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DEC. 5, 2016

DECEMBER 5, 2016

9 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 21 THE TALK OF THE TOWN

Amy Davidson on Trump’s rocky transition; Axis & Allies; Jason Sudeikis; a better hair dryer; James Surowiecki on the private-prison boom. PERSONAL HISTORY

The Teacher A mother’s lessons.

James Wood

River Clegg

Calvin Tomkins

D. T. Max

Margaret Talbot

Taking Trolls to Court A Brooklyn attorney protects sexual privacy.

Sam Shepard

“Tiny Man”

SHOUTS & MURMURS

Honest Museum Audio Tour DEPT. OF PERFORMANCE

Art Without Walls Alex Poots and New York’s mixed-media art scene. PROFILES

Sombre Colors The director Pedro Almodóvar enters a new phase. ANNALS OF LAW

FICTION

THE CRITICS ON TELEVISION

“Rectify.”

Emily Nussbaum

Dan Chiasson

77 78

Joan Acocella

Hilton Als

Anthony Lane

“Jackie,” “Allied.”

Joy Harjo Michael Earl Craig

52 72

“By the Way” “Rose Tantrum”

BOOKS

Emily Dickinson’s scrap poetry. Brieﬂy Noted DANCING

The tap dancing of Michelle Dorrance. THE THEATRE

“Sweet Charity.” THE CURRENT CINEMA

POEMS

COVER

Peter de Sève

DRAWINGS

“Rat Race”

David Sipress, Jason Adam Katzenstein, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Drew Dernavich, Harry Bliss, Jack Ziegler, P. C. Vey, Liam Francis Walsh, Mick Stevens, Tom Toro, Joe Dator, Sam Gross, Roz Chast, Ken Krimstein, Liana Finck, Amy Hwang SPOTS Guido Scarabottolo

CONTRIBUTORS D. T. Max (“Sombre Colors,” p. 42) is a

Michael Earl Craig (Poem, p. 72) is the

staﬀ writer and the author of “The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery.”

current Poet Laureate of Montana. His most recent poetry collection is “Talkativeness.”

Joan Acocella (Dancing, p. 82) be-

Margaret Talbot (“Taking Trolls to Court,”

came the magazine’s dance critic in 1998. She is writing a biography of Mikhail Baryshnikov.

p. 56), a staﬀ writer, is the author of “The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century.”

James Wood (“ The Teacher,” p. 28) teaches at Harvard. “The Nearest Thing to Life” is his latest book.

River Clegg (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 32)

is an associate editor at Comedy Central and a contributing writer at The Onion.

James Surowiecki (The Financial Page,

p. 26), a staff writer since 2000, writes about finance for the magazine. Anthony Lane (The Current Cinema, p. 86) has been a film critic for The New Yorker since 1993. Daniel Smith (The Talk of the Town, p. 22) is the author, most recently, of “Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety.”

Sam Shepard (Fiction, p. 66), a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, has a book of ﬁction, “The One Inside,” coming out in February. Calvin Tomkins (“Art Without Walls,” p. 34) covers art and culture for The New Yorker. “The Bride and the Bachelors” is one of his many books. Peter de Sève (Cover) is an illustrator

Emily Nussbaum (On Television, p.74),

the magazine’s television critic, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

and a character designer for animated movies. His work can be seen in the feature ﬁlm “The Little Prince.”

NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more.

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Model trains race through a miniature New York City, at the Botanical Garden’s annual holiday exhibit.

SUBSCRIBERS: Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the

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THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

RIGHT: EMILY RHYNE

THE NEW YORKER RADIO HOUR

This week, Bruce Springsteen discusses his singular musical career and his personal struggles.

THE MAIL THE ELECTION’S AFTERMATH

I have read much of The New Yorker’s election coverage, both in print and online, and I agree with all that was said about the dangers of Trump and what his Administration might mean for the country. However, I grew increasingly dissatisfied with the content, because it simply reinforced my fears and did not suggest a path forward. The best way to recover from this horrific election is to take action—now. The lesson I learned from Russia, where I come from, is that, when something goes wrong, people merely “hope” that it will change. They wait, they “heal,” and they get back to “business as usual.” This is the last thing you want to do! Dictatorships are built on the control of information and the passivity of its citizens. Dictators refuse to allow a voice to those who oppose them. We witnessed it throughout Trump’s campaign. We should not “wait and see” or “heal and hope” but instead look for effective and straightforward ways to engage with the political process, en masse. A politically active society is the biggest threat to an authoritarian government. The role of the press is to report on how, exactly, people can get involved. Julia Volfson Boston, Mass. For many liberals, the outcome of the election has filled them with a crippling sense of helplessness and horror; despite taking action, they feel essentially voiceless in their own country. This is the same feeling that Muslim Americans experience all the time. In the moments after a terrorist attack, instead of grieving we must wait, in dread of hearing the perpetrator’s name. We know that we will be made to answer for something that we vehemently oppose. To my white liberal friends: welcome to the club. The feeling that you’re experiencing is not going to go away. Your frustration and fear will continue to grow with each new governmental action that violates you or someone you care about. Trump and his supporters are not 6

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

the underbelly of America—they are simply America. The same America whose structural racism allowed the Supreme Court to strike down a key part of the Voting Rights Act and disproportionately disenfranchise minorities. The same America that allows the executive branch to perform extrajudicial killings of Muslims overseas. The same America that protests acts of hate on social media but stands by silently when a girl or woman in hijab is harassed on the streets. This is not all that America is, but it is America. It seems that the people who brought us Trump have also felt voiceless, with little control over their lives. We can’t ignore the role that white supremacy played in this election, but many also viewed a vote for Trump as the only way to regain the agency that they believe has been stolen from them. They are wrong, and it’s mostly people like me who will pay for their mistake. I have not found it in my heart to forgive them, but if their choice stems from the same feeling that minorities and liberals are experiencing now, then perhaps there is an opening for dialogue, and a chance for our two Americas to better understand each other. Yasmine Askari Clarksville, Md. Hillary Rodham Clinton won the popular vote by more than 1.7 million votes (and that number continues to grow as the remaining ballots are tallied). That fact didn’t count, in the end, but it is good to know that the majority of Americans were not suckered by a con man: the electorate actually opted to live in Clinton’s world. It is the Electoral College that has failed us. Every incompetent act that Trump perpetrates will not reﬂect the will of the American people. It will reﬂect on him and on the minority of the electorate who supported him. Sarah Maxwell Archbold, Ohio Throughout the twentieth century, nationalism violently competed with Communism for the mantle of populist em-

powerment. Liberalism was supposed to be the solution, to give us a framework for adjudicating between the competing visions of the good society. It didn’t propose any answers; it just told us how to conduct political discourse—with respect, intellectual compassion, and recognition of common dignity. This time, liberalism lost to nationalism. American voters chose racial and ethnic identity as the center of gravity for political discourse and political violence. Many others, repelled by the movement, will slide into a radicalized left. I hope that the liberal ideal is not down for the count. But, as in the past, it will not be hope but action—individual and collective—that determines our future. John Proios Tucson, Ariz. If you look at the footage of Trump realizing that he might actually be the next President, you will see a man who suddenly grasps the enormity of his own miscalculation. I don’t think that Trump had any intention of actually winning; he wanted to rabble-rouse and then move on to his next moneymaking venture, which would have capitalized on the lawlessness and anger that he helped create. Now he must answer to his own rabble. The American population that elected Trump has very real problems and needs a leader to represent it, not a reality-TV star with no capacity for serving others. When a political candidate is allowed and encouraged by his peers to push the hate and racism buttons for far too long, this is the result: a man who didn’t really want the job, representing people he couldn’t care less about. Now he’ll have to slum it in Washington, answering to his own angry constituents until it becomes apparent to them that they’ve been duped. Laura Stephan-Corio Blairstown, N.J.

• Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

NOVEMBER 30 – DECEMBER 6, 2016

PHOTOGRAPH BY JACK MITCHELL/ALVIN AILEY DANCE FOUNDATION/SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

In times of trouble, dependable sources of inspiration increase in value. By the late nineteen-seventies, when this photograph was taken, Alvin Ailey’s “Revelations” had been raising spirits—and the spirit—for nearly two decades. As Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre settles into City Center for its annual holiday run (Nov. 30-Dec. 31), the work retains an apparently inexhaustible power. It’s joined by new pieces, one that springs from speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., and one registering the pain of mass incarceration.

NIGHT LIFE

1 ROCK AND POP

Musicians and night-club proprietors lead complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in advance to conﬁrm engagements.

Art Department Kenny Glasgow and Jonny White d.j.ed and produced as a duo until just last year. Glasgow recently stepped out on his own to record and release an album, and now White takes command of this dance-music institution that has, at times, rivalled Daft Punk. The pair specialized in deep, downtrodden techno, as on their 2010 single “Without You,” on which a wilted Glasgow laments, “I can’t, I just can’t.” While he and Glasgow remain on good terms and still share a collaborative spirit, White will be on the decks alone at Output this weekend, bearing the team’s flag. He says the only change fans can expect is “a little bit less showmanship during shows . . . O.K., a lot.” (74 Wythe Ave., Brooklyn. outputclub.com. Dec. 3.) Benefit for the Standing Rock Sioux On November 14th, the U.S. Departments of the Army and the Interior issued a joint statement extending the halt on construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, but it’s conventional wisdom that when Donald J. Trump takes office the pipeline construction will resume, based on financial ties

between the President-elect and the companies building it. The cause has roused the best in the punk-rock community, which traditionally allies itself with the oppressed and often uses shows as grassroots fund-raising events. This week, a coalition of snarling hardcore groups, including St. Paul’s Condominium, Boston’s Aggression Pact, and the excellent local act Warthog, will meet in East Williamsburg Industrial Park to protest and to raise money for the cost of the Standing Rock Sioux’s legal defense. Bear in mind, these groups, and their fans, are the real deal; earplugs, bacitracin, and gauze are strongly recommended for the full pit experience. (Sunnyvale, 1031 Grand St., Brooklyn. 347-987-3971. Dec. 3.)

Dinosaur Jr. J. Mascis’s latest incarnation of his pivotal alt band has been around longer than the first. A product of Massachusetts, the group helped spark, and was subsequently swept up in, the Seattle grunge scene and press storm—by the late eighties, they’d broken up after releasing just three albums. In 2005, they had a reunion, and their new music has warmed up indie nostalgists with clear sound mixes that allow Mascis’s guitar theatrics to shine as they should. At their last New York gig, celebrating their August album, “Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not,” Lou Barlow promised, “I swear, next time we’re in town, this will sound better.” They’ll make good on their word for two nights,

during this last leg of their tour. (Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. 212-777-6800. Nov. 30-Dec. 1.)

Stevie Nicks Over the past six years or so, Fleetwood Mac has become a touchstone for a new generation of younger listeners, with the enigmatic singer Stevie Nicks eclipsing the group as an ambassador of seventies cool. Her captivating, occultish stage presence has resonated with overworked millennials hunting for secular, low-dose spirituality—it was hard to find a summer time-share not blasting her trademark songs, like “Gold Dust Woman,” “Landslide,” or “Rhiannon.” This week, she brings her “24 Karat Gold” tour to the Garden. The set includes all the hits, but also some rarely performed non-Fleetwood Mac gems, like her solo anthem “Wild Heart” and material from “Buckingham Nicks,” a 1973 project that predated her involvement with the band that made her famous. (Madison Square Garden, Seventh Ave. at 33rd St. 800-745-3000. Dec. 1.)

1 JAZZ AND STANDARDS

Tomas Fujiwara Double Trio Deliberately seeing double in the cause of exploratory new jazz, Fujiwara (paired with his fellowdrummer Gerald Cleaver) brings together instrumentalists primed to rub each other in all the right and creatively wrong ways, including the trumpeter Ralph Alessi, the cornettist Taylor Ho Bynum, and the guitarists Mary Halvorson and Brandon Seabrook. (Jazz Gallery, 1160 Broadway, at 27th St., fifth fl. 646494-3625. Nov. 30-Dec. 1.) The Power Quintet Uniting five imposing stylists—the trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, the vibraphonist Steve Nelson, the pianist Danny Grissett, the bassist Peter Washington, and the drummer Bill Stewart—this polished coöperative has already displayed the goods on its début album, “High Art,” released earlier this year. A club appearance can only confirm the felicity of their merger. (Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. 212-576-2232. Dec. 1-4.)

Randy Weston’s African Rhythms Quintet Imposing in stature and influence, this Brooklynborn pianist and composer has been mining the common ground between homegrown jazz and African musical idioms since the early sixties. The ninety-year-old master revels in churning rhythm and plush textures alongside some trusted associates, including the saxophonists T. K. Blue and Billy Harper and the bassist Alex Blake. (Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Broadway at 60th St. 212-258-9595. Dec. 2-4.)

Hardcore helps this week at Sunnyvale, where Sick Head, Concealed Blade, JJ Doll, Aggression Pact, Warthog, and Condominium will raise funds to support legal fees for water protectors at Standing Rock. 10

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

Steve Wilson and Wilsonian’s Grain Wilson is a trusted A-list sideman who knows just what to do when he takes command of the stage. The expressive alto saxophonist and flutist’s quartet is bolstered by such familiars as the pianist Orrin Evans and the bassist Ugonna Okegwo. (Smoke, 2751 Broadway, between 105th and 106th Sts. 212-864-6662. Dec. 2-4.)

ILLUSTRATION BY KRISTIAN HAMMERSTAD

Olli Soikkeli Django Reinhardt’s Gypsy jazz became an international musical dialect long ago, so it isn’t all that strange that Soikkeli, one of the most adept and resourceful contemporary guitarists in that still potent idiom, hails from Finland. Recently heard with the charging Rhythm Future Quartet, here Soikkeli fronts a trio with Julien Labro on accordion. (Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia St. 212-989-9319. Dec. 4.)

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Susanna Phillips and Eric Owens take the leading roles in the Met première of “L’Amour de Loin.”

The Sound of Love

ILLUSTRATION BY REBEKKA DUNLAP

Kaija Saariaho’s compelling ﬁrst opera is staged at the Met.

The distinguished composer Kaija Saariaho, who is sixty-four, would not have seemed to be the type of musician who would excel in the world of opera. Finnish-born, but long a paragon of the Parisian institutional avant-garde, Saariaho writes music that, like that of many of her colleagues, is a rigorously scientiﬁc exploration of the inner life of sound. In many a Saariaho piece, an arresting sonic statement is presented at the start, big in impact but

full of small voices that subtly fragment, bloom, or disappear. Listening to it can be a dazzling experience, though it is essentially a static one; the music lacks the narrative thrust that musical drama usually requires. What sets her apart, however, is her gift for weaving elements of mysticism and sensuality into that essentially intellectual quest, in a manner that has been more expressively refined and emotionally restrained than that of Messiaen, a composer who nonetheless deeply influenced her. And in “L’Amour de Loin” (“Love from Afar”), Saariaho’s acclaimed first opera, from

2000, which she wrote in collaboration with the librettist Amin Maalouf, she proved that her stylistic approach could work in splendid ways. The piece comes to the Metropolitan Opera on Dec. 1, the first opera written by a woman to be performed there in more than a century. The story is inspired by a historical character, the nobleman Jaufré Rudel, a celebrated twelfth-century French troubadour. But Saariaho and Maalouf ’s treatment has deep roots in a much more modern musical world, that of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” and Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” operas in which ardent aristocrats make ocean journeys and seek ideal love. Rudel, tiring of mere pleasure, is told by a travelling Pilgrim—who, like Wagner’s Brangäne, is less of an innocent bystander than she appears—of the Countess of Tripoli, a woman who is everything he desires. He is enticed; the Pilgrim crosses the Mediterranean to relate this to the pure-hearted Countess, who in turn expresses her own interest. Emotions rise, more crossings are made, until Rudel, à la Tristan, overcome by a passion that has morphed into an illness, dies in the grieving Countess’s arms. Saariaho’s singular language, deftly interwoven with passages suggesting medieval European song and Middle Eastern drumming, brings this rarefied world to life. Like another millennial work, Osvaldo Golijov’s “Passion According to St. Mark,” “L’Amour” comes from an optimistic time when self-imposed barriers to musical expression were breaking down and an aesthetic utopia seemed near. More than a decade later, the dystopian worlds of David T. Little’s “Dog Days” and George Benjamin’s “Written on Skin”— the first set in a nervous American future, the second in a squalid European past—define our own operatic era. Ideal love seems a dangerously nostalgic notion. —Russell Platt THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

CLASSICAL MUSIC

OPERA

Metropolitan Opera Compared to the fully realized tragic majesty of Tosca or Madama Butterfly, the heroine in “Manon Lescaut,” Puccini’s first great operatic success, is more of a rough sketch. Yet the ravishing voice and undeniable charisma of the alluring Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, the star of the Met’s current production, certainly provide adequate compensation. Richard Eyre’s staging, which moves the setting from the rarefied world of eighteenth-century Paris to the German occupation during the Second World War, leaves Marcelo Álvarez (a powerful Des Grieux) and Christopher Maltman (a vigorous Lescaut) dramatically aimless; but the conductor, Marco Armiliato, builds the show to a riveting conclusion. Nov. 30 at 8 and Dec. 3 at 12:30. • The Met première of Kaija Saariaho’s acclaimed opera “L’Amour de Loin” is the first opera by a woman presented by the house in more than a century. The Met has entrusted the staging to Robert Lepage, whose “Ring” flopped but who has certainly done excellent work on other occasions. Susanna Phillips, Eric Owens, and Tamara Mumford take the leading roles; Susanna Mälkki, a widely admired young Finnish conductor, makes her début. Dec. 1 and Dec. 6 at 7:30. • Sonja Frisell’s time-honored production of “Aida”—beloved for its soaring sets and picture-perfect evocations of ancient Egypt— returns with a promising cast that features Latonia Moore, Marco Berti, Ekaterina Gubanova, and Mark Delavan in the leading roles; Marco Armiliato. Dec. 2 at 8. • Puccini’s evergreen romance, “La Bohème,” continues its long run at the house. The heavy hitters Piotr Beczala and Kristine Opolais lead a new cast that includes Brigitta Kele, Massimo Cavalletti, and Ryan Speedo Green; Armiliato. Dec. 3 at 8. • Patricia Racette is one of the most versatile and accomplished sopranos on the Met’s roster, but she has nonetheless managed to surprise operagoers by adding the title role of Richard Strauss’s “Salome”—a notoriously difficult part, demanding an ample voice, fine musicianship, and over-thetop theatrics—to her repertoire. She leads a cast that includes Željko Lučić, Gerhard Siegel, and Nancy Fabiola Herrera; Johannes Debus. Dec. 5 at 8. (Metropolitan Opera House. 212-362-6000.)

1 ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES

New York Philharmonic Bernard Labadie, the greatly respected (and lyrically gifted) Canadian conductor and periodperformance expert, is returning to the Philharmonic’s podium in music by Mozart, one of his specialties. The program includes the Flute Concerto No. 2 in D Major (with the orchestra’s extraordinary principal, Robert Langevin), the cantata “Exsultate, Jubilate” (with the soprano Ying Fang), and two of the composer’s most charming symphonies, No. 31 in D Major (“Paris”) and No. 39 in E-Flat Major. Dec. 1 at 7:30 and Dec. 2-3 at 8. (David Geffen Hall. 212-875-5656.) Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra The magnificent Dutch ensemble comes to Carnegie Hall under the baton of Semyon Bychkov. He’ll return to Gotham in the winter to conduct music by Tchaikovsky with the New York Philharmonic; this concert, however, offers a New York première by the noted German composer Detlev Glanert as well as Mahler’s Fifth Sym12

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

phony, which has a long performance tradition in Amsterdam. Nov. 30 at 8. (212-247-7800.)

TENET: “Green Mountain Project” The vocalists and instrumentalists who make up this early-music collective once again lavish their attention on the intricacies of Monteverdi’s sprawling choral masterpiece, “Vespers of 1610.” The performances, which have become a holiday tradition for the group, are conducted by Scott Metcalfe and feature the brass ensemble Dark Horse Consort. (A portion of the tickets will be distributed for free to students, seniors, and charitable organizations.) Dec. 2-3 at 7:30. (St. Jean Baptiste Church, 184 E. 76th St. tenet.nyc.) Orpheus Chamber Orchestra The conductorless chamber orchestra’s next Carnegie Hall appearance presents the visceral Turkish pianist-composer Fazil Say, who performs his Concerto No. 2, Op. 4, “Silk Road,” a work driven by the multicultural folk music heard along the ancient trade route. Say also plays Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, while the orchestra goes it alone in Rossini’s Overture to “La Scala di Seta” and Haydn’s Symphony No. 83 (“The Hen”). Dec. 3 at 7. (212-247-7800.)

1 RECITALS

So Percussion: “A Gun Show” The group’s searching and superb musicians offer a very serious entertainment that examines America’s intense, and deadly, relationship with firearms. This theatrical presentation, featuring recitation and choreography, is directed by Ain Gordon. Nov. 30 and Dec. 1-3 at 7:30. (BAM Harvey Theatre, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn. bam.org.) Variation Trio A new chamber ensemble featuring three outstanding players—the violinist Jennifer Koh, the violist Hsin-Yun Huang, and the cellist Wilhelmina Smith—makes its début at the 92nd Street Y in a bracing program of music by modern masters: Kaija Saariaho (“Cloud Trio”), György Kurtág, and Andrew Norman (“The Companion Guide to Rome”). Nov. 30 at 8:30. (Lexington Ave. at 92nd St. 212-415-5500.) Miller Theatre “Composer Portrait”: Zosha Di Castri Miller’s “Portrait” series has become a consistent advocate for modernism, a movement that includes several members of Columbia’s music department. Di Castri, recently appointed to the faculty, writes pieces in which two basic forces of music—instrumental color and rhythmic propulsion—are smoothly balanced. Two superb ensembles—the percussion-and-piano quartet Yarn/ Wire and the vocal group Ekmeles—perform several of her works, including two premières. Dec. 1 at 8. (Broadway at 116th St. 212-854-7799.) Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: “Solo Bach” J. S. Bach’s works for unaccompanied instruments are each a master class in how to make a traditionally melodic instrument sound like a contrapuntal chorale. In this concert, the Society offers a number of its artists as one-person Bach bands, including the cellist Colin Carr (in the majestic Suite No. 3 in C Major) and the violinist Ani Kavafian (in the Sonata in G Minor for violin, revered for its daunting fugue). Dec. 4 at 5. (Alice Tully Hall. 212-875-5788.)

ART

1 MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES

MOMA PS1 “Mark Leckey” In his first major museum retrospective in the U.S., deftly curated by Peter Eleey, the British artist weaves autobiography, underground music, and technology into profound—and profoundly entertaining—investigations of culture and collective consciousness. “Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore,” the trancelike pre-YouTube montage of VHS fan footage, which announced Leckey as a major talent in 1999, holds up as a beautiful paean to the rave and techno scenes that were so formative to his artistic sensibility. The 2015 film “Dream English Kid, 1964-1999” functions as a kind of prequel: the impressionistic narrative of “found memories” artfully sutures together clips that were captured and uploaded by other people. Leckey’s poetic, pleasantly nostalgic processes of excavation and aggregation are not confined to any one medium, though. For his ongoing “UniAddDumThs” project, begun in 2013, the artist makes physical replicas of images he finds on Google. In the resulting displays, alternately slick and makeshift knockoffs mingle on pedestals, copies of everything from a bionic hand to a fourteenth-century manuscript to a Robert Gober sculpture. We all keep secret shrines to our personal tastes; it’s to Leckey’s credit, and our benefit, that he makes his public, never taking himself too seriously. Through March 5. Museum of the City of New York “Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York.” This large show, examining queer subcultures and the art that arose from them, is at its best in the first half, which presents such prewar gender benders as the “pansy performers” of nineteentwenties Greenwich Village, beloved of Mae West. On the street, conformity was prudent, but, in private, things often got edgier. George Platt Lynes photographed himself in a racy two-tone leotard; James Van Der Zee took a portrait of an imperious gent in a fox stole and a flapper bob. The show’s postwar half suffers from a greatest-hits vibe: Andy Warhol’s screen tests, Peter Hujar’s portrait of a recumbent Susan Sontag, Robert Mapplethorpe’s sadomasochistic formalism, Keith Haring and Bill T. Jones’s body art responding to AIDS. There are small delights, though, such as the photographs of black drag balls in the late eighties by Chantal Regnault and a 1978 lithograph announcing “A Lesbian Show,” whose Klee-like illustration of a spindly interior was made by a young Amy Sillman. Through Feb. 26.

1 GALLERIES—CHELSEA

William Eggleston One of America’s greatest living photographers shows pictures from his sprawling series “The Democratic Forest,” shot between 1983 and 1986. (Most of the images are being exhibited for the first time.) The title derives from Eggleston’s interest in “photographing democratically,” giving every subject equal consideration, no matter how apparently base. True, a forlorn row of empty parking spaces, marked with oil-stain stigmata, merits the same at-

ART tention from his camera as an angelic boy regarding a magazine ad for firearms. But, in some sense, the title is a rhetorical ruse. Eggleston’s sensitivity to light and color, and to a peculiarly American melancholy, links his pictures to the paintings of Edward Hopper; far from creating a flat hierarchy of images, he revels in the glorious specificity of each one. As he has said, “I am at war with the obvious.” Through Dec. 17. (Zwirner, 537 W. 20th St. 212-517-8677.)

Jonathan Meese When he was younger, the German provocateur was often labelled an enfant terrible. But Meese, now forty-six, is still churning the history of his homeland into anarchic, sexually charged, and reliably sloppy paintings, plays, and operas, none of which are for the easily offended. (The artist has been tried and acquitted in German courts more than once for the crime of using the Nazi salute in his performances.) His first New York outing in five years features comparatively decorous works on paper: ballpoint sketches of sprites wearing the Iron Cross, illustrated books slathered with fluorescent paint, and a powerfully indecorous portrait of Richard Wagner, whose redemptive “Parsifal” is one of the artist’s touchstones. A large-scale installation—a walk-in fun house of collaged body parts and anxious scrawling—gives a sense of Meese at full blast. Through Dec. 17. (Nolan, 527 W. 29th St. 212-925-6190.) Paulina Olowska In the Polish artist’s new show, “Wisteria, Mysteria, Hysteria,” haunted-house candelabras accompany big, drizzly paintings—windows onto a stylized countryside, in which imposing female figures suggest tarot-deck archetypes. “The Mycologist” depicts its titular mushroom collector as a high-fashion occultist in a damp forest, a raven about to perch on her shoulder. In “The Gardener,” a chic, sombre woman, her hat askew, wields pruning shears beside a scribbly flower bed. Olowska lives and works in the small village of Rabka-Zdrój, a nineteenth-century spa town, and she draws on its folkloric history, as well as on the palette of post-Impressionist painting, in these grand, theatrical canvases. They bode well for the artist’s upcoming performance work, created in collaboration with the choreographer Katy Pyle and the composer Sergei Tcherepnin, which débuts at the Kitchen in January. Through Dec. 22. (Metro Pictures, 519 W. 24th St. 212-206-7100.)

ILLUSTRATION BY RICHIE POPE

GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN

Diane Simpson The auspicious first show in the gallery’s new, larger space offers a rare encounter with the exacting early work of the tremendous Chicago artist. The free-standing sculptures in Simpson’s “Samurai” series, made in the nineteen-eighties, feel at once ancient and futuristic, evoking sleek architectural elements, humble woodworking projects, robots, vessels, dresses, and, of course, the Japanese armor that inspired them. They impress from afar but reward close inspection, with precisely textured surfaces that have been subtly stained pinkish, flaxen, mossy, white, or gray. A print, from 1981, diagrams the shapely components of one of the sculptures, revealing that Simpson’s mysterious geometric forms are ingeniously constructed from slotted pieces of M.D.F. Assembly instructions are provided in a tidy script, a generous gesture that implies you might want to make one of your own—and who wouldn’t? Through Jan. 15. (JTT, 191 Chrystie St. 212-574-8152.)

THE THEATRE

Stoking the Fire Meshell Ndegeocello creates a show based on a classic text by James Baldwin. Throughout his career, James Baldwin had a hankering to work in show business. Like Henry James, one of his early heroes, Baldwin loved the footlights; early on, with his friend and editor Sol Stein, he collaborated on a still unproduced television script based on his 1955 essay “Equal in Paris.” For a while, the Harlem-raised writer worked with the director Elia Kazan, as the latter prepared Tennessee Williams’s “Sweet Bird of Youth” for Broadway, and in the nineteen-sixties he was hired to adapt his friend Malcolm X’s “Autobiography” for the screen. The project did not go well, and Baldwin fled Hollywood, and its conventionality, with his script in hand. (It was published as a book in 1972.) Over the years, a number of Baldwin devotees have produced theatre and film projects based on his legacy, including the actor Colman Domingo, who starred in the show “Nothing Personal,” two years ago, about the writer’s relationship with his high-school friend, the photographer Richard Avedon. Coming up in February is the director Raoul Peck’s documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” which incorporates previously unpublished texts by the writer. The Washington, D.C.raised singer and bass player Meshell

Ndegeocello’s “Can I Get a Witness? The Gospel of James Baldwin” comes to Harlem Stage, Dec. 7-11. Inspired by Baldwin’s classic 1963 text, “The Fire Next Time”—part of which appeared in this magazine as “Letter from a Region in My Mind”—Ndegeocello’s piece, staged as a church service, employs music, sermon, text, images, and movement, all of which enter into conversation with Baldwin’s monumental and delicate essay about how black bodies were perceived not only by white Americans but by blacks themselves. In the first part of the work, Baldwin wrestles with—without naming it—his homosexuality, and with the strain of being “saved,” when he knew, by virtue of his preference, that he was among the so-called dispossessed. In a way, the project can be considered a sister work to Ndegeocello’s 2012 studio album, “Pour une Âme Souveraine,” which features her interpretation of signature Nina Simone tunes. Simone and Baldwin knew each other in France, where they both went to get some distance from the racism that threatened to suffocate them. It was that distance that afforded Baldwin the chance to write about the U.S., that conundrum otherwise known as home. It was a world that despised his black queer body but which gave him his voice—and the romance of combining entertainment with thought. —Hilton Als THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

1 OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS

The Babylon Line Richard Greenberg’s new play, set in 1967, follows a Greenwich Village writer (Josh Radnor) who connects with a student (Elizabeth Reaser) while teaching an adult-ed class in Levittown. (Mitzi E. Newhouse, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200. In previews. Opens Dec. 5.) The Band’s Visit David Cromer directs a new musical by David Yazbek and Itamar Moses, based on a 2007 Israeli film about an Egyptian orchestra that gets stranded in the Negev Desert. (Atlantic Theatre Company, 336 W. 20th St. 866-811-4111. In previews.) A Bronx Tale Robert De Niro and Jerry Zaks co-direct a musical adaptation of Chazz Palminteri’s semiautobiographical one-man show, set in his native borough in the sixties and featuring a doo-wop score by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater. (Longacre, 220 W. 48th St. 212-239-6200. In previews. Opens Dec. 1.) Dear Evan Hansen Ben Platt plays an antisocial teen-ager who finds himself in a moral quandary after a classmate’s death, in a new musical by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, and Steven Levenson, directed by Michael Greif. (Music Box, 239 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. In previews. Opens Dec. 4.) Elements of Oz The Builders Association’s multimedia piece, created by James Gibbs and Moe Angelos, uses augmentedreality technology to tell the stories behind the film “The Wizard of Oz.” (3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Greenwich St. 800-838-3006. Previews begin Dec. 1.) His Royal Hipness Lord Buckley Jake Broder wrote and stars in this tribute to the mid-century comedian, who drew on bebop rhythms to create an outré countercultural persona. (59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200. Previews begin Dec. 6.) Longing Lasts Longer The downtown fixture Penny Arcade performs a piece about the gentrification of New York City and the effects of capitalism on creativity. (St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water St., Brooklyn. 718-2548779. Previews begin Dec. 1. Opens Dec. 4.) Rancho Viejo In Dan LeFranc’s comedy, directed by Daniel Aukin, the residents of a Southwestern suburb gossip and fret over the separation of an unseen married couple. (Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. In previews. Opens Dec. 6.) Ride the Cyclone MCC Theatre presents a musical by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell, in which a chamber choir involved in a tragic roller-coaster accident meets a magical fortune-teller. (Lucille Lortel, 121 Christopher St. 212-352-3101. In previews. Opens Dec. 1.) Tiny Beautiful Things Nia Vardalos stars in a stage adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s book, a collection from her stint writing the advice column “Dear Sugar.” Thomas Kail directs. (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555. In previews.) The Wolves An encore run of Sarah DeLappe’s play, directed by Lila Neugebauer and set at the practice ses14

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

THE THEATRE sions for a girls’ soccer team in the suburbs. (The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 W. 42nd St. 646-223-3010. In previews. Opens Dec. 5.)

1 NOW PLAYING

The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World This exceptional production of Suzan-Lori Parks’s 1990 work is directed by a great new talent, Lileana Blain-Cruz. The play, which borrows elements from Adrienne Kennedy and Ntozake Shange, tells the story of Black Man with Watermelon (Daniel J. Watts), who is married to Black Woman with Fried Drumstick (Roslyn Ruff). Various characters— Prunes and Prisms (the wonderful Mirirai Sithole) and Lots of Grease and Lots of Pork (Jamar Williams), for instance—take the stage individually but also move en masse: they are ideas about blackness clustering together, then separating, like beautiful molecules, as we learn that Black Man with Watermelon is, in fact, dead. What Parks is saying—and not saying—is that the marginalization of black men means that their lives can be trivialized and forgotten if there is no one around to remember them. (Reviewed in our issue of 11/28/16.) (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-244-7529.) A Life In Adam Bock’s new play, the fortyish Nate Martin (David Hyde Pierce, giving one of those performances that take you over, moment by sensitively explicated moment) lives in a small New York City apartment. Using astrology as a tool, he tries to figure out why none of his love affairs worked out, why he was dumped or did the dumping. He’s the kind of guy people strain to remember over late-night drinks, long after he’s gone; he’s a faded sketch even before he dies. That he does die comes as a surprise, but not as big a surprise as the loss we feel when this genial fellow is silenced. The director, Anne Kauffman, doesn’t try to make the script more than it is; she helps to reveal the subtleties and the weirdness at its heart. (11/7/16) (Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. Through Dec. 4.) My Name Is Gideon: I’m Probably Going to Die, Eventually Gideon Irving starts off his solo evening of staged songs by wielding whimsy like a weapon, which may turn off theatregoers with little patience for selfconsciously quirky singer-songwriters. It takes a while to get used to the relentless charm offensive, but Irving does build an inventive little universe that is very much his own. As this rough-and-tumble faux-naïf works his way through his pared-down, Americana-flavored songbook, each number reveals new marvels, from the clever way Irving loops his voice and instruments to the many surprises lurking in the set’s nooks and crannies. Irving has often performed in people’s houses in the past, staying with his hosts afterward, but this time he’s built a stage home for us to visit. He’s a bit like Pee-wee Herman’s hootenanny cousin, springing delightful surprises on his guests—affected in his nonchalance, but ultimately winning. (Rattlestick, 224 Waverly Pl. 866-811-4111.) Othello: The Remix The latest rapid-fire rap adaptation of a classic text by the Q Brothers—whose first such show, “The Bomb-itty of Errors,” was a hit in 1999—borrows the plot but none of the language of Shakespeare’s tragedy, updating the milieu and the idiom to the world of hip-hop, in eighty minutes of impressive precision. Othello (Postell Pringle) is an affable superstar rapper, and Cassio (Jackson

Doran) is his corny yet cocky protégé, to whom Iago (GQ) plays bitter third fiddle. (GQ’s sibling JQ rounds out the cast in several silly roles, including a tennis-obsessed music executive named Loco Vito.) The murder of Desdemona (who is heard but not seen) is one of the few moments not played for comedy, a jarring departure that, along with Pringle’s perfect crescendo of rage, lends the scene even more horror than usual. (Westside, 407 W. 43rd St. 212-239-6200.)

Sweat Lynn Nottage’s play is set, primarily, in 2000, in a bar in Reading, Pennsylvania. Tracey (Johanna Day) enters, ready to shake off the tedium of the day with her pals from the steel-tubing factory where she works—the hard-drinking Jessie (Miriam Shor) and the high-voiced, trying-to-keeppain-at-bay Cynthia (Michelle Wilson), who is black. The bonds of friendship are tested when Cynthia becomes a foreman at the plant and huge changes occur: the new owners want the workers to take a buyout. The workers go on strike. Unemployment breeds distrust and hatred. The director, Kate Whoriskey, stages this and the ensuing disasters with clarity and verve. Nottage and Whoriskey spent a great deal of time in Reading, interviewing factory workers and survivors—if that’s the word—of the economic downturn, and you can hear the region in Nottage’s lines; the people there got into her bones. (11/28/16) (Public, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555.) This Day Forward The first act of Nicky Silver’s latest play focusses on a catastrophic wedding night in 1958, when secrets and lies explode. The archly comic tone and trying-too-hard slapstick appear to aim for screwball-neurotic boulevard, but they fall disastrously flat. Fast-forward to 2004, when Act II informs us of that fateful night’s legacy; few will be surprised to learn that “happily ever after” is not exactly in the cards when deceit is baked into a relationship. The show’s ending is an improvement, though, because Silver is on surer ground writing zingers for the tough-minded, acid-tongued matriarch (June Gable), reminiscent of the one played by Linda Lavin in his 2011 hit, “The Lyons.” Still, it says quite a bit about the rest of the characters that once again you end up rooting for the woman wrecking their lives. (Vineyard, 108 E. 15th St. 212-353-0303.)

1 ALSO NOTABLE

The Cherry Orchard American Airlines Theatre. Through Dec. 4. • The Encounter Golden. • Fal settos Walter Kerr. • Finian’s Rainbow Irish Repertory. • The Front Page Broadhurst. • Heisen berg Samuel J. Friedman. • Holiday Inn Studio 54. • The Illusionists: Turn of the Century Palace. • In Transit Circle in the Square. • Les Li aisons Dangereuses Booth. • “Master Harold” . . . and the Boys Pershing Square Signature Center. • Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 Imperial. • Notes from the Field Second Stage. • Oh, Hello on Broadway Lyceum. • Othel lo New York Theatre Workshop. • Party People Public. • Plenty Public. Through Dec. 1. • Sell / Buy / Date City Center Stage II. Through Dec. 3. • The Servant of Two Masters Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Through Dec. 4. • Sweet Char ity Pershing Square Signature Center. (Reviewed in this issue.) • Tick, Tick . . . Boom! Acorn. • Vietgone City Center Stage I. Through Dec. 4. • Women of a Certain Age Public.

DANCE New York City Ballet / “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” Balanchine’s classic 1954 ballet has a bit of everything: cozy family dances, conflict, drama—enter Dewdrop with her urgent leaps—and sugarplums, too. (David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-496-0600. Nov. 30-Dec. 4 and Dec. 6. Through Dec. 31.) ZviDance / “On the Road” Zvi Gotheiner, best known as a highly regarded New York dance teacher, is also a choreographer. His newest evening-length work, “On the Road,” is inspired by the 1957 Kerouac novel, as well as by Gotheiner’s own cross-country travels. Set against projections of shifting landscapes captured along back roads, it touches on ideas about freedom, rebellion, and the mystery and breadth of America. (BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Pl., Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. Nov. 30-Dec. 3.) Lucinda Childs Dance Company Childs has been constructing dances for more than fifty years, walking the line between tedium and transcendence. A two-week season at the Joyce continues with a career-spanning program, rang-

ing from her first solo (“Pastime,” from 1963) to “Into View,” a short première set to indie-rock minimalism. The second week’s program (starting Dec. 6) brings back Childs’s 1979 work “Dance,” a large-scale breakthrough with a score by Philip Glass. The current dancers perform it juxtaposed with Sol LeWitt’s film of the original cast, an arrangement that turns a work meditating on perception into one reflecting on time. (175 Eighth Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. Nov. 30-Dec. 4 and Dec. 6. Through Dec. 11.)

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre The opening-night program is a collection of pieces set to jazz, mostly old and a bit hoary, apart from a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald by the company’s artistic director, Robert Battle. The rest of the season shows how thoroughly Battle has updated the repertory of late. Premières include an expressionist take on “Bolero” by the Swedish choreographer Johan Inger and the completion of “Untitled America,” Kyle Abraham’s murky, pain-wracked, three-part response to mass incarceration. (City Center, 131 W. 55th St. 212581-1212. Nov. 30-Dec. 4 and Dec. 6. Through Dec. 31.)

MOVIES

1 OPENING

Forest Whitaker, as her military handler.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 11/14/16.) (In wide release.)

Always Shine Sophia Takal directed this drama, about

two young actresses (Mackenzie Davis and Caitlin FitzGerald) whose friendship is strained by their struggle for success. Opening Dec. 2. (In limited release.) • The Eyes of My Mother Reviewed in Now Playing. Opening Dec. 2. (In limited release.) • Jackie Reviewed this week in The Current Cinema. Opening Dec. 2. (In limited release.) • Things to Come Reviewed in Now Playing. Opening Dec. 2. (In limited release.)

1 NOW PLAYING

Arrival The new Denis Villeneuve movie stars Amy Adams as Dr. Louise Banks, a noted linguist who is asked by the authorities to translate a previously unknown language—if, indeed, a language is what it is. Sounds of some kind, followed by graceful inky symbols written in midair, are being emitted by tentacled aliens, which have appeared in twelve locations around the planet, and Louise, based at a site in Montana, must determine whether these communications are cordial or malign. World peace and all that jazz is now at stake—should we befriend these giant squids or go to war and turn them into fritto misto? The story is Villeneuve’s most balanced work to date, tempering the pessimistic gloom that benumbed his film “Prisoners” (2013) with a pulse of excitement; the blush of awe and fear on Adams’s face is contagious, and the framing of the egg-like spaceships, within and without, sucks you into the thrill of the ordeal. The movie is capacious in scale but strangely inward in mood, aided by the unshowy performances of Jeremy Renner, as Louise’s scientific colleague, and 16

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

Canyon Passage The smell of death hangs heavy over the Edenic splendor of the Oregon landscape of Jacques Tourneur’s 1946 Western. Dana Andrews stars as Logan Stuart, an ambitious and wide-travelling trader who brings his best friend’s fiancée (Susan Hayward) to the remote town where her betrothed, George Camrose (Brian Donlevy), a local banker, and his own fiancée, Caroline (Patricia Roc), live. There, Logan finds a thug (Ward Bond) who tried to rob him and a rancher (Andy Devine) whose outpost is the heart of a growing settlement. Tourneur sets in motion a complex array of subplots and side characters—including an inquisitive entertainer (Hoagy Carmichael), an icy saloon matron (Rose Hobart), and her cardsharp husband (Onslow Stevens)—that offers a quasi-sociological view of frontier life. The relentless drinking, gambling, gunplay, and battles with Native Americans blend with struggles for love and money to evoke a raw and violent culture that plays, in the year after the Second World War ended, as utterly contemporary; avoiding history and politics, Tourneur serves up, in a dreamlike Technicolor glow, a pastoral film noir.—Richard Brody (Metrograph; Dec. 3.) The Devil Probably Constructed as a flashback from news reports of a young man’s suicide, Robert Bresson’s splenetic 1977 drama puts the post-1968 world on trial and judges it unlivable. Charles (Antoine Monnier), a quietly imperious sensualist of blazing intelligence, lives in a bare garret and does little but chase women. Essaying the gamut of modern pursuits—politics, religion, education, drugs, psychoanalysis—he finds them all

“DoublePlus”: Dylan Crossman/Caleb Teicher In the “DoublePlus” series, veteran artists pick pairings of less recognized ones. Here, David Parker, whose career has bridged the worlds of contemporary dance and tap, draws from both sides. Crossman, a former member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and still an unaffected standout with Pam Tanowitz, is joined by three other dancers and a table for his “[Insert Title].” Teicher, best known as a tap dancer, collaborates with Nathan Bugh in “Meet Ella,” which channels swing dancing into the atypical form of a male duet. (Gibney Dance, 280 Broadway. 646-837-6809. Dec. 1-3.) “Peter & the Wolf” Prokofiev created this thirty-minute piece in 1936 for the Moscow Children’s Theatre. It tells the uplifting tale of a brave but disobedient young boy, while introducing the instruments of the orchestra. Peter is represented by a string motif; his grandfather, by the bassoon; the unfortunate and dim-witted duck, by a plaintive oboe. In this annual “Works & Process” show, Isaac Mizrahi is the avuncular narrator; the story is illustrated through John Heginbotham’s witty choreography. It’s a delight. (Guggenheim Museum, Fifth Ave. at 89th St. 212-423-3575. Dec. 3-4. Through Dec. 11.) pointless, and his despair is deepened by documentary footage of dire pollution which he watches at the home of an environmentalist (Henri de Maublanc), whose girlfriend he steals. Bresson’s chilling visions of daily life—including a brilliant sequence aboard a bus which depicts the mechanical world as a horror—suggest its hostility toward the passions of youth. The film offers a near-parody of the spiritual universe of Bresson’s earlier films: these children of the revolution tremble with uncertainty, and their loose gestures and shambling ways conflict with his precise images. Both the world and Bresson’s cinema are in disarray, and the signs of his inner conflict are deeply troubling and tremendously moving. In French.—R.B. (Metrograph; Dec. 2.)

Elle A clever, nasty, and seductive piece of work from Paul Verhoeven, who, as the director of “RoboCop,” “Basic Instinct,” and “Showgirls,” has never been allergic to controversy. Isabelle Huppert plays Michèle Leblanc, who runs a company specializing in gruesome video games. Divorced and living alone in a suburb of Paris, she is raped by a masked intruder. Instead of reporting the crime to the police, she sets about the process of revenge, in a manner so tranquil and determined that she herself becomes almost frightening. Along the way, we learn of a terrible secret in her past, although, truth be told, Huppert is so coolly formidable in the role that no backstory is required. One of the film’s most disturbing traits is how often, and how cruelly, it touches on comedy. As for the whodunit, Verhoeven and his screenwriter, David Birke, seem unconcerned; the puzzle is solved long before the end, freeing them to concentrate on the mystery of Michèle herself. With Huppert in this kind of form, you can hardly blame them. With Christian Berkel, as the heroine’s lover, and Charles Berling, as her weary ex. In French.—A.L. (11/21/16) (In limited release.) The Eyes of My Mother At a secluded farmhouse, a mother and her young daughter are approached by a smiling stranger. He is invited in, and from that small act of kindness a

MOVIES history of nastiness unfurls. It’s neither softened nor stunted by the years; on the contrary, the child grows into a self-possessed young woman (Kika Magalhaes) who continues to perpetrate savage acts as if they were social niceties. Unfamiliar cuts of meat are kept in the fridge. Nicolas Pesce’s début feature, strikingly shot by Zach Kuperstein in black-and-white, is curt and crisp, running less than eighty minutes; yet it seems to crawl along, so punishingly grim are the details of bodily harm, and so intent is Pesce on the trancelike behavior of his heroine. Although we are in America, both the place and the period feel vague and insecure, and the movie, for all its physicality, shrivels up at the slightest touch of logic. All of which, to be fair, is likely to lure rather than to repel any Poe-steeped addicts of horror; budding necrophiliacs, too, will find themselves instructed and entertained.—A.L. (In limited release.)

EVERETT

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them What began as a short book by J. K. Rowling, published in 2001 in aid of charity, has led to this: the first of five planned movies spun off from the world of Harry Potter. The year is 1926, and Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), a Hogwarts alumnus so dithering that he makes Hugh Grant look like General Patton, disembarks in New York, where a newspaper headline reads “Is Anyone Safe?” Newt has a suitcase full of magic—step into it and you find yourself in a menagerie of unearthly creatures. By accident, these are let loose in the city, and Newt must run around corralling them, with the help of a portly human, Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler). Also in the offing is a pair of wizarding sisters (Katherine Waterston and Alison Sudol), a witch hunter (Samantha Morton), and a menace named Percival Graves (Colin Farrell). David Yates’s movie, with a script by Rowling herself, marks a welcome change from the cloistered settings and adolescent agonies of the Potter franchise, and offers more of an opportunity for the supernatural to knock against the humdrum. The subway can be scarier than a castle.—A.L. (11/28/16) (In wide release.)

Lion A small boy called Saroo (Sunny Pawar), born into a poor Indian family, falls asleep on a train and wakes up more than a thousand miles from his home. Eventually, after escaping various perils, he winds up in an orphanage; from there, he is adopted by an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham) and goes to live with them in Tasmania. We jump twenty years, to Saroo as a young man (now played by Dev Patel), who has an American girlfriend (Rooney Mara) and an unappeasable wish to discover where he came from. Whether that desire has grown with time is unclear, but now, at last, it can be fulfilled, thanks to the miracle of Google Earth (for which the movie is an unabashed commercial). As is proved by documentary footage at the end, Garth Davis’s film is based on a true story; though wrenching, there is barely enough of it to fill the dramatic space, and the second half is a slow and muted affair after the Dickensian punch of the first. The undoubted star is Pawar, whose début commands attention much as Sabu’s did, in “Elephant Boy,” some eighty years ago.—A.L. (In limited release.) The Love Witch Anna Biller ingeniously tweaks some Hollywood conventions and clichés of the nineteen-sixties in this wild and bloody comedy about a young Wiccan named Elaine (Samantha Robinson), who uses her supernatural powers to attract the men of her choice, and, when they disappoint her, to kill them. The action parodies classic movie tropes—the drifter who returns to a small town, the flowing-haired professorial Adonis, the police officer whose investigation is compromised by divided loyalties, the burlesque bar where everyone meets and destinies play out. But the movie is less a matter of story than of style—it’s filled with ornate period costumes and furnishings (which were handmade by Biller) as well as sumptuous swaths of color and old-school optical effects. Biller’s feminist philosophy meshes with the freewheeling delight of her aestheticism. The film pulsates with furious creative energy, sparking excitement and amazement by way of its decorative twists,

intellectual provocations, and astounding humor.—R.B. (In limited release.)

Loving It has only been a few months since Jeff Nichols’s science-fiction drama, “Midnight Special,” was released, and this new film, based on a genuine legal saga, marks a surprising shift in both subject matter and pace. The story is simple enough: Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) marries Mildred (Ruth Negga), and they raise a family together. No problem there, except that he is white and she is black, and this is Virginia, in the late nineteen-fifties and early sixties. The couple has to go to Washington, D.C., for the wedding, and they are arrested shortly after their return. They sue, and their case drags on until 1967, when the Supreme Court rules in their favor and thus effectively outlaws all race-based restrictions on marriage. The Lovings crave no fame; Richard, especially, wants only a quiet life, and Nichols, who both writes and directs, honors their forbearance by telling the tale with a minimum of showiness and outrage. Some people will find that method too patient by half, yet it is dotted with Nichols’s trademark hints of suspense, and reinforced by the gathering strength and depth of the performances. Negga is not an actress from whom you can look away.—A.L. (11/7/16) (In limited release.) Manchester by the Sea Kenneth Lonergan’s new film, his first since the illused “Margaret” (2011), is carefully constructed, compellingly acted, and often hard to watch. The hero—if you can apply the word to someone so defiantly unheroic—is a janitor, Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), who is summoned from Boston to the coast of Massachusetts after the death of his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler). This is the definition of a winter’s tale, and the ground is frozen too hard for the body to be buried. Piece by piece, in a succession of flashbacks, the shape of Chandler’s past becomes apparent; he was married to Randi (Michelle Williams), who still lives locally, and something terrible tore them apart. Joe, too, had an ex-wife, now an ex-drinker (Gretchen Mol), and their teen-age son, Patrick—the most resilient character in the movie, smartly played by Lucas Hedges—is alarmed to learn that Lee is to be his legal guardian. What comes as a surprise, amid a welter of sorrow, is the harsh comedy that colors much of the dialogue, and the near-farcical frequency with which things go wrong. Far-reaching tragedy adjoins simple human error: such is the territory that Lonergan so skillfully maps out.—A.L. (11/28/16) (In wide release.)

Lucia Bosè, the star of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1953 drama “The Lady Without Camelias,” is one of the Italian actresses spotlighted in MOMA’s series “Le Grandi Donne,” running through Jan. 27.

Moonlight Miami heat and light weigh heavily on the furious lives and moods realized by the director Barry Jenkins. The grand yet finespun drama depicts three eras in the life of a young black man: as a bullied schoolboy called Little (Alex Hibbert), who is neglected by his crack-addicted mother (Naomie Harris) and sheltered and mentored by a drug dealer (Mahershala Ali) and his girlfriend (Janelle Monáe); as a teen-ager with his given name of Chiron (Ashton Sanders), whose friendship with a classmate named Kevin (Jharrel Jerome) veers toward romantic intimacy and leads to violence; and as a grown man nicknamed Black (Trevante Rhodes), who faces adult responsibilities with terse determination and reconnects with Kevin (André Holland). Adapting a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Jenkins burrows deep into his characters’ pain-seared memories, creating ferociously restrained performances and confrontational yet tender images that seem wrenched from his very core. Even the title is no mere nature reference but an evocation of skin

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

MOVIES

Nocturnal Animals For fans of Tom Ford, this surely counts as a bonus: two films for the price of one. In the outer shell of the movie, Amy Adams plays Susan, a gallery owner in Los Angeles who’s struggling with a life so empty that it contains nothing more than contemporary art, wealth, friends, support staff, wellcut clothes, a beautiful house, and a handsome husband (Armie Hammer). She has our sympathy. One day, Susan receives the manuscript of a new novel from her ex-husband; she opens it, reads, and is at once plunged into the story that it tells—the tale of a family that is terrorized and torn apart during a road trip across Texas. (The novelist and his beleaguered hero are both played by a long-suffering Jake Gyllenhaal.) The film looks sumptuous and dense, but neither section, on its own, is especially compelling—the social lampoon, in L.A., feels thin and obvious, while the Texan scenes are more like a stylized dream of violence than the real thing. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, straining every sinew, plays the leading brute; as the pursuing detective, by contrast, Michael Shannon is a model of grim control.—A.L. (11/21/16) (In limited release.) The Police Tapes In 1976, the filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond, using newly developed portable videotape equipment, embedded themselves among the officers of the Forty-fourth Precinct, in the South Bronx. Lodged in the back seat of police cruisers—sometimes beside suspects under arrest—the Raymonds became the officers’ confidants and companions, and the intimate revelations that they elicit offer a wide-ranging view of government at work. The filmmakers also follow officers into the heat of conflict as they try to defuse a gang war, remove a body after a deadly dispute, and resolve an apparent hostage situation in a housing project. In the station house, the filmmakers show detainees being arraigned and jailed; there, so little heed is paid to the filmmakers by those facing incarceration that they may as well be invisible. The borough commander, Anthony Bouza, acknowledges the lurid fascination of police work, calling it “a ringside seat to the greatest show on earth,” but adds an impassioned monologue—regarding the resentment aroused by the police among those enduring the traumas of poverty—that should be engraved on the halls of justice.—R.B. (Metrograph; Dec. 1.) Rules Don’t Apply Warren Beatty’s new film, set mainly in 1959, about Howard Hughes’s forceful eccentricity and his enduring impact on those in his sphere of influence, is a wildly scattershot comedy filled with bright moments that never cohere. Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich), an ambitious driver-cum-factotum for Hughes, is on around-the-clock call as the chauffeur to Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins), the newest starlet in the magnate’s stable. The earnest youngsters quickly bond, but Frank is forbidden to socialize with Marla on pain of dismissal. Meanwhile, Hughes (Beatty), who’s trying to develop the jet engine, fulfill defense contracts, run a movie studio, and maintain his power while refusing to appear in public, takes more than a professional interest in Marla, a devout Baptist whose virginity is no secret. The through-line concerns Hughes’s effort to avoid being declared insane and stripped of his empire, an effort in which Marla is involved. Beatty packs the movie with labored period references and unsubtle 18

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

allusions to Donald Trump. He delights in Hughes’s high-handed wisdom, his high-stakes gamesmanship, and his petty idiosyncrasies, while looking ruefully at his paranoid reclusiveness. Beatty’s portrayal of a dominant personality who shuns the spotlight is a self-portrait in reverse.—R.B. (In wide release.)

Things to Come Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) is a Parisian philosophy professor in the thick of things. She teaches ambitious students; she’s in an intellectually solid relationship with her husband of a quarter century, Heinz (André Marcon), also a philosophy professor; and their children, young adults, are thriving. Nathalie is the author of a perennial textbook, the editor of an esteemed scholarly series, and the mentor to Fabien (Roman Kolinka), a philosopher who’s also a co-founder of a rural commune. Then things fall apart: Nathalie’s husband leaves her, her elderly mother’s health fails, she suffers major professional setbacks, and she must cope with a narrowed circle of activity. This drama, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve, weaves a dense web of connec-

tions around Nathalie and then, with a bittersweet romanticism, treats them ironically, like a cocoon from which the middle-aged woman must learn to fly free. Her flurry of outer activity is stronger than any sense of inner life, although Huppert feasts on the turmoil beneath Nathalie’s composed surfaces, the emotional force of the philosopher’s dialectical intelligence. In French.—R.B. (In limited release.)

1 REVIVALS AND FESTIVALS Titles with a dagger are reviewed.

Museum of Modern Art “Le Grandi Donne.” Dec.

1 at 1:30: “Rome, Open City” (1945, Roberto Rossellini). • Dec. 2 at 1:30: “The Lady Without Camelias” (1953, Michelangelo Antonioni). • The films of Pedro Almodóvar. Dec. 1 at 7:30: “Kika” (1993), followed by a Q. & A. with the actress Rossy de Palma. • Dec. 3 at 5: “High Heels” (1991). • Dec. 4 at 7:30: “All About My Mother” (1999). • Dec. 5 at 1:30: “Pepi, Luci, Bom” (1980).

ABOVE & BEYOND

The Poetry Brothel Guests at this temple of literary deviance are treated to readings enlivened by the aura of burlesque. A rotating cast of male and female poets perform as bordello troubadours, erupting into verse in public and luring guests into back rooms for private readings that may be overheard by voyeurs lurking just around the corner. The event transforms House of Yes into an immersive cabaret with live jazz, vaudeville, painters, and fortune-tellers—this week’s holiday-partythemed installment includes readings from the poet, author, and lawyer Monica Youn, a performance by the Hot Club of Flatbush, and the burlesque performers Puss N Boots and Foxx Von Tempt. (2 Wyckoff Ave., Brooklyn. houseofyes.org. Dec. 4.)

cluding Louise Saunders’s children’s book “The Knave of Hearts,” illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, and an eighteenth-century guide to the Roman ruins of Palmyra, in Syria (which were recently damaged by ISIS). (104 E. 25th St. 212254-4710.) • In the first of two auctions of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s (Dec. 5-6), the late Charles Caldwell Ryrie’s collection of English Bibles goes under the gavel. The library, amassed over five decades, includes early editions of Wycliffe’s Bible, translated into Middle English in the fourteenth century, and Myles Coverdale’s, the first complete English translation, from the sixteenth. (York Ave. at 72nd St. 212-606-7000.)

Magic at Coney Island Illusionists, escape artists, mentalists, and closeup magicians descend on Coney Island each Sunday afternoon at this matinée magic show. The family-friendly performance is hosted by Gary Dreifus, who has staged magic and hypnosis shows for more than thirty-five years. He believes that you’re never too old to be a magician—his Magical Promotions platform is dedicated to educating all who are interested in the art, from children to senior citizens. Kids under twelve enjoy half-price admission. (Coney Island Museum, 1208 Surf Ave., Brooklyn. coneyisland.com. Dec. 4 at noon.)

READINGS AND TALKS

1 AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES

Swann, a house that specializes in rare books,

brings out an assortment of tomes on Dec. 1, in-

92nd Street Y A significant number of Americans are sturdily confident in the future of the nation after our Presidential election. Tom Friedman, the foreignaffairs columnist and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is not among them, but he’d like to be. His new book, “Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations,” bills itself as a field guide for the twenty-first century, shepherding readers through the rapid changes in technology, globalization, and the climate, which affect everything from personal relationships to the highest government office. He discusses his theories for enduring the future, in conversation with the founder and president of the Reut Institute, Gidi Grinstein. (Kaufmann Concert Hall, Lexington Ave. at 92nd St. 92y.org. Nov. 30 at 7:30.)

ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO AMARGO

color; subtly alluding to wider societal conflicts, Jenkins looks closely at the hard intimacies of people whose very identities are forged under relentless pressure.—R.B. (In limited release.)

F§D & DRINK

TABLES FOR TWO

Günter Seeger

PHOTOGRAPH BY ZACHARY ZAVISLAK FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE

641 Hudson St. (646-657-0045) How should a fancy restaurant be? Should it be radical, like Momofuku Ko; grand, like Eleven Madison Park; wacky, like Gabriel Kreuther; haughty, like Jean-Georges? Günter Seeger, a new European-accented place in the West Village, suggests something different: a fancy restaurant should be discreet. For your ten-course meal—fresh, even when it’s not local, and changing nightly—you’ve relayed your creditcard digits in advance, which isn’t threatening, but cosseting, like a membership fee at a social club. That’s how it feels, too, when you enter a foyer like a town house might have, with a velvet chaise and herringbone flooring and a pendant lamp. The hostess has an index card with your name on it; she spirits you across the thickly curtained threshold. In the back, the room opens directly onto a glistening white kitchen. It’s an exquisitely simple scheme. Günter Seeger is a restaurant for the low-key rich, the ABC Carpet & Home set. This may be the German-born chef ’s compromise between his Swiss-hotel training and his humble origins: his father was a fruit wholesaler, and his first restaurant, in the Black Forest town of Pforzheim, featured spaetzle and smoked fish reinvented

with French techniques, earning him a Michelin star. (Two weeks ago, he got one at this restaurant.) Or it may be a reaction against articles such as “The Arrogance and the Ecstasy,” a profile of Seeger published in Atlanta magazine in 1999, after he’d found his way to Georgia via the Ritz-Carlton. He ran their dining room for a while, and then opened Seeger’s, a shrine to barely cooked seafood, beloved by many critics but not enough locals. Now he’s hoping that New Yorkers will take to his High German sangfroid. On a recent Friday evening, an egg was steamed in soy and truffle juice, then put back into the bottom of its shell and graced by bottarga shavings: the most custardlike fish chowder in history. A Treviso salad was dominated by Bosc pear, made strangely meaty with anchovy emulsion. West Bath, Maine, produces very good oysters; each guest got exactly one of them. At least it was decorated, with subtle sea-lettuce gelée and tiny orbs of finger lime, the “citrus caviar” of the Australian rain forest. Later, a Scottish langoustine gently poached in a bowl of rose tea as it made its way to the table. It tasted like rose tea. The lamb chop, finally, was a basic affair—bloody, Hibachi-scarred. Club food will be club food, in the end. (Ten-course tasting menu $148.) —Daniel Wenger

1 BAR TAB

Beverly’s 21 Essex St. At the back of this skinny Chinatown bar sits a large wooden sculpture in the shape of a 2. Its significance is mysterious—questions such as “Is there a secret brethren of even-number fanatics who meet here on a regular basis?” are not, perhaps, unwarranted. It is, however, a good suggestion of when to arrive at Beverly’s. As the hour slunk closer on a recent Tuesday morning, the dance floor squirmed with life. The occasion was a party whose poster asked, “What if you could only love places . . . and fashion?” Pressed up against a wall, an artist in a white vinyl dog collar was discussing advances in virtual reality while a British d.j. punctuated a slick electro set with Hi-NRG classics from the eighties. “Last call!” a barkeep yelled, but his voice was drowned out by a more primal bellow: “Picklebacks!” So it goes at Beverly’s, a pink-neon-washed paradise for people who value conversation, music, and getting crunk (that would be: crazy drunk). On an even more recent Tuesday, and at a more sensible time, it was evident that a couple wearing beanies, slouched in a front window seat, were intent on discussion. What they were discussing, however, was lost in the beats of a playlist heavy on Young Thug. “It’s quiet around this time,” the barkeep explained, clarifying that d.j. sets usually begin at ten. All the better to enjoy a Laphroaig-and-soda and inspect a selection of well-curated art—monolithic sculpture panels, paintings on loose canvas, a video of a young woman in a field sporting American-flag-emblazoned leggings. The exhibit would change soon, the barkeep noted, when one of the bar’s owners, who selects the art, returned to New York. As he explained, “She’s doing a residency in Berlin.”—Nicolas Niarchos THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

THE TALK OF THE TOWN COMMENT TRANSITIONS

Presidential transition can be a disconcerting

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL

A stretch of time, even in quieter days than these. The

transition to the Presidency of Donald J. Trump has at its center a man who has never served in public office, has spoken disdainfully of constitutional norms, and was either too faithful a reader of the polls or too superstitious to do much about getting ready to govern. His first decisive move was to discard Governor Chris Christie, of New Jersey, who had been assigned to direct his transition. Even to speak of the transition in the singular is, in a way, misleading, given that there are many changes occurring at once: the handover of institutions from one set of hands to another; a businessman becoming President; an electorate witnessing a season of bitter campaigning give way to a period of governance. The main concern at this point is not that the government will plunge into chaos the day after Trump takes the oath of office but how Trump and his team will use the institutions they inherit. His early nominations, such as that of Senator Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, for Attorney General, did nothing to allay that fear. Putting Sessions in the Department of Justice would give the job of protecting voting rights to a man who has, throughout his career, been more inclined to undermine them. Other nominations, like that of Governor Nikki Haley, of South Carolina, to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, might signal a transition to a Presidency that includes more traditional Republican aspects—or not. The Senate Democrats have to quickly recover from the shock of the election and move on to taking an active role in the confirmation process. (Trump will also be the first President in recent memory to be choosing a Supreme Court Justice at the same time that he names his cabinet.) The goal should not be blind obstructionism of the kind that

would push away a nominee like Haley; rather, it should be to communicate, if only for the record, that lines must be drawn, and that Sessions, who was unconfirmable as a federal judge in 1986, crosses them. That message can be conveyed even by a minority; and the Democrats are, after all, a party that is said to be trying to find its voice. In terms of Trump’s own transition to office, there are indications that the arc of his character is more like a loop. His attacks on everyone from the NBC News reporter assigned to cover him to the cast of “Hamilton” are a repeat of his campaign behavior. He seems unwilling to view the Presidency as an office, which has defined limits, instead of as a new way to express his personal desires, which have none. This is reflected, too, in his supposed gestures of moderation. His waning interest in locking up Hillary Clinton, which he expressed in an interview with the Times last week (“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons. I really don’t”), reveals a view of prosecution as something that a President can decide to unleash or withhold arbitrarily. In the same interview, Trump spoke in vague terms about keeping an “open mind” on international climate-change accords, but he also expressed a distrust of climate scientists, echoing the conspiracyminded attitude of his campaign. Trump also seems unwilling to engage seriously in the project of moving from the private sector to the public. The possible conflicts of interest posed by his many businesses, which operate in countries from Turkey to Argentina, can play out in farcical ways, such as when he complained to Nigel Farage, the acting leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, about the wind farms that mar the view from his golf course in Scotland. But the conflicts potentially involve politicians with more real power than Farage and interests that are more damaging to the United THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

States. It would be difficult to manage them even if Trump were willing to give it a goodfaith try, which, so far, has not been the case. “Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world. Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!” he tweeted last week. He had said that he would hand the management of his business interests over to his adult children, but they are now advisers to the transition. He claims that, if critics had their way, “I would never, ever see my daughter Ivanka again.” But there has to be distance: if it is not between him and his chil dren, then between his children and the business. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has argued that the best option is for Trump to liquidate his holdings and put the cash in a blind trust. That may not be legally required, since federal conflictofinterest laws don’t fully apply to the President, though the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause should. It is up to members of both parties and the public to instead make a comprehensive reorganization of his financial holdings a political necessity. More important than all these concerns is the way that a Trump Presidency might change our common conception of what it means to be American. In addition to naming Ses sions, Trump has chosen a chief strategist who has retailed altright rhetoric, a nationalsecurity adviser who tweeted out WIND ON CAPITOL HILL DEPT. WAR GAMES

he morning after the Presiden

T tial election, the Washington Post re

ported that a “palpable sense of dread” had settled on the U.S. intelligence commu nity. That community is large—tens of thousands of people, working for seven teen agencies—so the reasons for such feelings varied. Among the many contend ers: Trump’s statements during the cam paign about America’s intelligence work ers (“I won’t use them, because they’ve made such bad decisions”); his dismissal of the conclusion, by the office of the director of National Intelligence and by the Department of Homeland Security, that the Kremlin was committing cyber espionage; and his cavalier attitude toward nuclear proliferation. “Everyone I’ve spo ken to is freaking out,” one intelligence official said. (Depressed, he had called in sick.) “No one knows what to expect. We’re in uncharted waters.” The following Saturday, the official bought a box of coffee and eighteen dough nuts and welcomed four colleagues to his 22

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

a video presenting reasons to fear Islam, and a C.I.A. direc tor who has called for the execution of Edward Snowden. And this is in a time of relative peace. Where Trump’s instinct for blame and diversion would take him and the country during an emergency—a terrorist attack, for example—is an unpleas ant question to contemplate. This is why many people voted for Clinton rather than for Trump. But he won, so what do they do now? Trump has a shot at being the century’s worst President, but Americans are not in the worst position they have ever been in from which to confront him. We’ve been more eco nomically desperate; we’ve been, in terms of the breadth of the franchise, less free. In the Trump Presidency, as in all Administrations, there will be political ﬁghts that deﬁne the course of events. There are constitutional tools available, but only if people in both parties, inside and outside of govern ment, are willing to use them—to sustain a sense of non Trump possibility. This includes not accepting bigotry as a normal part of the national conversation. There is also some thing to be said for not moving away entirely from the mind set of the campaign, with its imperatives to both reach out and to challenge, with its skepticism and its sense that there are always options. Some transitions should never be made. —Amy Davidson

condo, in Arlington, Virginia. The pur pose of the gathering, scheduled weeks earlier, was a daylong match of the classic Second World Warstrategy board game Axis & Allies, in which the world’s major powers battle for global military domina tion. After the election, there had been talk of postponement. Somehow, roleplay ing nations at war seemed less amusing than it had on November 7th. But, ulti mately, the officials decided that they needed a diversion. By 10:30 A.M., they had convened and selected their dough nuts (with the exception of the man play ing Italy; he was at a baby shower). By 11 A.M., they had divvied up the map and assembled their miniature plastic forces. By 11:30 A.M., the apartment was at war. Hitler directed his forces from the Wolfsschanze, a heavily fortified complex deep in the forests of northern Poland. The intelligence officers—five conserva tively dressed men, just on the near side of middle age—directed theirs from a living room filled with vintage movie posters, overlooking a burrito shop. The folding table on which they worked had been liberated from a major American intelligence agency. “Don’t worry,” the official playing the United Kingdom, who was nursing a cold, said. “We’re profes sionals. We’ll return it before anyone notices.” He washed his Boston Kreme

down with bourbon, to clear his sinuses. For the first few hours, an eerie still ness presided. No one mentioned con temporary politics. On the board, Ger man and Soviet infantries squared off in Eastern Europe. The British Navy settled in for a siege. The Japanese Army menaced the Indian subcontinent. (The player in charge of Japan had spent a restless night on the foldout couch, scan ning Twitter.) According to the rulebook, the offi cial playing the U.S. was barred from attacking until Round 3. He amassed warships and bombers until midafter noon, when his time came, and he turned his forces west. The official playing Italy arrived and surveyed the board. “This is how it goes, isn’t it?” he said. “First, American isola tionism, then antagonistic powers run ning rampant, then, finally, war.” It took a moment for the group to realize that he was talking about the new political reality. “Except today Russia and China are adversaries,” the official playing the U.K. said. “And their armies are no longer made up of malnourished peasants,”the U.S. said. “And everyone has nuclear weapons,” Italy said. Back to the game. The Americans

took the Caroline Islands. France fell. The officials passed around the bourbon, and the mood lightened. The Soviet Union emerged from the bathroom, drying his hands on his jeans. “It’s amazing,” he said. “ ‘Back to the Future: Part II’ has basically come true. The Cubs have won the World Series, Biff Tannen is President, and soon it’ll be 1985 again.” At 4:06 P.M., Japan’s phone dinged with a push notification. Hillary Clinton had blamed James Comey, the F.B.I. director, for her election loss. A tense silence descended: the community protects its own. “It’s not like someone asked her to set up a private e-mail server,” the official playing Germany said. “Christ, he was just doing his job,” Italy said. The U.S. said, “This is the only election where the Russians can be accused of interfering on one side, the other side can be accused of mishandling classified information, and somehow the people tasked with righting both wrongs come out as the bad guys!” By dusk, war-weariness had set in. The official playing the U.K. relinquished command and went home to sleep off his cold. “The Second World War took five whole years to prosecute,” the U.S. said. He looked glumly out the window. “This game is never going to end.” “Five years!” Germany said. “That’s

like a Trump Presidency plus a year.” The official playing Italy said, “I’m worried we’re going to be set back. China and Russia are going to have a field day.” The official playing China: “Yep.” On the board, the Soviet Army surrounded Berlin. The officials ordered pizza. —Daniel Smith

1 DEPT. OF BELLES-LETTRES QUOTE MACHINE

ason Sudeikis sat at the back of

J the Bowery Poetry Club, waiting for

open-mike night to begin. He had parked his black Vespa outside, having motored in from Clinton Hill, where he lives with his ﬁancée, Olivia Wilde, and their children, Otis and Daisy. At his side was a Contax G2 camera, which he keeps on hand for moments when the light is just right. “I was on the Manhattan Bridge on my way over here, and there was an awesome view of the sun right behind the Statue of Liberty,” he said. “I read this quote recently: ‘The camera is an instrument to teach people how to see without a camera.’ ” (Dorothea Lange.) Sudeikis, who on “Saturday Night Live” brought a devilish glint to ﬁgures

like Joe Biden and Mitt Romney, has been scootering to the East Village a lot lately, to star in a stage version of the 1989 film “Dead Poets Society,” at Classic Stage Company. He plays Mr. Keating, a nonconformist teacher at an allboys school, the part made famous by Robin Williams. He likes to run lines while zooming over the bridge, including Mr. Keating’s favorite snippets of poetry: “Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring.” (Walt Whitman.) Like Mr. Keating, Sudeikis has a mania for quotable wisdom. “Great Lincoln one: ‘You learn something from everyone, sometimes what not to do.’ I’m butchering it a little bit.” (Yes.) “Mark Twain: ‘Every man’s life is a comedy, a tragedy, and a drama.’ ” (Closer.) Speaking of his improv-comedy training, he added, “Failing and succeeding is more fun when it’s with other people.” Who said that one? “I just said that now! That’s off the dome. That’s fresh.” Another one, from “Dead Poets Society”: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” (Thoreau, mangled.) “That’s one that resonates with me when I think about back home,” he said. Sudeikis grew up in Overland Park, Kansas. His Mr. Keating was Sally Shipley, who taught a radio-and-TV class at his high school. “If ‘Sesame Street’ made a puppet of Miss Shipley, it would look very similar to Miss Shipley,” he said. “Me being a smartass didn’t upset her. If I yawned, she’d go, ‘Don’t yawn. It makes me feel like I’m on a date.’” One day, for inspiration, Miss Shipley showed him a student broadcast by a recent alumnus. It was Paul Rudd. Poets streamed into the club as waiters lit votive candles. Sudeikis doesn’t write verse, but he does like to jot down ideas on his phone. “ ‘A pun: the Zirconium Rhythm,’” he read, scrolling. Next: “ ‘A bunch of Fosse dancers passing a joint.’” (He mimed taking a hit from a jazz hand.) “None of these are good,” he clarified. There was a list of repairs for pinball machines; Sudeikis keeps about ten in his basement. “I love the philosophy of it,” he said. “You’re just trying to help this ball exist in this world. It’s you against gravity. And occasionally the machine fucks up. But, as the saying goes, that’s pinball.” (Source unknown.) The lights dimmed, and Sudeikis snapped a picture of the bartender’s silhouette. “We got a lot of poets in the

house!” Nikhil Melnechuk, the m.c., began. “We got any love poems?” A woman in black raised her hand and said, “It’s more of a loss poem.” She read, over the stylings of a jazz duo, as Sudeikis sipped a Jack on the rocks. A few poets later, he whispered, “To see people own that it’s a work in progress—it’s invigorating!” He texted Wilde to make sure it was O.K. if he stayed for the whole show. A slam poet from Hawaii, Julia Ogilvie, read a piece called “Frozen Wagner,” about her ﬁrst trip to Manhattan, at age nine. Sudeikis was taken with a line about “strutting my Roy G. Biv style through Times Square like it’s no big deal.” “I was thinking about all the people she felt she was representing at that point,” he said, “sticking out as a rainbow does, in a lovely way, but also in a way that maybe people who are not conditioned to seeing the rainbows in life can judge.” After the show, he slid the license plate back onto his scooter, having removed it to avoid getting a ticket. “Little trick of the trade,” he said, donning a metallic-blue helmet. Then he rode back over the Manhattan Bridge, the night’s verses bouncing around his brain. —Michael Schulman

1 HOT AIR DEPT. FLOWER POWER

ne Wednesday night earlier

O this fall, James Dyson, the British

design engineer, billionaire, knight, and vacuum-cleaner magnate, threw a party at a loft in Chelsea. The occasion was the U.S. launch of the Dyson Supersonic hair dryer: a four-hundred-dollar magenta O on a stick, of a shape more microphone than popgun. Guests took a sort of disco freight elevator to the fourth ﬂoor; there, a video closeup of the impeller V-9, the tiny motor that powers the Supersonic, swirled on a wall-size screen, to gently carnivalesque music. When a Supersonic appeared on the screen, several guests held their phones aloft, recording. Dyson employees wore impeller V-9s on their shirts, like brooches.

Each motor was the size of a beefy dime. Dyson delivered his version of a Steve Jobs-ian ta-da. Phrases like “The Hair Dryer, Re-Thought” and “Intelligent Heat Control” were projected behind him. He described the features of the hair dryer. Its motor, he said, had been milled using military-grade tools by robots in Singapore. “No humans, completely automated,” Dyson said. “Can’t have any humans.” That afternoon, in the loft, Dyson had shown the Supersonic to a guest. He sat in a Barcelona chair, before a glass table strewn with motors, circuit panels, prototypes, a conventional hair dryer, tresses of blond, brown, and black hair, and a hot-pink cordless vacuum. Beside him, a Dyson air purifier, a motorized metal oval, was, as Dyson put it, “sampling the nasties in the air.” Dyson is sixty-nine. He wore blue-framed eyeglasses, a navy cardigan, and a solar-powered Seiko watch. His shortish white hair was fluffier than usual. “Since this project, I’ve been growing my hair back to how it was in the sixties, the sort of Rolling Stones-and-Beatles sixties,” he said. “Flower power and all that.” Dyson began his career by improving a wheelbarrow, and then a vacuum, and pricing his creations like works of art; he is now a cheerful Brexiteer who lives at Dodington Park, a vast country estate in Gloucestershire. (That morning, he’d been quoted about Brexit in the Telegraph: “Absolutely I’m delighted to be out and don’t think we have to negotiate anything.”) He has long been aware of the flaws of the common hair dryer, which the Supersonic aims to solve via the impeller V-9. “It goes a hundred and twenty thousand r.p.m.s,” he said. (Very fast.) “Because it’s so fast, it can be very efficient, with a small fan. With the old hair dryer, the motor goes in there”— he picked up a dryer and pointed at its barrel—“and it makes rather a long hair dryer. I’ll talk about long in a second. So it makes it very top-heavy.” The Dyson motor fits in the handle, which also functions as a “silencer tube.” “The speed is ultrasonic,” Dyson said. “A horse might be able to hear it, but a human can’t.” He looked pleased. He talked about long. “That length is a nuisance, because it means you have to hold it quite a long way out,” he said,

miming with his own head. He turned a Supersonic on; it was somewhat loud. “I’m holding it quite close to my body, so it’s not tiring,” he shouted. “The weight is nicely in my hand.” He talked about heat control, laminar airﬂow, temperature. “We’ve used a thousand ﬁfty-seven miles of virgin human hair on our tests,” he said. “If you overheat the hair when it’s wet, the water inside the follicle explodes, and it makes a crater. All those

James Dyson craters take the shine off your hair—oh, it’s disgusting.” Engineers had created a rig to rough-dry hair, and a cabinet that “measures the light refraction, how glossy or shiny it is—the flyaways, the smoothness, and the orderliness.”Those scores were compared, by computer, with scores “from real humans.” Such rigs and cabinets were on display in the loft; Mark Leaver, Dyson’s engineering manager, stood beside them. Leaver does not need a Supersonic to dry his hair. “I tend to use it in a more blokey kind of way,” he said. “Drying shoes, defrosting a freezer. Drying socks.” That night, the party was boisterous: chitchat, liquor, blow-drying. Guests nudged past one another, admiring motorized mannequin heads. Supersonics, on pedestals, were available to blow at oneself; at a bar staffed by GlamSquad stylists, women photographed their hair being misted and dried. Revellers in a photo booth waved Supersonics around, blowing hot air at pink wigs, pink balloons, pink confetti, and each other. One woman, leaving the booth, turned to her friend. “Is my hair O.K.?” she asked. —Sarah Larson THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

oing into Election Day, few industries seemed in

G worse shape than America’s private prisons. Prison pop-

ulations, which had been rising for decades, were falling. In 2014, Corrections Corporation of America, the biggest private-prison company in the U.S., lost its contract to run Idaho’s largest prison, after lawsuits relating to understaffing and violence that had earned the place the nickname Gladiator School. There were press exposés of shocking conditions in the industry and signs of a policy shift toward it. In April, Hillary Clinton said, “We should end private prisons.” In August, the Justice Department said that private federal prisons were less safe and less secure than government-run ones. The same month, the department announced that it would phase out the use of private prisons at the federal level. Although most of the private-prison industry operates on the state level (immigrant-detention centers are its other big business), the news sent C.C.A.’s stock down by thirty-five per cent. Donald Trump’s victory changed all that: within days, C.C.A.’s stock had jumped forty-seven per cent. His faith in privatization is no secret, and prison companies aren’t the only ones rubbing their hands. The stock price of for-profit schools has also rocketed. Still, the outlook for private prisons is particularly rosy, because many Trump policies work to their benefit. The Justice Department’s plan to phase out private prisons will likely be scrapped, and a growing bipartisan movement for prison and sentencing reform is about to run up against a President who campaigned as a defender of “law and order.” Above all, Trump’s hard-line position on immigration seems certain to fill detention centers, one of the biggest money spinners for private-prison operators. The boom in private prisons in the past two decades was part of a broader privatization trend, fuelled by a belief in the superior efficiency of the private sector. But privatizing prisons makes little economic or political sense. Some studies find private prisons to be less cost-effective than government ones, some more, and further studies suggest that any savings are likely the result of cutting corners. In a study of prisons in nine states, Chris Petrella, a lecturer at Bates College, found that private ones avoid taking sick and elderly inmates, since health care is a huge expense for prisons. They employ a younger, less well trained, and less well paid workforce and have higher inmate-to-guard ratios, all of which saves money but also makes prisons more dangerous. When

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

you consider that the government still spends money monitoring private prisons, and that it’s stuck running the parts of the system that private companies thought were money losers, the case that private prisons save money looks shaky. Even if they did, the ethical cost would be too high. Imprisoning people is one of the weightiest things that government does, yet outsourcing imprisonment means that treatment of inmates is shaped by bottom-line considerations. This has led to understaffing, inadequate mentalhealth care, and, in some cases, inadequate meals. Worse, private prisons have an obvious incentive to keep people inside as long as possible. Last year, Anita Mukherjee, an assistant professor of actuarial science at the University of Wisconsin, studied Mississippi’s prison system, and found that people in private prisons received many more “prison conduct violations” than those in government-run ones. This made it harder for them to get parole, and, on average, they served two to three more months of prison time. The perversities of profit-driven prison policy don’t end there. The need for inmates leads companies, in effect, to lobby state and federal governments to maintain the current system of mass incarceration. Government-run prisons aren’t blameless here—prison-guard unions lobby for longer sentences and tougher laws—but the private companies know how to throw their weight around, and they benefit from strong local support, as they are often in rural towns without many other sources of jobs or tax revenue. Since the midaughts, the industry has spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying on the state and federal levels. Its successes include an Arizona law that required cops to stop suspected undocumented immigrants, major increases in spending on immigration enforcement, and the blocking of congressional efforts to ban private prisons. It’s become common to speak of “the prison-industrial complex,” and the analogy to the military-industrial complex is a good one: in both cases, government spending helps fund very profitable businesses, which, in turn, lobby legislators and regulators to keep the funds flowing. Just as we spend billions on weapons systems that we may not need, so, too, we jail more people than we need for longer than necessary, because it keeps someone’s balance sheet healthy. In recent years, an unlikely coalition of conservatives and liberals had made some progress in weakening this system, going after policies like mandatory sentences. Trump’s election will make it much harder to sustain that progress. Private prisons, he said earlier this year, “work a lot better,” and he’ll doubtless look to expand their reach. And he has a simple and grim answer to how many people we should put in prisons and detention centers: More. —James Surowiecki

CHRISTOPH NIEMANN

THE FINANCIAL PAGE TRUMP SETS PRIVATE PRISONS FREE

PERSONAL HISTORY

THE TEACHER A mother’s lesson plan. BY JAMES WOOD

t my mother’s funeral, I was

A calmer than I had ever imagined

being. She was eighty-seven and had lived a long and fruitful life, and for some time her body had been signalling its eagerness to depart: almost blind from macular degeneration, emaciated, she had been bedridden for months, after a bad fall. She died alone, but my father and I were at her side a few hours before her death. In the hospital room, grief conspired with natural curiosity: so this is how a body near death functions; this is how most of us will go. . . . Six or seven seconds passed between deep breaths; each was likely to be the last, and the renewal of breath, when it came, seemed almost like a strange, teasing physiological game—no, not yet, not quite. In the days before she died, a sentence from “The Death of 28

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

Ivan Ilyich” kept coming to my mind. Peter Ivanovich is looking at Ivan Ilyich’s corpse: “The expression on the face said that what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly.” Those words sustained me. A long life, a fulﬁlling career as a schoolteacher, a merciful end (relatively speaking), three children and a devoted husband: what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly. And there was another “right” thing, which would have satisﬁed Tolstoy in his late religious phase. My mother died a Christian, sure that she was going to meet her Redeemer. I don’t share that belief, but in those last months I was sometimes consoled by the thought of my parents’ consolation. My mother had chosen all the readings and the hymns for her funeral, and I admired

the optimism that filled the church. We ended the service with an old Methodist rabble-rouser, “Thine Be the Glory, Risen Conquering Son,” sung to a tune from Handel’s “Judas Maccabaeus.” It was hard not to be moved when the minister said that my mother was finally at one with the Lord she had spent a lifetime serving: she was now in the glory of his presence. Could these words, beautifully improbable, possess the power entrusted to them? For a moment, it seemed as if the ugly oak coffin, sitting on trestles near the altar, were less a final box than the husk of another husk, the body now joyously unimportant, finally discarded. The ancient promise: the soul has thrown off its impediments and is flying away. There was a moment when I came close to tears, and it involved another set of words. I feared discomposure, didn’t want to be an embarrassment (that shaming English shame). But it was not so easy when the minister read this prayer: “O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.” It’s a beautiful plea—“a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.” But the phrase I found most moving was “and our work is done.” Like most mothers, mine worked very hard: the never finished labor of maternity. In many ways, she was an almost stereotypically Scottish mother (the goyish version of the Jewish caricature)—passionate, narrow, judgmental, always aspiring. Her children were her artifacts, through which she created the drama of her own restless ambitions. These ambitions were moral and social. She wanted us to be morally successful, to get the best possible grades from the Great Examiner. It was my mother who told me that my untidy bedroom was unworthy of good Christian living (it showed “poor stewardship”), that I should speak not of “luck” but of “blessing,” and who was made distinctly nervous by my talk of having a beer in a pub (“only ever half a pint, I hope”; her own Scottish mother had signed the “temperance pledge,” and never drank). The emphasis, in Protestant fashion, was rigorous and ILLUSTRATION BY GÉRARD DUBOIS

corrective. There was plenty of happiness in our household, but it was rarely religious happiness. The self was viewed with suspicion, as if it were a mob of appetites and hedonism. As an adolescent, I was often told that “self, self, self is all you think about,” and that “selfishness is your whole philosophy.” Life was understood to be constant moral work, a job that could never really be “done,” because the ideal was Jesus’ unsurpassable perfection. My mother and I quarrelled over the corpse of my religious faith. She told me that at night she prayed I would “come back into the fold.” As a young man, I lined up my pagan, life-loving heroes—Nietzsche, Camus, D. H. Lawrence, Keith Moon, Ian Dury—in glorious defensive formation: reasons to be cheerful. Her social aspirations weren’t always compatible with her religious aspirations, though they proceeded from the same extraordinary will. The woman who wanted to assign luck to godly providence also believed deeply in the earned fortune of hard work. She understood, again in familiar Scottish fashion, that social advancement was best achieved through education. Her own origins were lower middle class, petit bourgeois: she had an uncle who was a doctor—the star of the family— but neither of her parents had gone to university. Her mother had a Scottish accent; hers came and went. She told me that she had been bullied at her fairly ordinary state school for affecting, like Margaret Thatcher, a “posh” accent a few stations above her class; it was always difficult for me to assess Mrs. Thatcher with any neutrality, because in demeanor and sheer force of will she so reminded me of my mother. eaching ran in my family. My

T father was also a teacher, and my

mother’s grandfather was in charge of a small junior school, long gone, in a house situated in gentle ﬁelds outside Edinburgh. Mother remembered visiting him during the summer holidays, when, so she told me, he would coach private pupils, boys headed for expensive boarding schools in Scotland and England. Over the years, a few of these boys, suitably crammed with exambusting power, went to Eton, and it was this knowledge that gave my

mother the idea that if she had sons she would “send them to Eton.” An absurd story, in part because women of my mother’s class were not exactly invited to think of Eton as within their reach. They had not enough money, and certainly not enough social standing. But I believe what she told me, because it sounds so magnificently like her, and because she achieved her ambition. It was financial insanity, even with the help of scholarships and bursaries, to try to send two sons to Eton and a daughter to a boarding school in Scotland, and it brought my parents to the verge of ruin. (I will never forget the moment when my father phoned me to ask if he could borrow five hundred pounds. He was sixty-two, and perilously close to being broke; I was twenty-five, had just started working for a London newspaper, and had my first regular salary.) Eton was also unnecessary: there was a good grammar school not far from our town, a place that sent kids every year to Oxford and Cambridge. But who is defining necessity? I guess that my mother considered the unnecessary surplus of private education— the invisible social lift that a place like Eton offered—absolutely necessary. If not, why else put her family through the hardship and labor? And mostly that’s what it was. Not for me, the lucky beneficiary of my mother’s quixotic and self-abnegating striving, but for my perpetually impoverished parents. My father, a zoologist, had no more money than his modest salary from an English university; Mother taught at the local girls’ school. They needed every penny. Had they sat down, at the start of it all, and run the numbers on the back of an envelope, they would never have contemplated private education for their three children. But they believed in sacrifice, and they probably imagined that they could muddle through somehow, borne aloft by my mother’s surging triumphalism. And by extra work: in addition to his teaching, my father marked Open University and high-school exam papers in the summer vacation. And my mother, in addition to her weekday school teaching, took on a Saturday job, at a bookshop in town. There cannot be many old Etonians, in the entire history of

that fabled and fortunate place, whose mothers, daunted by debt, worked a Saturday job, standing behind a cash register. When I was young, I wasn’t proud enough of her; indeed, I was probably a bit ashamed. Yet that tremendous force of character was riddled with anxiety and doubt. Her anxiety was structurally related to her ambition; her vigilance resembled the omniscient uncertainty of immigrant parents. (The story of social class in Britain is, figuratively, one of emigration and immigration: a voyaging out of one station or place and into another. At Eton, I was a spy from the obscure North of England and the equally obscure middle classes, quickly learning the language and the signification of the surprisingly hospitable enemy.) My mother fiercely desired her children’s success, but never quite believed in it. We were like the parishioners who Jonathan Edwards warned were suspended over Hell by “a slender thread,” which an angry God might sever at any minute. Was this a theological fear that became a social one, or the other way around? Certainly, the two anxieties were inextricable: look away from the struggle, for one second, and you may fall. In our household, there could be no complacency. Mother didn’t assume I would go to Cambridge or Oxford; she didn’t assume I would get to university at all, despite indications to the contrary. If you get to university—that was the menacing conditional. Exams were sites of strenuous terror, doors that opened onto everything desirable but that could as easily be closed in one’s face. For the same reason, she only warily encouraged my desire to be a writer. I might just be able to pull it off, but only if I worked at it, with devotion and Protestant modesty. The profession of letters was generally admirable, but the idea of my being a writer made her anxious: How would I earn a living? What sort of social status could I ever achieve? Was writing, at bottom, even a moral activity? I tried to make my case, aware of how flimsy and amoral my ambitions sounded. Her idol was the writer and politician John Buchan, the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister who rose from that relatively humble background to the heights of THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

Oxford, later becoming a Member of Parliament and the governor-general of Canada: a man of substance. I didn’t take him very seriously as a writer; as I saw it, Buchan’s worldly success richly compensated for—and effectively obliterated—the eccentricity of his wanting to be a writer in the first place. But I understood why his example meant so much to my mother, and why she used it to push me on. John Buchan, she would intone, rose at five in the morning to write his books (not least “The Thirty-nine Steps”), before going out into the world and earning a living: “You will have to work like that if you want to achieve anything comparable.” She preferred the security of the law, or medicine (the path my brother took), or the academy (a shabby but dependable cousin to these grander professions). Her expressed hope was that when she answered the phone and a stranger asked to speak to Dr. Wood she could reply, “Which one? My husband, or one of my three children? We have four Dr. Woods in this house.” (She ended up with only two, her husband and my brother.) In many ways, she was a natural teacher. She marched her children around English stately homes and told us the history of these places, in loud, confident tones; we sometimes feared that she might be mistaken for a docent. She took us to many museums, and to the great sites of Scottish history—Culloden, Glenfinnan, Glencoe. She certainly encouraged us; more often she goaded, enforced. But she also defended us. When my first-grade teacher

reported that I could read “fluently enough, but without much comprehension,” she took it up with the school. Years later, when I got a B in an English exam (it was my best subject, so I was “supposed” to get an A), she made me sit for the exam again, the unspoken but hovering implication being that I would keep retaking it until the expected grade was achieved. My father, in his usual mild manner, went along with all these incursions and improvements. It was a joke in our family that my mother and Muriel Spark’s great fictional creation, Miss Jean Brodie, shared a certain temperament, as well as a profession that was really a vocation. Like Miss Brodie (or like Maggie Smith’s impersonation, in the 1969 movie), my mother had a genteel Anglo-Scots accent, taught at a private girls’ school, was forceful and opinionated, had firm ideas about education, and was clearly a wonderful presence in the classroom, filling the girls’ heads with strange stories, historical gossip, unusual dates, nice prejudices, delicious facts. I know that she loved talking to her classes about her own children; over the years, I would encounter some of her former pupils, and was amused by how much these young women knew about our family life. (They invariably knew that I played the trumpet, and had been to Eton.) When my mother used John Buchan’s work ethic as a moral goad, it was hard not to hear Miss Brodie telling her girls that she was going to learn Greek: “John Stuart Mill used to rise at dawn to learn Greek at the age

of five, and what John Stuart Mill could do as an infant at dawn, I too can do on a Saturday afternoon in my prime.” In Spark’s novel, we never see Miss Brodie not performing, we never see her just at home, offstage, not being a teacher. If she was anything like my mother, that may be an authorial mercy. Though authoritative with her young pupils and with her own children, my mother was not a confident or worldly woman. The anticipation of teaching made her extremely nervous, physically sick at times. The days just before the beginning of term, after the blessing of the holidays, were always tense and furious, full of melancholy and complaint. If she was a natural teacher, she was never an easy one. One of my fondest childhood memories is of standing outside the bathroom door and listening to her on the other side, as she methodically whispered words and dates: she had a history textbook with her in the bathroom, and was cramming for class. If I had been asked, when I was a child, how my mother liked teaching, I would have replied that she hated it. And because of this knowledge my siblings and I were sometimes condescending toward my mother’s work. Today, I would probably say that she disliked it but was powerfully, helplessly drawn to it. Now that I am myself a parent, I realize how perpetually exhausted and overloaded she must have been, how every muscle and nerve must have been pulled taut: three children, a week’s work at school, an extra job on Saturdays, the constant drag of debt. And Sunday, alas, was not a day of rest, but more work—what seemed like endless churchgoing. few months after the funeral,

A I gotstudents, an e-mail from one of her Katrina Porteous. I

“I’m starting to think humans don’t even like winning free cruises.”

former knew her name, because she is a poet, who has written eloquently about the North of England, in particular about the Northumberland coast, where she lives. She was one of my mother’s great success stories—Durham High School for Girls, a brilliant history degree at Cambridge University, a Harkness Fellowship to Berkeley and Harvard, and several acclaimed books of verse since the publication of her ﬁrst collection, “The Lost Music,” in 1996. Mother had

spoken of Katrina, and, a year before she died, had given me one of her books. But she was five years older than me, and we hadn’t known each other. We had learned of each other’s movements, literary and otherwise, intermittently and remotely, through my mother. Katrina had not been in touch with my parents for a long time, and was writing to ask if my mother was in good health, “and whether it might be possible to contact her.” She went on, “I’d like to thank her for the encouragement and inspiration she gave me. She really was the most wonderful teacher. I’ve recently published a new poetry collection with Bloodaxe, and would love to send it to her. Would that be possible?” It was strange to receive this message, so soon after my mother’s funeral, as if Katrina had some eerie premonition that all was not well, as if the long silence were speaking to her, laden with significance. It was strange, too, to be communicating as two middle-aged people. In my mind, my mother’s “old girls” were still girls, as I was still my mother’s boy. What linked us was lost in our far-off childhoods; and here we were, two graying adults talking across a waste of gain and loss. I wrote to her on Christmas Day, and told her that my mother had died in July. I added that I had been moved by the tributes my father had received from former Durham High School girls. Her e-mail, I told her, was one of the most moving: because she was a writer, and because of the accident of its timing. Katrina replied four days later. She said she was especially touched to hear from me at Christmas, when she was at home with her own parents, now in their eighties, “in the house from which I travelled to Durham High School every day as a child. One is powerfully transported back to earlier times in those moments.” She continued, “Your mother was and will always remain a profound influence in my life. She gave me the confidence to believe in myself as a ‘writer’ at a precocious age, when I had no right to think of myself as such, but every opportunity to become one. (I am still trying.) Growing up in

Consett, the only child of a scientist and a lovely but utterly unbookish mother, I encountered in yours the first ‘woman of letters’ I had met. She was also kind, sensitive, principled and spirited. I adored her. I am so sorry not to have taken the opportunity when I had it to tell her how much her example has meant to me.” Had Katrina spoken this at my mother’s funeral, I would not have stayed so calm. She, as a pupil, said what I, as a son, could not. Her words were simple and forthright and grateful, while mine would have been complicated and wary and not grateful enough. Did I want to take Katrina’s words as my own? Was I jealous of the easy literary encouragement she received? Perhaps, though surely what made her tribute so moving was precisely that it came from someone else. All sons adore their complicated mothers, in one way or another. But how powerful to encounter, from someone else, the beautifully uncomplicated statement “I adored her.” And Katrina’s message was a revelation, as if one of Miss Brodie’s girls had materialized, in order to write a letter to me. I had a sense that my mother was a good teacher, but I had no idea that she had been such an influential one, and in the very area I had chosen, and struggled to succeed in, often in the face of parental doubts. She had been not just a good teacher but a crucial literary encourager, and I had not been able to see this well enough—because as a mother her pedagogy was so fraught, so anxious and vicarious, and was such a difficult companion of her role as a parent. Sometimes, in anger or rebellion, I had felt that it was at best a frustration and at worst a misfortune to be the son of such a possessive and sharply gifted teacher. But my father knew better. To my surprise, he had these words put on her gravestone: “A devoted mother and grandmother and dear friend of many, including her former pupils.” He had properly assessed the components of her identity, the parts of her great labor, the variety of her lifework. What was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly. Her work was done.  THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

HONEST MUSEUM AUDIO TOUR BY RIVER CLEGG

ere it is, the “Mona Lisa.” You

H woke up early for this. You waited

in line for almost an hour. You’re now surrounded by seventy people, all trying to catch a glimpse of it. One of them just elbowed you while taking a photograph of it. It’s behind a lot of glass. It’s not very big. What I’m trying to say is: it’s O.K. to feel disappointed.

chair, which was made in 1573. The ﬁrst person to have sat in it is long dead. Now no one is allowed to sit in it. As you gaze at this haunting Rodin sculpture, note the contrast between the ﬁgure’s blank stare and the tormented curl of his lips. Wait, don’t note that. Forget I said anything. Moving on. This sculpture, you’ll notice, is a tube

This powerful self-portrait is from Picasso’s Blue Period—so named because the paint he used was mostly blue. You spent eight dollars on this audio guide. As the nineteenth century progressed, Impressionists such as Monet and Pissarro continued to divide public opinion—some people thought that the painters should be applying their paint to the canvas diﬀerently, while others maintained that the painters were doing the right thing with the paint. Now we come to the antique-furniture room. Note this intricately carved

sticking out of an orange cardboard box. You’re wondering, Is there something I’m missing? No, there is not. This is a bad sculpture. Look at this guy. Strolling through the museum without an audio guide— not even a map. Probably thinks he already knows everything. Well, his loss. Remember those neat tidbits about Gauguin’s personal life I told you in the last room? No way this guy knows them. Oh, God, now he’s stroking his chin and nodding thoughtfully at a Rembrandt. Christ. Let’s keep moving. We don’t need him.

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

This frenetic painting by Jackson Pollock is typical of his drip style, which features gestural splatters of paint across the canvas, and I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that this type of painting is easy, and that you could do it. It’s not, and you couldn’t. Paul Cézanne completed this landscape in 1879, and you can touch it right now if you want to. Quick! No one’s looking. This oil painting, like the eight preceding it, is of a table with fruit on it. There wasn’t a lot to paint back then. Titled “The Persistence of Memory,” this 1931 Surrealist work, renowned for its iconic melting clocks, was painted, by Salvador Dali, in response to a worldwide shortage of dorm-room poster art. By this point, you might have noticed that the history of Western painting went something like this: First, it didn’t matter whether the people looked realistic. Then it mattered. Then it stopped mattering again. This one is from 1910, when it was no longer mattering so much. “The Starry Night,” Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 masterpiece, captures a small village beneath a luminous sky. But the painting’s enduring mystery lies in the dark, ﬂame-shaped form in the left foreground. What was van Gogh attempting to convey with these elusive brushstrokes? What might this menacing presence in an otherwise tranquil landscape suggest? For years, there seemed to be no answer. Then we checked Wikipedia. It’s a cypress tree. As you can see, this room is a bunch of rugs hanging on a wall, so we can skip it. Your feet must be sore; you’ve been here for two hours. Your young child is screaming. Why did you think a sixyear-old would enjoy an art museum? Did you really believe that you were doing him a favor by bringing him here? You’re actively ruining everyone else’s time. And then there’s your other kid, who is bored and resents your very existence. She didn’t even want to come on this vacation, you know. One day soon, she will declare that she hates you, and mean it. This painting is by Courbet. The gift shop dates back to 1983, but it was made bigger in 1997. 

CHI BIRMINGHAM

SHOUTS & MURMURS

DEPT. OF PERFORMANCE

ART WITHOUT WALLS Alex Poots and the boom in mixed-media art. BY CALVIN TOMKINS

The Shed may be New York’s first example of performative architecture. very so often, it seems, visual art-

E ists are stricken by the urge to per-

form. The “happenings” movement in the nineteen-sixties—young painters and sculptors doing nonverbal theatre—was explained as a response to Pollock, de Kooning, and other gestural Abstract Expressionists: it was the gesture without the painting. In the seventies, when skill, craft, and mastery went out of fashion, a lot of visual artists moved into performance works that were considerably less entertaining than “happenings”—live or ﬁlmed or videotaped presentations of oneself doing something not particularly diﬃcult, like walking a straight line in the studio. Robert Rauschenberg, the most protean artist since Picasso, became so

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

obsessed with dancing in the ﬁfties and sixties, when he was creating sets and costumes for Merce Cunningham’s company, that he choreographed and performed in several extraordinary dance works of his own. His friend John Cage, the composer, philosopher, and Pied Piper to several generations of would-be radicals in all ﬁelds, had prophesied the new direction much earlier, in a 1957 lecture “Experimental Music.” “Where do we go from here?” Cage said. “Towards theatre. That art more than music resembles nature. We have eyes as well as ears, and it is our business while we are alive to use them.” Since 2000, the number of visual artists doing time-based, mixed-media

performances has expanded greatly, here and abroad, and their work has found a home in the festivals, art fairs, and biennials whose global proliferation now verges on the epidemic. (The first Antarctic Biennial—no kidding—takes place next spring, on a cruise ship and an ice field.) These artists—Philippe Parreno, Olafur Eliasson, Pierre Huyghe, Liam Gillick, Tino Sehgal, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Doug Aitken, and many others—are not widely known outside the art world, but they reach large, enthusiastic audiences on the festival circuit. Performance art has its own New York biennial (called “Performa”), organized and nourished since 2005 by the indefatigable RoseLee Goldberg. Nobody gets rich from these activities, and for many artists that is a powerful incentive. They see their work, in part, as a reaction to the overcommercialized world of the galleries and the auction houses, with its ever-rising prices and billionaire buyer-traders. “As the value of paintings and sculptures increases, some artists make things that can’t be sold,” Alex Poots, a leading impresario of the cross-discipline art movement, said to me last February. “The art walks off when the show ends.” Poots and I were standing at the eastern edge of the Hudson Yards, a twenty-eight-acre tract of real estate that runs from Thirtieth to Thirtyfourth Streets and from Tenth Avenue to the river. This is where the Long Island Rail Road parks trains that are not in use, and it is now a vast construction site. At least twenty cranes were doing the heavy lifting for seven of sixteen planned commercial and residential towers, several of which had already topped out. “It’s all being built on a platform over the railroad yards, and the trains are still running normally underneath,” Poots said, in a tone of boyish wonder. A new community—a new city, actually—is taking shape here, with thousands of offices and apartments, restaurants, a school, parks, and a new subway station for the No. 7 train, and at the heart of it, not yet visible but with the foundations in place, is the Shed, an experimental center for music, theatre, film and video, dance, and visual art, ILLUSTRATION BY JOSH COCHRAN

whose program Poots has been hired to create and direct. A six-story building with movable walls and ceilings and computerized lighting and sound systems, the Shed may be the city’s first example of performative architecture. It will have an exterior steel-and-glass shell that rests on gigantic rail tracks so that it can roll out over the public plaza in front, providing an enclosed performance area for audiences of up to three thousand people. “This will be the most flexible space ever made,” Poots said, proudly. A forty-nine-year-old former trumpet player from Edinburgh, Poots lacks the flamboyance generally expected in a world-class impresario. He is compact, soft-spoken, and unobtrusive. He sleeps no more than five hours a night, has permanent circles under his large, expressive eyes, and keeps track of his life with tiny handwritten notations in a black notebook. Under the calm exterior, though, is a tough-minded, hard-driving visionary who founded England’s Manchester International Festival and ran it for ten years, and turned the Park Avenue Armory into one of Manhattan’s most exciting venues for new performance works. Everything that he has done so far, he feels, can be seen as preparation for the Shed. “This is the largest effort to start a new cultural institution in New York in a very long time,” Daniel Doctoroff, the chairman of the Shed’s board of directors, told me. “What I love about Alex is that he’s an impresario in the truest sense of the word, but he is also a very practical Scottish guy who is very concerned that we live within our means. He’s got his hands on everything.” he idea of building above the

T Hudson Yards came about in the

mid-nineteen-nineties, with New York City’s bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The original plan included rezoning the whole area, investing in parks and other amenities, and building a stadium, which would become home ﬁeld for the New York Jets, on a huge tract between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues. The city approved the plan in 2005, but the stadium required approval by the state, and, when

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

Albany refused to give it, the city’s Olympic bid collapsed. At that point, Doctoroff, who had been a key player in the Olympics negotiations and was now a deputy mayor in the Bloomberg administration, forged ahead with the mixed-use redevelopment plan for the Hudson Yards. A separately funded nonprofit cultural center had been part of the plan from the outset, but, according to Doctoroff, “we had no idea what it was going to be. We asked ourselves, ‘Why does a city that has twelve hundred cultural institutions need one more, and what can we do here that will be different from all the others?’ ” When Doctoroff left the Mayor’s office, in 2008, to become the C.E.O. of Bloomberg L.P., the privately owned software, data, and media firm, he continued to meet informally with members of the administration to discuss plans for the arts center. Later that year, the city-run Hudson Yards Development Corporation commissioned the designers Elizabeth Diller and David Rockwell to start developing ideas of what the center would look like. Diller, of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, was one of the lead designers of the High Line, the hugely popular landscaped walkway whose northern end curls around the Hudson Yards. Rockwell’s firm had done the sets for numerous Broadway productions. The timing could not have been worse. The collapse of the financial markets in the 2008 economic recession caused Tishman Speyer, the real-estate firm initially charged with developing the Hudson Yards, to pull out of the project. Another firm, Related Companies, took over, but for the next few years planning for what was then called the Culture Shed proceeded much more slowly. Not until 2014 did Doctoroff and the board of directors he had put together feel confident enough to start looking for an artistic director. When Poots received a telephone call from a corporate headhunter, followed by a copy of the business plan for the Culture Shed, he wasn’t interested. “It just looked like an exhibition hall,” he recalled. “Rooms for hire by the highest bidder. So I didn’t apply for the job.” In late May, the headhunter asked him if he would at least 36

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

talk to Doctoroff. Poots agreed, on the condition that Doctoroff would first go to the show that he was putting on at the Park Avenue Armory. Doctoroff and his wife saw the show—it was Kenneth Branagh’s radical staging of “Macbeth,” which opened with a sword fight in a field of mud—and he and Poots had lunch the next day. “I asked him what he thought of it,” Poots recalled, “and he said he loved it, and that his wife had talked about it all night. I told him that in his world the show might seem like a loss-making event, but that in my world it was an investment—and that he, Doctoroff, would have to invest in things like this heart and soul. He said, ‘Would you come and tell my board what you’ve told me?’ ” “Alex made everyone on the board taste and smell and feel the building,” Liz Diller, who attended the meeting, told me. “He provided the magic link, the sense of what artists could do here.” His appointment as the Shed’s director was announced in November, 2014. Working closely with Diller and Rockwell for the next few months, while he was still involved with both Manchester and the Armory, Poots proposed a number of changes in the building’s design, to provide more flexibility and larger performance areas. The trustees had to raise an additional twenty-six million dollars to pay for these changes, and their willingness to do so boosted Poots’s optimism. He also cut back drastically on the amount of time that would be allotted for rentals, persuaded the board to drop the word “culture”—with its echoes of élitism—from the building’s title, and gained a clear understanding that his programming would focus primarily on new and commissioned works. “I hire a lot of people, and I have great confidence in my powers of cynicism,” Doctoroff told me. “Alex evaporated my cynicism.”

lexander Moinet Poots grew

Aup in a household in which music

and language were the dominant interests. His French mother, Mireille Moinet, taught French literature and translation at Heriot-Watt University, in Edinburgh. (She was also a ﬁrstrate pianist.) His Irish father, Robert

Victor Poots, was a dentist and an amateur trumpet player. When Alex was four, he learned how to blow his father’s cornet, which is smaller than a trumpet. He soon graduated to the trumpet, took lessons, and practiced for an hour every day. “I was extremely good at playing the trumpet but extremely average at everything else,” he told me. “I remember, when I was ten, standing up before the whole school and playing ‘The Mexican Hat Dance.’ I took it at double speed, because I was a little nervous, and it worked—until then, I’d been pretty anonymous at school.” His French grandmother lived with them when he was small, and for several years Alex spent summers at her ancestral home, in a pine forest near Bordeaux. “His mind thought in French as much as in English,” his younger brother, Ben, who was born when Alex was eleven, told me. “He was always full of energy, and he slept only a few hours a night.” After high school, Poots enrolled at Napier College, in Edinburgh, where he ﬁnished his classical-trumpet training and earned a diploma granted by London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. “And then, much to my parents’ dismay, I postponed university for a year and became a professional trumpet player in Edinburgh,” he said. “I played for jazz bands in bars, and I even recorded with a pop group called the Blue Nile.” A year later, he found an academic program at the City University of London that matched his highly speciﬁc interests— it covered music from antiquity to Bach and then skipped to the twentieth century. “It was extremely competitive,” he said. “They wanted straight A’s, and my grades weren’t good enough. But I showed them my A-level paper on Wynton Marsalis, a young trumpet player who was at that point the new hope of contemporary jazz, and I played the trumpet for them, and they made an exception and let me in.” After graduating, in 1992, he stayed in London and for the next few years earned his living, in part, as a trumpet player, but he had begun to question whether his future lay in performing. “I knew I was never going to play the

trumpet as well as Wynton Marsalis,” he said. “His sound—the roundness of it, the beauty, the agility in moving from a low register to a high register without losing quality—was on a different level. There was an absolutely clear moment when I knew the trumpet wasn’t my future,” he recalled. “I was in Edinburgh on holiday, and playing offstage trumpet for Verdi’s ‘Requiem’ at King’s Theatre. The trumpet part is only about two minutes, and then you can leave. I walked back to my parents’ house, went to bed, and had a nightmare about playing that same piece of music thirty years later. I woke up and said to myself, ‘That is not what I want to be doing in thirty years, playing Verdi’s “Requiem” not quite as well as I did before.’” Poots had met a number of important figures in the music world while he was a student, working as a concert manager for the Edinburgh International Festival during his summer vacations. In 1996, Graham Sheffield, the music director of London’s Royal Festival Hall and also of the Barbican Centre, the large performing-arts complex, offered him a temporary position there. “Your job will be to put on shows that are so attractive they’ll drag audiences kicking and screaming to the venue they hate most,” Poots was told. (The Barbican’s brutalist architecture had few admirers then—it had been voted London’s ugliest building.) One of the shows Sheffield wanted was a yearlong season of American culture. Poots put on a series called “American Pioneers,” which featured John Cage, Morton Feldman, La Monte Young, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Adams, and others who, in his view, had redefined music in the second half of the twentieth century. Another series, called “Sing It Loud,” traced the rise of African-American music and culture. Many of his shows had a strong appeal to younger audiences: a week of American Indian storytelling by Gayle Ross; appearances by Ken Kesey and some of the surviving Merry Pranksters, along with the Magic Bus; James Brown, performing in the U.K. for the first time in twelve years. “We had an absolute ball, and all the money we needed, and there were huge audiences,” Poots recalled. He

ended up working with the Barbican for ﬁve years. “His program there was quite spectacular,” Peter Sellars, the American theatre and opera director, said recently. “Alex is brilliantly intuitive and genuinely curious, and his intuitions are surprisingly right on—or dead wrong. He is so receptive to what the artist is thinking.” ne evening in June, I had din-

O ner with Poots and his wife, Kath-

ryn, at their rented town house on the West Side. They are both good cooks, and Kathryn made dinner that night—a halibut-and-shrimp dish, with Persian rice. Their two young children, Lucy, who is eight, and Thomas, five, had dined earlier, but Lucy wanted (and was given) a plate of our meal. Kathryn Spellman Poots grew up in Iowa, in a large Catholic family. Five of her six siblings are lawyers, and they all work for the family law firm, in Des Moines. When Kathryn was at Marquette University, in Milwaukee, she went to London for her semester abroad and stayed for twenty-five years. She became a sociologist, whose special fields of interest are Shia Islam, gender, and migration. Kathryn and Alex met in 2004, when she provided research assistance for a new opera, with a Middle East focus, that he was developing. Their paths

crossed again the following year. Steve McQueen, the artist and filmmaker, needed some professional advice on Iraq for a project that he was working on, and Alex called her in to help. Kathryn was married at the time, and Alex was engaged, but a few months later her marriage broke up and his engagement ended. McQueen told Kathryn that she and Poots belonged together. He told Poots the same thing. When Alex learned she was single, he said, “There was no stopping me. We were together within weeks, and we married in 2007.” They moved to New York last fall. Kathryn, who had been teaching sociology at Aga Khan University, in Pakistan, is now a visiting scholar at Columbia. Poots’s work for the Shed requires a lot of travel, mostly to meet with artists and talk about what they want to do. His focus is so intense that you wonder how he can juggle ten to fifteen complex productions at the same time, as he has been doing for the past decade in Manchester and at the Armory, navigating the minefields of artistic ego that go with the territory. “He’s good at being in many places at the same time,” Kathryn said, laughing. Peter Saville, a British designer and one of Poots’s closest friends, told me, “Sometimes Alex doesn’t trust his own opinion enough, and can’t make up his mind. But he’s very tough. Things

“Now more than ever I need the right kind of avocado toast.”

upset him and hurt him, but they do not deflate him.” During dinner, Kathryn told a story about the first day of their honeymoon, which they spent in an old mill, two hours from Edinburgh, that belonged to his parents. Alex went for a walk in the late afternoon, and was gone for an alarmingly long time. He had seen a lamb stuck in deep mud, and had spent more than an hour pulling it out. (In an earlier conversation, Kathryn had told me that it would be hard for a woman who didn’t have a life of her own to be with him.) We talked about the Broadway theatre. Poots thought the libretto for “Hamilton” was magnificent, but I could tell that he was less enthusiastic about the music. “I don’t think a great musical has been written since ‘West Side Story,’ ” he said. “It’s a benchmark, an amazing opera. It expands your mind, as great art does.” We went to the living room, where he screened a video of a Kanye West performance in which the hip-hop artist makes references to the terrorist attacks in Paris last year. “I think Plato said that music is the most dangerous art form,” Poots said. “I have that written down somewhere.” He looked in his black notebook and found it: “Plato believed that ‘when the modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the state change with them.’ ” n 2001, Poots signed a three-year

I contract with the Tate Gallery to

produce a series of works that combined the visual and the performing arts. Nicholas Serota, the Tate’s director, had recently opened Tate Modern, in a converted power plant on the south bank of the Thames. He was aware of the increasing number of visual artists, worldwide, who were working with time-based art forms, and he had decided that Poots, in his Barbican productions, “seemed to have his ﬁnger on a new pulse.” “Alex had conceived this notion of putting people together who had never met, and who might strike sparks from each other,” he said. Serota introduced Poots to Steve McQueen, who had just made a thirty38

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

minute art work in which a cousin of his describes on film how he accidentally shot and killed his younger brother. McQueen wanted a musical counterpart to the story, like a requiem, and Poots arranged for the singer Jessye Norman, whom he had worked with at the Edinburgh International Festival, to see it. Deeply moved, Norman composed a piece of music, which she sang as she walked slowly through the audience. Poots regards Serota as an important mentor. “Nick gave me a chance to be in the same room with the visual arts,” he said. “Before that, I was not very literate in that world.” Late in 2004, Poots got another call from a headhunter. The city council in Manchester, Britain’s second-largest city, planned to launch an international arts festival, and his name was on the list of potential directors. Poots, who had been hired a year earlier to commission new works for the English National Opera, said that he was not available. But his friend Peter Saville called him and said, “Alex, why don’t you just go and give them some advice? It would be a good contact.” Saville had grown up in Manchester, and he was advising its current leaders on ways to reboot the city’s reputation as a grimy anachronism— the world’s first industrialized city— and bring it to life in the twenty-first century. The festival was part of that revitalization effort. Saville had come up with a formative concept: instead of being the first industrial city, he had told his clients, Manchester should think of itself as “the original modern city.” When Poots heard this, he was captivated. “I asked myself what an original modern festival might look like,” he said to me. “And the answer, of course, was that it would be all about new work.” Poots went to Manchester. He urged the committee to build on the city’s history of radicalism—it was the birthplace of trade unionism and women’s suffrage, and Friedrich Engels had lived there when he was writing “The Condition of the Working Class in England”—and to break away from the

usual festival format of classics with a smattering of newer works. Present exclusively new or commissioned events, he said, and make it biennial, so that you can spend twice as much money on each festival. That evening, he was offered the job. Poots resigned from the National Opera (one work he was developing there, with the Asian Dub Foundation, eventually opened under the name “Gadaffi”). He rented a small apartment in Manchester, and threw himself into organizing the first Manchester International Festival, which was scheduled to run for eighteen days in the summer of 2007. That gave him two years to identify and develop a series of original productions. Working with a small staff and a generous budget—fifteen million dollars, considerably more than most established festivals had to spend at the time—Poots put together a program of about twenty events, to be staged throughout the city. They ranged from a contemporary adaptation of an ancient Chinese story (“Monkey: Journey to the West”), with a score by Damon Albarn, of Blur and Gorillaz, to “Il Tempo del Postino,” an exhibition of performance works by fourteen international artists, including Matthew Barney, Olafur Eliasson, Tacita Dean, and Tino Sehgal. “Il Tempo del Postino” had been developed by the artist Philippe Parreno, in collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist, the director of the Serpentine Gallery, in London. Poots, who still felt “underinformed” about visual art, had hired Obrist as an artistic adviser, and the two have worked together ever since. “Postino” was insanely ambitious, Poots recalled. Matthew Barney’s piece featured a live bull, which was supposed to copulate with a car onstage. When the owner of the Manchester Opera House, where the production was being staged, learned about the bull, he shut down rehearsals. Poots went to see Howard Bernstein, the city’s chief executive. “You believe this is important to the art work?” Bernstein asked him. “One hundred per cent,” Poots replied. Bernstein got on the phone and talked the owner into reopening the opera house. Poots’s programming has never been

exclusively mixed-media. He presented many single-artist exhibitions and music recitals in Manchester, as well as poetry readings, films, traditional theatre, debates and discussions, and children’s events. “It would be a very impoverished world if we had to choose between art in its purist form and things like ‘Monkey: Journey to the West,’ ” he told me. One of the most important works in the first festival was “Queen and Country,” Steve McQueen’s project to memorialize British soldiers killed in the Iraq War by putting their portraits on postage stamps. (This was the project that Kathryn had helped him research.) The Ministry of Defense and the British Post Office both refused to coöperate, but ninety-eight of the families who had lost sons or daughters in Iraq provided photographs, and Poots and McQueen exhibited them in the Manchester public library. Not all of the new productions came off as well as Poots had hoped, but the brilliance and experimental daring of the festival brought spectators and critics from London and beyond, and “Monkey: Journey to the West” was booked, after its Manchester début, to appear in Paris, London, New York, and Charleston, South Carolina. The London Times critic Richard Morrison, writing about the opera, said, “What’s most encouraging . . . is the sense of something new and exciting being created from the melding of many disparate styles—pop and classical, Western and Eastern, visual and aural. The audience, about fifty years younger on average than the usual opera crowd, loved it.” he Seventh Regiment Armory,

T a Gothic Revival colossus that oc-

cupies the entire block from Sixty-sixth to Sixty-seventh Streets between Park and Lexington Avenues, has undergone a renovation-through-art. For decades, its fifty-five-thousand-squarefoot drill hall—where the Knickerbocker Greys come after school for instruction in upper-class military maneuvers—and its Tiffany-glass-infested rooms were rented out for antique shows and other commercial exhibitions. In 2006, a group called the Park Avenue Armory Conservancy was

granted stewardship of the building and embarked on its transformation into a cultural center. Rebecca Robertson and Elihu Rose, the conservancy’s executive producer and chairman, respectively, were looking for a new artistic director to expand and coördinate their program, and in 2011 they went to Manchester to meet Poots. Soon afterward, he agreed to work part time at the Armory, directing the annual season there. Poots was struck by “the amazing curiosity and receptiveness of New York audiences toward new work.” Some of his productions had been done first in Manchester, but in the vast space of the Armory’s drill hall they looked very different. Branagh’s “Macbeth” had been staged in a deconsecrated Manchester church; in the drill hall, Poots said, “it was more like a pagan setting, with standing stones at one end and a heath that the audience walked through.” Robert Wilson’s staging of “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović,” in which Abramović and Willem Dafoe enacted scenes from the performance artist’s melodramatic career, was completely reconceived for the Armory. (“When I met Alex, in thirty seconds I knew I could work with this person,” Abramović told me.) About half of the events originated at the Armory, and some of them could have been done nowhere else. “White Snow,” a panoramic installation by the artist Paul McCarthy that turned the Snow White story into an X-rated shocker, was “a very challenging show for a lot of people, although the public came in droves,” Poots said. In one of its sculptural tableaux vivants, a grotesque male figure, down on all fours, is penetrated by a long pole. “Some members of the public and some of my board members asked why this was not called pornography,” Poots told me. He stood by McCarthy, and reminded doubters of the Abner Louima case, in 1997, in which a New York policeman had sodomized a man in custody with a broom handle. “I’m not one of those people who think all their shows are brilliant,” Poots once told me. “A good half of them are not great.” That may be overly optimistic, considering that he so often works with the new and the THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

“Why do they all gain those extra pounds at the exact same time of the year?”

•

moving of his Armory productions, to many viewers, was the 2014 “Tears Become . . . Streams Become,” by Hélène Grimaud, a French concert pianist, and Douglas Gordon (whose “Neck of the Woods” appeared in Manchester a year later). Seven hundred people sat on bleachers surrounding a sunken rectangle in the drill hall’s ﬂoor, at each end of which was a grand piano. The lights went down, and for twenty minutes the only sound was the soft trickle of water seeping into the rectangle. When the water was about an inch deep, the lights gradually came up, and Grimaud, dressed all in white, walked slowly to one of the pianos. (From the bleachers, it looked as if she were walking on water.) Grimaud played for an hour, a selection of water-themed works by Ravel, Fauré, Liszt, Debussy, and others. There were moments during the recital when it felt as though you were hearing music for the ﬁrst time. oots and his small but rapidly

experimental. One misfire was the Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon’s “Neck of the Woods,” at the 2015 Manchester International Festival. A theatrical retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story, with Charlotte Rampling as the heroine, it was panned by the Guardian as “humourless and sedate,” and described by the Daily Telegraph as having “the unmistakable whiff of a vanity project.” The next day, when Gordon went berserk backstage and attacked a wall with an axe, several news accounts assumed that he was reacting to the negative reviews. Poots made a statement reprimanding Gordon for acting “in a wholly inappropriate way,” but privately he blames himself for the incident, saying that he did not provide sufficient rehearsal time before opening night. So far, few of Poots’s shows have been subjected to the sort of rigorous criticism that traditional theatre receives in London and New York, and maybe they shouldn’t be. Performance works by visual artists are often ephemeral spectacles made for specific occasions—and they are sometimes just too long. Some of them work; many 40

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

don’t. John Cage, who anticipated the movement “towards theatre,” later identiﬁed a problem at the heart of this trend: visual artists, trained to deal with space, often have great trouble understanding time. “Tree of Codes,” a 2015 production for Manchester and the Armory that combined ballet (choreographed by Wayne McGregor), music (by Jamie xx), and a visual setting (by Olafur Eliasson), was one that was widely—and diversely—reviewed. “The Independent said, ‘Five stars is not enough,’ and there were other glorious reviews, but the ballet critics didn’t like it,” Poots said. “They thought the ballet was eclipsed by the music and the visuals.” What “Tree of Codes” achieved, Poots feels, was a true synthesis of three art forms. “I thought something new had been explored and presented,” Poots said. “All they were looking at was the footwork.” Poots does not overestimate his capabilities. He knows when he needs help on a project, and he seeks out the people who can give it to him. What he likes best is helping artists realize projects that might not otherwise have been possible. The strangest and most

P expanding staﬀ have less than three

years to develop a program for the Shed’s opening season, which will run from April through December, 2019. Throughout the year, the premises will be available for fashion shows, product launches, and other commercial enterprises, at rentals that are expected to help subsidize the artistic program. “I think this is a new model of how an art center can function,” Poots told me. “You have to be more resourceful in America about these things, and I’m up for that.” Poots has commissioned the New York artist Lawrence Weiner to design an art work—to be embedded, mosaic-like, in the paving of the public plaza in front—and he is working on two new productions that will appear in temporary venues before the Shed opens. One is “The Age of Starlight,” a computer-generated, 3-D visual history of the universe, with narration by the BBC’s science adviser Brian Cox. The other is being curated by the performance artist Tino Sehgal, known for his audience-participation pieces. A third commission, “FlexNYC,” is already up and running. The dance form called ﬂex, or ﬂexn,

derives from Jamaican dancehall styles, and was developed in the nineteennineties by young African-Americans in the East New York section of Brooklyn. (The name came from a local cable show called “Flex N Brooklyn.”) It differs from reggae and break dancing in its ambition to express raw emotion. Instead of trying to dazzle or defeat competing dancers with spectacular moves, flex dancers use their bodies to tell personal stories, often involving violence, drug use, prison, and also sudden eruptions of joy. Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray, whose charisma and virtuosity made him the leader of a group that would eventually include Sam (Sam I Am) Estavien, Calvin Hunt, and about fifteen others, perfected a movement that he called “pauzin,” a variation on Jamaican Bruk Up that requires continuous start-and-stop movements— movements so quick that they look strobe-lit. The group attracted a lot of attention in local dance halls. Several would-be promoters talked about offering professional contracts, but nothing happened until 2013, when Poots heard about the dancers, and went to East New York to see them perform. Afterward, he called Peter Sellars and told him that he had to see them. Sellars began working with them—not choreographing but helping to coördinate the lighting and the way the dancers interacted onstage. In 2015, Poots and Sellars brought “Flexn” to the Park Avenue Armory, and then to the Manchester International Festival, and audiences in both places responded with foot-stomping excitement. “For me, there’s not a more important new art form in America,” Sellars said. The Shed has funded a program to send flex dancers into public schools in the five boroughs of New York City. Sixteen dancers, ages eighteen and up, took an intensive, three-week program at Lincoln Center last summer, to hone their teaching skills, and this September they began working with juniorhigh and high-school students in eight schools. “It’s not just a style, it’s a life style,” Calvin Hunt told me. Young women are joining what started out as a male fraternity, and flex’s potential for changing lives may eventually over

shadow its signiﬁcance as an art form. Meanwhile, Poots is commissioning Reggie Gray and the dancers to develop an ensemble piece that will première in 2019. he Shed will not lack compet-

T itors. The Museum of Modern

Art, the Whitney Museum in its new downtown location, and other established institutions have added performance spaces and developed timebased art programs in recent years. In addition, a surprising number of New York business leaders, politicians, and real-estate satraps have convinced themselves that new cultural institutions are the handmaidens of commerce—especially when building permits call for them. Barry Diller, the media billionaire, has pledged more than two hundred million dollars to convert a crumbling Hudson River pier into a landscaped island for the arts. (Diller’s wife, Diane von Fürstenberg, is on the Shed’s board.) Ronald O. Perelman, on the heels of an acrimonious departure as the chairman of Carnegie Hall, has announced a seventy-five-million-dollar gift to the long-delayed performing-arts center at the World Trade Center, whose program and design, published in September, show certain affinities to the Shed’s. Poots welcomes all these initiatives. There can never be too many cultural venues in the city, he maintains, any more than there can be too many good restaurants. Poots sees the Shed as a permanent festival of the ways in which art is evolving. “I get very agitated when people talk about genre-bending and crossover,” he told me recently. “That doesn’t mean anything, or add anything. The core of what matters is that we’re exploring a shared essence among different art forms, to create a whole that’s greater than any of its parts. It’s a kind of alchemy. We’re ready to do something significant, I hope.” He went on, “The idea of arts collaborating isn’t new, by the way. It’s been around since Monteverdi. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes used visual artists and composers and dancers to create new art—‘The Rite of Spring’ is the bar we all set for ourselves. What we have to do is find ways to do that in our own time.”  THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

PROFILES

SOMBRE COLORS Pedro Almodóvar enters a new phase, tenderly adapting Alice Munro’s tale of a devastated mother. BY D. T. MAX

any famous directors re treat to the privacy of their own screening rooms, but Pedro Almodóvar still likes to see mov ies in theatres. He lives off a park on the western side of Madrid, and the art houses are clumped together near Plaza de España, not far away. He tries to go at least once a week. If a studio sends him a screener on DVD and he likes the movie, he will watch it a second time in a cinema. One day in September, his driver dropped him off near the Cine Renoir, which was showing “Neruda,” a film about the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda directed by Pablo Larraín. As Almodó var walked toward the theatre, carry ing a Prada bag that held a bottle of water, locals recognized him. Spain is passionate about its movies, and Almo dóvar, who just turned sixtyseven, is the country’s most famous director since Luis Buñuel. Stout and pale, he stands out among the Madrileños, with wide dark glasses—he suffers from light sensitivity—and a tuft of white hair that a bird appears to have woven on the top of his head. The Cine Renoir, despite its elegant name, is a small space on the ground floor of an unappealing building— a bomb shelter that shows films. A woman in her twenties asked if she could take a photograph with Almo dóvar. Many of his fans are no longer so young. A woman in her sixties praised “Julieta,” his melancholy new film, which is about a mother whose teenage daughter abandons her. “It made me cry,” she said. “I shuddered.” “Bueno,” Almodóvar answered, smil ing. “Muchas gracias. Bueno.” Almodóvar, who was a bold show man when he was younger, now car ries himself in public at once tenta tively and grandly. He clearly enjoys walking unimpeded through the city, but the cinema visits are telling—if you

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don’t want adulation, why go where you’ll certainly be recognized? He told me, in Spanish, that the advent of the selfie was a relief: “While you gave them an autograph, the other person tended to tell their whole life story.” Some of the fans at the Cine Renoir lingered anyway. Almodóvar’s mov ies—abiding closeups, conversations full of confidences—make people think he must be a good listener. Another older woman spotted him from inside the theatre and came out. “Wow,” she said. “Congratulations on ‘Julieta.’ I’ve seen all your movies!” Almodóvar seemed relieved to get into the dark. He sat down, folded a light jacket across his lap, and settled in. Almodóvar began directing feature films in the late seventies. Among his early movies were “Dark Habits” and “Matador.” They featured transvestites, transgender people, bondage, rape, and lots of drug use and sex. His stories blurred the lines between gay and straight, coerced and consensual, com edy and melodrama, the funny and the repulsive, high and low art. It was all delivered with a puzzling cheerfulness that made the movies far more trans gressive than if their tone had been se rious. Spain had just emerged from de cades of dictatorship and repression, and Almodóvar’s films suggested that the country had leaped from Opus Dei to the Mudd Club in a single bound. Critics could not decide whether Almo dóvar was the most trivial filmmaker in history or the inventor of an im portant new strain of postmodernism. In more recent years, Almodóvar has broadened his subject matter and his tone. He runs his own production com pany, El Deseo (Desire), with his brother, Agustín. Under the umbrella of El Deseo, Pedro makes whatever movie he wants. A new one comes out every couple of years, as with Woody Allen, but no two Almodóvar movies are alike.

His aesthetic has become harder and harder to pin down. Critics regularly announce that he has finally left behind his taste for gender games and melo dramatic plots with murdered spouses, only to have his next movie prove them wrong. In 2011, he released “The Skin I Live In,” a lurid thriller in which a plastic surgeon operates on the man who raped his daughter, transforming him into his own female lover. (At the film’s conclusion, the lover shoots him.) Three years later, Almodóvar released “I’m So Excited,” a fizzy comedy about an airline flight during which the male attendants get drunk and perform oral sex on the pilots. He merrily recalls the critical response: “How on earth! At your age, how could you?” “Julieta,” based on three linked short stories by Alice Munro, is Almodóvar at his most reflective and nuanced. He can be a fierce critic of other Spanishlanguage filmmakers, but among those he admires is the forty yearold Larraín. Almodóvar so dis likes what he calls los biopics that he joked to me that he’d inserted a clause into his will prohibiting anyone from making a movie about his life. But Larraín’s film impressed him. “Neruda” focusses on a moment in the poet’s life, a few years after the Second World War, when a hostile Chilean govern ment forced him to flee over the Andes and into Argentina. In Larraín’s fan tastical rendering, Neruda is pursued by a police official who is also a great reader; the pursuit becomes more metaphysical than real, a study of the seductions of narrative. Almodóvar watched mostly in silence, but when an actor playing Augusto Pinochet ap peared, he made a very Spanish cluck ing noise with his tongue. Afterward, he said that the film was lyrical and pretty, “emotional and, at the same time, abstract.” It was easy to detect Almodóvar’s influence on

Almodóvar produces all his own films, giving him total control. “Not even Scorsese has been able to do that,” he says. PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK PECKMEZIAN

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

the movie: Neruda was portrayed as a Dionysian figure declaiming verse to half-naked prostitutes, and there was even a transvestite singer whose humanity slowly emerged from beneath his smeared makeup. In front of the theatre, a row of fivepointed stars was visible in the dirty pavement. “Our Walk of Fame,” Almodóvar explained. “Have you ever seen a more humble thing?” The presence of the steel-and-white-marble stars in the dun concrete seemed ugly to Almodóvar. He has long had a difficult relationship with the Spanish cinema establishment, who helped install the walk in 2011. They have often underestimated his work, and he has lustily attacked them in return, critiquing the obscure nomination process for the Goya Awards, Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars. He joked, “I think they put the stars on the street so you could step on them.” They were in alphabetical order, but we were following them in reverse. We passed Buñuel and finally came to Almodóvar’s name: he was first. He was beset by selfie-seekers again.

He asked a man to wait to take a picture until he put his jacket on, but the man snapped it anyway, then raced oﬀ. “He didn’t even care if I got the other arm in!” Almodóvar said, bemused. Shoppers were hurrying past. Motorcycles roared, and there was a lot of honking. Fans kept gathering around him. “I’d better go,” he said. “This corner’s a little dangerous.” He got into his car, and his driver whisked him oﬀ. lmodóvar was born in 1949, in

A the small town of Calzada de Ca-

latrava, in the central Spanish region of Castilla-La Mancha. His father was a mule driver who led a team of twenty animals across the Sierra Morena to deliver wine to Jaén, in Andalucía. “It was something out of Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ or those novels of Théophile Gautier’s that take place in Spain,” Almodóvar recalls. “But in a time when there were cars and trucks.” He grew up mostly in the company of women. He fell in love with them singly and as a communal force. They were Spain’s secret power. “It was because of women that

“ Yes, I came back. I always come back.”

Spain survived the postwar period,” he says. In a 1988 interview, he described “the Spanish father” as “oppressive, repressive, castrating.” While the men were off working, the women nurtured the children and dealt with births, relationships, and deaths—what Almodóvar calls los problemas reales. One of his fondest memories is of the women of Calzada chatting at the town cemetery as they tended the graves of their families’ dead. “It’s basically what you see in ‘Volver,’ ” he explained, referring to his 2006 movie, part of which is set near where he was born. “Death disappeared, because the important thing was the flowers, the conversations.” Clothes were washed in the river. “Every La Mancha house had huge interior patios,” he said. The women worked lace there and gossiped. “Tops on the list were babies born out of marriage and suicides,” Almodóvar said. “People who threw themselves down the well or hanged themselves from the rafters.” He felt immediately the power of story. “It was a mixture of terror and vitality,” he said. “It was the origin of life and, at the same time, of fiction and fabulation.” As a boy who always felt different from his peers, he took away a second, less encouraging message: “I had no experience of anything, but I knew that this atmosphere was unnatural—or, at least, against my nature.” He added, “This was the last place I wanted to grow into adulthood.” In 1958, when he was nine, Almodóvar moved, with his parents, brother, and two sisters, to Madrigalejo, a town in Extremadura, in Spain’s far west. His intelligence and sophistication already were clear. His mother started a small concern writing and reading letters for illiterate neighbors. Pedro soon realized that she was embroidering the texts she read to them. In a 1999 essay in El País, he wrote, “The local women didn’t realize it, because the made-up stuff was always an extension of their lives. They were delighted after she read it.” His parents sent him to Catholic boarding school, planning to train him for the Church. He had a beautiful singing voice, and the priests admired him, but he hated the authoritarian education. Some of the priests sexually abused the students. The act of kissing the priest’s ring filled him with

repulsion; in 2007, he told GQ that he “could almost literally see their hands dirtied with sperm.” Nevertheless, he was moved by the mystery and pag eantry of Catholicism. “I am a posibilista,” Almodóvar told me repeatedly, a word that can mean both a practical person and an optimist. Rather than reject Catholicism, he made a bet with the Supreme Being. As he put it to me, “I would go to Mass for a year, and then He would show Himself.” But God remained invisible, and Almodó var soon stopped confessing. He had already found something else to worship. It came in the form of glamorous illustrations of actors, called cromos, which were included in pack ages of Matías López chocolates. “The world of those cromos—that’s where I knew I wanted to belong,” he said. “Not to a world where young women are locked away in their houses because they are pregnant.” He and Agustín, who is seven years younger, became regular moviegoers. In Calzada, spectators were expected to bring their own chairs to screenings. “It was like Victor Erice’s ‘Spirit of the Beehive,’ where everyone brings a can with coal,” Almodóvar says. In the sum mer in Madrigalejo, movies were pro jected on a wall of a building that, at other times, was used by boys to piss on. “Basically, they put on spaghetti Westerns,” Almodóvar recalls. “But we also saw ‘Los Olvidados,’ by Buñuel, and ‘The Virgin Spring,’ by Bergman.” Those movies explored extremes of be havior, and knowing about such things made Almodóvar feel powerful. When he recounted the plot of the Buñuel to his sisters, he remembers, they looked at him almost with terror. He also saw Welles’s “Chimes at Midnight” and Antonioni’s “Night,” and fell in love with Jeanne Moreau, twice. By then, Almodóvar had realized that he wanted not just to see movies but to make them, too. At the age of seventeen, he came home from Cath olic school and told his parents that he was moving to Madrid. His father, he recalls, “threatened to turn me in to the National Guard.” Pedro replied, “Turn me in. I’m leaving.” Almodóvar arrived in the capital in 1967, with daunting energy and a huge appetite for art and conversation. He

soon had an impressive Mexicanstyle mustache and long hair. He took on various odd jobs, including working as a disk jockey in a barra americana—a dance hall of questionable character— and playing an extra in movies that needed hippies. In 1969, he became an oﬃce assistant at Telefónica, the na tional telephone company, and his em ployers came to depend on him. “He is a perfectionist, and every company needs a perfectionist,” Agustín Almo

dóvar said. Pedro kept track of broken telephones that were returned. He found the work easy; it was as good a score as Hawthorne’s job at the Salem customs house. While working there, he began the screenplay for his ﬁrst feature ﬁlm. eneral Franco was still in power,

G and the repression was both polit

ical and cultural. His vicious regime had been hostile to avantgarde movie aes thetics. But by the time Almodóvar showed up in Madrid, Franco was in his midseventies, and the choke hold on artistic expression was loosening, at least in the major cities and at univer sities. Almodóvar intended to enroll in film school, but the city had only one, and Franco, viewing it as a center of Com munism, had all but closed it. Being a posibilista, Almodóvar bought a Super 8 camera and began to shoot short films on his own. “I had no budget, no money,” he says. “The important thing was to make movies.” He wrote out complete scripts, even though his camera couldn’t record sound, and changed the charac ters depending on which of his friends showed up for a shoot. He avoided film ing where he might bump into the au thorities, and so he made several Bibli cal epics in the countryside, giving them, he says, “a bucolic and abstract air, the opposite of Cecil B. De Mille’s.” Since he had no money to buy lights, many of the scenes in his Super 8 movies were

filmed on rooftops, in parks, and by win dows. “Fortunately, Spain is a place with a lot of natural light,” Almodóvar says. From the beginning, he was inter ested in the pathology of family rela tionships and the fluidity of sexual ity—ideally, the intersection of the two. For “The Fall of Sodom,” filmed in 1975, he dressed the Sodomites in wom en’s clothing. Two years later, he made “Sexo Va, Sexo Viene”—“Sex Goes, Sex Comes”—a farce about a lesbian who abuses her boyfriend until he starts dressing like a woman. The Super 8 movies are too dam aged to be shown today, according to Almodóvar. They exist only in his re telling. He projected them for friends in bars, discos, and art galleries. He im provised dialogue, sometimes com menting on the acting, while Agustín, who had followed him to Madrid, pro vided a soundtrack with recorded music. “It became a sort of performance,” Almodóvar recalls. Almodóvar’s movies, proudly soph omoric and raunchy, were part of a boisterous artistic and musical move ment called La Movida, which was taking hold in Madrid, much of it in Malasaña, a barrio of rundown ware houses and dingy clubs. For inspira tion, La Movida looked often to the punk and New Wave movements in England and America. “We imitated their life style,” Almodóvar says. “The way they sang, the way they lived. But it was also mixed up with something that was our own, and very idiosyn cratic.” Visual artists, musicians, drug dealers, homosexuals, transvestites, and students gathered through the night in scrappy venues, translating Anglo Saxon anomie and Teutonic angst into Hispanic vivacity, passion, and humor. A friend remembers Almodóvar show ing up at events in a white seat sedan with four or five other young male art ists, a group assumed to be gay. In fact, he told me, his sexuality was as fungi ble as one of his characters’. “I slept often with women, too,” he said. “I was bisexual until the age of thirtyfour.” La Movida was fuelled, in part, by drugs. Madrid had elected a new social ist mayor, and at a rock concert in the city’s sports stadium he astonished the citizenry by proclaiming, “If you aren’t already stoned, get stoned!” Almodóvar THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

generally does not discuss his own ex perience with drugs, but in 1988 he told an interviewer that what he and Rainer Werner Fassbinder had in common was “we both like cocaine and we’re both fat.” As enthusiastically as Almodóvar participated in the night life of Mala saña, he always had one eye on the exit. “The fact that I had this clear and re sounding goal meant that I could be in the middle of the current and not get swept away,” he says. He didn’t want to be a pasota—the word of the time for a slacker—or an experimental filmmaker in the Andy Warhol mode. What in terested him about movies was their ability to tell heightened stories. He initially tried to capture La Mo vida in prose, but decided that he didn’t have the talent for fiction. (He still de scribes himself as a “frustrated novel ist.”) So he worked hard on his screen plays, giving them plenty of twists. Most Movida members focussed on art, music, or poetry, all of it cheap and quick. Almodóvar was capable of imag ining larger enterprises that needed funding and the coöperation of other talented people. In the midseventies, he recalls, he appeared in a local pro duction of Sartre’s “Dirty Hands,” tak ing “the smallest role in the play”— three lines. At the theatre, he became friends with an established actress by the name of Carmen Maura. He liked to watch her put on her makeup (a memory that finds an echo in the dress ingroom intimacies of his 1999 film, “All About My Mother”). She went on to star in seven movies for him, be coming his most famous muse. In the late seventies, Maura and an other actor, Félix Rotaeta, helped Almo dóvar graduate from the Super 8 short to the 16mm. feature. They began a fundraising campaign among their friends and raised eight thousand dol lars. Meanwhile, an avantgarde mag azine asked Almodóvar to write some thing “muy punk.” In response, he started a narrative fashioned from cap tioned images: “General Erections” was about a nightclub competition over penis size. The winner got to ask any one in the audience for any sex act he wanted. Franco had just died, and this sort of dirty humor resonated with Spaniards at the time. Many young people doubted the value of their new 46

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

political freedom, but they never dis paraged their sexual freedom. Almodóvar did not publish the nar rative, deciding that instead it should be the centerpiece of a film. He built around it a plot that seemed like a head long remake of one of his favorite films, George Cukor’s “The Women.” The casting was casual. Alaska, a fourteen yearold La Movida singer, became one of the film’s stars. “It mattered more what clothes you had than how you could act,” she says. The movie, “Pepi, Luci, Bom,” was shot on weekends over thirteen months; filming halted when there was no money. Almodóvar recalls spending the largest part of the bud get on food and alcohol. “This was log ical,” he said, on a Spanish talk show. “The people had to be content.” “Pepi, Luci, Bom” is amateurish but winning, focussing, as nearly every Almodóvar film does, on relationships among women. Men are confined to supporting roles in which they are rarely supportive. Luci, a masochist, leaves her husband, a police officer, for Bom, a dominatrix. This leads to an Almo dovarian irony: the police officer reacts to Luci’s embrace of sadomasochism by raping her, which leaves her in a hospital bed, expressing gratitude to him. The institution of marriage has prevailed! The camera work is rough—Almo dóvar himself starred as the master of ceremonies for the General Erections contest, and the framing of the shot accidentally cuts off his head. (“It didn’t seem important enough to repeat the shot,” he recalls.) But some of the act ing is impressive, especially that of Car men Maura, who, as Pepi, makes a lovely, goodhumored impression. Almodóvar is already showing his skill at directing women, and in casting Maura as Pepi, the unshockable on looker and gentle encourager of her friends, he was really casting himself. Javier PérezGrueso, an artist in the La Movida scene, who is known as Furia, recalls, “She was his alter ego— optimistic, gracious, and a bit zany.” Luci, Bom” was shown at the “P epi, San Sebastián Film Festival in

1980. Some critics savaged the low pro duction values, but others argued that this attested to the ﬁlm’s urgency and

cultural authenticity. Who cared if the director hadn’t miked the actors prop erly? El Periódico perceptively praised Almodóvar as “a stubbornly passion ate defender of substandard movies.” The film became a staple of latenight Madrid—a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the Spanish—and highly profitable. Spanish producers began courting Almodóvar, but he fought them over creative control. He made his 1983 fea ture, “Dark Habits,” with money from the industrialist Jacques Hachuel, who insisted on casting his wife, Cristina Sánchez Pascual, in the starring role of a wayward dancer who enters a con vent. Almodóvar didn’t think that Sán chez Pascual could sing or dance well enough to carry the movie, and so he expanded the roles of other, more tal ented actresses. “The final result is that they grew and Cristina shrank,” he re members. The producer of his next project, “What Have I Done to De serve This?,” tried, without success, to force Almodóvar to eliminate a char acter who had magical powers. “What they didn’t understand was that Pedro is a genius,” Agustín says. “And that his value is precisely his energy and his brilliance. You have to channel him, but you can’t put him in a straitjacket.” In 1985, the brothers founded El Deseo, in part to protect Pedro from such battles. Agustín ran the busi ness side. By profession, he was a chemistry teacher, but his relation ship with Pedro was the crucial thing in his life. Agustín explained to me that his sole purpose at El Deseo is to help “Pedro make the movie he wants.” He has played bit parts in most of the movies. The brothers agreed to strict rules. The movies would have modest bud gets—around ten million dollars— which meant that Almodóvar forever after made movies in which people go in and out of rooms talking, rather than ones in which they blow each other up in cars. Creating his own pro duction company allowed Pedro an unusual luxury: he could often shoot a movie from first page to last, rather than in the least expensive order. Almo dóvar felt that a chronological approach yielded more persuasive performances. “I owe Agustín the independence and

liberty that I enjoy as a director,” Pedro says. “It’s completely without precedent. Not even Scorsese himself has been able to do that.” on the Verge of a Ner“W omen vous Breakdown,” Almodóvar’s

eighth feature and his second under El Deseo, was released in 1988. The movie began with a script based on Jean Cocteau’s play “The Human Voice,” in which a woman is heard on the phone speaking to an unseen lover who is breaking up with her. Almodóvar had made six movies in eight years, enjoying successively larger budgets and audiences. He wanted to return to his past, he told me, to make a “muy, muy underground film, with just one set.” But the script felt too slight, and so he started the story forty-eight hours earlier, transforming Cocteau’s intense portrait of a woman in crisis into a farcical roundelay of various women betrayed by men and their own credulous, loving natures. The story was frantic to the point of giddiness, with a plot that pivoted around a blender of gazpacho, laced with sleeping pills, that the main character plans to offer to her unfaithful boyfriend. Some of the film’s hectic appeal came from the screwball script and some from its look—extraordinarily bright Pop-art sets that were filmed in a superwide format that echoed CinemaScope. The art direction seemed determined to erase the distinction between life and the lifelike. Everything in the movie—from the stagy view of the Madrid skyline to the gazpacho, which puts one person after another to sleep, as if they were characters in an operetta—seemed to belong more to the world of cromos than to reality. “Women on the Verge” gave Maura her best role, as Pepa, the lovelorn but unsinkable reimagining of Cocteau’s despairing protagonist. “Our relationship was at its maximum intensity,” Almodóvar says. “I felt it was a miracle to have that instrument.” He cast the young Antonio Banderas as the male lead. For the role of Banderas’s virginal fiancée, Almodóvar selected Rossy de Palma, a musician with the high forehead, bulging eyes, and refracted nose of a Picasso. (The Times once called her “unforgettably strange-

¥ looking.”) The script called for De Palma to spend much of the film inert, after drinking Pepa’s gazpacho. At one point, she complained to Almodóvar that lying in a deck chair, pretending to be out cold, was boring. In response, Almodóvar wrote her a scene in which she dreams that she is having sex. “Good thing I was a pain and pushed him,” she recalls. “It got me that lovely orgasm.” “Women on the Verge” was at once a spoof of, and an anthem to, a liberated Spain. Like the Movida scene that Almodóvar had emerged from, it was optimistic and eager to please. The film received an Oscar nomination and was an international box-office hit. His mother, however, was unimpressed with her son’s new fame: she told him that he should go back to his Telefónica job. The troupe of actors who populated Almodóvar’s films became famous as well. Over the years, he assembled his team by hand, like George Clooney in

¥ “Ocean’s Eleven.” He recruited Rossy de Palma at a bar. He approached Antonio Banderas at the iconic Café Gijón, where the nineteen-year-old was relaxing with friends after a performance at the Teatro María Guerrero. Banderas remembers a fast-talking man with a red plastic briefcase sitting down with them: “He said to me, ‘You have a romantic face. You should be in movies.’ And then he left.” Shortly afterward, Banderas was offered a role in “Labyrinth of Passion.” Penélope Cruz received a phone call after appearing in a Spanish comedy. “My friend said, ‘Almodóvar is on the phone.’ I thought it was a joke.” She felt honored to speak to him. “He was almost a political figure, a representation of change, of democracy,” she recalls. He promised her, “I’m going to write you a small character.” It was a part in the 1997 melodrama “Live Flesh.” She has since appeared in four more of his feature films. Almodóvar and his actors became fixtures THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

on the Madrid restaurant circuit. “We were almost like the Rolling Stones,” Banderas says. “We were a group. We would go out to clubs and dinners and travel together. People would say, ‘Here comes the Almodóvar gang.’ ” lmodóvar’s apartment is a few

A blocks from the Malasaña district,

which is now thoroughly sanitized. He lives alone, except for a cat named Lucio, who, in proper Almodóvar fashion, has switched genders. In 2010, during the filming of “The Skin I Live In,” in Toledo, local children left a cat with one of the set porters, asking that it be called Lucía by its next owner. The cat was passed on to Almodóvar, and it turned out that the children had not looked carefully enough between its legs. “We had an instant sex change!” Almodóvar jokes, adding, “A cat is the right pet for a selfish writer.” He explained, “If you dedicate your life to the movies, to writing or painting, the life you can offer another person is very precarious. I couldn’t have the strength or the right to ask another person to accept this sort of life.” Similar words are spoken by the world-weary director Pablo in his 1987 movie, “Law of Desire.” The Spanish papers report that he remains in a long-term relationship with a pho-

tographer who has had small roles in his movies, but Almodóvar is steadfast in saying that he has no partner. Almodóvar’s infatuation with his adopted city has cooled. “I don’t want to sound disappointed,” he declares, sounding that way. “But Madrid and I are like a ﬁfty-year-long marriage. We’re based more in routine than excitement.” Madrid, he grouses, is turning into a Spanish Oslo; then again he has grown more staid himself. He has long since stopped going to night clubs: “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. And I don’t do drugs.” Cigarette smoke bothers him, and he is deaf in one ear and losing his hearing in the other—worrisome for a director who is so attuned to script and voice that he tries never to watch dubbed movies. The walls of Almodóvar’s living room are orange, and on them he has hung four surrealist Man Ray photographs, including one of an iron with tacks stuck to the soleplate. Nearby is a Warhol silk screen of a bright-yellow cow. There are also objects of more personal signiﬁcance, including a sculpture, by Miquel Navarro, of a seated man with a penis like a piece of pipe. It plays a prominent role in “Julieta.” “Pick it up—it’s surprisingly heavy,” Almodóvar said, noting that he was

“I can’t even begin to work out until I ﬁnd the right news to infuriate me.”

repeating a moment from the film. I also saw a picture frame, encrusted with blue marbles, that is identical to the one smashed onto the floor in “The Flower of My Secret.” A photograph of Almodóvar’s beloved mother, who died in 1999, now occupies the frame. Almodóvar’s shelves are as full of playful figurines and gaudy magnets as a Tribeca toy store. Over all, the apartment has the continually dusted look of a prominent artist’s studio. Almodóvar has a cook, and while we were talking his personal assistant, a young man in shorts, hovered nearby. This was Osama. If Almodóvar wanted tea, Osama made it for him. (Osama, too, gets a cameo in “Julieta.”) Almodóvar showed me a nook that he calls his “DVD-oteca.” A green couch with summery throw pillows sat opposite a TV installed in a shelving unit. Osama had tried to organize the holdings—some three thousand DVDs—but had given up. “They’re by genre,” Almodóvar explained. “And sometimes by director, if there are enough disks. There are Orson Welles, Rossellini, Visconti, Kazan. For someone from the provinces who lived dreaming of going to a different place, all the problems that Kazan talked about in ‘Splendor in the Grass’ seemed to me straight out of the town I grew up in.”There was a shelf marked “Joyas” (“Jewels”), with “The Palm Beach Story,” “Blue Velvet,” “Gun Crazy,” “Ed Wood,” and the 1936 kitsch horror classic “Devil Doll,” whose shrinking actors helped inspire the surreal moviewithin-a-movie in “Talk to Her,” in which a man gives himself an elixir and disappears into his girlfriend’s vagina. Alfred Hitchcock had his own section. Homages to Hitchcock appear often in the movies of Almodóvar, who shares a fondness for the bravura shot. In “Kika,” for example, one senses the kinship in the way the moon dissolves into a washing-machine window, or a moving train’s side panels begin to look like unspooling film. For Almodóvar, Hitchcock is the indispensable director. “Whenever I bump into one of his films on TV, it’s incredible how I can’t stop watching,” he said. “The color in my movies is very Caribbean, and it has a Baroque quality—the same as Hitchcock’s.”

Some of Almodóvar’s twenty feature films occupied a modest bottom shelf. If he watches any of them again, he can’t help but notice flaws—a poor shot, a line spoken by an actor that misses the effect Almodóvar was after—but he tries to let them go. “I don’t see them as faults but as part of the adventure,” he said. I asked him which of his films he liked best. “ ‘Talk to Her’ is the one that has the fewest moments I don’t like,” he said. Later, we discussed the 2004 film “Bad Education,” which centers on two friends in a Catholic school, one of whom has been sexually abused by a priest. Almodóvar had been criticized, sometimes rightly, for treating rape as yet another plot device, but this film made clear that he understood the horror of it. The actor Gael García Bernal is said to have had a strained relationship with Almodóvar on the set. Almodóvar spoke of the shoot haltingly, mentioning that one of the actors had been driven to physical and mental exhaustion by the character he’d written; there were plenty of times when Almodóvar was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to finish the movie. He stated this with tact, but without excess sympathy: he clearly finds the inability to get actors to satisfy his demands one of the hardest parts of being a director. Referring to Antonio Banderas’s role as a mad plastic surgeon in “The Skin I Live In,” he said that the movie was a metaphor. “I spoke in a very direct way through the character,” he explained. “He’s a psychopath, close to what it is to be a director.” He noted that Truffaut once defined a director as someone who is driving a train without brakes and trying to keep it on the tracks. To keep his train on the tracks, Almodóvar plans out the entire shoot and then instructs his actors with great precision. “I don’t want to suggest that it’s the only way to do it,” he says. “But I’m a partisan of writing ironclad screenplays, going over them many times, solving all the problems on paper. If there’s something that doesn’t work in the screenplay, it’s going to be impossible to solve it in the filming.” He rehearses his actors extensively, playing their roles in front of them to show them how lines should be read.

“You have to be careful not to imitate him,” Rossy de Palma, who has a memorable supporting role in “Julieta,” says. “You want to do it exactly the same way, but you have to make it yours.” Almodóvar goes to remarkable lengths to offer guidance. In 1985, he was filming the final scene in “Matador,” with Assumpta Serna. He was not sure whether Nacho Martínez, playing the wounded matador who was about to make love to her, should graze her crotch directly with his mouth or do so with a rosebud between his teeth. Almodóvar tried it out himself. “I realized it was better to put some distance between the actor’s tongue and the girl’s sex,” he said, during an appearance on a Spanish talk show. “I do it all,” he added. Actors are often both thrilled and terrified by his technique. When I told Banderas that Almodóvar said he directed him as if Banderas were a child, he did not disagree. He also told me, “I try to become almost a white canvas, so he can paint on it.” Almodóvar often shoots multiple takes of each scene, sometimes without giving feedback; unlike most directors, he edits as he goes. Actors, for their part, often can’t tell when a shot has succeeded. Banderas called the experience “a very creative Hell.” He added, “When you finish the process, you are exhausted and very insecure. But when you see the result it is spectacular.” Almodóvar dislikes self-conscious actorly technique—anything that interferes with his direction. “Sometimes it’s so out of the box and so unusual, the things that he may ask you to do,” Banderas says. “Some American actors couldn’t cope. They come with a lot of B.S., and they work their characters from the inside out—Stanislavski and other techniques. Pedro doesn’t give a shit about that. If you’re open and you follow instructions, it goes well, but if you oppose that, or if you try to impose your own ideas over his, you’re going to have a very hard confrontation.” Almodóvar confirms this, adding, “I can be very authoritarian.” His methods ultimately alienated Carmen Maura. In the late eighties, they feuded—it became a front-page story

in Spain. In 1990, Almodóvar appeared at the Goya Awards with a piece of the Berlin Wall and announced from the stage that if that wall could fall down surely the one between Maura and him could as well. In 2006, she appeared in her ﬁrst Almodóvar movie in eighteen years, “Volver,” playing a mother who makes a ghostly return to her daughters’ lives. But in 2012 Maura told El Pa’s that she was happier working with less rigid directors. “His shoots are tense,” she said. “And that doesn’t appeal to me.” Agustín Almodóvar tweeted a response: “Don’t worry. We won’t call you.”

lmodóvar analyzes

A his own ﬁlms with an

amiable facility and a disconcerting distance, as if someone else had made them. He told me that he sees his movies as falling into three groups. First came the decade of playful, often kitschy films, “full of humor and nonsense.” This was followed by a decade of moody melodrama that blended the psychological thrills of Hitchcock with the perfumed swoon of Douglas Sirk. Almodóvar begins this period with “Kika,” the glossily filmed story of a makeup artist whose rape becomes the subject of a tabloid show. According to Almodóvar, it was only in this second phase that he began to appreciate his rural background. He points especially to the 1995 movie “Flower of My Secret,” in which a romance writer who is disappointed in love abandons her luxurious life in Barcelona. She returns with her mother to their native town, where they join the village’s older women outside to sew and gossip. (The women share a story that Pedro heard often as a child, about a neighbor who killed herself by jumping into a well.) In his career’s third phase, he said, “pain is more present” and emotions are less cut with irony. “Talk to Her,” “Bad Education,” and “The Skin I Live In” all reflect this darker mode. After leaving the DVD-oteca, we headed into his home office. He keeps his writing projects in a neat stack on his desk, along with clippings that he finds interesting. In the pile was a THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

“No way am I going down there—what if there’s a comments section?”

• printout of an e-mail from Jeanne Moreau, which he had yet to answer. He showed me the elegant notebooks that he buys at Fabriano, in Rome. Inside one of them were decade-old drawings from the making of “Volver,” one of which depicted the moment when Penélope Cruz, the film’s star, leans over the body of her dead husband in the kitchen. He had recently printed out an article from El País about the psychological damage done to intersexuals who are surgically assigned a gender at birth. It was a fecund notion for Almodóvar, whose early insistence on the complexity of sexual orientation now seems prescient. He told me, “Binary gender is condemned to disappear.” This did not stop him from playing with the question of whether there was such a thing as a gay sensibility in film. “The furious aesthetic of my films has 50

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

• to do with a liberation that is connected to sexuality,” he said. But, he noted, gay people don’t always make gay art. He offered Truman Capote by way of example: “In ‘In Cold Blood’ there’s no trace of the person who is Truman Capote. But Holly Golightly in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ is a predecessor of all the drag queens of the nineties. She’s a transvestite. You probably have to be gay to see it.” He went on, “And the role of George Peppard? He’s a hustler, and his clients aren’t women— they’re guys! You get this. You smell it.” Of his own films, he puts “I’m So Excited” and “Women on the Verge,” which has no gay characters, into the “gay director” category. He excludes “Law of Desire,” which features a gay love triangle, because jealousy is universal. “Julieta” is a straight movie, he said, and so is “Volver.” “That’s my heterosexual side,” he explained.

On a typical morning, Almodóvar gets up around ten. He reads the news on his computer, searching for material that might spark his imagination, and then he writes for a few hours. After lunch, he sometimes writes a bit more. Then he may go for a walk, which helps him digest what he’s written. Unlike most writers, he doesn’t isolate himself from other media while he’s working. He prefers movies to television, but he has two favorite series, “Homeland” and “Breaking Bad.” Almodóvar always has several scripts going at once, and often writes just to see what comes out. He told me about a few of his embryonic projects. One script was partly inspired by the recent Netflix serial “Making a Murderer.” It focusses not on a falsely accused suspect but on the police, witnesses, and judges who warp justice. He is also writing what he called an “eco-fiction.” He didn’t tell me much about the script, beyond noting that the male protagonist is a human and the female protagonist is an animal. “I’ve got a lot of pages written,” he said. “I lack only an ending.” I could sense how pleased he was with the possibilities of a story that added interspecies complications to the stock difficulties of a relationship. He went on, “Normally, during my writing period—which is always— there’s a moment that I decide, This is the movie I’m going to make. This happens when one of the screenplays is either nearly done or seems sufficiently mature.” He sees this process as essentially outside his control. He says that he is “a medium,” awaiting which project will declare itself ready to be filmed. He voraciously reads fiction, often seeking out books with an eye toward filming them. He has just begun an adaptation of a Henry James story; he didn’t want to say which one. “The movie might be done in two years,” he said. “It might be done in six.” None of these unrealized films, he promised, would be “super-big productions.” Later, he noted that about ten years ago he’d been tempted to become a different kind of director. A French producer had offered him money to adapt “Suite Française,” by Irène Némirovsky. “It was marvellous,” he said of the novel. “But it just seemed

to me that Paris occupied by the Germans, with so many characters, was a big production. I’m always a little reluctant to get involved in a big production. The more money there is in the budget, the more compromises you have to make with that money.” Small-budget films, he added, come with plenty of problems of their own. “But you are owner of that difficulty,” he said. “And that is of the greatest importance.” Almodóvar has a fitful friendship with America, the world’s dominant cinematic culture. After “Women on the Verge,” he got many offers from Hollywood. He turned down “Sister Act,” the 1992 comedy about singing nuns, and in the early aughts he nearly agreed to direct “Brokeback Mountain.” He said of these demurrals, “Maybe it’s because I didn’t trust my English. Or maybe it’s because, even though they always tell me I’ll have artistic liberty—final cut—there is always a moment when I don’t believe it.” He appreciates the fact that American film critics championed his work from the start, but one aspect of their support confused him: many defined him as a gay director. It was a useful label for him—the gay press helped to make him well known in the States—but an ironic one for an artist whose films had done so much to suggest that sexuality was not so easily defined. The label also personally irritated Almodóvar, who was not interested in the identity politics that were then energizing the gay movement in America. “I was in New York when the outing thing was going on— ‘So and so is gay,’ with enormous posters of famous people,” he says. “I was totally against it.” He recalls, with frustration, a journalist asking him, “ What ’s your boyfriend’s name?” “That’s the first thing they ask you in the United States!” he says. “That and your box-office numbers.” He eventually got used to Americans describing him as “openly gay,” and came to realize why many Americans found it necessary to counter homophobia by coming out. “In Spain, in that era, you didn’t need to say anything,” he noted. “People just knew it. I’d never had to make any confession.” Over the years, he became fond of

New York. Whenever a new movie was released, his friend Kim Hastreiter, the editor of Paper, threw a party for him and introduced him to interesting New Yorkers. (Almodóvar’s English is surprisingly deft, but it tends to fly apart in moments of excitement.) Through Hastreiter, he met John Waters, whose films he had long admired. Hastreiter recalls Almodóvar asking her, “Who are the next photographers, who are the new fashion designers, who are the new young people making movies?” He didn’t care if they were successful or rich. “He liked to meet the freaks,” she told me. “If you were a freak, he liked you.” The fashion photographer Henny Garfunkel took him to such night clubs as Jackie 60 and the Roxy, and Madonna took him out dancing. He admired RuPaul, Lady Bunny, and Lahoma, “the great stars of the New York night.” He also became friendly with American intellectuals, among them Susan Sontag. She disapproved of the title “Flower of My Secret,” which Almodóvar had taken from a Valencian poet. He recalls, “She said to me, ‘Pedro, the next time you translate a title, ask me, because in English you can’t say, “The something of something,” because it means absolutely nothing.’ I answered that it was a metaphor everyone had to interpret, because it didn’t belong to nature. But she said, ‘Yes, but in English it doesn’t work that way.’ I’m sure she was right in English, but its meaning was atmospheric and dramatic.” In 1989, the film executive Michael

Barker arranged a meeting between Almodóvar and his idol Billy Wilder. They had lunch, and at the end of it Wilder told him that he had one piece of advice: “Don’t come to Hollywood, no matter what.” At that moment, Almodóvar says, he saw in Wilder’s eyes “memories of compromises, failures, and misunderstandings.” came about through yet “J ulieta” another flirtation with Hollywood. Almodóvar had long been an enthusiastic reader of Alice Munro, despite obvious differences of background and temperament. He particularly admired three linked stories in Munro’s 2004 collection, “Runaway.” The protagonist, named Juliet, has a twentyyear-old daughter who disappears into a cult. Almodóvar was attracted by the female characters and by a crucial sequence involving strangers on a train—he says he had always wanted to shoot on a train, as Hitchcock had famously done. In 2009, Almodóvar optioned the stories. He knew little of Canada, where Munro’s fiction is set. He had just been awarded an honorary degree from Harvard, and he thought of moving the action to Boston. Juliet, who in Munro’s story is a middle-class teacher, could work at a school there. Her lover and eventual partner—during the course of the story, Juliet moves in with a fisherman named Eric—could live on the coast of Maine. Within two years, he had produced a well-wrought script. He asked Meryl

Streep to consider playing Juliet. But he began to feel deep unease about his ability to capture the New England context. The nuances of Spanish cul ture are essential to his movies. He did not want to portray the United States coarsely. At one point, Juliet travelled to Maine and met her lover’s housekeeper. Almodóvar had his dialogue trans lated into English, and the results were tentative: “I had everything ship shape (or some local expression).” When Ju liet went out on the street in Boston and smiled at everyone, he added a marginal note: “Consider if Boston society would naturally accept such Mediterranean behavior as that of being openly looked at in the street.” Almodóvar next moved the action to New York City—the place in Amer ica he knew best—but he still couldn’t overcome his misgivings. “I didn’t feel certain, either of the English in the script or of my English,” he said. “I speak well enough to direct actors, but I’m talking about the idea.” After a year, he put aside the film, which he had titled “Silence,” after one of the Munro stories. (A phantom trace of Almodóvar’s effort could be seen in “The Skin I Live In”: the Spanish edi tion of Munro’s collection appears in one scene.) In 2014, a year after the release of “I’m So Excited,” Almodóvar trav elled to the Algarve coast of Portugal with two longtime female assistants. They talked about what he should do next. Noting how much they had loved the “Silence” script, the women suggested that he move its story to Spain. He loved the idea, and quickly wrote a new draft. “In that moment, I fol lowed my own path and forgot about Munro,” he said. “It’s like that moment when adolescents forget about their parents and begin to lead their own lives.” By the time the script was ready to shoot, he had made many narrative changes. He gave Juliet’s daughter a lesbian relationship from which she fled to a spiritual retreat. (Munro pre sents it as a passing teen friendship.) In Munro’s version of the train scene, where Juliet meets the man she will marry, she kisses him but doesn’t let it 52

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BY THE WAY

For Adrienne Rich I’ve given it time, as if time were mine to give. There was a dam, larger than Hoover or the President or the patent For the metal creature that sucks up all the dust. Words had to stop and ask permission before crossing over. Oh, sometimes they were wild with the urgency of sweet And leaped— Mostly the rest were kept in the net Of swallowed or forbidden language. I want to go back and rewrite all the letters. I lied frequently. No. I was not O.K. And neither was James Baldwin, though his essays Were perfect spinning platters of comprehension of the ﬁght To assert humanness in a blackandwhite world. That’s how blues emerged, by the way— Our spirits needed a way to dance through the heavy mess. The music, a sack that carries the bones of those left alongside The trail of tears when we were forced To leave everything we knew by the way— I constructed an individual life in the socalled civilized world. We all did—far from the trees and plants Who had born us and fed us. All I wanted was the music, I would tell you now— Within it, what we cannot carry. I talk about then from a hotel room just miles go further; she is having her period and feels unclean. In Almodóvar’s version they make rapturous love and conceive their daughter. “Hers is the feminine version, mine the masculine,” Almodó var jokes. The biggest change that Almodó var made was to the ending. In the third Munro story, Juliet gives up; her daughter is gone. She moves on with her life. In Munro’s version, the quest ends with a sigh: “She keeps on hop ing for word from Penelope but not in any strenuous way. She hopes, as peo ple who know better hope for unde served blessings, spontaneous remis sions, things of that sort.” Almodóvar saw this ending as im possible for him to ﬁlm. By way of ex planation, he told me the story of his childhood departure from Madrigalejo: “I was able to get away to freedom in

Madrid, but the first thing I did when I got there was call my mother, and she asked me if it was cold and if I had put on a sweater or not.” The ending he engineered for “Julieta” is not Mun ro’s, but it is more openended than usual for Almodóvar, who tends to tie up his complicated plots with a heavy bow (if not a gunshot). By the time he finished filming, in August, 2015, Almodóvar felt that he had made so many changes that he owed Munro an explanation. He had replaced Juliet’s covert inquietude with Julieta’s allconsuming suffering. He began a letter, but on the day I vis ited him it was still in draft form. He said, “It’s not a justification but a dec laration of love toward the work, and an explanation of where I have taken it as a filmmaker, because clearly I’ve taken it on a long journey.” He had

From your home in the East Before you fled on your personal path of tears To the West, that worn-out American Dream Dogging your steps. You lived on a pedestal for me then, the driven diver who climbed Back up from the abyss, Venus on a seashell with a dagger In her hands. I had to look, and followed your tracks in the poems Cut by suffering. Aren’t they all? We’re in the apocalyptic age of addiction and forgetting. It’s worse now. But that dam, I had to tell you. I broke it open stone by stone. It took a saxophone, flowers, and your words Had something to do with it I can’t say exactly how. The trajectory wasn’t clean, even though it was sure. Does that make sense? Maybe it does only in the precincts of dreams and poetry, Not in a country lit twenty-four hours a day to keep dreams stuck Turning in a wheel In the houses of money. I read about transcendence, how the light Came in through the window of a nearby traveller And every cell of creation opened its mouth To drink grace. That’s what I never told you.

been working on the letter for two months, but, like a character in one of his melodramas, he was vacillating. He told me recently, “The truth is I don’t know if I’ll ever send it.” Almodóvar is proud of the film, which he sees as inaugurating a fourth phase in his career. There were no short-cuts in “Julieta,” he told me— no mixing of genres, no pratfalls. “It is a very different movie from my others,” he said. “I imposed sobriety and compression every day of the shoot. It was deliberate.” He went on, “I had thought to have more movement of the camera, but when I was filming them in closeup I saw no reason to move it. When I speak of ‘simplify,’ I also mean technical simplicity.” He was echoing Munro, “a mistress of simplicity.” Filming sustained closeups puts a

—Joy Harjo great strain on performers. Almodóvar chose two actresses to play Julieta, one in her early thirties and one middle-aged. The older replaces the younger halfway through the story, when Julieta takes a bath after the death of her husband, Xoan. She covers her head with a reddish-brown towel (from Almodóvar’s apartment), and when she lifts it oﬀ she has aged twenty years. I met the two actresses, Adriana Ugarte and Emma Suárez, one day in New York. The women had the slightly shell-shocked quality that I had come to recognize in Almodóvar’s heroines. The situation reminded me of a comment made by Max Espejo, the director of B movies in “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!”: sometimes it’s hard to tell the diﬀerence between a love story and a horror story. Ugarte played the younger Julieta,

Suárez the older. Both had been eager to work with Almodóvar, though they knew of his controlling predisposition. They were friendly, and thought about discussing the role together, but decided against it. As Suárez put it, “We realized that he would lay down the guidelines. It would have been quite dangerous for us to do so independently.” The only time they worked together, at Almodóvar’s request, was to rehearse walking, so that they could match each other’s gait. Ugarte, the less experienced of the two, praised Almodóvar’s oversight. She asked him how she should act in her final scene, midway through the story, in which she is in a deep depression after Xoan’s death. According to Ugarte, he told her, “You’re not alive, but you aren’t dead either. You’re empty. You’re empty of muscles, of bones, of feelings.” She remembered another key moment, in which Xoan tells her that he has had an affair. Almodóvar made her play the scene two dozen times. She recalls him calling out highly varied instructions: “More restrained,” “Very Italian,” “Shout more,” “Cry,” “Don’t cry.” Almodóvar told me, “I think her personality pushed her to a more aggressive and visceral reaction, less adult. In my opinion, it was an age problem. Adriana followed my instructions as well as she could, but I think she never got to feel what I was asking of her.” Suárez arrived six weeks into the shoot, as Ugarte was finishing up, and picked up the baton. Almodóvar asked Suárez if she was prepared. “Not prepared, but looking forward to it,” she replied delicately. Suárez, too, had to do a scene over and over—a hospital scene between her and Ava, Xoan’s mistress. She could tell that Almodóvar felt something was not working. “It took a whole day to do the scene,” Suárez says. “And when it was over, after twenty tries, Pedro still was not convinced. And I went home with the sensation of having failed. To feel like you’ve failed with Pedro is very frustrating. I had to maintain my dignity, because the next day I had to go back and face the same scene again.” This time, Almodóvar was satisfied after one take. (He says that THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

the problem had nothing to do with her performance but with a continuity issue involving a scarf that Suárez was wearing.) Suárez notes, “Almodóvar is not an excessively affectionate person. He is a professional in that sense and maintains his distance. So that’s a challenge.” Almodóvar had his own challenge on the set: he had to shoot the movie digitally, since he was no longer able to find a place to develop celluloid film in Spain. The change did not make him happy. Digital focus, he said, is so sharp that “it makes everything seem flat.” Moreover, he found that the technology interfered with his famous eye for color. “I like dense, contrasting colors,” he said. “There were colors on the set—for instance, the gray-green of the walls in Julieta’s apartment—that I was never able to convey with digital.” n ‘Julieta’ you see more the in“I fluence of Ingmar Bergman than

of Preston Sturges,” Almodóvar told me when I sat with him in his apartment in Madrid. His throat was bothering him, and he had a cup of tea at hand. “Both as a person and a filmmaker, despite the big difference in culture and talent—I mean, we’ll never be comparable—I find the trail of Bergman is clearer than before.” He added, “It’s evident that my ability to make ‘Julieta’ in the way I have, and being able to draw inspiration from Munro, is the result of having made nineteen movies.” He cautioned me not to read too much biography into his new seriousness. No personal event had made him turn to a story about loss. “But, yes, what’s more meaningful than a loss is the fact of living day to day, and of being older than sixty.” He added, “Age makes you feel losses in general, many different kinds, every day.” To Almodóvar’s dismay, the début of “Julieta” in Spain, earlier this year, went badly. At home, Almodóvar is still beloved as a comic director—“I’m So Excited” did well at the box office—and the release coincided awkwardly with press reports, based on the Panama Papers leak, that Pedro and his brother had placed fifty thousand dollars in an offshore holding 54

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company that they had founded. This was particularly scandalous for a public ﬁgure who had retained a countercultural air. The day after the leak, a television reporter pursued Almodóvar from a building to his car. “Why don’t you calm down?” the reporter said as the visibly agitated director hurried across a plaza. Almodóvar, wearing a foulard furled around his neck, retorted, “If you leave me alone, I’ll calm down.” Almodóvar petulantly cancelled all his domestic press for “Julieta,” and he and Agustín hinted that they might take action against anyone who publicly speculated about the purpose of the Panama funds. (Agustín wrote an open letter to the press, saying that they had funded the company with an eye toward possible expansion of El Deseo. He apologized for embarrassing his brother.) Twenty thousand people signed a petition, under the rubric “All About My Money,” asking Pedro for a fuller explanation. Perhaps because of this tumult, Spanish reviewers seemed more critical than usual. Some writers objected precisely to what Almodóvar considered his accomplishment: that he had left his past behind. His movies are now far less Spanish, just as Spain is far less Spanish. This is a change that he, too, has noticed. After Julieta runs into a childhood friend of her daughter’s, she wanders, distraught, through

an élite area of Madrid that looks as generic as uptown Manhattan. “If it were set in the eighties, this woman never would have wound up going home alone,” Almodóvar told me. “She would have shared her problems with every person she met.” Alberto Rey, writing a blog post for El Mundo, objected to the new “Almodovarlandia,” with its “cultivated and well-read people, who live in apartments with stupendous parquet ﬂoors,

use only the best skin creams, and suffer a lot while they walk along fancy streets.” Almodóvar has certainly become more bourgeois over the years. I used to admire the way his movies conveyed his love for Madrid’s humble bus system: in “Dark Habits,” Cristina Pascual takes multiple buses to flee some thugs; in “Live Flesh,” Penélope Cruz gives birth on the No. 26 line. In recent movies, there are a lot of cabs and private cars. Where, Rey asked in his blog post, had the old Almodóvar gone, the one “capable of understanding, summarizing, wringing out, and explaining Spain?” Playing off the Spanish word volver, he ended with “Pedro, vuelve”—“Come back.” ne warm night in September,

O twenty or so of Almodóvar’s

friends met up at La Trainera, a wellknown seafood restaurant in the elegant Salamanca section of Madrid, to celebrate his birthday. Among them were various chicos and chicas Almodóvar, including Elena Anaya, who brilliantly played the character who is forced to undergo surgery in “The Skin I Live In,” and the three festive flight attendants from “I’m So Excited.” The guests gathered in a private room at a long table; at the head of it was Almodóvar, dressed in dark-blue pants and an untucked mustard-colored Hermès polo shirt. The man described by the Spanish press as Almodóvar’s companion sat at the other end and discreetly avoided photographs. (Penélope Cruz was absent with a cold.) One chair by Almodóvar’s side remained open. “Bibi’s always late,” Almodóvar said affectionately. Soon Bibiana Fernández came in, to applause. Six feet tall and striking, Fernández is one of Almodóvar’s oldest friends. She first appeared in “Matador,” in 1986, and has been in three other of his movies. I asked Almodóvar what appealed to him about her. “She can be savage,” he said. “She has an unlimited capacity to struggle and survive. And she has a good heart.” He and Fernández hugged; Fernández is more than a head taller. She had blond hair styled to fall over her eyes, and wore a sleeveless shift that would have been

appropriate at a poolside lunch at the Fontainebleau. She took a selfie with Almodóvar and began editing it on her phone with her long fingers. “She’s retouching her teeth, her lips, her eyelashes, the line of the eye, everything—she does it all with her phone!” Almodóvar, who has little knowledge of technology, said with excitement. “She’s a great Instagrammer. It’s her religion, her creed!” “It’s the boss’s birthday—congratulations, love,” Fernández wrote below the picture, then posted it to her two hundred thousand followers. Large plates of tapas came. “Que maravilla es el jamón, no?” Almodóvar declared to the room. Fernández complained about the lacklustre audiences in a theatre in Valladolid, where she had just been playing a comedy. Almodóvar reassured his old friend gracefully: “In Valladolid they watch all comedy as if they were watching Bergman.” It was the night of the San Sebastián Film Festival, and the guests knew many of the nominees. The actors were eager to learn the names of the winners, and Almodóvar moved around the room, chatting and tracking the festival on various phones. “Eduard Fernández won for best actor,” Almodóvar announced. “He was in ‘The Skin I Live In.’ ” “He’s the one who cut off my balls,” Anaya chimed in. “That’s not the way I would have put it,” Almodóvar joked. “How harsh that sounds!” The scene was playful, though they all, except for Bibiana Fernández, seemed mindful of being in the presence of an eminence. Almodóvar himself looked slightly adrift, reminding me of something that Banderas had told me: “He’s happiest on the set. When he’s on the set he’s full, complete.” Entrées of cod, snapper, and striped bass were served. The guests began singing for Almodóvar. The selections might have been chosen from the boleros, coplas, and Latin standards that he includes on his soundtracks. The comic actor Carlos Areces, one of the flight attendants in “I’m So Excited,” sang “The Hills Are Alive” with a light Spanish accent.

“Which is better—to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and get kicked out or to stick around here with nothing to talk about?”

• Fernández was back on her Instagram account. “You look thin in this one,” she reassured Almodóvar, showing him a picture. She posted it with the words “Here we are side by side, like the ﬁrst time.” The singing grew more spirited. The group sang a rousing song called “Pena, Penita, Pena.” “What it’s saying is ‘Pain, pain, little pain.’ It’s marvellous. It’s like Lorca, impossible to translate. It’s pure metaphor.” The next day, a gossip blogger on El Mundo’s Web site noted that it was a strange song for a birthday party. But Almodóvar looked contented; a small smile appeared on his face. He mentioned that he had been toying with one more movie treatment. It was the story of a brother and sister from a town like Calatrava who moved to Madrid, had some disappointments, grew old, then died. In his mind, the story had to do with his mother’s death. “It’s very sad,” he said. “I think in this moment after ‘Julieta’ I shouldn’t try something quite so sad.” He thought that the story about the man who is involved with a female animal seemed more pressing. “I have to feel passion,” he said. “That’s really in the front of my brain right now.”

• It was close to midnight, and everyone stood up and sang “Feliz Cumpleaños” and “Las Mañanitas,” a Mexican birthday song. They clinked glasses. They finished with the torch song “Luz de Luna.” Almodóvar joined in, arms up, showing off the fine voice that the priests had admired some sixty years ago. “That’s the song that Bibi sings, naked, in ‘Kika,’ ” he said, remembering one of his most daring scenes. It was clearly time to go. Word spread that there was a paparazzo on the street, so everyone said goodbye inside, kissing cheeks in the now empty restaurant. Only Bibiana Fernández lingered. “If everyone is going to leave, then I’ll leave, too,” she complained. “This isn’t a fiesta fiesta.” She gathered up her handbag, theatrically disappointed. Outside, a lone man waited with a camera. Almodóvar asked him not to photograph the actors. But he himself stood gamely, his polo shirt untucked, looking flushed beneath his anemone of white hair. The paparazzo framed the director and shot—Almodóvar was the cromo now—and climbed back into his car. Almodóvar got into his and headed home, eager to get back to work.  THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

ANNALS OF LAW

TAKING TROLLS TO COURT Carrie Goldberg, a Brooklyn attorney, is helping women who are victims of “revenge porn” and other online assaults. BY MARGARET TALBOT

ne morning in March, in a courtroom in Newark, New Jersey, a young woman named Norma attended the sentencing of a former boyfriend, who had gone to grotesque lengths to humiliate her online. Four years earlier, when she was seventeen, she had met Christopher Morcos, who was then nineteen, at a Starbucks near her home, in Nutley. He was a business student at a local college, and Norma, who is soft-spoken, liked that he was outgoing. He was her first boyfriend, and they dated for two years. Like a lot of young men these days, he asked Norma to send him explicit selfies, and, like a lot of young women, she did. She made him promise that he would keep the pictures to himself. He assured her that he had hidden them on an app with a secure password, and that in any case he would never circulate them. Once in a while, however, he made a joke about doing just that. Norma, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology who lives with her parents, never laughed in response; she warned him that if he did she’d take him to court. In November, 2014, Norma broke up with Morcos. He barraged her with texts, sometimes telling her that she needed to talk to him because his mother was deathly ill. (This was a lie.) Other texts threatened to post online her intimate photographs. A few months later, Norma received a text message from a stranger, who said that he’d seen her page on PornHub, one of the most popular X-rated sites. She called her boss at the clothing store where she worked and said that she was going to be late that afternoon. Then she frantically began searching the Internet. Eventually, she found eight photographs that she’d given to her boyfriend, on a page that identified her by her first and last names. Norma told me, “It was basically soliciting people to contact me for oral sex. It had my phone number—that’s how that stranger had

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

found me. It had my street name. My town was there. It said, ‘Find me on Facebook.’ My bra size was there. And then the photos.” Norma initiated a criminal case against Morcos, and he was charged with invasion of privacy in the third degree, in accordance with a statute that is popularly known as a “revenge porn” law. In 2004, New Jersey passed the nation’s ﬁrst such legislation. The statute makes it a crime for a person who knows “that he is not licensed or privileged to do so” to nonetheless disclose “any photograph, ﬁlm, videotape, recording or any other reproduction of the image of another person whose intimate parts are exposed or who is engaged in an act of sexual penetration or sexual contact, unless that person has consented to such disclosure.” The preferred term for such statutes is “nonconsensual-porn laws,” because the online harassment does not always involve a spurned ex like Morcos. Sometimes people hack into a celebrity’s iCloud or Gmail account to steal intimate pictures that can be sold and posted online. In 2014, Jennifer Lawrence and other prominent actresses were victims of such thefts; Lawrence told Vanity Fair that the incident was a “sex crime.” Last month, a Pennsylvania judge sentenced one of the men who hacked the images, Ryan Collins, to eighteen months in jail. Celebrities are not the only people targeted. A recent Brookings Institution report examined nearly eighty cases of “sextortion,” involving three thousand victims. In one such case, a Californian named Luis Mijangos tricked women into installing malware that searched their computers for sexually explicit photographs and switched on Webcams and computer microphones, allowing him to record the women undressing or having sex. He then threatened to release the resulting photographs or videos if the women didn’t make pornographic videos for him. In 2011, Mijangos was con-

victed of computer hacking and wiretapping, for which he is serving a six-year sentence. Sometimes people surreptitiously film consensual sex acts, or even rapes, and make the footage public for reasons other than revenge. In April, Marina Lonina, an eighteen-year-old Ohio woman, was charged with live-streaming, on the Periscope app, the rape of a seventeen-year-old friend by a man they’d met at a nearby mall. Lonina and her lawyer said that she was trying to gather evidence by filming it. But, according to the prosecutor, she soon got caught up in the stream of “like”s from viewers. Lonina has been charged with rape, kidnapping, sexual battery, and pandering sexual matter involving a minor. In the past decade, thirty-three more states and the District of Columbia have adopted nonconsensual-porn laws like New Jersey’s. Despite such efforts, one can easily find sites on the Internet that are dedicated to revenge porn. On myex.com, people post naked pictures of former spouses or lovers—mostly women, some men—along with their names, ages, and home towns. They add cruel captions: “My slut wife”; “Chubby frigid slut.” Posts about men frequently suggest that their penis is too small. Prosecutions of individuals receive considerable media attention, in part because they are unusual. Pennsylvania has undertaken a dozen or so prosecutions— the most of any state. Other states with nonconsensual-porn laws have had just one or two cases make it to court. Victims are often reluctant, or ashamed, to come forward; police officers are sometimes unfamiliar with the new laws, or are unsure how to conduct the computer forensics needed to build a case. Norma’s complaint would almost certainly not have proceeded to court had she not been represented by Carrie Goldberg, who was sitting in the courtroom next to her that day. Goldberg is

Goldberg was once harassed online by a vengeful ex. She started her practice to “be the lawyer I’d needed.” PHOTOGRAPH BY PARI DUKOVIC

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

a thirty-nine-year-old Brooklyn attorney with a practice specializing in sexual privacy, a new field of law that has emerged, in large part, to confront some of the grosser indulgences of the Internet. She has clients like Norma, who are trying to get intimate images of themselves, or graphic ads offering their sexual services, off the Internet before they go viral and strangers start showing up at their houses. She also has clients who are being extorted into providing sex or money because someone has graphic pictures of them and is threatening to send the images to employers or parents or siblings. She has even begun advising teen-age students who have been sexually assaulted and had the incidents recorded on cell phones, and who have then had to go to school with peers who may have been watching the videos in the cafeteria or the hallways. Goldberg, a graduate of Brooklyn Law School, is a surprisingly glamorous presence, especially for the places her work tends to take her: drab courtrooms, grubby police precincts. Her hair is long and wavy; her nails are always painted; she wears oversized designer glasses, fiveinch heels, color-block minidresses, and sharply cut trenchcoats. Rebecca Symes, a lawyer who once worked with Goldberg at Housing Conservation Coordinators, which represents Manhattan tenants facing eviction, told me, “Housing court is predominantly male—the attorneys, the landlords. And, how shall I put this? They tend to be schlumpy. Carrie stood out. She was a total badass. She was aggressive—you had to be—and you had to believe in your clients when everyone else was calling them deadbeats. A lot of the people called to legal-services work are do-gooders, and they are a little passive and meek. They don’t have that fierceness that Carrie has.” In 2014, Mary Anne Franks, a University of Miami law professor who has advocated for revenge-porn laws, was attracting online critics who repeatedly attacked her with obscenities. Goldberg, in a show of support, sent her a lipstick with the name Lady Danger. Franks told me, “She included a card where she’d written, ‘This is what I wear when I want to feel like a warrior.’ It made 58

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

me laugh, and I loved getting it. I love her whole persona. She’s so completely and utterly herself.” Several years ago, Goldberg was harassed by a vengeful ex. At the time, she was working as the director of legal services at the Vera Institute, a criminaljustice nonprofit in Manhattan. The ex threatened to send intimate pictures she’d given him to her professional colleagues. “I stand before you as a lawyer but also as somebody’s target,” Goldberg said recently, in a speech that she gave at a conference on domestic abuse, in Albany. “When I went to the police, they told me it was not a criminal issue.” She’d been frightened and embarrassed, and after the ex was served with a restraining order—he did not disseminate the pictures—she decided to start her own firm. As she put it to me, “That way, I could be the lawyer I’d needed.” To her clients, many of whom are in their teens and twenties, Goldberg comes off like a cool older sister who always has your back. She greets them with girlish flamboyance—“Hi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i!”— then gets down to business. A week before the sentencing of Christopher Morcos, I interviewed Norma in a conference room at Goldberg’s office, in Brooklyn Heights. At one point, Norma said, “Personally, I don’t see myself ever sending a photo like that again.” Goldberg was sitting with us, and she interjected, “Even though you know you did nothing wrong.” Norma nodded, and said to her, “I felt shame talking about it before, never knowing if the person you’re confiding in is judging you. I felt so worn out when I met you.” Goldberg said, “You’ve become much tougher. Whatever happens at the sentencing, you’re, like, a national leader on this, because so few people have got this far. You’re a warrior goddess, holding him accountable.” Goldberg tries to impress on her clients that they should not feel ashamed. I once asked her how she responds to the argument that people who value their privacy should not send naked pictures in the first place. Goldberg replied that this was judgmental and reductive. She mentioned the case of Erin Andrews, the former ESPN reporter, who

was filmed, without her knowledge, by a man staying in an adjoining hotel room. “Are you just supposed to never take your clothes off ?” she said. “You can’t get naked, you can’t take a shower?” She spoke of upskirting—the voyeuristic practice of taking unauthorized pictures beneath a woman’s dress. “Are you never supposed to go out in public in a skirt?” Goldberg said. “Or what about images where somebody’s face has been Photoshopped onto somebody else’s naked body? What’s getting distributed isn’t necessarily images that were consented to in the first place. That’s why it’s the distribution you have to focus on.” Goldberg went on, “But, even if you did take a naked picture and send it to somebody, that’s not necessarily reckless behavior. That’s time-honored behavior! G.I.s going off to war used to have pics of their wife or girlfriend in a pinup pose. It’s often part of intimate communication. It can be used as a weapon, but, the fact is, almost anything can be used as a weapon.” hen Norma’s boyfriend first

W threatened to release her photo-

graphs, she went to the police. They told her that there was nothing they could do. But after the pictures turned up online Norma’s mother, Arlene, looked up the New Jersey legal code and surmised that Morcos had broken a law. She found Goldberg’s practice through an Internet search, and when she called her office, in February, 2015, Goldberg picked up the line. “Oh, my God,” Goldberg told Arlene, upon hearing the story. “Of course I can help you.” Arlene’s family was struggling financially, and to their enormous relief Goldberg said that, in that case, she would provide the help pro bono. First, Norma needed to get her photos off the Internet. Until recently, getting images removed from the Web was most often accomplished by filing a notice of copyright infringement. The person who takes a photograph automatically owns the copyright to it, so a selfie is your property. If a selfie has turned up on a porn site, then the person who took it can file a takedown notice, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, and requesting that the relevant Web hosts and search engines remove the image. The copyright on a picture that somebody else snaps of you—even

with your cell phone, at your request— theoretically belongs to him or her, but you can apply to register the copyright under your name. Using copyright law to combat revenge porn is a bit like using tax law to go after Al Capone, but copyright is one of the only restrictions that the Internet respects. Since images proliferate swiftly online, and takedown notices have to be filed with each site separately, stopping a viral image can be tedious and expensive. Erica Johnstone, a San Francisco lawyer who is one of the few in the country besides Goldberg with a practice devoted largely to sexual privacy, recently told me about a case that she worked on in 2013. A mother was helping her daughter take down nonconsensual porn. Johnstone said, “They spent at least five hundred hours between May and October sending requests. It was like a full-time job.”Worse, not all the sites complied. Last year, partly in response to arguments by Goldberg and other activists, some major social-media platforms and search engines began banning revenge porn. The Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris, who was just elected to the U.S. Senate, convened a task force including tech companies, law enforcement officials, and advocates, which helped shape new policies. Companies have started providing online forms that allow victims to request that content be deleted without having to assert copyright first. Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook adopted policies against involuntary pornography in early 2015. Instagram, Google, Bing, and Yahoo soon followed. The search engines also agreed to “de-index” revenge porn, so that it no longer comes up under searches of the depicted person’s name, though it can still be accessed through the URL. Google explained the new policy in a statement: “Our philosophy has always been that Search should reflect the whole web. But revenge porn images are intensely personal and emotionally damaging, and serve only to degrade the victims. . . . This is a narrow and limited policy, similar to how we treat removal requests for other highly sensitive personal information, such as bank account numbers and signatures.” In October, 2015, PornHub joined the effort, announcing that it would honor requests to take down revenge porn.

(Goldberg tweeted that PornHub was her “@twitter crush” of the day.) Meanwhile, several notorious revenge-porn Web sites have been shut down and their operators sent to prison—not because they were distributing the photos and videos but because they were committing crimes such as identity theft, extortion, and hacking along the way. The Federal Trade Commission has taken up some of these cases in its role as a monitor of fraudulent or deceptive commercial practices. Last year, the agency prohibited Craig Brittain, the operator of a Web site called isanybodydown, from sharing nude photographs of women that he’d acquired by deceptive means—such as posing as a woman on Craigslist—while redirecting the women to another Web site that he ran, and which promised to remove the pictures in exchange for money. (Brittain has denied using such methods to acquire the photographs.) Misogyny on the Internet has proved notoriously intransigent. Trolls who threaten sexual violence against female writers in online comment threads have driven some women oﬀ-line, while anonymity protects the perpetrators. Some women confront trolls directly, but most try to ignore them. A few years ago, Lindy West, a witty columnist for the Guardian, who takes on such subjects as rape jokes and body shaming, was subjected to a particularly nasty barrage of com-

ments on social media. (“No one would want to rape that fat disgusting mess”; “I want to put an apple into that mouth of yours and take a huge stick and slide it through your body and roast you.”) One troll created a fake Twitter account in the name of West’s father, who had recently died, as though his ghost were issuing vulgar insults to his daughter. Instead of brushing off the troll’s attack, she wrote an essay about how it had made her feel; this prompted him to apologize to her. In 2015, the man appeared with West on an episode of “This American Life,” and she asked him why he’d done it. He said that he’d been overweight at the time, and that West’s confidence in her own large body had set him off. In the segment, he was not named. Like most trolls, he never experienced any repercussions for what he’d done. In the movement to combat online harassment, Goldberg is more of a pragmatist than a theorist. But Mary Anne Franks, of the University of Miami, and Danielle Citron, of the University of Maryland, have been publishing articles in law reviews arguing that extreme forms of cyber harassment undermine equal opportunity. Citron’s 2014 book, “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace,” contends that, because such behavior disproportionately affects women and minorities—damaging their ability to express themselves in public, their employment prospects, and

“I’m sorry, Jeannie, your answer was correct, but Kevin shouted his incorrect answer over yours, so he gets the points.”

their sense of personal safety—the legal system must treat it as a violation of their civil rights. She recommends criminalizing revenge porn, including online threats, in existing statutes against stalking and harassment, and making it easier for victims to sue under pseudonyms. Citron, who has been making such arguments for years, told me that tech companies and state legislators are increasingly embracing her perspective: “What seemed crazy to them back in 2007, when I was arguing that this should be criminalized and was a civil-rights violation, all of a sudden became non-crazy. It went from ‘Oh, no, she’s breaking the Internet’ to ‘Danielle, she’s ﬁne, she’s middle of the road.’ ” Citron thinks the companies have realized that consumers “have a taste for sexual privacy.”

rguments on behalf of online

A privacy still meet strong resistance.

Citron, Franks, and Goldberg are among the leaders of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a group that advocates for the passage of nonconsensual-porn laws. Its members have been criticized for being insuﬃciently attentive to the First Amendment, and for not respecting the untrammelled spirit of the Internet. If revenge-porn laws are too broad, they can incriminate consensually sexting teen-agers or people posting naked pic-

tures that merit public interest—images of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, for example. At a time when many liberals are trying to ﬁght excessive incarceration, it can be troubling to think about creating new classes of crime. Silicon Valley libertarians worry that the imagetakedown policies instituted by socialmedia platforms could promote a shift toward the “right to be forgotten” regime that has taken hold in Europe, in which individuals can force a search engine to remove links to online content that they consider embarrassing—including content that they themselves posted. Might valuable content be eﬀectively expunged from the Internet simply to shield people from shame? In 2014, the A.C.L.U. opposed an Arizona law designed to combat nonconsensual porn, on the ground that the wording was “overbroad.”This past April, the Motion Picture Association of America voiced a similar critique of a law under consideration in Minnesota. And in June the governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo, vetoed a revengeporn bill, citing the First Amendment, because the bill did not specify that, in order to be criminal, an unauthorized release of intimate pictures had to be made with an intent to harass. Citron and others have countered that revenge-porn laws can be drafted so that

“ Your fly is open.”

they carve out exceptions reflecting the public interest. Moreover, as Franks has pointed out, laws with an “intent to harass” requirement let off the hook people who run revenge-porn sites, and who are just out to make money. The Minnesota bill passed in May, and Franks considers it to be welldrafted legislation. It explicitly protects pictures and videos that were made for artistic sale or display, that were obtained legally in a commercial setting, that are of legitimate public interest, and that have a scientific or educational purpose. Under such a statute, a media organization could make a strong case that it was justified in publishing Anthony Weiner’s photographs of his penis, because it shows such foolish behavior in a politician running for office. It’s even possible, if a stretch, to make the argument that Hulk Hogan’s sex tape had to be posted online, as well as reported on, because he is a celebrity who bragged about his sexual prowess. (Gawker, which published the video, made this case to a Florida jury, but the jury was not convinced, awarding Hogan a hundred and forty million dollars in damages. Gawker said that it would appeal the verdict, but ended up settling the case, for thirty-one million dollars.) But, at least in states with nonconsensual-porn laws, it would now be very hard to make the case that a private individual posting a naked selfie of his ex, against that person’s will, is doing anything other than breaking the law. A federal nonconsensual-porn bill was introduced over the summer by Representative Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, and it includes a set of exceptions that echo the Minnesota law. It also offers Internet-service providers a degree of immunity; without this, opposition from Silicon Valley would be fierce. Speier’s staff consulted with Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional scholar at the University of California, Irvine, and he declared the bill to be sound, saying, “There is no First Amendment problem with this bill. The First Amendment does not protect a right to invade a person’s privacy by publicizing, without consent, nude photographs or videos of sexual activity.” In criminal courts, revenge-porn laws do not yet seem to be producing questionable guilty verdicts or egregious

sentences. Some critics argue that existing laws can handle the problem, but many examples suggest otherwise. In 2013, a twenty-nine-year-old man from Brooklyn who posted naked photographs of his ex-girlfriend on his Twitter account, and sent them to her employer and her sister, was charged with three misdemeanors: aggravated harassment, dissemination of unlawful surveillance, and public display of offensive sexual material. (New York does not have a nonconsensual-porn statute.) The judge, Steven Statsinger, called the man’s behavior reprehensible but found that he had not broken the law. Harassment law in New York stipulates that there has to have been direct communication with the victim; the man had not obtained the pictures unlawfully; nudity alone doesn’t constitute “offensive sexual material”; and posting on Twitter did not amount to “public display,” since Twitter is a “subscriber-based social networking service.” (This reflected Statsinger’s misunderstanding of social media: Twitter content easily migrates across the Internet.) After Norma went to the police, she asked PornHub to remove her pictures. The company complied. At the meeting in Brooklyn, Goldberg praised Norma’s quick thinking: the longer the images stayed on PornHub, which has billions of visits a month, the more likely they were to go viral. Some of the images, Goldberg explained, could still turn up on porn sites that would refuse to take them down; the images could also have been saved to people’s laptops and phones. But such problems were less likely because Norma had acted swiftly. It was too bad, Goldberg added gently, that Norma had not taken screen shots of the pictures online. That would have been useful in a criminal case or a civil suit. Goldberg counsels clients that, even though their first impulse might be to destroy all traces of revenge porn, they should collect evidence of its damaging effect, including online comments, which, as Goldberg’s associate Adam Massey told me, often contain “death and sexual-assault threats.” Goldberg’s firm uses a company called Page Vault, which preserves screen shots that capture the date, the time, and the URL, and are admissible in court. In nonconsensual-porn cases, Goldberg likes to

¥ say, “the proof of the crime”—images in a Web browser—“is the crime.” The day after Goldberg accepted Norma’s case, she accompanied her to the police precinct. “Sometimes it’s a framing problem,” Goldberg told me. “Sometimes victims don’t know how to explain the issue in a way that’s going to have the greatest impact on the police.” She brought in a printout of the relevant state law, and told Norma to tally all the communications that she’d received from Morcos. “I always tell clients that it’s super important to get the metrics,” Goldberg said. “Like, ‘He contacted me seventy-five times during this two-hour period. And fourteen times within those contacts were threats that he was going to drown my dog. And he posted my picture on three different Web sites within x period of time, and now I’m on a thousand different Web sites.’ ” Goldberg’s intervention here, though, was not a success. “We got the door shut in our face,” she told me. “I was, like, ‘I’m here to save the day.’ And they were

¥ saying, ‘No, Norma’s already reported this, and she doesn’t have enough proof, and the prosecutors told us not to be using this new law.’ Which was strange.” oon after taking Norma’s case,

Goldberg e-mailed Jason Boudwin, Sa prosecutor she knew of in Middlesex County, New Jersey, who had brought one of the first revenge-porn cases in the state. Goldberg persuaded him to call a counterpart in Essex County, where Norma lived. The prosecutor who ended up taking the case, Seth Yockel, had worked on domestic-violence cases and had a background in computers. Yockel issued subpoenas to Internetservice providers to find the I.P. addresses that had been involved in uploading Norma’s pictures. He told me, “We traced them back to the house of Mr. Morcos’s mom. We figured they probably weren’t coming from his mom.” He soon negotiated a plea deal with Morcos’s lawyer, in which Morcos pleaded guilty to the invasion-ofprivacy charge in exchange for the THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

state’s dropping a second charge, of cyber harassment. Norma’s parents were both in court with her on the day of the sentencing, as were two of her friends. Goldberg had invited another client, a New Yorker named Connie, to watch the proceeding, thinking that she might find it encouraging to witness a perpetrator facing justice. Connie and her boyfriend broke up after he became physically abusive. He then placed ads for her on escort sites and on Craigslist, including her full name and personal details; he also created fake Google+, Facebook, and porn-site pages about her. She was described as an “Asian black widow” who “enjoyed gang bangs” and had various sexually transmitted diseases. Connie, who is thirty-five, had never given naked pictures to her ex, but he posted photographs of her face alongside random images of vaginas. Connie told me, “I grew up in a very conservative Asian household—very quiet people, God-fearing and all that good stuff— in Jackson Heights, Queens. To see your picture on an escort site and all these venomous things about you, it kind of makes you question who you are. Because how did you allow this person to come into your life? And—how do I explain this without crying?—you feel ashamed.” Connie got some of the content taken down on her own; Goldberg helped her with the rest, and was pushing the New York prosecutor to count the online attacks as violations of a restraining order that had been placed on Connie’s ex. Still, Connie’s life remained in many ways on hold: she had left Manhattan, abandoning a career in luxury-ad sales, and she had eliminated her online presence, which made it hard to maintain friendships or to find a new job. Goldberg told me that people in Connie’s position often had such difficulties. If you didn’t mention the harassment in a job interview, you risked having the potential employer find graphic pictures of you online; if, like Connie, you erased your Internet presence, the employer might see nothing about you online, which was suspicious in its own way. “I 62

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

have no social life,” Connie told me. “I don’t go out. I basically have two friends. I’ve started to get used to it, but it’s also kind of lonely. I used to work in a very prestigious industry around a lot of people. But I’m really scared to have a Facebook account, or a Twitter, because I don’t know what backlash would come from it.” Connie was thinking about suing her ex-boyfriend. Goldberg had told her that there were relevant torts under which she could seek damages, including intentional inﬂiction of emotional distress, and that she could petition the judge to let her sue as a Jane Doe. A few victims of cyber harassment have successfully pursued civil actions. In 2014, a Texas jury awarded half a million dollars to a woman whose boyfriend had recorded their sexually explicit Skype sessions without her knowledge, then uploaded the videos to porn sites after they broke up. But victims don’t often pursue civil actions, in part because most potential defendants are what lawyers call “judgment-proof ”: they lack the money to pay a big settlement. Connie’s former boyfriend was a successful real-estate developer, but she was reluctant to be back in his orbit during a protracted legal case. At one point, I told Connie and Goldberg that the psychology of revenge porn confounded me. In trashing your ex, you were, in a sense, trashing yourself and a whole portion of your life. “Right,” Goldberg said. “It’s like you’re announcing to the world, ‘I was with a prostitute.’ But I think during breakups there is that devaluing. That’s how you justify it: ‘I dodged a bullet there.’ ” The Internet, she said, had given rise to something new in the history of revenge: “Historically, we had checks and balances. If you are someone who is always seeking revenge, that’s going to aﬀect your reputation. But on the Internet a guy can be really bad and his friends aren’t necessarily going to know that he’s doing all these shitty things.” Goldberg also thought that the Internet had made people “more compulsive and impulsive.” She explained, “So many people don’t know how to sit with a thought, whether it’s a good thing—

‘Oh, that’s such a pretty landscape, I have to post it on Facebook’—or a bad thing: ‘What do I do with this angry emotion?’ ”

ear the end of the New Jersey

N proceeding, Morcos oﬀered an apol-

ogy to the court and to Norma, whom he referred to only as “her.” He told the judge, “I went too far. I guess I didn’t handle it correctly.” Norma then got up to read a nine-hundred-word statement, which she had prepared and practiced in Goldberg’s office the previous week. The paper trembled in her hands, but her voice was steady. The courtroom got very quiet. Morcos looked down at the table. “I worried about future job opportunities being affected if these pictures were circulated throughout the Internet,” Norma read. “I was afraid for my safety—afraid that a sex offender would be able to locate me after seeing my photos and my information.” Such fears are not unreasonable. In 2009, a Wyoming woman whose ex-boyfriend had advertised her on Craigslist as someone looking for “a real aggressive man with no concern for women” was raped, at knifepoint, by a man who responded to the ad. In 2013, a Maryland man was found guilty of posting fake ads about his ex-wife, including one that said “Rape Me and My Children.” Fifty men showed up at the condominium where the woman lived with her children; some tried to break in. Goldberg has a client whose stalker has repeatedly created fake ads in which the client advertises free sex; the client works at a pharmacy, and a steady stream of men have shown up there. The ads urge men not to be discouraged if she ignores them. As Norma spoke, Goldberg sat up very straight. Connie shook her head in sympathy. “I cannot get back my privacy that had been invaded when those pictures were online,” Norma concluded. “I do not know how many people saw them, I do not know how many people saved them, and every single day I think about the fact that other people have seen me in my most private state.” The judge, Michael Ravin, addressed the court. “As a parent with a daughter, I could say plenty,” he said. “This kind of conduct is just so over the line. . . . Especially for somebody intelligent. It shows a lack of insight, a lack of impulse control.” He sentenced Morcos to four years of probation, then said, “No—make it

ﬁve.” This was the maximum allowed under the law. The judge also ordered Morcos to perform a hundred hours of community service, to undergo a mental-health evaluation, and to refrain from contacting Norma and her family. If Morcos violated any of these terms, Ravin said, he could be sent to prison. Afterward, Norma and her family said that they wouldn’t have minded if the judge had imposed some jail time. But they were grateful to Goldberg and to the prosecutor. Connie said she felt heartened that “this one guy, anyway, probably isn’t going to do this to another girl.” Goldberg was pleased, too. “Norma’s not going to go home and cry,” she said to me. “She was treated respectfully by everybody today.” I mentioned Judge Ravin’s remark about how the facts of this case had hit him as a father. “That actually bothered me,” Goldberg said. “I wish it wasn’t always ‘As the father of a daughter’ or ‘As the husband of a wife.’ I wish it were ‘This kind of assault on someone’s dignity bothers me as a human being with a soul and a conscience.’ ”

ince so many of Goldberg’s clients

S have unhinged exes, she works in an

oﬃce with an elaborate security system. She also carries pepper spray, making a point of using a product called BlingSting, which comes in sparkly cannisters. Although Goldberg acknowledges that she is a workaholic who spends much of her time thinking about men who cause women “irreparable misery,” she maintains the bright, squiggly demeanor of a screwball heroine. She has a Chihuahua named Meshugenneh, and drives a 1966 GTO. She starts most days boxing at the gym and keeps a silk apparatus for acrobatics hanging from her apartment ceiling, but she often eats candy for breakfast. She is divorced, amicably, from a Vassar English professor. They share custody of Meshugenneh. Goldberg grew up in Aberdeen, Washington, the rainy, economically depressed logging town that Kurt Cobain was from. Her father ran a furniture store; her mother, an obituary writer for the local paper, quit to bring up four children. Goldberg, the second child, was an instinctive feminist and a bit of a misﬁt. “Artsy without the artistic talent,” as she puts it. It was the riot-grrrl era, and Goldberg was riotous. She

started a little business, called Masked Mams, selling bras that she made out of baby-doll heads. “Well, selling might be overstating it,” she told me. “I’d go to the Evergreen College campus and barter them.” She and her friend Lindsay Lunnum, now an Episcopal priest, worked on the high-school yearbook together, and they amused themselves by writing erotica about some of the more boring boys’ teams. As Lunnum recalled, “We were very interested in sex, but we had no experience.” A teacher found their raunchy writings and confronted the young women’s parents about them. Goldberg was irate, pointing out that the teacher must have found the erotica by searching their lockers. He’d violated their privacy. During high school, Goldberg once dropped a friend oﬀ at a motel where a man the friend liked was hosting a party. The friend passed out from drinking and was sexually assaulted by the man and his friends. “Back then, it didn’t occur to her or me to tell the police or even to call it rape,” Goldberg said. “But, as I think about it now, that was a pivotal moment for me.” Goldberg’s oﬃce has a boutiquehotel vibe: navy-and-gold wallpaper, a blue velvet mid-century-modern couch. On a side table, there is a glittery plastic axe that a friend retrieved from an abandoned art exhibit. Whenever I saw the “disco axe,” as Goldberg calls it, I thought of that pejorative term for a

fierce woman—“battle-axe”—and how she was redefining the role. One morning in her office, she told me that she had recently gone to a management seminar where the instructor advised the lawyers in attendance to establish a stringent policy forbidding porn in the workplace. Adam Massey, Goldberg’s associate, laughed. His work often entails scanning porn sites and looking for evidence. Goldberg hopped on a pile of cushions next to Massey’s desk. She was wearing a black turtleneck dress and a ring that spelled out the word “B-A-L-L-S.” “I told them we had a different, rather more nuanced policy,” she said. “I didn’t tell them about the times I’ve gotten annoyed, like today, when you’ve got pages and pages to go through, and I’m, like, ‘Adam, get back to the porn!’” Massey, whose desk is in the middle of the office, keeps the sound on his computer turned down. That day, he was checking to see whether some porn links that had received takedown orders from Goldberg were still active. “My least favorite part of the job is looking at porn,” Massey told me later. “I try to think of it as document review.” Massey kept clicking through links while we talked about the market for “amateur” commercial porn—which is often billed as featuring young women who have only once been filmed having sex. There are Internet subcultures dedicated to unmasking the women’s

¥ identities. The client whose links Massey was monitoring had made one porn video, in her late teens, under coercion. She had been promised, falsely, that the footage would not be distributed widely online. Amateur porn obsessives had recently found innocuous YouTube videos of her from when she was a young girl, and they were linking them to the porn, exposing her identity. Goldberg came over and said that you couldn’t discount the thrill of the search as a motivation, too. “There’s that sleuthing aspect,” she said. “I get that, because we do our own version.” Earlier in the day, Goldberg and I had talked about the sleuthing she had done on behalf of a college student who’d worked as a so-called cam girl. The young woman was a student at a university in the South, and she had responded to a Craigslist ad that asked, “Are you an aspiring model?” She’d needed the money and agreed to the work, performing solo sex acts or getting naked, for individual clients, on Skype. She had even signed a contract, which contained murky language about the company owning her performances, in all technologies “now known or hereafter developed.”The young woman fell 64

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

¥ behind on her hours, and the operator stopped paying her. Then he started demanding that she come to his house and have sex with him; otherwise, he warned her, he would distribute her videos. He texted her, “I know u would much rather have sex with me once than your entire family knowing what u do and everyone at your school too. Cause it will be broadcast all over.” He told her that he had to get an underage friend of hers to come work for him, too. She texted back, “Thanks for messing with my life and being so cruel. I’m not getting my friend involved with this shit.” The man had used an alias, but his company had a Web site, and he had a Twitter account. Goldberg tried doing a reverse image search on his Twitter photo, but it didn’t yield anything. Eventually, she identiﬁed a phone number associated with the company’s Web-site registration, and that led her to the Facebook pages of the man and his wife. A photograph showed them in front of a house in Louisiana. Goldberg, using Google Street View, was able to track down the man’s address. She sent him a cease-and-desist letter, telling him that he could be charged with extortion under federal and state law, and noting that

Louisiana law sanctioned threats to “expose or impute any deformity or disgrace to the individual threatened or to any member of his family or to any other person held dear to him.”The crime, she added, carried up to fifteen years of prison, including hard labor. Goldberg takes pride in her cease-and-desist letters. Her client never heard from the man again. Not all of Goldberg’s clients are women, but the men, she says, generally have different concerns. Often, they are being extorted for money. One reason that revenge porn targets men less often is that, as Goldberg says, “there is less of a secondary downstream market for it.” She mentioned one male client, a graduate student from a prominent family. He responded to a Craigslist ad about a sexual fetish, and began chatting online with a woman who was into it. They were supposed to have a date, but he backed out, and the woman started threatening to expose their conversations. In this case, it was a matter of figuring out who she was and monitoring her online activity from afar, then deciding not to contact her. “She had started getting quieter on the Internet toward him,” Goldberg explained. “So we didn’t want to do anything to rev her up. We found her blog, under a pseudonym. And within a couple of days she was seriously trash-talking someone else—someone who actually had gone out on a date with her but didn’t want a second date.” Goldberg continued, “I knew that, because she had clearly moved on, she was probably no longer a threat to my client. And if somebody was out of control and spinning, and then they’re not continuing to throw out communications, it means they’ve calmed themselves down. It’s kind of like a baby throwing a tantrum—once they’ve calmed down, something would have to trigger them to start up again. And that trigger could be a letter from a lawyer.”

ne day when I stopped by Gold-

O berg’s oﬃce, she was preparing for

a visit from one of her youngest clients, whom I’ll call Jessica. In April, 2015, when Jessica was thirteen, a male classmate at Spring Creek Community School, in Brooklyn, dragged her into an alley and orally and anally sodomized her. She had never had sex, and she

said that it was rape, but the boy said that it was consensual. He had filmed the incident, and the video was circulating at school. Other students had bullied Jessica online and at school, where they waved cell phones that were playing the video. The principal had sent her home. A “safety transfer” to another school took a month to arrange, so that Jessica was in effect punished for what had happened to her. Goldberg considered the school’s handling of the incident a violation of Title IX, the statute under which any school receiving federal funds is required to quickly investigate claims of sexual harassment or assault, and to take steps to prevent abuse from happening again. Goldberg filed a complaint on behalf of Jessica with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which has agreed to investigate it. College campuses have been the locus for Title IX complaints about sexual assault, but middle schools and high schools may well be the next battleground. Jessica is African-American, and Goldberg has taken on two other cases involving peer assaults on young black girls in Brooklyn public schools. On Twitter, she has cited a troubling statistic: Yale has nineteen Title IX coördinators for its twelve thousand students; the New York City school system has one Title IX coördinator for 1.1 million children. (Toya Holness, a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Education, said that school staff are trained in “reporting, investigating, and responding to such incidents.”) In June, Goldberg filed another complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, on behalf of a developmentally disabled fifteen-year-old girl. According to the complaint, the girl had been taken into a stairwell at Teachers Preparatory School, in Brooklyn, by a group of seven boys, who forced her to perform oral sex on two of them while five watched. It was the second of three New York cases, Goldberg pointed out in her cover letter, “in which our client is a poor black girl age 13-15,” whose sexual assault had been mishandled, or neglected, by the school system.” (Holness said, “Nothing is more important than the safety of all students and staff, and we have policies in place that insure incidents are reported,

investigated, and appropriately addressed. We are reviewing these deeply troubling complaints and addressing any pending matters with the Office for Civil Rights.”) When Goldberg meets with her younger clients, she acts as both lawyer and social worker. She’d brought snacks for Jessica, and there was a translator on hand for her mother, whose primary language is Haitian Creole. Jessica is now fifteen, but she looks younger—she has a sweet, shy smile and a fresh-scrubbed face. She sat in the conference room huddled in a parka and a knit cap, her hands folded in her lap. But she seemed comfortable with Goldberg, whom she’s taken to texting when she gets a good grade. At one point, her mother said she was upset that her daughter hadn’t immediately told her about the assault: “She’s my life, so don’t keep secrets.” Goldberg told her, “So many kids her age would have done the same thing, especially because she knew it would hurt you.” Goldberg asked them if they were still sure they wanted to pursue a case. Jessica nodded and said yes. Her mother mentioned a friend whose daughter was raped, and said that the family had decided not to take legal action. “Not my daughter,” Jessica’s mother said. Goldberg replied, “There are a lot of reasonable ways to react. This is one of them. And I think it could make a difference in New York City schools.” She added that, were they to win, “as part of a settlement, maybe there could be required classes about sexual consent, and what to do if you receive a picture or video like this. ‘Report it, don’t send it on.’ ” A short hearing on the case was held in late October, but Goldberg told me that she expects the case to move slowly. Jessica may be an adult by the time it is resolved.

y this summer, Goldberg had more

B than thirty-ﬁve active clients, and

she decided to expand her firm. She hired a senior associate, Lindsay Lieberman, who had worked in the special-victims bureau of the Kings County prosecutor’s office. Goldberg’s public profile was steadily rising. In May, she was invited to the White House for the meeting of a task force about sexual assault in elementary, middle, and high schools. And, since the election of Donald Trump, she says, she’s seen a “drastic uptick” in people seeking her firm’s help—evidence of

what she worries is a “new license to be cruel.” Some of the cases have an explicitly political cast. One family’s baby pictures, for example, became memes in an anti-Hillary Clinton conspiracy theory alleging the sexual torture of children. Goldberg is emerging as a new kind of privacy champion—less concerned with government surveillance than with the sharing and leaking and hacking of our personal lives. She works on the assumption that, even in a world where graphic porn and Kardashian-style exhibitionism are ubiquitous, some people will want to keep certain intimate matters private, and society will be better oﬀ if they’re allowed to do so. It’s a complicated mission, because people do record and share so many images of themselves today. But she believes in protecting privacy as a form of dignity and as a bulwark against disgrace—an old-fashioned word that she is fond of. She’s a feminist lawyer who has turned her own experience of coming under attack into a ﬁghting stance: Gloria Allred crossed with Jessica Jones. Goldberg and I discussed an argument that I occasionally heard from younger feminists and Internet utopians: that someday disgrace would be irrelevant. If everybody’s naked pictures were available on the Internet, nobody would need to feel ashamed. “Well, I totally disagree with that,” Goldberg said. “I think that privacy is something that has to be respected, because otherwise where’s the boundary between you and me? And I’m not saying that everybody has to have the same level of modesty, but, if you are not wanting to show your naked pictures to everybody, that seems like a choice you ought to be able to have.” She smiled mischievously. “I think it would have worked, like, when we were cavemen.” “Before the Fall?” Massey, who was listening from his desk, said. “Yeah,” Goldberg said. She got up and walked across the room in her towering heels. “I mean, would people who make that argument say the same thing about your credit-card information? You know, it’s O.K. if everybody knows everybody else’s Social Security number? Or private medical information?” She paused, then said, “Can you imagine if everything was public? If we shared everything? That would be hellish.”  THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

FICTION

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

ILLUSTRATION BY RYAN HESHKA

arly morning: They deliver my father’s corpse in the trunk of a ’49 Mercury coupe, dew still heavy on the taillights. His body is wrapped up tight in see-through plastic, head to toe. Flesh-colored rubber bands bind it at the neck, waist, and ankles—mummy style. He’s become very small in the course of things—maybe eight inches tall. In fact, I’m holding him now, in the palm of my hand. I ask them for permission to unwrap his tiny head, just to make sure he’s truly dead. They allow me to do this. They all stand aside, hands clasped behind their tailored backs, heads bowed in a kind of ashamed mourning, but not something you would question them on. It’s smart to keep on their good side. Besides, they seem quite polite and stoic now. The Mercury idles with a deep, penetrating rumble that I can feel through the soles of both shoes. I remove the rubber bands carefully and uncover his face, peeling the Saran Wrap away from his nose very slowly. It makes a sticky sound, like linoleum coming free from its glue. His mouth opens involuntarily—some delayed response of the nervous system, no doubt, but I take it as a last gasp. I put my thumb inside and feel his rough gums. Little ripples where his teeth used to be. He had no teeth in life, either—the life I remember him in. I rewrap his head in the plastic sheathing, replace the rubber bands, and hand him over, thanking them all with a slight nod, trying to stay in keeping with the solemnity of things. They take him carefully from me and place him back in the dark trunk with the other miniatures.There are shrunken women wedged on either side of him, retaining all their alluring features in perfect detail: high cheekbones, eyebrows plucked, lashes caked with blue mascara, hair washed and coiﬀed, smelling like ripe sugarcane. His is the only tiny body that faces completely out toward a band of sunlight. When they close the trunk, this band goes to black, as though a cloud had abruptly covered the sun. They stand in a semicircle facing me now, hands clasped over their groins, casually yet formally. I can’t tell if they’re ex-marines or mobsters. They seem a mixture of both. I salute each one, rotating counterclockwise. I have the im-

pression that some even click their heels, Fascist style, but I may be making this up. I don’t know if this rain just started or if it’s been going on for some time. I watch them drive oﬀ in a light drizzle. That’s about all I can remember. Along with these smattered details is a strange morning grief, but over what I can’t say. FELICITY

n another language, in another

I time, her name meant “happiness,” I

guess. Felicity, I think it was—Felicity—yes, that was it. I’d never heard the name before, like something from an English novel. Very young. Frecklefaced. Red hair. Slightly plump. Adolescent. Always wearing simple cotton dresses that looked homemade. She’d scream like a trapped rabbit when she sat backward on my father’s cock. I’d never heard such ecstasy and horror, all at once. I’d listen from the next room, staring at the ceiling. Something smelled like eucalyptus and Vaseline. They never talked. I’d listen. But they never talked. I’d dare myself to go in there, just go in and appear and don’t say a thing. Just stare like some zombie child—a child who shows up from out of nowhere. What could they do? Stare back. Kick me out? Put on clothes and kick me out? I knew what they were doing. I knew it felt good. I knew it must feel good to be inside another person. Deep inside like that. I went in and there she was. My father’s girlfriend sitting ramrod straight— naked, almost—as though she were riding a pony backward. Neither of them noticed me. They never turned to see me. She just kept on riding him and screaming recklessly, working her way up and down in a frenzy. He was on his back on a table, staring at the ceiling, his arms folded behind his head, as if he might be taking a siesta or listening to the radio. His lips were moving, but nothing came out. I walked right up next to them, but they never turned to see me. Her pink underwear were on the ﬂoor. They looked as though they belonged to an older woman, maybe her mother. There was a frantic knocking and banging at the door, but neither of them paid any attention. Felicity just kept

screaming and pumping away. Sometimes she would lean slightly forward, look down and examine the penetration closely, without passion. Her mouth was open wide and her hair stuck to the sweat on her forehead. The knocking and banging went on. I went to the door and cracked it. I had my jockey shorts and a T-shirt on. It was Mabel Hynes, the landlady, from down the hall. She stood there with a Mexican hairless in the folds of her flabby arms. The dog was silent but kept its ears pricked for each scream. When the scream came, the dog yapped. “What’s going on in there? Sounds like someone’s getting murdered.” “No, it’s just my dad.” “Your dad? What’s he doing?” “Just having fun. He’s got a friend with him.” “Fun? Doesn’t sound like fun to me.” “I’ve never seen her before, actually. This girl.” “Yeah, well, tell him if he doesn’t find a way to keep the noise down I’m calling the cops.” “O.K.” “You tell him that.” “O.K.” “I’ve got enough to worry about without his shenanigans.” “Yes, Ma’am.” I closed the door and bolted it. Felicity kept on, but now her screams became short little cries for mercy. My father stayed silent. Maybe his lips kept moving. He was always moving his lips as though he were talking to someone invisible. They still didn’t seem to know I was there. I pulled on my jeans and sneaked out the back door, barefoot. It was cold when I hit the ground. Just getting to be dawn. Behind our rooming house was a long black rail yard, going off to Stanley and Bingham. It diminished into blinking neon and brakeman’s signals. Men were loading secret metals that someone told me were being sent out to Los Alamos and Alamogordo. The cargo trains were hissing and groaning as they waited. The smells of doughnuts, steam, waffles, and coffee spilled out across the bustedup yard and into the vast dark desert. Speechless men hauled huge, heavy boxes on iron wheels across the gravel. Now and then, one of the forms would emit a nod or a groan, but the world THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

my father as though he’d just shot the President. Mrs. Hynes went back inside with her dog and shut off the porch light. The woman in the long pink coat kept crying and going in little circles, searching through her deep pockets for more crumpled Kleenex. Her lips were moving. She was talking to someone far away. She bent down and took off both of her high heels. She dangled them from one finger as she weaved away from me, down Trace Street. OPPOSITE FELICITY

he thing about Felicity was how

T opposite she appeared to be in her

“I eat here all the time so I can be a regular.”

• remained enigmatic, shrouded, and unspeakable. I followed the same rules of geographic orientation as if I were walking alongside a quiet river. On the way out, I would keep the tracks on my left shoulder, and on the way back keep them on my right. As long as I used the tracks to guide me, I’d never get lost. Simple. I followed the long iron snake until the commercial lights of downtown receded to dots. My steps became louder. Lizards and little animals darted away. I tried to keep to the smooth cool sand, but bullthorns and shattered bottles tortured my bare feet. Little soft patches of cooch grass gave me momentary respite, until some thorn or nail punched through and ﬁnally I had to retreat. The iron rail still held heat from the day before, and I found myself hopping back to town on the creosoted ties. Once I’d reëntered the nest of pinkneon-and-green beer ads, I looked for a light in the window of our boardinghouse room. I imagined I saw it from that distance. I imagined I saw my dad frying bacon, but maybe not. Maybe I was making something up. A solid life of uncertainty. Squad cars surrounded the rooming 68

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

• house. Swirling blue lights. Mrs. Hynes was standing on the front porch surveying the goings-on, with her little dog yapping in her arms and a sweater thrown over her shoulders against the earlymorning chill. She had the grim look of someone watching the aftermath of a road accident. Felicity was standing on the sidewalk wearing a sheet, teeth chattering, sobbing, as a female officer tried to keep the top of the sheet closed tightly around her huge breasts. Purple mascara ran down her cheeks. The lady cop escorted her into one of the squad cars, which immediately sped off with its siren wailing. A woman in a long pink coat was yelling at my father, who was in his boxer shorts, smoking a cigarette. A cop stood on either side of him, squeezing on his bare elbows, then handcuffed his wrists behind his back. The woman in the pink coat kept yelling things like “Cocksucker!” and “Bastard!” while the cops placed him in the back seat of another squad car and protected the top of his head from hitting the doorframe. Which I thought was a really strange gesture, since they were already doing severe damage to his character. Now all the police cars sped off with their sirens screaming, following

pure-white cotton dress and tanned legs, black patent-leather pumps and purse to match, how opposite to her naked screaming self I remembered from that other morning, tossing her red hair. Abandonment. Now here she was in a ponytail, just standing, very straightforward, on our front porch with her arms crossed quaintly, purse dangling, asking if my father was home. I told her that he was still at work at the feedlot but she could come in anyway and wait, if she liked. So she did, and I got more and more nervous and shaky as she sat on the edge of a straight-backed wicker chair while I got iced tea from the cooler and poured it into a Mason jar and brought it to her, with the broken ice rattling around and the tea sloshing over the edge. (This was in a different house from the boarding house. Way out in the country, but Felicity had found it somehow, tracked us down.) When I gave her the tea, she put her little black purse on the floor and perched the Mason jar on her knees, then smiled at me with sudden elation. I got so nervous I had to go outside and walk around for a while. The whole time I was out there I kept imagining her sitting in the wicker chair, all alone with the iced tea balanced on her knees and looking around at our strange new house. New, I mean, to us—different— different things on the wall that didn’t belong to us, cheap prints of muskellunge and logging camps and places that had nothing to do with the place in which we now found ourselves. I missed the black rotating fan in our kitchen as I wound my way through patches of bullthorns, sidestepping old bean cans.

The friendliness of its counterclockwise rotation. The sun was really beating down by then, and I kept seeing it all in my head: the little fan blowing wind on the back of Felicity’s neck, wisps of red hair standing straight out. I imagined her just sitting there, with her back to me and the Mason jar shedding water down her legs, condensation running in cold streams down her calves. I thought that maybe what I should do was get up closer to the house and take a peek through the back window and see if she was still sitting there or if she’d maybe stood up and strolled around through the rooms (there were only three), trying to see if she recognized any of our stuff from the boarding house, like Dad’s shaving bowl or my chipped accordion. When I got up close like that to the window, I felt like a spy or someone sneaking around someone else’s house and peeking in to see if there was anything worth stealing. A Peeping Tom. I couldn’t see Felicity at all. The wicker chair was empty. The little black fan was rotating and blowing air through the empty room. I could almost feel the rushes of wind. I sneaked around to the bedroom window and saw her bouncing up and down on my dad’s mattress, plunked flat on the floor. There were no sheets or covers on it, and its dark coffee stains were in sharp contrast to Felicity’s dress. She seemed happy—silently laughing, holding one arm straight up above her head, tipping the Mason jar, tea spilling out over her shoulders and onto the bare mattress. She turned the jar over completely and poured the tea all over her head. She kicked off her black pumps and jumped up and down, then threw the Mason jar at the wall. It didn’t break, just bounced off the Sheetrock and rattled around in the corner. Spinning. She stopped laughing. She stopped jumping and just stood there, staring at the wall. The Mason jar twirled to a standstill. She didn’t move. I didn’t, either. She had no idea I was staring at the back of her wet head. LANTERNS

asked Felicity once about my dad.

I She was there again, waiting for

him. Sitting in the wicker chair with her little black purse and her dustcoated pumps. This time in a frilly pink

skirt (I guess to look more innocent). I asked her if she ever actually talked to him, and she told me that he was mostly the silent type. That was one of the things she liked about him, his silence. “Did he ever talk? Or just move his lips?” I asked her. “Once,” she said. “He talked about disappearing—how everything was disappearing. How there used to be bonﬁres everywhere, people running with torches. Laughing. The night was full of sparks. Songs. Little children running and screaming with glee. People in love would jump across the snapping ﬂames, hand in hand. Fires would shoot straight up to the stars.” “When was this?” I asked her. “The old days, he told me. Back in the old days, before electricity was pulled out of the earth, I suppose. Lanterns lit the unpaved roads.” Something about her voice hypnotized me, even at that age. Something like a hand softly stroking the top of my head. I’d seen horses put to sleep that way by someone barely rubbing their eyes, their lashes. That’s how it’s done. I thought, What if my father knew what I was thinking? What was going on? What if he knew I had these feelings about her? I didn’t even know what they were yet. These feelings. They were like warm water running down my back. SOMEONE ELSE’S LIFE

ne other morning, when Felic-

O ity came by with her same little

black purse and sat on the same wicker chair, waiting for my dad, who was always at work, I got up the courage to ask her why her face always looked so blank. She told me that she didn’t know what expression to use, because she didn’t understand other people. I asked her why not, and she said that she always had this feeling of living someone else’s life, and that people seemed way outside her somehow. Apart. I asked her who the other person might be, the one living her life for her, and she explained that she didn’t know how she knew, but it was someone her same age and female, but she didn’t know her name. I asked her if she knew what lay up ahead, if she had some idea what her future might hold. She THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

told me no, it wasn’t like that. “Like what?” I asked. It wasn’t as though she could see the future. It wasn’t as though things were laid out and all she had to do was go through with them. It was as though her experiences didn’t belong to her. They belonged to someone else. I sat there a long time in silence, staring at the ﬂoor. Felicity was good at silence. Better than me. She seemed to have no anxiety about what lay up ahead. She could take it or leave it. My fear of her mounted until I leaped up from the couch and tried to make up some excuse to go outside. She didn’t seem the least bit nervous. Nothing had changed in her. She just kept sitting on the wicker chair in the same way she had before, with the patentleather purse in her lap. I ran outside to the back porch and started tossing all the pails of warm slimy dog water out and reﬁlling them. Just for something to do. TINY MAN IN AN IRISH PUB

ight: They’re playing darts in

N an Irish pub. You can see them

through the glazed window, leaning toward the target. Three of them this time, still dressed up in their pin-striped suits, fedora hats, and those shoes you always see them wearing in black-and-white movies—pointed—brogans, I guess. With little indented holes or perforations in the pattern. They’re all smoking Luckies and drinking Martinis with green olives and a twist of lemon rind. The ’49 Merc is parked outside, with a fourth guy propped against the trunk, his foot on the bumper, dressed exactly like the others. He’s smoking and shuﬄing a deck of cards, separating the one-eyed jacks. None of these characters look like actors, but they all seem to be playing a role. Inside, the other three are laughing and chewing on toothpicks as one of them throws his set of darts at the wall. Each time he throws he leans in, squints his eyes, and makes three little practice strokes with his right arm before releasing. My tiny dead father, still wrapped in plastic, and two of the 70

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

shrunken women are hung on the target by the necks with pink rubber bands. They bob up and down ever so slightly as the darts zoom past their heads. One dart with red feathers and a golden streamlined point hits my father square in the forehead and sticks. The tiny body spins. He’s already dead, so he doesn’t make a peep. The gangsters are hysterical with laughter as they take sips of their drinks and adjust the bold knots of their ties. Two more darts are thrown at my father, who is still spinning. They both miss. One grazes his shoulder and clatters to the ﬂoor. One guy makes a yellow mark on a chalkboard. The third guy drops a dime in a Wurlitzer. This is about all I can remember. BOOTS WITH RED FLOWERS

told Felicity she had to stop com-

I ing around like this—why was she

always coming around when she knew my dad was at work? I mean, why was she always coming around? She’d just stare at me and smile. She moved the little black purse on her knees. This time she was wearing cutoff bluejeans and boots with red flowers and pistols carved into them. Very Western. She asked me if there was some law against her coming by my place and paying me a visit. She just wanted to see the dogs, anyway, she said. Maybe pick some oranges. Run through the sprinklers. I told her there was no law, it just seemed weird, that’s all. “Weird?” she said. “There’s nothing weird about us being friends.” She considered us friends. I thought that was great, but at the same time I wondered if that was the way my dad would see it. “Friends”? I mean, what did that mean to her? Did that mean that, when I looked at her purse moving around on her knees, that was all I was looking at? There were times back then when I thought I’d never get out of there alive. I’d have to become a famous golfer or a veterinarian or something like that. I’d have to escape completely. I’d have to take a different name, get a different haircut, wear clothes from a different era. Start listening to music by

Tommy Dorsey. I don’t know. What if Felicity decided to track me down? What if my father found out? What if he decided to do me in or have me arrested or something? What if he went completely crazy? Insanity ran in the family, don’t forget. There was some great-great-something—an uncle or a cousin or something—who ran oﬀ to live with the Indians back then, had many wives, many children, stopped speaking English altogether, took up astrology, had Cherokee slaves. I don’t know. I didn’t want to wind up like that, that’s for sure. I had to ﬁnd a way out of there. Completely. ’d never been with a woman in that

I way before, especially an older woman,

although Felicity was only about fourteen or fifteen at the time. She felt huge. I was lost in her body. Her breasts were immense and heaved like distant ocean waves inside her woman’s bra, which she must have “borrowed” from her mother. The floorboards were rock-hard on my knees. The rag rug had slipped away and I swam on top of her, flailing as though I’d never make it to the other side. She began screaming and making those same noises she’d made with my father the first time. I was sure her voice would carry for at least twenty acres. Over the heads of grazing cattle, frantic lizards. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and she took big fistfuls of my hair. I kept praying that my dad wouldn’t show up in the middle of all this. After days of her waiting for him, he finally shows up in the middle of all this! It was unbearable to imagine! I rode her like a pony, trying to stay on. She slipped away, grabbing me between the legs and shoving me into her. It was an incredible mess. Cum all over the place. She jumped up suddenly, gathered all her clothes, and ran out the front door, half naked, then turned on the porch and ran back in, and got on top of me. I was still stretched out, bewildered. I thought she was going to crush me. The sheer weight of her. Her pelvic bone. I’d thought it was all over, and here she was on me again, except worse—more savage, more huge. Her mouth opened and I saw tiny animals escaping, tiny animals that were trapped inside her all this time. They flew out as though something might catch them and drag them

back into imprisonment. I could feel them land on my face and crawl through my hair, searching for a hiding place. Each time she screamed, the animals flew out in small clouds like tiny gnats: little dragons, flying fish, headless horses. They came tumbling out, scratching at one another. The amazing thing was that I stayed hard all this time. Even after ejaculating all over. I was as hard as a stone salute. That must’ve been why she returned. avoided my father after that. I

I could see him at dusk in his rocker,

with a glass of whiskey and a glass of milk beside it, picking at the shrapnel scars on the back of his neck and staring at nothing from the front porch. I kept thinking that he somehow knew about me and Felicity. That she’d told him in a moment of panic. That she’d suddenly had a spell of “honesty” and spilled the beans. That that was why he was always staring off into the distance. It made no sense, though, that he hadn’t attacked me right away—as soon as he found out. Why would he wait? He wasn’t a man who carefully calculated his actions. If he kicked me out, where would I end up? Bakersfield? These were the kinds of things I thought of as I wandered farther and farther from the house. As it turned to night, I kept a bead on the kitchen light. I stumbled through plow ruts and tried to keep to the very edge of the fields, so as not to disturb seedbeds or crops already heading out. Our sheep heard me coming and bolted off in a burst of gray, away from the wire fence. I saw his bedroom light switch on and knew that he was brushing his teeth, with the glass of whiskey resting on the porcelain sink beside him. It was the same room in which I’d watched Felicity bouncing on the mattress. The same room in which I’d seen her throw the Mason jar. A purewhite owl dived at a field mouse, snagged it, then flapped away into the dark. What would I have asked my father if I’d had the guts? Would I have asked him who he was? Who he pretended to be? Would I have asked him what was on his mind? Had he “seen” something? Had he “seen” her and me? Did he think I might have fooled around with her behind his back? Got her hot and bothered? Caused those red blotches to emerge on her neck and

face? Sweating. Caused her to drop her mother’s underwear on the tiled ﬂoor? Did he think I might be the one she really loved? TINY MAN AT THE BEACH

hey are at the beach now. Carpin-

T teria or Ventura—very bright and

hot. The ’49 Mercury is parked up by the highway, facing the pounding Pacific. All the windows are rolled down and the trunk is wide open. Salty air sweeps through it, blowing sand against the whitewalls, half burying them. None of the miniature corpses are in evidence. Just the car—as though it had been abandoned in haste. No one’s around. Just wind. Wind again. Down on the beach, far below the cliffs, the miniatures are all lined up on their backs in the sand, as though taking sunbaths, even though they’re dead. Seagulls circle above them, waiting for the chance to carry one of them off and tear it apart. The gangsters lie in a line right beside the corpses. They, too, look as though they were taking sunbaths, but they’re all still very much alive. Two of them have their shirts off and are applying baby oil to their dark-olive skin. All the gangsters keep their felt fedoras on, and all of them are wearing very expensive dark glasses, fashioned in Rome, with a brand name that I can’t pronounce. None of them wear sunblock. They’re too proud of their Sicilian heritage to display white noses like a bunch of clowns in the circus. They’ve all taken off their brogans and their black silk dress socks. They wiggle their manicured toes in the sand and whistle at young girls strolling by. They call a group of girls over and show them the line of miniature corpses all on their backs. Taking the sun. The girls run away in horror, screaming, covering their noses, although the smell of death is very faint through the Saran Wrap. One of them runs toward the sea as though she were about to vomit. All the gangsters laugh hysterically and slap one another’s high fives so violently that one of them actually thinks he’s broken his wrist. A black waiter shows up in a tuxedo and white gloves, driving an electric golf cart. They all order mojitos, except one, who orders a vodka tonic. The black waiter jumps back on THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

his electric golf cart, after writing down their orders, and heads oﬀ toward the clubhouse. You can just make out the roof over a distant ridge, where a group of slender palms are swaying. MOUNDS OF THEIR OWN DUNG

he thing you remember most

T about feedlots is the smell—the

smell, way before seeing the actual cattle, usually Holstein crosses huddled in tight, listless bands on top of mounds of their own dung. You imagine them sensing death—their future as frozen hamburger patties—but I could be giving them a prescience they don’t possess. Mornings in the San Joaquin always carry a mist. Its origins are mysterious, because there is hardly any moisture to speak of. No water, except for the placid irrigation ditches: the giant rainbirds dripping; white transportable plastic pipes at the edge of rows of lettuce. We used to call it Tule Fog when we worked alfalfa, loading trucks with square bales in the summer. That was farther south, though, down around Chino, where there was more green and it actually rained a little. I put it in my head that I could walk the seventeen miles to the feedlot on the fifth straight day that Felicity showed up and was, again, asking to see my old man, who was never there. I invited her in, as usual, out of the blasting sun, sat her down, as always, on the wicker chair, and poured the usual jar of iced tea for her. She sat exactly the same way she always did—with her back straight and her spine not being supported by the chair at all. She set the little black purse on the floor and balanced the iced tea in the same way—on her knees, which were always pressed together and very tanned. I made up some excuse to go back into the kitchen and sneaked out the back, making sure the screen door didn’t slam behind me. I ran for about a hundred yards, until my lungs ached, then walked in long strides down to Highway 5. Meadowlarks trilled, then exploded out of a field of barley, landing on mesquite posts. Like Indians at the bus stop, they’d never look you directly in the face. Grasshoppers were everywhere, and bottle flies would go smack into your eyes, as though blind and suicidal. Crews of Japanese field hands were working straw72

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

ROSE TANTRUM

A rose was throwing a tantrum deep in the botanical gardens. An angel fell in the bathroom, knocked her front teeth out on the edge of the toilet. A long-haired dachshund was crossing the Bosporus I’m jumping around here. A rose. A tantrum. An angel saying it was the sink. A sign on a dumpster saying Unwanted Diamonds. But it was the toilet. Was deﬁnitely the toilet. The rose shook slightly but violently. Like a bruise happening. Sound of cable straining. The angel danced all night in a club. Music deafening. Rum & cokes. Carpenter blokes. Dried blood on her chin. I fell and smashed these in she tried saying, pointing to her mouth. On the sink! Today! At noon! The sink! —Michael Earl Craig berry patches in straw hats shaped like chocolate drops. A long line of giant blue-gum eucalyptus marked the highway’s shoulder and cast shade out into acres and acres of summer squash. I started making up in my head what I’d say to my dad when I got there. A sort of little raggedy monologue, as I marched my way toward the blur of occasional cars, on their journey up to San Francisco or down to L.A. in a straight line. “She’s really desperate to see you, Pop. She wouldn’t come every day if she wasn’t. I mean, maybe you could just go down to the liquor store and give her a call. Or you could give me a message, maybe, and I’d tell her. Or a note. A note would be even better, wouldn’t it? She’d see you’d signed it and everything. It would almost be like talking to her. Maybe she’d imagine your voice, even. Your face. As though you were actually talking to her. It might—I don’t know, it might ease her mind or it might even

make her feel better about you. You know? The whole situation. I think she really likes you. She does. The way she talks about you. I mean, I can’t stand it when she shows up looking for you and you’re not ever there. I don’t know what to do. I don’t. I mean, I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I try to talk to her, but you know I’m not very good at that. I don’t know what to do. I make things up. I do.” The hike to Coalinga was hot and dusty. I didn’t even attempt hitchhiking. People never stop when they’re going that fast, anyway. Occasionally, some old faggot insurance salesman. You can spot them right away. Driving alone. A bunch of suits and shirts on wire hangers behind him. His red balls hanging out of his ﬂy. I plodded on in the gravel ditch, through disposable diapers, bottle caps, and used condoms. Crows and mockingbirds dotted the fence lines. Some guy in an old Massey Ferguson, trying

to be a “lone little farmer” holding out against the “big boys.” Signs about water rights and how the politicians were to blame for the lack of it. White almond trees in full bloom. Boxes of bees pollinating apricots. Now and then a roadside fruit stand selling ﬁgs and watermelon. I could hardly wait to get out of this place. I started thinking about how Felicity might have found us. How come she could have just showed up here in this godforsaken valley. It became clear to me that Felicity was what you call “underage,” “jailbait,” or whatever. Older men used to use that term, “jailbait.” Something illegal like that, or else they’d never have taken him away. The cops. My dad. We’d never have had to move out of that boarding house in the middle of the night the way we did. He’d never have had to take a job at the feedlot. He doesn’t even know how to ride a horse. He just drives a pickup. Up and down the rows of cows, bawling and waiting for alfalfa pellets. Maybe that woman in the long pink coat was Felicity’s mother and she had secretly followed us. I don’t know why. Maybe the two of them have a place here. Somewhere in town. And the mother sends Felicity out here every day. Day after day. Like some kind of bait. “Jailbait”— maybe that’s it. Why isn’t she in school? I wonder. It is summer. Not that her mother gives a hoot in hell about education. I can’t see her grooming Felicity for some fancy girls’ school back East or some Ivy League deal, where they go on to “higher learning.” Not that Felicity would want that kind of thing, anyway. I don’t know. When I ﬁnally reached the feedlot, there was nothing but cattle and dust and a stench that made your eyes water. I couldn’t see another human being. Miles of cattle. Black. Black-and-white. Red. Gray. Spotted. All kinds. All sizes. Flies. Shit. The air seemed as if there might be a war nearby. That was what it felt like. War and death. Mass graves. Desolation. Pogroms. No human beings. Nothing but the constant sound of cattle bawling, as though their mothers were eternally lost. I saw a pickup truck, miles up one of the alleys. It would stop periodically. A man would get out and dump a bag of feed into

the troughs, then run a pitchfork over the top of it as the heads of cattle poked through the pipes and lolled their long slimy white tongues over the green pellets. The man dumped the empty bag and the pitchfork in the back of the pickup, then jumped behind the wheel. He’d go down the alley a few yards, then repeat the same process. I stood there for the longest time, just watching. I had an impulse to wave, but I didn’t. I saw the truck getting closer and closer, but I somehow knew the driver didn’t see me. I was sure it was my father. Who else would it be? I turned and walked away, all seventeen miles back to the house. When I got there, Felicity was gone.

a wince can mean anything, up to a point, but do you necessarily have the wherewithal to really feel what the grimacer or wincer feels? Be that as it may. To be afraid of the sufferer’s suffering is what I’m trying to consider. Is it even possible? Afraid of what? That the suffering might come over to you? As though it were there already, and watching the sufferer suffer only broke open what was already lying dormant but rarely released. Or is it the impossibility of ever knowing? One thing’s for certain: a grimace is not a scream and a wince is not a cry of anguish. But a miniaturization only causes you to look closer. elicity vanished. My dad walked

A GRIMACE IS NOT A SCREAM

hy or how he was shrunken in those various dreams and apparitions is beyond me. Whether he shrank before or after his death on this earth was another question I had. Before his death—this is going back to ’68 or ’69—I’d say he’d already shrunk some around the shoulders and neck, but that was in accordance with the natural aging process. I mean, that’s what they always say about the aged, don’t they? “He was once much taller, until that horse fell on him,” or “He was once much fatter, until that woman who couldn’t cook showed up,” or “He was once much wider, until the river breached its banks.” No matter. People will talk. It could also be that I’m dreaming him like that—tiny—because it’s a way of distancing myself, but that’s a bit Freudian, don’t you think? As though there were some kind of intelligence driving all this—the subconscious or some bullshit like that. Something I find hard to believe in. Why would I want to be distanced, anyway? There’s nothing I’m still afraid of. At least, not from him, my father. Maybe it’s his pain—his suffering. But why be afraid of his suffering? That’s what I’d like to know. What’s in it? For me, I mean. Hard to say what it was for him. Suffering, I mean. When you watch someone grimace or wince, what do you think he’s feeling? It’s certainly not a thing of pleasure that pops into your mind, or happiness, either. Neither of those. I mean, I suppose a grimace or

F the highway at night.Said he couldn’t

sleep, but I know it was more about looking for her, hoping she’d show up. He hardly ever talked about it. In fact, he hardly ever talked period, just picked at the scars on the back of his neck and stared at the fire. Every once in a while, he’d hear a change in the dogs and leap up from his chair and go rushing outside. The screen door slammed behind him as he stared out into the night and the dogs gathered around his knees, knocking their tails against the side of the porch. Hens clucked and fluffed their feathers from the shed, where the tractors were parked, and a cat scampered across the beam of orange night light cast from the creosote pole. He asked me again about the last time I’d seen her, and I told him it was the time I went out to find him at the feedlot. He couldn’t remember that time, and I told him that that was because I never actually talked to him, he looked so busy. “I’m never busy,” he said, then he turned to the fire again and gave the log a little kick. Sparks flew into the room and lit up the wicker chair where Felicity always sat, waiting. For a second, I thought I saw her, but I was only dreaming. Sometimes it was like that out there at night, completely alone. Not even a neighbor’s barn light. Just the two of us and the dogs. I thought about Felicity—where she might have gone. Maybe she hadn’t gone at all but just got bored with waiting around. Boredom was a real event in those days. What’s going to happen? That was the question. What’s going to happen. ♦

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

THE CRITICS ON TELEVISION

DOING TIME The unhurried pleasures of “Rectify.” BY EMILY NUSSBAUM

leased from death row, and he gives a speech to journalists and protesters gathered outside the prison. Rather than assert his innocence or talk about justice, he offers a zigzagging meditation on the nature of fatalism. “I had convinced myself that kind of optimism served no useful purpose in the world where I existed,” he explains, in an underwater monotone, as the protesters look on, baffled. “Obviously, this radical belief system was flawed and was, ironically, a kind of fantasy itself.” Humbly, as if ending a philosophy seminar, he concludes, “I will seriously need to reconsider my world view.” For three years, “Rectify” has been a small marvel, an eccentric independent drama, filmed in Griffin, Georgia, and airing off the beaten track as well, on Sundance. With its skewed insights into carceral cruelty, “Rectify” took the slot that “The Wire” used to occupy: it’s the smart crime drama whose fans have trouble persuading others to watch, because it sounds too grim—or maybe too good for you. It’s a frustrating dynamic that has haunted other dramas without cowboys or zombies—“The Leftovers” and “The Americans” come to mind—but “Rectify” ’s reputation for difficulty is misleading. The show’s dreamy pace makes it a satisfying high, like a bourbon-soaked bob down a river on a humid day. It’s a show about the way that time gets distorted; it’s one that distorts time, too. As with many structurally daring series, it’s joyful, because its insides match its outsides. It’s also, more straightforwardly, a gothic mystery about small-town secrets. When Daniel was in his late teens, he was convicted of the rape and murder of 74

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Hanna. He served nineteen years, most of them in solitary confinement. The crime itself was a foggy, ambiguous incident that involved psychedelic drugs; two boys testified against him, and, under pressure, Daniel confessed. DNA cleared him of the rape but not of the murder, so plenty of locals—and, at times, Daniel himself—suspect that he did it, because he was found cradling Hanna’s naked corpse, which he’d decorated with flowers. But Daniel’s younger sister, Amantha (Abigail Spencer), never lost faith in his innocence, and she’s been sleeping with the liberal Jewish lawyer she lobbied to work on his behalf—the big-city Reuben to her Norma Rae. Everyone involved wants clarity, now that Amantha’s faith has paid off. No one gets it. The murder case is reopened and leads down alarming paths. Few people want to face the uglier facts, including the knowledge that Daniel was raped in prison, multiple times. While he was on death row, his father died and his mother remarried, so he has two new stepbrothers, Ted, Jr., and Jared, who is still in his teens. In some ways, Daniel is himself an adolescent, prone to self-indulgent, self-destructive whims. In isolated Paulie, Georgia, he’s a distinctly odd figure, a socially awkward autodidact who meditated and read obsessively in his cell. He speaks in an off-kilter, whispery style, making even sympathetic neighbors uncomfortable. His mannered intellectualism marks him as an outsider, queer in several senses, as much as any suspicions of criminal guilt do. The one person who truly gets him is Ted, Jr.,’s wife, Tawney, a sweet born-again Christian who is desperate to save Daniel, and with whom he develops a dan-

gerous chemistry. Their flirtation takes place, however, largely through elevated conversation about Thomas Aquinas and Buddha, forgiveness and humility. And, in fact, a lot of the pleasure of the show is in the dialogue, which favors the stuff that Daniel jokes is not “gallows humor” but “lethal-injection humor—it’s more humane but less funny.” “It felt good to use the telephone that wasn’t smarter than me,” Daniel tells his sister, about a pay phone. His companion on a road trip tells him, “Everything that happens between men and women is written in mud. And butter. And barbecue sauce. Paula Deen said that to me in a dream I had one time.” Ted, Jr.,’s boozy koan: “First you hate it. Then you like it. It’s called beer.” While the talk takes its time, the plot moves fast. The first season covers six days in six episodes, and climaxes in two crimes, one committed by Daniel, one against him; by the fourth and final season, currently airing, only a few months have passed. Several of the best episodes are one-offs, featuring characters we never meet again. In one, Daniel drifts into the orbit of an antique dealer named Lezlie, a Pan-like anarchist, who invites anyone who is not a gentrifying yuppie—the class he regards as ruining Paulie—to party at his ramshackle house. In another, Daniel gets a ride from a stranger and steals some goats.There’s a strong sense in “Rectify” that, when your memory has been rendered spongy and your safety shattered, each event might last forever or be gone in a flash. erhaps the standout episode is

P “Donald the Normal,” from Sea-

son 2. In it, Daniel ﬁnally leaves town. He takes a bus to Atlanta, then puts on nice clothes and goes to a museum

ABOVE: LUCI GUTIÉRREZ

n the first episode of “Rectify,”

I Daniel Holden (Aden Young) is re-

Daniel was convicted of a brutal but ambiguous crime. Now that heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s out of prison, everyone wants clarity. ILLUSTRATION BY TOMER HANUKA

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

to see a beautiful painting that he knows only from a book. Throughout “Rectify,” the claustrophobically close-knit Paulie—where the local waitress sleeps with both Daniel and the politician who framed him, and where Hanna’s brother glares at Daniel’s family in the supermarket—is portrayed as nearenchanted in its isolation. Any mention of a larger Southern city (even from the former Atlantan Amantha, who has a liberal hipster’s condescension for her home town) makes it sound as distant as Mars. At the museum, Daniel is approached by an attractive older woman, played by Frances Fisher. “What do you think?” she asks. “I think I’ve looked at this painting in a book for so long that somehow my brain has trivialized it,” he says. “And as I stand here in front of the real thing I feel, if anything . . . disappointed.” She’s charmed by the alien quality that others find so creepy—his formal speech, his lack of boundaries. She invites him to lunch with her book-club friends. These are sleek, rich city women. He tells them that his name is Donald and that he owns a bookstore in Alabama. This experiment in reinvention falls apart fast. Daniel has cuts on his forehead and cheeks, the remnants of a beating that put him in a coma. And, bright as he is, he can’t improvise a life he never had. He finds himself faking a conversation about a book he hasn’t read, something with a “pitiful” protagonist. “This bread, um, is excellent,” he says, trying to change the subject. “The panini bread?” one of the women asks. “Yes, um, the pallini bread,” he responds. “It’s . . . unusually fresh.” It’s a heartbreaking slip, a class error that locks him out of a whole world. The book-club women get into a conversation about a story that Daniel has read, Tobias Wolff ’s “Bullet in the Brain,” and which he’s memorized. His lunch companion can’t believe it: “It would be torture to memorize.” No, he explains: it was a calming task, back during “a period in my life when I was having some difficulty dealing with the passing of time in a traditional sense.” Because Wolff ’s story deals “with the bending of time,” memorizing it helped him bend time as well. References like this get at the show’s fearlessness in taking art seriously, not 76

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merely as a distraction but as a bridge between strangers, a way of reframing the world. Still, it would be an exercise in solipsism without the larger, more grounded ensemble, particularly Daniel’s opposite number, Ted, Jr., who becomes both his bully and his victim. As played by Clayne Crawford, Ted is a strutting, insecure shit-kicker, a highschool tough kid gone to seed. A salesman at the family car dealership, he’s the yuppie type Lezlie disdains, or, at least, he aspires to be: he and Tawney share a McMansion decorated in pastels. When the bank won’t give him a loan for a sketchy scheme involving leasing auto rims to black customers, he mortgages the house, despite Tawney’s resistance. When things fall apart, he gets scary. In another story, Ted might be a cartoon villain: the abusive husband who, at one point, confesses to something so close to date rape that it’s a distinction without a difference. (Crimes on “Rectify” are like that: violence so ordinary that no one reports it—and, when someone does, the justice system makes it worse.) But the show sees Ted’s side, too. Like Daniel, he is a man humiliated by loss of control, with few coping skills when he’s been abandoned. In “Rectify,” anyone who feels something for others, however painful, must be redeemable. In the final season, Tawney and Ted, Jr., go to therapy, heading toward divorce. Daniel, who has been legally “banished” to Nashville, lives at a halfway house and gets an artist girlfriend. The crime is on the verge of being solved. If “Rectify” has a flaw, it’s one that so many humane shows develop in their final stretch—a Tawney-like desire to save everyone, simply because these are characters we’ve loved for years. In one scene, Amantha, recognizing that an old enemy is helping solve the mystery of Hanna’s murder, asks, “Is there anyone left to hate?” Daniel wryly refers to himself as Humpty-Dumpty, but he’s often more like Kimmy Schmidt: he’s strange not because his capacity for wonder has been shut down but because it’s almost too open. As the finale approaches, it’s not the show’s problem that I’ve found myself wanting some ugly to stay ugly. Perhaps I will seriously need to reconsider my world view. 

On stray bits of salvaged paper, Dickinson conjured a new form of verbal notation.

reshaping American literature, is a story that is still unfolding. Only ten of her poems were published in her lifetime, all anonymously; publication was, as she put it, as “foreign to my thought, as Firmament to Fin.” Not that she intended her poems to go unread—she often sent them in letters to friends, sometimes with other enclosures: dried flowers, a three-cent stamp, a dead cricket. She also tried a form of selfpublishing: from around 1858 until roughly 1864, she gathered her poems into forty homemade books, known as “fascicles,” by folding single sheets of blank paper in half to form four consecutive pages, which she then wrote on and, later, bound, one folded sheet on another, with red-and-white thread strung through crudely punched holes. These books were found in Dickinson’s room after her death, in 1886, by her sister, Lavinia, along with hundreds more poems in various states of composition, plus, intriguingly, the “scraps,” a cache of lines that Dickinson wrote on scavenged paper: the flap of a manila envelope, the backs of letters, chocolate wrappers, bits of newspaper. There were now two separate troves of Dickinson’s poems. The ones from her bedroom belonged to Lavinia. A second group, of more than three hundred poems sent in letters, belonged to Susan Gilbert Dickinson, the wife of Emily’s brother, Austin. Lavinia, soon after entrusting her collection to Susan for editing, abruptly reclaimed it, and delivered the work instead to Austin’s mistress (and Susan’s nemesis), Mabel Loomis Todd, who, with Thomas Higginson, a mentor of sorts to Dickinson, put out the first editions of Dickinson’s poems, in the eighteen-nineties. Soon, a wide readership formed and her posthumous fame grew, nourished by the stories people passed around. After a gregarious girlhood, it was said, Dickinson had gradually become a near-total recluse, known around Amherst as “the myth.” Children boasted of catching a glimpse of her at an upstairs window. Some thought she was a mystic. Later readers assumed that she was in love with Susan. Lyndall Gordon, a recent biographer, argued that Dickinson was epileptic and feared suffering one of her seizures in public. You can find support for any of these

ILLUSTRATION BY TINA BERNING

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

BOOKS

OUT OF PRINT The scrap poetry of Emily Dickinson. BY DAN CHIASSON

he poems of Emily Dickinson

T began as marks made in ink or

pencil on paper, usually the standard stationery that came into her family’s household. Most were composed in Dickinson’s large, airy bedroom, with two big windows facing south and two facing west, at a small table that her niece described as “18-inches square, with a drawer deep enough to take in her ink bottle, paper and pen.” It looked out over the family’s property on Main Street, in Amherst, Massachusetts, toward the Evergreens, her brother’s grand Italianate mansion, nestled among the pines a few hundred yards away. Dickinson had a Franklin stove

fitted to a bricked-up fireplace to keep her warm, which meant that she could write by candlelight, with the door closed, for as long as she wanted. In much of the rest of the house, the winter temperature would have been around fifty degrees. Though she usually composed at night, Dickinson sometimes jotted down lines during the day, while gardening or doing chores, wearing a simple white dress with pockets for her pencils and scraps of paper. A younger cousin recalled her reciting the “most emphatic things in the pantry” while skimming the milk. The way that Dickinson’s poems made it out of that house, eventually

BRIEFLY NOTED Thunder at the Gates, by Douglas R. Egerton (Basic). In 1861, the refugee slave Henry Jarvis arrived at Fort Monroe, in Virginia, and asked to enlist as a Union soldier. He was turned away and told that the war with the Confederates was not a “black man’s war” but one about keeping the nation together. The subsequent formation of three black regiments changed public opinion. Egerton’s history shows how the sacrifice of these recruits on the battlefields at Fort Wagner and Olustee not only proved that African-Americans could be dedicated fighters but also opened the way to securing rights, including equal pay for military service and the opportunity to be promoted into the ranks of commissioned officers.White Northerners may have enlisted to hold the nation together; it was their black counterparts, both former slaves and freemen, who fought for liberty.

Twenty-six Seconds, by Alexandra Zapruder (Twelve). This fam-

ily memoir explores fraught questions surrounding the “Zapruder film,” the home movie of the Kennedy assassination made by the author’s grandfather. Abraham Zapruder, an immigrant Russian dress manufacturer, caught the fatal shot with a Bell & Howell Zoomatic camera while standing on a four-foot concrete abutment. Americans were not yet accustomed to violence on television, and there was no road map for what to do with the footage and how to balance the public’s “right to know” with maintaining the dignity of the President’s family. The Zapruders made more than sixteen million dollars oﬀ the film and were much criticized. Zapruder is defensive about this, but she presents her case with rigor and nuance. Black Wave, by Michelle Tea (Feminist Press). This surreal

tale—part memoir, part metafiction—is narrated by a queer writer in San Francisco’s rapidly gentrifying Mission district. An alcoholic with a growing heroin habit, she decides that she must move to save her life, and chooses Los Angeles, where her brother lives. There she discovers that the end of the world is at hand—portents include suicides, poisoned oceans, plane crashes, and erotic dreams for everyone still alive. By some phantasmagoric logic, the end of the world and the writing of the book turn out to be one and the same. Events, though outlandish, are narrated with total conviction, and powerfully express the intensity both of attaining sobriety and of the writing process.

theories, and many others, in the poems; their quirks, though evened out by her early editors, nevertheless lend credence to the idea that she was a familiar New England stereotype, the ﬂighty, eccentric, proto-spinster daughter. Much of Lavinia’s pile ended up at Amherst College, the cornerstone of its special collections; Susan Dickinson’s batch went to Harvard, along with several household treasures that had been preserved at the Evergreens. Most of the scraps remained in Amherst’s archive, curiosities sought out by tenacious Dickinson scholars but unknown to the public at large. Then, in 2013, a handsome facsimile edition, “The Gorgeous Nothings,” was published by New Directions, followed, this fall, by a compact selected edition, “Envelope Poems,” the fruits of a collaboration between the Dickinson scholar Marta Werner and the poet and visual artist Jen Bervin. These volumes complement an astounding new digital resource. In 2013, Harvard launched the Emily Dickinson Archive, with the coöperation, if not exactly the blessing, of Amherst, which insisted on open access to all manuscripts. (Harvard, which hoards its Dickinson materials in Houghton Library, reportedly wanted users to buy subscriptions.) Readers can now ﬁnd Dickinson’s scraps in print and in digital facsimile. Like many previous Dickinson drops, going back to the eighteen-nineties, they radically alter our vision of perhaps the greatest poet to write on American soil— and, somehow, they’ve emerged on the other side of print culture. It is a pleasant fancy to imagine that Dickinson, ever the tortoise in relation to rushing time, knew that, in the end, we would catch up to her. here are countless expressive

After Disasters, by Viet Dinh (Little A). Set in India just after

a devastating earthquake, this novel examines the relationships, some romantic, among four men—two aid workers, a doctor, and a firefighter. Their narratives overlap and jump around chronologically, in a way that can be disorienting, but Dinh is skilled at rendering the messiness of human motivation, and he adeptly harmonizes various preoccupations— masculinity, ecological abrasion, and the complexities of international aid work. In the catastrophe’s aftermath, desire, love, and duty often clash. One man wants “nothing more than to avert someone else’s sadness, to limit, reduce it. But that he cannot—this, too, is a sadness.” 78

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

T features of a Dickinson manuscript,

all but a few of them eﬀaced when her poems enter a standard print edition. First, there is Dickinson’s handwriting, long a source of fascination. Higginson famously compared Dickinson’s hand to “fossil bird-tracks,” an insight about the shape and the saturation of her letters, and also about their ﬂickering gait as they cross the white of the page. The Dickinson scholar Domhnall Mitchell and others have suggested

that “the layout of a Dickinson autograph is deliberate or motivated” in potentially every regard, from the capital letters of various sizes, to the spaces between letters and words and lines, to the marginalia, which are often crammed with variant choices of word or phrase. Dickinson’s dashes are ubiquitous in all but the earliest editions of her poems, but fewer editions reproduce her plus signs, which mark an unfinished or provisory line, later to be filled in. There are watermarks and embossments around which Dickinson steers her words. The paper is ruled, except when it is not. Now that the Internet has destabilized the conventions of the printed page—in which a poem is a block of language so many inches wide and so many inches long, with pure white space surrounding letters and phrases set at fixed intervals—it is harder than ever to defend the translation of Dickinson’s wild, dynamic graphic surfaces into such confines. It has been argued that Dickinson refused publication exactly because it was synonymous with print, whose standardizing tendencies she knew would miscarry her precision effects. When, in 1866, Dickinson’s “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” appeared in the Springfield Daily Republican (under a title likely chosen by its editors, “The Snake”), Dickinson complained to Higginson that, among other problems, she was “defeated . . . of the third line by punctuation.” Her manuscript had read, “You may have met Him—did you not / His notice sudden is—.” But, when the poem appeared, the editors had supplied a question mark: “You may have met him—did you not? / His notice instant is.” The question mark makes the second half of line three auxiliary to the first: “You may have met him—did you not [meet him] ? / His notice instant is.” But Dickinson’s preferred punctuation, while it leaves the possibility of the auxiliary clause intact, allows for other syntactical relations: “You may have met him—[if you haven’t, you should know that] / His notice instant is.” The words “notice” and “not” reflect each other more vividly without the hard stop of the intervening question mark. Dickinson seems to have preferred “instant” over “sudden” in later drafts of

the poem, but when it appeared in the second edition of her work, edited by Todd and Higginson, a comma materialized in the spot where the question mark had gone. “I had told you I did not print,” Dickinson once wrote to Higginson, suggesting that it wasn’t shyness or modesty that kept her from publishing; it was a ﬁerce constancy to her vision of the page. he Envelope Poems suggest the

T current exhilarating paradox of

Dickinson’s work: her unique actions of mind are bound in unusually dramatic ways to slips of paper a hundred and fifty years old or more, rarities whose near-perfect reproductions are nevertheless now widely and freely available online. It sometimes feels as though Dickinson’s sojourn in print, so fraught from its inception, was a temporary measure, now nearing its end as it’s replaced by a better technology. To write this paragraph, I looked hard at an envelope: what a mercurial object it is, more like origami than like a sheet of paper. If you use the back of a closed envelope, as Dickinson did in “A 496/497,” you get three squat triangles, like faces of a flattened jewel. She wrote within, and occasionally across, the folds and creases of this complex surface. To read the lines, you have to turn the image counterclockwise. The vertical column of the first panel then becomes a broad horizon, which, when the poet runs out of space, picks up on the third blank panel. The pleasures and the challenges of this kind of reading are impossible to ignore; next to a clear facsimile of these manuscripts, a print version seems, at best, a kind of crude trot. “Letters are sounds we see,” the poet Susan Howe, a major force in Dickinson studies, wrote. Handwritten letters express a far greater variety of sounds than printed ones. And, if the letters are sounds, so, too, are the spaces between the letters, the margins and gaps, the shape and other material aspects of the paper she chose. There are no masterpieces hidden among the envelope poems, but Dickinson’s incandescent thinking is everywhere on display, and the makeshift nature of the scraps gives us a vivid idea of what composition must have THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

felt like for a woman whose thoughts raced far ahead of her ability to capture them. Who knows how many of Dickinson’s lines were forgotten before the poet had a chance to write them down? Her idiosyncratic punctuation sometimes feels like triage for the emergency conditions of her muse. Her dashes stand for all the nonessential and time-taking aspects of syntax: she is a process poet even in her ﬁnished drafts, preserving the urgency of composition. The poems often detail their own state of evanescence: in “A 316,” Dickinson addresses the “sumptuous moment” and entreats it to “Slower go / That I may gloat on thee.” Except that the actual manuscript has multiple anomalies, cross-outs, and alternate words surrounding the lines I have just quoted. The brief “moment” that the poem describes is enacted by the cramped space on which it’s written. Time, on these little scraps, is a function of space: both run out at the same instant. fragment such as “A 316” isn’t

A like anything except itself. It de-

feats categorization. It’s worth calling it a poem only if we reinstate the prestige of “poetry” that the scraps, in effect, deconstruct. But neither is it a mere draft: the scraps represent the audacious pinnacle of Dickinson’s mingled verbal and graphic gifts. The envelope poems are not purely works of visual art, like calligraphic screens or proto-modernist collages. Dickinson’s handwriting, though occasionally illegible, isn’t like the script in a Cy Twombly blackboard painting; it is meant to be read. What the scraps suggest to me is more radical: they are a unique category of verbal notation, significant both for their literary power and for their physical appearance on the page. They are also one more physical tie to a figure who, oddly, seems to grow nearer as time passes. Firsthand stories about the Dickinsons were still told in the early nineteen-nineties, when I was a student at Amherst. The Evergreens was a private residence until 1988; that year, the last inheritor of the property, Mary Hampson, passed away. The place sat largely empty until 2001, when its rooms were entered again, and found 80

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

weathered but essentially unchanged since the nineteenth century. The discovery of a new Dickinson treasure in the course of an attic cleanout or a basement purge is a perennial, if distant, possibility. Bits of poems turn up occasionally at auction, and an image of Dickinson, or someone looking very much like her, was sold on eBay in 2000. Thomas Johnson, the editor of an important edition of her work, was so convinced that there were lost Dickinson letters in New England closets that, with the help of the poet James Merrill, a friend, he once contacted Dickinson through a Ouija board and asked her for a couple of hints. She provided, according to Merrill’s biographer, Langdon Hammer, “plausiblesounding names and addresses,” and letters were mailed, only to be returned to sender. But Dickinson’s genius always kept a ﬁxed address. She was a scholar of passing time, and the big house on Main Street was the best place to study it. Because her subject was longitudinal change across the span of hours, days, and years, she needed to set her spatial position in order to see time move across the proscenium of her subjective imagination. In the 1850 national census, Dickinson listed her occupation as “keeping house”; the scraps might have kept her as she did so. Her own transformative power, often frightful even for her to contemplate, is their presiding subject: the “still—Volcano— Life” she describes as ever churning under her daily rounds. This is an extraordinary time to read Dickinson, one of the richest moments since her death. The publication of “Envelope Poems” and the growing collection of Dickinson’s manuscripts, available online and in inexpensive print editions, coincides with an ambitious restoration of the Dickinson properties in Amherst, including a reconstruction of the poet’s conservatory—a space that was second only to her bedroom in its importance to her art. Those looking for an even closer connection to Dickinson can rent her bedroom for an hour at a time and see precisely what she saw. The other elements of the picture, sun and moon and wind and birdcall, are just as she left them. She is the only thing missing. 

DANCING

HAPPY FEET Michelle Dorrance is a new kind of tap dancer. BY JOAN ACOCELLA

he new big deal in tap is Michelle

T Dorrance, whose troupe, Dorrance

Dance, has just completed a run at the Joyce. Dorrance, who is thirty-seven, is a girl from North Carolina whose backstory might have been written by a press agent. Her mother, M’Liss Gary Dorrance, a ballet dancer (she performed in Eliot Feld’s ﬁrst company), founded and directed the Ballet School of Chapel Hill. Her father, Anson Dorrance, currently the women’s soccer coach at the University of North Carolina, led the U.S. women’s soccer team to the World Cup in 1991. Put those two together, and you sort of get a tap dancer. Dorrance discovered early on that she was a natural. When she was nine, she was in an advanced tap class with eighteenyear-olds. She joined the North Carolina

Youth Tap Ensemble, and from there went on to other companies. She also took time out to get a B.A. at N.Y.U. and spent four years as one of the drummer-dancers in “STOMP.” In 2010, she founded her own company and began making work for it. The awards soon started rolling in, capped, last year, by a MacArthur Fellowship. It isn’t every day that a tap dancer gets a MacArthur. Dorrance is a new kind of tapper. Classically, tap is a matter of a cool, contained upper body suspended over a huge clatter down below—a contrast that is supposed to be witty and, in a great or even good tapper, is. (“My feet are producing twenty taps a second, in alternating rhythms? Gee, I didn’t notice.”) Dorrance supplies plenty of action in the feet, but meanwhile the rest of the body is all over

Dorrance’s tomboy energy departs from the controlled cool of classical tap. 82

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

the place. Her elbows fly out; so do her knees, in great, lay-an-egg squats. She looks like a happy little tomboy vaulting around in a tree. Now and then, she’ll put on the mood-indigo, darkness-in-mysoul expression sometimes seen in tappers, or, alternatively, the Vegas-y let-meentertain-you expression, but both of them fall off her face pretty fast, because she is fundamentally unaffected. Last October, she appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show— you can see it on YouTube—to teach him some steps. With no smirking, she got this big, besuited man to do the shim sham. He even seemed pleased with his performance. In any case, she was pleased, and completely relaxed. In “The Blues Project,” the show at the Joyce, Dorrance wears a blue-andwhite checked cotton dress with two big pockets in the front, the sort of thing you might wear to sit on the porch and shell peas. When performing, she often gathers her long hair in a topknot that slowly migrates to one side or the other as the evening progresses. She is the one thing no other professional tap dancer has ever been: dorky. Her good spirits appear to have had a huge effect on her company, and this, even more than her tapping, may be her great glory. Tap dancers are always telling you how grateful they are to their predecessors and to those currently working in the field. There is a reason for this—historically, no important area of dance has been less carefully documented—but after a while it all starts to sound a little goodygoody. Dorrance is no exception. In the program for “The Blues Project,” her whole “artist’s statement” is a hymn of praise to Toshi Reagon, her composer-accompanist, and to her two choreographic collaborators, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards and Derick K. Grant. She goes further, though: Sumbry-Edwards and Grant are listed with her, in the same line of type, as the show’s choreographers. In this, Dorrance may be observing something more than professional courtesy. She’s clearly sensitive to the fact that she is a white artist receiving great acclaim in a traditionally African-American department of dance. (SumbryEdwards and Grant, like most of the cast, are black.) And in practical terms she has no doubt noticed what she gets by spreading the wealth around. Her nine dancers (that’s including her) are like the seven ILLUSTRATION BY KEITH NEGLEY

dwarfs. They all have different personalities, different styles—not so much that they can’t dance together nicely but enough so that within two minutes you have favorites. Mine were SumbryEdwards, who is truly a master and, tap for tap, a better technician than Dorrance (she was Michael Jackson’s longtime tap coach), and Nicholas Van Young, a thirteen-year veteran of “STOMP.” Van Young may be too big to be a top-grade tapper, but his timing is flawless, and he is heaven to watch, because he has so much fun. Other spectators will have different favorites. The point is that Dorrance gave all of them the freedom, and the status, to become their best selves. Dorrance’s gift for collaboration is nowhere more evident than in her use of Reagon and her band, BIGLovely, to accompany the dancing. Reagon, like Dorrance, has an impressive pedigree— her mother, the black-music scholar Bernice Johnson Reagon, founded the famous a-cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock—and, at fifty-two, she is at the top of her game as a composer and singer. Her métier is folk and blues, which she accompanies with acoustic guitar (the band adds drums, violin, electric bass, and electric guitar)—a standard proceeding but, in her hands, a strange and wonderful business. Reagon is androgynous-looking, a great monument of a woman with a shaved head and a fedora, and her voice, too, is somewhat androgynous, a reedy sound (mediumregister, casual but insistent) that seems to come from a special, hidden place in her chest and hooks up with some rarely used conduit in your brain. orrance told Brian Seibert, in the

Dmagazine Dance, that her years with

“STOMP,” though they delayed her making her own material, gave her “a perspective on how I want my work to be received, a broader view of the theatre.” I take this to mean that they taught her how to create a show, rather than just stand there and tap. This has been a problem for tappers, whose art in the past was usually presented in venues (vaudeville, night clubs) favoring short-breathed dances. Even today, they often run to one extreme or the other: hard-sell (Riverdance) or nosell (Savion Glover.) Somewhere Dorrance has learned texture and pacing. As for rhythmic complexity, she probably had

that nailed from the start. She can place three groups of three dancers against one another—each trio doing its own rhythm, while the band is doing a fourth—and the effect is not confusing but rich and exciting. She plays with volume, tempo, even timbre. The sound that comes off Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards’s shoes is substantially different from Dorrance’s. It’s like Callas and Tebaldi. If you put a screen in front of them and had them tap the same phrase, you could still tell which was which. Something I’d like to see more of in Dorrance’s work is emotion. It’s good that the dancers are relaxed, but they shouldn’t get too relaxed and leave all the work of the heart to Toshi Reagon. In an earlier show, “ETM: Double Down,” Dorrance presented a very moving and muted malemale duet. These days, choreographers are constantly being urged to create samesex duets, but a lot of dance-makers don’t really know what to do with the form, and the results can easily come off as either self-conscious or the opposite: cold, so as not to look self-conscious. (“Hey, we do this every day.”) Dorrance had her two men assay each other, question each other, fall into each other’s arms, push each other away, circle each other, start over. In the end they parted, but not, I think, without having changed the temperature in the theatre. This deeper note is absent from “The Blues Project.” The other thing we need from Dorrance is simply more choreography. In 2013 and 2014, she created four eveninglength works. Since then, no more. “The Blues Project,” a sensation of this fall season, isn’t even new to the Joyce; it sold out there last year. This is what always happens when a choreographer gets hot. The offers pour in, and the choreographer says yes, yes—how can she not? she could get a new car, she could give her dancers health insurance—and she ends up touring constantly, with no time to create new work. The problem is compounded by the fact that schedules are usually made up at least a year in advance. When the invitation arrives, the choreographer says, “I can do that. It’s not till next November.” Then next November comes, and she has no new material, not even any new ideas. She’s been too busy performing. Dorrance doesn’t look tired, but chances are she will, and so will her work, if she doesn’t sit down for a while.  THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

THE THEATRE

DEAR HEART A stern take on “Sweet Charity.” BY HILTON ALS

man, I began to think of her as downtown’s “woman’s director,” in the old M-G-M George Cukor sense of the phrase. Like Cukor, I imagine, Silverman is useful to stars who want a clear eye and a firm hand when it comes to editing out their excesses. But what glut could the performer Sutton Foster have that we wouldn’t want more of? If the forty-one-year-old Foster suffers from anything, it’s her fantastic likability, and her desire to like us. This is different from wanting to please the audience—the old emotional buck-and-wing that so many actors put on to win maximum praise. Foster doesn’t condescend to us with Tin Pan Alley cheapness or sentimentality; she plays to what’s best in her characters and, therefore, what’s best in the world. Foster’s charm is not cloying; it’s as clear and unaffected as her complexion. She isn’t an exceptional dancer, like the young Chita Rivera, but what she lacks in style she makes up for in attack. She doesn’t point her toe; she points her toe. Her hands don’t flutter around to call attention to what she’s doing in a number; they move according to her character’s inner direction. And that’s another thing that makes Foster such an endlessly exciting musicalcomedy star (she’s much less cool than her near-contemporary and only rival, Kelli O’Hara): by performing her interiority, rather than the old showbiz razzledazzle, she makes musicals credible. o you’d think that Charity Hope Val-

S entine, the urban heroine of “Sweet weet Charity” (a New Group production, at the Pershing Square Signature Center) is both enervating and full of hope—yours. As you watch this revival of Bob Fosse’s 1966 hit, you keep hoping that, despite early signs of limpness, it won’t be drained of all its energy and sentiment by the end. But the director, Leigh Silverman, is adept at throwing ash on soap bubbles. The problem is that she’s too serious about theatre; she wants her shows to count— to have a moral purpose. Sometimes a play is just a play, and not all of her productions can bear the weight of her imperative. (I’m thinking of her work on Molly Smith Metzler’s “Close Up Space,”

“S

in 2011, and on David Greenspan’s “Go Back to Where You Are,” in the same year.) Still, I enjoy Silverman’s strictness when a writer or a performer plays against it. That was what the Five Lesbian Brothers managed to do in their 2005 play “Oedipus at Palm Springs.” I loved it, and never forgot it, because within Silverman’s joyless directorial form the troupe—which included the writer and performer Lisa Kron (whom Silverman also directed in “Well,” Kron’s celebrated 2004 autobiographical play)— was able, in a loose, improvisatory way, to mess with our preconceptions of queer bourgeois life. Watching that and other female-centered plays staged by Silver-

By avoiding showbiz razzle-dazzle, Sutton Foster makes musicals credible. 84

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

Charity,” would be a perfect part for Foster, right, particularly since so much of her story involves her efforts to align her secret dreams and anxieties with other people’s? It is a great part for Foster, but that affinity gets lost in Silverman’s conception of the show, which has very little shine or imagination. But I can see why Silverman got the job. The show’s creator, Bob Fosse, was a kind of moralist, too. He grew up in show business. As a kid, he danced in crummy clubs, and he never forgot the stink of stale cigarette smoke, the illicit or open dressingroom sex, or the powder coating the faces of those tired but game strippers. His strongest work is vibrant with a sense of right and wrong—or, more specifically, of why doing wrong can feel, to the corrupted soul, so damningly right. PHOTOGRAPH BY PARI DUKOVIC

While searching for a project for his wife and muse, that juggernaut of charm Gwen Verdon (Foster is Verdon’s only artistic heir), Fosse hit on “Nights of Cabiria,” Federico Fellini’s 1957 movie about a streetwalker named Cabiria— played by his wife, the Italian actress Giulietta Masina. Cabiria is optimistic and true, despite the fact that her first lover steals her money and pushes her into a river and her second lover, who actually falls for her, also steals from her and runs off. Although Verdon was skeptical—Broadway wouldn’t go for a story in which nobody wins, she told Fosse— he forged ahead, assembling one of the best creative teams that commercial theatre had to offer at the time: Neil Simon wrote the book, and Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields wrote the music and the lyrics, respectively. Transplanting the tale to nineteen-sixties New York, Fosse turned Cabiria into Charity, a youngish girl who works at the Fan-Dango Ballroom, a dance hall near Times Square. When “Sweet Charity” opened on Broadway, in 1966, it was a sensation, both because of Verdon—she was subtle even in her slapstick, like the great early screen comediennes, such as ZaSu Pitts—and because of Fosse’s choreography and staging. The show is a kind of trashy “Pilgrim’s Progress,” with Charity meeting her version of Beelzebub, Evangelist, and so on, as she tries not to give up on the possibility of a relationship. At the Fan-Dango, she’s besties with Nickie (Asmeret Ghebremichael) and Helene (Emily Padgett), who are as certain of their weariness with the entire scene as Charity is of her conviction that there is, as the trio eventually sings, “something better than this.” We follow Charity (in an anachronistic Farrah Fawcettish wig) as she takes a turn around the stage, which is surrounded on three sides by the audience—the all-female band is on a balcony above the stage—looking for evidence to back up her optimism. And, occasionally, the unexpected happens. One night, she runs into a movie star, Vittorio Vidal ( Joel Perez), who’s quarrelling with his girlfriend and ends up spending the evening with Charity. Another day, she gets stuck in an elevator with Oscar (Shuler Hensley), a shy and claustrophobic tax accountant. Seeing Fosse’s choreographic inter

pretation of sophistication and boredom in the original production—and in the 1969 Fosse-directed film version—was like coming across a familiar theme in a new language: no one had created dances like that before, or cast dancers who were not all conventionally svelte or pretty. (Silverman’s nod to Fosse is to include unusual-looking female dancers, too.) Fosse’s dancers slunk across the stage, nearly frozen by their self-control and their disaffection. His dance-hall girls struck attitudes and stayed in them, knees and elbows tensed, while they smoked. Charity, moving with the open-chested freedom of a clown, was all high kicks, turned-in feet, and bounce. Joshua Bergasse, who choreographed the current revival, had a mighty ghost to deal with, and I was interested to see whether, like Rob Marshall in his 2002 version of Fosse’s “Chicago,” he would let the influence show, or whether he would try to “radicalize” the dances by making them his own. Bergasse opted for the latter, and, regrettably, his work is neither good nor bad; it’s just there. Fosse solved the issue of how to show the dance-hall girls drearily at work by having them stand at a railing and stare out at the audience. Bergasse has them stare at the audience, too, but while seated in chairs. Whereas Fosse seemed to be reporting what he’d actually witnessed, Bergasse’s choice feels arbitrary. (Or perhaps he’s alluding to another showgirl— Marlene Dietrich, as the captivating, chair-straddling cabaret singer Lola in “The Blue Angel.”) Either way, he contributes to the flatness of the show, which is strangely muted from the time Charity meets Vittorio on. Silverman’s moral stance is different from Fosse’s. She’s not excited by display; she keeps things small, somehow. The only actor besides Foster to break out of her stern grip is Hensley, as Oscar, the man Charity loves, because he loves her. Fleshy and agile, Hensley’s Oscar is aquiver with his own neurosis: he’s a faith-seeker, but, in the end, he can’t believe in himself, so how can he believe in love with Charity? He just can’t face a future with so much trust and openness beside him. Silverman may have been driven by the same impulses: instead of trusting in and directing the flow of Foster’s natural wellspring of talent, she set out to dam it. ♦ THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

THE CURRENT CINEMA

WIVES AND HUSBANDS “Jackie” and “Allied.” BY ANTHONY LANE

Natalie Portman portrays Jacqueline Kennedy in Pablo Larraín’s new movie. n the simplicity of its title, “Jackie”

I lays claim to a truth, uncluttered and

clear. Here, we are encouraged to believe, is the Jacqueline Kennedy—or, at any rate, a Jacqueline Kennedy more plausible and more knowable than any version we have seen hitherto. Every actress who has assayed the role, including Jacqueline Bisset and Jaclyn Smith (even the names chime), must now make way for Natalie Portman. As the film begins, she fills the screen, head on, in the first of innumerable closeups, obliging us to ask: Is this woman submitting to our scrutiny or daring us to break down her defenses? One thing we can already be sure of: Jackie is a widow. Following John F. Kennedy’s death, in 1963, she retreats to Hyannis Port not merely to recuperate but to set in motion the process whereby the image of her husband will become a fixed star in the public gaze. To this end, an unnamed journalist (Billy Crudup) is summoned to the house and granted the privilege of an interview. Mrs. Kennedy, conscious of compiling the first draft of history, has 86

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

copy approval, and one of the more abrasive touches of the film is the manner in which she halts her narration of events to apply a touch of whitewash. After an impolitic disclosure, she adds, “Don’t think for one second I’m going to let you print that.” Like many mourners, she stokes herself on cigarettes, but, when the reporter boldly suggests that he refer to her habit in print, she answers, “I don’t smoke.” Pablo Larraín’s movie, with its keening score by Mica Levi, is a dance to the music of grief. Swiftly and nervously, as if obeying the beat of Jackie’s memory, we step back and forth in time. Back to Jackie, resplendent in eau de nil, with the proud President (Caspar Phillipson, who has the Kennedy eyes) at her side, listening to Pablo Casals; back to a flawless reconstruction of the televised White House tour that she offered to eighty million viewers, in 1962; forth to the fateful day in Dallas, to the swearing-in of Lyndon B. Johnson ( John Carroll Lynch) on Air Force One, and to Jackie’s flailing attempt to interrupt the autopsy at the

hospital. “I want him to look like himself,” she cries, in the most pitiful of pleas. Then comes the agony of arranging the funeral procession, with Robert Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard) and Jack Valenti (Max Casella) poised to be consulted or overruled. (Also of service is the painter, fixer, and all-round Kennedy confidant William Walton, stylishly played by Richard E. Grant and deserving a film of his own.) Other glimpses abound, some unnervingly intimate—a solitary Jackie, swooping through grand and empty rooms, in a waltz of despair, or reaching for the bottle and taking a consolatory swig. What is the source for this sad spectacle? The script is credited solely to Noah Oppenheim, but behind it you feel the weight of earlier investigations. The reporter is based on Theodore H. White, who wrote of his meeting with Jackie for Life. More recently, we have her conversations with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., recorded in 1964 and released in 2011, and Barbara Leaming’s 2014 biography, which proposed that Mrs. Kennedy fell prey to posttraumatic stress disorder after her husband’s demise. Leaming describes her as “self-medicating with vodka, tyrannized by flashbacks and nightmares,” and that is precisely the regimen that Larraín’s film reveals. I happen to find the result intrusive, presumptuous, and often absurd, but, for anyone who thinks that all formality is a front, and that the only point of a façade is that it should crack, “Jackie” delivers a gratifying thrill. It is timely, too, tapping into our fathomless obsession with First Ladies. No wonder Portman is in such inexorable form. Watchful and tremulous, she captures to perfection the breathiness of Jackie’s voice, as it floats above the guttural twang of less exalted lives—“Amairca,” she says, smoothing her native land into trisyllabic gentility. But Portman’s beauty is sharper and foxier than that of the woman she portrays, whose broad features were designed, whether by God or by good breeding, to give almost nothing away. Mystery and myth became her, and the film is right to show Jackie feeding thoughts of Camelot to her tame journalist. (In truth, when White passed on this hint his editors at Life rebuffed it as schmalz; only when ILLUSTRATION BY OLIMPIA ZAGNOLI

Mrs. Kennedy insisted did it stay in the published interview.) It is telling that “Jackie” should conclude, over the end credits, with Richard Burton’s croaking of the title song from Lerner and Loewe’s Arthurian musical, of which President Kennedy—so his widow claimed—was fond. After stripping oﬀ the veils of a legend, “Jackie” succumbs, at the last, and devotedly puts them back on. arely have I seen a movie star look

R tenser or more unhappy than Brad

Pitt does in “Allied.” You could say that he’s meant to be tense; after all, his role is that of Max Vatan, a Canadian airman working for British intelligence who is parachuted into Morocco, in 1942. His duties are manifold. Not only must he kill the German Ambassador, team up with a fellow-assassin, Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard), and pretend to be her husband in the leadup to the hit. Far, far worse than that, he has to speak French. Fluently. What triggers the panic in his eyes, le pauvre gar•on, is not a night club teeming with Nazis but the soft and deadly approach of an irregular verb. Back in London, once the operation is over, Max and Marianne fall in love, as if the make-believe had consumed them. (Speaking of her spying, Marianne says, “I keep the emotions real. That’s why it works.”) They marry properly and have a child, born during an air raid. All is fair in love and war, until Max learns that his wife is suspected of being a double agent, working for the Germans. (This, and more, is in the trailer.) He denies the charge, and sets out to disprove it—again, ample reason for his air of desperate

vexation. But here’s the thing: that air hangs around, from beginning to end, and it almost snuffs out the movie. Over the years, we have seen Pitt in many soul-testing experiences: he had to act crazy, in “12 Monkeys” (1995), and take up arms against a sea of zombies, in “World War Z” (2013). All he is required to do for “Allied” is choose between a tuxedo for homicide, pale summer suits for a hot climate, and a dashing Air Force uniform for rainy England, yet even his handsomeness fails to carry the day. If anything, he looks a little puffy and scared, as if Angelina Jolie were hiding around the corner of the set, with full Maleficent makeup and sharpened claws, preparing to pounce. That would explain a lot. “Allied” is written by Steven Knight and directed by Robert Zemeckis, who seems uncertain whether to treat the tale as a wrenching saga of split loyalties or as a glamorous jaunt. Having gathered all the ingredients for derring-do, he forgets to turn up the heat, and the derring never does. True, there is plenty of repartee between Marianne and Max, some of it flirtatious, some of it concerned with the tools of their merciless trade. Machine guns, for instance: “You’ll be O.K. with the Sten on the night, right?” “I’ll be O.K. if I have to use cutlery.” Half the time, however, thanks to a strange slackness in the editing, the couple pause so long before replying to each other that any charge between them, suspenseful or erotic, is squandered. Though face to face, they sound like two people talking down a long-distance phone line. Max might as well have stayed in London and sent telegrams. None of this reflects badly on Co-

tillard, who remains as hard to decode as the plot demands; a great ﬁlm about treachery might yet be made with her feline skills at its heart. There is strength, too, in the supporting cast, especially in Jared Harris, who is both peppery and sympathetic—and armed with the requisite mustache—as Max’s British superior. He seems harrowed at the climax, as if lamenting a twist that never happened, and puzzled by the glumness of the whole aﬀair. Join the club, old chap. What we are left with, in “Allied,” is an overwhelming sense of the secondhand. You cannot show your hero and heroine strolling to a café table in wartime Casablanca and not expect your viewers to murmur, “Been there. Seen that.”(The very shape of Cotillard’s hat is tipped toward Ingrid Bergman’s.) At one point, Max even tells Marianne, seated at a piano, to play the “Marseillaise.” Hey, that’s Victor Laszlo’s line! As for the scene in which Cotillard and Pitt, garbed in white linen, get to expand their relationship in the front seat of a car, while a desert storm caterwauls around them, I kept waiting for the camera to pan across to the next vehicle, where Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas were last seen doing the same in “The English Patient.” There must be a designated parking lot for sandy lovers. My fear, in short, is that Zemeckis may have stumbled into a patch of cinema so well trodden that it has simply gone to seed. As time goes by, will all the love stories in all the world run dry?  NEWYORKER.COM

Richard Brody blogs about movies.

THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2016 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. VOLUME XCII, NO. 40, December 5, 2016. THE NEW YORKER (ISSN 0028792X) is published weekly (except for five combined issues: February 8 & 15, June 6 & 13, July 11 & 18, August 8 & 15, and December 19 & 26) by Condé Nast, which is a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: Condé Nast, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. Elizabeth Hughes, publisher, chief revenue officer; Risa Aronson, associate publisher advertising; James Guilfoyle, director of finance and business operations; Fabio Bertoni, general counsel. Condé Nast: S. I. Newhouse, Jr., chairman emeritus; Charles H. Townsend, chairman; Robert A. Sauerberg, Jr., president & chief executive officer; David E. Geithner, chief financial officer; James M. Norton, chief business officer, president of revenue. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration No. 123242885-RT0001. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO THE NEW YORKER, P.O. Box 37684, Boone, IA 50037 0684. FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS, OR BACK ISSUE INQUIRIES: Please write to The New Yorker, P.O. Box 37684, Boone, IA 50037 0684, call (800) 825-2510, or e-mail subscriptions@newyorker.com. Please give both new and old addresses as printed on most recent label. Subscribers: If the Post Office alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. If during your subscription term or up to one year after the magazine becomes undeliverable, you are ever dissatisfied with your subscription, let us know. You will receive a full refund on all unmailed issues. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within four weeks after receipt of order. For advertising inquiries, please call Risa Aronson at (212) 286-4068. For submission guidelines, please refer to our Web site, www.newyorker.com. Address all editorial, business, and production correspondence to The New Yorker, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. For cover reprints, please call (800) 897-8666, or e-mail covers@cartoonbank.com. For permissions and reprint requests, please call (212) 630-5656 or fax requests to (212) 630-5883. No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the consent of The New Yorker. The New Yorker’s name and logo, and the various titles and headings herein, are trademarks of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. Visit us online at www.newyorker.com. To subscribe to other Condé Nast magazines, visit www.condenast.com. Occasionally, we make our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services that we believe would interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, please advise us at P.O. Box 37684, Boone, IA 50037 0684 or call (800) 825-2510. THE NEW YORKER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS, UNSOLICITED ART WORK (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICITED MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, ART WORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS, UNLESS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY THE NEW YORKER IN WRITING.

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 5, 2016

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 Tom Cheney, must be received by Sunday, December 4th. The finalists in the November 28th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the December 19th & 26th 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

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THE FINALISTS

THE WINNING CAPTION

“I knew they were smart. I didn’t know they were sarcastic.” Kathryn Sky-Peck, Sharon, Mass. “I’m thinking now I probably should have just trained them to get help.” Nicholas Orser, Washington, D.C. “Very nice. Now do a boat.” Steve Whitelaw, San Rafael, Calif.

“I’ll have my guy call your guy.” Joanne Recktenwald, Springfield, Pa.