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The New Yorker February 12 2018 PDF
The New Yorker February 12 2018 PDF
The New Yorker February 12 2018 PDF
12 & 19, 20 18
THE ANNIVERSARY ISSUE
FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
DRAWINGS P. C. Vey, Barbara Smaller, Roz Chast, Edward Koren, Mick Stevens, Joe Dator, Farley Katz, Emma Hunsinger,
Teresa Burns Parkhurst, William Haefeli, Liana Finck, Frank Cotham, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Amy Hwang SPOTS Golden Cosmos,
Andy Rementer, Olimpia Zagnoli, Eleni Kalorkoti, Seth, Craig & Karl, Christoph Niemann, Luci Gutiérrez
SEE THE BROADWAY musical ON EVERYONE'S LIST.
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“Anyone in any
relationship at any CONTRIBUTORS
stage of life could
Jill Lepore (Life and Letters, p. 86), a pro- David Grann (“The White Darkness,”
stand to learn from fessor of history at Harvard University, p. 48), a staff writer, is the author of
the wisdom in will publish “These Truths: A History
of the United States” in September.
“The Lost City of Z” and, most recently,
“Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage
these pages.” Murders and the Birth of the FBI.”
Peter Schjeldahl (The Art World, p. 102),
—Andrew Solomon, National the magazine’s art critic, is the author Malika Favre (Cover) is an illustrator
Book Award–winning author of “Let’s See: Writings on Art from who lives in London. This is her sixth
of Far from the Tree The New Yorker.” cover for the magazine.
Rachel Kushner (Fiction, p. 76) has writ- Hilton Als (The Theatre, p. 98), The New
The ten the novels “Telex from Cuba,” “The Yorker’s theatre critic, won the 2017 Pu-
F lamethrowers,” and “ The Mars litzer Prize for criticism. He is an asso-
ROUGH PATCH Room,” which will come out in May. ciate professor of writing at Columbia.
Jelani Cobb (Comment, p. 27) teaches Mia Mercado (Shouts & Murmurs,
“There isn’t a couple in in the journalism program at Colum- p. 41) has contributed to McSweeney’s,
bia University. Bustle, and Hallmark Cards.
America who would not
benefit from a copy—or two
copies—of this book.”
NEWYORKER.COM
—Meg Jay, PhD, author of Everything in the magazine, and more.
The Defining Decade
and Supernormal
partnership...will be
at once provoked and
comforted by this
enormously wise book.”
—Dani Shapiro, author of
Hourglass: Time, Memory,
Marriage and Devotion: A Memoir MULTIMEDIA VIDEO
Photographs, audio dispatches, and Jia Tolentino on writing her story
Also available as an ebook and an audiobook. video from Henry Worsley’s journey about campus sexual assault, from this
across Antarctica. week’s issue.
SimonandSchuster.com SUBSCRIBERS: Get access to our magazine app for tablets and smartphones at the
App Store, Amazon.com, or Google Play. (Access varies by location and device.)
6 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
“An essential guide for
getting along and getting ahead
THE MAIL in our world today.”
— S E N AT O R JO H N M c C A I N
1
Sackler, whose descendants, as Paumgar- Violette Sera Delfina Hiser Skilling
ten writes, have derived their massive Honolulu, Hawaii
fortune from Purdue Pharma and its
painkiller OxyContin, an opioid that has SHATTERED GLASS
unleashed a national epidemic of drug
abuse and incarceration. (Patrick Rad- Lindsay Gellman, in her article on Egon
den Keefe wrote last year about the dev- Neustadt’s collection of Tiffany glass,
astation that OxyContin has caused.) quotes the executive director of the col-
The inmates in Sackler’s film have, in lection, who laments comparisons be-
many cases, been adversely affected by tween Tiffany lamps and the “lousy”
“This should be the first book we
Indiana’s Draconian drug laws, yet she and “offensive” fixtures in T.G.I. Fri-
are all obliged to read in 2018.”
thinks it’s baloney to connect her back- day’s or Ruby Tuesday restaurants (The
—T H E N EW YO R K T I M E S
ground with her project. It’s not: shortly Talk of the Town, January 29th). I am
before filmmaking began, one inmate at a third-generation glass artist from the Available as ebooks and audiobooks
the prison died from a drug overdose. It Somers family, which has manufac-
might behoove Sackler, as a beneficiary tured Tiffany-style lamps and stained-
of one of medicine’s most insidious sub- glass panels for more than five hun-
stances, to dedicate any profits from the dred T.G.I. Friday’s and about forty “This book is an act of
film to the reform of national drug laws. Ruby Tuesdays. Junk has been flood-
1
radical empathy through
Mark A. Thompson ing American shores for years, but our
New York City work isn’t part of that. Somers pieces which the author—and,
are made of glass from Kokomo (which vicariously, the reader—
FACE OFF also sold to Tiffany), Wissmach, Youghio- enters intimately into a
gheny, and Bullseye, all very reputable life that would otherwise
My mom shared with me Jill Lepore’s manufacturers. be unintelligible.”
article about the legal and cultural bat- Back in the seventies, Neustadt in- —ANNE FADIMAN, author of The Spirit
tles over Barbie and Bratz dolls (A vited my father and my uncle to see his Catches You and You Fall Down
Critic at Large, January 22nd). As an collection. They said that he told them
eleven-year-old girl, I thought that I we were the only studio he would even
would share my perspective. I never consider selling the collection to. Bruce
wanted a Barbie or a Bratz doll until I Randall, a glass collector who wrote
discovered doll reconstruction. What the foreword to a book on Tiffany lamps
you do is erase the features of the doll by Neustadt, came to my studio in the
with nail-polish remover, and then re- early nineties. Randall said that there
move the hair and make other body was only one problem with my fami-
modifications. Then you give the doll ly’s work: our soldering was too neat.
a new face, new hair, and new cloth- Guy H. Somers
ing. (My favorite part is ripping out Stony Brook, N.Y.
the hair, which is very therapeutic.)
What I like about doll reconstruc- • “Searing.”
tion is that I am in control. I can make Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, —O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE
them pretty, or not. The two dolls that address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
I have reconstructed represent two parts themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited “A marvel.”
for length and clarity, and may be published in
of me: one nerdy and very unfashion- any medium. We regret that owing to the volume —ESQUIRE
able, and one strong and cool. I make of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
Every winter, New York goes to the dogs for a few days, during the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
(Feb. 12-13, at Madison Square Garden). One of the breeds competing this year is the Sussex spaniel.
Look familiar? You might have seen Stump, the ten-year-old who won top honors in 2009, the oldest
dog ever to do so. Pictured above is a one-and-a-half-year-old named CH Tara’s N Primetime Dark Star
Imperial Stout—but at the Garden, where she’s competing for the first time, she’ll just be called Star.
CLASSICAL MUSIC ture style, portions of his vast œuvre remain un-
1
derexplored and underappreciated. In the first
of two concerts presented as part of Glass’s sea-
son-long residency, Nico Muhly, a protégé and
Juilliard Opera: close collaborator, airs his own new arrange-
OPERA “Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor” ments of his mentor’s songs, joined by a clutch
“Falstaff ” casts a long shadow over other oper- of like-minded companions, including Laurie
Metropolitan Opera atic adaptations of Shakespeare’s “The Merry Anderson and Caroline Shaw, at Zankel Hall.
Rossini’s deft and propulsive musical style is so Wives of Windsor,” but Carl Otto Nicolai’s The second event, at Stern Auditorium, finds
synonymous with his comedies that his serious singspiel, composed earlier, looks ahead to Glass taking the stage with his long-running
operas don’t get taken all that seriously. Occasion- Verdi’s masterwork with its rich orchestra- ensemble, plus the San Francisco Girls Chorus
ally, however, the Met will dust one of them off as tions and charming vocal writing; John Giam- and students from the San Francisco Conserva-
a vehicle for a remarkable talent, and in this sea- pietro directs, and Teddy Poll conducts. Feb. tory of Music, for a rare-as-hens’-teeth account
son’s revival of “Semiramide” that singer is the so- 14 and Feb. 16 at 7:30 and Feb. 18 at 2. (Rose- of “Music with Changing Parts,” a surging, ex-
1
prano Angela Meade. Taking the titular role of the mary and Meredith Willson Theatre, 155 W. 65th ultant 1970 epic that memorably fuses motoric
warrior queen, she leads a first-rate bel-canto cast St. juilliard.edu.) rhythms with improvisatory liberties. Feb. 8 at
that includes Elizabeth DeShong, Javier Camarena, 7:30; Feb. 16 at 8. (212-247-7800.)
Ildar Abdrazakov, and Ryan Speedo Green; Mau-
rizio Benini conducts. Feb. 19 at 7:30. • Also playing: ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Bartlett Sher’s picturesque rendition of Donizetti’s The commanding ensemble, long known for
feather-light comedy “L’Elisir d’Amore” returns New York Philharmonic its muscular brass section, begins a two-con-
with a cast of full-bodied lyric voices, including The Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes is cert residency at Carnegie Hall with a program
Matthew Polenzani, Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, and confining his New York appearances this season featuring a brand-new Low Brass Concerto by
Pretty Yende; Domingo Hindoyan. (These are the to concerts connected with the Philharmonic, Jennifer Higdon, a master of orchestral writ-
final performances.) Feb. 7 and Feb. 14 at 7:30, Feb. which he currently serves as artist-in-residence. ing, along with epicurean favorites by Stravin-
10 at noon, and Feb. 17 at 8:30. • David McVicar’s He’s exploring some off-the-beaten-track rep- sky, Chausson (“Poème de l’Amour et de la Mer,”
fast-paced production of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” hurls ertory; in the first of his programs, he performs with the mezzo-soprano Clémentine Margaine),
the opera’s characters toward their grisly fate with the Piano Concerto of Benjamin Britten (1938), and Britten (the Four Sea Interludes from “Peter
just enough time for a string of explosive arias and, a moody yet exuberant piece that’s rarely heard. Grimes”). Riccardo Muti conducts, also bring-
of course, the work’s famous Anvil Chorus. The Antonio Pappano conducts the concerts, which ing his suave mastery to a concert of works by
show stars Maria Agresta, Yonghoon Lee, Quinn also feature Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Verdi, Samuel Adams (the New York première of
Kelsey, and Anita Rachvelishvili; Marco Armili- a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Saint-Saëns’s “Many Words of Love”), and Brahms (the Sec-
ato. (These are the final performances.) Feb. 9, Feb. sweeping Symphony No. 3, “Organ.” Feb. 8 at ond Symphony) on the following night. Feb. 9
12, and Feb. 15 at 7:30. • The Met’s music director 7:30, Feb. 9 at 2, and Feb. 10 at 8. • Jaap van Zwe- at 8 and Feb. 10 at 7:30. (212-247-7800.)
designate, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, is deep in James den, the orchestra’s music director designate,
Levine territory as he conducts this season’s revival returns to the Philharmonic podium to conduct Tōn: The Orchestra Now
of Richard Wagner’s magisterial valedictory opera, an ambitious program: the New York première The Metropolitan Museum’s smash-hit show de-
“Parsifal.” Klaus Florian Vogt heads up an inde- of a work by a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer voted to the drawings and designs of Michelan-
fatigable principal cast—including Peter Mattei, (John Luther Adams’s “Dark Waves”) and a gelo now has a musical component. Leon Bot-
René Pape, Evgeny Nikitin, and Evelyn Herlit- big excerpt from a challenging repertory opera stein will conduct Bard College Conservatory’s
zius—in François Girard’s postapocalyptic produc- (Act I of Wagner’s “Die Walküre,” in a concert pre-professional training orchestra in settings
tion of the four-hour-plus work. Feb. 10 at 7, Feb. performance that features the singers Heidi of Michelangelo’s magnificent poetry by a com-
13 and Feb. 20 at 6, and Feb. 17 at 11:30 A.M. • Met Melton, Simon O’Neill, and John Relyea). Feb. poser who could credibly stand beside him: Dmitri
audiences never have to wait long for Franco Zef- 14-15 at 7:30 and Feb. 17 at 8. (David Geffen Hall. Shostakovich. Tyler Duncan is the baritone solo-
firelli’s crowd-pleasing production of “La Bohème” 212-875-5656.) ist. Feb. 11 at 2. (Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. 212-570-3949.)
to reappear on the company’s schedule. The lat-
est revival has a promising cast headed by Sonya
Yoncheva (late of the Met’s new “Tosca”), Michael
Fabiano, Susanna Phillips, and Lucas Meacham;
Marco Armiliato, the Met’s trusted Italian hand,
is on the podium. Feb. 16 at 8. (Metropolitan Opera
House. 212-362-6000.)
“Six.Twenty.Outrageous”
ILLUSTRATION BY LORENZO GRITTI
RECITALS
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Brooklyn Museum “vagina china.” Indeed, Chicago deserves the pieces out of the façades of two historic houses
“Roots of ‘The Dinner Party’: History in the last laugh. For years, “The Dinner Party” was in Paris’s Les Halles neighborhood. (Though
Making” an object of outrage and ridicule, perhaps even the buildings were already slated for demolition,
Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party,” from 1974- more than one of curiosity and reverence, but it the artist was nonetheless criticized for help-
79, a monument of the American feminist art endures as a stunningly ambitious experiment. ing to destroy them.) This essential retrospec-
movement—and an example of the second wave’s Through March 4. tive is jam-packed with photographs and films
triumphs and blind spots—found a permanent documenting these and other projects, such as
home at the museum ten years ago. This show Bronx Museum Matta-Clark’s hybrid of happening and restau-
commemorates the acquisition with a fasci- “Gordon Matta-Clark” rant, FOOD. Especially noteworthy, given the
nating behind-the-scenes look at the project’s The SoHo-reared son of two artists (the Chilean context, are stunning pictures of big square holes
genesis, and the community effort behind its Roberto Matta and the American Anna Louise cut in the floors of abandoned buildings in the
realization. It took a small army of volunteers— Clark), Matta-Clark was a self-described “an- South Bronx, both a powerful critique of the de-
accomplished craftspeople, self-styled scholars architect” who made daring interventions in liberate devaluation of real estate in marginal-
of suppressed herstory, and novice embroider- urban environments until his untimely death, ized neighborhoods and a memorial to derelict
ers among them—to create the thirty-nine place in 1978, at the age of thirty-five. For his 1975 beauty. Through April 8.
settings on the triangular table, representing a project “Day’s End,” the artist filmed himself
pantheon of female figures from “Primordial cutting a half-moon shape from the front of an Morgan Library and Museum
Goddess” to Georgia O’Keeffe. (An additional abandoned warehouse on a Manhattan pier, with “Peter Hujar: Speed of Life”
nine hundred and ninety-nine names of notable the aid of pulleys and a chainsaw. He described Hujar, who died of AIDS-related pneumonia
women are written in gold script on the glazed the results as a “sun-and-water temple,” but wor- in 1987, at the age of fifty-three, was among the
floor tiles.) In preparatory works—sketches, de- ship was cut short when the police arrived with greatest of all American photographers and has
signs, and test plates—we see the artist refine an arrest warrant. One high point here is an ex- had, by far, the most confusing reputation. This
her technique and develop the signature “cen- tensive photographic archive of subway graffiti dazzling retrospective of a hundred and sixty-
tral core” imagery of her semi-abstract ceram- and the controversial “Conical Intersect,” also four pictures, curated by Joel Smith, affirms
ics—or, as she has jokingly referred to the plates, performed in 1975, for which Matta-Clark cut Hujar’s excellence while, if anything, compli-
cating his history. The works range across the
genres of portraiture, nudes, cityscape, and
still-life—the stillest of all from the catacombs
of Palermo, Italy, shot in 1963. The finest are
portraits, not only of people but of cows, sheep,
and, most notably, an individual goose, with an
eagerly confiding mien. The quality of Hujar’s
prints, tending to sumptuous blacks and sim-
mering grays, transfixes. He was a darkroom
master, maintaining technical standards for
which he got scant credit except among cer-
tain cognoscenti. He never hatched a signature
look to rival those of more celebrated elders
who influenced him (Richard Avedon, Diane
Arbus) or those of younger peers who learned
from him (Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Gol-
din). His pictures share, in place of a style, an
unfailing rigor that can only be experienced,
not described. Tall and handsome, volatile,
epically promiscuous, and chronically broke,
Hujar lived the bohemian dream of becoming
legendary rather than the bourgeois one of
being rich and conventionally famous. But he
craved more, hungering to have his art recog-
nized while repeatedly forestalling the event
with bristly pride. Hujar’s personal glamour
consorts so awkwardly with his artistic disci-
pline that trying to keep both in mind at once
can hurt your brain. But the conundrum de-
fines his significance at a historic crossroads
of high art and low life in the late twentieth
century. Through May 20.
Photo: Associate Conservator Devi Ormond cleans Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph, c. 1620, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino. On loan from the National Gallery of Ireland, NGI.4648
ART
a Whole Foods bag and a golf-course calendar “All Good Art Is Political: Käthe Kollwitz
threaten to edge Hicks’s animals out of the pic- and Sue Coe”
ture. Through April 8. This crackling show, titled after a quote from
Toni Morrison, displays prints and drawings
Queens Museum by Kollwitz, a German social realist who died in
“Patty Chang: The Wandering Lake” 1945, and Coe, an English antiwar, anti-capitalist,
Since the nineteen-nineties, the American art- and pro-animal-rights illustrator who lives in
ist has been investigating gendered family roles upstate New York. From opposite ends of the
and stereotypes of Asian femininity in dead- twentieth century, they prove the capacity of art,
pan and visually lush performance-based work. when both impassioned and adept, to dramatize
In this sprawling, essayistic exhibition, which worldly injustice with fury and flair. Kollwitz
encompasses video, installation, photography, is the more appealing, with a style of masterly
and sculpture, Chang documents her travels to touch and tender pathos, notably in delicately
China, Fogo Island, and the fast-shrinking Aral shaded images of mothers and children indom-
Sea. Bleak landscapes illustrate catastrophic geo- itably bonded in poverty or facing unspecified
political shifts and provide poetic backdrops for threats. Coe makes a burnt oéering of her own
momentous personal events. In large projec- fine artistic gifts by cultivating an ugliness to
tions, we watch Chang wash an abandoned fish- befit the targets of her rage, including military
ing boat and the corpse of a whale; in a video ti- and sexual violence and, especially, the horrors
tled “Que Sera, Sera,” which is more intimate in of industrial slaughterhouses, which, starting
both size and tone, she sings to her infant son in in the late nineteen-eighties, she spent several
a hospital room where her father lies dying. Ac- years researching in person. Both artists have as-
companying a three-part lecture-performance, signed themselves an evergreen social mission:
which incorporates footage from a trip along to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the com-
1
the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, fortable. Through March 3. (Galerie St. Etienne,
in China, are dozens of handblown glass objects 24 W. 57th St. 212-245-6734.)
that the artist calls “urinary devices,” absurdist
riffs on the plastic bottles she had to use as por-
table urinals during her journey. The piece epit- GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN
omizes Chang’s gift for breathing humor into
1
her rebellious takes on profound, even heart- Hervé Guibert and Luther Price
breaking, subjects. Through Feb. 18. The prolific French writer and photographer
Guibert, who died of AIDS-related causes in
1991, at the age of thirty-six, searched for beauty
GALLERIES—UPTOWN in the taboo. His gauzy black-and-white pictures,
which were taken in museums of anatomical odd-
Julian Hoeber ities, treat subjects, including a pair of conjoined
To depict one’s own consciousness may be a tall fetuses, with the same ethereal distance that he
order, but that’s the long-standing mission of was no doubt aiming for in “Autoportrait, Rue
this Los Angeles artist. It takes enthralling if, du Moulin-Vert,” from 1986, for which he posed
at times, high-handed form here in a series of as a cadaver under a sheet. Price, a mid-career
sculptural models of fantasy architecture and experimentalist, shares Guibert’s taste for the
trompe-l’oeil paintings of vision boards. One of morbid. Using found film footage, hair, glue,
the latter, titled “4,000 Years of Trying to Fig- and bubble wrap, he assembles tiny collages on
ure Out the Shape of the Mind,” includes refer- 35-mm. slides, which he projects in conjunction
ences to René Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Jacques with instructional medical filmstrips scavenged
Lacan, and the phrenologist L. A. Vaught. “The in Revere, Massachusetts, where he lives. The
Appearance of Geometry in Nature as a Root of strange visual poetry that emits from a pair of
Technology” charts the history of grids, from the slide carrousels in “Meat: Chapter 3” involves a
kindergarten blocks designed by Friedrich Frö- blue butterfly, burn victims, surgical incisions,
bel to the Microsoft logo. Hoeber’s navel-gazing and ominous-looking men in lab coats. Through
takes on a Borgesian melancholy in the sculp- Feb. 18. (Callicoon, 49 Delancey St. 212-219-0326.)
tures, particularly “Permeable Tension Figure
Model,” in which a spiralling white tube punc- Sondra Perry
tured with holes (part coral, part spinal column) By painting the walls of her ingenious show
accompanies a coal-black bust of the artist, com- chroma-key blue (used in videos as a placeholder
plete with glass eyes, resting cheek-side down, for backgrounds added in post-production), Perry
as if daydreaming. Through Feb. 24. (Blum & Poe, suggests that her viewers might be on camera.
19 E. 66th St. 212-249-2249.) In other words, the way we live now, every room
that we enter could become a set, whether we like
Katherine Hubbard it or not. In the show’s central video work, the
In these cryptic black-and-white photographs, young New Jersey artist explores the dystopian
words are spelled out with stones on the floor of predicament of her twin brother, who discov-
a sunlit warehouse. (The exception is one lone- ered that his animated likeness had been used as
some “S.”) The series was staged, in 2016, in an a video-game avatar, after a developer licensed
unfinished space designed by Donald Judd, in the images of college basketball players with-
Marfa, Texas. Moving around the gallery, reading out their consent. His story unfolds alongside
the pictures, one longs for a coherent message, footage of the siblings touring the Met and the
but good luck parsing the phrase “s-end-for-the- British Museum. Perry superimposes spinning
me-their.” A suspicion emerges: disorientation artifacts from the institutions’ African and Oce-
may be Hubbard’s point. In the photograph anic collections throughout the piece, as a robot
“Their,” she achieves a remarkable trick, as a reads the colonialist details of their acquisition.
swath of bright desert, glimpsed through a miss- Perry’s lyrical, unpolished use of 3-D-modelling
ing concrete panel, oésets the word, seemingly software, a key element of her D.I.Y.-cyborg aes-
defying the optical laws of vanishing-point per- thetic, lends her insights into racial politics an
spective. Through March 3. (Higher Pictures, 980 uncanny and timely power. Through Feb. 25. (Do-
Madison Ave., at 76th St. 212-249-6100.) nahue, 99 Bowery. 646-896-1368.)
NIGHT LIFE
1
he plays a suite of Valentine’s-week shows at the
Market Hotel. (1140 Myrtle Ave., Brooklyn. 718-
599-5800. Feb. 13-16.)
DJ Harvey Kelsey Lu
ROCK AND POP Harvey Bassett came of age in London in the late On her SoundCloud page, this classically trained
nineteen-seventies, amid pivotal developments in cellist and vocalist extends an invite to “dive into
Musicians and night-club proprietors lead the city’s music and politics. Punk and disco ger- my easily distracted mind.” Her work is anything
complicated lives; it’s advisable to check minated alongside oil shocks, bloody culture wars, but distracted, though: Lu’s first EP, “Church,”
in advance to confirm engagements. and seismic shifts in government. Inspired by the whirs with intent, and with discipline. Hailing
rapid change, Bassett sought out a new route; on from North Carolina, she grew up in a devout fam-
Rich Brian a trip to New York City in the early eighties, he ily of Jehovah’s Witnesses; she eventually moved
In the past decade, rap has become increasingly re- encountered hip-hop, which was then just blos- away from organized religion through music.
warding for everyone but traditional rappers: co- soming. Soon, he was spending up to eight hours “Church” was recorded live, in one take, and Lu
medians, frat boys, actors, children of actors, strip- a night behind decks in London, Cambridge, and typically performs alone, with just a loop pedal
pers, and countless other outsiders have quickly Bristol, playing everything from the Pop Group and her cello, trusting herself while asking for our
garnered fans, who may be weary of a genre en- to the Fat Boys. Now infamous for his marathon confidence as well. She reprises the music of Alice
tering its forties (with the worn-in habits to prove sets, he takes the reins at Output this week, play- Coltrane, along with Laraaji, in a celebration of
it). Brian Imanuel, an eighteen-year-old Internet ing from open to close. (74 Wythe Ave., Brooklyn. the late musician’s life. (MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jack-
yuckster turned rapper from Jakarta, should be outputclub.com. Feb. 16.) son Ave., Long Island City. 718-784-2084. Feb. 11.)
taken more seriously than such peers. His break-
out hit, “Dat $tick,” from 2016, isn’t just a racial gag, Homeshake John Maus
in which a plucky Asian boy adopts the affect of a Peter Sagar, the central member of this Mon- Even fans of Maus hardly know what to expect
tough trap star: it’s also ridiculously catchy, densely treal band, came into his own as the tour guitar- next from the synth-pop prince of darkness: ref-
lyrical, and as good as anything Migos made that ist for Mac DeMarco, an outsized personality who erences to Oedipal drama or to Stockhausen, an
year. Following that, he continued producing and couldn’t have been easy to support from the side. analysis of his former bandmate Ariel Pink, or a
releasing songs like “Who That Be” and “Glow In 2013, Sagar quit playing in DeMarco’s whimsi- twenty-four-thousand-word diatribe about life
Like Dat,” each one better than the last, under cal stage shows and began releasing subdued, icy and intent, much like the one he sent to the music
the name Rich Chigga. As his star rose, so did the indie compositions as Homeshake. His first two zine AdHoc, in 2012, after it published an open let-
scrutiny: at the beginning of this year, he bowed albums, “In the Shower” and “Midnight Snack,” ter to the musician. Maus, who has a Ph.D. in po-
to growing pressure about his name and swapped showcase Sagar’s ear for yacht-soul songwriting litical philosophy, is a cult musical hero known for
out the modified slur. “Brian” fits him better, obvi- and minimalist production while retaining some of crafting woozy, space-age baritone pop musings
ously, but it’s also less reductive. He’s a talent who the goofball humor and nineties-slacker slant that about quantum leaps and the moon, most notably
deserves to be considered individually; his latest
single, “See Me,” is pensive and lucid, and all the
jokes still land. “Indonesian MC Hammer in this
bitch, beat your ass if you correct my grammar in
this bitch” is a quip word nerds can get behind.
(Terminal 5, 610 W. 56th St. 212-582-6600. Feb. 20.)
Girlpool
Since 2013, Girlpool, the Los Angeles duo com- Alphonse Mucha, The Seasons, four decorative panels, 1896. Estimate $40,000 to $60,000.
posed of Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker, has
been spinning poignant punk songs about friend-
ship and relationships. On their latest album,
“Powerplant,” Tividad and Tucker have refined
Vintage Posters
Featuring Highlights from the Gail Chisholm Collection
their talents for penning evocative lyrics of heal-
ing and heartache, which often recall sweet dreams MARCH 1
one wakes up from just a moment too soon. The
creative dynamic between the two is fascinating: Specialist: Nicholas D. Lowry • posters@swanngalleries.com
their discordantly harmonious vocal stylings, typ-
ically sung in unison, meld in a way that makes Preview: February 24, 12-5; February 26 to 28, 10-6
lines about beige rooms and getting lost at the cor- 104 East 25th St, New York, NY 10010 • tel 212 254 4710
ner store feel thrilling. (Brooklyn Steel, 319 Frost SWANNGALLERIES.COM
St., Brooklyn. 888-929-7849. Feb. 8.)
on his 2011 album, “We Must Become the Piti- around broken hearts and betrayals. Yet few prac- rap samples and heart-racing beats. UNIIQU3
less Censors of Ourselves.” His latest gig in New titioners of the genre pine like Romeo Santos, plays alongside the Queens rapper Dai Burger.
1
York promises to be the most offbeat Valentine’s the superstar Bronx-born performer. His latest (Rough Trade, 64 N. 9th St., Brooklyn. 212-673-
Day a couple could wish for. (Elsewhere, 599 John- album, “Golden,” features a song about infidel- 1775. Feb. 10.)
son Ave., Brooklyn. elsewherebrooklyn.com. Feb. 14.) ity, sung in two parts: one from the perspective
of the lover, and one from the unsuspecting hus-
Neon Indian band. But it’s not all tears with Santos, who years JAZZ AND STANDARDS
On its début album, “Psychic Chasms,” from 2009, ago fronted the mega-successful boy band Aven-
this Texas electronic act outlined the lo-fi, sample- tura; he gets raunchy on songs like “Propuesta Bruce Barth
driven twist on pop, rock, and psychedelia which Indecente” and “El Amigo” (an ode to his mem- Heart, intangible yet palpable, is the quality that
would dominate music blogs and rooftop gath- ber) and goofy on the superhero-themed “Héroe most pervades Barth’s piano playing. A mainstream
erings in the summers to come. As Neon Indian, Favorito.” Santos will take over Madison Square modernist who wondrously calls to mind a host of
the singer and composer Alan Palomo, born in Garden for three nights. (Seventh Ave. at 33rd St. classic stylists without ever sounding precisely like
Monterrey, Mexico, distilled the so-called chill- 800-745-3000. Feb. 15-17.) any of them, Barth rounds out a sharp quartet with
wave sound down to potent concentrations: soft harmonious cohorts, including the saxophonist
and clipping drumbeats, synths modulated into Sophie Steve Wilson, the bassist Vicente Archer, and the
shivers, vocals sneaking acid-dream motifs in On Madonna’s 2015 comeback single, “Bitch, drummer Adam Cruz. (Smoke, 2751 Broadway, be-
through the fuzz. “Everything comes apart if you I’m Madonna,” the contributions by the pro- tween 105th and 106th Sts. 212-864-6662. Feb. 9-11.)
find the strand,” he sings. “All it takes is a hand.” ducer and d.j. Diplo are clear: a mashing line of
Since then, Neon Indian has released two more saxophone-like bass plays through the chorus Steve Davis
acclaimed records that have extended its grasp on like countless other E.D.M. climaxes. But the All modern jazz trombonists owe much to J. J.
downbeat dance music, including, most recently, staccato of Madonna’s lyrics and the synth ar- Johnson, the man who brought bebop to the in-
“Vega Intl. Night School,” from 2015. Palomo re- peggios are trademark Sophie, the London pro- strument. Davis is an obvious acolyte of the mas-
turns to Good Room for a d.j. set. (98 Meserole ducer who is smoothing out club music’s hard ter, his technical wizardry firmly wed to expres-
Ave., Brooklyn. 718-349-2373. Feb. 16.) edge, one shiny composition at a time. The bub- sive mirth. Here, Davis pays tribute to Johnson,
bly, tongue-in-cheek track “Lemonade” was irri- with an all-star sextet featuring Eddie Henderson
Palm tating electronic purists even before it ended up on trumpet and Harold Mabern on piano. (Smoke,
This quartet from the Hudson Valley is slicing in a McDonald’s commercial, and Sophie’s shad- 2751 Broadway, between 105th and 106th Sts. 212-864-
and dicing indie rock in its own image, forging owy work with the label PC Music is regarded 6662. Feb. 16-18.)
a collaged, frantic take on worn-out structures. as some of the best and most bewildering pop
Palm formed amid the fruitful live-music scene around, all baby-pitched vocals and kawaii in- Javon Jackson
at Bard College; its songs bob across odd time sig- dulgence. (Elsewhere, 599 Johnson Ave., Brook- A champion of the rugged tenor-saxophone tradition
natures, looping together asymmetrical phrases lyn. elsewherebrooklyn.com. Feb. 8.) of such masters as Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane,
and barely tonal harmonies as if applying Wil- and Joe Henderson, Jackson came up through the
liam S. Burroughs’s cut-up technique to pages UNIIQU3 jazz boot camps of Art Blakey and Elvin Jones, and
of sheet music. The jazz-ish result is entrancing, The d.j. and producer UNIIQU3 has helped to he wears his rigorous training proudly. These days
with the knotty rhythms supporting the coy vo- popularize Jersey club, the riotous dance rhythm he’s not averse to dipping into R. & B. and funk,
cals of Eve Alpert and Kasra Kurt. “Shadow Ex- built on strobing drums and vocal samples that the better to reveal his soulful inclinations. (Iridium,
pert,” the band’s last LP, is an essential listen for stutter and splash. She rose from home-studio 1650 Broadway, at 51st St. 212-582-2121. Feb. 15-17.)
long road trips through weird towns; Palm will tinkering in Newark to scene notoriety with re-
celebrate a new album, “Rock Island,” due out on mixes and celebrated club sets, providing an al- Frank London
the day of this show. (Market Hotel, 1140 Myrtle ternative to the house music and Top Forty pop A card-carrying downtown eclectic, the trum-
Ave., Brooklyn. Feb. 9.) that dominated venues in her home town. Hav- peter and composer London juggles klezmer,
ing grown out of the neighboring Baltimore club world music, new jazz, and contemporary classi-
Romeo Santos sound, Jersey club is more concerned with repur- cal, among other far-flung genres, with a healthy
Bachata, the arpeggiated guitar music that origi- posed source material and speed, and has found mix of respect and irreverent daring. This residency
nated in the Dominican Republic, often revolves fans through its hypnotizing blend of insolent finds him mixing it up with ensembles both com-
pact and enlarged, all supplied with similarly bold
and diverse collaborators. (The Stone, Avenue C at
2nd St. thestonenyc.com. Feb. 13-18.)
The broadclub cuttlefish is one of the psychedelic creatures featured in “Blue Planet II.”
TANIA
against fronds that secrete an antibacterial
The nature documentary “Blue Planet II” mucus. But, because the show’s sound is
BRUGUERA
is oceanic in topic, tone, scope, and maj- as impressive as all the other technical
esty. A production of the BBC Natural aspects, we hear the dolphins’ vocalization
History Unit, the seven-episode series with a horrifying new clarity—it sounds
flexes its broadcaster’s mastery of a genre like the screech of nails on a blackboard, UNTITLED
that it created. Over excellent footage shot released with a whistling wet flatulence. (HAVANA, 2000)
on a circumglobal photo safari, the ven- The second vignette visits the Great
erable narrator David Attenborough Barrier Reef, home to a tool-using
orates zoological narratives as if delivering tuskfish. A subsequent sequence of fish THROUGH MAR 11 ONLY
a state-of-nature address. “Blue Planet II” leaping from the Indian Ocean to snatch
follows the network’s “The Blue Planet,” fledgling terns from the air is edited with
from 2001, but it is less a sequel than a ideal savagery and a thrilling lack of sen-
subsequent quest, like Apollo 14. timentality: a splashy half-dozen feather-
Attenborough promises introductions crushing strikes. The next mealtime is
to “creatures beyond our imagination.” more tranquil, with rays wheeling in
Behold, for instance, the broadclub cut- pursuit of bioluminescent plankton while
tlefish. When the cuttlefish needs to the score supplies balletic strings.
subdue a crab to eat, its pigment flickers The last of the ten vignettes is a nail-
hypnotically, to stupefy its prey. Creatures biter about a mother walrus nudging her
beyond imagining, such as these, enrich pup through an Arctic climate—an en-
the imagination when encountered. The vironment that’s changing to slush—as
moments are psychedelic and spiritual, the walruses struggle to navigate the
and “Blue Planet II” collects them into a world’s new behavioral demands. The
saga pulsing with sea serpents, multi- walrus story is shaped to introduce a note
armed beasts, protean freaks, photogenic of poignancy, and it leads to Attenbor-
anemones, legends of kelp forests, and ough’s closing comment: “As we under-
cnidarians named for Gorgons. stand more about the complexity of the
In Episode 1, the first of ten vignettes lives of sea creatures, so we begin to ap- Tania Bruguera. Untitled (Havana, 2000). 2000.
Sugar cane bagasse, video, and live performance.
develops from crowd-pleasing footage of preciate the fragility of their home.” Here The Museum of Modern Art, New York.The Modern
Women’s Fund and Committee on Media and
bottlenose dolphins surfing gnarly South is the walrus, a symbol of interdepen- Performance Art Funds. © 2018 Tania Bruguera.
Installation view, VII Bienal de La Habana, 2000.
African waves, the slick cinematography dence, who grunts, “You are me and we
COURTESY BBC
the twenty-year fortunes of this com- son). Then there’s Dunya (Marsha woman.
pany, the most glamorous and influential Mason), Diaghilev’s childhood nurse, The play ends with Diaghilev, in a
ballet troupe of the twentieth century, an anachronistic presence (Diaghilev gilt chair, dying as the image of Nijinsky
into less than two hours, it’s like what didn’t take his nanny on tour), but good in his costume from “Afternoon of a
might have passed through Diaghilev’s to have around, because, amid the rages Faun” rises before his eyes. Amor vincit
mind if he had had to undergo general and imprecations accompanying Dia- omnia.
anesthesia. ghilev’s love life, she tends to take —Joan Acocella
18 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
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DANCE
Our members New York City Ballet silent movement, her unostentatious tenacity at-
return each year Ever since Prokofiev composed “Romeo and Juliet,”
in 1935, the ballet has undergone reinterpretations.
In 2007, Peter Martins, the recently departed artis-
tracting less attention than her more famous col-
laborators (Mikhail Baryshnikov, Sara Rudner, the
lighting designer Jennifer Tipton). She brings “Lat-
as faithfully as tic director of City Ballet, took a stab at the glis-
tening, cinematic score. The results are mixed; the
itude,” a new trio for herself, Elena Demyanenko,
and Yanan Yu. (New York Live Arts, 219 W. 19th St.
designs, by the Danish artist Per Kirkeby, are unat- 212-924-0077. Feb. 8-10.)
the tides. tractive, and the storytelling is not particularly con-
vincing. But the music is as heart-catching as ever, New York Theatre Ballet
and, in Tiler Peck and Sterling Hyltin, the company This small troupe of hardworking dancers presents
has two sparkling Juliets. • Feb. 7 at 7:30 and Feb. 10 a mixed bill that includes a ballet by the promising
at 2: “Square Dance,” “Oltremare,” and “The Four young choreographer Gemma Bond, also a dancer
Seasons.” • Feb. 8 at 7:30, Feb. 9 at 8, and Feb. 11 at at American Ballet Theatre. Her fast-paced “Opti-
3: “The Red Violin,” “Dance Odyssey,” and “Rus- mists” is set to the vivace movement of a Prokofiev
sian Seasons.” • Feb. 10 at 8: “Apollo,” “Mozartiana,” piano sonata, played live by the company’s pianist,
and “Cortège Hongrois.” • Feb. 13-15 and Feb. 20 at Michael Scales. Pam Tanowitz’s “Double Andante,”
7:30, Feb. 16 at 8, Feb. 17 at 2 and 8, and Feb. 18 at from 2015, also features a piano sonata, in this case
1 and 7: “Romeo + Juliet.” (David H. Koch, Lincoln by Beethoven; Tanowitz’s style is spare, formal, all
Center. 212-721-6500. Through March 4.) lines and angles. The program closes with a master-
piece of chamber ballet, Antony Tudor’s mournful
Ronald K. Brown / Evidence 1937 piece “Dark Elegies.” (Florence Gould Hall, 55
Arcell Cabuag, a dancer of dependable suppleness E. 59th St. 800-982-2787. Feb. 9-10.)
and funk, has been Brown’s right-hand man for
twenty years, a key contributor to the company’s ir- Noche Flamenca
resistible physicality and spiritual uplift. Brown now The Joyce Theatre is less intimate than some of the
celebrates that long relationship by joining Cabuag places where this superlative flamenco troupe per-
in a new duet he has made for the two of them, “Den forms, but it’s small enough that you can still feel
of Dreams.” A mixed repertory program also fea- the heat coming off the dancers and musicians. “Ín-
tures Brown’s liberating Nina Simone piece, “Come timo” happens to be the title of the current program,
Ye,” as well as an excerpt from “Lessons” that is set which focusses, unusually, on duets. The opener,
to a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. (Joyce Theatre, “La Ronde,” borrows the chain structure from Ar-
175 Eighth Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. Feb. 6-11.) thur Schnitzler’s eponymous play about sexual li-
aisons, creating its own passionate cycle of desire,
Dana Reitz rejection, and reaction. And any program that in-
This year’s Lumberyard in the City festival has been cludes, as this one does, Soledad Barrio wringing
focussing on female artists whose work hasn’t been herself out in “Soleá” is one worth witnessing. (175
seen in New York for a while. For decades, Reitz Eighth Ave., at 19th St. 212-242-0800. Feb. 13-18 and
has explored subtle interactions between light and Feb. 20. Through Feb. 25.)
THE THEATRE
Now you too are invited for
a rare visit to our legendary
private club through the
1 OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS
Good for Otto
Ed Harris, Rhea Perlman, and F. Murray Abra-
pages of Living magazine. ham star in David Rabe’s play, directed by Scott
Admissions Elliott for the New Group and set in an overbur-
In this new play by Joshua Harmon (“Significant dened mental-health center in Connecticut. (Per-
Visit OceanReefClubMagazine.com Other”), Jessica Hecht is an admissions director at shing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-
a private academy who is diversifying the student 279-4200. Previews begin Feb. 20.)
to request your complimentary copy body while her own son applies to Ivy League col-
or call 305.367.5921 to leges. Daniel Aukin directs. (Mitzi E. Newhouse, Hey, Look Me Over!
150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200. Previews begin Feb. 15.) Encores! presents an evening of numbers from
inquire about the possibilities shows it hasn’t got around to reviving, among them
of a guest stay. The Amateurs “Mack & Mabel,” “Sail Away,” and “Wildcat.” The
Jordan Harrison’s comedy, directed by Oliver But- cast includes Bebe Neuwirth, Vanessa Williams, Judy
ler, follows a theatre troupe trying to stay ahead Kuhn, and Bob Martin, reviving his theatre-loving
of the Black Death in fourteenth-century Europe. character from “The Drowsy Chaperone.” (City Cen-
With Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Michael Cyril ter, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. Feb. 7-11.)
Creighton, and Thomas Jay Ryan. (Vineyard, 108
E. 15th St. 212-353-0303. Previews begin Feb. 8.) Kings
Thomas Kail directs a new comedy by Sarah Bur-
Black Light gess (“Dry Powder”), about a Washington lobbyist
Daniel Alexander Jones performs a new show as his (Gillian Jacobs) attempting to manipulate a neo-
alter ego, the soul-singing diva Jomama Jones. (Joe’s Pub, phyte congresswoman (Eisa Davis). (Public, 425 La-
425 Lafayette St. 212-967-7555. Previews begin Feb. 12.) fayette St. 212-967-7555. In previews. Opens Feb. 20.)
An Ordinary Muslim is a worthy testimony, but it does not register stop there. It’s 1988, and we’re in the fluorescent-lit
In Hammaad Chaudry’s play, directed by Jo Bon- much in theatrical terms. (Rattlestick, 224 Wa- teachers’ lounge of an Ohio high school, where the
ney, a Pakistani-British couple navigate religious verly Pl. 212-627-2556. Through Feb. 18.) brain trust of the annual telethon gathers to dis-
doctrine, their families’ expectations, and West- cuss fund-raising goals and themes. Over a series of
ern secular culture. (New York Theatre Workshop, 79 John Lithgow: Stories by Heart meetings, passive-aggressive digs deepen into seis-
E. 4th St. 212-460-5475. In previews.) Lithgow, one of the more charming and emotionally mic squabbles—a comedic variation on the commu-
full actors alive, composed this evening of reminis- nity acting classes in Annie Baker’s “Circle Mirror
queens cences about the effect that his late father—a man Transformation” or the silent meditation sessions in
Martyna Majok’s play is set in a basement apart- of the theatre who lived for Shakespeare—had on Bess Wohl’s “Small Mouth Sounds.” Unlike them,
ment in Queens, where two generations of im- his life and his imagination. The two-act piece be- “Miles for Mary” was written collaboratively—
migrant women clash; Danya Taymor directs the gins with Lithgow’s recalling his amazement when there are five credited playwrights, including the
LCT3 production. (Claire Tow, 150 W. 65th St. 212- his father read Ring Lardner’s classic short story director, Lila Neugebauer—and creativity by com-
239-6200. Previews begin Feb. 14.) “Haircut” aloud to him and his siblings. Before you mittee, with all its buried hostilities, is the play’s
1
know it, Lithgow becomes his father, expertly nav- wickedly observed subject. (Playwrights Horizons,
Relevance igating the tale with a physical sureness and energy 416 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200.)
In JC Lee’s play, directed by Liesl Tommy for MCC, that illustrates just how much the senior Lithgow
a fight between a veteran feminist author (Jayne loved acting, and how much his son loved looking
Houdyshell) and an up-and-coming young writer at and listening to his father. After the interval, we ALSO NOTABLE
(Pascale Armand) becomes an Internet sensation. learn of Lithgow’s parents’ decline—and of how the
(Lucille Lortel, 121 Christopher St. 866-811-4111. In habit of reading aloud passed from father to child. Amy and the Orphans Laura Pels. • Balls 59E59. • The
previews. Opens Feb. 20.) It’s hard for a solo artist to hold an audience for as Band’s Visit Ethel Barrymore. • Bright Colors and
long as Lithgow does; he succeeds because he un- Bold Patterns SoHo Playhouse. • Disco Pigs Irish
Returning to Reims derstands the effort it takes to be still, and how si- Repertory. • Farinelli and the King Belasco. • Hang-
The German director Thomas Ostermeier stages lence can add dramatic weight to tale-telling. While men Atlantic Theatre Company. • He Brought Her
this metatheatrical adaptation of Didier Eribon’s not strictly a play, the Roundabout’s production is Heart Back in a Box Polonsky Shakespeare Center.
2009 memoir of class, sexuality, and right-drifting an opportunity to watch a terrific actor do what he Through Feb. 11. (Reviewed in this issue.) • Hello,
politics in working-class France. (St. Ann’s Ware- does, splendidly. (American Airlines Theatre, 227 Dolly! Shubert. • Hindle Wakes Clurman. Through
house, 45 Water St., Brooklyn. 718-254-8779. In pre- W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300.) Feb. 17. • The Homecoming Queen Atlantic Stage 2.
views. Opens Feb. 11.) Through Feb. 18. • In the Body of the World City Cen-
Miles for Mary ter Stage I. • Jerry Springer—The Opera Pershing
Some Old Black Man The nineteen-eighties are now generally regarded Square Signature Center. • Latin History for Mo-
Wendell Pierce (“Treme”) plays a college profes- as the decade when we all might as well have died rons Studio 54. • Once on This Island Circle in the
sor who moves his elderly father (Roger Robinson) from collective embarrassment. This acid com- Square. • The Parisian Woman Hudson. • SpongeBob
into his Harlem penthouse, in James Anthony Ty- edy of the banal, by the group the Mad Ones, gets SquarePants Palace. • Springsteen on Broadway Wal-
1
ler’s drama. (59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200. laughs from bad perms and short shorts, but doesn’t ter Kerr. • Until the Flood Rattlestick. Through Feb. 18.
Previews begin Feb. 8. Opens Feb. 14.)
NOW PLAYING
Cardinal
Greg Pierce’s play is set in a dying industrial
town given an uneasy lease on life. Lydia (Anna
Chlumsky) has returned to her depressed home
town with a sanguinary idea: to paint a six-block
radius bright red. “The only way to survive is to
get your town into books like ‘A Thousand Places to
See Before You Kill Yourself,’ ” she tells the doofy
mayor, Jeff (Adam Pally). The plan works—too
well—and soon the area is overrun with foreign
tour groups. As directed by Kate Whoriskey, the
play feels both compressed and saggy. The sense of
place is vague, unhelped by Derek McClane’s ge-
neric sets, and the stakes, personal and municipal,
rarely seem high. The relationships are implausi-
ble, and the cast, which includes Becky Ann Baker
and Stephen Park, strains to make the thin char-
acters thicker. Another coat might help. (Second
Stage, 305 W. 43rd St. 212-246-4422.)
Sven Nykvist’s cinematography heightens the performances of Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand, and Liv Ullmann in Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona.”
The Bergman Touch cultural heritage who yield to atavistic There’s a family connection between
drives that are all the more terrifying for Bergman’s movies. In the 1968 drama
Ingmar Bergman unfolded personal and
the refined, intellectual justifications of “Hour of the Wolf,” Ullmann plays Alma,
social traumas in a seven-decade career.
their explosive expressions. the wife and model of an artist (Max von
Film Forum is celebrating Ingmar Berg The summit of Bergman’s career, “Per Sydow), whose patron (Erland Josephson)
man’s centenary with a fortysevenfilm sona,” from 1966, is the story of a young reunites him with a former lover, Veronica
retrospective (Feb. 7March 15). For all actress, Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann), Vogler (Ingrid Thulin). “The Passion of
the modernist audacity of his work and who falls silent onstage and remains cata Anna,” from 1969, also starring Ullmann
its ongoing influence, Bergman (who died tonic. When a hospital stay proves useless, and Andersson, involves an intellectual
in 2007) is very much a man of his times. she’s sent to a remote cottage in the care named Andreas (von Sydow), who is drawn
The breathtaking intimacy of his films is of a young nurse named Alma (Bibi An into a vortex of jealousy by an architect
inseparable from their relentless rage and dersson). As Elisabet gradually engages named Vergerus ( Josephson). In “The
cruelty; they’re filled with physical and with domestic life, Alma confides in the Touch,” from 1971, Elliott Gould plays an
emotional violence, secrets and lies, in still silent star and a sort of personality American archeologist (and a Holocaust
trigues and betrayals. The relationships meld results, turning the oddly close re survivor), who’s treated by a doctor named
he depicts—whether romantic or erotic, lationship into an overheated bond and Andreas Vergerus (von Sydow) and begins
creative or familial—are equally fraught a furious rivalry—one that Bergman an affair with his wife, Karin (Andersson).
with destructive passion. captures in a radical sequence in which In the 1958 drama “The Magician,” Berg
In Bergman’s work, the force of desire the two women fuse. The film’s extreme man introduced the names of Vogler, ac
and the pursuit of pleasure are bound to visual inflection transforms the meticu tors, and Vergerus, a doctor. Throughout his
the allure of pain; he depicts stringent lous study of their daytoday wrangles career, he fused his emotional life and the
Christian faith that’s commensurate with into symbols of psychological disturbance. spirit of the times with a ruthless frank
SNAP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
the wanton impulses it’s meant to control. With uncomfortably intense closeups, ness. Anguished allusions to the Vietnam
The fury of his films is rendered derisive disorienting angles, harsh contrasts, and War and the Second World War mark his
by their social settings. Bergman filmed abrupt editing, along with dream imagery films with political passions as well; the
mainly in his native Sweden, often among and fantasy sequences, he evokes his private furies that Bergman revealed are
the artistic bourgeoisie, showing charac prime subject: the inner life, and, above as tenacious as those of history itself.
ters with suave manners and a shared all, his own turbulent visions. —Richard Brody
through the sport’s competitive ranks, the skating Reynolds Woodcock, a fashion designer of the torical re-creation. Meryl Streep plays Katha-
establishment holds her gaudy taste, rough man- nineteen-fifties, who, in the London house that he rine Graham, the owner of the Washington Post,
ners, and rude family against her. That endemic shares with his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), cre- with Tom Hanks as its swaggering editor, Ben
class discrimination and the ensuing bad publicity ates immaculate dresses for a selection of wealthy Bradlee. Most of the story is set in the early
are the backdrop for Jeff’s scheme to harm Kerri- women. As devout as a priest in his calling, he nineteen-seventies, at a vertiginous time for
gan—and for the beleaguered and abused Tonya’s seems to resent any intrusion upon his profes- the nation and its capital. The so-called Penta-
inability to oppose it. The heart of the movie is sional peace, yet he invites a waitress named Alma gon Papers, obtained by Daniel Ellsberg (Mat-
its recognition of Tonya’s dependence on peo- (Vicky Krieps) into his life as a model, and, even- thew Rhys), unveil a reluctance, on the part of
ple and institutions that have betrayed her. But tually, as far more. The result is a pact as peril- multiple Administrations, to inform the public
Gillespie’s empathy is mixed with condescension; ous and as claustrophobic as that between the about the true state of the Vietnam War. When
much of the movie’s bluff comedy mocks the tone guru and his disciple in Anderson’s “The Master” the Times is prevented, by legal injunction, from
and the actions of Tonya and her milieu. With (2012), with the camera closing in remorselessly publishing the Papers, the Post gets its chance to
Paul Walter Hauser, as Jeff’s delusional partner on stricken or adoring faces, and a strong tincture step in and continue the job; what will Graham
in crime.—R.B. (In limited release.) of sickness in the romantic atmosphere. All three do, given that further revelations will rock the
leading players respond with rigor to this Hitch- very establishment of which she is such a doy-
The Insult cockian intensity, and Reynolds—fussy, cold, and enne? The movie is a little too confident of its
Ziad Doueiri’s new film begins with a drainpipe agonized—is a worthy addition to Day-Lewis’s own righteous stand (listen to the strenuous John
and winds up with angry mobs and burning cars. gallery of obsessives. The costumes, every bit as Williams score), but the battle between hesita-
The pipe is the cause of a brief exchange between alluring as you would expect, are by Mark Bridges, tion and decisiveness is beautifully managed by
two men, from different—or, as they see it, oppos- and Jonny Greenwood contributes a swooning Streep. With Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Sarah
ing—sides of the Lebanese divide. One is Tony score.—A.L. (1/8/18) (In wide release.) Paulson, Bradley Whitford, and a lethally smil-
Hanna (Adel Karam), a Christian who runs a ga- ing Bruce Greenwood, as Robert McNamara,
rage, and the other is Yasser Salameh (Kamel El The Post and delicious period costumes, starting with
Basha), a Palestinian refugee who works on a con- The new film from Steven Spielberg, like his Bradlee’s striped shirts, by Ann Roth.—A.L.
struction crew. Both men, having wounded each “Lincoln” (2012), is a solidly rousing act of his- (12/18 & 25/17) (In wide release.)
other’s pride, find it almost impossible to back
down, despite mollifying advice from their wives,
and, once lawyers get involved and the media learn
of the dispute, the quarrel bursts out of control.
Much of the story, written by Doueiri and Jo-
elle Touma, is set in courtrooms, where we are
schooled in the past—not only in the individual
histories of the protagonists but in the sufferings
ABOVE & BEYOND
endured by their respective communities. With
all the weight of these matters, the movie often
feels clunky and didactic, grimly bent on balanc-
ing the argument; fortunately, there are fight-
ing performances—from Camille Salameh, as a
mischievous attorney, and from El Basha, whose
graven features tell a sorry tale. In Arabic.—A.L.
(1/15/18) (In limited release.)
11
his prodigious youth. But, when fate takes over, to ring in the Year of the Dog. (Canal St. at Chrys- Swann’s “Icons and Images” auction of photographs
it does so in a series of fanciful masterstrokes— tie St. Feb. 16-25.) on Feb. 15. (104 E. 25th St. 212-254-4710.)
such as a rechannelling of 007’s spiral-grooved
gun barrel—that exalt and prolong the last glim-
mer of life even as they embrace death with noble AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES READINGS AND TALKS
serenity. Ingenious digital effects turn nostalgic
and chatty home-town strolls into dreamlike ad- Sotheby’s launches a week of Asian-art sales on Feb. 19 Strand Bookstore
ventures, but ultra-low-tech toys become Ruiz’s with a session devoted to paintings by modern and Tavi Gevinson founded Rookie Mag in 2011, at the age
ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO AMARGO
tenderly exuberant metaphor for the surprising contemporary artists from India and the subconti- of fifteen, as a destination for writing, art, and pho-
ricochets of an entire lifetime’s play of memory. nent. Alongside abstract and semi-abstract pieces tography surrounding youth culture, feminism, and
In Spanish.—R.B. (Film Society of Lincoln Center, by modernists like Sayed Haider Raza and Maq- fashion. This January, Gevinson edited and published
Feb. 11 and Feb. 18, and streaming.) bool Fida Husain are paintings in a more romantic “Rookie on Love,” an anthology of new and original
vein, such as Raja Ravi Varma’s highly aestheticized essays, interviews, poems, cartoons, and more, with
Phantom Thread depiction of a partially nude Tillotama (a celestial contributions from forty-five writers, including Jenny
The role taken by Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul nymph). Also included are works that aim to cap- Zhang, Emma Straub, Hilton Als, and Janet Mock.
Thomas Anderson’s strange and sumptuous ture the poetry of everyday life, like Bikash Bhat- She launches the book at this talk, with a crafts table
film—the actor’s final screen appearance, he has tacharjee’s view of a crowded neighborhood in Cal- where attendees can make their own D.I.Y. Valen-
claimed—is, in every sense, tailor-made. He plays cutta, “Untitled (Rooftops).” Chinese art (porcelains, tine’s cards. (828 Broadway, 212-473-1452. Feb. 14 at 7.)
CONFERENCES PRESENTS
APRIL NEW
12 th YORK
Women
Entrepreneurs Tell Their
Stories
Why they did it. How they did it. What they learned.
FOR MORE
V F F O U N D E R S FA I R . C O M
I N F O R M AT I O N
and to
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I N V I TAT I O N :
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT during a catastrophic event, such as a during the 2016 campaign—can be seen.
STATE OF THE RESISTANCE seizure of power by a military junta. It The President who has been accused
fails more commonly through the grad- of sexual harassment or assault by at least
nder normal circumstances, refer- ual weakening of crucial institutions, such nineteen women has also overseen a re-
U ring to the address that the Presi-
dent delivers each January as the “State
as the judiciary and the press. In short,
the Union is precisely as strong as its in-
vision of the Department of Education’s
guidelines on sexual assault on college
of the Union” is a familiar bit of hyper- stitutions, and those institutions are being campuses that raises the standard of
bole. It is more aptly thought of as a assailed in ways that we’ve seldom seen. proof for accusers. He has made it eas-
summary of the year that was—not un- It is for this reason that, since the in- ier for employers to refuse to include
like the countless news and pop-culture ception of Trump’s Presidency, the mem- birth control in their health-care plans
roundups that appear at New Year’s— bers of his opposition have tended to and reinstated the “global gag rule” on
and as a projection of the Administra- understand themselves not simply as de- abortion counselling. He created an “elec-
tion’s priorities for the upcoming year. fenders of particular policy positions but tion integrity” commission that was a
The President gives a pro-forma state- also as stalwarts of democracy itself—a thinly veiled attempt to nationalize
ment that “the state of our union is resistance. As such, the Trump Resis- voter-suppression techniques. He has
strong,” because what else would it be? tance has differed from, for instance, the rescinded deportation protections
But these are not normal circumstances. Tea Party in key ways. The latter was in- granted to two hundred thousand Sal-
Trump’s statement regarding the tent upon “taking the country back”; the vadoreans and almost sixty thousand
strength of the Union in last week’s ad- former hopes to insure that the country Haitians, and tried to remove transgen-
dress carried about the same credibility remains standing. Yet it has been in par- der people from the military and to ban
as his denial that he cheated on his post- ticulars of policy that Trump’s impact on people in certain majority-Muslim coun-
partum wife with a porn star, or his claim women, immigrants, and minorities— tries from travelling here. His Justice
that Mexico would pay for his quixotic the groups most antagonized by him Department has issued new guidance
border wall. Americans, by a nearly two- that could lead to more prosecutions for
to-one margin, believe that Trump has marijuana-related crimes, which will dis-
further divided the country. Superficially, proportionately affect African-Ameri-
his speech conformed to the conven- cans, who are far more likely to be ar-
tional structure of a State of the Union rested on such charges.
address. But, at the very moment that Lest this litany seem too sunny, in
the President was attesting to the Union’s January the Doomsday Clock, which
durability, his Administration and its Re- measures the likelihood of human an-
publican abettors were actively engaged nihilation, moved closer to midnight
in a feud with the F.B.I., attempting to than it has been since the nineteen-fifties.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL
discredit the special counsel Robert The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which
Mueller’s investigation and to release a sets the clock, called out Donald Trump
secret memo about that investigation, specifically for his inflammatory rheto-
despite objections from senior officials ric on North Korea, the Iran deal, cli-
in the Department of Justice. In a new mate change, and nuclear weapons.
book, “How Democracies Die,” Steven Given this record, the pronounce-
Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that ments of the Commander-in-Chief were
democracy does not typically succumb hardly an accurate depiction of our
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 27
Union. Last year, the Washington Post comment reflected intentional discrim- midterms, Election Night also brought
noted, Trump’s actions prompted some ination in immigration policy; and fought eleven women—the first trans woman
eight thousand seven hundred protests the election-integrity commission, which, and the first Asian-American and Latina
across the country. The A.C.L.U., which stymied by its lack of progress, was dis- women among them—into that state’s
greeted the incoming Administration banded last month. legislative body.
by saying, “We’ll See You in Court,” has There is also a direct line connecting The amorphous shock and outrage
sued the Administration over DACA, the Trump’s election with the many wom- of a year ago have given way to the broad
rescission of Obama-era guidelines con- en’s marches that have taken place across contours of a movement. Trump’s au-
cerning the use of drones, the travel ban, the country and with the #MeToo move- thoritarian tendencies have been met by
the case of an undocumented teen who ment that emerged last fall. The cultural a majority in both houses of Congress,
was refused access to an abortion, and tide that saw the resignations of elected led by a stunningly pliable Republican
that of a ten-year-old girl with cerebral officials that included Senator Al Fran- Party. (At the State of the Union, Dem-
palsy, who was detained at the border ken and Representatives John Conyers ocrats registered dissent by boycotting,
rather than being allowed to return to and Trent Franks was, on many levels, dressing in black, and wearing kente
her family. (The A.C.L.U. of Virginia a backlash against the conditions that cloth and purple ribbons.) That con-
also sued for the right of alt-right pro- allowed Trump to win the Presidency junction has made it far easier for the
testers to gather in a Charlottesville despite his accusers’ credible allegations President to achieve his agenda than for
park—a decision that had disastrous of harassment and assault. The energy concerned citizens to place barriers in
consequences when, predictably, they of that moment has resulted in record his path. These are perilous times. But
resorted to violence against counter- numbers of female candidates running it’s possible, when looking from just the
demonstrators.) The N.A.A.C.P. has for office. While the main narrative of right angle and at exactly the right mo-
challenged Trump’s ruling on Haitians; the wave of victories in the Virginia ment, to discern something that looks
sued the Department of Homeland Se- House of Delegates last November was strikingly similar to inspiration.
curity, arguing that Trump’s “shithole” its potential as a predictor of the 2018 —Jelani Cobb
THE BOARDS if she moves, they propel her. But they Magee, the Left Winger, hovered in her
WINGS also work in an abstract way, making orbit. “Greetings, Prophet! The Great
shapes like images from religious ico- Work begins,” Pfitsch announced as she
nography. And they reflect her emotional rose, facing in this instance an empty
state—they show her anger, her fear, her bed, upon which Prior Walter, played by
insecurity.” Andrew Garfield, is to cower.
The six Shadows—all of whom are The Shadows spun her slowly around
new to the production, which is trans- as she spoke, and the wings, which are
hen Tony Kushner’s “Angels in ferring from the National Theatre in built from layers of tattered linen and
W America” opened on Broadway,
in 1993, the part of the Angel was played
London, where it débuted last year—
gathered with Caldwell in a studio in
crinoline on an articulated wood-and-
carbon-fibre frame, swirled around
by an athletic Ellen McLaughlin, who, Dumbo to rehearse the Angel’s first ex- her like the skirts of a ball gown. The
suspended from a pair of twin guy wires, tended confrontation with Prior Wal- pair of wings with which the actors were
flew twenty feet above the stage. At the ter, the character at the center of Kush- rehearsing had been brought over from
same time, she maneuvered a tremen- ner’s opus, who is suffering from AIDS.
dous pair of wings: a steel frame glued The Shadows sat in a circle on the floor.
all over with feathers—real and fake— Lucy York, the right wing bearer, was
attached to a sturdy corset. new to puppetry, and to the challenges
In the Broadway revival of the play, of appearing both visible and invisible
which begins previews later this month, to the audience. “Everything else is quite
the wings have metastasized. They have naturalistic, and then we are, like, Hello! ”
their own supporting cast: a team of six she said.
performers, known in the production as “We are not people that hide behind
Shadows. Four of them lift the Angel beds,” Curt James, the show’s associate
off the earth, and two of them manipu- director for puppetry and movement,
late one eight-foot wing each, holding said. “We are absolutely a part of her,
them aloft with the use of a handle and and a part of the action in the scene.”
a pole. “The wings are used in three ways,” They ran it through. The Angel—
Finn Caldwell, the show’s puppetry-and- played by Jane Pfitsch, who is normally
movement director, who designed the a Shadow but is understudying the Angel
wings along with the puppet-maker Nick on Broadway—was hoisted into the air
Barnes, explained the other day. “Primar- by a huddle of the three remaining wing-
ily, they are used in an anatomical way: less Shadows, while York and Rowan
28 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
London, but new ones were under plications of AIDS in 1986, was an im- African diaspora. She Googled “birth-
construction for Broadway. “Obviously, portant mentor to a young New York real- right” and “Africa,” and was pleased to
the Angel is quite destroyed in the show— estate developer by the name of Donald learn that one did—at least in theory.
she is glorious and decrepit at the same Trump. “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Pres- In 2005, Walla Elsheikh, a former
time,” Caldwell said. “The wings are sup- ident Trump reportedly exploded after Goldman Sachs associate whose father
posed to look old and damaged, but these Jeff Sessions recused himself from the had been a Sudanese diplomat, heard a
ones actually are old and damaged.” Justice Department’s Russia investigation. friend rave about a Taglit trip. She reg-
Afterward, the team talked through “It’s sort of like Tony wrote it for now,” istered a Web site with the name Birth-
the Angel’s emotional state, and how Caldwell said. “There’s a sense that the right AFRICA. She let the idea marinate,
they might best represent it with the world is ending—that everybody’s world and nothing much happened, until she
wing movement. Should they flap while in the play is ending.” He recalled a line got a Facebook message from Johnson.
she’s twirling? Should they pulse while delivered by the Angel a few pages on The two began a correspondence and
she is still? James suggested ways in which from the section they had just finished eventually decided to launch the pro-
York and Magee might bring life to the rehearsing: “Before Life on Earth be- gram together. In October, 2016, John-
wings with slight movements. “It’s, like, comes finally merely impossible / It will son, who is thirty-three, and Elsheikh,
my foot might be tapping—like my body for a long time before have become com- who is thirty-eight, travelled to Ghana,
giving away what’s in my brain,” he said. pletely unbearable.” Greetings, Prophet, where they met local entrepreneurs and
Caldwell showed how a cunning lift of indeed. They would get to it next time, saw relevant sights: everything from the
1
the wings at just the right moment could wings and all. notorious Cape Coast Castle, the cen-
enhance the audience’s sense that the —Rebecca Mead ter of the transatlantic slave trade, with
Angel is not just an actor being hefted its “door of no return,” to W. E. B. Du
around the stage, but a heavenly being FIELD TRIP DEPT. Bois’s last home, in Accra.
descending to earth, toe first. ROOTS Elsheikh, who grew up in Uganda,
In the new production, which is di- Sudan, and Sweden, said, “Ghana is re-
rected by Marianne Elliott, the Angel is ally seen as the gateway to Africa. Birth-
zombie-like and haggard—a celestial right AFRICA is built around the Gha-
being for a world that has fallen further naian principal of sankofa—in order to
even than might have been imagined know where you’re going, you have to
when the play premièred. After the re- know where you’re from.” The organi-
hearsal, Caldwell reflected upon Kush- hen Ashley Johnson, an artist zation has, to date, financed a trip en-
ner’s eerie prescience in “Angels in Amer-
ica,” whose dramatis personae include
W from Chicago, heard about Taglit-
Birthright—the program offering trips
abling seven young Americans to make
the journey.
Roy Cohn, the lawyer and fixer, played to Israel for young Americans of Jewish One evening, a City University pro-
by a snarling, charismatic Nathan Lane. descent—she wondered why a similar gram called Black Male Initiative,
The real-life Cohn, who died from com- program didn’t exist for people of the which supports access to higher edu-
cation for students from underrepre-
sented demographics, held a fund-raiser,
in part for Birthright AFRICA. The m.c.
was Jeff Gardere, also known as Dr. Jeff,
a popular TV psychologist (Orion TV’s
“Lauren Lake’s Paternity Court,” Reelz’s
“They Got Away with It”). Lots of B.M.I.
students attended the event, which fea-
tured an open bar and trays of choco-
late desserts. Guests could be overheard
chatting about clubbing (“We used to
slow-jam at Leviticus back in the day”)
and medical appointments (“Black men
don’t like two things: prostate exams
and therapy”).
All CUNY B.M.I. students of African
descent between the ages of eighteen and
thirty are eligible to apply for free Birth-
right AFRICA trips. Those who make the
cut, Gardere said, explaining the program
to the crowd, will first visit the African
Burial Ground National Monument, in
downtown Manhattan, and the National
“Will this take me where I want to go, no questions asked?” Museum of African American History
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fat liar.” a lot of issues were now getting shut about taking it further.” Then, “Think
—Michael Schulman down.” She wondered, How can I about stillness.” After twenty minutes,
get them moving? By summertime, she asked everyone to stop: “Think
RESISTANCE DEPT. she had opened her workshop to the about alternatives to protest.” The
INTERPRETIVE PROTEST public. dancers milled. Soon, everyone had
“A verbal landscape may define us joined hands and was weaving in and
more starkly,” she said. “But when we out of one another’s port de bras—
start moving we realize that the uni- Matisse’s “La Danse” meets sea anem-
verse is teeming with options.” She one. “Remember to not only do what’s
was delighted by the turnout—people best for the group, but also what feels
of all backgrounds, some of them weary true to you,” Sigman advised.
concerned citizen searching for of posing for Instagram at marches. The female dancers joined together,
A her place in the resistance but at
a loss for words might head over to
“We’re not signing a petition, we’re
not clicking on Facebook, we’re part
encircling “him” in a kind of cage. Then,
without a word, they lifted their arms
Gibney Dance Center, across from of the resistance by living a certain and let him go.
City Hall, in lower Manhattan, for a way,” she said. —Betsy Morais
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 33
ter of individual misbehavior, which,
AMERICAN CH RONICLES various studies have shown, most pre-
vention programs do little to change. But
SAFER SPACES
Hirsch and Mellins think about sexual
assault socio-ecologically: as a matter of
how people act within a particular envi-
Could small changes in campus life reduce the risk of sexual assault? ronment. They are doggedly optimistic
that there is, if not a single fix, a series
BY JIA TOLENT I NO of new solutions.
A four-year residential college is what
sociologists call a total institution: it con-
trols the conditions under which stu-
f I were asked by a survey to describe in an extended risk simulation—after dents eat, sleep, work, and party. “You
Icollege,
my experience with sexual assault in
I would pinpoint two inci-
talking with Jennifer Hirsch and Claude
Ann Mellins, at Columbia University’s
can just imagine all these contextual di-
mensions in college that could be tin-
dents, both of which occurred at or Mailman School of Public Health, in kered with to create a less stressful, less
after parties in my freshman year. In Washington Heights, on a biting, windy hard-drinking, more respectful environ-
the first case, the guy went after me day last December. Hirsch, an anthro- ment,” Hirsch said. The assumption is
with sniper accuracy, magnanimously pologist, and Mellins, a clinical psychol- that some college students are commit-
giving me a drink he’d poured upstairs. ogist, are Columbia professors. Both ting sexual assault when they don’t
In 2015, Columbia launched SHIFT, an unprecedented, wide-ranging study of the sexual behavior of undergraduates.
In the second case, I’m sure the guy had women are in their fifties, have shoulder- intend to, and that many are more vul-
no idea that he was doing something length brown hair, and grew up in Jew- nerable to sexual harm than they ought
wrong. I had joined a sorority, and all my ish families in Manhattan. They share a to be. Either idea can be controversial,
social circles were as sloppy, intense, and sharp, maternal pragmatism—between and focussing on contributing factors,
tribal as the Greek system—the groups them, they have five sons, ranging in age such as drinking, rather than just on the
that made these incidents possible are the from fifteen to twenty-three. For the past bad acts of perpetrators, can seem be-
same ones that made my life at the time three years, they have been leading a side the point. But Hirsch and Mellins
so good. In college, everything is Janus- $2.2-million research project on the sex- insist that their approach to prevention
faced: what you interpret as refuge can ual behavior of Columbia undergradu- does not ignore personal responsibility;
lead to danger, and vice versa. One of the ates. The project is called SHIFT, which rather, it aims to nudge students toward
most highly valorized social activities, stands for the Sexual Health Initiative responsible behavior on a collective scale.
blacking out and hooking up, holds the to Foster Transformation. The first time we met, on Columbia’s
potential for trauma within it like a seed. The problem of campus sexual as- main campus, Hirsch put it to me more
I got to thinking about this—and pic- sault can seem unfathomable and intrac- plainly: “We have to stop working one
turing my college self as a sort of avatar table. We generally think of it as a mat- penis at a time!”
34 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY CHLOE SCHEFFE
SHIFT was born out of a crisis. In in front of the Barnard gates, in 1988. responsibilities, including case managers,
the past several years, as students all The Columbia University Senate passed investigators, and administrators, and pro-
over the country became more vocal the first school-wide sexual-assault pol- vides free legal services to accusers and
about the problem of rape in college, icy in 1995—it required that complaints accused. The school’s gender-based mis-
the press seized on a series of dramatic be handled through an alternative form conduct policy is thirty-one pages long.
incidents, including one at Columbia. of the school’s standard disciplinary pro-
A rare combination of academic talent cedure. Student activists weren’t satisfied: reshman year at Columbia, as at
and initiative was then unleashed by
the university, which may have felt the
they wanted the deans who handled
sexual-assault cases to receive additional
F any college, can be overwhelming:
awkward encounters at parties in the
need to demonstrate its commitment training, and they wanted to know how “social dorm,” where the long wooden
to the cause, and this produced, after many incidents were being reported. doors can be taken down to serve as
two years of sunup-to-sundown effort, They staged a prolonged campaign that beer-pong tables; a rush to find a home
the most rigorous, nuanced, and wide- culminated, in 1999, in a twenty-three- base in extracurriculars and clubs. Ju-
ranging examination of the problem hour vigil, during which hundreds of liana Kaplan, a Barnard junior, told me,
that has ever been carried out on a col- students marched through campus “On the one hand, you have kids at
lege campus. “It’s better for universi- shouting, “Red tape can’t cover up rape!” Columbia who come from kings of
ties if sexual assault is positioned as a Seven years ago, the Office of Civil Wall Street—you have a secret society
matter of sexual health, rather than as Rights, under President Obama, issued a based completely on wealth. On the
a scary threat,” the journalist Vanessa “Dear Colleague” letter, reasserting that other, you have a demographic of
Grigoriadis, who published a book last sexual violence on campus was a viola- first-generation, low-income students
year, “Blurred Lines,” about sexual as- tion of Title IX, and pushing universities of color. People come in through very
sault on campus, told me. She added, to handle sexual-assault cases in a timely, different contexts.” When I asked her
“We’re in a new phase of the movement.” transparent, accuser-friendly manner. A about the tenor of student conversa-
year later, the Department of Justice ex- tion on sexual assault, she told me, “I
ou can trace that movement back panded its definition of rape to include try to remember that some people have
Y at least four decades, to 1977, when
a senior at Yale named Ann Olivarius—
male victims and multiple types of viola-
tions. (The previous definition—“the car-
been super aware of these issues for
their whole life, due to any number of
along with another student, three grad- nal knowledge of a female, forcibly and factors, and then there are some peo-
uates, and a male professor—sued the against her will”—had been in place since ple, such as men, who have to actively
school, citing quid-pro-quo sexual ha- 1927.) Today, the D.O.J. defines sexual as- learn about it while they’re here.”
rassment by professors, a hostile envi- sault as unwanted sexual contact, which Five years ago, a Columbia sopho-
ronment, and a lack of reporting proce- means that groping counts, as does at- more named Emma Sulkowicz filed a
dures. The plaintiffs, advised by a recent tempted assault. The crime hinges on in- complaint with the university, accusing
Yale Law graduate named Catharine tention, and there are often no witnesses, another student of rape. (Sulkowicz,
MacKinnon, argued that this was a vi- which makes it uniquely difficult to ad- who has been working as an artist since
olation of Title IX—the federal statute, judicate in any legal system, let alone one graduation, identifies as non-binary, and
passed five years before, that prohibits made up of college administrators. Cam- uses the gender-neutral pronouns “they”
gender discrimination in educational in- pus judiciary systems don’t have a crim- and “them.”) A consensual encounter
stitutions. The women lost the case, but inal court’s investigative powers or evi- on the first day of the school year had
the district court ruled that it was “per- dentiary procedures, but they do have turned violent, Sulkowicz alleged: in
fectly reasonable to maintain that aca- many of a criminal court’s responsibili- the midst of sex, the student anally pen-
demic advancement conditioned upon ties. To complicate matters further, ev- etrated and choked them while they
submission to sexual demands consti- eryone involved in the process—accuser, struggled and told him to stop. (He has
tutes sex discrimination in education.” accused, administrator—essentially works consistently maintained that the entire
Two years later, MacKinnon published under the same roof. Betsy DeVos,Trump’s encounter was consensual.) Sulkowicz
her landmark book, “Sexual Harassment Secretary of Education, has called the decided to report the incident after an-
of Working Women,” which argued that current approach a “failed system,” and other student said that she’d had a sim-
“economic power is to sexual harassment said that she would seek to replace it. ilar experience with the same man.
as physical force is to rape.” It might seem simpler to let the crim- Columbia held a series of hearings and
The proper scope of Title IX was ar- inal-justice system handle things, but uni- found the man “not responsible,” and
gued in court over and over in the years versities have a responsibility to insure Sulkowicz was subsequently denied an
that followed; rulings narrowed its ap- that women have equal access to educa- appeal. The following April, twenty-
plication, then expanded it again. Mean- tion. And, in addition, many students pre- three students and alumni, each with a
while, anti-rape activism progressed on fer to address these matters outside that story of assault, filed a hundred-page
campuses across the country. Take Back system—they don’t necessarily want to federal complaint against the university.
the Night marches, which had begun in send their assaulters to prison, and they Student activists formed a group called
the seventies, became a feature of col- may not be able to prove their cases be- No Red Tape, evoking the protests of
lege life in the eighties; Columbia’s first yond a reasonable doubt. Columbia now the nineties. When the fall semester
Take Back the Night march was held, has twenty-three staffers with Title IX began, Sulkowicz, an art major, started
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 35
carrying a fifty-pound, twin XL mat- cents who had been infected with H.I.V. pus assault; last year, she wrote a piece
tress around campus. It was a perfor- in the womb or as infants. She knew for HuffPost criticizing the notion that
mance project: they would stop carry- something about discussing uncomfort- “true stranger rapes” are any more seri-
ing it, they said, when the student who able matters with young people, and ous than those committed by people who
had raped them was expelled. (Sulko- quantifying those conversations for re- know their victims.) She asked to move
wicz carried it until graduation; the man search purposes. She answered Hirsch’s out of her dorm room, and alleges that
they accused later sued Columbia, ar- questions, and started asking her own. Columbia violated Title IX by requir-
guing that the university’s support of Hirsch looked at her closely. “Do you ing her to do so within twenty-four
the project, for which Sulkowicz had want to do this with me?” she asked. hours, and telling her it would cost five
received academic credit, constituted They spent the next few weeks brain- hundred dollars. Columbia has moved
gender discrimination, negligence, and storming—on the phone, over e-mail, to dismiss Roskin-Frazee’s lawsuit, ar-
intentional infliction of emotional dis- in each other’s offices, on whiteboards. guing that she obstructed her own in-
tress. The university settled with him They thought about the relevant exper- vestigation by waiting months to file an
out of court.) Soon after Sulkowicz tise of their colleagues. Who really knew official report. In October of last year,
began carrying the mattress, dozens of about interpersonal violence? Who re- with a group of protesters, Roskin-Frazee
other Columbia students brought mat- ally knew about epidemiology? Statis- barged into one of Goldberg’s law classes
tresses to the steps of Low Library and tics? Trauma in young adults? As the to publicly accuse her of endangering
told their own stories of sexual assault. fall turned crisp, they tracked down the student survivors.
It was around this time that Jennifer faculty members whose help they
Hirsch attended a meeting of Colum- wanted, and asked them if they would he creation of SHIFT was announced
bia’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality
Studies Council, where faculty members
join SHIFT. In November, 2014, they
submitted their proposal, and Goldberg
T to the university at the end of Feb-
ruary, 2015, in an e-mail from President
gathered in a conference room and picked quickly secured the university’s approval. Bollinger. Hirsch and Mellins began so-
over a catered breakfast. She sat next to Goldberg, who is in her mid-fifties liciting applications for a paid under-
Suzanne Goldberg, who at the time was and speaks with a flat, equanimous affect, graduate advisory board, ultimately se-
a special adviser to Columbia’s president, became Columbia’s first executive vice- lecting a dozen or so students, including
Lee Bollinger, on the subject of sexual- president for university life in 2015. She members of the Greek system, student-
assault prevention and response. The de- has a long career of progressive advo- government leaders, a ballerina in Co-
bates concerning rape on campus and cacy—she was a co-counsel for the de- lumbia’s General Studies program, anti-
what to do about it have been waged pri- fendants in Lawrence v. Texas, which sexual-assault activists, a sex educator, a
marily between students and adminis- nullified Texas’s sodomy law. She leads Barnard student, and an R.A. For the
trators, with professors off to the side. Columbia Law School’s Center for Gen- next two years, when school was in ses-
Hirsch had become frustrated by the der and Sexuality Law, and she was in- sion, the group met over bagels at
focus, in those debates, on adjudication tegral to the development of SHIFT. (“We 8 A.M. every Monday. The board created
and punishment, rather than on the ways had many breakfasts,” Hirsch explained.) a typology of Columbia students—the
in which the environment of college But she has become a maligned figure hyper-involved, the completely disinter-
makes students vulnerable. As the meet- among student activists. Amelia Roskin- ested, the kids who find their thing and
ing ended, and people began collecting Frazee, a senior involved with No Red stick to it—and corrected the research-
their things, Hirsch turned to Goldberg Tape, spoke to me dismissively about ers in their sometimes fumbling attempts
and spontaneously proposed conducting the Sexual Respect Initiative, a con- to classify student identities. (Each time
an ethnography: she would interview stu- sent-education requirement, instituted they pointed out such a mistake, one stu-
dents, learn the everyday context of their by Goldberg in 2014, that included an dent-board member told me, the re-
sex lives, document the stories that the arts option: students could write a poem, searchers’ eyes would pop in surprise, and
university couldn’t see. Goldberg said that submit a drawing, or perform a dance. then they’d come back the next week
sounded terrific, and told Hirsch to write When I asked Goldberg about this crit- saying, “We had seventeen meetings since
up a few pages pitching the project. icism, she said, “The initiative meets stu- the last time we saw you, and we’re going
A couple of weeks later, Hirsch dents where they are.” to do what you say.”) The students
popped into Mellins’s office, two floors Roskin-Frazee is a queer activist who, planned promotional events, setting up
down from hers in the Mailman build- at fourteen, founded a nonprofit that SHIFT tables outside the dining hall and
ing. The two professors have been friends provides schools and shelters with the gym. They brought the researchers,
since 2005, when Hirsch, who teaches in L.G.B.T.Q.-themed books. She is cur- who answered questions for students,
the sociomedical-sciences department, rently suing Columbia. She says that, and made sure they always had snacks.
began doing work at the H.I.V. center two months after arriving on campus, “Snacks, we learned, were a really big
at Columbia, which Mellins co-directs. she was violently raped in her dorm thing,” Hirsch said.
Hirsch handed Mellins the paper she’d room by a stranger, and that, a few Meanwhile, Hirsch and the Columbia
drafted, and began peppering her with months later, she was raped again, by sociologist Shamus Khan prepared a
questions. Mellins was the lead author an assailant she suspects to be the same team of ethnographers—current and
of a 2011 study into the mental health, person. (She told me more than once recent grad students, who were close
drug use, and sexual behavior of adoles- that she knew this was not a typical cam- to their subjects in age—to talk with
36 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
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undergraduates about intimate subjects. good, consensual research behavior”— servations, and Mellins brought up affir-
These interviews would be the first big he announced his name and his pur- mative consent—the practice of actively,
component of SHIFT’s information-gath- pose, along with a disclaimer about mutually soliciting enthusiasm through-
ering. The ethnographers began, that fall, confidentiality, before entering a con- out a sexual encounter, which is now
with “participant observation”—i.e., versation. He and the other researchers the legal standard for universities in
hanging around football games and conducted one-on-one interviews with New York and California. Most college
drinking club soda at student bars. Shortly a hundred and fifty-one students about students learn about it in orientation
afterward, a story appeared in the stu- their sex lives and their experiences at seminars or from online modules that
dent newspaper the Daily Spectator, in Columbia. (Students were paid for the they are required to complete. Mellins
which an unnamed sophomore said that time they spent in these interviews.) told the administrators that affirmative
Khan had been spotted taking notes at Hirsch and Khan sorted through the consent rarely factored into the experi-
1020, a popular bar near campus. (The data and adjusted their approach when ences that students were describing.
plans for the ethnographic research had they weren’t getting all the information “One of our institutional advisers
been announced in the Daily Spectator they needed. Wamboldt was hired to pretty much fell off her chair,” Mellins
months before.) The story was picked focus on so-called high-status men, such told me. “She said, ‘How can it not be
up by the Post, which reported that “Co- as those involved in athletics and fra- a thing? We’re working so hard to teach
lumbia University researchers are spying ternities, a group of students who hadn’t, them.’ And our point was: there’s a re-
on the school’s students at bars and cam- up to that point, spoken much with the ally broad disjuncture between what
pus parties as part of a new study about ethnographers, perhaps wary of the pos- students learn and what they actually
sexual health and violence—and the stu- sibility that they’d be portrayed badly in practice.” The researchers found that
dents say it’s creeping them out.” whatever the researchers wrote up. the practice is much simpler to under-
In fact, by all accounts, the process The interviews were bracing. Talk- stand than its detractors, who tend to
went pretty smoothly. Some students, ing about sex brings a lot to the sur- picture a stack of paperwork accompa-
after talking to the researchers for a while, face—students discussed loss, family, nying every make-out session, seem to
invited them to parties, or to kick it in trauma, hardship, fear. Some of the think—and also less common than its
dorm rooms. Many university employ- men Wamboldt spoke to cracked proponents would like to believe. (SHIFT
ees are required to report sexual assault offhand jokes about having been raped. plans to publish a paper on affirmative
to the Title IX coördinator, but the re- The members of the ethnography team consent later this year.)
searchers received a waiver so that they soon decided that they needed to do a
could promise students confidentiality mental-health check-in at their weekly irsch and Mellins launched the
while engaged in SHIFT research. Alex-
ander Wamboldt, an affable, bearded
meetings: they would go around the
room, and everyone would relate how
H second phase of the study, an
enormous daily-diary project, in Oc-
Princeton Ph.D. who worked as a SHIFT he or she was coping with the work. tober. Four hundred and twelve stu-
ethnographer, told me that it was im- In one advisory-board meeting, Mel- dents were asked to fill out a short on-
portant, in these encounters, to “model lins and Hirsch shared preliminary ob- line questionnaire every day for sixty
days. (The student board convinced
the researchers that the only way to
maintain subject participation through
midterms was to pay: diarists got a dol-
lar an entry.) The idea was that re-
searchers would be able to quickly scan
each twenty-four-hour period for mood,
sleep, sexual activity, substance use, and
unusual experiences. The pool of data
could then be parsed for patterns and
fine-grained interactions. Researchers
might find, for example, that unwanted
sexual contact is more likely to occur
in the midst of other crises, or after a
person has experienced unwanted sex-
ual attention in another setting.
In January, 2016, the SHIFT team re-
cruited students for Part 3: a sweeping,
onetime survey. The student board roped
in peers with the promise of gift cards,
and by talking to them about how im-
portant the project was, how it could
show that Columbia took sexual assault
“I was almost like Robin Hood. I took from the rich, but then I kept it.” more seriously than other universities,
and how, if they participated, they’d get experience at school, a lack of confu- students are especially vulnerable to as-
snacks. (Students who took the survey sion about what I wanted sex to be. My sault; SHIFT found that students who are
in SHIFT’s temporary office got fruit, vulnerabilities—a certain recklessness, struggling to pay for basic necessities
candy, pizza, and chips.) a freshman-year social life that depended are, too. Men in fraternities are, in fact,
The survey contains hundreds of ques- on spaces and substances provided by more likely than other male students to
tions, many of them startlingly intimate. men—were just as clear. I could see the be perpetrators; SHIFT found that they
It seems likely that no previous survey desires and the habits, sexual and oth- were more likely than other men to be
has so accurately reflected how sexual as- erwise, that traced the path between victims as well. A culture that doesn’t
sault actually occurs in college—as an then and now. I started to wonder if the teach men to ask for consent often
event embedded within the fabric of ev- research that SHIFT is pro- doesn’t teach them that they
eryday life, which both perpetrator and ducing might start closing can withhold it, either.
the victim understand based on their back- the gap between two seem- Hirsch and Mellins
ground, their habits, their state of mind. ingly contradictory reali- avoid the term “rape cul-
The survey asks students about sleep, ex- ties. Sexual assault on cam- ture” when discussing their
ercise, eating habits, mental health, where pus is frequently portrayed work. I’ve never liked that
they get alcohol, what sort of dorm room as lurid and dark and com- phrase, not because it doesn’t
they live in, where they party and how. It plex. But the experiences name something real but
asks about money, family, friends, their that live in our heads are because it emphasizes the
sexual experiences before college, their often obvious and ordinary, way that the world is al-
sense of agency and of self-worth. It asks sometimes heartbreakingly ready prepared to hurt me,
about gender identity and attraction, about so. SHIFT is, in a sense, a reporting proj- rather than emphasizing my personal,
the moments just before an incident— ect of unprecedented scale, a map that and not entirely predictable, relation-
who was around, what was happening— genuinely reflects the size of the terri- ship to the world. (As Jennifer Doyle,
and what followed, immediately and in tory. It could be one of the first endeav- an English professor at the University
the long term. It asks about consent: if ors to show the magnitude and the tex- of California, Riverside, puts it in her
students expect their partners to ask, if ture of the problem at the same time. book “Campus Sex, Campus Security,”
they think it’s a matter of body language, the term distances sexual violence from
if they think that asking once at the be- HIFT’s research concluded in the fall “the force of the ordinary.”) Hirsch and
ginning of a hookup is fine. It asks about
attitudes regarding sex and gender, suss-
Sanalyzing
of 2017. Since then, the team has been
the data and preparing to pub-
Mellins often talk about “sexual citizen-
ship,” which they define as a “person’s
ing out common cultural biases: To what lish a slew of papers about the results in understanding of his or her right, and
degree do they think that women lie to peer-reviewed journals. (In December, other people’s equivalent right, to sex-
get ahead? Do they think that men should Hirsch and Khan sold a book about SHIFT, ual self-determination.” In the confer-
reveal vulnerability? Do they believe that tentatively titled “The Sexual Project,” to ence room at the Mailman building,
it can’t be rape if both people are drunk? Norton, to be published in 2019.) The Hirsch told me, “Part of what I see our
Are they not at all sure, a little sure, some- first paper, which appeared in the open- work doing is disrupting these scripts
what sure, pretty sure, or very sure that access online journal PLOS ONE in No- that women give consent and men se-
they could say no to having sex with some- vember, laid out what the team learned cure it—that men are sexual agents and
one if they want to date that person? What about the frequency of sexual assault at women are gatekeepers, which is affirmed
if they want the person to fall in love with Columbia. Sexual-assault research is no- by consent education that frames men
them, or if the person won’t use a con- toriously contested and spotty—many exclusively as potential perpetrators.”
dom? What if they’ve had sex with the regularly cited statistics come from stud- “Of course, you don’t want to mini-
person before? ies with big design flaws, such as small mize the fact that women are still hold-
Twenty-five hundred Columbia and sample sizes, or loose definitions of “col- ing the burden on this, in terms of abso-
Barnard undergraduates were invited lege student.”The record-setting response lute numbers,” Mellins said. She hesi-
to participate in SHIFT’s survey, and rate for the SHIFT survey makes its data tated. “But you want to work in a way
sixty-seven per cent of them did so. I unusually comprehensive and reliable. In where there isn’t a single story.” A trans
took the survey myself one day at the certain important respects, its numbers student who is assaulted at a party is ex-
end of December—answering in the are in keeping with previous findings: a periencing something different from a
present, as a twenty-nine-year-old, and little more than one in five respondents freshman girl whose hookup is ignoring
thinking about how I would have an- said they had experienced sexual assault her protests in a dorm room. Both of
swered at eighteen. In the course of a since starting college—twenty-eight per them are experiencing something differ-
half hour, I felt nauseated, and then cent of women, twelve per cent of men, ent from a boy who has never imagined
oddly comforted, by how well the ques- and nearly forty per cent of gender-non- that he would ever give or receive a no.
tions were outlining my life. A detailed conforming students. (The survey did not Mellins pointed to an article about a
constellation emerged of all the things use the term “sexual assault”; it asked Brown University student who’d been as-
that had protected me in college: a about “unwanted sexual contact.”) But saulted in a bathroom by another man,
chemically stable disposition, satisfying there were also surprises. It’s long been and then, later that day, attended a stan-
relationships, a sense of control over my established that women and L.G.B.T.Q. dard prevention workshop, where he felt
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 39
entirely alone. “If you don’t give some- can retreat behind ‘Here’s a program, like we were just wasting our breath.”
one permission to be at risk, then they here’s a study, here’s a process,’ the less Would SHIFT make things different
can’t seek help,” Mellins said. that any human that finds themselves in at Columbia? “Every four years, there’s
The researchers discussed their find- this machine will ever be incentivized to a new student body, and I think Colum-
ings with the student board—they’re all act based on their moral compass.” bia is used to just waiting it out,” she
still in a group chat together—and also What if, I asked, the idea behind said. “But this time there are professors
with administrators. Certain fixes, they’ve the study was tinkering with the ma- involved. Shamus Khan is going to be
realized, are impossible to implement. chine, figuring out how to reorient that there, Jennifer Hirsch is going to be there.
All college students would benefit from moral compass? It’s up to Columbia if they want to shoot
drinking alcohol in a gentler manner: “That makes me think of asking some- themselves in the foot and ignore it, but
often with food, rarely in basements. But one to wash the dishes, and they tell you, people are actually paying attention to
colleges can’t encourage that among un- ‘I’ll try,’ ” Sulkowicz said. “I think that’s this.” She paused, and coffee-shop noises
derage students without breaking federal the difference between spending two tinkled in the background. “I mean, Co-
law. When I was talking with Hirsch and million dollars to try to understand the lumbia, you should want to solve the
Mellins, I thought about my own expe- conditions that create a community that’s problem, so you don’t keep having to solve
rience with the Greek system. The Na- conducive to sexual assault versus just the problem, you know what I mean?”
tional Panhellenic Conference, which ad- doing the right thing—expelling people
heres to rather antiquated gender norms, who sexually assault other students.” he question now is whether Co-
forbids sororities from holding parties
where alcohol is served—which means
Sulkowicz wants to change behavior,
too, but thinks that punishment is more
T lumbia values SHIFT as a flagship
research project or as a practical guide
that, at many schools, the most accessi- efficacious than tweaks to campus life. to institutional change. I asked Gold-
ble parties for freshmen take place on When Columbia settled the lawsuit filed berg, over the phone, whether she thought
fraternity terms, and on fraternity turf. by the man Sulkowicz accused of rape, Columbia would change after SHIFT.
Every school’s environment is differ- it put out a statement, noting that his She had spoken carefully throughout our
ent—where students drink, how they get “remaining time at Columbia became conversation, seeming to calibrate every
home from parties, the geographies and very difficult for him and not what Co- word against the various, sometimes com-
the conditions of their vulnerability— lumbia would want any of its students peting interests that she’s expected to
and the nudges and interventions have to experience.” But Sulkowicz believes balance. “I think,” she said, “that SHIFT’s
to vary accordingly. But Hirsch and Mel- that what he went through had a salu- research is profoundly important to the
lins hope that their research can serve as tary effect. “He’s been scared shitless,” work we are doing here.” It will be diffi-
the beginning of a network of innova- they said. (The man’s lawyer called this cult, under Title IX, for people who live
tive cross-campus studies. In the mean- statement “preposterous,” and said that or work on campus to entirely separate
time, they’re talking to administrators he had done nothing wrong.) sex from bureaucracy. When I asked Mel-
about the interrelationship of mental Sulkowicz also said something that lins what she hopes to ultimately accom-
health, substance abuse, and sexual as- I kept hearing from Columbia students: plish with SHIFT, she said, “I’m a clini-
sault, and about how different types of “It’s about finding a way to make your cian. I’ve come to feel that, if the work
incidents and different types of students institution, and the people who run it, we do makes the lives of even a small
require different types of prevention and more human.” Earlier that week, I’d spo- amount of students better, that’s what
response. Many of these conversations ken to a former SHIFT student-board we want. We want to eradicate sexual
have echoed long-standing conclusions member named Morgan Hughes, a laid- assault, but, short of that, I think we just
in public-health research, and also what back twenty-three-year-old hip-hop want to make a difference.”
some students are already asking for: more musician. She called me from a coffee The SHIFT approach, for all its rigor
crisis support, more consideration for shop in Cleveland, where she’d moved and scope, is in some ways remarkably
specific populations, more access to spaces after graduation. She had been a disen- modest: the idea is that small structural
on campus that feel like their own. “I’m gaged student, by her own account, adjustments to student life could change
grateful the SHIFT team chose to do this,” mainly focussed on her music. Her how students interact with one another—
Roskin-Frazee told me. “I hope they are friends at school, most of whom were help them find their moral compass more
persuasive to administrators who are not people of color, had found it difficult to easily, feel more at home on campus, have
easily persuaded.” secure space and permission from Co- some obstacles cleared out of their path.
lumbia to hold their own events, she These humble expectations can seem
ne night in January, I called Emma told me. “Everything is so regulated, so deflating. But SHIFT makes a powerful
O Sulkowicz to talk about Hirsch and
Mellins’s project. Sulkowicz was disarm-
limited, everything’s super uptight,” she
said. “Columbia always says they’re lis-
argument that sexual-violence preven-
tion must embrace the ordinary and the
ing and philosophical, despite having tening, taking students into account, particular. Its programming suggestions
spent five hours in the dentist’s chair ear- and then they turn around and make a may matter less than its potential to trans-
lier that day. Sulkowicz had not heard decision that doesn’t acknowledge any form how people think about the prob-
about SHIFT before, and was politely re- of that conversation. But SHIFT did lis- lem. At one point in my conversation
sistant to the idea: “My view in this whole ten. They changed their agenda based with Hirsch, she brought up an optimis-
thing is that, the more that Columbia on what we talked about. It didn’t feel tic analogy. Forty years ago, alcohol played
40 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
a role in more than sixty per cent of traffic
deaths. Since then, a comprehensive, mul- SHOU TS & MURMURS
tilevel campaign against drunk driving
has cut that number in half. This re-
quired institutional change, in the form
of new laws, and social change, as school
and community programs taught peo-
ple to designate a driver and to inter-
vene when a wobbly friend grabbed his
car keys. It also involved changes to the
physical environment: cities established
police checkpoints, and offenders were
required to install Breathalyzer locks on
their cars. Citizens lobbied for better
street lights, more speed bumps.
A version of this thinking applies to
life in college: there are checkpoints and
speed bumps that could decrease the
tial victims and potential perpetrators si- old chili. to as “fourth meal.”
multaneously, and that we are, at this The beer of the future will all be Everyone will be vegan in the fu-
moment, less eager to hurt one another rosé, rosé will be La Croix, and La ture, so eventually we’ll all run out
than we seem to be. Croix will literally rain down from of things to talk about.
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 41
fifty but looks almost two decades
ANNALS OF TECHNOLOGY younger. Born in Brooklyn, he grew up
in Puerto Rico before going to gradu-
JAMBUSTERS
ate school in Rochester, where he is
now a fixture of the city’s wintertime
indoor beach-volleyball scene. Wear-
Who you gonna call? ing designer sneakers, hip-hugging
maroon trousers, a trim plaid shirt
B Y J O S H UA R O T H M A N rolled to the elbows, and elegant stub-
ble, he began to pace in front of a
whiteboard.
Bruce Thompson, the computer
uilding 111 on the Xerox engineer- process, the paper was supposed to modeller who sat at the head of the
B ing campus, near Rochester, New
York, is vast and labyrinthine. On the
cross a gap; flung from the top of a ro-
tating belt, it needed to soar through
table, had spent days creating a simula-
tion of the jam. “We’re dealing with a
social-media site Foursquare, one vis- space until it could be sucked upward highly nonlinear entity moving at a very
itor writes that it’s “like Hotel Califor- by a vacuum pump onto another belt, high speed,” he said. On the screen, his
nia.” Conference Room C, near the which was positioned upside down. wireframes showed a sheet of paper in
southwest corner, is small and dingy; Unfortunately, the press was in a hot mid-flight. He called up a shadowy
it contains a few banged-up white- and humid place, and the paper, nor- slow-motion video made inside the
For printer engineers, solving paper jams is “the ultimate challenge,” combining physics, chemistry, and programming.
boards and a table. On a frigid winter mally lissome, had become listless. At press. “There’s a good inch before the
afternoon, a group of engineers gath- the apex of its trajectory, at the mo- vacuum takes effect,” he observed.
ered there, drawing the shades against ment when it was supposed to connect The team began to consider their
the late-day sun. They wanted to see with the conveyor belt, its back corners options. The most obvious fix would
more clearly the screen at the front of drooped. They dragged on the plat- have been to buffet the paper upward
the room, on which a computer model form below, and, like a trapeze flier from below using a device called an air
of a paper jam was projected. missing a catch, the paper sank down- knife. This was off limits, however, be-
The jam had occurred in Asia, ward. As more sheets rushed into the cause the bottom side was coated with
where the owners of a Xerox-manu- same space, they created a pile of loops loose toner. “An air knife will just blow
factured printing press were trying to and curlicues—what the jam engineers the toner right off,” Ruiz said. Another
print a book. The paper they had fed called a “flower arrangement.” possibility was to place “fingers”—small,
into the press was unusually thin and “It’s the worst-case scenario,” Erwin projecting pieces of plastic—where they
light, of the sort found in a phone Ruiz, the leader of the paper-jam team, could support the corners as they began
book or a Bible. This had not gone said. In the study of paper jams, Ruiz to droop. “That might create a higher
well. Midway through the printing has found his Fountain of Youth: he is jam rate on different paper shapes,” an
42 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL SAVAGE
engineer said—it could be a “stub point.” chine and I can’t get it out!” The em- There are many loose ends in high-
A mystified silence descended. ployees in Mike Judge’s 1999 film tech life. Like unbreachable blister
A mechanical engineer named Dave “Office Space” grow so frustrated with packs or awkward sticky tape, paper
Breed pointed toward the upside- their jam-prone printer that they de- jams suggest that imperfection will
down conveyor belt. “The vacuum pump stroy it with a baseball bat in a slow- persist, despite our best efforts. They’re
actually works by pulling air through motion montage set to the Geto Boys’ also a quintessential modern prob-
holes in the belts,” he said. “So what is “Still.” (Office workers around the lem—a trivial consequence of an oth-
the pattern of those holes relative to the country routinely reënact this scene, erwise efficient technology that’s been
corners? Maybe there’s no suction there.” posting the results on YouTube.) Ac- made monumentally annoying by the
On the whiteboard, Ruiz sketched cording to the Wall Street Journal, print- scale on which that technology has
a diagram of the conveyor belt—the ers are among the most in-demand ob- been adopted. Every year, printers get
V.P.T., or vacuum-paper transport— jects in “rage rooms,” where people pay faster, smarter, and cheaper. All the
showing the holes through which the to smash things with sledgehammers; same, jams endure.
suction operated. “Optimize belt pat- Battle Sports, a rage-room facility in
tern,” he wrote. Toronto, goes through fifteen a week. utenberg invented his printing
“If my understanding of air systems
is right,” Breed went on, “then the
Meanwhile, in the song “Paper Jam”
John Flansburgh, of the band They
G press around 1440; the modern
paper jam was invented around 1960.
force that gets a sheet moving isn’t Might Be Giants, sees the jam as a During most of the years in between,
really pressure—it’s flow.” stark moral test. “Paper jam/paper jam,” jamming was impossible, because
Thompson nodded, miming the he sings. “It would be so easy to walk printing was done one sheet at a time.
pushing of air away from himself with away.” Traditional presses lowered inked type
his hands. “It’s flow,” he concurred. Unsurprisingly, the engineers who onto individual sheets of paper; their
“Could we somehow create more specialize in paper jams see them successor, the rotary drum, was hand-
acquisition flow?” Breed asked. differently. Engineers tend to work in fed. In 1863, an inventor and newspa-
By this point, Ruiz appeared to be narrow subspecialties, but solving a per editor named William Bullock
vibrating. “Here’s a stupid idea,” he said. jam requires knowledge of physics, created the Bullock press, which was
“Bernoulli!” Bernoulli’s principle, dis- chemistry, mechanical engineering, fed by a single roll of paper several
covered in 1738, entails that fast-moving computer programming, and interface miles long. Bullock’s press revolution-
air exerts less air pressure than slow- design. “It’s the ultimate challenge,” ized the printing industry by vastly
moving air. Because the top side of an Ruiz said. increasing printing speeds. Sadly, in
airplane wing is flat, while the under- “I wouldn’t characterize it as annoy- 1867 Bullock’s leg was caught in the
side is curved, the air above moves faster ing,” Vicki Warner, who leads a team press; it became gangrenous, and he
than the air below, and the wing rises. of printer engineers at Xerox, said of died. There are jams worse than paper
“If you have jets of air shooting above discovering a new kind of paper jam. jams.
the corners, the airflow will lower the “I would characterize it as almost ex- The Bullock press was one of the
pressure, and they’ll lift,” Ruiz said. citing.” When she graduated from the first presses with a paper path, but by
Using the flat of his hand, he mimed Rochester Institute of Technology, in today’s standards its path was simple.
the paper levitating like a wing. 2006, her friends took jobs in trendy The most complex step, the composi-
“We could take the output from the fields, such as automotive design. tion of type, happened off-line; if a
vacuum pump and port it around to During her interview at Xerox, how- printer wanted to change the type, he
make it the air source for your Ber- ever, another engineer showed her the had to stop the press to reset it. The
noulli,” Breed said. inside of a printing press. All Xerox holy grail of printing—a paper path
“Stupid idea No. 7!” Ruiz said, grin- printers look basically the same: a that incorporated composition, and so
ning triumphantly. The whiteboard million-dollar printing press is like an could produce different pages, one
now contained an elaborate diagram office copier, but twenty-four feet long after another—remained inconceiv-
of rollers, conveyors, vacuum pumps, and eight feet high. Warner watched able. The creation of a miniature press,
air knives, air jets, stub points, and as the heavy, pale-gray double doors for use in offices, was an even wilder
fingers. “Jets on corners to lift with swung open to reveal a steampunk won- dream.
Bernoulli,” Ruiz wrote. Outside, the derland of gears, wheels, conveyor belts, The solution was xerography, in-
wind howled. Lake-effect snow had and circuit boards. As in an office copier, vented by Chester Carlson, the phys-
begun to dust the parking lot. The en- green plastic handles offer access to the icist co-founder of Xerox, in 1938. In
gineers were aglow: conspirators who’d “paper path”—the winding route, from xerography, static electricity quickly
just planned the perfect crime. “feeder” to “stacker,” along which sheets and precisely manipulates electrostat-
of paper are shocked and soaked, curled ically sensitive powdered ink—a.k.a.
ate in “Oslo,” J. T. Rogers’s recent and decurled, vacuumed and super- toner. As the term “photocopier” sug-
L play about the negotiation of the
Oslo Accords, diplomats are finalizing
heated. “Printers are essentially paper
torture chambers,” Warner said, smil-
gests, a xerographic machine is less
like a traditional printer and more
the document when one of them re- ing behind her glasses. “I thought, This like a darkroom. Using an early Xerox
ports a snag: “It’s stuck in the copy ma- is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” machine required placing an original
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 43
under a glass pane, reflecting light off
it onto a statically charged photosen-
sitive plate, using the charged plate to KOCHI BY THE SEA
draw toner from a tray, transferring
the toned image to plain paper, and The tin roof of the hospital has claw marks—
then melting the toner into the paper Bruised indigo
in a miniature electric oven. (Between
the charging of the plate and the ding The kind you left on your thigh
of the oven, or “fuser,” each copy took That awful night when no one could come near you.
around three minutes to make.) The
Xerox 914, introduced in 1959, auto- On the road from the hospital
mated this process. Caressed by sultry You pass me the prescription—Same?
secretaries in advertisements, it resem-
bled an instrument console from the I peer then nod, shortsighted already.
Starship Enterprise and shipped with You crane your neck, point out rain clouds
a fire extinguisher, in case its heating
elements set the paper alight; seven Noke—the sky has pink streaks shiny as a shell.
plain-paper copies per minute trun- You always saw those things so well
dled through its paper path. Between
1960 and 1979, the 914 earned Xerox You were the artistic one, keen and lovely.
around forty billion dollars—funding, I was your shadow self, strolling into water
among other things, the construction
of the corporate campus in Rochester, Lying in wait for boys
and jump-starting the development of So they could burn away the hurt in me
the personal computer, at Xerox PARC,
in California. (Xerox failed to capital- My hair black and angular
ize on the P.C. revolution; recently, Cut into wedge shapes, flapping like sails.
Fujifilm announced plans to acquire a
majority stake in the company.) Today, At six you hid in the attic
not all Xerox printers are xerographic;
many are ink-jets, which work by con-
verting an image into a waveform, much to reverse this process. When hundred and eighty-five degrees. “It’s
then using the waveform to control an paper gets too wet, it liquefies; when it like wringing a shirt through an old
ink nozzle. Almost all, however, follow gets too dry, it crumbles to dust. washing machine,” she said, miming the
the template of the 914 paper path: To a sheet of paper, a paper path is motion with her hands. Later, she gave
feeder, printer, fuser, stacker. like a Tough Mudder—a multistage ob- me a flowchart of the printing process;
Jams emerge from an elemental stacle course that must be run in hos- it featured a cartoon of a paper sheet,
struggle between the natural and the tile conditions. With a hint of swagger, its mouth agape in terror.
mechanical. “Paper isn’t manufac- Warner walked me through the paper Ruiz gestured down the length of
tured—it’s processed,” Warner said, as path of a hulking, truck-size iGen the iGen, which resembled many
we ambled among the copiers in a vast printing press (around a million dollars copiers daisy-chained together. “The
Xerox showroom with Ruiz and a few and a hundred and fifty pages per min- straighter the path, the less probabil-
other engineers. “It comes from living ute). “We start by sucking a sheet off ity of damaging the paper,” he ex-
things—trees—which are unique, just the stack with vacuum feeders,” she plained. For this reason, printing-press
like people are unique.” In Spain, paper said. “Then it travels along thirty feet paper paths tend to sprawl horizon-
is made from eucalyptus; in Kentucky, of path at one thousand three hundred tally. Office printers must be smaller,
from Southern pine; in the Northwest, and fifty millimetres per second, chang- and so their paths must fold back on
from Douglas fir. To transform these ing speed and direction at accelerations themselves, making a series of hairpin
trees into copy paper, you must first reaching 3g.” In xerographic printers, turns. “Think about being in a car,”
turn them into wood chips, which are she continued—she had to shout above Ruiz said. “The more turns you take,
then mashed into pulp. The pulp is the press’s vacuum pumps, which sound the more likely you are to get into an
bleached, and run through screens and like a copier’s, but louder—“the sheets accident.” Contemplating the “tight
chemical processes that remove biolog- are charged with sixty-five hundred radiuses” of office printers and their
ical gunk until only water and wood volts. In ink-jets, they’re soaked in liq- other daunting requirements—they
fibre remain. In building-size paper uid. Then we have to keep the image must be quiet, cheap, and low-power,
mills, the fibre is sprayed onto rollers from shaking or wiping off.” Warner and “people without master’s degrees”
turning thirty-five miles per hour, pointed to the back of the paper path, must be able to clear their jams—Ruiz
which press it into fat cylinders of where the fuser was situated: a set of shook his head with parental indul-
paper forty reams wide. It doesn’t take black rubber rollers heated to three gence. “For us, the smaller ones are
44 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
Nosh, Viavattine held the menu up to
the light to assess its “flocculation” (the
Scrawling half-inch creatures degree to which its fibres had clumped
infelicitously together). He launched
Scarlet word balloons jostling their lips, into a fabulous paper-jam war story. “I
Radiant ciphers no one could tell was asked to go to Chicago to visit the
Chicago children’s court,” he said.
Your imaginary friends, Susie Kali with corkscrew curls, “This was the mid-nineties, and a sales
Mad Thoma axe in hand. rep had put our printers—I think they
were 400 Series—all over the court
Sometimes you gathered stray cats, fed them milk system. What was happening was, law-
From Mama’s refrigerator, bits of bread soaked in honey yers had to deliver certain court docu-
ments to the defense attorneys within
You sang to them O Shenandoah a certain amount of time. Otherwise,
Your voice rising to the locust trees. the defendant was let go. And they
were losing two out of three cases be-
This road is covered with rocks and dirt cause of paper jams.” He paused. “Two
Buses with pilgrims hurtle past out of three defendants were gone—
walking out the door—because of
You squint at a boy pedalling his cycle rickshaw paper jams!”
Close, far too close, drops of mud splatter us both. Ruiz looked both fascinated and
skeptical. “So, just so I understand—
You lean sideways, touch my cheek— the repeated jams were delaying the
Let’s live in Kochi by the sea process so much that—?”
“That two out of three times they
Find a house with a white balcony, would be late, and the defendant would
I think the angels will call on me. be released!” Viavattine said. “And the
problem was that they were using some
—Meena Alexander off-brand, really down-in-the-dumps
paper.”
Ruiz turned to me with a twinkle
more challenging than the bigger ones.” humidity. (In general, winter jams are in his eye. “Paper jams!” he said. “Now
The owners of printing presses have more common than summer jams.) you know why the crime rate in Chi-
exotic tastes: they print on magnets, Sheets cut from the same forty-ream cago went down.”
tinfoil, windshield decals. Xerox exec- roll can vary in quality. At the center
utives push the engineers to accom- of the roll, paper fibres tend to arrange aper jams are a species within a
modate new kinds of stock, which
might open new markets. But even
themselves in an orderly matrix; nearer
the edges, they become jumbled.
P larger genus. Traffic jams, too; so
do tape decks, guns, and sewing ma-
plain office paper is full of hidden dan- (“Think of logs going down a river; the chines. On humid days, voting ma-
gers. In the facility some engineers call flow is different at the edges of the chines jam, leading to recounts; over
the Paper Torture Lab—officially, it’s river from down the middle,” Katz the aeons, tectonic plates jam, result-
the Media Technology Center—Bruce said.) When heated, wood fibres con- ing in earthquakes. Ice floating down
Katz, a soft-spoken paper technologist, tract; neatly arranged fibres contract a river makes an ice jam; floating logs
examined some copy paper through a equally in both dimensions, but badly join up into logjams. (Before railroads
microscope. “The edge of a sheet of aligned fibres do so unevenly, creating transformed the transportation of
paper is really a third dimension,” he curl. The team from the Paper Torture lumber, logjams had to be addressed
said. Magnified, the edge resembles a Lab travels around the world, helping by “jam breakers”—experts who spot-
snowy mountain range about four thou- paper mills improve their product, and ted and removed the “key logs” jam-
sandths of an inch thick; the snow is raising the quality of printer paper has ming up the river.) Jamming happens
paper dust, ready to drift into a printer’s played a major role in increasing print whenever something that’s supposed
jammable gears. More expensive paper speeds. Still, even the highest-quality to flow through a space fails to do so,
is more cleanly split, and its straighter paper can be ruined by poor “paper perhaps because of overcrowding, or
edges have less dust-generating surface handling.” A half-used package of bending, or because its constant move-
area. (They are also more likely to paper left to sit will grow damp and ment degrades the space through
cause paper cuts.) curly or dry and “tight.” Reams of which it travels.
“Papers are not created equally,” paper that are thrown around or kept To some extent, jamming is what
John Viavattine, the head of the Tor- in stacks can develop hidden curls that engineers call a “scheduling” problem.
ture Lab, said. Some stocks generate lead to jams. Picture a warehouse in which thou-
excessive friction; others swell in the At a hip Rochester restaurant called sands of packages are travelling on
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 45
intersecting conveyor belts. If the dis- else. Paper-path engineers work to ac- through mazes of cubicles, Ruiz thought
tance between the packages isn’t care- celerate a system that wants to get about his future. He and his team are
fully maintained, they will collide and stuck. very good at their jobs—printing speeds
pile up, creating jams. Printer design- keep rising, and jam rates hold steady
ers solve this problem by making the im Slattery, a recent graduate of or decline—and his promotion seems
paper path smart. In a typical office
photocopier, a host of small optical
T R.I.T., stood in Erwin Ruiz’s paper
lab, inspecting a stacker—the final com-
inevitable. But he loves paper jams too
much to move on.
sensors monitor the location, angle, ponent of a large printing press. The “Once, a cell-phone company tried
and speed of individual sheets of owners of an identical machine hoped to hire me,” he recalled. “They said,
paper; if one gets too close to its to print on thick, laminated plastic la- ‘You’re going to be working on the
neighbor, the rollers slow it down. bels—the kind that might mark the price frames of the cell phones.’ I said, ‘What
Similarly, if a sheet is subtly off-angle, of an item in a big-box store. The prob- else?’ They said, ‘No, that’s it—the
rollers on the slow side accelerate to lem was static electricity. “There’s so much frames of the cell phones.’ That’s so
straighten it; if the sheet is duplex— static between the sheets that they levi- boring! I don’t think they sell this job
that is, printed on both sides—they tate in the stacker,” Slattery said. I grabbed well enough. It’s, like, ‘Printers—I used
adjust on the fly to insure that both one, and had to make a concerted effort to have one, it used to break.’ But, if
sides are aligned. Printer engineers to push one sheet across another. “Our you really want to learn more about
call this “agile registration.” fluffers are constantly on, and we’re al- everything, this is what you should do.”
“The tolerances are very tight,” Ruiz ternating our vacuum and air knife,” Slat- He grinned. “I like solving problems.
said. “When you’re moving a box from tery noted, but it wasn’t working. Once you go to Toner Tower”—Xe-
here to there, if you’re off an inch it’s “Instead of sliding the sheet, we’re rox’s coal-black skyscraper in down-
probably fine. But our images cannot going to corrugate it,” Ruiz said. town Rochester—“life starts passing
be off by more than eighty-five mi- “Corrugating is when we put an in- you by.” In the hallway, we walked past
crons”—a third of a thousandth of an tentional wave in the sheet, like in a piece another engineer, who gave Ruiz a dis-
inch—“or else they’ll be fuzzy.” Dave of corrugated cardboard,” Vicki Warner creet fist pump. Ruiz turned to me:
Gurak, a software engineer who de- explained. “It adds stiffness.” The plan “Volleyball buddies!”
signs printer control systems (“It’s his was to corrugate the sheet lengthwise by In one of the company’s climate-
brain in there!” Ruiz said) thinks that running it over a line of rollers turning controlled testing chambers, the team
the biggest jump in print speed hap- at variable speeds before “flying it” into working on the Asian dog-ear prob-
pened in the nineteen-nineties, when the stacker. If a physical fix was neces- lem had gathered around a printing-
cheaper microprocessors enabled paper- sary, a part might be 3-D-printed and in- press component identical to the one
path designers to control scheduling at stalled, on-site, by one of the engineers. the customer owned. Earlier, condi-
a minute level. Today, he said, “twenty- (On some occasions, printer-jam fixes tions within the chamber had been set
five thousand independent events are propagated through software updates.) to eighty degrees and eighty-per-cent
happen per page.” In some printers, For a little while, I watched the team humidity, to match those at the cus-
if a sensor in a paper tray detects a at work. Then I asked whether it would tomer’s facility; now the room was
curl in a sheet the tray tilts to make ever be possible to build a jamless printer. cooler and crowded with engineers.
up for it. “Well, we have printers on subma- There was an atmosphere of convivial
In the largest sense, jamming is a rines, and also in space,” Ruiz said. “For fascination. Everyone took a turn bend-
problem in a field called tribology— the right amount of money you can ing down to squint at the area that
the study of friction, lubrication, and build lots of redundant systems. So I Bruce Thompson had represented so
wear between interacting surfaces. In think the answer is maybe yes.” clearly in wireframe, on the computer.
the nineteen-sixties, the British gov- “I think the answer is no,” Warner “Can you see it?” Ruiz asked, sinking,
ernment asked an engineer named said. “It’s paper. There will always be with athletic fluidity, into a deep squat.
H. Peter Jost to investigate this sub- something unpredictable about paper He pointed to the small upside-down
ject; the 1966 “Jost Report” found that that will cause a jam.” conveyor belt. “It’s tiny! Actually, maybe
poorly lubricated surfaces—sticky ball Perfectly made synthetic paper might just one finger would do it.”
bearings, rusty train rails, and the eliminate jams; it might also create un- “Can you see the stripper fingers
like—cost Britain 1.4 per cent of its foreseen problems of its own. They going?” Gurak asked. “Or is it just the
G.D.P. (The term “tribology,” coined stood, contemplating the problem, while air knife? We used to have the stripper
by Jost, comes from the Greek verb the copiers whirred. fingers down there.”
“to rub.”) The smooth functioning of Xerox’s engineering campus can be a “Yeah,” Ruiz said. “In theory, we
the world depends on invisible tribo- spooky place. Over time, the workforce could have stripper fingers pick up the
logical improvements. We rely on there has dwindled. Warehouses con- lead edge, but then they might touch
axles and gears that don’t grind, artifi- tain pyramids of unused office chairs, the belt, and that would be super bad.”
cial joints that don’t stick, and hard and groups of copiers lurk in utility cor- Someone turned the machine on,
drives that spin smoothly. Everything ridors like robots preparing to take over. and paper began flowing through the
in a printer, likewise, must slide (If the machines ever do rise up, jams path. The engineers drew closer, look-
quickly and smoothly over everything may be what save us.) While we walked ing for the flower arrangement.
46 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
Bestselling and Award-Winning
WINTER READING
Pulitzer Prize Winner Winner of the Man Booker International Prize A Best Book of the Year
National Book Award Winner and Jewish Book Award The New York Times, The Washington Post,
NPR, and more
A Best Book of the Year
“An American masterpiece.” The New York Times, The Washington Post
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“Powerful.... As haunting a postapocalyptic
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“Stunning [and] audacious...as challenging solitude and man’s eroding relationship with your assumptions about the world.”
as it is terrifying.... Completely impossible the natural world.”—The Atlantic —The Wall Street Journal
to put down.” —NPR
I. MORTAL DANGER food caches had been deposited along ories of his wife, Joanna, his twenty-
the route to help him forestall starva- one-year-old son, Max, and his nine-
he man felt like a speck in the tion, and he had to haul all his provi- teen-year-old daughter, Alicia. They
Before Henry Worsley set off alone, his family painted messages on his skis. “Come back to me safely, my darling,” his wife wrote.
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 49
now in more peril than he’d ever been—
he asked himself one question: What
would Shacks do?
wide—weighed at least a ton, and ice, along with several gold sovereigns. stead of a realm as “cold as the ice which
Shackleton told the men that they The other men began to winnow seemed likely to become our grave.”
must discard any nonessential items. their possessions. Still, the boats were To prevent unrest, Shackleton kept
One of Shackleton’s most cherished nearly impossible to haul, and two days three of the most troublesome charac-
belongings was a Bible given to him later Shackleton suspended the march. ters in his own tent. Nevertheless, one
by Queen Alexandra, the wife of Ed- For months, they remained trapped in day at the end of December, the ship’s
ward VII, which she had inscribed, tents on the island of ice, which they carpenter, who was in another tent, began
“May the Lord help you to do your dubbed Patience Camp. Frank Worsley to revolt, insisting that, with the Endur-
duty & guide you through all the dan- wondered “why people had always pic- ance lost, the crew was no longer bound
gers.” Shackleton laid the Bible on the tured Hell as a place that was hot,” in- to obey its commander. Shackleton
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 53
summoned the other members of the soaked and freezing, and Shackleton sea ice. As he approached the island
party, who professed their loyalty to him, doled out bits of food from their dwin- with Worsley, he peered through bin-
and, after the carpenter was left to con- dling rations to keep them conscious. oculars to see if anyone was alive. “There
template the prospect of his survival On May 10th, nearly a year and a half are only two,” he muttered. “No, four.”
alone, the mutiny ended. after departing from South Georgia Is- After a pause, he said, “I see six—eight.”
On April 9, 1916, the ice floe began land, they stumbled upon its shores Then he exclaimed, “They’re all there!
to crack, and Shackleton gave the long- again. They looked like the survivors of Every one of them!” Worsley later mar-
awaited order: “Launch the boats.” After an apocalypse. Shackleton then took velled at Shackleton’s “genius for lead-
nearly a week, the party reached Ele- Worsley and another crew member and ership,” which “enabled us to win
phant Island, a rocky, barren scrap of trekked north for twenty-six miles, through when the dice of the elements
land a hundred and fifty miles from climbing over uncharted glaciers, to get were loaded most heavily against us.”
mainland Antarctica and eight hun- to a whaling station on the island’s op- Shackleton later wrote that he and his
dred miles southwest of South Geor- posite coast, where they could summon men, in the course of their journey, had
gia Island. Shackleton realized that help. During the journey, Shackleton “pierced the veneer of outside things”
many of the men could not survive a said, he felt a divine presence—a “fourth and “reached the naked soul of man.”
longer boat journey—one had to have man”—guiding them. But Shackleton had failed in his
five frostbitten toes amputated—and When they staggered into the whal- mission to become the first person to
announced that he would leave most ing station, thirty-six hours later, Shack- cross the continent, and in 1922 he died
of the group on Elephant Island while leton immediately turned his atten- of a heart attack, at the age of forty-
he pressed on with five men, includ- tion to rescuing the twenty-two men seven. His fame soon dimmed, while
ing Worsley, in one of the lifeboats. stranded on Elephant Island. But it the grim march to death of his rival,
Amid a hurricane and towering took him until August 20th to obtain, Scott, held the public’s imagination.
waves glittering with ice, they navigated from the Chilean government, a steam- As the historian Max Jones notes in
across the open ocean. The men were ship big enough to break through the his 2003 book, “The Last Great Quest,”
heroes are a reflection of the societies
that venerate them. And at a time when
Britain’s empire was in decline, and the
world was grappling with the slaugh-
ter of the First World War, Scott was
seen as a martyr who had sacrificed
himself for his country. By the end of
the twentieth century, though, the era
of polar exploration was increasingly
viewed through the lens of strategy,
and Scott was criticized for his impe-
rious, mercurial nature and his inflex-
ible methods. In a 1999 essay, the travel
writer Paul Theroux captured this re-
visionist view: “Scott was insecure, dark,
panicky, humorless, an enigma to his
men, unprepared, and a bungler.”
In an age preoccupied with human
mastery—over companies, battlefields,
bureaucracies, and, most of all, oneself—
Shackleton was revered for the way he
had recruited and managed his men,
coolly guiding them to safety. His con-
duct was studied by entrepreneurs, ex-
ecutives, astronauts, scientists, political
strategists, and military commanders.
An entire subgenre of self-help litera-
ture devoted to analyzing his methods
emerged, books with titles like “Lead-
ing at the Edge: Leadership Lessons
from the Extraordinary Saga of Shack-
leton’s Antarctic Expedition.” Another
example, “Shackleton: Leadership Les-
“Folks, today we’re going to have perfect weather and some great sons from Antarctica,” included such
views of states that are swinging to the Democrats.” chapters as “Be My Tent Mate: Keep
Dissidents Close,” “Camaraderie at 20 threat of violence, in Northern Ireland, tended to break him. “You are beaten
Below Zero: Creating an Optimal Work he took up sewing to calm his nerves. up,” one applicant told a reporter, not-
Environment,” and “Sailing Uncharted He could often be seen in his quarters ing that any vulnerability was exploited:
Waters: Adapt and Innovate.” with his needlepoint, at work on a rug “If you’ve got a phobia about spiders,
In reducing a man’s life to a how-to or a cushion, before seizing his weapon they’ll use it against you.” Each year,
guide, these books often glossed over and heading into the streets. When only about fifteen per cent of applicants
some of Shackleton’s weaknesses—his back in London, he volunteered at a pass the selection course. Worsley was
almost naïvely ambitious endeavors and prison to teach tatting—a form of among them. An S.A.S. officer close to
his tactical mistakes. They all preached lace-making—to inmates. Worsley said that his “gentle, artistic
the same gospel: “By Endurance We In 1988, Worsley, by then promoted side could mask a very significant spine
Conquer.” Still, not even a cynic could to captain, was drawn to the Special of steel.” Worsley went on to serve two
deny Shackleton’s gifts as a commander. Air Service, whose forces, clad in black, tours with the S.A.S., a rare distinction
As one polar explorer put it, “For scien- had a mystique of unsurpassed fitness for a junior officer.
tific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and derring-do. Just as there were self-
and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when help books on Shackleton’s methods, ne evening at a party in London
you are in a hopeless situation, when
there seems to be no way out, get on
there were manuals on how to master
the S.A.S.’s “endurance techniques” and
O in 1989, Worsley met Joanna Stain-
ton. Whereas he often stood back warily
your knees and pray for Shackleton.” “practical leadership” skills, including in social settings, Joanna, a tall, grace-
how to foster a “team mind” and the ful woman with auburn hair, moved
III. A SPINE OF STEEL “will to survive.” Worsley signed up for with ease. She had worked for a time
the S.A.S.’s selection course, which is in Los Angeles, producing music vid-
hen Henry Worsley began com- so physically punishing that partici- eos for MTV. Though she liked to travel,
W manding men in battle, he tried
to emulate Shackleton. Forgoing the
pants have died trying to pass it. In
2013, two men on a prolonged trek fa-
she hated camping and the wintry cold,
and she especially hated ferrets. Still,
privileges of Army rank, Worsley be- tally collapsed from heat exhaustion; a she and Worsley began dating. “Talk
friended the members of his unit and third was rushed to the hospital, and about opposites attracting,” she said.
shared in their tasks. When his sol- later died of organ failure. (According “Christ, I’m a complete pavement girl.”
diers shaved their heads, he cut off his to legend, after two candidates lost Yet she loved the way that Worsley
hair, too—even though the look was, their lives during a test in 1981, the chief seemed to come from a bygone age—“a
as a superior pointed out to him, “rather instructor remarked, “Death is Nature’s man out of his time,” as a relative once
un-officer-like.” Worsley espoused pa- way of telling you you’ve failed.”) described him—believing unabashedly
tience and optimism, and tried to The course lasted six months, and in ideals of courage and sacrifice. She
demonstrate to his men that, as he put during its first stage Worsley had to loved his eccentric hobbies, and how
it, “their welfare, and their lives, mat- complete a series of timed marches— he recited poetry to her and held her
ter most of all.” Nick Carter, who is known as “death marches”—through with arms that seemed unbreakable.
now Chief of the General Staff, the the Brecon Beacons, a mountain range He loved her brashness and her abil-
head of the British Army, said that in South Wales. He trekked for days ity to talk to anyone, whether at an art
Worsley had a “very caring and sym- in full combat gear, consuming little benefit or at a homeless shelter, where
pathetic attitude to his soldiers—or, as more than water and carrying a heavy she often volunteered. And he loved
we like to call them, his riflemen.” He rucksack. He could see other applicants the way she punctured his stoicism and
added, “He was one of those figures collapsing and quitting; their minds exposed his hidden self, always urging
who people followed because he was often gave out before their bodies. The him to “go out and achieve your dreams.”
quite an aspirational leader. People marches culminated in what was known For all her free-spiritedness, she was
would like to be him.” as the Endurance—a forty-mile hike, the steadiest presence in his life. He
Though Worsley generally dis- over a three-thousand-foot-high peak, called her his “rock.”
played a modest temperament, he had that he had to finish in less than twenty- They married in 1993. Max was born
RESEARCH INSTITUTE/UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE/GETTY
moments of flamboyance. When he two hours while carrying a fifty-five- the following year, and Alicia in 1996.
wasn’t in uniform, he liked to wear a pound rucksack. Nick Carter said, “Worsley lusted after
PREVIOUS SPREAD: FRANK HURLEY/SCOTT POLAR
bright-colored belt or shirt. He kept After completing this part of the adventure but also relished being at home
ferrets as pets and he drove a Harley- course, he was flown to Brunei, where with his family—teaching his son to
Davidson, a cigar often clamped be- he was helicoptered into a jungle filled shoot or to ferret, or simply cutting wood
tween his teeth. Like Shackleton, who with orangutans and cloud leopards and for the winter and cutting the grass.”
considered poetry “vital mental med- poisonous snakes. He had to survive for Because of his military postings, though,
icine,” he could quote verse by such a week while eluding a band of soldiers Worsley was often separated from his
writers as Robert Browning and Rud- tasked with hunting him down. The family, as his father had been. In 2001,
yard Kipling. When he was stationed administrators of the course had eyes he was serving in Bosnia when a riot
abroad—his initial posting, in 1980, on the ground to observe him—to see broke out in the streets. A civilian was
was in Cyprus—he painted the novel what kind of clay he was made of. Later, beaten to death, and crowds began to
landscapes, and when he first faced the he was subjected to an interrogation in- chase Worsley. As he recounted in his
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 55
book, he sought refuge in a café, but the dollars. Weeks later, on his tenth wed- Rest, Sir Ernest, rest. God knows there’s
crowds closed in, throwing stones and ding anniversary, Joanna gave him a none
smashing the windows. “How would present: the inscribed book. Each had Deserves it more: the long Antarctic night
Now friend, not foe, with South’s white
Shacks get out of this, then?” he asked been unaware that the other was the warfare won
himself. He knew that if he remained rival bidder. He considered the gift to And crew from death’s dark door led back
in the café the situation would only be his “most treasured possession of all.” to light.
worsen: “I had to be decisive and make In November of 2003, he made a pil- How was it your endurance overcame
a move, as Shackleton had done.” He grimage to a place that he had dreamed The daily struggle just to keep alive
Long past the point where death would
pinpointed a place in the distance where of visiting since he was a boy: South bring no shame?
he could find cover, and he made a break Georgia Island. Not only had Shack- Half starved and frozen, how did you
for it, dashing through the onslaught leton and Frank Worsley found refuge survive,
and summoning his regiment. He then there after the sinking of the Endur- And how was no man lost while in your
defused the uprising by deploying his ance; the two men also had returned to care?
God knows. God knows it well. For He
soldiers around the area and persuading the island in 1922, preparing for a new was there.
the ringleaders to back down—using Antarctic expedition. The day after their
what Carter later described as “a very arrival, Shackleton had suffered his heart After his trip to South Georgia,
subtle use of coercion and negotiation.” attack and died. (“His stillness was star- Worsley longed even more to make his
In 2002, Worsley was awarded the tling to me, for stillness was the one own polar journey, to obtain his own
Queen’s Commendation for Valuable thing that I found it impossible to as- “life’s set prize,” but he doubted that
Service, in “recognition of gallant and sociate with him,” Frank Worsley he ever would. As he put it, “I was afraid
distinguished services.” wrote.) After Frank Worsley and other of the unknown—the planning, the
Many officers and soldiers admired members of the expedition buried training, the fund-raising and, not least,
him the way he admired Shackleton. Shackleton, at a cemetery on the island, the risk of failure.”
Carter described him to a reporter as they found stones and built a cairn to
“one of the most understated but brav- mark the grave. And as they raised this IV. PLAN OF ATTACK
est people I have known,” and a soldier makeshift memorial, Frank Worsley re-
who had served under Worsley hailed called, “a snowstorm beat down upon ne day in March, 2004, Worsley
him as a “fiercely capable leader of men.”
Yet his military career soon stalled. Jo-
us—a ghost, it seemed to me, of the
hurricane in which he and I had ap-
O was contacted by Alexandra
Shackleton, the explorer’s granddaugh-
anna recalled, “He loved the soldiering proached South Georgia after our boat ter. He’d met her several years earlier,
part of soldiering, but once you com- journey from Elephant Island.” at Christie’s in London, when he had
mand your regiment, at about the age More than eighty years later, Henry successfully bid on an autographed
of forty, all the postings after that are Worsley, carrying a rucksack and a photograph of her grandfather. After-
slightly more political desk-type jobs, sleeping bag, pried open the cemetery ward, Worsley periodically ran into her
which Henry hated.” A former officer gate and went inside. It was twilight, at lectures on polar exploration, and he
said that Worsley refused to jockey for and he could just make out the cairn had shared with her his desire to make
position, noting, “That wasn’t his style.” and a granite tombstone, which was an Antarctic expedition.
Worsley, who had been promoted to engraved with a paraphrase of a line Alexandra told Worsley that she
lieutenant colonel in 2000, watched as by Robert Browning: “I hold that a wanted him to meet another Shackle-
many of his closest friends were be- man should strive to the uttermost for ton descendant—a great-nephew—
coming brigadiers and generals. his life’s set prize.” Worsley put his named Will Gow. “Like you, he ad-
His fascination with Shackleton, sleeping bag on the ground and climbed mires my grandfather very much and
meanwhile, seemed to deepen. He spent inside it, facing the block of granite. for a few years now has had an idea for
hours at antique shops and auction “Reaching out to touch it I considered an expedition,” she said.
houses, in search of what he called for a moment just how significant a At a pub in South London, Wors-
Shackletonia: autographed books and moment in my life this was,” he later ley met with Gow, a thirty-three-year-
photographs and diaries and correspon- wrote, adding, “I was about to spend old banker with a pudgy face and squinty
dence and other memorabilia. “Henry the night . . . beside the grave of my blue eyes that widened in moments of
lost a fortune on it all,” Joanna recalled. hero since childhood.” excitement. Gow eagerly explained that
At one auction, he bid feverishly on a Afterward, he found a sonnet, by an the centennial of the Nimrod expedi-
first edition of Shackleton’s book about explorer from New Zealand named tion was a few years away, and that when
the Endurance expedition, “South,” in Hugh de Lautour, which echoed his the anniversary arrived he wanted to
which Shackleton had inscribed a mes- feelings so intensely that he annotated reënact the journey. Worsley was steeped
sage to his parents: “With Love from it and often recited it aloud: in the details of the failed journey. On
Ernest, Xmas 1919.” Every time Wors- October 29, 1908, Shackleton had de-
ley made an offer, a person bidding Rest, Sir Ernest, rest beneath your star; parted for the South Pole with three
All striving done and “life’s set prize”
anonymously over the telephone coun- attained: other men, including a meteorologist
tered him, and finally made off with Not geographic goals, but greater far named Jameson Boyd Adams, who was
the prize, at a price of seven thousand The pinnacles of leadership you gained. his second-in-command. After coming
56 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
The planned route for the Matrix Shackleton Centenary Expedition, in 2008-09.
within ninety-seven nautical miles of the history of polar exploration”—he And so, like two conspirators, Wors-
the Pole, on January 9, 1909, Shackle- turned back. ley and Gow began plotting their
ton planted a British flag in the ice, tak- Gow envisaged that the new expe- journey. They needed to find an-
ing, in his words, “possession of this pla- dition would be composed of descen- other recruit and to raise four hundred
teau in the name of His Majesty King dants of men who had explored along- thousand dollars to cover the costs of
Edward the Seventh.” He then faced a side Shackleton. They would try to equipment and travel. And they needed
terrible quandary: he knew that he could reach Shackleton’s farthest point on to train: though they had polar explo-
reach the Pole in several days, captur- January 9, 2009—exactly a hundred ration in their genes, they had no ac-
ing the grail, but if he kept going he years after he did—and then press on tual experience.
would deplete the food the party needed to the South Pole, completing, in Gow’s They began a ruthless exercise reg-
for the return journey and jeopardize words, “unfinished family business.” imen. Each tied tractor tires to a har-
MAP BY LA TIGRE
the lives of his men, who were already Worsley listened in amazement. ness around his waist, and then dragged
fading. Ultimately, Shackleton made Here was the chance of a lifetime. them back and forth across an open
what Worsley considered “the most He was confident that the Army would field. In 2005, they signed up for the
selfless and astonishing decision ever in grant him a leave for the expedition. Montane Yukon Arctic Ultra, a race
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 57
FRANK HURLEY/ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
During the Endurance mission, twenty-two men were stranded on Elephant Island, as Shackleton led a rescue team.
58 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
through the icy wilderness of northwest the region. He took with him his dog- conditions, and they made embarrass-
Canada, which is billed as the tough- eared copy of “The Heart of the Ant- ing blunders. They forgot to turn off a
est endurance competition in the world. arctic,” Shackleton’s account of the portable stove, and nearly engulfed
Temperatures can fall to minus fifty de- Nimrod expedition; paints and brushes their tent in flames. They skied too
grees, and participants have had toes and a sewing kit; and a bag of cricket slowly and never seemed to navigate
and fingers amputated because of frost- bats and balls, to play with the locals. along a straight line. One day, after
bite. Newsweek once observed that the For months, he travelled across Hel- Worsley declined to wear tinted gog-
event—which scientists have used to mand, conferring with tribal elders and gles, he suffered from snow blindness.
study the impact of extreme conditions mullahs. Worsley later wrote in an ar- But he and the others learned from
on the human body—sounded like the ticle, “Surviving in Afghanistan was as their mistakes, and emerged with a bet-
“premise for a Jack London novel.” much about an empathy with the peo- ter understanding, as Adams put it, of
There were different categories for ple and their culture as it was about how “to live on the ice.”
the race, and Worsley and Gow en- troop numbers and firepower.” The trip, however, had brought to
tered one that required them to trek After gathering intelligence, he a head a simmering problem: the team’s
on foot for three hundred miles—a warned his superiors that the arrival of lack of clear leadership. Gow was os-
third of the distance of their planned British forces risked “stirring up a hor- tensibly in charge, but the expedition
South Pole journey—while hauling all nets’ nest” by agitating the population was plagued by disorganization, caus-
their supplies on sleds. They had eight and provoking violent reprisals from the ing tension among the men; moreover,
days to complete the race. “Beyond Taliban. His words were prophetic. only a fraction of the necessary funds
coping with the physical demands, I “Henry, rightly, foresaw the trouble that had been raised. In their tent on Baffin
wanted to see if I had the mental was to come,” Tom Tugendhat, a mem- Island, Worsley broached the matter
strength,” Worsley wrote, adding, “Any ber of the British Parliament, later told with Gow, threatening to drop out of
sign of quitting on this short event a reporter. But, at the time, Worsley’s the expedition if things didn’t change.
would spell disaster for the future chal- alarms rankled many military and polit- “Henry didn’t dodge bullets,” Adams
lenge and, if I did give up . . . I would ical leaders who were downplaying the recalled. After some consideration,
have to seriously consider my place in dangers to the public, and, if Worsley Gow asked Worsley to take charge.
the expedition team.” had any remaining hope of military ad- “With his military background, it made
Armed with flares and swaddled in vancement, his candor ended it. Yet he very good sense,” Gow recalled. “Adams
layers of clothing, they dragged their was no longer disappointed. In a com- and myself were young whippersnap-
sleds through dense pine forests and monplace book, he jotted down the ad- pers. We were quite happy to have
over mountains and across frozen vice Shackleton had given after the sink- some wise old owl leading us away.”
rivers, where Gow’s foot once broke ing of the Endurance: “A man must shape In the two years before their depar-
through the ice and into the water. himself to a new mark directly the old ture, Worsley was consumed with the
They had been told that if they got wet one goes to ground.” And it occurred to mission. Late at night, after complet-
they had only about five minutes to Worsley that had he been promoted he ing his Army duties, he wrote letters
prevent hypothermia, and Gow quickly would not have had the time to prepare seeking meetings with potential do-
lit a fire, dried his foot, and changed for the upcoming expedition and become nors. “If he got his foot in the door, he
his clothing. Onward the men went. the explorer that he had always wanted would usually come out with money,”
Above them, the northern lights cast to be. “He suddenly realized that he could his son, Max, recalled. “His passion and
a haunting green glow. fulfill some dreams,” Joanna recalled. his fire—you could see it within him.
After several days of trekking, Wors- By the time Worsley returned from It gripped people.”
ley and Gow suffered from sleepless- Afghanistan, Gow had found a third Like a general developing a plan of
ness and sensory deprivation, and they recruit: Henry Adams, a thirty-two- attack, Worsley spent hours poring over
grew dizzy from hunger. Soon, they year-old shipping lawyer. Adams seemed maps, laying out a precise route for the
began to hallucinate. To keep going, a bit pale and spindly for an explorer, expedition. The more he studied Ant-
Worsley resorted to “drastic measures,” but he had a genial personality, and he arctica, the more forbidding it seemed.
imagining that he was pulling his sick was deeply committed. What’s more, The continent is nearly five and a half
daughter on the sled and had to get he was the great-grandson of Jameson million square miles—larger than Eu-
her to the doctor if she were to live. Boyd Adams, the second-in-command rope—and it doubles in size in winter,
He and Gow slumped across the finish on the Nimrod expedition. when its coastal waters freeze over. Ap-
line, beating the time limit by several That April, Worsley and his two proximately ninety-eight per cent of
hours. “That was really the first test,” companions headed to Baffin Island, a Antarctica is covered in an ice sheet,
Gow recalled. Canadian territory nine hundred miles which rises and drops and bends over
west of Greenland. For several weeks, the varied topography. The sheet—
Ito nexpedition,
2006, two years before the planned
Worsley was dispatched
Helmand Province, in Afghanistan,
they trained with Matty McNair, a fifty-
four-year-old American explorer, who,
in 1997, had led the first all-female ex-
which, in places, is fifteen thousand
feet thick—contains about seventy per
cent of the freshwater, and ninety per
to provide “eyes and ears,” as he put it, pedition to the North Pole. This was cent of the ice, on Earth.
before British forces were deployed to the men’s longest exposure yet to polar Yet Antarctica is classified as a desert,
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 59
because there is so little precipitation. last of Shackleton’s Manchurian ponies for my Dad that he is doing what he
It is the driest and highest continent, had disappeared into one. When Scott has always wanted to do, but I am also
with an average elevation of seventy- crossed the glacier during his later ex- worried for him. Even in the most bar-
five hundred feet. It is also the windi- pedition, one of his men suffered a fatal ren place in the world there is a risk of
est, with gusts reaching up to two hun- head injury after falling into a crevasse. falling down a glacier or crevasse.”
dred miles per hour, and the coldest, Only a dozen people—the same num- Joanna drove her husband to the
with temperatures in the interior fall- ber that have walked on the moon— airport, where she began to cry. He
ing below minus seventy-five degrees. had trekked the length of the glacier. told her not to worry, and quoted
(Scientists have used the Antarctic to Worsley referred to it as his “nemesis.” Shackleton: “Better a live donkey than
test spacesuits for Mars, where the av- If he and his companions survived a dead lion.”
erage surface temperature is minus sixty- the crossing, they would emerge on the
seven.) Polar Plateau, where they would ascend V. GET WET AND YOU DIE
Worsley, Gow, and Adams planned the ten-thousand-foot-high Titan Dome
to begin their journey south of New to reach Shackleton’s farthest point: 88° n October 30, 2008, Worsley, Gow,
Zealand, on Ross Island. The island is
bound by the Ross Ice Shelf, which ex-
23' S, 162° E. Finally, Worsley’s party
would trek the remaining ninety-seven
O and Adams arrived in Punta Are-
nas, on the southern tip of Chile. They
tends over the Ross Sea and is the larg- nautical miles to the Pole, whose eleva- went to a warehouse owned by a com-
est body of floating ice in the world— tion is ninety-three hundred feet. pany named Antarctic Logistics & Ex-
more than a hundred and eighty “Every spare hour was devoted to peditions. During the summer, between
thousand square miles and, on average, the project and ‘bloody Shackleton’ be- thirty thousand and forty-five thou-
more than a thousand feet thick. Be- came a phrase frequently used by the sand tourists visit the continent, nearly
cause the Ross Ice Shelf is easier to children,” Worsley wrote. By October all of them travelling on small cruise
reach by sea during the summer than of 2008, he and his colleagues were ships. Worsley’s party had hired A.L.E.
other parts of the continent, and be- ready to embark on what had been offi- to provide logistical support, which in-
cause it is relatively smooth and stretches cially named the Matrix Shackleton cluded transporting them by airplane
nearly six hundred miles toward the Centenary Expedition. Before leaving, to their starting point on Ross Island.
heart of Antarctica, it was the starting Worsley and his family gathered for an At the warehouse, Worsley and his
point for expeditions to the South Pole early Christmas celebration. Even companions collected freeze-dried
during the golden age of Antarctic ex- though Henry had been telling Joanna meals for the expedition. They faced
ploration. Shackleton and Scott and for years about the glories of Antarc- the same predicament that had bedev-
Amundsen all began their expeditions tica, it still seemed to her like the most illed polar explorers for generations:
on the shelf. dreadful place in the world. Yet she be- they could haul only so many supplies
Like these explorers, Worsley and lieved that, to borrow Thomas Pyn- on their sleds, a situation that left them
his team would head south across the chon’s words, “Everyone has an Ant- vulnerable to starvation. Shackleton,
ice shelf, a journey of nearly four hun- arctic”—someplace people seek to find during the Nimrod expedition, wrote
dred nautical miles, until they reached answers about themselves. In the case ruefully, “How one wishes for time and
the Transantarctic Mountains, which of her husband, it was the Antarctic it- unlimited provisions. Then indeed we
divide the continent and extend to the self. And so she gave her blessing to could penetrate the secrets of this great
Weddell Sea. To get to the Polar Pla- the adventure, even though it threat- lonely continent.”
teau—an elevated, almost featureless ened to take from her the man she loved. Worsley estimated that the journey
part of the continental ice shelf, where Worsley’s decision was harder for his would take nine weeks. Each of the
the South Pole is situated—the party children to understand. Alicia, who was men would be limited to about three
would have to cross these mountains, twelve, saw his sled primarily as an ob- hundred and ten pounds of provisions,
which rise nearly fifteen thousand feet. ject to play on. When the family ex- including a sled, and so they whittled
On the Nimrod expedition, Shackle- changed Christmas gifts, Max, who was down their kit to the essentials. Wors-
ton discovered one of the few pass- fourteen, seemed agitated. This was ley packed his portion of the food, which
able routes: a glacier-covered valley, different from when his father was de- was sealed in ten bags—one for each
twenty-five miles wide and a hundred ployed by the military—he had not had week of the journey, plus an extra in
and twenty-five miles long, that runs a choice then about leaving them be- case of emergency. His clothing in-
between the mountains like a frozen hind. This was a response to some mys- cluded two pairs of pants, a fleece shirt,
causeway. “There burst upon our vi- terious inner calling. Max had written a down jacket with a hood, gloves, a
sion an open road to the South,” Shack- a poem about Antarctica, a place that neck gaiter, a face mask, two pairs of
leton wrote. now loomed in his own imagination, long johns, and three pairs of socks. He
Still, the glacier—which Shackleton and he composed a short essay about his brought cross-country skis and poles;
named Beardmore, after William Beard- father’s upcoming journey. “I have heard for climbing, he carried crampons and
more, a Scottish industrialist and a pa- many stories about Shackleton since I ropes. As the only member of the team
tron of his expedition—is treacherous. was very young and as I grew older, I with first-aid training, he transported
Its elevation is eight thousand feet, and started to understand and admire Shack- the medical bag, which contained an-
its surface is riddled with crevasses. The leton more,” he wrote. “I am very happy tibiotics, syringes, splints, and morphine.
60 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
He made room for his diary and a copy Commanding the expedition was dertake was brought sharply into focus
of “The Heart of the Antarctic.” And far trickier than commanding sol- in those few moments. None of us said
he carefully stored what he considered diers in the military. In Antarctica, a word.” Finally, after flying eleven
the most vital piece of equipment: a his authority was not official but hours and more than twelve hundred
satellite phone with solar-powered bat- merely granted, and he had no more miles to the southwest, the plane
teries, which would allow the men not experience as a polar explorer than touched down on the sea ice by Ross
only to record short audio dispatches his peers did. Yet he felt the immea- Island. “My God, we’ve made it,” Wors-
but also to check in every day with an surable weight of being responsible ley exclaimed.
A.L.E. operator and report their coör- for their lives. He now formed a pact For years, he had been constructing
dinates and medical condition. If the with Gow and Adams: “There would Antarctica in his mind, and after climb-
team failed to communicate for two be no egos, no pride and if someone ing down from the plane he joyously
consecutive days, A.L.E. would dis- was feeling unwell or traveling stamped his boots on three-foot-thick
patch a search-and-rescue plane—what slowly, then he should have no diffi- ice. The temperature was about minus
Worsley called “the most expensive taxi culty in accepting the offer from one fourteen degrees, and his nostrils
ride in the world.” of the others to carry some of his burned. It was late in the afternoon,
The men permitted themselves the weight.” but because it was summer the sun re-
luxury of iPods, as well as a deck of On November 10th, the A.L.E. plane mained bright, and he could see two
From left to right: Ernest Shackleton, Jameson Adams, and Frank Worsley, polar explorers of the early twentieth century.
cards and a few mementos. Worsley was ready for departure. After decades of the volcanoes on Ross Island that
carried an envelope filled with notes of dreaming, Worsley’s Antarctic jour- had been beacons for polar explorers:
from family and friends, which Joanna ney was beginning. Mt. Terror, which is more than ten
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE/GETTY; CENTER: ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
had given him to open when he needed thousand feet high, and dormant, and
encouragement. In his front pocket, he he plane—an enormous Soviet- Mt. Erebus, an active volcano, which
had tucked away one more precious T designed freighter, which was so is more than twelve thousand feet high.
LEFT, RIGHT: FRANK HURLEY/SCOTT POLAR RESEARCH INSTITUTE/
object: the brass compass that Shack- loud that Worsley and the others could Black smoke drifted from its icy cone.
leton used on his expedition. Alexan- barely hear their own voices—took Not far from the men, penguins slid
dra Shackleton had asked Worsley to them to an A.L.E. camp on the side on their bellies across the ice—the world
bring it with him, hoping that, this of Antarctica that is south of Cape not yet deadened. And on the southern
time, it would reach the South Pole. Horn, a flight of four and a half hours. tip of the island, about twenty-two miles
For Worsley, getting closer to Shack- On arrival, they skidded onto a run- away, was McMurdo Station, which was
leton was a way of getting closer to him- way of ice. After waiting for the weather opened by the U.S. government in 1955
self. During an interview with an explo- to clear, they boarded a smaller, and has served since then as a hub for
ration Web site, he outlined the qualities twin-propeller aircraft with landing scientific research. In the summer,
that he most admired in Shackleton, in- skis. As they flew across the continent, around a thousand people live at the
cluding his “optimism and patience,” his they peered out the window at deep base, the largest population in Antarc-
“courage,” and his ability, when his men’s gashes in the ice sheet below. “Every- tica. With its power station and its dor-
lives were at stake, to instill in them the where we looked, there were crevasse mitories carved into the ice, the base
“confidence that he would get them out fields the size of a small parish,” Wors- has the look of a grimy truck stop.
of the desperate situation.” ley wrote. “What we were about to un- The men headed onto the island. As
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 61
they climbed a ridge overlooking a
bowl-shaped valley, Worsley came to
an abrupt halt. Down below, amid vol- RHODODENDRON
canic rock and ice, was a solitary wooden
hut with shuttered windows and an People pray to a vengeful
iron chimney. Worsley didn’t need to god because they seek revenge.
say what it was. They all knew. It was
the hut that Shackleton and his party They chose a god who hates
had built in February, 1908, and stayed what they hate
in that winter, before setting out for
the South Pole. Shackleton had called but also made the sea
the shelter “the Mecca of all our hopes and the sequoia.
and dreams.” In 2004, a team of con-
servationists had begun restoring the I’m walking my infant
hut, and to Worsley it looked just as it son through a stand of rhododendron
had in the grainy photograph in “The
Heart of the Antarctic.” trees. It feels like we are walking
Gow raced over and opened the through a cloud of jellyfish
door, and Worsley and Adams followed
him inside. In the dimness, Worsley made of pink and purple paper
could discern the scattered debris of petals falling
the Nimrod expedition, as if the party
had momentarily stepped away. There to the ground.
were canned goods, leather boots with These jellyfish are the fish of spring.
frayed laces, and blue bottles of med-
icine marked “diarrhea.” Two sleds He is making sounds
were suspended in the rafters, and hang- like a mouse, small but all out
ing on a wall was a framed photograph
of Queen Alexandra. Shackleton, in of his body. Inside,
his diary, had described a shaft of light his organs are so new
passing over the image before they set
out on their trek, which he had deemed that they are both organs
“an omen of good luck.”
Gow gasped at the ghostly scene.
Adams found the bunk where his ened, and the three men began mum- team; of getting injured; of letting down
great-grandfather had slept, while mifying themselves in layers of cloth- all those people who had supported us;
Worsley examined the dark recesses of ing and loading their provisions onto of plainly not being physically up for
the room as if he were rummaging their sleds. Worsley made sure to dis- it—put simply, I feared failure.”
through a tomb. “I could hardly get tribute the weight evenly on his sled, The surface was generally flat and
closer to my mentor,” he later wrote. and he covered his cargo with a tarp. smooth, and as he and the other men
“The only thing left to do was to walk The sled—which was emblazoned with headed south, toward the Ross Ice Shelf,
in his footsteps to the Pole.” the words “Always a little further” and they began to gather some momen-
That night, the men camped inside “By Endurance We Conquer”—resem- tum. Worsley made sure that they fol-
the hut, lying on the frozen ground in bled a torpedo. After attaching the sled lowed the advice of Matty McNair,
their sleeping bags. The silence among to a harness around his waist, Wors- who had instructed them on Baffin Is-
them betrayed their nerves. The next ley clipped his boots into his skis, see- land: “Stay together, never separate.”
morning, November 14th, Worsley was ing the messages that his family had She had drummed into them one other
the first to get up. “It had been impos- painted on them: “Don’t give up,” “Push rule: “If you get wet, you die.”
sible to sleep,” he noted. “The enormity it, fat ass.” After several miles, they came upon
of the task seemed overwhelming.” He At 10 a.m.—the hour that Shackle- another desolate wooden hut. Robert
put on his boots, slipped outside the ton had set out—Worsley and his men Falcon Scott and his men had built it
tent, and called the A.L.E. operator. leaned into their harnesses and began in 1911, on their fateful South Pole ex-
“The Matrix Shackleton Expedition their trek. This was the moment that pedition. Ice crept over the timbered
calling in with our first report,” he said. he’d been waiting for nearly all his life, walls and glazed the windowpanes like
“We are setting off in a couple hours. Worsley thought. Yet, as he strained jungle vines. Inside the hut, Worsley
All is well. No medical problems.” with his arms and his legs to propel and his companions found the chart
“O.K.,” the operator replied. “Have himself forward and drag the heavy sled, table where Scott had studied his maps,
a great journey.” he was gnawed by doubts: “I was ner- and the bunk belonging to Captain
Worsley’s companions had awak- vous about lots of things; of failing the Lawrence Oates, who had left the par-
62 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
sled, and had a deep sense of unease.
“He was right and honest,” Worsley
and the beginning of organs. wrote. “None of us knew what the next
two months were going to be like.”
When he cries for his mother Following supper, the men dipped
to nurse him their toothbrushes in the snow and
cleaned their teeth, which Worsley be-
he sounds like a rooster. lieved was essential to maintaining a
He is not sense of humanity. Then, jostling for
space, they spread out their sleeping
just hungry bags. Worsley, however, didn’t climb
but hunger itself. into his. In spite of his aching muscles
and the dropping temperature—the
He is the thing sun was now hugging the horizon—
he cries for. Sunlight is turning he went for an evening walk. He de-
cided to make this a daily ritual, like a
the rhododendrons mystic who pursues enlightenment
into balls of pink light if light through self-abnegation. The harsh re-
ality of Antarctica had seemed only to
were liquid deepen his entrancement with it. Out-
and something else, side, he often picked up objects—a
fragment of a penguin skull, a small
splashing, rock—and put them in a pocket, de-
that’s what the pink is doing, spite the extra weight. “We used to take
the Mickey out of him for taking all
splashing all over us, this rubbish,” Gow recalled.
lucky without god, After Worsley’s stroll, which lasted
about twenty minutes, he returned to
animals under the bright pink the tent and settled into his sleeping
idea of earth. bag. They all kept plastic bottles nearby,
in case they had to respond to what
—Matthew Dickman Adams referred to as a “call of nature.”
Before falling asleep, Worsley wrote
briefly in his diary, ending with a quote
ty’s tent on the return journey from the They began the cumbersome pro- from Shackleton: “I pray that we may
Pole, saying, “I am just going outside cess of making camp: pitching their be successful, for my heart had been so
and may be some time.” He was never tent, which was roughly fourteen feet much in this.”
seen again. long and seven feet wide; gathering Within eight days, they had cov-
As Worsley inspected the objects, provisions from the sled; squeezing ered more than seventy-five nautical
he felt uneasy: “I couldn’t shake the inside the shelter and removing their miles. The scale of the Ross Ice Shelf
sense of pathetic sadness from my ski boots and sweaty socks, which was dawning on Worsley: it was big-
mind.” The men quickly resumed trac- they hung on a clothesline above their ger than France. Shackleton described
ing the path of their forebears, which heads, along with any other damp it as a “dead, smooth, white plain, weird
had long since been obliterated by the items; checking their bodies for frost- beyond description.” Worsley and his
windswept ice. The fresh tracks made bite and putting on dry socks and tent men moved in single file and rarely
by Worsley and his companions grad- “booties”; and firing up a gas cooker, spoke, hearing only the thumping of
ually vanished as well; tiny granules of melting snow in a kettle, and pour- their sleds or the soundtracks on their
ice swirled in the wind like ash. The ing hot water into packets of freeze- iPods. Adams loved to listen to Rach-
men used a compass to maintain a dried meals. maninoff ’s Vespers; Gow sometimes
southward trajectory. Their breath As the men ate, they talked about trudged along to an audiobook of Lan-
smoked and their bodies sweated in the the relatively warm weather—the tem- sing’s “Endurance.” Worsley’s playlist
arid cold. After slogging for seven hours, perature had reached fourteen degrees. included Bruce Springsteen and the
Worsley gave the order to stop for the Adams delivered the evening broad- Seeger Sessions Band playing “Eyes on
day. They had covered nearly eight nau- cast, reporting that they had been the Prize” (“I got my hand on the gos-
tical miles. In order to reach the ninety- blessed with “beautiful sunshine, ex- pel plow / Won’t take nothing for my
seven-mile mark on January 9th, the actly as Shackleton had a hundred years journey now”) and “We Shall Over-
men would need to average between ago on his first day.” Privately, though, come” (“We are not afraid, we are not
ten and twelve nautical miles per day. Adams confessed to Worsley and Gow afraid”).
But it was a promising start. that he felt like an amateur hauling his With nothing to stare at but ice,
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 63
“We were back on an unblemished canvas,” Worsley said of the landscape, which has remained relatively untouched by man.
Worsley was becoming a connoisseur tive to maintain positive thoughts, re- lieved when he finally glanced back
of its varieties. It could be squeaky or called family holidays and planting and the instrument had disappeared
powdery or crusty. The wind often vegetables in the garden. He grew ac- from view. As he put it, “We were back
sculpted it into waves, known as sas- customed to the paradox of being re- on an unblemished canvas.”
trugi, which rose as high as four feet duced to irrelevance in the alien land-
and sometimes extended, in parallel scape while at the same time feeling he storm came upon the men sud-
rows, to the horizon. (Adams noted, in
a broadcast, that each of the men had
acutely aware of oneself: every aching
muscle, every joint, every breath, every
T denly. The temperature was minus
twenty-two degrees, and frigid winds
his own strategy for traversing the fro- heartbeat. He said that he preferred whipped up ice that stung the eyes like
zen waves: “Henry tends to herringbone breaking track, despite its difficulties, bits of glass. It was November 28, 2008,
over it, Will declares war on the sas- because all you saw in front of you was and Worsley’s team was two weeks into
trugi, and I tend to try and run at it.”) “the infinite beyond.” its journey. The men bent forward, but
Then, there was the deep, sludgy ice, One day, Adams spotted in the dis- the wind overwhelmed them, and
the most wretched of all, which made tance something poking from the ice Worsley concluded that they needed
them feel like they were plowing and gleaming in the blinding sun. to stop for the day. Moments after they
through wet sand. Because it was more “What’s that?” he asked. unpacked the tent, the wind nearly
COURTESY SHACKLETON FOUNDATION
taxing to be up front, breaking track, “No idea,” Worsley said. hurled it into the white oblivion. They
the men took hourly turns in the lead. When they reached it, they realized fastened its corners with ice screws and
They were burning between six that it was a meteorological instrument buried the flaps under the snow and
thousand and eight thousand calories recording such data as temperature and used their sleds as barricades. Then the
a day, and periodically paused to con- wind speed. A sign indicated that the men scurried inside, crouching together
sume energy drinks and snack on such device belonged to the University of and shivering as the tent’s nylon fab-
fatty foods as salami, nuts, and choco- Wisconsin. The men quickly moved ric rattled.
late; even so, they began to lose weight. on, but for hours Worsley fumed, re- Worsley called the A.L.E. operator
Worsley, knowing that it was impera- senting the intrusion, and he was re- to give their coördinates. “We are caught
64 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
in a storm and won’t be moving today,” journey, in mid-December, they had one of two ways,” he noted. “It can wear
he said. made it across the Ross Ice Shelf, to you down over a prolonged period of
“I can hear the wind,” the operator the base of the mountain range. The time through starvation, cold, and ex-
replied. terrain began to rise, and the surface haustion, often in the face of appall-
The tempest intensified, the wind was scarred with deep fissures, a prod- ing weather. Or it can take you into
hissing at fifty miles per hour. Ice drifted uct of the eternal churning of ice. “All the throat of a crevasse in a split sec-
over the tent. “It was as if the elements this disturbance meant only one thing— ond.” Once, Worsley went to retrieve
were furious that we were there,” Wors- the threat of crevasses,” Worsley wrote. his sleeping bag from his sled after a
ley wrote. When they awoke the next The following day, despite the dan- day of climbing, and the ice cracked
day, the storm was even angrier. In a ger, Worsley went on his walkabout, open under his right foot. His leg
broadcast, Adams said, “We are tent- and collected several rock specimens. plunged into the shaft. Adams raced
bound again.” They knew that in 1912, Hoping to do reconnaissance for the over and yanked him out. Each time
less than ten nautical miles from their upcoming route, he continued walking you escaped, Worsley wrote, “you sensed
position, Robert Falcon Scott and his for hours, at one point climbing onto your luck was running out.”
party had died during their trek back a ledge and looking south. Before him, Soon, the men encountered some-
from the Pole. “It’s a very, very sober- shrouded in mist, rose the Beardmore thing startling beneath their feet: a
ing thought for us,” Adams added. Glacier. “I gazed into the gloom won- sheet of blue ice. The result of snow
The tent was virtually submerged dering just what my nemesis had in accumulating on a glacier and being
under ice, and inside the air reeked of store for us,” he wrote. compressed over thousands of years,
unwashed bodies and dirty socks and By the time he returned to the tent, this kind of ice is so dense—so devoid
stove fuel. Worsley—whom Gow and it was late, and Adams said, “Ah, Gen- of air bubbles—that it absorbs long-
Adams now called the General—tried eral, we were beginning to think you’d wavelength light, which is why it ap-
to foster a lighthearted atmosphere. The met an unfortunate end.” pears mesmerizingly blue. Yet, as the
men passed the time chatting and read- The men gathered their belongings men quickly discovered, its beauty is
ing and playing poker. They had previ- and trekked to the mouth of the glacier. deceptive. “It’s hard like concrete,” Gow
ously named themselves the founding As Adams looked up, he felt that he was recalled. “Harder than concrete—lit-
members of the Antarctic Malt Whis- confronting a “Biblical terror.” Every erally indescribable how hard.”
key Appreciation Society; per its by- way they turned, it seemed, there was a Before long, the aluminum spikes of
laws, every Thursday evening the ex- new obstacle: a boulder of ice, or a tow- the crampons began to bend and break.
plorers would drink from a flask of ering slope resembling a frozen water- The men slipped again and again, their
whiskey, which Gow had brought with fall, or a snow bridge extending over a bodies smacking against the ice, their
him, and the next morning they would crevasse. Some of the crevasses were sleds pulling them downhill. “It was
sleep in an extra two hours. Even though “wide enough to swallow a car,” as Wors- agony,” Worsley wrote. “I felt every ridge
it was a Saturday, the men passed around ley put it. Others were only a few feet of ice as I was dragged over its vicious
the flask. The liquor warmed them. deep, but that was enough for someone surface.” Bruised and bleeding, the men
Worsley, who, in the Army, had honed to break an ankle or twist a knee. If one cursed into the wind. “Beardmore had
a gallows humor, joked about their cir- of the men were injured, there would be us in its grip,” Worsley wrote.
cumstances: if they could make fun of no place for miles for a rescue plane to One day, while they were cutting
dying, they still had some life in them. land. An A.L.E. doctor had warned southward through the middle of the
In an earlier audio broadcast, Worsley them, “You either get yourself out or you glacier, Adams said, impatiently, “I fun-
had reported, “Morale’s high,” adding, don’t get out.” damentally disagree with the route we
“We’ve just had supper. Will is picking Worsley decided that they could no are taking.” He pointed to a distant
his toes and Henry Adams is writing longer proceed on skis, and so they at- part of the glacier, saying, “We should
in his diary. We’ll send you another re- tached crampons to their boots and put be over there.” Gow argued that they
port tomorrow. Until then, farewell from on climbing harnesses, double-checking should maintain their course. Worsley
the Ross Ice Shelf.” the screws, slings, and carabiners. Then feared dissension as much as a mis-
After two more days, the storm re- the men roped themselves together: guided route, and he said sternly to
lented. The men unzipped the tent and Worsley in front, followed by Gow and Adams, “Look, mate, we need to keep
began hacking through a wall of ice Adams. As they inched up the glacier, heading southward and upward.”
about five feet tall and four feet thick. their sleds felt like ship anchors being Adams quietly relented. “Henry had
They dug for more than an hour, until dragged across an ocean floor. a calm authority,” Adams recalled. “He
they emerged into the blinding light, The days were slow and draining. made crisp decisions. Sometimes they
like escaped prisoners. They packed Before each step, Worsley, who was re- were right, sometimes they were wrong.
and pressed on, trying to make up time. sponsible for finding a path, poked his You just didn’t know, because you were
On a clear day, they could now dis- pole in front of him, to see if the ice walking through a maze. But he would
cern the peaks of the Transantarctic was solid. Whenever a hole opened, he make those decisions, having listened
Mountains—“high points piercing the leaned over and glimpsed the under- and consulted with us, so it made it
horizon line,” as Worsley reported in world—a chute swirling into darkness. very easy to follow him.”
a broadcast. By the fourth week of their “The Antarctic can take your life in On December 24th, after nine days
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 65
of climbing, they reached the top of the Worsley kept a vigilant eye on his
glacier. To the west, they could see the companions. They were almost un-
Adams Mountain Range, named for recognizable from the young profes-
Henry Adams’s great-grandfather. In sionals who had set out from London.
a broadcast, Worsley said, “It’s Christ- Their skin clung to their skulls and
mas Eve, and today . . . we bade fare- their eyes were sunken; they had wild
well to the Beardmore Glacier.” He beards and untamed hair that gleamed
went on, “We certainly worked hard to with ice. Because of the whiteouts,
gain each mile, and that’s why I find it Adams was suffering from motion sick-
such a rewarding phase of the journey.” ness. “I was moving and the surface
On Christmas morning, instead of was moving,” he recalled. “It was like
their usual breakfast of freeze-dried being trapped inside a Ping-Pong ball
porridge, the team prepared a special on a boisterous ocean.” Gow, who had
meal of sausages, bacon, and beans. developed frostbite on his face, blasted
Later, they emulated the holiday cele- blues songs into his earbuds—strug-
bration that Shackleton and his men gling, as he put it, to maintain a “sense
had shared, lighting cigars and swal- of sanity.”
lowing a teaspoon each of crème de Worsley tried to stay upbeat and
menthe. Worsley called home and spoke comfort the others, lending a hand with
to Joanna and Alicia, wishing them a their equipment or giving them Shack-
merry Christmas. Alicia, who had leton’s compass to carry for good luck.
painted on his skis “u r the best dad But by December 31st it was Worsley
ever,” asked him what it was like to who was suffering and struggling to
experience a white Christmas, and said keep pace. His body could not main-
that she missed him dearly. Yet Max, tain sufficient body fat. “My days were
who was still wrestling with his father’s fast turning into a raw, bare-knuckle
absence, refused to come to the phone. fight against fatigue,” he wrote. “En-
Worsley then called his own father, ergy just poured from my body, to be
hoping to share the news that he had snatched away and dissipated by the
reached the top of the glacier. But Rich- wind. My legs would not work any
ard Worsley, who was now eighty-five faster. Each stride of the ski seemed
years old, had dementia, and when his locked at a precise distance. I could go
son reminded him that he was in Ant- no faster, just slower and slower.”
arctica he said, “What are you doing On New Year’s Day, he was again
there?” lagging. Adams waited for him to catch
up and said, “General, let me carry some
he following morning, the forty- of your load.”
T third day of the expedition, Wors-
ley, Adams, and Gow began the next
Despite the pact they had made at
the start of the journey, Worsley said,
stage of their journey. They had trav- “I won’t have it. We are all completely
elled four hundred and eighty-nine done in, so why should you?” He in-
nautical miles, and if they were to reach sisted, “I’ll find a way. It’s my problem
Shackleton’s farthest point on Janu- to sort out.” Pointing to his temple
ary 9th, two weeks away, they needed with his gloved hand, he added, “The
to cover as much as sixteen nautical answer lies here.”
miles each day. In a broadcast on De- He was, he knew, blinded by pride;
cember 27th, Worsley echoed the words as he later wrote, he could not be seen Worsley’s crew traversing the Beardmore
of Shackleton: “Please God, ahead of as “admitting to weakness.” And, rather
us is a clear road to the Pole.” than accept Adams’s assistance, he dis- masters of our fate, that the task which
But, as they ascended the Titan Dome, carded his emergency supply of food, has been set before us is not above our
they confronted the most brutal condi- which lightened his load by a few strength; that its pangs and toils are
tions yet: hurricane-force gales, and a ounces. He recognized that it was a not beyond our endurance. As long as
wind-chill temperature of minus sixty risky move: “I would go hungry . . . if we have faith in our cause and an un-
degrees. The cold air singed the men’s we arrived at the Pole after 18 January.” conquerable will to win, victory will
lungs as if they were breathing fire. Inside the tent on January 5th, he not be denied us.”
During a broadcast on December 28th, opened the envelope that Joanna had “Read it again, General,”Adams asked.
Gow reported, “We were welcomed with given him. Some of the notes contained Worsley did, and then they all passed
our worst whiteout yet,” adding, “All we inspiring quotations, and he read aloud out.
could see were the tips of our skis.” one from Winston Churchill: “We are The next day, during another white-
66 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
Glacier, which is pocked with large crevasses. Henry Adams likened the experience to confronting a “Biblical terror.”
out, Adams got such severe motion sick- ninety-seven-mile mark on schedule. But “C’mo-o-on!” Adams cried.
ness that he began vomiting. Though on January 7th, with just two days to go, During the next two days, the storm
Worsley had never felt, in his own words, another storm descended, and they were abated, and they covered more than
“so empty, so feeble and so beaten,” he enveloped in the white darkness. Wors- twenty-five nautical miles. On January
COURTESY JOANNA WORSLEY
told Adams that he would switch sleds ley explained to the others that they could 9th, they barrelled ahead for six hours.
with him, given that Adams’s sled, which either keep going or sit out the storm. Then Worsley took out his G.P.S. and
was carrying unused fuel cannisters, was But if they waited they would miss the gripped it, as he put it, “like an old man
heavier. Worsley then forged ahead at anniversary. “I want to go on,” Worsley carefully carrying a cup of tea.” As Gow
his fastest pace in days. “Henry relied said. But he stressed that the decision and Adams anxiously looked on, Wors-
on force of mind,” Adams recalled. There had to be unanimous. ley shuffled around until the G.P.S. con-
was still a chance for them to make the “No question,” Gow said. nected with satellites and coördinates
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 67
flashed on the screen: 88° 23' S, 162° E.
“That’s it!” he yelled, slamming his
poles into the ground. “We’ve made
it!” The men looked around, examin-
ing the place that had long consumed
their imaginations, and which had lured
them nearly to their demise. All they
could see was barren ice—their grail
was no more than a geographical data
point. As Adams later put it, “What is
Antarctica other than a blank canvas
on which you seek to impose yourself ?”
The temperature was minus thirty-
one degrees, too cold to linger. But Wors-
ley planted a British flag and arranged
a group photograph similar to one that
Shackleton had taken with his party.
Adams was on the left, as his great-
grandfather had been; Gow was in the
middle; and Worsley stood on the right,
in Shackleton’s place.
Worsley kept thinking about the pre- In 1909, Shackleton’s team took a picture at 88° 23' S—the southernmost point
dicament that Shackleton had faced a
hundred years earlier. Shortly before could finally see a signpost: the smudged embraced the others. Only a few years
reaching the ninety-seven-mile mark, outline of the Amundsen-Scott South earlier, they had been strangers, yet they
Shackleton had written in his diary, “I Pole Station, a U.S. scientific-research had learned to trust one another with
cannot think of failure yet. I must look base. After a few hours, Worsley no- their lives. What’s more, Worsley be-
at the matter sensibly and consider the ticed that his skis were moving in tracks lieved, they had mastered the seemingly
lives of those who are with me. I feel that that had been etched by snowmobiles. impossible by adhering to the lessons of
if we go on too far it will be impossible Then he saw, dumped in a pile on the Shackleton; they had conquered through
to get back over this surface, and then ice, a broken washing machine, a mat- endurance. In a broadcast, Worsley an-
all the results will be lost to the world.” tress, and crushed boxes. The scentless nounced, “I’m calling you from ninety
He added, “Man can only do his best, air became infused with the sharp odors degrees south, the South Pole!” Then he
and we have arrayed against us the stron- of fried food and petroleum; occasion- took out Shackleton’s compass, lifted the
gest forces of nature.” When he finally ally, a military plane roared overhead. lid, and let the needle spin to a stop.
made the decision to retreat, on January “We had been thrust back into the world
9th, he wrote, “We have shot our bolt.” we had left behind,” Worsley wrote. VI. THE INFINITE BEYOND
Worsley said to Gow and Adams, In front of the research station, pro-
“I simply cannot contemplate them truding from the ice, was a gleaming orsley didn’t think that he would
just turning round and heading back
the way they had just come.”
metal rod, about waist-high, topped
with a brass globe. Scientists at the base
W ever go back to Antarctica again.
He happily returned to the Army and
As Worsley and his companions con- used it as a marker of the South Pole— relished being with his family. But he
tinued toward the Pole, they were no the place where all the lines of longi- gradually began to feel again the “lure
longer following in Shackleton’s steps. tude converge, and where the Earth of little voices.” In his commonplace
To their relief, they began descending doesn’t rotate. Because the rod was book, he wrote down a quote, from the
in altitude, their sleds, lightened from planted on a shifting ice sheet, it had Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nan-
the consumption of food, scooting eas- to be moved several feet each year, to sen, that seemed to address his own
ily behind them. After eight days, they return to the Pole’s precise location. compulsion to subject himself to more
had covered ninety-two nautical miles, On January 18th, at 4:32 p.m., after suffering: “Why? On account of the
a reminder of just how close Shackle- sixty-six days, Worsley and his com- great geographical discoveries, the im-
ton had been to realizing his dream. That panions—emaciated, with icicles drip- portant scientific results? Oh no; that
night, Worsley went for his stroll, wob- ping from their beards—reached out and will come later, for the few specialists.
bling on bone-thin legs. He was not a grasped the rod. As the journey had ap- This is something all can understand.
religious man, but the landscape stirred proached its end, Worsley had felt tears A victory of human mind and human
him. As Adams put it, “Henry felt the freezing under his eyes: he had not ex- strength over the dominion and pow-
spirituality of the Antarctic.” perienced such joy and relief since he ers of Nature; a deed that lifts us above
The next morning, the men broke was a little boy. But now Worsley, whom the great monotony of daily life; a view
camp, and embarked on the remaining Adams called an “absolute bang-on nat- over shining plains, with lofty moun-
five nautical miles. In the distance, they ural leader,” laughed and hollered and tains against the cold blue sky, and lands
68 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
ily, a way to convey what he could not
say directly. “Looking back now, I re-
alize that I lost track of where my real
priorities should lie,” he wrote. “I can
see now that I was not dividing up the
time sensibly and making my family
feel important and special.” He went
on, “Passion for something can so eas-
ily tip into obsession, which is a dan-
gerous thing, especially when those
affected are the very people who so loy-
ally ‘stand and wait.’”
Joanna, who often joked that the
Antarctic was her husband’s “mistress,”
had expected that, upon his retirement,
they would no longer be apart. But she
had never tried to limit his aspira-
tions—“He went with my blessings ev-
erywhere,” she once told a reporter—
and she understood how much the
proposed trip meant to him. And Henry
anyone had yet reached. Worsley’s crew re-created the photo a hundred years later. wasn’t just doing it for himself—he
hoped to raise a hundred thousand dol-
covered by ice-sheets of inconceivable half decades of service, he would be lars for the Endeavour Fund, the other
extent . . . the triumph of the living fifty-five, at that time the mandatory charity for injured soldiers. As he later
over the stiffened realm of death.” retirement age. Joanna had accompa- put it, “I want to leave a financial leg-
In 2012, Worsley launched a new ex- nied him to the States, and she sensed acy to assist my wounded mates.” And
pedition, to mark the centennial of the his mind drifting. “Are you doing an- so she gave Worsley her backing. The
race between Amundsen and Scott to other expedition?” she asked. children were equally supportive. Max,
the South Pole. Gow and Adams, who He said that the centenary of Shack- who would be twenty-one by the time
had married and settled down with fam- leton’s Endurance expedition would co- of the expedition, and who was helping
ilies, declined to go, and so Worsley incide with his retirement, and that he to build ships in the South of France,
drew recruits from the military. He and was considering an attempt of the had come to terms with his father’s ad-
a partner, Lou Rudd, followed the trail trans-Antarctica crossing that Shack- venturist spirit, and even lionized him
of Amundsen and raced against another leton had planned before the sinking for it.They talked about eventually doing
party, which took the route of Scott. of his ship. What’s more, Worsley hoped a polar journey together. “Everyone
Once more, Worsley proved an extraor- to make the nine-hundred-nautical-mile dreams, but Dad’s the guy who goes out
dinary commander—Rudd called him journey by himself, and without assis- and achieves them,” Max said.
a “true inspiration”—and they won the tance, something that had never been In the fall of 2015, before Henry de-
COURTESY SHACKLETON FOUNDATION; OPPOSITE: ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
nine-hundred-mile contest, which raised done. Paul Rose, a former base com- parted on the expedition, he and Jo-
nearly three hundred thousand dollars mander for the British Antarctic Sur- anna travelled to Greece. While visit-
for a Royal British Legion fund that as- vey, which conducts scientific research ing ancient sites and drinking wine at
sists wounded soldiers. in the region, called such a trek “un- tavernas, they plotted out the things
Worsley had become the first per- heard of,” and another explorer deemed they would do when he returned. They
son to trace the two classic routes to it an “almost inhuman challenge.” For would go to India and teach under-
the South Pole. Outside hailed him as Worsley, the expedition represented the privileged children, and travel to Ven-
“one of the great polar explorers of our culmination of all his energies. Not only ice, where he could study art and she
time,” and a reporter described him as would it be his longest, hardest, and could do charity work. Max recalled,
a “pioneer of the possible.” Worsley, most punishing quest; he would have “Mom was waiting twenty-five years
who had recently published “In Shack- to survive entirely on his own wits. for the moment when he left the Army
leton’s Footsteps,” gave lectures on ex- Henry, though, told Joanna that he and they could do these things together.”
ploration and leadership, becoming that would return to Antarctica only if she Worsley no longer journeyed in
rare apostle whose life seems to affirm approved. He was sensitive to the toll obscurity, and his plan received admir-
his master’s teachings. that his expeditions had taken on their ing news coverage. “intrepid ex-army
In 2013, he was stationed in Wash- family. He often struggled to express officer is set for antarctic
ington, D.C., as the British liaison to his emotions—the tumult that he had trek,” the Glasgow Herald announced.
U.S. Special Operations Forces. It was kept masked, even as it drove him— A Washington Post headline declared
his final military posting: in October and in his book he had included a pas- that Worsley would be “all alone on
of 2015, after more than three and a sage that seemed intended for his fam- the coldest continent.” Worsley
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 69
was interviewed by National Geographic his flight for a week, and then another. took time each evening to relay updates
and by the BBC, whose announcer said, “Greetings from Patience Camp,” he re- and respond to inquiries that had been
“You must be mad to do it.” Prince ported on his broadcast. “Unfortunately, sent to him. He answered questions
William invited Worsley to Kensing- this is Patience Camp in Chile.” about whether he had seen any animal
ton Palace and signed a Union Jack By the time he reached Berkner Is- life (“sadly not”), about his favorite
for him to carry with him on his trip, land, on November 13th, he was signifi- freeze-dried meal (spaghetti Bolognese),
which was similar to the one that King cantly behind schedule. He would need about his least favorite time of day (pre-
George V had given to Shackleton be- to arrive at the South Pole by January 1, paring to set off in the morning) and
fore he departed. 2016—a gruelling pace. Within moments his favorite (climbing into his tent after
On October 20th, Joanna drove him of exiting the plane, he was packing his a long march). He was asked which
to Heathrow Airport. She was more sled, which, because of the length of the actor should portray him in a movie
worried about this expedition than any journey, weighed three hundred and twen- about his adventures. Admitting that
other, given his age and the lack of help. ty-five pounds—even more than on his his answer offered a “strong exposé of
In a video that Worsley posted on his expedition with Gow and Adams. “Re- my vanity,” he suggested Matt Damon
Web site, he had spoken of the risks ally worried about weight,” he had writ- for his younger self and Anthony Hop-
of journeying solo. The biggest threat, ten earlier, in his diary. Noting that “anx- kins for his older self. He even replied
he said, was falling into a crevasse: no iety builds,” he reminded himself that he to a question about how he went to the
one could pull him out or call for res- needed to “banish negative thoughts.” loo. “If you need to pee, throw your back
cue. The other major threats, he said, He pushed off, and heard a familiar to the wind, unzip, and have a pee,” he
were a “severe medical injury” and “se- symphony: the poles crunching on the explained. “Really not a big deal about
vere weather.” But he believed that his ice, the sled creaking over ridges, the that. On the other hand, if you need to
meticulous preparations would miti- skis swishing back and forth. When he go No. 2, you need to be a little more
gate the risks. While travelling alone, paused, he was greeted by that silence organized, particularly if there’s a strong
he noted, “there is no one there to com- which seemed unlike any other. His wind, which, generally, there is. This
pare thoughts with and seek their opin- doubts soon dissipated, and after a brief time, you face into the wind. You make
ions on, but I want to do this on my baptismal trek he made camp. The sun sure that you’ve grabbed your outer trou-
own.” He later put the matter even was shining and the temperature was a sers, your long johns, your pants, and
more starkly: “Success or failure of this balmy nineteen degrees. “So, so happy you drop them as quickly as possible.”
journey is completely up to me.” to be back,” he wrote in his diary. “Many One evening, after answering several
At the terminal, Joanna broke down, days of struggle ahead but a glorious queries, he playfully signed off from
and he repeated what he always told her: start. My spirits lifted as soon as I got “somewhere” in “a complete whiteout.”
“Better a live donkey than a dead lion.” going. I thought, ‘I can do this.’” In his By the end of the first week, he had
Then he kissed her and said, “Onwards!” broadcast, he described Antarctica as travelled nearly seventy nautical miles.
the “best place on Earth right now.” His body, he reported to listeners, was
his time, Worsley’s route was to begin The next morning, he began what in remarkably good shape. He’d just en-
T on Berkner Island, an icebound
chunk of rock off the Atlantic coast of
he called his “first full day in the sad-
dle.” He trekked for eight hours, listen-
joyed a hot meal of chicken cacciatore,
with rice pudding for dessert. “I am
Antarctica, south of Chile. From there, ing to tracks by David Bowie, Johnny now off to my sleeping bag,” he said.
he would trek five hundred and seventy Cash, and Meat Loaf and pondering
nautical miles to the South Pole. Then, what he might say, upon his return, in hen, as on Shackleton’s Endur-
heading in the reverse direction from the
one he had followed with Gow and
a lecture about the trip. He covered a
good ten nautical miles, but it was a
T ance expedition, everything began
to go wrong. On November 22nd, a
Adams, he would ascend the Titan Dome shock to his system. “First few days re- little more than a week into his jour-
and make his way down to the rim of ally are hell—never forget that,” he ney, he was engulfed in a whiteout
the Ross Ice Shelf, on the Pacific side. wrote. If he focussed on the length of and was pinned down in his tent.
This second section would cover three his journey, he would never make it, and “Proper Antarctic storm!” he wrote in
hundred and thirty nautical miles, and so he concentrated on immediate tasks. his diary, noting that there was no
he estimated that the expedition would “It’s just chipping away at it, bit by bit, chance of moving forward that day.
take him nearly eighty days. He was de- and dealing with the moment,” he later The next morning, the gusts felt strong
termined to finish before February, when said on a broadcast. On the third day, enough to hurl a small dog; one of
winter set in and the conditions became after crossing the eighty-first degree of the tent poles broke, and he had to
too perilous for a rescue plane to land; latitude, he convened a one-man meet- repair it. “A salutary reminder just
even A.L.E. shut down in winter. At that ing of the Malt Whiskey Appreciation who is in control around here,” he
point, there would be no exit. Society, downing a shot of liquor, which said of the conditions. “Trespassers
Worsley had hoped to fly to Antarc- he had cooled with snow. He knew that will be punished.”
tica shortly after arriving in Punta Are- more and more people were following He emerged on November 24th, and
nas, on October 21st. But foul weath- his broadcasts, including schoolchil- found himself plowing through a dust
er—“our lord and master at the moment,” dren—“young explorers,” he called bowl of ice in which all he could see,
as he called it—forced A.L.E. to delay them—and, despite his exhaustion, he hour after hour, was his compass
70 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
strapped to his chest and his skis with required.” Two nights later, after an- and often I had to stop to give them
their metronomic rhythm—an experi- other whiteout, he lamented that he some warmth,” he said. “And the light
ence that he described as “miserable, hadn’t had enough strength “to pull the was so flat that on two occasions, im-
mind-numbing, monochromatic mo- sledge through” the storm. His diary mediately after stopping, I fell straight
notony.” He was ascending a section entries became a litany of suffering: over, such is the disorienting effect it
of the Transantarctic Mountains, and “hard day”; “a very difficult day”; “a bru- has on your senses.”
on November 25th he came upon a tal day”; “awful day—floundering The next day, he blindly skied over
steep slope of ice that rose hundreds around in a complete whiteout”; “an- a ridge, and the sled overtook him and
of feet. He tried to climb with his cram- other awful day—worse than yester- pulled him down. His head and back
pons but the sled wouldn’t move. Again, day”; “swimming against a strong tide”; and legs slammed against the ice. The
he tried. Again, it wouldn’t budge. “still swimming against the tide”; “to- sled flipped over twice, dragging him
If he didn’t keep moving, he would tally spent and demoralized.” Each for twenty yards. He lay splattered on
freeze. He decided to lighten his sled, morning, he unzipped the flap of his the ice, cursing. When he got to his
and unloaded most of his bags of food tent and peeked out, hoping for clear feet, he nervously checked his fuel can-
and stored them on a flat part of the skies, only to behold what he called nisters. One crack and he would be
ice. Then he began to climb. When he “more of the white darkness.” At times, doomed, but there were none, and,
reached the top of the ridge, gasping he could not even discern the tips of conscious of time slipping away, he un-
for air behind his face mask, he depos- his skis through the murk, which, he tangled his harness and set off again.
ited what he’d dragged up. After a short wrote, was as “thick as clotted cream.”
rest, he scaled back down to retrieve On December 1st, he marched into nd incredibly, despite every obsta-
the rest. He made trip after trip.
Once, in the poor visibility, he failed
what he described as “the mother of
all storms.” Trudging uphill, with his
A cle and every calamity, he was on
track to reach the South Pole around
to notice the scar of a crevasse and his head bowed against a fusillade of ice New Year’s Day. Nothing seemed to stop
foot broke through the surface. He felt pellets, he moved at less than a mile him. One morning, he forged on even
himself slipping into the hole, which per hour. After many hours, he abruptly when the conditions were so awful that
was widening around him. He grabbed paused. “I sat huddled on my sledge, he conceded that it was “crazy” to set
the edge and clung to it, dangling over down jacket on, wondering whether to off. Another time, he wrote in his diary,
an abyss, before he hauled himself up. go or to stop,” he later recalled. It was “I just can’t go further—I don’t have it
When he peered into the chasm, he so windy that he did not know if he in me.” And yet he rose the next day and
wrote in his diary, he “suddenly felt could set up his tent, and so he resumed marched onward. On December 18th,
very alone, vulnerable and scared.” trekking. “My hands took a battering, the thirty-sixth day, he walked more than
His body was weakening more rap-
idly than on his previous expeditions.
Not only was the sled heavier; he con-
stantly had to break track, and he had
to carry out alone the tiresome tasks
of making camp each night and pack-
ing up in the morning.
On November 30th, after trekking
for nearly three weeks and travers-
ing a hundred and sixty-five nautical
miles, he reported that he had “ach-
ing shoulders, lower-back pain, very
snotty nose . . . and coughing due to
breathing in cold air.” He developed a
rash on his groin. His feet were cov-
ered in bruises and blisters, and he took
a knife to his boots, hoping to smooth
the lining and alleviate the pain. One
day, he suffered from a mysterious stom-
ach ache, which was aggravated by the
sled harness yanking at his waist.
Though he usually maintained a
buoyant tone in his broadcast, he was
more despairing in his diary. “It was a
real physical battle with fatigue,” he
wrote, adding, “I was stopping literally
every minute or so to catch my breath
or just get ready for the next exertion “ You’re calling it love, but it’s really just static electricity.”
seventeen nautical miles, a remarkable into his sleeping bag and speaking to us, break, he nodded off, even though the
trek that took him fifteen hours. After you know he’s back into the green.” wind-chill temperature was minus
another punishing day—which he de- By Christmas Day, Worsley was twenty-two. “I may be drained of all
scribed as a “combination of eating, bend- nearly within a hundred nautical miles power and energy,” he reported on a
ing, driving, tying, pushing, bracing, of the Pole. Prince William broadcast broadcast. “But I still seem to have
draining, swearing, pausing and despair- a message, saying, “We’re thinking of the will that says, to my heart and
ing”—he told himself, “I just have to ac- you at the Christmas period as you’re nerves and sinews, Hold on.” He kept
cept it and keep moving.” lugging all your kit up and down the telling himself, “Keep your eyes on
His existence had been reduced to slopes and the hills of the southern At- the prize.”
a single purpose: making his mileage. lantic in the Antarctic.” Worsley opened On January 2nd, only a day behind
When approaching sastrugi, he com- a package that Joanna and the children schedule, he reached the Pole. He was
manded himself to “attack, attack, at- had given him. Inside were minia- greeted by a group of well-wishers from
tack.” After one such battle, he wrote ture versions of traditional Christmas the scientific-research station. They
proudly in his diary that he had stormed sweets: a mincemeat pie and a fruit- were the first people he had seen in
“the ramparts of every piece that was cake. Alicia had written him a note fifty-one days. But this was not the cli-
unfortunate enough to get in my way.” that quoted lyrics from “The Jungle max of his journey—it was only the
He added, “The sledge, now a batter- Book”: “Look for the bare necessi- end of the first phase—and, because
ing ram and not a burden, smashed ties /The simple bare necessities / For- he was making his trek unaided, he
through all in its path.” When he was get about your worries and your strife.” couldn’t go inside the base to receive a
asked by his radio listeners how he And Joanna had included a sample of hot meal or even to take a bath. “It was
persevered, he said that it was less about Amouage Journey Man cologne. “I weird arriving here and not stopping,”
physical prowess than about how figured his tent would be so smelly by he wrote in his diary, adding, “Very
“strong your mind and will are—hours then,” she recalled. tempting to stay at Pole—eat and sleep.”
at the gym cannot prepare you.” On his broadcast, Worsley said, But he set up his camp as usual, main-
Robert Swan, a British adventurer “Packages from home, especially at taining his self-imposed exile.
who had trekked to both poles, was mon- times like this, no matter where you During his broadcast, he told his
itoring Worsley’s journey, and expressed are in the world, carry special mean- listeners, “I owe so much to all of you
awe at his daily progress. In an audio ing. And none more so for me this for your support in getting me this far.
message posted on Worsley’s Web site, morning.” I cannot emphasize too strongly just
on December 5th, Swan said, “His av- Using his satellite phone, he called how much it has urged me on over the
erage is fantastic,” adding, “He’s facing Joanna and Alicia, in London, and then darker days, of which there have been
some quite odd conditions, but, being Max, in France. Throughout the jour- many. But those I have to thank most
Henry, he’s slugging it out.” In a second ney, Worsley had made a record in his are Joanna, Max, and Alicia.” His voice
message, posted later that month, Swan diary of virtually every communication cracked. “They have been with me every
described Worsley proceeding as if a that he had had with them. Once, after step of the way, each with a warm hand
traffic light were glowing in front of him: speaking to Joanna, he wrote, “I do love in the small of my back, lifting me when
“Very, very rarely in your mind do you her so much.” Another time, after he I am down, strengthening me when I
ever see the color green, received a text from Ali- am weak, and filling me when I’m
for the simple reason if cia saying “I am thinking empty. I owe them everything.” He
you’re in green you’re prob- of you constantly, and love concluded, “At the southerly point
ably not pushing hard you more than ever,” he where the world spins on—good night.”
enough. . . . You’re think- jotted down, “Sweet text
ing about your feet, your
legs, your calves, your hips,
your arms, your neck, your
from Shrimp”—his nick-
name for her. And he
noted that a conversation
Iingnbroadcasts
London, Joanna listened to his
each evening before fall-
asleep. Shortly before Christmas,
shoulders, and you’re con- one morning with Max she was interviewed by a reporter from
stantly doing these checks had “lifted my spirits.” On the Daily Express, and she said, “Henry
to see whether everything’s Christmas Day, he wrote was away abroad a lot in his army days
O.K. . . . As Henry has said, as he moves in his diary, “Lovely to hear their voices.” so we’ve been used to separations . . .
towards those last few hours every day, Despite the holiday, Worsley marched but I miss him much more now. I do
you can feel that he’s pushing into the twelve nautical miles. As he lay in his worry about him because I know how
red zone. And the red zone is not a place tent that night, he lit a cigar, the sweet frail he is getting—he does lose a huge
to stay in, because in the red zone your smoke filling the air, and ate his Christ- amount of weight and he has had a re-
body is starting to eat itself. You’re much mas treats. It was, he said, like a “little ally rough time with the weather.” She
more likely to get frostbite. So you live heaven.” went on, “He is so determined. In my
on the edge of the orange, occasionally Soon, he was almost at nine thou- head I know there’s no way he won’t
push into the red, and then, very sensi- sand feet, the elevation of the South succeed, even if he has to walk all day
bly, he comes back off the red, back into Pole. He was so tired that once, while and night. He has enormous mental
the orange. And hopefully, when he’s sitting on his sled during a snack strength.” She was overcome: “He’s an
72 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
amazing man—isn’t it wonderful to be
married to someone like that?”
Worsley estimated that it would
take him about three weeks to com-
plete the rest of his journey, and he
hoped that the hardest part was be-
hind him. In his diary, he had written,
“Just pray going North is that much
easier.” Yet, as he climbed the Titan
Dome, he found the ascent to be “a
killer.” He had lost more than forty
pounds, and his unwashed clothing
hung on him heavily. “Still very weak—
legs are stick thin and arms puny,” he
noted in his diary. His eyes had sunk
into shaded hollows. His fingers were
becoming numb. His Achilles tendons
were swollen. His hips were battered
and scraped from the constantly jerk-
ing harness. He had broken his front “Coastal élite!”
tooth biting into a frozen protein bar,
and told A.L.E. that he looked like a
pirate. He was dizzy from the altitude,
• •
and he had bleeding hemorrhoids.
On January 7th, he woke in the mid- poem “Ulysses”: “To strive, to seek, to ley’s close friends, asking if someone
dle of the night with another stomach find, and not to yield.” Once, he looked should ask A.L.E. to dispatch a rescue
ache. “I felt pretty awful,” he admitted up in the sky and saw, through his fro- plane. They thought that Worsley
on his broadcast. “The weakest I felt zen goggles, a dazzling sun halo. On the would be O.K., given his experience
in the entire expedition.” The earbuds edge of the circle, there were intense and abilities, and that he should be the
on his iPod had broken, leaving him bursts of light, as if the sun were being one to make such a call. Robert Swan,
in silence. “I feel alone,” he confessed splintered into three fiery balls. He knew in one of his earlier broadcasts, had
on a broadcast, adding, “Occasionally, that the phenomenon was caused by noted that Worsley had on his belt “a
it would be nice to have somebody to sunlight being refracted through a scrim wonderful, unbelievable” Iridium sat-
talk to about the day.” of ice particles. Yet, as he stumbled on- ellite telephone, adding, “If he does
He kept thinking that he would ward through the void, he wondered if have a problem, he can hit the button
soon reach the top of the Titan Dome. the light was actually some guiding spirit, and get some support and rescue very,
“I’ll be okay if the promised ‘downhill’ like the “fourth man” that Shackleton very quickly.”
materializes,” he wrote in his diary. But had spoken of. Perhaps Worsley, too, On January 19th, after man-haul-
the peak eluded him—he was trapped had pierced the “veneer of outside ing through another storm, Worsley
in an infinite beyond. On January 11th, things”—or perhaps his mind was sim- was too tired to give a broadcast, and
he told his listeners, “I’m desperate to ply unravelling. His diary entries had with his frozen hand he scribbled only
go down and into air thick enough to become sparer and darker: “So breath- a few words in his diary, the writing
breathe.” less . . . I am fading . . . hands/fingers are almost illegible: “Very desperate . . .
Listening to the broadcasts, Joanna forever shutting down . . . wonder how slipping away . . . stomach . . . took pain-
was increasingly concerned. “I felt in long they will last.” killers.” He was incontinent, and re-
his voice this exhaustion and sadness,” On January 17th, he staggered peatedly had to venture outside to squat
she recalled. He had no companion to through a whiteout, pulling his sled for in the freezing cold. His body seemed
tell him that he had remained too long sixteen hours. When he stopped, it was to be eating itself.
in the red zone; nor was he held back late evening, and he struggled to build The next day, the sixty-ninth day of
by the worry that his actions might jeop- his camp again—to plant the tent poles his journey, he could drag his sled for
ardize the lives of others. And he was in the ice, to unload his food, to light only a few hours. He built his tent and
confident that he could do what he al- the cooker, to melt snow for water. “It’s collapsed inside. At one point, he called
ways had done: prevail through unbend- now one o’clock in the morning,” he Max on the satellite phone, waking him
ing will. In his commonplace book, he said in his broadcast. “In sum, it’s been in the middle of the night in France.
had once written down a quote, from a punishing day.” He continued, “What All Henry kept saying was “I just want
the cyclist Lance Armstrong, that said, little energy I have left . . .” His voice to hear your voice, I just want to hear
“Losing and dying: it’s the same thing.” faded in and out. your voice.”
And so Worsley pressed on, mutter- Joanna panicked upon hearing the Max told him, “You will always be
ing to himself a line from Tennyson’s broadcast. She called many of Wors- a polar warrior in my eyes. You just
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 73
need to pull out and come home.” deavour Fund, which had exceeded his She caught the first flight out and
On the morning of January 21st, Jo- goal and would eventually surpass a arrived in Santiago, where she waited
anna spoke to him. He was suffering quarter of a million dollars. “It is in- for a connecting flight to Punta Are-
from, as she put it, “complete shutdown.” credible and does make me smile,” he nas. While she was in Santiago, she
He couldn’t even muster the energy to said. He explained that the rescue plane met the British Ambassador to Chile,
boil water or to brush his teeth, and she would arrive shortly, and that he was Fiona Clouder, who told Joanna that
pleaded with him to call A.L.E. and looking forward to a cup of hot tea. He Henry’s condition was grave. Joanna
evacuate. “You’ve absolutely got to call concluded, “This is Henry Worsley, continued to get updates from the
them,” she said. signing off, at journey’s end.” hospital, and was informed that his
He told her that, though he wasn’t He had already told Joanna of his liver had failed. You can live without
going to leave the tent, he needed some decision, and she couldn’t wait to see a liver, can’t you? Joanna thought. Then
time to think through what to do next. him and hold him. As she later noted, she heard that his kidney had failed,
He spent the day wrestling with his “Obviously, he will feel disappointed, and thought, Can’t you live without a
predicament, wondering what Shacks but Shackleton never reached his goals, kidney? Then, just before Joanna was
would do. Worsley had written in his and what Henry has done is extraor- to board the plane for Punta Arenas,
diary, “Just want it all to end,” adding, dinary.” She notified Max and Alicia the Ambassador got a call from the
“Miss everybody badly.” But the G.P.S. and many friends, all of whom expressed British Embassy. Afterward, Clouder
had informed him that he had finally relief that he had decided to come home. knelt beside Joanna, held her hand,
passed the apex of the Titan Dome, Or, as Joanna thought of it: He chose us. and said what Joanna already knew:
and had started to descend. History When the plane arrived, later on Henry was dead.
was within his grasp. In his diary, he January 22nd, he rose proudly and Accompanied by the Ambassador,
had written, “Never, ever give in.” It walked under his own power, though Joanna flew to Punta Arenas. She went
echoed a lesson from one of the Shack- he needed help climbing the stairs into past city streets and pedestrians, but
leton self-help books, which Worsley the cabin. He knew that he had made didn’t see anything; it was as if she
had once posted on his Web site: “Never the right decision: he had seen his naked were in a whiteout. She was taken into
give up—there’s always another move.” soul. Worsley was flown to A.L.E.’s a church: light filtering through stained-
But maybe that was wrong. Hadn’t base camp, on the other side of Ant- glass windows, a cross on the wall. In
Shackleton survived because he had re- arctica, where, according to a company front of her was an open wooden cas-
alized that, at a certain point, he had no report, he was “talking happily about ket. Henry was inside. She had been
more moves and turned back? Unlike home and his upcoming lecturing en- told that several rock specimens had
Scott and others who went to a polar gagement.” That evening, he called Jo- been found in his possession when he
grave, Shackleton reckoned with his own anna and said, “I’m having a cup of tea was evacuated, which was so like him:
limitations and those of his men. He and I’m going to be fine.” to carry them even as he was strug-
understood that not everything, least of “I love you so much,” she said. gling to pull his weight. She looked
all the Antarctic, can be conquered. And “Darling, I love you, too,” he said, down at his face. “I was completely
that within defeat there can still be tri- promising to call her the next morning. terrified,” she recalled. “But he looked
umph—the triumph of survival itself. incredibly peaceful. Almost happy.”
On January 22nd, after seventy-one round two in the afternoon on She leaned over and kissed him, his
days and a trek of nearly eight hundred
nautical miles, Worsley pushed the but-
A January 23rd, the phone rang. But
it wasn’t Henry—it was Steve Jones,
skin still warm.
Joanna was filled with regrets. She
ton and called for the most expensive A.L.E.’s expeditions manager. He ex- wished that she had spoken to him be-
taxi ride in the world. “Greetings, ev- plained that the doctors had discov- fore he had gone into surgery. She wished
erybody,” he said on his broadcast. ered that Worsley was suffering from that he had abandoned his quest sooner,
“When my hero Ernest Shackleton bacterial peritonitis, an infection of the and that she had called A.L.E. herself.
walked ninety-seven miles from the thin tissue that lines the inner wall of “I’ll feel guilty for the rest of my life,”
South Pole on the morning of January 9, the abdomen. It might have been caused she said. She was facing “an absolute
1909, he said he’d shot his bolt.” Wors- by a perforated ulcer, and if an infec- wall of pain,” her own Antarctica.
ley continued, “Well, today I have to tion spread into his bloodstream it could Joanna called their children. Alicia,
inform with some sadness that I, too, produce septic shock. A.L.E. had flown who had always shared some of her fa-
have shot my bolt. . . . My journey is at Worsley to a hospital in Punta Arenas, ther’s stoicism, nearly collapsed. Some
an end. I have run out of time and phys- and he was being rushed into surgery. time later, she looked through her fa-
ical endurance—and a simple, sheer in- He was still talking about his family ther’s writings about his journey and
ability to slide one ski in front of the and his upcoming lecture, as if unable found a line that has stayed with her:
other. . . . My summit is just out of to comprehend the sudden turn of “You are sitting on a large white plate
reach.” But he sounded relieved: “I’ll events. Hadn’t he turned back? Jones looking out to the edge and I would
lick my wounds. I will heal over time, asked Joanna if she wanted to speak to draw myself back up into the sky and
and I’ll come to terms with the disap- him. She feared delaying the opera- into space and look down and think of
pointment.” His spirits were buoyed by tion, and said no, promising to be on myself as this atom on an ice cube in
the outpouring of donations to the En- the next plane to Chile. the middle of nowhere.” Long after-
74 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
ward, Max found himself waiting for
his father to appear. “He was always the
invincible man—not physically but men-
tally—and I still expect him to come
back,” he recalled. “I’m still waiting.”
Despite his grief, he was overwhelmed
with pride when he thought of his fa-
ther: “If I’m even half the man Dad
turned out to be, I’d be so pleased.”
Whereas his father would ask himself,
“What would Shacks do?,” Max asked
himself, “What would Dad do?”
When the news of Worsley’s death
reached Great Britain, Prince William
said, “We have lost a friend, but he will
remain a source of inspiration to us
all.” The press hailed Worsley as “one
of the world’s great polar explorers”
and a “hero from a bygone age.” He
was posthumously awarded the Polar
Medal, which had been given to Scott
and Shackleton. In a Facebook post,
Nancy F. Koehn, the author of the
book “Ernest Shackleton, Exploring
Leadership,” wrote, “Worsley consid-
ered Shackleton his hero, and now we
see Worsley as one of ours.”
The funeral was held on February 11,
2016, at St. Paul’s Church in Knights-
bridge. Hundreds of people gathered,
among them Prince William, General
Nick Carter, Henry Adams, and Will Worsley called his wife and said, “I’m having a cup of tea and I’m going to be fine.”
Gow. In tribute to Worsley, many of
the mourners wore brightly colored ties he had written about Antarctica when a ceremony for Worsley in the chapel.
or scarves. Although Worsley’s remains he was thirteen years old and his father After a while, they headed outside, and
were cremated, there was a casket, was embarking on his first expedition: hiked up an icy slope. A light snow
draped with Polar Star white roses; his was falling, and Joanna had wrapped
What beauty is seen through the mist of
military medals had been placed on the white snow, herself in the down coat that Worsley
lid, resting on an embroidered cushion The depths of Antarctica, where no one had worn on his final expedition. “I
that Worsley had sewn, depicting will go. felt as if he was walking beside me,”
Shackleton and his men. The biting wind will freeze thoughts from she recalled.
In a eulogy, Adams said of Wors- your mind, She and her children climbed until
And the deathless cold will leave you
ley, “His exploits and the way in which behind . . . they reached a peak that overlooks the
he undertook them have quite rightly cemetery where Shackleton is buried.
seen him portrayed as a hero. But I’m Now that it’s morning the beauty shows, They had brought a wooden box, which
not sure he would have been entirely And as the sun rises, Antarctica glows; Worsley had made for one of his ex-
comfortable with that moniker. His And as I leave this beautiful land, peditions. Inside were his ashes. At the
The life beyond me starts to expand.
heroism is just one part of the fabric chapel, Max, who had begun to con-
of an incredibly rich character.” He template attempting his own polar ex-
went on, “He was primarily a father n December of 2017, almost two years pedition, had recited the sonnet about
and a husband. He was a soldier. He Iafter the funeral, Joanna, Max, and Shackleton that his father had loved:
was an artist. A raconteur. I loved him Alicia travelled by boat to South Geor-
COURTESY JOANNA WORSLEY
as the kindest of friends and the most gia Island. “I wanted to go to the place All striving done and “life’s set prize”
attained:
honorable of men. He had the most Henry so loved,” Joanna said. They Not geographic goals, but greater far
substance of any man I have ever met.” disembarked on the eastern shore of The pinnacles of leadership you gained.
Max rose to speak. Tall and thin, with the island, where, beneath towering
curly black hair and intense brown eyes, glaciers, there was a small wooden Joanna and her children dug a
he was as striking a man as his father chapel built in 1913 by whalers from hole and buried Worsley’s ashes in the
had been. Max recited the poem that Norway. Joanna and her children held frozen earth.
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 75
76 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN GALL
FICTION
STANVILLE
B Y R AC H E L K U S H N E R
f his students could learn to think don saw them in the court’s waiting afternoon with a loose metallic rattle.
Ihavefguards
I’d understood, then, how much
hated civilian staff, I might
been nicer to G. Hauser, which
was the name on the I.D. pinned to
the G.E.D. instructor’s shirt. The guy
sat down in a chair next to my bird-
“ Your motivation is that you’re a dog and it’s food.” cage with a stack of worksheets. He
was about my age or a little older, with
• • a non-ironic mustache and ugly run-
ning shoes.
“Let’s start with something sim-
and chopping wood. Went for walks. their property with chainsaws and cut ple.” He read the first question on the
Nights, he fed logs to his stove and read. paths through the woods for moto- math worksheet. “Four plus three
Ted Kaczynski, Gordon learned, ate cross courses and snowmobiling. Gor- equals (a) eight, (b) seven, (c) none
mostly rabbits. Squirrels, Ted reported, don withheld judgment. These people of the above.”
didn’t seem to like bad weather. His knew much more than he did about “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
diaries were mostly concerned with how to live in the mountains. How to “Is that (a) eight, (b) seven, or (c)
how he lived and what he saw happen- survive winter and forest fires and mud none of the above? It sometimes helps
ing in the wilderness around him, and flows from spring rains. How to prop- to use your fingers, if you need to count
Gordon acknowledged that compar- erly stack wood, something Gordon’s it out.”
ing him to Thoreau was not as crude neighbor from down the hill had pa- “It’s seven,” I said. “I think we can
as he’d first thought. But Kaczynski tiently showed him, after his two cords move to something more challenging.”
would never have written this: “Through of chunk wood were dumped in the He flipped pages. “All right, how
our own recovered innocence we dis- driveway by a guy named Beaver, who about a word problem? If there are
cern the innocence of our neighbors.” was missing most of his fingers. Gor- five children and two mothers and one
Gordon’s new neighbors were all don learned to split logs. Part 1 of his cousin going to the movies, how many
white, Christian, and conservative. Peo- rustication. tickets do they need? (a) seven, (b)
ple who tinkered with trucks and dirt eight, (c) none of the above.”
bikes and made assumptions about • “What movie are they going to?”
Gordon that he did nothing to dispel, ne morning, Sergeant McKinn- “That’s the wonderful thing about
because he knew that those assump-
tions would work in his favor if he
O ley yelled through the door that
my G.E.D. prep session was that
math: it doesn’t matter. You can count
without knowing the details.”
needed their help. It snowed up there. afternoon. “It’s hard for me to imagine these
Roads closed, cutting off access to sup- “When staff come back here after people without seeing who they are,
plies. Trees fell and knocked down lunch I want no monkey business, and knowing what movie they’re
power lines. Gordon did not enjoy the Hall.” going to.”
grinding zing of dirt bikes’ two-stroke I had not signed up for the G.E.D., He nodded, like my response was
motors, which echoed down the val- which was the only form of education reasonable, not at all a problem.
ley on weekends, but that was the coun- offered at Stanville. I had graduated “Maybe we got a little ahead of our-
try: not a pure and untrammelled world from high school. I was not a bad stu- selves. How about we make up a ques-
of native wildlife and songbird calls dent when I made the effort. But after tion?” he said. “Or, rather, we take the
but people who cleared the trees off he walked away my cellmate, Sammy, question and simplify it.”
78 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
This guy had the patience of a termer programs for which I’d be Candy looked up. Her face dimpled
genuine idiot. eligible with a G.E.D. I said I’d think into a sad smile. They were down there
“There are three adults and five about it and was taken back to the cell. on their sewing machines, stitching a
children: how many tickets do they seam on burlap, then moving the fab-
need?” hen he was my boyfriend, Jimmy ric ninety degrees, another seam, turn-
There was no sarcasm in his voice.
G. Hauser was so determined to work
W Darling used to do math with my
son, Jackson, for fun. It started with a les-
ing the material again to run a third
seam. Each piece was then tossed on
with whoever he thought I was that I son about the history of counting. Jimmy a pile. I didn’t see Betty, who often re-
could not play along. drew a circle on a piece of paper. “This is fused to work and lost her privileges.
“You didn’t say if they let kids in a stable where a farmer keeps his ani- They sewed sandbags on death row.
free, so how can I know how many mals,” Jimmy said. He drew three circles Nothing else. If you see a pile of sand-
tickets they need? And, depending for the animals. “What kind of animals?” bags along the side of a California road,
on what kind of people they are, what Jackson asked. I guess we both liked to know that they have been touched by
theatre this is—are they ghetto or know the irrelevant information. “Sheep, the hands of our celebrities.
are they squares like you? Because how about?” Jimmy said. “The farmer has Payment is five cents an hour, minus
maybe they let one of the adults, three sheep, and they each have a name: fifty-five per cent in restitution. The
like that cousin, in through an emer- Sally, Tim, and Joe. Every morning, the work is repetitive and doesn’t offer even
gency side door, after they pay for farmer lets the sheep out to graze. In the the satisfaction of making a single
two tickets.” evening, he herds them back into the pen. finished thing. The bags still have to
I saw the plush stained carpet of Since there are only three, he can easily be filled. Who completes the bags? My
the multiplex out by the Oakland air- go over the list of their names and confirm guess is men. Men fill them with sand
port, the one where a cousin would that Sally, Tim, and Joe are all safely back and close up the tops.
sneak in through the emergency exit in their enclosure for the night, where I spotted the G.E.D. teacher through
instead of paying. It’s probably gone, they won’t be eaten by wolves. But let’s the razor wire around our concrete ad-
like all the other theatres I used to say the farmer has ten sheep, instead of seg yard. He was on a path going into
know. The Strand on Market, where, three. If he names each one, he has to re- the ad-seg housing block. I waved. He
as kids, Eva and I drank Ripple wine member ten names when they return. He called through the barbed coils. “Have
with grownups. The Serra, which has to recognize ten sheep. Each name you given any more thought to whether
showed “Rocky Horror.” The Surf, goes with a specific sheep. If Sally is the you want to work toward the G.E.D.?”
out by the beach, where I went with pregnant sheep, then he can recognize I said I had not.
my mother when I was young. her by her broad belly and check her name “Let the administration know if you
“They’re squares,” G. Hauser said. off when she comes back from grazing. want to take the test. The questions
“Like me.” But let’s say the farmer has thirty sheep. were easy for you, and that’s a good in-
“The kids all have to have tickets?” Too many to name, right? So he gets a dicator. Though I didn’t give you a read-
He nodded. basket of rocks, exactly enough so that he ing assessment.”
“The answer is eight.” has one rock for each sheep. He takes a “I know how to read,” I told him.
“Excellent,” he said. rock out of the basket for every animal “And I graduated from high school.”
“You just congratulated a twenty- that leaves the enclosure in the morning. He nodded. “I didn’t realize. I’d be
nine-year-old woman for adding three As each one returns in the evening, he happy to get you some reading mate-
and five.” puts a rock in the basket. When all the rial, if you’d like.”
“I have to start somewhere.” rocks have been put back into the basket, Months later, when I was finally out
“What makes you think I can’t he knows that all his sheep are safely home. of ad seg and mainlined to general pop-
count?” The sheep don’t need names anymore. ulation, I saw him again. I had got into
“There are women here with innu- The farmer just has to know how many a scuffle in work exchange, where they
meracy. Who have trouble with basic there are.” He explained to Jackson that said I was setting off the metal detec-
addition. I can give you a G.E.D. prac- numbers started with counting and count- tor and went through all my stuff. They
tice test, and, if you’re confident you’ll ing started with names. It was like prison— even tore apart the baloney sandwich
pass, I’ll schedule you to take it.” from a name to a number. Except my in the sack lunch they gave us outside
“I don’t need a G.E.D.,” I said. “I’m number was more like a name than the chow hall, to take to work. I had to
here because I was called out here by rock that went with the sheep, because strip out in the little curtained area,
mistake.” the rock could go with any sheep, and my and I was boiling with anger by the
“You might think you don’t need a number went only with me. time I left. But, when I saw G. Hauser,
degree, but in the future, when you are something flipped in me, a switch. I
facing your release, you’ll be glad to hen they escorted us out for the called out a friendly hello. “Hey,” I said,
have it.”
“I’m not getting out,” I said.
W weekly yard time, we could see
down into the caged area of death row.
“I was wondering if I’d run into you.”
I had forgotten all about him. I had
He went into a calm and semi- Sammy hollered from the catwalk, not thought of him once.
robotic spiel about people with life “Candy Peña, I love you! Betty La- “I’m on C yard,” I said, “and I’ve
sentences and the numerous long- France, I love you!” been thinking about your offer to get
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 79
me some reading material. That would hotter and the air heavy with the smell don’s students but always insisted on
be great.” of fertilizer. There were no more or- speaking to him, brought a radio from
He was excited, like I was doing anges, no oil derricks, just power lines her cell and played elevator music as
him a favor by asking for one myself. and almond groves in huge geometric she crafted. The women were allowed
We chatted, and, in his growing ex- parcels all the way to the prison. to come and go from their cells, which
citement, he said, “Why don’t you take Gordon went through three elec- smelled of Renuzit air freshener and
my class?” tronic sally ports to get to his class- were blanketed in handmade afghans,
“All they teach here is G.E.D. prep. room, which was in a windowless trailer for privacy and probably so as to make
Which is the education level of our near the vocational workshops and the use of these afghans, which they churned
guards.” central kitchen. From the kitchen out on the oily axle of time.
“Yeah.” He laughed quickly, covertly. pumped a constant smell of rancid Administrative segregation, on the
“But, since it’s the only thing offered, grease, overpowered only by the drift floor above death row, had no common
I structure it around reading. We read of solvents from the auto-body shop, area, and there was no interaction among
and talk about books. Try it out. I’d where trucks—guards’ private vehi- the women except yelling. Gordon waited
love to have you join us.” He told me cles—were lined up for super-discounted in a small office as a student clink-jangled
how to sign up. paint jobs by prisoners. down the hall in her restraints and was
He had clearance to enter this part put in a cage for the lesson with him.
• of the grounds, but the housing units That was where he’d first met Romy
Idonnthethesometimes
early morning, on his way down
mountain toward Stanville, Gor-
glimpsed gray foxes,
and the yards were off limits to him,
with the exception of one cell block on
A yard, 504, where he worked with peo-
Hall, who was in his class now. What
he had noticed about her was that she
looked him in the eye. Many of the
their lustrous tails trailing after them, ple from death row and administrative women had a way of looking at his shoul-
as he followed the curves of the wind- segregation. Gordon had dreaded death der or past him. Their eyes rolled every
ing road, passing huge drought-desic- row but found that it didn’t quite con- which way to avoid his. Also, she was
cated live oaks, their jagged little leaves form to his nightmares. It was auto- attractive, despite the conditions. Wide-
coated in dust, and banks of rust-red mated and modern, each tiny cell with set greenish eyes. A mouth with a Cu-
buckeye and smoke-green manzanita. a white-painted steel door and a small pid’s bow—was that what it was called?—
On the straightaway toward the brown safety-glass window. There were twelve an upper lip that swoop-de-swooped. A
basin, the scenery changed to oil pipe- women, one to a cell, and a cramped pretty mouth that said, Trust this face.
line and derricks, whose axles wound alley with tables and sewing machines She spelled well, read with good com-
and wound. After the derricks was a surrounded by meshed cage. A guard prehension. He wasn’t looking for a good
shaggy orange grove, and one farm- led Gordon in to meet with students speller. He wasn’t looking for anything
house with two palm trees in front, one-on-one, while others knitted or among the women in Stanville.
where the road split. On the valley floor, made hook rugs at nearby tables. Betty Gordon passed out photocopied sec-
the temperature was twenty degrees LaFrance, who was not one of Gor- tions of books—“Julie of the Wolves,”
Laura Ingalls Wilder. He didn’t say
they were children’s books; he kept it
simple, since many of the women had
only an elementary-school education.
They wrote in bubble letters, like ad-
olescent girls. Even London—whose
nickname was Conan and who looked
like a man—wrote in bubble letters.
London was clever, it was obvious.
Never did the reading but made the
others laugh, which was something.
“Is ‘bosom’ plural?” London asked.
“Depends on whose, maybe,” some-
one said.
“The bosom of Jones. Sounds like
an adventure film. Lieutenant Jones
and the Bosom of Doom.”
Geronima Campos, an old Native
American woman, drew in her sketch-
book all through class time. Gordon
wondered if maybe she couldn’t read
or write. He asked her what she drew.
Portraits, she told him. She opened
“Do you think seventy-eight per cent water is too juicy?” her sketchbook to show him. Each page
had an image and, under it, a name. those already.” I felt sad and a little aways, Call for Help.” A hotline num-
She could write. But the images were protective of the teacher for not ber. My childhood was the era of the
not faces. They were wild streaks of knowing better. I planned on keep- hotline. But we never called any, ex-
color. “This is you,” she said, and showed ing them, even if I didn’t especially cept as a prank.
him a scribble of black lines with a want to read them. They were a link
staining splotch of blue ink. to the outside world. But a woman
When the class discussed a chapter
of “The Red Pony,” by John Stein-
in my unit offered me shampoo and
conditioner in exchange for both.
I told Hauser I’d read “Pick-Up.” He
asked what I thought.
“That it was good and bad at the
beck—the third chapter, “The Prom- The state gives us indigents only same time.”
ise,” about Nellie the pregnant mare— gritty powdered soap for body and “I know what you mean. The end
one woman raised her hand and said hair. Being able to properly wash and is a shock, right? But it makes you
that, when she’d delivered, her womb condition my hair made want to reread the book,
was heart-shaped, “in two parts,” she me feel happy, at least to see if there were ear-
said, “just like a horse’s, and even the for an evening, in a way lier clues.”
doctor confirmed it.” I hadn’t since I was ar- I told him I’d done
They read from the chapter out rested, three years before. that. And that it was good
loud. At the mention of pigs, a stu- I had been in Haus- to read a book about San
dent interjected that her cousin had er’s class for a couple of Francisco, that I was from
written to her from lockup in Ari- weeks when he stopped there.
zona, where they put a pig in the gas me afterward and asked “Oh, me, too,” he said.
chamber one Sunday a month, to test if I’d enjoyed the books. He didn’t seem like it
the machine. “I enjoyed reading to me, and I said so.
Gordon tried to steer the discussion them,” I said, “when I was fourteen.” “I mean, near there. Just across the
back to the book. What was the prom- “God, I’m sorry. That’s embarrassing.” Bay, Contra Costa County.” He named
ise that Billy Buck had made? “It’s O.K. You just don’t know me.” the town, but I hadn’t heard of it.
Romy Hall raised her hand. She He got me more books. One, called “It’s an armpit behind an oil refinery.
said that Billy Buck had promised the “Pick-Up,” was about two drunks in It’s not glamorous, like the city.”
boy, Jody, a healthy foal. Earlier, Billy San Francisco in the nineteen-fifties. I said that I hated San Francisco,
Buck had said that he would look after I started reading it and could not stop. that there was evil coming out of the
the red pony, and the pony had died. When I finished it, I read it again. ground there, but that I liked “Pick-Up”
This new promise was Billy Buck’s Scenes came into view for me, even because it reminded me of things
chance to be a man of his word, by de- though the character in the book about the city that I missed.
livering the foal safely. doesn’t name many locations besides He had got me two other books,
“Did he keep it?” Gordon asked. Civic Center, and Powell and Market, “Factotum” and “Jesus’ Son.” I would
She said that that was the trick of where the cable car turns around. read those next, I told him.
the story. Technically, yes, but in order When I was a kid, there was a large I said that I knew about the Jesus
to deliver the foal he had to kill the Woolworth’s at Powell and Market book because I’d seen the movie.
mare. He smashed its skull with a ham- that had a wig department. Eva and Which was good, except that the peo-
mer, and that was a bullshit way to I would go in and pretend we were ple in it were supposed to be living
keep a promise. The mare could have wig shopping. The old ladies who in the seventies. “The girl in it—she’s
had other foals that weren’t breach, but worked there helped us pin our hair got her midriff showing, and she wears
she had to die because some cowboy up in special nets and fitted us with a leather jacket with a fur collar like
was hung up on himself as a man of grand and curly hairdos. We laughed it’s San Francisco in the nineties.”
his word. and played around in the mirrors, “But those people you’re describ-
“It’s O.K. to make a promise,” London sneaked makeup and hair products ing—they’re all borrowing from the
said to Gordon, as if summarizing for the into our purses, and took pictures in seventies to begin with.”
teacher how life actually worked, “but it’s the photo booth inside the store. It was true. I told him how Jimmy
not always a good idea to keep one.” Sometimes we went to Zim’s on Van Darling used to go to this bookstore
Ness afterward, ordered a lot of food, in the Tenderloin to buy seventies-era
• and left without paying. It was differ- copies of Playboy, which they had in
ike one of the lucky women who ent from dining and dashing at the stacks on the floor in the back. An
L have family or outside help, I got
called to receiving and release to pick
more familiar Zim’s, on Taraval. We
felt sophisticated downtown. The
old man once tapped Jimmy on the
shoulder and whispered, “Sonny, they
up a package. G. Hauser had got whole long era of my childhood I ran have the new ones up here,” nodding
me two books: “I Know Why the around like a street urchin, no more in the direction of the plastic-sleeved
Caged Bird Sings” and “To Kill a rooted than the teen-agers on the post- monthlies Busty and Barely Legal,
Mockingbird.” ers in the Greyhound station on Sixth which were on display at the front
“That’s what he got you?” Sammy Street. Tall figures in silhouette, like of the store.
said, stifling a laugh. “Even I read long shadows, and the words “Run- “And Jimmy is—”
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 81
“My fiancé. And a teacher at the rules but because it had been almost yarn that he had chosen peeking out,
San Francisco Art Institute.” no trouble and yet she cried and said garish and sad. One day, he asked the
“Are you . . . still engaged?” that no one had ever done anything so officer in R. and R. about their status.
“He’s dead,” I said. nice for her, not once in her whole life. The officer was a scalded blonde with
The only remedy seemed to be to a tight ponytail, brusque, ex-military.
• do favors for others, so that he wasn’t She snorted. “These? Nobody wants
ne evening, as class ended, Romy Candy’s saint—to neutralize the act of ’em. I keep forgetting to tell the por-
O Hall hovered. Gordon started col-
lecting papers from an awkward posi-
giving by giving more.
He bought seeds for a student in
ters to take them out to the trash.”
That same officer supervised fam-
tion, on the far side of his own desk, in his class who gardened. She had given ily visits, when inmates got thirty-six
order to create more distance Gordon fresh mint as a hours in the prison’s version of an apart-
between them. present, and when he ment, with blood relatives.
She told him many asked her where she’d Blood relatives. It sounded so vio-
things about herself in the got it, she said it had rid- lent. Or was Gordon losing perspec-
span of about five minutes. den into the prison on tive, everything warped by what was
She spoke them in a con- reclaimed lumber, four- around him?
trolled voice. It seemed to by-twelves they were Was it difficult to watch them say good-
Gordon that she had been using for construction. bye? Gordon had asked the R. and R.
saving it up. He kept step- She’d replanted it, wa- officer, before he knew better. He had
ping back, to be farther from tered it. She told him she seen, on his way past, small children
her, and she kept stepping watched the sky and clinging to their mothers and crying
toward him, and he was not going to waited for birds to excrete seeds, and hysterically. Someone had painted a
be manipulated. One woman had tried germinated them secretly in wet paper lavender hopscotch pattern on the
to bribe him to smuggle in cell phones towels. The rules were that no plants walkway outside the family units.
for her, another tobacco. Staff and guards were to be grown in the yards. But the “You grow a thick skin,” the officer
alike were involved in these schemes. captain on D yard, where the gardener said, her mouth pulled into a frown, as
Gordon wanted no part. lived, let her have her plants. She was if to demonstrate: this is thick skin.
She was a lifer, she told him, and the a lifer. Gordon gave her a seed packet “Especially when you know it’s the
mother of a young boy. She apologized of California poppies. She put her hands mother’s own fault.”
for troubling him. Said she woke up de- to her face to hide her tears. “This is a It would have been better if the
pressed. Could feel the fog in her cell, God shot,” she said. “Thank you for baby blankets had gone into the trash.
even without a window, and said the this God shot.” Which started the cycle Instead, one of the unit cops redis-
dampness of it reminded her of home. over again, the discomfort, the outsized tributed them to the women on death
She wanted him to call a telephone gratitude. The packet of seeds had cost row who had made them. The next
number to find out where her kid was. him eighty-nine cents. time Gordon was there, Candy Peña
She had it written down and this was And so he had been sending books showed him how she’d patched to-
exactly the kind of thing he’d been to Romy Hall. You go on Amazon. gether two baby blankets into a large
backing away from, as she moved to- Click a button. What was twenty bucks vest, a sort of poncho, in soft, gauzy
ward him. Just because he had bought to him, if spending it meant several blue and yellow. She held it up. “I
her books or found her pretty, just be- weeks of freedom of thought for some- hope it fits?”
cause he thought about her some- one in prison? But looking into her “Knit” was the past tense of “knit.”
times, that didn’t mean he was look- personal life in the outside world, call- And no one wanted what Candy Peña
ing for family dramas. ing a number on her behalf: that was knit, not even Gordon, who put the
different. It was honest-to-God med- vest in a paper bag deep in the trunk
he assistance he gave on his own, dling, not just in her life but in his of his car and tried to forget about it.
T and against the rules, had all
started with Candy Peña on death row,
own, too.
He put the paper she had given him •
where they were knitting baby blan- on his coffee table. A phone number auser had made it pretty obvious
kets that would go to a Christian char-
ity in Stanville. Candy had cried like
and the name of her child. He did not
call and, to his relief, or his mixed re-
H that he liked me. Everyone in class
knew. It became a joke, Conan hum-
a child because she had no more yarn lief, she did not ask him about it. ming “Here Comes the Bride” as I
and no money and so she couldn’t help walked into the classroom trailer, sweaty
the babies. andy Peña made baby blankets and coated in wood-shop dust.
He knew that he could bring in yarn.
They almost never looked in his bag,
C with the yarn Gordon had brought
her. The blankets were collected by a
Sammy went into overdrive about
Hauser’s crush on me when I told her
and it would set off no alarm. When unit officer and placed in the office of I had given him a number to call.
he delivered it to Candy, she melted in receiving and release. Whenever Gor- Sammy was a walking historian of every
gratitude, which made him feel ob- don passed the office he saw them there, person who had faced every adversity
scene. Not because it was against the in a giant leaf bag, the colors of the in prison, and could produce examples
82 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
of all the cases where staff, or even teacher,” Sammy said. “Most of them best rationalized in the context of a
guards, had stepped in and raised the don’t get involved with prisoners. Too beautiful autumn walk. Gordon walked
children of imprisoned women. Hauser jaded. But he is open.” whenever he could, up logging paths,
was going to adopt Jackson, she de- Hauser had a lost quality. He didn’t through grazing meadows that were
cided. She went on about it, and she seem to have much happening outside federal land and went on for miles. On
meant well, but it didn’t comfort me. work. Not that he discussed his life a cow trail above his cabin, he found a
I didn’t think she was reading things with us. At Stanville, he was an odd- paper-wasp nest. It looked like a half-
right. This was a normal and nice ball to the rest of the staff. The guards crushed helmet lying on the path. Gor-
college-educated guy who probably made fun of him, mostly as a way to don carried it inside and placed it on
separated bottles and cans from the make fun of us. Go teach those dumb his table, this grand and mysterious,
rest of his trash. He wasn’t going to bitches to read, Mr. Hauser. Teach those half-deflated, torn-open thing.
adopt my kid. He’d marry a nice girl cows two plus two. They thought what After walking, he’d fix dinner, a can
like him who also recycled, and they’d he spent his life doing was pointless, of soup, the staple of his one-room life,
have children together, their own. not a worthy endeavor like watching and then he’d go online, where he had
But, in truth, I had begun to live us on security monitors or masturbat- developed a bad habit. He had started
for his G.E.D. class, even if I didn’t ing in a guard tower. running their names, as the women
admit it. I was determined to work on Candy Peña bragged to whoever would call it. To run someone’s name
him for Jackson’s sake, but I also was on her air vent that Hauser was was to have a contact on the outside
worked on him for a less delusional her boyfriend, that he got her “a whole who could Google the person or ask
reason. He knew places I knew. When grip” of knitting supplies. Anything she around. What the women needed to
I talked to him, I became a person wanted, she said. She should have confirm, most often, was: Had their
from a place. I could roam neighbor- known you don’t brag about something cellmate, unit mate, work partner,
hoods, visit my apartment in the Ten- like that. You keep it to yourself and prayer-group associate, friend, fuck-
derloin with the Murphy bed, my you cultivate it. friend, or enemy, had that person hurt
happy yellow Formica table, and above a child or turned state’s evidence? Those
it, the movie poster of Steve McQueen • were the two types that needed to be
in “Bullitt.”
Hauser, too, knew the mechanical
museum at Ocean Beach. “ ‘See Susie
Ithatnofthey
his essay celebrating the wonder
wild apples, Thoreau concedes
taste good only out-of-doors.
verified, baby killers and snitches.
Gordon’s search was more open-
ended. He didn’t know what he was
Dance the Can-Can,’ ” he said, as Even a saunterer, Thoreau says, would searching for. He hoped that some equi-
proof. The Camera Obscura, where a not tolerate a saunterer’s apple at a librium could be established from the
large dish showed the froth of the kitchen table. Their bitter flavor was process of obtaining facts. He also
waves. A huge sign that announced
“Playland,” but no Playland around.
Only the sun-bleached sign next to a
fake cliff, man-made, which people
said had been put there to trick the
Japanese during the war.
“There’s a pizza place up Irving,”
Hauser said. “They spin the dough in
the windows.”
I saw everything. The stretching
floury disks that collapsed on the
hands of the dough-makers in their
chef ’s hats, fists working the disks
around, dough growing in girth, orbit,
then back up in the air. I saw the huge
wreath of flowers that hung from the
closed entrance one morning, an-
nouncing the death of the old man,
the pizza patriarch. I’d never seen a
wreath that large. I was eight or nine.
Not yet into trouble.
I saw the shining lid of the ocean
from Irving Street, the way it rose, on
a clear day, like something that
breathed, that was alive, down at the
end of the avenues.
“You’ve got something with that “Do you want to watch another episode or heal our relationship?”
branches of the oak trees, he knew that
he could not judge. I cannot judge, be-
cause I do not know.
Gordon was familiar, from his time
at college and in graduate school, with
rich kids. If you grew up rich, you
played a musical instrument—violin
or piano. You were on the debate team.
Preferred a certain brand of jeans
cuffed just so. Maybe you puffed a
ciggie or smoked bowls with your
friends in your dad’s Lexus, then were
late to your SAT tutorial. But if you
were from Richmond, or East Oak-
land, or, like Sanchez, South L.A.,
you were probably trained practically
from birth to represent your neigh-
borhood, your gang, to have pride, to
be hard. Maybe you had a lot of sib-
lings to watch and possibly you knew
almost nobody who had finished
school or worked a stable job. People
“Granted, it would save countless lives—but to what end?” from your family were in prison, whole
swaths of your community, and it was
part of life to eventually go there. So
• • you were born fucked. But, like the
rich kids, you, too, wanted to have fun
sensed that this thing about facts and as he read. When they killed the stu- on Saturday night.
equilibrium was a lie he told himself dent, they knew even less. When they “No Tank Tops,” the sign at Youth
to justify going after squalid details were picked up separately, the morn- Guidance had said. Because it was pre-
that were none of his business. ing after, and brought in for question- sumed the parents didn’t know better
You were not supposed to ask what ing, and spoke freely, but each in than to show up to court looking like
people had been convicted of. Asking self-interest, to homicide detectives, hell. The sign might as well have said
was met with an opprobrium so deep with no parents present and no law- “Your Poverty Reeks.”
it seemed also to bar speculating, even yers, they did not know what they
privately. You weren’t supposed to were doing. They all got life without
wonder about the facts that had de-
termined people’s lives. He had in his
parole. Button was in prison and would
die there, a lost little girl who looked
HHeenames.
kept looking, searched other
the outside. There was an Internet cam- after class. He was stacking photocop- THE WRITER’S VOICE
paign page, to advocate for Geronima’s ies in an unnecessarily fastidious way, Listen to Rachel Kushner read “Stanville” on
parole. Those who signed the petition to draw out their few minutes together, this week’s episode.
BY JI LL LEPORE
ary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shel- had her sit on ice), the monster was in the book’s final scene, he disappears
M ley began writing “Frankenstein;
or, the Modern Prometheus” when she
listed on the playbill as “––––––.”
“This nameless mode of naming the
on a raft of ice.
“Frankenstein” is four stories in one:
was eighteen years old, two years after unnameable is rather good,” Shelley an allegory, a fable, an epistolary novel,
she’d become pregnant with her first remarked about the creature’s theatri- and an autobiography, a chaos of lit-
child, a baby she did not name. “Nurse cal billing. She herself had no name of erary fertility that left its very young
the baby, read,” she had written in her her own. Like the creature pieced to- author at pains to explain her “hideous
diary, day after day, until the eleventh gether from cadavers collected by Vic- progeny.” In the introduction she wrote
day: “I awoke in the night to give it tor Frankenstein, her name was an as- for a revised edition in 1831, she took
suck it appeared to be sleeping so qui- semblage of parts: the name of her up the humiliating question “How I,
etly that I would not awake it,” and mother, the feminist Mary Wollstone- then a young girl, came to think of,
then, in the morning, “Find my baby craft, stitched to that of her father, the and to dilate upon, so very hideous an
dead.” With grief at that loss came a philosopher William Godwin, grafted idea” and made up a story in which she
fear of “a fever from the milk.” Her onto that of her husband, the poet Percy virtually erased herself as an author,
breasts were swollen, inflamed, un- Bysshe Shelley, as if Mary Wollstone- insisting that the story had come to
sucked; her sleep, too, grew fevered. craft Godwin Shelley were the sum of her in a dream (“I saw—with shut eyes,
“Dream that my little baby came to life her relations, bone of their bone and but acute mental vision,—I saw the
again; that it had only been cold, and flesh of their flesh, if not the milk of pale student of unhallowed arts kneel-
that we rubbed it before the fire, and her mother’s milk, since her mother ing beside the thing he had put to-
it lived,” she wrote in her diary. “Awake had died eleven days after giving birth gether”) and that writing it consisted
and find no baby.” to her, mainly too sick to give suck— of “making only a transcript” of that
Pregnant again only weeks later, Awoke and found no mother. dream. A century later, when a lurch-
she was likely still nursing her second “It was on a dreary night of Novem- ing, grunting Boris Karloff played the
baby when she started writing “Fran- ber, that I beheld the accomplishment creature in Universal Pictures’s bril-
kenstein,” and pregnant with her third of my toils,” Victor Frankenstein, a uni- liant 1931 production of “Frankenstein,”
by the time she finished. She didn’t put versity student, says, pouring out his directed by James Whale, the mon-
her name on her book—she published tale. The rain patters on the window- ster—prodigiously eloquent, learned,
“Frankenstein” anonymously, in 1818, pane; a bleak light flickers from a dying and persuasive in the novel—was no
not least out of a concern that she might candle. He looks at the “lifeless thing” longer merely nameless but all but
lose custody of her children—and she at his feet, come to life: “I saw the dull speechless, too, as if what Mary Woll-
didn’t give her monster a name, either. yellow eye of the creature open; it stonecraft Godwin Shelley had to say
“This anonymous androdaemon,” one breathed hard, and a convulsive mo- was too radical to be heard, an agony
reviewer called it. For the first theat- tion agitated its limbs.” Having labored unutterable.
rical production of “Frankenstein,” so long to bring the creature to life, Every book is a baby, born, but
staged in London in 1823 (by which he finds himself disgusted and hor- “Frankenstein” is often supposed to
time the author had given birth to four rified—“unable to endure the aspect have been more assembled than writ-
ABOVE: BRIAN REA
children, buried three, and lost another of the being I had created”—and flees, ten, an unnatural birth, as though all
unnamed baby to a miscarriage so se- abandoning his creation, unnamed. “I, that the author had done were to piece
vere that she nearly died of bleeding the miserable and the abandoned, am together the writings of others, es-
that stopped only when her husband an abortion,” the creature says, before, pecially those of her father and her
86 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
Because Shelley was readily taken as a vessel for other people’s ideas, her novel has accreted wildly irreconcilable readings.
ILLUSTRATION BY HENNING WAGENBRETH THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 87
husband. “If Godwin’s daughter could the superhero is about to yield to the had been the author of unalterable
not help philosophising,” one mid- age of the monster. But what about evils; and I lived in daily fear, lest the
twentieth-century critic wrote, “Shel- the baby? monster whom I had created should
ley’s wife knew also the eerie charms perpetrate some new wickedness.” The
of the morbid, the occult, the scien-
tifically bizarre.” This enduring con-
“ F rankenstein,” the story of a crea-
ture who has no name, has for
M.I.T. edition appends, here, a foot-
note: “The remorse Victor expresses
descension, the idea of the author as two hundred years been made to mean is reminiscent of J. Robert Oppen-
a vessel for the ideas of other peo- just about anything. Most lately, it has heimer’s sentiments when he witnessed
ple—a fiction in which the author been taken as a cautionary tale for Sil- the unspeakable power of the atomic
participated, so as to avoid the scan- icon Valley technologists, an interpre- bomb. . . . Scientists’ responsibility
dal of her own brain—goes some way tation that derives less from the 1818 must be engaged before their creations
to explaining why “Frankenstein” has novel than from later stage and film are unleashed.”
accreted so many wildly different and versions, especially the 1931 film, and This is a way to make use of the
irreconcilable readings and restagings that took its modern form in the af- novel, but it involves stripping out
in the two centuries since its publi- termath of Hiroshima. In that spirit, nearly all the sex and birth, everything
cation. For its bicentennial, the orig- M.I.T. Press has just published an edi- female—material first mined by Mu-
inal, 1818 edition has been reissued, tion of the original text “annotated for riel Spark, in a biography of Shelley
as a trim little paperback (Penguin scientists, engineers, and creators of published in 1951, on the occasion of
Classics), with an introduction by the all kinds,” and prepared by the lead- the hundredth anniversary of her
distinguished biographer Charlotte ers of the Frankenstein Bicentennial death. Spark, working closely with
Gordon, and as a beautifully illus- Project, at Arizona State University, Shelley’s diaries and paying careful at-
trated hardcover keepsake, “The New with funding from the National Sci- tention to the author’s eight years of
Annotated Frankenstein” (Liveright), ence Foundation; they offer the book near-constant pregnancy and loss, ar-
edited and annotated by Leslie S. as a catechism for designers of robots gued that “Frankenstein” was no minor
Klinger. Universal is developing a new and inventors of artificial intelligences. piece of genre fiction but a literary
“Bride of Frankenstein” as part of a “Remorse extinguished every hope,” work of striking originality. In the
series of remakes from its backlist of Victor says, in Volume II, Chapter 1, nineteen-seventies, that interpretation
horror movies. Filmography recapit- by which time the creature has begun was taken up by feminist literary crit-
ulating politico-chicanery, the age of murdering everyone Victor loves. “I ics who wrote about “Frankenstein” as
establishing the origins of science fic-
tion by way of the “female gothic.”
What made Mary Shelley’s work so
original, Ellen Moers argued at the
time, was that she was a writer who
was a mother. Tolstoy had thirteen
children, born at home, Moers pointed
out, but the major female eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century writers, the
Austens and Dickinsons, tended to be
“spinsters and virgins.” Shelley was
an exception.
So was Mary Wollstonecraft, a
woman Shelley knew not as a mother
but as a writer who wrote about, among
other things, how to raise a baby. “I
conceive it to be the duty of every ra-
tional creature to attend to its offspring,”
Wollstonecraft wrote in “Thoughts on
the Education of Daughters,” in 1787,
ten years before giving birth to the au-
thor of “Frankenstein.” As Charlotte
Gordon notes in her dual biography
“Romantic Outlaws,” Wollstonecraft
first met her fellow political radical
William Godwin in 1791, at a London
dinner party hosted by the publisher
of Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man.”
Wollstonecraft and Godwin were
“mutually displeased with each other,”
Godwin later wrote; they were the and a daughter, Ada, was born in De- teen months later, it bore an unsigned
smartest people in the room, and they cember. But, when his wife left him, preface by Percy Shelley and a dedica-
couldn’t help arguing all evening. Woll- a year into their marriage, Byron was tion to William Godwin. The book
stonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights forced never to see his wife or daugh- became an immediate sensation. “It
of Woman” appeared in 1792, and, the ter again, lest his wife reveal the scan- seems to be universally known and
next year, Godwin published “Politi- dal of his affair with Leigh. (Ada was read,” a friend wrote to Percy Shelley.
cal Justice.” In 1793, during an affair about the age Mary Godwin’s first Sir Walter Scott wrote, in an early re-
with the American speculator and dip- baby would have been, had she lived. view, “The author seems to us to dis-
lomat Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft Ada’s mother, fearing that the girl close uncommon powers of poetic
became pregnant. (“I am nourishing a might grow up to be- imagination.” Scott, like
creature,” she wrote Imlay.) Not long come a poet, as mad and many readers, assumed
after Wollstonecraft gave birth to a bad as her father, raised that the author was Percy
daughter, whom she named Fanny, her, instead, to be a math- Shelley. Reviewers less
Imlay abandoned her. She and God- ematician. Ada Lovelace, enamored of the Roman-
win became lovers in 1796, and when a scientist as imaginative tic poet damned the
she became pregnant they married, for as Victor Frankenstein, book’s Godwinian radi-
the sake of the baby, even though nei- would in 1843 provide calism and its Byronic
ther of them believed in marriage. In an influential theoret- impieties. John Croker, a
1797, Wollstonecraft died of an infec- ic al description of a conservative member of
tion contracted from the fingers of a general-purpose com- Parliament, called “Fran-
physician who reached into her uterus puter, a century before one was built.) kenstein” a “tissue of horrible and dis-
to remove the afterbirth. Godwin’s In the spring of 1816, Byron, fleeing gusting absurdity”—radical, unhinged,
daughter bore the name of his dead scandal, left England for Geneva, and and immoral.
wife, as if she could be brought back it was there that he met up with Percy
to life, another afterbirth. Shelley, Mary Godwin, and Claire ut the politics of “Frankenstein” are
and rising, and among women with frisk and mass incarceration has become, Ohanacamp.org • (802) 333-3460
HOWL
Negro-Sarah, feels and projects. Sarah
lives in a room on the Upper West Side
with her various “selves,” including
A startling body of work about women, race, and dispossession. Queen Victoria and the Duchess of
Hapsburg. In her darkened “chamber,”
B Y H I LT O N A L S she has made a romance of European
and English empire and culture. Still,
no matter how much she identifies with
these historical figures, who are, per-
“ B lood” is one word that comes up.
Blood as poison, blood as might.
of her characters’ troubled, hope-filled,
and hopeless minds. Taken together,
force, isolated by their power, she can-
not fully enter into their stories or be
Other words—“help” and “cry”—are Kennedy’s twenty-odd plays form a long them, because she’s black—stained by
among the verbs most likely to be spo- and startling fugue, composed of language her dark-skinned father. In “Funny-
ken by the eighty-six-year-old playwright that is impactful and impacted but ever- house,” history, personal and otherwise,
Adrienne Kennedy’s characters. These moving, ever-shifting, as her protago- is accompanied by sound. Now it’s the
bitter, lovesick words—sharp bleats of nists, usually women of color, stand on sound of knocking on a door. Who’s
distress—rise and cling to the curtains the precipice of disaster, madness, or loss. knocking, and why?
and the walls in the ghastly showrooms For the course of the performance, at least, Victoria: It is my father. He is arriving
again for the night. He comes through the jun-
Adrienne Kennedy in Williamsburg, Virginia, in January, 2018. gle to find me. He never tires of his journey.
98 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 PHOTOGRAPH BY SUSAN WORSHAM
Duchess: How dare he enter the castle, characters from the black-and-white swer, naming this playwright or that
he who is the darkest of them all, the darkest movies she loved, and projected her- one, as time progresses I realize I never
one? My mother looked like a white woman, self onto, as a child: Bette Davis in go back far enough to the beginning.”
hair as straight as any white woman’s. And at
least I am yellow, but he is black, the blackest “Now, Voyager,” Jean Peters in “Viva The memoir is an attempt to go back
one of them all. I hoped he was dead. Yet he Zapata!,” and Shelley Winters in “A to the beginning. Wonderfully, Ken-
still comes through the jungle to find me. Place in the Sun.” When Clara was nedy doesn’t offer a straightforward bi-
Victoria: He never tires of the journey, growing up, there were no black film ographical self-portrait, but “People
does he, Duchess? actors who could express her panic, her Who Led to My Plays” brings into
Duchess: How dare he enter the castle of
Queen Victoria Regina, Monarch of England? high theatrical self-engagement, or her focus all that mattered to her as a girl,
It is because of him that my mother died. The sense of grief. Saddened by her dark- as a young woman, and as an artist,
wild black beast put his hands on her. She died. skinned father’s abandonment and preg- from paper dolls to Joe Louis to Gin-
nant with her first child, Clara expresses ger Rogers and Fred Astaire.
Other “selves” show up in the her anxiety, through “Bette Davis,” in Kennedy was born Adrienne Lita
play—including Jesus and Patrice Lu- one of the greatest monologues of the Hawkins in Pittsburgh, but grew up in
mumba—but none can save Sarah from twentieth century: Cleveland, Ohio, in such multiethnic
the feeling that her race is doomed and Bette Davis: When I have the baby I won- neighborhoods as Mount Pleasant and
her life loveless. Eventually, she hangs der will I turn into a river of blood and die? Glenville. Her dark-skinned father,
herself, killing off that yellow body, as My mother almost died when I was born. I’ve C. W. Hawkins, was a social worker,
well as all the confused and vivid his- always felt sad that I couldn’t have been an and her mother, Etta—who had a white
tory that was tearing it apart. angel of mercy to my father and mother and father—was a schoolteacher. “It’s im-
saved them from their torment. I used to hope
The protagonist of “The Owl An- when I was a little girl that one day I would portant to remember that I grew up in
swers,” a one-act from 1965, is a light- rise above them, an angel with glowing wings an immigrant neighborhood but was
skinned (“pallid”) black woman named and cover them with peace. But I failed. When also a product of black middle-class
Clara. As Clara sits in a clanging, rum- I came among them it seems to me I did not culture,” Kennedy said in one inter-
bling New York City subway train, bring them peace . . . but made them more dis- view. “I always tried to make sense of
consolate. The crosses they bore always made
Shakespeare, William the Conqueror, me sad. The one reality I wanted never came that. Tried to balance that. To under-
Chaucer, and Anne Boleyn enter the true . . . to be their angel of mercy to unite stand where I fit into that world.” In
car. Clara wants to see her father. She them. I keep remembering the time my mother school, she learned Latin. (Her aston-
is being held captive in the Tower of threatened to kill my father with the shotgun. ishing 1968 play “A Lesson in Dead
London. For what crime? Her black- I keep remembering my father’s going away Language” takes place in a classroom,
to marry a girl who talked to willow trees.
ness? Clara pleads with Anne Boleyn: where the students’ menstrual blood
The play, an underproduced mas- stains the backs of their white dresses
Clara: Anne, Anne Boleyn. Anne, you terpiece, is a mosaic of women’s pic- and the Latin teacher is a white dog.)
know so much of love, won’t you help me?
They took my father away and will not let me
tures, in every sense of the word—pic- Kennedy loved the mornings she
see him. They locked me in this tower and I tures that Kennedy crafts by marrying spent listening to her mother recount
can see them taking his body across to the poetry to action. At the end of “A Movie her dreams, which she sometimes be-
Chapel to be buried and see his white hair Star,” as in “A Place in the Sun,” Shel- lieved were true, and she loved, too, the
hanging down. Let me into the Chapel. He ley Winters drowns, a latter-day Ophe- wildness of Emily Brontë’s prose and
is my blood father. I am almost white, am I
not? Let me into St. Paul’s Chapel. Let me
lia sinking into a watery grave, while her story of unquenchable love. Ken-
please go down to St. Paul’s Chapel. I am his her killer, her once and always love, nedy and her brother, Cornell, spent
daughter. looks on, dispassionate. summers visiting relatives in Monte-
zuma, Georgia, their parents’ home
But Clara’s being “almost” white eath, maimed spirits, racial and town. (According to Kennedy, her
means nothing here; her blackness is
what keeps her outside of British his-
D cultural self-hatred, the joy of the
imagination, of finding real-life met-
mother was the illegitimate daughter
of a powerful married white man.) The
tory. She’s a cultural orphan, split by aphors to describe who you are, the train journey to Georgia in the Jim
her parents’ racial shame and recrimi- propulsive force of anger, nightmares, Crow car was one that Kennedy never
nations. As the play ends, Clara tries humorous imaginings—where do all got over; trains figure prominently in
to kill her black lover, a symbol of so these hobgoblins and fancies come her plays. In Montezuma, she saw “Col-
much anguish, but she fails, and what from? At the start of her original and ored” and “White” drinking fountains.
alternative does she have except to be- groundbreaking memoir, “People Who Segregation was as real as her mother’s
come an owl, a raceless non-human Led to My Plays” (1987), Kennedy her- dreams. At the same time, Hitler was
who sees so well in the dark? self poses that question: “More and rolling through Europe. A lookout tower
In Kennedy’s 1976 one-act “A Movie more often as my plays are performed went up in Kennedy’s Ohio neighbor-
Star Has to Star in Black and White”— in colleges and taught in universities, hood. (In her play “A Rat’s Mass,” from
the title plays on the idea of the Ne- people ask me why I write as I do. . . . 1966, two children have rat tails and
gress as star—a black woman named Who influenced you to write in such worship at a Catholic altar, while shout-
Clara (Kennedy often reuses names in a nonlinear way? Who are your favor- ing about Nazis as an imminent threat.)
several works) tells her story through ite playwrights? After I attempt to an- Nazis, Lena Horne visiting Kennedy’s
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 99
neighbors, the superb order of her ture, while he worked on a Ph.D. in By refusing to allow her hair to be “pro-
mother’s house, her mother’s mixed- social psychology. Kennedy has said cessed,” Kennedy was turning her back
race background: all these things spoke that her former husband—they were on how a colored girl was supposed to
to Kennedy’s imagination, just as married for thirteen years—helped re- look, let alone be, while grappling with
Thomas Hardy’s grim and theatrical lease her from “this image of myself as the question that all black American
novels did when she discovered his simply somebody who might teach sec- intellectuals struggle with eventually,
work, as a student at Ohio State Uni- ond grade.” especially when living abroad: How
versity, where she enrolled in 1949. (She In 1960, Joe Kennedy received a grant did the African become a Negro? As
was blown away by “Tess of the d’Ur- from the African Research Founda- a Negro, she was many things—black
bervilles.”) It was in Columbus that tion. Off the couple went to Ghana, by and white, a bastard child of cultures
she experienced racial hatred first hand; way of Europe and North Africa. It that were not her own, though she was
there were only a few black female stu- was Kennedy’s first trip to England, part of them, a product both of Eu-
dents there, and Kennedy felt ostra- Spain, Morocco—the places she had rope’s cultural schisms and of Ameri-
cized by her white classmates. The bit- read about or seen in movies. The jour- can racism. Dismantling her roman-
ter lives of pastoral women that Hardy ney made her thoughts more fluid; frag- ticism, in her plays she could curse
portrayed in his work were as signifi- ments of her past came back to her, England and Europe in their own lan-
cant to Kennedy as the characters in fragments that she wanted not to make guage, while wondering what her yel-
Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Me- whole but to shape. “The imagery in low body would look like without them.
nagerie.” From these authors she un- ‘Funnyhouse of a Negro’ was born by Who would she have been without her
derstood that one could write what one seeing those places,” Kennedy noted in dark-skinned father and the violations
knew about family and the desire to an essay about the play. After several associated with his skin color? In an
wrench oneself away from it, and that months in Accra, her husband trav- interview included in Paul K. Bryant-
women could speak at the speed of elled on to Nigeria and Kennedy moved Jackson and Lois More Overbeck’s
their own logic, if they chose to. to Rome, where she finished writing “Intersecting Boundaries: The Theatre
Kennedy’s degree in elementary ed- “Funnyhouse” the week before her sec- of Adrienne Kennedy” (1992), Kenne-
ucation—one of the few fields open to ond son was born. “I was twenty-nine,” dy’s first director, Michael Kahn, talks
black women, who were dissuaded from she wrote. “And I believed if I didn’t about working on “Funnyhouse of a
majoring in English—had little im- complete this play before my child’s Negro”:
pact on her career. Shortly after her birth and before my thirtieth birthday
When I first met Adrienne, instead of ex-
graduation, in 1953, she married a I would never finish it.” plaining the play to me, she brought me loads
fellow-student, Joseph Kennedy. The In the same essay, Kennedy noted and loads of photographs and reproductions
couple eventually moved to New York, that in Ghana, and for the rest of the of paintings. From that I really understood
where they went to the theatre and im- trip, she had stopped straightening her what the power of the images were for her.
mersed themselves in bohemian cul- hair. (Hair is central in “Funnyhouse.”) And for some reason, even though I was a
white boy from Brooklyn, I shared a lot of
those understandings of the same images.
astically supported by Edward Albee Noël Coward, but the piece ends trag JOHN-CHRISTIAN.COM
OR CALL 888.646.6466
and his Playwrights Unit—recognized ically, and what we’re left with, primar
something new in Kennedy’s language ily, is the image of Kay changing her
of heartbreak and revenge. clothes at various times during the per
formance, as though exchanging one
n a sense, Kay, in “He Brought Her skin for another as she moves toward
Imother.
Heart Back in a Box,” is NegroSarah’s
To say that the story is auto
a freedom that she will never know.
The set designer, Christopher Bar
biographical is to state the obvious. But, reca, has done an extraordinary job of
as usual in Kennedy’s plays, the auto realizing Kennedy’s cinematic approach
biographical strain is not direct. Also, to stage pictures, and when I saw the
“He Brought Her Heart Back,” which production I was reminded of “A Movie
runs for just over forty minutes, isn’t ex Star Has to Star in Black and White,”
actly a play; it’s a lyric populated by in which Kennedy most directly ex
characters who feel familiar to Kenne plores how screen images can inhabit
dy’s longtime readers and audiences. the mind. It would have been terrific
Kay is a mixedrace seventeen if Yionoulis had paired “He Brought New Yorker
yearold student at a boarding school Her Heart Back” with “A Movie Star.”
in the lightly fictionalized town of The new work is too short and thin Cartoon Prints
Montefiore, Georgia. Her grandmother to thrive on its own, especially for au
lives in the black part of town. Her diences who haven’t seen Kennedy’s
mother committed suicide when Kay work before. How marvellous it would
was an infant; her father writes histo be to experience Kennedy’s new work
ries and mysteries. Beautiful but prim, alongside another version of her par “Oh, grow up.”
Kay loves Chris, whose wealthy father ents in love and at war, spinning to
oversees the boarding school. Chris, gether and separately as their daugh Charles Barsotti, August 22, 2005
who is forwardthinking, wants to es ter tries to be if not a divided self then Order online at
cape his father’s control and become an entirely herself. ♦ newyorkerstore.com
BROTHERHOOD
tory. (Related works, including cop-
ies from Zurbarán’s series, reside in
Puebla, Mexico, and in Lima, Peru.)
COURTESY THE AUCKLAND PROJECT AND ZURBARÁN TRUST; PHOTOGRAPH: ROBERT LAPRELLE
Francisco de Zurbarán’s “Jacob and His Twelve Sons.” An old tale holds that the paintings
were seized in the mid-Atlantic from
B Y P E T ER S C H J ELDA H L a Spanish ship by English pirates, but
with no evidence on that account. The
ultimate buyer, in 1756, of all but one
of them, Richard Trevor, the Angli-
he Frick Collection has a sur- their day. All the characters—each a can Bishop of Durham, particularly
T prise for us: a room-filling loan
show of “Jacob and His Twelve Sons”
distinct personality uniquely posed,
costumed, and accessorized, and tow-
prized their exalting of Old Testa-
ment Scripture. He was a passionate
(circa 1640-45), thirteen full-length, ering against a bright, clouded sky promoter of Jewish civil rights who,
life-size imagined portraits, all but and a low swath of sylvan scenery— in the House of Lords, in 1753, had
unknown in the United States until appear to be approximately as old as helped pass an act of Parliament nat-
now, by the Spanish master Francisco they are in the forty-ninth chapter of uralizing Jews as citizens, though the
de Zurbarán. Twelve are from the din- Genesis. There the dying Jacob proph- measure was soon repealed, in the face
ing room of Auckland Castle, in the esies, in gorgeous verse, the fates of of anti-Semitic popular outrage. The
small northeastern English town of the founders-to-be of the Twelve clergyman’s sense of the works seems
Bishop Auckland, and one, reuniting Tribes of Israel. Some will fare bet- not to have been limited to a com-
the suite, is from another English col- ter than others: poorly, in the case of mon Christian interpretation of Jacob
lection. They constitute a terrific feat the eldest, Reuben, “unstable as water,” and his sons as coded premonitions
of Baroque storytelling: movies of and in the cases of the second and of Jesus and his dozen disciples.
It is interesting to note, as a side-
A detail from “Joseph,” Zurbarán’s magisterial depiction of Jacob’s eleventh son. light, the single canvas that got away
102 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018
from Trevor to a higher bidder: “Ben- ulation that had been expelled from that he would come to dominate them.
jamin,” depicting the father’s adored Spain in 1492. Epitomizing the mo- While they debated killing him, a
youngest boy. It is the liveliest, though ment are Zurbarán’s darkling por- caravan of foreign traders happened
not nearly the best, painting of the trayals of saints and monks in ec- by, so they sold him, instead, and
bunch. The subject, “a ravenous wolf ” static prayer. His art lost clerical stained his cloak with goat’s blood,
in Jacob’s approving view, is portrayed patronage, late in his life, to the soft- as evidence that a wild animal had
from the side, twisting cutely to glance ened, high-fructose manner of Bar- eaten him. His adventures in Egypt—
at the viewer while leading a rather tolomé Esteban Murillo. (By hap- he was the household manager for
doggy wolf on a chain. (Zurbarán penstance, the Frick has a concurrent the palace-guard captain Potiphar, an
wasn’t always a dab hand with ani- show of pretty good portraits by Mu- object of unrequited lust and of ven-
mals, as witness, too, the tutelary lion, rillo in its basement galleries.) Zur- geance by Potiphar’s wife, and a pris-
resembling less the king of beasts barán was almost forgotten until oner, before being promoted to the
than Bert Lahr, in “Judah.”) Benja- French aesthetes rediscovered him, Pharaoh’s right hand for interpreting
min’s voguish, faux-rustic garments along with other neglected Old Mas- the ruler’s dreams that foretold a
include a red suit tied up with yel- ters, including Vermeer, in the nine- seven-year famine—led to a frater-
low ribbon bows. The background teenth century. nal drama. His brothers (except Ben-
features stately ruins. In stylistic flavor, The “Jacob” paintings are un- jamin, at home because Jacob was
“Benjamin” most closely approaches signed—indicating a substantial role loath to ever part from him) came to
the eighteenth-century English taste in their execution by Zurbarán’s as- Egypt in quest of food and were at
for portraits of fetching individuals sistants, who, incidentally, may well his mercy. They didn’t recognize him.
in fancy dress. be immortalized in the realistic faces Joseph put them to hard tests before
of the figures—and uneven in qual- revealing his identity. Redeemed in
urbarán was the second-best ity. In addition, after nearly four cen- his eyes by their proven loyalty to
Z painter in seventeenth-century
Spain, no disgrace when the cham-
turies, the canvases sorely need clean-
ing. The brilliance of their colors has
Benjamin, they and the entire fam-
ily were granted choice land by the
pion, his Seville-born near-exact con- dimmed, notably in passages of bro- Pharaoh. (For how that arrangement
temporary, happened to be Diego cade and other sumptuous fabrics—a turned out eventually—no spoilers
Velázquez, who arguably remains bet- forte of Zurbarán, whose father was here—skip ahead to Exodus.) What
ter than anybody, ever. Velázquez a haberdasher. (At least one hue is must Joseph have been like?
landed the country’s one plum job defunct: that of the pigment smalt As envisioned by Zurbarán, he is
for an artist, as chief painter to King blue, which blackens with age.) But properly magisterial, wearing fantas-
Philip IV, in Madrid, where he could most of the pictures retain power tic raiment trimmed in fur and gold.
bring to peak refinement his aston- aplenty. Spend time with them, half His face appears between a medal-
ishing naturalism, with secular sub- an hour minimum. Their glories lioned, lustrous blue scarf and a mas-
jects in sophisticated company. Zur- bloom slowly, as you register the for- sive red-and-blue turban that casts a
barán had to subsist ad hoc, often on mal decisions that practically spring shadow across his eyes. He is still
commissions from religious orders the figures from their surfaces into young but has an air of seasoned ma-
that tethered him to pious subjects. the room with you, and as you pon- turity. His expression is watchful—
But an independent and even a lib- der, if you will, the stories that they unillusioned—but he doesn’t seem
eral spirit seethes in his art, which plumb. Near-masterpieces include temperamentally so: there is a linger-
took form, like that of Velázquez, the regally attired “Asher,” who in Ja- ing sweetness about him. He is a man
amid a convergence of innovations cob’s words “shall provide royal del- of extraordinary intelligence and heart,
from Italy and from Spanish-ruled icacies,” carrying a basket of bread disciplined by experience. To meet his
Flanders. Thought to be largely self- loaves that display Zurbarán’s subtle gaze is to feel his strict justice and his
taught, with a shaky grasp of perspec- mastery of still-life, and “Dan,” who reserve of compassion. I believe that
tive that made him wisely avoid try- “shall be a snake by the roadside” (ap- only Zurbarán himself could have
ing to render deep space, Zurbarán parently, a good thing for a man imagined, much less painted, that face.
came to be called the Spanish Cara- associated with judges) and who The Counter-Reformation didn’t
vaggio, for his theatrical manipula- gestures blithely, as if speaking to fancy tolerance. (As a boy of ten, the
tions of light and shadow, although someone out of frame, while wield- artist would have been aware of the
his knowledge of the revolutionary ing a live serpent on a stick. Finest mass expulsion from Spain, in 1609,
Italian may not have extended to see- of all is “Joseph,” as profound a paint- of the descendants of Moors, like that
ing any original paintings by him. ing as its subject is a foundational of the Jews before them—actions
He poeticized the stern predilec- personage in the world’s religious self-destructive for the nation’s cul-
tions of the Counter-Reformation, heritage. tural fertility.) But Zurbarán’s human-
which sparked both glories in art and Joseph was Jacob’s eleventh son. ized righteousness, like Velázquez’s
terrors in life—in particular, the In- He infuriated his brothers by being crystalline acumen, catches a fleeting
quisition, which especially targeted their father’s pet and by guilelessly glint of civil grace in history’s dusky
“crypto” remnants of the Jewish pop- telling them dreams that suggested promenade.
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 12 & 19, 2018 103
hillside nearby, where others stroll and
T HE CURRENT CINEMA play, but he sits in his room and watches
through the window, which weeps with
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