Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The New Yorker - USA (2023-01-30)
The New Yorker - USA (2023-01-30)
30, 20 23
LIMITED ENGAGEMENT
A PLAY ABOUT
LOVE, FAITH
AND
BROOKLYN
BY
ANNA ZIEGLER
DIRECTED BY
BARRY EDELSTEIN
SARAH COOPER LUCY FREYER KATIE HOLMES DAVE KLASKO EDDIE KAYE THOMAS
DRAWINGS Maggie Larson, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Bob Eckstein, Roz Chast, Felipe Galindo,
Amy Hwang, Paul Noth, Benjamin Schwartz, Liana Finck, Avi Steinberg, Frank Cotham,
Teresa Burns Parkhurst, Colin Tom, Zachary Kanin, Julia Suits SPOTS Victor Guan
CONTRIBUTORS
Jon Lee Anderson (“Lula’s Restoration,” Elif Batuman (“Novels of Empire,”
p. 30), a staff writer, has been contribut- p. 42) is the author of, most recently,
ing to The New Yorker since 1998. He is the novel “Either/Or.” She has been a
the author of several books, including staff writer since 2010.
“Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life.”
Eric Lach (“Friend of the Mayor,” p. 16)
Beverly Gage (“One of a Kind,” p. 24), a became a staff writer in 2020.
professor of history at Yale University,
published “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover Christoph Niemann (Cover) published
and the Making of the American Cen- the artist book “Idea Diary” last year.
tury” last year. An exhibition of his work, “Photodraw-
ings,” is on display at the Gallery Kicken,
Rosanna Warren (Poem, p. 36) published in Berlin, through February 16th.
the poetry collection “So Forth” and
the biography “Max Jacob: A Life in Casey Cep (Books, p. 58 ) is a staff writer
Art and Letters” in 2020. at The New Yorker. In 2019, she pub-
lished “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud,
Idrees Kahloon (Books, p. 63) is the Wash- and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.”
ington bureau chief for The Economist,
where he covers politics and policy. Henry Shukman (Poem, p. 56 ) is the
author of the memoir “One Blade of
Clare Sestanovich (Fiction, p. 52) is the Grass: Finding the Old Road of the
author of “Objects of Desire.” In 2022, Heart” and of two poetry collections.
she was named a “5 Under 35” honoree
by the National Book Foundation. Amy Davidson Sorkin (Comment, p. 11),
a staff writer, joined the magazine in
Vinson Cunningham (The Theatre, 1995 and is a regular contributor to
p. 68), a theatre critic for the magazine, Comment. She also writes a column
will publish his début novel this year. for newyorker.com.
Download the New Yorker app for the latest news, commentary, criticism,
and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008.
THE MAIL
ON WHEELS result directly from policy choices. In
the case of traffic deaths, Singer points
I enjoyed Patricia Marx’s marvellous ar- out that many U.S. roads are designed
ticle about electric bicycles, but I wish in a way that encourages unsafe driv-
she had dwelled more on the risks that ing. A lot of injurious traffic incidents
they present to pedestrians (“Uneasy are therefore not unpredictable “acci- FEED HOPE .
FEED LOVE .
Rider,” January 2nd & 9th). When my dents” but rather preventable conse-
wife and I walk around the city, we often quences of human decisions.
1
come into close proximity with bikes, Andrew Lokay
both electric and traditional, and have Washington, D.C.
had a number of near-collisions with
them. It’s bad enough when they’re rid- MEMORIES OF PARTITION
ing toward you; it can be terrifying when
they swoop from behind. Parul Sehgal’s essay about the literature
Coexistence with e-bikes would be of Partition brought back memories of
simpler if policymakers were more pro- the stories I heard as a child (A Critic
active about pedestrian safety. There are at Large, January 2nd & 9th). My par-
many areas where they might start. One ents were among the millions who made
is enforcement: both traffic cops and the harrowing trek across the border from
regular police officers have told me that Lahore to Delhi. Before that, they lived
they are not instructed to do anything for years among Muslim neighbors, who
about biking on the sidewalk. Another sheltered them from periodic violence.
is road design: as the lanes on some one- After Partition, these neighbors provided
way streets are used for two-way bike them safe passage out of the area. The
traffic, pedestrians must look both ways story I hold most dear is that of my uncle,
before crossing the street, even when who was in his late teens in the wake of
they have the walk signal in their favor. Partition. He lived in Jammu, in north-
Edward Colquhoun ern India, close to the border with Pa-
New York City kistan. He was a strong swimmer, and
he would swim across the Tawi River,
The popularity of e-bikes has very dif- carrying Muslims from the east to the
ferent implications in rural places than west, and Hindus from the west to the
it does in urban areas. On many of the east, bringing them to safety.
U.S.’s public lands, e-bikes now encroach When it comes to fiction written
on narrow trails previously used only by about Partition, I worry that some books
pedestrians or horses. Land managers elide the acts of kindness that occurred
are giving in to the e-bike lobby and al- alongside atrocities. At Yad Vashem, the
lowing e-bikes wherever traditional bi- Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, gar-
cycles are permitted. And, because e-bikes dens and tree-lined avenues memorial-
are heavier than regular bikes and cover ize individuals who rescued Jews at great
more terrain more quickly, they are a personal risk. Remembering and hon-
greater disturbance to wild animals and oring these stories is integral to achiev-
their habitats than hikers or bicyclists. ing reconciliation. To me, my uncle’s
They also, of course, disturb people seek- story endures as a similar reminder to
ing respite from cities and machines. break the cycle of violence.
Vicky Hoover Ripudaman Malhotra
San Francisco, Calif. Lake Oswego, Ore.
Those fretting over the future of indie rock can rest assured that the music has found stylish caretakers in the
bandmates of Horsegirl, who débuted their trio while still in high school, in Chicago—they’re now spending their
college years in New York. The group’s songs put a fresh spin on the type of lovingly harsh guitar sounds that spar-
kled in the nineties. On Jan. 28, Horsegirl plays Bowery Ballroom as part of Ground Control Touring’s Abortion
Funds Benefit Series, a concert that confronts America’s growing abortion barricade with a rock-and-roll army.
PHOTOGRAPH BY OK MCCAUSLAND
1 1
As ever, it’s advisable to check in advance self-referentiality, even daring his targeted “Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe”—a poetically re-
to confirm engagements. periodicals to bring the gesture full circle cursive moment.—J.F. (JTT; through Feb. 11.)
by reproducing them. But Mullen, who has
autism and is mostly nonverbal (he paints at
NIAD, an art studio in Richmond, California,
ART for adults with developmental disabilities), DANCE
has a singular relationship to his source ma-
terial, which he reproduces with visually
Glen Baldridge commanding spatial distortions and expres- New York City Ballet
Using a Candy Crush palette, and an abun- sive interpretations of graphics. The works Justin Peck, the company’s resident choreog-
dance of drips and oscillating lines, this on view here span more than twenty-five rapher since 2014, has had a busy decade and a
Brooklyn artist continues his two-decade- years; the earliest, from 1996, are the least half. Not only has he made more than forty bal-
long exploration of subcultural aesthet- complex, but they reveal a nascent abstract lets but he choreographed the dances in Steven
ics in a suite of eight paintings on paper, sensibility. Using thick acrylic pigment, Mul- Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story” and,
completed last year. Hippie and psyche- len achieves impasto surfaces and appealingly before that, the Broadway revival of “Carousel.”
delic styles converge in works that evoke collagelike effects. His subsequent, mag- Now his home company has given him the big-
summer-camp forays into crafts (marble- azine-inspired pieces have a jigsaw-puzzle gest possible canvas to work with: a full evening.
ized paper, yarn painting, spin art). But, in quality; one painting, from 2022, is based He fills it with his newest work, “Copland Dance
Baldridge’s slyly exacting exhibition, the on an Artforum cover featuring a 1973 photo- Episodes,” a non-narrative suite set to music
deceptively chaotic qualities of his faux-naïf graph by Nan Goldin, of picnicking friends. by Aaron Copland, much of it originally com-
compositions are balanced by a sophisti- Mullen’s wonderfully refracted rendition posed for dance, including “Appalachian Spring,”
cated restraint. Two paintings—both titled retains something of the original image, “Billy the Kid,” and “Fanfare for the Common
with the disoriented stoner query “Guys, including its nod to Manet’s famous canvas Man.” The ballet, which deploys thirty dancers,
what?”—depict small groups of startled crea-
tures peering out from the pictures. These
absurdly groovy figures are rendered by
little more than colorful arches of concen- AT THE GALLERIES
tric lines anchored by saltwater-taffy-like
eyes, which anthropomorphize forms that
would otherwise be categorized as biomor-
phic abstractions. There’s a comment here,
perhaps, about pretensions in art and false
distinctions between high and low, but it’s
a subtle one relative to the rowdy charm of
the show over all.—Johanna Fateman (Klaus
von Nichtssagend; through Feb. 11.)
Frankenstein’s Monster Is
Drunk and the Sheep Have
All Jumped the Fences
This play, written and directed by Zoë Seaton
(part of Origin’s First Irish festival), based
on a short story by Owen Booth, is a richly
allusive, campily knowing, often quite funny
riff on the Frankenstein myth. Here, Mary
Shelley’s creation, called the Monster (Rhodri
Lewis), has been excavated from a glacier by a
tall, strong woman (Nicky Harley) who hap-
pens to be a social outcast. They promptly fall
in love and marry; the Monster remembers
his old life as a B-movie star. He and his bride
struggle to be accepted by their fellow-towns-
people, played by Vicky Allen and Chris Rob-
inson, who also take turns narrating the show.
As we’re led through the stages of the couples’
lives together, the antic ensemble members
show off their singing and dancing, and find
laughs in almost all of Seaton’s lines.—V.C.
(59E59; through Jan. 28.)
Richard Maxwell’s decades of work in the theatre—his New York City Heaven
Players had their first performance here in 1999—has been an ongo- In this new play by Eugene O’Brien (part of
ing experiment in aesthetic dehydration. Some call his dilatory work Origin’s First Irish festival), under Jim Cul-
leton’s direction, a pair of intertwining mono-
“deadpan,” for his refusal to ask his actors to pretend to have emotions, logues tell the story of a married couple’s tur-
though he’s no minimalist. By draining away pretense, he opens up a bulent passage through middle age. Mairead
space to delve into melodrama, violence, allegory, and spectacle onstage. (Janet Moran) and Mal (Andrew Bennett)
are entering their fifties, and they’re both, in
(A recent show included a robot performer, and even that was a heart- their own ways, undergoing a kind of personal
breaker.) “Field of Mars,” his new commission for N.Y.U. Skirball, in the apocalypse. The repressed Mal made a bargain
Under the Radar Festival, through Jan. 29, stars several of the downtown with himself before he married Mairead—he’d
put an end to his youthful altar-boy fantasies of
treasures he’s worked with before—such as the great Tory Vazquez, Jim a sexualized Jesus and settle into an outwardly
Fletcher, and Brian Mendes—along with the electric guitarist James heterosexual life. Now he’s seen a Christlike
Moore. The plot description says that it takes place in a North Carolina young man and a crisis ensues. Mairead is a
tough, funny, outgoing sort, who married Mal
chain restaurant, but clearly Maxwell is continuing his investigation to interrupt her long streak of roguish bad boy-
into religious cosmology—Adam and Eve and Satan all turn up, and friends. At a bar in town, her past rushes back.
the second act wanders, as all mystics do, into the desert.—Helen Shaw Moran and Bennett are both excellent per-
formers—their monologues contain a friendly
music. But the play depends on tropes that feel
wearingly familiar and make the show’s ending
is performed, without intermission, several cally flawed hero of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s pat.—V.C. (59E59; through Jan. 29.)
times between Jan. 26 and Feb. 7.—Marina play from 2014 (now in its Broadway début),
Harss (David H. Koch Theatre; through Feb. 26.) is a through-and-through drunk. He lives in
an old, formerly grand apartment on River- The Immortal Jellyfish Girl
side Drive with his son, Junior (Common), The year is 2555 C.E., and humanity has gone
Tanzmainz Junior’s friend Oswaldo (Victor Almanzar), extinct. Two evolutionary offshoots battle for
This German ensemble, from the Staatsthe- and Junior’s skimpily dressed girlfriend, control of a blighted Earth: the technologi-
ater Mainz, is making its Joyce début, but the Lulu (the fantastic Rosal Colón). Walter’s in cally advanced Homo technalis and the biolog-
work it is bringing looks all too familiar. Sha- the middle of a long-running feud with the ically advanced Homo animalis. This setup is
ron Eyal’s “Soul Chain” closely resembles the N.Y.P.D., where he used to work as a cop, until unusual fodder for a puppet show, but “The
repertory of her own company, L-E-V. To an he was shot by a white officer. As the force—in Immortal Jellyfish Girl,” written and directed
electronic score by Ori Lichtik, a large ensem- the person of his former partner, Detective by Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage,
ble in flesh-colored leotards parades on tiptoe, Audrey O’Connor (Elizabeth Canavan), and revels in the extraordinary. The titular jellyfish
their hands on their abdomens. Swivels sug- her fiancé, Lieutenant Dave Caro (Michael girl, Aurelia, zips around on a fluorescent disk,
gest a fashion catwalk; convulsions evoke cold Rispoli)—doubles down on its effort to get him her tentacle-like hair crackling electrically in
sex. In its overwrought monotony, the style to settle his lawsuit against the city, Walter, spasms of emotion. (The lighting and sound
1
seems to parody itself, humorlessly.—Brian in a sequence of tough conversations, paints design, too, are technologically advanced.)
ILLUSTRATION BY JACKSON GIBBS
Seibert (Joyce Theatre; Jan. 24-28.) a portrait of himself as a hard, stubborn, all There’s also a fox narrator, a lobster phone, a
but unmovable motherfucker. Guirgis’s writ- near-omniscient cyborg villainess, and a per-
ing and pacing are, as ever, hilariously quick meable fourth wall in this singular vision of a
and spot-on. Austin Pendleton directs the ac- climate-changed, A.I.-controlled planet. The
THE THEATRE tors with the accuracy of a hectic but precise imagined future that it conjures ain’t pretty,
dance. The most heartening thing about this but the show, presented by Wakka Wakka
whirlingly accomplished character study is Productions and Nordland Visual Theatre, is
Between Riverside and Crazy the self-knowledge of its main character. “Do stunning—especially its puppetry, designed
Walter Washington (Stephen McKinley Hen- I like myself? Hell no!” Walter says at the by the supremely talented Waage, who also
derson, characteristically great), the operati- outset of one of his tirades. “Do I drink? Hell performs.—Dan Stahl (59E59; through Feb. 12.)
1
tions, whether embellishing mainstream jazz limn her appeal as a spinner; her selections with mesmerizing self-possession.—Oussama
or Brazilian fantasies, that have secured his un- are rhythmically boisterous and sharply de- Zahr (Carnegie Hall; Jan. 28.)
impeachable position in the pantheon. No one tailed. AceMoMA—a duo of the Brooklyn
has yet taken his place, but Grégoire Maret, house artists AceMo and MoMA—makes
a well-respected Thielemans acolyte, pays ap- a shrewd co-billing. The pair create work,
propriate homage to the master alongside the separately and together, that tends to be MOVIES
pianist and musical director Kenny Werner, both laid-back and biting.—Michaelangelo
joined by the clarinettist Anat Cohen, the gui- Matos (Paragon; Jan. 28.)
tarist Chico Pinheiro, the bassist Scott Colley, Li’l Quinquin
and the drummer Antonio Sánchez.—Steve Bruno Dumont’s three-hour-plus 2014 film is
Futterman (Dizzy’s Club; Jan. 26-29.) Philadelphia Orchestra centered on a taciturn fireplug of a boy in a
CLASSICALYuja Wang, a subtle, technically farm village on the northern coast of France.
astounding pianist with a pop star’s flair for On the first day of summer vacation, he, his
Nadah El Shazly
EXPERIMENTAL Since the release of her début
album, “Ahwar,” in 2017, the composer and
vocalist Nadah El Shazly has become a pillar HIP-HOP
of the Egyptian underground—in 2018, she
appeared on a cover of the British experi-
mental-music bible The Wire, in an issue an-
nouncing “Cairo’s New Wave.” The musician’s
eclectic background, encompassing choirs,
punk rock, and jazz, prepared her for the
electroacoustic reimagining of Arabic classical
music that’s inherent to “Ahwar.” Working
with more than twenty collaborators on the
album—including the psychedelic trio Dwarfs
of East Agouza—El Shazly recorded in both
Egypt and Montreal with a slate of vanguard
contemporary-classical players and improvis-
ers, incorporating kalimba, tablas, harp, oud,
saxophone, riq, divan saz, and trip-hop beats.
She has expressed an obsession with Egyp-
tian singers born in the nineteenth century,
such as Mounira El Mahdeya and Abdel Latif
al-Banna, particularly “the futuristic elements
in their music.” Her songs, taken for a rare
American spin here, vibrate with uncanny
harmonic textures and a celestial scope.—Jenn
Pelly (Public Records; Jan. 27.)
Sunny Jain
EXPERIMENTAL The indefatigable drummer
and dhol player Sunny Jain is an unrepen- Brooklyn drill, a ballistic rap subgenre that stems directly from the
tant maximalist—were he a visual artist, one combatively percussive music born in Chicago a decade ago, has
imagines bright-hued paints splattered across
his canvas, his floor, and perhaps his ceiling. continued to evolve since the death of its breakout star Pop Smoke,
Think of a genre, and it’s probably some- in 2020, spreading across the city in the process. Two emerging artists,
where in his compositions, yet the musician’s the Brooklynite Bizzy Banks and the Queens native Shawny Binladen,
hullabaloo stands on considered conceptual
ground. His album “Wild Wild East,” from are among those carrying the torch—their collaboration “Whole Lotta
2020, recasts the American cowboy myth Wickery,” which flips the Rosemary Fairweather song “Heavenly” by
as a frenzied immigrant’s tale, conjoining
ILLUSTRATION BY SADDO
The Wolfpack
Crystal Moselle directed this documentary,
from 2015, about the Angulo clan: two parents,
one sister, and—at center stage—six brothers.
The boys closely resemble one another, and
their lives, in an apartment on the Lower East
Side, could not be more tightly interknit. Ho-
meschooling is the least of it. Seldom do the
kids leave the place (once, they didn’t go out
for a year), and their principal conduit to the
outside world is through films: watching them;
typing out the scripts; learning the lines; fash-
ioning costumes and props, including card-
The treasures of Chinese independent filmmaking—a field that has board guns; and restaging sequences from
favorite flicks. “Reservoir Dogs,” complete
now largely been suppressed by that country’s government—include Liu with black suits and ties and white shirts, goes
Jiayin’s “Oxhide,” from 2005, which she made at the age of twenty-three. down especially well. If there is a ghost at the
(It screens at Metrograph on Jan. 28-29 and is streaming on OVID.) feast, it is the father, a Peruvian immigrant
who is often glimpsed in old video clips but
The film features a mere twenty-three shots, which are all static, but is seen infrequently in Moselle’s own footage,
they teem with action of an unusual sort. The movie is set entirely in and whose abusive habits and lofty beliefs are
Liu’s parents’ cramped apartment in Beijing, where she, her father (Liu mentioned with quiet trepidation. Any shock
comes not from the freakiness of the domestic
Zaiping), and her mother ( Jia Huifen) play themselves, or versions of setup but from seeing how thoughtful and
themselves. The drama is centered on Zaiping’s business, making and decent, by and large, the boys have turned
selling lovingly handcrafted and fancifully styled leather goods; but his out—far more so than the menacing electronic
score would like us to think. Their virtual im-
sales are scant, the household is drowning in debt, and his staunchly prisonment has shaped but not ruined them,
artistic and ethical disdain for the wiles of salesmanship don’t help. and we slowly see them venture into the wilds
Doing her own cinematography with a consumer-grade video camera, of regular existence. Should anyone be looking
for half a dozen film critics, these guys would
1
Liu creates dramatic, cannily framed wide-screen images that em- fit right in.—Anthony Lane (Streaming on Tubi,
phasize her parents’ tense discussions about money and health, acute Prime Video, MUBI, and other services.)
observations of neighborhood life, and lively reminiscences of happier
ALAMY
times. She transforms manual labor, family meals, and even domestic For more reviews, visit
arguments into intimately choreographed spectacles.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town
1
ell, Massachusetts, among other places.) them). For the Masala Half Fry (or Full
Eggholic was founded in a suburb of Fry, if you prefer your yolks less runny), a
Chicago, in 2018, by Bhagyesh and Lay pair of eggs sunny-side up are blanketed
TABLES FOR TWO Patel, cousins who grew up in Ahmed- in a dark, intensely concentrated hash of
abad, the largest city in Gujarat, a major- spiced tomato and onion and showered
Eggholic ity-Hindu state in western India that’s in cilantro.
256-01 Hillside Ave., Queens famous for its mostly vegetarian street Some dishes contain more than one
food. Since the nineteen-eighties, egg iteration of eggs: an omelette called la-
In the early nineteen-eighties, in India, dishes have become a major draw at Gu- peti is filled with boiled egg shredded
an agriculturist named B. V. Rao founded jarat’s night markets—though not with- as finely as cheese; for the Lava Pulav,
the National Egg Coordination Com- out controversy: some Hindus consider an omelette is left unfolded and topped
mittee (N.E.C.C.) to protect poultry eggs to be meat, and in 2021 Ahmedabad with a volcano-like mound of turmeric-
farmers, not to mention consumers, from banned the sale of eggs (joining meat and steamed basmati rice and shredded egg,
traders who bought low, ignoring rising fish) on the street. a ladle of tomato sauce spooned into
PHOTOGRAPH BY EMMA FISHMAN FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
production costs, and sold high. Among Americans, who eat around twice the middle. Shredded egg thickens the
the committee’s first orders of business as many eggs as Indians, need no con- tomato sauce that creates the base of
was rehabilitating the image of their vincing about them; if anything, we take the best-selling Surti Gotalo, which is
product, an ingredient largely left out them for granted. But if the threshold topped with two fried eggs.
of the average Indian’s diet. Rao hired an for making eggs exciting is higher here, Many dishes, including the Egg
advertising agency to devise a national Eggholic pole-vaults over it. Though Bhurji, scrambled with chopped Thai
campaign to drive interest in the egg. the setting suggests fast food (the dining chili, tomato, onion, ginger, and garlic,
Ads enumerated its nutritional benefits room is reminiscent of a bright, clean are spicy. To offset the heat, there are
and offered recipes for egg chaats and McDonald’s), the staff offers a warm, flaky roti and thick wedges of buttered
egg biryanis. A television spot featured personalized experience, and the kitchen white toast, plus cold bottles of Indian
the wrestler turned actor Dara Singh turns out a dizzying array of casually pre- beer and mango lassis, which become a
delivering a catchy jingle that went “Sun- sented but artfully executed egg dishes. dessert called Mastani with the addition
day ho ya Monday, roz khao ande”: “Be it Start with an “eggetizer” called Green of vanilla ice cream, nuts, and bright-
Sunday or Monday, eat an egg.” Boiled Fry, featuring two bisected hard- green, herbal-tasting khus syrup, made
That the campaign was incredibly boiled eggs draped in a supple sauce of from vetiver grass. To offset the eggs,
successful is borne out by Eggholic, an blitzed green Thai chili and garlic, which there are plenty of dishes that contain
Indian restaurant that opened in Flo- pools seductively with oil and almost none, centering instead on chicken or
ral Park, Queens, last year, the latest crackles with salt, a perfect foil to the paneer. But be it Sunday, Monday, or
iteration of a franchise with locations creamy yolk. A thin “floating” omelette, any other day of the week: eat an egg.
in a seemingly random collection of its surface golden brown and caramel- (Dishes $1.99-$14.99.)
places united by their growing South ized, is plump with sharp white Ched- —Hannah Goldfield
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 9
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT Now we find out that Joe Biden did the team let the news come out in dribs and
A CLASSIFIED MESS exact same thing that every President drabs in the course of a week.
has done.” The basic time line appears to be this:
epublicans are, unsurprisingly, in an The complaint from Comer, who is On November 2nd, a week before the
R uproar over the discovery, in three
different locations associated with Pres-
the new chair of the House Committee
on Oversight and Accountability, was,
midterm elections, Biden’s personal law-
yers, who were packing up his office at
ident Joe Biden—his former office at to say the least, muddled. Biden has in the Penn Biden Center, found Obama
the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy fact been “treated with” a special coun- Administration documents, some of them
and Global Engagement, a room in his sel: Robert Hur, whom Attorney Gen- marked as classified. (The Center didn’t
Delaware home, and his garage—of eral Merrick Garland appointed on Jan- open until a year after Biden left the Vice-
documents marked as classified. But uary 12th. It’s not obvious that every Presidency; it’s not clear where the pa-
there is some confusion in the G.O.P. President has taken home classified doc- pers were in the meantime.) The lawyers
ranks about what the focus of their ire uments, let alone done so with Trump’s notified the National Archives, which in-
should be, and last week it fell to Mar- obstruction, sense of entitlement, and formed the Department of Justice. Both
tha MacCallum, of Fox News, to try to defiance of both the National Archives Biden and Secretary of State Antony
clear things up. She was questioning and the F.B.I. (Biden also didn’t try to Blinken, who was the Center’s manag-
Representative James Comer, of Ken- overturn an election, but that’s another ing director, have said they weren’t aware
tucky, who had just been speculating story.) Hundreds of documents were that any such records were there. On No-
about the University of Pennsylvania found at Mar-a-Lago; so far, Biden’s case vember 14th, Garland asked a U.S. At-
being in the pocket of Chinese Com- seems to involve about twenty. One of torney to take a look.
munists. Comer had suggested, in an- the many unfortunate aspects of the case, More than a month later, on Decem-
other interview, that he was concerned though, is that the count rose as the Biden ber 20th, Biden’s lawyers told the Jus-
not so much about classified documents tice Department that they had found
ending up in a former Vice-President’s the documents that were in his garage
home as about whether Biden was being at home. On January 9th, CBS News
treated differently than Donald Trump reported on the papers found at the Biden
was when documents marked classified Center. The Biden team confirmed the
were found at his home, at Mar-a-Lago. report, without, at first, mentioning the
“Do you mean that?” MacCallum asked. garage papers. Two days later, according
“Or is it a big deal that he had these to the team, the lawyers found another
documents, and are you concerned about document, in the room in the house.
the national-security implications?” The next day, Karine Jean-Pierre, the
“I’m concerned, because we believe White House press secretary, said in re-
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA
that Hunter Biden, especially, is a na- sponse to a question about the search
tional-security risk,” Comer said, refer- process, “You should assume that it’s
ring to the President’s son. At the same been completed.” But five more docu-
time, “every President has accidentally ments were apparently found in the room
taken documents that were deemed clas- that evening.
sified,” he continued. “Yet they were never The communications from the White
raided. They never were treated with a House have been, in short, a mess. When
special counsel, like Donald Trump was. Peter Doocy, of Fox News, asked Biden
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 11
at a press conference, “Classified mate- lor Greene, and Scott Perry—got seats another. Presidents do not have the power
rial next to your Corvette—what were on the committee. Greene said that the to declassify documents psychically, as
you thinking?,” the President decided to documents case is an example of a “two- Trump has suggested, but their power
defend the honor of his car, a 1967 Sting- tiered justice system,” that Biden should to do so in other ways is surprisingly
ray convertible: “My Corvette’s in a locked be impeached, and that the timing of broad and ill-defined, governed largely
garage, O.K.? So it’s not like it’s sitting the disclosures was “so much B.S.” by executive orders and precedent. That
out in the street.” Cue a New York Post Republican-controlled hearings on reality had complicated the legal case
headline announcing, “HUNTER BIDEN the Biden documents will almost cer- against Trump even before Biden’s law-
HAD ACCESS TO DAD’S CORVETTE,” ac- tainly be distorted by an imperative to yers found the first documents.
companied by a photo of the President’s protect Trump. That is a pity, for more The President has not yet said for
son seated in the car, which was pur- than one reason. Comer may have come sure if he will run again in 2024. The af-
portedly found on a laptop belonging to to the issue in a backward, partisan way, fair of the documents may prove some-
him—the subject of yet another saga. but there are big problems with the gov- thing of a stress test. Republicans would
Comer, who can now wield sub- ernment’s classified-documents system. no doubt like to see all these story lines—
poena power, announced this month For one thing, there is wide agreement the documents, Hunter, the Corvette,
that the Oversight Committee will ramp that the United States has an overclas- Communists—merge into a lurid fog
up an investigation into Hunter Biden’s sification addiction. As Oona Hathaway, that obscures the real line between
business dealings and those of other a Yale law professor, told NPR last week, Trump’s case and Biden’s. They are not
family members and associates. And no one even knows exactly how many the same, and that is something worth
last week, thanks to the promises that classified documents there are. It’s esti- emphasizing. But the fact that these two
Kevin McCarthy appears to have made mated that some fifty million new things very different men, for different reasons,
to secure the Speakership, some of the get classified each year, and the more both had classified documents in their
most Trumpist and conspiracy-minded than two million people with security homes should be cause for reflection
members of the House G.O.P.—Lau- clearances, military and civilian, can po- about our system of secrecy, too.
ren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Tay- tentially add to the pile, by one route or —Amy Davidson Sorkin
DEPT. OF EARWORMS Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” in Salt Lake who recently installed opera-blaring
LOUDER City, Utah; Bizet’s “Carmen” in San speakers outside his store, offered his
Diego. In New York City, where more thoughts on local television: “Studies
than seventy thousand people are un- have shown that the classical music is
housed, locals know that the place to annoying. Opera is annoying.”
get an earful of very loud opera along A few opera types, ahem, disagreed.
with your Big Gulp is a 7-Eleven near “I don’t think there are any studies,” Mary
the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Ann Smart, who is a professor of music
usic can be many things, includ- The other night, a few police officers at the University of California, Berkeley,
M ing a weapon. Among the songs
that law enforcement and militaries have
stood around talking under the store’s
glowing sign. “They play it all the time,”
said. But she had some theories about
why 7-Eleven would choose opera. “It’s
played, at deafening volume, to break one cop said, of the opera music. She not calm,” she said. “It’s fast and loud
the spirits of adversaries over the years wore a bulletproof vest under her coat, and active, but it doesn’t have that syn-
are “Paranoid,” by Black Sabbath (Man- and an N.Y.P.D. beanie. Her partner copated aspect that makes people want
uel Noriega, 1989); the “Barney” theme looked as though he had just gradu- to dance, or give them the impression
(detainees held at black sites in Iraq, ated from high school. “It bothers me,” that they’re in a club or at a rave.”
2003); Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are she said. The composer Martin Bresnick, who
Made for Walkin’” (cult leader David A third cop said, “I never once woke is a professor at the Yale School of Music,
Koresh, 1993; federal agents also blared up and said, ‘Yeah, I wanna listen to hazarded a sociological explanation. “For
recordings of rabbits being slaughtered); opera music right now!’” some people,” he said, “the world of opera
and “Oops! . . . I Did It Again,” by Brit- The subway rumbled underfoot, sirens is so riddled through with racial and
ney Spears (Somali pirates, 2013; a se- blared, and two officers on horseback class hierarchies that people feel blocked
curity official said, “I’d imagine using clopped by. A man named C. J.—who out of it, or humiliated by it.” A similar
Justin Bieber would be against the Ge- was dressed in several coats and house point was made by Susan Rogers, a Berk-
neva Convention”). slippers, and said that he sleeps on the 2 lee College of Music professor, who has
Now the music-as-deterrent tech- train most nights—gestured at the store. worked as an audio engineer for Prince
nique has been adopted by the Slurpee “I like the blueberry muffins in there,” he and David Byrne. “Familiarity goes a
sector. Franchises of 7-Eleven have been said. He didn’t like the opera much: “They long way toward making us feel wel-
using the tactic to dissuade homeless just play it over and over and over again, come,” she said, “and something that’s
people from loitering outside. Their mu- all day long. And it’s the same song!” unfamiliar does the opposite.”
sic of choice? Opera—Verdi’s “Simon Why did 7-Eleven choose opera? Ellen Reid, who won the Pulitzer
Boccanegra” in Modesto, California; Jagat Patel, a franchisee in Austin, Texas, Prize for her opera “p r i s m,” in 2019,
12 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
explained that 7-Eleven had bastard- In the show, Quinn makes wry ob-
ized the form. “Opera is about the story- servations from an enthusiast’s per-
telling,” she said. “It’s about the shared spective and offers tips, of a sort (“Well,
experience. Without the context, with- folks, whoop! Wednesday night. That’s
out the setup, without the agreement how you small talk—you just state facts.
of your audience members to be a part Wednesday night. Middle of the week,
of the piece, what is it? Not opera!” She aaggh. New York City”); philosophizes
laughed and added, “It’s a great prem- (“We’re not robots yet, but we’re half-
ise for an opera: Store owner tries to way there. Between phones, AirPods,
scare away people!” and self-checkout, small talk is down
It doesn’t always work that way. At eighty-seven per cent”); and encourages
the 7-Eleven near Union Square, quarter- widespread education. Before preschool,
pound Big Bite hot dogs turned silently teach your kid, “ ‘Wait—before you go
on the roller grill, and the beer refriger- in there. It’s not your family in there.
ators hummed their refrigerator hum. This is the big leagues. This is society. . . .
No opera. Outside, a man held a paper Walk in with a little something.’” One
7-Eleven cup, and asked a passerby for of the show’s points, obvious but nec-
some spare change. The passerby won- essary, is that the social world requires
dered how he felt about the chain’s opera effort—dressing up, pretending to be in Colin Quinn
gambit. “Opera music is beautiful,” he a good mood, laughing at co-workers’
said. “Oooh, opera! I love opera. I’m a jokes—and most likely involves rising “Weekend Update” and his Comedy
1
music man.” above one’s authentic self, “mildly de- Central roundtable, “Tough Crowd with
—Adam Iscoe pressed and emotionally withholding,” Colin Quinn,” and to hyperdrive smack
in sweatpants. talk on Howard Stern’s shows and the
THE BOARDS Quinn, who has written and per- comedy-roast circuit. More recently,
BLARNEY formed eight solo shows, on and off he’s played funny elder-statesman roles:
Broadway, grew up as the son of teach- Amy Schumer’s dad in “Trainwreck,”
ers, in Park Slope, loving the comedy the Grumpy’s owner on “Girls.” But his
of Richard Pryor and George Carlin: stage shows, two directed by Jerry Sein-
“My brother and I had these obscure feld, may be Quinn’s purest artistic form:
Pryor bootlegs, with Pryor doing these deep dives into his mind, on a big topic,
characters at little clubs—it was so pow- with a crowd.
hough theoretically pleasant, small erful. I’d never heard anything like it.” “Small Talk,” directed by James Fau-
T talk—opening gambits, friendly
chitchat, weather observations—tends
He started doing standup in 1984, after
he quit drinking. (“I was banned from
vell, has evolved as a kind of dialogue
itself. “Sometimes I’ll be in my own
to be the Rodney Dangerfield of con- McSorley’s, which was very painful emo- head,” Quinn said. “I’ve been slandered
versation: it gets no respect. But the tionally for me. They were, like, ‘That’s many times as being a person that’s
comedian Colin Quinn, raspy-voiced, it—get the fook out!’”) He’d been afraid having a conversation with myself on-
Brooklyn-accented, and rat-a-tat loqua- of bombing onstage. “But, after I quit stage.” (He interrupts himself, too.) “You
cious, revels in it, including in his new drinking, I didn’t worry about bombing want to let people in.” He went on, “The
solo theatre show, “Small Talk,” at the anymore,” he said. He performed at the good thing about laughter is you get to
Lucille Lortel. A few weeks ago, after a Comedy Cellar regularly, as he still does, go, ‘Oh, I’m not crazy.’” He doesn’t mind
preparatory standup set, Quinn, sixty- and lived across the street from it for a not getting laughs for every joke, but
three and currently bearded, sat at a table while. “It was a really weird, wonderful “I don’t want to live in a delusion.” As
in the bustling upstairs bar at the Com- time,” he said. “The Paper Moon was he and Fauvell worked, they considered
edy Cellar, in Greenwich Village, en- right around the corner here. Eddie Brill various arrangements for joke bits (“The
joying live music and a Diet Coke, oc- started a comedy night. Downstairs was banter thing was better by itself, and
casionally chatting with passersby. “One a theatre setup,” conducive to mono- then Norm Macdonald, and then Soc-
of the things I’m saying in the show is logues. “Mario Cantone would do these rates,” Fauvell said, at one rehearsal),
that people adapt their personality to great characters.” and at the bar Quinn pulled out a neatly
the times, for survival,” he said. In the Quinn, a comic’s comic, became fa- hand-lettered list of bullet points for
social-media age, “the extremists set the mous to Gen X-ers in the eighties, as the show: “WORSHIP-REBEL-KIDS,”
tone,” but small talk, done right, can the announcer-sidekick on “Remote “EMPIRES-NOTICE THE DISGRUN-
help. The live music got fiddle-heavy Control,” MTV’s anarchic-comedic TLED,” “MAGIC-REVOLUTIONARY-
(“Ooh, a little Irish!”), and Quinn ad- game show (in early episodes, he smokes MANNERS.”
justed his own tone as the volume rose cigarettes), and to mainstream audi- In the bar, people began singing
and fell. “Humanity started with small ences on “Saturday Night Live” in the along with “Take Me Home, Coun-
talk. It’s that common thing, where you’re nineties; he applied his gravelly straight- try Roads.” “It’s a weird time,” Quinn
going, ‘We’re both humans.’ You know?” talking brio to political analysis on said, of the pandemic era. “People are
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 13
saying weird shit because there’s al- assessments that pair familiar footage ens and Radice played up the obnox-
most nothing to say and there are no (cheese-pull closeups, overhead plate iousness, as a gag. “Then it became
solutions.” Small talk’s little connec- pans) with caustic “Ab Fab”-ish voice- real,” Radice said, laughing. By calling
tions—in the elevator, on the subway— over (“By far the worst twelve hun- viewers “peasants”—which “we would
are only good. “It’s like two ships that dred dollars we have ever spent!” “How never do in real life,” Jongens said—
signal each other when they’re pass- is this F.D.A.-approved?”). They are they found a way to keep their com-
ing in the ocean,” Quinn says in the unrepentant. “All these restaurants have mentary cheekily confrontational even
show. “They can’t help each other if a wait lists for weeks and months,” Ra- when gushing over a meal. “Basically,
storm comes. But it’s basically saying, dice said. “We just want to give the either the restaurant is getting roasted
‘Hey, listen, we’re two ships, and we real tea.” or our audience is getting roasted,” Ra-
both know all the joy and agony that The other evening, the duo, who are dice said. “A Michelin-star restaurant
goes with being ships. I’m just acknowl- blond best friends from the Philly sub- can be upwards of five hundred dollars
1
edging you, you know?’ ” urbs, settled into a table at Daniel, the a person. People deserve to know what
—Sarah Larson two-Michelin-star restaurant on the they’re getting.”
Upper East Side. They decided on Dan- A waiter brought over an amuse-
MEAN GIRLS iel’s four-course à-la-carte option over bouche of tiny beets. Jongens and Radice
INFLUENCERS, EATING the fixed, seafood-heavy seven-course whipped out their iPhones. Initial skep-
tasting menu. “I don’t need, like, four ticism faded. “Truly the most I’ve ever
different kinds of fish,” Radice said. enjoyed beets,” Jongens said. Bread ar-
Both wore all black and matching sil- rived: warm, segmented horseshoes.
ver pendants engraved with the letters “Bougie!” she cried.
“VIP.” Neither cooks. Radice had not The first course—lobster salad chaud-
bought groceries in a year; Jongens’s froid for Radice, yuzu-and-dill-cured
. J. Liebling once wrote that “the fridge was empty except for Polly-O king salmon for Jongens—was chewed
A primary requisite for writing well
about food is a good appetite.” That’s
string cheese. “It’s so easy to get incred-
ible meals in New York,” Jongens said.
with quiet nods. Radice eyed Jongens’s
next dish, risotto topped with white truf-
a nice first step for TikTok-ing about “Why would I even try?” fles (a hundred and thirty dollars extra).
it, too, but if you want followers it helps Before TikTok, neither of them had “It’s not as truffly as expected,” Jongens
to offer some bite. (See: “The food is reviewed food. (Yelp? “Too Karen,” reported. “But it’s fire.”
terrible!” “And such small portions!”) Radice said.) The account launched at Jongens had previously worked as a
Coming off a time when many review- the start of lockdown, when Radice re- hostess for a short time after college,
ers have been pulling punches out of viewed a Manhattan night club using and Radice did admin for a wealth-man-
sympathy for the restaurant industry’s footage on her phone from the Before agement firm, but they now support
pandemic struggles, Audrey Jongens Times. Ten thousand unexpected views themselves by selling ads on the VIP
and Meg Radice have built an audi- later, she and Jongens had found their List. “No trust funds in sight,” Jongens
ence for the VIP List, their TikTok- calling. Most of the reviews were pos- said. Radice sipped an apple-pie-themed
born brand, in part by bringing out itive, but the harder they trashed a place, mocktail and said, “Everyone’s, like, ‘It’s
the brass knuckles. Their account can it seemed, the wider the clip spread. (A Daddy’s money!’ I’m, like, I make way
draw a million viewers, attracted by sober flogging of Artichoke Basille’s more than my dad!” Last year, they
the comically scathing thirty-second Pizza cleared five million views.) Jong- found a new revenue stream by curat-
ing “experiences”—select combinations
of plates and drinks—at their favorite
restaurants (Kyma, Oak Tuscan Truf-
fle Lounge); the restaurants give them
a cut. “We’re trying to build a business
that has longevity, so we’re not just in-
fluencers,” Radice said. “Like, I’m sorry,
will people still be getting brand deals
when they’re sixty?”
The entrées arrived: Wagyu strips
with licorice-braised red cabbage and
herbed corzetti. “Not the best Wagyu
I’ve ever had,” Jongens declared.
“You have to chew it,” Radice said.
“There’s no melt.”
Jongens glanced around at the neoclas-
sical décor. “Also, it’s not that much of a
vibe,” she said. “It’s giving bar mitzvah.”
“At least it’s winter.” Dessert was ample—pine-needle ice
cream, pear gâteau, and a chestnut-whis- Joshua Tree,” by U2, which sparked a ers Karamazov,” and to recount a disturb-
key mousse. When the waiter lifted a memory: “One time, I’m leaving a gig in ing anecdote about a methadone-clinic
porcelain lid to reveal a bowl of compli- Dublin, maybe 1 A.M., and a limo pulls staffer nicknamed Dr. Finger Fuck, all
mentary fresh-baked madeleines, Jong- up, unannounced—‘Sir, please get in, within three pages.
ens and Radice gasped and grabbed at Bono is waiting to record with you.’” For years, Mehldau and his wife, the
their phones. “I’ll do it again,” he of- He went on, “I always had people Dutch vocalist Fleurine, split their time
fered. Then he used miniature tongs to telling me, ‘You ought to do an all-Bea- between a suburb of Amsterdam and a
place four small chocolate batons on tles album,’ or ‘You should do the pop rental on the Upper West Side. Dur-
each plate, in a grid. “The most beauti- American songbook,’ but it felt forced.” ing COVID, they were locked down in
ful hashtag I’ve ever seen,” Jongens said. He had no qualms about playing the the Netherlands, and they let the lease
To their followers’ dismay, a positive songbook; the jazz greats have always on the New York apartment run out.
review was in the works. Someday, Ra- done that. He worried about pandering. They have two daughters and a teen-
dice said, they hope to cover the food “There’s a self-conscious inner voice: age son who’s an aspiring drummer.
scenes all over America, and beyond. ‘See, there he goes with the covers again,’” “Last night, he and I went to Smalls,”
“I’ll review a yacht if I have to,” Jongens he said. “But, with the right source ma- Mehldau said. “He tells me what he
said. “I mean, if the people want it, who terial, the more you take it apart, the thinks of the music, and I do my best
1
am I to say no?” more it opens up.” (He mentioned the to stay quiet.” Smalls is one of the West
—Dan Greene Talmud, Lizst’s transcriptions of Schu- Village clubs where Mehldau got his
bert, and “The Western Canon,” by Har- start; his picture is on the wall, and the
PERSONAL CANON old Bloom.) In 2018, he played a solo owner is an old friend from the Jones
PAPERBACK WRITER Bach concert at the Philharmonie de Street days. The previous night, in a lit-
Paris; in 2020, the Philharmonie asked tle club down the block from Smalls,
if he would play another one, this time he’d played as a sideman for another
swapping out Bach for the Beatles. He old friend, the guitarist Peter Bernstein,
thought about it for a day or two, and who still owed him his cut. The follow-
his response evolved from “meh” to “I ing week, he would play a jazz cruise—
call dibs on ‘Golden Slumbers.’” In Feb- “Not the sort of thing I usually do, but
rad Mehldau is arguably the great- ruary, the Beatles concert will be released the offer was too good to pass up”—
B est working jazz pianist. Top five,
for sure. He’s fifty-two—too old to be
as an album called “Your Mother Should
Know.”The following month, he’ll pub-
followed by a week at the Village Van-
guard. He left Jones Street and wan-
a wunderkind, too young to be an émi- lish a book—“my nonfiction bildungs- dered north, looking for old haunts,
nence grise, although his hair is grayer roman,” as he put it—called “Forma- when, almost literally, he bumped into
and thinner than it was on the cover of tion: Building a Personal Canon, Part Bernstein, who reached into his jacket
“Introducing Brad Mehldau,” his 1995 I.” He’s not the first musician to write pocket and handed Mehldau a rum-
début as a bandleader, which included a memoir. He is, presumably, the first pled check. Not cruise-liner money, but
some standards (Duke Ellington, Rod- to quote Goethe immediately after “Bo- a gig’s a gig.
gers and Hart) and the originals “Angst” hemian Rhapsody,” to allude to “Jonny Mehldau kept walking, determined
and “Young Werther.” (He was going Quest” in the same breath as “The Broth- to find the Corner Bistro from mem-
through a lot at the time, including a ory. “Ah, fuck it,” he said, and opened a
heroin addiction.) He had the touch of map on his phone. He remembered the
Bill Evans and the range of Keith Jar- late-night burgers (“I’m flexitarian now,
rett, but he became known, perhaps but I can still taste it”) and the jukebox,
above all, for his renditions of canoni- which had “everything from Tom Waits
cal rock songs: Radiohead, Jeff Buck- to Miles.” They still serve the burger,
ley, Neil Young, and, always, the Bea- but the jukebox has been replaced by an
tles (a head-spinning solo version of A.T.M.; the music now comes from
“Martha My Dear”; a fifteen-minute Spotify—the free version.
“And I Love Her”; “Mother Nature’s Stepping outside, Mehldau was rec-
Son” on vibraphone). ognized by a fan named Bobby Tie-
The other day, Mehldau stood in front mann, a thirty-year-old musician. “I don’t
of 7 Jones Street, a non-prime building mean to bother you,” Tiemann said.
in a prime West Village location, where “It’s no bother,” Mehldau said.
he’d lived in the early nineties. “Last time “I love what you did with—Bach’s
I came around, they still had my name Fugue in G Minor, was it? You played
on the buzzer,” he said. Not anymore. A that one?”
few doors down, in the display window “I tried, man. It kinda kicked my ass.”
of a record store, were “Meet the Bea- Afterward, he said, “He was sweet.
tles” (“the only Beatles record my par- At least he didn’t ‘Mr. Mehldau’ me.”
ents owned when I was a kid”) and “The Brad Mehldau —Andrew Marantz
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 15
with Adams. “He kept telling me we’re
OUR LOCAL CORRESPONDENTS gonna make millions together,” Bel-
monte said. “And he said, ‘You gotta
done. Whitehead wanted more. “He ba- make it a homeless shelter, and you’ll chased a one-bedroom apartment to-
sically says, ‘You got to give me another get city benefits,’” Belmonte recalled. gether in 1988. When The City, a local
five grand,’” Belmonte recalled. “I said, Whitehead offered to broker a meeting news Web site, asked Adams’s 2021 may-
16 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
oral campaign whether he still owned son, another N.Y.P.D. friend, to be a se- of stealing ninety thousand dollars from
the property, the campaign claimed that nior adviser on public safety, even as her after offering to help her buy a house.
Adams had “gifted” his half to Cowan. Pearson continued to work an outside Adams called Whitehead after the rob-
Later, Adams amended fifteen years job—at the same racino for which bery, to offer his support. “He just en-
of financial-disclosure forms to reflect Adams had been investigated. Lisa couraged me to keep my head strong,”
that he still owned half the apartment. White, the former treasurer of the One Whitehead said.
He blamed his former accountant, Clar- Brooklyn Fund, with whom Adams once Brandon Belmonte was not the first
ence Harley. Harley had gone through shared an apartment, was installed as person to go to law enforcement with
“some difficult times,” Adams said. “I deputy commissioner for employee re- the suspicion that Whitehead and Adams
had an accountant who was homeless,” lations at the N.Y.P.D., at an annual sal- were engaged in corruption. Both men
he explained. “I let him continue to do ary of roughly a quarter million dollars. deny that their relationship goes beyond
his job, even when he lived in a home- Adams is hardly the first New York that of mentor and mentee. “Everybody
less shelter and because of that, it caused mayor to have dubious friendships. But is trying to connect me and the Mayor
him to make some bad decisions.” It he came into office with a special cate- with some fiduciary experience,” White-
came out after the primary that Harley gory of associates, men he had spent time head told me, a few weeks ago. “We don’t
hadn’t simply fallen on hard times. Until with socially during his two terms as talk about real estate. We don’t talk about
2017, he had lived in an affordable-hous- Brooklyn borough president, from 2014 stocks. We don’t talk about none of that.
ing building in Harlem, where he did to 2021. He has called a few of them his We talk about life.” Some people who
the books for the building’s board. The “mentees.” Among them are two broth- have worked with Adams suggested that
board discovered that Harley appeared ers, Robert and Zhan Petrosyants, who his relationship with Whitehead is rep-
to have siphoned tens of thousands of pleaded guilty to financial crimes, in 2014, resentative of a character flaw: the May-
dollars from the building’s accounts, and and who run a Manhattan restaurant, or is unwilling to distance himself from
evicted him shortly thereafter. (Harley La Baia, where Adams, as mayor, dines people he’s let into his life, even when it
could not be reached for comment.) frequently. Lamor Whitehead was also would be politically wise to do so. “I have
Adams has dismissed much of the a protégé of the Mayor’s. And he made no experience of Eric crossing the line,”
critical coverage he’s received as racism. sure everyone knew. In May, Whitehead a local politician said. “That’s different
“Black candidates for office are often claimed to have negotiated, directly with from the company he keeps.”
held to a higher, unfair standard—espe- the Mayor, the surrender of a man who A few days before Christmas, the
cially those from lower-income back- was wanted for murder. Adams didn’t U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan an-
grounds such as myself,” he said just deny this. He described the bishop as nounced that Whitehead had been ar-
before primary day, when the Times ex- just one of many younger men whom rested. Prosecutors in the office’s Pub-
amined his past fund-raising practices. he’s taken under his wing. “He’s my men- lic Corruption Unit said they’d caught
The newspaper took a close look at the tor,” Whitehead told the Post in May. him claiming to have influence at City
One Brooklyn Fund, a nonprofit that “We’ve done a lot of work in Brooklyn Hall while trying to shake down Bel-
Adams controlled while serving as when he was the Brooklyn borough pres- monte. Adams was not accused of any
Brooklyn borough president. The fund ident. He helped me out a lot.” wrongdoing; prosecutors said that
received donations from real-estate de- This was true. During Adams’s time Whitehead, while making his overtures
velopers, some of whom had business as borough president, Whitehead, a con- to Belmonte, “knew” that he could not
with the city. Adams denied any impro- victed fraudster and identity thief, used obtain the city-government “actions” he
priety. “I hope by becoming mayor I can Adams’s name to promote his church, was promising. But it’s not clear how
change minds and create one equal stan- and to give a boost to his business in- the government reached that conclu-
dard for all,” he said. terests. Adams, meanwhile, opened doors sion. A spokesperson for the U.S. At-
On January 1, 2022, Adams was sworn for the younger man, offering advice torney’s office in Manhattan declined
in. He soon appointed to important and inviting him to speak at high-pro- to comment. When I asked a City Hall
posts an array of friends and close con- file events. “I think it’s important to hear spokesperson whether Adams or any-
nections. For his deputy mayor for pub- from some of our young people—a young one on his staff had been interviewed
lic safety, he chose Philip Banks III, a pastor, Bishop Lamor Whitehead,” Ad- or subpoenaed as part of the investiga-
former N.Y.P.D. official who had re- ams said, introducing Whitehead at a tion, the spokesperson referred me to
signed in 2014, amid a federal investi- press conference in 2017, in the wake of comments the Mayor made after White-
gation into favor trading and bribery. a hate crime. head’s arrest. “I have no comments on
For his chief of staff, he picked Frank This past July, Whitehead made na- the federal investigation,” Adams said.
Carone, a Brooklyn Democratic Party tional headlines when videos of him be- (When asked the same question fol-
power broker who has drawn scrutiny ing robbed during a church service, while lowing the publication of this story on-
for his business dealings. He tried to in- wearing what was reported as several line, Adams said that no one in his of-
stall his brother to run mayoral security hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jew- fice had been subpoenaed.) He called
at a salary of two hundred and ten thou- elry, went viral. The robbery prompted the allegations “troubling,” but he wasn’t
sand dollars a year. (An ethics board closer inspection of Whitehead’s church; ready to wash his hands of Whitehead,
forced him to knock the salary down to The City reported that a former parish- as a politician might be expected to do
a dollar.) He appointed Timothy Pear- ioner had sued Whitehead, accusing him upon hearing that an associate dropped
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 17
could feel that menace,” a man named
Brian Etta told me recently. Etta showed
me documents indicating that, in 2006,
while Whitehead was working for a
mortgage broker, Whitehead helped
sell Etta’s house in Brooklyn and then
pocketed proceeds from the sale. City
records show that the property was later
transferred to a company controlled by
Whitehead. In 2013, Etta volunteered
for Eric Adams’s first campaign for
Brooklyn borough president, and, at Ad-
ams’s inauguration, he spotted White-
head at Brooklyn Borough Hall. “I
thought, This is brazen,” Etta said. “A
guy who wants to have an image of being
squeaky clean, and this guy who is an
actual criminal?”
Not long after Etta met him, White-
head was convicted of a startling fraud
“Eh, instead of a bottle of rum, I think I’ll have a mocktail.” on Long Island. Using information that
he’d obtained from a girlfriend, an em-
ployee at a Honda dealership in Patch-
• • ogue, Whitehead stole the identities of
more than a dozen of the dealership’s
his name while trying to extort some- Whitehead. Many have reported him customers. He used those identities to
one. Adams said he would let the in- to the authorities, and several have come purchase luxury vehicles. A prosecutor
vestigative process play out. away feeling that he was protected by called it one of the largest identity-theft
his relationship with Adams. “I could cases Suffolk County had seen. During
hitehead is forty-four years old. tell he was name dropping again using his trial, Whitehead got ordained as a
W He has bright brown eyes and
a wide, engaging smile. He often spends
Eric Adams again and trying to discredit
me,” a pastor named Robin Brown wrote
pastor, and wore clerical collars to court
appearances. “I don’t fear you,” he told
several hours a day live-streaming on in an e-mail to the Brooklyn District the judge at his sentencing, in June,
Facebook and Instagram, where he Attorney’s office, in 2014, describing her 2008, after being found guilty of more
promotes his church and his luxurious attempts to report Whitehead to the than a dozen counts of identity theft.
life style, and denounces his enemies. N.Y.P.D. “I have lost all faith in the sys- “I fear God.”
“Designer for days,” he once said, giv- tem.” (Brown declined to comment for One of Whitehead’s lawyers was
ing his followers a virtual tour of his this article.) “I’ve tried to report him on André Soleil, a former Republican po-
walk-in “prayer closet,” which was several occasions at the local precinct, litical operative. Soleil, who has lived
stuffed with clothing from Gucci, Fendi, but to no avail,” the Reverend Benny abroad for the past several years, was
and Louis Vuitton. Whitehead, who Custodio, of Immanuel–First Spanish disbarred in absentia in 2019, after being
lives in a multimillion-dollar house in United Methodist Church, in Park Slope, accused of bilking a Harlem nonprofit,
Paramus, New Jersey, advertises him- Brooklyn, wrote in a comment on a blog and of stealing from escrow accounts he
self as an ascendant community leader post about Whitehead in 2017. “This set up during real-estate transactions. “I
in a multiplicity of realms: business, cardboard bishop is currently at my will note that I’ve been merely accused,”
politics, religion, and entertainment. church doing the same thing he has done he told me, when I called him recently.
He has said that one of his missions is in the past, using the church to fatten Soleil spoke with regret about the role
to serve as an emissary between “the his pockets. He knows the system very he played in Adams and Whitehead’s
streets” and “the church.” In 2018, after well and uses it to his advantage based relationship. “I introduced them,” he said.
the rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine pleaded on the close relationship he has with our A City Hall spokesperson disputes this,
guilty to making sexually explicit vid- borough president, Mr. Eric Adams.” claiming that Adams and Whitehead
eos of a thirteen-year-old girl, White- (Custodio declined to comment when met at “an anti-violence event with rap-
head spoke in court on his behalf. “The I contacted him several months ago; he pers” on an unspecified date “around”
bishop had to come through,” 6ix9ine died in November.) 2014. But there are videos and photo-
said in a video he posted on Instagram. Many Brooklyn church figures, and graphs available online of Adams and
“We had a situation.” business associates and former friends Whitehead together as early as 2013.
There are people all over the city who of Whitehead’s, refused to speak to me Soleil claims he is also a friend of the
claim to have been conned, burned, ha- for this article, because they said they Mayor’s. “Eric and I were close,” he told
rassed, lied to, or otherwise hurt by feared him. “When he got angry, you me. According to Soleil, they met in the
18 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
nineteennineties, when Soleil worked Whitehead in Crown Heights, Brook middle of the night, to go see Adams.
as an aide to Rudy Giuliani in City Hall lyn. Both had also experienced early run With Adams’s help, Whitehead con
and George Pataki in the governor’s of ins with the law. Adams was beaten in nected with other politicians, people in
fice, and when Adams was still a cop— the basement of a Queens police pre the business world, and N.Y.P.D. offi
and, for a time, a Republican. Soleil cinct when he was fifteen years old. Years cials. Whitehead and Adams got together
helped organize fundraisers during Ad before his identitytheft conviction, at Woodland, a restaurant on Flatbush
ams’s first run for Brooklyn borough Whitehead was charged with two counts Avenue where Adams liked to hang out
president. An email invitation to one of forgery in the third degree in New after work hours. Woodland was the first
such fundraiser lists Soleil as a “co Mexico. (The case was dismissed after restaurant run by the Petrosyants broth
chair” beside Tiffany Raspberry, a cur he made full restitution to the victims.) ers, who now run La Baia. “This clique
rent senior adviser to Adams at City People close to Adams say that he’s con didn’t exist when the Mayor was in the
Hall, and Jesse Hamilton, who succeeded scious of how easily his life could have State Senate,” a consultant who worked
Adams in the State Senate. been different, had he not joined the for one of Adams’s rivals in the 2021
Soleil’s legal specialty was real estate. city’s police ranks. “Lamor is like his id,” Democratic mayoral primary said, talking
He played both sides of Brooklyn’s Soleil said. “We all like our id.” about the scene at Woodland. “It formed
gentrification boom, representing both around 2013.” That was the year that
workingclass homeowners and the arly into his friendship with Adams, Whitehead got out of prison, and when
aggressive realestate companies that
flipped their homes. Whitehead, who
E Whitehead was living with a friend
named Aurora Gordon, who had an
the Petrosyants brothers were indicted
by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brook
for several years in the aughts worked apartment in an affordablehousing tower lyn, for conspiring with others to laun
as a branch manager for a realestate in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Gordon, a de der phony insurance payouts through
company called Custom Capital Cor cade older than Whitehead, had escaped shell companies. (They later pleaded
poration, was one of the few criminal from the World Trade Center on 9/11, guilty to lesser charges.)
defendants that Soleil ever represented. and worked in the office of a tech com Whitehead told people that Adams
Whitehead was sentenced to at least a pany. In her spare time, she ran a small planned to appoint him to the Brook
decade in prison, but he got out in the organization called Battered 2 Beauti lyn Chamber of Commerce, and Adams
summer of 2013, after just five years. He ful, for survivors of domestic violence asked community figures—political op
would later tell people that his convic and other forms of abuse. Gordon helped erators, businesspeople, and religious
tions had been overturned. He also said Whitehead found a youthoutreach min leaders—to join a committee called
that he planned to get into politics. istry called Leaders of Tomorrow Brook Leaders of Tomorrow, run by White
Soon after his release, Whitehead lyn. They soon spun it out into an inde head, which met on at least one occa
looked up his old lawyer, and began hang pendent church. “She thought that it sion. “In politics, you run into everybody
ing around Soleil’s law office. He would was really going to be something big, at the same meetings and stuff,” one at
ask Soleil about technical legal and real and she thought he was an honest per tendee remembered. “This gentleman,
estate matters. A few times, Soleil told son,” Gordon’s sister told me. Lamor, was new to a lot of us.” White
me, he came back to his office to find Whitehead, who in his early twen head’s appointment was so obviously
Whitehead there, without permission, ties had worked small jobs in the music wrong, the attendee added, that it “could
reading documents on his desk. business, and modelled streetwear, had not have been a mistake.”
Soleil remembers a holiday party a knack for getting close to the famous Brooklyn borough president is a lofty
that he threw the year Whitehead came and the powerful. He referred to the rap sounding title for a relatively limited
home. In a restaurant in Cobble Hill, per Foxy Brown, a Brooklyn icon, as his position; it’s what remains of the office
Soleil’s Hasidic realestateinvestor cli cousin. On Facebook and Instagram, he of the mayor of Brooklyn, a position
ents and his Black politicalworld friends began chronicling his encounters with that existed before 1898, when Brook
mingled. Soleil had invited Adams, who musicians, boxers, actors, radio person lyn was still its own city. Today, the job
gave a speech. Whitehead, in Soleil’s alities—and with Adams, the new bor is largely ceremonial. During his eight
telling, had more or less invited him ough president. Publicly, Whitehead re years at Borough Hall, Adams issued
self. Halfway through the night, Soleil ferred to Adams as his mentor. Privately, proclamations in honor of Whitehead’s
became aware that Whitehead and he called him E. In one YouTube video friends, relatives, and connections in the
Adams were engaged in what Soleil re from 2013, Whitehead interviews Adams music business, including Foxy Brown,
members as an “intense” conversation. at an event in BedfordStuyvesant. “We’re who received a key to the city from
“Shortly after that,” he said, “it appeared going to be doing a lot of things to Adams and Whitehead. Adams would
that they had become best buddies.” gether,” Whitehead tells him. “Thank declare July 31, 2016, to be Leaders of
Soleil, along with others I spoke to you for being a patriarch for our Black Tomorrow Brooklyn Day, in honor of
for this story, believes that Adams saw community. . . . Thank you for being an Whitehead’s “outstanding contributions”
something of himself in Whitehead. advocate for men.” to the community.
They were both charismatic, ambitious, Whitehead and Adams met up at A few weeks into his first term, Adams
and brash. They had both been raised by concerts, bars, and redcarpet events. hosted a morning meet and greet at
single, workingclass mothers in the outer Gordon told people she knew that Brooklyn Borough Hall with local busi
boroughs: Adams in Jamaica, Queens, Whitehead often got out of bed in the ness leaders. City authorities later found
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 19
that the event broke local political-fund- October. With Whitehead, he has taken had given a copy of an official procla-
raising rules by soliciting contributions a different tack. “I was arrested at fif- mation about Miller to Whitehead.
to the One Brooklyn Fund. The night teen years old . . . and because people Florence Miller wrote an e-mail to
of the meet and greet, Adams co-hosted embraced me when I was arrested, I em- Adams. “I do not want anyone using
an event with Whitehead at a high school brace Lamor Whitehead,” Adams said my husband’s name or the tragic cold
in Bedford-Stuyvesant, advertised as a in 2016, after a Post article revealed that blooded murder for publicity and/or
“One Brooklyn” event honoring Black Whitehead had made false claims about personal gain,” she wrote. “I was also
History Month. Whitehead would use collaborating with the Brooklyn Dis- informed (I’m not sure if this is fact or
the One Brooklyn name for his own trict Attorney’s office and the Brooklyn fiction) that you are working with Pas-
events, and in various promotional ma- Chamber of Commerce. tor Whitehead on different endeavors
terials. (A City Hall spokesperson told “As a Black man, I have an obliga- which is not of my concern. However,
me that the One Brooklyn Fund never tion to mentor other Black men that if any of those endeavor’s consist of the
gave money to Whitehead.) have had negative encounters in their use of my late husband’s name and/or
Among a borough president’s remain- lives,” Adams said earlier this year, talking his tragic death I am requesting it to
ing powers is a say in land-use and real- about Whitehead. “The Bishop lost his be stopped.”
estate matters, such as neighborhood re- father—Arthur Miller was his name— Miller-Bradford received a call from
zonings. In 2014, a community activist in a police incident.” The murder of Whitehead, who screamed at her. Then
named Alicia Boyd hosted a meeting in Miller, a Bahamian immigrant and pros- she got a call from Adams. “Try to work
her house to organize neighborhood op- perous businessman who was choked this out,” she remembers Adams telling
position to a proposed rezoning east of to death by police officers in Crown her. “I want to support your family.”The
Prospect Park—a proposal that Adams Heights in 1978, was one of the most call left the Millers feeling that Adams
supported. “They wanted to turn Em- notorious acts of racist police violence had unfairly taken sides against them,
pire Boulevard into Times Square,” Boyd in New York City history. The Rever- a feeling that has only intensified in the
said. The night of the meeting, White- end Herbert Daughtry, a Brooklyn civil- years since, as they’ve received word of
head showed up at Boyd’s house along rights icon whom Adams has long con- his continued support for Whitehead.
with roughly ten other people. In Ad- sidered a mentor, helped to organize the “Mr. Adams has not supported anything
ams’s name, they shouted the event down. community response. Later, Daughtry that Arthur Miller’s real family has
“He just carried on, he and his friends, and other Brooklyn leaders would call done,” Miller-Bradford said.
yelling, screaming,” Boyd said. They ac- for more young Black men to join the There were some who tried to warn
cused her of being anti-Black, and of N.Y.P.D. Adams heeded the call. Ac- Adams about Whitehead, and among
selfishly standing in the way of the first cording to Whitehead, Miller’s death those was Herbert Daughtry. Now
Black borough presidency in Brooklyn’s was an inspiration for Adams to start ninety-two years old, Daughtry has kept
history, even though Boyd is Black her- 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who up with the Miller family over the years.
self. Pamela Yard, who also attended the Care, an organization denouncing rac- “When he first showed up, I was tell-
meeting, remembers Whitehead signal- ism inside the police department. ing people, ‘Just be careful,’” Daughtry
ling the end of his group’s pro-Adams Arthur Miller had four children with said, of Whitehead. “No matter whose
intrusion with martial discipline. “It was his wife, Florence. Whitehead was born son he is, if he’s guilty of doing these
like a scene from ‘Malcolm X,’” she said. in April, 1978—six weeks before Miller things that they say he’s doing, Arthur
“He did, like, a hand signal, and they all was killed—to another woman. “When Miller’s memory cannot give him cover.”
turned around, and they all walked out.” I first heard from this young man, I was According to Soleil, who grew up in
Soleil found Adams to be a surpris- in my twenties,” LoLisa Miller-Bradford, the church and was a minister himself,
ingly cautious borough president—he the youngest child of Arthur and Flor- the message that Adams’s treatment of
treaded carefully, perhaps because he ence Miller, told me. Miller-Bradford Whitehead sent, particularly to the Black
had his sights set on City Hall. White- remembers that Whitehead called her church community in Brooklyn, was
head was an exception to this rule. “I in the early two-thousands, claiming to that Whitehead could be trusted, and
thought that my friend Eric Adams be her half brother, and saying that he’d that he had the backing of “strong” po-
was out of his goddam mind,” Soleil heard her family had received settle- litical forces. “And that is how he was
said. “He gave this guy a key to Bor- ment money after Miller’s death. White- getting anywhere,” Soleil said. In the
ough Hall.” head hadn’t received money, he told her, fall of 2014, Whitehead got approval to
and he wanted some in order to buy a organize a gospel concert at the Bar-
he personal indulgence that Adams Toyota Camry. Miller-Bradford said clays Center, the new arena in down-
T has extended to Whitehead, over
the years, is at odds with Adams’s law-
that she and her siblings offered to fly
Whitehead to Florida, where they now
town Brooklyn. (A press release for the
event noted that the concert would ben-
and-order public image. “It’s time for live, to take a DNA test. He declined. efit Leaders of Tomorrow Brooklyn, and
us to refocus our attention, not only as In June, 2014, Miller-Bradford and touted that Adams would attend as a
New Yorkers but as Americans, [on] the her mother discovered that there had “special guest.”) Marquee names in the
decent, innocent people who are the been a ceremony in Miller’s honor, on gospel world signed on, but, behind the
victims of crimes, not those who are the block he was killed on. Adams and scenes, the planning was a mess. White-
committing crimes,” the Mayor said in Whitehead had attended, and Adams head repeatedly dismissed concerns
20 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
about how he was raising money for the tions, which were termed “love offerings.” Brooklyn. Some of the company’s op-
event, and how he would market it. “He In early 2015, Whitehead’s ex-wife, Ie- erators were later indicted by the fed-
kept saying, ‘I have the support of Eric shah Williams, accused Whitehead and eral government for duping lenders and
Adams,’ ” someone involved with the André Soleil of conspiring to steal the borrowers in real-estate deals. (Bor-
concert said. “He just had no idea what title to her house, in an official grievance ovinsky was not criminally charged; the
he was doing.” The Barclays Center ul- with the state court system. In response, case is ongoing.) In her e-mail, Gor-
timately cancelled the event, despite the Soleil wrote to the court suggesting that don said she had learned that Ingrid
hundred and fifty thousand dollars that Whitehead had acted on his own, steal- Lewis-Martin, Adams’s closest adviser,
Whitehead had raised in order to put ing Soleil’s notary stamp and forging a had tried to get Adams to stay away
on the show. (Whitehead, through his power of attorney in his law firm’s of- from Whitehead. “Eric is not listen-
lawyer, said that it was his own decision fice. (Williams declined to comment.) ing,” Gordon wrote. “He and Lamor
to cancel the Barclays concert.) Gordon eventually kicked White- are in business together.”
The concert was the turning point in head out of her apartment. He responded The Brooklyn D.A.’s office ultimately
Whitehead’s relationship with a num- by filing a lawsuit against her, prompt- pursued two investigations into White-
ber of associates, including his collabo- ing the affordable-housing complex she head during Adams’s first term as bor-
rator and roommate, Aurora Gordon. lived in to investigate whether she’d been ough president. One investigation was
“It was your bad attitude and your rush illegally subletting. Anguished, Gordon based on the information supplied by
to have money,” Gordon wrote to him, went to Adams, to complain about Gordon. The other stemmed from Ie-
in an e-mail that November, explaining Whitehead. Adams told her that he shah Williams’s house-title allegations
why the concert had fallen apart. She didn’t want to get involved, according against Whitehead and Soleil. Accord-
listed more than a dozen people who to her sister. Then Gordon went to the ing to someone familiar with the of-
were supposedly “falling back,” or dis- Brooklyn D.A.’s office. fice’s operations at the time, Whitehead
tancing themselves from Whitehead. Gordon told the D.A. that her un- was one of several people close to Adams
Whitehead responded defiantly: “For derstanding was that Adams had prom- whom the office looked into under Ken
your information Eric didn’t fall back!” ised Whitehead money. “I worked 1 1/2 Thompson, the D.A. who had pledged
That month, Adams and Whitehead years for Lamor believing he was in to stamp out government corruption.
attended a ribbon-cutting at Forno partnership with Brooklyn Borough Both investigations into Whitehead
Rosso, a pizza restaurant opened by the President Eric Adams who [ . . . ] prom- ended without charges. “Federal au-
Petrosyants brothers. By then, the broth- ised we would be funded by end of thorities are generally seen as better
ers had pleaded guilty in their federal year,” Gordon wrote in an e-mail to the equipped at conducting complex cor-
case. On November 10th, Robert office’s senior executive for law-enforce- ruption investigations,” the source said.
Petrosyants’s lawyer submitted charac- ment operations. She told the office (A spokesperson for City Hall told me
ter testimonies to the judge who would about the hundred and fifty thousand that Adams never spoke to the Brook-
sentence his client—including a letter dollars that Whitehead had raised for lyn D.A. about Whitehead.)
from Whitehead, who claimed that the the Adams-backed Barclays Center Gordon died in November, 2020, of
brothers were involved in an anti-child- concert. The money had come from complications from COVID-19. Accord-
hood-obesity program he was running. Ron Borovinsky, one of the founders ing to her mother and sister, on at least
“Without the tireless efforts of Robert of a Brooklyn real-estate company called one occasion she spoke to the F.B.I.
and Zhan, this program would never My Ideal Property, which claimed to about Whitehead. She kept records from
have been offered,” Whitehead wrote. have flipped hundreds of millions of her days of working with him, some of
I called Robert Petrosyants and asked dollars’ worth of homes in the histori- which they shared with me. To her last
how he knew Whitehead. “He was one cally Black neighborhoods of central days, Gordon believed that Whitehead’s
of the customers that used to go to a
restaurant that I managed,” he told me.
“Never had anything to do with the
guy’s agenda. I don’t know why he’s
linked to us.” When I reminded
Petrosyants of the letter Whitehead
wrote to the judge on his behalf, and
asked if he remembered the child-
hood-obesity program, he said, “Not
me, but my brother did something. I
don’t recall, it was so long ago.”
By that point, Whitehead had got
back into real estate. He offers online
real-estate classes to his parishioners;
one attendee told me that the classes so-
licited participants’ personal data, includ-
ing Social Security numbers, and dona-
arrest was imminent. “Bozo, you’re going to give to Whitehead. Belmonte stuffed that when you look at my work around
to see, they’re going to get him,” she the bills in his left pants pocket. He then mentoring and helping people, it’s a fairly
told a friend not long before she fell ill. drove to Whitehead’s house. “He just impressive one—many of these young
kept talking,” Belmonte said. “He got people have gone on to do some good
n May 22, 2022, Daniel Enriquez, more and more excited when he saw the things with their lives.” But, as for White-
O a forty-eight-year-old researcher at
Goldman Sachs, was riding the Q train
money. He was, like, ‘I have the key to
the city!’” Soon afterward, Whitehead
head, “he should rate himself,” Adams
said. “That’s not my job, to judge others.”
when he was shot and killed by a fel- asked Belmonte for a larger sum: five Adams declined to be interviewed
low-passenger. Two days later, police ar- hundred thousand dollars, to renovate for this article. A spokesperson for City
rested a suspect in the case, Andrew Ab- some apartment buildings in Hartford, Hall told me that the Mayor and White-
dullah. Reporters gathered outside an Connecticut. When Belmonte didn’t send head had never worked together, or made
N.Y.P.D. precinct house in Chinatown, him the money, Whitehead was livid. “He money together. “He hasn’t met with
where Abdullah had been taken for a said, ‘You just lost City Hall,’” Belmonte him since he became mayor,” the spokes-
perp walk. Moments later, a gray Rolls- said. “And he started going crazy.” In the person said, of Whitehead. “He’s seen
Royce S.U.V. pulled up outside the pre- weeks that followed, Whitehead would him from time to time at others’ events
cinct house. Whitehead got out of the call him thirty or forty times a day, shout- where they both happen to be at.”
car, wearing a Fendi blazer and a large ing and cursing at Belmonte whenever Whitehead also declined numerous
episcopal ruby ring. He told reporters he picked up. requests to speak. A few days before
that he had negotiated Abdullah’s sur- On July 24th, Whitehead’s church was he was arrested by the F.B.I., I waited
render directly with Adams. (Abdullah’s robbed. It was reported that Whitehead for him outside the federal courthouse
family had gone to Whitehead knowing and his wife had been wearing, between in Brooklyn, where there had been a
that he had a relationship with the Mayor, them, two seventy-five-thousand-dollar hearing for the men charged in the
and had requested his help.) When asked watches, two twenty-five-thousand-dollar church robbery. I’d found Whitehead’s
about this at a press conference, Adams rings, and at least three crosses worth a Rolls-Royce S.U.V. parked on the street.
said, “All I wanted was this bad guy off combined value of fifty thousand dollars. Whitehead shook his head when he saw
the street, and whoever wanted to par- Speculation began to circulate online that me, and got into his car. “Stop with those
ticipate in a system that’s doing so in any the crime had been some kind of setup questions,” he said. “No, we never did
way, that’s good enough for me.” for an insurance payout. no real estate. We never did anything. I
Kristin Bruan, Abdullah’s attorney Whitehead spent the subsequent never did one business transaction at all
at the Legal Aid Society, told me that weeks in a frenzy, denying the accusa- with Eric.”
Whitehead’s actions in the lead-up to tions made against him, picking fights After his latest arrest, one of White-
Abdullah’s arrest were reckless. “He could online (at one point he threatened to head’s lawyers issued a statement indi-
have gotten someone killed,” she said. beat up the comedian D. L. Hughley), cating that the bishop denied all the new
Initially, Whitehead had told her that rotating lawyers, and trying to salvage charges against him. Whitehead was
he wanted Adams and Abdullah to come his public image. “Chief Maddrey, when soon back to live-streaming, and he
to his church, where the Mayor would this happened, he was over here in ten hinted that he had damaging informa-
personally take the suspect into custody. minutes,” he said at a press conference a tion to reveal about Belmonte. (Bel-
She said that Whitehead seemed to think few days after the robbery, mentioning monte has a criminal record that dates
that Adams was on board with this plan. the senior N.Y.P.D. official Jeffrey Mad- back to his early twenties.) On New
Bruan, who was already negotiating drey, who had joined Whitehead and Year’s Eve, Whitehead hosted his church’s
Abdullah’s surrender with the N.Y.P.D., Adams at past events. In late Septem- first in-person event in several months.
believes that Whitehead’s intrusion ber, after federal prosecutors in Brook- As midnight approached, he preached
alarmed the authorities, prompting lyn announced the arrest of two of three from the Book of Job. Some twenty peo-
officers to pounce on Abdullah, guns men suspected of holding up White- ple attended.
drawn, outside a Legal Aid office down- head’s church, the bishop claimed to have Outside the courthouse in Brooklyn,
town, where he had gone to meet with been vindicated. “This is a win today, be- Whitehead had ended our encounter by
Bruan before surrendering. After Ab- cause the narrative that was posted and driving away. I’d walked two or three
dullah was taken away, Whitehead got presented was that I had something to blocks when I heard him shouting at me,
into an argument with Bruan. “Stay away do with this robbery,” he told reporters from his car, across the street. He told
from my client,” she told him, to which outside Brooklyn federal court. “I just me to meet him at the corner. He said
Whitehead had responded, “What did really want to thank God.” he wanted to answer the question about
you say, you dumb bitch?” In December, Adams graded his per- Adams more fully. When I approached,
By that point, the F.B.I. was already formance during his first year in office he rolled down the window on the pas-
investigating Whitehead. Early one morn- as a B-plus. At a press conference after senger side so that I could lean in. “I
ing last spring, Brandon Belmonte, of No Whitehead’s arrest, Adams was asked want you to know, when you ask me
Limit Auto Body, met federal agents at what grade he’d give the bishop, as a about the Mayor, I want you to under-
a Kohl’s parking lot in Paramus. They mentee, “in light of the federal case stand that there is nothing,” he said. “He
handed him a short stack of hundred-dol- against him now.” was a mentor. He’s helped me as a man.
lar bills, totalling five thousand dollars, “First of all,” the Mayor said, “I think And that’s it.” Then he drove off.
22 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
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of “speak to your server and only your
server.” Should you be caught asking
anything of anyone not associated with
your table, our servers will scowl and
ask, “Do we all look the same to you?”
Our concept is small plates, which,
if you’re not familiar, consists of plates
RESERVATION
relative to the size of the plate. We
recommend ordering twelve to sixteen
dishes per customer, unless you’re hun-
BY ANAND GIRIDHARADAS gry, in which case we suggest thirty-
five dishes per diner. For a table of
hank you for booking at The Bai- our proprietary blend of lemon juice, four, that would be roughly eight hun-
T ley. You are confirmed for four peo-
ple at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, January 20th.
baking soda, and saliva.
We seat only complete parties. If
dred and fifty dishes. Because we are
concerned about the environment, we
Before we welcome you to our restau- you booked for a party of six and only do not offer takeout containers, but if
rant, a few housekeeping items, to in- five of you are present, do not—we re- you cup your hands on your way out
sure that your visit with us is excep- peat: do not—even think about com- we will send you home with whatever
tional—and to avoid misunderstandings. ing through the door. We also request leftovers you can carry. Consider it a
Owing to Covid, RSV, the appar- that your party be complete emotion- gift from us to you.
ent return of polio, inflation, the loom- ally. If you are sad, stay home. This is Fair warning: The Bailey is a meat-
ing recession, and Donald Trump’s an- a restaurant, not a clinic. One question positive space, and we subscribe to the
nouncement of his 2024 run, your table we are often asked involves running whole-animal approach. So remember
reservation will be for ninety minutes into people you know or making new to stop at your local butcher and bring
exactly. We offer a fifteen-minute grace friends while at the restaurant. May a whole animal if you want to have some-
period for arrival, but the ninety min- they join you at your table? Of course. thing to eat here. Vegans are welcome—
utes starts at the reservation time. To Not. Of course not. to wait outside.
illustrate with an example, let’s say you Let us know of any allergies by call- To enter The Bailey, please bring
arrive at 7:43 p.m., because your Uber ing between 7:45 and 8 a.m. on the proof of vaccination, plus your birth
driver was unfamiliar with the unmarked second Saturday in February and leav- certificate, Barack Obama’s birth cer-
doors of our speakeasy concept, and you ing a voice mail for Frank. Frank is not tificate (photocopy fine), your most
wait in line awhile to hand your coat to an actual person, and we are unable to recent credit score, your last utility bill,
our coat-check person (twenty dollars accommodate people with allergies, your children’s school transcripts, and
per item; yes, a scarf counts as one item) but creating a record of them helps us a notarized writeup of your most re-
before settling into your table by 8 p.m. truly see you. cent physical exam. If everyone does
You still need to leave by 9 p.m., be- We will make no substitutions of his or her part, we can beat this pan-
cause we have another party coming in. any kind in dishes, because we once demic together.
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
The table is recommitted, as we say. In read on a food blog that this makes a Finally, we are a cashless restaurant.
fact, it would be helpful if you vacated restaurant seem like it has a “vision.” We don’t take credit cards or checks, ei-
the table closer to 8:45 p.m. so that we A note on tipping: tips are very ther. All other forms of payment ac-
have plenty of time to sanitize it using much appreciated. In the name of cepted, except crypto, which is not real.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 23
of Pennsylvania—by immunologists,
PERSONAL HISTORY rheumatologists, dermatologists, pul-
monologists, and experts in infectious
ONE OF A KIND
disease. It has been debated at hospi-
tal grand rounds and global medical
conferences, and in high-powered con-
When you’re a medical patient, being unique can have its drawbacks. ference calls. There are PowerPoint
decks about it.
BY BEVERLY GAGE All of which makes me lucky, in one
respect. Far too often, women who pre-
sent with hard-to-diagnose illnesses are
told that the symptoms are no big deal,
that the problem is in their head. They
spend years going from doctor to doc-
tor, in a desperate search for someone,
anyone, who’s willing to help. This has
not been my experience. From the first,
doctors took my condition seriously,
sometimes more seriously than I did.
They pushed me along to the nation’s
greatest experts, at the finest medical
institutions. My insurance paid large
sums for tests and treatments; my fam-
ily and friends were patient and sup-
portive. All the while, I was able to keep
doing what needed to be done: write
a book, raise a child, teach my classes.
But none of this gets around a sin-
gle, stubborn fact. “You are the only
person known to have this exact mu-
tation,” Ombrello explains. “I haven’t
seen any reports in reference popula-
tions of this mutation, and I don’t have
anyone that I’ve had referred to me or
that I’ve seen in my patient cohort that
has this mutation.” In other words, I
am one of a kind, and therefore a med-
ical curiosity. Doctors often blurt out
that my situation is “fascinating” be-
fore catching themselves; they’re aware
n early 2021, Dr. Michael Ombrello, the N.I.H. campus, in Bethesda, Mary- that nobody really wants to be fasci-
I an investigator at the National In-
stitutes of Health, received a message
land, to study her case first hand.
That’s how I ended up as a patient
nating in quite this way. Thanks to ad-
vances in genetic sequencing, though,
from doctors at Yale about a patient in his clinic on a sweet, warming day researchers are increasingly able to iden-
with a novel genetic mutation—the in April, 2021, just as the cherry blos- tify one-offs like me.
first of its kind ever seen. A specialist soms in the Washington area were in That leaves them engaged in a pro-
in rare inflammatory and immune dis- full bloom. As a historian and a biog- cess not so different from what I do as
orders, Ombrello was concerned by rapher, I am used to conducting re- a biographer, trying to understand a
what first-round genetic tests showed: search, examining other people’s lives life and its meaning based on deep re-
a disabling mutation in a gene, known in search of patterns and insights. That search but incomplete information. My
as PLCG2, that’s crucial for proper im- spring, I became the research subject. historical training pushes me to think
mune functioning. It was hard to dis- At the N.I.H., Ombrello’s team took in chronological terms: Where do we
cern how the patient, a forty-eight- twenty-one vials of my blood and stand in the great saga of human his-
year-old woman, had survived for so stored a few of them in liquid nitro- tory? How do grand structural forces
long without serious infections. Even gen for future use. Scientists outside and ideas and technologies shape what
more puzzling was the sudden onset the N.I.H. began to study me, too. In it’s like for an individual to live a life,
of severe joint pain and swelling she the past few years, my case has been day to day? But nothing has rooted me
was experiencing after years of excel- examined by specialists at Yale, Har- in history quite like the experience of
lent health. He decided to bring her to vard, Columbia, and the University getting sick. Though illness and death
24 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 ILLUSTRATION BY HOKYOUNG KIM
may be the universals of earthly exis- ronistic name, with its nod to an age becomes to stop. Prednisone is some-
tence, the way that we get sick—and, when “rheums” and “vapors” and “hu- times referred to as “the Devil’s Tic
sometimes, get better—has everything mors” constituted the height of med- Tac”: cheap and available and effec-
to do with the luck of the moment. ical practice. Though scientific knowl- tive, but at potentially scorching long-
edge has advanced a good deal since term costs.
ike any good historical narrative, then, rheumatology still relies on in- I got off easy, at least at first. I gained
L mine has a day when it all began.
On September 1, 2019, I went for a mile-
tuition and pattern recognition, as well
as on definitive tests and cutting-edge
about ten pounds and my face puffed
up a bit. My lower teeth started to chip
long swim in the Long Island Sound, therapies. Today’s rheumatologists deal after a lifetime of solidity. These de-
along a thin strip of Connecticut beach regularly with autoimmune diseases, velopments bothered me, but they were
where distance swimmers like to gather. in which the body’s immune system nothing compared with the prospect
A few minutes in, I brushed up against attacks healthy cells and tissue. So of life without prednisone. On a high
a strange aquatic plant; it scratched my perhaps it should have been no sur- enough dose, I could function reason-
forearm and left me with angry welts prise when my first diagnosis fell into ably well; once, I even played basket-
that disappeared about an hour later. the autoimmune category. At our ini- ball with a band of teen-age boys. Dip
That night, my ankles started to itch— tial visit, the rheumatologist suggested below a certain threshold, though, and
really itch, the maddening kind of sen- that I might have serum sickness, a the simplest activities became impos-
sation that blots out all thought and temporary allergic reaction (maybe to sible; there was no more bending of
reason. By the next day, a hivelike rash that plant in the Sound). Six weeks knees, chewing of food, lifting of arms.
was creeping up my calves and thighs, later, when the pain and swelling per- A few months into this back-and-
and I could barely turn my neck or open sisted, she switched to a diagnosis forth, I began to keep a record of my
my jaw. By the following week, the of seronegative rheumatoid arthritis, symptoms and sensations, hoping to
symptoms had colonized the rest of my a chronic and incurable autoimmune uncover clues that would break the ste-
body, with the rash moving north along disease that tends to afflict middle- roid loop. I tried to be scientific, dis-
my trunk and arms while the pain in aged women. passionately recording dosage, symp-
my neck and jaw descended south into Already, though, there were aspects toms, and external conditions such
my arms and shoulders. of my condition that did not quite as food intake, exercise, and weather.
As a chronically healthy person, I make sense. I did not test positive for Mostly, though, I complained. Entries
assumed that these were temporary the usual markers of autoimmune dis- included “oof,” “omg ouch,” “can barely
annoyances, perhaps reactions to that ease. Nor did the pattern of my symp- move,” and “this sucks”—accurate de-
odd plant. My doctors initially thought toms—random, asymmetric pain that pictions of my inner state, if not shin-
more or less the same thing. As a pro- moved from joint to joint; swelling ing displays of literary merit. There
fessor at Yale, I receive my medical care of the tissues rather than of the joints were days, sometimes several in a row,
through the university’s health center, themselves—follow the usual rheu- when things seemed to improve. “Hoo-
a private bastion of socialized medi- matoid-arthritis course. And the front- ray. Gratitude + joy,” I wrote in Febru-
cine for faculty, students, and staff. After line treatment for the disease, a power- ary, 2020, after a largely pain-free day.
five or six days of worsening symp- ful immune suppressant known as Inevitably, though, the highs turned
toms, I made an appointment with an methotrexate, seemed to have no ef- low. Even a single day could bring wild
advanced-practice registered nurse, fect. We spent months cycling through variation. “Bad in morn,” I wrote on
who sent me to a dermatologist, who other standard R.A. medications: Hu- January 14th. “Felt stoic + accepting
prescribed a steroid cream and told mira, Xeljanz, Actemra—many of midday. Eve am kinda miserable but
me that things would clear up in a them vaguely familiar from prime- have been worse.”
few weeks. time TV commercials. The onset of the COVID-19 pan-
The cream did the trick; the rash dis- The only drug that controlled my demic, that spring, did not help. As a
appeared, never to return. But the joint symptoms was the steroid prednisone, consumer of powerful immune sup-
pain stayed and grew steadily worse, in substantial doses. The trouble is that pressants, I was “immunocompro-
soon accompanied by bouts of dramatic prednisone has side effects dire enough mised,” part of that subset of Ameri-
swelling as it migrated into my hands to put even the most alarmist F.D.A.- cans who definitely weren’t supposed
and ankles and knees. When the in- mandated voice-over to shame. In the to go to the grocery store or hug their
flammation visited my shoulders, I could short term, the drug can cause mood friends. At the same time, the imposi-
not raise my arms without yelping in swings, anxiety, sleep disruption, and tion of COVID restrictions allowed me
pain. When it stopped off in a knee, I even psychosis. In the medium term, to hide some of my physical ups and
aged thirty years in a day, a hobbled old it leads to weight gain and fat cheeks, downs. My son and my partner and a
woman daunted by a flight of stairs. also known as Cushingoid features, or few close friends knew what was hap-
When it visited my hand, I suddenly moon face. In the long term, it rots pening, but the medication cycle was
had a thick, swollen paw. your bones and teeth, thins out your so dismal and repetitive that I feared
Based on these symptoms, I was skin, degrades your vision, and increases boring them with too much detail. In-
sent to a rheumatologist. At first, I your susceptibility to diabetes. Plus, stead, I tried to be my own witness.
was charmed by the specialty’s anach- the longer you stay on it the harder it “For the record: I will do my best with
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 25
this, and I will stick it out over these on the pattern of swelling, which in- to combat a particular threat. When
next months in the hope that we can volved the tissues rather than the joint the immunologist tested my immune
stabilize the situation and find some itself, he speculated that I might have system by administering the pneumo-
relief,” I wrote in my journal. “But I’m an atypical presentation of a rare dis- coccal vaccine, in the fall of 2020, I
not sure I’m up for it if this is the next ease known as acquired angioedema. produced essentially no response.
30 or 40 years. I reserve the right to It was the first time that the words This was an alarming discovery to
bow out.” “atypical” and “rare” entered my med- make at a time when the COVID vac-
I also spent hours ruminating on ical calculus. He prescribed yet another cine was about to enter mass produc-
what I might have done to deserve my drug, itself rare and therefore outra- tion and supposedly save us all. But the
fate: Was it too much bourbon? The geously expensive. My health insur- numbers did not lie: according to the
cigarettes I smoked in college? My in- ance denied the request and demanded blood tests, I met the criteria for an im-
consistent commitment to yoga? The further testing. mune disorder known as common vari-
stress of my divorce? My rheumatol- That, too, was a stroke of luck— able immune deficiency (CVID), a grab-
ogist says this is typical of her female not something often said of insurance bag term for patients with low antibody
patients, who often turn to self-blame. denials. As part of an in-depth workup, levels and weak vaccine response. De-
In contrast, her male patients just show another Yale doctor, an immunolo- spite its name, CVID is not especially
up and say, “Fix me.” The truth, though, gist, tested my levels of immunoglobu- common; it affects at most one in
was that she could not fix me. So in lins, key proteins manufactured by the twenty-five thousand people. “When
the summer of 2020, with her blessing, immune system to fight infections. It you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not
I went in search of a second opinion. turned out that mine were wildly out zebras,” the medical-school adage goes,
of whack, with too many of some and counselling diagnosticians in training
t was a stroke of luck that my right not nearly enough of others. In a func- to think first of the most common sce-
I hand was swollen when the day of
the consult arrived. The new rheuma-
tioning immune system, the body re-
sponds to a pathogen by creating new
narios. CVID patient advocates wryly
refer to themselves as “zebras.”
tologist took one look at it and said, immunoglobulins, also known as anti- But what sort of zebra was I? My
“That’s not rheumatoid arthritis.” Based bodies, which are specifically designed tests showed the classic signs of CVID,
including a paucity of B cells, the white
blood cells that make antibodies, and,
in turn, low levels of immunoglobulin
G (IgG), the major class of antibodies
that respond to infection. In other ways,
though, the diagnosis did not fit any
better than rheumatoid arthritis had.
Most people who receive a diagnosis
of CVID have a history of frequent, stub-
born infections. I did not, at least as far
as anyone knew. And there was also
the imbalance in my immunoglobulins:
though my IgG level was low, another
type of immunoglobulin—IgM—was
more than three times the normal level.
Then, there was the question of how
any of this pertained to my actual symp-
toms: the pain and swelling that had
begun so suddenly back in September,
2019. My doctors speculated that I might
have a reactive arthritis related to myco-
bacteria discovered to be lurking in my
lungs. Identifying infections in CVID
patients can be difficult; many tests look
at antibodies, which CVID patients don’t
make a lot of. To complicate matters,
such patients are often treated with in-
fusions of donor antibodies—I myself
started monthly intravenous IgG infu-
sions in October, 2020—and it becomes
impossible to sort out which antibod-
ies are which.
But there was at least one impor-
tant test that retained a high degree people and not just for the doctors lonely experience; you wouldn’t be there
of precision. That fall, after seeing the and the rich,” an oasis of democratic if you had anywhere else to go. When
alarming immunology results, my doc- care. During those same years, Con- I began planning for my first visit,
tors ordered a round of genetic testing, gress rejected his call for universal COVID restrictions were in full force,
which revealed my one-of-a-kind mu- health insurance, though it appropri- so I had been instructed to come by
tation. This was when we discovered ated plenty of money for the Clinical myself. I wasn’t prepared, though, for
that I was not only a zebra but one with Center’s sophisticated research and just how alone I would feel. When
polka dots. high-tech experiments. Even then, you’re one of a kind, Facebook groups
Republicans and Democrats could and solidarity ribbons and walks for a
rom inside the gates, the N.I.H. not agree on the virtues of large-scale cure—the essential rituals of modern
F looks like any suburban college
campus: rolling green hills, a busy shut-
public-health investment,
though they managed to
illness—don’t have much
to offer. Becoming a pa-
tle bus, a smattering of buildings, mainly press on with the Clini- tient at the N.I.H. accen-
brick, with no especially coherent ar- cal Center, given its prom- tuates that sense of isola-
chitectural theme. It also features cer- ise of dramatic medical tion, even as it holds out
tain dystopian touches. To enter the breakthroughs. hope for a medical miracle.
campus, visitors must pass through a In the aggregate, the Like many N.I.H. pa-
security station for an I.D. check and idea of the Clinical Center tients, I stayed overnight at
a full vehicle search, often conducted has worked. Its walls are the Edmond J. Safra Fam-
by armed police officers with canine studded with exhibits tout- ily Lodge (Building 65),
assistance. The buildings are identified ing the many pioneering situated a few hundred yards
by numbers, designated in historical discoveries made possible from the Clinical Center—a
order of construction. When I arrived through the citizen-scientist-government Holiday Inn and an assisted-living fa-
for my first visit, in April, 2021, I stam- triad. In the nineteen-fifties, N.I.H. re- cility rolled into one. The rooms con-
mered to the security guards that I was searchers used plasma cells to show how tain the hotel standards: good enough
there as a patient—you know, for med- antibodies evolve to fight thousands of beds, a tiny television with basic cable.
ical research. “Oh, you’re Building 10,” specific infections. Around the same They also come equipped with support
they informed me. time, another N.I.H. team helped to bars and emergency-alert devices. In
Building 10, also known as the break the genetic code. Since then, sci- 2021, roughly seventy thousand people
N.I.H.’s Clinical Center, is the largest entists there have made key discoveries visited the Clinical Center on an out-
hospital in the world devoted solely to in critical areas of medical research, from patient basis, down from nearly a hun-
clinical research. To be invited in, pa- early tests of AZT in people with AIDS dred thousand in pre-COVID years. Three
tients usually have either a rare or a re- to recent success in curing patients with thousand more were admitted to the
fractory disease—in essence, one that sickle-cell anemia. on-site hospital, for an average stay of
is resistant to conventional treatment Even so, today’s rhetoric is less lofty 9.4 days. The team studying my case,
and thus a matter of medical interest. than Truman’s. Patients “come in the which Ombrello leads, has brought
Ideally, they also have an illness of “na- hope that we can cure them,” the car- sixteen patients to Bethesda for in-
tional and international significance,” diologist James K. Gilman, who runs person visits.
according to a Clinical Center hand- the Clinical Center, says. “But we never The Clinical Center itself is de-
book, with the potential to reveal some- promise that. If we could, it wouldn’t signed to impress, with a soaring, seven-
thing important about how the human be research.” Hired in 2016 after a life- story atrium as the chief point of entry.
body works. While N.I.H. investiga- time in military medicine, Gilman says Where private hospitals often feature
tors study a range of conditions, in- that his job is to insure that the facil- the names of donors, the walls bear
cluding common problems like COVID ity works as well for its research sub- tributes to politicians who have vis-
and cancer and alcoholism, many focus jects as it does for researchers. This ited or otherwise supported the cen-
on conditions that afflict only a few has been a challenge for the Clinical ter. But government appropriations
people and therefore attract little at- Center in recent years, as the rush to do not seem to be distributed evenly.
tention from private industry. The fed- make and publish discoveries has some- While the main lobby aims for tran-
eral government foots the bill for all times overwhelmed the more human scendence, most of the working facil-
of it. Most researchers do not apply for aspects of care. In 2016, a “Red Team” ities are far more quotidian. The lab
outside grants, and patients pay noth- panel found lapses in patient safety where my cells are stored features a
ing for their treatment. that have led to a round of reforms. stained drop ceiling, grayish wall-to-
The N.I.H. broke ground on Build- And patient advocates have criticized wall carpeting, and a line of cardboard
ing 10 in the late nineteen-forties, amid the N.I.H. for pushing incremental boxes stacked along the hallway.
the burst of scientific optimism that research ahead of more immediately My appointment began with a for-
followed the Second World War. Dur- useful clinical advances. mal registration process: document
ing a dedication ceremony, President Still, to be treated at the Clinical after document in which I signed my
Harry Truman promised that the Clin- Center is to feel awfully special, a mem- medical record over to the federal gov-
ical Center would be a place “for the ber of a select group. It can also be a ernment. From there, after a brief check
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 27
lab at this point.” Then he whipped
out his phone to show me a graph with
two lines. One rose sharply and then
evened out, depicting the normal ac-
tivities of the PLCG2 gene. Next there
was my line, pancake-flat from start to
finish. According to Ombrello, I have
a severe “truncating” mutation, yield-
ing a total loss of function in one copy
of the gene. Of the eighty or so par-
ticipants enrolled in his study, just two
others have a similarly serious loss of
function, and even the three of us dif-
fer considerably in the details.
It’s hard not to feel important when
highly trained investigators are busy
building your one weird gene. “Your
cells are gold to us,” a member of Om-
brello’s team told me during one visit.
The Clinical Center does its best to
feed this sense of purpose. “A Re-
searcher’s most important discovery
might be you!” a screen in the main
“One day, all of this was going to be yours, son. But now lobby declares. Gilman, the Clinical
I wonder—would you rather take Mars or Jupiter?” Center’s chief, says, “Whether it’s a
young man or woman on the battle-
field or whether it’s one of our pa-
• • tients in the clinical trials, I think it’s
hard to imagine making a bigger con-
of my vitals, it was on to phlebotomy, organ inflammation, and a distinctive tribution at the end of life.” This is
where I donated those twenty-one skin rash. Not long after he arrived, not what a research-study participant
vials of blood. The Clinical Center has another researcher mentioned a fam- wants to hear: that the rewards will
its own lab on site, separate from the ily with an as yet undiagnosed inflam- come later, maybe long after I’m gone.
investigators’ research facilities. The matory disorder; its members suffered But research of this sort is by nature
fact that everyone works under the from strange infections and swelling, slow and tedious, a matter of piece-
same roof—scientists and patients, along with a rash that occurred with meal improvements and repeated fail-
bench researchers and clinical staff— exposure to the cold. Genetic sequenc- ures rather than one big cure.
is supposed to be one of the center’s ing revealed a PLCG2 mutation that Thus far, my disease does not even
key strategic advantages. After phle- caused disruptions in the immune sys- have a name. Several well-informed
botomy, I made my way up to the ninth tem at low temperatures. Ombrello and experiments have failed, each with its
floor, where a member of Ombrello’s his colleagues named the new disease own cycle of optimism and disappoint-
team took a detailed case history. A PLAID (for PLCG2-associated anti- ment. After my first N.I.H. visit, I em-
few hours later, Ombrello himself ap- body deficiency and immune dysreg- barked on a yearlong course of anti-
peared, along with another researcher. ulation) and published their findings biotics, in the hope that the drugs would
(The rest of the team was listening in in The New England Journal of Medi- not only kill off mycobacteria lodged
by laptop.) We crammed into a tiny cine. With that, Ombrello became an in my lungs but also take care of my
exam room, all of us wearing masks, expert on PLCG2 mutations and began joint pain and swelling. At a second
determined to get to the bottom of receiving referrals. appointment, this past spring, I tested
this medical mystery. Our first appointment together con- positive for exposure to bacteria that
sisted largely of talk. I recounted my cause Lyme disease, necessitating a
side from a white lab coat and the story. We went over the parts of my month of oral antibiotics, followed by
A deference of his staff, Ombrello
might be mistaken for a grad student,
situation that seem distinctive, includ-
ing the high IgM, the weird pattern of
two weeks of I.V. antibiotics. None of
these attempts yielded the desired re-
all tousled hair and comfy clothes and symptoms, and, of course, my one-of- sults. Mostly, I came away nauseated
eagerness to talk shop. He came to the a-kind mutation. “When I said we’ve and discouraged.
N.I.H. to study systemic juvenile id- known about you for a while, I wasn’t Our latest experiment involves a
iopathic arthritis (known, more briefly, kidding,” Ombrello told me that first drug called rapamycin, an immuno-
as Still’s disease), a rare condition char- day. “We’ve actually made the muta- suppressant usually prescribed for
acterized by recurrent fevers, joint and tion that you have and tested it in the kidney-transplant patients. As of yet,
28 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
there have been no dramatic improve- “Which is the most unsatisfying part.” my overhyped and anxious nervous
ments, though this particular drug may Her supervisor, Dr. Junghee Shin, is system, the ferocious muscle tension
have at least one upside. Among fit- similarly baffled. “The tricky part is I fought for years, my lifelong unwill-
ness types, rapamycin is reputed to have that it’s very new,” she says of my ingness to work at night? Then again,
anti-aging properties. After years of genetic mutation. “So nobody really how did I not know about it for so
feeling decidedly middle-aged, I am knows what would be the best way to long? Dr. Shin once suggested that
now imbibing from a pharmaceutical treat it.” Like Ombrello, Shin has stud- perhaps I’ve always been sicker than
fountain of youth. ied my cells in her lab, hoping to fig- I recognized, that my baseline for pain
ure out the relationship among the ar- and fatigue and discomfort might be
rom Ombrello’s perspective, treat- thritis, the immune deficiency, and the radically different from the norm. “You
F ing an odd case like mine can be
intriguing and frustrating all at once.
genetic mutation.
With no clear answers to go on, it
might be a very tough person,” she of-
fered, a narrative that I’d be happy to
“If you think about people who get re- has been hard to stabilize a narrative embrace, were it not for the impossi-
ferred to the N.I.H., either you have about my current state: Am I healthy bility of ever knowing for sure one way
something that someone is specifically or sick? Is my condition alarming or or another.
interested in—a mutation or a disease— just interesting? As a practical matter, Ombrello says that the “hardest part”
or you have something that’s f lum- I’m more or less fine on sufficient doses of his job is accepting the slow pace of
moxed everyone you’ve come in con- of prednisone, able to live my life with- medical research, when there is so much
tact with and you’ve received a referral out giving my medical-mystery status urgency to discover answers for his pa-
to come here as the last center of hope. too much thought. The worst-case sce- tients in the here and now. Our stan-
And so we’re a bastion of hope,” he says. nario seems to be that I will be stuck dard cultural narratives don’t offer much
“But at the same time we can’t always in this state for years, going about my help. In an episode of “House,” the Fox
deliver what people are hoping for.” daily business while my bones erode network’s tribute to the power of di-
What he can deliver, for the mo- and my blood sugar spikes and my agnosis, the cranky but brilliant pro-
ment, is a research paper: an aggregate eyes cloud over with cataracts. Forty tagonist saves a dying Presidential can-
analysis of seventy-six patients with years ago, I would likely have ended didate by determining that he has CVID
sixty distinct PLCG2 mutations. For up in the same situation, dependent and ordering antibody infusions, stat—
such purposes, my set of one is not on prednisone to function day to day. at which point the patient heads back
necessarily useful; professional jour- In that sense, all the tests and appoint- out on the campaign trail. But things
nals tend to want the big picture, not ments, the poking and prodding, the don’t always work out so neatly, either
the quirky individual case. And yet the resources of the federal government for CVID patients, who must commit
new age of genetic testing seems to be and the great marvels of twenty-first- to a lifetime of treatment, or for the
producing a never-ending stream of century medicine, have not made much medical oddities who end up at the
one-off mutations, most of them “vari- of a difference. N.I.H. Beginning in 2015, the Discov-
ants of uncertain significance,” as the And yet it’s impossible to unknow ery Channel spent about a year film-
medical designation goes. Ombrello what the tests have revealed: that I ing four patients at the Clinical Cen-
says, “We’re now dealing with a fire have one strange gene, with its own ter, each of them suffering from a rare
hydrant,” spraying out vast and un- or refractory disease. Of the four, two
manageable quantities of information. died, one was cured, and the other was
This may someday yield a renaissance left somewhat improved but facing an
of personalized medicine, in which uncertain future.
each patient’s genes can be tweaked Learning to live with that uncer-
and edited in boutique fashion. For tainty—staring it down, then letting it
now, though, we are a long way from go—may be as good as it gets for most
that ideal. patients at the N.I.H. Despite every-
At Yale, my doctors are forging one’s best effort, “you don’t have con-
ahead with their own research. In the trol over what it’s going to do going
fall, Dr. Mehek Mehta, an allergy-and- agenda. Ombrello says that he tries to forward and it is what it is,” Ombrello
immunology fellow, condensed my saga avoid the “retrospectoscope,” in which says of rare disease. “For me, that’s the
into a presentation before the global patients and doctors reinterpret past point that I want to help people to come
Clinical Immunology Society—begin- symptoms through the lens of new to.” Such a measured assessment may
ning with “Cool Breezy Labor Day knowledge. Historians often refer to not be quite what Truman envisioned
weekend, 9/2019,” as she put it on one this error as presentism, the tendency when he dedicated the Clinical Center
PowerPoint slide, and ending with what to read contemporary attitudes back more than seventy years ago. But the
little is known about my PLCG2 mu- onto history. For better or worse, I sentiment seems true to our age of di-
tation. Despite the assembled brain- haven’t been able to avoid this way of minished expectations, when defeat and
power, she came away empty-handed. thinking. If the mutation was always discovery so often coexist, when we have
“We don’t have any answers for you,” there, throwing my immune system learned just enough to understand all
she said during a recent conversation. off-kilter, what else might it explain: that we do not and may never know.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 29
A REPORTER AT LARGE
LULA’S RESTORATION
After prison, a fraught election, and a near-coup, Brazil’s President wants to remake the country again.
BY JON LEE ANDERSON
ll around the immense city of he broke a half-century smoking habit, relatively youthful. Now, despite his cam-
Governing after four years of divisive rule will be a profound challenge. “The weight on my back is greater,” Lula said.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 31
Brazil!,” they invaded the Presidential It was a moment of buoyancy in a Steve Bannon stoked fears that Lula in-
offices, the Supreme Court, and the leg- contentious campaign, one that had di- tended to cheat his way to power: “Bol-
islature, setting fires and smashing what- vided voters over questions about what sonaro will win unless it’s stolen by, guess
ever they found. kind of a country Brazil is and what what, the machines.”
At Lula’s order, Brazilian author- kind it should be. Lula’s followers tended With concerns growing, the Biden
ities moved swiftly to turn back the to be younger, more multiracial, and Administration quietly deployed visit-
siege, arresting more than fifteen hun- lower-income, with a considerable ing emissaries, including Defense Sec-
dred protesters and promising an in- L.G.B.T.Q. contingent; Bolsonaro’s retary Lloyd Austin, to warn Bolsonaro,
quiry into the origins of the violence. skewed older, whiter, and wealthier. As his senior officials, and the military not
Lula also orchestrated a display of unity: Lula’s rowdy cavalcade made its way to interfere in the election. As a U.S.
dozens of government lead- down Rua Augusta, a Bol- official familiar with the outreach told
ers, including some loyal to sonaro procession traversed me, “We made a concerted policy to let
Bolsonaro, walked arm in a nearby avenue, accompa- them know where the lines were for us.
arm across the vast plaza nied by squads of hard- The outcome of the election was their
that connects the Planalto faced men on motorcycles. business, but what we cared about was
Palace with the Supreme Most polls suggested that the process be respected. We think
Court. It was an effective that Lula would win by a they listened.”
gesture—a reminder of comfortable margin. But it Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court
the street protests that had was uncertain whether Bol- also joined the effort. Its head justice,
helped establish his repu- sonaro would honor the re- Alexandre de Moraes, moved quickly to
tation decades before. But sults of the election if he engage the armed forces, inviting them
Lula seems conscious that lost. Like Donald Trump, to participate in an election-transpar-
making the country function after four with whom he had established a close ency commission. To defuse Bolsonaro’s
years of authoritarian rule will be a pro- rapport, Bolsonaro had long questioned claims, he also arranged for the military
foundly larger challenge. “My responsi- the security of Brazil’s electronic voting to inspect a number of voting machines
bility is much greater now,” he told me. machines—even though they had af- on Election Day. The proposal drew crit-
“The weight on my back is greater.” firmed his victory in the previous elec- icism from advocates of electoral inde-
tion. In 2021, he told a group of loyal- pendence, but the armed forces agreed.
ast October 1st, the day before vot- ists that he saw only three possible Whatever else might happen, it seemed,
L ing began in the Presidential elec-
tion, Lula stood in the back of a pickup
scenarios for himself in the election: vic-
tory, arrest, or death. He appeared to be
they were unlikely to launch a coup.
truck as it rolled along Rua Augusta, a prepping his supporters, the bolsonaris- he concerns about the stability of
narrow street in São Paulo known for
its bars, sex shops, and raucous night life.
tas, to reject any result that favored Lula.
He had also hinted repeatedly that the
T the government were not frivolous.
Democracy has tenuous roots in Brazil.
Crowds had gathered along the side- armed forces, where he had a great deal From 1964 to 1985, the country was ruled
walks and on apartment balconies, and of support, would back him in a con- by a military dictatorship, whose offi-
more clogged the street around his truck. tested election. His minister of security, cers harshly oppressed labor unionists,
Brazilian elections have two rounds, but a hard-line former general, made threat- clergy, academics, and the country’s tiny
any candidate who wins a simple ma- ening remarks about the possibility of contingent of Marxist guerrillas. Nearly
jority in the first round can clinch the military intervention. five hundred people were killed, and
Presidency. Lula, who is at his best in a In the United States, Trump’s allies thousands were imprisoned and tor-
throng of supporters, was hoping to in- helped amplify Bolsonaro’s arguments. tured—including Dilma Rousseff, Lu-
spire voters to put him in office with- On Fox News, Tucker Carlson warned la’s successor as President, who was cap-
out delay. that Lula would be a puppet of the Chi- tured when, as a young woman, she was
Electoral rules forbid candidates to nese President, Xi Jinping. “Allowing an urban guerrilla.
speak to voters on the last day of the Brazil to be a colony of China would be Some of Brazil’s neighbors suffered
campaign, so Lula waved silently and a significant blow to us and potentially far worse. In Argentina, between nine
blew kisses.The crowd was noisy, though: a very serious military threat,” he said. thousand and thirty thousand people
music was pounding from speakers on “The Biden Administration appears to were tortured, murdered, and “disap-
his vehicle, and people in the streets were be in favor of it. One person who is em- peared” by the military. But, while Ar-
dancing. Suddenly, Lula began jumping phatically not in favor of it is the Pres- gentina reckoned with the regime’s atroc-
around the truck, like a kid in a mosh ident of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro.” (Days ities in a series of trials, Brazil left its
pit. At his encouragement, his campaign before, Carlson had conducted a fawn- military untouched, passing a law in 1979
ally Fernando Haddad, two decades his ing interview with Bolsonaro, suggest- to provide amnesty for abuses. As an in-
junior and a head taller, began jumping, ing that he was a better leader than the stitution, it has expressed no remorse.
too. As they bounced, more or less in Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelen- The relatively unexamined legacy of
time to the music, onlookers cheered sky, and posing with him for pictures af- Brazil’s dictatorship, in which the hard-
them on. Video of the spectacle soon terward wearing an Indigenous feather right military attacked both leftist pro-
spread on social media. headdress.) The former Trump official testers and democrats, still informs the
32 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
country’s politics. Bolsonaro, a former one else of his stature in the hemisphere,” his tenure, thanks in large measure to
Army captain, was an eager participant a Western official who has met with him surging commodities prices, a signifi-
in the dictatorship, and during a twenty- several times said. “He’s the boss.” cant oil discovery off the coast, and the
seven-year stint in parliament often explosive growth of China, a major buyer
called for a return to military rule. In s the returns came in for the first of Brazilian exports. In 2010, the rate of
one famous outburst, he said that the
military had not gone far enough—that,
A round of voting, Lula’s campaign
team gathered in a São Paulo hotel. In
economic growth was 7.5 per cent, the
highest in decades. Brazil belonged to
if only it had killed thirty thousand more a briefing room, scores of journalists, a group of fast-growing nations known
people, Brazil’s problems with leftists hangers-on, and politicians crowded as the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India,
would have been solved. In 2016, when around a huge television screen, watch- China, and South Africa. But, since
Brazil’s Congress impeached Rousseff, ing as the tally tipped toward one can- then, the economy has slumped, and
Bolsonaro cast his vote in the name of didate, then the other. The sound in the Brazil, once the world’s fifth-largest
a notorious military colonel who had room tracked the results: agitated silence economy, is now its ninth.
commanded the unit that tortured her. when Lula was trailing, laughter and Bolsonaro worked to make Brazil
Lula, on the other hand, is Brazil’s cries of “Lula-la!,” a refrain from an old friendlier to business, but many of his
archetypal leftist. He was born poor, campaign song, when he took the lead. supporters were more energized by his
the sixth of seven children. His parents By early morning, Lula had 48.4 per prosecution of a culture war. He had
worked as farmers in famine-stricken cent of the votes—five points ahead of won the Presidency in 2018 with the
Pernambuco, a state in the northeast- Bolsonaro, but short of what he needed backing of the powerful consortium
ern part of the country. When Lula to win the Presidency in the first round. known as the three B’s: beef, Bibles, and
was a young child, his father set off for Moreover, Bolsonaro had attracted many bullets, signifying agribusiness, the evan-
São Paulo, in pursuit of a more stable more voters than pollsters had predicted. gelical church, and the arms lobby. In
livelihood, and found work as a day la- Lula’s team was realizing not only that public appearances, his characteristic
borer. By the time the rest of the fam- a second round was going to be neces- gesture was shooting make-believe pis-
ily could join him, when Lula was seven, sary but that, even if their candidate won, tols. He enjoyed widespread support
he had found another woman and started Brazil had become a vastly different among law-enforcement groups, espe-
a new family. For four years, they all country from the one he had presided cially the military police, which have
lived together until Lula’s mother could over twelve years earlier. a reputation for indiscriminate force
find another place—a cramped room Lula left office in 2010 with a his- and for involvement in organized crime.
behind a bar. toric eighty-eight-per-cent approval rat- In office, he expanded police depart-
Lula did not learn to read until he ing. The economy had boomed during ments and gave them wide leeway in
was about nine, and he quit school soon
afterward. He worked as a street vender,
a shoeshine boy, a warehouse laborer,
and, eventually, a machine operator in
a screw factory. At nineteen, he dam-
aged the little finger on his left hand
in an accident with a mechanical press.
He couldn’t get medical treatment until
the next day. To his dismay, the doctor
performed a full amputation. In time,
his opponents came to deride him as
Nine-Finger.
He soon got involved in trade-union
politics, organizing protests outside fac-
tories and displaying a gift for oratory.
He was imprisoned for leading an ille-
gal strike but emerged after a month,
and by the waning years of the dictator-
ship had become a prominent labor
leader in São Paulo. In 1980, as the armed
forces prepared to relinquish power, he
founded the left-wing Partido dos Tra-
balhadores, the Workers’ Party, known
as the P.T. He soon began running for
political office, and, over the years,
whether winning elections or losing
them, he has become the undisputed “Now that I know my personality type, I have an
leader of the Brazilian left. “There’s no excuse for behaving exactly the same.”
dealing with criminals. In 2020 and 2021, de Mello, a sharply dressed young pro- his part, wrote in his memoirs that Lula
police in Brazil killed more than six ponent of free-market ideas. Collor de was “impressive” but “reportedly had the
thousand people a year—six times the Mello resigned two years later, brought scruples of a Tammany Hall boss.”)
total in the United States. Bolsonaro down by a corruption scandal. (He was At times in last year’s campaign,
also loosened gun laws, arguing that later acquitted.) though, Lula seemed to have lost his
citizens needed to defend themselves Lula ran again in 1994 and 1998, and easy dexterity. At a television studio in
against criminals and left-wing land in- lost both times to Fernando Henrique Rio, I watched him take part in the last
vaders. Registered gun ownership grew Cardoso, a left-wing scholar who had of three Presidential debates. Bolso-
sixfold while he was in office; gun shops once marched alongside him in street naro’s insistent theme was that if Lula
and shooting ranges flourished. protests. As President, Cardoso moved won back the Presidency Brazil would
It is illegal in Brazil to make racist toward the center, supporting the pri- become like Venezuela—a byword for
remarks, but Bolsonaro regularly found vatization of several major government- failed left-wing politics. Bolsonaro strut-
ways to insult his country’s nonwhite owned corporations. Lula remained a ted grimly around the studio, calling
inhabitants, saying that members of committed leftist, assailing the “neo- his opponent “a thief, a traitor to the
Afro-Brazilian communities were “not liberal” reforms that swept the region, fatherland, and an ex-prisoner.” Lula
even good enough to breed” and that with American encouragement. While sputtered outraged denials and shouted
the Indigenous were “increasingly be- Cardoso became friendly with Bill Clin- back that Bolsonaro was “shameless, re-
coming human beings just like us.” Ref- ton and Tony Blair, Lula was more phil- pulsive,” and unfit to hold the Presi-
ugees were “the scum of the earth.” Vi- osophically aligned with Fidel Castro dency. Few of Lula’s loyalists were happy
olence against these communities, and and Hugo Chávez. about his performance. While Bolso-
against L.G.B.T.Q. people, surged But when Lula finally won the Pres- naro was characteristically vulgar, Lula
during his tenure. idency, in 2002, he showed a surprising had reacted badly to his attacks, and
As Bolsonaro’s popularity grew, Bra- pragmatism, along with a political sur- failed to express any new ideas or pol-
zilian politicians on the right began pro- vivor’s wiliness. He weathered a scan- icy initiatives.
claiming their adherence to bolsonar- dal involving a scheme to buy legisla- Bolsonaro’s accusations—he called
ismo. In the recent elections, candidates tors’ votes, which became known as Lula a “national embarrassment”—are
sympathetic to his ideas had done un- mensalão, or “the big monthly payment.” complicated by the fact that corruption
expectedly well, taking a majority of Though several of his closest deputies has been endemic in Brazil for much of
Senate and gubernatorial seats. One of were implicated, he was not charged. In its modern history. The government
those who won legislative posts was the same years, he launched a cash-trans- owns large sectors of the economy, and
Eduardo Pazuello, an Army general who fer program, known as Bolsa Família, many legislators expect to be compen-
for a time ran Bolsonaro’s calamitous that lifted some thirty million Brazil- sated for their coöperation. “Parliament
response to the pandemic. Another was ians out of extreme poverty, and initi- is either subservient or rebellious,” José
Ricardo Salles, Bolsonaro’s first envi- ated an ambitious program to bring Eduardo Cardozo, a lawyer and a prom-
ronment minister, who left office while electricity to neglected areas of the coun- inent Brazilian politician, told me. “And,
under investigation for conspiring to tryside. During his tenure, the illegal when it is subservient, it is because it
traffic Amazonian hardwoods. (He de- destruction of the Amazon rain forest participates in the government—it has
nies the allegations.) decreased dramatically, as he imple- the money. If it’s not participating, it
In São Paulo state, Brazil’s largest mented programs to police the region wants the government out.”
electoral constituency, the returns were and designated several million acres as Lula, in his two terms, managed to
mixed. The capital swung to Lula. conservation areas and as reserves for cultivate the legislature while avoiding
Smaller cities and the countryside went the Indigenous. the consequences of the mensalão vote-
to Bolsonaro, as they had in many other Lula’s personal warmth is probably buying scandal. His successor, Dilma
places where ranching and agribusi- his greatest political asset, and, unlike Rousseff, lacked his nimbleness. “She
ness drive the economy. In the cam- other Latin American leftists of his gen- was not a woman who liked to talk to
paign press room, Lula professed con- eration, he showed an exceptional abil- parliamentarians,” Cardozo, who also
fidence: “We’ll have to fight on, but ity to work both sides of the political served as Rousseff ’s minister of justice,
we’ll win.” His protégé Guilherme Bou- aisle. Despite his opposition to the Iraq told me. “She was a cadre who thinks
los put it more starkly. Running against War, he cultivated a genial relationship about politics, but who does not per-
Bolsonaro, he said, was “a war between with George W. Bush. When Barack form politics.”
democracy and barbarism.” Obama shook hands with Lula for the Rousseff was Brazil’s first female
first time, at a G-20 summit in 2009, President, and a formidable figure. After
ula began running for President as he told officials there, “I love this guy. her early stint as a Marxist guerrilla,
L soon as he was able. He launched
his first campaign in 1989, just a year
He’s the most popular politician on
Earth.” (In fact, the two didn’t get along
she had spent three years in prison, be-
fore going on to serve as Lula’s minis-
after a new constitution, adopted as that well; Lula told me that he had a ter of energy and his chief of staff. When
Brazil returned to democracy, made it better rapport with Bush, who, notwith- she became President, though, the econ-
legal for leftist parties to run for office. standing their differences, was a guy you omy was beginning to stagnate, and in
He lost narrowly to Fernando Collor could have a barbecue with. Obama, for her second term a crash in commodi-
34 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
Soon after Lula took office, Bolsonaro supporters stormed the federal district of Brasília, calling for military intervention.
ties prices meant that Brazil had less acy, and a yearslong investigation began. million dollars in bribes. Temer himself
money coming in. Street protests be In the end, the charges were narrow: was implicated, but the same Congress
came commonplace. So did maneu Moro alleged that Lula was illicitly that had voted to impeach Rousseff
vering by her political opponents to promised a beachside apartment, and opted to leave him in office, for the sake
unseat her. Even her VicePresident, that friends had effectively bought a of what the presiding judge called the
Michel Temer, supported calls for her ranch for his use, where Odebrecht made “stability of the electoral system.”
impeachment, ostensibly for manipu renovations at the request of Lula’s wife. As the 2018 Presidential election ap
lating the country’s budget. In a dramatic televised hearing, Moro proached, Lula remained the most pop
One irony of those years is that Lula coolly interrogated Lula, who angrily ular politician in the country, with what
and Rousseff strengthened the judiciary, denied the charges and demanded proof one poll said was a fifteenpoint lead
which made corruption more visible in of the allegations against him. Lula’s over his closest competitor. But he was
their own government. Under Rousseff, supporters have persistently argued that increasingly embroiled in criminal in
the federal police began a series of in there is little evidence tying him to the vestigations. A few months before the
vestigations known as Lava Jato, or Car properties. But, not long after the hear voting, police burst into Lula’s house to
Wash. For several years, a team led by ings, Moro released recordings that his search for evidence; Marisa Letícia Casa,
a judge named Sergio Moro operated agents had made of phone conversa his wife of four decades, died of a stroke
out of Curitiba, in the conservative south tions between Rousseff and Lula, in shortly afterward. Lula was convicted of
of Brazil. It investigated corruption which she said that she was sending corruption, sentenced to thirteen years
across Latin America, bringing down him papers that would secure him a in prison, and placed in a federalpolice
powerful C.E.O.s, government officials, ministerial post. Rousseff said that the facility in Curitiba.
and even several foreign Presidents for post was routine; Moro claimed that A contingent of supporters camped
ANTONIO CASCIO/REUTERS/REDUX
their involvement in money laundering she was trying to protect Lula from ar outside the fence near Lula’s cell, greet
and bribery. rest. A few months later, the legislature ing him every morning with calls of
Many of the schemes were linked to forced Rousseff out, and Temer took “Good day, Lula.” But Moro’s investi
Brazil’s state oil firm, Petrobras, and to her place. gation insured that he was barred from
the construction giant Odebrecht, both Political corruption did not diminish public office, instantly making Jair Bol
of which had thrived during Lula’s ten in Brazil. Eduardo Cunha, who had led sonaro the Presidential frontrunner. In
ure. Moro accused Lula of being the the congressional campaign against Rous the election, Bolsonaro secured a nar
mastermind of an international conspir seff, was found guilty of accepting forty row victory over Lula’s standin, the
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 35
former São Paulo mayor Fernando
Haddad. Soon after being elected, he
made Moro his minister of justice. A NEW YEAR
mong the loyalists who visited Lula Was it myself I left behind? Or was
A in prison was his friend Emidio de
Souza—a genial, burly man in his early
the country letting go of itself at each clackety-clack
as the train rattled northward into dusk?
sixties, who has served for years as a state Girders flashed by, the ghosts of factories.
legislator for the P.T. When Lula was Then frozen fields, their stubble narrowly laid out
arrested, it was de Souza who negoti- in an ancient, foreign, indecipherable script.
ated his surrender, persuading the po- New solitudes flared on the smutty pane.
lice to abide by two conditions: “no hair- As if I were aging faster than the engine’s hurtle . . .
cut, no handcuffs.” He also arranged for While the Hudson shoved its massive, wrinkled drowse
Lula to be picked up discreetly, out of south, dreaming at its own pace: the drowned
sight of a television crew circling in a river, carrying thousands of years
helicopter nearby, in the hope of avoid- of sediment through torn uterus of rock.
ing public humiliation. Angry signs slashed the shadows. Wrecked cars
Still, the arrest affected Lula pro- stacked in yards, tilting fences, sheds
foundly. “He expected to be in prison pledged revenge. Then a whoosh of snow
for a week, maybe, or ten days,” de Souza tattered the trees and night swallowed us whole.
told me in São Paulo. “But his extended
imprisonment showed him that the Till dawn, jerking me from my berth,
world was going to move against him.” broke over Indiana’s frostbitten furrows,
He passed the time by working through a country graveyard slotted among farms.
an earnest undergrad’s reading list: a
history of slavery in Brazil, a treatise on —Rosanna Warren
how oil has led to wars, a biography of
Nelson Mandela. He continued to fol-
low party politics, de Souza said: “He which revealed significant ethical lapses. letters had sustained him in prison, he
wasn’t allowed the Internet, but he re- Moro illicitly discussed tactics with the said. He was still legally barred from
ceived daily written reports, news clip- prosecutors; the lead prosecutor ex- politics, but he made it clear that he
pings, sometimes analyses of the polit- pressed doubts that Lula had actually would return as soon as his prohibition
ical situation in the country. He also owned the apartment at the center of was lifted. “If I were a candidate in 2022,
recorded the P.T. meetings on a flash the case. In other leaks, the Lava Jato I would surely win,” he said. “Because
drive, and then watched them on TV.” investigators admitted that they hoped there is a faithful relationship between
From prison, Lula looked on as to bring down Lula and the P.T. The the Brazilian people and me.”
Bolsonaro began to generate his own United Nations Human Rights Coun-
corruption scandals. Though he had cil subsequently found that the inves- hen Lula won the second round
campaigned as a reformer, he and his
family members were accused of a se-
tigation had violated due process.
In November, 2019, Lula was released,
W of voting, on October 30th, the
crowds in São Paulo were ecstatic. From
ries of offenses, all of which they deny. after five hundred and eighty days in a two-story soundstage above Avenida
Prosecutors allege that two of his sons prison. De Souza told me that Lula in- Paulista, the city’s main thoroughfare,
embezzled public funds, and that an sisted he could rebuild his image, say- Lula waved and blew kisses, as his sup-
aide involved in one of the schemes fun- ing, “I’m not going to go down in his- porters danced and sang and waved flags
nelled money into an account owned tory as a guy who stole.” In his first speech bearing images of his face. His voice
by Bolsonaro’s wife. The family was after being released, he called himself cracked with exhaustion and emotion
eventually found to have bought at least “the victim of the greatest legal lie ever as he declared, “Brazil is back!”
fifty-one properties, largely in cash. (Bol- told in five hundred years of history.” For many Brazilians I spoke with,
sonaro gave a bluff response: “What’s I saw Lula a few weeks later, in a though, the main reason for celebrat-
wrong with buying houses in cash?”) hotel overlooking Rio’s Copacabana ing Lula’s victory was not that it would
To cultivate political allies, Bolsonaro’s beach. He was seventy-four—one year return the P.T. to power but that it would
administration maintained a “secret bud- shy of the age at which the Catholic prevent another four years of Bolsonaro.
get,” which gave the legislature access Church would no longer allow him João Moreira Salles, a documentary film-
to some three billion dollars—a fifth of to be a bishop, he joked. He said he’d maker, the founder of the magazine
all discretionary spending—which could been working out and felt fitter than he Piauí, and an astute political observer,
be apportioned without oversight. had in years. He had also fallen in love, told me, “That he could win in these
In June, 2019, the Intercept published with Rosângela ( Janja) da Silva, a so- conditions is nothing short of stunning.
leaks of phone messages between Moro ciologist and a Workers’ Party member But we might remember the election as
and the prosecutors who had tried Lula, twenty-one years his junior; her daily the most admirable part of Lula III.
36 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
Winning was indeed epic. Governing began to yell, “Go away, dirty press!,” delivered before the elections,” he said.
might be a lot less rewarding.” until I backed off. His concerns extended beyond the
Lula’s team was uneasy. He had won As I left, I passed a clothesline strung silence of the military. When I told him
by just over two million votes, making between trees, which was hung with soc- about the protesters outside the Army
this the closest election in Brazil’s his- cer jerseys, many of which were embla- garrison, he turned grim. “I think we
tory. Bolsonaro had not conceded, and zoned with a 10—the number of Ney- need to find out who is financing and
his supporters insisted that the election mar, Brazil’s soccer star, who had recently who is feeding them, because this is not
had been rigged. Along with a large declared that he was a bolsonarista. Along- spontaneous,” he said. The day before,
contingent of bolsonarista truckers, they side them was a green-and-yellow ban- he’d had a discouraging talk with the
swarmed onto highways to block traf- ner that read, in English, “Our flag will governor of Pará state, in the Amazon.
fic and, in some cases, to erect burning never be red. Out Communism.” “When police went and tried to un-
barricades, halting commerce across All over the country, crowds had block the roads, demonstrators shot up
the country. gathered to protest and to pray for an their car,” he said. “The entire country
For days, Bolsonaro remained out of intervention. In the U.S., Tucker Carl- is like this. And Bolsonaro has locked
sight and issued no public statements. son broadcast their claims of fraud on himself inside his house. We are not
Finally, he made an appearance at the his show. On November 2nd, he said, used to this kind of thing here. Since
Planalto Palace, apparently under pres- “According to official tallies, a convicted the return of democracy, elections have
sure from allies. In a brief, stiff cere- criminal and avowed socialist called always been respected.”
mony, he suggested that his supporters Lula da Silva beat the incumbent Pres- Lula mentioned reports that pro-Bol-
had every right to express their anger, ident of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, by a nar- sonaro police around the country had in-
but should not block the roads: “Our row margin this weekend. And yet mil- terfered with his voters on Election Day,
methods should not be those of the left, lions of Brazilians—millions—don’t and had assisted bolsonaristas who blocked
which have always been bad for the believe that’s what actually happened. . . . the highways. Lula said that he wasn’t
populace.” As soon as Bolsonaro was There are questions about whether all worried about being kept out of office:
finished, he turned and walked off, while the ballots had been counted. Why so “It may be difficult, but, you see, the law
his chief of staff remained to say that many were thrown out. Millions. And exists to give guarantees to society.” The
officials from the current administra- whether election laws were violated in problem was instability, and Bolsonaro’s
tion would be meeting with Lula’s team the process. So we can’t render judg- seeming willingness to deploy the police
to begin handing over power. ment on those questions, but if you care to keep Lula out of office. “This election
There was going to be a transition, about democracy, if you think the pro- was atypical,” he said, “because it was
it seemed. But, within days, the mobs cess is essential, then you would look the candidacy of a candidate against the
that had occupied the country’s high- into those allegations.” state—an absurd thing.”
ways had moved to new positions out- Steve Bannon echoed Carlson. Just Like many others, Lula likened what
side military garrisons. There, they set days after he was convicted of refusing was happening in Brazil to the Trump
up camps and demanded an interven- to testify before Congress about his role phenomenon in the U.S. January 6th had
tion to stop Lula—the thief, the Commu- in the January 6th insurrection, he went established a destabilizing precedent all
nist—from taking away their country. over the world. “Whatever disagreements
you may have with the United States, it
utside the main gates of the South- still represents the face of democracy on
O east Military Command, a sprawl-
ing Army headquarters in São Paulo,
planet Earth,” he said. “When the most
important country fails to exercise de-
several hundred bolsonaristas held a daily mocracy, you are giving an endorsement
vigil. Men and women draped in Bra- to all the crazies in the world.”
zilian flags or wearing the national col-
ors of yellow and green stood chant- n speeches, Lula often raises the need
ing, “S.O.S., armed forces!” Some held
fists in the air. Several knelt to pray, on social media to claim that Brazil’s
I to address hunger in Brazil, describ-
ing it as an unassailable moral impera-
their eyes closed and their arms out- election “was stolen in broad daylight.” tive. He talked at length about hunger
stretched in the fashion of Pentecos- He called Lula “a Criminal Atheistic when we met in 2019, and with increas-
talism, which has a large following in Marxist” and the pro-Bolsonaro dem- ing emotion in his campaign appear-
Brazil. Some had their faces contorted onstrators “freedom fighters.” ances last year. In our interview after his
in expressions of pain; others looked to Brazil’s military had largely remained recent victory, it came up when I ques-
Heaven, beseechingly. quiet throughout the monthlong elec- tioned him about Ukraine. A few months
Men strode in front of the chanting toral process. A week after the second earlier, he’d made acerbic remarks about
crowd, urging them on. When I ap- round of voting, it still had not pro- Volodymyr Zelensky, and had seemed
proached several women to ask why they duced the results of its inspection of to suggest, as Vladimir Putin had, that
were there, demonstrators nearby be- voting machines. In São Paulo, Lula the United States was partly responsi-
came hostile, screaming at them, “No admitted to feeling fretful about the ble for the conflict. Apparently eager to
talking!” With rising hostility, the crowd delay. “This report should have been set the issue aside, Lula told me that he
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 37
intended to talk with Zelensky and Putin, But the Centrão was increasingly vaguely that the issue had to do with
and with Biden as well, but that all he aligned with the hard right. It had voted voting machines that had inexplicably
cared about was “world peace.” Soon out Rousseff in 2016 and then protected identical serial numbers. In a few days,
enough, he returned to the issue of hun- her successor, Temer. It had also effec- he said, he was going to hold a press
ger. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t betray these tively partnered with Bolsonaro when conference on the matter.
people,” he said, tears welling in his eyes. he joined one of its parties, the Partido He confessed to feeling anxious, be-
“I’ll have to fight with the markets some- Liberal, to run in last year’s election. Bra- cause the claim of fraud would surely
times, but people have to be able to eat zilian politicians change parties often. bring “three times as many people onto
again. I don’t want anything much, but Bolsonaro has belonged to nine. The the streets as those already camped out
people have to have hope again, and a leader of the lower house of Congress, in front of the Army bases.” But Bolso-
full belly, with morning coffee and lunch Arthur Lira, has belonged to five. Lira naro was an important ally, and Costa
and dinner.” was a main beneficiary of Bolsonaro’s Neto had promised to advance his cause.
Lula remains an earnest believer in “secret budget,” and the person Lula A few days later, he held his press con-
the leftist project in Latin America. But, most needed to cultivate on this trip. ference. The claim was quickly rejected
as Cardozo, Rousseff’s minister of jus- Judging by their encounter, Lira was by Brazil’s electoral tribunal; the mili-
tice, told me, “Lula is not a man who eager to make a deal; he came out of tary had already assessed its sample of
theorizes about politics like Lenin or Congress to greet Lula warmly. voting machines and declared Lula the
Trotsky. He is a pragmatist, a trade union- But Valdemar Costa Neto, the presi- legitimate winner. Still, the report gen-
ist.” He added, “He is also a political ge- dent of the Liberal Party, had decided to erated a flurry of headlines—enough to
nius and a charismatic man. Inside the stick with Bolsonaro. A canny, amiable feed the bolsonaristas’ conviction that
P.T., everyone below Lula fights against man in his seventies, Costa Neto was a there had been a conspiracy.
one another, but not against him. That’s former Lula ally; in 2012, he was con-
how he conserves his power.” victed on money-laundering charges re- n the afternoon of January 8th,
Lula’s team is mostly made up of fairly
doctrinaire leftists, but he has brought
lated to the mensalão scheme, and spent
two and a half years in detention before
O Bolsonaro supporters poured into
the federal district of Brasília, overrun-
in some ideological diversity, in an effort he was pardoned. “I had to rebuild the ning the complex that houses the three
to reassure the business lobby and other Party when I got out, because my image branches of government—the Three
conservative interests. His Vice-President was destroyed,” he told me. The Liberal Powers, as they are known. In the plaza,
is Geraldo Alckmin, a center-right phy- Party had traditionally leaned to the protesters gathered to confront soldiers
sician who once ran against him for Pres- center, but he had shifted it right, and protecting the buildings. Others prayed,
ident. His minister of planning and bud- eventually the affiliation with Bolsonaro or yelled slogans: “Brazil was whored
get is Simone Tebet, who leans to the had paid off. “Now we have ninety-nine out by those nasty, corrupt people!” Ri-
right on the economy. But Cardozo sug- congressmen,” he said, scribbling fig- oters forced their way in, shattering win-
gested that he’d need to go further to ures on a scrap of paper to demonstrate dows and setting fires. The district po-
cultivate people who disagreed with him. how much funding they were bringing lice, led by a former Bolsonaro official,
“The extreme right is going to be strong in. He explained brightly, “We have to offered little resistance, and sometimes
and make permanent efforts to destabi- make room for the extreme right now.” provided aid.
lize things. To keep the P.T. in its place Costa Neto said that he had nothing Marina Dias, a Brazilian journalist,
and the extreme right in its place, he will against the new President. Smiling, he was near the Ministry of Defense when
need a broad alliance,” he said. “You can’t told me that Lula had recently asked if he she saw an older woman dressed in a
put out a fire with alcohol.” would back his coalition, but he’d shown camouflage shirt, of a kind that bolso-
A couple of days after I met Lula in him the math and Lula had understood. naristas wear in tribute to the armed
São Paulo, he travelled to Brasília, hop- But, he added, Bolsonaro didn’t approve forces. The woman said that she had
ing to widen his network of allies. Even of him talking to Lula: “Bolsonaro’s not been camped out at the military head-
as he had retaken the Presidency, Bol- like you or me. He’s not normal.” quarters in Brasília for two months. She
sonaro’s party had won ninety-nine seats Costa Neto said that he thought Lula had joined the protest on the eighth to
in Congress, forming the largest bloc in had won the election fairly. He recalled urge Bolsonaro to hide; she explained
the lower house; in the upper house, it telling Bolsonaro to accept the results, that Alexandre de Moraes, the head of
secured fourteen of eighty-one seats. For relax, take a break, become the honor- the Supreme Electoral Court, was con-
Lula to run the country, he would have ary president of the Liberal Party, and spiring to have him killed.
to make a deal with the Centrão, a shape- rebuild for the next elections. But Bol- Dias, like other observers, was con-
shifting coalition of right-of-center par- sonaro truly believed he had won, he fused by the timing of the riots. Why
ties that have come to wield extraordi- said—he was wounded and “really de- wait until a week after the inauguration?
nary power in the capital. The Centrão pressed.” Costa Neto threw up his hands When she asked the woman if she was
has few ideological allegiances; its mem- in exasperation. At Bolsonaro’s insis- inspired by the January 6th insurrection
bers’ main imperative seems to be ex- tence, he had hired a company to inves- in the U.S., another protester yelled,
changing their votes for lucrative con- tigate his claims of voting-machine fraud, “Don’t answer her! She’s a journalist, a
cessions for their constituencies, and and, Costa Neto said, it had come back leftist!” Sensing a threat, Dias walked
for themselves. with “troubling data.” He explained away, but she was surrounded by bolso-
38 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
naristas, and someone tripped her. “I fell
to the street, where people kicked me
and punched me,” she told me. “Two
men tried to protect me, saying, ‘You
will kill her and ruin our movement.’”
But women were scratching her, pulling
her hair, grabbing for her phone. Some-
one snatched her glasses, broke them,
and yelled, “We have to kill her!”
Finally, a military officer forced his
way through the crowd and pulled her
away. As the officer escorted her off,
“people yelled that I was a whore, and
someone threw a bottle of water at me,”
she told me. “It was clear they felt like
there would be no punishment.”
On the day of the insurrection, Lula
and Janja were visiting the city of Ar-
araquara, in São Paulo state, five hun-
dred miles away. But they were able to
monitor the situation, an aide told me.
One of Lula’s bodyguards entered the
Planalto Palace, recorded the rampage,
and shared it with the President in real
time. No one noticed the bodyguard, the
aide said, because “they were all filming
themselves, too.”
Outside the President’s offices, on
the third floor, the rioters wrecked fur-
• •
niture and destroyed art: a seventeenth-
century French clock, a painting by ing horses, water cannons, and pepper ida, and reportedly was staying near Or-
Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, an ancient Chi- spray to clear the building and the roof. lando, as the guest of the Brazilian mixed-
nese vase. The vandals broke nearly ev- As helicopters dropped tear gas, pro- martial-arts fighter José Aldo. After four
erything they encountered, but they were testers ran, coughing and struggling for turbulent years as President, he suddenly
stopped at a glass door outside Lula’s air. By about seven o’clock that evening, didn’t seem to have much to do. He
private office by his personal security the building had been cleared. looked for a church to join. One after-
team—a group of longtime loyalists, noon, he was spotted sitting alone at a
which includes a former federal police espite the ferocity of the violence, KFC, eating fried chicken out of a box.
officer who oversaw Lula’s imprison-
ment and then went to work for him
D many Brazilians believed that it was
less an attempted coup than an act of
Admirers reported, with astonishment,
that they had been able to drop by his
after he was freed. political theatre. People took selfies and house for a chat. “He’s completely iso-
From São Paulo, Lula and his team FaceTimed friends. One rioter, stream- lated, and his influence is reduced to the
worked to assert control, starting by or- ing video as he entered Congress, asked fringe of Brazil’s extreme right,” Moreira
ganizing the dismissal of the Bolsonaro viewers to subscribe to his YouTube Salles said. “Flying to Disney when the
official who led the district police and channel. Venders sold spectators grilled going gets tough is not exactly condu-
replacing him with a loyalist. As they chicken and cotton candy. “On the sur- cive to becoming the next strongman.”
scrambled, Lula received a phone call face, 1/8 was a resounding failure,” João The Biden Administration has said
from his minister of defense and the Moreira Salles said. “The mob ransacked that it would take seriously a request to
chief of staff of the armed forces. They empty buildings and didn’t even try to extradite Bolsonaro, but Lula has not
proposed that he sign a “law-and-order occupy them. It was more of a simula- yet submitted one. Even from Orlando,
assurance”—a directive that would ef- crum of a coup, a spectacle—a coup for though, Bolsonaro can have an effect on
fectively hand them power to reëstab- the Instagram age.” Brazilian politics. Like many of his sup-
lish control. Lula refused, fearing that The lawlessness of the attack had porters, he is a skilled provocateur. During
it was the first step in a coup. Instead, demonstrated Bolsonaro’s hold on his his Presidency, his opponents faced such
he ordered military police to retake the loyalists, but it had also damaged him vicious attacks online that Brazilians
buildings of the Three Powers. The Su- politically. “It means the end of Bolso- spoke about a clandestine “office of hate,”
preme Court and the Planalto Palace naro as a democratically viable candi- run by Bolsonaro’s allies. The P.T. is less
were quickly secured, and then officers date,” Moreira Salles argued. Soon after adroit on social media. (Its leaders are
turned their focus on Congress, deploy- the elections, Bolsonaro had fled to Flor- largely older; one told me that sixty is
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 39
considered young.) Members of Lula’s military and the security forces are linked time a kind of folk hero for right-wing
administration told me that the solution to the insurrection, including a retired Brazil. In the recent election, he launched
was greater regulation of the media, par- senior officer of the Navy and a retired a campaign for President before drop-
ticularly on the Internet. “You can allow general of the Army reserves. ping out to support Bolsonaro, whom
total freedom, but you cannot allow evil, When Bolsonaro was President, he he coached through the debates. He
hatred, the encouragement of lies to gain handed over large swaths of the govern- also ran for the Senate, and won a seat,
space,” Lula said. ment to the armed forces, appointing representing his home state of Paraná,
In Moreira Salles’s view, people who more than six thousand military per- in southern Brazil.
were radicalized online were unlikely to sonnel to the civilian bureaucracy. To I met him in his office in Curitiba,
succeed in toppling the government. “The assert control, Lula knows that he will the state capital, in a modern tower that
danger is of an endless repetition of have to purge some officers and cultivate stood above a downtown of tidy lawns,
smaller January 8ths around the country,” many others. It will be delicate, unpop- churches, and steak houses. A neatly
he said. “Roads blocked, refineries occu- ular work. “The armed forces didn’t join groomed man with a deacon’s serious-
pied, that sort of thing. If they can’t seize Bolsonaro’s efforts to remain in power, ness, he was imperturbable as we talked
power, then the next best thing is to make otherwise he would still be in Brasília,” about his role in the political combat of
the current Presidency utterly chaotic.” Moreira Salles said. “But they are not the past few years.
Still, the threat of political violence coming forward to condemn the events When I asked why he had agreed
remains real; in December, police stopped of January 8th. Lula has to decipher to serve as Bolsonaro’s justice minis-
a bomb plot against Lula. People close this silence and bring the military to his ter, Moro said that he had hoped to
to him are particularly concerned about side. It’s going to be one of his hardest do some good for the country: “Who
the military, and perplexed by its reluc- tasks. History shows that the armed wouldn’t try that?” Before 2018, he said,
tance to quell the violence on January forces in Latin America are not guar- he’d known almost nothing about Bol-
8th. It has bases near the Three Powers antors of democracy.” sonaro. When I noted that Bolsonaro
buildings, and its troops secured the com- was already famous for offensive be-
pound during a demonstration in 2017— ome of the politicians who bene- havior, Moro fidgeted. “I heard from a
but this time, despite repeated requests
in the preceding days to step up security,
S fitted from Bolsonaro’s rise are fig-
uring out how to keep up their momen-
lot of people who said, ‘I’m relieved
that you’re joining the government, be-
it had intervened late, and seemingly half- tum without him. Sergio Moro, the cause you will be the voice of moder-
heartedly. At least fifteen members of the judge who put Lula in jail, was for a ation.’ And I never endorsed any kind
of attacks, verbal attacks of the Presi-
dent against women or anything like
that,” he said.
Moro pointed out that he had quit
his post after a year and a half, after
Bolsonaro forestalled a police investi-
gation into one of his sons’ activities.
When I asked if he believed that Bol-
sonaro was guilty of the offenses he had
been accused of, he nodded. Then why
had he rejoined him during the debates
with Lula? “I have never recanted what
I said in the past,” he said. “The past is
the past. But, if you have a second round
with two options, you need to make
a choice.” But why imprison one poli-
tician you regard as corrupt and aid an-
other? “Well, we are talking about dif-
ferent levels of corruption. And you
need to consider other issues. I don’t
believe in the economic thoughts of the
Workers’ Party.”
Moro did not deny that Lula had
won the election, yet he spoke sympa-
thetically about the people who ques-
tioned his legitimacy. “I am against any
kind of violence or any kind of coup,”
“Here comes the airplane—once it gets clearance he said. “But there are a lot of people
from the tower, which should be in another forty-five minutes. unsatisfied with the return of Lula, be-
Thank you for your patience.” cause there’s this perception that the
corruption scandals were not solved in pandemic, who defend the use of tor- fectively asking residents not to take
a proper way. So these people believe ture, and who believe that the Earth is advantage of the valuable resources
that Lula should never have been a flat.” The key, he said, was to improve around them. One rancher I spoke with
candidate.” Even before January 8th, their economic opportunities. “There said, “How can you live on top of a trea-
he acknowledged that the protesters are those who say Brazil has increas- sure chest and not be able to do any-
had “committed some mistakes.” But, ingly become a polarized country. I’d thing with it?”
he said, “I believe Brazilian democracy argue that it’s always been polarized. Lula’s environment minister is Ma-
should give these people an answer Think of it: this country is the third- rina Silva, who served for five years
and understand them, and not treat largest food producer in the world, while during his first tenure but resigned in
all of them as kind of villains. They thirty million of its citizens frustration over his desire
are not. They have families—they have go hungry, and one per cent to balance conservation with
children.” of the population owns development. Now Lula
most of the resources. Of had called her back, prom-
eople close to Lula were grappling course there’s going to be ising a zero-tolerance pol-
P with the same essential concern:
How could they bring Bolsonaro vot-
polarization!” He reminded
me that when Lula left of-
icy on deforestation. Silva,
a rubber tapper’s daughter
ers over to their side? Lula’s protégé fice the electorate had over- of Black Brazilian descent,
Guilherme Boulos is a forty-year-old whelmingly supported is an evangelical Christian,
activist and politician. We met for break- him—“because their lives a soft-spoken, long-haired
fast in a buffet-style “kilo” restaurant, were better!” Now, though, woman in her sixties. At her
where customers pay according to the there was less money flow- office in Brasília, she told
weight of the food piled on their plates. ing; the economy was in a downturn, me that she hoped to expand sustain-
He lamented, “Before, the opposition and the country was still recovering from able agriculture while halting illegal
was, if you will, civilized. We have a real the pandemic. “Lula’s margin of ma- deforestation. She acknowledged that
problem in the countryside.” neuverability will be reduced,” he said. there would still be violations of envi-
As the founder of the Homeless ronmental laws, and that the process
Workers’ Movement, Boulos spent years n the weeks after Lula won the elec- would take time. “We won’t be able to
organizing takeovers of disused build-
ings to provide shelter for Brazilians in
I tion, he often seemed as if he hoped
to simply return the country to the time
do this in four years—that would be
utopian,” she said. “The problem during
need. He won a legislative seat in the before Bolsonaro took over—when the Bolsonaro was that the transgressors had
recent elections, and will work closely Amazon was less imperilled, the econ- total impunity. With Lula, at least, the
with Lula. When I asked about the bol- omy was thriving, and Brazil was in a expectation of impunity will end.”
sonaristas, he said, “We have to learn to cohort of fast-ascending countries. “It Lula and his aides are conscious that
talk to those people.” But he suggested, was the best moment of social rise of the world will judge them less by the
in the tones of a New Yorker talking the poor people in Latin America,” he details of ordinary governance than by
about Texans, that Brazil’s rural areas told me in São Paulo, adding, “Let’s re- their handling of monumental crises:
were effectively a different country. “It’s cover the BRICS!” the collapse of the environment and
a mostly right-wing culture, which re- Four days after the January 8th in- the near-collapse of democracy. Sim-
volves around the idea that one’s prop- surrection, his administration released one Tebet, his planning minister, told
erties must be protected from left-wing its economic plan, which called for re- me, “President Lula’s big problem is
land invasions,” he said. “Its economic storing the Bolsa Família, increasing not just economic. He can solve the
program is neoliberal, and it is socially aid to the poor, rolling back privatiza- problem of inflation, the problem of
moralistic. Therein lies our problem: tion, and increasing taxes on gasoline. unemployment, reduce social inequal-
the left hasn’t attended to this sector, According to Brian Winter, the editor ity, reduce the percentage of poor peo-
and it really has to, if it wants to defeat of Americas Quarterly and a longtime ple in Brazil. But, if you don’t work on
bolsonarismo.” analyst of Brazilian politics, “The an- political pacification and unity, in four
Lula, he said, “has an extraordinary nouncements basically got a C-plus years’ time bolsonarismo will come back
capacity to govern and to articulate points from the markets—nobody too excited, with force.” At seventy-seven, Lula had
in common with different sectors.” But nobody too upset.” But Winter was not only one term left, and a great deal to
the past four years had made bridging optimistic that Lula’s government would do, Tebet reasoned. “He wants to clean
the differences much more difficult: “Bol- be able to spend its way out of a decade- the soul of Brazil,” she said. “He wants
sonaro didn’t govern—he set out the long slump. to halt injustice. I have no doubt that
guideposts for an ideological battle, and Recovering the Amazon will be he will assemble a team for this. What
he almost beat us by nearly winning harder still. During Bolsonaro’s term, worries me is whether he will have the
reëlection!” as ranchers and miners cleared land, strength, ability, discernment to under-
Boulos estimated that bolsonarista fires consumed an area of rain forest es- stand that his main role is not just these
extremists represented ten to twelve per timated to be the size of Belgium. The four years. It is building bridges so that
cent of the Brazilian population: “These region is rife with anti-government sen- we can, in 2026 and 2030, have demo-
are the people who don’t believe in the timent, and Lula and his allies are ef- cratic governments in Brazil.”
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 41
LETTER FROM TBILISI
NOVELS OF EMPIRE
Rereading Russian classics in the shadow of the Ukraine war.
BY ELIF BATUMAN
he first and only time I visited produced by my ancestors? I was read- Putin’s repeated invocations of the “Rus-
BOOKS
BY CASEY CEP
ho was the monkiest monk That would be a problem if Kreiner tween, talking with their Muslim and
televisions or TikTok, smartphones or and destitute. Almost all of Kreiner’s since some monasteries allowed them
streaming services, paying attention was subjects are Christian, but, as her Johns to retain property, including slaves. Even
already devilishly difficult—literally so, alone suggest, they were a cosmopol- monks who did divest themselves of
in the case of these monks, since they itan bunch. Her monks hail from Tur- worldly possessions were sometimes
associated distraction with the Devil. fan and Toledo and everywhere in be- slow to do so, first settling complex tax
58 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
In “The Wandering Mind,” we learn that even regulations on work, food, and sexual urges can’t vanquish distraction.
ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERTS RURANS THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 59
bills or figuring out how to provide for formation about monasteries, many of going obligations to the baptized. So
children or elderly family members. which maintained elaborate rule books extreme was some monks’ commitment
Still, in the centuries that Kreiner stud- and records that still survive. to forgoing human interaction that they
ies, Christians donated a full third of Such documents reveal widely vary- became known for their downcast faces,
all the land within Western Europe— ing strategies for staying focussed on a avoiding eye contact whenever they left
more than a hundred million acres— godly life. Some monasteries screened their monasteries.
to monasteries and churches. the mail or prohibited packages; many
The monks who surrendered their discouraged visitors, but others wel- ven the most solitary monks, those
property, or never had any to begin
with, could choose among several forms
comed anyone at all, especially pilgrims
and donors. Theories about the virtues
E who withdrew from both secular
society and religious community, soon
of ascetic living. Gyrovagues lived as or evils of outsiders were reflected even learned that the world had a way of
wanderers, begging for food and what- in the locations of religious communi- finding them. Frange, a monk who lived
ever else they needed; stylites, like Sim- ties. Geretrude of northern Gaul built in Egypt during the rule of the Umay-
eon, lived on top of pillars for long pe- her monastery in the desolate swamps yads, moved into a pharaonic tomb to
riods, while other monastics hunkered of the Scarpe River, but Qasr el Banat get away from it all, but even without
down in caves or hunkered up on crags. was built near the busy road between WhatsApp or DoorDash he remained
Household and itinerant monks were Antioch and Aleppo, so that travellers in touch with scores of people, whether
probably far more common than the could find shelter or worship. Plenty of to offer a blessing or to arrange a de-
monks we tend to picture—the so- monastics worried that caring for such livery of cardamom. Archeologists work-
called eremitic monks, who lived alone, people could lead to earthly entangle- ing in his tomb discovered ostraca—
often in remote places, and the ceno- ments; even the sacraments were at times shards of pottery repurposed as writing
bitic monks, who lived in intentional seen as suspicious, with leaders discour- slates—only some of which show him
communities. That historical blind spot aging their followers from performing wanting to be left alone; in most of
is partly the result of our wealth of in- baptisms, because they might create on- them, he is writing intercessory prayers
for children or pestering his sister to
bring him clothes and food.
As with all who try to devote them-
selves to ultimate concerns, Frange’s
resolve was tested by his physical needs.
A body isn’t like a town or a monas-
tery; you can’t move out of it to reduce
your worldly distractions. The best hope
was to fully transform it, as one fourth-
century Syriac poet said of monks:
Their bodies are temples of the Spirit, their
minds are churches;
their prayer is pure incense, and their tears
are fragrant smoke.
FALLING BEHIND
brand of reactionary Republican politics,
premised on a return to better times,
when America was great—and, unsub-
What’s the matter with men? tly, when men could really be men. The
question is what to make of the parox-
BY IDREES KAHLOON ysm. For the revanchist right, the plight
of American men is existential. It is an
affront to biological (and perhaps Bib-
lical) determinism, a threat to an entire
social order. Yet, for all the strides that
women have made since gaining the right
to vote, the highest echelons of power
remain lopsidedly male. The detoxifi-
cation of masculinity, progressives say, is
a messy and necessary process; sore los-
ers of undeserved privilege don’t merit
much sympathy.
Richard V. Reeves, a British Ameri-
can scholar of inequality and social mo-
bility, and a self-described “conscientious
objector in the culture wars,” would like
to skip past the moralizing and analyze
men in the state that he finds them: beset
by bewildering changes that they cannot
adapt to. His latest book, “Of Boys and
Men: Why the Modern Male Is Strug-
gling, Why It Matters, and What to Do
About It” (Brookings), argues that the
rapid liberation of women and the labor-
market shift toward brains and away from
brawn have left men bereft of what the
sociologist David Morgan calls “onto-
logical security.” They now confront the
prospect of “cultural redundancy,” Reeves
Gender equality, Richard V. Reeves contends, now calls for a focus on male deficits. writes. He sees telltale signs in the way
that boys are floundering at school and
irst, there was Adam, whose cre- ning to change.” Nearly three-quarters men are leaving work and failing to per-
F ation takes center stage on the ceil-
ing of the Sistine Chapel. Then, fash-
of a century later, that change has con-
tinued. By a variety of metrics, men are
form their paternal obligations. All this,
he says, has landed hardest on Black men,
ioned out of Adam’s spare rib, there was falling behind parity. Is the second sex whose life prospects have been decimated
Eve, relegated to a smaller panel. In Mi- becoming the better half? by decades of mass incarceration, and on
chelangelo’s rendition, as in the Bible’s, Many social scientists agree that con- men without college degrees, whose wages
the first man sleeps through the mirac- temporary American men are mired in have fallen in real terms, whose life ex-
ulous creation of his soul mate, the first malaise, even as they disagree about the pectancies have dropped markedly, and
woman and the eventual mother of hu- causes. In academic performance, boys whose families are fracturing at aston-
manity. Many of our foundational myths are well behind girls in elementary school, ishing rates. Things have become so bad,
are, in this way, stories about men, re- high school, and college, where the sex so quickly, that emergency social repairs
lated by men to other men. The notion ratio is approaching two female under- are needed. “It is like the needles on a
of female equality is, historically, an in- graduates for every one male. (It was an magnetic compass reversing their polar-
novation. “Woman has always been even split at the start of the nineteen- ity,” Reeves writes. “Suddenly, working
man’s dependent, if not his slave; the eighties.) Rage among self-designated for gender equality means focusing on
two sexes have never shared the world “incels” and other elements of the online boys rather than girls.”
in equality,” Simone de Beauvoir wrote “manosphere” appears to be steering some That either-or can be disputed; the
in “The Second Sex,” published in 1949. impressionable teens toward misogyny. transformed social landscape that men
“And even today woman is heavily hand- Men are increasingly dropping out of face cannot. When Beauvoir was writ-
icapped, though her situation is begin- work during their prime working years, ing her manifesto on the plight of women,
ILLUSTRATION BY GOLDEN COSMOS THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 63
she noted that “the most mediocre of comparison with women but in absolute majority of current medical and law stu-
males feels himself a demigod as com- terms—augurs so poorly for men several dents. And they’ve made extraordinary
pared with women,” and that “a man decades on. “As far as I can tell, nobody gains in subjects where they had once
would never get the notion of writing a predicted that women would overtake been highly underrepresented; they now
book on the peculiar situation of the men so rapidly, so comprehensively, or constitute a third of current graduates
human male.” Nowadays, there are so consistently around the world,” Reeves in STEM fields and more than forty per
many such books. Self-doubt has bro- writes. He notes that schoolgirls outper- cent of students in business schools.
ken through the supposed impervious- form schoolboys both in advanced coun- Much of the gender gap in pay, as
ness of masculine self-belief. Reeves’s tries that still struggle with considerable Claudia Goldin, a labor economist at
book is only the latest; it is also one of sexism, such as South Korea, and in no- Harvard, notes, is driven not by direct
the most cogent. That’s not just a con- tably egalitarian countries like Sweden discrimination—our conventional under-
sequence of his compelling procession (where researchers say they are confront- standing of a sexist boss paying a female
of statistical findings. It’s also due to the ing a pojkkrisen, or “boy crisis”). In 2009, employee less than an identically situated
originality of his crisply expressed the- American high-school students in the male one—but by differences in occupa-
sis: that men’s struggles are not reduc- top ten per cent of their freshman class tional choice. A more elusive target has
ible to a masculinity that is too toxic or were twice as likely to be female. Boys, been indirect forms of discrimination, in-
too enfeebled but, rather, ref lect the meanwhile, are at least twice as likely to cluding those sustained by social condi-
workings of the same structural forces be diagnosed with attention-deficit hy- tioning (which helps explain the gender
that apply to every other group. peractivity disorder and twice as likely to skew of certain occupations) and domes-
Reeves excels in relaying uncomfort- be suspended; their dropout rates, too, are tic arrangements that favor men. Within
able truths to his fellow-liberals—a tal- considerably higher than those of their occupations, there’s often no wage gap
ent that he displayed in his previous female counterparts. Young men are also until women have children and reduce
book, “Dream Hoarders,” about how four times as likely to die from suicide. their work hours. “For most women, hav-
well-meaning, college-educated parents ing a child is the economic equivalent
are hindering social mobility. Still, he his story pushes to the side the male- of being hit by a meteorite,” Reeves ob-
says, when he brought up the idea for
“Of Boys and Men,” many people tried
T favoring disparities in the world of
work. The gender pay gap is usually de-
serves. “For most men, it barely makes a
dent.” Goldin’s analysis is blunt: “The
to discourage him from writing it. Pro- scribed by noting that a woman earns gender gap in hourly compensation would
gressives are generally happier to dis- eighty-four cents for every dollar earned vanish if long, inflexible work days and
cuss current social disparities that go in by a man (though this is up from sixty- weeks weren’t profitable to employers.” Yet
the expected direction (such as the Black- four cents in 1980). Barely one-tenth of there may be reason for optimism. The
white gap in life expectancy) than those the C.E.O.s in the Fortune 500 are years-long pandemic and the subsequent
which don’t (the fact, say, that life ex- women (and that is itself a twenty-six- labor shortage have forced employers to
pectancy among Hispanics is slightly fold increase since 2000, when only two be more flexible in scheduling—partic-
higher than among non-Hispanic women were in the club). The #MeToo ularly within the most highly remuner-
whites). Besides, if our model of gender movement began just five years ago; the ated white-collar professions. If that sit-
politics is zero-sum, the educational and sexual harassment that women face has uation endures, the gender pay gap could
economic decline of men may even be hardly been extinguished. Even in the continue its decline, and boardrooms may
welcome. Women had to endure cen- workplace, however, gender convergence become more balanced by attrition.
turies of subjugation and discrimina- may be arriving sooner than anticipated. Good things can also come about
tion; should we really be alarmed that An axiom of policymaking is that dis- for bad reasons, though. Even if, as the
they are just now managing to overshoot parate educational achievement today French economist Thomas Piketty has
gender parity in a few domains? will manifest in disparate earnings later. suggested, global wars have helped re-
“Of Boys and Men” argues for a speedy Reeves points out that women earn duce inequality between the rich and the
response because the decline in the for- roughly three-fifths of all bachelor’s and poor, egalitarians should hesitate to be-
tunes of present-day men—not only in master’s degrees awarded. They are the come warmongers. And so it’s chasten-
ing to realize that the substantial decline
in the gender earnings gap is partly the
result of stagnating wages for working BRIEFLY NOTED
men (which have not grown apprecia-
bly in the past half century, adjusting for Forbidden Notebook, by Alba de Céspedes, translated from the
inflation), and partly of the steady creep Italian by Ann Goldstein (Astra House). Published in Italy in
in the number of men who drop out of 1952, this intimate, quietly subversive novel is told through the
the labor force entirely. increasingly frantic secret diary entries of a woman named Va-
We have some idea of why blue-collar leria. Against a backdrop of postwar trauma and deprivation,
wages have stagnated: a macroeconomic Valeria struggles with her household’s finances, a romance with
shift that greatly raised the value of a her boss, her husband’s professional dissatisfactions, and her
college degree, owing in part to the dec- grownup children’s love affairs. Confiding these tensions to
imation of manual labor by automation her diary—the only outlet for expression in her cramped life—
and globalization. White men experi- she awakens to society’s treatment of working wives and con-
enced a specific blow that Black men fronts a deep ambivalence toward her husband and children.
had felt earlier and even more acutely. She concludes that all women, to make sense of their world,
In a classic study, “The Truly Disadvan- “hide a black notebook, a forbidden diary. And they all have
taged,” the sociologist William Julius to destroy it.”
Wilson argued that early waves of de-
industrialization after the Second World This Afterlife, by A. E. Stallings (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). In
War devastated the lives of working-class this volume of selected and uncollected poems, Stallings’s for-
African Americans, who were buffeted mal ingenuity lends a music to her philosophically and narra-
both by economic forces, in the form of tively compelling verse. She draws inspiration from daily do-
greater rates of joblessness, and by social mestic life and from the mythology and history of Greece,
ones, including worsened prospects for where she resides, crafting clever yet profound meditations on
marriage. Later came the effects of the love, motherhood, language, and time. A particular pleasure is
so-called China shock—the contraction seeing certain personae—Persephone, Daphne, and Alice (of
of American manufacturing, a male- Wonderland)—recur throughout, accompanied by ever-deep-
skewing sector, as a result of increased ening resonances. “Song for the Women Poets” ends, “And
trade. David Autor, an economist at part of you leaves Tartarus, / But part stays there to dwell— / You
M.I.T., estimates that normalizing trade who are both Orpheus / And She he left in Hell.”
relations with China in 2001 cost as many
as two million American jobs, often in Hatching, by Jenni Quilter (Riverhead). Quilter’s memoir of
places that had not recovered even a de- conceiving a child through I.V.F. provides a history of the
cade later. A shelf of popular books about treatment and a sharp interrogation of her experiences. Re-
the white working class—Arlie Hoch- calling that she came to I.V.F. “driven by grief and fear and
schild’s “Strangers in Their Own Land,” desire to take a course of action that is hard enough to en-
Amy Goldstein’s “Janesville,” even the dure, let alone question at the same time,” she asks how much
newly minted senator J. D. Vance’s “Hill- of the yearning for a child is personal and how much is his-
billy Elegy”—have sought to reckon with torically and culturally conditioned. How do we rethink re-
the social consequences of these eco- productive technologies so that they don’t reproduce conser-
nomic transformations. None of them vative ideas of motherhood, class, and race? Quilter notes that
conveys much optimism. I.V.F. “anticipates the general tone of motherhood before you
What should we make of the grow- are even pregnant because it anticipates, even mimics, the no-
ing tendency of men to drop out of the tion of justified pain.”
workforce? In the past half century, fewer
and fewer men have returned to work The Lion House, by Christopher de Bellaigue (Farrar, Straus &
after each recession—like a ball that can Giroux). Centering on the reign of Suleyman the Magnifi-
never match its previous height as it re- cent, which sparked the Ottoman Empire’s vast expansion in
bounds. In 1960, ninety-seven per cent the sixteenth century, this tightly woven history depicts a Ma-
of men of “prime age,” between twenty- chiavellian world in which Ottoman and European leaders
five and fifty-four, were working. Today, bargained ruthlessly over land, ships, and people. With cine-
close to one in nine prime-age men is matic sweep and a dash of humor, de Bellaigue tracks fast-flow-
neither working nor seeking work. In ing shifts of power among the ambitious: illegitimate sons
the recently reissued “Men Without become diplomats, foreign consorts are crowned queens, pi-
Work: Post-Pandemic Edition” (Tem- rates turn pashas, and slaves are promoted to grand viziers.
pleton), the conservative demographer De Bellaigue is alert to a fragility inherent in empires, where
and economist Nicholas Eberstadt even the most influential ministers have “power to enact the
points out that men are now employed will of God or violate it” only while royal favor lasts.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 65
at roughly the same rate as in 1940, back Americans go on to earn substantially educational attainment”; on the contrary,
when America was still recovering from less than whites even if their parents were it finds “substantial evidence” that the
the Great Depression. Citing time-use similarly wealthy. Remarkably, the gap is practice is linked to higher high-school-
surveys—the detailed diaries that the due entirely to the differing prospects for dropout rates and lower over-all earn-
Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles on Black men relative to white men. In fact, ings. Reeves insists that he’d be vindi-
how Americans spend their days—Eber- Black women earn slightly more than cated if the protocol were applied more
stadt reports that most of these hours of white women who came from econom- widely, but his case isn’t very strong. We
free time are spent watching screens ically matched households. Sex-specific might hesitate before prescribing half
rather than doing household labor or variables—like the extraordinarily high the population an unusually strong and
caring for family members. Instead of rate of incarceration among Black men— uncertain medicine. Still, he is at least
socializing more, men without work are are evidently holding back progress. Al- proposing serious solutions. Many of his
even less involved in their communities though boys are as likely as girls to grow fellow-liberals remain undecided about
than those with jobs. The available data up in neighborhoods of concentrated whether below-par outcomes for males
suggest that their lot is not a happy one. poverty or in fractured families (sex at even merit attention, let alone efforts to
It would help if we had a firm grasp birth being almost a pure coin toss), an remedy them.
on why men are withdrawing from work. emerging body of evidence suggests that The political right has eagerly filled
Many economists have theories. Eber- boys may be less resilient to such adver- the void. At the 2021 National Conser-
stadt believes that “something like infan- sity. In a paper titled “The Trouble with vatism Conference, the Republican sen-
tilization besets some un-working men.” Boys,” the economists Marianne Ber- ator Josh Hawley gave a keynote speech
He notes the availability of disability- trand and Jessica Pan found that “boys on the crisis of masculinity, in which he
insurance programs (roughly a third of raised outside of a traditional family (with blamed “an effort the left has been at for
nonworking men reported some kind of two biological parents present) fare es- years now,” guided by the premise that
disability in 2016) and the over-all ex- pecially poorly,” with substantially worse “the deconstruction of America begins
pansion of the social safety net after the behavior in school and considerably lower with and depends on the deconstruction
nineteen-sixties. In 2017, the late Alan skills in “noncognitive” areas, such as emo- of American men.” Hawley, who is plan-
Krueger, who chaired President Obama’s tional sensitivity and persistence, that in- ning to expound upon his thoughts in a
Council of Economic Advisers, calcu- creasingly matter in the workplace. The forthcoming book titled “Manhood,” ar-
lated that nearly half of all nonworking gender gap in school suspensions, already gued that the solution must begin with
men were taking pain medication on a large, more than doubles among children “repudiating the lie that America is sys-
daily basis, and argued that the increased with single mothers. temically oppressive and men are sys-
prescribing of opioids could explain a lot tematically responsible,” and with re-
of the decline in the male labor force. eeves offers a wide menu of policies building “those manufacturing and
Erik Hurst, an economist at the Univer-
sity of Chicago, thinks that the rapid im-
R designed to foster a “prosocial mas-
culinity for a postfeminist world.” He
production sectors that so much of the
chattering class has written off as relics
provement in video-game quality could would encourage more men to become of the past.”
account for much of the especially deep nurses and teachers, expand paid leave, Meanwhile, the mass-market appeal
drop in work among younger men. Any- and create a thousand more vocational of the contentious cultural commenta-
one who has recently played (or momen- high schools. His signature idea, though, tor Jordan Peterson suggests an appetite
tarily lost a loved one to) Elden Ring or is to “redshirt” boys and give them all, for quasi-spiritual self-help (“Stand up
God of War Ragnarök can grasp the im- by default, an extra year of kindergarten. straight with your shoulders back”) in a
mersive spell that video games cast. But, The aim is to compensate for their slower secular age—Goop for young men. The
in the end, most economists admit that rates of adolescent brain development, vintage machismo that Donald Trump
they cannot settle on an exact etiology particularly in the prefrontal cortex, which so prizes may explain why the gender
for the problem of nonworking men. The controls decision-making. Reeves, who gap in the popular opinion of him was
former Treasury Secretary and Harvard places great stock in this biological dif- so large. And the swing among Hispanic
president Larry Summers, who is not ference, also places great stock in his voters toward Republicans is being driven,
known for his intellectual humility, re- proposed remedy: “A raft of studies of in no small part, by Hispanic men. How
cently surmised that “the answers here redshirted boys have shown dramatic men are faring in school and at work
lie more in the realm of sociology than reductions in hyperactivity and inatten- may not arouse everyone’s concern, but
they do in economics.” Reeves, too, thinks tion through the elementary school years, how men choose to pursue politics in-
that we can’t explain the economic de- higher levels of life satisfaction, lower evitably affects us all.
cline of men without looking at non- chances of being held back a grade later, Gender theorists have described a pe-
economic factors: “It is not that men have and higher test scores.” rennial struggle among multiple mascu-
fewer opportunities. It is that they are If that sounds too good to be true, it linities. In this scenario, nobody who val-
not taking them.” may well be. One of the studies he cites ues the prospect of eliminating gender
An intersectional approach may prove concludes that “there is little evidence hierarchies can afford to be a bystander.
useful here. Consider a recent landmark that being older than one’s classmates Masculinity is fragile; it’s also malleable.
study of income-tax returns, in which it has any long-term, positive effect on The shapes it will assume in the future
was definitively established that Black adult outcomes such as IQ , earnings, or have consequences.
66 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023
tion—instead of treating it as an “issue”
THE THEATRE to be regarded from a respectful and pious
distance, “The Appointment” sniffs out
PRO CHOICE
taboos and hunts them down at the pace
of a sprint. Here’s a taboo for you: the
chorus of fetuses turn out to be the play’s
“The Appointment” skewers the hypocrisy of the abortion debate. main characters—or, at least, they get the
most stage time. They sing and dance
BY VINSON CUNNINGHAM and tell jokes (the book is by Yorke, Stein-
metz, Sheppard, and Alex Bechtel, who
also wrote the music); they engage in
crowd work with the audience. They’re
obnoxious and needy, selfish and demand-
ing.The fetuses are stage-hogging hams—
which makes sense, given how much of
the national political spotlight, in Su-
preme Court hearings and state legisla-
tive chambers and on referendum bal-
lots, they’ve become accustomed to.
They even talk about their futures.
When one cries out, “I was going to cure
cancer!,” another retorts, “Oh Reginald
you’re a gambler not a doctor!” Yet an-
other forecasts a humbler fate: “I was
going to be on ‘Tiger King’!” The only
way to herd them offstage is to give them
the “hook.” That show-biz cliché has a
pointed meaning here. A glinting surgi-
cal instrument shows up time and again
to stop the incessant fetal chatter.
“The Appointment” is, in truth, less
a musical than a kind of cabaret or va-
riety show. Think of a gleefully spiky,
feminist version of “The Carol Burnett
Show,” or a special episode of the early,
punk-fuelled “Saturday Night Live.” (The
big, padded heads of the fetus costumes
reminded me more than once of Eddie
Murphy’s Gumby getup.) The only real
story comes when the fetuses are off-
t’s usually the anti-abortion activists— When the curtain opens, there’s a fetus stage. A woman, Louise Peterson, played
I the sign-wavers outside clinics, the
tellers of post-op horror stories—who
onstage, moving slowly and subtly, as if
bobbing in fluid. It’s soon joined by sev-
with stoic calm by Yorke, goes to a clinic
to get an abortion. She wears a paper
want to show you, in great detail, what a eral others. We know they’re fetuses pre- gown and is attended to by a cheerful,
fetus looks like. There’s something about cisely because of those images we’ve seen professional medical assistant named Ol-
the peach-and-hibiscus shock of flesh used as agitprop, even if we’ve strained iver, played by Wilfred. (“Ooh I like your
and blood, about the smallness of that to avoid them. The fetuses are played by socks!” he says.) Over and over, Louise
embryonic presence: the picture is sup- members of Lightning Rod Special— is asked her date of birth: “07/24/89,” she
posed to appall you into some new way Katie Gould, Jaime Maseda, Lee Minora, keeps saying with a cool patience.
of thinking and feeling about the poli- Brett Ashley Robinson, Scott R. Shep- Assuming that the action of the play
tics of birth. It’s only right, then, that the pard, Alice Yorke, and Danny Wilfred, is happening in 2023, Louise is a thirty-
first big laugh of the raucously pro-choice all vibrating with talent and hip smarts— three-year-old woman, grown, fully aware
musical “The Appointment,” by the Phil- wearing skintight, skin-colored suits mar- of what she’s doing. In what feels like
adelphia-based theatre collective Light- bled with purplish-gray veins. From their the only totally sincere song of the show,
ning Rod Special, directed by Eva Stein- tummies sprout ropelike umbilical cords. she sings:
metz at WP Theatre, is earned with a These outfits, funny and gross, are em-
I don’t feel confused.
similar kind of representation. blematic of the show’s approach to abor- And I don’t feel lazy.
I don’t feel regret.
In this gleefully spiky musical, a chorus of fetuses sing, dance, and tell jokes. And I don’t feel fucking dumb.
four-hour waiting period that might “the need for people to confront their
be the true span of the play, the fetuses participation in the systems that got us
hanging on to one last planetary twirl here is more pressing than ever.” (By
under the lights. The video shows a “here,” of course, they mean life after
long, melodramatic aria sung by re- the recent repeal of the constitutional
gretful former abortion patients, per- right to an abortion, following the Su-
formed, ironically, by the men in Light- preme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson deci- WHAT’S THE
ning Rod Special’s company. “Get me
a razor, so I can erase all the pain,” one
sion, last summer.)
But the show does something else BIG IDEA?
of them howls. entirely. Instead of excoriating the au- Small space has big rewards.
Another legal necessity: Louise has dience for its complicity, it mashes our
to look at a picture—not one of those faces into the scattered, swept-aside
gruesome hyperreal photographs that mess of images and tropes that are linked
show up at rallies but a sonogram. umbilically with abortion in our minds
Dr. Parsons asks her to explain what and cultural memories. It asks us whether
she sees. “I just have to write something it matters, or how much it matters, how TO FIND OUT MORE, CONTACT
JILLIAN GENET | 305.520.5159
down,” he says. The people who make we envision the fetus—as a bean, or a jgenet@zmedia-inc.com
laws like this think, one supposes, that taco, or a ghost, or a smear on a screen,
the sonogram image, a staticky moon or even, most harrowingly, as a person
landing in monochrome, might occa- with a daddy and a nascent sense of
sion a last-ditch upheaval in the preg- humor. The play makes you look at all
nant woman’s heart. But to Louise the of this, forcing you to court, with squirm-
picture is an abstraction. She describes inducing clarity, the imaginings that
it in a befuddled ekphrasis, like an art come by way of looking.
student looking at an obscure slide, In a poem titled “Orlando,” recently
bringing none of its ideological weight published in The Nation, the writer
to the task. “I mean it’s blurry. It’s kind Megan Fernandes indulges in the same
of . . . moving a little bit,” she says. “It’s kind of unmournful speculation about
in black and white—I don’t know.” what might have become, in an alter-
nate reality, of an aborted child:
ll this business about images is
A tricky, and tetchy, and strange. It’s
easy to imagine a pro-choice argument
. . . I think he’d be
a drummer and wear green. I have no
regrets,
against “The Appointment”—that, de- but I wonder if he’s waiting in the sky
spite the satiric intentions of its cre- somewhere
ators, there’s just too much risk involved or doing blow in another dimension where
he’s a rocker
in representing fetuses as persons, or and very much flesh.
in airing the arguments of anti-abor-
tionists. The fetuses parrot and parodize Fernandes echoes Anne Sexton, who,
pro-choice analogies—inherently vi- considering “this baby that I bleed,”
sual—about their size. “Guess what, wrote stoically, “Somebody who should
mommy? I’m as big as an olive,” one have been born / is gone.” The daring,
says. “I’m as big as a hot fudge sundae unspoken claim of “The Appointment”
with a little cherry on top and I’m sweet is that here, post-Dobbs, with abortion
like one, too. But don’t eat me please!” up in the air and out in the open yet
another pleads. again, more perilously than ever, there’s
But the fetuses also paint pictures of really no harm in pictures or possible
life outside the womb. They fantasize futures, counterfactuals or graven im-
about having a nice dad. (“My dream ages. Let them multiply. You might
daddy subsidizes my life as an artist.”) even get a laugh.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 69
Evelyn are different, perhaps, because of
THE CURRENT CINEMA the urgency with which they seek amends
for a lack of affection in the home. Ziggy
GROWING PAINS
falls for a girl at school, Lila (Alisha
Boe), when he hears her read one of her
poems. “It’s actually tera-sophisticated,”
“When You Finish Saving the World” and “Close.” he says. “Thanks for the validation,” she
replies. (Eisenberg has a keen ear for the
BY ANTHONY LANE patois. Ziggy’s most frequent term of
praise is “lift.”) Having set the poem to
t comes as a surprise to learn that even talk at dinner. Roger ( Jay O. San- music, which is cool, he then brags to
I “When You Finish Saving the World,”
a new film directed by Jesse Eisenberg,
ders) is the head of the household, but
a severed head; seldom without a glass
Lila about making money from it. Not
cool. His mother, meanwhile, develops
is also the first film directed by Jesse of wine, he prefers to slip upstairs, wise an interest—at first kindly, then un-
Eisenberg. Really? I could have sworn fellow, to read a book. Evelyn ( Julianne healthy—in a teen-ager, Kyle (Billy
he’d taken charge before. He’s one of Moore), his wife, runs a local women’s Bryk), the son of a woman who has ar-
those actors who become de-facto au- shelter. Completing the picture is their rived at the shelter after fleeing an abu-
teurs, imbuing a story so richly with only child, Ziggy (Finn Wolfhard), aged sive partner. So obsessed is Evelyn that
their manners, or their moods, that it seventeen, who hibernates in his room. she takes Kyle out for dinner at an Ethi-
opian place. It must be love.
If you are groaning in spirit after
watching Florian Zeller’s “The Son,”
which is now in wide release, you may
be wondering, Why bother with yet an-
other drama about wretched parents and
their lonely offspring? Because, although
“When You Finish Saving the World”
is equally taut with unhappiness, it al-
lows itself to be funny, in ways that are
inconceivable to “The Son.” When Roger
says to Ziggy, “I’m reading this fascinat-
ing article about teen suicide,” adding,
“It’s highest in your specific age group,”
you laugh at the breathtaking wrongness
of the line. This being an Eisenberg proj-
ect—he also wrote the screenplay—the
laughter comes with a wince attached as
standard, and there is barely a scene, in
Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard star in Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial début. a film constructed from social awkward-
ness, when your nails aren’t digging into
feels like their own creation. In Eisen- There, facing his computer, he plays gui- your palms. Kyle has a good job, work-
berg’s case, “The Double” (2013), “Louder tar and sings to a growing and, it must ing at a body shop, but Evelyn keeps
Than Bombs” (2015), and “The Art of be said, undiscerning bunch of fans. egging him to try college. “It’s the only
Self-Defense” (2019), all of them made Ziggy calls his music “classic folk rock way to learn and to grow, to live a more
by other directors, are galvanized by his with alternative influences.”“I don’t know examined life,” she declares, foisting her
nervous electricity. As he stares at the what that means,” his father says. What fancy-pants Socratic dreams on the poor
surrounding characters, furrowing his exasperates Ziggy, apart from absolutely kid. What if he just wants to examine
brow and twitching with unease, you everything, is being interrupted by Eve- the underside of a Buick?
can see their self-possession starting to lyn while he’s live-streaming. “What’s “When You Finish Saving the World”
waver. There you have it: Eisenberg’s ‘live-streaming’?” she asks. I was re- is a small and cloistered work, it’s true,
Uncertainty Principle. minded of the mother from New Jer- that seems to shrink into itself. Friends
Although he doesn’t appear in the sey, sublimely cited in the Onion, ten are thin on the ground, and it’s all too
new movie, and delegates his staring years ago, “who asked if the internet was apt that Evelyn’s emotional peak con-
duties to the camera, the principle is up- as good as the online.” sists of listening to Tchaikovsky in sol-
held. No one here could be accused, even Few zones have been more thoroughly itary confinement, at the wheel of her
temporarily, of contentment. Welcome scouted onscreen than the generation tiny red Smart car. Compare Mike
to the Katz family, of Bloomington, In- gap. There will always be rebels, with or Mills’s “20th Century Women” (2016),
diana—a huge and boisterous clan num- without causes, as well as fears that the which also mapped the ambitions of a
bering precisely three. Sometimes they gap will widen into a ravine. Ziggy and teen-ager and his progressive elders,
70 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2023 ILLUSTRATION BY CLAIRE MERCHLINSKY
but gave its dramatis personae far more twist in the title. It is the mother, not ever, he is peeling away from his pal.
room to roam, and less stifling air to her son, who never finished saving the (We think of unfriending as something
breathe. What’s most likable—and, these world. Now she can hardly save herself. performed with a tap of a finger. This
days, most valuable—in both films is is the real deal.) Forty-five minutes into
their urge to find comedy in political he hero of Lukas Dhont’s new the movie, something happens, and we
cravings. Hitherto, Ziggy hasn’t cared
about climate change, being stuck in
T movie, “Close,” is a Belgian boy,
four or five years younger than Ziggy,
don’t need the shot of a harvesting con-
traption, churning flowers from the soil,
the landmass of his own head, but now named Léo. He is played by Eden Dam- to tell us that the companionship of Léo
he desperately wants to care, if only to brine—making his début—with star- and Rémi will be forever threshed.
curry favor with Lila, a more natural tling intensity, and with a grace that To be honest, I found “Close” as hard
activist. His solution is to cook up a seems more unconscious than cannily to sit through as a horror flick. A vision
protest song, which involves strumming poised. Léo is blithe, blond, and fair of of bliss descends into a sorrow show. As
a single angry chord, over and over, and face. It’s a face that we are at leisure to with a china figurine placed near the lip
(the sweetest moment in the movie) observe, in searching closeups, though of a shelf, all you can do is brace your-
consulting the Web to see what rhymes whether our search is gratified is another self for the smash. There’s no sex, no sup-
with “congressman.” Answer: “collagen, matter. Léo is at once open and closed, purating special effects, and no violence,
Jonathan, oxygen.” Go, Ziggy! Rage loath to divulge his secrets, even to him- although Léo does vent his frustrations
against the machine! self, as he puts away childish things. on the hockey rink. Fenced in by the
Then, there is Evelyn—a worthy ad- Léo’s best friend—almost his other grille of his helmet, he slams himself into
dition to Julianne Moore’s gallery of half, you might say—is Rémi (Gustav the wall. Most upsetting of all is a bout
well-meaning souls from whose exis- De Waele). They bicycle to school to- of boyish horseplay, in a bedroom, that
tence the meaning has drained away, gether; they have regular sleepovers, doz- kicks off as a lark but turns into a dog-
drop by drop. Nobody smiles like Moore, ing side by side in a shaft of blessed morn- fight, complete with claws and teeth.
or compels us to ask, as she does, what ing sunlight; and they race through a What Dhont understands, in short,
kind of courage is required for the up- blur of blooms, pink and scarlet, shoulder- is how kinetic the rites of passage are—
keep of a brave face. (How she would high, like time travellers who have landed how growing pains are expressed not
have flourished in the weepies of the in the midst of a Monet. (The wistful in words, however therapeutic, but in
late nineteen-thirties and early forties, Rémi, indeed, never looks quite suited rushes of activity. When the kids in the
which traded so lavishly in the polite to the here and now, especially the now.) classroom are invited to voice their feel-
suppression of pain.) Hence the sudden The blooms, we soon gather, are part of ings, they mumble in platitudes; mess-
shock when, giving Ziggy a ride to a flower farm run by Léo’s parents, but ing about on a beach, they come alive.
school, she lays into him for not hav- what Dhont is offering, as the boys run If only François Truffaut were around
ing inherited her political fire. “When wild, is not so much a tour of a labori- to watch this film. He would have mea-
you were a little boy, I brought you to ous business as a whiff of paradise. sured the pulse of its sadness, quick and
every march, every protest,” she tells We know that loss is coming, as it slow, and cherished, as I did, the ex-
him. “You were going to be one of the must. The laws of Arcady demand no traordinary scenes between Rémi’s
good ones.” That’s a terrible thing to less. A girl at school, quizzing Léo about mother (Émilie Dequenne) and Léo,
say to anyone, let alone your own child, his rapport with Rémi, describes them who wind up confronting each other in
and Evelyn knows it. As she drops Ziggy as a couple. She’s being more curious a forest. Here is another tale of women
off and drives away, her eyes brim with than unkind, but from then on the blush and sons. Fathers flit by like ghosts.
tears behind her wire-rimmed specta- of innocence begins to fade. When Rémi
cles, and we realize that this tera-smart, plays an oboe solo at a concert, Léo re- NEWYORKER.COM
anxiety-fettered movie comes with a gards him with pride; little by little, how- Richard Brody blogs about movies.
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“ ”
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“ Your eggs should be out any minute now.” “Hold your fire—it turns out he’s a good boy!”
Samantha Schnell, New York City Donny Dietz, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Tune in wherever
you get your podcasts.
Scan to listen.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
THE 16 17 18
CROSSWORD 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26
A lightly challenging puzzle.
27 28 29
BY ERIK AGARD
30 31
32 33 34 35 36
ACROSS
1 Brownstone features 37 38 39
7 Managed somehow
13 Two for the price of one 40 41 42 43 44
15 “Allow me”
45 46 47
16 High-school graduation requirement
in some states 48 49
18 Stock at a car dealership
19 Engross 50 51 52 53 54
20 Emphatic denial
55 56
22 Hammer part
23 Though 57 58
24 Fast punch
27 Mobile-game annoyances 3 They may be pimiento-stuffed 43 Ring wearer
28 Haudenosaunee Confederacy nation 4 A lot 44 Place that’s directly to the right of
29 ___ platter 5 Master of metaphor, maybe a decimal point
30 2021 W.N.B.A. M.V.P. with the 6 C.G.I., e.g. 46 Not flat, terrain-wise
Connecticut Sun 47 “Mohawk ___” (TV show about four
7 Make a bad call?
32 Lead-in to It or Whiz women in Kahnawake)
8 Word after free or real estate
35 School in L.A. 48 “Red Table Talk” host ___ Pinkett Smith
9 Extinct Mauritian bird
36 Strong adhesive 49 Prefix similar to quasi-
10 Approx. travel figure
37 What the entire second season 50 Material in genomics
of “Roc” consisted of 11 Cacophony
51 Snakelike animal
12 Tiebreaking periods, for short
40 Done caring about
14 A harvest moon is the full moon 52 Just-released
41 Lure into a crime
closest to it 54 Country singer McGraw
42 Clock setting in L.A.
17 Band with an umlaut in its name
45 Lead-in to X or Z 21 Gives another look? Solution to the previous puzzle:
46 “Yay!” 23 ___ Arbor, Michigan C L A S P T H E M B I T E
47 Show astonishment 24 2007 teen-pregnancy movie R O U T E W A S A B I P E A
48 Talk yourself out of something? 25 Highest point E N D I T E Y E L A S H E S
49 Use as a perch A G E N D E R A T C O S T
26 Slammed with work
K I N G O F K O W L O O N
50 Mountain with a Koyukon name 28 Move like molasses S O L C H A N T E L S
53 Dwindle 29 Sounds of bursting balloons P C P R A T T Y S T A I N
55 Fir-tree dropping U H O H T H A R P I P S O
30 Loudly express derision
L I P I D E V E R T P A W
56 Language in which Katy Perry, Luke 31 Wrangler automaker I N S P E C I E E O S
Bryan, and Lizzo have recorded songs
32 Drain issue O S C A R S S O W H I T E
57 More 4-Down than 4-Down A R C T A N A P R O N E D
33 One of many in an apiary
58 Fails to attend L I K E L I K E S O R E A D
34 Mutually unindebted
B E E R S N O B S P E P S I
DOWN 38 Flowers that attract ants A L T S E N B Y E S T E E
1 Tibetan ethnic group 39 Jupiter’s is about ten hours
Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
2 Rolled to the runway 42 Jamaican language newyorker.com/crossword
Stop the flood
of misinformation
The Tampa Museum of Art recently acquired three of Mitchell Johnson’s early Truro paintings.
Mitchell Johnson Nothing and Change is available at Amazon. Request a digital catalog
by email: mitchell.catalog@gmail.com. More info available at www.mitchelljohnson.com.
Top: Green Umbrella (North Truro), 2023, 24 x 38 inches, oil on canvas. Lower left: Night Boat (Marseille), 2023, 30 x 14 inches, oil on canvas.
Lower Right: Cap-d’Ail, 2022, 34 x 24 inches, oil on canvas. All images © 2023 Mitchell Johnson.