Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Harpers - September 2020
Harpers - September 2020
Corporation
M A G A z
ERS
FOUNDED IN 1850 / VOL. 341, NO. 2044
N E
SEPTEMBER 2020
HARPERS.ORO
Letters 2
Promised Land A Mychal]olmson and Monxo Lopez
Editor's Desk 4
Fighting Words Christopher Beha
Easy Chair 7
Which Side Are You On? Kevin Baker
Harper's Index 11
Readings 13
Disappearing Ink Claire Messud
Vanishing Cream easy, breezy, beautiful covert girl
After Midnight Wolf Wondratschek
And ... Ga)• Block, Dominic Chambers, Walid Raad,
and all the blues that's fit to print
Report 26
THE BIG TECH EXTORTION R ACKET Barry C. Lynn
How Google, Amazon, and Facebook control our lives
From the Archive 33
Who ls the Tyrant? Herbert Best
Annotation 34
THE HAUNTED HOUSE Sophie Haigney
What privacy looks like on Google Street View
Memoir 36
A LITANY FOR SURV IVAL Naomi Jackson
Giving birth as a black woman in America
Letter from Washington 43
ELDER ABUSE Andrew Cockburn
Nursing homes, the coronavirus, and the bottom line
Poetry 50
THREE POEMS Jonah Mixon-Webster
Letter from Tor House 52
BRIGHT POWER, DARK PEACE Erik Reece
Robinson Jeffers and the hope of human extinction
Essay 61
NONCONFORMING Laurent Dubreuil
Against the erosion of academic freedom by identity politics
Story 69
THE WORK OF ART Namwali Serpell
79
Reviews
BIGTECH
111 111
NEW BOOKS Lidija Haas
CAGE OF GOLD Rachel Nolan
The corrupt business of deportation
COETZEE'S RADICAL MASTERPIECE
On the Jesus trilogy
Christian Lorentzen RACKET
Puzzle 95 Richard E. Maltby Jr.
Findings 96 Cover: lllustrarion b)· Nick Misani
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ELIZABETH BRYANT, \'(/11.L STEPHENSON
Associme An Director and Designer
Lrn1A CHoOOSH Promised Land Building on a deep legacy of orga
Assisrnm Editors
WILL AUGEROT, JOSEPH FRISCH MUTH,
nizing, we developed our community
ADRIAN KNEUBUHL, SHIRLEY Ncoz1 NwANGWA, As organizers mentioned in Au land trust, the Mott Haven-Port Mor
JOHN S1-1ERMAN
Editorial lmerns
drea Urn's essay on community land ris Community Land Stewards, to en
KvENDE K1NOTI, ALEX KoNG, trusts ["We Shall Not Be Moved," sure that community members could
PAUL SULLIVAN, ANI \X/11.CENSKI
Report, July], we wanted to expand preserve a stake in this neighbor
Arr Intern
AIDAN CHISHOLM on why we have pursued this model. hood. We have identified several va
Co111rib11cing Editors Mott Haven-Port Morris, where we cant and underutilized buildings and
J.
ANDREW BACEVICH, KEVIN BAKER, DAN BAUM,
ToM B1ssELL, JosHUA Crn-1EN, JoHN CROWLEl'i live, is a vibrant neighborhood in the lots, and have held dozens of sessions
WEs ENz1NNA, TANYA GoLo, GARY GREENBERG,
JACK HITT, EowARD HoAGLAND, ScoTT Hon.TON,
South Bronx, both a cradle of arts to reimagine their uses. Most notably,
FREDERICK KAUFM;\N, GARRET KEIZER, and culture and a survivor of decades we aim to acquire and repurpose a
MARK K1NCWELL, \VALTER K1RN,
RAFIL Kn.ou.•ZA1rn, G10EoN LEw1s•KRAus,
of neglect, environmental injustice, 25,000-square-foot building, currently
RICHARD MANNING, CLANCY MARTIN, and insidious, top-down decisions vacant and owned by the city, as a
DUNCAN MURRELL, VtNCE PASS,,RO,
FRANCINE Pn.osE, ELLEN RosENBus1-1, involving public land use. Under the center for health, education, and the
JEFF SHARLET, CHRISTINE SMALLWOOD, premise of economic development, arts. This is a building that the Black
ZADIE St--tJTH, REBECCA SOLNIT,
MA'ITHE\V STEVENSON, JOHN EDGAR \'(/10EMAN public land in our community has Panthers and Young Lords used to
Concributing Artiscs been zoned for noxious waste serve the needs of the community
OuvE AYHENS, L1SA ELMALEH, LENA HERZOG,
AARON Hu
EV, SAMUEL JAMES, STEVE MuMFORO, treatment facilities and fossil-fuel nearly fifty years ago.
R,cHARD Ross, ToMAS VAN HouTRYVE, power plants, while a highway system As Lim's essay makes clear, there is
DANIJEI. ZE!ELJ
has callously divided neighbors. Fol an intimate connection between land
Vice Presidem and Geneml. Manager
LYNN CARLSON lowing decades of planned shrinkage, control, systemic racism, and the
Vice Prcsidem, Circ11lt1tio11 the community is now fending off carceral state. Community land trusts
SHAWN D. GREEN
Vice President, Marketing and Communications real estate speculation. New market can help address the historic harm sus
GIULIA MELUCCI rate developments are bringing thou tained by communities of color. As we
Vice Presidem, Adver1ising
JOCELYN D. G1ANNINI sands of luxury residential units into steward local green spaces, we also paint
VIRGINIA NAVARRO, Assisw,u w the Publisher a community where nearly half the BLACK LIVES MATTER on our streets and
K1M LAU, Senior Accountant
EvE BRANT, Office Manager
children live in poverty and where protest the NYPD for its egregious as
CoURTNEY CARLSON, Marketing Assistant the pre-pandemic unemployment rate saults on peaceful protesters. We are
CAMERON FRENCH, Adverrising 0/,emtions Coordinator was higher than the national average. heartened by the plurality of voices that
ADVERTISING SALES:
(2 12) 420,5773; CAMERON@HARPERS.ORG have joined the movement.
Sales ReJJresenuaivcs Harper's Magazine welcomes reader response.
Chicago: TAUSTER MEDIA RESOURCES, INc. Please address mail to Letters, Harper's A. Mychal Johnson and Monxo Lopez
(630) 336,0916; SUSAN-r@-rAUSTEIO.tl::OlA.COM
Detroit: MAIORANA & PARTNERS, LTD. Magazine, 666 Broadway, New York, N.Y. Bronx, N.Y.
(248) 546,2222; COLLEENM@MAIORANA•PARTNERS.Cm.t 10012, or email us at letters@harpers.org.
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(450) 405�7J l7j JI-UJERANl;K@SYMPATICQ.CA
foR SUBSCRIPTION QUERIES AND ORUERS PLEASE CALL:
and all letters are subject to editing. Volume Lim describes the Jewish National
800-444-4653 precludes indi,vidual acknowledgment. Fund as "a private agency that had
OISSENT (OLLAR
Sherrod and his delegation visited Is nationhood under the pretext of
rael in 1968, the ]NF had "acquired" greater European stability.
the ruins of more than four hundred Lastly, I would point out that Prus
Palestinian villages whose residents sia was not militarized by Frederick the
had been made refugees in 1948 or, in
some cases, had been executed by the
Great, as Buruma claims, but rather by
his father, the so-called Soldier King.
dissentpins.com
Israeli military. Frederick II simply rook what his fa Use the code harp20
To this day, anyone can buy a ther had created and built on it.
tree for the JNF, which will then at checkout to get 20% off
be planted in Israel-expanding for Nelson Smith
ests planted on the ruins of Palestin Toronto
ian villages, obscuring destroyed
homes, mosques, churches, and Buruma quotes Helmut Walser
schools, all sites of murder and exile. Smith's argument that "the birth of
In an article that so clearly details the German nationalism was from the be
ways in which landownership enforces ginning tied in complex ways to anti
racist oppression, I was disappointed Jewish sentiment." The idea that a
to see Israel's kibbutzim mentioned in notional ethnic purity was endemic to
the same breath as "a system of land German identity-that it was a "spe
ownership that prevents foreclosure cifically German disease"-is an under
and loss of land." The very existence standable but, for many, self-serving
of these kibbutzim was predicated, in one. It allows Americans, for instance,
many cases, on the violent seizure of to overlook the specifically Ameri
Palestinian land. can disease that is being challenged
today in the country's streets.
Alia Persico-Shammas As Confederate statues are finally
Brooklyn, N.Y. being toppled en masse, Germany
faces its own monumental reckon
ing. The so-called Judensau (or "Jews'
The Old, Weird Germany sow") is a virulently anti-Semitic
image dating to the medieval period.
Contrary to Ian Buruma's account Stone gargoyle or bas-relief depic
["Teutomania," Review, July], the or tions are preserved on about twenty
igins of German nationalism extend churches today, including Cologne
much further back than Napoleon. Cathedral and the Wittenberg
The Thirty Years' War, which, as he Stadtkirche, where Martin Luther,
writes, reduced the German lands to himself an infamous anti-Semite, is
a "ruin, physically and culturally," said to have posted his ninety-five
was so disastrous in large part be theses. Somehow these marks of
cause the great powers of Europe shame have survived for centuries,
knew they could use them as a bat through the post-Nazi years and into
tleground. None of the individual the present.
German states had the military As recently as February, a regional
strength to resist, and the Holy Ro court rejected a request that the
man Empire was certainly not pre Wittenberg relief be relocated to a
pared, militarily or constitutionally, museum. T he pastor said that its re
to come to their rescue. It wasn't moval would be an unjustified erasure
merely "failure and humiliation," in of history, that it is "embedded in a
other words, but a legitimate concern culture of remembrance." In a way,
for their safety that inspired a sense this is so. The survival of the Juden
of unified German identity. sau is a testament to the persistence
Buruma argues that, "unable to of a subcultural Teutomania of the
match French military might, Ger most dangerous sort.
man national feeling turned inward"
in the first half of the nineteenth G. W Stephen Brodsky
century. In fact, this turn can be at- Sidney, British Columbia
LETTERS
EDITOR'S DESI{
Fighting Words
By Christopher Beha
POR TODOS.
matized her as a terrorist. A magazine for the color of their skin. But the people
given to ideological purity tests could in that room in Jerusalem were not there
POR Tl.
not have done any of this. And it to celebrate an abstract Enlightenment
would be a lesser magazine for it. principle about the free exchange of
S
ideas at the cost of addressing more
everal years ago, I helped organize pressing political problems. They were
JAIME CAMIL
a Harper's Forum that brought there precisely because their problems EmboJodor de
together Israelis and Palestinians were so pressing, and because they be Unldos Contra
El C6neer
from across the political spectrum to lieved that the free exchange of ideas
talk about the future of the region. was their best hope of solving them.
Some participants enthusiastically em What exactly did they think this
braced a two-state solution; others in conversation could achieve? At a dinner
sisted that abandoning the project of after the event, I posed that question.
Zionism and welcoming Palestinians One participant, a Palestinian Chris
into full citizenship in a secular state tian businessman named B assim
was the only way forward; and one Khoury, noted that shifting American
Dani Dayan, a leader of the Israeli set opinion could be decisive for the re
tlement movement-advocated for a gion's fate. More than anything, he
distinctly Jewish nation that metched wanted-Americans to know that people
from the Jordan River to the Mediter like him existed. His family had been
ranean, which would require Israel's removed from land that they had oc
Arab neighbors to take responsibility cupied, he said, since the time of Christ.
for the Palestinians living in the area. But he did not hate Israelis, and he did
Many of the arguments commonly not want them gone from the area. He
made by those who favor excluding of didn't even hope to return to his family
fensive views-that people are being home. He wanted economic develop
asked to debate their very right to exist, ment for his people; he wanted an end
that a straight line can be drawn be to the squalid conditions in which so
tween certain ideas and concrete acts many of them were living. In the Amer
of violence-unquestionably applied in ican media, he said, all Palestinians
this case, but the participants spoke were portrayed as religious fanatics who
eloquently of the need for dialogue. dreamed of wiping Israel off the map. Porque nos lmporta, debemos lnformamos
Indeed, some of them had risked quite He appreciated the fact that Harper's e lnformar a nueslros seres quericlos sob!e
a bit to be there. might show otherwise. He didn't much los ensayos cHnlcos,
Days before the conversation was set like sitting across a table from Dani Queremos lo meJor para nosahos v para
to take place, in June 2014, three Is Dayan, I could tell, but he knew that if los nuestros. SI tu o uno de tus seres querldos
raeli teenagers disappeared in the West any voice was going to be silenced, it ha sldo dlognosflcado con c6nc�
Bank. They were believed to have been would be his own, not Dayan's. consldera lodas las opclones, lncluyendo
los ensayos cllnlcos. para encontrar el
abducted by Hamas. In response, Prime I am not suggesting that our Forum meJor lratamlento.
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insti made a difference in the conflict.
En Unldos Contra el Cancer estomos
tuted a security crackdown in the area. Shortly after we left, the three teen convencldos que Henes que ester blen
At our event in Jerusalem, a liberal agers were found dead, a Palestinian lnformado sob!e todas las opclones de
member of the Knesset took a seat fac teenager in East Jerusalem was mur tratarnlentos dlsponibles. Con m6s v meJor
ing the window, his back against the dered in revenge, and another round lnlormocl6n, acerca de los ensavos clinlcos,
wall. He explained that his willingness of asym metrical warfare began. podras tomor las rlendas de tu lralomlento V
eleglr el meJor camlno para obfener
to sit down with Palestinians had made Hamas lobbed its $800 sugar-and los meJores resullados.
him subject to death threats, which no fertilizer-powered rockets at . Israel,
Israeli politician could take lightly after which responded with a campaign of Vlsitanos en
the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. state-of-the-art bombs that killed more
At first, I took this for hyperbole, but than two thousand people in Gaza.
everyone else at the table seemed to Given all this, perhaps the risk of sit para aprender m6s sob!e los ensayos clinlcos
dlsponlbles para comballr el cancer.
accept it on its face, and they acknowl ting across the cable from a man who
edged similar pressures from within denied his humanity had not been
their own communities. worth it for Khoury. But he knew far
Here it's worth stating clearly that better than most Americans that the
we in the United States do not need alternative to such conversations is a
to worry about getting shot in the back fight of a different kind, one that he
for holding unpopular opinions, while would be far less likely to win. ■ Folos por
ANDREW MACPHERSON
,on_..
UniClos Coma 8 care,, 5'ald lJo lo co-c
..
de -- """""'- � ""'�
do""""""8"C,5Q1 C 3).
EDITOR'S DESK
THE U.S. IS AT A
TURNING POINT
IN RACE RELATIONS
The life and presidency of Jimmy Carter
offers unique lessons for the way forward.
Pictured with President Carter from left to right: Martin Luther King Sr., Andrew Young, Coretta Scott King, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
"Eizenstat's account is fascinating: "Eizenstat has produced a "A comprehensive and persuasive account
detailed, intimate, even page-turning. thoughtful, measured and of Carter's presidency that stands far above
He tells little-known stories, in all sorts compelling account that bemoans the familiar confessional and reveal-all
of areas. From Stuart Eizenstat, you Carter's weaknesses even as it extols accounts by former White House officials
can learn a great deal-about Carter, his strengths. It fills a gaping void on we are accustomed to reading...Political
sure, but also about the presidency at the presidential bookshelf. Until now, junkies and presidential-history buffs will
large. That Eizenstat has contributed there has never been a satisfying love this book. Eizenstat has succeeded in
something valuable to literature on full-length history of his presidency. showing that the Carter presidency had a
the presidency is certain." Eizenstat closes that gap." huge impact on American political life."
-National Review -The New York Times Book Review -The Washington Post
EASY CHAIR
Which Side Are You On?
By Kevin Baker
EASY CHAIR 7
protesters, shoving them into the gut color line, openly aiding and even could do to save people from robbery,
ter, and ramming into them with pa instigating attacks by white mobs in rape, fire, or murder. Two years. later,
trol cars and bicycles. black communities. when widespread riots broke out dur
"I'm not going to blame officers With the advent of the New Deal ing the 1977 blackout, some 40 per
who were trying to deal with an ab and the social-welfare state, the ma cent of the police force, still upset
solutely impossible situation," the chines began to die off, and the po about the budget cuts, did not report
mayor insisted, until his advisers lice were on their own. They began for duty. When they received praise
publicly criticized him and city hall selling themselves to white America for not killing a single rioter, the
staff held their own demonstration. as the "thin blue line" between order NYPD went a step further, claiming
The police, for their part, responded and chaos in the nation's cities. that only two cops had so much as
to the mayor's support by demand There was a measure of truth to this: fired their guns during the riots. This
ing permission to be even more vi by the 1960s, cities shed industrial was a lie-and one that Ed Koch,
olent, and rushing to inform the jobs and were transformed into un taking the right-hand lane in the
media that the mayor's daughter, derfunded dumping grounds for the city's mayoral election, used to suggest
Chiara, had been arrested at a pro mentally ill, homeless, and addicted, that the National Guard should have
test and charged with "failure to leaving cops, firefighters, and hospi been called in to prevent looting.
disperse." "Is that why you're tying tal and social workers to pick up the The NYPD's reaction to the tur
our hands, because your daughter is pieces. But as people of color saw it, moil of the 1960s and 1970s soon
H
out there?" taunted Ed Mullins, the the police were a force that hypocrit became standard among police ev
head of the SBA. ically accepted bribes from organized erywhere: professional victimhood,
crime to bring drugs into the city laced with a threat. If we do not let
ow did we get here? How has and allowed their squads to rampage police do as they want, they will
the power of the police in through poor black and brown stand back and let our cities-not
the country's biggest city neighborhoods, arresting low-level their cities, all too often-bum to
eclipsed that of its mayor? It's been dealers and users who would then the ground. This was the reality in
widely noted as of late that police serve major prison time under the places like Detroit, where a great
forces in the South began as slave infamous Rockefeller drug laws. American metropolis was all but de
patrols. But in Northern cities, the All the while, laws permitting stroyed by police whose crackdown
evolution of the police was a more collective bargaining among public on a black-owned, unlicensed bar
complicated story, in which the force employees were leading to the for set off the 1967 riots that made the
became a socia 1 wedge for Irish mation of police unions across the city's very name shorthand for ur
Catholic immigrants. As they began country. From the first, they staged ban collapse. Meanwhile, any and
to build America's first great political massive, fearmongering media cam all civilian supervision is cast as an
machines in the 1840s, Irish Catholics paigns to derail attempts to create ci existential threat, one that would
took over city departments, including vilian review boards that might leave officers too demoralized to do
the police. But within the machine, monitor their actions. "I am sick and their jobs. When Pantaleo, who has
cops didn't become cops without kick tired of giving in to minority groups, still managed to dodge criminal
ing back a large portion of their mea with their whims and their gripes charges, was finally fired from the
ger salaries to the bosses or their and shouting," shouted John Cassese, NYPD in 2019 after a five-year disci
precinct captains. The only way they head of the PBA, in 1966. While plinary process, Lynch lamented
could recoup that money was by most of New York's municipal work like an opera diva: "The job is dead.
shaking down brothels, gambling ers were and are required to live Our police officers are in distress.
rooms, illegal prizefights, counter within city limits, the same is not Not because they have a difficult
feiters, and drug dens. true of the police, having won an ex job, not because they put them
In o ther words, cops in many emption in 1962 largely because they selves in danger, but because they
American cities were made into kept flouting the residency rules with realize they're abandoned."
I
criminals the moment they put on false addresses. White Americans
the uniform. They served as the vi had not only fled the cities, but had nevitably, perhaps, police will feel
tal link between politics, commerce, taken their cops with them. the need to have one another's
and crime, and were expected, as During New York City's fiscal cri backs and develop a certain esprit
Luc Sance put it, to be "stern with sis in 1975, police who were under de corps. But their unions have taken
the poor and benevolent to what standably upset about job and wage this to dangerous extremes. In 1992,
was held as the respectable part of cuts complained and protested but for example, New York cops held a
society." Police extorted legitimate also joined firefighters in an attempt drunken rally around city hall, stop
businesses as well as rackets, and to distribute pamphlets reading WEL ping traffic, vandalizing cars, and
clubbed ·honest citizens as well as COME TO FEAR CITY at New York's spewing racial epithets at people of
criminals. They brutally quashed airports. Complete with a cowled color. More recently, they have in
strikes. And when black people be skull on the cover, the brochure sisted on their members' First Amend
gan to arrive in Northern cities in warned visitors that, thanks to bud ment right to attend classes such as
large numbers, the police upheld the get cuts, there was little that police Dave Grossman's "The Bulletproof
M
campaign contributions. They have
also continued to oppose efforts to any municipal unions vo
legalize marijuana, end random stops ciferously defend their
and searches, and eliminate bail for members' rights. But the
petty, nonviolent offenses. head of the teachers' union does not
P ushing agendas on behalf of go around insulting the mayor and
themselves at the expense of those his children. Nor does the head of
they ostensibly work for, the police
have become so politicized that a
the nurses' union declare that work
ers are at war when members of the
SUBSCRIBE TO
movement has begun pushing for the union die on the job, and the head of The Weekly Archive
abolition of their unions. "Ultimately, the transit workers' union doesn't in
police unions protect their own, and sist that subway operators have the Newsletter from
the contracts they bargain keep kill right to ignore their official training
ers, domestic abusers, and white su and take external courses that in Harper's Magazine
premacists in positions of deadly struct them to drive their trains any
power-or provide them wit_h gener damned way they please. If the po
ous pensions should they leave," lice deserve the right to a union, and
wrote Kim Kelly in the New Repub to have their say in public debate, a curated selection
lic. Veena Dubai, a professor at the then they must exhibit the same lev
University of California Hastings els of respect, goodwill, and decency of excellent writing
College of Law, told The Intercept toward the people they serve as other
that the police "aren't workers even unions do. that helps put the
in the way that firemen are workers. The fight to reform police depart
Police defend property. They have ments and their unions will not be week's events into
historically defended white property. easy. For decades now, these unions
We're not in a place where that is go have balked not just at ending stop
greater context,
ing to change."
But no American worker should
and-frisk or legalizing marijuana but
at nearly every progressive societal
delivered to
be denied the right to organize, change. In 1973, New York's PBA your inbox
and getting rid of police unions tried to stop female officers from join
would likely simply push their ac ing street patrols. In 1978, the cops * free of charge *
tivities underground, even further warned us that letting gay and les
from public scru tiny. Abolishing bian officers serve openly would be
police unions would also contribute "catastrophic." Now they cannot op
to the nose-under-the-tent, long erate without choke holds, with
term right-wing project to eliminate body-camera surveillance, or with ef
all public-employe e unions. How fective civilian review boards. The
long after abolishing police unions sky is still up there, but they keep
do we hear the Murdoch media ask- telling us it is falling. ■
EASY CHAIR 9
ESSENTIAL TOOLS FOR WRITERS
AND EDITORS
Sharpen your savvy with these invaluable guides and resources
for writers looking to hone their craft
AUTHORS
r, /ego/ l,r,ndbvo/4-for
'jfE�
The new, updated edition of Everything a writer needs to
the handbook that should be know about the law.
on every copyeditor's desk.
Zachary Shore
Figures cited are the latest available as of July 2020. Sources are listed on page 66.
"Harper's Index" is a registered trademark.
HARPER'S INDEX 11
Winner of
the J. Anthony
Lukas Award
READINGS
'' T
and faith in our fellow human beings. human stories; as are psychology, anthropology,
ff
law, and philosophy. T he dramatic preva
e may look to the past, to the vast com lence of the image over the written word in
pendium of recorded human experience, for our present moment is akin to a return to the
READINGS 13
Lascaux caves: immediacy has its advantages, conversation. You're engaged in an experience
but nuance isn't one of them. that is simultaneously private and universal.
Just as we are called to be active custodians of Your encounter with a work of fiction is yours
our planet, we must also be custodians of human alone. And yet in words, our encounters can be
knowledge and of our own minds. We need not shared, our experiences thereby expanded and
be alone in our experiences, nor passive: the deepened. Reading opinions that differ from
riches of all human thought and imagination are our own, we are challenged to articulate our
available to us. If we were to ensure, as a society, own experiences, and through the articulation
that people's basic needs were met, then we we live more deeply. The hurtling slows.
might recognize that a richer life doesn't require I advocate for the actual, irreducible, and
money, or access, or things: each of us can be irreplaceable animal record-outside the age of
nourished by the life of the mind. Frederick mechanical reproduction. The movement of the
Douglass was born into slavery, and yet when we hand that holds the pen; the imprint of ink
read his writings, we encounter a mind pro upon paper; the dignity and inti1nacy of the in
foundly free, a mind able to articulate itself in dividual letter, written for a particular ad
language both urgent and lucid, that serves as a dressee (and hence so different from a blog or
reminder that power over language social-media post), without thought of other
'' T is power tout court. readers. The loss of what that represents
ll
philosophically is enormous: my grandpar
hen you read fiction or encounter a ents, my parents, even my friends and I in
work of art you are invited into an open-ended youth, spent hours writing letters about what
we were doing and thinking, where we were
going and what we noticed, as a gesture of
intimate communication. It signified that
each of us mattered, that the person to whom
I wrote mattered, and that our communica
[Closure] tion. was important-often precisely because
THE LONG GOODBYE it wasn't widely shared. Privacy, intimacy,
dignity, and with them, depth and richness
of thought-all were a readily available part
of daily life, for even the most
M
From sign-offs in the correspondence of the philoso
pher Gilles Deleuze, collected in Letters and Other modest among us.
Texts, which was published in July by Semiotext(e).
y paternal grandfather spent the bet
ter part of a decade in his retirement writing a
Wishes, wishes, wishes 1,500-page family memoir for my sister and
Friendship and wishes me. He did not expect anyone else to read it.
Thinking of your future He titled it "Everything That We Believed
You are among the greatest poets In." His undertaking was a gesture of faith in
Let me express the strong effect our mel:!tings, himself, in us, in language and the transmissi
both recent and upcoming, have on me bility of experience. The result was an extraor
Have a good conference, impose your talk, and dinary and life-changing document; nobody
stroke the good doctor else need think so, but for me and for my sis
Forgive me for troubling you in this way, as I hope ter, it was. My father, on the other hand, of
you will see it as proof of my great admiration more melancholic temperament, a business
I need some type of long sleep at present but man during the day, spent a lifetime of eve
cannot nings, weekends, and holidays as a scholar and
I am somewhat ill-suited for travel thinker who, as in Bernhard's account of Witt
I am not furious, as you say, but very annoyed genstein's nephew, was a philosopher only in
With all my heart, you are a terrible battlefield, his head, committing nothing to paper. My
from which friendship can extract joy and abiding memory of him in old age is of a man
complicity in his library, sitting in his leather chair in a
I have pushed back my departure for Paris, no pool of light surrounded by darkness, wearing
way to sell this fucking disgusting apartment half-moon glasses, with a book in his lap and
I find all that I am saying to you grotesque and a Scotch on the table beside him. He had no
pitifully intellectual body to talk to, nobody with whom to share
There, I've. done all I could to satisfy you his considerable erudition; he lived in the
Forgive my inadequacy splendid and terrible isolation of one who,
while still retaining faith in the life of the mind
and the power of books to speak to him, had
READINGS 15
"Clair de Lune," a phocograph by Paul Cu/1ido, whose iuork is on view this month at Photo Basel, in Berlin.
She was gone for several hours. Mom had a ronmental science class and took her seat near
doctor's appointment that day but wasn't leaving where a buck's head hung on the wall. She told
her room. I was about to wake her when Nancy me that night-walking was a beautiful and
came in the front door and breezed past me into tranquilizing experience.
the kitchen.
"Did you do it?" I called. 3.
"Wouldn't you like to know."
"You couldn't have gone that far, or you When we were teenagers, my sister would come
wouldn't be back," I said. into my bedroom, lie down on the floor, and
That night, she came into my room. She said start talking. She told me she believed in rein
that she never intended to go all the way to carnation, and that she was attracted to the des
Harrisburg, or wherever that train was head ert because her spirit was a coyote. She asked
ing. She rode it for a few minutes, and then whether I had ever experienced astral projec
jumped off to spend the remainder of the af tion, and when I said I hadn't she told me I'd
ternoon in the woods with Jen. I knew, then, have to be lying down and hovering at the edge
that she could disappear whenever she wanted, of a dream.
whether to scare me or to feel alive or to imag
ine herself gone. 4.
2. In 1994, my seventeen-year-old sister gave birth
to a new self. For Atlantis Black to exist, she
When Nancy was thirteen, she climbed out had to get rid of Eunice Anne Bonner. Two lo
her window in the middle of the night and cal newspapers printed the legal notice, and
walked the nine miles to our school, through the people of Chadds Ford had a month to
woods and fields and across Highway l. The present objections. There were none. Eunice
next day, she showed up on time for her envi- Anne Bonner drove herself to the hearing
READINGS 17
Installed heat-detection cameras outside hos Required students to wear electronic tracking
pitals devices
Integrated Al technology with surveillance cam Forced undocumented immigrants to wear elec
eras in the subway system to assess whether tronic tracking bracelets
passengers were wearing masks Required individuals who tested positive to
Introduced a robot to track when employees download an app that notifies the police
came within six feet of one another when they leave their homes
Used RFID technology co determine whether Introduced a police helmet with facial
employees were washing their hands recognition technology that uses thermal
Required arriving travelers to wear electronic cameras to measure body temperature
tracking wristbands Assigned citizens QR codes that contain per
sonal data
Required people in quarantine
to submi.t one selfie per hour
between 7 AM and 9 PM
Secretly registered users for a
[Instructions] game show called Are You at
VANISHING CREAM Home? in which the host calls
random users to check whether
they are obeying quarantine
From CV Dazzle, a project by Adam Harvey that demonstrates how
makeup, hair styling, and accessories can be used to foil facial recog
nition technology. Harvey ran the below looks through a neural
network that evaluates the similarities between two faces. Each face
is given a score between O and I, with scores below 0.8 interpreted as
likely not a match. \Xlhen compared with a makeup-free image of the [Personal Growth]
same subject, the looks below (clockwise from top left) received scores
of 1.0, 0.73, 0.56, and 0.53, showing the extent to which contouring EMPATHY,MY
and asymmetrical designs can be used to confuse the sJftware by
altering the spatial and textural re!ationshi/)s between key feauires DEAR WATSON
such as the eyes, eyebrows, and nose. These are considered more
identifiable than features in the bottom half of a face, ,which is dy
namic and easily obscured by collars, masks, or other gannents. From a lawsuit filed in June by the
estate of Arthur Conan Doyle al
leging that an upcoming Netflix
film about Enola Holmes, the
younger siste1· of She1·lock Holmes,
depicts Sherlock in an empathetic
manner distinct to Doyle's later
short stories, which are not yet in
the public domain. The following
is taken from allegations in the
lawsuit describing Sherlock's emo
tional evolution over the course of
Doyle's career.
3-D design hy Adam Harvey and Josh Evans; 3-D scan by Taylor
18 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ SEPTEMBER 2020 L. Absher; modeling by Lajune McMillian © Adam Han·cy/CV Daz:le
Holmes did not even congratulate Watson when do you got, and I told him about the notebooks
Watson told Holmes he was going to marry. "I dating back to 1960 and all the posters from
feared as much," said Holmes. "I really cannot readings and performances and the videotapes.
congratulate you." "I felt a little hurt," said Any pictures. Well. Yeah, though it's kind of
Watson. Then all of this changed. The
Great War happened. It was no longer
enough that Holmes was the most bril-
liant rational and analytical mind.
Holmes needed to be human. Holmes
became warmer. He became capable [How-To]
of friendship. He could express emo-
tion. He developed a knowledge of EXTRA EXTRA
medicine. He embraced modem tech
nologies. He changed from one who From the headlines of advice columns published in the New York
cared little for dogs to someone who had Times since the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
great interest in them. He began to
respect wo men. He reacted with
warmth and emotion to a woman- If You've Got Lemons, Make Limoncello
quite unlike his famous aversion to How to Raise a Happy, Carefree Butterfly
women. His relationship to Watson How to Make Your Own Coronavirus Pifiata
changed from that of master and as- How to Make a Frozen Margarita
sistant to one of genuine friendship. Go Ahead, Blow Out the Candles on Zoom
Watson became more than just a tool It's Not Too Late to Get a Virtual Internship
for Holmes to use. When Watson mar- How to Go on a First Date During Quarantine
ried for a second time and moved out Be Your Own Spin Class
of Baker Street, Holmes described the Give Yourself a Buzz Cut Now
emotional impact this had on him, It's Robes and Slippers All Day Now
calling Watson's remarriage "the only How to Hug During a Pandemic
selfish action which I can recall in our Masks, No Kissing and 'a Little Kinky'
association. I was alone." Holmes be- Turn Your Demanding Child Into a Productive Co-Worker
came a partner. When a villain fired a How to Create Screen-Life Balance
gun and Watson was hit, Holmes said: Make Stress Work for You
"You're not hurt, Watson? For God's Silver Lining to the Mask? Not Having to Smile
sake, say that you are not hurt!" "I You're Stronger Than Your Quarantine Fatigue
caught a glimpse of a great heart," said It's OK to Not Be a Perfect Quarantine Employee
Watson. "All my years of humble but You Don't Have to Emerge From Quarantine a
single-minded service culminated in Beautiful Butterfly
that moment of revelation." Maskne Is the New Acne
What Is All of That Screen Time Doing to Your Skin?
How to Politely Decline a Call
How to Write a Condolence Note
Emotional Eating in Quarantined Kids
Please Do Not Eat Disinfectant
[Lecture] Does Online Babysitting Work?
INTELLECTUAL Oh, Good, the Kids Are Fighting Again
I Left My Husband Before the Pandemic. Can I Go Back to
PROPERTY Him Now?
How to Rethink Your Wedding
Is It OK to Dump Him Because of His Medical Condition?
By Eileen Myles, from For Now, which How to Reduce Your Risk of PTSD in a Post-Covid-19
will be published this month by Yale Uni World
versity P1·ess as part of the Why I Write Nature Deficit Disorder Is Really a Thing
series. A version of the essay was delivered Hoping to Buy an Aboveground Pool to Salvage Summer?
at Yale last year. It May Be Too Late
How to Entertain Your Kids This Summer? Maybe Don't
You and Your Kids Can't Stand Each Other. Now What?
READINGS 19
weird and I told him how I had a collection of said but I'm not sure where those two things
archival photographs of myself and Andrei are. I mean I've got to have them. I think they
Voznesensky on a couch as he was putting the are either in my New York storage space or I
moves on me; Adrienne Rich and I hugging at guess I still have one storage unit in San Diego.
some reading; captioned photos of me by Allen A place called Big Box. I smirked. He was not
Ginsberg; and even outtakes from the Map interested in the details.
plethorpe shoot. But I don't know where they He paused for a moment, sipping his drink. He
are. There's this box and then I described the was thinking about the box with the binders. Or
poems in binders in the milk crate. It's weird I maybe it was the photos. Now he looked up at
me. In my business, he said, we call a box like
that the gusher.
I talked on the phohe with a psychic tarot
reader from Tucson. She said the box was very
close. I just had to write a letter and send it to
[Expert Opinion] everyone who ever came in contact with the
SYSTEM OF A CLOWN box in the time it was traveling with me. Peo
ple were heartbroken. Are you sure it wasn't in
your apartment. Are you sure it isn't in hers.
From an interview of Larry Kudlow, the director of My girlfriend had a big old apartment she
the National Economic Council, by Sara Eisen, the grew up in. It was kind of a railroad. There
coliost of Closing Bell on CNBC, conducted in]une. was this hall she called the closet, but it was
more like a long clothes rack with very high
shelves. I went to a psychic in New York and
SARA EISEN: Larry, I just wanted to follow up on he told me she had it. She may not have
something you told reporters last week. You known she had it. I asked her and she said she
said, "I don't believe there's systemic racism was very sorry but she would never lie about
in the U.S.," which I found surprising given something like that.
the moment that we're in. I talked to a hypnotist who said she saw
LARRY KUDLOW: Well, I don't believe in systemic something green like a lamp, something high.
racism. I think the American system is the No, actually she led me into a hypnotic state,
best system ever devised for mankind. Here's a and l looked around up there and that's what l
thought: the first black president was elected saw. There was that apartment I took in
twice and he got seventy-nine million white L.A. before I left. I had it for about three days
votes. Therefore I find it hard to understand and then I asked for my check back.' I was mov
something called "systemic racism." You ing to New York. They had this weird storage
know, I'm old enough to remember the Fifties. space that was actually right on the street and I
EISEN: Larry- remembered locking and unlocking it and l am
KUDLOW: You gotta watch this PBS documentary pretty sure the box was right in there. I remem
about the great black jurist and Supreme ber talking to some comedian who lived there
Court justice-um, uh-whose name I've after me and he said I'm sorry I don't have it.
forgotten. Sorry, I've forgotten him. My point I have so many theories.
is this: we can learn from our history. Bedbugs. My girlfriend had had them a cou
EISEN: Larry- ple of times in her building so when she saw
KUDLOW: ls this a systemic problem? No. Systemic the bloodstains on the side of the mattress she
means America is bad. America is wrong. freaked. It was our blood. We did a giant purge
EISEN: Larry, l think you have to look at the ex of the apartment. Putting things in trash bags,
planations for why the net worth of a white getting the place sprayed, and then throwing
family is ten times more than the net worth of out a ton of stuff. Her building had one of
a black family. Or why a black family led by a those cement dungeons right below the street
household with an advanced degree doesn't where you dropped your trash and we filled that
make as much as a white family led by a entire dungeon with black bags. She had this
household member with a high school degree. extra mom because her own mom had been ir
The statistics are endless. That's what people responsible and this woman named Sally
are referring to when they talk about systemic helped us clean and lug the mess down. I
racism in society. mean if you date a significantly younger per
KUDLOW: Number one, I'm not sure what sys son, especially if you are the same age as her
temic means. But I do not believe in whatever parents and her parents' friends, it's like you're
it may mean. John Wayne Gacy. So I find it very easy to
imagine Sally sliding my box into a trash bag
and throwing it out. And why not the second
READINGS 21
--
A photograph from the series LLmd/s by Gohar Oashri, whose work was on view in]u!y at Intersect Aspen, in Aspen, Colorado.
my shirt smells like my socks, like the hallway trick himself into believing he understood what
where the smell starts and then pours out into he was doing. I was at my best at these times. I
the other ro oms, and the kitchen as well, of liked to drink. We all liked to drink. All musicians
course. So long as I'm here there's little use in drank. Even if we had wanted to sober up, we
opening the windows. If the sun is shining, the couldn't stop drinking. These rare hours, they were
warm air just pushes the smell back through the what mattered. The hours before sunrise, when I
window into the apartment. If it's raining, I get to was alone with my hands on the piano and the
hope that things will be made fresh again. Or I tell music that I played. I don't know whether I was
myself I do. Rain washes the world clean, that's happy. I was concerned with more important
what they said in the villages where I grew up. things than being happy. Even today I have no
Even the old would pour themselves a glass when interest in the answer to that question. Some
the sky turned dark and the wind and the rain times I think the whole of a person's happiness
started in. We were all quiet, because that's how it rests on his wanting neither to seek nor to find it.
always was. Everyone listened, even me, even the Still happier the person who doesn't make a fuss
boys. No one would have dared say a single word. about it, whether happy or unhappy. Not ques
A holy silence, which I only ever found again tioning whatever judgment is imposed upon us.
in music-later, much later, when I began to Showing the same equanimity in remembering
love music. I won't say when I began to under and in forgetting. I've told myself for a long time:
stand music. Even today I don't think I have any nothing can happen to you, whatever God might
idea what music is. I sit at the piano, I play, I love do. I hear His angels in the apartment. I hear them
what I'm playing, but I understand nothing. After listening when I sit at the piano. I hear the quiet
midnight, when I'd had enough to drink, I some of their presence. Maybe that's what I wanted
times played like someone who'd been allowed to when I played: to make angels sing, to make their
READINGS 23
trapped in a body, without hope. Even if I haven't contemporaries like classics. She listens, doe-eyed.
managed to get rid of you, I don't receive visitors The audience isn't in charge, especially not the
anymore. Well, with the exception of a young lords and ladies in the orchestra seats. Don't look
violinist who whenever she comes to my door I at them! And don't let them love you! We speak
ask inside, a violinist who despite her youth has in our language. I serve tap water. A way of pass
had a lot of success all over the world, whose ing the time. I enjoy it, but I feel myself getting
father was a friend of mine and whose mother in tired. I can't keep up the concentration the young
her youth was considered one of the most beauti thing demands of me for long, and soon I'm no
ful but also one of the most stubborn women in longer even capable of thanking her for the com
all of Moldavia, an object of temptation for every pliments she pays me, and for the gift of a diver
one of us. Everything you need to make music on sion, a change of pace, which she has given me
a violin the daughter inherited fr01n her mother, with her excitement for music and her innate
plus her temperament and her beauty, which she recklessness, at least where her conception of the
considers a nuisance. She's hard on herself, which violin and a career without compromises are
I like. l don't hold back either. It's not about beat concerned. I can't even prevent her from taking
ing your rivals. And careful, don't burn yourself me in her arms when she says goodbye. This is
up before the first note. You're not going for a always embarrassing for me. Doesn't she smell it?
record! Everything develops slowly. Play the dead Doesn't she see the pile of unwashed dishes in the
like they're your contemporaries, and play your sink, the dust on the letters that are lying around
everywhere? No, she doesn't-or she acts like she
doesn't. She wants to save me, to get me back
onstage, wants to appear alongside me, the old
man and the girl, she says, and laughs. It'd make
me happy, she says, I want to. You've still got it,
[Accusations] even now. There's no one who plays like you. You'll
WHEN LIFE GIVES get yourself back into shape. I trust you. Do it, she
begs, do it for me. We'll make it happen. We'll
YOU LEMON travel together. My God, she's about to burst into
tears. Somehow we both keep standing there like
that for a while, both ashamed, both helpless,
From FCC com/Jlaints filed between 2016 and but, we know, lost to each other. It's better if you
2017 that allege inappropriate behavior by CNN go now, I say. Well before midnight I'm finished
host Don Lemon. The documents were obtained as a human being and fall into bed.
through a Freedom of Information Act request and At what would be the right time for making
published by Muckrock.com. music, I'm snoring. I miss those hours, oh how I
miss them! The hours that decided every truth,
the hours that were good to me, that brought
Don Lemon has been cutting people off on order to my mind. Brought the requisite disorder,
purpose to put it better. Or better still, a kind of higher
Don Lemon flipped off Larry Wilmore order. The late Schumann. The Russian alcoholics.
Don Lemon showed a clip of the assassination Czechs who didn't sleep at night. This time was
attempt on Ronald Reagan everything, the time ofhyperactive weariness. Even
Don Lemon said that anyone who supports for Sibelius, who tormented himself with his music
Donald Trump is complicit in his racism and with alcohol.' Who, driven to despair by lone
Don Lemon said that taking a knee is protected liness and isolation, listened to the night. No, said
by the Constitution Suvorin, with the photograph of his wife on the
Don Lemon depicted protests live with signs wall over the table, whatever is played before mid
saying FUCK all over the place night sounds like nothing. Even in the concerts
Don Lemon used the word "bullshit" two or that I myself played, it sounded like nothing. But
three times who would dare take the risk of allowing a concert
Don Lemon said "cojones," which means to begin after midnight? Even with free admission
testicles it wouldn't work. Oh night, sing the poets, and it's
Don Lemon had on a CNN employee who not just the romantics among them who are sing
intentionally said another word for "vagina" ing. There are good arguments to be made against
Don Lemon had on a so-called expert woman sobriety. The soul opens up in darkness. It is capri
Don Lemon drank tequila from a Jose Cuervo cious, as we know. It is an owl. It hides in the light.
bottle And, like me, it wants to be alone.
Don Lemon spoke his feelings I didn't notice that she was still standing there.
And only now, after these last words, which I had
spoken to myself, did she go.
© The artist. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York City READINGS 25
.
...
'
� � ;�
Ii �
..... ......
�I
R E P O R T
T
Act of 1996. In chat bill, Congress si What's more, these sellers don't have
mulcaneously exempted internet plat radicionally, retailers operate by the ability to raise their prices, even
forms from any responsibility co police purchasing someone else's if they spot an opportunity to do so.
the content on their sites, and failed product and reselling it to con Amazon has long controlled pricing
entirely to impose on chem any require sumers. Amazon calls this its first-party decisions on goods it buys and re
ment to provide equal and just service business, and it remains a large driver sells, and has long manipulated the
co all who depend on their networks. of revenue. But as Bezos detailed in his prices of other people's products for
As a result, Amazon, Google, 2018 letter to investors, Amazon in its own purposes. But it used to allow
Facebook, and other platforms were recent years has focused more on con third-par ty vendors to manage their
free to develop business models that necting companies that want to sell a own pricing. As Amazon's power has
treated every seller and buyer-every particular product with people who grown, however, it has begun to ma
citizen-differently. These corpora want to buy that product, then charg nipu lace these merchants' prices as
tions exploited chis license to the ing a fee for chis service. After noting well. Just before Christmas in 2017, for
fullest, and have used their power to that annual first-party sales had grown instance, Amazon arbitrarily slashed a
reorganize entire realms of human from $1.6 billion in 1999 to $117 billion number of third-party vendors' prices
activity. Amazon, Google, and Face in 2018, Bezos added chat during chat by up to 9 percent.
book match individuals to specific same period, third-party sales grew There's a reason these vendors
shoes and clothes, specific restaurants from $0.1 billion to $160 billion. don't complain. lf they did, there's
T
which a single corporation controls prior purchase behavior."
access to the market and enjoys a li hus far, Amazon has profited Varian then offered a suggestion to
cense to open and close the gate as it mainly from the same model online businesses: "if enough customers
sees fit, advertising is just another tool used by the railroads in the are myopic, or the costs of anonymizing
of the extortionist. If you want Amazon nineteenth century, during those pe technologies are too high, sellers will
to carry your goods, you must pay what- riods when their bosses were able to want to condition pricing on purchase
REPORT 29
history." The paper included a warning drivers with more rides and disfavor ing lack of economic sophistication,
to the buyer: "purchasing at a high others with fewer, for whatever reason or just plain desperation.
price is not the best strategy, since it they choose. They are free to pay some Although what you see on your
guarantees that [you, the consumer] drivers more per mile than others, for screen has been designed to look a lot
will face a high price in the future." whatever reason they choose. They can like a market system, in which the price
In short, online sellers are free to make some drivers travel farther than of each particular ride you take is regu
provide you with prices, terms of others to _earn the same fare. And they lated by supply and demand-with
service, and information tailored to can pay a particular driver a certain rate prices, for example, "surging" during
exploit your weaknesses. rush hour-what is actu
And there's nothing you ally happening is much
can do about it. different. Fluctuations in
Today this practice is pricing have nothing to
normal. The OECD de do with demand; prices go
scribed the problem in a up during rush hours and
paper last fall: during off-hours. Uber's
system is designed to care
The current evidence ... fully study your travel and
shows that the techno shopping habits so it can
logical means for online
figure out how to charge
personalisation and price
discrimination are exten
you the maximum amount
sive and developing rap for any particular ride,
id ly, and difficult to without leading you to
detect in market moni decide to take the bus or
toring research by au walk instead.
thorities. It also shows Uber's vast cache of
that online market places, data about where people
platforms, and social me go and when provides an
dia use or can use data ever more perfect map of
analytics and profiling
traffic to and from a
tech niques ... to rank
and target offers on the
community's bookstores
basis of estimated maxi and coffee shops and
mum willingness to pay. churches-and to its
backroom casinos and
To understand this drug dealers and sex clubs.
power and its implica All this information
tions, consider Uber, gives the corporation
whose service was de the ability to understand
signed to manipulate just how badly you need a
both buyer and seller us ride. Do you rush off ev
ing persona Ii zed price ery Thursday at 8 PM to
discrimination, as the see your boyfriend? Do
company has admitted. you like to squeeze your
The corporation's ini- Sunday visit to mom in
tial expansion strategy resembled one day and a different rate the next. between a morning round of golf and
those of earlier monopolists. In 1901, They have even adopted techniques the afternoon NFL game? Every Tues
it was J. P. Morgan who engineered a typically used in video games to more day and Thursday at 3 PM, do you have
near monopoly in steel production in effectively manipulate their drivers. to get to your psychiatrist and back
the United States. In 2011, it was Ja Uber's bosses are also free to do the without your boss knowing?
pan's SoftBank and Saudi Arabia's same thing to riders. In a statement Well, your boss may not know, but
sovereign wealth fund that armed admitting to price discrimination, Uber does. And it exploits this
Uber with enough money to price its Uber implied that its goal is to knowledge to extract more money.
service below cost for years. charge richer people more for the Nowhere has Uber demonstrated
But Uber differs from older mo same level of service. The corpora its capacity to deliver different ser
nopolists in at least two key respects: tion's pricing system is designed to vice to different people more perfectly
it enjoys the ability to capture and determine how much the people in a than in its treatment of officials
make sense of vast amounts of data particular region are willing to pay, charged with ensuring the provision
about individuals, and it enjoys a li then charge accordingly. But people of safe and affordable taxi services.
cense to discriminate. agree to pay more for a particular The corporation has repeatedly been
Absent common car rier rules, service for many reasons other than caught providing false information
Uber's bosses are free to favor some a higher disposable income, includ- to regulators around the world.
G
that Google keeps a detailed record came clear that Vladimir Putin and
oogle appears highly complex, of what events he attends and when Alex Jones were using Google and
but the corporation's business he arrives, what photos he takes and Facebook to spread the lies and mis
model can be boiled down to when he takes them, what exercises information that have so disrupted
three simple steps. he does and when he does them. And our society in recent years, the com
First, Google assembled a cluster of it has kept every email he has ever panies accepted their money. When
information-manipulation plat America's newspapers, magazines,
forms and tied them together. In and online news publications laid
house engineers created a better off tens of thousands of reporters
GooGLE BUILT A BUSINESS ON
search engine and a slicker email and editors because Google and
service. But after the corporation ITS ABILITY TO MANIPULATE Facebook were diverting so much
went public in 2004, it promptly set INDIVIDUALS' THOUGHTS, advertising revenue into their own
out on the greatest acquisition spree pockets, those checks kept getting
in history, buying up more than two PERCEPTIONS, FEARS, AND DESIRES cashed. When even the most pow
hundred other companies. erful corporate executives and pub
These deals made Google the lishers dared not speak out against
dominant player in mobile phones, sent or received, including those he Google or Facebook, the bosses
operating systems, web browsers, arti has deleted. smiled and raised the rent.
M
ficial intelligence, online advertising, Third, Google built a business rent
word processing, and maps, as well as ing its technology and data, allowing ost people who drive have
a major power in managing electricity anyone to steer individuals to buy a become accustomed to be
flows on the grid, undersea cables, particular product, read a particular ing steered through the
even educational publishing. And article, vote for a particular person, or world by Google. Even those who
these efforts continue. In June, Google hold racist beliefs about a particular don't drive follow the corporation's
confirmed plans to buy the wearable group. Put another way, Google built directions whenever we get in an Uber
technology company Fitbit. a business on its ability to manipulate or a taxi. We simply surrender our
Second, Google learned how to individuals' thoughts and perceptions selves to the blue line on the map. As
organize, study, and wield all the se and fears and desires. it directs us down particular streets, we
crets it gathers. Soon after Hal Varian The model has proven phenome zone out, oblivious to the fact that
published his paper, Google hired nally successful. In 2019, Google Google has the power to steer some of
him as a consultant. In 2007, the earned almost $135 billion from such us along better routes, to offer us swifter
corporation named him chief econo "advertising." The only other corpo ways of reaching our destinations.
mist. It was a classic variation on ration that comes close is Facebook, And conversely, that Google has the
vertical integration: hire the expert which last year earned more than power to steer others toward side
and lock him inside so he can help $70 billion by renting out its manipula streets and dead ends.
you-and only you-master the tech tion machine. Together these two cor Does Google discriminate in map
niques he identified. porations captured some two thirds of ping? Frankly, we h:ave no idea. What
In 2018, an Irish technologist named online ad revenue, and the total is we do know is that it can, that there
Dylan Curran downloaded the infor growing fast. are many ways for the company to
mation Google had collected about There's little evidence that Google's profit by doing so, and that no gov
him. All in all, Curran found, the cor founders imagined, in the early days, ernment agency in the free world is
poration had gathered 5.5 GB of data that the corporation would gain such watching to prevent such blatant
on his life, or the equivalent of more power. When Google engineers first abuses of the power that comes with
than three million Word documents. began to assemble its manipulation providing an essential service.
In an article for the Guardian, Curran machine, they expected that Procter Our failure to apply common carri
wrote that within this trove he found & Gamble might use it to steer buyers er rules to Google, to prevent the cor
to, say, a more expensive version of poration from discriminating in the
every Google Ad I've ever viewed or Tide. Or that American Airlines pricing and services it provides, has
clicked on, every app I've ever launched might use it to steer buyers to a last- left the corporation free to build a
REPORT 31
system that micromanages the move politicians from both parties have the time has come to open a new
ment and actions of millions and accused Google and Facebook of ma line of trade with a wheat-growing
millions of people, moment after mo nipulating campaign advertising. land across the sea.
ment after moment, perhaps forever. This has yet to be proven, but that's In other words, prices play a major
not what matters. What matters is role in making the public the public.
that a growing number of politicians It is one of the main factors that allow
THE PUBLIC ATOMIZED
believe that the companies do this, people to stand together in a town
D
and hence are tempted to trim their hall-or Congress-and compare
uring his 1912 campaign for speech accordingly. personal experiences with one an
president, Woodrow Wilson Yet something more dangerous other in ways that allow us to identify
spoke of the political dangers than a simple cowing of the once patterns and structural problems so
that come from allowing a few corpo powerful is taking place. that we can make decisions as a com
T
rations to control access to the market. munity. Markets are not only where
o understand, let's look at The we exchange goods and services.
I cannot tell you how many men of Wealth of Nations. Lik e Well-structured markets are also one
business, how many important men America's revolutionaries, of the primary institutions providing
of business, have communicated their Adam Smith was inspired to act by that most basic stuff of democracy:
real opinions about the situation in the spoliation of the British East In trustworthy information about po
the United States to me privately and
dia Company. But instead of tossing tentially dangerous concentrations of
confidentially. They are afraid of
somebody. They are afraid to make
tea into salt water, he responded by economic and political power.
their real opinions known publicly; they writing a great treatise against the From the perspective of a political
tell them to me behind their hand. evils of monopoly. economy micromanaged by Amazon
That means we are not masters of our In The Wealth of Nations, Smith and Google, the harms that Smith
own opinions. developed a theory of market struc feared seem innocuous. Yes, mercan
tures, and of the role that prices play tilism and monopolism, just as he
Today we see a similar pyramiding in transmitting political information. warned, have warped commercial ac
of power. Great corporate lords who Market prices, he believed, communi tivities toward wasteful and unneces
only five years ago ranked among the cate vital information, such as a sary ends. But when the prices of
top tier of economic predators, who shortage of tomatoes or a bumper goods and services are out in the open,
could alter the fates of tens of thou crop of corn, so that individual buyers and the public is able to identify fluc
sands with the wave of a hand, now and sellers can alter their economic tuations, then we the people can take
themselves fawn and fuss, flattering behavior accordingly, such as by buy action to fix structural problems.
the real bosses. Who makes the laws ing fewer tomatoes and more corn. The danger of price discrimina
in America today? Who chooses who On the surface, the theory ap tion is not merely that it grants a
wins and who loses? Increasingly it is pears almost simplistic. When a monopolist the ability to pick and
the masters of Google and Amazon price is too low, Smith wrote, suppli choose winners and losers. It is not
and Facebook. ers turn to other lines of trade. When merely that it grants a monopolist
And it's not only businesspeople a price is too high, new suppliers will the ability to manipulate commer
who understand that their professional bring goods to market. cial interactions to extort money
lives are in the hands of these corpo But Smith's theory implies a vi and political favor from those who
rations. Journalists know that to upset sion of the individual as a sophisti rely on them to get to market. The
Google or Facebook is to risk online cated political actor, someone who problem with personalized discrimi
vanishment. "Every publisher knows is competing against and cooperat nation is that even as it empowers
that, at best, they are sharecroppers ing with others in the community. the masters of these corporations to
on Facebook's massive industrial The market price does something atomize prices, it atomizes society at
farm," Nicholas Thompson, the editor else as well. It allows citizens to take the same time.
of Wired, wrote in 2018. political action to address the reason In the world of Amazon, Google,
for a shortage or surplus of a particu and Facebook, not only are we subject
And journalists know chat the man lar good. If the price of shoes goes up to the will of a few private companies,
who owns the farm has the leverage. If and stays up, this may indicate that a manipulated moment to moment by
Facebook wanted to, it could quietly
turn any number of dials that would
monopolist has captured control of unseen forces that rule our com
harm a publisher-by manipulating its shoe manufacturing and the time has merce, track our movement, and re
traffic, its ad network, or its readers. come for the public to break up the mo cord our every thought. Each of us
nopoly. If the price of wheat goes up must now suffer alone, with less and
So, too, do politicians. Reporters and stays up, then maybe the time less ability to commiserate with oth
at The Markup recently detailed how has come to irwestigate whether ers about our common problems. The
Google's email platform sorts cam some trader has amassed a dangerous power of the middleman has become
paign advertisements in ways that hold over the supply of wheat or the so great as to make each of our prob
can arbitrarily promote one candi capacity to process it. And if that lems unique, solely a matter between
date and disappear another. Major proves not to be the case, perhaps us and the master. ■
9 3 3
From "W/1y the Pol.ice Fail," which appea.red in the January 1933 issue of Harper's Magazine. The complete article-along with the magazine's
entire 170-year archive-is available online at liarpers.org/arcl1ive.
Relic.< (Sf,eakeasy Corner), 1928, by Martin Lewis ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art/
Art Resource, New York City. Originally published in the March 1929 issue of Harper's Magazine ARCHIVE 33
A N N O 1
THE HAUN
What privacy looks lik
By Sophi
Google launched Street View in 2007 with the stated ambition of capturing the
entire world on camera. It has now documented at least ten million miles-"a
distance that could circle the globe more than 400 times!" the company boasts.
The images are captured mostly by contract workers driving cars equipped with
nine high-resolution cameras and lidar sensors. Google developed the blur in
an attempt to address privacy concerns. A set of algorithms are used to conduct
large-scale facial and license-plate detection on images, and then automati
cally scramble the pixels. A button also allows users to "report a problem"-a
misplaced blur, an unblurred face. But the company makes decisions about
whether to blur buildings and other geographic sites on a case-by-case basis.
Some are likely obscured at a government's request: the Marcoule Nuclear Site
in France, the NATO headquarters in Brussels, certain stretches of the US.
Mexico border. We don't know precisely why or by whom the house on Seymour
Avenue was targeted for erasure. Google declined to comment, except to say
that the blurring is permanent and irreversible.
�ED HOUSE
n Google Street View
iaigney
To the right of the blur, a sign on a chain-link fence reads PRIVATE PROPERTY. The
house behind the fence is blue with red trim and boarded-up windows. But this,
too, was more than ten years ago. In Street View's digital museum, the whole
block remains frozen in the summer of 2009. Google regularly sends drivers to
recapture imagery in major cities, including Cleveland. Indeed, if you click around
the corner onto Scranton Road, you are suddenly looking at the world as it ex
isted in September 2019. It's a metaphor for what can happen to a crime scene, the
way these spaces often become fossilized in the popular imagination. The house
where Sharon Tate was murdered, on Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, has become one
such gruesome drive-by tourist destination. Residents have complained that Sey
mour Avenue has become another. Years and renovations later, these addresses
remain bizarrely marked, stuck in the enduring present of the crimes.
The arrows and zoom buttons that allow you to navigate Street View's photographed
universe make clear that we're looking at the world from Google's point of view. The
company presents itself as all-seeing, and indeed, it has seen a lot: Street View now
contains portions of the Great Barrier Reef, the interior of the British Museum, and
vistas from the world's tallest buildings. It has captured houses on fire and crimes
in progress. Like all documentary efforts, it records a surplus of information. The
blur represents a last-ditch effort to exert some measure of control over the surplus.
But it is a clumsy and mostly futile effort, one that doesn't so much excise private
material as deform it. In August 2009, a passing car captured images of a house in
which horrific things were taking place. The day these photographs were taken,
Castro's victims were still trapped inside. It probably looked like a normal house
the normalcy is part of the horror. In attempting to erase the record, Google has
Sophie Haigney lives in London. created something new in its place: a haunted house. ■
ANNOTATION 35
M E M O R
A LITANY
FOR SURVIVAL
Giving birth as a black wo1nan in America
By Naomi Jackson
H
protect us from a world that, in the tainty was our of reach. I'd been praying
words of Audre Larde, "we were never for a baby for years, though the intensity aving a black child in America
meant to survive." I was ten when Gavin of my wish to be a mother waxed and has always been an act of faith.
Naomi Jacl<son's fint novel, The Star Side waned. My desire was mostly a secret. I In the antebellum South, one
of Bird Hill, was published by Penguin had friends who talked about basal body in every two children born to an en
Press in 2015. She lives in New York City. temperatures and dieted to prepare for slaved woman was stillborn or died
D
fore, how would a black woman with Americans being cared for by black
out the protection of celebrity fare? uring my pregnancy, I worked doctors are more satisfied with their
And I was no one's ideal patient. My as a staff writer at a philan treatment; they have better health
medical chart was littered with prob thropic foundation that pro outcomes and longer life expectan
lems, including Graves' disease, thyroid vides grants to social science researchers, cies. My primary care physician, psy
nodules, and an increased risk of thy including several studying the benefits chiatrist, dentist, and dermatologist
roid cancer. I had been diagnosed with of paid family leave policies. I felt lucky are all black women, but I couldn't
uterine fibroids in 2014, and an MRI in to get the job just as a visiting profes find a black female ob-gyn who would
February 2019 showed multiple leio sorship I'd had at Queens College was take me on as a patient. According to
myomas. The obstetrician-gynecologist ending. But the human resources de the Association of American Medical
I consulted warned me that I could partment said I was ineligible for the Colleges, about 5 percent of physi-
T
woke up moaning and hy
he trouble began perventilating, convinced
two weeks later, that all that was left of the
when I went in for a baby was a bloody sheet. As
follow-up appointment with my due date neared, I wor
another doctor in the same ried less about qualifying for
practice. One of the fe paid family leave and more
tuses I was carrying was about making it out of the
smaller than the other due delivery room alive.
M
to a rare disorder known as
twin-twin transfusion syn y doctor wanted
drome, in which twins un to schedule an in
evenly share blood. I asked duction. I heard
the doctor whether I should her concerns about avoid
come back in a few days to ing a stillbirth, the risk of
check on the struggling which increases signifi
fetus. She replied that it cantly after thirty-nine
didn't matter-he would weeks for women over forty.
probably die anyway. I was Still, I wanted to aim for an
stunned by her callous unmedicated childbirth.
ness. I went home and W hen I was twelve, I had a
prayed for a sign to tell me seizure that left me afraid
what was happening, but I felt noth right to an abortion, but I still bris of sleeping alone and inspired a lasting
ing. W hen I returned to the hospital tled, thinking of the history of forced need to remain in control and aware
the following week, the heart of the sterilization among black women in of my surroundings. During a hospital
smaller fetus had stopped beating. the United States. stay after I was diagnosed with bipolar
My grief was intense and compli My husband and I knew that we disorder, I was sedated with psychiatric
cated. This summer, I spoke with would see the pregnancy through. But meds and was unconscious for several
Dorothy Roberts, a legal scholar of race I was unsure how to process the strange hours. I woke up groggy and afraid in
and reproduction and a mother of fact of carrying one living and one dead an unfamiliar hospital room. For weeks
four, and she reminded me that "there fetus. My beloved niece kept referring afterward, I was unable to write my
is still a very prominent belief that to Auntie's twins long after the co-twin name clearly and developed a stutter
there is something wrong with black had passed; I found myself both want whenever I was nervous or overly tired.
women's bodies, and every poor out ing to tell her to stop and happy that I vowed I would never again take med
come is because of us." We shouldn't be the idea lived on with her. ications that compromised my sense
having babies, the thinking goes, be I asked the doctor what it would be of autonomy.
cause our wombs are "harmful and like to deliver the deceased co-twin. At my thirty-eight-week appoint
defective." Even though I knew better, She described the fetus as a "pressed ment, my blood pressure tested above
MEMOIR 39
the acceptable range, meaning that l prostol, but ultimately gave in after a she had increased the dose when
could have preeclampsia, a condition nurse reportedly asked her, "You don't we weren't looking.*
that can result in seizures that are life want to go home with a dead baby, do My sister, Shari, arrived around
threatening for both mother and baby. you?" There is no proven link between nine o'clock that morning, and my
Preeclampsia is 60 percent more prev misoprostol and AFE, and the drug is husband went home to rest. Shari and
alent in black women and more likely widely used to induce labor, but my I did squats, led by Nicole, to encour
to affect women above thirty-five. My distrust of the medical establishment age the baby down the birth canal.
doctor wanted me to go to the labor was so thorough that I refused to take We listened to Mahalia Jackson and
and-deli very floor for monitoring. l it. One of racism's subtlest legacies is Kendrick Lamar. As the day wore on,
knew that she was trying to ensure to make it harder for black people to the doctors and nurses stopped com
that I didn't become another statistic, know when our fears are rational. ing to my room regularly. I couldn't
T
but l resented what felt like her efforts help but wonder whether it was be
to control me. I declined further mon he induction was scheduled for cause they didn't want to hear my
itoring that day, agreeing only to early evening on February 4. mouth. I lumbered around, dragging
come back for my appointment the I tried to stay cairn, but inside my IV behind me, because standing
following week. I prepared for a fight. I knew that my was more comfortable than sitting or
Over the weekend, my husband medical chart, which lists my bipolar lying down. At around 2:45 PM, the
cleaned, painted, and organized the diagnosis, was readily available to ev black ob-gyn came to check on me
baby's bedroom and tried to keep me ery nurse and doctor who interacted because she could see on the monitors
calm. I spoke with my doula, Nicole with me. So, in addition to the routine outside my room that I was pushing;
Jean Baptiste of Sese Doula Services threat of being labeled a stereotypical she warned me to stop before I tore
in the Bronx, about my birth plan. angry black woman, I worried that 1 ·myself. I insisted that the baby was
Nicole's services were a gift from an would be dismissed as a "crazy" person. coming soon and begged her not to
ob-gyn friend of mine who told me But I told myself I would rather be leave. She assured me that the baby
that continuous support from doulas seen as belligerent than be dead. was still a ways away and promised
during childbirth is associated with I wasn't wheeled down to the labor she'd be back in twenty minutes.
decreased caesarean section rates and-delivery floor until around three Twenty minutes later, she was no
and less frequent use of epidural an o'clock the next morning. From the where in sight. I swayed between Ni
esthesia. Years ago, in Boston, my beginning, I was at odds with the hos cole and my sister, and asked them if
friend had helped deliver the baby of pital staff. After having to wait nearly they were ready to catch a baby.
a black woman who died from com twelve hours, now I was being rushed. Shari ran to the nurse's station to
plications after she left the hospital. A Foley balloon was inserted in my tell them that the baby was coming.
She wanted to ensure the same thing cervix to encourage dilation. When I The staff promised her they would
didn't happen to me. told the resident who inserted it that page the doctor, but they seemed un
When I returned to the hospital she was hurting me, she said that if I concerned and made no move to
the following Monday for a blood couldn't handle that pain, I wouldn't come check on me. When Shari re
pressure screening, my reading was be able to make it through my labor turned to the room, Nicole told me
high again. I agreed to the induction. without medication. I had to repeat to reach down and see if I could feel
l knew that I'd never forgive myself if over and over again that I didn't want the baby's head. I could. Shari went
my stubbornness led me to lose the an epidural-I was terrified of being to the doorway and started yelling
baby or endanger my health. I was unable to move. for help, but the baby couldn't wait
relieved to be introduced to a black T hree and a half hours into my any longer. After one push, my son
female doctor who would be part of labor, the resident offered to break was born into Nicole's hands.
my care team. my water, which I knew would in I wept as I held my son to my chest
The day before the induction, the tensify my contractions to such an and fed him for the first time. I mar
black ob-gyn discussed possible plans extent that 1 might be in too much veled at his full head of hair and im
with me. She suggested I take the pain to refuse the epidural. When 1 possibly bright brown eyes. He put one
drug misoprostol to induce contrac asked why she was in such a hurry, tiny finger to his chin like an infant
tions. I hesitated. I'd just read about she admitted that she wanted to philosopher. I was shocked to finally
Tatia Oden French, a thirty-two-year complete the task before her shift touch him, as I had never really al
old black woman from Oakland, Cal ended. I was livid and asked her to lowed myself to believe that things
ifornia, who developed an amniotic leave my room. Later that morning, would turn out okay. f was at Mount
fluid embolism (AFE) after being given I sparred with the nurse, who pres Sinai, one of the leading hospitals in
misoprostol; both she and her daugh sured me to increase my intake of the country, and I had just delivered a
ter died after she gave birth via C Pitocin-a synthetic hormone that baby without a doctor or nurse present.
section. French, a psychologist who causes contractions-every hour to I was both enraged and comforted
had written her dissertation on trau keep my labor going at a healthy
matic brain injuries among black clip. My doula, Nicole, later no • A spokesperson for Mount Sinai told
women who had suffered domestic ticed that, despite my request that Harper's Magazine that the nurse was
violence, questioned the use of miso- the nurse stop upping the Pitocin, following induction protocol.
T lt·H\ihMI
dreamed about another place we
hese past few months, I've might live, where a mundane trip to
often wondered why I'm still the laundromat might not incite
here in the United States. Over a century of manufacturing
such anxiety and fear.
I've always imagined what my life My faith lies in God and black experience ensures your made in
would have been like if my parents women, as it always has. I know that Australia Akubra will provide long
had never emigrated, or if I were to we have the answers to this seemingly lasting protection from the elements.
move back to the Caribbean, which intractable problem. Scholars such as
I also consider home. Five years ago, I Deirdre Cooper Owens, Dana-Ain
applied for and received Antiguan Davis, and Lynn Roberts are pro
and Barbudan citizenship. But I ducing groundbreaking research on
haven't left. As much as I think about reproductive justice. National orga
living elsewhere, for better or worse, nizations like the Black Mamas Mar
I've thrown in my lot with black peo ter Alliance are pushing for legislative
ple in America. change that would transform mater
This spring, while I cared for my nal health care. And at the state and
newborn, at least three more black local level, black-led organizations are
women in the United States died dur developing new models of culturally The Banjo Paterson is the same perfect
ing or after giving birth. In April, congruent care. Jamaa Birth Village crossover shape, in a rain or shine Rabbit fur
Amber Rose Isaac, twenty-six years in Ferguson, Missouri, and Ancient felt. Full grain roan leather sweatband,
old, died at Montefiore Medical Cen Song Doula Services in Brooklyn Barramundi hatband. 4 ½" crown, 2 ¾" brim.
ter in the Bronx after delivering her are providing childbirth education Sizes: 6 ¾ - 8. Heritage Fawn or Charcoal.
son, Elias, via C-section. She had classes, parent support groups, and #1622 Banjo Paterson _ $175
requested in-person doctor's visits for doula and midwifery care that centers
several weeks before she was finally on black women and their commu Add $9 handling per order.
admitted to the hospital and diag nities. Bx (Re)Birth and Progress is
nosed with HELLP syndrome, a advocating for the construction of
complication of preeclampsia in which the first freestanding birth center Shop davidmorgan.com
the red blood cells that carry oxygen in the Bronx, which has some of the or request our catalog
to the body start to break down. Wo worst health, economic, and educa
gene Debele, an Ethiopian mother of tion indicators in the United States. #KB-354-PIN
four in Takoma Park, Maryland, died To be a black mother in America
on the same day, before she was able is to know that your children never
to hold her son, Levi. Unique Clay, a truly belong to you, that any number
postal worker and mother of three in of forces or actors might take them #1746 #1613
Chicago, died of COVID-19 just days from you at any moment. I pray that
after being released from the hospital this will not always be the case. Since Akubra® Hats from Australia
where she had given birth. giving birth, I have been comforted by Wildlife Jewelry in Bronze
I am grateful to have a healthy the image of the pregnant Virgen de
baby, because I know it could have Guadalupe-a woman with the sun at and much more ..
easily gone another way for him, or her back, the moon at her feet, sur
me, or both of us. I appreciate bed- rounded by roses. ■ � David Morgan
800-324-4934 davidmorgan.com
11812 N Creek Pkwy N, Ste 103,Bothell, WA 980 l l
MEMOIR 41
NYCRELIEF
47-47-47
L E T T E R F R O M W A S H N G T O N
ELDER ABUSE
Nursing ho1nes, the coronavirus, and the bottom line
By Andrew Cockburn
A t the beginning
of this year, Can
terbury Rehabili
tation and Healthcare
Center, a nursing home
nurse was convicted of at
tempting to rape a seventy
two-year-old Alzheimer's
patient. In October 2019, a
report from the Centers for
in Richmond, Virginia, Medicare and Medicaid
housed 160 elderly resi Services (CMS) cited ma
dents, roughly half of jor staffing shortages and
whom were A f rican almost three times the
American. Most of them number of "health defi
were there courtesy of ciencies" as the national
Medicaid, the government average. By Ronald's ac
program that finances count, Canterbury was "a
health care for those with bad place, a very bad
little or no mon ey. By place." On his weekly vis
mid-May, 80 percent of its, his mother told him of
Canterbury's residents had "people going to the bath
been infected with the room on the floor in the
novel coronavirus. A third hallways" and described
of them were dead. Alzheimer's patients wan
Sharon Mitchell, a dering into her room at
sixty-two-year-old former night. "Her clothes were
dental receptionist, was one of the ca have poststroke rehabilitation therapy stolen; her jewelry was stolen," he told
sualties. She had been at Canterbury at home, but therapists refused to travel me. The therapy, it turned out, con
for two years, following a stroke brought to the public housing project where she sisted of biweekly sessions in which she
on by the shock of losing her longtime lived, deeming it too dangerous. So, after was asked to spin a wheel with her
receptionist job, her son Ronald told much discussion, the family elected to hand for fifteen minutes. He was
me. She had been healthy enough to send her to Canterbury (then known as shocked when his mother told him she
Lexington Court), where Medicaid was given a shower just once a week:
Andrew Cockburn is the Washington editor would cover poststroke treatment. "'Thursday's my shower day,' she told
of Harper's Magazine and the author, most
recently, of Kill Chain: The Rise of the Even before the pandemic, the facil me. Otherwise they gave her a wipe
High-Tech Assassins. ity had a poor reputation. In 2018, a staff down with a baby wipe every two days."
M
that sent her to nearby St. Mary's Hos deaths that occurred before May 8,
pital. During one of these hospital onths into the pandemic, it although the agency said it was confi
izations, a year into his mother's stay, has become clear that dent that "the vast majority" did so.
Ronald spotted blood on one of her the majority of people in One in five nursing homes didn't
socks. Pulling it off, he found that fected by the coronavirus suffer mild or bother to report their numbers at all.
her big toe was infected-it had been no symptoms and recover quickly. De A New York Times study in late June
neglected by the staff for so long that spite the panic and economic devasta put the number of deaths in U.S. nurs
"the flesh was all eaten away; I could tion, the risk of death or serious illness ing homes at a staggering 55,000, but
see the bone." Gangrene had invaded from the virus for most people is rela even this figure did not necessarily
her leg, which eventually had to be tively small. For people of color, it is include all of those who became in
amputated above the knee. Immobi worse. According to one study, black fected in a home but died in a hospital,
lized thereafter, Sharon spent most of Americans were more than twice as as was the case for Sharon Mitchell.
her time in bed. She was often
dehydrated because she could not
hold a cup, Ronald said, "but they
wouldn't help her drink, or put
her on an IV"
Ronald saw his mother for the
last time in February, before visi
tors were barred as a precaution
against the coronavirus, which
had already attacked a nursing
home outsideSeattle. Two months
earlier, Canterbury had been ac
quired by Tryko Partners, a fast
growing private equity concern,
which operated it through an af
filiate, Marquis Health Services.
A Marquis spokesperson told me
that by the time of the COVID-19
outbreak, "in-house staffing was
at its highest point in years,"
and that wages had been tem
porarily doubled. But so far as
Ronald was concerned, "Nothing
had changed. Nothing." On March
18, a Canterbury patient was diag
nosed with the virus. Sharorr also
tested positive soon after, and was
moved into a quarantine unit the
center had set up. When Ronald
called her after the move, she told him likely as white Americans to die of In some states, the vast majority of
she needed a drink of water. "I stayed COVID-19 complications. But it is COVID-19 deaths were in homes:
on the line for an hour and a half while worst of all among those with health 64 percent in Massachusetts, 68 per
she pressed the bell for a nurse, but no issues, particularly the elderly. At the cent in Pennsylvania, 77 percent in
one ever came," he said. When he height of the pandemic in New York Minnesota. In New Jersey, one in every
complained, Canterbury staff told City, for example, fewer than 1 percent ten people housed in nursing homes or
him they had just two nurses looking of people who died while infected with assisted-living centers died. This was a
after forty patients. (A Canterbury COVID-19 were confirmed to have helpless population, helpless because so
spokesperson excused the inadequate lacked an underlying illness. often confined in a state of neglect and
staffing on grounds that it met CMS Inevitably, then, the virus has squalor. But despite or perhaps because
guidelines.) Three weeks later, Sha found its most ideal conditions in the of their conditions, they were worth a
ron was dead. "My morn died all warehouses storing America's elderly lot of money. In effect, they were being
alone," Ronald told me, bitter at the population. No one knows the cur harvested for profit.
neglect-the dehydration, the pro rent death toll. As of early July, CMS The business model is simple. It
forma therapy, the gangrene-that he put the number at 33, 509, but the depends in part on the personal
is convinced led to her death. "She count covered only federally regu- funds-including insurance policies-
T
ited time. When the Medicare runs ing Americans avoided this fate by
out, the patient can either go home, or he practice of segregating the relying on their children to care for
pay for long-term care." This can drain e lderly in profit-making them, often sealing the deal with a
away a lifetime of savings in short or old-age homes was born in the promise of inheritance. Gelbman sum
der, and once it does, Medicaid starts mid-twentieth century. There were marized this common arrangement: "A
daughter would stay home, not get
married, and look after the par
ents as they got old and infirm
while her siblings went off and
raised families of their own. But in
return, she got the house."
As the Princeton historian
Hendrik Hartog explained in his
book Someday All This Will Be
Yours, this custom persisted into
the 1940s, at which point Social
Security began replacing the fam
ily in providing care and shelter
for the elderly. In 1950, an amend
ment to the 1935 Social Security
Act established direct federal pay
ments to privately owned homes,
which until then were mostly
charities or mom-and-pop opera
tions. (Owing to searing memories
of the poorhouses, government
aid to any "inmate of a public
institution" was explicitly barred.)
A for-profit industry was born.
Initially the federal subsidies were
small, though still enough, ac
cording to Mary Mendelson's 1974
muckraking expose, Tender Lov
ing Greed, to "whet the appetite"
picking up the bill. But Medicaid will also homes for the elderly in Victorian of hustlers who perceived "the exciting
only spend a limited amount per pa times, but they were not yet seen as a profit potential in the nursing home."
tient. (In most of Virginia, including financial opportunity. The hugely These opportunities would expand
Richmond, the cap is $6,422 a month.) popular nineteenth-century American dramatically in 1965, when the cre
"The only way the home can make it poet Will Carleton (a frequent Harp ation of Medicare and Medicaid
worthwhile and meet their profit target er's Magazine contributor) became fa turned a trickle of federal largesse into
is to cut corners," said Gelbman. "And mous with his 1872 poem "Over the a torrent. Medicare financed health
that's why you have low-paid, un Hill to the Poor House," which relates care for anyone over sixty-five, and
trained, and overworked staff." the story of a widow left without prop would pay for up to a hundred days in
Like a flash of lightning, the virus erty and abandoned by ungrateful a nursing home for patients recovering
has illuminated a corner of society and children who consign her to the mis from hospital treatment. Medicaid, in
the economy that normally festers in eries of institutional care: "Over the addition to providing medical aid to
obscurity. I asked Mary Evans, a former hill to the poor house, I'm trudgin' my the poor of any age, also provided for
senior consultant for several leading weary way/ 1, a woman of seventy, and unlimited stays in nursing homes.
nursing-home chains, whether she was only a trifle gray." As with the British Naturally, hustlers were poised to take
surprised at the havoc that COVID-19 poorhouses described by Dickens, the full advantage of the near limitless
T
One of the principal monsters in the wood Rehabilitation and Healthcare
private equity world is the Carlyle Center, in Danvers, Massachuset ts, he pandemic has apparently
Group. In 2007, Carlyle acquired HCR which it bought for $3.8 million in done little to disturb the indus
ManorCare, a nationwide nursing 2013. By 2015, according to a detailed try's business model. As media
home chain. Four years later, after investigation by Paul Leighton in the reports this spring chronicled soaring
ManorCare's debt load had grown from Salem News, the facility had been rated numbers of deaths in nursing homes,
$1 billion to $5 billion, Carlyle hived "much below average"-the lowest pos ano ther ascending graph denoted
the company's real estate holdings off sible category-by Medicare inspectors, booming stock prices for nursing-home
into a separate company, corporations. After hav
which it sold to a health ing bottomed out just after
care REIT called HCP mid-March, around the
for $6.l billion, earning time Sharon Mitchell was
its investors $1.3 billion. diagnosed with the coro
Under the deal, Carlyle navirus, they had been on
leased the homes back an upward trajectory ever
from HCP and continued since. On April 15, the
to extract hefty manage day Mitchell died, the Ja
ment and consulting fees nus Long:ferm Care ETF
from ManorCare, ulti (market symbol OLD),
mately garnering at least which reflects the market
$80 million. performance of companies
The conseqoences for involved in long-tenn care,
the aged and infirm pa was up 38 percent from its
tients subjected· to this low. By June, it had climbed
exercise in financial engi almost 70 percent. Clearly,
neering were sickeningly the crisis was by no means
predictable: crushed by bad for nursing homes, at
payments on the debt that least not for the 70 percent
Carlyle had piled on, as that are for-profit.
well as $39.5 million in As Okusanya told me,
monthly lease payments success in the nursing
to the REIT, ManorCare home business lies in
vigorously slashed costs by "get ting the Medicare
cutting care for its 25,000 Medicaid mix right." In
residents. A 2018 Wash March, nursing homes
ington Post investigation suddenly got a significant
of the whole sorry saga boost in Medicare patients.
found that health-code violations re who described filthy conditions, over Owing to (another) miscalculation by
ported by Medicare inspectors at worked staff, and neglected patients. modelers overestimating the severity of
ManorCare facilities jumped by at least Norman Rokeach, the CEO of Mar the pandemic and the consequent
26 percent in the years after Carlyle's quis Health Services, Tryko Partners' shortage of hospital beds, New York,
purchase. Its debt having climbed to health care affiliate, told Leighton that Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and other
$7.l billion, ManorCare went bank understaffing was due to employees states ordered hospitals to offload med
rupt. (CEO Paul Ormond managed to calling in sick or being otherwise un ically stable patients to nursing homes,
get away with a compensation package able to work. The $400,000 loss that including people who had been diag
worth $117 million.) Welltower, a $21 Brentwood posted in 2015 might have nosed with and treated for COVID-19.
billion REIT, bought the real estate at excused the staffing problem but for The nursing homes were required to
a cost that worked out to $57,000 per the fact that Brentwood was mean accept them, and in New York, Gover
bed, a profitable investment given that while paying $1.3 million in rent to nor Andrew Cuomo forbade homes from
less than two years later it sold three of companies owned by Rokeach and testing new arrivals. The results were
the nursing homes for $67 million, or other Tryko principals-effectively disastrous, as carriers broadcast the
$156,000 per bed. Today, the analyst draining the struggling facility of re virus throughout overcrowded facilities.
Okusanya rates Welltower a "buy." sources. (A spokesman at the time Once this was publicized, Cuomo and
The strategy employed by Tryko claimed, "We're moving in the right other state executives came in for well
Partners, the private equity operation direction. We're proud of what we're deserved abuse. But for nursing-home
T
supplicant. "The truth is that nursing ties for its treatment of patients during
homes have not failed America. The the crisis. This effort has already been he wreckage wrought by the
public health system has failed nursing handsomely rewarded in a number of pandemic among the elderly in
homes," announced Mark Parkinson, states, most notably New York. Deep the United States has by no
the former nursing-home entrepreneur in Cuomo's 2020-21 budget is a para means been unique. At least half the
and governor of Kansas who com graph providing that, for the length of deaths attributed to COVID-19 across
mands the industry's chief lobbying the COVID-19 crisis, Europe have occurred in nursing homes.
operation, the American Health Care In some countries the toll has been far
Association. "Long-term care facilities any health care facility or health care higher-as much as 75 percent in the
are doing everything possible to stop the professional shall have immunity from United Kingdom and 64 percent in
any liability, civil or criminal, for any
spread of this virus. But we need help." Norway. A Dutch nursing-home worker
harm or damages alleged to have been
That help was soon on the way in the sustained as a result of an act or omis
posted a video of himself walking past
form of the $2 trillion CARES Act. sion in the course of arranging for or empty room after empty room, ex
"Here Comes the COVID-19 Cash," providing health care services. claiming, "All the people here died of
Okusanya wrote in a note to his clients. corona. This whole corridor is dead.
Nursing homes initially stood to receive This neatly lets corporate owners and Dead." The same pattern has persisted
$1.5 billion, and further bailout assis executives off the hook for any and all in Sweden, where the deceased have
tance boosted that sum to $5 billion by mistreatment of their patients. (As re been almost all elderly. The high death
the end of May. "There are no strings ported by David Sirota in Jacobin, rate in Sweden has been eagerly cited
attached," Seema Verma, the CMS ad Cuomo and the New York State Dem as evidence that the country's failure to
ministrator, confirmed at a W hite ocratic Committee received no less lock down brought inevitably lethal
House press conference. "So the health than $2.3 million from the hospital and consequences. But Swedes in general
care providers that are receiving these nursing-home industries in his frantic escaped relatively lightly, while at least
dollars can essentially spend that in any effort to ward off an electoral challenge half of those who died were in nursing
way that they see fit." This was in addi from Cynthia Nixon in 2018. Their homes. Another 26 percent were el
tion to help provided to the industry in faith was apparently not misplaced.) derly Swedes being attended to at home
the form of dismantled oversight and These immunity provisions, or "get by overextended care workers shuttling
regulations. Toby Edelman, an attorney out-of-jail-free cards," as Gelbman de between clients without proper protec
with the Center for Medicare Advocacy, scribed them to me, soon spread far tive equipment, inexorably spreading
described how CMS had "waived the beyond New York. As of early July, infection. All of this, though financed
BRIGHT POWER,
DARK PEACE
Robinson Jeffers and the hope of human extinction
By Erik Reece
52 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ SEPTEMBER 2020 Embroidered photographs by Adriene Hughes for Har/ier's Magaiine © The artist
Source photograph: Robinson Jeffers, 1948 © Nat Farbman/LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images LETTER FROM TOR HOUSE 53
After that, he began to floun
der. He tried graduate work in
Romance languages at the
University of Southern Cali
fornia, then medical school, then
forestry school. Nothing stuck. "If
he had a little less cleverness and
a little better capacity for work,"
his exasperated mother wrote
to a friend, "his future would
look brighter."
Jeffers was drinking heavily
and had fallen in love with a
married woman. He'd met Una
Kuster back at Southern Cal in
a German literature course. She
was the wife of Edward "Teddie"
Kuster, a powerful Los Angeles
lawyer who came from money.
In an attempt to flee her hus
band's gilded social circle, Una
had gone back to school, where
she soon found herself having
long, extracurricular conversa
tions about Faust with the
young Jeffers. When Una told
Teddie that she was leaving
him, the story made the Los An
geles Times under the headline,
TWO POINTS OF THE ETERNAL
TRIANGLE. Teddie lashed out at
the "vile poetaster," but Jeffers
and Una were married in 1913,
the day after Teddie granted her
a divorce.
With a modest inheritance
from Jeffers's parents, the couple
planned to move to a town on
the English coast. But the begin
ning of war in Europe scuttled
that idea, and a friend suggested
they visit Carmel-by-the-Sea,
California's ragged coast to turn his 1953. When I was an English major because its shoreline resembled that
back on the country. He had come in the Eighties, you could still find a of Cornwall. Traveling by stagecoach,
here to play Cassandra and warn his handful of Jeffers's poems in the Nor Jeffers was amazed at what he found:
tribe of its dismal future, though "truly ton Anthology of American Literature, "For the first time in my life I could
men hate the truth." but even that's no longer the case. see people living-amid magnificent
I had come here to see whether he Jeffers was born in 1887 in Alle unspoiled scenery-essentially as
was right. gheny, Pennsylvania. His father, a they did in the Idyls or the Sagas, or
I
Presbyterian minister and a professor in Homer's Ithaca."
n 1932, when Jeffers appeared on of biblical literature and ancient lan He and Una had twin sons, Garth
the cover of Time magazine look guages, dispatched the family to and Donnan, and rented a cabin in
ing like a windswept Robert Mit Switzerland so his son would be Carmel. At Una's urging, and under
chum, he was among the nation's spared a mediocre American educa no financial pressure to find a job,
most celebrated poets. But over the tion. By age twelve, Jeffers was fluent Jeffers became serious about writing
next two decades, modernism largely in five languages, including Greek and publishing poetry, but the po
pushed his more formal verse aside. and Latin. T he family moved back to ems were derivative and he knew it.
"Why does such deep silence sur the United States in 1902; three In 1919, he bought a tract of land at
round the name of Robinson Jeffers?" years later, Jeffers graduated from Carmel Point and hired stonemasons
the critic Horace Gregory asked in Occidental College at age eighteen. to build a house based on a Tudor
S
elsewhere, "have choked/Their na At one end of the main living room tain glaciers, and then imagines a
tures until the souls die in them." was a small nook furnished with a future in which "little fish will
sea captain's table where Una sat flicker in and out of the windows"
hortly after I arrived in Carmel, during the day and carried on a vo of Tor House. This poem was writ
I went looking for Tor House. luminous correspondence. Elliot ten sixty years ago, long before any
W hen I found myself winding pointed to some markings on the one except a few paleoclimatologists
through a neighborhood of densely redwood ceiling above her chair. were talking about global warming.
spaced, magazine-ready bungalows, I "Robinson's writing desk was on the And yet Jeffers could see it coming.
assumed the GPS had misled me, but second floor right above hers," he ex In 1958, when much of American
suddenly there it was. In all of the old plained. "He measured out his long poetry had dissolved into self
pictures I had seen, Tor House stood poetic lines by walking back and absorption, Jeffers was foretelling a
alone on a barren bluff. Now it al forth, and if Una didn't hear him climate crisis.
F
most disappears b ehind multi pacing, she rapped on the ceiling
million-dollar vacation homes, and I with a broom." Elliot, a retired col rom where Elliot and I stood, we
thought of Jeffers's line, "T his beau lege professor with an Abe Lincoln could see and hear the promon
tiful place defaced with a crop of beard and long dark hair pulled back tory that became the site and
suburban houses." with a clip, grinned broadly. the title of Jeffers's best-known poem,
A
species had abandoned the sea and the same energy, and they are all in
was now paying the price for self communication with each other, influ s one might expect, the tower
consciousness, for ego, for hubris. encing each other, therefore parts of is a bit cramped inside. It
Gazing seaward, Jeffers rejected the one organic whole .... This whole is in has a secret staircase bui It
historical time that so preoccupied all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by into the front wall that reminded me
Ezra Pound and the modernists, and of a narrow passage of Mammoth
he pondered instead ·what geolo Cave called Fat Man's Misery.
gists call "deep time." In recogniz Halfway up the stairs, I regretted
ing that "the tides are in our veins," JEFFERS REJECTED BOTH my decision.
that "we still mirror the stars," Jef CHRISTIANITY AND MODERNITY On the lower floor sits a chair and
fers crossed over the great schism FOR WHAT HE CALLED A desk at which Jeffers worked (though
that divided the human mind from probably never here in the tower).
the world and from itself. "MYSTICISM OF STONE" According to Elliot, the chair was
Elliot grabbed another key and one hundred and fifty years old and
led me back outside toward what I had been carved from the timber
had really come to see: Hawk Tower. me to be so intensely in earnest, that I of a nearby Carmelite mission.
Set across the flower garden from Tor am compelled to love it, and to think A less daunting staircase wraps
House, the tower is constructed with of it as divine. It seems to me that this around the tower. T he second-story
what Jeffers called "heavy sea-orphaned whole alone is worthy of the deeper room, paneled in mahogany, was de
stone," and stands forty feet tall. Jeffers sort of love; and that here is peace, -
signed as a sitting room for Una. On
freedom, I might say a kind of salvation,
built it himself, rolling rocks (some in turning one's affection outward to one wall hangs a portrait of Jeffers
weighing four hundred pounds) up ward th.is one God, rather than inward taken by Edward Weston. As Weston
from the coast. "I hung/Stones in the on one's self, or on humanity.... I think and others have remarked, the poet
sky," he wrote, and he did, first using that it is our privilege and felicity to had granite features, a face that
ramps, later hoisting them into place love God for his beauty, without claim looked as if it had been chiseled by
with block and tackle. We tend to ing or expecting love from him. We are the wind and waves. Yet there was
think of poets as effete, tweedy, imprac not important to him, but he is to us. also a tenderness in Jeffers's eyes. It
tical. But Jeffers, a former wrestler, de reminded me of Weston's defense of
signed one of the West Coast's great Jeffers's God seems very close to his friend: "Despite his writing I can
architectural eccentricities, then spent the deity of another great pantheist, not feel him misanthropic: his is the
live years building it. "My back hurts Baruch Spinoza, who wrote of Deus bitterness of despair over humanity
just looking at it," Elliot said as we sive Natura: God, or nature. For Spi he really loves."
looked up from the tower's base. noza and Jeffers, there is no distinc T he stairs lead up to a marble
Hawk Tower was sup p osedly tion between the Creator and the floor battlement, and then Hawk
named for a lone raptor that super creation. But for Jeffers, thinking of Tower resolves into an open turret.
vised Jeffers's work from above. In the Creator as an entity that inter Into one comer, Jeffers set a flat
the poem "Rock and Hawk," Jeffers feres in human history, then demands stone that func tioned as a small
gazes out at a falcon and thinks, love and obedience, is a colossal fail bench. Once the family was in bed,
ure of the imagination, the worst Elliot told me, Jeffers would perch
Here is your emblem kind of fear-based anthropomor here with a cigarette and a glass of
To hang in the future sky;
phism. So Jeffers invented a much wine, stargazing and listening to the
Not the cross, not the hive,
freakier, "self-hanged God." T his endless beat of the ocean.
But this; bright power, dark peace. deity believed that peace is dull Jeffers's poetry is as relentless as
oblivion; so instead it said, in "At the sea. W hat he heard the waves
Jeffers rejected both the cross of the Birth of an Age," "I have cho saying over and over was: You are
Christianity and the bustling hive sen/ Being. . . . I tortur e myself/ To nothing. Your cities are nothing. Your
of modernity for what he called a discover myself." history is nothing.
Source photograph: Robinson Jeffers at the top of Hawk Tower, 1926 © Bcttmann/Getty Images LETTER FROM TOR HOUSE 57
No imaginable the penalties, kill a man than a hawk," us go. Bue still the going would be
he wrote. For a long time, I'd thought tragic. Tragic in the Greek sense of
Human presence here could do
of Jeffers's fatalism about humanity as hubris-that we would deserve it
anything
But dilute the lonely self-watchful a kind of callousness. But now I think but also tragic in that it would be
passion. it was his sensitivity to all life-the accompanied by appalling human
injured hawks, the lab animals he suffering: water wars, famines, heat
Here was Jeffers's metaphysic of witnessed "cowering in cages"-that death, refugees turned away from
transhuman beauty. It was, I think, fueled his anger at his own species, his closed borders. But that is the future
the beauty of this coast that in many feeling chat the world would be better toward which our species is hurtling,
ways informed Jeffers's darkness. The off without us. unable as we are to "uncenter our
human race was "a spreading fungus," It's a sentiment to which I have minds from ourselves."
he wrote, "my own coast's obscene fu become deeply sympathetic. Not In 1941, near the height of Jeffers's
ture." And here we all were, still long ago, I read about the case of a popularity, the Library of Congress
spreading, still belching fossil fuels, man who tied a pit bull to the fender invited him to Washington to give
still drying out the forest floors and of his truck and dragged the dog for the inaugural address at a conference
extending the fire season. Indeed, I two blocks before bystanders forced called "The Poet in a Democracy."
was beginning to feel that nowhere him to stop. I would just as soon turn The audience included Supreme
do Jeffers's predictions about the de off that man's light as I would a light Court justices and Cabinet officials,
mise of mankind seem more prescient in my own house. Which is another and was so large that loudspeakers
than in this ravaged state. way of saying that it wouldn't bother were installed for chose crowded out
I
me in the least if the entire human side the auditorium. In his speecl1,
n the agonizing poem "Hurt race vanished from the face of the Jeffers offered a new way to read his
Hawks," Jeffers wrote of a raptor earth, along with its architecture poems. "I have heard myself called a
that dragged its broken wing for and literature and military gunships. pessimist," he said, "and perhaps I
weeks around Carmel Point until, Good riddance to us all. have written some words of ill omen
with a "lead gift," Jeffers put the hawk The other ten million species on in my books of verses .. . but they
out of its misery. "I'd sooner, except the planet would be relieved to see are not words of despair." He said a
58 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ SEPTEMBER 2020 Source photograph: Carmel-by-the-Sea, California© Bridgeman Images
poetry that fixates on death is also filled with live oaks, ponderosa pines, stylized. They looked like something
a poetry that dreams of resurrec and the rare Santa Lucia fir. out of a Gerrp.an Expressionist paint
tion: "If we conjecture the decline Under an eight-hundred-year-old ing. What did they mean? Archaeolo
and fall of this civilization, it is be oak, I pulled up alongside Greg Sher gist don't know. And even today, who
cause we hope for a better one." At man, an octogenarian sporting an knows why humans make art? The
first I was drawn to Jeffers's notion impressive handlebar mustache and a answer eludes us. But we do know
of rising from the ashes. But the felt fedora. A former Marine, jewelry this: of all the primates, only Homo
more I thought about it, the more maker, and leader of vision quests, sa/Jiens have the complex hand struc
disingenuous his speech felt. Per Greg has lived in these mountains for ture and fine motor skills needed to
haps he was trying to soften his vi almost forty years. He offered to guide make art. It seems fitting, then, that
sion for the D.C. luminaries, but it me to the place that had inspired one one of the first images we as a species
flew in the face of his oeuvre. After of my favorite Jeffers poems, "Hands." created was a hand.
all, didn't he write in "De Rerum In it, he visits a remote cave and finds Greg told me a theory about these
Virtute," "One light is left us: the hundreds of native petroglyphs, all petroglyphs: "The Esselen believed
beauty of things, not men; /The im drawings of hands. that if you see a handprint in a ·sa
mense beauty of the world, not the Greg drove over the ridgeline in his cred place, and you touch that print,
human world"? Jeffers was, as he old pickup, and I followed. Boulders you will come into connection with
wanted to be, our Cassandra. He pre and pine cones the size of footballs the sacred place." Greg paused, then
dicted that rapacity and ego would filled the one-lane dirt road, which added, "I believe that."
lead us to our demise, to the brink of was badly washed out. We crept care "What happened to them?" I asked
extinction, and here we are. fully down into a canyon somewhere rather obtusely.
What's more, I believe that the fat in the Ventana Wilderness. Trees "The white man happened to them!"
uous notion of hope must itself go ex along the road were charred from re he shot back.
tinct. There is nothing left to hope cent fires. We came to an old home They were enslaved by the Spanish
for. No better human civilization is stead built beside a beautiful trout to build missions. They were ravaged
going to gracefully rise from our mis stream called Church Creek. by disease. An old Spanish rancher told
takes. It's simply too late in the grind "When I was younger," Greg said, the anthropologist John Coulter that
of the capitalist machine for that. selecting two walking sticks from his he remembered, as a boy in the mid-
We will not voluntarily do what we truck, "I used to fish down this creek 1800s, seeing Esselen corpses hanging
should: abandon industrial agricul from here to the hot springs at Tassa in the trees of what is now Indian Val
ture, move to small-scale economies, jara." Greg had bad knees, but he ley. In the end, the tribe may have re
and power self-reliant, Jeffersonian told me he wanted to see the place mained so long in these rock shelters
cantons with clean energy. one more time. We crossed the creek simply to escape genocide.
If we do, as a species, survive the and started a steep climb through a Greg argued that the Esselen had
coming catastrophe, I suspect it will meadow of madrones and manzanita. no words for "war" or "killing," and
only be as the small bands of re Jeffers and Una had wandered here that they thought everything had a
sourcefu 1, food-sharing generalists sometime in the late Twenties, fol spirit. That certainly would have ap
that Paul Shepard described in his lowing the same path. When we pealed to Jeffers, who called them a
classic plea, Coming Home ro the reached the base of a cliff, Greg "shy quiet people." But at the end of
Pleistocene. Heat-absorbing concrete said he wanted to offer a prayer to "Hands," Jeffers gave his own inter
and heat-induced violence will those he called "the Grandfathers." pretation of the petroglyphs. The
make densely crowded cities unliv His invocation ended, "We are the images announced:
able, and the desk-based skills of fruit of all those generations that
urban dwellers will prove useless. went before us. Ike! Ike! It is good!" Look: we also were human; we had
Instead, we will return to the way Those generations included mem hands, not paws. All hail
we lived for half a million years be bers of the small Esselen tribe, a mi You people with the cleverer hands,
our supplanters
fore a griculture brought on the gratory people who are believed to In the beautifu I country; enjoy her a
modern world and all of its maladies. have spent summers fishing on the season, her beauty, and come down
That wiII be the resmrection of hu coast and winters grinding acorns in And be supplanted; for you also are
man civilization that Jeffers imag these canyons. About one hundred human.
0
ined-a return to our true place in feet above us, a number of rock shel
the matrix of life. ters lined the sandstone outcrops. The Esselen, it seemed to me, rep
Slowly, Greg and I found footholds resent not only our past but our
n my last day in California, I and crevices that led us up to the cave future-a future in which we have
headed away from the water, Jeffers had explored and that archae gone extinct, or exist only in small,
down through Carmel Valley ologists estimate was inhabited by the radically deindustrialized, egalitarian
and the center of the Coastal Range. Esselen for 3,400 years. There, they communities. Neither possibility trou
I traveled several shaky miles on dirt painted on the black, soot-stained bled me. I stepped toward the wall and
switchbacks before the road opened up wall pictographs of nearly 250 pressed my palm against one of those
to reveal jagged ridgelines and canyons hands-white, skeletal, and highly ancient, vanquished hands. ■
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E S S A Y
NONCONFORNIING
Against the erosion of acade1nic freedom by identity politics
By Laurent Dubreuil
sim�
mester began at Cornell secondary The next fall, a long article in the
University, I received an email education. Cornell magazine Ezra featured ad
inviting me to participate in a My father ministrators attesting to the remark
campaign called "I'm First!'' • finished high able progress of this new identity.
The idea was to encourage s c h o o l ; my Judging by their comments, first-gen
"faculty and staff on cam- t-..,'l>'t\0/1 � mother learned persons would no longer need a but-
pus to identify themselves,
via T-shirt or button, as the
Jg
tJ>
stenography at a vocational
school and got her first job
ton: their nature was now
self-evident. One ad
�'.::J �f)
first in their family to grad- JIJ\ at sixteen. I guess this made ministrator spoke of
uate from a four-year institu- me an ideal candidate to the difficulty for
tion." The rationale for this wear the nice T-shirt pro- first-generation
themed costume party was the vided by the administration. students of "walk
following: "This visual campaign will But I declined. I'm not ing onto a college
allow first-generation students to ashamed of my back campus and maybe
clearly identify (and connect with) ground, and I don't not seeing someone
faculty and professional staff that underestimate the who looks like you."
have had similar experiences as challenges students Another suggested
them!" Though I have been a ten face when they are that the same stu
ured professor at Cornell for eleven the first in their family dents "benefit from
years, neither of my parents, who are to attend college. But having spaces in
the two occurrences of the which to be them
Laurent Dubreuil is a professor of compar verb "to identify" in one eight-line selves; to see lead
ative literature, Romance studies, and cog paragraph were clear hints that the ership staff, other
nitive science at Cornell University. I'm First! initiative-part of a na- students and even
"l'1n First!" button© Strive for College. "I \Vas First to Go" button courtesy Kennesaw Seate University Department of FirstNem and Tra nsition
Studies. Additional buttons from Bzmon Power: 125 Years of Saying 1z wizlz 81111011s, by Christen Carter and Ted Hake, which will be published in
October by Princeton Architectural Press. Courtesy the Busy Beaver Burton Museum, Chicago, and Hake's Auctions, York, Pennsylvania ESSAY 61
artworks that look like them." I won tions. It is the social order of the day, elicit mechanical expressions of ap
dered: Do I look first-gen enough? ls it its rhetoric ubiquitous in the neurotic proval or disapproval. This type of
okay if I wear a bow tie or a skirt? centers of the American economy (uni electronic elocution is fundamen
Should I speak loudly or be shy? More versities, the media, the tech sector). tally self-centered, but the I seeking
seriously, what if art or education are, Under this regime, identities, once to grab attention must connect to a
in my view, valuable precisely as a way affirmed, are indisputable. If I say, "As we in order to survive and thrive.
of becoming other? If I defy expecta an x, I think ... ," I am no longer voic This we is formed of the crudest
tions, am I untrue to myself, or to the ing an opinion that can be evaluated commonalities, and it is, so to speak,
manufactured self that others think I or critiqued within a shared space of automatic: sustained by knee-jerk re
should reclaim? The collection of pre discourse; I am merely saying what I actions, memes, and viral behaviors
sumed tastes, behaviors, desires, aspi am. If you disagree with me, you may driven by the basest stimuli. These
rations, and appearances that come trace everything I say back to my responses are personal in the way one
with an externally defined identity identity before availing yourself of "personalizes" a phone or a computer,
rejects in advance anyone who doesn't corresponding counterarguments: by selecting one of the few options
conform. "lntersectionality"-or bear you say a because you are an x, but I that engineers have allowed you.
ing several identities simultaneously am a y and I therefore believe in b. The most powerful instrument of so
does not change this conundrum; it Such identities, I insist, are not cial prescription is in the hands of
simply adds additional prescriptions. emancipatory, neither at the psycho every soliloquist who posts on Face
It goes without saying that what logical nor at the political level. We book or Twitter a demand for silenc-
happens on my campus• is in no ing some other we. The ability for
way unique and that being a first · each mechanized soul to exert a
gen is only one relatively novel op miniature tyranny is daunting
tion in a continuously growing list WE SHOULD ALWAYS BE enough online. Offline, it has un
of what every one of us is supposed READY TO BE TOUCHED, dermined institutions and given
to be. American academia is a hot CHALLENGED, OR CHANGED us President Donald Trump. More
bed of proliferating identities sup and more, the political realm
ported and largely shaped by the BY WHAT WE STUDY transcribes social media's logic of
higher ranks of administrators, fac identity. This goes for the white
ulty, student groups, alumni, and supremacy at the core ofTrumpism
trustees. Not all identities are equal in all should have the right to evade as well as for the identity-based clien
dignity, history, or weight. Race, gender, identification, individually and col telism of mainstream Democrats.
and sexual orientation were the three lectively. What's more, identity poli With their official emphasis on
main dimensions of what in the 1970s tics as now practiced does not put an open-ended scholarly discussion, uni
began to be called identity politics. end to racism, sexism, or other sorts versities should offer a counterpoint.
These traits continue to be key today. of exclusion or exploitation. Ready But American academia tends to align
But affirmed identities are mushroom made identities imprison us in stereo itself with the business world, and cor
ing. The slightest shared characteris typed narratives of trauma. In short, porations cater to the perceived needs
tic, once anchored in a narrative of identity determinism has become an of their customers. In colleges, such
pain, can give rise to a new group. additional layer of oppression, one accommodations may begin with the
There is now a rural identity, a peanut that fails to address the problems it exclusion of dissenting voices under
allergic identity, a fat identity, an clumsily articulates. the pretext of protecting certain iden
T
ADHD identity, and so on. Each comes tity groups-such as by passing over
with stories of humiliation or of life he driving force behind the works that run counter to their sup
threatening experiences, with de new rise of identity determin posed interests. The next step is to
mands for official recognition, with ism is trivial: social media. prevent dialogue in the classroom by
products specifically targeted to the Our willing accommodation of the forbidding students to talk (this is the
group, and with the sort of people flattening logic that makes complex traditional, magisterial approach) or
the writer Toure called, in Who's social life tractable to computer algo avoiding all conflicts and contradic
Afraid of Post-Blackness?, "the self rithms, the constant mental reshap tions among participants, thereby con
appointed identity cops." Whereas ing to which we subject ourselves fusing a college seminar with an AA
identity politics, as theorized four through instant communication and meeting. ( The move toward online
decades ago, aimed to liberate the individualized mass media, and the instruction during the pandemic has
oppressed and to oppose American profitability of selling data generated encouraged professorial monologues,
capitalism, its main form today is more by internet users have all contributed since the technology isn't conducive
invested in changing the direction of to the success of identity politics. to spontaneous discussion.) The last
domination and in multiplying restric- Rigid, constantly reenacted identities stage involves censoring the name of
have become a new law of the mar censorship. When an NYU graduate
• I'm speaking on behalf of myself, not Cor ket, one whose grip extends offline.
nell, of course, though I support whole launched a petition in 2017 titled "Met
heartedly the school's motto, "Any person, The most powerful digital platforms ropolitan Museum of Art: Remove
any study." A person is not an identity. are made for monologues or rants that Balthus' Suggestive Painting of a
ti
ism. Third, the students assert that "so
many texts in the Western canon" are
like so many texts in "offensive." This is a baffling claim. In
the Western canon ...
all the textual traditions I know, vio
contains triggering and
lence is expressed and emotions are
offensive material that mar
ginalizes stu dent identities triggered, one way or the other. A
in the classroom. These little more intellectual hu mility
texts, wrought with might be useful for a small group of
histories and narra- Ivy League students in the twenty-first
tives of exclusion century presuming to determine what
and oppression, is acceptable in an ancient Greek
can be difficult tragedy, a Tang poem, or a traditional
to read and dis izibongo. It's striking also that, of all
cuss as a survi
the "Western" authors studied in
vor, a person of
Columbia's core curriculum, Ovid
color, or a stu dent
from a low-income was the center of such attacks. The
background. Metamorphoses unfolds a theoretical
argument alongside its mythological
There are three in content: it insists on the crucial role
terlinked ideas here. of transformation. This was not ex
The first is that, de actly a majority opinion in an empire
Pubescent Girl, pending on one's own obsessed with fostering stability and
Therese Dreaming," identity, one should be what would later be named Romanitas
she insisted she was not demanding coddled when encountering (or "Roman identity," if you like).
censorship (as if the latter were only a texts (or more generally, artworks or Appearing as a character in Ovid's
synonym for physical destruction). Dur experiences) that could be harmful. (I poem, the philosopher Pythagoras
ing the Q&A after a talk I gave last particularly appreciate the absolutely asserts that "all things change."
November, a university lecturer told me condescending suggestion that a low Ovid's point is precisely that this
that "there is no cancel culture," there income student is going to be hurt by principle of metamorphosis shatters
by attempting to cancel "cancel." classical literature.) The logical culmi any rule of identity, which makes his
I
nation of trigger warnings is a right to writings incompatible with the cur
t is hard to determine whether opt out before having any contact with rent reverence for reified quiddities.
most professors, students, and ad the work, which undermines the In 2016, English majors at Yale asked
ministrators sincerely subscribe to whole project of education. Second, that a course on "major poets" such as
current identity politics. It varies by the students seem to suppose that they Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot,
campus, discipline, and professional are asked to "read and discuss as" and Louise Gli.ick no
role (administrators certainly tend to members of a group. This might unfor
express their support for the new order tunately be the case in more and more
of things). But I do know that, at classes, but it is incompatible with the
Cornell and elsewhere, only a negli task of interpretation in the humani
gible minority dares to dissent pub ties, where we should always remain
licly. This stands in sharp contrast capable of being touched, chal
with the initial wave of political cor lenged, and above all changed
rectness, in the mid to late 1990s, by the object of study. A cardi-
when dozens of books written by aca nal error when dealing with
demics critiqued identity policies from works of art or thought is to
Marxist, conservative, liberal, and suppose that they are mono
queer perspectives. W hen four Co lithic and in one (ideologi
lumbia undergraduates wrote an op-ed cal) piece. Some are,
in 2015 titled OUR IDENTITIES MATTER but they're usually the
IN COR E CLASSROOMS, they were sim uninteresting ones,
ply spelling out the majority opinion relics often of a tradi
on campus. Identities matter in the tion force-fed to stu
classroom, and to many they are what dents in the name of
should matter most. The students some correctness. For a
made the case for trigger warnings long time, the goal was the
by pointing out chat "transgressions fostering of national identities;
concerning student identities are our era is more attuned to social
common" in the core curriculum. engineering and moral piety,
ESSAY 63
longer be mandatory. Their petition such as "Japanese" sushi, "American" remain silent and let the black stu
stated that hamburgers, or "Italian" pasta in to dents bear the burden of discussion.
mato sauce, the banh mi, whose name A Cornell colleague used the word
a year spent around a seminar table derives from the French pain de mie, is "blow job" in a guest lecture he gave
where the I iterary contributions of itself the result of culinary and cul for a seminar on the subject of plea
women, people of color and queer
tural mixing.) A less laughable inci sure last spring; he learned in January
folks are absent actively harms all
students, regardless of their identity,
dent was the formal complaint filed that a now-dismissed complaint had
[but is] especially hostile to students against Laurie Sheck in 2019 by some been lodged against him by a student
of color. of her students at the New School, who considered the term derogatory
after she focused in class on the dis to women (who, by the way, are not
Beyond the dubious equation of bod crepancy between the title I Am Not the only people who perform fellatio).
ies of texts with the bodies of their Your Negro, used by Raoul Peck for his Formal complaints of this sort rarely
authors and what they did with documentary about James Baldwin, have spectacular consequences, though
them, Shakespeare's sonnets are any and Baldwin's original wording of the the anxiety of being called out, the stress
thing but a promotion of male sentence. That Sheck would herself of public shaming, even over frivolous
heteronormativity, T. S. Eliot's absti read t h e so-called N-word grievances, at best wastes one's time and
nence looks quite close to the aloud-that she would jus at worst leaves a permanent stain on
asexual label included in the ac tify it as pedagogi one's reputation. But I don't believe that
ronym LGBTQlA+, and Louise cally useful-was the goal is actually the removal of
Gluck is a woman. professors. The objective is to
This January, a l'M FROM reach a system of self-censorship
BERKELEY that would bind ev
ANO,,,,,
Nor eryone in the
REVOLTING room, eroding
academic free
dom. If the
Time. shar n
ig
can be fun.
enough to choice of our words,
prompt an ideas, positions,
revamping of i nquiry that and texts is con
survey classes in could have led to ditioned by
a r t history was her dismissal. (The New School volatile mobs, if
presented by the Yale cleared her of wrongdoing.) entire sets of
Daily News as Less prominent cases abound. In a questions are
literature class at Stanford, a col now off-limits in
the latest response to student uneasi league who wished to devote a session our class r o o m s ,
ness over an idealized Western
to Toni Morrison was challenged by books, or labs, then we will no longer
'canon'-a product of an overwhelm
ingly white, straight, European and
several undergraduates who argued have the capacity to create or contest.
I
male cadre of artists. that a white faculty member should
refrain from teaching work by an n many of these cases, naturally, the
(The department's faculty later dis African-American writer. Having villain is a dead or old white,
puted this characterization.) noticed a few years ago that most straight, cisgender male. Yet, a few
In a comic mode, you may remem students in my classes stopped partic months after the Ovid affair, a freshman
ber the 2015 banh mi affair, when ipating when we covered the history at Duke University explained that he
there was a brief controversy over of slavery in eighteenth-century would not read Alison B echdel's
whether a version of the Vietnamese Saint-Domingue and the origins of graphic memoir Fun Home, which had
sandwich served at Oberlin College the Haitian Revolution, I was cold in been assigned to all first-year students,
was a symptom of cultural appropria private by white students that they felt because he considered its depictions
tion and a dire blow to the integrity of they shouldn't speak on such issues in of same-sex relations "pornography"
Asian identities on campus. (Like vir front of black students. I pointed out and contradictory to his Christian
tually every other national food staple, to them that it was no more moral to "beliefs and identity." He quoted a
T
of harmed identities now emanate from culed for being too white, owing to the
the right. The two camps may be op here is a tired objection to what paleness caused by my chronic asthma?
posed on policy, but, more and more, I've written so far: that only Yes, and incidentally this abuse always
they agree that identities should anchor people enjoying a dominant came from white people, including far
politics. In her book Uncivil Agreement, position could imagine escaping right extremists. Was I bullied in ele
the political scientist Lilliana Mason identity-that only they have that mentary and middle school by other
argues that Democrat and Republican luxury, not the powerless people who kids for being fat? Yes, I gained weight
are no longer ideological positions endure daily suffering and microaggres after recovering from a near-fatal case
but rather identities. This is hardly sions, especially at the hands of of hepatitis at age eight, and the hassle
democratic progress. Coupled with heteronormative, cisgender, structur lasted for five years. Have I been bullied
ubiquitous surveillance, heightened ally racist, and ableist men. Not quite. for other reasons? Oh yes, many: be
censorship, digital conformism, and Let us remember, for instance, how cause I sucked at sports, because my
educational failure, the monomania of Ralph Ellison, in Invisible Man (1952), parents were poor, because I did well in
political identity leaves the people pow Percival Everett, in Erasure (2001), or school, and so on. In my fifteen years
erless by making cooperation impossi Reginald Shepherd, in a 2003 essay in the United States, I have never gone
ble. In such a regime, the shredding of satirizing "identity poetics," are critical, a week without someone frowning
the social fabric is inevitable. in different ways, of identity determin when reading my name or asking me to
It is worth noting that the manifesto ism without ever trying to efface their repeat what I just said, as if I were un
signed in 1977 by the Combahee River social, racial, political, or sexual in able to order a single-shot espresso in
Collective-the text that launched the scriptions. At the end of Ellison's novel, English. I have lost track of the number
initial theory and practice of identity the narrator comes to understand "the of times colleagues have complained
politics-warned against both "sepa beautiful absurdity of . . . American that I am a weirdo, decidedly not
ratism" and "fractionalization." This identity," which leaves few other op American, not visible enough as an
year, Barbara Smith, one of the mem- tions to members of this society beyond LGBT person. I am fine with all these
ESSAY 65
statements (1 am weird, I don't hold should work tirelessly to overcome such identities. Living, thinking, dreaming,
U.S. citizenship, I don't want to look a limitations. But as soon as we believe and creating are not about what we are,
certain way), but they weren't intended that social circumstances are absolute but who we might become. ■
as words of praise. Such aggressions determinations-or, worse, "what we
were real, and they were tied to a whole are"-we condemn ourselves to the end
array of political oppressions based on less repetition of the past and to the September Index Sources
gender, class, sexual orientation, skin methodical destruction of new possi 1 Timothy Gill, University of North Carolina
Wilmington; 2,3 International Campaign
color, mental and physical ability. None bilities. While emancipation cannot be to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Geneva); 4,5
of them were fortuitous or unrelated to achieved only through education, the National Guard Bureau (Arlington, Va.); 6,7
social circumstances. But even in ele latter is, quite clearly, indispensable. U.S. Customs and Border Protection; 8 Claudia
mentary school, I understood that I did The free pursuit of knowledge cannot Flores, University of Chicago Law School; 9-11
Law Enforcement Support Office (Battle Creek,
not have to swallow the venom or be an afterthought: neither teaching
Mich.); 12-14 USA Today (McLean, Va.); 15,16
waste my life spitting it back in the face nor research should be defined a priori AH Datalytics (New Orleans); 17 Kaiser Health
of others. My reactions have varied, but by the twenty-first-century catechism News (San Francisco); 18 Retraction Watch
my line is simple: lam not looking for of political identities. Freeing oneself (NYC); 19 McKinsey & Company (NYC);
external validation. I simply refuse to from the given is an unending process 20 Travis Pillow, University of Washington
Bothell; 21 The Harris Poll (Chicago); 22 Pew
identify. I am not going to dispute that lies at the core of higher education. Research Center (Washington); 23 Nefesh
wrongful characterizations, and I will This task concerns students and profes B'Nefesh (Jerusalem); 24 YouOov (NYC);
not apologize either. This method pro sors alike, who should constantly allow 25 U.S. Travel Association (Washington);
tects more against microaggressions themselves to be altered by different 26,27 Bernstein Research (London); 28 Japan
concepts, poems, people, and events. In Tourism Agency (Tokyo); 29 Icelandic Ministry
than separatism or celebrations of iden
of Health {Reykjavik); 30 U.S. Depamnem of
tity ever could. contrast, today's identity politics is a Housing and Urban Development; 31 Timothy
Nothing programmed me to be false promise that is imposed on us, Garton Ash, University of Oxford (England);
come who I am. In fact, nothing is often in spaces of relative intellectual 32 Dalia R�search (Berlin); 33 .The Williams
programming any of us. True, many freedom. No university worthy of that Institute {Los Angeles); 34,35 YouGov; 36,37
Trump Twitter Archive (Boston); 38 YouGov;
things constrain us. All systems of po name, and indeed no democracy wor 39 Chris Danforth, University of Vermont
litical inequality narrow the choices of thy of that name, should urge people to {Burlington); 40 International Chamber of
those who lie at the bottom. We retreat within the brackets of their Shipping {London).
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is the mule of the world." He reread the C'mon now. Art didn't belong to anyone.
word "chiaroscuro," the definition of liff told me and Mike all of this The painting's abstraction, which
which Cliff had heard plenty too, from later. Cliff and Mike had met at LaBlanc had called "A PRETTIFICA
the art history students who worked as the opening of Black Matt(h)er. TION OF BLOOD TER ROR," couldn't
docents; it meant light and dark, white Basically, Mike had tried to do his really be faulted; a realist depiction of
and black. Middleton's painting fit usual thing-get into a work situation lynching could easily have been con
the label, and it was big, running sideways-which, in this case, had sidered worse. And to call for the de
from a couple feet above the floor to involved meeting this new ga'llerist, struction of art in an era like this was
a couple feet below the ceiling. Cliff's who, Mike had heard, was looking for particularly tone-deaf, conjuring the
feeling, on this second close viewing, a curator for a show in Prague called specter of Nazis and Fascists. This was
was that it was pretty-it reminded Dada Africa, Black Dada, Blada Blada. not the time for us to attack one an
him of willow trees or the end of a sad Mike had pitched up at the gallery in other. The Arts were already under at
song-but nothing special. Chinatown, glanced briefly at the art, tack. As was Civility. And Democracy.
The burqa woman returned the flirted platonically with everyone, People coolly criticized LaBlanc, but
next day. downed a lot of free cava, and ended no one felt comfortable criticizing the
"She's baaack," Georgina buzzed in up at a bar down the street with Cliff, burqa woman whocl sparked the whole
Cliff's ear as she passed, dreads in ba after they literally shut down the party controversy and who kept asserting, to
nana bunches today. together, pulling the shutter closed and Georgina and later to the police, that
The woman was again in front of the padlocking it to the sidewalk. she had a First Amendment right to be
painting, but instead of standing, she Cliff looked like he was in his for there. She wasn't breaking any rules.
was sitting on the floor. This offended ties and was actually fifty-three; Mike, She wasn't bothering anyone or instigat
Cliff. It looked primitive or maybe just the reverse. They drank whiskey and ing violence. She was just sitting in a
dirty. That floor got a professional Cokes, and chatted about the cost of gallery. This is, I think, where Cliff
cleaning only every other week, alleg rent. Cliff had lived all over Manhattan picked up the word "interesting," which
edly because the gallery couldn't afford but had recently moved back into his the woman kept using in her arguments,
a janitor. Sitting on the floor seemed at childhood home in the Bronx with e.g., "I'rn just expressing my interest in
odds with all that the burqa implied. his mother, who had been a librarian this work of art. I just fi n d it inte1·esting."
But there were no rules against it, tech back in the day and was now just "like, Fair enough. Blocking the painting
nically, so Cliff just stayed on his stool the flesh part of a breathing machine" from view seemed insufficient grounds
and monitored the situation. (Mike's words to me). The conversa- for people to drag her. What if she got
T
Xi, a San man. His tribe decides it must
he painting wasn't just a paint be a gift from the gods; it cannot be
ing. It was a painting of a post shared; it breeds conflict. Xi decides to
card of a photograph. I thought walk to the edge of the world and dis
about the first time I saw Andy War pose of it. The film becomes a buffoon
hol's Green Coca-Cola Bottles projected ish picaresque through the desert,
on a screen during an Art and bouncing along with antic slapstick
Thought of the Cold War class. In and racism. It's as if the bottle had been
1962, Warhol wasn't yet sending his tossed from the peak of Coca-Cola's
images through his proto-Instagram 1971 "Hilltop" advertisement-with its
color filters, turning them garish green multicultural confetti of faces, its offer
or blue or red, so the Duchampian to "buy the world a Coke"-all the way
gesture-an ordinary object framed by down to the bathetic valley of what the
the museum effect-still had a certain world really thinks about black people.
clarity and simplicity. I hummed with That Coke bottle still became iconic
pleasure before the image of those for us, a joke my Zambian friends and I
stalwart bottles, with their distinctive riffed on, despite the condescension in
bishop-piece shape, greenish, blackish, the idea that an African tribe would
stacked high and wide. I thought of a treat it as sacred. The thing is, a Coke
military battery and also, oddly, of the bottle does have aura. It is like an orig
famous slave ship blueprint. inal work of art, with its swooping lines
In "The Work of Art in the Age of and shapely anthropomorphic figure.
Mechanical Reproduction," Walter In the world of the film, its double
Benjamin wrote about "the presence of s" i ngularity-it is both unique and
the original" work of art, which was alone-is in fact what makes it sacred.
essential to what he called its "aura," a Another way to put it is that there
kind of glow: "the earliest artworks would have been no movie if another
originated in the service of a ritual Coke bottle had fallen from the sky.
U
first the magical, then the religious
kind." For Benjamin, mechanical re nder pressure, the white South
production such as photography creates African artist Sonia Middleton
copies of the original that don't require released a semi-conciliatory
us to be present before it. This depletes statement on the homepage of her spar
its aura, wearing it away like the nose tan website. The statement was short, a
of a statue that we rub for luck. little impersonal. She said that she had
Warhol parodied mechanical repro never planned to sell the painting. She
duction by painting racks of a com gestured vaguely toward parallels be
mercial product on a canvas. But the tween apartheid and Jim Crow. She a1�
duplication, I think, actually gives aura gued for art's role as "instigation." She
back to the painting, lends it a new asked that her work stay up in the gal
kind of glow. This isn't even the be lery "to keep the conversation going."
atific glow of the grocery store refrig Then, her website got hacked. The
erator, though. It's the warehouse at background f lashed red behind big
the back, the area behind the grimy white block letters:
plastic blinds, the fluorescent lights
I DRINK BLACK BLOOD
stark overhead, where the crates of
FOR MY BREAKFAST'
empties are collected before being re
turned to the factory to be refilled. Or, That "my" in the second line seemed
at least that's what they did in Zambia less than idiomatic. I was peering at my
STORY 71
laptop screen, wondering whether the Three more protesters had indeed
hackers were American,when I heard joined the sit-in. Tourists were visiting
a soft chime. Mike was gchatting me: the gallery in droves to see them,not the
painting. Journalists waited to pick off
what do you think of this gallery
selfie-takers for interviews.We showed
conflagratio?
up in the midst of this circus of rub
berneckers: short brown me and tall
I see Le Blanc's general point but to
stage a protest slash petition slash
white Mike, who is Mexican and
reputational gofundme seems stupid shaped like a candle flame and looks
and boring to me like Jesus,if Jesus had lived long enough
to go gray. A few patrons were pretend
I am myself put off by the framing ing to ignore the chaos but most milled
if LaBlanc's move hadn't been "you, unabashedly close to the protest. Their
power structure, should destroy this smartphones made clicking, scything
painting," I would be straightforwardly sounds, as if someone had amplified a
and comfortably ambivalent, what with fleet of butterflies.
my temperamental post-Jesuit leeriness My stomach whimpered-we'd had
of grandstanding, which is in turn dumplings for lunch a couple of
already heightened by the expansion of
blocks over-and I covered it with
opportunities to grandstand provided by
mass social media bandstandery and also
my hand. I peered between bystand
by my advancing age ers, trying to suss out the protesters,
who had stopped speaking to anyone
·omg shut up you are not old mike! at all. There they were, an assembly
of dark figures, a parliament of ravens,
of course what I would most prefer is a ... bouquet of burqas?The very fact
This is the push sweeper of there being more than one lent the
that she or her likest-minded would have
that quickly collects leaves just gone into the show and destroyed or whole situation a dubious air. It felt
without back straining defaced the painting themselves stagy, in a community-theater kind of
raking. Its flexible combs way. The tints of their black cover
grab leaves, grass clippings, Nazi ings differed slightly. They sat with
JK! JK! their backs to the room, ostensibly
and other small detritus looking at the painting, though they
and deposit them into the No no no I know
must have memorized every paint
removable nylon hopper. streak by now.
I'm just saying we can't really
Sturdy tubular steel frame. advocate for the destruction of
Cliff stood in parade rest position
Assembly required. 44" H x paintings in this day and age
between them and the crowd. He looked
28" W x 12" D. (12 lbs.) a bit like Method Man. His uniform
I mean it's not CENSORship
consisted of navy pants, a navy tie, a
spiky silver badge, and a shirt in that
Item#91858 $119.95 shade of periwinkle that screams "not
it's not NOT censorship
a real cop." His elbows made wings.
I just think destroying it would mean
'"Sup, man." Mike walked up and
putting herself on the hook introduced me.
$
defacing the defaced over effacement " 'Sup." Cliff nodded languidly in
the shock, charge, horror of it my direction and shuffled his heels.
the ... sacred terrorism of it? "How's Ma?"
NI
glancing over his shoulder at the paint
ing, the protesters, "when all y'all are ike and I went back to the
gone for the day? And it is interesting." gallery a few weeks later. We
My belly mewled quietly. had started our day at the
"I mean ... " Cliff frowned, then Rose Reading Room at the New York
leaned in to speak confidentially. Public Library to work. As usual, we
"We got a lotta black folk dying right sat across from each other with our
now, you know? Out there." laptops at one of the long tables. Un
"Uh, yeah," said Mike, waving his El daunted by the trompe l'oeil ceilings
Greco hands. "It's a fucking genocide." and arched windows and walls of
"It's k inda messed up in that leather-bound books, indifferent to the
sense to picture the dead, maybe? echoey hush and the tapping of keys
But. It is interesting." like a spring shower of diligence around
This, l thought, was the exact op us, we proceeded to have a full-blown
posite of what Kant had said about the conversation over gchat. We typed
correct approach to art. I was quiet as replies in tandem, muffling our laugh
they continued their conversation ter, which just grew worse for the muf
though. Melanin is a kind of aura that fling, like catching the giggles in a
fades in reproduction. Cliff had the lecture. Eyes flashed and rolled around
most, mulatta me the next, Mexican us. We are truly insufferable people. l
Mike the least. My brownness had started keeping track of when our
validated Mike. You can be real with us, LOLs onscreen matched our real ones.
my skin had said to Cliff. But if l Finally, we succumbed to the peer
opened my mouth now and started pressure and started "working." Except
holding forth about Kant or Benjamin, I c ouldn't stop reading about the
I'd seem show-offy or condescending, painting and the protest and the peti
and that would disturb the balmy vibe tion. A Facebook post here, a Twitter
of solidarity. rant there, semi-autobiographical es
So while the guys palavered about sayistic digressions about art and cap
police brutality, I stood there think ital, this or that polished writer, black
ing about Kant on my own-the idea or brown or white, weighing in on this
that the pleasure we take in beauty tiny, enormous debate, this teacup
ought to b e disinterested, that it storm for the ages. The think pieces
shouldn't result from the satisfaction all felt solidly constructed but huddled
of a desire. I had always disliked the around their blind spots, like buildings
puritanical bent to this as a philo with hidden courtyards.
sophical dictum: How do you explain Feeling an irritable deja vu, I closed
taste then, Kant? W hat about money, the overlapping cascade of open tabs in
Kant? W hat about pleasure? my browser and landed on the window
I stared past Cliffs nodding head at for the bare-bones eBay auction for
the painting, trying to sense whether it Sonia Middleton's painting. Someone
had any aura left. It was difficult in the had posted it a couple of days earlier: "'
crowded gallery, with the other art and
people competing for my attention. I
... MINSTRELSY FOR SALE*** over a blurry
cell-phone picture of the painting.T he
Partnership
for Drug-Free Kids
shifted focus, making my vision blur bidding had now reached the mid-six
like it was a Magic Eye poster, like it figures and was steadily ticking up. I Where families find answers
would somehow crystallize into a clear gchatted the link to Mike. If you find yourself in a situation
image. I was looking for the postcard in you never thought you'd be
the painting, seeking the true horror of holy shit: in, we're here to help. No matter
its pale, murky background-the white https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lynching
what you and your family are
people's faces brimming with ... desire? Postcard-Abstract-Painting-Original
Sonia-Middleton/I 12778552326?hash going through, we can help you
Satisfaction? Interest? My eyes kept take on your child's drug or
=item la3a9d86
bouncing between the two black figures alcohol problem.
hanging like rag dolls in the painting Across the table, I saw his eyes
and the hunched protesters on the goggle cartoonishly,then narrow as he Connect with a Parent Specialist
floor, near-identical in their black skittered out a flurry of keystrokes for free. Call 1-855-DRUGFREE
burqas. I felt more dizzy than awed. If punctuated with Return-the telltale or Text 55753
mechanical reproduction empties out sound of googling. I interrupted him:
Cl Center on Add1ct1on
Part�ersh1p for Drug-Free Kids
STORY 73
the problem with this whole auction "Oh yeah. l got it at the opening. flag with Beyonce's face for stars. We
isn't even the aura Also I got drinks with him in Dumbo discussed the implications.
it's the indexicality last week." "With the erased de Kooning, it
"What?! Without me?" was at least, like, between friends."
right
The end-of-day murmur echoed in "Didn't some lady kiss a Rausch
wait what?
the massive foyer, people already gath enberg?"
ering in a curly queue by the exit "That was a Twombly. She said
Primed qy my online reading, I be where the security guard, Sam, was she couldn't help it. An act of love."
gan to discourse. The photo of the lackadaisically checking bags. "Ugh. Did Twombly even care?''
lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram "Do you think Cliff was there "Twombly was dead."
Smith, I explained in jerky gchat when it happened?" "'Twombly' is starting co sound
N
rhythm, had been an index of an ac weird. Ta-wom-ba-lee."
tual event. Those men had been bru ot only had Cliff been there, "It's not not Seussian."
ralized and hung and burnt (had they but it turned out that he was "Superseussian."
been burnt? I googled: yes), and that the security guard who'd tack "Someone threw acid on the Mona
violence had left its mark on a strip of led the protester setting fire to the paint Lisa in the Fifties." Mike was on his
film-real light had hit real people, ing! This was, l have co admit, totally phone, scrolling through the Wikipedia
then a real chemical composition of thrilling. le was like we had conjured it. entry on "Vandalism of art." "I'm look
silver halide. That photograph had First, we had gchacced about how the ing for my favorite: KILL KILL KILL on
then been reproduced in the form of a destruction of the painting would have the Guernica . . . Ah, it is in fact KILL
postcard. Nearly a century later, Sonia been the Platonic ideal of protest. LIES ALL. Huh! A suffragette knifed
Middleton had rendered that repro Then we had actually gone to the ex a Velazquez!"
duction in an elite, organic medium: hibit and seen the burqa bouquet. And "Las Meninas?"
oil paint. Did this reversal of reproduc then we had been the ones who got "No, a Venus. The Rokeby."
tion sanctify the event or displace it? Cliff talking about art and value and "That's rad. This," I sent a thumb
The paint on her canvas had not interest. Not chat those conversations over my shoulder, "is a tad deflating."
couched those bodies, not even transi were why he'd tackled the protester. "Like popping a Koons."
tively. Worse, this lynching postcard That was just his job. My eyes widened. "Or pooping on
had already been reproduced in art le had been two days since the an Ofili?"
several times over now, by Abel incident-we were outraged chat it "You mean, doubling down on
Meeropol in his poem "Bitter Fruit," hadn't been front-page news-but the . . . extant poop?"
which became Billie Holida y's luckily the painting was still up in its "Band name," I said absently.
"Strange Fruit"; by Claudia Rankine new, compromised condition. A brief "Let's find Cliff!" Mike said brightly.
in Citizen; by David Powers, whose announcement concerning the deci But Cliff wasn't there. He'd been
2007 mural, American Nocturne, sion co leave it up was posted on the told to stay away from the gallery until
which omitted the lynched bodies, gallery's website-and caped to its glass the civil suits closed. We learned chis
had been protested and taken down, front door-but it remained unclear from Georgina, who was sitting with
though you could still see it online, in whether this decision was primarily one butt cheek on the kitchen stool,
digital photos, another form of me political, artistic, or financial. (The the other leg stretched out before her.
chanical reproduction, whose aura, auction continued on eBay.) I'd never met her before. She was beau
because of JPEG degradation, is also Mike and I shuffled in with the tiful, Badu-esque, her chin bronze locks
always already fading . . . crowd-fifty or so people, each caking in rose-shaped cupcakes. She struck
A new link popped up in my gchat a giggling, shocked tum co witness the me as more "authentic" than Cliff.
window. Mike had been ignoring my burnt work of art. The painting was When we explained who we were and
treatise and his googling had turned cordoned off now by short white poles how we knew him, she was more than
up a news story about an incident at with thin black ropes between them, happy to tell us what had happened.
the gallery. I clicked. Someone had giving it an air of exclusivity. Even Two clays ago, Cliff had been stand
lit the painting on fire! We looked up from the distance these ropes imposed, ing in his usual spot, protecting the
at each other at the same time, mouth you could see where the bottom right protesters behind him, when he smelled
ing our mutual WTFs?! corner of the painting had been something burning. He turned and
The library was closing soon any torched. It looked like crumbling scabs noticed the original protester-by now
way, so we snapped our laptops shut. or a honeycomb of black bubbles in the he could recognize the cut and shade
We headed out with the crowd, mak white paint, surrounded by gray wisps of her burqa-standing close to the
ing our way down the marble steps, like when an outlet short-circuits. The painting, a little too close for just look
scooped in their centers from the cu burn matched the chiaroscuro aes ing. As he approached, he saw that she
mulative rub of a million feet. thetic and could easily have been part was holding a lighter to the bottom
"We have to go, right?" of Middleton's original design. right corner of it.
"Of course," Mike scoffed. "Cliff Mike and I shuffled off past it and "Hey!" he shouted and grabbed at
hasn't responded to my text yet, though." went co stand in front of another, right her, buc she ducked him and ran off. By
"You have his number?" fully neglected, painting: an American the time he started to give chase, she
AIRBRUSH
cloth at her ankles and gone skidding
across the floor. (I pictured patrons
gasping and stepping away, afraid that
this was a shooting like the one in the
Turkish museum.) Once the protester
was down, Cliff managed to restrain
her, but in the struggle to zip-tie cuffs
Airbrush eye cream reduces
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trash can. He waved the burnt pages
around, riled up the crowd, demanded
that she be punished.
"l am a Muslim, and Muslims do not
burn the Qur'an,11 Farkhunda responded.
Nobody listened. A mob quickly clot SOLUTION TO THE D E M & G y M H 0 0 K A H
ted around her-almost all men-and AUGUST PUZZLE A M p E R s & R A D I C &
the police were called to take her into I p B R & B A C H E L 0 R
custody. First the police shot their guns s A s s I E R A u A L M I
in the air to disperse the crowd. When NOTES FOR "10 ACROSS": y T & 0 0 R I s 0 L E M N
this didn't work, they tried to lift Far
khunda onto a roof, away from the
C H A N s 0 N T s T R & s
reaching men. After one of the men The letters A-N-D, wherever s Q u & E R J 0 H N D 0 E
knocked her down from the building they occur in an answer, are H u E s I & A L u s I A N
with a piece of timber, the police gave replaced by an ampersand, the & I R 0 N s z u L y L & 0
up. Once she was on the ground, the answer to lOA. s C & A L I z E D B L E D
men kicked her, punched her, beat her,
E K R s & M A N & R E A s
tore at her. They drove a car over
her. They slammed rocks on her body, Note: * indicates an anagram. T s E T s E G E E & R N T
breeze-blocks that required great effort s & WI C H E s R 0 s T &
to lift. By the time they tried to set what
was left of Farkhunda on fire, her
clothes were too blood-soaked to burn. ACROSS: I. demand*; 4. homophone; 6. ho-OK-ah; LO. [clamper-sand; 11. r[ehearsals]-adicand*;
The resourceful men threw their own 14. bra-lGa]nd[hi]; 15. Bach-elor(rev.); 16. first letters; 17. t(an-door)i(rev.); 18. double *; 19. *;
shawls onto her for kindling. 22. strands, two mngs.; 23. squa(n) der*; 26. john-doe; 27. odd letters; 29. Andalusian*;
Sitting in the 3 AM rumple of my 3 I. andirons*; 32. Zululand, hidden in reverse; 34. s[ocial]-candalize*-d[istancing]; 38. [disa]blcd;
bed-nightblack room, moonbright 39. sand-man; 41. Andreas, pun; 43. tse*-tse*; 44. san(d-w)iches*; 45. Rostand*.
screen, a packet of chips glinting among DOWN: I. da(is)y; 2. *; 3. lw]anders-on; 4. grandiose*; 5. man-darin[g]; 7. homophone; 8. pun;
the sheets-I had followed the links 9. hand-rinse*; 11. *; 12. lildeal-t[ol; 13. comma-ndo*; 20. homophone; 21. tolue(ne[wl)s*; 22. pun;
from Twitter to Wikipedia to the dark 24. qui(cksan*)d; 25. [E.R.]rands; 26. Ja(y]-Z-zage*; 27. ha(nd set*)s; 28. [F]inland; 30. rev.;
est corner of the internet: the news. I 33. A(ndea)n; 35. Andrew, two *; 36. hidden; 37. dander*; 38. Bran-do; 40. rev.; 42. stand, two mngs.
STORY 75
watched a video that the New York damage to the painting-not only
Times had patched together from cell against the protester, but also against
phone footage taken (cynically? guilt Christianne LaBlanc, whose petition
ily?) by the men in the crowd. I watched was deemed to have incited violence.
the staggered collapse of Farkhunda's The painting, of course, was now expo
covered form, its disintegration to a nentially more valuable.
puddled mass, the satisfaction of the A month later, Mike texted me to
men's desire, the eyes of those smiling meet him in the Bronx. I thought it was
lynchers sparkling and spent. another place on the map that he'd
The part of the footage that stuck in been painstakingly constructing of the
my mind-and is now forever patched best Szechuan in all five boroughs. I
into my ongoing reel of internal clambered out of the subway station
despair-is from early in the video. Far into the late-summer heat. We grinned
khunda is still alive and surrounded by but didn't hug-he was in his all-black
police. The crowd throngs around sweat camouflage-and that's when he
them. A man from the mob approaches told me we were going to visit Cliff
a policeman. He cups the policeman's "Cliff?!" I shouted, skipping with de
beard tenderly with both hands, as if to light. "Where the fuck does Cliff live?"
kiss him. I repeated my question in a different
"Let us take her, please," the man tone when Cliff buzzed us in to his build
says, according to the translated closed ing. The linoleum tiles were cracked like
captioning. "Brother, let us have her. an archaeological site. The elevator
Why not let us near her?" jolted down violently before it shimmied
The ache in his gesture, the word us up. Cliff greeted us at the door in his
"brother," the desperate longing to civilian clothes. His braided leather belt
harm her-this is what I can't shake. and tucked-in T-shirt turned his jeans
You could never paint this: a man into dad-jeans. He and Mike clapped and
clutching another man's beard, separate l gave him an inappropriately warm hug.
yet bound by the shared understanding He gestured around at the aromas of
that would lead a civilian to touch an neighborly cooking in the hallway: "The
armed officer in such a presumptive, real melting pot of America," he grinned
intimate way, to plead not for mercy, half-apologetically. "Goat curry."
but for the gift of murder. Or, you could We all stepped inside. The curtains
paint it, but what would you say in the were closed, the AC on high. Piles of
caption? What frame could possibly old magazines lined the foyer. A cat
help us understand it? sashayed toward us, cut warning eyes,
A
then twined possessively around Cliff's
t first, the burqa protester had calves. He pointed at a door and whis
made a big fuss over Cliff's pered around his index finger.
unveiling-it was an "inde "Ma's asleep."
cency," a "violation"-but this was Now I heard the hoarse waves, the
obviated by the fact chat she and her crest of beeps. We followed Cliff into
fellow protesters weren't even Muslim. the living room: a low glass table,
They were white kids from Brooklyn, opaque with scratches, and a black sofa,
young artist types. They had been us gray with creases. Mike and I sat on the
ing the burqa as a disguise. Even be sofa and found ourselves looking at
fore that revelation, it was obvious Sonia Middleton's painting. It was pre
Cliff had done nothing wrong-the cariously balanced on the mantle of a
veil had slipped off by accident. blocked-up fireplace, extending beyond
With no legal grounds for criminal the bricks on both sides.
charges, the protester filed a civil suit "Whoa!" Mike said.
against the gallery instead. She claimed Cliff went and stood next to it. He
that setting fire to the painting had grinned and posed for us, one arm across
been a First Amendment act of protest his torso, the other elbow propped on it
in defiance of its racism, akin to burn to pinch his chin musingly. The Thinker
ing the U.S. flag. She also sued for on His Feet. "It's nice, right?"
rights to the painting, claiming that by Was it? The table lamp beside me
lighting it on fire, she had "co-created was on, but didn't glow golden-the
�
City Poinl Press
�
HARPERS
M A. 0 A 2 1 N fl
it in its current exhibited condition."
The gallery filed a retaliatory suit for
eco-friendly bulb was visible under
the shade, a tangle of mean white
FROIIUONOF
stains or rips in the canvas, the burnt A dream, I wrote, is like art. It is an
corner a mere shadow. Mike stood and event and a memory both, it is experi
THE LEFT
approached to examine it. He looked enced and then recalled. So I want you
like a bishop to Cliff's castle. to read this twice. Once to get a sense of
"How did you buy it?" the details and again to feel them all at
"Get the fuck outta here!" Cliff once. If each detail is a point in a poin
scoffed. "You think I could afford tillist painting, pretend you're an ant
MY LIFE IN
that? With my ma's bills?" moving from point to point. Then step
I felt both better and worse for back to take in the full effect, or better
having thought the same thing. yet, smack the canvas so the points
"Nah, man," Cliff said, grinning.
"She gave it to me."
I piped up from the audience.
scatter into the air and form a cloud of
particles-ashes of event around you.
Also, I wrote, I want you to feel the sleepy
THE SERVICE
"Middleton?" chattiness and intimate funk of having
"Yeah." Cliff turned to me. "Oh, my just woken up beside me. So imagine my
bad. Y'all want a drink?" He stepped into voice whispering this to you, your eyes
the kitchen, still calling out his story. closed, my lips brushing your ear:
"Yeah, so she came up to me outside the There's a white field, or rather a field
courthouse and she was like, 'Look, you of whiteness-sweet, dusty milk
saved my work. You took that risk. within which a thin black line appears
Diary of
VERN
You put yourself on the line for me."' from above, like a drip of bird shit. The
"Wow 1" Mike said genuinely. line trickles down, tracing the figure
"Were there cameras?" I asked of a hanging thing, a man. Cliff hands
skeptically. me a small heavy object made of
"Yeah, but she didn't just do it for glass and gold-opera glasses or an
the publicity or whatever. It was, like, tique binoculars-and when l look
a real present." through them, the painting becomes
Cliff came back into the living TV fuzz, like sugar falling through wa
room holding three glasses of milk, ter, or like the spritz above a glass of
balancing them by pressing them to Coke in the sun, or like those smoky
gether like a squat white posy. bubbles trapped inside the surface of an
"So, are you gonna keep it here?" old mirror. The deck pitches and I drop
Mike was pointing at the mantle but the opera glasses and I realize that
Cliff didn't notice. where we are, the gallery, is a ship. (I'm
"Nah, man," he chuckled as he pretty sure that this is my mi�d pun
handed us each a glass. "I'm selling ning on the word "galley.") I cast my
that shit on eBay." eyes over the edge. The water down
We laughed. The sound of Ma's there is black as ink and the waves
breathing machine scraped around us. drown themselves. One wave tilts into
Cliff apologized for the milk, which was being, shapes itself into a pitchblack
all he had. Tap water would have been arm-a tar baby arm with a fist on its
better but we didn't say so. We toasted. end. A flat silhouette emerges, white
The milk tasted old-not sour, but eyes surface only to recede again, like
sweet and slightly dusty. Kara Walker is cutting the sea's planes
I
into paper dolls. A woman behind me
woke up this morning to an email on the deck steps forward and asks me
on my phone from someone I've to empty my pockets to make sure I
been having sex with. No subject haven't stolen anything. She wears a
line, just a link to an essay about Damien burqa but it's not cloth, it's soot, implic
Hirst's use of an Ife sculpture without itly it's built into her skin, and it might
attribution in his Venice show. I'd al be dried blood, a moonscape of scabs, or
ready read the essay, so I replied with the it might be a brittle weave of mascaraed
dream I had last night instead. I typed eyelashes. Farkhunda speaks into my ear
it on my iPhone, lying on my side, my but her script carves the air into shapes
screen smeared with hairy-looking I can't read. In despair, she points out at
smudges. The autocorrect function filled the sea, and so I look. ■
STORY 77
IGI 10 Uoo TARCHITTI
l\uitastic Tales
Ivan Vladislavic is one of the most Beautifully translated by Lawrence This book will give you 'a momentary
significant writers working in English Venuti, these capture Tarcherri's unique stay against confusion: It is a beautiful
today. Everyone should read him. and peculiar flavor. gift. -Tlya Kaminsky
-Karie Kitamura -Brian Evenson
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Mukasonga rescues a million souls from An unblinking meditation on pain Slowly, page after page, the black pencil
the collective noun 'genocide; returning which actually manages to say new things illustrations on milky white paper tell a
them to us as individual human beings, about the way we feel. Difficult Ligl,t is restrained, eloquently poetic universal
who lived, laughed, told stories. wise, moving and true. story.
-Zadie Smith -Juan Gabriel Vasquez -Bologna Ragazzi Award Jury
R E V E W S
�,
who have also experimented with the
D
boundaries of noise and silence, by
on't say that he's hypocriti Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. the sonic traditions of Alaska's lnupiat
cal/ Say rather that he's apo And though Adams doesn't mention and Yupik peoples, and by collabora
litical," Tom Lehrer sang, in the Lehrer number, his book offers a tions with local writers such as the
1965, of the former Nazi engineer then more meditative treatment of its cen
serving as director of NASA's space tral concern: How can people best use
flight center in Huntsville, Alabama. their gifts, and what are their larger
"'Once the rockets are up, who cares responsibilities in doing so? The mem
where they come down? That's not my oir charts Adams's decades living in
department!' says Wernher von Braun." Alaska (he professes an "almost erotic"
Von Braun makes a surprise cameo attachment to the place), his youth as
early in the composer John Luther Ad a full-time environmental activist, and
ams's memoir, SILENCES SO DEEP the lifelong development of his music,
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26), as the for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in
disapproving father of Adams's first wife, 2014. It begins by setting out the verdict
Margrit. The couple met as pupils at an he reached in his thirties: "I decided
all-white boarding school in Atlanta that someone else could take my place
where, one night in 1970, they snuck out in politics; and no one else could make
to attend a vigil for the anniversary of the music I imagined but me." That
Top: Elegy IV (detail), from the series Arctic Elegy, hy DM Witman© The artist. Courtesy Klompching Gallery,
Brooklyn, New York. Bottom: Okefenokee, by DeeJra Ludwig© The artisr. Courtesy LeMicux Galleries. New Orleans REVIEWS 79
poet John Haines, whose work pro other and agreed, "We lost." In this reminder that life has no narrative
vides his title ('There are silences so context, immersive music that alters logic. He observes mindless catastrophe:
deep/you can hear/the journeys of the and renews one's sense of time and place a cherry picker tips over in the wind,
A
soul,/enormous footsteps/ downward in has a special urgency, making real to the killing a group of children; a man chugs
a freezing earth."). Late in the book, he listener what might still be preserved. his pills right there in the hospital, in
even contradicts himself, defending tending a casually dramatic gesture, but
Haines from a conservative columnist comparable high-stakes lyri misjudges it and can't be saved.
who recommends he retreat from po cism infuses WHITE HOT Although there have been many
litical engagemenr and stick to ingrati LIGHT (Harper Perennial, writer-doctors, you still have to wonder
ating nature poems. $16.99), a collection of vignettes from what the nature of such a double calling
Of course, Adams's work does not the physician Frank Huyler's twenty-five might be, to spend a life in the attempt
actually avoid politics, either, in that it years spent work to cure or rescue,
shares what he describes as Haines's ing in an emer and at the same
"unabashedly ecocentric perspective." gency room in time save your
The outside world has provided an un New Mexico. As notes, garnished
usual dramatic structure for his study of material for art, with simile: the
art and activism. W hereas artists get to emergency medi heart "dumb and
impose order, create beginnings and cine, like the cli brutal, charging
endings, political work can be a long, mate crisis, wou Id itself up again and
slow struggle, its victories and defeats seem, given its again like a firefly";
contingent, uncertain. Bue Adams's tendency toward an exposed brain
career as an environmentalist began at unrel ieved cre "like a jellyfish un
an invigorating moment, soon after the scendo, both appealing and treacher folding in the water." There's the risk of
high-water mark of green legislation in ous. Huyler, though, is an old hand, romanticizing the miseries of others,
the early 1970s. The Fairbanks Daily having published both poetry and fic turning people into wretched arche
News-Miner attacked him as a Com tion, as well as an earlier volume of types. The staff laughs together after
munist and "a carpetbagger with no memoir, Tlie Blood of Strangers (1999). saving a drunk, unconscious, platinum
roots in the community," but he and his The mood of this one is shaped by the haired woman who had been aspirat
colleagues were able to change laws and accumulation of years of clinical prac ing vomit: she's the height of a child,
protect the wilderness, pushing back on tice, accustomed disappointments, and had fallen off the bar she was
plans for land disposals, dams, and oil strokes of luck and grace. '.'So much of dancing on. "Suturing a wound can be
what we do is ritual," a meditation," Huyler writes of a young
he writes. Native American woman whose boy
friend has slashed her face open with
The minor illnesses a broken bottle.
of Iife get better on
their own. The ter You roll your wrist again to follow the
rible ones get worse. curve as you pull the needle free, trail
There are only a few ing its blue filament. You tie the knot.
moments, and a few You cut the thread. You pick up the
conditions, where needle again. Blood rises in little points.
medicine earns the
faith we want to There is a reverence to the description.
place in it. He has taken over for his intern, in
recognition that the stitches will be a
At times his style kind of legacy: "The scar is waiting for
owes something co her. She will have it for the rest of her
the rapturous econ life. . . . The scar will be there long after
and gas drilling across the state. They omy of Denis Johnson, and the people I am gone and forgotten."
A
also got to watch their hopes collapse at drifting in and out could well find a
nightmarish speed. Adams bears wit home in a Johnson story. Like Adams's, s Huyler gathers the injured and
ness as the very texture of life-air, Huyler's work is implicitly political-he the saved, Eliot Weinberger, in
light, seasons, fauna-warps in Alaska, lays bare the cruelties and humiliations ANGELS&SAINTS (Christine
ground zero for climate change. Fair of poverty, and of for-profit health care Burgin/New Directions, $26.95), col
banks has long been more polluted than in particular-but maintains an ele lects records and rumors of messengers
Los Angeles, and the Arctic is warming mental tone. "Even now you cannot and martyrs the world over-the results
twice as fast as the rest of the planet. He accept an irregular line," Huyler writes are just as bloody, and a lot more comi
recalls how he and Cynthia, one "lovely of his own story, which we glimpse in cal. A luminous book, it is illustrated
summer evening under the midnight flashes among the case histories, "one with elaborate gilded grid poems by the
sun," after a baseball game in which the chat simply starts and scops, as if with ninth-century monk Hrabanus Maurus.
home team prevailed, looked at each out significance." His job is a constant (The scholar Mary Wellesley proffers a
A
sue, forming areas that are much
1 ighter than the rest. One of those ar because some of us
more reverent impulse ani are murdered, and some of us have
eas is across the shoulder blades and
upper back, and it takes the form of mates the poet Jorie Graham's mouths that keep saying yes, do
perfectly symmetrical wings. RUNAWAY (Ecco, $26.99), that to me
which, picking up where her previous
The saints, though, provide the collection, Fast, left off, envisions a fu again, I know it hurts but yes, I am an
book's funnier and more alarming in ture after our current, fatal accelerations: American and I like it harder than
. you 'll ever
sights into human nature. Weinberger
Must I put down know, this is Tuesclay, the day rises
sometimes groups them by name (Hy with its fist over the harbor saying
acinths, Teresas) or by theme ("Dogs here chat this is long ago. That the
sky has been invisible for years give it to me
and Cats and a Trout"). He quotes and the day obliges, saying more,
now. That the ash
them at length, or gives each a one more, do you want more, and the
of our fires has covered the sun. That
liner. Placid of Rodi "slept standing the fruit is stunted yellow mold torch of dawn
for thirty-seven years, for to lie down when it appears says more, yes more, ask for my
was to submit to carnality." As for the at all identificatjon, my little pool of
anti-iconoclast brothers and monks identification, here
Theodore and Theophanes Graptus: Graham doesn't allow herself the rev
on the only road, arrested again
"The emperor Theophilus ordered eling in ruin and despair that some
among the monuments.
that a twelve-line insulting poem be times tempts those who write about
tattooed on their faces." Some seem apocalypse. To keep a mind open and Her most thrilling poems hurtle
startlingly impious. Angela of Foligno steady on a planet that is being de through long, unpredictable lines that
wrote of living with her husband in stroyed, whether or not you deem that devour and spit out ancient echoes
the thirteenth century: and internet detritus as they go, re
turning to unpoetic words such as
It was bitter for me co put up with all normal till you feel the hideous adjust
the slanders and injustices.... Then it ments they are hiding ("What is it we
came to pass that my mother, who mean by/ok"). She can cram the hu
had been a great obstacle to me, died.
man condition into a description of a
In like manner my husband died, as
did all my sons, in a short space of toddler taking a step, looking first at
time. Because I .. . had pra);ed to Goel an air conditioner and then out the
for their deaths, I felt a great consola window. T here are halting efforts to
tion when it happened. begin again, yoked to permanent
losses ("right through our throats/as
On the other hand, excessive piety fish used to be hooked when there
can be a liability. Juan Garfn, a cave were fish"). Graham's work dissents
dwelling ninth-century hermit, was so from Adams's explicit verdict on po
assiduous in performing his ascetic litical art, but the two share a deeper
rituals that Satan grew "jealous"; a political act, is surely an artist's task. feeling of responsibility. As he does in
when the Count of Barcelona sent his "Vastness played all over us, slippery, his music, she in her poems remakes a
teenage daughter to be exorcised, &/slid off like a ring into the sea." world you can inhabit, one in which
Garfn, egged on by Satan in disguise, Just because the destruction is hap you sense what it is we're letting go of,
"raped her, then cut off her head and pening now, and swiftly, doesn't mean now, before it's gone. ■
Swan, rhe Spirit ofrhe Deceased, and Hi, Guardian Angd, an illumination from The Three
l'iliirimages, by Guillaume de Dcguilevillc, circa 1355 © akg,images/Jean-Cbudc Varga REVIEWS 81
CAGE OF GOLD
they were challenged by immigrants
and their families, and, importantly,
how they were paid for. Formal de
The corrupt business of deportation portation, hearing and all, has until
recently been relatively infrequent
because it is time-consuming and
By Rachel Nolan expensive. It was Goodman's keen
attention to the economics of depor
tation that led him to focus on vol
Discussed in this essay: untary departures. Without that
mechanism, he notes, we could
The Deportation Machine: America's Long History of Expelling Immigrants, never have achieved such industrial
W
by Adam Goodman. Princeton University Press. 336 pages. $29.95. capacities for kicking people out of
the country.
R
this number, since he acknowledges the local government and prohibit
that they are "unquantifiable.") emovals were common even ing people who were likely to re
This darker view of U.S. history before the United States quire public relief from coming
is less controversial than it once gained independence. In Co ashore. Six years later, the state
was, thanks in large part to Trump's lonial New England, the practice passed one of the country's first de
willingness to say out loud that was called "warning out," and the portation laws, which authorized
Braceros, by Domingo Ulloti C) Smithsonian American Art Museum/Art Resource, New York Ciry REVIEWS 83
e
1/'f'f/Z-.
the forcible removal of the poor to key and rum to meet U.S. demand. voluntary departures as well as those
"any place beyond the sea, where he The B order Patrol, which was who were terrorized into leaving.
belongs." Goodman is very good on founded in 1924, was so focused on The first of these mass raids was
the windup of the country's depor Mexicans that it had a term for ev conducted on February 26, 1931.
tation machine: how immigration eryone else-OTMs, "other than That afternoon, about four hundred
officials came to wield broad discre Mexicans"-which is still in use to people were out sunning themselves
tionary power, how the "immigrants day. During the 1920s and 1930s, in a park that was then called La
are taking our jobs" narrative spread there was no official policy of releas Placita, a center of Mexican and
during anti-Chinese agitating and ing migrants if they agreed to pay Mexican-American life in Los Ange
lynchings in the 1890s, and how their own way out of the country, les. At three o'clock, six immigration
successive Supreme Court cases lim but individual agents began facili agents in khaki uniforms entered the
ited the rights of noncitizens and tating voluntary departures on an park, accompanied by a cadre of po
denied them due process. ad hoc basis. As one border agent lice. Two policemen stationed them
People sometimes say that, before wrote, "If the alien does not want selves at each entrance to prevent
1924, America's borders were open. his day in court, why not let him re people from leaving. They forced ev
Goodman notes that that's not turn to Mexico instead of holding eryone to remain seated, which
quite right. If you arrived at a port him anywhere from two or three "caused tremendous panic," accord
of entry, paid a "head tax," demon weeks to a month or more?" ing to a newspaper story the next
strated that you were literate, passed Voluntary departures became rou day. For over an hour, agents from
an often intrusive and humiliating tine during the Great Depression, the Immigration and Naturalization
medical inspection, proved that you enabling the country to carry out its Service (INS), ICE's predecessor, in
were unlikely to become a public first mass deportation of Mexicans. terrogated people one by qne, as a
charge, and-after the 1882 exclu Raids throughout California, the crowd gathered outside the park to
sion act-were not Chinese, then you Southwest, the Midwest, and even watch. Those who didn't have pass
could come on in. But it is true that Alaska marked a turn in deporta ports or evidence of legal entry with
the 1924 Immigration Act, which tion history: expulsion as spectacle. them were detained.
first introduced national-origin quo Herbert Hoover's secretary of labor Moises Gonzalez, a legal resident,
tas, marked the beginning of the authorized immigration agents to happened by the park while the raid
country's broader effort to restrict monitor strikes involving foreigners was under way, so the immigration
entry on the basis of race. It was an and to deport radicals. Announce agents questioned him too. Gonzalez
attempt to choke off large-scale im men ts were published in the produced his papers, which showed
migration from Southern Europe Spanish- and English-language press he had been living legally in the
and Asia, but there were no restric ahead of raids on businesses. Fran United States since crossing the bor
tions whatsoever on countries in cisco E. Balderrama and Raymond der eight years prior through a port
the Western Hemisphere, including Rodrfguez, authors of the authorita of entry in El Paso. Nevertheless,
Mexico. America's agricultural tive history of this period, Decade of an immigration agent pocketed
bosses did not want to lose access to Betrayal, estimate the number of de Gonzalez's paperwork and told him
cheap labor. ported Mexicans at between five to wait with the ochers. Balderrama
Prohibition started the first wave hundred thousand and one million, and Rodrfguez estimate chat as many
of panic about Mexicans crossing which includes people who were ex as 60 percent of chose caught up in
the border, loaded down with whis- pelled through formal removals and raids in this era were in the United
Left: A photograph (derail) from immigration files in Sierra County, California, 1890-1930.
CourteS\' Cnlifornia Historical Socier}', San Francisco. Right: Asian women and children
84 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ SEPTEMBER 2020 detained at Angel Island lmmigrarion Station, California, circa 1910. Courresy the Library of Congress
States legally. California formally DDT, a carcinogenic insecticide that military-style roundups mostly along
apologized for its Depression-era de is now banned. A photograph from the border, but also in Los Angeles,
portations in 20 05, noting that Mex 1956, in the Smithsonian's collection, San Francisco, and Chicago. Good
ican and Mexican-American families shows a U.S. official in a white face man found that in Los Angeles, the
had been "forced to abandon, or mask spraying a shirtless bracero in INS leased a recreation center from
were defrauded of, personal and real the face with DDT while a long line the city for $1 25 a day in Elysian Park,
property, which often was sold by lo of people behind him wait their turn. near where Dodger Stadium stands
cal authorities as 'payment' for the At the end of the war, Gis returned, today, and converted it into an
transportation expenses incurred in but the pattern of Mexican migra open-air detention facility. That year,
their removal." The federal govern t ion had been set. Hundreds of the government recorded thirty thou
ment has never apologized. thousands of Mexicans-with and sand formal deportations and more
A
without bracero contracts, including than one million voluntary depar
fter deporting hundreds of undocumented women and children tures. When a district director of the
thousands of Mexicans during accompanying men with contracts INS suggested that every migrant be
the Depression, the United continued to travel to the United given a hearing, another official wrote
States had the little problem of need States. Some U.S. citizens called the in the margins of his memo: "Costly
ing them back to solve the labor migrants by the derogatory term "wet detention point not necessary if pro
shortage created by the Second back," because many of them waded or cessing is streamlined" and "Hearings
World War. From 1942 to 1964, the swam across the Rio Grande to enter not necessary if idea is co clean out
United States and Mexico came to a the country. The largest deportation volume-not make records."
series of agreements to issue more campaign in U.S. history, and not co Operation Wetback separated fam
than 4.6 million short-term contracts incidentally the first since voluntary ilies. Parents were deported while
to Mexican agricultural guest workers. departure was made official policy in their children were at school. Workers
The deal became known as the Bra 1940, was named after this racial slur: were deported before they could gather
cero Program, from brazo, the Spanish Operation Wetback. Trump referred to their belongings. Some American cit
word for "arm." Labor abuses were the operation approvingly at a debate izens were critical of the raids for hu
common, and medical examinations in 2015. "Moved them way south," he manitarian reasons, others because
at the border were extremely inva said. "They never came back." they stood to lose money. When Oper
sive. Incoming workers were fumigated Operation Wetback officially began ation Wetback swept through Texas, a
with toxic chemicals, among them on June 17, 1954, with a burst of local newspaper offered a solution to
Braceros being sprayed wirh DDT bl' Department of Agriculture personnel, 1956. Phorograph bl' Leonard Nadel. CourtcS)'
Leonard Nadel Photographs and Scrapbooks, Notional Museum of American I listor)', Smirhsonian lnsrirution REVIEWS 85
the coming shortage of people willing do ourselves, but we don't want them control the borders and to cater to
to do certain kinds of work: "putting because they represent, in the eyes employers, who want to maintain a
700-800 invading Border patrol of some Americans, a threat to our "well-regulated, exploitable migrant la
men into the cotton fields picking." way of life. Ac the start of the novel bor force." Recruiting Mexican workers
A candy store in Harlingen, Texas, coronavirus pandemic, undocumented to migrate to the United States was
hung a sign: PRICES DOUBLE TO BOR people who pick strawberries and good business. So was getting govern
DER PATROLMEN UNTIL COTTON IS lettuce in California's Central Valley ment contracts to deport them. Those
PICKED. INS officers found it hard to received official letters from their contracts were paid for, at least in
rent a room in some towns, but they employers designating chem "essen part, by migrants who had signed
did their work one way or another. tial workers." Still, ICE conducted a forms agreeing to voluntary depar
One South Texas resident wrote to raid on the very first day of California's tures, making the process almost as
the U.S. attorney general, "I have lockdown in March. A reporter from cheap as scareheading.
seen mothers deport[ed) and leave on the Los Angeles Times noted chat it Long before private companies
this side their nursing babies. What was "business as usual," except that built the detention facilities that now
is wrong with chis country any way?" "the agents had N95 respirator masks imprison migrants near our borders,
D
in their vehicles, just in case." Mi deportation was a public-private
eporcacion policy in "t he grant farmworkers are essential, but business. Safety was not a priority, to
United States is nonsensical ICE is essential, too. put it mildly. In 1948, a deportation
because it is determined by Goodman is sharp on this concra flight operated by a private contrac
two opposing impulses: racist hate diction. He demonstrates chat the tor crashed in California, killing
and greed. We want immigrants be federal government's immigration everyone on board. Wo ody Guthrie
cause they do cheap work we won't policy emerges from a desire both to memorialized the accident in his
I
(Deportee)." That same year, INS of ern Mexico, forcing the captain to
ficials investigated what kind of bring the ship clo ser to l and.
charter airlines it would be legal for Around forty deportees then jumped
BOOKSTORE I
T-sh rts • Books • Tote Bags
II
the agency to hire for deportation overboard and tried to swim to
flights and concluded that the only shore. Two men who drowned were I
S
States was a member and stock of other Mexicans back to Mexico.
holder of one of the Mexican ship Well, I just fly the plane." IXTIES
ping companies that got a contract. The Bracero Program ended in
His company was already shipping 1964, a year before Lyndon John
[ti 10 tt,1.•La'I""
bananas north; why not ship de son signed the Immigration and
portees south on return trips? In INS Nationality Act during a ceremony
records, Go odman found that the at the base of the Statue of Liberty.
company installed air-conditioning The act, which laid the foundation
below the main deck "not for the de for today's immigration law, called for
portees, but to ensure that the ba immigrants to be admitted not on
nanas arrived in good condition." the basis of their race or national
These ships, including one called origin, but on the basis of special
Emancipaci6n, were vessels designed ized skills, refugee status, or family
to carry cargo, and Mexicans were reunification. It opened the door for
forced down into crowded holds for a huge increase in immigration from
the duration of the forty-eight-hour places other than Europe, much
trip. Those who weren't seasick trav larger even than its backers had
eled in the vomit of those who were. anticipated, but it also capped im
The conditions were so bad that migration from the Western Hemi
Goodman convincingly poses the sphere for the first time.
boatlifts as a predecessor to later "pre In her excellent bo ok Undocu
vention through deterrence" policies, mented Lives, the historian Ana
which, beginning in the 1990s, tried Raquel Minian shows that between
to dissuade Mexicans from crossing 1965 and 1986, a permanent class of
the border by making the trip harder Mexican workers cycled seasonally
and more dangerous, often deadly. between the two countries. The rise
"They hate the boat trip like a devil in arrivals in the United States was TO ORDER MERCHANDISE,
hates holy water," crowed Lieutenant 86 percent offset by departures. This VISIT STORE.HARPERS.ORG
General Joseph Swing, the commis pattern of circular migration ended OR CALL (212) 420-5754
sioner of the INS who planned and only because of harsher new policies
executed Operation Wetback, while at the border. In 1986, Ronald Rea
testifying before Congress in 1955. gan granted amnesty to three mil
"The boatlift is the most salutary lion undocumented people, and in
thing that we have hit on yet."
Deportation bo atlifts ended in
exchange, Congress agreed to milita
rize the border, allo cate more HARPERS
M A C A Z l ' l
REVIEWS 87
HARPER'S employers who hired undocumented
people, and pass deportation laws
time in almost a hundred years, our
immigration system is now concerned
REVIE,V
tion rose. Mexicans who wanted to mostly from the Northern Triangle
earn a wage in U.S. dollars, Minian countries of El Salvador, Guatemala,
writes, "found themselves trapped in and Honduras. Central Americans are
the United States, which they re fleeing gangs, anti-indigenous vio
Enjoying the issue? ferred to as the Jaula de Oro, or Cage lence, domestic violence, poverty, po
of Gold." litical corruption, and instability-a
W
whole host of overlapping problems
Check out our weekly hat finally moved the that the United States helped create
take on the news, United States away from by funding military dictatorships in
voluntary departures was the 1970s and 1980s.
delivered to your inbox Asylum seekers allege that they are
another punitive change in the law.
FREE every Tuesday. Democrats were the ones who over being tricked and coerced into sign
saw the shift to formal deportations, ing ICE Form 1-210, a version of the
VISIT HARPERS.ORG in an effort to appear tough on crime. same voluntary departure paperwork
In 1996, Congress passed a new set that the country has used since Op
TO SIGN UP TODAY! of immigration laws that provided for eration Wetback. Some parents who
"expedited removals" and "reinstate were separated from their children
ment of removal," allowing immigra at the border said they were told
tion officers to arrest, charge, and they had to agree to voluntary depar
formally deport people without any ture before they could be reunited.
investigation or the participation of And now, during the pandemic, the
a judge. As a result, formal deporta Trump Administration has moved
tion came to look more and more like to shut down the asylum process for
voluntary departure-speedy and the first time since it was created af
unprotected by due process. Conse ter the Second World War. Thou
quences were serious: formal deporta sands of asylum seekers are waiting
tion resulted in a ban on reentry in squalid and dangerous camps in
from five years to life, and possible Mexico for their asylum claims to be
felony criminal charges if caught heard-when, they do not know.
again in the United States. Kan As the pandemic stretches on, un
stroom, the legal historian, calls 1996 documented people are risking expo
"the year in which the rule of depor sure to COVID-19 while picking fruit,
tation law died." cleaning homes, and delivering food
Goodman's book covers so much and packages all over the United
ground that he can hardly be faulted States. Such workers are always "es
for not giving more space to asylum. sential," but it is never so clear as
But because the formal deportation during a national crisis-a point
process has sped up so much, seeking underlined in Tlie Undocumented
asylum is now the primary and Americans, by Karla Cornejo Vil
sometimes the only way that people lavicencio, a writer who is herself
can slow down the system enough to undocumented. Of 9/11 she writes:
claim rights. Over the past decade, "The first responders were firemen
the most pronounced change at the and EMT workers. The second re
border has been that more people are sponders were undocumented immi
seeking refuge rather than just work. grants." New York City hired contrac
In 2008, only one in a hundred bor tors to clean up the holes where the
der crossers applied for asylum or hu twin towers used to be. The contrac
manitarian relief. By 2018, it was one tors hired subcontractors, who hired
in three. day laborers who were mostly Eastern
The development is a result of European and Latin American.
changing conditions in Latin Amer "Many of the women knew the area
ica. Due to the improving economic well," Villavicencio writes, "having
outlook in Mexico and the Great Re cleaned offices and apartments in
cession in the United States, Mexi Lower Manhattan for years. They
cans are leaving in larger numbers knew they'd be called to dust. There
than they are entering. For the first was so much dust." ■
T
nation. No one has a sense of irony
he novels of J. M. Coetzee's refrigerators, televisions, and auto or sees "any doubleness in the world."
Jesus trilogy take place in a mobiles but no computers. Medical There are shops and even advertising
purer world than our own science is a matter of injections and circulars, but the effulgences of capi
and, on the surface, a simpler one. In blood transfusions, not X-rays, CAT talism are absent, as are the trap
this world, which might be an afterlife scans, and arthroscopes. Progress itself pings of bourgeois society. Hardly
or a waystation in the transmigration
of souls, no one, except newborns, is
native, and everyone speaks the same
language, "beginner's Spanish." Ar
rivals in this land have been "washed
clean" of their memories, given new
names, and assigned ages by their
looks. Ample state services-housing,
education, medicine-and jobs are
available to all. The climate seems to
be temperate: sometimes it's hot,
sometimes it isn't, and once in a
while it rains. There are seals by the
shore, and a mild infestation of rats
in the warehouses that store the grain
that arrives every day by ship. The
diet is mostly vegetarian-crackers,
spaghetti, bean paste; meat is hard to
come by, as are spices. The world
Coetzee has constructed bears resem
blance to his prose style. "I do believe
in spareness," he once remarked.
"Spare prose and a spare, thrifty
world: it's an unattractive part of my
makeup that has exasperated people
who have had to share their lives
with me." It's hard not to conclude
that he has imagined a world in the
shape of his own mind.
What is missing from this world?
Technology is stuck at the level of the
1950s, not coincidentally the era of
Coetzee's youth. There are ne;spapers,
Reading from a blank book, by Hernan Bas. Courtesy rhc artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York City REVIEWS 89
any differences in class can be de as if they've been plucked from one of ing. The title on the last page would
tected in this land of migrants, and Plato's dialogues, debating such basic come as a retroactive shock.
tbe only reference to race is men questions as the nature of love, the The David of The Death of Jesus is
tion of "Red Indians" in the Disney purpose of work, and the chairness of different from the boy we encounter
cartoon. There is 110 oppressor and no chairs. Simon finds this exasperating in the first two novels. He is ten
oppressed, no one victorious and at times, but more and more be en years old (four years older than in
no one defeated, no legacies of guilt gages, and the conversations ease his Schooldays), tall, and athletic, a star
or victimization. We are a long way adjustment to a land where both pas on the soccer field and the leader of
from the South Africa where Coet sion and irony are mostly absent. In the boys in his neighborhood and at
zee was born in 1940, and the post Childhood, the largest question is his school. There he has a special,
apartheid South Africa he left in whether the characters are living in quasi-teacher status, showing up on
2002 for Australia. the best of all possible worlds or the his own schedule to perform dances
Into this welcoming but austere and only world, whatever "shadows of of his own invention. His attitudes
culturally blank world come Simon memories" linger in Sim6n's mind. about numbers-a kind of nominal
and David, a man and a motherless The problems of justice and redemp ism according to which each has its
boy who met on the ship that brought tion follow from the murder at the own special qualities beyond the
them from the life they no longer re center of Schooldays. Mortality looms rules of arithmetic-have hardened
member. T/ie Childhood of Jesus (2013) over the final volume. The conflict into casual dogma, such that he dis
traces their arrival in the city of No between passion and rationality, the dains a watch Simon and Ines have
villa. Sim6n assumes guardianship of disparity between appearance and re given him for his birthday because its
the boy and searches for his mother. ality, and the nature of numbers and face arranges the digits in an ordered
Following the advice of "the voice words are turned over throughout the circle against their true natures. The
that speaks inside us," Simon recruits trilogy. None of these issues becomes makeshift family's life has been stable
a woman named Ines to fill the role any simpler as David asserts himself as until the arrival at a pickup game of
after seeing her playing tennis with a kind of half-pint oracle: a boy who Dr. Julio Fabricante, head of a local
her brothers. Their adjustments to life resists systems of thought like arith orphanage of two hundred children.
in a new land are uneasy, and there's metic, teaches himself to read, and He tempts David away from his adop
something out of the ordinary, even writes on the classroom blackboard, "I tive parents with the promise of play
supernatural, about the boy. At the am the truth." ing for an organized team. Beyond
least, be resists socialization. After The novels' titles are at once literal their wish to keep him, Simon and
j
municipal authorities try to put him in (in that they name the stages of one Ines fear that the boy will be cor
a remote reform school, Sim6n, Ines, character's life) and a puzzle (in that rupted: one night he comes home in
and David escape Novilla by car. The they invite the reader to identify the muddied clothes after hanging out
Schooldays of Jesus (2016) follows the character with someone whose fa with teenage orphans, having broken
makeshift family's assimilation to life mous story is altogether different). Is and abandoned his bicycle, and
in the inland city of Estrella. David David a redemptive figure? A savant? smelling of cigarettes. As a pretext for
enrolls in its dance academy, where In 2012, in Cape Town, before read moving into the orphanage, David
he is recognized as a gifted child. A ing from the first novel, as yet unpub claims that, besides not being his
scandal ensues when the school's jani lished, Coetzee told the audience: "I "real parents," Simon and Ines have
tor, Dmitri, murders David's beautiful had hoped that the book would ap mistreated him, an accusation that
dance instructor, Senora Arroyo; he pear with a blank cover and a blank hurts Simon profoundly and that the
is tried, confesses, and is sentenced title page, so that only after the last boy admits to fabricating: 'Things
to confinement in a psychiatric ward. page had been read would the reader don't have to be true to be true," David
In The Death of Jesus, David aban meet the title, namely The Childhood says. He and Simon argue similarly
dons Sim6n and Ines to live in an or of Jesus. But in the publishing indus about the story of Don Quixote. No
phanage. He then falls mysteriously try as it is at present, that is not al tably, David knows that story
ill, becomes an object of notoriety lowed." Such an unconventional which he understands as "veritable
from his hospital bed, and speaks placement of the title would no doubt history" rather than fiction-not
gnomically of delivering his "mes alter the experience of readers disci from Cervantes but from an illus
sage" to the world before he leaves it. plined enough not to peek. In a book trated children's edition adapted by
At last, he dies. with plenty of allusions to Christian "a man named Benengeli." He is not
I
scripture but no characters who prac privy to the authentic version of the
f the setting of these novels is tice the religion, David would come novel, just as Coetzee's readers don't
minimalist and ahistorical, and across less like a possibly divine sav know what his characters sound like
their action the stuff of melodrama ior than a bright but obnoxious and in beginner's Spanish.
and pulp, their texture is philosophical delusional child, and Simon, who Each of the novels rehearses Da
conversation. In one of the trilogy's has a vision of David in a loincloth vid's separation from, and possible be
many allusive jokes, David refers to riding aloft in a chariot pulled by trayal of, Simon. Ines is the first to
Mickey Mouse's dog Pluto as "Plato." two white horses, would himself be take David away, in Childhood, until
The residents ofNovilla tend to speak a candidate for psychiatric counsel- she and Simon come to an uneasy
REVIEWS 91
THE
SIXTIES
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE DECADE
protest against the rational order of
things and a hierarchy of nature with
human beings at the top. Even in No
villa and Estrella, where everyone
quires an immediate p osthumous
mystique among the orphans, Dmitri,
and his classmates at the dance acad
emy, who put on a memorial show
GEORGE
FROM HARPER'S MAGAZINE
seems to be a new arrival, these sys dramatizing episodes from his life in a
tems are cast as novel developments. comic manner (including the one of
PLIMPTON
Near the end of Schooldays, we get a the dog eating the lamb, which can
glimpse of the only bit of mythology also be seen as a replay of Dmitri's
WALKER
in the trilogy that is unique to their murder of Senora Arroyo). But it may
PERCY
world. Senor Moreno, a guest lecturer be Simon who is the proper recipient
at the dance academy, gives a talk on of David's message. Dmitri says as
"Metros the measurer": much to him in a letter at the end of
JOE
the novel:
"A shadowy figure, Metros," Moreno
is saying. "And like his comrade Pro
The fact is, authentic sinners like old
metheus, bringer of fire, perhaps only
Omit1i were too easy for him. It was t)'Pes
a figure of legend. Nevertheless, the
like you that he wanted to save, types who
arrival of Metros marks a turning
presented him with more of a challenge.
point in human history: the moment
Here is old Simon, with his more or less
when we collectively gave up the old
MCGINNISS way of apprehending the world, the
unblemished record, a good fellow
DAVID
though not excessively good, with no
unthinking, animal way, when we
great hankering after another life-let's
abandoned as futile the quest to
see what we can do with him.
know things in themselves, and be
gan instead to see the world through
RICHARD
upon fluctuations in the metra we
enabled ourselves to discover new are a few dissenters, among them ste
laws, laws that even the heavenly vedores in Novilla who debate the
HOFSTADTER bodies have to obey. idea idly. In Death, Simon asks one
C.VANN
"Similarly on earth, where in the of David's nurses, "Do you not be
spirit of the new metric science we lieve in a life to come?''
measured mankind and, finding that
WOODWARD
all men are equal, concluded that men I do. I do. But the life to come will be
should fall equally under the law. here on earth, not among the dead
PRISCILLA
No more slaves, no more kings, no stars. We will die, all of us, and disin
more exceptions. tegrate, and become material for a
JOHNSON
"Was Metros the measurer a bad new generation to rise up from. There
man? Were he and his heirs guilty of will be a life after this one, but I, the
abolishing reality and putting a simu one I call I, will not be here to live it.
MCMILLAN lacrum in its place, as some critics Nor will you. Nor will David. Now
SARA
claim? Would we be better off if Met please let me go.
ros had never been born? As we look
around us at this splendid Institute, The concept of another life allows
designed by architects and built by Simon to understand his own life
DAVIDSON
engineers schooled in the metra of
and its limits, allowing for the possi
statics and dynamics, that position
bility that things have been different
LOUIS
seems hard to maintain."
before and might be again. The les
Of course, "that position" is the son of David's life and death are
one espoused by David, who rejects about the limits of understanding.
LOMAX
mathematics and the hierarchy of liv After the boy dies, Bolivar goes miss
ing things, and in a milder sense by ing and Simon considers adopting a
his music teacher, Juan Sebastian Ar dog called Pablo that is taken by
royo, who says that just because ev other owners. He ponders a dog's no
INTRODUCTION BY
EUGENE J.
erything can be measured doesn't tion of death:
mean it should be. David rejects the
MCCARTHY tyranny of rationality and the idea Dogs do not understand death, do not
understand how a being can cease to
that there are no exceptions: to him
be. But perhaps the reason (the deeper
ORDER TODAY FROM everything has a singular essential na reason) why they do not under
STORE.HARPERS.ORG ture. The mystery of his death-the
rioting orphans blame it on a conspir
stand death is that they do not un
derstand understanding. I Bolivar
acy of doctors-shows the limits of breathe my last in a gutter in - the
II
I
FRANKLIN
SQUARE
rR ESS scientific explanations. David ac- rain-lashed city and at the same mo-
Distributed by Midpoint Trade Books,
a division of IPG
W
There are white people and Co TEXT ADS: Minimum ten words.
e could say something sim
loured people and Natives, of whom COST per word: lX rate $4.50; 3X rate
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and many critics have,
the Natives are the lowest and most $4.40; 6X rate $4.30; 9X rate $4.10;
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calling the novels "utterly cryptic," the Natives are the third brother.
"unfathomable," or "allegorical" but Telephone numbers, box numbers, URLs,
lacking in "a clear correlative" outside In his book of memoir and criticism and email addresses count as two words.
themselves. To say that the message of on Coetzee, In the Middle of No ZIP codes count as one word.
these novels is something about the where, Jonathan Crewe, a South Af SPACE: One-inch, $270; Two-inch, $530;
limits of human understanding, or rican scholar of English who taught 1/12, $650; 1/9, $765. Frequency
that they dramatize the conflict be beside Coetzee at the University of discounts available.
tween two different ways of seeing and Cape Town in the 1970s, writes: CLOSING DATES: 1st of the 2nd preceding
being in the world, broadly represented month. For example: August 1st for the
by passion and reason-and that the The parable's simple inversion of ra October issue.
contest comes to a draw-may be un cial hierarchy may be taken as the PAYMENT: Prepayment for all text ads and
satisfying, but only if you are expect boy's first, benevolent step towards re first-time display advertisers is required.
je cting the dominant ideology of
ing to find a pat message. W hat the Make checks payable to Harper's Magazine,
white racial purity and supremacy, but it
reader will remember will be the plea hardly represents an escape from racial 666 Broadway, New York, NY 10012,
sures available to anyone: the deadpan thinking. Perhaps there is no subjective or charge your ad to MasterCard, Visa,
humor, the swoons of their melodra escape, ever, in so heavily racialized a or American Express. Include telephone
matic thriller plots, and the beguiling society as South Africa. number on all correspondence.
weirdness of the world Coetzee has PERSONAL ADS: Minimum ten words.
constructed. These are not merely In Childhood, no such escape is neces COST per word: $4.50. Check, MasterCard,
surface pleasures. The novels teach sary. David, an essentialist, wants to be Visa, or American Express only.
you how to read them without re the third brother himself. Simon ex TO RESPOND TO AN AD: Harper's Magazine
course to reading or rereading Plato, plains to him that even if Ines had two Personals, 666 Broadway, New York,
Wittgenstein, Cervantes, Dostoevsky, more sons, David would always be the NY 10012.
or the Gospels. The reader's experi first brother. But because the boy re
ence mirrors Simon's comic educa jects the idea of numeric order, he DISCLAIMER: Harper's Magazine assumes no
tion. The novels' philosophy lives in rejects the very concept of hierarchy. liability for the content of or reply to any personal
an autonomous zone. In the fictional world Coetzee has con advertisement. The advertiser assumes complete
At the same time, a substantial ac structed for David, no escape is neces liability for the content of and all replies to any
ademic literature has grown up sary. He need nor be born third to be advertisement and for any claims made against
around Coetzee's life and career that the third brother: it's already his na Harper's Magazine as a result thereof. The
demonstrates the trilogy's layers of ture. He is immune to shame. advertiser agrees to indemnify and hold Harper's
meaning. A defining aspect of Coet Crewe's affectionate portrait of Magazine and its employees harmless from all
zee's early life and his writings about Coetzee includes several details that costs, expenses (including reasonable attorney
fees}, liabilities, and damages resulting from or
caused by the publication placed by the advertiser
REVIEWS 93 or any reply to any such advertisement.
suggest autobiographical readings of Jesus trilogy. You could add the 2010
the Jesus trilogy. He writes of "a genre death of his brother David, dedica
of Coetzee anecdotes, in which John tee of Childhood, and the death by
was the man to whom bad things falling of Coetzee's son Nicolas in
happened." In one such story, rabbits 1989. They are fragments Coetzee
that he bought for his children as has picked up and transfor med
pets "turned feral and began to within a painstakingly imagined
cannibalize each other"-perhaps world. ln his 2016 study of the au
the source of the dog mauling the thor's archive at the University of
lamb in David's hospital room. In a Texas at Austin, J. M. Coetzee and
broader sense, Crewe writes that the Life of Writing, David Attwell ar
Coetzee was part of a wave of profes gues that "Coetzee's w riting is a
sors who brought professionalization huge existential enterprise, grounded
and knowledge of French theory to in fictionalized autobiography. In
the South African academy. Having this enterprise the texts marked as
studied mathematics as an under autobiography are continuous with
graduate and worked as a computer those marked as fiction-only the
programmer for IBM in London degree of fictionalization varies."
during his twenties, Coetzee did Coetzee, Attwell writes, begins his
his early work on Beckett in "stylo work "personally and circumstantially"
metrics," the use of computers to and his drafts pass through many
study literary text s, and w rote stages of "self-masking." "Twelve,
computer-generated poetry before thirteen, fourteen versions of a work
turning to fiction. But he soon re are not unusual." The books that
nounced these methods and by the emerge are neither strictly realist nor
end of his academic career it's clear traditionally allegorical. Plot is an
• Bob (FL) 1 OX reorder "Your scientific he believed the study of literature it unstable element throughout, and
magic trick does seem to work. I give self had been devalued in a process though Coetzee starts with a genre
1 OX credit as one of the things I did
that helped save my marriage. of "rationalism," a situation he dra and perhaps a specific model in
Thanks Dr. Cutler" matized in earlier novels, among mind, the allusions in his work are
• Sara, PhD (CO)"I find 10:13 has them Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello. usually late additions. Attwell calls
major positive effects on my profes He uses the word in his obituary for the process "deliteralization." He
sionaI work in my contacts with Nelson Mandela: "he was blindsided uses the term in reference to Life &
people. My interviews, or important by the collapse of socialism world Times of Michael K, another book in
meetings. It's like the Red Sea parts. I don't wide; the party had no philosophi which race is both present and ab
think think its all my charm! Thank you Dr. cal resistance to put up against a sent in a world that is like our own
Cutler. This product is shocking!"
new, predatory economic rational but is not, a South Africa of the near
ism." He seems to mean neoliber future torn apart by a violent revolu
alism, and in the Jesus trilogy it is tion. It was Coetzee's first master
the tyranny of Metros the measurer piece. His late trilogy (Coetzee is
that David rebels against. eighty this year), displaying marks of
There are other elements of Coet the same process pursued to more
zee's life and work that appear in the radical ends, is another. ■
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94 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/ SEPTEMBER 2020
■
PUZZLE ■
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
SAME DIFFERENCE
14 15
16
By Richard E. Maltby Jr.
17 18
19 20 21
22 23 24
25 26 27
'[1e four unclued across entries each con
sist of three words that have something in com 28 29 30
mon. Or don't.
Clue answers include six proper nouns, one for 31 32 33 34
eign word, and one abbreviation. The entries at
35 36 37 38
28A, 41A, 60, 90, and 170 are uncommon. As
always, mental repunctuarion of a clue is the key 39 40
to its solution. The solution to last month's puzzle
appears on page 75. 41 42 43
44
Contest Rules: Send completed diagram with name and address to "Same Difference," Har/Jer's Magm:ine, 666 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10012.
If you already subscribe to Harper's, please include a copy of your latest mailing label. Entries must be received by September 11. The sender of the
first correct solution opened at random will receive a one-year subscription to Harper's Magazine {limit one winner per household per year). The
winner's name will be primed in the November issue. The winner of the July puzzle, "Shaky Ground," is Nancy Haydu kc, Pittsburgh.
PUZZLE 95
FINDINGS
Neuropsychologists developed a shorter IQ test on religion. Recent toilet-paper hoarding was more
for children with shorter attention spans. The de prevalent among Americans than Europeans and
pression-prone are less attracted to the political more prevalent among the old than the young. Ger
right. The nocturnal heart rate of young men can ontologists cautioned that it would be difficult to
be predicted by their female partners' daytime feel predict individual Holocaust survivors' trauma or
ings of intimacy or annoyance. Men who pose for resilience in response to the pandemic, which was
photos with cats are seen as less datable. Men can expected to strengthen the market for laboratory
rate the facial attractiveness of women without mouse-suffocation chambers. Researchers proposed
paying attention, but women cannot do the same replacing the paradigm of extinction with that of
for men; gay men find the faces of purportedly fer evanescence. Climate change was expected to drive
tile women and men more attractive; adolescents American lobsters to seek deeper waters, beavers to
and adults both rare the faces of children younger colonize new parts of Canada, and wolf spiders in
than 4.6 years old as more appealing than those of the high Arctic to produce a second annual brood.
older children; and body odors associated with fear Humboldt penguins who nest in the open have
quicken the visual processing of others' facial ex more pollutant metabolites in their blood than do
pressions of fear. Beak covering and nape-feather penguins who nest in guano-rich burrows. The tiger
ruffling indicate calmness in sulfur-crested cocka snakes of Perth have heavy metals in their livers. Sat
toos. Repetitive negative thinking was associated ellite imagery captured ecosystem damage from fog
with an increased risk of dementia, and self-harm in loss, and aerial photography confirmed the existence
female adolescents may prevent suicide. Psychopaths of Roman military camps revealed by the 2018 Welsh
recommend harsher punishments for homicides, drought. A young woman in a Vilnius plague pit was
whether accidental or motivated by profit, but ex found to have been coinfected with yaws. A man bur
hibit relatively low concern about killing in general. ied at Newgrange passage tomb was found to be the
Online murder-for-hire advertisements seek to con product of first-degree incest, indicating that he was a
vey p�ofessionalism yet tend not to provide refer- member of the elite.
ences up front.
Scientists trained subjects to exercise control over
Convalescent plasma helps Syrian hamsters fight a single neuron, linked the hippocampus to regret,
SARS-CoV-2. Plastic surgeons suggested chat Botox and concluded that humans smell in stereo. Straight
could reduce the expression of negative emotions by Slovakians assume that a woman in high heels will
masked faces. The presence of a professional sports inspire more intense mate-guarding. Women who re
team increases a city's seasonal flu deaths. A psy ceive continuous rather than interrupted sutures for
cholinguistic analysis of posts on Twitter and Weibo perinea! repair after vaginal delivery report higher
during COVID-19 lockdowns found that residents sexual levels of arousal and orgasmic function. Pink
of Lombardy grew increasingly focused on leisure ness predicts aggression in flamingos. Chimpanzees
and residents of Wuhan grew increasingly focused have a bone in their hearts. ■
"Ernie and Leela," and "Ernie Under My Desk," photographs by Tony Mendoza from his book Ernie: A Photographer's Memoir,
published by Chronicle Books. Co1trtesy the artist and Lee Marks Fine Art, Shelbyville, Indiana