The New Yorker May 27 2019

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MAY 27, 2019
4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

19 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Jeffrey Toobin on the coming abortion fight;
de Blasio’s botched rollout; Mac DeMarco;
rent-a-goat; wheelchair chic for Cannes.
PROFILES
Mark Singer 24 Hello, Darkness
A creator of hit TV shows has dementia, and work to do.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Patricia Marx 31 23 and Him
LETTER FROM MONTREAL
Hannah Goldfield 32 Kitchen Shift
A band of famously hard-living chefs clean up their act.
PERSONAL HISTORY
Jia Tolentino 38 Ecstasy
Of faith and other drugs.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Ed Caesar 46 Hate and Love
The neo-Nazi who became an informant.
FICTION
Ben Lerner 58 “Ross Perot and China”
THE CRITICS
POP MUSIC
Amanda Petrusich 63 Rammstein’s panorama of German history.
BOOKS
65 Briefly Noted
Jerome Groopman 66 Psychiatry’s vexed quest for the causes of mental illness.
THE ART WORLD
Peter Schjeldahl 70 The Whitney Biennial.
THE THEATRE
Hilton Als 72 “Curse of the Starving Class.”
MUSICAL EVENTS
Alex Ross 74 The Shed at Hudson Yards opens its doors.
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 76 “Booksmart,” “The Souvenir.”
POEMS
Frances Leviston 35 “High Force”
Gregory Fraser 43 “Business”
COVER
Malika Favre “Summer Hours”
DRAWINGS Tom Toro, JohnCuneo, Roz Chast, Will McPhail, Liana Finck, Pia Guerra and Ian Boothby, Paul Karasik,
Zachary Kanin, Amy Hwang, Matt Diffee, Barbara Smaller, Drew Dernavich SPOTS Tomi Um
The Food Newsletter
CONTRIBUTORS
Jia Tolentino (“Ecstasy,” p. 38) is a staff Ed Caesar (“Hate and Love,” p. 46) is a
writer. Her first essay collection, “Trick contributing writer and the author of
The best Mirror,” will be out in August. “Two Hours: The Quest to Run the
Impossible Marathon.”
way to stay Mark Singer (“Hello, Darkness,” p. 24),
a longtime contributor to the maga- Hannah Goldfield (Tables for Two,
zine, published, most recently, “Trump p. 17; “Kitchen Shift,” p. 32), the maga-
connected and Me.” zine’s food critic, has been a contrib-
utor since 2010.
with the Malika Favre (Cover), an illustrator,
lives in London and Barcelona. This is Jerome Groopman (Books, p. 66) is the
culinary scene. her eighth cover for The New Yorker. Recanati Professor of Medicine at Har-
vard. His latest book is “Your Medical
Gregory Fraser (Poem, p. 43) is the au- Mind: How to Decide What Is Right
thor of four collections of poetry, infor You,” with Pamela Hartzband, M.D.
cluding the forthcoming book “Little
Armageddon.” Frances Leviston (Poem, p. 35) is the
author of, most recently, the poetry col-
Amanda Petrusich (Pop Music, p. 63), a lection “Disinformation.”
staff writer, is the author of “Do Not
Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obses- Ben Lerner (Fiction, p. 58) is a MacAr-
sive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 thur Fellow. His new novel, “The To-
rpm Records.” peka School,” will be out in October.
Brent Crane (The Talk of the Town, Paige Williams (The Talk of the Town,
p. 23) is a journalist based in San Diego. p. 22), a staff writer, is the author of
His work has appeared in the Times “The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Be-
and Scientific American, among other trayal, and the Quest for Earth’s Ulti-
publications. mate Trophy.”
Twice a month, we’ll send

you recommendations
and reviews from our critics THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM
and correspondents—plus
the best of The New Yorker’s
food coverage, past and
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present.
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2 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019
Our members
THE MAIL return each year
LEAVING THE COMMUNITY I met with the Family’s chief astrolo-
as faithfully as
ger, who claimed that our star charts the tides.
I relate to Guinevere Turner’s ambiva- showed that we were not meant to be
lence in calling the “communities” in together. I suppose this prophecy was
which she grew up, the Lyman Family, part of the family-separation strategy
a cult (“The Others,” May 6th). I was that Turner so poignantly describes.
raised not in isolation, as Turner was, but For his part, our friend disappeared into
in New York City, within the Chabad- the cult, and his artistic and architec-
Lubavitch movement. Although the tural abilities may have bolstered the
Chabad community may seem like a Lyman Family’s funds for many years.
relatively modern Hasidic Jewish sect David Barker
that is integrated into American soci- Del Mar, Calif.
ety, this perception is far from the truth.
The school that my brothers and I at- Turner perceptively captures the subtle
tended did not teach the English-lan- psychological dynamics of cults, from
guage alphabet; we studied the Bible, the power of group norms to the blind
the Talmud, and Jewish law in Yiddish adherence to beliefs that are no less ar-
instead. We also weren’t taught any math bitrary than those of established reli-
or science, lest our impressionable minds gions. However, by writing about the
be polluted by secular knowledge. De- more benign-seeming practices of the
spite immense communal resistance to Lyman Family, she unwittingly under-
outside education, I decided, at the age emphasizes the dangers of contempo-
of twenty-three, to study for the G.E.D. rary cults. On many people’s minds today
exam. Learning times tables and frac- are Islamic terrorist organizations, such
tions as an adult was not easy, but I as ISIS, which recruit followers using
managed to pass the test. However, my cultlike strategies. The leaders of such
unfamiliarity with math and English organizations exploit people’s desire for,
grammar continued to bedevil me in as Turner puts it, “structure, solidarity,
college. These difficulties were a prod- a kind of hope” by inviting them to pub-
uct of the cultlike world view that my licly extoll their devotion to the cause Situated on 2,500 acres of unspoiled
parents, who grew up as secular Jews, on social media and by promising im- paradise, Ocean Reef provides a long list
adopted in their early twenties: after mortality to those who commit horrific of unsurpassed amenities to its
joining the Chabad movement, they acts, such as suicide bombings. Sadly, Members including a 175-slip marina, two
came to believe that the Messiah would Turner is correct when she writes that 18-hole golf courses, tennis facilities,
reveal himself and take us to Israel. Many there will always be people who are state-of-the-art medical center,
people consider education to be the most searching for the sense of belonging that K-8 school, private airport and more.
valuable gift that parents can give their cults can provide. By understanding the
child; mine suffered severely as a result psychologically manipulative methods There are only two ways to experience
of my parents’ choices. used by the Lyman Family, perhaps we Ocean Reef Club’s Unique Way of Life –
Joseph Newfield can find ways to help those who are as a guest of a member or through
Brooklyn, N.Y. tempted to join terrorist groups, and the pages of Living magazine.
even deter them from doing so. Visit OceanReefClubMagazine.com
Turner’s personal history reminded me Richard M. Perloff or call 305.367.5921 to request your
of my own brush with the Lyman Fam- Professor of Communication and complimentary copy.
ily. Around the time that Turner was Psychology
born—in 1968, during the psychedelic Cleveland State University
heyday of Timothy Leary—a friend in- Cleveland, Ohio
vited my wife and me to visit the Lyman
compound in Roxbury, Massachusetts. •
Lyman was developing his messianic Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
personality and attracting lost souls address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
whose drug abuse or other life experi- themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
ences had left them seeking a sense of any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
structure and community. My wife and of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
PRIVATE • AUTHENTIC • UNIQUE
S U M M E R P R E V I E WS
MAY 22 – 28, 2019
GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
This year’s DanceAfrica festival, at BAM May 24-27, is focussed on Rwanda. Although some of the events
invoke the country’s 1994 genocide, the emphasis is on rebound and healing through tradition. The head-
lining act, Inganzo Ngari, a popular Rwandan folkloric troupe founded in 2006, performs crop rituals and a
big-wigged warrior dance alongside the Brooklyn-based BAM/Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble, a festival
mainstay whose spirited members (including Adia Clarke, pictured above) never fail to bring down the house.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSEFINA SANTOS

MOVIES
SUMMER PREVIEW
Monsters, Celebrities, Friends, and Lovers

The supernatural pervades the season, is John Shaft, Jr., the son of the detective nese family who decide not to tell their
starting with Jim Jarmusch’s zombie from the 1971 original. “Men in Black: grandmother that she’s mortally ill. Jesse
drama, “The Dead Don’t Die” ( June 14), International” ( June 14), an update of Eisenberg stars in Riley Stearns’s “The
which features a cast of Jarmusch vet- the franchise, stars Chris Hemsworth, Art of SelfDefense” ( July 12), a com-
erans (including Adam Driver, Tilda Tessa Thompson, Rebecca Ferguson, edy about a meek man who, after a ran-
Swinton, and Bill Murray) and new- and Liam Neeson; F. Gary Gray di- dom assault, studies karate with a sensei
comers to his cinematic universe, such as rected. Tom Holland returns in the title (Alessandro Nivola) who becomes his
Danny Glover and Selena Gomez. Ari role of “SpiderMan: Far from Home” mentor—and, perhaps, his tormentor as
Aster’s “Midsommar” ( July 3) is set in ( July 2), directed by Jon Watts. Zendaya well. Elisabeth Moss, Tiffany Haddish,
a village in Sweden, where a vacation- is also back, as Peter Parker’s friend MJ. and Melissa McCarthy star in “The
ing American woman (Florence Pugh) Friends and family are central to sev- Kitchen” (Aug. 9), an action comedy, set
believes that she has stumbled upon a eral upcoming movies, including the in New York in the nineteen-seventies,
macabre cult. comedic drama “The Farewell” ( July about the wives of imprisoned criminals
Movies set in the entertainment 12), starring Awkwafina and directed by who keep their spouses’ schemes going.
world are soon to be prominent. “Rocket Lulu Wang, about members of a Chi- —Richard Brody
man” (May 31), a drama about Elton
John’s rise to fame, stars Taron Egerton,
as the singer-songwriter, alongside Jamie
Bell, who plays his collaborator Bernie
Taupin; it’s directed by Dexter Fletcher.
In “Late Night” ( June 7), directed by
Nisha Ganatra, Emma Thompson plays
a talk-show host whose staff writer
(Mindy Kaling) helps rescue the show
from cancellation. Danny Boyle directed
“Yesterday” ( June 28), a comedic fan-
tasy in which the Beatles are remem-
bered by nobody except for one musician
(Himesh Patel), who shares their music
with the world; Lily James, Kate Mc-
Kinnon, and Ed Sheeran co-star. Quen-
tin Tarantino’s latest work, “Once Upon
a Time in Hollywood” ( July 26), is set
in 1969 Los Angeles and stars Leonardo
DiCaprio as a fading actor and Brad Pitt
as the actor’s stunt double, who attempt
a double comeback. The Manson-family
murders are involved in the story, too:
Damon Herriman plays Charles Man-
son and Margot Robbie plays Sharon
Tate. “Blinded by the Light” (Aug. 14),
directed by Gurinder Chadha, is set in
London in the nineteen-eighties and
stars Viveik Kalra, as a teen-ager from
ILLUSTRATION BY ALLISON FILICE
a Pakistani family who finds resolutions

to his personal problems through the
music of Bruce Springsteen.
Familiar intellectual property prevails
in a new batch of remakes and sequels.
Samuel L. Jackson stars in the latest
version of “Shaft” ( June 14), directed
by Tim Story; this time, the protagonist
THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 5

1
MOVIES
movie’s careful, empathetic attention to the
processes of manipulation also forces personal
Symphony No. 8 for its free annual Memorial
Day concert, on May 27 at 7, at the Cathedral of
experience into the background and filters out St. John the Divine; Jaap van Zweden conducts
the characters’ specificity in favor of arm’s- both programs.—Fergus McIntosh (May 22-23 at
All Is True length abstractions.—R.B. (In limited release.) 7:30, May 25 at 8, and May 28 at 7:30.)
Kenneth Branagh does Shakespeare, again.
This time, he’s not adapting one of the plays
but, rather—fully armed with a false nose and Tolkien American Composers Orchestra
other props—taking on the role of the play- Devoted and sedate, Dome Karukoski’s film
wright himself. We find the Bard at the dusk of is a biographical account of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Frederick Loewe Theatre
his career, leaving London—where the Globe early years, which begins with a boy in a rural Now in its twenty-ninth year, the annual Under-
Theatre has burned down—and returning to idyll, and ends with a full-grown man writing wood New Music Readings has become a high-
his native Stratford, where his family awaits. the first line of “The Hobbit.” In between, we light of the American Composers Orchestra sea-
His wife, Anne (Judi Dench), tells him of the see Tolkien as he is orphaned, educated at a de- son. In a morning open rehearsal and an evening
hurt that he has caused through his lengthy manding school and then at Oxford, and finally concert, six up-and-coming composers—Rodrigo
absences (though he’s hardly been idle); one of sent to the front line in the First World War. Castro, Chen Yihan, inti figgis-vizueta, Jack
their daughters, Susannah (Lydia Wilson), is Almost all the film’s events, including the loss Hughes, Jihyun Kim, and Aaron Israel Levin—
married to a disapproving prig, and the other, of pastoral bliss and the fellowship of friends, will hear their works prepared by the estimable
Judith (Kathryn Wilder), single and discon- are cast as foreshadowings of Tolkien’s fiction; conductor Ludovic Morlot. Audience mem-
tented, sits at home. The movie is a somnolent the death-dealing horsemen from “The Lord of bers will select one of three commissions to be
affair, laden with a strange and tendentious the Rings,” for instance, ride past his eyes in the awarded for new pieces, which will be premièred
subplot involving Shakespeare’s dead son, trenches. Nicholas Hoult invests the adult hero in future seasons.—Steve Smith (May 23 at 10:30
Hamnet, and enlivened mainly by a visit from with a distracted and stammering intensity; A.M., free with R.S.V.P.; May 24 at 7:30.)
the Earl of Southampton (Ian McKellen), Lily Collins takes the rather thankless role of
during which the two men trade sonnet rec- Edith, a fellow-lodger in a boarding house and
itations by the fire.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed later his wife; and Derek Jacobi plays Profes- Meredith Monk
in our issue of 5/20/19.) (In wide release.) sor Wright, a real-life linguist of formidable
range.—A.L. (5/20/19) (In wide release.) Jewish Museum
“Ich vergesse—I forget,” Meredith Monk sings
August at Akiko’s at the start of her “Memory Song,” from 1984.
Returning to his family’s home town in Ha- Xala That she hasn’t forgotten is evidenced by this
waii after a long absence, Alex (Alex Zhang The opening sequence of the Senegalese di- Bang on a Can presentation, which plumbs five
Hungtai), a thirtysomething saxophonist, dis- rector Ousmane Sembène’s bitter satire, from decades of Monk’s career; it’s paired with the
covers that his grandparents are dead and their 1974, shows Africans taking over the Dakar museum’s current Leonard Cohen exhibition.
house is gone. He finds a room in a Buddhist Chamber of Commerce from its European Alongside two members of her Vocal Ensemble,
bed-and-breakfast run by an elderly woman overlords—and then exchanging their garb for she’ll weave her world anew from beguiling,
named Akiko (Akiko Masuda), who initiates suits, speaking in French instead of Wolof, and repetitive effects on voice and keyboard.—F.M.
him in spiritual practices, introduces him to happily accepting briefcases full of money from (May 23 at 8.)
a new circle of friends, and reacquaints him the sole remaining French functionary. Sem-
with the region’s natural splendors. This first bène’s political anger also targets the practice of
feature by the director Christopher Makoto polygamy, endorsed by local Islamic customs. “Lucretia”
Yogi advances with gentle warmth and serene El Hadj (Thierno Laye), a corrupt business-
majesty; working with the cinematographer man who sits on the council, takes a third wife, HERE
Eunsoo Cho, he composes images of intricate but suddenly—under a curse, or xala—becomes “Proud of my suffering, the traitor of my honor
texture and emotional urgency that render impotent and fails to consummate the mar- takes his leave.” So begins the first aria of Han-
contemplation energetic. Unfolding the tra- riage. He scurries to shamans (one, comically, del’s “La Lucrezia,” a cantata for solo female
ditions of the area’s Japanese population, Yogi has him crawl to his new wife with a talisman voice and continuo, in which a noblewoman
intertwines Alex’s outer and inner journeys between his teeth), but superstition proves to from ancient Rome ultimately decides to kill
by fusing confessional conversation and mu- be just another form of blindness to underlying herself after being raped by the king’s son.
sical performance, solitary wanderings and ills—his own and those of Senegalese society at With its searing despair and stripped-down
playful gatherings. Few films reach as briskly large. Sembène depicts a corrupt system that accompaniment, the piece has the sound of a
and deeply into cultural history and personal replaced white dictators and profiteers with woman staring into the open maw of grief as
memory, or sketch with such spare lucidity the black ones; the symbolic ending, a glimmer it begins to consume her. The deft chamber
sources of artistic inspiration.—Richard Brody of revolutionary hope, is as gratifying as it is ensemble Cantata Profana’s evening-length ex-
1
(Film at Lincoln Center, May 22.) implausible. In French and Wolof.—R.B. (Film ploration of Lucretia’s story—which includes
Forum, May 25, and streaming.) excerpts of Respighi’s operatic setting and folk
songs popularized by Shirley Collins and Joan
Charlie Says Baez—culminates in Shadi Ghaheri’s staging of
The director Mary Harron’s schematic drama- “La Lucrezia,” with the mezzo-soprano Annie
tization of the Manson-family killings flips be- CLASSICAL MUSIC Rosen.—Oussama Zahr (May 23-25 at 8:30.)
tween two time frames: the late nineteen-six-
ties, when Charles Manson (Matt Smith) is
pursuing a music career while forming his “Eroica” “Silence and Memory”
cult of submissive devotees (mainly young
women), and the early seventies, when three David Geffen Hall National Sawdust
of those women—Leslie Van Houten (Hannah The New York Philharmonic presents two The rests and pauses that composers write into
Murray), Patricia Krenwinkel (Sosie Bacon), politically potent works of radically different their work are responsible for some of the most
and Susan Atkins (Marianne Rendón)—are character. Beethoven’s irrepressible “Eroica” devastatingly effective moments in classical
in prison for the murders they committed at Symphony, written in a time of revolutionary music. Cornelius Dufallo—a former member
his behest. The drama, written by Guinevere fervor, was originally dedicated to Napoleon of the string quartet ETHEL, a composer of
Turner, focusses, in the earlier time period, on Bonaparte, but the honor was withdrawn after incisive violin pieces, and now a certified psycho-
Manson’s seductive and cruel techniques for the Frenchman declared himself Emperor, in therapist—spearheads an event that considers
destroying the identities of his acolytes. The 1804. It stands in stark contrast to Shostakovich’s the impact of silence in both music and thera-
prison scenes involve the efforts of a graduate Soviet-era “Chamber Symphony”—actually a peutic practice. Part concert and part lecture,
student, Karlene Faith (Merritt Wever), to ed- string-orchestra transcription of his String Quar- the program weaves together pieces by Dufallo
ucate the three women in feminist thought, in tet No. 8—in which personal torment is provoked and others with commentary from the psycho-
order to help them shed Manson’s psychologi- and then muffled by a revolution gone wrong. analyst Ruth Oscharoff and the neuroscientist
cal grasp and reconstitute their selfhood. The Also this week, the orchestra plays Bruckner’s Joseph LeDoux, who himself is a member of

New York production premiere
Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra

Louis Langrée, conductor “A joyous yet
Suzanne Andrade and Barrie Kosky, co-directors
Paul Barritt, animation profound staging.”
—Guardian (U.K.)
Wednesday–Saturday,
July 17–20 at 7:00 pm
David H. Koch Theater
Photo: Mathew Imaging
A production of the Komische Oper Berlin
Lead Sponsor MostlyMozartFestival.org

Alice Tully Hall or David Geffen Hall Box Office, Broadway at 65th Street | 212.721.6500
Endowment support is provided by the Blavatnik Family Public support is provided by New York “Summer at Lincoln Center” is supported by PEPSICO
Foundation Fund for Dance, Nancy Abeles Marks, and State Council on the Arts with the support
Jennie L. and Richard K. DeScherer. of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the Artist catering provided by Zabar’s and Zabars.com
New York State Legislature. Official Hospital of Lincoln Center
CLASSICAL MUSIC
the Amygdaloids, a folk-rock band of scientists
moonlighting as musicians.—O.Z. (May 24 at 7.)
Burgers, Bourbon & Beethoven

Green-Wood Cemetery
It’s hard to turn one’s nose up at the three
principal offerings of the inaugural Burgers,
Bourbon & Beethoven Festival, which unfolds
on the idyllic acreage of Brooklyn’s Green-
Wood Cemetery. This Memorial Day-weekend
concert and cookout kicks off the second sea-
son of the Angel’s Share classical-music series
and features bites from Harlem Public and
Madcap Café, bottles from WhistlePig, Widow
Jane, and others, and a performance, by the
String Orchestra of Brooklyn, of Schubert’s
“Unfinished” Symphony and Beethoven’s ever-
popular Fifth Symphony. Also playing: The
series continues with Purcell’s punch-packing
opera “Dido and Aeneas” (June 4-5 and June
7-8 at 7:30), directed by Alek Shrader and
starring his wife, the mezzo-soprano Daniela
Mack, as the tragic Carthaginian queen.—O.Z.
(May 25 at 7.)
SUMMER PREVIEW New York Electronic Art Festival

Political Opera, Legacies Remade Issue Project Room
Presented by Harvestworks and a variety of
partner organizations, the New York Electronic
Fifty years ago, a West Village riot struck Opera ( July 14-Aug. 22). Back in the Art Festival is a consistently vibrant celebration
the match of gay liberation. New York city, the Mostly Mozart Festival features of plugged-in work. It includes concerts, work-
shops, talks, and other events on Governors
City Opera marks the anniversary with two potent pieces of music theatre: a Island, and in other venues citywide, through
the world première of “Stonewall,” by Weimar-themed “Magic Flute” ( July Aug. 11. The opening-night concert sets the
Iain Bell and Mark Campbell, which sets 17-20), and “The Black Clown” ( July stage with a potent trifecta of performing com-
posers: Lea Bertucci, Mario Diaz de Leon, and
the famous event to music ( June 21-28). 24-27), adapted by Michael Schachter Colin Marston.—S.S. (May 25 at 8.)
The New York Festival of Song presents and Davóne Tines—who takes the title
two concerts on the theme. The first in- role—from the “melancholy jazz” of
cludes a song cycle written by a group Langston Hughes’s poem. panSonus
of mostly lesbian composers; two weeks At BAM, the vocal ensemble Room- Mise-En Place
later, the revived program “Manning the ful of Teeth makes music based on the The soprano Amber Evans and the percussionist
Jon Clancy, together known as panSonus, are
Canon” highlights songs by and about photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe an idiosyncratic and exciting young duo who,
gay men (L.G.B.T. Community Center, in “Triptych,” by Bryce Dessner and in their few public outings to date, have shown
June 11 and June 25). The New York Korde Arrington Tuttle ( June 6-8). a knack for clever, offbeat programming and
the skill to make their bold notions stick. For
Philharmonic sounds a sombre note in The group also appears at Caramoor, this event, the pair enlists select guests to lend
John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, his in Westchester, in a series dedicated a hand in pieces by Christopher Cerrone, Lei
anguished response to the epochal trauma to compositions by its colleague Car- Liang, and Bethany Younge, presented alongside
new and recent works by Anahita Abbasi, Lisa
of AIDS (May 30 and June 1). In a more oline Shaw ( June 20-July 21). Farther Atkinson, and Jakob Bragg.—S.S. (May 25 at 8.)
antic mode, the orchestra brings a free north, Bard SummerScape presents
concert to every borough, playing pieces the U.S. première of Erich Wolfgang
that include the overture to Rossini’s “La Korngold’s grandiose “Miracle of Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble
Gazza Ladra” ( June 11-16). Heliane” ( July 26-Aug. 4), before the Bohemian National Hall
That ostentatious music prefaces Bard Music Festival turns to film scores From the earliest days of his career, the Czech
composer, conductor, and flutist Petr Kotik
a melodrama about a thieving mag- and other works by the Viennese- felt a creative kinship with John Cage and his
pie and a wrongful conviction, one of turned-Angeleno composer (Aug. New York School cohorts, including Christian
two operas (the other is Bellini’s “La 9-18). Another overshadowed legacy, Wolff and Earle Brown. Kotik championed those
figures, and extended their lineage, with the
Clara Schumann’s, guides the Chelsea
Straniera”) on offer from the bel-canto S.E.M. Ensemble, which he founded in 1970,
aficionados of Teatro Nuovo (Lincoln Music Festival ( June 6-15): for the and with Ostrava Days, the biennial institute
Center’s Rose Theatre, July 17-18). Law prodigious pianist’s second centennial, and festival that he established, in the Czech
Republic, in 1999. Here, a program celebrating
enforcement similarly drives the plot of pieces of hers (and a few by her hus- their common threads starts with a documen-
Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thomp- band, Robert) are threaded through a tary-film screening and is followed by a concert
son’s “Blue,” a family drama centered slate of commissions from ten contem- of works by Kotik, Wolff, Brown, Alvin Lucier,
and the former Ostrava Days student residents
on a black cop, his wife, and their activ- porary composers. Lucie Vítková and Anna Heflin.—S.S. (May 28
ist son, playing upstate at Glimmerglass —Fergus McIntosh at 6, free with R.S.V.P.)

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DANCE
SUMMER PREVIEW
You Classical Ballet, Spiritual Grace
might be If classical ballet is about beauty, order,

and equilibrium, then Marius Petipa’s
“The Sleeping Beauty” is the most
good story; his works, based on folk leg-
ends and fairy tales, are filled with pas-
sages of surprisingly naturalistic mime,
able to classical of all. Tchaikovsky’s score pro-

vides a thrilling undertow of emotion:
light, darkness, longing, and, in the end,
as well as buoyant, joyful dancing.
The dirgelike second movement of
Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-Flat
ignore an epic sense of scale. In his staging

for American Ballet Theatre (at the
Metropolitan Opera House, July 1-6),
Alexei Ratmansky draws from original
Major is one of the great musical il-
lustrations of the misery of man. In
2001, Mark Morris used it as the back-
ground to a striking passage in his piece
this ad notations and period sketches to restore

a filigree that had eroded since the bal-
let’s première, in St. Petersburg, in 1890.
“V,” in which the dancers crawl on all
fours, face down, across the stage. “V”
returns to the Mostly Mozart Festi-
for oat- What makes Ronald K. Brown’s

dances so satisfying is their deep mu-
sicality, and their humanity—each work
val in a program by the Mark Morris
Dance Group (at the Rose Theatre,
July 10-13) that also includes a new
milk but lays out a path toward grace and spiri-

tual renewal. At Bard SummerScape (at
the Fisher Center, in Annandale-on-
work set to Erik Satie’s witty piano suite
“Sports et Divertissements.”
The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festi-
there’s Hudson, N.Y., July 5-7), Brown’s en-

semble, Evidence, a Dance Company,
will perform an updated version of one
val, in the Berkshires, brings together
the high priestess of minimalist dance
Lucinda Childs, the former New York
another of his best-loved works, “Grace” (1999),

and also “Mercy,” a new piece set to
music, performed live, by the soul-
City Ballet star Wendy Whelan, and
the experimental cellist Maya Beiser.
They’ve created “The Day” (at the
one funk-jazz singer-songwriter Meshell Doris Duke, in Becket, Mass., July 31-
Ndegeocello. Aug. 4), which explores the spectral
over This summer, New York will receive

an all too infrequent visit from a group
of dancers from the Royal Danish Bal-
let, who will perform excerpts drawn
realm between life and death. Whelan
and Beiser share the stage, bathed in
a wash of projected images, as Beiser
plays a composition by David Lang,
there. from the company’s unique repertory of

ballets by August Bournonville (at the
Joyce, July 9-14). Bournonville loved a
inspired by the phrase “I remember
the day . . . .”
—Marina Harss
1
DANCE
Center on May 24, features luminaries (Mi-
chelle Dorrance) alongside up-and-comers (the
teen-age Foreman twins) and an ace ensemble.
The concluding jam session, at Swing 46 on
New York City Ballet the afternoon of May 26, is like a family picnic
for a very talented family.—B.S. (May 23-26.)
David H. Koch
In the penultimate week of the company’s
spring run, the strongest program is a qua- Niall Jones
druple bill of Balanchine ballets, on May 24,
that opens with the seldom performed “Scotch The Chocolate Factory
Symphony”—set to Mendelssohn’s eponymous Though Jones sometimes wears fabulous cos-
score, which was inspired by a visit to the Scot- tumes, he is a subtle and slippery performer, a
tish Highlands—and closes with the modernist thoughtful artist drawn to the indefinite. For
work “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.” In the mid- several years, he has been pursuing an interest
dle are two jewel-like pas de deux, both per- in darkness, so don’t expect his new work “Fan-
formed to onstage musical accompaniment. The tasies in Low Fade” to shine a lot of light on
first, “Duo Concertant,” is for violin and piano; its mysteries. It’s a middle-of-the-night piece
1
it begins playfully and ends with a poetic scène focussed on what can and can’t be seen.—B.S.
d’amour bathed in light and shadows. In the (May 27-June 1.)
second, “Sonatine,” Ravel’s keyboard sonata sets
a mood of nonchalance and sophistication; the
two dancers move in and out of synch with each
other, as if carrying on an extremely civilized NIGHT LIFE
conversation.—Marina Harss (Through June 2.)
Musicians and night-club proprietors lead
complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in
advance to confirm engagements.
American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House
The company celebrates the choreographer
Alexei Ratmansky’s tenth year in residence
with a triple bill of one-act ballets, followed
Bill Charlap Trio
Dizzy’s Club
You
by seven performances of his confection-
ary-themed “Whipped Cream.” The mixed
program contains both his earliest ballet for
the company, “On the Dnieper” (2009)—a dark
The pianist Bill Charlap’s sheer ardor for
melodious phrasing, the winding terrain of
harmony, and the durable beauty of the song
form is palpable in his every touch of the
might be
tale of love and betrayal, set after the end of the
First World War—and his newest, “The Sea-
sons.” The latter, a large ballet suite for fifty-six
dancers, evokes the forces of nature: snow,
keys. His long-established trio with Peter
Washington, on bass, and Kenny Washing-
ton, on drums, remains the gold standard of
commitment to the verities of small-group
able to
frost, wildflowers swaying in the breeze. The
lilting and suggestive score, written, in 1900,
by the Russian composer Alexander Glazunov,
is likely to stay with you long after you leave
the theatre.—M.H. (Through July 6.)
unity and lucidity.—Steve Futterman (May
21-26.)
ignore
Ligia Lewis
Duckwrth
Union Pool
The Los Angeles rapper Duckwrth is a mu-
sical shape-shifter whose hip-hop is as likely
this ad
Performance Space New York
Closing out Performance Space New York’s
“No Series,” Lewis, an American artist based in
Berlin, reprises her 2016 piece “Minor Matter”
to feature wailing electric-guitar lines as
it is funky 808s that rumble and rattle so
deeply they feel like they could rip a car
(or a body) apart. His previous releases
for oat-
(May 21-22). As lights flash and a soundtrack
moves between the Renaissance and Donna
Summer, three performers grapple as if in a
mosh pit and make noise with gumboot dance,
“I’M UUGLY” and “an XTRA UUGLY
Mixtape” reflected the range of his mo-
saic sound palette to intriguing effect, but
his latest project, “The Falling Man,” is
milk but
expressing love and rage and a resistance that
extends into doing nearly nothing. Her newest
work, “Water Will (In Melody),” in its U.S.
première (May 28-29), ratchets up the theory-
more refined in its focus. The dynamism of
orchestral punk courses through its veins,
providing an apt backdrop for his agile
flows; with Duckwrth on the stage, one can
there’s
inspired excess with melodrama and miming,
presenting a rather German-looking dysto-
pia.—Brian Seibert (May 21-22 and May 28-29.)
reasonably expect jam sessions and mosh
pits—maybe both at the same time.—Briana
Younger (May 22.) another
Tap Family Reunion
Schomburg Center
Betty Who
Terminal 5 one
This celebration of National Tap Dance Day,
started last year by the tap leaders Dormeshia
Sumbry-Edwards (who has since dropped her
surname), Derick K. Grant, and Jason Samuels
Throughout the past decade, the Australian
singer Betty Who has been making radiant
pop music that’s as playful and air-light as
a bouquet of balloons. She broke out with
over
Smith, is a rough-edged and happy mix of classes
and events that aim to maintain a connection
between the past and the future of the art. The
centerpiece performance, at the Schomberg
her ecstatic hit “Somebody Loves You,” a
song that still feels like a dopamine rush
nearly seven years later. She parted ways
with her label in 2017 and, this February,
there.
NIGHT LIFE
SUMMER PREVIEW Ibeyi ( June 8) and the electronic cum-

bia band Bomba Estéreo (Aug. 10).
Fresh and Fabled Faces, a Golden Jubilee SummerStage is similarly interna-
tional and cross-generational, bringing
Music’s communal qualities peak in the Taylor, and the stunning Brazilian drag the psychedelic legends George Clinton
summer, as rising temperatures allow queen Pabllo Vittar. The Greatest Day and Parliament Funkadelic, on their
for the pleasures of outdoor concerts. Ever (Ford Amphitheatre at Coney farewell tour (Central Park, June 4),
Governors Ball (Randall’s Island Park, Island, July 13-14) combines a carnival the Colombian rock band Aterciope-
May 31-June 2) signals the official start experience with electronic dance music lados (Queensbridge Park, July 11), and
of the season, featuring a diverse lineup and hip-hop. This year’s edition in- the long-running folk-rock outfit the
that includes the irreverent rapper Tyler, cludes the party-starting producer-d.j.s Mountain Goats (East River Park, Aug.
the Creator, the charming English pop- Carnage, Zed’s Dead, and Cashmere 10). And, in Long Island City, MoMA
rock band the 1975, and the candid Cat and the nimble rappers Pusha T PS1’s Warm Up pulses with some of the
R. & B. darling SZA. Hot 97’s Sum- and Bas. And for those whose emo most innovative rising artists, including
mer Jam (MetLife Stadium, June 2) dispositions can’t be tempered even by the trilingual Catalan singer and rap-
shares the weekend, offering a roster the glory of beach weather, the travel- per Bad Gyal ( July 13) and the quick-
focussed on the brilliant new genera- ling Sad Summer Festival (Rooftop at tongued U.K. rapper Flohio (Aug. 3).
tion of women in rap, from the headliner Pier 17, July 16) provides a fix with Should the festival crowds prove too
Cardi B to the slick Southern spitter such angsty bands as Mayday Parade hectic, or a daylong event too daunt-
Megan Thee Stallion and the rising De- and the Maine. ing, the wave of pop stars descending
troit rhymer Kash Doll. Elsewhere, rock A few season-long series swing on more contained venues provides an
finds a dedicated home at the inaugural widely and broadly to fill out their bills. alternative. The promising singer Nor-
ALT 92.3 Summer Open (Forest Hills This year’s BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!, mani joins with one of music’s biggest
voices, Ariana Grande, to enchant
Stadium, June 22-23), which showcases at the Prospect Park Bandshell, offers
the manifold styles of the Lumineers, a striking balance of storied luminar- the Barclays Center ( June 14-15) and
Sharon Van Etten, and Young the Giant. ies—among them the inimitable Patti Madison Square Garden ( June 18-19).
Marking the fiftieth anniversary of LaBelle ( June 4), the indie-rock titan And Khalid, who was recently crowned
the Stonewall uprising, Pride Island Liz Phair ( June 29), and the pioneering the most streamed artist in the world,
(Pier 97, June 29-30) celebrates with Malian singer-songwriter Salif Keita brings his amiable musical style to the
the extraordinary icon Grace Jones, the ( July 13)—and such modern genre- Garden ( July 31-Aug. 1).
thrilling singer and performer Teyana defiers as the French-Cuban twins —Briana Younger

released her first-ever independent album, personal obsession: “Monk’s Dreams,” an
“Betty,” a project full of dance grooves and elucidative recording of all seventy of The-
electro-glitter that show off her consistent lonious Monk’s compositions. Though it’s
vivacity.—Julyssa Lopez (May 22.) close to a sure thing that Monk’s tunes will
find their way into these sets, Kimbrough
is also a highly individualistic interpreter
Littlefield’s Ten Year Anniversary of both standards and his own quirky work.
He’s joined by the drummer Billy Drummond
Littlefield (an essential “Monk’s Dreams” participant)
The modestly ambitious Gowanus venue and the bassist Dezron Douglas.—S.F. (May
Littlefield celebrates a decade of business 24-25.)
with a special slate of shows. In keeping with
its usual amalgam, it alternates between
comedy—Wyatt Cenac resurrects his “Night Omar Apollo
Train” showcase on May 22—and music,
including the delectably murky indie band Bowery Ballroom
Califone on May 25. Of special note are the The Mexican-American singer and guitar-
Masqueraders, R. & B. troupers who last ist Omar Apollo started recording soulful
played New York in 1968 (at the Apollo, nat- R. & B. experiments in his home town of
urally) and who return, on May 24, via the Hobart, Indiana, in 2016. His first few re-
tasteful soul excavation of Dig Deeper.—Jay leases were lovestruck, melancholic reflec-
Ruttenberg (May 22-26.) tions, lightly washed in reverb and peppered
with smooth vocal loops. But on his new EP,
“Friends,” which came out in April, Apollo
No Rome injects his sound with hefty doses of funk and
dance, hinting at the multifaceted musical
Rough Trade NYC universe that he has at his fingertips. After Mead Schaeffer, oil on canvas cover art for the Dodd, Mead & Co
edition of Moby Dick, 1922. Estimate $25,000 to $35,000.
Occasionally, No Rome sounds like the angsty this Manhattan set, he performs the following
bands of the early two-thousands—all thrash- night at Music Hall of Williamsburg.—J.L.
ing passion smoothed over by boyish soft- (May 25.) Illustration Art
ness—but, mostly, the London-based Fili- June 4
pino singer’s music is an atmospheric wash
of lush grooves. On his latest EP,“Crying in Yann Tiersen Christine von der Linn • cv@swanngalleries.com
the Prettiest Places,” he is at his best when
he embodies both of those things and more, Beacon Theatre
weaving electronic sounds into R. & B. with When confronted by a mountain lion in
an attuned pop sensibility. Having spent time Northern California, Yann Tiersen had a
on the road with the eclectic band the 1975, uniquely human reaction: he fled, then later
he basks in his own spotlight in his first New returned to the site to record a violin part for
York headlining show.—B.Y. (May 23.) his new album, “ALL.” A multi-instrumental-
ist with a quintessentially French philosoph-
ical streak, Tiersen floods his new work with
Amelie Lens nature recordings and singers trafficking in
dwindling tongues (Breton and Faroese). The
99 Scott reflection on man’s wobbly place on the planet
Techno d.j.s sometimes act as if playing records is clear but rarely heavy-handed. Onstage,
for a crowd were more mystical than it is. The it’s delivered alongside a cinematic wash of
1
rising Belgian d.j.-producer Amelie Lens has spotlights, a stylized existential crisis.—J.R.
little time for that sort of approach—her selec- (May 28.)
tions mean to grab, hold, and shake you around,
from start to finish. In a way, she’s a techno
classicist: on the decks, Lens conjures the giddy
drive of early-nineties Euro-rave anthems, cut THE THEATRE
with the drier, loop-based production that came
later.—Michaelangelo Matos (May 24.)
Happy Talk
Four Tet Pershing Square Signature Center
Jesse Eisenberg’s fourth play, for the New
Knockdown Center Group, is a confident, wide-ranging work,
One of the most gifted melodists doing business buoyed by undeniable star power. Lorraine
in the dance-music world, the London-bred (Susan Sarandon, in her first stage appearance
Brooklyn resident Kieran Hebden, who works as since “Exit the King,” in 2009) is a suburban William Curtis, The Botanical Magazine, or Flower Garden Displayed,
complete run, London, 1787-1827. Estimate $7,000 to $10,000.
Four Tet, spins d.j. sets with a beguiling charm housewife with delusions of theatrical gran-
that’s only partly due to his own work. Hebden’s deur. She indulges the fantasy by rehearsing for
playfully galloping grooves—including self- her Jewish Community Center’s production of Maps & Atlases, Natural History
made edits of outside material—do firmly guide “South Pacific,” but shares her real life with her
things, but he keeps the mood buoyant and is unresponsive husband, Bill (Daniel Oreskes), & Color Plate Books
unafraid of familiar pop, as when he pairs Ariana her ailing mother, and Ljuba (Marin Ireland), June 6
Grande’s fluttering vocals with the kinetic min- her mother’s caregiver. Some affection seems
imal techno of Robert Hood.—M.M. (May 24.) to have blossomed from the codependency Caleb Kiffer • caleb@swanngalleries.com
between Lorraine and Ljuba, but nothing is
as it seems; setups that earned big laughs the
Frank Kimbrough first time around curdle when they next appear. Download the App
Eisenberg’s script, under Scott Elliott’s direc-
Mezzrow tion, skillfully serves up cleverness, poignancy, 104 E 25th St. NYC • 212 254 4710
Last year, the pianist Frank Kimbrough plot twists, and menace. Ireland is phenomenal SWANNGALLERIES.COM
delivered the comprehensive product of a as the plucky Serbian immigrant, and Sarandon

THE THEATRE
creates a character that earns, by turns, our
admiration, revulsion, and pity.—Ken Marks
(Through June 16.)
Original Sound
Cherry Lane
Adam Seidel’s fast-moving new play, about
Danny (Sebastian Chacon), a scrappy young
beatmaker, who convinces Ryan (Jane Bruce), a
major pop star, to work with him, has two main
ideas: that the ambition of talented artists can
expose them to exploitation, and that it can also
make them selfish. As directed by Elena Araoz,
for the Cherry Lane, the exploitation theme,
which surfaces mostly in sharp exchanges with
Ryan’s manager (Anthony Arkin) and Dan-
ny’s father (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), is a lot
more compelling than the selfishness theme,
which plays out too familiarly in situations with
Danny’s sister (Cynthia Bastidas) and with his
roommate (Lio Mehiel). But the best scene
is about neither: at the center of the play is a
gorgeous extended musical sequence between
Danny and Ryan that captures the magic mo-
ment when a collaboration clicks.—Rollo Romig
(Through June 8.)
SUMMER PREVIEW
Love, Tragedy, and Futuristic Kung Fu The Pink Unicorn

Episcopal Actors’ Guild
Love takes center stage this summer with uncomfortable racial truths return The performance space at the Episcopal Ac-
as the Public’s Shakespeare in the Park for encores. In “Underground Railroad tors’ Guild is a cozy attic immediately above
midtown’s tiny Church of the Transfigura-
season opens with “Much Ado About Game,” written and performed by Jen- tion—an aptly intimate setting, and a perfectly
Nothing” (starting previews May 21, nifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard, a named church, for this one-person show about
at the Delacorte), featuring an all-black chipper lesson from two middle-school a Presbyterian widow (Alice Ripley) in small-
town Texas who struggles to adapt to her teen-
cast directed by Kenny Leon. Danielle teachers on America’s sins transforms ager’s genderqueer identity. “I kept poking at
Brooks, whose character Taystee has be- into a sadomasochistic fantasia. The it the way you poke your tongue on a canker
come the heart and soul of the Netflix show, last seen in New York in 2016, sore,” she says. Directed by Amy Jones for
Out of the Box Theatrics, Elise Forier Edie’s
show “Orange Is the New Black,” plays comes to Ars Nova’s new downtown script scans a bit more like a first-person short
Beatrice; Grantham Coleman is her Ben- home, at Greenwich House, starting story than like a monologue to be performed.
edick. Later, Daniel Sullivan directs the May 30. After a sold-out run at the But Ripley fully inhabits the role, employing
a profound command of inflection and man-
considerably less romantic “Coriolanus,” SoHo Rep this past summer, Jackie Sib- nerism that makes her character engrossingly
starting July 16. On Broadway, Aaron blies Drury’s “Fairview,” which won this genuine and conversational; she finds humor
Tveit and Karen Olivo play a heartsick year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama, moves in the most unexpected little places.—R.R.
(Through June 2.)
poet and his showgirl muse in an adapta- to the Polonsky Shakespeare Center,
tion of the Baz Luhrmann film “Moulin starting June 2; a matryoshka doll of
Rouge!,” in which Belle Époque Paris racial perception, the play steamrolls Proof of Love
incongruously bursts with the songs of the fourth wall as an African-American Minetta Lane Theatre
Elton John, the Police, and Lady Gaga. family throws a birthday party. Chisa Hutchinson (“Surely Goodness and
Alex Timbers’s opulent production starts The Shed, the new arts venue at Mercy”) wrote this one-woman play, com-
missioned by Audible and starring the poised
previews June 28, at the Al Hirschfeld. Hudson Yards, has sought cultural ca- Brenda Pressley as Constance, a Wasplike well-
Of course, there’s also tragedy, lone- chet by cross-pollinating the likes of to-do black woman. Constance paces a hospital
liness, and calamity. “Sea Wall/A Gerhard Richter, Renée Fleming, and room, ranting at her husband, who’s comatose
after an accident en route to meet his lover,
Life,” a double bill of sombre one- Steve Reich. So get ready for “Dragon who, according to Constance, and much to her
act monologues, transfers from the Spring Phoenix Rise” (starting June 22), chagrin, can best be described as “ghetto fabu-
Public to Broadway’s Hudson Theatre a commission that brings together the lous.” In reckoning with the question of where
her marriage went wrong, Constance ruminates
( July 26). In “Sea Wall,” by Simon Ste- director Chen Shi-Zheng (“Monkey: on markers of class and status in the black com-
phens, Tom Sturridge plays a photog- Journey to the West”), the screenwrit- munity, especially language—African-American
rapher whose contented family life is ers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger vernacular English, slang, and Internet-speak
all escape her. Despite some labored moments
suddenly upended. In “A Life,” by Nick (“Kung Fu Panda”), and the enigmatic of vulnerability and the play’s stiff final swerve
Payne, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a young singer-songwriter Sia for a “futuristic toward realization and closure, Pressley, under
father contemplating death, birth, and kung-fu musical” that unfolds around Jade King Carroll’s direction, gives life to Con-
stance’s biting quips and classist judgments and
the unknowable. and above its spectators. delivers a charming performance full of snark
Two recent productions that deal —Michael Schulman and pep.—Maya Phillips (Through June 16.)

1
ART
graphic elements—a black triangle, a red disk,
a white disk, an odd black hook shape, and
Sanya Kantarovsky
some skittery lines—on an amorphous ground Luhring Augustine
of thinned grayish paint that soaks here and CHELSEA In Kantarovsky’s new paintings, the
“Betye Saar” there into the unevenly primed canvas. It’s distortions of modernist figuration take a
large—more than eight feet high by more than tragicomic turn, and telltale contemporary
New-York Historical Society six feet wide—but feels larger: cosmic. There references—a puffy parka, say, in a wintry
Decades of trawling yard sales yielded the had never been anything quite like it in paint- scene that foregrounds a disconsolate snow-
haunting raw material—American artifacts ing, and it stood far apart from the formally man—assume an eerie storybook edge. The
of domestic labor and racist caricature—for a conservative, lurid fantasizing of the other Moscow-born artist, who lives and works in
stinging group of assemblages by the vener- Surrealist painters. Today, we are ever less apt New York, favors an unusual aerial perspective
ated African-American artist. Aunt Jemima’s to base valuations on precedence—who did in several works. Egon Schiele looms large in
liberation is one long-running theme. In the what first. Art of the past seems not so much the harshly expressive hospital scene “Nee-
nineteen-seventies, Saar, who is ninety-two, a parade as a convocation, subject to case-by- dles,” a portrait of a listless green woman wear-
began recasting that symbol of subservience case assessments. Never unsettling in the ways ing a gown printed with flowers and syringes,
as a revolutionary figure, balancing her ar- of, say, Matisse or, for heaven’s sake, Picasso, wrapped in the embrace of a naked man. In
chetypal kerchief with a rifle. This show, ti- Miró is a modernist for everybody. He earns the large canvas “Life of the Party,” a group
tled “Keepin’ It Clean,” features many such and will keep his place in our hearts.—P.S. of figures huddle together while a headless
détourned “mammy” kitsch objects, mounted (Through June 15.) baby plays the accordion. Rendered in muddy
on the weathered, ridged surfaces of antique hues except for its dappled gold background,
washboards to underscore the founding role the composition, weirdly enough, suggests
of black women’s work in the nation’s culture “Simone Leigh” an homage to Gustav Klimt.—J.F. (Through
and economy. The exceptionally powerful June 15.)
mixed-media installation “I’ll Bend, but I Guggenheim Museum
Will Not Break,” from 1998, makes the brutal Imagine living for seven years in the crawl
character of that history explicit. Instead of a space of an attic, as an enslaved woman self-se- Honoré Sharrer
washboard, it includes a wooden ironing board, questered in the pursuit of her freedom.
with the stomach-churning diagram of a slave Leigh’s spare, impressive exhibition—three Hirschl & Adler
ship printed on its top and a heavy iron shack- towering bronze sculptures, augmented with UPTOWN Surrealist humor and social critique
led to it. A pristine, pressed white sheet bearing raffia and terra-cotta, and a sound-and-stone- merge in the vibrant canvases of this American
the monogram “KKK” hangs ominously from ware installation, made in collaboration with painter, who died in 2009, at the age of eighty-
the clothesline behind it.—Johanna Fateman the musician Moor Mother—borrows its title, eight, and who is just starting to receive the
(Through May 27.) “Loophole of Retreat,” from the abolitionist attention that she deserves. One highlight of
Harriet Jacobs’s nineteenth-century account this ample show is the sun-soaked “Mother
of such an experience. Leigh’s long-standing Goose,” from 1960. The influence of Edward
“Garry Winogrand: Color” subject is the conflation of the black female Hopper’s realism is evident, but Sharrer brings
figure and the space of her labor, from the a satirical edge to her scene, a child’s-eye view
Brooklyn Museum earthen roundhouses of Togo and Benin to of three young men loitering in a parking lot;
Winogrand once defined a photograph as the vernacular architecture of the American beyond them, a late-Renaissance-style nude
“what something looks like to a camera.” Keep South. (Leigh’s sculptural hybrids of bodies rides the titular goose. The artist skewered
that in mind when viewing this fiercely plea- and buildings—she describes her approach as gender roles more explicitly in “Archer and Un-
surable, if somewhat flawed, show, consisting “formal creolization”—earned the American liberated Woman,” from 1987, a canary-yellow
mainly of hundreds of digitally projected Ko- artist the 2018 Hugo Boss Prize, the occasion canvas that portrays a naked sportsman, bow in
dachrome slides, most from the nineteen-six- for this show and a related film series.) Accom- hand, whose lingerie-clad companion holds a
ties. Winogrand, the all-time champion of panying the quartet of art works is a broadsheet, chalice of grapes. “Meat and Greek Sculpture,”
street photography, died in 1984, at the age written by the historian Saidiya Hartman, which from 2003, is a comically macabre scene show-
of fifty-six. He is most famous for his hyper- eloquently mirrors Leigh’s union of the polit- ing an aristocratic-looking butcher in a straw
kinetic shots of unaware pedestrians, taken ical and the poetic.—Andrea K. Scott (Through boater’s hat, surrounded by pig carcasses and
with high-speed black-and-white film. The Oct. 27.) statuary.—J.F. (Through June 7.)
relatively long exposures required by color
film steered him to subjects more static: peo-
ple seated rather than walking, or at a beach “Tiepolo in Milan” Diamond Stingily
instead of on the street. The problem here is
that Winogrand didn’t take digital images; Frick Collection Queer Thoughts
he took color slides. Sixteen sequences of big This lovely, melancholic exhibition centers on DOWNTOWN This young black artist continues to
digitized images projected onto the walls of a art that doesn’t exist: ceilings painted in 1730- make powerful use of her signature material:
long room are only too gorgeous, in the me- 31, by the rococo master Giambattista Tiepolo, braids of dark synthetic hair. In 2017, an epic
dium’s smoothly flattening way. The projec- in the Palazzo Archinto, which, like most of version cut through three floors of the New
tions go by at clips that pander to present-day Milan’s historical buildings, was destroyed Museum. Absurdly long plaits are also the
attention deficits—eight seconds apiece for by Allied bombing during the Second World centerpiece of Stingily’s new show, “Death.”
horizontal pictures and thirteen seconds for War. (Sandbags saved Leonardo’s “Last Sup- In “Kaas (Punishment),” a piece named for
interspersed verticals. Winogrand worked per,” but not the convent it was in.) Paintings, the talking snake in “The Jungle Book,” a few
fast, but to absorb the results takes time, first drawings, etchings, books, and photographs dozen lengths hang from the walls and pool
to register the subjects and then to have the that relate to Tiepolo’s frescoes on mytholog- on the floor in serpentine curls. Joining the
form and the drama, the intelligence and the ical themes, and to the munificent Archinto installation is “Cephalophore,” a masklike cast
beauty, of the vision sink in.—Peter Schjeldahl family, vivify glories of a former time. The of Stingily’s face that bears a smile-shaped
(Through Dec. 8.) gossamer grays of hauntingly beautiful photo- scar between the eyes; the work’s title refers
graphs, from 1897, convey the tones of colors to a genre of statue in which saints hold their
that are now only guessable. The commission decapitated heads to convey their martyrdom.
“Joan Miró” was Tiepolo’s first outside his native Venice, Stingily’s astute art marries myth to personal
but, on the evidence here, he was already fully history, as evidenced by a text accompanying
Museum of Modern Art mature, crowning architectural spaces with the exhibition, the first scene of a play starring
1
This enchanting show draws on the museum’s heavens of epic imagination. If, like many seven little girls—a meditation on trauma, race,
immense holdings of Miró’s work, along with people, you find Tiepolo hard to appreciate, and visibility.—J.F. (Through June 16.)
a few loans. Its star attraction is “The Birth of this intimately absorbing show may initiate
the World,” painted in 1925, while the artist you in the charms—heart, soul, inventive-
was under the spell of the Surrealist circle ness, staggering ambition—of his art.—P.S. For more reviews, visit
of André Breton. It presents drifting picto- (Through July 14.) newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town

ART
SUMMER PREVIEW
Fibre-Rich Sculptures, Moon Shots, Wild Things Onstage

When the Indian artist Mrinalini ceramics and bronze. (Opens June 4.) a notorious instance of police brutality:
Mukherjee was a graduate student in In the late nineteen-seventies, the the death of the graffiti artist Michael
mural painting, she happened upon beloved children’s-book author Mau- Stewart, in 1983, following his arrest
hand-dyed hemp rope in a Gujarat rice Sendak embarked on a new wild in a New York City subway station.
market. With no formal training in rumpus—designing costumes and sets Twenty related paintings and draw-
sculpture or textiles, she devised an infor ballets and operas. The Morgan ings by Basquiat accompany works by
genious process of knotting the fibre Library, whose archives Sendak often Andy Warhol, David Hammons, and
into towering volumes that merged the turned to for inspiration, shares a hun- Keith Haring‚ on whose studio wall
bodily and the botanical—sui-generis dred and fifty of his preparatory works Basquiat originally commemorated
works that put a modernist twist on on paper in the exhibition “Drawing the Stewart. (Opens June 21.)
an ancient material. The artist, who Curtain.” (Opens June 14.) The absurdist videos of the Argen-
died in 2015, at the age of sixty-five, is The Guggenheim’s compact but tine-Israeli artist Mika Rottenberg
the subject of the retrospective “Phe- crucial exhibition “Basquiat’s ‘De- are so entertaining that you could al-
nomenal Nature,” at the Met Breuer, facement’: The Untold Story” cen- most miss her biting critique of late
which also includes her later forays into ters on the artist’s private response to capitalism—imagine the feminist love
child of Jacques Tati and Rube Gold-
berg, ripe for the era of Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez. Rottenberg’s first solo
museum show in New York, “Easy-
pieces,” is one of three single-floor
exhibitions at the New Museum this
summer; also on view are a new series
by the Zanzibari-born, London-based
painter Lubaina Himid—the winner of
the 2017 Turner Prize—and a re-cre-
ation of a famed 1965 installation by
the prescient Argentine artist Marta
Minujín. (Opens June 26.)
Fifty years ago, more than half a bil-
lion people watched Neil Armstrong
walk on the moon. The Met marks the
occasion with “Apollo’s Muse: The
Moon in the Age of Photography,”
an exhibition of a hundred and seventy
lunar photos, including two newly dis-
covered mid-nineteenth-century da-
guerreotypes, augmented by reflections
on the moon landing by contemporary
artists. (Opens July 3.)
The French fashion designer Pierre
Cardin, who is now ninety-six, was so
inspired by the Cold War-era space race
that, in 1964, he created a series of hats
based on astronauts’ helmets as part
of his “Cosmoscorps” collection. The

Brooklyn Museum surveys his prolific
career through his futuristic garments
and with footage of his legendary fash-
ion shows at the Great Wall of China,
in 1979, and in Moscow’s Red Square,
in 1991. (Opens July 20.)
—Andrea K. Scott

sound almost like the titles of academic with fresh mint, are the texture of satu-
papers, covering a range of styles and city- rated cake doughnuts, crispy, salty, and
specific dishes—“Street Food: Sidewalk sweet; a salad of julienned green papaya
Classics, Reinvented”; “Saigon: Bold, in a gently spicy Thai-chili vinaigrette is
1
Modern, Driven”—and the perspectives bejewelled with pink cubes of raw tuna
and specialties of the two chefs, who both and matchsticks of mango. A “pho short
happen to be women. (Van Ða means rib grilled cheese” smacks of gimmickry—
TABLES FOR TWO “warrior woman.”) though I had a hard time arguing, one
The most unusual section is largely recent evening, with the juicy shreds of
Van Ða attributable to the owner, Yen Ngo, a meat and provolone sandwiched in in-
234 E. 4th St. Vietnamese-born chef in her late forties credibly buttery griddled slices of Pullman
who moved to the U.S. in 1980; it’s called loaf, and was ultimately won over by the
You could say that Vietnamese food is “Hue: Ancient, Refined, Royal,” after her accompanying shooter of hot, fragrant
trending in New York, what with the parents’ home city, which was Vietnam’s beef broth, pleasingly heavy on star anise.
recent buzz around several new restau- imperial capital from 1802 to 1945 and Still, I was glad to return to the con-
rants. The more accurate assessment is famous for traditional dishes that don’t cept of the city tour. A version of cha
seems to be that Vietnamese food has tend to travel abroad, including bite-size ca la Vong—from “Hanoi: Traditional,
finally arrived, and is here to stay. These delicacies akin to Chinese dim sum. Here, Authentic, Subtle”—comprised a sil-
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID WILLIAMS FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
restaurants are not trading in opportu- they make perfect appetizers. Silver-dol- ver-skinned, silky-fleshed fillet of tur-
nistic novelty; they’re offering menus that lar-size steamed rice-flour pancakes, called meric-marinated branzino, piled high
are firmly rooted in traditional flavors banh beo, have the consistency of a creamy with fronds of dill, chopped peanuts, and
but also distinctly modern, creative, and porridge that’s been thickened until just sautéed scallions, atop a tangle of rice
unafraid to buck the pesky constraints of solid, and are topped with fried yuba (tofu noodles. A refreshing free-range-chicken
authenticity, and they have quickly be- skin), minced shrimp, sliced chilies, and salad called goi ga, from “Saigon,” was
come indispensable. a few drops of scallion oil; banh bot loc, bountiful with tender shredded meat,
First came Hanoi House and Madame dumplings made of chewy, translucent, crunchy fennel, and cabbage, bright with
Vo, both of which arrived in the East Vil- slippery tapioca and cooked in banana ginger and fresh rau ram (Vietnamese
lage in 2017 and specialize in pho, easily leaves, encase crunchy nubs of shrimp and coriander), topped with puffy sesame
the best to be found in Manhattan. Last tender morsels of pork like amber. crackers, and served with a small bowl
year, Di An Di, in Greenpoint, reached The street-food category, on the other of satisfyingly soupy chicken congee.
similar heights in Brooklyn. This year, the hand, is more of a collaboration with Both dishes, heady with the caramel
teams behind Hanoi House and Madame Hannah Wong, a thirty-three-year-old brine of fish sauce, felt timeless. And
Vo each expanded, with a takeout shop from New Jersey who previously worked both were sweet enough that I could
and a Vietnamese barbecue place, respec- at Gramercy Tavern and Brooklyn’s be- have skipped dessert—but the espresso-
tively. Van Ða joined the mix in March, loved, now closed Battersby. The dishes chocolate tart with a tiny glass of Viet-
in a cozily sleek space in Alphabet City. here are well executed, but much less sur- namese coffee, appealingly viscous with
At Van Ða, the menu acts as some- prising in their hewing to more contem- condensed milk, made for a lovely part-
thing of a survey course in Vietnamese porary tropes. Bronzed cornmeal fritters, ing shot. (Dishes $8-$24.)
cooking. It’s divided by headings that seasoned subtly with red curry and strewn —Hannah Goldfield
SETTING A NEW
STANDARD IN
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
A Zapotec woman wearing a crown of live iguanas is one of Mexican photographer
Graciela Iturbide’s most iconic works. Author Isabel Quintero and illustrator Zeke
Peña explore the stories and creative process behind this and other images in their
acclaimed graphic biography Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide. Learn
about the collaboration among Quintero, Peña, and Iturbide herself to create a book
that Quintero describes as a “mash-up of an art book, biography and graphic novel”
at getty.edu/world.
A World of Art, Research, Conservation, and Philanthropy.
GETTY CONSERVATION INSTITUTE + GETTY FOUNDATION + GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE + J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM
Pictured: Graciela Iturbide. Text and design © 2019 J. Paul Getty Trust
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT nant. If the heartbeat statutes go into assumption that, when they come before
THE THREAT TO ROE effect, doctors, rather than risk violating the current Court, the two Trump ap-
them, may elect not to perform any abor- pointees, plus Chief Justice John Rob-
s both candidate and President, Don- tions. So these statutes will, in fact if not erts, and Associate Justices Clarence
A ald Trump has lied so frequently
and so extravagantly that it’s possible to
by law, amount to revocations of the right
to choose abortion in those states.
Thomas and Samuel Alito, will use the
case to vanquish Roe once and for all.
overlook the occasions when he told the Last week, though, Alabama decided The human costs of these new laws
truth. During the campaign, for exam- to forgo even the pretense of respect for can scarcely be overstated. Laws have
ple, he said many times that he was “pro- the Roe precedent.The State Senate voted never stopped women from getting abor-
life,” and that he would appoint Justices twenty-five to six to ban virtually all abortions; indeed, the abortion rate in coun-
to the Supreme Court who would vote tions, and to establish criminal penalties tries that ban the procedure is about the
to overturn Roe v. Wade. Indeed, as Trump of up to ninety-nine years in prison for same as it is in countries that allow it.
put it in his final debate with Hillary doctors who perform them. The legisla- But, by driving the practice underground,
Clinton, if he won, the burial of the tors also rejected an amendment that the new laws will increase the danger to
Court’s 1973 abortion-rights landmark would have allowed women who were women’s health. It was once thought that
would “happen automatically, in my opin- victims of rape or incest to obtain the the availability of abortifacient drugs
ion, because I am putting pro-life Jus- procedure. (All twenty-five senators who would allow women to avoid the stric-
tices on the court.” So Trump promised, voted in favor of the bill were men.) The tures of anti-abortion laws, but these
and so, with Justices Neil Gorsuch and bill passed the State House on Tuesday, methods are now being targeted, too.
Brett Kavanaugh, he has delivered. and Governor Kay Ivey signed it into law The heartbeat law that passed earlier this
During their confirmation hearings, the next day. The supporters of these stat- month in Georgia is so broadly worded
both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh made the utes recognize that they violate existing that it could lead to the criminal prose-
customary noises about respecting the Supreme Court precedent—and that’s cution of women who seek abortions, as
Court’s precedents, including Roe, but the point. Legislators passed them on the well as medical personnel who perform
one group in particular saw through the them; women who are residents of Geor-
platitudes. State legislators who oppose gia and travel to other states to end their
abortion rights knew that the two Trump pregnancies could also be prosecuted.
appointees, especially Kavanaugh, who All the new laws are currently being
replaced Anthony Kennedy, gave them challenged in the lower courts, and sev-
the opportunity they sought. In recent eral have already been enjoined because
months, a dozen states have taken steps they contravene Roe and the many sub-
to pass laws that restrict abortion rights sequent Supreme Court decisions that
in Draconian ways. The most common reaffirm a woman’s right to choose. There
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA
of these efforts have been the so-called is a school of thought that the current
“heartbeat bills,” which prohibit a woman Court, and especially the Chief Justice,
from ending a pregnancy when an ul- will want to proceed cautiously on abor-
trasound scan can detect a fetal heart- tion, particularly in an election year; that
beat. (Missouri passed one on Friday.) the conservative majority will uphold re-
This can happen as early as six weeks strictions but hold off on overturning Roe.
into a pregnancy, at a time when a woman This is unlikely, on both legal and polit-
may not yet even know that she is preg- ical grounds. The Alabama legislators
wrote their statute in a way that will make current majority believes that the pre- to overturn a long-established precedent
it impossible for the Justices to uphold it cedent represents “an incorrect resolution if five current justices believed that it was
while still pretending that Roe is good of an important constitutional question.” wrongly decided, he emphatically said
law. Just as important, the gradualism This is not how stare decisis is meant ‘No.’ ” By joining the majority in Hyatt,
theory overlooks the centrality of a Roe to work. Respect for precedent serves the the now safely confirmed Kavanaugh has
reversal to the conservative judicial agenda. values of stability and predictability; it shown that he really meant “Yes.”
More than any other issue, it has defined, allows lawyers to give good advice and The four dissenters in Hyatt under-
and united, right-wing judges. permits ordinary citizens to plan their stood what was truly at stake in the case.
Just last week, in Franchise Tax Board lives. Precedents are supposed to be over- Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for Jus-
of California v. Hyatt, the Court’s five turned only in the rarest circumstances, tices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Soto-
conservatives gave a stark preview of how not simply because the current Court mayor, and Elena Kagan, said that the
they regard precedents with which they would have decided differently. Kava- majority had given in to the temptation
disagree. The case concerned an obscure naugh’s alleged fealty to stare decisis won to overrule a precedent “even though it
corner of civil procedure—specifically, him the support of Senator Susan Col- is a well-reasoned decision that has caused
whether states can be sued in the state lins, after his contentious confirmation no serious practical problems in the four
courts of other states. The real issue, how- hearings last year. Collins, the Maine Re- decades since we decided it. Today’s de-
ever, was whether a 1979 precedent of publican who is usually described as a cision can only cause one to wonder
the Court should be overturned, and Jus- supporter of abortion rights, announced which cases the Court will overrule next.”
tice Thomas’s opinion for the majority that she would vote for Kavanaugh be- Breyer didn’t spell it out, but it doesn’t
welcomed that opportunity. In his view, cause of his expressed belief in precedent, take much wondering to see which case
it is fine for the Court to do away with notably when it came to Roe. She said, will likely be the next to fall.
stare decisis, the rule of precedent, if the “When I asked him, would it be sufficient —Jeffrey Toobin
THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL hour A.P. English exam. “We didn’t have posted by the Woodbury County Dem-
PREËMPTED classes because of the test,” he said, over ocratic Party, in Iowa: “Join Mayor of
the phone, “and then we had a little health New York City, Bill di Blasio [sic] on
presentation on drugs and alcohol.” He Friday, May 17 at 7:00 pm at 310 Vir-
got home from school earlier than usual, ginia Street. (Next to Jitters.) Sioux City
so he went up to his bedroom—framed is his first stop on his Presidential an-
copies of the Declaration of Indepen- nouncement tour.”
dence and the Constitution, bumper “He hadn’t yet announced a Presi-
here are three types of Presidential stickers for Carly Fiorina and Frank Un- dential campaign, so that definitely rang
T candidate. The first announces a
bid for office in the morning, as Kamala
derwood—and opened up his Lenovo
laptop to read some political blogs.
some alarm bells for me,” Fleisher said.
“I reached out to both the county Party
Harris did when she declared her can- Since 2011, when he was nine, he’s in Iowa and the de Blasio campaign to
didacy during the 7 a.m. slot of “Good written a newsletter called Wake Up to try and get confirmation of his Presi-
Morning America.” The second an- Politics, which has around fifty thousand dential bid.” When Fleisher posted a
nounces at night: Kirsten Gillibrand subscribers. “I’m in St. Louis, which cre- screenshot of the event notice on Twit-
spilled the beans to Stephen Colbert on ates some barriers,” he said, “but any- ter, retweets began to roll in, and media
“The Late Show” at 11:35 p.m. The third time the story comes to me I’m always outlets picked up the story. The county
type is Bill de Blasio. there.” (He looks up to the Times’ Mag- Party deleted the event, misspelled name
De Blasio wanted to be Type 1. Like gie Haberman, another political jour- and all.
Harris (and John Hickenlooper and Seth nalist who lives outside D.C.) Fleisher The de Blasio campaign had given
Moulton), he planned to announce his has covered Donald Trump, Joe Biden, news organizations a heads-up about
run on “Good Morning America.” His Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, Bernie San- the Mayor’s Iowa travels, but the infor-
campaign video would air, and George ders, and both Clintons during their vis- mation was under a press embargo.
Stephanopoulos would interview him. its to St. Louis. In March, he interviewed Within an hour of Fleisher’s scoop, news
He wouldn’t earn any millennial cred Nancy Pelosi. “A lot of the time at these outlets broke the embargo and confirmed
for doing it that way, and he’d be pass- events, I’m one of the few reporters who’s that de Blasio would formally announce
ing up an opportunity to one-up Gilli- there, and so I’ve been able to set the his bid the next day.
brand, his fellow New Yorker, by appear- scene, and offer really rich reporting,” The following morning, Fleisher’s
ing on James Corden’s show. But if he he said. In 2016, when Jill Stein held a alarm went off at 5:55 a.m. He started
announced in the morning he could po- campaign event in St. Louis, Fleisher writing his newsletter. “I’m Gabe Fleisher,
tentially dominate the day’s news cycle. was one of two journalists who showed reporting live from WUTP World
The day before de Blasio’s announce- up. He published a long, exclusive in- HQ in my bedroom,” he typed. “It’s
ment, Gabe Fleisher, a junior at John terview with her. He was fourteen. Thursday, May 16, 2019. 263 days until
Burroughs School, in St. Louis (prom Last Wednesday, after the A.P. exam, the 2020 Iowa caucuses. 537 days until
theme: the jungle), was taking a four- Fleisher stumbled upon a Facebook event Election Day 2020.” A few minutes later,
de Blasio’s campaign video dropped, shirt that said “MASONIC HOME TEAM,”
showing the Mayor being chauffeured rolled-up jeans, stained yellow skate shoes,
around the city in a black S.U.V., to a and a dark-blue baseball cap bearing a
soundtrack of horn-heavy jazz. Mean- yin-yang symbol and the word “SWIM-
while, on “Good Morning America,” MING,” the title of Miller’s final album.
Stephanopoulos read de Blasio the re- He talked about cars. “Everyone
sults of a recent poll: seventy-six per around me is starting to be, like, ‘Mac,
cent of New York City voters felt that you need to buy a car, because yours is
he shouldn’t run. Outside the studio, fucked and it has been broken for six
protesters—who, thanks to Fleisher, had months and you’re an adult.’ I’m, like,
got wind of the Mayor’s announcement ‘Yeah. I’ll get around to it.’” He has two
the night before—began to gather. (De Volvo 240 station wagons. “They’re cool,
Blasio’s run has unified the city: that but I need a reliable car,” he said. “Maybe
morning, protesters from the New York I should buy something that’s not as old
Police Department and the Black Lives as I am. But I’m cheap. I’ve never had
Matter movement stood together, chant- a car that was worth more than three
ing “Liar!”) grand. I don’t like the way new cars look.
“Presidential announcements are so Mac DeMarco They’re weird.”
orchestrated to the minute,” Fleisher said. DeMarco grew up in Canada. Re-
“I don’t think my tweet will change the like that often.” He looked around. “I cently, he’s been listening almost exclu-
trajectory of de Blasio’s campaign, but it can’t keep doing shows the way we’re sively to the Beatles, Japanese video-game
fits very neatly into the narrative that doing shows,” he said. “If I keep drink- soundtracks, and Michael McDonald,
this campaign is not destined to go very ing a bottle of Jameson every day, to get the former front man for the Doobie
far.” He went on, “The fact that the state loose, I’ll be fucking dead, too.” Brothers. “He says nice things about me
Party in Iowa clumsily put it out early, Winter came, then spring. DeMarco and my band all the time,” DeMarco
and his name was misspelled in the re- emerged with a bunch of new songs— said of McDonald, who is a pal. “I took
lease, combined with the fact that jour- “slow, sparse, and repetitive,” he called him to my favorite pho restaurant in
nalists don’t see him as much of a factor them, on a recent day in New York. L.A.—kind of a dump, but great. He
in the race”—none of that bodes well. “I He was in town to promote his new al- was, like, ‘Man, bone broth! My wife
guess we’ll see whether that’s a narrative bum,“Here Comes the Cowboy,” with says it’s really good for you.’” DeMarco
he can rebound from.” Then Fleisher a performance on “The Tonight Show has thought about what a collaboration
laced up his gray Nikes and left for school. Starring Jimmy Fallon.” He has lived with McDonald would be like. “Michael
He had an oral presentation in Spanish in L.A. since 2016, but for three years is crazy talented,” DeMarco said. “I
to prepare for, and in his history class before that he lived in New York. He don’t really know what I can bring to
they were reading “Between the World recorded his second record, “Salad Days,” the table. A four-chord progression and
1
and Me.” Later, for dinner, burgers. in a windowless Bushwick warehouse, some basic lyrics?”
—Tyler Foggatt “shit-rammed with my stuff.” He moved DeMarco calls his lo-fi, yacht-rocky
to Far Rockaway next, and he had his sound “jizz jazz,” and he has been known
HOMECOMING landlord play trumpet onstage with him to perform in his tighty-whities. A few
SLOW AND SPARSE in Central Park. And he made a record, years ago, he sold out a show at Radio
“Another One”; in one of its songs, he City Music Hall, across the street from
invited fans over for coffee and provided Fallon’s studio. Shortly before that per-
his home address. (“It never got that formance, it dawned on him how vast
weird,” he said.) the stage is. “My friend Matt, who I lived
Before the “Tonight Show” taping, with in Far Rockaway, does tapestries,”
his guitarist wandered the sixth floor of he recalled. “I was, like, ‘You want to help
ast fall, the singer-songwriter Mac 30 Rockefeller Center without shoes. me fill this stage?’” Matt brought in fake
L DeMarco crouched backstage at
Red Rocks Amphitheatre, in Colorado,
DeMarco napped in the woodsy-themed
Adirondack Room. “Very cute,” he said,
human, dog, and dinosaur skeletons;
shabby living-room furniture; and a Bunn-
chain-smoking Marlboro Reds. He’d upon waking. O-Matic coffee machine. For a backdrop,
taken the red-eye from Los Angeles after It was the day before his twenty-ninth he hung banners printed with what De-
attending the funeral of a friend, the rap- birthday. He had a two-day-old hang- Marco called “chewed-up wrestling dolls.”
per Mac Miller, who’d overdosed days over from “some rum in Virginia Beach,” The “Tonight Show” taping began,
earlier. “I met him on tour in South Amer- but he felt it had less to do with quan- and DeMarco did one of the new slow,
ica,” DeMarco said. “I didn’t really know tity and more to do with age. “I still party,” sparse, repetitive songs, about growing
his music. I don’t think he really knew he said, “but I don’t drink at home any- up. “It’s always about growing up,” he
my music, either. But we jelled.” He went more. I rarely go to bars.” He went on, said afterward.
on, “He called me, like, three times a day. “What’s to complain about? I got to sleep He was happy to be back in New
It was easy. I don’t encounter friendships in a bed last night.” He wore a blue sweat- York. “I heard someone say once that
Manhattan has a special energy,” he said, Goats will happily devour vegetation bring it into their first stomach, unchewed.
“because it’s built on deep, subterranean, that other animals won’t touch, includ- Then they spit it up and chew on it for
purple, crystal bedrock. You don’t get ing species with thorns. By ravaging the hours before going back for more.”
1
that pep in other boroughs.” leaves, they deplete a plant’s energy, in- The Cihaneks’ goats had gorged their
—Charles Bethea hibiting new growth. Goats eat in vol- way through Harsimus Cemetery, in Jer-
ume and they do it fast. They’re partic- sey City, and the Long Pond Greenbelt,
THE OUT-OF-TOWNERS ular only about ivy: no to English, yes in Bridgehampton. But they had never
HIRED HOOVES to poison. sampled Manhattan. The Riverside Park
The retirees, in their past life, had Conservancy wanted to know: were the
been commercially milked and bred.They goats free from May 21st to August 30th?
now live on a farm near the Dutchess Larry and Ann checked the schedule.
County village of Red Hook, under the The goats were available. The Cihaneks
care of Larry and Ann Cihanek. The Ci- will pocket a chunk of the forty-five
haneks’ two hundred or so goats are all thousand dollars that’s been budgeted
wo dozen retirees had settled into a donations, many of them offered after a for the project.
T pastoral life in the Hudson Valley,
where they ran with a like-minded herd.
barn fire, in 2015, killed their herd. Among
them are Penny, formerly of a junk yard,
The Conservancy erected a fence, and
arranged for park employees and volun-
They enjoyed a regular mani-pedi. They and Buckles, who spent much of his life teers to watch over the herd. They in-
wandered around, eating all kinds of junk. tethered by a chain and whose owner fed vited local residents to meet their new
Some summers, they worked temporary him cigarette butts. neighbors at a welcoming ceremony,
jobs in the landscaping industry. Recently, Early on, Larry, a former advertising which will take place this week.
a call came from Manhattan. The retir- executive and Upper East Side native, The Cihaneks, meanwhile, pondered
ees were needed on the Upper West Side, had hoped to make cheese.Then he began which goats to send to Gotham. (In Old
to address a pressing problem: invaders fielding inquiries about goats’ potential English, the name happens to mean “goat
had overrun a swath of Riverside Park. as an environmentally friendly alterna- town.”) They chose for visual diversity—
Porcelain berry, mugwort, and multiflora tive to chemicals. He and Ann started a Boers, Kikos, nubby-eared Lamanchas,
rose were choking out the native plants, company, Green Goats. Their herd was floppy-topped Nubians—but also for re-
wrecking the ecosystem. The weeds blan- soon decimating problem foliage as far lationship chemistry. Skittles was alpha.
keted a slope between 119th Street and away as West Virginia. “The way nature (“He thinks he’s the boss man,” Ann said.)
125th Street, where the steep terrain and designed goats, they gobble up as much Max exuded chill. (“Nothing harshes his
the prolific poison ivy thwarted human food as they can in about half an hour,” mellow.”) Worming and grooming com-
intervention. The crisis called for goats. Larry explained the other day. “They menced. Each woolly neck was encircled
with a grosgrain ribbon, from which dan-
gled a numbered plastic tag.
Last Monday—wet and cold—Cin-
namon, Swirl, Cheech, Chong, Bella,
Brooklyn, Chewey, and Charlie milled
around, damp and pungent, within their
wire enclosure, awaiting the trip to the
big city. During a break in the rain, the
Cihaneks checked on them.
Goats are brave about heights but total
babies when it comes to water—most of
the herd refused to leave the barn. Ann
went in and called, “Chalupa!” Chalupa
was on the list for Manhattan. “He’s hid-
ing out in here somewhere.” She found
him—big guy, brown and white—loung-
ing in a corner, chewing his cud. “If I was
a goat, I would dream of Riverside Park,”
she said. “Manhattan is all around, but if
you close your eyes and don’t listen you
could be in a farm field.”
The next morning, the Cihaneks re-
ceived an urgent call from a neighbor:
some of their goats had got out. They
grabbed a bag of zip ties to repair holes
in the fence, jumped in their truck,
“Let’s try one without smiling.” and headed out to search. Ann traipsed
through the shin-deep grass of a field of who is adept at choosing clothes for peo- cardboard toilet-paper tubes (used for
new hay; fresh A.T.V. tracks led past a ple with disabilities (known as adaptive tightening up loose bras). “If your styl-
gap in a wire fence. Ann stood at the fashion). Thomas met Spencer two years ist don’t show up prepared like this, they
opening and called the missing goats by ago, through Instagram, where Spencer ain’t no stylist,” Spencer said.
clapping her hands and yelling, “Ladies!” has a big following. (She also has many They discussed how many formal out-
Nearly a hundred escaped goats ma- followers on YouTube, where she hosts fits would be needed in Cannes. “There’s
terialized at a high bend in the road and a show called “Sitting Pretty,” which, she guaranteed a Q. & A. and guaranteed a
came clopping, en masse, down the pave- says, “documents the dope things I do lunch,” Spencer said.
ment.They scampered across the meadow, as a person with a disability.”) “I want to do one strong look and
snatching greens in their teeth, as Larry Before Thomas’s intervention, Spen- one soft,” Thomas said. “But both re-
1
hollered, “Be there or be square!” cer’s style was notably tame. When they ally pretty.” She disappeared into the
—Paige Williams first started working together, things racks and returned with a metallic-
didn’t go smoothly. “We fought,” Spen-
RAG TRADE cer said.
ADAPTIVE “A lot,” Thomas added.
Spencer laughed. She said that even-
tually, after some sparring, “I figured out
what I can wear and what options there
are, and I opened my mind to more col-
ors, more textures, more patterns.”
Spencer began the shoot by model-
n the movie “Give Me Liberty,” a dark ling a black-and-white checked dress (no
I comedy that will screen this month,
at the Cannes Film Festival, one of the
fasteners, easy to slip on) with orange
platform sandals (Velcro straps) and or-
lead roles is played by Lauren (Lolo) ange sunglasses, while seated in her mo-
Spencer, a thirty-one-year-old market- torized wheelchair. Behind her, an out-
ing manager and disability-rights advo- of-frame crew member attempted to keep
cate from Los Angeles. It was her first a backdrop of beach balls from collaps-
acting job. “The producer had a casting ing. Spencer also posed in an orange two-
friend who was specifically looking for piece bathing suit with a black coverup,
a black girl in a wheelchair,” Spencer, designed to be shorter than usual so as
who has been diagnosed as having not to get tangled in the chair’s wheels. Lauren Spencer
A.L.S., recounted the other day. “I was, Thomas, who was born with no toes,
like, ‘Fo’ sho’. I’ll go in there. I’ll talk to developed a system for styling clients copper raincoat: strong. Spencer smiled
whoever I need to talk to.’” In the film, with disabilities, based on three quali- and put it on.
which chronicles a winter day in a Mil- ties: accessible, smart, and fashionable. Thomas frowned. “This would be a
waukee medical van, Spencer plays a Spencer is a convert. “I can still be styl- dead giveaway that you’re a newcomer,
passenger named Tracey. “She’s a don’t- ish and not look like I just came out of and thirsty,” she said.
take-no-shit-from-nobody kind of girl,” a hospital, because that’s what a lot of “Thirsty for attention,” Spencer said.
Spencer said. “Sound like somebody?” adaptive fashion looks like,” she explained. Thomas put the coat aside and dis-
There were two items on Spencer’s “I want to look young, fly, fresh, and fash- appeared again. She came back bran-
agenda that day: a photo shoot for Zap- ionable, just like any other woman my dishing a stretchy fuchsia gown by an
pos Adaptive, an offshoot launched two age would.” Italian designer named Chiara Boni. It
years ago by the online shoe and cloth- Thomas pointed out that adaptive had elbow-length sleeves with ruffled
ing retailer, and shopping for the Cannes fashion is on the rise. Brands such as cuffs, and no straps or fasteners. Spen-
red carpet. It would be her second glitzy Nike and Tommy Hilfiger now produce cer wheeled into a fitting room and
screening—“Liberty” had premièred at accessible lines. She views this trend as tried it on.
Sundance—and her first trip overseas. a response to the social-media activism A minute later, they were admiring
“I’ve been on plenty, plenty planes but engaged in by people like Spencer, who it in a three-way mirror. “V-necks cre-
never on a ten-hour flight,” said Spen- talk about their lives in frank, relatable ate the illusion of height,” Thomas said.
cer, who has short purple hair and wore ways. Gomez, the paraplegic model, men- Spencer leaned forward and stared.
a strapless dress with big silver hoop tioned a Target commercial he had re- “Makes me look like I got booty in the
earrings. cently appeared in. It featured a family back,” she said. “That’s always the goal.”
First, the photo shoot. Spencer was gathering. “I just happened to be in a She was quiet for a moment, thinking
joined by two other models, a paraple- wheelchair,” he said. about the red carpet in Cannes. “It’s big-
gic actor named Danny Gomez and After the shoot, Thomas and Spen- ger than clothes,” she said.
a one-handed makeup artist named cer hit the perfumed aisles of Nordstrom. Thomas nodded, and said, “It’s show-
Chauntal Lewis. The models would be Thomas carried her styling kit, a tackle ing up to the world, out loud and in style.”
assisted by Stephanie Thomas, a stylist box full of safety pins, colorful socks, and —Brent Crane
ics Cleanth Brooks, R. W. B. Lewis, and
PROFILES Robert Penn Warren, who had been a
mentor to Milch when he was an under-
HELLO, DARKNESS
graduate there, in the mid-sixties. Read-
ing Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Twain,
James, and Faulkner in such depth
The creator of several hit shows has dementia. And some thoughts about that. helped Milch create complex television
characters whose voices were each
BY MARK SINGER marked by singular diction. His dia-
logue was suffused with psychological
subtext and literary allusion. In Holly-
wood, his work ethic was undeviating:
he showed up every day. He believed,
and still believes, that any time spent
thinking about writing is wasted except
when one is in a room writing. He quotes
Billy Wilder: “The muse has to know
where to find you.” He also became
known for nurturing aspiring writers.
Writing and teaching, Milch thought,
should be “a going out in spirit.”
I first met Milch in 2004, while re-
porting about him for this magazine,
during the filming of the second sea-
son of “Deadwood.” The show, which
is regarded by Milch, and by many crit-
ics, as his best work, was set in the Da-
kota Territory in the eighteen-seven-
ties. The town of Deadwood had been
at the center of the Black Hills gold
rush, one of the last of its kind in the
Lower Forty-eight. He began writing
the pilot episode only after having spent
two years digesting biographies and his-
torical accounts of mining, the Indian
wars, territorial politics, whorehouse
and gambling protocols, rudimentary
systems of justice, and criminality mun-
dane and monstrous. Deadwood, built
on land stolen from the Lakota Sioux,
avid Milch, the television writer, for “Hill Street Blues” introduced him had attracted exiles, fugitives, optimists,
D lives with his wife, Rita Stern
Milch, on a peaceful block in Santa
to Steven Bochco, the series’ co-cre-
ator, and he began writing for the show,
gamblers with nothing to lose, bloody-
minded opportunists, cynics, and seek-
Monica, in a cozy stucco bungalow too, Milch earned a reputation as one ers who had come to try their luck, or
camouflaged by a lush cottage garden. of the most original and intellectually to escape bad luck, in terrain that lay
When they moved there, five years ago, fluent figures in the history of episodic largely beyond the reach of the law.
from a much larger house a few miles television. In 1993, Milch and Bochco The real people depicted in “Dead-
away, where they had raised three chil- created “NYPD Blue,” a radical rein- wood”—among them Wild Bill Hickok;
dren, Milch was about to turn seventy. vention of the prime-time network his murderer, Jack McCall; Calamity
A survivor of decades of serial addic- police drama. He went on to create Jane; Wyatt Earp; and Al Swearengen—
tion-recovery-relapse-recovery—and several shows of his own, among them are greatly outnumbered by Milch’s
also of heart disease, childhood sexual the sui-generis Western “Deadwood,” fictional characters. Through three sea-
predation, obsessive-compulsive dis- for HBO. sons of labyrinthine story lines, an ever-
order, and bipolarity—he remained in Before Milch went to work in Hol- rising body count, boundless scheming
command of prodigious gifts. Starting lywood, he taught writing at Yale while and exploitation, and a profusion of de-
in the early nineteen-eighties, when a collaborating on a two-volume anthol- pravity that sometimes abruptly trans-
former college roommate who wrote ogy of American literature with the crit- muted into tenderness, Milch’s dialogue
transformed the frontier demotic into
David Milch in the converted garage of his bungalow, in Santa Monica. something baroquely profane. In an
24 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 PHOTOGRAPH BY RYAN PFLUGER
early episode, a prospector named Ells persuaded him to create a new series,
worth, having breakfasted on a few shots “John from Cincinnati,” set in a Cali
of whiskey, declaims to no one in par fornia surfing community, a collabora
ticular, “I may have fucked up my life tion with Kem Nunn, a novelist whose
flatter ’n hammered shit, but I stand books can be found in the surfnoir sec
here before you today beholden to no tion. It lasted only one season, a conse
human cocksucker, and workin’ a payin’ quence generally attributed to a plot
fuckin’ gold claim, and not the U.S. gov coherence deficit. In the years that PRESENTED BY HALCYON
ernment sayin’ I’m trespassin’, or the followed, Milch remained fiercely in
savage fuckin’ red man himself or any dustrious. He created “Luck,” set at the
of these other limberdick cocksuckers Santa Anita Park racetrack and starring
passin’ themselves off as prospectors had Dustin Hoffman, which was shut down
better try and stop me.” in its second season after multiple horses
By design, Milch wrote “Deadwood” died during filming. Milch also made a
under a guntothehead deadline, reg pilot—the only episode shot—for an
ularly composing dialogue the day be HBO series called “The Money.” (Milch
fore a scene was to be shot. Milch is the described it to me as “King Lear meets
only writer I have ever watched, at length, Rupert Murdoch and family.”) Two other
write. I sat in a dimly lit, airconditioned HBO projects never progressed beyond
trailer as Milch—surrounded by several the pilotscript stage: adaptations of Peter
silent acolytes, of varying degrees of ex Matthiessen’s novel “Shadow Country”
perience and career accomplishment— and “Island of Vice,” a history of The
sprawled on the floor in the middle of odore Roosevelt’s tenure as the police
the room, staring at a large computer commissioner of New York City. Ear
monitor a few feet away. An assistant lier this year, HBO’s “True Detective”
at a keyboard took dictation as Milch, aired a new episode written by Milch
seemingly channelling voices from a re and Nic Pizzolatto.
mote dimension, put words into (and Milch’s career earned him a fortune—
took words out of ) the mouth of this more than a hundred million dollars
or that character. The cursor on the from “Hill Street Blues,” “NYPD Blue,”
screen advanced and retreated until the and “Deadwood” alone. This made pos
exchange sounded precisely right. The sible both a history of philanthropy and
methodology evoked a séance, and it promiscuous nondeductible onetoone
was necessary to remind oneself that largesse. Several years after I published
the voices in fact issued from a certain my Profile, as Milch was writing early
precinct of the fellow on the floor’s brain. episodes of “Luck,” he called and tried
In June, 2006, at the start of Season 3, to persuade me to work on the series. I
HBO announced, unexpectedly, that reflexively declined the offer. He kept
there would be no Season 4. Instead, at it, and I kept demurring. At last, he
the network said, Milch would bring said, “Let me just send you some money.”
“Deadwood” to a conclusion with a pair To Milch I owe the strange pleasure
of twohour movies. Within months, of once upon a time hearing myself say,
it became evident that even this was “Please do not send me money.”
not to be. Rather than being permitted Unfortunately, this tendency to treat
a meticulously conceived dénouement, money as something to be gotten rid A free festival
“Deadwood” just stopped. It came as a of also fed a gambling compulsion, with massive art
gut punch to everyone associated with which controlled Milch as unremit
the series. “Deadwood” devotees never tingly as heroin, alcohol, and pain meds installations, pop-up
abandoned hope that it might some once did. A 2015 lawsuit in Los An performances,
day return, but the more time passed geles Superior Court, filed by Rita curated dialogues,
the less likely a revival seemed. The Milch against David’s former business
show had sinned by failing to rack up managers, revealed that between 2001 and more, celebrating
the boffo audience numbers sufficient and 2011 he lost almost twentyfive life, liberty, and the
to convince HBO that it would become million dollars betting on horses and pusuit of happiness.
a sensation, like “The Sopranos,” which football. (The lawsuit was settled out
was winding down after six seasons. of court.) Only when Rita learned— J U N E 15 -2 3, 2019
Still, the studio’s faith in Milch never from the business managers, in 2011— WA S H I N GTO N, D C
wavered. It just wanted him to focus on of their calamitous finances did Da R EG I S T E R AT
more potentially lucrative projects, and vid’s gambling cease. They owed the W W W.BY T H E P EO P L E.O R G
Internal Revenue Service five million mise in the series return to Deadwood plot. I think about that ten times a day
dollars. Both their houses—in Brent- in 1889, as North Dakota and South when I’m writing.”
wood and on Martha’s Vineyard—went Dakota join the Union. Extraordinarily, During the making of “Deadwood,”
on the market. Rita sold much of her nearly all the surviving members of the the arc of a season, each consisting of
jewelry. The bungalow in Santa Mon- original cast—Powers Boothe and Ralph twelve episodes, took shape over months
ica is a rental. Richeson had died—agreed to reunite, of writers’-room conversations, all re-
In late 2013, while Milch was in New and shooting began in October, at the corded and transcribed. Embedded in
York, filming the pilot for “The Money,” Melody Movie Ranch, thirty miles north these gigantic texts were Milchian riffs
he began having episodes of confusion of dialogue, which were pasted into
and erratic memory. These symptoms scripts as the writing progressed. When
coincided with severe anemia, which a new episode was about to be shot, a
required blood transfusions and surgery, staff writer would compose a first draft
and Rita wishfully assumed that, once that provided the scaffolding for the
his problem was addressed, the mem- wizardry I observed fifteen years ago,
ory issue would soon resolve itself. In- in the dark trailer. To everyone involved
stead, other ominous signs emerged: with making “Deadwood,” it was a given
more than once, David called her to that fixed in Milch’s consciousness was
confess that he couldn’t remember where a complete vision: context, character,
he had parked his car. He found him- of Santa Monica, using sets based on motive, plot. Now he can no longer
self searching in vain for familiar names those from the series. The film will hold in his memory the full trajectory
and words. When their older daughter, première on HBO on May 31st. of anything that he writes.
Elizabeth, got married, in the winter of These days, the workday begins with
2014, she sensed that her father was ive days a week, Milch commutes Milch, seated in a cushiony leather arm-
overwhelmed by the prospect of hav-
ing to interact with a crowd and deliver
F twenty-five yards along an arbor-
shaded path that extends from the back
chair opposite a desktop computer mon-
itor, rereading the printout of a com-
a toast. Never before had Milch minded of his house to a converted garage, where pleted scene from the previous day or
being the focus of attention. Now he he writes until it’s time to break for scrutinizing a new one written by, say,
seemed tentative, almost frail. He was lunch. Before he developed Alzhei- Corrado. As Milch scans and rescans
depressed and increasingly anxious, de- mer’s, he rose most days by 4:30 a.m., what amounts to the scene’s studs, joists,
cidedly not himself. In early 2015, he ready to work. He now shows up in and walls, Dushame takes dictation.
was given a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s the garage at nine-thirty or ten. Await- When things go well, the dialogue will
disease. For such a cerebral man, it was ing him are two writing assistants, have been planed, sanded, and smoothed
an especially crushing verdict. Brittany Dushame and Micah Samp- by lunchtime. Every word of the final
For most Alzheimer’s patients, there’s son, and frequently Regina Corrado, version sounds like Milch, undiminished.
a distinct emotional demarcation be- who worked on “Deadwood” and “John This past winter, I went to Los An-
tween the before and after of receiving from Cincinnati” and returned, in 2017, geles twice to see him, in January and
the diagnosis. Although Milch accepted to help him with the screenplay and again in March. I didn’t need anyone
the validity of the diagnosis, he refused whatever might follow. Another col- to explain that the work goes mark-
to capitulate to it. He knew that con- laborator is his younger daughter, Olivia, edly better on some days than on oth-
tinuing to write was imperative for his who is now a successful screenwriter ers. Two projects were under way: an
survival—that stopping would, more and director. (She co-wrote the script eight-episode bio-pic of Johnny Car-
than anything, hasten the process of his for “Ocean’s 8.”) Olivia, who lives in son and a memoir that is to be pub-
ceasing to be his most intrinsic self. His New York, flies to Los Angeles at least lished by Random House. The Car-
finances presented a different impera- once a month. Recently, she told me, son project came to him from the
tive. As his creditors awaited satisfac- “My father and I first worked together production and management company
tion, HBO, thankfully, continued to in 2011, on an adaptation of Faulkner’s Anonymous Content; HBO, per
provide him with work. In late 2015, ‘Light in August.’ Writing a scene with Milch’s current contract, retained a
Milch submitted his adaptation of him was like learning to write a para- right of first refusal. Between my two
“Shadow Country.” The studio passed graph. That was my education in visits, HBO turned down the pilot
on it, but opened a different door: re- screenwriting. But Dave doesn’t really script. It was a disappointment, but the
boots had become fashionable on TV, write movies. He does long-form char- project still had funding, and Milch
and HBO was now amenable to revis- acter development. I’ve always said continued working on it. Whenever
iting “Deadwood” in a film. that he writes novels set like plays, and he hit a snag on the Carson scripts, he
For the next two years, Milch worked shot like movies, that air on television. turned to the memoir.
through drafts of a story that was both What he does is its own thing, but he Rita organizes and oversees every-
new and old. Last summer, HBO green- definitely doesn’t do three-act struc- thing that Milch cannot do for himself.
lighted the script. The movie begins ten ture, where everything resolves itself A doorway from the office leads to a
years after the last scene of Season 3. by the end. Dave always says the emo- large space that has long served as a
Characters who avoided a violent de- tional response of the character is the painting studio for Rita, who has had
careers as an artist and as an editor. On Tell me a story. think any longer. Your inability to sus-
its floor are file boxes of source mate- tain a continuity of focus. And those
rial for the memoir, including lecture Make it a story of great distances, and are accumulated deletions of ability.
starlight.
transcripts, writers’-room transcripts of And you adjust—you’d better adjust, or
every series that Milch has worked on The name of the story will be Time, you adjust whether you want to or not.
starting with “Deadwood,” recordings But you must not pronounce its name. Singer: From my own experience
of interviews that he’s given, poetry and with serious illness, though it’s been
essays that he wrote in college—every- Tell me a story of deep delight. nothing like what you’re going through,
thing that hasn’t already been shipped I’ve found that my capacity for denial
to Yale, where his papers will reside, at • has helped.
the Beinecke Library. Milch: Denial, I think, is a sort of
Last fall, as shooting was under way My conversations with Milch, which ongoing operative procedure—you try
for “Deadwood: The Movie,” I began took place in his garage office and on the and proceed as if you’re capable, as if
talking regularly again with Milch. We telephone, have been edited for clarity and you weren’t ill. And then begin mak-
spoke, by telephone, every other Satur- concision. ing concessions to the fact that you
day for about forty-five minutes, with are. . . . Things that you can’t remem-
Rita listening in and filling in blanks as Singer: What do you want to be ber any longer, in particular—it’s like
needed. The American Alzheimer’s As- the focus of our conversations? shifting the gears of the engine of a
sociation identifies three stages of the Milch: To the extent that this sort car, except to the extent that it abso-
disease’s progression: early, middle, and of thing is appropriate, a focus on the lutely isn’t. You just move through the
late. Milch appears to be in the middle illness. . . . While writing the screen- day experiencing a series of awarenesses
stage. This is characterized by a diffi- play for “Deadwood: The Movie,” I was of what’s gone in terms of your capac-
culty with organizing everyday tasks and in the last part of the privacy of my fac- ities. And there are physiological con-
remembering the events of one’s per- ulties, and that’s gone now. I was able sequences. I’ve been describing, I guess,
sonal history; social withdrawal; confu- to believe that— You know, we all make mental consequences, but there are ab-
sion about where one is or the day of deals, I suppose, in terms of how we solute physical limitations that you live
the week; disruption of sleep habits; and think about the process of our aging. into, increasingly. I never thought I’d
an increased risk, if left unsupervised, It’s a series of givings away, a making be quoting a Paul Simon song, at least
of becoming lost. The Milch I observed peace with givings away. I had thought, not in public, but “Hello, darkness, my
fifteen years ago during the making of as many or most people do, that I was old friend.” There’s an experience you
“Deadwood” was gregarious, physically in an earlier stage of givings away than have as every day goes on of what you’re
strong, and prone to riveting discursive it turns out I am. It’s kind of a relent- no longer capable of and . . . it’s an ac-
detours. During our recent time to- less series of adjustments to what you cumulation of indignities. At a more
gether, he spoke slowly and deliberately, can do, in particular the way you can’t fundamental level, it’s an accretion of
and moved accordingly. At one point, I
asked him whether, despite what Alz-
heimer’s was stealing from him, it had
given anything in return. The answer:
a continuous sense of urgency.
“There’s an acute sense of time’s pas-
sage,” he said. “Things are important.
You don’t want to be inconsequential
in your perspective on things. I feel that
with an increasing acuteness—that ev-
erything counts.”
“Do you wake up to that feeling every
day?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Milch believes that time is ultimately
the subject of every story. It is a con-
viction descended, ex cathedra, from
Robert Penn Warren, in his spare mas-
terpiece, “Tell Me a Story.” For decades,
in classrooms, writers’ rooms, personal
encounters, lectures, and interviews,
Milch has cited its concluding lines:
Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania, “Let’s just agree to disagree on everything except the dog.”
ADVERTISEMENT irrevocable truths: this is gone, and anger that is quickly internalized as un-
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You awaken and inventory where you of that exchange is. Sometimes I can
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can’t do, what you can’t think. tary and humiliating level, I’m incapa-
Singer: When you wake up in the ble of lucid discourse. That’s no fun.
morning, is there a process that you’re Singer: Once you realized this was
aware of—an inventorying—that you happening to you, did you say to your-
weren’t experiencing five years ago? self that there was anything you needed
Milch: Absolutely. As I say, it’s a to do to memorialize what was hap-
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normal anymore. You’re not capable of ganize one’s behavior around a differ-
thinking in the fashion you would hope ent reality. It’s a second chance. You pray
to as an artist and as a person. Things to be equal to it, equal to its opportu-
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to you, and you’re describing what portunity to do those things is trans-
you’re describing, and there is to me ferrable to the artistic process as well—
an immense irony: this is the same the process of passing on, for better or
mind that I’ve known for as long as worse, as well as one can, what you’ve
I’ve known you. learned. And blessing him on the voy-
Milch: That’s a blessing of this age that he’ll begin. Those are special
conversation, and I’m concentrating and particular opportunities that are
and thinking as hard as I can. I’m ask- given an artist.
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craftsmanship. Introducing the Boston such as they are, in whatever diminu- you’re not writing. Did that mean that
chair, available in walnut, cherry, white
tion they are, to meet you fairly. writing was easy for you, and did that
oak, and black painted ash. Visit our
Maine showrooms, or online at: I’m different recognizably, unmis- change when you were working on this
CHILTONS.COM
takably, from one day to the next. I’m new film?
866.883.3366 capable of things on one day that are Milch: It’s not a self-conscious
absolutely beyond me. Down to things process. I try to think of an interior
as rudimentary as sometimes where I logic to things. Exploring that interior
live. One tries to adjust to those rigors and kind of walking around inside it.
and disciplines as they reveal them- And, for better or worse, finding things
@NEWYORKERPROMO selves, as the day unfolds. At one level— as I go, which instruct me how to pro-
the level of vanity, I suppose—there’s ceed, so that it’s a kind of exfoliating
a shame that shows itself as anger, an logic that I’m pursuing. You have to be
A
CRACK
content when a path that you’re pur- An encounter in January. Rita has
IN
suing turns out not to be rewarding. joined us. Milch’s Alzheimer’s is compli- EVERY-
It’s a journey in that sense. cated by long-standing cardiac difficulties. THING
Singer: We’re talking about your
creative process and mental process Milch: I’m not feeling very well
pre-Alzheimer’s, correct? And you just now. I’ve got an amount of pain
didn’t have a time during the produc- and my faculties aren’t very good. It’s
tion of the movie where that changed? in my chest.
Milch: No. I think not. It’s vari- Singer: Do you know what it’s
able from moment to moment, but over about?
all there’s a dynamic to the process that Milch: No.
you try to be disciplined in pursuing. Singer: This is completely organic?
Singer: “Discipline” is the word Milch: It’s not an anxiety disor-
you use more than anyone I’ve ever der. It’s like somebody’s got his fist on
known. It seems deeply inculcated in your chest.
your approach to learning and writing. Singer: One of the things we
You’ve said that Robert Penn Warren haven’t talked about is fear. Do you
used to discuss certain disciplines. Does have fear?
it derive from that? Milch: Yeah. You need some? It’s
Milch: Yeah, it does. I recall viv- a consequence of something pressing Upcoming Talks
idly experiencing a sense of being priv- hard on your chest. It’s a kind of in- & Performances
ileged as Mr. Warren would pursue the trusive, dominant state of being. The
logic and emotion of his thoughts— pain is coercive and distracting to an June 13, 6:30 pm
the respect that he had for the disci- extent that it’s hard to think of any- I’m Your Man:
pline of that pursuit as organizing the thing else or bring one’s concentration
exchange between us. That was uni- to anything else. Authors Roundtable
versal with him. There was something Singer: Does that mean you’re not Discover Cohen’s relationship to
holy about it. The street version of it reading very much? place, text, and spirituality in a
is “Don’t fuck with this.” It was a beau- Milch: Yes. discussion between biographers
tiful experience to be in the presence Singer: What about listening to Chantal Ringuet, Sylvie Simmons,
of that searching out. music?
and Alan Light, and music
He was a teacher, but he was also al- Milch: Mostly I’ve been chroni-
producer John Lissauer.
ways a searcher. He was respectful in cling my grievances.
sharing the pursuit and you felt you Singer: When your family, includ-
mustn’t fail to bring anything but your ing your granddaughter, was around June 20, 8 pm
best attention and respect for the trans- over the holidays, was that a relief ? Who Shall I Say is Calling?
action. You had the feeling that there Milch: Yes. Our grandchild has A Night of Covers
were two spirits residing in a holy place. adopted toward me a sort of casually
And there was an absolute lack of self- pleasant tone—she calls me Dave—and Celebrate the legacy of Leonard
consciousness to the process. A mutual she pats my wrist sometimes. And I Cohen’s life and lyricism
absence. You felt that you must suppress amuse her. She thinks I’m funny. It’s just through a live performance by
everything irrelevant or distracting. happening. I think it’s like “He doesn’t cantors Azi Schwartz, Gideon
Singer: I wonder whether there’s mean me ill, so he must mean me well.” Zelermyer, and Basya Schechter.
an overlap between that sort of pro- Singer: Do you think you’re at an
found respect and the recognition you early stage?
came to later, in A.A. meetings, about Milch: No.
a higher power. Singer: When do you think you
Milch: Yes. You had in his pres- were? Program tickets available at:
ence an effect of a continuous unfold- Milch: I couldn’t pinpoint it. May- TheJewishMuseum.org
ing. It wasn’t so much an unfolding of be three months ago.
a truth as it was of a passion, or that Singer: Do you think there’s been Exhibition on view through
there was some higher power that had an acceleration in the rate of loss? September 8, 2019
become present as a result of a shared Milch: Yes.
effort. And the presence needed to be Rita: The past six months have Organized by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
Curated by John Zeppetelli and Victor Shiffman
acknowledged or the exchange could been hard. I’ve gone to some meet-
The Jewish Museum is under the auspices of
not be understood. The great blessing ings of a support group for caregiv- The Jewish Theological Seminary.
of Mr. Warren’s presence was a rising ers, and I heard nothing hopeful in
up in one’s heart of the desire to ac- those meetings.
knowledge that shared experience. Singer: Is there anything you’ve The Jewish Museum
5th Ave at 92nd St
been able to draw upon, David? Is there Singer: Did he ever try to do more Singer: Would you pick up a new
comfort in the past? than that? Was he ever paternal, and novel and read it now?
Milch: I feel the past falling away did he say, “Goddammit, cut that shit Milch: It’s not likely.
and the attachments of regret for what out”? Singer: Is that because the hours
wasn’t done or was done badly or was Milch: He often remarked, “Un- in the day you’re able to focus are
done without sufficient sympathy, and derstand, David, I don’t give a good diminished?
it was for that reason that our grand- God damn who writes and who doesn’t.” Milch: To some extent. But more
daughter’s visit was such a redemptive Singer: I remember you telling me so I feel the constriction of possibility,
and compelling occurrence. Everything that—that if you were going to fuck it what I’m able to undertake responsibly.
is an adventure for her and a delight up that wasn’t his problem. I have only a certain amount of energy.
and a surprise, an opening up, and that’s Milch: Yes. Singer: Do you feel like you’re in
a big gratification. Singer: Can you actually say now a race?
Singer: I’ve never thought of you that you would rather you had lived Milch: Yes.
as a sentimental person, but maybe I differently during that period? Singer: You’re racing to finish this
misread that. How would you charac- Milch: Sure. When you know that memoir?
terize yourself ? you could have done something with Milch: More so a larger enterprise,
Milch: As an unsentimental person. a fuller heart, with a more open spirit, of which this is just a part.
Singer: Right. So, when you talk that’s an occasion for regret, and the Singer: Can you be more specific?
about loss, sadness, are those sentimen- regrets do tend to pile up. But there’s Milch: I’m trying to make work,
tal feelings or objective realities? nothing to be done. That’s the predi- the undertaking in general, coherent. To
Milch: Objective realities. There’s cate of regret. And so you kind of build restore a dignity to the way that I pro-
increasingly little to hold on to. A kind around it, and do the best you can to ceed, and it’s a demanding process. You’re
of relentless deterioration, and that’s learn some useful way to proceed. tempted to . . . toss it in. Just to quit.
disconcerting. Singer: Have you talked to other Singer: Before this, were you some-
Singer: I’m so sorry this is hap- Alzheimer’s patients? one who had preoccupying fears?
pening. . . . And, now that I’ve said that, Milch: No. Milch: No.
I feel like an idiot. When people tell Singer: When do you think you Singer: And now what is it you’re
you they’re sorry, what’s your response? knew that this was going on? What afraid of, if you could identify it?
Milch: “Thank you.” It depends told you that? Milch: I intuit the presence of a co-
on who I’m talking to and what the Milch: It was an irrefutable and herence in my life which I haven’t given
ambitions of the conversation are. In obtrusive fact. There were lapses which expression to in an honorable fashion.
a lot of ways, it feels like you’re living were inexplicable otherwise. Singer: So this is an opportunity.
a dream, with those relentless aspects. Singer: We’ve talked about having Is that what you’re saying?
Singer: Tell me what in your ear- your granddaughter here, the pleasure Milch: Yes.
lier life, if anything, gave you any sense of that. But what about the things that Singer: The rush to get to work,
of anticipation of what aging would be gave pleasure from before, the aesthetic that inner necessity to make something.
like. In the brain of a twenty-two-year- pleasures? You still have that? Do you wake up
old, in particular a twenty-two-year- Milch: The world gets smaller. every day with that?
old male, the parts that recognize risk You’re capable of less work and you Milch: Yes.
and danger are not as fully developed, have to learn to accept that—that’s a Singer: Did you feel during the
and so it becomes this Darwinistic mat- given of the way you have to live. And “Deadwood” movie shoot that anyone
ter. We do catch up, if we’re lucky and that’s a sadness. But it’s also true that regarded you as diminished?
we haven’t killed ourselves first. In your a focus comes to your behavior which Milch: I don’t think so.
twenties, you were living hard and fast. is productive. Singer: Do you think about the
Did you ever think, I might kill myself Singer: Elaborate upon that. future?
inadvertently? Milch (after a long pause): I’m hav- Milch: In a very constricted way.
Milch: I thought I might die in- ing a good deal of pain. I have disabused myself of any thought
advertently in the process of doing what of a normal future, but I allow myself
I was doing. You know, I assembled a Rita leaves to get him some water. He’s a provisional optimism about the pos-
number of stupidities, which took up sitting in an armchair, looking away from sibilities of what time I will be allowed.
a lot of my time. I remember Mr. War- me, as if I’ve left the room. And I’m determined to experience what
ren used to say to me, more than once, life will allow me. I know I have a short
“How much of a goddam fool can you Singer: Can I ask what you’re while possible to me, but I don’t want
be?” And I used to devote a portion of thinking right now? to constrict or profane that with re-
every day to assembling evidence in Milch: I’m wondering if I’m going crimination or a distorting bitterness.
support of this argument. to be able to tolerate this discomfiture. And I permit myself a belief that there
Singer: That question from him Singer: Can you read things you’ve is possible for me a genuine happiness
was not a chastening question? written in the past? and fulfillment in my family and the
Milch: Oh, yes, it was. Milch: No. work I do. 
most recent analysis indicates that your
SHOUTS & MURMURS starch levels are normal and you are
not likely to die in a potato blight.
Here’s something else to cheer you
up. Remember our add-on feature,
“This Deathbed in History,” which
you’d unwittingly signed up for, not
realizing until it was too late to opt
out that you’d be charged a monthly
fee? As you may recall from our Web
site, our proprietary geneware gives us
the ability to predict the past. Specifi-
cally, the year 1374. Revisiting your
chromosomal codons, we are happy to
report that, contrary to what we’d con-
cluded, if you’d been alive then you
would not have succumbed to the Black
Plague. Instead, you’d have survived a
painful bout of chartreuse fever and a
misplaced spleen, as well as fatty-elbow
syndrome—all before your eleventh
birthday, when your brother Dwayne
(sixty-three per cent Neanderthal,
thirty-four per cent French, three per
cent garlic) would have done you in
with a stone axe.
Which brings us to another reason
for this follow-up letter. It turns out
that crime runs in your family. It’s a
long story, but it appears that Mike
sold some of our data to another com-
23 AND HIM
pany, which sold it to yet another com-
pany, where someone had a connection
to the Akron, Ohio, police department.
BY PATRICIA MARX Apparently, your DNA matched DNA
found at the scene of a murder. (Maybe
hank you for your purchase of in the cryogenic-storage lab/cafeteria you’ve already been arrested?) Did you
T SpoilerAlert, the only genetic-
testing kit that tells you how and when
about money-saving coupons for Marl-
boro Menthols.) Finally, the lab made
also leave a tortoiseshell barrette there?
But there is some encouraging news.
you will die, and then, after you’re dead, the thrilling discovery that your over- We can guarantee that you will not
invites relatives who’ve never heard bearing cousin Kitty had been adopted serve your full twenty-five-year prison
of you to your funeral. We hope that and returned. sentence. Remember those bumpy
you are pleased with the results you The reason we are sending this fol- things on your leg that you thought
received last week. There is so much low-up letter is that, owing to a mis- were mosquito bites? You were wrong.
to celebrate! Let’s review the high- hap in the lab involving an employee For more detail, we are attaching our
lights. After analyzing your Spit ’N named Mike, your saliva sample was intern Adele’s poem, “Knockin’ at Heav-
Smile sample every day for a week, our contaminated by a Mr. Potato Head. en’s Gate on Your Expiration Date.”
intern, Adele, was able to rearrange the There is no need to worry: many of Thank you again for choosing Spoil-
letters of your amino-acid sequence to the findings you received in our orig- erAlert. To show our appreciation, we
confirm that you have a variant of por- inal report are still valid. We’re sure are sending along some discount vouch-
cine stress disorder, and also to form you will be relieved to know that it re- ers to be used for any of our new ser-
the anagram “Mike is evil. I like IKEA.” mains the case that you are not a car- vices, including “Is R. Kelly My Fa-
Other great news: you have a negligible rier of any of the maladies we screened ther?,” “Whose Fault Is It That I’m
chance of developing dandruff or child- for that could be passed on to your Fat?,” and “How to Improve Your DNA
hood rickets, and your resistance to children, such as travelling bunions and Test Score.” And don’t forget, there’s
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
primary lung cancer is so off-the-charts side thorns. We do now know, how- still time—even for you!—to sign up
robust that our genetic counsellor be- ever, that you have polygenetic mark- for Mike’s seminar on how to utilize
lieves you should take advantage of ers associated with a condition that Barbie and Ken’s family tree to lower
the holiday cigarette sales. (Ask Lucas leaves you barren. On the upside, our your life-insurance rates. 
cooked with charcoal and licorice, and
LETTER FROM MONTREAL a rendition of jambon persillé, a Burgun-
dian charcuterie of ham suspended in
KITCHEN SHIFT
parsleyed jelly.
Joe Beef, which opened in 2005, is
McMillan and Morin’s first and best-
The chefs behind North America’s most hedonistic restaurant quit drinking. known restaurant. It specializes in am-
bitious but unfussy French cooking—no
BY HANNAH GOLDFIELD white tablecloths, no minimalist dishes
sprinkled with microgreens or gold leaf.
Situated in the former industrial neigh-
borhood of Little Burgundy, near the La-
chine Canal, the restaurant has the feel
of a ragtag bistro, with vintage furniture
and stuffed animal heads mounted on the
walls. The menu, written only on chalk-
boards, in French, is defined by exuber-
ant immoderation, a blend of the haute
and the gluttonous. On a given night,
it might include a traditional foie-gras
torchon or a sandwich of foie gras on
white bread; tartare of raw duck, venison,
or horsemeat; and a hulking strip steak
topped with cheese curds—a Québécois
staple—or fat links of boudin noir. Often,
it includes dishes that aren’t French at all:
skate schnitzel, porchetta, barbecued ribs
cooked in the back-yard smoker. Din-
ers willing to spend at least a hundred
dollars apiece can forgo ordering and
let the kitchen stuff them with a dozen
courses of its choosing. The food writer
John Birdsall once published an ecstatic
piece on the site First We Feast titled
“I Puked at Joe Beef and It Made Me
a Better Man.”
For a long time, McMillan and Mo-
rin made a point of living the experience
that they were selling. McMillan was
known for drinking with his custom-
or Americans living through tur- ing Joe Beef. Published late last year, ers, and then downing bottles of wine
F bulent times, Canada can seem like
a refuge. The Montreal chef David Mc-
and co-written with Meredith Erick-
son, a cookbook author who was one
long after dinner service was over. The
chefs’ spirit of extravagance helped make
Millan figures it doesn’t hurt for Cana- of Joe Beef ’s first servers, the new book Joe Beef a success. In 2007, they opened
dians to have a getaway plan, too. Since is in part a tongue-in-cheek survival- Liverpool House, two doors down, to
2012, he’s owned a lakeside cabin in the ist’s manual, with instructions for build- accommodate Joe Beef overflow; four
Laurentian Mountains, accessible only ing a subterranean bunker, making hard- years later, they expanded Joe Beef into
by boat. It’s equipped with solar power, tack, and growing endive in darkness. an adjacent space, doubling its capac-
fishing rods and rifles, and enough dried By “apocalypse,” the authors mean a ity. And, a couple of years after that,
provisions to last a year. McMillan, who range of modern ills, from the “constant they opened a wine bar, Le Vin Papil-
has three young daughters, told me, “If noise” of social media to the threat of lon, two doors down from Liverpool
anything is weird, I could grab every- nuclear war. “We don’t want to just sur- House. Today, they employ a hundred
body and head up there.”The cabin was vive,” Erickson writes. “We want to live and fifty people. But their ethos of ex-
an inspiration for “Joe Beef: Surviving it out in full Burgundy style.” To that cess proved unsustainable. In an essay
the Apocalypse,” McMillan’s second end, the book also collects more than for Bon Appétit, in February, McMillan
cookbook with Frédéric Morin, his part- a hundred of the chefs’ recipes, includ- wrote, “The community of people I sur-
ner in five Montreal restaurants, including a tater-tot galette, sweetbreads rounded myself with ate and drank like
Vikings. It worked well in my twenties.
Joe Beef and its sister restaurants specialize in exuberant immoderation. It worked well in my thirties. It started
32 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEXI HOBBS
to unravel when I was forty. I couldn’t of the restaurant industry. Anthony Bour- who owns Zahav, the acclaimed Israeli
shut it off.” dain, in his 2000 memoir, “Kitchen Con- restaurant in Philadelphia, began treat-
One day in January of last year, Morin fidential,” enshrined the perception of ment for crack-cocaine addiction and
and several employees and friends staged cooks as hard-driving misfits, and of alcoholism a decade ago. Sean Brock,
an intervention for McMillan at Joe kitchens as places generally populated best known for the restaurant Husk, in
Beef. McMillan had always thought of by “a thuggish assortment of drunks.” Charleston, wrote last April about quit-
addiction as a weakness, not a disease. Mario Batali, who in 1998 opened Babbo, ting drinking and taking up a new “self-
But he agreed to go to rehab, and his his flagship restaurant, in New York, care” regimen that included meditation
monthlong stay there, he wrote, pro- made his prodigious appetites a defining and Reiki. Brock and Solomonov are
vided a “crash-course in alcoholism, well- part of his image, along with his pony- just two of many chefs who now serve
ness, and the language of sobriety.”When tail and orange Crocs. Batali was one of nonalcoholic cocktails at their restau-
he got out, he continued to attend A.A. the world’s most admired chefs, known rants. In “The Rise of the Sober Chef,”
meetings. Morin, who is married with for rhapsodizing about the pleasures of a First We Feast story from 2015, Sol-
three kids, realized that he also had a Italian specialties such as lardo and bu- omonov noted that admitting you’re an
problem. Several months after McMil- catini all’amatriciana. That changed in alcoholic “is less of a taboo than it was
lan got sober, he stopped drinking, too. December of 2017, when, in reports by ten years ago—even in the kitchen.”
One morning not long ago, I went Eater and the Washington Post, multi- Before McMillan and Morin gave
with McMillan and Morin to their lat- ple women accused him of sexually ha- up drinking, Joe Beef was an occasion-
est venture, McKiernan Luncheonette, rassing or assaulting them. At one of his ally volatile and abusive work environ-
across the canal from Joe Beef. They late-night party spots, the West Village ment; they are adamant that sobriety
opened it, last September, with Derek gastropub the Spotted Pig (where he has made them more responsible bosses.
Dammann, the chef-owner of Maison was an investor), he and Ken Friedman, Both are evangelists by nature. Where
Publique, a gastropub in town—one of a co-owner, drank heavily and subjected they once promoted unbridled hedo-
many local establishments that feel made women to unwanted verbal and physi- nism, they’ve now become unlikely cru-
in Joe Beef ’s image. Housed in a former cal advances, according to the Times. saders against the excesses of restaurant
textile mill, McKiernan is the largest of Suddenly, Batali’s proud intemperance culture. McMillan said, “I believe clearly
their restaurants, and the only one to was considered in a new light—as em- now that you can make a decision to go
serve breakfast and lunch. It offers dishes blematic of a kind of ugly behavior that into the service industry and have a
in McMillan and Morin’s maximalist had been allowed to flourish in the in- healthy life, a happy life, as a waiter, a
style: a grilled cheese as big as a skate- dustry for too long. (Both Batali and sommelier, or a cook.”
board; a hundred-and-twenty-dollar côte Friedman denied some of the allega-
de boeuf. There is also lighter, café fare, tions. In March, Batali sold his share of cMillan and Morin grew up in
such as clam chowder and buffalo-milk
yogurt with granola. When we arrived,
his restaurant group. Friedman remains
an owner of the Spotted Pig.)
M Montreal, not far from each other,
and both developed an early interest in
the kitchen staff were slicing baguettes For diners who are attracted to brash French cooking. Morin watched Jacques
for jambon beurre. McMillan said, laugh- culinary celebrity, Joe Beef became no Pépin and Julia Child on TV; McMil-
ing, “Five of the best chefs in Montreal, less a destination than Babbo or David lan recalls his mother bringing home a
making seven-dollar sandwiches!” Chang’s Momofuku Noodle Bar, which book by the Lyonnaise chef Paul Bo-
He and Morin are both in their for- opened, in New York, a year before Joe cuse. After high school, both began
ties but they are physical opposites, a Beef. Chang has called Joe Beef his working in restaurants, and, later, at-
Québécois Asterix and Obelix. Six feet favorite restaurant in the world; both tended cooking school. At the time,
three and heavily tattooed, McMillan he and Bourdain, another fan, became there was little glamour in being a chef.
is Joe Beef ’s front man—charismatic, friends of McMillan and Morin. Bour- “We went into cooking like you go into
obscenely quotable, as inconspicuous as dain, who committed suicide last year, plumbing or electricity,” McMillan said.
a grizzly bear. Morin is smaller and more had been open about abusing heroin They didn’t know each other well until
circumspect, with an aquiline nose, a and crack cocaine early in his career, 1999, when they found themselves work-
pronounced French-Canadian accent, and about eventually getting clean. But ing together at the Globe, a restaurant
and a sly sense of humor. In the early he never gave up drinking, and he strug- and supper club in downtown Montreal.
years of Joe Beef, Morin spent most of gled with depression. After he died, McMillan was the chef de cuisine and
his time in the kitchen; McMillan read- a toxicology report found only trace Morin was his sous chef. The Globe had
ily admits that Morin is the better cook. amounts of alcohol in his system. Still, been an excellent French restaurant, they
As the business has grown, both have Morin said that Bourdain’s death was a told me, but it began catering to a late-
moved into supervisory roles, stopping factor that made him question his own night crowd who cared little about the
by the restaurants frequently but leav- relationship with alcohol: “It surely food. “They dressed the waitresses like
ing their staff to handle day-to-day tasks. couldn’t have helped him, that’s the most sluts, in little pink tight dresses,” McMil-
Since getting sober, both have lost a I feel qualified to say.” lan said. “They did bottle service. The
significant amount of weight. McMillan and Morin are not the restaurant was frequented by the Mafia
Until very recently, debauchery was first high-profile chefs to get sober in and motorcycle gangs and drug dealers,
considered inescapable in some corners recent memory. Michael Solomonov, vodka drinkers, d.j. culture. Sodom and
Gomorrah.” In 2004, Morin took over Dover-sole meunière and pâté en croûte. When McMillan first went to rehab,
the kitchen while McMillan oversaw the Morin devised a creamy, lardon-stud- he said, he’d look at other addicts and
opening of a sister restaurant, Rosalie. ded lobster spaghetti, now a Joe Beef think, “Oh, no, no, I’m not like you los-
McMillan, overworked and drinking too staple. They found a supplier of horse- ers. I have a natural-wine problem.”
much, had what he has called a “little meat, an ingredient that they describe McMillan made intermittent efforts
breakdown.” “We were so burned out,” in their first cookbook, “The Art of Liv- to drink less and to go to the gym. In
Morin said. “We were both on antide- ing According to Joe Beef,” as “the great 2013, he had gastric bypass surgery. He
pressants.” They wondered if they should divide between Anglophone and Fran- lost a hundred and eighty pounds in the
get out of the industry altogether. cophone.” There was an intimacy to the following years, but he continued to
At the time, modernist chefs like dining room: McMillan shucked oys- drink heavily. Max Campbell, a bar-
Ferran Adrià, in Spain, and Charlie Trot- ters at the bar and kibbitzed with cus- tender and server who has worked at
ter, in Chicago, were in vogue, but Mc- tomers. The occasional rude or disrup- Joe Beef for more than a decade, told
Millan and Morin retained their pas- tive guest was invited to leave. Within me that, each night, when McMillan
sion for traditional French food. After six months, the restaurant was booking came into the restaurant, “I’d open one,
shifts at the Globe, they ate at L’Ex- tables a month in advance. two bottles, three bottles, I don’t know.”
press, one of Montreal’s few remaining McMillan and Morin attribute much McMillan would make the rounds in
old-school bistros, where the ceilings of their success to the support of Chang the dining room, pouring wine, Calva-
are painted yellow to match stains from and Bourdain. In a 2013 episode of his dos, and champagne for customers and
the cigarette smoke that once filled the TV series “Parts Unknown,” Bourdain for himself. Sometimes Campbell had
dining room, and each meal begins with spent a sybaritic few days with McMil- to make excuses for McMillan’s drunken
a server delivering to the table a jar of lan and Morin in and around Mon- behavior; one night, he drove him home
cornichons and a pot of mustard. Mc- treal. They staged a six-course meal in McMillan’s own car. Meredith Er-
Millan and Morin still consider it a per- in an ice-fishing shack on the frozen ickson told me, “David changed from
fect restaurant. They also admired a new St. Lawrence River. It included Glacier being the guy who everyone wanted to
generation of chefs who’d opened small, Bay and Beausoleil oysters, oxtail con- circle around, and listen to the stories,
idiosyncratic restaurants in the U.S. and sommé over foie gras, chilled lobster à to a guy where everyone was just, like,
in Canada: Gabrielle Hamilton, who la Parisienne with shaved truffles, wild ‘I’m feeling really uncomfortable, be-
had, Morin said, the temerity to put hare in a sauce of its own blood, Époisses cause you’re not acting like the guy we
Triscuits on the menu at her tiny New cheese smeared on bread, and a layer love right now.’ ”
York restaurant, Prune; Martin Picard, cake called a Marjolaine. They smoked Several current and former Joe Beef
whose Montreal tavern, Au Pied de Co- Cuban cigars and drank white Burgundy employees told me that they’d felt pres-
chon, served the kind of snout-to-tail and Chartreuse. Later in the episode, sure to drink. After hours, McMillan
cooking that was gaining popularity at on a trip to Martin Picard’s Cabane à would herd staff members to the bar
the time, with a Québécois spin, includ- Sucre Au Pied de Cochon, outside Mon- across the street and buy them beers and
ing a famous foie-gras poutine. treal, Morin opened a bottle of spar- shots of whiskey. In the summer, Camp-
On their days off, McMillan and kling wine with a hammer. bell said, “we’d all sit outside on the ter-
Morin often hung out in Little Bur- McMillan’s greatest passion, apart race and we’d drink beer until the keg
gundy—then a backwater neighbor- from French cooking, was natural wine, ran out.” Emily Ekelund, a former em-
hood of greasy spoons, thrift shops, and ployee, started working as a busser at
Art Deco buildings like the home of Joe Beef in 2011, and was eventually pro-
Atwater, one of Montreal’s sprawling moted to bartender. In 2014, she left the
indoor markets. One morning, the owner job to focus on getting sober. When she
of a café on Notre-Dame Street West returned, a year and a half later, to work
mentioned that he was closing his busi- at Le Vin Papillon, it was with certain
ness, and offered them cheap rent on stipulations—she’d no longer close the
the dingy space. McMillan, Morin, and bar or work past midnight. “I needed to
Allison Cunningham, a server at the get myself out of that environment in
Globe (who later married Morin), de- order to stop drinking,” she said.
cided to go in on it together. They fixed a movement—until recently based al- According to a 2015 report by the Sub-
up the twenty-six-seat dining room, most entirely in France—to produce stance Abuse and Mental Health Ser-
putting in wainscotting and a bar made wines using organic or biodynamically vices Administration, the food-service
from a farmhouse floor. Out back, they grown grapes, no additives, and mini- and hospitality sectors have among the
planted a garden and installed a smoker. mal processing. In 2015, he helped Vanya highest rates of alcohol and drug use
They named the restaurant after Charles Filipovic, Joe Beef ’s wine director and of any industry. Morin said that he
( Joe Beef ) McKiernan, the proprietor a partner in Le Vin Papillon, start an thinks drinking is responsible for most
of a rowdy nineteenth-century Mon- import business, turning his restaurants of “the anger and the pressure and the
treal tavern. into a hub of natural wine in North abuse” in professional kitchens. As a
McMillan and Morin served raw America. But his oenophilia became a young chef, he witnessed several bad
seafood and French classics such as cover for his accelerating alcoholism. fights in kitchens, including one that
magazine Fool, McMillan bragged about
how he greeted female customers: “My
HIGH FORCE new line is, ‘You’re so hot I would chase
you through the forest with an ax.’” And
Seven years have passed, seven and a half yet McMillan doesn’t believe that he
since we last parked up beside the white hotel— acted inappropriately toward women,
in a hire car, then—and holding hands descended in part because his longtime partner
the steep path lined with pale birches (now ex) Julie Sanchez, was a server at
into the gorge, neither of us knowing Joe Beef for many years. Filipovic and
whether passing families in bright waterproofs Erickson, who worked at the restaurant
did or didn’t presage our future together. until 2010, both told me that they were
always treated with respect. A former
Love was molten, blazing. Amazing we’d left bartender, Sarah Reid, told me, without
the rented room long enough for this, animus, that McMillan slapped her butt
clothed and everything, separately scarfed, in search on several occasions after he’d been
of backdrops to pose against, or rough drinking. At the time, she considered it
drafts with which to gauge one another a sign that he was pleased with her work.
as the words swam and swapped and shook themselves “We’re all brainwashed in this culture,”
like dogs coming out of the river. she said, adding, “I don’t want to de-
monize Dave and say that he is the prob-
The fosse that day, after weeks of rain, lem.” (McMillan denies ever slapping
brimmed and foamed and hid the Whin Sill Reid. “Even in my drinking, I remem-
and its usual zagged path in a pounding-down ber everything,” he said.)
of polar-bear spume, ropy and rippling Last June, in an article in the Globe
but somehow standing still through sheer and Mail, Reid and twenty other women
insistence, sheer abundance. This was detailed allegations of sexual harassment
infinity’s house, house of perpetual motion— and assault against Norman Hardie, one
of Canada’s leading winemakers, and a
froth falling forever, forever self- friend and associate of McMillan and
renewing, is what we thought we were, I was, Morin. (Hardie denied many of the al-
underneath it all: a metaphor legations.) A week later, a former Joe
whose issuing-forth would never end, who would Beef busser—who is trans and uses the
not stand like this in seven years’ time pronoun “they”—claimed, in a string of
grown softer and scareder even than the whin, Instagram posts (later deleted), that, in
let alone the water it thrums beneath. 2016, when they were working in the
restaurant, the chef de cuisine groped
Even writing this, I can’t see how, their genitals. The busser, who declined
I want to laugh, these images rivering through me to comment on the incident, wrote that
and on into you could ever end, they complained to a manager, who did
nor High Force continue falling little in response; they left the job the
down the lightning-bolt course it likes, following day. They decided to come
or even being water, in our absence— forward on social media after reading
though it will, and it does, and it’s doing so still. the Hardie exposé, which noted that
McMillan had cut ties with the wine-
—Frances Leviston maker and quoted him saying, “I’m hor-
rified and disappointed in Norman.”
McMillan was distancing himself from
had to be broken up by the police. Mc- McMillan sometimes abetted what one abuser, the employee wrote, while
Millan told me, “Everybody that I a former employee called “bullshit frat- “he employs and supports” another.
worked for, all my mentors, were scream- boy stuff.” He used homophobic slurs, The chefs declined to discuss the in-
ers. I’ve been hit multiple times in the and he once gave a cook a glass of cident with me, but, in an article pub-
kitchen.” Morin recalled once throwing chicken blood to drink, telling him that lished last year, in Eater Montreal, Mc-
a pan of bacon onto the floor after a line it was his “mother’s strawberry wine.” Millan acknowledged that the groping
cook accidentally tossed out fresh fish. Afterward, McMillan gave him whis- had occurred; the chef de cuisine was
McMillan said, “Joe Beef is the nicest key, to kill the salmonella. “He was fine, “extremely remorseful,” he said. McMil-
restaurant I’ve ever worked at. But have he was drunk,” he told me. “That’s boys lan added that he hadn’t been in the
I screamed at people? Yes, I have. Have being bad in the kitchen.” In a 2014 restaurant during the incident, and
I punched people? Fucking yeah. I’ve profile by Lesley Chesterman, a Mon- blamed alcoholism for making him an
never hit a woman.” treal food critic, in the Swedish food inattentive boss. The busser wasn’t able
seem like a marketing maneuver: by mak-
ing a show of reforming their ways, they
are taking credit for addressing problems
that they long helped to perpetuate.
Several former Joe Beef employees
told me it was obvious that Hardie, the
winemaker, had been mistreating women
since long before the allegations against
him were made public. “Did Norman
Hardie objectify women in my pres-
ence? Yes,” McMillan said. The inci-
dent that Sarah Reid described to the
Globe and Mail—Hardie putting his
hand up her shirt and down the back
of her pants—took place at an event
that McMillan attended. Still, he main-
tains that he wasn’t aware of the extent
of the abuse until he got a phone call
about the paper’s investigation while he
was in rehab. He sees himself as a teller
of hard truths about the industry. “Some
of my peers are furious at me for speak-
ing about the Norman Hardie stuff,” he
said. “Some of my peers are furious at
me for speaking about alcohol.” Ekelund,
the former Joe Beef employee, told me,
“It’s very easy to take sobriety and make
it the righteous thing that you’re doing.”
She added, “Making yourself look good
publicly is not making amends.”
This past February, a Canadian TV
personality, Anne-Marie Withenshaw,
McMillan and Morin say that sobriety has made them more responsible bosses. tweeted, and later deleted, a message
that seemed directed at McMillan: “It’s
to appeal to him for help, he said, “be- turned to his restaurants, three months interesting how some chefs now flash-
cause I was stuck drinking somewhere.” later, he found that the staff welcomed ing their sobriety as a badge of man-
He told me, of that period, “I went to his and Morin’s sobriety. “The kids,” as hood used to relentlessly bully (and use
work and I wondered who I was going McMillan calls them, now party less, homophobic slurs which I won’t) the
to drink with, when I was going to drink, and often choose sparkling water or ones trying to quietly get/stay sober a
what winemaker was in town, what wines kombucha instead of beer at the end of decade ago.” McMillan tweeted, in re-
are we selling—wine, wine, wine, wine, a shift. Since the publication of his Bon sponse, “I am imperfect absolutely. I was
wine, wine, wine. Meanwhile, some chef Appétit piece, McMillan said, he receives and am a product of the environment I
at some other restaurant has just made messages every day, from industry peo- was brought up in and in the twilight
someone cry for the fifth time. And, in- ple all over the world, seeking advice on of my career am committed to change.”
stead of addressing it, I would get somehow to get sober. At McKiernan Lun- Withenshaw told me that she didn’t
one else to address it. I was a coward.” cheonette, on Sunday nights, one of wish to elaborate on the comment, and
their employees hosts recovery-group added that she meant to call attention
cMillan told me that, in rehab, meetings in the dining room, which to a problem bigger than any one chef
M he was advised to find a new line
of work. “I have no other skills or edu-
McMillan, Morin, and a number of
their staff attend. The group has a name,
or restaurant. A few people I spoke to
declined to discuss Joe Beef out of fear
cation apart from this business, so I was inspired by the French culinary term that it could damage their careers. Yas-
in a very awkward position,” he said. “I mise en place: Remise en Place—to put min Hother Yishay, who worked for Joe
thought I was going to work in a gro- back in place. Beef briefly in 2015, developed a pod-
cery store, to be honest.” Instead, he Some members of Montreal’s food cast, the following year, about incidents
started working kitchen shifts again, at community found the Bon Appétit arti- of labor violation and abuse in Montre-
Elena, an Italian restaurant co-owned cle inspiring; others found it self-serving. al’s restaurants, including the groping at
by his friend Ryan Gray, a former Joe McMillan and Morin are shrewd stew- Joe Beef. It was never finished, she told
Beef sommelier who had got sober a ards of their restaurants’—and their me, because not enough people were
few years earlier. After McMillan re- own—reputations, and their sobriety can willing to go on the record. “Alcoholism
is a huge part of that industry, but that’s wine for each course. McMillan, who the other.” When he needs to taste a new
not even the problem,” she said. “It’s a was drinking nonalcoholic beer, listened bottle, he sips and spits. He acknowl-
space where men can roam free.” attentively to her descriptions and sniffed edged that advocating for sobriety and
a few glasses. Morin, who was given a for wine at the same time might sound
ne evening, I met McMillan, Morin, diagnosis of celiac disease in 2010, after contradictory: “There’s always going to
O and Erickson for drinks and hors
d’œuvres at Le Vin Papillon. McMillan
years of stomach problems, drank only
water. He said that the condition hasn’t
be someone who says, ‘Yeah, but you’re
only a year sober, shut the fuck up, you’re
and Morin’s first two restaurants have interfered with his work: much of Joe a rookie, you could fuck up any day.’ I
often been described as “masculine.” Liv- Beef ’s menu—raw seafood, meat and go, ‘Yeah, no, sure, I might, but for now
erpool House is decorated with photo- potatoes—is gluten-free. I’m not, so fuck you.’”
graphs of tractor trailers and serves some The food was as decadent as ev- McMillan and Morin have not elim-
of the same dishes as Joe Beef. (In 2017, er—“It’s not broken, I’m not gonna fix inated all their workplace liabilities. The
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had dinner it,” McMillan said—but he and Morin chef de cuisine who groped the busser
there with Barack Obama; Ariel Schor, told me that they’ve become less inter- is now a co-owner of one of their other
the restaurant’s chef de cuisine, reported ested in putting truffles and foie gras on restaurants. (McMillan told Eater that
that Obama “was surprised at the size of everything. Morin recalled reading a bi- the chef has “proven by his actions that
our portions.”) Le Vin Papillon has an ography of Julia Child, in which she de- he’s a good man.”) Only one woman
aesthetic that McMillan regards as more scribes a dinner of a few large oysters, currently works in the Joe Beef kitchen.
feminine, with whitewashed floors and an entrée of fish, and a slice of Brie de A front-of-house employee, Kellie Stu-
walls, and paintings of its namesake pa- Meaux for dessert. “The simple French pert, told me that she was verbally abused
pillons, or butterflies, on the wall. The menu, the one that I now find most ap- by a male co-worker last summer, but
food is lighter, too. “I realized one day, petite-whetting—I used to consider it that McMillan immediately reprimanded
sitting at Joe Beef, that there were beau- boring,” he said. “But a part of sobriety him. “He told me that he was on my
tiful, responsible women and men who is learning to deal with boredom, which side, that they had my back,” she said.
were eating only the appetizers and drink- in time you realize is more like simplic- “You can’t really ask for anything better
ing responsibly by the glass,” McMillan ity.” Both he and McMillan ate mod- than that.” McMillan believes it’s inev-
told me, over a plate of house-cured ham. estly; more than one platter was returned itable that such issues arise in a com-
“I built Vin Papillon with an image of to the kitchen largely untouched. At one pany as big as theirs. But he now has
how Vanya and Meredith ate and drank. point, a customer stopped by the table. “zero tolerance for homophobia, zero
They wouldn’t come to Joe Beef and crush “You guys look great!” he said to Mc- tolerance for misogyny, sexism,” he said,
a magnum with two steaks.” Millan and Morin. adding, “It sounds hypocritical, because
Last year, McMillan and Morin “Ah, we’ve been wearing makeup, I’m sure people you’ve talked to have
opened a second wine bar, Vin Mon more and more makeup,” Morin replied. said, ‘Yeah, it’s rich coming from him.’”
Lapin, with Filipovic and her husband, “We’re still dark on the inside.” Stephanie Cardinal, who worked for
where they serve an omelette filled with McMillan remains proudly chauvin- four and a half years at Le Vin Papil-
lobes of fresh sea urchin and a salade rose, istic about Montreal’s dining scene. “I lon, first as a sous chef and then as the
made with radicchio, pink endive, and had two eighteen-year-old girls from La- chef de cuisine, said that McMillan and
delicate curls of foie gras. Until a recent val”—a suburb of Montreal—“the other Morin were supportive when, last year,
staffing change at Vin Papillon, the kitch- day, who were having a meal at Joe Beef she worked to get sober. McMillan took
ens at both wine bars were run by women. before going out to a night club, and they her with him to A.A. meetings, even if
But Filipovic, who oversees the front of were having deer liver medium rare,” he they were held during her shifts. Still,
the house at Joe Beef and the two bars, said. “Show me a restaurant in Manhattan she struggled with the demands of the
told me that she doesn’t like the mascu- that has deer liver, and then show me two job. She helped with the opening of
line-feminine distinction. She thinks of eighteen-year-old girls from New Jersey Vin Mon Lapin, then returned to Le
the lighter fare at Vin Papillon and Vin eating it—and loving it—medium rare.” Vin Papillon. This past winter, fearing
Mon Lapin as part of a natural evolu- Lately, McMillan has been spending that she was burning out, she sat down
tion. “We all kind of got older and much of his time at his cabin, where he with McMillan and Morin to discuss
stopped being able to deal with eating takes his daughters fishing and foraging her situation. “Rather than telling me,
like that all the time,” she said. for mushrooms. He recently bought a ‘Yes, you should stay at Vin Papillon,’
For dinner, we went to Joe Beef, where farm, near the border of Vermont, which or ‘Yes, let’s open up a restaurant to-
we sat on the back patio, beneath a giant he plans to eventually turn into a restau- gether,’ they told me, ‘Steph, you’re
metal lobster. A parade of dishes began rant. He also started a natural-wine label, twenty-eight,’” she said. “ ‘If you stay
to arrive from the kitchen: raw oysters, working with vintners in Ontario. His here at Vin Papillon, you’re going to
razor clams, and scallops on shaved ice; chefs will drive for hours to buy a single find yourself a year from now hitting
crackly brown croquettes stuffed with bag of whitefish caviar; it would be a that same wall.’” In March, with Mc-
“smoked meat,” the Montreal cousin to shame to let customers pair their food Millan and Morin’s encouragement, she
pastrami; tender tripe in a fragrant con- with a commercial Chablis. “Our job is left her job to figure out what she wanted
sommé; rosy slabs of roast beef. Filipo- putting two things inside your body, food to do next. She said, “Letting me go is
vic poured Erickson and me a different and wine,” he said. “One has to go with the nicest gift they’ve ever given me.” 
PERSONAL HISTORY
ECSTASY
Losing religion and doing drugs in Houston.
BY JIA TOLENTINO
he church I grew up in was so every weekend, baptizing your children to put me in first grade, even though
T big we called it the Repenta-

gon. It was not a single struc-
ture but a thirty-four-million-dollar
in the Worship Center, and meeting
your fellow-retirees for racquetball and
a chicken-salad sandwich, secure in the
I was four years old.
I would regret this situation when
I was in high school at the age of twelve.
campus, built in the nineteen-eighties knowledge that your loved ones would But, as a kid, I was eager and easy. I
and spread across forty-two acres in a gather in the sanctuary to honor you pointed my toes in dance class and did
leafy, white neighborhood ten miles after your death. all my homework. In daily Bible classes,
west of downtown Houston. A circu- The church was founded in 1927, I made salvation bracelets on tiny
lar drive with a fountain in the mid- and the school was established two de- leather cords—a black bead for my sin,
dle led up to a bone-white sanctuary cades later. By the time I got there, in a red bead for the blood of Jesus, a white
that sat eight hundred; next to it was the mid-nineties, Houston was enter- bead for purity, a blue bead for bap-
a small chapel, modest and humble, ing an era of glossy, self-satisfied power, tism, a green bead for spiritual growth,
with pale-blue walls. There was also a enjoying the dominance of Southern a gold bead for the streets of Heaven
school, a restaurant, a bookstore, three evangelicals and the spoils of extractive that awaited me. During the holidays,
basketball courts, an exercise center, Texan empires—Halliburton, Enron, I acted in the church’s youth musicals;
and a cavernous mirrored atrium. There Exxon, Bush. Associate pastors flogged one of them was set at CNN, the “Ce-
was a dried-out field with bleachers fund-raising campaigns during Sun- lestial News Network,” and several of
and, next to it, a sprawling playground; day services, working to convert the us played reporters covering the birth
during the school year, the rutting considerable wealth of the church’s of Jesus Christ. When I was still in el-
rhythm of football practice bled into tithing population into ostentatious ementary school, my family moved far-
the cacophony of recess through a new displays. When I was in high ther west, to new suburbs where model
porous border of mossy oaks. Mall- school, the church built a fifth floor homes rose out of bare farmland. On
size parking lots circled the campus; with a train for children to play in, and Sundays, as we drove into the city, I sat
on Sundays, it looked like a car dealer- a teen-youth-group space called the quietly in the back seat next to my che-
ship, and during the week it looked Hangar, which featured the nose of a rubic little brother, ready to take my
like a fortress, surrounded by an as- plane half crashed through a wall. place in the dark and think about my
phalt moat. At the middle of every- My parents hadn’t always been evan- soul. Spiritual matters felt simple and
thing was an eight-sided, six-story cor- gelical, nor had they favored this ten- absolute. I didn’t want to be bad, or
porate cathedral called the Worship dency toward excess. They had grown doomed. I wanted to be saved, and good.
Center, which sat six thousand people. up Catholic in the Philippines and, Back then, believing in God felt
Inside were two huge balconies, a jum- after moving to Toronto, a few years mostly unremarkable, occasionally in-
botron, an organ with nearly two hun- before I was born, had attended a small teresting, and every so often like a pri-
dred stops and more than ten thou- Baptist church. When, in 1993, they vate thrill. In the Bible, angels came to
sand pipes, and a glowing baptismal moved to Houston, an unfamiliar and your doorstep. Fathers offered their
font. My mom sometimes worked as unfathomably large expanse of high- children up to be sacrificed. Fishes mul-
a cameraperson for church services, way and prairie, one pastor’s face was tiplied; cities burned. The horror-movie
filming every backward dip into the everywhere, smiling at commuters from progression of the plagues in Exodus
water as though it were a major-league the billboards that studded I-10. My riveted me: the blood, the frogs, the
pitch. There was tiered seating for a parents took to his kind and compel- boils, the locusts, the darkness. I was
baby-boomer choir that sang at the ling style of preaching—he was class- taught that the violence of Christian-
nine-thirty service, a performance area ier than your average televangelist, and ity came with great safety: under a pleas-
for the Gen X house band at eleven, much less greasy than Joel Osteen, the ing shroud of aesthetic mystery, there
and sky-high stained-glass windows better-known Houston pastor, who were clear prescriptions about who you
depicting the beginning and end of became famous in the two-thousands should be. I prayed every night, thank-
the world. You could spend your whole for his airport books about the pros- ing God for the wonderful life I had
life inside the Repentagon, starting in perity gospel. My parents began reg- been given. On weekends, I would pedal
nursery school, continuing through ularly attending services at the Re- my bike across a big stretch of pasture
twelfth grade, getting married in the pentagon, and, soon afterward, they in the late-afternoon light and feel holy.
chapel, attending adult Bible study persuaded the school’s administrators I would spin in circles at the skating
I’ve been walking away from institutional religion for half my life, fifteen years dismantling what the first fifteen built.
ILLUSTRATION BY SHAWNA X THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 39
rink and know that someone was look- istic white chamber and then, as vio- ing the Book of Revelation in the un-
ing down on me. lins swelled in the background, walked supervised pews in the highest balcony.
Toward the end of elementary down an endless hall to be martyred One Sunday, I told my parents that
school, the impression of wholeness for his Christian faith. I cried. After- I needed a sweater from the car. I
started slipping. A teacher advised us ward, we sang “I Pledge Allegiance to walked across the echoing atrium with
to boycott Disney movies, because the Lamb.” the keys jangling in my hand and the
Disney World had allowed gay peo- In middle school, I became con- pastor’s voice ringing through the empty
ple to host a parade. Another teacher scious of my ambivalence. I started to space. In the parking lot, the sun burned
confiscated my Archie comics and my feel twinges of guilt at the end of every my eyes and softened the asphalt. I got
peace-sign notebook, replacing this church service, when the pastor would into the passenger seat of our powder-
heathen paraphernalia with a copy of call for people to come forward and blue Suburban and put the key in the
the new best-seller about the Second accept Jesus. What if this feeling of un- ignition. The Christian radio station
Coming, “Left Behind.” Three girls certainty meant that I needed to avow was playing—89.3 KSBJ, “God listens.”
were electrocuted when a light blew Him again and again? I’d been taught I hit the Seek button, sending the dial
out in the pool where they’d been swim- that my relationship with God would to country, alt-rock, the Spanish sta-
ming, and this tragedy was deemed decay if I wasn’t careful. I wasn’t pre- tions, and then to something I had
the will of the Lord. Around this time, destined, I wasn’t chosen: if I wanted never heard before. It was the Box,
television screens were installed all over God’s forgiveness, I had to work. I Houston’s hip-hop radio station, and
campus, and the senatorial face of our started feeling agoraphobic in the Wor- it was playing what it always played on
pastor bobbed around on each one, ship Center; thinking about these in- Sundays: chopped and screwed.
preaching to nobody in particular. At timate matters in such a crowded pub-
chapel, we were sometimes shown re- lic place felt indecent. I took breaks he Greater Houston area is as big
ligious agitprop videos; in the worst of
these, a handsome dark-haired man
from services, sometimes curling up
on the couches in the corridor, where
T as New Jersey and contains seven
million people. Its freeways trace nine-
bid his young son farewell in a futur- mothers shushed their infants, or read- teenth-century market routes, form-
ing the shape of a wagon wheel around
downtown. There are no zoning laws:
strip clubs sit next to churches, shin-
ing skyscrapers next to gap-toothed
convenience stores. The city is less than
an hour from the Gulf Coast, with the
alien-civilization oil refineries of Port
Arthur and the ghost piers that rise
out of Galveston’s dirty water. There’s
an irradiated spirit to everything: an
impurity that can feel like absolution.
By some measures, Houston is the
most diverse city in America. It’s also
a deeply segregated one, with a long
history of its wealthy white population
quietly exploiting minorities in order
to shore up the city’s vaunted quality
of life. For decades, Houston’s govern-
ment placed its garbage dumps in black
neighborhoods, many of which bor-
dered downtown. It was in some of
these neighborhoods, in the nineties,
in cheap bungalows behind patchy
lawns and wire fences, south of 610 and
west of 45, that the Houston rap scene
was born. Alongside the legendary Port
Arthur duo UGK, rappers like Z-Ro,
Lil’ Keke, Lil’ Troy, Paul Wall, and Lil’
Flip concocted a narcotized bang and
sparkle that one can still hear in hip-
hop. It sounds like an Escalade vibrat-
ing under the influence, like someone
pulling up in a car with spinners and
rolling down the window really slow.
It shows up about a hundred seconds Robitussin. He sang one song, 1971’s We had been taught that even French
into last year’s No. 1 hit “Sicko Mode,” “Delta Momma Blues,” from the ge- kissing was dangerous, that anything
by the young Houston rapper Travis nial point of view of the drug: “Well, not marked as white and Christian
Scott, when he samples Big Hawk, a my delta boy I’m afraid you’re up too was murky and perverse. Eventually,
South Side rapper who was shot and tight / But you take it slow and some- it was the church that seemed cor-
killed, thirteen years ago, at the age of how you’ll come meandering out my rupted to me. What had been forbid-
thirty-six. way / And I’ll take you in my arms den began to feel earnest and clean. I
Big Hawk was a member of the and make it right.” went to college and began consider-
Screwed Up Click, which was led by Chopped and screwed mimics the ing different ideas of virtue. It was hot
the man who created chopped and feeling you get from lean—a heady and out the first time I tasted lean, on a
screwed: Robert Earl Davis, Jr., bet- dissociative security, as if you’re mov- night when everyone was home from
ter known as DJ Screw. Davis, whose school. I drank it with ice, booze, and
life was chronicled by Michael Hall Sprite, from a big Styrofoam cup. Soon
in Texas Monthly, was born in 1971, in afterward, I was in my friend’s pool,
Bastrop, outside Austin, to a trucker wading through hip-high water. The
father and a mother who held three song “Overnight Celebrity” was play-
cleaning jobs and bootlegged cassette ing, and it sounded like it would never
tapes from her record collection for end—like it had been slowed to Sun-
extra cash. A cousin with whom Davis day’s chopped-and-screwed tempo,
learned how to d.j. gave him his stage thick enough to carry me. The water
name after watching him use a screw felt like I could hold it. The sky was
to scratch up records he didn’t like. ing very slowly toward a conclusion enormous and velvet. I looked up and
Screw moved to Houston, dropped out you don’t need to understand. It’s per- saw the stars blanketed by the glow of
of high school, and started d.j.’ing at fect for Houston, where you can pass pollution, and I felt as blessed as I ever
a South Side skating rink. In 1989, he a full day without ever getting off the did when I was a child.
hit the wrong button on the turntable, highway, where the caustic gleam of
and the tempo slowed to what would daytime melts into a long, swampy have been walking away from insti-
become his signature wooze. A friend
gave him ten dollars to record an entire
night. The music sounded right to me
as soon as I heard it, sitting on the old
I tutional religion for half my life now,
fifteen years dismantling what the first
tape at that tempo. He started record- seats of my parents’ Suburban, in the fifteen built. But I’ve always been glad
ing Houston rappers over mixtapes, di- parking lot of the megachurch. I was that I grew up the way that I did. The
recting their long, fluid sessions as he in eighth grade, and Southern rap had Repentagon trained me to feel at ease
mixed, and then slowing the tape down, already ascended, permeating even the in odd, insular, extreme environments,
making it skip beats and stutter, like Repentagon. At cheerleading camp, and Christianity formed my deepest
a heart about to stop. He made cop- we tied thick white ribbons in our hair instincts. It gave me a leftist world
ies of his mixtapes on gray cassettes, before stunt practice, listening to Out- view—a desire to follow leaders who
which he bought in bulk, labelled by Kast and Nelly; in ninth grade, we feel themselves inseparable from the
hand, and sold out of his house, to played Ludacris, and in tenth grade hungry, the imprisoned, and the sick.
customers who waited in cars lined T.I. One summer, everyone started Years of auditing my own conduct in
up around the block. In 1998, Screw twerking: we dropped to the floor and prayer gave me an obsession with ev-
established Screwed Up Records, be- clumsily thrust our hips, mimicking eryday morality. And Christian theol-
hind bulletproof glass in a store near the motions that were spreading like ogy convinced me that I had been born
South Park. Nothing was for sale ex- a virus, clapping for the girls who could in a compromised situation. It made
cept those cassettes. do it best. In high school, we would me want to investigate my own ideas
By then, Screw was getting physi- spend some of our evenings at youth about what it means to be good.
cally heavier and slower, as if his body group, where we sang about Jesus, and This spiritual inheritance spurred
had started working at his trademark others going to teen night at a Hous- my defection: by the end of my teens,
tempo. He had become addicted to ton club, driving into the thicket of li- I’d lost interest in trying to reconcile
codeine cough syrup, also known as quor stores and strip clubs a mile up big-tent Southern evangelicalism with
lean. Lean is now permanently asso- on Westheimer, entering a dark room my burgeoning political beliefs. Many
ciated with rappers, partly because of where the girls wore miniskirts and of the rich white Christians I knew
notable acolytes of the substance, such everyone sought amnesty in a differ- believed—albeit politely, and with gen-
as Lil Wayne. But drugs are demo- ent way. (There was a lack of zoning erous year-end donations to various
graphically flexible. Townes Van Zandt, in our cultural lives, too.) Sometimes ministries—that wealth was a kind of
the country-blues artist, who was born a foam machine in the ceiling would divine anointment, and that they were
in Fort Worth and made his name turn on and soak our cheap pushup worth more to God and country than
playing Houston clubs in the sixties, bras, and we’d glue ourselves to strang- everyone else. People at my school
loved cough syrup so much that he ers as everyone chewed on big mouth- often whispered the words “Mexican”
called it Delta Momma—DM, as in fuls of Southern rap. and “black,” instinctively assuming that
those descriptions were slurs. The Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, nearer to the Enemy or nearer to us.”
Gospels preach economic redistribu- a “junior tempter” who is trying to lead I have been overpowered with ecstasy
tion—“Let him who has two tunics his first human subject astray. The in religious settings, during bouts of
share with him who has none,” and so book’s title had odd, coincidental echoes hedonistic excess, on Friday afternoons
on—but everyone around me seemed that hinted at my relationship to its walking sober in the park as the sun
mainly to believe in low taxes and the central subject—the ordinary tempta- turns everything translucent. Church
righteousness of war. George W. Bush tions that could lead a person to Hell. never felt much more like virtue than
was adorable, and the Patriot Act made “The safest road to Hell is the grad- drugs did, and drugs never felt much
him a hero; there were, without ques- ual one,” Screwtape reminds Worm- more sinful than church.
tion, weapons of mass destruction in wood, “the gentle slope, soft underfoot, The first woman who is known
Iraq. Public demonstrations of faith without sudden turnings, without mile- to have published a book in English
often doubled as performances of stones, without signposts.” When I first was a religious ecstatic: Julian of Nor-
superiority. Sometimes, at chapel, a came across that sentence, I felt as if wich, whose name possibly comes from
troupe of Christian bodybuilders someone were reading my palm. St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, En-
ripped apart phone books as a demon- My road that way has, in fact, been gland, where, in the fourteenth cen-
stration of the strength we could ac- gentle, although there were signposts tury, she lived in devotional seclusion.
quire through Jesus. At Halloween, if I’d wanted to see them. I could say, At age thirty, Julian experienced six-
the church put on a “Judgment House,” for instance, without too much over- teen extended and agonizing visions
a walk-through haunted-house play simplification, that the year that I of God, which she collected in a book
in which the main character, a high- stopped believing in God—2006—was called “Revelations of Divine Love.”
school student, drank beer at a party, also the year I first did Ecstasy, in a She describes feeling “a supreme spir-
succumbed to further temptations, and friend’s college apartment. We swal- itual pleasure in my soul” and being
wound up in Hell. lowed pills that had been crushed into “filled with eternal certainty,” a feeling
It wasn’t hard to sever my ties to Kleenex, and then we slipped into a “so joyful to me and so full of good-
these theatrics. But, for years, I retained sweaty black box of a music venue down ness that I felt completely peaceful,
an intense hunger for devotion. First, the street, and I felt weightless, like I’d easy and at rest, as though there were
I turned my attention inward. I kept come back around to a truth that I had nothing on earth that could hurt me.”
a devotional journal, producing a rec- first been taught in church: that any- But, she writes, “this only lasted for a
ord of jagged and fierce spiritual long- thing could happen, and a sort of grace while, and then my feeling was reversed
ing. I pleaded for things I still find that was both within you and outside and I was left oppressed, weary of my-
recognizable. “Help me to not put on you would pull you through. self, and so disgusted with my life that
an act of any kind,” I wrote. I told God Like many people before me, I found I could hardly bear to live.”
that I wanted to live in accordance religion and drugs appealing for sim- This kind of delirious experience is
with my beliefs, that I wanted to di- ilar reasons. (“You require absolution, seemingly a human constant, recounted
minish my sense of self-importance, complete abandonment,” I wrote, pray- with more or less identical phrasing in
that I was sorry for not being better, ing to God my junior year of high many different eras and attributed to
and that I was grateful for being alive. school.) Both provide a path toward many different sources. In 1969, the
“It’s hard to draw the line between tak- British biologist Alister Hardy began
ing pleasure in God’s purpose and to compile a database of thousands of
aligning God’s purpose with what I narratives that sound almost exactly
take pleasure in,” I wrote, between like Julian’s. One man writes, “I was
entries in which I wondered if it was out walking one night in the busy
inherently wrong to get drunk. The streets of Glasgow when, with slow
church stood on one side of my life, majesty, at a corner where the pedes-
and what I wanted—a moral code de- trians were hurrying by and the city
termined by my own instincts, and an traffic was hurtling on its way, the air
understanding of unmitigated desire— was filled with heavenly music; and an
stood on the other. I was in the mid- transcendence, a way of accessing an all-encompassing light, that moved in
dle, trying to resolve a tension that, at extrahuman world of rapture and par- waves of luminous color, outshone the
some point, I stopped being able to don. The word “ecstasy” suggests this brightness of the lighted streets. I stood
feel. Eventually, almost without real- etymologically, coming from the Greek still, filled with a strange peace and
izing it, I let one side go. ekstasis—ek meaning “out” and stasis joy.” Technically, Hardy’s archive is a
Throughout these years, I read a lot meaning something like “stand.” To be compendium of religious experiences,
of C. S. Lewis, the strangest and yet in ecstasy is to stand outside yourself. but the accounts within it resemble
most reasonable of twentieth-century The “Screwtape” demon tells his transcripts from the supervised drug
Christian writers. I went back most nephew, “Nothing matters at all except sessions that were conducted in the
often to “The Screwtape Letters,” a the tendency of a given state of mind, mid-seventies to the mid-eighties,
collection of imaginary correspondence in given circumstances, to move a par- during the brief period when Ecstasy
sent by a bureaucratic demon named ticular patient at a particular moment could be used in therapeutic settings.
of the group. Unlike other drugs that
provoke extraordinary interpersonal
BUSINESS euphoria, such as mushrooms or acid,
Ecstasy does not confuse the user about
A man hands me his business card and asks for mine. what is occurring. Your awareness of
How should I know my business? The world self and of basic reality remains un-
is my business, and the world is none of my business. changed. For this reason, Ecstasy can
provide a sense of salvation that might
These words are shadows of thoughts be more likely to stick than, say, a hal-
shaped nothing like those thoughts. lucinogen epiphany delivered from a
Am I a distortionist? face in the clouds.
In 1985, the Drug Enforcement Ad-
My grief is the square root of my laughter, ministration banned Ecstasy for a year,
my laughter that of my grief. as an emergency measure, amid a rise
Perhaps a mathematician? in recreational use. Shortly before the
ban ended, a D.E.A. judge recommended
Maybe there is life on the other side of death. that MDMA be placed in the Sched-
Maybe there is life on this side of death. ule III category, for drugs, like ket-
Shall I start a detective agency, specialize in missing persons? amine and steroids, that have an ac-
cepted medical use and a moderate to
The man who is all business, who keeps himself low potential for abuse and addiction.
on the short leash of a necktie, pumps my hand Instead, MDMA was placed in Sched-
and invites me to dine. With its strict dress code, ule I, the category for drugs with high
abusive potential, no accepted medi-
the restaurant keeps a sports jacket at the coat check. cal usage, and severe safety concerns.
Whose life hasn’t been that jacket, It was around this time that a drug
hung in shadow, furred with dust, waiting to be filled dealer renamed the substance Ecstasy.
Despite the ban, the drug went global
by another stranger? A man hands me his business card, in the nineties, at raves. At the turn of
asks for mine. How should I know my business? the century, the D.E.A. estimated that
The world is my business, and none of my business. two million hits of Ecstasy were brought
into the United States every week. Its
In winter, wind scrapes up and down the walk—a blade availability ran in cycles. By 2011, when
across the sharpening stone. This, I think, is my business. I returned to the States after a year in
Or blond light sauntering in spring, the whole city on its arm. the Peace Corps, Ecstasy had been re-
branded as Molly, and it was once again
—Gregory Fraser a mainstream drug, engineered for the
decade of corporate music festivals—
both a special-occasion option and no
(More recently, clinical trials with Ec- cause of the state of Edenic innocence big deal.
stasy have begun.) that it seemed to prompt in their pa- Ecstasy’s magic is strongest at the
The substance that would later be tients. “Adam sessions” were collected beginning; it dissipates through repe-
called Ecstasy was first developed in in a 1985 book called “Through the tition. I’ve become careful about using
1912, in Germany, by Merck, which was Gateway of the Heart.” One subject, a it—I’m afraid that the high will blunt
trying to find a treatment for abnor- rape survivor, writes, “I felt expansive, my tilt toward unprovoked happiness,
mal bleeding. For decades, it was known physically exhausted but full of love which might already be disappearing.
by its technical name, 3,4-methylene- and a deep feeling of peace.” Another I’m afraid that the low that sometimes
dioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA. writes, “I do intend to become a per- comes after will leave a permanent
In the seventies, a number of scientists fect temple for this God-conscious- trace. But, still, each time, it can feel
tried it themselves, and a network of ness.” A third subject identifies the drug like divinity. Your world realigns in a
underground MDMA psychothera- as a religious pathway to “allow, invite, juddering oceanic shimmer. You un-
pists began to grow. In the eighties, the surrender God into my own body.” derstand that you can give the best of
drug was labelled an empathogen, or The attainment of chemical ecstasy, yourself to everyone you love without
an entactogen, because it can generate empathogenesis, occurs in stages. The feeling depleted. This is what it feels
a state of empathy, by blocking sero- drug first strips away the user’s inhi- like to be a child of Jesus, in a dark
tonin reuptake and inducing the re- bitions, then it prompts the user to rec- chapel, with stained-glass diamonds
lease of both serotonin and dopamine. ognize and value the emotional states floating on the skin of all the peo-
During this period, Ecstasy was some- of others, and, finally, it makes the user’s ple kneeling around you. This is what
times called Adam, by therapists, be- well-being feel inseparable from that it feels like to be twenty-two, nearly
ings as she watches the woman. In Car-
son’s translation:
. . . thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
fills ears
and cold sweat holds me and shaking

grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead—or almost
I seem to me.
Fragment 31 is one of the longest ex-

tant pieces of Sappho’s work, preserved
because it was excerpted in “On the
Sublime,” a work of literary criticism
from the first century. In the seven-
teenth century, John Hall translated
Fragment 31 for the first time in En-
glish; in Hall’s version, the “greener than
grass” line is “like a wither’d flower I
fade.” The Greek word in question is
chloros, the root of the word “chloro-
phyll”—a pale yellow-green color, like
new grass in the spring. As the narra-
tor takes on the quality of that color, a
translator could imagine her growing
paler, fading—the “pale horse” in Rev-
elation is a chloros horse. Carson reaches
for the opposite effect. As the narrator
stares at the woman she loves, she be-
comes greener, and the line becomes an
expression of ecstasy in its original sense.
“I’ve met someone else.” Sappho steps outside herself. Love has
caused her to abandon her body. The
• • green grows greener. Some essential
quality deepens as the self is removed.
The word “decreation” is Weil’s term
naked, your hair blowing in the wind Greek woman who supposedly threw for the process of moving toward a love
as the pink twilight expands into per- herself over a cliff in the sixth century so unadulterated that it makes you leave
manence, your body still holding the B.C. out of an excess of love for Phaon, yourself behind. “Perfect joy excludes
warmth of the day. You were made to the ferryman—though, for Sapphic even the very feeling of joy,” she writes.
be here. The nature of a revelation is reasons, this is unlikely. Carson con- “For in the soul filled by the object no
that you don’t have to reëxperience it. nects Sappho to Marguerite Porete, a corner is left for saying ‘I.’” She dreams
In the seventies, researchers believed Christian mystic who was burned at of vanishing, but this fantasy reinscribes
that MDMA treatment could be dis- the stake in 1310, and then to Simone the dazzling force and vision of her in-
crete and limited—that once you got Weil, the French intellectual who, while tellectual presence. It’s a “profoundly
the message, as they put it, you could living in England during the Second tricky spiritual fact,” Carson writes, de-
hang up the phone. You would be bet- World War, starved herself in solidar- scribing Weil’s quandary. “I cannot go
ter for having listened. You would be ity with her compatriots in German- towards God in love without bringing
changed. occupied France and died in 1943. The myself along.” Being a writer com-
They don’t say this about religion, spiritual matter that Carson seeks to pounds the dilemma: to articulate the
but they should. address is mysticism, the belief that, desire to vanish is to reiterate the self.
through attaining a state of ecstatic Greener, not paler.
“ W hat if I were to begin an essay
on spiritual matters by citing
consciousness, a person can achieve
union with the divine.
Carson’s book includes a three-part
libretto in which she imagines Weil in
a poem that will not at first seem to Carson cites Sappho’s Fragment 31, a hospital bed as “the Chorus of the Void
you spiritual at all?” Anne Carson writes in which the poet looks at a woman tapdance around her.” In a line that
in the title essay of her book “Decre- who is sitting next to a man, laughing makes me shiver, Carson’s Weil says, “I
ation.” The poem is by Sappho, the with him. Sappho describes her feel- was afraid this might not happen to me.”
She expires in the white space that fol- clination toward ecstasy is a sign that I a piece of paper, and, after noting that
lows the libretto, reaching the logical still believe in God, or if it was only be- the ink seemed to be breathing, I wrote,
end point of her philosophy of devo- cause of that ecstatic tendency that I “The situations in my life when I have
tion—an ecstasy that is not so different ever believed at all. The first time I did been sympathetic to desperation are the
from death. To grasp at self-erasure is to mushrooms, the summer after my fresh- situations when I have felt sure I was
approach a total annihilation that can be man year of college, I felt vulnerable encountering God.”
achieved only once. I have wondered if and rescued, as if someone had just told I don’t know if I’m after truth or
this is part of the reason that many evan- me that I was going to Heaven. I walked hanging on to its dwindling half-life.
gelical Christians seem eager for the down a beach and everything coalesced I might only be hoping to remember
Rapture, the prophesied event in which with the cheesy, psychotic logic of “Foot- that my ecstatic disposition is the source
they’ll depart the earth and ascend to prints in the Sand.” The first time I did of the good in me—spontaneity, devo-
Heaven. When you love something so acid, I saw God again—the trees and tion, sweetness—and the worst things,
much that you dream of emptying your- clouds around me blazing with pres- too: heedlessness, blankness, equivoca-
self out for it, you’d be forgiven for want- ence, like Moses’ burning bush. Com- tion. Sunday in church isn’t the same
ing to let your love finish the job. pletely out of my mind, I wrote on a as Sunday on the radio.
napkin, “I can process nothing right In the fall of 2000, a few months after
he last time I participated in any- now that does not terminate in God’s I first heard DJ Screw’s music, he was
T thing on my old church campus
was high-school graduation. I was wear-
presence—this revelation I seem ready
to have forever in degraded forms.”
found dead on the bathroom floor at his
studio, with an ice-cream wrapper in his
ing a white flowered sundress under a A couple of years later, I did acid in hand. He was twenty-nine. Coroners
royal-blue robe, and I was onstage at the desert, in a house at the top of a hill found that his body was full of codeine;
the Worship Center, looking up at the in a canyon where the sun and the wind his blood also flowed with Valium and
bright lights, toward the empty balco- were white hot and merciless. I left the PCP. His heart was engorged, possibly
nies, giving the salutatorian’s speech. I house and walked down into the valley, the result of sedentary days and nights
had turned in a different speech for ap- and felt the drugs kick in when I was in the indulgent vortex of the studio. At
proval. I barely remember what I ended wandering in the scrub. The dry bushes his funeral, in Smithville, the town where
up saying—I know I made at least one became brilliant—greener—and a hum- he grew up, old folks sang gospel and
joke about the Repentagon. My class- mingbird torpedoed past me so quickly rappers nodded quietly along with the
mates whooped, but, as I crossed the that I froze. I experienced, for the first hymns. People lined up outside the
stage to accept my diploma, an admin- time, Weil’s precise fantasy of disappear- church the way they’d done outside
istrator hissed his disapproval. The dis- ance. I wanted to see the landscape as Screw’s house to pick up their tapes.
tance between the place that formed it was when I wasn’t there. Everything They were honoring the sound that dark-
me and the form I had taken was out was rippling. For hours, I watched the ened Houston’s anonymous, looping
in the open, and widening. The next blinding swirl of light and cloud move highways, that seeped through the veins
Christmas, when I came home from west, and I repented. At sunset, the sky of the city, setting the pace and the
college, my church held a holiday ser- billowed into mile-wide peonies, hardly rhythm of its people as they slipped past
vice at the Toyota Center, the huge an arm’s length above me, and it felt like one another in cars.
downtown arena where the Houston That year, I got on a bus and rode in
Rockets play. I spent much of the af- a convoy east toward Alabama with a
ternoon getting stoned with a friend, thousand other kids. On a middle-of-
and, in the middle of the spectacle, I nowhere beach, we participated in mass
started to lose it. The country star Clay baptisms, put our hands up in huge ser-
Walker was singing, his face looming vices where everyone cried in the dark-
huge on the jumbotron. I left my par- ness. We groped one another on the bus
ents, edging my way out of the stadium afterward, and in the morning we talked
seating. Outside, on the perimeter of about how good it felt to be saved. Later,
our church service, venders were sell- it was one of the boys from that trip who
ing popcorn and brisket sandwiches a visitation, as if God were replacing the chopped lines on my friend’s kitchen
and thirty-two-ounce Cokes. I went to breath in my lungs. I sobbed, battered table as I waded through her pool, drunk
the bathroom, overwhelmed, and cried. by a love I knew would fall away from on syrup, staring at the stars. There
I wonder if I would have stayed re- me, ashamed for all the ways I had tried are some institutions—drugs, church,
ligious if I had grown up in a place other to bring myself to this, humiliated by money—that align the superstructure
than Houston and a time other than the grace of encountering it now. I finally of white wealth in Houston with the
now. I wonder how different I would dragged myself inside and looked in the heart of black and brown culture be-
be if I had been able to find the feeling mirror. My eyes were smeared with black neath it. There are feelings, like ecstasy,
of devoted self-destruction only through makeup, my face was red from crying, that provide an unbreakable link be-
God. Instead, I have confused religion my lips were swollen; a thick, whitish tween virtue and vice. You don’t have to
with drugs, drugs with music, music substance clung stubbornly around my believe a revelation to understand that
with religion. I can’t tell whether my in- mouth. I looked like a junkie. I found something inside it was real. 
A REPORTER AT LARGE
HATE AND LOVE

A young Englishman got mixed up with white supremacists. Then he learned of a plot to kill a politician.
BY ED CAESAR
early every Saturday afternoon gating hate speech on campus, and since killing several Jewish people at a syna-
N in 2016, Robbie Mullen, a

twenty-four-year-old ware-
house worker, met with a group of neo-
then he’d become National Action’s most
vocal spokesperson.
Renshaw told the group that he was
gogue might have an even greater im-
pact. Mullen, who had young nephews
and nieces, said that this was a bad idea,
Nazis at the Friar Penketh, a lively pub planning to murder someone: Rosie Coo- because there would probably be chil-
in Warrington, in the North of En- per, his local Member of Parliament. It dren in the synagogue. Renshaw scoffed,
gland. The men belonged to an extrem- had been a little more than a year since saying that vermin were vermin, whether
ist group named National Action. another M.P., Jo Cox, had been mur- young or old. But he remained commit-
Seated at a round table upstairs, they dered, in Yorkshire, by Thomas Mair, a ted to his original scheme.
discussed until closing time their dark, white nationalist who was obsessed with Closing time approached, and most
shared politics: a hatred of Jews and of the racist policies of apartheid South members of the group wanted to con-
ethnic minorities; an expectation that Africa, and opposed Cox’s liberal views tinue drinking at a night club. But a
a race war would soon engulf Britain. on immigration. The killing of Cooper, hot day had turned to rain, and Mul-
Mullen, who has a meaty build and a Renshaw said, would be another major len was underdressed, in shorts and a
pallid complexion, was not much of a strike in what the group called the “white T-shirt. He said that he wasn’t eager to
drinker. He nursed pints of Pepsi while jihad.” Renshaw considered Cooper, who go “out out.” He told his friends that he
the others, emboldened by lager, grew supports the parliamentary group La- had to catch the ten-fifty train to Run-
more voluble. bour Friends of Israel, a “race traitor.” corn, where he lived. Before leaving the
In December, 2016, the U.K. gov- He later claimed that he simply wished pub, Mullen asked Renshaw if he was
ernment designated National Action a to attack “the state,” and that Cooper, really going to carry out his plan. Ren-
terrorist group, and banned it. Under who represented West Lancashire, was shaw said that he was “a hundred per
British law, being a proven member of the nearest M.P. cent” committed—they’d probably never
a terrorist organization carries a prison Renshaw said that he also planned see each other again. Mullen hugged
sentence of up to ten years. The group’s to kill Victoria Henderson, a local po- him and said goodbye.
demonstrations and membership drives lice detective. He alleged that she had As Mullen walked to the station, he
stopped, and its Web site shut down. been harassing him for giving anti- tried feverishly to send a text, but the
But many of its hundred or so adher- Semitic speeches, and had insulted him screen on his iPhone was too wet. Even-
ents kept up their communications, by insinuating that he was a pedophile. tually, he found cover and typed the mes-
through encrypted apps. And, even After murdering Cooper, he intended sage: “Ring me ASAP.” The recipient
though meetings like the one at the to take Henderson hostage, kill her, and was Matthew Collins, the head of intel-
Friar Penketh were risky, they secretly then commit suicide by cop, by run- ligence at HOPE Not Hate, an anti-fas-
continued. ning toward armed police while wear- cist organization. For nearly three months,
On the afternoon of July 1, 2017, a ing a fake suicide belt. British residents Mullen had been working as an infor-
twenty-two-year-old named Jack Ren- cannot legally own guns without a li- mant inside National Action. Collins,
shaw sat down at the round table next cense, so Renshaw had bought a nine- who was on vacation in Portugal, called
to Mullen. Renshaw was well known teen-inch gladius sword. He had also Mullen early the next morning.
in far-right circles. With preppy clothes, researched how long it took an adult “Jack Renshaw’s going to kill an M.P.,”
a ruffled side part, and wide eyes, he to bleed out after her jugular vein was Mullen told him.
looked like a choirboy, but in speeches cut: about three minutes.
he called Jews “parasites” and said that Nobody at the table attempted to dis- obbie Mullen grew up in Widnes,
Hitler’s mistake was to show “mercy to
people who did not deserve mercy.” Ren-
suade Renshaw. One man asked him
why he wasn’t going to use a real suicide
R a predominantly white, working-
class town between Warrington and
shaw had spent two years studying pol- belt. The group suggested other poten- Liverpool. He has a heavy Scouse ac-
itics and economics at Manchester Met- tial targets. Rosie Cooper was a relatively cent: his consonants are breathy, and his
ropolitan University, and became known obscure politician; it would be more dra- vowels are long and inquisitive. He was
for confronting other students in pubs matic to kill Amber Rudd, the Home brought up in a postwar housing proj-
and asking them, “Have you given much Secretary. This notion was discounted ect. His father lived on state disability
thought to the Jewish question?” In 2015, because Rudd, as a Cabinet minister, had benefits, and his mother stayed at home
the university expelled him for propa- a security team. Someone proposed that to care for him. Mullen recalled to me
PHOTOGRAPHS: JOEL GOODMAN/LONDON NEWS PICTURES/ZUMA; HOPE NOT HATE
Robbie Mullen joined rallies where fascist banners proclaimed “Hitler Was Right.” It was thrilling to offend—and to be hated.
ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE MCQUADE THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 47
that heroin abuse was common in his lim workers seemed to be allotted fa- the E.D.L. and the best-known figure
neighborhood, noting that one of his vorable hours during the holy month of on the British far right, have garnered
relatives was a recovering “smackhead.” Ramadan. Georgina told me that her millions of views online. Two members
On a recent walk through the complex, son had been brought up in a Labour- of a group called the Sonnenkrieg Di-
Mullen pointed out an alleyway where, supporting household where racism was vision recently pleaded guilty to encour-
as a child, he saw addicts “injecting into not tolerated. But Mullen increasingly aging terrorism; they had posted online
their groin.” Crime in the area was still saw the world in racialized terms. He messages calling for the murder of Prince
widespread. His cousin had recently and his mother stopped discussing pol- Harry. (The Prince was considered a race
been jailed for a botched armed rob- itics, because it led to confrontations. traitor for marrying Meghan Markle,
bery. “Drugs, guns, loan sharks,” Mul- Georgina remembers one argument in whose mother is African-American.)
len said. “I could get a gun in five min- which Mullen asked why there were so In 2015, Robbie Mullen thought about
utes, for two hundred quid.” many immigrants in England, given joining the National Front, but, as he
Mullen is bright, but his education that many native Britons lacked jobs. put it to me, its members all seemed to
was truncated, and in our conversations “I said, ‘Robbie, it’s just the way it is,’ ” be “big, bald, fat guys with a can of lager.”
he sometimes lacked the vocabulary to Georgina told me. “‘These people will Then he came across National Action’s
express complicated thoughts or feel- work harder and put up with what Web site. He was instantly attracted by
ings. He relied heavily on three adjec- they’re putting up with, whereas En- the fact that its members were young
tives: “weird,” “strange,” and “awkward.” glish lads won’t.’ ” people. (Anti-fascists had nicknamed
When I spoke to his mother, Georgina, Mullen began researching the far right the group National Acne.) National Ac-
who now works in customer service, she online. There have been white ethno- tion had sleek branding that was based
told me that, in elementary school, Mul- nationalists in Britain since at least the on the insignia of the Sturmabteilung,
len fell in with a tough group of boys, nineteen-twenties. In 1932, Oswald Mos- Hitler’s Brown Shirts, and the Web site
almost all of whom have now spent time ley founded the British Union of Fas- featured snappily edited videos. In one
in prison. At the age of eleven, Mullen cists, which aped the movements that clip, members are shown fighting one
began attending a well-regarded sec- had swept Germany and Italy. The Na- another in a mixed-martial-arts gym,
ondary school, but he was disruptive, tional Front, a whites-only organization, accompanied by the kind of portentous
and after two years he was placed in an- was formed in 1967, during a period when music featured in first-person-shooter
other local school. Despite his mother’s many nonwhite immigrants from Brit- video games. At the end of the clip, a
best efforts, he rarely attended class, and ain’s former colonies were arriving in the slogan pops up: “Join the White Gang.”
at fourteen he dropped out. Two years country. An offshoot, the British Na- National Action was founded, in
later, Mullen’s father died, of pancreatic tional Party, soon vied with the N.F. for 2013, by a twenty-four-year-old politics
cancer.They had been close, often watch- supporters. Both groups issued hateful graduate named Ben Raymond and a
ing Manchester United games together speeches and provoked street clashes, Welsh teen-ager named Alex Davies,
on television. Mullen grew even more and violent splinter movements such as who withdrew from Warwick Univer-
angry and sullen, and began spending Combat 18—“1” and “8” correspond to sity in 2014, when his far-right connec-
much of his time alone, playing video “A” and “H,” Adolf Hitler’s initials— tions were revealed. Raymond claimed
games in darkened rooms. posed a terror threat. to have been inspired, in part, by the
After he left school, he found part- In 2006, the B.N.P. shocked the U.K. turn-of-the-century French anti-Se-
time work installing satellite dishes on by winning more than thirty council mitic movement Action Française. Be-
rooftops. When the job brought him to fore launching National Action, he had
Blackburn and Bradford, cities where self-published a pseudo-intellectual
there are long-established South Asian magazine called Attack.
communities, he became fearful that In March, 2015, Mullen went to the
white Britain was being “taken over.” As nearby town of Wigan to check out a
he put it to me, “I didn’t want my town white-nationalist demonstration. A Na-
being like that.” In his late teens, Mul- tional Action member there gave him
len moved out of his family home, and the e-mail address of its organizer for
found low-paying work in local ware- northwest England, Christopher Lyth-
houses for Amazon and for Tesco, a gro- goe—a muscled martial-arts enthusiast,
cery chain. At both sites, employees had seats in local elections. But since then in his late twenties, who lived with his
to wear G.P.S. devices, so that they could its popularity has waned. Groups such parents. A few days later, Mullen sent
be tracked by superiors. Even bathroom as the English Defence League, which Lythgoe a message, and Lythgoe invited
breaks were timed. Mullen often worked are not interested in electoral success and him to the Friar Penketh.
the night shift, then slept all day. instead promote violent anti-Islamic Mullen was soon admitted to the
In the warehouses, Mullen encoun- views online and at street demonstra- group, and he found it galvanizing to
tered not only Asians but also Poles and tions, have attracted more attention. The talk to other people who believed in a
black Africans. It rankled him that most Internet has also made it easier for rac- “free white Britain.” More established
of his colleagues did not speak English ists to find one another. The speeches of N.A. members educated Mullen in what
as a first language, and that the Mus- Tommy Robinson, the former leader of seemed to him a sophisticated world
view. Unlike other strains of anti-Sem-
itism that have been reawakened in
Britain, particularly in left-wing circles,
N.A.’s hatred of Jews was ostensibly un-
connected to the Israel-Palestine issue.
The group’s founders argued that a Jew-
ish cabal had improper access to wealth,
and that it was in the interest of this
self-serving coterie to weaken national
and racial borders. The patriot’s duty
was to fight back.
Aside from the pub meetings, most
communication among group members
took place in the digital realm. Even be-
fore N.A. was banned, members were en-
couraged to be mindful of operational
security: they rarely used one another’s
surnames, and in some cases didn’t know
what they were. Mullen went by North
West Robbie. Almost every member
created a pseudonymous e-mail han-
dle, such as jill_kews@tutanota.com
or adolfhipster@tutanota.com; Mul- “I bagged this one in a museum.”
len chose robbie@tutanota.com. In en-
crypted chats, which flowed in a tor-
rent, night and day, members discussed
• •
extreme subjects: rape fantasies, geno-
cidal ideology, niche porn. N.A. felt like a true brotherhood. “You believe you’re bers of National Action were ecstatic.
a place where these young men could going to change the world with them,” Within hours of the murder, one
say anything, without consequence. Mullen told me. “You’d die for them.” member had used an official National
The group had an equally obnoxious Action Twitter account to celebrate Cox’s
public dimension. Every few weeks, ullen rose quickly within National death, linking the assassination to the
a few dozen members put on black
outfits and ghoulish face masks, then
M Action, where he was viewed as
trustworthy and discreet. Lythgoe, the
forthcoming referendum on Britain’s
membership in the European Union.
gathered in the center of a northern city, organizer who had first invited Mullen One tweet read, “#VoteLeave, don’t let
making offensive speeches and march- to the Friar Penketh, supplanted Na- this man’s sacrifice go in vain. #JoCox
ing behind banners bearing such slo- tional Action’s college-educated found- would have filled Yorkshire with more
gans as “Hitler Was Right.” At Mullen’s ers to become the de-facto national leader. subhumans!” Another read, “Only 649
first event with National Action, a so- In April, 2016, Lythgoe made Mullen MPs to go!” After Mair declared, in court,
called White Man March, in Newcas- his deputy. Mullen was included in al- “Death to traitors, freedom for Britain,”
tle, in March of 2015, he watched one most all the group’s internal communi- National Action posted the phrase on
member, Matthew Hankinson, give a cations, and he knew its sources of fund- its Web site. Lythgoe sent an encrypted
speech about reclaiming Britain for white ing. He told me that he never saw less message to other members which urged
people while others gave Sieg heil salutes. than ten thousand pounds in the group’s them to be inspired by Mair’s attack.
Hankinson was good-looking, well spo- PayPal account, and that some dona- The message was stored on a phone that
ken, and middle-class. At the end of the tions were made by white-nationalist has since been seized by the police, but
speech, he shouted, “Blood must be shed! sympathizers in the United States. Mullen remembers its content: If this is
The blood of traitors!” Dozens of anti- On June 16, 2016, the day that Jo Cox what a loner like Mair can do, imagine
fascist protesters crashed the event, and was murdered, Mullen was working at what we could do.
scuffles later broke out. An Israeli flag a warehouse in Runcorn, for a multina- Mullen felt no joy about Cox’s death.
was burned, and the police arrested nine tional company. He was happier with He was convinced that nobody in the
fascists for a variety of offenses. this job: his boss was reasonable, his group had even known who Cox was
Mullen returned to Runcorn having hours flexible. Nobody at work knew before she was killed. Their celebration
experienced a jolt of adrenaline unlike that he was a neo-Nazi. Mullen remem- struck him as pure opportunism. But he
any he had felt before. He found it thrill- bers hearing about Cox’s death on the also experienced what he later realized
ing to be hated. He continued to have radio. None of his co-workers paid much was a moral pang. When he read reports
a few “normal” friends in Widnes, with attention to the news, and, as a result, about Cox’s murder, and learned that
whom he watched soccer or played video neither did Mullen. But when he looked she had been the mother of two young
games. But he saw National Action as at his phone he saw that other mem- children, he understood her to be just “a
normal person, doing her job.” She did erings confirms, beyond a reasonable the organization without suspicion. He
not deserve her fate. Misogyny coursed doubt, membership in “a proscribed ter- could not simply walk away; Lythgoe
through National Action. Mullen has rorist organization.” Some, but not all, had shared too much damning infor-
never had a girlfriend, but he is close to of the former members have been found mation with him. Mullen was tormented.
his sister and his mother, and he does guilty of the offense. His politics were still broadly anti-im-
not hate women. He told me recently Lythgoe predicted to Mullen and migrant—he remained worried about
that the group’s embrace of Thomas the others that a wave of Islamist ter- Asian gangs and the diminution of
Mair made him uneasy. “I thought, I’m ror attacks would soon hit Britain, and “white Britain.” Moreover, Matthew
connected to this person who’s tweet- said that “white jihadis” would have a Hankinson, the National Action mem-
ing it and celebrating it,” Mullen said. duty to strike back. They would wait ber who’d given the “Blood must be
Mullen did not betray any discom- for three Islamist atrocities before com- shed!” speech, had become his best friend.
fort with the group’s reaction to the mitting an atrocity of their own. No They sometimes went hiking together
murder, although he noted to Lythgoe specific target was mentioned, but Mul- to keep fit, and Mullen had cheered
that the social-media posts about Cox len felt that this was not idle talk: the Hankinson on when he boxed in an
were likely to land National Action in atmosphere in the group had darkened, amateur bout. At the fight, Mullen
trouble with the police. He was right: and the members had begun to take learned Hankinson’s surname: a rare in-
the Home Office cited the group’s tweets their physical training more seriously. timacy in National Action.
when announcing that it had been Someone in National Action, Mullen There was no chance that Mullen
banned. National Action was the first believed, would soon commit murder would talk to the police. In the work-
far-right organization to be outlawed in the group’s name. ing-class community where he was
since the Second World War. Mullen On March 22, 2017, Khalid Masood, brought up, the greatest crime was being
was worried about the proscription, and a fifty-two-year-old British Muslim, “a grass.” Struggling to find another op-
briefly stopped meeting with other deliberately drove a car into pedestri- tion, he remembered that HOPE Not
members, but Lythgoe revelled in the ans on Westminster Bridge, in London, Hate published frequent articles about
group’s notoriety. Shortly before the ban killing four people, before fatally stab- the far right, based on inside informa-
went into effect, he sent an e-mail to bing a policeman outside the Houses tion. Members of National Action read
his lieutenants: “The SUBSTANCE of of Parliament. Masood was shot dead these reports voraciously. Mullen de-
NA is the people, our talents, the bonds by a minister’s bodyguard eighty-two cided that he might be able to give the
between us, our ideas, our sustained seconds after the attack started. One of organization sufficient evidence to ex-
force of will. All of that will continue Lythgoe’s three inciting incidents had pose the post-ban activities of National
into the future. We’re just shedding one occurred. That evening, Mullen and Action. This might lead to arrests, or to
skin for another. All genuinely revolu- other N.A. members met at a gym in a a more comprehensive crackdown on
tionary movements in the past have warehouse in Warrington, which the the network. In any event, the disrup-
needed to exist partly underground. group used as its headquarters. Mem- tion would give Mullen a credible rea-
These are exciting times.” bers expressed anger and excitement. son to leave the group.
The young men who had been mem- Islamist attacks not only heightened the He agonized for a week before con-
bers of National Action continued to sense of an ongoing race war; they could tacting HOPE Not Hate. Adopting the
meet. Two recent criminal trials have also boost recruitment. pseudonym Lucas Harrison, he sent an
explored whether attending such gath- Mullen wanted to find a way to leave e-mail containing secret information
about National Action’s personnel and
its headquarters. Within hours, Mat-
thew Collins e-mailed back. When Mul-
len saw Collins’s name on the e-mail,
he knew that he had crossed a perma-
nent divide.
“Everyone in the right knows who
Matt is,” Mullen told me.
atthew Collins has a stout frame

M and a lordly appearance that
evokes Hans Holbein’s portrait of Car-
dinal Wolsey. The impression is dis-
pelled when Collins opens his mouth.
He speaks with an eloquence that is
offset by a ribald wit and an unpriestly
turn of phrase. Collins can explain Marx-
ist theory like a political scientist; he
also uses “Fuck me!” like a comma. He
“I brought my editor along in case my stories start going nowhere.” was born in 1972, and was brought up
in a housing project in South London, Collins stayed in the far right, but his no compassion. . . . They were not going
the youngest of four boys, with a strict mortification lingered. At night, in front to go away, I would know these people
English mother and a bibulous Irish of a mirror, he attempted to reassure for the rest of my life and, from this day
Catholic father. Before he started ele- himself by saying, out loud, “I am still a on, live in fear of them.” He noted,“I
mentary school, his father left home National Socialist, I am still a white was really scared. What the fuck had I
with a young woman of color who had Aryan, part of the master race.” But he been doing?”
been working as Collins’s babysitter. She also came to feel that his behavior was
and her family were the only black peo- indefensible “at a person-to-person level.” ollins’s colleagues in the National
ple Collins knew.
In high school, Collins became, in
Shortly after the Welling Library attack,
he made an anonymous call to Search-
C Front were infuriated by the leaks
to Searchlight. One neo-Nazi associate
the words of his teachers, a “racist” and light, an anti-fascist magazine, from told him that, the moment the infor-
a “bully.” At a library, he began to re- a phone booth. During the next few mant was exposed, “we’ll fucking bury
search the National Front and other him, no questions asked.” Even though
fascist groups. When he was fifteen, he Collins feared that his life was in peril,
watched news coverage about the fu- he continued to pass on information.
neral of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, He trusted Searchlight. With the orga-
on television, and was impressed by nization’s blessing, he began to associ-
footage of black-clad neo-Nazis. “I was ate with members of both Combat 18,
leaderless and I was bored,” Collins the National Front offshoot, and the Ul-
writes, in his 2011 book, “Hate: My Life ster Defence Association, a Northern
in the British Far Right.” “Where was Irish paramilitary group.
my Rudolf Hess?” In 1991, Collins obtained informa-
As if answering his call, a free copy months, Collins made several more calls. tion about a journalist at the Sun who
of the newspaper British Nationalist Each time, he heard the same man’s secretly supported the National Front.
came through the letter box one Satur- Newcastle accent on the other end of This led to a front-page story in Search-
day afternoon. Collins “pored over the the line. The man noted down his in- light. The journalist subsequently filed
pages in awe,” then wrote to the chair- formation, about leadership struggles in a libel suit against the magazine. Search-
man of the British National Party, John the National Front, or financial misman- light’s editor, Gerry Gable, had not told
Tyndall. Weeks later, a B.N.P. official agement, and then hung up. Collins when the story was to be pub-
invited Collins to a meeting, where he The calls palliated some of Collins’s lished, and Collins was shocked when
was given literature about the “Jewish guilt, but not all of it. Eventually, he it came out. After the libel action was
problem.” Collins spent his late teens decided to change his life. He became initiated, Gable took Collins to a West
oscillating between the B.N.P. and the a spy for Searchlight, and in doing so End hotel and asked him if he would
National Front. (Sometimes the N.F. unwittingly joined a long tradition of give evidence in the court case. Doing
even asked him to spy on the B.N.P.) fascist turncoats. As the journalist Rob- so would have outed Collins as the mag-
In the community of the far right, Col- ert Hutton’s recent book, “Agent Jack,” azine’s informant. In Gable’s recollec-
lins found men whom he admired and recounts, in the thirties and forties the tion, the prospect caused Collins to
an ideology that explained his meagre far right in Britain was quelled, in large burst into tears and vomit in the hotel
lot in life. The older neo-Nazis fondly part, by the infiltration of Eric Roberts, bathroom.
called him Maff—short, in the muffled an agent for the domestic security ser- “There was no way,” Collins writes
South London consonants of his up- vice M.I.5, who had joined the British in his book. “I could name ten people
bringing, for “Maff-hew.” Fascists as a teen-ager. “As long as there who would not hesitate to kill me.”
In 1989, Collins joined a B.N.P. gang have been fascist parties in Britain, The libel case was settled out of court,
that violently disrupted an anti-fascist they’ve had spies inside them,” Hutton and Collins’s identity remained safe for
meeting at Welling Library, in South told me. the moment. But in 1993 Collins told
London. A dozen people, mostly Asian Before Collins was debriefed by Gable that he was uncomfortable re-
women, required hospital treatment after Searchlight, he was put through an maining involved with violent groups.
the attack. A pregnant woman locked elaborate security routine that included He did not want to be implicated in
herself in a toilet, and B.N.P. members changing cars and getting into a taxi someone’s murder. Gable agreed to help
tried to break down the door. The raid with two minders. At a London hotel, Collins leave the far right, but suggested
was, in Collins’s recollection, a “bloody he was interviewed for an afternoon. that he first give information to a doc-
massacre.” In nationalist literature, the Collins found the experience terrifying. umentary team that hoped to expose
violence at Welling Library was framed The journalists made clear to him the Combat 18’s activities. Collins complied.
as a victory, but Collins felt ashamed. In stupidity and the danger of his time in The film was shown on British televi-
“Hate,” he writes, “I was a fucking cow- the far right. When Collins began to sion in April, 1993, shortly after Collins’s
ard to have done such a thing. I began name fascists with whom he had asso- twenty-first birthday. Although his words
to realise that this was what race wars ciated, he realized that he may already were spoken by an actor, people in the
were about, the innocent attacked and have ruined his life. As he later wrote, far right believed that some of the in-
their dignity destroyed.” these people were “men with no lives, formation could have come only from
him—and that he was also most likely edits politics.co.uk, tweeted, “This is not told me that when he e-mailed HOPE
Searchlight’s mole. A senior figure in a road you should be going down.” Not Hate, in April, 2017, he didn’t par-
Combat 18 ordered Collins’s murder. Collins’s posts on HOPE not Hate’s ticularly care who responded, but Col-
Weeks later, with a passport and a visa Web site are a potent weapon: they poke lins believes different: “He knew I knew
hastily expedited by Scotland Yard’s Spe- fun at British nationalists while also re- a way out. It was me he wanted.”
cial Branch, Collins left London for vealing their secrets. His tone alternates Collins was riveted when he read Mul-
Melbourne, Australia. between earnest and puerile, depending len’s e-mail. According to Lowles, who
Collins remained in the country for on the target. In a typical recent article, received a briefing shortly afterward, the
ten years, picking up a slight accent. He he described so-called unity meetings, police believed that National Action had
married and divorced an Australian which bring together various far-right been all but dismantled in the wake of
woman. He was employed for a long pe- the ban. Collins thought that the group
riod in the clothing industry, alongside was actually still active, but he didn’t
low-wage Vietnamese workers. “I learned know how many members were in Na-
to respect immigrants, and how hard tional Action or how, exactly, it was or-
they work,” Collins told me. Eventually, ganized. Even the initial information
feeling lonely and disconnected from his that Mullen passed on—the names of
family in London, he returned to Brit- members, the gym where they were train-
ain. His old contacts at Searchlight offered ing for race war—was revelatory. Col-
him a job at the magazine, and a jour- lins sensed that he’d hooked a fish, and
nalist asked him to star in a documen- he began to turn the reel.
tary about returning home. The result- groups. “These non-party types get to-
ing BBC film, “Dead Man Walking,” gether in a secret location, have a few ullen and Collins exchanged phone
which aired in 2004, documented Col-
lins’s role in both the fascist and the anti-
sausage rolls and pints of Proletarian
lager and then discover/remember how
M numbers, and in a brief conver-
sation Collins elicited Mullen’s real iden-
fascist movements. Collins appeared on much they hate each other,” Collins tity. To insure that Mullen’s name wasn’t
camera without a disguise. He was no wrote. “Get pissed, make threats, blame leaked, Collins discussed the new walk-in
longer willing to let a fear of reprisal the Jews and go home.” only with Lowles, and even in that case
constrain his life. Collins told me that he runs some described him using a pseudonym, Nigel.
Collins continued working for Search- dozen regular informants, and maybe Mullen had no desire to become an
light, and in 2007 he began collaborat- eight more on a less regular basis. Nick active informant. He wanted to leave
ing with Nick Lowles, a journalist and Lowles, HOPE Not Hate’s chief ex- the group without grassing on people
activist, on a social-campaign division ecutive, also runs several moles. Many he considered friends. Collins knew
called HOPE Not Hate; it split from informants are “walk-ins,” like Mullen, that he needed to advance gingerly. He
the magazine in 2011. Gable still edits and others are recruits, but some are and Mullen, in their initial texts, talked
Searchlight, but its work has been eclipsed plants—anti-fascists placed inside far- more about Manchester United than
by HOPE Not Hate. He and Collins right groups. Lowles told me that one about National Action. More than fifty
are not on friendly terms. Among other source was an anti-fascist campaigner texts later, they agreed that Mullen
issues, Collins thinks that, when he was who went undercover nearly twenty- would travel to London, so they could
a Searchlight informant, Gable was cav- five years ago. talk in person.
alier about his safety. Gable denies this; The British government considers On May 18, 2017, two employees of
for his part, he believes that Collins the infiltration of extremist networks to HOPE Not Hate waited for Mullen
overstates the importance and the brav- be the domain of M.I.5, or of such at the train station in Liverpool and
ery of his work. When I spoke to Gable, law-enforcement agencies as the Met- followed him onto an express to Lon-
he referred coolly to Collins’s refusal to ropolitan Police’s Counter-Terror Com- don: a journey of two and a quarter
“out” himself as Searchlight’s mole in the mand (C.T.C.). Collins feels that his or- hours. On the train, the employees
libel case. “When push came to shove, ganization’s work is a provocation to watched Mullen from a nearby table,
Collins bottled it,” Gable said. “He was these state bodies. Official intelligence to confirm that he was alone and that
no hero.” operatives may even view HOPE Not he stayed on board. Mullen stared at
Since 2010, Collins has coördinated Hate’s activities as reckless. (A Metro- his phone the entire way to London.
an intelligence network for HOPE Not politan Police spokesperson declined to On arriving at Euston Station, Mullen
Hate, with the aim of disrupting the far comment on HOPE Not Hate’s intel- walked to a Thistle Hotel, where Col-
right’s activities. HOPE Not Hate is not ligence-gathering.) lins was waiting in the bar. Mullen’s
universally admired. Its advocacy arm Collins is patient and empathetic phone was taken from him. He and
is sometimes accused of overstepping with sources. He builds relationships Collins then talked for four hours.
its mandate. A campaign to encourage through Indian food and soccer. He has Collins remembered how frightened
booksellers not to stock titles by far- a nose for lies. Crucially, because of his he had been, eighteen years earlier, at
right authors, which began last year, was notoriety within the far right, Collins’s his debriefing by Searchlight. His primary
considered illiberal even by people who moles don’t have to explain themselves goal now was to gain Mullen’s trust.
respect the organization. Ian Dunt, who to him. Their story is his story. Mullen Mullen struggled to describe the moral
journey on which he had embarked. Col- ing an Ariana Grande concert. An Is- Lythgoe and a group of neo-Nazis to
lins thought that Mullen displayed a lamist terrorist named Salman Abedi, central Manchester, where floral trib-
deficit of empathy; it was as if his time who lived in south Manchester, had det- utes filled the public squares and many
in the far right’s bubble had cauterized onated a suicide bomb, killing himself people were grieving. Lythgoe’s crew
him to emotion. Collins understood this. and twenty-two concertgoers, and in- sneered at anyone displaying emotion.
In “Hate,” he explains that, while he was juring hundreds more. Many of the dead But, Mullen recalls, the group was also
a Nazi, “nothing got me upset,” adding, were young; one girl was eight years old. impressed by the scene. Armed police
“I’d talked, bullied and convinced the life Mullen isn’t prone to tears—he told filled the city—an unusual sight in Brit-
out of myself and consumed my thoughts me that he didn’t cry at his father’s fu- ain, where few officers carry guns. The
and emotions with hatred. This way, neral—but he said that the bombing young men of N.A. had an almost erotic
nothing could harm me.” had upset him in a way that other ter- interest in weaponry. On the same trip,
By the end of the meeting, Collins rorist attacks had not: “There’s little kids Mullen told me, Matthew Hankinson
had persuaded Mullen to work for killed, and that’s obviously wrong.” predicted that when National Action
HOPE Not Hate, for no money, as an Lythgoe and the other neo-Nazis finally pulled off a terrorist attack—on
informant. In return, the organization were electrified by the attack. Mullen a mosque, or a synagogue—it would
would protect his identity and help him began to document excited chatter from create a similar outpouring of grief, “ex-
change his life. Mullen still held, in the group, taking screenshots of en- cept it won’t be white people standing
Collins’s recollection, “horrendous views” crypted texts before the app’s timer erased around crying.” In conversations with
about immigrants, and he constantly them. He sent the images to Collins, the group, Mullen agreed with the sen-
used offensive language: “slag,” for a who was horrified—if unsurprised— timent. But in private he comforted
promiscuous woman; “nonce,” for a pe- that white racists were celebrating a ter- himself with the thought that he would
dophile; and “retard,” for a disabled per- rorist who’d killed children in the name be out of National Action by the time
son. But the two men had begun to of Islam. He already understood, through any such atrocity took place.
form a bond. Mullen’s information, that National Ac- On June 3, 2017, three men inspired
The next day, Mullen went to a Na- tion venerated the propaganda cam- by the Islamic State drove a white van
tional Action meeting at the Piccadilly paigns and the secretive structure of into pedestrians on London Bridge, then
Tavern, in Manchester. “It was very Salafist terrorist groups such as the Is- emerged from the vehicle and stabbed
strange,” Mullen told me. “You just kind lamic State. According to Mullen, Lyth- passersby. Eight people were killed, and
of don’t think about what you did the goe urged N.A. members to read the forty-eight were injured. The excitement
previous day.” Quran, because he thought that it made within National Action grew. The three
Mullen met Collins again the fol- a persuasive justification for terrorism. Islamist provocations had occurred. Lyth-
lowing week, at a Vietnamese restau- After the Manchester bombing, it be- goe’s decision on how to “strike back”
rant in Manchester. Mullen had rarely came clear to Collins that members of was keenly anticipated. On June 19th,
eaten in formal restaurants. Collins felt National Action had become interested however, Darren Osborne, a man un-
that part of his job, as a handler, was to in violence for its own sake. “It turned connected to National Action, drove a
“socialize” Mullen by exposing him to them on,” Collins recalled. van into a group of Muslims outside a
new experiences, and by impressing good A few days later, Mullen went with mosque in North London, killing one
habits on him. When I met both men
for drinks last summer, Collins scolded
Mullen for texting at the table, telling
him, “Phones away, Robbie—the
grownups are talking.” Mullen stashed
his phone without complaint. (Collins
said that, as a working-class man him-
self, he would “never sneer” at Mullen’s
manners; he also remembered that, when
meeting with Searchlight employees as
a young man, he had enjoyed the rare
opportunity to engage in polite conver-
sation, and to have “the occasional posh
cup of tea, served on a saucer.”)
After the Vietnamese meal, Mullen
went to Manchester Piccadilly station.
While his train was leaving the plat-
form, he saw police vans and ambulances
driving at high speed, their sirens wail-
ing. At home, he turned on the news,
and saw that there had been an explo-
sion at the Manchester Arena, follow- “Right here’s fine.”
worshipper. Osborne said later that he be both risible and lethal. Robert Hut- a really dark direction.” Collins called
had been inspired by the writings of ton, the author of “Agent Jack,” told me, Lowles, who told him to keep gather-
Tommy Robinson, the former English “You can always look at these people ing details from Mullen. The next day,
Defence League leader. Lythgoe cele- and say that they’re a bunch of losers, July 3, 2017, Lowles called Ruth Smeeth,
brated Osborne’s attack, not least be- but losers can stab people, and losers a Labour M.P. who was a former em-
cause it took the pressure off him to order can plant bombs. The line between loser ployee of HOPE Not Hate. He asked
a retaliatory killing. In Mullen’s view, and successful terrorist is often how her to notify Rosie Cooper. Smeeth told
Lythgoe was a man of words, not action. soon they’re caught.” me, “It’s a very difficult thing to ring
By the time of the June 3rd atrocity, By the summer, Collins thought, he’d one of your mates and tell them there’s
Mullen was sharing almost every com- have enough information to publish an a viable death threat about them. I was
munication he received from National article that would be picked up by na- very candid with her.”
Action. Collins felt that he was getting tional newspapers, leading to arrests and, Earlier that day, Renshaw had been
a flood of “very, very good” information, possibly, to political resignations. Mul- interviewed in Lancashire by Detective
which detailed the group’s paranoia and len could then, with the help of HOPE Victoria Henderson—who did not then
its lust for violence. His goal was to ex- Not Hate, abandon extremism. Collins’s know that she was one of Renshaw’s
pose and damage National Action while plan was upended, however, when Jack murder targets. Henderson told Ren-
embarrassing the police and the secu- Renshaw entered the Friar Penketh and shaw that she was charging him with
rity services, who appeared to have taken said that he was going to murder an stirring up racial hatred, citing two anti-
their eye off the group after banning it. M.P. and a police officer. Semitic speeches that he had made in
Collins told me that the far right is 2016. But that was not all. At the Friar
usually underestimated in Britain, be- hen Collins spoke to Mullen Penketh, Renshaw had implied to his
cause its numbers are so small and its
members have often seemed pitiful. The
W from his hotel in Portugal, he
was both alarmed and confused. He’d
friends that Henderson had merely been
taunting him by calling him “a pedo.”
idea of a handful of young men prepar- never heard of Rosie Cooper. He asked But, in fact, police officers had compiled
ing for a race war by boxing in a War- Mullen if the plot might actually be substantial evidence that he’d been going
rington gym can seem grimly comic. targeting Yvette Cooper, a former La- online and grooming underage boys for
Collins explained that it was wrong to bour Cabinet minister. But Mullen was sex, and were preparing to arrest him.
judge the far right on its size, because clear on the facts. At the end of the interview, Renshaw
“danger and terrorism isn’t based on “How urgent is it? Is it tomorrow?” was released, on bail.
how big a group is, it’s based on how Collins asked. That night, Renshaw posted mes-
nasty it is.” Moreover, the case of Jo “It’s as soon as he can,” Mullen sages to Facebook under a pseudonym,
Cox’s murderer, Thomas Mair, a mid- replied. Jack Renstein. One read, “It will all be
dle-aged loner who had decorated his Collins took Mullen seriously. He’d over soon.” A picture posted at nearly
bedroom with Nazi paraphernalia, had been monitoring Renshaw for some midnight was accompanied by the phrase
made it clear that a racist Briton could time, and felt that he was heading “in “A broken man is invincible.”
Meanwhile, the police in Lancashire
had just learned of the threat to Rosie
Cooper’s life, and counterterrorism
officers scrambled to find Renshaw. He
was not at his bail address. The officers
searched the house of Renshaw’s uncle,
where they found the gladius sword,
inside a laundry cupboard. Two days
later, the police found Renshaw at an-
other address in Lancashire. They ar-
rested him for violating his bail condi-
tions, and subsequently charged him
with “making threats to kill.” This time,
bail was not granted, so Renshaw could
not warn other N.A. members.
Cooper was safe, but Mullen was
not. Two weeks before Renshaw an-
nounced his terrorist plot, members had
begun voicing suspicions that there was
an informant within the group. Ren-
shaw, using the encrypted app Telegram,
had sent a message to a chat group for
fourteen N.A. adherents in northwest
“That dream means you’re hungry—how about a hot dog?” England. “This Telegram is compro-
mised,” he wrote. “This group, rather.” organizations. HOPE Not Hate had it knew about National Action. Accord-
“In here?” Mullen replied. been instrumental in dismantling a ter- ing to Collins, the police were embar-
“Yes,” Lythgoe said. rorist plot, but it had unwittingly bro- rassed by his blog posts about National
“Who’s the grass then?” another ken the law by running Mullen as an Action’s headquarters, which made clear
member of the Telegram chat group, informant. Lowles and Collins explained that he knew more about the group than
Andy Clarke, asked. the situation to Mullen. The organiza- they did. (Two police spokespersons, in
One of the results of Mullen’s foil- tion was at risk if he refused to reveal Lancashire and in London, declined to
ing the murder plot was that his stay himself, and his evidence might not be comment.) The posts also upset N.A.
within National Action was prolonged: admissible unless he came forward. On members. In several group chats, they
it would be impossible to walk away now July 27, 2017, Mullen, who had an indi- vowed to murder the mole, then burn
without raising suspicion. He therefore cation that he might receive immunity his body. At the end of August, Lythgoe
continued to attend meetings at the Friar wrote Mullen an e-mail saying that he
Penketh, and at pubs in Manchester and was “pretty certain” the informant was
Preston. A part of him still enjoyed see- Garron Helm, an unpopular former
ing his friends. Yet rumors of a spy grew. member: “No-one else had access to all
Three weeks after Renshaw was arrested, the info passed over to HOPE not Hate,
his father sent an accusatory Facebook or the personality to even contemplate
message addressing the men who met doing something like this.” Mullen wrote
at the Warrington pub: one of them, he back that Helm was indeed the most
said, was a mole. Mullen’s mother told likely informant.
me that, during this period, her son slept That September, Mullen, under con-
with a knife under his pillow, “in case but no formal assurance of it, agreed to ditional immunity, met with counter-
they came to the house for him.” coöperate with the police. terrorism police for three days, at a hotel
The police had no idea who the in- In the course of the next seven weeks— in Newcastle. Mullen had thought that
formant was; Lowles and Collins would during which he continued to work at his information would be used to in-
not reveal Mullen’s identity without his the warehouse in Runcorn and to meet criminate only Renshaw. He could jus-
permission. Collins remembered Ga- with other neo-Nazis in his habitual tify Renshaw’s jailing—he was actively
ble’s asking him, as a teen-ager, to put way—Mullen, the police, and HOPE plotting murders, and he was an alleged
his life at risk to protect Searchlight in Not Hate engaged in a delicate dance. pedophile. But the police now had
the libel case. Collins had learned, he At a central-Manchester hotel, Mul- enough evidence to arrest and charge
told me, to “look after people, to do ev- len attended a “scoping interview” with several current and former members of
erything that Gerry didn’t do for me.” several police officers. He was asked National Action, and Mullen was in-
If Mullen did not want to reveal him- about the extent of his knowledge of formed that the crackdown would be
self, Collins would do whatever he could National Action, and about Renshaw’s more wide-ranging. The news upset
to protect him. intentions. The objective was to es- him, but it was too late. He was offered
Before long, though, it seemed that tablish how much Mullen could assist another chance to enter witness protec-
Mullen had no choice but to coöperate the police. tion. The government would even pay
with the authorities: if the police began “Do you have information about a him his current salary for two years.
to make arrests, Mullen was vulnerable plot to murder Rosie Cooper?” an officer Mullen refused.
to being prosecuted for belonging to a asked Mullen. The next day, September 27, 2017,
banned terrorist organization. HOPE “Yes,” Mullen replied. eleven suspected National Action mem-
Not Hate hired a lawyer to represent “Were you present when this plot bers were arrested. Lythgoe was detained,
Mullen. Mullen said that he did not was arranged?” as was Hankinson. It would soon be-
want to give evidence to the police un- “I was.” come obvious that the police had ar-
less he had an offer of immunity. In Brit- Prosecutors offered him limited im- rested everyone who attended the Friar
ain, unlike in the United States, it’s rare munity, on the condition that his story Penketh meetings but Mullen.
for information to be exchanged for legal remain consistent and truthful. The po- At around 5 p.m., the police visited
immunity, but in “exceptional circum- lice urged him to enter a witness-pro- Mullen at home. Officers seized his phone
stances” it can be done. The lawyer ad- tection program, and to move far away and other evidence. They then issued an
vised Mullen that his case might merit from the northwest of England. To their Osman warning, a formal notice given
the provision. Mullen decided to hold surprise, he refused. Mullen couldn’t to someone who faces a “real and imme-
out for immunity. imagine life without his sister and his diate” threat of being murdered. It was
In July, 2017, HOPE Not Hate was mother. Moreover, the police had said the first of five such warnings that Mul-
contacted by a senior officer from the that he could not take an animal with len received. Two hours later, HOPE
C.T.C. According to Lowles, the officer him, and he did not want to be sepa- Not Hate helped him move to a hotel
intimated that the staff might be in legal rated from his dog, a Staffordshire bull in the Manchester area. He was reluc-
jeopardy of its own. Under the Terror- terrier named Milly. tant to go, but Collins had no doubt that
ism Act, it’s illegal for journalists to se- The police continued to pressure someone from National Action would
cretly handle sources within proscribed HOPE Not Hate to reveal everything try to kill Mullen if he stayed. Before he
for many of Mullen’s expenses himself,
at a considerable strain to his relation-
ship with his partner. (Once, after see-
ing Collins’s credit-card bill, she cut up
the card.) Mullen was eager to resume
working, but, when he applied for jobs,
background checks revealed that he was
on a list of terror suspects. He found it
difficult to gain even menial employ-
ment. Lowles eventually found Mul-
len a position as a researcher for HOPE
Not Hate.
In January, 2018, at a court in Lan-
cashire, Renshaw was convicted of “in-
“I identified most with the popcorn-loving protagonist citement to racial hatred.” He was sen-
who hosted a monthly book club in her home.” tenced to three years in prison. In June,
he was convicted of four counts of in-
citing a child to engage in sexual activ-
• • ity. Later that summer, Renshaw ap-
peared with five other suspected members
left home, Mullen asked his sister to pick about. Going into hiding had forced him of National Action at the Old Bailey,
up his dog. In torrential rain, Mullen was to relinquish one of the first jobs he had London’s oldest and most important
driven, with Collins, toward the “safe” actually enjoyed. The prospect of giving criminal courthouse, in the murder-plot
hotel. The party changed vehicles once, evidence against his old friends in court trial. On the first morning, Renshaw un-
at Runcorn Station, in case it was being filled him with anxiety. expectedly pleaded guilty to preparing
followed. There was no police escort. Collins and Lowles took him to soc- an act of terrorism, but he and the oth-
Mullen lay flat in the rear footwell the cer games and bought him meals when ers remained on trial for membership in
whole way. they could. (In Mullen’s first week in a proscribed terror organization. From
At the hotel, Mullen could not bring hiding, he visited the Old Trafford sta- the witness box, Renshaw told the court
himself to call his mother. In June, he’d dium and watched Manchester United that his plot was intended to “send the
told her that he had become mixed up defeat Crystal Palace.) But Mullen was state a message—if you beat a dog long
with National Action, and she had Goo- depressed. Eventually, HOPE Not Hate enough, it bites.”
gled the group to find out more. What moved him into a tiny house in an anon- When it was Mullen’s moment to
she had seen chilled her, and she had ymous neighborhood in northwest En- give evidence, he entered the witness
said to him, “I don’t like them—they’re gland. He was now far away from his box wearing a navy-blue suit and a red
nob-heads.” Mullen had also recently old network, and the organization hoped tie bought for the occasion. The press
informed her that he was in contact with that the move would give him enough box was full of journalists; rows of bar-
HOPE Not Hate, but she had no idea space to consider his future. Collins asked risters, in gowns and horsehair wigs,
how much danger he was in. Collins him questions about what larger ambi- were arranged behind long wooden
made the call for him. He told Geor- tions he had for his life, but Mullen did benches; and there were six defendants
gina that her son had helped to stop a not seem to want much, apart from earn- in the dock, staring at him. He looked
terror attack, that he was now safe, and ing money, walking Milly, and seeing at his former best friend Matt Hankin-
that he would ring her when he could. his family. There was one thing that he son, who shook his head. Until that
Georgina recalls, “I was still disap- yearned to do: Mullen had never been point, Mullen had felt that his actions
pointed in him. But I was also so proud abroad, or even on an airplane. Collins had been justified. But when he saw
of him. It could have been a million took him to Dublin, and, later, to Am- Hankinson his stomach turned.
times worse.” sterdam for a long weekend. The trips “It’s the ultimate betrayal, isn’t it?”
did little to lighten Mullen’s mood. Mullen told me recently.
ullen’s time in hiding was largely (Collins has recalled that, in Amster- Mullen testified for three days. At
M miserable. After the police confis-
cated his phone, he felt bereft. “You don’t
dam, Mullen stared “aimlessly at tits in
a shop window, missing his dog”; he also
times, he told his story with clarity. He
recounted that, when Renshaw had un-
realize how much you’re on it until they took a tour of the Anne Frank House.) veiled his murder plot in the pub, Lyth-
take it away,” he told me. He stayed in Mullen then mentioned wanting to see goe had told him, “Don’t fuck it up.”
one hotel for three weeks, then spent America. Collins promised that, once (Lythgoe denies saying this.) But Mul-
three weeks in another. He had nothing the trials were over, they would visit len was riled by the leading defense bar-
to do. The neo-Nazis had been an in- New York together. risters, who were all Queen’s Counsel,
tegral part of his life—perhaps the only Paying for Mullen’s upkeep and travel the finest trial lawyers in Britain. Mul-
thing beyond his family, his dog, and taxed HOPE Not Hate’s finances. Col- len believed that they were using “big
Manchester United that he truly cared lins told me that he had paid, up front, words” to patronize him. One of them
interrupted Mullen while he was testi- say, “Whatever else happens in my life, would reveal the surprise only when
fying to complain that she could not un- I’ve saved someone’s life.” But it was in- they arrived at the airport. Not long
derstand his northern accent. Another creasingly clear that Mullen also felt afterward, I received a text from Mul-
barrister, Crispin Aylett, who represented pride in his subsequent moral courage. len in Malta. It was about how much
Lythgoe, suggested that Mullen had Even if he still had an incomplete un- he had delighted in his nephew’s joy-
trouble reading. derstanding of his own politics, he knew ous reaction. “He didn’t have a clue
Aylett also said that Mullen was un- what he stood against. Collins told me ahha!” he wrote.
trustworthy and corrupt: “You’ve exag- that, at a recent Manchester United Around this time, I also met with
gerated aspects of your evidence, told match, Mullen had noticed a man openly Collins, who seemed burdened by the
lies, all to get Christopher Lythgoe and displaying swastika tattoos. Mullen events of the previous two years. He
others convicted and to bolster your cred- wanted the man to be ejected, and alerted was vexed that, at the retrial, a jury had
ibility with your paymaster, HOPE Not other fans, who were similarly outraged. been unable to reach a majority verdict
Hate.” Mullen reacted so angrily that The man left the stadium. on any of the charges. Although Ren-
the judge told him he was close to being On the drive, Mullen told me how shaw was sentenced, on May 17th, to a
found in contempt of court. strange it was that he had ever been a minimum of twenty years in prison,
Mullen kept himself in check for the neo-Nazi. As a child, he had never know- Collins was worried about Andy Clarke,
rest of the trial. On July 18, 2018, Lyth- ingly met a Jewish person. How had he the former N.A. member, who was now
goe was found guilty of membership in got it into his head that a Jewish cabal free. Clarke’s uncles, some of Liver-
National Action, but not guilty of en- controlled powerful institutions to the pool’s most notorious gangsters, are
couraging Renshaw to murder Cooper. detriment of white Englishmen? He re- currently serving long sentences for
Hankinson, too, was found guilty of called bleakly humorous incidents from drugs and for gun offenses. Collins
membership. The jury was unable to his past in National Action. At one rally, feared for Mullen’s safety.
reach a decision on the question of Ren- in St. Helens—a town whose popula- Collins told me that the risk to his
shaw’s membership. He and two other tion is overwhelmingly “white British” own life remained high—both from peo-
suspected N.A. members were ordered and Christian—one member with a ple he betrayed in the nineties and from
to return to the Old Bailey for a retrial megaphone had shouted at passersby, far-right figures whose activities he had
in 2019, which meant that Mullen would “Your enemy is the Jew!” Mullen told disrupted more recently. He noted that,
be required to give evidence again. His me, “People in St. Helens were, like, not long ago, the police had visited his
heart sank. ‘What’s a Jew?’ ” partner at their house, to tell her they
Mullen and Collins had co-written had credible information that she and
n April, I took a long drive with Mul- a book, “Nazi Terrorist: The Story of her family were in danger. Nevertheless,
I len. We passed the pub where the plot
was hatched, the houses where he had
National Action,” which was published
this month in the U.K. But Mullen still
Collins told me, he was more certain
than ever that tracking white suprema-
lived, his mother’s new house, his school, wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with cists was urgent work. The attack on
his places of work, and his new safe house. his life. He was taking things “month mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand,
His mood seemed much brighter. A few by month.” He suspected that he would had just occurred, killing fifty people.
weeks earlier, at the Old Bailey, I had move back to Widnes one day. If he Rosie Cooper had made a statement to
watched him testify at the retrial. Wear- could secure a visa, he and Collins planned Parliament, thanking Mullen and HOPE
ing the same navy-blue suit, he spoke on visiting New York in June. Not Hate for saving her life. Collins also
clearly, and did not take the bait from During our drive, for the first time enjoyed the acclaim that accompanied
the barristers. He never looked at the in the seven months we’d known each his work with HOPE Not Hate. Since
defendants. He told me that he had made other, Mullen asked me several un- the Renshaw trial, he had become a
peace with the fact that the people in prompted questions. The deficit of em- minor celebrity in leftist circles. Recently,
the dock were no longer his friends. pathy Collins had first noticed in him at a fashionable restaurant in Manches-
During cross-examination, a defense seemed to be evaporating. He told me ter, Conrad Murray, the manager of the
barrister, Alan Kent, asked Mullen about a story about going to a café in London, Stone Roses, came to our table, hugged
his political views. across the road from the Old Bailey, and Collins, and told him, “Well done, mate.”
“Are you racist?” Kent asked. bumping into the female barrister who Yet Collins was exhausted and in
“No,” Mullen replied. had commented on his accent. Out of debt. The phone in his pocket never
“Are you anti-Semitic?” court, he said, she was “really nice” and stopped buzzing. Collins’s partner had
“No.” “really friendly.” He bore her no ill feel- said to him recently, “I can’t live like
“And previously you would have said ing. “I know it’s her job,” he said. this.” Collins told me, semi-seriously,
you held those views?” Mullen also told me excitedly about that he had considered applying to
“Yes.” a plan to take his ten-year-old nephew become a train driver. I said that this
As this exchange ended, a look of on a surprise vacation to Malta. He had sounded like an improbable change of
contentment appeared on Mullen’s face, saved up his salary from HOPE Not career. Collins agreed, but noted, with
as if he were considering his transfor- Hate to buy tickets. The arrangements a thin smile, “I’m not going to live for-
mation afresh. Lowles told me that Mul- had been made, and Mullen had stashed ever doing this job. Either the life style
len, even at his lowest moments, would his nephew’s suitcase at his house. He will kill me or a Nazi will.” 
FICTION
TYPOGRAPHY BY NICO SCHWEIZER
58 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 PHOTOGRAPH BY LORI NIX AND KATHLEEN GERBER
hey were drifting on her step- gious psychiatric clinic—exhibited a through a brawl at a recent party. They’ll
T father’s boat in the middle of

an otherwise empty man-made
lake encircled by large tract houses. It
basic Midwestern mechanical compe-
tence, could change their oil or clean
a gun, whereas he couldn’t even drive
never wake up, he reassured himself,
just don’t knock anything over; he was
glad to be in his socks.
was early autumn and they were drink- stick. He located what he assumed was He reached the first floor and sur-
ing Southern Comfort from the bot- a starter rope, pulled it, nothing hap- veyed the dark, expansive living room
tle. Adam was in the front of the boat pened; he pushed what must have been before he climbed the next flight of
watching a changeable blue light across the throttle to another position and stairs to where the bedrooms were. He
the water that was probably a televi- tried again; nothing. He was beginning could almost make out the large ge-
sion seen through a window or a glass to wonder if he might have to swim— neric hunting scene on the far wall:
door. He heard the scrape of her lighter, he wasn’t sure how well he swam— dogs flushing game from the woods
then saw smoke float over him, unravel. when he saw the key in the ignition; beside a lake at sunset. He could see
For a long time he had been speaking. he turned it and the engine started up. the red light blinking on the panel
When he turned to see what effect As slowly as possible he motored for the alarm system they thankfully
his speech had had, she was gone, jeans back to shore. When he approached never armed. And a little light collected
and sweater in a little pile with the pipe the land, he turned the engine off but around the silver edges of the framed
and lighter. failed to bring the boat in parallel with family photographs on the mantel: teen-
He said her name, suddenly aware the dock; there was a loud crack when agers in sweaters posing on a leaf-strewn
of the surrounding quiet, and put his the fibreglass hit the wood, which si- lawn, her brother holding a football.
hand in the water, which was cold. Un- lenced the nearby bullfrogs; nothing Something ticked and settled in the
thinkingly, he lifted her white sweater seemed damaged, not that he really giant kitchen. He went upstairs.
and smelled the woodsmoke from ear- looked. He rushed to throw the lines
lier that evening, the synthetic laven- gathered in the boat around the cleats ers was the first open door on the
der of what he knew to be her shower
gel. He said her name again, louder
nailed to the dock, quickly improvised
some knots, then pulled himself out
H right, and without turning on the
light he could see from the doorway
now, then looked around. A few birds of the boat; he prayed that no one was that Amber was in her bed, under the
skimmed the undisturbed surface of watching him from a window. With- covers, breathing steadily. His shoul-
the lake; no, those were bats. When did out taking the keys or her clothes or ders relaxed; the relief was profound,
she dive or step off the boat and how pipe or bottle, he sprinted up the in- and the relief made more room for
could she have made no splash and cline through the wet grass toward her anger; it also let him realize how badly
what if she was drowned? He yelled house; if the boat drifted back out on he had to piss. He turned and crossed
now; a dog responded in the distance. the water, that would be her fault. the hall into the bathroom and care-
From spinning around in search of her, The large glass doors facing the lake fully shut the door and without turn-
he felt dizzy and sat down. Then he were always unlocked; he slid one open ing on the light lifted the lid. On sec-
stood again and looked along the edges quietly and went in. Only now did he ond thought, he lowered the seat and
of the boat; maybe she was just beside feel the cold sweat. He could make out sat down. A car passed slowly outside,
it, stifling her laughter, but she wasn’t. her brother’s shape on the couch, pil- its headlights illuminating the bath-
He would have to pilot the boat back low over his head, sleeping in the glow room through an open venetian blind.
to the dock, where she must be wait- of the large television; the news was on It wasn’t her bathroom. The electric
ing. (There was a dock for every two mute—Saddam Hussein reviewing a toothbrush and the hair dryer; these
or three subdivisions.) He thought he military parade, then a shot of a Tom- particular soaps—these were not her
saw a firefly signal slowly from the shore, ahawk launch. The room was other- toiletries. For an instant he thought,
but it was too late in the year for that. wise dark. He thought of waking him, desperately hoped, that they might be-
He felt a wave of anger rising and he but instead removed his Timberland long to her mother, but there were too
welcomed it, wanted it to overwhelm boots, which he assumed were muddy, many other discrepancies: the shower
his panic. He hoped Amber had dived and crept across the room to the white door was different, its glass frosted;
into the water before his rambling con- carpeted stairs; he went up slowly. now he smelled the lemon-scented gel
fession of feeling. He’d said they would He’d stayed over two or three times beads in a jar atop the toilet; alien dried
stay together after graduation, once he before when she’d told her parents flowers hung from a purple sachet on
left Topeka for college, but now he knew he’d had too much to drink; they’d the wall. In a single shudder of retro-
they wouldn’t; he was eager to demon- thought he’d slept in the guest room; spection his impressions of the house
strate his indifference as soon as he found they’d thought, correctly, that he’d called were changed: Where was the piano
her safe on land. home. But the prospect of encounter- (that nobody played)? Wouldn’t he have
See the outboard motor gleaming ing anyone now—when he hadn’t even seen the electric chandelier? The car-
in the moonlight. For any of his friends, confirmed that she was present—hor- pet on the stairs—wasn’t the pile too
managing the boat would be easy; all rified him. Her mom took sleeping pills; thick, too dark in the dark to have been
of them, even the other “Foundation he’d seen the oversized prescription truly white?
kids”—the children of therapists who’d bottle, knew she mixed them nightly Along with the sheer terror of find-
settled in Topeka to work at its presti- with her wine. Her stepdad had slept ing himself in the wrong house, with
his recognition of its difference, was a could barely make them run, but he the bedroom of a sleeping girl. Fear
sense, because of the houses’ sameness, loved the scenery, the green static flock- made it difficult to breathe, but he told
that he was in all the houses around ing spread over the board, the tiny yet himself that he would press rewind,
the lake at once; the sublime of iden- towering pines and hardwoods. When quietly walk back out the way he’d come,
tical layouts. In each house she or some- he looked at the impossibly detailed disturbing no one. That was what he
one like her was in her bed, sleeping trees, he occupied two vantages at did, although now the little differences
or pretending to sleep; legal guardians once: he pictured himself beneath their called out to him as he descended: there
were farther down the hall, large men branches and also considered them from was a large L-shaped couch he hadn’t
snoring; the faces and poses in the fam- above; he was looking up at himself seen before; he could tell the coffee table
ily photographs on the mantel might looking down. Then he could toggle here was glass and not dark wood like
change, but would all belong to the rapidly between these perspectives, these hers. At the bottom of the stairs, he
same grammar of faces and poses; the scales, in a relay that unfixed him from hesitated: the front door was right there,
elements of the painted scenes might his body. Now he was frozen in fear in beckoning; he’d be free, but his Tim-
vary, but not the level of familiarity and this particular bathroom and in all the berlands were downstairs where he’d
flatness; if you opened any of the giant bathrooms simultaneously; he looked left them. To recover them he’d have to
stainless-steel refrigerators or surveyed down from a hundred windows at the pass the sleeping stranger.
the faux-marble islands, you would en- little boat on the placid man-made lake. Despite his fear that he might at
counter matching, modular products (Touches of white paint atop the dried any moment be discovered, he decided
in slightly different configurations. acrylic add a sense of motion and of he had to go after his boots, less be-
He was in all the houses but, pre- moonlight to the surface.) cause they were evidence and could be
cisely because he was no longer bound He swam back into himself. He felt traced to him than because he felt that
to a discrete body, he could also float like a timer had started somewhere, that he’d be risking ridicule, humiliation, if
above them; it was like looking at the he had minutes, maybe only seconds, he returned to Amber barefoot. He
miniature train set that his dad’s friend to flee the house into which he’d unin- could intuit the shape of the story, could
Klaus—one of the Foundation’s older, tentionally broken before someone emp- sense that it would spread—how she’d
émigré analysts—had given him as a tied a shotgun into his face or the cops left him first to mishandle the boat and
child; he didn’t care about the trains, arrived to find him hovering outside then to lose his fucking footwear in
the midst of whatever misadventure.
Hey, Adam, you got your shoes tied
on? Got your slippers? A memory from
middle school of Sean McCabe, com-
ing home in socks, in tears, after he’d
been jumped for his Air Jordans, flared
up before him; Sean still got shit about
it and Sean could now bench three
hundred pounds.
The young man who had been her
brother had turned his face toward the
back of the couch; the pillow had fallen
to the floor. The giant head of Bob Dole
moved its lips on the screen as he crept
past. He picked up his boots and slowly
slid open the door; the rollers jammed
a little; he had to apply some force, caus-
ing a loud squeak; the body on the couch
stirred and started to sit up. (All over
Lake Sherwood Housing Community,
the bodies stirred and started to sit up.)
Without closing the door, he bolted,
boots in hand, over the wet grass—in-
different to uneven ground, to sticks
and stones—at a speed he might never
match again, his body grateful for some-
thing to do with its adrenaline. No one
yelled after him; there was only his foot-
fall, blood thundering in his ears; he
triggered a few motion lights and so
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you, moved closer to the water; he ran at full
is this the straw of a sane man?” force for a minute before he realized he
wasn’t sure where he was going. He
dropped to a knee, lungs burning, looked
behind him to make sure he wasn’t being
followed. He pulled his boots on as
quickly as possible over his wet socks.
Then he got up and sprinted between
two houses until he reached the street.
His only goal now was to find his
red ’89 Camry parked in her driveway
and go home, to sleep for a few hours.
He’d have to rise before dawn, put on
the black suit he’d bought with his mom
at West Ridge, tie one of his dad’s two
ties, and head for a debate tourna-
ment—tomorrow’s was in the town of
Russell—as he did most Saturdays, a
fact he would never willingly mention
around the kids he drank with. He
thought of Joanna, his debate partner,
who he imagined was fast asleep, who
had probably spent the night prepar-
ing; the daughter of two Foundation
neurologists, she compiled almost all
of their research, having attended a
“debate institute” at the University of “Of course I’d love to retire and spend more time with my family,
Michigan over the summer to get a but I feel there’s still more I can skim off the top.”
head start on the competition. Adam
just skimmed The Economist during de-
bate class. His strength was thinking
• •
on his feet, exposing fallacies; his cross-
examinations were widely feared. This ered his window and lit his cigarette My stepdad used to give these like
year’s topic was whether the federal with a yellow Bic he took from the cup endless speeches at dinner. Now he
government should establish new pol- holder and inhaled what felt like his barely talks, and anyway we don’t eat
icies to reduce juvenile crime; as he first full breath since he’d discovered together. I think he’s depressed, like he
searched for his car, Adam recited sta- her absence on the boat. should have a therapist, see your par-
tistics about recidivism to himself. He started the engine and turned ents at the Foundation. It’s weird now
He was still scared—at any moment the headlights on to discover that she that he’s quiet, because before he would
he might hear sirens—but away from was standing, had been standing, in the make dinners into these long fucking
the water and the scene of his ridicu- threshold of her front door wearing an discussions, except not really, because
lous trespass he felt the worst was over. oversized sweater. Her almost waist- nobody discussed anything; he just
He patted his pocket to confirm the length dark-blond hair was down. He talked in our direction. He’d ask my
presence of his keys and walked quickly cut the engine reflexively, turning off brother a question every once in a while,
along the curb—there were no side- the lights. Barefoot, she walked to the but it was always, like, pop quiz: What
walks—but he did not run, so as to car and opened the passenger door and did I say made this a hard time for the
minimize suspicion on the off chance got in. She helped herself to a cigarette, aeronautics business? (You know he got
that he was seen. He walked and walked, lit it, and said, as though he were a few rich off somebody else’s invention. Some
ashamed to be on foot; he could not minutes late for an appointment, Where kind of screw that doesn’t weigh any-
find his car, her house; he must have have you been? thing.) And my brother would never
pointed the boat in exactly the wrong He was furious. He could not admit have to answer, because my stepdad an-
direction. After he’d searched for al- that he’d been scared, couldn’t say he’d swered his own fucking questions. The
most half an hour, had circled half the been unequal to managing the boat, or answer was always China, basically.
lake, he saw, was overjoyed to see, his that he’d almost confronted the wrong Then there was this one night last sum-
car where he had parked some hours young woman in another house. He de- mer when my mom was letting me
before. The sound of the doors unlock- manded an explanation: What the fuck sneak white wine and my brother was
ing was deeply reassuring. He got in, is wrong with you? I wanted to swim, out and I had to be the one at the table
found his pack of Marlboro Reds on she said, and shrugged and smoked getting talked at and it was getting on
the passenger seat, and shook one loose; when he pressed, tobacco mixing with my nerves for real. Maybe it was be-
he turned the key to the on position the smell of her conditioner. Absently, cause I was a little fucked up or because
but did not start the engine. He low- she began playing with his hair. I’m just older now and so like more
aware of my mom. What she’s been the stepdaughter smile back and hold sion—or whatever you call your field
through, starting with my dad. But, it, hold it. We basically have a staring of vision when your eyes are shut. In-
anyway, I did this stupid also kind of contest and my mom’s laughter gets all stead of moving a hand toward the in-
awesome thing. Really, really slowly I nervous until finally his face relaxes and side of her thigh, as was expected, he
started lowering myself in my chair, like it’s all a big joke. moved both hands now toward her face;
sliding down out of it, while he was It would take Adam twenty years to he held her head and ran his thumbs
eating his ravioli talking about what- grasp the analogy between her slipping across her closed eyelids, carefully ap-
ever. My mom was already in the from the chair and from the boat. He plying distinct but intermittent pres-
kitchen, loading the dishwasher; she asked her some questions about her bi- sure; did she also see a few red sparks,
never eats. It required a lot of core ological father and she answered them. a network of faint lines?
strength going down so slowly. All those He considered telling her about enter- She pulled back a little, laughing:
crunches. All that crystal (joking). At ing the wrong house—maybe he could What are you doing? He told her the
dance they are always telling me to vi- bring out the poetry of it—but he did word for it, which he’d learned from
sualize a movement as I do it and I was not tell her, didn’t want to risk it. To Klaus, who said that phosphenes might
visualizing myself as a liquid flowing protect himself (from what, he wasn’t be triggers of psychotic hallucinations.
down the chair. All the way down off sure), he imagined that he was looking That some people have tried to draw
my chair until I was literally under the back on the present from a vaguely them and the drawings look strangely
table and my stepdad still hadn’t noticed imagined East Coast city where his ex- like those cave paintings, the oldest art.
anything, and my mom was in there periences in Topeka could be recounted He hoped she liked the poetry he made
cleaning, and I was trying not to laugh. only with great irony. out of it, how he wanted her to see
Or maybe cry? Adam asked, and she what he saw, and to imagine seeing
looked at him. ut he was back in his body when with or as her; the world’s subtlest fire-
At how fucking sad this dude is
maybe. Or, yeah, like for my mom who
B they kissed goodbye and her damp
hair was in his face and her tongue was
works announcing the problem of other
minds. Soon they were kissing again
is married to him. Like he doesn’t rein his mouth, running over his teeth, and he didn’t know if they would fuck.
alize the audience has gone home while tobacco and mint, Crest toothpaste. But that night in Topeka’s premier
he’s just going on and on. And then I The kiss deepened and as he moved housing community conveniently lo-
seal-crawl so slowly under the table his hands under her sweatshirt he saw cated near West Ridge Mall she sepa-
across the carpet holding my breath against the black back of his eyelids lit- rated from him gently, decisively; maybe
into the kitchen. My mom has stopped tle illuminated patterns flaring up. she was on her period. Maybe she didn’t
cleaning and now she’s on the other Phosphenes, tiny fading Rorschachs really care about him. She climbed out
side of the island and doesn’t see me formed by the inherent electrical charges of the passenger side with one of his
and I stand up really quietly. She’s hold- the retina produces while at rest, an ex- cigarettes and the lighter; she walked
ing her pink wine looking out the win- perience of light in the absence of light. around the front of the car and returned
dow at the lake or more at her reflec- He knew these shapes from a concus- the lighter to him through the window.
tion in the glass, because it’s night. I sion he’d had as a child and from his Where’s the boat? He said he’d driven
get the bottle from the fridge door and migraines and more recently from this around the lake drinking for a while,
pour most of it into a plastic cup and kind of contact; he knew them from wasn’t sure where he’d parked it; he was
come up to her with my like Big Gulp when he was little trying to fall asleep, tense again, worried he’d have to admit
and she’s coming back from Mars and watching gray circles migrate across his various navigational failures, but
about to say something to me but I the darkness; if he pressed his closed she was unconcerned.
shush her with a finger on my lips and eyes near the temples, the forms would Win me a medal tomorrow, she said,
whisper, Listen. We can hear my step- brighten. He’d wondered if these pat- smiling, when he started the engine
dad in the dining room telling nobody terns were unique to him, evidence of again. Soon he was speeding away from
about Ross Perot. (He was obsessed some specialness or damage, or if they the McMansions, cool air thundering
with Ross Perot. Ross Perot and China.) were universal, if everyone saw them. through the sunroof that he’d opened.
And my mom maybe doesn’t under- But they were so faint and difficult to State prisons are operating between fifteen
stand what’s going on yet but we tip- describe that he was never able to figure and twenty-four per cent above capacity.
toe over to the doorway and stand there out if his parents or friends shared this When he hit Twenty-first he stopped
looking into the dining room while he experience just above the threshold of at a flashing red light. Our opponent’s
talks to the air like AM radio and wine perception; the patterns dissipated plan will result in disastrous overcrowd-
is almost coming out of my nose. We under the weight of language, remained ing. He flicked his cigarette butt out of
stand there forever before he looks up, irreducibly private. He’d hear people the window, watched the embers scat-
like we caught him beating off. He talk about “seeing stars” when they hit ter on the asphalt. He pushed “All Eyez
looks at my chair, then back at us, and their head, but he saw no stars; he saw on Me” into the tape deck and turned
now my mom and I start really crack- rings of red or yellow light or tessel- it up very loud. Then he drove on. 
ing up. Then he gets this fucked-up lated feather shapes that started to shake
smile that’s pure rage. Like, how dare if he attended to them or dull gold spi- THE WRITER’S VOICE PODCAST
you cunts laugh at me. But I give him rals that spun across his field of vi- Ben Lerner reads “Ross Perot and China.”

THE CRITICS
POP MUSIC
HARDCORE HISTORY
Rammstein’s heavy and cathartic camp.
BY AMANDA PETRUSICH
he nearly ten-minute video for many, before the Berlin Wall fell, and ematography recalls both “Game of
T Rammstein’s “Deutschland,” the
first single from the band’s untitled
the “Deutschland” video attempts to
deliver an accelerated and gory sum-
Thrones” and “The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari.” What follows is a gnarly
seventh album, has been viewed more mation of German history. In 16 A.D., account of the past century in Ger-
than forty million times on YouTube Roman soldiers clashed with Germanic man politics, including the First World
since its release, in late March. Ramm- tribes east of the Rhine; the video be- War, the Weimar Republic, Marx,
stein formed in 1994, and its six-man gins with a band of Romans creeping Lenin, and the Holocaust. The video
lineup hasn’t changed since then. Its through the Teutoburg Forest, toward also contains brief nods to cosmonauts,
members came of age in East Ger- a pulsating beam of red light. The cin- the Hindenburg, and sausage (pulled,
The band is enjoying renewed success after the release of a single that condenses two thousand years of German history.
ILLUSTRATION BY HENNING WAGENBRETH THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 63
as it were, from a human abdomen). been particularly preoccupied with re- Rammstein uses an extraordinary
By condensing Germany’s history invention, but now the band is metab- amount of pyrotechnics in its stage
into a parade of horrors, Rammstein olizing its earliest influences in ways shows, and it is not unusual for Lin-
is lampooning the country’s delicate that veer even farther from the batter- demann to perform while most of his
and complex relationship with its own ing rage of nu metal. The new songs outfit is ablaze, his long arms swing-
past. This is what Rammstein does. It feel especially indebted to the Ger- ing like comets. Sometimes he and the
transforms hideous or troubling imag- man electronic duo Kraftwerk, who, guitarists Richard Kruspe and Paul
ery into cathartic camp. The clobber- beginning in the nineteen-seventies, Landers wear flamethrowing masks
ing drums and guitars of “Deutsch- wrote stylized, repetitive, experimen- and launch fireballs at one another;
land” suggest a kind of forced reck- tal pop songs that relied heavily on Lorenz might climb off a keyboard
oning: Let’s not look away from any synthesizers. (In 1997, Rammstein re- treadmill and take a flaming shower
of this. leased a cover of Kraftwerk’s “Das in a metal bathtub. If Lindemann puts
In the mid-nineties, the German Model”; Rammstein’s version retains on a giant pair of angel wings, trust
press devised a new genre of music the jaunty keyboard melody, but is that they, too, will soon burst into
just for Rammstein: Neue Deutsche harsher and more sinister.) “Radio,” flames. The show is chaotic, but it’s
Härte, or “new German hardness.” the second single from the new record, orchestrated with a staggering Ger-
The band combined elements of Kraut- is not a Kraftwerk cover, though at man precision. “You have to under-
rock, industrial music, heavy metal, times it feels as if it could be. Ramm- stand that ninety-nine per cent of the
and an almost Jacques Brel-like insis- stein’s sound is still heavy—occasion- people don’t understand the lyrics,
tence on drawing out and enunciat- ally, as on “Tattoo,” it makes you feel so you have to come up with some-
ing each lyric. Till Lindemann, Ramm- as though you were being flattened thing to keep the drama in the show,”
stein’s hulking front man, has a deep by an asphalt paver—but “Radio” is Kruspe has said.
and foreboding voice. He sings in Ger- Rammstein at its most harmonically It is easy to place Rammstein in a
man, usually about carnal pleasures or adventurous. Though Lindemann’s lyr- lineage of theatrical rock bands that
the sweet release of death. If you don’t ics are still mostly about sex, much of have incorporated elements of inde-
speak the language, the unfamiliarity the new album will be sonically pal- cency, horror, sadomasochism, or self-
and the gruffness give the music an atable to listeners who might normally mutilation into their live performances:
added bit of menace. I often don’t dismiss heavy metal as grotesque noise. Kiss, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne,
know precisely what Lindemann is These songs are as energizing as they Gwar, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, In-
saying, but I can usually sense that it’s are titillating. sane Clown Posse. In 1969, Jim Mor-
not nice. rison was arrested for exposing him-
In 1997, the director David Lynch n 2010, Rammstein performed at self during a concert in Miami. In 1974,
used two Rammstein songs (“Ramm-
stein” and “Heirate Mich”) in his film
I Madison Square Garden, the band’s
first U.S. date in ten years. Tickets sold
while onstage in Los Angeles, Iggy
Pop slashed his chest with a knife. GG
“Lost Highway,” which, for a while, out within thirty minutes. The con- Allin has both produced and consumed
lent the band an arty and cerebral air. cert became fodder for a feature-length excrement while playing.
That year, the single “Du Hast,” from documentary, “Rammstein in Amer- For Rammstein, the concert expe-
the group’s second record, “Sehnsucht,” ika.” The film includes interviews with rience can feel more revelatory (and,
made it to No. 20 on the Billboard some of the group’s famous fans—in- occasionally, more artful) than its rec-
Mainstream Rock chart. Rammstein cluding Steven Tyler, of Aerosmith; ords, in part because watching the
was eventually swept up in the nu- Scott Ian, of Anthrax; Chad Smith, of band perform compels audiences to
metal craze of the late nineties, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers; Moby; both account for and laugh at the en-
in 1998 was invited to join the first and the actor Kiefer Sutherland—and tire notion of mortality. In an inter-
Family Values Tour, a metal and hip- shows how American authorities were view with John McCarty, for his book
hop revue created and curated by the not always so open-minded about “Splatter Movies,” the director David
band Korn. (That year’s lineup also Rammstein’s sense of decency. In 1999, Cronenberg talks about the existen-
included Orgy, Limp Bizkit, Ice Cube, in Worcester, Massachusetts, Linde- tial appeal of this sort of imagery, and
and, later, Incubus.) Rammstein’s par- mann and the keyboardist Flake Lo- how it can become a powerful sort of
ticipation in the tour made sense in renz were arrested for pretending to truthtelling: “They are films of con-
some ways, but a majority of the Fam- engage in sodomy onstage, while play- frontation. They aren’t films of escape.
ily Values acts indulged a hypermas- ing “Buck Dich.” (The title translates And what it is that the audience is
culine form of aggression, in which as “bend over.”) Afterward, Lindemann forced to confront are some very hard
fear or anxiety could simply be shouted shot streams of an opaque liquid out truths about the human condition,
down. Rammstein is still more likely of a plastic penis. which have to do, in my films partic-
to scoff at or ridicule macho postur- Toward the beginning of “Ramm- ularly, with the human body and the
ing. (It is very hard to imagine the stein in Amerika,” Marilyn Manson fact of aging and death and disease
members of Limp Bizkit simulating describes the first time he met Linde- and the loss of people close to you.”
anal sex onstage.) mann backstage: “We couldn’t even By turning existence into a specta-
Musically, Rammstein has never shake hands, because he was on fire.” cle—exaggerating it, rendering it in
preposterous proportions—the band
manages, however counterintuitively,
to comfort us. BRIEFLY NOTED
ammstein is touring Europe and The Flight Portfolio, by Julie Orringer (Knopf ). This gripping,
R the U.K. this summer, and it has
been booked into the sorts of venues
tender novel fictionalizes the experiences of Varian Fry, an
American journalist who, in Vichy France in 1940, risked his
typically filled by artists like U2, Paul life by smuggling some of Europe’s imperilled artists, writers,
McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, and Me- and thinkers—including Marc Chagall and Hannah Arendt—
tallica. In Berlin, Rammstein will play to safety. Orringer has Fry alternately luxuriate in the thrill
the Olympiastadion, which can accom- of heroism and torture himself by wondering whether he’d
modate nearly seventy-five thousand “care less about saving human beings if those human beings
people. In Munich, the band will play couldn’t write a perfect novel or make an enduring painting.”
a comparably sized stadium on consec- His choices become even more fraught when a man he loved
utive nights; both shows are sold out. in college appears with a request that threatens his mission,
It’s worth noting that Rammstein throwing into conflict Fry’s long-buried desires and his re-
has established a huge and wildly ded- sponsibilities to history and to his wife, back in New York.
icated global fan base while eschewing
(or, perhaps more accurately, being es- Dawson’s Fall, by Roxana Robinson (Sarah Crichton Books). In-
chewed by) traditional media outlets terspersed with diary excerpts and news clips, this novel re-cre-
and most commercial radio stations. In ates events leading up to the murder, in 1889, of the author’s
an era in which the compression of fame great-grandfather Frank Dawson, the editor of the Charles-
feels acute, and only the acts at the very ton, South Carolina, News and Courier. The paper was an in-
top receive much attention, Rammstein fluential voice of moderation amid anti-Reconstruction dem-
has nonetheless thrived. As the music agoguery and widespread lynching, and the murder trial—of
industry continues to struggle with a man infatuated by the Dawson family’s Swiss nanny—was
effectively and fairly monetizing record- national news. Robinson conjures an era when the South was
ings, Rammstein—much like, say, a hair-trigger place, obsessed with lost privilege. American
Phish—has built an entire economy cotton had once been “king everywhere,” but, after the war,
around its live shows. the “great beautiful edifice” of its exports collapsed. As Rob-
Watching “Rammstein in Amerika,” inson notes, “It turned out that cotton wasn’t actually a pay-
I was surprised by how youthful the ing crop unless the labor was free.”
crowd at Madison Square Garden was.
In camera pans of the audience, I could Women’s War, by Stephanie McCurry (Harvard). In America,
see their sweet, teen-age faces curled the idea that “the woman cannot defend the state,” as an 1838
into snarls, locked in a kind of angry book asserted, was once so powerful that women were as-
rapture. Rammstein travels with a two- sumed to be civilians rather than combatants. But the Civil
million-watt sound system and four War upended the notion. McCurry, a feminist historian, traces
hundred speakers—“I used the earplugs, three narratives to argue that “there is no Civil War history
and it was still too loud, my body was without women in it.” Women waged grassroots campaigns
shaking,” Iggy Pop admits in the film— that informed the new concept of “Civilian as Enemy”—the
and this kind of scale makes the show trial of the Confederate spy Cara Judd altered martial law—
transformational on a physical level, too. and shaped the Union’s refugee policy and the terms of the
Something gets rearranged inside you. peace. McCurry scrutinizes legal archives compiled by men,
I have found that, if I listen to enough seeking glimpses of women they overlooked, whose voices
Rammstein at the right volume, I, too, enliven the book.
turn into a kind of overexcited, gnash-
ing maniac, reminiscent of Beavis in the Democracy and Truth, by Sophia Rosenfeld (Pennsylvania). Sur-
“Cornholio” episodes of MTV’s “Bea- veying the post-Enlightenment era, this incisive account shows
vis and Butt-head,” in which he con- that our concerns with “fake news” have a long history, and
sumes too much sugar, pulls his T-shirt that democracy and truth have often pulled in opposite di-
over his head, and demands toilet paper rections. Drawing mostly on the American experiment, Ros-
from strangers. It is possible to dis- enfeld analyzes political spin, the idealization of journalistic
appear into the squall, gleefully and objectivity, and the echo chambers within which news is ei-
completely. If we define fun as the un- ther believed or derided. She dives into such eclectic topics
knowing acceleration of time, then as Kant’s “Dare to know!” dictum, lie detectors, and oath-swear-
Rammstein’s particular brand of self- ing. Rosenfeld’s conclusion is sobering: even if the relation-
obliteration, in which time collapses en- ship between democracy and truth has long been vexed, the
tirely, is a guaranteed good time.  crisis facing Western democracies today is distinctly new.
psychiatry for nearly a century and a half.
BOOKS In “Mind Fixers” (Norton), Anne Har-
rington, a history-of-science professor at
MEDICINE IN MIND
Harvard, follows “psychiatry’s troubled
search for the biology of mental illness,”
deftly tracing a progression of paradigms
Psychiatry’s fraught history. adopted by neurologists, psychiatrists,
and psychologists, as well as patients and
BY JEROME GROOPMAN their advocates.
Her narrative begins in the late nine-
teenth century, when researchers explored
the brain’s anatomy in an attempt to
identify the origins of mental disorders.
The studies ultimately proved fruitless,
and their failure produced a split in the
field. Some psychiatrists sought nonbi-
ological causes, including psychoanalytic
ones, for mental disorders. Others dou-
bled down on the biological approach
and, as she writes, “increasingly pursued
a hodgepodge of theories and projects,
many of which, in hindsight, look both
ill-considered and incautious.” The split
is still evident today.
The history that Harrington relays
is a series of pendulum swings. For much
of the book, touted breakthroughs dis-
appoint, discredited dogmas give rise
to counter-dogmas, treatments are in-
fluenced by the financial interests of the
pharmaceutical industry, and real harm
is done to patients and their loved ones.
One thing that becomes apparent is that,
when pathogenesis is absent, historical
events and cultural shifts have an out-
sized influence on prevailing views on
causes and treatments. By charting our
fluctuating beliefs about our own minds,
Harrington effectively tells a story about
odern medicine can be seen as a taught that peptic ulcers were often caused the twentieth century itself.
M quest to understand pathogenesis,
the biological cause of an illness. Once
by stress; treatments included bed rest
and a soothing diet rich in milk. Anyone n 1885, the Boston Medical and Surgi-
pathogenesis—the word comes from the
Greek pathos (suffering) and genesis (or-
who had suggested that ulcers were the
result of bacterial infection would have
I cal Journal noted, “The increase in the
number of the insane has been excep-
igin)—has been established by scientific been thought crazy. The prevailing view tionally rapid in the last decade.” Mental
experiment, accurate diagnoses can be was that no bacterium could thrive in the asylums built earlier in the century were
made, and targeted therapies developed. acidic environment of the stomach. But overflowing with patients. Harrington
In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, in 1982 two Australian researchers (who points out that the asylum may have “cre-
there were all kinds of theories about later won a Nobel Prize for their work) ated its own expanding clientele,” but it’s
what was causing it: toxicity from drug proposed that a bacterium called Helico- possible that insanity really was on the
use during sex, allergic reactions to semen, bacter pylori was crucial to the onset of rise, in part because of the rapid spread
and so on. Only after the discovery of the many peptic ulcers. Although the hy- of syphilis. What we now know to be a
human immunodeficiency virus helped pothesis was met with widespread scorn, late stage of the disease was at the time
lay such conjectures to rest did it become experimental evidence gradually became termed “general paralysis of the insane.”
possible to use specific blood tests for di- conclusive. Now ulcers are routinely Patients were afflicted by dementia and
agnosis and, eventually, to provide anti- healed with antibiotics. grandiose delusions and developed a wob-
viral drugs to improve immune defenses. But what can medicine do when bly gait. Toward the end of the century, as
Sometimes a disease’s pathogenesis is pathogenesis remains elusive? That’s a many as one in five people entering asy-
surprising. As a medical student, I was question that has bedevilled the field of lums had general paralysis of the insane.
66 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA PARINI
Proof of a causal relationship between oped an interview method to bring them in the intestine, the mouth, or the sinuses
the condition and syphilis came in 1897, to consciousness, interpreted dreams, and could release toxins that impaired brain
and marked the first time, Harrington argued that nearly all neuroses arose from functions. Harrington writes of schizo-
writes, that “psychiatry had discovered a repressed “sexual impressions.” phrenia treatments that included “remov-
specific biological cause for a common Freud acknowledged the fact “that ing teeth, appendixes, ovaries, testes, co-
mental illness.” The discovery was made the case histories I write should read like lons, and more.”
by the neurologist Richard von Krafft- short stories and that, as one might say, The most notorious mid-century sur-
Ebing (today best known for “Psycho- they lack the serious stamp of science.” gical intervention was the lobotomy. Pi-
pathia Sexualis,” his study of sexual “per- He justified the approach by pointing oneered in the thirties, by Egas Moniz,
version”) and his assistant Josef Adolf to the inefficacy of other methods and whose work later won him the Nobel
Hirschl. They devised an experiment that asserting that there was “an intimate Prize, the treatment reached a grotesque
made use of a fact that was already known: connection between the story of the pa- apogee in America, with Walter Free-
syphilis could be contracted only once. tient’s sufferings and the symptoms of man’s popularization of the transor-
The pair took pus from the sores of syph- his illness.” Many neurologists, respond- bital lobotomy, which involved severing
ilitics and injected it into patients suffering to the demand for confessional heal- connections near the prefrontal cortex
ing from general paralysis of the insane. ing, gave up on anatomy and adopted with an icepick-like instrument inserted
Then they watched to see if the test sub- psychotherapeutics. through the eye sockets. Freeman criss-
jects became infected. Any patient who Soon, however, the limits of this ap- crossed the country—a trip he called
did could be said with certainty not to proach, too, were exposed. During the Operation Icepick—proselytizing for
have had the disease before. As it turned First World War, men who returned from the technique in state mental hospitals.
out, though, none of the subjects became the trenches apparently uninjured dis- On the nonbiological, analytic side of
infected, leading the researchers to con- played physical symptoms associated the discipline, world events again proved
clude that the condition arose from pre- with hysteria. Clearly, they couldn’t all pivotal. The postwar period, dubbed “The
vious infection with syphilis. be manifesting neuroses caused by re- Age of Anxiety” by W. H. Auden, was
This apparent validation of the bio- pressed sexual fantasies. The English clouded by fears about the power of nu-
logical approach was influential. “If it physician Charles Myers coined the term clear weapons, the Cold War arms race,
could be done once,” Harrington writes, “shell shock,” proposing a physiological and the possibility that communist spies
“maybe it could be done again.” But the cause: damage to the nervous system were infiltrating society. In 1948, Presi-
work on syphilis proved to be some- from the shock waves of artillery explo- dent Harry Truman told the annual meet-
thing of a dead end. Neurologists of the sions. Yet that explanation wasn’t entirely ing of the American Psychiatric Associ-
time, knowing nothing of brain chem- satisfactory, either. Sufferers included sol- ation, “The greatest prerequisite for peace,
istry, were heavily focussed on what could diers who had not been in the trenches which is uppermost in the minds and
be observed at autopsy, but there were or exposed to bombing. hearts of all of us, must be sanity—san-
many mental illnesses that left no trace Harrington commends physicians ity in its broadest sense, which permits
in the solid tissue of the brain. Har- who charted a middle course. Adolf clear thinking on the part of all citizens.”
rington frames this outcome in the Car- Meyer, a Swiss-born physician who, in Accordingly, American neo-Freud-
tesian terms of a mind-body dualism: 1910, became the first director of the psy- ians substituted anxiety for sex as the un-
“Brain anatomists had failed so miser- chiatry clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hos- derlying cause of psychological maladies.
ably because they focused on the brain pital, advocated an approach he called, They replaced Freudian tropes with a
at the expense of the mind.” variously, “psychobiology” and “common focus on family dynamics, especially the
Meanwhile, two neurologists, Pierre sense” psychiatry—the gathering of data need for emotional security in early child-
Janet and Sigmund Freud, had been ex- without a guiding dogma. Meanwhile, hood. Mothers bore the brunt of this new
ploring a condition that affected both in Europe, Eugen Bleuler, credited with diagnostic scrutiny: overprotective moth-
mind and body and that left no detect- coining the term “schizophrenia,” took ers stunted their children’s maturation
able trace in brain tissue: hysteria. The a view somewhat similar to Meyer’s and and were, according to a leading Amer-
symptoms included wild swings of emo- incurred the wrath of Freud. In 1911, ican psychiatrist, “our gravest menace” in
tion, tremors, catatonia, and convulsions. Bleuler left the International Psychoan- the fight against communism; excessively
Both men had studied under Jean-Mar- alytical Association. “Saying ‘he who is permissive mothers produced children
tin Charcot, who believed that hysteria not with us is against us’ or ‘all or noth- who would become juvenile delinquents;
could arise from traumatic events as well ing’ is necessary for religious communi- a mother who smothered a son with affec-
as from physiological causes. Janet con- ties and useful for political parties,” he tion risked making him homosexual, while
tended that patients “split off ” memories wrote in his resignation letter. “All the the undemonstrative “refrigerator mother”
of traumatic events and manifested them same I find that it is harmful for science.” was blamed for what is now diagnosed
in an array of physical symptoms. He ad- as autism.
vocated hypnosis as a means of accessing s the century progressed, the schism In 1963, Betty Friedan’s “Feminine
these memories and discovering the causes
of a patient’s malady. Freud believed that
A between the biological camp and
the psychoanalytic camp widened. With
Mystique” denounced neo-Freudian
mother blamers. She wrote, “It was sud-
traumatic memories were repressed and advances in bacteriology, the biological denly discovered that the mother could
consigned to the unconscious. He devel- camp embraced the idea that microbes be blamed for almost everything. In every
case history of a troubled child . . . could Manual of Mental Disorders, even as many One of the first drugs to target de-
be found a mother.” Her indictment was psychiatrists clearly held a different view. pression was Elavil, introduced in 1961,
later taken up by the San Francisco Red- Robert Spitzer, an eminent psychiatrist which boosted available levels of norepi-
stockings, a group of female psychother- and a key architect of the DSM, was put nephrine, a neurotransmitter related to
apists who distributed literature to their in charge of considering the issue, and adrenaline. Again there was a marketing
A.P.A. colleagues which declared, devised what has become a working cri- blitz. Harrington mentions “Symposium
“Mother is not public enemy number terion for mental illness: “For a behav- in Blues,” a promotional record featur-
one. Start looking for the real enemy.” ior to be termed a psychiatric disorder it ing Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong,
Feminism furnished just one of sev- had to be regularly accompanied by sub- and Artie Shaw. Released by RCA Vic-
eral sweeping attacks on psychiatry that jective distress and/or ‘some generalized tor, it was paid for by Merck and distrib-
saw the enterprise as a tool of social con- impairment in social effectiveness of func- uted to doctors. The liner notes included
trol. In 1961, three influential critiques tioning.’” Spitzer noted that plenty of claims about the benefits that patients
appeared. “Asylums,” by the sociologist homosexuals didn’t suffer distress (ex- would experience if the drug was pre-
Erving Goffman, compared mental hos- cept as a result of stigma and discrimi- scribed for them.
pitals to prisons and concentration camps, nation) and had no difficulty function- Focus shifted from norepinephrine
places where personal autonomy was ing socially. In December, 1973, the A.P.A. to the neurotransmitter serotonin, and,
stripped from “inmates.” Michel Fou- removed homosexuality from the DSM. in 1988, Prozac appeared, soon followed
cault’s history of psychiatry, “Madness by other selective serotonin reuptake in-
and Civilization,” cast the mentally ill as oday, around one in six Americans hibitors (SSRIs). Promotional material
an oppressed group and the medical es-
tablishment as a tool for suppressing re-
T takes a psychotropic drug of some
kind. The medication era stretches back
from GlaxoSmithKline couched the
benefits of its SSRI Paxil in cozy terms:
sistance. Finally, Thomas Szasz, in “The more than sixty years and is the most “Just as a cake recipe requires you to use
Myth of Mental Illness,” argued that psy- significant legacy of the biological ap- flour, sugar, and baking powder in the
chiatric diagnoses were too vague to meet proach to psychiatry. It has its roots in right amounts, your brain needs a fine
scientific medical standards and that it the thirties, when experiments on rodents chemical balance.”
was a mistake to label people as being suggested that paranoid behavior was Yet, despite the phenomenal success
ill when they were really, as he termed caused by high dopamine levels in the of Prozac, and of other SSRIs, no one
it, “disabled by living”—dealing with vi- brain. The idea that brain chemistry could has been able to produce definitive ex-
cissitudes that were a natural part of life. offer a pathogenesis for mental illness led perimental proof establishing neuro-
By the early seventies, such critiques researchers to hunt for chemical imbal- chemical imbalances as the pathogene-
had entered the mainstream. Activists ances, and for medications to treat them. sis of mental illness. Indeed, quite a lot
created the Insane Liberation Front, the In 1954, the F.D.A., for the first time, of evidence calls the assumption into
Mental Patients’ Liberation Project, and approved a drug as a treatment for a men- question. Clinical trials have stirred up
the Network Against Psychiatric As- tal disorder: the antipsychotic chlorprom- intense controversy about whether an-
sault. Psychiatry, they argued, labelled azine (marketed with the brand name tidepressants greatly outperform the pla-
people disturbed in order to deprive Thorazine). The pharmaceutical indus- cebo effect. And, while SSRIs do boost
them of freedom. try vigorously promoted it as a biological serotonin, it doesn’t appear that people
Challenges to the legitimacy of psy- solution to a chemical problem. One ad with depression have unusually low se-
chiatry forced the profession to exam- claimed that Thorazine “reduces or elimi- rotonin levels. What’s more, advances
ine the fundamental question of what nates the need for restraint and seclusion; in psychopharmacology have been in-
did and did not constitute mental illness. improves ward morale; speeds release of cremental at best; Harrington quotes
Homosexuality, for instance, had been hospitalized patients; reduces destruction the eminent psychiatrist Steven Hyman’s
considered a psychiatric disorder since of personal and hospital property.” By assessment that “no new drug targets or
the time of Krafft-Ebing. But, in 1972, 1964, some fifty million prescriptions had therapeutic mechanisms of real signifi-
the annual A.P.A. meeting featured a been filled. The income of its maker— cance have been developed for more
panel discussion titled “Psychiatry: Friend Smith, Kline & French—increased eight- than four decades.” This doesn’t mean
or Foe to Homosexuals?” One panelist, fold in a period of fifteen years. that the available psychiatric medication
disguised with a mask and a wig, and Next came sedatives. Approved in isn’t beneficial. But some drugs seem to
using a voice-distorting microphone, said, 1955, meprobamate (marketed as Mil- work well for some people and not oth-
“I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist. town and Equanil) was hailed as a “peace ers, and a patient who gets no benefit
I, like most of you in this room, am a pill” and an “emotional aspirin.” Within from one may do well on another. For
member of the A.P.A. and am proud to a year, it was the best-selling drug in a psychiatrist, writing a prescription re-
be a member.” He addressed the emo- America, and by the close of the fifties mains as much an art as a science.
tional suffering caused by social attitudes, one in every three prescriptions written Harrington’s book closes on a som-
and called for the embrace of “that lit- in the United States was for meprobamate. bre note. In America, the final decade
tle piece of humanity called homosexu- An alternative, Valium, introduced in of the twentieth century was declared
ality.” He received a standing ovation. 1963, became the most commonly pre- the Decade of the Brain. But, in 2010,
Homosexuality was still listed as a scribed drug in the country the next year the director of the National Institute of
disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical and remained so until 1982. Mental Health reflected that the initia-
tive hadn’t produced any marked in-
crease in rates of recovery from mental
illness. Harrington calls for an end to
triumphalist claims and urges a willing-
ness to acknowledge what we don’t know.
lthough psychiatry has yet to find

A the pathogenesis of most mental
illness, it’s important to remember that
medical treatment is often beneficial
even when pathogenesis remains un-
known. After all, what I was taught
about peptic ulcers and stress wasn’t en-
tirely useless; though we now know that
stress doesn’t cause ulcers, it can exac- “I feel like I play better on clay.”
erbate their symptoms. Even in instances
where the discovery of pathogenesis has
produced medical successes, it has often
• •
worked in tandem with other factors.
Without the discovery of H.I.V. we potential patients are more knowledge- erable side effects, including depression.
would not have antiretroviral drugs, and able than ever about the range of treat- My patient had been widowed and she
yet the halt in the spread of the disease ments available. In addition to medica- had no children. “My pupils are my kids,”
owes much to simple innovations, such tion and talk therapy, there have been she said. Unable to teach, she missed the
as safe-sex education and the distribu- other approaches, such as cognitive-be- uplift of the classroom. She told me that
tion of free needles and condoms. havioral therapy, which was propounded she was anxious and had been unable to
Still, the search for pathogenesis in in the seventies by the psychiatrist Aaron sleep well; she knew that the treatment
psychiatry continues. Genetic analysis Beck. He posited that depressed individ- might not help, and would make her feel
may one day shed light on the causes of uals habitually felt unworthy and help- sick. In the past, she had experienced de-
schizophrenia, although, even if current less, and that their beliefs could be “un- pression, and, before I administered in-
hypotheses are borne out, it would likely learned” with training. An experiment in terferon, I wanted her to consult a psy-
take years for therapies to be developed. 1977 showed that cognitive-behavioral chiatrist at the hospital who served as a
Recent interest in the body’s microbi- therapy outperformed one of the lead- liaison between his department and the
ome has renewed scrutiny of gut bacte- ing antidepressants of the time. Thanks oncology unit. He was in his early six-
ria; it’s possible that bacterial imbalance to neuroscience, we can demonstrate that ties, with a graying beard and a wry sense
alters the body’s metabolism of dopa- cognitive-behavioral therapy causes neu- of humor: the staff often remarked that
mine and other molecules that may con- ronal changes in the brain. (This is also he reminded them of Freud. But, unlike
tribute to depression. Meanwhile, Ed- true of learning a new language or a mu- Freud, he was not dogmatic. He treated
ward Bullmore, the chief of psychiatry sical instrument.) It may be that the more his patients, variously, with medications,
at Cambridge University, argues that the we discover about the brain the easier it talk therapy, hypnosis, and relaxation tech-
pathogenesis of mental disorders will be will be to disregard the apparent divide niques, often combining several of these.
deciphered by linking the workings of between mind and body. It was a pragmatic, empirical approach,
the mind to that of the immune system. In the late nineties, as an oncologist, trying to find what worked for each pa-
Bullmore’s evidence, presented in his re- I treated a teacher in her fifties suffer- tient. I admired his humility and reflected
cent book, “The Inflamed Mind” (Pic- ing from metastatic melanoma. It had that his field was not so unlike my own,
ador), is largely epidemiological: inflam- spread from her upper arm to lymph where, despite a growing knowledge of
matory illness in childhood is associated nodes in one of her armpits and her neck. the pathogenesis of cancer, one could not
with adult depression, and people with The surgeon had removed as much of precisely predict whether a patient would
inflammatory autoimmune disorders like the disease as he could, and referred her benefit from a treatment or suffer point-
rheumatoid arthritis are often depressed. to me because I had previously conducted lessly from its side effects. In some sense,
It’s too early to say whether any of early clinical trials of an agent called in- everything my colleague and I did for the
these hypotheses could hold the key to terferon. Interferon is a naturally occur- patient was in the end biological. Words
mental illness. More important, we’d do ring protein that our bodies produce as can alter, for better or worse, the chemi-
better not to set so much store by the part of the immune response to infec- cal transmitters and circuits of our brain,
idea of a single key. It’s more useful to tion. Initially hailed as a possible pana- just as drugs or electroconvulsive therapy
think in terms of cumulative advances in cea for all cancers, interferon eventually can. We still don’t fully understand how
the field. Many people have been helped, proved beneficial for some twenty per this occurs. But we do know that all these
and the stigma both of severe mental ill- cent of patients with metastatic mela- treatments are given with a common pur-
ness and of fleeting depressive episodes noma. But the treatment required high pose based on hope, a feeling that surely
has been vastly reduced. Practitioners and doses, which sometimes caused consid- has its own therapeutic biology. 
dealers and collectors. An implied re
THE ART WORLD sistance to commerce estranges many
of the artists from an art world in which,
NOT WAVING
like an alien spaceship, the market ab
ducts appealing new talents and whisks
them far aloft of colloquy with their less
The Whitney Biennial in an age of anxiety. seductive contemporaries. Polarization
in the nation splits left from right. In
BY PETER SCHJELDAHL the congenitally liberal precincts of art,
it is more effectively vertical, between
up and down. Beyond that, there’s the
eternal futility of attempts to reconcile
ethical right and wrong with aesthetic
good and bad. These scales of value op
erate on different neural networks. In a
pinch, ambition rules—and you never
know when appearing in a Whitney Bi
ennial will alert the spaceship. It seems
notable that at a moment when the
Whitney is being fiercely criticized, and
has been picketed, for having on its board
a man whose businesses include the
manufacture of tear gas that has been
used against migrants at the Mexican
border, exactly one invited artist, Mi
chael Rakowitz, withdrew from the Bi
ennial in protest. That leaves troubled
conscience to register as nervous de
pression, as seen in fine but dispiriting
photographs of the American heartland
by Curran Hatleberg, and in Eddie Ar
royo’s wistful paintings of dilapidated
buildings that are imperilled by gen
trification in the Little Haiti neighbor
hood of Miami.
There’s a sense of inevitability about
the show, with the Whitney doing its job
of faithfully summarizing some preva
“ Young Man Wearing a Maternity Bust (from the Makonde),” by John Edmonds. lent trends in recent art. It follows on
the awkwardly zestful Biennial of 2017,
“ T echnology will surely drown us.
The individual is disappearing
irresponsible joy of aesthetic experience
is only fitfully one of them. Nearly all
which, having been assembled, by and
large, before the 2016 national election,
rapidly. We’ll eventually be nothing but the artists are technically adept in me seemed pointed toward a future that
numbered ants. The group thing grows.” diums that include photography, video, was abruptly kaput. I think of that as
So said Marcel Duchamp to an inter and performance, as well as painting and the Hillary Clinton Memorial Bien
viewer in 1966, as quoted in the cata sculpture, but most of the work, though nial. You can’t accuse the present one—
logue of the 2019 Whitney Biennial, by charming at times, is derivative in form, call it the PostTraumatic Stress Edi
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND COMPANY, NEW YORK
Adam Weinberg, the museum’s direc recycling modes that would not surprise tion of the eightysevenyearold ritual
tor. Weinberg has in mind the delete any artschool student of the past quar event—of lacking currency. Its mood
rious effects of social media, but Du ter century. Lucas Blalock’s photographic runs to petrified anxiety and halfhearted
champ’s bull’seye prophecy could do as images of normal interiors inhabited by defiance: artists, with their sensitive an
a capsule review of this Biennial. With surreal whatsits are suavely sensual, and tennae, having picked up the worst of
scarce exceptions, the mostly youthful studio photographs by John Edmonds the maddening static. Thus Kota Eza
artists gravitate to identity or otherwise suggest Robert Mapplethorpe’s tony wa’s vast projected animations of foot
communitarian politics—strikingly, they classicism translated into slang. ball players kneeling to the soundtrack
are not, for the most part, militant, as if Concerning art history, Edmonds of a dirgelike national anthem, or Carissa
they had resigned themselves to ineffec aside, the show feels amnesiac. It even Rodriguez’s slow video pans inside the
tiveness, but they appear entrenched. forgets the present, as regards styles and punishingly luxurious homes of ultrarich
The show is about many things, but the ideas that have been winning favor with collectors in New York and California.
The cause of all the anguish is obvi- quin) by Diane Simpson, a veteran Chi-
ous: Trump. The predominant effect is cago artist. Their grace startles. Similarly
one of creative entropy, a defensive hud- elating is a blue wall that bears a fantas-
dling in political or coterie formations tic variety of both functional and deco-
that are pointedly indifferent when not rative store-bought metalwork by Maia
hostile to outsiders. Catalogue entries Ruth Lee. (Think of the Barnes Foun-
for some Native Americans in the show dation, in Philadelphia—whose founder,
term fellow-citizens who lack tribal blood Albert C. Barnes, interspersed the art
“settlers.” At the same time, the artists works on his walls with just such items—
are trapped in a cultural élite by their ed- absent only the Renoirs and Cézannes.)
ucation, employing sophisticated forms I was lucky to catch a rehearsal of a per-
that are inaccessible to the general pub- formance work by Brendan Fernandes
lic. If politics is about winning power that will take place at scheduled but in-
through persuasion, much of the art at frequent times: five ballet dancers in black
hand hardly qualifies as political. Instead, leotards strike varying poses on an ar-
it suggests the virulence of the classic rangement of skeletal frameworks in
American malaise: loneliness, the toxic black-painted wood. That was dreamy.
by-product of freedom which generates But visual splendor blunts, somewhat,
ad-hoc, fragile communities among peo- the polemical edge of the Native Amer-
ple who have escaped conventional back- ican Nicholas Galanin’s “White Noise,
grounds and who, after dreaming of cos- American Prayer Rug” (2018), a hanging
mopolis, wake up atomized. rug stitched with the image of a static-
My spirits revived on the museum’s filled TV screen. It’s gorgeous.
sixth-floor outdoor terrace, with a suite Weinberg and the curators Jane Pa-
of hilarious figure sculptures by Nicole netta and Rujeko Hockley bear down
Eisenman, who, at the venerable age of hard, in their catalogue essays—which
fifty-four, comes off as the show’s sole are printed, for some reason, in barely
Old Master. Eisenman, incidentally, readable, tiny light-gray type—on in-
blazed a trail, starting in the Biennial of vocations of historic crisis. Weinberg
1995, for the declaration of gender or writes, “How do artists continue to work
sexual orientation—lesbian, in her case— in the face of mass dislocation and mi-
as a negotiable theme in art. But her gration, racism and xenophobia, the cri-
solidarity is broadly bohemian, free for sis of neoliberal capitalism, the rise of
all. A bronze-and-plaster giant of inde- fascism, and the rapidly deteriorating
terminate sex, holding a stick over its environment?” I’d say probably as art-
shoulder from which empty tuna cans ists always have, by taking the world as
dangle, leads a parade of several chip- it is and competing for glory in service
per grotesques in many sizes, mediums, to some social authority, be it that of re-
and degrees of caricature and abstrac- ligion or connoisseurship, billionaires or
tion. One, on hands and knees, period- activist cohorts. The rhetorical challenge
ically emits the white mist of a fart (odor- is to adduce a unity—akin to herding
less, I promise). Eisenman specializes in cats—among a multitude of self-cen-
what might be called wholesome hys- tered interests and causes. Hockley’s
teria, cognizant of worldly and personal solution is global paranoia: “There is
disarray but refusing to be gloomy about nothing accidental about our height-
it. She is an individual in the vanishing ened states of fear, mistrust, and anxi-
sense meant by Duchamp when, in the ety. Unease is what we are meant to feel,
1966 interview, he said that “artists are what the stimuli we receive from our
New Yorker
the only people who have a chance to president, our media outlets, our twenty-
become citizens of the world, to make first-century world are meant to engen-
a good world to live in.” She stands out der.” Nobody here but us victims.
for insistently taking and generously im-
parting robust pleasures of eye and mind.
I came away from the show with a
thought not new to me, but freshly burn-
Cover Prints
The show’s other upbeat pieces tend ing: Trump is a cinch for reëlection.
to be frankly decorative. Some convey There’s always hope, but without level- newyorkerstore.com
no apparent social concern, such as the headed, practical application hope is apt
beautiful, large sculptural constructions, to meet Paul Valéry’s great, cruel defi- Heidi Goennel, August 20, 1984
derived from details of dress design or nition of the emotion: “man’s mistrust
interior décor (peplum, jabot, lambre- of the clear foresight of his mind.” 
was not about surfaces but about how
THE THEATRE people’s lives can be mangled by their
belief in surfaces. There’s a moment in
HUNGRY HEARTS
“Curse” when a character says, after an
exchange about “enemy territory,”“We’re
all white, aren’t we?” It passes so quickly
Emotional malnourishment in Sam Shepard’s “Curse of the Starving Class.” that you might not hear it, but it’s there,
in a script that was first produced when
BY HILTON ALS Shepard was only thirty-three and the
theatre world was decades away from
being “woke.” That’s what I treasure
about Shepard: his matter-of-fact ob-
servations about where his characters
stand in the world—observations that
also tell us so much about the world
they inhabit.
Another risk in weak productions of
Shepard’s work is that directors will make
too little or too much of his surrealism.
When Kinney’s staging of “Curse” be-
gins, we hear snatches of rock and roll
as the lights come up on a large, dirty
kitchen whose door to the outside world
has been busted in. Soon, the music is
interrupted by a great rumble, and the
kitchen walls break in half. (The set de-
sign is by Julian Crouch.) Having the
set self-destruct is meant to indicate, of
course, that trouble is on the way, but
why make such an overdetermined move
when Shepard clearly reveals, in the en-
suing dialogue and action, how trou-
bling the story we’re entering is?
After the walls split, we see a young
man, Wesley (Gilles Geary), picking up
what’s left of the kitchen door. His
mother, Ella (Maggie Siff ), enters, won-
dering why her son is doing what he’s
doing—cleaning up after the guy who
broke the door down, otherwise known
very time I see a fair-to-middling ard’s writing, including the types of char- as Weston (David Warshofsky), Wes-
E production of a brilliant play by the
irreplaceable Sam Shepard, who died in
acters he returned to time and again:
disgruntled drunk dads, battling spouses
ley’s father and Ella’s spouse. We don’t
see Weston for a while, but he’s every-
2017, at the age of seventy-three, I leave and siblings, forsaken lovers. But treat- where in this run-down home, or ev-
the theatre with conflicted feelings. On ing Shepard’s stage paradigms superfi- erywhere that violence and destruction
the one hand, I want you to experience cially can lead to characterizations that have taken place, including in his son’s
the extraordinary power of Shepard’s miss the point of how his figures got to and his wife’s consciousness. Ella and
alternately disciplined and unwieldy lan- be heartbroken or angry in the first place. Wesley react differently to Weston’s
guage—language that pulsates with a For instance, sprinkling sand on abuse. While Ella takes steps to get
unique imagination—but, on the other, the stage to evoke Shepard’s edge-of- away by trying to sell the old home-
I don’t want you to see and hear what America Western locales—he grew up stead, through a lawyer named Taylor
Shepard brought to the American stage on an avocado farm in Duarte, Califor- (Andrew Rothenberg), Wesley can’t
in less than ideal circumstances. You nia, near Route 66—as is done in the imagine his life as anything other than
might get the wrong idea about what current revival of his 1977 play “Curse what it is: he moves and speaks as if be-
he was up to, what he worked so hard of the Starving Class” (at the Signature, witched by the awfulness; his existence
to say. Directors and actors tend to latch under the direction of Terry Kinney), is a Daddy-dominated dream.
onto the more obvious effects in Shep- does little to get at his genius, which Still, Ella and Wesley both convey
their hurt and their ambivalence toward
Maggie Siff, as the wife of an abusive man, in Shepard’s story of a broken family. Weston’s power over them. Ella has
72 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 ILLUSTRATION BY KEITH NEGLEY
called the police because Weston threat- two—with no door on the kitchen, is
ened to kill her, but she doesn’t leave he inside or outside, meaning does he
right away; Wesley is upset that his still have power over all that he sur-
mother has summoned outside forces veys?—before starting to complain about
to their home. “It’s humiliating to have how little his family can do without
the cops come,” he says, whining a lit- him. Then, looking in that bloody fridge,
tle. “Makes me feel like we’re someone he, like his children, finds nothing:
else. . . . Makes me feel lonely.” Ella’s “zero! absolutely zero! nada!
loneliness, or the incredible amount of goose eggs! we’ve done it again!
adrenaline she has to produce in order we’ve gone and left everything
to keep her body together—I’m not up to the old man again! all the
sure about her soul; she’s not that deep— upkeep! the maintenance!”
BEST
makes her hungry. In the fridge, she In a way, Weston plays his role as a
finds some bacon and bread and, as she father perfectly: what would the patri-
fries up the last of the family’s meat, archy be without chest thumping? And
Wesley thinks about himself and his although Warshofsky can’t quite con-
father and recalls a memory: trol what he’s doing, presumably be- STUFF
cause of a lack of direction—his cast-
I was lying there on my back. I could smell
the avocado blossoms. I could hear the coyotes. mates are under-directed, too, and they
I could hear stock cars squealing down the compensate for it by either underplay-
street. I could feel myself in my bed in my ing or overplaying their roles—if you
room in this house in this town in this state in scrape away the bombast, you can see
this country. I could feel this country close like what Shepard is getting at. Weston’s
it was part of my bones. I could feel the pres-
ence of all the people outside, at night, in the only way of being a father is to exercise
dark. Even sleeping people I could feel. Even his paternal privileges, which, in Shepard-
all the sleeping animals. Dogs. Peacocks. land, include wreaking havoc, fucking
Bulls. . . . I could feel the space around me like up your kids and your wife, and squan-
a big, black world. . . . Then I heard the Pack- dering the future; we learn by the sec-
ard coming up the hill. From a mile off I could
tell it was the Packard by the sound of the ond act that, in order to pay off loan
valves. The lifters have a sound like nothing sharks, Weston has already sold the
else. Then I could picture my Dad driving it. property, to a bar owner named Ellis
Shifting unconsciously. Downshifting into sec- (Esau Pritchett, who has a lot of strength
ond for the last pull up the hill. I could feel and appeal, though Kinney doesn’t tem-
the headlights closing in. . . . My heart was
per his performance, either). As a dad,
pounding. Just from my Dad coming back.
Weston is an amalgam of brute force
The GQ
What does heartache for the wrong and regret, and that’s the only legacy Best Stuff Box
reason (is it ever the right reason?) sound that his son will ever have. We are all
is a quarterly subscription
like? Wesley’s monologue is like the a version of someone else’s story.
steady tapping of rain on a window- In a 1997 Paris Review interview, box featuring our favorite
pane: melancholy and constant. His Shepard, whose own father was an al- gadgets, grooming products,
teen-age sister, Emma (Lizzy DeClem- coholic, made a powerful point about style accessories, and
ent), on the other hand, can only howl the men he grew up around. They were beyond—all tested and
about being emotionally ripped off. By Second World War veterans, he said, endorsed by GQ’s editors.
the time she enters the action, there’s “who were disappointed in a way that
nothing left for her in the fridge, not they didn’t understand . . . men who
even the chicken she raised so that she came back from the war, had to settle
could kill it and cut it up as a demon- down, raise a family and send the kids Spring Box Includes:
stration for the 4-H Club. to school—and they just couldn’t han-
dle it.” That was what Shepard knew a MOPHIE CHARGER
ho or what can fill these people as a boy. What he didn’t know then, a JLAB WIRELESS SPEAKER
W up? Emma and Wesley keep
opening the fridge and looking for
but worked out in glorious play after
play, once he’d found his vocation, was
a ARQUISTE PARFUMEUR SCENT
a THIS IS GROUND CORD ROLL
something that’s not there—a crystal why, amid all the waste and destruc-
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MUSICAL EVENTS gram-shaped shell, which rests on giant
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CULTURE BY THE YARDS

part of the main plaza. The interiors have
an unvarnished, downtownish feel. The
main theatre, the McCourt, exists only
The Shed, a West Side venue devoted to new work, opens. when the shell is rolled out and bleacher-
style risers are set up for the audience.
BY ALEX ROSS You enter not from the plaza but from
Thirtieth Street, which, for now, still
looks like Manhattan. In the Shed’s lobby,
one finds, instead of perfumes and lux-
ury watches, an aggressively intellectual
pop-up bookstore, run by McNally Jack-
son. More than a few of the titles on
offer—“The Marx-Engels Reader,” The-
odor W. Adorno’s “Minima Moralia,”
works by Angela Davis—seem to pro-
test against the materialism all around.
The artistic director and chief exec-
utive of the Shed is the Scottish-born
impresario Alex Poots, who came to
New York, in 2011, to lead the Park Av-
enue Armory, after running the Man-
chester International Festival. He is
noted for cross-disciplinary projects that
involve notable figures in unexpected
configurations. Under his aegis, the
rock stars Damon Albarn and Rufus
Wainwright moved into opera and the
performance artist Marina Abramović
worked with the director Robert Wil-
son. The inaugural season at the Shed,
which began in April, has included
“Reich Richter Pärt,” a collaboration
between the German painter Gerhard
Richter and the composers Steve Reich
and Arvo Pärt; and “Norma Jeane Baker
of Troy,” in which the actor Ben
Whishaw and the soprano Renée Flem-
he Shed, Manhattan’s newest arts stair-climbing exercise for tourists who ing perform a text by the poet Anne
T complex, sits on the south side of
Hudson Yards, a colossal real-estate de-
haven’t yet been worn out by their trek
along the High Line. The landscaping
Carson. An ad campaign encapsulates
the philosophy: “The Shed: Where Ben
velopment that aspires to be a city unto on the central plaza has the soulless Whishaw Meets Renée Fleming.”
itself. Some twenty-five billion dollars neatness of a digital architectural ren- Collaboration is unimpeachable in
has been spent to erect an array of office dering. Several stone flower beds are theory, but Poots’s approach can lead to
towers, condominiums, and shopping strangely menacing, with jagged edges a hastily arranged packaging of over-
arcades in lower midtown, west of Tenth redolent of counterterrorism chic. The scheduled artists—Gesamtkunstwerk
Avenue. The main buildings resemble entire assemblage has a prematurely by Skype. Programming at the Armory
skyscrapers that have been expelled from dated air, like one of yesterday’s forgot- has also shown a tendency toward gi-
other cities and deposited here, their ten tomorrows. There is no trace of New gantism: the floor gets covered by water;
mismatched angles gesturing in an aes- York City’s past, its grit, its chaos. a flock of sheep wanders around the
thetic void. Corporate lobbies are done Within this oligarchic citadel, the arena; everyone says, “Wow, cool,” and
up in billionaire-supervillain décor: Shed cuts a funny, funky profile. Diller takes pictures for Instagram. As Zach-
pyramid-block walls, skeletonic hang- Scofidio + Renfro and the Rockwell ary Woolfe wrote recently, in the Times,
ing globes, gold-dusk lighting. An out- Group, the architects, have given it a de- New York has enough venues geared
door structure called the Vessel offers liberately makeshift look: its dominant toward “interchangeable boldface names
and their flashy output.” What the city
Within the oligarchic citadel of Hudson Yards, the Shed cuts a funky profile. needs is sustained support for lesser-
74 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 ILLUSTRATION BY GIACOMO GAMBINERI
known artists, at all stages of their careers. Fleming’s voice. Ultimately, though, the I turned away from the hypnotic screen
The Shed is about more than just ce- fixation on Monroe feels stale—a re- and watched them play: sometimes one
lebrity allure. This summer, it will pre- tread of an already heavily exploited art form is sufficient.
sent fifty-two emerging artists, in a se- pop-culture tragedy.
ries titled “Open Call.” Another program, “Reich Richter Pärt,” which runs he third major offering of the Shed’s
“Dis Obey,” is designed to cultivate “pro-
test and creative action” among New York
through June 2nd, is a more satisfying
construction, probably because it rests
T opening weeks was “Cornucopia,” an
exuberantly overpowering stage show by
high-school students. How such initia- on organic connections among the art- Björk, with extravagant visual designs by
tives will consort with the capitalist be- ists. Richter, an artist alert to musical the Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Mar-
hemoth of Hudson Yards remains to currents ranging from John Cage to tel and the digital artist Tobias Gremmler.
be seen. Adorno, in “Minima Moralia,” Sonic Youth, has painted while listen- Collaboration has always been an essen-
defined culture as whatever resists the ing to works by Reich and Pärt. Those tial component of Björk’s œuvre, yet her
domination of the material world. At the composers, in turn, have long been kin- various alliances with poets, visual art-
Shed, which itself cost half a billion dol- dred spirits—minimalist pioneers who ists, pop producers, fashion designers,
lars, domination is close enough to touch. invest their music with an austere spir- filmmakers, and instrument inventors all
ituality. At once exhibition and concert, lead back to a relentlessly distinctive per-
orma Jeane Baker,” a theatre piece “Reich Richter Pärt” is presented four sonal vision, one that is grounded in her
“ N with operatic elements, exem- times a day, in two gallery spaces. In singing and composing. That singleness
plifies the risks of meet-cute art-mak- one, singers who have infiltrated the of purpose sets “Cornucopia” apart from
ing. Carson’s text interweaves the stories audience give four consecutive perfor- other events at the Shed.
of Helen of Troy and Marilyn Monroe, mances of Pärt’s brief choral piece “Drei The show, which ends on June 1st,
attempting to deconstruct mythologies Hirtenkinder aus Fátima” (“Three Shep- is based largely on Björk’s most recent
of beauty. It is set in an empty New York herd Children from Fátima”). On the album, “Utopia,” although the set list also
office on New Year’s Eve, in 1963. As walls are ornately abstract wallpapers includes earlier songs (“Venus as a Boy,”
noises of celebration intrude from out- and tapestries that Richter created for “Isobel,” “Hidden Place,” “Mouth’s Cra-
side, a nervously fidgeting young man, the occasion. The day I was there, mem- dle”). Björk’s lyrics often gesture toward
played by Whishaw, begins a rambling, bers of the Choir of Trinity Wall Street a world in which humanity finds bal-
opaque monologue. A stenographer, made a sound at once immaculate and ance with nature. The visual dimension
played by Fleming, arrives to transcribe vital. Although the music felt distant of “Cornucopia” elaborates on that mythic
his words; it emerges that the mono- from Richter’s images—simple and som- vision, conjuring exotic plant life and an-
logue is an adaptation of Euripides’ bre set against bright and busy—the ex- imal forms on which Björk’s face is some-
“Helen” garlanded with Monroe motifs. perience enigmatically cohered. times superimposed. Pictures of intact
As Whishaw spins out modern-ancient The second gallery is given over to glaciers accompany the hopeful mani-
parallels, including a comparison of an animated film based on Richter’s art festo of “Future Forever” (“Imagine a
Arthur Miller to Menelaus, he strips book “Patterns,” in which an abstraction future and be in it”). The ensemble in-
down and changes into drag, eventually is successively subdivided, mirrored, and cludes the Hamrahlid Choir, from Ice-
assuming Monroe’s look in “The Seven subdivided again, until it is reduced to land; Viibra, an all-female flute septet;
Year Itch.” Fleming, meanwhile, becomes thin stripes of color. The film, directed harp, percussion, and electronics; the ex-
increasingly involved in the shaping of by Richter and Corinna Belz, reverses perimental gospel-inflected musician ser-
the text, breaking into flights of jazz-in- that process, moving from simple stripes pentwithfeet; an echo chamber; and two
flected song. In a predictable climax, to complex shapes. For the occasion, deep-bass organ pipes, which descend
Whishaw ingests champagne and pills, Reich wrote a thirty-seven-minute score dramatically from the ceiling for “Body
reënacting Monroe’s fatal overdose. for fourteen players, titled “Reich/Rich- Memory.” (“The body memory kicks in,
The performers handle their often ter.” It is one of the composer’s strongest and I trust the unknown / Unfathom-
perplexing assignments adroitly. Whi- works in recent years, recapturing the able imagination / Surrender to future.”)
shaw recites the torrent of text with spacious, swirling beauty of “Music for Interlaced through these voluptuous
pinpoint flair, his herky-jerky physical- 18 Musicians,” his classic piece of the hallucinations are premonitions about
ity suggesting the young Anthony Per- nineteen-seventies. At times, sound and what kind of dystopia might arise if hu-
kins. Fleming sings beautifully, as is her image achieve an exhilarating synchro- manity continues on its present path.
wont, and finds an understated wit in nicity, as when stripes are hurtling across Near the end of the show, the audience
the predicament of an upright stenog- the screen and Reich’s instruments are is shown a stark video message by the
rapher caught up in Whishaw’s obses- racing in parallel motion. The daunting teen-age Swedish activist Greta Thun-
sion.The director, Katie Mitchell, known task of giving twenty-four performances berg, who has inspired climate-change
for her severe, oblique productions of a week is divided between the new-mu- strikes by schoolchildren around the
theatre and opera (including George sic groups Ensemble Signal and the In- world. “The adults are not mature enough
Benjamin’s “Written on Skin”), gives ternational Contemporary Ensemble. to tell it like it is,” Thunberg says. A sim-
ominous momentum to the proceed- During my visit, members of the latter, ilar kind of radical innocence has always
ings. The composer Paul Clark creates under the direction of Jeffrey Means, at- dwelled in Björk’s work—fantasy as a
arresting soundscapes from samples of tained a gleaming precision. For a while, weapon for change. 
which to make good on their lack of
THE CURRENT CINEMA horseplay. Time to saddle up.
Here, again, Wilde swerves aside
AWKWARD AGES
from expectations. I was bracing my-
self for the girls to become party
beasts—like the boys of “Superbad”
“Booksmart” and “The Souvenir.” (2007), say, another tribute to pre-grad-
uation rites. The trouble is that to be a
BY ANTHONY LANE party beast you must first find your
party. Molly and Amy don’t even have
wo films, two female directors, them, it turns out, are also headed to top the right address, so they resort to track-
T and two relationships tested to the
hilt. Olivia Wilde’s “Booksmart” takes
colleges, and the third, a stoner with flow-
ing locks, is going straight to Google.
ing it down in (where else?) the school
library. Such is the wise and humbling
place now, in Los Angeles, in the final Molly is aghast. “You guys don’t even rule of “Booksmart”: try as you might
twenty-four hours of high school. Jo- care about school,” she says. Back comes to flee your regular self, you always end
anna Hogg’s “The Souvenir” is set in the reply: “No, we just don’t only care up bumping into it. The profanities that
the loftier reaches of London society, about school.” punctuate the film are exclamation
in the early nineteen-eighties. The first The lesson of this memorable mo- marks rather than darts of malice; drugs
movie is as headlong as the second is ment is that Wilde and her all-female are not snorted, smoked, or injected but
served on strawberries; and Amy gets
to make out, though not with the girl
whom she has craved all year. The fun-
niest loser is Jared (Skyler Gisondo), a
rich kid who longs to be a wild child.
Offering the girls a ride in his growl-
ing car, he puts on music to boost the
mood, except that it isn’t music. It’s
an audiobook of “Lean In,” by Sheryl
Sandberg. Pump it up, Jared!
Now and then, amid the frenzied quest
for fun, we are offered time-outs. Wilde
switches to stop-motion animation, for
reasons I won’t disclose, with Amy and
Molly morphing into dolls, and then
slows for a lyrical interlude below the
surface of a swimming pool, where Amy,
like a lonely mermaid, watches the other
swimmers sport and embrace. I haven’t
Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever star in Olivia Wilde’s film. been so swept up in the aquatic since
“Leaving Las Vegas” (1995), in which
patient. What binds the two directors, squad of screenwriters—Susanna Fogel, Nicolas Cage, as an alcoholic, carried on
though, is how fanatically each is deter- Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, and drinking underwater, beer in hand. As
mined to let nothing—nothing witnessed, Katie Silberman—will not be satisfied for conclusions, “Booksmart” nods to
heard, or felt—escape her grasp. with the formulas that govern the high- “Dazed and Confused” (1993), still the
“Booksmart” is about Amy (Kaitlyn school movie. Tutored by decades of the apex of the high-school flick, for that
Dever) and her best friend, Molly (Beanie genre, we wait for the class goddess to blissed-out, morning-after feel. Not much
Feldstein). One is louder than the other, pal up with the slacker (as in “Say Any- is said, as the graduates bid farewell;
one is gay and one is straight, and they thing,” from 1987), or with the dweeb heads are still too fuzzy, hearts too full.
share pretty much everything, including (as in “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” from One last thought: Beanie Feldstein,
the useful revelation that a plush panda, 2009). But those mismatches, however endearingly semi-tough as Molly, hap-
in Amy’s bedroom, can be pressed into cute, reek of male self-congratulation, pens to be the younger sister of Jonah
service as a sex toy. Both girls have stud- whereas Wilde is unerringly focussed Hill, who was in “Superbad,” and I like
ied hard in school—so hard that they’ve on her heroines, and on their funda- to imagine the Feldstein household, at
missed out on the jinks, high and low, mental right to get things wrong. So breakfast time, around the turn of the
that are supposed to temper the toil. In stunned are they to realize that hedo- millennium. Picture the scene. Jonah,
the school bathroom, Molly confronts nists can be nerds, and vice versa, that aged sixteen, announces that, one day
three of her fellow-seniors, who have had only one option remains: with gradua- soon, he’s going to star in a film about
all the jinks, and reminds them that she tion slated for the next morning, Molly high school. Beanie, aged all of six, says
has earned a place at Yale. But two of and Amy have precisely one night in no, she’s going to star in a film about
76 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 ILLUSTRATION BY SON EUNKYOUNG
high school, with lots of rude words None of which is going to be easy, rich to upbraid or to beguile, that makes
in it, and it’ll be much better than his. since Julie has an apartment in Knights- Burke’s Anthony so unignorable.
“No, it won’t.” “Yes, it will.” The argu- bridge, not far from Harrods—“Good Here, to the best of our knowledge,
ment rages. Mrs. Feldstein is forced to old Harrods,” a friend says, when Julie is the deal. Anthony is the pedagogue,
step in: “Maybe you’re both right, O.K.? brings home fillet steak for dinner. At Julie the pupil; he is the corrupter, she
Both movies will be great, and that’s one point, we hear a boom nearby: the the prey. (Swinton Byrne delivers a poi-
that. Who wants eggs?” Harrods bomb, which was planted by gnant portrait of the Jamesian innocent,
the I.R.A., in 1983, and killed six people. at once hesitant and avid.) For a while,
he less you know about “The Sou- (Rosalind, over Sunday lunch, says of the though, they sleep together like brother
T venir” before you see it, the better.
Not because the story squirms with
Irish question, “It’s terribly complicated.”
There it is, the desire not to know. Can
and sister, dividing the bed between
them, and, over dinner, an inquiring
twists, or because there are villains to we blame her?) The period is lightly guest (Richard Ayoade)—peacockish
be unmasked, but simply because Jo- summoned up, partly through music— but astute, like Anthony Blanche in
anna Hogg’s film is all about knowing— hark to the Pretenders and the Specials— “Brideshead Revisited”—remarks, “I’m
about carnal knowledge, about the but also by the sight of a handwritten trying to work out where you two tes-
youthful urge to know more of life, and letter being slipped beneath Julie’s door. sellate here. How, what, why, when?” He
also, if that life grows bitter to the taste, Ah, the billet-doux! For centuries a main- also lets slip, in passing, a fact that both
about choosing not to know. As Henry stay of romantic pacts, it has all but van- clarifies the tale and turns it completely
James once pointed out, “We pay more ished from the practice of modern love. on its head. We reckon that we know
for some kinds of knowledge than those The letter is the first of many from these lovers, but we don’t. They may be
particular kinds are worth.” Indeed. Anthony (Tom Burke), who is older, a mystery to each other.
The heroine is Julie (Honor Swin- wiser, naughtier, and more Delphic than This is Hogg’s most disconcerting
ton Byrne), who hails from a politely Julie. He wears pin-striped suits and work to date. Like her previous movies,
prosperous family. The taxonomy of monogrammed velvet slippers, takes her such as “Unrelated” (2007), it proceeds
the British class system is as complex out to tea, buys her lingerie, and gently in lengthy takes, and the camera, more
as that of tree frogs or lichens, and I planes down her high ideals. “Don’t often than not, prefers to keep its dis-
would place Julie somewhere toward be worthy. Be arrogant. It’s much more tance, the better to observe her charac-
the lower end of the middle-upper-mid- sexy,” he says to Julie. “Do you find your- ters—the human animals—at play. Look
dle. Her mother, Rosalind—kind and self sexy?” she asks. “Yes, all the time,” at Anthony and Julie in her apartment,
calming, yet tugged by an undertow of he replies, taunting her, and adding, “It’s one in the kitchen and one in the lounge;
fretfulness—is played by Tilda Swin- hard for me to get through the day.” He the wall between them, filmed from the
ton, Swinton Byrne’s mother. The movie claims that he works for the Foreign side, bisects the couple as though we
begins with photographs of Sunder- Office, though I still can’t decide whether were watching a split screen. It’s a sorry
land, in the industrial Northeast, worlds I believe him. It’s a sumptuous perfor- sight, all the sorrier when you learn how
away from Julie’s world; like many folk mance from Burke, whom I’ve seen on closely, and in what depth of detail, “The
with an education and a conscience, TV playing the nefarious Dolokhov, in Souvenir” is modelled on Hogg’s own
she feels the shame of that gulf and the BBC’s “War and Peace,” and on- past. She has returned to the scene of
plans to bridge it, not least by apply- stage as the agonized pastor in Ibsen’s the time, creating and re-creating her
ing to film school. “I want to be really “Rosmersholm,” and who gives off an younger self. So much for Sunderland.
aware about what’s going on around aroma of loucheness as if it were expen- Go with what you know. 
me,” she says to the admissions board. sive cologne. But he’s also solidly built,
A movie about Sunderland, she thinks, and it’s the compound of the bruiser NEWYORKER.COM
is the sort of project she ought to make. and the cad, with a voice sufficiently Richard Brody blogs about movies.
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CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST
Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose
three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Pat Achilles,
must be received by Sunday, May 26th. The finalists in the May 13th contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the June 10th & 17th issue. Anyone age
thirteen or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.
THIS WEEK’S CONTEST
“ ”
..........................................................................................................................
THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION
“It’s about time they settled down and razed a village.”

Steve Everhart, Tyrone, Pa.
“Did you see the rock he gave her?” “Worse than a cold. It’s a common cold.”
Robert Blake, Coopersburg, Pa. Donald B. Benson, San Jose, Calif.
“I love that no one wears the pants in their relationship.”

Richard Berman, Amherst, Mass.
UNTIL THE
BOOK BY JOHN LOGAN DIRECTED BY ALEX TIMBERS

CHOREOGRAPHED BY SONYA TAYEH MUSIC SUPERVISION, ORCHESTRATIONS & ARRANGEMENTS BY JUSTIN LEVINE
B ROADWAY P R E VI E WS B EG I N
AL HIRSCHFELD THEATRE • 302 W 45TH ST, NEW YORK, NY 10036 • 877.250.2929 • MOULINROUGEMUSICAL.COM

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simplicity On a hot day in New York

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THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 13

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THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 15

Fibre-Rich Sculptures, Moon Shots, Wild Things Onstage

of his “Cosmoscorps” collection. The

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A World of Art, Research, Conservation, and Philanthropy.

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Fragment 31 is one of the longest ex-

HATE AND LOVE

N in 2016, Robbie Mullen, a

atthew Collins has a stout frame

TYPOGRAPHY BY NICO SCHWEIZER

T father’s boat in the middle of

62 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019

lthough psychiatry has yet to ﬁnd

CULTURE BY THE YARDS

THE NEW YORKER, MAY 27, 2019 77

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION