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 NOVEMBER 11, 2024

8 GOINGS ON
17 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
David Remnick on courage and complicity;
the other Kamala Harrises; dismantling dining sheds;
Willie Nelson’s cannabis cookery; locking up.
THE POLITICAL SCENE
Andrew Marantz 22 Tucker Everlasting
What does Tucker Carlson believe?
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Viktoria Shulevich 29 Life Advice with Animal Analogies
ANNALS OF CRIME
Ed Caesar 30 Syria’s Empire of Speed
How the amphetamine trade funds Assad’s regime.
AMERICAN CHRONICLES
Charles Bethea 38 The Home Front
Preparing for a second civil war.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Sam Knight 48 The Shipwreck Detective
A lifetime searching for sunken treasure.
FICTION
Greg Jackson 58 “The Honest Island”
THE CRITICS
ON TELEVISION
Vinson Cunningham 66 Surveying the political-ad landscape.
A CRITIC AT LARGE
Jill Lepore 69 The rise of algorithmic politics.
BOOKS
Jennifer Wilson 73 The German nation of the Brothers Grimm.
77 Briefly Noted
MUSICAL EVENTS
Alex Ross 78 A celebration of Charles Ives.
POEMS
Joy Harjo 44 “Creation Theory”
Vona Groarke 63 “Two Kinds of Ending”
COVER
Barry Blitt “Tightrope”

DRAWINGS Johnny DiNapoli, Emily Bernstein, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Ed Himelblau, Jon Adams,
Avi Steinberg, Suerynn Lee, P. C. Vey, Roz Chast, Roland High, Harry Bliss, Sofia Warren, Asher Perlman,
Sophie Lucido Johnson, Joe Dator, Drew Dernavich, Edward Steed SPOTS Pierre Buttin
 with Danny Meyer
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 CONTRIBUTORS
Ed Caesar (“Syria’s Empire of Speed,” Sam Knight (“The Shipwreck Detec-
p. 30), a contributing staff writer, most tive,” p. 48 ) is a staff writer based in
recently published “The Moth and the London. He is the author of “The
Mountain: A True Story of Love, War, Premonitions Bureau: A True Account
and Everest.” of Death Foretold.”

Charles Bethea (“The Home Front,” Jennifer Wilson (Books, p. 73), a staff
p. 38), a staff writer since 2012, received writer, received a Robert B. Silvers Prize
a 2021 Mirror Award. for Literary Criticism earlier this year.

Joy Harjo (Poem, p. 44) served three Andrew Marantz (“Tucker Everlasting,”
terms as U.S. Poet Laureate. Her books p. 22), a staff writer, is the author of
include the poetry collection “Weav- “Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-
ing Sundown in a Scarlet Light” and Utopians, and the Hijacking of the
the memoir “Poet Warrior.” American Conversation.”

Greg Jackson (Fiction, p. 58) is the Viktoria Shulevich (Shouts & Murmurs,
author of the short-story collection p. 29) has contributed to The New Yorker,
“Prodigals” and the novel “The Di- McSweeney’s, and WBUR.
mensions of a Cave.”
Caitlin Reid (Puzzles & Games Dept.)
Naomi Zeveloff (The Talk of the Town, began constructing crosswords in 2017.
p. 19) has reported for outlets includ- Her work has appeared in the Times,
ing NPR and The Atlantic. This is her the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.
first contribution to The New Yorker.
Vona Groarke (Poem, p. 63), the writer-
Barry Blitt (Cover) has been a contrib- in-residence at St. John’s College,
utor since 1992. In 2020, he received the Cambridge, will publish her ninth book
Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. of poetry, “Infinity Pool,” next year.

THIS WEEK IN THE NEW YORKER APP

Election Season Retold

Our writers and editors look back on the key moments of a Presidential
campaign that has encompassed debate nights and assassination attempts,
SCORPION DAGGER

courtroom appearances, a doughnut-shop mishap, and more.

Download the New Yorker app for the latest news, commentary, criticism,
and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008.
 THE MAIL
W.W.E. REFORM two basic layers, envelope and fine
structure. Groundbreaking studies
In his review of the docuseries “Mr. by scientists such as Robert Dooling The election
McMahon,” Vinson Cunningham have shown that birds have a super-
writes that, during the late nineties
and early two-thousands, the boor-
human ability to distinguish f ine
structure. While human communi-
is over. What
ish Attitude Era—in which “the
matches were no longer between good
cation relies on syllabic sound units,
bird talk is more varied. Birds’ vocal
happens now?
guys and bad guys but between bad apparatus is more complex than ours:
guys and worse guys”—was the high- unlike humans, who produce sounds
water mark of the W.W.E.’s popu- through a larynx, birds use a syrinx,
larity, and he speculates that we may which contains two sound-genera-
be living through its equivalent in tion elements that can produce a
American politics (On Television, range of frequencies. The syrinx
October 21st). As an unlikely and rel- modulates these via musculature op-
atively new wrestling fan, I think Mr. erating at rates measured in thou-
Cunningham would be heartened sandths of a second. (This is why par-
by the state of today’s W.W.E. Iron- rots can imitate both human speech
ically, McMahon’s successor, Paul and, with uncanny accuracy, the
(Triple H) Levesque, one of the At- sounds from our electronics.) We
titude Era’s nastiest bad guys, has have the technology to build a de-
done a great deal to purge the com- vice that “hears” this fine structure,
pany of his predecessor’s influence, and we could use A.I. software to
ushering in a new regime that, by all make a start at understanding it. In
accounts, is kinder to everyone in- doing so, we may soon recognize that
volved. The women’s roster in partic- bird talk is not just notes. Plus, it Tune in three
ular has come a long way: what was would be nice to know what birds times a week as
once a stream of models has been re- are talking about all day. Maybe they
placed by a diverse bench of highly are talking about us. The New Yorker’s
trained athletes. The Triple H era of Malcolm Hamer writers and editors
the W.W.E. is no progressive utopia, New York City
but it’s remarkable how much the cul- unpack the latest news
ture seems to have improved in just a To Galchen’s fascinating discussion from Washington
few short years. I remain hopeful that of avian accomplishments, I would
our country’s trajectory will mirror the add the story of Mozart’s encounter
and what it means
W.W.E.’s, and that we will soon with a starling, in Vienna, in 1784. for the country.
move—haltingly, imperfectly, yet in- He bought the bird at a pet store,
exorably—into a new and better era. and was impressed by its ability to Available wherever
Larissa Sapko chirp an improvised theme from his you get your podcasts.
Philadelphia, Pa. Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major.
1 The starling lived with Mozart and
CAN BIRDS TALK? his family for three years—apparently
influencing his work and serving as
Rivka Galchen’s piece about the re- his companion, his distraction, his
searchers studying the connection consolation, and his muse.
between birdsong and language men- Kathryn Whitmer
tions that those who live and work Bellingham, Wash. Scan to listen.
alongside animals often think that
animals “can speak with one another, •
and in depth” (“Pecking Order,” Oc- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
tober 21st). It’s worth detailing the address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
biology underlying how this speak- themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
ing occurs for birds. Scientists often any medium. We regret that owing to the volume To find all of The New Yorker’s podcasts,
break down complex sounds into of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter. visit newyorker.com/podcasts.
“Late bloomer”
If you feel like the AI boom has left you behind, Claude
is here to help. Some might call Claude a “late bloomer”
because it wasn’t the first AI chatbot released, but that
was intentional. The researchers at Anthropic prioritized
safety and thoughtfulness in their approach to devel-
oping powerful AI systems, recognizing the significant
implications for society. They anticipated the far-reach-
ing impacts that AI can have on humanity and took time
to make sure Claude was safe before it was deployed.
Claude was built with clear principles that guide
every interaction, backed by some of the most advanced
AI safety research in the field. These principles ensure
Claude remains honest, thoughtful, and ethical—putting
human wellbeing first. It’s here to amplify your ideas and
help you thrive.
Before it was ready for prime time, Claude’s outputs
were extensively tested for bias, hallucination, and moral
implications. Thousands of prompts were analyzed to
ensure consistent, helpful, and ethically-sound responses.
This obsession with quality and ethical standards means
Claude communicates more naturally, understands con-
text better, and navigates moral dilemmas more thought-
fully. It’s an approachable tool that speaks your language,
respects your data, and shares your values. We hope it
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Claude may be fashionably late to the party, but that’s
okay. It’s designed with humanity in mind. We think that
makes for a pretty sweet (and principled) conversation.

We build AI you can trust.

Visit anthropic.com/claude
 GOINGS ON

WINTER PREVIEW
What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this season.

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC appeal, consider Fousheé (Music Hall a special series of shows, Regina Spektor
of Williamsburg; Nov. 26), Toro y Moi runs through her 2002 album, “Songs,”
Wu-Tang, Esperanza (Terminal 5; Feb. 14), or Bartees Strange at Warsaw (Dec. 8-10). On Jan. 30, the
(Bowery Ballroom; Feb. 19), whose new loop artist L’Rain joins Soccer Mommy
Spalding, Indie album, “Horror,” is out on Valentine’s Day. at Brooklyn Steel while the emergent
Crooners Rappers from across the city score folk star Joy Oladokun shares her ob-
homecoming shows. On Dec. 6, three servant music of personal awakening at
of the Wu-Tang Clan’s most revered Irving Plaza. At Radio City Music Hall,
The winter concert slate opens with the members, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, the understated R. & B. humorist Faye
reunion of one of the great indie-rock and GZA bum-rush Terminal 5. Another Webster hits the road for the second time
acts of the twenty-first century: TV on seminal hip-hop group, De La Soul, in support of her recent album, “Under-
the Radio, at Webster Hall (Nov. 25-30), comes to Lincoln Center on Jan. 17, as dressed at the Symphony” (Feb. 26). As a
which leads a spate of sensational bands. part of its pay-what-you-wish program. spiritual palate cleanser, there are plenty
On Nov. 14-15, at the same venue, the A night later, the Queens m.c. Elucid of opportunities to catch the jazz vision-
easygoing outfit Slow Pulp unwinds its stages the punk provocations of his new ary Esperanza Spalding during her Blue
moody sound. The following week, the album, “Revelator,” at Baby’s All Right. Note residency, Feb. 18-March 2.
shoegaze pioneers Slowdive take over There’s a singer-songwriter for anyone If you prefer dancing to swaying side
Brooklyn Paramount (Nov. 18-19). At in need of a less boisterous experience. to side, lighter in hand, the d.j.s are in full
Pioneer Works, the post-rock radicals The Big Thief leader Adrianne Lenker swing. On Nov. 15, the “Brat” architect
of Godspeed You! Black Emperor début stokes the embers of the rustic songs A. G. Cook continues a breakout run—
urgent music of protest (Nov. 20-21). from her recent solo record, “Bright Fu- which welcomed his album “Britpop”—
For those seeking rock with a more outré ture,” at Kings Theatre (Nov. 18-19). In at Knockdown Center; Floating Points
(Feb. 21), the techno experimentalist who
once collaborated with the sax colossus
Pharoah Sanders, later appears. At Avant
Gardner, on Nov. 21, Dan Snaith un-
veils the new Caribou album, “Honey,” a
product of A.I. vocal effects, and, at Park
Avenue Armory, Jan. 9-12, the xx bell-
wether and producer Jamie xx celebrates
“In Waves,” his first LP in nine years.
For shows even more driven by charis-
matic star power, look to the realm of col-
orful international pop. The Norwegian
folk-pop musician AURORA continues
the second part of her “What Happened
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JULIEN POSTURE

to the Heart?” tour at Beacon Theatre

(Dec. 5-6). And, as the season melts
to a close, Brooklyn Paramount hosts
two budding sensations: the Argentine
fusionist Nathy Peluso (March 8) and
the British soul hypnotist Jorja Smith
(March 10).
—Sheldon Pearce

8 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024

 WINTER PREVIEW

THE THEATRE Simon Rich’s comedic vignettes, will be Menzel stars in (and co-conceived) Tina
performed by a kind of rotating comic Landau’s “Redwood” (Nederlander;
A Starry “Othello” and supergroup, featuring John Mulaney, Jan. 24), with music by Kate Diaz,
Tim Meadows, Renée Elise Goldsberry, about a woman fleeing her grief in the
“Gypsy,” Language and Richard Kind. forest; the musical adaptation “Buena
Lessons The new year belongs to serious
playwriting: first up is “English” (Todd
Vista Social Club” (Schoenfeld; Feb. 21)
imagines sorrows of romance and racism
Haimes; Jan. 3), Sanaz Toossi’s Pulit- behind the group’s stunning self-titled
The big news of the winter season is zer Prize-winning play about learning album; and, Off Broadway, the exper-
that the six-time Tony Award-winning the language in Iran; later, Branden imental director David Herskovits
Audra McDonald is playing Madame Jacobs-Jenkins gives us the drama reimagines and reëxamines the racial
Rose in George C. Wolfe’s production “Purpose” (Helen Hayes; Feb. 25), in currents in Hammerstein and Kern’s
of “Gypsy” (Majestic; starting previews which a family fractures around a leg- masterpiece “Show/Boat: A River” (Skir-
Nov. 21). Rose is the musical equivalent acy of Black radicalism. Off Broadway ball; Jan. 9), now that the musical has
of King Lear, a role that great actors contains a rogues’ gallery: Jordan Har- sailed into the public domain.
rise toward as a capstone achievement. rison’s “The Antiquities” (Playwrights Finally, as the snows melt, stars’
As for the rest of 2024, Broadway Horizons; Jan. 20) imagines a museum minds must turn to the classics. Denzel
sleds down it on comedy: Matthew dedicated to a vanished humanity; Bess Washington plays the baffled general
Sklar, Chad Beguelin, Thomas Mee- Wohl opens “Liberation” (Laura Pels; “Othello” (Barrymore; Feb. 24), oppo-
han, and Bob Martin’s musical adap- Jan. 31), a time-jumping tale about a site Jake Gyllenhaal as the toxic Iago,
tation of the Will Ferrell movie “Elf” group of women and the daughter who in a new revival by Kenny Leon; Sarah
is back, with Grey Henson in Ferrell’s tries to understand their fate; and Sam- Snook takes on the corrupt but un-
curly shoes (Marquis; Nov. 9); Leslye uel D. Hunter’s “Grangeville” (Pershing changing title character, as well as two
Headland’s Christmas-set farce, “Cult Square Signature Center; Feb. 4) in- dozen others, in her solo performance
of Love” (Helen Hayes; Nov. 20), fea- cludes the Oscar-winning star of Hunt- of Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian
tures stars such as Zachary Quinto er’s “The Whale,” Brendan Fraser, in Gray” (Music Box; March 10); Isabelle
and Shailene Woodley as members of another of Hunter’s perfectly machined Huppert plays Mary Stuart in Darryl
a Christian family in schism; Jonathan stories of effortful connection. Pinckney’s “Mary Said What She Said”
Spector’s “Eureka Day” (Friedman; When it comes to musicals, I’m ex- (Skirball; Feb. 27), directed by the great
Nov. 25), a precise satire of devolving cited to see if SpitLip’s Second World visual-theatre maestro Robert Wilson;
communication on a progressive school War-set “Operation Mincemeat” and Andrew Scott plays all the parts
board, casts the wry wits Amber Gray (Golden; Feb. 15) seems as hilarious to a in “Vanya” (Lucille Lortel; March 11),
and Bill Irwin; and “All In: Comedy Broadway audience as it did when I saw an adaptation shaped to his particular,
About Love” (Hudson; Dec. 11), Alex the zany, fringey show on London’s West puckish spirit.
Timbers’s staging of the gifted writer End. Other options are graver: Idina —Helen Shaw
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 9
 WINTER PREVIEW

ART Jews of the Twentieth Century.” Among of Nature” (Feb. 8), occasioned by the
the juiciest morsels in “Franz Kafka” two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
Caspar David Friedrich, (Nov. 22), besides that Warhol, are the the great German Romantic painter’s
original manuscript of “The Metamor- birth. You probably know him, even if
Kafka, MOMA’s phosis” and mounds of letters, photo- you don’t recognize his name, for 1818’s
Ode to Design graphs, drawings, and diaries.
While the centennial shows con-
“Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog,” but
his bench is deep—depths, geographic
tinue at the Morgan, the Dia Founda- and otherwise, being to Friedrich
There is no New York without graffiti, tion celebrates a still respectable fifty roughly what apples were to Cézanne.
and periodic attempts to pretend oth- years. Its Chelsea location ends 2024 After a year of bangers, the American
erwise have made it only plainer. Three with “Echoes from the Borderlands” Folk Art Museum hosts the third and
decades ago, the year Giuliani became (Dec. 11), a four-part, twenty-four-hour final part of its exhibition “Somewhere
mayor, the painter Martin Wong made sound piece, created by Valeria Luiselli, to Roost” (Feb. 12), a characteristically
the Museum of the City of New York Ricardo Giraldo, and Leo Heiblum, that compact, thoughtful exploration of
a donation of more than three hun- mixes unadorned field recordings and the themes of home and belonging.
dred works by the sorts of street artists the artists’ imaginative replies. The name comes from the title of a
who were then being harassed almost MOMA kicks off 2025 with a char- mixed-media piece, by Thornton Dial,
out of existence. Some landed on their ismatic selection of furniture, clothes, Sr., that joins some sixty art works as-
feet (Futura 2000, for one, is currently games, and gadgets, all from the misty sembled for the occasion.
enjoying a retrospective at the Bronx land known as “design.” If there is a The Purim story was among the few
Museum), but others deserved better— governing theme, it’s the power of this that both Jews and Christians of sev-
making “Above Ground: Art from the kind of art to alter the world in subtle enteenth-century Holland celebrated,
Martin Wong Graffiti Collection” (open- ways—to make a computer easy enough and Rembrandt’s lustrous “A Jewish
ing Nov. 22) a belated opportunity to for a child to use, say, or to render the Heroine from the Hebrew Bible”—
give it to them. “Wheelchair Accessible” sign more quite possibly his imagining of the
Nothing says the holidays quite like proudly kinetic. Good design is unob- story’s protagonist, Queen Esther—is
Franz Kafka, who died of tuberculosis trusive, but “Pirouette: Turning Points the sturdy trunk of a show at the Jewish
in 1924, right when the Morgan Li- in Design” ( Jan. 26) takes some of the Museum. The painting shares wall space
brary was admitting its first visitors. The most sneakily influential art of the past with drawings, prints, and ceremonial
pairing, a century later, of author and century and gives it a welcome chance art for “The Book of Esther in the Age
museum should delight anybody who to obtrude. of Rembrandt” (March 7), a splendid
cares about literature, and even some If you’ve ever stared out at the ocean way of celebrating democratic pluralism
people who don’t, provided that they’re and felt huge and microscopic at the at its best, or just bidding goodbye to
fans of Andy Warhol—he included same time, stop by the Met for a dip winter already.
Kafka in the silkscreen “Ten Portraits of in “Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul —Jackson Arn

10 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024

 WINTER PREVIEW

proach to theatre—which is explosive, CLASSICAL

polyrhythmic, honest—can be felt
most clearly in the dances she makes Angel Blue, Barbara
for herself and her own handpicked
dancer-collaborators. Here, she ex- Hannigan, Tallis
plores an idea drawn from the HBO
series “Lovecraft Country”: a charac-
Scholars
ter who can be whatever she imagines
herself to be. If there’s one thing you can rely on hear-
While the cultural reverberations ing around the holidays—even though
of Alvin Ailey receive their due at the it was written for Easter—it’s Handel’s
Whitney Museum’s “Edges of Ailey” “Messiah,” which falls in flurries through-
exhibit (through Feb. 9), the company out December. Performers include the
he founded, in 1958, leans into the choirs of St. Thomas Fifth Avenue (with
idea of forward motion. Alvin Ailey New York Baroque Incorporated, Dec. 10
American Dance Theatre’s season at and 12) and Trinity Church (conducted
City Center (Dec. 4-Jan. 5) introduces by Jane Glover, Dec. 11-13); Musica Sacra
a raft of new works, three of them by with the New York Philharmonic (David
former Ailey dancers. Matthew Rush- Geffen Hall; Dec. 11-14); Masterwork
ing’s “Sacred Songs” is set to nine spir- Chorus and Orchestra (Carnegie Hall;
Dec. 19); the Oratorio Society (Carn-
ituals that Ailey cut from his great
egie Hall; Dec. 23); and Grace Chorale
“Revelations” after its première. Hope
and the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra
DANCE Boykin uses her open-hearted move-
(St. Ann’s Church, Brooklyn; Dec. 22).
ment style, in her jazz-inflected “Find-
Holiday traditions also continue at the
Camille A. Brown, ing Free,” to explore the theme of
Chamber Music Society (Bach’s six Bran-
individual freedom. And, in Jamar
Kyle Abraham, Roberts’s “Al-Andalus Blues,” dancers
denburg Concertos, Dec. 13, 15, and 17)
and at the Metropolitan Opera ( Julie Tay-
Maria Tallchief take a musical excursion to Moorish
mor’s abridged, Englished version of “The
Spain, on the wings of Miles Davis’s Magic Flute,” Dec. 12-Jan. 4). The Tallis
The soaring Drill Hall at the Park Av- adaptation of the “Concierto de Aran- Scholars’ plainchant-oriented concert at
enue Armory tends to infuse anything juez” and Roberta Flack’s rendition of St. Mary the Virgin strips down the jubi-
that happens there with an aura of the poem “Angelitos Negros.” lation (Dec. 5), whereas David Lang’s “Lit-
grandiosity. And yet Kyle Abraham has New York City Ballet’s winter sea- tle Match Girl Passion” (Crypt Sessions;
chosen the most intimate of themes— son (at the David H. Koch Theatre, Dec. 4-6) and the American Modern
the sadness that comes with the passing Jan. 21-March 2) brings new works Opera Company’s “El Niño” (Cathedral
of time, the feeling of being alive in this from two artists-in-residence, Justin of St. John the Divine; Dec. 19) offer more
world—for his new work, “Dear Lord, Peck and Alexei Ratmansky, each re- questioning takes on the Christmas story.
Make Me Beautiful,” to be performed flecting the character of its maker. At the Park Avenue Armory, the
there Dec. 3-14. Along with Abraham’s Peck, who has shown a knack for soprano-impresario Barbara Hannigan
silken physical language, the new piece channelling a kind of raw millennial breaks the holiday embargo with a recital
is built on the contrast between the energy, will harness the electronics- centering John Zorn’s “Jumalatteret,” a
layered movement of groups and the heavy sound of Dan Deacon; Ratman- cycle of songs named for Sami goddesses
isolation of the individual—as in a solo sky draws from the nineteenth-century which has all the cackling beauty of a leaf
for Abraham—all bathed in immersive ballet “Paquita,” out of which he will blown on the wind (Dec. 12). Heartbeat
visuals by the artist Cao Yuxi. carve a suite of dances designed to Opera, always adventurous, brings Dan
A solo, danced on some nights by challenge the performers’ classical Schlosberg’s refashioning of Strauss’s “Sa-
the choreographer herself, is also at technique. And Balanchine’s brilliant lome” to the Irondale Center (Feb. 4-16),
the heart of “I Am,” Camille A. Brown’s “Sylvia Pas de Deux” (set to Delibes) and National Sawdust premières the
newest work, which comes to the Joyce returns, for the first time since 1994, “North American Indigenous Songbook,”
Feb. 5-9. Brown’s influence can now as part of a program of works origi- a project, and a corrective, constructed
be seen everywhere from Broadway nally choreographed for the Osage- by Native composers including Raven
(where she created the dances for born ballerina Maria Tallchief, one of Chacon and Martha Redbone (Nov. 16).
“Hell’s Kitchen,” among other shows) the company’s first stars. Amid the European ensembles parad-
to the opera, but the root of her ap- —Marina Harss ing through Carnegie Hall—including
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 11
 WINTER PREVIEW

TELEVISION tion. During Gabriel García Márquez’s

lifetime, the Nobel laureate refused to
Thrillers in Belfast, the sell the movie rights to his most fa-
mous work, “One Hundred Years of
Poconos, and London Solitude” (Dec. 11), declaring that the
story necessitated a hundred hours of
Until fairly recently, television seemed screen time to be told properly. None-
content to be ensconced in stock lo- theless, Netflix is now taking a stab at
cales: the living room, the office, the bringing the saga of seven generations
neighborhood bar. Then, in the past of the Buendía family to TV, with a
two decades, as prestige TV embraced Spanish-language production filmed
riskier narratives (and benefitted from in García Márquez’s native Colombia.
higher budgets), its settings became Escapes, of a sort, can also be
more adventurous, too. That ambi- found via the two-part Ken Burns
tion (and money) is draining from the documentary “Leonardo da Vinci”
medium, but far-flung and fanciful (Nov. 18), on PBS, and the Barack
backdrops may be here to stay, at least Obama-narrated nature docuseries
“Our Oceans” (Nov. 20), on Netflix.
judging from winter’s premières.
Also on the streaming service, “Black
One of late fall’s most anticipated
Doves” (Dec. 5), a spy mystery set in
programs, Hulu’s “Say Nothing”
London at Christmastime that stars
(Nov. 14), transports viewers to Bel-
Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw,
the Berlin Philharmonic (Nov. 17-19), fast, Northern Ireland, where, during seems designed to sweep you up, as does
Czech Philharmonic (Dec. 3-5), and Lon- the Troubles, two young, photogenic Max’s “Get Millie Black” (Nov. 25), a
don Symphony Orchestra (March 5-6)— sisters join the guerrilla campaign for crime drama set in Kingston, Jamaica,
the Philadelphia Orchestra’s program Irish Republicanism. (The series is written by the Booker Prize-winning
of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and Jake based on the book by Patrick Radden author Marlon James.
Heggie’s “Songs for Murdered Sisters” Keefe, a staff writer at this magazine.) A Of course, TV offers the pleasures
( Jan. 15) stands out; so does Angel Blue’s different pair of powerful sisters, played of familiarity, too. Netflix’s “Squid
recital of songs by Strauss, Rachmaninoff, by Emily Watson and Olivia Williams, Game” (Dec. 26) returns after three
and Hoiby, accompanied by Lang Lang wage their own war for survival on a years, as does Apple TV+’s “Severance”
(March 8). Blue also appears at the Met- hostile desert planet in Max’s “Dune: ( Jan. 17). The romantic comedy gets a
ropolitan Opera, where she makes her Prophecy” (Nov. 17), a prequel to the dark new spin with “Laid” (Dec. 19),
title-role début in Verdi’s “Aida” (select recent big-screen adaptations of Frank on Peacock, which finds Stephanie Hsu
dates Dec. 31-May 9). On the same stage, Herbert’s sci-fi novel. (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”)
Ryan Speedo Green appears as Queequeg “Dune” has long been considered playing a woman who discovers that
in Heggie’s “Moby-Dick” (March 3-29), “unadaptable,” but it’s not the season’s all her past lovers have been dying “in
and Lise Davidsen, as Leonore, anchors only difficult page-to-screen transla- unusual ways.” The genre playfulness
Beethoven’s “Fidelio” (March 4-15). “Oh
to Believe in Another World,” a film by
William Kentridge, plays as the New York
Philharmonic performs Shostakovich’s
Symphony No. 10 (Dec. 5-7); Nathalie
Stutzmann leads the orchestra in “The
Ring Without Words,” which boils Wag-
ner’s sprawling epic down to seventy-five
minutes ( Jan. 16, 18-19).
The Miller Theatre’s composer
portrait of Miya Masaoka includes her
“Mapping a Joyful Noise,” for violin and
tapes (March 6). Want a really joyful
noise? Get to Washington Square Park at
6 p.m. on Dec. 15, for Phil Kline’s annual
phone-and-speaker carolling pageant,
“Unsilent Night.”
—Fergus McIntosh

12 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024

®

®
 WINTER PREVIEW

continues on Hulu in “Interior China-

town” (Nov. 19), a crime mystery with
a sly, self-aware take on the police pro-
cedural and on kung-fu tales.
The stakes are higher in “The Mad-
ness” (Nov. 28), a conspiracy thriller on
Netflix, in which a media commenta-
tor, played by Colman Domingo, be-
comes linked to a murder in the Pocono
woods. Perhaps no frustration strikes
deeper in the heart than the challenges
of buying a home, a predicament dra-
matized in the black comedy “No Good
Deed” (Dec. 12), co-starring Lisa Kud-
row and Ray Romano, as a couple who
have a hard time leaving the site of so
many memories.
—Inkoo Kang
Pasolini, is an adaptation of Homer’s intern (Harris Dickinson). In Brady
“Odyssey,” starring Ralph Fiennes as Corbet’s “The Brutalist” (Dec. 20),
MOVIES the wandering Odysseus and Juliette Adrien Brody plays a Hungarian ar-
Binoche as Penelope, the steadfast wife chitect who survives the Holocaust,
“Nickel Boys,” Bob who waits for him for twenty years. moves to Philadelphia, and tries to
Music-centered movies are also in- reunite with his wife (Felicity Jones),
Dylan, Intern Affairs evitably prominent, especially in the while working for a rich industrialist
form of bio-pics—foremost, James (Guy Pearce) on a grandiose project.
This winter’s movie season resembles Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown” Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next
the 2024 baseball season, in which (Dec. 25), about Bob Dylan’s rise to Door” (Dec. 20), adapted from a novel
many teams saw a chance to compete folk-music fame, in the early nine- by Sigrid Nunez, stars Julianne Moore
for a wild-card slot. Similarly, with few teen-sixties, and the backlash that and Tilda Swinton as writers and for-
obvious Oscar front-runners emerging resulted from his turn to amplified in- mer friends who reconnect when one
early in the year, the calendar has filled struments. Timothée Chalamet stars becomes terminally ill.
up with movies of ostensible prestige, as the young bard, Monica Barbaro Fantasy is a genre for all seasons,
in a wide array of genres. co-stars as Joan Baez, and Edward as with Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch”
As usual, literary adaptations are Norton plays Dylan’s supporter turned (Dec. 6), starring Amy Adams as a for-
generously represented, albeit some- antagonist Pete Seeger. Angelina Jolie mer artist, now an overwhelmed stay-
times in surprising ways. RaMell Ross’s plays the title role in Pablo Larraín’s at-home mom, whose rage is embodied
“Nickel Boys” (opening Dec. 13), based “Maria” (Nov. 27), which imagines in her occasional transformation into
on a novel by Colson Whitehead, is the opera singer Maria Callas’s tur- a dog. Robert Eggers’s “Nosferatu”
set in the mid-nineteen-sixties and fo- bulent life and career from her own (Dec. 25), a remake of F. W. Murnau’s
cusses on two Black teen-agers’ strug- jumbled perspective in the week before silent vampire drama, from 1922, stars
gles to survive in a segregated Florida her death, in 1977. “The End” (Dec. 6), Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, Emma
juvenile-detention center that’s run by directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, is a Corrin, and Willem Dafoe.
a sadistic warden. The narrative offers more traditional musical in format if Highlights of the new year include
unusual shifts in the main characters’ not in subject: it’s a postapocalyptic two films by Steven Soderbergh—the
points of view, which Ross evokes with operetta, starring Michael Shannon horror film “Presence” ( Jan. 24), de-
a visual style that’s as distinctive as his and Tilda Swinton as the heads of a picting a haunted house from a ghost’s
sense of form. The director Luca Gua- super-rich family taking refuge from point of view, and the spy thriller “Black
dagnino’s “Queer” (Nov. 27), an adapta- climate disaster in their luxurious sub- Bag” (March 14), with Cate Blanchett,
tion of William Burroughs’s unfinished terranean bunker. Michael Fassbender, and Regé-Jean
1985 novel, set in the mid-fifties, fea- Melodramas provide florid show- Page—and one by Bong Joon-ho, the
tures Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey as cases for certified stars, such as Nicole science-fiction comedy “Mickey 17”
American men of different generations Kidman, who heads Halina Reijn’s ( Jan. 31), starring Robert Pattinson as
who meet in Mexico City and begin “Babygirl” (Dec. 25), as a hard-driv- a clone in outer space who meets his
a fraught sexual relationship. “The ing C.E.O. who risks her career and mental double.
Return” (Dec. 6), directed by Uberto her marriage to have an affair with an —Richard Brody
14 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
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 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT run. All manner of explanation was of- ilarly last-minute decision of Patrick
STANDING UP TO TRUMP fered—respect for the reader, a return to Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los An-
the editorial page’s more neutral roots— geles Times, to kill a Harris endorse-
n May, at a prison colony in the Si- but these contortions convinced no one. ment that his editorial-page editors had
Iweekly
berian city of Omsk, a lawyer paid his
visit to his client, the Russian dis-
Most concluded that what had happened
was that the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos,
drafted? (Cue the resignations. Cue the
cancelled subscriptions.)
sident Vladimir Kara-Murza. They sat who has plenty of business with the fed- Every editor who is not too stupid or
together in a small room, separated by a eral government, and with the election too full of himself to notice what is going
pane of glass. Kara-Murza, who had been approaching, dared not offend Donald on knows that endorsements are of mod-
poisoned in 2015 and 2017, presumably Trump. This was the same Bezos who est influence at best. The editors of this
by Vladimir Putin’s secret police, was had endorsed a Trump-era slogan for the magazine, when it recently published a
serving the second year of a twenty-five- paper—“Democracy Dies in Darkness”— lengthy essay describing (for the thou-
year sentence for his public opposition and supported a great deal of extraordi- sandth time) the authoritarian prospects
to the invasion of Ukraine. nary reporting. Now, it seemed, Bezos of a second Trump Presidency, and en-
The lawyer had news to deliver: Kara- was suffering from degeneration of the dorsing Kamala Harris, had no illusions.
Murza had been awarded a Pulitzer Prize spine. Columnists expressed their em- Editors may be as prone to sanctimony
for columns he had written for the Wash- barrassment and anger. Three editorial- as they are to the common cold, but there
ington Post. The news, Kara-Murza re- board members, including Hoffman, re- was never any thought that such an en-
called, “sounded like something from a dif- signed. Within a few days, according dorsement would suddenly tip the bal-
ferent planet, from some kind of a parallel to NPR, two hundred thousand read- ance in the battleground states, much
reality.” He was pleased, of course, though ers had cancelled their subscriptions. less win majorities in the Deep South or
he assumed that he would never collect What was the meaning of this sorry the Great Plains. The point was that we,
the prize in person. Like Alexei Navalny, episode? Or, for that matter, of the sim- like other publications, attempted to make
like so many political prisoners before him, a cogent case, and had the editorial free-
he believed that he would die in his cell. dom to do so.
Yet the unimaginable happened. On Perhaps experience ought to tell us
August 1st, Kara-Murza was part of a that it is ridiculous to clutch our pearls
prisoner exchange, and in late October he every time a person of immense polit-
stepped onto a stage at Columbia Univer- ical power or financial means acts in his
sity’s Low Library, to receive his Pulitzer. own selfish interest. Bezos is hardly
He gave a brief speech to an audience alone. Senator Mitch McConnell, who
that included the other winners—among denounced Trump in the immediate af-
them the Post’s David Hoffman, who had termath of January 6th and, in private,
won for his reported editorials on the has called him “stupid” and a “despica-
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA

technologies that authoritarian regimes ble human being,” is endorsing him. The
deploy to suppress dissent. The occa- billionaire Nelson Peltz has referred to
sion, Kara-Murza admitted, was “surreal.” Trump as a “terrible human being,” and
For the staff and the readers of the yet is helping to bankroll him. Is there
Post, the next day was equally surreal: the anything still to know about Donald
paper’s publisher and C.E.O., William Trump? Deeply conservative and reti-
Lewis, announced that its planned en- cent figures who have long working
dorsement of Kamala Harris would not experience with Trump—such as his
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 17
former chief of staff John Kelly and the elements are all there: the identification is a campaign promise, Trump told the
former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of of “vermin” and “the enemy within”; the crowd at the Garden, to be carried out
Staff Mark Milley—have gone on the threat to deploy the military against dis- “on Day One.”
record to declare him a fascist, a peril senters; the erasure of truth, the “big lie.” The literature of anti-authoritarian-
to national security, and yet they can- The maga rally at Madison Square Gar- ism—Czeslaw Milosz’s “The Captive
not seem to dissuade Elon Musk, Ste- den last Sunday did not feature starched Mind”; Václav Havel’s essays and letters
phen Schwarzman, Paul Singer, Timo- gray uniforms, swastikas, or disciplined to his wife, Olga; Nadezhda Mandel-
thy Mellon, and a line of other plutocrats salutes. Lee Greenwood is no Elisabeth stam’s memoirs; Frederick Douglass’s au-
from backing him. Éric Vuillard’s “The Schwarzkopf. But the rhetoric was rife tobiographies—are written by souls larger
Order of the Day” opens with a lightly with scapegoating, racism, and lies. and vastly more heroic than common
fictionalized scene of two dozen German In Russia, Putin has not replicated mortals. Yet they describe the ways that
industrialists and financiers summoned, the Stalinism of the nineteen-thirties so human-scale people, all of us, can refuse
in 1933, to meet Hermann Göring, who much as he has modernized it. He has complicity, and act in the face of repres-
demands their fealty. If the Nazi Party not gone to the trouble or the expense sion and outrage, if that is what public
wins the election, Göring tells them, of re-creating the totalism of the old life comes to. The reporters and the ed-
“These would be the last elections for Gulag system. Instead, he carefully se- itors at the Post who have resigned or
ten years––even, he added with a laugh, lects his victims—an opposition journal- spoken out against something as seem-
for a hundred years.” Where have we ist here, a liberal politician there—and ingly trivial as a spiked editorial may not
heard similar “jokes”? makes sure that their destruction is clearly be risking their lives or their immediate
No small part of Trump’s authoritar- understood by the Russian people. Sim- material comfort, but they are writing
ian campaign is his insistence on dom- ilarly, the authoritarianism that Trump an endorsement that is worth signing on
inance. And, though his aides and sup- intends to establish will be of its mo- to: In order to stand up, one must have
porters are dismissive of comparisons to ment. There will be no Lefortovo, no a backbone.
previous embodiments of fascism, the Treblinka. But mass deportations? That —David Remnick

NAME GAME even achieve a prominence of their own. my driver’s license,” she said. She was
A KETTLE OF KAMALAS In the early sixties, the Washington Sen- named Kamala, in the seventies, after a
ators had a third baseman named John similar-sounding form of funk dancing
Kennedy, who also shared a birthday that her father liked. This past summer,
with the then President. The Virginia people would jokingly ask who she was
oncologist Donald L. Trump has in- going to pick as her running mate.
spired a rare bit of humility from the “It gets annoying quick,” Kamii
forty-fifth President, who once said that said. She has become accustomed to

R esidents of New Hampshire, where

Presidential hopefuls often court
diners at greasy spoons, have come to
the doctor is “probably more important
than Donald J. Trump, which is me.”
If measuring Presidential-name pop-
the routine when she presents I.D.
at her local dispensary: “It’s, like, a
whole five-minute thing of ‘That’s so
expect high-level politico drop-ins. Not ularity on a scale of Barack Obama to crazy, what are the odds?’ You have to
long ago, a doctor’s office in Portsmouth Andrew Johnson, Kamala Harris would just be polite and entertain it, you
prepared itself for a visit from the fall somewhere around Martin Van know?” Growing up was worse. Kids
Vice-President. A half-dozen staffers Buren: others exist, but they’re rare. Pub-
stood at attention in the waiting room, lic-records searches suggest that you
ready for duties both Hippocratic and could count them on your fingers. Some,
patriotic. A white woman with blond like their political namesake, seem to be
hair who was several months pregnant reticent with the press. Others might
entered and checked in with the recep- reply to an inquiring text with “I am
tionist: she, Kamala Harris, was there for not the vice president.” Their name is
her scheduled appointment. The letdown one part common (Harris is the twen-
was palpable. The patient rolled her eyes. ty-fifth most popular surname in the
“I was, like, ‘Why would the Vice-Pres- U.S.), one part less so (Kamala is five
ident go to a doctor in Portsmouth?’” Har- thousand one hundred and thirtieth
ris, a thirty-two-year-old resident of among given names, according to My-
nearby Seabrook, said recently. Gener- NameStats.com). The forty-nine-year-
ally, she goes by Kamii. old Kamala Harris of San Bernardino,
Some Presidents have plenty of name California, made it four decades with-
duplicates. There are more than a hun- out encountering anyone with even her
dred George Bushes in New York alone; first name, let alone her first and last.
IMDb has listings for almost a hundred Recently, she, too, visited a new doctor
James, Jimmy, or Jim Carters. A few and was met with disbelief. “I showed
18 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
twisted her first name into vulgarities. standardized barriers and ceiling covers.
The Vice-President, as her grand-
1
STREETSCAPE
The city has offered four prototypes;
SHED LIFE
nieces memorably demonstrated at the floors, ultimately, are not mandatory.
D.N.C., pronounces her first name like Tymkiw, who lives in Stuyvesant
“comma-la,” with emphasis on the first Town and has graying chin-length hair
syllable: KAH-muh-luh. Trump and his and glasses with clear frames, is pro-purge.
partisans have continually deployed it as “They needed some excuse to clear all of
“Kuh-MAH-la.” Perhaps they just can’t these away and start over again,” he said.
shake the preferred pronunciations of For four years, he has crisscrossed town
Kamala Khan, a Marvel superheroine ast year, when New York City was on a Citi Bike to photograph more than
who débuted in 2013, and Kamala the
Ugandan Giant, a late pro wrestler who
L devising new rules for outdoor din-
ing structures, a designer in the city-plan-
a thousand roadway cafés. Many are fea-
tured on his Instagram page and in
occasionally took on Trump’s pal Hulk ning department e-mailed an art direc- self-published books. The sixth and final
Hogan. (That Kamala’s real name: James tor named John Tymkiw. Since 2020, volume has just been released.
Harris.) More likely, it’s a disrespectful Tymkiw has been photographing what Tymkiw didn’t set out to document
dig, with a subtext of othering. “I don’t he describes as the city’s “D.I.Y., free- every last shed. He focussed on designs
think that’s right,” the San Bernardino for-all folk architecture,” which sprang that piqued his interest, like the faux
Kamala Harris said, of such willful mis- up during COVID lockdowns, as part of Winnebago outside Joey Roses sand-
pronunciations. But, if you called her a series on sidewalk sheds called “How wich shop, on the Lower East Side, or
KAH-muh-luh, that wouldn’t be quite We Ate.” The city designer was a fan; the lighthouse-esque roof at Sami’s
right, either: she pronounces it like Pa- Tymkiw offered suggestions. “My one Kabab House, in Long Island City. He
mela. So does Kamii in New Hampshire. pet peeve was the floors—if you look at combed social-media posts, searched
Kamala Plaisted, of Weston, Con- them, all of them are terrible, all of them Google Street View, and pounded the
necticut, does, too. She’s part of another are, like, rotting,” he recalled. “I said just streets to find his subjects. People sent
select club: the former Kamala Harrises. allow people to have no floors.” him tips. His research led him to every
Like Kamala DeLuz, of Sacramento The other day, Tymkiw was in the borough except Staten Island.
(who goes by Denise, her middle name), East Village for a farewell tour of sorts. The East Village never failed to de-
Plaisted dropped Harris, her maiden Restaurants are dismantling their sheds liver. It was where he took several snowy
name, when she got married, twenty in what he calls a “big purge.” By the end photos during what he calls his “winter
years ago. Plaisted, who is of mixed Eu- of this month, the city will require that period.” “I was sticking the camera in
ropean stock, was named in honor of its streets be empty of these defining sym- my armpit to warm it up so the battery
the Indian-born actress Kamala Devi, bols of the pandemic. When restaurants would come back, and I’m, like, ‘Is this
whose husband, Chuck Connors, Plais- are allowed to resurrect them, in April, even worth it?’” he said. Up the street
ted’s mother adored. (Devi is also the they’ll be more uniform in style, with was another one of his subjects, Miss
Vice-President’s middle name.) She is
pretty sure that she was once confused
with the Veep, in the mid-nineties, when
she gave her name to a clerk at Saks
Fifth Avenue, who then called up an ac-
count with a San Francisco address. “The
lovely girl was, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, there’s
two of you!’” Plaisted recalled. Her name
change has failed to insulate her from
being bothered by impassioned non-
constituents on the phone. “Some have
been threatening,” she said. “And a cou-
ple have been, like, ‘Oh, please, you’re
the only one that can help us! I know
who you are!’ And I’m, like, ‘I’m not.’”
Mixups can have their benefits. Every
once in a while, the New Hampshire
Kamala Harris reported, she receives an
unsolicited PayPal deposit from a mis-
taken would-be donor. It’s typically five
or ten bucks, which has been a help to
her as a single mother of three. “That
side of it has been pretty cool,” she said.
She doesn’t correct them.
—Dan Greene “Golly! If my folks back in Nebraska could see me now!”
Lily’s, a Caribbean restaurant. He had becomes very New Yorky—that’s not cookbook’s recipes, which, these days,
photographed it in 2020, when there like Paris, that’s not like Barcelona.” the singer doesn’t much fancy. “He only
were just a few simple barriers outside, Later, over a drip coffee at Cafe eats certain foods,” D’Angelo said.
and again a year later, after it débuted a Mogador, Tymkiw added, “The only Nelson, who wore old cowboy boots,
jaunty red-white-and-blue shed. thing I’d be disappointed in is if they all black jeans, and a black puffer coat in
He made for the shed, and paused go away in every form and we go back the eighty-degree heat, said, “I used to
to admire its transparent corrugated roof. to just parking everywhere.” eat chicken-fried steaks and enchiladas
“When you look toward the sun, some- —Naomi Zeveloff and all that good stuff. Now I have to
times the light is really nice. You get this 1 watch it.” His current diet features toast,
special glow,” he said. Near the base of AUSTIN POSTCARD protein shakes, gluten-free waffles with
one door was a small metal screen. “So SOUP’S ON syrup, chicken soup, and bacon-and-
the rats don’t get in,” he said. “But rats, tomato sandwiches.
they always get in.” But he does still get high. “I had to
Tymkiw liked to shoot in the morn- lay off smoking for a while. I’m giving
ing, before customers arrived. He started my lungs a rest,” he said. “I started out
with an iPhone 7, but the camera had a smoking cedar bark, and then cornstalks,
short focal length, and he had to dodge and then switched up to cigarettes—
traffic to fit longer sheds in the frame. illie Nelson, the ninety-one-year- Chesterfields and Camels.” He went on,
“I was so happy to find the iPhone 13
had a wide-angle lens,” he said. “I didn’t
W old singer-songwriter, who has
brought comfort and heartbreak and joy
“One day, I emptied out my Chester-
fields box and rolled up twenty fat joints
have to dare death to get a picture.” to his fans with a hundred and fifty-three and stuck ’em in the box, and anytime I
A couple of stops later, at Nowon, a albums, thirteen books, and more than wanted a cigarette I’d smoke a joint. And
Korean American gastropub on East a couple of arrests for marijuana posses- I quit smoking that way.” He laughed.
Sixth, Tymkiw peered through the win- sion, will soon publish his first-ever cook- “Now I do edibles.”
dow of a locked wooden shed. Inside were book. The concoctions in “Willie and “I’m the one who makes them,”
heat lamps, a signboard, and fake plants. Annie Nelson’s Cannabis Cookbook: D’Angelo said. Nelson’s daily dose of
“This looks like it was cobbled together Mouthwatering Recipes and the High- THC is about sixty milligrams—enough
with stuff from Home Depot,” he said. Flying Stories Behind Them” include to turn a regular person into stardust.
Over on Avenue B, Horus Cafe had Shirred Eggs with Asparagus & Fennel “I think it saved my life,” Nelson said,
one of the most mystifying outdoor din- (17.6 milligrams of THC per serving), of cannabis. “And probably other peo-
ing structures Tymkiw had encountered: Vegan Cannabis Butter (212 milligrams ple’s lives.” He paused. “I drank a lot—”
an elevated wood platform with stairs of THC per tablespoon), and Butter- “He’s not a good drinker,” D’Angelo,
and a railing, but no roof. “It’s like a pa- milk Fried Chicken (no THC). The sto- who wore a “humans against ted
rade float—it’s a stage,” he said. “If there ries veer from recollections of a Christ- cruz” T-shirt, chimed in. “He breaks
is a block party and you have a local mas he spent in the Alps with Johnny the family rule when he drinks. The
band playing, or an m.c., they would be Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kris- family rule is: Don’t be an asshole, don’t
up here. But why would they do that?” tofferson to an account of a harsh win- be an asshole, don’t be a goddam asshole.”
Tymkiw had photographed many ter, in Tennessee, when he bought sev- “I quit doing a lot of the shit that
other unusual designs: a set of stairs enteen weaner pigs at a quarter a pound, was killing me—smoking and drink-
meant to evoke a brownstone stoop, at then sold them at a loss. ing,” Nelson said. “And now I’m feeling
Foreigner NYC; an elaborate green Vic- “I learned one thing—I’m not a hog good and looking forward to the show,
torian-style wrought-iron shelter, at raiser,” Nelson recalled the other day at and not dreading it.”
Oscar Wilde; a gossamer overhead cov- Luck, his dusty ranch in the Texas Hill “Once he’s up there, it’s wild to see,”
ering made of knitted white shapes, at Country. He was at his “world headquar- D’Angelo said.
NeueHouse. “The things I’ve docu- ters,” a building used mostly for playing “That’s what keeps me going, doing
mented were human creativity and spirit poker, watching MSNBC, drinking, and an hour show,” he said. “Not only is it
manifested in physical constructions,” getting high. The inside was decorated good exercise but it’s good mentally,
he said. Not manifested: durability. with cardboard cutouts of Gene Autry physically, everything.”
On East Seventh Street, at the shed and John Wayne (“My heroes!”), a “Wil- The previous night, he had performed
in front of C&B (notable for once hav- lie for President” license plate, and some the title track of his latest album for an
ing a wood stove), a woman wearing a signed Snoop Dogg memorabilia. Nel- audience at a taping for the fiftieth sea-
“Harris for President” hat chatted with son glanced over at a Doggy Dogg poster son of the public-television show “Aus-
Tymkiw. Her name was Denise Kuriger, and said, “I smoked him under the table tin City Limits.” He’d crooned, “I’m the
and she wanted to know how he felt one night!” (Snoop confirmed: “Willie last leaf on the tree /The autumn took
about the structures. Nelson is the only person who has ever the rest / But it won’t take me.” Several
“They are an experiment that the city outsmoked Snoop Dogg!”) large men in the crowd wept. “I’ll be
didn’t realize was really an experiment,” On the front porch, Nelson sat with here through eternity / If you wanna
he said. “My hope is that we have a new his wife, Annie D’Angelo. She and the know how long / If they cut down this
version of dining in New York City that chef Andrea Drummer had written the tree / I’ll show up in a song.”
20 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
 Since 1899, its headquarters have been at flanked by an ornate brass railing. “I love
20 West Forty-fourth Street, in a build- this view, and I just appreciate it every
ing that had previously been a school for day,” she said. If her office were your of-
boys. Not long ago, Victoria Dengel, fice, you would never work from home.
the executive director, pointed to a large Among the society’s many treasures
leaded-glass arched window above the is the John M. Mossman Lock Collec-
entrance and said, “We restored the build- tion, which includes more than three
ing’s façade a few years ago, and the Ram- hundred and fifty locks, keys, and safes,
busch Decorating Company, which was most of them from between 1850 and
founded in 1898, took that window com- 1912, a robust period for bank robbing.
pletely apart and re-leaded it.” The soci- Mossman was born in 1846. His parents
ety’s library is the city’s second oldest. Its were Scottish immigrants, as Carnegie’s
stacks rise four stories alongside a cav- were, and, like Carnegie, he went to work
ernous central atrium, and it’s an ideal at twelve, in his father’s safe-and-lock
resource for anyone who has questions business on West Broadway. His spe-
about concrete-making, corrosion pre- cialties eventually included time locks,
vention, tunnel digging, or hundreds of whose intricate mechanical workings
other subjects, as well as for anyone who prevented tellers from opening safes out-
Willie Nelson needs a break from the stuffed animal side of banking hours, even if they knew
heads on the walls of the Harvard Club, the combination and had a gun at their
On the porch, Nelson said, “I believe across the street. head. Mossman became one of his trade’s
in reincarnation. It’s the only thing that Dengel started at the society as a vol- most avid historians, and, in 1903, he do-
makes sense to me. But I don’t worry unteer, and, ten years ago, became the nated his collection to the society. “Peo-
about it. We’re all gonna die, and there’s boss. “I’ve been coming here since I was ple come from all over the world to see
no use rushing it.” He went on, “I’ve lost eleven years old,” she said. “My dad was it,” Dengel said.
a lot of friends. Kris, a few days ago— a Local 14 operating engineer. He was Ryan Krakowsky recently became the
Kris Kristofferson. And Waylon Jen- the president in 1982, and he definitely curator in charge of the lock collection.
nings and Merle Haggard and Johnny impressed upon us how important the He studied sculpture at the Rhode Is-
Cash.” He looked out at a grove of ce- society’s work was.” It conducts a land- land School of Design in the nineties,
dars and live oaks. “I am one of the last mark- and labor-related lecture series, and, after graduation, talked his way into
ones. I don’t know why I’m still here, which began as a nineteenth-century a job as a locksmith’s apprentice in Prov-
but here we are. Last man standing.” equivalent to TED talks, and it holds idence. For the past five years, he has
After a brief rainstorm, D’Angelo free classes for people who work in build- been one of eleven full-time locksmiths
began to make some chicken soup for ing trades. It also rents office space to a at Harvard University, which owns five
lunch. “Or I can make a bacon-and- number of compatible organizations, hundred or so lockable structures in and
tomato sandwich, too, if you’d rather,” among them the Horological Society around Cambridge. He visits the Gen-
she said to her husband. of New York, the Institute of Classical eral Society when he can, and recently
“Soup’s good,” he said. Architecture & Art, and the Society of straightened out some mislabelled locks
—Adam Iscoe Mayflower Descendants. in several of its display cases.
1 “These are our presidents since the “I’m also a collector,” he said. “I have
LOCKBOX DEPT. time of photography,” Dengel said, re- a basement full of stuff, and I have four
BY HAMMER AND HAND ferring to a series of portraits. “On this or five safes right now in my dining
wall, they’re all deceased.” Her office looks room.” He’s especially interested in the
roughly as it must have in the eigh- work of George Damon, who was based
teen-nineties. Its furnishings include ster- in Boston in the late eighteen-hundreds
num-height wooden wainscoting and a and specialized in bank vaults and safes.
Seth Thomas pendulum calendar clock, Damon’s customers included the Bos-
patented in 1876, which was designed to ton Safe Deposit Company, the Bay
he Manhattan organization with the keep track of the month, date, and day State Trust Company, the Old Colony
T coolest name, the General Society
of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City
of the week, in addition to the time. “This
is a bust of Brother Andrew Carnegie,
Trust Company, and the United States
Treasury. “His attention to detail and
of New York, also has the coolest motto, who joined in 1903,” she said. When Car- his craftsmanship were amazing, even
which it shares with the Worshipful Com- negie signed the membership register, he in parts you couldn’t see,” Krakowsky
pany of Blacksmiths: “By hammer and listed his trade not as “millionaire philan- said. “His vault doors are basically works
hand all arts do stand.” The society was thropist” but as “cotton spinner,” his first of art.” Modern locks are works of art,
founded, in 1785, by twenty-two local job after immigrating to the United too, at least technologically—right?
craftsmen, whose trades included tan- States, in 1848, when he was twelve. An “No, they’re really not,” Krakowsky
ning, silversmithing, ship-joining, stone- open hallway outside Dengel’s office over- said. “Unfortunately, they’re not.”
cutting, coach-making, and chandlery. looks the library’s main f loor and is —David Owen
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 21
 logue, usually starting with some geo-
THE POLITICAL SCENE targeted pandering. In Michigan, he
praised the local muskie fishing before
slamming the state’s “brain-dead robot”
TUCKER EVERLASTING of a governor. In Pennsylvania, he ex-
tolled the beauty of the Conestoga River
Trump’s favorite pundit takes his show on the road. before describing that state’s governor as
“evil, actually.” In Texas, he said, “There’s
BY ANDREW MARANTZ something about being in a room full of
people you agree with that is so great.

Smentometimes, when Tucker Carlson is

in the shower, he takes a quiet mo-
to reflect on whether his haters
hyena bark of a laugh—a familiar se-
quence to anyone who has watched
Tucker Carlson heap scorn on his ene-
It’s like a spa treatment.”
He claims to hold his haters beneath
contempt, but he does bring them up a
may be right about him. I know this not mies, which is to say, anyone who has lot. A forthcoming biography of Carl-
firsthand but because he recently men- watched Tucker Carlson. “Whatever else son will be named for one of the high-
tioned it to a few thousand fans in Rosen- I am, I’m the opposite of an extremist,” est compliments he pays: “Hated by All
berg, Texas. He said, “I have been through he continued. “My parents got divorced. the Right People.” Carlson began one of
this process for so many years, where I’m totally opposed to change.” He claims his own books with a personal note to
they call you something”—in his case, a that his vision for the country’s future the C.E.O. of Simon & Schuster, “whose
very incomplete list would include “ven- is actually a vision of the country’s past, descent from open-minded book editor
omous demagogue,” “crypto-Nazi blow- one that strikes him as modest, even ob- to cartoonish corporate censor mirrors
hard,” “anti-science ignoramus,” and “a vious: “I liked America in 1985.” the decline of America itself.” (To be
dick”—“and I actually do try to take stock. This was the ninth stop on the Tucker clear, Carlson’s book was not censored;
Like, am I that person?” Carlson Live Tour—sixteen arenas, this it was published by Simon & Schuster.)
These reveries always lead him to the fall, from Anaheim, California, to Sun- When he still had a show on Fox News—
same conclusion: he’s clean. It is the hat- rise, Florida, but mostly in the heartland. for a time, the most popular program in
ers who are wrong. That night, in Rosen- At each stop, before bringing out his spe- the history of cable news, and the one
berg, the epithet he lingered on was “ex- cial guest (Kid Rock in Grand Rapids; that set the agenda on the American
tremist.” He drew out the syllables in a Donald Trump, Jr., in Jacksonville), Carl- right throughout the Trump Adminis-
derisive growl, followed by his foppish son delivered a semi-improvised mono- tration—the Times ran a front-page story

REDUX

“Just look around,” Tucker Carlson has said. “Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?”
22 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK PETERSON
about how he had “adopted the rhetor- ever that is”). Without Donald Trump ous,” Carlson said, when he and Vance
ical tropes and exotic fixations of white watching every night, he had less imme- were seated onstage. As he did most
nationalists.” Holding up the paper and diate political influence but more free- nights, he brought up the fact that Dick
laughing, he posed for a photo, which he dom to think out loud. Cheney—or “Darth Vader”—had re-
posted on Twitter. He doesn’t ignore his In private, many Republicans will cently endorsed Kamala Harris, and
enemies; he seems to define himself by admit that, although Trump may be use- Vance replied, “The leadership of this
them.The globalists in Davos, the defense ful as a political battering ram, he’s too country has gotten so deranged that
contractors in Bethesda, the private- indolent and self-serving to get much they’ve convinced themselves that there’s
equity wives in Santa Monica: whatever done. Because he has instincts, not ideas— a great American majority for fighting
else he is, at least he’s not one of them. and because his Kitchen Cabinet has in- a ton of wars, importing a ton of illegal
On the tour, each night’s monologue cluded both nationalists like Carlson and aliens, and shipping all the jobs over-
included at least one off-putting non free-market neoconservatives like Rupert seas.” If you like those ideas, he contin-
sequitur (“I can identify every member Murdoch—Trump can be spun around ued, “you’re welcome in the party of Ka-
of my family by smell, and I’m proud by whichever adviser gets to him last. For mala Harris and Dick Cheney.” Carlson
of it”), and at least one contrarian riff years, Carlson and others pined for a na- nodded along and, at one point, added,
on a topic that would have appeared on tionalist movement unconstrained by one “Amen.” For now, and for the foresee-
no one’s current-events bingo card (An- man’s personal limitations, and with a able future, this is what Trumpism after
tifa pretends to be radical but is actu- more unified ethos. A wonky way to put Trump looks like. It looks like Vanceism,
ally “the Praetorian Guard for the rul- this: What might a post-neoliberal Re- which owes a heavy debt to Tuckerism.
ing class”; sending mosquito nets to publican coalition look like? A plainer
Africa is overrated, actually). He often way: What is Trumpism after Trump? ike Trump, Carlson appeals to his
punctuated his claims with “actually,” or
“obviously” (as in “They’re lying to you—
On social media, Carlson screen-
tested some options. Maybe the coali-
L base by positioning himself as a class
traitor—not a man of the people, exactly,
obviously”). Then he would segue back tion could infuse some of Trump’s old but an apostate from the cosmopolitan
to his general thesis: You’re not crazy; instincts (the nativism, the unending élite. His stepmother was a Swanson, an
they’re crazy. “Who is actually for infla- crusade against a pervasive enemy) with heir to the frozen-dinner fortune; his
tion, or no borders, or castrating your a new sense of purpose (more working- father was an ambassador under Ron-
kids and having no grandchildren?” he class cred, a turn toward economic pop- ald Reagan (and reputedly had ties to
said in Texas, comparing the gaslighting ulism). And, to prepare for Trump’s re- the C.I.A.). Carlson has gone bow-tie-
of right-wingers to a Soviet PsyOp. tirement, the movement would need a less for nearly two decades, but he never
“Like, nine rich ladies in L.A. are for standard-bearer-in-waiting. For a mo- stopped looking like “The Official Preppy
that. Everybody else hates it.” ment, it seemed like this might be the Handbook” come to life; it can seem a
In the spring of 2023, Carlson was entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, or Gov- bit rich to hear a populist battle cry from
abruptly fired from Fox News, for rea- ernor Ron DeSantis—or Carlson him- a guy wearing a blazer and a Rolex, but
sons that remain somewhat opaque. He self. But the heir apparent has turned his indignation appears sincere. He spent
took refuge on Twitter, whose new owner, out to be Senator J. D. Vance, a friend thirty-five years in Washington, D.C., be-
Elon Musk, he had praised for “risking and protégé of Carlson’s since before he fore decamping to central Maine. Though
it all to save free speech.” (Carlson, a ran for public office. he was a Beltway fixture, making the
coastal-élite prep schooler turned rugged The Tucker Carlson Live Tour made rounds at book parties and lunching at
prepper, claims to revile the billionaire a stop in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and the Palm, he always treated his fellow
class, but in practice he’s more discrimi- Vance was the special guest. By then, of swamp dwellers with palpable disdain.
nating.) His next show, if you could call course, he was the Republican candi- In January, 2016, long before most of his
it a show, was named “Tucker on Twit- date for Vice-President—a dark-horse Republican neighbors, Carlson came out
ter,” then “Tucker on X.” He posted in- pick championed by a small circle, Carl- as gleefully anti-anti-Trump, in a Politico
termittently. In straight-to-camera mono- son prominent among them. “I know article titled “Donald Trump Is Shocking,
logues, he used the editorial “we” to decry J. D. Vance very well, and I know that Vulgar and Right.” “Like most effective
vaccine mandates or the war in Ukraine— he’s, like, the most authentic person in populists, he’s a whistleblower,” Carlson
like the A-block of his Fox show, but politics,” Carlson said. To prove it, he wrote. “Anyone can peer through the win-
without the graphics (or the ratings). He brandished an incandescent-green ob- dow in envy. It takes a real man to throw
broadcast from his barn in rural Maine, ject—a plastic bottle of Diet Mountain furniture through it from the inside.”
sitting at a desk with a hatchet and an Dew. “They don’t have this at the Aspen Both men take obvious pleasure in
alpenstock behind him, or at a dining- Institute, trust me,” he said. There is not desecrating Republican pieties. This is
room table beneath a chandelier made of much that Carlson won’t do for an au- less remarkable in the case of Trump,
antlers. He did interviews, too; these were dience’s approval, but he put the bottle who enjoys desecrating everything, than
released as a podcast, in which he deliv- down unopened. “I’m not gonna try that, in the case of Carlson, who was once
ered even his ad reads in a paranoid aggro sorry,” he said. “I’m not a man of the such a dyed-in-the-wool movement con-
style (“Verizon, A.T. & T., and T-Mobile people.” Instead, he picked up a smaller, servative that he has both a brother and
want you to believe that you have to have darker glass bottle of Perrier. a son named Buckley. Both Carlson and
something called ‘unlimited data’ . . . what- “The realignment is now very obvi- Trump were for the Iraq War before they
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 23
 a similar admonition: If Republicans
won’t become the party of the working
class, the other side will. He insinuated
that “Trump, at his best,” had the right
instincts, but that he was being thwarted
by Mitch McConnell and the rest of the
swamp. Soon enough, a handful of Re-
publican figures started to echo him. In
2019, on Carlson’s show, Vance said that
“working- and middle-class, blue-collar
folks” were “increasingly the base of the
Republican Party, but the Republican
donor élites are actually not aligned with
those folks. . . . Have Republicans done
anything for those people, really, in the
last fifteen or twenty years?” Carlson
ended the segment by telling Vance, “If
the Republican Party has a future, it will
“I just need you to find this e-mail from two or five years ago, but I can’t be organized around the ideas you just
remember the subject line or address or if I actually received it.” laid out—maybe led by you, or someone
who thinks like you.”
In 2021, when Carlson started a stream-
• • ing show on Fox Nation, Vance was one
of his first guests. They spoke for an hour,
were against it; only Carlson freely ad- endorsing Warren for President—she was discussing their many ideological affini-
mits this, and often raises it as an exam- still a “race-hustling, gun-grabbing abor- ties, with a rapport that suggested a his-
ple of his fallibility. tion extremist,” after all. But at least she tory of developing those affinities off-air.
When he was at Fox News, his prime- was willing to “protect American indus- Carlson teed Vance up with a question
time colleagues Sean Hannity and Laura tries”—as opposed to most Republican about visiting the Aspen Institute, and
Ingraham were reliable partisan war- lawmakers, who were too afraid to “violate Vance said that it was there, among the
riors. In some respects, the Republican some principle of Austrian economics” or ruling class, that he’d had an epiphany:
Party was a close enough proxy for Carl- “make the Koch brothers mad.” Despite “The reason they’re not governing effec-
son’s personal world view: abortion is the cliché that the average voter is socially tively is ’cause they actually hate the coun-
murder; Oberlin sophomores are an- liberal but fiscally conservative, Carlson try they’re meant to govern. . . . A little
noying; we should be more libertarian insisted that an untapped majority was more malice and evil, as opposed to just
on guns, but not on sex or drugs or po- the opposite—“nationalist on econom- incompetence.” Carlson agreed, looking
licing. In other ways, it was a more com- ics, fairly traditional on the social issues.” slightly enamored. Trump may be a rich
bustible fit, because Carlson seemed to One of the first major attempts to guy who likes McDonald’s, but in
have an ideological project of his own. map out a Trumpism after Trump was Vance—a Yale Law graduate with Ap-
He argued that both parties had strayed the 2019 National Conservatism Con- palachian roots—he seemed to see a newly
radically off course—that, for decades, ference, in Washington. Carlson was a sophisticated kind of whistle-blower.
professional Washington had been be- keynote speaker. “I was trained from the When it’s framed as a choice be-
witched by economic neoliberalism (ru- youngest age, from a pup, to believe that tween social services at home and un-
inous trade deals, laissez-faire corporate the threats to liberty came from govern- winnable wars abroad, the logic of Amer-
regulations) and neoconservatism (“in- ment,” he said. But now—“I’m bewil- ica First seems straightforward. And
vade the world, invite the world”), both dered that I’m saying it”—the bigger yet it has a way of masking the poison-
of which struck him as not only mis- threat came from multinational corpo- ous America First of Charles Lindbergh
guided but practically treasonous. rations. Some of his examples were friv- and Father Coughlin, or cashing out in
One night in 2019, he started his Fox olous. (Apparently, Nabisco had printed empty promises. “Party of the working
show by quoting extensively from a doc- various gender pronouns on some special- class” is just a slogan; the details mat-
ument called “A Plan for Economic Pa- edition Oreos, which Carlson called “a ter, and Carlson and Vance seem more
triotism,” which called for re-shoring profound statement against nature.”) But invested in shielding American work-
American jobs, propping up domestic he was on his way to a more significant ers from the ravages of immigration
manufacturing, and other protectionist argument—about why Google may need than in, say, protecting their right to
measures that flew in the face of free- to be broken up—when he interrupted join a union. Still, it’s difficult to deny
market orthodoxy. Gradually, he built to himself, delighted to see a friend in the that large swaths of the country have
his big reveal: “The words you just heard audience. “J. D. Vance, ladies and gentle- been hollowed out, in part owing to
are from—and brace yourself here—Sen- men,” he said, with a wide smile. free-market orthodoxy, in the past few
ator Elizabeth Warren.” Carlson wasn’t On air, night after night, he repeated decades, and that resentment over this
24 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
has become a tectonic political force. antihistamine. And then Carlson bounded world, so I know a lot about this,” he
In his final months on Fox News, onto the stage, to the strains of “American said. “Everyone I know” is a “consultant
Carlson interviewed Vance several times. Bad Ass,” by Kid Rock, holding a Perrier. for Bain”—the sort of job that is high
One Friday night, Carlson ended his He wore a blazer, a gingham shirt, and status but “totally useless.”Trump voters,
show by eating a sausage-and-pineapple loafers with no socks; as always, his hair by contrast, are “the people who don’t
pizza, then signed off: “We’ll be back on was elegantly rumpled, as if he’d just been really matter—you know, like farmers,
Monday.” That Monday morning, he awakened from a nap on a friend’s yacht. and electricians, and the people who
was fired, apparently with no explana- “This is the best country,” he said. “For built the house that you live in.”
tion. (“I’m kind of psyched to be humil- anybody who doubts it, from too much “Preach it, Tucker!” someone shouted.
iated in public,” he recalled thinking. “I time on Instagram—get on the road.” Carlson smiles when he’s having fun, but
know that I will learn something about Whatever else he is, Carlson is a sin- when he’s really cooking he looks deadly
myself.”) Dominion Voting Systems had gularly compelling performer. Apart from serious, like Kobe Bryant in unblinking
sued Fox News, alleging that its anchors, looks, brains, and moneyed benefactors, Mamba mode. “The credentialling sys-
including Carlson, had falsely accused it there is really only one relevant skill in tem that produces the worst people in
of election meddling. Many of Carlson’s political mass media: you have to be able the world is not an accident,” he contin-
text messages had become public in the to hold an audience’s attention. By this ued. “It’s a way that people who have no
process, including one in which he called metric, Carlson is better than just about useful skills at all—who couldn’t change
Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer.” In anyone on the planet. Trump, the reign- your tire, or find shelter in a rainstorm,
the end, the last straw that led to Carl- ing virtuoso of attention-hacking, seems or fix your freakin’ toaster—can still have
son’s firing could have been any number destined to keep repeating the same houses on St. Barts, and then at the same
of things—a text in which he fantasized leaden anecdotes about shark attacks and time lecture you about how you’re non-
about a mob of Trump supporters beat- long-dead celebrities, but Carlson has essential and should go die of a fentanyl
ing an Antifa protester to death, or one an appetite for new information and a O.D.” Near where I was sitting, some
in which he reportedly referred to a fe- flair for verbal dexterity. (He was once, people cheered and others sat in rapt si-
male Fox executive as a “cunt”—but Carl- as much as it pains me to admit it, a very lence. One woman had her hands raised
son and his allies suggested that the real good magazine writer.) Like a d.j. who and her eyes closed, as if in prayer. The
problem may have been his freethink- can fill a dance floor without playing any seventy-thirty statistic wasn’t exactly right,
ing brand of nationalism. “Rupert Mur- Top Ten hits, he can go for long stretches but the larger point, about inequality and
doch is a globalist,” Trump said, a few without mentioning Biden’s senility or class immobility, certainly was. Carlson
months after Carlson’s firing, “and I am Trump’s virility, keeping a crowd in thrall wasn’t offering any specific solutions, but
America First.” with one obscure digression after an- at least he sounded angry at the right
other: Regency architecture, transhu- people. Of course rural workers, whose
espite his wariness of T-Mobile’s manism, Grateful Dead trivia, the Hart- real wages and life expectancies keep fall-
D unlimited-data plans, Carlson
agreed to perform at the T-Mobile Cen-
Celler Act. Sean Hannity could never.
In Kansas City, his main riff started
ing, are not mourning the death of the
free-market consensus. It’s not surpris-
ter, in Kansas City, a couple of weeks be- with a simple statistic: “People who voted ing that, if you’re desperate enough, you’ll
fore Nicki Minaj and after Barry Man- for Joe Biden hold seventy per cent of thrill to someone willing to throw fur-
ilow. The stadium has about nineteen the wealth in the United States, and the niture on your behalf.
thousand seats, and maybe half of them people who voted for Donald Trump Carlson’s guest that night was Megyn
had been filled. The stage set could have Kelly, one of his erstwhile Fox News col-
been on loan from Oprah: two white leagues. She didn’t have much to say about
armchairs, elaborate bouquets of flow- neoliberalism. She mostly played the hits:
ers. The sound system played classic rock the Trump indictments are bogus; “gen-
at dentist-waiting-room volume: “Ram- der is bullshit.” She ended by protesting
blin’ Man,” by the Allman Brothers Band; too much about the cultural relevance
“I’m on Fire,” which Bruce Springsteen she and Carlson still enjoyed, even though
released as a single in 1985. they’re no longer on TV. “Cable news is
A few fans wore Carlson merch, such dead,” she said. “It was a suicide that was
as a T-shirt that read “No One Can Can- assisted by Donald Trump.”
cel Tucker.” (Fact check: probably true, if hold thirty per cent.” Instead of deliv-
only because, as Carlson sometimes says, ering this as an applause line, he plumbed fter Carlson was fired, he spent a
“I don’t even know what I do for a living at
this point.”) But most wore Trump shirts:
it for dark ironies, almost in the style of
one of his old nemeses, Jon Stewart.
A year in the wilderness. On X, he
posted long, loosely structured inter-
“Felon/Hillbilly 2024”; “Fight,” with a “How long do you think we could live views with a man who claimed to have
photo of Trump after getting shot. After in this country without private equity?” had sex with Barack Obama and an ex-
I found my seat, there was a word from Carlson said. “Three days, four days, be- pert on fossil fuels in space. None of this
the tour’s main sponsor, a sleep aid made fore people starved to death?” He stayed was setting any national agenda, but it
with “honey and organic herbs,” whose ac- deadpan, but the audience warmed to likely turned a profit. Some weeks, his
tive ingredient turned out to be a generic the bit. “And, by the way, I’m from that podcast was among the most popular in
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 25
the country. For a while, this seemed to A few months after Carlson’s insulting days, he makes his own groundless claims
be his lot: hawking life insurance and texts about him became public, Trump about election fraud, and downplays Jan-
bamboo bedsheets on X and iTunes. For attended a U.F.C. fight at Madison uary 6th as a vibrant demonstration at-
a guy who had already lived nine lives in Square Garden, with Carlson in his en- tended by “diabetic grandmothers.” Still,
the fickle media business—self-satisfied tourage. When Fox News hosted a Re- cynicism can’t explain everything. On
pugilist on CNN and MSNBC; stiff- publican primary debate, in 2023, Trump his Fox show, Carlson did fawning in-
backed “Dancing with the Stars” contes- skipped it and gave an interview to terviews with four sitting heads of state,
tant—this iteration didn’t seem half bad. “Tucker on X.” By the time he won the all aspiring proto-authoritarian strong-
And all along, amid his shock-jock antics, nomination and needed a new running men: Nayib Bukele, of El Salvador; Jair
he maintained a steady ideological drum- mate, having sicked a murderous mob Bolsonaro, of Brazil; Viktor Orbán, of
beat: You are being replaced. on the previous one, he Hungary; and Donald Trump. This past
Carl Sagan said that ex- asked an array of people for February, Carlson went to the Kremlin
traordinary claims require advice: Wall Street donors, to film a long interview with Vladimir
extraordinary evidence. Ac- the staff at Mar-a-Lago, and Putin; last summer, Carlson was back
cording to Carlson’s Razor, his ever-evolving brain trust. in Hungary. “Your country is freer than
there are no unintended Some of Trump’s more tra- the one I live in,” he told a local reporter.
outcomes; that which seems ditional advisers, including “It reminds me of America in 1985.”
extraordinary is in fact sim- Kellyanne Conway and Sean Given his various rhetorical modes, it
ple, and intentional. Follow Hannity, were reportedly for can be hard to know when to take him at
your gut. Why is your com- Marco Rubio, the polished his word. Does he really believe that Lind-
munity falling apart? Be- senator from Florida. But sey Graham is not just his political enemy
cause your leaders pledge apparently the nationalists but an agent of the Enemy, a.k.a. Satan?
allegiance to foreign shareholders and in Trump’s circle, led by Carlson, Elon Communism “isn’t an ideology. It’s an an-
cheap labor, not to the American peo- Musk, and Donald Trump, Jr., convinced tihuman impulse that comes from some
ple. Crime, disorder, spiritual decay, him that Rubio was a swamp creature outside source. Obviously.” The point of
deaths of despair: whatever the prob- with divided loyalties. In June, accord- COVID was to destroy the nuclear fam-
lem, it’s something that they are doing ing to the Times, Carlson told Trump ily. Seed oils may sterilize you, but nic-
to you, on purpose, because they hate that “if he chose a ‘neocon’ . . . the U.S. otine is a superfood. In Fort Worth, to
you. Obviously. intelligence agencies would have every make a point about humility, Carlson re-
The writer Matt Yglesias argues that, incentive” to assassinate him. turned to the topic of his bathing habits.
in the past decade, a “crank realignment” On the first night of the Republican “You really do have this image of your-
has pushed left-leaning “cranks and National Convention, Carlson talked self as a godlike figure,” he mused—“un-
know-nothings,” such as Robert F. Ken- about having spent “the whole day . . . til you step out of the shower and into
nedy, Jr., out of the Democratic fringes starting at 5 A.M.,” engaged in a behind- the harsh glare of the mirror.” His guest
and into the Republican base. On the the-scenes fight against a number of “fe- that night was Roseanne Barr, who lit
Tucker Carlson Live Tour, the only two line and ruthless” adversaries to get Vance up a Parliament onstage. “Fauci gave ev-
repeat guests were Kennedy and Russell selected, a fight that he’d just learned erybody AIDS!” she shouted. “Google it!”
Brand, disaffected progressives who re- he’d won. “Sometimes I’m not on God’s I have no access to the inside of Carl-
cently became zealous Trump support- side, but I definitely know who’s repre- son’s mind, heart, or shower, and he did
ers. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor senting the other side,” he said. “And not respond to texts and e-mails ask-
Greene was on the schedule for Green- every single one of those people” was ing for an interview. But I think I have
ville, South Carolina, but the event had lined up “to knife J. D. Vance.” Later listened to him long enough to have a
to be cancelled because of Hurricane He- that evening, he named one such per- sense of what’s truly important to him.
lene. (“Yes they can control the weather,” son: Lindsey Graham, the Republican He might deny it, but luckily, accord-
Greene tweeted.) Another guest was Alex senator, who had just hailed Vance’s ad- ing to him, that doesn’t matter. “The
Jones, the keening fabulist whom Carl- dition to the ticket. “No one lobbied only way to understand motive is by ef-
son once considered beyond the pale and harder against JD Vance than he did,” fect,” he said in Kansas City. “If I keep
now treats as a prophet. In Maine, Jones Carlson tweeted. (Graham did not re- doing something that has the same re-
sat in Carlson’s barn for a ninety-minute spond to requests for comment.) “Peo- sult, then that is the intended result.”
interview, ranting about 5G and bug pro- ple like Lindsey Graham are happy to He added, “Someone can tell you, ‘I’m
tein. Whenever Carlson couldn’t think lie right to your face, smiling as they plot the best person there is’ . . . but I’ve got-
of anything nice to say, he could always your destruction.” ten to the point where that’s totally ir-
make the negative case. “We have a rul- relevant to me.”
ing class in the United States defined by
its hatreds,” he said, in his introduction.
“But no one is hated more by them than
IandtCarlson’s
would be simple enough to dismiss
whole act as pure cynicism,
clearly there is some cynicism in-
Although he’d always considered him-
self a freethinker, he said at the National
Conservatism Conference, “the Trump
a man called Alex Jones.” volved. In his private texts, he referred election was so shocking” that it forced
Donald Trump is famously vain, but to conspiracy theories about the 2020 him to reassess his other beliefs: “In other
he doesn’t always hold grudges for long. election as “absurd” and “insane”; these words, if the Loch Ness monster is real,
26 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
what about the yeti?” As it turned out, the base of it, the part that has never ev- century, the population of the Twin Cit-
the Loch Ness monster wasn’t real, but idently changed, is immigration. On his ies was almost entirely white; now nearly
U.F.O.s were, and they were being re- Fox show, Carlson suggested that the half the residents are people of color,
vealed as part of a celestial plan. Maybe Democratic Party was importing “more many of them refugees from Somalia or
there really was a conspiracy to kill J.F.K., obedient voters from the Third World,” Southeast Asia, a fact that Carlson seems
and Jeffrey Epstein, too. Carlson had and that immigrants make the country to find intolerable. “I no longer go there,”
been raised Episcopalian but basically “poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.” He he said, because the cities are “disgusting.”
secular, encouraged to talk about the addressed his audience as “legacy Amer- If you had to pick a turning point, a
weather rather than his immortal soul. icans,” and he didn’t seem to mean Na- year before places like the Twin Cities
Now he started reading more Scripture, tive Americans. If the way to understand were, in Carlson’s view, irrevocably de-
and talking more about signs and por- motive is by effect, then it was plain to stroyed by demographic change, you
tents. There was good and evil in the see the effect he was having on the fascist might choose 1985. The following year,
world—not in the colloquial sense but fringe. “If you didn’t catch the German- Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration
in the literal, supernatural sense. shepherd whistles,” a white supremacist Reform and Control Act, granting am-
The main thing he started doing was named Mike Enoch said, praising one nesty to millions of immigrants. Carlson
trusting his gut. Diversity is not our of Carlson’s monologues, “I don’t know grew up in San Diego County, “the most
strength; what makes a nation strong is what universe you’re existing in.” For a beautiful place God ever made,” but it,
unity. Obviously. Western civilization long time, Carlson mostly avoided ex- too, underwent rapid change during the
was under attack, though most people plicit racial language, and so, whenever mid-eighties, while he was in boarding
were scared to say this out loud. “Ev- the pearl-clutching media called him rac- school; now he talks about himself as a
eryone’s lying, it’s all propaganda,” he ist, he laughed it off. More recently, on a refugee, forced to live thousands of miles
said. “So just disregard all of it, put your live stream with Donald Trump, Jr., Carl- away. “The main thing worth preserving
earphones on to white noise, and just son alleged that George Soros was replac- in our country,” he said, is the ability “to
look around: Who are the good guys ing the “indigenous population” of Ireland live in the place where your grandpar-
and who are the bad guys?” with “people from the Third World,” and ents were buried. . . . And that is under
When you looked at it that way, it accused him of having “genocidal intent.” threat in a way that I don’t think we even
was clear that Lindsey Graham was a “I don’t, at this point, care if you’re not al- perceive.” Carlson’s brand of nationalism
bad guy and Vladimir Putin was a good lowed to notice it,” he said. “I’m going to plays on a range of desires, from the lowest
guy. Fake conservatives might tut-tut live like it’s 1985 in my country.” to the loftiest: the yearning for commu-
about the cultural ground they were los- In October, during a talk at a conser- nal cohesion, for satisfying work, for a life
ing (methadone on demand, drag-queen vative think tank in the Upper Midwest, rich with meaning. But, because Carlson’s
story hour); ultimately, however, they Carlson waxed nostalgic about the Twin Razor requires a unified narrative with a
went along with the program. But Putin Cities. Because a place is a reflection of clear villain, complexity must be written
wasn’t going along with the program: a its people, he said, “Minneapolis always out of the story. Kick out the immigrants,
man is a man, criminals go to jail, ille- struck me as famously clean, but also punish the globalists, and then we can
gal immigrants get deported. Graham kind of sterile and atomized—like the have a functioning welfare state, just for us.
is a neocon who loves war because he’s Scandinavians.” St. Paul was boisterous Carlson’s side is “honorable” and “di-
possessed by a demonic force; Putin is but charming, like the Irish. For about a rect,” he continued. “If you make someone
a nationalist who is looking out for Rus-
sia’s interests. Recently, on his podcast,
Carlson said that Putin, Orbán, and
Trump “are pretty sincere nationalists—
not crazed ideological nationalists, just
want to do the best for their coun-
try. . . . In the 1984, ’85, ’86 context, they
would be sort of moderate.” His guest
on that episode was the history pod-
caster Darryl Cooper, who espoused a
similar theory about the Second World
War: Actually, the leader who escalated
the war was Churchill, who was likely
“a psychopath”; Hitler made some mis-
takes, including letting some prisoners
of war die of starvation. Who knew!
When you’re truly open-minded, you
learn something new every day.
Tuckerism is an ornate pyramid, with
a lot of weird stuff about testosterone and
declining sperm counts near the top, but
on the right angry, they’re, like, ‘I’ve got an to authoritarian populist, but his guest gets home, you know what he says?”
AR-15.’ ” But the left is passive-aggressive, for the night, the thirty-one-year-old Carlson asked, rousing the crowd to a
which keeps most Americans from recog- activist Charlie Kirk, had done the speed- libidinal frenzy. “ ‘You’re getting a vig-
nizing whom “we have to kill to be free.” run version. “The reason they hate Trump orous spanking, because you’ve been a
The audience chuckled nervously, but is not because he talks funny,” Kirk said. bad girl.’ ” That weekend, Carlson got
Carlson, unsmiling, named the enemy: “It’s because he does not believe in the a prime slot at Trump’s Madison Square
“An invading army that calls itself ref- core religious orthodoxy of the neolib- Garden rally, where he declared that,
ugees.” Encouraging your audience to eral governing élite.” Carlson nodded, at long last, “a realignment” has arrived
take up arms against the needy would referring ominously to “a large black in American politics. On Thursday
seem to contradict many of Jesus’ teach- building not far from here”—the global night, in Arizona, a one-night-only en-
ings. At other times, Carlson has ad- headquarters of Koch Industries. core performance was added to the
vocated for nonviolence, but that day About an hour in, the mood started Tucker Carlson Live Tour. Special guest:
he was apparently channelling the cru- to turn. “Can I just talk about Spring- Donald Trump.
sading Jesus of Matthew 10:34 (“I have field, Ohio, for a little bit?” Kirk said. Carlson is probably right that which-
come not to bring peace, but a sword”). Trump had recently claimed, without ever party is most associated with the
Carlson and his various nationalist al- evidence, that Haitian immigrants in interests of the working class, in 2026
lies sometimes contradict one another, and Springfield were “eating the pets of the or 2028 or beyond, will be the party best
themselves, but they agree on one point: people that live there.” Kirk added, positioned to win national majorities
A nation is its people, and if you put a “Their local school is being overrun by for a generation. And he seems to have
people under too much strain—through Haitians. But they’re racist for notic- placed his bet about how to accomplish
drugs, depravity, inequality, or mass migra- ing that their home is turning into Port- this: a meta-narrative that weaves to-
tion—then you won’t have a country for au-Prince?” gether all the aspirations and grievances
long. Orbán understands that Hungary Across the aisle from me I’d noticed that have always undergirded the na-
is for the Hungarian people. Bukele un- a wholesome-looking young family—a tionalist impulse, along with some new
derstands that El Salvador is for the Sal- mother, a father, and four children, all ones. It’s a compelling story, even if
vadorans. If those leaders have to get cre- wearing church T-shirts. During the many parts of it are not true. And the
ative to stay in power—jailing enemies of bits about neoliberalism, they’d seemed resentments of the neglected working
the state, packing the courts, bending the buoyant and surprisingly engaged. Now class, both white and nonwhite, are not
rules around election time—then that’s a they were hollering, their voices tak- going away. The left-populist meta-
fair price. After Orbán lost an election in ing on a hoarser, darker edge. “They’re narrative that would address those re-
2002, he gave a speech explaining that, in coming from a country where witch- sentments hasn’t quite caught on. In
a higher sense, he hadn’t really lost, be- craft is the dominant religion,” Carl- fairness, though, the left may have an
cause “the nation can’t be in opposition.” son said. “I don’t think you should im- inherently tougher job. It’s easier to
When Trump lost in 2020, he made sim- port people who practice witchcraft. I stitch together a post-neoliberal coa-
ilar noises, and Carlson amplified them. think that should be illegal. I’m sorry, lition if you’re willing to pass off ca-
In July, on the main stage at the Repub- it’s my country.” lumnious rumors as obvious facts, to
lican National Convention, Carlson said A religious test for immigration appeal to an ethnic majority’s basest in-
that, from the moment Trump survived an would violate the First Amendment, stincts, to throw the least of these under
assassination attempt, “he was no longer but everyone in the stadium under- the bus. To address inequality at its roots,
just a political party’s nominee”; he was stood what Carlson meant: You are without sacrificing the rule of law or
“the leader of a nation.” Titles don’t con- being replaced. Taking swipes at the the ideal of a truly multiracial democ-
fer legitimacy. Legal niceties can be re- Kochs and the Bain consultants was racy—that is more difficult. In fact, it’s
negotiated. “A leader is the bravest man,” one thing, but this was scapegoating never really been achieved.
Carlson continued. “This is a law of na- of the most classic kind: a vicious lie, After the show in Wichita, I stayed
ture.” You could interpret that statement weaponized by Vance and mainstreamed in the lobby and talked to some of Carl-
as merely a rousing line in a campaign by Trump. Six elementary schools in son’s fans. Most of them were in good
speech, or you could see it as a prejusti- Springfield have now been evacuated spirits. “Tucker is hilarious!” one woman
fication for whatever Trump’s support- or closed because of bomb threats. said. Another noted, “Eye-opening,
ers are prepared to do in the unlikely And yet I can’t find clear evidence that truly.” The only two attendees who
event—the impossible event, really— Trump or Vance has paid a political seemed relatively subdued were a local
that he loses. He is the bravest man—the price for this. As far as I can tell, it may college student and her mother, a biol-
only man—in the race. He is the right- have helped them. ogist from Montana. The mother was
ful leader, whatever the official tally says. The other night, Carlson joined Kirk a fan of Carlson’s, and she said that the
at a Trump rally in Georgia. America show was “entertaining, but I don’t know
he night after the Kansas City was out of control—like a two-year- why he has to stoop to the divisive stuff.”
T show, the Tucker Carlson Live Tour
stopped in Wichita. It had taken Carl-
old smearing feces on a wall, or a “hor-
mone-addled fifteen-year-old daugh-
She certainly wasn’t a globalist, she con-
tinued, but “I’m not a nationalist. I’m
son decades to graduate from free-market ter”—but Trump, the nation’s daddy, a hardworking, thinking Christian. I
conservative to Trump-curious contrarian was about to restore order. “When Dad think we can do better.” 
28 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
 f ly. Then lower your expectations,
SHOUTS & MURMURS because butterf lies emerge from a
chrysalis, not a cocoon, so you are ac-
tually a moth. Accept your moth iden-
tity and fly toward a flame.

Always move forward like a shark.

Unless there is a shark approaching
you, in which case scurry sideways like
a crab.

Be mindful and notice the little things,

like a mountain lion suddenly notic-
ing the electric fence.

When life gives you lemons, eat the

lemons off the ground under the cover
of night like a possum.

Love what you do like a bear hunt-

ing salmon. Do what you love like a
salmon futilely attempting to thrash
upstream away from a bear.

Change is good—it’s the only thing

that’s certain in life. Embrace change
like a snake shedding its skin, but
stay true to your authentic self. If your
authentic self is the skin you just shed,
go find it and put it back on. If it
shrivelled and no longer fits, make a
vest out of it and wear your true self
LIFE ADVICE WITH as a layer when it gets chilly.

ANIMAL ANALOGIES Work hard and keep your eyes on the

prize like a mountain lion digging a
BY VIKTORIA SHULEVICH hole under the electric fence.

Go with the f low like a dead fish. ways keep one foot on the ground like Ignorance is bliss. Be blissfully happy
a pink flamingo and your head buried as a clam that doesn’t know it’s at a
If you don’t like where the flow is going, in the sand like an ostrich. This may clambake.
stop the flow like a beaver does with wood. sound impossible, but you can do it if
you practice Pilates. Remember that life is what happens
Laughter is the best medicine, unless you while you’re busy making plans to eat
laugh like a hyena, in which case you Age gracefully but invisibly, like a household pet but sometimes you
should laugh like a hamster. (Hamsters a pigeon. find yourself covered in mud, sitting
don’t laugh.) alone in a hole under an electric fence,
Patience is a virtue. Be patient like a no closer to the household pet than
Pursue your goals with passion and de- mountain lion when the household you were eight hours ago and won-
termination like a mountain lion stalking pet’s owner returns home because dering if it’s even worth it, but you’ve
a household pet. she forgot her phone. already dug a pretty deep hole so you
should probably just keep going so
Remember that it’s all about the jour- Take big swings like a howler mon- that you don’t feel like a total loser.
ney, not the destination. So enjoy the key, and don’t be afraid of crashing But then it starts raining, so you say
views along the way like a mountain lion into a tree like a howler monkey that fuck it.
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ

watching a household pet’s owner head- is bad at judging distance.

ing off to work. Follow your gut like a cow with four
Visualize your future self emerging stomachs, but don’t always trust your
No matter what life throws at you, al- from a cocoon as a beautiful butter- gut. It could be indigestion. 
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 29
 opportunity: drugs. Marai al-Ramthan
ANNALS OF CRIME was one such entrepreneur. He began
moving large volumes of captagon, an
amphetamine, into Jordan. To avoid
SYRIA’S EMPIRE OF SPEED checkpoints, he hired Bedouins to trans-
port the drug through the desert. Be-
Bashar al-Assad’s regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines. fore long, he had an army of hundreds
of smugglers.
BY ED CAESAR Syria has now endured thirteen years
of civil war. More than half a million
efore Marai al-Ramthan started the The bahhara brought back fresh produce, Syrians have died in the fighting; five
B job that made him rich and got him
killed, he was a sheepherder. A hand-
cigarettes, and other everyday items, and
sold them at a considerable profit. Jor-
million have fled abroad. The country’s
infrastructure and legitimate economy
some and resourceful man in his thirties, danian customs officials and the bahhara have been shattered, and the regime is
he lived in southern Syria, in the scrubby had an informal deal: for a bribe, a driver heavily sanctioned internationally. But,
area near Jordan, and had family on both could bring trunk loads of Syrian prod- with the support of Iran and Russia,
sides of the border. There is a long tradi- ucts into the country tax free. Assad has survived, and his government
tion of petty smuggling in the region. His When the civil war broke out, reb- now controls about three-quarters of the
surname is derived from Ar-Ramtha, a els opposing the regime of President country. In the past few years, he has

A storage room in Jordan’s anti-narcotics directorate contains captagon pills seized along the Syrian border.

city on the northern edge of Jordan which Bashar al-Assad seized control of the found a desperately needed source of in-
grew prosperous through the illicit tran- city of Daraa, across the border from come in captagon.
sit of goods in and out of the country. Ar-Ramtha. As the two sides fought in In Syria, a single pill of the stimulant
Until the civil war in Syria began, in the streets, the bahhara trade came to a costs a few cents to produce. But that
2011, a group of Jordanians known as standstill. According to a report by the pill can be sold elsewhere in the Mid-
bahhara (or “sailors”) were licensed to Carnegie Middle East Center, eighty dle East—the only part of the world
drive taxis across the border. There were per cent of Ar-Ramtha’s stores had where captagon is a popular drug—for
about eight hundred such drivers, and closed by 2017. The following year, As- as much as twenty-five dollars, especially
everybody understood the real purpose sad’s forces recaptured Daraa, and the in wealthy cities such as Riyadh. The
of their journeys: to return to Jordan, border crossing reopened. Many of the margins of the business are high enough
MAGNUM

where the cost of living is sixty per cent bahhara resumed their old profession. that exporters can be unsuccessful as
higher than in Syria, with cheap goods. A few locals pursued a more lucrative often as not and still reap giant profits.
30 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 PHOTOGRAPH BY MOISES SAMAN
The Assad regime now controls much goes after captagon kingpins inside Syria. biography, Obermaier revealed that as a
of the captagon trade, making billions of For some time, Marai al-Ramthan was young woman she became so addicted
dollars a year. The most significant fig- at the top of the hit list. Aware that he to Captagon that she took marijuana and
ure in the government’s production and was a target, he owned at least one bul- LSD simply to counteract its effects.
distribution of captagon is reportedly the letproof car and, according to a Syrian Sales of Captagon were strong, but
President’s younger brother Maher al- military defector, shuttled among three after eighteen years the patent expired,
Assad, who is the head of the 4th Divi- houses. One was a seven-acre complex and other pharmaceutical companies
sion of the Syrian Army, a unit founded near Damascus, protected by multiple se- began marketing fenethylline products.
in 1984 to protect the government from curity guards, which contained a basement In the late seventies, Reda Yastas, an
all threats to its authority. Caroline Rose, warehouse. His family residence, near the Egyptian who owned a pharmaceutical
who studies the captagon trade at the Jordanian border, was decorated with a company in Germany called Samy-
New Lines Institute, a think tank in large photograph of Bashar al-Assad. The chemie, travelled to various Arab coun-
Washington, D.C., told me that Syria’s logo of Syria’s military-intelligence agency tries, including Lebanon, where he no-
amphetamine business is worth some ten hung by the front door. ticed that a surprising number of people
billion dollars. The country’s official gross On May 8, 2023, shortly before dawn, were taking Captagon. Yastas later told
domestic product is only nine billion. Jordanian fighter jets bombed Ramthan’s a German court that there was “great
Michael Kenney, a professor at the family house. The attack flattened the demand for fenethylline there, perhaps
University of Pittsburgh who researches building and killed Ramthan, his wife, because constant heat makes you so tired,
the transnational drug trade, told me that and five of their six children. The Jorda- or because the Quran forbids alcohol.”
although the term “narco-state” is often nian Air Force did not express any re- Yastas produced pills that were chem-
misused, it describes Syria perfectly. As- gret about the collateral damage. Shortly ically and visually identical to Captagon,
sad’s regime has become dependent on after the air strike, several figures con- and shipped half a million of them to
captagon, much the way Bolivia’s gov- nected to the captagon trade in south- Lebanon. In 1978, Degussa sued, but was
ernment relied on the cocaine trade in ern Syria received texts from an unknown forced to concede in court that it hadn’t
the early eighties, and the Taliban stayed number: “We know who you are, your protected the half-moon logo. It settled
afloat on opium revenue during the years movements are monitored, your meet- with Yastas, for about ten thousand dol-
that it was fighting U.S. forces for con- ings are hacked. You contribute to de- lars, but Yastas continued producing
trol of Afghanistan. Kenney said of the stroying the minds of our people, and fenethylline pills, now using a similar
Assad regime, “State institutions have for their sake we will not have mercy on snake-like “S” as the logo. In another in-
been thoroughly penetrated and cor- any of you. The Jordanians will soar like junction hearing, in 1982, Degussa claimed
rupted by drug activities. Significant el- eagles to hunt you down, one criminal that Yastas was sowing “confusion” among
ements of the Army, of the security ap- after another. Marai al-Ramthan was the customers. A judge disagreed. In any
paratus, are directly involved in various first but not the last.” case, it seems likely that the real issue
aspects of the trade. And the govern- was profit: the Arab market for feneth-
ment itself—to the extent that there is n 1961, Karl Heinz-Klinger, a researcher ylline had grown so huge that Degussa
one—has become heavily reliant on the
revenues from captagon exports in order
Icompany
at the West German pharmaceutical
Degussa, completed the synthe-
was selling only four per cent of its Cap-
tagon stock in Germany.
to maintain its governance.” sis of a new drug called fenethylline—a Degussa is now known as Evonik. A
Jordan, which abuts much of Syria’s combination of amphetamine and an spokesperson for the company told me
southern border, is now an important asthma medication called theophylline. that, in the early eighties, Degussa sug-
overland route to Saudi Arabia, where One of fenethylline’s advertised benefits gested to the World Health Organiza-
the vast majority of captagon pills are was that it produced the same kick as a tion that fenethylline should be tightly
consumed. And Jordan itself has be- standard amphetamine but didn’t cause controlled, “since growing numbers of
come an increasingly fertile market for a dangerous surge in blood pressure. De- counterfeit Captagon or the active in-
the amphetamine. Signs of drug wealth gussa launched the drug onto the world- gredient fenethylline were being pro-
are now obvious in Ar-Ramtha, where wide market with the trademarked name duced by unauthorized manufacturers.”
run-down houses stand next to gaudy Captagon. Each pill contained fifty mil- The Evonik spokesperson said that this
new mansions with gold-painted walls. ligrams of fenethylline, and had a pair was the first time a pharmaceutical busi-
(A British diplomat in Jordan described of interlocking half-moons imprinted ness had asked for its own drug to be
such buildings to me as examples of the on one side. Doctors prescribed Capta- regulated by the W.H.O. In 1986, the
local “narchitecture.”) The Jordanian gon to treat narcolepsy and listlessness, W.H.O. and the U.N. Commission on
government is determined to impede and to help people recover from serious Narcotic Drugs designated fenethylline
the movement of drugs through its ter- illnesses and injuries. From the begin- as a stimulant so prone to being abused
ritory. Much of its military is stationed ning, however, the drug reached a non- that it could be prescribed only in a small
on the border with Syria, despite the medical market. One famous user was number of cases. Exports of the drug
wider conflict that has shaken the re- Uschi Obermaier, a model who lived on were also severely limited.
gion since last October. Clashes with various communes in West Germany Other suppliers, however, were ready
armed traffickers are frequent. and became an emblem of left-wing to meet the demand in the Middle
The Jordanian military sometimes radicalism in the late sixties. In an auto- East. Traffickers began secretly exporting
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 31
Captagon pills from West Germany to was used to make players more aggres- methyl ketone, or BMK, were exported
Communist Bulgaria, and then on to the sive and relentless. In 2035, the French from various Western countries to the
Middle East and West Africa, under the investigative journalist Pierre Ballester, Middle East. BMK is sometimes used
protection of Bulgaria’s state security ap- in a book about rugby, quoted a French in household cleaning products, and,
paratus, known as the D.S. Then a Leb- doctor as saying that members of the whenever shipments of BMK were in-
anese trafficker named Abdul Hamid French rugby team took captagon pills tercepted, traffickers would claim to be
Shamaa gave the D.S. pill-pressing equip- before a notorious 3986 match against transporting the chemical for legitimate
ment, and three sites in Bulgaria began the All Blacks, New Zealand’s national purposes. But in 2009 ninety-five per
making counterfeit tablets, also called team. The game is considered to be one cent of all BMK being produced was
captagon. (Shamaa was granted Bulgar- of the most violent in rugby history. going to the Middle East. Either the
ian citizenship for his services.) France won, 36–3, and the All Blacks region had become addicted to spar-
In 3986, Degussa’s lawyers con- team captain suffered a concussion, the klingly clean kitchens or a more nefar-
cluded—correctly—that the W.H.O.’s loss of several teeth, and a torn scrotum. ious pattern had been established.
classification of fenethylline meant “the The labs of the Middle East have
virtual elimination of legal sales,” and
halted production. Fenethylline was
banned in most countries. Nevertheless,
Itiesnofessentially
the decade and a half after the fall
Communism, Bulgarian authori-
ignored the continued
never been as fastidious as the Bulgar-
ian ones were about copying captagon.
Indeed, almost no pills sold as capta-
Bulgarians continued producing and ex- illicit production of captagon—as long gon today contain fenethylline. Instead,
porting pills. According to Hristo Hris- as it was for export only. The country Rose told me, they comprise “a mish-
tov, a Bulgarian investigative journalist finally cracked down on the drug’s man- mash of precursor chemicals and addi-
who has researched recently opened ufacture in the mid-two-thousands, tives.” She added, “The producers are
state files on drug trafficking, the reve- when it successfully made a bid to be- kind of making it up as they go.” In the
nues provided the government, which come a member of the European Union. Arab world, “captagon” has come to mean
was starved of funds, with an important Captagon production soon shifted any pill that has amphetamine inside, or
source of foreign currency. Although to the Middle East. Caroline Rose, at that provides an amphetamine-type
the Middle East remained the primary the New Lines Institute, has noted that, boost. Often, the only link to Degussa’s
captagon market, the drug also found for years, the Syrian government was original product is the interlocking-
its way to Bulgaria’s neighbors in the invited to send “chemists to study in half-moon design.
Eastern Bloc. Misha Glenny, the author Bulgaria.” This connection, she says, Part of captagon’s allure is that it can
of the 2008 best-seller “McMafia: A “paved the way for an exchange of tech- be used invisibly in societies that mete
Journey Through the Global Criminal nical and scientific expertise and the es- out harsh punishments for intoxication.
Underworld,” told me that he encoun- tablishment of clandestine labs in Syria There are no documented instances of
tered captagon in Prague before the fall and along the Lebanese-Syrian border.” fatal overdoses. Many Saudis use the
of the Berlin Wall—a time when other The militant group Hezbollah, which drug regularly, and some fall prey to ad-
illicit drugs were hard to find. had plenty of experience trafficking diction, but the streets of Riyadh are
Captagon never became a coveted hashish, ran many of the Lebanese labs. not strewn with captagon junkies. It’s
drug in Western Europe, except in one Meanwhile, vast quantities of a precur- as if an entire region had developed a
context: sports. The illegal stimulant sor chemical for amphetamines, benzyl secret penchant for Adderall. Malik
al-Abdeh, a British Syrian who has writ-
ten extensively about captagon, told me,
“In Middle Eastern societies, captagon
is not viewed by a lot of people as a
drug. They see it as almost a step up
from headache pills. It’s more like a cof-
fee than like a drug that you’re sniffing
or injecting into your veins.” Of course,
if many pills are ingested, the kick is
stronger. Captagon is sometimes called
“poor man’s cocaine.”
In 2033, after the Arab Spring upris-
ings, Lebanese authorities, eager to
weaken Hezbollah, began shutting down
the organization’s captagon factories.
The group simply moved its production
facilities across the Syrian border. This
was when the Assad regime became in-
volved in the captagon trade in earnest.
Captagon manufactured in Syria can
follow various routes to reach the wealthy
 sullivan + associates
A R C H I T E C T S
markets of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Forces reported finding captagon pills
Pills can be shipped overland through on the bodies of Hamas fighters killed
Jordan; sent north to Turkey, then taken during the October 7th attacks.
by boat to their destination; or delivered These discoveries notwithstanding,
martha's vineyard
to one of Syria’s ports, such as Latakia, European tabloids have exaggerated the
and shipped to ports in the Red Sea. The threat of what they call “jihadi speed.”
relative popularity of each route has de- After the ISIS attacks in Paris in 2015,
pended on the fluctuations of geopoli- such outlets reported that using capta- Goorin Private Cap $35
100% cotton. Rip stop fabric.
tics. A paper in the Columbia Journal of gon had made the perpetrators fearless Sizes: S - 2XL. Available in 5 Colors.
International Affairs notes that when ISIS and aggressive enough to commit sui- www.johnhelmer.com
took control of northern Syria, in the cidal violence. There was never any ev-
mid-twenty-tens, captagon smuggling idence to support this claim; autopsies John Helmer Haberdasher
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into Turkey slowed dramatically. In 2015 of the bodies of the terrorists showed
and 2016, battles between rebels and As- that they had not ingested alcohol or
sad’s forces in the Syrian city of Homs narcotics. Nor can jihadism account for
led to the destruction of captagon facil- the volume of captagon being produced,
ities there; some production briefly re- or for the enormous profits it generates.
turned to Lebanon. There are only so many jihadis. The
As the trade keeps adapting, traffick- major user base for captagon is broadly
ers have sometimes turned to unortho- the same as the one Reda Yastas found
dox methods. In 2015, the Saudi prince in the late seventies: workers and stu-
Abdel Mohsen bin Walid bin Abdulaziz dents looking for a strong pick-me-up
was arrested, along with four other Sau- that won’t derail their day.
dis, at Beirut’s airport after attempting Half a century ago, amphetamines
to load forty suitcases filled with cap- became popular among truckers in the
tagon, and a little cocaine, onto a pri- United States. On a recent trip to Jordan, MAINE, USA C H I LT O N S . C O M
vate plane bound for Riyadh. It was the I was told that truck drivers who stop
largest seizure of drugs ever made at the at roadside coffee venders often order a
airport. Abdulaziz was sentenced to five qahwa mazbouta: a “blended coffee,”
years in prison—a severe punishment which costs about ten dollars. A capta-
for a prince. gon pill gets crushed and mixed into
the drink. On the streets of Syria, mean-
aptagon has developed a reputa- while, one can ask for a ya mas-hrny—a
C
©2020 KENDAL

tion as a soldier’s drug. This has “keep me awake” pill. A passion

some basis in fact. Since the production Saudi Arabia, in particular, appears for music.
of synthetic amphetamine and meth- to be flooded with captagon, given the
amphetamine became widespread, in scale of the seizures that authorities Experience the stimulating sounds
the first half of the twentieth century, there are making. The U.N. Office on of Oberlin Conservatory—enjoy live
such drugs have been attractive to Drugs and Crime has stated that be- performances throughout the year.
sleep-deprived fighters. In the Second tween 2012 and 2021 sixty-seven per
World War, the first conflict in which cent of the captagon officially seized by
uppers became widespread, the Ger-
1.800.548.9469
authorities was either inside or bound
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man military used Pervitin, a metham- for the kingdom. A working assump-
phetamine, to energize its troops. Royal tion by anti-narcotics experts is that po-
Air Force airmen on nighttime mis- lice forces generally catch about twenty
sions sometimes turned to Benzedrine— per cent of trafficked drugs. Saudi Ara- Experience Pennswood!
an amphetamine that was originally for- bia claims that between May, 2023, and
mulated as an asthma medication—which July, 2024, it seized seventy-six million
they called Wakey Wakey pills. captagon pills. The country has a pop-
Captagon has been used in battle in ulation of only thirty-two million.
the Arab world. Saddam Hussein’s Army This past spring, I visited Riyadh.
was a top client of the Bulgarian mob- The Saudi government was uneasy about
sters who produced the drug. Fighters allowing officials to talk to a reporter Pennswood Village is a Welcoming & Vibrant
on all sides of the conflict in Syria have about drugs, but a man who dealt di- Life Plan Community, Located in
taken captagon. On June 12, 2018, coa- rectly with the captagon problem was Beautiful Bucks County, PA.
lition forces battling ISIS found and authorized to speak with me, on the Learn More & Schedule a Tour,
destroyed three hundred thousand cap- condition that I did not name him or Call 855-944-0673
tagon pills belonging to the Islamist the ministry where he worked. The www.pennswood.org
group. Last year, the Israel Defense official said that sixty-five per cent of
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 33
 Fawaz Akhras, has a cardiology prac-
tice. A few doors down, Sophia Khalique,
a general practitioner, runs a clinic with
Rameez Ali, a therapist and addiction
specialist. Among its clients are Saudi
captagon addicts.
Khalique and Ali make an odd pair.
On the day I visited, Khalique padded
around her giant office in a minidress,
fish-net tights, and fluffy slippers. Ali
was friendly but intense; his forehead
bore the mark of frequent prayer.
Khalique and Ali have treated hundreds
of rich students from the Middle East
who have developed captagon habits.
Their patients are mostly men aged nine-
teen to twenty-four. Many of them come
to the clinic complaining of severe in-
somnia. It always takes a few questions
to identify the root of this problem: a
dependence on stimulants.
“When I speak to the students, they
say it’s becoming more and more em-
“Ever wonder what our lives would be like bedded in their life style in the Middle
if we’d never abducted earthlings?” East,” Ali said, of the drug. Khalique
said that some patients, already depen-
dent on amphetamines, come to her
• • hoping for a legal prescription—for, say,
attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder
people in jail in Saudi Arabia were there matically, was to tear at the social fab- medication. “They’re saying they want
for drug-related offenses. The domes- ric of his country, and thereby slow down a study aid,” she told me, raising an eye-
tic market for captagon, he confirmed, its progress. To counter this destructive brow. Some of these patients, she noted,
was mostly students, and also included effect, he said, authorities in the king- might indeed have learning difficulties.
workers in the “shadow” economy— dom treat addicts with kindness: any- But the attraction of captagon is often
presumably, the temporary migrants one who admits to a drug dependency social. In her view, it is often used as a
being enlisted to construct the coun- can be treated for free at a government “party drug.”
try’s many new buildings, often at alarm- clinic, without fear of punishment. Traf- Ali told me that young Middle East-
ingly high speeds. (The new Kingdom fickers, however, are put to death. ern men had frequently spoken to him
Arena, the highest-capacity soccer arena In October, the Ministry of the In- of taking captagon at private house
in the world, was reportedly built in terior announced that twenty-one Sau- parties. At high doses, users experience
two months.) Academic researchers in- dis had been arrested on suspicion of euphoria, but the drug seems low risk
terviewing Saudi captagon users have belonging to a gang that trafficked cap- and not as overtly haram as alcohol.
found that some women use the drug tagon into the Riyadh region. Sixteen Habitual users of captagon often de-
to aid weight loss. of the suspects were employed at gov- velop symptoms such as insomnia, anx-
The official told me that the glut of ernment ministries. Their crimes in- iety, depression, and mood swings. Ali
captagon in Saudi Arabia could not be cluded transporting drugs “from out- was also beginning to hear stories about
explained solely as a matter of supply side the kingdom” and secretly selling Syrian captagon being used in tandem
and demand. Rather, there had to be a off drugs seized by Saudi authorities. with anabolic steroids, to cater to a
political motivation behind such high Saudi Arabia is no exception to the rule crossover market of men who want not
volumes of trafficking to the kingdom. that drug trafficking cannot thrive with- only to keep awake but also to sup-
They were being targeted, he said. (This out corruption. press their appetites and bulk up their
view seemed at odds with that of most bodies. Ali said, “Steroid abuse in the
Western observers, who see captagon he Arab world’s relationship with Middle East is huge.”
primarily as a source of income for the
Assad regime; Michael Kenney, the nar-
T captagon shows up in unlikely
places. Harley Street, in London, is disused captagon-pill press stands
cotics expert at the University of Pitts-
burgh, said that it’s “more about busi-
where the most expensive private doc-
tors in the United Kingdom have their
A in the parking lot outside Jordan’s
anti-narcotics directorate, in Amman.
ness.”) The political purpose of captagon, offices. In an elegant town house on the The device, made of metal, is about the
the Saudi official said, a bit melodra- street, Bashar al-Assad’s father-in-law, size of a refrigerator, with large buttons
34 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
in primary colors, like a child’s toy. Jor- taneously, at different locations; another smoked cigarettes, and shook violently,
danian authorities seized the press time, four hundred men had used this told me he’d first become a captagon
during a recent raid on a production fa- strategy. The modus operandi was for user in Jordan. He then moved to Tur-
cility, and placed it outside the director- cars to transport the drugs to within a key, where he ran a successful construc-
ate as a symbol of the agency’s purpose. mile of the border, where individuals tion business. The captagon boost be-
On a cool February morning, the would carry them into Jordan in back- came insufficient, and he turned to
head of the directorate, Lieutenant Col- packs. Jordanian forces have infrared crystal meth. The patient said that he
onel Hassan al-Qudah, sat behind a cameras that register body heat, but had “lost everything” because of his ad-
wooden desk, drinking coffee and suck- these sometimes fail to spot traffick- diction. In Istanbul, he’d become hooked
ing on a vape, while others in the office ers—say, during a sandstorm. (A source on crystal meth—in addition to taking
smoked cigarettes. (Nicotine is Jordan’s who knew some of the smugglers said three or four captagon pills a day. He’d
most popular drug.) He said that I’d that traffickers had invested in thermal- been arrested and deported to Jordan.
caught him during the busiest season camouflage suits, to evade infrared de- The man said that most of the capta-
for trafficking from Syria, and explained tection.) The Jordanians also knew that gon dealers in Istanbul had been Syr-
that smugglers prefer to cross the des- behind the smugglers carrying back- ian or Jordanian. But Iranian gangs, he
ert in winter, when they can use the packs would be a “defensive line” of mi- said, controlled the crystal-meth trade,
cover of sandstorms, snow, or fog. litiamen with semi-automatic weapons, to the point that the drug was known
During a snowstorm on January 26, ready to kill members of border patrols. locally as “Iranian heroin.”
2022, Syrian traffickers attempted to Often, Qudah said, engagements be-
ferry a huge consignment of captagon came “a shoot-out.” round 2015, police forces in Eu-
pills into Jordan on foot. Jordanian troops
opened fire, killing twenty-seven smug-
Qudah estimated that four-fifths of
the captagon entering Jordan was des-
A rope and the Middle East began
seizing huge consignments of captagon.
glers and wounding several others. That tined for Saudi Arabia. The rest would In November, 2015, Turkish authorities
was an unusually bloody clash, but se- remain in Jordan. I asked to see some confiscated nearly eleven million tab-
rious engagements occur nearly every pills that he had seized. He buzzed his lets hidden inside a shipment of oil fil-
month. Syrian smugglers now use a va- secretary. A minute later, an officer ters headed for the Gulf. A month later,
riety of cunning techniques to move brought in a baggie containing two Lebanese police found thirty million
their drugs to Jordan, including drones hundred tan-colored pills printed with tablets bound for Egypt, stashed in a
and carrier pigeons, which have been interlocking half-moons. That logo, shipment of school desks.
taught to fly with tiny bags of contra- Qudah said, was becoming passé. One Chris Urben worked for the D.E.A.
band affixed to their legs. More than popular Syrian variety, he said, now fea- for twenty-five years. Before retiring
once in recent months, smugglers have tured a horse’s-head insignia; another, from the agency, in 2021, he was in the
fired consignments of captagon across the Lexus logo. special-operations division, focussing
the border inside surface-to-air missiles Captagon pills were no longer his sole on international threats. Captagon be-
fitted with tracking devices that allow concern. The same people moving cap- came an area of concern. Starting in
criminal colleagues in Jordan to find tagon from Syria were now also traffick- 2018, Urben told me, “the U.S. govern-
them after they land. ing crystal meth, which could easily be ment essentially had an intelligence-
An international monitor had told made in the same factories as captagon, gathering effort to determine why we
me that a smaller amount of drugs had were seeing this massive increase in terms
been captured at the border in 2023 than of large seizures of captagon at ports,
in 2022, suggesting a decrease in traf- and who was benefitting.”
ficking activity. But Qudah said that By 2021, the picture had become clear.
the volume of seized drugs was an im- Many of the intercepted shipments were
perfect metric. His ministry preferred arriving from Syria—especially from
to measure trafficking attempts, which, the port of Latakia, which is a strong-
incidentally, were on the rise. “Three hold of the Assad family. In the most
attempts weekly, minimum,” he said. notable case, in July, 2020, eighty-four
“This hasn’t been the case before. It’s million captagon pills from Latakia were
much more aggressive now.” and was far more dangerous. A few years uncovered inside a shipment of indus-
Moreover, the number of people en- ago, crystal meth in Jordan cost a hun- trial-sized gears and rolls of paper at
gaged in such sorties had risen. Before dred and forty dollars a gram; now it was the Italian port of Salerno. The seized
Jordan instituted a shoot-on-sight order fifty-five. A friend in Amman told me drugs were worth a billion dollars. But,
against traffickers, in 2022, most at- that she’d seen crystal meth used at in the estimation of Europol, there is
tempts to move drugs across the bor- middle-class dinner parties. no domestic market for captagon in Eu-
der involved only a handful of people. I visited a state-sponsored rehabili- rope. Some Middle Eastern traffickers
Now, Qudah said, groups of thirty or tation clinic in Amman, where some whose shipments might seem suspi-
forty men were common. A few weeks fifty men were recovering from various cious to Saudi or Gulf authorities laun-
before our meeting, two hundred and addictions. One patient in his thirties, der the provenance of the freight by
fifty men had crossed the border simul- who wore a Hollister hoodie, chain- moving it through Europe first. The
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 35
extra cost is worthwhile if the shipment rying more than a hundred million dol- Arab League for the first time since 2011,
is successful. lars’ worth of captagon and hashish, was at a summit in Jeddah. Saudi Arabia’s
“The Assad regime was organizing a Neptunus ship. leader, Mohammed bin Salman, was pho-
this on a massive scale,”Urben said. “There Whether sanctions will help to cur- tographed chatting warmly with Assad.
was a certain professionalism, in terms tail the captagon trade is an open ques- For the moment, Russia and Iran remain
of organized crime.” Intelligence from tion. A recent U.N. report noted that Assad’s most crucial allies, but other
within Syria confirmed that the Assad sanctions against Iraq prior to the 2003 countries have recently chosen to take a
family, and in particular the President’s U.S.-led war had “contracted the Iraqi less punitive approach to his government,
brother Maher, controlled the supply, in economy” but “fuelled underground despite the sanctions risks.
partnership with producers in Lebanon. economies.” Similarly, sanctions against In Jordan, too, politicians are chang-
The Hezbollah connection was signifi- Iran and Syria could amplify “opportu- ing their confrontational stance. I met
cant, Urben explained, “because they’re nities for trafficking and illegal econo- with the interior minister, Mazin al-
experts in terms of transportation, facil- mies in overcoming sanction restric- Farrayeh, who told me that he’d seen
itation, and corruption in those regions tions.” When the world won’t otherwise his Syrian counterpart the previous week,
and outside those regions—corruption do business with you, selling drugs can at a gathering that also included the
at ports, money laundering.” make up the shortfall. Iraqi and Lebanese ministers. “The out-
Urben told me that the D.E.A. shared Since the Caesar Act was passed, cap- come of that meeting was that Syria
its intelligence on captagon with legisla- tagon trafficking has, in fact, increased was the center of the drug problem,”
tors, and that a few politicians had jumped dramatically. Matthew Zweig helped to Farrayeh said. But Jordan’s response was
on the issue. The concern wasn’t that cap- implement that legislation as a senior not to threaten the Syrians. Instead,
tagon would soon flood America—the sanctions adviser in the Trump Admin- Farrayeh told me, Syria needed finan-
country was already in the grip of more istration. He is now at the lobbying arm cial help to pay for scanning equipment
powerful and addictive synthetic drugs, of the Foundation for Defense of De- and additional customs officers, so that
such as fentanyl. The politicians wanted mocracies, a think tank. “For many of it could curtail smuggling on its side of
to stop the billions of dollars flowing to the Syrian actors, and for actors in the the border.
Assad’s sanctioned regime, and also to Iran threat network, captagon is a major The situation seemed absurd: the Jor-
his allies and enablers in Iran and Leb- sanctions-evasion tool,” he said. But, in danian government knew that the Assad
anon. At the vanguard of this effort was his reckoning, this was a reason to work regime was directing much of the cap-
French Hill, a Republican congressman even harder to stifle the trade, rather than tagon trade, and yet it was pretending
from Arkansas, who co-sponsored the a reason to weaken sanctions. that Syria was committed to stopping
Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of On my trip to Jordan, I was told that that trade. (Farrayeh told me that, if Jor-
2019, which placed heavy sanctions on the U.S. had provided authorities there dan were to give the Syrian government
Assad and his closest allies. Hill subse- with scanners and other equipment for scanning equipment, at least it would re-
quently introduced the Captagon Act of interdicting trafficked substances. A move one of Assad’s possible excuses for
2022, which was designed to “disrupt and D.E.A. officer based in Cyprus recently failing to stop the smuggling.) The min-
dismantle the Assad regime’s production spent six months in Jordan offering as- ister’s approach was mirrored across other
and trafficking of the lethal narcotic,” sistance to the government there. But agencies. Every Jordanian official I met
and, more recently, the Illicit Captagon the D.E.A., which has many higher pri- seemed loath to criticize the Assad re-
Trafficking Suppression Act––which orities than captagon, officially has no gime’s involvement in captagon produc-
President Joe Biden signed into law as tion and smuggling. Indeed, Qudah, the
part of April’s foreign-aid package—to head of the anti-narcotics directorate,
widen the ambit of sanctions against those refused to speak to me on the record
involved with the trade. Hill, whose ef- about it. (Even the Saudi official who
forts have attracted bipartisan support, talked to me about captagon being used
told me that his bill had two objectives: as a weapon declined to name Assad or
“Can you disrupt transnational drug net- Syria explicitly.)
works, with partners? That’s a good goal. Representatives from several Jordan-
But my principal goal is cutting off the ian agencies explained their positions by
funding to Assad.” pointing to the chaotic situation in south-
permanent staff in the country. The ern Syria, where, despite over-all control
he Treasury Department recently Jordanians are clearly overwhelmed. A by the Assad regime, an array of groups
T sanctioned fourteen more Syrian
and Lebanese nationals involved in the
Syrian opposition figure who monitors
the captagon trade told me that Jordan’s
hold influence. Katrina Sammour, a Jor-
danian security analyst, told me that the
captagon trade. One of these individu- soldiers are “doing what they can . . . but cautious rapprochement between Jordan
als is Taher al-Kayali, a Syrian who owns they are not equipped enough.” and Assad’s government reflected her
Neptunus L.L.C., a shipping company There is also a question of whether country’s weariness, given Assad’s seem-
based in Latakia. The cargo ship Noka, the U.S.’s policy aligns with those of ing impregnability. Sammour said, “Jor-
which was intercepted by Greek au- countries in the Middle East. In May, dan was the first to call for Syria to be
thorities in 2018 and found to be car- 2023, Syria was welcomed back to the removed from the community of states
36 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
as punishment for Assad’s crimes”—such
as chemical attacks on his own people.
“But, ultimately, the world community
failed.” When it came to captagon, “in-
stead of allowing chaos at our border, the
decision was made to make a partner-
ship—albeit an imperfect one.”

Syrian-opposition monitoring group

A called ETANA has done bold inves-
tigations into the captagon trade, gath-
ering information from hundreds of
sources within Syrian gangs, businesses,
and government ministries. ETANA staff-
ers scoff at any suggestion that the Assad
regime is not in control of Syria’s drug
empire. Before the Jordanian air strike
killed Marai al-Ramthan and his fam-
ily, for instance, ETANA sources observed
him meeting with several members of
Syrian military intelligence. In two in-
terviews, ETANA representatives ex-
plained to me what they believed to be
the structure of the captagon business in “I can’t tell if it’s still in there or not.”
Syria. Profits, they said, flowed upward
to senior figures in the 4th Division.
About half the money made from the
• •
Syrian captagon trade was pocketed by
the Assad regime. the captagon trade tomorrow, the defec- clearly thought the Syrians had not been
Last year, a joint investigation by the tor said, it would just take “a phone call.” trying hard enough: Marai al-Ramthan
BBC and a journalistic collective called Samir Rifai, who served as the Prime and his family were killed shortly before
the Organized Crime and Corruption Minister of Jordan between 2009 and the summit.) But the ETANA represen-
Reporting Project uncovered impor- 2011, told me that this view was sim- tatives showed me evidence that the sit-
tant new details from the 2021 trial, in plistic. We met at his house, in the hills uation had since changed. This past Feb-
Beirut, of Hassan Daqqou, a Lebanese outside Amman. From his garden, you ruary, a source described to ETANA a
Syrian man who has been called “the could gaze across the border to Israel conversation in which a senior figure in
King of Captagon” in the Lebanese press. and the West Bank. Jericho was just Assad’s government ordered a captagon
Daqqou had been accused of master- visible. Syria, to the north, was out of kingpin to resume “full production.”
minding a shipment of nearly a hun- sight. Rifai, who speaks in English that Matthew Zweig, the sanctions expert
dred million captagon pills, which was he polished while studying at Harvard at the Foundation for Defense of De-
seized in Malaysia. During the trial, a and Cambridge, sees his region in prag- mocracies, was less certain about such a
series of WhatsApp messages between matic terms. As Prime Minister, he sat clean narrative. Over time, he pointed
Daqqou and a man he named only as across the table from Assad when the out, drug empires develop rival centers
the Boss was presented as evidence. In Arab Spring was exploding. Ever since, of power, and the criminals involved in
the messages, the two men discuss the he has followed the catastrophe in Syria the captagon trade were no doubt deter-
movement of “goods” and security clear- with increasing dismay. I asked him mined to keep their businesses going.
ances. The Boss is suspected to be Ghas- whether he thought Assad could stop Zweig didn’t doubt that Syria’s 4th Di-
san Bilal—Maher al-Assad’s deputy in the drug trade if he wanted to. vision was heavily involved in the cap-
the 4th Division. “Yes,” Rifai said. “But with a caveat. tagon business. But the amphetamine
In London, I talked with a Syrian de- He and the Iranians have to be con- and methamphetamine markets in the
fector who had met Bilal when they were vinced. The problem that he has is he Middle East had possibly grown beyond
both in the Syrian Army. He told me that does not trust the West. So for him to Assad’s control. Zweig noted that the
Bilal, a former engineer who had served leave the graces of Russia and Iran? What Arab League’s decision to resume rela-
for a long time under Maher al-Assad, guarantees are going to be given to him tions with Assad was made partly in the
“was giving orders” about captagon traf- that will make him take that leap of faith?” hope that he could stop captagon from
ficking himself. The defector said that ETANA believes that, for a few weeks saturating the region. But the captagon
both Bilal and Maher had the power to before the May, 2023, meeting of the Arab trade was still strong, and possibly grow-
increase or decrease the flow of capta- League, the Assads ordered traffickers ing. Zweig asked, “Is that because Assad
gon out of Syria. If they wanted to stop to slow captagon production. ( Jordan won’t stop it—or because he can’t?” 
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 37
 AMERICAN CHRONICLES

THE HOME FRONT

Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
BY CHARLES BETHEA

“D id he say fight?” Drew Miller

asked me. It was July 13th,
and we were in rural Col-
malian weeds,” as one prominent sci-
entist has called humans; an electro-
magnetic-pulse attack could cause
orado, near an outpost of Fortitude months-long blackouts. After retiring,
Ranch, a network of survivalist retreats Miller had an idea that combined his
that Miller has constructed in antici- interest in readiness for such events with
pation of civilizational collapse. News an entrepreneurial streak: establishing
of the attempted assassination of Don- a survival community that was both
ald Trump—the first one—had just comfortable and armed to the teeth. He
pinged: a young man named Thomas reached out to real-estate agents in West
Crooks had shot at Trump from a roof- Virginia. “I just said I wanted a remote
top near a rally in Butler, Pennsylva- location with year-round water, off the
nia, striking his right ear. Trump had beaten path, accessible in all kinds of
stood, with blood on his face, and weather,” he told me. “The first one said,
shouted to his crowd, “Fight, fight, ‘Oh, you’re looking for a survival loca-
fight!” The shooter’s motives were un- tion.’ ” After several more agents had
known, but Republicans were blaming the same response, Miller asked one
Democrats. “File charges against Jo- how they knew what he was after. The
seph R. Biden for inciting an assassi- agent replied, “We have people from
nation,” Representative Mike Collins every three-letter agency in D.C. with
posted on X. Representative Marjorie little places out here.” Miller told me,
Taylor Greene accused the “evil” Dem- “She even showed me a few! I thought,
ocratic Party of attempting “murder.” God dang it, people, you shouldn’t do
Miller’s phone began to make the sound that!” In 2015, Miller opened the first
of a dog barking—his ringtone—as Fortitude Ranch in the mountains a
members and employees of the ranches couple of hours outside D.C. Its prox-
sent texts and e-mails. imity to the capital was strategic. “That’s
A salesperson in Nevada was seeing the obvious big target,” Miller told me.
a sudden increase in requests to join: At the time, foreign terrorist attacks
“Member interest. I’m already getting were at the top of people’s minds. “Now,
previous leads texting me.” for many, it’s civil war,” he said.
A member in Colorado wondered According to an analysis of FEMA
if it was time to mobilize: “Should we data, some twenty million Americans
do an alert?” are actively preparing for cataclysm—
As the barking continued, I asked roughly twice as many as in 2017. Po-
what Miller thought. “This could stir litical violence, including the spectre of
things up,” he said, after a heavy pause. civil war, is one of the reasons. A re-
“Things could escalate.” cent study conducted by researchers at
Miller, a fit and unnervingly analyt- U.C. Davis concluded that one in three
ical sixty-six-year-old, was wearing a adults in the U.S., including up to half
Fortitude Ranch T-shirt and had a of Republicans, feel that violence is
handgun holstered on his cargo pants. “usually or always justified” to advance
He grew up in Nebraska, and served as certain political objectives (say, return-
an intelligence officer in the Air Force ing Trump to the White House). In
for thirty years before retiring as a col- May, Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder
onel, in 2010. He has long maintained of Bridgewater Associates, one of the
a fixation on disaster. A “Unabomber- world’s largest hedge funds, told the
type person,” he told me, could release Financial Times that he believed there
a bioengineered virus to kill off “mam- was about a thirty-five-per-cent chance When Drew Miller established Fortitude
38 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
Ranch, a network of survivalist compounds, foreign terrorist attacks were top of mind. “Now, for many, it’s civil war,” he said.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAN FINKE THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 39
 some penned-up dogs and chickens, a
greenhouse, a broken tractor.
Forty years ago, for a Ph.D. at Har-
vard, Miller wrote a dissertation on “un-
derground nuclear defense shelters and
field fortifications,” so I’d expected the
ranch’s living quarters to look formida-
ble, if not fancy. But as I stepped inside
the quonset hut, which Miller had
dubbed the Viking Lodge, my first im-
pression was of a hastily erected college
dorm. There were three dozen rooms,
and half had been claimed. Members
had paid between four thousand and
sixty thousand dollars to join—depend-
ing on time frame (five to fifty years),
group size, and amenities (en-suite toi-
lets cost extra)—plus annual dues of up
to fifteen hundred dollars. Inside the
rooms, I saw bare mattresses, stacked
furniture, a PlayStation, sacks of rice,
pallets of canned tuna, boxes of Pop-
Tarts, Costco emergency food buckets
(potato potpie, vanilla pudding), packs
of D batteries, pairs of snake boots, reams
of toilet paper, some Dan Brown nov-
els, and containers of coffee.
“My wife says my espresso is a reli-
gious experience,” Larry, the ranch’s as-
sistant manager, told me, as we exam-
“ You play it all day, every day, until you can’t anymore.” ined some coffee beans he’d stockpiled.
“I’ve got enough dark roast here to keep
us all going for six months at five cups
• • a day.” Larry, who is sixty-nine, ex-
plained that his full-time job is with a
of civil war breaking out in America. man takes precautions. Civil war is a “three-letter government agency” that
“We are now on the brink,” Dalio said, definite possibility.” A man named Pat, deploys him to war zones. Like most
noting that a modern civil war—though who works as a computer scientist in Fortitude Ranchers, Larry could fore-
it might not involve muskets—would Colorado, agreed. “The potential for vi- see society breaking down in a number
see the fracturing of states and wide- olence across the country scares us,” he of ways: a nuclear detonation, another
spread defiance of federal law. In June, told me. “Fortitude Ranch is insurance.” pandemic, or rising political violence
Dalio upped his estimate to “uncom- Miller’s goal is to open dozens of that could split the country into war-
fortably more than 50 percent,” predict- ranches around the country. There are ring factions. He drew a crude map of
ing “an existential battle of the hard currently seven, which range in size from the U.S. on scrap paper. Two squiggly
right against the hard left in which you ten to a hundred and sixty acres. Their lines partitioned off the east, the west,
will have to pick a side and fight for it, precise whereabouts are officially secret, and the middle. “I can see three differ-
or keep your head down, or flee.” but all are strategically remote. The Col- ent Americas,” he said. Miller had told
Fortitude Ranch has more than a orado ranch, I can confirm, is a few hours me earlier that day that he thinks Texas,
thousand members of all political per- from the closest Home Depot. On the where he lives, will likely secede if
suasions, including doctors, engineers, drive in, Miller had stopped there to Trump loses again. If Trump wins, states
restaurant workers, pilots, and entrepre- buy drywall for the ranch’s quonset such as Oregon and Colorado could
neurs. “I’m not some hard-core prepper hut—a three-story structure with a gal- break apart along political lines. War
survivalist,” George, a retired C.I.A. of- vanized steel roof, bullet-resistant walls, might follow, even accidentally. “Maybe
ficer in Texas, who asked that I use only and enough underground rooms to co- someone shoots Governor Abbott and
his first name, told me. “I don’t want to zily house a hundred new neighbors. then other nuts start shooting at Fort
live without running water or air-con- We pulled into a clearing with a view Hood,” Miller said. “The media mis-
ditioning or run around in the woods of the ranch: a scattering of structures reports it and some militias form and
for long. But it’s like the old saying goes: on a dozen acres of arid, rocky land be- fight. It would be irrational, but irra-
When trouble is on the horizon, a wise neath snow-dusted peaks. There were tional wars are perfectly normal.”
40 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
 So what then? When disaster nears, gate,” he said. “There’s a lot of ambush and the Presidential Inauguration is a
Larry told me, an alert will go out to spots.” Military know-how distinguishes time of especially high risk. The morn-
members via an app. (If messages can’t Fortitude from “your average prepper ing after my visit, Miller sent out his
be sent, “it’ll be pretty obvious you should bugout setup,” Miller had told me. “Solo monthly newsletter early. “Trump as-
go to the nearest ranch,” he added.) preppers will mostly get wiped out.” sassination attempt moves us closer to
Only paid-up members will be allowed Most of the ranches have a few mem- Civil War,” he wrote. “We are of course
in. Pets are welcome, though they might bers with medical training, which will monitoring this situation, and will issue
be consumed in a pinch. Each ranch, help, too. “We don’t recruit for skills,” an alert if irrational violence erupts, bad
Larry explained, has a natural water Miller said. “But it’s nice when mem- people and looters exploit it, and law
source and a year’s worth of food per bers are useful.” Before I left, Larry had and order breaks down.” The ranches
member. But, because that food may me do some target practice. From var- would be prepared during Election Day
run out, there are also—where possi- ious distances, I fired an AR-15 at a and the uncertain period to follow.
ble—farm animals, fishponds, fruit trees, paper plate pinned to a tree. Members Miller told me, “Trump is still dodging
edible bugs, and “survival crops,” includ- would soon gather for preëlection fire- the question of whether he’ll accept the
ing Jerusalem artichokes, which yield arm trainings of their own. results. We’ll be ready.”
roughly sixty times more calories per Larry and Miller have their quar-
acre than beef. But the tuber, I learned, rels—for example, over whether to raise here has been a growing under-
can also be hard to digest. “Constipa-
tion in a SHTF ain’t going to be pretty,”
tilapia in a cattle trough inside the hut.
(Larry thinks it would require too much
T standing, felt on a sensory level,
of what the World Economic Forum
one commenter, using prepper short- energy; Miller wants fresh fish.) But recently referred to as the “polycrisis.”
hand for “shit hits the fan,” posted on a they agree that the period between now A warming planet does not exist in a
Reddit thread about Fortitude Ranch.
Larry reassured me, “Coffee helps.”
After walking past a reading nook,
Larry and I climbed a spiral staircase
to a roof deck with a grill and solar pan-
els. During a collapse, ranch members
would come here to survey for threats.
There were waist-high walls, which,
Larry told me admiringly, “can sop up
an AK round.” He gestured out at the
wilderness. “A thousand-yard shot? I
own you.” Earlier, Miller had casually
remarked that members would “shallow-
bury dead marauders”—his preferred
term for attackers—“to produce worms
for our chickens.” I’d seen the chick-
ens, but I asked Larry where the weap-
ons were. He led me to a neighboring
log cabin and opened a hidden door.
Shotguns, pistols, AR-15s, and boxes of
ammo sat by a bunk bed, along with a
crossbow. “There’s enough here for at
least a month of fighting off maraud-
ers,” Larry said. One member of an-
other ranch, he added, has cached nine-
teen guns and thirty thousand rounds
just for himself.
Back at the Viking Lodge, I met
Benjamin, a middle-aged restaurant
manager, who was hanging around the
ranch, as members sometimes do. He
was marinating lamb in a subterranean
kitchen. Lunchtime. “You want to be a
minimum of five miles off pavement,”
Benjamin said. “We’re ten and a half.”
I asked about the possibility of maraud- “Don’t worry—if we miss the curtain we’ll just
ers. “We’ve got plans to contend with fumble our way to our seats while noisily complaining
them from the time they get to the about the unreliability of the subway.”
Miller at Fortitude Ranch’s compound in Texas. “Solo preppers will mostly get wiped out,” he said.

vacuum, separate from global pandem- She wasn’t clear who “they” are. But she ning mate, George Lang, a Republican
ics and widening wealth gaps; crises reminded me that, like many of her state senator in Ohio, told a crowd at
amplify one another. Still, some stand friends, she is well armed. (I was aware; a campaign rally, “I’m afraid if we lose
out. A recent study found that half of I’d once stumbled upon one of her guns this one, it’s going to take a civil war to
Americans expect a second civil war to hidden behind a toaster.) A progres- save the country.” He went on, “And if
happen “in the next few years,” even if sive lawyer I know in Atlanta, who is we come down to a civil war I’m glad
the specifics vary according to one’s Jewish, bought an AR-15 after January we got people like . . . Bikers for Trump
politics and imagination. A liberal writer 6th as a hedge against antisemitic and on our side.” Lang later apologized
in Los Angeles recently told me that political violence. “If Harris wins, ten- for the incendiary remarks, but he is
he imagines “duelling militias, like the sions could escalate,” he said. “The di- hardly alone in expressing such senti-
Lebanese civil war,” following a “fascist visions in the country are so strong, and ment. Kevin Roberts, the president of
takeover” in January. A family member they’re not going to go away.” the Heritage Foundation, recently re-
of mine who supports Trump told me Some politicians are even speaking ferred to a “second American revolu-
that she believes a more traditional about civil war publicly. In July, after tion,” now under way, “which will re-
civil war will begin, “if they kill Trump.” Trump selected J. D. Vance as his run- main bloodless if the left allows it to
42 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
be.” The pro-Trump commentator Tim and Memphis. An economically pow- Most Surprising New Gun Owners
Pool has invoked “civil war” dozens of erful red state, perhaps Texas, attempts Are U.S. Liberals.” It noted the recent
times on X, where he has more than to secede. Ignoring the lessons of Ruby creation of gun groups marketed to
two million followers. Marjorie Taylor Ridge and Waco, the Harris Adminis- Democrats, including one in Los An-
Greene prefers calling for “a national tration uses disproportionate force to geles called L.A. Progressive Shooters.
divorce.” Trump increasingly refers to deter other states from following suit. Nearly three in ten liberals now own
the “enemies within.” It’s not just rhet- Innocent people die. Everyday Ameri- guns, according to a University of Chi-
oric. A Reuters investigation identified cans are radicalized by the apparent cago survey; researchers at Johns Hop-
more than two hundred cases of polit- validation of the extremists’ claim that kins have determined that more than
ical violence between January 6, 2021, federal power is the enemy. Civil war is half of Democratic gun buyers since
and August of last year, and noted that on its way. Walter’s scenario gets foggy 2020 are first-time owners. One of them
“America is grappling with the biggest from there, but we know that economic is Bradley Garrett, a forty-three-year-
and most sustained increase in politi- growth declines during civil wars, as do old academic and the author of “Bun-
cal violence since the 1970s.” health outcomes. Travel is hard. Most ker,” an account of Americans planning
Last year, Michael Haas, a former troubling to Walter, outside actors get for the end times. This sort of prepping
political-science professor at the Uni- involved. “China, Russia, and Iran would seems to have increased in the run-up
versity of Hawaii, published a book want to help Texas militias,” Walter told to the election, he said. “You can imag-
titled “Beyond Polarized American me. “Texas could become a dictatorship ine infighting breaking out in pockets
Democracy: From Mass Society to run by some crazy guy whose best friends of the United States, and progressives
Coups and Civil War.” Haas, who is are Putin and Xi Jinping.” would be at a severe disadvantage,” he
now eighty-six and has retired to Los Such a chain of events still seems told me. “They don’t have the weapons
Angeles, told me that he, too, is more unlikely. But Anna Maria Bounds, or the preparation.” Garrett, who lives
concerned than ever about the threat a sociology professor at Queens Col- in Southern California, bought a shot-
of civil war. He thinks that it could lege, told me that people are already gun this spring: “I’m on a five-acre ranch
begin with an armed attempt to stop “taking sides and prepping for violence.” pretty far out. But, if things devolved
the counting of electoral votes in De- Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly spent in L.A. very quickly, I can imagine peo-
cember. “They’ll start shooting,” Haas more than a hundred million dollars ple fleeing to the desert and looking for
told me. “And in the chaos they—these building what Wired called “an opulent a refuge—and that’s not gonna be at
pro-Trump anarchists—become the techno-Xanadu” on a Hawaiian island, my house.” Others are taking less mil-
party of power. That’s where Sinclair “complete with underground shelter itaristic measures. A recent attendee of
Lewis hit it right on the button.” (Lew- and what appears to be a blast-resistant a Homesteaders of America event where
is’s novel “It Can’t Happen Here,” from door.” Average Americans are preparing participants preserved food told me that
1935, imagines a fascist leader impos- in less costly ways. Some are stocking some were preparing provisions in case
ing totalitarian rule over the United up on toilet paper, or buying Taser guns of political violence. “They kept talking
States.) “The reason they want anar- or fish antibiotics. (They’re cheaper than about being ready for when ‘they come,’”
chy is they will be in charge. They have human antibiotics but lack F.D.A. ap- she recalled. “Just ‘they.’”
the guns.” I asked Haas what prepa- proval.) Others are getting Lasik, fill-
rations he’s made for such a conflict. ing gas cans, or withdrawing “go money” n May, I spoke on the phone with a
He seemed to be relying mainly on
topography. “I live on a hill with a gate
from the bank. A Utah company called
Armormax has been bulletproofing ve-
Ivague
man named John Ramey, who was
about his location. “I’m at the
that’s usually closed,” he told me. hicles for three decades. Until recently, homestead of someone who hired me
Barbara Walter, a professor at U.C. most customers were foreign dignitar- to help him choose where and how to
San Diego and an expert on civil war, ies with fancy cars. Now many Amer- build a home to deal with the full range
recently detailed a worst-case election icans are armoring normal ones. Pro- of threats,” he said. The panhandle of
scenario. Trump loses, and protests of tecting a vehicle’s glass from .44-calibre Idaho and the Upper Peninsula of
the result, inflamed by the former Pres- or 9-millimetre fire starts at around Michigan are both good places to
ident, turn into riots. What’s left of the forty thousand dollars. For twice that, weather the worst of climate change,
Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys join an entire vehicle, including its tires, can he explained, “but, depending on your
in. Assassinations first target Republi- be made AR-15- and M16-proof. Do- politics, you’re very clearly going to
cans deemed traitorous. “The Adam mestic demand for these services is choose one over the other for the threat
Kinzingers and Liz Cheneys of the nearly seven times what it was in 2020. of civil war.”
world,” Walter said. The mob turns on “We’re selling as many as we can build,” Ramey has done as much as anyone
minorities, immigrants, and other scape- Mark Burton, the C.E.O., told me. On to help the act of prepping trade its tin-
goat communities. Judges are shot. The the company’s blog, he recently wrote foil hat for an Eagle Scout badge. He
worst of this violence occurs in fairly a post with a section called “How to worked as a Silicon Valley investor and
diverse states—Georgia, Nevada, Ari- Survive a Civil War.” (Advice: “Make entrepreneur, and then as an “innova-
zona—as it did during Reconstruction sure that the gas tank is full.”) tions adviser” in the Obama Admin-
in places where whites felt their privi- In late September, the Wall Street istration. In 2018, he launched a Web
lege endangered, such as Birmingham Journal published a story titled “The site called the Prepared, a resource for
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 43
people interested in disaster packing
lists, gear reviews, and emergency plans,
o3ered in a refreshingly measured tone. CREATION THEORY
Readers can learn how to use two-way
radios, safely store water, and obtain First it was me in the mother-and-father universe—
body armor. Also, where to buy the best I emerged precariously as an unstable element
wet wipes. When Ramey sold the site, In the province of fire and water.
in 2022, it had eight million annual read- I came out fighting. I was not a princess.
ers. “Preparedness is now part of mod- I should have been a boy.
ern adulting,” he said. I was earth grasping for air.
Today, Ramey is a disaster consul- No one in this universe fit precisely anywhere.
tant who, among other services, helps And then you, my brother, arrived eighteen months
clients build fortified homesteads in Afterward, on a winter day,
rural areas. His own politics seem to Along with my mother who had disappeared
lie in a no man’s land: he’s a supporter To bring me back a gift.
of both expansive gun rights and ex- It was you, a baby who was already an old man
panding the number of Justices on the Who even before kindergarten would search
Supreme Court. But, like Drew Miller, The house for cigarette butts to smoke,
he doesn’t particularly care who hires Empties to glean the last drops of liquid high.
him. “There’s the guy quoting a bull- In the myth of us, you were the warrior-usurper,
shit Newsmaxy thing about how ‘eight Earth boy come in to claim territory,
hundred thousand illegals have a voter To inherit the kingdom of mother and father.
I.D.,’ ” he told me of his customers. I was the protector of my homeland.
“Then, there’s a Silicon Valley leader, a I bit your thigh and made a mark, and because
blue-hearted liberal, who’ll point to what I was an honorable competitor we made a pact
the Supreme Court is doing with Roe. To stand by each other, no matter the weather
They’ve both concluded the system is As our freshly inhabited parental planet
broken.” Twice during our recent con- Turned and turned, and the world of us
versations, Ramey quoted a grim Thomas
Je3erson line: “The tree of liberty must
be refreshed from time to time with the “Our society put a lot of effort into I have not had is zombie apocalypse.”
blood of patriots and tyrants.” He told building systems for redress, like the (Ellis spoke to me as a private individ-
me, “It’s proven in human history that justice system,” Ramey told me. “But ual, not on behalf of the Department
you create an institution, you create rules, when they fail—as they are now—we of Defense.) Ellis and Ramey diverge
and they’ll eventually reach their end- go back to the only tool available: vi- on the likelihood of civil war. “Are there
game. Things become unrepairable. The olence.” He showed me around the re- concerning things happening? Yes,” Ellis
only answer is to build a new house.” mote mountain home of one of his said. “But I don’t like ‘civil war’ being
He meant this both metaphorically and family members, for whom he had cre- thrown around.” Still, he acknowledged
literally. “A client worked for an elec- ated an elaborate prepping setup. Cis- a real fraying of the social fabric.
tions bureau in a blue state during the terns held three thousand gallons of Most people, Ellis and Ramey con-
last cycle and the MAGAs wanted to kill water; solar panels and batteries stored cede, can’t a3ord a worst-case home-
him,” he said. “So he sold his house and three weeks of power; dehydrated food stead. But they can make their current
left.” (Such threats have since become was stacked high in a barn. “The peo- homes more resilient by tightening the
commonplace. In Georgia, election of- ple talking about civil war are not pa- screws on the front door, adding win-
ficials have started keeping Narcan be- riahs anymore,” he said. dow bars, securing a backup power
side voting tabulators, after receiving a We sat down on a porch with a friend source, and getting to know their neigh-
spate of fentanyl-laced letters. In Penn- of Ramey’s, Chris Ellis, who’d just come bors. “The people around you are often
sylvania, a building that houses an elec- from a cold swim in a nearby alpine your best protection,” Ellis said. “Say
tions office is now encircled by a barri- lake. In the course of a decade, Ellis hello.” And, if all else fails, drive. Ramey
cade of protective boulders.) conducted military operations in Iraq, took me out to his Ford F-350. “I’ll
In early August, I met Ramey in the Afghanistan, and Kosovo and then show you my bag in the back seat,” he
mountains of central Colorado. He is earned a Ph.D. in political science from said. Bugout bags are an essential prep-
a tall, languid man in his late thirties Cornell. In 2023, he became the chief per accessory, subject to endless dissec-
who sometimes lapses into tech-bro of future operations for the United tion and debate. Dion Coleman, who
speak, as when referring to his “founder” States Northern Command, which is goes by Marine X on his YouTube chan-
pals. A few weeks earlier, a federal judge in charge of assessing disaster threats nel, recommends packing pepper gel
had dismissed Jack Smith’s classi- to the U.S. “We look at everything from in anticipation of political unrest, to
fied-documents case against Trump, in fentanyl to nuclear threats and wild- “disengage the enemy and get away,”
a move that many considered partisan. fires,” he said. “The only conversation as he put it to me recently. Coleman
44 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
 fire and read a map. Ramey repeated
a prepper truism: “The more you know,
Disintegrated and broke. the less you need.”
We were never able to put it back together.
You were a rambunctious cowboy driving semis, circling
The country, always looking for our father, whose friends called him
Chief—
I“It called up some survival schools, which
are now catering to a new clientele.
used to be mostly soldier-of-fortune
He was lost in the embrace of sirens in an underworld bar and doomsday-prepper guys who took
somewhere far. the courses,” Shane Hobel, who runs
I was Indian, fighting for our sovereign rights and becoming Mountain Scout, in East Fishkill, New
A poet; still, it was you and me, no matter our orbits York, told me recently. “Now it’s women.
Which rarely met. I was always escaping danger, and you were part Even Democrats. People who used to
of my looking back. make fun of my school.” He said that
We ran and ran, but no one can outrun the story. he’s noticed a “quiet desperation build-
And yet, I am standing here beside you and you are not here. ing into a slow hum: people concerned
The memory of you laughs, tells your rodeo tales of trips about political unrest, the dollar drop-
And girls, and there are always cars to buy and sell. ping.” He teaches how to improvise rus-
I’m still figuring out how to keep you alive. tic shelter, use tools and weapons, rely
That’s why I’m here, in these words, grabbing your arm. on camouflage, and administer first aid.
I saved your life twice. Once on earth. Once in water. Dave Canterbury, the founder of the
The third time, I reached for you, but you disappeared. Pathfinder school, in Ohio, and the au-
When I lean back into those years when our father fathered, thor of the popular Bushcraft book se-
And our mother mothered, we go running out into the yard ries, told me that his courses are gain-
And there’s a universe there. ing popularity, too, though most of his
No one will ever hurt us. students aren’t specific about why they’ve
No one will ever leave. come. “They probably don’t want to end
up on watch lists,” he said. “And, any-
—Joy Harjo way, it’s nobody’s business.”
Anamaria Teodorescu, who immi-
grated to the U.S. from Romania twenty-
said that a Bic lighter offers a cheap his bugout bag. “If you get shot in the two years ago and now lives in New Jer-
combat hack: “Hold it in your fist and lung, I can save you,” he said. Next, sey, decided to pursue survival education
you’re less likely to break fingers when he took out a portable solar panel for last year because, she told me, “Amer-
you throw a punch.” Bugout stashes charging devices. He withdrew charging ica is dying.” She sees food shortages
are ultimately idiosyncratic. “I have cables, laminated maps, a compass and election malfeasance on the hori-
guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiot- (“ ‘Death by G.P.S.’ is a term in the zon. “I lived through it in Romania,”
ics, batteries, water, gas masks from the search-and-rescue community”), duct she said. “Hungry people won’t ask for
Israeli Defense Force,” Sam Altman, tape, a multi-tool, a battery bank, a bread—they’ll kill for it.” She’s taken
the C.E.O. of OpenAI, has said. The ham radio, a USB drive containing vital ten of Hobel’s courses, bringing her six-
writer Walter Kirn recently told his personal documents, food that wouldn’t year-old daughter along. “She learned
hundred and seventy thousand follow- cause thirst or require cooking (“com- camouflage a couple of weeks ago,”Teo-
ers on X that, along with Oreo cook- pressed bricks of carbs held together dorescu said. Hobel shared other sto-
ies and a multi-tool, his car’s bugout by coconut”), a butane stove, a light- ries. The parents of a group of home-
kit has “an emergency library of essen- weight sleeping bag, a set of clothes, a schoolers had signed up because, they
tial world literature,” including “The water filter, two water bottles (“Two is said, the government can’t be trusted.
Arabian Nights” and “old copies of one, and one is none”), a waterproof An elderly Jewish couple in Greenwich
Norton Anthologies.” These, he ex- deck of cards (“mental health”), a wad Village had learned how to repurpose
plained, are to “restart civilization.” of cash, and—without comment—a sidewalk detritus (cardboard can be
Reached by phone, Kirn noted a num- 9-millimetre pistol. used for warmth; scraps of clothing can
ber of other books in the trunk— Ramey asked how I was feeling. I filter water or mark trails), but “they
“Moby-Dick,” Sherlock Holmes, and was, to use a phrase he likes, some- wanted more,” Hobel said. He helped
a compendium of Oxford philosophy— where near “the bottom of the ladder them plan an escape route from their
and joked that, using the contents of in the pit of despair.” He nodded. Time home. Among Hobel’s special offerings
his car, he could “probably found Christ to climb out. Start by stockpiling two is a course on the “art of invisibility”—
Church college again.” He went on, weeks of food, water, and power, he also helpful, he said, in times of unrest.
“In a real breakdown, I might be able advised, calling this “turtle mode.” He “Never walk down the street with your
to trade them or teach. Prepping is re- also suggested learning new skills. viewpoint,” he told me. “Always walk
ally a meditation on what you value.” Knowing how to use a gun is good, he with the viewpoint of the person who
Ramey pulled a first-aid kit from said, but so is being able to make a wants to attack you. When he turns
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 45
around to look at you, you’ll already be thirty-three-year-old Eagle Scout, started and daughter from Braselton, who had
behind the dumpster.” I tried this while it in 2017. For the first few years, his stu- just stocked up on emergency food from
walking my dog. dents mostly were white outdoor enthu- 4patriots.com; a young woman named
At Fieldcraft Survival, a training out- siasts and military types, but lately he’s Valerie, from Sharpsburg, who works
fit in Provo, Utah, students study jujitsu had an inf lux of newcomers “who’ve in finance at a Fortune 500 company
and firearms. The school recently dé- never hunted, fished, or started a fire,” and had recently taken up archery; and
buted Program 62—a reference to the he told me. “They realize that we have a middle-aged scientist from Atlanta
Homestead Act of 1862, which was de- the markers of a very tumultuous time.” who was considering buying a gun. Our
signed to grant land to Americans who He will soon begin teaching a course re- instructor was a stout, silver-haired
hadn’t fought for the Confederacy in lated to civil unrest, in which students veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division
the Civil War—in which online stu- pack “get home” bags. In the meantime, named Buck Freitag. “Nobody is shoot-
dents create personal preparedness plans they continue to learn the essentials: shel- ing at us yet,” Freitag deadpanned,
and learn about things like ballistic sun- ter, fire, foraging. A wealth-management when an acorn smacked the metal roof.
glasses, conflict code words, canning, adviser who lives in an Atlanta suburb “If it’s gunfire, I’ll tell everyone to get
and sealing chest wounds (cost: eight told me that he took Sarcraft’s introduc- down.” The second assassination at-
hundred and fifty dollars). Greg Lapin, tory navigation course this summer to tempt on Trump in a little more than
an instructor at Fieldcraft, told me that prepare for “some militant right-wing two months had taken place only a few
most clients “can’t do ten burpees in a nutjobs pulling off acts of violence around days earlier. A man named Ryan Routh
row or run up two flights of stairs” and the election.” He added, “Some people had allegedly set up an SKS-style rifle
will be “dead within the first five min- just buy guns. I wanted to know how to in the bushes lining the Mar-a-Lago
utes of a gunfight.” He added, “What get home, too.” golf course. The Secret Service spot-
you should be doing now to prepare is Another Sarcraft navigation semi- ted his weapon before he could fire. “I
get a gym membership.” nar recently took place in the hills of tried my best,” a note that he’d report-
I already had one. So, in September, northern Georgia. Eight of us sat on edly left behind read. “It is up to you
I visited Sarcraft, a survival school closer wooden benches in an open-air shel- now to finish the job.” He offered a
to my home, in Atlanta. Alex Bryant, a ter, including Ray and Rachel, a father hundred and fifty thousand dollars to
anyone who did so. At the navigation
course, a tattooed mechanic named
Mark, sitting next to me with his note-
book open, shook his head. “Now they’re
going to start talking about taking our
guns again,” he told me. “That could
start a civil war.”
Shaun, a bearded fifty-nine-year-old
insurance-claims adjuster and a Sar-
craft graduate, who was assisting Frei-
tag, nodded. “We’re heading for a so-
cietal upset,” he said. “I look at what
Scripture says about what’s coming, and
I believe it.” Moments later, Mark
showed me his Glock, tucked in his
belt. “It’s already happened,” he said.
“Revolutionary War. Civil War. No so-
ciety lasts. We’re on the edge again.”
When society collapses, the biggest
threat, he figures, will be “the ex-Navy
seal that’s come out of retirement. The
government is paying him. All this guy
knows is blood. He’s Rambo. And if
he’s got a killing itinerary and they’re
paying the bill, that’s all he cares about.”
Mark had seen something about this
on YouTube. At the moment, he felt
reasonably prepared. He can shoot, ride
a motorcycle, and administer first aid.
He has a bugout bag in his truck. But
he wanted to know how to “read the
squiggly lines on a map.”
Freitag passed out compasses and
demonstrated how to plot a precise path. and camaraderie between militaristic ings at Democratic events and offices;
We split into groups, each with a hand- MAGA types and back-to-the-land hip- attacks on judges and courthouses; a
ful of navigation targets: metal posts pies at bunker communities that he has proposed AR-15 ban.
with buckets on them, labelled with a visited in recent years. Some recent re- A Democratic congresswoman an-
letter indicated on our map. I was part- search can be read optimistically, too: nounced, “This is a civil war, and if we
nered with Mark, who decided to pre- only three per cent of U.S. adults— don’t start fighting fire with fire, we will
tend that we were fleeing government around eight million people—are “very lose.”There was widespread looting and
troops. “Federales,” Mark exclaimed. or completely willing to threaten, in- home invasions. Police quit. Prison in-
“We’re trying to get free from federa- jure, or kill to advance a political aim,” mates escaped. A neglected nuclear re-
les!” We reached the first target, a bucket according to the U.C. Davis study. Sarah actor released tons of radiation. Mem-
marked “Q”—for “Quebec,” Mark de- Kreps, a professor of gov- bers of Greenpeace killed
termined, a safe haven from the author- ernment at Cornell, pointed climate deniers, and police
ities coming for our guns. After paus- me to another reason for shot curfew breakers. Mil-
ing for a moment, we headed to the hope. “I’ve heard about the lions of residents fled New
next target and stumbled off course into ‘cyber 9/11’ or the ‘cyber York and other cities after
someone’s yard. A Confederate flag was Pearl Harbor’ for at least they were suddenly seized
visible on the porch. “See, that wasn’t two decades,” she said, by gangs. Militias spread.
so long ago,” Mark said. referring to the possibility Food dwindled. Biden died
of a large-scale hack that of a stroke after winning a
ost experts think that another causes national paralysis. close election—this was be-
M full-scale American civil war is
highly unlikely in the near term. Ellis,
“Nothing remotely of that
magnitude has happened.
fore he dropped out—and
Kamala Harris was sworn
the future-operations director, explained So it’s this question of whether these in, prompting Trump to announce, “If
that it would take leadership, funding, were just fearmongers, or whether that she stays on as an unelected President
and a singularly explosive disagreement prediction of an apocalyptic scenario you’re really going to see violence, this
to start such a conflict. “The eighteen- was, in fact, a reason why it didn’t hap- country truly ripped apart.”
sixties had slavery,” he said. “You may pen.” The more we discuss threats, I was prompted with questions as
despise your uncle at Thanksgiving. But Kreps said, “the more we guard against the crisis worsened. If there was a ten-
do you disagree about something enough them.” In this way, the civil-war talk per-cent chance of being shot or se-
to get in a gray coat, he gets in a blue of late has, counterintuitively, given her verely injured at a voting precinct, would
coat, and you meet on a field of battle reason for optimism. “As these scenar- you vote? A private militia is forming
to shoot at each other?” And if so, he ios get gamed out, the political space in your neighborhood—will you join?
said, who are the opposing generals? has more capacity to anticipate and Where is a safe location to bug out?
Could Erik Prince—the founder of guard against them,” she told me. Still, Some of the questions, I noticed,
Blackwater, who recently said, “Maybe our deepening obsession with civil war seemed to point to the wisdom of join-
it’s worth going to war over defining points to something real. “It’s not 1861,” ing Fortitude Ranch. For most of them,
what a gender is”—command a MAGA Bounds, the sociology professor, said. I had no answer. At the end of the sim-
army? Would an Antifa member lead “But there’s a hostility growing in this ulation, Texas seceded in what was
a coalition of the left? America has pe- country.” dubbed Texit, and various counties in
riodic eruptions of political unrest, Ellis For those who remain concerned Oregon and Colorado did the same,
argued, but none has come close to a about civil war but can’t leave the couch, creating “American Oregon” and “Real
civil war. “It’s not Black Lives Matter there are apps. Earlier this year, Drew Colorado.” The narration concluded,
protests, or January 6th, or Thomas Miller, of Fortitude Ranch, released one “The POTUS election collapse is over,
Crooks,” he said. Even the hypotheti- called Collapse Survivor, whose full but the U.S. breakup and civil war has
cal secession of Texas might fall short suite of features costs ten dollars a year. just begun.” Suddenly thirsty, I went
of provoking civil war. “President Har- In addition to helping users assemble to the sink.
ris would have a decision,” Ellis theo- survival supplies, and alerting them to A post-simulation summary ap-
rized. “Am I going to commit federal impending disasters “before the gov- peared on my screen: I was among the
forces to bring a rebellious state to heel ernment will,” the app allows users to survivors. I plugged the phone into an
through war? Or am I just going to play out a number of disaster scenar- outlet and went for a long walk. It was
send in the military and treat it more ios, including “AI Uranium Enrich- a late summer day in America. I smiled
like a civil criminal action and arrest ment Terrorist Nuclear Attacks,” “Grid at my neighbors and wondered what
Governor Abbott and the legislature Down, Cyber,” and “End of Earth As- plans they’d made. I considered the lay
that voted for this to happen?” teroid.” (Pro tip: gather bugs.) of the land more closely now, and noted
Garrett, the author of “Bunker,” This summer, I spent an hour going what was edible, and what would be
thinks that there is still too much fellow- through one of Miller’s civil-war sce- edible soon, in the parks and the pub-
feeling in America for a civil war—a narios. It had several precipitating lic spaces I passed. When I got home,
conclusion he reached while witness- events, according to the troubling text I did something I’d been putting off: I
ing surprising moments of coöperation that filled my smartphone’s screen: kill- began to pack a bag. 
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 47
 A REPORTER AT LARGE

THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE

Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure—without leaving dry land.
BY SAM KNIGHT

T
he wreck was like a bug on the decade, the company has helped to trans- a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a
wall, a jumbly shape splayed on form the exploration of the seabed by day to charter.) “Sometimes it’s heart-
the abyssal plain. It was noticed deploying fleets of A.U.V.s—underwa- breaking,” Bound said. A few years ago,
by a team of autonomous-underwater- ter drones—which cruise in formation, he was with a team that stumbled across
vehicle operators on board a subsea ex- mapping large areas of the ocean floor a wreck in the Indian Ocean. They had
ploration vessel, working at an undis- with high-definition imagery. a few hours to spare, so they brought a
closed location in the Atlantic Ocean, “We find wrecks everywhere, just sodden box up to the surface. It was full
about a thousand miles from the near- blunder into them,” Mensun Bound, a of books. “That was the most exciting
est shore. The analysts belonged to a maritime archeologist who works fre- thing I’ve ever found in my life,” Bound
small private company that specializes quently with the company, told me. The said. “But then the question becomes:
in deep-sea search operations; I have pressures of time and money mean that What do we do with it?” The seabed is
been asked not to name it. They were it is usually not possible to stop. (Top- a complicated, as well as an expensive,
looking for something else. In the past of-the-line search vessels can cost about place to operate in. So they put it back.

“ You get to know whether you’re right or not,” Pickford said, of identifying wrecks. “That doesn’t often happen with history.”
48 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
 This Atlantic wreck was beguiling. regained. “It’s like popping the locks on thing,” Bound said. But he had heard
An R.O.V.—a remotely operated ve- an old suitcase and you lift the lid,” of a self-taught shipwreck researcher,
hicle, connected by a cable to the ex- Bound told me. Bound grew up on the based in England, who was said to have
ploration vessel—was sent down to take Falkland Islands in the nineteen-4fties. an unusually broad grasp of the world’s
a closer look. It was the remains of an In 2022, he found the Endurance, Er- lost vessels. Bound contacted the re-
old wooden sailing ship, stuffed with nest Shackleton’s polar-exploration ship, searcher, Nigel Pickford, by satellite
cargo, lying some six thousand metres under the ice of the Weddell Sea, off phone from the ship.
below the surface—much deeper than Antarctica. “On a shipwreck, everything, Within twenty-four hours, Pickford
the Titanic. The contents seemed to in theory, that was there on that ship replied, saying that Bound and his team
be Asian in origin: intricate lacquered when it went down is still there,” he were on the site of the Battle of Cape
screens and bolts of cloth, thousands of said. “It’s all the product of one unpre- Rachado, which was fought between
slender rattan canes, and an extraordi- meditated instant of time.” Portuguese and Dutch fleets over sev-
nary array of porcelain, all preserved in What was the ship? There was an eral days in August, 1606. The cannon
the darkness of the ocean. “It was just obvious person to ask. In 1993, Bound probably belonged to a ship called the
cascading in these spills down around had been searching for the remains of Nassau. “He said, ‘O.K., you found one
the slopes and undulations of the sea- a nineteenth-century English trading wreck by itself,’” Bound recalled. “ ‘There
bed,” Bound recalled. “And there were vessel, the Caroline, in the Straits of should be three wrecks nearby.’ And he
barrels there, which hadn’t been opened. Malacca, in Southeast Asia, when he even gave us a rough direction.”
They were sitting there intact.” and his colleagues pulled up a much Just over a kilometre away, Bound and
There is something almost danger- older, bronze cannon instead. The can- his team found the wreck mounds of
ously tantalizing about an undiscovered non was marked with a relief of a sail- three more ships—another Dutch war-
shipwreck. It exists on the edge of the ing ship, the name of the Dutch East ship, the Middelburg, and two Portu-
real, containing death and desire. Lost India Company, and a date, 1604. “I had guese vessels, the São Salvador and Dom
ships are lost knowledge, waiting to be no idea what it was doing there or any- Duarte de Guerra’s Galleon—which had
ILLUSTRATION BY OWEN POMERY THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 49
become tangled together and sunk in ical point of view, I suppose they’re all dedicated the book to his father,Thomas,
flames. “There they were, still tied to- of interest,” he told me. “From a treasure- who was also a shipwreck researcher.
gether on the bottom of the Straits of hunting point of view, about naught “He’s not an adventurer,” Pickford’s
Malacca, just as they’d gone down,” point naught one of them are of inter- wife, Rosamund, told me. “He’s a de-
Bound said. “You could see the violence.” est.” Pickford nicknamed the unknown tective.” Other people involved in the
A Portuguese cannon was bent like an wreck Deep Pots and, without anybody shipwreck world—maritime archeolo-
elbow, with fragments of a Dutch can- ever formally asking him to, he set out gists, divers, treasure hunters—speak of
nonball embedded inside it. to identify the vessel. the thrill and addiction of their discov-
Two years later, Bound led an exca- Pickford is the purveyor of a singu- eries. But for Pickford these pangs of
vation of the site on behalf of the Na- lar sort of information. In the course of elation tend to be private, if not silent:
tional Museum of Malay- fifty years, his research has opening an e-mail, taking a phone call,
sia. “Had it not been for led to the discovery of doz- deciphering a centuries-old cargo man-
Nigel, that would never have ens of shipwrecks, contain- ifest in a climate-controlled basement
happened,” he said. I asked ing more than two hundred somewhere. Pickford enjoys the binary
Bound whether there were million dollars’ worth of re- outcomes of his work. The diamonds
any other experts, compa- covered cargoes. Clients— are in the strong room, or they aren’t.
rable to Pickford, whom he specialist salvage companies “You get to know whether you’re right
could have called in that sit- and their investors—tend or not,” he said. “That doesn’t often hap-
uation. “I can’t think of any- to call him, rather than the pen with history.” The moment that
body of his calibre,” he re- other way around. “I never Pickford craves is when the two realms
plied. “I can think of one or really bother to look for collide—the archive and the artifact—
two others. But they are people,” he said. His work and the years in between suddenly melt
more swashbuckling, let’s say.”The ship- encompasses every ocean and a time away. “I think it’s something fairly em-
wreck world swims with hucksters; Pick- span of roughly five centuries. One bedded in our psyche, actually, this de-
ford deals in facts that you can use. “He day, when we were chatting, Pickford sire,” he said. “It’s connecting with the
is a serious scholar,” Bound said. “His mentioned that he had been hired to past, really. It’s all about time.”
approach, his attention to detail, his note- investigate a couple of wrecks near the
taking, the insight that he brings.” Comoro Islands, off the coast of Mo- porcelain expert who studied im-

ews of the Atlantic discovery found

zambique, in East Africa. “I can’t tell
you anything about them,” he said, af-
A ages from the Deep Pots wreck
dated the pieces on the seabed to the
N its way to Pickford within a few
days. Earlier this year, he showed me
fably enough.
Pickford works on a retainer or for
last twenty years of the seventeenth
century. Pickford went to his files and
images taken by the R.O.V. on his lap- between five and ten per cent of the tried to narrow down possible candi-
top, in a modern apartment decorated proceeds of any treasure that is recov- dates for the vessel. The wreck’s posi-
with contemporary art and Asian ce- ered. Because of a medical condition, tion, in the mid-Atlantic, suggested that
ramics, overlooking the rooftops of Mallory-Weiss syndrome, which can he was looking for a ship that had been
Cambridge. Pickford is seventy-eight, lead to severe internal bleeding if he returning to Europe from Asia via the
with white hair, crooked teeth, and a vomits, he does not go to sea. Instead, Caribbean when it sank—a relatively
mild, understated manner that could Pickford is a creature of libraries and uncommon route. “It was unusual,” Pick-
be mistaken entirely for gentleness, or maritime archives, which he returns to ford said. He thought of the Azie, a
English politeness, but is also the mark again and again, a missable figure in a Dutch East India Company ship that
of a lifetime spent among secrets. tweed coat with elbow patches, stand- sank in 1683 and which he had been cu-
“My things are not always well or- ing aside to let you pass. rious about for years. He hired a re-
ganized. I’ve got so much bloody stuff,” In 1994, Pickford published “The searcher to scour the company’s records,
Pickford muttered, clicking around on Atlas of Shipwrecks and Treasure,” in The Hague, but these revealed that
his desktop. A bookshelf next to him which included a gazetteer of more than the Azie’s crew was rescued after a storm
held a seven-volume history of the Royal fourteen hundred shipwrecks and has north of Cape Verde, a thousand miles
Navy and a copy of “Dictionary of Di- become something of a reference work from the wreck site.
sasters at Sea During the Age of Steam.” in the field. “As well as greed, there has For a time, Pickford considered the
“I think it’s this one,” Pickford said. The to be a love of gambling, a strong ten- Oriflamme, a French trader that disap-
screen suddenly filled with barrels, china, dency to dream, a boundless optimism, peared while crossing the Atlantic in
and chests. A ghostly sword lay on the a passion for quests, an enjoyment of 1691, on its way back from Siam. But an
ocean floor. We stared for a few moments. physical risks, and a perverse desire to account in the French colonial archives,
“It’s incredibly real, isn’t it?” he said. attempt that which is inherently diffi- in Aix-en-Provence, indicated that the
Pickford is fascinated by the era of cult,” he wrote, of looking for vanished Oriflamme could have made it as far as
early colonial expansion and also, to ships. Pickford introduced the gazet- the Bay of Biscay. Next, Pickford won-
be frank, by treasure. “There are mil- teer with a quote from “The Tempest”: dered about the Modena—a grand En-
lions of shipwrecks going back mil- “O, the cry did knock / Against my very glish ship named after Mary of Modena,
lennia, obviously. From an archeolog- heart! Poor souls, they perish’d!” He the wife of King James II—which traded
50 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
in Asia for the East India Company. visit anywhere known to export porce- ture from the Canary Islands, in April,
The last credible sighting of the Modena lain or canes in sizable quantities. 1692, and was left behind. His name
was on October 5, 1694, when passing Fortunately for Pickford, however, was Samuel Causton. When Causton’s
seamen recognized pieces of her elabo- much of her odyssey was witnessed by father found out, he sent a letter, over-
rate painted woodwork floating in the Edward Barlow, the chief mate on the land, to Surat, on the east coast of India,
ocean after a violent storm. The Modena Sampson (another ship in the same fleet), asking for his son’s possessions to be
had set sail for England from Barbados who kept a vivid journal. Working from unloaded and held for his arrival on a
just over a month before. Barlow’s descriptions and the East India later ship. Causton’s baggage was not
I had assumed that Pickford would Company records, Pickford spent more unusual for a young administrator of
spend most of his time re-navigating than two years assembling the story of the period, a mixture of gifts and per-
old voyages, ruminating on lee shores the Modena. “It surprises me some- sonal goods that might be traded. Pick-
and the direction of winds. But trea- times,” he said. “Why do I enjoy dig- ford wrote them down. The list included
sure hunting begins and ends with cargo. ging around?” Pickford takes copious two cases of brandy, a box of tobacco,
“You always start off with ‘What did it notes, with half an eye on information three beaver hats (two white, one black),
have on it?’” he told me. “Did it really that could turn out to be useful on an- and two silver watches.
have that on it?” In the case of the Deep other wreck someday. He circles back Later that year, Mensun Bound,
Pots wreck, the only way to offer a ten- to documents that stay in his mind, and the archeologist, directed a second sur-
tative identification would be to find a photographs them. vey of the Deep Pots site. He worked
persuasive match between what was One day, about six months into his from a laptop at the kitchen table of
lying on the ocean floor and what was research, Pickford came across a letter his home, a fifteenth-century manor
loaded onto the vessel when she sailed. that caught his attention. A twenty- outside Oxford, while an R.O.V. probed
The Modena weighed somewhere one-year-old apprentice sailing on the some three and a half miles below
between eight hundred and a thousand Modena missed the ship on its depar- the Atlantic. At the far end of the site,
tons. She was the largest ship in the
East India Company’s fleet when she
was built, in the Blackwall docks of
East London, in 1685. While much of
her cargo was recorded in company
correspondence, which Pickford could
study at the British Library, a lot of it
went undocumented, either by acci-
dent or as “private trade,” to avoid cer-
tain duties.
Colonial trading ships of the period
were worlds unto themselves. They went
to sea for years at a time, their decks
crammed with an improbable medley
of people and things. When the Modena
left England for India, in February, 1692,
she carried soldiers, lascars, sixteen com-
pany apprentices, and a group of Ar-
menian merchants among her passen-
gers. Her holds contained lead, iron, a
thousand pieces of woollen cloth, eight
spare anchors, twenty barrels of tar, two
hundred and fifty swords, thirteen chests
of silver bars, medicine, and a consign-
ment of unsold coral.
At first glance, the Modena’s likely
cargo on her return from Asia didn’t
tally with what was found at the Deep
Pots site. The most conspicuous objects
on the seabed were porcelain and thou-
sands of rattan canes, intended for use
as walking sticks or in furniture-making.
The Modena’s final trading voyage lasted
almost three years—and included stops
in the Canary Islands, Cape Town, Cey-
lon, Bombay, and Persia. But she didn’t “I came, I saw, I didn’t know anybody.”
 chant ship sunk by a Japanese subma­
rine in the Indian Ocean in 1942. Two
hundred and eighty people died in the
attack. The Tilawa came to rest some
four thousand metres below the surface.
R.O.V.s brought up all but twenty­seven
of the twenty­three hundred and ninety­
one silver bars that she was carrying—a
recovery rate of 98.9 per cent. (The bul­
lion, which had been on its way to the
South African mint, has a current value
of about forty­five million dollars.) With
enough money and expertise, almost
anything can be found.
As the technology has progressed,
however, the rules governing shipwrecks
have tightened considerably. During the
twentieth century, decades of looting by
divers and unlicensed salvage compa­
nies stripped some seabeds clean. “Once,
we had man’s entire history as a seafarer,
and everything else, literally spread out
before us within easy diving depth
around the Mediterranean and else­
where,” Bound told me. “And now, one
by one, they’ve all been just picked out
of existence.”
In response, nation­states have tough­
ened laws in order to protect their ter­
“Try not to fill up on bread.” ritorial waters. (The shores of the United
Kingdom alone are thought to hold
more than fifty thousand shipwrecks.)
• • The open oceans are, in theory, regu­
lated as well. Since 2001, according to
among the scattered porcelain, there R.O.V. took the water­ blackened the UNESCO Convention on the Pro­
was a small chest—the kind that might watch—and its stopped time—back to tection of the Underwater Cultural Her­
have been used for someone’s luggage. the bottom of the sea. itage, which has been signed by seventy­
“The box was open,” Bound said. eight countries, all wrecks more than a
Inside were some trinkets: two china
bowls, beads and buttons, the com­
pressed remains of what might have
Ithenbusiness
the course of Pickford’s career, the
of prospecting for wealth in
world’s oceans has changed dra­
century old should be left alone and
preserved in situ “as the first option.”
Commercial exploitation is banned. Par­
been leather hats, and two heavily matically. When he started out, in the allel attempts to crack down on antiq­
corroded, but recognizably silver, seventies, commercial salvage firms used uities crimes and an increasing aware­
watches. explosives and steel claws to rip apart ness of cultural theft mean that it is also
Bound called Pickford. It was as if wrecks on the seabed, a technique harder to sell recovered booty once it
he already knew they were there. “Every­ known as “smash and grab.” Most re­ comes to the surface.
thing seemed to confirm his research,” coveries were of large, nonferrous car­ The result is that Pickford and his
Bound said. At some point during the goes sunk during the First and Second clients operate in contested waters. On
surveys of the wreck, a watch was World Wars—tin, copper, gold, and sil­ the one hand, they have the skills and,
brought up to the search ship and ver—and very few were lifted from more often, the finances to recover spectacu­
cleaned, revealing elaborate scrollwork, than a few hundred metres of water. lar things. On the other hand, they are
a jewelled interior, and its maker: Ed­ Now the most advanced operations, ever more likely to be challenged by
ward East, of London. East was a clock­ using technology developed for the oil­ states and archeologists over their right
maker to King Charles I. The King and­gas industry or subsea mining, de­ to do so. (The salvage of the Tilawa led
gave away one of his watches on the ploy unmanned vehicles—with delicate to a five­year legal dispute and a suc­
morning of his execution, in 1649. At instruments, suction cups, and laser­ cessful appeal by the South African gov­
the time of the Modena’s disappear­ scanning capabilities—in waters fifteen ernment in the U.K.’s Supreme Court.)
ance, East still had a workshop, on Tem­ times as deep. In 2014, Pickford helped When I suggested to Jessica Berry, the
ple Bar, in the heart of the city. An to locate the S.S. Tilawa, a British mer­ founder of the Maritime Archaeology
52 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
Sea Trust, a British nonprofit that mon- nicated with the surface by means of a the Admiralty, became Risdon Beaz-
itors unauthorized salvage operations, telephone. The Artiglio carried half a ley’s shipwreck researcher.
that it would be difficult for Pickford ton of macaroni in its hold, for suste- Pickford grew up in a quiet, unhappy
and some of his collaborators to start nance, and detonators stuffed in its bunk- house near Richmond Park, in south-
their careers today, she replied, “They bed drawers. When the crew struck gold, west London. His father wore a bowler
would all be nicked.” they celebrated by playing ballads on hat and went off to the City each day.
As a historian, it is possible for Pick- mandolins. The leader of SORIMA was Sometimes he travelled overseas. Pick-
ford to stay apart from these matters, to Commendatore Giovanni Quaglia, a.k.a. ford’s mother, Sylvia, drank and had
some extent. “The people he’s research- the Quail, who wore a jewelled tiepin affairs. She left when he was a teen-
ing for, they’re the ones that are doing in the shape of the bird. No one had ager. Pickford wanted to be a writer.
the stuff that’s either right or wrong,” ever worked at such depths before. He studied English at Cambridge,
Alex Hildred, the head of research for That afternoon, the crew of the Ar- where he met Rosamund, who was still
the Mary Rose Trust, a charity that cares tiglio was working on the remains of in high school. They married when she
for the remains of Henry VIII’s favor- the Florence H., an American muni- turned eighteen.
ite warship, told me. Others take a harder tions ship that had caught fire and sunk Pickford trained to become a teacher,
line. “I absolutely respect the quality of in 1918. Because of her volatile cargo, and, for a time, the young couple lived
the research that Nigel Pickford does,” the salvage operation had been slow at with Pickford’s father in London. “You
another archeologist told me. “I think first, and nothing had gone wrong. Then, would never have guessed that there was
that some of the people that he works around 2 p.m., Alberto Gianni, SORI- any connection with shipwrecks if you
with should not be allowed anywhere MA’s lead diver, fired six charges that went in the house,” Rosamund told me.
near historic wrecks.” had been laid under the Florence H. to The rooms were crowded with glass-
Spending time with Pickford, I blow the stern apart. The sea erupted. fronted display cabinets, full of antiques
couldn’t quite make up my mind. In al- Witnesses saw a crater open and a mush- that Sylvia had bought and left behind.
most every way, he was a quintessential room cloud rise. The Artiglio disap- Thomas didn’t talk much. “He was an
gentleman scholar: modest, shy, com- peared. Twelve of her nineteen crew extremely private man, I suppose you’d
fortable with silence. Then, one day last members were killed. say,” Nigel observed. Rosamund found
January, I saw him crossing Sloane A salvor is a risktaker. Quaglia hired Thomas distant, rather than stern, and
Square, in London, in jeans and with a more divers and bought a new boat, the prone to getting lost in his thoughts—a
bag slung over his shoulder, walking Artiglio II. There were still fortunes to trait that she has noticed in Pickford,
with a pair of salvage associates, and he be found. The shores of Europe were too. “Abstraction seems to run in that
suddenly resembled an aging safecracker, littered with wrecks from the First World family,” she said.
holding out for one last job. Pickford War. SORIMA collected “no cure, no pay” In the seventies, the postwar salvage
does not disguise where his sympathies (the equivalent of “no win, no fee”) con- boom faded. Metal prices were volatile.
lie. If a shipwreck is found, it is human tracts from governments and insurers, The easy pickings were gone. Risdon
nature to look inside. He sees most ar- seeking to recoup their losses. In Lon- Beazley was acquired by Smit Tak, a
cheologists as naïve and utopian. “It’s don, the company was represented by Dutch rival, and the fleet was gradually
like they live in this benign world, where Count Giuseppe Buraggi, who lived in depleted. (Beazley died in 1979.) Thomas
everyone is good and, you know, nice to Mayfair. Sometime in the thirties, Bu- was worn out. When he was asked to
each other. And no one’s at all acquisi- raggi hired a young Englishman,Thomas conduct some research on wrecks in
tive,” he said. Searching for sunken trea- Pickford, to work with him. Asia, he handed off the work to his son.
sure has never been like that. “It’s all Nigel doesn’t know much about his There was no particular conversation
thorny questions. It’s the most ridicu- father’s early life. Thomas was born in about it. “I don’t know why,” Pickford
lous business,” Pickford said. “I don’t East London in 1913. He left school at recalled. “He suggested I might like to
know why anyone would get involved.” thirteen and apprenticed, for a time, as do it instead, rather than him, slightly
a tea-maker. But, after working with out of the blue, and I thought, Well, why
n a Sunday afternoon in early De- Buraggi, he was recruited by the Royal not?” Pickford was working as an En-
O cember, 1930, an Italian salvage ves-
sel, the Artiglio, was stationed at the
Navy. During the Second World War,
five salvage firms were appointed to re-
glish teacher and helping out in a cou-
ple of youth clubs. I asked whether
entrance of Quiberon Bay, off the coast trieve precious cargoes sunk by the Ger- Thomas had ever given him any advice.
of Brittany. The Artiglio, whose name mans and to keep Britain’s ports acces- “No. Just gave me a load of papers,” Pick-
means “talon,” was a converted fishing sible. The south coast was covered by ford replied. It was his father’s shipwreck
trawler and the flagship of the Società Risdon Beazley Ltd., a firm named for archive. “Lots of typed letters. Lots of
Ricuperi Marittimi (SORIMA), a Gen- its taciturn founder and based in South- handwriting,” Pickford said. “Actually
oese company that pioneered the mod- ampton. Risdon Beazley vessels helped quite good handwriting.”
ern salvage industry. Old pictures of SO- to keep the D Day landing beaches clear, We were in his study in Cambridge.
RIMA at work look like stills from a Wes and the firm went on to become the Pickford and his wife had moved into
Anderson movie. Divers were lowered largest salvage company in the world. the apartment last year and were still
in large white articulated shells, which After the war, Thomas, who was nick- transferring all his files from another
were made in Germany. They commu- named the Commander for his time at property, in Kent. The top shelf of one
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 53
cupboard was crammed with brown fold- sailed alone. In the eighties, he found two actually called the Indiana. (The cap-
ers—his father’s papers. The Risdon fabulous porcelain cargoes that, between tain was James Pearl.) But Pickford had
Beazley archive has a near-mythical sta- them, sold for more than seventeen mil- the clue he needed. In Dutch colonial
tus among treasure hunters and maritime lion dollars at auction. But in the spring archives in The Hague, he learned that
historians alike. The company’s records of 1999 he was in the doldrums. There the junk was called the Tek Sing. It may
were broken up in the late seventies and was violence in East Timor; he had to have been carrying as many as eighteen
scattered. But no one did more research give up on the Portuguese galleon. “It was hundred people—mostly Chinese mi-
for the firm than the Commander, and a pretty rough setup,” he said. Hatcher grants—when it hit the reef. Some two
many of his documents survive. had a permit to search in Indonesian hundred survived. Part of the junk’s bal-
Pickford handed me a clutch of his waters, so he called Pickford from his last had been provided by granite grave-
father’s letters from 1954, relating to the motor yacht, the Restless M, and asked stones, brought by the migrants from
sinking of the S.S. Juno in him whether he had any China for use at the end of their lives.
the English Channel, in other targets to track down. The Tek Sing is, to date, the largest
1917, and the location of its In England, Pickford had Chinese wooden sailing vessel ever dis-
copper cargo (“bottom of recently been looking at the covered. In the fall of 2000, Nagel Auc-
No 2 hold, further quantity fifth edition of “Directions tions, a German auction house, took the
at bottom of No 3 hold”), for Sailing to and from the best of the porcelain on a five-city tour,
as well as a note from Bea- East Indies,” published in with stops in New York and London.
zley himself. In 1993, Pick- 1843, by James Horsburgh, A replica of the Tek Sing went on dis-
ford helped to f ind the a Scottish sailor who be- play at the railway station in Stuttgart,
R.M.S. Douro—a Victo- came a hydrographer after where the auction took place. The week-
rian transatlantic liner that being shipwrecked in the long sale brought in slightly more than
went down carrying twenty- Indian Ocean. (The first ten million dollars.
eight thousand gold coins in 1882—be- edition appeared in 1809.) Horsburgh Both Hatcher and Pickford consider
cause he was intrigued by a note of his described the existence of a “large Chi- the Tek Sing to be a positive example
father’s: “Douro (ph), 1882, 53,000 nese junk” on a reef in the Gaspar Strait, of their work. They used their wits and
pounds, Bay of Biscay.” Thomas died a about two hundred and fifty miles north gumption to find an extraordinary ship-
few years later. of Jakarta. Pickford told Hatcher about wreck; they made some money and added
Pickford came to know his father, in it on the phone. “I said, ‘Why don’t we to the historical record. The British Mu-
a way, by reading his files. “I think I un- go and look at this large Chinese junk?’” seum holds fifteen objects from the Tek
derstood him much more,” he told me. On May 12th, after about a month of Sing, including a porcelain urinal. “You
Thomas was both more romantic and searching, two of Hatcher’s divers found go to the British Museum . . . and there
more pedantic than his son had imag- three iron rings—each about a metre in it is, ‘Salvaged by Captain Hatcher,’ ”
ined. “I guess I am as well, on some level,” diameter—spaced out evenly on the sea- Hatcher told me. “Most museums in the
Pickford said. While his father focussed floor. The rings would have strengthened world have got Hatcher collections, or
on twentieth-century wrecks, he also the masts of a large oceangoing sailing pieces of Hatcher. . . . Well, that’s pieces
harbored dreams of finding the San José, ship. Then the divers began to find por- from Nigel and Hatcher. And it wouldn’t
a legendary Spanish treasure ship that celain, more than three hundred and fifty be there unless we did it.”
sank off Cartagena in 1708. (It was dis- thousand pieces in all, many of them Not everyone sees it that way. In 2000,
covered, in 2015, by the Colombian Navy. stacked in eerie columns, their wooden the Indonesian authorities tried to stop
Its location is now a state secret.) “He crates having rotted away. Hatcher’s team the Tek Sing sale from happening.
wasn’t as good as me, I have to say, on spent the next five months excavating (Seven containers of porcelain were in-
the old stuff,” Pickford observed. Taken the site, while Pickford tried to figure tercepted by Australian customs offi-
together, the research of the Pickfords, out what they had found. According to cials, but the rest made it to Germany.)
plus their share of the Risdon Beazley Horsburgh’s commentary, some of the Ten years later, Hatcher was declared
archive, may constitute one of the most junk’s passengers had been rescued by an persona non grata in Thailand after he
valuable repositories of treasure infor- English ship. The wreck appeared in the tried to salvage a wreck in its territorial
mation in the world. book’s 1827 edition but not in the 1817 waters. When we spoke, he did not deny
printing—giving Pickford a ten-year skirting the edges of the law. “You can’t
he Deep Pots wreck reminded Pick- window to investigate. tell the truth anymore,” Hatcher said.
T ford of another nameless ship that
he identified, a quarter of a century be-
By chance, while reading up on the
mast rings in “Chinese Junks,” a multi-
“You can make a deal with the govern-
ment, Navy people, and pay them off,”
fore. Back then, Captain Mike Hatcher, a volume work by Louis Audemard, a he said. “They close their eyes to it.”
British-born treasure hunter, was search- French navigator known for his explo- Hatcher’s exploits in Southeast Asia
ing for a Portuguese galleon around the ration of the Yangtze River, Pickford in the eighties and nineties are now held
Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia. came across a reference to the loss of a up by conservationists as case studies of
Hatcher began prospecting in the seven- large junk in 1822 and a rescue attempt cultural theft and the careless destruc-
ties, salvaging brass propellers from Sec- by a ship named the Pearl. Audemard tion of historical sites. An archeology
ond World War wrecks in a yacht that he had the rescue ship’s name wrong: it was professor who has worked with the Brit-
54 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
ish government on its handling of wrecks after spotting the name in the “Ship- not given permission for any of this to
said that what most often gets lost in wreck Index of the British Isles” and happen. After the news broke, I received
treasure-hunting expeditions is a frag- details of its supposed remains. “The an e-mail from a historian, suggesting
ile archeological record of seafaring: the word ‘cannon’ just appeared,” Lincoln that I speak to Pickford. In 2021, Pick-
details of ship construction, ephemeral said. “I picked the phone up, literally ford had published “Samuel Pepys and
traces of life and death at sea, which can’t that night, and said to my brother, ‘We’re the Strange Wrecking of the Glouces-
be polished and sold. “You don’t know going to need a bigger boat.’ ” Then, ter,” a book that had discussed the find-
what you’ve lost,” the professor said. after four years, crisscrossing five thou- ing of the wreck, in somewhat cryptic
sand nautical miles of the North Sea, terms, though his account had largely
here are days when Pickford won- the Barnwells got lucky. “The visibility gone unnoticed.
T ders whether the salvage business
that he has known is coming to an end.
was excellent. Lovely white sand, and
right in front me,” Lincoln recounted,
In the library, Pickford told me that
he had signed a contract to locate the
One afternoon, in his study, I asked raising his hands in wonder: “cannon.” Gloucester some twenty years earlier
him how many viable shipwreck tar- But there were unexplained aspects and that his analysis had led to the dis-
gets he had in his files. “Viable is the to the story. The Barnwells said that they covery of the wreck. “Very lengthy busi-
key word you’ve used there,” Pickford had found the Gloucester in 2007, some ness,” he said, over a cup of tea. Since
replied. “There’s all sorts of pressures fifteen years earlier, but kept it secret. the sixties, Pickford explained, divers
that we shouldn’t be doing it at all.” The BBC reported that the wreck’s ex- had been searching for the wreck off the
Pickford’s status as a freelance re- istence had been concealed for “security wrong sandbank. Starting about twenty-
searcher makes him vulnerable to being reasons.” Hundreds of items—includ- five miles off the northeastern coast of
marginalized by sniffy academics or un- ing a cannonball, spectacles, a pewter Norfolk, there are six named sandbanks
scrupulous clients, or both. We first met bowl, and twenty-six unopened bottles that run parallel to one another. The
in the summer of 2022, in a café at the of wine—had already been excavated. Leman and Ower Banks are the closest
back of the British Library, where I often But the Royal Navy, which claims sov- to shore. Treasure hunters looking for
work. A few weeks earlier, the Univer- ereign immunity over its lost ships, had the Gloucester had mostly relied on the
sity of East Anglia had announced the
discovery of the Gloucester, a three-
hundred-and-seventy-year-old royal war-
ship, which had been found, half buried,
near a sandbank in the North Sea.
The story made international head-
lines. Claire Jowitt, a history professor
at U.E.A. who was researching the find,
compared the wreck to the Mary Rose,
which was raised from the bottom of
the Solent, at fantastic expense, in 1982.
The Gloucester holds a notable place
in British history because it was carry-
ing a future king, James II of England,
who escaped through the window of
his cabin while as many as two hun-
dred sailors, servants, musicians, and
courtiers perished. John Churchill, the
first Duke of Marlborough and an an-
cestor of Winston’s, drew his sword to
protect the prince from the panicking
crowd, and Samuel Pepys, the celebrated
diarist and Royal Navy administrator,
witnessed the sinking.
The tale of the f inding of the
Gloucester was picturesque, too. It was
said to be the triumph, after years of
fruitless searching, of Lincoln and Ju-
lian Barnwell, a pair of hobbyist divers
who ran a family-owned printing com-
pany in Aylsham, a town in north Nor-
folk. In a promotional film, made by
the university, Lincoln recalled how he “ You seem nice, but between work, sleep, and the eight hours a day
decided to search for the Gloucester mysteriously lost to my phone, I just don’t have time to date.”
account of its captain, John Berry, who he was asked to sign an N.D.A., which document shared by Julian Barnwell es-
wrote, “We run ashore upon the west would have stopped him from publish- timated that an auction of the Glouces-
part of the Lemon [sic] . . . . Whilst our ing his book, and when he suspected ter treasure could raise twenty million
rudder held, we bore away West,” of the that they were making plans behind his pounds. (Pickford’s cut was put at just
ship’s grounding, early in the morning back. “They want fame,” he said. “They’ve over five hundred thousand.) A sepa-
of May 6, 1682. got that. They want control. And I sus- rate presentation, circulated by Rose and
Pickford started looking at the case pect they want payback as well.” offering a “low risk, high reward and
in the eighties. He noticed in contem- Shipwrecks go weird. They fester. fun” business opportunity, stated, opti-
poraneous accounts that many seven- They do strange things to people’s mistically, that the crown jewels might
teenth-century mariners did not distin- minds. Pickford also feared that his ar- have been on board.
guish accurately between the sandbanks, chival work was being superseded. In Treasure hunting is rife with dubious
if they distinguished between them at 2021, Jowitt, at U.E.A., was awarded a schemes that don’t go anywhere and, ul-
all. He consulted “The English Pilot,” £324,028 academic grant to research timately, ruin wreck sites. Seventeen years
a set of charts published by John Seller, the history of the Gloucester—work after the Gloucester was found, the iden-
the king’s hydrographer, in the sixteen- that Pickford thought he had already tity of the wreck has still not been con-
seventies, and found them hopelessly done in his book. On June 10, 2022, the clusively verified by archeologists, and
muddled. Moreover, the logbooks of same day that the find was announced the Receiver of Wreck, the official body
eyewitnesses in the royal fleet suggested to the world, Jowitt published an arti- that adjudicates salvage cases in the U.K.,
that the Gloucester hit the Ower, rather cle in The English Historical Review has yet to make a decision about what
than the Leman. After considering the about the sinking, in which she accused to do with the objects recovered by the
tide height, the draft of the Gloucester, Pickford of making transcription er- Barnwells. “In the meantime, H.M.S.
and the generally acknowledged fact rors and coming to “spurious conclu- Gloucester and her artifacts should re-
that the ship “beat along the sand” be- sions about what happened and why.” main undisturbed,” a Royal Navy spokes-
fore sinking, Pickford sketched a twenty- Neither Jowitt nor U.E.A. has ever ac- person told me.The project appears stuck.
square-mile box around the Glouces- knowledged Pickford’s contribution to The Barnwells, the Gloucester 1682
ter’s likely resting place. The target area the ship’s discovery. “I feel I’ve been Trust—which is raising money for the
was “very tiny” in the context of ship- completely deleted from the historical preservation of the wreck—and Jowitt,
wreck research, he said. record,” Pickford said. at U.E.A., all declined to comment on
In 2003, Pickford entered into an People who admire Pickford’s work Pickford’s version of events. “It’s a mess,”
agreement with John Rose, a rakish think that he should have been a pro- the archeology professor told me. “It’s
businessman and treasure hunter from fessor of maritime history. “That was an absolute mess.”
Great Yarmouth who wanted to find his proper calling,” Bound said. Oth-
the Gloucester. Pickford introduced ers blame him for working as a gun he silver watches played on Pick-
Rose to an acquaintance who had car-
ried out a magnetometer survey of Pick-
for hire. “His background of dealing
with some very, very shady people . . .
T ford’s mind. At the very least, they
suggested that the Deep Pots wreck
ford’s search area—to detect submerged has meant he’s never been really seen could be an English ship. But the co-
metal—a few years earlier. The survey as a serious individual,” the professor incidence with the details of Samuel
had indicated the presence of a wreck. who has advised the U.K. government Causton’s baggage was too striking to
“Bob’s your uncle, for want of a better ignore. “The watches were the critical
word,” Rose quipped, when we spoke. point, where it just seemed, Oh, it’s got
“Not that I have got an uncle.” to be,” Pickford said. And yet what he
In the summer of 2005, according to had actually found in the archives were
Pickford, the Barnwells got involved. instructions to take Causton’s posses-
They were younger, fitter divers, with sions off the Modena in India—not to
access to a fast boat that could get them send them back home. “You waver a
out to the Ower Bank in an hour or bit,” Pickford said. “Other days, you
two. Rose shared Pickford’s search box think, No, it’s not one hundred per cent.”
and the magnetometer survey with them. There were other problems to solve, too,
“I saw something about how they said. “That’s not to say his research is not least how the bulk of the Deep Pots
had spent years going up and down bad. I think he produces the goods.” cargo—the porcelain and the canes on
looking for it,” Rose said, of the Barn- The search for the Gloucester is a the seafloor—could have been carried
wells’ supposed quest. “It’s ridiculous.” case in point. It was a treasure quest by the Modena.
In 2007, when the wreck was found, the from the start. According to the ac- Pickford began to pay more atten-
group was ecstatic. Not long afterward, counts of Augurship 320, the commer- tion to an incident that occurred on the
in the manner of all good treasure- cial entity set up to salvage the wreck, Modena’s outward voyage, in the sum-
hunting stories, the gang fell apart. Rose the company borrowed hundreds of mer of 1692. The Modena reached Cape
ran into money trouble. The Barnwells thousands of pounds from investors, in Town in July, a little over a month after
took charge. Pickford told me that he the hope of selling off the Gloucester’s another English ship, the Orange, had
parted company with the Barnwells after wine, treasure, and other antiquities. A foundered on rocks nearby, in Table Bay.
56 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
The Orange had been on its way back
to England from Madras. Three of her
crew had drowned, but much of her
cargo had been saved. Divers were sent
down for the rest. “We made such shifts
that we took up out of the bottom of
her ten bales of goods,” Barlow recorded
in his journal. It was an early salvage
operation. Most of the recovered mer-
chandise was transferred to the Modena.
Pickford had known about the Or-
ange for years. But he had been unaware
of the fate of her cargo. About a year
into his Deep Pots research, the rest of
the puzzle seemed to fall into place. To
his delight, Pickford found a letter or-
dering Causton’s possessions—the hats,
the watches, etc.—to be put back on
the Modena, after all. Poor Causton had
died, and his family asked for his goods
to be sent home. “If you wanted a eu-
reka moment, it was those watches going
back on the ship,” Pickford told me. He
also learned that the ill-fated Orange
had been carrying separate consign-
ments of porcelain and canes.
The Orange had been loaded in an “The crisis is lifelong. It just took me until midlife to be able to afford it.”
unusual way. She had arrived in Ma-
dras, a booming English colony, with
her holds partially empty after an un-
• •
successful trading mission. Her chief
cargo was rattan canes, from the island senger who survived the sinking of closely typed history, a forensic account-
of Sumatra. The governor of the settle- the Orange, describing “thirty-seven ing of broken bowsprits, sudden hurri-
ment at the time was Elihu Yale, one of bulses”—purses—of diamonds that had canes, scurvy outbreaks, and Yale’s miss-
the East India Company’s richest and been saved from the wreck. ing diamonds. “There’s still a big question
most influential officials. Yale was born The Orange left Madras in Febru- mark about those diamonds and where
in Boston but left New England when ary, 1692. Later that year, Yale was re- the hell they are,” Pickford said.
he was three and spent his childhood moved from his role, on charges of cor- He was ninety-per-cent sure that the
in London. He had been working out ruption. He returned to England in 1699. wreck was the Modena. “That final nail-
of Madras for twenty years. A promi- He spent the rest of his life in increas- ing would only happen with some sort
nent diamond dealer, slave trader, and ing seclusion, dividing his time between of excavation,” he said. In the two years
alleged poisoner of troublesome oppo- houses in London and Wales, ensconced in which we had talked, there were meet-
nents, he knew an opportunity when he in his wealth and collections.“To my ings among investors about a possible
saw one. Yale ordered the Orange’s wicked wife . . .” he wrote, leaving a salvage attempt in the Atlantic. But noth-
empty holds to be filled with private memorable blank space in his will. In ing ever materialized. The wreck was
cargoes from the colony’s merchants— 1718, three years before his death, he was too deep, the rewards too uncertain, the
including “China goods”: porcelain, lac- asked to make a donation to the Col- ethics unclear. The lacquer, the porce-
quer, and textiles—a rare relaxation of legiate School of Connecticut, in New lain, the swords, the silver watches are
the East India Company’s rules. Haven, which was training young men all still there, strewn on the ocean floor.
According to Pickford’s calculations, to work for the Church and the state. The diamonds, too? I asked Pickford
the Orange had space for up to a hun- He sent nine bales of goods, which were once whether he would be content if the
dred tons of China goods. Yale himself sold for five hundred and sixty-two wreck were left alone. Wasn’t the satis-
stood to profit. In the previous two pounds, along with four hundred and faction of his work, ultimately, to solve
years, he and his brother, Thomas, had seventeen books and a portrait of King the puzzle, to uncover the secrets of the
run a pair of trading missions to Can- George I. The school became Yale. perish’d souls? “Not entirely, no,” Pick-
ton and were looking for a way to Pickford wrote up his research on the ford said, correcting me gently. “I don’t
get their goods to Europe. Yale con- Deep Pots wreck. In June, he sent me a think for my work that is entirely the
signed other valuables, too. Pickford manuscript called “Lost Worlds.” It was point.” I was forgetting the treasure,
uncovered a letter to Yale from a pas- three hundred and twenty-six pages of which he never does. 
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 57
 FICTION

THE
HO NES T
I SLA N D

GRE G
JAC KS O N
YOSIGO

58 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024

C
raint did not know when he tality common on the island and an guage which Craint could not begin
had come to the island or why awkward, laughing manner that seemed to understand.
he had come. He had ran- less an expression of amusement at his He took his beers to the village har-
sacked his mind but he could not re- curious, ongoing sojourn than an apol- bor, where the sun, hovering low above
member and he could not recall many ogy for the barriers to communication the island, lacquered the water in milk-
other things besides. The period be- between them. gold, and drank them slowly, sitting on
fore his arrival, for instance. He knew He had stopped asking about the the retaining wall and watching as the
he came from elsewhere. His appear- ferry service. Someone had taped a sun ripened to a fiery stain in the west.
ance made that abundantly clear, and handwritten sign on pale-pink paper It was his favorite time of day. Soon a
he did not speak the islanders’ lan- to the ticket booth announcing the ser- mournful blue light would rise over the
guage, although between gestures and vice’s suspension. With the proprietors islands in the sea. Soon the delicious
the few words of his own language of the hotel and various other locals he possibility of sleep would rise within
the islanders knew, he could commu- had broached the topic of when the him and, with it, the hope that he would
nicate most of his basic needs. service might resume, but from every- slumber deeply and remember every-
The island was small. If one cared one he received the same reply: “Soon.” thing when he awoke.
to, one could walk from one end to the He could get nothing more definite.
other in a matter of hours. To reach
the southern tip, where there was a
swimming beach, he sometimes took
For a week or so, he crossed the is-
land to the ferry slip each day, but be-
fore long he abandoned these forays
Iwastnowas not the case that Craint had
dealings with the islanders. It
a small community, and he recog-
one of the small buses that circulated as pointless. The harbor had a dere- nized many people and they recog-
throughout the day. Across the hazy lict air, its large docks empty and the nized him. Passing, they often greeted
sea to the south, one saw a city on a plaza devoid of people. Between the one another. At the cafés and restau-
far-off coastline, with factories lining jutting concrete pier and the break- rants, the waiters knew enough to seat
its harbor, whose tall chimneys emit- water, a line of boats bobbed gently in him by himself.
ted knotted white streams. An unmain- the waves. But he observed no traffic And then there was the girl. As with
tained road led from the swimming on the water, just a few fishermen at so much else, he did not remember
beach into steep hills above, where an dusk, making for the sea. how they had settled on their routine,
abandoned complex of concrete struc- Although beyond a certain point but every few days, in the evening, he
tures had been overrun by bushes and in the past all memory faded for would call at the house she and her fa-
ivy. To the north, not visible from the Craint, like vision straining into the ther shared. Her father, a little frail in
beach, was a distant shore, where rows seaborne mist, he understood that this an ageless way, would greet him each
of mountains resembling jagged waves was odd and that he had not always time with the same question: “Happy?”
disappeared into the mist. suffered this privation. Having arrived Always this, as if to say, “And you are
The island itself had a teardrop one day, the aff liction, he believed, well?” And Craint would smile and
shape. Craint knew this from a map would similarly depart. He needed nod, even if deciding whether he was
at the bus depot and another at the only to be patient. One day he would happy or not seemed as impossible and
ferry terminal. Its northern half had remember again. One day the ferry meaningless as determining the pre-
been given over to mining ventures. would resume its runs. cise color of the sea.
Large machines dug up the rocky waste In the absence of anything point- The girl would gently incline her
and pulverized it into powder and ing to the time before or the time to head in greeting, and then they would
gravel. He had seen images of this in come, routine assumed a central im- walk together through the village, past
the small museum devoted to the is- portance in his life. It steadied him the brimming lotus pond and along
land’s history, where, unable to read just when, toward the end of day, the the narrow drainage canals to where
the explanatory texts, he had had to glassy stillness of his existence threat- steps descended to an empty beach.
invent his own history from the pho- ened to send him into a futile rage. As No one swam here. He had, in fact,
tographs and dates. if a world so placid and unresponsive never seen another person on the beach,
The problems with his memory could excite only the opposite sensa- just a few skinny cats, whose curious
made Craint reluctant to ask questions tions in him. He crossed the street to eyes followed them as their footfalls
that might cause him to appear fool- the small store facing his hotel and imprinted the coarse ochre sand.
ish. At his hotel he refrained from ask- bought two beers from the elderly Often they walked without speak-
ing how many nights he had stayed, woman at the counter, who, seeing ing. Sometimes Craint, to break the
afraid such an inquiry might call at- him, would gesture to the refrigerator silence, gave voice to stray thoughts.
tention to the bill he had no means of in back and announce, “Beer!” Al- Other times he spoke more person-
paying. For now, at least, the propri- though at first he’d rolled his eyes at ally, laying bare his fear and confusion,
etors seemed unconcerned about their this, in time he found comfort in the the helplessness he felt at knowing
guest’s ability to meet his obligations. precise repetition of the encounter. At so little about his present circum-
Every morning at quarter past eight the register, she handed over his change stances or when, if ever, his memory
they served him the same breakfast beneath a small staticky TV that played would return.
with the cheerful, deferential hospi- strange, lurid shows in the local lan- The days were unbearably hot. The
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 59
heat lingered late into the evening quest in her eyes, and after a time she ing any alteration in his condition. Then
and the air grew moist and filmy as turned away. at last the hour would arrive for him
it cooled. The locals preferred to re- She was slight and pale, with the to drink his beers, and as the possibil-
main inside, and because their win- bluish lips of one who has swum too ity of sleep arose, so sounded faint
dowless houses guarded their privacy long in cold water. By look and com- chords of hope.
the village often had a disquieting plexion she was an islander; no one But every morning, in those obscure
air of desertion. would mistake them for kin, although beats by which the light and solidity
After their walk, they ate dinner it was not easy to put the difference of day replace the liquid remnants of
with the girl’s father. They followed between them into words. In fact, hav- dream, the reality of his situation would
this with tea, making, by way of smiles ing studied the island’s inhabitants, return to him and drain his heart of
and small noises, a show of compan- Craint had come to realize that he any comfort sleep had brought. The
ionability, and then Craint would bid was not the only foreigner there. The full weight of his confusion, the blank
them good night. On these evenings, others simply, by way of dress and impenetrable wall between him and
he would return to his hotel room to style, blended in, keeping to the com- the past, and his anticipation of the
drink the beers with which he beck- pany of local families to which they long hours ahead would settle on him
oned sleep. seemed to belong. so oppressively he sometimes pounded
Although certain his words meant So his days passed: breakfast, a stroll his head with his fists.
nothing to the girl, Craint believed across the island or a bus ride to the He had to make an effort to com-
she understood some part of what he southern beach, lunch followed by an pose himself. Before dressing and head-
expressed, the contours of feeling or afternoon siesta in the shade of a sea- ing to breakfast, he often looked again
meaning, like the pale outline of the side palm. By the time the shadows through his few personal articles, as if
mountains to the north. Did she pity were lengthening on the sand, he could these might, one day, disclose a mes-
him? Did she know why he had come? feel a panic stirring within him. The sage or a clue he had failed to notice or
Just once she had stopped him, tak- noise of the cicadas throbbed terribly understand. There were his clothes, piled
ing hold of his arm and causing him in the trees. He strained into the un- in a jumble in his suitcase, his cache of
to break off midsentence. He met her yielding depths where memory was local currency, a felt-tip pen, and on the
gaze, breathing like a startled horse, meant to lie and understood that an- bedside table a few small piles of rocks
but he could not respond to the re- other day would pass without deliver- he was in the habit of making.
It was always the same arrange-
ment: a tiny pyramid of four stones,
three for the base and one resting on
top. The folded piece of paper in his
wallet was perhaps the most pregnant
and inscrutable remnant of all. On it
was a drawing of what looked like a
ring with a square gemstone lying on
its side and, in his own hand, a sen-
tence copied from an unknown source:
“We do not concern ourselves with
the death of animals, for animals live
in an eternal present.”

he houses in town stuck to an old

T style of batten siding and wood
treated to appear a tarry brown, but
here and there signs of a modern in-
fluence showed through. The gas sta-
tions had the dingy look of gas stations
everywhere, mottled with the stains of
oil and exhaust. The concrete seawall
could only have been a few decades
old, and the municipal buildings had
a familiar utilitarian air. Only the town
hall made a distinctive architectural
statement. It stood notably higher than
the surrounding buildings, with three
generous stories, a steep metal roof,
and eccentric brick design.
“It’s ageism, plain and simple.” The first time Craint saw the man,
he was emerging from this building my things settled in my room. You’ll cat, which eventually abandoned the
into the blistering sun. He had the be- wait, won’t you?” hope that Craint might surprise it in
wildered, blinking look of one new to At the small café in the naked, sandy some pleasant way. He never actually
a place. His clothes, his features, his courtyard Craint watched the man’s slept during these siestas but merely
manner altogether announced his for- face redden. He was perspiring, and the rested and let his mind wander. They
eignness. He was the first newcomer heat and beer brought color to his give you a girl, I guess. What had he
Craint could remember seeing. The cheeks. Though it was not quite lunch- meant? Well, it was July, late July, hence
man consulted a sheet of paper in his time, they ate. “Not bad, not bad. Takes the heat. Had it been cooler when he
hand several times before setting off getting used to, I imagine,” the man first arrived? He didn’t know.
across the parking lot. Craint followed said. “The whole setup, I mean. Not At his side were three stone pyra-
at a distance, intrigued by the novelty saying I have any regrets, you under- mids in the sand. It gave him com-
of the man’s arrival. stand, but it’s a change. My first day fort to assemble these small cairns,
After no more than a minute or two, and all that. But—” He paused and the sort of comfort a photograph of
Craint understood that the man was looked at Craint. “What does one do loved ones might offer during a pe-
headed for the same hotel where he’d here? There must be something to oc- riod of absence or an extended stay
been staying. It was too much to call it cupy the time.” in a strange room. He didn’t know
a hotel, really; an inn or a B. and B. Craint looked past the man into the why it should bring him this peace,
would better describe the establish- hot, languid air. He explained about but he didn’t question it, for of all
ment. Craint could not recall there hav- the swimming beach and the impor- things it was what made him feel in
ing been any other guests during his tance of resting in the afternoon and some way himself, not merely a mind
stay, but the state of his memory did the ease of traversing the island on foot free-floating in the world.
not entirely rule out the possibility. As and the beauty of the sunsets. The pal- Like the cat, he mused. Did it have
the man climbed the steps, he stood on triness of this routine impressed itself memories, true memories, or coming
the sidewalk and was watching, pleas- on him as he spoke, and it surprised upon something familiar did it simply
antly carried away by the idea that the him that he didn’t have more to offer. feel a sense of recognition? Did a cat
newcomer might shed light on certain He must be forgetting something. His really have hopes, and, if so, how far
matters, when one of the innkeepers memory again. He mentioned how into the future did these extend? A few
called out to him. The innkeeper seemed peaceful it was to drink beer in the eve- seconds? A minute? What had the girl
uncomfortable at seeing him, and Craint ning while the sun expired and a blue wanted from him when she stopped
held up a hand in reassurance. But now light rose over the islands in the sea. him and took his arm? What could
the newcomer had caught sight of The man was not listening closely. anyone want from a wreck like him?
Craint as well and gave a wide toothy “They give you a girl, I guess.” It was He must have closed his eyes, for
grin and a jovial “Ahoy!” not phrased as a question, but in the within the dusky red mist of his idling
“Budger’s the name,” he said. He silence that followed Craint saw that vision he heard a voice too crisp and
had, as Craint surmised, just arrived he expected a response. loud to be his own thoughts address-
on the island. He announced this with- “Give you?” ing him. “Had a lie-down and a shower.
out any self-consciousness in a loud, “Fresh blood, you know. All we have Feel like a new man altogether. You
unguarded voice so out of place that to offer, I suppose.” The man laughed. planning to sleep all day?”
Craint looked around instinctively to Craint felt an urge to object, but he The man stood over him in swim
see if anyone else took notice. “Fresh could think of nothing definite to say. trunks and a T-shirt, a flaccid baseball
off the boat,” he said a second time. “You know, it’s the funniest thing but cap on his head and sunscreen smeared
“Always this hot?” my memory hasn’t been very good of in white gouts over his cheeks and nose.
“Yes,” said Craint. “It seems that way.” late. Maybe it’s the heat. I’m afraid I He looked outf itted for a beach-
“Well, time of year, I guess.” might not be as much help to you as volleyball match, his spindly pale legs
Timidly, Craint asked if the man you thought.” freckled and hairy. He was tall by is-
then knew what time of year it was. The man’s grin had a conspiratorial land standards, taller even than Craint,
“Naturally. Don’t you?” He chuck- edge. “No, no. Don’t mention it. It’s all and though Craint certainly resembled
led good-naturedly. “That would be to be expected. I had my doubts, you him more than he did the islanders, he
the breakfast talking, I suppose. Why, know, but I see I worried unnecessar- found the man’s appearance in bad taste,
it’s July, nearly the end of the month.” ily. It’s a comfort, really. A load off the even ridiculous.
Craint did not follow the man’s mind. Literally, hey! I’m awfully lucky Craint was light-headed as he strug-
meaning, but he was glad to know that to have someone to show me around. gled to his feet. “Easy,” the man said.
it was July. This situated him for the I had the impression I’d be on my own.” “Hey, what are all these little piles of
first time he could remember in some- rocks, then?”
thing more solid than the rhythms of t was hot that day even by the is- Craint shrugged. “I don’t really
his repetitive days.
“Too early for a drink?” the man
Itreated
land’s standards. The man had re-
to the cool refuge of his room.
know.”
The man toed a stone from the
asked hopefully. “What else is there Craint lay in the shade on the local base of a pyramid, causing it to fall.
to do in this bloody heat? I’ll just get beach, watched by a white-and-gray “I was just telling myself, far too hot
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 61
for anything but a swim. Fancy show- “I haven’t, no.” storms. Did he, Craint, care to relate
ing me that beach?” “Shall we give it a look, then?” or share, perhaps, what had impelled
They rode south in a small bus that “It’s not allowed.” him to— No. No, it wasn’t right to ask.
hugged the cliff before descending “Not allowed? Says who?” Load off the mind and all that. Prob-
through an inland village and depos- Craint was about to speak when he ably didn’t even know what he was
iting them at its terminal by the swim- realized he had no answer. Why had talking about—ha! Yes, that would be
ming beach. The city on the far coast he said it wasn’t allowed? nice. Something to look forward to.
was just visible through the haze. It “It used to be an observatory,” said The road turned inland and ran
made a grim impression, too distant to the man. “Or was it a laboratory? Some- through the shade of a valley in the
reveal any sign of life but the rising thing like that, in any case.” hills. A slender creek fell like smoke
ribbons of smoke. “How do you know?” into a pond choked with lotus flow-
“What’s that, now?” the man said. Budger yawned. “Bloke on the boat ers. The trees listed over the path,
“Sort of spoils the view, doesn’t it? Grubby told me. Asked him what was up in eclipsing the sun. The man was still
kind of place.” He had taken off his hat the hills.” talking when Craint said, “Do you have
and shirt and set them atop his sandals. any idea what this means? It’s odd. I
No one else was swimming. In fact, Craint he walk was not as steep as Craint seem to have copied it down, but I
had only ever seen children swimming
at the beach and he wondered whether
T had expected. An overgrown ser-
vice road snaked through the hills, tak-
can’t make head or tail of it. Some-
thing about how animals live in an
the islanders thought it undignified or ing a roundabout route that never rose eternal present and that’s why we don’t
inappropriate for adults to swim. “Reckon above a modest incline. Trees and vines care about their deaths.”
my things are safe if I take a dip? Bad overhung the road, and the pavement The man frowned at Craint in such
business being a thief on an island, I’d was cracked and breaking up along the a way that he immediately regretted
think.” He waded in. “Not very refresh- shoulders, but none of it made for a mentioning it. “Why are you on about
ing, is it? Bit like a bathtub.” difficult climb, only a bit sticky in the that now?” They had come to the edge
Craint sat on the sand and looked stagnant heat. of a crumbling paved lot. Weeds grew
around him at the southerly islands and The deafening sound of the cicadas everywhere through seams in the buck-
the gray city veiled in mist and the man rose from within the lush growth at the ling asphalt.
splashing an awful lot as he swam and side of the road. The man breathed “We do not concern ourselves with the
the concrete ruins in the hills. He had heavily, mostly, Craint decided, because death of animals, for animals live in an
a memory of holding someone as they he insisted on talking throughout the eternal present. That’s what you mean?
swam. He could not picture the person. climb. He talked about this and that. How does the rest go. . . . Without hope
He remembered more the holding and He had had a promising career, but it to point forward or memory to point back,
the splashing, the wild legs kicking—a had levelled off. Gone slack. It wasn’t existence has no meaning. And therefore
sensation more than an image. It seemed that he minded the work, but you reach death has no meaning. Cheerful, isn’t it?”
so natural to remember this that the a certain age, you know, and you start “But what does it mean? Why did
novelty of remembering at all did not wondering what it’s all for. And who I write it down?”
occur to him immediately. Only as the it’s for. And you ask yourself why it The man’s frown deepened. “Why
memory faded and he struggled to de- seemed quite so important. And is this you wrote it down is because you read
tain it did he realize, with a start, that it, then, the course charted long ago, it, same as me. But what it means I
he had remembered something. A faint can’t say better than you. It’s philoso-
impression, pulsing briefly, but some- phy. The deer whose antlers grew so
how solid. The man’s ridiculous splash- large and heavy it couldn’t survive. Went
ing now awoke a strange tender feel- extinct. I forget what else. A lot of rub-
ing in Craint, such as one might feel bish, I’d say.”
for something dear and helpless. A wooded path off the lot emerged
He must have been smiling, because onto a clear promontory high above
when the man emerged from the water the sea. They could see the forms of
he said, “What’s all that, now? I know islands, and farther islands behind
I’m not much of a swimmer. But was those, and the shorefront city wrapped
it as embarrassing as all that?” steady on until the legs and lungs give in haze and, in the sky, the full face of
Craint shook his head. He had been out? And then eternity in a box for your a daytime moon.
thinking of something else entirely, he troubles! Not that he was one to com- At last they had a clear view of the
said. He saw the man glance to his side plain. No, he’d been a regular trouper ruins. Before them, emerging from the
and open his mouth, before deciding for years. Decades, if you were the lit- hillside, a wall of curved concrete ran
to hold his tongue. There in the sand eral sort. And that was the clear, easy toward the sea. “That was good of them.
sat another small pyramid of stones. sailing. That was the best of it. What Left the door open for us,” said Budger,
“Have you been up there?” asked prepared you for the thunderclap in the making for a set of heavy doors, one
Budger. Craint followed his gaze to midst of the backbreaking toil? The of which stood ajar.
the hills above. thunderclap, and then the rains, the Craint climbed the hill to where the
62 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
 fancy some nasty surprise. And on my
first day!”
TWO KINDS OF ENDING Accustomed to the sun, Craint’s
eyes adjusted only gradually. What he
She’d be waiting; eye to the window, could see of the room was bare. Slowly,
ear to the door, a day behind her in such a way that at first he didn’t
she thinks of, morning and afternoon, know whether it was his vision or his
as two sullen plaits of rain imagination disclosing forms in the
clipped, tightly, to her skull; impenetrable dark, his eyes picked out
a minute glow, like a shred of nacre, at
then thinks of him the far end. He moved with blind cau-
feels the silt of him thickening tion. It was the corner of something
in her lungs, her throat, her mouth. covered in cloth.
He lifted the cloth gently. A faintly
If it weren’t for the small body luminous rectangle the size of a small
starfished in the top third portrait rested against the wall. A mir-
of the deep-blue bed, ror, he thought, raising it to his eyes.
one hand open, the other burled He must have made a startled noise,
inside hot milk breath, because he heard Budger say, “What’s
that? You alive in there?” The image
she’d tear page 100 from his in the mirror shocked him. It was his
every favorite novel, she would; face, but a grotesque version of it—
leave the flitters in the shape of a noose wild and red and covered in lesions.
on the marble countertop. He looked, he thought, more like the
man, Budger, than he cared to admit.
Let him riddle that in her being gone: “Place gives me the creeps,” he heard
words hard against new edges ripped muttered from outside, but this barely
by a hand all innocence. registered. It struck him, as he looked
at the image in the mirror, that he could
But how can it be? not remember the last time he had
She asks it, ringless, to budge seen his face. He could not recall a sin-
the evening a small bit to the right. gle mirror on the island. Strange that
he had not remarked on this before.
There now. Oranges. Plums. The face that confronted him was hag-
gard and gaunt, its hair and beard un-
—Vona Groarke kempt. But what he had taken for le-
sions or a rash, he now saw, were
blemishes in the surface of the mirror
land ran even with the top of the wall. pyramids just like the ones Craint so itself. And there was some sort of writ-
He could now see that the concrete often assembled on the beach. ing on it as well.
wall was the exterior of a circular build- “I wasn’t lying. I told you, my mem- Budger was standing by the door.
ing with a flat roof and a round court- ory has been exceedingly poor of late.” Craint almost walked into him as he
yard in the middle. He stepped out A large cairn, constructed from rug- emerged with the mirror into the
onto the roof and remembered the ged blocks of broken concrete, held blinding light.
drawing on the folded paper, the ring open a door at the northern edge of “Hey, what have you got?”
lying on its side. the yard. Budger eyed Craint warily. “I Craint ignored this and blinked to
“You sly dog,” he heard from the wouldn’t mind your going first.” urge focus into his eyes. Below his face
courtyard below. Peering over the lip In the dark corridor an interior door in the mirror were three names: Vir-
of the roof, he saw Budger grinning up led into what must have been the hill ginie, Cassandre, and Paul. The names
at him. itself. The rusted hinges gave some re- stirred something in him, a sediment
“What is it?” sistance, but Craint managed to open of deep feeling, but he couldn’t orga-
“Come see yourself.” it partway. His eyes strained into the nize his thoughts with the man peer-
Craint entered the courtyard through blackness. He could hardly see a thing. ing over his shoulder.
a broad unlit corridor that encircled it. The only illumination was what passed “Who are they?” asked Budger.
Budger stood to one side, a glint of sun through the corridor from the court- In his mind, Craint saw a small
speckling his eye. “Haven’t been up here yard, a wedge of cold, muted light on group huddled together on a misty
before—I bet!” the cement floor. pier. The three names below his face
At his feet in the weedy yard stood “Any skeletons in the closet, then?” made a kind of pyramid. Then he had
pile upon pile of stones, dozens of tiny called Budger from outside. “Don’t a thought. “Say, what time did you
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 63
 “Your luck?” the man said in baffle-
ment. “Now, now. There is no reason to
run immediately to . . . extremes. There
is much we could try before consider-
ing so radical an option. Returning to
the initial dosage, for instance.”
“Dosage?”
The man’s smile had certain elements
of a wince. “It is only an idea. But let’s
have no more talk of leaving, yes?”
Craint could not hide his distress.
“Am I trapped here, then?”
“Trapped?”The man laughed lightly.
“What are you saying? You came here—
of your own decision. I have your pa-
perwork. If you would care to see your
signature?”
Craint felt short of breath. “That’s
all right,” he managed to croak. “I am
sure everything is in order, but—” He
paused. “May I ask a question?” The
man sighed and waved a hand in as-
“Happy? Yeah, sure, I guess I’m as happy as something with zero sent. Though evidently troubled by the
locomotion and no discernible features or extremities can be.” situation, he seemed to find Craint
amusing, or at least curious. “How long
have I been here?”
• • His smile was now the kindly, for-
bearing smile of someone asked a minor
arrive this morning? Do you know?” picions, he did not mention the mem- kindness by the condemned. “How
“Couldn’t tell you, but bloody early,” ory of splashing, the young body in his long? Three months, if you must know.
said Budger. “Sun wasn’t even up.” arms, kicking with life. He did not men- Three months, although—how swiftly
tion the odd feeling, like some exquisite, time moves!—it will be four next week.”
he prefect sat very straight in his longed-for pain, that had pierced him His tone was wistful. “You were so
T high-backed chair. Either the man
was quite short or the chair excessively
when he read the names. “The girl is not
to your liking, perhaps? Lila.”
grateful when you came. . . .”

tall, for it continued on for about a foot Was that her name, then? He must n his room he splashed water on his
above his head. He had set his pen on
the blotter with great care, parallel to
have known it once. “On the contrary,”
said Craint. “I find her very nice.”
Istruck
face. The absence of any mirror now
him as somewhat sinister. He
the table’s edge, and now appraised The prefect ran a hand through his would have liked a haircut and a shave,
Craint closely. It was early and other- hair. It seemed a notable betrayal of he thought, as he dried himself, combed
wise silent in the town hall. emotion in one so disciplined. Every- his hair with his fingers, and filled his
“You are not experiencing an easy thing about his manner and dress sug- pockets with tissues. But there was no
or natural transition,” he remarked. gested a composure rigid to the point time for that.
Sensitive to the inequality in their of fragility. He eyed the pen, closed his The note saying that the prefect was
positions, Craint gave a guarded reply. eyes briefly, then returned his gaze to expecting him first thing had been wait-
“I suppose not.” Craint. “But in what lies your resistance, ing for him when he returned to the
“These things are not unprece- if not the girl?” He said this almost to hotel the night before. Now it was after
dented,” said the man. “Not altogether himself. “It was a mistake for you to nine, and he had missed his morning
unprecedented, but very rare.” Craint cross paths.” meal. In what passed for a dining room,
was silent. “You persist in clinging to Craint frowned. “Me and the girl? two tables beside the reception desk,
the past.” Lila?” he saw Budger sitting before a tray of
“I don’t feel I am.” Craint regretted “The girl? No, you and the new— empty dishes. The man had a glassy
the protest in his voice. “I remember Mr. Budger.” look in his eyes but seemed to rouse
very little.” Gingerly Craint said, “Perhaps it himself at Craint’s arrival.
“But you do remember. That is would be best if I left.” Registering the “Hello there. Had a bit of a lie-in,
enough. Enough to light the fuse man’s alarm and uncertain what in his did you?”
of . . . curiosity.” It struck Craint vaguely words had provoked it, he quickly clar- Craint took the seat across from him.
that the man had prepared certain phrases ified. “Leave the island, I mean. Try my The innkeepers, he could see, had begun
ahead of time. Loath to confirm his sus- luck somewhere else.” busying themselves with his breakfast.
64 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
 “Had a bit of a lie-in?” the man brighten. He walked quickly and qui- than spider’s silk floating in the air. He
persisted. etly, making a point not to look at the thought he could just discern a hint of
“Yes, that’s right.” cars passing him. blue in the inky sea as they motored
“The heat’ll do that. Takes it right That there were cars at all at this past the northern reaches of the island,
out of you.” The man’s yawn brought a hour convinced him he had been cor- where, inland somewhere, vast machines
smile to his face. “Always this hot, is it?” rect in his surmise. He passed out of dug up the matter of the island and
Craint looked at him but could find the village and beyond the school. In crushed it into tiny stones. But all he
no trace of mischief or buried meaning. no time he had reached the crest of the could see were the crescents of empty
He said simply, “Yes, it seems that way.” hill from which the road began its grad- beaches beneath the cliffs.
The innkeepers laid out his break- ual descent toward the town in the west. In the open sea, the engines roared
fast. He poked around at its contents. His progress was quick. He could never to life and the boat gathered speed. The
Although he was quite hungry, the believe quite how small the island was, sky brightened more rapidly now. The
thought of the food now revolted him. how quickly one crossed it on foot. rows of mountains appeared on the
“Nothing to do for it but go for a The street lamps of the town below mainland to the north, receding into
swim, I say. There’s supposed to be a now came into view and the floodlit lots the mist, and the blue water churned a
swimming beach, south end of the is- of its closed shops. The traffic had picked smoky white as the hull left broad fur-
land. Very nice, I’ve heard. Perhaps you’d up. A clock face outside a bank showed rows in its wake. The light culled a green
be good enough to show me.” he was on time; he would reach the har- hue from the water, too. During the day,
Craint nodded, chewing his food. bor by quarter to five. That was assum- Craint recalled, it often had a clear rust
He removed a tissue from his pocket ing he was correct, but the line of cars color. Impossible to say what color it
and, affecting to cough, discreetly de- gave him confidence. He felt almost giddy. really was. Always shifting, like a mood.
posited the food in it and returned the The feeling rose like the pitch of sing- The wind off the water brushed back
balled tissue to his empty pocket. ing insects, and he had to urge stillness his hair. Why had he come to the is-
“Gladly.” on his breath. At the corner where the land? Would he ever know? What had
“My luck, then,” the man said brightly. road turned into the harbor, however, he he been hoping to find, to escape?
He beamed a pure, ingenuous smile at was helpless to stop the pounding in his Maybe someone would tell him. Maybe
Craint. “Terrible good fortune. I was chest. There, for the first time, Craint one day he would remember. Or maybe
under the impression I’d be on my own.” saw a ferry in the slip, lit up as if for one mystery we had to live with was
Then, frowning at his own omission, Christmas, with people streaming from that there were not always reasons for
he added, “Budger’s the name.” the open apron at its bow. He moved our decisions, not in the way we imag-
against this tide, which was dispersing ined, and only after the fact did we
arkness filled the room, broken toward the town, and joined the line wait- grope for explanations in the hazy re-
D only softly by light from the street
at the edges of the curtains. Craint had
ing to board. No one gave him a second
glance. The ticket-taker accepted the bill
cesses of our souls.
The boat sped on, closing the dis-
tried to rest, but the fear of sleeping he offered without looking up and moved tance to the shore. He could see the
deeply until morning had caused him on quickly to the next passenger. Beneath ferry terminal now, and the nearby pier
to wake with a start every few minutes the weight of wheels and feet, the ship’s where a few people stood watching
to check the time. Eventually he gave ramp clanged and echoed the boat arrive. He did not
up on sleep and fixed his mind on the as he boarded. He climbed know how, in the morning
names on the mirror and the faint mem- the metal stairs to the upper mist, he recognized the
ories that pulsed suggestively in the re- deck, where he leaned against group of three standing on
cesses of his mind. They were not mem- a painted railing and looked the pier: Virginie, Cassan-
ories as such, but intimations, wan back toward the light-span- dre, and little Paul—the
trickles of illumination like the light gled town below and the is- children huddled, on either
from outside. A great weight of feel- land’s dark inland hills. side, beneath the arms of
ing attached itself to these blurry forms, The faintest light had their mother. Something
as to vestigial snatches of a dream. just come into the sky, ineffable in posture or spirit
At four, he rose and dressed him- revealing the subtle sil- gave them away. His heart
self. He dressed quietly, leaving the houettes of other islands. leapt. He felt an indescrib-
lights off and donning the outfit he Promptly, with one short blast of the able emotion, indescribable because like
had laid on the chair the night before. foghorn, the boat lurched under his feet. the color of the sea it was too many
He took his wallet but didn’t bother The engines hummed. Beneath their things. Elation and nausea and tender-
with his suitcase. The less noise and vibration he felt a gliding sense of re- ness and fear. He felt so happy, and he
encumbrance the better. He was care- lease, as if of gravity loosening its grip. felt as well the anguish and dread that
ful at the door not to let the latch sound. The ferry moved slowly out of the lived in and alongside the streaming
Out in the street the roadside lamps harbor, through the channel formed by channels of joy. 
blazed in the dark. It could have been a neighboring island. High-voltage tow-
any time of night, but he knew that in ers surmounted this islet, the cables NEWYORKER.COM/FICTION
only an hour the sky would begin to themselves, in the dimness, no more Sign up to get author interviews in your in-box.

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 65

 THE CRITICS

ON TELEVISION

PRESIDENT FOR SALE

A survey of today’s political ads.

BY VINSON CUNNINGHAM

O
n a mid-October Sunday not long Sometimes, when I take a YouTube tour ever seen,” he shouted as he settled his tab.
ago—sun high, wind cool—I was through the small rotation of rambling, If an ad for either candidate ran, no-
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for male-centric podcasts hosted by bom- body noticed it.
a book festival, and I took a stroll. There bastic former rappers that keep me up to
were few people on the streets—like the date on the doings in contemporary hip- n New York, we get bombarded with
population of a lot of capital cities, Har-
risburg’s swells on weekdays with lawyers
hop, I’ll get a Harris ad that seems tar-
geted to people like me: Black men who
IRepublican
barbs by local pols. Mike Lawler, the
congressman who represents
and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and want her to win and who feel disillusioned Rockland and Putnam counties, wants you
dwindles on the weekends. But, on the fa- by the news. Harris, in the ad, looks wan to know that Mondaire Jones, his Dem-
çades of small businesses and in the door- and stern, even slightly annoyed—possi- ocratic challenger, has been endorsed by
ways of private homes, I could see evidence bly it was the last bit of work in a long Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. One of his
of political activity. Across from the spar- day. “Don’t forget that little thing for the ads portrays Jones as a radical, his color
kling Susquehanna River, there was a row Black manosphere,” some staffer might washed out, with the words “Defunding
of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Ken- have said, prompting a weary sigh from Police” beneath his face. Gotcha. Lawler
yatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for the Vice-President. “Polls show us this is never mentions Donald Trump, and his
U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white the closest Presidential campaign in sixty choice of issue, public safety, makes the
letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that years,” she tells viewers. “We might be ad almost quaint, like it could have been
of the sky, Kamala Harris for President. the underdogs in this race, but I believe plucked from the pre-Trump era—say,
Loose pamphlets were scattered over the in you, I believe in our team, and let’s get 2012, when the paint-by-numbers Re-
ground. Behind a screen door on a side to work.” The title of the video is gently publican Mitt Romney was at the top
street, I saw a Sharpied message scribbled catastrophist: “We Are Falling Behind.” of the ticket.
with evident irritation: “NO Political Flier.” I doubt that the suburban moms of Phil- There’s an increasingly loony, dark,
I was looking for a sports bar, both to adelphia, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Raleigh, semi-fascist faction within the Republican
watch the Eagles play the Browns—when and Tucson—those mega-voters whose House, to be sure—you might even call
in Rome—and to look out for any ads votes matter so much more than mine, it the ruling faction. Famous names like
that might be running with the swing- in New York City—get bureaucratic busi- Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert,
state crowd in mind. The current politi- ness, both panicked and encouraging, like and Matt Gaetz get so much press and
cal season, dense with incident and over- this. Maybe watching TV in a more con- screen time that they appear to have suc-
cast with grim premonitions, feels more sequential state, I thought, would help me cessfully taken over their party. But guys
difficult than usual to take in at just a understand a bit better. like Lawler, stranded in blue states, seem
glance. Too much is happening. No ad- I found the right bar—the crowd didn’t to be sticking their fingers into their ears
maker in the world could be expected to conform to any type that I could discern. and hoping for the chaos to pass over like a
keep up with the waterfall of events: as- The bartenders had tattoos down to their long storm. (Without a rare and sustained
sassination attempts, abrupt abrogations, wrists and up to their necks; one woman display of conscience from them, it won’t.)
morbid rallies with ominous lighting fore- wore glasses and a black-and-white kaf- Sometimes I detect a hint of a simi-
shadowing a future in which the nation fiyeh, telegraphing her support for Pal- lar sort of poll-tested nostalgia in Har-
is one big L.E.D.-lit Death Star. And the estinians in Gaza under siege; a guy had ris’s commercials, or, more precisely, a
ABOVE: PIERRE BUTTIN

rapid fracturing of what we’re still strain- a gray hoodie on beneath an Eagles jer- struggle between acknowledging Trump’s
ing to call mass media makes it so that sey. When the Browns blocked an Eagles world-historic strangeness and sticking
you can’t really be sure whether what you’re field goal, got the ball, and ran it back for a to the issues that feel native to a Presi-
seeing on TV is the story your fellow- touchdown, the hoodie guy had an angry dential campaign. One ad starts out show-
citizens are also following. fit. “That is the most Philadelphia shit I’ve ing kids on their bikes and elders at a
66 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
No Democrat since 2015—no Republican, either—has landed on a single anti-Trump message to hammer home.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY KEITH NEGLEY THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 67
kitchen table—then there’s a menacing Trump, on the other hand, seems to be officers stand nearby. The woman’s eyes
angle on some imposing buildings down communicating in a language that only are squeezed shut, and her hand grasps at
on Wall Street. It’s a swift, reproachful his biggest fans can decipher completely. Trump’s elbow. Her face is placid and
reading of Project 2025, the much bally- Implicitly, his crowd cries out like the grateful, set in ecstasy or prayer. Presum-
hooed blueprint for a second Trump speaker of Robert Frost’s poem “Choose ably, she’s happy, too happy for feeble
term. The warnings, in bold letters, pour Something Like a Star”: “Talk Fahren- words, that Donald Trump shares her un-
forward with total clarity. Trump means heit, talk Centigrade./ Use language we prompted dislike for trans people, but the
“HIGHER COSTS ON GROCERIES” and can comprehend.” Trump never fails to ad doesn’t make that clear. She’s a hugger
“CUTS TO SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDI- answer in the affirmative, even if it means and her President is, too—that’s all. (“The
CARE” and “TAX BREAKS FOR BILLION- that nobody else can pick up the signal. If Breakfast Club” ’s producers have issued
AIRES” and a “NATIONAL ABORTION Harris is still opening her arms, in search a cease-and-desist order to Trump’s cam-
BAN.”That stuff is scary and, by my lights, of new constituencies to persuade, Trump paign.) And so there you are, taking in
probably true, but it also represents a is drilling his way down a narrow path, the ballgame with your kids, hoping to
fairly standard line of attack by a Dem- apparently content to stick with his true transmit to them the beauties of Ameri-
ocrat against any Republican candidate pals and keep playing the hits. ca’s pastime but also impatiently waiting
of the past quarter century. And, yes: If he ends up casting a wide net—chip- to hear some vile slurry, apropos of noth-
part of Trump’s danger is how, even amid ping away at some groups of Black and ing, about transitioning behind bars. The
his exotic behaviors and promises of nov- Latino men—it’s because more kinds of ad refuses—just as Trump himself re-
elty, he can quite easily conform to the Americans are willfully imagining them- fuses—to leave its watchers lukewarm.
broken, often fatal status quo that pre- selves into comradeship with him, not the
ceded his Presidency. But then the com- other way around. Trump does Trump ne source of Trump’s instinctive, in-
mercial ends with a litany of exceptional
adjectives describing Trump in all his
and dares you to join in. Surely this con-
fidence in the loyalty of his audience is
O imitable political talent is that, for
him, oratory and advertisement are en-
uniqueness, only notionally connected why, just the other day, in Latrobe, Penn- tirely coeval domains. If he’s talking, he’s
to the issues, in a foreboding stack: “UN- sylvania, he felt comfortable enough to selling. He never commits to one activ-
HINGED / UNSTABLE / UNCHECKED.” go on for more than ten minutes about ity and forgets about the other. His recent
Which: true. But the ad, just like the its home-town golf god, Arnold Palmer, three-hour conversation with the podcaster
candidate behind it, is trying to do so punctuating the hagiographic reminis- and notional comedian Joe Rogan was a
much work—to speak to frazzled parents cence—itself an advertisement for the master class in this regard—it was more
and to worried seniors and, crucially, to days of the “good old boy”—with a wise- infomercial than interview. Even at this
women eager to preserve sovereignty over crack about the size of Palmer’s, well, club? late date in the campaign, Trump was still
their bodies and lives. But you’ve also got “This is a guy that was all man,”Trump busily branding. “The word ‘tariff,’” he said,
to talk about the crazy, right? The crazy’s said, playing to his primarily male voter beaming proudly, as if he’d coined it. “It’s
too important to bracket off in its own base, near and far. “I refuse to say it”— more beautiful than ‘love.’ ” Blockheaded
commercial, I guess. The impression the no, he didn’t—“but, when he took show- protectionism never sounded so sweet.
ad leaves, though, is of a campaign over- ers with the other pros, they came out of During his already infamous rally at
stretched by the miasmic spread of its op- there, they said, ‘Oh, my God, that’s un- Madison Square Garden, Trump, at times,
ponent’s toxicity. believable.’” Then he laughed at his own surrendered himself to the quick-cut pro-

LOGAN CYRUS / GETTY; SHELBY TAUBER / REUTERS; SAM WOLFE / REUTERS; EVAN VUCCI / AP
The bureaucratic and technical com- joke sincerely, the way you do when you’re pulsion of televised ads. The rally was an
petency of Harris’s campaign is one of surrounded by friends. extravaganza during which Hulk Hogan

PREVIOUS PAGE: SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM GETTY; ALLISON JOYCE / GETTY;

the stronger cases for her candidacy. Her The same insider logic is at work in ripped his shirt off, Dr. Phil sold snake
team excels at raising money, making Trump’s campaign ads. During the World oil, and Tucker Carlson giggled all the
more or less slick ads like the “UNHINGED” Series, a bizarre commercial ran. It starts way through a block of quasi-Nazi text—
one, setting up energetic-looking rallies off with DJ Envy and Charlamagne tha just a bunch of dudes displaying skills that
with optimally diverse cross-sections from God—the co-hosts of the radio show they’ve honed down the years.
the crowd placed just behind the podium. “The Breakfast Club” and notable Har- But I was most riveted and confused
At the biggest moment of her public ris supporters—quizzically reading about at the moments when Trump, after mak-
career, Harris is evidently able to run a her policy to support “taxpayer-funded ing some mendacious claim, would veer
smooth operation, largely devoid of in- sex changes for prisoners.” away from his speech and let a nativist
ternal drama. But in her rhetoric, both “Hell no, I don’t want my taxpayer dol- video about immigration play. It seemed
personal and commercial, she reminds lars going to that!” Charlamagne shouts. like a tacit acknowledgment of what so
me of a decent free safety on an other- Soon, a narrator out of a movie trailer many of us feel: that this campaign is a
wise bad defensive unit, zagging back begins in a rumbling voice meant to con- watershed in our nation’s already magical-
and forth, overcome by potential disas- vey peril and light humor all at once: “Ka- realist political history, that speech—el-
ters to tamp down. She’s not alone in this: mala is for they/them. President Trump liptical and wild like Trump’s, or nervously
no Democrat since 2015—no primary- is for you.” The ad ends with a total non surveilled like Harris’s—is often unequal
tortured Republican, either—has landed sequitur: Trump hugging an elderly Black to the emergencies of the moment, that
on a single, all-encompassing anti-Trump woman.The U.S. Capitol sits behind them. some things must be seen, high up on the
message to hit and hammer home. Guys who look like law-enforcement screen, to be believed. 
68 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
 all his piffle about his indifference to data,
A CRITIC AT LARGE is as much a creature of automated pol-
itics as anyone. The man doesn’t stay on
message, but his campaign does. The 2016
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE Trump campaign hired Cambridge An-
alytica, which exploited the data of up to
A different kind of machine politics. eighty-seven million Facebook users to
create targeted messaging. “I pretty much
BY JILL LEPORE used Facebook to get Trump elected in
2016,” a Trump campaign adviser, Brad
Parscale, boasted. This year, the R.N.C.
is working with Parscale’s A.I. company,
Campaign Nucleus. And although the
Trump campaign insists that it “does not
engage in or utilize A.I.,” it does use “a
set of proprietary algorithmic tools.”
These days, Americans are worried
not only about this election but about
this democracy and its future. In Sep-
tember, the Stanford Digital Economy
Lab, part of the Stanford Institute for
Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence,
released “The Digitalist Papers: Arti-
ficial Intelligence and Democracy in
America,” billed as the Federalist Papers
for the twenty-first century. Most of the
essays, chiefly written by tech executives
and academics, advance the theory that
the automation of politics through arti-
ficial intelligence could save American
democracy. Critics take a rather differ-
ent view. In the book “Algorithms and
the End of Politics: How Technology
Shapes 21st-Century American Life,”
the political economist Scott Timcke,
using Marxism to look at Muskism,
argues that “datafication”—converting
Liberal democratic states make citizens; the artificial state makes trolls. “human practices into computational ar-
tefacts”—promotes neoliberalism, auto-
“ J acob Javits of New York is the first
United States senator to become
ical work of rallying support, running
campaigns, communicating with con-
mates inequality, and decreases freedom.
Most developments in the automa-
fully automated,” the Chicago Tribune stituents, and even crafting policy. In that tion of politics have historically hap-
announced in 1962 from the Republican same stretch of time, the proportion of pened first in the United States, but they
state convention in Buffalo, where an Americans who say that they trust the spread quicker than a keystroke. More
electronic Javits spat out slips of paper U.S. government to do what is right most than four billion people, a record-break-
with answers to questions about every- of the time has fallen from nearly eighty ing number of humans, are eligible to
thing from Cuba’s missiles (“a serious per cent to about twenty per cent. Au- vote in elections around the world in
threat”) to the Cubs’ prospects (dim). tomated politics, it would seem, makes 2024, including in the United States, the
“Mr. Javits also harbors thoughts on med- for very bad government, helping pro- European Union, India, Indonesia, Rus-
ical care for the elderly, Berlin, the com- duce an electorate that is alienated, po- sia, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Ban-
munist menace,” and more than a hun- larized, and mistrustful, and elected of- gladesh, Taiwan, Mexico, and South Af-
dred other subjects, the Tribune reported ficials who are paralyzed by their ability rica. Whatever problems the automation
after an interview with the machine. to calculate, in advance, the likely con- of politics creates, it creates everywhere.
Javits may have been the first auto- sequences of their actions, down to the In “Political Theory of the Digital Age:
mated American politician, but he wasn’t last lost primary or donated dollar. Where Artificial Intelligence Might Take
the last. Since the nineteen-sixties, much Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign was Us,” Mathias Risse, a Rawlsian political
of American public life has become au- vastly influenced by the data-driven ad philosopher, issues an urgent call for a
tomated, driven by computers and pre- tester Future Forward, the biggest PAC new category to be added to the Universal
dictive algorithms that can do the polit- in the United States. Donald Trump, for Declaration of Human Rights: “epistemic
ILLUSTRATION BY MARK PERNICE THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 69
rights,” meaning the right to know and ing of the field of artificial intelligence scheme. Instead, there were dedicated
to be known, or—as may well be more in 1956, the workings of politics—once people trying to do their jobs as effec-
sought after—the right to remain un- quaintly referred to, metaphorically, as tively as possible using the latest technol-
known. “Democracy and technology, the “political machine”—began to be ogies, with the result that year by year
specifically AI, are by no means natural outsourced to actual machines. and decade by decade, in both politics
allies,” Risse writes, arguing that preserv- The mainframe computer, the per- and journalism, automated data process-
ing democracy will require making hard sonal computer, the Internet, data science, ing and targeted messaging replaced face-
choices about technology. So far, those machine learning, and large language to-face interaction and mass circulation
choices are being made by corporations, models have made possible astounding in the interest of speed, efficiency, and
especially American corporations, and advances in scientific research, commu- personalization. Meanwhile, polarization
especially in the United States, where nication, education, public health, and a grew and trust in government fell, and,
people now live in what can be best un- thousand other realms of human en- for reasons that, to be sure, were driven
derstood as an artificial state. deavor. But their effects on political dis- by forces that went beyond technological
course, representative democracy, and change, Americans became lonelier and
he artificial state is not a shadow constitutional government have been, on angrier; more susceptible to conspiracy
T government. It’s not a conspiracy.
There’s nothing secret about it. The ar-
the whole, malign. Liberal democratic
states make citizens; the artificial state
theories, hoaxes, and frauds; and also more
likely to believe that much of what they
tificial state is a digital-communications makes trolls. once thought was true was in fact a lie.
infrastructure used by political strategists Building an artificial state took de- In 1972, Stewart Brand suggested that
and private corporations to organize and cades, and it happened mainly by acci- the personal computer could bring
automate political discourse. It is the re- dent. In 1959, the Democratic Party, des- “power to the people.” Three years later,
duction of politics to the digital manip- perate to win back the White House, the New York Times, with CBS, released
ulation of attention-mining algorithms, considered retaining the services of a the nation’s first media-run poll, at once
the trussing of government by corporate- startup staffed by computer scientists, diminishing the role of man-on-the-
owned digital architecture, the diminish- political scientists, and admen, whose street reporting and abandoning the
ment of citizenship to minutely message- “People Machine” could run simulations long-standing reluctance of news orga-
tested online engagement. An entire on an artificial electorate and tell a par- nizations to conduct polls. In 1984, Apple
generation of Americans can no longer ty’s nominee what to say, to whom, and released a TV ad suggesting that its
imagine any other system and, wisely, when. “Without prejudicing your judg- new Macintosh would topple Orwel-
have very little faith in this one. (Accord- ment, my own opinion is that such a lian totalitarianism. In the nineteen-nine-
ing to a Harvard poll from 2021, more thing (a) cannot work, (b) is immoral, ties, Clinton-and-Gore-era Democrats
than half of Americans between the ages (c) should be declared illegal,” Adlai Ste- promised, in one manifesto, that “thanks
of eighteen and twenty-nine believe that venson’s adviser Newton Minow wrote to the near-miraculous capabilities of
American democracy either is “in trou- to the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., micro-electronics, we are vanquishing
ble” or has already “failed.”) Within the a confidant of John F. Kennedy, Jr. scarcity.” In 1993, Wired reported that
artificial state, nearly every element of Schlesinger agreed, saying, “I shudder at “life in cyberspace seems to be shaping
American democratic life—civil society, the implication for public leadership of up exactly like Thomas Jefferson would
representative government, a free press, the notion . . . that a man shouldn’t say have wanted: founded on the primacy
free expression, and faith in elections— something until it is cleared with the of individual liberty and a commitment
is vulnerable to subversion. In lieu of de- machine,” but added that he didn’t want to pluralism, diversity and community.”
cision-making by democratic delibera- “to be a party to choking off new ideas.” Seven years later, Wired announced, “We
tion, the artificial state offers prediction The Kennedy campaign went ahead, hir- are, as a nation, better educated, more
by calculation, the capture of the public ing the Simulmatics Corporation to run tolerant, and more connected because
sphere by data-driven commerce, and the predictions on an I.B.M. 704. (I investi- of—not in spite of—the convergence of
replacement of humans with machines— gated the history of Simulmatics in a the Internet and public life.” No such
drones in the place of the demos. 2020 book, “If Then.”) “It is the nature era of tolerance ever arrived.
All nation-states are “imagined com- of politics that men must always act on In the virtual political reality of the
munities,” as the political theorist Ben- the basis of uncertain fact,”Theodore H. twenty-first century, much of public dis-
edict Anderson once memorably wrote. White wrote in his prize-winning ac- course is controlled by private corpora-
No nation is natural, like a mountain or count of the Kennedy campaign, “The tions that manufacture, and profit from,
a forest or a species of whale. They’re all Making of the President.” Otherwise, political extremism, even as they purport
inventions, mostly of modernity, and es- “politics would be an exact science in to be committed to democratic gover-
pecially of the long nineteenth century which our purposes and destiny could nance. At every stage in the emergence
that began in 1776 and ended in 1914. be left to great impersonal computers.” of the artificial state, tech leaders have
But, with the development of general- But a transition had already begun. As promised that the latest new tools would
purpose computing in the nineteen-fifties the New York Herald Tribune put it, “a be good for democracy, and for freedom,
(the first UNIVAC, or Universal Auto- big, bulky monster called a ‘Simulmat- no matter the mounting evidence to the
matic Computer, was built in 1951 for ics’” had been Kennedy’s “secret weapon.” contrary. In 2014, Twitter released what
the U.S. Census Bureau) and the found- There was no grand plan, no sinister it called “The Twitter Government and
70 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
Elections Handbook,” which informed temic rights as a new kind of human the company in 2022. By 2023, X had,
legislators that its platform is “the Town right, Simons proposes an A.I. Equality by some estimates, become inverted:
Hall Meeting . . . in Your Pocket.” The Act, to “assert political equality as a guid- one study found that nearly two out of
company, which has since become X, is ing principle in the design and deploy- three of its accounts appeared to be bots.
a privately held corporation that could ment of predictive tools.” If twenty-first- (An X-commissioned study said that
withhold from public scrutiny data about century democracy feels half dead, the amount was closer to eleven per
its users or operations. It is not a demo- Simons believes that working through cent.) Despite Musk’s promise to rid
cratic institution. Facebook’s vaunted these challenges will bring it back to life. the platform of them, X now seems to
mission as of 2017 was “to give people That can’t happen fast enough, because, have more bots than ever before. Ear-
the power to build community and bring year by year, the problems get more dif- lier this year, Musk estimated that there
the world closer together.” Facebook, now ficult to solve. would soon be two, three, or four bots
Meta, is a corporation that has histori- for every human on the planet. (He’s
cally been ruled by the mantra of its n the artificial state, at least as much building the technology that could allow
C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg: “company
over country.” It is not a democratic in-
Igrams
political speech is made by bots—pro-
that, mimicking human behavior,
us to abandon the planet, so long as no
pesky government stops him. “Unless
stitution. “The most problematic aspect execute automated tasks—as by humans. current trends for absurd regulatory
of Facebook’s power is Mark’s unilateral The Internet became “inverted” in 2012, overreach are reversed, humanity will
control over speech,” Chris Hughes, a when, for the first time on record, bots be confined to Earth forever,” Musk re-
Facebook co-founder, wrote in 2019. were more active online than people were. cently declared.) Zuckerberg, once
“There is no precedent for his ability to This helped generate a conspiracy the- widely discussed as a possible Demo-
monitor, organize and even censor the ory, known as the dead-Internet theory, cratic candidate for the Presidency, gave
conversations of two billion people.” that everything on the Internet is fake. up on American politics, refusing to try
Newer social-media companies have “It’s ridiculous, but possibly not that ri- to fix what he’s broken and instead de-
not forged a different path. Nearly half diculous?” the Internet beat reporter Kait- voting himself to his personal “well-
of American TikTok users under thirty lyn Tiffany wrote in The Atlantic. Al- ness,” the refuge of all scoundrels; he
say they use the platform to follow pol- though Cambridge Analytica’s targeting has also privately reinvented himself as
itics or political issues, and about the of voters using Facebook data in the 2016 a libertarian. This fall, Musk not only
same percentage believe that TikTok is election was met with condemnation, endorsed Trump but, dressed in black
“mostly good” for democracy. In 2021, a what it did seemed little different from and describing himself as “dark MAGA,”
report by the Department of Homeland the way news organizations had come appeared at a Trump rally to warn Amer-
Security concluded that TikTok’s algo- to treat their own political coverage, icans that, if they don’t vote, “this will
rithm had unintentionally driven sup- driven less by editorial judgment than be the last election.” But this very sense—
port for the January 6th insurrection at by search-engine optimization. the dark and uncanny precarity of it
the Capitol. This year, a study conducted Social media made many things all, the exhausted rhetoric of existential
in Germany alleged that TikTok pro- worse. “For Twitter to deserve public risk, the fear that everything might col-
moted far-right candidates to young vot- trust, it must be politically neutral,” Elon lapse because everything is at once so
ers. It is not a democratic institution. Musk tweeted, when he was taking over fragile and so fake, so untrustworthy and
It’s not as though these platforms
couldn’t become good for democracy,
if they were to be reinvented as well-
regulated, public-interested digital util-
ities. “Algorithms for the People: De-
mocracy in the Age of AI,” an extremely
thoughtful 2023 book by the British La-
bour Party M.P. Josh Simons, offers a
political theory of machine learning—
explaining the politics of search-result
ranking, for instance—and expresses con-
fidence that legislators can “develop struc-
tures of governance within which cor-
porations design infrastructural ranking
systems that create a healthy public sphere
and civic information architecture.”This
isn’t a new idea, and it’s one shared by
Risse, who follows many earlier writers,
including Ethan Zuckerman, in propos-
ing a public-interested digital infrastruc-
ture, “like creating parks and libraries for
the internet.” Where Risse endorses epis-
so unreal—is itself a creation of the ar- islators with “AI-driven collective choice in Science this fall, conspiracy-minded
tificial state. systems.” He wrote that “nobody has so Americans were subjected to long ex-
The building of the artificial state far seriously proposed anything like this,” changes with a deprogramming chatbot.
came at the expense of the natural and cautioned that we would be “ill ad- “The treatment reduced participants’ be-
world. “The modern world worships the vised to be guided by such a utopia.” But lief in their chosen conspiracy theory by
gods of speed and quantity, and of the his book was published last year, and since 20% on average,” the researchers con-
quick and easy profit, and out of this then fantasies of a Grand Democratic AI cluded. They don’t seem to have both-
idolatry monstrous evils have arisen,” Ra- Utopia have cropped up all over the place. ered to establish control groups who
chel Carson warned in the preface to a In “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” might, for instance, have been asked to
1964 book called “Animal Machines,” the posted last October, Marc Andreessen, read articles and books, or—seemingly
“Silent Spring” of factory farming, which the venture capitalist and notable Trump- beyond the realm of imagination—con-
involved the raising of animals from birth Vance supporter, delivered a delusional verse with another human.
to death in cages hardly bigger than account of human history as the triumph The same spirit of inquiry-as-boost-
themselves. “Yet the evils go long unrec- of the “techno-capital machine” over the erism lies behind “The Digitalist Pa-
ognised,” Carson wrote. “Even those who constraints of nature. “We had a prob- pers.” It brings together venture-capital
create them manage by some devious ra- lem of isolation, so we invented the In- magical thinking about a Grand Dem-
tionalising to blind themselves to the ternet,” Andreessen proclaimed, prepos- ocratic AI Utopia with the kind of so-
harm they have done society.” The arti- terously. The solution is at hand: “We cial science that imagines improving
ficial state is the factory farming of pub- believe Artificial Intelligence is our al- machines but cannot imagine helping
lic life, the sorting and segmenting, the chemy, our Philosopher’s Stone—we are people by way of, say, funding for public
isolation and alienation, the destruction literally making sand think.” This Sep- education. The self-described Federalist
of human community. Meanwhile, the tember, OpenAI’s Sam Altman posted Papers for the age of artificial intelligence
immense energy and water consumption an essay in which he argued that gener- propose schemes that include digital cit-
required to build, expand, and maintain ative A.I. is “the most consequential fact izen assemblies and “actionable strategies
the coming A.I. infrastructure threatens about all of history so far,” and that hu- for successfully transitioning to a new
to roll back gains made by environmen- manity is on the cusp of solving every era of governance whereby AI recom-
tal regulation in the past half century. problem. “There are a lot of details we mends courses of action to the humans”
This election season, even as hurri- still have to figure out,” Altman wrote, in places like legislatures and courtrooms.
canes battered North Carolina and Flor- unironically, “but it’s a mistake to get dis- In one of the essays, “The Potential for
ida, the natural world has been notably tracted by any particular challenge.” The AI to Restore Local Community Con-
absent from both the Trump and the following month, not to be outdone, Dario nectedness,” the former C.E.O. of Nex-
Harris campaigns. Trump, who used to Amodei, the C.E.O. of Anthropic, a rival tdoor touts the ability of the company’s
describe climate change as a hoax, has of OpenAI, published a blog post called “AI Kindness Reminder” to reduce “the
not substantially altered that position. “Machines of Loving Grace: How AI creation of uncivil and harmful content.”
(“You know, they have no idea what’s Could Transform the World for the Bet- Eric Schmidt, the former C.E.O. of Goo-
going to happen,” he said this summer. ter,” in which he predicted that A.I. could gle, boasts that “the coming of AGI may
“It’s weather.”) Harris, despite having lead, in five to ten years, to “the defeat of herald less of a new world order and more
been part of an Administration that pro- most diseases, the growth in biological of an improved version of our current lib-
duced perhaps the most important en- and cognitive freedom, the lifting of bil- eral order: Democracy 2.0.” John Coch-
vironmental law in a generation, has lions of people out of poverty to share in rane, a Hoover Institution economist,
seemed to distance herself from environ- the new technologies, a renaissance of delights at this news: “As birthrates con-
mentalism as she attempts to take back liberal democracy and human rights”— tinue to decline, the issue is not too few
the language of freedom from her op- developments that will happen so fast jobs, but too few people. Artificial ‘peo-
ponent. But, as the historian Sunil Am- and be so overwhelming that many of us ple’ may be coming along just in time!”
rith writes in his essential new book, will be “literally moved to tears.” Some- All but alone among the Digitalist Pa-
“The Burning Earth: A History,” the one will be crying. That much is true. pers’ contributors, the legal scholar Law-
rhetoric of freedom has become bound rence Lessig sounds a note of caution:
up with the triumph of the artificial over aving built an information infra- “The likely effect of AI will make an al-
the natural: “Into the pursuit of freedom
there crept, over time, a notion previ-
H structure that classifies and divides
humans and drives them to ideological
ready broken political system even worse.”
The artificial state is not alive; it can-
ously unthinkable: that true human au- extremes, these same people and corpo- not be killed. But, because it is some-
tonomy entailed a liberation from the rations are now building machines that thing built, it can be dismantled, if
binding constraints of nature.” purport to undo the very damage they enough people decide to sell it off for
Risse’s “Political Theory of the Digi- have caused, much in the same way that parts. Other very stubborn systems for
tal Age” laid out a philosopher’s thought geoengineering schemes seek to address organizing human societies have been
experiment, a “Grand Democratic AI catastrophic climate by using the very dismantled before. The divine right of
Utopia,” in which democracy would work logic and tools that created the problem. kings, feudalism, human bondage. Com-
at machine scale. Judges would be re- In a study funded in part by M.I.T.’s pared with those, this one might be easy.
placed with sophisticated algorithms, leg- Generative AI Initiative and published It begins with naming it. 
72 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
 cursed with a view of their former home
BOOKS and the courtyard where they once
played, happily, until what came after.
Jacob and Wilhelm, the Brothers
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS Grimm, experienced the kind of sharp
reversal of fortune characteristic of the
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation. genre that became synonymous with
their name: the fairy tale. A prince turned
BY JENNIFER WILSON into a frog; a beloved daughter reduced
to a scullery maid. Where the French
rendition of “Cinderella,” by Charles
Perrault, opens with Cinderella already
in tatters, laboring away for her step-
mother, the Grimms’ version, “Aschen-
puttel,” begins with the heroine’s mother
on her deathbed. Ann Schmiesing, the
author of “The Brothers Grimm: A Bi-
ography” (Yale), observes that the change
transforms a “story of ‘rags to riches’ to
‘riches to rags to riches’—a trajectory,
incidentally, that parallels the Grimms’
experience.”The Grimms’ version hacks
away at the French tale in other ways.
When the prince shows up with the
fateful slipper, Aschenputtel’s stepsis-
ters slash at their heels to make their
feet fit. Each makes it to the gates of
the castle before the prince notices blood
gushing everywhere.
The dark tenor of the Grimms’ fairy
tales is almost a punch line at this point,
and their surname, which means “wrath-
ful” in German, hasn’t helped. Even in
their lifetime, the brothers were sub-
jected to the obligatory punning. Jacob,
an accomplished philologist, thanked a
friend for resisting the urge to crack the
obvious joke after he published his book
“German Grammar”: “I do so appreci-
ate that you have not chided my Gram-
nce upon a time, a family by the a cook, and a coachman. Every Christ- mar as a Grimmer.” In truth, there’s an
O name of Grimm carried on a life
that was anything but. In the wooded
mas, the family decorated a tree with
apples, as was the German custom. In
almost comical severity to their tales,
among them “How Some Children
German state of Hessen, Philipp, a the summer, the children ventured into Played at Slaughtering,” in which a pair
town clerk, lived with his wife, Doro- the surrounding woods to collect but- of siblings, having just seen their father
thea, and their children in a quaint cot- terflies and flowers, confident they could butcher a pig, try out the act on each
tage. Its exterior was an inviting light find their way back home. other. In “Briar Rose,” the Grimms’ ver-
red, and its doors tan, as if made of gin- Then, one day, a dark cloud appeared, sion of “Sleeping Beauty,” suitors trying
gerbread. The drawing room had been as if summoned by a witch jealous of to reach the slumbering maiden become
wallpapered with pictures of huntsmen, their domestic idyll. In 1796, Philipp, snagged on the briar hedge surround-
onto whose faces the two eldest boys, only forty-four years old, succumbed to ing her castle, dying “miserable deaths.”
Jacob and Wilhelm (born in 1785 and pneumonia. Jacob later recalled seeing These stories amount to wish ful-
1786, respectively), would cheekily pen- his father’s body being measured for a fillment for people who want to believe
cil in beards. Soon, Philipp was pro- coffin. Dorothea and her children were stereotypes about German austerity,
moted to serve as the magistrate of a ordered to clear out. Without Philipp’s which may be a measure of the Grimms’
town nearby, and the Grimms moved income, they were forced for a time to success. Their aim in collecting such
into a stately home staffed with maids, shelter in an almshouse just next door— folklore—alongside the fairy tales,
the Grimms published legends, songs,
Jacob and Wilhelm were all too familiar with the rags-to-riches narrative. myths—was to create a cohesive national
ILLUSTRATION BY GOLDEN COSMOS THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 73
identity for German speakers. It’s why their way into German.) When, in their with his brother and new sister-in-law.
the brothers, especially Jacob, also wrote mid-fifties, the brothers accepted ap- A friend once addressed the brothers in
books on German philology and began pointments at the University of Berlin, a letter as “My dear double hooks!”
what was intended to be the most com- Jacob spurned any honors and illustri- Their bond was forged through their
prehensive dictionary of the German ous positions that would take him away shared history of loss and social isola-
language, the Deutsches Wörterbuch. from his desk. “I would happily don a tion. After Philipp’s death, Jacob and
(Toiling into their final years, they got homespun smock of the coarsest material Wilhelm no longer enjoyed the status
as far as frucht, fruit.) and strive for nothing other than that,” that came with being the sons of a mag-
The Grimms were Germanists be- he joked to a friend. Meanwhile, Wil- istrate. Matriculating at the University
fore there was a Germany. When they helm’s diary from that period shows him of Marburg, in their late teens, they had
were born, “Germany” contained what watching a production of “A Midsum- to pay their own way; stipends were typ-
the historian Perry Anderson describes mer Night’s Dream,” strolling through ically reserved for the sons of aristocrats
as a “maze of dwarfish princedoms,” and the botanical gardens, and taking in the and landowners. Jacob saw his situation
they died not long before the country’s Cabinet of Art, where Napoleon’s hat at Marburg as akin to the slights that
unification, in 1871. In between, the out- was on display. A “rare day without any the German people—lacking the polit-
lines of their homeland shifted again visit,” he noted in one entry. ical and economic advantages that came
and again, with the Napoleonic invasion And yet a joint biography is the only with being part of a nation-state—suf-
of Hessen, in 1806, the Congress of Vi- kind that feels appropriate; posthumously fered on the European stage. He wrote
enna and post-Napoleonic redivisions disentangling one brother from the other in his autobiography, “Sparseness spurs
of Europe, and, eventually, the rise of seems tantamount to desecrating a corpse, a person to industriousness and work,
Otto von Bismarck. Amid such geo- for Jacob and Wilhelm were ardently in- keeps one from many a distraction and
graphic disarray, the Grimms believed separable. When, during their under- infuses one with noble pride that keeps
that shared language and cultural tradi- graduate years, Jacob brief ly worked one conscious of self-achievement in
tions could be the connective yarn of a abroad for one of their professors, Wil- contrast to what social class and wealth
people, their people. All that was needed helm wrote to him, “When you left, I provide. . . . A great deal of what Ger-
was a fellow, or two, to come along with thought my heart would tear in two. I mans have achieved overall should be
a spinning wheel. couldn’t stand it. You certainly don’t know attributed to the fact that they are not
how much I love you.” Jacob pledged a rich folk.”
hough posterity has conjoined them, that it would never happen again, and While at the university, the broth-
T Jacob and Wilhelm were two rather
disparate men. Wilhelm was the bon vi-
sketched out what he hoped their life
would look like after they completed
ers came under the influence of Fried-
rich Carl von Savigny, a young law pro-
vant to Jacob’s introvert. The elder was their studies: “We will presumably at last fessor who maintained that laws should
the more accomplished scholar. Jacob’s live quite withdrawn and isolated, for we not be imposed upon a people but, rather,
research on phonetics established what will not have many friends, and I do not be derived from them. A legislator, then,
is still known today in linguistics as enjoy acquaintances. We shall want to must be a kind of historian, or, better
Grimm’s law. (He had noticed patterns work with each other quite collabora- yet, a philologist, alert to a people’s de-
by which consonants from other Indo- tively and to cut off all other affairs.” sires as expressed in their language and
European languages altered as they made When Wilhelm married, Jacob lived storytelling. In a study of the Brothers
Grimm and German nationalism, the
scholar Jakob Norberg argues that, if
Plato prescribed a “philosopher king”
to rule the city-state, the Grimms en-
visioned a “philologist king” to lead the
nation-state.
It was also at Marburg, and through
Savigny, that the Grimms fell in with
Achim von Arnim and Clemens Bren-
tano, two wellborn writers who had
begun to amass German folk songs,
aiming to capture the Volksseele—the
soul of the people—that predated the
European Enlightenment and French
neoclassicism. Arnim and Brentano were
founding members of what became
known as Heidelberg Romanticism. If
early German Romanticism, which flow-
ered in Jena, in the seventeen-nineties,
prized the “individual, subjective world-
“ You don’t gasp at my miracles anymore.” view,” Schmiesing writes, “the Hei-
delberg Romantics celebrated folk and as a kind of foot soldier-folklorist amid on it, and the shirt hanging out of the
heroic literature because they saw in it the Napoleonic Wars. He later assem- pants.” But the Grimms wanted to pre-
the collective experience of a people.” bled a group of folklorists who took an serve the culture of the common folk,
Savigny’s dictum situated the national oath to “honor the fatherland” through not to make the folk sound cultured.
will in the hearts, or, more precisely, on the “rescuing of our folk literature.” The Schmiesing’s biography of the Grimms
the tongues, of common folk. Though tales they gathered were bread crumbs is the first major English-language one
the Grimms began by helping Arnim that would guide the German people to in decades. It can be dense with details,
and Brentano, they came to see them- their cultural home. but when I read Murray B. Peppard’s
selves as uniquely fluent, by virtue both “Paths Through the Forest” (1971), a more
of their family’s impoverishment and of he first volume of the Grimms’ approachable biography of the Grimms,
the lore surrounding their home state of
Hessen. They would gather many of
T “Children’s and Household Tales”
was published in December of 1812. It
I found myself missing Schmiesing’s un-
rulier thickets of Prussian bureaucrats
their fairy tales there, convinced that the contained eighty-six stories, including and long asides about German grammar.
region’s relative remove from commer- classics like “Rapunzel,” “Hansel and Hers is hearty German fare. It also pre-
cial roads preserved its authentically Ger- Gretel,” “Snow White,” “Rumpel- sents findings that complicate the broth-
man character. stiltskin,” “Briar Rose,” and “Little Red ers’ image as ethnographic purists.
Hessen also had a touch of myth to Riding Hood,” along with extensive foot- The popular perception of how the
it. The land had been settled in ancient notes. Critics weren’t sure what to make Grimms collected their tales was cap-
times by the Chatti people, described by of a collection of “children’s tales” that tured in an illustration that appeared in
the Roman historian Tacitus as being came with scholarly addenda and randy an eighteen-nineties German magazine:
brawnier than other Germanic tribes. animals. “Mrs. Fox,” where a fox with Jacob and Wilhelm are shown visiting
With much of its rugged terrain a hin- nine tails, which scan as furry phallic a humble cottage, listening to an older
drance to agriculture, mercenaries be- symbols, tests his wife’s faithfulness, was peasant woman. “This rustic scene did
came a primary export. Twenty-five per not the kind of bedtime story that par- not actually take place,” Schmiesing
cent of British land forces in the Amer- ents had in mind. The same went for writes. The Grimms’ informants tended
ican Revolutionary War were Hessian. “Rapunzel,” in which the fairy (not the to be well-educated women from afflu-
(Washington Irving’s headless horseman witch) realizes that her long-tressed pris- ent families who retrieved stories from
was rumored to be the ghost of a Hes- oner has been receiving visits from the villagers and servants in their employ.
sian trooper.) The philosopher Johann prince when, one day, Rapunzel asks, The woman in the illustration, Doro-
Gottlieb Fichte, a father of German na- “Why are my clothes becoming too thea Viehmann, was indeed one of the
tionalism, even accused Europeans of tight?” For the Grimms, what mattered Grimms’ poorer informants, but her tales
deliberately keeping German lands frag- was to be authentic, not appropriate, and were not as “genuinely Hessian” as the
mented—the better to enlist German fairy tales, across many literary tradi- brothers once described them. She was
valor for their own conquests. It was on tions, weren’t always intended for chil- of Huguenot extraction on her father’s
this embattled landscape that the Grimms dren. According to the scholar Maria side, accounting, scholars have specu-
set about stitching together a cultural Tatar, these were folktales shared among lated, for the French influence on some
heritage that they could raise as a flag. adults after hours, while the children of her stories.
A foe for the ages had appeared. Na- were asleep. She cites a French version Schmiesing also revisits the scholar-
poleon’s conquest of Germanic lands of “Little Red Riding Hood,” in which ship on Wilhelm’s change in editorial
was a watershed moment for German the big bad wolf has designs on the lit- policy. Possibly in response to critical
Romanticism. “Soon everything changed tle girl that are not gastronomical. In disapprobation, he updated the second
from the ground up,” Wilhem recalled, that version, she does what amounts to version of “Children’s and Household
of French troops occupying his home a striptease, peeling off her clothes as Tales” to satisfy nineteenth-century gen-
town of Kassel, in 1806. “Foreign peo- the disguised wolf watches from the bed, der norms. In the first edition, the story
ple, foreign customs, and in the streets giving fresher context to “What big of Hansel and Gretel begins with their
and on walks a foreign, loudly spoken hands you have!” mother telling their father to abandon
language.” Hessen was subsumed into Then, there was the matter of the the siblings in the woods. In the second
the Kingdom of Westphalia, led by Grimms’ language—sparse, hectic, vis- edition, the father’s wife—the archetypal
Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon’s hapless ceral, unfiltered. In the preface, the broth- evil stepmother—makes the order, be-
brother, who had scarcely learned more ers boasted of the collection’s fidelity to cause it was unseemly to suggest that a
than three words of German: those for their sources: “No circumstance has been biological mother would dispose of her
“tomorrow,” “again,” and “jolly.” (This poeticized, beautified, or altered.” Well, children so coolly. (The father going
earned him the moniker King Jolly.) that much was clear, complained the along with it all—just fine!)
Jérôme was rumored to bathe in red Grimms’ old friend Clemens Brentano,
wine, which, Schmiesing writes, “under- who thought they went too far. “If you lthough their legacy may be
scored his foreignness in a region accus-
tomed to white wine.”
want to display children’s clothes,” Bren-
tano wrote, “you can do that with fidel-
A as German Mother Geese, the
brothers regarded their fairy-tale vol-
Jacob actually served as Jérôme’s per- ity without bringing out an outfit that umes as one project among many, and
sonal librarian, but his real vocation was has all the buttons torn off, dirt smeared hardly the most important. In 1829, the
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 75
Grimms, then in their forties, took jobs were ordered to leave Hanover within ods, giving a sense of how language
as librarians at the University of Göt­ three days—became known as the Göt­ changed over time. Johnson and oth­
tingen, in the kingdom of Hanover. tingen Seven, and their act of defiance ers believed that dictionaries could re­
There, Jacob published “German My­ was later enshrined in German history cord, and not merely dictate, the ex­
thology” (1835). He believed that, just as a banner moment in the nation’s pressions of a people, in a version of
as etymologists could identify features path to democracy. Wilhelm even re­ what Savigny, the Grimms’ old pro­
of ancient languages through modern vised a fairy tale with the episode in fessor at Marburg, had preached about
descendants, he could approximate an­ mind. In an earlier version of a story the law.
cient German mythology through folk­ titled “The Blue Light,” a man leaves Just as they had worked with infor­
lore. He scoured ballads, fairy tales, and the military because he is too old to mants on their fairy tales, the Grimms
legends for references to heroes, wise fight. In the new version, the protag­ solicited dictionary entries from more
women, dwarfs, giants, ghosts, cures, onist is a wounded soldier who is dis­ than eighty contributors, including pro­
magic, and more. charged by his sovereign with the words fessors, philologists, and preachers. The
Unlike “Children’s and Household “You can go home now. I no longer results could be enchanting. The first
Tales,” “German Mythology” was a na­ need you, and you shall receive no more entry was for the letter “A”:
tional, and nationalist, sensation. The money from me. I give wages only to
book positively rejuvenated the com­ those who can serve me.” A, the noblest and most primordial of any
sound, resounding with fullness from the chest
poser Richard Wagner. In his autobi­ The detail of wages withheld spoke and throat, first and easiest sound that a child
ography, “My Life,” Wagner wrote of to the financial straits in which Jacob will learn to produce, and which the alphabets of
encountering “German Mythology”: and Wilhelm now found themselves. most languages rightfully put at the beginning.
“Before my mind’s eye, a world of fig­ In 1840, Arnim’s widow implored the
ures soon built itself up, which in turn Prussian prince, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, The men worked twelve hours a day
revealed themselves in such unexpect­ to find positions for two of her friends, to meet publishing deadlines, but they
edly sculptural form and so primordi­ whom she did not name. After doing managed to sneak in some fun. In the
ally recognizable that, when I saw them some digging, the Prince learned their complete first volume, which appeared
clearly before me and heard their speech identities, and wrote back, “The fruit of in 1854, the Grimms included Wilhelm’s
within me, I finally could not compre­ my grim researching was—two research­ affectionate nickname for his wife,
hend whence came this almost tangi­ ing Grimms!” Alexander von Hum­ bierlümmel (beer lout). It took them six­
ble familiarity and certainty of their boldt, the celebrated geographer and teen years to finish that first section—
bearing. I cannot describe the effect of naturalist, arranged for the brothers to which ended with the entry for biermolke
this on the disposition of my soul as pursue their scholarship in Berlin on a (beer whey)—but the quibbles rolled
anything other than a complete re­ combined salary of three thousand tha­ in almost immediately. Catholics com­
birth.” With “German Mythology,” lers, to be divided as they pleased “since plained about the preponderance of
Jacob had hoped to defend his ances­ they live like man and wife.” word­usage examples from Martin Lu­
tors—the Germanic peoples who in­ Two years later, Humboldt came to ther, and about the tone of certain en­
vaded the Roman Empire—against al­ Jacob with a question. The Prussian tries. The one for ablass (indulgence)
legations of barbarism. It’s a defense court was announcing a new honor for read, “Principally the ecclesiastical re­
that, Schmiesing writes, “was at times achievements in the arts and sciences. mission of sin for money . . . against
overtly racialized.” Though Wilhelm Could Jacob advise on how a specific which the Reformation victoriously in­
praised the fairy tales of Sierra Leone, word in the statute should be spelled? veighed.” Jacob believed that the capi­
Jacob once wrote an article in which The word in question: deutsch. talization of common nouns was an in­
he called fetishism “a descending into The project that would preoccupy organic import and did away with it, a
dullness and coarseness, like that which the Grimms for the remainder of their choice that inspired parodies in the
rules the wild Negro,” and insisted that lives was the Deutsches Wörterbuch— German press.
it was “essentially foreign to a people the German dictionary. A publishing Despite their critics, the Grimms
like our ancestors, which as soon as it house in Leipzig had pitched them carried on. In their hands, the dictio­
appears in history, acts worthily and the idea in 1838, but Jacob hesitated. nary was a form of political speech,
freely and speaks a finely wrought lan­ He had concerns about the system­ the only kind that ever worked for
guage that is closely related to that of atizing of language, and about German­ them. In 1848, amid the wave of na­
the noblest peoples of antiquity.” language classes in schools—he cher­ tionalist revolutions across Europe,
ished the idea of the mother tongue Jacob was invited to serve as a repre­
he Grimms’ professional lives were being imparted by actual mothers. Still, sentative at the Frankfurt National As­
T as unstable as the borders of the
Holy Roman Empire. In 1837, a new
the Grimms had models for a differ­
ent kind of lexicon. Samuel Johnson’s
sembly, a body convened in an effort
to create a unified German state. But
monarch dissolved Hanover’s legisla­ Dictionary of the English Language, the meeting descended into factional­
tive assemblies and cast aside its con­ from the mid­eighteenth century, had ism as competing class and geograph­
stitution. Jacob and Wilhelm, joining been part of a movement away from ical interests revealed the country to
five of their colleagues, signed a state­ rigid language textbooks. Entries fea­ be far more divided than Jacob had
ment in protest. The dissenters—who tured texts drawn from various peri­ fantasized. The brothers retreated to
76 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
their study to work on the dictionary.
Every letter was a step toward the
goal—if not a unified Germany, then BRIEFLY NOTED
at least a unified German people, con-
nected by words, and by familial bick- Disrupted City, by Manan Ahmed Asif (New Press). In this
ering about their meaning. engaging book, a professor of South Asian history invites
readers to take a walk with him through Lahore, the city of
n December 16, 1859, Wilhelm died, his birth. As he winds past monuments and bazaars—evok-
O at the age of seventy-three, follow-
ing complications from back surgery.
ing a rich cast of characters who have called Lahore home
for more than a millennium—he contemplates how this an-
Jacob sat by his bedside and counted cient city has changed since Partition, in 1947. Muslim fam-
each of his brother’s last breaths. Four ilies like his settled into the homes of displaced Sikhs and
years later, Jacob followed. Stricken with Hindus as part of a calamity that remade the population by
an inflamed liver and then a stroke, he forcing people “to move without much, to put down shallow
lay in bed conscious but unable to speak. roots, to remember even less.” But, as Asif demonstrates,
He reached for a picture of Wilhelm walking through a city can be an act of remembering its past.
and brought it up to his face, and died
not long afterward. The two are buried Q&A, by Adrian Tomine (Drawn & Quarterly). Structured as
in Berlin as they lived, side by side. a series of answers to questions from readers, this book, by a
In 1871, Kaiser Wilhelm ascended noted graphic novelist, is part advice manual for aspiring car-
to the throne of a newly unified Ger- toonists, part memoir. Tomine, who taught himself to draw
many. In Goslar, a northern town in as a “defense against chaos and loneliness,” started self-
the Harz Mountains, an imperial pal- publishing at sixteen, and he has worked steadily for nearly
ace was renovated to include a fresco thirty years now. He reflects candidly and wittily on topics
drawing of “Briar Rose,” symbolizing including the solitary nature of cartooning, writing to artist
a long-slumbering, finally awakened idols, parenthood’s influence on his art, and adapting a graphic
German identity. It was the fairy-tale novel into a screenplay (“Shortcomings”). His writing, by
ending the Grimms had dreamed of, turns encouraging and nostalgic, is interspersed with life-
and, as in many of their stories, there drawing sketches and with panels from his graphic novels.
was no happily ever after.
The Grimms’ stories, with their Model Home, by Rivers Solomon (MCD x FSG). “Being well
promise of bodying forth an authenti- versed in the specific tropes of a genre should save me from
cally Teutonic spirit, were so sought worry, but knowledge has never saved anyone”—so observes
after during the Nazi years that Allied Ezri, the Oxford-educated, nonbinary narrator of Solomon’s
occupying forces temporarily banned novel, which adapts the conventions of haunted-house fic-
them after the war. Scholars have since tion. After their parents—onetime paragons of “Black Ex-
stressed that their nationalism was cellence”—meet a grisly death in the affluent, white gated
rooted in a shared cultural and linguis- community in Texas where their family once lived, Ezri is
tic heritage, not blood and soil. Still, summoned back to their childhood home, a place they have
the task of narrating the lives of Jacob long regarded as haunted. As Ezri and their sisters parse su-
and Wilhelm remains as thorny as the pernatural horrors from earthbound ones, Solomon succeeds
hedge that trapped Briar Rose’s suit- in evoking an atmosphere in which there is more than one
ors. As Schmiesing writes, it “entails way to feel haunted.
navigating between too naively or too
judgmentally presenting the nineteenth- Canoes, by Maylis de Kerangal, translated from the French by
century constructions of Germany and Jessica Moore (Archipelago). This stylish collection opens with
Germanness to which they contributed.” a narrator getting her jaw molded while a dentist shows her
In truth, this ambivalence existed a photo of “a human jawbone from the mesolithic,” an image
for Jacob, too, who worried that the that establishes the oral and historical fixations that give de
standardization of German in schools Kerangal’s mostly plotless stories their energy. A deep sensi-
might downgrade dialects and the very tivity to language elevates the mundanity of these narrators’
folk speech that their lives had been lives: one listens to radio static and feels that she is “crossing
devoted to capturing. The brothers another dimension of reality in a breaststroke, immersed in
knew better than anyone that every the crackling of electromagnetic waves.” In another story, a
story of enchantment is also a story of narrator is asked to recite and record a poem by mysterious
disenchantment, and their lifelong sisters who have undertaken “a monumental work that aimed
cause was no exception. The nation has to restore to literature its oral aspect, to embody it, to give
proved to be humanity’s most cher- each text a voice all its own, the right one”—a project not
ished fairy tale, and its grimmest.  dissimilar to de Kerangal’s.
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 77
 mount a proper tribute—“Charles Ives
MUSICAL EVENTS at 150,” a nine-day festival in early Oc-
tober. Part of the neglect has to do with
the fact that craggy patriarchs are no
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS longer in fashion, particularly ones who
were prone to misogynistic and ho-
The masterly musical assemblages of Charles Ives. mophobic rhetoric, as Ives was. But the
deeper problem is that American mu-
BY ALEX ROSS sical organizations have grown peril-
ously risk-averse. Something has gone
wrong when the Berliner Festspiele
features Ives in depth while New York
overlooks him.
American music offers nothing
better than Ives at his best. My touch-
stone is “Three Places in New En-
gland” (1912-21), which the Jacobs
School Philharmonic performed in
Bloomington. The final movement,
“The Housatonic at Stockbridge,”
evokes a Sunday-morning walk that
Ives took with his wife, Harmony, along
the Housatonic River: mist rising off
the water, a church choir in the dis-
tance. After a polyrhythmic depiction
of the currents, we hear the hymn
“Dorrnance,” first in a major-key con-
text and then in darksome minor. A
cacophony builds, indicating a mael-
strom of inner feeling. In its wake, the
hymn steals back in for two quick-fad-
ing measures. A bittersweet progres-
sion stops mid-phrase. The vision van-
ishes. This incomparable ending not
only replicates the blindsiding impact
of nature’s sublimities; it also conveys
how such epiphanies echo in our mem-
Like Mahler, Ives stormed toward the future while mourning the past. ory, forming sites of perpetual longing.

n 1921, Charles E. Ives, a wealthy

Ilife-insurance
co-proprietor of the New York
eliciting critical awe. In 1947, Ives’s
Third Symphony, a stately mashup of
“ C harles Ives at 150,” which was
organized by the Ives scholar
firm Ives & Myrick, Christian hymns, won him a Pulitzer J. Peter Burkholder and the cultural
launched a bid to rebrand himself as Prize. In 1951, Leonard Bernstein led historian Joseph Horowitz, concen-
an American Beethoven. He sent cop- the New York Philharmonic in the pre- trated largely on smaller-scale scores:
ies of his Second Piano Sonata, titled mière of the raucous, joyous Second chamber-orchestra pieces, chamber
“Concord, Mass., 1840-1860,” to hun- Symphony. By century’s end, Ives had and piano music, choral music, and
dreds of musicians, critics, and patrons seemingly been canonized as the craggy songs. This emphasis was welcome,
across the United States. The first patriarch of American music; in the because the composer’s more intimate
movement, “Emerson,” begins with a mid-nineties, I attended three festivals work belies the image of him as a dil-
kind of axe-swinging gesture: an oc- centered on him. ettante, a tinkerer, or—in Bernstein’s
tave B gets smashed into dissonant Lately, though, Ives has drifted to regrettable characterization—a “prim-
splinters. Fractured impressions of the margins again. The hundred-and- itive.” Ives received rigorous training,
Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau fiftieth anniversary of his birth, on first from his father, the ace bandmas-
ensue. Most of the recipients dismissed October 20th, passed with little fan- ter George Ives, and then from Hora-
the composer as a crank, but a few were fare. Carnegie Hall is presenting very tio Parker at Yale. He often defied
spellbound by his transcendentalist little by Ives this season, and the Phil- Western musical conventions, but he
conjurations, and a cult began to grow. harmonic is playing nothing at all. It knew them all the same.
In 1939, the pianist John Kirkpatrick fell to the Jacobs School of Music, at On my first night in Bloomington,
played the “Concord” at Town Hall, Indiana University Bloomington, to I heard the violinist Stefan Jackiw and
78 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID PLUNKERT
the pianist Jeremy Denk play Ives’s four dertaking—and to its emotional im- is Ives in visionary mode, as the friends
violin sonatas, in reverse order. (The port—are quotations from a Fugue in set aside their differences and take a
duo has also recorded them for the B-flat composed by Ives’s father. This walk under the stars. Here, the Paci-
Nonesuch label.) When I was first dis- is meta-counterpoint, spanning genres fica played with devout focus, bring-
covering Ives, I remember being dis- and generations. ing us into the territory of late Bee-
appointed by these scores: they seemed There is nothing analytical about thoven and late Shostakovich.
tame next to the convulsions of the Jackiw and Denk’s rendition, which Various pianists tackled Ives in
“Concord” and the Fourth Symphony. translates all those formal intricacies Bloomington, among them the eighty-
Ives’s legendary status initially rested into an infectious colloquy of voices. nine-year-old Gilbert Kalish, who gave
on his reputation as a maverick pio- Distinguished violinists from Joseph a stupendously assured reading of the
neer who supposedly had beaten Szigeti to Hilary Hahn have tackled little-heard First Sonata. Later in the
Schoenberg in the race to the atonal the Fourth Sonata, yet Jackiw sets a month, at the Piano Spheres series in
pole. In fact, he didn’t, and it hardly new standard, running the gamut from Los Angeles, I witnessed powerhouse
matters. What sets Ives apart is his boisterous fiddling to solitary chant, performances of both sonatas by Ste-
masterly fusion of disparate materials: with sly parodies of overcooked Ro- phen Drury. The “Concord” is the more
tattered old tunes, newfangled disso- manticism along the way. Denk, whose spectacular piece, with its mystical dis-
nances, received classical forms, self- enthusiasm for Ives deepened after he sonances, its thunderous citations of
fashioned streams of consciousness. As took a course from Burkholder more Beethoven’s Fifth, its wrenching lyri-
Horowitz has argued, Ives is really than thirty years ago, keeps pace with cal oases. But the First is just as po-
an American counterpart to Mahler, Jackiw’s code-switching and fills in tent. Sparing in its use of preëxisting
who stormed toward the future while the brooding meditations that hover material, it proceeds from abstract or-
mourning the past. behind Ives’s games and pranks. The atory to madcap ragtime dances and
Consider Ives’s Fourth Violin So- Fourth has another eerie Ivesian end- back again. The closing gesture is, of
nata, which packs a cosmos of ideas ing—“Shall We Gather at the River” course, enigmatic: a crashing “Amen”
into nine fleeting minutes. At the fes- cuts off abruptly—but Jackiw and Denk cadence in A major gives way to a three-
tival, Burkholder came onstage to ex- find a midnight comedy in it: the vio- note question mark, pianissimo.
plicate an Ivesian process that he calls lin’s progressively blurrier articulation Something similar happens in a blis-
“cumulative form,” in which the prin- and the piano’s progressively sketchier tering Ives song titled “Nov. 2, 1920,”
cipal thematic material of a movement pounding suggest a jam session that which denounces the election of War-
emerges only at the end, rather than at slides toward stupor. ren G. Harding and the ascendancy of
the beginning. The themes, as so often Ives rises or falls on the performers’ Republican laissez-faire economics.
with this composer, are drawn from the degree of belief. Musicians must be- (Ives, an eccentric capitalist, believed
hymnal: “Old, Old Story,” “Jesus Loves come actors playing roles, hollering that personal fortunes should be capped
Me,” “Shall We Gather at the River.” certain motifs and muttering others. at a hundred thousand dollars.) The
They become manifest first as fleet- Some of that theatrical engagement song’s text concludes in an ostensibly
ing fragments, and only if you know was missing in the Pacifica Quartet’s hopeful mood: “A heritage we’ve thrown
them in advance can you catch the account of Ives’s string quartets, which away; but we’ll find it again.” The music,
transformations they undergo. Burk- came two nights after the Jackiw-Denk though, falls short of its implied C-
holder pointed out a passage in the concert. The middle movement of the major triumph and trails off into si-
Fourth’s middle movement in which Second Quartet, which portrays heated lence. In the end, the most radical thing
segments of “Jesus Loves Me” unfold arguments among four friends, needed about Ives is his refusal of simple sto-
simultaneously in two distinct keys. a more characterful delineation of the ries, his acceptance of uncertainty, his
Adding to the complexity of the un- clashing lines. The finale, by contrast, readiness for the unknown. 

THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2024 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

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THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2024 79

 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 Ellis Rosen,
must be received by Sunday, November 10th. The finalists in the October 28th contest appear below. We
will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the November 25th 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

“Hold up, Clint, we’re looking for

a blue car. That ain’t our horse.”
Matthew Feingold, Portsmouth, N.H.

“Turns out he’s a two-trick pony.” “Why even travel if you’re not going to try the local cuisine?”
Harise Poland, Silver Spring, Md. David Davidson, Castle Rock, Colo.

“C’mon, you left the barn door, the

gate, and the garage open?”
Dan Singleton, Chatham, Ont.
Women around the
world are demanding
access to abortion.
At this year’s United Nation’s General Assembly,
MSI Reproductive Choices committed to
accelerating progress toward universal access
to abortion and contraception.
40% of women live in countries where abortion
is banned or restricted and 257 million women
can’t access contraception. Without safe care,
35 million people turn to unsafe abortions every
year and as a result, 22,800 die.
We’re calling on funders, philanthropists
and everyone who cares about reproductive
choice, freedom and opportunity to join us
in this commitment.
Global access to modern contraception and
safe abortion is an achievable goal.

Help us make it a reality.

msiunitedstates.org
 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.

14 15 16

THE 17 18

CROSSWORD 19 20 21 22

23 24 25
A beginner-friendly puzzle.
26 27 28 29

BY CAITLIN REID
30 31

32 33
ACROSS
1 Vocal or muscle quality
34 35
5 New alum
9 Dominated, in sports lingo 36 37 38 39 40

14 Mouth-related
41 42 43 44 45
15 Goal of meditation, perhaps
15 The ___ Piper of Hamelin 46 47 48
18 “That’s the way it is, unfortunately”
19 “I swear!” 49 50 51 52

21 Welcome with open ___

53 54
22 Eminem’s genre
23 Something to set before going to sleep 55 56 57
24 Suddenly lose it
25 Slowly enter (into)
DOWN 36 One of three in Adidas’s logo
26 Peg in a golf bag
1 Original Monopoly token that’s still 38 Fancy fish roe
25 Twistable treat that débuted four years
in use 39 Perfect world
after Hydrox
29 Cousin of a croc 2 Baltimore M.L.B. player 40 Tête toppers
30 Sidestep 3 Hip-hop dance with a reduplicative 42 Org. with the Artemis program
name
31 Really enjoy 43 Nail-polish brand owned by L’Oréal
4 Mature member of the community
32 Suspenseful ending to a season 45 Order from someone who’s too hungry
5 Main idea for a medium
34 U.S. President between Johnson and
Hayes 6 Messenger ___ (carrier of genetic code) 45 “Now, where ___ we?”
35 Mideast military officials 5 “What’s more . . .” 48 Government agents, informally
36 “Rizz” for “charisma,” e.g. 8 “Will & Grace” star Messing 50 Stat for a slugger
35 Lasso 9 Chooses (to) 51 Chill (out)
38 What Simba is at the beginning of “The 10 Sopping
Lion King” One with a story to tell?
11 Solution to the previous puzzle:
41 Section of the GMAT, the LSAT, and the 12 Quito’s country B O L O T I E L A P U P
MCAT?
13 Like Lake Superior vis-à-vis a R A I D E R S E A S E B Y
42 Targets for lacrosse players kiddie pool A T L E A S T C R I S P E R
44 Put on cloud nine C H A S M A P H I D P R O
16 Heinie
46 “Go, team!” E S C R E D O A K M E R
20 Word before hot or gun L O T I O N E E R I E
45 Scrub in a tub
24 Lord’s underling in medieval times B R O C C O L I C L O D S
48 ___ of the month A L E C K A P S H O N E S
25 Greetings from afar
49 “Wow, you’re good at that!” V A G U E Z A M B O N I S
28 Falling-out between friends
52 Ready for eating A N G S T T R I A L S
29 Compilation of outtakes K A T L E T S G O T A T
53 Knuckleheaded
30 Bias A T E M A C Y S C A R G O
54 Horse’s pace R I T A O R A I T A L I A N
31 Sound made by scissors
55 Guitarist Van Halen C L O M P S N A T L O V E

56 They might be served sunny-side up 32 Place to catch some z’s for the night H E N C E G R E A S E D

55 “Taylor Swift: The ___ Tour” (2023 33 Famous ___ cookies

Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
concert film) 34 Shone newyorker.com/crossword
 MOZ ART’S THE MAGIC FLUTE

Mozart’s enchanting musical fairy tale returns in the Met’s

abridged, English-language production by Broadway legend
Julie Taymor. With dazzling puppets and a spectacularly
vibrant setting, the Met’s Magic Flute is one of the city’s
ultimate seasonal sensations for family audiences. On stage
December 12–January 4.
Peter Gelb
MARIA MANET TI SHREM GENER AL MANAGER
Tickets start at $25 metopera.org/holidays
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
JEANET TE LERMAN-NEUBAUER MUSIC DIRECTOR

ILLUSTRATION: MEI KANAMOTO / MET OPERA