The New Yorker August 15 2022

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AUGUST 15, 2022
4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

17 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Jill Lepore on reviving the woolly mammoth;
sharks on ice; the last queen of Sunset Boulevard;
wooing the bonsai cognoscenti; cuddling goes pro.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Jane Mayer 22 Goodbye, Columbus
The right-wing takeover of swing-state legislatures.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Jenn Knott 29 Why You Shouldn’t Room with James Taylor
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS
Alex Ross 30 Laughter in the Dark
How Ernst Lubitsch modernized the Hollywood comedy.
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
Susan B. Glasser 36 Trump’s Last General
and Peter Baker The Pentagon’s standoff with a rogue President.
ANNALS OF INQUIRY
Gideon Lewis-Kraus 48 Do Better
Preaching the gospel of effective altruism.
FICTION
Sana Krasikov 60 “The Muddle”
THE CRITICS
POP MUSIC
Carrie Battan 70 Beyoncé hits the dance floor.
BOOKS
Lauren Michele Jackson 73 Josephine Baker’s life as a spy.
75 Briefly Noted
ON TELEVISION
Naomi Fry 78 Nathan Fielder and “The Rehearsal.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 80 “Bullet Train,” “Bodies Bodies Bodies.”
POEMS
Craig Morgan Teicher 43 “Birthday Poem”
Jane Hirshfield 64 “Manifest”
COVER
Gayle Kabaker “Summer Walk”
DRAWINGS Benjamin Schwartz, Jason Adam Katzenstein, Seth Fleishman, Ali Solomon, E. S. Glenn, David Sipress,
Roz Chast, William Haefeli, Julia Suits, Frank Cotham, Amy Hwang, Asher Perlman, Zachary Kanin, Navied Mahdavian,
Dan Misdea, Sofia Warren, Lars Kenseth, Shannon Wheeler SPOTS Christoph Abbrederis
CONTRIBUTORS
Gideon Lewis-Kraus (“Do Better,” p. 48) Jane Mayer (“Goodbye, Columbus,” p. 22),
is a staff writer. He has published the the magazine’s chief Washington cor-
memoir “A Sense of Direction.” respondent, won a 2021 Freedom of
the Press Award. She is the author of
Susan B.Glasser and Peter Baker (“Trump’s “Dark Money.”
Last General,” p. 36), a staff writer and
the Times’ chief White House corre- Craig Morgan Teicher (Poem, p. 43) was
spondent, respectively, are the authors a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. His books
of “The Divider: Trump in the White include “Welcome to Sonnetville, New
House, 2017-2021,” which is due out in Jersey” and “We Begin in Gladness.”
September.
Sana Krasikov (Fiction, p. 60) has pub-
Alex Ross (“Laughter in the Dark,” p. 30) lished the story collection “One More
became The New Yorker’s music critic Year” and the novel “The Patriots.”
in 1996. His latest book is “Wagnerism.”
Anthony Lane (The Current Cinema,
Jane Hirshfield (Poem, p. 64) most re- p. 80) has been a film critic for the mag-
cently published “Ledger.” Her next azine since 1993.
collection, “The Asking,” will be out
in 2023. Jenn Knott (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 29),
a television and comedy writer, is based
Ben McGrath (The Talk of the Town, in Bavaria, Germany.
p. 18) has been a staff writer since 2003.
His new book is “Riverman.” Lauren Michele Jackson (Books, p. 73),
a contributing writer at The New Yorker,
Gayle Kabaker (Cover) is a visual artist is an assistant professor at Northwest-
and a writer. “Vital Voices,” a book fea- ern University and the author of the
turing her portraits of women, came essay collection “White Negroes.” She
out in 2020. is at work on a new book.
THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM
LEFT: MARK PETERSON / REDUX; RIGHT: SIMON LANDREIN
THE POLITICAL SCENE CULTURE DESK

Benjamin Wallace-Wells on Lauren Collins recounts how the
Liz Cheney, who has put her name Kevin fell from grace in France,
career on the line to end Trump’s. where some now consider it gauche.
Download the New Yorker app for the latest news, commentary, criticism,
and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008.
THE MAIL
SAVING OUR SWAMPS landscape, streams and rivers sped up,
becoming channelized and disconnected
Annie Proulx’s inspiring article about from their floodplains. This hydrologic
the importance of preserving our swamp transformation resulted in the loss of
land reminded me of a time, in the early millions of acres of wetland habitat—
nineteensixties, when the Port Author an ecological nightmare.
ity of New York and New Jersey, seek Proulx is spot on in capturing “the
ing to relocate and expand Newark Air unequalled joy” of wetland restoration.
port, decided to put a new complex in Those efforts are immensely more suc
the Great Swamp, a twelvesquaremile cessful when paired with the reintroduc
wetland (“Swamped,” July 4th). It seemed tion of the North American beaver, which
like a done deal until a local resident, is well suited to nurturing, repairing,
Helen Fenske, began promoting the and resaturating our drying continent.
swamp as an invaluable habitat for wild Dave Schaub
life and migrating birds, and warned Executive Director
1
that an airport on the site would threaten Inland Northwest Land Conservancy
the area’s water sources. Spokane, Wash.
My family and I lived near the swamp
then. We wondered what, besides mos SOUNDS RIGHT
quitoes and the odd turtle, could pos
BE A
sibly want to live in that bog. But we Anna Wiener’s piece about Foley art
certainly didn’t want an airport in our ists and their pursuit of the ideal sound
FORCE
back yard, so we listened—and became was a delightful read (“Noise Makers,”
alarmed. Numerous garbage collectors July 4th). I’ve worked as a soundeffects
were using the swamp as a landfill, pol editor in film and television for thirty
luting the streams. So the community
rallied behind Fenske and her proposal
to save the Great Swamp.
years, and I can attest to the great ex
citement that people in my profession
feel when they find the sound that fits
FOR GOOD
Today, the Great Swamp National the moment. I’ve also felt that pleasure
Wildlife Refuge, which lies just twenty when witnessing my peers’ creative de With a bequest to
six miles west of Times Square, is cisions in action. A favorite example
a vital nature preserve and hiking area; was produced by the remarkable Foley
The New York
the Helen Fenske Visitor Center ed artist Andy Malcolm and the sound Community Trust,
ucates people of all ages on the urgency effects editor David Evans for David you can champion
of conserving wetlands. And Newark’s Cronenberg’s 1991 film, “Naked Lunch.” the causes and
airport is thriving, right where it al In one scene, a character’s use of hal
ways was. lucinogens turns his typewriter into a communities you
Mary Carey Churchill scarablike beetle. When the insect tries care about—for
West Palm Beach, Fla. to escape capture, it runs into a door. generations to come.
The sound we hear is not that of a giant
The dewatering of North America that bug crashing against it but, rather, the
Proulx describes was under way well sharp ding of the typewriter’s margin
before the nineteenth century, when bell. It’s a perfect artistic choice.
westward expansionists began cutting Jane Tattersall
down forests and farmers began drain Supervising Sound Editor
ing and tilling fields. By the time those Formosa Group
people were “reclaiming” land for their Toronto, Ont.
use, fur traders had been wreaking havoc
on our wetlands for almost two hun • Kickstart your charitable legacy
dred years, through the commodifica Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, with NYC’s community foundation.
tion of beavers. Their dams had once address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to giving@nyct-cfi.org
slowed and spread water through vir themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in (212) 686-0010 x363
tually every watershed on the continent. any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
But, as beavers were removed from the of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
giveto.nyc
FA L L P R E V I E W
AUGUST 10 – 16, 2022
GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
The Brooklyn-based sculptor and L.G.B.T.Q. activist Leilah Babirye, who was born in Kampala, Uganda,
in 1985, was granted asylum in the U.S. in 2018, after being outed by her country’s notoriously homophobic
press. Through Nov. 27, “Agali Awamu (Togetherness),” a towering ensemble of wooden figures (pictured
above), which Babirye carved with a chisel and a chainsaw, is on view in Brooklyn Bridge Park as part of
“Black Atlantic,” a group exhibition from the Public Art Fund reflecting on themes of the African diaspora.
PHOTOGRAPH BY DONAVON SMALLWOOD

THE THEATRE
FALL PREVIEW Sharon D. Clarke as Willy and Linda

Loman; and “Topdog/Underdog”
K-Pop, New Stoppard, Revivals with a Twist (Sept. 27, Golden), Suzan-Lori Parks’s
Pulitzer-winning play, from 2001, star-
Five years ago, the sly, spectacular musi- which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama ring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey
cal “KPOP” transformed two floors of a in 2018 and braids together two stories, Hawkins as small-time-hustler brothers.
building in Hell’s Kitchen into a fictitious each about a person with a disability and Off Broadway, the intrepid Elevator
Korean hit factory. Audience members, a caretaker, makes its belated Broadway Repair Service stages “Baldwin and Buck-
divided into groups, shuffled through début, at Manhattan Theatre Club. And ley at Cambridge” (Sept. 24, Public),
various rooms, following stars in the three revivals showcase an abundance a retelling of the famous 1965 debate
making through choreography sessions of Black talent: August Wilson’s “The between James Baldwin and William F.
and plastic-surgery consultations, all cul- Piano Lesson” (Sept. 19, Barrymore), Buckley, Jr. Ralph Fiennes plays the
minating in a full-on concert. The show set in Pittsburgh in the thirties, directed New York power broker Robert Moses
was a flashy, immersive hit, but how could by LaTanya Richardson Jackson and in David Hare’s “Straight Line Crazy”
it translate to Broadway? We’ll find out starring Samuel L. Jackson, John David (Oct. 18, the Shed). And Ivo van Hove’s
this fall, when it opens at the Circle in Washington, and Danielle Brooks; Mi- staging of “A Little Life,” the harrowing
the Square (beginning previews Oct. 13), randa Cromwell’s revival of Arthur Mil- Hanya Yanagihara novel, comes to BAM’s
starring the real-life K-pop singer Luna. ler’s “Death of a Salesman” (Sept. 17, Howard Gilman Opera House (Oct. 20).
The show joins a busy Broadway sea- Hudson), starring Wendell Pierce and —Michael Schulman
son, including a revival of “1776,” the
Nixon-era musical that follows John
Adams as he corrals his fellow Founding
Fathers into signing the Declaration of
Independence. Taking a cue from “Ham-
ilton,” Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Pau-
lus’s Roundabout production (Sept. 16,
American Airlines) tweaks American
history, here with an entirely female, non-
binary, and trans cast. The West End hit
“& Juliet” (Oct. 28, Stephen Sondheim)
also puts a twenty-first-century twist on
an old tale, using pop anthems written
and produced by Max Martin (“Since U
Been Gone,” “Roar”) to imagine what
post-Romeo life might have been like
for Shakespeare’s heroine. Other musicals
include “Kimberly Akimbo” (Oct. 12,
Booth), David Lindsay-Abaire’s adapta-
tion of his play, from 2000, about a New
Jersey teen-ager with a condition that
causes her to rapidly, prematurely age;
Victoria Clark stars in Jessica Stone’s
production, with music by Jeanine Tesori.
And Cameron Crowe adapts his film
“Almost Famous” (Oct. 3, Bernard B.
Jacobs), based on his stint as a teen rock
journalist for Rolling Stone, with a score
by Crowe and Tom Kitt.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSH COCHRAN
Tom Stoppard’s Olivier Award-win-

ning new play, “Leopoldstadt” (Sept. 14,
Longacre), arrives from London under
the direction of Patrick Marber; inspired
by Stoppard’s own ancestry, it traces half
a century in the life of a Jewish family
in Vienna. Martyna Majok’s “Cost of
Living” (Sept. 13, Samuel J. Friedman),
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022 5

DANCE
1
As ever, it’s advisable to check in advance
to confirm engagements.
FALL PREVIEW
Odissi, Fall for Dance, Kaatsbaan Festival THE THEATRE
Some dancers transcend form. Bijayini Ukrainian folk dance, “Men of Kyiv.” The Butcher Boy
Satpathy is one of them. As a member Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, on the “What’s so great about being a grownup
anyway?” Francie Brady (Nicholas Barasch),
of the ensemble Nrityagram, based near grounds of a former horse farm in whose tale will never be mistaken for Peter
Bangalore, Satpathy was one of the most Tivoli, N.Y., has established itself as an Pan’s, sings. This new musical—based on
compelling exponents of the classical idyllic spot to watch dance. This year’s Patrick McCabe’s 1992 novel and directed
by Ciarán O’Reilly, with a book, music, and
Indian form Odissi. Since leaving the Kaatsbaan Fall Festival (Sept. 16- lyrics by Asher Muldoon—is set in the small
group, she has gone even further, ex- Oct. 1) includes “The Glass Etudes,” Irish village of Clones, in the early nine-
ploring new themes, movements, and a series of five new pieces set to Philip teen-sixties. Francie is a high-spirited lad
whose ma (Andrea Lynn Green) has men-
musical worlds. She has spent the past Glass’s “Études for Piano” by various tal-health issues and whose da (Scott Stang-
year taking in, and creating solos in re- choreographers, including the eminent land) is an unhappy drinker, but he navigates
sponse to, the Metropolitan Museum postmodernist Lucinda Childs, the bal- his small-town, small-minded environment
with optimism and enthusiasm. He’s fuelled
of Art’s paintings and sculptures, as the let choreographer Justin Peck, and the by comic books and TV; that “Twilight Zone”
museum’s artist-in-residence. Her reflec- Brazilian tap artist Leonardo Sandoval. episode in which people have pig faces has re-
tions have led to her latest work, “Dohā,” Another highlight: a revival of Mark ally got into his head. Porcine demons invade
his thoughts—and our stage—encouraging
in which she considers the relationships Morris’s “Gloria,” from 1981, in which Francie to act out in increasingly sociopathic
between prayer and play, precision and the dancers crawl, run, fall, and exult to ways. Barasch is a fine singer and an ener-
spontaneity. It premières in the Met’s Vivaldi’s exuberant choral work of the getic presence, but the script and the songs
are prosaic, the scene transitions are clunky,
theatre on Sept. 13. same name, suggesting the joy and the and the mix of lightheartedness and violence
At New York City Center’s Fall dejection that come with being human. just doesn’t work.—Ken Marks (Irish Repertory
for Dance Festival (Sept. 21-Oct. 2), Kyle Abraham, whose first work for Theatre; through Sept. 11.)
twenty dollars gets you a triple bill of New York City Ballet, “The Runaway,”
dance works, often in wildly contrasting had people whooping in their seats, has Romeo and Juliet
styles. Take Program 3: it opens with made a new piece for the company that With color- and gender-blind casting be-
coming more common in today’s theatre, the
“Morani/Mungu”—Jamar Roberts’s premières as part of N.Y.C.B.’s fall sea- Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is mak-
extraordinary solo for himself, a reflec- son (Sept. 20-Oct. 16, David H. Koch). ing a strong case for age-blind role-playing
tion on violence and power that is half And American Ballet Theatre returns as well. Nance Williamson, playing Juliet,
and Kurt Rhoads, playing Romeo, a mar-
exorcism, half molting—and ends with (Oct. 20-30, David H. Koch) with a new ried couple in real life, have been gracing the
one of Spain’s most inventive young work by Christopher Rudd (“Lifted”), company for more than twenty years, longer
flamenco stars, María Moreno, accom- featuring an all-Black cast of dancers. than this play’s titular pair have been alive.
Friar Laurence, the lovers’ parents, and the
panied by the singer María Terremoto, The company also performs Alexei Rat- Prince of Verona are all played by younger
whose voice, as her name suggests, mansky’s “The Seasons,” a windswept actors. It doesn’t matter. Rhoads and Wil-
moves mountains. On Program 4, the suite inspired by the weather and set to liamson bring their customary intelligence,
humor, passion, and clarity to the roles. The
Kyiv City Ballet, exiled from Ukraine music by Glazunov. director, Gaye Taylor Upchurch, hasn’t fash-
by the war, performs a work inspired by —Marina Harss ioned a high-concept take; there’s no wink-
ing at the lines that reference the characters’
youth. It’s just actors playing parts, with a
fine-tuned ear to Shakespeare’s ever-clever
language and construction. Lauren Karaman
and Luis Quintero shine, as the Nurse and
Mercutio, respectively. Some skillful textual
concision and a bit of novel stage business
during the final embrace, in the Capulet
burial vault, produce a creepier-than-usual
climax.—K.M. (Running in repertory with “Mr.
1
Burns, a Post-Electric Play,” Garrison, N.Y.;
through Sept. 18.)
DANCE
A.I.M by Kyle Abraham

The requiem in Abraham’s new work “Re-
quiem: Fire in the Air of the Earth” (part
of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City)
is Mozart’s, thoroughly remixed by the
E.D.M. producer Jlin. The costumes are
by Giles Deacon: silk tunics, body bustles,
6 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022

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smock-shirt short suits. The dance language
is Abraham’s, a mix of classical, contempo-
1
ART
nation on photography—one that, with its
pictures-of-pictures theme, pertains to Col-
rary, and social styles. Dancers fall to the lier’s own appropriationist strategies. (In her
floor, convulse, and are revived.—Brian Seib- cropped closeups of women’s tears, she seems
ert (Rose Theatre; Aug. 11-13.) “The Clamor of Ornament” to wring the essence of a mythic, pop-cultural
With equal parts rigor and whimsy, this exhi- femininity from found imagery.) But the con-
bition at the Drawing Center celebrates global cerns of this show, which takes its title from
BAAND Together Dance Festival decorative traditions—vegetal, calligraphic, the brooding lyrics of the band Depeche Mode,
For the second summer in a row, five of New geometric—in materials ranging from textiles are as varied as they are interrelated. Among
York’s top dance companies—Alvin Ailey and furniture to street art and pâtisserie, span- the nearly twenty artists in this meditation
American Dance Theatre, American Ballet ning the fifteenth century to the present. The on mediation are Julie Becker, who achieves a
Theatre, Ballet Hispánico, Dance Theatre of show’s title is a play on the British architect mise-en-abyme effect in her characteristically
Harlem, and New York City Ballet—share the Owen Jones’s canonical design compendium charged interior “Whole (Scene),” from 1999;
stage for free, open-air samplers at Lincoln from 1856, “The Grammar of Ornament,” which Luigi Ghirri, known for capturing the acci-
Center. Each program is a little different, attempted to establish universal principles of dental photomontages of signage and ads in
with the troupes offering some of their most style and motif. The curators—Emily King, urban space; and Melanie Schiff, whose photos
crowd-pleasing short works, but all the shows Duncan Tomlin, and Margaret-Anne Logan— featuring album covers—including a water-
include “One for All,” a new, made-for-the- draw attention to the disorderly dynamics of logged copy of Joni Mitchell’s “Blue,” seen in
occasion piece, by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, inspiration, cross-pollination, and theft. The the disorienting, poignant “Reflecting Pool,”
that features dancers from all five organiza- pairing of two nineteenth-century designs, one from 2007—underscore the show’s thread of
1
tions.—B.S. (Damrosch Park; Aug. 9-13.) by an unknown artist from present-day Pakistan, self-aware nostalgia.—Johanna Fateman (Anton
the other by the Kentish shawl designer George Kern; through Aug. 26.)
Haité, illustrates the proliferation of the pattern
Battery Dance Festival known to Anglophones as paisley. Photographs
Situated in a park at the very southern tip of of the “Second Coming House” in Niagara Falls,
Manhattan, with a view of New York Harbor the home of Prophet Isaiah Robertson, document MUSIC
and the Statue of Liberty, this fun, free-form the self-trained Christian artist’s adaptation of
festival is a mainstay of late summer in the Islamic motifs. Throughout the exhibition, the
city. In the course of a week, the Battery embellishing impulse, which might, in another Bill Frisell Three
Dance Company hosts more than thirty-five context, come across as merely striving for opu- JAZZ Not every contemporary jazz guitarist
of its fellow artists and ensembles, from as lence, appears as something closer to reverie. In a deserves to be the subject of a five-hundred-
far afield as Singapore (Lasalle Dance Singa- winning gesture of flamboyance on a budget, the plus-page biographical opus, but Bill Frisell is
pore) and Spain (Dos Proposiciones Dance informative wall labels are displayed in curved a special case. The subtitle of Philip Watson’s
Theatre), representing an eclectic mix of brackets made not of elaborate metalwork but new book, “Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer:
styles. Each show includes up to a dozen short of brightly colored card stock.—J.F. (Drawing The Guitarist Who Changed the Sound of
works, ranging from the human-rights-in- Center; through Sept. 18.) American Music,” may be hyperbolic, but it’s
spired “Threads,” by Buglisi Dance Theatre, undeniable that the mild-mannered maverick
to jazz and tap, as in Sydney Burtis’s “The has made a colossal impact. Frisell seemingly
Difference,” and Balkan rhythms and har- “New York: 1962-1964” finds his space in any musical idiom, yet his sty-
monies, as in “Balkan Bacchanal,” performed This spectacular historical show of art and docu- listic approach has little to do with flashiness.
by Tina Croll + Company. As day turns to mentation addresses an era of season-to-season— He has an uncanny feel for making each of his
night, the audience gets another, equally at times almost monthly or weekly—advances in carefully chosen notes fit, no matter the eclectic
dramatic display: the sun setting over the painting, sculpture, photography, dance, music, context. An oddly configured trio with the
Hudson.—Marina Harss (Robert F. Wagner design, fashion, and such hybrid high jinks as saxophonist Gregory Tardy and the drummer
Jr. Park; Aug. 13-19.) “happenings.” With Pop art and nascent Mini- Johnathan Blake is just the kind of setting that
malism, New York artists were turning no end of can set off Frisell’s brilliance.—Steve Futterman
tables on solemnly histrionic Abstract Expres- (Village Vanguard; Aug. 10-14.)
Rennie Harris sionism, which had established the city as the new
The Philadelphia hip-hop master Rennie Har- wheelhouse of creative origination worldwide.
ris is no stranger to the spiritual buoyancy of Instrumental to the moment was a brilliant critic Maya Jane Coles
house music. In “Lifted: A Gospel House Mu- and curator, Alan Solomon, who, as the director ELECTRONIC In late 2010, the British tech-house
sical,” now making its New York City début at of the Jewish Museum during the years bracketed d.j. Maya Jane Coles skyrocketed to fame in
the Joyce, he tells the “Oliver Twist”-like tale here, consolidated what he called “The New Art,” the club world, and in the ensuing years the
of an orphan tempted by a life of crime. What mounting the first museum retrospectives of the forthrightness of her selections, and her evident
saves the boy is his church—in the glorious trailblazers Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper pleasure in playing them, has kept her at the
form of a live gospel choir soaring over the Johns and elevating such newbie Pop phenoms scene’s forefront. Indeed, the more her style
groove of gospel house. As drama, the show as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and James has moved away from bassy house and toward
is clunky and unsophisticated. As dance and Rosenquist in tandem with radically formalist bleepy techno, the more buoyant her sets have
music, it rises, raises, even saves.—B.S. (Joyce abstract painters like Frank Stella and Kenneth become; it helps that bleepy techno is itself
Theatre; Aug. 9-14.) Noland. The eruptive early sixties launched many in a particularly buoyant phase. Coles head-
folks on all sorts of trajectories. Some artists, lines over Danielle and Despina in the Hall at
at the margins of fame, hung fire for unjustly Elsewhere; in Zone One is Bring Dat Ass with
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival belated recognition, as demonstrated here by Turtle Bugg, Toribio, and Alicia.—Michaelangelo
On the outdoor stage this week, Dance the achievements of the Spiral Group, a cadre Matos (Elsewhere; Aug. 13.)
Heginbotham revives and extends a collab- of stylistically diverse Black artists who banded
oration with the pianist Ethan Iverson, com- together in 1963. Few women at the time were
bining “Easy Win,” a quirky satire of a ballet given their due, which should accrue to them in Joyce Manor
class, with “Dance Sonata,” a kind of sequel. retrospect. A garish relief painting, from 1963, by POP PUNK A song by the pop-punk fixture Joyce
The program also features a new duet, “The the underknown Marjorie Strider, of a glamour Manor is like a one-way ticket to the band’s
Understudies,” performed by John Hegin- girl chomping on a huge red radish, could serve native Southern California: heart tattoos and
botham and Amber Star Merkens. Indoors, as an icon of Pop glee and sexual impertinence faded summer crushes are notable themes. The
at the Ted Shawn Theatre, Hubbard Street crossed with proto-feminist vexation.—Peter sensitive charm and sly edge of the music’s
Dance Chicago brings a slick collection of Schjeldahl (Jewish Museum; through Jan. 8.) tattered emotions, blown-out melodies, and
work by Ohad Naharin, Aszure Barton, and diverting abandon have placed the group’s work
others. In the festival tent, Aug. 10-13, Liz in the league of modern punk-rock classics.
Lerman summons witches and their sup- “Photographic Pictures” “Looking at your face in the dark / You don’t
pressed knowledge in “Wicked Bodies.”—B.S. This excellent group exhibition, curated by even look that smart,” the vocalist and guitar-
(Becket, Mass.; Aug. 10-14.) the artist Anne Collier, is an elegant rumi- ist Barry Johnson sings on the opener of the

Browse the store.
ART
FALL PREVIEW earliest works on view in “Gathering,”

a retrospective of the artist’s signature
Cubism, Edward Hopper, Meret Oppenheim portraits and epic landscapes at the
museum. (Opens Oct. 21.)
A picture by Wolfgang Tillmans might granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth I. The tradition of painters tricking the
be an intimate nude or a galactic ab- No, it’s not Netflix’s prequel to “The eye with still-lifes of startling realism
straction, in color or black-and-white, Crown”—it’s the Met’s exhibition “The dates back to the ancient Greeks. But,
extra-large or the size of a postcard, Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance because the Cubists essentially disman-
displayed framed or just taped to the England,” a gathering of magnificent tled realism in the twentieth century,
wall. This fluid approach has made paintings, sculptures, textiles, manu- it’s unlikely that you have ever looked
the fifty-three-year-old queer German scripts, armor, and more from that tur- at a piece by Georges Braque, Juan
photographer one of the most influ- bulent period in British history, when Gris, or Pablo Picasso in light of Pliny
ential figures of his generation. MOMA the court flexed its power through its the Elder, who wrote about real birds
surveys his beautiful, transgressive, and patronage of Europe’s finest artists and pecking at painted grapes. The radical
empathetic œuvre in “To Look With- artisans. (Opens Oct. 10.) proposition of the Met’s blockbuster
out Fear.” (Opens Sept. 12.) Edward Hopper, the bard of Amer- “Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradi-
In 1974, Linda Goode Bryant ican solitude, lived for more than half tion” is that those modernists were, in
opened a gallery in Manhattan called a century on Washington Square, in fact, engaged in a lively conversation
Just Above Midtown (JAM, to those in lower Manhattan. The Whitney— with centuries of European and Amer-
the know). Before closing, in 1986, it whose collection of the painter’s out- ican artists who shared their interest in
spotlighted such daring artists as David put includes hundreds of his letters, visual games. (Opens Oct. 22.)
Hammons, Lorraine O’Grady, and notebooks, and personal photographs— The first piece by a female artist to
Howardena Pindell, who are all now considers the role of the city as muse in enter the collection of MOMA was a fur-
mainstays of major museums. MOMA “Edward Hopper’s New York.” (Opens lined teacup, saucer, and spoon, made by
pays homage to Goode Bryant’s still Oct. 19.) Meret Oppenheim in 1936 and shown
evolving legacy in the exhibition “Just In the late nineteen-forties, while at the museum that year. Now it’s joined
Above Midtown: Changing Spaces.” the construction of the Guggenheim by nearly two hundred other ingenious
(Opens Oct. 9.) Museum was being planned, the painter works by the Swiss Surrealist, who died
Imagine a dynastic drama that opens Alex Katz—a Brooklyn native, born in in 1985, in the six-decade survey “My
with Henry VII seizing the English 1927—was sketching straphangers on Exhibition.” (Opens Oct. 30.)
throne and ends with the death of his the subway. Those drawings are the —Andrea K. Scott

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
wishfully titled 2014 LP “Never Hungover
Again.” Nonetheless, the band has rarely pro-
duced material that “slams,” as Johnson recently
put it. This changes on the group’s new album,
“40 oz. to Fresno,” a riff on the title of a Sub-
lime record. (The working title was “Hungover
Again.”) The ripping lead single, “Gotta Let It
Go,” introduces Joyce Manor’s most seismic alt-
rock pivot, and its most gripping chorus.—Jenn
Pelly (Brooklyn Steel; Aug. 12.)
Tashi Wada and Julia Holter

EXPERIMENTAL Last year, at Brooklyn’s Blank
Forms gallery, the Los Angeles avant-gard-
ists Julia Holter and Tashi Wada performed
a dreamlike set of dark keyboard works that
subsumed the tiny space. Holter is best known
for graceful, baroque pop records that, during
the past decade, have made her one of the most
distinctive voices in independent music. During
the same period, Wada maintained a regular
collaboration with his father, Yoshi Wada, a
Kyoto-born Fluxus artist and a bagpipe vi-
sionary who died in 2021. The Wadas’ album
“Nue,” from 2018, created for RVNG’s esteemed
“FRKWYS” series, featured Holter as a guest
performer, and the younger Wada has reissued
his father’s recordings on his own label. Their FALL PREVIEW
work’s ecstatic drones, unconventional tunings,
1
and spirit of infinity remain alive in Wada and
Holter’s concerts.—J.P. (Public Records; Aug. 13.)
Gothic Americana, Pop Divas Across Generations
After a buzzing summer slate that saw shows feature a colorful array of music,
the return of many stars to bigger in- mostly oriented around movement.
MOVIES
door stages, the fall calendar continues The baroque-pop outfit Florence
to deliver, with even more options and and the Machine celebrates its first
A Better Life
many artists giving back-to-back con- album in four years, “Dance Fever,” at
The director Chris Weitz brings a personal
touch and a keen focus to the story of Carlos certs to satisfy eager fans. Madison Square Garden (Sept. 16-
Galindo (Demián Bichir), an undocumented Brooklyn Steel plays host to a rous- 17). A few days later, on Sept. 20, the
Mexican immigrant in Los Angeles who works ing, diverse collection of shows. On reggaetón pioneer Daddy Yankee
as a gardener and struggles, as a single father,
to keep his fourteen-year-old son, Luis (José Oct. 1, the twins behind Ibeyi share performs there on his farewell tour.
Julián), in school and out of gangs. When Car- their stirring experimental soul. The For electronic-dance enthusiasts, the
los, hoping to move to a neighborhood with recently reunited avant-pop band Ste- English d.j.s and producers Jamie xx
better schools, buys his boss’s truck and seeks
advancement as an independent businessman, reolab explores twenty years’ worth and Four Tet play Forest Hills Sta-
the movie veers into the territory of “The Bicy- of post-rock jams across two nights dium (Sept. 23). And Gorillaz, the
cle Thief,” but Weitz avoids pastiche and arch (Oct. 10-11), and the smooth-talking virtual project of Damon Albarn, best
aestheticism as he captures the constant fear
of the authorities and the threat of deporta- Compton native Channel Tres tinkers known as the front man of Blur, sets
tion. The story unfolds without pity or inflated with his blend of West Coast rap and up shop at Barclays Center (Oct. 12).
heroics, presenting the lives of everyday peo- house music (Oct. 15). On Oct. 28, the Elsewhere, unconventional sounds
ple with modest compassion and imaginative
sympathy. As Carlos, returning home from laid-back British bedroom-pop musi- from off-center musicians find homes:
work, gazes through the truck window at the cian beabadoobee presents her second at Bowery Ballroom, the gothic Amer-
faces of the city—prosperous white people at album, “Beatopia.” And, on Nov. 8, the icana artist Ethel Cain (Sept. 9-10) and
leisure, clusters of Asian people and Ortho-
dox Jews, tough-looking gang members—he Nashville-based singer-songwriter So- the Shabaka Hutchings-led jazz-fusion
reflects Weitz’s own curiosity about the lives phie Allison unveils the O.P.N.-pro- band The Comet Is Coming (Oct. 19)
of others, which the warmhearted, clear-eyed duced “Sometimes, Forever,” her latest perform; Terminal 5 dispatches the ka-
film raises to a matter of morality. Released
in 2011.—Richard Brody (Streaming on Peacock, album as Soccer Mommy. mikaze rapper Denzel Curry (Oct. 6);
Prime Video, and other services.) At Radio City Music Hall, pop BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House
divas across generations grace the hosts the experimental Brainfeeder
Emily the Criminal stage: the dance icon Diana Ross founder Flying Lotus (Oct. 6-7); and
The powers and the pitfalls of the writer-di- brings her decades of pageantry Webster Hall presents the emerging
rector are laid bare in this vigorous yet bare- (Sept. 13), the flamenco innovator Travis Barker-approved punk Kenny-
bones drama, which puts Aubrey Plaza’s fierce
performance front and center. She plays the Rosalía makes two stops along her Hoopla (Oct. 14), the sludge-pop group
title role, a hard-nosed woman with a refined “MOTOMAMI” world tour (Sept. 18- Let’s Eat Grandma (Nov. 4), and the
sensibility. An artist who’s saddled with student 19), and the multimedia savant Lil Nas sleek synth-pop duo Magdalena Bay
debt, Emily lives in Los Angeles and can’t find
an office job because of a felony on her record. X continues to milk his début album, (Nov. 15).
She’s lured into a well-organized scheme of “Montero” (Sept. 20-21). Stadium —Sheldon Pearce
CLASSICAL MUSIC
credit-card fraud, which she takes to like a nat-
ural, while also building a relationship with her
handler, a young Lebanese man named Youcef
(Theo Rossi). But as her ardor for the scam—
and for him—increase apace, the ramped-up
stakes of her intersecting commitments involve
ever-greater legal and physical dangers. John
Patton Ford, as the movie’s screenwriter, sets up
clear, tense situations and establishes an array
of characters whose traits seem solely devised
to fit the plot; as its director, he merely sets the
story into rapid, choppy, and occasionally senti-
mental motion, missing the chance to challenge
and expand his own premise. The result is an
appealing but insubstantial showcase for a fine
cast.—R.B. (In theatrical release.)
Four Months, Three Weeks,

and Two Days
This forbidding drama from 2007, by the Ro-
manian director Cristian Mungiu, is set in
Bucharest in 1987. Anamaria Marinca stars as
Otilia, a young student trying to help a friend
and finding herself thwarted, at every turn, by
a jaded and hostile world. Her roommate, the
hapless Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), wants to be rid
FALL PREVIEW of the baby she is carrying; abortion, however,
is illegal, and thus, like almost everything in the
New Homes, Old Wounds, a Chapel’s Light city, is subject to the vagaries (and the perils) of
the black market. So much about this story could
have grown gruesome and sensational; instead,
It goes without saying that new seasons Avenue Armory (Sept. 27-Oct. 8), and even the central deed—performed by the foul-
indicate new beginnings, but the New “Everything Rises,” a personal reflec- hearted Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov)—is filmed with
unerring control. As for Marinca, she draws
York Philharmonic has an extra reason tion on BIPOC experiences, created with us ever nearer with her balance of composure
to celebrate: the reopening of David the violinist Jennifer Koh, at BAM’s Next and exasperation; why didn’t the Academy take
Geffen Hall after a two-year renovation. Wave Festival (Oct. 12-15). notice of this actress? In truth, what Mungiu
has made is not only an abortion picture—it is
The ensemble and its music director, With a Carnegie Hall début (Nov. 3), a study of a system too exhausted to handle love
Jaap van Zweden, christen their remod- Tines joins a roster that includes the and death.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue
elled home with some self-awareness, pianist Igor Levit, who plunges into of 1/28/08.) (Streaming on the Criterion Channel,
Prime Video, Kanopy, and other services.)
performing Etienne Charles’s “San Shostakovich’s engrossing Twenty-four
Juan Hill—A New York Story” (Oct. 8), Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (Oct. 18);
a piece named for the African Amer- the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its
Last Year at Marienbad
Alain Resnais’s second feature, from 1961, is
ican and Caribbean neighborhood on maestro, Gustavo Dudamel, presenting widely considered the ultimate art-house puzzle.
the Upper West Side that was razed to New York premières by Gabriela Ortiz But history has caught up to its subject; the sto-
make room for Lincoln Center. (Oct. 25-26); and the Berlin Philhar- ry’s obscurity results from its protagonists’ own
efforts to blur their painful past. An unnamed
Across the plaza, Sondra Radva- monic and its baton-wielder, Kirill Pe- man (Giorgio Albertazzi) pursues an unnamed
novsky, a soprano of rare power and trenko, playing emphatic symphonies woman (Delphine Seyrig) through the baroque
agility, stars as the vengeful sorceress by Mahler and Korngold (Nov. 10-12). splendors and ornamental gardens of a palatial
hotel; he tries to convince her that they’d met
of Cherubini’s “Medea,” a role closely Experiments in Opera, a compos- there a year earlier, which she—under the harsh
associated with Maria Callas, in the ers’ collective that treats opera like a gaze of her husband (Sacha Pitoëff)—tries to
Metropolitan Opera’s season-opening sandbox for quirky invention, rolls out deny. The timelessly hermetic setting evokes
Europe in the nineteen-thirties; Resnais con-
production (Sept. 27-Oct. 28). a ten-episode streaming miniseries, jures an exquisite air of haut-bourgeois and
Perhaps sharing Medea’s fond- “Everything for Dawn” (allarts.org; aristocratic ease that spotlights the role of such
ness for curses, the composer and so- Oct. 7-Nov. 4). Miller Theatre, another obliviousness in the arrival of the Second World
War. The man and the woman share in the grace-
prano Kate Soper writes and stars in hotbed of contemporary music, opens its ful pleasures but struggle with the agonized
“HEX”—in which a contemporary- season with the JACK Quartet, playing circumstances of their previous encounter; the
music group manages to accidentally Liza Lim’s “String Creatures” (Sept. 29). drama is centered on her need to face her trauma
and his need to face his guilt. In its vision of
open the gates of Hell—accompanied At the 92nd Street Y, in something memory as liberation, the non-ideological story,
by the Wet Ink Ensemble, at a venue to of a coda to the Philharmonic’s opener, written by Alain Robbe-Grillet, is as intensely
be announced (Sept. 14). The bass-bari- the cellist Seth Parker Woods performs political as Resnais’s celebrated first feature,
“Hiroshima Mon Amour.”—R.B. (Screening Aug.
1
tone Davóne Tines stars in two other “Difficult Grace,” a narration of the Great 14-15 at Film Forum and streaming on the Criterion
alt-theatre shows: Tyshawn Sorey’s Migration, which brought millions of Channel, Apple TV, and other services.)
“Monochromatic Light (Afterlife),” Black Americans to the North in search
inspired by the Rothko Chapel, in a of better fortunes (Nov. 19). For more reviews, visit
production by Peter Sellars at the Park —Oussama Zahr newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town

TELEVISION
FALL PREVIEW country-music matriarch in “Monarch”

(Fox, Sept. 11). And the great Lesley
Fantasy Prequels, Remakes, Back to School Manville steps into the role of a book
editor turned amateur sleuth in a much
The fall television season kicks off with as they reunite to make new episodes. anticipated PBS adaptation of Anthony
duelling fantasy spinoffs, milking some If fresh content is what you’re after, Horowitz’s suspenseful novel “Magpie
of the most valuable fire-breathing there are several intriguing offerings Murders” (Oct. 16).
franchises in Hollywood. On Aug. 21, featuring major actresses. Samantha Perhaps the most exciting show of
HBO releases a “Game of Thrones” Morton plays a scheming Catherine the fall season is one that is not new
prequel, “House of the Dragon,” which de Medici in “The Serpent Queen” but has been gaining steam: hot on the
follows the ice-blond Targaryen clan (on Starz, starting Sept. 11). Hilary heels of nabbing seven Emmy nomi-
as it attempts to tame scaly beasts Swank stars as a struggling journalist in nations, Quinta Brunson’s kindhearted
some two hundred years before the ABC’s “Alaska Daily” (Oct. 6), created teachers’-lounge comedy, “Abbott Ele-
start of the original series. Then, on by Tom McCarthy, who directed the mentary,” is back in session (on ABC)
Sept. 2, Amazon Prime Video débuts a film “Spotlight.” Riley Keough chan- on Sept. 21. If you haven’t yet leaped
big-budget “Lord of the Rings” prequel, nels a bohemian nineteen-seventies into Brunson’s warm, tender, and breez-
“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of rock singer in “Daisy Jones & the Six” ily funny world, now is the time to do
Power,” following the rise of the ne- (Amazon Prime Video, fall date to be your homework.
farious wizard Sauron. Which will be announced); Susan Sarandon plays a —Rachel Syme
the one binge to rule them all? Only
time—and Nielsen ratings—will tell.
In general, this season of television
is all about rebooting, remixing, or re-
suscitating existing intellectual prop-
erty—so much so that you might won-
der if anything is truly new at all. On
Sept. 9, Showtime airs a series remake
of the 1980 neo-noir film “American
Gigolo,” with Jon Bernthal stepping
into the Richard Gere role of an élite
male escort embroiled in a murder case.
On Sept. 19, NBC débuts a remake of
“Quantum Leap,” and on Oct. 2 AMC
releases a series-length adaptation of
Anne Rice’s novel “Interview with the
Vampire,” starring Sam Reid as the
sybaritic vampire Lestat and Jacob
Anderson as his erudite mentee. The
CW has its own reboot in “Walker:
Independence” (Oct. 6), a prequel to
the meanderings of the Texas ranger,
and Showtime has yet another rehash
on deck with an updated version of the
chilly vampire drama “Let the Right
One In” (Oct. 9). On Disney+, Warwick
Davis returns as “Willow,” in a pastoral
fantasy series set two decades after the
events of the 1988 Ron Howard film
(Nov. 30). The revamps are so plenti-
ful that they have become the punch
line of a brand-new comedy: “Reboot”
(Sept. 20, Hulu), a romp from the cre-
ator of “Modern Family,” starring Ra-
chel Bloom, Keegan-Michael Key, Judy
Greer, and Johnny Knoxville, follows
the cast of a beloved nineties sitcom
MOVIES
FALL PREVIEW novel by Karen Cushman, about the

life of a teen-age girl (Bella Ramsey) in
Medieval England, Historical Drama, A Crocodile medieval England. The Queens native
James Gray fuses personal reminiscences
Historical events figure prominently Mamie Till-Mobley (Danielle Deadwy- and political drama in “Armageddon
in this season’s releases, including ler), to seek justice for her son’s lynching Time” (Oct. 28); it’s set in 1980 and is
“Moonage Daydream” (Sept. 16), a doc- and to publicize the facts of his murder. centered on a white sixth-grader (Banks
umentary portrait of David Bowie, cen- Family stories are being told with a Repeta) who becomes friends with a
tered on his audiovisual archive, directed wide variety of approaches, starting with Black classmate ( Jaylin Webb) in public
by Brett Morgen. Phyllis Nagy directed “The Cathedral” (Sept. 2), the daringly school and discovers the grim power of
“Call Jane” (Oct. 14), a drama based on original second feature by Ricky D’Am- privilege—and then, in a private school,
the real-life Jane Collective, a Chicago brose, a quasi-autobiographical coming- crosses paths with the Trump family.
group that provided abortions at a time of-age story about a young man from Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and
when the procedure was illegal. The the New York suburbs who, growing up Anthony Hopkins co-star.
story, set in 1968, follows a housewife amid conflicts and secrets, develops a The risks of life in the public eye
(Elizabeth Banks) who, after having an unique aesthetic sensibility—which the are portrayed in a number of movies
abortion, joins the group. “Till” (Oct. 14), movie’s own style reflects. Lena Dun- this season. “Honk for Jesus. Save Your
directed by Chinonye Chukwu, drama- ham wrote and directed “Catherine, Soul.” (Sept. 2), the first feature directed
tizes the effort of Emmett Till’s mother, Called Birdy” (Sept. 23), based on a by Adamma Ebo, is a serious comedy
about a pastor of a megachurch (Ster-
ling K. Brown) who, after a sex scandal,
attempts to rebuild the congregation
with the help of his wife (Regina Hall).
“Blonde” (Sept. 28), adapted from the
novel by Joyce Carol Oates, is the di-
rector Andrew Dominik’s bio-pic about
Marilyn Monroe (Ana de Armas),
which delves into the crises of celeb-
rity. Cate Blanchett plays an orchestra
conductor in “TÁR” (Oct. 7), a drama set
in the world of classical music, written
and directed by Todd Field.
It wouldn’t be Hollywood without
fantasy, as in “Don’t Worry, Darling”
(Sept. 23), Olivia Wilde’s second fea-
ture as director, a dystopian thriller, set
in the nineteen-fifties, about a planned
community that harbors mysteries.
She co-stars in it with Florence Pugh
and Harry Styles. “Lyle, Lyle Croc-
odile” (Oct. 7), Will Speck and Josh
Gordon’s live-action adaptation of
the children’s-book series by Bernard
Waber, presents a New York family
(Constance Wu, Scoot McNairy, and
Winslow Fegley) that adopts the titu-
lar reptile (Shawn Mendes). In “Black
Panther: Wakanda Forever” (Nov. 11),
the sequel to the 2018 Marvel adventure,
the residents of Wakanda defend their
country after the death of their king,
T’Challa; the director Ryan Coogler
and the actors Letitia Wright, Lupita
Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, and Winston
Duke return from the earlier installment.
—Richard Brody

home of Pedro’s son Victor, who, with collard greens and a dish of farofa, or
his brother Carlos, had largely taken toasted cassava. More satisfying still
over the business. But in 2021 Vic- was lunch a week later, at the day-
tor and Carlos—who grew up, they time-only café within the restaurant
1
told me, as “those restaurant kids that called Bica, which is shorthand for the
would sleep on chairs pushed together Portuguese equivalent of an espresso
under a table, and be at the bar just, (and an acronym, some say, for “beba
TABLES FOR TWO like, mixing random stuff ”—took isto com açúcar,” meaning “drink it
out a new lease on West Thirty-sixth with sugar”). Here are the coxinhas,
Ipanema / Bica Street. In May, Ipanema hung its shin- the pastéis de nata (Portuguese egg
3 W. 36th St. gle in Manhattan again, down the tarts), the pão de queijo, gently blis-
block from Keens Steakhouse, which tered, chewy cassava-flour-and-cheese
In 1979, Alfredo Pedro—who was born opened in 1885 and is the last survivor rolls ubiquitous in Brazil.
in Portugal and moved to Flushing, of the Herald Square theatre district. It’s easy to roll your eyes at an açai
Queens, as a teen-ager—quit his job Where Ipanema’s original iterations bowl, but what’s become a manic
as an engineer at IBM and bought a tended toward kitsch, the latest interior health-food craze in America, smack-
restaurant: Brazilian Coffee, on West is pure glamour, a controlled riot of ing of snake oil, originated as a normal,
PHOTOGRAPH BY CAROLINE TOMPKINS FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
Forty-sixth Street. Opened seven years luxe materials: curving wood, gleaming delicious beachy breakfast in Brazil,
prior, it was the harbinger of Manhat- marble, jungle-green tiles, cascades of where açai berries grow. The thick, tart,
tan’s Little Brazil, attracting all manner tropical foliage, performance velvet, sweet frozen slurry, topped with sliced
of Brazilian and Portuguese entrepre- romantic lighting, Getz and Gilberto banana and strawberry, might not hit
neurs to set up shop nearby. In 1988, on the stereo. The food, too, from a the same, as the kids say, on the sun-
Pedro changed the name to Ipanema, Brazilian-born chef named Giancarlo baked sidewalks of midtown as it does
for the famous stretch of beach in Rio Junyent, who cooked at Tom Colic- on the famous mosaic pavement of Co-
de Janeiro, and through the decades he chio’s Temple Court, veers fancy, in pacabana, but it’s undeniably refreshing.
upsized several times, without leaving a slightly outmoded way. On a recent If Bica’s variety of bowls could techni-
the street. The menu, drawing gen- night, a perfectly round mold of foie- cally be described as fast-casual, there
erations of regulars, was a constant: gras mousseline was capped with a would be nothing sad about having any
coxinhas (shredded-chicken croquettes), translucent layer of passion-fruit gelée, of them for lunch at your desk. For the
bitoque (Portuguese-style strip steak and bacalhau, or salt cod, came elegantly Lagos, tiny, garlicky shrimp, roasted
with a fried egg and rice and beans), molded, too, one layer in a tower that fingerling potato, and a zingy chickpea
moqueca (coconut-milk-based seafood also included shredded potato, egg yolk, salad are piled onto red quinoa. For the
stew from Bahia). and olive tapenade. Amazon, a bed of baby spinach and
By 2020, pre-pandemic, the place Entrées were homier. An excellent kale is decked with candied cashews,
that had started it all was one of Little feijoada, an inherently rustic Brazil- dried fig, purple sweet potato, pink
Brazil’s last standing establishments. ian black-bean stew, thick with kiel- chicory, and green apple, as colorful
When Ipanema reopened after the first basa and pork loin, was served in a and as cheerful as confetti. (Ipanema
lockdown, it had been transplanted to ceramic cauldron alongside miniature dishes $15-$48. Bica dishes $8-$18.)
South Norwalk, Connecticut, near the clay pots of white rice and steamed —Hannah Goldfield
I sipped sake with the Empress of Japan
I flirted with fisherman on the Amalfi Coast
I sat front row for the Beatles
I danced with nobles along the Aegean Sea
My next adventure awaits...
Find me at ross-simons.com/estate
800-835-1340
Follow us on Instagram
@RareLuxuries
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT kind, animal kind, and earth are ALL Woolly Mammoth” is something of a
BRINGING UP BABIES one, all belong to the same home.” True, slogan for the twenty-twenties. Woolly
but one of us is a homewrecker. mammoths, which were as big as the
his Fourth of July, in Brattleboro, Since 1970, wildlife populations have African elephant but closer, genetically,
T Vermont, marching bands and fire
departments and Vietnam veterans and
fallen by two-thirds, according to the
World Wildlife Fund. The World An-
to the Asian elephant, lived across Asia,
Europe, and North America until about
baton twirlers and a motorcycle convoy imal Foundation has predicted that a ten thousand years ago—although in
paraded down Main Street, past Sam’s third to a half of all nonhuman animal some places they survived until about
Outdoor Outfitters and Mocha Joe’s species will have become extinct by 2050. four thousand years ago. They are the
Coffeehouse, and up the hill toward A study published this month in the first species whose extinction humans
Brown and Roberts Ace Hardware and Proceedings of the National Academy of came to understand, and could prove.
the Brooks Memorial Library. You had Sciences—citing the latest projections The reason was harder to know. Hu-
to arrive early to get a spot on the side- from the United Nations’ Intergovern- mans were first believed to have played
walk. Kids handed out tiny paper Amer- mental Panel on Climate Change and a role, by hunting them, but climate
ican flags glued to wooden toothpicks. evidence of the accelerating mass exchange more likely caused the decline,
A naked man covered in red paint de- tinction of nonhuman species—reports by ending the last Ice Age. The mam-
cided to walk, silently, in the middle of that “previous mass extinction events moths left behind bones and giant tusks,
the street, in the other direction. No occurred due to threshold effects in the which Western naturalists began col-
one stopped him; later, he told the town carbon cycle that we could cross this lecting in the seventeenth century, be-
paper that he had been protesting the century.” What does the woolly mam- fore the discovery of dinosaurs.
Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. moth have to do with all this? The mammoth, often confused at the
Jackson Women’s Health Organization. If “Save the Whales” was the motto time with the American mastodon, was
Love the country, hate the Court, Brat- of the environmental movement in the “the dinosaur of the early American re-
tleborovians seemed to agree. “Hey, hey, nineteen-seventies, “Bring Back the public,” as the historian Paul Semonin
ho, ho, the Supreme Court has got to wrote in “American Monster”—evidence
go!” marchers chanted. Two people car- of antiquity, of greatness, and, apocalyp-
ried a sheet lashed between tree branches, tically, of possible doom. Two centuries
painted with lines from Marge Piercy, before Charles Darwin boarded the Bea-
“I am not your cornfield, not your ura- gle, analysis of mammoth remains proved
nium mine, not your cow for milking.” that Earth is much older than the ac-
Also in the parade: an eight-foot-tall count given in Genesis and that, con-
woolly mammoth, on wheels, made out trary to a Christian doctrine of divine
of plywood, chicken wire, PVC pipes, design, not every species that God cre-
burlap, coconut husks, white birch bark, ated lasts forever. The unearthing of the
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA
nails, box springs, buttons, rusty iron mammoth proved the existence of a time
tools, and deer bones. For tusks, it had before time. Its disappearance was taken
coiled metal tubing and, for a trunk, a as a warning of the possibility of an end
chimney liner. “It’s a climate prophet,” of time; a way to imagine, for the first
Kevin O’Keefe, who built it, said. O’Keefe time, the extinction of humankind.
is a circus artist and a writer. From a gray Woolly mammoths keep being un-
plastic bucket, he handed out prophe- earthed. In June, in the Yukon, in the
cies to paradegoers. One read “Human- territory of the First Nation people the
Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, a gold miner hack- solve it.” The plan is to reconstruct the logical hurdles, and scientific improba-
ing into the permafrost came across a DNA of the woolly mammoth, use bilities of this venture, it makes almost
baby mammoth, about a month old, ex- crispr to combine it with the DNA no sense as climate-change mitigation;
quisitely preserved, her legs tucked under, of an (endangered) Asian elephant, make it’s too little, too late. And that’s not even
as if she’d just fallen asleep. Tr’ondëk an embryo, implant it in an Asian ele- considering the plight of the mother-
Hwëch’in elders decided to name her phant—or, perhaps, into a not yet in- less baby mammoths, alone and wan-
Nun cho ga, big baby animal. “She is vented artificial womb—and begin to dering helplessly.
beautiful, one of the most incredible “de-extinct” the species. Resurrected By the end of the nineteenth century,
mummified Ice Age animals ever dis- mammoths would populate the perma- the dinosaur had dethroned the woolly
covered,” Grant Zazula, the Yukon’s gov- frost and avert its melting by turning mammoth as an American emblem—
ernment paleontologist, said. “She has a wet tundra into dry grasslands, which and become the favorite megafauna of
trunk. She has a tail. She has tiny little better sequester carbon and reflect sun- Gilded Age oligarchs. Robber barons
ears.” She died alone, very likely, having light, keeping the permafrost cooler and loved the idea of giant reptilian carni-
wandered off and got stuck in the mud. helping, thereby, to save the planet. vores. In 1906, J. P. Morgan financed the
Creating a baby woolly mammoth After Colossal had raised its first fif- installation of a T. rex in the American
today is the objective of Colossal, a bio- teen million dollars from venture capi- Museum of Natural History. Colossal is
science and genetic-engineering com- talists (among them the Winklevoss funded, in part, by Musky, tusky tech bil-
pany founded last year by the Harvard brothers), Lamm, who is the C.E.O., lionaires keen to “futureproof ” the world.
geneticist George Church and the se- said that the company expects to have They’re hoping to build animals out of
rial entrepreneur Ben Lamm, who had its first calves as soon as 2025. Last month, bitcoin and code. Meanwhile, back in
earlier launched the similarly named Colossal announced that, together with Brattleboro, a homespun and better-
A.I. firm Hypergiant. “Extinction is a the Vertebrates Genomes Project, it had beloved hope for humanity made out of
colossal problem facing the world,” the completed the reconstruction of the chicken wire and birch bark and burlap
startup’s Web site announces. “And Co- DNA of the Asian elephant. Aside from rolls along, through pine-dark woods.
lossal is the company that is going to the countless ethical problems, techno- —Jill Lepore
POOL SHARK kidding—sort of. It was near the bot- There was a small blemish behind the
IT’S A BIRD . . . IT’S A PLANE . . . tom step in the shallow end, it had two gills, and a scratch on the right side;
dorsal fins, and it wasn’t moving. She otherwise, Doyle recalled the other day,
figured it for a toy, an impressive replica, “it was anatomically perfect, like a mas-
not that she could recall buying one sive great white but just shrunk down
for her three-year-old daughter or her to a tiny size.” Its texture reminded
one-year-old son. Using the skimmer, her of a hot dog, a food that she says
she poked at it—and let out a scream, she now has trouble eating without gag-
ake of it what you will, but the before running inside to fetch her hus- ging. “My three-year-old didn’t even
M sharks appear to be coming for
us: a foot laceration at Jones Beach, a
band, Sam, who was also on Zoom.
Sam scooped it out. The shark was
think it was weird,” she went on. “She
was, like, ‘Yeah, of course there’s a shark.
punctured calf off Fire Island, a bloody dead but must not have been for long. Sharks are everywhere.’ She just picked
chest at Smith Point. Four attacks in it up by its tail.”
Suffolk County alone. They were soon Fearing greater skepticism from
followed by the washing ashore of a grownups, Doyle prepared a bed of ice
great white in Quogue, baring teeth in a cooler, in order to preserve the ev-
that looked hungry for elbows and idence. Over the phone, and on social
knees. New Jersey is more often spared media, theorizing commenced. “Oh, it
these visitations, although a twelve- must have swam through the pipe!”
footer swam laps around a fishing boat someone suggested. Doyle dismissed
in June, near Townsends Inlet. And this as a beach-town variation of the
then, in neighboring Avalon, there was urban legend involving alligators and
the recent case of the shark that showed toilets. Nevertheless, she consulted her
up in Erin Doyle’s swimming pool. “pool guy,” who reassured her that she
Doyle, a television producer, was was dealing with a “closed circuit,” un-
Zooming on her phone, with col- like a city sewer, not to mention a chlo-
leagues, from the back porch of her rinated one.
beach house, when something dark “Some people were, like, ‘Do you
and “baguette-sized” caught her eye. have any enemies?’ ” Doyle said. “And
“Guys, sorry to interrupt,” she said, I’m, like, ‘Yeah, and they happen to be
getting up to investigate. “But I think my neighbors.’ ” She confessed that she
I found a shark in my pool.” She was and Sam have been known to host par-
ties that run a little late and loud— Livingston is ninety-four, and lives the Clown,” made a soloist of Nat
belting out show tunes at midnight— just north of Sunset, in a one-story King Cole, and created “Bonanza,”
and a couple of curmudgeons have L-shaped house graciously appointed which ran for fourteen seasons. As
confronted her. She didn’t ask them with animal-print velvet, much like the president of Capitol, she writes in the
about the pool surprise, she said. A interior of Norma Desmond’s Isotta book, he helped design the company’s
friend of a friend told Doyle that he Fraschini. She has coiffed medium- iconic record-stack headquarters; it
could relate: shortly after moving to a blond hair, high Scandinavian cheek- was his idea that the aircraft-warning
house near the Hudson River, upstate, bones, and a trim figure. “I’m the same light on the top of the building blink
he’d found a decomposing fish—men- weight I was in college, that’s not an out “H-o-l-l-y-w-o-o-d,” in Morse
haden, he later concluded—in the gar- issue,” she remarked breezily on a re- code. He signed the Beach Boys, the
den, and wondered if it was some kind cent afternoon. In October, “A Front Beatles, and the Band.
of territorial message about proper yard Row Seat,” a memoir about her life in In 1965, Livingston hosted a party
maintenance. Then he mentioned it and around show business, will be re- for the Beatles at the house above Sun-
to the foreman of a construction crew, leased. “I have to stay well through the set and invited all the most interesting
across the street, and learned that one end of the publishing of the book,” she
of the workers had been struck in the said. “And then will you just please
head by a fish from the sky. (Good leave me alone and let me be, so I don’t
thing for hard hats.) The culprit was have to look wonderful every day.”
an osprey. When she was cast in “Sunset,” Liv-
“Down here you just see seagulls,” ingston was a junior at U.C.L.A., signed
Doyle said, insisting that her shark was to a seven-picture contract at Para-
too big to be “seagull-liftable.” From mount. College nickname: Wholesome
her pool to the Atlantic is a third of a Olson. The lot was full of starlets, but
mile, an impressive distance for any Billy Wilder, the film’s director and co-
bird whose talons had managed to leave writer, homed in on her. “He’d say, ‘Are
so little evidence of pierced skin. “Poor you going to the commissary? I’ll walk
guy,” she ref lected. “I wonder if he with you,’ ” she recalled. “He would ask
was alive when he landed.” Google has me questions: ‘What was it like grow-
convinced her that it was not a great ing up in Wisconsin? What is U.C.L.A.
white, as she once imagined, but a dusky like?’ It was clear to me years later that
smooth-hound, otherwise known as a he had the character, the aspiring young
dog shark, with teeth too blunt to have writer, in mind. He did not want a star-
posed any threat. After keeping it on let with barely a high-school educa-
ice for a few days, she bagged it and tion.” Edith Head designed the cos-
walked over to the town dump, leav- tumes, but Wilder asked Livingston to Nancy Olson
1
ing a gift for the vultures. wear her own clothing. “By the way, I
—Ben McGrath did not have a great wardrobe,” she people in Hollywood: Rock Hudson,
said. “I didn’t know where to shop. I Hayley Mills, Natalie Wood. Tony Ben-
L.A. POSTCARD was from Milwaukee!” When Howard nett was at the piano, singing the Amer-
CLOSEUP Hughes pursued her briefly, her strat- ican songbook. McCartney charmed;
egy was to bore him into retreat with Lennon didn’t try. “John was so diffi-
stories of her Midwestern childhood. cult,” Livingston said. He was stand-
Not long before the movie came ing alone by the pool when she ap-
out, in 1950, Livingston met and mar- proached to offer him a drink. “Leave
ried her first husband, the librettist me alone,” he said. Distressed, Living-
Alan Jay Lerner. “I was his third wife. ston asked Gene Kelly to intercede.
he stars are ageless. So says Norma He was ultimately married eight times,” “He did, and the two of them hit it off,
T Desmond, the forgotten silent-
movie queen at the center of “Sunset
she said. “He was writing ‘An Amer-
ican in Paris’ when I met him. Then
and then John was the last to leave.”
She went on, “What was it like being
Boulevard.” Desmond is written as an he wrote ‘Paint Your Wagon.’ Then he married to two Alans?” Livingston won-
inconceivably ancient fifty—the age of wrote ‘My Fair Lady,’ which he ded- dered aloud. “First of all, I never made
Gloria Swanson, the actress who played icated to me. Then he wrote ‘Gigi.’ a mistake—‘Alan, darling.’ And my
her. Swanson died in the early eight- And he was reading ‘The Once and monogram has been the same since I
ies, shortly after her co-star, William Future King,’ about King Arthur, and was twenty-one. On my jewelry, my
Holden. Nancy Livingston, then an in- thinking about ‘Camelot,’ when we linens, my luggage, my silver, it is NOL.”
genue named Nancy Olson, who por- were divorced.” According to Livingston, in 2009, when
trayed a novice screenwriter and Hol- Next, she married Alan Livingston, her husband was dying, he said, “Oh,
den’s love interest, is the last surviving the president of Capitol Records, who darling, I’m so sorry you’re never going
member of the cast. earlier in his career had written “Bozo to be able to marry again. There are
only so many Alan L’s in the world.” of his larger works—a near-horizontal “Before plastic was a bad thing, ya
Not long after “Sunset Boulevard,” bonsai supported by a bronze sculpture know?” A bee alighted on a branch,
Livingston, who was nominated for an that discreetly featured the words “noth- and Keating smiled. “They attract lit-
Academy Award for her performance, ing pinned.” (In addition to making his tle predator insects, which is good. I
decided to quit acting. Too narrow a own sculptures, and writing poetry, have very few mosquitoes in my back
life, she said, too much waiting around. Keating owns a foundry in New Jersey, yard since I’ve been doing the trees.”
Or maybe it was that the dark moral and is a master caster of bronze for, Keating gestured toward another
of the movie struck her, even from that among others, the artists Robert Longo, bonsai. “This tree is an estimated two
side of the actuarial looking glass. Nicole Eisenman, and Terence Koh.) hundred and fifty years old. The reason
“Gloria Swanson was the one per- “There’s something in bonsai that’s we know that? Andy Smith.” Keating
son on that set who understood what called the ‘raft style,’ ” he said, gesturing explained, “Andy works for the Forest
a great film this was, because she un- toward the sideways tree. “It happens Service. So Andy’s job is to core-sam-
derstood the truth of it,” Livingston in nature—a tree falls over, then it grows. ple trees. This hasn’t been core-sam-
said. “She was beautiful, but she was What happens in nature, though, when pled, but he’s done so much that he can
over the hill for them.” Not everyone it keeps growing and growing, the plant guesstimate by the height of the tree
wanted the truth. Wilder screened can kill itself. So the sculpture here be- and its elevation. He collected this tree
the movie for Louis B. Mayer, the comes integral to the raft for perpetu- twenty years ago”—six thousand feet
producer who co-founded M-G-M. ation—the bronze is going to hold this up in the Rockies, likely saving it from
Livingston said, “When it was fin- thing together.” prescribed burning or clear-cutting—
ished, Billy was walking up the aisle Artfully arranged around the tree’s “and I bought this off someone who’s
and Louis B. Mayer says, ‘How could trunk were rocks and small plants, in- been training it for fifteen years.”
you do this to us?’ And Billy said, ‘Go cluding an heirloom dwarf strawberry So what happens if an art collector
1
fuck yourself. ’ ” that Keating had grown in the back has a less-than-green thumb? “The
—Dana Goodyear yard of his house on Fort Hamilton bonsais are not as complicated as you
Parkway, in Windsor Terrace, where think,” Keating said. “They need not
GREEN THUMB his family has lived since 1898. “My too much and not too little attention.”
BENT great-grandfather planted a tree for my And the sculptures come with a cer-
grandmother when she was born, in tificate that offers restoration services.
1910,” Keating said. “I planted trees for “All these trees are replaceable,” he con-
my kids”—three spruces. tinued. “So if this piece is sixteen thou-
He recalled his introduction to the sand dollars, if you bought the work
upper echelons of bonsai society. After and the tree didn’t survive I would send
taking a Zoom class with an expert in you three or four different trees and
tocking up on trees at Marders or Oregon “to learn the dialogue of trees” you could pick one and we would come
S Whitmores plant nursery to shade
your Hamptons manse can cost a small
(“The tree kind of talks to you—each
tree has its own statue in it”), Keating
and reinstall the tree.”
Also, he noted, comparing his sculp-
fortune. By comparison, Benjamin Keat- approached Paul Graviano, who has tures with other fragile art works, “Let’s
ing’s bonsai sculptures—on view a short run Bonsai of Brooklyn since 1976, and say you have a Peter Voulkos vase or
jaunt down Route 27, outside Tripoli offered to clean up his “cat-pee-stink- something, or a Dale Chihuly”—glass-
Gallery, in Wainscott—are a steal at ing mess” of a garden, for twenty dol- work—“and it breaks. You’re in worse
between five and a hundred thousand lars an hour, in exchange for some shape. Or a Gober wax! Let’s say your
dollars. Especially when you take into pointers and a discount. Keating courted maid moves that into the sun—it’s gonna
account the obstacles Keating had to another one of his “bonsai trainers,” melt on you.” Regardless, he added, “any-
1
overcome in order to get sufficiently in Jim Doyle of Nature’s Way Nursery, in one that buys art has a gardener.”
with the “famous bonsai guys” to pur- Pennsylvania, via his belly. He sent him —Emma Allen
chase their plants and learn the art of “a care package of tomato sauce and
the diminutive tree. fresh pasta, FedEx style.” DEPT. OF SIDEKICKS
“It’s like they don’t want to talk to The whole tree-sculpture idea first PLEASE TOUCH
you. They don’t want to deal with you,” came to Keating while vacationing in
Keating, who is forty-five and has thick Maine, where he had visions of cast-
sideburns and an old-school Brooklyn ing enormous trees in bronze. “But that
accent, said of the nation’s far-f lung would cost me a hundred and some-
bonsai experts. “You develop kind of a thing thousand dollars,” he said. In
crackhead-type mentality—I was com- Wainscott, he strolled up to a mini tree
ing in with five, six grand, and they were planted in an aluminum cast of a plas- he other day, a professional cud-
still not answering my calls.To buy trees!”
Keating, who wore a snap-button
tic bag. (Other bases feature cast bricks,
baby shoes, and Nike Dunks.) “Ever
T dler who goes by the name Trevor
James and who cuddles for up to ten
checked shirt, white jeans, and blue mir- since I was a kid I always noticed the hours a day, sat down for an intake ses-
rored Ray-Bans, stood in front of one plastic bags in trees,” Keating went on. sion at his home office, in Hollywood.
“People come to me because they are
not being touched,” he said. He wore
a cross pendant, a muscle T-shirt, red
athletic shorts, and flip-flops. “When
the client comes through the door, I
ask, ‘May I give you a hug?’ ” They em-
brace, or not, and James guides the
client to an L-shaped couch for an
“ice-breaking conversation” before en-
tering his treatment room for eye-gaz-
ing and breathing exercises. “Then the
cuddle starts,” he said. Eighty differ-
ent positions are available; he charges
ninety dollars an hour for cuddling
and has a two-hour minimum. During
the sessions, jazz or classical music
plays softly in the background.
A registry of certified cuddlers can
be found on Cuddlist, a sister com-
pany to hearme.app, an online ther-
apy platform. Cuddlist has a roster of
professional cuddlers in thirty-four “The scariest part is knowing that someday something’ll come along that
states: Missouri and Utah have one will make us go, ‘Even the spider mutants weren’t this bad.’ ”
each; Ohio has three; California has
seventeen. James, who is Ghanaian,
calls himself an “ethical-touch thera-
• •
pist”; he used to work as a social com-
panion, under an offshoot business Frequency? “It could be once in stretched out next to him. He then
called the Sidekick Bromance Expe- four months, or maybe twice in one moved through a series of greatest hits,
rience. James moved to L.A. eighteen week,” James said. “Some people come beginning with arm-stroking. “I usu-
years ago while working as a producer constantly.” His most regular client ally start with low-contact cuddle po-
for live events, including award shows is an eighty-five-year-old man, who sitions,” he explained. He demonstrated
and pageants. Then he read the sev- comes to cuddle several times a week. the “peas in a pod” position, in which
enties self-help book “What Color Is A college student had booked an af- he and a client hold hands and face
Your Parachute?” to determine his pas- ternoon cuddle. Another regular is a each other.
sion. He learned that he was warm married man who comes for an hour “We’re in a touch-deprivation cri-
and nurturing. “Cuddling was a niche in the evening. “I don’t ask questions,” sis,” James said. “We are currently liv-
market, and it’s impactful,” he said, James said. ing in an epidemic of skin hunger.”
and proceeded to get two cuddling Mark, another of James’s regular Cuddlist has about a hundred and forty
certifications from Cuddle Profession- clients, who works as an archivist at a professional cuddlers in the United
als International, in the U.K., and Cud- movie studio, said, “My work is my States, with different business mod-
dle Sanctuary, in Los Angeles. life. At least at church you get a hug els. The Snuggery, another cuddling
“In some ways, it’s sad that people or something, but during the pandemic service, offers overnight sessions, like
resort to a stranger for this,” James that went away.” He and James cycle sleepovers for adults, for four hundred
said. “At home, in Ghana, we touch a through a selection of cuddling posi- and twenty-five dollars.
lot.” He considers practicing his pro- tions. “I haven’t been held in the arms James meets with other professional
fession, he said, to be “an honor,” add- of somebody in that way since I was cuddlers each month to debrief. “You
ing, “It’s satisfying, and it involves a a child,” he said. know, what’s it like working with a
lot of intuition. People cry a lot.” James has Zoom sessions for peo- client who is a quadriplegic?” he said.
He presents new clients with a menu ple who feel safer cuddling alone. “That “What positions would you use? What
of cuddling experiences to choose from, was huge during the pandemic,” he about a client who’s autistic? Of course,
including “the classic cuddle” (cuddle said. “I suggest they wrap a blanket some people ask, ‘Is this sexual? Can
positions on a sofa or a bed); “binge around their shoulders and embrace you get naked?’ And, when they real-
cuddling” (“cuddle up in front of the themselves.” Down a hallway hung ize that it’s not, they are disappointed.
silver screen and binge-watch what- with Robert Mapplethorpe photo- One man scheduled a session for what
ever your current favorite show is”); graphs is the carpeted treatment room. I thought would be board games, but
and “culture club” (“spend an afternoon James lay on a bed and took up the then he asked me to walk him on a
at the latest exhibition linking arms “stargazing position,” flat on his back, leash, like a dog. I left.”
and discussing the artwork”). and indicated where a client would be —Antonia Hitchens
itics in Ohio “has changed.” The story is
A REPORTER AT LARGE similar in several other states with repu-
tations for being moderate, such as Wis-
GOODBYE, COLUMBUS
consin and Pennsylvania: their legisla-
tures have also begun proposing laws so
far to the right that they could never be
How an extreme minority has upended democracy in Ohio. passed in the U.S. Congress.
Ohio’s law prohibits abortion after
BY JANE MAYER six weeks—or even earlier, if doctors can
detect fetal cardiac activity—unless the
mother is at risk of death or serious per-
manent injury. Dr. Bernard noted that
the bill’s opponents had warned about
the proposed restrictions’ potential effect
on underage rape victims. “It was liter-
ally a hypothetical that was discussed,”
she told me. Indeed, at a hearing on April
27th, a Democrat in the Ohio House,
Richard Brown, declared that if a thir-
teen-year-old girl “was raped by a serial
rapist . . . this bill would require this thir-
teen-year-old to carry this felon’s fetus.”
The bill’s chief sponsor, State Repre-
sentative Jean Schmidt, is an archcon-
servative Republican who represents a
district east of Cincinnati. At the hear-
ing, she responded to Brown by arguing
that the birth of a rapist’s baby would be
“an opportunity.” She explained, “If a baby
is created, it is a human life. . . . It is a
shame that it happens. But there’s an op-
portunity for that woman, no matter how
young or old she is, to make a determi-
nation about what she’s going to do to
help that life be a productive human
being.” The rapist’s offspring, she sug-
gested, could grow up to “cure cancer.”
Her remarks were deemed so outlandish
s the Supreme Court anticipated Assembly instituted an abortion ban so that they were denounced everywhere
A when it overturned Roe v. Wade,
the battle over abortion rights is now
extreme that the girl was forced to travel
to Indiana to terminate her pregnancy.
from the Guardian to the New York Post.
According to David Niven, a political-
being waged state by state. Nowhere is In early July, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the In- science professor at the University of Cin-
the fight more intense than in Ohio, diana obstetrician who treated the child, cinnati, a 2020 survey indicated that less
which has long been considered a na- told me that she had a message for Ohio’s than fourteen per cent of Ohioans sup-
tional bellwether. The state helped se- legislature: “This is your fault!” port banning all abortions without ex-
cure the Presidential victories of Barack Longtime Ohio politicians have been ceptions for rape and incest. And a 2019
Obama in 2008 and 2012, then went for shocked by the state’s transformation into Quinnipiac University poll showed that
Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Its res- a center of extremist legislation, not just only thirty-nine per cent of Ohio voters
idents tend to be politically moderate, on abortion but on such divisive issues supported the kind of “heartbeat” law
and polls consistently show that a ma- as guns and transgender rights. Ted that the legislature passed. But the Dem-
jority of Ohio voters support legal access Strickland, a Democrat who served as ocrats in the Ohio legislature had no way
to abortion, particularly for victims of governor between 2007 and 2011, told to mount resistance: since 2012, the Re-
rape and incest. Yet, as the recent ordeal me, “The legislature is as barbaric, prim- publicans have had a veto-proof su-
of a pregnant ten-year-old rape victim itive, and Neanderthal as any in the coun- per-majority in both chambers.The Dem-
has illustrated, Ohio’s state legislature has try. It’s really troubling.” When he was ocratic state representative Beth Liston,
become radically out of synch with its governor, he recalled, the two parties a pediatrician and an internist in Ohio,
constituents. In June, the state’s General worked reasonably well together, but pol- who voted against the bill, told me, “Doc-
tors are going to be afraid of providing
Ohio’s voters are moderate, but its legislature is to the right of South Carolina’s. ordinary care. Women are going to die.”
22 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX MERTO
In a referendum on August 2nd, Kan- erally higher for pregnant girls who are Yale Law School, in the nineties, his ge-
sas voters strongly rejected an abortion younger than fifteen, but, Liston said, niality and Buckeye boosterism had led
ban, indicating that even voters in deep- “there’s nothing in the law that states that his classmates to name him the Most
red states—when given the chance to ex- age is a sufficient exception.” Likely to Be President of the Cincinnati
press themselves—oppose radical cur- Click, who is a close ally of the Re- Board of Tourism, but he spoke to me
tailments of reproductive rights. Yet Ohio publican congressman Jim Jordan, is one with an almost desperate alarmism.
voters have had no such recourse, and the of Ohio’s most extreme legislators, but Last year, Pepper wrote a book, “Lab-
General Assembly is poised to pass even he’s hardly out of place among the Gen- oratories of Autocracy,” whose title of-
more repressive restrictions on abortion eral Assembly’s increasingly radical Re- fers a grim spin on a famous statement,
when it returns from a summer recess. publican majority. Niven, the University attributed to the Supreme Court Justice
State Representative Gary Click—a pas- of Cincinnati professor, told me that, Louis Brandeis, calling America’s state
tor at the Fremont Baptist Temple and according to one study, the laws being legislatures “laboratories of democracy.”
a Republican who serves the Sandusky passed by Ohio’s statehouse place it to The subtitle of Pepper’s book, “A Wake-
area—has proposed a “Personhood Act,” the right of the deeply conservative leg- Up Call from Behind the Lines,” is a bit
which would prohibit any interference islature in South Carolina. How did this more hopeful. He is determined to get
with embryonic development from the happen, given that most Ohio voters are the Democratic political establishment
moment of conception, unless the moth- not ultra-conservatives? “It’s all about to stop lavishing almost all its money
er’s life is endangered. If the bill passes, gerrymandering,” Niven told me. The and attention on U.S. House, Senate, and
it could outlaw many kinds of contracep- legislative-district maps in Ohio have gubernatorial races (say, the current Sen-
tion, not to mention various practices been deliberately drawn so that many ate race in Ohio between Tim Ryan and
commonly used during in-vitro fertiliza- Republicans effectively cannot lose, all J. D. Vance) and to focus more energy
tion. In an e-mail, Click told me that “the but insuring that the Party has a veto- on what he sees as a greater emergency:
ultimate question that needs to be an- proof super-majority. As a result, the only the collapse of representative democracy
swered” is “When does life begin?” He contests most Republican incumbents in one statehouse after another.
added, “I believe the answer to that ques- need worry about are the primaries— Pepper understands that few Ameri-
tion is self-evident.” Click is a graduate and, because hard-core partisans domi- cans share his obsession. “No one knows
of an unaccredited Christian school in nate the vote in those contests, the sole anything about statehouses,” he said.
Michigan, Midwestern Baptist College, threat most Republican incumbents face “They can’t even name their state repre-
whose Web site says that “civil govern- is the possibility of being outflanked by sentatives. And it’s getting worse every
ment is of divine appointment” and must a rival even farther to the right. The na- year, since the local media’s dying and
be obeyed “except in things opposed to tional press has devoted considerable at- the statehouse bureaus are being hol-
‘the will of our Lord Jesus Christ.’” tention to the gerrymandering of con- lowed out.” Columbus has an unusually
Click acknowledged that the story of gressional districts, but state legislative strong press corps, but it is an exception.
the ten-year-old rape victim is discom- districts have received much less scru- And it is precisely because so few Amer-
fiting, adding that “we all have a visceral tiny, even though they are every bit as icans pay attention to state politics that
reaction” to such a scenario, “regardless skewed, and in some states far more so. the legislatures have become ideal arenas
of one’s political leaning.” But the news “Ohio is about the second most gerry- for manipulation by extremists and spe-
had not made him question his position; mandered statehouse in the country,” cial interests—who often work in tan-
rather, he questioned the girl’s story, call- Niven told me. “It doesn’t have a voter dem. “I’m banging my head against the
ing it “suspicious,” and noting that the base to support a total abortion ban, yet wall,” Pepper told me. With a nod to the
incident “fit too neatly” with the pro- that’s a likely outcome.” He concluded, political consultant James Carville, he
choice agenda. (According to law-en- “Ohio has become the Hindenburg of added, “My God, Democrats, don’t you
forcement authorities, a twenty-seven- democracy.” see it? It’s the statehouse, stupid! That’s
year-old Ohio man confessed to twice where the attack is happening!”
raping the girl when she was nine. He hree days before the Supreme Court Pepper scoffed at recent claims, made
has since pleaded not guilty.) Click also
echoed an argument made by Ohio’s Re-
T overturned Roe, I went to a lun-
cheonette in Columbus, Ohio, to meet
by conservative Justices on the U.S. Su-
preme Court, that the state legislatures
publican attorney general, Dave Yost, who with David Pepper, an election-law pro- are more suited than the judiciary to ad-
claimed that the ten-year-old—“if she fessor, a novelist, a onetime Cincinnati judicate the divisive issue of abortion. In
exists”—would have qualified for the new city councilman, and a former chairman Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Or-
statute’s medical-emergency exception. of the state’s Democratic Party. Pepper, ganization, the case that overturned Roe,
This assertion, however, has been dis- who is fifty-one, looked boyish and preppy Brett Kavanaugh issued a concurring
puted by various doctors, including State in a polo shirt. He had recently become opinion in which he argued that the
Representative Liston. “I don’t know the a small phenomenon on Twitter, having Court was merely restoring “the people’s
child’s health condition,” she acknowl- posted videos in which he delivered im- authority to address the issue of abor-
edged to me. “But it’s hard to say that passioned short lectures, punctuated with tion through the processes of democratic
simply because she is young she would frantic scribbles on a whiteboard, about self-government.” Pepper said of Kava-
meet the requirement of risk as defined the growing crisis of democracy in Amer- naugh’s concurrence, “It’s so disingenu-
by the new law.” Mortality rates are gen- ica’s state legislatures. When he attended ous—total gaslighting. Many statehouses
no longer have representative democracy. Republican Party in Wood County, Ohio, Wine—once regarded as a centrist con
Because they’ve been gerrymandered, and the author of “Bellwether Blues: A servative—has increasingly capitulated
they don’t reflect the will of the people.” Conservative Awakening of the Millennial to his party’s radical base, on publichealth
With Trump, he believes, the situa Soul,” and he emphasized that, in the policy and much else. (Reached for com
tion became a lot worse—the former nineteeneighties, it was the Democrats ment, a spokesperson for the Governor
President “made people a little more will who gerrymandered the state’s districts. said that “we disagree with that senti
ing to be lawless, and he gave oxygen “We’re all equalopportunity offenders,” ment.”) Daley told me that the redmap
to white supremacy.” But Pepper thinks he said. But the redmap project—pow campaign “took a state that was slightly
that “people make a huge mistake when ered by advances in digital mapping and red and gave it a hue more like Eliza
they equate the attack on democracy by billionaire donors such as the fossil beth Taylor’s lipstick,” adding, “The up
entirely with him.” In his fuel magnates Charles and shot has been some of the most farright,
view, Democrats, including David Koch—took electoral noxious, payforplay politics we’ve seen
President Joe Biden, who distortion to a new level. over the last decade. That’s what gerry
have portrayed Trump as a And Ohio, which had be mandering enables. When voters lose
singular aberration are fail come one of the most fiercely the ability to throw the rascals out, the
ing to see that “the Repub fought battleground states rascals do whatever they please.”
lican attack on democracy in Presidential politics, was Matt Huffman, the influential presi
preceded him”—and that “if subjected to an especially dent of the Ohio Senate, recently said as
Trump was locked up to tortured dissection. much himself. Speaking in May to the
morrow it would continue.” The journalist David Columbus Dispatch about the Republi
The shift began, Pepper Daley tells the story of cans’ supermajority, he said, “We can
believes, with the shock of redmap in his 2016 book, kind of do what we want.”
Obama’s 2008 victory. The election of “Ratf**ked.” By 2012, he writes, the Re
the country’s first Black President pro publicans’ plan had already begun to pay or Pepper, the state’s transformation
voked a racial and cultural backlash, and
many Republican officials panicked that
off handsomely: even though Obama was
reëlected in Ohio that year, by three per
F has been crushing. He has watched
the reputation of Ohio’s publicschool
their party, which was overwhelmingly centage points, and Sherrod Brown, a system slide as Republicans have siphoned
white, was facing a demographic demise. progressive Democrat, was easily reëlected off public funding to support failing, po
Swept out of power in Washington, the to the Senate, Republicans had a resound litically connected charter schools. In
Republican Party’s smartest operatives ing triumph in the state legislature. They 2010, Education Week ranked the state’s
decided to exploit the only opening they won a 60–39 supermajority in the House. schooling as the fifth best in the coun
could find: the possibility of capturing The Ohio statehouse has grown only try; in 2021, U.S. News & World Report
state legislatures in the 2010 midterm more lopsided in the past decade. Cur ranked it thirtyfirst. Last year, F.B.I.
elections. They knew that, in 2011, many rently, the Republican members have a agents told USA Today that publiccor
congressional and local legislative dis 64–35 advantage in the House and a 25–8 ruption cases in Ohio were the most egre
tricts would be redrawn based on data advantage in the Senate. This vetoproof gious in the country. In the past five years,
from the 2010 census—a process that oc majority makes the Republican leaders the state has had five speakers of the
curs only once a decade. If Republicans of both chambers arguably the most pow House, because two were forced out as a
reshaped enough districts, they could erful officeholders in the state—and they result of the biggest bribery scandals in
hugely advantage conservative candi proved it when they undermined Gov Ohio’s history. Larry Householder, who
dates, even if many of the Party’s poli ernor Mike DeWine’s initial public was removed from office in July, 2020, is
cies were unpopular. healthminded approach to the COVID19 scheduled to be tried on federal racke
In 2010, the Supreme Court issued pandemic. DeWine is a Republican, yet teering charges this coming January.
its controversial Citizens United deci he was a leader in imposing such emer This wasn’t the path that Pepper had
sion, which allowed dark money to flood gency health orders as mask mandates foreseen for his state. A native of Cin
American politics. Donors, many un and the closing of schools and businesses. cinnati, he grew up in a relatively apolit
disclosed, soon funnelled thirty million Ohio voters had widely supported these ical, upwardly mobile household: his fa
dollars into the Republicans’ redistrict measures. But antivaccine and antimask ther climbed the ranks at one of Ohio’s
ing project, called redmap, and the re extremists in the statehouse passed a law largest companies, Procter & Gamble,
sult was an astonishing success: the Party stripping the Governor and his health ultimately becoming its chairman. After
picked up nearly seven hundred legis director of the authority to issue such Pepper graduated from Yale Law School,
lative seats, and won the power to re orders. (One Republican lawmaker, a he returned to Cincinnati and clerked
draw the maps for four times as many doctor, suggested that “the colored pop for Nathaniel R. Jones, a Black federal
districts as the Democrats. ulation” was more vulnerable to COVID19 judge, who ignited in him an interest in
Gerrymandering the shapes of dis because “they do not wash their hands public service. In 2001, Pepper ran for the
tricts to create safe seats is an old trick as well as other groups.” The lawmaker city council, and to everyone’s surprise
that has been used by both sides in Amer was subsequently named the chairman he won, partly owing to a catchy slogan:
ican politics. I recently spoke with Jon of the Ohio Senate’s health committee.) “Just Add Pepper.” After two terms in
athan Jakubowski, the chairman of the Since the legislature’s rebellion, De office, he moved up to the county com
mission, eventually presiding over it, and trated U.S. statehouses. Of the 7,383 peo- Ohio. Some of these churches are mili-
in 2010 he was recruited by the state’s ple who served in state legislatures in the tant, and some are basically militias op-
Democratic governor, Strickland, to run 2021-22 session, eight hundred and sev- erating under the guise of religion.They’re
for auditor, a statewide office. At the time, enty-five had joined far-right Facebook weaponizing religion into a power grab.”
the auditor was one of five state officials groups. (All but three were Republicans.) He went on, “So, I’m the Jew, and they
on a commission overseeing the redis- The study describes the fringe beliefs came to my house to try to intimidate
tricting process, and could therefore act that many of these members shared, in- me and my family. That’s what’s happen-
as an effective curb against gerrymander- cluding “the idea that Christians consti- ing, and where this is going.”
ing. On the campaign trail, Pepper re- tute a core of the American citizenry and/ Weinstein became further alarmed
calls, “I was running around, talking about or that government and public policies this past March, when Republicans in
gerrymandering, and no one knew what should be reshaped to reflect that.” A the statehouse pushed legislation prohib-
the hell I was talking about.” Meanwhile, group promoting this view, the Ohio iting public-school teachers from teach-
his opponent was getting a torrent of sus- Christian Alliance, counts eleven Ohio ing “divisive concepts.” The bill, aimed
picious contributions from people who state legislators among its Facebook mem- at censoring class discussions of critical
worked for out-of-state energy compa- bers, including Gary Click. Last year, the race theory—which was never part of the
nies—many of which, Pepper deduced, organization helped block a bill, the Ohio Ohio public-school curriculum to begin
had ties to the controversial coal baron Fairness Act, that would have barred with—threatened teachers with suspen-
Bob Murray, the chief executive officer housing and employment discrimination sion unless they neutrally instructed stu-
of Murray Energy, an Ohio-based com- against the L.G.B.T.Q. community. dents about “both sides of a political or
pany. Such donations initially made lit- State Representative Casey Weinstein, ideological belief.” When Morgan Trau,
tle sense to Pepper—the auditor’s role a second-term Democrat from a subur- an enterprising statehouse reporter for a
had nothing to do with coal mines—until ban swing district between Akron and television station in Cleveland, pressed
he discovered that redmap had targeted Cleveland, and one of the General As- one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Sarah Fowler
his state, and that his candidacy stood in sembly’s two Jewish members, told me Arthur, for details, the lawmaker pro-
the project’s way. He lost the race. In that he’s recently become “really con- voked an uproar by offering the Holo-
2014, he made a second bid for statewide cerned” about a new level of extremism. caust as an example of a topic that re-
office, running this time for Ohio attor- On January 23, 2022, a protest outside his quired a “both sides” approach. “You
ney general. Again, he was defeated. In house shattered a peaceful Sunday after- should talk about these atrocities that
2015, he became the chairman of the state’s noon with his wife and young children. have happened in history, but you also
Democratic Party, a position that he Some thirty vehicles blocked the entrance do have an obligation to point out the
stepped down from at the end of 2020. to his driveway; one had a flag bearing value that each individual brings to the
Pepper had become consumed by the the message “Kneel for the Cross.” table,” Fowler Arthur said, adding that
problem of gerrymandering, but the sub- Weinstein told me, “I thought it was a students should consider the Holocaust
ject drew only blank stares from Demo- Trump group, but it turned out to be a “from the perspective of a German sol-
cratic Party officials. To counter this ap- church, Liberty Valley, near Macedonia, dier.” As Fowler Arthur went on, she
athy, he told me, he decided “to write a
novel about gerrymandering—which, of
course, is a horrible idea.” In the book,
“The People’s House,” a Russian oligarch
modelled on Vladimir Putin rigs an
American election after figuring out that,
thanks to gerrymandering, he needs only
to flip a few dozen swing districts. The
book appeared in the summer of 2016,
when Putin’s clandestine efforts on be-
half of Trump were making headlines;
Politico called the book “the thriller that
predicted the Russia scandal.” Pepper was
pleased about the media attention, but
he was disappointed that more people
didn’t focus on the novel’s message: “how
bad gerrymandering is.” With evident
frustration, he told me that media and
political insiders prefer “to talk about pol-
itics in terms of personalities.”
A recent study by the Institute for Re-
search and Education on Human Rights,
a nonpartisan nonprofit, documents how
deeply right-wing extremism has infil- “Well, this is me.”
state, where it is legal for residents to kill
a trespasser without first attempting to
de-escalate the situation. Lawmakers also
passed a bill that allows Ohioans aged
twenty-one or older to carry concealed
handguns virtually anywhere, without
first obtaining a permit or undergoing a
background check and firearms training.
In response to the school massacre in
Uvalde, Texas, the Ohio General Assem-
bly rushed through a law that enables
any school board to arm teachers and
other staff—including cafeteria workers
and bus drivers—after only minimal gun
training. The legislation was written by
• • a lawmaker who owns a business in tac-
tical-firearms training, and the lawmak-
er’s business partner gave testimony in
seemed to misunderstand both the scope moted by Fowler Arthur represents an the Ohio Senate in support of the bill,
and the nature of the Holocaust, referring attempt to put forth a sanitized view of which specified that armed school per-
to it as an event in which “hundreds of history—in this case, “to ban teaching sonnel needed only twenty-four hours of
thousands,” rather than six million, Jews parts of our history that cast a bad light firearms training. (Law-enforcement of-
were killed, and suggesting that victims on white America.” Pepper asked me, ficers in Ohio must undergo some seven
were murdered “for having a different “If this was happening in another coun- hundred hours of training.) The bill was
color of skin.” Weinstein and other Jewish try, what would you say? You’d say, ‘Oh, so extreme that it was denounced in hear-
leaders in Ohio vociferously denounced my gosh—your democracy is under at- ings by more than three hundred and
what came to be known as the Both Sides tack!’ Well, it’s happening in Columbus.” fifty speakers—including representatives
of the Holocaust Bill. “That was enough Indeed, he warned, it’s happening in of the Ohio Federation of Teachers and
for me,”Weinstein told me. “What unique state capitols across the country. of the state’s largest police organization,
value did the German Nazis bring to the the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio.
table?” He noted that Fowler Arthur, who hio Republicans put the “divisive In an interview, Michael Weinman,
sits on the Ohio House’s Primary and
Secondary Education Committee, “was
O concepts” bill on hold after the idea
of teaching neutrally about the Holo-
the head of government affairs for
the Ohio chapter of the Fraternal Order
homeschooled her entire life, has never caust provoked national condemnation. of Police, which represents some twen-
set foot in a public school, and elected But Ohio’s General Assembly otherwise ty-four thousand law-enforcement offi-
not to go to college.” Weinstein added, proceeded at a breakneck pace this past cers, described the new gun laws as “dan-
“There’s nothing wrong with that, until spring—debating a bill enabling the in- gerous” and “insane.” Thanks to the
she starts censoring what can and can- spection of the genitals of transgender legislation, he explained, “anyone can
not be taught in public schools.” (Fowler student athletes, and passing a raft of leg- come into Ohio and carry a concealed
Arthur declined to comment.) islation about guns. Many of these new firearm,” and need not mention having
The real intent behind attacking laws were so extreme that they inspired the gun if stopped by law enforcement.
public-school curricula, Weinstein be- fierce protests from Ohio residents. Weinman pointed out that the law about
lieves, was to “fire up the Republican A 2018 poll conducted by Baldwin arming school employees contains no
base” about the teaching of slavery, the Wallace University, in Berea, Ohio, provision requiring that lethal weapons
Civil War, and the civil-rights move- showed that Ohioans, by clear majorities be locked safely, adding, “Can you imag-
ment—in other words, to get out the ranging from sixty-one to seventy-five ine a kindergarten student sitting down
conservative vote by inflaming the ra- per cent, wanted the state legislature to to be read to, and there’s a gun in the
cial grievances of white Ohioans. The enact new gun-control laws: banning kid’s face?” He noted that, other than
“divisive concepts” bill championed by high-powered semi-automatic rifles, in- teachers, most employees of a school
Fowler Arthur opposes teaching any cluding the AR-15; banning extended “haven’t been taught how to discipline
reading of American history suggesting ammunition magazines; banning bump people—and most school shooters are
that “the United States and its institu- stocks that, in effect, make semi-auto- students.” Melissa Cropper, the presi-
tions are systemically racist.” matic rifles automatic; enacting a man- dent of the Ohio Federation of Teach-
Pepper noted that the efforts to con- datory waiting period for gun purchases; ers, told me, “It’s unbelievable. The more
trol the curriculum in Ohio are “very raising the minimum age to buy semi- guns you have in schools, the more ac-
similar to the meltdown in democracy automatic rifles from eighteen to twenty- cidents and deaths can happen, especially
in other places.” Like Russia’s attempts one. But no such measures were passed. with such minimal training.” She added,
to censor what is taught to students about Instead, the state legislature has turned “We are every bit as bad as Texas and
Ukraine, he said, the legislation pro- Ohio into a so-called “stand your ground” Florida when it comes to these laws. We
are becoming more and more extreme.” have the life I dreamed of as a little girl, that we’re going to be in this for the long
Weinman said that the rightward turn because I had that choice.” Without the haul,” Baer said. “We’re going to have a
on guns in Ohio has been driven, in no freedom to have an abortion, she said, “I voice on the direction of the state—and
small part, by “very aggressive gun groups,” wouldn’t be a state senator today.” the nation, God willing.”
some of which profit from extremism by In 2015, during a floor debate over The center already commands unusual
stoking fear. This helps to sell member- abortion policy, Fedor testified about her influence. E-mails obtained by a watch-
ships and to expand valuable mailing lists. experience. As she was speaking, she was dog group, Campaign for Accountabil-
“These groups are very confrontational,” enraged to notice that another lawmaker, ity, show that Baer has been in regular
Weinman said. He recently testified in who opposed her view, was chuckling. contact with Governor DeWine’s office
the Ohio General Assembly against loos- She said that Republicans who serve in about an array of policies. The center’s
ening state gun laws; afterward, he told districts that have been engineered to be board of directors includes two of the
me, Chris Dorr, the head of a particu- impervious to voters are “just not listen- state’s biggest Republican donors, one of
larly militant group called Ohio Gun ing to the public, period—there’s no need whom, the corporate lobbyist David
Owners, chased him out of the room and to.” Many of the most extreme bills, Fedor Myhal, previously served as DeWine’s
down a hallway, demanding that he be believes, have been written not by the chief fund-raiser. A third director, Tom
fired. In an online post, Dorr, who main- legislators themselves but by local and Minnery, who has served as the center’s
tains that the National Rifle Association national right-wing pressure groups, board chair, is a chairman emeritus of the
is too soft in its defense of gun rights, which can raise dark money and turn Alliance Defending Freedom, a power-
posted a closeup shot of Weinman with out primary voters in force. Nationally, ful national legal organization that was
the caption “remember this face,” the most influential such group is the created as the religious right’s answer to
adding in another post that Weinman is American Legislative Exchange Coun- the American Civil Liberties Union. And,
“the most aggressive gun-rights hater in cil, an organization that essentially out- until earlier this year, a fourth director at
Ohio.” Dorr and his two brothers, Ben sources the drafting of laws to self-in- the center was Seth Morgan, who is cur-
and Aaron, operate affiliated gun groups terested businesses. In Ohio, Fedor told rently the vice-chairman of the A.D.F.
around the country, which share the slo- me, it is often extreme religious groups The most recently available I.R.S. rec-
gan “No Compromise.” During the pan- that exert undue inf luence. She then ords show that the center and the A.D.F.
demic, the Dorrs’ groups expanded into noted that one such organization is about share several funding sources—notably,
other vehemently anti-government causes, to have “an office right across from the the huge, opaque National Christian
and helped lead anti-mask and anti-vax statehouse chamber.” Foundation—and have amplified each
protests. Niven, the political scientist, said other’s messages. In April, the center cel-
that the Dorrs “cultivate relationships acing Ohio’s Greek Revival state- ebrated the A.D.F.’s legal defense of an
with the hardest-right members of the
state legislature, and can get their bills
F house is a vacant six-story building
that is slated to become the new head-
Ohio college professor who refused to
use a student’s preferred pronouns. In ad-
heard.” Ninety per cent of Ohio voters quarters of the Center for Christian Vir- dition, the center works in concert with
favor universal background checks for tue, a once obscure nonprofit that an anti- about a hundred and thirty Catholic and
people trying to buy guns, Niven noted, pornography advocate founded four evangelical schools, twenty-two hundred
“but the Democrats can’t get a hearing.” decades ago, in the basement of a Cin- churches, and what it calls a Christian
Teresa Fedor, a Democratic state sen- cinnati church. In 2015 and 2016, the Chamber of Commerce of aligned busi-
ator who has served in the General As- left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Cen- nesses. Jake Grumbach, a political scien-
sembly for twenty-two years, described ter classified the organization as a hate tist specializing in state government who
Ohio’s new gun and abortion laws as the group, citing homophobic statements on teaches at the University of Washington,
worst legislation that she has ever wit- its Web site that described “homosexual told me that the center illustrates what
nessed being passed. She told me, “It behavior” as “unhealthy and destructive political scientists are calling the “nation-
feels like Gilead”—the fictional theoc- to the individual” and “to society as a alization of local politics.”
racy in Margaret Atwood’s novel “The whole.” The group subsequently deleted The Center for Christian Virtue ap-
Handmaid’s Tale.” Fedor added, “We’ve the offending statements, and, according pears to be the true sponsor of some of
got state-mandated pregnancies, even to the Columbus Dispatch, it has recently Ohio’s most extreme right-wing bills.
of a ten-year-old.” evolved into “the state’s premier lobby- Gary Click, the Sandusky-area pastor
The issue is personal to her. Fedor, a ing force on Christian conservative is- serving in the Ohio House, acknowl-
grandmother, is a former teacher; in her sues.” In the past five years, its full-time edged to me that the group had prompted
twenties, when she was serving in the staff has expanded from two to thirteen, him to introduce a bill opposing gender-
military, she was raped. She had an abor- and its annual budget has risen from four affirming care for transgender youths,
tion. Fedor was a divorced single mother hundred thousand dollars to $1.2 million. regardless of parental consent. The cen-
at the time, trying to earn a teaching de- The group’s president, Aaron Baer, told ter, in essence, handed Click the word-
gree. “I thought my life was going to be me that the new headquarters—the group ing for the legislation. Click confirmed
over,” she said. “But abortion was acces- bought the building for $1.25 million last to me that the center “is very proactive
sible, and it was a way back. To me, that year, and plans to spend an additional on Cap Square”—the Ohio capitol—
choice meant I’d be able to have a future. $3.75 million renovating it—is very much adding, “All legislators are aware of their
I feel like I made it to the other side, and meant to send a signal. “The message is presence.” Click’s transgender bill isn’t
yet law, but a related bill, also promoted As a result, the Ohio constitution now leader of the Ohio House, jeered at his
by the center, has passed in the Ohio requires that districts be shaped so that Democratic opponents: “Too bad so sad.
House. It stipulates that any student on the makeup of the General Assembly is We win again.” He continued, “Now I
a girls’ sports team participating in in- proportional to the political makeup of know it’s been a tough night for all you
terscholastic conferences must have been the state. In 2018, an even larger biparti- libs. Pour yourself a glass of warm milk
born with female genitals. The legisla- san majority—seventy-five per cent of and you will sleep better. The game is
tion also calls for genital inspections. Ohio voters—passed a similar resolution over and you lost.”
Niven observed that “many anti-trans for the state’s congressional districts. Ohio Democrats, including David
sports bills were percolating” in Repub- Though these reforms were demo- Pepper, are outraged. “The most corrupt
lican-ruled statehouses, but “leave it to cratically enacted, the voters’ will has thus state in the country was told more than
Ohio to pass a provision for mandatory far been ignored. Allison Russo, the mi- five times that it was violating the law,
genital inspection if anyone questions nority leader in the House, who is one and then the federal court said it was
their gender.” He went on, “That’s ger- of two Democratic members of the seven- O.K.,” he told me. “If you add up all the
rymandering. You can’t say ‘Show me person redistricting commission, told me, abnormalities, it’s a case study—we’re see-
your daughter’ and stay in office unless “I was optimistic at the beginning.” But, ing the disintegration of the rule of law
you have unlosable districts.” she explained, the Republican members in Ohio. They intentionally created an
In a phone interview, Baer told me drafted a new districting map in secret, illegal map, and are laughing about it.”
that his mother and father, who divorced, and earlier this year they presented it to Russo likens the Republicans’ stun-
were Jewish Democrats. But his father her and the other Democrat just hours ning contempt for the Ohio Supreme
converted to Christianity, and became a before a deadline. The proposed districts Court to the January 6th insurrection:
Baptist pastor. After a rocky adolescence, were nowhere near proportional to the “People are saying, ‘Where is the account-
Baer himself converted to a more con- state’s political makeup. The Democrats ability when you disregard the rule of law
servative form of evangelical Christian- argued that the Republicans had fla- and attack democracy?’ Because that’s
ity. He told me that the only “real hope grantly violated the reforms that had been what’s happening in the statehouses, and
for our nation is in Jesus, but we need written into the state constitution. Ohio is a perfect example.”
safeguards in the law.” He described This past spring, an extraordinary se- Pepper has resorted to giving nightly
gender-confirming health care for trans- ries of legal fights were playing out. The Zoom lectures to small groups of Dem-
gender patients as “mutilation.” Baer be- Ohio Supreme Court struck down the ocratic activists and donors from across
lieves that the Supreme Court should map—and then struck down four more, the country, in the hope of opening
overturn the legalization of same-sex after the Republican majority on the re- their eyes to what’s happening at the
marriage, and he opposes the use of sur- districting commission continued sub- ground level in the statehouses. Mean-
rogate pregnancy, which he called “rent- mitting maps that defied the spirit of while, he recently co-founded a group
ing a womb,” because it “permanently the court’s orders. The chief justice of called Blue Ohio to fund even seem-
separates the children from their biolog- the Ohio Supreme Court was herself a ingly doomed races in deep-red local
ical mothers.” He supports the Person- Republican. Russo told me, “If norms districts. Even if these Democratic can-
hood Act—State Representative Click’s were being obeyed, we would expect that didates lose in 2022, he says, they will
proposal to ban abortions at conception. there would have been an effort to fol- at least be making arguments that vot-
As for Ohio’s much publicized ten-year- low the first Ohio Supreme Court de- ers in many districts would never oth-
old rape victim, Baer told me that the cision. But that simply didn’t happen.” erwise hear. “You can’t just abandon half
girl would have been better off having The Republicans’ antics lasted so the country to extremism,” he warns.
her rapist’s baby and raising it, too, belong that they basically ran out the clock. As Pepper sees it, Republicans under-
cause a “child will always do best with Election deadlines were looming, and stand clearly that, “if it were a level play-
the biological mother.” the makeup of Ohio’s districts still hadn’t ing field, their positions would be too
“Even if the mother is in grade school?” been settled. “They contrived a crisis,” unpopular to win.” But “this is not a de-
I asked. Russo told me. At that point, a group mocracy to them anymore.”
“Yes,” he said. allied with the Republicans, Ohio Right He told me, “There are two sides in
Baer is untroubled by the notion that to Life, urged a federal court to inter- America, but they’re fighting different
gerrymandering has enabled minority vene, on the ground that the delay was battles. The blue side thinks their views
rule. “I think the polls that matter are imperilling the fair administration of are largely popular and democracy is
the polls of the folks turning out to upcoming elections. The decision was relatively stable—and that they just need
vote,” he said. made by a panel of three federal judges— better outcomes in federal elections. The
two of whom had been appointed by focus is on winning swing states in na-
he vast majority of Ohio residents Trump. Over the strenuous objection tional elections. The other side, though,
T clearly want legislative districts that
are drawn more fairly. By 2015, the state’s
of the third judge, the two Trump judges
ruled in the group’s favor, allowing the
knows that our democracy isn’t stable—
that it can be subverted through the
gerrymandering problem had become so 2022 elections to proceed with a map statehouses. Blue America needs to re-
notorious that seventy-one per cent of so rigged that Ohio’s top judicial body shape everything it does for that much
Ohioans voted to pass an amendment to had rejected it as unconstitutional. deeper battle. It’s not about one cycle.
the state constitution demanding reforms. On Twitter, Bill Seitz, the majority It’s a long game.” 
so much denim. Somehow his dark-in-
SHOUTS & MURMURS digo laundry always sneaks into your
load of whites.
You’re sick of his annoying friend Jack-

son Browne coming over for a beer,
because it’s never just a beer—it’s Jack-
son and James getting into an end-
less argument about who’s sold more
albums, and then Jackson crashing on
your couch until noon.
You can’t listen to him quote the Time

cover story from 1971 that refers to
his “Heathcliffian inner fire” even one
more time.
When you’re in the shower, James

Taylor pokes his head in and yells,
“Shower the people you love with
love!,” and then laughs maniacally.
When you watch Peter Jackson’s

eight-hour Beatles documentary,
“Get Back,” James interrupts every
five minutes, saying, “Hey, I know
those cats!”
He insists that you sing “Sweet Baby

James” to him as a lullaby. While it’s
a beautiful song, James is not a baby
but a seventy-four-year-old man who
could probably afford his own place
by now.
WHY YOU SHOULDN’T

If it rains and you build a fire in the
fireplace, James Taylor smugly goes,
ROOM WITH JAMES TAYLOR

“I’ve seen both of those before.”
He’s started writing songs for his new

BY JENN KNOTT album which are obviously about you
even though he denies it, including
our last roommate left hair every- You wanted to decorate the mantel “Sun’s Shining (and the Dishwasher
Y where, but James Taylor leaves
guitar picks.
with tasteful dried flowers and candles,
but James insists that’s where all six of
Don’t Unload Itself )” and “God
Damn, Never Heard a Woman Snore
his Grammys go. So Loud.”
James Taylor is always saying he’s your
handyman, but when you ask if he’ll He’s always bragging about his Starbucks One morning, after James has spent
unclog the toilet he says he can only CD and asking if you’ve ever released a raucous evening with Jackson, you
fix broken hearts. something that can be purchased with wake to find his room cleaned out
your morning Frappuccino. When you and both singer-songwriters gone. On
When you confront him about his late tell him that no one drinks a Frappuc- the mantel, you discover a hastily
rent check, he insists that his manager cino in the morning, he just rolls his eyes. scribbled note that says, “Decided to
was supposed to send it. move back to North Carolina. Left a
Your parents now visit you constantly . . . Grammy to cover next month’s rent.
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
Deep greens and blues are not the col- but only after asking if James Taylor Sorry ’bout turning all your shirts blue.
ors you choose, but he’s painted your will be there. Best of luck, J.T. (& J.B.)”
entire apartment in a mind-bending
swirl of them anyway. You’ve never known anyone who owned He’s just too folksy. 
quently clashed? Perhaps an overstate-
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS ment, Raphaelson admitted, but a
humanizing touch. About the phrase
LAUGHTER IN THE DARK

“free from guile,” Lubitsch said, “You
know better than to call me honest”—a
line that could fit into any of his films.
The subtly incisive film comedy of Ernst Lubitsch. Only once did he show serious dis-
comfort, and that was at the mention
BY ALEX ROSS of the historians: “What historians?
They’ll laugh at you. A movie—any
movie, good or bad—ends up in a tin
can in a warehouse; in ten years it’s
dust.” He expressed envy for Raphael-
son, whose stage plays counted as lit-
erature and might live on. Eventually,
Lubitsch decided that the tribute was
perfect as it was, exaggerations be
damned. It was published unaltered
when, later that year, Lubitsch’s heart
did give out. He was fifty-five.
Raphaelson told the story of Lu-
bitsch previewing his own eulogy in an
article for this magazine in 1981. By then,
it was evident that the director would
not be forgotten—indeed, that Rapha-
elson would go down in history mainly
as a screenwriter. Still, there is no ques-
tion that Lubitsch’s renown has faded
in recent decades. He is best remem-
bered as the purveyor of the so-called
Lubitsch Touch, which is understood
to mean some blend of cosmopolitan
sophistication and winking innuendo.
His movies radiate those qualities in
abundance, but categorizing him as
a kind of cinematic cosmetician sells
him short. Technically virtuosic and vi-
sually poetic, he elevated comedy to the
realm of the sublime. The late Peter
Bogdanovich, who knew many of the
major filmmakers of the mid- and
n the summer of 1943, the play- son. He was genuinely modest. He late twentieth century, wrote that Lu-
I wright and screenwriter Samson
Raphaelson received word that Ernst
never sought fame or coveted prizes. . . .
He was as free from guile and pre-
bitsch was “the one director whom nearly
every other director I ever interviewed
Lubitsch, the Berlin-born director tense as children are supposed to be, mentioned with respect and awe as
of such incandescent Hollywood and this made him endlessly various among the very best.” Jean Renoir put
comedies as “Trouble in Paradise,” and charming.” it pithily: “Lubitsch invented the mod-
SCHERL / SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO / ALAMY
“The Shop Around the Corner,” and Lubitsch had not died, it turned out, ern Hollywood.”
“Heaven Can Wait,” had suffered a though he never fully regained his grin- Billy Wilder, another of the awe-
fatal heart attack. Raphaelson, who ning, cigar-chewing buoyancy. When, struck, enjoyed telling an anecdote from
had written scripts for those films and in 1947, he worked with Raphaelson the making of the 1939 classic “Ni-
for many others, set about compos- again, he let it slip that he had read notchka,” which he co-wrote and Lu-
ing a tribute to Lubitsch, extolling and appreciated the premature memo- bitsch directed. Greta Garbo plays a
him in terms that few other directors rial. Out of habit, the two men began dour Bolshevik ideologue who falls prey
of the era elicited: “However great the going over the text, as if it were a bit to capitalist temptations in Paris. Wilder
cinema historians will eventually es- in a script. Was it true, Lubitsch won- and his writing partners, Charles Brack-
timate him, he was bigger as a per- dered, that his pants and coats fre- ett and Walter Reisch, were struggling
to convey the stages of Garbo’s trans-
Technically virtuosic, visually poetic, he elevated comedy to the realm of the sublime. formation. One day, Lubitsch emerged
from the bathroom saying, “It’s the hat.” obsession, which involved viewing prints had Eastern European Jewish roots. His
Here is Wilder’s recounting, more than at the Museum of Modern Art, explor- father, Simon, was a Russian-born tai-
five decades after the fact: ing archives at the Academy of Motion lor who had settled in Berlin; his mother,
Picture Arts and Sciences, and visiting Anna, grew up east of the city. Lubitsch
We said, “What hat?” He said, “We build the
hat into the beginning!” Brackett and I looked
the director’s daughter, Nicola. I found gravitated to the theatre at an early age
at each other—this is Lubitsch. The story of Lubitsch to be the rare case of a major and was mentored by Victor Arnold,
the hat has three acts. Ninotchka first sees it artist who becomes more likable the who played comic roles in Max Rein-
in a shop window as she enters the Ritz Hotel more one learns about him. He had hardt’s celebrated company. Lubitsch,
with her three Bolshevik accomplices. This ab- nothing dark or demonic in him, even too, became a Reinhardt actor. Although
solutely crazy hat is the symbol of capitalism
to her. She gives it a disgusted look and says,
if there were chambers of sadness be- he never advanced beyond bit parts, he
“How can a civilization survive which allows hind his suggestively closed doors. was able to study at close range Rein-
women to wear this on their heads?” Then the hardt’s brilliant direction of onstage
second time she goes by the hat and makes a he fate of Lubitsch is a familiar movement. Those lessons are reflected
noise—tch-tch-tch. The third time, she is fi-
nally alone, she has gotten rid of her Bolshe-
T one for the comic auteur. The
genres on which he thrived and that he
in the vitality of Lubitsch’s party scenes,
where everyone seems to be having the
vik accomplices, opens a drawer and pulls it
out. And now she wears it. helped to establish—romantic comedy, time of his life, probably because there
the movie musical, warm-blooded so- was no better party to be found.
Wilder can be excused for missing a cial satire—are routinely overlooked in Lubitsch received his first film-act-
few details: the hotel is called the Clar- catalogues of directorial genius. Wilder ing credit in 1913, when he was twenty-
ence, and Ninotchka actually says, “How escaped that lot by demonstrating a flair one, and made his début as a director
can such a civilization survive which for drama: “Double Indemnity” and a year later, in a short titled “Miss Soap-
permits their women to put things like “Ace in the Hole” count among the suds.” He achieved considerable popu-
that on their heads?” (She adds, “Won’t boldest, bleakest films ever made in larity playing a certain comic type: a
be long now, comrades.”) Adding to the Hollywood. Lubitsch’s occasional ven- Jewish schlemiel who, despite his vul-
intricacy of the joke is the unambigu- tures into “serious” territory are less per- garity and klutziness, maneuvers his
ous ridiculousness of the hat in ques- suasive. His 1932 antiwar picture, “Bro- way up the social ladder. Critics have
tion: it looks a bit like an upside-down ken Lullaby,” about a French veteran debated whether these “milieu films,”
drinking goblet of Bronze Age manu- who falls in love with the former fian- usually set in the garment business, in-
facture. Bolshevism is being lampooned, cée of a German soldier he killed, la- dulge anti-Semitic stereotypes. McBride
but so is capitalist taste. Lubitsch prizes, bors under tearjerker tropes, although follows scholars like Enno Patalas and
above all, the freedom to be ridiculous, its raging sorrow at the waste of war Valerie Weinstein in concluding that
in the context of whatever ideology. commands respect. Lubitsch treats his subjects with a “com-
In a curious twist, Wilder, Lubitsch’s An added problem for Lubitsch is plex blend of affection and mockery.”
most devout acolyte, has a stronger hold that the early-twentieth-century Ger- Weinstein calls it a form of Jewish camp,
on the public imagination. “Sunset Bou- man cinema, from which he emerged, dismantling clichés through “exagger-
levard,” “The Apartment,” and “Some tends to be defined by its artier, eerier ated, theatrical masquerade.” As a per-
Like It Hot” are pop-culture monu- products: “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” former, Lubitsch is a relentless but ir-
ments, and books about Wilder have “Nosferatu,” “Metropolis,” and other resistible ham; it’s a pity that he stopped
piled up: the latest include Joseph Mc- staples of college classes. The focus on acting in 1920.
Bride’s “Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Expressionist styles reflects the long- The German film industry bene-
Edge,” a critical study of the director’s standing influence of Siegfried Kra- fitted from its isolation during the First
films, and Noah Isenberg’s “Billy Wilder cauer and Lotte Eisner, émigré critics World War; with foreign movies effec-
on Assignment,” a selection of his youth- who interpreted German film in light tively banned, it could develop free of
ful journalistic writing in Vienna and of the country’s slide toward Nazism. Hollywood’s growing domination. Lu-
Berlin. Lubitsch, in contrast, is mostly As latter-day scholars complain, Kra- bitsch took the opportunity to broaden
the terrain of academics, though Mc- cauer and Eisner emphasized tales of his template. In “I Don’t Want to Be a
Bride pleaded for a broader reassess- madness and horror over comedies, op- Man,” from 1918, Ossi Oswalda plays a
ment in a 2018 study, “How Did Lu- erettas, melodramas, adventures, and rebellious tomboy who decides to dress
bitsch Do It?”—the title based on a other popular fare of the day. After the as a man. On the town, she encounters
sign that hung in Wilder’s office. First World War, the movie that reopened her natty male guardian (Curt Goetz),
How he did it, no one knows. His the American market for German film- who fails to recognize her and goes drink-
films, with their interweaving of for- makers was not “Caligari” but “Madame ing in her company. Attraction grows,
mal elegance, sly wit, and emotional DuBarry” (1919), a vibrant epic of French leading to a kiss in broad daylight. When
ambiguity, resist analysis. His entire ca- decadence and revolution. Its director everything is sorted out, the guardian
reer is a singular event: arguably, no di- was Lubitsch, whom Eisner dismissed recovers remarkably quickly. He asks,
rector maintained so distinctive an iden- as a “one-time shop assistant” with a pen- “You let me kiss you?” She answers,
tity within the Hollywood studio system. chant for “telling love stories in sump- “Well, was it not to your taste?” We
McBride’s deeply researched, impas- tuous period costume.” are only a step away from the gender-
sioned book nudged me into a Lubitsch Like so many film pioneers, Lubitsch bending antics of “Some Like It Hot,”
except that Lubitsch is really a step incident on the streets of Bel Air. Lu- eral Lubitsch silents, I was struck by the
ahead: the casualness about sexuality is bitsch was serving as the local air-raid elemental beauty of the images. “Lady
thoroughly modern. warden, identifying blackout infractions Windermere’s Fan,” released in 1925, is
The following year, Lubitsch made as he patrolled the neighborhood in a based on the Oscar Wilde play, though
“The Oyster Princess,” again starring white helmet. Outside the home of none of the original text appears in the
the gleefully anarchic Oswalda. The Walter Reisch, an Austrian who tai- intertitles. Instead, Lubitsch discovers
plot is standard-issue operetta mate- lored scripts for M-G-M, he barked, cinematic analogues to Wilde’s apho-
rial—an American millionaire’s daugh- “Walter—your lights! You have forgot- ristic razzle-dazzle. The claustrophobia
ter woos an impoverished European ten!” Reisch answered, “Ach, yes, was of the upper crust is captured in hard
prince—but the visual invention is elec- gibt’s?” (“What’s going on?”) The Amer- gazes, sidewise looks, stolen glances, and
trifying. In one scene, the prince’s ser- ican director Mervyn LeRoy, hearing flashes of raw desperation. The charac-
vant is kept waiting in a palatial room this exchange from a neighboring house, ters drift through strangely vast rooms,
at the millionaire’s mansion. Out of merrily yelled, “German paratroopers dwarfed by the architecture of their sta-
boredom, he becomes absorbed in an have taken over!” tion. The central figure is the social out-
elaborate pattern in the floor, and amuses The jest had some truth in it: Lu- cast Mrs. Erlynne, whom Irene Rich
himself by balletically prancing across bitsch had been the advance agent for endows with wounded power. In a tour-
it. As in the comedies of Jacques Tati, a mighty squadron of German-speak- de-force racetrack scene, she withstands
quizzical mischief warms up a cold ening directors, actors, screenwriters, pro- the scrutiny of half a dozen binoculars.
vironment. Later, a stuffy wedding party ducers, composers, and technicians. Even At the climax, she glides majestically
is overcome by a “foxtrot epidemic.” before Hitler and Goebbels drove hun- into a room full of scandal-seeking men,
The exquisitely choreographed chaos— dreds of film people into exile, a sub- saving Lady Windermere from ruin.
couples kicking their legs in mass for- stantial German-Austrian colony had Women are objectified in Lubitsch’s
mation, the kitchen staff joining in while formed in Hollywood, with Lubitsch world, but so are men. The 1924 film
balancing trays, a bandleader wiggling at its center. The director didn’t Amer- “Forbidden Paradise,” which MoMA has
his butt—is a convulsively musical ex- icanize himself—nor could he, really. returned to gleaming condition, is a
perience, even without music. Instead, he fused European and Amer- comic take on the story of Catherine
Several other films from Lubitsch’s ican traditions. “Every good film is by the Great, with a libidinous Tsarina
German period display avant-garde fea- nature international,” he wrote in 1924. (Pola Negri) delighting in a handsome
tures: surrealist sets, geometrical ma- In defiance of commercial nostrums, guardsman (Rod La Rocque). Movies
nipulations of the screen image, self-ref- Lubitsch trusted in the intelligence of of the twenties fetishized beautiful men
erential cameos by the director. At the his audience. The way to win the hearts like Rudolph Valentino and Ramon
same time, he was devising lavish cos- of moviegoers, he once told Wilder, was Novarro; Lubitsch is plainly having fun
tume pictures that adroitly mix com- not to tell them that two plus two equals with that trend, reducing his male lead
edy and drama. In “Madame DuBarry,” four but to let them do the addition to a stupid sex object. In one scene of
aristocratic shenanigans go off with the themselves. The hat in “Ninotchka” is deafening innuendo, La Rocque’s chest
expected saucy wit; more startling are a case in point: when Garbo puts it on, swells so muscularly that a button bursts
the helter-skelter scenes of revolution. off his tunic, causing the Tsarina’s eyes
“The Loves of Pharaoh” (1922) contains to open wide. At the end, she moves
sequences of staggering complexity, with on to a new conquest, without having
thousands of extras in motion. Such paid any great price for her exercise of
proficiency in the epic mode caught the lust. Lubitsch, in a later discussion of
attention of Hollywood, which saw Lu- the roguish 1933 comedy “Design for
bitsch as a European counterpart to Living,” said that women in film should
D. W. Griffith. Thankfully, he turned do “what all the male Don Juans have
out to be something quite different. been doing for ages—and attractively.”
hen Lubitsch moved to Los no one reminds the viewer that she cas- o absolute was Lubitsch’s mastery
W Angeles, in December, 1922, his
background caused unease. The First
tigated the same hat half an hour ear-
lier. Lubitsch’s reliance on the oblique,
S of the silent-film medium that he
might have been expected to stumble
World War was not long in the past, the elliptical, and the unsaid leads the with the introduction of sound. Instead,
and some rabid patriots took umbrage audience to suspect innuendo where starting in 1929, he launched another
at the idea of a German-speaking film- none may have been intended. When ebullient revolution, codifying the film
maker working in Hollywood. Unlike Genevieve Tobin, in the marital-temp- musical with a run of movies, most of
his predecessor Erich von Stroheim, tation comedy “One Hour with You,” them featuring Maurice Chevalier: “The
who had come to America at the age asks, “Do you play Ping-Pong?,” we gig- Love Parade,” “Monte Carlo,” “The
of twenty-four and spoke English flu- gle at God knows what. Smiling Lieutenant,” “One Hour with
idly, Lubitsch retained a strong accent. Lubitsch’s early American films have You,” and “The Merry Widow.” In ret-
During the Second World War, his a cool, polished look. When I went to rospect, it was obvious that the man
Germanic delivery led to a cherished MOMA, which has restored prints of sev- who made “The Oyster Princess” would
thrive in the new genre. A famous se-
quence in “Monte Carlo”—Jeanette
MacDonald at the window of a speed-
ing train, singing “Beyond the Blue
Horizon” to peasants in fields—was de-
scribed by the film scholar Gerald Mast
as the “first sensational Big Number”
in Hollywood history.
In the matter of gender relations, the
musicals have aged less well. The em-
powerment of the female gaze in the
silent films gives way to a male-domi-
nated perspective, a sacralizing of Che-
valier’s roué persona. Characters played
by MacDonald and Claudette Colbert
are not granted the freedom that Os-
walda and Negri earlier enjoyed. Mc-
Bride argues, in Lubitsch’s defense, that
the movies address the “emotional con-
sequences of male abandon.” The rake
is often exposed as a grownup boy who
fears both loneliness and commitment.
As it happens, the cinematic bard of
sexual laissez-faire was himself unlucky
in love. Lubitsch’s first marriage, to He-
lene Kraus, ended when Kraus had an
affair with the screenwriter Hanns Kräly, “Someday, you can turn this crippling loss into
who had been working with Lubitsch a really triumphant college essay.”
since the garment-comedy days. A sec-
ond marriage, to Vivian Gaye, fell apart
following a passionate beginning. • •
After Kräly made his exit, in 1930,
Lubitsch turned to Raphaelson, one of during the Great Depression, and at more believable than Chevalier ever
many New York writers who went west first glance it seems frivolously detached could. A bittersweet atmosphere infil-
when sound came in. In 1932, the two from its historical moment. There is, trates the relationship between Gaston
concocted “Trouble in Paradise,” which however, a political undertow beneath and Colet, culminating in an almost
is to film comedy what “The Marriage the froth. Aaron Schuster, in the 2014 shockingly expressive series of shots.
of Figaro” is to comic opera. McBride essay collection “Lubitsch Can’t Wait,” Colet, embracing Gaston in her bed-
rightly says of it, “Nothing could ever tracks recurrences of the phrase “in times room, says, “We have a long time ahead
be more perfect.” Miriam Hopkins and like these”: well-off people use it to ges- of us, Gaston—weeks, months, years . . .”
Herbert Marshall play Lily and Gas- ture emptily toward the Depression First, we see the couple reflected in a
ton, master thieves on a debonair ram- while justifying their usual behavior. The circular mirror over the bed; then, at
page through high society. Kay Francis chairman of Colet’s board says to her, the word “months,” they appear in a
is Madame Colet, an eccentric perfume “If your husband were alive, the first small cosmetic mirror; and finally, at
executive who is initially Gaston’s mark thing he would do in times like these— “years,” they dematerialize into shad-
but then becomes the object of his con- cut salaries.” This is, as Schuster says, ows on the bed. It’s like an abyss open-
flicted affections. The thieves inhabit a the cruel politics of austerity, and Colet ing and then quickly closing.
world of pure artifice, which allows for nobly, if daffily, rejects it: “Unfortunately,
pitch-perfect parodies of tony movie Monsieur Giron, business bores me to he final decade and a half of Lu-
dialogue (“Out there in the moonlight
everything seemed so perfect, so sim-
distraction. Besides, I have a luncheon
engagement. So I think we’d better leave
T bitsch’s career unfolded under the
cloud of the dreaded Production Code,
ple—but now . . . ”). Colet, a mesmer- the salaries just where they are.” Natu- with its prudish horror of sexuality and
izing Francis creation, has a way of punc- rally, Giron is unmasked as the biggest its callow fear of politics. The mecha-
turing illusions with regal candor: “You thief of all. Gaston boasts that he can nism of studio self-censorship took shape
see, François, marriage is a beautiful at least count himself a “self-made crook.” in 1930 but wasn’t fully enforced until
mistake which two people make to- Gaston is another Lubitsch rake who 1934, when the Motion Picture Produc-
gether. But with you, François, I think rethinks his two-timing ways. Marshall, ers and Distributors of America handed
it would be a mistake.” hinting at vulnerability beneath an im- control of the process to Joseph Breen,
“Trouble in Paradise” was made peccable veneer, makes the transition a conservative Catholic journalist. The
following year, Breen barred a reissue in “Bluebeard” clashed with Lubitsch’s “garbo laughs”—but acres of clunky
of “Trouble in Paradise” on moral airier sensibility. Wilder, who had ar- dialogue surrounded it.
grounds. In the same period, Lubitsch rived in Hollywood in 1934, may have When Lubitsch took over the proj-
accepted an offer from Paramount to adulated Lubitsch, but he had differ- ect, in early 1939, he first brought in
become the studio’s head of production. ent cultural roots, his voice having Reisch, a wizard of plot construction,
Putting a director in charge of other di- formed in Jazz Age Berlin. Lubitsch and then the verbally dexterous Brack-
rectors invites conflict, and Lubitsch was whimsical; Wilder was savage. In ett and Wilder. Reading the team’s
was soon skirmishing with Josef von “Ninotchka,” the two met on fertile drafts, you can almost hear the kibbitz-
Sternberg, Paramount’s other paragon middle ground. ing in the room as ideas were bandied
of Continental style. The experiment The Turner/M-G-M script collec- about, rejected, altered, and perfected.
lasted only a year, and Lubitsch emerged tion at the Margaret Herrick Library, Here are successive versions of a line
with his reputation diminished and his the home of the Academy archives, con- that Ninotchka utters to her Russian
creative path uncertain. tains hundreds of pages of drafts for comrades after arriving in Paris:
After two much debated out- “Ninotchka,” which had undergone
The last trial was a big success. People are
ings—“Angel,” an absorbing but im- many iterations before Lubitsch got confessing more and more.
perfect vehicle for Marlene Dietrich, involved. The idea for a story about a
and “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife,” a fit- cold Bolshevik fanatic finding love in The last mass trials were a great success.
fully funny pairing of Colbert with Paris originated with the playwright We are going to be fewer but better Russians!
Gary Cooper—Lubitsch returned to Melchior Lengyel, who had also helped
The last mass trials were a great success.
peak form in “Ninotchka,” released in to conceive “Forbidden Paradise.” Sev- There are going to be fewer but better Russians.
1939 by M-G-M. This was the direc- eral other writers, including S. N. Behr-
tor’s second collaboration with Brack- man, fleshed out the screenplay. By late According to Brackett, this line origi-
ett and Wilder, who had first joined 1938, the pivotal scene was in place— nated with Lubitsch, who had visited
forces to work on “Bluebeard.” As Mc- one in which Ninotchka’s worldly lover, the Soviet Union in 1936, coming away
Bride points out, the duo imported the Leon, gets her to guffaw in a restau- with a grim view of the Stalinist state.
raucousness of screwball comedy, which rant, enabling the promotional tagline Yet “Ninotchka” is by no means an
anti-socialist tract. The title character
may succumb to the silly hat, but Leon
(Melvyn Douglas) experiences his own
evolution, and Ninotchka fires some
sharp quips in his direction: “I have
heard of the arrogant male in capital-
istic society. It is having a superior earn-
ing power that makes you that way.”
The two end up in Constantinople, in
what feels like a geographical and ideo-
logical compromise. A lovably rascally
trio of Bolshevik functionaries, played
by the émigré actors Alexander Gra-
nach, Sig Ruman, and Felix Bressart,
exemplify the make-the-best-of-it types
who populate any system.
Bressart, a lanky, twinkling, birdlike
man who had been a star of German
comedies before fleeing the Nazi re-
gime, is a mainstay of Lubitsch’s later
films. In “The Shop Around the Cor-
ner,” he portrays a meek clerk who as-
siduously avoids any confrontation with
the shop’s overbearing owner, played by
Frank Morgan. Three times Morgan
asks those around him for an “honest
opinion,” and three times Bressart ac-
robatically vanishes. In a very Lubitsch-
ean way, this gag undergoes a diminu-
endo as it is repeated, until, by the end,
we catch only a glimpse of Bressart’s
“No, it’s not exactly ‘on’ the water, but it’s near legs at the top of a spiral staircase, tak-
the water and it has a lot of character.” ing a few steps down and then scam-
pering back up. A similar trick is per “How dare you call me a ham!”) The stands on the piano on which he im
formed in “Ninotchka,” as the Bolshevik Hollywood studios, in deference to the provised operettastyle melodies. Nicola
buffoons furtively check out the grand German market, had long discouraged was nine when her father died, and she
lobby of the Hotel Clarence one by one. representations of Nazi antiSemitism, can’t shed much light on what he
Granach, the last in the series, merely and even as late as 1942 such references thought about weighty matters. Yet she
takes a turn in the revolving door, star were rare. Lubitsch knew how to cir remembers him vividly and fondly.
ing wideeyed through the glass. cumvent the Code, however, and in “To “All the beautiful things in his
The most memorable of Bressart’s Be or Not to Be” he got in a joke at films—the luxurious textures, the ob
performances is in “To Be or Not to Breen’s expense. On the eve of the Ger jects—Daddy didn’t really care about
Be,” Lubitsch’s antiNazi comedy of man invasion of Poland, the any of that at home,” Nicola
1942. The deliciously convoluted script, actors are told that they told me. “He was a man of
which Edwin Justus Mayer wrote in cannot stage an antiNazi fixed habits. He had prunes
league with the director, imagines a play they’ve been rehears every morning for break
troupe of Polish actors who pass them ing, because it “might of fast, listening to Fred War
selves off as Nazis in a scheme to pro fend Hitler.” Benny replies, ing or ‘The Breakfast Club’
tect the resistance. Jack Benny, as the with brittle sarcasm, “Well, on his portable radio. If the
selfinfatuated thespian Joseph Tura, wouldn’t that be too bad!” car broke down, he’d tell
first pretends to be a Gestapo colonel, Wartime America wasn’t Otto, our chauffeur, to go
in order to obtain information from the quite ready for this brand buy another big black car.
treacherous Professor Siletsky; then he of labyrinthine satire. Crit He lived in his own world:
pretends to be Siletsky, in a meeting ics of the day took partic he was consumed by his
with the actual colonel (a magisterially ular exception to Colonel Ehrhardt’s work, and by music, and by me. And,
simpering Ruman). All the while, Tura comment about Tura’s acting: “What of course, he loved having interesting
fumes over an affair between his he did to Shakespeare, we are doing people around.”
freespirited wife (Carole Lombard) now to Poland.” Bosley Crowther, in Nicola brought out a guestbook that
and a hunky airman (Robert Stack). At the Times, called the movie “callous and documented gatherings at the Lubitsch
the climax, a fake Hitler stages a dis macabre.” Lubitsch, in a response pub home, on Bel Air Road. The roster of
traction at a theatre where the actual lished in the newspaper, argued that the names includes Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz
Hitler is in attendance. Lubitsch’s mes best way to combat Nazis onscreen was Lang, Gary Cooper, Claudette Colbert,
sage is clear enough: the Nazis are them to ridicule them, thereby puncturing Charles Laughton, Jack Benny, Franz
selves a gang of ham actors who bam their negative mystique. He also sought Waxman, Salka Viertel, Bruno Walter,
boozled the world. to transcend the conventional division Alma MahlerWerfel, and Billy Wilder,
Bressart plays Greenberg, an actor between “drama with comedy relief ” who gives his middle name as “Valen
who dreams of a starring role as Shy and “comedy with dramatic relief ”; his tino.” Nicola told me, “All these great
lock but is relegated to the part of a aim was not to “relieve anybody from musicians would be at the house, and
spearcarrier in “Hamlet.” This makes anything at any time.” Daddy would always be at the piano,
him an obvious standin for Lubitsch, Wilder made that formula his own even though he couldn’t actually read
an erstwhile Second Gravedigger for in his great string of black comedies music. Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur
Max Reinhardt. At three points in the and screwball tragedies. Whether Lu Rubinstein would be sitting there lis
film—Lubitsch’s law of three in oper bitsch himself could have capitalized tening to Daddy’s Viennese café music.
ation again—Greenberg recites phrases on the advance of “To Be or Not to Be” But they all loved him.”
from Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew eyes?” is unknowable. He completed two more The headline in Daily Variety on
speech. First, it serves as an expression highend entertainments—“Heaven December 1, 1947, might have made
of artistic longing; then it communi Can Wait” and “Cluny Brown”—but the Master laugh: “lubitsch drops
cates mourning amid the ruin of war. health issues curtailed his energies and dead.” The interment was at Forest
Finally, during the resistance action at ambitions. As his heart disease advanced, Lawn, in Glendale. Nicola and her
the theatre, the monologue becomes an he was often housebound. According mother were shown several grandiose
act of heroic defiance, as Greenberg to his biographer, Scott Eyman, friends burial sites, including one in a walledin
speaks the lines to Hitler’s face. That found him gentler and more reflective garden with pipedin Muzak. Nicola
he is addressing the fake Hitler and not in mood. Increasingly, the chief joy of said, “Daddy couldn’t possibly live in
the real one hardly matters in the mov his life was Nicola, his only child. a place with such awful music.” In
ie’s topsyturvy world. stead, Lubitsch took up residence out
Although Greenberg is never explic icola Lubitsch did some acting in on the rolling lawn, under a simple,
itly identified as Jewish, we surmise that
he is, not only because of his identifi
N her youth, and later worked as a
radio producer and announcer in Los
flat headstone.
After the burial, Wilder walked
cation with Shylock but also on account Angeles. She lives in Brentwood, in a glumly next to his colleague William
of a groanworthy exchange with an house stocked with mementos of her Wyler. “Well, no more Lubitsch,”Wilder
other actor. (Greenberg: “Mr. Rawitch, father. An honorary Oscar that Lu said. “Worse than that,” Wyler replied.
what you are, I wouldn’t eat.” Rawitch: bitsch received the year of his death “No more Lubitsch films.” 
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
TRUMP’S LAST GENERAL

How did the Pentagon handle the national-security threat posed by its own Commander-in-Chief ?
BY SUSAN B. GLASSER AND PETER BAKER
n the summer of 2017, after just half Sure enough, Trump returned to Iran. The divide was also a matter of
I a year in the White House, Don-

ald Trump flew to Paris for Bastille
Day celebrations thrown by Emman-
Washington determined to have his gen-
erals throw him the biggest, grandest
military parade ever for the Fourth of
values, of how they viewed the United
States itself. That was never clearer than
when Trump told his new chief of staff,
uel Macron, the new French President. July. The generals, to his bewilderment, John Kelly—like Mattis, a retired Ma-
Macron staged a spectacular martial dis- reacted with disgust. “I’d rather swallow rine Corps general—about his vision
play to commemorate the hundredth acid,” his Defense Secretary, James Mat- for Independence Day. “Look, I don’t
anniversary of the American entrance tis, said. Struggling to dissuade Trump, want any wounded guys in the parade,”
into the First World War. Vintage tanks officials pointed out that the parade Trump said. “This doesn’t look good for
rolled down the Champs-Élysées as would cost millions of dollars and tear me.” He explained with distaste that at
fighter jets roared overhead. The event up the streets of the capital. the Bastille Day parade there had been
seemed to be calculated to appeal to But the gulf between Trump and the several formations of injured veterans,
Trump—his sense of showmanship and generals was not really about money or including wheelchair-bound soldiers
grandiosity—and he was visibly de- practicalities, just as their endless pol- who had lost limbs in battle.
lighted. The French general in charge icy battles were not only about clash- Kelly could not believe what he was
of the parade turned to one of his Amer- ing views on whether to withdraw from hearing. “Those are the heroes,” he told
ican counterparts and said, “You are Afghanistan or how to combat the nu- Trump. “In our society, there’s only one
going to be doing this next year.” clear threat posed by North Korea and group of people who are more heroic
As the President’s behavior grew increasingly erratic, General Mark Milley told his staff, “I will fight from the inside.”
than they are—and they are buried over Trump still did not get it. “So, you don’t “Which generals?” Kelly asked.
in Arlington.” Kelly did not mention like the idea?” he said, incredulous. “The German generals in World
that his own son Robert, a lieutenant “No,” Selva said. “It’s what dicta- War II,” Trump responded.
killed in action in Afghanistan, was tors do.” “You do know that they tried to kill
among the dead interred there. Hitler three times and almost pulled
“I don’t want them,” Trump repeated. he four years of the Trump Presi- it off?” Kelly said.
“It doesn’t look good for me.”
The subject came up again during
T dency were characterized by a fan-
tastical degree of instability: fits of
But, of course, Trump did not know
that. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal
an Oval Office briefing that included rage, late-night Twitter storms, abrupt to him,” the President replied. In his
Trump, Kelly, and Paul Selva, an Air dismissals. At first, Trump, who had version of history, the generals of the
Force general and the vice-chairman of dodged the draft by claiming to have Third Reich had been completely sub-
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kelly joked in bone spurs, seemed enamored with servient to Hitler; this was the model
his deadpan way about the parade. “Well, being Commander-in-Chief and with he wanted for his military. Kelly told
you know, General Selva is going to be the national-security officials he’d ei- Trump that there were no such Amer-
in charge of organizing the Fourth of ther appointed or inherited. But Trump’s ican generals, but the President was
July parade,” he told the President.Trump love affair with “my generals” was brief, determined to test the proposition.
did not understand that Kelly was being and in a statement for this article the By late 2018, Trump wanted his own
sarcastic. “So, what do you think of the former President confirmed how much handpicked chairman of the Joint Chiefs
parade?” Trump asked Selva. Instead of he had soured on them over time. “These of Staff. He had tired of Joseph Dun-
telling Trump what he wanted to hear, were very untalented people and once ford, a Marine general who had been ap-
Selva was forthright. I realized it, I did not rely on them, I pointed chairman by Barack Obama, and
“I didn’t grow up in the United States, relied on the real generals and admirals who worked closely with Mattis as they
I actually grew up in Portugal,” Selva within the system,” he said. resisted some of Trump’s more outland-
said. “Portugal was a dictatorship—and It turned out that the generals had ish ideas. Never mind that Dunford still
parades were about showing the people rules, standards, and expertise, not blind had most of a year to go in his term. For
who had the guns. And in this country, loyalty. The President’s loud complaint months, David Urban, a lobbyist who
we don’t do that.” He added, “It’s not to John Kelly one day was typical: “You ran the winning 2016 Trump campaign
who we are.” fucking generals, why can’t you be like in Pennsylvania, had been urging the
Even after this impassioned speech, the German generals?” President and his inner circle to replace
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY KLAWE RZECZY THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022 37
of elevator-speech punch lines,” a senior
defense official recalled. “He would have
that big bellowing voice and be right in
his face with all the one-liners, and then
he would take a breath and he would say,
‘Mr. President, our Army is here to serve
you. Because you’re the Command-
er-in-Chief.’ It was a very different ap-
proach, and Trump liked that.” And, like
Trump, Milley was not a subscriber to
the legend of Mad Dog Mattis, whom
he considered a “complete control freak.”
Mattis, for his part, seemed to believe
that Milley was inappropriately cam-
paigning for the job, and Milley recalled
to others that Mattis confronted him at
a reception that fall, saying, “Hey, you
shouldn’t run for office. You shouldn’t
run to be the chairman.” Milley later told
people that he had replied sharply to
Mattis, “I’m not lobbying for any fucking
thing. I don’t do that.” Milley eventually
raised the issue with Dunford. “Hey,
Mattis has got this in his head,” Milley
told him. “I’m telling you it ain’t me.”
“Michael, your father and I are worried that you’re Milley even claimed that he had begged
awfully young to be singing the blues.” Urban to cease promoting his candidacy.
In November, 2018, the day before
Milley was scheduled for an interview
• • with Trump, he and Mattis had another
barbed encounter at the Pentagon. In
Dunford with a more like-minded chair- heart, backed Mark Milley, the chief of Milley’s recounting of the episode later
man, someone less aligned with Mattis, staff of the Army. Milley, who was then to others, Mattis urged him to tell
who had commanded both Dunford and sixty, was the son of a Navy corpsman Trump that he wanted to be the next
Kelly in the Marines. who had served with the 4th Marine Di- Supreme Allied Commander in Eu-
Mattis’s candidate to succeed Dun- vision, in Iwo Jima. He grew up outside rope, rather than the chairman of the
ford was David Goldfein, an Air Force Boston and played hockey at Princeton. Joint Chiefs. Milley said he would not
PREVIOUS SPREAD: SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM GETTY; NATIONAL ARCHIVES / NEWSMAKERS

general and a former F-16 fighter pilot As an Army officer, Milley commanded do that but would instead wait to hear
who had been shot down in the Bal- troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, led the what the President wanted him to do.
kans and successfully evaded capture. 10th Mountain Division, and oversaw This would end whatever relationship
No one could remember a President se- the Army Forces Command. A student the two generals had.
lecting a chairman over the objections of history who often carried a pile of the When Milley arrived at the White
of his Defense Secretary, but word came latest books on the Second World War House the next day, he was received by
back to the Pentagon that there was no with him, Milley was decidedly not a Kelly, who seemed to him unusually
way Trump would accept just one rec- member of the close-knit Marine fra- distraught. Before they headed into the
ommendation. Two obvious contend- ternity that had dominated national- Oval Office to meet with Trump, Mil-
ers from the Army, however, declined security policy for Trump’s first two years. ley asked Kelly what he thought.
to be considered: General Curtis Sca- Urban told the President that he would “You should go to Europe and just
parrotti, the NATO Supreme Allied connect better with Milley, who was lo- get the fuck out of D.C.,” Kelly said.
Commander in Europe, told fellow- quacious and blunt to the point of being The White House was a cesspool: “Just
officers that there was “no gas left in rude, and who had the Ivy League ped- get as far away as you can.”
my tank” to deal with being Trump’s igree that always impressed Trump. In the Oval Office, Trump said right
chairman. General Joseph Votel, the Milley had already demonstrated those from the start that he was considering
Central Command chief, also begged qualities in meetings with Trump as the Milley for chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
off, telling a colleague he was not a good Army chief of staff. “Milley would go When Trump offered him the job, Mil-
fit to work so closely with Mattis. right at why it’s important for the Pres- ley replied, “Mr. President, I’ll do what-
Urban, who had attended West Point ident to know this about the Army and ever you ask me to do.”
with Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike why the Army is the service that wins all For the next hour, they talked about
Pompeo, and remained an Army man at the nation’s wars. He had all those sort the state of the world. Immediately, there
were points of profound disagreement. President gravitated toward one who That same morning, Mulvaney showed
On Afghanistan, Milley said he believed would basically go along with whatever up at the White House for his first of-
that a complete withdrawal of Ameri- he wanted. A week later, Kelly made an ficial day as acting chief of staff. He
can troops, as Trump wanted, would unsuccessful last-ditch effort to per- called an all-hands meeting and made
cause a serious new set of problems. suade Trump not to replace him with an announcement: O.K., we’re going to
And Milley had already spoken out pub- Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman do things differently. John Kelly’s gone,
licly against the banning of transgender from South Carolina who was serving and we’re going to let the President be
troops, which Trump was insisting on. as Trump’s budget director. “You don’t the President.
“Mattis tells me you are weak on want to hire someone who’s going to
transgender,” Trump said. be a yes-man,” Kelly told the President. n the fall of 2019, nearly a year after
“No, I am not weak on transgender,”
Milley replied. “I just don’t care who
“I don’t give a shit anymore,” Trump
replied. “I want a yes-man!”
I Trump named him the next chairman
of the Joint Chiefs, Milley finally took
sleeps with who.” A little more than a week after that, over the position from Dunford. Two
There were other differences as well, Mattis was out, too, having quit in pro- weeks into the job, Milley sat at Trump’s
but in the end Milley assured him, “Mr. test over Trump’s order that the U.S. side in a meeting at the White House
President, you’re going to be making abruptly withdraw its forces from Syria with congressional leaders to discuss a
the decisions. All I can guarantee from right after Mattis had met with Amer- brewing crisis in the Middle East. Trump
me is I’m going to give you an honest ican allies fighting alongside the U.S. had again ordered the withdrawal of U.S.
answer, and I’m not going to talk about It was the first time in nearly four de- forces from Syria, imperilling America’s
it on the front page of the Washing- cades that a major Cabinet secretary Kurdish allies and effectively handing
ton Post. I’ll give you an honest answer had resigned over a national-security control of the territory over to the Syr-
on everything I can. And you’re going dispute with the President. ian government and Russian military
to make the decisions, and as long as The so-called “axis of adults” was over. forces. The House—amid impeachment
they’re legal I’ll support it.” None of them had done nearly as much proceedings against the President for
As long as they’re legal. It was not clear to restrain Trump as the President’s crit- holding up nearly four hundred million
how much that caveat even registered ics thought they should have. But all of dollars in security assistance to Ukraine
with Trump. The decision to name Mil- them—Kelly, Mattis, Dunford, plus as leverage to demand an investigation
ley was a rare chance, as Trump saw it, H. R. McMaster, the national-security of his Democratic opponent—passed a
to get back at Mattis. Trump would adviser, and Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first nonbinding resolution rebuking Trump
confirm this years later, after falling out Secretary of State—had served as guard- for the pullout. Even two-thirds of the
with both men, saying that he had picked rails in one way or another. Trump hoped House Republicans voted for it.
Milley only because Mattis “could not to replace them with more malleable At the meeting, the Speaker of the
stand him, had no respect for him, and figures. As Mattis would put it, Trump House, Nancy Pelosi, pointed out the
would not recommend him.” was so out of his depth that he had de- vote against the President. “Congratula-
Late on the evening of December 7th, cided to drain the pool. tions,” Trump snapped sarcastically. He
Trump announced that he would reveal On January 2, 2019, Kelly sent a fare- grew even angrier when the Senate Dem-
a big personnel decision having to do well e-mail to the White House staff. ocratic leader, Chuck Schumer, read out
with the Joint Chiefs the next day, in He said that these were the people he a warning from Mattis that leaving Syria
Philadelphia, at the hundred-and-nine- would miss: “The self less ones, who could result in the resurgence of the Is-
teenth annual Army-Navy football game. lamic State. In response, Trump derided
This was all the notice Dunford had that his former Defense Secretary as “the
he was about to be publicly humiliated. world’s most overrated general. You know
The next morning, Dunford was stand- why I fired him? I fired him because he
ing with Milley at the game waiting for wasn’t tough enough.”
the President to arrive when Urban, the Eventually, Pelosi, in her frustration,
lobbyist, showed up. Urban hugged Mil- stood and pointed at the President. “All
ley. “We did it!” Urban said. “We did it!” roads with you lead to Putin,” she said.
But Milley’s appointment was not “You gave Russia Ukraine and Syria.”
even the day’s biggest news. As Trump “You’re just a politician, a third-rate
walked to his helicopter to fly to the work for the American people so hard politician!” Trump shot back.
game, he dropped another surprise. “John and never lowered themselves to wres- Finally, Steny Hoyer, the House Ma-
Kelly will be leaving toward the end of tle in the mud with the pigs. The ones jority Leader and Pelosi’s No. 2, had had
the year,” he told reporters. Kelly had who stayed above the drama, put per- enough. “This is not useful,” he said, and
lasted seventeen months in what he called sonal ambition and politics aside, and stood up to leave with the Speaker.
“the worst fucking job in the world.” simply worked for our great country. “We’ll see you at the polls,” Trump
For Trump, the decision was a turn- The ones who were ethical, moral and shouted as they walked out.
ing point. Instead of installing another always told their boss what he or she When she exited the White House,
strong-willed White House chief of NEEDED to hear, as opposed to what Pelosi told reporters that she left because
staff who might have told him no, the they might have wanted to hear.” Trump was having a “meltdown.” A few
hours later, Trump tweeted a White ing, street violence, and arson, including were long versions. His preferred ver-
House photograph of Pelosi standing a small fire in St. John’s Church, across sion was the one that read in its entirety:
over him, apparently thinking it would from the White House.
I regret to inform you that I intend to re-
prove that she was the one having a melt- In the morning before the Lafayette sign as your Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
down. Instead, the image went viral as Square photo op, Trump had clashed Staff. Thank you for the honor of appointing
an example of Pelosi confronting Trump. with Milley, Attorney General William me as senior ranking officer. The events of the
Milley could also be seen in the pho- Barr, and the Defense Secretary, Mark last couple weeks have caused me to do deep
tograph, his hands clenched together, his Esper, over his demands for a militarized soul-searching, and I can no longer faithfully
support and execute your orders as Chairman
head bowed low, looking as though he show of force. “We look weak,” Trump of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is my belief that
wanted to sink into the floor. told them. The President you were doing great and irreparable harm to
To Pelosi, this was a sign of wanted to invoke the Insur- my country. I believe that you have made a
inexplicable weakness, and rection Act of 1807 and use concerted effort over time to politicize the
she would later say that she active-duty military to quell United States military. I thought that I could
change that. I’ve come to the realization that
never understood why Mil- the protests. He wanted ten I cannot, and I need to step aside and let some-
ley had not been willing to thousand troops in the one else try to do that.
stand up to Trump at that streets and the 82nd Air- Second, you are using the military to cre-
meeting. After all, she would borne called up. He de- ate fear in the minds of the people—and we
point out, he was the non- manded that Milley take are trying to protect the American people. I
cannot stand idly by and participate in that at-
partisan leader of the mili- personal charge. When tack, verbally or otherwise, on the American
tary, not one of Trump’s Milley and the others re- people. The American people trust their mil-
toadies. “Milley, you would sisted and said that the Na- itary and they trust us to protect them against
have thought, would have had more in- tional Guard would be sufficient, Trump all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our mil-
dependence,” she told us, “but he just shouted, “You are all losers! You are all itary will do just that. We will not turn our
back on the American people.
had his head down.” fucking losers!”Turning to Milley, Trump Third, I swore an oath to the Constitution
In fact, Milley was already quite wary said, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just of the United States and embodied within that
of Trump. That night, he called Repre- shoot them in the legs or something?” Constitution is the idea that says that all men
sentative Adam Smith, a Washington Eventually, Trump was persuaded not and women are created equal. All men and
Democrat and the chairman of the to send in the military against Ameri- women are created equal, no matter who you
are, whether you are white or Black, Asian, In-
House Armed Services Committee, can citizens. Barr, as the civilian head of dian, no matter the color of your skin, no mat-
who had also been present. “Is that the law enforcement, was given the lead role ter if you’re gay, straight or something in be-
way these things normally go?” Milley in the protest response, and the National tween. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic,
asked. As Smith later put it, “That was Guard was deployed to assist police. Protestant, Muslim, Jew, or choose not to be-
the moment when Milley realized that Hours later, Milley, Esper, and other of- lieve. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter
what country you came from, what your last
the boss might have a screw or two ficials were abruptly summoned back to name is—what matters is we’re Americans.
loose.” There had been no honeymoon. the White House and sent marching We’re all Americans. That under these colors
“From pretty much his first day on the across Lafayette Square. As they walked, of red, white, and blue—the colors that my par-
job as chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” with the scent of tear gas still in the air, ents fought for in World War II—means some-
Smith said, “he was very much aware Milley realized that he should not be thing around the world. It’s obvious to me that
you don’t think of those colors the same way I
of the fact that there was a challenge there and made his exit, quietly peeling do. It’s obvious to me that you don’t hold those
here that was not your normal challenge off to his waiting black Chevy Suburban. values dear and the cause that I serve.
with a Commander-in-Chief.” But the damage was done. No one would And lastly it is my deeply held belief that
care or even remember that he was not you’re ruining the international order, and caus-
arly on the evening of June 1, 2020, present when Trump held up a Bible in ing significant damage to our country over-
E Milley failed what he came to real-
ize was the biggest test of his career: a
front of the damaged church; people had
already seen him striding with the Pres-
seas, that was fought for so hard by the Great-
est Generation that they instituted in 1945.
Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people
short walk from the White House across ident on live television in his battle dress, were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They
Lafayette Square, minutes after it had an image that seemed to signal that the were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dic-
been violently cleared of Black Lives United States under Trump was, finally, tatorships. That generation, like every gener-
ation, has fought against that, has fought against
Matter protesters. Dressed in combat fa- a nation at war with itself. Milley knew fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought
tigues, Milley marched behind Trump this was a misjudgment that would haunt against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that
with a phalanx of the President’s advisers him forever, a “road-to-Damascus mo- you don’t understand that world order. You
in a photo op, the most infamous of the ment,” as he would later put it. What don’t understand what the war was all about.
Trump Presidency, that was meant to would he do about it? In fact, you subscribe to many of the princi-
ples that we fought against. And I cannot be
project a forceful response to the protests a party to that. It is with deep regret that I
that had raged outside the White House n the days after the Lafayette Square
and across the country since the killing,
the week before, of George Floyd. Most
I incident, Milley sat in his office at
the Pentagon, writing and rewriting
hereby submit my letter of resignation.
The letter was dated June 8th, a full

of the demonstrations had been peace- drafts of a letter of resignation. There week after Lafayette Square, but Mil-
ful, but there were also eruptions of loot- were short versions of the letter; there ley still was not sure if he should give
it to Trump. He was sending up flares, dred thousand active-duty Black troops, of Peter Feaver, a Duke University ex-
seeking advice from a wide circle. He could not be seen opposing a movement pert on civil-military relations, who
reached out to Dunford, and to men- for racial justice. Even Mattis, who had taught the subject to generals at com-
tors such as the retired Army general refrained from openly criticizing Trump, mand school. When Milley, who had
James Dubik, an expert on military eth- issued a statement about the “bizarre been among Feaver’s students, called for
ics. He called political contacts as well, photo op.”The Washington Post reported advice after Lafayette Square, Feaver
including members of Congress and that Mattis had been motivated to do so agreed that Milley should apologize but
former officials from the Bush and by his anger at the image of Milley pa- encouraged him not to resign. “It would
Obama Administrations. Most told him rading through the square in his fatigues. have been a mistake,” Feaver said. “We
what Robert Gates, a former Secretary Whatever their personal differences, have no tradition of resignation in pro-
of Defense and C.I.A. chief, did: “Make Mattis and Milley both knew that there test amongst the military.”
them fire you. Don’t resign.” was a tragic inevitability to the moment. Milley decided to apologize in a com-
“My sense is Mark had a pretty ac- Throughout his Presidency, Trump had mencement address at the National De-
curate measure of the man pretty quickly,” sought to redefine the role of the mili- fense University that he was scheduled
Gates recalled later. “He would tell me tary in American public life. In his 2016 to deliver the week after the photo op.
over time, well before June 1st, some of campaign, he had spoken out in support Feaver’s counsel was to own up to the
the absolutely crazy notions that were of the use of torture and other practices error and make it clear that the mis-
put forward in the Oval Office, crazy that the military considered war crimes. take was his and not Trump’s. Presi-
ideas from the President, things about Just before the 2018 midterms, he ordered dents, after all, “are allowed to do po-
using or not using military force, the im- thousands of troops to the southern bor- litical stunts,” Feaver said. “That’s part
mediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, der to combat a fake “invasion” by a car- of being President.”
pulling out of South Korea. It just went avan of migrants. In 2019, in a move that Milley’s apology was unequivocal. “I
on and on.” undermined military justice and the chain should not have been there,” he said in
Milley was not the only senior offi- of command, he gave clemency to a Navy the address. He did not mention Trump.
cial to seek Gates’s counsel. Several mem- SEAL found guilty of posing with the “My presence in that moment, and in
bers of Trump’s national-security team dead body of a captive in Iraq. that environment, created a perception
had made the pilgrimage out to his home Many considered Trump’s 2018 de- of the military involved in domestic pol-
in Washington State during the previ- cision to use the military in his preëlec- itics.” It was, he added, “a mistake that
ous two years. Gates would pour them tion border stunt to be “the predicate— I have learned from.”
a drink, grill them some salmon, and or the harbinger—of 2020,” in the words At the same time, Milley had finally
help them wrestle with the latest Trump
conundrum. “The problem with resig-
nation is you can only fire that gun once,”
he told them. All the conversations were
variations on a theme: “ ‘How do I walk
us back from the ledge?’ ‘How do I keep
this from happening, because it would
be a terrible thing for the country?’”
After Lafayette Square, Gates told
both Milley and Esper that, given Trump’s
increasingly erratic and dangerous be-
havior, they needed to stay in the Pentagon
as long as they could. “If you resign, it’s
a one-day story,” Gates told them. “If
you’re fired, it makes it clear you were
standing up for the right thing.” Gates
advised Milley that he had another im-
portant card and urged him to play it:
“Keep the chiefs on board with you and
make it clear to the White House that
if you go they all go, so that the White
House knows this isn’t just about firing
Mark Milley. This is about the entire
Joint Chiefs of Staff quitting in response.”
Publicly, Lafayette Square looked like
a debacle for Milley. Several retired gen-
erals had condemned his participation,
pointing out that the leader of a racially
diverse military, with more than two hun-
come to a decision. He would not quit. Pelosi believed that the chairman had They resisted him throughout the sum-
“Fuck that shit,” he told his staff. “I’ll just been “evasive” and disrespectful to Con- mer, as Trump repeatedly demanded that
fight him.” The challenge, as he saw it, gress. Milley, for his part, felt he could active-duty troops quash ongoing pro-
was to stop Trump from doing any more not disregard Trump’s insistence that tests, threatened to invoke the Insurrec-
damage, while also acting in a way that lawmakers not be notified—a breach that tion Act, and tried to stop the military
was consistent with his obligation to carry was due to the President’s pique over the from renaming bases honoring Confed-
out the orders of his Commander-in- impeachment proceedings against him. erate generals. “They both expected, lit-
Chief. Yet the Constitution offered no “The navigation of Trumpworld was erally on a daily basis, to be fired,” Gates
practical guide for a general faced with more difficult for Milley than Nancy recalled. Milley “would call me and es-
a rogue President. Never before since the gives him credit for,” Smith said. He sentially say, ‘I may not last until tomor-
position had been created, in 1949—or vouched for the chairman but never man- row night.’ And he was comfortable with
at least since Richard Nixon’s final days, aged to convince Pelosi. that. He felt like he knew he was going
in 1974—had a chairman of the Joint to support the Constitution, and there
Chiefs encountered such a situation. “If ow long could this standoff be- were no two ways about it.”
they want to court-martial me, or put me
in prison, have at it,” Milley told his staff.
H tween the Pentagon and the Pres-
ident go on? For the next few months,
Milley put away the resignation let-
ter in his desk and drew up a plan, a
“But I will fight from the inside.” Milley woke up each morning not know- guide for how to get through the next
ing whether he would be fired before the few months. He settled on four goals:
illey’s apology tour was private as day was over. His wife told him she was First, make sure Trump did not start an
M well as public. With the upcom-
ing election fuelling Trump’s sense of
shocked that he had not been cashiered
outright when he made his apology.
unnecessary war overseas. Second, make
sure the military was not used in the
frenetic urgency, the chairman sought to Esper was also on notice. Two days streets against the American people for
get the message to Democrats that he after Lafayette Square, the Defense Sec- the purpose of keeping Trump in power.
would not go along with any further ef- retary had gone to the Pentagon press- Third, maintain the military’s integrity.
forts by the President to deploy the ma- room and offered his own apology, even And, fourth, maintain his own integ-
chinery of war for domestic political ends. revealing his opposition to Trump’s de- rity. In the months to come, Milley
He called both Pelosi and Schumer. “After mands to invoke the Insurrection Act would refer back to the plan more times
the Lafayette Square episode, Milley was and use the active-duty military. Such a than he could count.
extremely contrite and communicated step, Esper said, should be reserved only Even in June, Milley understood that
to any number of people that he had no for “the most urgent and dire of situa- it was not just a matter of holding off
intention of playing Trump’s game any tions.” Trump later exploded at Esper in Trump until after the Presidential elec-
longer,” Bob Bauer, the former Obama the Oval Office about the criticism, de- tion, on November 3rd. He knew that
White House counsel, who was then ad- livering what Milley would recall as “the Election Day might well mark merely
vising Joe Biden’s campaign and heard worst reaming out” he had ever heard. the beginning, not the end, of the chal-
about the calls, said. “He was really burned The next day, Trump’s latest chief of lenges Trump would pose. The portents
by that experience. He was appalled. He staff, Mark Meadows, called the Defense were worrisome. Barely one week before
apologized for it, and it was pretty clear Secretary at home—three times—to get Lafayette Square, Trump had posted a
he was digging his heels in.” him to recant his opposition to invoking tweet that would soon become a refrain.
On Capitol Hill, however, some the Insurrection Act. When he refused, The 2020 Presidential race, he warned
Democrats, including Pelosi, remained Meadows took “the Tony Soprano ap- for the first time, would end up as “the
skeptical. To them, Lafayette Square proach,” as Esper later put it, and began greatest Rigged Election in history.”
proved that Milley had been a Trump- threatening him, before eventually back-
ist all along. “There was a huge misun- ing off. (A spokesperson for Meadows y the evening of Monday, Novem-
derstanding about Milley,” Adam Smith,
the House Armed Services Committee
disputed Esper’s account.) Esper resolved
to stay in office as long as he could, “to
B ber 9th, Milley’s fears about a vol-
atile post-election period unlike any-
chairman, recalled. “A lot of my Demo- endure all the shit and run the clock out,” thing America had seen before seemed
cratic colleagues after June 1st in par- as he put it. He felt that he had a partic- to be coming true. News organizations
ticular were concerned about him.” ular responsibility to hold on. By law, the had called the election for Biden, but
Smith tried to assure other Democrats only person authorized to deploy troops Trump refused to acknowledge that he
that “there was never a single solitary other than the President is the Secretary had lost by millions of votes. The peace-
moment where it was possible that Mil- of Defense. Esper was determined not ful transition of power—a cornerstone
ley was going to help Trump do any- to hand that power off to satraps such as of liberal democracy—was now in doubt.
thing that shouldn’t be done.” Robert O’Brien, who had become Trump’s Sitting at home that night at around
And yet Pelosi, among others, also fourth and final national-security adviser, nine, the chairman received an urgent
distrusted Milley because of an incident or Ric Grenell, a former public-relations phone call from the Secretary of State,
earlier that year in which Trump ordered man who had been serving as acting di- Mike Pompeo. With the possible ex-
the killing of the Iranian commander rector of National Intelligence. ception of Vice-President Mike Pence,
Qassem Suleimani without briefing con- Both Esper and Milley found new no one had been more slavishly loyal in
gressional leaders in advance. Smith said purpose in waiting out the President. public, or more privately obsequious, to
bered how Miller had changed in the
Trump White House. “He’s inclined to
BIRTHDAY POEM be a bit of a sail, and as the wind blows
he will flap in that direction,” the offi-
She’s a clever dog, but she can’t understand cial said. “He’s not an ideologue. He’s
that the leash—a fifty footer I staked just a guy willing to do their bidding.”
out back so she can explore our patch of land— By coincidence, the official happened to
is tangling, trailing her like a wake be walking into the Pentagon just as
or like a crayon’s line looping through Miller was entering—a video of Miller
a placemat maze. She ambles a few feet tripping on the stairs soon made the
to sniff a clump of leaves, slaloms between two rounds. Accompanying him were three
poles beneath the deck, then visits the slab of concrete men who would, for a few weeks, at least,
where I sit at the pandemic picnic table writing. have immense influence over the most
Then she doubles back to find a place to pee. powerful military in the world: Kash
The leash has been recording Patel, Miller’s new chief of staff; Ezra
her every turn, and her territory, Cohen, who would ascend to acting
which was the whole wide yard, is diminishing. Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelli-
Bewildered, suddenly stuck, she’s me. gence and Security; and Anthony Tata,
a retired general and a talking head on
—Craig Morgan Teicher Fox News, who would become the Pen-
tagon’s acting head of policy.
It was an extraordinary trio. Tata’s
Trump than Pompeo. But even he could As soon as he’d heard about Esper’s claims to fame were calling Obama a
not take it anymore. ouster, Milley had rushed upstairs to “terrorist leader”—an assertion he later
“We’ve got to talk,” Pompeo told the Secretary’s office. “This is complete retracted—and alleging that a former
Milley, who was at home in Quarters bullshit,” he told Esper. Milley said that C.I.A. director had threatened to assas-
Six, the red brick house that has been he would resign in protest. “You can’t,” sinate Trump. Patel, a former aide to
the official residence of chairmen of the Esper insisted. “You’re the only one left.” Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the
Joint Chiefs since the early nineteen- Once he cooled off, Milley agreed. House Intelligence Committee, had been
sixties. “Can I come over?” In the coming weeks, Milley would accused of spreading conspiracy theories
Milley invited Pompeo to visit repeatedly convene the Joint Chiefs, to claiming that Ukraine, not Russia, had
immediately. bolster their resolve to resist any dan- interfered in the 2016 election. Both
“The crazies have taken over,” Pompeo gerous political schemes from the White Trump’s third national-security adviser,
told him when they sat down at Mil- House now that Esper was out. He John Bolton, and Bolton’s deputy, Charles
ley’s kitchen table. Not only was Trump quoted Benjamin Franklin to them on Kupperman, had vociferously objected to
surrounded by the crazies; they were, in the virtues of hanging together rather putting Patel on the National Security
fact, ascendant in the White House and, than hanging separately. He told his Council staff, backing down only when
as of that afternoon, inside the Penta- staff that, if need be, he and all the chiefs told that it was a personal, “must-hire”
gon itself. Just a few hours earlier, on the were prepared to “put on their uniforms order from the President. Still, Patel found
first workday after the election was called and go across the river together”—to his way around them to deal with Trump
for Biden, Trump had finally fired Esper. threaten to quit en masse—to prevent directly, feeding him packets of informa-
Milley and Pompeo were alarmed that Trump from trying to use the military tion on Ukraine, which was outside his
the Defense Secretary was being re- to stay in power illegally. portfolio, according to testimony during
placed by Christopher Miller, until re- Soon after Miller arrived at the Pen- Trump’s first impeachment. (In a state-
cently an obscure mid-level counter- tagon, Milley met with him. “First things ment for this article, Patel called the al-
terrorism official at Trump’s National first here,” he told the new acting De- legations a “total fabrication.”) Eventu-
Security Council, who had arrived at the fense Secretary, who had spent the ally, Patel was sent to help Ric Grenell
Pentagon flanked by a team of what ap- previous few months running the Na- carry out a White House-ordered purge
peared to be Trump’s political minders. tional Counterterrorism Center. “You of the intelligence community.
For Milley, this was an ominous de- are one of two people in the United Cohen, who had worked earlier in
velopment. From the beginning, he un- States now with the capability to launch his career at the Defense Intelligence
derstood that “if the idea was to seize nuclear weapons.” Agency under Michael Flynn, had ini-
power,” as he told his staff, “you are not A Pentagon official who had worked tially been hired at the Trump National
going to do this without the military.” closely with Miller had heard a rumor Security Council in 2017 but was pushed
Milley had studied the history of coups. about him potentially replacing Esper out after Flynn’s swift implosion as
They invariably required the takeover more than a week before the election. Trump’s first national-security adviser.
of what he referred to as the “power “My first instinct was this is the most When efforts were later made to rehire
ministries”—the military, the national preposterous thing I’ve ever heard,” the Cohen in the White House, Bolton’s
police, and the interior forces. official recalled. But then he remem- deputy vowed to “put my badge on the
table” and quit. “I am not going to hire that whole cabal.” The C.I.A. refused to smell it. I can see it. And so can a lot of
somebody that is going to be another have anything to do with Patel, Pompeo other people. And, by the way, the mil-
cancer in the organization, and Ezra is recalled to his State Department staff, itary will have no part of this shit.”
cancer,” Kupperman bluntly told Trump. and they should be cautious as well. “The
In the spring of 2020, Cohen landed at Secretary thought these people were just art of the new team’s agenda soon
the Pentagon, and following Trump’s
post-election shakeup he assumed the
wackadoodles, nuts, and dangerous,” a
second senior State Department official
P became clear: making sure Trump
fulfilled his 2016 campaign promise to
top intelligence post at the Pentagon. said. (Patel denied their accounts, assert- withdraw American troops from the
Milley had firsthand reason to be wary ing, “I caused no delay at all.”) “endless wars” overseas. Two days after
of these new Pentagon advisers. Just be- After Esper’s firing, Milley sum- Esper was fired, Patel slid a piece of
fore the election, he and Pompeo were moned Patel and Cohen separately to paper across the desk to Milley during
infuriated when a top-secret Navy SEAL his office to deliver stern lectures. What- a meeting with him and Miller. It was
Team 6 rescue mission to free an Amer- ever machinations they were up to, he an order, with Trump’s trademark sig-
ican hostage held in Nigeria nearly had told each of them, “life looks really shitty nature in black Sharpie, decreeing that
to be cancelled at the last minute. The from behind bars. And, whether you all four thousand five hundred remain-
Nigerians had not formally approved the want to realize it or not, there’s going to ing troops in Afghanistan be withdrawn
mission in advance, as required, despite be a President at exactly 1200 hours on by January 15th, and that a contingent
Patel’s assurances. “Planes were already the twentieth and his name is Joe Biden. of fewer than a thousand troops on a
in the air and we didn’t have the approv- And, if you guys do anything that’s il- counterterrorism mission in Somalia be
als,” a senior State Department official legal, I don’t mind having you in prison.” pulled out by December 31st.
recalled. The rescue team was kept cir- Cohen denied that Milley said this to Milley was stunned. “Where’d you
cling while diplomats tried to track down him, insisting it was a “very friendly, pos- get this?” he said.
their Nigerian counterparts. They man- itive conversation.” Patel also denied it, Patel said that it had just come from
aged to find them only minutes before asserting, “He worked for me, not the the White House.
the planes would have had to turn back. other way around.” But Milley told his “Did you advise the President to do
As a result, the official said, both Pompeo staff that he warned both Cohen and this?” he asked Patel, who said no.
and Milley, who believed he had been Patel that they were being watched: “Did you advise the President to do
personally lied to, “assigned ill will to “Don’t do it, don’t even try to do it. I can this?” he asked Miller, who said no.
“Well, then, who advised the Presi-
dent to do it?” Milley asked. “By law, I’m
the President’s adviser on military action.
How does this happen without me ren-
dering my military opinion and advice?”
With that, he announced that he was
putting on his dress uniform and going
to the White House, where Milley and
the others ended up in the office of the
national-security adviser, Robert O’Brien.
“Where did this come from?” Mil-
ley demanded, putting the withdrawal
order on O’Brien’s desk.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen that
before,” O’Brien said. “It doesn’t look
like a White House memo.”
Keith Kellogg, a retired general serv-
ing as Pence’s national-security adviser,
asked to see the document. “This is not
the President,” he said. “The format’s
not right. This is not done right.”
“Keith, you’ve got to be kidding me,”
Milley said. “You’re telling me that some-
one’s forging the President of the United
States’ signature?”
The order, it turned out, was not fake.
It was the work of a rogue operation in-
side Trump’s White House overseen by
Johnny McEntee, Trump’s thirty-year-
“Something tells me you’re the kind of guy who old personnel chief, and supported by
always wears his baseball cap backward.” the President himself. The order had
been drafted by Douglas Macgregor, a that Trump would manufacture a do- overturn the result. “He was totally
retired colonel and a Trump favorite mestic crisis to justify ordering the mil- against it,” a senior State Department
from his television appearances, work- itary into the streets to prevent the trans- official recalled. Pompeo cynically jus-
ing with a junior McEntee aide. The fer of power. Milley feared that Trump’s tified this jarring contrast between what
order was then brought to the Presi- “Hitler-like” embrace of his own lies he said in public and in private. “It was
dent, bypassing the national-security about the election would lead him to important for him to not get fired at
apparatus and Trump’s own senior of- seek a “Reichstag moment.” In 1933, the end, too, to be there to the bitter
ficials, to get him to sign it. Hitler had seized on a fire in the Ger- end,” the senior official said.
Macgregor often appeared on Fox man parliament to take control of the Both Milley and Pompeo were
News demanding an exit from Afghan- country. Milley now envisioned a dec- angered by the bumbling team of
istan and accused Trump’s advisers of laration of martial law or a Presidential ideologues that Trump had sent to the
blocking the President from doing what invocation of the Insurrec- Pentagon after the firing of
he wanted. “He needs to send everyone tion Act, with Trumpian Esper, a West Point class-
out of the Oval Office who keeps tell- Brown Shirts fomenting mate of Pompeo’s. The two,
ing him, ‘If you do that and something violence. who were “already converg-
bad happens, it’s going to be blamed on By late November, amid ing as fellow-travellers,” as
you, Mr. President,’ ” Macgregor had Trump’s escalating attacks one of the State officials
told Tucker Carlson in January. “He on the election, Milley and put it, worked even more
needs to say, ‘I don’t give a damn.’” Pompeo’s coöperation had closely together as their
On the day that Esper was fired, deepened—a fact that the alarm about Trump’s post-
McEntee had invited Macgregor to his Secretary of State revealed election conduct grew, al-
office, offered him a job as the new act- to Attorney General Bill though Milley was under
ing Defense Secretary’s senior adviser, Barr over dinner on the no illusions about the Sec-
and handed him a handwritten list of night of December 1st. Barr had just retary of State. He believed that Pompeo,
four priorities that, as Axios reported, publicly broken with Trump, telling a longtime enabler of Trump who as-
McEntee claimed had come directly the Associated Press in an interview pired to run for President himself,
from Trump: that there was no evidence of election wanted “a second political life,” but that
fraud sufficient to overturn the results. Trump’s final descent into denialism
1. Get us out of Afghanistan. As they ate at an Italian restaurant in was the line that, at last, he would not
2. Get us out of Iraq and Syria.
3. Complete the withdrawal from Germany. a Virginia strip mall, Barr recounted cross. “At the end, he wouldn’t be a party
4. Get us out of Africa. for Pompeo what he called “an event- to that craziness,” Milley told his staff.
ful day.” And Pompeo told Barr about By early December, as they were hold-
Once the Afghanistan order was dis- the extraordinary arrangement he had ing their 8 A.M. land-the-plane calls,
covered, Trump’s advisers persuaded the proposed to Milley to make sure that Milley was confident that Pompeo was
President to back off, reminding him the country was in steady hands until genuinely trying to achieve a peaceful
that he had already approved a plan for the Inauguration: they would hold daily handover of power to Biden. But he
leaving over the following few months. morning phone calls with Mark Mead- was never sure what to make of Mead-
“Why do we need a new plan?” Pompeo ows. Pompeo and Milley soon took ows. Was the chief of staff trying to
asked. Trump relented, and O’Brien to calling them the “land the plane” land the plane or to hijack it?
then told the rest of the rattled national- phone calls. Most days, Milley would also call the
security leadership that the order was “Our job is to land this plane safely White House counsel, Pat Cipollone,
“null and void.” and to do a peaceful transfer of power who was hardly a usual interlocutor for
The compromise, however, was a new the twentieth of January,” Milley told a chairman of the Joint Chiefs. In the
order that codified the drawdown to his staff. “This is our obligation to final weeks of the Administration, Cipol-
twenty-five hundred troops in Afghan- this nation.”There was a problem, how- lone, a true believer in Trump’s conser-
istan by mid-January, which Milley and ever. “Both engines are out, the land- vative agenda, was a principal actor in
Esper had been resisting, and a reducing gear are stuck. We’re in an emer- the near-daily drama over Trump’s var-
tion in the remaining three thousand gency situation.” ious schemes to overturn his election
troops in Iraq as well. The State De- In public, Pompeo remained his defeat. After getting off one call with
partment was given one hour to notify staunchly pro-Trump self. The day after Cipollone, Milley told a visitor that the
leaders of those countries before the his secret visit to Milley’s house to com- White House counsel was “construc-
order was released. miserate about “the crazies” taking over, tive,” “not crazy,” and a force for “trying
in fact, he refused to acknowledge to keep guardrails around the President.”
wo nightmare scenarios kept run- Trump’s defeat, snidely telling report- Milley continued to reach out to
T ning through Milley’s mind. One
was that Trump might spark an exter-
ers, “There will be a smooth transition—
to a second Trump Administration.”
Democrats close to Biden to assure
them that he would not allow the mil-
nal crisis, such as a war with Iran, to di- Behind the scenes, however, Pompeo itary to be misused to keep Trump in
vert attention or to create a pretext for accepted that the election was over and power. One regular contact was Susan
a power grab at home. The other was made it clear that he would not help Rice, the former Obama national-security
these guys talking about?” moment. Now
it seemed frighteningly possible.
Robert O’Brien, the national-security
adviser, had been another frequent cheer-
leader for tough measures. He said, ac-
cording to Esper’s memoir, “Mr. President,
we should hit ’em hard, hit ’em hard with
everything we have.” Esper called this
O’Brien’s “tedious signature phrase.”
(O’Brien disputed this, saying, “The quote
attributed to me is not accurate.”)
In the week of Esper’s firing, Milley
was called to the White House to pre-
sent various military options for attack-
ing Iran and encountered a disturbing
performance by Miller, the new acting
Defense Secretary. Miller later told Jon-
athan Karl, of ABC, that he had inten-
tionally acted like a “fucking madman”
at the meeting, just three days into his
tenure, pushing various escalatory sce-
“ Yep, a rare gray-suited office worker.” narios for responding to Iran’s breakout
nuclear capacities.
Miller’s behavior did not look inten-
• • tional so much as unhelpful to Milley,
as Trump kept asking for alternatives,
adviser, dubbed by Democrats the Rice retain and analyze” voting machines and including an attack inside Iran on its
Channel. He also spoke several times provide a final assessment of any find- ballistic-weapons sites. Milley explained
with Senator Angus King, an Indepen- ings in sixty days, well after the Inau- that this would be an illegal preëmptive
dent from Maine. “My conversations guration was to take place. Later that act: “If you attack the mainland of Iran,
with him were about the danger of some night, Trump sent out a tweet beckon- you will be starting a war.” During an-
attempt to use the military to declare ing his followers to descend on the cap- other clash with Trump’s more militant
martial law,” King said. He took it upon ital to help him hold on to office. “Big advisers, when Trump was not present,
himself to reassure fellow-senators. “I protest in D.C. on January 6th,” he wrote Milley was even more explicit. “If we
can’t tell you why I know this,” but the at 1:42 a.m. “Be there, will be wild!” do what you’re saying,” he said, “we are
military will absolutely do the right Milley’s fears of a coup no longer all going to be tried as war criminals in
thing, he would tell them, citing Mil- seemed far-fetched. The Hague.”
ley’s “character and honesty.” Trump often seemed more bluster
Milley had increasing reason to fear hile Trump was being lobbied by than bite, and the Pentagon brass still
that such a choice might actually be
forced upon him. In late November,
W “the crazies” to order troops to
intervene at home, Milley and his fellow-
believed that he did not want an all-out
war, yet he continued pushing for a mis-
Trump pardoned Michael Flynn, who generals were concerned that he would sile strike on Iran even after that Novem-
had pleaded guilty to charges of lying authorize a strike against Iran. For much ber meeting. If Trump said it once, Mil-
to the F.B.I. about his contacts with of his Presidency, Trump’s foreign-pol- ley told his staff, he said it a thousand
Russia. Soon afterward, Flynn publicly icy hawks had agitated for a showdown times. “The thing he was most worried
suggested several extreme options for with Iran; they accelerated their efforts about was Iran,” a senior Biden adviser
Trump: he could invoke martial law, ap- when they realized that Trump might who spoke with Milley recalled. “Mil-
point a special counsel, and authorize lose the election. In early 2020, when ley had had the experience more than
the military to “rerun” an election in the Mike Pence advocated taking tough once of having to walk the President off
swing states. On December 18th, Trump measures, Milley asked why. “Because the ledge when it came to retaliating.”
hosted Flynn and a group of other elec- they are evil,” Pence said. Milley recalled The biggest fear was that Iran
tion deniers in the Oval Office, where, replying, “Mr. Vice-President, there’s a would provoke Trump, and, using an
for the first time in American history, lot of evil in the world, but we don’t go array of diplomatic and military chan-
a President would seriously entertain to war against all of it.” Milley grew even nels, American officials warned the
using the military to overturn an elec- more nervous before the election, when Iranians not to exploit the volatile do-
tion. They brought with them a draft he heard a senior official tell Trump that mestic situation in the U.S. “There
of a proposed Presidential order requir- if he lost he should strike Iran’s nuclear was a distinct concern that Iran would
ing the acting Defense Secretary— program. At the time, Milley told his take advantage of this to strike at us
Christopher Miller—to “seize, collect, staff that it was a “What the fuck are in some way,” Adam Smith, the House
Armed Services chairman, recalled. across from the round table where he as well. He reached Miller around 4 p.m.,
Among those pushing the President and Wormuth sat: CNN and Fox News, with Milley still in his office listening
to hit Iran before Biden’s Inauguration, as well as the small pro-Trump outlets in. “Clear the Capitol,” Pence ordered.
Milley believed, was the Israeli Prime Newsmax and One America News Net- Although it was the Vice-President
Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. On De- work, which had been airing election who was seeking to defend the Capi-
cember 18th, the same day that Trump disinformation that even Fox would not tol, Meadows wanted to pretend that
met with Flynn to discuss instituting broadcast. “You’ve got to know what Trump was the one taking action. He
martial law, Milley met with Netanyahu the enemy is up to,” Milley had joked called Milley, telling him, “We have to
at his home in Jerusalem to personally when Wormuth noticed his viewing kill the narrative that the Vice-President
urge him to back off with Trump. “If habits at one of their meetings. is making all the decisions. We need to
you do this, you’re gonna have a fuck- Milley and Wormuth that day were establish the narrative that the Presi-
ing war,” Milley told him. supposed to discuss the Pentagon’s plans dent is still in charge.” Milley later dis-
Two days later, on December 20th, to draw down U.S. troops in Afghani- missed Meadows, whose spokesperson
Iranian-backed militias in Iraq fired nearly stan, as well as the Biden team’s hopes denied Milley’s account, as playing “pol-
two dozen rockets at the American Em- to mobilize large-scale Covid vaccina- itics, politics, politics.”
bassy in Baghdad. Trump responded by tion sites around the country. But, as The Guard finally arrived at the
publicly blaming Iran and threatening they realized in horror what was trans- Capitol by 5:40 p.m., “sprint speed” for
major retaliation if so much as a single piring on the screen in front of them, the military, as Milley would put it, but
American was killed. It was the largest Milley was summoned to an urgent not nearly fast enough for some mem-
attack on the Green Zone in more than meeting with Miller and Ryan Mc- bers of Congress, who would spend
a decade, and exactly the sort of provo- Carthy, the Secretary of the Army. They months investigating why it took so
cation Milley had been dreading. had not landed the plane, after all. The long. By 7 p.m., a perimeter had been
During the holidays, tensions with plane was crashing. set up outside the Capitol, and F.B.I.
Iran escalated even more as the first Milley entered the Defense Secre- and A.T.F. agents were going door to
anniversary of the American killing of tary’s office at 2:30 p.m., and they dis- door in the Capitol’s many hideaways
Suleimani approached. Ayatollah Ali cussed deploying the D.C. National and narrow corridors, searching for any
Khamenei warned that “those who or- Guard and mobilizing National Guard remaining rioters.
dered the murder of General Soleimani” units from nearby states and federal That night, waiting for Congress to
would “be punished.” Late on the after- agents under the umbrella of the Jus- return and formally ratify Trump’s elec-
noon of Sunday, January 3rd, Trump met tice Department. Miller issued an order toral defeat, Milley called one of his
with Milley, Miller, and his other national- at 3:04 p.m. to send in the D.C. Guard. contacts on the Biden team. He ex-
security advisers on Iran. Pompeo and But it was too late to prevent the hu- plained that he had spoken with Mead-
Milley discussed a worrisome new re- miliation: Congress had been over- ows and Pat Cipollone at the White
port from the International Atomic whelmed by a mob of election deniers, House, and that he had been on the
Energy Agency. But, by the end, even white-supremacist militia members, phone with Pence and the congressio-
Pompeo and O’Brien, the Iran hawks, conspiracy theorists, and Trump loyal- nal leaders as well. But Milley never
opposed a military strike at this late hour ists. Milley worried that this truly was heard from the Commander-in-Chief,
in Trump’s Presidency. “He realized the Trump’s “Reichstag moment,” the cri- on a day when the Capitol was overrun
clock ran out,” Milley told his staff. sis that would allow the President to by a hostile force for the first time since
Trump, consumed with his election fight, invoke martial law and maintain his the War of 1812. Trump, he said, was
backed off. grip on power. both “shameful” and “complicit.”
At the end of the meeting with his From the secure facility at Fort Mc- Later, Milley would often think back
security chiefs, the President pulled Nair, where they had been brought by to that awful day. “It was a very close-
Miller aside and asked him if he was their protective details, congressional run thing,” the historically minded chair-
ready for the upcoming January 6th pro- leaders called on the Pentagon to send man would say, invoking the famous
test. “It’s going to be a big deal,” Milley forces to the Capitol immediately. line of the Duke of Wellington after he
heard Trump tell Miller. “You’ve got Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were had only narrowly defeated Napoleon
enough people to make sure it’s safe for suspicious of Miller: Whose side was at Waterloo. Trump and his men had
my people, right?” Miller assured him this unknown Trump appointee on? failed in their execution of the plot, failed
he did. This was the last time that Mil- Milley tried to reassure the Democratic in part by failing to understand that
ley would ever see Trump. leadership that the uniformed military Milley and the others had never been
was on the case, and not there to do Trump’s generals and never would be.
n January 6th, Milley was in his Trump’s bidding. The Guard, he told But their attack on the election had ex-
O office at the Pentagon meeting
with Christine Wormuth, the lead Biden
them, was coming.
It was already after three-thirty by
posed a system with glaring weaknesses.
“They shook the very Republic to the
transition official for the Defense De- then, however, and the congressional core,” Milley would eventually reflect.
partment. In the weeks since the elec- leaders were furious that it was taking “Can you imagine what a group of peo-
tion, Milley had started displaying four so long. They also spoke with Mike ple who are much more capable could
networks at once on a large monitor Pence, who offered to call the Pentagon have done?” 
ANNALS OF INQUIRY
DO BETTER
The gospel of effective altruism.
BY GIDEON LEWIS-KRAUS
he philosopher William Mac period in his life both darkly lonesome public and private. He told me, “There
T Askill credits his personal trans

figuration to an undergraduate
seminar at Cambridge. Before this shift,
and ethically ablaze. As he put it to me
recently, “I was very annoying.”
In an effort to shape a new social equi
was a point where E.A. affairs were no
longer social things—people would come
up to me and want to talk about their
MacAskill liked to drink too many pints librium in which his commitments might moral priorities, and I’d be, like, ‘Man,
of beer and frolic about in the nude, climb not be immediately written off as mere it’s 10 p.m. and we’re at a party!’”
ing pitched roofs by night for the life affectation, he helped to found a moral On a Saturday afternoon in Oxford,
affirming flush; he was the saxophonist crusade called “effective altruism.” The this past March, MacAskill sent me a
in a campus funk band that played the movement, known as E.A. to its practi text message about an hour before we’d
May Balls, and was known as a hopeless tioners, who themselves are known as planned to meet: “I presume not, given
romantic. But at eighteen, when he was E.A.s, takes as its premise that people jetlag, but might you want to go for a
first exposed to “Famine, Affluence, and ought to do good in the most clear sunset swim? It’d be very very cold!” I
Morality,” a 1972 essay by the radical util sighted, ambitious, and unsentimental was out for a run beside the Thames,
itarian Peter Singer, MacAskill felt a slight way possible. Among other backofthe and replied, in an exacting mode I hoped
click as he was shunted onto a track of envelope estimates, E.A.s believe that a he’d appreciate—MacAskill has a way
rigorous and uncompromising moralism. life in the developing world can be saved of making those around him greedy for
Singer, prompted by widespread and for about four thousand dollars. Effec his approval—that I was about eight
eradicable hunger in what’s now Bangla tive altruists have lashed themselves to tenths of a mile from his house, and would
desh, proposed a simple thought exper the mast of a certain kind of logical rigor, be at his door in approximately five min
iment: if you stroll by a child drowning refusing to look away when it leads them utes and thirty seconds. “Oh wow im
in a shallow pond, presumably you don’t to counterintuitive, bewildering, or even pressive!” he replied. “Let’s do it!”
worry too much about soiling your clothes seemingly repugnant conclusions. For a MacAskill limits his personal budget
before you wade in to help; given the ir time, the movement recommended that to about twentysix thousand pounds a
relevance of the child’s location—in an inspirited young people should, rather year, and gives everything else away. He
actual pond nearby or in a metaphorical than work for charities, get jobs in fi lives with two roommates in a stolid row
pond six thousand miles away—devot nance and donate their income. More house in an area of south Oxford bereft,
ing resources to superfluous goods is tan recently, E.A.s have turned to fretting he warned me, of even a good coffee
tamount to allowing a child to drown for about existential risks that might curtail shop. He greeted me at his door, prais
the sake of a dry cleaner’s bill. For about humanity’s future, full stop. ing my “bias for action,” then led me
four decades, Singer’s essay was assigned Effective altruism, which used to be down a low and dark hallway and through
predominantly as a philosophical exer a loose, Internetenabled affiliation of a laundry room arrayed with buckets
cise: his moral theory was so onerous that the likeminded, is now a broadly influ that catch a perpetual bathroom leak up
it had to rest on a shaky foundation, and ential faction, especially in Silicon Val stairs. MacAskill is tall and sturdily built,
bright students were instructed to iden ley, and controls philanthropic resources with an untidy mop of darkblond hair
tify the flaws that might absolve us of its on the order of thirty billion dollars. that had grown during the pandemic to
demands. MacAskill, however, could find Though MacAskill is only one of the messianic lengths. In an effort to unwild
nothing wrong with it. movement’s principal leaders, his con himself for reëntry, he had recently re
By the time MacAskill was a graduate spicuous integrity and easygoing cha duced it to a dimension better suited to
student in philosophy, at Oxford, Sing risma have made him a natural candidate polite society.
er’s insight had become the organizing for head boy. The movement’s transi MacAskill allowed, somewhat sheep
principle of his life. When he met friends tions—from obscurity to power; from ishly, that lockdown had been a welcome
at the pub, he ordered only a glass of the needs of the contemporary global reprieve from the strictures of his pre
water, which he then refilled with a can poor to those of our distant descendants— vious life. He and some friends had
of twopercent lager he’d bought on the have not been altogether smooth. Mac rented a home in the Buckinghamshire
corner; for dinner, he ate bread he’d baked Askill, as the movement’s defacto con countryside; he’d meditated, acted as the
at home. The balance of his earnings was science, has felt increasing pressure to house exercise coach, and taken in the
reserved for others. He tried not to be provide instruction and succor. At one sunset. He had spent his time in a wolf
too showy or evangelical, but neither was point, almost all of his friends were E.A.s, emblazoned jumper writing a book
he diffident about his rationale. It was a but he now tries to draw a line between called “What We Owe the Future,”
“The world’s long-run fate depends in part on the choices we make in our lifetimes,” the philosopher William MacAskill writes.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ULYSSES ORTEGA THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022 49
which comes out this month. Now the closest schoolmate, told me,“The Glasgow his adviser suggested that he meet an
world was opening up, and he was being attitude was best summed up by a school Australian philosopher named Toby Ord.
called back to serve as the movement’s friend’s parent, who looked at Will and In activist circles, MacAskill had found,
shepherd. He spoke as if the life he was said, ‘Philosophy. What a waste. That boy “there was this focus on the problems—
poised to return to were not quite his could have cured cancer.’ ” climate is so bad!—along with intense
own—as if he weren’t a person with de- MacAskill found Cambridge intel- feelings of angst, and a lack of real views
sires but a tabulating machine through lectually and socially satisfying: he dis- on what one could actually do. But Toby
which the profusion of dire global need cussed meta-ethics on shirtless walks, was planning to give money in relatively
was assessed, ranked, and processed. and spent vacations at friends’ homes in large amounts to focussed places, and
He was doing his best to retain a grasp the South of France. But he also remem- trying to get others to do the same—I
on spontaneity, and we set off on the bers feeling adrift, “searching for mean- felt, ‘Oh, this is taking action.’” At the
short walk to the lake. Upon our arrival, ing.” “There weren’t a lot of opportuni- time, Ord was earning fifteen thousand
MacAskill vaulted over a locked gate ties for moral activism,” he told me. He pounds a year and was prepared to give
that led to a small floating dock, where spent a summer volunteering at a reha- away a quarter of it. “He’d only had two
he placed a Bluetooth speaker that played bilitation center in Ethiopia and, after half-pints in his time at Oxford,” Mac-
a down-tempo house remix of the 1974 graduation, another as a “chugger,” a street Askill said. “It was really hardcore.” Un-
pop hit “Magic.” The water temperature, canvasser paid to convert pedestrians to like, say, someone who donates to cystic-
according to a bath-toy thermometer, charitable causes. “We used to say it only fibrosis research because a friend suffers
was about fifty degrees. He put on a pair cost twenty pence to save a life from from the disease—to take a personal ex-
of orange sunglasses with tinted lenses, polio, and a lot of other stuff that was ample of my own—Ord thought it was
which enhanced the sunset’s glow, and just wrong,” he said, shaking his head. important that he make his allocations
stripped off his shirt, revealing a long ab- Nevertheless, he continued, “it was two impartially. There was no point in giv-
dominal scar, the result of a fall through months of just sitting with extreme pov- ing to anyone in the developed world;
a skylight as a teen-ager. He reassured erty, and I felt like other people just didn’t the difference you could make elsewhere
me, “If all you do is just get in and get get it.” In graduate school, “I started was at least two orders of magnitude
out, that’s great.” I quickly discharged giving three per cent, and then five per greater. Ord’s ideal beneficiary was the
my duty and then flung myself, fingers cent, of my income,” he said. This wasn’t Fred Hollows Foundation, which treats
blue, back onto the dock. MacAskill did much—he was then living on a univer- blindness in poor countries for as little
a powerful breaststroke out into the mid- sity stipend. “I think it’s O.K. to tell you as twenty-five dollars a person.
dle of the lake, where he floated, freez- this: I supplemented my income with MacAskill immediately signed on to
ing, alone and near-invisible in the po- nude modelling for life-drawing classes.” give away as much as he could in perpe-
larized Creamsicle sunset.Then he slowly The postures left him free to philoso- tuity: “I was on board with the idea of
swam back to resume his obligations. phize. Later, he moved on to bachelor- binding my future self—I had a lot of
ette parties, where he could make twice youthful energy, and I was worried I’d
acAskill, who was born in 1987 the money “for way easier poses.” become more conservative over time.”
M as William Crouch, grew up in
Glasgow and attended a vaunted private
He told me, “I was in the game for
being convinced of a cause, and did a
He recalled the pleasure of proving that
his new mentor’s donations were subop-
school. He excelled at almost everything bunch of stuff that was more character- timal. “My first big win was convincing
but was the first to make fun of himself istically far-lefty. I went to a climate- him about deworming charities.” It may
for singing off-key, juggling poorly, and justice protest, and a pro-Palestinian seem impossible to compare the eradi-
falling out of treehouses. Though his protest, and a meeting of the Socialist cation of blindness with the elimination
mother grew up in conditions of rural Workers Party.” None passed muster, for of intestinal parasites, but health econ-
Welsh privation, his family had little po- reasons of efficacy or intellectual coher- omists had developed rough methods.
litical color—as a child, he was given to ence. “I realized the climate protest was MacAskill estimated that the relief of
understand that all newspapers were against cap-and-trade, which I was for. intestinal parasites, when measured in
right-leaning tabloids. From an early age, The Socialist Workers Party was just eight “quality-adjusted life years,” or QALYs,
however, he demonstrated a precocious people with long hair in a basement would be a hundred times more cost-
moral zeal. At fifteen, when he learned talking about the glory of the Russian effective than a sight-saving eye opera-
how many people were dying of AIDS, Revolution.” He surveyed working phi- tion. Ord reallocated.
he set out to become a successful novel- losophers and found that none felt like If Peter Singer’s theory—that any ex-
ist and give away half of his earnings. He they’d done anything of real consequence. penditure beyond basic survival was akin
volunteered for a disabled-Scout group George Marshall, a friend from Cam- to letting someone die—was simply too
and worked at a care home for the el- bridge, told me, “He was at dinner in Ox- taxing to gain wide adherence, it seemed
derly, which his parents found baffling. ford—some sort of practical-ethics con- modest to ask people to give ten per cent
In his milieu, the brightest graduates were ference—and he was just deeply shocked of their income. This number also had
expected to study medicine in Edinburgh, that almost none of the attendees were a long-standing religious precedent.
but MacAskill, as class dux, or valedic- vegetarians, because he thought that was During the next six months, MacAskill
torian, won a place to read philosophy at the most basic application of ethical ideas.” and Ord enjoined their friends and other
Cambridge. Robbie Kerr, MacAskill’s When MacAskill was twenty-two, moral philosophers to pledge a secular
tithe. MacAskill told me, “I would quote unteer in a soup kitchen, as long as you lems, and they approached causes on the
them back to themselves—you know, ‘If assigned those activities to a column basis of three criteria: importance, trac-
someone in extreme poverty dies, it’s as marked “self-interest.” But the pursuit tability, and neglectedness. They were in-
if you killed them yourself,’ and other of a warm glow should be separate from terested in thought experiments like the
really severe pronouncements—and say, doing the most impartial good. trolley problem, in part because they found
‘So, would you like to sign?’” Singer said When I asked Singer why the late such exercises enlivening and in part be-
yes, but almost everyone else said no. two-thousands were a time of great fer- cause it emphasized that passive actors
On November 14, 2009, in a small room ment for applied consequentialism, he could be culpable. It also made plain the
in Balliol College, MacAskill and Ord cited the Internet: “People will say, ‘I’ve very real dilemma of resource constraints:
announced Giving What We Can. Mac- had these ideas since I was a teen-ager, if the same amount of money could save
Askill said, “At the launch, we had and I thought it was just me,’ and then one person here or five people there, there
twenty-three members, and most of them they got online and found that there were was no need for performative hand-wring-
were friends of Toby’s and mine.” others.” Julia Wise, then an aspiring so- ing. As the rationalists put it, sometimes
When MacAskill took his vow of rel- cial worker, had been giving for years to you just had to “shut up and multiply.” A
ative poverty, he worried that it would the point of extreme personal sacrifice; kind of no-hard-feelings, debate-me glad-
make him less attractive to date: “It was she met Ord in the comments section iatorialism was seen as a crucial part of
all so weird and unusual that I thought, of the economist Tyler Cowen’s blog, and good “epistemic hygiene,” and a common
Out of all the people I could be in a re- made the Giving What We Can pledge. social overture was to tell someone that
lationship with, I’ve just cut out ninety- She told me that she was attracted on a her numbers were wrong. On GiveWell’s
nine per cent of them.” This prediction “tribal basis” to the movement’s sense of blog, MacAskill and Karnofsky got into
was incorrect; in 2013, he married another “global solidarity.” a scrap about the right numbers to as-
Scottish philosopher and early E.A., and Proto-E.A. attracted people who sign to a deworming initiative. Before
the two of them took her grandmother’s longed to reconcile expansive moral sen- Wise met MacAskill, she had e-mailed
surname, MacAskill. Later, a close rela- sibilities with an analytical cast of mind. to say that he had got some other num-
tive found out what MacAskill had been They tended to be consequentialists— bers wrong by an order of magnitude. “A
doing with his stipend and told him, those who believe that an act should be few months later, here I was having a
“That’s unethical!” If he wasn’t using his evaluated not as it conforms to universal beer with Will,” she said.
scholarship, he should return it to the rules but based on its results—and to em- In late 2011, in the midst of the Oc-
university. He loves his family, he told brace utilitarianism, a commitment to cupy movement, MacAskill gave a talk
me, “but I guess if I’d spent that money the greatest good for the greatest num- at Oxford called “Doctor, NGO Worker,
on beer it would have been O.K.” ber. Their instinct was to see moral in- or Something Else Entirely? Which Ca-
terventions as grand optimization prob- reers Do the Most Good.” That year
ike agriculture, echolocation, and the
L river dolphin, the practice that would
become effective altruism emerged in-
dependently in different places at around
the same time. Insofar as there was a
common ancestor, it was Peter Singer.
Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld,
young analysts at the hedge fund Bridge-
water Associates, formed a club to iden-
tify the most fruitful giving oppor-
tunities—one that relied not on crude
heuristics but on hard data. That club
grew into an organization called Give-
Well, which determined that, for exam-
ple, the most cost-effective way to save
a human life was to give approximately
four thousand dollars to the Against
Malaria Foundation, which distributes
insecticide-treated bed nets. In the Bay
Area “rationalist” community, a tech-
adjacent online subculture devoted to
hawkish logic and quarrelsome empiri-
cism, bloggers converged on similar ideas.
Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the group’s
patriarchs, instructed his followers to
“purchase fuzzies and utilons separately.”
It was fine to tutor at-risk kids or vol- “Any of you boys interested in fresh gossip for your diaries?”
saw the launch of 80,000 Hours, an off- She told me, “It was just obvious that we Askill said, “every new pledge was a big
shoot of Giving What We Can designed privileged people should be helping more deal, a cause for celebration.” As E.A.
to offer “ethical life-optimisation” advice than we were.” expanded, it required an umbrella non-
to undergraduates. His advice, which Matt Wage, a student of Singer’s at profit with paid staff. They brainstormed
became known as “earning to give,” was Princeton, decided that, instead of pur- names with variants of the words “good”
that you—and the “you” was pretty ex- suing philosophy in grad school, he and “maximization,” and settled on the
plicitly high-calibre students at élite in- would get a job at the trading firm Jane Centre for Effective Altruism. Wise do-
stitutions—could become a doctor in a Street. If you rescued a dozen people nated thousands of dollars; it was the
poor country and possibly save the equiv- from a burning building, he thought, first time her money was going not to
alent of a hundred and forty lives in your you would live out the rest of your days “object-level” work but to movement-
medical career, or you could take a job feeling like a hero; with donations, you building. She said, “I was an unemployed
in finance or consulting and, by donat- could save that many lives every year. social worker, but I felt so optimistic
ing intelligently, save ten times as many. “You can pay to provide and train a about their work that I gave them most
A young Oxonian named Habiba guide dog for a blind American, which of my savings.”
Islam was at that talk, and it changed costs about $40,000,” Wage told the re- In 2015, MacAskill was hired as an
her life. “I was the head of Amnesty In- porter Dylan Matthews, for a Wash- associate professor at Oxford and, at
ternational at university, I was volunteer- ington Post piece called “Join Wall Street. twenty-eight, was said to be the young-
ing at the local homeless shelter in Ox- Save the world.” “But with that money est such philosophy professor in the
ford—that kind of thing,” she told me. you could also cure between 400 and world. It should have been a moment of
“I know people who were committed to 2,000 people in developing countries of vindication, but he felt conflicted. “It was
climate change as their thing—a pretty blindness from glaucoma.” Matthews, easy and high-status,” he said. “But I
good guess for what’s important—be- convinced by his sources in the move- didn’t want to be too comfortable.” The
fore getting involved in E.A.” Islam was ment, went on to donate a kidney. “You same year, his marriage deteriorated—
considering a political career; 80,000 go to an E.A. conference and things he kept the surname; his ex didn’t—and
Hours estimated that an Oxford grad- feel genuinely novel,” he said. “Some- he published his first book, “Doing Good
uate in Philosophy, Politics, and Eco- one will give a talk about how, if we Better,” an extended case that Western-
nomics who embarked on such a path regulate pesticides differently, we can ers were in a situation akin to “a happy
has historically had about a one-in-thirty reduce suicide. I don’t have to agree with hour where you could either buy your-
chance of becoming an M.P. She took everything they say, or think Will is the self a beer for five dollars or buy some-
the pledge, agreeing to give away every- Pope, for it to be a very useful way to one else a beer for five cents.” That sum-
thing above twenty-five thousand pounds think about what deserves attention.” mer, 80,000 Hours was accepted into
a year, and became a consultant for PwC. In the movement’s early years, Mac- Y Combinator, a prestigious startup in-
cubator. The Effective Altruism Global
summit was held at the Googleplex, and
Elon Musk appeared on a panel about
artificial intelligence. (MacAskill told
me, “I tried to talk to him for five min-
utes about global poverty and got little
interest.”) By then, GiveWell had moved
to San Francisco, and the Facebook co-
founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife,
the former journalist Cari Tuna, had
tasked its new project—later known as
Open Philanthropy—with spending
down their multibillion-dollar fortune.
Open Philanthropy invested in interna-
tional development and campaigns for
broiler-chicken welfare, and expanded
into causes like bail reform. For the first
time, MacAskill said, the fledgling ex-
periment felt like “a force in the world.”
MacAskill, too, was newly a force in
the world. For all E.A.’s aspirations to
stringency, its numbers can sometimes
seem arbitrarily plastic. MacAskill has a
gap between his front teeth, and he told
close friends that he was now thinking
of getting braces, because studies showed
“They like you because you’re allergic to them.” that more “classically” handsome people
were more impactful fund-raisers. A view. It can have an ecclesiastical flavor, moments, look like “the only coherent
friend of his told me, “We were, like, and early critics observed that the move- alternative to a dilapidated set of values,”
‘Dude, if you want to have the gap closed, ment seemed to be in the business of but that it was ultimately bloodless and
it’s O.K.’ It felt like he had subsumed his selling philanthropic indulgences for the simpleminded. Williams held that the
own humanity to become a vehicle for original sin of privilege. It has a priestly philosophy alienated a person “from the
the saving of humanity.” class, whose posts on E.A.’s online forum source of his actions in his own convic-
are often received as encyclicals. In the tions”—from what we think of as moral
he Centre for Effective Altruism place of Mass, E.A.s endure three-hour integrity. Its means-end rationality could
T now dwells, along with a spate of
adjacent organizations with vaguely
podcasts. There is an emphasis on hu-
mility, and a commandment to sacrifice
seem untrustworthy. Someone who seeks
justification for the impulse to save the
imperious names—the Global Priorities for the sake of the neediest. life of a spouse instead of
Institute, the Forethought Foundation— Since its inception, Give- that of a stranger, Williams
in Trajan House, an Oxford building that Well has directed the do- famously wrote, has had “one
overlooks a graveyard. Nick Bostrom, a nation of more than a bil- thought too many.”
philosopher whose organization, the Fu- lion dollars; the Against The Oxford philosopher
ture of Humanity Institute, also shares Malaria Foundation alone Amia Srinivasan, whom
the space, disliked the building’s name, estimates that its work to MacAskill considers a
which honors a philanthropic Roman date will save a hundred and friend, wrote a decidedly
emperor, and proposed that it be called sixty-five thousand lives. mixed critique in the Lon-
Corpsewatch Manor. The interior, with There have been more than don Review of Books, calling
shelves of vegan nutritional bars and seven thousand Giving MacAskill’s first book “a
meal-replacement smoothies, resembles What We Can pledges, feel-good guide to getting
that of a pre-fiasco WeWork. MacAskill which total almost three billion dollars. good done.” She noted, “His patter is
struggles with the opportunity cost of In an alternate world, a portion of that calculated for maximal effect: if the book
his time. He told me, “It’s always been sum would presumably have been spent weren’t so cheery, MacAskill couldn’t ex-
an open question: What weight do I give on overpriced tapas in San Francisco’s pect to inspire as much do-gooding.” She
my own well-being against the possible Mission District. conceded the basic power of the move-
impact I can have?” Many evenings, he As effective altruism became a global ment’s rhetoric: “I’m not saying it doesn’t
has a frozen vegan dinner at the office. phenomenon, what had been treated as work. Halfway through reading the book
(He wasn’t sure, when feeding me, a fringe curiosity became subject to more I set up a regular donation to Give-
whether the microwave time for two sustained criticism. A panel convened Directly,” one of GiveWell’s top recom-
dishes would scale linearly.) He sched- by the Boston Review described E.A.s mended charities. But she called upon
ules his days down to the half hour. He as having cast their lot with the status effective altruism to abandon the world
and one of his assistants recently dis- quo. Though their patronage might help view of the “benevolent capitalist” and,
cussed reducing some slots to twenty-five to alleviate some suffering on the mar- just as Engels worked in a mill to sup-
minutes, but they ultimately decided that gins, they left the international machine port Marx, to live up to its more thor-
it might seem insulting. intact. As hard-nosed utilitarians, they oughgoing possibilities. “Effective altru-
In a rare free moment, MacAskill, who bracketed values—like justice, fairness, ism has so far been a rather homogenous
wears tight-fitting V necks that accen- and equality—that didn’t lend them- movement of middle-class white men
tuate his lack of sartorial vanity and his selves to spreadsheets. The Stanford po- fighting poverty through largely conven-
biceps, took me on a tour of the move- litical scientist Rob Reich wrote, “Plato tional means, but it is at least in theory
ment’s early sites. We passed Queen’s identified the best city as that in which a broad church.” She noted, encourag-
Lane Coffee House. “That’s where Ben- philosophers were the rulers. Effective ingly, that one element was now push-
tham discovered utilitarianism,” he com- altruists see the best state of affairs, I ing for “systemic change” on issues like
mented. “There should be a plaque, but think, as that in which good-maximiz- factory farming and immigration reform.
the current owners have no idea.” Most ing technocrats are in charge. Perhaps Some E.A.s felt that one of the best
of the colleges were closed to visitors, but it is possible to call this a politics: tech- features of their movement—that, in the
MacAskill had perfected the flash of an nocracy. But this politics is suspicious context of near-total political sclerosis,
old I.D. card and a brazen stride past a of, or rejects, the form of politics to they had found a way to do something—
porter. He paused reverently outside All which most people attach enormous had been recast as a bug. The move-
Souls College, where the late moral phi- value: democracy.”The Ethiopian Amer- ment’s self-corrections, they believed,
losopher Derek Parfit, one of the guid- ican A.I. scientist Timnit Gebru has had been underplayed: a high-paying
ing lights of E.A., spent his life in a tower. condemned E.A.s for acting as though job at a petrochemical firm, for exam-
Parfit believed that our inherited they are above such structural issues as ple, was by then considered sufficiently
moral theories were constructed on re- racism and colonialism. detrimental that no level of income could
ligious foundations, and aspired to build Few of these appraisals were new; justify it. But others found Srinivasan’s
a comprehensive secular moral frame- many were indebted to the philosopher criticisms harsh but fair. As Alexander
work. Effective altruism, in that spirit, Bernard Williams, who noted that util- Berger, the co-C.E.O. of Open Philan-
furnishes an all-encompassing world itarianism might, in certain historical thropy, told me, “She was basically right
that early E.A. argued for the atomized which the lives of digital consciousnesses Cotra, of Open Philanthropy, brought
response—that you as an individual might be staged, this could result in the him around. Ord believed that if we made
should rationally and calculatedly allo- efflorescence of approximately ten to the it through the next century or two we
cate a portion of your privilege to achieve power of fifty-eight beings. For any de- would have about even odds of achiev-
the best outcomes in the world, and this cision we made now, an astronomical ing the best possible long-haul future—a
doesn’t leave much space for solidarity.” number of lives hung in the balance. universe filled with the descendants of
During the next few years, however, the In the first month of the pandemic, humanity, living lives of untold, unimag-
movement gained a new appreciation Toby Ord published a book called “The inable, and unspecified freedom and plea-
for the more sweeping possibilities of Precipice.” According to Ord’s “cre- sure. MacAskill worries in his new book
systemic change—though perhaps not dences,” the chances of human extinc- that annihilation per se might not be the
in the ways Srinivasan had envisioned. tion during the next century stand at only risk. He believes in the radical con-
about 1–6, or the odds of Russian rou- tingency of moral progress; he argues,
ne of the virtues of effective altru- lette. The major contributor to existen- for example, that, without the agitation
O ists—which runs counter to their
stereotype as mere actuaries—is that,
tial risk was not climate change—which,
even in a worst-case scenario, is unlikely
of a small cohort of abolitionists, slavery
might have lasted much longer. Even a
when they feel like it, they’re capable of to render the planet wholly uninhabit- benign A.I. overlord, by contrast, might
great feats of imagination. A subset of able. (New Zealand, for example, might produce “value lock-in”: a world gov-
them, for example, has developed grave be fine.) Instead, he singles out engi- erned by code that forever stalls the arc
concern about the suffering of wild an- neered pathogens and runaway artificial of moral progress. (On the other hand,
imals: Should we euthanize geriatric el- intelligence. DNA editing might allow if we don’t avail ourselves of the possi-
ephants? Neutralize predator species? a scientist to create a superbug that could bilities of A.I., we might face techno-
What should be done about the bugs? wipe us out. A well-intentioned A.I. logical stagnation—in over our heads on
The prime status marker in a movement might, as in one of Bostrom’s famous a deteriorating planet.)
that has abjured financial reward is a rep- thought experiments, turn a directive to MacAskill understands that worries
utation for punctilious (and often con- make paper clips into an effort to do so about a sci-fi apocalypse might sound
trarian) intelligence. The community has with all available atoms. Ord imagines a glib when “there are real problems in the
a tendency to overindex on perceived ce- power-hungry superintelligence distrib- world facing real people,” he writes. The
rebral firepower, which makes even lead- uting thousands of copies of itself around distant future, however, is likely to be
ing lights like MacAskill feel a peren- the world, using this botnet to win fi- even more crowded with real people.
nial sense of imposture. This means that nancial resources, and gaining dominion And if spatial distance is irrelevant to
genuinely bizarre ideas, if argued with “by manipulating the leaders of major our regard for starvation overseas, tem-
sufficient virtuosity, get a fair hearing. world powers (blackmail, or the prom- poral distance should be an equally poor
Holden Karnofsky told me, “If you read ise of future power); or by having the excuse. “I now believe the world’s long-
things that E.A.s are saying, they sound humans under its control use weapons run fate depends in part on the choices
a lot crazier than what they’re actually of mass destruction to cripple the rest of we make in our lifetimes,” he writes. This
doing.” But the movement—constrained humanity.” These risks might have a amounts to nothing less than a “moral
by methodological commitments rather probability close to zero, but a negligi- revolution.”
than by substantive moral ones—has ble possibility times a catastrophic out-
proved vulnerable to rapid changes in its come is still very bad; significant action n 2012, while MacAskill was in Cam-
priorities from unexpected quarters.
In retrospect, “Doing Good Better”
is now of paramount concern. “We can
state with confidence that humanity
I bridge, Massachusetts, delivering his
earning-to-give spiel, he heard of a prom-
was less a blueprint for future campaigns spends more on ice cream every year than ising M.I.T. undergraduate named Sam
than an epitaph for what came to be on ensuring that the technologies we Bankman-Fried and invited him to lunch.
called the “bed-nets era.” During the develop do not destroy us,” Ord writes. Bankman-Fried’s parents are scholars at
next five years, a much vaster idea began These ideas were grouped together under Stanford Law School, and he had been
to take hold in the minds of the move- the new heading of “longtermism.” raised as a card-carrying consequential-
ment’s leaders: the threat of humanity’s When Ord first mentioned existen- ist. He had recently become vegan and
annihilation. Such concerns had been tial risk, MacAskill thought that it was was in the market for a righteous path.
around since the dawn of the nuclear a totally crackpot idea. He was uneasy MacAskill pitched him on earning to
age. Parfit had connected them to an old about how it related to his own priori- give. Bankman-Fried approached an
utilitarian argument, that the protection ties, and remembers attending a meet- animal-welfare group and asked its mem-
of future lives was just as important as ing about A.I. risk and feeling frustrated bers whether they had more use for his
the preservation of current ones. The by the vagueness of the potential im- volunteer time or for his money, and they
philosopher Nick Bostrom contended pacts. But profound improvements in the strongly preferred the money. The next
that, if humanity successfully colonized past half decade (DeepMind’s AlphaGo, year, Bankman-Fried invited MacAskill
the planets within its “light cone”—the OpenAI’s GPT-3), combined with ar- to stay at his coed nerd frat, where ev-
plausibly reachable regions of the uni- guments about the exponential gains eryone slept in the attic to preserve the
verse—and harnessed the computational in computational power compared to living area for video and board games.
power of the stars to run servers upon biological benchmarks, cited by Ajeya In 2014, Bankman-Fried graduated
with a degree in physics, and went to
work at Jane Street. He says that he do-
nated about half his salary, giving some
to animal-welfare organizations and
the rest to E.A. movement-building ini-
tiatives. In 2017, he started Alameda
Research, a crypto-trading firm that
sought to exploit an arbitrage opportu-
nity wherein bitcoin, for various reasons,
traded higher on Japanese exchanges.
The scheme was elaborate, and required
that his employees spend a lot of time
in bank branches, but he made a ten-
per-cent profit on every trade. One crypto
impresario told me, “We all knew that
was possible in theory, but S.B.F. was the
one who actually went and did it.”
In 2019, Bankman-Fried founded a
user-friendly crypto exchange called
FTX. One of the exchange’s most prof-
itable products is not yet legal in the
United States; he shopped for more con-
genial jurisdictions and set up in the Ba-
hamas. By the time Bankman-Fried was
twenty-nine, Forbes estimated his net “ You can’t just put on the uniform whenever you
worth at about twenty-six billion dol- don’t want to have a conversation, Barry.”
lars, making him the twenty-fifth-richest
American. At least three of his co-work-
ers, depending on the fluctuating price
• •
of crypto assets, are also E.A. billion-
aires. Nishad Singh had been working promise: “Someone gets very rich and, tion not only to theorize but to disburse
an earning-to-give job at Facebook when it’s, like, O.K., remember the altruism on a grand scale. The Future Fund’s ini-
Bankman-Fried invited him to join. side? I called him and said, ‘So, still plan- tial ideas included the development of
Singh told me, “I had been somewhat ning to donate?’” Bankman-Fried pledged early-detection systems for unknown
dishonest with myself. I might have been to give nearly all his money away; if pathogens, and vast improvements in per-
picking a path that let me lead the life I suitable opportunities are found, he’s sonal protective equipment—including
wanted to lead, but I was not picking the willing to contribute more than a billion a suit “designed to allow severely immu-
path of maximal good.” dollars a year. Bankman-Fried had long- nocompromised people to lead relatively
Bankman-Fried has refined the per- termist views before they held sway over normal lives.” With the organization’s
sona of a dishevelled, savantlike techno- MacAskill, and has always been, Mac- support, someone might buy a large coal
fakir. He has been widely advertised for Askill remembers, “particularly excited mine to keep the coal in the ground—
his fiscal chastity—he drives a Toyota by pandemics”—a normal thing to hear not only to reduce our carbon footprint
Corolla and, on the rare occasion that he among E.A.s. Bankman-Fried set up a but to insure that humanity has available
leaves the office, lives with nine room- foundation, the FTX Future Fund, and deposits should some desperate future
mates. Even when beds are ready to hand, hired the longtermist philosopher Nick generation have to reindustrialize. The
he pitches down on a beanbag. Accord- Beckstead as C.E.O. This past Decem- foundation was keen to hear proposals
ing to the Times, visitors are sometimes ber, MacAskill finished the manuscript for “civilizational recovery drills,” and to
scheduled to arrive for meetings during of his new book, and hoped to spend fund organizations like ALLFED, which
his naps; they watch from a conference more time with his partner, Holly develops food sources that could, in a nu-
room as he wakes up and pads over in Morgan, an early E.A. and the biggest clear winter, be cultivated without sun-
cargo shorts. But his marketing efforts single input to his stability. Instead, light. (So far, it’s mostly mushrooms, but
have been splashy. FTX spent an esti- Bankman-Fried enlisted him as a Fu- seaweed shows promise.) Inevitably, there
mated twenty million dollars on an ad ture Fund adviser. (He offered MacAskill were calls for bunkers where, at any given
campaign featuring Tom Brady and Gisele a “generous” six-figure salary, but Mac- time, a subset of humanity would live in
Bündchen, and bought the naming rights Askill replied that he was just going to a sealed ark.
to the Miami Heat’s arena for a hundred redistribute the money anyway.) Along with the money came glam-
and thirty-five million dollars. Overnight, the funds potentially avail- orous attractors. Last week, Elon Musk
Last year, MacAskill contacted able to E.A. organizations more than tweeted, of MacAskill’s new book, “This
Bankman-Fried to check in about his doubled, and MacAskill was in a posi- is a close match for my philosophy.” (For
a brief period, Musk reportedly assigned Cremer and Luke Kemp published a Tory Party here is that they go straight
responsibility for the charitable distri- paper called “Democratising Risk,” from Oxford to a job in Parliament. How
bution of nearly six billion dollars to Igor which criticized the “techno-utopian could they possibly solve problems that
Kurganov, a former professional poker approach” of longtermists. Some E.A.s, they themselves have never come into
player and a onetime housemate of Mac- Cremer wrote in a forum post, had at- contact with? They’ve never been at the
Askill’s; in MacAskill’s book, Kurganov tempted to thwart the paper’s publica- coalface. The same criticism could be
is thanked for “unfettered prances round tion: “These individuals—often senior said of many E.A.s.” The community’s
the garden.”) MacAskill has long been scholars within the field—told us in priorities were prone to capture by its
friendly with the actor Joseph Gor- private that they were concerned that funders. Cremer said, of Bankman-Fried,
don-Levitt, who told me, “Last year, Will any critique of central figures in EA “Now everyone is in the Bahamas, and
called me up about ‘What We Owe the would result in an inability to secure now all of a sudden we have to listen to
Future,’ to talk about what it might be funding.” MacAskill responded solici- three-hour podcasts with him, because
like to adapt the book for the screen.” tously in the comments, and when they he’s the one with all the money. He’s
MacAskill felt that such movies as “Deep finally had a chance to meet, in Febru- good at crypto so he must be good at
Impact” and “Armageddon” had prompted ary, Cremer presented a list of proposed public policy . . . what?!”
governments to take the asteroid threat “structural reforms” to E.A., including The bed-nets era had been chided
more seriously, and that “The Termina- whistle-blower protections and a broad as myopic, but at least its outcomes were
tor” ’s Skynet wasn’t a bad way to discuss democratization of E.A.’s structure. concrete. The same could not be said
the menace of A.I. Gordon-Levitt said, Cremer felt that MacAskill, the move- of longtermism. Among the better ob-
“We’ve started figuring out how it could ment leader who gave her the most jections was a charge of “cluelessness,”
work to build a pipeline from the E.A. hope, had listened perfunctorily and or the recognition that we have trouble
community to my creative one, and see- done nothing. “I can’t wear the E.A. projecting decades down the line, let
ing if we can’t get some of these ideas hoodie to the gym anymore,” she told alone millennia. It does, in any case,
out there into the world.” me. “Many young people identify with seem convenient that a group of moral
Bankman-Fried has made an all-in E.A. as a movement or a community philosophers and computer scientists
commitment to longtermism. In May, I or even a family—but underneath this happened to conclude that the people
spoke with him over video chat, and he is a set of institutions that are becom- most likely to safeguard humanity’s fu-
seemed almost willfully distracted: he ing increasingly powerful.” ture are moral philosophers and com-
didn’t bother to hide the fact that he was Last year, the Centre for Effective puter scientists. The movement had
doing things on several monitors at once. Altruism bought Wytham Abbey, a prided itself on its resolute secularism,
(As a child, his brother has said, Bank- palatial estate near Oxford, built in 1480. but longtermist dread recalled the verse
man-Fried was so bored by the pace of Money, which no longer seemed an ob- in the Book of Revelation that warns
regular board games that it became his ject, was increasingly being reinvested of a time when the stars will fall from
custom to play multiple games at once, in the community itself. The math could the sky like unripe figs. Rob Reich, the
ideally with speed timers.) He told me work out: it was a canny investment to Stanford political scientist, who once
that he never had a bed-nets phase, and spend thousands of dollars to recruit sat on the board of GiveWell, told me,
considered neartermist causes—global the next Sam Bankman-Fried. But the “They are the secular apocalypticists of
health and poverty—to be more emo- logic of the exponential downstream our age, not much different than Sa-
tionally driven. He was happy for some had some kinship with a multilevel- vonarola—the world is ending and we
money to continue to flow to those pri- marketing ploy. Similarly, if you assigned need a radical break with our previous
orities, but they were not his own. “The an arbitrarily high value to an E.A.’s practices.” Longtermism is invariably a
majority of donations should go to places hourly output, it was easy to justify lux- phenomenon of its time: in the nine-
with a longtermist mind-set,” he said, uries such as laundry services for un- teen-seventies, sophisticated fans of
although he added that some interces- dergraduate groups, or, as one person “Soylent Green” feared a population ex-
sions coded as short term have impor- put it to me, wincing, “retreats to teach plosion; in the era of “The Matrix,” peo-
tant long-term implications. He paused people how to run retreats.” Josh Mor- ple are prone to agonize about A.I. In
to pay attention for a moment. “I want rison, a kidney donor and the founder the week I spent in Oxford, I heard al-
to be careful about being too dictatorial of a pandemic-response organization, most nothing about the month-old war
about it, or too prescriptive about how commented on the forum, “ The in Ukraine. I could see how comfort-
other people should feel. But I did feel Ponzi-ishness of the whole thing doesn’t ing it was, when everything seemed so
like the longtermist argument was very quite sit well.” awful, to take refuge on the higher plane
compelling. I couldn’t refute it. It was One disaffected E.A. worried that of millenarianism.
clearly the right thing.” the “outside view” might be neglected Longtermism also led to some bi-
in a community that felt increasingly in- zarre conclusions. Depending on the
he shift to longtermism, and the sular. “I know E.A.s who no longer seek probabilities one attaches to this or that
T movement’s new proximity to
wealth and power—developments that
out the opinions or input of their col-
leagues at work, because they take them-
outcome, something like a .0001-per-cent
reduction in over-all existential risk
were not uncorrelated—generated in- selves to have a higher I.Q.,” she said. might be worth more than the effort
ternal discord. In December, Carla Zoe “The common criticism thrown at the to save a billion people today. (In the
literature, this argument is called “fa- Democratic contributors. Given anxi- portunity cost of ten million dollars
naticism,” and, though it remains a sub- eties about the nuclear codes, his action spent on a long-shot primary was about
ject of lively scholastic debate in E.A. wasn’t hard to justify. But Bankman-Fried twenty-five hundred lives.
circles, nobody openly endorses it.) Re- has his own interests—the only times
ferring to such regrettable episodes as he’s been known to wear pants is in front ne of the reasons MacAskill is so
all previous epidemics and wars, Nick
Bostrom once wrote, “Tragic as such
of Congress, where he urges crypto de-
regulation—and electoral interventions
O venerated by his followers is that,
despite his rarefied intellect, he seems to
events are to the people immediately are slippery. This year, Bankman-Fried’s experience the tensions of the movement
affected, in the big picture of things— super PAC gave more than ten million on a somatic level. In late March, he gave
from the perspective of humankind as dollars to support Carrick Flynn, the a talk at EAGxOxford, a conference of
a whole—even the worst of these ca- first explicitly E.A.-affiliated congres- some six hundred and fifty young E.A.s.
tastrophes are mere ripples on the sur- sional candidate, in a crowded Demo- MacAskill had celebrated his thirty-fifth
face of the sea of life.” Nick Beckstead, cratic primary in a new Oregon district. birthday the night before—a small group
the philosopher at the helm of the Flynn ran on a longtermist message of largely E.A.-unaffiliated friends had
Future Fund, remarked in his 2013 dis- about pandemic preparedness. (His back- gone out into the fields in pagan cos-
sertation, “Richer countries have sub- ground was in A.I. safety, but this was tumes to participate in a Lithuanian rite
stantially more innovation, and their clearly a non-starter.) He did little to of spring. MacAskill told me that he’d
workers are much more economically tailor his platform to the particular needs never been happier with his life, and he
productive. By ordinary standards—at of the local constituency, which has a definitely looked a little worse for wear.
least by ordinary enlightened humani- substantial Latino population, and he At the conference, he was introduced,
tarian standards—saving and improv- lost by a large margin. to rapturous applause, under a portrait
ing lives in rich countries is about equally Part of the initial attraction of the of George III wearing a gold damask
as important as saving and improving movement, for a certain sort of person, suit. The room featured a series of or-
lives in poor countries, provided lives was that E.A. existed in a realm out- nately carved wooden clocks, all of which
are improved by roughly comparable side the business of politics as usual. displayed contrary times; an apologetic
amounts. But it now seems more plau- Now its biggest funder was doing some- sign read “Clocks undergoing mainte-
sible to me that saving a life in a rich thing that looked a lot like an attempt nance,” but it was an odd portent for a
country is substantially more important to buy an open congressional seat. There talk about the future. Afterward, Mac-
than saving a life in a poor country.” wasn’t necessarily anything wrong, from Askill had a difficult time negotiating
Beckstead’s comment may formal- a means-end perspective. But it did seem his exit from the marbled hall—he was
ize what many philanthropists already as though, overnight, the ground had constantly being stopped for selfies, or
do: the venture capitalist John Doerr shifted underneath the movement’s rank interrupted to talk about some neglected
recently gave a billion dollars to already and file. From the perspective of the nuclear risk by a guy dressed like Mad
over-endowed Stanford to bankroll a early days of hard benchmarks, the op- Max, or detained by a teen-ager who
school for studying climate change. But
such extreme trade-offs were not an
easy sell. As Holden Karnofsky once
put it, most people who sit down to rea-
son through these things from a place
of compassion don’t expect to arrive at
such conclusions—or want to. E.A. lif-
ers told me that they had been unable
to bring themselves to feel as though
existential risk from out-of-control A.I.
presented the same kind of “gut punch”
as global poverty, but that they were
generally ready to defer to the smart
people who thought otherwise. Nishad
Singh told me that he, like many long-
termists, continues to donate to allevi-
ate current misfortune: “I still do the
neartermist thing, personally, to keep
the fire in my belly.”
One of the ironies of the longtermist
correction was that, all of a sudden, pol-
itics was on the table in a new way. In
2020, Bankman-Fried donated more
than five million dollars to Joe Biden’s
campaign, making him one of the top “Remember, he created us in his image a really long time ago.”
scream, or cry.” MacAskill replenishes his
own moral and aesthetic commitment
through his personal giving, even if he
can now fund-raise more in an hour than
he could donate in a year.
In “What We Owe the Future,” he
is careful to sidestep the notion that
efforts on behalf of trillions of theoret-
ical future humans might be fundamen-
tally irreconcilable with the neartermist
world-on-fire agenda. During a break
in the conference, he whisked me to a
footpath called Addison’s Walk, point-
ing out the fritillaries, and a muntjac
deer in the undergrowth. “We need to
stay away from totalizing thinking,” he
said. “These thought experiments about
suffering now versus suffering in the fu-
ture—once you start actually doing the
work, you’re obviously informed by com-
mon sense. For almost any path, there’s
almost always a way to do things in a
• • coöperative, nonfanatical way.” Pandemic
preparedness, for example, is equally im-
portant in the near term, and some peo-
wanted to know how he felt about the think of the suffering of the world.” ple think that A.I. alignment will be rel-
structural disadvantages that kept poor MacAskill, who still does his own evant in our lifetimes.
countries poor. laundry, was deeply ambivalent about the Members of the mutinous cohort told
One young woman, two months shy deterioration of frugality norms in the me that the movement’s leaders were not
of her high-school graduation, told him community. The Centre for Effective to be taken at their word—that they would
that she had stayed up all night fret- Altruism’s first office had been in an say anything in public to maximize im-
ting—she felt bad that she had paid for overcrowded firetrap of a basement be- pact. Some of the paranoia—rumor-mill
private lodging for the weekend, and neath an estate agent’s office. “I get a lot references to secret Google docs and ruth-
wanted to know how to harmonize her of joy thinking about the early stages— less clandestine councils—seemed over-
own appetites with the needs of others. every day for lunch we had Sainsbury’s stated, but there was a core cadre that ex-
When MacAskill speaks, he often makes baguettes with hummus, and it felt mor- ercised control over public messaging; its
a gesture that resembles the stringing of ally appropriate,” MacAskill told me. members debated, for example, how to
gossamer in midair, as if threading nar- “Now we have this nice office with ca- formulate their position that climate
row bridges across pitfalls in understand- tered vegan lunches. We could hire a change was probably not as important as
ing. He told the young woman that he hedge-fund guy at market rates, and that runaway A.I. without sounding like de-
tried to cultivate his own disposition so makes sense! But there’s an aesthetic part nialists or jerks. When I told the disaf-
that the contradictions disappeared: “E.A. of me that feels really sad about these fected E.A. that MacAskill seemed of
has motivated me to do stuff that’s hard compromises with the world.” two minds about longtermism as an ab-
or intimidating or makes me feel scared, I asked about the slippage, in his resolute priority, she was less convinced of
but our preferences are malleable, and sponse, from moral to aesthetic propri- his sincerity: “I think Will does lean more
these activities become rewarding.” He ety. He said, “Imagine you’re travelling toward the fanatical side of things, but I
warned her, however, that it was “pretty through a foreign country. During a long think he has the awareness—off the merit
easy to justify anything on altruistic bus ride, there’s an explosion and the bus of his own social skills or feedback—of
grounds if your reasoning is skewed overturns. When you come to, you find the way the more fanatical versions sound
enough. Should I have a less nice apart- yourself in a conflict zone. Your travel to people, and how those might affect
ment? Should I not have Bluetooth head- companion is trapped under the bus, look- the appeal and credibility of the move-
phones?” He sighed and fluttered his ing into your eyes and begging for help. ment. He has toned it down in his com-
eyelids, unable to provide the answers A few metres away, a bloody child screams munications and has also encouraged
she sought. “After all this time, I guess in pain. At the same time, you hear the other E.A. orgs to do the same.” In a pri-
I don’t have a better suggestion for ticking of another explosive. In the dis- vate working document about how to
what to do than to give ten per cent. It’s tance, gunshots fire. That is the state of pitch longtermism, extensive editing has
a costly signal of your moral commit- the world. We have just a horrific set of reduced the message to three concise and
ment.” Beyond that, he continued, “try choices in front of us, so it feels virtuous, palatable takeaways.
to do the best you can and not constantly and morally appropriate, to vomit, or The disaffected E.A. warned me to
be wary whenever MacAskill spoke young philosopher, on his dancing at an From the outside, E.A. could look
slowly: these were the moments, she said, E.A. wedding they’d all attended. The like a chipper doomsday cult intent on
when he was triaging his commitment wedding had been for Matt Wage, the imposing its narrow vision on the world.
to honesty and the objectives of opti- early earning-to-give convert. The em- From the inside, its adherents feel as
mized P.R. With so many future lives at ployees had planned to go to Napa for though they are just trying to figure out
stake, the question of honor in the pres- the weekend, but they were completing how to allocate limited resources—a task
ent could be an open one. Was MacAskill’s their first open call for funding, and there that most charities and governments un-
gambit with me—the wild swimming in was never a moment to spare. First, some dertake with perhaps one thought too
the frigid lake—merely a calculation that had skipped Friday’s rehearsal dinner. few. “A.I. safety is such an unusual and
it was best to start things off with a showy Then they figured that they wouldn’t be uncertain area that it’s tempting to sim-
abdication of the calculus? missed at the Sunday brunch. In the end, ply hope the risks aren’t real,” Ramakrish-
But, during my week in Oxford, it was they’d left the reception early, too. Wage nan said. “One thing I like about the
hard to shake my impression of him as understood. The opportunity cost of their E.A. community is that it’s willing to
heartrendingly genuine—a sweaty young time was high. The Future Fund agreed deal with the knottiness, and just try to
postulant who had looked into the abyss to finance sixty-nine projects, for a total reason as carefully as possible.” There
and was narrating in real time as he con- of about twenty-seven million dollars. were also signs that E.A.s were, despite
structed a frail bridge to the far side. I The most heavily awarded category was the hazard of fanaticism, increasingly
asked him what made him most appre- biorisk, followed by A.I.-alignment re- prone to pluralism themselves. Open
hensive, and he thought for a moment. search and various forecasting projects; Philanthropy has embraced an ethic of
“My No. 1 worry is: what if we’re focussed the team had funded, among other things, “worldview diversification,” whereby we
on entirely the wrong things?” he said. the mushroom caterers of the coming might give up on perfect commensura-
“What if we’re just wrong? What if A.I. nuclear winter. bility and acknowledge it is O.K. that
is just a distraction? Like, look at the Beckstead’s new role, and accumu- some money be reserved to address the
Greens and nuclear power.” Panic about lated life experience, seemed to have mel- suffering of chickens, some for the suf-
meltdowns appears, in retrospect, to have lowed his more scholarly inclinations. “I fering of the poor, and some for a com-
driven disastrously short-term bets. Mac- personally find it tough to be all in on a putational eschatology. After almost a
Askill paused for a long time. “It’s very, philosophical framework in the fanati- decade of first-principles reasoning,
very easy to be totally mistaken.” cal sense,” he said. “Longtermism has E.A.s had effectively reinvented the
We returned to the conference court- been my main focus, and will be my main mixed-portfolio model of many philan-
yard for lunch, where an eclectic vegan focus. But I also feel like there’s some thropic foundations.
buffet had been set up. The line was long, value in doing some stuff that does de- One sweltering afternoon, MacAskill
and MacAskill had only five minutes liver more concrete wins,” and which and I went for a walk in the Berkeley
free. He tried to gauge the longest amount shows that “we’re morally serious peo- hills. What had begun as a set of tech-
of time he could spend queuing, and in ple who are not just doing vanity proj- niques and approaches had become an
the end we contritely cut in at about the ects about fancy technology.” It remains identity, and what was once a diffuse co-
halfway point. The buffet table had two plausible that the best longtermist strat- alition had hardened into a powerful but
stacks of plates, and a fly alighted briefly egy is more mundanely custodial. In 1955, fractious constituency; the burden of
on one of them. In MacAskill’s presence, leadership fell heavily on his shoulders.
it’s difficult not to feel as though every- “One of the things I liked about early
thing is an occasion for moral distinc- E.A. was the unapologetic nature of it,”
tion. I felt that I had no choice but to he said. “Some charities are better by a
take the plate the fly had landed on. Mac- lot! There was this commitment to truth
Askill nodded approvingly. “That was as a primary goal. Now I constantly think
altruistic of you,” he said. of how people will respond to things—
that people might be unhappy.” He strung
he Future Fund has offices on a high another invisible thread in the air. “Am
T floor of a building in downtown
Berkeley, with panoramic views of the the computer scientist John von Neu-
I an academic who says what he thinks?
Or am I representative of this move-
hills. The décor is of the equations-on- mann, a hero of E.A.s, concluded, “What ment? And, if so, what responsibilities
a-whiteboard variety, and MacAskill told safeguard remains? Apparently only day- do I have? There are some things that
me that the water-cooler talk runs the to-day—or perhaps year-to-year—op- become compromised there.” We passed
gamut from “What are your timelines?” portunistic measures, a long sequence of People’s Park, which had become a tent
to “What’s your p(doom)?”—when will small, correct decisions.” MacAskill had city, but his eyes flicked toward the hori-
we achieve artificial general intelligence, worried that one of the best new initia- zon. “Sometimes, as I think about what
and what’s your probability of cataclysm? tives he’d heard about—the Lead Expo- I’m going to do after the book comes
When I visited recently, Nick Beck- sure Elimination Project, which was out, I think, I have a job as the intellec-
stead, the C.E.O., assembled the team working to rid the world of lead poison- tual face of this broader movement, and
for a morning standup, and began by ing—might be a hard sell, but everyone sometimes I just want to be an indepen-
complimenting Ketan Ramakrishnan, a had readily agreed to fund it. dent pair of eyes on the world.” 
FICTION
60 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY KARLOTTA FREIER

hura was trying to reach Alyona his own bitterness to shed. “Last time French was that song they’d sung at
S and Oleg, first over Skype and

WhatsApp, then Facebook, on
which Alyona kept an account she
she was here, Mama said she didn’t
find Winnipeg ‘cozy.’”
“Meaning what—it’s too Canadian?”
the top of their voices, walking home.
“Les Russes veulent-ils la guerre?” Do
the Russians want war? A refrain that,
barely used. It should not have been so “Too Ukrainian.” fifty years later, could land you in prison.
hard to get hold of them. Alyona had “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Oleg, to be Alyona had kept up her French, read-
not posted recently, but she’d checked sure, was Russian, the son of a colonel. ing classics in the original. When Shura
her messages, Shura could see that. But Alyona was Ukrainian, on both had spoken to her by Skype last year,
Maybe she thought Shura was being sides, as she’d proudly told Shura when while Alyona and Oleg were living in
dramatic—hadn’t she always thought they were girls. Her father’s family was Winnipeg (no, not living, only visiting,
so? With her digital silence, Alyona from the Vinnytsia area; her mother’s, as it turned out), Alyona had been work-
was making a big show of her own from Donbas. ing through a copy of Colette’s “Le Blé
calm, doubling down on her refusal to Pavel said, “Mama I understand bet- en herbe.” Into the corporate-issued
treat anything as a catastrophe. Well, ter than I do him. She’s always been Mac that Shura had inherited in her
goody for her, Shura thought, and shut under his thumb. But I think he’d rather retirement, she’d nearly shouted, “What
her laptop. If Alyona wasn’t panicked, spend his old age living on canned tush- are you doing with that? You’re wast-
why should she be? It was day three onka than accept help from me.” ing your time. It’s Winnipeg, not Que-
and there were still no Russian boots Pavel had been more of a joker when bec! Start practicing your English.”
in central Kyiv. There was the battle at he’d arrived in Winnipeg, twenty years Foolishly, she’d imagined herself and
the Hostomel airport, and a rocket had ago. The long shift into a Canadian had Alyona forming a study group the way
crashed into a building in Obolon, but turned him, Shura thought, more ear- they’d done as girls, a tight unit to beat
that was not near where Alyona and nest, and a touch more righteous. out the boys in their class. She advised
Oleg lived, in the Shevchenkivskyi “Oh, Pavel.” She sensed that he Alyona on the best language software
district. From the security of her own would tell her more if she egged him and told her that she would dig up
house in Croton-on-Hudson, Shura on a little. But she hesitated, not want- her old E.S.L. coursework from night
tried not to think about the last con- ing to give the impression that she was classes. She’d held on to it, sentimen-
versation she’d had with Alyona. It had disparaging his mother. “So what’s their tally, even after her daughters had left
been a rather unpleasant chat, but now situation with groceries?” home and she’d decluttered the place.
there was a war on and it seemed un- “No worries about that. Last time “I’ll mail you everything,” she prom-
necessary to be holding a grudge, one we spoke, she was making veal the ised overeagerly, too pleased to have
of the very few they’d had in their sixty- French way.” her friend on the same continent to
odd-year friendship. • hear her demurrals. “I have my grand-
On day five, a reply came over Skype. son here if I need to practice conver-
“We’re alive.” Two words in a pale-blue At School No. 6, French had been sation,” Alyona had said. “And, any-
bubble. It should have taken the ten- Alyona’s favorite subject, and, by ex- how, I prefer to work on my French.”
sion out of her lungs, but it only agi- tension, Shura’s. Chattering in broken Shura had never asked what it had
tated Shura more. She’d expected a bit French was how they got to pretend taken Pavel to get his parents Cana-
more emotiveness—did they have gro- that they were more than provincial dian residency cards. Years of paper-
ceries? Were they spending nights in Soviet schoolgirls in a quasi-industrial work, she imagined. Regular checks
their building’s basement, or in the railroad city. In their sixth-grade pro- mailed to lawyers. And yet, after only
metro? We’re alive. The bare minimum. duction of “Cinderella,” Alyona, with three months in Winnipeg, they’d
She would write back, Shura de- her shining blond head and biscuit skin, packed up and flown home. “Not for
cided, but not yet. She dialled Pavel’s was cast as Fée Marraine, the fairy god- us” was all Alyona had told her.
number in Winnipeg instead. “All right, mother. Shura, slight, pale, with dark Shura could understand Alyona pro-
Pavel,” she said briskly. “What’s going braids and eyes that could narrow tecting her pride—she certainly had
on with your parents?” suspiciously, had played an evil step- enough of it. But practicing her French?
“ They ’re waiting it out in the sister. Alyona was one of only five It made no sense. She would have
apartment.” Ukrainian kids in their class of twenty- thought her friend more pragmatic
She gathered from his voice that nine. Zhidovskaya shkola—the Jew than that.
he’d understood her meaning. Not school—was how the Ukrainians and •
Are they O.K.? but What’s wrong with the Jews both referred to School No. 6,
those two? a neighborhood Russian school known They’d sat at neighboring desks since
“Why aren’t they on their way to to be one of the best in the city. Not a the first grade, Korolenko and Kravetz,
Winnipeg?” snide designation, just fact. There was their friendship alphabetically predes-
Shura could hear Pavel exhale. He’d a Ukrainian school in the same neigh- tined, but it wasn’t until the second
likely been asked this a dozen times by borhood, so parents had a choice. Al- grade that they’d become close. Their
now. “Have they become patriots all of yona’s parents, engineers at the mechan- teacher that year was young and rigid,
a sudden?” she said, unable to resist. ical plant, had chosen the Jew school. without the heavyset authority of their
But he wasn’t hurt, having some of All Shura remembered now of her first-grade teacher, who’d hand-selected
children for her class, insuring that the of the treachery that the spring was ca- “Why? In Kharkiv, their hands are al-
brightest (in her clairvoyant estima- pable of. Each time Shura was about ready tired from baking karavai.”
tion) would remain with one another to jump, Alyona would take a step back, Shura wasn’t sure she’d heard cor-
until their college-entrance exams. By protecting her own neat ensemble. Yet rectly. Did Alyona understand what
contrast, the young teacher exercised she did not tell Shura to stop. “You saw! she’d just said? Karavai? Did she mean
her rule through public embarrassment. You saw!” Shura kept insisting, because the bread and salt with which some
It was March, and they were start- it seemed to her that only Alyona did Ukrainians had greeted the Germans
ing their painting unit. (Shura’s father not think her crazy, even if Alyona her- back in ’41? “You mean celebrating the
had bought her a new watercolor set, self had decided to ignore the world takeover? What about you—are you
the waffles of pigment arrayed in a tin outside the window. Finally, seeing that baking karavai, too?”
like tiny gems.) The assignment was Shura’s tantrum would not end with- If Alyona was taken aback by the
to paint the spring outside. out some concession on sharpness of Shura’s voice, she didn’t
The teacher brought in an her part, Alyona said, “She show it. “You know I never bake,” she
easel with her own painting, wanted us to paint spring said. But they’d both felt a shift then,
a primitively pastoral scene as it should be.” Her voice as if each had suddenly discovered
with a leafy tree support- was filled with quiet, tidy something distasteful about the other
ing a yellow-breasted bird, exhaustion at having to de- and wanted to get past it as quickly
and a blue pond accom- liver an explanation too ob- as possible.
modating one duck. Two vious to be spoken aloud. •
clouds, major and minor, Only it hadn’t been ob-
floated toward a conical sun vious to Shura. For the next After that conversation, Shura had
wedged in a corner. Shura eight years of her school- slept badly. Plenty of her friends in
had not understood that ing, she’d learn to adopt North America had relatives or old
she was supposed to copy directly from a kind of vigilance toward herself, to classmates still in Ukraine. But none
the teacher’s example. She’d made the ferret out what a teacher really wanted of them, as far as she knew, had men-
mistake of looking out the window, from her, to stop herself before her tioned anyone speaking the way Aly-
where spring had arrived in a wash of hunger to excel tipped over into in- ona had. Shura was, in fact, placing
mud-streaked sidewalks and oily pud- tellectual extravagance. She found it bets on a war, and the morning that
dles. In truth, she’d hewed closely to helpful to follow Alyona’s lead in this it finally happened she felt so weak-
her teacher’s design, altering only the regard. Later, when Shura began to ened that her vision blurred from an
palette, graying the blues, daubing study computer science in Leningrad, abrupt drop in blood pressure. She had
brown along the picture’s grassy bot- the word “requirements” would come experienced these sudden drops occa-
tom edge. She’d covered the sun with to mind whenever she thought of her sionally since the conclusion of her
a gray cloud. friend (studying the same subject in chemo, three years before, an uncom-
Moving down the rows of desks, Kyiv). She thought of Alyona’s abil- mon but not life-threatening side ef-
their teacher had stopped and, with ity to ascertain the implicit expecta- fect. For the first time in two years,
pincered fingers, lifted Shura’s wet paper tions of a task while ignoring any- Shura wondered if things would be
as an example of what the others should thing unnecessary. easier now if she hadn’t retired, if her
not do: muddy their colors, soak their mind had blocks of code to occupy it-
parchment with water, fail to pay at- • self with, instead of the movements
tention to the assignment. Shura had The conversation that had left a bad of troops and tanks across three sep-
sat wordlessly, her cheeks growing hot. taste in Shura’s mouth, a week before arate fronts. After her treatment, she
It was true she’d used too much water, the invasion began, had been about hadn’t gone back to work, and she’d
but the charge of not paying attention bread. Shura was watching the mass- been surprised at how quickly many
to the assignment seemed utterly un- ing of troops on the border with a grow- of her friendships thinned out with-
fair. “But I did paint the spring,” she ing dread and had called Alyona. out common deadlines and office gos-
protested, turning to the window as “You aren’t worried?” sip. Still, life was too short to code
proof. The young teacher, still looking “About?” yourself into the grave. Throughout
at her picture, had declared, “This is “War.” the years, she and Alyona had been in
not spring. This is a muddle.” “Is that what you all are placing your touch sporadically, but during her re-
That afternoon, Alyona and Shura bets on?” covery they’d started talking again al-
walked home together, and Shura’s out- “You all?” Shura said. “It’s me you’re most every week. Until now.
rage unleashed itself in her gait. She talking to.”
didn’t avoid the mud on the sidewalks, “Your media, then, putting chips on •
despite owning only one pair of school different squares on the calendar.” On days six and seven, Shura tried
shoes, which her mother would have to These didn’t sound like Alyona’s Skyping Alyona but couldn’t reach her.
scrub that night. She made herself leap words—perhaps they were Oleg’s. “So On day eight, she called Pavel again.
in puddles, as if the damage to her wool you’re not placing a bet, then?” He said that his parents had packed
stockings and coat would stand as proof That was when Alyona said it: up and headed to their dacha. He
couldn’t vouch for the reliability of their Shura had complicated opinions on “Oleg and I are tired of this whole
Internet when they arrived. this matter but kept them to herself. muddle.”
Shura did not want to second-guess “Zelensky’s afraid they’ll topple the Her face looked puffy, dark satch-
herself. Most likely Alyona was busy government if he doesn’t kiss their asses. els of exhaustion under her eyes. It
escaping the city. Perhaps her devices You should hear them talk. An army was always unsettling for Shura to see
had died. And still Shura felt that Al- of lions being led by sheep. Big deal, a woman like Alyona not looking her
yona’s failure to give her updates was Jewish President—we change Presi- best. At school, the boys had all been
payback for their argument about kar- dents every five years.” in love with her, but Shura hadn’t re-
avai, when Alyona had accused her of “Better than every twenty-five,” ally understood the measure of Aly-
not having a clue about what was re- Shura said. ona’s beauty until she’d come to Amer-
ally happening in “the East.” • ica and watched “Tootsie” at a party
“They act like they’re the cops, roam- thrown by one of the seasoned immi-
ing the streets after dark and stopping On the evening before day eleven, NATO grants, who’d screened it for the new
anyone they want, asking for papers,” was still rejecting a no-fly zone, and arrivals as a kind of cultural tutorial.
Alyona had said of the Ukrainian mi- the nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia had Watching Dustin Hoffman’s love in-
litias. “They say they’re hunting sepa- been seized, but that morning Shura terest, played by Jessica Lange, had
ratists. You get a mass riot in America felt as though her body had somehow suddenly made her feel both nostal-
every time one of your police tries half acclimated to the new state of alarm. gic and comforted in this new land.
the stuff these fascists pull.” She was squinting at the expiration It was as though Alyona had appeared
“Really?” Shura said. “Are they date on a Vitamin-D bottle when onscreen, with the same soft brown
shooting people?” Skype’s cartoonish jingle rang on her eyes and feathery waves, the same slow
“Well, they’re not exactly walking laptop. “Alyona, where are you?” she smile. Now Lange was skinny and
around unarmed. And they’re anti- shouted as the screen revealed, behind Botoxed, her fine features sharpened
Semites.” Alyona’s halo of pulled-back blond hair, into aggressive angles, while Alyona’s,
She suspected that Alyona had a narrow kitchen with old metal dishes each time Shura saw her, seemed to
thrown in the anti-Semite charge to stacked on hanging shelves. “Are you be blurring and becoming more lost
press her buttons. “Are they pogrom- at the dacha?” in the fleshiness of her face, her soft-
ing?” she inquired. “We arrived two nights ago. Pavel ening jawline.
“Are you out of your mind?” said you called him?” Alyona hadn’t Oleg’s meaty head entered the frame
“So it’s just words.” wanted to Skype from Kyiv, she said. as he crouched down to say, “Greet-
“You think that isn’t enough? The “Too noisy. Hard to talk over the sirens.” ings, Shurochka!”
police let the nationalists run rampant. “Right.” “How are you two?”
They’re afraid to stop them.” “A mess.” She made a few limp hand The couple glanced at each other, an
“In Kyiv?” motions like waving a lazy goodbye. inscrutable message passing between
“Not here, but . . . even here they
come out on Independence Square in
their sunglasses and stupid bandannas,
and their wrong-side-up swastikas
painted on their cars.”
“Democracy is messy,” Shura said,
though she wasn’t sure why she was
defending Ukraine to a Ukrainian.
“Democracy, are you kidding?
They’ve colonized the state. Our Nou-
velle Droite.”
Alyona sometimes used French
when she wanted to make a point, but
“colonized the state” hardly sounded
like her.
“How could the fascists have colo-
nized the state,” Shura said, “when your
President is a Jew? And the defense
minister, too.”
“You think that proves anything?
Your Trump was practically a Jew
himself with his Kushners running
the shop. Did that stop him saluting
your neo-Nazis when he got up on a
balcony?” “Be honest—do these glasses make me look scarier?”
them. “No worse for wear,” Oleg an-
swered. Which meant what, exactly?
“Where are you, again?” MANIFEST
He gave the name of the town, in
the Zhitomir area. Hawks, rivers, cities, ochre, us.
“It’s really quieter around Zhito-
mir?” Shura said, powerless to keep the A species whose right hand sketches its left hand
distress out of her voice, as she quickly but can’t draw itself.
typed in the city on Google Maps, em-
ploying the Ukrainian “Zhytomyr,” the Whales.
more guttural sound of which she still Geosynchronous satellites.
felt too pretentious to say. Hadn’t they A truck hauling folded tarps under a tarp.
been shelling Zhitomir all night?
“Tell her to take a breath,” Oleg said. Wars, hunger, jail cells, praises, pratfalls, puns,
“We’re nowhere near the city.” gold circuits on phone-card connectors—
Alyona confirmed. “Not even close.” all cargo, manifest,
Shura liked Oleg well enough, but circling the sun together
he had a way of making you feel slightly each three hundred and sixty-five days
foolish for asking reasonable ques- plus a few remnant hours.
tions—either giving you an excessively
long and detailed answer, and getting A story here ribboned with lightning,
impatient if you wanted to hurry it there dimmed by clouds,
along, or else making some joke of your on a nitrogen-, oxygen-,
inquiry so that you felt it was super- carbon-dioxide-, and dust-cushioned bundle,
fluous. Their dacha was closer to Kyiv whose glaciers depart, insects quiet, seas rise.
than to the Belarus border, he now ex-
plained, giving the full coördinates. Still, To that which is coming, I say,
it seemed odd to Shura that they should Here, take what is yours.
have travelled in that direction, with
troops still filtering down from the
north. “How long do you plan to stay?”
she asked. they were playing, chatting as if it were ronto. If they can just get themselves
“Oh, the usual—probably through another spring at the dacha, as if Aly- to Lviv first—all the trains are run-
September.” ona and Oleg had retired to the coun- ning, I’ve checked the schedules.”
Shura tried not to let the surprise tryside for a vacation instead of flee- “Aunt Shura, they know.”
show on her face. Pavel had been right ing a city under attack. Then again, “They’re almost seventy years old,
about them making no plans to leave. what should Alyona be doing? All day and that estate is at least an acre! If
“Do you have food with you?” long, Shura watched the news on You- the Russians move another few inches
Oleg was silently laughing at her Tube, zooming in on crowds flooding south, your parents are going to be
again. “We brought plenty from Kyiv, into train stations, people shouting, feeding three types of squash to those
even red wine. Packed the whole car.” “Please, please,” and conductors shout- bandits.”
“I suppose you’ll grow the rest, then?” ing back, “No space.” Occasionally, “My father is impenetrable. If it was
“Well, sure,” Alyona said. “We’ll someone begged for a mother with a just her, I could convince her to come
need to get the ground ready for plant- child to be let on, as in the war tales back, get some proper care. But as long
ing soon.” she’d heard growing up. Except this as she’s around him . . .”
“In March?” time everything was in bright color. A feeling like embarrassment flut-
“Why not?” Oleg cut in. “The car- She could hardly blame her friend for tered through her at his words. She
rots and dill we can plant already. We not wanting to be stuck among all those thought of Alyona, with her sense of
can start the seeds for the cabbage and jostling bodies. And yet she could not decorum, hearing them talk like this.
squash in the greenhouses.” help thinking that these people had “What happened, Pavel? Why did they
Alyona gave him a look. “You know nowhere to go, while Alyona did—to leave Winnipeg so soon?”
I like to use those for the strawberries.” her son. It baffled her. “All that plant- She hadn’t dared to ask this ques-
For a few moments, the screen seemed ing sounds like a lot of work,” she said. tion before, and he was quiet for so
to freeze. Alyona gave her Jessica Lange smile. long that she had to say his name
When the connection returned to “It always is.” again.
normal, Alyona was talking about mov- • “I don’t know where to start,” he
ing the tomato pots indoors. said. “He’s contemptuous of the way I
Shura said, “I guess you’ve got it all The next day, she called Pavel again. live. He said that I do nothing but work,
sorted out.” She wasn’t sure what game “There are flights from Warsaw to To- I barely see my child. It’s true, I had a
sure. He did most of the work at the
dacha, Alyona had told her: planting,
But forget, if you can, what-is-coming, fixing pipes, rigging the Internet, build-
find not worth pocketing, ing a sauna.
let fall unnoticed as weed seed, “That isn’t why,” Pavel objected. “It’s
one small handful of moments and gestures. because they ran the show, those Rus-
sian military guys. They still expect ev-
Moments mouse-colored, minor. eryone to roll over for them. He feels
Gestures disturbing no one, hurt that my son speaks only English
slipped between the ones that were counted, and Ukrainian.”
the ones in which everything happened. She understood now that Pavel had
forsaken his Russianness completely.
A petroglyph’s single fingerprint. “But your father knows Ukrainian, al-
most as well as your mother.”
A spider awake in an undusted corner. “I explained that they teach the lan-
guage at Sunday school, but Papa shook
Let stay, if you can, what-is-coming, his head. He thinks our church is a
one or two musical notes, bunch of banderovtsy stuck in a time
hummed in a half hour that couldn’t be herded capsule, and that groups like them fund
or mined, everything that’s wrong at home. But
made to save daylight or spend it. I think what really kills him is that the
community here has done more for me
Leave one unfraudulent hope, than he ever did.”
one affection like curtains blown open in wind, Or could do, Shura thought. What
whose minutes, seconds, fragrance, good would Oleg’s family connections
choices, have done for Pavel after the great col-
won’t sadden the heart to recall. lapse? The economy had still been reel-
ing when Pavel had left on a summer
—Jane Hirshfield work visa to pick fruit on a farm in
England, when he’d befriended some
local guys at an Internet café in Cam-
tight delivery schedule when they were eran songs—‘We Need Only Victory!’” bridge and offered to write code for
here—the company had just gone pub- “Was he drunk?” them, when he’d been hired by the
lic. I was managing a new team. I didn’t “Not at all. He was trying to get startup they worked for, then by the
argue with him. He started going on Mama to sing along with him. He was corporation that had bought the startup
about how when he and Mama were waving his hand up and down like a and transplanted him and his young
working at the Informatics Institute, choirmaster—to get her to harmonize.” wife to Winnipeg. That his father dared
they never kept anyone past six—how “And did she?” to judge him for having clawed his way
after work there was a life, culture, a “Oh, yes. She may have been a lit- to the life he had must have felt ex-
theatre circle, a chess club—people did tle embarrassed at first, but then she ceedingly unfair. But how fair was it
things together. I said, Papa, I’m sorry did it. She got into it, or pretended to. to judge his parents, Shura thought,
my e-commerce firm doesn’t have a I can’t tell with her anymore. She did who’d had so little to offer him?
chess club, I’m sorry it doesn’t have an her best to carry his tune, like she al- “My wife and I had a big fight that
a-cappella group.” ways does.” night. The next day I told him that if
“What did he say?” “What do you mean always?” he ever did that in my house again he
“He thought I was mocking him. “He talks to me about how I live.” was free to leave. When I woke up the
He said, ‘Your problem is you believe There was a river of grievance waiting morning after, they were packing their
that the whole world wants to live like to come out now. “His mother waited suitcases.”
you.’ I was foolish enough to think I on his father, and on him, hand and “But you said your mother needed
could prove him wrong. We had a party, foot, and when she died he expected medical attention?”
a few friends from work, but mostly the same treatment from Mama. Her diabetes had worsened, Pavel
my wife’s from the Ukrainian church, Couldn’t care less if she had her own admitted. Alyona had had appoint-
people who helped us out when we job or life.” ments coming up.
first came. We started talking about “He’s a man of the old generation,” Preoccupied with her own health,
Crimea, Donbas. He got up from the Shura said, disingenuously. She thought Shura had not pressed Alyona on her
table and left the room. I thought, Good of her husband, Misha, donning vol- diabetes, which Alyona always played
riddance. But then he came back. He leyball kneepads to clean the kitchen down, perhaps not wanting to com-
sat down, lifted his glass, and started tile. Oleg might laugh at that. But then pete over their ailments. Shura regret-
singing one of those old Russian-vet- he wasn’t exactly a gentleman of lei- ted this now. “They wouldn’t even wait
until the next doctor’s visit,” Pavel said, simply. He wanted to marry her. His women would drink tea and talk. Al-
his voice strained with helpless petu- father was a colonel in the Soviet Army, yona had seemed happy, or at least con-
lance. “Mama said she could get it all and his parents had a three-bedroom tent. “I have a lot of freedom,” she’d
in Kyiv.” apartment on the Right Bank in Kyiv, admit, almost guiltily. Shura assumed
“But she’s not in Kyiv now.” and would help them get their own she was referring to her roomy apart-
“They loathe the city almost as much place soon. He’d given Alyona one day ment, close to Oleg’s parents, and to
as they do Winnipeg.” to decide. the fact that Oleg’s mother took Pavel
“But why?” “Only a day?” Shura had been a lit- to day care every morning and picked
“The Ubers, the new street names, tle stunned to confirm this when she’d him up, and also did the grocery shop-
the ads in Ukrainian and English. Last come home from Leningrad that July, ping and errands. (Shura’s own life, ex-
time I was there, everything annoyed to attend the wedding. cept for these brief trips home, had
them.” It had never looked so modern, But Alyona saw this as a sign of been a series of increasingly narrow
Pavel added. Like Prague or London. character. “He said twenty-four hours constrictions. She’d married Misha, her
They’d changed the parking rules, put should be enough time.” college sweetheart, and moved to his
up those stone planters so cars couldn’t “What did you like about him?” native Azerbaijan. Not even to Baku,
nose up on the sidewalks anymore. But Shura ventured to ask. She’d meant be- but to an industrial town that made
his mother had kept stubbing her toe sides his Kyiv residency papers. the one she’d grown up in seem like a
on the planters, almost as if she didn’t “He’s tall. And he has confidence.” botanical garden.) Later, however, she
see them, or didn’t want to. “What Of course, a colonel’s son had the had wondered if Alyona’s allusion to
frightens them is that there’s no trace confidence of his position, but Alyona her freedom had meant something
of anything Soviet anymore. I can’t get had meant more than that. She meant more. Sometimes Alyona made refer-
through to her, Aunt Shura. Maybe certainty about what he wanted from ences to a colleague, a man with whom
you can.” life, and what he was entitled to. In she ate lunches that stretched into mat-
Shura felt panic touch her chest. this case, her. inées at a nearby movie house. Just a
“What are you asking, Pavel?” she said, Shura had always thought of Aly- friend from work, she said.
suddenly switching to English. ona’s ability to intuit what was required The last time Alyona and Shura had
“She needs care. She listens to you, of her as a kind of mental elegance, met in Kyiv, Shura had confessed that
Aunt Shura.” something of a piece with the physi- she and Misha had received permis-
“You mean she should come alone?” cal elegance. But a different memory sion to emigrate, and Alyona, in turn,
“It’s the only way.” had come to her then: in high school, had confessed that her friend’s wife
When she hung up the phone, Shura they’d made a pact to travel to Lenin- had died abruptly, a few months ear-
reminded herself that she’d agreed to grad and sit for their university exams lier, and that he had asked her to leave
nothing. She wasn’t completely sure together. After they’d already bought Oleg to be with him. They had not
what Pavel had asked her to do—per- the train tickets, Alyona announced acted on their affection and she was
suade Alyona to go to Winnipeg for that she wasn’t going. Her father wanted asking Shura what to do.
medical care, or to stay for good? Be- her to go to a college closer to home. Maybe it was the giddiness of know-
cause it also sounded to her like what Shura had known even then that Al- ing that everything in her own life was
her friend’s son was asking her to do yona would not argue with this. about to change that made Shura say,
was break up his parents’ marriage. Nonetheless, Shura did not think “Do it! Pavel is in high school. If you
that Pavel’s version of his mother as don’t now, when?”
• “Yes, you’re right.” Alyona had
Shura had never given much thought breathed slowly, bracing herself, it
to Alyona and Oleg as a pair, though seemed, for escape. She’d taken the
initially she had found Alyona’s choice wide collar of her blouse and raised it
perplexing. In the letters they exchanged to her face, knuckles at her nose as if
throughout college, Alyona had not protecting herself from a freezing gale,
once mentioned Oleg. Then, in her though it was June.
second-to-last year, she’d written to When they got back in touch, two
Shura to announce that she was get- years later, Shura learned that Alyona
ting married. Oleg was a year ahead. had stayed with Oleg.
They’d known each other as acquain- the long-suffering wife was accurate. “I thought you loved him—your
tances but never dated. One day, late Whenever Shura had returned to friend.”
in his final semester, he’d asked to walk Ukraine for visits, it was always Al- “I do.”
her to her dormitory. He’d been hop- yona who’d picked her up at the air- “But?”
ing for a while to speak to her, he said. port, in any kind of weather, first on “He doesn’t have the same, I don’t
It was not hard for Shura to imagine a the bus and later in her own car. At know . . . force of will.”
boy taking months to work up the cour- the train station in Kyiv, while Shura Shura hid her disappointment. She
age to approach Alyona. But Oleg was waited for her connection back to the liked the idea of giving up everything
not timid. On their walk, he laid it out town where they’d grown up, the young for a great love. (She believed, in a pri-
vate way, that she’d done just that for
Misha.) But Alyona wasn’t interested
in talking about a decision once it was
made, and Shura let it drop.
•
“So, what have you planted so far?”
Shura asked when they spoke next, on
day sixteen. Alyona said that she’d sown
the beets and carrot seeds and spring
onions. She wanted to plant spinach,
but there was a shortage of fertilizer,
so she’d settled for peas.
“All that in two weeks?”
Alyona smiled, glad at Shura’s ex-
aggerated awe. “Well, then, what have
you and Pavel been talking about?”
Shura hesitated. “We were talking
about your health. He said you need
an update to your blood-sugar monitor.”
“You don’t know the whole story.”
“You’re right, I know nothing,” Shura
admitted. “But it sounds like he wants “No, I think I get it. So if I were to throw, say, an amateur
to take care of you.” grammarian off the boat, that would be jetsam, not flotsam?”
Alyona said that they could take
care of themselves well enough. In-
deed, they could, Shura concurred.
• •
Privately, it made Shura manic.
Those goddam vegetable gardens! tive as if she’d just learned that Shura and Shukhevych and the Odesa and
She’d grown up on a little homestead had cancer again. It was how all her Proskurov pogroms and all the rest of
herself—right in the middle of their American friends spoke to her now, it. Oh, how Shura detested that “but,
town—helping her parents tend a siz- calling and asking what they could do, still.” In the chemo room, she’d watched
able piece of property that had been flexing their empathy muscles. Shura Zelensky’s victory—a kind of sunlight
in the family since before the Bolshe- appreciated it, even if it felt infantiliz- trickling into her veins along with the
viks, complete with apple trees and ing. What she liked about this coun- drugs. The surprise was not just that
chickens. Shura’s parents had wanted try was the unfailing optimism of its they’d elected a Jew but that this seemed
her to “inherit” this patch of soil they’d people, the faith they had that some- of so much less consequence to the
somehow managed to hold on to under thing could always be done, that things Ukrainians themselves than it was to
the system. (Did they really think she, could be improved. They were certain the press. It had made her feel that the
an only child, a professional, would that, with enough aid, enough sanc- world really could change, that its sur-
have time to tend any of it?) Not until tions, enough deprivation, “the regu- prises were worth sticking around for.
her mid-forties did she acquire a taste lar Russian people” would take it upon
for gardening again, after she and themselves to overthrow the Turd. It •
Misha had saved up and moved to didn’t occur to them that these same Shura had started calling on Tuesdays
their house in Croton. They’d bought “regular people” might take a vengeful at 7 p.m. Alyona’s time, noon hers. This
across the street from a woman named pleasure, even a national pride, in their was the hour, Alyona had told her, when
Trish, who worked as a real-estate own deprivation and humiliation. That Oleg was usually out visiting a neigh-
agent and was obsessed with helping this pride could propel them, at a mo- bor for a drink.
her neighbors keep their yards nice in ment’s notice, to head to their little “How’s settlement life going?”
order to maintain the neighborhood’s dachas and plant their little gardens, Alyona said she’d been up since
property values. Trish had been gen- to pickle and can their vegetables until dawn pruning fruit trees. It seemed to
erous with her time, showing Shura Armageddon. Shura that her enthusiasm had some-
which boxwoods were better for light Harder to explain was the sentiment what waned. She said two of the green-
and for shade, how to keep her grass of some of her Jewish immigrant friends, houses had torn siding and finding re-
from yellowing. who in spite of shaking their heads placement plastic was turning out to
When the war started, Trish had compassionately, in spite of sending be a nightmare.
come over with a basket of begonia money to Ukraine’s Army fund, said “Well, at least you did a lot of the
bulbs and said, “Are you all right? Tell among themselves, But, still, are we sup- ground planting.”
me what I can do.” Her eyes as plain- posed to forget? They meant Bandera “That’s true.” Alyona sighed. “Then
Shura asked if she remembered their
second-grade teacher, the one she’d ar-
gued with about painting spring. Aly-
ona shook her head. “You don’t remem-
ber telling me I should paint spring as
it should be?” She didn’t know why it
should sadden her that Alyona had for-
gotten. “You always did insist on your
way of things,” Alyona finally said.
It was April now, and through her
bay window Shura could see her tulips
peeking up, her daffodils already bloom-
ing. She thought of the news analysis
she’d heard that morning, that all Ukraine
needed to turn the war around was tree
cover. The country had a long tradition
of guerrilla warfare. Once everything
was in bloom and the forests dense, the
Russians were in for a bitter slog. She
repeated none of this to Alyona.
•
Shura couldn’t remember when she’d
stopped counting the days. Maybe after
the Russians had been pushed out of
Kyiv and thousands of Ukrainians had
returned. Each week, Alyona seemed
• • closer to changing her mind. One eve-
ning, watching Shura scoop ice cream
again, fish, meat, and butter don’t grow that she knew more about each round into a bowl, Alyona said, “What I
in neat little rows, do they?” of shelling from her kitchen in Cro- wouldn’t do for some of that.”
It was a sign, Shura thought, that ton than Alyona, forty miles away from Shura stopped moving the spoon
Alyona was letting her guard down. it. “Schools No. 5 and 2 also got hit,” toward her mouth, feeling the illusion
The self-sufficiency she’d opted for she said. of their proximity suddenly disappear.
wasn’t without its burdens. Still, it was “Anyone inside?” “I’d love to give you mine.”
not the same as being captive. Some- “I don’t think so.” “We couldn’t take any in the car. It
thing Shura could not explain to Pavel: “What about No. 6?” would melt, that’s all.”
that when you reached a certain age, “No, ours is still standing.” “I bet you could make some.”
when you’d peered down that canyon, On the screen, Alyona sat, her shoul- But Alyona said that she was almost
your mate, if they happened to still be ders fallen. She was looking away from out of cooking butter. What cream she
alive and healthy, was the luck you held the camera, toward what must have could get her hands on, she’d make into
on to by your fingernails. been the window, the last of the day’s that first.
pink sun touching the wooden posts “You could go back to Kyiv for a
• of her chair. bit,” Shura suggested.
The next time Shura called, Alyona • For a long moment, Alyona didn’t
picked up right away, instead of return- speak, looking somewhere past the cam-
ing the missed call. “Did you see about They were making progress, Shura era. “There’s not enough fuel in the
O——?” Shura said, naming the town thought. Sometimes, after Oleg turned cans for leisure trips,” she said. Mean-
they’d grown up in. in for the night, Alyona called her. They ing, Oleg wouldn’t do it.
A look of naked worry crossed Al- avoided talk of the war, instead recall- “Anyone you could get a ride with?”
yona’s face. “I heard something. What ing moments of their youth. “Remem- Shura knew she was treading on deli-
happened?” ber Felix Smolyar, in the green brigades cate ground now. “To get some sup-
“They bombed the railway station.” with us?” Shura said. plies,” she added.
Even if Shura hadn’t been compul- “Not too bright with numbers?” Alyona was gazing out the window
sively following the war, she would “He wrote me from California, asked again. It would be good for her, Shura
have heard about the bombing on Face- if I was still in contact with you.” thought, to be in a city that had just
book, where her old classmates posted “He did?” won its freedom, however precarious.
news like this within minutes of its “We all thought he was a dummy, “You have a cousin in Kyiv, don’t you?”
announcement. Still, it was strange but turns out he had dyslexia.” Alyona seemed to consider this. But
there were parallel creases between her to the top of the line.” She didn’t know It wasn’t that Shura was shocked
eyes when she looked in the camera again. how true this was but hoped it was by this parroting of worn propaganda.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be treated true enough. Shura had no wish anymore to argue
as an enemy because you want peace,” Alyona swung her head in an I-don’t- about the particulars. What she had
she said. know gesture. It wasn’t enough for her failed to see was that in Alyona’s view
• to have the facts. She had to be seduced. the choice was always between two com-
“Change is hard only at first, but then promises. The idea of an unadulterated
Was it the cousin she was talking about, it’s just . . . life,” Shura said. “Look at liberty was another sham Shura had
or Pavel? Shura couldn’t say. But that me. I’ve done it three times already.” fallen for. Had Alyona always felt this
night, calling Pavel, she said, “If she “You think I haven’t lived through way, or had it come from a lifetime of
felt she could have a place to herself, enough changes?” Alyona’s face was making her bargains and sticking with
in Winnipeg . . . it might be easier to amused and cool, and Shura saw her them? Before they hung up, she said,
persuade her to come back.” own error. Of course she’d witnessed “You’ll forgive me if I don’t want to end
He said that he had already put his bigger upheavals just staying put. my days in a waiting room, holding out
parents on a list for subsidized apart- “Look, even if Oleg wanted to leave for Canada’s promises.”
ments in the greater Winnipeg area. Winnipeg that doesn’t mean you have
There was a housing help center he to . . . ” •
could appeal to. He could guarantee “Oleg?” Shura’s aversion to that term—waiting
their rent. The problem, he explained, “Pavel said they were quarrelling . . .” room—still rises in her throat five days
was that filling out more paperwork “Yes, and they would have gone on later, while she sits in her oncologist’s
wouldn’t do the job. They had to show quarrelling for eternity if I hadn’t said waiting room, expecting to be called in
up, physically, at various offices. Or at we were going home.” for her marker test. The words make
least Alyona did. Shura felt something like a tremor in her think of the Turd’s latest speech, ac-
• her breastbone. “You wanted to go back?” cusing defectors who have left Russia
“I just wanted peace, Shura. Pavel of selling out their mothers for a chance
But Shura found herself unable to talk invites friends over who he knows will to sit in the waiting rooms of the West.
about this with Alyona, their common make Oleg upset. What can we do? When the tests come back normal, she
ground now being, quite literally, the We’re there at his good will, so he re- takes a long, sustaining breath, then tries
ground. Shura shared her own difficul- minds us.” to Skype Alyona. No answer. She tries
ties with her dry, rock-filled soil, the chal- The irony of this struck Shura like the following day. Maybe they have lost
lenges of untangling perennial tubers. a blow to the temple. Her blood pres- their jiggered Internet. Maybe they have
“Planting is not so bad,” Alyona said. sure was doing funny things again. How gone back to Kyiv. She is too embar-
“There’s hope in it, at least. It’s the weed- silly of her to think that Alyona was rassed to call Pavel, not that she’d ever
ing I can’t bear. It’s endless.” She pre- being kept in Ukraine against her will, tell him that it was his mother’s deci-
sented her pale arms to the camera so that she’d lived too long on the milk sion to leave Winnipeg, or admit what
Shura could see the map of red scratches of others’ admiration to know what she her last words to Alyona had been. “And
from thickets she’d tried to rip out. Her really desired. That, like her country, yet who could have imagined you, Al-
knees were rubbed raw, she said. yona Korolenko,” she’d said, “living out
Shura suggested a hot bath to soak your days as a farmer’s wife?” In her
them, and knew her mistake immediately. parting shot, she’d gone after the one
“What in? I can’t fill it with more thing she’d known would make Alyona
than five centimetres of warm water, or turn away: her vanity.
he says we’re wasting heating oil.” But For weeks, she continues to hope
suddenly Alyona looked embarrassed by that her friend might be the one to call
her complaint. “I’ve lived through worse.” her, for once. That Alyona should feel
“Well, of course you have. But you so out of place outside her country, or
don’t have to anymore, right? You have in it, strikes Shura as a failure of imag-
options this time.” all she needed was an opportunity to ination much worse than her own fail-
“Options?” decide her own fate. “Leave or stay,” ures of discretion. In her garden, on her
“Stocked shelves. Good health care. Shura said. “You’ll have to adapt either knees, Shura breaks up the soil, mixing
It’s nothing to laugh at, at our age. You way—it’s never going back to how it in the compost, removing the winter
need to be taking walks, not digging a was, you know. The country won’t let mulch. Afterward, she washes her hands
spade in the ground eight hours a day.” itself be occupied.” in the kitchen, where the birds can be
“Sounds like you and Pavel have Alyona almost, but not quite, laughed. heard tweeting from a dogwood in
been talking about more than just my “It already is,” she said. Did Shura think bloom over her deck. The season, as it
health.” it was free? That it wasn’t already occu- should be, has arrived at last. 
But Shura was tired of being coy. pied by an army of government consul-
“Look, he’s found you an apartment. tants? “By ones like Hunter Biden sit- NEWYORKER.COM
In your kind of situation, you’ll go right ting on every board?” Sana Krasikov on war and friendship.

THE CRITICS
POP MUSIC
JUST DANCE
Beyoncé’s exuberant night-club record.
BY CARRIE BATTAN
he stakes could not be higher tal that its long tail felt justified. Each work my nerves, that’s why I cannot
T for Beyoncé—an artist who

has challenged herself at every
turn—to do more, to be more, to say
iteration seemed to pump new fuel
into the project.
After such a personal and cultural
sleep at night,” Beyoncé sings. Later
in the song, she brings in her long-
time collaborator Big Freedia, the New
more. She has, throughout her solo tour de force—not to mention six years Orleans bounce icon. “Release your
career, rewritten the rules of album of sociopolitical turmoil and a pan- anger, release your mind, release your
releases, of stage performance, of music demic—Beyoncé, like so many, is now job, release the time,” Freedia bellows.
videos, of Black representation, of cul- looking to lighten the mood. She’s Beyonce’s proletarian swerve is almost
tural legacy, and of self-expression. chosen the dance f loor as her new convincing until she indirectly reminds
The final frontier of innovation, the spiritual home for her seventh solo listeners, on “Pure/Honey,” of her ma-
only thing left for her to achieve, is album. Where “Lemonade” showcased terial status. “It should cost a billion
to walk away from it all. And that’s a broad musical palette and a narrow, to look like this,” she purrs.
what she’s trying to do these days— intensely personal subject matter, “Re- At one point, the record deceives
sort of. “I just quit my job,” she an- naissance,” which came out at the end you into thinking that it’s about to
nounces on “Break My Soul,” a clubby of July, is the inverse: a work of sonic take a political turn with a track called
and joyous house track, on her new hyper-specificity with an egalitarian “America Has a Problem,” but it’s a
album, “Renaissance.” “I’m looking spirit. Stylistically, it’s a tribute to Black playful bait and switch: the song is a
for new motivation.” dance music and to queer cultural deliciously grimy ode to Southern
It’s been six years since Beyoncé re- touchstones, with inspirations drawn cocaine-dealer rap of the early nine-
leased “Lemonade,” an album (and from early-nineties Chicago house ties, complete with a sample of a song
film) on which she laid bare her mar- music and the drag-ball culture of called “Cocaine.” “Renaissance” is an
ital strife, and subsequent reconcilia- New York City. It’s a swaggering, album designed to be consumed like
tion, with Jay-Z. The album was a feat high-octane record: Beyoncé seems to a d.j. set, with few real song breaks. Its
of storytelling so ambitious that it be holding defibrillator paddles, at- meticulously crafted transitions reflect
made us reconsider what a modern tempting to shock some life into a the shifting moods and the physical-
pop star could accomplish. For years culture gone inert. ity of the dance f loor, not the con-
after its release, Beyoncé worked to In the past two decades, Beyoncé straints of a radio station or a playlist.
expand the cultural footprint of “Lem- has gradually found her voice as a per- The record ventures with an innate
onade,” first touring it in arenas around former. Now, on “Renaissance,” she’s intelligence between mild, soulful disco
the world. In 2018, at Coachella, she more interested in playing the role of grooves and discordant techno sam-
blew it out into a baroque theatrical a member of the world-weary masses: ples. Beyoncé, like the best d.j.s, un-
production honoring the legacy of on a song called “Pure/Honey,” she’s derstands that clubgoers’ needs shift
Black collegiate marching bands. She another frustrated employee, with a over the course of a night. At times,
followed that performance with a doc- “quarter tank of gas, world’s at war, dancers must be gently eased along; at
umentary about her preparation for low on cash.” “Break My Soul,” the al- others, they must be abruptly jolted
the show, along with an accompany- bum’s lead single, is a populist call to out of a lull.
ing live album called “Homecoming.” arms that interpolates the iconic synth
ABOVE: LALALIMOLA
That year, she and Jay-Z released “Ev- melody of Robin S.’s “Show Me Love,” eyoncé seldom explains herself,
erything Is Love,” a joint album that
was more a “Lemonade” victory lap
one of the most beloved—and widely
recycled—house tracks in history.
B but when she announced “Renais-
sance” she posted an unusually expos-
than a new musical chapter. And yet “They work me so damn hard / Work itory Instagram caption about its ori-
the “Lemonade” era was so monumen- by nine, then off past five / And they gins. She created the record, she said,
Beyoncé wrote that creating “Renaissance” helped her “feel free and adventurous in a time when little else was moving.”
ILLUSTRATION BY DEBORA CHEYENNE THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022 71
sullivan + associates
A R C H I T E C T S
“during a scary time for the world”— a new album inspired by house and
presumably a reference to the pan- techno music. (The album has yet to
demic lockdown. Making the album materialize.) Earlier this summer,
had allowed her to “feel free and ad- Drake released a surprise album called
martha’s vineyard
venturous in a time when little else “Honestly, Nevermind,” a work of
was moving . . . a place to be free of night-club escapism that, like “Renais-
Your Anniversary
perfectionism and overthinking.” And sance,” draws on the strident, exhila-
Immortalized yet there is nothing casual or ill con- rating sounds of Jersey club, and on
in Roman Numerals
sidered on “Renaissance,” which is a assorted strains of chilled-out global
3-Day Rush Available!
Crafted from Gold and Platinum
grand feat of research, sampling, re- lounge music. It was a noble experi-
JOHN-CHRISTIAN.COM source marshalling, and talent mining. ment from one of pop’s most innova-
OR .646.6466 Queer totems like drag balls have had tive talents, but the album often felt
plenty of mainstream moments over limp and vacant. Beyoncé’s new album,
the years, including Madonna’s single thanks in part to its sense of celebra-
“Vogue” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” tory queer flamboyance and libidinal
but Beyoncé is intent on proving that femininity, feels more alive. The only
she is more dutiful student than fickle song on “Renaissance” that sounds
voyeur. A whole lot of thinking went oddly bloodless is “Heated,” which was
into a record designed for feeling and written by Drake.
moving, and each song seems to war- There is something bracing about a
rant its own syllabus. Beyoncé is a me- pop figurehead like Beyoncé commit-
ticulous curator; the record creates ting to “Renaissance”’s level of aesthetic
bridges between unknowns and super- specificity. It’s a bold choice and a re-
M A I N E | C H I LT O N S . C O M star collaborators, between mega-hits jection of commercial interests in the
of the past and micro-genres of the streaming-music era, which has ush-
present, between mass culture and sub- ered in a protracted dissolution of genre
culture. (It also has built-in ethical barriers. In theory, the shift to stream-
controls: Beyoncé reportedly ran backing should have enabled innovation;
ground checks on the dozens of art- instead, it has helped squash distinct
ists involved in the record to insure points of view, and nudged many art-
A passion that none had been accused of sexual
©2020 KENDAL
ists in the maudlin direction of easy

for music. abuse.) “Move,” a spiky, bossy track,
incorporates spoken-word vocals from
listening. Beyoncé’s and Drake’s exper-
iments in genre might help shift things
Experience the stimulating sounds Grace Jones and from a breakout back toward specificity. It is refreshing
of Oberlin Conservatory—enjoy live Nigerian singer named Tems. “Pure/ to imagine a future in which Taylor
performances throughout the year. Honey,” a ballroom house track, braids Swift records a pure country album,
together samples sourced across de- Rihanna releases a dancehall album,
cades of drag-culture history. Jay-Z’s Adele makes a gospel record, and Ro-
1.800.548.9469 EQUAL HOUSING
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name is nestled in the lengthy writing salia returns to her flamenco roots.
kao.kendal.org/oberlin-connection credits of the song “Alien Superstar.” Over time, Beyoncé has become
“Renaissance” is not the first time America’s most complete performer,
ADVERTISEMENT that a star of Beyoncé’s stature has creating elaborate stage shows and or-
turned to dance music to escape the nate video collections to accompany
WHAT’S
claustrophobia of the pop marketplace. each album. Nothing about this new
Dance music, house in particular, has era of Beyoncé signals that she’s low
THE
deep roots in Black culture, but has on ambition: “Renaissance” is the first
been perennially neutered by white chapter in a trilogy of albums she’s
BIG
artists refashioning it into generic pool- planning to release this year. But the
party soundtracks. Exploring the Black album is missing two of her custom-
and Midwestern origins of club music ary weapons. There are no ballads.
IDEA? has become a rite of passage for some

Black artists at the vanguard of con-
temporary pop, who are perhaps look-
There are also no music videos for the
songs, which is perhaps another ges-
ture of deference to the dance floor.
Small space ing to reclaim a piece of musical his- Maybe Beyoncé means for this album
has big rewards. tory. For years, Kanye West mined the to produce more feelings than thoughts.
genre as a sample-hungry producer, Maybe “Renaissance” is intended to be
TO FIND OUT MORE, CONTACT using Chicago house tracks to breathe enjoyed not in front of a computer
JILLIAN GENET | 305.520.5159
jgenet@zmedia-inc.com life into his songs. In 2019, Frank Ocean screen but among human bodies, in a
announced that he was working on night club. 
when she appeared on the stage of the
BOOKS Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, nude save
for her feathers. The next year, at the
SHADOW AND ACT

Folies Bergère, audiences saw stretches
of brown skin intersected by pearls and
a skirt strung with tumescent bananas.
Josephine Baker’s war. As her star rose, Baker was known to
stroll the streets of Paris with her fellow-
BY LAUREN MICHELE JACKSON performer Chiquita, a cheetah collared
by a rope of diamonds. Without actu-
ally laying eyes on the woman, a visitor
to Paris would see her everywhere: in
photographs and on those Paul Colin
posters, as a doll in a shop window, in
the style of Parisiennes palming their
heads with Bakerfix pomade.
Who was she, really? Baker hom-
ages are usually unsubtle and beatify-
ing, embodied by contemporary Black
denizens of the arts who managed to
do what Baker couldn’t: carve out star-
dom on American soil. Diana Ross, Be-
yoncé, and Rihanna have played in her
silhouette; Lynn Whitfield received an
Emmy when she starred in HBO’s “The
Josephine Baker Story” (1991). In “Frida”
(2002), Baker has an affair with the title
character, a nod to the free sexuality of
each; she rumbas through “Midnight in
Paris” (2011). Cush Jumbo staged an ac-
claimed tribute show, “Josephine and I,”
in 2015, and Carra Patterson recently
played her, with strange showgirl mal-
aise, in an episode of the horror series
“Lovecraft Country.” Ruth Negga and
Janelle Monáe are now slated to take
their turn, in a pair of TV series about
her. Last November, Baker was inducted
into the French Panthéon, the first
woman of color to grace the hallowed
he Negro, historically, has always and the color of his hair had metamor- monument, among such figures as Vic-
T been in the espionage business. Sub-
alterns survive by being watchful, warily
phosed him into the Spanish-looking
fellow he then appeared; and as grace-
tor Hugo and Marie Curie. “Stereotypes,
Joséphine Baker takes them on,” Pres-
gathering intelligence about those for fulness of movement and gentlemanly ident Macron said. “But she shakes them
whom they labor. The flight from ser- manners had always been perfectly nat- up, digs at them, turns them into sub-
vitude, even from an identity, involves ural to him, he found no difficulty in lime burlesque. A spirit of the Enlight-
spycraft, too. Harriet Tubman was called playing the bold part he had adopted.” enment ridiculing colonialist prejudices
Moses for a liberator who slipped the In this respect, Josephine Baker, who to music by Sidney Bechet.”
confines of caste when his mother placed clowned her way into the heart of les Even if Baker’s career had been re-
him undercover among the reeds in that Années folles—France’s Roaring Twen- stricted to her role as an entertainer, it
PICTORIAL PRESS LTD / ALAMY
pitch-daubed basket. Brown skin could ties—and played the civilized primitive would have had the allure of a thriller.
be cloaked in soot and stereotype or in when she got there, might have been the The racecraft of the day was bound to
learned airs. George Harris, one of Har- smoothest operator of the twentieth cen- give rise to spycraft: all identities are im-
riet Beecher Stowe’s high-yellow fugi- tury. A dancer, a singer, and the most postures, and Baker had a chameleonic
tives, attained an inscrutable foreign- celebrated night-club entertainer of her gift for moving among them. But during
ness with the assistance of walnut bark: era, she was at once inescapable and elu- the war years she was also—as a new
“A slight change in the tint of the skin sive. She first captivated Parisians in 1925 book, “Agent Josephine” (PublicAffairs),
by the British journalist Damien Lewis,
A chameleonic gift for moving among identities aided Baker’s turn at espionage. chronicles with much fresh detail—a spy
in the most literal sense. There was, after he writes. “You couldn’t hold her to strict upside down and in a full split. André
all, little that La Bakaire didn’t under- account as you could a tailor who mea- Levinson, perhaps the foremost ballet
stand about resistance. sured slipcovers.” critic of the day, wrote:
She had her reasons. “A black child-
his is not a book telling Josephine hood is always a little sad,” Baker told It was as though the jazz, catching on the
“T Baker’s life story,” Lewis cautions. Sauvage. Hers began on June 3, 1906, in
wing the vibrations of this body, was interpret
ing word by word its fantastic monologue. . . .
His saga, though it stretches across five St. Louis, when a dance-hall girl of local The gyrations of this cynical yet merry mounte
hundred pages, is mainly concerned renown, Carrie McDonald, delivered a bank, the goodnatured grin on her large mouth,
with Baker’s service as a secret agent, baby whom she named Freda Josephine. suddenly give way to visions from which good
and mainly confined to the years shad- The baby was plump, and came to be humor is entirely absent. In the short pas de
deux of the savages, which came as the finale
owed by the Second World War. There’s called Tumpy (for Humpty Dumpty), of the Revue Nègre, there was a wild splendor
another sense, too, in which it isn’t her a moniker that persisted well after pov- and magnificent animality.
life story: the account is largely told by erty had thinned her into a ragamuffin.
an assemblage of third parties. Lewis’s The identity of her father remains dis- He was sure he had glimpsed “the black
bibliography and notes make clear how puted, and became an opportunity for Venus that haunted Baudelaire.”
deeply he has drawn on interviews with Baker to improvise. Lewis notes, “She At a certain point, her efflorescence
veterans, memoirs by agents, the pri- had variously claimed that her father seems to depart from linear narrative,
vate family archives of a British spy- was a famous black lawyer, a Jewish tai- demanding a form suited to the artistic
master, and the wartime files of intel- lor, a Spanish dancer, or a white Ger- flights of the era: collage. The appeal of
ligence bureaus, some of which were man then resident in America.” The La Joséphine—in Europe, at least; Amer-
not made available to the public until shifting myth was mirrored in the eth- ica never ran quite as hot for her—ex-
2020. But Baker maintained a code of nic promiscuity of her on-screen roles: hausted hyperbole. “The most sensa-
silence about the seven years she spent the tropical daughter of a colonial offi- tional woman anyone ever saw,” Ernest
fighting the Nazis and, Lewis writes, cial, possibly Spanish, in “La Sirène des Hemingway pronounced. “Beyond time
“went to her grave in 1975 taking many Tropiques” (1927), a Tunisian Eliza Doo- in the sense that emotion is beyond arith-
of those secrets with her.” little, in “Princesse Tam-Tam” (1935). metic” was E. E. Cummings’s estima-
She could be sly about other facts, too. Little Tumpy wanted to dance, but tion. Le Corbusier, a lover of hers, dressed
Like many colored women intent on ar- opportunities were scarce. By 1921, Baker himself in Baker drag, blackening his
ranging their destiny, Baker subjected her had fled her St. Louis life and her sec- skin and wearing a feathered waistband.
origin story to copious revisions. “I don’t ond husband—she was all of fifteen George Balanchine gave her dance les-
lie,” she said. “I improve on life.” Her au- when she married the man, William sons; Alexander Calder sculpted her out
tobiographies can generously be called Howard Baker—and was performing of wire. Adolf Loos, after a chance meet-
loose collaborations: “Les Mémoires de as a comic chorine among the Dixie ing, started sketching an architectural
Joséphine Baker,” published in 1927, when Steppers, a travelling vaudeville troupe. wonder to be called Baker House, with
she was twenty-one, and updated in later Aiming higher, she booked a one-way viewing windows cut into an indoor
years, was in drafts before she and her passage to New York, where she ended swimming pool. But Baker’s power wasn’t
co-author, Marcel Sauvage, shared a lan- up working as a backstage dresser for a matter of being hoisted upon the shoul-
guage. And once they did? “It would then the all-Black revue “Shuff le Along.” ders of great men; she regarded most of
be thoroughly funny—and at times, very When a member of the touring cast fell them with equable indifference. In a 1933
difficult,” Sauvage wrote in the book’s ill—it was just a matter of time—Baker interview, she f lubbed the name of a
preface. “Miss Baker does not like to re- stepped in with fizzing style. After the notable Spanish painter: “You know,
member.” Her third autobiography, “Jo- show’s successful run, she landed a role Pinazaro, or what is his name, the one
sephine,” was published in 1977, two years in the 1924 Broadway musical “The everyone talks about?” As Margo Jeffer-
after her death, produced from folders of Chocolate Dandies,” playing a black- son has observed of Baker, “She was her
notes, press clippings, documents, and face version of Topsy. She was nineteen own devoted muse.”
the rough draft of a memoir that her last when she was recruited by a society By the thirties, Baker had refined
husband, Jo Bouillon, pulled together woman and impresario named Caro- her visual signature. The show “Paris
with the assistance of a co-author. The line Dudley Reagan for a new produc- Qui Remue,” at the illustrious Casino
resulting Baker is another assemblage, an tion across the Atlantic. “La Revue de Paris, made this plain. The feathers
“I” laid alongside the testimony of oth- Nègre” opened at the Champs on Oc- were gone. Writing for this magazine,
ers who were enlisted, as Bouillon writes, tober 2nd that year. That evening, a ve- in 1930, Janet Flanner reported, “Her
“whenever there was information lack- dette was born. caramel-colored body which overnight
ing.” More candid was the biography “Jo- You surely had to be there. Review- became a legend in Europe is still mag-
sephine: The Hungry Heart,” published ers tripped over gerunds in their efforts nificent, but it has become thinned,
in 1993 and written by her adopted son to commit the wriggling thing to print. trained, almost civilized.” A Paris critic
Jean-Claude Baker with the journalist In the jungle dreamscape “Danse Sau- announced, with greater enthusiasm,
Chris Chase; the effort to sort through vage,” Baker, wearing little more than “She left us a négresse, droll and prim-
his mother’s various fictions is notated a feathered loincloth, entered on the itive; she comes back a great artist.”
in its pages. “Josephine was a fabulist,” shoulders of her male dance partner, Not everyone was entertained. Aus-
trian headlines denounced the “Black
Devil” touring the country’s cities; at
the Theater des Westens, in Berlin, BRIEFLY NOTED
Baker was hounded out of town three
weeks into a scheduled six-month en- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
gagement. In the late nineteen-thirties, (Knopf ). Having met as children, playing Super Mario Bros.
her face appeared on a leaflet issued by in a hospital, Sam and Sadie, whose relationship forms the
the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph core of this novel, become reacquainted in college. There they
Goebbels, as a potent representative of develop a video game, featuring a child who “ages and takes
degenerate, untermenschlich art. Shortly the damage inflicted by the narrative and time itself,” which
thereafter, Benito Mussolini banned makes them famous and rich. Their friendship lasts for al-
Baker from Italy. Such enmity was in- most twenty years but frays amid fights and a shocking trag-
tense, and intensely reciprocated. edy. Woven throughout are meditations on originality, ap-
propriation, the similarities between video games and other
ow could a named target of the forms of art, the liberating possibilities of inhabiting a vir-
H Fascists serve as a secret agent? Her
very celebrity would provide camouflage,
tual world, and the ways in which platonic love can be deeper
and more rewarding—especially in the context of a creative
or so the theatre manager Daniel Ma- partnership—than romance.
rouani argued when he brought up her
name with the French counter-intelli- Hurricane Girl, by Marcy Dermansky (Knopf ). Allison, the
gence agency, the Deuxième Bureau. For protagonist of this subversively wry, post-Weinstein thriller,
certain Bureau officers, the prospect called is a screenwriter specializing in horror who leaves an abusive
to mind the case of Mata Hari, the Dutch Hollywood boyfriend for the North Carolina coast. When
dancer who was recruited by the French a hurricane destroys her home, she appears on the TV news;
during the First World War and then an initially helpful cameraman later becomes violent after
executed by them when she was revealed she rejects his advances. The narrative teases suspense from
to have been a double agent for the Ger- the trauma (and possible brain damage) caused by the at-
mans. Fame coupled with inexperience tack, as Allison becomes increasingly erratic and lashes out
could prove costly. at almost everyone around her. Her resentment of power im-
Still, the Deuxième Bureau was in balances—doctor-patient, male-female, older-younger sib-
dire straits: cash-strapped, understaffed, lings—vacillates between perspicacity and paranoia.
and, worse, ignored by political officials.
“It was far easier to gather intelligence Musical Revolutions, by Stuart Isacoff (Knopf ). Attempting to
than it was to get those in power to act chart the most important turning points in Western classi-
upon it,” Lewis writes. Counter-espio- cal and jazz music, this history traverses immense territory,
nage would require the deployment of drawing unexpected connections between artists—for in-
amateur, loyal, and—vitally—unpaid stance, the harmonic links between Debussy and Charlie
sources, who were designated Honor- Parker. The spirit of revolution reverberates most potently
ary Correspondents. in an almost novelistic account of the eleventh-century monk
If Baker has a co-star in Lewis’s book, Guido D’Arezzo’s crusade to standardize music notation.
it’s Captain Jacques Abtey, an agent at Isacoff’s descriptions frequently help us see anew things we
the Deuxième Bureau. He was thirty might take for granted: in polyphony, tones are “coiled
when, in September of 1939, he went to around” a cantus firmus “like climbing vines”; the lines of
meet La Joséphine. His mission was to the musical staff that Guido invents are “like rungs of an
determine whether she was willing and imaginary ladder.”
able to be entrusted with undercover
service. Arriving at her mansion in the Yield, by Anne Truitt (Yale). The sculptor, who died in 2004,
posh Paris suburb of Le Vésinet, he found at the age of eighty-three, began keeping a journal in 1974,
her wearing not the expected finery but in an effort to understand herself. This latest volume, the
a felt hat and faded trousers that were fourth to be published, gathers entries from 2001 to 2002.
suited to her current task—scrounging Its subjects include family life (she had three children) and
for snails in the garden to feed to her the ruthlessness and “dumb tenacity” with which she de-
ducks. Soon enough, though, champagne fended her artistic career from the demands of motherhood
was served, and Baker made a toast: “To and marriage; her friendships; her ongoing projects; anec-
France.” Abtey was taken by her fierce dotes from the lives of other artists; and her favorite books
French nationalism and, Lewis writes, and works of art. The last entry finds Truitt contemplating
by “her almost childlike quality, at turns Aristotle and planning to order armatures for a new sculp-
playful and pensive, and her schoolgirl- ture, “content because I was secure, curious because being
ish habit of wrinkling her forehead when alive was new.”
lost in thought.” He was also “struck by Amid mobilizations for de Gaulle’s Free cialty. In the 1934 film “Zouzou,” Baker,
the dichotomy of this superstar: her split French forces, Baker and Abtey found in the title role, discovers her immense,
life.”The agent did not seem to consider time to take lazy canoe trips along the dancing shadow against the back wall of
an alternative geometry, in which she river. He also taught her how to use a a stage. She is entranced, and then so are
wore many more than two faces. pistol, and equipped her with a cyanide we, as the camera strays from the human
After he anointed her “one of us,” pill in the event of capture. in favor of a thrown silhouette that re-
she was asked to exploit her Italian and Although Milandes was situated in mains unmistakably Baker’s. What we’re
Japanese contacts for any useful infor- the “free zone” of Vichy, the terms of watching “is neither pure illusion nor au-
mation they might let slip. Four years armistice required that all French secu- thentic embodiment,” the scholar Anne
earlier, Baker had expressed support for rity forces report to the newly throttled Anlin Cheng writes in a book-length
Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, believing government. Officially, there was no study of Baker’s art. Cheng nicely de-
that it would emancipate the country’s longer a Deuxième Bureau; unofficially, scribes Baker’s idiosyncratic method—
enslaved people. That otherwise unfor- its agents had simply gone to ground, enlisting shadows, gold lamé, animal
tunate show of faith gained her the de- including the crew at Milandes. One hides, and her own golden skin—as “dis-
votion of a loose-lipped attaché at the fall day, as Baker met with two former appearance into appearance.”
Italian Embassy. “She’d realised the best Bureau agents, a group of Nazi officials Now, in November of 1940, Baker and
way to pump him for information was arrived at the château. Baker, after shoo- Abtey made their way by train through
to provoke and contradict him, in re- ing her résistantes into hiding, struck Franco’s Spain, with Baker wrapped in furs
sponse to which he had fallen into the her pose as the lady of the house, hotly and Abtey, as Lewis writes, “lurking in her
habit of whispering reassurances into impatient with the German intrusion, shadow.” The cover story was that Baker
her ear,” Lewis writes. Whatever she especially once a search warrant ap- was touring again, assisted by “Jacques
learned, she passed along to Abtey. peared. In Lewis’s account, drawn from Hébert,” her nondescript tour manager.
It was the start of a partnership, pro- the writings of a Resistance veteran Alongside costumes and makeup, her
fessional and romantic. Both Baker and named Gilbert Renault (nom de guerre: trunks held Paillole’s dossier, written in
Abtey were married; both were at least Colonel Rémy), her sheer effrontery as- invisible ink among the notes on Baker’s
nominally separated. Abtey had sent his suaged suspicion. She acted as if she sheet music. As Baker disembarked, no-
wife and child to the French country- had nothing to hide. body concerned himself with her luggage
side as the war heated up. Baker’s situ- Baker and Abtey could not lie in wait or with the man attending to it. Instead,
ation was more honorable. In 1937, as forever, though, and a former com- Lewis recounts, French, Spanish, and
the bride of the French industrialist Jean mander at the Bureau, Paul Paillole, had German officials “crowded around Jose-
Lion, she cast off her U.S. citizenship a job for them. He had already set up a phine, desperate to see, to feel, to touch;
and renounced her flashy life style. “I shadow network in the city of Marseille, to bask in the radiance of that famous
have finished with the exotic,” she told under the cover of an agricultural ser- smile.” In Lisbon, as Baker drew atten-
the press. She was prepared to be “just vice. But he urgently needed to reëstab- tion—“I come to dance, to sing,” she told
plain Madame Lion.” But domesticity lish lines of communication with Great reporters—Abtey saw to it that the files
on patriarchal terms didn’t suit her. After Britain. Otherwise, whatever intelli- passed from the British Embassy there
learning that Lion was catting around, gence he gathered couldn’t be put to into the hands of Wilfred Dunderdale,
and spending her money, she filed for a spymaster in London’s Secret Intelli-
divorce in 1939. gence Service. “Her stardom was her
As Hitler’s troops advanced, Baker cloak,” Lewis writes.
maintained her life in and around Paris In the summer of 1941, Baker and
for as long as she could, making use of Abtey were in Morocco, having gained,
her piloting skills—flying lessons had Lewis says, another vital link to Britain,
been a gift from Lion—to transport aid this time through a group of wily Amer-
to refugees in the Low Countries, and ican diplomats. Then Baker fell ill. She
performing for troops along the Ma- was diagnosed with peritonitis and was
ginot Line. Early in June of 1940, Baker, essentially bedridden for more than a year.
prompted by Abtey, left her beloved use, and Britain would be left ignorant According to Lewis, her sickbed, in Casa-
city, days before German troops stalked of the enemy’s movements on the Con- blanca’s Comte Clinic, became a rendez-
its avenues. Her car carried petrol-filled tinent and in North Africa. He com- vous point, as contacts arrived as “visitors”
champagne bottles, along with an el- piled a dossier, which included details to give their best to an ailing performer.
derly Belgian Jewish couple, fugitives about Nazi airbases across France, known “Josephine Baker’s celebrity was global,
she had taken in. Abwehr agents roaming Britain and which meant that practically anyone
Her destination, the Château des Mi- Ireland, and Axis plans for taking Gi- might want to pay a visit,” Lewis tells us.
landes, overlooking the Dordogne, was braltar. The information was to be trans- It made for an ideal intelligence hub.
a place she had leased three years earlier ported by someone who could move The toll her illness had taken was
as a country idyll. The fifteenth-century freely, and who knew how to use her apparent, though. Baker grew “bone
castle now became a fortress once again, incandescence to cast shadows. thin,” her nurse recalled, and had fits of
harboring a ragtag Resistance group. Shadows had long been a Baker spe- weeping when she wasn’t putting on a
show for visitors. One day, Maurice Che-
valier, a quondam co-star of hers who
happily performed in Occupied Paris,
showed up at the Comte Clinic but was
turned away. Afterward, Lewis recounts,
he spun the story of Baker “dying in a
small room of a Casablanca hospital.”
As word spread, Baker received memo-
rial tributes, including from her friend
Langston Hughes. On December 6,
1942, a month after the Allied invasion
of North Africa, the Times ran the head-
line “JOSEPHINE BAKER IS SAFE.”
After her recovery, Baker resumed
performing for Allied troops, in a
fund-raising and morale-boosting tour
alongside the likes of Laurence Olivier “They’re talking about birdhouses again.
and Vivien Leigh. She and Abtey also Time to send them birdhouse ads.”
assembled a final docket of intelligence
for Free France. As she performed in
Alexandria and Cairo and Damascus
• •
and Beirut, hobnobbing with the beau
monde, the energy of the region was hattan’s Stork Club was one such estab- uniform of the Free French Air Force.
clear. Europeans were not the only ones lishment, and, on a fateful night in 1951, “I am not a young woman now,
seeking freedom. Baker made a show of walking out of friends,” she told the quarter-million
the place. (So did Grace Kelly, in soli- people gathered on the Mall. “My life
aker and Abtey’s romance scarcely darity.) The newspaper columnist Wal- is behind me.” She pledged to use her
B outlasted the war. She later wrote
that he was someone she could have
ter Winchell, who was present at the
club, did nothing, and Baker reproached
ebbing flame to light a fire in them. But
although her performance schedule had
settled down with. But, Lewis tells us, him for condoning discrimination. Win- slowed to a crawl, and her finances had
Abtey confided to a friend that “he could chell, a staunch supporter of Senator Jo- grown tight, she embarked on the cre-
not countenance being ‘Monsieur Baker’; seph McCarthy, responded in print, ac- ation of a new race, adopting a dozen
in other words, living in her shadow.” cusing Baker of harboring “Communist children from various continents and
In 1947, Baker bought the Château des sympathies.” Her visa was revoked, re- countries. She called them the Rainbow
Milandes outright and married the turning her to France. The F.B.I., once Tribe, summoning them either to an-
French composer Jo Bouillon. Still, she the recipient of intelligence facilitated other dreamscape or to another form of
and Abtey continued to support each by Baker’s wartime activity for the Re- resistance. In a Christmas card, she wrote
other throughout the next decades, tes- sistance, opened a dossier on her. of “twelve tiny tots who were blown
tifying to the heroism of each other’s Baker sometimes described herself together by a soft wind as a symbol of
exploits, with Abtey even returning to as a fugitive from injustice: “I ran away universal brotherhood.” (Unsurprisingly,
reside at Milandes. Did his stories about from home. I ran away from St. Louis. Jean-Claude Baker describes a distinctly
those exploits improve on life? It’s im- And then I ran away from the United chaotic mode of child-rearing.) In 1975,
possible not to wonder: deception, ma- States of America, because of that ter- she managed to perform at a Paris trib-
nipulation, and pretense were, in vari- ror of discrimination, that horrible beast ute revue, celebrating a half century in
ous ways, part of his and her professional which paralyzes one’s very soul and entertainment. When she died, a few
repertoire. But French officials made body.” Yet she thrived on the tension days later, of a cerebral hemorrhage, she
their own assessment. In 1957, Baker was between shadow and act. As a cabaret became the only woman from Amer-
awarded the Légion d’Honneur for mil- performer, she played to the colonial ica whose funeral saw full French mil-
itary service. imagination even as she declared her itary honors.
For her, there were battles still to be own independence. Both artist and fe- What most beguiles us today is the
waged. She had promised the Black tish, she was a chorine who evaded sense that a proud revolutionary lurked
American G.I.s. she encountered on Jim Crow’s reach for the embrace of la beneath the winsome savage, the snowy
the African front that a war on segrega- négrophilie—then placed that fetishized smile. Spycraft wasn’t so much what
tion would follow the war on Fascism. body in the service of liberation. She Baker did as who she was. The most
Throughout the nineteen-fifties and six- was fifty-seven when she spoke at the public of figures in her heyday, she
ties, Baker reasserted her racial egalitar- 1963 March on Washington, one of two pulled off the trick of vanishing into
ianism, refusing to perform in segregated women (the other was Daisy Bates) who visibility, of disappearing into the lime-
clubs, and shaming establishments that were permitted a speech that day. She light. She still does. Now as then, how-
declined to serve Black patrons. Man- came dressed in the stately, decorated ever, the silhouette remains. 
For more than a decade, Kor has been
ON TELEVISION lying to his bar-trivia team about hav-
ing a master’s degree, and he hopes to
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

come clean to one of his teammates,
Tricia. To that end, Fielder builds a me-
ticulous replica of the Alligator Lounge,
“The Rehearsal,” on HBO. the Brooklyn bar that holds the trivia
night, to allow Kor and an actress play-
BY NAOMI FRY ing Tricia to rehearse the minutiae that
will lead to his moment of unburden-
ing. Fielder helps run the simulation,
aided by a flowchart: if Tricia arrives in
a bad mood, then Kor will make a joke
about someone “plucking” her nerves
before moving on to conversation topics
such as “twins” and “Presidents.” Fielder,
who wears a laptop strapped to his chest,
hovers over the proceedings like a bi-
zarro middle-management emissary.
This is just the beginning of the per-
formative refractions of reality that
Fielder sets in motion. He arranges a
way for the Tricia impersonator to meet
the real Tricia, in an intricate scheme
that involves the actress posing as a bird-
watcher, so that she can mimic Tricia
more accurately. Once it becomes clear,
after several rehearsals, that Kor won’t
be able to go through with the confes-
sion unless he is having a “good trivia
night,” Fielder himself poses as a blogger
and meets with the trivia night’s host,
so that he can get the answers to the
questions in advance and surreptitiously
teach them to Kor, who is willing to cut
corners when it comes to emotional au-
thenticity in his social life but would
never dream of cheating at a quiz game.
Fielder, a thirty-nine-year-old co-
median from Canada, is a savant of
he opening gambit of “The Re- Kor, using a full-scale model of the man’s cringe. His previous project, “Nathan
T hearsal,” on HBO, is deceptively
simple. “I’ve been told that my person-
apartment—the details of which were
underhandedly obtained by actors pos-
for You,” which ran on Comedy Cen-
tral from 2013 to 2017, deconstructed
ality can make people uncomfortable,” ing as technicians sent to investigate a the “Kitchen Nightmares”-style expert-
the show’s creator and host, Nathan fake gas leak. “Shoes off? . . . Shirt off?” advice reality-show genre. Fielder acted
Fielder, explains, in a voice-over, as he we see Fielder practice with an actor as a consultant for struggling small busi-
enters the apartment of a middle-aged playing Kor, who bursts into laughter. nesses, but his shtick was that he pro-
man named Kor. “Shoes off? . . . Shirt “The Rehearsal,” like any reality posed absurd ideas, which ranged from
off?” Fielder cracks to Kor, adding, in show, is dependent on its participants’ getting a frozen-yogurt shop to develop
his narration, that, when meeting some- willingness to do almost anything in a poop flavor to having a car mechanic
one for the first time, “every joke is a front of a camera. Kor, whom the pro- wear a lie detector while giving price es-
gamble.” Luckily, there’s a solution to duction team found on Craigslist, doesn’t timates. Sometimes the bad ideas were
this uncertainty: Fielder has found that seem disturbed by the revelation that wildly successful, and this was part of
rehearsing uncomfortable life events be- Fielder broke into his apartment, and, the show’s meta-joke; “Nathan for You”
fore they take place can produce a “happy when he is given the opportunity to re- was a Canadian’s sendup of the Ameri-
outcome.” We then watch him, in a hearse his own life event, he replies, can Dream. But most of the humor came
flashback, prepare for his meeting with “That would be extremely appealing.” from watching Fielder persuade the busi-
ness owners to compromise themselves.
The Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder is a savant of cringe. “So, it’s a trade-off between living lon-
78 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY ZACK ROSEBRUGH
ger, or dying and getting to be Santa,” the grandfather of the actor who is play- of humiliation, specifically vis-à-vis the
a poker-faced Fielder tells a gentle mall ing Patrick’s brother. (Even in his most weirder, more colorful areas of contem-
Claus he is advising, whose doctor has convoluted setups, Fielder doesn’t for- porary American culture.
encouraged him to lose weight. In an- get the simple pleasures of toilet humor; Often, these works try to obfuscate
other hard-to-watch segment, Fielder it’s as if he’s reciting a math theorem the mechanisms of power that drive
convinces a travel agent to start offering and capping it with a fart noise.) Later, them. But I was struck by Fielder’s com-
funeral services to her elderly clientele, Fielder travels to Los Angeles, where mitment to exposing the web he weaves
as a “last-ditch effort to squeeze out as he establishes an ad-hoc acting school for “The Rehearsal”’s participants. “Na-
much as you can from your customers designed around “the Fielder Method,” than . . . likes to manipulate people,” An-
before they’re gone for good.” in order to train thespians to partici- gela, whose hatred for Fielder becomes
“The Rehearsal” relies on the same pate in rehearsals. The whole thing is more apparent with each episode, says.
dynamics that made “Nathan for You” very “Dogville” on steroids. “He lies a lot.” Early on, Fielder encour-
work; both shows foreground Fielder Watching “The Rehearsal,” I mar- ages Angela, a Christian with a deep
as an apparently vulnerable, receding velled at Fielder’s ability to beat a prem- belief in conspiracy theories, to find a
weirdo—his shoulders a touch hunched, ise into the ground harder and more in- co-parent for her rehearsal (and, hope-
his graying hair molded into a tech ventively than I’d ever seen before. There fully, for real life). She hits it off with a
worker’s slablike coif—who also hap- is something intensely comical, and de- like-minded man named Robbin. (He
pens to be uniquely skilled at manipu- mented, about the disproportionate ef- is hyper-attuned to so-called angel num-
lating the people around him. But if fort at play here, the enormous labor bers; she thinks that the Devil runs Goo-
“Nathan for You” made consistent use devoted to minor, otherwise much more gle.) He temporarily moves in with
of the disruptive “is he fucking with us easily solvable problems. (HBO, too, her, but he is driven away by Fielder’s
or is he for real?” tactics of the late anti- deserves props for entrusting Fielder enhanced-interrogation-style tactics. At
comedian Andy Kaufman, “The Re- with a seemingly unlimited budget for night, while viewing real-time surveil-
hearsal”—brilliant, audacious, occasion- such an unconventional project.) But lance footage, Fielder demands more
ally disturbing—takes things a step there is also the potentially ugly issue noise from the robot baby—“Keep him
further, by borrowing from the byzan- of control. Writing for this magazine’s crying! Don’t let up!”—leaving Robbin
tine narrative configurations of another Web site, my colleague Richard Brody sleepless and frustrated. Once he de-
Kaufman: the film director Charlie. noted that Fielder’s demeanor struck parts, Fielder decides to step into the
Much like “Being John Malkovich,”“Ad- him as “arrogant, cruel, and, above all, role of co-parent and to complete the
aptation,” and “Synecdoche, New York,” indifferent.” Certainly, Fielder’s style of rehearsal with Angela. How much of
in which the protagonists engage with comedy includes, in its grasp, other peo- this was planned is unclear, but a sub-
reality by confronting a nutty metafic- ple—people who definitionally cannot sequent scene in which Fielder calls the
tional version of it, “The Rehearsal” be in on the joke. In one episode of “Na- parents of the child actors to inform
probes the divide between art and life, than for You,” Fielder advises a young them of his new, fatherly involvement
and the potential of the former to trans- Latina woman who runs a housekeep- is another object lesson in the way that
form the latter. What happens, the show ing service to offer “the fastest clean in power can seep into even the most pro-
asks, when people who struggle to find the country,” by sending dozens of her fessedly intimate of nooks. A flowchart
connection and meaning attempt to female employees to simultaneously script guides Fielder through the calls:
achieve it by layering their lives with the work on one man’s apartment. “Are you “If you’re feeling even the slightest bit
scrim of performance? interested in any of them?” Fielder jokes uncomfortable and would like to opt
to the man after the women are done. out, that is no problem. There are many
he second episode of the series (The service’s owner recently told Vul- families eager to take your spot and re-
T takes Fielder to Oregon, where a
single, childless fortysomething named
ture that she wouldn’t have participated
had she known the show was a comedy.)
ceive the generous participation fee.”
Can intimacy also emerge from the
Angela signs up to rehearse the raising We probably wouldn’t have “The Re- wreckage of power, beyond doll babies
of a son from infancy to age eighteen. hearsal” without eighties and nineties and playacting, beyond the reliance on
For the simulation, which spans multi- candid-camera programs, or without self-conscious artifice? The thing about
ple episodes, the production moves An- Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” movies. emotions, Fielder realizes, is that “they’re
gela into a house outfitted with surveil- (Fielder directed a couple of episodes not easy to engineer.” How does one
lance cameras, where the process of child of Baron Cohen’s TV show “Who Is not only act authentically but feel au-
rearing is accelerated by a rotating cast America?”) The series also calls to mind thentically? “The Rehearsal” is a self-por-
of young actors and, at night, a robot the docu-naïf-style œuvre of Louis trait of a man trying to reach past his
baby. Meanwhile, other strands are spun Theroux or Nick Broomfield, not to relentless solipsism. “Every now and
out: Fielder helps a man named Patrick mention reality shows like “Big Brother” then, there are these glimmers,” Fielder
rehearse a confrontation with his brother and recent nonfiction offerings like Net- says over footage of him playing with
over their late grandfather’s estate, an flix’s “Tiger King.” All these works are, one of the many child actors. “These
exercise that somehow comes to involve at their very worst, aloofly voyeuristic, moments where you forget and you just
Patrick wiping the butt of an old man implicating not just their creators but feel like a family. That’s when you know
playing—get ready for a mouthful— also their viewers in a kind of theatre the rehearsal is working.” 
tains of gore, are we not basically watch-
THE CURRENT CINEMA ing a juiced-up version of “Murder on
the Orient Express”? At least Agatha
MIDSUMMER MURDERS
Christie gave us a narrative nut to crack;
here, bamboozling is in short supply.
The story turns on a briefcase full of
“Bullet Train” and “Bodies Bodies Bodies.” ransom money, which Ladybug is bid-
den to retrieve, and for which his fel-
BY ANTHONY LANE low-professionals will fight him to the
death. The fighting is relentless, and,
sked why he chose to wear a skirt ers, the Hornet (Zazie Beetz) and the in the hands of the resourceful Lady-
A to the Los Angeles première of his
latest film, “Bullet Train,” Brad Pitt re-
Prince ( Joey King), a vision of youth-
ful innocence in pink, who is not to be
bug, the briefcase itself becomes both
weapon and shield.
plied, “We’re all going to die, so let’s trusted for an instant. We have a snake Anyone who has, presumably under
mess it up.” An excellent point. With (a proper snake, not an insidious human), duress, sat through the collected works
geopolitical and ecological crises set to with a bite that makes your eyes bleed. of Guy Ritchie, or Matthew Vaughn’s
deepen, I am already looking forward In the final act, we have the White Death “Kick-Ass” (2010) and “Kingsman” flicks,
to whatever Chanel creation Pitt will (Michael Shannon), whom Ladybug will recognize the unlovely breed to
sport at the Oscars of 2023. His comic addresses as Mr. Death. And we have which “Bullet Train” belongs. Cocky,
conceited, and apostolically eager to
touch the hem of Tarantino, such mov-
ies delight in pummelling our senses
while drawing us in with a conspirato-
rial wink. Take Tangerine and Lemon,
to whom a great deal of Leitch’s film is
devoted. Because they can’t agree on
whether it was sixteen or seventeen vic-
tims whom they offed on a previous job,
a flashback shows them in mid-slaughter,
accompanied by Engelbert Humper-
dinck on the soundtrack singing “I’m
Forever Blowing Bubbles.” (A lurid title
even f lashes up, confirming that it’s
Humperdinck. Thanks for that.) Sim-
ilarly, Lemon is obsessed with Thomas
the Tank Engine, carrying around a
page of children’s stickers; the tonal mis-
match, amusing for the first ten sec-
In David Leitch’s film, Brad Pitt stars as an assassin on assignment in Japan. onds, is then repeated ad infinitum.
Compare, if you can bear to, another
nihilism is certainly of a piece with “Bul- the Wolf, played by Benito Antonio pairing: Charters and Caldicott, the
let Train,” which—viewed in tandem Martínez Ocasio, familiar to rap fans English chums inserted by Hitchcock
with another new release, “Bodies Bod- as Bad Bunny. It seems that Mr. Bunny into the train-bound drollery of “The
ies Bodies”—suggests a thoughtful tac- is using “Bullet Train” to branch out Lady Vanishes,” in 1938. (Two years later,
tic on the part of the movie industry. into acting. He may want to branch they were summoned back, by popular
As the pandemic very gradually ebbs, back in. demand, for Carol Reed’s “Night Train
and as the next doom waits in line, we The film is directed by David Leitch, to Munich.”) A chorus of two fools,
are not only being treated to multiple and it comes with a central kick: all the like Tangerine and Lemon, they were
spasms of extreme violence but invited homicidal specialists are on a train, run- as mad about cricket as Lemon is about
to laugh along with them. Talk about ning from Tokyo to Kyoto. Though su- Thomas the Tank Engine. How lightly
messed up. perfast, as befits the slam-bang plot, that madness was worn, though, and
Pitt’s role in “Bullet Train” is that of the train is also illogically slow, stretch- with what quick grace they saw the
Ladybug, who is an assassin by trade— ing an itinerary of two or three hours moral error of their ways; remember
an honorable calling, which happens to into an all-night ride. (To be fair, a reg- the superb scene in which the peace-
be shared by most of the other charac- ular tension does arise at the station able Charters was shot in the hand,
ters. We have Tangerine (Aaron Tay- stops, when the doors open for one barely f linched, and grasped at once
lor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree minute exactly.) Isn’t there something who the real enemy was and why bat-
Henry), commonly referred to as the old-school about this labored muster- tle had to be joined. Dramatically speak-
Twins. We have a couple of female killing of maleficents? For all the foun- ing, Hitch achieved more, with that one
80 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON BAILLY
small spillage of blood, than Leitch can where Bee will be introduced to a gang music of brutal aggression, she is pinch-
deliver in two hours of carnage. In truth, of Sophie’s friends. Lucky Bee. ing a trick that Michael Haneke pulled
the only soul to emerge with any credit The houseparty comprises Emma in the opening of “Funny Games” (1997)
from “Bullet Train” is Brad Pitt, who (Chase Sui Wonders), Jordan (Myha’la and again in the 2007 remake. And the
drifts through the tumult in a haze of Herrold), Alice (Rachel Sennott), Greg plot of the new movie? Brace yourself
unbothered charm. To say that the whole (Lee Pace), and David (Pete Davidson). for a ludicrous hurricane, which blows
thing concludes with a total train wreck We soon realize that the place belongs in after Sophie and Bee arrive, batten-
is both accurate and misleading. The to David’s folks, who are away. In what ing down the dramatis personae for the
wreckage was there all along. dire lapse of sanity, you want to ask, did next hour or more, and keeping them
they leave it in his care? Apart from Jor- a) wet, b) unable to call for help, and
f your thirst for mayhem has not been dan, the daughter of mere college pro- c) in harm’s way. All of the above would
I slaked by “Bullet Train,” more is on
tap in “Bodies Bodies Bodies.”The film
fessors, everyone here is couched in priv-
ilege and wealth. And, apart from Greg,
have brought a slow smile to the long
face of Boris Karloff, the star of “The
is written by Sarah DeLappe, from a who is older and semi-detached, every- Old Dark House” (1932), which came
story by Kristen Roupenian, and di- one hails from Gen Z, and has the tics— with a handy tempest of its own.
rected by Halina Reijn. The first sounds linguistic, emotional, and technologi- As for the title, “Bodies Bodies Bod-
we hear are birdsong, a breeze, and soft cal—to prove it. The dialogue, cunningly ies” is the name of a game, played by
kisses, followed by a declaration of love, stacked by Roupenian and DeLappe, is David and his guests as the storm kicks
but those are a diversionary joke. The a bonfire of inanities and vanities, in- in. After the drawing of lots, one person
movie is a beastly thing, and proud of candescent with blame and sudden spite: gets to be the assassin, pretending to “kill”
it—a gaily sadistic kerfuffle, from which “Don’t call her a psychopath. That’s so another player with a tap on the back.
all traces of tenderness have been ex- ableist.” “You are so toxic.” “Feelings are The others then gather round to solve
punged. At best, the characters are randy facts.” “I have body dysmorphia!” “You the crime. Except, in this case, you’ll never
with self-adulation. As one of them hate-listen to her podcast.” (That was guess what: someone actually dies. Then
says, “I look like I fuck. And that’s the a new one to me. I should spend less someone else. And so on. The suspense,
vibe I like to put out there.” time love-reading Jane Austen.) We to be honest, is pretty half-cocked, and
The smoochers at the beginning are also get the wistful shrug of “You’re made to seem more intense than it is by
Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and her coked out. We’re all coked out,” which outbursts of dimly choreographed panic,
girlfriend, Bee (Maria Bakalova). They is a direct descendant of James Thurber’s yet there is a genuine twist: in traditional
have been together for ages—like, I cartoon caption, first printed in these murder mysteries, you don’t much care
don’t know, weeks. Don’t waste any ef- pages in 1935, “Well, I’m disenchanted, who croaks, but this was the first occa-
fort trying to work out who is, or was, too. We’re all disenchanted.” Every age sion on which I found myself actively
seeing whom; just accept that relation- is proud of its pains. willing the extinction of every single
ships, in the world of this film, last Sociologically, in other words, the character, if possible in conspicuous agony.
about as long as an open carton of milk. film has quite a nerve, setting out both Not one deserves to survive. I did briefly
The souring starts at once. Also, being to woo and to aggravate the very de- wonder: if Bee is indeed Russian, could
in a couple doesn’t mean that you are mographic that it represents onscreen. she be part of a secret Putinist plan, sent
well informed about your other half. It wants to have its cake, slice it, blitz to destroy this hotbed of rich Western
Sophie, for instance, believes that Bee it, roll it out in little lines, and snort it. decadents from within? Nah. They can
attended Utah State University, and The irony is that such blatant hanker- do it all by themselves. 
there is talk of her being Russian, but ing to catch the moment cannot help
that’s it. Anyway, they are on their way but remind you of moments past. When NEWYORKER.COM
to a fancy house in the countryside, Reijn overlays a sylvan landscape with Richard Brody blogs about movies.
THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2022 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST
Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose
three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Victoria Roberts,
must be received by Sunday, August 14th. The finalists in the August 1st contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the August 29th 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
“What happened to the mouse that came in before me?”

Tyler Bradley, Stratford, Ont.
“You wouldn’t understand. I need people to like me.” “Actually, everybody wants to talk about it.”
Lawrence Wood, Chicago, Ill. Ken Carlson, New Haven, Conn.
“This is the only place I’m allowed on the couch.”

Beth Lawler, Montclair, N.J.
Call with Dr. Gonzales
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.

13 14 15 16
THE 17 18 19
CROSSWORD 20 21 22 23
24 25 26
A beginner-friendly puzzle.
27 28 29 30 31
BY CAITLIN REID
32 33 34
35 36
ACROSS
1 ___ judgment (hasty decision)
37 38 39 40 41
5 Impolite
9 Places to conduct science experiments 42 43 44
13 Thing that every instrumentalist can

play 45 46 47 48
14 Prestigious British boarding school

49 50 51 52
15 Actor’s representative
17 Birds associated with wisdom
53 54 55 56
18 Named names, as it were
19 “___ me impressed!” 57 58 59
20 “Why even bother?”

60 61 62
23 One who’s decidedly not a friend
24 “My Year in ___” (Jamie Loftus’s
podcast about infiltrating a high-I.Q.
DOWN 39 Dramatize, as a historic battle
society)
1 Result of a winter character-building 40 “Baywatch” actress Carmen
25 ___ shot
activity? 41 Dispense, as advice
26 Puzzle that’s wall-to-wall fun?
2 Middle of ___ 42 Chinese martial art with slow
27 Subject of some “appreciation” classes
3 State capital with the world’s busiest movements
28 Not even remotely accurate
airport 43 Three-legged prop for a camera
32 Rhyming term for a low-alcohol brew
4 Annoying people 45 Tractor attachment
34 Move like a butterfly
5 Take it easy 48 Sheets of glass
35 New Age energy field
6 Western neighbor of Colorado 50 Smallest bills in the till
36 Bit in a burrito
37 Puerto ___ 7 Doomed 51 Opposite of difficulty
38 Traded one thing for another 8 Completely surround 52 Stereotypical frat guys
42 Boasts before a big game, say 9 Frilly fabric for some wedding dresses 54 The whole enchilada
44 Former Giants quarterback Manning 10 Many moons ___
45 Feet in a pound? 11 2021 Oscar-winning film set in Solution to the previous puzzle:
46 “Let You Love Me” singer Rita Northern Ireland
S A L T S C R U B N A M
47 Fencing swords 12 Grab forty winks E L A B O R A T E B O R E
49 Pot topper 16 Elm, oak, or ash G E T S T O N E D D A W E S

A X E H O G S P O B O Y S
50 Figurative peace offering 21 Ten-dollar bill, slangily
Z A N E V I C E R O Y
53 Roughly seventy-one per cent of 22 Endures J O T S L A X S N U B
Earth’s surface L A O S B A L E S E M U
26 Home to Acadia National Park
55 Prickly ___ J A Z M I N E S U L L I V A N
29 Kind of can for some sunscreen and
56 International alliance headquartered dry shampoo
A Z Z T E A S E A W E D
in Brussels L Y E S U N I S P A R
30 Apt anagram of “aye” A R R E A R S F U S S
57 Moby-Dick, e.g.
58 “Ish” 31 Prattle on and on P I C A D O V E N T C B D
E V I L S M A N T I C O R E
59 Shade of beige 33 Features of some skate parks
N E S S R I C E C A K E S
60 Troubles 36 Sheepish remark? O R E S N E A K P E E K
61 Lightens up at the salon, say 37 Short end of the stick

Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
62 “On the double!” 38 Courage newyorker.com/crossword
October 7-9

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4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM

LEFT: MARK PETERSON / REDUX; RIGHT: SIMON LANDREIN

THE POLITICAL SCENE CULTURE DESK

AUGUST 10 – 16, 2022

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

PHOTOGRAPH BY DONAVON SMALLWOOD

FALL PREVIEW Sharon D. Clarke as Willy and Linda

Tom Stoppard’s Olivier Award-win-

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A.I.M by Kyle Abraham

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Tashi Wada and Julia Holter

Four Months, Three Weeks,

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I flirted with fisherman on the Amalfi Coast

I sat front row for the Beatles

I danced with nobles along the Aegean Sea

My next adventure awaits...

You’re sick of his annoying friend Jack-

You can’t listen to him quote the Time

When you’re in the shower, James

When you watch Peter Jackson’s

He insists that you sing “Sweet Baby

WHY YOU SHOULDN’T

ROOM WITH JAMES TAYLOR

He’s started writing songs for his new

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TRUMP’S LAST GENERAL

I a year in the White House, Don-

PREVIOUS SPREAD: SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM GETTY; NATIONAL ARCHIVES / NEWSMAKERS

The letter was dated June 8th, a full

T Askill credits his personal trans­

60 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY KARLOTTA FREIER

S and Oleg, first over Skype and

THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022 69

T for Beyoncé—an artist who

ists in the maudlin direction of easy

IDEA? has become a rite of passage for some

SHADOW AND ACT

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 15, 2022 81

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“What happened to the mouse that came in before me?”

“This is the only place I’m allowed on the couch.”

T Askill credits his personal trans