All Clear”
DRAWINGS Liam Francis Walsh, Sam Gross, Roland High, Will McPhail, Mads Horwath,
Lonnie Millsap, Carolita Johnson, Emily Bernstein, Daniel Kanhai, Avi Steinberg, Lars Kenseth, Amy Hwang,
John Kerschbaum, Roz Chast, Ed Himelblau, Kaamran Hafeez and Al Batt SPOTS Keith Negley
CONTRIBUTORS
Kathryn Schulz (“Starburst,” p. 26), a Shane Bauer (“The Dispossessed,” p. 36),
staff writer, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize the author of “American Prison,” is at
for feature writing. She published the work on a book about Americans in the
memoir “Lost & Found” in 2022. Syrian war.
Ian Urbina (“Invisible Workers,” p. 20) Jay Caspian Kang (“Identity Crisis,”
is the director of the journalism non p. 12), a staff writer, is the author of “The
profit the Outlaw Ocean Project. While Loneliest Americans.”
at the Times, he shared a Pulitzer Prize
for breaking news. This piece was pub Hala Alyan (Poem, p. 48) is a clinical
lished in collaboration with the Out psychologist. She has written two nov
law Ocean Project. els and five poetry collections, includ
ing “The Moon That Turns You Back,”
Maggie Doherty (Books, p. 53) is the au forthcoming this spring.
thor of “The Equivalents.” She teaches
creative writing at Harvard. Thomas Korsgaard (Fiction, p. 46) has
published five books of fiction in Dan
Justin Chang (The Current Cinema, ish. This is his first Englishlanguage
p. 68) is a film critic at The New Yorker. publication.
Joy Harjo (Poem, p. 32) has served three Jenny Kroik (Sketchpad, p. 11) is an
terms as the United States Poet Laure illustrator based in New York City. She
ate. Her most recent book is “Weaving has contributed three covers to The
Sundown in a Scarlet Light.” New Yorker.
Ian Frazier (The Talk of the Town, p. 3; Victoria TentlerKrylov (Cover) is a

Shouts & Murmurs, p. 13), a staff writer, children’sbook author and illustrator.
most recently published “Cranial Frack She illustrated “I’m Gonna Paint,” by
ing,” a collection of humor pieces. Anne Broyles, in 2023.
THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM
LEFT: DIANA MARKOSIAN; RIGHT: MARK PERNICE
PERSONS OF INTEREST ELEMENTS

Peter Slevin profiles a doctor in Rivka Galchen writes about how
Indiana who is risking her career, Stanisław Lem foresaw the promise
and her safety, to provide abortions. and the peril of artificial intelligence.
Download the New Yorker app for the latest news, commentary, criticism,
and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008.
2 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024
THE MAIL
INTO THE LIGHT ducers that closely mirror what our
colleagues in the actors’ and writers’
D. T. Max’s account of Beatriz Flami- unions recently undertook.
ni’s experience of living alone in a cave Skye Soto Steele
for five hundred days was fascinating Brooklyn, N.Y.
(“Cave Woman,” January 29th). Near 1
the end of the story, however, Max LITERARY PEDIGREE
wonders if Flamini’s accomplishment
“might provide information on, say, Merve Emre, in her absorbing discus-
whether survival on the dark side of sion of the early modern intellectual
the moon is possible.” Pink Floyd not- Margaret Cavendish, notes that Cav-
withstanding, there is no “dark side” of endish’s husband, William Cavendish,
the moon. Being gravitationally locked the first Duke of Newcastle, had “a
to the Earth, the moon always presents passion for training horses” (Books,
the same near-side face to us. This February 5th). That observation is an
means that someone on the moon’s far understatement. A seminal figure in
side would never see our planet in their the history of horsemanship, William
sky. But, since the moon orbits the Earth was the author of the canonical trea-
approximately monthly, nearly the en- tise “La Méthode Nouvelle, et Inven-
tire surface is gradually exposed to the tion Extraordinaire de Dresser les Che-
BE A
sun. Observers on both near and far vaux” (1658), translated posthumously,
sides would experience a day and a night, in 1743, as “A General System of Horse-
each lasting about two weeks. manship.” He followed it with “A New
James E. Kloeppel
Urbana, Ill.
Method, and Extraordinary Invention,
to Dress Horses” (1667), which he de- FORCE
1
WITH THE BAND
scribed as “neither a translation of the
first [work], nor an absolutely neces-
sary addition to it.” The great eigh-
FOR GOOD
I read John Seabrook’s recent article teenth-century dressage master François
about Lucian Grainge, the chairman Robichon de la Guérinière admired
of Universal Music Group, with in- Cavendish, as did the nineteenth-cen- Your name can live on
terest that gradually turned to disap- tury masters François Baucher, le as a champion of the
pointment (“The Next Scene,” Feb- Comte d’Aure, and Gustav Steinbrecht.
ruary 5th). The piece credits Grainge Margaret and William Cavendish causes, communities,
with successfully steering the music influenced each other as writers and
industry to profitability in the stream- thinkers. The scholar Elaine Walker, and places dear to
ing era and discusses how A.I. might in her study of William’s treatises, “To you...for generations
affect the future of the business, yet it Amaze the People with Pleasure and
largely neglects the perspectives of Delight,” examines “the cross-refer- to come.
practicing musicians. Seabrook thus ences” and “cross-pollination of ideas”
risks missing an obvious parallel be- regarding horses in the Cavendishes’
tween streaming and A.I.: the latter work, and notes that Margaret’s biog-
could result, once again, in money dis- raphy of her husband was published
appearing from the hands of music- in the same year as his second treatise
makers and appearing in the hands of on horsemanship.
tech companies. Charles Caramello
This does not have to be an en- Bethesda, Md. Kickstart your charitable legacy
tirely foregone conclusion, however.
Groups such as the American Feder- • with NYC’s community foundation.
ation of Musicians are helping musi- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, [email protected]
cians like me to navigate the effects address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to (212) 686-0010 x363
of A.I.; our union has been in con- [email protected]. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
tract negotiations with the Alliance any medium. We regret that owing to the volume giveto.nyc
of Motion Picture and Television Pro- of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
bass. The next day, A Far Cry invites attendees
to delve into its artistic process as equal part-
GOINGS ON ners in an interactive listening session.—Ous-
sama Zahr (Kaufman Music Center; March 2-3.)
FEBRUARY 28 – MARCH 5, 2024
ART | In her latest photographs, Catherine Opie
takes us on another tour of a solemn sadomas-
ochistic subculture, except that this time it’s
the Catholic Church. For the two most strik-
ing images in the exhibition “Walls, Windows
and Blood,” she assembles closeups of Christ’s
What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. gushing wounds, all taken from medieval and
Renaissance paintings and all marked by a bold
androgynous eroticism. The kinkiness of Chris-
Around a decade ago, the PigPen Theatre Co., a seven-man theatrical collec- tian iconography may be more of a cliché than an
tive and band, made a stir with its banjo-forward, Mumford & Sons-esque insight at this point, but Opie’s eye is so keen that
music, breaking through with lo-fi shows such as “The Old Man and the she can walk around Vatican City photographing
the most banal-seeming subjects—a red banner, a
Old Moon,” a sweet folktale from 2012 told with lamplight and shadow wall missing a few bricks, a window with a cross
puppets. Now the company is back, composing songs for the much brighter running up the middle—and give them a sug-
lights of Broadway, joining the book writer Rick Elice to adapt Sara Gruen’s gestive tingle.—Jackson Arn (Lehmann Maupin;
through March 12.)
Depression-era romance, “Water for Elephants,” from 2006, in which a
veterinarian runs away and joins the circus. Shana Carroll, of the Montreal OFF BROADWAY | Ana (the charismatic Gabby
acrobatic troupe Les 7 Doigts de la Main, designs the show’s circus chore- Beans) is a clever, capable young woman,
perched on the edge of becoming. Her encoun-
ography, which guarantees a certain lighter-than-air quality; Grant Gustin, ters with three male figures make up the dream-
of “The Flash,” plays the sawdust-struck newcomer, and Isabelle McCalla like texture of “Jonah,” a new play by Rachel
(pictured) plays his aerialist love.—Helen Shaw (Imperial Theatre; in previews.) Bonds, directed by Danya Taymor, for Round-
about Theatre Company. The show opens on Ana
meeting Jonah (Hagan Oliveras) at a boarding
school. Jonah is sweet and sensitive—the kind of
boy that a certain kind of girl dreams of holding
in a healing embrace. Ana encourages him, just
as she does her off-putting stepbrother, Danny
(Samuel H. Levine), with whom she has a more
troublingly complicated relationship, and, later
on, a fellow-writer at a residency, Steven (John
Zdrojeski). On a claustrophobic one-room set,
“Jonah” asks, through a symphonic structure,
what are the costs of this sort of intimacy?—Vin-
son Cunningham (Laura Pels; through March 10.)
DANCE | For those unaware or in need of a re-

minder that the African diaspora extends to
Colombia, the dancers of Sankofa Danzafro are
ready to teach, not didactically but through
poetic embodiment. In the new piece “Behind
the South: Dances for Manuel,” they take
inspiration from the anthropologist Manuel
Zapata Olivella and his epic novel “Changó, el
gran putas.” Like the book, the work touches
on the arrival of African people to the Ameri-
cas and the spiritual beliefs that they brought
with them, but the company expresses those
beliefs in drumming, song, and supple, sub-
tle dance. The guiding spirit is less Changó,
the god of fire, than Yemaya, the mother who
heals.—Brian Seibert (Joyce Theatre; Feb. 27-March 3.)
ABOUT TOWN
MOVIES | The first feature by the Japanese film-
maker Shiori Itō, “Black Box Diaries,” will have
FOLK | The New Orleans-based folk rocker Al- ing those memories closest to home.—Sheldon its New York première at MOMA on March 6, as
ynda Segarra has been a patron saint of trouba- Pearce (Music Hall of Williamsburg; March 5.) part of the annual “Doc Fortnight” series, which
dours for fifteen years, as the front person for runs Feb. 22-March 7. Itō, a female journalist,
Hurray for the Riff Raff. They left the Bronx at sev- CLASSICAL MUSIC| A Far Cry, a Boston-based cham- accused a powerful elder male reporter of raping
enteen to escape a fractured home life, hopping ber orchestra of vigor, sensitivity, and shared her, in 2015; two years later, when prosecutors
trains and exploring the U.S. Their music embod- concentration, operates in egalitarian ways: its refused to bring charges, Itō went public with
ies those travels, exploding Americana traditions members play without a conductor, vote on their her accusations, filed a civil suit against the re-
and speaking for those marginalized by society. programs, and rotate artistic leadership. On porter, and launched an investigation of her own,
The 2014 song “The Body Electric” revealed the March 2, the ensemble finds a beautiful meta- which she documents in the film. Itō shows in
band’s full potential—its sharp sendup of the phor for its organizational model in the concerto harrowing detail the surveillance and the threats
MATTHEW MURPHY
murder ballad displayed Segurra’s smoky voice grosso, a Baroque form in which multiple solo- that she endured, the intrepid maneuvers she
and striking authorship, and the singer-song- ists spin glittery lines in dialogue with a larger undertook in pursuit of the truth, and the high
writer has grown even bolder since. The group’s unit of players. The program includes modern personal price of her efforts, which have been
new album, “The Past Is Still Alive,” recorded in examples by Ernest Bloch and Errollyn Wallen, credited with sparking Japan’s own #MeToo
the wake of Segarra’s father’s death, continues a which combine a fresh harmonic sense with movement and changes to the country’s laws
mission of record-keeping for outcasts, includ- Baroque elements such as the fugue and ground regarding rape.—Richard Brody

1
PICK THREE
The staff writer Amanda Petrusich
shares current obsessions.
1. Best Instagram account to browse while you
dutifully eat kale: One could never in good con-
science recommend smoking—the risks are real,
gnarly, assured—but it’s impossible to deny that,
from an aesthetic perspective, the act itself is
perversely alluring. This is the founding prin-
ciple of Cigfluencers, which posts photos, new
and old, of hot and famous people smoking while
looking hot and famous.
2. Best podcast for pretending that you’re still

cool: The central pleasure of the smart, irrever-
1
TABLES FOR TWO
so much reverence can get lost amid
the restaurant’s taste for vivacity and
ent, and gleefully indecorous podcast “How Long
Gone,” hosted by the old buds and “bicoastal
drama, set to a soundtrack of hip-hop élites” Chris Black and Jason Stewart, is that
Le B. and bossa nova. A bronze-dark pastry it makes its listeners feel as if they are privy to
283 W. 12th St. encasing a Dungeness-crab Wellington
the travails and micro-beefs of the creative class,
even if they’re not spending their mornings
The West Village restaurant Le B., op- was gloriously crisp and buttery, but it sipping fourth-wave coffee or nibbling toast
erated by the veteran New York chef overwhelmed the delicate flavor of the at Balthazar. The show has its own rhythm and
slang, and Black and Stewart have an easy, con-
Angie Mar, was, until a few months crustacean inside. The desserts were quite fident rapport. Their interviews—with writers,
ago, Les Trois Chevaux, Mar’s homage lovely, including butter-drenched crêpes musicians, artists, and fashion types—are often
to the mid-century French haute cui- Suzette, theatrically flambéed tableside, revelatory.
sine of places like Lutèce and La Côte and an obscenely silky chocolate sorbet 3. Best way to drop a hundred dollars and feel
Basque. With a pricey prix-fixe menu that conjures licking frosting straight great about it: Record stores. Streaming is a
and a jackets-required dress code, Les from the bowl. But eating a meal of such convenient way to hear music, but it inevitably
creates a gaping hole in your soul. One anti-
Trois Chevaux drew a well-heeled uptown technical ambition without an haute-pâ- dote is to ditch the algorithm for some good
crowd. As Le B., the physical space has tisserie finale feels a bit like hearing a old-fashioned manual curation: if you Venmo
hardly changed—there’s still the gilded melody without the resolving chord. the End of All Music, a record store in Oxford and
Jackson, Mississippi, one of the shop’s employees
bar mirror, the velvet banquettes, the cur- For all of her evident Francophilia, will send you a box of records, handpicked and
tained alcoves. But the menu is now à la Mar threads Le B.’s menu with references nearly guaranteed to be great. Or just wander
carte, and there’s a burger at the bar that to her Chinese American heritage, and into your local shop and ask a clerk what’s good.
I’ve never once regretted it.
harks back to Mar’s restaurant before last, her cooking feels most assured, most alive,
the Beatrice Inn, an over-the-top, base- when she’s playing in the slippery space
ment-level chophouse. between Chinese and chinoiserie. Her
Still, a bid for a more downtown vibe Salad “Chinoise” is a reinvention of that
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRISTOPH NIEMANN (TOP); JAM DONG (BOTTOM)
does not mean that things skew to the ubiquitous mid-tier-restaurant assem-
proletarian. Nearly every dish incorpo- blage often called Chinese chicken salad.
PHOTOGRAPH BY KELSEY MCCLELLAN FOR THE NEW YORKER;
rates a luxury ingredient, though they In some circles, the dish, being neither
often show up as supporting players. At authentically nor coherently Chinese, has
times, this can feel a bit like opulence become shorthand for a certain stripe of
theatre, rather than actual opulence—a culinary whitewashing. Mar makes hers
black-truffle-flecked gelée, draped over a with a stark green pile of baby lettuce
devilled egg en chemise, tasted like nothing leaves and a brilliant dressing of fresh sat-
much at all, least of all truffles—but when suma juice and toasted sesame oil, plus a
it works, my God, it works. A heavenly crackling, golden tuile made from chicken
first course identified as Liver & Onions drippings. It’s bold and zingy, French and
involved braised lentilles du Puy, tooth- Chinese at once, but mostly it’s Mar’s
some and outrageously savory, topped own vision, both a reclamation and a
with a sliver of nearly melting foie gras. subversion that doesn’t sacrifice even an NEWYORKER.COM/NEWSLETTERS
The subtlety of the grand old Conti- ounce of glamour. (Dishes $12-$210.) Get expanded versions of Helen Rosner’s reviews,
nental techniques for which Le B. holds —Helen Rosner plus Goings On, delivered early in your in-box.
THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024 5

THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT sitting in seat 13-A, he soon found him- was at show trials where the verdict was
FEARLESS self howling in agony, as his body began never in question or in samizdat man-
to shut down. The plane made an emer- uscripts that were passed hand to hand.
IvietnanUnion
1986, Mikhail Gorbachev initiated
era of political reform in the So-
by liberating political pris-
gency landing in the city of Omsk. Some-
how, Navalny survived. He was eventu-
ally flown to Germany and, with his
But Navalny, who preferred to see him-
self as a politician, was also distinctly
modern. Rather than attack his perse-
oners and internal exiles, including the wife, Yulia Navalnaya, at his side, he cutor in court with high-flown meta-
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Andrei came out of a medically induced coma phors and allusions, he referred to Putin
Sakharov. During the next three years, and steadily regained his strength. But plainly, comically, as “this thieving little
Sakharov presided as the moral leader he declined permanent refuge in the man in his bunker,” as “Vladimir, the
of the democratic opposition in Mos- West. Do not be afraid, do not give up, Poisoner of Underpants.”
cow and spoke his mind from the ros- was his constant refrain, and he refused Part of Navalny’s appeal was that he
trum of the Congress of People’s Dep- to betray his own counsel and princi- evolved over time. He set aside the crude
uties. On the eve of a major debate, he ples. In January, 2021, Navalny boarded nationalism of his early rhetoric and
told his wife, “Tomorrow there will be a flight to Moscow, knowing full well learned to deploy both his courage and
a battle.” He went to his study to take that his moral prestige represented an his humor. He came off not as a luft-
a nap and never woke up. Sakharov had intolerable threat to the regime. Putin mensch, an ethereal intellectual, but as
died of natural causes, a free man in a had him arrested at the airport. a grounded member of a hopeful gen-
fleeting era of hope. At his trial, Navalny showed that he eration: interested in freedom and pros-
In 2020, Vladimir Putin set out to was worthy of the Russian dissidents of perity. He even spoke of “happiness”––
crush popular dissent in Russia once the past, men and women who risked hardly a common term in the Soviet
and for all, ordering his secret police to everything to tell the truth, whether it and post-Soviet political lexicon. His
hunt down his nemesis Alexei Navalny, methods were entirely new. One of his
the eventual winner of the European earliest ventures into protest was as an
Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Free- activist shareholder; he used his small
dom of Thought. For nearly a decade, investments to uncover the ways some
Navalny had driven Putin to distrac- of the biggest Russian companies ille-
tion, denouncing his regime as a “party gally enriched their Kremlin patrons.
of crooks and thieves.” He campaigned Navalny knew how to talk to people
for high public office and employed on their level. He consumed many of the
open-source reporting techniques to un- Russian classics and prison memoirs, but
cover the gaudy corruption of the rehe also spoke of his affection for “Harry
gime: the yachts, the planes, the villas, Potter” and “Rick and Morty.” In a let-
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA
the billions stashed abroad. ter written to his friend Sergey Parkho-
Agents of the F.S.B. trailed Navalny menko shortly before his death, Navalny
to Siberia. They broke into his hotel referred not only to the portrait of de-
room and, in a plot that might have been spair in Chekhov’s story “In the Ravine”
scripted by Gogol, spiked his underwear but also to the no less gloomy late-Soviet
with Novichok, a deadly nerve agent. landscape depicted in the popular film
Navalny wore the poisoned garment by Aleksei Balabanov, “Cargo 200.”
aboard his flight home to Moscow and, Last week, forty miles north of the
Arctic Circle, at a prison camp known In this moment, Putin’s self-posses- Biden, for his part, was admirably di-
as Polar Wolf, Navalny was pronounced sion can only be outsized. He is a few rect in his response: he squarely blamed
dead. Or, to call things by their proper weeks away from winning another phony Putin for Navalny’s death, met with
name, he was murdered. The cause election. He senses that the war in his widow and his daughter in San
provided by the local prison authori- Ukraine, which just entered its third Francisco, and announced a package
ties—“sudden-death syndrome”––was year, is going his way and that the Re- of further sanctions as punishment for
just an additional form of contempt publican Party and its standard-bearer the murder and for Russia’s invasion
and violence. have little interest in resisting that dark of Ukraine.
Speculative history can be hollow, trend. Putin has every reason to think In 2007, Putin went to the Munich
and a country in need of martyrs and he is secure. Cruelty is his ultimate pro- Security Conference in order to unbur-
saints is not to be envied, and yet it is tection. There are hundreds more po- den himself of his resentments against
hard to overstate the loss of Navalny. litical prisoners languishing in his jails, the West and to make it clear that he
Imagine the course of South African including Vladimir Kara-Murza (who would carry out a politics based on that
history had Nelson Mandela been killed has been poisoned twice) and the Wall fury. Now, seventeen years later, at the
on Robben Island. Or the fate of Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich. same conference, Yulia Navalnaya ex-
Czechoslovakia had Václav Havel been Certain reactions in the United States emplified the courage of the husband
poisoned in his cell at Ruzyne Prison, to Navalny’s death have been clarifying. she had just lost and took the same stage.
near the Prague airport. Navalny was Tucker Carlson, freshly returned from She stood tall. She refused despair. There
fearless, and a man of faith. When his a Moscow grocery store and Putin’s will come a day, she insisted, that Putin
friend Yevgenia Albats confided that knee, hustled to express Russia’s allure will be called to account for what he
she feared dying in exile, he told her, to Glenn Beck. Donald Trump went has done to her family, for what he has
“There is no death.” And yet, as Albats on Truth Social not to send his condo- done to Russia. “And that day,” she said,
said the other day, the loss is devastat- lences but to compare his self-inflicted “will come very soon.”
ing: for now, at least, “hope is lost.” troubles to Navalny’s killing. President ––David Remnick
DEPT. OF ZERO VISIBILITY the trajectory of which way it was going Among their remarkable recoveries are
WHERE’S MY CAR? and where it would sink.” That was the a contact lens (“Guy threw it out the
easy part. After three hours of conduct- side of his boat in a tissue”), a wedding
ing a grid search on a fire-department ring, and an undetonated Second World
boat, using side-scan sonar, they located War bomb. (Piermont Pier was once
the vehicle several football fields north- known as “Last Stop U.S.A.,” the dis-
east of the pier and thirty feet down. embarkation point for a million troops
Retrieving it, however, required diving, bound for Europe, including Goswick’s
arly one morning not long ago, a which is a Goswick family specialty. “I uncle Harold.) A Saab, discovered
E municipal worker spreading road
salt noticed damage to the dock at
dove every part of this damn river,” he
said. “Me, my dad, my brother, my son,
during a training exercise in the late
eighties, remains underwater, rusting,
the end of Piermont Pier, a former my cousins—basically, all of us were just southeast of the dock. “And the
railroad spur that juts a mile out into divers. And now my granddaughter and reason we knew it was a Saab?” Gos-
the Hudson River, south of the Gov- grandson are coming up.”
ernor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge. A Goswick is fifty-six and bald, with
bent cleat, splintered wood. On closer a mustache and a strong jaw. He was
examination, there were tire tracks in standing at the pier’s end, surveying the
the snow leading to the mess. Sur- broad river. “This is a shithole,” he said,
veillance footage from a nearby sci- gesturing southward at a sewage out-
entific-research field station showed flow pipe near a marsh. “As you start
a car launching into the water in the to go down, you can see your hand, but
middle of the night. It also showed after you get five or six feet you’re done.
the driver bailing before the plunge, And the thing with us is, when we’re
without getting wet. And it showed diving, we’re on the bottom.” Zero vis-
the car floating north, with the in- ibility. “You feel a squish,” Goswick
coming tide, like a duck boat. Then went on. That means you’ve reached
it went out of frame. the bottom. Then you have to dig in
“The thing is, the air bags went off,” with your hands, to hold your position
Daniel Goswick, Sr., a chief with the against the current. The squishy loam
Piermont Fire Department, said re- can be a foot deep. “You got to stay in
cently, explaining the peculiar buoy- shape,” he said, slightly tensing his bar-
ancy. “I think it was, like, a knot-and- rel chest.
a-half current. We basically figured out The dive team was founded in 1956. Daniel Goswick, Sr.
wick said. “Remember the tail-lights
at the top?”
The divers wear dry suits, but the cold
is inescapable. In 2005, Goswick sliced
his suit going through the windshield of
a car that went off the old Tappan Zee
Bridge. “You’re so jacked up, you don’t
feel it,” he said. Not until you resurface,
that is. “I spent the day in the hospital
for that one. I had severe hypothermia.”
The bacteria are inescapable, too. He
once cut his hand groping around in the
dark, “and my fucking hand blew up to
three times the size,” he said. He was on
antibiotics for a month.
“Hang on, I’ll show you something,”
Goswick said, and he pushed up the
right sleeve of his jacket, revealing a
long scar. “That’s Lennon.” He meant
Mark Lennon, the best man in a wed-
ding party that crashed a Stingray pow-
erboat into a parked barge, at night, in
2013. “Tore my bicep pulling him out
• •
of the river right over there. That was
a sad day, man.” There have been jump- at large—but not for long, Goswick chine), vividly captured beams of light
ers. A while back, he began noticing predicted. “Detective Boutros is on the from above the stage that came down
patterns. “When Clinton was in, it wasn’t case. He’s like a pit bull, that kid.” in vertical shafts, suggesting interroga-
too bad,” he said. “When Bush was in, —Ben McGrath tion lamps, the columns of a courthouse,
people were jumping left and right, for 1 or the bars of a prison cell.
Chrissakes. I guess it’s based on the EXONERATIONS DEPT. Since 2003, the Ohio Innocence Proj-
economy.” More sad days. A happier UNCAGED BIRDS ect (O.I.P.) has freed forty-two people.
day came a few years ago, when Gos- Godsey has said that the organization
wick rescued a sixteen-year-old girl on could take on thousands more cases if
her third suicide attempt. “All we saw it had the resources. In an office in the
was the top of her head,” he said. “Col- theatre building, Rickey Jackson, one
lapsed lung, both legs broke, busted pel- of the forty-two exonerated, talked with
vis, ribs.” A year later, she sent him a a visitor who stopped by on his way to
text of gratitude. “And I’m not an emo- efore a recent performance of “Blind the show. Jackson served more than
tional guy,” he said, “but thank God I
was home alone that day.”
B Injustice” at the Alexander Kasser
Theatre, at Montclair State University,
thirty-nine years of a murder sentence,
with two and a half years on death row,
Lately, Goswick has been spending in suburban New Jersey, a wispy hori- because of the testimony of a thirteen-
more time training the next generation zontal cloud drifted across the stage. year-old boy whom the police had co-
of divers than working in the squishy You almost might not have noticed it erced. Both Jackson and the witness
depths himself. For the recent car re- as you took your seat for the Sunday lived in the East Cleveland neighbor-
trieval, he remained on board the boat, matinée. If you did, you would have had hood known as Hough. “Later, the wit-
supervising, while his godson and an- to stare at it for a while to see that it ness, Ed Vernon, had serious health
other younger man descended, with was moving almost imperceptibly from problems,” Jackson said. “He was on his
hooks attached to a crane from a local right to left. Why would there be a deathbed, and his pastor went to him
shipyard. “The current was ripping, the cloud in a ninety-minute opera about and said, ‘You know what you got to
wind was whipping,” he said. “And, of people wrongly convicted in the state get off your soul.’ Everybody knew Ed
course, the guys say, ‘You picked this of Ohio who were later freed through had lied on me. Ed agreed with the pas-
because you’re such a prick, and you the efforts of Mark Godsey, a profes- tor and recanted, and he was so con-
want us to train in the worst conditions.’ sor at the University of Cincinnati Col- vincing on the stand at the case review
They’re probably right!” The crane de- lege of Law, and the organization he that the prosecutor dropped the charges
posited the car back on the dock. It was co-founded, the Ohio Innocence Proj- even before the closing arguments. That
a new BMW—stolen, it turns out, and ect? Once the performance started, the was in 2014. And then Ed didn’t die,
reportedly connected to several other cloud, which you soon forgot about, after all—he’s still living today.”
crimes. “There’s a lot of backstory to and others like it (all products, proba- Nancy Smith, another of the exon-
it,” Goswick said. The driver remains bly, of an offstage cloud-making ma- erated, was a Head Start bus driver in
Lorain who spent nearly fifteen years wrote the score. He said, “The tran- ture the wisdom of nature’s matriarchs,
in prison after being convicted of mo- scripts are often so beautiful and rhyth- such as the elephant who leads her herd
lesting children she was driving to day mic. I took a lot of the rhythms in the along ancient savanna pathways. But
care. After the verdict, the children’s music directly from them.” there were divas, too, including an iri-
parents sued the federal government, Mark Godsey published a book, descent orchid bee in the Central Amer-
which funds Head Start, and won large “Blind Injustice,” in 2017, and the opera ican jungle. “She would absolutely be
settlements. Some years later, it was al- is also partly based on that. The num- at New York Fashion Week,” Darling-
leged that the children who testified ber of people wrongly jailed in our coun- ton said. “Female leadership isn’t always
had been coached on what to say; one try appalls and angers him. He was a pretty. She basically gets her daughter
of the parents began coaching her grand- federal prosecutor himself in the South- to do all of her work.” Bonobos were
daughter in a similar scam, and the girl’s ern District of New York in his younger gentler. “You’ve got these beautiful el-
father called the O.I.P. Nancy Smith days, and aspects of that experience still ders—which I love, being an elder—
told the visitor how moved she was that pain him. He seemed happy and proud and they make love to calm everybody
the creators of the opera cared about as he stood onstage—his coat not but- down.” She clarified, “I’m not advocat-
her story. She recently retired from toned—but a bit wistful, too. “Now I ing we all go and do that.”
grooming dogs—including, as it hap- spend most of my time fund-raising,” Darlington, who had briefly mod-
pens, the dog of one of the detectives he said at one point, in an aside. elled in Dublin in her youth—“I used
on her case. —Ian Frazier to walk on a plank laid over beer bar-
Onstage, twelve actors, who portrayed 1 rels for nuns, and you’d flash your knick-
Jackson, Smith, four other exonerees, a CATWALK DEPT. ers at them”—was mentored by Hugo
generic lead prosecutor, Mark Godsey, FIERCE van Lawick, Jane Goodall’s first hus-
police officers, guards, and maybe a dozen band. (“He was not scared of strong
other people, moved in and out of the women.”) Having risen in a male-dom-
beams of light, lifting their faces into inated industry, she and her collabora-
the brightness as they sang and reced- tors brought on young female filmmak-
ing into the gloom as their characters ers for “Queens.” Faith Musembi, from
despaired. A twenty-seven-person cho- Kenya, joined as a field director and
rus on risers behind the action and a he fashion world is notoriously cut- bonded with a pregnant elephant. One
twelve-person orchestra in the pit backed
them. The prosecutor—the main vil-
T throat, but is it lions-and-tigers-
and-bears-level ferocious? The ques-
day, after turning on her car and star-
tling the animal, she realized that she
lain—wore a suit and kept his jacket tion arose earlier this month, when was blind. “I played her lots of Disney
buttoned, while the hero, Mark Godsey, National Geographic held its first-ever soundtracks,” she said.
kept his jacket unbuttoned. Rickey Jack- New York Fashion Week show, in SoHo. Erin Ranney, who filmed in Alaska,
son had said that when he forgave Ed The occasion was the première, next where she was born, came across a wa-
Vernon he hugged him, and he could week, of “Queens,” a new docuseries terfall where female brown bears were
feel him growing lighter and lighter in about female wildlife: Ethiopian she- sharing a fishing spot. “There was only
his arms. That was what the whole com- wolves, Tanzanian lionesses, a deadly one dorky male who came in at one
pany sang at the triumphant, swelling orca grandmother. The series, narrated point, and we’re pretty sure he was re-
end: “Lighter and lighter in my arms! by Angela Bassett, also has a female-led lated to the top female,” she recalled.
Lighter and lighter in my arms!” filmmaking team, and the theme of the She wore a secondhand one-shoulder
After a standing ovation, Jackson, runway event, “ ’Fit for a Queen,” was
Smith, some of the performers, the di- girl power across species.
rector, the librettist, the composer, the “There are so many subtleties in fe-
conductor, and Godsey came back on- male leadership,” Sophie Darlington, a
stage and answered questions. Godsey veteran wildlife cinematographer, said
asked Jackson how it had felt to watch before the show. “It’s not all fighting, al-
an actor play him. “My wife said she though we’ve got a lot of that as well.
would like to trade me in for that guy,” There’s some badassery.” After working
Jackson said, gesturing to Eric Shane on “Queens,” she was there to walk the
Heatley, the powerful baritone who por- runway, in a flamingo-pink linen pants
trayed Jackson’s younger self. David suit. Sakinah Bashir, the evening’s styl-
Cote, the librettist, and Robin Guarino, ist, had pulled together nine nature-
the director and dramaturge, had inter- themed outfits. There were rules. “No
viewed the exonerees and had made the fur, no leather,” Bashir said backstage,
opera based on the transcripts; Cote as models primped nearby. “I was in-
said that about forty per cent of the li- spired by late-nineties runways. They
bretto is taken from them verbatim. had a lot of animal prints.”
Scott Davenport Richards, who teaches Ignoring male beasts and their bra-
music composition at Montclair State, vado had freed the filmmakers to cap-
white jumpsuit that showed off an arm SKETCHPAD BY JENNY KROIK
tattoo of a bear hunting salmon. In the
wild, she usually wears “greens and
browns and a lot of sunscreen,” she said.
“Now we’re not trying to blend in, which
is very weird.”
Out by the stage, fashionable mam-
mals sipped sparkling rosé as “I’m
Every Woman” blasted over speakers.
A pair of fashion vloggers, Jayria Ni-
cole and Iesha Gilchrist, sat in the sec-
ond row. “I’m a Leo, so I would abso-
lutely be a lion,” Nicole said. “Lions
are fierce!”
Gilchrist saw herself as a giraffe: “I
want to be able to see what everyone
else has going on.”
“You give long neck,” Nicole agreed.
Monét X Change, a “RuPaul’s Drag
Race All Stars” champion, prowled the
room in a gem-studded lioness body-
suit, fondling her tail. “The vibe is Scar
from ‘The Lion King,’” she said. But,
she added, “I identify with the rhino—
hard on the outside, very soft internally.”
A rapper in leopard-print spandex,
Maiya the Don, eyed her and said, “I
wish I had a tail. Motherfucker!”
The lights dimmed. Holograms of
roaring lions and growling bears alter- “Do you want to buy this print “Who’s the artist that puts old
nated with fauna-inspired looks, in- to replace the paper you have taped animal faces on people?”
up in the bathroom?” “I don’t know, but I hope I never see it.”
cluding a lioness-like crushed-velvet
bodysuit and a bearish burnt-sienna
dress with a bubble hem. At the end,
Alicia Graf Mack, the dean of dance at
Juilliard, came out with her seven-year-
old daughter, both in gray stretch-nylon
suits. They performed a pas de deux,
reinterpreting a scene from “Queens,”
of a mother elephant protecting her calf
from hyenas.
At the after-party, Musembi and
Ranney surveyed the partygoers—in-
cluding a few peacocking males—and
saw traces of the jungle. “The postur-
ing, the dancing. It’s like animal soci-
ety,” Musembi said, comparing the
swarm around the bar to “hyenas at a
carcass.” Ranney was reminded of a li-
on’s den: “The females are really in
charge—you just don’t realize it.”
Darlington, having changed from
pink to black, said, “This is like a flock
of the most beautiful flamingos. Every-
one’s out in their finest.” She was re-
lieved to be done with her runway mo-
ment: “I’m much happier watching cats
walk than being on the catwalk.” “My father would “ You dropped my business
—Michael Schulman have loved for you to be me.” card —that’s a bad omen!”
where Native Americans would play
U.S. JOURNAL music, share crafts, and dance. These
gatherings are held throughout the coun-
try. They are intertribal and offer op-
IDENTITY CRISIS portunities for Native Americans who
have become disconnected from their
A professor claimed for years to be Native. She insists it was just a mistake. people to be welcomed back in.
Tammy Bucchino met Hoover at a
BY JAY CASPIAN KANG powwow in the early nineties. Bucchi-
no’s mother, a German woman, took
Tammy to the powwows for the same
reasons that Anita Hoover took Eliza-
beth: she wanted her child to feel a con-
nection to her heritage. Bucchino’s fa-
ther was full-blood Mi’kmaq, but she
wouldn’t get to know him until later in
life. “We clicked because she said she’s
Mi’kmaq, like me,” Bucchino said of
Hoover. “And she said she had Mohawk
background, and my stepbrother has a
Mohawk background as well.”
The Bucchinos and the Hoovers
began to spend frequent weekends to-
gether. Elizabeth and Tammy taught
each other the intricacies of the Fancy
Shawl Dance, which involves elaborate
regalia. (The dance emerged in the twen-
tieth century, and it became a way to
preserve Native American culture.) At
powwows, the girls picked up ways of
thinking and speaking that distinguished
them from their white classmates in
school. “Liz dances like her feet don’t
even touch the ground,” Bucchino said.
“She’s put her heart and soul into her
own culture. Not many people do that.”
By the time Hoover was a teen-ager,
Idrowned
n 1928, a forty-one-year-old woman
named Adeline Ovitt, née Rivers,
in the Schroon River, in up-
unemployed—but idyllic. “I spent most
of my time running around outside,”
she told me recently. “My dad said I
she had taken on a Mi’kmaq name,
Gomdineôeôeu Ôsaog, which she trans-
lates as Mountain Flower. She says she
state New York. The circumstances of could head anywhere as long as I took was given that name by a Mi’kmaq elder
her death are largely unknown, but she a dog, a walking stick, and a knife.” Much at a ceremony attended by her paternal
left behind a husband and five children, of her youth was spent harvesting veg- grandmother. In 1996, Parade magazine
including a ten-year-old son named etables, butchering meat, and chopping collected statements from high-school
LeRoy, who later had six children of his wood for the winter. students about racism and offensive mas-
own, including a daughter named Anita. As Hoover and her sisters grew older, cots. “Being of Native American de-
Anita eventually settled down with they began to find a sense of purpose scent, I am annoyed at mascots like ‘In-
Robert Hoover, a pipe fitter for Gen- and identity in a story that Anita told dians’ or ‘Chiefs’ or ‘Braves’—and the
eral Electric, in the town of Knox, about them about their family. Their great- mock war whoops and chanting that
forty minutes west of Albany. In 1978, grandmother, she said, had been a Mo- often accompany these names,” Hoover
Anita and Robert had their first child hawk Indian, and she had drowned her- is quoted as saying. The statement is
together, a daughter named Elizabeth. self in order to escape her drunk and signed “Elizabeth Gomdineôeôeu Ôsaog
Two more daughters would follow. abusive French Canadian husband. Hoover, 17, Knox, N.Y.”
Elizabeth Hoover, who is now forty- The girls were also told that they were Hoover was an exemplary student,
five years old, describes her childhood Mi’kmaq on their father’s side. Anita and she enrolled at Williams College, in
as “broke”—her father worked odd began taking the girls to powwows across western Massachusetts, in 1997. She stud-
construction jobs and was periodically western New York and New England, ied anthropology and psychology. As a
sophomore, she organized a powwow
In 2021, Elizabeth Hoover appeared on a notorious list of so-called Pretendians. that got a writeup in the student paper.
12 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY DADU SHIN
The accompanying photo shows a nine- on filial lineage and tribal citizenship. Native American in the academy are
teen-year-old Hoover, thin and tall, with Tribal nations have their own rules for what she calls “self-Indigenizers,” peo-
dark-brown hair, close-set eyes, and two enrollment, and some are more open ple who either invent a Native heritage
white feathers in her hair. She is de- than others. The Saint Regis Mohawk wholesale or play up a tenuous connec-
scribed as “Elizabeth Hoover ’01, known Tribe, for example, requires twenty-five tion. “Most of the cases haven’t been
as Wind Chaser and descendant of the per cent Akwesasne Mohawk blood; the made very public yet,” TallBear said.
Mohawk and Micmac tribes.” (Hoover Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma mandates The word “complicated” always hov-
says she has never gone by Wind Chaser.) that an ancestor be on its 1937 roll and ers in the stories of Pretendians. After
Her senior thesis was titled “The Self- have an eighth Pawnee blood. The Cher- centuries of colonization, displacement,
Identification of Mixed-Blood Indians okee Nation, one of the two largest Na- and forceful assimilation, many Native
in the United States and Canada.” tive groups in the United States, will ac- Americans who grew up in their tribal
After graduation, Hoover went to cept anyone who can prove some lineal communities can pass as white or as other
Brown to pursue a Ph.D. in anthropol- descent in specific records. races. People whose parents were adopted
ogy. A teaching appointment at Brown These rules have been informed by or sent to boarding schools as part of
was followed by a tenured professorship brutal histories. Blood requirements can government programs to weaken tribal
at the University of California, Berke- be traced to “blood quantum” laws, sovereignty may return to their commu-
ley. By her early forties, Hoover had be- which, beginning in the Colonial era, nities, however removed they have since
come one of the most successful Native were used to disenfranchise Native become. And a child may hear about
American academics in the country, re- Americans and to enforce racial distinc- some distant Native ancestor, then build
nowned for her work in food sovereignty, tions that controlled everything from an identity around what turns out to be
the idea that self-determination entails land claims to marriages. But such cri- a bit of family lore. There is a sympa-
controlling one’s sources of nutrition. teria can now be a way of insuring that thetic—and, yes, complicated—version
On Instagram, she posted envy-inducing often scarce tribal resources are divided of Hoover’s story in which a white woman
pictures with her partner, a Crow pho- among actual descendants, and to dis- named Anita is so moved by the tale of
tographer named Adam Sings In The courage impostors from claiming iden- a grandmother’s tragic death that she
Timber: Hoover, dressed in Fancy Shawl tities that they don’t possess. takes her daughters to powwows and en-
Dance regalia of bright blue and white, Such fraud seems particularly rife courages them to befriend Native kids.
a goofy smile on her face; Sings In The in academia. In just the past few years, Anita Hoover brought up her daugh-
Timber, handsome and dressed in black, several scholars have been accused of ters to care about being Native; not even
a camera slung around his neck. being Pretendians, including Mary Ellen Hoover’s critics dispute that. Hoover, in
Then in October of 2022 Hoover Turpel-Lafond, a former judge and law her formal statements and in the con-
published a statement on her Web site: professor in Canada who has said that her versations I had with her over the course
“As a result of recent questions about father was Cree, and Qwo-Li Driskill, a of nine months, has repeatedly insisted
my identity, I, along with others, con- professor of gender and queer studies at that, until people began questioning her
ducted genealogical research to verify Oregon State University who claims to identity, she had never carefully re-
the tribal descent that my family raised have Cherokee, Lenape, Lumbee, and searched her genealogy. She knew that
me with, digging through online data- Osage heritage. (Turpel-Lafond denied she was not eligible for tribal enrollment,
bases, archival records, and census data.” the accusation, in 2022; Driskill’s attorney she says, and so she didn’t bother. This
These searches, she explained, had turned characterized the accusation against his explanation seems to take for granted
up no evidence of Native American lin- client as intrusive and false.) Ward Chur- that there was little else to be gained by
eage. “Essentially what I am currently chill, one of the country’s best-known Na- knowing more about the specific people
left with is that I do not have any offi- tive-studies scholars, has been accused, she came from. You might wonder if, at
cial documentation to verify the way my throughout his career, of telling false sto- some point, she began to have her own
family has identified.” ries about his Cherokee ancestry; when suspicions and avoided getting to the
Several months later, after this state- asked for proof of it, he claimed that such bottom of them. Or you might believe
ment had been met with great skepti- inquiries were the tools of colonialism. In that Hoover must have traced her fam-
cism and online furor, Hoover, in con- January, 2023, Andrea Smith, a major fig- ily tree, found it wanting, and decided
sultation with the Restorative Justice ure in the field of ethnic studies, agreed to keep going with a story that had given
Center at Berkeley, published another to resign from the University of Califor- her the life she had—in which case, you
statement: “I am a white person who has nia, Riverside, effective this August, fol- will have to conclude not only that she
incorrectly identified as Native my whole lowing questions about the veracity of her lied in her two formal statements but
life, based on incomplete information.” Cherokee heritage. (Both Churchill and that she lied for years about who she was.
Smith deny lying about their identities.)
o outsiders, the term “Pretendian” There are likely many other cases. ennifer Weston first met Hoover
T might sound ugly or be discomfort-
ing. There is no universal standard for
Kim TallBear, an enrolled member of
the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe and
Jgraduate
around the time that Hoover began her
work at Brown. Weston, who
determining who is a “real” Native Amer- a professor of Native studies at the Uni- is Hunkpapa Lakota and was born and
ican and who is not. Native identity is a versity of Alberta, guesses that a quarter grew up on the Standing Rock Sioux
legal and political classification, based of those who have checked the box for Reservation, had gone to Brown as an
undergraduate, and she had recently re- trip to Kahnawà:ke to attend a pow- along with the records Cook had given
turned to Providence to organize the wow; afterward, in an e-mail, she re- her, provided much of the basis for
small number of Native students on the ported running into “people who knew her dissertation.
campus. Hoover was with her boyfriend people i’m related to so that was nice.” In the community garden, Hoover
at the time, who is Wampanoag. They She went on to explain that her fam- met Jean Laffin, who runs a small farm.
told Weston that they had connections ily “left kahnawake a few generations Laffin doesn’t recall Hoover ever ex-
to nearby tribes. “I didn’t know what I ago” and had lived in New York ever plaining her background, but she always
wanted to do with my life,” Hoover told since. (Hoover said that this connec- assumed that Hoover was Native. “It
me. Her boyfriend worked in a museum. tion fell through and that she never was the way she spoke,” Laffin said. “She
“So I was, like, ‘Well, I’ll go get a de- pursued it further.) just blended right in with people here.”
gree in museum studies.’” A month later, Weston got married. She eventually took to calling Hoover
She matriculated at Brown in 2001, Hoover offered to make her a pair of her “chosen daughter,” and came to con-
shortly before the arrival of a professor moccasins to go with a traditional buck- sider her part of the family.
named Evelyn Hu-DeHart, a historian skin dress. Although Hoover would later Kahnawà:ke is about an hour and a
whose family immigrated to the U.S. maintain that she never found her rel- half ’s drive from Akwesasne. Hoover
from China when she was a girl. Hu- atives, Weston insists that, at the wed- had been there at least once, before
DeHart studied Latin American and ding, Hoover told people that she had Weston’s wedding, and Katsi Cook’s
Caribbean history and wrote extensively, found them—and that, contrary to what mother was from Kahnawà:ke. Given
at the beginning of her academic career, she had believed before, they were ac- the close ties between the two Mohawk
on the Yaqui, a Native tribe with roots tually from Kahnawà:ke proper. Weston communities, Cook could easily have
in northwest Mexico. She was hired to remembers feeling a great deal of hap- started Hoover on a path to finding her
build up the school’s ethnic-studies pro- piness for her friend. relatives, no matter how distant. So why
gram, and to run the Center for the Study didn’t Hoover take the short drive in
of Race and Ethnicity in America. he Akwesasne Mohawk reserva- order to find them? And why didn’t she
Early in her time at Brown, Hu-
DeHart remembers noticing a striking
T tion straddles the border between
New York and Canada and sits along
ask Cook for help?
young woman who wore beaded ear- the St. Lawrence River, which, for gen- udra Simpson, an anthropology
rings and hung around with the kids
in a Native American student group.
erations, carried effluents from nearby
industrial sites, contaminating every-
A professor at Columbia and a mem-
ber of the Mohawk Nation at Kahnawà:ke,
Hoover “figured out very early how to thing from local food to breast milk. met Hoover at a Native-studies confer-
project her Native American identity,” Hoover began spending a lot of time ence before Hoover had embarked on
Hu-DeHart told me, noting that many on the reservation not long after she her Akwesasne project. Simpson was
Native people can pass for white. (“They started her doctorate. Through mutual there with a Mohawk curator and scholar.
don’t necessarily have physical features Ivy League acquaintances, she’d met the “Liz Hoover approached us and intro-
or even a skin color that immediately son of a scholar and midwife named duced herself very enthusiastically,”
marks them,” she said.) She added, of Katsi Cook, who, in the nineteen-eight- Simpson told me. “She was quite friendly.
Hoover, “At Brown, she organized an ies, had conducted a groundbreaking And she said she was from Kahnawà:ke.”
annual powwow. We brought in drums study of industrial pollutants in breast Simpson began asking about
from the different tribes around. We milk. Cook’s son introduced Hoover to Hoover’s family, as she would any Na-
had dancers, and Liz would always have his mother, who quickly saw a use for tive person with overlapping heritage.
a beautiful regalia, gowns, and beauti- this young, eager student from Brown. “I’m looking to make a connection,”
ful beaded jewelry.” The ethnic-studies Cook wanted someone to look through Simpson explained to me. “I’m looking
department did not have a full-time Na- the health records of participants from to find out if we’re related, because if
tive American faculty member, a fact her study and to follow up with them, you claim that you’re from Kahnawà:ke
that weighed on Hu-DeHart. The uni- in order to gather information for how then you’re potentially related to me
versity eventually began a job search for future studies could be improved. somehow. There’s so few of us.” Hoover
a Native-studies scholar. In the mean- Hoover began travelling back and gave her the name Brooks. Simpson
time, Hu-DeHart asked Hoover to serve forth between Providence and Akwe- thought she must have misheard. It
as a graduate instructor for an introduc- sasne. On the reservation, she helped wasn’t a name she knew.
tory Native-studies course that Hu- out with farming projects and in the Over the years, Simpson occasion-
DeHart planned to offer. community library. At Cook’s urging, ally heard about Hoover and spoke with
In Hoover’s first few years at Brown, she decided to write her dissertation other academics who had noticed the
she and Jennifer Weston ran into each about industrial pollution as well as gar- vague way that Hoover talked about
other often. Weston recalls Hoover say- dening. The perception of reservation- her ancestry. Simpson was also slightly
ing that the Mohawk side of her fam- wide contamination had made people suspicious of Hoover on account of the
ily was from “north of Kahnawà:ke,” a at Akwesasne afraid to grow crops, an volume of beadwork and Native Amer-
territory in southern Quebec, and that activity that was vital for their self-re- ican signifiers that she was known to
she wasn’t sure about her Mi’kmaq side. liance. Within a year, Hoover had con- wear. (Hoover insists that this is exag-
In the summer of 2005, Hoover took a ducted sixty-three interviews, which, gerated, but others described her in a
similar fashion. “It looked like an Etsy scholar who gave a job talk wearing a so she exploited the system. But I think
shop exploded on her,” Simpson said.) three-piece suit with a distinctively pat- the system also was very happy to have
On a visit to Kahnawà:ke, Simpson terned tie. Someone asked him about her as the visible Native.”
asked around to learn if there was a the pattern, expecting that the design
family named Brooks. There was. “It’s
a tiny, tiny family,” Simpson told me.
“There were two people still alive.” She
had come from his tribal community.
The scholar said it was from Barneys.
“He wasn’t going to fuel the fantasies
Iblocknat2016, thousands of people gathered
the Standing Rock reservation to
the construction of the Dakota
asked cousins of the family if Elizabeth of the white imagination of what an au- Access Pipeline. Weston, who had re-
Hoover was related to them. “Nobody thentic Native person was,” Rodriguez turned home to take part in the resis-
had ever heard of her,” Simpson said. said. “Liz was very happy to do that.” tance, got a message from her old friend.
The next time she saw Hoover, at an Hoover had returned to Brown as a Hoover was planning on coming to
American Anthropological Association visiting scholar in 2011, after another at- Standing Rock, and a group of students
event, she asked her a direct question: tempt to fill the full-time position had were getting money together so that they
“Who are you?” failed. The American-studies depart- could join her. They wanted to get the
“I was not warm,” Simpson recalled. ment, which had absorbed the ethnic- lay of the land before coming and hoped
“She looked at me like a deer in the studies program, then decided to alter that Weston could fill them in.
headlights and then she sort of scuttled the job description, calling for a scholar The students created a GoFundMe
away.” (Hoover disputes this account.) earlier in her career, and quickly hired page for the trip. They also drafted a
Simpson has known people whose fam- Hoover. Hu-DeHart was on leave at funding proposal, with Hoover’s knowl-
ilies were from Kahnawà:ke and who the time, but Rodriguez saw her hand edge, that suggested they would bring
had become disconnected from their in it. Hu-DeHart was Hoover’s patron, back items to donate to a museum. This
pasts. “Some of us were forced to live Rodriguez said. It’s common—arguably, seemed to violate key tenets of Native
off the reserve,” she told me. “Even the even required—for young faculty to have studies: you should not extract from a
ones forced out, we still know them and champions in their departments. But community and you should respect the
claim them.” Such stories were not new such a prestigious job doesn’t often ap- sovereignty of its people. Weston was
to Simpson. “There are people who re- pear so suddenly for an academic who baffled that Hoover would fail to grasp
turned home, and maybe they don’t feel has not yet published a book or had a something so fundamental. She explained
one hundred per cent welcome, but they tenure-track job elsewhere. these concerns to Hoover, who acqui-
are brought back in,” Simpson said. “I Rodriguez saw a connection between esced, and they remained on friendly
don’t think Elizabeth Hoover ever made Hoover’s swift rise and how ardently terms. Weston sent Hoover slides to use
that journey.” she signalled her supposed Native iden- at Brown chronicling the Lakota’s trea-
Hoover completed her dissertation tity. “I was never in a meeting where ties with the U.S. government and Stand-
in 2010. When Jennifer Weston read she wasn’t beading,” Rodriguez said. ing Rock’s history of resistance. After
it, she noted a mention of Kahnawà:ke “She had different beads in little plas- Hoover’s dissertation was published as
in Hoover’s description of her back- tic containers or bags, and she would a book, “The River Is in Us,” in 2017,
ground. She assumed that Hoover had take them out and start beading during Weston helped organize a launch party
successfully traced her family, but, when our faculty meetings or when someone at a bookstore in Providence.
she asked her friend about it, Hoover was giving a presentation.” A short while later, the department
said she still didn’t have much infor- In Rodriguez’s view, Hoover was of Environmental Science, Policy, and
mation. “I remember thinking that was performing a kind of fantasy of the Na- Management at Berkeley started a hiring
weird,” Weston told me. Hoover did tive scholar for the non-Native faculty search. The department was under some
say that she had learned who her fam- around her—she was what they wanted pressure to diversify the faculty after
ily was. It wasn’t the Brooks family. She to see. “She got grants, and she got fel- a Black professor was denied tenure. A
was from the Rivers family, she said. lowships, and she checked boxes, and handful of people in the department
She believed they had shortened the she got positions,” Rodriguez said. “And advocated for Hoover, including a
name from Two Rivers.
y 2012, Brown University’s search

B for a Native-studies scholar had
been going on for several years. Can-
didates were flown to Providence and
asked to give “job talks,” during which
the scholar meets students and presents
research. Some candidates who were
brought in dropped out voluntarily. Oth-
ers were passed over.
Annette Rodriguez was a graduate
fellow at the center toward the end of
this period. She told me about a Native
professor named Kathryn De Master, on behalf of Marlon Brando, in 1973, in Weston told me. (Hoover disputes this
who had met Hoover earlier in her ca- an effort to protest Hollywood’s por- account.) “And now I’m wondering if
reer and was impressed by her work. trayal of Native Americans. that’s one of the only true things she’s
Hoover got the job, and she and Adam Keeler shared the Alleged Pretendi- ever said to me.”
Sings In The Timber moved to Berke- ans List with a select group of scholars
ley in October, 2020. He was hired as a and community members, who could arly in 2022, accusations that Adam
photographer for the university. Hoover
connected with students over Zoom and
contribute the names of people they be-
lieved were faking their heritage and
E Sings In The Timber, Hoover’s part-
ner, was a sexual predator began circu-
began figuring out her niche in the some- add notes detailing whatever evidence lating on social media. Soon, a Native
times dramatic and frequently petty they had. The list was quickly screen- organization, the Chi-Nations Youth
forum of department politics. shotted, downloaded, and shared. The Council, which had worked with him in
That December, Joe Biden appointed ancestries of some people on the list the past, posted a statement denouncing
Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo were ultimately verified and marked ac- him as “a groomer and a rapist.”
of Laguna, to lead the Department of cordingly. But many people I spoke to One of Sings In The Timber’s accus-
the Interior. A writer named Claudia expressed discomfort with Keeler’s ers was a student and an aspiring pho-
Lawrence, who identified as Native, wrote methods, saying that she assumes guilt, tographer named Tena Bear Don’t Walk.
an Op-Ed in the Times offering Haaland requiring the accused to prove them- Bear Don’t Walk, who is Crow, was eigh-
advice. After the column ran, the Times selves innocent. What’s more, critics say, teen when she first got to know Sings
was informed of a claim that Lawrence the campaign encourages cultural chau- In The Timber. They began exchanging
had no Native ancestry, and determined vinism—tribal strength and sovereignty Instagram messages in 2018, and the fol-
that Lawrence could not prove other- depend on a community being able to lowing year Sings In The Timber, who
wise. (Lawrence could not be reached determine whom to invite in, not on was in his early forties, told her about a
for comment.) In the wake of the dustup, the watchful policing of sometimes ar- talk he was giving in Seattle. Bear Don’t
a journalist named Jacqueline Keeler cre- bitrary genetic boundaries. Walk met him and Hoover there.
ated the Alleged Pretendians List. Still, even some of Keeler’s sharpest When Sings In The Timber made
Keeler had been on a campaign against critics say that she is, as one grad stu- another visit to Washington State,
Pretendians for several years. In 2015, she dent put it to me, “problematic but nec- months later, he met Bear Don’t Walk
wrote a piece about the phenomenon for essary.” Prior to Keeler, Pretendians had for dinner. After dinner, he bought some
the Daily Beast, after Dartmouth, her cosplayed for years without any real re- alcohol, and they drank together in his
alma mater, hired a woman named Susan percussions. Kim TallBear, the profes- hotel room. Then, while she was asleep,
Taffe Reed, the president of Eastern Del- sor of Native studies at the University she says, he sexually assaulted her. Bear
aware Nation, as the director of its Na- of Alberta, supports Keeler’s work un- Don’t Walk reported the alleged assault
tive American Program. The writers of equivocally. “Jackie being out front has to the Tulalip Tribal Police Department
an irreverent blog called FakeIndians had opened a door that a lot of other peo- three years later; after a brief investiga-
discovered that Eastern Delaware Na- ple have walked through,” she said. “I tion, the Tulalip prosecutor’s office de-
tion was not a recognized tribe but a am disgusted when people throw her cided not to pursue the case. (Sings In
nonprofit, and that Taffe Reed did not under the bus.” The Timber did not respond to a request
appear to have Delaware tribal ancestry. Jennifer Weston sought out the list for comment. In an Instagram post, from
(Taffe Reed did not respond to a request to see if anyone she knew was on it. Many 2022, he denied ever having nonconsen-
for comment.) Keeler began working of the names were unsurprising, the sub- sual sex with anyone.)
with a team of scholars and genealogists jects of years of rumor. Then she saw After the allegations began circulat-
to expose Pretendians, prompting bursts Hoover’s name. She got in touch with ing, Hoover privately defended her part-
of attention in the press—most notably her, expressing surprise and confusion. ner. She told an acquaintance, David
when she challenged the identity of Sa- “When I asked her about it, she said that Smoke-McCluskey, that the accusations
cheen Littlefeather, the actress and ac- she was just going to keep doing her had been “completely made up,” and that
tivist who declined an Academy Award good work until they came for her,” Sings In The Timber was working on a
statement with a mediator and with “the
woman who fabricated” the story. There
would be a ceremony, she said, at which
Bear Don’t Walk would apologize for
“publicly slandering” Sings In The Tim-
ber, and he would apologize “for hurt-
ing her feelings.” A Crow woman named
Nina Sanders had, indeed, been ap-
proached about handling the situation
in a Crow way, and had explained that
this would involve a ceremony, but she
claims she never proposed a joint apol-
“He thinks that just because he thinks, he is.” ogy or characterized the allegations as
false. Hoover says the messages reflected which makes what I found even harder several of Hoover’s former students and
her understanding of the situation at the for me to understand,” she wrote in a colleagues. Hoover dressed the part, they
time, but Smoke-McCluskey believes long e-mail to Hoover, in June, 2022. “I said, but was also able to ingratiate her-
that Hoover lied to him in order to cast wanted your story to be true. I wanted self with senior faculty—who may have
doubt on Bear Don’t Walk’s story. to give you the tools you needed to subconsciously gravitated to someone
Bear Don’t Walk went public in April. prove everyone wrong.” The e-mail who, behind the beads and the regalia,
Another young woman had posted a goes through several generations of was just like them. “People who either
story about Sings In The Timber behav- Hoover’s family tree, finding no ties have a story of a Cherokee ancestor or
ing inappropriately, and the allegations to any Indigenous community. Keene maybe actually have one in 1820, but who
were written up in a couple of Native later posted the e-mail on her blog. code as white, and come from a middle-
publications. Hoover posted a statement In October of that year, or upper-middle-class back-
on Instagram, insisting that she was “com- Hoover published the first ground, there’s a certain kind
pletely unaware of Adam’s harmful in- of her two statements about of white privilege that opens
teractions with the two women who have her identity. In response, doors for you,” Kim TallBear
come forward, until everything came out three Native students who told me. “They’re more com-
on this very public forum.” This is an had studied with Hoover— fortable for people.”
overstatement at best: the mediation in- Ataya Cesspooch, Sierra Nearly four hundred peo-
volving Sanders was proposed shortly Edd, and Breylan Martin— ple have signed the students’
after the accusations were made, in Feb- wrote an open letter de- letter. Hoover’s department
ruary. Hoover later deleted her Insta- manding her resignation. “As asked the university’s Re-
gram account. scholars embedded in the storative Justice Center to
As this was going on, Hoover went kinship networks of our work with students who felt
to her colleague Kathryn De Master’s communities,” they wrote, “we find betrayed, and also with Hoover, to dis-
house and broke down. De Master felt Hoover’s repeated attempts to differen- cuss the harm she’d caused. Hoover then
overwhelmed, she told me. She consid- tiate herself from settlers with similar released her second statement, titled “Let-
ered Hoover a friend and an ally—the stories and her claims of having lived ex- ter of Apology and Accountability.” In
two had ridden out much of the early perience as an Indigenous person by it, she writes, “I was first directly chal-
days of the pandemic texting jokes back dancing at powwows absolutely appall- lenged in my Indigenous identity when
and forth during department Zoom calls. ing.” Hoover, they went on, had “failed I began my first assistant professor job.”
And all the attention had made the whis- to acknowledge the harm she has caused The word “harm,” and its variants, makes
pers about Hoover’s identity harder to and enabled.” thirteen appearances. Hoover never says
ignore. When people wrote about Sings This question of harm—of whether that she lied, but she refers multiple times
In The Timber’s alleged behavior, they and to what extent it has actually been to “broken trust” and insists that she is
generally noted that his partner’s Native done—is central to debates about racial deeply sorry. “I have put away my dance
identity had been contested. This wasn’t fraud, particularly when the person ac- regalia, ribbons skirts, moccasins, and
news to De Master, but, like many of cused has done good work in the com- Native jewelry,” she writes. “I’ve begun
Hoover’s colleagues, she had wanted to munity. With academics, harm is often, to give away some of these things to peo-
believe Hoover, and so she did. though not entirely, a matter of stolen ple who will wear them better.”
opportunities. Martin told me about the Reading this second statement, Kath-
erhaps none of Hoover’s colleagues difficulties she has had paying for her ryn De Master thought back to a visit
P were as upset about the rumors as
Adrienne Keene, whom Hoover had
education, and about the necessity of fel-
lowships and financial-aid opportunities
she and a colleague had made to Hoover’s
house months before, to ask Hoover about
mentored at Brown. Despite years of aimed at Native students. Hoover had her past. If De Master and others in the
close friendship, Keene realized that seized such opportunities her entire ac- department were going to support.
Hoover had never told her the “full story” ademic life, Martin said. Hoover, they needed to have a full ac-
of her family. (Hoover denies keeping Edd suggested that Hoover’s lofty counting of the facts, and they needed
anything from her.) Keene reached out career was symptomatic of a larger to hear them from her. The three col-
to Hoover and “asked her directly for identity problem within the academy. leagues sat together on Hoover’s porch.
family names and ties,” she later wrote, “There’s a prevalence of white people De Master asked Hoover if there had
and “was left confused and unsatisfied and white-passing people within ethnic ever been questions about her Native
by the answers.” She decided to investi- cultural studies, whether you’re talking heritage before she arrived at Berkeley,
gate the matter herself, searching census about African American studies, Latino, and Hoover emphatically said no.
records and reading through newspaper Asian American, or Native American,” (Hoover denies saying no.)
archives. Keene, who did not respond to she said. “There is a centering of white-
several requests for an interview, has in- ness that is felt within the fields, within first contacted Elizabeth Hoover in
sisted that she began her investigation
with the goal of helping her mentor by
the academic discourse, but also within
the institutions who hire the people who
Ilished
May, 2023, the day after she pub-
her second statement. We met
putting the questions to rest. make up these departments.” shortly afterward, in a coffee shop in
“I did this work from a place of love, I heard versions of this point from Berkeley. Living in a college town, one
meets more than one’s share of aca- answers about who she was, and then a Native student, had put aside com-
demic narcissists, but Hoover didn’t just walked away? munity work to study at Berkeley with
come across as that type. Her charm Some of Hoover’s friends and col- Hoover’s encouragement. She has
and intelligence were obvious. She leagues have come to distrust her over switched advisers. As Hoover’s own ca-
spoke of the wreckage of her life with time. In 2019, Hoover co-edited a book reer demonstrates, mentorship is cru-
a dark, engaging humor. of essays about food sovereignty with cial to academic success.
I told Hoover that others remem- a scholar at the University of Kansas “I’m not going to be driven out, be-
bered her speaking of a connection to named Devon Mihesuah. In the book’s cause I still have usefulness,” Hoover
a family named Brooks, and then to original biographical materials, Hoover told me. “I still did all that work. I did
the Rivers and Two Rivers families. If listed herself as Mohawk and Mi’kmaq. the research, I did all the learning, I
she had never researched her family, as But after another of the book’s contrib- did the teaching. And I’m not going
she claimed, where did these names utors was accused of being a Preten- to have all of that just cancelled and
come from? dian, Hoover, without alerting Mihe- thrown away because people are upset
“I’ve had one story, which is the suah, contacted the publisher and asked about this.”
story that my mother gave me,” Hoover to have her tribal affiliations removed For a long time, Hoover continued
insisted. “My mom’s grandma was Ad- from this material. Mihesuah doesn’t to show up to every department meet-
elaide Rivers, and she was under the understand why Hoover would do this ing, even to parties and retreats where
impression that it used to be Two Riv- unless she doubted the veracity of the her presence wasn’t mandatory. Some
ers and she shortened it.” The Two affiliations. (Hoover says that includ- of her former students and faculty
Rivers family does in fact exist, though ing her affiliations alongside Mihe- friends began to dread running into
Hoover has no connection to it. She suah’s felt inappropriate given that, her. Eventually, the chair of her depart-
denies mentioning the name Brooks unlike Mihesuah, she wasn’t an en- ment announced via e-mail that Hoover
to anyone. rolled citizen.) would stop attending these events; the
I asked why she didn’t enlist the That same year, Hoover published department’s administration also qui-
help of Katsi Cook—who, despite all an article in the Review of Interna- etly tried to make sure that Hoover no
the allegations, still loves Hoover— tional American Studies titled “ ‘Fires longer worked in Native communities,
in order to f ind her people in were lit inside them:’ The Pyropolitics as she had promised in her statement
Kahnawà:ke. She reiterated her point of Water Protector Camps at Standing of accountability. (Hoover says she has
about not meeting the criteria for en- Rock.” When Jennifer Weston read it, upheld her promise without any ad-
rollment. “I know other people who she saw that language had been lifted, ministrative intervention.)
have been rejected in this way,” she without attribution, from the slides that Almost immediately, however, ru-
said. “There’s not an ethos of ‘Yes, she had given Hoover years before. She mors circulated that Hoover was break-
please come home and reclaim.’ Peo- confronted Hoover, who said it had ing that promise, taking part in cul-
ple, when I would reach out, were been an innocent mistake and asked tural burns—the lighting of controlled
prickly towards me.” She added, “I the journal to issue an erratum. Later, fires to manage Native land—and post-
should have put myself out there. I Weston said, Hoover sent her a long ing photos of herself at these events
should have just sucked it up.” handwritten explanation for what had on Facebook. Hoover denies that the
At one point, Hoover suggested happened. The letter came wrapped in burns are part of her scholarly work
that she didn’t investigate things fur- “some kind of greenery,” Weston told and says that she had been invited by
ther because the great-grandmother me. “I don’t know if she put cedar or the tribal chairperson who hosted the
she’d heard about was not inspiring. something in there with it. I guess she burns. (The tribal chairperson did not
“When people are, like, ‘Oh, draw on was intending to communicate some respond to a request for comment.)
the strength of your ancestors,’ mine sort of healing energy or whatever.” One day last fall, the Native grad
weren’t,” she said, alluding to Adeline When Weston eventually read both student who had paused her commu-
Rivers. “She cracked and killed herself of Hoover’s statements of identity, she nity work was feeling overwhelmed by
and abandoned her kids. So I lived in could not recognize the person de- the turmoil in her new department and
the present. And I went with the peo- scribed there. “As someone who has went to a cultural burn up north. She
ple that took me in and taught me and known Elizabeth for twenty years, both wanted to be around people who weren’t
accepted me and didn’t provide this of her statements are fraught with mis- embroiled in the drama surrounding
kind of resistance.” information and misrepresentation,” Hoover, she told me. When she got to
How does one square these state- she told me. Weston refuses to believe the burn, which was crowded, Hoover
ments with Hoover’s reference, in an that Hoover never researched her ge- was there. The tribal chairperson ac-
e-mail about Kahnawà:ke, to “people nealogy. “She did look,” Weston said. knowledged Hoover, announcing that
who knew people i’m related to”? Or Although Hoover has support from she had given him a beaded medallion
with what she allegedly told friends some professors, the leadership of her a year or two before. “And then she was
at Weston’s wedding? Does it seem department has turned against her. at the campfires, laughing really loud,
plausible that Hoover, a budding an- When the current school year started, like how Native women usually laugh,”
thropologist, would have arrived in two of her three graduate students re- the grad student said. “It’s weird she
Kahnawà:ke, come so close to finding fused to work with her. One of them, laughs like that.” 
should be checking your e-mail every
SHOUTS & MURMURS few seconds and getting rid of anything
from my colleagues or myself the in-
stant it pops up on your screen. Remem-
ber what happened with my book “Mid-
night in Washington”? You unwisely
ordered it, thumbed through it, and lost
an entire several minutes of your life
that you will never be able to get back.
Don’t let that happen again.
From: Cheap Botox Last Chance

Subject: BACKFIRES!
The Dems’ pleas for help in delet-
ing their e-mails have BACKFIRED!
E-MAILS FROM THE DEMS Now you’re deleting so much that your
finger is too tired to delete Cheap Botox
BY IAN FRAZIER Last Chance, and you end up buying
Botox, for Cheap—when the average
From: Nancy Pelosi thirds. But you must act before 4:40 p.m. age of U.S. senators is over sixty-five,
Subject: Help! tomorrow—sorry, make that 4:41:33 p.m.! and they probably need it even more
Dear Ian—I am overwhelmed! I’ve than you do. Talk about a BACKFIRE!
tried and tried, but I can’t delete this From: Defend the Senate (See order form attached.)
e-mail. You have been helpful in delet- Subject: Please Don’t Delete (Not!)
ing e-mails from the Dems in the past— We’re reaching out to you, Ian, be- From: Dems in Congress
won’t you please delete this one? All it cause you have been one of our most Subject: FIRE! Really! A Real Fire, Not Just
takes is a few seconds of your time. In faithful deleters in the past. But now, Figure-of-Speech Clickbait—FIRE!! I’m Not
the upper right-hand corner of your frankly, we’re worried. Our records show Kidding! FI-I-I-RE!!!
keyboard, you will see a button that says that you often read this far in our e-mails, (Sorry, that was Jamaal Bowman.
“Delete.” Can we count on you to hit and sometimes even farther. An e-mail Disregard, delete.)
that button before midnight tonight? like this should not even be opened, let
We knew we could! alone allowed to go on for this long. We From: Nancy Pelosi
can make this work, but it’s going to Subject: Blunt
From: James Carville take all of us. Hi, Ian. We have been blunt with
Subject: Game Over you in the past. Now we have to up our
Hi, Ian, it’s Jim here. Do you re- From: Elizabeth Warren game and be even blunter, in the hope
member, two years ago, when I reached Subject: This Is Incredible! that our increased bluntness will get
out to you and said that if we lost the Dear Ian—did you know that it’s through. We understand that you’re try-
governor’s race in Virginia it would be possible to go into your e-mail trash ing, but you are simply not deleting
“game over” for the Democrats? Well, folder and delete e-mails that you have enough. I know this can be very hard
we did, and it is. That’s why I am ask- already deleted ?! It’s true! Each of those for older folks like yourself. But I’ll be
ing you to delete this e-mail as soon as “double deletions” helps, so let’s start as blunt as blunt can be—if we don’t
you possibly can. Please, won’t you dig with this one—delete, then re-delete, get at least four hundred thousand de-
deep and hit that ol’ Delete key? (Upper to make sure. It’s as easy as that. letions by midnight, our very gerontoc-
right-hand corner, if you’ve got a Mac.) racy could be at risk! It’s your decision.
I’d sure appreciate it. From: Tracking Poll
Subject: Update Your Poll Answers From: James Carville
From: Chuck Schumer Don’t worry, all we’re asking for today Subject: You Call That ‘Blunt’? I’ll Give You
Subject: Wonderful News! is your input on some important issues Blunt!
Dear Ian—I’ve just received some in the news, so there’s no need to de- What’s it gonna take, Ian? What’s
news that I’m sure will make you as lete this e-mail. . . . On second thought, stopping you? Bad experiences in the
happy as it made me. One of our most maybe you’d better. past? You thought you pressed Delete,
faithful supporters has offered to match and you accidentally launched an
every deletion for the next twenty-four From: Adam Schiff I.C.B.M., or something? C’mon, Ian—
hours on a two-for-one basis. That Subject: You Need to See This just hit Delete, and keep on hittin’
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
means you don’t even have to delete a Ian, I’m going to be very candid with it. . . . Wait, I said hit Delete, not the
whole e-mail! Just select one-third of you. To help yourself and your fel- Launch All Rockets button! Stop! HIT
an e-mail from me and delete it, and low-Dems—not just to win but to sur- DELETE! DELETE!! Oh, no-o-o-o-
this supporter will delete the other two- vive emotionally and physically—you o-o-o . . . (End of world.) 
cessing and cold-storage facilities and
ANNALS OF CRIME what appears to be a seven-floor dor-
mitory for workers. The company touted
a wide array of Western certifications
INVISIBLE WORKERS from organizations that claim to check
workplaces for labor violations, includ-
How North Korea operates a forced-labor program in China. ing the use of North Korean workers.
When videos of the party were posted
BY IAN URBINA online, a commenter—presumably be-
fuddled, because using these workers
violates U.N. sanctions—asked, “Aren’t
you prohibited from filming this?”
Like Jinhui, many companies in
China rely on a vast program of forced
labor from North Korea. ( Jinhui did not
respond to requests for comment.) The
program is run by various entities in the
North Korean government, including a
secretive agency called Room 39, which
oversees activities such as money laun-
dering and cyberattacks, and which funds
the country’s nuclear- and ballistic-mis-
sile programs. (The agency is so named,
according to some defectors, because it
is based in the ninth room on the third
floor of the Korean Workers’ Party head-
quarters.) Such labor transfers are not
new. In 2012, North Korea sent some
forty thousand workers to China. A por-
tion of their salaries was taken by the
state, providing a vital source of foreign
currency for Party officials: at the time,
a Seoul-based think tank estimated that
the country made as much as $2.3 bil-
lion a year through the program. Since
then, North Koreans have been sent to
Russia, Poland, Qatar, Uruguay, and Mali.
In 2017, after North Korea tested a
series of nuclear and ballistic weapons,
A worker sent to a Chinese seafood plant said, “It was like a prison for me.” the United Nations imposed sanctions
that prohibit foreign companies from
n February of last year, Donggang Jin- between fifty and seventy North Koreans. using North Korean workers. The U.S.
Icompany
hui Foodstuff, a seafood-processing
in Dandong, China, threw a
Videos posted by a company represen-
tative show machines labelled in Korean,
passed a law that established a “rebut-
table presumption” categorizing work
party. It had been a successful year: a new and workers with North Korean accents by North Koreans as forced labor un-
plant had opened, and the company had explaining how to clean squid. At the less proven otherwise, and levying fines
doubled the amount of squid that it ex- party, the company played songs that are on companies that import goods tied to
ported to the United States. The party, popular in Pyongyang, including “Peo- these workers. China is supposed to en-
according to videos posted on Douyin, ple Bring Glory to Our Party” (written force the sanctions in a similar manner.
the Chinese version of TikTok, featured by North Korea’s 1989 poet laureate) and Nevertheless, according to State De-
singers, instrumentalists, dancers, fire- “We Will Go to Mt. Paektu” (a reference partment estimates, there are currently
works, and strobe lights. One aspect of to the widely mythologized birthplace as many as a hundred thousand North
the company’s success seems to have been of Kim Jong Il). Performers wore North Koreans working in the country. Many
its use of North Korean workers, who Korean colors, and the country’s flag bil- work at construction companies, tex-
are sent by their government to work in lowed behind them; in the audience, doz- tile factories, and software firms. Some
Chinese factories, in conditions of cap- ens of workers held miniature flags. also process seafood. In 2022, accord-
tivity, to earn money for the state. A sea- Drone footage played at the event ing to Chinese officials running pan-
food trader who does business with Jin- showed off Jinhui’s twenty-one-acre, demic quarantines, there were some
hui recently estimated that it employed fenced-in compound, which has pro- eighty thousand North Koreans just in
20 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY CLEON PETERSON
Dandong, a hub of the seafood industry. have used more than a thousand North person for Donggang Haimeng said that
Last year, I set out with a team of re- Korean workers since 2017. China officially it does not hire North Korean workers.)
searchers to document this phenome- denies that North Korean laborers are in At times, China aggressively conceals
non. We reviewed leaked government the country. But their presence is an open the existence of the program. Alexander
documents, promotional materials, sat- secret. “They are easy to distinguish,” a Dukalskis, a political-science professor
ellite imagery, online forums, and local Dandong native wrote in a comment on at University College Dublin, said that
news reports. We watched hundreds of Bilibili, a video-sharing site. “They all workers have a hard time making their
cell-phone videos published on social- wear uniform clothes, have a leader, and conditions known. “They’re in a coun-
media sites. In some, the presence of follow orders.” Often, footage of the work- try where they may not speak the lan-
North Koreans was explicit. Others were ers ends up online. In a video from a plant guage, are under surveillance, usually liv-
examined by experts to detect North called Dandong Yuanyi Refined Sea- ing collectively, and have no experience
Korean accents, language usage, and foods, a dozen women perform a syn- in contacting journalists,” he said. In late
other cultural markers. Reporting in chronized dance in front of a mural com- November, after my team’s investigators
China is tightly restricted for Western memorating Youth Day, a North Korean visited several plants, authorities distrib-
reporters. But we hired Chinese inves- holiday. The video features a North Ko- uted pamphlets on the country’s anti-es-
tigators to visit factories and record foot- rean flag emoji and the caption “Beauti- pionage laws. Local officials announced
age of production lines. I also secretly ful little women from North Korea in that people who try “to contact North
sent interview questions, through an- Donggang’s cold-storage facility.” (The Korean workers, or to approach the work-
other group of investigators and their company did not respond to requests for places of North Korean workers, will be
contacts, to two dozen North Koreans— comment.) Remco Breuker, a North treated as engaging in espionage activi-
twenty workers and four managers— Korea specialist at Leiden University, in ties that endanger national security, and
who had recently spent time in Chinese the Netherlands, told me, “Hundreds of will be punished severely.” They also
factories. Their anonymous responses thousands of North Korean workers have warned that people who were found to
were transcribed and sent back to me. for decades slaved away in China and be working in connection with foreign
The workers, all of whom are women, elsewhere, enriching their leader and his media outlets would face consequences
described conditions of confinement and party while facing unconscionable abuse.” under the Anti-Espionage Act.
violence at the plants. Workers are held In late 2023, an investigator hired by
in compounds, sometimes behind barbed my team visited a Chinese plant called andong, a city of more than two
wire, under the watch of security agents.
Many work gruelling shifts and get at
Donggang Xinxin Foodstuff. He found
hundreds of North Korean women work-
D million people, sits on the Yalu River,
just over the border from North Korea.
most one day off a month. Several de- ing under a red banner that read, in Ko- The Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge links
scribed being beaten by the managers rean, “Let’s carry out the resolution of Dandong to the North Korean city of
sent by North Korea to watch them. “It the 8th Congress of the Workers’ Party.” Sinuiju. A second bridge, bombed during
was like prison for me,” one woman said. (The company did not respond to re- the Korean War, still extends partway
“At first, I almost vomited at how bad it quests for comment.) Soon afterward, across the river, and serves as a platform
was, and, just when I got used to it, the the investigator visited a nearby plant from which Chinese residents can view
supervisors would tell us to shut up, and called Donggang Haimeng Foodstuff, the North Koreans living six hundred
curse if we talked.” Many described en- and found a North Korean manager sit- yards away. The Friendship Bridge is one
during sexual assault at the hands of their ting at a wooden desk with two minia- of the Hermit Kingdom’s few gateways
managers. “They would say I’m fuck- ture flags, one Chinese and one North to the world. Some trade with North
able and then suddenly grab my body Korean. The walls around the desk were Korea is allowed under U.N. sanctions,
and grope my breasts and put their dirty mostly bare except for two portraits of and nearly seventy per cent of the goods
mouth on mine and be disgusting,” a the past North Korean leaders Kim Il exchanged between that country and
woman who did product transport at a Sung and Kim Jong Il. The manager China travel across this bridge. At least
plant in the city of Dalian said. Another, took our investigator to the workers’ caf- one department store in Dandong keeps
who worked at Jinhui, said, “The worst eteria to eat a North Korean cold-noodle a list of products preferred by North Ko-
and saddest moment was when I was dish called naengmyeon, and then gave rean customers. Shops sell North Korean
forced to have sexual relations when we him a tour of the processing floor. Sev- ginseng, beer, and “7.27” cigarettes, named
were brought to a party with alcohol.” eral hundred North Korean women for the date on which the armistice end-
The workers described being kept at dressed in red uniforms, plastic aprons, ing the Korean War was signed. The city
the factories against their will, and being and white rubber boots stood shoulder is home to a museum about the conflict,
threatened with severe punishment if they to shoulder at long metal tables under officially called the Memorial Hall of the
tried to escape. A woman who was at a harsh lights, hunched over plastic bas- War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid
factory called Dalian Haiqing Food for kets of seafood, slicing and sorting prod- Korea. On boat tours, Chinese tourists
more than four years said, “It’s often em- ucts by hand. “They work hard,” the man- purchase bags of biscuits to toss to children
phasized that, if you are caught running ager said. The factory has exported on the North Korean side of the river.
away, you will be killed without a trace.” thousands of tons of fish to companies Government officials carefully select
In all, I identified fifteen seafood- that supply major U.S. retailers, includ- workers to send to China, screening them
processing plants that together seem to ing Walmart and ShopRite. (A spokes- for their political loyalties to reduce the
risk of defections. To qualify, a person line. A video posted on Douyin this past butts. “I felt bad, and I wanted to fight
must generally have a job at a North Ko- September announced the availability of them, but I had to endure,” she said. “That
rean company and a positive evaluation twenty-five hundred North Koreans, and was when I was sad.”
from a local Party official. “These checks a commenter asked if they could be sent Workers get few, if any, holidays or
start at the neighborhood,” Breuker said. to seafood factories. A post on a forum sick days. At seafood plants, the women
Candidates who have family in China, advertised five thousand workers; a com- sleep in bunk beds in locked dormito-
or a relative who has already defected, menter asked if any spoke Mandarin, and ries, sometimes thirty to a room. One
can be disqualified. For some positions, the poster replied, “There is a team leader, worker, who spent four years processing
applicants under twenty-seven years of management, and an interpreter.” A com- clams in Dandong, estimated that more
age who are unmarried must have living pany called Jinuo Human Resources than sixty per cent of her co-workers suf-
parents, who can be punished if they try posted, “I am a human-resources com- fered from depression. “We regretted
to defect, according to a report from the pany coöperating with the embassy, and coming to China but couldn’t go back
South Korean government; applicants currently have a large number of regular empty-handed,” she said. Workers are
over twenty-seven must be married. North North Korean workers.” Several people forbidden to tune in to local TV or radio.
Korean authorities even select for height: expressed interest. (The company did They are sometimes allowed to leave fac-
the country’s population is chronically not respond to requests for comment.) tory grounds—say, to go shopping—but
malnourished, and the state prefers can- Jobs in China are coveted in North generally in groups of no more than three,
didates who are taller than five feet one, Korea, because they often come with and accompanied by a minder. Mail is
to avoid the official embarrassment of contracts promising salaries of around scrutinized by North Korean security
being represented abroad by short peo- two hundred and seventy dollars a month. agents who also “surveil the daily life and
ple. Once selected, applicants go through (Similar work in North Korea pays just report back with official reports,” one
pre-departure training, which can last a three dollars a month.) But the jobs come manager said. Sometimes the women are
year and often includes government-run with hidden costs. Workers usually sign allowed to socialize. In a video titled
classes covering everything from Chi- two- or three-year contracts. When they “North Korean beauties working in China
nese customs and etiquette to “enemy arrive in China, managers confiscate their play volleyball,” posted in 2022, women
operations” and the activities of other passports. Inside the factories, North Ko- in blue-and-white uniforms exercise on
countries’ intelligence agencies. (The rean workers wear different uniforms the grounds of the Dandong Omeca Food
North Korean government did not re- than Chinese workers. “Without this, seafood plant. (The company that owns
spond to requests for comment.) we couldn’t tell if one disappeared,” a the plant did not respond to requests for
The governments of both countries manager said. Shifts run as long as six- comment.) A commenter wrote, “The
coördinate to place workers, most of teen hours. If workers attempt to escape, joy of poverty. That’s just how it is.”
whom are women, with seafood com- or complain to people outside the plants, Factories typically give the women’s
panies. The logistics are often handled their families at home can face reprisals. money to their managers, who take cuts
by local Chinese recruitment agencies, One seafood worker described how man- for themselves and the government, and
and advertisements can be found on- agers cursed at her and flicked cigarette hold on to the rest until the workers’
terms in China end. Kim Jieun, a North
Korean defector who now works for
Radio Free Asia, said that companies tell
workers their money is safer this way,
because it could be stolen in the dormi-
tories. But, in the end, workers often see
less than ten per cent of their promised
salary. One contract that I reviewed stip-
ulated that around forty dollars would
be deducted each month by the state to
pay for food. More is sometimes de-
ducted for electricity, housing, heat, water,
insurance, and “loyalty” payments to the
state. Managers also hold on to wages
to discourage defections. The women
have been warned, Kim added, that if
they try to defect “they will be immedi-
ately caught by Chinese CCTV cameras
installed everywhere.” This past Octo-
ber, Chinese authorities repatriated
around six hundred North Korean de-
fectors. “China does not recognize North
“Excuse me, can I ask how you guys come Korean defectors as refugees,” Edward
up with such believable dialogue?” Howell, who teaches politics at Oxford
University, told me. “If they are caught luxury apartments. A subcontractor who and Haiqing also shipped to an im-
by Chinese authorities, they will be forc- worked alongside the North Koreans in porter that supplies the cafeterias of the
ibly returned to the D.P.R.K., where they Russia told the Guardian that they lived in European Parliament. (Dalian Haiqing
face harsh punishment in labor camps.” cramped spaces, with as many as eight peo- Food said that it “does not employ over-
Chinese companies have significant ple packed into a trailer, in an atmosphere seas North Korean workers.” Dandong
incentives to use North Korean workers. of fear and abuse like “prisoners of war.” Galicia Seafood did not respond to re-
They’re typically paid only a quarter of quests for comment. One of the U.S.
what local employees earn. And they are lthough it’s illegal in the U.S. to importers tied to Haiqing, Trident Sea-
generally excluded from mandatory social-
welfare programs (regarding retirement,
A import goods made with North
Korean labor, the law can be difficult to
foods, said that audits “found no evi-
dence or even suspicion” of North Ko-
medical treatment, work-related injury, enforce. Some eighty per cent of sea- rean labor at the plant. Several companies,
and maternity), which further reduces food consumed in America, for exam- including Trident, High Liner, and Sysco,
costs. In 2017, Dandong’s Commerce Bu- ple, is imported, and much said that they would sever
reau announced a plan to create a clus- of it comes from China ties with the plant while they
ter of garment factories that would use through opaque supply conducted their own inves-
North Korean labor. The bureau’s Web chains. To trace the impor- tigations. A spokesperson
site noted that all such workers undergo tation of seafood from fac- for the European Parliament
political screenings to make sure they are tories that appear to be using said that its food contractor
“rooted, red, and upright.” “The disci- North Korean labor, my did not supply seafood from
pline among the workers is extremely team reviewed trade data, the plant.) Breuker, from
strong,” it added. “There are no instances shipping contracts, and the Leiden University, told me
of absenteeism or insubordination to- codes that are stamped on that American customers
ward leadership, and there are no occur- seafood packages to moni- quietly benefit from this ar-
rences of feigning illness or delaying tor food safety. We found rangement. “This labor-
work.” China’s Ministry of Foreign Af- that, since 2017, ten of these plants have transfer system is for North Korea and
fairs did not respond to questions for this together shipped more than a hundred China as economically successful as it is
piece, but last year the Chinese Ambas- and twenty thousand tons of seafood to morally reprehensible,” he said. “It’s also
sador to the U.N. wrote that China has more than seventy American importers, a boon for the West because of the cheap
abided by sanctions even though it has which supplied grocery stores including goods we get as a result.”
sustained “great losses” as a result. A Walmart, Giant, ShopRite, and the on- North Korea doesn’t just export sea-
spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign line grocer Weee! The seafood from food workers; it also exports fish—an-
Affairs recently said that China and North these importers also ended up at major other means by which the government
Korea have “enjoyed long-standing restaurant chains, like McDonald’s, and secures foreign currency. Importing North
friendly ties,” adding, “The United States with Sysco, the largest food distributor Korean seafood is forbidden by U.N.
needs to draw lessons, correct course, step in the world, which supplies almost half sanctions, but it also tends to be inex-
up to its responsibility, stop heightening a million restaurants, as well as the caf- pensive, which encourages companies to
the pressure and sanctions, stop military eterias on American military bases, in skirt the rules. Sometimes Chinese fish-
deterrence, and take effective steps to re- public schools, and for the U.S. Con- ing companies pay the North Korean
sume meaningful dialogue.” gress. (Walmart, Weee!, and McDon- government for illegal licenses to fish in
North Koreans face difficult circum- ald’s did not respond to requests for com- North Korea’s waters. Sometimes they
stances across industries. In January of ment. Giant’s parent company, Ahold buy fish from other boats at sea: a letter
this year, more than two thousand work- Delhaize, and ShopRite’s parent com- from a North Korean, leaked in 2022,
ers rioted in Jilin Province, breaking sew- pany, Wakefern, said their suppliers proposed selling ten thousand tons of
ing machines and kitchen utensils, when claimed that they currently do not source squid to a Chinese company in return
they learned that their wages would be from the Chinese plant in question, and for more than eighteen million dollars
withheld. Many North Koreans—per- added that audit reports showed no ev- and five hundred tons of diesel fuel.
haps thousands—work in Russian log- idence of forced labor.) Sometimes the seafood is trucked over
ging, in brutal winter weather without Two of the plants that investigators the border. This trade is poorly hidden.
proper clothing. Hundreds have been from my team visited—Dandong Gali- In October, a Chinese man who said his
found working in the Russian construc- cia Seafood and Dalian Haiqing Food— last name was Cui posted a video on
tion industry; some lived in shipping had an estimated fifty to seventy North Douyin advertising crabs from North
containers or in the basements of build- Korean workers apiece. One worker who Korea. When someone commented, “The
ings under construction, because bet- has been employed at Galicia said that goods can’t be shipped,” Cui responded
ter accommodations were not provided. the managers are “so stingy with money with laughing emojis. In other videos,
One recounted working shifts that lasted that they don’t allow us to get proper he explained that he operated a process-
from 7:30 A.M. to 3 A.M. In preparation medical treatment even when we are ing plant in North Korea, and gave in-
for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, held sick.” Galicia and Haiqing have shipped formation on the timing of shipments
in Russia and Qatar, thousands of North roughly a hundred thousand tons of sea- that he planned to send across the bor-
Koreans were sent to build stadiums and food to American importers since 2017, der. When I contacted Cui, he said that
he had stopped importing North Ko- such audits is growing. In 2021, the U.S. North Koreans who had been dispatched
rean seafood in 2016 (though the videos State Department said that social au- to a half-dozen different Chinese facto-
were actually from last year), and added, dits in China are generally inadequate ries, most of whom had since returned
“It’s none of your business, and I don’t for identifying forced labor, in part be- home. The investigators’ contacts then
care who you are.” My team found that cause auditors rely on government trans- met with these workers in secret, one-
seafood from North Korea was imported lators and rarely speak directly to work- on-one, so that the workers wouldn’t
by several American distributors, includ- ers. Auditors can be reluctant to anger know one another’s identity. The meet-
ing HF Foods, which supplies more than the companies that have hired them, ings usually occurred in open fields, or
fifteen thousand Asian restaurants in the and workers face reprisals for reporting on the street, where it’s harder for secu-
U.S. (HF Foods did not respond to re- abuses. This past November, U.S. Cus- rity agents to conduct surveillance.
quests for comment.) toms and Border Protection advised The workers were told that their re-
Chinese companies often claim that American companies that a credible sponses would be shared publicly by an
they are in compliance with labor laws assessment would require an “unan- American journalism outlet. They faced
because they have passed “social audits,” nounced independent, third-party audit” considerable risk speaking out; experts
which are conducted by firms that in- and “interviews completed in native lan- told me that, if they were caught, they
spect worksites for abuses. But half the guage.” Liana Foxvog, who works at a could be executed, and their families put
Chinese plants that we found using North nonprofit called the Worker Rights Con- in prison camps. But they agreed to talk
Korean workers have certifications from sortium, argues that assessments should because they believe that it is important
the Marine Stewardship Council, which involve other checks too, including off- for the rest of the world to know what
is based in the U.K. and sets standards site worker interviews. But she noted happens to workers who are sent to
for granting sustainability certifications, that most audits in China fall short even China. The North Korean contacts tran-
but only to companies that have also of C.B.P.’s standards. scribed their answers by hand, and then
passed social audits or other labor as- Joshua Stanton, an attorney based in took photos of the completed question-
sessments. ( Jackie Marks, an M.S.C. Washington, D.C., who helped draft naires and sent them, using encrypted
spokesperson, told me that these social the American law that banned goods phones, to the investigators, who sent
audits are conducted by a third party, and produced with North Korean labor, ar- them to me. North Koreans who are still
that “We make no claims about setting gues that the government is not doing in China were interviewed in a similar
standards on labor.”) Last year, one of enough to enforce it. “The U.S. govern- fashion. Because of these layers of pro-
my team’s investigators visited a sea- ment will need to put more pressure on tection, it is, of course, impossible to fully
food-processing plant in northeastern American companies, and those com- verify the content of the interviews. But
China called Dandong Taifeng Food- panies need to be more diligent about the responses were reviewed by experts
stuff. The company has been designated their suppliers and their supply chains, to make sure that they are consistent
a “national brand,” a status reserved for or face stricter sanctions,” he said. Chris with what is broadly known about the
the country’s most successful companies, Smith, a Republican congressman from work-transfer program, and in line with
and supplies thousands of tons of sea- New Jersey and a specialist on China, interviews given by North Korean de-
food to grocery stores in the U.S. and noted that social audits “create a Po- fectors. (Recently, the investigators
elsewhere. At the plant, our investigator temkin village.” He added, “The con- checked in on the interviewers and in-
was given a tour by a North Korean man- sequence is that millions of dollars, even terviewees, and everyone was safe.)
ager. On the factory floor, which was lit federal dollars, are going to Chinese In their answers, the workers described
by bright fluorescent bulbs, more than a plants using North Korean workers, and crushing loneliness. The work was ardu-
hundred and fifty North Korean women, that money then goes right into the ous, the factories smelled, and violence
most of them under thirty-five years old, hands of Kim Jong Un’s regime, which was common. “They kicked us and treated
wore head-to-toe white protective cloth- uses the money to arm our adversaries us as subhuman,” the worker who pro-
ing, plastic aprons, white rubber boots, and repress its own people.” cessed clams in Dandong said. Asked if
and red gloves that went up to their el- they could recount any happy moments,
bows. They stood with their heads down, ate last year, when I set out to con- most said that there had been none. A
moving red, yellow, and blue plastic bins
of seafood. Water puddled at their feet.
L tact North Koreans who had been
sent to China, I ran into significant ob-
few said that they felt relieved when they
returned home and got some of their
“Quick, quick,” one woman said to the stacles. Western journalists are barred pay. “I was happy when the money wasn’t
other members of her small group. (Tai- from entering North Korea, and citizens all taken out,” the woman who did prod-
feng did not respond to requests for com- of the country are strictly prohibited from uct transport in Dalian said. One woman
ment.) Just weeks after that visit, the talking freely to reporters. I hired a team said that her experience at a Chinese
plant was recertified by the Marine Stew- of investigators in South Korea who em- plant made her feel like she “wanted to
ardship Council. ploy contacts in North Korea to get in- die.” Another said that she often felt tired
Marcus Noland, who works at the formation out of the country for local and upset while she was working, but
Peterson Institute for International Eco- and Western news outlets—for example, kept those thoughts to herself to avoid
nomics, said, of social audits within the about food shortages, power outages, or reprisals. “It was lonely,” she said. “I hated
seafood industry, “The basic stance ap- the rise of anti-government graffiti. The the military-like communal life.”
pears to be ‘See no evil.’” Skepticism of investigators compiled a list of two dozen The most striking pattern was the
women’s description of sexual abuse. Of
twenty workers, seventeen said that they
had been sexually assaulted by their North
Korean managers. They described a range
of tactics used to coerce them into hav-
ing sex. Some managers pretended to
wipe something from their uniforms,
only to grope them. Some called them
into their offices as if there were an emer-
gency, then demanded sex. Others asked
them to serve alcohol at a weekend party,
then assaulted them there. “When they
drank, they touched my body everywhere
like playing with toys,” a woman said.
The woman who did product transport
in Dalian said, “When they suddenly put
their mouths to mine, I wanted to throw
up.” If the women didn’t comply, the
managers could become violent. The
worker who was at Haiqing for more
than four years said, of her manager,
“When he doesn’t get his way sexually,
he gets angry and kicks me. . . . He calls
me a ‘fucking bitch.’”Three of the women
said that their managers had forced work-
ers into prostitution. “Whenever they “This recipe turned out awful despite my
can, they flirt with us to the point of substituting every major ingredient.”
nausea and force us to have sex for money,
and it’s even worse if you’re pretty,” an-
other worker at Haiqing said. The worker
• •
from Jinhui noted, “Even when there
was no work during the pandemic, the The worker who told me that she wanted clams in Dandong explained. As 2023
state demanded foreign-currency funds to die said that such deaths are often kept ended, the North Korean government
out of loyalty, so managers forced work- hidden. “If someone dies from suicide, began planning to dispatch its next wave
ers to sell their bodies.” The worker who then the manager is responsible, so they of workers. In the past couple of years,
spent more than four years at Haiqing keep it under wraps to keep it from being according to reporting by Hyemin Son,
said, of the managers, “They forced vir- leaked to other workers or Chinese peo- a North Korean defector who works for
gin workers into prostitution, claiming ple,” she said. Radio Free Asia, labor brokers have re-
that they had to meet state-set quotas.” This past year, pandemic restrictions quested that Chinese companies pay a
The pandemic made life more diffi- were lifted, and the border between large advance; they were being asked to
cult for many of the women. When China China and North Korea reopened. In pay ahead of time, one broker told her,
closed its borders, some found themselves August, some three hundred North Ko- because “Chinese companies cannot op-
trapped far from home. Often, their work- rean workers boarded ten buses in Dan- erate without North Korean manpower.”
places shut down, and they lost their in- dong to go back home. Police officers Some North Korean workers have
comes. North Korean workers sometimes lined up around the buses to prevent yet to go home. One woman said that
pay bribes to government officials to se- defections. In photos and a video of the she has spent the past several years gut-
cure posts in China, and, during the pan- event, some of the women can be seen ting fish at a processing plant in Dalian.
demic, many borrowed these funds from hurriedly preparing to load large suit- She described working late into the night
loan sharks. The loans, typically between cases onto a neon-green bus, then rid- and getting sores in her mouth from
two and three thousand dollars, came ing away across the Friendship Bridge. stress and exhaustion. In the question-
with high interest rates. Because of work In September, another three hundred naire, I had asked about the worst part
stoppages in China, North Korean work- boarded a passenger train to Sinuiju, of her job, and she said, “When I am
ers were unable to pay back their loans, and two hundred were repatriated by forced to have sex.” She also described
and loan sharks sent thugs to their rela- plane. Workers who return face intense a sense of imprisonment that felt suffo-
tives’ homes to intimidate them. Some questioning by officials. “They asked cating. “If you show even the slightest
of their families had to sell their houses about every single thing that happened attitude, they will treat you like an in-
to settle the debts. In 2023, according to every day from morning to evening in sect,” she said. “Living a life where we
Radio Free Asia, two North Korean China, about other workers, supervisors, can’t see the outside world as we please
women at textile plants killed themselves. and agents,” the worker who processed is so difficult that it’s killing us.” 
A REPORTER AT LARGE
STARBURST
The next big solar storm could devastate our power grid and communication systems. Are we prepared?
BY KATHRYN SCHULZ
K
en Tegnell’s first home was on 1226. Today, his job is simultaneously so fect the entire nation. One is a pandemic.
Alcatraz. At the time—this was obscure that most people have never The other is a severe solar storm.
in the nineteen-fifties—there heard of it and so important that virtu- That is why Tegnell’s job is so impor-
was, in addition to the federal peniten- ally every sector of the economy depends tant. But “space-weather forecaster” is an
tiary, a preschool, a post office, and hous- on it. His official title, one shared by no optimistic misnomer; for the most part,
ing for prison employees and their fam- more than a few dozen Americans, is he and his colleagues can’t predict what
ily members. That included Tegnell, who space-weather forecaster. Ever since leav- will happen in outer space. All they can
lived with his mother and grandfather, ing the Air Force, Tegnell has worked for do is try to figure out what’s happening
a guard, while his father was stationed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric there right now, preferably fast enough
in Korea. The whole of Alcatraz Island Administration’s Space Weather Predic- to limit the impact on our planet. Even
is less than a tenth of a square mile, so, tion Center, in Boulder, Colorado: ten that is difficult, because space weather is
despite all the security measures and “DO hours a day, forty hours a week, three de- both an extremely challenging field—it
NOT ENTER” signs, the inmates and ci- cades spent staring at real-time images is essentially applied astrophysics—and
vilians were never very far apart. Yet even of the sun. Eleven other forecasters work a relatively new one. As such, it is full of
given the proximity to the likes of Whitey there as well. The remaining ones are many lingering scientific questions and
Bulger, it was a peaceful place to live. employed by the only similar institution one looming practical question: What
The view was spectacular, almost none in the country: the Space Weather Op- will happen here on Earth when the next
of the non-incarcerated residents locked erations Center, run by the Department huge space storm hits?
their doors, and almost all of them knew of Defense on Offutt Air Force Base, in
one another and shared the camarade- Sarpy County, Nebraska. he first such storm to cause us trou-
rie of an unusual identity. “We were an
odd group of people,”Tegnell jokes, “and
Regular, Earth-based weather is such
a fundamental part of our lives that we
T ble took place in 1852. In late Au-
gust, the aurora borealis, which is nor-
that’s why I’m strange the way I am.” are almost always aware of it and very mally visible only in polar latitudes, made
When Tegnell’s father returned from often obsessed with it; it is the subject a series of unusual appearances: in Ha-
Korea, the family moved away, and then of everything from idle chitchat to im- vana, Panama, Rome, New York City.
moved often. But eventually Tegnell re- passioned political debate. By contrast, Then, in early September, the aurora re-
turned to the Bay Area—this time to at- most people have no idea that there is turned with such brilliance that gold
tend Berkeley, which, by the late nineteen- weather in outer space, let alone what its miners in the Rocky Mountains woke
sixties, was another island of odd people. fluctuations might mean for our planet. up at night and began making breakfast,
While taking an astronomy course there, That’s because, unlike everyday weather, and disoriented birds greeted the non-
he attended a lecture by a not yet famous you can’t experience space weather di- existent morning.
scientist named Carl Sagan. Interested rectly. It doesn’t make you hot or cold, This lovely if perplexing phenome-
in things that happen in the sky and un- doesn’t flood your basement or take the non had an unwelcome corollary: around
moved by the hippie culture around him, roof off your home. In fact, until the the globe, telegraph systems went hay-
Tegnell joined the Air Force, in 1274. The nineteenth century, it had almost no ap- wire. Many stopped working entirely,
military taught him to use telescopes and preciable effect whatsoever on human while others sent and received “fantas-
radio arrays, then sent him to the Lear- activity. Then came a series of scientific tical and unreadable messages,” as the
month Solar Observatory, at the north- revolutions that made certain technolo- Philadelphia Evening Bulletin put it. At
western tip of Australia, to gather data gies, from electricity to telecommunica- some telegraph stations, operators found
about the sun. He served two tours there, tions, central to our lives. Only later did that they could disconnect their batter-
twelve hours from anything that could we realize that those technologies are ies and send messages via the ambient
be called a city—a godforsaken place, as vulnerable to the effects of weather in current, as if the Earth itself had be-
Tegnell recalls it, but gorgeous, with beau- outer space. The potential consequences come an instant-messaging system.
tiful beaches, terrific fishing, and almost are as sweeping as our technological de- Owing to a lucky coincidence, all these
no rainfall year-round. Whether work- pendence. In 2012, the Federal Emer- anomalies were soon linked to their likely
ing or playing, he spent his days there gency Management Agency, surveying cause. At around noon on September 1st,
looking at the sun. the landscape of possible disasters, con- the British astronomer Richard Car-
That is still how Tegnell makes a liv- cluded that only two natural hazards rington was outside sketching a group
ing, although he hung up his wings in have the capacity to simultaneously af- of sunspots when he saw a burst of light
FEMA has identified two natural hazards that could affect the whole nation at once: pandemics and space weather.
ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT BEATTY THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024 27
ing Societal and Economic Impacts.”
The title was dry; the contents were
not. The report noted that the Earth
hadn’t experienced a Carrington-size
storm during the space age, or, for that
matter, during the age of widespread
electrification, and that much of the coun-
try’s critical infrastructure seemed un-
likely to withstand one. Extensive dam-
age to satellites would compromise
everything from communications to na-
tional security, while extensive damage
to the power grid would compromise ev-
erything: health care, transportation, ag-
riculture, emergency response, water and
sanitation, the financial industry, the con-
tinuity of government. The report esti-
mated that recovery from a Carrington-
“O.K., so if we share a ride and cut out all the singing, we just might class storm could take up to a decade
be able to make it to the Emerald City in time for happy hour.” and cost many trillions of dollars.
That report made headlines, and
also made its way to President Barack
• • Obama—who by then had appointed
a new FEMA administrator, a man
on the surface of the sun: the first known same time. In May, 1967, all three radar named Craig Fugate. At the time, very
observation of a solar flare. When ac- sites of the Ballistic Missile Early Warn- few people even within the emergency-
counts of the low-latitude auroras started ing Systems then maintained by the U.S. response community knew much about
rolling in, along with reports that mag- Air Force appeared to have been jammed; space weather. But, by chance, Fugate
netometers—devices that measure fluc- worried that the Soviet Union was on had crossed paths with the Space
tuations in the Earth’s magnetic field— the verge of attacking, military officials Weather Prediction Center earlier in
had surged so high they maxed out their nearly scrambled nuclear-equipped air- his career; interested in the center’s
recording capabilities, scientists began to craft. Five years later, during the Viet- work, he had made himself into some-
suspect that the strange things happen- nam War, the United States started sow- thing of a space-weather expert.
ing on Earth were related to the strange ing the waters outside North Vietnamese As a result, when the White House
thing Carrington had seen on the sun. seaports with mines that had magnetic came knocking to ask if it should be
Wonderment over the Carrington sensors, to trigger explosions when steel- concerned about the N.A.S. report, Fu-
Event, as it is now known, faded almost hulled vessels passed overhead. Three gate was in a position to offer an em-
as quickly as the auroras—but sixty years months after that program began, many phatic yes. The question, for him, wasn’t
later it happened again. In May, 1921, of those mines—four thousand of them, whether a major solar storm posed a risk
dazzling lights filled the night sky in according to one contemporaneous to the nation; it was how best to pre-
places as far from the poles as Texas and source—detonated almost simultaneously. pare for it beforehand and recover from
Samoa; this time, too, spectacle was fol- An investigation determined that the it afterward. And so, as he began set-
lowed by debacle. “Electric fluid” leap- plan had been compromised not by Hanoi tling into his job, and getting to know
ing from a telegraph switchboard set on but by a newly discovered solar phenom- the rest of the senior leaders at FEMA,
fire a railroad station in Brewster, New enon called a coronal mass ejection. he made a habit of presenting them with
York, while stray voltage on railway sig- In time, aided by each new techno- a hypothetical situation. “I asked them
nal and switching systems halted trains logical difficulty, astrophysicists began what they would do if there was a G5
in Manhattan and, farther north, started to piece together a better understand- storm,” Fugate told me, referring to the
a fire at Albany’s Union Station. ing of the weather in outer space. But highest classification on the NOAA Space
Over the years, at odd intervals, this science can take a long time to make in- Weather Scale, akin to an F5 tornado or
pattern kept repeating: brilliant night roads into public awareness, let alone a Category 5 hurricane. “And they go,
skies followed by troubling consequences, public policy, so space weather remained ‘What’s a G5 storm?’” Hoo boy, Fugate
which changed in concert with evolving a mostly marginal subject until 2008, remembers thinking. We got a problem.
technologies. Teletype machines ceased when the National Academy of Sciences
to operate; or transatlantic cables stopped convened a group of experts to assess n space weather, every day is a sunny
working; or worldwide radio circuits fell
silent; or hundreds of thousands of miles
the nation’s capacity to endure its ter-
restrial effects. Later that year, the N.A.S.
Iinterplanetary
day. There is no interstellar rain, no
snow, no sleet spinning
of transmission lines used to send and published a report on the findings, “Se- off the rings of Saturn; all the phe-
receive wire stories all went down at the vere Space Weather Events: Understand- nomena we call space weather origi-
nate on the sun. And so, to start, you ners would eventually lap the others, occur separately, but when large ones
must shed the idea—implicit in our and the ribbon would cross over itself. occur together they mark the begin-
meteorology and omnipresent in our The longer the race lasted, the more ning of a major solar storm.
metaphors—that the sun is a mild and tangled the ribbon would become.
beneficent force, a bestower of good That’s what happens to solar-mag- he forecasting room of the Space
moods and great tans.
In reality, the sun is an enormous
netic-field lines. They twist and criss-
cross until clusters of them pop up from
T Weather Prediction Center is a
dimly lit ground-floor office with no ex-
thermonuclear bomb that has been the sun’s surface, in huge loops that gen- terior windows. Nonetheless, in a sense,
exploding continuously for four and a erate enormous amounts of energy. sunlight is everywhere. Banks of moni-
half billion years. Its inner workings are (Think of the energy stored in a rub- tors run the length of one wall, filled
imperfectly understood even by helio- ber band when it is twisted and stretched. with real-time images of the sun. Some
physicists, who sometimes sound less Now imagine that the rubber band is a show only the disk, others only the co-
like scientists than like nineteen-fifties hundred thousand miles long.) The ends rona, others the entire star filtered
comic-book heroes, enthusiastically in- of these loops are sunspots, the phe- through different wavelengths of light,
voking things like flux tubes and con- nomenon that Carrington observed in turning it pale pink and brilliant yellow,
vection zones and galactic-cosmic-ray 1859. He could see them readily enough electric blue and neon green. Two large
dropouts. Fortunately, for our purposes, for two reasons. The first is that they images in the center show the sun as a
the only two solar phenomena you need are darker than their surroundings, be- writhing riot of orange and gold, the
to understand are solar flares and coro- cause they are a couple of thousand de- loops and filaments of its magnetic field
nal mass ejections, both of which stem grees cooler; the intensity of their mag- lines rendered visible not by scientific
from the same thing: a buildup of en- netic fields hinders the flow of hot gas instruments but by its own plasma, which
ergy in the magnetic field of the sun. across the sun. The second is that they is drawn to those field lines the way iron
You are probably familiar with the are large. An average sunspot is the size filings are drawn to bar magnets. Viewed
Earth’s magnetic field, which makes all of the Earth, while the biggest ones can this way, the sun does not make you want
life here possible by deflecting danger- be ten times larger. to grab a paperback and lie in a ham-
ous radiation from outer space. If you Forecasters like Ken Tegnell watch mock. It looks like a volcanic eruption
could see that field, it would look like sunspots for the same reason that reg- as seen from deep inside the caldera; it
a relatively tidy series of rings surround- ular meteorologists watch low-pres- looks like a wildfire raging beneath forty
ing our planet, flowing out at the South sure areas in the tropics: to see if a billion hurricanes; it looks like, when it
Pole and reëntering at the North. The storm is forming. This happens when is over, there will be no survivors.
solar magnetic field does not look like one of those twisted magnetic fields Surrounded by all of this, unfazed,
that. That’s largely because, although suddenly rips apart, then snaps back Tegnell is logging in for his shift. In the
the sun is three hundred thousand times together again. That rearrangement hallway just outside, a mannequin stands
more massive than the Earth, no part returns the magnetic field to a more upright in a NASA uniform. The uni-
of it is solid. Instead, it is made of plasma, stable, lower-energy state, while reform is the old-school, pale-blue kind,
that strange and mesmerizing fourth leasing the excess energy into space in and the mannequin is pale and old
state of matter. (Heat up a liquid and two different forms. The first is a solar school, too—crewcut, chisel-jawed, per-
it turns into a gas. Heat up a gas and it manently twentysomething. Tegnell
turns into a plasma, a glowing slurry of does not look like that. Bigger, bearded,
electrically charged particles.) As a re- older, he looks like the guy in the di-
sult, the sun doesn’t have to rotate rig- saster movie who has the right combi-
idly, as our planet must. One rotation nation of grit, experience, and indiffer-
of the Earth takes twenty-four hours ence to authority to save the day. At
in both Ecuador and Antarctica, but present, he is eye level with a brace of
one rotation of the sun takes approxi- computers, the screen of each one cov-
mately twenty-five days at its equator ered in flowing lines, as if the solar sys-
and thirty-three days at its poles. tem were hooked up to half a dozen
This uneven rotation wreaks havoc flare: a burst of radiation that can range heart-rate monitors.
on the sun’s magnetic field. Imagine a across the electromagnetic spectrum, Some of the information filling those
race in which eight people are lined up from gamma rays and X rays to radio screens comes from terrestrial observa-
on a track, holding on to the same long waves and visible light. Solar f lares tories, like the one where Tegnell used
elastic ribbon. The starting gun fires contain a colossal amount of energy— to work. The rest comes from space-
and the people start running. The two enough, in a large one, to meet our based equipment on satellites, managed,
in the middle are the fastest and the planet’s power needs for the next fif- variously, by NASA, NOAA, and the Eu-
two on the ends are the slowest, so after teen or twenty thousand years. The ropean Space Agency. Most of those
a while the middle two are far ahead second is a coronal mass ejection: a satellites are in orbit twenty-two thou-
and the ribbon looks like this: > . If the billion-ton bubble of magnetized sand miles above the Earth, a hundred
race kept going and the runners’ speeds plasma that explodes off the surface of times farther away than the Interna-
remained constant, the two middle run- the sun. These two phenomena can tional Space Station; a few are in orbit
a million miles away, or about one per a parental stint in the U.S., where his are the backbone of modern society:
cent of the distance to the sun. From mother worked for Ogden Nash, taking telecommunications, aviation, space-
these outposts, they transmit data to the care of his grandchildren.) Unlike Teg- based technology, and the power grid.
forecasting room, where it is Tegnell’s nell, he enjoys collaborating with other
responsibility to interpret the contents, people. At swpc—which is pronounced ost solar storms do not hit the
detect anything unusual, issue twice-
daily forecasts, and, when necessary, ac-
“swipsy,” like “tipsy”—he coördinates
space-weather-preparedness efforts with
M Earth, for the same reason that
most baseballs don’t hit one particular
tivate a suite of watches and warnings. government officials, emergency man- person in the stands. But, when a storm
Tegnell loves his job best when noth- agers, and the private sector, and he does get here, it gets here fast. Some of
ing is happening in the room—no doesn’t mind being loaned out to the the radiation from the solar flare arrives
groups of engineers trekking through, White House Office of Science and in a little more than eight minutes: the
no stray journalists hanging around— Technology Policy and working with amount of time it takes anything trav-
but when many things are happening the National Security Council. When a elling at the speed of light to cross the
up in the sky. That makes some stretches big storm starts materializing on one of ninety-three million miles between us
of his professional life duller than oth- the monitors in the forecasting room, it and the sun. All that energy smacking
ers, because sunspots follow an eleven- is Ken Tegnell’s job to notice. It is Bill into our atmosphere further ionizes the
year cycle, during which their activity Murtagh’s job to help minimize the ionosphere, its upper reaches. The result,
goes from infrequent (solar minimum) storm’s impact on everything it might in a severe storm, is a partial blackout of
to frequent (solar maximum). We are derail, damage, or destroy. low-frequency radio wavelengths and a
currently headed toward solar maxi- That is a long list, because solar complete blackout of high-frequency
mum, with activity on the sun expected storms affect a broad, strange swath of wavelengths across the entire side of the
to peak sometime between now and the human endeavor. For instance, out- Earth that’s facing the sun. Those black-
2025. That cycle is not wholly determi- side the swpc forecasting room, in a outs, which can last up to several hours,
native; a solar maximum can pass by glass case displaying old astronomical disrupt ham radios, AM radio, ground-
uneventfully, while a powerful storm devices and a statue of a sun god, there to-submarine communications (used by
can happen during solar minimum. is a life-size model of a homing pigeon. the Navy), backup ground-to-air com-
Still, solar maximum does tend to Pigeons navigate partly by tracking the munications (used by both military and
make Tegnell’s job more interesting. As Earth’s magnetic field; when it behaves civilian flights), and other backup com-
we talk, an automated voice keeps in- in uncharacteristic ways, a pigeon race munication, navigation, and timing sys-
forming him that a flare has been de- can end in a “smash,” the term of art tems used for military, government, and
tected, with the same impassive insis- for events in which many birds fail to maritime purposes.
tence of Siri saying, “Proceed to the return home. Since the most highly That is the first phase of a solar storm.
route.”Tegnell ignores it, having already prized pigeons can be worth more than Meanwhile, from the moment they
determined that the flare is too small a million dollars, some pigeon racers formed, the flare and the coronal mass
to produce any effects on Earth, except have become dedicated subscribers to ejection began transferring energy to
possibly some auroras for people living swpc’s space-weather alerts. Other con- any protons and electrons in their path,
near polar latitudes. (Auroras are the stituents are interested for even more accelerating them to relativistic or near-
only pleasant by-product of charged relativistic speeds. When those enhanced
particles entering our atmosphere, where protons and electrons, known as solar
they’re channelled north and south along energetic particles, reach our atmosphere,
magnetic-field lines and interact with sometimes in just tens of minutes, they
nitrogen and oxygen molecules, caus- form the second phase, known as a solar-
ing them to produce interesting colors.) radiation storm.
But then something else leaps off the As that name suggests, a solar-radi-
edge of the sun: a fountain of plasma ation storm can harm humans, although
that looks, to my untrained eye, enor- only if they happen to be up in the sky
mous. “It is enormous,” Tegnell affirms. while such a storm is taking place. For
“It’s just incredible.” It is not, however, arcane reasons. One of Murtagh’s fa- people on airplanes flying routes over
headed toward the Earth. vorite phone calls came from a man the poles (where energetic particles, fol-
“I know,” Tegnell’s colleague Bill who wanted to know if it was true that lowing magnetic-field lines, tend to con-
Murtagh says as he watches me watch- solar storms could interfere with G.P.S. centrate), that risk is minor; nonethe-
ing. “It’s stunning. I’ve been doing this signals. When Murtagh said yes, the less, such f lights get space-weather
for twenty-five years and I’ve never yet man had a follow-up question: How reports from swpc before takeoff, and
found it boring.” Like Tegnell, Murtagh did those storms affect electronic ankle will typically reroute if a big storm is
arrived at the Space Weather Prediction bracelets? (“You know,” Murtagh told expected. For astronauts, however, se-
Center via the U.S. Air Force, albeit the caller, “I’m not too familiar with that vere radiation storms are more of a con-
more circuitously, as his Irish accent sug- technology.”) But the sectors that bear cern. Those on the International Space
gests. (He owes his American citizen- the brunt of bad space weather are any- Station benefit from the attenuated but
ship to the fact that he was born during thing but niche interest groups. They still extant protection of the Earth’s
magnetic field, and during extreme ra-
diation events they can take cover in the
better-shielded parts of the station. But
for those beyond our atmosphere such
a storm could be lethal, either immedi-
ately or because radiation sickness would
render them unable to perform life-crit-
ical functions. One obstacle to some of
the space exploration currently being
contemplated is that the moon and Mars
lack a magnetic field to deflect the sun’s
radiation; as a result, absent adequate
shelter, both are extremely dangerous in
a solar storm. Only retroactively did it
become apparent how lucky NASA was
that no such storms happened during
the Apollo missions.
At the moment, though, the num-
ber of people in outer space—fewer than
a dozen—pales in comparison with the
number of satellites in outer space: more
than eight thousand. Like us, those sat-
ellites are imperilled by solar-radiation
• •
storms. For one thing, solar energetic
particles can pass straight into the sat- launched forty-nine new satellites as part leading to location inaccuracies of tens
ellites, physically damaging hardware of its Starlink system, which aims to pro- or, in rare cases, hundreds of metres.
and hijacking software by randomly vide sky-based Internet access to paying Those inaccuracies generally self-correct
changing ones to zeros or zeros to ones. customers anywhere on Earth. The com- when the storm subsides, and they don’t
For another, as those particles bombard pany knew that a storm had started just really matter if you’re using G.P.S. just
a satellite, different parts of it can build before the launch date, but it was a mild to remind yourself which exit to take
up different levels of charge, and the one—a G2, the second-lowest category for the airport. But an increasing num-
electricity can arc from one area to anon NOAA’s geomagnetic storm scale— ber of processes require constant access
other, attempting to neutralize itself and, and internal modelling suggested that to ultra-precise location data, including
in the process, damaging or disabling the satellites would be fine. One day after military operations, aviation, crop man-
the onboard electronics. launch, thirty-eight of them lost orbit agement, bridge building, and oil and
Finally, enhanced solar radiation in- and suffered catastrophic failure. natural-gas exploration, especially off
creases the density of certain regions of SpaceX still plans to launch tens of deep-sea platforms, where exact posi-
the Earth’s atmosphere, which increases thousands of satellites in the coming tions must be maintained during un-
the drag. This is particularly problematic years, and other entities are likewise ex- derwater drilling operations regardless
in lower Earth orbit (up to about twelve panding their fleets, deploying space- of wave action and drift.
hundred miles above the surface of our based technology for everything from The more important service provided
planet), where more than eighty per cent wildlife tracking to intelligence gather- by the Global Positioning System, how-
of all satellites are found. As drag in- ing. But, of all the satellites in the sky ever, is not about space but about time:
creases, those satellites can shift out of right now, none are more crucial than every G.P.S. satellite carries multiple
place, leaving both their owners and the those which constitute our Global Po- atomic clocks, normally accurate to within
North American Aerospace Defense sitioning System—or, to use the more a billionth of a second, which transmit
Command scrambling to find them in universal term, G.N.S.S., the Global hyperaccurate temporal information
order to maintain functionality, prevent Navigation Satellite System. known as G.P.S. timing signals. Those
collisions, and avoid confusion about their G.P.S. satellites are not endangered signals are one of our most essential pieces
identity: unidentified intruder or old by drag, because they are not in lower of invisible infrastructure. Cell-phone
friend in a new place? At best, satellites Earth orbit; up where they hang out, companies use them to manage the flow
experiencing this drag must use more there is not enough atmosphere left to of data over their networks. Media com-
fuel to maintain orbit, thereby shorten- affect them. But, to reach receivers on panies use them to broadcast programs,
ing their life spans; that’s why, back in the ground, signals from those satellites chopping up large data streams into
1979, Skylab crashed to Earth sooner than must cross some twelve thousand miles smaller packets to transmit them, then
expected. At worst, they lose orbit en- of space. During a solar storm, when recombining them upon arrival based
tirely, burning up on reëntry. In February our ionosphere is disturbed, those sig- on the time stamp. Power companies
of 2022, SpaceX, the space-exploration nals get distorted, much the way light use them to help regulate the flow of
company co-founded by Elon Musk, bends when it passes through water, electricity from source to destination,
protecting against surges and blackouts.
Computer applications use them to
coördinate any situation in which two EAT
or more users are working on the same
project in different locations. The finan- Grasshoppers devour the sunflowers
cial industry uses them to track mobile Petal by petal to raggedy yellow flags—
banking transactions and to time-stamp Squash blossoms of small suns blessed
every trade—a crucial traffic-control sys- By dewdrops flare beauty in the morning
tem in a world where hundreds of thou- Until an army of squash bugs land
sands of financial messages are processed And eat, then drag their bellies
every second. From the carnage—
Like G.P.S. location accuracy, G.P.S. Field mice chew their way
timing accuracy can suffer during a solar Into the house. They eat anything
storm. The longer and more severe the Sweet and leave their pebbled shit
storm, the more those errors compound, In staggered lines to the closet door.
until the systems that depend on the Hungry tree frogs cling to the screen.
signals no longer work correctly, or work Their curled tongues catch anything
at all. Backup programs are available; With wings driven to the light—
the Federal Aviation Administration, We find a snake hidden on the porch,
for instance, has alternative capabilities There are rumors in the yard
to keep planes flying safely when G.P.S. Of fat mice frolicking here.
fails. Over all, though, incorporation of The night is swallowing
such alternatives remains limited, for a Daylight.
straightforward reason: G.P.S. is a ser-
vice that our federal government pro- We sit down to eat.
vides free of charge. As the Department
of Homeland Security dryly noted in a —Joy Harjo
2020 report, “Without regulatory re-
quirements or positive benefit-cost equa-
tions, adoption of non-G.N.S.S. ser- enormously in volume. Once it arrives, tricity flows freely—and so can electri-
vices is unlikely.” it smashes into our magnetosphere, flat- cal problems, as when, in 2003, a shorted
In the meantime, our primary source tening whichever side is facing the sun power line in Ohio caused a blackout
of navigation and timing information (that is, the daytime side) and sending across much of the Midwest, the mid-
remains vulnerable to the vicissitudes the nighttime side streaming away from Atlantic, and the Northeast, leaving
of weather on the sun. So do the thou- the Earth, like a wind sock in a gale. If fifty-five million people in the dark.
sands of other satellites that increasingly you remember Faraday’s law, you know All this infrastructure, which contin-
fill our skies, courtesy of a young, boom- that moving a magnetic field around pro- ues across the border into Canada to
ing, and largely unregulated industry. duces an electric current. And so it is ul- form the North American Power Grid,
This worries the generally unflappable timately the Earth’s own storm-tossed is also known as the bulk-power system,
Bill Murtagh. “It’s a Wild West out in magnetosphere that induces excess elec- because it handles energy transmission,
space right now,” he says. His assess- tricity in our planet, thereby initiating not energy distribution. Distribution in-
ment of satellite companies is blunt: “I the third and final phase of a space- volves sending electricity from a local
do not think they are ready for a major weather event: the geomagnetic storm. substation to everything nearby that
space-weather event.” If he is right, when Although that storm can affect any- needs it—schools, stoplights, factories,
that event happens, large portions of thing long and metal (pipelines, railroad the toaster in your kitchen. Transmis-
our life could be compromised: infor- tracks), it poses the gravest danger to sion gets power to that substation, from
mation, communication, entertainment, power grids. In the United States, our one of the more than six thousand gen-
economic activity, national security. But grid is divided into three regions. The eration facilities on the North Ameri-
all those are our vulnerabilities just in Eastern Interconnection runs from the can grid (nuclear plants, hydroelectric
the sky. By most accounts, when the East Coast to the Rocky Mountains; dams, solar farms, etc.), via more than
next extreme space storm hits, the real the Western Interconnection runs from half a million miles of line.
problems will be the ones on the ground. the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean; Texas, The crucial nodes in this vast net-
in true Lone Star style, goes it alone. work are transformers. Power enters
Imassfmuzzle
a solar flare is something like the
flash of a cannon, a coronal
ejection is the cannonball: slower,
For the most part, power can’t flow from
one region to another—which is why,
when seventy-five per cent of Texas suf-
your home at a hundred and ten volts,
but voltage that low can’t be sent from
a coal plant in West Virginia to your
but more destructive. It takes anywhere fered blackouts during a winter storm laptop charger in Alexandria; too much
from fifteen hours to several days to reach in 2021, no outside energy providers energy (in the form of heat) would be
our planet, by which time it has expanded could help. But, within each region, elec- lost in transit. Instead, a transformer at
the power plant ramps up the electric- Weather Advisory Group and a man- transmission lines. A study commissioned
ity to hundreds of thousands of volts, ager of reliability assessments at the by the federal government and summa-
so that it can be transferred efficiently North American Electric Reliability rized in the report found that a storm
over long distances; once it reaches a Corporation—the nonprofit agency the size of the 1921 event would cause
substation, another transformer ramps tasked by the Federal Energy Regula- large regions of the grid to fail, with im-
the voltage back down until it can safely tory Commission and Canada’s pro- pacts that “would be of unprecedented
enter your home. Whatever its voltage, vincial governments with keeping the scale and involve populations in excess
all that power flows through the grid continent’s power grid sound and se- of 130 million”—close to half of all Amer-
as alternating current, moving at a con- cure—summed this up for me suc- icans. The report estimated the cost of
stant frequency of sixty hertz. cinctly: “blackout.” a storm like that as “$1 trillion to $2 tril-
Hold that thought; here comes the This can all happen almost instantly. lion during the first year alone . . . with
coronal mass ejection. It smacks into our On March 13, 1989, a coronal mass ejec- recovery times of four to ten years.”
magnetic field, warping it—or, in severe tion struck the Earth; within ninety sec- Fifteen years later, some experts be-
storms, temporarily ripping part of it onds, transformers on the Quebec power lieve that was the wake-up call: that the
open—and setting in motion the chain grid malfunctioned, dozens of safety 2008 report, in its sober-minded scari-
of events that sends additional electric mechanisms failed, and the entire grid ness, inspired reforms that will make
charge into the planet. Some of that shut down, leaving almost a quarter of the next severe solar storm more nui-
charge, which is known as geomagnet- the population of Canada in the dark. sance than nightmare. Bill Murtagh
ically induced current, dissipates harm- That geomagnetic storm—which also worries about satellite companies, but
lessly, because it flows into a part of the triggered outages in the U.K. and Swe- he thinks that most power companies
Earth that excels at conducting electric- den, destroyed a transformer at a nu- take space weather seriously and are
ity—salt water, say, or sedimentary rock. clear power plant in New Jersey, and doing their best to prepare for it. Mark
But, in places where the underlying rock caused at least two hundred other issues Olson, of the North American Electric
is a poor conductor, the current must go on the North American grid alone— Reliability Corporation, concedes that
elsewhere. Like all current, it follows the was strong, but not exceptionally so. solar storms present “a very challeng-
path of least resistance, and the least re- Based on magnetometer readings, au- ing risk” to the energy sector, not least
sistant path of all is the one designed to roral latitudes, and other fingerprints because we still know relatively little
conduct electricity: the power grid. left behind by solar storms, scientists about them. But, he says, when a major
By unfortunate chance, some of the now believe that at least three storms in one happens, “the North American grid
least conductive bedrock in the United the past hundred and fifty-odd years— won’t be taken by surprise.” And he
States is the very old metamorphic and the Carrington Event and others in 1872 points to a federal directive that, as of
igneous rock of the Appalachian Moun- and 1921—were roughly an order of mag- this January, requires every provider of
tains and the New England High- nitude more powerful. bulk power to have a plan in place to
lands—the geological substrates of deal with a “benchmark geomagnetic
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Wash- ll three of those storms took place disturbance event.”
ington, D.C., and much of the rest of
the Eastern Seaboard, home to half the
A before the power grid existed. The
question that troubles space-weather ex-
That directive is important, but the
benchmark itself is troubling. It was
country’s population. As detailed haz- perts—and divides them—is what will established by using thirty years of
ard maps recently created by the geo- happen the next time a comparable one magnetic-field data to extrapolate the
physicist Jeffrey Love and a team of strikes. Some people think that the likely magnitude of a once-in-a-century
his colleagues at the United States Geo- storm. The resulting standard is clear,
logical Survey show, some other parts uniform, achievable, extremely useful
of the country, notably the Midwest, during most solar storms, and wholly
are likewise vulnerable to geomagnet- inadequate for severe ones. As Olson
ically induced currents. acknowledged, the federal benchmark
What makes these currents so dis- is now widely believed to be weaker
ruptive is not their strength—they are than the Carrington Event.
actually quite weak—but their form. That wouldn’t matter if the Carrington
The power grid is built for alternating storm were an outlier, likely to happen
current, but geomagnetically induced only once every several hundred years.
currents are basically direct. The colli- Quebec event was a wake-up call—the But, in reality, it might not even have
sion of these two currents can lead to perfect-sized storm, really, large enough been the worst storm of the nineteenth
the inability to transfer power efficiently, to teach a lesson without being large century; the one in 1872 was at least as
large temperature spikes inside trans- enough to cause a catastrophe. But, per strong. We also know, from data col-
formers (which emit unholy groans and the N.A.S. report, any gains following lected by satellite, that a more powerful
bangs under the strain), relays and other the Quebec storm were offset by trends storm narrowly missed the Earth in 2012.
equipment tripping off-line, and, on a in America’s bulk-power system, which As that suggests, an extreme geomag-
very bad day, voltage collapse. Mark came to rely on ever-larger amounts of netic storm—the swpc people call it a
Olson, a member of NOAA’s Space power travelling through ever-longer G5-Plus, at the upper threshold of the
highest NOAA category of severity— expensive and time-consuming will also one-to-two-trillion-dollar figure in the
could be a more common event than dramatically compound the effects of a N.A.S. report is “probably on the low
previously thought. Some scientists now severe solar storm. “Transformers are side.” But he also raises a problem that
believe there is an approximately twelve- not just something you can go to Home extends beyond the power grid: because
per-cent chance of one striking the Earth Depot and buy,” Baker points out; each solar storms affect an unusually wide
in the next decade. one is idiosyncratic, a half-million- geographic area and an unusually broad
That scares some experts. One of the pound object designed specifically for range of technologies, they are more
eminences in the field of space-weather one of the fifteen hundred-plus enti- likely than other disasters to cause cas-
studies is Daniel Baker, who was the head ties, from publicly traded companies to cading failures. A malfunction in one
of space-plasma physics at Los Alamos energy coöperatives, that together con- part of the grid forces electricity to flow
National Laboratory and a division chief stitute the power grid. As a result, trans- elsewhere, overburdening a second part,
at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center formers can’t be stockpiled. They are al- which is then more likely to malfunc-
before going to the University of Colo- most always built to spec, and they are tion as well; the more such problems
rado to lead its Laboratory for Atmo- almost all made abroad, which increases you string together, the greater the bur-
spheric and Space Physics. “I do not want shipping times and leaves them vulner- den on the remaining parts, and the
to be unduly alarmist,” Baker told me. able to political conflict and supply- more likely a catastrophic failure. And
“But I do want to be duly alarmist.” Like chain issues. Even under optimal cir- what is true of the disaster is also true
so much American infrastructure, he cumstances, the typical lead time to of the disaster response. Unlike terrestrial
notes, our bulk-power system is under- replace a transformer is at least a year. hazards, solar storms are not, in FEMA-
funded and aging, while demand on it If enough of them fail in a solar storm, speak, “geofenced.”They can affect large
keeps rising—not only from population the recovery will not be measured in areas of the world, which minimizes
growth but from an incommensurate in- days (the length of time it took to get access to outside help in the aftermath.
crease in our energy use. As a result, he the power back after the Texas winter If an earthquake devastates Los Ange-
says, the grid is operating “closer and storms) or weeks (the length of time it les, aid can pour in from neighboring
closer to its maximum stress level.” In took after Hurricane Katrina). It will regions. But, if a solar storm devastates
that condition, it cannot easily absorb the be measured, almost unthinkably, in New York, anywhere close enough to
additional stress of a solar storm. months and years. help will likely be devastated, too
Our aging grid could be updated, That’s one reason Craig Fugate, the Above all, Fugate fears that, because
but the factors that make doing so former FEMA administrator, thinks the space weather affects so many technol-
ogies, a severe storm could expose de-
pendencies among them that we did
not fully appreciate, or did not recog-
nize at all. Our vast and interrelated
technological infrastructure could turn
out to harbor a single point of failure—a
component, no matter how central or
trivial, whose malfunction shuts the
whole thing down. Many experts regard
G.P.S. signals with alarm for this rea-
son; as a 2021 report by the National
Security Telecommunications Advisory
Committee noted, the signals are used
so ubiquitously in so many critical sec-
tors that “their vulnerabilities pose a
near-existential threat.” Alternatively,
an individual system that seems robust
in isolation might not respond as ex-
pected when other systems to which it
is connected simultaneously experience
powerful stressors—especially when
those stressors involve, as Fugate put it,
“more unknowns than knowns.” That
is true not only of technology but also
of the people who operate it; we do not
always perform at our best when things
around us start malfunctioning. In this
kind of “system of systems,” even seem-
ingly minor problems can concatenate
in calamitous ways.
Baker worries about this as well. can happen in ten to fifteen minutes.” private lives, we tend to focus on the high
“We’ve built ourselves into a cyber-elec- In part to facilitate these assessments, consequences: your nine-year-old will
tric cocoon,” he says, “and a lot of risk swpc makes all its space-weather in- almost certainly not be kidnapped while
analyses show that when you start to formation publicly available. “We have playing alone at the local playground,
lose nodes in that kind of a connected no problem sharing information across but you don’t let him do so, because the
system it can propagate in very unpre- the world,” Murtagh told me. The U.S. potential cost is too devastating. By con-
dictable ways. And there’s nothing out- has a vested interest in the global com- trast, corporations and nations tend to
side it.” In a closed loop like that, a di- munity not mistaking natural hazards focus on the low odds, and therefore
saster is disastrous not only because of for foreign adversaries; for that matter, wave away the possible consequences.
the problems it causes but because of given international supply chains and “I’m working with people and they’ll say,
the solutions it eliminates. Post-disas- international commerce, the United ‘Why do I need to spend a cent on this
ter relief and recovery operations rely States has a vested interest in the global issue? I’ve been here for forty years and
on functional transportation systems, community minimizing disruptions from I’ve never seen a problem,’ ” Murtagh
but airports, railroads, gas pumps, stop- solar storms. Whether it can do so is told me. “And I look at them and say, ‘I
lights, and an increasing number of ve- impossible to say; we don’t even know don’t know what to say to you.’” As far
hicles all need electricity. Emergency how prepared the U.S. is, and the world as the sun is concerned, “the Carrington
dispatchers rely on sophisticated com- is the ultimate system of systems, as we Event happened one second ago. And it
munication and mapping technologies, all learned at great cost from the pan- will happen again.”
but those technologies rely on work- demic. But it is difficult to be optimis- We don’t know when, of course; there
ing computers and satellite transmis- tic. For many nations, especially in the is so much we do not know. Before Teg-
sions. Power companies need water developing world, better space-weather nell became a space-weather forecaster,
supplies, but water companies need preparedness is low on the list of prior- he was a regular-weather forecaster, and
electricity. Knock over the wrong dom- ities for infrastructure improvements. he remains acutely aware of the differ-
ino and down goes, as the N.A.S. re- And yet, precisely because solar ence between them. It’s not just that
port put it, “just about every critical in- storms can cause the same problems as you have to go from thinking on the
frastructure including government enemy agents, better space-weather pre- scale of cities and counties to thinking
services.” Baker, who led the team be- paredness amounts to better prepared- on the scale of millions of miles. It’s that
hind the report, suspects that we will ness over all. “I think of space weather with solar events “you have no idea what
see a devastating storm within a few as a stand-in for all those other disrup- goes on in ninety per cent of them.”
decades, and that most of us alive today tions,” Kathryn Draeger, an agronomist Space-weather forecasting, he believes,
will suffer through those serial failures. at the University of Minnesota who re- is where terrestrial meteorology was sev-
“Maybe here in Colorado, we can go searches how to mitigate the impact of enty-five years ago. Back then, we were
out and hunt elk or something,” he says. solar storms on agriculture, told me. “A farther from today’s reality, of minute-
“But I’d be very concerned about the terrorist attack on our grid, an electro- by-minute weather information on your
major metropolitan areas.” magnetic pulse, a natural disaster, a pan- phone, and closer to the reality of six-
demic—if we can figure it out for space teenth-century mariners or third-century
ll these problems have a meta prob- weather, we will be better protected shepherds, for whom hurricanes and
A lem. Radio blackouts, communica-
tion disruptions, power-grid problems:
from all these other major disruptions.”
In theory, we’ve already figured out
blizzards happened more or less out of
nowhere, and for whom our vulnerabil-
to an uncanny degree, solar storms mimic some of it. We could require backup nav- ity to severe weather seemed immutable
malicious actors trying to sabotage tech- igation and timing systems; we could and inevitable, laid down as our lot in
nology that is central to our economy move away from ultra-long, ultra-high- life since that first Biblical flood.
and safety. Because of this, one of the voltage transmission lines. Certain new Someday, Tegnell says, our current
most important functions of swpc and technologies could help, such as devices understanding of space weather will
the Defense Department’s Space Weather that block geomagnetically induced cur- seem similarly sparse. We will put more
Operations Center is attribution—de- rents from entering the grid, as could a and better instruments in space; we will
termining whether a given anomaly was return to some old ones. The Army, con- learn more about the physical dynam-
caused by bad weather in space rather cerned about overreliance on vulnerable ics of the sun and their effects here on
than by a technical malfunction or de- technologies, has reinstated courses in Earth. Whether infrastructure improve-
liberate interference. Such determina- orienteering, and the Navy has resumed ments will keep pace with that knowl-
tions must be accomplished quickly: if teaching sailors how to use a sextant. edge is beyond his job description, and
you have a radar system that’s jammed Still, persuading people to implement beyond his ken. He is hoping to retire
or a missile-defense system that’s mal- safety measures is difficult, because se- this year, after half a century of service
functioning, you can’t wait around for vere solar storms are what people in emer- to the United States. He is not worried
long to figure out why. “When we see gency management sometimes call low- about being bored. He has spent a life-
something, we’ve got five to ten minutes frequency, high-consequence events. Such time studying solar activity and doesn’t
or less to get this stuff out,” Tegnell says. events are emotionally, ethically, and prag- figure that will change all that much.
Delay can be disastrous; in matters of matically vexing, and we respond to them “I’m the kind of guy,” he told me, “who
national security, Murtagh notes, “a lot in curious and inconsistent ways. In our likes looking at sunsets.” 
LETTER FROM THE WEST BANK
THE DISPOSSESSED
Israeli settlers are escalating attacks on their Palestinian neighbors.
BY SHANE BAUER
T
he sounds of destruction carried In Qaryut, Ma’amar operates a branch
through the valley. It was Octo- of the Red Crescent and administers
ber 28th, and I was standing on message groups that monitor the ac-
a rocky slope in the West Bank with tions of settlers and of the Israel De-
Bashar Ma’amar, a Palestinian who re- fense Forces. He is also a volunteer with
cords the aggressions of Israeli settlers. B’tselem, an Israeli human-rights group.
Ma’amar pointed a camera at a group One day when I visited Ma’amar, he
ransacking a house below us. A couple piled up a dozen cameras on his desk—
of days before, the settlers had set fire to old mini-D.V. camcorders, point-and-
it; the house’s owner had gone to the po- shoot 35-mm.s—some broken by settlers.
lice, but they had not intervened. As we It was a collection built up during nearly
watched, one settler kicked at the front twenty years of documenting settler vi-
door, and another tried to penetrate the olence and encroachment onto Palestin-
charred walls with a board. Others tore ian land. “My cameras are my weapons,”
a hole in the roof and slipped inside. On he said. “I’m probably the person in Qa-
the hillside opposite us, three Israeli sol- ryut who has filed the most complaints
diers and a man with a rifle stood watch- to the police, to the Supreme Court.”
ing. Eventually, the settlers joined the There had been some moments of suc-
soldiers to walk back to Eli, their settle- cess. He’d helped a man get back half of
ment, where mothers pushed strollers the hundred and seventy acres that set-
down tree-lined blocks of red-roofed tlers had seized from him. Mostly, though,
houses, people played tennis on courts his cases went nowhere. “The Israeli legal
with views of Palestinian farmland, and system doesn’t work for the benefit of
men and women carrying M16s and Uzis Palestinians,” he said.
shopped in strip malls. His obsession with documentation
“Now is the time for them to imple- was inherited from his grandfather
ment their objectives,” Ma’amar told me. Ahmed Odeh, who served for some thirty
“All the attention is on Gaza.” Ma’amar years as mayor of Qaryut. Ma’amar keeps
is forty-one, tall and lanky. He drove his century-old land deeds and tattered ad-
dilapidated car to Qaryut, his village of ministrative maps, which show that the
three thousand people, with winding al- surrounding settlements were built on
leys and olive groves that stretch in every private land.
direction. Qaryut, twenty miles north of When Ma’amar was born, in 1982, his
Ramallah, is in the fertile central high- village was next to only one settlement,
lands of the West Bank, the twenty-two- Shilo, established on land seized from
hundred-square-mile territory that has his grandfather. Eli was founded when
been occupied by Israel since 1967. After Ma’amar was five, taking more land from
Israel won the Six-Day War, fought Qaryut. Eli and Shilo, which each has
against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, it took nearly five thousand residents, subsumed
territory that included the West Bank, three of Qaryut’s five springs. The vil-
which most Israelis refer to as Judea and lage had to buy its water from Mekorot,
Samaria. Today, there are roughly half a Israel’s national water company.
million settlers in the West Bank, one The first time that Ma’amar wit-
for every six Palestinians. The Palestin- nessed settler violence was in 1996. It
ian Authority, which nominally governs was in the wake of the first election to
the territory, controls security—often Prime Minister of Benjamin Netanyahu,
with Israeli assistance—only in the urban who was intent on blocking any prog-
centers. In the remaining eighty-two per ress toward a two-state solution. Shilo
cent of the territory, Israel is in charge. took even more land from Qaryut, to The family of Bilal Saleh, who was killed
while harvesting olives. Since October 7th, the U.N. has recorded nearly six hundred attacks by settlers in the West Bank.
PHOTOGRAPH BY TANYA HABJOUQA THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024 37
make a vineyard. The village staged a had started tracking the trend, in 2006, to the village. Ma’amar took one of them
protest, which Ma’amar filmed. The and eleven hundred Palestinians in the in his ambulance. The I.D.F. dictated
Army and settlers rushed in, firing shots West Bank had been displaced. the route, then directed mourners to
into the air, and settlers beat people and change course to avoid settlers. But doz-
tried to take cameras from anyone doc-
umenting the scene. An Israeli court
ruled that the land should be returned
SGaza’since October 7th, when Hamas-led
fighters broke through the fence on
border with Israel and killed some
ens of settlers blocked the road and
stoned the procession anyway. “I got out
and talked to the Israeli commander,
to Qaryut, but Ma’amar said that set- twelve hundred people and took some begging him to make the settlers leave,”
tlers continued to attack people who ap- two hundred and fifty hostages, attacks Odeh said. “He told me to turn around.”
proached, so the land was effectively lost. near Qaryut have become routine. Settlers The settlers killed a sixty-two-year-old
In the years that followed, have burned cars and houses, man and his twenty-five-year-old son.
settlers put up tents, then blockaded roads, damaged “They can’t just continue to unleash
mobile homes, on hilltops. electricity networks, seized the settlers on us like that,” Odeh told
Settlements are mostly con- farmland, severed irrigation me. “My generation has always tried
sidered illegal under inter- lines, attacked people in their to reason with our youth, but they can
national law, but these out- fields and olive groves, and no longer take it, so what am I to do?
posts were illegal even under killed, all without repercus- People like me, who advocated for
Israeli law. Still, the govern- sion. Ma’amar told me that peace their whole lives—we are not re-
ment did little to dissuade a thousand acres had been spected anymore. They say what did
the hilltop settlers, who cut off from Qaryut. The Abu Mazen”—Mahmoud Abbas, the
viewed themselves as pio- U.N. has recorded five hun- president of the Palestinian Authori-
neers. The outposts were dred and seventy-three at- ty—“ever do for us? And they’re right.
quickly connected to larger settlements tacks by settlers in the West Bank since He keeps asking people to protest peace-
by water systems, power lines, and paved the war began, with Israeli forces accom- fully. Peacefully? There’s nothing peace-
roads. In time, a corridor of settlement panying them half the time. At least nine ful about the situation we’re in.”
took shape, slicing across the West Bank people have been killed by settlers, and On October 29th, settlers showed up
until the map looked more and more like three hundred and eighty-two have been at one of Qaryut’s two remaining springs.
the one envisioned by many settlers and killed by Israeli forces. Five Israelis have They hung an Israeli flag and, with sol-
political leaders, in which Palestinians been killed in the West Bank, at least diers present, demolished one of the large
would live in small and disconnected ter- one of whom was a civilian. concrete water basins that villagers had
ritories within an expanded Israel. Qa- On October 9th, settlers sent a pic- been using for irrigation for generations.
ryut sat right in the corridor’s path; there ture on Facebook to people in Qusra, a Then the Army closed Qaryut’s access
were now eight official settlements and few miles from Qaryut, of masked men road to the spring. The road separated
at least eleven smaller outposts in a five- holding axes, clubs, a gas can, and a Shilo and Eli, and Ma’amar guessed that
mile radius of the village. “Without inter- chainsaw, with text that read, “To all the the aim of the settlers and the Army was
national and legal pressure on the Israe- rats in the sewers of Qusra village, we to connect the two settlements.
lis, Qaryut will disappear,” Ma’amar said. are waiting for you and we will not feel For the next couple of weeks, settlers
In November, 2022, Netanyahu won sorry for you. The day of revenge is com- came to the spring frequently, accom-
reëlection for the sixth time. To form ing.” Two days later, at the edge of the panied by soldiers. Some wore shirts
a governing coalition, he allied with village, settlers lit utility poles on fire with the logo of Artzenu (“Our Land”),
leaders of far-right parties, including and tried to break into a house. For a a subsidiary of a government-funded or-
Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, half hour, a family huddled inside; then ganization which is dedicated to farm-
who advocate for annexing the West young men from the village arrived and ing land in the West Bank before “non-
Bank. Since then, the situation there has threw rocks at the Israelis. Ma’amar Jewish entities” do. (A spokesperson for
grown dramatically worse. In the first drove over in his ambulance. At that Artzenu said, “Not everyone who wears
nine months of 2023, Ma’amar filed about point, the settlers started shooting. A the shirt in their free time represents the
seventy police reports of settler violence. man handed Ma’amar a six-year-old organization’s values.”) One day, Ma’amar
In February, while he was driving an am- girl who had been shot. As the man filmed two soldiers in sniper costumes
bulance to pick up people injured in an walked away, he was shot and killed. on the hillside above the spring and
attack, settlers smashed his windows and When Ma’amar sped off, he said, set- young settlers burning tires on the ac-
tried to burn the vehicle. In June, Pales- tlers fired on his ambulance. Three Pal- cess road. One soldier, lying prone with
tinian gunmen killed four settlers near estinians were killed, one of them the his rif le balanced on a tripod, aimed
Eli; the next day, hundreds of settlers de- son of a man who had been killed by straight at Ma’amar.
PREVIOUS SPREAD: NOOR
scended on Turmus Aya, a nearby vil- settlers in 2017. Then the Israeli Army That day, I went down to the spring
lage, shooting residents and burning cars stormed the village and killed a thirteen- with Ariel Elmaliach, the mayor of
and houses, some with people inside. By year-old boy. Eli. Around ten young men and boys
September, 2023, the United Nations was The next day, Hani Odeh, the mayor were working to turn one of the con-
documenting around three settler-related of Qusra, arranged for a procession to crete basins into a swimming pool.
incidents each day, the highest since it transport the bodies from the hospital “Come in another week with shorts
and you can enjoy,” Elmaliach told me. said that the Army should “strike the not, and the exit of masses of Arabs who
He asked the group why they were cities of terror and its instigators with- lived here, willingly or not, to the sur-
doing this work. out mercy, with tanks and helicopters.” rounding Arab areas. This historic pat-
“To take more room around the set- Israel, he added, should act “in a way tern seems to require culmination.”
tlement,” a boy of about fifteen said. that conveys that the master of the Plans for expulsion go back to 1937,
“For our homeland,” Nadav Levy, a house has gone crazy.” While the Army when Britain proposed the partition of
bearded man in his early twenties, said. stood by, hundreds of settlers rampaged Palestine into two states and the trans-
He added that he didn’t understand why through Hawara, a village south of Nab- fer of about two hundred thousand Arabs
people in Qaryut were upset about their lus, killing one person and injuring about out of territory slated for the Jewish state.
project: “From my perspective, all of this a hundred, and burning some thirty Zionist pioneers attempted to expand
is our land.” homes and a hundred cars. It was the their territory by building settlements
Ory Shimon, twenty, said he felt that worst outbreak of settler violence in de- outside the proposed boundary. David
Israel was being unfairly scrutinized: cades. (The I.D.F. did not respond to Ben-Gurion, the future Prime Minister
“America came with ships and killed all a request for comment.) of Israel, wrote, in a letter to his sixteen-
the Indians and made them slaves. It’s Smotrich, who lives in a settlement, year-old son about settling the Negev
terrible, but now America doesn’t say, has become one of the most prominent Desert, “We must expel the Arabs and
‘We’re sorry, take the land back.’” settler ideologists. In 2017, he published take their place.” In the end, Ben-Gurion
Elmaliach told me I was not allowed his “Decisive Plan” for the Israeli-Pal- agreed to a U.N. partition plan that did
to take pictures, but then reconsidered. estinian conflict. The first step, he wrote, not call for the expulsion of Arabs from
“Let’s do a deal,” he said. “If you write was to make the “ambition for a Jewish Gaza and the West Bank, but he imme-
in your media that the Jews always take State from the river to the sea . . . an ac- diately began taking tactical steps to-
a place and they make it better, I give complished fact” by “establishing new ward expanding the territory. He and
you permission to take a picture.” He cities and settlements deep inside the other leaders devised a military strategy
picked up a couple of discarded bottles. territory and bringing hundreds of thou- called Plan Dalet, which aimed to “gain
“See, this is Arabs,” he said. sands of additional settlers to live there.” control of the areas of the Hebrew state”
The spring, Elmaliach said, belonged Once “victory by settlement” was ac- and “the areas of Jewish settlement . . .
to them, not to Qaryut. I showed him a complished, Smotrich continued, Pal- located outside the borders” through
map from the Civil Administration, Is- estinians would have two options: stay “operations against enemy population
rael’s governing body in the West Bank, in Israel, without the right to vote in centers,” “control of frontline enemy po-
showing that the spring was well out- national elections, or emigrate. “Zion- sitions,” and the “destruction of villages.”
side settlement boundaries. Eventually, ism,” he wrote, “was built based on pop- Should resistance be met, “the armed
he said, “I will give you a real answer. If ulation exchange e.g. the mass Aliyah force must be destroyed and the popu-
you are coming to a new land, and you of Jews from Arab countries and Eu- lation must be expelled outside the
are now the owner of that land, then you rope to the Land of Israel, willingly or borders of the state.” The Haganah (the
put in that land the rules that you want.”
IthenSmotrich,
February, 2023, Netanyahu appointed
the finance minister and
head of the Religious Zionist Party,
to a governmental position that granted
him sweeping powers over West Bank
settlements. In 2005, Smotrich had been
arrested as part of a small group in pos-
session of seven hundred litres of fuel.
The former deputy head of Shin Bet,
the Israeli internal security agency, ac-
cused him of plotting to blow up cars
on a highway to protest Israel’s with-
drawal from settlements in Gaza. (Smo-
trich denied the allegation and wasn’t
charged with a crime.) Now Smotrich
had the authority to legalize unautho-
rized outposts, to prevent enforcement
against illegal Jewish construction, to
thwart Palestinian development proj-
ects, and to allocate land to settlers.
Around the time of Smotrich’s
appointment, a Palestinian gunman
shot and killed two settlers. Smotrich
predecessor to the I.D.F.), destroyed live in them: the younger generation of residents “to stand up to the Arabs who
Palestinian villages and carried out mas- secular Israelis didn’t have the nostalgia try to harvest around our settlements.”
sacres. Three hundred thousand Arabs for pioneering that older Zionists did. Saleh, who was forty, kept his opin-
were expelled or fled before the British But Kook’s followers were more eager. ions to himself and avoided protests.
withdrew, in May, 1948. Then Israel de- As the government deliberated, Kook- But the land had been in his family
clared independence, Egypt and Syria ists announced that they were settling in for generations. He’d recently left his
invaded the territory, and another four Hebron. Allon, a one-time socialist, made job at a hotel in Tel Aviv and had been
hundred thousand Arabs were driven common cause with the right-wing set- selling herbs on the streets of Ramal-
out. By 1949, about eighty per cent of the tlers, immediately guaranteeing them lah. Without the olive harvest, he’d be
Arab population had been removed from jobs and trying to procure weapons for stretched thin. He and his friends and
the territory claimed by Israel, now larger them. Then he persuaded the Cabinet relatives chose a Saturday to pick olives,
than what the U.N. partition plan— to grant permission for a settlement. because it was the Jewish Sabbath, a day
which was never implemented—had out- The Kookists learned an important when the Orthodox settlers were likely
lined, and hundreds of villages had been lesson: if they took direct action and to be in synagogue or resting.
erased. Palestinians remember this as the found sympathetic officials, the state Saleh loaded up his family’s donkey
Nakba, or “catastrophe.” would follow. They formed a movement, and walked with his wife and kids
Smotrich’s desire to claim all of Pal- Gush Emunim, which tried to establish through their village, across from the
estine for Israel was held by many peo- settlements on the densely populated road where Israelis-only buses took set-
ple in 1948, but his belief that such col- mountain ridge south of Nablus, where tlers to their jobs, and down to their
onization is a divine commandment was Qaryut is situated. Yet the government, plot of trees. The settlement of Rehe-
marginal. Zionism was largely a secu- which, in accordance with Allon’s plan, lim looked down on them from less than
lar movement, and most Orthodox Jews had begun building settlements in less half a mile away. They put a tarp down
considered it a rebellion against God: populated areas, repeatedly evicted them. under a tree and started picking.
if he had exiled the Israelites, then only In 1977, the Labor Party, which had At around 10:30 a.m., Saleh’s friend
he could determine when the punish- held power since the founding of the Sami Kaf ineh was driving back to
ment should end. Smotrich, like a third state, was defeated by the Likud Party. al-Sawiya from Nablus. Just before he
of West Bank settlers today, follows the Like Gush Emunim, Likud advocated reached the village, he noticed four men,
teachings of a rabbi named Tzvi Yehuda for complete Israeli sovereignty “be- dressed in white, walking from Rehelim
Kook, who preached that Jews should tween the Sea and the Jordan.”The gov- toward the olive grove. He pulled over and
play an active role in bringing about ernment started building settlements shouted that settlers were approaching.
God’s forgiveness by gaining possession throughout the West Bank, and put People who were in the grove told
of the entirety of the Biblical Land of them under the management of Gush me that, as soon as Bilal Saleh realized
Israel. By establishing a state, secular Emunim, which it funded. The state that the settlers were coming, he hur-
Jews—“good sinners,” he called them— encouraged Israelis to move in, offering ried his wife and children to safety, leav-
had unwittingly created a stepping stone housing subsidies, lower income tax, and ing their belongings behind. As they
to the “foundation of the throne of God state grants for businesses. By the early walked to the road, Saleh, realizing he’d
in the world.” When Israel occupied the nineties, there were some hundred thou- left his phone behind, turned back. He
West Bank, in 1967, Kook’s devotees be- sand Israelis living in a hundred and returned to the plot, picked up his phone,
lieved that it was a miracle. twenty settlements in the West Bank. and was shot.
Government off icials disagreed Kafineh was still on the road above.
about what to do with the West Bank. n October 28, 2023, Bilal Saleh woke As soon as he heard the rifle crack, he
Maximalists, like Yigal Allon, a former
special-forces commander, had been
O early to prepare for the olive har-
vest in the village of al-Sawiya. He knew
started filming. The four settlers were in
a clearing; one had an M16 and was walk-
stopped short of taking the territory beit was risky. A couple of days earlier, ing along the edge of the terraced grove
fore borders were established, in 1949, farmers had returned from their olive of olive trees. The settler fired again, and
and wanted to finish the job; other of- groves in the nearby village of Deir Is- walked away. A video shows Saleh lying
ficials worried that incorporating nine tiya to find flyers on their cars that read, in the dirt, his chest and mouth bloody.
hundred thousand Palestinians into Is- “You wanted war, now wait for the great Then settlers rewrote the story. In a
rael would upend the country’s Jewish Nakba. . . . This is your last chance to statement, Yossi Dagan, the head of the
majority. Levi Eshkol, the Prime Min- escape to Jordan in an orderly fashion settlers’ regional council whose area of
ister at the time, said, “We got a lovely before we forcibly expel you from our authority includes Rehelim, said that a
dowry. The trouble is that the dowry holy lands, which were given to us by combat soldier on leave had been “at-
comes with the wife.” Allon proposed a God.” Since October 7th, messages in tacked by tens of Hamasniks.” The har-
compromise: annex the least populated settler chat groups had portrayed olive vest around Israeli settlements had to be
regions—a third of the territory—and pickers as undercover Hamas operatives stopped, he said, because it was “being
give the rest back to Jordan. He pro- and as Nazis. Elmaliach, the mayor of used as a platform for terrorism.” Set-
posed establishing settlements until the Eli, which is a mile and a half from tlers later shared an image from Saleh’s
annexation was complete. al-Sawiya, sent around a sign-up sheet funeral, in which his brother, Hisham, is
The difficulty was finding people to calling for the “full mobilization” of his waving a Hamas flag. Shortly afterward,
Israeli police arrested Hisham. Polls show
that support for Hamas in the West Bank,
where dissatisfaction with the Palestin-
ian Authority is widespread, has risen
from twelve per cent to forty-four per
cent in recent months. Seventy-two per
cent of Palestinians polled also said that
they thought the October 7th attack was
“correct.” (Ninety-four per cent of Israe-
lis think that the I.D.F. is using either
an appropriate or an insufficient amount
of force in Gaza.)
“We don’t have any hope,” Bilal’s
cousin Hazem Saleh told me. He pointed
toward some new houses in the village.
Their owners didn’t intend for them “to
be demolished or bombed,” he said.
“They are not calling for fighting, or
killing, or war. But when they are afraid
to go out, when they don’t have the min-
imum standard of living, when they are
pressured, their reaction will be the same
as the action.”
Hisham Saleh spent three months “It certainly looks like we accidentally created a miniature black hole,
in jail, without charges, for waving the but, just to be sure, let’s throw in some more office supplies.”
Hamas flag. The settler who shot Bilal
was arrested, and released a few days
later. “We are happy that the court de-
• •
cided from the beginning that that was
self-defense,” his lawyer, Nati Rom, told the bus, killing the driver and a settler ernment mostly stopped building new
me. The judge had cited the events of from Shilo named Rachel Drouk. After settlements, but in 1998, ahead of the
October 7th, writing, “The vigilance to Drouk’s funeral, twenty-five women set final status talks for Oslo, Ariel Sharon,
which we are commanded by the blood up a mourning tent on the spot of the then the foreign minister, urged settlers
of our brothers and sisters who fell for killing. After three weeks, they issued to occupy territory themselves. On the
the sanctity of the land and the defense their Feminist Manifesto. “We remain radio, he said they should “run, grab
of the homeland is a real obligation.” at this site demanding to found a set- more hills, expand the territory. Every-
Rom said that, to his knowledge, no tlement, for this is the only Zionist re- thing that’s grabbed will be in our hands.
other settlers had faced charges since sponse to this criminal murder,” it read. Everything we don’t grab will be in their
October 7th. Settler violence was “fake Under Army protection, the settlers hands.” In the next nine years, roughly
news,” he said. seized land belonging to Saleh’s village, a hundred illegal outposts were created.
and installed mobile homes on it. In 2001, during the second intifada,
aleh’s shooter was back in the Army, Two years later, Prime Minister a popular Palestinian uprising against
Sforty-six-year-old
so I visited one of his neighbors, a
woman named Reuma
Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, the
leader of the Palestine Liberation Or-
the occupation, Harari and her family
decided to move from Jerusalem to
Harari. At the gate of Rehelim, soldiers ganization, agreed on the first stage of Rehelim. She had asked herself, “What
took my passport, then security escorted the Oslo Accords. Israel and the P.L.O. can I do for this country?” She knew
me to Harari’s house. Her back yard recognized each other, and the Pales- that, wherever settlers go, “the Army
was a suburban idyll: a swing set on an tinians gained limited autonomy in Gaza will come,” she said. “Zionism for me
AstroTurf lawn, an oak tree, a small dog; and some of the West Bank, under the is dreaming and doing.” Four years later,
Tel Aviv was only forty minutes away, administration of the newly created Pal- a government report revealed that the
if the traffic was light. She offered me estinian Authority. But major issues— World Zionist Organization and a num-
a seat under an olive tree. “Ironic,” she the future of Jerusalem, the ability of ber of ministries had been secretly di-
said, chuckling. Palestinian refugees to return, the set- verting millions of dollars to settler out-
Harari was eager to tell me about the tlements, and the border—were left for posts with the active collusion of the
origin of her settlement. “It’s not a vic- a final agreement to be made in five military and the police. “It seems that
tim story,” she said. “It’s just the oppo- years’ time. That agreement never came the lawbreaking has become institu-
site.” In 1991, settlers were on a bus to to pass, and the hope for a two-state tionalized,” the report said. The govern-
Tel Aviv to protest peace talks taking solution has steadily vanished. ment declared that such outposts would
place in Madrid. Palestinians attacked Under international pressure, the gov- be evacuated, but in the twenty-tens
to the Jordan Valley is granted twenty
acres of agricultural land.
The residents of the valley’s more
than twenty settlements are a mix of
Orthodox Jews and the secular descen-
dants of early Labor Party settlers. In
the “eco settlement” of Rotem, businesses
offer acupuncture, natural cosmetics, and
“holistic therapy.” People live in yurts,
buildings made from hemp, and con-
verted vehicles. One day, I sat under a
thatched roof at a café where barefoot
waitresses served vegan meals. Yet, as in
other parts of the West Bank, violence
is woven into the fabric of life. A fam-
ily posed for a photograph looking over
the valley, the man raising an M16 in the
air. A small Palestinian sheepherding
community sat on the valley floor. Rotem
settlers had recently been showing up in
the night, demanding that the Palestin-
ians evacuate.
Many of the sixty-five thousand Pal-
estinians in the Jordan Valley are the de-
scendants of Bedouins who fled what is
now Israel in 1948. Israel has long re-
stricted their access to water and demol-
ished their buildings. In the five months
“There it is, Jenkins. The Wi-Fi password.” before October 7th, hundreds of Pales-
tinians, the residents of three communi-
ties, left. Their exodus was prompted by
• • a relatively new type of settler—the Or-
thodox Jewish shepherd.
Netanyahu retroactively legalized many it normal?” Then she recovered. “We are In the northern part of the valley, I
of them, including Rehelim. not going anywhere,” she said. “ ‘Home- visited Moshe and Moriah Sharvit, whose
Harari said that Rehelim’s stance to- land’ is not a figure of speech.” sheep farm doubled as a bed-and-break-
ward its Palestinian neighbors had al- fast, with offerings including air-condi-
ways been “If you live peace and quiet, en miles east of Rehelim, the olive tioned Bedouin-style tents and talks about
we will live peace and quiet.”
When I mentioned the various at-
T groves and crowded settlements and
Palestinian villages give way to the cara-
“Zionism and the importance of settling
on farms and the seizure of land.”
tacks perpetrated by inhabitants of her mel-colored expanse of the Jordan Val- Moriah, who is twenty-eight, wore a
settlement through the years, Harari re- ley. The valley stretches six miles wide, daisy-print dress and a dark-green head
sponded with examples of settlers killed from the Jordan River to the hills of the scarf, and had a blond infant strapped to
in other parts of the West Bank, or by central highlands, and fifty miles long, her back. Mountains rose in the west,
discussing October 7th. “My neighbors, from the Dead Sea to the Israeli city of and on the eastern horizon, beyond Pal-
if they have the ability, will come and Beit She’an. Israel has eyed the region estinian villages, the Jordan Highlands
butcher me in my bed,” she said. She for annexation since Allon’s plan of 1967. were outlined faintly. All this, she be-
likened the Hamas attacks to Auschwitz, Sparsely populated, it makes up about a lieved, was given to her by God.
but she also said that they brought her quarter of the West Bank’s landmass. Moriah was born in New Jersey and
a “shred of joy,” because “now we earned Since 2012, Israel has been building what grew up in West Bank settlements. After
back our unity. Now it’s like ’48 again.” Dror Etkes, a longtime authority on set- she and Moshe married, at nineteen, they
Harari could understand why Pales- tlements, called its “biggest and most ex- wanted a different life. The settlements,
tinians might resent settlers. “Israel is an pensive infrastructure project” in the West with their fences, cameras, and security,
occupied territory from the river to the Bank, piping water from Jerusalem to were like “ghettos,” Moriah said. She in-
sea,” she said. If she were Palestinian, she settlers’ date plantations throughout the vited me into their mobile home. A cou-
went on, she “would probably think we valley. “They are building a project that ple of M16s sat on a woodstove. Moshe,
are not supposed to be here and we should costs a fortune,” Etkes said. “From their an olive-skinned man with a short black
go.” She sometimes asked herself, “Is it point of view, they are going to be here beard, ate in the kitchen. I recognized
worthwhile? Are the kids suffering? Is forever.” Any Jewish family that moves him. Israeli anti-occupation activists had
documented him dispersing Palestinians’ settler organization called Amana. At lition orders for two years, but Moriah
sheep with his A.T.V., sending his dogs a 2021 conference titled “The Battle for said that no one had pressured them to
after them, and following with a drone. State Lands,” Amana’s secretary-general, leave: “Israel understands—either we’re
Moshe had had a vineyard and an Ze’ev Hever, a convicted member of the here or the land’s gonna be taken away.”
olive grove, Moriah told me, but that Jewish Underground terrorist organiza- On the living-room wall, a monitor
didn’t allow for the control of much land, tion, explained that traditional settle- displayed live footage from cameras that
so he turned to sheepherding. “When ments had been an inefficient way to surveilled the surrounding area. Their
you have sheep, you go here, you go there, seize land. “It took us more than fifty farm acted as “eyes” for the Army, Mo-
wherever there is food to graze,” she said. years to get a hundred square kilome- riah told me. “We could report on ille-
“You can protect more land.” tres,” he said. Sheep farms, on the other gal buildings, on illegal hunting. . . . We
Moriah and Moshe set up the out- hand, control “more than double the area work together.” On the screen, the angle
post in 2020. “It’s not like we bought the of built-up settlements.” of one of the cameras changed; Moriah
land from someone,” she said. “It doesn’t Avi Naim, the former director gen- said that it, like cameras at other out-
belong to us.” Yet she described their mis- eral of the Ministry of Settlement Af- posts in the valley, was controlled by a
sion as preventing land theft. She pointed fairs, said that herding outposts were soldier at a command center.
through a window toward some Pales- helping “prevent Palestinian invasions” After October 7th, an Army unit stayed
tinian farmhouses a half mile away. “All of Area C: “You take people who believe at their outpost for a month. Moriah said
those houses that you see over there are in that goal as a pioneering mission, and the Army told them that each herding
Arabs who came from A land to C land let them spearhead the work to keep outpost needed at least three long rifles, so
and stole the land,” she said. “If we weren’t control of land reserves.” By Dror Et- it gave her an M16. “They are giving them
here right now, they would be here.” kes’s count, there are now about ninety out like crazy,” she said. The Army has
The Oslo Accords sorted the West herding outposts in the West Bank. He distributed around seven thousand weap-
Bank into three areas, A, B, and C. Pal- estimated that together they control some ons to settlers since October 7th, on top
estinian cities were designated Area A hundred and thirty-five square miles, of the ten thousand that the Ministry of
and put under the full control of the Pal- about ten per cent of Area C. National Security ordered be handed out
estinian Authority. The main villages— All such outposts are considered ille- to Jews across Israel and the West Bank.
Area B—were left under Palestinian ci- gal under Israeli law, but Moriah said Like some fifty-five hundred other set-
vilian administration, with Israel in charge that she and Moshe had received a great tlers, Moshe and his brother David were
of security. Together, Areas A and B make deal of assistance from the state. They drafted into the Army’s “regional de-
up forty per cent of the West Bank, but had “a gazillion meetings,” she said, with fense” battalions, the ranks of which have
they are broken into a hundred and sixty- the Civil Administration, the Army, the increased fivefold since the war began.
five islands. The sea they float in—Area Jordan Valley regional council, and other Moriah said that their issue wasn’t just
C—remains under full Israeli control government bodies. Amana connected with Hamas but with Palestinians in gen-
and includes not only settlements but them to running water. eral. They weren’t “regular people,” she
also most of the West Bank’s agricultural “Moriah!” Moshe shouted from the said. Violence was in “their DNA.” The
land. The accords said that Area C, now kitchen. He told her to be careful what October 7th attacks happened because
home to half a million settlers and some she said. Israelis “were too nice,” she said. “I think
three hundred thousand Palestinians, was Before the 2019 elections, Netanyahu we need to do what we need to do to
to be “gradually transferred to Palestin- announced a plan to annex twenty-two make this stop. I think we need to give
ian jurisdiction,” but Israel has increas- an alternative to the Arabs who live
ingly treated it as its own. here. . . . There’s Jordan, there’s Egypt,
Israel requires Palestinians to obtain there’s Syria.”
permits for any new construction in Moriah drove me down a dirt road to
Area C, but it has rejected ninety-eight the land below the outpost, where Pales-
per cent of applications. Unpermitted tinians grew wheat and potatoes. She
structures are regularly demolished by the pointed to some houses. “This over here—
military—yet settlers believe that the gov- all on C land,” she said. (According to
ernment doesn’t do enough. Regavim, an Civil Administration maps, most of the
organization co-founded by Bezalel Smo- houses were in Area B.) Shortly after Oc-
trich, takes aerial photographs of the West per cent of the West Bank, most of it in tober 7th, she said, a curious thing had
Bank twice a year in order to identify un- Area C, including the majority of the happened: “We saw everyone just leav-
permitted structures, and it sues the gov- Jordan Valley. The Sharvits established ing.” She continued driving down the dirt
ernment if it doesn’t demolish them. their outpost inside the area slated for road. “They left,” she said. “They all left.”
Naomi Kahn, Regavim’s international di- annexation, which has not yet occurred.
rector, told me, “Area C should be an- “I believe that everything is ours— ive days later, I visited David El-
nexed.” A poll from 2020 showed that
half of Israelis supported this idea.
but there is the law,” Moriah said. “We
go by the law and what we’re allowed
F hayani, the governor of the Jordan
Valley regional council. There are six such
The sheepherding strategy started to and what we’re not allowed.” Buildings elected councils in the West Bank that
take hold around 2018, pioneered by a on their outpost had been under demo- provide services to settlers. Despite being
outside Israel, they fall under the author- ransacked his home, and told him to its residents were dedicated to bringing
ity of the Ministry of the Interior. leave. Others said he’d threatened to kill down the state of Israel and replacing
Elhayani thought that Netanyahu had them. (Moriah Sharvit said, “Nobody on it with the Kingdom of Judea. At least
not been decisive enough in annexing this farm has committed any offense.”) two of them have been convicted of ar-
territory. “We don’t have leadership any- Twelve families had evacuated. son-related hate crimes, including the
more in this country,” Elhayani told me. “They are lying,” Elhayani said. firebombing of a Palestinian home, in
If annexation went for a vote, he said, he “I can take you right now,” I said. 2015, which killed an eighteen-month-
was confident that two-thirds of the “I don’t believe you.” old baby and his parents. After that at-
Knesset would approve it. “I’ll show you.” tack, Baladim was evacuated by the
In the meantime, he was grateful that “I don’t want you to show me.” Army. Ben-Pazi was arrested for estab-
settler shepherds like Moshe Sharvit lishing the outpost in a military zone,
were “taking care of the area.” When I he next day, the photographer but he was soon released. Then the en-
asked why the demolition orders on the
Sharvits’ property hadn’t been carried
T Tanya Habjouqa and I went to
Wadi al-Seeq, a recently depopulated
campment was reëstablished.
In 2019, after Netanyahu announced
out, he replied, “It’s not my job.” community in the hills above the Jor- his plan to annex part of the West Bank,
Elhayani said that, if he could claim dan Valley. The sun slowly sank, light- Ben-Pazi’s relationship with the govern-
territory for Israel, he would do it, “even ing up the skeletons of shacks clustered ment changed. Within weeks, he estab-
if it’s not legal.” He added, “The fight in the shallow valley. Forty-odd fami- lished a new herding outpost outside Ri-
of 1948 is the same fight [today] in all lies had lived here since the nineties, monim, a secular settlement that likely
of Judea and Samaria”—the fight over but the last of them had fled a month fell within the area targeted for annex-
land. “You know what homa u’migdal is?” before. Inside a school, overturned desks ation. A Civil Administration document
he asked. lay on the floor; lessons remained on shows that Ben-Pazi was allocated a hun-
It means “wall and tower.” During the whiteboards. dred-and-thirty-five-acre plot. He was
British rule, the government restricted As we drove down a gravel road, a also given funds by the Ministry of Ag-
the establishment of Jewish settlements, pickup truck blocked our path. A sun- riculture to pay for people to guard the
but during the 1936-39 Arab revolt more tanned man with a long ginger-brown outpost. Before long, Ben-Pazi and his
than fifty of them were founded, in order beard and sidelocks stepped out. It was men had taken over two square miles of
to claim territory for a future state. The Neria Ben-Pazi, a settler shepherd who Palestinian land. According to a settler
British let them stand, given an Otto- presided over a handful of outposts and publication, senior I.D.F. officers and po-
man law that said authorities could not had organized the expulsion of the Pal- litical figures, including Yoav Gallant, the
demolish a structure once a roof had estinian families. I had tried multiple defense minister, regularly visited his farm.
been constructed. The Zionists “came times to interview Ben-Pazi, but he never One of the managers of Rimonim, a
at night, made a wall, a tower, and said, responded. When settler shepherds ap- tattooed, motorcycle-riding secular man
‘We are here,’” Elhayani said. The herd- pear, their friends are often close behind, named Oz Shraibom, told me, “Those
ing outposts, he noted, “are the same.” so I turned the car around and we left. fanatic religious people are crazy. They
I told Elhayani that I had gone with Ben-Pazi grew up in Kohav HaSha- come to fight.” Since October 7th, “there
some Palestinians to their now empty har, six miles north of Wadi al-Seeq. By are people who think this is the time to
houses, near the Sharvits’ outpost. An 2015, he had founded a rugged outpost make everything happen.” But, he added,
elderly man told me that, a few days after called Baladim nearby. Shin Bet con- “they are keeping the Arabs away. It’s
October 7th, Moshe had beaten him, sidered it a center of terrorism; some of really convenient for me.”
Ben-Pazi had established his Wadi
al-Seeq outpost in February, 2023, just
after Netanyahu gave Smotrich juris-
diction over the Civil Administration
and the West Bank settlers. Almost im-
mediately, young settlers started to graze
their livestock on Palestinian fields. Be-
fore long, nearly all of Wadi al-Seeq’s
wells were in the hands of the settlers,
so the Palestinians had to truck in water.
Unable to access their farmland safely,
they stopped planting. They could no
longer graze their animals in most of
the surrounding hills, so they had to buy
feed. A few families left.
A man I’ll call Suheil, whose home
was just a few hundred yards from the
“What do you think is a good step goal for outpost, told me that settlers had started
someone who’s just started walking?” to come by his house at night. One ap-
peared in his doorway early one morn- “These men are Army,” the officer raeli police have not interviewed any of
ing, and stared at him and his family as said, pointing to the men who had been the Palestinians or Israeli activists who
they slept. In August, settlers near the beating them. were there. Eden Levi has since led an-
village tried to steal the sheep of two Three Israeli activists were hiding other raid near his outpost, in which
young men. Men from the village ran with a Palestinian family in a partially settlers burned cars and shot Palestin-
out to defend them, and a fight ensued. dismantled shack. They saw Ben-Pazi ians, killing one.
Dozens of police officers and soldiers talking urgently on his phone; then an
arrived, confiscating three cars and ar- Army van arrived. Soldiers from the n December 5th, the U.S. State
resting three Palestinians.
That day, a video circulated on so-
Desert Frontier unit emerged, largely
youths recruited from shepherd outposts.
O Department announced that it
was imposing visa restrictions on “ex-
cial media showing Suheil pleading with After the activists emerged, a sol- tremist settlers” who have committed
Ben-Pazi. A settler WhatsApp chan- dier punched one of them in the face; acts of violence or have restricted ci-
nel reposted the video, calling it the “last they were zip-tied, and their vilians’ access to basic ne-
gasp” of the Palestinian community and phones and cameras were cessities. The I.D.F. issued
referring cryptically to “the Deir Yas- taken away. “Why aren’t you a restraining order barring
sin effect.” (Deir Yassin was the site of in Gaza!” another soldier Ben-Pazi from the West
the most notorious massacre of Pales- shouted. “You are under ar- Bank, with the exception
tinians in 1948; for many people, it rep- rest for helping the enemy of the Ariel settlement,
resents the use of violence to instigate during war.” The soldiers for three months. In an
a broader exodus.) Arabs in Wadi al- left them in another shack, appeal, his lawyer, Nati
Seeq, the WhatsApp channel said, were guarded by settlers, and Rom, wrote that Ben-
being “forced to leave their encamp- drove over to where Abu Pazi’s “extensive ties with
ments because they cannot hold out Hassan and Mohammed the security forces are the
against the Jews.” Khaled were being held. best evidence that there is
The families remaining in Wadi al- While Abu Hassan was lying face no place for the order to be issued.”
Seeq asked Israeli activists to stay in the down, one of the settlers pulled him up In apparent defiance of the order,
village, hoping that their presence might by the hair. “Do you remember me?” he Ben-Pazi hosted senior rabbis and
deter the settlers. The Palestinian Au- asked. “I’m the shepherd from Biddya, hundreds of worshippers at his Wadi
thority’s Wall and Settlements Resis- near Salfit. A couple of months ago, you al-Seeq outpost for Hanukkah. Am-
tance Commission organized Palestin- staged a protest there.” ichai Eliyahu, the minister of heri-
ian volunteers to stay as well. In charge “That wasn’t me,” Abu Hassan said. tage, who a month earlier had said
was Mohammed Matar, better known He later identified the man as Eden that the government should consider
as Abu Hassan, a forty-six-year-old ac- Levi, who was establishing a chain of dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza,
tivist turned official with a long history herding outposts with the aim, he told spent the night at the outpost. (He
of civil disobedience against the occu- a settler publication last summer, of “cre- later claimed that the comment was
pation forces. ating an important territorial continu- “metaphorical.”) Ben-Pazi, Eliyahu
After October 7th, settlers started to ity in the entire region of Western Sa- tweeted, was “the first line of defense
drive through Wadi al-Seeq more often, maria.” Last February, Arabic media against the enemy.”
now dressed in uniform and carrying as- published a photograph of Levi, report- On February 1st, President Biden
sault rifles.They set up impromptu checking that residents near his outposts said ordered financial sanctions against
points at the entrance to the village, beat that he had shot and killed a twenty- four Israeli settlers. Abu Hassan said
people, stole their phones, and visited seven-year-old Palestinian. (Levi could that the political pressure was impor-
families in their houses at night. not be reached for comment.) Accord- tant, but that sanctions should “in-
Most of the villagers decided that ing to Haaretz, the Israeli police had clude the political and financial in-
they couldn’t stay. On October 12th, they interviewed no witnesses. stitutions that support [the settlers],
started piling onto trucks mattresses, Abu Hassan and Khaled said they as well as the police chiefs and Army
sheep troughs, and the tin roofs of their were tortured for hours—beaten with officers that conspire with them.”
homes. That morning, six pickup trucks poles, burned with cigarettes, sexually as- In late December, Moshe Feiglin,
of settlers arrived. Abu Hassan, his col- saulted, urinated on, forced to eat sheep the chairman of the far-right Zehut
league Mohammed Khaled, five Israeli dung. Someone took a picture of them, party, visited Ben-Pazi’s farm. “So you
activists, and a number of villagers stayed stripped to their underwear, which was are the violent monster that managed
behind; they called the Army to ask for posted on Facebook. “Terrorists tried to to drive away the multitude of Arabs?”
help. The settlers tied up Abu Hassan infiltrate the Ben-Pazi farm near Ko- he asked. Feiglin looked around, tak-
and Khaled and started beating them. chav Hashachar,” the post read. “Our ing in the landscape. “You are sitting
At one point, the two men recalled, a forces seized the terrorists.” They spent here on an area that is three times the
Civil Administration officer arrived. After two days in the hospital. municipal area of Tel Aviv.”
talking to the settlers, he started to leave. Shortly after Wadi al-Seeq was de- “In the end, it’s the connection to
“Where are you going?” Abu Has- populated, a new gravel road to Ben- the earth,” Ben-Pazi said. “If we want
san asked. Pazi’s outpost was laid down. The Is- the land, we will get it.” 
FICTION
46 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY HENNING WAGENBRETH

K
evin didn’t have a rain jacket and ber to ring. Kevin stood on his tip- tant, but then the man’s eyes moved.
for that reason he wasn’t wear- toes and leaned forward. There was “You can wipe that grin off your
ing one. A pair of “Bananas in a slight bump as his forehead touched face, too, if you know what’s good
Pyjamas” pajama bottoms bunched over the pane. The shopwindow was for you.”
the shafts of his rain boots. From his crammed with china dolls wearing A baby started crying inside, and
left shoulder, a flat laptop bag dangled. crocheted bonnets. Shoulder to shoul- a woman’s voice called out. The man
It had been consigned to his school’s der they sat, staring out empty-eyed went in and quietly shut the door be-
lost-property box and had remained at the road. Two Madam Blå colan- hind him. A little click of the lock,
there more than four months before ders, also, and a pair of hospital and then the light came on in the hall.
he’d claimed it for himself. Now it crutches. Farther inside, an old-fash- Kevin went down the drive until
flapped rhythmically against his hip. It ioned spinning wheel and a desktop he reached the road again. The rain
contained next to nothing, but he felt computer with its keyboard. There was heavier now. His boots chafed at
that it lent him a professional air. were price stickers on everything. his ankles. He paused to empty out
It was a Tuesday, early evening, and Someone sneezed. Then sneezed some grit.
Kevin was the only person out. Dark- again. It sounded like a “no.” Kevin
ness had descended upon him since he’d dropped onto his heels and went round evin walked on through the vil-
left home. Drizzle beaded his face.
He’d told his father that he was going
the side of the house. Some tall steps
led to a door. He went up them and
K lage and, after a while, came to
some houses that were being built.
out to get some fresh air. He wasn’t actu- considered for a moment a Teddy bear Cable drums occupied the pavement,
ally sure that his father had even heard crafted from moss which sat at the top. which appeared to be new. Some of
him. His father never heard anything He raised his hand and gripped the the paving stones wobbled under his
when he was gathering his deposit bottles. knocker. It was made of brass and feet. One house looked to be finished.
Anyway, there Kevin was, walking looked like a boot. But before he could It had big picture windows. There were
along the side of the road. Occasion- bang it against the door the lights went stickers on several panes, featuring the
ally, he looked up to see if there were out inside, one after another. name of a security firm and warnings
any cars coming. Only a single truck There were so many people you about CCTV and Neighborhood
had gone past in the half hour that he’d would never meet. Most, in fact. He Watch. The hedge had only just been
been walking. returned the brass boot to its resting planted. In the garden, perennials
He was approaching the neighbor- position and went back to the road. poked out of various sacks, waiting to
ing village. He’d never been this far. It In front of the next house stood a be planted. Flagstones on a pallet, and
was actually quite near his own village, figure of a stork, with a pink ribbon a soil compactor. It was a two-story
but his father never took him there. around its neck. There were no lights house. A few lights were on, and a
“What would we want to go there on. Nonetheless, he went up to the flame flickered in a pumpkin lantern
for?” his father had said when Kevin door and knocked a couple of times. on the doorstep. Its lid was rotten and
pointed at a signpost over by the church He stepped back and was trying to re- sinking. Three printed lines on the let-
one day and asked if they could drive member what he’d decided to say when ter box:
in that direction for a change. “It’s a a voice behind him said, “What can I Candle Showroom
piddling little place with bugger all to help you with?” &
see. All it’s good for is driving through.” Kevin spun around to see a square- The Rønbjerg Madsen Family
shouldered man with a crewcut stand-
Ilage’stnow,
couldn’t be that little, Kevin thought
as he passed a sign with the vil-
name. There were lampposts, too,
ing before him.
“It ’s because I’m out selling
stickers. . . .”
Kevin knew that their first names
were Birgitte and Henrik. Every year,
they donated some boxes of Advent-
with soft pools of light. White lines ran The man bent forward, his eyes calendar candles to his school, Christ-
down the middle of the road. And soon seeming to fix on Kevin’s wet hair. He mas gifts from their factory.
there were houses, set rather far apart at looked Kevin up and down, then zipped He stepped up to the door and wiped
first, then closer together. his coat. It was the local sports club’s the rain from his face. Readied his teeth
Lettering was peeling off from the coat. Various sponsor logos were em- and pressed the bell. An intricate mel-
front of one. COFFEE. TOBACCO. BET- blazoned on the front. Kevin recog- ody played, but no one answered.
TING. There were some lights on inside. nized some of them. He pressed again, leaving his finger
He went up to a window where a small “And what would your name be?” on the bell this time. The music started
sheet of paper with some handwriting the man asked. from the beginning, but there was still
on it had been affixed. The letters got “Kevin.” no answer.
smaller and smaller as they neared the “Kevin what?” After a while, he stepped back, and
edge of the paper. “Jørgensen.” he was about to walk away when a
“You’ve got some guts,” the man said, light came on behind the frosted glass.
Open by appointment. and folded his arms. A tingling sensation spread across
Kevin looked him in the eye. He’d Kevin’s cheeks as a shadow loomed.
But there was no telephone num- heard that eye contact was impor- And then a woman wearing an
apron was standing in front of him.
“Yes?” she said.
“Yes” was all Kevin could say. LIGHT GHAZAL
“Adverts, is it?”
“Adverts?” he said. I’m terrible at parties, secrets, and money. I want my stars sexy: fast light
“Just drop them in the letter box over that’s prophetic. No nonsense about physics, refraction, past light.
there,” she said. “We haven’t got a slot.”
She gestured to show him where and Even in Barcelona, I can’t turn a bike. I let you change my mind: free will
turned to go back in. and wet hair. One night, I let you pour white wine. I drink its aghast light.
“Actually, it’s not adverts.”
A pleasant smell came from inside. Happy now? We’re both like this—full of risk and nowhere to put it.
He tried to sniff it in without making a We sidle up to strangers with dry cigarettes and ask, Light?
sound. Cinnamon and something else.
He could see behind her and into a mud- I want small churches and noisy continents. I want you. I want you better.
room with shiny tiles, and a long stair- I want you moved by what moves me: God, glass, light.
case going up.
“What do you want, then?” You like the line about men bored with beautiful women, as though
Birgitte pushed a strand of hair be- boredom’s the prize, as though those peonies weren’t a gaslight.
hind her ear.
“Well, you see, it’s . . . just a second,” It’s O.K. I play dumb. I count codes under my breath. I circle
Kevin said. His hand found his laptop you like a devoted planet. I see the whiskey bottle. I forecast light.
bag. The Velcro from the flap made a
rasping sound as he reached inside to I’m a better gambler than wife: the house fills with music and your singing.
produce a smooth, plastic sleeve. Dear enabler. Dear truce. I know you see the moon’s steadfast light.
“There,” he said. “They’re a bit hard
to separate in this cold weather.” I know you remember Madrid, Istanbul, pinecones, that trip to
“You should be wearing something Iceland. How every midnight had a sun. How we clung to its last light.
warmer.”
“No, I’m fine,” Kevin said, in an older- —Hala Alyan
sounding voice. “But I’m out selling some-
thing, you see.”
“And what might that be?” For a second, neither of them spoke. “A good thing we took the washing in.”
“These stickers here.” Music was coming from upstairs. A man’s “We?” Birgitte said.
“Stickers?” voice was singing along. “Summer’s long gone,” Kevin said. He
“Yes.” “Henrik,” she shouted again. “Hen- felt a drip run down his neck.
“What for?” rik, turn that down. Have we got any “Birgitte,” Henrik said. “Why don’t
For every sheet you sold, you could change for some stamps or something you fetch those cookies?”
keep five kroner. The rest went to a good for our Christmas cards? Turn it down “They’re supposed to be for later.”
cause. He’d been given two thick fold- so you can hear me, or else come down- “Fetch them, go on.”
ers full, but not that many people lived stairs. I’m asking if we’ve got any She stepped past him and disappeared
around here. money for a sheet of stamps. There’s from view.
“You can put them on your Christ- a boy here.” “The proceeds go to—” Kevin began,
mas cards,” he said. “It’s only twenty kroner a sheet,” Kevin only to be cut off. It was Birgitte, back
“Christmas cards?” said. “And it’s for a good cause.” already. Her hands held out a baking tray.
“For example, yes.” “It’s twenty kroner a sheet, Henrik.” She gave it a little shake and the cook-
He handed her a sheet. She looked “Yes, all right,” a voice shouted back, ies loosened from the greaseproof paper.
at it, then handed it back. and the music stopped. There was a thud- “Take one,” she said, looking at Kevin
“Christmas is a long way off,” she said. ding of feet on the stairs and a long sigh and then at her husband.
“Forty-eight days.” as someone came down. A man in a “Just the one, mind,” Henrik said.
“As many as that.” checked shirt appeared in the hall. He Kevin’s fingers hovered over the cook-
“You can put them on ordinary let- looked inquiringly at Kevin and then at ies before selecting a medium-sized one.
ters, too.” his wife. “Thank you,” he said, and popped it
“Oh, yes?” “Have we got twenty kroner?” into his mouth.
“Oh, yes,” Kevin said. “It’s completely she asked. He shuffled forward, slightly out of
up to you.” “What for?” the rain. Under-floor heating streamed
And, because he stayed put, she even- “The boy’s making an effort to earn from the house and warmed his face.
tually turned her head and shouted into some pocket money.” “I know who you are,” Henrik said.
the house. Henrik extended a hand into the rain. Birgitte looked at her husband
“Henrik,” she shouted. “What terrible weather,” the man said. in surprise.
Kevin was going to say he knew who “They’re very nice candles,” Kevin said. “It’s your honker that gives you away,”
they were, too, only his cookie was in “ We produce them ourselves,” Henrik said, tapping the side of his own
the way. Henrik said. nose with a forefinger. “What’s he doing
“There’s no mistaking it,” Henrik said, “I know.” with himself, anyway?”
his eyes finding Birgitte as if wanting her “It keeps half the village in work,” “Now, you mean?”
to say something, too. “Can’t you see?” Henrik said. “But what’s your name, if it “Yes, now.”
She scrutinized Kevin. isn’t Jon?” “I can phone him, if you like. But I
“It’s Åge Jørgensen’s lad,” he said. “Kevin Jørgensen.” don’t think he’d answer.”
A little gasp escaped her. A snap “Kevin,” Henrik said. “I’m sure,” Henrik said.
of breath. “Yes.” “It’s because we’ve only got one char-
“It is, isn’t it?” Henrik said, and then “Birgitte,” Henrik said, placing a hand ger at the moment.”
seemed to examine Kevin’s clothing. A on her shoulder. “Offer Kevin another “Ah.”
moment passed in which Kevin munched cookie, would you?” “Our dog keeps chewing them up.”
and pointed at his mouth, munched Birgitte held out the baking tray.He “I see. That’s not very good.”
and pointed. chose another one and put it in his pocket. “No, he chews everything up.”
Kevin swallowed at last and smiled “Thank you very much,” he said. “Dogs need to be trained, or else—”
with pride. “Take a couple.” “Or else what?” Birgitte said.
“Yes,” he said. “I am.” Kevin studied the cookies again. “Well, or else you shouldn’t have one.”
“I hadn’t realized,” Birgitte said. She “In fact, you can take as many as you “He just needs to learn, that’s all,”
kept looking first at Kevin, then at like,” Henrik said, and so Kevin took one, Kevin said. “He’s only a puppy.”
her husband. two, three more cookies and put them in Birgitte was about to say something,
“Do you know my dad?” Kevin said. his pocket. but then her husband did.
“Oh, we don’t know him,” Henrik “Are you sure that’s all? Go on, have “I saw that advert your dad put in the
said, his expression changing. “But we some more,” Henrik said. local paper. What was the slogan, now?
know who he is.” “I don’t mind if I do,” Kevin said. It’s slipped my mind.”
Kevin gave a puzzled look. “I thought so,” Henrik said. “ ‘Cow-hoof trimmer? Åge’s no be-
“From when he used to live here,” Kevin didn’t know what else to say. ginner!’ ” Kevin said.
Henrik explained. Fortunately, Henrik did. “That was it,” Henrik replied with a
“Here?” Kevin said. “You’re the absolute spit of him,”he said. smile. “Priceless.”
“That’s right,” Henrik said. “The spit?” Kevin smiled back.
“But he’s never lived here.” “That’s right. You look just like him. “It’s just something he does on the
They all went quiet. Your dad, that is,” Henrik said. “It’s amaz- side,” he explained. “To earn a bit of extra
“You’ll be Jan,” Henrik said after ing, when you think about it, that a per- money. He’s been looking for something
a second. son can look so much like somebody else.” more permanent, only jobs are hard to
“Not Jan, Jon,” Kevin said. Kevin’s father was tall and hairy. His come by if you can’t work full time.”
“Jon,” Henrik said. forehead was creased, and the creases “Are they really?”
“Jon, yes,” Kevin said. “He’s my younger never went away, not even when he re- “Yes, and employers can’t even be
brother.” laxed. His father had five DVDs of porn bothered to take five minutes to reply to
“Yes, you would have a younger hidden under the mattress and a bat next an application.”
brother,” Henrik said, glancing again to his bed. His father walked with a slight “Can’t they?”
at Birgitte. “No, they’re too stuck up.”
“Two, in a way, if my dad’s new girl- “Plenty of work to be had for those
friend’s boy counts. But they live in Pat- who want it,” Henrik said.
taya,” Kevin said. “It’s in Thailand.” Kevin pictured his father making
“You don’t say,” Henrik said, and candles for Henrik and Birgitte, twenty
laughed as if what Kevin had said was hours a week in a factory hall with tall
funny. chimneys. He imagined him having his
“Have you been there?” Kevin asked. lunch in a cafeteria and then coming
He smoothed the front of his top. home and talking about how his day
“No,” Henrik said, rather quickly. “We had gone. Getting paid once a month
certainly have not.” limp and coughed up mucus into the and taking Kevin to the cinema.
“Me neither,” Kevin said. He could bathroom sink every night without wash- “That’ll be why he’s driving again, I
hear his father’s voice in his head: Some- ing it away. His father hated the govern- suppose,” Henrik said. “I hear he drives
day we’ll go there together. Only it’s a ment, which made people work for their a brown Lada now, with commercial
bit expensive if we’re all going to go. disability benefits. His father was a Libra. plates. With loud music coming out of
One of the candles on the chest of His father had green eyes. it. Is that right?”
drawers in the hall went out. Birgitte “I’ve got my mum’s eyes,” Kevin said, “Yes, it’s got a really good stereo,”
opened a drawer, took out a long-necked widening them so that both Henrik and Kevin said.
lighter, and lit the candle again. Birgitte could see. “ There you are, then,” Henrik
said. “Spotted on the main road a cou- gitte. Kevin smiled at them, and Bir- “To think,” Henrik said, as if to
ple of weeks back.” gitte smiled back. himself. “More than ten years ago
“Says who?” Birgitte said. “It won’t be a big party,” he said. now.”
“Says Svenne, the carpenter.” “Won’t it?” Henrik said. “Henrik,” Birgitte said. “I think
“Well, do you know what I think?” “Not this time. It’s the half-term hol- you should go inside.” She made as if
she said, folding her arms across her iday, you see. People will be away. Be- to bundle him away from the door,
chest. “I think Svenne should get a life. sides, it’s too much fuss for my dad. I’m but Henrik stayed put.
And I think you should lay off the lad. sure it’ll be a nice day, though.” “Philip,” he said calmly, pensively,
It’s hardly his fault.” “Too much fuss? His son’s birthday?” and shook his head.
Henrik scrutinized her for a moment. “It’s not because he doesn’t want to,” “Henrik,” Birgitte said. “Inside.”
“He’s not responsible for his dad,” Kevin said, shaking his foot inside his “Philip?” Kevin said.
she said. rain boot. It had gone to sleep from “Yes, Philip,” Henrik snapped back,
“I could come back another time, standing still so long. like the name belonged only to him.
if you like,” Kevin said. “Nothing “Have you ever heard the like?” Hen- “It’s a nice name,” Kevin said, sens-
we can do today that can’t be put off rik said, looking now at Birgitte. “His ing that he ought to say something
until tomorrow.” own lad’s birthday.” but unsure what it should be.
“How old are you, anyway?” Hen- “He’s got an old concussion,” Kevin “He was only on his way home
rik said. said. from handball practice,” Henrik said.
“Ten,” Kevin said. “I’ll bet.” “It wouldn’t have taken five minutes
“Ten,” Henrik said, in a strange “That’ll do,” Birgitte said. on an ordinary night like this, especially
voice, as if he could tell by looking at “And dodgy knees,” Kevin said. “It’s when the weather wasn’t as bad.”
Kevin that this wasn’t entirely true. not easy for him.” Kevin could hear himself breathe.
“Or nearly ten,” Kevin said. “Nine The wind gusted in the dark. Far- “It was an accident,” Birgitte said.
and three-quarters, actually. But I’ll be ther away, something made a commo- Kevin dipped a hand into his pocket
ten next year. The eighth of February.” tion. It was the sound of an object dis- and was about to produce a cookie but
“You’ll be having a party, then?” lodging, a roofing tile or a satellite dish, thought better of it.
“Yes,” Kevin said. He could feel perhaps, falling to the concrete and “An accident?” Henrik said. “Is that
his cheeks growing warm. Under his breaking into bits. The lawn was satu- what you call it?”
bed, he kept a birthday box. In it were rated. There were big muddy pools in “Yes,” she said. It sounded almost
some drinking straws with little um- the grass. The rain sheeted down. as if she were crying. “A terrible ac-
brellas attached, leftovers from last cident that we needn’t talk about
New Year’s Eve. There were fifteen
in all. He dealt them out in his head.
“C ome out of that weather,” Birgitte
said. “You’ll be drenched.” She
now, Henrik.”
“Getting behind the wheel of a car
Dad and Jon and himself. Granddad took Kevin’s arm and drew him a step when you’re pissed out of your mind?”
in Thisted, if he could get someone closer. “Now, about those stamps you “Henrik,” Birgitte said again. She
to drive him. Mum, if she and Dad were selling.” took his hand and gave it a squeeze.
were getting along. Henrik and Bir- “They’re not stamps exactly.They’re—” “The boy obviously knows nothing
about it.”
“About what?” Kevin said.
“Let me see those stickers you’ve
got,” Birgitte said, smiling at him now.
He’d nearly forgotten about them.
“It wasn’t what I would call an acci-
dent,” Henrik said.
Then Kevin said what his father
usually said whenever there was a pro-
gram about such things on the tele-
vision: “How terrible.”
“You think so, do you?” Henrik said.
Birgitte put the f lat of her hand
against his chest to shove him inside.
“I’m talking to the boy. I’m allowed
to, you know,” Henrik said.
“Not about this, you’re not.”
“Like I said,” Kevin said, and
gave his laptop bag a pat. “I’m out for
a good cause.”
Henrik was breathing heavily.
“Uh, what do you say we skip birding today?” Then gradually everything went quiet.
“All right,” Henrik said at last.
“What sort of good cause?”
“I can’t quite remember,” Kevin said.
“You can’t remember?”
“It was something to do with
children. . . .”
“Save the Children?” Birgitte said.
“That’s it,” Kevin said.
He wasn’t sure what more to say.
Henrik looked out at the garden.
“These are the stickers, if you’d like
to see them first,” Kevin said, and handed
Henrik a plastic sleeve.
Henrik looked through them.
“Actually,” he said, “I’m not sure we’re
interested.”
He handed them back to Kevin,
though without returning the sheets to
their sleeve. Rain washed over them.
Colors started to run. Angels dissolved
into clouds, chimney sweeps became
black blotches that seeped into toothy
mice, then trailed over stars and Christ-
mas hearts and trees.
Henrik went inside for a moment
• •
and then came back.
“You’re in luck,” he said. In his “Yes,” Kevin said. “Henrik Rønbjerg was an empty tobacco tin. He kicked
hand was a small cylinder wrapped in Madsen.” it away. An out-of-date timetable was
brown paper. “Right,” Henrik said. “It’s a deal.” fixed to the inside of the shelter. Be-
He squeezed the cylinder between “Right,” Kevin said. “I’ll tell him. side it, some words were scratched into
his fingers and out popped first one, Have a nice evening, and thank you for the fibreglass:
then two, three, sixteen coins in all into your business.” S+T
Kevin’s outstretched hand. “My pleasure,” Henrik said. torkild lund is a joke
“We’ll take the lot,” he said. BIG BASTARD GOT HIS H EAD
Shiny and new, the coins lay in Kev- or a moment, Kevin remained KICKED IN HERE 13.8.2001 WELL
in’s palm, the Queen’s head on top.
“All of them?” Kevin said.
F standing at the door that had now
closed on him, as if he were waiting for
DESERVED
Thanks for info
BEST FUCK RING 91528252
“That’s right,” Henrik said. “All something more to happen. As he went Fake
of them.” down the drive, he turned and looked Not fake
Kevin handed him the soggy sheets back, and in an upstairs window he saw Number not working
of paper. Henrik flop down into an armchair. Not working
Number doesn’t work :-(
“Thank you very much,” he said, and Seconds later, the music started again,
dropped the coins into a pocket in the volume turned up a notch. Kevin His fingers were numb. He won-
his bag. arranged the strap of his laptop bag dered how much rain it took to make
“On one condition,” Henrik said. more comfortably on his shoulder, then a flood. The dike could burst. The roads
“You do me a little favor in return.” carried on along the road. could turn into rivers. The bus shelter
“Of course,” Kevin said. Slowly, slowly, he walked. could be swept away with him in it.
“Say hello to your dad from Henrik He counted his steps to put his mind The rain drummed against the roof.
Rønbjerg Madsen.” on something else. Apart from that, there were no other
“There’s no need for that,” Bir- One, two, three. sounds. He craned his head to look at
gitte said. He passed the first of the houses he the sky. His father had once told him
“You stay out of it,” her husband had seen when entering the village and about the moon in Pattaya. It was big
replied. was soon well on his way. A wind there, and as orange as an orange. Here,
Birgitte huffed and went inside, her whipped at everything that was not it was small and pale. 
feet thumping heavily. rooted or lashed to the ground, rivu- (Translated, from the Danish,
“Henrik Rønbjerg Madsen.” Henrik lets of rain ran toward him on the road, by Martin Aitken.)
pronounced the name slowly and de- and his pajama bottoms felt sodden
liberately, almost sounding it out. “Have and heavy. He sat down on a bench in- NEWYORKER.COM
you got that, do you think?” side a podlike bus shelter. At his feet Thomas Korsgaard on what children know.

THE CRITICS
BOOKS
LORDING IT
Can Byron be freed from the Byronic?
BY ANTHONY LANE
I
t is almost two hundred years since of English, Italian, and Greek, and, out- lovers conform to a type, in their sigh-
the death of Lord Byron. He suc- side, the shout of a thunderstorm. “Half ing and gasping, seems to buoy up, not
cumbed to a fever on April 19, 1824, smiling,” one onlooker reported, the dying to pop, the erotic mood. For all his lofty
in the town of Missolonghi, on the west man said, “Questa è una bella scena.” Or, status, Byron tends to look askance rather
coast of Greece, at the age of thirty-six. “What a beautiful scene.” than down. Ever generous, he bequeaths
As was far from unusual at the time, That clear note of the theatrical—of to us his craving for sensation. Just be-
medical professionals did much to has- the self-dramatizing reflex, ringing out cause there is nothing original under the
ten the end that they were supposed to even at the last, on a dismal deathbed, sun doesn’t mean that adventurous souls
prevent. In Byron’s words, “There are far from home—is what we should lis- should not be over the moon. Tomor-
many more die of the lancet than the ten out for, two centuries on, as we con- row to fresh beds, and battles new.
lance.” Leeches, enemas, and blistering— sider the case of Byron. Seldom is the But where to start? Should you wish
the deliberate raising of blisters on the drama unattended by the half smile. to tackle Byron, now is the time, as the
skin—were part of the treatment. Byron However heated the moment, and no bicentenary of his death draws near;
was reluctant to be bled by his physi- matter whether the action is carnal, do- there’s no denying, however, that his col-
cians, whom he slighted as “a damned mestic, military, meteorological, or fash- lected works loom like a fortress in your
set of butchers,” but eventually surren- ionably social, Byron, at his best, takes path. He claimed to detest the act of
dered to their efforts. One modern ex- care to cast a cool, appraising glance at writing: “I feel it as a torture, which I
pert has estimated that, in his final days, how the spectacle must appear to the must get rid of, but never as a pleasure.
they drained at least two and a half li- passing ironist: On the contrary, I think composition a
tres of his blood. It is surprising that the great pain.” Join the club. Somehow he
They look upon each other, and their eyes
patient lasted as long as he did. Gleam in the moonlight; and her white
mastered the torment and plowed ahead.
Byron had come to Greece the pre- arm clasps A fine new Oxford edition of his poetry
vious year, sailing from Italy, where he Round Juan’s head, and his around her lies and accompanying material, edited by
had been living since 1816. He was a Brit- Half buried in the tresses which it grasps; Jonathan Sachs and Andrew Stauffer,
ish peer, and his poems have lodged him She sits upon his knee, and drinks his sighs, omits great swathes of Byron’s output,
He hers, until they end in broken gasps;
in the canon of English verse, yet the And thus they form a group that’s quite
but still runs to some eleven hundred
last eight years of his life were spent in antique, pages. (And costs a hundred and forty-
exile. His liberal sympathies had always Half naked, loving, natural, and Greek. five dollars. Could one request a small
been fierily provocative, and his hope, on discount, perhaps, given that there’s a
arrival in Greece, had been that he might Such is the pretty picture presented typo on the first page of the introduc-
lend his name, his title, his legendary by the hero and his paramour (one of tion?) As for his letters and journals, they
lustre, and his considerable wealth to the many) in the second canto of “Don Juan,” have struck devotees as the most unflag-
cause of Greek independence in the fight Byron’s uncontested masterpiece. He ging in the language, but these days they
against Ottoman rule. A naval officer, began it in 1818; the fifteenth and six- need to be hunted down secondhand,
Captain Edward Blaquiere, had assured teenth cantos were published shortly be- and, be warned, they fill thirteen volumes
him that “your presence will operate as fore his death, a fragment of a seven- in all. To read straight through them
ABOVE: ERRATA CARMONA
a Talisman—and the field is too glori- teenth long afterward. Notice how the would ruin your sleep, imperil your rela-
ous,—too closely associated with all you quip at the stanza’s end—a comical coun- tionships, and entail trading your life for
hold dear, to be any longer abandoned.” terpart, you might say, to the vision of Byron’s. Sounds like a fair swap to me.
Yet here was Byron, expiring not in glory arrested beauty in Keats’s “Ode on a Gre- Luckily, there is an alternative. Stauffer
but in delirium, with an unavailing gag- cian Urn”—provides something other is paying double homage, not just co-
gle of doctors and servants, amid a Babel than cynical deflation. The fact that the producing the Oxford edition but also
People who have never read a line of Byron’s verse may still have heard that he was “mad—bad—and dangerous to know.”
ILLUSTRATION BY CECILIA CARLSTEDT THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024 53
giving us “Byron: A Life in Ten Letters” sixth Lord Byron, and his earliest biog- root cause, but any inquiries should start
(Cambridge). This is a compact biogra- rapher, Thomas Moore, tells us that, at with May Gray.
phy, elegantly structured around a few school roll call, the word “Dominus” was Byron went to Harrow School, and
choice pickings from the poet’s corre- prefixed to Byron’s name. According to from there, “as unsocial as a wolf taken
spondence. Each letter affords Stauffer Moore, the ten-year-old child “stood si- from the troop,” to Trinity College, Cam-
a chance for a ruminative riff on which- lent amid the general stare of his school- bridge. “I am now most pleasantly situ-
ever facet of Byron’s history and character fellows, and, at last, burst into tears.” ated in Superexcellent Rooms,” he wrote,
happened to be glittering most brightly With his change of status came an in 1805. “Yesterday my appearance in the
at the time. We are presented, for in- ancient house, Newstead Abbey, near Hall in my State Robes was Superb.” Be-
stance, with a jammed and breathless Nottingham, which still stands today. hind the snort of the italics, you hear a
communication from Byron to his Lon- Grand and gloomy, with monastic ruins smart young beau trying too hard to carry
don publisher, John Murray, almost three built into its structure, and three hundred off an aristocratic swagger. Hop ahead
thousand words long, sent from Ravenna, acres of parkland, it is almost a parody of two years and you discover, as so often
in 1819, and centered on “La Fornarina”— a Gothic dwelling; Washington Irving, with Byron, that the edge of enthusiasm
Margarita Cogni, a tempestuous baker’s having paid a visit, described it as one of has been dulled.The first letter in Stauffer’s
wife with whom Byron had been in- “those quaint and romantic piles, half cas- selection has a jaded air: “This place is
volved in Venice. Stauffer comments, tle, half convent, which remain as mon- wretched enough, a villainous Chaos of
“One gets the sense that he could have uments of the olden times of England.” Dice and Drunkenness, nothing but Haz-
kept going indefinitely with more juicy No less absurd is the notion of its hav- ard and Burgundy, Hunting, Mathemat-
details, except he runs out of room.” ing been the fiefdom of a lad. A poem ics and Newmarket, Riot and Racing.”
titled “On Leaving N—st—d,” written For all the wretchedness, Cambridge
he person whom we know as Lord when Byron was fifteen, shows how the provided Byron with what he later called
T Byron made his entrance into the
world, in 1788, with a plainer name:
place ignited his flammable imaginings: “the happiest, perhaps, days of my life.”
It also furnished him with new acquain-
Through the cracks in these battlements
George Gordon Byron. The baby’s loud the winds whistle,
tances, including an undergraduate
mother was Catherine Gordon, a Scot- For the hall of my fathers is gone to decay. named John Cam Hobhouse, who would
tish heiress, and his father was Captain grow into a lifelong friend; a young cho-
John Byron, commonly referred to as The precocity did not end there. rister, John Edleston, for whom Byron
Mad Jack (not to be confused with his Something murkier occurred as well. conceived “a violent, though pure love
father, an admiral known as Foulweather Byron had a Scottish nurse, May Gray; and passion”; and, notoriously, a bear—
Jack), a spendthrift who did his best to it was reported, by one of his guardians, Byron’s way of cocking a shaggy snook
burn through his wife’s inheritance. The “that she was perpetually beating him, at the authorities, who forbade the keep-
child had a misshapen foot and lower and that his bones sometimes ached from ing of dogs. But he was genuinely fond
leg, which was to cause him lasting pain it; that she brought all sorts of Company of animals, and the bear was the prelude
and lent him what one biographer, Fiona of the very lowest Description into his to a rolling bestiary. Years afterward, Percy
MacCarthy, calls a “sliding gait.” Even apartments.” Byron later confessed to a Bysshe Shelley went to stay with Byron
here one finds a spasm of unlikely com- friend that, when he was nine, “a free in Ravenna and met “five peacocks, two
edy: among his adult acquaintances, there guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane” on
was some disagreement as to which foot the stairs.
was actually deformed. At Cambridge, Byron attended no
Young George was three years old lectures, as far as we know. And yet, de-
when his father died. The boy was taken spite the demands of dissipation, he
to Scotland by his mother, who was any- wrote. For him, poetry was no seques-
thing but temperate—“haughty as Lu- tered art; more aflame than aloft, it had
cifer,” as he later recalled. From first to to hold its own among competing ar-
last, there is no sense of placidity, let alone dors, any one of which could burn it-
swampy flatness, in Byron’s existence; he self out. The trick was to catch and to
was either forcing things to happen or Scotch girl,” meaning Gray, “used to come kindle it when the opportunity arose,
having them befall him, and, in follow- to bed with him and play tricks with his as he explained to Thomas Moore:
ing every twist, you constantly need to person.” Byron added, in his journal, “My
remind yourself that this is a real being passions were developed very early—so I can never get people to understand that
and not a fictional character. (He may early—that few would believe me.” The poetry is the expression of excited passion, and
that there is no such thing as a life of passion
have suffered the same confusion him- tone here is highly distinctive, entwin- any more than a continuous earthquake, or an
self.) When he was six, the plot took an- ing a perverse boastfulness with trau- eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave
other turn. The great-nephew of Foul- matic dread. As if that mixture weren’t themselves in such a state?
weather Jack was killed by a cannonball dense enough, the boy’s abuser had a
in Corsica, the upshot being that Byron habit of quoting Scripture to him. The By the time Byron left university, he
was now the heir presumptive to a title. commingling of the sacred and profane had produced no less than three volumes
He acceded to it in 1798, becoming the in Byron’s mature verse has no single of verse, two of them privately printed.
FORMER US ATTORNEY
The third, tellingly titled “Hours of Idle- don, so fraught with incident that they AND MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST
ness,” earned a review so infuriating to would have filled another man’s life to
Byron that his response developed into overflowing. The final adieu to his na-
yet another book, “English Bards and tive land, in 1816. Brussels, Waterloo, and “A necessary call to the
Scotch Reviewers,” which launched a a villa on Lake Geneva. Venice, Rome, ethical commitment to truth.”
broadside against his contemporaries and Venice once more, this time for a deep
hymned the praises of Alexander Pope, dive. Ravenna, Bologna, Pisa, Genoa, and
who had died sixty-five years earlier. In Greece. Embarkation to the underworld.
homage to Pope, Byron vented his spleen And the cast list! Abroad, there was
in heroic couplets: a teen-ager who taught Byron Italian—“I
am his ‘Padrone’ and his ‘amico’ and Lord
But now, so callous grown, so changed since knows what besides,” Byron said—and a
youth,
I’ve learn’d to think, and sternly speak the Greek with “ambrosial curls hanging
truth; down his amiable back.” (A bright thread
of bisexuality runs through Byron’s ca-
The joke is that Byron was all of reer.) In England, there was Lady Car-
twenty-one when this was published. oline Lamb, with whom Byron conducted
Upon coming of age, he was able to take a barely concealed affair, and whose hus-
his place in the House of Lords. By then band was later, as Lord Melbourne, to be
he was residing in London, “buried in Prime Minister. Byron also enjoyed an
an abyss of Sensuality,” as he admitted, epistolary closeness to Caroline’s mother-
from which there was but one reliable in-law, who was rather more discreet; in
escape. Thus it was that he set off, in 1815, briefly and catastrophically, he mar-
June, 1809, together with Hobhouse, for ried the latter’s niece, Annabella Mil-
Portugal. The new Oxford edition, ever banke. One cause of the marital split was
dutiful, treats us to the poet’s earnest Annabella’s well-grounded suspicion that
envoi, its stanzas stiff with respectable Byron was having sexual relations with AVAI LABLE NOW
yearning. (“And I will cross the whit’ning his own half sister, Augusta, whose third
foam,/And I will seek a foreign home” daughter may have been his. If so, he was
and “I go—but wheresoe’er I flee/There’s following the example of his father, Mad
not an eye will weep for me.”) No fun Jack, who had consorted with his sister.
at all. What the editors leave out, and Fiona MacCarthy remarks that incest
what gives us a much saltier splash of “clusters within families.” No kidding.
the departing Byron, is a farewell letter For anyone who likes to have inti-
that he sent to a pal named Francis Hodg- mate miseries from long ago unpacked
son. Imagine receiving this in the mail: and clarified as if they were current af-
fairs, MacCarthy is your guide. In re-
Now we’ve reached her, lo! the Captain
Gallant Kidd commands the crew
gard to Byron’s sundering from Anna-
Passengers now their berths are clapt in bella, for example, Stauffer wisely
Some to grumble, some to spew, suggests that “the total narrative is elu-
Heyday! call you that a Cabin? sive, perhaps as it would be for any re-
Why tis hardly three feet square lationship placed under such intense
Not enough to stow Queen Mab in,
Who the deuce can harbour there?
scrutiny by so many interested parties.”
Who Sir? plenty Thomas Moore alludes to “some dimly
Nobles twenty hinted confession of undefined hor-
Did at once my vessel fill rors.” MacCarthy, though, dispenses
Did they—Jesus! with the dimness:
How you squeeze us
Would to God, they did so still, Had the scandal been only that of the break-
Then I’d scape the heat & racket down of his marriage Byron might, if he had
Of the good ship, Lisbon Packet. chosen to do so, have ridden out the storm. It
was the additional element of incest, and more
f you want to track the to-and-fro of critically sodomy, that made his departure
Iwould
Byron’s life, you need a map. This
show his first batch of peregrina-
unavoidable.
Byron, for his part, took a poised ap-

tions: Lisbon, Seville, Cádiz, Gibraltar, proach to the rumors. “If they were true
Malta, Albania, Missolonghi (fifteen I was unfit for England, if false England
years before he died there), Athens, Con- is unfit for me,” he wrote. We find our-
stantinople, Athens again, and back to selves bumping headlong into the Byron
England. Five years in and around Lon- problem—not the question of what he
did or might have done with whom, and ies on the day of publication, in 1814. (“I yet gone—too free for these very mod-
when, but the remorseless way in which, have read the Corsair, mended my pet- est days. However, I shall try the exper-
during his lifetime and ever since, what ticoat, & have nothing else to do,” Jane iment, anonymously, and if it don’t take
you might call the higher gossip has Austen wrote in a letter.) Murray said it will be discontinued.” Safe to say that
trapped him in its claws. In the process, that every man in the street had either he continued, taking advantage of that
he is at once idolized and belittled. You read it or heard of it. How come? The freedom to cram into the poem pretty
could say that this procedure awaits all autobiographical shading helped, for sure. much anything that came to mind: ship-
major poets; they are doomed to be more The fact that Byron was known to have wreck, cannibalism, lobster, cross-dress-
talked about than read, and, even when ventured far afield played into the vogu- ing, violent slurs upon the Duke of Wel-
they are read, the poetry is parsed as a ish lust for the “exotic,” and he, in turn, lington. In the ranks of the gallivanting,
coded transcription of the life. Byron, went along with it, posing for a “Portrait Don Juan makes Childe Harold seem
however, remains the most extreme case. of a Nobleman in the Dress of an Alba- sedentary, and Byron, as a narrator, keeps
People who have never encountered a nian.” To modern senses, “The Corsair” interrupting his story and whipping him-
line of his verse may be able to cite Car- gives off a heavy whiff of Orientalism: self back into line: “Hail, Muse! et cet-
oline Lamb’s verdict on him (“mad— era,” or, “But I’m digressing.”
bad—and dangerous to know”), and, in In Coron’s bay floats many a galley light, All told, the result is the most con-
Through Coron’s lattices the lamps are
common with Machiavelli, he has had bright, versational epic ever penned, and cer-
the disturbing honor of spawning his For Seyd, the Pacha, makes a feast to-night: tainly the only one with punch lines.
own adjective. Google the word “By- Such is its Shakespearean capacious-
ronic” and up, with a toss of the forelock, Reading this now is like standing in ness that Byron finds a use even for
comes this: “alluringly dark, mysterious, front of a richly hued and glossily var- the dregs of his own experience. His
and moody.” The Devil take him! nished old oil painting. So, in an era of biographers may be preoccupied by the
But Byron was Byronic. One ob- mass tourism, when we can check out ill will that brimmed between him and
server, Lady Mildmay, is said to have Coron (now Koroni, in southern Greece) Annabella, but “Don Juan” distills the
felt the full force: on Instagram, and when celebrity—a entire disaster into one sparkling phrase,
Once, when he spoke to her in a doorway, concept that Byron, as much as anyone, (“that moral centaur, man and wife”),
her heart beat so violently that she could hardly brought into being—has gained in frenzy and proposes this:
answer him. She said it was not only her awe but lost its individuating glow, how can
of his great talents, but the peculiarity of a sort we summon the shock of Byronism? I Marriage from love, like vinegar from
of under look he used to give, that produced wine—
this effect upon her.
would advise retracing his steps not in A sad, sour, sober beverage—by time
verse but in his letters and diaries, where Is sharpen’d from its high celestial flavour
Then, there was Lady Falkland, the wonders forever cease in order to make Down to a very homely household savour.
widow of a friend. “It is not a loveless room for anticlimax. The dashing Lord
heart I offer you, but a heart where every is never more himself than when he Notice how the second line requires
throb beats responsive to your own,” she charges into a forest of dashes, as in us, especially if we’re reading aloud,
wrote to Byron, in 1812, after “Childe these Swiss jottings from 1816: to slow down and relish the rueful-
Harold’s Pilgrimage,” his first hit, had Arrived at the Grindenwald—dined— ness. The ensuing pages are littered
commenced publication. “I awoke one mounted again & rode to the higher Glacier— with similar aperçus, too pensive to be
morning and found myself famous,” he twilight—but distinct—very fine Glacier—like gags, too light of spirit for sententious-
recalled, and that fame seems to have a frozen hurricane—Starlight—beautiful—but ness: “Think you, if Laura had been
a devil of a path—never mind—got safe in—a
quickened the birth of fan mail. In order little lightning—but the whole of the day as
Petrarch’s wife,/ He would have writ-
to feel the throb, you didn’t need to be a fine in point of weather—as the day on which ten sonnets all his life?” Or, “Wives in
Lady, or even to have met the poet in Paradise was made.—Passed whole woods of their husbands’ absences grow sub-
the flesh. His presence on paper was suf- withered pines—all withered—trunks stripped tler / and daughters sometimes run off
ficient, as shown by the outpourings of & barkless—branches lifeless—done by a sin- with the butler.”
gle winter—their appearance reminded me of
another reader: “Sir, I have just finished me & my family.—
What’s going on here? The poem,
the perusal of your incomparable works— as its creator says, “Turns what was
an impulse grateful as irresistible impels Alternatively, sit down and read “Don once romantic to burlesque,” catching
me to acknowledge your Pen has called Juan.” I have it in an old Penguin pa- up with the garrulously jocund strain
forth the most exquisite feelings I have perback that can be stuffed into a coat that had animated Byron’s letters from
ever experienced.” pocket, carried around, and devoured the start. But how, precisely, did he
In truth, much of Byron’s earlier like a nineteenth-century novel. Which, manage to leap from this, in “Childe
verse—including “Childe Harold’s Pil- in many ways, it is. Harold’s Pilgrimage,” in 1816—
grimage,” with its protagonist roaming
across Europe, powered by the perpet- He who hath loved not, here would learn
ual motion of unsatisfied longing—leaves
one struggling to fathom what all the
IJuan,’nofSeptember, 1818, Byron told Moore
a new undertaking: “It is called ‘Don
and is meant to be a little quietly
that lore,
And make his heart a spirit; he who knows
That tender mystery, will love the more,
fuss was about. “The Corsair,” a roister- facetious upon every thing. But I doubt For this is Love’s recess, where vain men’s
ing tale of piracy, sold ten thousand cop- whether it is not—at least, as far as it has woes,

And the world’s waste, have driven him
far from those,
For ’tis his nature to advance or die.
He stands not still, but or decays, or grows
BRIEFLY NOTED
Into a boundless blessing, which may vie
With the immortal lights, in its eternity! Bitter Crop, by Paul Alexander (Knopf ). This ambitious biog-
raphy of the jazz singer Billie Holiday uses 1959, the tumul-
—to this, from “Don Juan,” only three tuous final year of her life, as a prism through which to view
years later? her career. Drawing its title from “Strange Fruit,” a song about
In thoughts like these true wisdom may lynching that was Holiday’s best-selling recording, the book
discern focusses on her experiences of racism and exploitation, and
Longings sublime, and aspirations high, on her anxiety about government surveillance. In tracing Hol-
Which some are born with, but the most iday’s longtime drug and alcohol use, which damaged her
part learn health and led to her spending nearly a year in prison for nar-
To plague themselves withal, they know
not why: cotics possession, Alexander also delves into the unwarranted
’Twas strange that one so young should sensationalism with which the press often covered these mat-
thus concern ters at the time. Holiday died at forty-four. Toward the end,
His brain about the action of the sky; she was frail—at one point weighing only ninety-nine pounds—
If you think ’twas philosophy that this did, but, as one concertgoer noted, “She still had her voice.”
I can’t help thinking puberty assisted.
One answer is technical. The first Our Moon, by Rebecca Boyle (Penguin). This chronicle of our
passage is a Spenserian stanza, nine lines planet’s “silvery sister” begins with the explosive interaction,
long, the last line being an Alexandrine— four and a half billion years ago, that split the moon from
consisting of six feet, that is, and thus the Earth, and eventually encompasses the climatic chaos
metrically a foot longer than the iam- that is likely to ensue when it ultimately escapes our grav-
bic pentameters that precede it. The ef- itational pull. Boyle inventories the ways in which the moon’s
fect is to stretch out the march of the presence affects life on Earth—influencing menstrual cy-
verse, and to apply a calmative or an up- cles, dictating the timing of D Day—and how humans’ con-
lift. In contrast, “Don Juan” is, a few in- ception of it has evolved, changing from a deity to the basis
terludes excepted, in ottava rima: eight for an astronomical calendar to a natural-resource bank.
lines of equal length, rounded off with Throughout, the author orbits a central idea: that under-
a resounding snap. As often as not, the standing the science and the history of the moon may help
snap is an undercut, slicing off solem- to unlock mysteries elsewhere in the universe.
nity at the knees. Byron dreams up
rhymes with a cunning and a candor The Adversary, by Michael Crummey (Doubleday). An all-con-
that are specifically designed to jolt: “mar- suming, mutually destructive sibling rivalry propels this vi-
tyrs hairy”/ “Virgin Mary,” “resurrec- brant historical novel, set in a provincial port in nineteenth-cen-
tion”/“dissection,” “the loss of her”/“phi- tury Newfoundland—“the backwoods of a backwards colony.”
losopher,” or the splendidly mischievous The antagonists are the inheritor of the largest business in
“intellectual” /“hen-peck’d you all.” Both the region and his older sister, who, through marriage, takes
Childe Harold and Don Juan are rest- control of a competing enterprise. Amid their attempts to
less wanderers, but only the latter in- undermine and overtake each other, the community around
spires Byron to unloose this meaty in- them suffers “a spiralling accretion of chaos”: murder, pan-
sult: “But here I say the Turks were much demics, a cataclysmic storm, an attack by privateers, and a
mistaken,/Who hating hogs, yet wished riot. By turns bawdy, violent, comic, and gruesome, Crum-
to save their bacon.” mey’s novel presents a bleak portrait of colonial life and a
Here and there, “Don Juan” over- potent rendering of the ways in which the “vicious, hateful
steps the mark. No one has ever been helplessness” of a grudge can corrupt everything it touches.
more cavalier than Byron about plung-
ing face first into the melee of desire, Life on Earth, by Dorianne Laux (Norton). “If we are frac-
on the page as on the rumpled couch, tured / we are fractured / like stars / bred to shine / in every
and he is equally honest when faced direction,” begins this small marvel of a poetry collection.
with the sheer nastiness of combat—“a Laux’s deft, muscular verse illuminates the sharp facets of
brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art,” everyday existence, rendering humble things—Bisquick, a
as he says in “Don Juan.” His accounts sewing machine, waitressing, watching a neighbor look at
of slaughter, wrought by Russians porn—into opportunities to project memory and imagina-
against Turks, in the poem’s eighth canto, tion. Beautifully constructed exercises in tender yet fierce
verge on the Tolstoyan: “Sliding knee- attention, these poems bear witness to deaths in the fam-
deep in lately frozen mud,/Now thawed ily, to climate destruction, and to the ravages of U.S. his-
into a marsh of human blood.” It is tory, even as they insist on intimacy and wonder.
when he jumbles war and sex together from reputation, martial triumph, of the Luddites, who had smashed ma-
that trouble stirs: “But six old damsels, pledges of undying passion, and other chinery that was taking over their jobs
each of seventy years,/Were all deflow- mainstays of romantic renown, and to and were facing the death penalty. In
ered by different Grenadiers.” fool with them like toys: Greece, likewise, Byron’s faith in the
That is outrageous, now more than self-determination of the country—“I
ever, and even the most ethically relaxed Well—well, the world must turn upon its dream’d that Greece might still be
reader will feel like collaring the poet axis, free”—has not been forgotten. To mark
And all mankind turn with it, heads or
and exclaiming, “Hang on, Your Lord- tails, the bicentenary of his death, the Greek
ship, that’s not funny.” But the outrage And live and die, make love and pay our Ambassador to the United Kingdom
is the point. Byron is surveying rout and taxes, will lay a wreath at Byron’s statue in
pillage, and the terrible ease with which And as the veering wind shifts, shift our Trinity College.
the laws of civil society, such as respect sails; Byron the philhellene is but one
The king commands us, and the doctor
for the elderly, are f lung aside. The quacks us, Byron among many. The limping boy,
clinching rhyme is like a pair of pin- The priest instructs, and so our life ex- the wag with the bear, the cad with the
cers, gripping to make us flinch. Byron hales, under look, the Londoner, the libertine,
is an equal-opportunity satirist, refus- A little breath, love, wine, ambition, fame, the would-be liberator: take your pick.
ing to let go until we have agreed to ex- Fighting, devotion, dust,—perhaps a name. Although Byron defined himself as “a
amine our own prejudices for f laws: broken Dandy,” and despite the por-
“Christians have burnt each other, quite he name of Byron, for a long while, traits that depict him wearing a super-
persuaded/That all the Apostles would
have done as they did.” God knows
T tolled like a bell. On hearing the
news of his passing, the teen-age Ten-
cilious sulk, his loyal Cambridge friend
Hobhouse clung to a more heartening
that’s true. nyson carved the words “Byron is dead” vision. Of all Byron’s peculiarities, Hob-
In a letter to Murray, Byron referred on a rock. “Let not my body be hacked, house wrote, “his laugh is that of which
to “Don Juan” as “Donny Johnny.” It’s or sent to England,” Byron had ordered, I have the most distinct recollections.”
like Tolstoy saying that “Annie Karrie” and he was promptly disobeyed. Many Anyone who believes that radical poli-
is coming along nicely, or Shakespeare folk wanted a piece of him. His lungs tics have to be stern and humorless, for
muttering about “Tony and Cleo” in and larynx were plucked out, placed in maximum impact, should consult Byron.
the back of a pub. What allowed such an urn, and kept in Missolonghi. The He would cheer our progressive causes,
insouciance to flourish, I would argue, rest of him was ferried back to Lon- but shame us into unpursing our lips.
was not just the Italian model of ottava don, where his open coffin was dis- What, if anything, binds all these
rima but also Italy itself—Venice, above played before being borne to a church Byrons together? Why does he not fall
all, where Byron slipped his leash. “What near Newstead Abbey for interment. apart in our hands? Perhaps because
men call gallantry, and gods adultery,/Is (Poets’ Corner, in Westminster Abbey, his appetite for life, though contagious,
much more common where the cli- was not an option: the dean had re- is not insatiable; he, and his most com-
mate’s sultry,” he wrote, and rarely has fused to accommodate such a blasphem- pelling poems, are alert to the ways in
the bond between couplets and cou- ing ne’er-do-well.) Byron’s fellow-no- which our hunger can be slaked. Very
pling been demonstrated with such bles, by and large, did not condescend little matters as much as we like to pre-
alarming stamina. In a typical letter, to grieve him publicly. Thomas Moore tend it does: “When one subtracts from
Byron mentions a recent acquaintance, noted, instead, “the riotous curiosity of life infancy (which is vegetation),—
and adds: “fucked her twice a day for the mob,” with “few respectable per- sleep, eating, and swilling—buttoning
the last six—today is the seventh—but sons among the crowd.” and unbuttoning—how much remains
no Sabbath day—for we meet at Mid- Byron would have rejoiced in such of downright existence? The summer
night at her Milliner’s.—” As if to bal- an irony: the blue blood revered by com- of a dormouse.” Melancholy and fail-
ance the books, he also spends time on moners. In a sense, it was not unex- ure are part of the deal, and there is a
the island of San Lazzaro, in a com- pected. His readership had already been profound comedy to be had from press-
munity of monks, learning Armenian. broadened by the temptingly scandal- ing on regardless. As he wrote, closing
“My mind wanted something craggy ous aura of “Don Juan.” (I have seen a letter to a friend:
to break upon,” he explains. shelves of cheap editions from the pe-
Good night—or, rather, morning. It is four,
But Venice was more than a set of riod, many of them pirated, and some and the dawn gleams over the Grand Canal,
challenges. To Byron, as to generations no bigger than a pack of cigarettes.) As and unshadows the Rialto.
of uneasy admirers, it was the city of late as 1916, in “A Portrait of the Art-
show. One word or deed could always ist as a Young Man,” James Joyce’s hero I find it impossible not to be thrilled
mask another, and the waters offered is pummelled by schoolmates for sup- by that freshly minted verb, and by its
both a sporting chance (he swam over porting Byron, who is, to the assailants, promise of a day that is dying to be
the lagoon from the Lido and up the “only a poet for uneducated people.” spent, or misspent, as fortune and fancy
Grand Canal) and a rippling threat of The fact is that Byron had spoken up dictate. Byron was not a contented soul,
dissolution. Everything, in the end, for the downtrodden. His maiden yet a chapter of civilization is told by
would melt away. Hence his newfound speech in the House of Lords, in 1812, his discontents. Let him be unshad-
ability, in “Don Juan,” to stand back is still a clarion call: a rousing defense owed once again. 
“when you remember the poetry of her
BOOKS work, you feel differently about her, ap-
preciate her isolation and her longings,
and you forgive her selfishness.”
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT Since her untimely death, in 1967, at
the age of fifty, biographers have tended
The long adolescence of Carson McCullers. to be similarly forgiving. In her 1975 bi-
ography, Virginia Spencer Carr presents
BY MAGGIE DOHERTY McCullers as a sensitive and well-mean-
ing dreamer, coddled from a young age
and adored by the literati—how could
she not be a bit self-important? Josyane
Savigneau, whose biography of McCul-
lers was translated from French into En-
glish in 2001, defends the novelist at nearly
every turn, explaining that “a writer lives
differently from people who don’t write.”
And, in a more recent study of McCul-
lers’s life, Jenn Shapland attributes both
the writer’s protracted adolescence and
her substance abuse to her queerness.
(Though McCullers was married to a
man for many years, her most significant
romantic relationships were with women.)
Given how lesbianism was pathologized,
Shapland argues, it’s not surprising that
McCullers turned to drink.
The time is ripe, then, for a more
clear-eyed appraisal. With “Carson Mc-
Cullers: A Life” (Knopf ), Mary V. Dear-
born delivers. Dearborn, the author of
six prior biographies, including three of
mid-century American writers, ap-
proaches her subject with admiration—
McCullers “created what may be Amer-
ican literature’s most detailed, carefully
observed picture of what it means to be
an outsider,” she writes—and also with
a healthy skepticism. She’s critical of
McCullers was a brilliant but pampered writer, one who never quite grew up. McCullers’s drinking and other “bad
habits,” and, armed with archival mate-
hroughout her life, the novelist Car- thor of four novels, one novella, two rial unavailable to many of her prede-
T son McCullers struck observers as
preternaturally young. The biographer
plays, and sundry short stories and
poems, McCullers ascended to literary
cessors, makes a strong case that these
behaviors inhibited McCullers’s writ-
Leon Edel, who met her when she was fame when she was only twenty-three. ing and hurt those around her. “Those
thirty-seven, remarked on her “childish Her début novel, “The Heart Is a Lonely who loved her best treated her, in effect,
wonder.”The French novelist Françoise Hunter,” wowed critics, who crowned like a child,” Dearborn writes. “But Car-
Sagan wrote that she had the “laugh of her Faulkner’s successor. In the decades son was a strong-willed woman, and
a child forever lost.” Like a child, she that followed, McCullers devoted her- this was how she wanted it.”
loved sweets, Christmas, and receiving self entirely to her work, relying on al- A child in life, McCullers probed the
© THE RICHARD AVEDON FOUNDATION
presents on her birthday. Though she cohol and an active fantasy life for in- emotional complexities of youth in her
was tall—a “slender wand of a girl,” in spiration. She relied, too, on a rotating fiction. She is one of the great writers of
the words of her protégé turned rival, cast of friends and family members, who American girlhood, someone who might
Truman Capote—she was often de- cooked her meals, poured her drinks, be mentioned in the same breath as Lou-
scribed as “little”: “an odd little 22-year- listened to “her self-loving arias,” and isa May Alcott and Judy Blume. But she
old,” a “little star.” tucked her into bed at night. The play- was not a sentimentalist, or a young-
If seemingly everyone agreed that wright Tennessee Williams, McCul- adult author; rather, she used the tech-
McCullers was a child, they indulged lers’s closest friend, thought she could niques of literary modernism to depict
her because she was a genius. The au- be demanding, but he also thought that the world as the child sees it, producing
PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD AVEDON THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024 59
sophisticated works of fiction for a so- Assuming she would be a great concert ture work. Most of them depict the tri-
phisticated crowd. It may be true that pianist, her parents allowed her to skip als of childhood and adolescence: a lonely
she was a difficult person to be around, school in favor of practicing. McCullers, eighteen-year-old adrift in New York
and that her life was less healthy and set apart from her peers, spent much of (“Court in the West Eighties”), a thirteen-
productive than it might have been. It her childhood alone. year-old girl who looks askance at her
may also be true that the same indulgent Encouraged by her mother and by a older sister’s dating antics (“Like That”),
atmosphere that stunted her growth kept local musician named Mary Tucker— a teen-age boy who resents his adoring
the link to late childhood alive. McCullers’s first love object, Dearborn younger cousin (“Sucker”). If these sto-
argues—McCullers planned to leave Co- ries were scant in plot, forever McCull-
cCullers was singled out early. lumbus for New York, where she could ers’s weakness, they ingeniously repre-
M The eldest of three children, Lula
Carson Smith was clearly her mother’s
study at Juilliard and, as she later put it,
prepare “to make my mark in the world.”
sented the tumult of growing up.
“Wunderkind,” the strongest story
favorite. Vera Marguerite Smith, called But for various reasons—including a lack from this period, depicts a fifteen-year-
Bébé by everyone who knew her, was an of family funds and a sickly adolescence— old piano prodigy named Frances. She
imaginative, charismatic woman who she shifted her attention to writing, a less arrives at her piano lesson “twitching,”
hosted salons in her living room. She physically demanding activity. Inspired “quivering,” gripped by the “fear that
dominated her quiet husband, a watch- by the plays of Eugene O’Neill and the had begun to torment her for the past
maker and tinkerer, and lavished atten- fiction of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, she few months.” What is Frances afraid
tion on her firstborn. “Mother fussed wrote an amateurish novel at fifteen, the of? That she will play the piano badly
over me,” McCullers recalled in an un- same year she started going by her more for her stern German teacher—and,
finished autobiography—curling her androgynous middle name. Never one to worse, that a bad lesson will confirm
hair, tending to her appearance, and gen- research her books, McCullers instead that she is no longer the “wunderkind”
erally treating her like a young beauty- dreamed up the details, imagining a New she once was:
pageant contestant, or a doll. York where ticket collectors move through
What had begun to happen to her four months
Bébé was certain that her daughter subway cars and city residents live in ago? The notes began springing out with a glib,
was destined for fame, though she couldn’t houses with front yards. dead intonation. Adolescence, she thought.
predict what kind. At first, it appeared In the fall of 1934, McCullers saw Some kids played with promise—and worked
that the girl’s genius was musical. Ac- the city for herself. Arriving by steam- and worked until, like her, the least little thing
cording to family lore, McCullers began ship, she worked menial jobs, having would start them crying, and worn out with
trying to get the thing across—the longing
playing the piano at five, when her fa- somehow lost the money her family had they felt—something queer began to happen—
ther bought one for their home, in Co- scraped together for her, and took writ- But not she! . . . She had to be. She—
lumbus, Georgia. By six, she could pick ing classes at Columbia and New York
out popular songs by ear; at ten, she was University. The stories she produced The more she contemplates the poten-
playing Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhap- there are impressive—and notably sim- tial loss of her talent, the more fractured
sody under the supervision of a teacher. ilar, in both theme and form, to her ma- her thoughts become. Frances doesn’t
have the language to describe this new
and troubling condition: a “little thing”
wounds her, “something queer” thwarts
her, there’s a “thing” in the music that
she can’t get across. Stuck in the lim-
inal space of adolescence, she is too
young to understand the life experi-
ences that motivated the great compos-
ers, but too old to impress her teacher
with technical skill alone. At the lesson,
she plays flawlessly but without great
feeling; she cannot “imagine the music
as it should be.” When she flees the
music room at the story’s end, she is no
longer an exceptional child but merely
an ordinary teen.
Itoo,ffalter—if
McCullers ever felt her confidence
she ever worried that she,
was ordinary—she had her moth-
er’s admiration to bolster her. And, soon
enough, she had Reeves.
Dearborn describes Reeves McCul-
“Their house is full of shit and feathers just like the rest of us.” lers as a “good-looking Alabama-born
charmer”; to Carson, he was simply “the “very famous”: “She would ride back good looks. (McCullers kept her hair
best-looking man I had ever seen.” The home in a red-and-white Packard au- short and favored menswear for most of
two met in 1935 on one of Carson’s fre- tomobile with her initials on the doors. her adult life.) The Times said the book
quent trips home to Columbus, near an She would have M.K. written in red on had a “sweep and certainty that are over-
Army base where the twenty-one-year- her handkerchiefs and underclothes.” whelming,” and Richard Wright praised
old Reeves was stationed. They bonded Mick can’t wait for adulthood, and she it as “a projected mood, a state of mind
over books, progressive politics, and lit- rushes around all summer, as if she could poetically objectified in words.” Here
erary ambitions: Reeves, too, fancied speed up time. was confirmation that McCullers was
himself a writer, though he lacked Car- And yet, in one of the novel’s most special, singular, fundamentally differ-
son’s single-minded dedication to her memorable scenes, Mick willingly turns ent from everyone else. She and Reeves
craft. They married in 1937, then moved back toward childhood. moved to New York, to an
to North Carolina, where Reeves worked She’s throwing a “prom apartment on West Elev-
as an investigator for a credit company party” for her high-school enth Street, where, in Dear-
and Carson drafted her first novel. Ini- classmates, adolescents who born’s words, McCullers was
tially, the couple planned to alternate are just starting to be curi- a “white-hot arrival on the
years writing and wage-earning, but it ous about dating, and she’s literary scene,” shot by fash-
soon became apparent that Carson dressed in an evening gown, ion photographers and so-
would never take a day job. Nor did she silk stockings, and an un- licited by glossy magazines.
have much inclination to keep house: necessary bra. The party When an editor at Harper’s
immersed in her work, she let dinner starts off fairly tame—boys Bazaar published her next
burn in the oven and relied on Reeves and girls stand on either novel—a twisted tale of voy-
to wring out the wash. But Reeves had side of the room, while “the eurism and infidelity at an
only admiration for his brilliant wife, boys thought about the girls and the Army base in the South—under the title
who read to him from her work in prog- girls thought about the boys”—but, “Reflections in a Golden Eye,” he re-
ress each night. When she asked him midway through, some rough-and- ferred to its author as “a Wunderkind.”
whether it was any good, he replied, tumble neighborhood kids bust in,
“No, it’s not good, it’s great.” shattering the evening’s decorum. Mick ore than two decades later, Mc-
He was right: “The Heart Is a Lonely
Hunter,” which earned McCullers a con-
is first enraged by the development,
then “excited”:
M Cullers looked back at this mo-
ment in her career. “I became an estab-
tract with Houghton Mifflin, is an ex- They were like a catching sickness, and their
lished literary figure overnight, and I
traordinarily accomplished first novel, a coming to the party made all the other people was much too young to understand what
symphonic work about our desires to be forget about High School and being almost happened to me or the responsibility it
known and to be loved. Set in the Deep grown. It was like just before you take a bath entailed,” she told an interviewer. “I was
South, the story revolves around John in the afternoon when you might wallow around a bit of a holy terror.”
in the back yard and get plenty dirty just for
Singer, a deaf-mute with Christlike pa- the good feel of it before getting into the tub.
The reign of terror began almost im-
tience and fast-moving hands. After he mediately. Just weeks after the publica-
loses his beloved companion—Spiros If childhood is presented here as a “sick- tion of “Heart,” she fell head over heels
Antonapoulos, an “obese and dreamy ness,” it’s also a tonic, something that in love with the Swiss journalist Annema-
Greek” who is also a deaf-mute—to men- cuts through the fog of adult conven- rie Schwarzenbach, a dashing, worldly
tal illness, Singer becomes a sort of fa- tion. McCullers understood the libidi- morphine addict; she had a face, Mc-
ther-confessor for a group of tortured nal appeal of childhood, a time when Cullers later wrote, “that would haunt
and lonely characters, including a wid- appetite and impulse dominate, and she me to the end of my life.” Annemarie
owed café owner who’s drawn to the was at her best depicting the teen-ager’s wasn’t interested in cultivating a romance
downtrodden, a tubercular Black doctor ambivalence about leaving it behind. with McCullers, and, depending on how
who dreams of a better future for his When adulthood does come for Mick, you look at it, either sought out a friend-
race, and a pugnacious revolutionary pow- it’s not what she envisioned: she loses ship or strung her along. Torn up over
ered by liquor and Marx. At first glance, her virginity in an awkward encounter, her first real lesbian love, McCullers
these sad, middle-aged men seem utterly takes a boring job in retail, and stops confessed her feelings to Reeves, who,
unlike their creator, yet there is some- hearing music in her head. “It was like to his great discredit, slapped her across
thing childlike about all of them, and she was shut out from the inside room,” the face. Neither willing to commit fully
their desire for a better, more just world. McCullers writes, a metaphor that both to Reeves nor willing to leave him, she
But McCullers’s clearest avatar is recalls Frances’s flight from the music instead hoped that he would grant her
Mick Kelly, a lanky thirteen-year-old room and neatly reverses it. the freedom to pursue other relation-
who loves Mozart and wants to be a Monogrammed underwear aside, Mc- ships. Reeves, hopelessly in love, acqui-
composer, and whose parents own the Cullers’s own entry into adulthood was esced. It was a bargain the couple would
boarding house where Singer resides. much closer to Mick’s dream. When strike repeatedly in the years to come,
Wandering around her home town, com- “Heart” was published, in June, 1940, the with disastrous results.
posing a symphony in her head, she spotlight shone on its young author, a That same summer, McCullers began
dreams about a time when she will be Southern ingénue with gender-bending a whirlwind tour of conferences and
residencies, where she charmed some diate and vital contact between himself a check in her name, and then, incredi
of the most famous names in literature and all things in the world.” bly, remarried in 1945, after Reeves fin
and alienated many others. At Bread “Ballad” is a strange little fable, and ished serving in the Second World War.
Loaf, the summer writers’ conference at it occupies a strange place in McCul “These two had an abominable, canni
Middlebury College, she was an “en lers’s career. It’s more philosophical than balistic relationship,” a friend of the cou
fant terrible,” monopolizing the con any of her novels, and its omniscient ple observed. “But she was the vampire. . . .
versation and drinking all of Wallace narrator frequently interrupts the cen She had a colossal power of destruction.”
Stegner’s bourbon—when she wasn’t tral plot—a love triangle involving a
drinking straight gin out of a water glass. crosseyed giantess, a fourfoottall cCullers couldn’t always see the
Back in New York, she abandoned
Reeves for an experiment in communal
hunchback, and a goodlooking convict
who is also the giantess’s estranged hus
M damage she caused. But the novel
she worked on throughout her turbu
living in a Brooklyn Heights brown band—to pontificate about romantic lent twenties suggests that, on some level,
stone; other residents included W. H. love, smalltown life, and “the atmo she knew she was a handful. “The Mem
Auden, Jane and Paul Bowles, and Gypsy sphere of a proper café.” One oftquoted ber of the Wedding,” from 1946, seems
Rose Lee. From there, it was on to Yaddo, passage concerns how lonely love is, de at first to be a rehash of McCullers’s
where she became infatuated with Kath scribing the lover and the beloved as prior work. It is yet another story about
erine Anne Porter, a writer nearly thirty coming “from different countries”: the painful transition from childhood to
years her senior and the “queen bee” of adolescence, featuring yet another young
Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the
the artists’ colony. One night, Porter ex stored-up love which has lain quiet within the
female protagonist with a nickname that
ited her residence to find the lovelorn lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow sounds like a boy’s. Frankie Addams is
McCullers lying prone on the doorstep. every lover knows this. He feels in his soul twelve years old during a “green and
The older writer simply stepped over that his love is a solitary thing. . . . He must crazy summer,” and in the middle of an
the body and continued to dinner. house his love within himself as best he can; existential crisis. Having suddenly shot
he must create for himself a whole new inward
All this activity took its toll. Never world—a world intense and strange, complete
up in height—she’s now too tall to walk
a hardy person, McCullers suffered from in himself. beneath the scuppernong arbor, where
increasing ill health during the early she used to put on plays—Frankie feels
forties, contracting strep throat, an ear It’s a strikingly capacious vision of love, like an “unjoined person,” belonging to
infection, double pneumonia, pleurisy, if ultimately an adolescent one. What nothing and no one. Early in the novel,
and a tooth infection that required daily young person, falling in love for the first she lights upon a solution to her lone
trips to the dentist. She also suffered a time, doesn’t feel proud of her passion, liness: after a visit from her older brother
small stroke in 1941 that affected her vi or wary of sharing her feelings with the and his bridetobe, Frankie resolves to
sion, though she seemed to recover very person who inspired them? Mc join the wedding party and depart with
within a couple of months. Bébé, who Cullers’s trick, in “Ballad,” was to trans the married couple for a new home, far
still saw herself as her daughter’s guard mute the typical teen’s experience of away from her small Southern town.
ian, appeared at the first sign of sick love into a universal philosophy of the But the novel is a repetition with a
ness. She nursed McCullers in New same. In all her fiction, she presented difference. In her earlier fiction, Mc
York, then summoned her home to Co love not as a mutual experience but as Cullers presented imagination posi
lumbus, where McCullers did nothing a solitary fantasy, a feat of imagination tively—as the handmaiden to creativity,
but write, eat, and rest. Such attentive that torments and consoles at once. or as a kind of life force. In “Member,”
care both enabled McCullers to keep For her part, McCullers loved to play we see for the first time its dangers.
writing and insured that she wouldn’t the lover. She spent most of her life pur Frankie is obsessed with the wedding:
have to change her ways. suing women who were usually both un she talks about it, daydreams about it,
McCullers rarely wrote directly about available and uninterested, a group that and pesters Berenice, the Black house
illness, but she wrote often about what included the Broadway producer Cheryl keeper, to tell her about it again and
it’s like to have a body that, for one rea Crawford, the actress Katharine Cornell, again. Berenice tries to puncture Frank
son or another, doesn’t fit the norm. Her and the “First Lady of Alcoholics Anon ie’s fantasies, warning her against “fall
fiction is full of unusual characters, the ymous,” Marty Mann. Meanwhile, in ing in love with some unheardof thing.”
kind that critics sometimes call “gro her marriage, she cast herself perma “You cozen and change things too much
tesques”: deafmutes, drifters, convicts, nently in the role of the beloved. Reeves in your own mind. And that is a serious
women who chafe at feminine conven existed to manage their domestic life and fault,” she tells Frankie. The rest of the
tion. But, in McCullers’s fiction, these to meet her needs; if he wanted some novel proves Berenice right: Frankie has
people aren’t freakish or threatening so one to meet his needs, then he could a disastrous flirtation with a soldier, then
much as they are uncorrupted by adult simply become someone else’s beloved. is disappointed by the wedding. She
life. In “The Ballad of the Sad Café,” a But Reeves didn’t embrace abjection the throws a tantrum, dismayed that her
novella she worked on while recover way his wife did. When McCullers crit brother treats her like a child and equally
ing from her stroke, she described one icized him or withdrew her affection, he dismayed that her childish behavior
such character as possessing “an instinct drank, raged, and occasionally threat doesn’t get her what she wants. As much
which is usually found only in small ened suicide. The couple divorced in 1941, as we may sympathize with Frankie, we
children, an instinct to establish imme after McCullers caught Reeves forging also see clearly the error of her ways. It’s
as if McCullers were stretching herself
to show the adult perspective on the
child who refuses to grow up.
McCullers took five years to write
“Member,” choosing each word carefully,
as if she were composing a long poem.
The novel is better for the effort, con-
taining some of the most beautiful pas-
sages she ever wrote. (The dawn sky has
“the wet pale blue of watercolor sky just
painted and not yet dried.”) There were
emotional challenges, too. McCullers felt
too close to the novel; at one point, she
told Reeves that Frankie was “the expres-
sion of [her] failure”—not as a writer, one
gleans, but as a person. For years after-
ward, McCullers said she was prouder of
“Member” than of any other of her works.
Many critics saw the novel differently.
For them, McCullers was no longer a
twenty-three-year-old début novelist but
an established writer—and she was still
writing about twelve-year-old girls. Ed-
mund Wilson panned the book, writ-
ing, not entirely without reason, that it “Has anyone turned in a pair of reading glasses?”
was too long and that nothing really
happens. Even some of McCullers’s
friends were repulsed. The journalist
• •
Janet Flanner was aghast: “To think that
such disorder, physical and mental, regained her mobility when she had a third, was: McCullers was a genius, and ge-
sides within her perpetual juvenility is this one debilitating. Only thirty years niuses got to live by different rules.
an alarming sight to see in print.” Ad- old, she found it hard to walk and nearly Eventually, although later than one
olescence is a terrible time; why revisit impossible to type. Depressed, in pain, would like, McCullers decided to grow
it in adulthood? But McCullers, indulged and entirely dependent on others, she up. In 1958, she began seeing a therapist
and unfettered, wasn’t writing what she wrote less and drank more. For years, named Mary Mercer. In an early ses-
remembered so much as what she knew. she’d kept a thermos of sherry with her sion, McCullers described her infatua-
while she worked—she called it “tea,” tion with Annemarie and the lessons
earborn describes the publication and sometimes there was tea in the mix— she’d taken from it: love is suffering, and
D of “Member” as a turning point in
McCullers’s career, but it’s tempting to
but now she drank several cocktails be-
fore dinner, then a bottle or more of wine.
reciprocal love impossible. Mercer sug-
gested that love could in fact be recip-
call it the end. McCullers became pro- She turned mean. Reeves bore the brunt; rocated, then showed her how: after they
gressively less sure of herself and even she degraded him, confessing to various concluded therapy, the two began a re-
more desperate for affection; Leon Edel crushes and writing him letters that Dear- lationship. At the age of forty-one, Mc-
remembered “a certain pathos in her born describes as “intricately cruel.” Cullers had her first real girlfriend. She
pleading look, those large, liquid eyes that When Reeves died by suicide, in 1953, returned to her writing, and became hap-
asked the world for love.” She began writ- McCullers did not attend the funeral. pier than she had been in decades. She
ing for the stage, perhaps thinking that As Dearborn notes, with some in- wanted to travel abroad, to stay at fancy
theatregoers were easier to please than credulity, no one ever tried to moderate hotels, to cook elaborate meals from
literary critics. (Her adaptation of “The McCullers’s drinking. (According to a scratch—even though she only ate what
Member of the Wedding,” starring Ethel relative, doctors recommended that she Mercer called “pediatric” amounts of
Waters as Berenice, opened on Broad- have no more than “one large drink— food. And she dreamed of writing a book
way in 1950.) She struck up a friendship or two small ones” each night, but “they called “In Spite Of,” which would de-
with Truman Capote—another preco- didn’t define ‘large’ or ‘small,’” and, with scribe the lives of artists who had over-
cious Southern writer—but dropped him said relative’s help, “the jigger got big- come disability and pain: Sarah Bern-
before long, worried that she couldn’t ger and bigger.”) Nor did friends and hardt, Cole Porter, and Arthur Rimbaud,
trust him. (To be fair, Capote was a snake.) family insist that she seek consistent among others. These were artists who
In 1947, McCullers had a second psychiatric care, not even after McCul- had suffered greatly, sometimes by their
stroke, a serious one, that partially par- lers tried to take her own life, in 1948. own hands. Like her, they were imper-
alyzed her left side. She had barely re- The reason was the same as it always fect; like her, they were extraordinary. 
husband-and-wife creators, Justin Marks
ON TELEVISION and Rachel Kondo, “Shōgun” doesn’t con-
fine itself to his point of view for long.
A proud Protestant, Blackthorne has
SWORD PLAY been searching for a route to “the Japans”
to catch up with the Portuguese, who
“Shōgun,” on FX. arrived there in the name of gold, God,
and glory a half century earlier and have
BY INKOO KANG kept its location a secret from other Eu-
ropean nations. After Blackthorne and
his men wash up on the shore of a small
fishing village, his ship—with its many
cannons and muskets—is claimed by
Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), who
sees the “Christian weapons” as the ad-
vantage he’ll need in an impending con-
flict with his rivals. Five regents, includ-
ing Toranaga, have been entrusted to
maintain peace while keeping the royal
seat warm for their deceased sovereign’s
sole heir, who has yet to come of age.
But, by the time the series begins, To-
ranaga’s quiet consolidation of power has
so threatened the other four that they’ve
aligned themselves against him. The
dreams of the dead can seldom compete
with the ambitions of the living.
Early on, a fellow-sailor informs
Blackthorne of a Japanese belief that
“every man has three hearts: one in his
mouth, for the world to know; one in
his chest, just for his friends; and a se-
cret heart buried deep where no one can
find it.” Toranaga embodies this spirit
of hidden ambition. He employs Lady
Mariko (Anna Sawai), a Catholic con-
vert fluent in Portuguese, as a transla-
tor for the polyglot Blackthorne. Like
Toranaga, she prizes discretion; she tells
her new charge that her people are taught
“ S hōgun” is the kind of Hollywood
product that assumes a defensive
(A previous miniseries, from 1980, hadn’t
bothered to subtitle the Japanese dia-
to compartmentalize their feelings, erect-
ing “an impenetrable wall behind which
crouch from the outset. The FX series— logue: producers felt that if the British we can retreat whenever we need.” But
a ten-part adaptation of James Clavell’s protagonist, John Blackthorne, couldn’t characters defined by their opacity tend
best-selling 1975 doorstopper, which comprehend what was being said then not to make for dynamic scenes—hence
centers on an English sailor who lands neither should American audiences.) the dramatic (and comedic) value of
in seventeenth-century Japan and rises These production details were intended Blackthorne, a brute who refuses to bathe
through its samurai ranks—was an- to distinguish “Shōgun” from the many more than twice a week, still believes in
nounced six years ago with reassurances Western films and TV shows that have medicinal bloodletting, and addresses a
from John Landgraf, the network’s chair- been made under the assumption that, local lord as a “milk-dribbling fuck
man, that this version would be au cou- while Asian aesthetics are worthy as smear.” Unlike most of his Japanese
rant with modern sensibilities. “It’s not spectacle, Asian people do not merit counterparts, he voices his wants con-
an easy thing to get right,” Landgraf understanding, identification, or indi- stantly: to reunite with his few surviv-
admitted, adding that the show’s cre- viduation—or, in the most egregious ing crew members, to pursue the mar-
ative team would consult experts in cases, any presence at all. ried Mariko, and, in time, to advocate
“feudal Japanese culture” and feature a The series opens with Blackthorne for the commoners whom he once dis-
cast of “almost entirely Japanese actors.” (Cosmo Jarvis), but, to the credit of its missed as “a savage horde.”
The show’s world-building is elab-
The adaptation elevates Mariko and Toranaga to primary characters. orate and sometimes hard to keep up
64 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICK LEGER
with, but it may also feel familiar. Stu- of grandeur. And, though much of the
E
dios and streamers have been trying to season is dour in tone, some of its best
T
create the next “Game of Thrones” for twists are the product of a dark wit.
at least a decade, investing heavily in Even so, “Shōgun” ultimately feels
fantasy tales, medieval realms, and pricey more like a curio than like a compel-
I.P. HBO attempted to build on its ini- ling series. “Game of Thrones” excelled
tial success with a Targaryen spinoff, at the macro—who’ll prevail, and
R
“House of the Dragon”; Amazon spent how?—and at the micro, which made
hundreds of millions of dollars on a the interpersonal ties among its char-
J
E
“Lord of the Rings” prequel series it acters relatable, or at least recognizable.
hoped would inspire similar devotion. “Shōgun” struggles on both fronts. To-
K
In the case of “Shōgun,” a “Game of ranaga’s rivals are scarcely differenti-
Thrones”-style premise is accompanied ated, making it difficult to truly grasp
S
by “Game of Thrones”-style carnage: what one regent’s rule versus another’s
in the first episode alone, there’s a sur- would mean. And, despite the series’
N
prise beheading, death by boiling, rit- emphasis on lineage—Mariko suffers
ual infanticide, and off-screen seppuku. unduly for her bloodline, which has
I
(Many other hara-kiris will take place been tarnished by her beloved father—
in plain view before the season is over.) the parent-child relationships that were
Blackthorne, whose time at sea has made so central to “Thrones” are nearly ab-
him no stranger to violence, finds the sent here. Mariko gets a few warm ex-
routine slaughter appalling. Toranaga, changes with her growing son, but she
too, is reluctant to enforce honor codes seems perfectly content to leave him
that end not just single lives but entire behind, fantasizing about killing her-
family lines—and wary of the possibil- self in order to be reunited with dead
ity of a new shogunate, deeming such relatives. Matters of protocol and duty
a military dictatorship “a brutal relic eclipse all else.
from a bygone era.” This restraint is un- Blackthorne’s gradual understand-
dercut by one of his generals, the cocky ing of such samurai mores is meant to
Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano), who, de- mirror our own, but his demotion from
spite his sadism as an executioner, comes the novel’s lone protagonist to one of
across as the series’ most believable several leads gives audiences little to
character for his blithe self-interest and seize on emotionally. His journey to-
transparent scheming. The general’s ward “enlightenment” and his uncon-
slippery desperation as he attempts to vincing affair with Mariko are thinly
play both sides, heightened by Asano’s sketched—and, because “Shōgun” is at
petty-uncle energy, yields one of the pains to foreground the regents’ war, he
season’s most engaging story lines. has more to offer the narrative as a source
Like “Game of Thrones,” “Shōgun” of discord and of new martial technol-
is a demanding watch, with dozens of ogy than as a romantic hero.
characters sharing long, interlocking In theory, elevating Mariko and To-
histories; a sprawling in-universe map; ranaga to primary characters is the “cor-
and frustratingly dim cinematography. rect” update, helping to avoid another
By my count, about three-quarters of “whitewashed” tale about Japan. But
the dialogue is in Japanese, and it’s both are so bound by repression and se-
something of a wonder that the show crecy that they’re almost doomed to be
exists at all, with a cast unknown to dramatically inert. Though the marvel-
most Americans and a setting so far lous Sanada exudes an enigmatic nobil-
removed from us by time, geography, ity, Toranaga’s refusal to confide in his
and culture. That distance is attenuated advisers thwarts any real insight into—
through gobs of exposition, and with or investment in—his ascent. Black-
weighty, often inelegant monologues thorne gleans some wisdom from his
that reinforce (and fail to enliven) well- time in Mariko and Toranaga’s com-
worn themes. But Marks and Kondo pany, but he still frequently misreads the
also know how to highlight the show’s pair, presuming desires they haven’t
distinctive assets. The action, especially voiced and may not possess; when they
on the water, is impressive, and the sets decline to clarify their true feelings, the
and costumes are lavish. A slight lens viewer suffers, too. The show’s own heart
warp lends the scenes at court a sense is buried too deep for us to hear it beat. 
liberation; they want ten thousand dol-
THE THEATRE lars. That stash will finally let them es-
cape East New York for Paris or Lon-
don or some other beautiful place that
FORGIVE ME NOT Nina has fallen in love with via the
Travel Channel.
A revival of Dominique Morisseau’s “Sunset Baby.” Nina—named for the play’s tutelary
spirit, Simone—spends a great deal of
BY HELEN SHAW “Sunset Baby” staring into a mirror,
dressing for her part in these crimes,
pulling her thigh-high electric-blue
boots on and off, and making herself
up to the point of unrecognizability.
Ingram, who swung a lightsabre in the
TV show “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” seems
infinitely more tired here: her shoul-
ders slump; her eyes, their lids painted
peacock green, often drift nearly shut.
Nina does have several stashes of trea-
sure, however, that she hasn’t told
Damon about. Most important is a
trove of letters that her mother left be-
hind, written but never sent to her lover
in prison; now that Kenyatta is out, he’s
desperate to have them. First, he begs
his daughter, and she rejects him, with
a surge of righteous fury. But, once
Damon realizes that Kenyatta might
be willing to pay for the letters, he pres-
sures Nina into meeting with him again.
Bitter and hardened as she is, her fa-
ther’s still burning idealism starts to
melt and change her, even though he
himself never seems to bend. Hornsby
plays Kenyatta as a man always stand-
ing rigidly at attention, a soldier who
hears the bugle calling.
In the director Steve H. Broad-
nax III’s production, the crumbling,
meagrely furnished tenement where
Moses Ingram stars as a daughter grappling with her father’s past. Nina lives—designed by Wilson Chin
for maximum bleakness—doesn’t al-
heatre is a mirror, but for what? tivist father. When Nina (Moses Ingram) ways seem quite real. Inside the apart-
T We quote “Hamlet,” saying that
performance should hold a “mirror up
was five years old, her dad, the Black
Power revolutionary Kenyatta (Russell
ment, Broadnax and his cast pay atten-
tion to small, world-building gestures,
to nature”; in an interview, the play- Hornsby), went to prison for an at- such as the way Damon takes off
wright Dominique Morisseau cited tempted armored-truck heist—to “steal his shoes and changes into slides the
Nina Simone, who said that an artist’s capitalist dollars in the name of Third minute he arrives. We never sense the
duty is “to reflect the times.” Nature, World democracy,” Nina sneers—and world outside, though—no neighbors,
right; the times, of course—the theatre her once renegade mother dwindled no friends, nothing but the apartment
should reflect those things. But a play into heartbreak and, eventually, addic- buzzer, signalling another man who
might also be positioned to show us tion and early death. Now Nina is needs Nina to come to the door. She
the person who wrote it. grown and making her own violent listens to Nina Simone’s music con-
In “Sunset Baby,” now at the Off way, along with her boyfriend, Damon stantly, and thus a sense of blues-bro-
Broadway Pershing Square Signature ( J. Alphonse Nicholson). Together they ken reverie pervades every scene, even
Center, Morisseau, best known for her think of themselves as Bonnie and when people are shouting at, or steal-
play cycle, “The Detroit Project,” in- Clyde, gun-toting tricksters who lure ing from, or abandoning one another.
vites us to look at the fraught final en- men into drug deals and rob them. Kenyatta has recorded video messages
counters between a woman and her ac- Nina and Damon don’t want radical for his estranged daughter, which are
66 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY WANJIRA KINYUA
projected on the upstage wall, and his sometimes in the same moment, his
face, big as a billboard, looms above Ni- arms around Nina’s waist. Morisseau
na’s ugly room, his eyes as staring and often pairs threat with some kind of
huge as a god’s. The image is wonder- appeal for love. “Tell me you need me,
ful, even though these passages are some baby,” Damon demands. Nina, in turn,
of Morisseau’s least confidently writ- will ask her father to express his re-
ten. “This is not my apology. I could grets—at the point of a gun.
never. . . . Wouldn’t know where to None of this mirrors Morisseau’s life,
begin,” Kenyatta says, his eyes moist or her parents’. But there’s still personal
with tears. “This is all I know, Nina. revelation in the play. The playwright
Speaking. Writing. Ideas. Activism. Jus- has posted a quote in the lobby outside
tice. Meditation. Pondering.” the theatre, noting the way her own po-
litically engaged father inspired her:
“S unset Baby” was first produced in
New York by the LAByrinth The-
“I’ve called my mother many times, like,
‘Explain this to me. I’m trying to calm
atre, in 2013, after premièring in 2012 in down; I’m not sure why I can’t calm
London. Though it was well received, down. Have I always been this agitated?’
it was soon eclipsed by the Detroit tril- She reminds me that I have always been
ogy—“Paradise Blue,” set in 1949; the like this. My father was a revolution-
Motown-era “Detroit ’67”; and the con- ary-minded man.” And when, toward
temporary “Skeleton Crew”—which the end of the play, Kenyatta hands
established Morisseau as a gifted or- Nina a photograph of herself as a child,
chestrator of plots about America’s on- it’s actually a picture of Morisseau, taken
going betrayal of Black workers. The by her dad when she was a toddler.
revival of “Sunset” at the Signature is For a long time now, Morisseau, the
part of a multiyear residency, which has bard of Detroit, has been one of our
included a restaging of “Paradise Blue,” most morally driven, socially active writ-
in 2018, and a première of her most ers. So “Sunset Baby,” with its air of
beautiful play to date, “Confederates,” both fantasy and remorse, provides an
in 2022, which darted between two time illuminating look into Morisseau’s mag-
frames: modern-day academia and a isterial status in American theatre. Who,
guerrilla action on a plantation during really, is qualified to be Nina’s comrade?
the Civil War. As a socially conscious Damon seems steeped in progressive
writer, Morisseau seems drawn to real- theory, casually dropping terms from
ism, but I find her most convincing Steven Spitzer’s “Toward a Marxian
when she blurs her stories into quasi- Theory of Deviance,” but for some rea-
fable, which she did in the time-bending son his praxis includes taking Nina’s
“Confederates,” and which she does, in money. And Kenyatta, so dedicated to
glimpses and glances, here. action and self-examination, has made
The attempts in “Sunset” to capture no allowance for the profound damage
reality, when unmediated by fantasy, can done to his daughter by his absence.
falter. Ingram has a nice, icy thousand- Morisseau hints at the pressures ap-
yard stare, but Morisseau has written plied from one generation to the next,
her part as a strange mixture of street- and we begin to understand the lone-
smart intellectual and deprived inno- liness of liberation. It is necessary, of
cent who, as Nina says, has never even course, and Morisseau clearly appreci-
seen a “fuckin’ sunset.” (New York has ates the immeasurable gifts given to
its drawbacks, no doubt, but the sun her by her father. But Nina hasn’t had
does go down here.) Elsewhere, though, a childhood—and her creator may be
Morisseau is more careful with cha- showing us the high emotional cost of
racterization. The play’s finest accom- being raised in the revolution. 
plishment is Damon, whose own deep 1
reading has allowed him to recast Great Breakthroughs in American
his exploitation of others as a kind of Technology
warped political radicalism. Nicholson, From the Times.
giving an astonishing performance, dis-
An earlier version of this article described
plays a gorgeous ease onstage, and is incorrectly how Amanda Lepore decorated her
able to play Damon as both the sup- accessories. She used a glue gun, not needle
portive lover and the pleading bully, and thread.
Until now, Samet has shown negligible
THE CURRENT CINEMA romantic interest in this young woman,
but his competitive instincts are awak-
ened by her unexpected chemistry with
UNLEARNED LESSONS Kenan. The warmer their conversation,
the more bitter and reproachful Samet’s
“About Dry Grasses.” silence. Your reservations might deepen
when you see, in montages throughout
BY JUSTIN CHANG the film, the many portraits that Samet,
an amateur photographer, has taken of
hat a thankless time it is to be snow; not until the season changes, near various Anatolian locals posed in their
W molding young minds, at least in
the movies. The grouchy literature pro-
the end of a formidable three hours and
seventeen minutes, do the desiccated
natural surroundings—images of stir-
ring but also faintly patronizing beauty.
fessor in “American Fiction,” played by yellow blades of the title push their way Samet, a self-styled urbanite who dreams
Jeffrey Wright, makes the mistake of into the frame. Until then, we must of moving to Istanbul, can’t hide his con-
teaching Flannery O’Connor, and is re- make do with the prickly company of tempt for the country mice he’s been
warded with a leave of absence. A nastier Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu), an art teacher saddled with. “None of you will become
fate awaits Nicolas Cage’s evolutionary- who’s finishing up his fourth and—he artists,” he hisses at his pupils during
biology professor in “Dream Scenario,” hopes—final year at this remote outpost, one particularly nasty tantrum, condemn-
ing them to a lifetime of planting pota-
toes and sugar beets. In another ugly
scene, when a student accuses him of fa-
voritism, he yells, “Don’t take advantage
because I’m nice.”
The student’s charge happens to be
spot-on. The teacher’s pet in question
is a girl named Sevim (Ece Bağcı), whom
Samet treats with a discreetly conspir-
atorial affection, slipping her a gift out-
side class and briefly hugging her. Sevim
responds to the attention with a co-
quettish giggle, a mischievous smile,
and, disastrously, a love note that falls
into the hands of another faculty mem-
ber. In a sudden accretion of betrayals
and reversals, stunning in their swift-
ness and wrenching in their plausibil-
ity, Samet’s behavior makes him the ob-
An accusation against a teacher exposes social ills in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film. ject of serious accusations by Sevim and
another student.
who becomes, for an inexplicably large a stint mandated by Turkey’s public- The allegations are upsetting but
swath of the population, a nebbishy fig- education system. Our first glimpse of vague, and the degree of Samet’s culpa-
ure of nightmares—a sad-sack Freddy Samet, a tiny speck trudging across a bility is unclear. Little resolution is forth-
Krueger. Both movies are to some ex- blinding-white landscape, is a typical coming, in any case. Not for the first
tent poking fun at the thin skins and Ceylan overture: a lone figure dwarfed, time, Ceylan (who wrote the script with
trigger warnings of contemporary cam- spectacularly, by a terrain that reflects Ebru Ceylan, his wife and longtime cre-
pus culture, but Paul Giamatti’s nineteen- his inner desolation. Funny thing is, ative partner, and Akın Aksu) intro-
seventies ancient-history teacher, in “The the closer we get to Samet, the smaller duces a plot rife with tension and sus-
Holdovers,” fares little better, stuck he seems; his outward affability soon picion only to pivot and de-escalate.
during the Christmas holidays at a board- melts away, exposing a heart of petti- He’s less interested in crime and pun-
ing school as frigid and isolated as the est permafrost. That, too, is typical of ishment, or even the proper allocation
Overlook Hotel. Ceylan: he never mistakes a protago- of blame, than he is in the accused’s
The weather is just as chilly and the nist for a hero. character, or lack thereof, and the way
classrooms just as cheerless in “About How soon will you find yourself turn- that it is revealed in the bureaucratic
Dry Grasses,” the latest epic of wintry ing against Samet? Perhaps as early as grind of the ensuing investigation. Even
discontent by the Turkish director Nuri the scene in which he and his colleague if, as Samet would claim, he is being
Bilge Ceylan. We are in eastern Ana- and housemate, Kenan (Musab Ekici), unfairly targeted, the process still shows
tolia, where craggy mountain roads and go out for tea with Nuray (Merve Diz- us something essential about him. It
stretches of steppe lie blanketed by heavy dar), a fellow-teacher from a nearby town. also lays bare the fault lines—entrenched
68 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 4, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY EMILIANO PONZI
sexism, low-level authoritarianism, pro- prove both exhilarating and exhausting: ing during a political protest in Ankara.
vincial small-mindedness—of a society two barely sufferable protagonists, two The pain of that memory is visible in
that Samet, no matter how desperately moral crises set in motion by rebellious the laserlike intelligence and bracing
he tries to preserve a sense of superior- children, and two titles whose cheer- warmth of Dizdar’s performance (which
ity, is part of. lessness almost suggests a parody of art- won her the Best Actress prize at Cannes
film anhedonia. If you find yourself last year), and it imparts rare dramatic
eylan, now in his mid-sixties, came plunking down your money on the ticket force to a dinner-table sequence in which
C to international prominence with
his third feature, “Distant,” an exqui-
counter and saying, “One for ‘About
Dry Grasses,’ please,” you may even won-
Samet and Nuray spar over issues of the
personal versus the political, the indi-
sitely observed, modestly scaled two- der whether Ceylan could be burlesqu- vidual versus the collective. Samet, cyn-
hander that won the Grand Prix at the ing his reputation for artistic severity, ically defending his right to be an iso-
2003 Cannes Film Festival. The movie, or daring us to roll over in our seats and lationist schlub, dismisses justice and
about two cousins sharing an apartment enjoy a little winter sleep of our own. community as naïve ideals. Nuray, hav-
in Istanbul, was an odd-couple comedy Yet I urge you to go. “About Dry ing suffered and bled for those ideals,
in a wistful key, suffused with a bone- Grasses” may be unhurried, with lan- insists that everyone in society must do
deep sense of alienation—social, eco- guid steppe-by-steppe pacing and long, something, however small. “Can this
nomic, spiritual—that has haunted his luxuriant, exquisitely sculpted conver- wretched world be helped?” she asks.
films ever since. In the intervening de- sations, but it is also nimble, alert, and “That’s the only question.”
cades, Ceylan’s characters have grown alive in ways that seem to have taken Ceylan clearly wants to agree with
chattier, his running times more dis- Ceylan himself by surprise. How else her—but can he? His long-standing
tended, and his images more and more to explain a dazzling formal rupture—a fascination with a certain specimen of
strikingly beautiful. Along the way, he breaking of the fourth wall at the mo- male blowhard has always smacked a
has played with the trappings of genre— ment of Samet’s greatest self-doubt— bit of self-implication, something he
memorably in “Three Monkeys” (2008), that has no precedent, as far as I can re- made slyly explicit when he played the
a James M. Cain-style noir, and with call, in Ceylan’s work? The movie brims male lead, superbly, in “Climates” (2006),
utter mastery in “Once Upon a Time with a bitingly melancholy Chekhovian an incisive portrait of a toxic relation-
in Anatolia” (2011), a contemplative fu- spirit, so what are we to make of its sin- ship. (Ebru Ceylan played the female
sion of police procedural and West- gle boldest departure from the Russian lead.) And, given that Ceylan was a pho-
ern—but he has never abandoned a master’s orders: a sequence in which one tographer before he turned to film-
harsh yet fundamentally humane view character, bragging about his toughness, making, it’s reasonable to ponder the
of the world. briefly produces a handgun that is never extent of his identification with the odi-
He has also clung, with stubborn fired, or even seen again? ous (if not irredeemable) Samet. But it’s
consistency, to his formative artistic in- Even if the weapons remain mostly ultimately Nuray, with whom he almost
fluences, melding Antonioni’s feel for sheathed, the threat of violence, espe- shares a first name, who captivates him.
existential anomie, Tarkovsky’s eye for cially emotional violence, lingers. You There’s a productive tension, a bifurca-
majestically bleak scenery, and Chek- feel it in Samet’s fury as he throws the tion of sensibilities, at work in “About
hov’s ear for trivial argument and windy once adored Sevim out of his classroom, Dry Grasses” that feels excitingly unre-
introspection. A pair of Chekhov sto- and also in the callous determination solved. If the movie’s perspective favors
ries provided the inspiration for “Win- with which he sets his sights on Nuray, Samet, its sympathies are with Nuray,
ter Sleep,” Ceylan’s Palme d’Or-win- quietly but decisively breaking Kenan’s who practices what she preaches, push-
ning drama, from 2014, and, should you heart. Tellingly, it is Nuray who has ex- ing back against his complacency at
have seven hours to spare, a double bill perienced actual physical trauma, hav- every opportunity. She has a lot to teach
of that and “About Dry Grasses” would ing lost part of a leg in a suicide bomb- him and us. 
THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2024 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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THIS WEEK’S CONTEST
“ ”
..........................................................................................................................
THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION
“Part of me thinks this was a bad idea.”

Dave Matta, Pittsburgh, Pa.
“Don’t feel bad. In a few weeks, it’ll “ You knew I was domesticated when
be like this never happened.” you married me, Margaret.”
Roy North, Norristown, Pa. Jesse Kavadlo, Chesterfield, Mo.
“Oh, my God! My butt is huge.”

James Flaherty, Oakville, Ont.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.

12 13 14
THE 15 16
CROSSWORD 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25
A lightly challenging puzzle.
26 27 28 29 30
BY CAITLIN REID
31 32 33 34
35 36 37
ACROSS
1 What kids don’t want to catch during 38 39
recess
8 Comedian Trevor 40 41 42 43 44 45
12 High price to pay
46 47 48 49 50
14 Excited about
15 Stream flowing down a mountain, maybe 51 52 53 54 55
16 Accessory that goes to waist?
17 ___ Stanley Gardner (creator of Perry 56 57 58 59 60
Mason)
61 62
18 Make a lot of noise in bed, perhaps
20 On the ___
63 64
21 Like citrus fruits
24 Nebbiolo or Sangiovese
4 Heavy weight 41 Spearheaded
26 Word often ignored when alphabetizing
5 Societal troubles 43 Places to find some sweaters
27 “Rats!”
6 Get-up-and-go 44 Complete
30 Shades
7 Relish, as a frankfurter 45 Not quite all
31 Partner in the sky
8 Writing tip? 47 Big brass
34 Cuatro y dos
9 “I used to hate facial hair, but then it 48 Bounced
35 Major-league starters? grew on me,” e.g. 50 Three-card ___
38 Brusque Fantasy island?
10 53 Currency adopted by Croatia in 2023
39 Workplace training session 11 Train wreck, as it were 54 Lily with an edible bulb
40 Sprite in “The Tempest” 12 It’s carried by the lovelorn 57 Roll sold at a nursery
42 Spotted 13 Like a steak that’s “still mooing” 59 Chum
43 “Tidy” amount 15 Steak, for instance 60 It may be crude
46 Things shared with confidants 19 Summer hrs. in N.Y.C.
49 Base of a puttanesca sauce 22 Exchanged promises Solution to the previous puzzle:
51 Pressure unit on a tire gauge: Abbr. 23 Family guys? S N A G M O U S S E
52 Pulls one over on 25 None the ___ L O C A L D A U N T E D
A double play results in two of them A I R B A G M E N T I O N S

55 28 scotus count
B R O R E D I D L O R D
56 Some methods of birth control, briefly 29 Grabs (on to) B A D M E D I C I N E
58 Texas’s colorful state flower 31 Supply the spread for C A G E M A T C H E S
61 Guthrie who sang “Alice’s Restaurant” 32 Ron Howard’s role on “The Andy N A T U R A L H A I R S H Y
62 “Instrument” that requires no musical Griffith Show” A S I A B I T O W E S

P E C T E R R I T O R I A L
talent 33 Principle
C O M E T O A N E N D
63 Food or water, for example 35 “Yeah, I bet” C A P T A I N S L O G
64 “Bye-bye!” 36 Portrayer of Sir Robin the Not-Quite- W O L F K E S H A V A T
So-Brave-as-Sir-Launcelot in “Monty C H I L I T E S A N G O L A
DOWN Python and the Holy Grail” D E L I V E R D E T E R
1 Popular breed of herding dog 37 Bygone small iPod T E S T E D T E X T
2 Went (for) 38 ___ Sea (world’s largest inland body of Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
3 Laudatory lines water) newyorker.com/crossword
so much fun
wedding, anniversary, graduation,

new house, new job, promotion,
If it’s the thought that counts, think in color. glassybaby come in

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OC EAN O F STO RMS

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Ian Frazier (The Talk of the Town, p. 3; Victoria Tentler­Krylov (Cover) is a

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THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“Part of me thinks this was a bad idea.”

“Oh, my God! My butt is huge.”

Follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts.

PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.

A double play results in two of them A I R B A G M E N T I O N S

62 “Instrument” that requires no musical Griffith Show” A S I A B I T O W E S

wedding, anniversary, graduation,

If it’s the thought that counts, think in color. glassybaby come in

Made by hand in the USA. glassybaby.com/thenewyorker

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