The - New - Yorker June - 24 - 2024

PRICE $8.
99 JUNE 24, 2024

Only available in selected Swatch Stores
JUNE 24, 2024
6 GOINGS ON
9 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Adam Gopnik on Europe’s rightward shift;
healing cashmere; the Gottlieb house;
Welsh stars; new titles from Hypocrisy Press.
ANNALS OF CELEBRITY
Jay Fielden 14 In Search of Lost Time
The strange journey of John Lennon’s stolen watch.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Yoni Brenner 19 Middle-Age Fantasies
BRAVE NEW WORLD DEPT.
Dhruv Khullar 20 Small Wonder
How will nanomachines change our lives?
LETTER FROM ECUADOR
Jon Lee Anderson 24 The Crackdown
Ecuador’s war against narcos—and itself.
U.S. JOURNAL
Paige Williams 36 Ghosts on the Water
Inside Maine’s glass-eel gold rush.
FICTION
Roddy Doyle 46 “The Buggy”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
Jerome Groopman 50 Anthony Fauci diagnoses America.
53 Briefly Noted
Adam Gopnik 55 How a philosopher would reënchant society.
ON AND OFF THE MENU
Hannah Goldfield 60 The era of the line cook.
POP MUSIC
Amanda Petrusich 62 Lizzy McAlpine and the curse of virality.
THE THEATRE
Helen Shaw 64 Lucy Kirkwood’s “The Welkin.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Justin Chang 66 “Janet Planet.”
POEMS
Peter Balakian 30 “Moonlight”
Joyce Carol Oates 43 “Suite for Voices”
COVER
Adrian Tomine “Eternal Youth”
DRAWINGS Ali Solomon, Tim Hunt, Asher Perlman, Suerynn Lee,

David Sipress, Benjamin Schwartz, Sofia Warren, Roz Chast, Carolita Johnson,
Dan Rosen, Lonnie Millsap, Andy Babbitz SPOTS Victor Guan
CONTRIBUTORS
Paige Williams (“Ghosts on the Water,” Jon Lee Anderson (“The Crackdown,”
p. 36 ), a staff writer, is the author of p. 24), a staff writer, began contribut-
the book “The Dinosaur Artist” and ing to the magazine in 1998. He is the
the winner of a 2024 Mirror Award. author of several books, including
“Che Guevara.”
Dhruv Khullar (“Small Wonder,” p. 20),
a contributing writer, is a physician and Jay Fielden (“In Search of Lost Time,”
an assistant professor at Weill Cornell p. 14), a former editor of Esquire, began
Medical College. contributing to The New Yorker in 1995.
Sarah Larson (The Talk of the Town, Amanda Petrusich (Pop Music, p. 62) is
p. 10) is a staff writer. She has been con- a staff writer and the author of “Do
tributing to the magazine since 2007. Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Ob-
sessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest
Roddy Doyle (Fiction, p. 46) is the au- 78rpm Records.”
thor of numerous books, including the
novel “The Women Behind the Door,” Jerome Groopman (Books, p. 50), a
being published this fall. professor at Harvard and a staff writer
since 1998, writes primarily about med-
Joyce Carol Oates (Poem, p. 43) was the icine and biology.
2024 recipient of the Prix Fitzgerald.
Her latest novel is “Butcher,” and her H. C. Wilentz (The Talk of the Town,
forthcoming story collection is “Flint p. 12) is a member of the magazine’s
Kill Creek.” editorial staff.
Yoni Brenner (Shouts & Murmurs, Adrian Tomine (Cover) is a cartoonist,

p. 19) writes for film and television, and an illustrator, and a screenwriter. His
has contributed humor pieces to the most recent book is “Shortcomings: A
magazine since 2007. Screenplay.”
THE WEEKEND ESSAY
NICHOLAS KONRAD; SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS

FROM ALAMY / EVERETT / GETTY
How “The Real World” Created Modern Reality TV

By Emily Nussbaum
Read this digital-only story on the New Yorker app, the best place to find
the latest issue, plus more news, commentary, criticism, and humor.
THE MAIL
GROWTH AND EMISSIONS was also a model for Poe and Dickens.
The only writings that Godwin cites
Idrees Kahloon’s review of the economist by name are nonfiction. (They include
Daniel Susskind’s new book, “Growth,” a memoir by a fugitive Huguenot.) He
succinctly summarizes the debate about gives the impression that he didn’t have
whether we can avert climate catastro a previous structural model in fiction, so
phe while also pursuing economic growth this may be as far back as we can go.
(Books, June 3rd). However, Kahloon’s Aaron Zinger
assertion that, in the U.S., “growth and Tarrytown, N.Y.
carbon emissions have decoupled” is mis 1
leading. Although it’s true that the econ MORE “MAD MAX”
omies of the U.S. and many other devel
oped nations have become more and more I was intrigued by Justin Chang’s dis
digital and serviceoriented, these na cussion of the influences that have shaped
tions and their residents still rely heavily the “Mad Max” films, in his review
on emissionsintensive, environment of “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (The
degrading resource extraction and indus Current Cinema, June 3rd). I wonder if
try. Those activities just occur, increas one of them might be the literary the
ingly, in the developing world (where orist Northrop Frye’s idea of the “drama
they often drive economic growth). of the green world.” For Frye, the green
Ted Lamm world—especially in Shakespeare’s ro
Associate Director, Center for Law, mantic comedies—represents “the tri
Energy, and the Environment umph of life and love over the waste
University of California, Berkeley land.” In “Furiosa,” the eponymous pro
School of Law tagonist begins in an Edenic landscape.
Berkeley, Calif. She is soon taken to a barren wasteland,
1 where the story unfolds. And, through
INCITING INCIDENT out, she is haunted by the hope of being
able to return to the green world.
I really enjoyed Kathryn Schulz’s witty Allan Irving
and insightful essay about suspense (“Wait Swarthmore, Pa.
for It,” May 27th). I’ve been trying to trace
the origins of the modern pageturner As a fan of the first two “Mad Max”
myself, and I think I can take us back a movies, I was happy to read Chang’s ex
little further. Railway fiction comes from tended take on the series. However, I
penny dreadfuls and sensation novels, was surprised that his list of George Mil
which in turn owe a lot to “Frankenstein.” ler’s other notable projects did not in
Mary Shelley wrote that book during a clude “Babe,” a movie about a pig that
series of difficult pregnancies, so that’s a wants to be a sheepdog. (Miller may not
bit more evidence for pregnancy as the have directed it, but he cowrote and co
original suspense story. (Also, the year produced it.) This is a movie that is both
that she started writing it, 1816, the sun heartwarming and technically amazing.
had been mysteriously blotted out from Yes, “Happy Feet” was sweet, but it was
the sky, owing to a faraway volcanic erup more of a oneuse item than “Babe.” I
tion, and nobody knew when it would don’t understand the omission.
come back, a circumstance that must’ve Elmera Goldberg
set a worldwide record for suspense.) New York City
Shelley, in turn, borrowed suspense
techniques from her father, William •
Godwin. He wrote what I think is the Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
first modern pageturner, “The Adven address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
tures of Caleb Williams,” which, along themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
with Godwin’s preface to a later edition any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
explaining how he’d written the book, of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
contemporary-gospel group the Adrian Dunn
Singers.—Jane Bua (Carnegie Hall; June 19.)
GOINGS ON ART | If the late performer, artist, and concep-
JUNE 19 – 25, 2024 tualist Ray Johnson (1927-95) was known to you
primarily as a chief architect of Pop art, this
show will come as a revelation—and a relief.
Though in much of his work Johnson’s restless
energy can be inspiring, one can feel fatigued
by his desire to be heard, and noticed. But these
exquisite paintings and collages are meditative:
What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Johnson eschews words and symbols for shapes
that are soulful and calm. And even as some
of the incredible detail he gives to pieces like
To call T-Pain’s journey back to the center of pop culture a redemption “Calm Center” (ca. 1949-55) is eye-boggling,
arc might be underestimating his influence, but in recent years the singer you don’t get lost in Johnson’s bravura hand
so much as you want to be close to the formal
and rapper has become a case study in successful second impressions. distance that haunts the work. Beautifully lit
Once the purveyor of a horny, liquor-infused, Auto-Tuned R. & B., he and laid out, this show is like a well-ordered
was soon deemed gimmicky and regressive. A 2014 Tiny Desk concert dream, filled with care and tenderness.—Hilton
Als (Craig F. Starr; through June 29.)
helped dispel the notion that he couldn’t actually sing; winning “The
Masked Singer,” in 2019, further ratified his performance credentials. HIP-HOP | In 2013, the indie-rap lifers billy woods
These days, he leans into a soulful crooner rebrand—most recently with and Elucid joined forces to become Armand
Hammer, a clear-eyed, thrilling guerrilla duo
more role-playing, on his 2023 album, “On Top of the Covers”—but with a penchant for cutting through nonsense.
he is still most captivating when he’s navigating the tipsy world of strip Taking the name of a man dubbed “Lenin’s
joints and night clubs, even with a voice that’s now sweet and unclouded. chosen capitalist,” they trade complementary
snarky, razor-sharp bars. Elucid, a Queens-born
He plays SummerStage’s Rumsey Playfield, on June 23.—Sheldon Pearce skeptic, can’t help but be blunt, wielding his
bludgeoning voice like a hammer and sickle, and
his raps press ever forward through the beats.
woods, who hides his face in photos, is more elu-
sive; his elliptical verses are built like a labyrinth
of postern doors all leading back to the center
of the maze. Their music plays up the absurdity
of the dystopia it evokes, and their most recent
album, “We Buy Diabetic Test Strips” (2023),
transmits shrugging revelations from inside the
matrix.—Sheldon Pearce (Union Pool; June 23.)
DANCE | Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana has been

tending the flame of flamenco in New York
for more than forty years, but its makeup and
character change from one production to the
next. In the company’s latest show, “Equilibrio
(Clásica/Tradición),” the gifted dancer-cho-
reographer Emilio Ochando is joined by five
other dancers and three musicians, includ-
ing Daniel Jurado, who composed the score.
The title marks a search for balance between
the classical and the traditional elements of
Spanish dance and flamenco, and between the
individual and the group. Ochando, a castanet
virtuoso, also plays the spoons.—Brian Seibert
(Joyce Theatre; June 18-23.)
MOVIES | Under the guise of modest realism, the

writer and director Bridgett M. Davis’s 1996
feature, “Naked Acts”—which is only now being
ABOUT TOWN widely released—confronts grand archetypes
and unexplored legacies of Black cinema. The
THEATRE | In “Home,” Samm-Art Williams’s of comic-book panels.—Vinson Cunningham twentysomething protagonist, Cicely (Jake-ann
celebrated play from 1979, the blithe, trick- (Reviewed in our issue of 6/17/24.) (Todd Haimes; Jones), is the daughter of a former blaxploitation
sterish farmer Cephus (Tory Kittles) is in love through July 21.) star (Patricia DeArcy) and the granddaughter of
with Pattie Mae (Brittany Inge), who goes off a theatre actress (Maranantha Quick). Cicely is
ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD A. CHANCE
to college and decides not to return to their CLASSICAL | Although it took a while for the gov- making her own belated acting début in an inde-
North Carolina home town, dashing Cephus’s ernment to catch up, people have been observing pendent film about a male artist and his female
hope to marry her. Cephus ducks the Vietnam Juneteenth, a commemoration of the end of slav- models, but she rejects the nudity the role re-
draft and does time in prison, then reluctantly ery in the U.S., since the late eighteen-hundreds. quires. Davis presents a woman who, amid mem-
skips town and heads north, to the coldhearted For the sixth consecutive year, Carnegie Hall ories of neglect and abuse, struggles to find a
streets of New York. Inge and Stori Ayers play hosts a Juneteenth Celebration, in partnership creative space between being ignored and being
a host of characters, giving Cephus’s journey with the Healing of the Nations Foundation. exploited. Made when there were few Black fe-
shades of an epic allegory. But the director The evening features the frequent “Les Mis” male filmmakers, Davis’s starkly symbolic drama
Kenny Leon creates a shallow stage plane, Javert and acclaimed baritone Norm Lewis, the exalts the hard-won breakthrough of self-depic-
all bright, saturated color, more interested Grammy-winning and cap-donning jazz singer tion, of controlling the means of production; it
in horizontality than in depth, making Ce- Gregory Porter, the orchestrator and pianist opens pathways to a future cinema more radical
phus and his tribulations look like a series Joseph Joubert, and the esteemed Chicago-based than itself.—Richard Brody (BAM Rose Cinemas.)
6 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024

1
PICK THREE
The staff writer Vinson Cunningham
shares current obsessions.
1. I was recently wowed, and weirdly moved, by a
video of the Brazilian singer Seu Jorge perform-
ing “Tempo Perdido” (“Lost Time”), a heart-
rending song from 1986 by the Brazilian pop
band Legião Urbana. I can’t speak Portuguese
yet, but now I know that the song is about the
sacredness of time, how each morning we wake
up on the knife’s edge between the irretrievable
and the unknowable. I’ve been poking around
Legião Urbana’s smart, playful, trenchant œuvre,
making much use of Google Translate as I listen.
1
TABLES FOR TWO
transported, via the meticulous construc-
tion of space and vibe, to the faraway, the
2. I remain hopelessly addicted to sports talk—
there’s something soothing about the fact that
unfamiliar, the nostalgically yearned-for. the pleasures of sports can be extended ad nau-
Kisa Normally, though, this sort of production seam by endless attempts at interpretation. In
205 Allen St. is designed to dazzle, telling a story of
“First Things First,” on Fox Sports 1, the hosts
engage earnestly—rehashing, reframing, twist-
A whiteboard affixed to the glass door glamour and grandeur. What’s intriguing ing their way into needless arguments—and also
of Kisa, a Korean restaurant that opened (and, to me, incredibly fun) about Kisa is at a comic remove. They read fake fan mail,
hire buglers and break-dancers to raid their
recently, on the corner of Allen and that it applies the same aesthetic rigor in set, feather themselves in fake snow. It’s like
Houston Streets, lists approximate wait the opposite direction—call it a glow- “Letterman” for sports junkies.
times. On a recent evening, rolling up at down. The illusion is so straight-faced
3. “A Chance Meeting: American Encounters,” by
the geriatric hour of 5:30 P.M., I learned that an unknowing diner could sit down Rachel Cohen, from 2004 and recently reissued
that the wait for a party of two would be for a meal and have no idea that they were by New York Review Books, is imaginative
around forty-five minutes; by the time on a stage set and not in some off-radar, nonfiction with a deceptively simple structure:
each chapter envisions what happened at a real
I finished my meal, the estimates had hole-in-the-wall discovery. meeting between two American luminaries—
grown to an hour and a half. Kisa does This conceit could easily land wrong, politicians, poets, artists, actors. It begins with
not take reservations, only walk-ins, a slipping perhaps into a distasteful sort a young Henry James and his father sitting for
a daguerreotype portrait by Mathew Brady, the
setup that makes perfect sense: this is a of blue-collar cosplay. Kisa pulls it off, great Civil War-era photographer. I’ve been
diner, and a fairly bare-bones one at that. however, thanks in part to the fact that reading a chapter every few days, each a rare
Operated by the duo behind the sceney the food, overseen by the chef Simon Lee, piece of rich fudge, reluctant to finish a book
so obnoxiously up my alley.
NoHo restaurant C as in Charlie, the is simply terrific. Lee’s jeyuk (spicy pork)
Korean-born restaurateurs David Joon- is sliced whisper-thin and grilled to a car-
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTOPH NIEMANN (TOP); BETTMANN / GETTY (BOTTOM)
Woo Yun and Steve JaeWoo Choi, and amel sweetness; the ojingeo bokkeum (spicy
a partner, Yong Min Kim, the restaurant squid) is charred and chewy. The colorful
is an homage to South Korea’s “drivers’ banchan include such dishes as a fluffy
restaurants” (kisa sikdang), no-frills estab- rolled omelette, wiggly strips of mung-
lishments whose limited menus, speedy bean jelly, and sweet raw soy-sauce-cured
service, and affordable prices are perfectly shrimp. The sotteok sotteok—skewers of
PHOTOGRAPH BY HEAMI LEE FOR THE NEW YORKER;
tuned to the needs of cabbies on the go. alternating chewy rice cakes and cock-
Like the restaurants on which it’s tail weenies, brushed with gochujang—
modelled, Kisa offers baekban (home- are sticky and savory and perfectly silly.
style, though the word literally means There’s no dessert menu, but after paying
“white rice”) set meals, featuring a cen- the bill you’ll be handed a quarter for the
terpiece entrée rounded out with rice, vintage automatic coffee machine by the
soup, and an array of banchan. Where door, which dispenses your hot chocolate,
C as in Charlie is sleek and stylish, Kisa black-bean latte, or milky coffee into a
is utilitarian, almost austere. It has the paper cup that holds just enough to last
unpretentious patina of a restaurant that’s you a half block beyond Kisa’s cabdriver NEWYORKER.COM/NEWSLETTERS
been there forever, but it is in fact brand fantasy. (Set meals $32.) Get expanded versions of Helen Rosner’s reviews,
new. Restaurantgoers are used to being —Helen Rosner plus Goings On, delivered early in your in-box.
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 7

THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT Front National), won the most seats, seems as empty there as it does here.
RIGHT TURNS under the guidance of Marine Le Pen, Jean-Yves Dormagen, a leading French
the daughter of the movement’s noto- pollster, sliced and diced the results for
n the classic days of the Republic of rious antisemitic founder, Jean-Marie the magazine Le Point, and noted that
Iagainst
Venice, you could lodge a complaint
the government by slipping a
Le Pen. That outcome, though not en-
tirely unanticipated, led President Em-
the R.N. electorate—like the Trumpite
one in 2020—is largely old and rural and
paper into the bocca di leone, the lion’s manuel Macron to dissolve the National relatively rich, though also, as in the U.S.,
mouth, a kind of proto postal box. The Assembly and call for new parliamen- less educated. And, as in the U.S., the
lions’ mouths were distributed around tary elections, which will be held in two real divide is cultural: country against
town and were often highly specified: rounds, later this month and then in July. city, old against young, people with di-
this one to get hot over taxes, this one The rise of the far right in Europe plomas against people without them.
to complain about garbage in the canal. might help Americans deprovincialize The nameable cause of this general
Their purpose was not just, as some imag- their own crisis. The single wave has revolt is a fear of what’s perceived to be
ine, secret denunciation but also open struck many coastlines. Whatever is hap- uncontrolled immigration. This involves
protest; the authorities would witness pening is happening everywhere. Why both the movement, over several gen-
the disquiet, register the grievance, and what is happening is happening every- erations, of new ethnicities and old faiths
then, possibly, do something about it. where is still under scrutiny, with the same into Europe and also the more recent
The just-concluded elections for the explanations offered in Europe that are crisis cap of hundreds of thousands of
European Parliament have some of the already familiar to Americans. The pop- refugees and asylum seekers arriving via
character of lion’s-mouth communica- ular notion, intended to rationalize the the Greek islands and southern Italy.
tion on a continental scale. The Euro- irrational—that what is happening is a No country, including the United States,
pean Parliament is, like the Venetian revolt of those dispossessed by globaliza- has ever dealt happily with the panic,
Senate, mostly a pro-forma talking shop tion against neoliberalism or the like— no matter how unfounded, prompted
with limited power: actual political by mass migration, legal or clandestine,
power still resides in the national gov- and the Europeans are doing no better.
ernments, while the power to initiate The rural foundation of the populist
and implement all those European rules impulse also involves a revolt against
and decrees with which “Brussels” sup- European agricultural regulation asso-
posedly encumbers its members—such ciated with continent-wide efforts to
as classifying bananas according to how address climate change. The rural pro-
bendy they are—remains largely in the test in Europe is, ironically, anti-green.
hands of the bureaucrats and techno- The specificity of the R.N.’s rise in
crats of the European Commission. France is complicated, however, by an
Yet the election results have mean- uncertainty about whether it is merely
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA
ing, and they have been cast, rather too a grumble in the lion’s mouth, as Ma-
narrowly but understandably, as another cron’s people suspect, or an actual on-
victory for the extreme right—a victory going rebellion. It is one thing to vote
particularly noxious in France and Ger- the far right into power in a relatively
many, where more or less openly neo- powerless institution, and another to
fascist parties won startlingly large shares endorse its governing of France. This is
of the vote. In France, the R.N., or Ras- the gamble that Macron has made.
semblement National (formerly the The result of this summer’s election
will depend on how effectively the par- the old-school nor the new-school so- are as far right as Trump is, or as reck-
ties of the far right and the far left can cial democrats, under the leadership of lessly contemptuous of the rule of law.)
form coalitions with the old moderates. Raphaël Glucksmann, the son of the The second general truth is that the
This is harder to do than it might seem. humanist philosopher André Glucks- great divide of European and Ameri-
On the right, the few remaining old- mann, will support for Prime Minister can politics is no longer between left
style Gaullists are deeply divided about the fading demagogue Jean-Luc Mélen- and right—as it was first symbolized in
joining up with the once diabolized R.N. chon, of the populist left party La France the French hémicycle at the time of the
The leader of the Republicans, Éric Insoumise. So Macron believes that he Revolution—but between authoritar-
Ciotti, proposed an alliance with the can emerge if not victorious then at ian, antidemocratic demagogues of both
R.N. and was booted out of his party least in command of a still divided hémi- sides and those who represent, however
the next day. Le Pen’s expected coalition cycle, as the French call the National uncertainly, the upholding of liberal de-
with the still more extreme and openly Assembly, presiding from the center mocracy, pluralism, and tolerance.
anti-Islamic Reconquête! party, led by over “two extremes.” The other animal mouth that Ital-
Éric Zemmour, stalled—to the point Two general truths appear. First, as ians talk about is that of the wolf; to tell
that the leader of the party’s European in the U.S., the rise of the far right can someone “Into the wolf ’s mouth!” is the
list, Marion Maréchal, turned on Zem- obscure the continuity of the center: the equivalent of saying “Break a leg!” The
mour to back the R.N., an act that he largest groupings in the European Par- idea is that it is better to throw yourself
referred to as “the world record for trea- liament will still be of the rational right directly into a crisis than to try to avoid
son,” but which he also desolately rec- and the reasonable left—just as the truth, it. (That’s what actors do.) Macron’s
ognized as “familial.” Maréchal is, among concealed by the antidemocratic Elec- gamble is that to throw yourself at the
other things, Marine Le Pen’s niece. toral College, is that Trump, even now, wolf may be better than waiting for the
On the left, there was an instant is unlikely ever to win a majority of the wolf to come and get you. If he’s right,
agreement to call for a nineteen-thirties- popular vote. (And as Anne Applebaum, Americans might learn something from
style Popular Front, but this idea is al- a historian of the Gulag, has pointed that thought, too.
ready showing strain, given that neither out, none of Europe’s far-right leaders —Adam Gopnik
APPAREL DEPT. on the math test?—and still does, such went up. Each yoga mat was equipped
SOFTER as on a Tuesday night in 2018, when she with a cashmere blanket and a cash-
dreamed about Brad Pitt standing be- mere bag of crystals. Sat Hari recom-
fore her in an outfit made entirely of mended holding a crystal (rose quartz,
green cashmere. to activate love, say, or green amethyst,
“I looked at him and said, ‘What are to release stress and “past traumas”)
you doing? Are you going golfing? You above the heart or the solar plexus.
look like a leprechaun,’ ” she recalled. Auster had everyone lie down for a
T he other day, just before a gong-

bath session co-hosted by Berg-
dorf Goodman in a sunlit loft in Chel-
“And he said, ‘No, I just need more soft-
ness in my life.’” Two days later, while
awake, she told Pitt about the dream.
guided meditation. “Feel your breath
as it gently moves in and out,” she said.
“With each exhalation, allow yourself
sea, Sat Hari Khalsa, a Los Angeles-based “And he said, ‘That’s strange, because to soften even more into this moment.”
holistic healer, greeted a small group of on Tuesday I told my stylist, “I need
fashion-conscious New Yorkers seated more green cashmere in my life. I need
on yoga mats. The room smelled pleas- more softness.”’” Sat Hari knew that
antly spa-like (cotton-poplin-scented this was important, and she had a green
candles); guests were offered macarons cashmere shirt made for him. It was a
and cold-pressed vegetable juice. Sat hit, and they started God’s True Cash-
Hari, who doesn’t use her surname, is mere. (“Sat Hari” means “God’s truth.”)
fifty-four, with long blond hair and a The shirts, woven in Italy from the wool
no-nonsense demeanor. She wore jeans, of well-treated goats, retail for about
jewelry that she designed, and a blue two thousand dollars apiece. Each shirt
shirt made by God’s True Cashmere, a has seven buttons down the front rep-
line of unisex “quiet luxury” button- resenting the body’s seven chakras. “Brad
down cashmere shirts that she founded and I design it all together,” Sat Hari
with her good friend Brad Pitt. “I grew said: color, weight, tartan, stone. “We
up in India, and at a very young age I pick the gemstone snap that we feel
was attracted to softness,” Sat Hari told resonates with the shirt. It’s almost like
the group. “I was also attracted to gem- the shirt asks for the snap that it needs.”
stones and the healing properties of “Is this anybody’s first sound bath?”
stones.” She also had meaningful, some- Sara Auster, a sound therapist in a wide-
times prophetic dreams—What will be brimmed hat, asked. Several hands Brad Pitt and Sat Hari
For the next half hour, the room
thrummed. Auster played a set of crys
tal bowls with a corkandleather mal
let, walked around gently shaking a
string of bells, activated a droning sruti
box, and struck tuning forks of various
pitches. The vibes became expansive;
the mind roamed; a snore rang out.
Sat Hari, who also has a line of jew
elry with symbolic meanings, met Pitt
several years ago through a sculptor
friend. Born in Massachusetts, she was
sent at age ten to a boarding school in
India after her mother became a Sikh.
“I had abandonment stuff, for sure,” she
said. Part “incredible adventure” and “a
little ‘Lord of the Flies,’” her India ex
perience lasted through high school.
She returned to the States, had an ar
ranged marriage, had a daughter, stud
ied, and began working as a healer,
which led, in 2000, to touring with the
Red Hot Chili Peppers, when Flea “I’m not leaving you—I’m spending the day at the beach.”
brought her along to give him intrave
nous ozone therapy. “One of my main
soul mates is Sat Hari,” the Chili Pep
• •
pers’ Anthony Kiedis writes in his mem
oir; her presence made their tour bus that came to mind and say it on the Maria Tucci, were cleaning out the
“a cozy, moving cocoon of happiness.” count of three; the result sounded like house. Gottlieb, who ran Simon &
She still works as a healer: “That’s what, an aural scribble. “Amazing!” Auster said. Schuster, Knopf, and The New Yorker,
honestly, pays my bills.” “Please take your crystals with you,” died last year, and Tucci decided to move
The loft featured a rack of shirts— Sat Hari said. “And please try on a shirt!” out. “I always wanted to live on the
gray plaid, with moonstone snaps; —Sarah Larson Upper West Side,” she said. It’s closer
“Brad’s tomato red,” with carnelian, for 1 to the theatres. They weren’t ready to
“healing, protection”; a tartan in muted LEGACY DEPT. sell, but they were off loading stuff.
greens. “Brad and I really went over EDITING IS SAVING They’d engaged iGavel Auctions to de
these colors,” Sat Hari said, holding up accession some of his thousands of
a sleeve. “Acid green, but not too sour. books, many inscribed. (The auction
Bring in the lemon, but not too lem ends on June 26th.) Gottlieb was also
ony. No, that’s fridge butter, as opposed a prodigious collector of kitschy knick
to counter butter. It’s all very, very im knacks. Some of those (“Three Life
portant. He’s super particular about Size Figures of Pugs”) are on sale, too.
color.” Of a maroon plaid, she said, “This he Turtle Bay town house where Most of the sorting was happen
could be for everybody—vintage Amer
ican, old school, not like a lumberjack
T the editor Robert Gottlieb spent
much of his life backs onto a commu
ing on the parlor level. On a side table
was a porcelain Miss Piggy, wearing
but maybe a worker, the real people. A nal garden, shared by the entire block. a flowery Sunday hat. “He did Miss
bluecollar shirt made into elevated “Sondheim lived on the end,” Gottlieb’s Piggy’s memoir at the same time he
cashmere.” She added that she hoped daughter, the filmmaker Lizzie Gott was doing Jacobo Timerman on tor
the shirts, even if unattainable for many, lieb, said recently, pointing out build ture,” Tucci said.
would have an effect that “ripples out ings. “That was Bob Dylan’s. E. B. White Tucci wore a black shirt dress. Liz
to others” and reminds people to “soften and Katharine White lived there. Janet zie was in jeans and a black Tshirt.
inside of themselves.” Malcolm and Gardner Botsford were She pushed on a bookcase, which swung
When the sound bath reached its there—we used to go over to watch open. “This is our secret bathroom,”
apotheosis, Auster said, “Feel the tex ‘Battlestar Galactica.’” Sometimes Got she said. On the walls, Gottlieb had
ture of your stones, the softness of your tlieb would edit the neighbors’ mem hung photos of people with their dogs.
blanket. . . . I see the softness in your oirs. “I was ten years old and someone Above a door was a rendering of the
faces.” Everybody sat up and looked knocked at the back door,” Lizzie said. Royal Family, circa 1955—floating head
around. “Have a little laugh!” Auster said. “It was Katharine Hepburn.” shots, looking at one another, in the
She had everyone think of the first word Lizzie and her mother, the actor style of “The Brady Bunch.” It faced
the toilet. “Just because they’re so awful,” would attend. He hosted, too, in the Rhys, who is forty-nine, wore an
Tucci said. family’s Washington Heights apart- old quilted jacket and Timberland
Gottlieb’s most notorious collection ment—Camus, Prince Heinrich of Ba- boots. A few days earlier, at the 92nd
was his mid-century plastic handbags— varia, antifascists, White Russians. “Saul Street Y, he had starred in “Dear Mr.
hideous and stunning specimens, en- Steinberg sat me down in the corner Thomas: A New Play for Voices,”
tirely impractical. “There’s probably a and said to me, ‘You know, there are staged in the same auditorium where
thousand,” Tucci said. “He got bored people who are like crystal balls, and the poet’s first reading in the U.S. had
with them after a while.” He moved on there are people who are like goulash. commanded a crowd of almost a thou-
to macramé owls and something called You and I are goulash,’” Tucci recalled. sand. “There are elements of Thom-
TV lights, intricate fish-shaped lamps Niccolò once took her to meet Albert as’s life that are very much magni-
from France meant for decorating tele- Einstein. “His dog ate my doll,” she fied—his drinking being one of them,”
vision sets. Lizzie and Tucci were try- said. “I was so broken up about it that Rhys said. “But I think there was a far
ing to find everything a suitable home. to cheer me up he played me a song more complex relationship to the life
A friend suggested a handbag museum, on the violin.” of excess—to the swagger of it all.” He
but it was all the way in Australia. (They She and Lizzie weren’t sure how they went on, “In the play, I was wary of
put more than two hundred of the would sift through everything. There not turning him into this cartoon char-
handbags in the auction.) was stuff everywhere: antique postcards, acter, which he has been.” There were
They moved to the living room. other people’s family photos, old ads a few snags. Worried about selling
Piled-up furniture was everywhere. Liz- for Maidenform bras. (“I dreamed I tickets, Rhys got Penderyn, a Welsh
zie performed some minor bouldering was a lady editor in my Maidenform distillery, to underwrite the evening:
to reach a box. “Letters from camp,” bra.”) “Sometimes I get overwhelmed,” “And Chris Monger, the playwright,
she said. “He somehow got the Times Lizzie said. “Will anyone want this?” says, ‘Why the fuck did you get us a
delivered.” Gottlieb made one camp She continued, “He used to say that whisky sponsorship?’ ”
friend, Eddie—E. L. Doctorow, it editing is saving. He delighted in the A world-class sponger, Thomas was
turned out. They read together in the fact that people had made strange, beau- constantly in debt, and was known for
cabin and avoided the lake. tiful things. Some of them were beau- scooting around barrooms on all fours
Lizzie chose some boxes at random tiful because he saw the beauty in them.” and for other rumored acts of indeco-
and hauled them into the library. They Tucci came down the stairs with rum, which included urinating on Char-
were mostly author letters: Bill Clin- more things. Lizzie went up, looking lie Chaplin’s porch. (Once, at a dinner
ton, Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison. for a mechanical pet designed for de- party, he excused himself and returned
(“Big problem: is this one book or mentia patients; Gottlieb had once re- wearing a full outfit of clothes pinched
three?” she wrote. “Your thoughts, puh- quested it for Christmas. “We named from his host’s closet.) In an age of
leez?”) The choreographer Paul Taylor it Leslie Silverpaws,” she explained. compulsory wellness, the taste for liv-
was a frequent correspondent. (“Dear Tucci said, “We may have to do an- ing vicariously through incorrigibles
Bobsie—You’re right again! Aphids are other auction.” past runs strong. “One of the reasons
insects—family aphididae, also disre- —Zach Helfand why I love Dylan is he could have long
spectfully known as ‘plant lice.’ Love 1 moments of great abandonment, where
ya—Paulsie.”) Doris Lessing wrote, “I DEPT. OF IDOLS he just—he lived so in the moment,”
had a dream of you the other night THE DIONYSIAN LIFE Rhys said. “I have such envy. I feel the
about my having two little girls, you complete opposite of him.”
being the father, we were separated, As the light faded, he hailed a cab
and I was finding it such hard work downtown, past the hospital where
bringing them up without you, I said Thomas died, at thirty-nine, after a
to you, ‘For the sake of the children . . .’ doctor’s misguided morphine injection
Well, what do you make of that?” helped put him in a coma. (Frantic, his
Many of the correspondents also vis-
ited. Baryshnikov, Julia Child—“I think
I got ambitious and made a soufflé,”
I1953,nflights
a suite at the Chelsea Hotel, a few
up from the room where, in
the poet Dylan Thomas spent his
wife, Caitlin, smashed a crucifix and
bit a nurse.) Rhys got out at Barrow
Street and headed to St. Luke’s chapel,
Tucci said. final conscious hours, the actor Mat- where hundreds of people, including
She went on, “When Nora Eph- thew Rhys plucked a beer from the E. E. Cummings, William Faulkner,
ron was breaking up with Carl Bern- minibar and settled on the balcony. Rhys, and Tennessee Williams, had gathered
stein, she came here. Carl came to the like Thomas, grew up in South Wales, for Thomas’s memorial service. The
door, and I had to stand there like a where he was steeped in the poet’s work. door was locked. “Isn’t the whole deal
Sicilian vendetta queen.” He recalled spending his first acting with churches that they have to remain
Before Tucci and Gottlieb moved paycheck on a flight to New York, to open?” Rhys said.
in, the house had once belonged to the visit his idol’s old haunts, and stopping He strolled north, past a pet-
journalist Dorothy Thompson, who at the hotel. “I remember loving how portrait gallery and a concept gym
also entertained a colorful circle. Tuc- shitty it looked—just as I’d imagined called Willspace, and arrived at the
ci’s father, the writer Niccolò Tucci, it,” he said. “I was too scared to go in.” White Horse Tavern, Thomas’s favor-
ite bar. Rhys was dismayed by a new SKETCHPAD BY LIANA FINCK
outdoor patio decorated with garlands
of fake flowers. A bouncer guarded
the door. Malia Obama sat at a table
with a group, looking bored. “It used
to be grotty—that’s what I loved about
it,” he said. “De Niro’s brother used
to come in drinking—he looks a lot
like him—and when people would
glance over at him the barman would
scream, ‘It’s not him!’ ”
Rhys walked past the bar and into
a space labelled the Dylan Thomas
Room. On the walls were a few framed
printouts of Thomas chestnuts and two
flat-screen TVs tuned to hockey. Rhys
settled gloomily into a back booth and
ordered a double smashburger. Not long
after, his partner, the actor Keri Rus-
sell, arrived. She’d biked in from Brook-
lyn Heights, where they live with their
three kids. She got carded at the door.
In “Dear Mr. Thomas,” she played Eliz-
abeth Reitell, Thomas’s final lover. It
was their second collaboration (after
“Cocaine Bear”) since “The Ameri-
cans,” in which they starred as married
K.G.B. spies. When filming started,
Russell was married to a Brooklyn con-
tractor; by the airing of the second sea-
son, she was dating Rhys. Chewing a
French fry, she recalled how, late one
night when they were filming the pilot,
Rhys had read her lines from Thom-
as’s “In My Craft or Sullen Art.” In the
booth, Rhys began reciting: “I labour
by singing light / not for ambition or
bread.” Russell brought up the moment
that her children heard Dylan Thomas
name-checked in Taylor Swift’s new
song “The Tortured Poets Department.”
She’d texted her husband immediately,
and he was thrilled. “I went, ‘I wonder
if this leads to people Googling Dylan
Thomas?’” Rhys said.
They mused on the enduring allure
of the Dionysian life. Russell picked
up her glass of white wine. “There’s no
room for those people anymore—we’ve
kind of gotten rid of them,” she said.
“And it’s a bummer, because you’re miss-
ing the greatness of people. Like, I don’t
need my poets or my rock stars to be
able to run for Congress.”
Rhys got a text: a friend had invited
him to a karaoke dive back in Brook-
lyn. His eyes flickered. Russell urged
him to go.
—H. C. Wilentz
vers will adjust its readings to the
ANNALS OF CELEBRITY quirky imperfections of the Grego-
rian calendar, including leap years. No
other watchmaker was able to pro-
IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME duce a perpetual-calendar-chronograph
movement small enough to fit into a
The strange journey of John Lennon’s stolen Patek Philippe watch. wristwatch until 1985.
What makes this 2499 even rarer—
BY JAY FIELDEN and perhaps the most valuable wrist-
watch in existence—is how little we
know about it. Ono gave it to her hus-
band for his fortieth birthday, on Oc-
tober 9, 1980, two months before he
was fatally shot by a deranged man
outside the Dakota. For the next three
decades, the existence of the watch
remained unknown except to a hand-
ful of family and close friends.
But, sometime around 2007, in the
early days of social media, a new kind
of watch obsessive materialized,
equipped with native computer skills
and an appreciation for the places
where pop culture and the luxury mar-
ket intersect. In those pre-Instagram
years, fanboy wonks traded watch es-
oterica online: an image of Picasso
wearing a lost Jaeger-LeCoultre; Cas-
tro with two trendy Rolexes strapped
to one arm; Brando, on the set of
“Apocalypse Now,” “flexing,” as watch
geeks say, a Rolex GMT-Master with-
out its timing bezel, a modification
he made to better inhabit the role of
Kurtz; and—the Google image-search
find of them all—two frames of an
uncredited snapshot of Lennon and
his Patek.
Since its discovery, around 2011,
the image has appeared online again
or years, John Lennon’s Patek nograph, it is, as Paul Boutros, the and again, fuelling a speculative frenzy
F Philippe 2499 has been the El Do-
rado of lost watches. Lennon was
head of watches at the American arm
of Phillips auction house, says, a “me-
about what the watch—which cost
around twenty-five thousand dollars
known for collecting expensive things: chanical microcomputer, the most at Tiffany in 1980—might bring at
apartments in the Dakota (five); gui- sought after of all Pateks.” Between auction today, with estimates ranging
tars (one apartment was mainly for 1952 and around 1985, Patek produced from ten million to forty million dol-
musical equipment); country estates; just three hundred and forty-nine of lars. (Bloomberg’s Subdial Watch
jukeboxes (three); and Egyptian ar- them. The watch, which Ono bought Index tracks the value of a bundle of
tifacts, including a gold-leafed sar- at Tiffany on Fifth Avenue, records watches produced by Rolex, Patek,
cophagus containing a mummified time in eight different ways; the dial and Audemars Piguet, like an E.T.F.;
princess, who Yoko Ono believed houses three apertures (day, month, the Boston Consulting Group re-
was a former self. But the Patek ap- moon phase) and three subdials (sec- ported that, between 2018 and 2023, a
pears to have been his one and only onds, elapsed minutes, date). If you similar selection outperformed the
wristwatch. never memorized the mnemonic S. & P. 500 by twelve per cent. In 2017,
A gift from Ono, the watch is more “thirty days hath September,” no wor- Paul Newman’s Rolex Daytona broke
than anyone would ever need to tell ries—the 2499 Patek hath. Its mirac- records by selling at auction for $17.8
BOB GRUEN
the time. A perpetual-calendar chro- ulous ganglia of tiny wheels and le- million.) But all the clickbait posts
about the Lennon Patek, as it had
The watch was a birthday gift from Yoko Ono, along with a tie she knit herself. come to be known, were regurgita-
tions that contained few facts. There vested in real estate, Lennon occu- erpool); the flag pin; and the Patek,
was never a mention of who took the pied himself by watching soap operas, in yellow gold, which had a rare and
photo, where it was taken, or even eating bran biscuits and rice, smok- highly coveted double-stamped dial,
where the watch might be. ing Gitanes, and listening to either meaning that both the watchmaker’s
During the long, dull days of the classical music or Muzak. “If I heard and Tiffany’s logos were printed on
pandemic, I decided to see what I anything bad,” he later explained, it. Gruen remembered Lennon being
could find out. Several years went by, “I’d want to fix it, and if I heard any- abuzz over the tie and the pin, a nod
as I traced the journey of the watch thing good, I’d wonder why I hadn’t to Lennon’s fourth anniversary as a
from where it was stowed after Len- thought of it.” green-card holder. He doesn’t recall
non’s death—a locked room in his In the photograph, Lennon, trim talking about the watch. But Lennon
Dakota apartment—to when it was and fit from a macrobiotic diet, wears nonetheless strapped the black lizard
stolen, apparently in 2005. From there, jeans and a loosely knotted striped band onto his wrist when Gruen
it moved around Europe and the watch knit tie adorned with a jewel-encrusted reached for his Olympus OM4.
departments of two auction houses, American-flag pin. The picture was A few other photographs that
before becoming the subject of an on- taken in the Hit Factory, where he Gruen took that week have never been
going lawsuit, in Switzerland, to de- and Ono had been recording “Dou- seen by the public. One shows Len-
termine whether the watch’s rightful ble Fantasy,” his first album in five non at a mixing board with Douglas,
owner is Ono or an unnamed man a years. The room is dim, but he has on who is wearing a recognizable watch
Swiss court judgment refers to as Mr. sunglasses, celluloid horn-rims re- himself, a Porsche Design Chrono-
A, who claims to have bought the cently bought in Japan. Buckled on graph I—stainless steel and coated in
watch legally in 2014. his left wrist is the Patek 2499. black—which Porsche had presented
Having reached its final appeal— In order to find out more about to him and to the members of Aero-
Ono has so far prevailed—the case is the photograph, I tracked down Jack smith in 1976, after the band’s Ger-
now in the hands of the Tribunal Douglas, the noted record producer man tour for its album “Rocks.” Doug-
Fédéral, Switzerland’s Supreme Court, who oversaw “Double Fantasy,” and las told me that he and Lennon later
which is expected to render a verdict sent him the picture by e-mail. He wrist-checked each other. “Although
later this year. Meanwhile, the watch replied right away. “Bob Gruen took I thought his watch was beautiful,”
continues to sit in an undisclosed the photo,” he wrote, referring to the he wrote in an e-mail to me, “I told
location in Geneva, a city that spe- well-known documenter of the sev- John it didn’t have the pizzazz of
cializes in the safe, secret storage of enties and eighties rock scene. my black beauty, and we had a
lost treasures. When I contacted Gruen, who is good laugh.”
now seventy-eight and lives in New
ennon holding up his birthday York City, he had no idea that his fter Lennon’s death, Ono had a
L Patek in the fall of 1980 is one of
the happiest moments captured on
photograph had become the talk of
the horological world or why he’d
A full inventory taken of her hus-
band’s possessions, a document that
film in the final years of his life. That never been given credit for it; he’d amounted to nearly a thousand pages.
summer, he’d begun making music published the image in a book, titled She then put the Patek in a locked
again, during a trip to Bermuda which “John Lennon: The New York Years,” room of her apartment. And there
he’d hoped would help repair the in 2005. But he remembered the night the watch remained for more than
well-publicized strain in his marriage he took the photo—Lennon’s forti- twenty years.
to Ono. Lennon’s “lost weekend”— eth birthday. Since late that summer, I found a clue as to what happened
more than a year spent living in Los Lennon and Ono had been spending next by putting together shards of in-
Angeles with May Pang, a former as- a lot of time in a multiroom studio formation from various members of
sistant who became his lover—was on the sixth floor of the Hit Factory the watch intelligentsia who had all
not that far in the past, and Ono had building, then on West Forty-eighth “heard” that the Patek had been sto-
fallen into an infatuation with an art- Street. “I was one of the few people len. “I think the guy was Turkish,” one
world socialite named Sam Green. (It who had an open invitation,” Gruen said. Another remembered “some-
was in Bermuda that Lennon wrote told me. “They liked to work late.” thing about a chauffeur.” This led me
“I’m Losing You.”) Gruen, who said he was living on a to a 2006 article in the Times about
Lennon had spent the previous “steak-and-Cognac diet” in those days, a man named Koral Karsan (Turk-
five years holed up in the Dakota as showed up after midnight, having at- ish: check), who had served as Ono’s
a self-proclaimed “househusband,” tended the thirty-sixth-birthday party chauffeur (check two) for the previous
raising his son Sean so that Ono, of the singer Nona Hendr yx. “I ten years. Karsan, a veteran member
whom Lennon called Mother, could thought I’d bring John a piece of her of Ono’s oft-shuffled staff—trusted
take her turn at being the decision- birthday cake,” he said. enough that he had full access to her
maker of the music-business enter- When Gruen arrived, Lennon was apartment—had simply gone berserk
prise they’d named Lennono. While enjoying his presents: the knit tie, in December of that year, threaten-
Ono dealt with Beatles headaches, which Ono had made herself (a copy ing to release embarrassing photos
controlled the purse strings, and in- of the one he wore at school in Liv- and private conversations he’d been
recording unless Ono paid him two According to a story that Karsan he showed Lennon’s watch to a Turk-
million dollars; he allegedly said that would later tell, Ono—who was ish friend visiting from Berlin named
if she refused he would have her and known to consult psychics—became Erhan G (as he came to be known
Sean killed. worried one day in 2006 that a fore- owing to German privacy laws). Kar-
A tall, square-jawed man with a casted heavy-weather event might san let Erhan G flip through the dia-
thick burr of white hair, Karsan, then endanger some meaningful Lennon ries, including one marked 1980, which
fifty, was arrested. In a series of pre- items, including two pairs of Len- includes Lennon’s final entry. Karsan
liminary hearings in a Manhattan non’s eyeglasses and several New Yorker threw out an idea: he’d give the Lennon
courtroom, he defended himself desk diaries (which he used as jour- Patek to Erhan G as collateral for a
against charges of extortion and at- nals during the last five years of his loan. Erhan G agreed.
tempted grand larceny by claiming, life); she asked Karsan to find a safer One evening in 2013, in Berlin,
as the Times reported, that Ono had place to keep them. Unbeknownst to Erhan G met an executive who worked
“humiliated and degraded him, wreck- Ono, when Karsan was subsequently for a new, much hyped digital auc-
ing his marriage and making him so deported, these items, along with the tion platform called Auctionata. He
nervous that he ground eight of his Patek, followed him. couldn’t resist boasting about the Patek
teeth to the bone.” A letter he’d writ- Ono, who is ninety-one and lives 2499 and the rest of the Lennon
ten to Ono describing himself as her in seclusion in upstate New York, de- trove—some eighty items. In short
“driver, bodyguard, assistant, butler, clined to comment. Of Karsan, Sean order, a dinner was arranged with Ol-
nurse, handyman and more so your Lennon told me, “He took advantage iver Hoffmann, Auctionata’s twenty-
lover and confidant” was also entered of a widow at a vulnerable time. Of eight-year-old director of watches.
into the record. Ono disputed Kar- all the incidents of people stealing “He told me the story of how he’d
san’s claims about a romance, but the things from my parents, this one is gotten the watch,” Hoffmann recalled,
prosecution allowed him to plead the most painful.” of his meeting with Erhan G. “It was
guilty to a lesser charge, and he was Karsan, back in Turkey, was in the strange, but it felt whole and true. It
ordered to return to his native Turkey. market for a house. Around 2009, was credible because of the many de-
tails.” Erhan G, who said that he was
the watch’s rightful owner, per an
agreement with Karsan, didn’t strike
Hoffmann as a man desperate for
money. “He owned a successful busi-
ness and lived in a large apartment in
a building close to Potsdamer Platz,”
Hoffman said. (Erhan G could not
be reached for comment.)
uctionata, which live-streamed

A its auctions, was one of Ger-
many’s dot-com darlings, lauded in
the press for disrupting the old
auction-house model, dominated by
Christie’s and Sotheby’s, which had
yet to develop a digital-first business.
Investors including Groupe Arnault,
Holtzbrinck Ventures, and Hearst
Ventures had put up more than a hun-
dred million dollars of venture capi-
tal for the company. Hoffmann says
that the C.E.O., Alexander Zacke,
recognized what a publicity boon sell-
ing John Lennon’s lost watch would
be and pushed for a way to do it with
or without notifying Ono. (Zacke did
not respond to a request for com-
ment.) Teams of lawyers studied the
watch’s provenance and puzzled over
how to offer it for sale without rais-
ing eyebrows. A document called an
extract was obtained from Patek
Philippe, which meant that the watch
had not been registered as stolen, and sentative reached out to Ono’s law-
Karsan himself travelled to Berlin, yer, who promptly notified his client.
where he signed a document in front Ono rushed to check the locked room,
of a notary testifying that Ono had only to discover that the Patek wasn’t
given him her husband’s Patek as a there. She had no idea how long it
gift in 2005. As for the authenticity had been gone.
of the watch, there was no doubt: on
the case back is an identifying inscrip- n August of 2023, a reporter named
tion that has never been made pub-
lic outside Germany.
Ismall
Coline Emmel, who works for a
but enterprising Web site in
In late 2013, in preparation for Switzerland called Gotham City,
an auction, Auctionata had the found something interesting in a back-
watch professionally photographed. log of documents filed that summer
(In the photo, the watch by the Chambre Civile in
floats in a vacuum, a care- the canton of Geneva—
fully lit token of com- an appellate judgment
merce, divorced from all in a civil case that had
human and emotional been going on for f ive
context.) But Erhan G got years. European privacy
cold feet. Some years ear- laws, especially those in
lier, Ono had sued a for- Switzerland, make legal
mer employee who had documents unusually hard
slipped out of the Dakota to decipher. The Swiss ju-
with Lennon memorabilia; diciary uses a system of
Frederic Seaman, Lennon’s letters and numbers to cre-
last personal assistant, confessed to ate pseudonyms for appellants, re-
having stolen diaries similar, if not spondents, and anyone else involved,
identical, to those which Karsan and turning a case file into a cryptogram.
Erhan G had stashed away. (He later Emmel knew enough about Beatles
returned them.) Searching for a pri- history to recognize that “C_____,
vate buyer, Hoffmann approached widow of late F_____, of Japanese
Mr. A, a man he knew from the rare- nationality and domiciled in [New
watch circuit. A deal by “private York City]” was, in fact, Yoko Ono.
treaty”—a sale undisclosed to the pub- Although the appeals court affirmed
lic—was reached, and in March, 2014, the lower court’s decision that Ono
Mr. A agreed that he would consign was the “sole legitimate owner of the
a selection of Rolex and Patek watches watch,” Mr. A—“a watch collector
from his own collection, whose sale and longtime professional in the sector,
proceeds would go toward payment of Italian nationality”—was launch-
for the Lennon 2499, which was priced ing another appeal. Emmel posted a
at six hundred thousand euros (about brief synopsis on Gotham City, along
eight hundred thousand dollars). “This, with the news that a final judgment
in some ways, was more helpful than was now being awaited from the Swiss
auctioning the watch,” Hoffmann told Supreme Court.
me, explaining that Auctionata’s watch “Mystery solved!” was the gist of
department needed the inventory. The the message that ricocheted around
vintage watches Mr. A consigned, most the watch world. But, to me, the mys-
of which Hoffmann valued at between tery had only deepened. The basic
twenty thousand and forty thousand itinerary of the Patek’s odyssey and
euros apiece, were in total likely worth its current location had been dis-
more than the 2499. covered, but the human detail of
Mr. A told Hoffmann that he how it had passed from wrist to
planned to keep Lennon’s watch in wrist, hiding place to hiding place,
his collection, which has included still hadn’t been reported. What’s
pieces owned by Eric Clapton. But, more, where had Ono ever got the
within months, he took the Lennon idea of giving a guy like John Len-
Patek to the Geneva office of Chris- non—eater of carob-coated peanuts,
tie’s. As part of the auction house’s singer of a song about imagining no
appraisal process, a Christie’s repre- possessions, peacenik—a watch that
was a status symbol of lockjawed good that he was the Patek’s rightful owner. you in the middle of the night”—Ono
taste? And what was its famously se- What Mr. A never expected was was spending time with Sam Green,
cret inscription? that his fate would become intertwined whom the Times once described as “an
with that of Auctionata, which went unabashed poseur blessed with good
had already been in contact with bankrupt in early 2017. A German court looks.” Green had a way with rich and
Iposted
Mr. A; three days before Emmel
her scoop, he’d cancelled a
brought in a bankruptcy expert and
lawyer named Christian Graf Brock-
eccentric women. He’d had an affair
with the Bakelite heiress, Barbara
planned meeting with me in Italy. In- dorff, who, in a review of the compa- Baekeland, and by 1980 he was spend-
stead, we arranged to speak over Zoom. ny’s inventory, stumbled on the eighty- ing his time juggling Greta Garbo,
Seated in a panelled room, he told me odd other Lennon items that Erhan Diana Vreeland, and Ono.
that, when Ono had found the watch G had consigned for a high-six-figure Looking through Green’s papers,
missing, her counsel demanded its re- sum. “I doubted that everything that which are at Yale’s Beinecke Library,
turn. It was a tricky legal situation, be- had happened in the past was legally I got an eerie feeling. I found a num-
cause Ono, having never realized that correct,” Brockdorff told me in an ber of diary entries that corroborated
the watch was gone, hadn’t reported it e-mail. He contacted the police; a crim- his close relationship with Ono (“Yoko
stolen, and because the case spans sev- inal case was opened, and Erhan G was all day and night,” numerous notations
eral national jurisdictions. Mr. A ex- found guilty of knowingly dealing in read), and a handwritten tally for more
plained that he didn’t return the watch stolen goods. He served a one-year sus- than twenty-five thousand dollars—
because he didn’t believe it to be sto- pended sentence, having admitted that the cost of furniture that Green had
len property. He mentioned the inven- the story that Karsan had told of how sourced to appoint the Hit Factory
tory that had been taken of Lennon’s he got the Lennon items “did not cor- studio. Whether Green was the one
possessions after his death, which was respond to reality.” (A Europol war- who suggested the Patek as a birthday
referred to in the judgment; he claimed rant was issued for Karsan, whose present for Lennon is hard to confirm,
that only two watches were listed—a whereabouts are unknown; he could but the cursed history of the watch in-
gold watch (presumably the Patek) and not be reached for comment.) That the vites speculation.
another that Mr. A said was a pocket case itself ever came to be is curious, The secret engraving, which I found
watch Ono had auctioned through So- but its verdict set a legal foundation in the never-published Auctionata photo
theby’s in 1984, two decades before Kar- that the Swiss judgment cited in de- of the watch, is haunting in another way:
san swore she gave him the Patek. claring that Mr. A is not the watch’s
Mr. A pointed to Ono’s own ver- rightful owner. According to Guido (JUST LIKE)
sion of the story. “Following the death Urbach, a knowledgeable Swiss attor- STARTING OVER
LOVE YOKO
of the late [ John Lennon],” the Swiss ney, it is unlikely that the Supreme 10 • 9 • 1980
court’s judgment reads, in a summary Court will decide any differently. N. Y. C.
of a deposition that Ono gave to in- In a series of follow-up e-mails, I
vestigators from Berlin at the German asked Mr. A about what John Lennon’s Was there a new start? By the time
consulate in New York City, “[Ono] Patek meant to him. “I’m more of a “Double Fantasy” was finished, Ono
wanted to give something belonging Rolling Stones man,” he replied, men- had lost interest in Green, and Len-
to her to those who had worked very tioning that he has played bass in a local non, who had just written and recorded
faithfully for her. So, she told [Karsan] band for years. Still, “to own the JL watch no fewer than four love songs about
to take a watch.” Ono, however, added is really a double good feeling,” he said, her, appeared to be a happy man. The
that she in no way meant the “watch adding that he remained hopeful that weeks they spent together at the Hit
she’d given the late [ John Lennon].” he could “wear it as soon as possible.” Factory that year had been charmed,
What watch did she mean? Mr. A asked But, if the Supreme Court confirms which means that the Lennon Patek
rhetorically. “There was only the Patek.” the appellate court’s ruling, the watch captures a measure of time that no
Christie’s, informed that the watch will likely return to New York. “It’s im- other watch ever will—the little they
had been stolen, kept the 2499 secured portant that we get it back because of had left together. 
in its Geneva vault, where it sat for all we’ve gone through over it,” Sean 1
several years. The judgment states, Lennon told me. He added, “I’m not a Freudian Slip Dept.
“On December 17, 2015, the parties watch guy. I’d be terrified to wear any- From the Los Angeles Times.
and [Christie’s] SA entered into a thing of my dad’s. I never even played
consignment-escrow agreement under one of his guitars.” He paused. “To me, At his sentencing, Simpson was contrite.
“In no way did I mean to hurt anybody, to
which the Watch would be consigned if anything, the watch is just a symbol steal anything from anybody. I just wanted my
to [Mr. A’s lawyer], until agreement of how dangerous it is to trust.” personal things,” he told the judge after hear-
or right is adjudicated on the prop- ing his sentence. Then, with wrists shackled
erty.” (Christie’s did not respond to he watch never seems to have given to a chain around his waist, he was taken to
a request for comment.) Mr. A told
me that he eventually decided to go
T anyone peace and happiness for
long. When Lennon was in Bermuda,
his cell.
Long before the city woke up on a fall morn-
ing in 2017, Trump walked out of Lovelock
on the offensive. In 2018, he initiated writing what he described as the best Correctional Center outside Reno, a free man
a civil lawsuit against Ono to prove kind of songs—“the ones that come to for the first time in 9 years.

“Is that all?” she replies, surprised.
SHOUTS & MURMURS “Because I’ve got half a million.”
Naughty Therapist
You are grabbing lunch at a Mexi-
can fast-food chain when you spot your
therapist deep in conversation with a
colleague. You start toward her to say
hello, but freeze when you realize that
she is talking about you.
“I know we’re not supposed to have
favorites,” you hear her say, “but in ten
years I’ve never encountered someone
who combines such oceanic depths of
emotion with raw intellectual horse-
MIDDLE-AGE FANTASIES power. Plus, he’s hilarious!”
Her paean continues for five min-
BY YONI BRENNER utes, as she extolls every cranny of your
psyche. “I don’t think he knows that
Sexy Nurse with clients in Malaysia. The agent I’m only charging him one-third my
You are seated on the examination nods with genuine sympathy and says rate. To be honest,” she continues, “I
table when the nurse enters. She’s tall that although he can’t rebook you, per- feel guilty charging him at all. Just his
and raven-haired, with enormous blue haps a pass to the first-class lounge company is payment enough.”
eyes and candy-red lips. She says hello might make up for the inconvenience? Sitting in her office the next week,
with a husky Eastern European ac- Two hours later, you are in a leather you casually mention that you would
cent, which reminds you of a recent armchair sipping small-batch mezcal be open to a pro-bono situation. She
episode of “The Daily” about Polish beside a heap of olive pits while bingeing looks up, nibbling her lip seductively.
elections. As she takes your blood Season 8 of “Top Chef ” on your iPad. “I’d like that,” she says. “I’d like that
pressure, you casually ask her whether The P.A. crackles to life, announcing very much.”
the new centrist government will be that your flight has been delayed an ad-
able to sustain broad support among ditional four hours. A wave of eupho- A Star Is Born
an increasingly populist electorate. ria washes through your body, and you Back at the airport, you are in the
Her eyes flash with delight, and you wonder if this is what heroin feels like. boarding line when you feel a tap on
spend the next three minutes chat- your shoulder. You turn around and
ting knowledgeably—but not obnox- Bad Babysitter are astonished to see the acclaimed
iously—about the challenges facing When you arrive home, you are dis- actor-director Bradley Cooper, a sheep-
emerging European democracies in mayed to discover that not only are the ish expression on his face. “I swear I
the shadow of Russian aggression. kids still up but the sink is filled with never do this,” he says, then asks if
When it’s time to summon the doc- dishes and the dog has shredded the you aren’t the author of that unpub-
tor, she lingers in the doorway for a new throw pillows. You discover the lished novel everyone is talking about.
moment, nibbling her lip seductively, babysitter—an auburn-haired coed And, if you are, would you consider
and says, “You are quite well informed.” from a nearby liberal-arts college—sit- selling him the movie rights for sev-
And it’s true. You are. ting on the floor of your home office. eral million dollars?
When you ask her what happened, You hesitate, lost in his Arctic-blue
Forbidden Layover she crumples, tears streaming down eyes, then tell him that, while you are
You are standing at the United Air- her freckled cheeks. She confesses that flattered by his interest, your Art isn’t
lines counter at O’Hare, having just while looking for your son’s stuffie she for sale, and that a massive interna-
learned that your flight is delayed three stumbled on the manuscript of your tional audience would betray the sa-
hours. The agent taps on his keyboard. unpublished novel, and once she started cred compact between author and
He’s six-three and distractingly hand- reading she found herself so transported reader. He nods, clearly disappointed
some—green-eyed, olive-skinned, and by the finely wrought characters and but also sort of awed.
bearing an uncanny resemblance to dreamlike prose that the world seemed Two months later, you and Brad-
that bad-boy tennis player, Nick some- to melt away. ley Cooper are riding motorcycles to-
thing. You explain why you need to get “I feel like I’m babysitting for Tolstoy,” gether in Jalisco when he asks, almost
home today: it’s your night to pick up she whispers. as an afterthought, whether you might
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
your daughter from gymnastics, and You gently deflect her praise, saying partner with him on a line of small-
your dog has some weird diarrhea thing that nowadays no one would give Tolstoy batch mezcal.
but your wife can’t take him to the vet the time of day until he amassed twenty “I’d like that,” you say. “I’d like that
because she has back-to-back Zooms thousand followers on #BookTok. very much.” 
ist James Tour, had developed “molecu-
BRAVE NEW WORLD DEPT. lar machines” that spun like microscopic
drills and were roughly ten thousand
times smaller than the width of a human
SMALL WONDER hair—small enough to puncture and kill
individual cells. Shortly thereafter, San-
How will nanomachines change our lives? tos moved to Houston to join Tour’s lab.
Now in her late thirties, Santos is con-
BY DHRUV KHULLAR genial but reserved, with straight brown
hair, rectangular glasses, and lightly ac-
cented English. She seems like the kind
of person who would be the first to fin-
ish her homework, and the first to help
her peers with theirs. When I visited her
at Rice, this past February, she led me
past microscopes, fume hoods, and amber
glass jugs; the chemicals in the lab gave
off a faintly sweet smell, as though the
walls were painted with banana-scented
varnish. I could see an inflatable T. rex
on top of a fridge, grinning, and a red-
white-and-blue portrait of Charles Dar-
win, modelled on Barack Obama’s 2008
campaign posters. “Very gradual change
we can believe in,” it read.
When we reached Santos’s desk, she
pulled up an image of kidney-bean-
shaped bacteria on her computer. She
explained that, in a petri dish, molecu-
lar machines are tiny enough to enter
bacteria, affix themselves to the inside
of bacterial cell walls, and tunnel through
the tough outer membrane, rupturing it.
The machines are activated by an intense
blue light, which causes them to rotate
millions of times per second—a hundred
thousand times faster than a power drill.
Santos showed me an image of the af-
termath. The bacteria now resembled
shrivelled lumps with angry blisters on
na Santos, a microbiologist at Rice me recently, fury in her voice. “A simple their surface. She looked pleased.
A University, grew up in Cantanhede,
a small city in Portugal that is known as
bacterial infection kills him? I thought
medicine had dealt with that.”
“Let’s see these things in action,” San-
tos said, and led me to a small room on
a biotechnology hub and a source of good At the time, Santos was at the Cen- the other side of the lab. A neon-orange
wine. When she was a child, her grand- tre for Interdisciplinary Research in Paris, biohazard sticker was plastered outside.
father, who bound books for a living, was studying genes that allow some bacteria “Dangerous pathogens in there?” I
an energetic man who often rode his bi- to live longer than others. But after her asked.
cycle around town. But by 2019, his health grandfather’s death she decided to focus She paused longer than I would have
had deteriorated and he depended on a instead on new ways of killing patho- liked. “Mostly mild stuff,” she said. “Just
catheter. One day, he spiked a fever; doc- gens. One problem with traditional anti- try not to touch anything.”
tors found that his urinary tract was in- biotics is that bacteria, which are always We donned lab coats, gloves, and
fected with a highly drug-resistant form evolving, can develop resistance over time. safety goggles. From an overhead shelf,
of Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bacteria that To stay competitive in the arms race be- Santos retrieved two petri dishes that
is commonly found in the gut. None of tween bacteria and biotechnology, San- each contained five beige moth larvae.
their antibiotics could treat it. A few days tos reasoned, scientists might need en- Before I’d arrived, she’d injected the lar-
later, he died. “There was literally noth- tirely new weapons. She read in Nature vae with mrsa, an antibiotic-resistant
ing they could do for him,” Santos told that scientists at Rice, led by the chem- bacterium that can cause devastating in-
fections. Now, using a tiny syringe, she
Scientists in Texas have created “molecular machines” that drill into bacteria. injected the larvae in one dish with a
20 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY JOSIE NORTON
solution containing molecular machines. (Today’s nanomachines are not self- structures. Tour had constructed the mol-
She slid that dish under the glow of a replicating, but A.I. pessimists have pop- ecules in the two-thousands, as a way of
blue light, and I imagined thousands of ularized a strikingly similar thought ex- demonstrating the precision with which
little drills sticking to each bacterium periment, in which an out-of-control nanoscale structures could be created.
and then whirring to life. A.I. turns everything into paper clips.) The drawings looked like stick figures,
After a minute or so, Santos moved In the nineties, a Dutch chemist and each molecule had its own nickname
the dishes to an incubator and took out named Bernard Feringa made another and headgear. One appeared to be wear-
two others, which had undergone the breakthrough: he constructed a mole- ing a crown (NanoMonarch); another
same procedure a few hours earlier. In cule that had the unusual property of had on a graduation cap (NanoScholar).
the first dish, which had been infused spinning continuously in one direction Between them was a molecule with a
with mrsa and molecular machines, the when exposed to UV light. The mole- cowboy hat. This was NanoTexan.
larvae wriggled happily. I watched as one cule’s central element was a carbon axis, We sat down at a long mahogany
climbed on top of another, like puppies and it spun like a pinwheel, generating table. Above us hung a portrait of Tour,
at play. In the second, the larvae that had a small propulsive force. Feringa later sketched in the world’s thinnest known
been injected with only mrsa were described these tiny motors as a crucial solid, graphene. Tour developed a novel
crusted black. Four of them lay flat against step toward realizing Feynman’s vision. production process for graphene, which
the dish, motionless. The fifth rolled In 2016, he shared the Nobel Prize in he hopes could be implemented at scale;
meekly to one side and lifted its dark- Chemistry. “I feel a little bit like the although the much-touted material was
ened head. Then it dropped down, Wright brothers,” he said, after winning widely hyped, it has not yet entered wide-
stopped moving, and died. the award. “People were saying, ‘Why do spread use. (He is also known for engag-
we need a flying machine?’ And now we ing in a rancorous online debate about
few days after Christmas, 1959, in a have a Boeing 747 and an Airbus.” the origins of life.)
A lecture at the California Institute of
Technology, the physicist Richard Feyn-
In 2006, Tour, the chemist at Rice,
built on Feringa’s work to create the
Tour told me about two major devel-
opments in molecular machines since
man considered a future in which mo- world’s first motor-propelled “nanocar,” the twenty-tens, when he began explor-
lecular machines could “arrange the atoms which was roughly the width of a sin- ing their use in medicine. The first in-
the way we want,” creating a vast array gle strand of DNA. He attached four volved the machines’ energy source. To
of possibilities. Such machines might, round formations of carbon—called activate the molecules, his team had ini-
for instance, allow us to “swallow the sur- buckyballs—to an axle and chassis made tially used UV light, which can be toxic
geon,” he said—we could ingest tiny ma- of hydrogen and carbon. When research- to our cells. (Wear sunscreen!) He walked
chines that swim through our bodies to ers shone a UV laser on the molecule, to a bookshelf.
repair faulty heart valves or failing or- the electrons in its central bond jumped “See this?” he asked, holding up a
gans. Feynman’s talk established the con- to a higher energy state and then relaxed brass-colored bullet as wide as his palm.
ceptual foundations for manipulating again, causing the motor to spin, the It was hard not to. “It’s a .50-calibre bul-
matter at the nanoscale—the scale of wheels to rotate, and the vehicle to speed let,” he said. “That’s UV light—it packs
atoms. (If you cut a grain of sand into forward. In 2017, a team led by Tour won an enormous amount of energy.” By at-
half a million slices, each fragment would the first international nanocar race, which taching nitrogen or oxygen groups to his
be about a nanometre wide.) For de- pitted academic labs against one another microscopic drills, Tour’s team had en-
cades, however, scientists didn’t have the in the South of France. (Scientists peered gineered them to instead rotate under a
technology to test the idea. at their creations using a scanning tun- concentrated form of visible blue light.
A turning point came in the nineteen- nelling microscope and cheered them Some newer machines, Tour told me,
eighties, when a pair of physicists in- on; Tour’s achieved an average speed of could be activated with an even weaker
vented the scanning tunnelling micro- ninety-five nanometres per hour.) That light, known as near-infrared. “Near-
scope, which was powerful enough to year, Tour published the paper that infrared is like a .22-calibre bullet,” he
observe individual atoms. A few years caught Santos’s attention. Molecular ma- said. “A tiny little thing.”
later, K. Eric Drexler, then a research af- chines could do more than compete in The second development related to
filiate at M.I.T., published “Engines of nano-Daytona 500s. They could poten- how, and how rapidly, the molecules
Creation: The Coming Era of Nano- tially help deliver drugs to specific points moved. A researcher in Tour’s lab, Cice-
technology,” a book in which he imag- in the body. They could also home in ron Ayala-Orozco, discovered that mol-
ined “nano-assemblers” capable of reor- on dangerous cells, drill holes into their ecules in some medical dyes could be
ganizing atoms. Drexler co-founded an membranes, and trigger a swift and vi- stimulated to oscillate trillions of times
organization to promote the develop- olent death. a second, making them more like jack-
ment and use of nanotechnology, but, at Tour, a fit man in his mid-sixties, is hammers than like drills. Ayala-Orozco
the same time, he worried that without courteous but playful, with salt-and- and his colleagues went on to inject mice
proper safeguards nanomachines could pepper hair that gives him the air of a with millions of melanoma cells and, a
be built to replicate themselves. Drexler more professorial version of Mr. Rogers. week later, billions of molecular jack-
envisioned one apocalyptic scenario in In his office, he pulled out a tray of vials, hammers. About half the mice who were
which they fed on the materials of life each holding different molecules; behind treated became cancer-free.
and turned everything into “gray goo.” them were sketches of their chemical “Say you have a beautiful lawn in
do harm. “This potential to create such
new weaponry is not likely to escape the
notice of adversaries,” the authors wrote.
It’s not that our bodies have never en-
countered something as tiny as a nano-
machine: volcanic ash, certain viruses,
and the smallest fragments of pollen and
mineral dust are all roughly on the same
scale. “Humans actually evolved along-
side any number of nanoparticles,” An-
drew Maynard, who leads the Risk In-
novation Lab at Arizona State University
and previously served on the U.S. Na-
tional Nanotechnology Initiative, told
me. “They’re all around us and always
have been.” What’s different about nano-
machines, Maynard said, is that they can
be engineered for specific purposes:
“When you start talking about active
nanomachines, you run the risk—even
if it’s a long-tail risk—of adversely dis-
rupting complex biological systems.”
For the molecular drills being devel-
oped by Tour’s lab, using visible light as
an energy source has both benefits and
drawbacks. Visible light can penetrate
“Sorry to bother you. It’s just that this morning, only a few millimetres beneath the sur-
when I handed you your latte, I specifically told you to face of human skin, which means that the
have a good day and you said, ‘Thanks, I will.’ ” machines are better suited to treating su-
perficial conditions than to fixing prob-
lems deep inside the body. (The near-
• • infrared light used to activate molecular
jackhammers can penetrate a couple of
front of your home and the next morn- tists develop nanoparticles powered by inches; Tour’s team plans to focus most
ing you come out and there’s a big solar energy to use in medical imaging, of its future efforts on those.) But light
mound of dirt smack-dab in the mid- but ambition and greed lead them to ig- usefully serves as a kind of on-off switch.
dle,”Tour said. “That’s because ten thou- nore the technology’s risks. The parti- Tour said that, because the machines re-
sand fire ants have been working all cles, which are self-replicating and guided quire a high intensity for activation, they
night. Go and disturb them and they’ll by artificial intelligence, start to display are unlikely to be triggered inadvertently.
climb all over you.” His fingers scurried emergent properties. They find that the He also argued that they would not be
across the table toward me. “One fire most efficient path to reproduction is to any more dangerous than technologies
ant can’t do much, but thousands? Mil- feed on organic matter, including human that are already widespread. Theoreti-
lions? Now we’re talking.” flesh, and they start buzzing around in cally, he said, you could “hold someone
predatory swarms. (Spoiler: the book’s down and shine a very intense light on
n 1989, J. Doyne Farmer, a physicist at protagonist ultimately infects the nano- them to activate machines inside, but, at
Iwhere
Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Manhattan Project scientists had
bots with a lethal virus, beating the bio-
tech at its own game.)
that point, you might as well just use a
knife.” Other scientists are experiment-
developed the atomic bomb, predicted Molecular machines could prove dan- ing with nanomachines triggered by heat,
that the twenty-first century might see gerous to humans for the same reason acidity, magnets, or sound waves.
the rise of artificial life, which had “po- that they’re powerful against pathogens: When I asked Tour if I could make
tential to be either the ugliest terrestrial natural selection hasn’t prepared us for some molecular machines, I imagined
disaster, or the most beautiful creation them. “Biological systems are not evolved something like a microscopic video game
of humanity.” He worried that artificial to recognize and interfere with (many) in which I could direct tiny robots to as-
organisms could be designed to repro- nanotechnological functions and capa- semble atoms into mini Model Ts. The
duce, or even to evolve new abilities, “thus bilities,” two defense experts argued in actual process was closer to a high-school
creating self-modifying, autonomous the journal Health Security in 2019. The chemistry experiment.
tools.” A dozen years later, Michael experts were less worried about rogue A postdoc in the lab, Bowen Li, ex-
Crichton published “Prey,” a novel about science experiments than about bad ac- plained that the reaction required three
nanobots gone wild. In the book, scien- tors who could design nanomachines to powders: two salts, which he’d synthe-
sized before I’d arrived, and a common cles and the biological world of DNA ogy like the laser, there are many others
chemical reagent, which he’d purchased and proteins. Historically, medicine has that never live up to their promise. Di-
online. (Their scientific names were ben- acted through increasingly sophisticated recting the right number of molecular
zoindole salts, which are found in some forms of chemistry: aspirin blocks a machines to the right places, so that they
perfumes, and glutacondianil hydro- pro-inflammatory enzyme; Lipitor in- do exactly what they’re made for and
chloride.) If we mixed the ingredients hibits the synthesis of cholesterol. Con- nothing more, is much easier in a petri
in a solution and heated them to nearly tera sees Tour and Santos’s molecular ma- dish than a living body. Some machines
two hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the chines as part of a scientific movement could have untoward interactions with
compounds would fuse together to cre- to manipulate the building blocks of life the immune system; others may be harm-
ate a hybrid molecule that reacts to mechanically, rather than chemically. ful to mammalian cells. It will probably
near-infrared light. “We’re now at a place where we can in- be many years before the technologies
Li poured precise amounts of each fluence the physics of the cell,” she said. are tested in humans. “There’s a huge
powder into a glass vial, then placed the In the human body, molecular ma- leap between showing something works
vial over intense heat. He squirted in chines could allow obsolete antibiotics in a lab and proving it works in people,”
some ethanol and the concoction turned to become effective again by, for exam- Mihail Roco, a senior adviser at the Na-
a deep purple. A few minutes later, he ple, disrupting the pumps that bacteria tional Science Foundation, who helped
transferred the vial to an evaporator, the have evolved to expel them, or by pene- create the National Nanotechnology Ini-
same kind of machine used to produce trating thick bacterial membranes that tiative, told me. “These nanomachines
condensed milk. We were left with a keep drugs out. A group of researchers could be a new treatment paradigm, but
forest-green goo. at the University of Texas Southwestern the human body is enormously complex.
I raised the vial into the air. The ceil- Medical Center recently showed that Many things we thought would work
ing lights illuminated tiny splatters of their nanoparticles could break down the turned out to be ineffective or toxic.”
slime, which looked almost like ants molecular defenses around tumors; they Still, he went on, “Even if you don’t get
crawling up the sides of the glass. I mar- could also drop off a gene-editing sys- exactly what you hoped for, you often
velled at the simplicity with which the tem, which would then rewrite a gene learn something useful. You advance
microscopic machines had been created, that the cancer uses to evade the immune knowledge that, down the line, could
and at the complexity of the biology they system. Other scientists are trying to de- benefit humanity.”
were meant to influence. velop machines that might one day har- After Santos wielded her power over
“So that’s it?” I asked, turning to Li. vest rare metals from seawater, or extract the moth larvae, we walked together
The process had taken less than half an carbon from the atmosphere. During my through a courtyard on campus. I had
hour, and the ingredients had cost about visit to Rice, I shuttled between build- spent so much time in the laboratory
a hundred dollars. ings dedicated to engineering, cell biol- that I savored the bright sun and the
He looked at me and smiled. “That’s it.” ogy, and clinical care—a sign that dispa- pastel-blue sky. A squirrel scurried up a
rate scientific domains are converging in tree; a bee buzzed by my ear. I thought
Sshapesonia Contera, a physicist at Oxford

University, studies how biological
influence function. Chlorophyll’s
the development of nanotechnology.
In the best case, Santos said, the ad-
vent of molecular machines will be less
of the sweep of evolution, which has
shaped everything from the simplest cells
to the humans who are doing these ex-
ring structure enables plants to convert periments. Power over nature is one of
sunlight into usable energy; the infin- humanity’s defining features, and one of
itesimally thin nerve fibres in our brains its most destructive.
power cognition; the coronavirus’s crown As we walked, I asked Santos about
helps it break into our cells. In 2019, the prospect that her work might never
Contera published a book titled “Nano reach patients like her grandfather. Most
Comes to Life: How Nanotechnology medical research fails, especially if it de-
is Transforming Medicine and the Fu- parts radically from established scientific
ture of Biology.” She’s interested in the practice. “I try to temper my expecta-
possible use of nanotechnologies to de- tions,” Santos told me. “But I’m also con-
velop sensors for pathogens, including, like the invention of an individual tool fident that this is possible.” In a way, she
potentially, bioweapons. and more like the creation of a new tool- said, her work recapitulates the work of
Earlier this year, I called Contera to box. “We have to decide which tool works evolution. Molecular machines are all
ask her about nanotechnology as a ther- best for each job,” she told me. Nano- around us—in the flagella that can pro-
apeutic tool. Learning to use molecular machines bring to mind other innova- pel individual microorganisms, in the
machines, she told me, unlocks a capac- tions for which scientists have found enzymes that unzip our DNA, in the
ity to manipulate biology at its most fun- new applications over time. After lasers proteins that ferry cargo across our cells.
damental level. “There is something very were invented, in 1960, the military used “We’re not inventing anything new,” she
special about the nanoscale,” she said. “It them to improve guidance systems for went on. “We’re taking inspiration from
is the scale that the universe chose to cre- smart bombs; now they are used for eye what already happens in nature. But now
ate life.” It is a kind of bridge between surgery, high-speed Internet, and tattoo we’re getting more of a say in how the
the quantum world of waves and parti- removal. Of course, for every technol- story plays out.” 
A
fter several hours of closed-door
meetings with security officials,
Daniel Noboa, the recently
elected President of Ecuador, sat in a
darkened office of the Presidential pal-
ace—an elegant eighteenth-century
building, known as Carondelet, that over-
looks the old center of Quito. When I
arrived for our first meeting, Noboa was
at a wide, empty desk, staring intently
at his phone. Several minutes passed in
silence before he looked up, mumbling
an apology. We shook hands, and I asked
how he was doing. “Surviving,” he said.
He didn’t mean this in the ordinary,
mildly ironic, getting-through-the-day
way. A week earlier, he explained, a dozen
hit men had been intercepted crossing
the border from Colombia, apparently
sent by drug traffickers to kill him. Four
of the would-be assassins had been killed
in a shoot-out with Ecuadorian secu-
rity forces. The rest were in detention,
but there were presumably others out
there. Now that he was President, he
said with a rueful laugh, he would never
be out of danger again.
Noboa’s story about hit men might
have seemed exaggerated, not to men-
tion impolitic, but a foreign diplomat
in Quito later confirmed it to me. The
diplomat was taken aback that Noboa
was discussing a highly confidential in-
cident, but, he said, the new President
had not yet mastered the art of discre-
tion. I spent several weeks this spring
with Noboa, travelling around Ecuador,
and found that he spoke in an unfil-
tered way about most things, including
his dangerous circumstances. Only a
few months into his Presidency, he was
overseeing an “internal armed conflict”
against twenty-two criminal gangs that,
taken together, constituted one of the
most powerful forces in the country.
When Noboa took office, last No-
vember, his presentation was far sunnier.
He is athletically built, clean-shaven,
and boyishly handsome; at thirty-six,
he is the world’s youngest elected head
of state. (Ibrahim Traoré, of Burkina
Faso, is four months younger, but he
seized power in a military coup.) He is
the son of Álvaro Noboa, often said to
be Ecuador’s richest man, whose fam-
ily banana business has grown into a
conglomerate with interests in everything
from fertilizer to container storage. Ál-
varo, who has estimated his fortune at Daniel Noboa’s supporters praise his “mano dura”—his aggressive tactics in combatting
LETTER FROM ECUADOR
THE CRACKDOWN
Fighting drug gangs, a young President
declares war within his own country.
BY JON LEE ANDERSON
organized crime. His critics fear that he is building an authoritarian state.

PHOTOGRAPH BY FRED RAMOS THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 25
ping down eighteen months early, under
threat of impeachment for alleged em-
bezzlement. Among the candidates was
Fernando Villavicencio, a former jour-
nalist who spoke urgently about the
need to constrain the drug gangs. Eleven
days before the election, as he left a cam-
paign rally in Quito, a squad of Colom-
bian gunmen shot him dead.
The election proceeded in a state of
fearful tension, but the shock benefitted
Noboa. Previously regarded as a well-pre-
pared but unexciting speaker, he caused
a sensation by arriving at a debate wear-
ing a bulletproof vest. He promised to
improve security, along with creating
jobs and attracting foreign investment.
Perhaps as important, he made a virtue
of his youth. One TikTok video showed
him squaring up with a rack of dumb-
bells at the gym, wearing a tank top in
the same highlighter yellow as the na-
tional soccer team’s jerseys. In another,
which his campaign posted under the
slogan “Noboa for everyone,” Ecuador-
ians stopped their cars to grab life-size
cutouts of him that his team had placed
on city streets. One of his communica-
“What’s that thing you just said that no one else heard, so if I say it tions advisers, a twenty-five-year-old
louder everyone will laugh and think I’m the funny one?” named Doménica Suárez, told me that
Noboa had attracted intense support
from young Ecuadorians—a crucial de-
• • mographic in a country with an aver-
age age of twenty-eight and a voting
more than a billion dollars, also launched see the Andes and to retrace Darwin’s age of sixteen.
five unsuccessful Presidential campaigns route through the Galápagos Islands. The election was held in two rounds.
of his own. Thousands of Americans retired there, In the initial round, Noboa came in
Until 2021, when Daniel Noboa won seeking an easygoing, inexpensive life. second. In the runoff, he won fifty-two
a seat in the National Assembly, he was But across the border in Colombia per cent of the vote. He took office pro-
best known as an executive in his fami- the cocaine trade was flourishing. De- jecting an image of himself as a com-
ly’s business, and as an occasional pres- spite a fifteen-year anti-trafficking ef- monsense leader, a businessman with-
ence in gossip columns. His first mar- fort supported by the United States, by out much interest in ideology. What
riage, to Gabriela Goldbaum, a designer 2016 the country was producing more he promised, at least at the beginning,
of high-fashion straw hats, ended in a of the drug than ever, accounting for was not a war but a return to normalcy.
difficult divorce. (Goldbaum claimed that an estimated sixty per cent of the world’s “I’m not anti-anything,” he said. “I am
the relationship unravelled after Noboa supply. In the past few years, Ecuador— pro-everything.”
said he was going to Miami to meet with which has a dollarized economy, a mod-
tax lawyers, then snuck off to Tulum with ern road system, and major ports on the hen Noboa was sworn in, he
a woman named Anastasia.) He is now
married to Lavinia Valbonesi, a twenty-
Pacific—has become a critical hub for
the Colombian drug trade. Devastat-
W seemed wary of radical solutions
to the crisis in Ecuador; his main pro-
six-year-old social-media influencer with ing violence and corruption followed. posal was to build maximum-security
arctic-blond hair. Particularly on the coast, where drug prisons. For years, the country’s over-
Even Noboa described his run for gangs dominated, killings became com- crowded jails had been effectively run
President as “an improbable political monplace, and many Ecuadorians fled, from within by the leaders of narco-traf-
project.” The country was in crisis. For heading to safer parts of the country or ficking gangs, who used them as head-
decades, Ecuador, a small nation of eigh- to the U.S. quarters to organize crimes. Villavi-
teen million people, was generally re- Last spring, a snap election was called cencio’s assassination was reportedly
garded as a peaceful, stable place, at least to replace President Guillermo Lasso, commissioned by imprisoned leaders of
by regional standards. Tourists came to an unpopular conservative who was step- a gang known as Los Lobos. After the
U.S. posted a five-million-dollar reward raids, particularly in poor neighbor- words “Daniel Noboa Presidente” em-
for information on the attack, seven sus- hoods. There were shoot-outs and ar- broidered in gold thread. Generally, he
pects were found dead in their cells— rests, followed quickly by reports of spent the time absorbed in his own
murdered, it was assumed, before they heavy-handed treatment of suspects and, thoughts, or scrolling through his phone,
could talk. Such internecine violence in some cases, of torture. but he would respond to questions, and
was common. Turf warfare among gang The gangs did not seem deterred. A if a topic interested him he’d argue for
members had led to gruesome prison week after the TC Televisión attack, the his point of view in seemingly inex-
massacres and hundreds of deaths. prosecutor assigned to the case was as- haustible detail. (Several aides specu-
In early January, six weeks into No- sassinated. In one of our conversations, lated to me that Noboa is on the au-
boa’s Presidency, the news broke that the Noboa predicted that there would be tism spectrum.) On one f light, his
country’s most dangerous prisoner had many more such killings. Ecuador was intelligence chief mentioned that Alex
disappeared from his cell. Adolfo Macías, corrupted from top to bottom, he said— Jones was tweeting about the container
alias Fito, was the boss of the powerful infiltrated by the Colombian cartels, ship that crashed into Baltimore’s Key
gang Los Choneros; he was serving their Mexican counterparts, and Alba- Bridge, suggesting that the controls had
thirty-four years for a series of crimes nian gangs. Noboa is not an imposing been hacked. Noboa, looking up from
that included drug trafficking and mur- figure, but since being elected he has his phone, dismissed social media as
der. A photo of him being led into cus- seemed increasingly eager to demon- largely vacuous: “Only ten per cent of
tody had been a public-relations victory strate his mano dura, or strong hand. He what’s on there is valuable information.
for the government: the disgraced king- told me he had seen intelligence show- The rest is poison.” He added that his
pin—long-haired, shirtless, and built like ing that, when he launched his cam- wife, Lavinia, was profoundly addicted.
a former wrestler going soft—submit- paign, the narcos predicted his govern- “If you hide her phone for two hours,
ting helplessly to armed security officers. ment would collapse within a couple of she’ll collapse,” he said. (In fact, she
Now he had escaped. Perhaps most star- weeks. “That was their plan,” he said. joined us on a subsequent trip and hardly
tling, it emerged that Fito had vanished “They never expected me to have the raised her eyes from her screen.)
just as Noboa was planning to transfer balls to declare war on them.” The raid we were flying to was an
him to the country’s highest-security hour away, in Guayaquil, the country’s
prison, known as La Roca, or the Rock. he next morning, a car picked me sprawling commercial hub. We landed
It seemed likely that someone in the gov-
ernment had facilitated his escape.
T up before dawn and sped me to a
V.I.P. airport, to accompany the Presi-
at a military base, and travelled by con-
voy to a dusty neighborhood at the edge
While campaigning, Noboa had often dent on one of the drug raids that his of town. Squads of military officers and
stopped short of endorsing a military security forces had been carrying out. policemen were there, keeping curious
solution to his country’s gang problem. Noboa arrived soon afterward, in a con- onlookers at bay. The raid, it turned out,
Now he declared a sixty-day state of voy of black Suburbans. Travelling with had already taken place, and a haul of
emergency and sent in the Army to take him was like taking part in a small-scale drugs and weapons had been laid out
control of the prisons. Ecuador’s gangs military operation. He moved under like an open-air exhibition; next to it,
fought back. Across the country, they close guard from his motorcade to the seventeen detained men were lined
set off car bombs, triggered prison riots, Presidential jet or a Presi- up on their knees, with a
and attacked police stations; amid the dential helicopter; when he masked security off icer
chaos, a leader of Los Lobos also es- got out of a vehicle, body- standing behind each one.
caped from jail. At the height of the tu- guards unfurled bulletproof Most of the detainees looked
mult, on January 9th, gunmen broke screens to protect him from meekly at the pavement, but
into the studios of TC Televisión, in the potential snipers. At stops, a few stared sullenly at the
coastal city of Guayaquil. The station dozens of security men members of the Presidential
was in the middle of a news broadcast, formed tightly choreo- entourage. Noboa, wearing
and the cameras kept rolling as report- graphed cordons, overseen a helmet and a flak jacket,
ers and studio employees pleaded for by an élite military unit and stood silently for a moment
their lives. The attackers, most wearing private security guards, in- and contemplated the de-
masks, put guns to their captives’ heads cluding a laconic Israeli tainees.Then, trailed by pho-
and ordered them to lie down. Before named Rafi. (In a moment of indiscre- tographers, he walked around the con-
anyone could be killed, a police task tion, Noboa disclosed that he received fiscated drugs and weapons, assessing
force arrived and arrested the assailants. intelligence and security coöperation them with a stern look.
But Ecuadorians were shaken: a near- from the C.I.A. and Mossad.) In less than half an hour, we were
massacre had played out on live TV. On flights, Noboa occupied a recliner- back in the convoy, and then on the
Noboa announced a state of inter- size leather seat, embossed with the Presidential jet, heading back to Quito.
nal armed conflict and instituted new Presidential seal. Aides filled the other Considering that more than a thousand
rules: the drug gangs would henceforth rows, and flight attendants circulated policemen and military personnel had
be classified as “terrorists” and regarded with snacks. He usually dressed down, been deployed, the results of the oper-
as military targets. Across the country, in slacks and sneakers, though some- ation seemed modest: fifty-two kilos of
soldiers carried out patrols and armed times he wore a flight jacket with the drugs, a few weapons, and a lineup of
detainees. But Doménica Suárez and ence there helped make him a visible Presidents in Latin America—and the
her team were drafting a press release enemy of the cartels. “Even if I’m in youngest, too.” She said that she had
that would make it a major news item. Geneva in twenty years, they could send worked for his father. Referring to him
Within hours, Ecuadorian media were a Russian hit man after me,” he said. reverently as “the engineer,” she noted
leading with reports of the government’s He shrugged and stretched out his that she had participated in each of his
“mega-operation”—a raid on an infa- hands, smiling. “It is what it is.” five Presidential campaigns. A second
mous Guayaquil housing project, con- guest also talked at length about No-
trolled by a gang called Los Tiguerones he next morning, staffers at Caron- boa’s father: he had built companies for
(the Big Tigers), near which several dis-
membered bodies of victims had re-
T delet placed bouquets of fresh-cut
f lowers in the fountains of a central
Ecuador, and now it was his son’s turn
to do something big.
cently been recovered. The stories ran patio. Security men and attendants hus- As the audience chanted his family
alongside pictures of Noboa in his hel- tled around, while forty or so elderly name, Noboa wore a slightly pained
met, looking decisive amid the action. men and women sat expectantly in a smile. Finally, he took the microphone
On the plane, Noboa made it clear shaded arcade. The President, trying a and thanked the speakers for their kind
that the trip, like others he had planned, new form of political outreach, was re- words. Then he pivoted sharply to say,
was all about politics. In a few weeks, ceiving the members of a local senior “I have to harden my heart, on behalf
a national referendum was scheduled citizens’ group. The guests, dressed for of eighteen million Ecuadorians.” He
on several of his proposed security mea- a formal occasion, called excited greet- said that he wanted to restore “dignity”
sures, including the continued deploy- ings to one another. to his constituents’ lives, and suggested
ment of the military, tougher prison Everyone applauded as Noboa and that experience had toughened him for
sentences for drug offenses, and the ex- Lavinia descended the stairs from the the job. “I’ve spent all my life receiving
tradition of narco-trafficking suspects palace and took seats before the crowd. attacks, directly or indirectly,” he said.
to the U.S. Noboa knew that the ref- Noboa wore a stylish suède jacket, a “Maybe that’s why God put me here.”
erendum would also serve as an index pink shirt, and blue slacks, and Lavinia If any of the attendees detected a trace
of how Ecuadorians saw his leadership. had on a loose brown jacket and bur- of messianism, they kept it to them-
If he succeeded, he would likely win gundy pants. selves as they clapped.
next year’s Presidential election. If he The first guest to speak, the group’s Noboa has a story that he likes to tell
lost, his political career was probably leader, stood and handed Noboa an ef- about his early travails. At eighteen, he
over. Noboa may have been prone to figy of the Virgin Mary, as if in offer- started a company that staged concerts
bluster, and the raids were obviously a ing. On the microphone, she addressed in Miami with popular Latin American
kind of campaign event, but his pres- him affectionately as “one of the best musicians. But, he told me regretfully,
he was inexperienced, and his business
rivals were cutthroat. After a year, he
went bankrupt, with more than a mil-
lion dollars in debt, and asked his father
for work. The family banana business,
Bonita, had been steadily expanding, and
Noboa was dispatched to Central Amer-
ica to hire farm managers. He travelled
all over the region, including to the no-
toriously violent town of Tapachula, near
Mexico’s border with Guatemala. Once,
he recalled, he was caught in a gun bat-
tle between coyotes, and had to jump
into a canal to avoid getting shot. Af-
terward, he said, his father had taken
pleasure in joking that his son knew all
the “worst places” in Latin America.
For the most part, the circumstances
of Noboa’s life had set him apart from
his constituents. He was born in Miami
and speaks English like a native. He
says that he feels equally American and
Ecuadorian, and when I asked him
where he felt the most at home in the
U.S. he immediately said, “New York.”
“At the conclusion of tonight’s performance, there will be His father owned a home in the Hamp-
a mandatory standing ovation. Failure to stand will result tons, and he went there every summer
in a permanent ban from every theatre in this city.” growing up. The elder Noboa was a
political combatant, fond of the epithet
“Communist devil,” but Daniel seemed
groomed from the start to join the in-
ternational élite. He earned a bachelor’s
degree at N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Busi-
ness, followed by an M.B.A. from
Northwestern, a master’s in public ad-
ministration from Harvard, and a mas-
ter’s in political communication and
strategic governance from George
Washington University.
He and Lavinia have two children,
both toddlers; they came along on a
flight we took to the coast, with a de-
tachment of nannies to care for them.
Noboa wanted to offer his children an
education like the one he’d had. As a
boy, he had gone to an élite private Ger-
man school in Guayaquil, which he said
was beneficially strict. He explained
that the tuition hadn’t been that expen-
sive, three or four hundred dollars a
month, so he had made friends not only
with the children of bankers but also
with those of bus drivers. (They would
likely have been among a small num-
ber of scholarship students; in those “Why settle for itsy-bitsy when you could be swole as hell?”
years, four hundred dollars was more
than the entire monthly earnings of a • •
typical bus driver in Ecuador.)
Noboa seemed unconcerned, or per-
haps unaware, that his wealth might and the tables near us were kept empty, phone, saying quietly, “Something’s up
inspire resentment. On a flight over the but the other diners waved and smiled in a prison.” Noboa read a text mes-
Andes, I had seen a patchwork section from across the room. As servers brought sage—it was his chief of staff, inform-
of jungle and asked about deforesta- us swordfish, Noboa spoke about a dry ing him of rioting and a hostage situ-
tion. He replied that it wasn’t bad—the part of southern Ecuador where peo- ation in one of the Guayaquil prisons.
forest in that area regenerated quickly— ple go to ease health problems. Some- Noboa fretted briefly, speculating that
and then immediately added, “For the day, he said, he wanted to retire to an the riot was being staged as a distrac-
record, I believe in climate change.” He almond farm there. “It’s a great area for tion; the attorney general was about to
acknowledged that the glaciers were that,” he said. “To be surrounded by all present a key witness in an anti-cor-
retreating in South America, and the those white blossoms . . . ” ruption case. But dinner went on, and
snow was vanishing in Europe. “But it Lavinia had dressed for dinner in a soon he got another message, saying
wasn’t bad in Colorado last winter,” he tunic with a vivid turquoise pattern. that the rioting had ended. Before we
said. “The powder is still good there. I She is the daughter of an Italian ad- left, guests from the other tables came
go every winter.” He was an avid snow- venturer, who arrived in the Galápagos to ask for selfies with the First Couple.
boarder, he said, and as a teen-ager had Islands and opened a hotel there, and Noboa and Lavinia rose from the table
won a championship in New York State. an Ecuadorian woman. Before becom- and posed with Instagram-ready smiles.
On the flight with Lavinia, as we ap- ing First Lady, she had been a social-
proached the coastal city of Salinas, he media inf luencer, a model, and the oboa took office at a time of un-
pointed to a lake just inland from the
beach. “I really want to build a home
owner of a health-food restaurant.
When I asked how she had adjusted
N certain change in Latin America.
As populism surges, the traditional split
there one day,” he said. “It’s a dream of to politics, she smiled again and said between left and right is eroding. There
mine.” Lavinia smiled but said nothing. that she never expected this life. Any- are ten governments in the region that
Their current beach house, in the resort way, she added, she was just a mother, could be described as left wing, but they
town of Olón, was close enough to nearly while “Daniel has all the hard work to range widely. There are those led by
be visible from the site he had in mind. do.” With an adoring look, she said, “I performative militants (Gustavo Petro,
That night in Olón, we went to din- am just so proud of him. He’s saving in Colombia, and the lame duck An-
ner at a rustic-chic restaurant. The se- our country.” drés Manuel López Obrador, in Mex-
curity men took up stations outside, Later, Lavinia passed Noboa her ico) and by pragmatic social democrats
(Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in Brazil,
and Gabriel Boric, in Chile). At the ex-
treme are the weary authoritarian re- MOONLIGHT
gimes still proclaiming revolution in
Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. I was walking through the muddy pastures of Woodstock.
On the right, the most visible lead- Even now, what do I know?
ers are the most outrageous ones. In
El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, a social- My days on the football field were numbered.
media-savvy millennial, has given him- And—then—what did I know?
self dictatorial powers as he fights street
gangs. In Argentina, the self-described I pumped iron, ran down-and-outs—followed a pulling
“anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei has guard. It was 1969 and men had just landed
declared war on the welfare state, ad-
vocating a market so free of constraints on the moon; we watched it on TV two miles
that, as he once suggested, people would from where a car went off a bridge at Chappaquiddick.
ultimately be able to buy and sell chil-
dren. Milei has been embraced by Vik- And so—Chappa-quid-dick floated
tor Orbán and by Donald Trump; Elon in the air; what matters more, the bridge or the moon?
Musk and Mark Zuckerberg posed for
photos with him when he visited the Then—I thought I understood the moonlight
U.S. When Bukele recently staged a on the water snakes in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
ceremony to celebrate his reëlection,
the guests included Donald Trump, Jr., I knew that three women broke down the door at McSorley’s
Tucker Carlson, and Matt Gaetz. that summer. Liberty was not just for men on the moon.
In this milieu, it is perhaps unsur-
prising that Noboa tries to resist po- I walked out of McSorley’s with Coleridge’s poem
litical categorization. The diplomat in in my pocket, uplifted by their breakthrough.
Quito told me that he espouses both
center-right security policies and center- I didn’t know Coleridge was high on dope.
left social-welfare programs. In our I thought I knew his poem was an ode to love.
conversations, though, Noboa seemed
to be evolving a political philosophy When I entered the pasture of love Canned Heat
on the fly. One afternoon, as we rode needled my head. The sky was acid blue.
in his armored S.U.V. to the opening
of a low-income housing project near Whatever I knew—I didn’t know. The moon
the city of Riobamba, I asked which stared over the groaning planet and that pasture.
Latin American leader he felt most
aligned with. He smiled and said, “Lula.” —Peter Balakian
This was unexpected—in Brazil and
abroad, Lula is a longtime emblem of
the left. But Noboa said that he had ing in conversation. “He’s smart, but for himself and making his family rich.”
met Lula fifteen years earlier, at a he’s not getting anything done,” Noboa There were a handful of families who
“father-and-son business leaders’ sum- said. Milei was worse, in his view: “I owned everything in El Salvador, he
mit” organized by the Mexican com- don’t know why he thinks he’s so great. said, “and now there are the Bukeles.” I
munications magnate Carlos Slim. He hasn’t achieved anything since he noted that Bukele had referred to him-
Since then, Lula had impressed him became President. He seems full of himself as “the coolest dictator in the world.”
with his political savvy and his ability self—which is very Argentine, actually.” Noboa smirked and said, “Yeah, in a
to push through an agenda. Among his peers in the region, Noboa country the size of Guayas”—a midsize
He seemed less impressed by other is most often compared to Bukele, who province of Ecuador.
regional leaders. When I mentioned has moved to end his country’s security Noboa distinguished his security
Chile’s Boric—a fellow-millennial, just problems by jailing more than eighty campaign from that of Bukele, who
a few years older—Noboa said that he thousand purported gang members, had imposed authoritarian measures
“seems all right,” but was hamstrung by some of them in a gigantic, purpose-built by overriding his country’s institutions.
his far-left coalition partners. “It’s not new prison. But a close aide of Noboa’s “What I did was entirely democratic,”
a problem I have,” he added. He de- had warned me that his boss reacted Noboa said. “I asked the legislature and
scribed Colombia’s President, the for- badly to the comparison. When I men- the judiciary when I declared my war.
mer Marxist guerrilla Petro, as a “left- tioned Bukele’s name in the S.U.V., he I had the backing of the three powers
ist snob,” adding that he had a habit of wrinkled his nose and said, “The guy is to do it.”
delivering lectures rather than engag- arrogant and all about controlling power In fact, Ecuador’s Constitutional
Court found that Noboa had supplied in absentia on corruption charges, he them was murdered. Last July, the
insufficient evidence to justify his dec- was sentenced to eight years in prison. mayor of Manta, Agustín Intriago, was
laration. International observers raised Still, he has a devoted following in inspecting a sewage facility when hit
concerns that his security forces had Ecuador, and his party, Revolución Ci- men drove up and shot him to death;
essentially discarded due process. Juan- udadana, holds the largest share of seats a woman talking with him was also
ita Goebertus, the director of the Amer- in congress. Noboa’s main rival in last killed. The day I arrived in Ecuador,
icas division of Human Rights Watch, year’s election was a Correa loyalist, the country’s youngest mayor, Brigitte
pointed out that more than thirteen and it was generally understood that García, was shot to death in her home
thousand people had been arrested in if she won she would facilitate his re- town of San Vicente. Her body was
just the first two months of this year. turn to power. When the next election found in a car, alongside the corpse of
There were reports of detainees being is held, in February, 2025, Noboa will her press officer. Noboa told me that,
beaten or denied a hearing with a judge. surely have to face another candidate before García died, she had scheduled
“So far, Daniel Noboa still seems con- picked by Correa. To survive politi- a meeting with him. He suggested that
cerned about not being labelled an au- cally, he must weaken Correa’s influ- narcos had killed her because she was
thoritarian,” Goebertus said. “What he ence, and his strategy is clearly to blame going to share compromising informa-
has to do is take the appropriate mea- him for the narcopolítica that has con- tion about them.
sures so that he doesn’t become one.” sumed Ecuador. During my visit, Noboa was plan-
But Noboa seemed to suspect that Noboa argued that Correa had set ning a swing through Manabí. With
many of his constituents wouldn’t mind the problem in motion in 2009, by forc- the referendum coming, he wanted to
an authoritarian leader, if he could rid ing a U.S. military base out of Manta, be seen visiting cartel territory, and also
the country of the cartels. Throughout a port city in the coastal province of hoped to promote his programs for a
the region, the fraying of democratic Manabí. The Americans had used the “new Ecuador,” which would provide
institutions and the rise of insecurity base to launch surveillance flights and employment, wean young people from
had encouraged support for strongmen. block drug shipments, but Correa in- the drug business, and ease insecurity
“If you took a poll right now,” he said, sisted that their presence violated Ec- in the region. As his aides worked out
“the fact is most Latin Americans would uadorian sovereignty. As Paulina Re- details of the trip, five people were kid-
take dictatorship over democracy.” calde, an Ecuadorian political pollster, napped from a hotel in a beach town
pointed out, two of the more popular near Manta, and their bodies were later
espite Noboa’s security measures, protest slogans in the Correa years were found on the side of a road. The vic-
D his government seemed fragile.
During my visit, there were constant
“Take the base out of Manta” and “No
to the T.L.C.”—a proposed free-trade
tims seemed unconnected to traffick-
ing, and Noboa and his advisers were
reports of killings. In the past two agreement with the U.S. baffled, until a theory emerged that it
years, the homicide rate had more Correa rejects the idea that remov- was a case of mistaken identity, in which
than tripled, making it the highest in ing the base encouraged trafficking. a drug gang believed that the visitors
Latin America. “That’s like saying that it happened belonged to a rival group.
Noboa portrayed Ecuador as a coun- because the Spaniards were removed Noboa managed a bluff response.
try that had been hijacked with the from Ecuador at independence!” he told When one of the suspected killers was
compliance of its officials. Since tak- captured, a few days later, he tweeted
ing office, he had fired the heads of the out a video of a masked policeman
Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. The forcing the suspect, a scruffy young
attorney general, Diana Salazar, had man, into a patrol car. Beneath it, he
carried out an investigation called the wrote, “We won’t rest until we find the
Metástasis case, which uncovered ex- others.” But he seemed frustrated by
tensive evidence allegedly implicating the situation. After we arrived in Manta,
scores of judges, prosecutors, and po- he held a security briefing with his in-
lice and prison officials in collusion telligence chief, his interior minister,
with narco-trafficking. his defense minister, and the governor
Perhaps as much as Noboa blamed me recently. “When I left office, nobody of Manabí, along with the regional
the drug lords, he blamed his prede- was saying Ecuador was a narco-state.” head of the police and a senior naval
cessor Rafael Correa. A protégé of But it is indisputable that, in the years officer. In opening remarks, a police of-
the Venezuelan strongman Hugo that followed, Manabí became a strong- ficial said that Noboa’s administration
Chávez, Correa was a charismatic, di- hold for narcos, as well as the locus of had brought down homicides substan-
visive leftist, who ran Ecuador from vicious turf wars. Noboa told me that tially. Yet everyone knew that the toll
2007 to 2017. His administration was his administration had intelligence remained appalling: some two thou-
widely seen as corrupt; his Vice-Pres- showing that some sixty per cent of the sand deaths in the months since he had
ident was imprisoned for bribery, and province’s political class was involved taken office. Noboa complained about
Salazar, the attorney general, accused with traffickers, who used public-works the murdered tourists. “It gives the im-
Correa as well. By then, he had fled contracts to co-opt officials and to laun- pression of a lack of control,” he said.
to Belgium. In 2020, after being tried der their profits. Anyone who opposed “With the referendum coming up, it’s
imperative to mount more aggressive guys to La Roca.” He speculated that weapon into the prison. Macías, a woman
police operations.” the drop in murders in Manta—there in her fifties who wore a billowy red
The governor seemed eager to show had been two the previous day, he said, shirt, a white baseball cap, and gold-
aggression. He asked Noboa for “more down from five earlier that week—was framed sunglasses, arrived to escort me
firmness,” and for additional protections also due to his visit. “It would have been into the prison. We went through in-
for police, “who fear that, down the road, way too shameful for the military and spections, including an electronic body
they’ll be held to account for human the police to have an increase in vio- scan and a pat-down, in a series of rooms
rights for what they’re doing now.” (At- lent deaths with me present.” Looking where police and penitentiary employ-
torney General Salazar had opened at around the breakfast room, he said, “This ees jostled for space with military offi-
least eight investigations into extraju- place, Manta, it’s like Sinaloa.” cers. Macías explained that Noboa had
dicial killings.) He also asked for a sys- brought in the Army to monitor the
tem that would offer rewards for the n Manta, Noboa held an event in a rest of the staff. The military had effec-
capture of the most wanted criminals,
arguing that “the relatives of the crim-
IAmbassador,
college auditorium with the Israeli
to mark the announce-
tively no experience in running prisons,
and the atmosphere was strained.
inals themselves will turn them in.” ment of a program of “circular immi- The interior of La Roca was a war-
Noboa responded grimly, “We’ll post a gration,” in which young Ecuadorians ren of concrete hallways with brown
list of military objectives, not ‘most would be allowed to travel to Israel as walls and harsh lighting. As Macías led
wanted,’ and everyone can figure out agricultural workers. There would also me through, surrounded by guards, she
for themselves what that means.” be new scholarship programs in several described the strictures that had been
Two prominent members of Los countries, including Hungary, Saudi imposed there since Noboa declared his
Choneros had been arrested recently, Arabia, South Korea, and Spain. “The internal war: prisoners were forbidden
and the governor asked to have them youth are the most vulnerable to the family visits and kept in lockdown for
transferred to La Roca. But the naval narco-terrorists, so they are my top pri- twenty-three and a half hours a day,
officer resisted the idea, warning that it ority,” Noboa said. “If we don’t look after with a half hour allotted for recreation
was risky to mix “prisoners of war,” as our youth, we are destined to fail.” in a concrete yard with a steel-mesh
he called gang leaders, with white-col- Travelling through rural Manabí, roof. In the yard, Macías showed spots
lar “political prisoners.” He also noted Noboa made quick stops in a string of in the wall where the prisoners had for-
that he had intelligence indicating that small towns. In each, he was greeted merly hidden cell phones and weapons;
the prospect of moving to the tightly by politicians, local beauty queens, and they were now plugged with concrete.
controlled prison had caused rising ten- applauding teen-agers. Wearing a In a small infirmary, a prisoner was
sions among the narcos. T-shirt that read “Youth Employment— talking with a medic. Macías said that
Noboa’s interior minister, Mónica The New Ecuador,” he promised greater the room had been Fito’s cell, before he
Palencia, bristled. She asked the naval security and government support for had presumably used his influence to
officer curtly whether he was implying projects in agriculture, fish processing, secure a transfer to a more comfortable
that the government should not move and mining. prison—from which he then escaped.
important prisoners to La Roca because The culminating event of our trip was In another room was a screen where
they “felt tense.” Noboa broke in to set- supposed to have been a drug raid in a prisoners could talk by Zoom with their
tle the matter: “There are still vacant rural town, but our appearance there was lawyers. The room doubled as a library,
cells at La Roca, and it is the highest-se- called off at the last minute. Noboa told and on a makeshift shelf I spotted a
curity facility we have.” me that the suspects had been alerted by Deepak Chopra book and an English-
The next morning, over breakfast at an intelligence leak, so the bust was too language copy of Howard Zinn’s “A
the luxurious beachfront hotel where insignificant to bother with—he wasn’t People’s History of the United States.”
Noboa was staying, I asked about the about to show up for three guys caught Nearby was a tome on Ecuador’s judi-
exchange. Noboa suggested that it with a couple of kilos and a donkey. In- cial system and another on agronomy.
wasn’t unusual to get pushback from stead, we went to Guayaquil, where he “Please try and get us some more books,”
security officers. “I’m sure they have took two days off to visit relatives, in- Macías pleaded.
agreements,” he said. (The naval offi- cluding his first child, who lives there The main cellblock was a dark, cav-
cer denied links to drug trafficking.) with his ex-wife. While he was occupied, ernous two-story rectangle built around
“The big guys don’t want to go to La I obtained permission to visit La Roca. a concrete yard. It held about fifty of
Roca because they have no control.” In Ecuador’s most secure prison sits next Ecuador’s most dangerous prisoners,
other prisons, he said, the inmates were to a highway on the scrubby outskirts Macías explained, but also a former se-
used to doing whatever they liked: “It’s of the city, an area of car-repair shops, nior judicial official and the son of Ec-
like a night club.” electrical pylons, and run-down build- uador’s Vice-President, who had been
After our breakfast attendant left the ings. The entry road was surrounded by charged with inf luence-peddling.
room, he lowered his voice and said, chain-link fencing, overgrown with Noboa had had a falling out with the
“Manabí is one of the areas where the weeds, and festooned with trash. A new Vice-President, and some observers be-
military has done the fewest crackdowns. warden, Martha Macías, was appointed lieved that he had orchestrated her son’s
If I didn’t come here, there was no earlier this year, after one of her prede- arrest in an attempt to force her resig-
chance they were going to move those cessors was accused of smuggling a nation. (A spokesman for Noboa said
that judicial authorities had made the
decision independently.)
As we approached, prisoners reached
through the bars of their cells and
pressed their faces close to look. Macías
got permission from one inmate for
me to see his cell. The inmate, a pale
middle-aged man, was led out by a cor-
don of guards. In the cell, which Macías
described wryly as a “suite,” there were
two concrete slabs, stacked like bunk
beds; one held a soiled mattress. There
was also a toilet and a sink. Macías ex-
plained that prisoners didn’t leave their
cells even for meals.
The cellblock was hot, and the air
still and fetid. After a few minutes, pris-
oners began calling out from the floor
above. One shouted, “Help us get back
our family visits!” Another, complain-
ing about the constant lockdown,
screamed, “This isn’t El Salvador!”
La Roca was evidently not the worst- “Mirror, mirror, on the floor, when will
case scenario. Ecuador’s prisons are I learn how to use a power drill?”
largely off limits to journalists, but
Human Rights Watch says that observ-
ers have reported “restrictions in the
• •
provision of food, medicines and other
basic services, cases of beatings, use of a public building in Guayaquil. He en- the internal war, President López Ob-
teargas, electric shocks, sexual violence tered accompanied by guards, wearing rador adopted a reformist policy known
and deaths at the hands of soldiers.” a flak jacket and a helmet. The violence as abrazos, no balazos (“hugs, not bul-
Even at La Roca, there wasn’t enough in Durán had become gruesome, he said, lets”). Noboa dismissed this milder phi-
food for “los P.P.L.,” Macías told me, re- with beheadings and bodies hung from losophy, saying that it had done noth-
ferring to the Spanish for “persons de- overpasses. “I try to overcome my fear ing to curb violence in Mexico. He
prived of liberty.” As she drove me back every day,” he told me. pointed out that the powerful Sinaloa
out, she asked me to tell the President Chonillo, who is thirty-nine, has de- and Nueva Generación cartels had only
about the problems she faced. In Quito grees from the University of Miami and increased their influence in Ecuador,
a couple of days later, I relayed her con- from Mexico’s élite Monterrey Institute with deadly results.
cerns to Noboa. He listened but looked of Technology and Higher Education. In his most combative and self-re-
unsympathetic. “The conditions could He was in Mexico in 2006 when Pres- garding moods, Noboa seemed to sug-
be a lot worse,” he said. ident Felipe Calderón declared his own gest that he was fighting the war with
war on the drug cartels. Since then, the narcos on his own. He showed me
urán, a sprawling town across the nearly two hundred and fifty thousand a video from social media in which
D river from Guayaquil, is the most
dangerous place in Ecuador. Gangs are
people are estimated to have died as a
result of the conflict, and more than a
masked thugs warned that they were
going to rape his wife and kill him—
fighting for control of its streets, and hundred thousand have disappeared. one of many such threats, he said. With
last year alone more than four hundred “What is happening here now is some- obvious pleasure, he told a story about
people were murdered there. thing like that,” Chonillo said. “States how he’d sent word to a gang chief that,
In May, 2023, a reformist new mayor of siege tend to work at the beginning. if he didn’t free a group of hostages he
named Luis Chonillo was ambushed as But without continuity these policies had taken, Noboa would go in with the
he drove to his inauguration, and three don’t work.” He suggested that law en- special forces and personally “shoot him
people were killed. Chonillo survived, but forcement needed to be matched by in the face.” During one of my visits, he
he has never sat in the mayor’s office; programs to address the poverty and was carrying around “Fouché,” Stefan
he lives in secrecy, surrounded by armed inequity that allow gangs to flourish. Zweig’s biography of Napoleon’s crafty,
guards. He governs by phone and Zoom, “It’s important to get resources to the amoral minister of police.
and often sleeps in a different bed each affected towns and cities,” Chonillo said. One day, flying back to Quito after
night. Every few weeks, he visits his “Otherwise, how will we ever recover a visit to a prison in Cuenca, where au-
family, who have fled to a safer location. the public spaces?” thorities had discovered a secret tunnel
I met Chonillo in the back room of As Mexicans grew disillusioned with dug by inmates, Noboa wondered
whether it was possible to build a prison tence criminals from there? Looking istration spokesman claimed that ene-
in territory that Ecuador has legal ac- doubtful, the aide promised to investi- mies had disabled a hydroelectric dam
cess to in Antarctica. “We have a slice gate that, too. by opening the f loodgates; the dam
of it, so why not?” he said, with a sly turned out not to have floodgates. Soon
smile. “A prison for just a hundred guys.” s the bloody skirmishes with the afterward, a luxury development that
A senior aide, sitting across from us,
coughed nervously. “Mr. President, it’s
A narcos dragged on, Noboa seemed
increasingly conspiratorial. In conver-
Noboa’s wife was planning on land
owned by his family was halted by en-
not a bad idea, but I think the Antarc- sation, he intimated that some of his vironmentalists, who pointed out that
tic nations are bound by a treaty, and political rivals had sex with minors. it encroached on a nature conservancy.
their presence there is limited to scien- Publicly, he referred to a judge who An investigation was opened, but Noboa
tific research and the like,” he said. “But challenged him over prisoners’ rights claimed that his family was abandon-
I will investigate.” as “anti-patriotic” and suggested that ing the project only to avoid empow-
After a moment’s consideration, his opposition in the legislature was ering his political opponents.
Noboa raised another possibility. If Ant- trying to “destabilize the government.” On the evening of April 5th, Noboa
arctica turned out to be too compli- In April, there were frequent power made an extraordinarily provocative
cated, could he protect prosecutors and outages, causing widespread frustration. move: he ordered police commandos to
judges who were facing threats by mov- In response, Noboa fired the energy breach the gates of the Mexican Em-
ing them to Ecuadorian embassies minister, accusing her and twenty-one bassy in Quito. Inside, they arrested
abroad? Could they legally try and sen- other officials of sabotage. An admin- Jorge Glas, who had served as Ecua-
dor’s Vice-President under Rafael Cor-
rea. Glas is a controversial figure who,
in 2017 and 2020, was convicted of brib-
ery and corruption and sentenced to a
total of fourteen years in prison—though
a judge allowed him early release, rul-
ing that his well-being was at risk. He
was under investigation in a separate
case when he fled to the Embassy and
secured political asylum.
A standoff ensued, as Noboa refused
to honor the asylum. Finally, he told
the police to move in. Within minutes,
videos circulated online that showed
the former Vice-President being driven
from the compound, and the Mexican
official in charge of the Embassy shout-
ing in outrage as he was jostled by po-
lice and then pushed to the ground. Of-
ficials around the world expressed
indignation over a breach of the Vi-
enna Convention on Diplomatic Rela-
tions. The Mexican government broke
off relations with Ecuador, and Nica-
ragua soon followed, condemning the
“neo-fascist political barbarism” of No-
boa’s government.
Observers within Ecuador were fu-
rious, too. Verónica Potes, a prominent
lawyer and activist, told me, “To go into
the Mexican Embassy like that was a
signal that he is ready to violate any
norm. I don’t think he has any scruples
about breaking any laws.” She said that
Noboa appeared determined to con-
solidate power, with the referendum
and his reëlection in mind. Leonidas
Iza, the leader of Ecuador’s largest In-
digenous alliance, Conaie, presented
me with a litany of Noboa’s worrisome
behaviors—which included accusing sponses from Canada and China were sponse: “Like they’ve done in Donetsk
rights groups like his of conspiring with milder, and slower to arrive. and Luhansk, we’re moving the whole
narcos. “It’s clear that Noboa is trying Along with Mexico and Nicaragua, Army to those f ive provinces.” He
to create a state like Bukele’s,” Iza said. Venezuela and Colombia also force- laughed at the ungainly comparison to
“It goes beyond authoritarianism. He fully condemned the raid. Noboa saw the war in Ukraine, but he was serious
has a dictatorial attitude.” a plot: Correa and his allies were try- about further militarizing the conflict.
Thirty-six hours after the Embassy ing to position him as a right-wing He had extended the state of emergency,
raid, I met Noboa at Carondelet, where extremist. “They need to show me as and it seemed possible that it would go
I was shown into an expansive living a neo-Nazi, because I’ve been taking on for the foreseeable future.
area with elaborate sofas, gilded mir- away their more moderate voters,” he Huge numbers of Ecuadorians were
rors, and a grand piano topped with said. “They want to put me in that box still fleeing the violence, making their
silver-framed photographs of his fam- because it’s hard to fight me when I way north through the lawless Darién
ily. Through the windows, I could see am in the center.” Laugh- jungle, which links Panama
the ranks of terra-cotta roofs that make ing, he added, “It’s like an and Colombia. On the way,
up the colonial heart of old Quito, and M.M.A. fight—I would many were preyed on by
beyond them the tin-roofed slums on beat them all, because I criminals, suffering robber-
the adjacent hills. have ground game, and I ies, rapes, and sometimes
Noboa came in wearing a red-and- can kick and punch them. murder. Ecuador was also
white athletic shirt bearing the logo for But if they put me in a box- being used as a transit point
Pilsener, a ubiquitous Ecuadorian beer. ing match I’d probably lose, for U.S.-bound migrants
Chuckling, he said, “It’s been a crazy because it’s the only thing from other countries.
few days.” He explained his decision to they know how to do.” Noboa said that sixty thou-
arrest Glas. “The option of entering the Regardless of the con- sand Chinese people—
Embassy was always in my head over troversy, his polling num- mostly young men—had
the last couple of months,” he said. He bers remained high. Noboa considered f lown into Quito in the first three
told me that Attorney General Salazar the raid a victory: “If Glas had escaped, months of the year, and only half had
had heard from witnesses in the Metásta- we’d have lost the referendum, because flown out. The rest were presumably
sis case that Glas was leading operations it would have made us look weak.” heading north.
aimed at undermining his government. Outside Latin America, Noboa has
“He’s a very dark figure,” Noboa said. hen the referendum was held, retained the support of key allies, in-
As Vice-President, Glas had over-
seen the ministries in charge of ports,
W on April 21st, Noboa won it
handily, as some two-thirds of voters
cluding the United States. “The sense
is, he has warts, but who doesn’t?” the
highways, electrical plants, and petro- approved nine of his security measures. diplomat in Quito said. But Noboa ex-
leum. “If you were a cartel, you needed His economic plans were far less pop- pressed frustration at the extent of that
to talk to two guys,” Noboa said. “Glas ular; two proposals to loosen business support. He complained that the U.S.
and another guy, José Serrano, who was regulations, which his opposition had had recently sent ninety billion dollars
the minister of the interior.” Serrano described as gifts to the neoliberal élite, to help Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, while
was living comfortably in Florida; were soundly rejected. But, over all, giving him just ten million for his fight
Noboa had asked American officials to Noboa was delighted by the outcome. against the cartels. “Ten million dollars,”
arrest him, but they had thus far de- Even before the votes were entirely he exclaimed. “We’re in a war, and we
clined. (Serrano denied any wrongdo- counted, he proclaimed victory on so- represent twenty per cent of the migra-
ing and called the accusations “base- cial media, writing, “I apologize for tion crisis.” He went on, “Yesterday, I
less.” Glas’s lawyer said that his client jumping the gun on a triumph that I had a meeting with the C.I.A., and I
hadn’t been charged with committing cannot help but celebrate.” That eve- said, ‘Please, help. Focus all your efforts
anti-government acts or having con- ning, he gathered with his wife and on the border between Ecuador and Co-
nections with drug groups.) Glas, mean- several close aides on the rooftop of lombia. If you don’t want to help us with
while, had taken the fall for the Cor- Carondelet, with the lights of the city anything else, it’s enough to do that.’ ”
rea team, evidently without informing beneath them. I wondered whether Noboa’s idea for
on anyone. “If he gets out of jail, he’s A week later, when I saw him in his an Antarctic prison was still on the table.
got power,” Noboa said. “The day he office, he was still in an upbeat mood. He said that his aide had looked into
talks, the whole structure collapses.” He was wearing a tailored gray suit with it: “Initially, they said you could only
Noboa told me that the U.S., Can- a yellow-and-blue silk tie; an emissary have scientific-research stations.” But
ada, and China had not said anything of the Pope was waiting in a nearby room there might be a way around the restric-
about the Embassy raid. “They seem to see him. Since our last meeting, how- tion, if the facility was run by the mil-
O.K. with it,” he said. A few days later, ever, there had been an uptick in vio- itary. He could already picture it—the
the U.S. national-security adviser, Jake lence in several provinces. Two mayors country’s enemies removed to a mili-
Sullivan, denounced the incursion, say- had been murdered, and the warden of tary prison, in a frigid waste thousands
ing that it “jeopardizes the foundation a prison in Manabí had been killed. of miles from Quito. “Yes!” he said. “It’s
of basic diplomatic norms.” But the re- Noboa said that he had mounted a re- a great possibility.” 
U.S. JOURNAL
GHOSTS ON THE WATER

Glass eels are mysterious creatures—and worth a fortune to those who catch them.
BY PAIGE WILLIAMS
T
he Sargasso Sea, a warm, calm runs from late March to early June. Four on a per-pound basis.” A recent issue
expanse of the North Atlantic Native American tribes may legally fish of Marine Policy cited “unprecedented
Ocean, is bordered not by land another two thousand or so pounds, demand” for American eel. Only lob-
but by four strong currents—a gyre. Vast with more than half of that amount ster outranks it in Maine.
mats of prickly brown seaweed float so designated for the Passamaquoddy, who During a favorable market and a
thickly on the windless surface that have lived in Maine and eastern Can- hard elver run, a Mainer may earn a
Christopher Columbus worried about ada for some twelve thousand years. hundred thousand dollars in a single
his ships getting stuck. The biodiverse Maine is the only state with a major haul. Each license holder is assigned a
sanctuary within and beneath the sar- elver fishery. South Carolina has a small quota, ranging from four pounds to
gassum produces Anguilla rostrata, the one (ten licensed elvermen), but every- more than a hundred, based partly on
American eel. Each female lays some where else, in an effort to preserve the seniority. Even the lowest quota insures
eight million eggs. The eggs hatch as species, elver fishing is a federal crime. a payout of six thousand dollars if the
ribbonlike larvae that drift to the Gulf The elvermen sell their catch to price per pound breaches fifteen hun-
Stream, which carries them to the con- state-licensed buyers, who in turn sell dred, which happens with some regu-
tinental shelf. By the time they reach to customers in Asia. The baby eels are larity. Maine is the only place in the
Maine, the larvae have transformed into shipped live, mostly to Hong Kong, in country where a kid can become eligi-
swimmers about the length of an index clear plastic bags of water and pure ox- ble for an elver license at fifteen and
finger, with the circumference of a bean ygen, like a sophisticated twist on pet- win a shot at making more money over-
sprout and the translucence of a jelly- store goldfish. They live in carefully night, swinging a net, than slinging
fish. Hence their nickname, glass eels, tended tanks and ponds at aquaculture years’ worth of burgers. Elvermen have
also known as elvers. The glass eel is farms until they are big enough to be sent their children to college on eels,
barely visible, but for a dark stripe—its eaten. Japan alone annually consumes and have used the income to improve
developing backbone—and a couple of at least a hundred thousand tons of their homes, their businesses, their
chia seeds for eyes. “Ghosts on the freshwater eel, unagi, which is widely boobs. This year, more than forty-five
water,” a Maine fisherman once called enjoyed kabayaki style—butterf lied, hundred Mainers applied for sixteen
them. Travelling almost as one, like a marinated, and grilled. available licenses.
swarm or a murmuration, glass eels enter The American eel became a valu- One frosty evening in April, an el-
tidal rivers and push upstream, pursu- able commodity as overfishing, poach- verman named Sam Glass turned onto
ing the scent of freshwater until, ide- ing, and other forms of human inter- a dead-end road in the state’s northern-
ally, they reach a pond and commence ference led to the decline of similar most coastal region, Down East, and
a long, tranquil life of bottom-feeding. species in Japan (Anguilla japonica) and parked beside a stream. The water was
Elvers mature into adults two to three Europe (Anguilla anguilla). Those spe- about thirty feet wide, with boulders
feet in length, with the girth and the cies are now red-listed as, respectively, across it and trees on the other side. The
coloring of a slimy bicycle tire. Then, endangered and critically endangered. stream feeds West Bay, which leads to
one distant autumn, on some unknown The U.S. has not declared the Ameri- the Atlantic, whose tide swells and then
cue, they return to the Sargasso, where can eel endangered, and fishermen want shrinks the river’s volume every twelve
they spawn and die. to keep it that way. hours. Glass, a tall, reserved fifty-year-
Maine has thirty-five hundred miles In March, 2011, just before elver sea- old with dark, curly hair and a trim beard,
of coastline, including coves, inlets, and son started in Maine, a tsunami in Japan pulled five hand-chopped maple poles
bays, plus hundreds of tidal rivers, thou- decimated aquaculture ponds, driving from the bed of his pickup truck and
sands of streams, and what has been de- the price of American glass eels from carried them down the riverbank. Next,
scribed as “an ungodly amount of about two hundred dollars per pound he fetched a plastic bucket, nylon cord,
brooks.” Hundreds of millions of glass to nearly nine hundred by the season’s coils of rope, two boat anchors, and a
eels arrive each spring, as the waters closing day. The next year, the price fyke net. Unfurled, the net, made of
warm. Four hundred and twenty-five reached one thousand eight hundred pale, fine-gauge mesh, resembled a Chi-
licensed elvermen are allowed to har- and sixty-nine dollars per pound, and nese lantern trailed by two oversized
vest slightly more than seven thousand soon topped two thousand. National streamers, or a mutant sea creature with
five hundred pounds of them during a Fisherman calls glass eels “likely the a barrel-shaped head.
strictly regulated fishing season, which most valuable fish in the United States Glass, wearing waders, sloshed into
In coastal Maine, jackpot payouts, fierce secrecy, and transnational poaching have transformed the eel industry.
ILLUSTRATION BY AGNES JONAS THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 37
the water and fastened a rope around lean of the stanchions. Hawks and bald supply. Loughran and Glass augmented
a boulder, securing the barrel, called the eagles were circling, and watching from their own fishing by taking a commis-
tail bag, at the foot of a gentle rapids. tree branches. He finished after sun- sion on each transaction. When I asked
Back on land, he hooked a streamer to down, his exhalations visible in the beam why not sell directly to Hong Kong,
one of the maple poles, which he’d of his headlamp. “That’s about it,” he bypassing the middlemen, another fish-
stabbed into the earth as a stanchion. said, and walked back up the riverbank, erman who overheard the question said,
The streamer now resembled a wing, through the bulrush and thorn. A block “It isn’t done.”
hemmed at the top with tubular buoys of dislodged snow slipped downstream, Glass has other entrepreneurial in-
and weighted at the bottom with chains pinballing through the boulders and terests, including turning a cottage that
and one of the boat anchors. To pull passing beneath a bridge, beyond which he built when he was twenty into an
the wing taut, Glass roped it to a spruce, other elvermen had just finished set- Airbnb property. Aside from a shipyard
then went to work on the other streamer. ting their nets. Glass went home to wait pension, eeling constitutes Loughran’s
The net took shape as an ocean-facing for high water. entire livelihood. He is a gregarious fa-
funnel, hugging the shore. ther of three in his forties who always
The high-tide line showed on the lass grew up in a cedar-shingled wears a baseball cap and, because of a
riverbank like a shadow on a wall. In
about six hours, the water would rise
G house on ten acres near Dyer Bay,
and still lives there today. He keeps fyke
nerve disorder, walks with a cane. When
he was a boy, his father, an eeler, ad-
again, submerging the tail bag and the nets strung up near his apple trees and vised him to get a fishing license in case
bottom half of the wings. Glass was piled in a greenhouse, where he’s been glass eels ever became valuable, never
working to beat the setting sun and to restoring his late father’s lobster boat. expecting a disaster on the other side
harness the pull of the moon. If he had He got burned out on lobstering a while of the world to produce Florida-condo
set a good net, baby eels would swim ago and fantasizes about piloting the money, comfortable-retirement money.
right into his trap. boat to the Bahamas. He prefers eel- In the early boom days of eeling, armed
Elvers avoid strong currents by keeping to lobstering, and travelling to al- buyers roamed the coast with aerated
ing to the sides of rivers, the way mice most anything. tanks and a tantalizing amount of bun-
follow baseboards. Glass long ago A couple of years ago, Glass and an- dled cash, paying for elvers straight out
learned to look for “pinch points,” where other elverman, Ryan Loughran, went of the water.
the eels are likely to pass within two into business together as licensed elver The Maine Department of Marine
feet of shore. For the better part of two buyers. They partnered with a Korean Resources now required fishermen to
hours, he cut cord, tied clove hitches, businessman who wanted to stake a sell their catch at a fixed address. Glass’s
positioned the anchors, tweaked the local broker and guarantee a shippable home wasn’t particularly conducive to
handling customers, so he reached out
to the patriarch of a respected fishing
family who lived in a more convenient
location, with a wide gravel driveway
and a stand-alone garage. Glass had
known the patriarch’s wife since grade
school. The patriarch captained a range
of vessels and wore jackets embroidered
with the name of his forty-two-foot
Duffy. “I scallop, I lobster, I eel,” he told
me one night. I wondered what hap-
pens when two competing boats show
up at the same fishing grounds—who
wins? The patriarch said, “Whoever’s
got the biggest balls and the biggest
red knife.” A lobsterman standing next
to him nodded solemnly.
The patriarch agreed to rent Glass
and Loughran his garage as a buying
station. (His name isn’t mentioned here
because he wouldn’t allow it, but he
tolerated my hanging around.) This
year, in late March, they brought in
tanks, aerators, nets, buckets, folding
tables, and a portable scale. In one cor-
ner, near a “TRUMP 2020” banner, they
installed a chest-high tank, which re-
sembled a one-person hot tub. Some-
one chalked “$900” on a blackboard. box, and showed it to me: “Even that book video of glass eels wriggling around
Demand in Asia drives the price, one will cause mass destruction.” in, supposedly, a cup of sake.
but the floor is set locally by a small The patriarch often eats scallops out Years ago, John Wyatt Greenlee was
group of buyers whose names are known of the shell on his boat. He plucked a working on a doctorate in medieval his-
and whose conversations, I was told, baby eel from the tank and swallowed tory when he became intrigued by sev-
are private. Nine hundred dollars per it alive. Glass, who is known for his enteenth-century maps of London,
pound was the lowest opening price in ability to stomach anything, did the which showed images of “eel ships” an-
years. (Loughran had heard that there same, and said, “Not much taste to ’em.” chored in the Thames. The Dutch had
was a “bottleneck” in Hong Kong.) As This was an old trick sometimes per- been selling salted eel to England since
the season progresses, the price climbs formed for nosy outsiders. Eleven years at least the fourteenth century, and now
in twenty-five- or fifty-dollar incre- ago, an elverman downed delivered them live. Call-
ments. Each change is posted in Elver- a live eel in front of a Buzz- ing himself “Surprised Eel
holics, a popular fishing forum on Face- Feed reporter and claimed Historian, PhD,” Greenlee
book. Some fishermen sell early and that it tried to crawl back took his findings to Twit-
low, just to get money in hand. Those up his throat. ter, attracting tens of thou-
who won’t even consider taking less In the human palm, a liv- sands of followers with
than fifteen hundred dollars a pound ing mass of glass eels feels trivia (early Britons could
respond with yawn emojis and exhor- like a cold pile of squirm. pay their rent in eels), cheek
tations to “HOOOLLLDDDD!!!!” as In captivity, they resemble (“Eel on Twitter > Elon
they wait for the price-setters to turn restless black threads, or Twitter”), and activism
on one another. pepper that has learned how (“Eels are also a super-im-
In early spring, there’s little for fisher- to move. Eels enjoy density, portant part of stream ecol-
men in Maine to do other than catch and often cuddle up in piles. With each ogies”). Greenlee told me, “It’s not a
bait herring and prepare boats and drags. scoop of the net, elvers wriggled onto panda, or something big and majestic,
The clam flats are still thawing. Eeling, Glass’s wrist before appearing to leap and it’s not a cute otter. Eels are slimy,
theoretically, bridges the gap between back into the water. Glass said, joking weird, snakelike things. But they’re an
seasons. Glass eels hate turbulence, and a little, “This was the funnest business umbrella species. Saving them means
cold water stupefies them. They seem in the world, but the government doesn’t saving broad swaths of habitat from the
to run hardest under a full or new moon, want to see you have fun or make money. ocean all the way up to the headwaters.”
in warmer weather, which may not come We used to be able to go at it unlimited.” Previous eel obsessives have included
until May or June, by which time the “A free-for-all,” the patriarch said. Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Linnaeus,
season is nearly over. This year, rain and Licensed fishermen could once set and Freud, who published one of his
snow had left the rivers frothy and high. as many fykes and catch as many glass first papers, in 1877, on eels. (He dis-
Eelers were pulling their nets to avoid eels as they wanted, using a net of any sected hundreds of them in a futile
losing them to the blow. Leaving baby size or type. The patriarch showed me search for clues to how they reproduce.)
eels trapped in churn was “like puttin’ a cell-phone video of someone dump- Contemporary biologists know more
’em through a washing machine,” the ing a funky gumbo of overage back into about the eel’s reproductive system than
patriarch told me. a river, to comply with the state’s lim- Freud did, but the sex life of eels is still
Loughran set up a makeshift bar in its. The price at the time was twenty- a secret that plays out within the pres-
the garage. One night, he invited a bunch two hundred dollars per pound. The surized depths of the Sargasso. Despite
of people over. I walked in to find about eels would have fetched more than numerous attempts, no one has ever
a dozen fishermen, drinks in hand. ninety grand. seen them mate in the wild, or man-
Loughran was sitting behind his scale, aged to document the hatching of eggs
his laptop open. School had been can- ike lobster, eel was popular for its outside of captivity.
celled for the next day, because of an-
other incoming snowstorm. Bottles of
L affordability and protein before it
became an expensive delicacy. In the
The freshwater eel “has a complex
life history, parts of which are still
Bacardi Limón and Skrewball peanut- U.K., elvers are scrambled with eggs. In shrouded in mystery,” Jonna Tom-
butter whiskey were being drained. the Basque country, elvers a la bilbaína kiewicz, a senior researcher at the Na-
In the corner, Glass was running an are fried in olive oil with chili peppers tional Institute of Aquatic Resources,
aquarium net through the holding tank, and garlic. The Scandinavians smoke in Denmark, explained in one of many
cleaning out dead eels and searching eels. The Maori roast them in leaves. The papers she’s written on the subject. Do
for killers. The elver’s mortal enemies Economist once noted that the cooking the larvae live on gelatinous plankton?
include trout and raccoons, but eelers encyclopedia “Larousse Gastronomique,” Marine snow? Where in the water col-
most despise sea lice, fingertip-size crus- published in 1938, contains forty-five dif- umn do they feed? Without this kind
taceans that look as lovely as their name. ferent recipes for eel. (“To kill an eel, of knowledge, researchers are “often op-
The lice bite the eels; the eels die. The seize it with a cloth and bang its head erating in the dark.” In “Under the Sea-
patriarch fished a brown louse from a violently against a hard surface.”) Cock- Wind,” Rachel Carson observed that
garbage barrel, where it had been cling- tail garnishes are typically inanimate (and when the American eel returned to its
ing to the side of an empty Miller Lite non-sentient), but I recently saw a Face- sargassum patch to die it “passed from
human sight and almost from human thousand—eighteen pounds, a personal changed our life,” she said, in an inter-
knowledge.” In his book “Eels,” James best. On the Union River, in Ellsworth, view for an oral-history project in 2014.
Prosek, whom the Times has dubbed “a the capital of Down East eeling, fish- “And then let’s look at how it’s con-
kind of underwater Audubon,” calls this ermen were said to have caught more tributing to the rest of the state. We
final swim “among the greatest unseen than a million dollars’ worth of glass paid sixty thousand dollars in taxes last
migrations of any creature on the planet.” eels in a single night. year. That’s enough money to support
For adult eels, the trip often involves The next year, the fishing was still five families on welfare.”
surviving the turbine blades of hydro- so good that one elverman tattooed his Keene, who considered herself a good
electric dams. A Maine elverman named forearm with an eel, dollar signs, and steward of Maine’s natural resources,
Randy Bushey once reported finding “2013,” memorializing a record season told the historian that she had watched
migrating eels “chopped up in perfect, that afforded him, among other things, “a complete gold rush” nearly destroy
one-foot chunks.” Brian Altvater, Sr., a a new four-wheeler. Rural Mainers sea urchins in the late eighties and early
member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe could work their entire lives and never nineties, and that she didn’t want to see
who is working to restore healthy fish see big money, especially all at once, es- the same thing happen to eels or any
runs to the Schoodic River, on the Ca- pecially Down East, where the median other species. “I believe in having a fu-
nadian border, has pushed for the re- household income was about thirty-six ture,” she said. That future already
moval of dams by arguing that “they thousand dollars. seemed compromised by factors unre-
generate very little electricity compared Jackpot payouts, in cash, fomented lated to conservation. Keene described
to the damage that they do to the en- a wild period of interstate elver poach- pervasive drug abuse and a “lot of alco-
tire ecosystem.” ing. Saboteurs sliced their competitors’ holism” Down East, where, as in many
Elvers are the key to eel aquaculture nets. Untended buckets got taken. rural areas, it can be hard to get help.
farming, given the difficulty, as yet, of Thieves would detach entire tail bags (A record seven hundred and twenty-
captive breeding and scalable hatcher- and run off with them. Loughran’s fa- three Mainers died of overdoses in 2022.)
ies. Japan, which now imports two- ther used to have him camp beside their Keene said, “How does a local commu-
thirds of its eel stock, was eying the “honey hole” around the clock. A splash nity hold on just by their fingernails,
American eel as early as 1970. The fol- in the night, or “hootin’ and hollerin’,” you know?”
lowing spring, William Sheldon, a as one eeler put it, was the sound of Responsible fishermen don’t disap-
young employee of the Maine Depart- fishermen throwing one another into prove of rules; they simply want more
ment of Marine Resources with a new the drink. “There were just hundreds of of a say in making them. Regulators
degree in wildlife management, em- people poaching,” Darrell Young, a were worried about the American eel’s
barked on a study to see if the state’s prominent elverman, told a filmmaker. decline, but fishermen were seeing el-
elver numbers could support a fishery. Another, Rick Sibley, said that eeling vers in what Keene called “Biblical”
He found more than enough, and in a “didn’t bring the community together— numbers. Eelers wondered if the regu-
report that is still referenced today, he it tore people apart.” lators were perhaps looking in the wrong
detailed his observations along with By 2014, the state had imposed its place, or conducting their census on
one of his fishing inventions, the “Shel- quota, capped the number of elver li- nights when eels didn’t “go.” Keene said,
don trap.” (A net with a mesh size censes, limited eelers to two nets, banned “Just because they didn’t go doesn’t mean
“somewhat smaller than ordinary win- cash transactions (buyers must pay with they’re not there.” No one seemed to
dow screening” appeared to work best.) checks), and implemented a swipe-card know exactly how many elvers there
Sheldon also described how to harvest, system to monitor eelers’ individual were, or whether any decrease in pop-
hold, and transport elvers without kill- hauls in real time. The regulations were ulation was caused by overfishing or
ing them. The document was founda- devised in collaboration with the At- more properly attributable to the tur-
tional to the fishery that exists today. lantic States Marine Fisheries Com- bine gantlet and other hazards. Jason
mission, a long-standing interstate body Bartlett, a Maine Department of Ma-
hen Maine’s elver season starts, that works with federal agencies to rine Resources biologist who special-
W every March 22nd, eelers pray
for warm weather. Some toss a coin in
maintain a sustainable industry. Poach-
ing quieted down. Fishermen who had
izes in eels, told me that he is increas-
ingly worried about a swim-bladder
their chosen river, for luck. A couple of let their license expire kicked them- parasite that messes with an eel’s buoy-
days before the opening in 2012, the selves when, in 2018, the price of elvers ancy: “If they can’t get off the bottom,
year after the tsunami in Japan boosted peaked at twenty-eight hundred dol- they’re going to die before they get back
prices, the temperature reached the low lars a pound. Now it was possible to to the Sargasso.” The U.S. Fish and
eighties, far above average. Julie Keene, get back in only through a state lottery. Wildlife Service, in its most recent sig-
a veteran eeler from Lubec, at the north- A fourth-generation sardine packer, nificant assessment of A. rostrata, ac-
eastern tip of the contiguous United Keene started fishing glass eels decades knowledged a decline but indicated that
States, got a sunburn and fourteen glass ago, when it paid barely twenty dollars “the American eel population is not
eels. That time of year, the typical num- a pound. After the price spiked, she and subject to threats that would imperil its
ber was zero, because the rivers were her longtime boyfriend were able to continued existence.”
usually still full of ice. Within a couple buy two new trucks, plant an orchard, The A.S.M.F.C. has never increased
of days, she had caught about forty-five and build a barn and a garage. “It’s Maine’s over-all quota. Individual quotas
are not made public, and fishermen re-
veal their number about as quickly as
they give up their favorite fishing spot.
Some of those who remember the un-
regulated days bristle at any limit (“Fish-
ermen always grumble,” one elverman
told me), but they were especially infu-
riated when the lottery was introduced,
in 2013, and their quotas stagnated while
the state admitted newcomers. Keene
said, at the time, “How is that reward-
ing someone that’s been in this fishery,
that breathes that fishery? That makes
their own gear, that is dependent on it,
that understands it, that respects it? I
still have a license because I obey the
law. How is that rewarding good faith?”
lass eels are an ideal target for sub-

G terfuge, because they run at night
and because once they’re out of the water
it is impossible to prove where they
came from. The risk-reward ratio makes
them irresistible. Eel smuggling, report-
edly a four-billion-dollar-a-year trade
spanning at least three continents, has
been called the world’s least known but Sam Glass tends to his fyke net. “We used to be able to go at it unlimited,” he said.
most profitable wildlife crime. (The
G-7’s Financial Action Task Force, a had been sourced in Spain. Smugglers over eels ended with one man report-
watchdog federation of thirty-nine there have operated in Algeciras and edly assaulting another with a pipe. Can-
countries, has identified wildlife traf- Tarifa, at the southern tip of the con- ada’s minister of fisheries and oceans
ficking as a “major transnational” racket, tinent, just across the Strait of Gibral- temporarily shut down the country’s
on par with arms dealing and drug run- tar from Morocco, which has restricted fishery, saying, “It was simply too dan-
ning.) Glass eels are among the most elver fishing since 2011. gerous to let this continue.”
bootlegged protected species in Europe. Although A. anguilla tends to be the Elver fishing in Canada was can-
In 2021, an investigation into the assas- most trafficked eel species, in 2022, Hong celled again this year, but eelers went
sination of the Haitian President Jo- Kong alone imported almost twenty- on eeling. (By late April, the authori-
venel Moïse revealed that his govern- eight thousand pounds of rostrata from ties had charged ninety-five people with
ment had been bearing down on the United States, according to Hiromi doing so, including five Mainers.) First
traffickers of narcotics, weapons—and Shiraishi, a researcher at Chuo Univer- Nation members argued that treaty
eels. Moïse believed that the eel trade sity. The amount far exceeded the quo- rights exempted them from federal reg-
should be regulated and taxed, the Times tas in Maine and South Carolina com- ulations. In a Facebook video, a First
reported, noting, “Many of the eels go bined. When I asked Maine’s fishing Nation fisherman named Cory Francis
to China, but the Haitian police are in- commissioner, Patrick Keliher, to ex- announced plans to set fykes on the
vestigating the industry as a way to laun- plain the discrepancy, he told me, Annis River in Yarmouth County, Nova
der illicit profits.” through a spokesperson, “Elvers from Scotia, a hundred and twenty-two miles
PHOTOGRAPH BY JOCELYN LEE FOR THE NEW YORKER
Glass eels have been found in pas- Maine are being tracked very closely, across the Gulf of Maine, and declared
sengers’ luggage at airports in Amster- and it’s our belief that if there are ad- Canada’s Department of Fisheries and
dam and Brussels. In 2017, British bor- ditional elvers entering the supply chain, Oceans a “criminal element” and a “rogue
der agents checked cargo bound for it’s because of the illegal activity that group.” Accusing the agency of “racially
Hong Kong and discovered, hidden be- has been so prevalent in Canada the profiling Indigenous people,” he said,
neath a batch of iced fish, four hundred last two years.” “You can go fuck off.”
and forty pounds of illicitly harvested In Canada, glass eels are the most
elvers. Half were dead. The smuggler valuable seafood by weight. Last year, a ot long after conducting his semi-
had allegedly spent two years traffick-
ing more than five million eels, with a
woman who lived near Hubbards Cove,
in Nova Scotia, was alarmed to wake at
N nal elver study, Sheldon, the Maine
Department of Marine Resources em-
market value of nearly seventy million three in the morning to see men out- ployee, left government service to be-
dollars. He used a warehouse in Glouces- side, in balaclavas, taking glass eels from come a lobsterman. His boat sank, and
tershire as a way station, and the eels a stream. In another incident, a dispute he turned to eeling. He both fished
and operated as a buyer, once explain- In court, Sheldon minimized, as de- glass eels, someone posted on Facebook,
ing to a TV news station, “The small fendants do. He claimed to have made, “I smell Fed.” One person liked the com-
man can get into it.” The license plate at most, thirty thousand dollars on his ment: Sheldon.
on his truck read “EEL WAGN.” A sign crime, and expressed shame and regret
in his headquarters, in Ellsworth, said for “poor judgment.” His lawyer re- n a recent night, the patriarch and
“Smoking is permitted here in the shop.
Lying is to be expected. Everyone wel-
quested home confinement instead of
incarceration, arguing that Sheldon was
O his son drove to a back-road bridge
north of Acadia National Park and
come here.” a good, stable person: married for nearly parked downslope on a concrete boat
Sheldon often talked to the media. fifty years, a father of two, a grandfather ramp. The headlamps of their truck il-
He was the one who swallowed a live of four, no prior felonies. Hardships luminated little more than a wedge of
eel in front of the BuzzFeed reporter. were enumerated: a sick father, the sunk flotsam. The only other light was the
In that reporter’s profile, published in boat. Worst of all, Sheldon’s daughter sickly twinkle off a scattering of stars.
2013, we find Sheldon in his sixties, with Deb had killed herself as his case un- As I crossed the bridge on foot, it was
both a flare gun and a 40-calibre Glock, folded. Sheldon told the judge, “I will so dark that I could have walked into
serving bucket-bearing customers at a forever feel like I was responsible.” an elephant.
temporary headquarters set up in a cheap Sheldon was sentenced to six months The men were wearing waders,
motel room. He’s on the phone with in prison and three years of probation—a hoodies, and yellow rubber gloves up
“Chinese guys who wired him $600,000 fitting punishment, the judge said, for to their elbows. One of them flicked
on handshake deals.” The year before, “significant deception” and for helping on a powerful f lashlight. From the
Sheldon had “paid his fishermen $12 to create and clandestinely support a bridge, I watched them traverse an in-
million for elvers (about a third of the black market. His probation ended a hospitable stretch of beach and climb
estimated $40 million paid out in Maine few years ago. He gave up his dealer li- the jagged riprap, moving toward the
over the season).” cense but was allowed to keep fishing, bridge piling where their fyke net was
What few knew then was that fed- and went to work for a Maine-based tethered. The outgoing tide churned
eral agents had launched an interstate company co-owned by Mitchell Fei- between the pilings with the noisy ve-
poaching investigation, called Opera- genbaum, a former Philadelphia law- locity of floodwaters. Grasping one of
tion Broken Glass. Baby eels were being yer who moved to Canada decades ago the tethers, the patriarch waded into
harvested up and down the East Coast to become an eel exporter. Feigenbaum the buffeting rush. He untied one end
in places that banned elver fishing, and had testified on Sheldon’s behalf at sen- of the tail bag and emptied it into a
passed off as having come from Maine. tencing, and tried to differentiate him plastic bait bucket that his son was hold-
Dealers were knowingly buying and sell- from the “rough, tough, mean, nasty, ing. Then he re-tied the bag and se-
ing illicit elvers, learning only too late hard individuals” typical of their indus- cured the tether, and the two of them
that they’d been talking to undercover try. He told the judge, “Our product is returned to the truck.
officers.Twenty-one men were ultimately all going to one place. It’s the Chinese Back home, they found Loughran
charged with trafficking more than five government. State-owned industries are waiting at the garage. It was one-thirty
million dollars’ worth of glass eels. pretty much our sole consumer for this in the morning. Eelers on the Presump-
Sheldon was one of them. By the product. They want it as cheap as pos- scot River, another elver stronghold,
time federal agents raided his business, sible. They will engage in predatory further south, were “slaughtering,”
he was considered the grandfather of practices that would make your head Loughran reported. That meant hav-
the industry in Maine. Sheldon had spin, including a lot of the poaching.” ing a good night.
“cornered the market, basically,” a fel- Although Sheldon remains an in- The patriarch’s son set an aquarium
low-elverman later said. In federal court, fluential figure in eeling, he no longer net over the top of an empty bucket
a prosecutor noted, “By his own pro- takes questions. (He did not respond and strained the first of their sludge.
nouncement and by the consensus of to mine.) He and his supporters blamed The pour revealed sea lice, krill, a nee-
the community, he knows more about “the media” for the death of his daugh- dlefish, and a bunch of twitchy stick-
elver fishing than anyone.” ter—a mother of two, a registered nurse, lebacks, as silver as store-bought fish-
In October, 2017, Sheldon pleaded a Steelers fan who refused to shit-talk ing lures—bycatch, all of which gets
guilty to trafficking two hundred and the Patriots, a smoker who was trying returned to the river. Cupping the net
sixty-eight pounds of glass eels from to quit, an alcoholic who already had. from the bottom, the patriarch teased
states where elver fishing is illegal. “Bill “The various stories about Bill and the the few glass eels into view and plucked
Sheldon not only facilitated a black mar- stress it brought to the family had a them out, the way you’d pick lint off a
ket in illegal elvers—he encouraged it,” negative impact,” one of his defense sweater. He said, “We have to work
the federal prosecutor said, at sentenc- documents said. harder for ours than they do down in
ing. “He didn’t just buy illegal elvers— The Sheldon case left a lot of fish- southern Maine. They don’t get out of
he provided poachers with advice and ermen even more wary than usual. bed for this little bit.” I understood what
equipment. He didn’t just dodge the law Loughran told me, “It’s a fragile indus- he meant when I later saw a video in
himself—he told other people what to try, and bad publicity could be very det- which two eelers struggled to lift a tail
say if they got caught.” The prosecutor rimental to it.” Last year, when I ini- bag so full that they might as well have
told the judge, “This was just greed.” tially expressed interest in writing about been trying to move a body. “Holy
centerpiece was a chessboard. After-
ward, Glass walked me out to the green-
SUITE FOR VOICES house and showed me his dad’s lobster
boat, the Don’t Know. He was think-
ing of renaming it the Andromeda. In
SOLITARY the distance we could hear the ocean.
He said, “When it’s real rough, it sounds
If there is no one to hear like a lion’s den.”
the cry is there a When we got back to the house, the
cry that there is patriarch and his wife were there, sit-
no one? ting with Loughran in Glass’s living
room. Loughran told a story about kill-
POEM FOR THE POET’S BIRTHDAY ing twenty-seven rats in one night in
his father’s barn and lining them up as
(Bill Heyen)
evidence of an infestation; the corpses
After Novocain, pain were gone by morning, having presum-
returns in small surges ably been carried off and eaten by other
you might mistake for the life rats. This led to talk of wharf rats, New
it has replaced. York City rats, black widows, brown
recluses, and the redback spiders of
Bill, you’ve always known Australia, but, as inevitably happens
the composing of a poem with elvermen, the conversation re-
is removing tooth from bone turned to eels.
deep-rooted in the bloody jaw Like hunters, elvermen study and
no matter with what mercy, admire the animals that provide their
and precision. livelihood. Glass and Loughran had re-
cently asked Alexa about the lifespan
A YEAR OF TEARS of the American eel, marvelling that
the answer was as many as forty-four
A year of tears years, the same age as Loughran. Be-
& tears in the sky cause eels absorb oxygen through their
we called the road skin, they can skirt a strong current by
to nowhere. leaving the water briefly to climb rocks
& now, the road or scale a concrete dam. They may rest
to the bright shore in a river’s calm pockets, waiting for
we hate for the rising tide to help push them past
rousing hope white water before the next lunar cycle
where there should drags them back.
be none. Loughran told me, “In China and
Japan, there’s whole families that rely
—Joyce Carol Oates on this seed fish for their livelihoods as
well.” (Aquaculture farming has existed
in Asia since antiquity.) On Glass’s tele-
mackerel,” one said. The other said, you ain’t showing nobody that.” Rivals vision, he cued up a YouTube video of
“Oh, my word.” would “set nets around every fucking an eel-farming operation in Taiwan. A
The second pour of the patriarch’s inch of you.” Elvermen don’t like oth- doughy mass oozed out of a machine
bucket writhed with eels—a pound and ers watching their weigh-ins, either. and hit the concrete floor like a dense
a half ’s worth, all told. They moved the Nobody wants the world to know that blob of poo. Glass eels eat nothing—
elvers into their holding tank and pre- he just banked fifty grand. they don’t even have a mouth—but in
pared to wait out the price the way an Several days later, Loughran and the next stage of development, when
investor sits on a promising stock. The Glass brought kimchi (a gift from their they start to resemble garter snakes,
blackboard now said “$950.” It was hard business partner) and fresh crabmeat they can be taught to expect “eel chow,”
to know what kind of payout they could over to Glass’s house. They were mak- often some amalgam of fish proteins,
ultimately expect, given the caginess ing crab rolls when I arrived. Glass oils, and blood. (This garter-snake stage
surrounding pricing and quotas. (Buy- stoked a fire in a woodstove and handed is when glass eels technically become
ers sometimes pay more than the pub- me a Heineken in a jelly jar. We ate elvers, though fishermen almost always
licized rate.) I’d once asked Loughran some dried haddock as he prepared the refer to the two interchangeably.) We
why all the secrecy, and he’d said, “If rolls, which he served on square por- watched a farmer quarter the blob and
you’re pullin’ a hundred pounds a night, celain plates at the dining table, whose drop one of the chunks into a pond. It
In Maine, the right conditions must be
simulated. An indoor operation such
as Rademaker’s requires, to start, square
footage, tanks, feeders, pumps, tem-
perature control, filtration, and clean
water flow. As the eels mature, work-
ers continually separate the stock by
size, so that they’ll feed correctly—and
not on one another.
The Maine Department of Marine
Resources assigned American Unagi a
quota of two hundred pounds. Rade-
maker also buys elvers from local har-
vesters. She told me that black-market
fishing is no longer a concern locally
because of the state’s strict regulations
and enforcement, and that eelers po-
lice themselves: “They’ll turn people in
at the drop of a hat.”
American Unagi is headquartered
in a new ten-million-dollar facility at
an industrial park in the small town of
Waldoboro. The company has twelve
employees, one of whom, Liam Fisher,
is trying to turn eel innards into a mar-
ketable condiment. On the day that I
met him, he was carrying a tiny fish-
shaped bottle of prototype behind one
“They say it gets easier after the third demon child.” ear. He produced it like a magic nickel
and squeezed an oily drop onto my fin-
ger. It tasted like liquid fish. Co-work-
• • ers were preparing to run dead eels
through a butterfly machine. The com-
floated. Hundreds of mature eels at- one growing, processing, and selling its pany, which sells fillets and smoked eel
tacked it from all sides. They were large own valuable catch. Establishing such to restaurants and grocery stores, ex-
and ropy, and you could hear them an enterprise would theoretically keep pects to hit a production record of half
smacking. It was hard to believe that jobs and money Stateside, shrink the a million pounds next year.
the baby eels in the patriarch’s garage trade’s environmental footprint, and, Rademaker led me through a labo-
would grow up eating the stuff in this if done right, provide accountability. ratory, where she and her staff moni-
video. “Yep,” the patriarch said, “and then (Rademaker told me that American tor the health of their eels by micro-
we’re gonna eat them.” The U.S. im- Unagi uses no antibiotics or chemicals.) scope. “We look at their gills, we look
ports eleven million pounds of eel an- Aquaculture farming, the fastest- at their skin, we look at their fins,” she
nually, mostly from China. The elvers growing sector of food production, is a said. The company spends two years
that get shipped to the other side of the global industry valued at more than growing each new class of elvers into
world may wind up right back in Maine. three hundred billion dollars. It already processable adults. We stopped in the
provides half the world’s food and is doorway of a room the size of an air-
Isevenncensus
the United States, according to a
conducted in 2018, there are
eel farms—two fewer than there
projected to account for more as the
planet’s human population hurtles to-
ward ten billion in the next couple of
plane hangar, where nearly two million
eels were living in dozens of gurgling,
futuristic tanks. Another half a million
are frog farms. The only land-based eel decades. Twenty million people work glass eels were quarantined. Rademaker
aquaculture operation, American Unagi, in the aquaculture trade, many of them explained, “We keep things super bio-
is in Midcoast Maine. Sara Rademaker, in developing nations. When someone secure, because we have one time of
an Indiana native who studied aquacul- recently asked Loughran why Maine year to get them.”
ture at Auburn University, started the elvermen don’t try to get a piece of the
company ten years ago by test-raising farming, he replied, “You’d need several hen an elver permit is not re-
elvers in her basement. She had been
looking for a fish to farm when she re-
million dollars just to gear up.”
A successful eel farm requires the
W newed, or the licensee dies, a
newcomer gets the slot via the state’s
alized how ludicrous it was that the only careful balance of environmental fac- lottery. “The lottery’s good,” a fisher-
state with a major elver fishery had no tors: warmth, diet, oxygen, pH levels. man named Randy insisted one night
in the patriarch’s garage. Loughran the lobster boats were going out, windfall haven’t borne much fruit, but
countered, “You have families that have though lobstering, for some, had started that was all right. “We have a nice lit-
been doing this for fucking genera- to feel like more trouble than it was tle garden, and some chickens and stuff,”
tions, and instead of being able to pass worth. The warming oceans are push- she told me.
on their fucking livelihood they have ing lobsters north, and the industry This fall, not long after she picks
to put it up for a lottery, for anyone has already collapsed in southern the last of her cucumbers, Keene will
and their brother to take a piece of it.” Maine. Last year, the statewide catch turn sixty-six. It pains her to know that
“So, yes, then you end up like the fell to ninety-four million pounds, the state law prevents her from bequeath-
Rockefellers,” Randy, who was getting lowest level since 2009. Fishermen’s ing her elver license to her children or
red in the face, replied. prospects are further hampered by ef- grandchildren. It will, in a sense, die
“He’s disgusted because he wants a forts to erect windmill farms and to with her.
piece of this,” Loughran said. save the planet’s last three hundred When I first rang Keene, she an-
“I’m fuckin’ pissed,” Randy said. and sixty or so North Atlantic right swered with a bark worthy of Olive
A lot of Mainers want badly to win whales, which can get tangled in fish- Kitteridge: “What do you want?” Like
the lottery. “It’s an industry, not a ing ropes. In the patriarch’s garage, a most everyone else Down East, she had
fucking cult.” sternman named Tristan told me, “Kids zero interest in talking to another re-
“Randy, chill.” growing up now, I’d tell them not to porter about elvers. “You get hit over
“It’s like lobstering,” Randy said. try working on the water.” Mainers the head every time you do,” she said.
Down East, a commercial lobster li- whose families have been fishing for The articles always seemed to dwell on
cense is one of the few paths to a generations are pushing their children venality and crime. Keene much pre-
middle-class income. (“It’s not like toward contracting, or trucking—to- ferred talking about the sight of a baby
there’s a lot of accounting jobs around ward land. seal, or that night when she was out
here,” one elverman told me.) Certain Several days ago, I called Keene, clamming alone and sat on a bucket to
lobster permits can be legally trans- the fisherwoman from Lubec. Her smoke a cigarette, and a fox strolled by.
ferred, and they often sell for tens of family has lived in Maine since it was She told me, “It’s not just about how
thousands of dollars. Feigenbaum, Massachusetts. An ancestor, Richard much money you can make. It’s about
the exporter who co-owns the com- Warren, came over on the Mayflower, seeing the alewives trying to get up-
pany that Sheldon went to work for she told me. (“I have my certificate!”) river, and an eagle fishing for them.
after prison, and who once served His progeny supposedly also includes And hearing the river at night. When
on the A.S.M.F.C., has pushed for Ulysses S. Grant, Sarah Palin, and you see millions and millions and mil-
transferrable quotas for glass eels. He Taylor Swift. In addition to pack- lions of elvers, it’s mind-blowing. You
pitches eelers by asking, Wouldn’t you ing fish, Keene’s forebears founded see full moons. You see rings around
like to be able to leave something to community newspapers and served the moon. You see fog. If you see gar-
your grandchildren? in the Coast Guard. Both her grand- bage, you pick it up. You want passage
In Canada, quotas are distributed father and her father were keepers of for all the things that are trying to get
basically evenly among nine compa- the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, into the lakes to spawn. You want it to
nies. Feigenbaum runs one of them; it a peppermint-striped tower with a be—not ruined.”
controls about twenty-six hundred One night when Keene was about
pounds of quota, according to the De- fifteen, she begged to go out on the
partment of Fisheries and Oceans. water with her grandfather, a lifelong
Some Mainers worry that transfers fisherman with one eye. They put on
could lead to a few entities dominat- warm clothes and crossed Johnson
ing the industry in the U.S., too, and Bay in a skiff, to see how the herring
force formerly independent elvermen were running in a certain cove. Vol-
to work for someone else, for an hourly ume was measured by the hogshead,
wage. “If you could buy up quotas in a cask or a barrel that holds sixty-
Maine, you’d be sitting back like any three gallons.
other corporation, where only a few fog bell and a beam visible eighteen Keene’s grandfather cut the out-
people make all the money,” an elver- miles away, across the Quoddy Narrows. board motor and put a finger to his
man told me. “It would be horrible for Keene’s college degree involved com- lips. Using a cloth-wrapped oar, he
the fishery.” (Feigenbaum told me that puters, but she prefers being outdoors. rowed quietly into the cove. Keene
such fears are “unwarranted,” and that She has dug clams for a living and picks watched, mystified, as he lowered a
elver quotas should be transferrable periwinkles on winter beaches, mak- long piano wire into the water, and
only under certain conditions, mostly ing sure to leave the smallest ones alone, waited. “What was that?” she recalled
related to aquaculture.) giving them the “chance to grow up.” asking him on the way home. “He said,
This year’s elver season closed at She has urged people not to overhar- ‘I could tell how many hogshead of
just over fifteen hundred dollars per vest rockweed, a marine algae that farm- herring there were by how hard they
pound. The elvermen pulled their nets. ers add to their soil. Cherry and apple were hitting the wire.’ I knew I wanted
The alewives were running now, and trees that she planted after the elver to be a fisherman after that.” 
FICTION
46 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN MCHENRY

T
here were people at the far end pushing a little bride or groom from remember looking up at the handle of
of the beach. Some adults, a lot one pub to the next in the buggy he the fridge, in the kitchen. He could re-
of children. An extended fam- was looking at. member standing beside his father, rest-
ily, maybe—he didn’t know. He tried It wasn’t buckled, but it might have ing his arm on his father’s knee as his
to see if one of the adults was carrying been abandoned, and he wanted noth- father ate his dinner. He could remem-
a baby or if there was a toddler—a pad- ing to do with it. ber the smell of his father’s tobacco.
ded lump—plonked on the sand. Was the tide coming in or on its He could remember the paint on his
He didn’t want to walk over, down way out? He didn’t know. He hadn’t father’s trousers. He could remember
from the path, across the sand and paid much attention to the tides and his father telling his mother that he’d
stones, to the buggy. It was facing the their times since he was a kid. He re- change his trousers after he’d finished
sea. If the people up the beach had membered how much he’d loved look- his dinner; he was starving and the grub
been nearer to it, he’d have known ing them up in the back of his father’s wouldn’t taste any better in clean trou-
that it was theirs. He’d have known Independent, after his father had shown sers, the trousers weren’t the ones eat-
that they’d parked the buggy there at him how to read the charts. ing it. He remembered his mother
the edge of the sea so the baby would The sea—the wave he was looking laughing and calling his father an eejit.
drink in the air—the ozone, whatever at now—stopped a yard, a metre, from He remembered looking up at them—
it was—and sleep, and stay asleep for the buggy’s front wheels, and receded. their words and laughter—over his head.
a while. But it stood out, alone. There He waited for the next wave. Exactly That was how far back he could go.
wasn’t an adult or a sibling, a towel or the same—from where he stood. It got But not just that—the little lad was
a bucket, anywhere near it. It made no closer to the wheels. He looked still in him. He was the much, much
no sense. again, from left to right, to see if any- older version of that child. And the
It was more than likely empty. That one was going to claim the buggy be- older boys, the other layers of his life—
didn’t make much sense, either, a fore the sea took it. they were in him, too. Not just the mem-
buggy abandoned on the beach like ories—it wasn’t that they were vivid.
that. But he remembered abandon- e should have kept driving. Of They were living things, events—he
ing a buggy himself, years ago—it
would have been more than thirty
H course, he should have. He’d been
on his way to meet his brother, who’d
could live them now. He could scratch
at the blue paint on his father’s cord
years—when the frame had buckled moved down to Arklow. He’d left the trousers. He could hear his mother’s
as he was pushing it up the hill in house early—hours early—before he’d laughter—now he could. He could feel
that place in France they’d gone to wanted to. He’d just been anxious— his foot hitting a wet leather football.
on their way to the ferry in Le Havre. anxious about finding his brother’s He could hear the chalk on a primary-
Mont-Saint-Michel. A spectacular place, anxious about the traffic, anx- school blackboard. He could taste the
place, dripping with history and reli- ious about leaving the house, anxious first girl’s tongue—he could feel her
gion, but all he remembered about it about meeting his brother. He’d seen sweat on his cheek as they kissed, both
was the ache in his arms, and the heat, the sign for the beach and he’d turned of them afraid to stop, like they were
as he pushed the buggy and the tod- left, off the motorway. And here he both cycling bikes for the first time and
dler in it up the incline, and the metal- was, about to witness a drowning, an would fall off if they slowed down
lic screech as the frame—the sides— abandonment. Something bad. Some- or stopped.
surrendered and the toddler seemed thing dreadful. An accusation, a mis- But the man—the competent young
to disappear, as if she had been eaten understanding, a night in a Garda sta- man he’d been, the father—he couldn’t
by the buggy. The toddler, Gráinne, tion, a slot on the news. Or just an feel him at all.
was fine—she had a toddler of her empty buggy on a cold Irish beach. A He could see him. He could see him
own these days—but the buggy wasn’t mystery. A story he didn’t want to make take Gráinne from the buggy, making
savable. No amount of bending or up, or even think about. a joke of its collapse, making her broth-
hammering would have coaxed it back He should have kept driving. He ers laugh—The poor ol’ buggy; your bum
into shape. They’d left it beside a bin shouldn’t have left home in the first place. was too big for it, Gráinne—and carry-
and passed three more buggies, buck- He didn’t want to do it—he really ing her back down the hill. But he
led and discarded, on their way back didn’t. He’d go over now to the buggy; couldn’t feel her weight on his arm, or
down to the car park. he’d look in, he’d bend down. Even here, the confidence—the knowledge—that
Maybe that was what had happened on the path above the beach, he could he’d make it all the way without chang-
here. The frame had given up as the feel it. The magic, the curse—the man ing arms or putting her down and try-
buggy was pushed—shoved, forced— he’d been thirty years ago. The man who ing to persuade her to walk.
across the sand. But he was looking at would have known what to do. The man He could remember another buggy.
it and he knew: there was nothing wrong who wouldn’t have hesitated. But he He was standing on the platform as
with this one. It was a solid-looking was so far away from being that man, the train—the DART—came slowly
thing; calling it a vehicle wouldn’t have he’d have to turn into an entirely dif- into Killester station, with the boys
been ridiculous. A small adult could ferent man—a man who wasn’t in him. on either side of him. A double buggy
have squeezed into it. A hen or a stag He could remember being a kid. He this time—before Gráinne was born.
party—he could picture the other eejits remembered being very small. He could He had one boy’s hand in his own
left hand—the younger lad, Colm— if the guy on the platform hadn’t hand, his arm, shook sometimes—
and he held the buggy, folded, in his been there to shout the warning to just slightly—when he had to reach
right hand. The older boy, Seán, held the driver—all of these possibilities out to grab something, and sometimes
on to the buggy. The train stopped. rattled away inside him as the train he was happier holding a mug or a
There was no one getting off, no one left the station and the boys sat so glass in both hands till he became
there to press the button to open the they could both look out the window used to the weight. But it wasn’t his
train door. He forgot that Seán loved and get ready to be surprised by any hands or his arms or aging or any-
pressing the button, that it was his trains dashing past in the other di- thing. It was him. Just him. That
job, the thing that made him more rection. Ambush! phrase from the pandemic, “essential
important than his little brother. He But, really, he’d been fine, even worker”—he’d been an essential fa-
let go of Colm’s hand for a second, to happy. He’d known that he’d just have ther. He could remember rescuing
give the button a jab—and Colm was had to reach down, his arm in the Colm, but he couldn’t imagine it—he
gone. He had tried to step onto the gap between the train’s green side and couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t believe
train; his stride fell short of the gap, the rain-drenched cement of the he’d done it. He didn’t believe he’d
and he dropped between the train and station platform, and hold Colm’s done it. Or any of the other things
the platform, under the train. Some- hand—not even grab it—just hold it he’d done when he was a father. Not
one had seen what had happened and and lift the boy effortlessly to safety. just observed or witnessed, stored away
was shouting up the platform to the He’d have managed it. He remem- for later. Done. Picked up, set down,
driver, as he got down on his knees, bered examining the soaked knees of pushed, pulled, fed, tickled, comforted.
gently grabbed Colm’s outstretched his jeans and brushing the grit off His physical life beyond children, too.
hand—Good lad, up you come—and them with his open hand. Mission Ran, gasped, laughed, cried, came.
pulled him up to the platform, gave accomplished. The verbs—the action words. He had
him a hug, Colm smiling, not a bother the words, but the actions? He could
on him, then got himself, the boys, e looked at the hand now, his walk and drive and eat and sleep. He
and the buggy onto the train, and
dealt with Seán’s tears.
H right hand. It wasn’t the same
one—it wasn’t the hand that had saved
could go through the motions. He
could get through the day.
If the train had been moving, Colm. It wasn’t the age, or the liver But he didn’t live.
if Colm had slid further beneath it, spots. It wasn’t even the hand. The The tide was coming in—the sea
was closer to the buggy. Another min-
ute and the waves would be digging
under a front wheel.
There was another buggy story.
He’d pushed the buggy, empty—he
couldn’t remember which buggy;
they’d gone through five or six—down
to the shops, with Seán walking be-
side him. Seán was grand walking
anywhere, it didn’t really matter how
far. But, coming back, he often went
on strike. Setting out, he’d object to
the buggy—Buggy’s for babies!—but
on the way home he’d sit on the
ground, plonk himself down, in pud-
dles, or right in front of shopping
trolleys and pit bulls and pensioners,
and refuse to walk. Even then he ob-
jected to the buggy. He wouldn’t climb
into it or let his father pick him up
and fasten him in. This particular time,
Seán—the adorable little bastard—
shoved the buggy out onto the road,
right in front of an oncoming car. The
driver braked, but the car hit the buggy
side-on—he’d never forget the noise,
the thump. The buggy went into the
air and landed clean, all four wheels
at once, facing the car, and the driver,
a woman with a carful of her own ba-
“I’ll bet you’ve been wondering where I’ve been.” bies, stared out at the empty buggy
and screamed and screamed and fell mother, exhausted and lovely. But she his name? I feel like I should know.
out of the car and looked under it and didn’t have a baby, on her hip or in He pulled at a wet trouser leg where
on the roof for the missing baby— her arms. it was stuck to his thigh.
Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus— He held on to the buggy. —Seán, she said.
while the missing baby, Seán, pointed —You’re drenched, she said. I’m —I’ve a Seán as well, he told her.
at her and laughed. Funneee! so sorry. —Really? she said. That’s amazing.
He could remember it like a scene He shrugged. He wasn’t sure if it They were on the tarmac, off the
from a film. It was a very good film. was a proper shrug. He was gripping sand. He let go of the buggy. She took
But he wasn’t in it. the handles and leaning over the buggy, hold of it and pointed it at the car park.
What happened? protecting the baby that wasn’t in it. —Tell Seán I said hello, he said.
Where had his life gone? Not the She was a bit uncertain—he could She laughed. She smiled.
years—the blood. Where was the life? see that. She’d expected him to roll the —I will, she said. Bye. Thanks again.
The buggy was listing—it was going —Seeyeh.
to topple. The next wave or the one
after, it was going to be on its side and he hadn’t asked him if he was O.K.
the baby—if there was one—would be
strapped in and helpless.
S or if he knew where he was going,
or if there was someone he could phone
If there was one. to come and collect him. She’d seen a
He’d forgotten how hard moving man who was fine, and she’d walked
across soft sand was; his ankles were away. He was freezing, and stiff. He’d
already aching. He nearly fell—the drive to Arklow now and change into
sole of his shoe slid on a stone. He one of his brother’s tracksuits.
watched a wave wallop the wheel— buggy across the stones to her, or to He took his phone from his trou-
he saw the buggy pushed back. He turn it around and offer her the han- sers pocket and rubbed the screen dry
didn’t seem to be getting any closer— dles. It probably looked like he needed on the shoulder of his jumper. He went
he’d left it too late. His shoes were the buggy to hold himself up. He looked to Favourites and tapped “Seán.”
full of sand—there was a stone dig- down. He was wet past his trousers, —Dad?
ging into his heel. But the ground was halfway up his jumper. —Howyeh, son. Are you busy—can
more solid; there was a layer of stones, —I left my phone in the car, she you talk?
a thick band that stretched along the said. Are you all right? —What’s up? Are you all right?
beach. He got over the stones quickly Jesus Christ, she wanted to phone He told his son about how he’d been
enough, and he was nearly at the for an ambulance—for him. on his way to Arklow, about how he’d
buggy—he could feel the handle, all He stood up straight. He let go of been early so he’d stopped at the beach.
the handles, in his grip—when a wave the buggy. About how he’d gone for a walk. How
slid up over his shoes and he was lift- —I’m grand, he said. he’d seen the buggy facing the sea.
ing his feet, moving like a mad thing, —You must be frozen, she said. How he’d seen the tide coming in, how
his feet smacking the water, and he His job now was to get her to stop he’d dashed down to the sea to rescue
caught the buggy, he grabbed one of talking to him like he was an old man. the buggy.
the handles and pulled it back with An old man who’d fallen into the water, He didn’t hesitate.
him, up to the bank of stones, and he or who’d wet himself. —There was a baby in it, Seán.
knew before he looked. He had the —I’m grand, he said again. —Ah, Jesus—a baby? Are you serious?
buggy by both handles now, and he He patted a buggy handle. —I couldn’t believe it, he said. Fast
parked it, still facing the sea, and —Where’s the owner of the vehi- asleep.
looked—no baby. He was relieved— cle? he asked. —No!
and disappointed—and angry. His She smiled. —Yeah.
feet were freezing—his legs, up to his —He’s in the car, she said. In the There—in the car park beside the
knees and past them—fuckin’ freez- car park. Irish Sea—he’d never felt happier. He
ing. And he laughed. He was angry, —If he hasn’t driven away, he said. watched the mother drive slowly to the
and delighted to be angry. He was I’m only joking. gate, stop, then turn left, out, onto the
soaking and didn’t know what he’d She looked behind her, toward the road. He waved at the back of the car.
do, and he didn’t care. car park that they couldn’t see from A Volvo, he thought it was. Black, or
—Oh, God. Thank you! where they stood. very dark blue.
It was a woman, a young woman —I wouldn’t put it past him, she —Was the baby O.K.?
running at him, sliding over the stones. said. —Ah, yeah, he said. Not a bother
He checked again—the buggy was He moved first. He walked off the on him. And come here—guess what
empty. He wondered why she was sand, pulling the buggy with him. his name was. 
thanking him. —He wanted to go to the toilet like
—I forgot all about it, she said. a big boy, she told him. In the dunes. NEWYORKER.COM/FICTION
She looked the part, the young —Fair enough, he said. What’s Sign up to get author interviews in your in-box.

THE CRITICS
BOOKS
THE PLAGUE DOCTOR

Anthony Fauci on what’s ailing America.
BY JEROME GROOPMAN
S
ome fifty pages into his autobi- and was responsible for countless un- revealing as the similarities, in ways
ography, “On Call: A Doctor’s necessary deaths. So it is telling that that, by the end of the book, test even
Journey in Public Service” (Vi- his memoir is less dominated by recent Fauci’s resistance to pessimism.
king), Anthony Fauci, the former head events than one might expect. Although
of the National Institute of Allergy and most readers will surely first turn to the he title “On Call” suggests that
Infectious Diseases (NIAID), describes
a moment of horror when he and his
part that relates Fauci’s dealings with
the Trump Administration, the forty-
T medicine is not merely a job but
a calling, and Fauci traces the roots of
colleagues realize that the scale of fifth President is only one of six whom this sensibility back to his childhood
the epidemic they are dealing with is we meet in person, and AIDS gets more in Brooklyn. His parents were first-gen-
far greater than previously supposed: pages than COVID. eration Italian Americans, both col-
“Thousands and thousands of people The book thus presents an implicit lege-educated. His father worked as a
had been getting infected before we demand for us to see Fauci’s career pharmacist, and the Faucis—a close-
knew that the disease existed, and they whole, from medical training to retire- knit family, proud of their heritage—
were passing the infections on to oth- ment. When, at the start of this month, lived above his pharmacy. Dedication
ers long before they showed symptoms he was questioned by the House Se- to caring for others was exemplified
of the disease itself.” Later, as the gov- lect Subcommittee on the Coronavirus by Fauci’s father. “Dad was generous
ernment response—of which he is the Pandemic, the Republican firebrand to a fault when it came to accommo-
“public face”—comes under fire, Fauci Marjorie Taylor Greene insisted upon dating customers who could not af-
will be called a murderer. addressing him as Mr. Fauci, rather ford to pay their pharmacy bills,” he
The year is 1985, and a blood test for than Dr. Fauci. “Because you’re not writes. “He kept a running account for
H.I.V. has recently become available. ‘Doctor,’ you’re ‘Mister’ Fauci,” she said. them, much to the frustration of the
By the end of the year, it will be evi- “That man does not deserve to have a whole family.”
dent that, for each of the nearly sixteen license. As a matter of fact, it should Fauci was educated in Catholic
thousand people in the United States be revoked, and he belongs in prison.” schools, initially by Dominican nuns
suffering from AIDS, more than seven Against this absurd charge, “On Call” who demanded achievement and
others are infected but asymptomatic. maintains that Anthony Fauci is a doc- graded students down to a tenth of a
Even if the COVID-19 pandemic had tor first and foremost. point. At Regis, an élite Jesuit high
not occurred, Fauci’s career would still The book is also something of a school in Manhattan, he immersed
have been one of the most consequen- diptych. The resonances between the himself in Greek and Latin. Regis’s
tial and most prominent in American two greatest public-health crises of motto is “Men for Others,” making
medicine in the past fifty years. But it Fauci’s tenure at NIAID are impossible personal gain secondary to public ser-
was the pandemic that made him, as to ignore. Both cases involve asymp- vice, and Fauci notes the school’s spirit
he writes, “a political lightning rod—a tomatic infection, a scramble for tests as a “natural extension” of that of his
figure who represents hope to so many and treatments, public-information upbringing. He went on to a Jesuit col-
and evil to some.” Long renowned as campaigns, and the search for a vac- lege, Holy Cross, in Worcester, Mas-
a clinician, a researcher, and a public cine—miraculously fast for COVID-19, sachusetts, and then to medical school
servant—George W. Bush awarded still unfulfilled for H.I.V. And, each at Cornell, where he graduated first in
him the Presidential Medal of Free- time, he is vilified—first by militant his class.
dom in 2008—he became demonized AIDS activists, later by anti-vaxxers and Fauci joined the National Institutes
as a liar who hid evidence about the anti-maskers, populist Republicans and of Health in 1968, rising through its
SARS-CoV-2 virus, funded dangerous libertarians, and a panoply of conspir- ranks as an infectious-disease special-
laboratory studies, misled Congress, acy theorists. But the differences are as ist and immunologist. He cared for
SOURCE PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM WATSON / GETTY; OPPOSITE: TIM LAHAN
Fauci’s account of his career focusses as much on AIDS as on COVID, and comparison of the two crises is revealing.
ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREA VENTURA THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 51
patients with rare autoimmune disor- with HIV received AZT, and 137 re- ing activists of a shared goal was real-
ders, and discovered that low doses of ceived the placebo. At the end of the ized, and even Larry Kramer forged a
chemotherapy and steroids could be study, 19 patients who received the pla- bond with him. Shortly before Kramer
life-saving, because they blunted these cebo had died compared with only 1 died, in May, 2020, he had one last phone
patients’ aberrant inf lammatory re- death in the group that received AZT. conversation with Fauci, which ended
sponses. It was serendipitously perfect Opportunistic infections, such as Pneu- with Kramer saying, “I love you, Tony.”
preparation for studying H.I.V.—so mocystis pneumonia, developed in 45 Fauci writes, “I tearfully responded, ‘I
much so that Fauci describes feeling subjects receiving the placebo, com- love you too, Larry.’ A complex rela-
“the illusion of fate” when the disease’s pared with 24 subjects receiving AZT.” tionship, indeed.”
first victims, mostly young gay men, The drug was clearly a turning point,
began arriving at the N.I.H. Clinical and not long after the publication of auci’s commitment to his work on
Center. “I was trained for years as an
immunologist and an infectious dis-
these results, in a New England Journal
of Medicine article that I co-authored,
F AIDS was such that when, in 1984,
he was offered the directorship of
ease specialist,” he writes. “Here was a I joined colleagues on a panel present- NIAID, a purely administrative role, he
disease that certainly was infectious. ing the results of the clinical trial to insisted on being allowed to continue
It also was destroying the immune sys- physicians, nurses, and other caregiv- doing research and treating patients.
tem and rendering the patients highly ers. During the discussion, a group from He writes of a piece of advice a men-
susceptible to opportunistic infections.” ACT UP barged into the meeting room. tor gave him as his influence increased:
Fauci redirected his efforts from in- I vividly recall how they yelled that “It’s a good rule when you are walking
flammatory diseases to H.I.V. At first, AZT was poison and handed out Kool- into the West Wing of the White
there was no medication to block the Aid to the attendees, a reference to the House to advise the president, vice pres-
virus, and half the admitted patients deaths of Jim Jones’s cult followers. ident, or the White House staff to re-
died of infections or cancer within nine They turned to the physicians on the mind yourself that this might be the
to ten months. During the early years panel, calling us Nazis. This stung; many last time you will walk through that
of the epidemic, I crossed paths with members of my mother’s extended fam- door.” In other words, sooner or later
Fauci at various scientific conferences; ily were murdered in Auschwitz. Hav- there would likely be a choice between
at my hospital, at Harvard, I had been ing worked to care for people with AIDS, sugarcoating unwelcome news and los-
enlisted as an oncologist to care for and having participated in a clinical ing influence, so one should mentally
AIDS patients with malignancies, spe- trial that proved for the first time that prepare to do the right thing.
cifically Kaposi’s sarcoma and lym- a drug could combat the virus, I was Fauci was neither naïve nor cynical
phoma. Fauci became a frequent tar- indignant at the group’s slander. about the ways of Washington. He un-
get of gay activists, who saw that the But this is where one distinctive derstood that politicians were obliged
government was failing them. Larry facet of Fauci’s mentality reveals itself. to grandstand for the press and the
Kramer, in the San Francisco Exam- Although he writes that he was hurt public, and that even allies could oc-
iner, wrote a piece headed “i call you to be called a murderer by Kramer, he casionally make trouble. During a hear-
murderers: An open letter to an in- goes on to say, “Yet, in a strange way, I ing in 1988, Senator Ted Kennedy se-
competent idiot, Dr. Anthony Fauci.” still did not blame Larry. If I had been lectively quoted him in a way that
He accused Fauci of facilitating the in his position, I would have been just implied that a dinner invitation from
deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, as angry.” When activists protested at Vice-President George H. W. Bush
of people with H.I.V. “His rationale the N.I.H., demanding the develop- had made him soft-pedal his demands
for the attack was that I had not de- ment of better drugs than AZT, Fauci for more AIDS funding. Fauci writes,
manded enough money for AIDS,” Fauci made a key decision, bringing a hand- “At the end of the hearing Senator
writes. “He ignored the fact that I had ful of the demonstrators inside to meet Kennedy called me over, put his arm
requested from Congress and the pres- with him. “They were shocked,” he re- around my shoulder, and said warmly,
ident the largest increase in resources calls. “This was the first time in any- ‘Sorry I had to do that, Tony, it was
given to an NIH institute since the fa- one’s memory that a government offi- nothing personal, but I just have to
mous ‘war on cancer’ in the 1970s.” cial had invited them to sit down and keep the pressure on. Anyway, keep up
The first major advance in the treat- talk on equal terms and on government your great work.’ ”
ment of aids was AZT, a drug that turf.” Fauci was able to clarify what Fauci was known for being apoliti-
had originally been tested as a chemo- drug development involved, while the cal and having friends on both sides of
therapy agent. Although AZT was not activists, as he writes, “played an in- the aisle. This, along with his reputa-
effective against tumors, laboratory re- creasingly important role in shaping tion for integrity, bore fruit in both Re-
sults showed it to be a potent inhibi- my thinking and policy in these areas.” publican and Democratic Administra-
tor of H.I.V. I was among several phy- This culminated in an innovative “par- tions. He writes with affection about
sicians who participated in the pivotal allel track” of drug testing that expanded Bush, Sr., who offered him the N.I.H.
clinical trial of AZT for the treatment the availability of experimental treat- directorship—a position he turned
of AIDS patients. Fauci presents these ments for AIDS beyond the rigid con- down, as it would have required him
results succinctly: “Over a twenty-four- fines of clinical trials. to give up hands-on medical care. He
week period in 1986, 145 individuals Ultimately, Fauci’s vision of convinc- worked with Bill Clinton on creating
a center devoted in part to H.I.V.-vaccine
research, with George W. Bush on pro-
viding life-saving medication to peo- BRIEFLY NOTED
ple with the disease in the developing
world, and with Barack Obama on com- Long Island, by Colm Tóibín (Scribner). Eilis Lacey, an Irish
batting outbreaks of Zika and Ebola. immigrant in New York whom Tóibín introduced in his novel
And so to Donald Trump. Seeing “Brooklyn,” returns in this deeply felt but resolutely unsenti-
Fauci’s expressionless face during mental sequel. The book, which takes place in the nineteen-
the President’s pandemic press confer- seventies, two decades after the events of the earlier install-
ences, I often wondered what he was ment, opens with Eilis—now a mother of two living on Long
thinking. Once, while listening to Island—learning that her Italian American husband has im-
Trump, Fauci moved his hand to his pregnated another woman. The news sparks Eilis’s return to
forehead in disbelief. That seemed to her home town, Enniscorthy, where she has not been for some
answer my question. twenty years, and where she reconnects with a man with whom
Fauci mentions this incident in his she had a dalliance early on in her marriage. Tóibín uses masterly
memoir, and his handling of it is char- restraint to dramatize how lives can be destabilized by desire.
acteristic. Trump, he writes, “was being
especially flippant” and made a joke that Ask Me Again, by Clare Sestanovich (Knopf ). This début novel,
gave him “a moment of despair mixed by a noted writer of short stories, begins as Eva, the self-
with amusement.” Catching the eye of conscious teen-age daughter of middle-class parents, befriends
a journalist who shot him “one of those a boy named Jamie, an intellectual with a contrarian streak
‘What the . . . ?’ looks,” Fauci recalls, “I who comes from a wealthy family. In the next few years, Eva
put my hand to my forehead to hide graduates from a prestigious college and gets a job at a news-
my expression.” He was dismayed when paper while contending with romances, ambitions, a nascent
a photograph of this gesture was seized political consciousness, and a changing relationship with her
upon by his critics as proof that he was parents. Meanwhile, Jamie drops out to join a thinly veiled
“a naysaying bureaucrat who deliber- Occupy Wall Street. Throughout, the novel considers how a
ately, even maliciously, was undermin- life’s trajectory takes shape, and how much it is influenced by
ing President Trump.” Fauci, then, does other people: “Eva herself thought about impressions all the
not deny that he was aghast at what time. She liked picturing it literally: the mark that you left on
Trump was saying, but he is adamant someone or that someone left on you.”
that he had no intention of communi-
cating disrespect—a line he maintains Orwell’s Ghosts, by Laura Beers (Norton). In the nearly seventy-
consistently—and that, indeed, the no- five years since George Orwell’s death, his writing has been
torious gesture was an attempt to con- appropriated for various ideological ends. In this lucid, en-
ceal his reaction. The word “flippant” is gaging study, Beers teases out its intricacies, considering, for
notable, too. As criticisms of Trump go, instance, Orwell’s dual commitment to socialist revolution
it’s decidedly mild, and it does capture and “traditional” English society; his apparent dismissal of
something about his character; namely, feminism; his belief in individual liberty; and why he ulti-
his love of playing to an audience. mately valued truth above freedom of speech. The complex-
The chapter about working with ity (and sheer volume) of Orwell’s work means that he has
Trump is called “He Loves Me, He frequently been misunderstood. Beers reaches a satisfying
Loves Me Not.” At first, Fauci found synthesis, writing that Orwell illuminates how “to resist the
Trump “far more personable than I had temptations of totalitarianism in favor of a more open and
expected.” But, early on in the pan- democratic socialism.”
demic, Fauci encountered “the first, but
not the last, whiplash effect that I would Vows, by Cheryl Mendelson (Simon & Schuster). This timely, if
experience in dealing with this com- uneven, blend of social science, history, literary criticism, and
plex man.” On a nighttime phone call anecdote mounts a defense of monogamous marriage as the
in February, 2020, Trump listened as “world’s best blueprint for happiness.” Mendelson is on firm
Fauci advised him against underplay- footing as she traces the evolution of standard marriage vows
ing the severity of the situation—“That from their feudal roots, and she makes compelling points re-
almost always comes back to bite you, garding the interconnectedness of love, desire, and commit-
Mr. President”—and suggested that ment. But other sections, including an underbaked one pos-
honesty would win the country’s re- iting a causal relationship between a monogamy-based society
spect. The next day, at a rally in Charles- and a strong G.D.P., are less persuasive. She critiques defend-
ton, South Carolina, Trump called ers of consensual non-monogamy, but she and they are speak-
COVID the Democrats’ “new hoax.” ing different languages; this is a book on the institution of
Similarly, Fauci was impressed that, marriage in which the word “patriarchal” never appears.
despite the economic consequences, be such that booster shots would be More broadly, he emphasizes that
Trump agreed to shut down the coun- needed, he got a call: “people associate science with absolutes
try for fifteen days in March, in an at- that are immutable, when in fact sci-
tempt to “flatten the curve.” The diffi- The president was irate, saying that I could ence is a process that continually un-
not keep doing this to him. He said he loved
culty came when fifteen days turned me, but the country was in trouble, and I was covers new information.” People look
into longer and longer still. “I think making it worse. He added that the stock mar- to medical science for definitive an-
Donald Trump thought that COVID ket went up only six hundred points in re- swers, but the advice during the pan-
would be temporary: a little time goes sponse to the positive phase 1 vaccine news demic had to change as the understand-
by, the outbreak is over, everyone goes and it should have gone up a thousand points ing of the virus developed. This idea
and so I cost the country “one trillion fucking
back to work, and the election cycle can dollars.” governs Fauci’s stated attitude toward
begin,” Fauci writes. But, “with the the debate that still rages about whether
ghastly reality setting in that COVID Fauci himself evinces anger only the pandemic started with the virus nat-
was not going to go away, Trump began when he tells of death threats to him urally jumping species to humans, per-
to grab for an elixir that would cure and his family, which required him to haps in the Wuhan wet market, or
this disease.” When the President have a security detail at home. In the whether a leak from a laboratory in
started touting the benefits of hydroxy- AIDS era, he recalls, he got maybe a cou- Wuhan working on coronaviruses could
chloroquine, Fauci realized that “sooner ple of abusive letters a month. Things have been to blame. (The latter possi-
or later I would have to refute him pub- were very different this time: “Now my bility is made more politically fraught
licly.” Knowing that the press would family and I were barraged by emails, by the fact that the Wuhan lab indi-
seize on divisions between Trump and texts, and phone calls.” He is particu- rectly received funding for some coro-
his COVID team, he evidently tried to larly outraged at the harassment of his navirus research from the N.I.H.) Fauci
make these corrections as measured as daughters, writing that he “wanted to states that there is no proof either way,
possible, and he writes of being struck lash out at the people who were terri- but that “keeping an open mind about
that Trump did not seem to hold them fying these innocent young women.” both possibilities does not mean that
against him. Fauci’s troubles did not end with one cannot have an opinion.” In the
Nothing that Fauci says will change Trump’s departure. Once Joe Biden was book, as in the recent hearing, he con-
the minds of those who believe he was President, the abuse got worse, he writes, tinues to argue that a natural spillover
trying to undermine the President, but because attacking him became a badge from another species is more probable.
Democrats may be surprised that he of loyalty for extremist Republicans and He notes that this is the prevailing opin-
enjoyed cordial relations with much of a way to wage war on Biden and the ion among evolutionary virologists and
the Administration. He finds Mike Democrats—“as well as established the majority opinion among U.S. intel-
Pence, Marc Short, and Hope Hicks principles of public health.” In 2022, ligence agencies; he also asserts that sev-
to be supportive and sees “positive at- Fauci decided to retire, but the polar- enty-five per cent of all new infectious
tributes” in Jared Kushner. Even Trump ization that he laments is as virulent as diseases originate in this manner.
often seems guilty more of wishful ever, as the rhetoric at the recent con- While somewhat open-minded
thinking than of something darker, gressional hearing shows. about the origin of the virus, he is vo-
pleading with Fauci to find some sort ciferous about the way that the lab-leak
of silver lining. The villains in the ac- arts of the book were obviously theory has been used to erode confi-
count are the White House chief of
staff Mark Meadows and the press
P written with an eye to the ongo-
ing scrutiny of the government’s han-
dence in public-health provisions. He
relays in detail his rebuttal, in May, 2021,
secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who dling of the pandemic. He is open, if of Senator Rand Paul’s claim that N.I.H.
Fauci feels try to silence him, and Peter a little general, about things that went money directly funded the creation of
Navarro, an economic adviser, who be- wrong. “If we knew in the first months the virus in Wuhan.
rates him about hydroxychloroquine. what we know now, many things would “At times, I am deeply disturbed
Fauci shows quiet scorn for Scott Atlas, have been done differently,” he writes. about the state of our society,” Fauci
a doctor who becomes Trump’s special “We learned, for example, that aerosol writes near the end of his book. “We
assistant on COVID. Atlas is against transmission of infection was impor- have seen complete fabrications be-
lockdowns, putting his faith in herd tant, and asymptomatic spread of virus come some people’s accepted reality.”
immunity, and acquires influence by played a much greater role in transmis- If this “crisis of truth” persists, the ef-
“telling the president what he wanted sion than originally appreciated. This fects of future pandemics will be much
to hear.” knowledge clearly would have influ- worse. Such is the grim lesson of Fau-
The relationship with Trump cer- enced earlier recommendations for ci’s career in public service. In the nine-
tainly soured, something Fauci attri- mask wearing, social distancing, and teen-eighties, by listening to his crit-
butes in part to the people who had ventilation.” He also thinks that mask ics, he managed to turn them into allies.
the President’s ear, and there is an mandates could have been relaxed ear- Larry Kramer, famously combative,
alarming account of Trump at his most lier but explains that although he pri- went from calling him a murderer to
furious. In June, 2020, after Fauci said vately made this recommendation to saying he loved him. Which of Fauci’s
that the duration of immunity from the C.D.C., he was hesitant to criti- current adversaries would be capable
the vaccines then in development might cize the agency openly. of such a transformation? 
primacy it accords to autonomy, reason,
BOOKS and individual rights. By wresting our
identities away from a sense of commu-
nity and common purpose, the new “at-
UNSHATTERED omist-instrumental” model was, he thinks,
bound to produce our familiar modern
How the philosopher Charles Taylor would reënchant the world. alienation. We became estranged from
a sense of belonging and meaning. We
BY ADAM GOPNIK experienced the attenuation of the citi-
zen-participation politics we need. We
wanted to be alone, and now we are.
With this analysis, critical of the foun-
dations of liberalism without betraying
liberal values, Taylor manages to be at
once precise and prophetic. He may be
the most well-regarded philosopher in
the English-speaking world, having
snatched most of the big prizes, includ-
ing the million-dollar Berggruen Prize,
in 2016. There are now books about his
books, study guides and Web sites ded-
icated to indexing his œuvre.
When I was a kid, growing up in
Montreal around McGill University,
where Taylor taught for more than three
decades, he was a significant if troubling
presence: not personally troubling—quite
the opposite, he was an amiable faculty
friend—but troubling because, in my
own science-worshipping (what the other
side would have called “positivist”) fac-
ulty family, Taylor’s rehabilitation of
Hegel seemed almost sinister. Of such
matters are quarrels made in Barchester.
Nonetheless, at some point I began to
read Taylor, first with the fascination of
the forbidden and then with ever-increas-
ing pleasure. Though Taylor was defend-
ing a German idealist tradition that a
Liberalism, in Taylor’s view, has neglected the socially embedded nature of the self. more empirical-minded tradition had de-
nounced as mere verbiage and wind, he
yric poets and mathematicians, by ostensibly a study of Romantic poetry had spent a formative period in the pre-
L general agreement, do their best work
young, while composers and conductors
and music, is about nothing less than
modern life and its discontents, and how
cincts of ordinary-language philosophy
at Oxford, where he was mentored by
are evergreen, doing their best work, or we might transcend them. Isaiah Berlin; he spoke the plainer dia-
more work of the same kind, as they age. A hard thinker to pigeonhole, Taylor lects of Anglo-American philosophy. (The
Philosophers seem to be a more mixed has long been a mainstay of Canada’s so- phone calls were coming from inside the
SOURCE PHOTOGRAPH BY NEVILLE ELDER / GETTY
bag: some shine early and some, like cial-democratic left; he helped found the house.) Indeed, he felt that Berlin had
Wittgenstein, have distinct chapters of New Democratic Party, running for of- abandoned philosophy for the history of
youth and middle age; Bertrand Russell fice several times in Quebec, though los- ideas because the moral philosophy of his
went on tirelessly until he was almost ing, inevitably, to the Liberal Party and day was too parched to capture the com-
a hundred. Yet surely few will surpass the charismatic Pierre Trudeau. He’s also plexities Berlin cared about.
the record of the Canadian philosopher a Catholic and a singularly eloquent critic As a social and political theorist, Tay-
Charles Taylor, who is back, at ninety- of individualism and secularism, those lor emphasized the primacy of shared
two, with what may be the most ambi- two pillars of modern liberalism. He wor- experience—the idea that identity re-
tious work ever written by a major thinker ries about the modern conception of the sides within communities rather than in-
at such an advanced age. The new book, self—what he has called “the punctual side brains—without succumbing to nos-
“Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age self ”—which he takes to be rooted in talgia for some lost organic society. What
of Disenchantment” (Belknap), though Enlightenment thought, and about the matters most in life to actual people, he
ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES LEE CHIAHAN THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 55
has argued, is not the standard liberal the sort that doesn’t offer propositions human value in the experience of art.
question “Who am I?” but the richer hu- but casts spells and enacts rituals. The At one point, he constructs a table in
manist question “Where am I going?” In arts are not subsidiary places of second- which he contrasts things toward which
expansive volumes such as “Sources of ary sensations but the primary place our attitudes are subjective with things
the Self ” and “A Secular Age,” he has where we go to recall feelings of whole- that have hard, biological significance:
stalked, like a soft-footed cat, a “natural- ness, of harmony not just with “Na- I may prefer vanilla ice cream to straw-
ist” view of humanity which assimilates ture”—the craggy peaks the Romantics berry, but I must have air to breathe. Is
our minds and morals to a purely mate- loved and the Italian lakes they lingered listening to Beethoven, he asks, more
rialist and empirical program of study. by—but with existence itself. Poetry and like preferring vanilla ice cream or more
We are not atoms in a mindless universe, music do this by escaping the constraints like needing to breathe? Or does it, as
he argues, but agents in a metaphysically of intellect, by going at things atmo- Taylor is convinced, belong to the realm
alert one, embodied and embedded in spherically rather than argumentatively. of ethical elevation? Perhaps hearing
meanings we jointly create. Art is not an They convey a sublime atmosphere of late Beethoven is more like seeing that
accessory to pleasure but the means of sound, ineffable intimations of immor- viral video of a small Chinese boy me-
our connection to the cosmos. tality, and so the apprehension of a “cos- ticulously cooking a meal of egg fried
mic connection.” rice for his still smaller sibling than it
aylor’s new book is formidably Taylor reproduces lines from Word- is like the experience of eating the egg
T chewy, with page after page featur-
ing passages of Hölderlin, Novalis, and
sworth’s “Tintern Abbey” (“And the
round ocean and the living air, /And the
fried rice. “Strong ethical insights are
grounded in what I called ‘felt intu-
Rilke, offered both in the original Ger- blue sky, and in the mind of man; / A itions,’”Taylor writes. “Someone couldn’t
man and in translation. Long analyses motion and a spirit, that impels / All be said to have a moral conviction about
of T. S. Eliot and Milosz arrive, too. But, thinking things, all objects of thought”) universal human rights, for instance, if
though Taylor’s subjects are often se- and tells us, “To let oneself be carried by she wasn’t prone on the appropriate oc-
verely abstract, his sentences are lucid, this passage is to experience a strong casions to experience them, to feel them
even charmingly direct, and his purpose sense of connection, far from clearly as inspiring (hearing the choral move-
is plain. We once lived in an “enchanted” defined . . . but deeply felt; a connection ment of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony),
universe of agreed-upon meaning and not static, but which f lows through and their flagrant violation as appall-
common purpose, where we looked at us and our world.” Keats’s “Ode to a ing.” We are convinced because we are
the night sky and felt that each object Nightingale” is similarly effervescent in moved. The reasoning may seem circu-
was shaped with significance by a God- diction, similarly ethereal in effect. The lar—I know it’s inspiring because it feels
given order. Now we live in the modern lines “O for a beaker full of the warm inspiring—but his point is that what
world the Enlightenment produced— South,/Full of the true, the blushful Hip- great modern poetry does is to encircle
one of fragmented belief and broken pur- pocrene,/With beaded bubbles winking us with inspiring feelings.
poses, where no God superintends the at the brim,/And purple-stained mouth” Art isn’t absolute, but it isn’t at all ar-
cosmos, common agreement on mean- cast a spell as much as they describe a bitrary. Taylor escapes from the divide
ing is no longer possible, and all you can feeling. Taylor writes, “The rhythmic between subjectivity and objectivity
do with the moon is measure it. “I ad- flow between the features as recounted through a concept he calls the “inter-
mire the moon as a moon, just a moon,” in the poem somehow encounters, meets, space”—not the inner space where I per-
Lorenz Hart sighed, with memorable ceive and enjoy but some resonant atmo-
modernity, adding, significantly, “No- sphere that exists between me and the
body’s heart belongs to me today.” En- world.The sound of the cello in a Schubert
lightened, we are alone. trio isn’t entirely in the cello, where the
Romantic poetry—the poetry of Shel- sound begins, or entirely between my lis-
ley and Keats, in English, of Novalis and tening ears, where the experience of struc-
Hölderlin, in German—first diagnosed tured sound as music happens, but some-
this fracture (the argument goes) and where between the two, where the creation
offered a way to heal it. Where neoclas- of meaning takes place. The interspace is
sical poets like Alexander Pope appealed the phenomenal field of the arts. When
to an ordered world, with clear mean- connects up with the flow between the we listen to sublime music, then, our ex-
ings and a hierarchy of kinds, the Ro- features as we live it.” Classical art, he perience is not of pleasure but of an over-
mantics recognized that this was no lon- argues, moves us by convincing us; Ro- whelming feeling of encountering and
ger credible. The enchanted world had mantic art convinces us by moving us. exploring some truth. The music sculpts
been replaced by the modern world. We us, we sculpt the music, and to reduce
could hardly go back toward ignorance— aylor is challenging the belief that this to mood misses the cosmic connec-
Goethe, one of Taylor’s heroes, partici-
pated in the modern world as a scien-
T science provides objective truth,
and art mere subjective feeling—that
tion that the experience proposes and,
quite often, provides.
tist—but we had to f ind a way to art produces sensations, and what you All of this is attractive, directed at
reënchant it. The best way to heal the make of the sensations is all up to you. some unnamed but quite easily imagined
wound is through poetry and music, of He insists that there is intrinsic, grounded contemporary Gradgrind who thinks that
poetry is mere décor and music mere en-
tertainment (in a footnote, Taylor cites
Steven Pinker’s provocation that music
is “auditory cheesecake”), and who scoffs
at the conviction of aesthetes and hu-
manists that music and art contain a kind
of knowledge. Most readers will respond
to Taylor’s contagious excitement in the
presence of Wordsworth and Rilke and
Beethoven. His are ideas that one assents
to enthusiastically even while realizing
that it would be hard to defend them to
someone less inclined to assent. Indeed,
one recalls the spiral of puzzled questions
that apostles of the arts regularly encoun-
ter from the science-minded, who insist
that when we invoke the ethical allure
of music we’re just saying we really like
those fuzzy feelings. If Taylor’s experien-
tial enthusiasms sometimes do not seem
too far away from the lyrics to “Misty”
(“Walk my way and a thousand violins
begin to play”), well, being misty about
something is a precondition of transcen-
dence, even if it’s only that old black magic
called love. And so the interspace be-
tween Taylor and the art-infatuated reader
is likely to be one of enthusiastic assent:
Yes, it does feel like that! Yes, it is a big
experience. Yes, I feel the cosmos. When
I browse through Spotify, passing from
Ray Charles to the obscurer singers of
the Stax/Volt catalogue, each stop along
• •
the way offers some experience of com-
mon space which is not just diverting but people who, at least culturally, have re- affect and narrowly communal in ar-
deeply reassuring. Yes, there is meaning tained a sense of the sacred. Overcom- rangement, and, for the most part, the
in the mess; yes, the space says yes. ing discrimination becomes not just an two forces contest peaceably.
abstract advance in justice or an instru- Taylor is inclined by his experience to
he last fifty pages of “Cosmic Con- mental strategy for minimizing conflict think that the communal and the cos-
T nections” pivot decisively from the
intricacies of poetic imagination to the
but a “source of deep fulfillment.”
Taylor is a believer in the importance
mopolitan can coexist. You can belong to
a tribe and still belong to the people. The
specifics of contemporary American and of place; one does not provincialize his “politics of recognition” that Taylor has
Canadian (and, secondarily, European) work by situating it within the province recommended gives weight, accordingly,
politics—toward the social interspace, so it comes from. Born in Montreal, Tay- to the demands that communities—eth-
to speak. A long section turns to ques- lor was shaped by the peculiar social fab- nic, religious, or otherwise—make on the
tions of white supremacy, civil rights, ric of Quebec. The communal connec- state. Given Taylor’s emphasis on the em-
national identity, the rise of Trumpist tion among Québécois remains unusually bodied dimensions of social meaning, it
populism, and so on. A successful self- strong. It’s reinforced by linguistic iso- seems significant that he was reared in a
governing republic, Taylor believes, re- lation, which outside Montreal often bicultural household; his mother was
quires a community of shared purpose produces an inward-turning monolingual a Francophone Catholic, and his father
and a common space of deliberation. An- culture, and in Montreal an outward- an Anglophone Protestant. McGill is
tagonistic groups must go beyond the turning bilingual one. The Catholic a great English-speaking university in
narrow aspiration of winning a contest Church has collapsed as a living force, the midst of a French-speaking city, and
against adversaries and come to one an- but it provides a cultural scaffolding in though its autonomy and financing is
other with a sense of mutual recognition which much else still takes place. (The threatened from time to time by the
and regard. And the people best able to holiday celebrating the now secularized provincial government, it has survived
make this case, in Taylor’s view, “are peo- cause of Quebec nationalism is a reli- through even the most extreme indepen-
ple who are deeply rooted in their spir- gious one: June 24th, Saint-Jean-Baptiste dence-minded administrations. Montreal
itual sources, often religious.” These are Day.) Quebec is openly cosmopolitan in is a very good place to nourish the belief
that communities can supply meaning out that, if we have to look past leprosy with the scientific findings of his day,
without fomenting mayhem. and death in childbirth in chronicling and they showed up in his verse. Keats’s
The link Taylor wants to make the enchanted, we also have to look past claim that “beauty is truth, truth beauty”
between his readings of poetry and his Treblinka, the killing fields, Wounded is contestable on its own terms, and the
civics lessons has affinities to the pro- Knee, and more in chronicling the dis- subsequent claim that this is all we need
posals made by a number of writers— enchanted. Yet such a rejoinder is cor- to know puts one in mind of the phi-
many of them Catholic, significantly— rosive of the neat division between the losopher’s favorite T-shirt: “Surely not
throughout the modern period: the two worlds he makes. Though he never everybody was kung-fu fighting.” One
meticulous remaking of ritual (which says it directly, the atmospherics of Tay- hates to pit one great Polish poet against
you find in Chesterton and Tolkien lor’s book suggest that great music is an another, but Taylor’s book might have
alike), the love of the local, the revalu- agent of moral growth. So you can won- benefitted by having a little more Szym-
ing of ceremony and communal spirit der what it would be like if we had a civ- borska and a little less Milosz, since she
as things essential in themselves rather ilization where Romantic music was the gets an effect quite as Romantic as her
than leftovers from a barbaric past. The soundtrack of the people, and where even counterpart’s simply by inventorying the
wrong kind of politics, Taylor implies, military victories and defeats were cele- actual world of peeled onions and doc-
arises from the loss of a cosmic connec- brated through the allure of symphonic tors’ offices. Humanistic inquiry may not
tion which the Romantics first sensed, sound. In fact, such a society existed— be susceptible to strict empirical mea-
and which now is part of the unhappy in the Third Reich of the nineteen-for- surement or evolutionary explanation.
inheritance of our civilization. Alien- ties. Loving Schubert and Beethoven, it But it remains rational, forcing us to
ated and disconnected, the Trump voter, seems, gets you nowhere at all ethically. argue out our tastes and values. To treat
the Brexiteer, the Le Pen supporter turns And then the question arises of art as a question of personal taste is, as
to theatricalized reassurances of fascist- whether the alteration between the en- Taylor thinks, reductive, but it’s also im-
style unity, predicated on the demoni- chanted and the enlightened is really practical. It is to forget that almost all
zation of the nearby other. Taylor cele- the historical one proposed by Taylor’s we ever do is argue about taste—and
brates Pope Francis’s encyclicals on Hegelian model, with its emphasis on the good arguments often ask how art
extended families, with their sense of an unfolding one-way plot, or, rather, a corresponds to our experience or shines
the common good, and those Native re- permanent tension in all literate times. light on our values.
ligions which get their sense of the sa- Shakespeare’s language, as Taylor hints
cred from a specific place of dwelling. at various moments, is structured by a aylor extolls the communities of
He turns again to the interspace, now
lofted to become not only the theatre
pull between inherited magic and Re-
naissance cynicism. Ted Hughes made
T meaning that are drawn together
by the interspace of enchantment. Yet,
of reception and communication be- the point that Shakespeare stood bal- as he would be the first to acknowledge,
tween artist and audience but also the anced on a knife’s edge between myth such communities are, first of all, com-
implicit space of political community. and measurement, between an old, fairy- munities of practice. We learn to listen,
tale world and a new, empirical one. just as we learn to read. Learning to love
he turn from poetry to politics is There’s visionary language in the son- Beethoven’s music is first to love the
T certainly seductive, but is it persua-
sive? Certain objections rise even in the
nets that seems to say almost more
than we can understand (“the prophetic
sound, then to find it achingly long-
winded, then to sustain concentration,
mind of the reader stirred by these kinds soul / Of the wide world dreaming on then to find the concentration rewarded
of accounts. First, and simplest: Should things to come”) and acerbic worldliness by new understanding—only to return
we be so enchanted by “enchantment”? right next door (“My mistress’ eyes are to the pleasure of the sound.
Taylor treats the change from the en- nothing like the sun”). Enchanted and The interspace is an arena of shared
chanted world to the post-Enlightenment enlightened sensibilities rise throughout education as much as of solitary epiph-
naturalistic world as a change from one history and seem two points in the cycle any. Ritual without reason has led mo-
climate of opinion to another, rather than of human possibility more than two modernity in many wrong directions. Prac-
as any kind of progress. But “progress” ments in fixed historical sequence. tical communities are as valuable as
does seem to be the right word for it: life A third point relates to Taylor’s par- poetic communities. The experiences
in the “enchanted” world was poorer, ticular appetite for poetry. He likes the Taylor evokes of being overwhelmed by
briefer, uglier, and more brutal. The op- sides of Keats and Wordsworth that are aesthetic responses scarcely distinguish-
position of the enchanted and the dis- ineffable, symbolic, atmospheric, and able from ethical elevation are ones we
enchanted—one world lacking in tech- mystically resonant. But this taste can encounter daily—exploring a stranger’s
nological power but rich in communal lead him, so to speak, to miss the ice playlist of Chuck Berry and his precur-
spirit, the other rich in machines but poor cubes in the tumbler while seeking the sors, reading a newly sent poem, or see-
in soul—is tilted toward the past. To put iceberg in the ocean. Romantic poetry ing an Instagram Story of children in a
it plainly, the “disenchanted” universe is gets some of its meaning by overwhelm- distant land sharing a meal. The inter-
one where, increasingly, human suffering ing us, but it also gets meaning by mak- space is enchanted mainly in its nor-
is resolved by vaccination and effective ing a disputable case. There’s a lot of at- malcy. Perhaps connecting with the
drugs, not by bleeding and cupping. mosphere in Romantic poetry, but also cosmos is not as hard as philosophers
Taylor’s response would be to point a lot of argument. Shelley was obsessed sometimes imagine. It’s where we live. 
Enjoy The New Yorker
from head to tote.
Check out new offerings, evergreen favorites,
limited-edition items, and more.
tidian dramas of opening a restaurant,
ON AND OFF THE MENU giving focus not only to Carmy, the
head chef and owner, but also to Syd-
ney, a sous-chef learning her worth in
HEAT RISING macho environs, and to Lionel, a qui-
etly ambitious pastry chef.
The era of the line cook. The restaurant world still harbors
affection for the idea of cooks paying
BY HANNAH GOLDFIELD their dues, but the fetish for rigidly
hierarchical and abusive workplaces
seems to have abated in recent years.
In his memoir “Notes from a Young
Black Chef,” Kwame Onwuachi re-
counts being emotionally abused in
some of New York’s most prestigious
kitchens. At his own restaurant, Tati-
ana, he is a firm but gentle leader, pre-
siding over an ongoing “Top Chef ”-
style knockout tournament, in which
cooks both compete and serve as
judges, whipping up dishes during
lulls in service. It’s lighthearted—an
impromptu round I saw involved
shooting a balled-up piece of tinfoil
into a trash can—but high-stakes, end-
ing with a big-ticket prize of the win-
ner’s choice. (One person won a trip
to Jamaica, at Onwuachi’s expense.)
Eric Ripert, the chef and co-owner of
Le Bernardin, recently hired a “staff
meal chef,” whose sole job is to pre-
pare excellent food for his co-workers.
If the era of the line cook had been
hovering pre-pandemic, the course of
2020 certainly hastened it. That year,
as restaurant workers scrambled for
gigs and sweated in the trenches of
“essential work,” the chef Eli Sussman,
who began his career as a prep cook,
started posting memes that united den-
n “Kitchen Confidential,” the book am not—an advocate for change in izens of the industry over the daily
Iwriting
that launched Anthony Bourdain’s
career, he explained that his
the restaurant business,” he wrote. “I
like the business just the way it is.”
struggles of kitchen labor: dropping a
paring knife behind a lowboy, forget-
subject was “street-level cooking and Whether he meant to or not, Bour- ting to close the roll gate at the end of
its practitioners.” Line cooks—the peo- dain did change the business, in part your shift, barely livable hourly wages.
ple actually making your food—“were by stoking the public’s interest in its (To a pair of photos of Tom Hanks—a
the heroes,” he wrote. It was clear what inner workings. His vivid portrait of clean-cut Forrest Gump on the left, a
kind of heroism he meant: obscured life in the kitchen helped turn the line bedraggled castaway on the right—he
and nearly undetectable; all drudgery, cook into an ascendant figure; a quar- added the text “Day 1: Hi Chef ! Look-
no glory; the hustle its own reward. In ter of a century later, people without ing forward to being part of the team!
the preface to an updated paperback any particular connection to the indus- Day 366: Who the fuck stole my fucking
edition, Bourdain said that the book try are familiar with the image of a sharpie!!!”) At the latest Baldor Bite,
had been wrongly perceived as an ex- cook drinking ice water out of a plas- a biannual food expo hosted by one of
posé of the restaurant business, when tic quart container; with the term “back the biggest restaurant suppliers on the
all he was trying to do was write some- of house”; with the ritual of “family East Coast, Sussman hawked delight-
thing that his fellow-cooks found “en- meal.” The TV show “The Bear” has fully niche merchandise for the back-
tertaining and true.” “I was not—and proffered an insider’s view of the quo- of-house crowd, including T-shirts
printed with the script for Baldor’s au-
How back-of-house workers came to the forefront of pop culture. tomated phone menu.
60 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JASON FULFORD AND TAMARA SHOPSIN
One recent Monday afternoon, I agreed: no “mods,” or modifications. born sous-chef at the Musket Room,
stopped by gertrude’s, a restaurant Chefs see these opportunities as a a Michelin-starred restaurant in No-
Sussman co-owns, in Prospect Heights, way to develop the skills of newer lita. At the offices of Food 52, on a
and made my way down a precariously cooks, and to retain their talent. Jason high floor in the Brooklyn Navy Yard,
steep set of stairs to the dark, cramped Vincent, the chef and co-owner of guests milled around a bar, drinking a
basement prep kitchen. Every Mon- Giant, in Chicago, prints the initials cocktail called Clear Skies—a riff on
day, Sussman runs a burger special, of line cooks who conceive of new a Hurricane, with coconut milk and
usually conceived by someone—a line dishes on the restaurant’s menu. (When lime—and eating cornmeal-battered
cook, a dishwasher—who works one I went recently, a pasta with lentil ragù fried oysters before being seated at
of the restaurant’s less glamorous jobs. and a grilled swordfish Tom Kha were several large tables.
That day, it was in the hands of João attributed to “l.k.” and “l.d.,” respec- Ponjuan, who is twenty-seven and
Soares Vieira, the production man- tively.) Younger cooks, he’s observed, slight, with a ruffled mop of fine curls,
ager, who oversees all kitchen prep and have different expectations for their a goatee, and round spectacles that
who now stood at an induction burner, careers than he did when he started. give him the look of a young, Brook-
stirring a pot of garlic simmering in “With Instagram and everything, ev- lynite Colonel Sanders, seemed ner-
olive oil, to which he’d soon add wal- eryone’s got the potential to be no- vous and excited; it was clear that he
nuts and diced cremini, to make mush- ticed,” Vincent said. wasn’t taking the experience lightly.
room duxelles. “I was a cook not so long ago; I A detailed menu began with a poem
This was Soares Vieira’s second go know how monotonous it can be,” On- about his mother and explained the
at burger night; his first had been wuachi told me. “And I think by hav- inspiration behind each dish: the
“vaguely controversial,” he said, because ing the tournament, by bringing the boiled-peanut vinaigrette on a plate
the patties were served without a bun, staff into the dining room, by playing of white asparagus reminded him of
after bife à café, a classic of Lisbon, his the music loud so they can hear it, it eating boiled peanuts by the side of
home town. This time, he was show- feels more like they’re a part of the the road on the way to baseball games
casing his classical French training, culture that we’re trying to convey to in Louisiana; a course of duck à l’or-
pairing the duxelles with yellow mus- the diners.” But also, he said, “every- ange was made with satsumas like the
tard, Roquefort, and a handful of pars- body has a voice now, especially with ones that grew on a tree behind his
ley, all to be sandwiched with the beef social media. So I think a lot of peo- grandparents’ house. A dish of crab
patty on a buttered challah bun. Other ple are more cognizant of how they’re “rice and gravy” came with a tiny plas-
cooks had done riffs on the banh mi treating their staff—because there is tic squeeze bottle of Nasty Noah’s
and the chopped cheese; a porter named someone watching.” Hot Sauce, labelled with an illustra-
Keith had smothered his in smoked tion of Ponjuan’s face.
cheddar, crispy onions, and a house- his spring, I went to a dinner in a Besser said that when she was first
made A1 sauce. “It’s definitely not com-
mon to have line cooks actually put
T series called the Line Up, for which
line cooks, sous-chefs, and chefs de
putting together the Line Up, five years
ago, “it felt like walking on eggshells”—
something on a menu,” Soares Vieira cuisine from buzzy New York restau- some chefs she approached “felt threat-
said. Cooking is his second career; be- rants get to be executive chefs for a ened and nervous about their cook
fore culinary school, he worked for ten night. It’s the brainchild of Elena Besser, being distracted, or wanting to leave
years as an interior architect. He con- who is in her thirties and makes a liv- and go do their own thing.” But re-
fessed to spending “too much time” at ing as a private chef, a caterer, and a cently, she told me, chefs have been
gertrude’s—“to the point that Eli sends culinary contributor to the “Today” eager to showcase their employees’
me home sometimes.” show. She has worked the line herself, talents. At dinner, I sat next to Ca-
During the restaurant’s lineup meet- at Lilia, in Williamsburg. “I felt really mari Mick, the Musket Room’s exec-
ing, after Sussman updated the front- frustrated that it takes years and years, utive pastry chef and one of Ponjuan’s
of-house staff on changes to service— and many other factors, to get the op- bosses and mentors, who cheered
the chopped salad was eighty-sixed; portunity to be in the spotlight,” she loudly—“Yeah, Nasty Noah!”—when
it would be great to sell more of the told me. “Often, individuals leave the he stood up to speak.
Montauk sea bass—Soares Vieira industry because they put in all of this Ponjuan considered the night a suc-
emerged from the kitchen with two time and effort, and are never the ones cess, though afterward he couldn’t re-
finished burgers, which he sliced into calling the shots.” sist thinking about what he might have
tiny wedges so everyone could have a For the series, Besser and her co- done differently. (The plating on the
taste. “How would you describe Roque- founders find participants by asking crab rice, and on the dessert, could
fort to someone who’s never had it be- chefs to nominate someone in their have been cleaner, he told me.) If he
fore?” a server asked. “Very nutty,” Soares kitchen, and choose three per “season” had relished his moment in the spot-
Vieira said. “Don’t say ‘moldy,’ but it’s to each come up with a one-night light, it didn’t seem to be what moti-
full-on moldy—it’s a full blue cheese, restaurant concept, which Besser and vated him. “It’s hard,” he said of his
which has mold in it. If they don’t know her team fully fund and help to exe- work, “but there’s something that I just
what Roquefort is, they probably won’t cute. On the marquee when I went enjoy about the endurance of it. The
like it.” But Soares Vieira and Sussman was Noah Ponjuan, the Baton Rouge- life that comes with it.” 
tongue rather than confessing devotion
POP MUSIC too soon: “I don’t wanna ruin the mo-
ment / Lovely to sit between comfort
and chaos.” Much of McAlpine’s writ-
OFFLINE ing wobbles between those two poles.
Like Bridgers and Rodrigo, she is prone
Lizzy McAlpine on the power and pitfalls of viral fame. to contemplating the distance between
what feels safe and what feels thrilling.
BY AMANDA PETRUSICH Yet the final verse of “Ceilings” sug-
gests that it was all an elaborate fan-
tasy. “But it’s not real / And you don’t
exist / And I can’t recall the last time I
was kissed,” she sings. Plenty of songs
feature extended daydreams about get-
ting subsumed by a new romance, but
far fewer include invented thoughts of
love-related angst. “Ceilings” feels par-
ticularly modern in this way, and in con-
versation, somehow, with the loneliness
of quarantine. McAlpine’s longing for
love is also a longing for confusion, for
nervousness, for weird feelings. She
wants the whole imperfect and exhila-
rating package: comfort, chaos.
It was the verse containing the plot
twist—it was all just a dream!—that
started whipping across TikTok. The
audio was typically sped up (users will
sometimes increase a song’s b.p.m. so
that they can cram more lyrical con-
tent into a very brief clip—yes, this is
nuts) and played over footage of girls
in long dresses twirling around out-
side, sometimes during a rainstorm,
with beatific expressions on their faces.
For several years now, the music in-
dustry has been hyperfocussed on
TikTok as a kind of magic portal to
huge, near-instantaneous success. Al-
though the platform can be confound-
IondnLizzy
2022, the singer and songwriter
McAlpine released her sec-
studio album, “Five Seconds Flat,”
warblers to pull out their iPhone tri-
pods. McAlpine had collaborated with
Jacob Collier and Finneas on the re-
ing—the particulars of its algorithm
are famously kept secret—it’s a cheap
and efficient marketing tool, and om-
a collection of winsome bedroom- cord, and would soon work with Noah nipresent in the lives of its billion-plus
pop songs about feeling heartsick and Kahan and Niall Horan. She felt like users. It works to create a certain kind
alienated. McAlpine, who was then a singer of her time and place. of outsized, often momentary fame.
twenty-two, seemed to fit neatly be- Almost a year after “Five Seconds “Ceilings” has now been streamed more
tween Phoebe Bridgers and Olivia Ro- Flat” was released, the single “Ceilings” than five hundred and thirty million
drigo, two other visionary young song- went viral on TikTok. McAlpine, who times on Spotify.
writers who became enormously famous was brought up in a suburb of Phila- When we first spoke, McAlpine,
during the pandemic. McAlpine’s work delphia, wrote the song while she was who has long brown hair and an air of
was funny and forthright, but also in London, working on an EP and mud- seriousness, was seated on her bed at
vaguely elegiac. She has a velvety, agile dling through a breakup. It tells the her house in Los Angeles, an open,
voice that trembles in the right mo- story of a relationship’s heady and in- high-ceilinged space with heavy wooden
ments. She is also unusually adept at toxicating early days, when everything beams and white walls. I asked how
writing the sorts of tender, yearning feels possible but the ground is still un- long she’d been living there. She paused,
hooks that move legions of aspiring steady. The song’s narrator bites her then laughed. “Time is weird,” she said.
“Two-ish years?” She found the city
“Older” eschews the melodramatic swooning of McAlpine’s previous album. isolating at first, but has slowly settled
62 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 PHOTOGRAPH BY MAIWENN RAOULT
into a domestic rhythm. She told me Music. “We dated for a month and a “As we kept going, it just started to
that she has come to understand viral- half, and then the next four years were feel less and less right,” she said. “We
ity as something of a curse. “I play ‘Ceil- on and off, basically,” she said. “I was were doing it like my other records. I
ings’ toward the end of the set,” she just going back to him over and over listen back to my first two albums, and
said. “The song I play after ‘Ceilings’ again because I knew he would be I can just hear the perfection. We would
is about my father, who passed away. there.” Now she’s trying to hold her- Melodyne every vocal. It was perfectly
Hundreds of people just get up and self accountable: “I only hear songs in time. I felt like this music deserved
walk out. Like, you really paid that about ‘You hurt me and you left and something more messy than that, more
much money to come see my show, you suck!’ That’s not my experience.” human.” She ended up reworking most
and only wanted to hear ‘Ceilings’? It’s The melodies on “Older” are rich of that material, and ultimately helped
mind-boggling.” but subtle. On the title track, Mc- produce the record herself. “I found a
Of course, griping about the inan- Alpine details her regrets over mourn- band,” she said. “Finally being in a
ity of TikTok can make a person feel ful piano lines: room with people who are real, and in
dusty and oblivious. For a while, I was the same room, and we’re recording
Over and over
so resistant to resisting it that I found Watch it all pass things in one take, playing off of each
myself engaging in all sorts of mental Mom’s getting older other—it just felt so good. It was ex-
and spiritual gymnastics to justify its I’m wanting it back actly what the music was missing.”
galloping pace, its endless expanse of Where no one is dying She recalled her previous tour, in
fun-sized content, the way it reduces And no one is hurt support of “Five Seconds Flat,” as har-
And I have been good to you
even the most dynamic and emotion- Instead of making it worse. rowing, anxious. She wrote “All Falls
ally complicated songs to neutral blips. Down,” one of the more beguiling
But the more a person mulls over the It is impossible, the song suggests, to tracks on “Older,” while in the midst
mechanics of virality the more odious understand or control our lives as we’re of it. “I was trying to put on a show
the experience seems. Building a ca- living them. “I wish I knew what the that I saw other people doing—the
reer the old-fashioned way—slow and end is,” she repeats in the final verse, pop thing,” she said. “But it just didn’t
steady—is not glamorous, but being her voice splintering. I told McAlpine sit right with me. This tour is com-
launched into the stratosphere seem- that I found the album to be a poi- pletely different. It’s like night and
ingly at random, with no personal or gnant meditation on self-loathing and day.” On “All Falls Down,” McAlpine
professional infrastructure in place to the time we lose to pain. “I’ve seen so sings about being miserable over
support sudden fame, tends to leave many people just be, like, ‘It’s really jaunty, AM-radio horns. The track is
musicians stricken, if not traumatized. boring,’ ” McAlpine told me, of the playful but intensely grim, in the mold
This is partly because virality is un- record. “It’s not ‘Five Seconds Flat,’ of Harry Nilsson or Randy Newman.
derstood as a gift, the whole point of but ‘Five Seconds Flat’ was so not “Twenty-two / Was a panic attack,”
being relentlessly online. It can be irk- me.” She went on, “I’m kind of los- she sings, her voice soft. “I can’t stop
some when artists don’t express end- ing the people who don’t actually care the time from moving / And I can
less gratitude for their luck. As we about my art, which is hard, but also never get it back.”
spoke, McAlpine was careful not to good, probably, in the long run, be- Lately, McAlpine has been reëval-
complain too much about this kind of cause this album sounds the most like uating her aspirations. “I didn’t play
notoriety. “It’s kind of disheartening, me that I’ve ever sounded. If people gigs growing up—all I really did was
a little bit, sometimes,” she said cau- don’t fuck with it, ‘Five Seconds Flat’ do theatre,” she said. “I wanted to be
tiously. “But for the most part it’s fine. is still there for them.” on Broadway. I liked writing songs be-
I’m just going to move ‘Ceilings’ to the McAlpine also said that she has been cause it helps me process things, and
encore. If they really want to see ‘Ceil- turning away from social media. “I used for a long time the songs were just
ings,’ they can wait.” to put myself out there a lot more, in for me.” I asked if she could imagine
the early days, when I was building my a future in which she stopped touring
Iandnalbum,
April, McAlpine released her third
“Older,” an eerie, sparse,
gorgeous folk-rock record that de-
career. But recently, I just . . . I don’t
like it,” she said. “I don’t want to have
people know my every move and every
and concentrated on a different kind of
performance, maybe auditioning for a
musical. “That’s all I’ve been thinking
liberately eschews the melodramatic thought. With this record specifically, about, honestly,” she said. “This album
swooning of “Five Seconds Flat.” She I was, like, I’m not doing that. I don’t took so long to make, and it took a
is in the middle of a world tour, and care if my music goes nowhere. I’m not lot of the joy out of making music
will perform two shows this month at going to be lip-synching the songs on for me.” Now she’s considering a life
Radio City Music Hall. “Older” is a TikTok every day to get them to go centered on selflessness, slowness, pri-
slower and more mature album, fo- viral. That’s not who I am.” vacy, quiet. “After this tour, I’m fully
cussed on grief, culpability, and the Instead, McAlpine has spent much going to pivot to something else,” she
tumult of change. The songs were of the last two years reëstablishing her- said. “I want to work on other people’s
inspired by a romantic relationship self both creatively and personally. She words. I want to be a part of some-
McAlpine had while she was an un- initially recorded a different version of one else’s ideas. I need to live a little
dergraduate at the Berklee College of the album, but the results left her cold. before I can write more.” 
twelve women—a “jury of matrons”—
THE THEATRE into service to evaluate Sally, sequestering
them “without meat, drink, fire and can-
dle,” to hasten their examination along.
LABOR PAINS For much of its first half, “The Wel-
kin” is Kirkwood’s gender-swapped ver-
Lucy Kirkwood’s “The Welkin” assesses women’s work. sion of “Twelve Angry Men.” Here, San-
dra Oh takes on what the playwright has
BY HELEN SHAW referred to as the Henry Fonda position
in the jury room, playing Lizzy, a mid-
wife who empathizes with the unsta-
ble, fierce, forsaken Sally. Lizzy brings
obstetric expertise and a brutal class
consciousness to the deliberations. She
spares no pity for the victim, the rich
eleven-year-old Alice Wax, who was
beaten to death with a hammer. “They
found the little girl in pieces in two sacks
stuffed up the fireplace,” the bailiff, Mr.
Coombes (Glenn Fitzgerald), tells Lizzy.
“Expect that is the closest a Wax child
ever got to sweeping a chimney,” she
tuts, banging away at her butter churn.
Kirkwood uses the second half to take
wilder stylistic swings. Music and ap-
paritions move through the space; the
women channel absurd interventions
from other centuries. I found these mo-
ments bewildering at first, and then, as
the superb cast invests them with manic
energy, exhilarating.
In 1759, Halley’s Comet was a recent
fascination, and Kirkwood threads its
presence through the play, hinting at
the way that future years (maybe 1835,
certainly 1986) will drift into the play’s
weird gravity. Other things—angels, de-
mons, even the idea of airplanes—also
hover above the action. In fact, “welkin”
is an old English word for sky, or, re-
arly in “The Welkin,” the British If work can crush a soul, who’s to blame ally, the firmament, the high vault over
E playwright Lucy Kirkwood’s period
thriller, now at the Linda Gross Theatre,
for the monstrous thing that takes that
poor soul’s place?
us. Georgian and East Anglian idiom
is usually introduced carefully and with
a dozen women appear in something like In Kirkwood’s play, directed for the enough repetition that I can now con-
an eighteenth-century diorama: they are Atlantic Theatre Company by Sarah fidently insult any sloppy mawther as a
arranged in bas-relief against a black cur- Benson, a court has already condemned slamkin who keeps a dirty house. “Wel-
tain, each obsessively performing a sin- a young married woman, Sally Poppy kin,” though, is said only once. I wonder
gle task. Whump, whump, whump goes a (Haley Wong), to hang, for helping her if Kirkwood wants you to reach for a dic-
carpet beater; scrape, scrape, scrape grinds lover murder a little girl. We’re pretty tionary after you leave the theatre, and
a brush against the floor. It’s a cliché, of sure she did it: the play starts with a then, as you realize that you just spent
course, that “women’s work” is backbreak- candlelit prologue, in which Sally vis- two and a half hours at a play named
ing and soul-crushing, but Kirkwood, its her abandoned husband raving and for Heaven, she wants you to look up.
who also wrote the Tony-nominated play covered in the child’s blood. But Sally
“The Children”—in which retired nu- has sworn to the judge that she’s preg- wo trends seem to be converging
clear scientists consider sacrificing them-
selves to shut down a damaged reactor—
nant, and, under English common law
in 1759, “pleading the belly” could com-
T in “The Welkin”: the urge to re-
visit plays like “The Crucible” with our
is interested in what follows the cliché. mute the sentence. The judge presses modern feminist sensibilities—in just a
few years, we’ve had Kimberly Belflow-
Sandra Oh stars as an eighteenth-century midwife and moral lodestone. er’s “John Proctor Is the Villain,” Talene
64 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY BEN WISEMAN
Monahon’s “The Good John Proctor,” and wearing, though I did come to believe
Sarah Ruhl’s “Becky Nurse of Salem”— that Kirkwood wants the seams to show.
and a long-building fear of authority and Benson’s directorial touch is extrav-
its instruments, including the justice sys- agantly precise: we never see her move
tem, the medical establishment, and even her ensemble into a tableau, but sud-
civic society itself. In Arthur Miller’s clas- denly we’ll be looking at a stage image as
sic, girls—historically, little girls, Ruhl’s delicately composed as a Hogarth print.
“Becky” taught us—are treated like so- Unfortunately, Benson, like Kirkwood,
ciopathic maniacs. Kirkwood’s tragic plot exhibits less deftness with the central
shows us a girl who is certainly violent, pair, whose performances are big but
but we also gather that Sally’s fall into sometimes flat. Oh, who has a gift for
madness came after a short lifetime of majesty, thunders like a lawyer during
abuse, unstinting work, and marital as- summation, and when she’s thwarted
sault. As for that long-building fear, the she gets even louder. And Wong, as the
women on the jury hear from a doc- complex Sally, leans into playing her as
PDF dl'ed @mobilism.org

tor (Danny Wolohan) who treats Lizzy if she’s a sulky teen. Kirkwood has given
with grave respect—while also remind- Wong an almost impossible task, and Sal-
ing her, “The life of a woman is a his- ly’s costume doesn’t help. The designer
tory of disease.” This phrase is cribbed, Kaye Voyce puts the rest of the cast in
I believe, from the nineteenth-century clothes that suit 1759 from a distance
physician George Darwin, who recom- but turn out to be inventive, anachro-
mended that women cleanse their va- nistic patchworks of hoodies, knitwear,
ginas with borax. (Kirkwood has a gift and gathered skirts, yet she strips Sally
for chilling details, but even her horrors down: by the end, she’s in just a cor-
can’t rival the actual history.) set over a slinky, soiled shift. (Did For-
ever 21 open an outlet in the eighteenth
irkwood is also following in the century?) Wong therefore spends a long
K great Caryl Churchill’s footsteps;
there are elements here that recall the
time in her underwear, and that makes
her character’s late-arriving fear of phys-
time-travelling “Top Girls,” the vignettes ical exposure difficult to sell.
of rural English labor in “Fen,” and the Lizzy and Sally may be the core duo,
acidic defense of cunning women in but Kirkwood offers her secondary char-
“Vinegar Tom.” When Kirkwood’s at acters the best material. Susannah Per-
her best—the often hilarious group ex- kins is wonderful as Mary, one of sev-
changes, the adventurous aesthetics— eral comic-relief characters, notable for
she does Churchill proud. Kirkwood can her dim-witted sweetness (she “does not
write with a gunslinger’s ease: she intro- know which glove belongs on which
duces the jury in a clever impanelling hand,” Lizzy says); Ann Harada shines
scene, in which each woman responds as a lusty, menopausal mischief-maker,
to a disembodied judge’s voice with a who takes great joy in humiliating the
saucy little summation of herself. (“Mary humorless bailiff. Sarah (Hannah Ca-
Middleton. Wife to Amos Middleton. bell) is a mute jury member who forces
I do not know what else to tell you ex- herself to speak after years of silence;
cept we have five children and there is her hoarse confession that she has seen
a tankard in our house that is haunted.”) a cloven-hoofed woman, spitting on
As the twelve women—plus Sally— blackberries to make them sour, is the
argue and reveal themselves in the court’s dense, dark heart of “The Welkin.” Sarah
upper room, Kirkwood orchestrates the has, until her outburst, seemed affable
many voices into a believably undulat- and sane, and when she tells the others
ing, sometimes chaotic conversation. not only that she met a devil-woman
Kirkwood’s text, though, walks a tricky but that the demon delivered Sarah’s
line between period-appropriate earthy baby, the women all accept her testi-
banter and less graceful, more laborious mony as though it makes perfect sense.
speechifying. Lizzy at her most righ- It’s like the moment in a village-gone-
teous observes, “It is a poor apparatus bad thriller, say, “Midsommar” or “The
for justice. But it is what we have. This Wicker Man,” when you realize that
room. The sky outside that window and everybody’s in on it. A sweet face is no
our own dignity beneath it.” For a long guarantee that the mind behind it isn’t
while, I found Lizzy’s didactic speeches wriggling like a bag of snakes. 
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024
Janet has a boyfriend on the premises,
THE CURRENT CINEMA too: a terse, tetchy older fellow named
Wayne (Will Patton), who mostly keeps
to himself. And so we watch, for un-
THE SPACE BETWEEN hurried stretches, as Lacy busies her-
self practicing piano on an electronic
“Janet Planet.” keyboard and directing a makeshift
puppet theatre peopled with a collec-
BY JUSTIN CHANG tion of tiny figurines. She is alone, but
not exactly lonely. The house is awash
he first time we meet Janet in daughter’s anxieties too well to be taken with sunlight, streaming in through
T “Janet Planet,” a wondrous début
feature from the celebrated playwright
aback by them, and loves her too deeply
to hold them against her. Lacy loves
enormous windows, bouncing off high,
vaulted ceilings, encasing her like a
Annie Baker, she is standing on a rural her mother, too, yet the quality and in- wood-panelled womb—a rustic exten-
road a little way from the camera. The tensity of that love will fluctuate over sion of her mother’s embrace.
distance is subtle, but crucial. Glimpsed the remaining summer months. You At night, though, as darkness de-
from afar, surrounded by grass and sun- could call “Janet Planet” a coming-of- scends and the chirping of crickets in-
shine, Janet ( Julianne Nicholson) is a age story, but that would risk lumping tensifies, Lacy grows restless and cov-
vision of loveliness—serene, earthy, and it together with countless movies it etous of Janet’s attention. She insists
that her mother sleep beside her; when
Janet tries to slip out, Lacy forces her
to leave behind a piece of herself, a strand
of her hair. (Hair figures frequently, and
evocatively, into this micro-layered story:
watch how Lacy’s red-brown locks bil-
low in the breeze during a car ride, or
how her curiosity leads her, mid-shower,
to sample a visitor’s unfamiliar-look-
ing shampoo.) If there’s a reason Lacy
clings to her mother so fiercely, it’s to
thwart Wayne, who is obviously put
out by the girl’s premature return from
camp. You can’t entirely blame him;
Lacy can be blunt and overly inquisi-
tive, and Ziegler, a remarkable discov-
ery, doesn’t soften any rough edges. But
you also can’t entirely blame Lacy, and
her presence merely hastens the inev-
Zoe Ziegler and Julianne Nicholson star in Annie Baker’s film. itable end of Janet’s relationship—the
latest, we sense, of many.
a little remote. We’re seeing her through doesn’t much resemble. It’s more a story “I think you have to break up with
the eyes of her eleven-year-old daugh- about a child at the stage where one him,” Lacy says, when Janet asks her
ter, Lacy (Zoe Ziegler), an owlish mis- moves beyond the intense, almost ro- advice. Does their exchange reveal
fit with whom she shares a close bond, mantic, idolization of a parent—a pro- heartening depths of parental trust, or
though we can already guess that things cess that, as Baker is aware, is gradual, is it a warning sign of mother-daugh-
are about to change. Janet has come full of hesitations and stumbles. To ter codependency? The camera, spying
to fetch her daughter from summer capture a process of disillusionment re- on Janet and Lacy as they walk and
camp, yet summer is far from over; quires uncommon patience, plus keen talk on a dirt road, betrays nothing.
Lacy called the night before, demand- powers of observation. Hers are up to (The cinematographer is Maria von
ing liberation or death. “I’m gonna kill the challenge. Hausswolff, who brought her eye for
myself if you don’t come get me,” she It will surprise none of Baker’s ad- natural splendor to the magnificent
announced, before calmly replacing mirers to hear that, onscreen as well as Icelandic drama “Godland,” from 2022.)
the receiver. (Yes, the receiver; the onstage, she is attuned to the quotid- And Nicholson, in an exquisite perfor-
movie takes place in 1991.) ian, allergic to melodrama, and border- mance of pinpoint subtlety, doesn’t try
If Janet was at all disturbed by Lacy’s line monkish in her appreciation for to sway judgment in either direction.
threat, she doesn’t show it now. Instead, silence. Back home in woodsy western When Lacy later asks how her mother
she fixes Lacy with a smile, devoid of Massachusetts, Janet, an acupunctur- would feel if she were to someday date
reproach or alarm, and pulls her into a ist, meets clients at her in-house stu- a girl, Janet’s response is an uncom-
warm, reassuring hug. She knows her dio, leaving Lacy to her own devices. monly thoughtful one, evincing a kind
66 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY MARY KIRKPATRICK
of honesty that I suspect not every par- omy: Janet is the planet who, with sub- sion), feels like a tip of the hat to Ing-
ent would sanction. It’s not just an an- dued but undeniable magnetism, pulls mar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander”
swer; it’s a declaration of faith in the various human satellites into her orbit. (1982). There is also the alfresco per-
person Lacy is becoming, and who she But Lacy can see, more clearly than formance that introduces us to Regina:
already is. most, that Janet’s celestial radiance has a beguiling Dionysian spectacle, with
“Janet Planet” consists of three loosely begun to dwindle, eclipsed by the dis- actors in flowing white costumes and
plotted chapters, the first of which ends appointments of middle age and the horned animal masks, which Baker re-
with Wayne’s departure. The following frustrations of an unmet longing. cords with an almost anthropological
two each center on a new house guest. wonderment, plus the faintest whisper
One of these is Janet’s longtime friend aker’s most prominent work re- of satire. Even as we register, and maybe
Regina (Sophie Okonedo), who belongs
to a theatrical-agricultural hippie com-
B mains “The Flick,” which won the
2014 Pulitzer Prize for drama, and
share, Lacy’s bewilderment, we also feel
the filmmaker’s rigorous fascination
mune, and whom we first see at an out- which follows the travails of three em- with what she’s showing us.
door performance, monologuing in full ployees at a small Massachusetts art- We are not, in other words, locked
force. (“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it house cinema. The action, such as it inside Lacy’s head at all times. Indeed,
a cult,” Janet says to Lacy. “What’s a is, unfolds inside the theatre, during if there’s a reason “Janet Planet” never
cult?” her daughter asks.) Regina is post-screening cleaning sessions; emo- succumbs to the rosy, banalizing glow
warm, chatty, and free-spirited; she is tional truth emerges as reluctantly as of nineties nostalgia, it’s Baker’s ability
also hypercritical, entitled, and blind to it does in real life, one stale popcorn to juxtapose multiple perspectives in the
her hypocrisies. Up next in the guest kernel at a time. Like many of Baker’s same static frame—a gift that feels
rotation, through mysterious yet oddly plays, including “Circle Mirror Trans- closely rooted in her theatre work. Mean-
logical circumstances, is Regina’s char- formation” (2009) and “The Antipo- while, it’s a pleasure to watch her avail
ismatic ex-partner Avi (Elias Koteas), des” (2017), “The Flick” pushes against herself, for the first time, of a filmmak-
who happens to be the leader of the the trappings of what we ordinarily er’s tools. Now that she can cut swiftly
not-really-a-cult. He immerses Janet in think of as theatrical realism or natu- from one setup to the next, her scenes
liberation-speak and reads to her from ralism—two concepts that feel espe- are shorter and tighter, less dependent
Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Duino Elegies.” cially reductive when applied to Bak- on a sense of prolonged duration. And
And then he, too, is gone, as shifty and er’s leisurely pacing, her precise use of there’s a startling sequence whose ef-
unreliable as his words. silences and pauses, and the persua- fects would be difficult to reproduce
It’s here that at least one of the ti- sively humdrum quality of her dialogue. through stagecraft alone: Janet and Lacy
tle’s meanings drifts into focus. Janet But the play is also an expression of attend a local dance, which Baker has
Planet is the name of Janet’s acupunc- profound movie love, replete with the inspiration to film as a kind of human
ture studio; it’s also an allusion—oblique wide-ranging cinematic references and constellation, a roundelay of fast-mov-
and unacknowledged—to the nickname even a full-throated defense of old- ing, not quite heavenly bodies. By the
that Van Morrison gave the songwriter school film projection—a manifesto end, nothing obvious has changed, and
Janet Rigsbee, who, during their five- against an era of ever more aggressive yet mother and daughter—one grin-
year marriage, inspired some of his most digital encroachment. ning on the dance floor, the other watch-
well-known songs. (Although don’t ex- If “The Flick” was Baker’s theatre- ing quietly from the sidelines—seem
pect “Crazy Love” on the soundtrack, based tribute to movies, “Janet Planet” strangely, and perhaps permanently, out
which consists mainly of the classical is her cinematic ode to the theatre. of alignment. It’s a gifted filmmaker
pieces that Lacy is practicing—those, There is Lacy’s figurine company, which, who can draw blood with a single cut,
and the crickets.) But the title is best apart from the wry inclusion of a bright- and turn the distance between two souls
understood as a lesson in social astron- haired troll doll (a very nineties obses- into a chasm. 
THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2024 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
VOLUME C, NO. 18, June 24, 2024. THE NEW YORKER (ISSN 0028792X) is published weekly (except for four planned combined issues, as indicated on the issue’s cover, and other
combined or extra issues) by Condé Nast, a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: Condé Nast, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. Eric Gillin, chief busi-
ness officer; Lauren Kamen Macri, vice-president of sales; Rob Novick, vice-president of finance; Fabio B. Bertoni, general counsel. Condé Nast Global: Roger Lynch, chief executive officer;
Pamela Drucker Mann, global chief revenue officer and president, U.S. revenue and international; Anna Wintour, chief content officer; Nick Hotchkin, chief financial officer; Stan Duncan, chief
people officer; Danielle Carrig, chief communications officer; Samantha Morgan, chief of staff; Sanjay Bhakta, chief product and technology officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at
additional mailing offices. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration No. 123242885-RT0001.
POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO THE NEW YORKER, P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037. FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS, OR BACK ISSUE
INQUIRIES: Write to The New Yorker, P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037, call (800) 825-2510, or e-mail help@newyorker.com. Give both new and old addresses as printed on most recent label. Subscribers: If the
Post Office alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. If during your subscription term or up to one year after the magazine
becomes undeliverable you are dissatisfied with your subscription, you may receive a full refund on all unmailed issues. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within four weeks after receipt of order. Address
all editorial, business, and production correspondence to The New Yorker, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. For advertising inquiries, e-mail adinquiries@condenast.com. For submission guidelines,
visit www.newyorker.com. For cover reprints, call (800) 897-8666, or e-mail covers@cartoonbank.com. For permissions and reprint requests, call (212) 630-5656, or e-mail image_licensing@condenast.com. No part
of this periodical may be reproduced without the consent of The New Yorker. The New Yorker’s name and logo, and the various titles and headings herein, are trademarks of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc.
To subscribe to other Condé Nast magazines, visit www.condenast.com. Occasionally, we make our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services that we believe would
interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, advise us at P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037, or call (800) 825-2510.
THE NEW YORKER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS,
UNSOLICITED ART WORK (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICITED
MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, ART WORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS, UNLESS
SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY THE NEW YORKER IN WRITING.

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 Niall Maher,
must be received by Sunday, June 23rd. The finalists in the June 10th contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the July 8th & 15th 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
“Try not to lose it. It’s the only one.”

Chris Norborg, Chicago, Ill.
“Of course, it would be a lot lighter “My last place was a hole in the wall.”
if it wasn’t made of stone.” Amy Rosenberg, East Lansing, Mich.
Mark Levy, Brookline, Mass.
“Or we could move farther from the volcano.”

James Bogar, Missoula, Mont.
Conversations
that change
your world.
Join The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick,

for in-depth interviews and thought-provoking
discussions about politics, culture, and the arts.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.

11 12 13
THE 14 15
CROSSWORD 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23
A moderately challenging puzzle.
24 25 26
BY ERIK AGARD
27 28
29
ACROSS
1 Something drawn before a slash? 30
6 Cuban dance
31 32 33 34 35
11 Person from Portland, for example
36 37 38
12 Assists, in hockey lingo
14 Tort retort? 39 40 41 42
15 “Be cool!”
43 44 45 46 47
16 “Cool” amount
16 Word followed by pants or party 48 49
19 Swimming symbols of luck 50 51
20 Bon ___ (band name derived from the

French for “good winter”)
DOWN 30 Period of duty?
22 Memento ___
1 Aid in digestion 31 Unauthorized album drops
23 Shoulder muscle, for short
2 Dafoe who delivered the much memed 33 Untroubled
24 Flowers in the tea family line “I’m something of a scientist
myself,” in “Spider-Man” 34 Real bummer
26 Chaotic fight
3 Press-___ (artificial nails) 35 Asset in blitz chess
26 Destined for greatness
4 Subscribe again 40 Advocate for
29 Actress who played Sandra Clark and
Lisa Landry 5 Surreal 41 Like Paxlovid
30 Made some good points 6 WhatsApp owner 44 Verb that’s a homophone of 45-Down
31 Pool divisions 6 ___ mode 45 Number that’s a homophone of 44-Down

8 Car stat: Abbr. 46 Mouthful for a cow
32 Stubborn types
9 Cal, by another name
36 Parts of an old item
10 Cal Ripken, Jr.,’s team Solution to the previous puzzle:
36 Subjects of some ratings on the app
Untappd 11 Source of a repeat performance? Y E S C H E F R A G S
U T E R I N E E X I T S
38 “___! In the Name of Love” 12 Ball two?
L A V E N D E R M E N A C E
39 Vote that sounds like a letter 13 Vindictive sentiment E G E S T D U A L G O V T

S E N T N E S T P E I
40 Grp. that selects World Heritage sites 15 What homemade signs with arrows may
B O R S C H T B E L T
point to
42 Animal that sounds like a letter W I C C A N S H A I R O I L
18 Connected manually? I N H A L F T R I U N E
43 They’re researched by S.E.O. specialists 21 Entertains T H I N M A N S T E T T E D
T I M E S T A B L E S
46 Little known 23 Orders of magnitude? I B E T I E R T A G S
48 Wrapped garments whose name comes 25 Sure bets G I R L M U T E B E R R A
from Malay T A Y L O R S V E R S I O N
26 Prairie pothole, for example
S L O P E E V I L E S T
49 Not playing
28 Portrait alternative E W E S S E E A L S O
50 “Tummy Hurts” singer Rapp
29 Novel that “Wide Sargasso Sea” serves Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
51 Senior figure in a tribe as a prequel to newyorker.com/crossword
CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF FRENCH FASHION AND SPORT
LIVE
23 JUNE 2024
NEW YORK FOR MORE DETAILS PARIS
3 PM ET VOGUE.WORLD 9 PM CEST

The - New - Yorker June - 24 - 2024

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The - New - Yorker June - 24 - 2024

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The - New - Yorker June - 24 - 2024

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

PRICE $8.

99 JUNE 24, 2024

DRAWINGS Ali Solomon, Tim Hunt, Asher Perlman, Suerynn Lee,

Yoni Brenner (Shouts & Murmurs, Adrian Tomine (Cover) is a cartoonist,

THE WEEKEND ESSAY

NICHOLAS KONRAD; SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS

How “The Real World” Created Modern Reality TV

DANCE | Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana has been

MOVIES | Under the guise of modest realism, the

6 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 7

T he other day, just before a gong-

uctionata, which live-streamed

18 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024

Sshapesonia Contera, a physicist at Oxford

organized crime. His critics fear that he is building an authoritarian state.

GHOSTS ON THE WATER

lass eels are an ideal target for sub-

46 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN MCHENRY

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 49

THE PLAGUE DOCTOR

PDF dl'ed @mobilism.org

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2024 67

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“Try not to lose it. It’s the only one.”

“Or we could move farther from the volcano.”

Join The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick,

PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.

19 Swimming symbols of luck 50 51

20 Bon ___ (band name derived from the

31 Pool divisions 6 ___ mode 45 Number that’s a homophone of 44-Down

39 Vote that sounds like a letter 13 Vindictive sentiment E G E S T D U A L G O V T

You might also like