PRICE $8.99 AUG.

9, 20 2 1
IF YOU CAN
MAKE IT
HERE,
MAKE IT
HERE.
 AUGUST 9, 2021

4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

11 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Sue Halpern on the House’s January 6th hearing;
David Adjaye’s citadel; of Mitfords and flowers;
a menu made of memories; taking the show on the road.
BRAVE NEW WORLD DEPT.
Eric Klinenberg 18 Manufacturing Nature
How a landscape architect is responding to rising seas.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Zoe Pearl 25 Left Behind
PERSONAL HISTORY
David Sedaris 26 Happy-Go-Lucky
A father’s late-in-life change of personality.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Jane Mayer 30 The Big Money Behind the Big Lie
Who is funding the election-fraud myth?
PROFILES
Calvin Tomkins 42 On an Epic Scale
The virtuosic artistry of Kerry James Marshall.
FICTION
Sarah Braunstein 54 “Superstition”
THE CRITICS
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 61 “The Green Knight,” “John and the Hole.”
BOOKS
63 Briefly Noted
James Wood 65 “China Room,” a new novel by Sunjeev Sahota.
Andrew Chan 68 The poetry of Kaveh Akbar.
POP MUSIC
Carrie Battan 70 Hyperpop is going mainstream.
POEMS
Sarah Arvio 36 “Handbag”
Elisa Gonzalez 48 “Notes Toward an Elegy”
COVER
Mark Ulriksen “Summer Treat”

DRAWINGS Robert Leighton, Adam Douglas Thompson, Drew Dernavich, Leise Hook, John Klossner,
Zachary Kanin, Millie von Platen, Ellis Rosen, Lars Kenseth, Roz Chast, Sophie Lucido Johnson and Sammi Skolmoski,
Liana Finck, Mick Stevens, Frank Cotham, Trevor Spaulding SPOTS Antony Huchette
 CONTRIBUTORS
Jane Mayer (“The Big Money Behind the Calvin Tomkins (“On an Epic Scale,”
Big Lie,” p. 30), the magazine’s chief p. 42) is a staff writer who covers art
Washington correspondent, is the au- and culture for the magazine. He most
thor of “Dark Money” and the recipient recently published “The Lives of Art-
Commemorative of a 2021 Freedom of the Press Award. ists,” a six-volume collection of his
profiles.
Cover Reprints Eric Klinenberg (“Manufacturing Na-
ture,” p. 18) is a professor of sociology Elisa Gonzalez (Poem, p. 48), the win-
Search our extensive and the director of the Institute for ner of a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation
Public Knowledge at New York Uni- Writers’ Award, is at work on her first
archive of weekly
versity. His latest book is “Palaces for book.
covers dating back to the People.”
1925 and commemorate David Sedaris (“Happy-Go-Lucky,”
a milestone with a Sarah Braunstein (Fiction, p. 54), the au- p. 26) has contributed to the magazine
thor of “The Sweet Relief of Missing since 1995. He will publish “A Carnival
New Yorker cover reprint. Children,” teaches at Colby College. of Snackery” in October.
newyorkerstore.com/covers
Andrew Chan (Books, p. 68 ), the Web Zoe Pearl (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 25)
editor at the Criterion Collection, began writing humor pieces for The
writes about film, music, and books. New Yorker in 2017.

PRICE $8.99 OCT. 24, 2016 Sarah Arvio (Poem, p. 36) is a poet and Darryn King (The Talk of the Town,
a translator. Her poetry collection “Cry p. 17), a freelance journalist, is based
Back My Sea” will be out in August. in New York City.

Mark Ulriksen (Cover), an artist and Caitlin Reid (Puzzles & Games Dept.)
an illustrator, has contributed more has been a crossword constructor since
than sixty covers to The New Yorker 2017. Her puzzles have appeared in
since 1994. the Times and the Wall Street Journal.

THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM

COLLECTION / GETTY; RIGHT: JESSICA INGRAM FOR THE NEW YORKER

LEFT: NA KIM; SOURCE PHOTOGRAPH FROM DONALDSON

PAGE TURNER U.S. JOURNAL

Rachel Syme takes readers on A family faces losing their home
an interactive tour of her favorite as the C.D.C.’s eviction moratorium
Hollywood memoirs. expires, Oliver Whang reports.

Download the New Yorker app for the latest news, commentary, criticism,
and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008.
2 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
 PROMOTION

THE MAIL
WHO WAS O. HENRY? of a pseudonym may have served the
aim of concealing his past, but it was
Louis Menand, in his review of the new not unusual.

1
Library of America volume of short sto- Craig Saper
ries by O. Henry, notes that the prolific Owings Mills, Md.
writer once worked at a bank, and had
various problems, large and small, han- CRAZY FOR COCKATOOS
dling money (Books, July 5th). Money
is a theme in his stories, too. Indeed, Rebecca Mead’s essay about how an
in the opening line of “The Gift of the Australasian cockatoo came to appear
Magi,” he informs the reader that Della in a fifteenth-century Italian painting,
has only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a and what it reveals about the world’s
Christmas gift. We learn that Jim’s interconnectedness at that time, men-
weekly salary has shrunk from thirty tions Chinese trade routes, but it doesn’t
dollars to twenty, and that the weekly explore China’s own love affair with
rental price of a furnished room is eight cockatoos (“Invasive Species,” July 5th).
dollars. The story’s obsession with such After reading Mead’s piece, I hastened
particulars is a reminder of the finan- to retrieve my copy of “The Golden
cial pressure that O. Henry felt when Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of
it came to writing and selling his sto- T’ang Exotics,” a delightful 1963 work
ries—and perhaps also stems from his by the American Sinologist Edward H.
days as a teller, counting other peo- Schafer, which examines exotic goods
ple’s pennies. imported to China in the years 618-907.
Margaret Earley Whitt In a chapter on birds, including hawks,
Professor Emerita falcons, peacocks, and parrots, he notes
Department of English that “the ‘white parrots’ of Chinese lit-
University of Denver erature were plainly cockatoos from . . .
Denver, Colo. remote lands,” brought in by seafarers
and diplomats.
Menand’s piece, which is full of sur- As in Europe, Schafer writes, cock-
prising details, suggests that William atoos were immortalized in paintings
Sidney Porter signed his stories with in China. One “famous white cockatoo
the pseudonym O. Henry in an effort preserved in paint” was the pet of Yang
to keep the public from learning of Kuei-fei, a concubine of a Tang em-
his three-year stint in prison. It’s worth peror, which was named Snow-Garbed
pointing out that, in Porter’s time, Maiden; another, a cockatoo with “ten
many short-story writers for pulp mag- long pink feathers on its crown,” was
azines used pseudonyms. Sometimes likely a gift from the Moluccas, in east-
pen names were employed to make it ern Indonesia. And, in a charming an-
seem as though a magazine were writ- ecdote, Schafer claims that, by special
ten by many different contributors, decree of the Emperor T’ai Tsung, both
as in the October, 1914, issue of the a five-colored parrot and a cockatoo—
literary magazine The Smart Set, co- birds that “complained frequently” about
edited by George Jean Nathan and the cold—“were manumitted and sent
H. L. Mencken, which featured mul- home again.”
tiple stories by Robert Carlton Brown Barbara Ann Porte
under different bylines. Pseudonyms Arlington, Va.
were also used by women writing for
male-dominated magazines, such as •
Alice B. Sheldon, who published her Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
work under the name James Tiptree, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
Jr.; or because stories were written by themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
groups of people, with plotlines sup- any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
plied by story consultants. Porter’s use of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
 In an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, many New York City venues remain closed. Here’s a selection of culture to be
found around town, as well as online and streaming; as ever, it’s advisable to check in advance to confirm engagements.

AUGUST 4 – 10, 2021

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Robert Longo is a key figure of the Pictures Generation, an influential group of American artists who gave
image-making conceptual cred starting in the late seventies. He is best known for his cinematic charcoal-on-
paper works, epic in both subject matter—the eternal mysteries of the sea, in the case of “Untitled (Rumi),”
from 2019, above—and scale (the magnificent hand-drawn piece is more than seven feet high). The exhibi-
tion “Robert Longo: A History of the Present” opens on Aug. 7 at Guild Hall, in East Hampton, New York.
 1
MUSIC
resentation of that particular vein of d.j., with
Maurice Fulton, Osunlade, Eli Escobar, Soul
and taking a radical approach to inclusivity
come as naturally as breathing to the members
Clap’s Eli Goldstein, and Nickerson among of the intrepid string band PUBLIQuartet.
the attractions. Tickets to the event—billed Hosted by Death of Classical as part of its
Leon Bridges: as “Kid friendly!”—are fifty dollars in ad- inventive series “The Angel’s Share,” the
vance.—Michaelangelo Matos (Aug. 6-8.) group presents “Freedom and Faith,” a pro-
“Gold-Digger Sound” gram that explores spirituality and resilience
SOUL Leon Bridges made his musical début with in music spanning ten centuries. Included
tender soul songs that sounded as if they had “Nadia Boulanger and Her World” are works by Julia Perry, Jessica Meyer, Jessie
been sitting in dusty record crates for decades. CLASSICAL The list of people who studied with Montgomery, and Caroline Shaw, alongside
His voice, all warmth and rounded edges, rep- Nadia Boulanger reads like a Who’s Who of improvisations based on the music of Hilde-
licated the essence of classic sixties singers with twentieth- and twenty-first-century American gard von Bingen, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nina

1
eerie accuracy, but nostalgia can quickly turn composers—Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Simone.—Steve Smith (Aug. 4 and Aug. 6-7
into shtick, and perpetually living in the past has Marc Blitzstein, Walter Piston, Elliott Carter, at 6 and 7:30; deathofclassical.com.)
its limitations. On his latest album, “Gold-Dig- Philip Glass—but the Bard Music Festival, in
ger Sound,” Bridges doesn’t completely shake Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, spotlights
his affinity for throwback styles: songs such as the great French pedagogue’s own composi-
“Details” and “Why Don’t You Touch Me” have tions in addition to her legacy as a teacher. DANCE
the smokiness of nineties R. & B.; others braid Her beautifully balanced songs—along with
in touches of funk and rock. These tracks show the freer, more adventurous work of her sister,
that Bridges is versatile enough to stretch his Lili, who died tragically at the age of twenty- Drive East
skills across multiple eras, even if they never four—fill out five programs during the fes- The Indian-dance festival Drive East, now in
approach the future.—Julyssa Lopez tival’s first weekend. Lili’s sharply imagined its tenth season, is hybrid this year, with some
cantata, “Faust et Hélène,” which made her performances broadcast exclusively online
the first woman to win the Prix de Rome, and others performed live (and also shown
Ron Carter anchors the opening program, and sprinklings online) at the festival’s previous home, La
JAZZ Ron Carter now personifies the jazz bass— of works by Poulenc, Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Mama. Loosely arranged around the theme
an aftereffect of a six-decade career in which and Messiaen throughout the weekend evoke of “becoming a conscious artist” are per-
he has appeared on more than two thousand the cultural milieu of Paris in the first half of formances in a variety of classical forms,
recordings with a myriad of artists. When cap- the last century.—Oussama Zahr (Aug. 6-8.) including Hindustani music, Sufi songs,
taining his own ship, this hale living legend bharata-natyam dance, and Kalaripayattu,
keeps his instrument firmly in the spotlight; a martial art developed in the coastal state
the selfless supporting player who came to fame PUBLIQuartet of Kerala more than three thousand years
with Miles Davis in the sixties has long cast off CLASSICALBlending genres, conjuring new ago. On Aug. 9, Vaibhav Arekar participates
any notions of overt deference. In this residency sounds and ideas from canonical standards, virtually, from his home city of Mumbai. He
at the Blue Note, Carter displays his compelling
rapport with the pianist Renee Rosnes, who
intuits the byways of Carter’s canny originals HIP-HOP
while surfing the waves of the bassist’s imper-
turbable swing.—Steve Futterman (Aug. 4-8.)

Clem Snide
ALTERNATIVE ROCK Eef Barzelay, the probing
wordsmith driving Clem Snide, has spent
time in Israel, Boston, New York, and Nash-
ville, but he mostly seems to dwell under the
Eeyore rain cloud that a certain kind of brainy
songwriter will forever attract. Clem Snide’s
recent album, “Forever Just Beyond,” springs
from a thorny patch involving bankruptcy,
familial strain, and wavering artistic faith.
Produced and at times co-written by an Avett
brother, it was poised to be a comeback but was
released—when else?—in March of 2020. At
the Loft at City Winery, Barzelay finally gets
to air his new material, in which the anger that
once lurked behind his songs melts into acuity.
Throughout this record, Barzelay dispenses
aphorisms that suggest a kind of bootleg
OPPOSITE: COURTESY THE ARTIST / METRO PICTURES / PACE

rabbinical wisdom, staring down life, death,

GALLERY; RIGHT: ILLUSTRATION BY RAPHAELLE MACARON

and despair. And what of the divine? “God is The London rapper and pianist Dave spent the last few years establishing
simply that which lies forever just beyond the himself as one of the premier writers in U.K. hip-hop; along the way, he’s
limits,” Barzelay sings, “of what we already
seem to know.”—Jay Ruttenberg (Aug. 8.) also become one of the most decorated, winning the Mercury Prize and the
Brit Award for Album of the Year for his full-length début, “Psychodrama,”
Dope Jams Open-Air Festival from 2019. The rapper pulled the title for his follow-up, “We’re All Alone
ELECTRONIC The online dance-music retailer in This Together,” from a FaceTime conversation with the film-score com-
Dope Jams, founded by Paul Nickerson and poser Hans Zimmer. The music does carry vaguely cinematic flourishes, but
Francis Engleheardt (who also issue record- Dave has described the project as less conceptual than canonical, signalling
ings together as Slow to Speak), has always
operated with a house-music puritan’s streak, a broader canvas for his lyrics. His first album was a plea to be heeded. These
prizing soulful nineties organs, string pads, songs find him in a different place—rich and successful, widely recognized
and straightforwardly uplifting grooves. That and critically acclaimed. With everyone paying attention now, Dave rattles
approach would seem to translate perfectly
to this weekend getaway in Oak Hill, New off revelations from his new perch, his personal questions opening out onto
York, in the Catskills, featuring a sharp rep- broader critiques of British society.—Sheldon Pearce
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 5
 to calibrate each line reading to its funniest
ON BROADWAY possible sound; he’ll shriek a random word
in an otherwise quiet sentence—“I didn’t DO
this!,” from a sketch about a cable show called
“Coffin Flop,” which captures corpses falling
out of shoddy caskets—or swallow words in
the back of his throat like a bullfrog. “I Think
You Should Leave” doesn’t have an official
recurring cast, but Robinson stocks the show
with guest players—Sam Richardson, Tim
Heidecker, John Early, Kate Berlant—who
share a similar sense of chaotic repartee. He’s
slowly assembling a troupe of the best brains
in alternative comedy, a motley band of thes-
pians with a shared commitment to deranged,
fantastical wordplay.—Rachel Syme

Schmigadoon!
Mid-century musicals, with their plucky
smiles and honeyed harmonies, aren’t hard
to mock, and for a while the new Apple TV+
series “Schmigadoon!” seems to be shoot-
ing singing fish in a barrel. Created by Ken
Daurio and Cinco Paul (who wrote the ear-
worm-y songs), it follows a semi-happy New
York couple, both doctors, who wander into
a candy-bright land where everyone bursts
into song and the only escape is “true love.”
Now that Bruce Springsteen has broken the ice, Broadway’s first proper The jaded visitors, played by Cecily Strong
play after the shutdown comes in the form of “Pass Over,” Antoinette and Keegan-Michael Key, cringe and scoff at
Chinonye Nwandu’s verbally explosive drama. A riff on “Waiting for the pure-hearted denizens, drawn from the
likes of “Oklahoma!,” “The Music Man,” and
Godot,” with a dash of Exodus, the play finds two Black teens, Moses “Carousel,” with a schmig of “The Sound of
( Jon Michael Hill) and Kitch (Namir Smallwood), hanging around a Music.” (The Broadway-certified cast includes
street corner, spinning the peril they face at the hands of the “po-po” Alan Cumming, Kristin Chenoweth, Ariana
DeBose, and Aaron Tveit.) The jokes are good,
into anxious, imaginative games. Danya Taymor’s production drew if glib, only winking at the sex, violence, and
acclaim in its previous stagings, at Chicago’s Steppenwolf (where backwardness that have always coursed be-
Spike Lee filmed it) and Off Broadway, at LCT3. But its transfer to neath the genre. But then the show tries for
something harder than parody—sincerity. It
the August Wilson, where it starts previews on Aug. 4, is bound to have succeeds, thanks to mature performances by
new resonance after last year’s protests, which called for change not just Key and Strong, a longtime gem on “Satur-
in policing but in the culture at large—including the theatre. This is day Night Live” who finally gets to show her
dramatic range.—Michael Schulman
the first of seven Broadway plays by Black playwrights slated to open
between now and the end of the year.—Michael Schulman
The White Lotus
This six-episode series—named for a fic-
tional Hawaiian resort where rich American
is part of a rising generation of male dancers Mark Morris Dance Group tourists are waited on by the resort’s decid-
specializing in bharata natyam, recently con- edly less wealthy, more ethnically diverse
sidered the province of women. Arekar’s ap- The latest “Summer Cinema” haul from the staff—created by Mike White for HBO, is
proach brings a particular stillness and sharp- Mark Morris video vault, available online, a near-note-perfect tragicomedy. The guests
ness of line to stories of gods and goddesses Aug. 5-Sept. 2, focusses on piano music. “Ca- include Nicole (Connie Britton), a Sheryl
drawn from the bharata-natyam repertoire. nonic ¾ Studies” (1982) delightfully spoofs Sandberg-like tech C.F.O.; her beta husband,
On Aug. 15, the San Francisco-based Ganesh ballet class through sequential imitation. Mark (Steve Zahn); their porn-addicted six-
Vasudeva presents his bharata-natyam dance “Bedtime,” set to Schubert songs, starts teen-year-old son, Quinn (Fred Hechinger);
drama inspired by Yann Martel’s fantastical as formally as a machine and ends with a their daughter, Olivia (“Euphoria” ’s Sydney
novel “Life of Pi.”—Marina Harss (Aug. 9-15; richly complex narrative. “Sang-Froid” treats Sweeney), a bitchy, performatively woke

1
driveeast.org.) Chopin un-Romantically.—B.S. (mmdg.org/ college sophomore, who has brought along a
summer-cinema) friend, Paula (Brittany O’Grady); and Tanya
(Jennifer Coolidge), a lonely alcoholic who
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival carries around her dead mother’s ashes. The
Founded in 1976, Dallas Black Dance The- chief coddlers are Belinda (Natasha Rothwell),
atre has waited a long time for its début at TELEVISION a soothing, long-suffering spa manager, who
the Berkshires festival. In outdoor perfor- is perhaps the only truly likable character on
mances, Aug. 4-8, the company presents “Like the show, and Armond (the Australian actor
Water,” an inspirational, Pillow-commissioned I Think You Should Leave Murray Bartlett), a recovering addict whose
ILLUSTRATION BY JAMIEL LAW

première by the increasingly sought-after cho- The second season of Tim Robinson’s zany sobriety is tested by his stressful job. The
reographer Darrell Grand Moultrie. The rest sketch-comedy show, which premièred in show was shot entirely at the Four Seasons in
of the program—“Night Run,” by Christopher 2019, landed on Netflix in early July. Robin- Maui, and the focus on a single site gives it
L. Huggins, and “Face what’s facing you!,” son (formerly of “Saturday Night Live” and a Pinteresque airlessness. The guests and the
by Claude Alexander III—similarly stresses “Detroiters”) and his co-creator, Zach Kanin employees circle one another like animals in a
perseverance. Video of the performance will (a former “S.N.L.” writer and a New Yorker car- cage, and White’s greatest sympathy lies with
be available on demand on the Pillow’s Web toonist), know how to craft an impeccable sight those who have a more tenuous connection to
site, Aug. 19-Sept. 2.—Brian Seibert (jacobs- gag; as a performer, Robinson also makes a power and money.—Naomi Fry (Reviewed in
pillow.org) strange kind of music with language. He seems our issue of 8/2/21.)

6 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021

 1
ART
the look and the content of Hershman Leeson’s
art; of the many through lines in her retrospec-
very recently, was monotonously dominated
by men. Genres include reportage, ethnogra-
tive, several are very intentionally highlighted. phy, fashion, advertising, and determinedly
From 1973 to 1978, Hershman Leeson created the avant-garde experimentation. Widely recog-
Diedrick Brackens fictional identity Roberta Breitmore through a nized names (the Americans Berenice Abbott,
This Los Angeles-based artist’s splendid, emo- series of public performances, beauty rituals, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, and
tionally lush show, at the Shainman gallery, is a and bureaucratic records. Some forty years later, Helen Levitt among them) are few. The array
celebration of a subject that hasn’t been cham- Roberta was resurrected in the form of the art- of images tantalizes to the point of possibly
pioned much in American art—namely, Black ist’s genetically engineered antibody ERTA, a maddening some viewers. Now for something
men, seen joyfully alone and together. Brackens’s poetic redemption of Roberta’s “life,” which was that brought tears to my eyes: five shots of a Jap-
handwoven tapestries bring to mind the tradi- initially conceived as a feminist deconstruction anese actress, Yasue Yamamoto, taken in secret,
tions of both West African textiles and American of identity.—J.F. (newmuseum.org) around 1943 and 1944, after her theatre company
quilting; his elongated figures occupy colorful was banned by Japan’s wartime government.
spaces that enhance their implied movement and Yamamoto’s tiny shifts of facial expression speak
propulsive energy. Looking at these unabashedly “The New Woman or, really, sing of muted emotions that are no less
romantic works, one is reminded of their obvi- moving for being unidentifiable. The pictures
ous influences—the cutout silhouettes in Henri Behind the Camera” are by the pioneering Japanese photographer
Matisse’s “Jazz” series, the lives commemorated This monumental show at the Met—a hundred Eiko Yamazawa, whose style is flatly vernac-
in the ongoing AIDS Memorial Quilt project. and eighty-five works, made between the nine- ular, with nothing overtly dramatizing about
Nearly twenty years ago, Thelma Golden, now teen-twenties and the fifties, by a hundred and it; timelessly here-and-now across a span of
the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, twenty female photographers from more than sixty-eight years, they didn’t so much blow my
curated the landmark exhibition “Black Roman- twenty countries—builds a case for the historic mind as take it away and begin to replace it with
tic: The Figurative Impulse in Contemporary contributions of women to a field that, until a better one.—Peter Schjeldahl (metmuseum.org)
African-American Art,” and it’s wonderful to see
how the ideas it identified—about dreams as they
relate to Black lives—are still being explored,
and so fully.—Hilton Als (jackshainman.com) AT THE GALLERIES

Highwaymen
Terms such as “kitsch” and “motel painting”
would likely not have rubbed the Highwaymen
the wrong way. The silhouetted palm trees, sun-
sets, and moonlit seascapes painted in Florida
by this informal group of twenty-six self-taught
Black artists were made to be sold at affordable
prices, ideally in bulk, door to door or from their
cars along the roadside, hence the group’s name.
In the decades since they started working, in the
nineteen-fifties, their art has gained increasing
attention as a lush, savvy genre of folk art—or a
populist strain of Pop. The Highwaymen tapped
into a heady vision of American landscape and
décor, fantasy aesthetics born of the postwar
abundance they were largely denied during the
Jim Crow era. The eleven paintings on view
at the Charles Moffett gallery represent just a
sliver of the artists’ prodigious (and often anon-
ymous and undated) output. But it’s enough to
relay the range of their enchanting style, from a
wetland vista at dusk by Mary Ann Carroll, the
sole Highwaywoman, in which tropical foliage
appears as dark tracery against a streaked, blaz-
ing sky, to the cotton-candy clouds and buttery In the early nineteen-seventies, a group of American artists who shared an
touch in a pair of canvases by Harold Newton, unironic love of craft, vivid color, and kitsch—rebels against the ornamen-
which evoke Fragonard in the Everglades.—Jo­
hanna Fateman (charlesmoffett.com) tation-averse restraint of the Minimalists—became known as the Pattern
and Decoration movement (a.k.a. P&D). By the mid-eighties, the initial
Lynn Hershman Leeson enthusiasm, mostly in Europe, for the group’s paintings, sculptures, ceramics,
The dystopian prescience of this pioneering and textiles had waned. Individual artists succeeded, but P&D was written
American artist stands apart from that of other off as a footnote that was slightly embarrassing. (And also threatening: it’s no
Cassandras: she isn’t afraid to embrace new tech- coincidence that the group’s focus on needlework, floral imagery, and other
nologies that raise challenging ethical questions.
“Twisted,” Hershman Leeson’s current retro- hallmarks of domesticity aligned it with feminism.) Today, when a loom is as
spective at the New Museum, gathers together good as a paintbrush to a young artist, the movement is back in the spotlight.
fifty years of her experimentations in the Bay The historical survey “With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American
Area, where she is based. Cast-wax masks made
COURTESY DENNY DIMIN GALLERY

in the sixties—at once macabre and delightful— Art, 1972-1985” is installed at the Hessel Museum, at Bard College, through
breathe when triggered by motion detectors, Nov. 28. A more intimate and entirely irresistible group show—cleverly
prefiguring the artist’s long-standing interest in titled “Fringe”—is on view at the Denny Dimin gallery through Aug. 20.
surveillance and interactivity. More recently, in
2017, she created two antibodies, working with a It mixes original P&D artists (in charming pieces, from 1976, by Cynthia
scientist at Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Between Carlson and Ree Morton and a sinuous 2020 canvas by Valerie Jaudon)
these endeavors lies an enthralling, varied body with others whose works make a strong case for the movement’s ongoing
of work—drawing, sculpture, filmmaking, Inter-
net art—united by her idiosyncratic futurism. relevance, including the quilted irreverence of Natalie Baxter’s “Housecoat
As technology has evolved, so, too, have both III” (in the foreground, above), completed this year.—Andrea K. Scott
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 7
1
MOVIES
from Hope Davis, as Mrs. Pekar, and Judah
Friedlander, as Harvey’s profoundly unusual
in the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Fuentes
brilliantly combines a wide array of authentic
friend Toby. Mild fame may have patronized archival footage (including of the fair) with
these folks, but the movie pays them a comic faux-documentary scenes depicting Markod’s
American Splendor homage that feels flattering, fast-witted, and travels, his American captivity, and his strug-
In Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pul- true.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of gle to escape. With voice-over narration and
cini’s 2003 drama-documentary, the drama 8/11/03.) (Streaming on Amazon, Hulu, and his own on-camera presence, Fuentes drama-
and the documentary look at each other but other services.) tizes the ongoing effects of colonialism, from
don’t touch. The movie is about Harvey generation to generation and in the culture at
Pekar, a real-life and rusted-up gentleman large, and links the breakdown of family his-
from Cleveland. He works as a filing clerk, Bontoc Eulogy tory to the whitewashing of history; his canny
and his experiences have long been the sub- Marlon Fuentes’s only feature to date, from and visionary corrective sets the stage for
ject of a comic strip, illustrated by—among 1995, belongs to a genre unto itself—the change.—Richard Brody (Streaming on OVID.tv
others—Robert Crumb. So we get a good personal mockumentary. In the film, Fuen- starting Aug. 5.)
dose of Harvey. But we get an even better tes portrays himself as an émigré from the
and funnier dose of Paul Giamatti, who plays Philippines to the United States who has lost
an alternative Harvey, and who is framed, touch with his homeland and attempts to re- Seven Men from Now
or sometimes drawn, in fond imitation of a construct his family history, especially that of Budd Boetticher’s stark 1956 Western offers
comic book—the implication being that even his grandfather Markod. Soon after the end a Hemingwayesque intensity of unspoken
the cruddiest lives can, in sympathetic hands, of the Philippine-American War, Markod, a emotion and bitter wisdom, with a visually
acquire shape and grace. The story, such as it member of the Igorot people, was lured from terse style to match. Before you can blink,
is, moves from Harvey the record collector to his family in the Mountain Province to the two of the seven men are gunned down by
Harvey the cancer sufferer to Harvey the talk- United States, where he—along with hun- Stride (Randolph Scott), the former sheriff
show guest. There is terrific supporting work dreds of other Filipinos—was put on display of Silver Springs, Colorado, who is trawl-
ing the desert for the bandits who killed his
wife, a Wells Fargo clerk, in a robbery. But
WHAT TO STREAM the stolen shipment of gold is still missing,
and Masters (Lee Marvin), a criminal whom
Stride had captured twice, is after it. Mean-
while, John and Annie Greer (Walter Reed
and Gail Russell), Easterners en route to Cal-
ifornia whose wagon gets stuck in mud, are
rescued by Stride, who falls for Annie but, on
principle, keeps it to himself. In Boetticher’s
harshly judgmental view, the lawless and bar-
ren landscape proves the humanity of some
but dehumanizes others: the crazed robbers
pursuing Stride scuttle like scorpions among
rocks, whereas the wounded hero, embodied
by the huge yet delicate Scott, moves with a
dancer’s proud grace.—R.B. (Streaming on the
Criterion Channel, Amazon, and other services.)

The Swarm
What Alfred Hitchcock did for birds the
French director Just Philippot does for grass-
hoppers in this extravagantly eerie, rootedly
practical horror film. It’s set in farm country
in the South of France, where a young widow
named Virginie (Suliane Brahim) attempts
to save her property from foreclosure—and
to support her children, the teen-age Laura
(Marie Narbonne) and the young Gaston
The 2018 documentary “Beyond the Bolex” (streaming on Kanopy) depicts (Raphael Romand)—by raising a tentful of
the insects, which she roasts, grinds, and sells
a surprising intersection of personal experience and historical revelation. Its as animal feed. But the bugs aren’t thriving,
director, Alyssa Bolsey, was in film school when she delved into the archives and after Virginie accidentally discovers that
of her grandfather Emil, who died in 2004, and discovered that his father, they have a taste for blood—which makes
them grow and reproduce rapidly—she takes
Jacques, was an unheralded yet crucial figure in the history of cinema. exceptional measures to feed them what they
A Russian Jewish émigré to Switzerland, Jacques Bolsey was a medical crave, which turns the brood into an uncon-
student and an artist in Geneva when he became obsessed with creating trollable menace. Working with a script by
Jérôme Genevray and Franck Victor, Philippot
a small and inexpensive movie camera for serious amateur filmmakers, anchors the action in the relationships and
including himself. His major invention, the Bolex 16-mm. camera, went the economics of rural life, with an eye to the
into mass production in 1935 and soon became standard equipment for prejudice aimed at Virginie’s friend Karim
(Sofian Khammes), an independent wine-
COURTESY “BEYOND THE BOLEX”

independent filmmakers, as affirmed here in interviews with such directors grower of North African descent, and to the
as Wim Wenders, Barbara Hammer, and Jonas Mekas. In 1939, Jacques universal dramas of family and adolescence.
immigrated to the United States. His final invention failed commercially, But the core of the film is the terror sparked
by vampiric insects, which are depicted with a

1
but it was nonetheless his most visionary: a movie camera the size of a straightforward, unshakable creepiness.—R.B.
pack of cigarettes. Alyssa Bolsey’s ardent research explores her polymathic (Streaming on Netflix starting Aug. 6.)
great-grandfather’s utopian industrial schemes as well as his spirit of inno-
vation and situates his life and work amid the vast events of the times—the For more reviews, visit
Depression, the Second World War, and the Holocaust.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town

8 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021

 and “quinotto,” i.e. quinoa prepared like Ancient World, East Coast Terroir (in-
risotto—nutty, creamy, and brightly jew- cluding a sparkling blueberry variety
elled with fava beans and sweet peas. from Maine)—the most intriguing is,
But Contento’s undercurrent of joy perhaps, Wines of Impact. These bottles

1
seems especially attributable to the come from winemakers who are in some
restaurant’s unusual commitment to in- way marginalized: a smooth Viognier
clusivity. In 2003, at the age of twenty- from Kishor Vineyards, in Galilee, Is-
TABLES FOR TWO five, Benjamin—raised, in Hell’s Kitchen, rael, staffed by people with intellectual
in a family of French immigrants who disabilities; a Pinot Noir from Kitá
Contento worked at restaurants including La Wines, a vineyard on Chumash land in
88 E. 111th St. Grenouille and Lutèce—was confined California’s Santa Ynez Valley, run by a
permanently to a wheelchair after a car Chumash woman named Tara Gomez.
Although I can’t promise that every accident. Though he didn’t let paraplegia Before the car accident, “I was a six-
night at Contento, a new restaurant in stop him from pursuing the ambitious foot-two white guy,” Benjamin told me.
East Harlem, is a party, I can report that, career he’d already begun in food and “It’s incredibly humbling to go into
on a recent Saturday, around 10 P.M., wine, he faced no shortage of physical a situation like where I am now, in a
when several patrons began to belt out challenges, plus a great deal of stigma. wheelchair, paralyzed for the rest of my
“Seven Nation Army,” by the White Benjamin and his partners designed life.” In the wine world, he said, “I stick
PHOTOGRAPH BY MENGWEN CAO FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE

Stripes, an employee rejoined by play- Contento’s small dining room, quite out. I’m different.” Contento’s location,
ing it on the sound system, inspiring subtly, to accommodate both guests a forty-minute “push,” as Benjamin calls
an impromptu dining-room-wide rave. and staff members with disabilities. wheelchair travel, from his home, in
The following Tuesday, someone was There are wide passageways between the South Bronx, reminds him of the
marking another year around the sun; a tables built slightly taller than average diverse Hell’s Kitchen of his youth.
rousing sing-along to Stevie Wonder’s to fit wheelchairs, a handsomely curved Lorenzzi’s food, too, bridges cultures.
“Happy Birthday” ensued. bar bifurcated into two heights, and a A comforting entrée of shaggy short
There is much to celebrate at Con- roomy bathroom with an enormous, ribs over saucy peanut udon noodles,
tento, whose name is a Spanish cognate easy-sliding door. Adaptive flatware— dusted in togarashi, highlights Nikkei
for “content,” as in “happy”: the opening intended for use by, say, someone with cuisine, a result of Japanese immigration
itself, long delayed by COVID and longer quadriplegia or A.L.S., with adjustable to Peru in the first half of the twentieth
dreamed of by its co-founder Yannick metal rings that make handles easier to century, as does the excellent Kurobuta
Benjamin, an accomplished somme- grip—is available upon request. (a Japanese term for Berkshire pork)
lier and restaurant veteran (Le Cirque, Benjamin, a seasoned para-athlete, katsu, served with spicy daikon slaw and
Jean-Georges); Benjamin’s thought- wheels effortlessly around the dining yuzu aioli. Lorenzzi’s devilled eggs, laced
fully curated, internationally sourced room and the sidewalk patio, a cus- with a punchy, acidic hit of ají amarillo,
wine list, with a wide range of prices; a tomized wine tray on his lap, making a mild, citrusy chili essential to Peruvian
Peruvian-inspired menu from the chef recommendations and pouring tastes cooking, link his roots with the Ameri-
Oscar Lorenzzi (a native of Lima who with a laid-back manner belied by his can South. Contento sticks out, entirely
once ran the kitchen at the Waverly Inn), personal uniform of crisp suits. Of the on its own terms. (Dishes $8-$31.)
featuring such dishes as ceviche clásico categories on his list—Wines of the —Hannah Goldfield
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 9
 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT tutional violence.” Representative Adam gogue represents an ongoing threat to
RESPONSIBLE PARTIES Kinzinger, of Illinois, one of two Re- the country.
publicans who joined the committee, The insurrectionists, however, called
t the first House select-commit- against the wishes of the House Mi- themselves “patriots,” seeming to believe
A tee hearing on the January 6th in-
surrection, last week, four law-enforce-
nority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, noted
something similar in his opening state-
that bearing the American flag earned
them that title. To most people, the flag
ment officers presented excruciating ment. “We never imagined,” he said, symbolizes the freedoms enshrined in
details of their efforts to protect the “that this could happen: an attack by the Constitution. But at the Capitol it
Capitol and the lawmakers inside it our own people fostered and encouraged was brandished as a weapon—along with
from the mob that sought to disrupt by those granted power through the the Trump flag, the Confederate battle
the certification of the Presidential elec- very system they sought to overturn.” flag, and the thin-blue-line flag—in an
tion. Aquilino Gonell, a Capitol Police When Officer Hodges used the word attempt to undermine what the com-
sergeant, recalled how rioters set upon “terrorist,” he was demanding that the mittee’s chair, Representative Bennie
him, doused him with chemical irri- obvious be made visible. This is also the Thompson, called “the pillar of our de-
tants, and flashed lasers into his eyes. essential task of the committee: to as- mocracy”: the peaceful transfer of power.
Michael Fanone, of the D.C. Metro- semble a comprehensive record of Jan- The insurrectionists, in calling themselves
politan Police, said that he was Tased uary 6th showing that those who en- patriots, had absorbed a fundamental
and beaten unconscious, and suffered a tered the Capitol were not, as Trump lesson of the Trump Presidency—how
heart attack. Harry Dunn told of being said, “a loving crowd” but political ex- to pervert language so that the things
taunted with a racist epithet that “no tremists, incited by the President and you say are the opposite of what they
one had ever, ever called” him while he abetted by Republican members of Con- actually mean.
was “wearing the uniform of a Capi- gress and other government officials, That lesson was on display on the
tol Police officer.” Daniel Hodges, the whose deference to a seditious dema- morning of the hearing, when Represen-
youthful Metropolitan Police officer who tative Elise Stefanik, who was once a
was recorded on video being crushed in vocal critic of the former President but
a doorway, used a single word twenty- has since become his willing enabler,
four times to describe the people who stepped up to a bank of microphones
rampaged through Congress. He called outside the Capitol, alongside McCar-
them “terrorists.” thy. “The American people deserve to
Shortly after the insurrection, R. P. know the truth—that Nancy Pelosi bears
Eddy, a former director of the National responsibility, as Speaker of the House,
Security Council, suggested on NPR that for the tragedy that occurred on January
the reason the Department of Home- 6th,” Stefanik said, alleging that Pelosi
land Security and the F.B.I. had missed had “prioritized her partisan political op-
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA

every glaring sign of what some mem- tics” over the safety of the police. The
bers of the group that Donald Trump Speaker of the House is not, in fact, in
liked to call his “army” were planning charge of security. But at least, one could
for the sixth had to do with “the invis- argue, the woman who is now the third-
ible obvious.” It was difficult for offi- ranking Republican member of the House
cials, Eddy explained, “to realize that recognizes that the events of January 6th
people who look just like them could were tragic.
want to commit this kind of unconsti- Stefanik ascended to the leadership
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 11
position because Representative Liz Che- Trump loyalists in Congress—gathered “unrestricted testimony,” Trump’s At-
ney was ousted from it by her fellow- outside the Department of Justice. Be- torney General William Barr and his
Republicans, this spring, for challeng- fore hecklers could chase them away, they acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen
ing Trump’s lies that the election had championed the more than five hundred are likely to be called. So are members
been stolen. “No member of Congress people who have been charged so far in of Trump’s inner circle, including Rep-
should now attempt to defend the in- connection with the assault. Paul Gosar resentative Jim Jordan, who spoke with
defensible, obstruct this investigation, or called those still in jail awaiting trial “po- him that day. ( Jordan was one of two
whitewash what happened that day,” litical prisoners,” following the lead of Republicans nominated to the commit-
Cheney, who joined Kinzinger as the Louie Gohmert, who, in May, on the tee by McCarthy and rejected by Pe-
only other Republican on the commit- House floor, said that they were “politi- losi, for having challenged the legiti-
tee, said at the hearing. Or, as Sergeant cal prisoners held hostage by their own macy of the election and for calling the
Gonell put it, “What do you think peo- government.” This theme has become a committee “impeachment round three,”
ple considering becoming law-enforce- talking point on the far right. Trump, after which McCarthy pulled all five of
ment officers think when they see elected too, has embraced it. Recently, on Fox his nominees.) It’s unclear if officials will
leaders downplaying this?” Nevertheless, News, he questioned why such “tremen- honor subpoenas or ignore them, as
both McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, dous people” had been incarcerated. happened during Trump’s two impeach-
the Senate Minority Leader, said that The House select committee will re- ments, potentially forcing a protracted
they had been too busy to watch the of- convene sometime in August. Before legal battle.
ficers’ testimony. that, according to Thompson, it is likely If they choose to obstruct the com-
Meanwhile, members of the now de- to begin issuing subpoenas to people, mittee, the obvious—an invitation to
funct America First caucus—a small including some in the government, who incite and carry out future acts of in-
cadre of House Republicans led by Mar- may have known about events leading surrection—will be visible for all to see.
jorie Taylor Greene, whose attempt to up to and surrounding the insurrec- The pillar of American democracy may
promote “Anglo-Saxon political tradi- tion. Now that the Justice Department yet be the final casualty of January 6th.
tion” proved too retrograde even for other has allowed former officials to provide —Sue Halpern

FICTIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY experience of encountering the finished reached the inner sanctum. He leaned
MUD DEFENSE work as “insane.” back to contemplate a looming column
Adjaye, dressed in loose layers of that serves as a focal point. Seen from
black, like a ninja in leather slip-ons, the outside, it looks solid, but Adjaye
meditated on the relationship between had decided to hollow it out, so visitors
humans and geology. “It’s another crea- are confronted with the surprise of emp-
ture,” he said, of mud. He discussed ox- tiness—a trick.
idation, ionization, the properties of A hair dryer lay across Adjaye’s path.
avid Adjaye, the architect, usu- local stone. Once, while building a house Also a moment, if a less magical one.
D ally makes buildings for people
to live in and to use. That’s what an
on Park Avenue and Seventy-seventh
Street, he hit Manhattan’s famous schist.
A gallery technician in white overalls
materialized to warn Adjaye, in a Ger-
architect does. Recently, though, he In the gallery, his silky British voice was man accent, not to trip on the cord. She
dropped by the Gagosian gallery on at risk of being drowned out by the had been painting the concrete ground.
Twenty-fourth Street to visit a new dentist-drill ambiance of nearby instal- Moving away, he murmured, “We put
structure of his that serves no practi- lation work. Crushed earth, like that
cal purpose, otherwise known as an used to make “Asaase,” soaks up carbon
art work: a labyrinthine citadel called dioxide, purifying the air. “Apparently,
“Asaase,” a Twi word that means “earth.” that’s why ancient cultures survived for
The curator Antwaun Sargent had so long,” Adjaye said. He swiped his
commissioned the piece for “Social palm along a fine layer of silt that had
Works,” a group show for which he settled on the sculpture’s outer wall.
asked a dozen Black artists to engage “The mud became a way of protecting
with social space “as a community- these communities, because it was more
building tool.” Adjaye’s “Asaase” is than just an enclosure,” he went on. “It
made from blocks of rammed earth, a was a kind of defense.”
technique dating to the Neolithic pe- Adjaye entered “Asaase” through a
riod. Take some dirt—in this case, sixty sloping passageway and meandered
tons’ worth, from a limestone quarry down one of its curving corridors. The
outside Albany—add water and a soup- work begins low to the ground, but its
çon of cement, pound vigorously, and walls swiftly rise to suggest a fortified
voilà. After months spent contemplat- city, or a temple. “This moment can
ing the project, Adjaye described the really be very magical,” he said, as he David Adjaye
12 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
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a little pad down not to destroy Lar- itive, future sustainability,” he added— it into a whimsical BBC miniseries (it

1
ry’s floor.” earth, for the good of Earth. premièred on Amazon Prime last week),
Adjaye was born in 1966 in Tanza- —Alexandra Schwartz starring Lily James as a thrill-seeking
nia, to Ghanaian parents; his father, who débutante. But don’t expect swelling vi-
served as a diplomat for the newly in- ADAPTATION olins: Mortimer, who also directed, gave
dependent Ghana, took the family from STAR OF THE SHOW the series an anachronistic soundtrack
country to country, eventually settling that includes Le Tigre, Sleater-Kinney,
in England. As an adult, Adjaye has kept and T. Rex. “I just think it’s got a bit of
up the habit of travel. “I’m terrified of a punk-rock soul, that book,” she said,
being bored,” he said. He likes to im- walking through Boerum Hill, Brook-
merse himself in the places where he lyn, where she lives with her husband,
works. In 2010, when, together with the the actor Alessandro Nivola. She had
architect J. Max Bond, Jr., he was lead- hen the actress Emily Mortimer just passed the restaurant where she
ing the design team for the National
Museum of African American History
W was growing up, in London, her
father, the dramatist Sir John Mortimer,
spent days laboring over the script. She
recalled, “A waiter came up to me at one
and Culture, in Washington, D.C., he would tell her tales of the Mitford sis- point and said, ‘Have you finished your
moved to New York, an Amtrak ride ters. The six aristocratic siblings were map of the universe yet?’”
away. A few years ago, he was chosen to raised in isolation in the English coun- One key to the Mitford universe:
design Ghana’s National Cathedral, in tryside, where they developed a private flowers. Jessica Mitford, in her mem-
Accra. “It’s the country of my ancestors, language called Boudledidge, and they oir, “Hons and Rebels,” from 1960, re-
but it’s still developing,” he said. “It’s not, led adventuresome lives in the years be- called that her mother, educating the
like, going to be your metropolitan city. tween the wars. Nancy and Diana be- girls in household economy, “once of-
I talked to my wife, and we were, like, came part of the fashionable set the fered a prize of half a crown to the child
‘We should just go.’” Bright Young Things, and another sis- who could produce the best budget for
The couple arrived in Accra, with ter, Unity, befriended Hitler. “My dad a young couple living on £500 a year;
their two young children, in 2019, and talked often of this family of fascinat- but Nancy ruined the contest by start-
soon found themselves grounded by ing, extreme women, two of whom were ing her list of expenditures with ‘Flow-
the pandemic. Adjaye owns land in the allied with the Fascist Party, two of whom ers . . . £490.’” Mortimer borrowed the
village where his father grew up, and were allied with the Communist Party, line for “The Pursuit of Love.” “I re-
the family began to spend weekends and one of whom was a duchess,” Mor- member my dad quoting that from Jes-
there. “It’s a converted Methodist, Pres- timer recalled recently. “In fact, he knew sica’s book,” she said. She reached a small
byterian, animist, Muslim community,” Jessica Mitford, the Communist, and I house in Cobble Hill and rang the bell.
he explained. “My father actually comes remember her coming for lunch when In the spirit of aristocratic leisure, Mor-
from the head family, but he sort of ran I was very young.” timer had signed up for a private flower-
away. In a weird way, I’ve come back.” In 1945, Nancy Mitford fictionalized arranging class at something called Fleur
The village, with its low-slung build- her eccentric upbringing and romantic Elise Bkln. The door opened: Fleur
ings, partly inspired Adjaye to work misadventures in her novel “The Pur- Elise Bkln turned out to be the home
with rammed earth. He is using the suit of Love,” which Mortimer discov- of Elise Bernhardt, a sixtysomething
same method to build a house of his ered as a teen-ager. She has now adapted woman with a salt-and-pepper pixie
own there, the first that he has ever cut. She led Mortimer to a rambling
built for himself. Thus far, he has man- back yard.
aged to keep his identity, both as an in- Bernhardt started teaching the class
ternationally renowned architect and in 2018, she said, after a trip to Japan ex-
as a town scion, a secret. “It’s very lo-fi,” posed her to ikebana, a classical form of
he said. “At first my kids were, like, flower arranging. “Ikebana is very pre-
‘What the hell are we doing here?’ Now cise—which is why I study it, because
they’re obsessed.” I’m not,” she explained. She began by
He walked behind his sculpture, paus- asking her pupil to share a flower-related
ing to peer through a crack that had memory. “My dad loved gardening, and
formed in one of its blocks. Some of the he had this big display of dahlias,” Mor-
earth had crumbled during the truck trip timer recalled. “I remember his first wife
to the gallery. “At first I freaked out,” he coming through the garden to visit. I
said. He has since made his peace with must have been a little girl, and my dad
his structure’s flaws: “If it were too per- went, ‘Aren’t the dahlias looking mar-
fect, I think it would look too fake.” He vellous?’ And she went, ‘It’s a very vul-
intended, he said, for “Asaase” to offer a gar flower.’ ” Mortimer’s face fell, as it
“fictional anthropology” for an imagined had then.
civilization, rooted in African custom and Moving on, Bernhardt, who used to
mindful of the planet. “A kind of prim- Emily Mortimer run a dance nonprofit, said, “Let me
14 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
 too on a forearm and wears a silver ring
in his left eyebrow, sat down at a long
table in front of a burlap-lined wall and
spread his hands. “My grandmother has
a table for twenty people,” he said. “She’s
an amazing cook. She used to cook every
day, three meals a day.” The restaurant,
Mesa Coyoacan, is named for such ta-
bles, and for the neighborhood in Mex-
ico City where Garcia grew up. He opened
it in 2009; a few years later, he opened
Zona Rosa, a casual spot nearby, where
he cooks out of a silver trailer. “When
I’m done here, I move to Zona Rosa,” he
said. “I try the mole, the salsa, the rice,
the beans—I go back and forth.”
Garcia hasn’t been in Mexico since
2000, when, at the age of twenty-eight,
he and a friend trekked across the U.S.
“Don’t ask me. I only look like an adult in the vacuum of summer camp.” border south of Phoenix. They reached
New Jersey, where Garcia worked at a
car wash, then in construction, then at a
• • garment factory. The friend, dispirited,
returned to Mexico. Garcia got a job as
introduce you to our characters here— “Perfection is overrated,” Bernhardt a dishwasher at a Scandinavian restau-
because, really, you’re making a dance in assured her, adding, “I want to suggest rant in Tribeca. “The chef was amazing,
a vase.” Lined up in tubs were the dra- that you take a few more leaves off.” an incredible person,” he said. “He gave
matis personae: gerbera daisies, alstroe- “I guess minimalism is not my strong me the opportunity to go into the kitchen
merias, leucadendrons, thistles, bear grass, point, as my TV show will show you,” as a line cook.” Soon, Garcia was the chef
sweet william. Bernhardt asked Mortimer Mortimer said, with a self-effacing laugh. at Barrio Chino, on the Lower East Side.
to pick a vase—she chose a chipped Tu- After trimming some leaves and adding His boyfriend, Gerardo Zabaleta, had
nisian pitcher that Bernhardt had found one more peony, she was done. Her ar- followed him to New York, and they
at a flea market—and instructed, “I want rangement, like “The Pursuit of Love,” wanted to open a restaurant together.
you to decide who’s the star of your show.” was an off-kilter period piece: petticoats “But we had a little problem,” Garcia said.
Mortimer selected celosia, a bunchy, and punk. Mortimer thanked her in- “We were undocumented.”
ruffled flower that Bernhardt thought structor and carried her creation out to Garcia and Zabaleta are still undoc-
looked like brains, but which reminded the street. “It suffers a little bit from ex- umented, and that obstacle pervades “I

1
Mortimer of petticoats. Bernhardt told cess,” she said. “But I like that.” Carry You With Me,” a film about their
her to start with three—“You want things —Michael Schulman lives, directed by Heidi Ewing, which
asymmetrical”—and to leave room for opened in June. Garcia appears as him-
negative space. “By the way,” she added, TRANSPLANT DEPT. self; the actor Armando Espitia portrays
“the star of the show may not end up HOMESICK RESTAURANT him as a young man. At the start of the
being the star of the show.” movie, the past and the present are en-
Mortimer, a character actress, seemed meshed: Garcia is staring out a subway
pleased. (In “The Pursuit of Love,” she window, and Espitia is walking through
cast herself as “the Bolter,” the protago- a darkened field. “I had that dream again,”
nist’s flighty, monogamy-phobic mother.) Espitia says softly, in a voice-over. “It’s
Bernhardt laid out a couple of rules: vary so real. I’m in Mexico. My home . . . And
the stem lengths so that the flowers aren’t n the afternoon of the Puerto Rican I realize I can’t go back.”
at a uniform height, and get rid of leaves,
especially ugly ones. “No ugliness,” she
O Day Parade this year, Williams-
burg was filled with the sound of salsa
If Garcia were to go home, he would
be unable to return to the U.S. His son,
said, as she tore a leaf from one of Mor- and the smell of rain, and Iván Garcia who is twenty-eight and lives in Puebla,
timer’s celosias and hurled it into the was in the kitchen of his restaurant, pre- was six the last time they saw each other;
bushes. “Or, as my ikebana teacher would paring for dinner service. “I’m checking although Garcia has video calls with his
say, ‘Sayonara!’” all the equipment, like the temperature granddaughter, he has never met her.
Next: the supporting players. Mor- of the walk-in downstairs,” he said. “I’m When his father died, he couldn’t attend
timer added hypericums and peonies, testing the flavors, saying, ‘This is too the funeral, and he worries about his
stuffing her pitcher to the hilt. “I may have spicy,’ or ‘This needs more salt.’” ninety-one-year-old grandmother. A few
gone a bit O.T.T.—over the top,” she said. Garcia, who has a “Viva la vida!” tat- years ago, his mother managed to get a
16 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
tourist visa to visit him in New York.
“You know how much I was crying,” he
1
ROAD SHOW
the streets of the financial district. “We
did that show on Wall Street in crazy
SITE-SPECIFIC
said. “When she came, I saw her in the Manhattan traffic. Through a blizzard,”
airport—I saw her from far away, and I he said. “No crashing.”
thought, No, I can’t believe it.” It had “Taxilandia” is easier because the turf
been fifteen years. is more familiar. “See that furniture
During the pandemic, immigration store?” Jimenez said.“It’s always been a
status made Garcia and many other restau- furniture store. Even when the Germans
rant workers ineligible for unemployment were here. The land demands it to be a
benefits. At the same time, Garcia’s cooks odesto (Flako) Jimenez stood near furniture store. Every time I come by
had family members in Mexico who were
losing their jobs, and remittances were
M an intersection in Brooklyn one
Saturday, not far from the L train, tell-
here, it looks like there’s a new owner.
But it’s still the same furniture.”
more essential than ever.The staff at Mesa ing the story of a sidewalk grease stain. Jimenez’s conversation, unlike his driv-
Coyoacan began cranking out meals for “This is Yolanda’s grease,” he said. “She’s ing, careers crazily: Father Knickerbocker,
nonprofits, including Feed the Frontlines been selling food here since I was a lit- nineteenth-century breweries, Robert
NYC, through which they sent four thou- tle kid. It’s amazing to watch her clean- Moses, redlining, white flight, gang life,
sand meals to Elmhurst Hospital. “No- ing it every morning. Like, ‘You know the war on drugs, the pandemic. (More
body left. I have people who have been you’re not getting that grease out.’” stoplights during the show mean more
working here since Day One,” Garcia Earlier this year, Jimenez, a Domin- stories.) “I’m trying to get the word ‘tour’
said. “But, like many people in this coun- ican-born poet and theatre-maker, spent out of my mouth, because it disconnects,”
try, we are working very hard, we are pay- a couple of months driving pods of up he said. “It never holds you accountable.
ing a lot of taxes, we are providing em- to three passengers around Bushwick in We gotta respect the land and its peo-
ployment for American people, for im- a cab, for a site-specific performance ple.” He forbids his passengers to take
migrants—and we’re still with no papers, piece called “Taxilandia.” Jimenez wasn’t photographs: “I ain’t no museum. I ain’t
we’re still with no Social Security number.” interested in making a show for Zoom. no exhibition.”
Cooking is the only way Garcia can “How do you show a neighborhood?” The principal subject of “Taxilandia”
experience Mexico. “I miss my gastron- he asked. “Except by taking people is gentrification, and Jimenez is happy to
omy,” he said, as waiters bustled around through the neighborhood.” start difficult conversations with his rid-
him. “But I created a menu out of all The first stop in“Taxilandia” is Ji- ers. “After being uncomfortable, we can
my memories.” The mole he serves is menez’s childhood home, which is his have a blast,” he said. He also gets to cel-
his grandmother’s recipe, made less spicy current home, too. He climbed into the ebrate the things that have stayed the
for the gringos. Some dishes come from driver’s seat of a burgundy Lincoln Town same, such as Tony’s, a pizza joint that
his mother’s home town of Veracruz; Car with a Little Trees Black Ice air opened in 1969: “It’s, like, ‘Watch me not
others, from a trip he took in the nine- freshener dangling from the mirror. change.’The neighborhood is gonna keep
ties to Zabaleta’s family home, in Chi- Jimenez, wearing brown glasses and a changing, but you’re gonna be one of
apas. In the film, the young Garcia woos Yankees cap, held a coffee in his non- those constants. I love that friction.”
Zabaleta with the Puebla specialty chiles steering hand. “Now you locked in, boy,” The show includes a bodega pit stop,
en nogada: stuffed poblano peppers he said, eying his back-seat passenger although snacking in the car is not per-
doused in walnut sauce and sprinkled through a protective sheet of plexiglass. mitted. It also includes murals. “That’s
with pomegranate seeds. As Garcia tells “You ready?” what people think they came to see,”
it, he learned to cook the dish at a con- Jimenez drove a cab for nine years, Jimenez said. Pulling over near a depic-
vent, where the nuns charged him a cou- typically working from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. tion of the Notorious B.I.G. by Danielle
ple thousand pesos for the lesson. “It’s “I saw the real world,” he said. If a con- Mastrion, he briefly relaxed his no-pho-
very, very complicated,” he said, of the versation was stimulating, he would some- tos policy: “I don’t mind that one. I know
recipe, grinning. “The poblano, we have times give the passenger what he called the artist. She’s respecting the community.”
to roast it, and peel it, and take out the a two-dollar “keeping humanity alive” Jimenez enjoys having a captive au-
seeds inside. But you’d better be care- discount. He had riders sign a kind of dience. “I’m a performer, and I have an
ful—you cannot destroy the chili, be- guestbook, and some of his favorite in- ego,” he said. “And I love this. I love that
cause it has to be stuffed and look nice.” teractions are preserved on social media, I’m in a car right now, at nine in the
He fills each one with chicken, pork, ap- under the hashtag #bgtflow (for Brook- fucking morning on a Saturday, to talk.
ples, peaches, toasted almonds, and rai- lyn Gypsy Taxi). “People wrote everything And to talk about changes.”
sins. The walnuts for the sauce must be in that guestbook,” he said. “Their life The show does not involve finding
peeled one by one. “In Mexico, it took stories. Or just ‘This driver is crazy.’” He a parking space, which is just as well.
me hours to peel them,” Garcia said. “I tended to feel safer inside the cab: “All “That’s Brooklyn,” Jimenez said, as his
remember seeing the nuns sitting, talking, the chaos of the city is closed out.” rightful length of curb was claimed by
peeling for hours. I was inspired by them. Seven years ago, Jimenez was a per- another vehicle. He exhaled slowly. Then
But here we are, like, poom-poom-poom- former and a designated driver in a show he drove on: “I’m, like, ‘Well, if I go to
poom—done.” called “Take Me Home,” which whisked jail, there’s no show.’”
—Fergus McIntosh tightly packed mini-audiences through —Darryn King
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 17
 have risen. Behind us were the Red
BRAVE NEW WORLD DEPT. Hook Houses, the largest public-housing
complex in Brooklyn, with some twenty-

MANUFACTURING NATURE
five hundred units set on a peninsula, a
former tidal marsh that will take on
more and more water as the planet con-
How a landscape architect designs ecosystems to protect cities from the sea. tinues to warm.
“Before Buttermilk Channel was
BY ERIC KLINENBERG dredged, people used to walk from here
to Governors Island at low tide,” she said.
“There were oysters, tide pools, grasses,
lots of colorful marine life, and they were
a big part of New York’s coastal-protection
system. They acted like breakwaters, ab-
sorbing wave energy and slowing the
water before it hit the shore. We’ve spent
the past one hundred years dredging out
everything for shipping and hardening
the edges. Now we have a different cli-
mate, and we need a different approach.”
A great deal of Orff ’s work addresses
the inescapable fact that the Atlantic
Ocean is rising, and coming for the land.
She’s the founder of the design firm
SCAPE, the director of the Urban De-
sign Program at Columbia University,
and the first landscape architect to win
a MacArthur “genius” grant. She’s also
at the forefront of an emerging approach
to climate resilience that argues we should
be building with nature, not just in na-
ture. Its guiding principle is that “gray
infrastructure”—the dikes, dams, and
seawalls that modern societies use to
contain and control water—is often in-
sufficient, and sometimes destructive.
Green infrastructure, by contrast, in-
volves strategically deploying wetlands,
dunes, mangrove forests, and reefs to re-
duce threats of catastrophic flooding and
n a windy afternoon in April, the strands of ash-brown hair that had blown coastal erosion, while also revitalizing
O landscape architect Kate Orff stood
on the open walkway of a container
loose from her ponytail, and pointed out
the busy navigation channels, which, for
the land. This carefully designed “sec-
ond nature,” the thinking goes, could be
crane, some eighty feet above the Red more than two centuries, the U.S. Army our second chance.
Hook Terminal, in Brooklyn, and the Corps of Engineers has dredged in order It won’t be the same as the now dis-
Buttermilk Channel, a tidal strait on to keep them deep and fast. Then she appeared natural world. Some conser-
the southeast side of Governors Island. pointed toward the steel-and-concrete vationists advocate “rewilding,” return-
Most places in New York City make it barriers that separate the city from the ing developed land to indigenous flora
easy to avoid thinking about the rivers, harbor but that, in 2012, proved no match and fauna, but in places like New York
canals, and ocean waters that form an for Superstorm Sandy. City that’s not an option. “I know peo-
aquatic thoroughfare for the global econ- “I’m interested in reworking the ple who have this romantic view that
omy and surround the industrial corri- edges,” Orff told me, squinting into the we should just let nature take its course,”
dors, office towers, and densely popu- breeze. Farther west, along the Hudson Orff said, eying the factories and tall
lated neighborhoods where millions of River, we could make out the ports and buildings that line the riverfront. “But
people have settled. This place is not cities in New Jersey where the risk of that doesn’t take into account the dam-
one of them. tidal flooding has more than doubled age we’ve already done.”
Orff, who is forty-nine, pushed back over the past generation, as sea levels That afternoon at the Red Hook Ter-
minal, Orff, in a long black jacket and
In New York, Kate Orff will use oyster reefs to mitigate storm surges. sneakers with fluorescent yellow laces,
18 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 PHOTOGRAPH BY THOMAS PRIOR
was inspecting a mollusk setting tank Narrows Bridge, Staten Island was a ter nursery; an environmental-education
belonging to the Billion Oyster Project, greenish mound on the horizon. There, hub; and a set of man-made tide pools,
a nonprofit that aims to reintroduce the almost half a million people live near a shallow rocky basins built in the zones
bivalve, in vast quantities, to the water- triangular indentation of coastline and where water and land mingle at high
ways of New York City—oysters being ocean known as the New York Bight, tide. “A lot of coastal infrastructure lacks
a critical part of her coastal-infrastruc- which funnels storm water directly onto surface complexity,” Pippa Brashear, one
ture plans. Correctly deployed, oysters the land. During Sandy, a sixteen-foot of Orff’s colleagues at SCAPE, told me.
can form dense reefs that slow the move- storm surge slammed into residential “It’s mostly hard walls.” The SCAPE proj-
ment of water and mitigate the impact neighborhoods on the South Shore, ect will be the opposite. “If you put on
of storm surges. The Red Hook termi- tearing entire houses off their founda- a scuba suit and swim around Living
nal is situated where the East River feeds tions. Twenty-four people died on the Breakwaters, you’ll see something that
into the Upper Bay, which was once a island. After the disaster, local leaders looks like an oyster reef, with lots of nooks
prime habitat for oysters; they could grow called for the government to safeguard and crannies,” she said. “It’s designed to
to weigh more than a pound apiece and coastal communities with a seawall. But be messy, with lots of little critters, in-
fill an entire dinner plate. But, in the past blocking off the vulnerable parts of New vertebrates like tunicates, really colorful
century and a half, extensive river exca- York City would have been extraordi- sponges, young sea bass and striped bass
vation, industrial pollution, and overhar- narily expensive, and the ecological costs and silversides darting around and find-
vesting have destroyed nearly every oys- of cutting off the flow of water into the ing places to hide. Then we’ll have the
ter colony in the New York Harbor region. Hudson River and its tributaries—or of oysters, hopefully tons of them. It’ll be
The Billion Oyster Project has ret- locking it into places that experience teeming with life.”
rofitted four beige nine-thousand-gallon heavy rainfall—were equally daunting. “It’s not easy,” Orff said of the proj-
shipping containers into oyster tanks. We can’t live without water; the chal- ect’s ambitions, which are both social
They look a little like back-yard above- lenge is learning how to live with it. and ecological. “But the oysters do a lot
ground swimming pools, complete with When Orff looked into Staten Island’s of the work.”
blue plastic interiors, and are connected predicament, she couldn’t help but no-
to the harbor through PVC hoses and tice how much it resembled the situation rff grew up in suburban Maryland
powerful water pumps. On Governors
Island, several hundred yards away, proj-
in other parts of New York City and, for
that matter, in coastal cities throughout
O and describes herself as “a classic
latchkey kid.” Her father, an engineer
ect staffers and volunteers build wire the world. At SCAPE, she put together a and an avid birder, was a civil servant
cages, or gabions, filled with cleaned plan, called Living Breakwaters, for pro- who worked at NASA and the N.S.A.;
oyster shells. Then, in a cavernous ware- tecting and reanimating Staten Island’s her mother worked as a secretary for the
house at the Red Hook Terminal, the coastline. In 2014, the proposal earned county executive. “I had a lot of time to
gabions are loaded into the salt-water- the highest score in the billion-dollar Re- explore things and basically do whatever
filled tanks. Next, oyster larvae are re- build by Design competition, an Obama seemed interesting,” Orff told me with
leased into each tank, starting a process Administration initiative that invited de- a slightly mischievous smile. “For me,
called “setting.” After about a week, the signers, engineers, scientists, and plan- that wound up being a pretty weird mix
shell-anchored larvae, or “spat,” are trans- ners to build systems for a wetter, warmer of things.” In high school, most kids get
ported to the restoration site and placed world. Orff designed a necklace of sloped sorted into specific roles and identities:
underwater, where they will spend their rock formations and “reef streets” to be freaks and geeks, jocks and goths. Orff
adult lives. submerged in Raritan Bay, where they refused to be limited. She was an artist,
Much of Orff ’s work involves trans- would attenuate the energy of waves the captain of her lacrosse team, a fem-
lating arcane topics—from ecology, ma- crashing into the South Shore of Staten inist, and a budding environmentalist.
rine biology, climate science, and archi- Island and serve as habitats for oysters, At the University of Virginia, she
tecture—into concepts that resonate with lobsters, and juvenile fish. The system, studied with the late pragmatist philoso-
nonexperts. When she explains a proj- which would be largely invisible to the pher Richard Rorty and wrote an un-
ect, Orff holds her interlocutor’s gaze; area’s residents, wouldn’t prevent storm dergraduate thesis on ecofeminism; at
you can sense her mind racing to cali- water from reaching their sidewalks and the Harvard Graduate School of Design,
brate the right language for the occa- streets. But it would lessen the impact, another eminence, the architect Rem
sion, and you hear it as she punctuates lowering the risk of major damage in fu- Koolhaas, selected her to join his six-
her key ideas, her voice rising and then ture hurricanes while helping people con- person urban-design seminar and re-
resting so that her words can sink in. nect with one another and with the eco- search team. “I wasn’t even supposed to
“We’re essentially mimicking the activ- systems that sustain them. apply, because I was still so early in the
ity that would be happening naturally in The project, which will cost sixty mil- program,” Orff recalled. “One day, I saw
a healthier body of water,” Orff told me. lion dollars in federal funding—a mod- my name posted on his board, and when
“We have to hit the reset button if we est sum for a flood-protection system I walked into his office he said, ‘O.K.,
want nature to come back. There’s no that protects a long urban shoreline— Kate. You are landscape.’ ”
more natural nature. Now it’s a matter includes nine separate breakwater seg- Orff’s first design job after her grad-
of design.” ments, spanning twenty-four hundred uate training was at a traditional corpo-
To the south, behind the Verrazzano- linear feet across the bay; a floating oys- rate design firm in Sausalito. One day,
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 19
 sea levels but struggling to gain traction
in a city fixated on post­9/11 security
concerns. “They understood that the
marshes, and a lot of the life they nur­
tured, were going to disappear unless
there was major intervention,” she re­
called. “And I started thinking about
what that intervention would look like.
I mean, what would it mean to design
Jamaica Bay? You would need to gar­
den it. You would plant oysters, plant
marsh grass, renature the ecosystem. But
where? And how?”
Orff took these questions to Ken­
neth Frampton, a renowned scholar of
architecture at Columbia whose essay
“Toward an Urban Landscape” was a
formative influence, and they chatted
in his office in Morningside Heights.
At the end of the conversation, he said,
“Kate, why aren’t you teaching here?”
Orff worked up a proposal for a new
seminar called “Landscape, Infrastruc­
ture, Intervention,” and the following
year she joined the faculty of Colum­
bia’s graduate program. The course at­
“Don’t push that! It makes a super-annoying squeak sound!” tracted students from different depart­
ments and created buzz around campus.
• • “It was exciting to see so much interest
in wetlands, coastlines, and urban infra­
structure,” she said.
Koolhaas called and asked if the proj­ acres of wetlands, dunes, salt marshes, In 2005, she launched SCAPE, where,
ects she was doing were “beautiful.” “I forests, and beaches, along with some by all accounts, she has cultivated a role
was working on a courtyard at Stanford, three hundred species of birds. For Orff, more like a coach and a choreographer
a tourism complex in Egypt, a gated it became a source of inspiration. than a dictator who demands that the
community in Myanmar,” Orff told me. “You could tell the whole history of staff build their napkin sketches at scale.
“I’m not even sure that one was legal. I New York in, like, one square metre of But her professional breakthrough came
said, ‘No, they’re not beautiful.’ And he Jamaica Bay,” Orff explained. “It was four years later, when she was invited
said, ‘Well, why aren’t you working with full of Lenape settlements, with shell to participate in “Rising Currents,” a
me?’” She went home, posted an ad to mounds and hunting grounds. People Museum of Modern Art exhibition that
sell all her furniture, and then pulled up lived between the water and the land. showcased new ideas for combatting
stakes. In 2000, Orff helped open a new They caught every kind of fish.” Euro­ global warming in the urban environ­
Manhattan office for Koolhaas’s firm, pean settlers appreciated the area’s flora ment. Orff, the sole landscape designer
O.M.A. (Office for Metropolitan Archi­ and fauna, but they also liked its beaches, leading a team for the show, was asked
tecture). She rented a small studio apart­ where they disposed of waste. “The en­ to develop a plan for Liberty State Park
ment on Fifteenth Street, and, like a typ­ tire bay is ringed with the detritus of in New Jersey. But the site didn’t work
ical New Yorker, she quickly discovered modern society,” Orff said. “It’s where for her, because there wasn’t enough
how much she needed to escape it. we put everything that we didn’t value. daily social life to support the cultural
Her friends recommended that she Including horses. There’s actually a place connections she’d envisaged between
take advantage of Central Park. “But by here called Dead Horse Bay, where people and place. “I didn’t know what
then I had already spent all this time horses who worked the streets of New to do,” she said. “So I told them I had
studying it in graduate school, and I was York City—including the ones who a conflict of interest because of a client
basically uninterested,” Orff recalled. In­ lugged the soil they used to make Cen­ in Jersey. Bit of a stretch!”
stead, she volunteered with the National tral Park—got shipped out and dumped. Instead, she put in for the Gowanus
Audubon Society and started spending You can still find bones there, and some Canal, a 1.8­mile­long, hundred­foot­
time at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Ref­ of them are big.” wide waterway in Brooklyn that runs
uge, a sprawling oasis in Queens, be­ In Jamaica Bay, Orff met ecologists from Boerum Hill through Red Hook
tween Kennedy Airport and Rockaway and environmental activists who were and into New York Harbor. Although
Beach. It has more than twelve thousand warning about the dangers of rising it once nourished an abundant supply
20 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
of oysters, it’s now better known for research helped inspire the “Rising Cur-
holding enough “black mayonnaise”—a rents” exhibition. “It connects with PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.
toxic mixture of raw sewage, oil, coal, things Europeans are doing, making
chemicals, and heavy metals—to fill room for the river instead of walling it
twenty-two Olympic-size swimming
pools. A few years earlier, in 2007, a young
off.” Orff delights in the popular ap-
peal of Oyster-Tecture, convinced that
The New Yorker
minke whale was spotted swimming ecological design should be an entice- Crossword Puzzle
near the mouth of the canal after a his- ment to those who see climate change
toric rainstorm. The Daily News nick- as cause for building a better world.
named it Sludgie the Whale (a play on “The way we talk about global warm-
the popular Carvel ice-cream cake Fud- ing is usually dark and pessimistic,” she
gie the Whale), and New Yorkers rushed told me. “It can be stifling. Part of my
to see it. But the Gowanus, which re- job is showing people new ways to see
ceives about three hundred and sixty things, to offer a vision of places we can
million gallons of untreated wastewa- live in, responsibly, and also enjoy.”
ter each year, was no place for a young
whale to visit. Sludgie, injured and dis- n a cold day this spring, Orff met
oriented, promptly beached herself on
some rocks and died. In March, 2010,
O me at Plumb Beach, a short, nar-
row stretch of shoreline at the south-
just as Orff ’s exhibit was going up at ern edge of Brooklyn, and a nesting-
MoMA, the E.P.A. designated the and-breeding ground for horseshoe
Gowanus a Superfund site, spurring a crabs. Right off the Belt Parkway, near
$1.5 billion dredging-and-cleaning proj- Sheepshead Bay, the beach looks across
ect. (It finally began last year.) to the Rockaway Peninsula, a natural
Orff ’s submission, called “Oyster- barrier between it and the open ocean.
Tecture,” imagined a living reef in the It’s sometimes referred to as New York
canal made of tangles and webs of fuzzy City’s “hidden beach,” accessible only
rope that, by harnessing the filtration via an eastbound exit, and invisible until
powers of shellfish and eelgrass, would you step out of the parking lot and onto
help support a resurgence of aquatic the sand. Giving me directions on the
biodiversity. On the banks of the canal, phone, Orff warned that the beach was
she designed a water park for families, like the seventh-and-a-half floor in the
with lots of places to sit and to stroll, and movie “Being John Malkovich.” “It’s
new channels that could flow out of the after Exit 9 and before Exit 11, but there
canal and feed into Brooklyn’s residen- is no Exit 10,” she told me. “It’s a warp
tial communities; the water- in time and space. Just trust
front, treated as a dumping that it’s there.”
ground for decades, would Plumb Beach, the site of
become a gathering place. a federally funded ecologi- 1. Plot device sometimes
It was a utopian-sound- cal restoration project, pro- used in thrillers.
ing vision, and some people vided an early test case of
2. Bad stuff to microwave.
dismissed it. In the Times, whether Orff-style natural
the critic Nicolai Ourous- infrastructure projects can 3. N.Y.C. club said to
soff belittled what he called succeed. The push for this have catalyzed the punk
Orff ’s “effort to turn back approach in the United movement.
the clock to a time when States came after Hurricane 4. Apt to snoop.
New York was an oyster cap- Katrina, in 2005, when some
ital of the world”; he found it “slightly studies indicated that the disappearance
hokey,” which he ascribed to her being of marshes and wetlands around the Find a new crossword
one of the show’s “young and relatively Gulf of Mexico had allowed storm wa- every Monday, Wednesday,
untested” contributors. ters to pick up force as they approached and Friday, and a cryptic
every Sunday, at
“I was so riled up when that came New Orleans, adding pressure on levees
newyorker.com/crossword
out!” Orff recalled. “He didn’t get it.” and seawalls. Calls to restore these eco-
Other influential people in the design logical systems gained support from
profession did, however, and the Army Congress and the Army Corps of En-
Corps of Engineers asked for a meet- gineers. Today, the Corps has a team of
ing. “It’s a beautiful idea,” said Guy Nor- nearly two hundred scientists, engineers,
denson, a Princeton University engi- and resource managers, who are devel-
neering and architecture professor whose oping guidelines for the task. In the past
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 21
dozen or so years, they have done small- drowned in that water. Their story is willow trees as he can. “I’ve done about
scale wetland restoration in Lower burned in my memory.” twenty-five thousand so far,” he told me.
Township, New Jersey; on beaches and In Plumb Beach, however, the “But we’re gonna need a whole lot more.”
dunes in Encinitas, California; and at berm held, blocking the storm surge Trees, as Blink sees it, are essential
Shoalwater Bay, in Washington. But, and largely protecting the Belt Park- green infrastructure for shoring up one
for Orff, the Corps’s work at Plumb way, along with the people directly be- of the world’s most fragile landscapes—
Beach was particularly significant. hind it. For Orff, the performance of what locals call the Bird’s Foot. It’s a
On the day I visited, the forecast was the nature-based infrastructure during strip of small islands, narrow canals, and
baffling: frigid conditions at the start of Sandy was revelatory. It suggested that murky wetlands that juts out from the
the day, howling winds later in the morn- a scaled-up version of Oyster-Tecture mouth of the Mississippi River and ex-
ing, and, by afternoon, record-high tem- could be immediately useful—not for tends Louisiana into the ocean; from
peratures. The beach was desolate, with provoking discussion but for preserving above, the spindly stretches of land look
a lone dog walker, a young couple snug- communities along the coast. like a young root system or, indeed, the
gling, and a long line of flowers that local delicate footprint of a bird. In recent de-
residents had left near the water, seem- s vulnerable as New York was, Orff cades, the foot has been retracting, with
ingly as some kind of religious offering.
The beach was sheltered by sloping
A knew that other population cen-
ters were still more so. Back in 2010, after
land disappearing into the sea at the
staggering pace of a football field’s worth
dunes, covered in thick grasses and plants. the BP spill dumped nearly five million every hundred minutes. If current trends
It hadn’t always been that way. When barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico continue, the remaining four-thousand-
a powerful storm hit Plumb Beach in and its neighboring waterways and wet- square-mile coastal area will become
2009, Orff explained, “this was basically lands, Orff made her first visit to the open water in about fifty years, leaving
flat landscape, and the bay came close Lower Mississippi Valley, the nation’s New Orleans and the towns around it
to washing away the Belt Parkway.”The largest floodplain, to begin a collabora- even more vulnerable to catastrophic
Corps built a beach berm, two jetties tive project with the photographer Rich- flooding. The land loss is not just a mat-
made of large rocks, and a substantial ard Misrach. (It turned into the book ter of rising sea levels; it’s also driven by
breakwater, to thicken the edge of the “Petrochemical America.”) She wanted the way we’ve pumped water, oil, and
land and to shield developed areas in- to see the Mississippi Flyway, where gas from the ground, causing the terrain
land from future storms. nearly half of North America’s water- to sink, and by the way we’ve lined the
In 2012, soon after the government fowl and sixty per cent of U.S. bird spe- banks of the Mississippi River with hard,
had completed the first phase of the proj- cies migrate or winter, and where scores flat construction material—including
ect—building the berm, with more than of fish and shellfish species make their more than two thousand miles of fed-
a hundred thousand cubic yards of sand home. Orff immediately took to the re- eral levees. Because these levees confine
from harbor-dredging work—Super- gion, and SCAPE now runs a busy office the flow of the river, they increase its
storm Sandy hit. Orff was living in For- in New Orleans. The entire city sits on speed; instead of depositing sediment in
est Hills at the time, with her husband one of Orff ’s “edges”—a site of extraor- marshlands along the way, the current
and two young children. “Like most New dinary natural peril and promise. sends it past the delta and its historic
Yorkers, I was watching the storm in real On a hot, humid morning in late floodplain, into the Gulf of Mexico.
time,” she remembered. “It was like a spring, I joined Orff and her collabora- Today, though, Orff had been brought
comet on a direct path to New York and tor David Muth, who directs the Na- out on the water by a positive develop-
New Jersey. But I don’t think a lot of ment. A few years earlier, new crevasses
people here were thinking about the risk had formed in the riverbanks that hold
of mass deaths or major infrastructure the Mississippi River in place, and began
failures. I was mainly concerned about slowing the flow of sediment out to sea.
trees falling on our house.” She experi- The backwaters were filling up with soil
enced nothing worse than a brief power again. Gradually, but wondrously, new
loss, and woke up the next day feeling land was forming.
relieved—until she realized the extent Although those crevasses were acci-
of the damage throughout the city. The dental, they also provided proof of prin-
East River had rushed into a Con Edi- ciple. This year, Muth and Orff have
son substation, plunging a quarter of a tional Wildlife Federation’s Gulf Pro- lent their support to the Mid-Barataria
million households into darkness. Scores gram, on a skiff at the Pointe à la Hache Sediment Diversion, a $1.5-billion plan
of large apartment buildings were in- Boat Harbor, elevation seven feet. We to tear open a great hole in the levee
undated. “The tunnels had turned into were about an hour’s drive south of New that lines the Mississippi River in lower
rivers,” she said. “People were wading Orleans. Our captain, Richie Blink, grew Plaquemines Parish, sending some sev-
through the streets of Chelsea. And there up shrimping on the bayous of the Mis- enty-five thousand cubic feet of water
were many deaths in Staten Island, in- sissippi River Delta; he now represents and sediment per second into the West
cluding the Dresch family, in Tottenville, his district in the parish government, runs Bank wetlands.
whose house got torn off its foundations an ecotourism business, and, in his spare “It’s the best chance we have to restore
by the waves. The father and daughter time, plants as many bald-cypress and and protect the coast before it drowns
22 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
forever,” Muth told me. “We have fund-
ing for it, from the BP settlement, and
about seventy per cent of the state sup-
ports it.”
The main holdout is the fishing in-
dustry, for which brackish seawater breeds
abundance, while the arrival of fresh river
water is hostile to most shrimp and other
valuable saltwater harvests. The proposal,
scheduled for permitting next April, in-
cludes more than three hundred million
dollars to compensate communities that
suffer losses from the diversion.
“I understand why some people are
worried about changes,” Orff said. “But
change is coming no matter what hap-
pens, and this is the way we can help.”
Blink, whose round, youthful face was
protected by a fraying baseball cap, steered
the small, seafoam-green boat through
a maze of tree-lined channels and ca-
nals. Every few minutes, Muth spotted
a bird (“painted bunting!” “prothonotary
warbler!” “roseate spoonbill!”), an alliga- “ Your anxiety should fit either under the seat
tor, feral cows, or, on one occasion, a pair or in the overhead compartment.”
of goats. Blink pulled the skiff up along
a patch of earth that had surfaced re-
cently, formed by sediment that would
• •
formerly have been swept out to sea. It
was already thick with vegetation. what happened during Superstorm Sandy, structures on shake tables or in wind tun-
“Baby land!” Orff exclaimed, reaching the SCAPE team was able to fine-tune nels and test them, physically.”
her hand out to touch it from the bow. its design by testing different configura- In 2017, Living Breakwaters was fi-
“Careful,” Muth said. “They call it tions of reefs and breakwaters: Where nally subjected to physical, three-di-
cut-grass for a reason.” should they be built? How many should mensional testing. The trials took place
Orff, in orange Crocs and gray jog- there be? Two potentially conflicting at a Canadian facility the size of an
gers, asked if it was safe to walk on. goals had to be balanced—to weaken Olympic swimming complex, and the
“Sure,” Blink responded. “Just look waves but also to prevent beach erosion. event had the nervous energy of a high-
out for cottonmouths. They’re all over “If you slow the waves too much, you stakes sports competition. An exact
this place.” wind up starving the beach,” said Joseph model of the Breakwaters project had
Unfazed, Orff swung her legs out and Marrone, who works for Arcadis, a global been built inside a long, narrow flume,
stepped onto the soft, mucky terrain. engineering corporation known for large- at a one-to-twenty scale: each rock and
“Heron prints!” she called out. “And scale water-management projects, and concrete structure was painted a differ-
tiny willows.” whose expertise Orff enlisted for Living ent color, so that observers would be
Minutes later, she climbed back on Breakwaters. able to easily identify which were un-
board, beaming. “You may think this is But New York State funders weren’t moored during the simulation, and
silly,” she said, “but I find it almost pre- content with digital simulations; they which held strong. The exact contours
historic here. There’s something dan- insisted that the project be tested with of the Raritan Bay floor had been rep-
gerous in the air, but also something more extensive hydrodynamic wave licated, too; even small variations could
overwhelmingly beautiful. You can feel modelling, using actual water. And for change the movement of the waves
the earth being born again.” good reason. The Princeton engineer- against the model shorelines. Probes
ing scholar Guy Nordenson cautioned were prepared to monitor wave energy
other Nature’s designs for the me, “The dynamics in coastal ecosystems and speed; “damage cams” were mounted
M planet did not need to withstand
any legal or scientific scrutiny. Orff’s plans
are truly complex, and although we have
exciting ideas about how to protect them
at regular intervals.
Then members of the SCAPE team
must withstand both, and Living Break- they’re not fully validated yet. It’s not took their positions on a catwalk above
waters, in particular, had to provide ev- like the science on what happens to tall the model and, with the click of a but-
idence that it would function as intended buildings in earthquakes or windstorms. ton, the tranquil pool began its transfor-
in order to secure its funding. Using a The people putting those up don’t just mation into a tempest. For a moment,
supercomputer that digitally modelled trust computer simulations. They put the waves moved slowly. “It sounded
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 23
like being on a lakeshore,” Brad Howe, est attempt to mend the landscape. In ticed expensive real-estate developments
a SCAPE designer, said. “We could hear fact, it will be among the most exten- featuring beautifully landscaped prom-
the water lapping up on the rocks.” sive nature-based infrastructure systems enades along the canal, and fashionable
Moments later, everything intensified, in urban America. bars and restaurants with prime water
the tension in the room heightening And its timing finally seems right. views. “We’re still a long, long way from
along with the waves. “We had never In July, the Senate voted to advance a eating oysters grown in the Gowanus,”
tested the reef streets in a real wave en- trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure Orff said. “But this used to be a sewage
vironment, and we didn’t know exactly plan that includes forty-seven billion stream. Look how far we’ve come.”
what would happen,” Howe went on. dollars for “resilience.” This is a fash- Recently, Orff and I met up in Tot-
“Years of design work went into this. ionable but fungible term, and can mean tenville, the town where Sandy swept
What if all those colored stones that anything from community-education George and Angela Dresch from their
we’d set in specific places for the break- projects (which, skeptics say, cynically home. Two centuries ago, when Staten
water wound up looking like a pile of transfer responsibility from govern- Island was farmland dotted with fishing
spilled jelly beans?” ment agencies to ordinary people), to shacks and small villages rather than an
They ran two simulations, and the levees, parks, and trees. Critics worry urban borough connected to Brooklyn
breakwaters performed superbly: no that, without a clear strategy, these in- by a highway and a suspension bridge,
jelly-bean effect in the water, no inun- vestments will be ad hoc and short- the community was organized around
dation of the shore. Still, a few surprises sighted, driven by defense contractors oysters. The beaches were long and ex-
turned up. Some tidal-pool units under- and municipal politicians pitching con- pansive, the waterways shallow and slow.
performed, and SCAPE decided to move ventional projects, such as seawalls and The South Shore was hit directly by
them; the spacing between a few of the floodgates, rather than by the new gen- the storms that came in off the Atlan-
concrete blocks was adjusted, too. A third eration of engineers, climate scientists, tic, but heavy reefs and wetlands buff-
test, performed in a basin the size of half and designers who, like Orff, want to ered the coastline.
a soccer field, lasted several hours, and revitalize ecosystems and let nature do That afternoon, as we walked along
the results were even better than the its work. Still, demand for new, cost- the beach, Orff paused every few min-
team had expected. “When the tests effective, and sustainable models— utes to identify worrisome signs. There
ended, they drained the water out of the Orff’s specialty—is high. was a dead groundhog, lying face up in
pool and I remember being, like, ‘Oh, Orff is pressing ahead with new proj- the sand; drainage pipes, once buried,
thank God, nothing moved!’ ” Pippa ects meant to address the overlapping had been unearthed by coastal erosion;
Brashear said. Orff’s team left Canada crises of global warming, racial equity, tattered sandbags were evidence of pre-
feeling even more confident about the and political polarization. In Memphis, vious makeshift flood-prevention ef-
over-all design of Living Breakwaters— she’s collaborating with the architect forts. Living Breakwaters, Orff expects,
and about the likelihood that it would Jeanne Gang and the artist Theaster will offer not just natural protection but
actually be built. Gates on Tom Lee Park (named for a lasting restoration: in a few years, walk-
Black man who, in 1925, helped save ing down the beach, she hopes to see a
ater this summer, after seven years some thirty people from drowning after newly vital social landscape, with kay-
L of environmental reviews and de-
sign refinements, the first in a series of
a steamer overturned in the Mississippi
River). It’s a space that aims to bring
akers in the tamed water and bustling
kiosks by the beach.
barges loaded with armor stone and together communities in a segregated “I think of this as a blue-green in-
rock from a quarry in upstate New York city, where many Black residents lack frastructure,” Orff said of the waterfront.
will travel down the Hudson River and access to parklands. In Atlanta, she’s “It’s engineered, but it’s not a traditional
anchor off the coast of Tottenville, where leading a “participatory design” process engineering project. We’re in a moment
marine contractors will begin install- for remaking the Chattahoochee River- of crisis, and it’s not enough to just make
ing Living Breakwaters. In total, those Lands, a hundred-and-twenty-five-mile beautiful landscapes. We have to fix
barges will be bringing a hundred and trail that will link urban, suburban, and them, too.”
twenty-three thousand tons of quar- rural Georgia—access will be just a short She led me along the shoreline, where
ried material. In a year or two, after the bike ride away from Atlanta. “We all the waves rolled in slowly, and with each
heaviest elements of the system have know how divided the state is,” she said. step our shoes sank deeper into the sand.
settled into Raritan Bay, a crew from “My question is, Can we do with land- The beach was calm and pleasant, the
the Billion Oyster Project will bring scape what we can’t do with political mood serene. But these days, as the cli-
spat-on-shell oysters affixed to ecolog- ideology or the Internet? Can we mend mate changes and images circulate of
ically enhanced concrete units—mol- things, ecologically, and also repair the catastrophic flooding—this summer, so
lusk habitats of various dimensions— social world?” far, in Germany, China, Ghana, Japan,
to the landward side of the breakwater. At the same time, she’s keeping a and various places in the U.S.—there is
The fantastic, “slightly hokey” idea that close eye on existing projects. (SCAPE always something ominous at the wa-
Orff first pitched at MoMA more than has almost doubled its staffing in the ter’s edge. Someday the storm winds will
a decade ago will spring to life. When past several years.) When Orff and I pick up again, and the ocean will come
it’s completed, which is expected to visited the Gowanus Canal during a back for the land. There’s another test
happen in 2024, it will be Orff’s larg- stage of its Superfund cleansing, I no- coming; the only question is when. 
24 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
 It’s hard to tell, since they mostly com-
SHOUTS & MURMURS municate telepathically via alien hive
mind. Talk about feeling left out of the
group chat!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy for
my friends. I want what they have.
Every time I see one of them showing
off a new baby bump or spewing black
bile from her eyeballs as the alien par-
asite sucks nutrients from its human
host, I ask myself, When’s it going to
be my turn? But, alas, my body has re-
peatedly rejected the alien parasite, for
reasons unknown. And I’m still going
on first dates!
Social media hasn’t helped. How
do I stop comparing myself with oth-
ers when their lives look so amazing?
All the luxurious vacations and dot-
ing partners. My old roommate, Harper,
posted about a big promotion at work:
she got to infiltrate an emergency sum-
mit at Camp David, where the para-
site controlling her body separated it-
self and infected twenty-nine world
leaders. And all I could do was com-
ment, “You go, #girlboss!,” while send-
ing out yet another job application.
I know life isn’t linear, and I shouldn’t
compare my path with anyone else’s.
Some of my friends may get divorced,
lose their jobs, or be used as a human
shield in an alien counterstrike to pro-
tect the Hive Queen. We’re just in dif-
ferent places in our lives.
At the end of the day, no matter
where we are in our journeys, I know
that my friends love me. Even as they
strap me to an examination table and
prepare to vivisect me and harvest my
organs, and I scream, “Harper, I know

LEFT BEHIND
you’re still in there! It’s me! Don’t do
this!,” causing a half second’s hesitation,
just long enough for me to break free
BY ZOE PEARL from my restraints, jab a pipe through
Harper’s abdomen, and escape alien
ately, I’ve been starting to feel as in bars at 2 A.M. But now my friends captivity.
L though my friends are so much far-
ther ahead of me in life. Every week,
all have responsibilities, mortgages to
pay, or a planet to overrun and strip of
So, for now, I’m just going to focus
on myself, maybe travel or take a pot-
someone gets engaged, or announces its natural resources until Earth is a tery class, really use the time I have out
a pregnancy, or complains of having lifeless husk. here in the woods alone, hiding from
a slimy alien parasite crawl down her I see my friends a lot more infre- the invaders, for some self-discovery.
throat, attach itself to her brain stem, quently than I used to—everyone’s so Because someday I might just meet
and take over her body as part of a wide- busy now, with work and the afore- one of the few other human survivors,
scale invasion. Meanwhile, I’m still go- mentioned alien invasion and all. When and as we lock eyes, knowing that we
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ

ing on first dates! we do get together, it’s a lot harder to may well be the last two of our species,
It seems like just yesterday that we relate. The only thing my friends want I’ll know that I’ve found my person,
were all carefree twentysomethings to talk about is their kids—at least, that’s and see that the long journey was all
with entry-level jobs, kissing strangers what I assume they’re talking about. worth it! 
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 25
 I am vaguely aware that Andrew Cuomo
PERSONAL HISTORY has fallen out of favor, and that people
who aren’t me will be receiving govern-

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
ment checks for some reason or other,
but that’s about it. When Trump was
President, I started every morning by
My father as a new man. reading the New York Times, followed
by the Washington Post, and would
BY DAVID SEDARIS track both papers’ Web sites regularly
throughout the day. To be less than vig-
ilant was to fall behind, and was there
anything worse than not knowing what
Stephen Miller just said about Wis-
consin? My friend Mike likened this
constant monitoring to having a sec-
ond job. It was exhausting, and the mo-
ment that Joe Biden was sworn into
office I let it all go. When the new Pres-
ident speaks, I feel the way I do on a
plane when the pilot announces that
after reaching our cruising altitude he
will head due north, or take a left at
Lake Erie. You don’t need to tell me
about your job, I always think. Just, you
know, do it.
It’s so freeing, no longer listening to
political podcasts—no longer being en-
raged. I still browse the dailies, skip-
ping over the stories about Covid, as I
am finished with all that as well. The
moment I got my first vaccine shot, I
started thinking of the coronavirus the
way I think of scurvy—something from
a long-ago time that can no longer hurt
me, something that mainly pirates get.
“Yes,” the papers would say. “But what
if there’s a powerful surge this sum-
mer? This Christmas? A year from now?
What if our next pandemic is worse
than this one? What if it kills all the
omething about a car running over ing his head toward the sun. “Gosh, it’s fish and cattle and poultry and affects
S a policeman and a second officer
being injured. This is my assessment of
good to see you kids!”
As Amy and I move in to embrace
our skin’s reaction to sunlight? What
if it forces everyone to live underground
a news story broadcast on the televi- him, Hugh wonders if we could possi- and subsist on earthworms?”
sion in my father’s room at Springmoor, bly turn off the TV. “Well, sure,” my My father tested positive for the
the retirement community where he’s father, still smothered in grown chil- coronavirus shortly before Christmas,
spent the past three years in the assisted- dren, says. “I don’t even know why it’s at around the time he started wheel-
living section. It is early April, three on, to tell you the truth.” ing himself to the front desk at Spring-
days before his ninety-eighth birthday, Hugh takes the remote off the bed- moor and asking if anyone there had
and Amy, Hugh, and I have just flown side table, and, after he’s killed the tele- seen his mother. He hasn’t got Alzhei-
to Raleigh from New York. The plan vision, Amy asks if he can figure out mer’s, nothing that severe. Rather, he’s
is to hang out for a while, and then the radio. As a non-blood relative, that what used to be called “soft in the head.”
drive to the Sea Section, our house on seems to be his role during our visits Gaga. It’s a relatively new develop-
Emerald Isle. to Springmoor—the servant. ment—aside from the time he was dis-
Dad is in his wheelchair, dressed and “Find us a jazz station,” I tell him. covered on the floor in his house, de-
groomed for our visit. Hair combed. “There we go!” my father says. “That hydrated and suffering from a bladder
Real shoes on his feet. A red bandanna would be fantastic!” infection, he’s always been not just lucid
tied around his neck “Well, hey!” he Neither Amy nor I care about the but commanding.
calls as we walk in, an old turtle rais- news anymore, at least the political news. “If it happens several times in one
26 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY JANNE IIVONEN
day, someone on the staff will contact on Monday and today is only Friday.” for some reason,” I say to my father.
me,” Lisa told us over the phone. “Then “A hundred years old!” He turns from me to Hugh, and
I’ll call and say, ‘Dad, your mother died This isn’t softheadedness but a life- then to Amy. “Well, you do. All of you
in 1976 and is buried beside your fa- long tendency to exaggerate. “What the do. The only one who’s changed is me.
ther at the Rural Cemetery in Cort- hell are you still doing up?” he’d de- I’m a hundred years old!”
land, New York. You bought the plot mand of my brother, my sisters, and me “Ninety-eight on Monday,” Amy says.
next to theirs, so that’s where you’ll every school night of our lives. “It’s one “A hundred years old!”
be going.” o’clock in the morning!” “Have you had your Covid shots?”
There had to be a gentler way to say We’d point to the nearest clock. “Ac- I ask, knowing that he has.
this, but I’m not sure the news really tually, it’s nine-forty-five.” “I’m not sure,” he says. “Maybe.”
registered, especially after his diagno- “It’s one o’clock, dammit!” I pick up a salmon carved out of
sis, when he was at his weakest. Every “Then how come ‘Barnaby Jones’ is something hard and porous, an antler
time the phone rang, I expected to hear still on?” maybe. It used to be in his basement
that he had died. But my father recov- “Go to bed!” office at the house. This was before he
ered. “Without being hospitalized,” I Amy has brought my father some turned every room into an office, and
told my cousin Nancy. “Plus he lost ten chocolate turtles, and as he watches she buried himself in envelopes. “Hugh and
pounds!” Not that he needed to. opens the box, then hands him one.“Your I and Amy, we’ve each had one shot.”
When I ask him what it was like to room looks good, too. It’s clean, and My father laughs. “Well, good for
have covid, he offers a false-sounding your stuff fits in real well.” you. I haven’t had a drink since I got
laugh. He does that a lot now—“Ha-ha!” “It’s not bad, is it?” my father says. here.”
I suspect it’s a cover for his failed hear- “You might not believe it, but this is At first, I take this as a non sequi-
ing, that rather than saying “Could you the exact same square footage as the tur. Then I realize that by “shot” he
repeat that?” he figures it’s a safe bet that house, the basement of it, anyway.” thinks we mean a shot of alcohol.
you are delivering a joke of some sort. This is simply not true, but we let “They don’t let you drink?” I ask.
“Hugh and I just went to Louisville to it go. “Oh, you can have a little, I guess,
see his mother,” I’d said to my dad the “There are a few things I’d like to but it’s not easy. You have to order it in
last time we were at Springmoor. “Joan get rid of, but as a whole it’s not too advance, like medicine, and you only
is ninety now, and has blood cancer.” cluttered,” he observes, turning a jerky get a thimbleful,” he says.
“Ha-ha!” semicircle in his wheelchair. “That was “What do you think would happen
That was on Halloween. Socially a real problem for me once upon a time. if you had a screwdriver?” Amy asks.
distanced visits were allowed in the out- I used to be the king of clutter.” He thinks for a moment. “I’d prob-
door courtyard of my father’s building, Were I his decorator, I’d definitely ably get an erection!”
and after our allotted thirty minutes lose the Christmas tree that stands col- I really like this new version of my
were up an aide disguised as a witch lecting dust on the console beneath his father. He’s charming and positive and
wheeled him back to his room. TV. It is a foot and a half tall, and made full of surprises. “One of the things I
“The costumes must do a real num- of plastic. Naked it might be O.K., but like about us as a family is that we
ber on some of the residents,” Amy its baubles—which are the size of ju- laugh,” he says. “Always! As far back
said as we walked with Hugh to our niper berries, and gaudy—depress me. as I can remember. It’s what we’re
rental car. “‘And then a vampire came Beside it is a stack of cards sent by peo- known for!”
to take my blood pressure!’ ‘Sure he did, ple I don’t know, or whose names I only Most of that laughter had been di-
Grandpa.’” vaguely recognize from the Greek Or- rected at him, and erupted the moment
A few days after we saw him, Spring- thodox church. “Has the priest been he left whichever room the rest of us
moor was locked down. No one allowed by?” I ask. were occupying. A Merriment Club
in or out except staff, and all the resi- My father nods. “A few times. He member he definitely was not. But I
dents confined to their rooms. The pol- doesn’t much like me, though.” like that he remembers things differ-
icy wasn’t reversed until six months Amy takes a seat on the bed. “Why ently. “My offbeat sense of humor has
later. That’s when we flew down from not?” won me a lot of friends,” he tells us. “A
New York. He laughs. “Let’s just say I’m not as hell of a lot.”
generous as I could be!” “Friends here?” Amy asks.
“ Y ou look great, Dad,” Amy says
in a voice that is almost but not
My father is thinner than the last
time I saw him, but somehow his face
“All over the damn place! Even the
kids I used to roller-skate with, they
quite a shout. Hugh has finally found is fuller. Something else is different as come by sometimes.”
a jazz station, and managed to tune out well, but I can’t put my finger on it. He opens his hand and we see that
the static. It’s like when celebrities get face-lifts. the chocolate turtle he’s been holding
“Well, I’m a hundred years old!” my I can see they’ve undergone a change, has melted. Amy fetches some toilet
father tells us in his whisper of a voice. but I can never tell exactly what it is. paper from the bathroom, and he sits
“Can you beat that?” Examining a photo on some gossip passively as she cleans him off. “What
“Ninety-eight,” Amy corrects him. site, I’ll wonder, What is it? The eyes? is it you’re wearing?” he asks.
“And not quite yet. Your birthday is The mouth? “You don’t look the same, She takes a step back so that he can
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 27
see her black-and-white polka-dot shift. this,” he says, pointing to a framed enties, we thought of our color scheme
Over it is a Japanese denim shirt with serigraph over his bed, “this I could as permanently modern. What could
coaster-size smiley-face patches run- look at every minute of the day.” It is replace all that orange and brown and
ning up and down the sleeves. Her a sentimental, naïf-style street scene avocado? By the early eighties, it was
friend Paul recently told her that she of Paris in the early twentieth cen- laughable, but now it’s back and we’re
dresses like a fat person, the defiant sort tury—a veritable checklist of tropes able to think fondly of our milk-choc-
who thinks, You want to laugh, I’ll give and clichés by Michel Delacroix, who olate walls, and the stout wicker burro
you something to laugh at. defines himself as a “painter of dreams that used to pout atop the piano, one
“Interesting,” my father says. and of the poetic past.” On the two oc- of our father’s acrylic bullfighters seem-
Whenever the conversation stalls, casions when my father visited me in ingly afire on the wall behind it.
he turns it back to one of several sub- the actual Paris, he couldn’t leave fast When Dad retired from I.B.M., the
jects, the first being the inexpensive enough. It’s only in pictures that he art work became a greater part of his
guitar he bought me when I was a child can stand the place. “I’ve got to write identity. He had been an engineer, but
and insisted on bringing with him to this guy a letter and tell him what his he was an art lover. This didn’t extend
Springmoor, this after it had sat ne- work means to me,” he says. “The trick to museums—who needed them when
glected in a closet for more than half is finding the damn time!” he had his living room! “I’m an actual
a century. “I’m trying to teach myself Two of the paintings in the room collector, while David, he’s more of an
to play, but I just can’t find the time are by my father, done in the late six- investor,” he sniffed to my friend Lee
to practice.” ties. His art phase came from nowhere, after I bought a Picasso that was painted
It seems to me that all he has is time. and, during its brief, six-month span, by Picasso and did not look—dare I
What else is there to do here, shut up he was prolific, churning out twenty or say it—like cake frosting.
in his room? “I’ve got to make some so canvases, most done with a palette Then, there’s my father’s collection
music!” he says. As he shakes his fist knife rather than a brush. All of them of masks, some of which are hanging
in frustration, I notice that he still has are copies—of van Gogh, of Zurbarán high on the wall over his bed. The best
some chocolate beneath his thumbnail. and Picasso. They wouldn’t fool any- of them were made by tribes in the Pa-
“You’re too hard on yourself, Dad,” one, but as children we were awed by cific Northwest and Alaska, bought on
Amy tells him. “You don’t have to do his talent. The problem was what to fly-fishing trips. A few others are Af-
everything, you know. Maybe it’s O.K. paint, or, in his case, to copy. Some of rican or Mexican. They used to leer
to just relax for a change.” his choices were questionable—a stage- down from the panelled wall above the
His second go-to topic is the art coach silhouetted against a tanger- staircase in our house, and it is odd but
work hanging on his walls, most of ine-colored sunset comes to mind— not unpleasant to see them in this new
it bought by him and my mother in but in retrospect they fit right in with setting. When walking along the hall
the seventies and early eighties. “Now, the rest of the house. Back in the sev- at Springmoor, I always peek into the
other rooms, none of which resemble
my father’s. There are the neighbors,
and then there is Dad—Dad who is
listening to Eric Dolphy and holding
the guitar he has never in his life played.
“You know, four of the strings on this
thing came off my old violin, the one
I had in grade school!”
No, they didn’t, but who cares. Be-
fore his mind started failing, my father
consumed a steady diet of Fox News
and conservative talk radio that kept
him at a constant boiling point. “Who’s
that Black guy?” he demanded in 2014.
The family was together at the Sea
Section, and we were talking about
Michael Brown, who’d been shot and
killed three months earlier, in Fergu-
son, Missouri.
“What Black guy?” I asked.
“Oh, you know the one.”
“Bill Cosby?” Amy offered.
“Gil Scott-Heron?” I asked.
“Stevie Wonder?” Gretchen called
“Well, it was so good to see everyone! What do you all from the living room.
have planned for the rest of the afternoon?” Lisa said, “Denzel Washington?”
 “You know who I mean,” Dad said.
“He’s got that son.”
“Jesse Jackson?”
“He’s the one. Always stirring up
trouble.”
Now, though, our father has taken
a few steps back, and, like me, seems
all the better for it. “How did you feel
when Biden was elected?” I ask. The
question is a violation of the pact Amy
and I made before arriving: Don’t stir
him up, don’t confuse him.
“Actually,” he says, “I was for that
other one.”
Hugh says, “Trump.”
My father nods. “That’s right. I be-
lieved what he was telling us. And, well,
it seems that I was wrong. That guy
was bad news.”
Never did I expect to hear this:
Trump was “bad” and “I was wrong”—
practically in the same breath. “Who “She loves me not.”
are you?” I want to ask the gentle gnome
in front of me. “And what have you
done with Lou Sedaris?”
• •
“So Biden . . . I guess he’s O.K.,” my
father says, looking, with his red ban- it leaves her smelling like a strange them up onstage when I read this part
danna, like the leftist he never was. cookie, maybe one with pencil shav- out loud. For, rather than thinking of
Amy, Hugh, and I are just recover- ings in it. his death, I will be thinking of the story
ing when an aide walks in and an- “Eat, why don’t you,” my father says. of his death, so much so that after his
nounces that it is five o’clock, time for I am conscious of everyone watch- funeral Amy will ask, “Did I see you
dinner. “I’ll wheel Mr. Sedaris down . . .” ing. Visitors! Lou has visitors! taking notes during the service?”
“Oh, we’ll take him,” Amy says. While Amy and Hugh talk to an There’ll be no surprise in her voice.
“Take what?” my father asks, con- aide, my father looks up and pats the Rather, it will be the way you might
fused by the sudden activity. space beside him at the table. “Stay for playfully scold a squirrel: “Did you just
I push him out the door and past a dinner. They can make you anything jump up from the deck and completely
TV that’s showing the news. Again the you want.” empty that bird feeder?”
incident at the Capitol. Some people I can’t remember my mother’s last The squirrel and me—it’s in our na-
hit by a car, someone shot. words to me. They were delivered over ture, though maybe not forever. For our
“This is like that old joke,” I say to the phone at the end of a casual con- natures, I have just recently learned
my father as we near the dining room. versation. “See you,” she might have from my father, can change. Or maybe
“A man bitches to his wife, ‘You’re al- said, or “I’ll call back in a few days.” they’re simply revealed, and the dear,
ways pushing me around and talking And in the thoughtless way you re- cheerful man I saw that afternoon at
behind my back.’ And she says, ‘What spond when you think you have for- Springmoor was there all along, smoth-
do you expect—you’re in a wheelchair!’” ever with the person on the other end ered in layers of rage and impatience
My father roars, “Ha!” of the line, I likely said, “O.K.” that burned away as he blazed into the
My father’s last words to me, spo- homestretch.
he dining room, which fits maybe ken in the too-hot, too-bright dining For the moment, though, leaving
T six tables, is full when we arrive.
Women greatly outnumber men, and
room at his assisted-living facility three
days before his ninety-eighth birthday,
the dining room in the company of
Hugh and Amy, I am thinking that
no one except for us and the staff is are “Don’t go yet. Don’t leave.” we’ll have to do this again, and soon.
ambulatory. The air should smell like My last words to him—and I think Fly to Raleigh. See Dad. Maybe have
food, but instead it smells like Amy, they are as telling as his, given all we’ve a picnic in his room. I’ll talk Gretchen
her perfume. She wears so much that been through—are “We need to get to into coming. Lisa will be there, too,
it manages to both precede her and trail the beach before the grocery stores and our brother, Paul. All of us to-
behind her, lingering long after she’s close.” They look cold on paper, and gether and laughing so loudly we’ll be
moved on. That said, I like it. A com- when he dies, a few weeks later, and I asked by some aide to close the door.
bination of five different scents, none realize they were the last words I said Because, really, isn’t that what we’re
of which is flowery or particularly sweet, to him, I will think, Maybe I can warm known for? 
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 29
 A REPORTER AT LARGE

THE BIG MONEY BEHIND THE BIG LIE

Trump’s attacks on democracy are being promoted by rich conservatives determined to win at all costs.
BY JANE MAYER

t was tempting to dismiss the show tially explosive consequences for Amer- one trying to save American democracy.”

I unfolding inside the Dream City

Church in Phoenix, Arizona, as an
unintended comedy. One night in June,
ican democracy.
Approximately 2.1 million Presiden-
tial votes were cast in Maricopa County,
Predicting that the audit would vindi-
cate him, he rambled angrily for nearly
two hours about having been cheated,
a few hundred people gathered for the which includes Phoenix and accounts calling the election “a scam—the great-
première of “The Deep Rig,” a film fi- for most of the state’s population. In re- est crime in history.”
nanced by the multimillionaire founder cent years, younger voters and people In June, I stood in the bleachers at
of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne, who of color have turned the county’s elec- the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in
is a vocal supporter of former President torate increasingly Democratic—a shift Phoenix, where the audit was taking
Donald Trump. Styled as a documen- that helped Biden win the traditionally place, and witnessed people examining
tary, the movie asserts that the 2020 Pres- conservative state, by 10,457 votes. Since carton after carton of paper ballots cast
idential election was stolen by support- the election, the county has become a by Arizonans last fall. Some inspectors
ers of Joe Biden, including by Antifa focus of ire for Trump and his support- used microscopes to investigate surreal
members who chatted about their sin- ers. By March, when Logan’s company allegations: that some ballots had been
ister plot on a conference call. The eve- was hired, the county had already un- filled out by machines or were Asian
ning’s program featured live appearances dergone four election audits, all of which counterfeits with telltale bamboo fibres.
by Byrne and a local QAnon conspir- upheld the outcome. Governor Doug Other inspectors looked for creases in
acist, BabyQ , who claimed to be receiv- Ducey, a Republican and a former mail-in ballots, to determine whether
ing messages from his future self. They Trump ally, had certified Biden’s vic- they had been legitimately sent in en-
were joined by the film’s director, who tory. But Trump’s core supporters were velopes or—as Trump has alleged—
had previously made an exposé contend- not assuaged. dumped in bulk.
ing that the real perpetrators of 9/11 were As soon as the Fox News Deci- As the audit has unfolded, various vi-
space aliens. sion Desk called the state for Biden, at olations of professional norms have been
But the event, for all its absurdities, 11:20 p.m. on November 3rd, Trump de- observed, including inspectors caught
had a dark surprise: “The Deep Rig” manded that the network “reverse this!” with pens whose ink matched what
repeatedly quotes Doug Logan, the When Fox held firm, he declared, “This was used on ballots. One auditor turned
C.E.O. of Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based is a major fraud.” By the time of the out to have been an unsuccessful Re-
company that consults with clients on “Deep Rig” première, the standoff had publican candidate during the election.
software security. In a voice-over, Logan dragged on for more than half a year. As I watched the proceedings, black-
warns, “If we don’t fix our election in- The Cyber Ninjas audit was supposed vested paid supervisors monitored the
tegrity now, we may no longer have a to conclude in May, but at the compa- process, but their role was cloaked in se-
democracy.” He also suggests, without ny’s request Fann has repeatedly ex- crecy. The audit is almost entirely pri-
evidence, that members of the “deep tended it. On July 28th, the auditors vately funded, and a county judge in Ar-
state,” such as C.I.A. agents, have inten- completed a hand recount, but they are izona recently ordered the State Senate
tionally spread disinformation about still demanding access to the computer to disclose who is paying for it. Last
the election. Although it wasn’t the first routers used by Maricopa County and week, Cyber Ninjas acknowledged hav-
time that Logan had promoted what also want to scrutinize images of mail- ing received $5.7 million in private do-
has come to be known as the Big Lie in-ballot envelopes. The U.S. Depart- nations, most of it from nonprofit groups
about the 2020 election—he had tweeted ment of Justice has warned that “private led by Trump allies who live outside Ar-
unsubstantiated claims that Trump had actors who have neither experience nor izona, including Byrne.
been victimized by voter fraud—the expertise in handling” ballots could face I was joined in the bleachers by Ken
film offered stark confirmation of Lo- prosecution for failing to follow federal Bennett, a former Arizona secretary of
gan’s entanglement in fringe conspira- audit rules. Trump, meanwhile, has fix- state and a Republican, whom the State
cies. Nevertheless, the president of the ated on Arizona’s audit, describing it as Senate had designated its liaison to the
Arizona State Senate, Karen Fann, has a step toward his “reinstatement.” On audit. He acknowledged that, if the au-
put Logan’s company in charge of a “fo- July 24th, he appeared in Phoenix for a ditors end up claiming to have found
rensic audit”—an ongoing review of the “Rally to Protect Our Elections,” and large discrepancies, “that will of course
state’s 2020 Presidential vote. It’s an un- said, “I am not the one trying to under- be very inflammatory.” Indeed, a recent
precedented undertaking, with poten- mine American democracy—I’m the incendiary claim by the auditors—that
30 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
Bill Gates, a Republican official in Arizona, is appalled by his party’s “national effort to delegitimize the election system.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN ROSS GOLDSTEIN THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 31
 ald Trump to be elected again in 2024.
That’s the bottom line. Maricopa County
is the prism through which to view ev-
erything. It’s not so much about 2020—
it’s about 2022 and 2024. This is a coör-
dinated national effort to distort not
just what happened in 2020 but to re-
gain the House of Representatives and
the Presidency.”
Richard Hasen, a law professor at the
University of California, Irvine, and one
of the country’s foremost election-law
experts, told me, “I’m scared shitless.”
Referring to the array of new laws passed
by Republican state legislatures since the
2020 election, he said, “It’s not just about
voter suppression. What I’m really wor-
ried about is election subversion. Elec-
“ You’re dead.” tion officials are being put in place who
will mess with the count.”
Arizona’s secretary of state, Katie
• • Hobbs, whose office has authority over
the administration of elections, told me
the vote had tallied about seventy thou- They’re trying to disenfranchise every- that the conspiracy-driven audit “looks
sand more mail-in ballots than had been one who is not older white guys.” so comical you have to laugh at it some-
postmarked—prompted one Republi- Arizona is hardly the only place where times.” But Hobbs, a Democrat, who is
can state senator to propose a recall of attacks on the electoral process are under running for governor, warned, “It’s dan-
Arizona’s electoral votes for Biden. (In way: a well-funded national movement gerous. It’s feeding the kind of misinfor-
fact, the auditors misunderstood what has been exploiting Trump’s claims of mation that led to the January 6th in-
they were counting.) Nevertheless, Ben- fraud in order to promote alterations to surrection.” QAnon followers have been
nett defended the audit process: “It’s the way that ballots are cast and counted celebrating the audit as the beginning of
important to prove to both sides that in forty-nine states, eighteen of which a “Great Awakening” that will eject Biden
the election was done accurately and have passed new voting laws in the past from the White House. She noted, “I’ve
fairly. If we lurch from one election to six months. Republican-dominated leg- gotten death threats. I’ve had armed pro-
another with almost half the electorate islatures have also stripped secretaries testors outside my house. Every day, there
thinking the election was a fraud, it’s of state and other independent election is a total barrage of social media to our
going to rip our country apart.” officials of their power. The chair of Ar- office. We’ve had to route our phones to
Many experts on democratic gover- izona’s Republican Party, Kelli Ward, voice mail so that no one has to listen
nance, however, believe that efforts to has referred to the state’s audit as a “dom- to it. It can be really traumatizing. I feel
upend long-settled election practices are ino,” and has expressed hope that it will beaten up.” She added, “But I’m not going
what truly threaten to rip the country inspire similar challenges elsewhere. to cave to their tactics—because I think
apart. Chad Campbell, a Democrat who Ralph Neas has been involved in they’re laying the groundwork to steal
was the minority leader in the Arizona voting-rights battles since the nine- the 2024 elections.”
House of Representatives until 2014, teen-eighties, when, as a Republican, he
when he left to become a consultant in served as the executive director of the lthough the Arizona audit may ap-
Phoenix, has been shocked by the state’s
anti-democratic turn. For several years,
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
He has overseen a study of the Arizona
A pear to be the product of local ex-
tremists, it has been fed by sophisticated,
he sat next to Karen Fann when she was audit for the nonpartisan Century Foun- well-funded national organizations whose
a member of the House, and in his view dation, and he told me that, though the boards of directors include some of the
she’s gone from being a traditional Re- audit is a “farce,” it may nonetheless have country’s wealthiest and highest-profile
publican lawmaker to being a member “extraordinary consequences.” He said, conservatives. Dark-money organiza-
of “Trump’s cult of personality.” He said, “The Maricopa County audit exposes tions, sustained by undisclosed donors,
“I don’t know if she believes it or not, exactly what the Big Lie is all about. If have relentlessly promoted the myth that
or which would be worse.” Arizona, he they come up with an analysis that dis- American elections are rife with fraud,
added, is in the midst of a “nonviolent credits the 2020 election results in Ar- and, according to leaked records of their
overthrow in some ways—it’s subtle, izona, it will be replicated in other states, internal deliberations, they have drafted,
and not in people’s face because it’s not furthering more chaos. That will enable supported, and in some cases taken credit
happening with weapons. But it’s still new legislation. Millions of Americans for state laws that make it harder to vote.
a complete overthrow of democracy. could be disenfranchised, helping Don- Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a
32 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
Democrat from Rhode Island who has tive groups involved in election issues. limited resources who have moved on to
tracked the flow of dark money in Amer- It might seem improbable that a manipulating that most precious of Amer-
ican politics, told me that a “flotilla of low-profile family foundation in Wis- ican gifts—the vote.”
front groups” once focussed on advanc- consin has assumed a central role in cur-
ing such conservative causes as captur- rent struggles over American democracy. n animating force behind the Brad-
ing the courts and opposing abortion
have now “more or less shifted to work
But the modern conservative movement
has depended on leveraging the fortunes
A ley Foundation’s war on “election
fraud” is Cleta Mitchell, a fiercely partisan
on the voter-suppression thing.” These of wealthy reactionaries. In 1903, Lynde Republican election lawyer, who joined
groups have cast their campaigns as high- Bradley, a high-school dropout in Mil- the organization’s board of directors in
minded attempts to maintain “election waukee, founded what would become 2012. Until recently, she was virtually un-
integrity,” but Whitehouse believes that the Allen-Bradley company. He was soon known to most Americans. But, on Jan-
they are in fact tampering with the guard- joined by his brother Harry, and they got uary 3rd, the Washington Post exposed
rails of democracy. rich by selling electronic instruments the contents of a private phone call, re-
One of the movement’s leaders is the such as rheostats. Harry, a John Birch corded the previous day, during which
Heritage Foundation, the prominent Society founding member, started a small Trump threatened election officials in
conservative think tank in Washington, family foundation that initially devoted Georgia with a “criminal offense” un-
D.C. It has been working with the Amer- much of its giving to needy employees less they could “find” 11,780 more votes
ican Legislative Exchange Council and to civic causes in Milwaukee. In 1985, for him—just enough to alter the re-
(alec)—a corporate-funded nonprofit after the brothers’ death, their heirs sold sults. Also on the call was Mitchell, who
that generates model laws for state leg- the company to the defense contractor challenged the officials to provide rec-
islators—on ways to impose new voting Rockwell International, for $1.65 billion, ords proving that dead people hadn’t cast
restrictions. Among those deep in the generating an enormous windfall for the votes. The call was widely criticized as a
fight is Leonard Leo, a chairman of the foundation. The Bradley Foundation re- rogue effort to overturn the election, and
Federalist Society, the legal organization mains small in comparison with such Foley & Lardner, the Milwaukee-based
known for its decades-long campaign liberal behemoths as the Ford Founda- law firm where Mitchell was a partner,
to fill the courts with conservative judges. tion, but it has become singularly pre- announced that it was “concerned” about
In February, 2020, the Judicial Educa- occupied with wielding national politi- her role, and then parted ways with her.
tion Project, a group tied to Leo, qui- cal influence. It has funded conservative Trump’s call prompted the district attor-
etly rebranded itself as the Honest Elec- projects ranging from school-choice ini- ney in Fulton County, Georgia, to begin
tions Project, which subsequently filed tiatives to the controversial scholarship a criminal investigation.
briefs at the Supreme Court, and in nu- of Charles Murray, the co-author of the In a series of e-mails and phone calls
merous states, opposing mail-in ballots 1994 book “The Bell Curve,” which ar- with me, Mitchell adamantly defended
and other reforms that have made it eas- gues that Blacks are less likely than whites her work with the Trump campaign,
ier for people to vote. to join the “cognitive elite.” And, at least and said that in Georgia, where she has
Another newcomer to the cause is as far back as 2012, it has funded groups centered her efforts, “I don’t think we
the Election Integrity Project Califor- challenging voting rights in the name of can say with certainty who won.” She
nia. And a group called FreedomWorks, fighting fraud. told me that there were countless elec-
which once concentrated on opposing Since the 2020 election, this move- tion “irregularities,” such as voters using
government regulation, is now demand- ment has evolved into a broader and more post-office boxes as their residences, in
ing expanded government regulation of aggressive assault on democracy. Accord- violation of state law. “I believe there
voters, with a project called the National ing to some surveys, a third of Ameri- were more illegal votes cast than the
Election Protection Initiative. cans now believe that Biden was illegit- margin of victory,” she said. “The only
These disparate nonprofits have one imately elected, and nearly half of Trump remedy is a new election.” Georgia’s sec-
thing in common: they have all received supporters agree that Republican legis- retary of state rejected her claims, but
funding from the Lynde and Harry Brad- lators should overturn the results in some Mitchell insists that the decision lacked
ley Foundation. Based in Milwaukee, states that Biden won. Jonathan Rauch, a rigorous evaluation of the evidence.
the private, tax-exempt organization has of the Brookings Institution, recently told With her support, diehard conspiracy
become an extraordinary force in per- The Economist, “We need to regard what’s theorists are still litigating the matter
suading mainstream Republicans to happening now as epistemic warfare by in Fulton County, which includes most
support radical challenges to election some Americans on other Americans.” of Atlanta. Because they keep demand-
rules—a tactic once relegated to the far Pillars of the conservative establishment, ing that election officials prove a nega-
right. With an endowment of some eight faced with a changing U.S. voter popu- tive—that corruption didn’t happen—
hundred and fifty million dollars, the lation that threatens their agenda, are ex- their requests to keep interrogating the
foundation funds a network of groups ploiting Trump’s contempt for norms to results can be repeated almost indefi-
that have been stoking fear about elec- devise ways to hold on to power. Sena- nitely. Despite three independent counts
tion fraud, in some cases for years. Pub- tor Whitehouse said of the campaign, of Georgia’s vote, including a hand re-
lic records show that, since 2012, the “It’s a massive covert operation run by a count, all of which confirmed Biden’s
foundation has spent some eighteen mil- small group of billionaire élites. These victory, Mitchell argues that “Trump
lion dollars supporting eleven conserva- are powerful interests with practically un- never got his day in court,” adding,
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 33
“There are a lot of miscarriages of jus­ she declared that her agenda for elec­ ica by eight points. He won non­urban
tice I’ve seen and experienced in my life, tions is “to make it harder to cheat.” areas by over twenty points. He is the
and this was one of them.” Mitchell told me that the Democrats democratically elected President of white
Mitchell, who is seventy, has warm used the pandemic as a “great pretext” to America. It’s almost like he represents
friendships with people in both parties, “be able to cheat”: they caused “admin­ a nation within a nation.”
and she often appears grandmotherly, istrative chaos” by changing rules about
in pastel knit suits and reading glasses. early and absentee voting, and they didn’t larmism about election fraud in
But, like Angela Lansbury in “The
Manchurian Candidate,” to whom she
adequately police fraud. She denied that
race had motivated her actions in Geor­
A America extends at least as far back
as Reconstruction, when white South­
bears a striking resemblance, she should gia. Yet, in an e­mail to me, she said that erners disenfranchised newly empow­
not be underestimated. She Democrats are “using black ered Black voters and politicians by ac­
began her political career voters as a prop to accomplish cusing them of corruption. After the
in Oklahoma, as an out­ their political objectives.” passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
spoken Democrat and a Few experts have found some white conservatives were frank
champion  of the Equal Mitchell’s evidence convinc­ about their hostility to democracy. Forty
Rights Amendment. She ing. On November 12, 2020, years ago, Paul Weyrich, who helped es­
was elected to the state leg­ the Trump Administration’s tablish the Heritage Foundation and
islature in her twenties, but own election authorities de­ other conservative groups, admitted, “I
then lost a bid for lieutenant clared the Presidential vote don’t want everybody to vote. . . . As a
governor, in 1986. She told to be “the most secure in matter of fact, our leverage in the elec­
me that she subsequently American history.” It is true tions quite candidly goes up as the vot­
underwent a political con­ that in many American elec­ ing populace goes down.” 
version: when her stepson squandered tions there are small numbers of ques­ Like many conservatives of her gen­
the college tuition that she was paying, tionable ballots. An Associated Press in­ eration, Cleta Mitchell was galvanized
she turned against the idea of welfare in vestigation found that, in 2020, a hundred by the disputed 2000 election, in which
favor of personal responsibility, and began and eighty­two of the 3.4 million ballots George W. Bush and Al Gore battled for
reading conservative critiques of liberal­ cast in Arizona were problematic. Four weeks over the outcome in Florida. She
ism. When I first interviewed her for this of the ballots have led to criminal charges. repeatedly spoke out on behalf of Bush,
magazine, in 1996, she told me that “over­ But the consensus among nonpartisan who won the state by only five hundred
reaching government regulation is one experts is that the amount of fraud, par­ and thirty­seven votes. A dispute over
of the great scandals of our times.” ticularly in major races, is negligible. As recounts ended up at the Supreme Court.
On behalf of Republican candidates Phil Keisling, a former secretary of state Few people noticed at the time, but
and groups, she began to fight limits on in Oregon, who pioneered universal vot­ in that case, Bush v. Gore, Chief Justice
campaign spending. She also represented ing by mail, has said, “Voters don’t cast William Rehnquist, along with Antonin
numerous right­wing nonprofits, includ­ fraudulent ballots for the same reason Scalia and Clarence Thomas, hinted at
ing the National Rifle Association, whose counterfeiters don’t manufacture pen­ a radical reading of the Constitution
board she joined in the early two­thou­ nies—it doesn’t pay.” that, two decades later, undergirds many
sands. A former N.R.A. official recently What explains, then, the hardening of the court challenges on behalf of
told the Guardian that Mitchell was the conviction among Republicans that the Trump. In a concurring opinion, the Jus­
“fringe of the fringe,” and a Republican 2020 race was stolen? Michael Podhorzer, tices argued that state legislatures have
voting­rights lawyer said that “she tells a senior adviser to the president of the the plenary power to run elections and
clients what they want to hear, regard­ A.F.L.­C.I.O., which invested deeply can even pass laws giving themselves the
less of the law or reality.” in expanding Democratic turnout in right to appoint electors. Today, the so­
In our conversations, Mitchell mocked 2020, suggests that the two parties now called Independent Legislature Doc­
what she called the mainstream media’s have irreconcilable beliefs about whose trine has informed Trump and the right’s
“narrative” of a “vast right­wing conspir­ votes are legitimate. “What blue­state attempts to use Republican­dominated
acy to suppress the vote of Black peo­ people don’t understand about why the state legislatures to overrule the popu­
ple,” and insisted that the fraud prob­ Big Lie works,” he said, is that it doesn’t lar will. Nathaniel Persily, an election­law
lem was significant. “I actually think actually require proof of fraud. “What expert at Stanford, told me, “It’s giving
your readers need to hear from people animates it is the belief that Biden won intellectual respectability to an other­
like me—believe it or not, there are tens because votes were cast by some people wise insane, anti­democratic argument.”
of millions of us,” she wrote. “We are in this country who others think are not Barack Obama’s election in 2008
not crazy. At least not to us. We are in­ ‘real’ Americans.” This anti­democratic made plain that the voting­rights wars
telligent and educated people who are belief has been bolstered by a constella­ were fuelled, in no small part, by racial
very concerned about the future of Amer­ tion of established institutions on the animus. Bigoted conspiracists, includ­
ica. And we are among the vast major­ right: “white evangelical churches, leg­ ing Trump, spent years trying to under­
ity of Americans who support election­ islators, media companies, nonprofits, mine the result by falsely claiming that
integrity measures.” Echoing what has and even now paramilitary groups.” Pod­ Obama wasn’t born in America. Birth­
become the right’s standard talking point, horzer noted, “Trump won white Amer­ erism, which attempted to undercut a
34 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
landmark election in which the turnout the board members were George F. Will, with the left. “Have you looked at the
rate among Black voters nearly matched the syndicated columnist, and Robert Democracy Alliance?” she asked me.
that of whites, was a progenitor of the George, a Princeton political philoso- The Alliance, whose membership is se-
Big Lie. As Penda Hair, a founder of the pher known for his defense of traditional cret, distributes hundreds of millions of
Advancement Project, a progressive vot- Catholic values. By 2017, Will, who has dollars in dark money to many left-lean-
ing-rights advocacy group, told me, con- been a critic of Trump, had stepped down ing causes. But, when it comes to influ-
servatives were looking at Obama’s vic- from the Bradley board. But George has encing elections, the contrast with the
tory “and saying, ‘We’ve got to clamp continued to serve as a director, even as Bradley Foundation is clear. Whereas
things down’—they’d always tried to sup- the foundation has heavily funded groups the Alliance’s efforts have centered on
press the Black vote, but it was then that promulgating the falsehood that elec- increasing voter participation, the Brad-
they came up with new schemes.” tion fraud is widespread in America, par- ley Foundation has focussed on disqual-
Mitchell was at the forefront of the ticularly in minority communities, and ifying ostensibly illegitimate voters.
right’s offensive. In 2010, she accused the sowing doubt about the legitimacy of Like most private nonprofits, the
Majority Leader of the Senate, the Dem- Biden’s win. The foundation, meanwhile, Bradley Foundation doesn’t disclose
ocrat Harry Reid, who was running for has given nearly three million dollars to much about its inner workings. But in
reëlection in Nevada, of planning “to steal programs that George established at 2016 hackers posted online some of the
this election if he can’t win it outright.” Princeton. He has written in praise of group’s confidential documents, which
Her evidence was that Democrats in the Pence’s refusal to decertify Biden’s elec- showed that, once Mitchell became a di-
state had provided “clearly illegal” free tion, and has lamented that so many rector, she began urging the foundation
food at voter-turnout events—a negligi- Americans believe, “wrongly,” that “the to support nonprofit organizations po-
ble infraction, given that Reid won by election was ‘stolen.’” But he declined to licing election fraud. Mitchell has pro-
more than forty thousand votes. discuss with me why, then, he serves on fessional ties to several of the groups that
A year later, Mitchell successfully de- the Bradley Foundation’s board. received money, although she says that
fended Trump, who had been exploring The board includes Art Pope, the she has abstained from voting on grants
a Presidential bid, against charges that libertarian discount-store magnate, who to any of those organizations.
he had taken illegal campaign contribu- serves on the board of governors at the One recipient of Bradley money is
tions. She had been recommended to University of North Carolina. Pope, who True the Vote, a Texas-based group that,
Trump by Chris Ruddy, the founder of has also acknowledged the legitimacy among other things, trains people to
the conservative media company News- of Biden’s victory, declined to discuss his monitor polling sites. Mitchell has served
max, which was also a Mitchell client. role at the foundation. Another board as its legal counsel, and hacked docu-
Later, Ruddy introduced the future Pres- member is Paul Clement, a partner at ments show that she advocated to the
ident to Mitchell over dinner at Mar- the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, who is I.R.S. that the group deserved tax-exempt
a-Lago. (She told me that she found one of the country’s most distinguished status as a charity. To earn such a desig-
Trump “gracious,” and noted that, since Supreme Court litigators. He could not nation, a group must file federal tax
the 2020 election, she has talked with be reached for comment. forms promising not to engage in elec-
him “pretty often.”) Mitchell argues that the right spends toral politics. In a letter of support, she
In 2013, the Supreme Court struck “a pittance” on election issues compared asserted that “fraudulent voting occurs
down a key section of the Voting Rights
Act, eliminating the Justice Department’s
power to screen proposed changes to
election procedures in states with dis-
criminatory histories, one of which was
Arizona. Terry Goddard, a former Ari-
zona attorney general and a Democrat,
told me that “the state has a history of
voter suppression, especially against Na-
tive Americans.” Before Rehnquist be-
came a Supreme Court Justice, in 1971,
he lived in Arizona, where he was ac-
cused of administering literacy tests to
voters of color. In the mid-two-thou-
sands, Goddard recalled, Republican
leaders erected many barriers aimed at
deterring Latino voters, some of which
the courts struck down. But the 2013 Su-
preme Court ruling initiated a new era
of election manipulation.
Around this time, Mitchell became a “That’s a good boy—keep distracting Mommy so she can
director at the Bradley Foundation. Among remember how to have conversations with humans.”
in the United States,” citing a 2010 case
in which the F.B.I. arrested nine Florid-
ians for election violations. But, as with HANDBAG
many voter-fraud allegations, the details
of the case were less than advertised. The I felt some desire and I lost my cents
accusation involved a school-board elec- it was expensive to feel so much
tion in a rural Black community in which
a campaign had collected dozens of ab- I lost my sense and my money I did
sentee ballots, in violation of the law. The not consent though it was consensual
charges were eventually dismissed. The
judge found “no intent to cast a false or It was a con and it cost me my self
fraudulent ballot.” True the Vote, which I was selfless I was trailing a scent
was granted tax-exempt status, has since
been the subject of numerous complaints I was moaning but not for the money
from voters, who have accused it of in- and that’s a mistake I lost my sole take
timidation and racism.
Last year, a Reuters report character- and now there’s nowhere to stake a claim
ized Mitchell as one of four lawyers lead- I’d put a stake in his heart but I can’t
ing the conservative war on “election
fraud,” and described True the Vote as O Bacchus will you dress me in grape leaves
one of the movement’s hubs. The story I’m back to the bar to begin again
linked the group and three other con-
servative nonprofits to at least sixty-one and needing a quaff of some rich stuff
election lawsuits since 2012. Reuters noted and some hair dye and a bewitching scent
that, during the same period, the four
groups, along with two others devoted and all that is sensual and cunning
to election-integrity issues, have received without a cent or sense in the world
more than three and a half million dol-
lars from the Bradley Foundation. and nothing in my handbag but my soul

t’s a surprisingly short leap from mak- —Sarah Arvio

I ing accusations of voter fraud to call-
ing for the nullification of a supposedly
tainted election.The Public Interest Legal Congress from certifying Biden’s win. Christian Adams, and another board
Foundation, a group funded by the Brad- “This is bigger than President Trump!” member, Hans von Spakovsky—served
ley Foundation, is leading the way. Based Eastman declared. “It is the very essence in George W. Bush’s Justice Depart-
in Indiana, it has become a prolific source of our republican form of government, ment, where they began efforts to use
of litigation; in the past year alone, it has and it has to be done!” He thundered the Voting Rights Act, which was de-
brought nine election-law cases in eight that election officials had robbed Trump signed to protect Black voters, to pros-
states. It has amassed some of the most by illegally casting ballots in the name ecute purported fraud by Black voters
visible lawyers obsessed with election of non-voters whose records they had and election officials. Both men have ar-
fraud, including Mitchell, who is its chair extracted, after the polls had closed, from gued strenuously that American elec-
and sits on its board. a “secret folder” in electronic voting ma- tions are rife with serious fraud, and in
One of the group’s directors is John chines. He told the crowd that the scan- 2017 they got a rare opportunity to make
Eastman, a former law professor at Chap- dal was visible in “the data.” There is no their case, when Trump appointed them
man University, in California. On Jan- evidence of such malfeasance, however. to a Presidential commission on elec-
uary 4, 2021, he visited the White House, Eastman, who recently retired, under tion integrity. Within months, after the
where he spoke with Trump about ways pressure, from Chapman University, and commission was unable to find signifi-
to void the election. In a nod to the In- was stripped of his public duties at an- cant evidence of election fraud, it acri-
dependent Legislature Doctrine, East- other post that he held, at the Univer- moniously disbanded. Adams and von
man and Trump tried to persuade Vice- sity of Colorado Boulder, told me he Spakovsky, who are members of what
President Mike Pence to halt the certi- still believes that the election was stolen, Roll Call has termed the Voter Fraud
fication of the Electoral College vote, and thinks that the audits in Arizona Brain Trust, have nevertheless contin-
instead throwing the election to the state and other states will help prove it. The ued their crusade, sustained partly by
legislatures. Pence was not persuaded. Bradley Foundation declined to com- Bradley funds. Von Spakovsky now heads
Two days later, Eastman spoke at ment on him, or on Mitchell, when asked the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law
Trump’s “Save America” rally in Wash- about its role in funding their activities. Reform Initiative, which has received
ington, hours before the crowds ran- Two other Public Interest Legal grants from the Bradley Foundation.
sacked the Capitol in an effort to stop Foundation lawyers—its president, J. At Heritage, von Spakovsky has over-
36 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
seen a national tracking system moni- Presidential electors “in such Manner Bolick has since announced her can-
toring election-fraud cases. But its data as the Legislature thereof may direct.” didacy for secretary of state in Arizona.
on Arizona, the putative center of the Since the late nineteenth century, states Her husband, Clint Bolick, is an Arizona
storm, is not exactly alarming: of the mil- have delegated that authority to the Supreme Court justice and a leader in
lions of votes cast in the state from 2016 popular vote. But, arguably, the Consti- right-wing legal circles. Clarence Thomas,
to 2020, only nine individuals were con- tution permits state legislatures to take one of the three U.S. Supreme Court Jus-
victed of fraud. Each instance involved this authority back. Legislators could tices who signed on to the concurring
someone casting a duplicate ballot in argue that an election had been com- opinion in Bush v. Gore laying out the
another state. There were no recorded promised by irregularities or fraud, forc- Independent Legislature Doctrine, is the
cases of identity fraud, ballot stuffing, ing them to intervene. godfather of one of Clint Bolick’s sons.
voting by non-citizens, or other nefari- In August, 2019, e-mails show, Mitch- If Shawnna Bolick wins her race, she will
ous schemes. The numbers confirm that ell co-chaired a high-level working group oversee future elections in the state. And,
there is some voter fraud, or at least con- with Shawnna Bolick, a Republican state if the Supreme Court faces another case
fusion, but not remotely enough to af- representative from Phoenix. Among the in which arguments about the Indepen-
fect election outcomes. topics slated for discussion was the Elec- dent Legislature Doctrine come into play,
Even Benjamin Ginsberg, a Repub- toral College. The working group was there may now be enough conservative
lican lawyer who for years led the Par- convened by alec, the corporate-backed Justices to agree with Thomas that there
ty’s election-law fights, recently con- nonprofit that transmits conservative are circumstances under which legisla-
ceded to the Times that “a party that’s policy ideas and legislation to state law- tures, not voters, could have the final word
increasingly old and white whose base makers. The Bradley Foundation has in American elections.
is a diminishing share of the population long supported alec, and Mitchell has
is conjuring up charges of fraud to erect worked closely with it, serving as its out- onths before the 2020 vote, Lisa
barriers to voting for people it fears won’t
support its candidates.”
side counsel until recently.
Mitchell and Bolick declined to an-
M Nelson, the C.E.O. of alec, also
anticipated contesting the election re-
The Voter Fraud Brain Trust lent sup- swer questions about the working group’s sults. That February, she told a private
port to Trump’s lies from the time he focus, but it appears that Bolick’s partic- gathering of the Council for National
took office. In 2016, when he lost the pop- ipation was productive. After the elec- Policy about a high-level review that
ular vote by nearly three million ballots, tion, she signed a resolution demanding her group had undertaken of ways to
he insisted that he had actually won it, that Congress block the certification of challenge “the validity” of the Presiden-
spuriously blaming rampant fraud in Cal- Biden’s victory and award Arizona’s elec- tial returns. A video of the proceedings
ifornia. Soon afterward, von Spakovsky tors to Trump. Then, early this year, Bol- was obtained by the investigative group
gave Trump’s false claim credence by pub- ick introduced a bill proposing a radical Documented, and first reported by the
lishing an essay at Heritage arguing that reading of Article II of the Constitution, Washington Spectator. In her speech,
there was no way to disprove the allega- along the lines of the Independent Leg- Nelson noted that she was working with
tion, because “we have an election sys- islature Doctrine. It would enable a ma- Mitchell and von Spakovsky.
tem that’s based on the honor system.” jority of the Arizona legislature to over- Although the law bars charitable or-
More than a year before the 2020 ride the popular vote if it found fault ganizations such as the Council for Na-
election, Cleta Mitchell and her allies with the outcome, and dictate the state’s tional Policy from engaging in electoral
sensed political peril for Trump and Electoral College votes itself—anytime politics, Nelson unabashedly acknowl-
began reviewing strategies to help keep up until Inauguration Day. Bolick has edged, “Obviously, we all want President
him in office. According to a leaked video described her bill as just “a good, dem- Trump to win, and win the national
of an address that she gave in May, 2019, ocratic check and balance,” but her mea- vote.” She went on, “But it’s very clear
to the Council for National Policy, a se- sure was considered so extreme that it that, really, what it comes down to is the
cretive conservative society, she warned died in committee, despite Republican states, and the state legislators.” One
that Democrats were successfully regis- majorities in both houses of the legisla- plan, she said, was to urge conservative
tering what she sarcastically referred to ture. Yet, simply by putting forth the idea legislators to voice doubt to their respec-
as “the disenfranchised.” She continued, as legislation, she helped lend legitimacy tive secretaries of state, questioning the
“They know that if they target certain to the audacious scheme that the Trump election’s outcome and asking, “What
communities and they can get them reg- campaign desperately pursued in the final did happen that night?”
istered and get them to the polls, then days before Biden’s Inauguration: to rely By August, 2020, when the Council
those groups . . . will vote ninety per cent, on Republican-led state legislatures to for National Policy held another meet-
ninety-five per cent for Democrats.” overturn Electoral College votes. Ian ing, the pandemic had hurt Trump’s
One possible countermove was for Bassin, the executive director of Protect prospects, and talk within the member-
conservative state legislators to reëngi- Democracy, who served as an associate ship about potential Democratic elec-
neer the way the Electoral College has White House counsel under Obama, tion fraud had reached a frenzy. At the
worked for more than a hundred years, told me, “Institutions like the Heritage meeting, Adams, the Public Interest
in essence by invoking the Independent Foundation and alec are providing the Legal Foundation’s president, echoed
Legislature Doctrine. The Constitution grease to turn these attacks on democ- Trump’s raging about mail-in ballots,
gives states the authority to choose their racy into law.” describing them as “the No. 1 left-wing
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 37
agenda.” He urged conservatives not to ran a troll farm, arguing that the teen­ Hoffman’s bills have made the Her­
be deterred by criticism: “Be not afraid age employees were genuine, but a study itage Foundation’s wish list a reality. Vot­
of the accusations that you’re a voter by the Internet Observatory at Stanford’s ing by mail has long been popular in Ar­
suppressor, you’re a racist, and so forth.” Cyber Policy Center documented the izona, with as many as ninety per cent
A younger member of the orga­ scheme, along with other dubious prac­ of voters doing so in 2020, but one of
nization, Charlie Kirk—a founder of tices by Rally Forge. In 2016, the com­ Hoffman’s bills made it a felony to send
Turning Point USA, which promotes pany fabricated a politician—complete a mail­in ballot to residents who hadn’t
right­wing ideas on school campuses— with a doctored photograph—to run requested one, unless they were on an
injected a note of optimism. He sug­ as an Independent write­in candidate official list of early voters. Another bill,
gested that the pandemic, by closing against Andy Biggs, a far­right Repub­ which Hoffman supported, will, accord­
campuses, would likely suppress voting lican seeking an open congressional seat ing to one estimate, push as many as two
among college students, a left­leaning in Arizona. The ploy, evidently intended hundred thousand people off the state’s
bloc. “Please keep the campuses closed,” to siphon votes from Biggs’s Democratic list of early voters. Opponents say that
he said, to cheers. “Like, it’s a great thing!” opponent, didn’t go far, but it was hardly this legislation will disproportionately
Five months later, Turning Point Ac­ the company’s only scam. The Guardian purge Latinos, who constitute twenty­
tion, a “social welfare organization” run has shown how Rally Forge also created four per cent of the state’s eligible vot­
by Kirk’s group, was one of nearly a dozen a phony left­wing front group, America ers. Another bill by Hoffman banned
groups behind Trump’s “March to Save Progress Now, which promoted Green state election officials from accepting
America,” on January 6th. Shortly be­ Party candidates online in 2018, appar­ outside donations to help pay for any as­
fore the rally, Kirk tweeted that the ently to hurt Democrats in several races. pect of election administration, includ­
groups he leads would send “80+ buses In October, 2020, Rally Forge was ing voter registration. (One of the bill’s
full of patriots to DC to fight for this banned from Facebook, and its presi­ targets was Mark Zuckerberg, whose
president.” His tweet was deleted after dent, Hoffman, was permanently sus­ foundation helped county election offi­
the crowds assaulted the Capitol. pended by Twitter. Undeterred, he ran cials in Arizona handle the pandemic.)
as a pro­Trump Republican for the Ar­ In February, at a hearing of the Com­
urning Point, which has received izona House—and won. Remarkably, the mittee on Government and Elections, a
T small grants from the Bradley Foun­
dation, is headquartered in Arizona, and
chamber’s Republican leadership then
appointed him the vice­chair of the Com­
witness from the Washington­based Cap­
ital Research Center—also funded by
it has played a significant role in the rad­ mittee on Government and Elections. the Bradley Foundation—testified in
icalization of the state, in part by ampli­ Since getting elected, Hoffman has chal­ support of Hoffman’s legislation. Athena
fying fear and anger about voter fraud. lenged the legitimacy of Biden’s victory, Salman, the ranking Democrat, told me
Turning Point’s chief operating officer, called for election audits, and, in coör­ she was incensed that Hoffman—“a guy
Tyler Bowyer, is a member of the Re­ dination with the Heritage Foundation, who paid teen­agers to lie”—was put on
publican National Committee and a for­ used his position to propose numerous the election committee. “It’s the fox
mer chair of the Maricopa County Re­ bills making it more difficult to vote. guarding the henhouse!” she said.
publican Party. Bowyer’s friend Jake This past spring, at a private gather­ Anderson, of Heritage, declined to
Hoffman runs an Arizona­based digital­ ing outside Tucson, Jessica Anderson, respond to questions about the group’s
marketing company, Rally Forge, that the executive director of Heritage Ac­ collaborations with Hoffman, instead
has been Turning Point’s highest­com­ tion—the politically active arm of the sending a prepared statement: “After a
pensated contractor. In the summer of Heritage Foundation—singled out Hoff­ year when voters’ trust in our elections
2020, Rally Forge helped Turning Point man for praise. As a leaked video of her plummeted, restoring that trust should
use social media to spread incendiary remarks revealed, she told supporters be the top priority of legislators and gov­
misinformation about the coming elec­ that, with the help of Hoffman and other ernors nationwide. That’s why Heritage
tions. In September, the Washington Post state legislators, the nonprofit group was Action is deploying our established grass­
reported that Rally Forge, on behalf of rewriting America’s election laws. “In roots network for state advocacy for the
Turning Point Action, had paid teen­ some cases, we actually draft them for first time ever. There is nothing more
agers to deceptively post thousands of them, or we have a sentinel on our be­ important than ensuring every Ameri­
copycat propaganda messages, much as half give them the model legislation so can is confident their vote counts—and
Russia had done during the 2016 cam­ it has that grassroots, from­the­bot­ we will do whatever it takes to get there.”
paign. Adult leaders had instructed the tom­up type of vibe,” Anderson ex­ Hoffman, who formerly served as a
teens to tweak the wording of their posts, plained. “We’ve got three bills done in town­council member in Queen Creek,
to evade detection by technology com­ Arizona!” She continued, “We’re mov­ a deeply conservative part of Maricopa
panies. Some messages were posted under ing four more through the state of Ar­ County, did not respond to requests for
the teens’ accounts, but others were sent izona right now . . . simple bills, all comment. Kristin Clark, a Democrat who
under assumed personae. Many posts straight from the Heritage recommen­ mounted a write­in campaign against
claimed that mail­in ballots would “lead dations.” One of the bills, she noted, was him after the news of his troll farm broke,
to fraud,” and that Democrats planned “written and carried by Jake Hoffman,” called Hoffman an “unintelligent man
to steal the Presidency. whom she described as “a longtime friend who wants to be a big guy.” She told me,
Turning Point Action denied that it of the Heritage Foundation.” “The Republicans here have changed.
38 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
They were conservative, but now they’ve
sold out. It’s money that’s changed it. All
these giant, corporate groups that are
faceless—it’s outside money.” In her view,
“Jake Hoffman is but a cog.”

he spark that ignited the Arizona

T audit was an amateur video, taken
on Election Night, of an unidentified fe-
male voter outside a polling place in what
Kristin Clark recognized as Hoffman’s
district. The voter claimed that election
workers had tried to sabotage her ballot
by deliberately giving her a Sharpie that
the electronic scanners couldn’t read. Her
claim was false: the scanners could read
Sharpie ink, and the ballots had been de-
signed so that the flip side wouldn’t be
affected if the ink bled through. Never-
theless, the video went viral. Among the
first to spread the Sharpiegate conspir-
acy was another one of Charlie Kirk’s
youth groups, Students for Trump. The
next day, as Trump furiously insisted he
had won an election that he ended up
losing by roughly seven million votes,
protesters staged angry rallies in Mar-
icopa County, where ballots were still
being counted. Adding an aura of legal
• •
credibility to the conspiracy theory,
Adams, the Public Interest Legal Foun- Meadows, to help the Trump campaign ing that adjusted voting procedures
dation president, immediately filed suit in Georgia, told Fox News, “We’re al- during the pandemic. The Honest Elec-
against Maricopa County, alleging that ready double-checking and finding dead tions Project filed a brief with the U.S.
a Sharpie-using voter he represented had people having voted.” As Georgia was Supreme Court arguing that the Penn-
been disenfranchised. The case was soon ratifying its results with a recount, she sylvania court had usurped the legisla-
dismissed, but not before Adams tweeted, tweeted that the tally was “FAKE!!!” ture’s authority to oversee elections. The
“just filed to have our client’s right to Meanwhile, on the conservative Web effort didn’t succeed, but Richard Hasen,
#vote upheld. Her #Sharpie ballot was site Townhall, Hoffman demanded “a full the election-law professor, regards such
cancelled without cure.” Arizona’s audit of the vote count in swing states,” arguments as “powder kegs” that threaten
attorney general, Mark Brnovich, a Re- adding that the election was “far from American democracy. Leo didn’t re-
publican, investigated, and his office took over.” He claimed that there had been spond to requests for comment, but
only a day to conclude that the Sharpie “countless violations of state election law, Hasen believes that Leo is trying to pre-
story was nonsense. But, by then, many statistical anomalies and election irregu- serve “minority rule” in elections in order
Trump supporters no longer trusted Ar- larities in more than a half dozen states,” to advance his agenda. Hasen told me,
izona’s election results. Clark, the former and argued that state legislatures should “Making it harder to vote helps them
Democratic challenger to Hoffman, told therefore have the final say. By Decem- get more Republican victories, which
me that she watched in horror as “they ber, he had joined his friend Bowyer and helps them get more conservative judges
took B.S. and made it real!” other members of the state’s Republican and courts.”
A day after the election, the office Party in filing suit against Arizona’s gov- In the case of Arizona, it took only
of Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of ernor, calling for the state to set aside Ar- a week for a federal district court to dis-
state, reported that, based on a routine, izona’s eleven electoral votes and allow miss Hoffman and Bowyer’s suit, citing
bipartisan hand recount of a sample of the legislature to intervene. an absence of “relevant or reliable evi-
ballots, “no discrepancies were found” At the same time, another version of dence.”The court admonished the plain-
in Maricopa County. Within days, the the Independent Legislature Doctrine tiffs that “gossip and innuendo” cannot
mainstream media had called the elec- argument was being mounted in Penn- “be the basis for upending Arizona’s
tion for Biden, based on late returns from sylvania, by the Honest Elections Proj- 2020 General Election.” Hoffman and
Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. ect, the group tied to Leonard Leo, of the other plaintiffs appealed the case to
But Cleta Mitchell, who had been dis- the Federalist Society. Local Republi- the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined
patched by Trump’s chief of staff, Mark cans had challenged a state-court rul- to hear the matter, but it waited to do
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 39
so until March. In the meantime, elec- way to Harvard Law School, where he Gates says that Karen Fann, the Ar-
tion-fraud conspiracy theories in Ari- joined the Federalist Society, the Har- izona Senate’s president, confided to him
zona were growing out of control. vard Law School Republican Club, and that she knew there was “nothing to” the
the Journal of Law and Public Policy. At fraud charges. (She didn’t respond to re-
n November 12th, Biden was de- Harvard, membership in all three was quests for comment.) Nevertheless, she
O clared the winner in Maricopa
County. Soon after, a Republican mem-
called the “conservative trifecta.” Gates
can scarcely believe how the Republican
buckled under the political pressure and
authorized a subpoena of the county’s
ber of the county’s Board of Supervi- Party and the conservative movement ballots, for the “forensic audit.” At one
sors, Bill Gates, was picking up takeout have changed in the years since. point, county supervisors were told that
food for his family when the board’s Over breakfast in June, in Phoenix, if they didn’t comply they would face con-
chairman—one of four Republicans on he apologized for his eyes welling up tempt charges and, potentially, could be
the five-person board—called to warn with tears as he described his efforts to imprisoned. For a time, the official Twit-
him to be careful going home. Ninety stand up to his own party’s mob. He ter account for the audit accused the su-
angry people had gathered outside the said that he and the other county su- pervisors, without evidence, of “spolia-
chairman’s house, and Gates’s place could pervisors had been “feeling great” about tion” of the ballots. “I get a little emotional
be next. “We’d all been doxed,” Gates how well their administration of the when I talk about it,” Gates said. “My
told me. He and his wife are the legal election had gone despite the pandemic. daughter called me, frantically trying to
guardians of a teen-ager whose father, a But, as the final ballots were counted find out whether or not I was going to
Ugandan, was nearly killed by hench- and Trump fell behind, Maricopa County be thrown in jail.” Trump supporters set
men for Idi Amin. “It’s chilling to see became the focal point of conspiracy up a guillotine on a grassy plaza outside
the parallels,” Gates told me. “You’d never theorists. “Alex Jones and those guys Arizona’s statehouse, demanding the su-
think there were any parallels to a strong- start coming out here, and they’re pro- pervisors’ heads. Inside, Gates recalled,
man autocracy in Africa.” Gates consid- testing outside of our election center as one Republican member after another
ers himself a political-science nerd, but, the counting is going on,” he said. He rose to denounce the county supervisors.
he said, “I had no concept that we were could hear people screaming, and what A representative for the national Re-
heading where we were heading.” sounded like a drum: “It was Lollapa- publican Party tried to silence Gates
Gates, who moved to Arizona as a looza for the alt-right—it was crazy.” when he spoke out to defend the integ-
teen-ager, was a latchkey kid whose idea He started getting calls and e-mails say- rity of Arizona’s election. He told me
of entertainment was watching C-Span. ing, “You guys need to stop the steal.” that Hoffman’s ally Tyler Bowyer, of the
He is forty-nine and describes himself Gates told me, “I’d wonder, Is this a Republican National Committee, paid
as a “child of the Reagan Revolution” real person?” But some angry messages him a visit and warned, “You need to
who started a Republican club in high came from people he knew. They stop it.” According to Gates, Bowyer
school. He attended Drake University, said they’d never support him again. made it clear that “the Republican Na-
in Iowa, partly so that he could witness “People thought I was failing them,” tional Committee supports this audit.”
the state’s Presidential caucuses. Win- Gates said. “I have been called a traitor Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Bow-
ning a Truman Scholarship opened his so many times in the last six months.” yer, denied that the visit was an official
attempt at intimidation, calling it in-
stead a “personal courtesy.”
Gates said that after he received
death threats he fled with his family to
an Airbnb. At one point, the sheriff sent
two deputies to guard Gates’s home
overnight. Trump supporters, Gates
said, “are basically asking Republican
leaders to bow before the altar of the
Big Lie—‘You’re willing to do it? O.K.,
great. You’re not? You’re a RINO. You’re
a Commie. You are not a Republican.’
It’s been incredibly effective, really, when
you think about where we’ve come from
January 6th.”
Part of what had drawn Gates to the
Republican Party was the Reagan-era
doctrine of confronting totalitarianism.
He’d long had a fascination with emerg-
ing democracies, particularly the former
Soviet republics. He had come up with
“I know this is hard, but I just can’t be with someone what he admits was a “kooky” retirement
who gets so many fewer bug bites than me.” plan—“to go to some place like Uzbeki-
stan and help.” He told me, “I’d always acy theory, which became known as It- comfortable. But in the end, he said, “the
thought that, if I had a tragic end, it alygate, had bubbled up from the same diversification of America is frightening
would be in some place like Tajikistan.” pools of dark money that were funding to a lot of people in my party.”
He shook his head. “If you had told me, other election misinformation. Records Gates believes that his party’s reac-
‘You’re going to be doing this in the U.S.,’ show that Italygate was spread by a “so- tion may backfire. Polls show that, al-
I would have told you, ‘You’re crazy.’ ” cial welfare organization” called Nations though the Arizona audit is wildly pop-
Some of the political pressure on elec- in Action, whose directors included ular among Republican voters in the state,
tion officials in Arizona was exerted di- von Spakovsky. When Talking Points it alienates independents, who constitute
rectly by Trump and his associates, po- Memo contacted von Spakovsky, he approximately a third of the state’s elec-
tentially illegally. Interfering in a federal said that he had resigned from torate—and whose support
election can be a crime. As the Arizona the board on January 8th. is necessary for statewide
Republic has reported, the President and But the money trail remains. candidates to win.
his legal adviser Rudy Giuliani phoned Crooks and Liars, a progres- For now, though, con-
state and local officials, including Fann. sive investigative-reporting servative groups seem to
The White House switchboard tried to site, dug up tax filings show- be doubling down on their
connect Trump with the chairman of the ing that the group’s 501(c)(3) investments in election-
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, sibling, the Nations in Action fraud alarmism. In the next
but, even though the chairman was a Globally Lifting Up Fund, two years, Heritage Action
Republican, he ducked the call, lest the had received thousands of plans to spend twenty-four
President interfere improperly. Giuliani dollars from the Judicial Cri- million dollars mobilizing
called Gates’s cell phone when he was sis Network—a nonprofit en- supporters and lobbyists
shopping at Walgreens on Christmas terprise, closely tied to Leonard Leo, who will promote “election integrity,”
Eve. Not recognizing the number, Gates that also funds Turning Point Action. starting in eight battleground states, in-
didn’t answer. “You can’t make this stuff While Justice Department officials cluding Arizona. It is coördinating its
up,” he told me. Giuliani left a voice mail were fending off conspiracy theories being effort with the Election Transparency
saying it was a “shame” that two Repub- spread by tax-exempt charities in Wash- Initiative, a joint venture of two anti-abor-
licans couldn’t work things out—he’d ington, the pressure was even more acute tion groups, the Susan B. Anthony List
come up with a “nice way” to “get this on local officials in Phoenix. Trump and the American Principles Project.
thing fixed up.” tweeted relentlessly about the audit. He The Election Transparency Initiative
“I never returned the phone call,” “clearly has had a fascination with this has set a fund-raising goal of five mil-
Gates said. A week later, when news issue, because he thinks it’s the key to lion dollars. Cleta Mitchell, having left
broke of Trump’s notorious call to offi- his reinstatement,” Gates told me. “It’s her law firm, has joined FreedomWorks,
cials in Georgia, Gates was more re- not about Arizona. We’re literally pawns the free-market group, where she plans
lieved than ever that he hadn’t called in this. This is a national effort to dele- to lead a ten-million-dollar project on
Giuliani back. A panel of judges in New gitimize the election system.” Gates pre- voting issues. She will also head the Elec-
York has since suspended Giuliani’s law dicted that, if “Arizona can question this, tion Integrity Network at the Conserva-
license, for threatening the public inter- and show that Trump won,” the game tive Partnership Institute, another Wash-
est by making “demonstrably false and will move on to Colorado, Georgia, Penn- ington-based nonprofit. As a senior legal
misleading statements” about the Pres- sylvania, Michigan, and Virginia, all of fellow there, she told the Washington
idential election. which have sent Republican delegations Examiner, she will “help bring all these
By New Year’s Eve, when Trump to observe Arizona’s audit. Noting that strings” of conservative election-law ac-
tried and failed to reach the chairman both QAnon followers and his own state’s tivism together, and she added, “I’ve had
of the Maricopa County board, his Ad- Republican Party chair had referred to my finger in so many different pieces of
ministration was in extraordinary tur- “dominoes” in connection with the audit, the election-integrity pie for so long.”
moil. Attorney General William Barr Gates said, “We know what that game Back in Arizona, where the auditors
had resigned from the Justice Depart- is, and how it works.” are demanding still more time, Gates
ment after declaring that it had de- It would be tempting for Gates, a life- believes that the Big Lie has become a
tected no significant election fraud. Even time Republican with political ambitions, “grift” used to motivate Republican vot-
so, Trump continued to demand that to blame only Trump for his party’s anti- ers and donors to support conservative
the department investigate a variety of democratic turn. But he has few such il- candidates and political groups. “The
loony conspiracies, including a plot to lusions. What’s really going on, he be- sad thing is that there are probably mil-
erase Trump votes using Italian mili- lieves, is a reactionary backlash against lions of people—hardworking, good
tary satellites. According to a leaked Obama: “I’ve thought about it a lot. I be- Americans, maybe retired—who have
e-mail, a Justice Department attorney lieve the election of President Obama paid their taxes, always followed the law,
disparaged the satellite theory as “pure frightened a lot of Americans.” Gates ar- and they truly believe this, because of
insanity.” A man supposedly involved gues that the fear isn’t entirely about race. what they’ve been fed by their leaders,”
in the plot issued a denial to Reuters, He thinks it’s also about cosmopolitan- he said. “And what’s so dispiriting is that
and Italian police suggested that the al- ism, secularism, and other contemporary the people who are pushing it from the
legation was baseless. But the conspir- values that make white conservatives un- top? They know better.” 
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 41
 PROFILES

ON AN EPIC SCALE
How Kerry James Marshall takes on the Western canon.
BY CALVIN TOMKINS

or the first thirty years of his ca­ not have become one—David Ham­

F reer, Kerry James Marshall was

a successful but little known art­
ist. His figurative paintings, drawings,
mons and Kerry James Marshall.”
Marshall, whose calm manner and
impeccable courtesy put people at ease,
sculptures, photographs, and videos ap­ talks about his work with clarity and
peared in gallery and museum shows precision. “Everything I do is based on
here and abroad, and selling them was my understanding of art history,” he
never a problem. He won awards, res­ told me recently. “The foundation of
idencies, and grants, including a Mac­ art as an activity among human beings
Arthur Fellowship in 1997, but in the has always been some form of repre­
contemporary­art world, which started sentation, and there isn’t a mode of art­
to look more closely at Black artists in making that I haven’t explored, and put
the nineties, Marshall was an outlier, into use when it was necessary.” His
and happy to be one. He had an un­ painting is figurative but not realistic.
shakable confidence in himself as an In 1993, he made two paintings that set
artist, and the undistracted solitude of him on a course that was entirely his
his practice allowed him to spend most own. He was thirty­eight years old, liv­
of his time in the studio. The curator ing in Chicago with his wife, the ac­
Helen Molesworth told me that during tress Cheryl Lynn Bruce, and he had
the three years it took to put together recently moved into his first real stu­
“Mastry,” Marshall’s first major retro­ dio, a three­hundred­and­fifty­square­
spective in the United States, which foot office space with an eleven­foot­
opened in 2016 at the Museum of Con­ high ceiling. The new paintings were
temporary Art Chicago and travelled much bigger than anything he had done
to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for quite a while—nine feet high by
and the Museum of Contemporary Art, ten feet wide. “The Lost Boys” shows
Los Angeles, “there were still people two young Black boys, one of whom
in the art world who didn’t know who sits in a dollar­a­ride toy car; the other
he was.” stands nearby, holding a pink water
This is no longer the case. The ex­ pistol, beside a tree that has a yellow
hibition outed Marshall as a great art­ “Do Not Cross” police tape around its
ist, a virtuoso of landscape, portraiture, trunk. The boys look directly at the
still­life, history painting, and other viewer, and there is something unnerv­ Marshall’s “Past Times,” from 1997. “Every-
genres of the Western canon since the ing about them, a sense of sadness and
Renaissance. The return to figurative vulnerability. older brother, Wayne, narrowly escaped
art in the past two decades has been The painting, Marshall said, came a drive­by shooting on our block. ‘The
embraced by a new wave of younger partly out of experiences he’d had dur­ Lost Boys’ was built around a child
Black artists, and for many of them, it ing his own boyhood, in South Cen­ who was killed by a police officer be­
is now clear, Kerry James Marshall has tral Los Angeles, where his family lived cause he had a toy pistol that they mis­
been a primary inspiration. “Kerry’s in­ in the nineteen­sixties. “This was the took for a gun. When I finished ‘The
fluence expands so far beyond his own period when the Crips and the Bloods Lost Boys,’ I stood back and said, ‘This
project,” Rashid Johnson, who at forty­ came into existence and everything is the kind of painting I always imag­
three is one of the strongest voices in changed,” Marshall recalled. “The level ined myself making.’ It seemed to me
contemporary art, told me. “He’s an of violence grew exponentially. Before, to have the scale of the great history
electric and dynamic thinker who’s also gangs were groups of guys who hung paintings, mixed with the rich surface
had an enormous influence on those out together and now and then they effects you get from modernist paint­
of us who use abstraction and more would have a fight, but it was a fight. ing. I felt it was a synthesis of every­
conceptual approaches. There are two When the Crips came, it was just shoot­ thing I’d seen, everything I’d read, ev­
artists without whom I probably would ing, and a lot of young people died. My erything that I thought was important
42 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
thing I do is based on my understanding of art history,” he says. “There isn’t a mode of art-making that I haven’t explored.” © KERRY JAMES MARSHALL / COURTESY THE ARTIST AND JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY, NEW YORK

about the whole practice of painting gles, echoing Mondrian. Our atten- I went to bed. Guys were spending as
and making pictures.” tion is drawn to the men’s elaborate much on their hair as girls did. And
The other painting, which he began hair styles—sculptured masses on the not only hair. We designed our own
working on at the same time as “The standing figure, a tower of stacked suits and had them made. You worked
Lost Boys,” is called “De Style.” The braids on one of the sitters, who I could all summer so you could start school
title is a play on the Dutch movement have sworn was a woman. (Marshall in the fall with a new wardrobe.” For
De Stijl, founded in 1917, which opened said they’re all men.) He went on to ex- a Black teen-ager in Los Angeles, life
the way to pure, hard-edge abstraction plain how young men of his genera- was in the details. “Just walking is not
in art and architecture, and the setting tion in South Central had been cap- a simple thing,” Marshall told the cu-
is a barbershop—the window sign reads tivated by the blaxploitation movies of rator Terrie Sultan. “You’ve got to walk
“Percy’s House of Style.” A customer the seventies, which “gave us models with style.”
is in the chair, and three others wait, of high style and sophistication that a The Los Angeles County Museum
two seated and one standing. Behind lot of guys I was in high school with of Art bought “De Style” the year Mar-
them, red cabinets with white draw- emulated. My brother and I did each shall painted it—his first sale to a major
ers form a structure of precise rectan- other’s hair. I had mine in rollers when museum. The price was “around twelve
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 43
thousand dollars,” he recalls, and he you have a whole generation of kids in a Volkswagen van packed with all
saw this as a down payment on what who don’t know how to make any- his belongings, and he arrived two
had become his overriding ambition: thing.” Today, the workshop in his weeks early, planning to store his things
to bring large-scale Black faces and studio is three times as big as the area at the museum while he explored the
Black bodies into places, such as mu- where he paints. When the overhead city and found a place to stay. Cheryl
seums, where their almost complete lighting there needed rewiring a few Bruce, the museum’s public-relations
absence had troubled him since he was years ago, he rented a hydraulic lift director, had to tell him that he couldn’t
a child. “Once I made those two pic- and fixed the problem himself. “There do so, because the three outgoing res-
tures, I understood clearly how to move isn’t anything I can’t do,” he said. “I idents hadn’t left yet. Bruce had grown
forward,” he told me. am not going to be found not know- up in Chicago. She was seven years
ing how something works.” He is older than Marshall, she had a thir-
nowing what to do and how to bone-certain that knowing how things teen-year-old daughter, Sydney, who
K do it is the cornerstone of Kerry
James Marshall’s existence. When he
work gives him a freedom and an in-
dependence he would not otherwise
lived with Cheryl and spent summers
with her father, in Los Angeles, and
was in the seventh grade, at the pre- have. Marshall once told a group of she was already launched on an act-
dominantly Black George Washing- doctors, only half joking, that with a ing career. That fall, when she was of-
ton Carver Junior High School in Los couple of weeks’ study he could do fered a role in a series for children,
Angeles, he took every shop class that brain surgery. starring a very young Ben Aff leck,
was available—the school offered a How someone with Marshall’s depth which would be filmed on location in
wide range of options. During sum- of knowledge, confidence, and self- Yucatán, she quit her job at the mu-
mer vacations, when the shop facili- reliance escaped being somewhat in- seum. At her going-away party, Bruce
ties were open to the public, Marshall sufferable is a good question. His alert struck Marshall as “the strangest girl
spent one summer learning about plas- and amused approach to the world has I’d ever seen, because she was just cry-
tics—how to laminate, cut, sand, and brought him many close friendships, ing her eyes out. I had never seen any-
polish earrings, ashtrays, and other and no discernible detractors. I some- body do that. She was also extremely
objects. “I sometimes use plastic now, times wonder how much of this is re- beautiful and vivacious, with person-
because I know what I can do with lated to the remarkable woman he ality in excess.”
it,” he told me. “The new D.I.Y. cul- married. They met in 1985, when Mar- Four months later, after Bruce fin-
ture is so behind what we had. Par- shall came to New York for a one-year ished working on the series, she re-
ents spoiled it by suing schools if any- artist residency at the Studio Museum turned to visit her friends at the mu-
body got hurt in shop class, and so in Harlem. He had driven from L.A. seum. Mary Schmidt Campbell, the
director, asked if she wanted her job
back, and she said yes. Marshall called
her the next day. Would she be inter-
ested in going with him to see Orson
Welles’s “The Magnificent Amber-
sons,” which was playing at the Thalia
on upper Broadway? Bruce said she
did not date artist residents or people
who worked at the museum. “But I
felt badly about turning him down,
and I asked him to my place in Brook-
lyn for dinner with me and my daugh-
ter, Sydney,” she recalled. “I was mak-
ing a salad when all of a sudden he
kissed me. I thought, Oh, man, he is
really misconstruing this. But then we
talked for a long time. Sydney went to
bed. As Kerry was getting ready to
leave, he said, ‘You’re the most beau-
tiful woman I’ve ever seen.’ And I re-
member—maybe this was another
night—I looked out the window and
saw him walking under a tree, playing
his harmonica.”
The no-dating rule lasted for six
months. Marshall had stayed in New
York after his Studio Museum resi-
dency ended, living in Harlem and
working for a Manhattan print pub- of the Dust,” released in 1991, is con- of them have the book during nap time.
lisher. He was in the early stages of his sidered one of the classics of indepen- “I was captivated by those images,”
career, making small abstract paintings dent cinema. Marshall told me. “I remember saying
and collages, some of which he had After driving back to Chicago with to myself, This is what I want to do, I
shown in 1985 at the Koplin Gallery Bruce, Marshall returned to New York want to make pictures.”
in Los Angeles. He and Bruce started and his job at the print publisher. The family moved to Los Angeles
dating, but they didn’t live together. “When I left L.A., I had planned to in 1963, first to a public-housing proj-
They were best friends. She kidded stay in New York,” he told me. “But I ect in the Watts area and later to a
him a lot, and they made each other felt confident that I could go anywhere rented house elsewhere in South Cen-
laugh. Sydney thought he was cool, on the planet and do what I had to do.” tral, the heart of the Black diaspora.
because he talked to her the same way As soon as he had some They were part of the Great
he talked to her mother, and was “in- money in the bank, he Migration of more than six
credibly comfortable about going his moved to Chicago per- million Black people who
own way.” One night, when Marshall manently. Bruce’s acting left the South during the
and Bruce were in the Union Square career was thriving—she Jim Crow era, to find bet-
subway station—she was headed for was in two plays, one at ter jobs and more humane
Brooklyn, he was going uptown—he the Northlight Theatre, in treatment. James worked
asked if she’d like to get married. “I Evanston, and the other at for the U.S. Postal Service,
had already put my token in—that was Steppenwolf, in Chicago. and Ora Dee ran a second-
when you still used tokens—and I She also landed a film role hand shop, selling objects
said . . . ‘Kerry, you can’t ask me some- that allowed them to sub- she bought at auction. Ra-
thing like that going through a turn- let an apartment in Hyde cial tensions were build-
stile. I can’t answer you. Give me some Park. They got married in April, 1989, ing in L.A. The Watts riots erupted in
time to think about it.’ He asked me at the South Side Community Art Cen- 1965. By then, Kerry and his family were
again a couple months later—we were ter, in Chicago. By 1992, Marshall had a few miles north, but the rioting spread
in a playground somewhere in Man- made enough money to buy, for fifteen throughout the area; Kerry and Wayne
hattan—and I hadn’t thought about thousand dollars, the house they live saw a supermarket on fire and bricks
it. I’d promised to give him an answer, in today. being thrown through store windows.
though, and I said O.K. We didn’t “It looked like a carnival,” Kerry re-
set a date. And then my sister Vicki ames Marshall, Kerry’s father, didn’t called. Gang warfare was on the rise.
got very sick with multiple sclerosis,
and my mom said she needed me home
J graduate from high school. He
served in the Army during the Korean
Neither Wayne nor Kerry joined a gang.
Wayne had gained respect at their pub-
in Chicago.” War, then went to work as a dishwasher lic school as someone you didn’t mess
Marshall drove her there in a U-Haul. at the veterans hospital in Birming- with, and, because he looked out for
They dropped her belongings off at ham, Alabama, his home town. His his younger brother, Kerry didn’t have
her mother’s garage, explained that they wife, Ora Dee, had hoped to be a singer- to fight. They both did well in school,
would be back as soon as possible, then songwriter; she made a record with a and became avid readers—their mother
turned around and went to South Car- doo-wop group in Birmingham, and had read Aesop’s Fables and other clas-
olina. Both of them had agreed to work co-wrote a song called “Lovin’ Feel- sics to them, and she signed up for a
on an independent film, written and ing,” which paid her royalties for years, subscription to receive the Dr. Seuss
directed by Julie Dash, called “Daugh- but that was the extent of her musical books—as a bonus they were given a
ters of the Dust,” about three genera- career. Kerry, their second child, was “Children’s Guide to Knowledge.” “I
tions of Gullah-speaking people living born in 1955. Birmingham then was so also became obsessed with comic
on an island off the coast. Marshall had rigidly segregated that the only white books,” Kerry said. “When I was in the
been recruited as the film’s production people he and his brother Wayne, who fifth grade, my brother and a friend
designer by Arthur Jafa, its cinematog- was a year older, came into contact with and I rode our bikes to a used-maga-
rapher and Dash’s husband, whom were the Italian family that ran the zine store in Huntington Park, just
he had met a few years earlier in Los corner store and the Catholic nuns who south of L.A., which had back issues
Angeles. Bruce would play one of the taught at the Holy Family school he of Marvel Comics. I wanted to go again
key roles. They had come to South attended, where the students were all by myself, so one day, after lunch, I
Carolina to make a “proof of concept,” Black. Marshall’s most vivid early mem- climbed the fence at school and walked
a few scenes to help raise money for ory was of looking through a scrap- there.” It took him four hours. He ar-
the film. Shooting the footage took book of pictures—Christmas cards and rived just in time to buy three comic
several weeks. Marshall provided all Valentine cards, photographs from Na- books before the store closed, and he
the props—if he couldn’t find them in tional Geographic and other maga- didn’t get home until nine-thirty. “I told
stores on the mainland, he made them zines—that belonged to Miss Hill, his my mother I’d been helping a teacher
himself. Although Dash and Jafa broke kindergarten teacher and the only Black at school.”
up a few years later, the four of them teacher in the school. She rewarded Kerry and Wayne both liked to draw
have remained close, and “Daughters well-behaved children by letting one images of comic-book superheroes and
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 45
Marshall and his wife, the actress Cheryl Lynn Bruce, in Dawoud Bey’s “Kerry and Cheryl I,” from 1993.

other characters.“Kerry was just sketching Design. This was where Marshall dis- Wayne for a while, after Wayne’s girl-
all the time,” his younger sister Jennifer, covered the work of Charles White. friend moved out of his house, and he
who was born in Birmingham the year Born in Chicago in 1918, White was a learned to subsist on five dollars a week.
before they left, told me. She remem- great but largely unrecognized Black In 1975, he entered Los Angeles City
bers lying on the floor in front of the artist. Marshall had read a biography College. By the time he became a full-
TV, with Wayne and their youngest of him when he was in the sixth grade, time student at Otis two years later,
brother, Travis, “and Kerry would be and he had written a paper on it, but Marshall had taken evening and week-
drawing us.” In 1965, the same year he had no real conception of what end classes with Charles White and
Kerry played hooky from school, his White’s work looked like until the Otis Sam Clayberger, both of whom knew
class made a field trip to the Los An- instructor George De Groat projected how to analyze a painting and build
geles County Museum of Art, which reproductions from “Images of Dig- visual structures. “Charlie White just
had just opened at its current location. nity,” a book of White’s drawings. The adored him,” the veteran Otis teacher
“I didn’t know there was such a thing pictures were all of Black people, and Arnold Mesches told Ian Alteveer, the
as a museum,” Kerry told me. “Once I they had a depth and a power that as- curator who installed Marshall’s retro-
learned how to get there, you couldn’t tonished Marshall. White was teach- spective at the Met. “Charlie would say,
keep me away.” What he remembers ing at Otis then. De Groat took the ‘He’s a bit obnoxious, isn’t he? . . . He’s
vividly from that first visit are two huge class upstairs to see his studio, and later good, but he’s opinionated.’” To Mar-
© DAWOUD BEY / COURTESY RENNIE COLLECTION

allegorical paintings by Veronese and that afternoon White himself walked shall, though, the Otis program was a
a wooden tribal figure from Mali, a into their classroom. “He was shorter bitter disappointment: “By the time I
Senufo executioner with feathers on than I was, but he had a big voice,” got there, conceptual art was the dom-
the head and two sticks for arms. (“That Marshall told me. “That’s when I de- inant force in a lot of art schools, in-
thing scared me to death.”) He didn’t cided Otis is where I want to go after cluding Otis. Anything that looked like
know art schools existed until several high school.” conventional painting and drawing and
years later. A teacher at his junior high Otis required that applicants to its sculpture was dismissed. Charles White
school had noticed that Kerry was more B.F.A. program have two years of col- was still there, but the Old Guard had
interested in drawing than any of the lege credits. Marshall graduated from been pushed aside. There was no rigor.”
other students were, and he recom- high school in 1973, and spent the next Except for White and a few others,
mended him for a summer drawing year washing dishes, parking cars, and Marshall said, “it just seemed like a co-
class at the Otis College of Art and finding other odd jobs. He lived with lossal waste of time.”
46 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
 Soon after he graduated from Otis, you have to know what you’re doing sions of Black lovers in domestic inte-
his abstract collages were in a group because the medium dries so quickly,” riors, and strange, surrealistic works
show called “Newcomers” at the Los Marshall said to me. “It allows you to that borrowed images from African
Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. A Los be deliberate in your approach.” Mar- folklore and Haitian voodoo. The break-
Angeles couple had bought four of shall had no interest in chance or the through came in 1993, with “The Lost
them, but Marshall was losing interest sort of random order that many contem- Boys” and “De Style.” The next year,
in abstraction and collage—like Otis, porary artists used to give an effect of he began work on the “Garden Proj-
they both now seemed too forgiving, spontaneity. He wanted total control of ect,” a series of large paintings that con-
lacking in rigor. His life was opening everything that happened in his work. firmed his new direction as a history
up in other ways. He went to New York He also wanted to be a painter of so- painter.
for the first time, to see the monumen- cial and political history, and the ques- His subject was the public-housing
tal 1980 Picasso retrospective at the tion he asked himself was: “How do projects that had been introduced in the
Museum of Modern Art—more spe- you address history with a painting that nineteen-twenties to get low-income
cifically, to see “Guernica,” which he doesn’t look like Giotto or Géricault families out of urban slums—a well-in-
called “one of the greatest history paint- or Ingres, but without abandoning the tentioned experiment that poor plan-
ings in modern art,” and which would knowledge that painters had accumu- ning, spreading poverty, and the drug
be repatriated to the Prado Museum lated over the centuries?” wars turned into a nationwide disaster.
in Madrid after the show ended. Around The key to “A Portrait of the Art- Marshall and his family had lived in
that time he read Ralph Ellison’s 1952 ist as a Shadow of His Former Self,” one of these developments, called Nick-
novel, “Invisible Man,” which changed Marshall told me, “is that every sin- erson Gardens, when they moved to
his approach to representation in art. gle shape you see in it was calculated Los Angeles in 1963. “This was before
“It allowed me to set a path away from in a way that exercises a certain force the projects were overloaded with peo-
those abstract collages and mixed-media against the edges. The angle and the ple who were out of work,” he said. “I
work,” he told me. Ellison’s piercing crease of the hat, the location of the would mark the transformation to some-
insight, that Black people were invisi- shirt, the gap in the teeth, all those time after the 1974 recession, when the
ble because white people refused to see things are lined up on vectors that ei- cycles of poverty set in. After that, no-
them, was a revelation. It also made ther stabilize or add tension to the di- body wanted to live in the projects, but
Marshall realize that he could use the rection those shapes are going in—it’s when we were there everybody did.”
human figure to explore the phenom- plotted like a mathematical equation.” Marshall’s tapestry-like paintings, which
enon of being present and absent at the The result is shockingly vivid. He had are on unstretched canvas, with grom-
same time. turned a racist caricature into a pow- mets to hang them by, show well-main-
This idea is embodied in “A Por- erful, disturbing, and complex work of tained buildings, neatly dressed Black
trait of the Artist as a Shadow of His art. Martha Koplin, who opened her people gardening and enjoying one an-
Former Self ” (1980), the first figura- L.A. gallery in 1982, heard about Mar- other’s company, children running or
tive painting Marshall had done in shall and asked him to bring in some biking to school, and lots of songbirds,
several years. Only eight inches tall of his work. He brought “A Portrait,” blue sky, and green lawns. “The Gar-
by six and a half inches wide, on paper, and she sold it the next day, for eight den Project paintings are overabun-
it shows the head and torso of a Black hundred and fifty dollars, to a Los An- dant, particularly lush, particularly rich
man in a wide-brimmed black hat, geles collector who donated it, three in surface and mark-making,” Marshall
against a dark-gray background. His years ago, to the Los Angeles County wrote in a 2000 essay. “[The] sky is al-
skin is so dark that all we see at first Museum of Art. Several more “Invis- ways just a little too bright a blue; the
are the dazzling whites of his eyes, a ible Man” paintings followed. In each sun is always beaming just a little too
triangle of white shirt, and eighteen one, the Black figure’s outlines are gaily; there are bluebirds of happiness
teeth in a comically wide, gap-toothed barely visible against the black back- and flowers bursting out all over the
grin. “There’s a joke about people ground, but the longer you look the place.” Why all the too muchness? “I
being so black that you can’t see them more you see. The figure is simulta- wanted to evoke some of the hope that
at night unless they’re smiling,” Mar- neously there and not there. the projects started with, but also to
shall told me. “Being Black was a neg- demonstrate a little bit of the despair,”
ative, and for me this was the start- fter they married in 1989, Mar- he told me. “And the way I did that
ing point from which I could build
an image of Blackness without those
A shall and Cheryl Bruce went back
to South Carolina to shoot “Daugh-
was to go over the top, with the Disney-
land fantasy and the bluebirds.” The
negative associations.” ters of the Dust.” Marshall was the pro- gangs and the drugs and the poverty
Instead of oil paint, he used egg tem- duction designer for two more inde- that overwhelmed the projects are what
pera, which he mixed according to the pendent films after that, one of which we remember, not the utopian dreams
formula in a fifteenth-century treatise was Haile Gerima’s “Sankofa.” Film- that inspired them. As his work would
by the Renaissance artist Cennino Cen- making usually required working with demonstrate again and again in the
nini. This gave his Black figure an un- other people, though, and Marshall years to come, Marshall was not inter-
canny depth and richness of tone. “With preferred to be alone in his studio. In ested in depicting Black trauma. He
egg tempera, as with fresco painting, the early nineties, he painted tender vi- wanted to show that there has always
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 47
been more to the Black experience in
America than oppression and humili-
ation—that somehow, in spite of ev- NOTES TOWARD AN ELEGY
erything, Black lives have been and can
be rewarding, diverse, and full of joy. The Cypriot sun is impatient, a woman undressed
The dense, matte, ultra-black skin who can’t spare the time to dress, so light
that he gave to everyone in these paint- like a vitrine holds even a storm.
ings is a rhetorical statement about One day in the Old City, a pineapple rain.
Blackness itself—not realistic but di- And I’m on my way home from the pharmacy, carrying my little bag
dactic. “When you say Black people, of cures.
Black culture, Black history, you have Refuge at the café in the nameless square.
to show that,” he remarked, in one of Nihal brings espresso poured over ice, turns off the music.
our conversations. “You have to demon- We listen to rain fall through the light until the end.
strate that black is richer than it appears
to be, that it is not just darkness but a White wine greening in a glass.
color.” Marshall worked with the three Lion rampant in the sky. Moon reclined gorgeous in her silver shift.
black pigments that can be bought in Polished newels. Door askew in its frame.
a paint store—ivory black, carbon black,
and Mars black—and he mixed them Hot mornings. Hot apple tea, honeyed.
with cobalt blue, or chrome-oxide green, The mountains a fist knuckled on the horizon.
or dioxazine violet. The result, which is Dust is coming, dust is not yet here.
fully visible only in the original paint-
ing, not in reproductions, is something Whenever her hands dance, I tell her how beautiful.
entirely his own. “That’s what got me She says there’s so much other movement I do not perceive.
to the place I am now, where the black And I accept the presence of dances invisible to me.
is fully chromatic,” he said.
The “Garden Project” paintings were Figs in the tree, figs on the stones.
shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, Stains of rotting fruit spread and shadow at the sun’s whim.
in a 1995 group exhibition called “About
Place,” curated by Madeleine Gryn-
sztejn, and soon afterward they appeared tenance work and improvements on bors threatened to harm us, I did go
at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New the two-story brick house that he and shopping for a firearm, but I didn’t buy
York. Shainman had become Marshall’s Bruce had bought in 1992, on Chica- it,” Marshall said. “Guns are really ex-
New York dealer, working in collabo- go’s South Side. Their neighborhood, pensive. I knew that if I got one I was
ration with Martha Koplin in Santa called Bronzeville, had once attracted probably going to use it, so we had to
Monica. All five paintings sold quickly, successful Black professionals—doc- find a better way.” Moving to a safer
four of them to museums and one to tors, lawyers, musicians—but by the neighborhood was not an option. Aya-
a private collector. “Kerry had a wait- nineteen-sixties most of them had left, Nikole Cook, a former student of Mar-
ing list from then on,” Shainman re- and the area had been in decline for shall’s who became his first (and last)
calls. It was a limited one, and buyers many years. The house, which he saw studio assistant, from 1995 to 2013, told
had to be patient, because Marshall in a local listing, had been abandoned me that she often felt nervous because
worked slowly. As Shainman explained, and occupied by squatters, and it was he and Bruce would confront their neigh-
“Kerry told me right at the beginning in bad shape. Marshall bought it be- bors for playing too-loud music at night.
that every painting he did had to have cause the price was low and he could The house was their home, and they re-
a reason for existing, and he never, never make the necessary repairs himself— fused to be pushed out. Bruce was at-
produced for the market.” putting in new bathrooms and a new tached to her substantial garden in the
In 1997, recognition “was just rain- roof and shoring up the floors, with back yard. The greeting on her answer-
ing on me,” Marshall said. He was in- help from Bruce. “He referred to me ing machine, updated regularly, always
vited to show at the Whitney Biennial as unskilled labor,” she said, and added, began with a horticultural note: “Peo-
and at Documenta X, the big interna- “Our kitchen window was shot out one nies are blooming. Please leave a mes-
tional art exhibition in Kassel, Ger- New Year’s Eve. The next year, we heard sage.” As Cook explained, “They both
many, and the MacArthur Foundation a similar noise. No windows were bro- felt very strongly that once you achieve
awarded him one of its “genius” grants: ken, but a week later I was sweeping a level of success you have a responsi-
sixty thousand dollars a year, for five the second floor and I found a bullet.” bility to the neighborhood. . . . They ex-
years. He used the money to buy the Marshall stopped a police car one panded my view in so many ways.” The
building his studio was in—to buy it day, described the shootings, and asked Bronzeville neighborhood has improved
outright, with no mortgage. Being debt- what could be done about them. “Stay considerably in recent years, and in 2017,
free has always been important to him. away from the windows,” he was told. to Bruce’s utter amazement, Marshall
Until quite recently, he did all the main- “About eight years ago, when our neigh- agreed to a complete renovation of their
48 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
 “He tried fiercely to get me into Doc-
umenta in 1997. He’s not just a friend
but a comrade.”

That steady dissolution of body into form that signals the progress
of a masterpiece.
“ R ythm Mastr,” Marshall’s visual
Black superhero narrative, started
in 1999 as a comic strip. Images from
Copper bowl in her hands. In the bowl in the hands, olive leaves burn. it were shown at the Carnegie Inter-
national in Pittsburgh that year, on
I ask her to read to me. I like the way her voice handles words. newsprint, and it had a limited run in
What will she read? First she laughs. the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette while the
It’s a good day to laugh. The coffee is strong. And the light. show was on. Since then, the evolving
Why read when we can talk? When all our friends are here? concept has appeared, in different forms,
at the David Zwirner gallery, and, this
My perversity is silence, a shudder stopped summer, in a large group exhibition of
in the throat. When all the time I hear her voice: comic-strip art at MCA Chicago. Mar-
I am glad my soul met your soul. shall is now working on a new version
in the form of a graphic novel, which
—Examples of what, I do not know. It’s just that will become the basis for an animated
for a time I took Love out walking film, and then a live-action feature film.
with me everywhere and sometimes I thought Child, whose is this child? We talked about this hugely ambi-
when it played in the square. A sunshine creature, terrifying, tious project one morning. Marshall
yet still I looked at it like I’ve never looked at a stranger was in his studio on Michigan Ave-
who promises water to the waterless for nothing. nue, an eighty-by-twenty-foot build-
And now I lie awake pretending ing that an architect was commissioned
everyone in the world lies still the way the living are still: to build, to Marshall’s exact specifica-
not entirely, never entirely. tions, in 2011. (Architecture, like brain
—Elisa Gonzalez surgery, is one of the rare disciplines
that he hasn’t had time to master.) He
was sitting at his desk on the mezza-
house, which involved an architect and Marshall family had left Birmingham nine, where the walls are covered with
a contractor. The job took two years, dur- a month before the bombing.) “Heir- drawings, prints, and images of all
ing which they lived on the twenty-first looms and Accessories,” a later work, kinds. One section is devoted to his
floor of an apartment building overlook- shows three open lockets on chains, meticulously organized art library, and
ing Lake Michigan. each one bearing a photograph of a dif- another to dozens of small action fig-
Marshall never had creative blocks ferent white woman. The women were ures, dolls, furniture, and other objects
or fallow periods. He explored a wide part of a large and festive audience that that he often makes himself and uses
range of media, including photography, gathered on August 7, 1930, in Marion, as models for things that will appear,
video, and sculptural works such as Indiana, to watch the lynching of two enlarged and altered, in his paintings.
the 1998 “Mementos”—vastly oversized young Black men. Marshall had sin- Genial and self-contained, as always,
stamps and ink pads scattered around gled them out from a photograph of Marshall took pictures on his iPhone
a room, with their printed messages the event, which is reproduced in the to show me the rest of the studio—
(“Black Is Beautiful,” “Black Power,” background, but so faintly that the other the twenty-by-twenty-foot area on the
“We Shall Overcome,” “By Any Means celebrants and the victims are hard to ground floor where he does his paint-
Necessary,” “Burn Baby Burn”) on the see. The three white women are “acces- ing, and the adjoining, much larger
wall. The “Garden Project” was fol- sories” to the crime, ready to hang from workshop space, filled with machin-
lowed by “Souvenir,” a series that me- someone’s unsuspecting neck. ery and tools to make whatever he
morializes the civil-rights struggles in “Kerry has such a whimsical, quiz- needs. “I’m in the midst right now of
the sixties. Violence and trauma are zical mind,” Arthur Jafa told me. “His developing the graphic novel,” he said,
present in them, but not on view. In a paintings take on the whole weight of “but I also paint every day. I’m always
painting of a middle-class living room, Western civilization, but I don’t know doing several things simultaneously—
a woman with mysterious golden wings another person with whom I laugh as they overlap, and become completely
bends to move a vase of flowers, wall much when we talk.” In the years since integrated. I hate to have people drop
hangings mourn the martyred Kennedy Jafa and Marshall worked together in on me here because it breaks my con-
brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr., on “Daughters of the Dust,” Jafa had centration. Cheryl gives me a courtesy
and the faces of the four girls who were become an artist as well as a cinema- call before she comes, and”—laugh-
killed in the 1963 Birmingham church tographer, but his career in art had de- ing—“she has to call before she gets to
bombing and other victims of white veloped more slowly than Marshall’s. the corner of my block.”
supremacy float near the ceiling. (The “He is amazingly generous,” Jafa said. Through the decades, Marshall said,
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 49
a lot of people have tried to introduce ten biggest-selling movies of all time,
Black superheroes. One of the first was and several of them are Marvel Com-
the Black Panther, who appeared in ics adaptations, right? And they all
Marvel Comics’ “The Fantastic Four” come out of this one guy Jack Kirby.
in 1966. “But none of them got the kind He had a bigger visual impact on me
of traction that Superman or Batman than anyone. I think he’s up there
or Spider-Man had, and that gave me with Charlie Parker and Picasso and
a challenge.” Marshall saw no point in Miles Davis.”
a Black superhero who was created by Kirby’s drawings, Marshall said, have
a white artist, and for that reason he an artistry that goes beyond technical
has little interest in the new Black Pan- skill. “He was a great storyteller with
ther series that was developed by Mar- pictures—looking at one of his comic
vel, and written by Ta-Nehisi Coates. books is like watching a movie. The
“If all you can do is take characters that page layout and the way the action
already exist, it’s a failure to me,” he is drawn is really dynamic. There’s a
said. Marshall wanted to invent his kind of electric plasma that he did with
own characters, and a narrative and a dots—they’re called Kirby dots—to
world in which they could function. show something that’s been charged
He found his narrative in two things with radiation. I always saw the ab-
that were happening simultaneously sence of Black superheroes in comic
in Chicago in the late nineties: the books as a failure of Black imagination
“explosion of violence” that the gang that needed to be resolved, and I wanted
wars were inflicting on young people, to be an inventor, like Kirby, rather than
and the demolition of public housing, a follower.”
“which moved kids into neighbor- In our mezzanine conversation, Mar-
hoods where the gangs didn’t want shall told me that the “Rythm Mastr”
them.” His superhero is dual—Rythm story line has become increasingly com-
Mastr, an old man who teaches his plex. There are now two different groups
young protégé, Farell, the ancient se- of people trying to stop the gang vio-
crets of drumming that can activate lence—Farell and his crew of Afrocen-
the powers of African tribal objects tric drummers, and a posse of wheel-
on display at the Art Institute of Chi- chair-bound tech wizards, victims of
cago. There are echoes of Obi-Wan drive-by shootings, who use weapon-
Kenobi and Luke Skywalker here, but ized robots against gangs. He also said
the characters are different, and, any- that Chicago is no longer where it hap-
way, why not? “ ‘Star Wars’ is more pens. “I’ve substituted a city and a world
than a trilogy,” Marshall said. “Those that I created myself,” he said. “It’s in-
characters are iconic—there isn’t a per- vention the whole way. And I don’t think
son on the planet who doesn’t know it will take another ten years. It’s pos-
who Darth Vader is.” What Marshall sible within the next five.”
has in mind is a film on the scale of
the Steven Spielberg and George Lucas n the early two-thousands, a few
epic. “My goal is to match the iconic
level of ‘Star Wars,’ ” he said.
I perceptive curators started to think
about giving Marshall a mid-career “School of Beauty, School of Culture,” from
Marshall clearly sees this magnum survey show. Elizabeth Smith, the chief
opus as both an art work and a cine- curator at the Museum of Contem- Madeleine Grynsztejn, who had re-
matic blockbuster. “I think it can be porary Art Chicago at the time, ap- cently become the director of MCA
as complex as anything I’ve done as a proached him about doing one. Mar- Chicago, proposed doing a full-scale
painter,” he said recently to Arthur Jafa, shall didn’t want a survey. What he retrospective of Marshall’s work there
who shares Marshall’s love of comics, wanted was a show of existing and and he said yes. At Grynsztejn’s sug-
and, in particular, of Jack Kirby, the new works of his that dealt with Black gestion, they decided to wait until he
comic-book artist who collaborated identity and Black culture in white so- turned sixty. The Museum of Con-
with the writer Stan Lee to co-create ciety. This led to “Kerry James Mar- temporary Art, Los Angeles signed on
the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the In- shall: One True Thing, Meditations to take the show when Helen Moles-
credible Hulk, and other Marvel Com- on Black Aesthetics,” which opened worth became its chief curator in 2014.
ics superheroes. “Jack Kirby was the in Chicago in 2003 and travelled to The Metropolitan Museum of Art had
man, the king,” Jafa told me. “A Jew- museums in Miami, Baltimore, New already agreed to do the same, a deci-
ish guy from the Lower East Side in- York (the Studio Museum), and Bir- sion that helped make the exhibition
vented all this stuff. You think of the mingham. Five years later, though, a major art-world event.
50 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
 © KERRY JAMES MARSHALL / COURTESY THE ARTIST AND JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY, NEW YORK
2012, channels Marshall’s earlier work “De Style,” as well as Velázquez’s 1656 painting “Las Meninas.”

Marshall gave Grynsztejn and Moles- April, 2016. I saw it a few months later roll Dunham wrote, in Artforum. “There
worth complete freedom to do the kind in New York, where its seventy-two really are no other American painters
of show they wanted, a chronological paintings filled two floors in the Met who have taken on such a project.”
survey that concentrated on his paint- Breuer, at that time the Met’s modern Painting after painting bore witness
ings. They wanted to call it “Kerry James and contemporary branch. (The build- to the fusion of image and idea, and to
Marshall: Old Master,” but he balked ing had formerly housed the Whitney the subtle, not so subtle, and sometimes
at that. “Kerry didn’t like the word ‘old,’” Museum of American Art.) For me and hilarious references to art history. The
Molesworth confided, smiling. “He came for many others, the exhibition placed “Vignette” series (2003-12) shows mostly
back with ‘Mastry.’ I think he liked play- Kerry James Marshall in the pantheon young Black people in antique clothes
ing with the word—what it meant to of great living artists. “One might have enjoying the rococo charms of Frago-
have mastery, and to misspell it and thought it impossible for contemporary nard’s “The Progress of Love.” “Do Black
make it colloquial, and put it in the tra- art to simultaneously occupy a position people seek out pleasure?” Marshall asked
dition of African American wordplay.” of beauty, difficulty, didacticism, and for- me. “Of course. So let’s have some of it.”
“Mastry” opened at MCA Chicago in malism with such power,” the artist Car- In “Black Painting,” whose blackness
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 51
is so deep that it takes a minute or more ground, one of them a boy, who is peer- yellow dog in a room where radiant
to make out the image, two people are ing at a distorted yellow-and-white color and magically calibrated design
in bed, one of them a woman who has shape on the floor, which no one else make it feel like the most desirable
just heard something that prompts her seems to have noticed; it is an image place on earth. It’s hard to imagine
to raise herself up on one arm. Mar- that can be seen only from an extreme a painting more mysteriously seduc-
shall’s junior high school was a few angle, an anamorphosis, like the skull tive than this, but Chris Ofili is con-
blocks from the Black Panther head- in Hans Holbein’s “The Ambassa- vinced that Marshall’s best work is
quarters in Los Angeles, and he remem- dors”—in Marshall’s painting, it is Walt yet to come. Comparing him recently
bers the police raid on it in 1969. His Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. The idea of to a Formula One racing driver, Ofili
painting shows “the instant when noth- white female beauty as the impregna- said, “For quite some years, we’ve been
ing has happened yet, but it’s about to ble standard in Western art is only one watching Kerry doing warmup laps to
happen,” he said. “It’s not Fred Hamp- of the questions raised by this end- get his tires sticky. Now he’s ready to
ton and his wife; it’s meant to evoke the lessly evocative painting. assert his authority on the contempo-
whole range of police raids on the Black Marshall’s craftsmanship and free- rary history of painting. His tires are
Panthers.” The painting is dated 2003-06, ranging imagination make his later sticky, and he knows he can take the
because Marshall was not satisfied with work as unpredictable as “A Portrait corners a little bit tighter than before.”
its first incarnation; he took it back from of the Artist as a Shadow of His For-
his New York gallery and continued to mer Self.” The “Painter” series shows big retrospective can derail an
work on it, off and on, for three years.
Marshall’s paintings often have
confident, sumptuously dressed women
and men, several of whom pose in front
A artist’s career, but Marshall took
his in stride. When “Mastry” was about
inexplicable elements. “7am Sunday of their unfinished, paint-by-number to close at the Met, the museum gave
Morning”—the title refers to Edward canvases. Anyone can paint, they seem him an informal party in the Temple
Hopper’s “Early Sunday Morning”— to say; their absurdly oversized pal- of Dendur which was one of the most
is divided down the middle. The left ettes are abstract paintings in them- joyous gatherings I have ever attended.
half is a precise, almost photo-realist selves. There is a series of imaginary Something magnificent had happened,
rendering of a street crossing near Mar- portraits, most of them of historical and was being celebrated. Soon after-
shall’s studio, with red brick storefronts, figures such as Nat Turner, the rebel ward, Marshall went to the opening
a pedestrian in a yellow jacket, and a slave, who holds the hatchet he has in Los Angeles, and then returned,
flight of birds overhead. The only un- used to kill his master, and Harriet with a sigh of relief, to his studio and
clear object is a blurred gray car, speed- Tubman, portrayed as a young woman, his unrelenting work schedule. Only
ing across the space and linking the with the man she just married, who a few people were aware that he had
left side of the painting to the right has vanished from the historical rec- undergone successful surgery for pros-
side, where nothing is clear. I asked ord. The exhibition at the Met also tate cancer early in 2016. In the past
Marshall what was going on there. “It’s included an example of Marshall’s pho- two years, Cheryl Bruce has had a pul-
like a lens flare,” he replied. “It’s the tographs of people—himself, his wife, monary embolism and a second knee
sun reflected in the glass of that build- and several close friends—in black replacement. They are both in good
ing on the corner, an optical phenom- light, which is ultraviolet light. “What health now, and they have decided to
enon that lets you introduce into the move to Los Angeles. It won’t happen
space something that’s not there, a mi- for a few years—they are too busy with
rage.” His aim was to catch “a moment ongoing projects and obligations—but
that’s miraculous in the context of a the bitterly cold Chicago winters and
mundane, ordinary day.” There are sev- a yearning to spend more time with
eral such moments in his huge, 2012 their families are too strong to resist.
“School of Beauty, School of Culture,” Marshall’s brothers and sisters and
which channels his earlier “De Style” their children live in or near L.A., and
and also Velázquez’s “Las Meninas.” so does Bruce’s married daughter, Syd-
Here we are in a hairdressing salon, ney Kamlager, who went into politics
where eight or nine women talk or this does is to give this beautiful dark and was recently elected to the Cali-
preen or stand and watch. The critic tone to the skin, and a kind of blue fornia State Senate. (Marshall, her god-
Peter Plagens described it as “one of wash over everything,” Naomi Beck- father as well as her stepfather, now
the most complex orchestrations of with, the Guggenheim Museum’s chief calls her Senator Godchild.)
color in contemporary painting.” A curator, and one of the sitters, said. In the meantime, their Chicago life
large poster of a woman with a flower “Kerry has always been interested in continues as before. Marshall gets up
in her hair, on the wall at the far right, the question ‘What would art history at five-thirty or six every morning and
is from Chris Ofili’s 2010 show at Tate look like if we had saturated it with is in his studio by eight-thirty. Before
Britain in London. (“I was absolutely Black American cultural history?’ ” her knee operation, Bruce was per-
floored when I saw that image,” Ofili The most indelible painting in the forming several times a week in “The-
told me. “I’m still honored when I think show, to me, was his 2014 “Untitled: ater for One,” a production, in Chi-
of it.”) Two toddlers are in the fore- (Studio).” It shows four people and a cago, for a solo actor and a sole audience
52 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
member. In the evening, Bruce cooks
dinner, and they argue and spar ami­
ably. She makes fun of his erudition,
calls him El Jefe, and threatens to beat
him up. Years ago, they had talked
about having a child. “The timing was
always wrong, and somehow it didn’t
work out,” Bruce said. After dinner,
they watch classic films from Mar­
shall’s extensive collection, and at
eleven­thirty they tune in to “NHK
World­Japan,” a Japanese channel (in
English) that Marshall, who discov­
ered it, describes as being devoted to
explaining what it means to be Japa­
nese. “You see craft traditions that are
hundreds and sometimes thousands
of years old,” he said. Lately, they’ve
been glued to the sumo­wrestling tour­
naments that are shown for fifteen
days every other month. “Cheryl has
become obsessed with sumo wrestling,”
Marshall said.
Since his retrospective, the prices 
paid for Marshall’s work embarrass
him. “Past Times” sold at Sotheby’s
in 2018 for twenty­one million dol­
lars, the highest auction price yet reg­
istered for a living African American
artist. (The buyer was Sean Combs.) “Ultimately, my goal is vengeance, but I’m still
David Zwirner, the mega­dealer who very much in the research phase.”
represents Marshall in Europe, told
me that his new paintings can sell for
seven or eight million dollars. Marshall
• •
is a semi­celebrity: his name turns up
in rap songs, including “Vendetta,” by was my friend, and would come to my broadly. “He and his sister were sold
Vic Mensa, and “One Way Flight,” call,” he told me. into slavery as children, and Olaudah
by Benny the Butcher. He is working “London Bridge,” which he painted ended up as a servant to a British sea
on a new series of paintings, called in 2017, is his most recent history pic­ captain. He eventually became free,
“Black and part Black Birds,” which ture in the grand manner. The famous settled in England, married an En­
will eventually include all the species landmark was judged unsafe for traf­ glishwoman, and got rich from his
in John James Audubon’s “The Birds of fic in the early sixties, and an Ameri­ book.” In the painting, Marshall said,
America” that are black or have black can entrepreneur named Robert P. “the staff he carries has a picture of
markings. Using Audubon’s images as McCulloch bought it from the city, Queen Victoria, and the song he’s sing­
a starting point, he depicts each species dismantled it, and used the parts to ing”—it’s notated on a scroll—“is the
in a fanciful environment, perched on create a replica, as a tourist attraction, Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the
trees and posts adorned with brilliant on the shore of Arizona’s Lake Ha­ Devil.’ ” The painting was bought by
flowers. Marshall is a longtime bird­ vasu. “The picture is about disloca­ the Tate, where it quickly became a
watcher. A few years ago, he captured tion,” according to Marshall, who obvi­ crowd favorite.
a juvenile crow in his bare hands— ously had a fine time painting it. Among Marshall’s determination to know
the bird was sitting on a low limb of the tourists strolling near the bridge more than anyone else about whatever
a tree near his property, and he man­ is a Black man, dressed in the Beef­ he does is unabated. “Kerry is like Goya,
aged to sneak up on it from behind. eater costume of the guards of the you know,” Madeleine Grynsztejn told
He tied one of the bird’s legs to a milk Tower of London. He’s wearing a sand­ me. “He’s a political, social, emotional,
crate on the second­floor deck of his wich board that advertises “Olaudah’s intellectual powerhouse.There’s a draw­
house, took photos and videos, set out Fish and Chips,” which refers to an­ ing that Goya made in his last years of
water and mulberries for it to eat, and other dislocation. “One of the earli­ an old man, bent over, leaning on two
released it the next morning. “I’d al­ est slave narratives was by Olaudah sticks, who says ‘Aun aprendo’—I’m still
ways had a fantasy about a crow that Equiano,” Marshall explained, smiling learning. That’s Kerry.” 
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 53
 FICTION

54 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY OWEN D. POMERY

 hey were born to the cul-de- ter, at which point she got a spot on the the weighted cape for an X-ray. Lenny

T sacs of the Arizona desert,

hose-drinking boys, allowed to
run loose provided they came when
gymnastics team, etc., and then after
three months she had a dream, the fish
gave her the same message, and now
liked to tease: Need a nap, baby Jimmy?
But Lenny was jealous because he was
short, chubby, handsome but vaguely
called, and they did, these two. James they are selling it and hope the lucky disproportioned, with an ass that he
and Lenny. Obedient and clever. Ga- winner respects its commands. called his rump.
rages packed with scooters, go-carts, ar- A minor bidding war ensued. A per- Both boys were of the impression that
senals of water guns, each machine-gun son in Philadelphia won the trout for they were somehow grotesque. This was
soaker more elaborate than the last. ninety-three bucks. part of their bond. There was a children’s
They’d outgrown the toys only yester- Ninety-three! Ninety-three! Lenny book called “Big Dog, Little Dog,” about
day, but the rift was total. Now they were jerk-danced around his bedroom like a friendship between different-sized dogs,
sixteen and spent afternoons in the food Elaine Benes, whom they both loved. and Lenny had given it to James for
court dreaming up pranks, or sprawled People are strange, James observed. Christmas with a clever inscription.
on the carpet watching sitcoms. Their Lenny said they were going to be James would not sell that.
aimlessness was permitted—not a mark rich. He was certain. He sat down on No one wants your old clothes,
against their future. They had been in the bed. The dark, newly shaved folli- Lenny said.
Gifted and Talented. Lenny was funny cles on his checks awed James. He was They opened plastic bins in the ga-
and good at math; James was an ace so hairy already, like a hobo in a comic rage, went through games and puzzles
mimic. Sometimes he was in the school strip. So far Lenny had used the Inter- and plastic trash, the same shit that Lenny
plays. James wanted to become an actor, net only to steal movies and music. He and every other kid they knew had, all
a theatre rat in Manhattan; Lenny hadn’t understood. Cash! He rammed the batteries dead, screens scratched. He
wanted to write for “The Simpsons.” the heel of his palm to his forehead. felt sorry for his father for paying for all
Lenny told James about all the Duh, he said. this shit, sorry that whatever money his
best things. Snoop and LimeWire and mother had earned—she’d been a fourth-
“Eraserhead.”
Now eBay. Lenny was one of those J ames wanted to sell something, too.
He could sell the mirror in which
grade teacher during the period she was
able to work—had gone to purchasing
people, tapped into a certain frequency, he watched his body grow. He could trash. He had not ardently wanted any
knew everything first. He had an idea, sell his pants that no longer fit. He could of this. Or had he? He certainly didn’t
he said, wanted to sell something. A sell his appendix or a kidney. Every- think so, had no memory of wanting it,
fish mounted on a wooden plaque, which thing extra. His gallbladder. He was and, even if he had, they should have
he’d bought a couple of years ago at a unclear on whether you really needed told him no. They should have had the
Goodwill for three dollars and hung in a gallbladder. foresight to give him better things, though
his bedroom to annoy his mother, for Do you need a gallbladder? what was better he couldn’t say.
whom fish were not décor. Me personally? Then James remembered that in his
Your fish? You want to sell that? James Does one. underwear drawer, in a velvet box that
didn’t understand. No one really knows, Lenny said. opened like a clamshell, was his silver
The fish meant nothing. It was only The next day, they surveyed the ob- cross. He got it out, showed it to Lenny,
ironic. But on eBay he called it “LUCKY jects on James’s dresser. He had a tro- who pumped his fist and made slot-ma-
TROUT! (WORKS IN THREE-MONTH CY- phy commending his participation in a chine noises. Say it was used in an ex-
CLES ONLY.)” Starting bid: fifteen dollars. recreational soccer league, and a black orcism, Lenny said. Don’t polish it. Keep
No one will pay fifteen for that, comb, and a framed photograph of his it tarnished.
James said. parents from before he was born, nine- It’s my First Communion cross,
But he watched the whole thing hap- teen, twenty, Ivory-soapy. His mother James said.
pen—saw Lenny’s fingers punching the had been dead for a decade. All his life, Huh, Lenny said.
keyboard, spinning a yarn, command- that picture had sat there—his father Theirs had been on the same day.
ing money from a fool. In the descrip- would notice if it was gone. The comb, James set it on the dresser.
tion, he said that after he’d caught and maybe, he could say that it had been Maybe—Lenny began.
mounted the fish all these unusually used by someone important. James didn’t want to hear.
lucky things began to happen—he was None of my clothes fit, James said. Yeah, he said. I guess I shouldn’t.
the seventh caller to Power 92 and won I can sell my clothes. But why not?
concert tickets, then won fifty bucks on He was in the midst of what was He didn’t ask.
a scratch-off, then his mother’s doctor called, disgustingly, a growth spurt. He Because of his mother? Because of
called to say the tumor was benign. After feared he was becoming problemati- God?
three months, he had a dream. In the cally tall, that he would never stop grow- That cross would sit in that box for
dream, the fish spoke to him. It said, ing, his ankles and wrists narrowing like the next seventy years. He was supposed
Share the wealth. At this point his luck a paraplegic’s. Fatigue often rushed over to keep it tucked in his underwear for-
started wearing off. He got a parking him, as if he’d taken a handful of pills. ever, like a hedge against the Devil, a
ticket, and other annoying things hap- Growing, spurting, did that, like some thing to pass on, to live in his own kid’s
pened, until he gave the fish to his sis- sick medicine reaching his blood, like underwear drawer. He didn’t want a kid
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 55
to waste money on. He knew that al- had been reluctant to intervene as a ment. She might die, he could write.
ready. Why couldn’t he send this sup- genocide unfolded in Europe—but Unless this Michael Jackson spider saves
posedly precious thing into the vastness? James didn’t include that detail. her. He imagined a life in which he sup-
He looked at Lenny’s face, that dis- He was pleased by the story. Writ- ported himself with this kind of fraud.
tracted, squinty expression which meant ing it made him feel alert, subversive.
he was working on a joke, and for some Anyone who would be moved by that he auction ended at 5 P.M. the fol-
reason James didn’t say anything. He
wanted to do it alone.
Pope, or by any Pope, anyone for whom
such an object had meaning deserved
T lowing Tuesday, but he wasn’t at
the computer to watch. He was eating
Later that night, after Lenny left, he to be misled. Whether the buyer was dinner with his father. Pork chops, ap-
began to make up a story: This cross Nazi or Catholic, he would feel no re- plesauce in individual-serving cups for
has been in my family for many, many morse taking that fool’s money. dipping. As he ate he found himself
years. It once . . . He learned in the coming days that growing nervous, for now the crime
What did it once? The exorcism was there were people who collected any- would have a victim, and who would
good, but he didn’t want to use Lenny’s thing a Pope has touched or blessed. that be? His father said, Sheila wants
idea. He was tired again. This time he The glove a woman was wearing when us to go hiking with her this weekend.
embraced his fatigue, got into bed even she shook his hand. The very fly that Saturday. Three, four miles. Nothing
before Conan. His mind dove into irritated His Holiness while he break- too strenuous. Papago Park. What do
blankness like a bird off a cliff. fasted one morning in Lisbon—you you think?
could buy that bug in a clear plastic box. She was his father’s girlfriend, a spe-
t would always be in his nature to get The number of watchers of his cross cial-ed teacher. Most of his father’s girl-
I rid of things. He’d vowed it early. After
his grandparents died, his father had to
startled him; then, as it rose, began to
disturb him. He was tempted to call
friends were teachers, though not all from
the same town. He was a school psy-
hire a special company to clear out their Lenny, but he just sat still, growing fear- chologist, rotated through the district.
house. Men in white suits like astro- ful, certain he was committing a crime. The new one drove a yellow Beetle. Once
nauts shuffled in and out. They had kept Fifteen people. Twenty-three. Fifty- she had been married to a ceramicist.
everything, Nana and Pops, every piece seven. A hundred and two. You want to come along? Sheila and
of mail that came through the slot, de- He sat in his bedroom, on the com- I would love it if you’d join us.
cades of birthday cards, church news- puter his uncle had given them and that James did not want to hike or bike
letters, public notices, each one of his his father permitted James to keep in or admire the crags in the earth or do
report cards and his dead mother’s re- his room. His father did not know about any of their Saturday activities. He
port cards, nothing locatable but every- all these eyes, all over the world, seeing wanted to be still, like a lizard. He said
thing there, somewhere, lost in plain the laminate wood grain of his dresser that he and Lenny had plans to go to
sight. Then it all got put in a white van top, the cloudy tarnish on the silver SunSplash on Saturday. Sure thing, his
and taken to be incinerated. The empty cross. The number of watchers rose, and father said. He never took it personally,
house smelled like chemicals, a burn- he felt a shiver down his back, as though never forced James to do anything. That
ing lemony air, and James vowed that someone had actually stepped behind was the unspoken policy.
he would never have more than he him. He turned off the monitor. James went back to worrying about
needed. He would keep the fat trimmed Atheism flooded his veins as if from the cross. Perhaps the new owner would
off his life, always; whoever had the job a spigot he’d opened. It was another kind have it examined by an expert, a jewel-
of cleaning up after James died would ler or a priest. His grandmother proba-
feel only relief when they opened the bly bought it at the church bookstore or
door to his room, only a sense that their ordered it from her angel catalogue—it
day wasn’t spent after all. couldn’t be old enough to have been
blessed by that Pope. He wanted to check
e woke with a thing in his head, the computer. He put down his fork.
H as if he’d dreamed it, though he
remembered no dream: a Pope. A man
Sometimes having to sit at a table
with his father, listening to him eat, was
in a hat on a balcony. unbearable. James hated when he was
He sat up, knowing what he was hard on his dad. His father was the most
going to do. of religion, almost, nonbelief. A kind of decent person James knew. The lock on
In a spirit of rebellion he went to the moral fierceness. What’s worse than an James’s door, for example.
school library at lunch to do some re- atheist? What’s more repugnant to the When James was six or seven they put
search. At the only computer with an faithful? He wanted to be that. him on Santa’s lap, and when Santa asked
Internet connection he wrote, This cross He should kill a spider. He should what he wanted he had said, My own
was blessed by Pope Pius XII. It has say it landed on another Pope. Or on apartment. He had meant it, hungered
been in my family since 1915. My great- someone better, more powerful. Mi- for privacy in a way that felt bodily. From
great uncle got to meet him at an im- chael Jackson. He’d had it preserved, his earliest memories that’s what he’d
portant council in Vienna. One of the but now his mother had cancer and they wanted—a compartment, really. A cubby.
controversial Popes, this particular Pius needed the cash to pay for her treat- His own air. Of course this was a story
56 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
everyone loved telling. His grandparents:
an apartment! His own place! A knee-slap-
per. But his father had known not to
make fun. His father had the next day
installed a small lock, a hook and eye, on
the inside of his bedroom door, at a level
where James could reach it. He said, I
want you to know I respect your privacy.
His father chewed his pork chops
loudly, cleaned the applesauce cup with
his index finger, licked his finger, and
finally James excused himself. Tonight
he locked himself in.
The winning bid was two hundred
and ninety dollars.
Good Christ.
The number frightened him, a siren
went off in his head, conspiracy, con-
spiracy, red syllables spinning. Should
he tell his father?
No.
He called Lenny and confessed. He
expected Lenny to chide him, or to be
mad that James hadn’t told him, but
Lenny only said, A Pope? That’s genius,
man, that’s sick! and James felt a pop
of regret and went cold all over.
It’s fraud, James said.
Lenny laughed. My fish was fraud, too.
It feels different.
Lenny said it wasn’t a big deal. If
• •
James got caught he should claim to be
an idiot who believed a stupid story—a of those singing novelties, but no words not compound it with denial. Before
gullible kid who’d only passed on what came out, no command, just screech- he left for school he made a decision,
he’d been told. It’s not illegal to sell bull- ing, metal on metal, a mouth gasping and he wrote an e-mail, simple and to
shit, not in America. You could not be for air, and after he woke he lay in his the point:
arrested for holding a false belief. bed for a long time. Lenny would say
They talked about things one could it was a funny dream but it was not. He I’ve thought about it and I feel uncomfort-
able taking money for something of spiritual
buy with two hundred and ninety dollars. wouldn’t tell Lenny. significance. You obviously care a lot about
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, James said The sunrise made his curtains red. this. Please send me your address. I need no
before they hung up. He pictured the desert around him. In money. It’s yours for free.
And Lenny said, You’re cold-blooded, his mind he lifted its top, like the lid
man. I respect that. I don’t think I could off a pot, and underneath, in a million He felt better.
sell mine. divots and tunnels and burrows, every He was going to tell Lenny at lunch,
manner of bug fretting away, full of poi- but Lenny was busy talking about some

J ames received an e-mail:

Quite the showdown! I am the lucky

son. Not just bugs. People, too. Bugs
and people, toiling out of sight. A suf-
girl who had apparently spent almost the
entirety of typing period painting her
fering class, an army of workers, always nails with Wite-Out, and then, at the
winner. My name is Steven. Please share your
address and I will send a check promptly by
out of sight. He tried to remember them. end, aced the unit test. A girl like that,
postal service. I prefer to use checks. I hope He was supposed to be grateful he was Lenny mused. She commands respect.
this is acceptable to you. I am old-fashioned not them; he had received this message Then the girl joined them, and Lenny
(in most things, when I can be). When you from a young age, but you had to re- introduced them.
send the cross, it would be kind of you to in- member them to be grateful. That was quite a stunt in typing.
clude a detailed writeup. Anything you know
is appreciated—its provenance, ownership,
He knew he had made a mistake. She tossed an arm like whatever.
travel history. For posterity. I will take great He couldn’t take the money. Taking that Her name was Claudine. She had
care of it, you can be sure. Yrs sincerely. man’s money made him feel sick. Ste- dyed black hair and a loud, zingy voice.
ven’s money. Bad luck. Nonsense, but Her fingers were long and skinny, and
That night James dreamed of a there it was, suddenly clear. He was with the Wite-Out on her nails they
fish on a plaque, a mechanical bass, one ashamed of his irrationality but would reminded James of Q-tips. He said
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 57
 time. Then inside again to get cold.
He was preparing to go. Titration. In
and out.

t was the early days of sending pic-

I tures on the Internet. So when the
e-mail came from Steven a week later,
which said only, in the subject line,
“THANK YOU,” James almost didn’t see
the attachment, and then he almost didn’t
open it—he wasn’t sure how to, or what
he was opening. Finally he clicked on
the right spot, certain his eyes would land
on something awful. A penis, likely. A
mutilated body. Or a category of horror
he’d not yet been exposed to, something
even Lenny hadn’t prepared him for. But
it was only a picture of a room. A twin
bed, neatly made. A blue blanket, a white
pillow, a window with its shade pulled
halfway down, an expanse of unbroken
“And voilà! The magician disappears!” gray sky in the glass. The bed had a plain
wooden headboard. Above it, on the wall,
his First Communion cross. Someone
• • had pounded it into the wall with a nail.
That was all the picture showed.
this. She laughed and wiggled her fingers. James read it twice. Take my Nazi
Lenny had math team that day, so cross. That’s what he wanted to write. e didn’t audition for the play that
James went home alone. The first thing
he did was go to the computer, where
But he didn’t write anything. He got on
his bike and rode to the post office,
H spring, even though the drama
teacher had picked it specifically for
he found another message: mailed the cross. No note, no informa- him, and spent more time at home. His
tion, no posterity, just the thing in its father grew concerned. Are you un-
You’re telling me you want to donate this
object to me? Am I to believe what I’m hear-
box. He swore he grew during this ride. happy, James? His father had steady,
ing? Faithfully, Steven He was a freak. It would not stop. By warm eyes. They radiated goodness, like
the time he got home, the bicycle seat a horse’s eyes, like a wise animal’s.
The interrogative mood annoyed was too low. Not at all, James said. And it was true,
him. As did the sign-off. He did not he realized. He was not unhappy. This
want to say it again. He could not. Yes, heila and his father made plans to was different from unhappiness. He sim-
send me your address, James wrote. He
didn’t put his name. It was three o’clock.
S go river rafting the next Saturday.
Did he want to come along? They’d
ply felt that he owed no one anything.
But he saw that his father was worried
He made himself a snack. He turned love it if he would. Couple hours. Noth- about him, so he went back to drama club.
on the television. He watched bloop- ing too serious. He really was an excellent actor, had
ers, then an infomercial for the last Lenny and I have plans. a kind of vacancy in his face that could
piece of exercise equipment he’d ever O.K., his father said. be filled by anything. His movements
need, a kind of pulley that would do But Lenny had math team, and were small, and he didn’t try to do too
miraculous things to both the male James decided to stay home alone, much, didn’t push. He was knobby, an-
and female posterior, gravity defiance. watch some TV, read a magazine, drogynous. He had the elegant slouch
When he went back to the computer, shave his downy lip and the under- of a Frenchman. Unless he played a sol-
he found: side of his chin. Then he would nap. dier, or a dignified prisoner, and then his
Or he would just sit by a window, spine was steel. He’d missed a month of
I believe I am in the presence of a soul who
has taken King Solomon’s advice to heart. My
sunlight streaming on his face, his rehearsal, but the teacher, Mr. Casey, gave
willingness to pay such an exorbitant sum limbs goose-bumped from air-condi- him the role he’d wanted him to play all
proves I am the rightful owner—is this my les- tioning, which he set at fifty-five when along—the lead—and the second choice
son, dear friend? If I read too much into your his father was gone. Fifty-three. Fifty. got demoted to play the banker, and the
generosity, I would appreciate you not to dis- He wanted a freezer, loved being banker went to the chorus.
suade me of my suspicion. It is a gift upon a
gift. The cross has found a good home. I will
punched by heat when he stepped When summer came he napped as
cherish it! In gratitude, Steven outside, which he did on the hour, much as possible. His limbs ached. His
letting the hot air blast his face. Im- legs cramped at night. It helped to swim
He included an address in Michigan. mense, dangerous air, even in spring- laps in the city pool. To kick. To hang
58 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
off a rubbery kickboard and motor dream- His father said, We’ll start going to curred to him in time. He hated it here,
ily until the lifeguard made him give up church again. he decided. These were hucksters. He
the lane for the geriatric club. He saw James made the start of a protest, would never come again. But he did all the
Lenny less. Lenny met a girl: Essie. She but his father said, I’m putting my foot things you do, the bowing and kneeling
was a friend of Claudine’s. down. It’ll be good for me, too. and murmuring—they were in his body,
Did this wound James? He thought No. like manners, and probably not even de-
about it. He told himself no. Lenny was It’s all right. We’ll go again. I was mentia can undo that programming. Af-
allowed to be normal. He did not want wrong to stop. I let my doubt affect you. terward, just as when he was a child, they
the things other people wanted, but I owe it to myself to examine my doubt. went for brunch at Eggington’s and ate
Lenny should. I owe it to you, too. pancakes and bacon, and here they told
Lenny began calling him the Monk No, you don’t. him he did not have a choice, sorry kiddo,
whenever he turned down plans. End of discussion, son. Which was they were kidnapping him and taking
He gave all his childhood junk to as firm as he got. him hiking on one of their favorite trails.
Goodwill. He lived in his cold, empty James didn’t say anything more. His You’ll love it, Sheila said. I know you
room. He grew in there, his bones. In the father would change his mind. He would will. It’s a very deep place. Deeper than
middle of summer vacation, he came not allow this breach in protocol. There church, even. A different kind of deep.
home from an afternoon of swimming was raspberry-ripple ice cream for des- I think you mean high, his father said,
to find his father at the kitchen table, sert, and some sort of low-fat topping wrapped his arm around her shoulder.
holding a piece of paper, mail spread out Sheila had recommended, a pale-pink High and deep, she sighed. She nuz-
before him. viscous froth that it turned out neither zled in for a kiss.
James, his father said. You’ve got to of them liked very much. She says it James looked down at his lap. When
tell me what’s going on. grows on you, his father said. he looked up again they were blush-
James was damp, shirtless, a towel ing and smiling and sitting conspicu-
across his shoulders. The air-condition- is father did not relent, and the ously apart.
ing slammed him. The tiles on his bare
feet sent scalding cold into legs. He’d
H next Sunday they went to the early
Mass. Sheila came along, wearing a blue
You want to invite Lenny? Sheila
said. You can invite Lenny. But you, sir,
forgotten to adjust the temperature be- dress, blue sandals, carrying a straw are going. It’s final. If you hate it, you
fore he left; he assumed the paper his purse, primly hippie. Church was as he never have to do it again.
father held was the electric bill. remembered—the blood was embar- Lenny’s busy.
Is it expensive? I’m sorry. I like it rassing in the same way, and the vagi- So you’ll come? I’m really of the be-
cold. I’ll stop turning it down. nal gashes in Christ’s torso, too. lief that all this air-conditioning is bad
But it was not the electric bill; it was When does a preoccupation with wick- for the lungs. We need to get up higher.
a card.The card stock was thin and glossy. edness become wicked itself ? This was It was the first time she had made
It had a floral meadow on the front. In- what he wished he could have asked his any play for his time.
side it said that a donation had been grandfather. The question had not oc- She wore two big turquoise rings,
made in James’s name to a monastery
in Michigan in the amount of two hun-
dred and ninety dollars. Blessings on his
soul, and prosperity in the Lord.
Oh, James said.
His father read aloud: Following the
example of St. Benedict, our monastery
is isolated in the country. In solitude
and silence, we seek to deepen our re-
lationship with the Lord.
His father blinked.
I don’t understand, his father said.
You gave money to this place?
It’s a long story.
Michigan?
It was a prank, James wanted to say,
but he found he could not.
Help me understand?
James felt a pulse behind his eyes.
He was going to cry.
His father saw. He said, It’s O.K. You
don’t have to explain.
James took a breath. Another. The
pulse quickened. “A sandbar formed during the night.”
one on each middle finger, and her ramicist, whom she still loved, who loved Her face near his face wobbled like a
mouth was slick, coated in Vaseline, on her, it was only that he was gay. One day, hologram.
account of the dryness. She applied it she said, they’d all have a meal together. Did you have too much coffee, honey?
constantly, always offered it to James They made their way up. The three Maybe, he said. He was always do-
and his father, even though neither of them climbed into the cragginess, up ing this, bringing himself to nausea with
availed himself. How chapped would and up, to the lookout, to the next look- caffeine.
his lips have to be to take a smudge of out, until the parched, dangerous ground Darling, Sheila said, stroked his
it from her mouthy tube? was very far away. The sweetness in the cheek.
What do you say, James? his father air fell away. It became harder and harder You O.K. there, pal? You need some
asked. to breathe. Sweat slipped down his spine. water?
In his father’s eyes was the softest She was giving up her apartment, Did you see him drink a single glass
beseeching thing. Barely there. James the best thing in the world, and taking of water at Eggington’s?
could plausibly deny having seen it. James’s spot. He saw in his mind’s eye a cold, clean,
Oh, James thought. Oh. May all that have life be delivered anonymous place. An apartment. The
He had missed something. He looked from suffering, Sheila was saying. I say word itself was a riot of happiness. It was
back to Sheila, saw her glistening lips, that every time I despair. It’s amazing all he’d ever wanted, to be alone in a simple
her sunny force, and understood: she how much comfort it gives me. Which place, a room. Privacy. A bed. A window.
was going to become his stepmother. I know isn’t the point, my comfort. But He could have it. His father could have
Nothing was spoken, but it was so clear I can’t help it. She gave a happy sigh, a family, a new twosome in their house.
that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen two notes, like a flute. I say it when I His father’s kindness spun around
it before. despair, and I say it when I see any crea- him like a lasso. Not like a lasso. A re-
He was fine. It’s true there was a mo- ture despairing. I’m always saying it. verse lasso. It was letting him go. O.K.,
ment, just one, a stabbing sense of sep- It’s very generous of you, his father he thought. O.K.
aration—but it passed. said. I’m happy for you two, he said.
He did the math. She was too old Sweetie, don’t tease! When we state They laughed in a way he didn’t
for babies. our intentions in the simplest way we like—laughed as if at a child who says
Well, he was disappointed in his fa- come closest to our divine nature. something unwittingly cute.
ther for needing a wife, but people were I’m dizzy, James said, for the world He wanted to throw the sombrero
allowed to do normal things. had gone faintly gauzy, but he spoke into the wilderness, get rid of it as fast
I’ll hike, he conceded. Once. too softly for them to hear. Then Sheila as he could. It seemed only a bad omen,
She clapped her hands. was saying, Oh, my God! Look—! Look though he didn’t believe in omens.
But I’m never going to church again, at that—! and from her tone they They were talking about coffee. They
he said. Just to make that clear. couldn’t tell if it was something sublime were saying that a body in the desert
His father raised an eyebrow. or dangerous—a f lowering bush? A needs a certain amount of water. Fuck
He’ll come back to it when he needs snake poised to strike? it! he thought. One last wish before he’d
it, Sheila said, patting his father’s hand. Something glistened on the ground, slide forever into disbelief. One last try.
I won’t, James said. near James’s foot. No, it was not alive. And he closed his eyes so that he would
You’ll decide, his father said. When Not going to bite. It was a necklace, half not see it land, so that it was still in the
you’re ready. under his sneaker, a gold necklace with air and would always be in the air, and
I’ve decided. a charm. threw the necklace overhand, expelling
I thought I’d decided, Sheila said. She bent down to pick it up. the thing. He did not mean to step off
Many times. A sombrero! she cried. How mar- the ledge. But he threw it hard, and his
I’m not as susceptible as you are, he vellous! I told you. I told you about foot slipped into crumbling earth, and
began to say, but he felt queasy from this place. he stumbled and then—as if in the same
caffeine and dropped it. They left the A sombrero, his father said. Well, spot where he’d been standing—he was
diner. It was so hot. The heat was never look at that. falling. Is falling. He cannot find any-
not a metaphor for death. This dry, hot She held it up to the sun. thing to grip. His limbs are not in his
air which preserved everything, which Brass, she announced, not gold, but possession any more; there is nothing
made him fear he would not get out. that did not detract from its luckiness. to hold. James! But then there are hands
Now Sheila would live with them. He His father pretended to be a prospec- around his arm, pulling him back. His
knew it. She rented a studio apartment tor, put it between his teeth, but Sheila wrist is being held. He feels the hands,
downtown; naturally she’d move in with grabbed it back from him. trying. They are trying their hardest,
them, into their three-bedroom in the It’s James’s, she said. She put it in his beginning to lift him. He hears a plane
safety of a cul-de-sac. hand, which was damp, shaking a little. shoot across the sky. He hears a woman
He saw what would happen. She James found it, she said, getting close screaming. He makes a face for the back
would install a better shower curtain. She to his face, speaking tenderly. Didn’t he? of the house. 
would paint the walls. She’d bring her James was standing right on top of it.
macramé plant holders and the set of I wasn’t, he said, but he was. He had NEWYORKER.COM
dishes made by her ex-husband the ce- been. He didn’t want to be. He felt sick. Sarah Braunstein on the early Web’s magic.

60 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021

 THE CRITICS

THE CURRENT CINEMA

FUNNY GAMES
“The Green Knight” and “John and the Hole.”

BY ANTHONY LANE

mong the highlights of David right. Students of Arthurian custom did Ralph Ineson, who starred with
A Lowery’s latest film, “The Green
Knight,” are the crowns. As worn by
will also note Lowery’s take on the
Round Table, which is more of a ring,
Dickie in “The Witch” (2015). Noth-
ing but his voice, which makes a bass
King Arthur (Sean Harris) and his with room in the middle for capering drum sound like a piccolo, tells us that
queen (Kate Dickie), they come with jesters, blackjack dealers, and the like. this is Ineson, for his features are clad
built-in halos, which are attached to Watch this space. in rough bark; he is part tree, like an
the back at ninety degrees, like the open Into Arthur’s hall, without an invi- Ent in “The Lord of the Rings,” and
lid of a tin can—handy for reminding tation, comes a figure on horseback— he creaks as he moves. (In a film full
your subjects that you rule by divine the Green Knight, played by the splen- of noises, which is worthy of savoring

David Lowery’s film of the medieval Gawain poem stars Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, and Ralph Ineson.
ILLUSTRATION BY DANI CHOI THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 61
with your eyes shut, the most resonant fulfills the demands of his Yuletide himself on the overgrown track of the
is the steely, clattering hiss that greets pledge, and, as in the poem, he takes poet from long ago, whose name we
the intruder when Arthur’s men draw refuge on his journey at a lonely cas- shall never know.
their swords.) It is Christmas, wreathed tle, where the lord ( Joel Edgerton)
with pagan ritual and Christian piety supplies a warm welcome and his wife ithout wishing to point the
alike, and the Knight bears an axe and
a branch of holly. He is armed with a
(Vikander again, now with improved
elocution) makes it warmer still, much
W finger at witchcraft, I’d say that
the kinship between “The Green
festive wager, too: Who will strike him to Gawain’s discomfort. Yet what we Knight” and “John and the Hole,” a
with a single swing of a blade, and witness in his chamber is, if anything, new movie from the Spanish director
then, a year and a day hence, accept a less carnally candid than what we read Pascual Sisto, surpasses mere coinci-
blow in return? As Arthur remarks, on the page—“Hir brest bare bifore, dence. Sisto picks up the spell that is
in a sinister whisper, “Remember, it is and bihinde eke”—and the bloodshed, cast by Lowery’s tale, verdant with dan-
only a game.” too, is diluted. The hunting scenes on ger, and continues to weave.
“The Green Knight” is described on- which the poet lavishes great care, “John and the Hole” is set in the wilds
screen, in suitably antiquated fonts, as sparing no detail of gutting and butch- of New England; not the deepest wilds,
“A Filmed Adaptation of the Chivalric ering, are nowhere to be seen. (Low- because a short drive brings you to a
Romance by Anonymous.” The romance ery is a longtime vegan.) What we do town, but deep enough. Here, in a quiet
in question is a long English poem, “Sir have is a talking fox, imported from and fancy house, live Brad (Michael C.
Gawain and the Green Knight,” which Lars von Trier’s no less arboreal “Anti- Hall), his wife, Anna ( Jennifer Ehle),
was most likely written in the late four- christ” (2009), plus an introduction and their children, Laurie (Taissa Far-
teenth century. The poet promises to to Gawain’s mother (Sarita Choud- miga) and her younger brother, John
tell his tale “as hit is stad and stoken / In hury), a sorceress of many charms, (Charlie Shotwell). John is thirteen,
stori stif and stronge”—or, as rendered and a cameo appearance from a gang with days to fill and Lord knows what
by J. R. R. Tolkien, “as it is fixed and of passing giants. Above all, we get on his mind. Expressively blank, like a
fettered/in story brave and bold.” If the to hear the line “You’ll be my lady, handless clock, he sports a long lock of
language of the original, thorny with and I’ll be your man,” which would hair that flops over his brow; so did the
alliteration, has proved as tempting have surprised Tolkien, one of the po- youth who teamed up with the cyborg
and as testing to modern translators— em’s most distinguished editors, and in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991),
including the poets W. S. Merwin and which suggests that the culture of but John can boast no such adventures.
Simon Armitage—as the challenge courtly love was au fait with the work He has to invent his own. One night,
thrown down in Arthur’s court, how of Celine Dion. for no reason that he is willing to share,
much tougher is the task of convey- Yet “The Green Knight” wields a he uses his mother’s sleeping pills to
ing, in a movie, even scraps of so dis- peculiar magic, the reason being that drug his family, then hauls them out-
tant a legend? Lowery—as he showed in “A Ghost side, into the woods, and lowers them
One option is to snap the whole Story” (2017), which ranged with ease into a pit. And there, for most of the
thing awake. Thus, the sleeping Ga- over centuries—is consumed by cin- story, they remain.
wain (Dev Patel) gets a bucket of water ema’s capacity to measure and manip- The pit, we learn, is a bunker, dug
tossed over him by his low-born lover, ulate time. Observe the marvellous as part of a construction project that
Essel (Alicia Vikander), whose accent sequence in which Gawain, trussed was started by persons unknown but
wanders like a travelling minstrel. up by bandits, lies on a forest floor. never finished. Other remnants of the
Somebody calls out to him, “You a The camera pans around through project lie nearby: stone-gray chunks
knight yet?” “Not yet,” he says. “Better three hundred and sixty degrees; finds that resemble a Neolithic dolmen. In
hurry up,” comes the reply. Here, we him reduced to a skeleton; circles back line with that sense of historical ver-
gather, is not Gawain the paragon of in the opposite direction; and finally tigo, the captives seem to fall out of
gallant virtues, as he is hymned in the alights on him, now alive and about the here and now; exposed to the ele-
poem, but Gawain the lad—lusty, hasty, to break free of his bonds. What might ments, for the hole has no cover, they
and unsure of his noble vocation. Later, happen and what does happen are grow filthy and then sluggish, slum-
though, it is he who responds to the thereby fused within one shot, and bering as if in hibernation. Later, when
Green Knight’s dare; who decapitates the fusion recurs toward the movie’s John lets down a bucket of food, they
him; who looks on as his victim calmly end, when Gawain, to his shame, scrabble at it with bare paws. Brad, in
retrieves the head (which gives a defi- flinches from the axe and runs away. particular, after an initial protest—“You
ant laugh) and departs; who is there- As in a vision, we see him returning are in so much trouble, little man,”
fore honor-bound to embark on a quest, home, inheriting the crown, losing all he says to his son—begins to slump.
enduring many perils en route; and joy, and watching his reign collapse. How swiftly and with what docility,
who, as the year dwindles, meets the Such, we understand, is what would according to Sisto’s film, the prosper-
woody stranger once again, and awaits befall him were he to fail in his chi- ous American male is unmanned. “I’ve
the axe’s bite. valric duty, and such is the irony that never been hungry before,” Brad ad-
In short, the film is an uneasy blend fires this film: it is when the director mits. The creature without his com-
of the bygone and the new. Gawain follows his own path that he finds forts scarcely exists.
62 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
 Anna and Laurie, as you’d expect,
make more of an effort to engage with
John, yet the movie is largely uncon- BRIEFLY NOTED
cerned with them—a real pity, with
performers as strong as Ehle and Far- This Is Your Mind on Plants, by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press).
miga in the frame. It’s almost as if Sisto The plants of the title furnish three consciousness-altering
were allowing John’s indifference, and drugs—opium, caffeine, and mescaline—and this thought-
his torpor of spirit, to infect the entire ful study traces their effects not only on our brains but also
proceedings. Shotwell is scarily plau- on our culture and history. Coffee and tea consumption in
sible in the role, presenting us not sim- Europe may have paved the way for the Enlightenment; the
ply with a sociopath but, below that, peyote cactus, which produces mescaline, is central to Native
with a bored boy who searches for kicks American Church ceremonies that help participants process
and rehearses an adulthood that he Colonial traumas. Pollan, experimenting himself, discovers
both craves and dreads. He drives the that opium “lightens the existential load,” while mescaline
family car; he cooks a risotto, follow- brings about “a tidal wave of awe.” As the U.S.’s drug poli-
ing a recipe from a laptop; and, when cies become less punitive, he argues, we should think more
a friend of his mother’s, Paula (Tamara clearly about substances we’ve come to depend on, “both al-
Hickey), shows up, he tells her that his lies and poisons at once.”
parents are away and, at his creepiest,
entreats her to stay. He also inquires Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn (Viking). Travelling
into her age: “How does it feel?” he asks. around the world to places blighted by human activity, Flyn,
“To be fifty?” a writer from the Scottish Highlands, witnesses “the conse-
John has a pal of his own, Peter (Ben quences of human folly, hubris, of deals made with the devil.”
O’Brien), who pays a visit. They play Visiting such wastelands as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a
video games and try to discover how burial site for chemical weapons from the First World War,
close they can come to drowning in and Cyprus’s no man’s land, she is struck not so much by des-
the swimming pool, courting death in a olation as by the capacity of ecosystems to adapt to change,
bid to shock themselves into sentience. with primal, elemental creativity. Flyn does not absolve us of
Here, as elsewhere, you feel the touch of pillaging the planet, but sees hope for redemption in nature’s
Michael Haneke, whose films are a roll ability to persist. Her travelogue captures the dread, sadness,
call of anesthetized souls; the image of and wonder of beholding the results of humanity’s destructive
a Ping-Pong player, endlessly repeating impulse, and she arrives at a new appreciation of life, “all the
his forehand, in Haneke’s “71 Fragments stranger and more valuable for its resilience.”
of a Chronology of Chance” (1994),
is echoed in closeups of John, who is Virtue, by Hermione Hoby (Riverhead). Luca, the protago-
gifted at tennis, hitting ball after ball. nist of this novel, set in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s
“This is your life, John,” the coach says electoral victory, is an intern at a New York literary maga-
to him. “This could be who you are.” zine. Educated at Dartmouth and Oxford, he feels he “had
What a prospect. no voice” and is drawn to those who do: a brilliant Black
In case you aren’t sufficiently chilled colleague who skewers liberal bourgeois pieties; a pair of es-
by this icy fable, Sisto wraps it inside teemed, wealthy artists who entangle him in their theatrics.
a second, semi-connected scenario. Actual events, such as the white-supremacist rally in Char-
“John and the Hole” is also the title of lottesville, flood the book, but Trump is never mentioned by
a story that is requested by a girl named name. The novel is most poignant when it reflects on the
Lily (Samantha LeBretton), who is irreversible passing of time. “I’d never be that young again,”
twelve but looks younger. Without a future Luca tells us. “You only realize this when you’re old.”
warning or explanation, in a scene that
typifies Sisto’s nonviolent yet emotion- The Beginners, by Anne Serre, translated from the French by
ally bruising approach, Lily is left to Mark Hutchinson (New Directions). On the first page of this
fend for herself by her mother, who, wry, unconventional novel about a woman’s desire, Anna, a
much like the tennis coach, declares, middle-aged art critic in an exceptionally happy twenty-year
“This is your life. You get to make your relationship, falls abruptly in love with Thomas, a near-
own decisions now.” Lily’s face is a pic- stranger. Overwhelmed by the affair, but wanting to believe
ture of devastation, and we realize, com- she loves both men, Anna searches for her “true life,” reckoning
paring her experience with John’s, that with the selfishness of her passion and a sadness at her core
one child’s freedom is another’s utter that Thomas seems to share. “It’s not about, on the one hand,
abandonment. Either way, kids, the a man, and on the other, another,” Serre writes. “It’s about a
grownup world is coming to get you. life—beating, quivering, like an organ laid bare—to which
Good luck.  both men belong.”
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 63
 origin and the country of destination.
BOOKS I’m thinking of writers as diverse as
W. G. Sebald, Amit Chaudhuri, Taiye

COMING AND GOING

Selasi, Aleksandar Hemon, Chima-
manda Ngozi Adichie, Francisco Gold-
man, and Yaa Gyasi. It’s not unusual to
In Sunjeev Sahota’s “China Room,” immigration divides stories and selves. find their books structured around sev-
eral narratives set in different countries,
BY JAMES WOOD and to find the author as the narrating
self who binds together these disparate
journeys. Mental travel—the work of
memory—is replaced, to some extent,
by actual travel. I don’t know if this is
World Literature, but it’s certainly a
worldly literature: the enigma of arriv-
als and departures. The anguish of ir-
reversibility—of journeys that can never
be redone—is replaced by the more ex-
pansive unease of liminality, of journeys
that are constantly being redone.
This simple point has complex con-
sequences. Significantly, an identity that
was somewhat complacently called hy-
brid or hyphenated (“British-Indian,”
“Bosnian-American,” and so on) is now
producing stories whose very form is
structurally hyphenated. The picture of
immigration, in turn, shifts a little. The
literature of immigration edges closer
to a literature of migration. The heavy
modernity of travel may have intro-
duced a new type of liquid modernity.

unjeev Sahota’s new novel, “China

S Room” (Viking), is a fine example
of this emerging form—a split narra-
tive, alternating between India and Brit-
ain, controlled by the self-conscious
presence of the author, who appears as
himself in different guises. One strand,
s it hyperbolic to suggest that the 747 the old country receded into vivid mem- set in India in the late nineteen-twenties,
I has been more world-changing than
the Internet—that the supercharged mo-
ory, while the immigrant’s daily focus had
to shift to the sometimes bitter novelties
tells the story of Mehar Kaur, an illit-
erate girl who is married off at fifteen
bility of people, rather than of bits, has of life in the new country. It is hard to to a wealthier, somewhat older man
mattered most? Consider immigration live in two places at once: with a few no- named Jeet, and is kept like chattel on
in the decades after the Second World table exceptions, émigré fiction and the Jeet’s family farm, which he shares with
War, and the rich literature it produced. fiction of early post-colonial immigra- his tyrannical mother, Mai, and his two
A world in which it was practically im- tion tended to be set either in the old married brothers. The novel’s title re-
possible to return to the country one had country or in the new one, but not, during fers to the dark room where Mehar and
left resulted in a kind of immigration the same period, in both. her two sisters-in-law spend much of
close to the idea of exile. The journey In the past three decades or so, with their circumscribed lives: Jeet’s mother
from birthplace to adopted country—the the advent of cheaper air travel and a keeps a set of china plates there, origi-
journey that V. S. Naipaul called, in “The further “great movement of peoples,” a nally part of her wedding dowry.
Enigma of Arrival,” the “great movement new literature of displacement has arisen, Forty pages into this engrossingly
of peoples that was to take place in the whose structure is often characterized bleak tale, we shift to the summer of
second half of the twentieth century”— by a freer and continuous movement 2019, somewhere in the English Mid-
took on an arrowlike terminality. Life in back and forth between the country of lands. Sahota, who was born in Derby
in 1981, and is here apparently writing
Sahota traverses a family’s history, from India to Britain and back. as himself, or as a near alter ego, tells of
ILLUSTRATION BY SIMONE NORONHA THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 65
 cleanliness of the railway station: “This
Sheffield must be a good city. He won-
dered why he’d never heard of it.” Ran-
deep tells a friend, who is meeting him
at the station, that Sheffield seems
beautiful. The friend looks surprised,
and flatly replies, “Hold that thought.”
They drive out of the city on roads that
“wound through narrow, boarded-up,
wretched-looking streets.” Avtar, who
finds a job at a fried-chicken outlet, is
warned by other employees to make
himself scarce during the nightly “Drunk
Rush,” when the pubs close and the rac-
ist white youths come out. When sev-
eral of those youths spit at him, Ran-
deep is gently consoled by a white
colleague, who tells him how sorry she
is. Sahota writes, “He nodded, though
perhaps even worse than the spitting
was the quietness in her voice, the sense
of someone being embarrassed for him.”
“China Room” is smaller, trickier, and
more artfully constructed than “The Year
of the Runaways”; it lacks the hospita-
ble grasp and ample onrush of that big
“I always feel fat when we play in Los Angeles.” work. But Sahota’s gifts as both story-
teller and stylist are undiminished. Lovely
• • phrases glitter. In India, “the asphalt of
the road was giving off rags of steam.”
A sunny day is described as “bright as
his father’s knee surgery, and of return- renew realism’s charter by illuminating parrots.” Also in India: “Around him the
ing to the “house and shop where I grew realities that had previously been shad- lane is greasy with sun.” And in contem-
up,” in order to help out. He brings some owy, with a generous mimetic innocence porary England? The author remem-
books with him, but finds it hard to read that brings to mind the great realist bers growing up there, the menace of
or write. Memories swarm. As he sits chroniclers. It concerns the lives of three racism all around him, and compacts it
at the family dining table, his attention young Indian men and a British Indian into this eloquent trace: “older kids, with
is drawn to a framed photograph of his woman, Narinder, who marries one of their grey threatening noise.”
great-grandmother, who came all the them. Tochi, Randeep, and Avtar are Sahota’s ability to shine a phrase is
way to England to meet him when he new immigrants to Britain, desperate not bought for the usual steep formal-
was born. “China Room” reproduces this for money, living together with other ist price, at the expense of simplicity, in-
same photograph, in which a white- workers in the dilapidated former in- timate feeling, and solid representation.
haired lady, “her chunni sliding off her dustrial powerhouse of Sheffield. They He’s both camera and painter, in a lit-
head,” smiles down forgivingly at the must take whatever jobs they can pick erary world that often separates those
yelling baby on her lap. We will learn up—doing construction, working at a novelistic tasks. In one of the opening
that the woman is Mehar, whose story takeout shop. Sahota is a bold storyteller scenes, for instance, the five-year-old
we have just begun. The photograph re- who seems to have learned as many tricks Mehar is being appraised for marriage
minds our writer of a visit he made to from TV as from Tolstoy, and has a jew- by Jeet’s horrible mother, Mai. Mai acts
a farm in India when he was eighteen eller’s unillusioned eye for the goods. with the license of a woman who has
and recovering from heroin addiction. Detail after detail gleams in that the wealth of three marriageable sons.
The account of this convalescent visit novel: Tochi, standing in the office of Mehar’s shy, nervous mother apologizes
now alternates with Mehar’s tale from the travel agent who will arrange his to Mai for her daughter’s unformed looks:
the early twentieth century. arduous passage from India to Europe, “I think she has a nice face . . . and, god
sees a map on the wall and asks him willing, I’m sure she’ll grow into her
ahota is an enormously gifted writer. where France is. “Oh, no,” the agent re- forehead. Rest assured, I apply down-
S His last novel, “The Year of the Run-
aways,” which was short-listed for the
plies. “France is in Europe. That is South
India.” Randeep, arriving by train from
ward pressure on it most mornings.” She
smiles anxiously. “She’s adequate,” Mai
2015 Booker Prize, is a detailed epic of London at Sheffield, is impressed by brusquely replies. “In any case, an agree-
immigration, one of those works that the softness of the countryside and the ment was made.”
66 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021
 Mehar’s story has the brutal elegance is at large in the countryside, and talk of earlier imposed version. Sahota’s nov-
of folklore. Three women, Mehar, Har- “self-rule” is in the air. Perhaps the po- elistic intention here, it would seem, is
bans, and Gurleen, strangers to one an- litical can become the personal. ultimately curative: the recovering de-
other, have been married off to Mai’s scendant must open the dread room
three sons, Jeet, Mohan, and Suraj. The t’s possible that Sahota inherited a where Mehar was once kept, and “re-
brothers, who are Sikhs, spend their time
out in the fields at work, or elsewhere,
I version of this story as family lore,
and was drawn to the extraordinary gap
cover” the past by admitting a cleans-
ing contemporary illumination. The al-
but the three women are largely con- between the misogynist purdah of his ternation between Mehar’s tale and the
fined to the china room, where they pre- great-grandmother’s experience in 1929 narrator’s, we see, is one between a re-
pare food and where they sleep, lying and the photographic evidence of an old ligious and a secular dispensation. On
next to one another on two parallel string woman free to travel from an indepen- one side, there is confinement, prohi-
beds. Mai controls every detail of the dent India to visit her descendants in bition, and antique punishment; on the
lives of her sons and daughters-in-law, the former seat of colonial power. The other, there is mobility, license, and con-
and runs the household like the madam distance might be fifty years or five hun- temporary forgiveness. The old tale is
of a brothel, with a prurient interest in dred; the story of switched lovers and written in a locked-up third person, the
the sexual activity of the residents and the threat of retribution clearly belongs contemporary one, with its nice timbre
a businesswoman’s stake in producing to ancient literature. This must be part of autofiction, in a free first person. And
male heirs. Whenever one of the hus- of the reason that Sahota decided to dis- a third presence hovers, the present-day
bands wishes to sleep with his wife, the rupt the old tale with modern interven- narrator, who, one assumes, got beyond
relevant woman is ordered by Mai to a tions—measuring progress made and his teen-age problems and flourished
windowless room at the back of the farm, not made. The narrator, at the age of into the author of this novel. Contrast-
a sort of dedicated sex chamber. Since eighteen, arrives in the village of Kala ing versions of belonging, of being in
the women are veiled, and cast their eyes Sanghian, in Punjab, which is “at least the world, face each other as well. Had
down in the presence of their husbands, a twelve-hour drive from the nearest city the young Mehar been able to immi-
since they only ever make love in the anyone would have heard of.” He is stay- grate to England, her narrative would
dark, and since Mai chooses to ration ing with his uncle and aunt, who are likely have gone in one irreversible di-
all their knowledge, none can identify trapped in an unhappy arranged mar- rection, scored with a tragic note of exile
which brother is her husband. The riage. The teen-ager from England is on and homelessness: maybe a liberation
women are curious, of course. But the the lip of change—feverish from heroin of sorts, but one with its own aspects
brothers look alike: “The same narrow withdrawal, sent away for the summer of imprisonment.
build, with unconvincing shoulders and to recover, he is awaiting the start of his That is precisely the shape of the im-
grave eyes; serious faces that carry no first university term in London. Much migrant lives represented in “The Year
slack, features that follow the same rules. hangs on his healing. Eventually, as part of the Runaways”: the novel pictures
The three are evenly bearded, the hair of his convalescence, he decides to spend their impoverished Indian existence as
trimmed short and tight, and all day some time alone at a nearby family farm, before, and their bleak English existence
they wear loose turbans cut from the now derelict. It is, of course, as after. But the narrator
same saffron wrap.” the farm where Mehar was of “China Room,” for all
The premise becomes a plot when, confined, and, indeed, the his experience of gray, rac-
with the inevitability of a fairy tale, Mehar young man finds the china ist little Englanders, doesn’t
identifies the wrong brother, Suraj, as room, bolted shut and with inhabit a before and after
her husband. Suraj is under no such il- iron bars over the window. in quite the same way. Born
lusion, but what begins, for him, as ex- He spends about two months in England, the relatively
ploitative sex deepens into passion. The here, his isolation sporadically fortunate child of immi-
lovers meet in a nearby barn, in the fields, interrupted by visits from a grants who have already
wherever they can escape Mai’s surveil- brilliant and alluring phy- made their difficult jour-
lance. These scenes are fraught with ob- sician, Radhika Chaturvedi, ney, and have done so, in
vious danger; the threat of exposure and who has divined what “ill- part, for him, he has no
punishment is close by. Suraj knows that ness” he is really recovering from. The personal knowledge of before and after.
if the news ever emerges Mehar’s life teen-ager falls promptly and fruitlessly in He inhabits something closer to a kind
will effectively end. But these are also love with her. In time, he also hears a gar- of secular homelessness, shorn of the
moments of tender liberation. Sahota bled account of his great-grandmother’s religious echo of exile. For him, belong-
delicately brings alive the lovers’ awak- story. “She strayed with a brother,” a ing has become complex and continu-
ening, especially Mehar’s, as she devel- local tells him. “He went away and left ous—a state of movement, an identity
ops a steady erotic confidence, a language her behind.” always being worked out and worked
to express her desire for the man she The two story lines are neatly, per- at. In this way, Sahota’s implied pres-
thinks is her husband. Suraj imagines haps too neatly, counterposed: a mod- ence in his own text seems necessary
that the world is changing, that they ern arranged marriage is paired with and also perhaps hopeful: a difficult re-
might be able to flee the farm for a big the older one; the young man’s volun- covery and healing beyond the dimen-
city, like Lahore. A Sikh revolutionary tary purdah on the farm glances off the sion of a single summer. 
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 67
 mad, in which the Prophet, then an
BOOKS illiterate merchant, is visited by the
angel Gabriel, commanded to “read,”

LOST FOR WORDS

and given his first revelation. In Ak-
bar’s retelling, this gift of knowledge
isn’t benevolently bestowed; it’s thrust
Kaveh Akbar’s “Pilgrim Bell” finds meaning in misunderstanding. upon the recipient without his consent,
the angel “squeezing out the air of pro-
BY ANDREW CHAN test, the air of doubt, crushing it out
of his crushable human body.” Lan-
guage can illuminate the world, but it
can also destroy a self. It may be both
good and bad fortune, then, that no
grand truth will be elucidated for the
poet: “Gabriel isn’t coming for you,”
Akbar tells himself.
In “the absence of cloud-parting,
trumpet-blaring clarity,” these poems
ask what meaning can be found—or
made—through partial revelation, in
a world so often defined by misunder-
standings: with others, with God, with
ourselves. Sometimes the lack of clar-
ity is literal. Flip through this book and
you’ll notice formal and stylistic strat-
egies that play at the edges of deci-
pherability. One poem is printed back-
ward, forcing us to either hold it up to
a mirror or patiently decode it letter by
letter. (Farsi is read right to left, a re-
minder that our notion of backward-
ness is always arbitrary.) The six enig-
matic poems that share the book’s title
are studded with periods that keep in-
terrupting the speaker midsentence, as
though his hurtling train of thought re-
quired speed bumps.
This illegibility, in Akbar’s hands,
becomes a site of creativity. “Reading
Farrokhzad in a Pandemic” begins with
hen the poet Kaveh Akbar was so careless with the words I already an admission:
W a young child, his father taught
him to recite Muslim prayers in Ara-
have. / / I don’t remember how to say
home / in my first language, or lonely, The title is a lie;
I can’t read Farsi.
bic, a language Akbar didn’t under- or light.”
stand, and which his family spoke only Poetry requires the opposite of such ‫ما هر چه را که باید از دست داده باشیم از دست داده ایم‬
during worship. Mimicking those in- carelessness, and Akbar is exquisitely
I can make out:
cantatory sounds, he briefly embodied sensitive to how language can func-
a foreign tongue. He could inhabit the tion as both presence and absence. In “we lose,
lyric beauty of the words, he discov- his most recent collection, “Pilgrim we lose.”
ered, even without grasping their mean- Bell” (Graywolf ), words assume phys-
ing. Akbar, who was born in Iran, ar- ical, palpable form—as reverberations I type it into a translation app:
“we have lost everything we need to lose.”
rived in the United States when he was in the mouth and ear—but can just as
two, a transition that imparted another easily take on a spectral aura, remind- In between what I read and what is written:
lesson in linguistic gain and loss: while ing us of worlds and selves no longer “need,” “everything.”
he picked up English, Farsi began to within reach. “The Miracle,” written
fade. In a poem called “Do You Speak in short, parable-like paragraphs, opens Akbar’s writing, like his halting trans-
Persian?,” Akbar writes, “I have been with a story from the life of Muham- lation, depends on resourcefulness, a
surrender to a given set of materials,
Akbar captures how total, and totalizing, the physicality of language can be. even those which elude understanding.
68 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 PHOTOGRAPH BY RAFAEL MARTÍNEZ
The words he assembles are like so many so, too, do they shape his reckoning with
puzzle pieces, and meaning is created divinity. Like another transcendentally
even when they don’t fit. inclined chronicler of addiction, the late
poet Franz Wright, Akbar suggests that
n Akbar’s poetry, what the mind strains pain’s intensity thrusts us into the sub-
I to interpret the body often feels viscer-
ally. “Pilgrim Bell” is strewn with throats,
lime—or, at least, replaces God’s untouch-
ability with something that we can feel
lungs, teeth, clavicles. In Akbar’s first in our flesh. In “Vines,” Akbar’s description
full-length collection, “Calling a Wolf a of a divine encounter echoes John Donne:
Wolf,” from 2017, about struggling with where Donne implores the Lord to “bat-
drug and alcohol addiction, he writes, ter” and “ravish” him, Akbar imagines that
“every step I’ve taken/has been from one God has “bricked up my mouthhole.”
tongue to another,” a nonsensical colli- Elsewhere, he speculates that faith, rather
sion of body parts—feet and mouths— than originating in the unknown, “passes
that captures just how total, and totaliz- first through the body/like an arrow.”
ing, the physicality of language can be. When divine wisdom is violently im-
“Wolf ” overflows with compulsive speech, posed, the poet responds by forging his
a frenzy that replaces, or relives, the mania own knowledge. “I live in a great mosque,”
of intoxication.The reader moves through he writes,
the narrator’s sensorium like a pinball,
ricocheting between strange visions and Built on top of a flagpole.
Whatever happens happens.
exuberant riffs: Loudly. All day I hammer the distance.
I need to be broken like Between earth and me.
an unruly mustang Into faith.
like bitten skin supposedly people hymned
before names their mouths What he hammers and builds—this
were zeroes little pleasure portals for taking book—is beautiful, but it isn’t always du-
in grape rable, or endurable. He laments that his
leaves cloudberries the fingers of lovers today
words fly
“savior” is often a “no-call no-show. Cu-
in all directions rious menace.” In “My Empire,” he caus-
tically observes, “The prophets came to
And yet alongside this wordplay we sense participate in suffering/as if to an amuse-
that Akbar’s concern with language is ment park, which makes / our suffering
deadly serious: to speak is to survive. the main attraction.”
In “Pilgrim Bell,” claustrophobic The question of who suffers and who
monologues open up, making room for watches is inevitably a political one. “Pil-
other sympathetic characters. “Reza’s Res- grim Bell” builds up to “The Palace,” the
taurant, Chicago, 1997” revolves around a longest poem in the book, and its most
joke Akbar’s father told him as a child explicit take on power in America. Here
about how to differentiate Persians from the singular images that distinguish many
Arabs and white people: “we’re just ug- of Akbar’s poems occasionally give way
lier,” the punch line goes. This is a lesson to more predictable symbols: “There are
in yet another type of legibility, the kind no doors in America. /Only king-sized
written on the human face. It isn’t, at first, holes.” Indeed, Akbar himself seems aware
a comfortable lesson: for an eight-year- of this derivativeness. “It is absurd to say
old, it’s a recipe for self-consciousness. anything now/(much less anything new),”
Still, this poem is also full of sensual tex- he writes. But his practice of taking lan-
ture and nostalgic pleasure. Akbar’s fa- guage apart, and harnessing the empty
ther’s smile is “a warm nest /of lip”; his space around it, makes even the most fa-
voice, “the first sound I ever heard.” If the miliar words seem eerie and unexpected.
fraught question of beauty within com- Beneath the hyperbole of politics, Akbar
munities of color can sometimes inspire uncovers a simpler, awkward humanity.
generic calls for self-esteem, a corrective His discoveries may not always be “new,”
to society’s othering gaze, this tongue- and may not always feel right, but they’re
in-cheek ode to “ugliness” offers some- the truth:
thing possibly deeper: a sense of self that
Mistyping in an email I write,
is truly sensory. I lose you so much today,
Just as pain and pleasure vie in Ak-
bar’s search for identity within his family, then leave it. 
 cently, the experimental duo 100 gecs
POP MUSIC has honed a delirious, cleverly referen-
tial sort of hyperpop. Like PC Music,

MAINSTREAMING
they confound the corporate centers
of the music industry: their songs have
drawn fervent fans, but the group is too
How online playlists took hyperpop from subculture to pop culture. brash and novel to be easily boxed into
any preëxisting musical categories. Still,
BY CARRIE BATTAN playlists are the bread and butter of
streaming services, and they live and die
by legible taxonomies. So in 2019, to ad-
dress the quandary of 100 gecs’ unlikely
popularity and unwieldy style, Spotify
launched a new playlist designed to give
their sound a home on the platform. It
was called “hyperpop.”
Today, the hyperpop playlist serves
many functions: it is a corporate brand-
ing exercise, a track list with an obses-
sive listener base, a constantly evolving
document of a vital corner of music’s
digital underground, and an object of
resentment among some of the artists
it promotes. The micro-genre has be-
come inf luential enough that Apple
Music now has its own version of the
hyperpop playlist, called “Glitch.” Ear-
lier this year, SoundCloud—the D.I.Y.
streaming service where many hyper-
pop artists uploaded their earliest songs—
published a short film about the scene,
which it called “digicore.” Incoherence
is inherent to the genre, and the songs
on Spotify’s hyperpop playlist vary widely
in style. A recent track-list update in-
cluded songs that featured rapping in
Chinese, vocals pitched to robotic or ex-
traterrestrial tones, pure pop hooks, and
even an adrenalized head rush of a dub-
step song by the Russian activist group
n 2014, music fans and critics began to make people feel as if they’re on com- Pussy Riot, which seems to have taken
I paying close attention to a mysteri-
ous group of artists who’d started re-
mon ground with all of humanity, this
music made listeners feel like they were
a liking to the genre. (The update also
included an ecstatic remix by A. G. Cook,
leasing tracks online. They were part of in on a very specific joke. In a Pitch- the so-called godfather of hyperpop.)
PC Music, a loose electronic-music col- fork article titled “PC Music’s Twisted Most of the songs on the playlist, though,
lective that functioned more like a con- Electronic Pop: A User’s Manual,” one are unified by a bludgeoning irreverence,
ceptual-art project. Led by a young, in- critic wrote, “The shadowy operation beats with breakneck tempos, and a max-
ventive producer from London named and its bewildering brand of hyper-pop imalist electronic production style that
A. G. Cook, PC Music, and its affiliates, have been everywhere in the past few sounds like it was designed to blow out
rejected a dark, murky strain of under- months . . . and its influence seems to speakers, or to be played on ones that
ground electronic music that was be- be growing on a daily basis.” are already damaged.
loved at the time. Instead, they latched That term, “hyper-pop,” was such an One artist often featured on the hy-
onto the most exuberant and absurd el- intuitively accurate way to describe this perpop playlist is a gangly, mop-headed
ements of pop, making cutesy, theatri- scene that it eventually became a catch- sixteen-year-old named Ash Gutierrez,
cal songs that sounded a bit like chil- all for the many subgenres, artists, and who performs as glaive, a name taken
dren’s music, but with an unsettling af- micro-communities that the PC Music from the video game Dark Souls III. (It
tertaste. If mainstream pop is designed movement helped give rise to. More re- is technically inaccurate to say that he
performs—Gutierrez has never per-
The artist glaive might expand the genre’s boundaries, or he might outgrow them. formed live, nor has he ever even seen
70 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 ILLUSTRATION BY RAISA ÁLAVA
live music performed, as he said in a re- tronic effects to render human emotions shown how corporate entities not only
cent interview.) Gutierrez spent the early foreign, but Gutierrez shows so many glom onto cultural waves but also be-
days of the pandemic in his bedroom, genuine feelings on this record that those come instrumental in shaping their iden-
in a small rural town in North Caro- digital filters would have been inappro- tities. It’s a dynamic that can be vexing
lina, acquainting himself with music- priate, and these days he tends to forgo to artists. Last September, Spotify re-
production software. Energized by art- them. On the EP, which is laden with cruited A. G. Cook to do a “takeover” of
ists like 100 gecs and a suite of emotional bluesy guitar arrangements and over- the playlist, adding songs of his choos-
Internet rappers, Gutierrez began mak- cast hip-hop beats, he plays the belea- ing. His selections included beloved,
ing beats and singing over them. Re- guered protagonist of his own teen-age decades-old tracks by legacy artists like
mote schooling had freed him from a dramas, conveying small-time conflicts Kate Bush and J Dilla, a sign that per-
fear of judgment by his classmates, and in anguished, cinematic proportions. haps he had misunderstood the nature
he gathered the courage to post some “There’s a couple hundred people wanna of the playlist, or had taken a willfully
of his songs on SoundCloud. One of the end me/If you ever need a thing, prom- broad approach. This rankled some of
first, called “sick,” was clearly part of the ise you’ll text me,” he sings on “detest the musicians who were booted from
hyperpop lineage. The one-minute-and- me,” a confident pop song. He expresses the playlist to make room for Cook’s se-
thirty-second track begins with a set of his sense of betrayal with such inten- lections. Playlists can act as financial life-
bleeps and bloops that recall a video- sity and charm that it feels impossible lines for featured artists; one hyperpop
game soundtrack, and Gutierrez’s voice not to take his side. act named osquinn told the Times, “There
is distorted, to sound high-pitched and “All dogs go to heaven” showcases a were people who were literally living off
alien. In a rapid patter, he describes the startlingly well-formed sound—not just that Spotify check.”
state of his brain: “I’m sick and I’m over- a high-concept joke—developed by an Other young artists have grown dis-
stimulated / Neurons in my brain filled artist who began recording music only illusioned with the hyperpop label, or re-
with information.” a year ago. Although his work has ma- sentful of its constraints. In a short time,
Although amateurish and silly, the tured quickly, Gutierrez inadvertently hyperpop has already become a genre
song is spellbinding. By the end of 2020, reveals his age with references to child- that performers wish to discard, decon-
Gutierrez was appearing regularly on hood preoccupations and high-school- struct, or rebel against. A recent press re-
the hyperpop playlist and collaborat- level coursework, name-checking the lease for an upcoming EP by the highly
ing with other emerging talents of the Berlin Wall, Quidditch, and the Cap- talented artist midwxst discouraged crit-
genre, most notably an eighteen-year- ulets and the Montagues. Most of these ics from tying him to hyperpop: “He’s
old named ericdoa, whose music might songs will be more at home on bigger, part of this group of young kids leading
be more aptly described as hyper-rap. more mainstream pop playlists than on this new subset of music . . . [but] he’s
Gutierrez also signed with Interscope hyperpop, though the EP includes a few definitely not boxed into the hyperpop
Records and released a polished EP notable exceptions. On “i wanna slam sound and on his new music he flows
called “cypress grove,” which culled tex- my head against the wall,” Gutierrez beyond the genre.” (Later, another press
tures from alternative emo rock, hip- playfully inverts the dynamics of a con- release described midwxst as a “rising
hop, electronic, and pop. ventional pop song. He sings sweetly, as hyperpop artist.”) As for Gutierrez, it is
if he were smiling, over a dizzying beat unclear whether he’ll help expand hy-
laive’s latest project, an EP titled with the frantic rhythm of a drum-’n’- perpop’s boundaries or simply outgrow
G “all dogs go to heaven,” suggests
that, although Gutierrez may have been
bass song.
The Internet has a tendency to trans-
them. In an interview this year, he was
asked about these classifications. He re-
birthed into the hyperpop scene, he form subcultures into popular culture at sponded with a shrug, and said, “As long
could soon graduate from its ranks. a disorienting rate. Spotify’s hyperpop as people listen to the music, then I don’t
Much of hyperpop uses cartoonish elec- playlist is a curious case: its success has really care.” 

THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2021 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

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THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 9, 2021 71

 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 Mick Stevens,
must be received by Sunday, August 8th. The finalists in the July 26th contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the August 23rd 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

“I hope you’ve come to change the water.”

Erica Sheen, Sheffield, England

“The key to happiness? A three-second memory span.” “We’re really looking for someone with more lab experience.”
Mark Berkson, St. Paul, Minn. Shaun Howell, Durham, N.C.

“If I had the answers, you think I’d be in this bowl?”

Stephen Stiles, Indianapolis, Ind.
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 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.

12 13 14 15

THE 16 17 18

CROSSWORD 19 20 21

22 23 24 25
A lightly challenging puzzle.
26 27 28 29 30

BY CAITLIN REID
31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39
ACROSS
1 Lowest vocal range
40 41 42
5 Furtive “Hey!”
9 “Now I’ve got it!” 43 44 45 46 47 48

12 Edmonton N.H.L. player

49 50 51 52 53
14 Possessive sometimes confused with one
of its two homophones
54 55 56 57
15 Fashion’s Diane ___ Furstenberg
16 Support for an injured body part 58 59 60
17 Last one in, idiomatically
19 Cold-blooded creature 61 62 63

21 Rent payers
64 65 66
22 Uneven?
23 ___ orange
25 43-Across, e.g. DOWN 42 Bit of safety gear
26 Lather maker 1 Bushy-haired painter of “happy little trees” 43 Facts of little consequence
28 Unit on a screen 2 Put on a clothesline, perhaps 44 Like too-thin soup
30 “Brokeback Mountain” director Ang 3 Hastily and carelessly done 46 Baby bird?
31 Actress Essman of “Curb Your 4 45-Across, e.g. 47 Mother bird
Enthusiasm” 5 Soup often garnished with lime and bean 49 Grumpy
33 Explore thoroughly sprouts 50 New York variant of hopscotch
35 “So not cool!” 6 Colonists 52 Slowly flow
40 River nymph of Greek mythology 7 Link destination 55 Coleridge’s “The ___ of the Ancient
41 Singer and actress Shore 8 Thing that’s in, for the time being Mariner”
43 Duet number? 9 Right, as a wrong 57 Swedish automaker, once
45 Group with the adolescent rite of 10 Stymie 59 Do wrong
passage rumspringa 11 Feeling of deep dread
48 Funny Fey Strap held by a jockey
13 Solution to the previous puzzle:
49 Period pain 14 Rome’s ___ Fountain
A M A S S E D F I L E T S
51 Buddies, in Brisbane 18 Sarcastic cry after an epic fail B A C K A T I T A D E X E C
53 Bygone tape player, in brief 20 Trip around the track A F R I C A N A C A V I A R
54 Pop star whose first U.K. No. 1 hit was 24 Online travel-booking service T I E R T E R R E E T T A
“How We Do (Party)” E A S E S D O H D E P O P
27 Billy Joel tune that starts, “It’s nine S I R E V E O W E
56 Tourney team deemed most likely to o’clock on a Saturday / The regular W O M E N S S I N G L E S
succeed crowd shuffles in”
M A R I Y A R U S S E L L
58 Kitchen counter? 29 The “L” in U.C.L.A. L I T T L E S I S T E R S
60 “Pale blue dot” in a NASA photo 32 Uber info E S E E S C A S A
61 Title of honor 34 Place to get some shut-eye A F R O S A A H T L D E F
V I T A U R B A N D E L I
62 Smile smugly 36 One-named singer of “Cheap Thrills” E R A S E D C R U C I F I X
63 Edible bow ties 37 Musical based on the songs of ABBA M E X I C O S U D A N E S E
64 Put into words 38 Parallel ___ E D I S O N M E T E R E D

65 Trip around the sun 39 Salt-cured pork product that’s similar to Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
66 Best in a competition bacon newyorker.com/crossword
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