Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The New Yorker 01.2.2023
The New Yorker 01.2.2023
The New Yorker 01.2.2023
2 & 9, 2023
JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
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THE MAIL
THE NEED FOR HOSPICE with serious illnesses—and the qual-
ity of their deaths.
The cases of fraud that Ava Kofman Sandra Frellsen
documents in her article about the Austin, Texas
hospice industry are deeply disturb-
ing (“Endgame,” December 5th). Al- As someone who worked as a hospice
most the entire piece is devoted to de- nurse for eighteen years, I found Kofman’s
tailing instances of wrongdoing—some investigation to be both welcome and
of them hair-raising, all of them mad- long overdue. We nurses were overworked
dening. Yet it also notes that the more and underpaid, but we remained com-
than a hundred and fifty interviewees, mitted to our patients and their families.
though concerned about exploitation I left the field in 2012, when a for-profit
of the system, all praised the hospice organization was hired to administer
mission. Why not contrast the fraud- ours. It was at that moment that I be-
sters with some places that are doing it came an advocate for patients, helping
right, like the services in Arizona and them with decisions about end-of-life
New York that allowed my mother, care. I was appalled by the proliferation
my father, and, most recently, my hus- of for-profit hospices, and advised pa-
band to die at home, with dignity and tients to seek out nonprofit options. Ask
with family by their sides? I hope that any family about the help, care, and com-
Kofman’s investigation will bring about passion provided by their nonprofit-
reform, but I also hope that it will not hospice team, and they will tell you that
discourage families from seeking the the assistance was an unexpected gift in
solace and the support that reputable a lonely, frightening time.
hospice care can offer to the dying and Bonnie Topper-Bricker
their loved ones. Northville, Mich.
Ann Cooper
New York City The problem with for-profit hospices
which Kofman describes is real, yet it
As the medical director for the old- saddens me to think that this article might
est nonprofit hospice in central Texas, lead some readers to reject hospice care
I was glad to see Kofman shine a light entirely. All over the country, there are
on the dramatic rise in the number of nonprofit hospices acting with the same
for-profit hospices, some of which good will that started the movement in
have dubious or fraudulent business the first place. At the nonprofit hospice
practices. Most hospices, however, ad- in Northern California where I volunteer,
here to Medicare regulations to pro- funds go straight back into our programs,
vide quality care to people with lim- paying for not only reliable hospice care
ited prognoses; our organization, like but also bereavement counselling, palli-
many others, has a department dedi- ative services, caregiver training, and a
cated to insuring that we follow these healing garden. American patients and
regulatory requirements. Our staff families must learn to seek out community-
works hard to do the right thing, and based nonprofits, especially as aggres-
our physicians carefully review pa- sive competition from for-profit hos-
tients’ eligibility prior to and during pices makes it harder for them to survive.
hospice enrollment. Marion Franck
To make an educated hospice choice, Davis, Calif.
patients and their families can use tools,
such as those on Medicare’s Web site, •
to compare different organizations’ Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
quality scores. Bad actors tarnish the address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
reputation of the hospice agencies themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
that are making a difference in im- any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
proving the quality of life for people of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
DECEMBER 28, 2022 – JANUARY 10, 2023
After skipping two years, for obvious reasons, a beloved holiday tradition is back in the streets of East
Harlem—El Museo del Barrio’s Three Kings Day Parade and Celebration, which is now in its forty-
sixth year. Some revellers show up dressed as the wise men, but there are other Biblical trios: look for
fresh faces self-styled as la Sagrada Família (pictured above, in 2020). Everyone is welcome to join the
hour-long procession, which begins at 11 a.m., on Jan. 6, but registration, via elmuseo.org, is required.
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Christmas Show! Futterman (Birdland; Jan. 4-7.) larly wistful aura.—Jay Ruttenberg (Racket;
Jan. 7.)
ROCK Aimee Mann and Ted Leo began col-
laborating, under the inconspicuous band Prototype Festival
name the Both, in 2013. The pairing revealed OPERA Last season, the Omicron surge
two artists with more in common than one squelched the Prototype Festival’s plans DANCE
might suspect. Mann, a generational singer- for its tenth anniversary, so the producers
songwriter, was, in her formative years, a of this highly influential bastion of experi-
punk, before coming up playing in the New mental opera postponed the commemoration American Dance Platform
Wave favorites ’Til Tuesday, and eventually to 2023. The boundary-pushing composer The participants in this year’s festival have
turning to the wry ballads for which she is Du Yun opens the festival with “In Our been chosen by Ronald K. Brown, and they
revered. Leo, a New Jersey-bred punk hero, Daughter’s Eyes,” her one-man chamber tilt toward his affinity for African diasporic
is a biting lyricist attuned to the nuances of opera, with a libretto by Michael Joseph culture. Each program features a different
pop songcraft. Both are fiercely independent McQuilken. The suave-voiced baritone company. Les Ballet Afrik, led by Omari
artists, free to follow their muses where they Nathan Gunn plays a father, known simply Wiles, presents its take on ballroom vogue, in
travel—even if that happens to be a holiday as Our Hero, who wants to be worthy of a piece called “New York Is Burning.” Bridget
variety show that mixes jovial Christmas clas- his family but can’t imagine what that will Moore’s B. Moore Dance, from Dallas, brings
sics with piquant original songs. A seasonal entail. Other shows include a double bill by three full-bodied, highly theatrical works,
tradition for Mann since 2006, the concert Emma O’Halloran; an animated film about including “Southern Recollection: Romare
includes sketches and guests from both mu- an addiction-addled mermaid, “Undine”; Bearden.” And Tommie-Waheed Evans’s wa-
sical and comedic realms.—Jenn Pelly (City and “morning//mourning,” a music-theatre heedworks, from Philadelphia, offers “Bodies
Winery; Dec. 28-30 and Jan. 1.) piece that imagines the rebirth of an Earth as Site of Faith and Protest,” partially set to
where humans no longer exist.—Oussama civil-rights-era speeches.—Brian Seibert (Joyce
Zahr (Various venues; Jan. 5-15.) Theatre; Jan. 10-15.)
The Bunker
TECHNO New York’s reigning techno party, the
Bunker, celebrates its twentieth anniversary Real Estate Noche Flamenca
with a total of twenty performers—a smor- ROCK The Highline Ballroom opened, with The beloved flamenco troupe and its great
gasbord of largely local techno and house a splash, in 2007 (Lou Reed headlined, star, Soledad Barrio, like to workshop new
talent. At parties like these, the emphasis cantankerously); a dozen years later, the pieces in public. That’s what they did a few
is often on the out-of-towners, who here Roots lowered its curtain. Although nobody years back with “Antigona,” their terrific ad-
include the personable d.j.s. Erika, Carlos would have mistaken the Highline Ball- aptation of the Sophocles play, performing it
Souffront, and Sister Zo. But what’s most room for CBGB, it was the type of midsize for several weeks in residence at West Park
exciting is the chance to experience those club that a city’s rock ecosystem needs to Presbyterian Church. For most of January,
guests alongside a murderers’ row of res- keep purring. This week, it begins anew, they’ll be back in that space, presenting parts
idents and regulars—such as the Bunker as Racket, with opening duties falling to of their new work, “Searching for Goya,”
founder Bryan Kasenic, plus Derek Plas-
laiko, Mike Servito, and Lauren Flax, whom
DJ Mag crowned the Underground Hero of ELECTRONIC
2022.—Michaelangelo Matos (Good Room;
Jan. 6-7.)
In 2006, while interning at the rap label
Gogol Bordello Stones Throw, the musician Steven El-
ROCK Eugene Hütz, the Ukrainian ringleader lison was watching Cartoon Network’s
of the Gypsy-punk outfit Gogol Bordello, Adult Swim block when he noticed an
is a mustachioed futurist who has been in
somewhat open conflict with the ugly march ad soliciting song submissions for the
of history since he was a boy fleeing the Cher- channel. Since his selection—under
nobyl disaster with his family. Though rooted the moniker Flying Lotus—Ellison has
in a place now under direct siege from Russia,
his band’s richly inventive rock continues to become one of the most prominent fig-
make good on the immigrant dreams of that ures in experimental music, releasing six
youngster, with strains of his Roma heritage albums of future funk and founding an
rubbing up against reggae rhythms and high-
speed New York raucousness. On “Solidari- independent hub for like-minded odd-
tine,” the band’s driving new album, we know balls, Brainfeeder. Ellison is the great-
that Hütz is thinking about Kyiv when he nephew of Alice Coltrane, so eclecticism
sings the one called “Take Only What You
Can Carry.”—K. Leander Williams (Brooklyn is in his blood; he makes hip-hop beats
ILLUSTRATION BY OHNI LISLE
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bring it to life.—B.S. (The Center at West Park; framing device, intensified by Mark Jacoby’s Workshop; through Jan. 22.)
Jan. 528.) hauntedness as an aged Diamond looking
back at scenes from his life. Ingenuity also
glimmers in Steven Hoggett’s choreog- Some Like It Hot
raphy (chorus members emerge as songs Broadway musical adaptations of movies
THE THEATRE from Diamond’s mind), and in Bri Sudia’s about cross-dressing have been like buses
tartness as a music producer who likens lately: if you missed “Tootsie,” in 2019, “Mrs.
ILLUSTRATION BY MAX GUTHER
the singer-songwriter’s voice to “gravel Doubtfire” was right behind it. Where each
A Beautiful Noise wrapped in velvet.” Will Swenson, playing of those efforts accepted its source material’s
Much has been made of the Disneyfication Diamond in his prime, approximates that basic premise (despite the way both had aged),
of Broadway, but what of its Vegasization? voice impressively—which is convenient the artists who adapted Billy Wilder’s clas-
At least Disney properties have narratives; because, as directed by Michael Mayer, he’s sic film “Some Like It Hot”—the composer-
the “plot” of most jukebox musicals is a performing a glorified concert. Money talks, lyricist Marc Shaiman, the lyricist Scott
singer’s biography, with the human mo- as “Forever in Blue Jeans” proclaims, but it Wittman, the book writers Matthew López
ments edited out. Here the subject is Neil can’t buy originality.—Dan Stahl (Broadhurst; and Amber Ruffin, and the director Casey
Diamond, famed for his songs “Sweet Car- open run.) Nicholaw—have dislodged the beloved Wilder
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hand—that’s doing the deal.—H.S. (10/31/22)
(Golden; through Jan. 15.) Per a Mayan myth, when the world began, in 3114 B.C., it took the
gods three tries to get humans right. The first attempt, using mud,
was a wash; wood didn’t make the cut, either. Finally, corn hit the spot
ART and people came into being. A few millennia later, Mayan artists paid
homage to their makers by creating dazzling figures themselves, nota-
Martha Rosler bly during the Classic period, between 250 and 900 A.D. (They also
Videos, photo collages, and installation works
COURTESY METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART / MUSEO DE SITIO
Women Talking
This tense, compassionate, stirringly acted
drama, written and directed by Sarah Polley,
based on the novel by Miriam Toews, depicts
a radical response to desperate circumstances.
The film is set within a Christian cult, on a
remote farm in rural Canada, where men
keep their wives and daughters uneducated
and dependent—and drug and rape them, at-
tributing the attacks to supernatural demons.
The three short documentaries that form the program “James Baldwin When one man, denounced by a woman, is
Abroad” (opening Jan. 6 at Film Forum) depict the writer amid his arrested, all of the men head to town to bail
travels to London, Paris, and Istanbul, which he describes as a kind of him out; while they’re away, a delegation of
women gather in a hayloft to choose their
exile from the physical and emotional dangers that he was facing as a course of action. (The group’s most prom-
Black man in the United States. The earliest and longest film, “Baldwin’s inent members are played by Claire Foy,
N****r,” from 1968, showcasing a trenchant and contentious public dis- Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, and Frances
McDormand.) The mounting suspense as
cussion in London, is acutely directed by Horace Ové, one of Britain’s the women plot their escape is powerful, but
first Black filmmakers. There, Baldwin cites the urgency of learning the the core of the movie, as the title suggests,
“actual history” of the United States and Europe—a concept that was is the debate itself, which proves to be much
more: they give voice, for the first time, to
as daring and controversial then as it is now. “Meeting the Man: James the appalling realities of their lives. Though
Baldwin in Paris,” from 1971, finds Baldwin contesting the very effort of the movie offers few mysteries—its substance
is foregrounded and there isn’t much back-
COURTESY JANUS FILMS
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career from his political one. In “James Baldwin: From Another Place,” face of outrage is resonant.—R.B. (Opening
made by Sedat Pakay, in Turkey, in 1973, Baldwin discusses his bisexuality Dec. 23 in limited theatrical release.)
along with American men’s “paranoiac” view of homosexuality. All three
films show Baldwin uniting creation and activism in an overarching For more reviews, visit
calling that he describes as the bearing of witness.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town
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ome. When Bâtard closed during the grette over the top, a piece of bread. That
pandemic for the second time, in 2021, was it. It was delicious.” For Glocker’s
and the Breslin space became available, terrine, he cooks beef shoulder, chuck, and
TABLES FOR TWO Glocker—who’d “had a business plan in top round, chills them in their broth, and
my pocket for quite a while”—took the slices the result for layers of the terrine,
Koloman plunge on his dream project. which gets wrapped in carrots cooked in
16 W. 29th St. Koloman Moser’s visual influence is the same broth. It’s served chilled, fin-
apparent in meticulous, gorgeous details ished with Styrian pumpkin-seed oil, a
Markus Glocker, the chef and co-owner throughout the restaurant, such as brass high-end cold-pressed specialty of Styria,
of Koloman—a new French-Viennese light fixtures re-created from Moser’s de- Austria; egg yolk and tarragon cream take
restaurant in the former Breslin space, signs, and the grand bar, backlit in amber the edge off the austerity of the meat.
adjoining the Ace Hotel in NoMad—has and anchored by a train-station-worthy A perfectly crisp schnitzel starts with
a clarity of vision that springs from the brass-and-mica clock—but the food is all a veal loin—more tender than the usual
PHOTOGRAPH BY WILLIAM JESS LAIRD FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
philosophy of the turn-of-the-century Glocker. The tight menu features coyly top round—which gets shallow-fried
artist Koloman Moser. It may sound a bit engaging twists on classic French and in clarified butter. Its bevy of accom-
stiff, such a specific and obscure restaurant Viennese cuisine. Duck-liver parfait is paniments includes lingonberry and
theme—Koloman who?—but Glocker topped with a gelée of Kracher, Austria’s sea-buckthorn sauces, to cut the rich-
shares a kindred spirit with the graphic rival to France’s Sauternes. The beets in ness with sweet-and-sour tang; and a
designer and painter, a founding member the Roasted Beets “Linzer” taste nearly lively potato salad—“You have to leave
of the Viennese Secession movement, candied, their sweetness from raspberry it out,” Glocker said, “as soon as you put
whose concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, or vinegar; they’re tossed with little squares potato salad in the fridge the flavor’s
total art, included furniture, textiles, met- of shortbread. (“Didn’t look like a Linzer gone”—made the way his mom did,
alwork, stained glass, and other crafts. torte, but it tasted like it,” a friend pro- properly seasoned with vinegar.
Glocker takes this idea to its logical claimed.) Oversized gougères (no com- There are other standouts—beef
modern-day conclusion, extending total plaints here) incorporate Bergkäse, Pleas- tenderloin with a bone-marrow-and-
art to also encompass—what else?—food. ant Ridge Reserve, and Cheddar cheese brioche crust, served with marvellous
Glocker grew up in a small town in and red-wine-braised shallots into pâte à Baumkuchen, potato-pancake rings filled
Austria, where he was expected to take choux dough; they’re baked in muffin tins, with potato purée; hefty cross-sections
over his family’s hotel, but, he told me, yielding maximum caramelized crust and of salmon sandwiched in a cracklingly
after culinary school, “I packed my bags a gooey center. crisp tramezzini-bread croûte. For one
and left,” to cook with Gordon Ramsay, Glocker’s Short Rib & Tafelspitz last surprise, try the crème brûlée. You’d
in London and New York, and Charlie Terrine was born from a reverie of Sun- never guess it, but Glocker has discovered
Trotter, in Chicago, where he discovered day meals after church. “My father took that duck egg transforms custard into a
that he loved discipline in the kitchen. me to the local restaurant, and we had cloudlike ideal. (Dishes $15-$60.)
That discipline was on full display during boiled beef ”—Tafelspitz, named for the —Shauna Lyon
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 9
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT (His remit also includes the question The D.O.J. has charged some nine
TRUMP ON TRIAL? of whether Trump improperly kept hundred defendants, and has success-
classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.) fully prosecuted several members of
n October 14th, the day after the If Smith recommends that Trump be the Oath Keepers on charges that
O Select Committee to Investigate
the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Cap-
charged, Attorney General Merrick
Garland would have to sign off, and
match or parallel some of those in the
committee’s referral. Trump, unlike the
itol voted to subpoena Donald Trump, a grand jury would have to approve Oath Keepers, did not enter the Cap-
he released a long letter of “anger, dis- an indictment. itol on January 6th. From the White
appointment, and complaint.”The com- There is no exact model for what House, though, to take one example
mittee, he said, had “perpetuated a Show such a trial might look like. Presidents from an executive summary of the com-
Trial the likes of which this Country have been impeached, but none has ever mittee’s final report, he “repeatedly and
has never seen before,” with “no Due been asked, after leaving office, to turn unlawfully pressured” Vice-President
Process, no Cross-Examination, no ‘real’ himself in for arraignment, with the Mike Pence to reject several states’ elec-
Republican members, and no legiti- prospect of arrest if he failed to com- toral votes in favor of fraudulent ones.
macy.” (And, he added, it got “very poor ply. No judge has had to consider the ( John Eastman, the former law pro-
television ratings.”) The committee, of question of cash bail for a billionaire fessor who helped Trump devise what
course, was not staging any sort of trial; who once lived in the White House, or became known as the “fake electors”
it was conducting an inquiry into a asked the former head of state to turn scheme, was the subject of committee
series of events that culminated in Con- over his passport. The voir dire of po- referrals, too.)
gress members fleeing a mob. But at its tential jurors would be an unprecedented The committee’s nine members—
final public meeting, on December 19th, spectacle; so would the mug shot. including the Republicans Liz Cheney
it voted to send criminal referrals to the Trump, however, would not be alone and Adam Kinzinger—ran a tightly
Department of Justice regarding four in facing trial as a result of January 6th. managed process. In televised hear-
felonies that Trump might have commit- ings, they were able to play the snip-
ted. If he wants a proper trial, the com- pets of videotaped testimony that they
mittee may have helped him get one. judged most effective. Prosecutors at
One of the referrals is for violating trial, by contrast, have to deal with the
a statute in the U.S. criminal code that live testimony of the witnesses before
deals with inciting, assisting, or giving them. The rules of discovery mean
aid or comfort to an insurrection. The that Trump’s lawyers would have ac-
others are for obstruction of an official cess to full transcripts of depositions
proceeding (namely, the counting of and to any exculpatory material the
electoral votes), conspiracy to defraud prosecutors possess. Evidentiary dis-
the United States, and conspiracy to putes, such as the one over whether
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA
DEPT. OF SONG island of Kauai; his wife owns a tiki bar. velvet and ball it up, tie it up in twine,
DAY JOB The bar in Chelsea was on the and boil it until it got permanently
ground f loor of the building where, wrinkled.” He went on, “I was design-
fifty years ago, he set up his first re- ing lights for a discothèque, doing any-
cording studio, Secret Sound, with thing I could to survive, because I didn’t
Moogy Klingman. “He had the loft know what I’m doing next. I knew I
space and was living there,” Rundgren didn’t want to be in a band.”
said. “And I had the wherewithal to With Nazz, he’d got some experi-
odd Rundgren, the record pro- equip it. By then, I was getting a bud- ence at the engineering console. Albert
T ducer, sound engineer, songwriter,
and recording artist, has had such a
get to make my next record.” His pre-
vious album—the one with the hit
Grossman, manager of Dylan, hired
Rundgren to make some of his old folk
strange career in the music business “Hello It’s Me”—had done well, so he acts sound more modern. Grossman
that it somehow does not seem strange spent the budget on equipment instead told Rundgren that he would make him
that, at seventy-four, he has been per- of studio time. “I built the console. We
forming in a David Bowie tribute band. wired it all up ourselves, did our own
This on the heels of a few Beatles- soldering.” Someone had given him a
tribute tours. A giant covering giants. shoebox of peyote buttons. “I’d have
“I’ve already determined that I’m one for breakfast, one for lunch, and
not doing any more Beatles,” he said one for dinner. I was high for a month.”
the other day. “I’m Beatled out. At this Rundgren, originally from the Phil-
point, I’m kind of tributed out.” adelphia area, came to New York in
He was in a bar in Chelsea, on a late 1967 with his band, Nazz. “We were
day off from the Bowie tour (twelve a dress-up band, a glam band,” he said.
gigs in thirteen nights), sipping what “I recall our excursions starting in
he called a Ukrainian Mule. Known in Brooklyn, looking for an affordable
his youth as Runt, he’s sturdier now, place, and by the time we found some-
with long two-tone hair and a vibe thing it was in Great Neck, on Long
that manages to be both beatific and Island.” He left Nazz after a year and
bearish. He arranges his own travel, a half. “I was spending my days in the
to avoid the tour bus and the Covid Village with clothing designers. There
risk. He doesn’t own a cell phone. “I ac- was a boutique down on Christopher
tually have my wife’s spare in case I Street called Stone the Crows. Crushed
need an Uber,” he said. They live on the velvet was very popular. You would take Todd Rundgren
12 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
the highest-paid producer in the world.
This soon came to pass. Rundgren pro-
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HAWAII POSTCARD
mission: scout a backup carbon-track-
ing site at the summit, safe from mun-
LAVA, CARBON
duced big albums for the Band, Grand dane emissions (humans, cars) and fu-
Funk Railroad, Badfinger, Hall & Oates, ture eruptions, to keep the graph going.
and the New York Dolls, plus Meat “The Keeling Curve is going to be eli-
Loaf ’s “Bat Out of Hell,” which Rund- gible for Medicare next March,” Lueker
gren treated as a spoof of Springsteen. said. (He and the curve share a birthday.)
Meanwhile, at Secret Sound, and As he drove higher, houses became
then in a home studio upstate (“New auna Loa, the world’s biggest ac- fewer and the temperature fell. “It could
York to me is a monkey house”), Rund-
gren, eschewing earlier pop success,
M tive volcano, on Hawaii’s Big Is-
land, erupted last month, after almost
be an excellent comparison to what’s
happening at Mauna Loa if we can get
made experimental records of his own. four quiet decades. As lava oozed down an instrument in here,” Lueker said,
“For most artists, it would always be the mountainside, residents packed go putting on a sweater four thousand feet
in the back of their minds that if they bags and amateur volcanologists flew above sea level. Clouds slid along a
didn’t sell records it would be the end in. Some Hawaiians came to make of- steep green hillside. “Whenever you
of their career,” he said. “But I was pro- ferings to the goddess Pele; the mayor start making—this is something Dave
ducing records and making hundreds warned spectators not to throw marsh- Keeling really showed the world—very
of thousands of dollars at it, so it never mallows. Amid the hoopla, the lava shut precise measurements over time, you
crossed my mind when I was making down some scientific instruments. “We always learn things you didn’t know
my own records that I had to be eco- didn’t want to set a new record for the about.” He was alarmed to see a few
nomically successful at it, and that’s biggest hole in the curve,” Tim Lueker, cows. “Odd. We don’t want cows around
what inspired me to get so crazy. I’m a scientist at the Scripps Institution of our measurements.”
still making records now, and the peo- Oceanography, said recently. He meant After watching Jacques Cousteau on
ple who were worried about the eco- the Keeling Curve—an authoritative TV as a kid in Michigan, Lueker stud-
nomics of it, well, they never found a illustration that the planet is warm- ied chemical oceanography in college,
day job.” ing—which had been tracking carbon hoping to fight marine pollution. “I
There have been other income dioxide almost continuously from 1958, wanted to go to work for the E.P.A.,”
streams. “My most licensed song is when Charles David Keeling created he said. Bad timing: Ronald Reagan
‘Bang the Drum All Day,’ and it used it, until November, when the lava took had appointed someone named Anne
to be I could almost live off of it,” he out power lines. It has not gone down Gorsuch Burford to run the agency.
said. “It was in the trailer for ‘Antz.’ since Mauna Loa last erupted, in 1984. “They wanted to just get rid of all the
Just the trailer. Carnival Cruise Line “The number of earthquakes went regulations,” he said. “And her son is on
was using it for all their ads, but they way up in September,” Lueker said, driv- the Supreme Court.” Lueker ultimately
decided to change their image, and ing a rented Dodge Challenger up a two- decided to take a job in Keeling’s lab.
that’s where that gravy train ended.” mile-high volcano called Haleakalā, on As the air thinned, the terrain turned
He added, “I always wondered why Maui. “It seemed inevitable that sooner to black sand and sharp volcanic rock.
the phone company never used ‘Hello or later the volcano could erupt.” The Lueker parked at around ten thousand
It’s Me.’”
Rundgren, earlier in his career, was
hard-core sober, a scolder of stoned
collaborators. The first time he ever
drank was in his early twenties, while
he was staying in Soupy Sales’s pool
house, in Los Angeles. Sales’s sons were
helping Rundgren record his first al-
bum, and their mother decided to get
him drunk. Later, a Philly friend, a
med student, introduced him to mar-
ijuana. “It got me to step back and look
at the process more,” he said. “Sud-
denly, I could see that things weren’t
happening to me—they were happen-
ing around me.”
Does he still smoke? He took out
a vape pen and drew on it. “As a mat-
ter of fact, I have a vanity line of can-
nabis coming out. It’s called Hello It’s
Weed.”
—Nick Paumgarten “Guess you’re right—I do internalize criticism.”
feet, put on a windbreaker, and ascended next to Mauna Loa, but tour-bus ex- laminated cards at each of its nine seats:
a hill. “We want to sample above those haust has been spiking their readings.) you must state your target upon arrival;
guys,” he said, waving at a billow of fog Lueker entered a nearby visitor cen- the manager will check your progress
to the east. The sky in the southwest ter and introduced himself to a park every hour; you can’t leave until you’ve
was clear, with thirty-knot winds. “This ranger with a handlebar mustache. He met your goal; alcohol should be con-
is the perfect place,” he said. said that he was looking for a building sumed only after you’re done.
He unpacked a cardboard box: two where his team could keep its instru- The idea for the café, Kawai said,
glass vacuum globes the size of volley- ments, and asked the ranger if there came from a short story he read as a boy,
balls, with protruding nozzles—“Keel- were any storage spaces in the park. Kenji Miyazawa’s “The Restaurant of
ing flasks.” (One such flask was just “That’s an upper-management ques- Many Orders,” published in 1924, about
sent to the Smithsonian.) “You don’t tion,” the ranger said. a restaurant that is filled with signs tell-
want any CO2 from humans getting in Lueker got back in the car and ing customers what to do. “The Manu-
the f lask, so you can’t breathe while headed down the mountain. “We’re script Café rules are not a joke,” he said.
you’re taking samples,” he said, hefting going to need to fix this mess,” he said, “This is a place for serious people.”
one of the contraptions. He inhaled looking out at the islands. “I’m hoping On her intake form, the college stu-
deeply and marched into the wind, that the data we’re collecting will help dent wrote down her target: “15 pages in
holding the flask aloft. He twisted a the next generation of scientists figure 2 hours.” The last section on the form,
knob and the flask sighed loudly. He out the things that need to happen called “Progress Check,” asks customers
closed the valve. “That was the air whis- next.” Getting greenhouse gases under to choose between “mild,” “normal,” and
tling into the vacuum,” he said, free to control would be part of it, he said, and “hard.” If a patron checks “mild,” Kawai
breathe again. He set the flask in the he knew that the Dodge wasn’t help- will ask, as the bill is being paid, “Have
box and picked up the other. ing. “But we like our toys, we like to you met your goal for today?” “Nor-
Two women strolled into Lueker’s have fun,” he said. “The thing that re- mal” means hourly verbal encourage-
1
path, one holding a baby in a beanie, all ally scares me is virtual reality.” ment. (“You can do this! “Way to go!”)
three emitting carbon dioxide. —Jack Truesdale “Hard” involves more frequent mon-
“We have to wait for the pedestri- itoring and what Kawai calls “silent
ans,” Lueker said, standing aside. TOKYO POSTCARD pressure”: standing behind a customer’s
“I’m sorry!” one of the women said. FINISH LINE chair, sometimes holding his chiwax (a
“It’s O.K.!” Lueker said. “The wind’s Chihuahua-dachshund mix), Matcha.
going to blow it all away really fast.” “I’d like to request ‘hard,’” the col-
He held his breath, then repeated lege student said.
the operation with the second flask. “Understood.” He wished her luck
“This is historic stuff,” he said, back in and suggested that she visit the rest room,
the car. He’d ship the flasks to Cali- even if she didn’t need to, because the
fornia and analyze the concentration ne recent rainy day, in the hip décor was interesting.
of CO2 in them. “There could be a lot
of really interesting information com-
O Tokyo neighborhood of Kōenji,
Takuya Kawai greeted a customer. She
Since 2019, Kawai has tried out sev-
eral other themes in the space—a coffee-
ing from this site, compared to Mauna was a college student, working on a and-cigarettes café, a video-editing café,
Loa,” he said. (Lueker and Ralph Keel- translation of an interview with a ref- a café to sort receipts—but they haven’t
ing, Dave’s son, recently started mea- ugee from Cameroon for a research taken off, partly because of Covid. “The
suring carbon dioxide on Mauna Kea, project. Kawai is the proprietor of a new Manuscript Café is my fourth time at
kind of co-working space, designed for bat,” he said, miming a slow-motion
procrastinators. After its opening, in swing. The inspiration for this itera-
April, Kawai tweeted, “At the Manu- tion came not just from the Miyazawa
script Writing Café, people who aren’t story but also from Tokyo’s Hilltop
facing a deadline cannot enter! I ask for Hotel, where such writers as Yukio
your understanding and coöperation in Mishima and the Nobel laureate Yasu-
order to maintain the tension in the nari Kawabata were once confined by
café.” The cost starts at two hundred their editors, to make them finish their
and forty yen (about a dollar and eighty- projects. Kawai thinks of the café as a
two cents) for thirty minutes. Patrons “third space,” separate from home or
can choose from several timed “courses.” the office. It caught on right away.
Kawai is an affable man in his fifties The café’s customers were hard at
who used to work in advertising. He work, despite the traffic buzzing outside
wore Birkenstocks, jeans, a shirt pat- and the Chūō Line trains rumbling on
terned with goldfish, and a blue mask. elevated tracks across the street. Some-
He handed the college student a “terms times people got up to make drip coffee
of use” intake form. The café has a lot at the Free-Drink Corner. In the rest
Tim Lueker of rules, posted on the windows and on room, a radio over the sink was tuned to
14 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
J-Wave; vintage Walkmans, tape record- his office, in Boerum Hill. “Newspapers, Transportation. A week later, he walked
ers, iPods, and rotary phones, along with underground newspapers, stuff I find on by and saw that it was gone. He asked
a few stuffed animals, were arranged on the Internet.” He read from one of the a museum security guard if he knew
shelves. Kawai designed the bathroom offerings, “a book of mind-control pat- what had happened. The guy didn’t, but
to “refresh customers’ minds,” an anti- ents that are really crazy!”: “This inven- he promised to review security-camera
dote to the intensity of the main area. tion pertains to influencing the nervous footage of the scene. The next day, the
After tidying the Drink Corner, Ka- system of a subject by a weak externally Whitney’s head of security called with
wai went around offering treats from a applied magnetic field with a frequency news that an employee had accidentally
plate of candy and snacks; he said that near 1/2 hz.” moved the news box to the loading dock.
he was inspired by flight attendants. “I Anzuoni, who wore dirty white “It turns out we treated it as lost prop-
pretend to view their screens to confirm sneakers and carried a waterproof back- erty,” the guard said. “It got picked up
progress,” he said of his patrons. “But I pack (“I work in books, man! Water is and taken to a junk yard in Red Hook
don’t actually look, since there are peo- the enemy!”), was loading a recently ac- and destroyed.”
ple dealing with sensitive material.” quired news box into the back of his Anzuoni was devastated. He de-
It was time for the final “hard” check- girlfriend’s Lexus S.U.V. “This is the In- manded an apology. The Whitney sent
in with the college student. She had writ- patient Express,” he said, of the car. He him one, on official letterhead, and a
ten thirteen pages. “You’ve made great pointed to the news box, which he had check for $477.56—what he had paid for
progress!” he said. By the end of her ses- bought on eBay, for two hundred and the news box. (A friend interning at the
sion, she met her goal. Kawai handed her fifty dollars. “Here is the new guy, a museum later told Anzuoni that the in-
a completion sticker. beautiful Facebook blue. I drove out to cident is mentioned in a PowerPoint
Part of the café’s appeal to locals, New Jersey to get it.” presentation given during an orienta-
Kawai believes, is its similarity to juku, Coco Fitterman, a twenty-four-year- tion for new employees.)
or cram school, the classrooms where old master’s student in comparative lit- A few boxes later, Anzuoni double-
Japanese students prepare for entrance erature at CUNY, who works as An- parked the Lexus outside Clementine
exams. “We all need this kind of atmo- zuoni’s “executive-intern-in-chief,” was Bakery, in Clinton Hill, and jumped out
sphere to overcome human weakness,” helping out. “It’s so heavy!” she said, to check the revenue from a dark-green
Kawai said. He thinks one reason the hoisting the box into the trunk, which news box. Twenty-two dollars and sev-
café has attracted so much attention is also held L. L. Bean snowshoes. “I don’t enty-five cents in quarters. “Do you want
that people view him as a Zen master know how I thought we were going to to keep a stack for your laundry?” An-
who will whack customers with a stick take this on the train!” zuoni asked Fitterman, who pocketed a
if they daydream. “I don’t do that, Anzuoni, who is thirty-two, planned few. A young man who had been stand-
1
though,” he said. “It would be weird.” to spend the afternoon checking on his ing in line at Clementine for a cold brew
—Ann Tashi Slater news boxes before installing the latest and a cauliflower sandwich hesitantly
one. Inpatient’s titles, which are printed approached the box. “I don’t have any
THE WAYWARD PRESS and bound in Reykjavík, Iceland, include quarters,” he said. Anzuoni was happy
EXTRA! EXTRA! a novel, translated from the Russian, that to make change.
is rumored to be authored by Vladimir As the guy dropped a quarter in the
Putin’s former deputy chief of staff; a slot, Anzuoni whispered, “It makes such
story about the sex life of a grocery-store a good sound!” The customer walked
cashier; and a young woman’s (that is, away with an art book about cults and
Fitterman’s) first chapbook. “I realized paramilitary organizations (retail: twenty-
I can make any book I want,” Anzuoni five dollars) and a Spencer Longo col-
n the old days—the days of the side- said. “Our motto is ‘We Publish What lage print (limited edition: priceless).
I walk shoeshine, the days of the pay
phone—a New Yorker could buy an eve-
Others Don’t.’” His stock is sold at book-
stores in Paris, Mexico City, Hong Kong,
“Very cool,” he said.
Across town, in front of an art gal-
ning edition of the Times or the Post Berlin, Brussels. In New York, McNally lery in Chinatown, Anzuoni and Fitter-
from a metal news box and read it on Jackson, Printed Matter, and, occasion- man dropped off the new box, which he
the subway home. No push notifications ally, the store at the Whitney Museum had nicknamed Old Blue. “All right, lit-
involved. But history has a way of re- carry Inpatient titles, but Anzuoni pre- tle buddy. Godspeed. You better be empty
peating itself. Somehow, baggy jeans are fers less conventional distribution. He next time I’m here!” Anzuoni said. Fitter-
back, and mullets, too. And news boxes used to sell books out of special pock- man headed to class, and Anzuoni mulled
are showing up on street corners again. ets sewn inside a trenchcoat: “I’d just go his next distribution project: “I really
A few years ago, Mitch Anzuoni, a self- up to people who looked bored. ‘Hey, want to get a fridge—one of those fridges
proclaimed multimedia mogul who runs want to buy a book?’” that you can see into, that you can get a
a small press called Inpatient, started The news-box project had a tumul- drink out of—and I want to stock books
placing old newspaper boxes around town. tuous beginning. In 2019, Anzuoni in them and sell ice-cold books to peo-
Inside: posters, books, zines, erotica. Cost: dropped off his first box, painted taxi- ple. Like, you ever hold a cold book in
a quarter. “I publish anything!” Anzuoni cab yellow, outside the Whitney, with your hand? It feels amazing!”
said the other day, on the sidewalk near the blessing of the city’s Department of —Adam Iscoe
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 15
resemblance to its namesake, subsequent
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS video-game adaptations veered to the
opposite extreme, prioritizing faithful-
GAME THEORY
ness without regard for what might be
lost in translation from one medium to
another. For three decades, the genre
Can a critically acclaimed video game be turned into a hit HBO series? has been plagued by ill-defined charac-
ters, contrived in-jokes, and nonsensi-
BY ALEX BARASCH cal lore dumps—and, with few excep-
tions, the impulse to cater to diehard
fans at the expense of new viewers has
alienated both. Nevertheless, studios
and streamers, desperate for younger
audiences and enticed by the promise
of multibillion-dollar I.P., have forged
ahead: Netf lix alone has announced
more than a dozen video-game adap-
tations. This past February, the turgid
“Halo” was renewed by Paramount+ be-
fore the first season had even aired. In
mid-December, Amazon ordered a show
derived from the God of War franchise.
Next year, Universal will take another
run at a Mario movie, with Chris Pratt
in the lead. And HBO has reportedly
spent upward of a hundred million dol-
lars on its best hope of breaking the
curse: a series, premièring in January,
based on a game called The Last of Us.
A Sony PlayStation title released in
2013, The Last of Us follows a man
charged with shepherding a teen-age
girl across a pandemic-ravaged Amer-
ica, where infected individuals are re-
duced to mindless assailants. What
might have been a rote zombie story is
instead a character study that includes
Phoebe Waller-Bridge among its ad-
mirers. By the time Neil Druckmann,
the game’s creator, walked into HBO’s
hen the British actor Bob Hoskins chise—but when his kids learned that offices, in 2020, he understood the risk
W agreed to star in “Super Mario
Bros.,” he had little sense of what he
he would be playing Mario they excit-
edly showed him the game. “This is
he was taking. An Israeli immigrant
with a trim, athletic build and salt-
was getting into. The year was 1992, and, you!” one said, gesturing to a pixelated and-pepper hair, he’d learned English,
although the title on which the film was mustachioed plumber. “I saw this thing in part, from the games he’d played
based had sold tens of millions of cop- jumping up and down,” Hoskins later throughout his childhood, and he ap-
ies, a feature-length live-action adapta- recalled, in doubtful tones. “I thought, proached different mediums as an am-
tion of a video game had never been at- I used to play King Lear.” bassador for his own. A truly great ad-
tempted. The movie’s eventual tagline, The film marked the first major stab aptation, he told me, could “enlighten
“This ain’t no game,” reflected a self-con- at a puzzle that Hollywood has been this whole other audience that cares
scious distance from its source material: trying to solve ever since. The intent about storytelling and hasn’t realized
a convoluted parallel-universe plot re- had been to produce a zany, subversive there’s amazing storytelling happening
cast the heroes as Italian American comedy in the “Ghostbusters” mold; the in games.”
handymen from Brooklyn and the prin- outcome was a box-office bomb that But his evangelism had nearly gone
cess they set out to save as an N.Y.U. Hoskins has called “the worst thing I awry. In 2014, a film version of The Last
archeology student. Hoskins himself ever did” and “a fucking nightmare.” of Us was optioned by Screen Gems, a
hadn’t even heard of the Nintendo fran- Whereas “Super Mario Bros.” bore little Sony subsidiary that he described, dip-
lomatically, as geared toward making “a
In The Last of Us, Joel and Ellie develop an almost familial bond. particular kind of movie.” Screen Gems
16 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 ILLUSTRATION BY ANGELICA ALZONA
is best known for another video-game mutual fanboys to collaborators. At a nothing there that you can’t generate
adaptation, the commercially successful recent lunch, Mazin, who is bald, on your own—”
but critically reviled “Resident Evil” fran- bearded, and naturally exuberant, drew “Other than the name Doom, and
chise; the most indelible image from out the more introverted Druckmann marketing,” Druckmann cut in.
the first installment is that of Milla Jo- as they discussed the challenges of their “That’s the thing,” Mazin said. “If what
vovich, clad in a red dress and knee- project. When Druckmann expressed the property is giving you is a name and
high boots, sailing through the air to confidence that the show “will be the a built-in thing, you’re basically setting
kick an undead dog in the face. Druck- best, most authentic game adaptation,” yourself up for disaster, because the fans
mann respected Sam Raimi, who had Mazin said, “That’s not the highest bar will be, like, ‘Where’s my fucking thing?’
been hired to direct “The Last of Us,” in the world.” He went on, “I cheat- and everybody else will be, like, ‘What’s
but he mistrusted the executives in- ed—I just took the one with the best Doom?’ And then you’re in trouble.”
volved, who constantly asked for things story. Like, I love Assassin’s Creed. But “The Last of Us,” they believed,
to be bigger and “sexier.” His aesthetic when they announced that they were would be different. “Hopefully, this
touchstone was “No Country for Old gonna make it as a movie I was, like, I will put that video-game curse to bed,”
Men”; they wanted “World War Z.” He don’t know how! Because the joy of it Druckmann said.
also began to fear that fifteen hours of is the gameplay. The story is impene- Mazin laughed and shook his head.
gameplay couldn’t be condensed into a trable.” The Assassin’s Creed franchise “I’m telling you—it’s gonna make it worse.”
two-hour feature. boasted sophisticated stealth mechan-
After years in development hell, ics—a style of play focussed on avoid- n 2001, a Japanese developer released
Screen Gems relinquished the rights.
Druckmann soon found himself clashing
ing detection by enemies—and lush
historical settings; the 2016 film com-
I Ico, a minimalist puzzle-based game
about a boy and a girl escaping a castle.
with Carter Swan, the executive in charge pelled Jeremy Irons to utter such lines Though the title sold modestly, it has
of I.P. expansion at PlayStation, who as “She has traced the protectors of the since achieved cult status; the horror au-
was intent on finding a creative partner Apple.” Mazin added, “I still am strug- teur Guillermo del Toro has hailed it as
to entice him. When Druckmann ad- gling to understand how Abstergo and a masterpiece. The player character, the
mitted that a film adaptation seemed the Animus and the Isu—I mean, the boy, has been locked away by supersti-
wrongheaded, Swan informed him that Isu alone . . .” tious villagers because of his monstrous
the screenwriter Craig Mazin had said “I don’t even know what you’re talking appearance. His companion, Yorda, is a
the same thing. “Wait,” Druckmann said. about, and I’ve played so many Assassin’s princess fleeing an attempt on her life.
“The ‘Chernobyl’ guy? Why can’t I meet Creed games,” Druckmann said. He, The actions available to the player are
with him?” too, was conscious of the genre’s abysmal limited but evocative: when you reach
A wrenching account of the 1986 nu- track record; so far, he said, only “kids’ out to Yorda to catch her as she falls,
clear disaster and its aftermath, “Cher- movies,” such as the 2019 film “Detective the controller vibrates to mimic the tug
nobyl,” which aired on HBO in 2019, Pikachu,” had actually worked. Later, of her hand. The game’s climax left
was a drama built like a thriller, praised he ventured his own theory about failed Druckmann, then a student, transfixed.
for its contemporary resonance and com- adaptations: “The other thing that peo- “You’ve been playing for hours, helping
plex characters. Crucially, it also man- ple get wrong is that they think people this almost helpless princess,” he re-
aged to impart grim visuals—skin slough- want to see the gameplay onscreen.” called. “And then this bridge is open-
ing off an irradiated worker; the suicide Countless films have fallen into the trap; ing in such a way that you’re going to
of a disgraced physicist—with emotional the most notorious is “Doom,” a 2005 die, so you have to turn back and jump
weight. Mazin’s show earned nineteen treatment of the pioneering first-person to her—and all of a sudden, she reaches
Emmy nominations and won ten, in- shooter. The movie, starring Dwayne out, and she catches you.” Ico had im-
cluding Outstanding Limited Series. Johnson and Karl Urban, featured an posed strict rules and then broken them,
Following this triumph, Casey Bloys, the extended sequence that took weeks to to great emotional effect.
head of HBO, had encouraged him to shoot, relying on a combination of Druckmann recounted the expe-
“write what makes you levitate.” Mazin Steadicam and C.G.I. to re-create the rience when I met him in Santa Mon-
had been enamored of The Last of Us perspective that had made the game fa- ica at the headquarters of Naughty Dog,
since its release—so much so that he’d mous. For five minutes, the action un- the studio behind The Last of Us.
already tried to reach Druckmann. (“I folded through the protagonist’s eyes, Dressed in joggers and a T-shirt, he of-
blew him off,” Druckmann admitted to with only his hands and his weapon vis- fered me a tour, showing off the gaming-
me, sheepishly. “I didn’t know who he ible at the bottom of the frame as he magazine covers on the walls. Now forty-
was.”) The men finally met, and spent stalked through corridors and gunned four, he’d first arrived there nearly twenty
hours geeking out over each other’s down enemies. The result was both diz- years earlier, as an intern. Born in Tel
work—then concluded that, although zying and dull: what felt immersive to Aviv and raised in the West Bank, he’d
The Last of Us would never succeed as a player was borderline illegible to a immigrated to Miami with his family
a movie, it could be ported to television. passive viewer. when he was ten. At Florida State Uni-
Afterward, Mazin sent Bloys a note: “I Mazin noted, “Doom is also a per- versity, he’d started as a criminology ma-
am currently levitating.” fect example of something that you jor—a precursor, he thought, to an even-
Druckmann and Mazin went from don’t actually need to adapt. There’s tual career as a thriller writer—but a
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 17
computer-science course set him on a namic to change gradually, with Joel de- actions to influence the plot. But end-
different path. After joining Naughty veloping a protectiveness toward Ellie less possibilities came at a cost: they
Dog, as a coder, he studied screenplays, that—in his mind, and in some play- turned protagonists into mere ciphers.
sketched out game levels by hand, and ers’—justifies amoral acts on her behalf. The creator of BioShock, another story-
petitioned Evan Wells—then his boss, To heighten that feeling, Druckmann rich game from that era, later said that
now his co-president—for a spot on the borrowed the twist that had struck him he’d been pushed by higher-ups to re-
design team. Druckmann believed games in Ico, and took it further. When inca- place the troubling, ambiguous finale
could elicit emotions that no other art pacitated as Joel, players wouldn’t just he’d devised with a stark moral fork in
form could, and he’d played some, mainly be helped by Ellie; they would become the road; the player’s choices would yield
indies, that proved it. But, in the early her. Occupying Ellie’s body feels differ- one of two endings, one “good” and one
two-thousands, mainstream publishers ent, and requires a shift in strategy. She’s “bad.” Druckmann was urged to do the
seemed fixated on spectacle. He saw more capable of quick, quiet movements, same and refused. There were decisions
Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men” but she’s also comparatively fragile. An he knew Joel—a man capable of both
while working on a game called Un- attack that Joel could withstand would tenderness and terrible violence—would
charted, and, he remembered, “It made flatten her. never make. “If the player can jump in
me angry.” The film, a relationship- Druckmann’s own daughter was born and be, like, ‘No, you’re gonna make this
driven thriller, stood in stark contrast during the game’s development. The choice,’ I’m, like, ‘Now we kind of broke
to the “over-the-top sci-fi” being offered intensity of his emotions as a new fa- that character,’” he said.
by major game developers: “I was, like, ther helped shape The Last of Us, which At the time, the staunchly linear
Why does nobody in games tell a story became, he said, an exploration of a storytelling of The Last of Us seemed
like this?” charged question: “How far will the un- risky and almost retrograde. Its protag-
Uncharted 2, the first game that conditional love a parent feels for their onist wasn’t a customizable avatar onto
Druckmann both co-wrote and de- child go?” whom players could project their whims;
signed, was deemed a breakthrough. It was an unusual animating impulse although they could find inventive ways
The Times called it the first action- for an action game. Uncharted 2, though to survive, they couldn’t change the fates
adventure story to outclass its Holly- ambitious, had stuck to a recognizable of the characters around them. But, as
wood counterparts, declaring, “No game template: bravura set pieces, quippy di- reviews poured in, it became clear that
yet has provided a more genuinely cin- alogue. “Working on Uncharted, it was, critics respected the strength of its nar-
ematic entertainment experience.” It ‘How do we crank it to eleven?’” Druck- rative—including a climactic, polariz-
sold well and cemented Naughty Dog’s mann recalled. “The brainstorms were, ing choice that, in keeping with Druck-
reputation; suddenly, the studio could ‘O.K., here’s a helicopter that shoots a mann’s philosophy, wasn’t a choice at all.
afford to pursue two projects at once. bunch of missiles at this building, the The game, which went on to win a raft
After struggling to reboot an older fran- building is collapsing while you’re in it, of awards, sold upward of a million cop-
chise, Druckmann proposed an alter- and you’re shooting a bunch of bad ies in its first week.
native project: a post-apocalyptic drama guys. How do we make that playable?’”
that he’d been quietly nursing for years. With The Last of Us, “it was always, lthough Sony executives were eager
A nature documentary had intro-
duced Druckmann to Cordyceps, a genus
‘What’s the least we need to do to com- A to capitalize on the success of The
Last of Us, urging Druckmann to “pic-
of fungus that infects ants, hijacking ture it on the big screen,” Naughty Dog’s
their brains; in The Last of Us, a mu- history with adaptations had been trou-
tated strain does the same to people. bled. In 2008, when Uncharted was op-
Joel, a single dad from Texas, loses his tioned, the studio had ceded consider-
daughter in the initial chaos of the out- able creative control; the script spent
break. Twenty years later, hardened by more than a decade passing through the
her death and working as a smuggler in hands of seven directors and twice as
a quarantine zone in Boston, he’s thrown many writers before entering produc-
together with Ellie, a scrappy, sweary tion. “At some point, I think we just said,
teen-ager who seems to be immune to municate this moment?’ ” The result ‘You guys run with it, because we can’t
the fungus. As they travel across the was a blockbuster-budget game with keep investing time in this,’” Druckmann
country, she evinces childlike curiosity, an indie feel. told me. The final version, which mixed
asking questions that Joel can’t—or In 2013, the year The Last of Us was and matched four games’ worth of char-
doesn’t want to—answer. What began released, the industry was dominated by acters and set pieces, was jumbled and
as an alliance of convenience deepens “open-world” role-playing franchises, inert. Druckmann politely called the
into an almost familial bond. For Druck- such as The Elder Scrolls and Grand movie “fun”—but when the rights were
mann, the surrogate aspect had been Theft Auto, which allowed players to being negotiated for “The Last of Us”
key to the conceit: the two start as strang- pursue only the quests that interested he went so far as to make sure that cer-
ers in part so that “the player has the them and to choose whom they killed, tain plot points were included in the deal.
same relationship to Ellie as Joel does.” romanced, or rescued. Some featured “I helped create Uncharted, but it didn’t
The game’s length allows for their dy- branching narratives, enabling gamers’ come from me the way that The Last of
18 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
Us did,” he said. “If a bad version of The
Last of Us comes out, it will crush me.”
Once Mazin and Druckmann set to
work, in early 2020, the biggest question
they faced was when to deviate from the
source material. Some dialogue was trans-
posed wholesale. But Druckmann also
found freedom in the ability to “unplug”
from Joel and Ellie’s perspectives—some-
thing that the game, with its reliance on
immersion, had never allowed. Whereas
players could piece together what had
happened to the rest of the world only
through hearsay and environmental clues,
the show could venture beyond America
and move freely through time, showing
characters’ lives before disaster struck.
Crucially, however, the adaptation would
retain the picaresque structure of the
original, in which players progress from
area to area, each with its own side char-
acters and ways of life. What had been “Seems like we overslept.”
a standard convention in gaming would
give the series a strikingly distinctive feel:
rather than sticking with an ensemble,
• •
each episode would build a new world,
only to blow it up. can do anything. But I like my middle- hand your kid over to someone else and
The shift to television also enabled aged people middle-aged.” say, ‘I trust you to take care of my kid,
a different approach to violence. Druck- The onset of the covid-19 pande- because I gotta tend to this other thing.
mann had always intended for the mic underscored the need for a more Please don’t fuck it up.’”
game’s brutality to be distressing rather grounded approach to cataclysm. “If the
than titillating, but, in a medium where world ends, everybody imagines that n our conversations, Druckmann spoke
killing is a primary mode of engage-
ment, players can become inured to the
we all become the Road Warrior,” Mazin
told me. “We do not! Nobody’s wear-
I enthusiastically about cinematic figures
such as the director David Fincher and
cost. As Mazin explained, “When you’re ing those spiked leather clothes. Peo- the composer Carter Burwell, but he’d
playing a section, you’re killing people, ple actually attempt, as best they can, found that people in Hollywood rarely
and when you die you get sent back to to find what they used to have amid had the same passion for games as he
the checkpoint. All those people are the insanity of their new condition.” himself had for film. Often, he said, they
back, moving around in the same way.” In July, 2021, the series entered pro- expressed outright disdain.The first thing
At a certain point, they read as obsta- duction, in Calgary, with Pedro Pascal that struck Druckmann about Mazin
cles, not as human beings. In the show, as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie. Mazin, was that he was conversant in both me-
such encounters would carry more an entertainer by nature, was a chameleon diums. “He could talk circles around most
weight: “Watching a person die, I think, on set, equally at ease making bro-ish gamers,” Druckmann recalled. The men
ought to be much different than watch- small talk with the grips and singing both prized character relationships above
ing pixels die.” show tunes with the costumer. Druck- all else. Equally important, Mazin seemed
In the game, Joel is near-superhuman, mann, by contrast, was quiet and fo- well equipped to handle executives and
both because play demands it and in cussed, often pausing to consider his op- to settle creative differences. “Craig can
order to make the unexpected switch tions between takes. He had years of be very charming, even when he’s say-
between the action hero and his charge experience directing video games, but, ing no,” Druckmann explained.
more subversive. But Mazin told Druck- in his native medium, the player, not the Mazin, the son of New York City
mann that the Joel of the series needed creator, dictated the camera angles; now public-school teachers, graduated from
to be less resilient. “We had a conver- it was his job to guide the viewer’s eye. Princeton with a science degree—then
sation about the toll Joel’s life would Although he found the process exhila- drove to L.A. against their wishes, de-
have had on him physically,” Druck- rating, after months of shuttling back termined to get into the entertainment
mann recalled. “So, he’s hard of hear- and forth to Calgary, he was struggling industry. One of his first big breaks, “Scary
ing on one side because of a gunshot. to fulfill his obligations to Naughty Dog. Movie 3,” proved to be a nightmare: Bob
His knees hurt every time he stands Feeling confident in Mazin, he decided Weinstein, its producer, called at all hours
up.” Mazin, who is fifty-one, said, “I to return to L.A. and advise from afar. and showed up on set unannounced, add-
guess there’s a tone where Tom Cruise He told me, “Sometimes you have to ing and changing scenes. Mazin became
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 19
known as a writer of parody films and Raider is a gender-f lipped “Indiana But that’s something that Neil and I feel
crude comedies that performed well at Jones.” Returning to the medium where was a good removal. And we’re just gonna
the box office but received largely neg- such story formulas had originated was say to them no. Because it looks cheesy.
ative reviews. He also worked regularly like running text through Google Trans- It just looks like network TV.”
as a script doctor. Though such emer- late and back: each iteration came out “It just cheapens it,” Good said. “It
gency operations could be thrilling, he more garbled than the last. Conversely, makes it, like, ‘Predator.’” The empha-
said, “I started feeling the tension of being there were experiences that couldn’t be sis, he argued, should be on the scene’s
better than the things I was working on.” reproduced outside of games. The chief emotional thrust.
His decades in features taught him to delight of open-world titles, Mazin told Mazin nodded and said, “Joel’s skill
be protective of story and particular about me, was the opportunity to craft a story with evading bullets is the least impor-
execution. “The purest process is the of one’s own—or to forgo narrative en- tant thing. Which, by the way, is where
writing,” Mazin told me. “Everything tirely. “I love the ability to wander, to do video-game adaptations have gone
that comes after that is corrosive.” nothing, in Skyrim,” he said, of an Elder wrong so many times—they try to rep-
By 2015, he had saved enough money Scrolls game. “That is not translatable!” licate the action. It’s just the wrong
to take a risk—namely, pitching “Cher- By contrast, “The Last of Us was always medium. That’s that. This is this.”
nobyl” and jumping to television. HBO, a story where the story comes first.”
too, considered the project a gamble: it In October, I met with Mazin and espite its focus on relationships,
paid him less for the entire series than
a studio had recently given him for a
his producing partner, Jacqueline Lesko,
at a post-production office in Burbank.
D The Last of Us is still a horror story
set in a ruined landscape. For the adap-
week and a half of uncredited rewrites. They were about to review HBO’s notes tation, visual effects would be crucial.
“I had never written TV,” he said. “I had on an episode with the editors Timothy Early in the process, Naughty Dog de-
never written drama. I had never writ- Good and Emily Mendez. In the edit- velopers had shared research they’d con-
ten history. It worked—but no one had ing bay, a poster board was emblazoned ducted while building the world of the
any expectation that it would.” with the phrase “negative space”: a game, from maps of quarantine zones
Before “The Last of Us” came to- Druckmannism intended to stave off vi- to a time line of the Cordyceps infection’s
gether, a video-game adaptation seemed sual and verbal clutter. (Good explained progression. At first, Cordyceps hosts can
an unlikely next step for Mazin. In 2018, it, affectionately, as “a fancy way of say- pass for human, but, as mycelial fila-
Swan, the PlayStation executive, had of- ing silence.”) Mazin clutched a print- ments penetrate the brain, the victims
fered him the rights to an array of ti- out of an e-mail relaying HBO execu- become more alien in appearance, dis-
tles—all of which he’d declined. Like tives’ feedback. Most of the notes were figured by a fungal bloom that ruptures
Druckmann, he had thought deeply easy to accommodate, but he balked at their skull—an oddly entrancing form
about the problems facing the genre. a suggestion about the episode’s climax, of body horror. The game’s overgrown
“One of the major contributors to the in which Joel enters a desperate firefight. cities were informed by “The World
curse is the fact that a lot of video games Mazin said, “What they’re asking for— Without Us,” a book that blends science
are already derivative of movies,” he told and we have the shots—is more, like, journalism and speculative fiction, ex-
me. Halo borrowed from “Aliens”; Tomb ducking, shooting, ducking, shooting. amining how environments might de-
grade if humans were to vanish; to
achieve the same effect on a grand scale,
HBO gave the series a budget exceed-
ing that of each of the first five seasons
of “Game of Thrones.”
The look of “The Last of Us” hewed
closely to its source material. When a
script called for an infected individual
unlike those seen in the game, the show’s
team consulted with Naughty Dog’s
concept artists. One afternoon in Oc-
tober, Mazin and Lesko sat in the dim-
ly lit office of Alex Wang, the series’s
visual-effects supervisor, with Druck-
mann and others joining via Zoom, to
assess the results.
As they reviewed the latest render-
ings of the new variant, Druckmann wor-
ried that it looked “too cute.” Mazin as-
sured him that the creature would appear
monstrous onscreen, promising to change
course if it didn’t. “As long as we say it’s
never gonna look silly,” Druckmann said.
“She has to be terrifying,” Mazin the new arc: “To me, the story we tell is
agreed. At the same time, he noted more authentic to the world. It’s authentic to
humanizing aspects of the design: the the themes that we’re talking about.”
clothes the host would be wearing; the Mazin had described the couple as an
way her hair would be darkened, after embodiment of the show’s overarching
years underground. “These are the things interest in “outward love and inward
that make my heart sing,” he said. love—the people who want to make ev-
In the game, the infected exist only erybody better, and the people who want
as enemies to be avoided or defeated, to protect particular people at any cost.”
and they are glimpsed primarily in fran- A decade ago, when Druckmann was
tic, brutal encounters. In the adaptation, preparing to release The Last of Us, he FEED HOPE .
FEED LOVE .
lingering shots would let viewers appre- was unsure how it would be received by
ciate the creatures’ strange beauty—and an audience trained to expect some-
even acknowledge their interiority. One thing else. “I kept thinking to myself, I
early script briefly adopted the perspec- don’t want it to end on a cliffhanger,
tive of an infected man, whom Mazin because I don’t know if we’ll make a se-
describes in almost loving terms: “He quel,” he said, “and I don’t want to make
lifts his head. The sun shines warmth any compromises that I’ll regret.” On
on his face. He rises slightly toward it. the eve of the show’s release, he felt the
A soft breeze flutters through his hair. same way: “If everybody else hates it, I
This is a living creature in a living world.” don’t care—because I love it.”
Not long after the VFX meeting, Still, he was bullish about the show’s
Mazin, Lesko, and a group of editors prospects. “I think it will change things,”
and mixers gathered for the final phase he said. “Sometimes adaptations haven’t
of the sound-design process, during worked because the source material is
which they reviewed each episode, iden- not strong enough. Sometimes they
tifying errors and inconsistencies. That haven’t worked because the people mak-
morning, the team buzzed with excite- ing it don’t understand the source ma-
ment and trepidation; one person asked terial.” Whenever screenwriters gut-ren-
me whether I cried easily. Mazin—who’d ovate a property, he observed, it rarely
asked the same question the previous ends well: “You think you need to fix it,
night, warning that the rough cut had and in trying to fix it you change too
reduced him to tears—answered confi- much, or you’ve lost what made it spe-
dently that I did not. cial.” But Hollywood’s relationship to
The seventy-four minutes that fol- video games, he thought, was changing
lowed mark the show’s boldest departure by degrees. Partly, it was the result of a
from its source material. In the game, generational shift: more film and TV
Joel and Ellie encounter a man, Bill, professionals had grown up playing
who lives alone in an abandoned town, them. There was also an increasing flow
rigging it with traps to keep the masses— of talent between the industries. Ten
infected or otherwise—at bay.The player years earlier, he’d surprised his team-
learns of Bill’s onetime partner, Frank, mates by persuading Gustavo San-
only in passing; the fact that their rela- taolalla, an Oscar-winning composer, to
tionship was romantic is scarcely hinted score The Last of Us. For its sequel, he’d
at. The series gives the men’s love story enlisted Halley Gross, best known for
room to breathe. Half an hour in, Lesko HBO’s “Westworld,” as his co-writer.
began to weep. Mazin, smiling, slid a Druckmann’s own approach had changed
tissue box toward her. as a result. He had continued to recruit
Later, Druckmann and I discussed the from television, and made it clear to a
new treatment of Bill and Frank.Through- cinematographer on “The Last of Us”
out the show’s development, his philos- that the door was open if she ever wanted
ophy had been that the greater the di- to jump mediums. His next project, he
vergence from the game, the more it had revealed, was a game that was “struc-
to justify itself emotionally. “As awesome tured more like a TV show” than any-
as that episode is, there are going to be thing else Naughty Dog had made—
fans who are upset by it,” he said. Some for which he’d taken a highly unusual
devotees would turn on the series at the step. He wasn’t writing the script alone,
first sign of infidelity. Nevertheless, it had or with a single partner. He was assem-
been easy for Druckmann to say yes to bling a writers’ room.
And the Angel said, “I’ve actually
SHOUTS & MURMURS been reading a lot about this lately, and
most experts agree that punishments
are counterproductive.”
And the Lord said, “So, what, we’re
just supposed to let them do whatever
they want and become drug addicts?”
And the Angel rolled her eyes and
said, “I’m obviously not saying that I
want them to become drug addicts.”
And then she added, softly, “This is why
we should’ve signed up for that class.”
And the Lord said, “That class was
bullshit!”
And the Angel said, “How would
PUNISHMENT
you know? You refused to even read the
description on the Web site.”
And the Lord said, “It was held in
BY SIMON RICH the basement of a toy store! It was ob-
viously just a scam to sell us toys!”
nd so the Lord created two hu- my dad’s voice coming out of my mouth.” And that was how the conversation
A mans in His image, called Adam
and Eve. And He put them in the Gar-
And the Angel said, “Well, I guess
we should go talk to them.”
ended, without any resolution about the
whole discipline thing.
den of Eden and provided them with And the Lord said, “What do you
everything that they could want. And mean?” nd so the Lord punished the hu-
all He asked in return was that they not
eat from the Tree of Knowledge. But,
And the Angel said, “You know, to
tell them we changed our mind about
A mans more and more, with floods
and plagues and entire centuries with-
lo, it came to pass that they did eat from the punishment.” out any television, and He kept giving
this tree. And when the Lord saw that And the Lord said, “No, we’ve got them new rules, some of which made
they had disobeyed Him, He was filled to follow through. Otherwise, they’ll sense, but some of which were arbitrary,
with wrath. And so He said to Eve, “Be- never take anything we say seriously like “Don’t mix milk and meat,” which
cause you have done this, I will make again!” And He handed her the sword was something He’d just blurted out one
your labor pains severe, and you will suf- and set it on fire and told her to start morning when He was half asleep but
fer greatly during childbirth.” And to whirring it. now felt obliged to stick to. And it got
Adam He said, “From this day forth, And the Angel said, “I really don’t to the point where He could barely even
you will work by the sweat of your brow think we’re going about this right.” keep track of the rules that He had made,
in the fields, and indeed you shall die And the Lord said, “Just let me han- or what the penalties were for breaking
there, for you are made of dust, and to dle the discipline, O.K.? I know what them. And so the humans were punished
dust you shall return.” And He banished I’m doing.” inconsistently, in ways that had more to
Adam and Eve and brought forth His do with His frustration level than with
Angel to guard the Garden with a flam- nd so the Lord stuck to the ban- any kind of actual philosophy or game
ing, whirring sword for all eternity.
And when Adam and Eve were out
A ishment thing. But, despite the
harsh punishment, the humans contin-
plan. Like, sometimes the humans would
have punishments heaped upon them
of earshot, the Lord turned to His Angel ued to sin. And one day the Angel showed for basically no reason, and sometimes
and said, “Was that too harsh?” the Lord a note from school, and He they’d do something truly messed up and
And the Angel stared back at Him was, like, “Fuck, this is some major shit.” get no punishment at all, or even be re-
and said, “Uh, yeah, probably. They ate And the Angel said, “Yeah, they’re warded with political office.
one piece of fruit.” starting to have real behavioral prob- And the Angel would say, “What hap-
And the Lord groaned and said, lems. We should talk to a psychologist pened to being consistent?”
“Why didn’t you stop me?” and get some advice on what to do.” And the Lord would tell her some
And the Angel said, “We’re supposed And the Lord said, “There’s only one bullshit about how it was a Test, but re-
to be a united front. If we contradict thing we can do: bring the hammer down.” ally it was just that He was overwhelmed
each other, it’ll just make them con- And the Angel said, “What? Why?” and exhausted and also privately kind of
fused.” And she shook her head and And the Lord said, “Because we set stressed out about money.
said, “What was with that ‘dust’ thing?” a precedent with that fucking fruit thing! And so it came to pass that there was
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
And the Lord sighed and said, “I don’t If we don’t punish them at least that basically zero continuity. And one day,
know. I knew it was crazy even while I much for this new stuff, they’re going in desperation, the Lord suggested that
was saying it, but I couldn’t stop myself. to think that sodomy and murder aren’t they pick the ten main rules and engrave
It was just, like, out of nowhere I heard as bad as, like, sharing a bite of an apple.” them on a pair of stone tablets.
22 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
And the Angel said, “A, they’re never or not Heaven was real, and how the se-
going to follow that, and, B, it’s com- cret numerical code in the Bible really
pletely unenforceable. Like, the only worked. And they had so much fun that
way to police it would be to watch them it felt like they were back In The Begin-
around the clock, which would be more ning, before they had humans, or even
of a punishment for us than for them.” any animals, and it was just the two of
And the Lord broke down and ad- them floating around among the sun and
mitted that the Angel was right, and that moon and stars.
the tablet thing was crazy, and that He’d And it came to pass that spending
only suggested it because He was so beat some time away from the humans made
down and broken and stressed out about them feel better about them. And the
money that He didn’t know what the Lord quoted some of the cute things
fuck to do anymore about anything. He’d overheard them saying lately, like
And the Angel said, “What is going “I have a plan for my future” and “Here
on with you? You can tell me.” is the forecast for tomorrow’s weather.”
And the Lord took a deep breath And the Angel showed the Lord pho-
and confessed His secret fear: “I feel like tos of some of the cute crap that the hu-
the humans are becoming bad people, mans had made recently, like forts and
and it’s all because of me.” towers and cities, and even though the
And the Angel took His hand and Lord knew that it was going to be a pain
said, “That isn’t true.” in the ass to clean it all up, and that the
And the Lord looked hopeful and humans would probably cry when He
said, “So you think the humans are turn- knocked it all down, He had to admit
ing out all right?” that it was adorable.
And the Angel said, “No. They ob- And they stayed out so late that they
viously have some real issues. But I don’t lost track of time, and their babysitter,
think it’s all because of you.” Satan, texted them saying the next hour
And the Lord said, “Everything’s all would be forty dollars, because after
because of me. I’m omnipotent.” 10 p.m. counted as overtime.
And the Angel said, “I think maybe, And the Lord said, “Maybe we should
when it comes to creating humans, find a different sitter.”
no one is. Sure, you can guide them a And the Angel said, “There’s no one
little here and there, and, obviously, it’s else. I’ve checked.”
possible to really fuck them up, like, And the Lord told her how grateful
that’s been proven with those Romanian- He was that they were doing this crazy
orphanage studies. But in general you thing together, because, even though it
can’t control what kind of people they was a shit show, there was no one in the
become. No matter what you do, they universe He’d rather create humans with.
just end up turning into . . . themselves.” And the Angel smiled and said, “Do
And, as her point was sinking in, the you ever think about creating more?”
Lord looked down and saw that the hu- And the Lord said, “No fucking way.
mans had started a new war. And He I mean, where would we even put them?”
was going to do what He normally did And the Angel shrugged and said,
(punish all involved, whether they’d “We could add another continent, or, if
started it or not), but instead He turned that’s too expensive, put up drywall.”
to the Angel and said, “Maybe we should And the Lord laughed and said,
go out tonight?” “You’re nuts! If we add more humans,
And the Angel said, “What about we’ll never have a handle on things.”
the flaming sword?” Because she’d been And the Angel said, “Yeah, but maybe
whirring it around this whole time. they will.”
And the Lord was, like, “I’m sorry I And the Lord was taken aback, be-
made you do that. You can put it down. cause He’d never considered that pos-
That was just me being nuts.” sibility, that someday the humans would
And so they dressed up and went out know things that He didn’t, fix prob-
for the first time in eternity. And they lems that He couldn’t, make new things
ordered drinks and appetizers and the that He wouldn’t. He’d been trying to
whole thing. And they talked about fun mold them in His image, but maybe
subjects that they couldn’t discuss when they never would be. Maybe, instead,
the humans were around, like whether they’d be better.
Tannus Armour inserts, and a Mudguard
ON AND OFF THE AVENUE Mounting Kit. “Our sales were huge, es-
pecially cargo bikes—gotta get the kids
UNEASY RIDER
to school.” (Many private schools re-
mained open during lockdown.) “Sud-
denly, biking became utilitarian,” Hall
When you want some extra oomph on two wheels. said. “Some of our e-bike customers had
never even ridden a bike in New York
BY PATRICIA MARX before.” Post-lockdown, the e-bike mo-
mentum has continued. What’s bad for
General Motors—rising fuel prices, con-
cern for the environment, etc.—is good
for e-bikes, sales of which rose two hun-
dred and forty per cent between July,
2020, and July, 2021. K. C. Cohen, the
owner of Joulvert E-Bikes SoHo, saw a
similar surge in sales. “A lot of corporate
types lost their jobs and started doing
deliveries,” he said. “They needed bikes
and we were the first responders and al-
lowed to stay open.”
It was in the summer of 2020 that I
joined Citi Bike, the bicycle-share pro-
gram serving New York City and parts
of New Jersey. In February, Citi Bike
had rolled out only two hundred e-bikes.
By the end of the year, Citi Bike had
three thousand, and had logged six hun-
dred thousand first-time riders. One
humid day this past summer, when I
was huffing up Murray Hill on my pedal
bike, an old guy who, I flatter myself
to think, looked as if he should be the
tortoise to my hare whizzed by on a
hey-look-at-me, red motorized bike.
Cheater!, I thought, as if he were Lance
Armstrong on extra steroids. Actually,
studies have shown that riders using
pedal-assists—a type of e-bike that am-
plifies your pedal power but does not
ou can learn a lot about what’s wheel culture in the next century? I say take over entirely—get more exercise
Y trending by reading T-shirts. A few
months ago, I saw someone on the sub-
absolutely! There ain’t enough roadway,
there ain’t enough materials to build
than those on regular bikes, because
they cycle longer and more frequently.
way whose chest announced, “My other cars, there ain’t enough wealth to sus- E-bikers, even the ones who don’t
car is an eBike.”The tee was onto some- tain the car culture.” have “Life Is Better with an E Bike”
thing: e-bikes are the top-selling elec- As someone who is not an influencer mugs, are so ardent about their new trans-
tric vehicle in the United States. In 2020, but an influencee, I have had an urge ports that you’d think they’d given birth
Americans bought more than twice as lately to strap on a helmet, join the traffic, to them. Ozzie Vilela, a cherubic-looking
many e-bikes as they did electric cars and e-go with the flow. “When the pan- sixty-year-old I met on Fifty-seventh
(score: an estimated 500,000 to 231,000). demic came, that pretty much ripped the Street and First Avenue, as we waited
In China, e-bikes outnumber all cars, cover off of the e-bike business,” Shane at a red light—he on a peacock-blue
e- and not e-, Edward Benjamin, the Hall, a senior buyer for Bicycles NYC, folding Fly Wing-2 ($850), I on my legs—
chairman of the Light Electric Vehicle told me one afternoon at the company’s told me that he’d had his bike for only
Association, told me over the phone Upper East Side operation, which was three months but had already persuaded
from his house in Fort Myers, Florida. crammed with bicycles and accessories. two friends to buy one. “When I ride in
He went on, “Can Americans change Several of the latter sounded vaguely the morning, there are lots of parents
from a four-wheel culture to a two- pornographic, such as Muc-Off dry lube, taking their kids to school,” he said. “I’m
invisible to the parents, but I can see the
In 2020, Americans bought twice as many e-bikes as they did electric cars. kids’ eyes are big. They’re thinking, Hey,
24 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA HAIFISCH
I want a toy like that!” Clarence Ecker- you have a no-wheels-inside rule.) The pedal-assist and throttle, can travel up
son, a videographer who lives in Queens, downside is that the husky newcomers to twenty-eight m.p.h., but New York
borrowed his wife’s Tern HSD ($3,699) weigh around eighty-four pounds, which City law requires the rider to wear a
and promptly bought his own. He rides is fifteen per cent heavier than the blue helmet. If you find this interesting, you
thirty or forty miles a week. Carol Ster- ones, and can be cumbersome to ma- should join the City Council’s Com-
ling, an eighty-five-year-old puppeteer, neuver when you’re not going fast. You mittee on Transportation and Infra-
who has had two knee replacements and know how it feels when you drive a structure while the rest of us talk about
a hip replacement, e-bikes in Central First World War battle tank? Like that. throttles.
Park a few times a week. “As I got older, By the time I managed to snag a new Throttles provide power regardless
I realized I don’t have as much stamina,” model, I wasn’t so gung ho about get- of what the pedal is or isn’t doing. They
she said. “And yet I love being outside, ting on it. My trepidation was similar are to regular bikes what Roombas are
feeling the sun on my face.” to how I feel about trying heroin: what to brooms (pedal-assists being Dustbust-
Motorized vehicles, including e- if I like it? I begin pedalling. The motor ers). A throttle control is functionally a
bikes, are not permitted in New York kicks in. It’s not a jerky or a sudden sen- gas pedal on your handlebars, operated
City parks, although plenty of pedal- sation; it’s more like when I was five and either by twisting one of the grips or by
assists clog the paths and the drives, learning to ride a bicycle, being helped pushing a thumb trigger. Now, if they
which is technically a violation. Asked along by a gentle push from behind by just had air bags and a cup holder . . .
about how the city deals with scoff- my father. On the other hand, the bike’s
laws, Meghan Lalor, a Parks Depart- poor suspension makes me empathize ime to scope out what’s available
ment spokesperson, said, “When safely
able to enforce, we do.” In Los Angeles,
with tennis sneakers put in clothes dry-
ers. I tackle a hill, forty degrees upward.
T in the marketplace. By this point,
I’d ridden only Citi Bikes, and I was a
John Bailey Owen, a TV writer, bought Easy peasy. Obviously, I have superhero fan: no parking or maintenance, and they
his Cero One ($3,799) after he and his legs—and a budding Icarus complex. afford the possibility of a one-way ride,
wife got rid of their second car. Now Coasting downhill in a bike lane, the in case, for instance, it starts raining or
he considers errands “so, so fun,” he motor leaves me alone, knowing when you break your leg. They seemed great,
said in an e-mail, which closed, “My it is wanted and when it is not. How but, having never sampled anything else,
ebike is my favorite purchase of all time. does it know? E.S.P.? what did I know? “With a Citi Bike,
I love it, dammit.” Here we must break for a lesson on you get a functional experience of a bike,”
how e-bikes work. Every e-bike has a a Trek employee told me. “They are good
weighed the pros and cons and con- battery and a motor, and, if you don’t at being not broken and moving people
I cluded,“What’s wrong with cheating?”
That there never seemed to be any elec-
know that, may I recommend my class
on the invention of the wheel? The
around. They are not as good at being
bikes, so riding one will not give you the
tric Citi Bikes available made me want motor delivers power to your crankset experience of a lighter, better-made, and
one desperately. They are the four-leaf by one of two systems: the pedal-assist more fun bike.” How much better could
clovers of the fleet. Among the total bi- and the throttle control. (Crankset, n. 1. better-made be? Almost a thousand dol-
cycle stock of 26,450, they number 4,450 the metal arm and surrounding com- lars better (which is approximately the
but account for more than forty-five ponents that connect the pedal to the least amount of cash you’d have to lay
per cent of the rides. The most sought- wheel 2. informal. your neighbors in 8-G.) out for a decent e-bike)?
after pedal-assists are the spiffy mod- The Citi Bike is a pedal-assist. It will One of the oldest purveyors of elec-
els that were released by Citi Bike last help you, but only if you help yourself. tric bicycles in the city is Propel, situ-
May. They are palest gray, whereas the Pedal daintily and the boost it supplies ated at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. This
old ones were scuffed Citibank blue. will be commensurately unenthusiastic; pedal-assist-only business was started
(Spooky coincidence: the color is sim- pedal with more vigor and it’ll send in by Chris Nolte, who returned from
ilar to that of ghost bikes, a term that the Marines. Cheaper pedal-assists have military duty in 2003, disabled with a
refers to the bicycles, usually freshly a cadence sensor, which, unlike the back injury. Over Zoom, he said that
painted throwaways, that mark the site torque sensor on a Citi Bike, is binary he had built an e-bike in 2011, so that
where a cyclist was killed in a road ac- and, when activated, can feel like a pas- he could join friends on a bike trip.
cident.) The new bikes have a might- sive-aggressive shove. The motor shuts That year, he opened Propel. At the
ier motor, so they accelerate faster, and off when your speed hits eighteen miles time, the legality of pedal-assists in
a heavier-duty battery that enables the per hour, a limit agreed on by Lyft (the New York was fuzzy, and he racked up
bike to be ridden sixty miles—more operator of Citi Bike) and the Depart- a series of fines (to the tune of six thou-
than twice as far as the old ones—be- ment of Transportation. Most e-bikes sand dollars). He took the case to court,
fore needing a charge. (An e-bike bat- cut off at around that speed, the exact hoping to codify a pro-pedal-assist law
tery charges the same way as a phone: m.p.h. determined by the relevant state as a boon to the environment. He won.
plug the charger into an outlet, connect or municipality. In New York City, the I visited Propel’s Brooklyn showroom,
your battery to the charger, and wait speed limit for pedal-assist-only bikes which is open by appointment only, and
three to five hours on average. Many (Class 1) is twenty m.p.h., and the same was introduced to a few of the bikes on
e-bikes don’t require you to remove the goes for Class 2, a pedal-assist with a the floor by Roberto Jeanniton, who ges-
battery in order to charge it, but maybe throttle. Class 3 bikes, which are also tured to each with so much exuberance
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 25
that his smartwatch kept reminding him one bike (the Greyp G6; $6,799-$13,999), reported that an e-bike or e-scooter bat-
to relax. Propel salespeople are called a button that saves the last thirty sec- tery catches fire in New York City about
“matchmakers,” because their mission is onds of video taken by front and rear four times a week. By mid-November,
not to sell you a product but to intro- wide-angle HD cameras on the han- there’d been a hundred and ninety-one
duce you to a vehicular partner that you dlebars and uploads the footage to the lithium-ion fires in 2022, almost dou-
will love. “When you ride an e-bike, the rider’s social-media feeds. ble the figure in 2021. The increase mir-
last thing you want to do is get off,” Jean- How much money is too much? “I rors a rise in the number of battery-pow-
niton said, touting the Tern cargo bikes, don’t think anyone needs to spend thirty ered devices used to deliver takeout food.
which allow you to tote a kid, an adult, thousand dollars on an e-bike,” Chris- In early November, there was a fire in
and sometimes one of each, plus a bag tian Guaman, at the Specialized bike a Midtown East high-rise ignited by an
or two of groceries from the store in Long Island City, e-bike battery in an apartment whose oc-
Park Slope Food Co-op. said. “It’s a want.” If what cupants fire marshals suspect were oper-
O.K., but where in your New you want is to move around ating an illicit e-bike repair business. But
York apartment do you store town encapsulated in a most e-bike fires occur in lower-income
this bulkitude? Most Terns swish Kevlar-insulated areas. When the New York City Hous-
can be stored vertically, and cabin whose extras include ing Authority proposed banning e-bikes
one model, the Vektron, stereo and temperature in public housing, the plan was nixed,
folds into an origami-like controls, then the Peraves after workers’-rights activists protested
configuration that can be MonoTracer MTE-150 is that it would mainly affect poor and im-
rolled along like luggage, the a must. Bonus: what look migrant populations who rely on e-bikes
handlebar becoming the like training wheels pop out for their livelihood. Before you curse de-
handle. Terns range in price so you don’t have to put your livery workers and the “Out of my way,
from $3,000 to $5,500, depending on add- feet on the ground when you stop. Price I’m coming through, maybe even the
ons, and many of the other brands are tag: $85,000, which is so much cheaper wrong way!” attitude displayed by a hand-
costlier still. The Benno eJoy ($3,799 and than a jet pack ($350,000-$450,000). ful of them, remember that the delivery
up), featuring wide tires and a comfort- You want cheap? Let’s drop by Roll- apps punish the delivery guys who don’t
ably ample seat, was inspired by the de- good, in midtown. Crammed with bikes, arrive at their destinations lickety-split.
sign of vintage Italian scooters. Jeanni- scooters, and paraphernalia, this narrow Another reason to buy from a repu-
ton called it “a great date bike” and “great storefront serves mostly delivery work- table brick-and-mortar shop (like Pro-
for an older crowd.” Another Benno ers. Explaining that I was a journalist pel, Bicycles NYC, Trek, Joulvert, Hill-
model—the RemiDemi—has a cargo writing about e-bikes, I asked José, an top) is that if anything breaks—and it
attachment that can “carry a surfboard.” older man, if I could take a floor model will—good luck getting it repaired at,
Jeanniton doesn’t have the space for for a spin. “You buy one?” he asked, and say, Mike’s Fly-by-Night Bikes. Local
an e-bike at home, and commutes via said, “This is the one you should buy.” shops take care of their customers as if
Citi Bike, but I asked which model he He pointed to a black bike that looked they were family, putting them in “the
would get if he could. The Riese & as if it’d been around the block—a BEK24 fast lane,” as Cohen said. But some of
Müller Homage, he said. “It is the most ($425), with a fifteen-mile range and a these, such as Trek, Specialized, and
comfortable bike I’ve had the pleasure fifteen-m.p.h. capacity. “What if I buy Propel, tend not to work on bikes that
to ride,” he said. Ramon Hernandez, one and don’t like it?” I asked, to which aren’t theirs, because they don’t have the
who had just finished adjusting a Tern he replied, “You have fifteen or twenty parts. Stay away from big-box stores,
GSD, also loves the brand. Because the minutes to bring it back and we’ll refund too; Consumer Reports warns that their
bikes’ carbon belts don’t require con- your money.” I eyed a sign on the counter: service and support are poor.
stant degunking and lubricating, like NO REFUND New York is dense with bike shops,
traditional chains? Because their dual NO RETURN but, for those of you who live in the hin-
batteries let you go twice as far? No. It’s NO EXCHANGE terlands, don’t despair. According to Shane
their panache. “If I’m sitting on a bike, NO STORE CREDIT Hall (of second-paragraph fame), some
I want to look a certain way,” he said of I moved on. What about a bargain excellent brands are available online,
these small-wheeled vehicles, so Quak- online? “If you see an e-bike for a few among them Rad Power (the largest
erishly unadorned that they look like a hundred dollars on the Internet, it’s a e-bike retailer in the U.S.), Aventon, Mag-
picture of a two-wheeler drawn by a piece of shit and will last a month, at num, and Gocycle. I spoke to a real-es-
child. But, Jeanniton said, they cost most,” K. C. Cohen, at Joulvert, said. tate developer named Ryan Johnson, who
“rich-uncle money”—$5,779 to $11,549. Or worse. If the bike’s lithium-ion bat- is building the first community designed
Pricier bikes, forged from high teries are defective (inexpensive ones to be car-free. (It is called Culdesac
strength-to-weight materials like carbon are often not U.L. certified), they could Tempe, near Phoenix, Arizona; rentals
fibre and aerospace aluminum, tend to explode and catch fire. (U.L. = Under- come with a thousand dollars’ worth of
be lighter and faster. They are loaded writers Laboratories, a century-old safety “mobility benefits” each year.) Johnson
with deluxe features, such as heart-rate organization that tests and evaluates has been dubbed the Jay Leno of e-bikes,
connectivity, sensors that measure baro- products, typically industrial equipment because he owns more than seventy spec-
metric pressure and air quality, and, on and home appliances.) NPR recently imens. He treats his collection as a “li-
26 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
brary,” loaning the devices to people who path hugging the river. I rode a Turbo At Propel, the inventory is divided into
often end up buying one of their own. Como SL ($3,250-$4,250), capable of Comfort and Cruising, Commuters, Kids
(Try borrowing Leno’s McLaren F1.) achieving a speed of twenty-eight m.p.h., and Cargo, and Adventure. Specialized
Did Johnson have any tips for a nov- but it didn’t have to try that hard with uses the terms Road, Mountain, Com-
ice? “Just buy one,” he said. “People are me. Never mind that the company’s muter, Cruiser, and Cargo. Within each
almost always happy with what they e-bike slogan is “It’s You, Only Faster”; category are more categories. Among
have. And e-bikes are the gateway drugs it turns out that I’m more scaredy cat Specialized’s mountain bikes, you can
to more e-bikes.” The only e-bikes he’d than cheetah. While Guaman and I tool select Cross Country, Trail, Downhill,
stay away from are the ones sold on Am- along the waterfront, the wind blowing and Dirt Jump. At Trek, there are Road
azon. Among those he especially rec- so hard I feel like Miss Gulch cycling Bikes and Hybrids, and also Mountain
ommends, the cheapest is the Lectric through the tornado, let’s talk taxonomy. Bikes. If you intend to have adventurous
XP Lite ($799). He also likes the Dutch There are several ways to categorize fun on your commute in a mountainous
VanMoofs, citing the S3 and X3, and e-bikes, and I’m not counting the one city while carrying cargo, I guess any of
their anti-theft features, which include most meaningful to me, which is by color. the bikes would work.
automatic rider recognition and a lock Technically speaking, it matters whether Mid-excursion, Guaman and I trade
on the wheel that opens with your phone the motor is a hub-drive or a mid-drive. bikes. When I tell him that his Vado SL
or by entering a code on the handle- A hub-drive motor, commonly found in 5.0 ($4,500) feels feistier than the Como,
bars. If your VanMoof ($2,548) is sto- cheaper bikes, lives in either the front or he explains that the Como may seem
len, there are onboard alarms and smart the back wheel, propelling the bike by sluggish because it was designed to repro-
location tracking, and you can buy in- pushing it; a mid-drive perches above duce the vibe of a beach cruiser or a Citi
surance ($348 for three years) that guar- the pedal and the surrounding chain kit Bike. At least, that’s what I think he said;
antees you a replacement if the compa- and caboodle, where it amplifies your a gust blew that page of notes out of my
ny’s Bike Hunters can’t find it. pedal exertion, energizing a more nu- hand. We walk our bikes on the sidewalk
On second thought, if you live in the anced assist that reacts to gear shifts. the last half block back to Specialized,
hinterlands, move. Unless, that is, assem- Most e-bike outfits, however, organize an exercise that introduced me to a nifty
bling small vehicles in your garage is your their stock according to intended use. To feature of many higher-end e-bikes—
passion. Yes, a few brands come ready- make things confusing, the nomencla- the Walk Mode—without which drag-
to-ride, but most want you to at least ture varies from company to company. ging an electric bike can be a drag. (The
screw this thingy into that other doo-
hickey with a type of wrench you’ve never
heard of. The clincher, though, in buy-
ing an e-bike is a test drive—the quick-
est way to know if motorized micro-mo-
bility is for you. Any establishment that
doesn’t allow you this small indulgence
is an establishment you might not want
to patronize. Call ahead to arrange for a
road test and bring a credit card and a
driver’s license (hey, isn’t the point not to
drive?). In many cases, you may be ac-
companied on your excursion by a shop
employee. According to K. C. Cohen,
there have been cases of fake customers
who use fake credit cards and then ride
a sample bike off into the sunset, one way.
some seven hundred miles long, features relentless, industrial-scale violence of a type unknown in Europe since the Second World War.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID GUTTENFELDER THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 31
ne Sunday in early October, of Donald Trump, and he blamed so- vived the attack. When I’d reached
the trees. While Rambo kneeled amid mal ones are not, and Herring could He had just one question, it turned
the deadwood, pulling security, Her- not risk losing his. out: “You will fight with us?”
ring stepped out from under the can- Apart from their weapons, the for- “Of course,” Herring said.
opy, draping a poncho over his head eigners had acquired much of their The men clasped hands.
to hide the glow of his controller’s equipment on their own. Doc had
monitor. The drone’s four miniature bought helmets, scopes, binoculars, rust between international vol-
rotors whirred into action, lifting it
into the sky. Artillery whistled back
range finders, ear protection, ammo
pouches, and other essential items for
T unteers and the Ukrainian mili-
tary was crucial yet precarious. Lan-
and forth, over the field. After a while, the team. Each night-vision device guage was an obvious hurdle. When
I heard Herring curse. had cost thousands of dollars. T.Q. had Doc first rotated to Donetsk, a Por-
“Jammers,” he told Rambo. traded a bottle of whiskey for Amer- tuguese team member whose parents
The Russians and the Ukrainians ican smoke grenades. Their two vehi- were Ukrainian would translate from
employ two main countermeasures cles—a pickup truck and an S.U.V., Ukrainian to Portuguese, which a
against each other’s drones. One is a both Nissans—had been donated but Brazilian member would translate to
futuristic-looking contraption, fired were forever breaking down, requiring Spanish, which an American mem-
like a rifle, whose transmissions force parts and repairs. ber would translate to English. Each
emergency landings. The other is a Back at the command center, a link in that chain had since left
signal-jamming system that scrambles, soft-spoken Ukrainian officer told the country. Turtle had persuaded a
over a broad zone, the satellite net- Rambo the brigade had received in- Ukrainian friend who spoke English
works on which drones depend for formation that the Russians were pre- to come to Donetsk, but he was a
navigation. Herring had run up against paring an attack. Rambo nodded, and civilian, and so he mostly stayed at
the latter, which had triggered an au- then the officer turned to Herring. the house.
tomatic response in his drone to race For a moment, they regarded each Another persistent obstacle was the
in the opposite direction, depleting its other uncertainly. At first blush, Her- fact that both Ukraine and the Legion
battery. He eventually retrieved it— ring could seem abrasive. His boom- were constantly losing and replacing
correcting its course with small flicks ing voice was seldom modulated, his men. The 72nd Mechanized Brigade
of the joystick—and we returned to sense of humor often lewd. I won- had assumed control of the area in Au-
the air shaft. Although multi-rotor dered what the officer thought about gust. Before that, the foreigners had
drones are relatively inexpensive, ther- this brash American. worked with another brigade, the 53rd,
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 35
which had fully integrated them into
its operations and had furnished them
with coveted Javelins. On near-daily THE DAYS
missions, the team had pushed for-
ward Ukrainian positions, ambushed If only I could live my life, not write it,
enemy tanks, and planted mines be- I’d have double the experience
hind Russian lines.
The 72nd had shown less interest and be better at nothingness, at being present.
in collaboration. Before coming to The page, I once believed, offers permanence,
Pavlivka, the brigade had been sta-
tioned in Bakhmut, another city in sanctifying time, making it longer,
Donetsk, where an enormous num- but now I see my words as susceptible,
ber of soldiers had died, and even more
had been wounded. The trauma of even if digital, to fire, flood, misplacement.
Bakhmut had unnerved many of the To misinterpretation. To accidental
survivors, and they now seemed wary
of outsiders. download by enemy. I don’t yet want them
While the 72nd was settling in, Doc to be lost, but I dread the possibility
had gone on vacation, to the Spanish
party island of Ibiza. Before his re- that they won’t self-destruct at the end
turn, the team had undertaken to se- of my life, or the end of my lucidity.
cure a tree line where, Herring’s drone
surveillance indicated, Russian sol- Maybe I’ve been using paper all wrong,
diers occupied a trench system. The committing to ink what should live in my head,
foreigners left Pavlivka late in the eve-
ning. Although they had briefed the which is part of my body, which will not last.
72nd on their route, a Ukrainian unit Long ago, in college, a friend once said
opened f ire on them as they ap-
proached. The team shot back. “We he would never keep a journal; he preferred
won, they didn’t,” Turtle told me. to live in the moment. Back home in June,
While the Ukrainians evacuated
their casualties, the team proceeded I threw the lot of them, dating back to childhood,
with its mission. Turtle and Tai estab- into a rose-red shopping bag—we reused
lished a machine-gun position in
a field; everybody else continued on every one—then put the bag out with the trash.
foot. T.Q. and Herring were there, as Thank the stars or our thrift for its luminosity:
were four Americans, a Frenchman
called Nick, and a third Kiwi, Dom- my mother asked what was in it, then ran
inic Abelen. The men followed a down the driveway, hauled it back up. Her family
trench until they came upon a com-
plex of dugouts and bunkers full of
Russian troops—far more than they
had anticipated. Most were asleep or
just waking up. A frenzied close-quar- a former marine who went by Saint, over the scene, the bodies were still
ters fight ensued. Using rifles and gre- was struck in his elbow and foot. there. Two days later, the Russians
nades, the team killed at least a dozen Jones, bleeding profusely, screamed had collected them.
soldiers. Turtle and Tai, from across for help. But Russian mortars had The debacle had further strained the
the field, assailed additional Russians begun to zero in on the machine-gun team’s rapport with the 72nd. No Ukrai-
with the machine gun. position, and any effort to retrieve nians had died in the exchange of friendly
As the sun rose, and the foreign- him or Abelen would have been sui- fire, and Turtle didn’t know how many
ers lost the advantage of their night cidal. The team retreated, linked up had been injured, but he allowed, “That
vision, they became overwhelmed. with Turtle and Tai, and delivered might be why some people don’t like us
Abelen was shot in the head while at- Nick and Saint to a hospital. A round in this area anymore.” The leeriness was
tempting to withdraw from the trench. had smashed into Turtle’s chest plate, mutual. Members of the brigade’s re-
He died instantly. One of the Amer- and Herring found a bullet hole in connaissance company—with which the
icans, a twenty-four-year-old Army the crotch of his pants. That after- team was supposed to coördinate—had
veteran named Joshua Jones, was noon, they attempted to return to the followed the foreigners partway through
wounded in the thigh. A bullet pierced trench, but heavy shelling forced them the tree line, and had agreed to provide
Nick’s hindside. Another American, back. When Herring f lew a drone additional backup if anything went
36 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
reserveofficertrainingcorps program.
At the time, a year of military service
was mandatory in Ukraine, and many
young academics opted to earn their
had once lost everything. She knew what I wanted commissions rather than be conscripted.
to be, what I already was. “You have to keep them!” When Putin launched his campaign to
take Kyiv, Grek was assigned to the re
she yelled. She never yelled. Even my friend, connaissance company, which was then
hearing it later, said the same. What worked for him commanded by an experienced older of
ficer. After the ferocious combat in
might not be right for me. He loved to argue Bakhmut, the unit was reduced from a
and was always there, vociferous, ready to engage, hundred and twentyeight men to eighty
two. Grek and his superior both suffered
while I was too receptive, too easily swayed, concussions in an artillery strike, and the
though I often swatted back. That’s what college latter never fully recovered; shortly after
Grek was released from the hospital, he
is for, the wisdom goes, latenight conversation was temporarily put in charge of the
with challenging peers. A few years later, company. A month later, when the 72nd
rotated to Pavlivka, another experienced
we were no longer friends, not through conflict officer was sent to relieve Grek. But the
but cliché: he had wanted more, I had demurred, day after the officer arrived he was fa
tally wounded by a Russian shell.
and then there was nothing to say. But maybe When I noted the irony of Grek’s
I’d been partial to aspects of his attention— becoming an officer to avoid military
service, only to end up a frontline com
maybe all the platitudes were true. I had failed mander, he said, “Times change, people
to consider, despite constant reflection, change.” Nevertheless, he retained the
languid demeanor of a scholar. His pos
what my being there must have conveyed. ture was hunched, his expression one of
Reflection is simply an image, a face in a mirror; aloof amusement. “I’m not a professional
soldier,” he told me more than once.
to look upon is not the same as to examine. Two days after Herring’s drone mis
Perhaps there is such a thing as a neutral observer. sion, Turtle and Grek visited the same
tree line. Turtle wanted to create new
Each night, I had written Here is what happened positions there, deeper into the gray zone,
like a kid whose pen makes her small life exciting, which would offer better angles for fire
support during the impending opera
then gone on mistaking the plot for the story, tion. Grek was unconvinced that the ben
as if the point of writing were writing. efit warranted the risk, and they had
agreed to take a look, together, at the
—Adrienne Su forwardmost trench.
On our way to the coal mine, Grek
asked Turtle, “You stay the winter?”
wrong. Yet none of the Ukrainians had fear and trepidation had crept in, erod Turtle laughed. “Yeah, that’s when
joined the battle with the Russians. (One ing the unit’s esprit de corps. Shaking all the fun happens.”
of them later told me that their radio his head at the memory, Turtle said of “Crazy man. I’ll probably go to New
had malfunctioned and they had not the trench, “I don’t know if we ever got Zealand.”
heard the team’s call for help.) out of that thing.” “We’ll change passports—you go to
“There’s always gonna be some sore New Zealand, I’ll stay here.”
ness there,” Turtle said. While other he acting commander of the Ukrai We switched to a fourwheeldrive
Legion members were less restrained
about their frustration, Turtle hewed
T nian reconnaissance company, code
named Grek, was a thirtyyearold his
truck at the mine, and Turtle and I rode
in the bed as it followed muddy tracks
to a philosophical detachment that I torian who had written a doctoral thesis past the air shaft with the command
came to appreciate as central to his ef on ancient Thebes. He and his men (with center. When the truck could go no far
ficacy as a soldier. “Until then, we’d the exception of Rambo’s group) were ther, we walked. Rain made the ground
been lucky,” he told me. “And our luck stationed in another house in town, a a slippery morass. After a while, we
ran out that night.” He was most con short drive away. As an undergraduate reached a Ukrainian encampment with
cerned about the fallout within his team. at Kyiv University, in 2012 and 2013, Grek a few soldiers, handdug foxholes, and
After Jones and Abelen were killed, had spent one day a week attending a a fire pit under camouflage netting. Grek
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 37
Herring, braving incoming Russian artillery and tank fire, flies a reconnaissance drone while other members of his unit patrol
was talking to an infantryman with gray rived at the terminus. A middle-aged into a defilade, ceding the high ground
stubble and glasses when a shell crashed soldier was posted there; as he and Grek to Russian snipers. “It’s not a good idea
in the fields. We took cover in a shal- spoke in Ukrainian, Turtle filmed them to go down there,” the soldier said. “I’m
low bunker reinforced with logs and with a GoPro mounted on his helmet. telling you like it is.”
scrap lumber. A rusty pot sat over dead (Later, at the house, his friend would “A lot of mines,” Grek said, in English.
coals; an archaic telephone was con- translate the exchange for him.) Turtle shrugged. “We’re going. That’s
nected to a wire that ran back to the air “Everything beyond here is mined just happening.”
shaft. The bespectacled man introduced and booby-trapped with trip wires,” On our way back, we stopped at an-
himself as Grandpa. He was a fifty-four- the soldier warned Grek. “Some of our other Ukrainian encampment, where a
year-old farmer who had not left the guys were already blown up.” soldier with a digital tablet pulled up
encampment for two and a half months. “We’ll go with de-miners,” Grek said. drone images and provided a detailed
When the artillery subsided, Grek “They already tried. That’s who was overview of the proximate Russian po-
and Turtle resumed moving up the tree blown up.” sitions, their likely directions of attack,
line. The path dropped into a narrow There were other dangers: the tree and how to defend against them.
trench, and, after slogging through ankle- line narrowed and thinned significantly, “You’re the commander of this zone?”
deep water for ten minutes or so, we ar- offering scant protection, and it sloped Grek asked.
38 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
C.Q.B., a foundational doctrine among CNN had aired footage of the hand-
Western militaries for urban combat: how over which showed Ukrainian forensic
to enter rooms, move as a squad, shoot investigators, in biohazard suits, carry-
from windows. The Ukrainians were un- ing a body bag and a white flag away
accustomed to handling rifles or wear- from a group of Russian soldiers. The
ing body armor, and, when Turtle asked U.S. State Department had announced
if any of them were familiar with C.Q.B., that Jones would “soon be returned” to
only one raised his hand. his home town, in Tennessee.
At the same time, the team had The team’s reaction was subdued,
learned from the Ukrainians, especially which confused me. When I retired to
when it came to the historical anachro- the basement, I found Tai, the former
nism of trench warfare. Once, while the New Zealand Defense Force member,
foreigners were visiting a trench that lying on his mat with one of the cats
came under heavy bombardment, they purring on his chest. Since I had ar-
had scrambled into a foxhole that was rived, Tai had been the hardest team
eight feet deep, in an L shape, with stairs member to draw out. The twenty-nine-
and a roof of felled timber. For the next year-old son of Chinese immigrants,
five hours, as Russian tank rounds and he was sleeved in tattoos that included,
mortars burst around them, they had on his right hand, a five-petal orchid—
shared the shelter with an older infan- the symbol of his family’s native Hong
tryman who had been fighting in the Kong. “Tai” was a facetious reference
Donbas since 2014. T.Q., the German to Taiwan, which many volunteers be-
who’d served in the French Foreign Le- lieved would be attacked by an embold-
gion, told me, “If he hadn’t had the ex- ened China unless Russia was humili-
perience and taken the time to dig out ated in Ukraine.
that position—with enough space not After some stilted small talk, I brought
only for himself but also for other peo- up Jones, and asked Tai whether he felt
ple—we would have had casualties.” any sense of closure.
Staying alive in a Ukrainian trench “I’m concerned about my mate,” Tai
requires a daunting combination of said. He meant Dominic Abelen, whose
stamina, vigilance, and luck. The daily body remained in Russian custody. Tai
misery induces a mental fatigue that dulls had known Abelen since 2017, when
alertness and subverts morale. But even they served together in Iraq. After Tai
the most disciplined soldier, with the and Turtle joined the International Le-
most elaborate foxhole, can fall victim gion, in August, Abelen requested that
to a well-aimed munition, and the menace the G.U.R. assign them to Donetsk.
of sudden death plagues every Ukrainian The two Kiwis both spoke of Abelen
infantryman charged with the impera- with reverence, describing him as an
tive, terrible job of holding the line. expert soldier whose courage and en-
Before we left the encampment where thusiasm had been a reliable source of
Vitaliy, the dancer, was stationed, I gave inspiration for his comrades. Before
the front line on foot. him my card. He later texted me a photo the unit had left the house on Abel-
of himself onstage, brandishing a sword en’s final mission, he’d given Turtle the
“Me?” the soldier said. “I’m just a in Cossack garb. It was an image, in more black tag, marked “dead,” that I’d no-
dancer.” ways than one, of another world and an- ticed in Turtle’s room. It was a digital
His name was Vitaliy, and before other time. When I checked in on Vitaliy I.D. that New Zealanders carry with
the war he’d belonged to a Ukrainian a few weeks later, he was in the hospital: them on deployments. “You’ll need
folk-dance ensemble. a tank round had landed in his dugout, that,” Abelen had joked.
Many of the professional soldiers in wounding him and killing a comrade. After Abelen was killed, Tai had
the 72nd had been killed or injured in I expressed my condolences, and Vi- informed the G.U.R. that he was going
Bakhmut. Conscripts had replenished taliy replied, “Yes, but this is war.” He home. He spent a week in a hotel in
the ranks. Some had attended a three- planned to return to the front as soon Kyiv and bought a bus ticket to Poland.
week basic infantry course in the U.K., as possible. The morning that he was to leave,
with instructors from across Europe, but however, he returned to Donetsk. He’d
most had received only minimal train- hen Turtle and I got back to the joined the Legion to escape his “mun-
ing before being given Kalashnikovs and
dispatched to the front. I had watched
W house, there was news. The re-
mains of Joshua Jones had been recov-
dane and boring” life in New Zealand,
he told me, where he’d worked as a
Turtle and the team train several dozen ered, as part of a prisoner exchange in mail carrier since being discharged from
Ukrainians in close-quarters battle, or the southern region of Zaporizhzhia. the Army. In the end, the prospect of
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 39
resuming that existence had been more orders was never an option. He at- tle received word that the Ukrainians
intimidating than staying in Ukraine. tributed the Legion’s high attrition rate in the trenches we had visited—where
“I knew that, as soon as I got home, to the stress of having to constantly I’d met Grandpa and Vitaliy—had de-
there’s nothing there I’d rather do,” he choose whether to participate in risky stroyed two tanks, using shoulder-fired
said. “So I came back.” missions: “It’s a cumulative effect. It weapons. A larger Russian contingent,
The contract that international fight- stacks up in your mind.” however, had captured a southern
ers sign with the government in Kyiv Similarly, whereas Doc’s tours in Iraq neighborhood of Pavlivka.
makes them Ukrainian soldiers and and Afghanistan had scheduled end Turtle gathered the team outside.
grants them the same benefits accorded dates, Legion members must decide for “It might be a day where nothing hap-
to local troops: medical care, a base sal- themselves when to stop fighting. The pens, it might be a day where every-
ary of about twelve hundred dollars a fact that Ukrainians like Rambo and thing happens,” he said. Then he turned
month (with additional pay for haz- Grek lack such agency makes quitting to Doc. “Are you in this?” he asked.
ardous duty), and legal-combatant sta- all the more fraught. Doc agreed with “Yeah,” Doc said.
tus under the Geneva Conventions President Zelensky’s assertion that the Grek, the reconnaissance-company
(though Russia considers them merce- war was about much more than just commander, advised the team to re-
naries ineligible for prisoner-of-war Ukraine—that no less than the future port to the battalion headquarters in
status). The critical difference is that of democracy might be governed by its Vuhledar, the next Ukrainian-held town
foreigners are free to leave when they outcome. “And this is the problem,” he after Pavlivka. The foreigners left in
want. They can also refuse to carry out told me. “Because how am I different their two Nissans, while Rambo and
specific requests or tasks. Everything from these Ukrainian soldiers, then, if his men followed in a Hyundai that a
they do is voluntary. I believe that?” network of friends and relatives had
To a civilian, this may sound ap- bought for them. The main route was
pealing. But any service member knows ive days after the soft-spoken offi- exposed to Russian tanks, so we had
that such an arrangement not only con-
tradicts the basic premise on which
F cer at the air shaft warned Herring
and Rambo of a looming attack, Rus-
to travel off-road. Rockets were clob-
bering Vuhledar. We parked outside an
functioning militaries are built; it also sian forces mounted a multi-pronged apartment tower, and the men hustled
imposes an oppressive burden on in- armored offensive. From the house, we into the stairwell. Turtle and Rambo
dividual soldiers. On our way to Do- could hear a major spike in artillery, went to find the headquarters.
netsk, Doc had explained to me, “In cluster bombs, and tank fire. Ukrainian There was no electricity, heat, or
the Marines, it didn’t matter what shit helicopters shuttled overhead. Rockets working plumbing in Vuhledar, and
you threw at us,” because disobeying dragged contrails across the sky. Tur- the only remaining tenant in the build-
ing appeared to be a middle-aged
woman in a shabby coat and a track-
suit, named Lena. Alcohol seemed
to have enhanced her delight at hav-
ing guests.
“Where do you want to go?” she
asked. “I can tell you the way. I’ve lived
here since I was two.” Herring gave her
a cigarette, and Lena gestured for him
to light it. “I’m a lady,” she said.
An extended salvo shook the build-
ing. One shell screamed into a play-
ground across the street, throwing up
a splash of flame and dirt. Shrapnel
tinked against the concrete walls.
“Well, they found our vehicles,” Her-
ring said.
When Turtle and Rambo reap-
peared, they informed the team that
the battalion commander wanted them
to remain in Vuhledar on standby. It
was the same story the next day, and
the next: driving to Lena’s building
and waiting in her stairwell, only to be
sent home. By the third night, the team
was bitterly demoralized. I found
Rambo and Turtle in the kitchen, shar-
ing a bottle of whiskey. “Three days,
we just suck fucking Chupa Chups,” unfamiliar terrain littered with mines. a pocket and brought out a yellow rub-
Rambo said. “It’s not what I came here to do, but it’s ber duck. In March, he said, he’d dis-
“We’re trying to make something what needs to be done,” Doc said. When tributed clothing to displaced civilians
happen,” Turtle replied. he joined the Legion, he’d assumed that arriving at the train station in Kyiv.
Soldiers in other companies had the Ukrainians would use him in an en- He’d given a jacket to a young boy, who
been sending Rambo videos of dra- gineering or communications role. It reciprocated with the duck. The boy
matic firefights and attacks on Russian wasn’t just that he had worked at Goo- explained that it had helped him sur-
tanks. “They kill a lot of guys in this gle. His tours in Iraq and Afghanistan vive the siege of Mariupol. “He said
time we sit in fucking Vuhledar,” he had taken a toll on his body, and in 2021 that it would keep me safe,” Herring
lamented. he had broken both knees and fractured said, his jokey façade falling away.
“We’re stuck,” Turtle agreed. “But a vertebra during a paramotor accident We joined the rest of the team in an
we can get out of it.” in the Hudson Valley. “I abandoned dacha riddled
The next day, he drove to Vuhledar thought I was too old and with holes. Other soldiers
with only his friend who served as an too broke to fight,” he said. from the 72nd were also
interpreter. Returning to the house, Nonetheless, he hadn’t pro- staging there, preparing to
Turtle summoned Rambo’s men and tested when the G.U.R. re- enter Pavlivka with about a
his. “We have a mission,” he told them. cruited him for the recon- dozen anti-tank weapons.
naissance team. Knowing Artillery was landing close;
he 72nd had assessed that six hun- little about such techniques, we could hear the clatter of
T dred enemy troops and thirty ar-
mored vehicles had entered Pavlivka.
he’d scoured the Internet
for manuals and studied
small arms not far off. In a
disarrayed living room, Doc
The village was divided between Rus- them on his phone. Still, he tried to lighten the mood,
sian forces in the southern neighbor- was not a natural—not like speculating about the cal-
hoods and Ukrainian forces in the Dominic Abelen, who’d been the point ibre of the projectiles outside.
northern ones, though the fronts were man on every mission until he was killed. T.Q. reclined on a couch, looking
fluid and ambiguous. The center of “He was so careful,” Doc said. “You want sombre. At twenty-five, he was the team’s
the village could be accessed by a tree someone who’s obsessive to a fault.” youngest member, the only one who
line from the east, and the brigade Combat was fast and frenetic, recon- neither drank nor smoked, and gener-
wanted the foreigners to see if it was naissance painstaking and slow. You ally the most serious, with a stereotyp-
possible to traverse its length, or how took a few steps, then stopped and lis- ical German reserve. After studying
far they could go before encountering tened. You had to diligently suppress a chemistry at college for two semesters,
Russian positions. powerful instinct, amplified by adren- he had asked himself, “Do I want to
On a whiteboard in the living room, aline and nerves, to speed up. “That’s waste four years of my life for a piece
Turtle drew a map. The team would not me,” Doc said. of paper that validates an increase of
travel by vehicle to a collection of sum- When we’d met in Kyiv, he’d been salary?” He’d enlisted in the French For-
mer cottages, or dachas, across a river working on pivoting from frontline op- eign Legion and deployed to Iraq. In
from Pavlivka. Once it was dark, Tur- erations to safer projects, such as fund- Ukraine, T.Q. had preceded Turtle as
tle, Doc, T.Q., Rambo, and another raising. “But, at the end of the day, I’m team leader. Although T.Q. was univer-
Ukrainian would depart from there on still a soldier,” he said. In any war, the sally admired for his meticulous prag-
foot, pass over a bridge, and enter the abstract or ideological reasons that lead matism, after Abelen and Jones were
tree line. Herring would remain in one someone to take up arms often dis- killed everyone had agreed to make a
of the dachas to provide real-time in- solve in the highly personal crucible of change. Since then, according to Tur-
telligence from his drone, identifying combat, which produces its own logic. tle, T.Q. had sometimes chafed at his
any Russian soldiers, tanks, or artillery A desire for revenge can take hold, or loss of control. The previous day, he’d
that might attack the team. If all went a need for redemption, or an addiction posed pointed questions about the
well, they’d be home before dawn. to risk. Doc seemed to be contending plan that Turtle had outlined on the
Tai’s name did not appear on the with a sense of guilt. “The most shit whiteboard. He worried, above all, that
whiteboard. When the others visited I’ve ever felt about anything in this the team lacked clear lines of commu-
a firing range to rehearse their move- war,” he’d told me, was being absent nication with the Ukrainian forces in
ments and practice shooting with night when Abelen and Jones were killed. Pavlivka.
vision and thermal optics, he didn’t “When two of your guys die and you’re “You all right, man?” Doc asked him
participate. “Tai’s out,” Turtle told me. sitting on a beach in Ibiza . . .” He’d in the dacha.
There was no animus in his voice, and trailed off, grimacing. T.Q. shrugged.
indeed the team seemed to be going
out of its way to reassure Tai. he team left the house the follow- he night before, Doc had told me,
I rode back from the range with Doc.
During the rehearsal, he’d been the point
T ing afternoon. A photographer
and I rode in the Hyundai with Her-
T “If we do our job correctly, they’ll
never know we were there.” He’d then
man, a dangerous and demanding re- ring and a Ukrainian soldier called Pan. qualified the assurance. The trees were
sponsibility when navigating hostile, On the way, Herring stuck his hand in almost bare, the roads carpeted with
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 41
leaves. An Orlan, the Russian fixed- warned them that an Orlan had spot-
wing drone, would have “perfect obser- ted them. The team had decided to
vation.” Ultimately, Doc said, it was “a continue the mission but had quickly
game of chance.” become pinned down.
More and more members of the 72nd “Roger that, Doc,” Herring said.
were congregating at the dacha, and “We’re taking near-direct hits on this
Herring and Pan, the Ukrainian soldier, house. I had a good visual on you guys.
decided to station themselves elsewhere. I just landed.”
As the photographer and I followed “Roger. We’re taking what seems
them, along a dirt lane dotted with small like tank fire. Over.”
homes, all of which had been partially “Roger that. About the same story
demolished, something whistled toward here. I got a good scan of that tree line. I
us—loud and fast. We dove into the saw zero, I repeat zero, signatures along it.”
mud, then got up and ran. Arriving at Doc asked Herring to locate the
a larger, gated property, we entered a Russian tank. “It’s coming about ten
foyer, and as Herring shut the door be- degrees from the left,” he said.
hind us another shell slammed to earth, “I gotta wait for this to subside to
blasting shrapnel against the walls. run out and grab the drone,” Herring
The foyer was full of glass and de- told him.
bris. Floral-patterned drapes hung over Another strike near the house made
a shattered window. A door leading to Doc’s response inaudible.
the next room was barricaded shut “I gotta get that drone,” Herring
by rubble on the other side. I was re- said. If he could pinpoint the location
lieved to see a hole in the floor with a of the tank, Rambo could transmit its
wooden ladder descending to a root coördinates to the 72nd Brigade, which
cellar. When the photographer and I could neutralize it with artillery.
climbed down, we found that the shel- It was pitch-black in the cellar. Even
ter was too shallow to stand in. when three of us sat with our knees drawn
The rest of the team, still at the orig- up, the fourth person could fit only by
inal dacha, waited for night to fall. Then standing next to the ladder. In the claus-
Turtle radioed that they were heading trophobic space, I could feel Herring de-
out. He had substituted himself for bating what to do. He was lighting a cig-
Doc as the point man, and had secured arette when a loud whooshing noise, like
a member of the 72nd to guide them a cascade of water, roared toward us.
around Ukrainian mines. “Down!” Herring barked, though there
Herring went into the yard of the was nowhere farther down to go. I bowed
gated property, draped a blanket over my head and pressed my palms into the
his head, and launched the drone. Soon, dirt floor, which quaked as three succes-
a renewed barrage pounded the neigh- sive impacts left a ringing in my ears.
borhood. The photographer and I hun- “Fucking dildos,” Herring said.
kered down in the root cellar. After one It was unclear whether we, too, were
incoming strike, I could hear Pan, in the being deliberately targeted. I had re- In a basement bunker in Donetsk, Tai, a New
foyer, shout, “Herring O.K.?” It seemed cently interviewed an American who
insane to me that Herring was still out- was teaching Ukrainians in the south flame under his face to show us that he
side. Only after a giant explosion brought to identify Russian drone pilots by trac- was smiling. At first, I was annoyed by
chunks of ceiling crashing into the foyer ing the signal of their controllers. But what seemed like a juvenile display of
did he and Pan join us under the floor. Herring said that this method worked bravado. Then I realized that Herring
“That’s the closest it’s ever come to only on a Chinese brand of drones fa- was trying to put the photographer and
hitting me,” Herring marvelled. He’d vored by the Russians; his drone was me at ease. “I feel safe!” he said, as half
managed to land the drone in the yard, made by a different company and not a dozen more shells detonated outside.
but had sprinted inside before he could susceptible to such tracking. Doc came over the radio. The Rus-
retrieve it. He’d also lost his radio. Bor- “I think they’re just hitting the whole sian tank was homing in on them. He
rowing Pan’s, Herring said, “Turtle, this area,” he surmised. said of the rounds, “They’re walking
is Herring.” The next blast was the biggest yet. up the tree line. The next one will likely
There was a long pause. Then: “This Above us, wood and plaster broke and be on us. So please try to find it.”
is Doc. Be advised, we’re taking fire.” tumbled down; the windows of other “We’re getting stuffed up here pretty
As soon as the team had crossed the houses burst. good right now,” Herring told him.
bridge, Ukrainian troops in a dugout “We’ll be all right, boys,” Herring When Doc didn’t answer, Herring said
on the Pavlivka side of the river had said. He sparked his lighter and held the again, “I gotta get that drone.” Another
42 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
Zealander who joined the Legion unit, rests on a mattress, with a sniper rifle at his feet.
munition rocked the house. Some- this basement, we’re taking rounds house, and make a mad dash for the
where, a machine gun had begun to pretty much right on top of this house,” drone, I guess.” Going up the ladder,
fire. I urged Herring not to go outside. Herring told him. he added, “If something happens, don’t
“Yeah, but they need me,” he said. Turtle seemed not to have heard. “We come outside. I’ll find my way in.”
“Like, if I don’t do this . . .” He picked are under pretty heavy shelling,” he said. The drone was where he’d left it, ap-
up the radio. “Doc, this is Herring.” “Try and find where it’s coming from. parently intact. Herring got it in the air,
No answer. A few seconds later, thir- I know it’s a hard ask, but if you can it but before he could spot the tank the
teen rockets, some landing almost si- would be good for our counter-battery.” camera came loose, rendering it inoper-
multaneously, caused more of the house “Roger that, Turtle. I’m trying.” ative. Guided only by a digital map on
to crumble. “Do your best, mate.” the controller and by the sound of the
“Fuck!” Herring said. During a brief lull in the high- rotors, he brought the drone back to the
Finally, Turtle came over the radio. pitched whizzing and booming thun- yard. When he returned to the house, he
“How much luck have you had with derclaps of tank rounds, rockets, and discovered that the drone’s camera mount
the flying?” he asked. “Are you finding artillery, Herring muttered, as much to had been damaged in one of the blasts.
out where the issue is?” himself as to anyone, “All right. I’m “She’s fucked,” he said.
“Every time I try to get up out of gonna get real low, crawl through the I climbed into the foyer. A fresh
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 43
in the sky,” and “I’ve had a good life, I
can die happy.” When I asked him to
relate his mind-set in the tree line, he
said, “There was not a thought of re-
gret. I was, like, It’s been a great ride.
No tears. It was just acceptance. Like,
Wow, here I am.”
He’d once told me that many vol-
unteers who quit the Legion did so
because they hadn’t been honest with
themselves about their reasons for
coming to Ukraine. “Because when
you get here your reason will be
tested,” Turtle said. “And if it’s some-
thing weak, something that’s not real,
you’re going to find out.” He was du-
bious of foreigners who claimed to
want to help Ukraine. Turtle wanted
to help, too, of course, but that im-
pulse was not enough; it might get
you to the front, but it wouldn’t keep
you there.
I asked what was keeping him there.
“In the end, it’s just that I love this
shit,” he said. “And maybe I can’t es-
cape that—maybe that’s the way it’s
always gonna be.”
“I made it myself.” The photographer and I left for
Kyiv the next morning. Tai came with
us. So did Doc, who was flying to New
• • York to attend a Veterans Day gala,
where he hoped to solicit donations.
layer of debris was strewn across the device. The others followed in the Herring also caught a ride. He had a
floor, and when I looked up I saw that pickup. As Rambo turned into a rut- girlfriend in Bucha, whom he’d met
all the laths on the ceiling were exposed. ted black field, Herring asked if every- on a dating app, and he was due for a
On the controller, Herring showed me one was O.K. visit. T.Q. was staying—but not for
thermal footage of the team: each man “We’re alive,” Rambo said. long. In his logical fashion, he had con-
a small black speck in the long gray cluded that he could be more of an
tree line. They still had a ways to go, t the house, Doc looked like a asset to the team if he spoke Ukrai-
and now there was nothing for us to
do but wait.
A different person. His eyes were
bright and tense, his face smeared
nian, and, given his linguistic apti-
tude—he was fluent in German, En-
Forty-five minutes later, Doc in- with sweat and grime. Even his speech glish, and French—he’d decided to
formed Herring that they were return- was unnaturally animated. He ema- take classes in Kyiv.
ing to the dacha. It was too soon for nated a kind of physical energy that, We were loading up our bags when
them to have completed the mission, in another context, might have sug- Rambo received a call from Grek. A
and Herring fretted that someone gested mania or narcotics. “It’s endor- Russian armored unit was pushing on
might have stepped on a mine. This phins,” Doc said. another tree line near the coal mine,
wasn’t the case, though: the bombard- Turtle told me that he’d been “one and the infantry troops there needed
ment had convinced them that the Rus- hundred per cent” certain that they were backup. As we left the house, Rambo,
sians were tracking them, and Turtle going to die. I talked to him more about Pan, and Turtle were donning their gear.
had decided to abort. this the next day. Throughout my two That night, while I was in Kyiv, Turtle
When we ran back to the Hyundai, weeks with the team, I’d been struck by texted me a GoPro video: the three of
we found that its rear window had been what seemed to be a fatalistic anticipa- them bounding through a cratered field,
blown out. Rambo arrived at the same tion of his own death. The “dead” tag emptying their magazines, bullets zing-
time as us. It was 10:30 p.m. Headlights that Dominic Abelen had given him ing past them, a shell sending up a
would have been like beacons for the was just one example. Turtle regularly shower of dirt. When I called him, he
Russians, so Herring covered the dash- made comments such as “When it’s said that they had been forced to pull
board with a tarp and Rambo drove your time, it’s your time,” “I wake up back from the tree line but that no one
through the dark using his night-vision every morning ready to see the big guy had been hurt.
44 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
I asked if they would be returning. finally found his place in the world.” Zealand Army has its own haka, with
“I fucking hope so, mate,” Turtle A few days after I spoke with Tur- its own words that the soldiers hiss
said. tle, Rambo sent me a video of himself and bellow. The name of the haka that
with a bandage over his face and his Abelen’s unit will perform translates
hree days later, members of a Rus- right hand bundled in a splint. The as “We Are Ready.”
T sian brigade that was leading the
Pavlivka offensive published a letter al-
Hyundai had come under fire near the
coal mine, sending him careering into fter attending the Veterans Day
leging that about three hundred of their
troops had been killed, wounded, or cap-
a ditch. A couple of weeks later, Her-
ring was riding in a truck through
A gala in New York, Doc went back
to Kyiv, where he plans to buy an apart-
tured, and that half their armored ve- the dachas when a shell landed in the ment. He is currently raising funds to
hicles had been destroyed. In an un- road. When he regained consciousness, produce and distribute an innovative
precedented public rebuke, the brigade the truck was on its side and wrapped overhead-protection system for Ukrainian
members called the decision to invade around a tree. Herring climbed through troops deployed in frontline trenches.
Pavlivka “incomprehensible,” denounc- a shattered window but lacked the More than any other foreign volun-
ing their commanders for treating them strength to stand. The next time he teer I met, Doc seemed to be genu-
like “meat.” Despite the uproar over ca- woke up, a Ukrainian was slapping him inely motivated by a conviction that
sualties, Russia plowed ahead with its in the face and he could hear muffled the conflict was “a clear case of right
offensive, and the 72nd Brigade even- explosions. He was evacuated to a hos- and wrong.” I sometimes wondered to
tually withdrew from the village. The pital in Dnipro, where he was told that what extent his desire to participate in
defeat marked the largest loss of terri- he had four broken ribs and a punc- such an unambiguously just war was
tory for Ukraine since the summer. Rus- tured lung. His face and torso were connected to his previous military ca-
sian shelling of Vuhledar has subse- covered with lacerations. When he reer. The cause for which he is fight-
quently intensified, imperilling it as well. called me from his room, which he was ing in Ukraine is righteous because it
Now that the trees in Donetsk are with- sharing with multiple wounded Ukrai- consists of one country resisting occu-
out leaves, it is unlikely that the Ukrai- nians, he credited his rubber duck with pation by another. But Doc’s adversar-
nians will be able to reoccupy any of having saved his life. “Either the duck ies in Iraq and Afghanistan viewed
their surrendered trenches before the or my helmet,” Herring quipped. their causes similarly—and, in Afghan-
spring. Although Ukrainian forces re- Tai, the Kiwi who quit the Legion, istan, that galvanizing sentiment may
cently liberated Kherson, a major port did not have a change of heart this time. be why the Taliban prevailed. This is
city on the Black Sea, the trench and His only regret, he told me, was leav- a thorny topic for veterans, and Doc
artillery warfare being waged in the ing Ukraine without Dominic Abelen’s was not willing to concede a moral
Donbas shows no sign of relenting. The body, which he had hoped to escort to equivalence between the U.S. and Rus-
grinding stalemate in Bakhmut contin- New Zealand. That was why he’d stuck sian invasions. However, the experi-
ues to inflict a horrific toll on both sides, around as long as he had. But, he said, ence of defending a country against an
with little ground lost or won. “I realized that if I stay I’ll probably die outside aggressor that was superior in
On November 10th, General Mark as well, waiting for him.” numbers and in firepower had given
Milley, the U.S. chairman of the Joint When New Zealand soldiers are him a new appreciation for his former
Chiefs of Staff, estimated that Russia killed overseas, their units welcome enemies. “I used to think, What kind
and Ukraine had each sustained “well home their caskets with a haka—the of pussy fights with mines?” he said.
over” a hundred thousand casualties “And here I am, laying mines.”
since February—a staggering number, I also suspected another appeal in
if true. The International Legion de- Ukraine for International Legion mem-
clines to say how many foreigners have bers. During my lunch with Doc on
been killed or wounded. After the pris- Andriyivsky Descent, in October, I’d
oner exchange in Zaporizhzhia, the been unexpectedly moved when the old
Ukrainian government announced that man in the fedora thanked him for his
it was holding Joshua Jones’s remains service. I shared Doc’s discomfort with
as part of a war-crimes investigation. similar gestures Stateside, but some-
Jones’s father, Jeff, a U.S. Army veteran thing here was different. Although the
of the Gulf War and a retired police of- ceremonial Maori dance. Turtle and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were
ficer, told me that he had identified his Tai plan to lobby for Abelen to receive transformative for those who fought in
son in a photograph, and that the corpse the same honor. If they succeed, the them, they had no real impact on most
had been “charred.” He was awaiting casket will be brought to his former Americans and Europeans. Everyone
the results of an autopsy that would in- unit’s parade grounds, in Christchurch, in Ukraine, by contrast, has been af-
dicate whether Jones had been alive through a wooden gate decorated with fected by the Russian invasion; every-
when his body was burned. Jeff said that traditional carvings, called a waharoa. one has sacrificed and suffered. For some
he had spoken to Joshua on the phone Abelen’s comrades will stomp their feet, foreign veterans, such a country, so thor-
in the weeks before his death, and that beat their chests, and stick out their oughly reshaped and haunted by war,
“he seemed content over there, like he tongues. Each battalion in the New must feel less alien than home.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 45
PROFILES
oliciting pedestrians in the Ma- Among the people whom Wiley did Judith holding the head of Holofernes;
changed after a studio visit from Kerry tic vision of life in the big city. Brian began a yearlong residency. He’d ar-
James Marshall, whose critique pro- Keith Jackson, a novelist from Louisi- rived at a propitious moment. Thelma
foundly altered Wiley’s approach to the ana, remembers meeting Wiley when Golden, then best known for her land-
relationship between figure and ground. he came to a party at the writer’s apart- mark exhibition “Black Male,” had just
© KEHINDE WILEY / COURTESY GALERIE TEMPLON
“ ‘Enough with the sharp edges. They’re ment with a plastic bottle of gin. Jack- started her tenure as chief curator of
cold, they’re clinical, and they say a lot son made him sign it, and from then the storied Harlem organization. “Ke-
about you,’” Wiley recalls the older art- on the two were inseparable. In the hinde is one of those artists who was
ist saying. The comment helped inspire years since, he has accompanied Wiley fully formed from the start,” Golden
his work’s distinctive entanglement of on travels from China to Brazil, and recalled. She took an interest in the
decorative patterns with limbs and skin. written several essays for his catalogues. young painter partially because his work
Wiley realized that the interplay could “There weren’t many Black gay men paralleled her research for her exhibi-
stand in for other relationships: race that were the face of something,” Jack- tion “Black Romantic,” which explored
and society, man and marketplace, model son told me. “We just struck out on the the tension between popular genres of
and artist. city, because you needed that support.” idealizing portraiture and the concep-
He moved to New York in 2001, ar- Wiley also found community at the tualism of institutions like her own. In
riving with little money and a roman- Studio Museum, where, in 2001, he the catalogue, she wrote, “I was suspi-
50 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
Serpent (Mamadou Gueye),” from 2022, reimagines a sculpture, by Auguste Clésinger, that was first displayed in 1847.
cious of the notion of the ‘real’ or the cape, or a silent struggle with double A breakthrough came when he found
authentic that many of the artists strive consciousness. Golden featured the a Black teen’s discarded mug shot and
to present”; she found it full of “over- painting in her exhibition, earning Wiley arrest record. Wiley took the photo-
wrought sentiment” and “strident es- immediate notice. In an interview for graph home and began to consider the
sentialism.” Yet she also wanted to the exhibition’s catalogue, he declared, chasm between the aggrandizing con-
reckon with its appeal. “I want to aestheticize masculine beauty ventions of European portraiture—with
Wiley’s work bridged the two worlds. and to be complicit within that lan- its kings, saints, and smug gentry—and
At the time, he was working on a se- guage of oppressive power while at once its perverse opposite in the photo stu-
ries called “Conspicuous Fraud,” which critiquing it.” dios of the New York Police Depart-
explored the commodification of iden- Harlem was a revelation, Wiley re- ment. What if he reversed the terms,
tity through depictions of young men called, “teeming with this sexy black simultaneously demystifying the West-
with explosively branching Afros against young energy” that strutted down the ern canon and endowing Black youth
monochromatic backdrops. In the most sidewalk. At the museum, he often slept with Old Master grandiosity?
celebrated work from the series, a man in his studio, overlooking 125th Street, The breakthrough earned Wiley
in a suit closes his eyes as his smoke- papering the walls with Polaroids of his first solo museum show when he
like hair fills the canvas: a dream of es- men he’d met around the neighborhood. was just twenty-six. “Passing/Posing”
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 51
transformed a room at the Brooklyn attentive about his own image; she was paintings as “gaudy shams” enjoying
Museum into a b-boy Sistine Chapel. struck by a Dolce & Gabbana shirt “fifteen minutes of fame,” and com-
Arch-shaped portraits depicted men in he’d bought for an opening while she pared the young artist to the fanciful
basketball jerseys posing like Biblical confronted him about an overdue pay- and largely faded French salon painter
figures. Break-dancers cut up clouds in ment. Wiley insists that it was fake; ei- William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Oth-
a mock ceiling fresco called “Go.” (Wiley ther way, it was a talisman of his de- ers saw more commercialism than cri-
recently reprised the composition in termination. “He executes on his ideas,” tique in his slick fantasies, especially
stained glass, for a monumental sky- the painter told me. “Everything he once he began collaborating with lux-
light in the new Moynihan Train Hall.) said, he did.” ury brands like Grey Goose. Wiley, un-
It was “a sendup of Old Master paint- “Nothing surprised me,” the gal- daunted, embraced celebrity. He painted
ing as the ultimate cum shot,” Wiley lerist Jeffrey Deitch said of Wiley’s suc- LL Cool J for the VH1 Hip Hop Hon-
told the art historian Sarah Lewis; many cess. “It was all preordained.” What in- ors, and Michael Jackson, at the sing-
of the young men were surrounded by terested Deitch wasn’t just the paintings er’s own request, portraying him on a
filigrees of fleurs-de-lis and spermato- but the persona. Wiley’s compositions white horse, clad in plate mail and ser-
zoa. The packed opening featured a per- evoked predecessors like Barkley Hen- enaded by cherubim. He threw legend-
formance by the Juilliard-trained drag dricks, with his poised, gilt-backed icons ary parties, cooking, at one bacchanal,
queen Shequida, who sang a Baroque of everyday Black style; a tradition of a menu of six quail, four rabbits, three
arrangement of Kelis’s “Milkshake” ac- homoerotic photography, dating back red snappers, and two ducks with the
companied by the Columbia Bach So- to Fred Holland Day and Wilhelm von heads left on for about a hundred guests.
ciety. “I had no idea where I was going Gloeden, who posed peasant youths as “By the end of the night, we had lit-
to go,” Wiley told me, though it was classical heroes; and the exaggerated tle gay boys going around with joints
immediately clear that he was going up. gender play of contemporary drag, fash- and cigarettes and silver platters,” Scott
“The future was almost there,” an ion, and advertising. At the same time, Andresen, an artist friend who co-hosted
early studio assistant recalled. With Wiley’s reputation conjured up the the gathering, recalled. Wiley’s open-
fondness and frustration, she and oth- spectres of Warhol and Basquiat, col- ings escalated to such an extent that
ers described a boss who projected a lapsing their dance of detached media one took place at a Harlem ballroom,
fabulous persona even as he struggled manipulator and streetwise innocent and featured voguing demonstrations
to pay salaries and slept off all-night- into a single figure. by members of the House of Xtrava-
ers on piles of bubble wrap in a ragged Deitch staged Wiley’s next hit show, ganza. The spectacles were less an ex-
Chelsea studio that doubled as his apart- “Rumors of War” (2005), an exhibition travagance, though, than an investment.
ment. Wiley started hiring extra hands— of equestrian portraits whose standout,
initially, a quartet of Columbia under- “Napoleon Leading the Army over the n August, I met Wiley at his SoHo
graduates—before he had even finished
his residency, overwhelmed by a de-
Alps,” became the young artist’s sig-
nature work. It swapped out the dimin-
I apartment, a cavernous ground-floor
loft in a cast-iron building surrounded
mand for his paintings that quickly utive Corsican general of David’s mas- by galleries and boutiques. It had taken
outstripped his ability to make them. terwork for a muscular Black man in months to pin the artist down. In the
A division of labor emerged. Wiley a headband and fatigues, raising a tat- past year, he’s travelled to more than a
cruised Harlem for striking young men, dozen countries on four continents—
often bringing along a gay assistant or not only for work but also to relax at
an attractive woman friend. The artist his homes in Senegal, Nigeria, and
did his own photography. Lacking the the Catskills.
equipment to print transparencies, he “I sort of feel like I’m cheating on
outlined subjects from projections of one life with a different life,” he said
ordinary printouts rubbed with Vase- of these migrations, each inaugurating
line. Assistants completed the elabo- a new season of friends and habits.
rate backgrounds, leaving Wiley to con- Lately, he has favored Africa; this past
centrate on the figures. February, he and Taiwo celebrated their
The team worked at a furious pace. tooed arm as he digs his Timberland forty-fifth birthday at a new house in
For the gilt patterns, they used a shim- boots into the stirrups. Deitch arranged the exclusive Victoria Island neighbor-
mery model paint more often applied its purchase and long-term loan to the hood of Lagos. But when I asked if
to cars than to canvases, and its strong Brooklyn Museum, where it hangs in any particular place was “home” Wiley
fumes often sent them scrambling to the lobby. Like many other Wileys that demurred, saying, “It’s probably about
the windows. Wiley was “not interested crib titles from their inspirations, it entropy and how warm the seat is since
in quality control,” one of the painters now surpasses the original in online last you’ve sat in it.”
told me, pointing out errors in fore- search results. We sat on opposite couches in his
shortening figures—an artifact of out- Years before a repentant art world high-ceilinged living room, watched by
lining from projections—and incon- started buying Black art like indul- a fun-house hoard of contemporary por-
sistent sperm motifs in his early work. gences, Wiley’s rise provoked grum- traiture. Works by Njideka Akunyili
One assistant found him to be more bles. Roberta Smith described his early Crosby, Deana Lawson, Shikeith, Mick-
52 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
alene Thomas, and Amoako Boafo—
whom Wiley championed after discov-
ering him on Instagram—floated above
family photographs and African carv-
ings, one of which supported a heavy
Warhol catalogue. Dominating the col-
lection was a recent portrait by Wiley,
which depicts a shirtless dark-skinned
young man holding a copy of Nancy
Isenberg’s “White Trash” between his
splayed legs.
Wiley offered me a glass of wine
and an oversized ice cube, cautioning
me to slide it in with care. Broken glass
was on his mind; the previous day, con-
tractors had dropped a tool and shat-
tered the skylight in his den, startling
the artist and his Afghan hounds, Sudan
and Togo. “The vibe is not the same,”
Wiley said of returning to Manhattan.
He moved into the apartment nine “Hey, looks like I’m going to be stuck here awhile. Can you
years ago but has spent only two months get dinner started and finish raising the kids?”
in the city since 2020. Many of his
friends and associates have moved else-
where, and some of those who hadn’t—
• •
like LL Cool J, whom he’d just seen at
a party thrown by the stylist and so- in the Hudson Valley. “I want Black casually crossed. In 2006, Wiley opened
cialite Legendary Damon—reminded Rock to be less about me.” a large studio with a sculpture work-
him of another era. Wiley doesn’t do self-portraits, shop in Beijing, where he also rented
I asked if there were any of his own though not because he shuns the spot- an apartment, learned Mandarin, and
works that he had wanted but couldn’t light. “I’m always very suspicious about started dating a local d.j. This marked
keep. “Hell yeah,” Wiley said, naming artists who are ambivalent about recog- the beginning of a transition from hot-
a painting from his 2008 exhibition, nition,” he told me. “The ability to have shot painter to diversified global enter-
“Down,” which had been acquired by something to say and reach people? prise. Starting in China, Wiley em-
his friend Swizz Beatz. The series re- That’s a dream.” Nevertheless, he pre- barked on a series called “The World
imagined fallen figures like Hans Hol- fers having a famous name to having a Stage,” an atlas of the Black figure and
bein’s “The Body of the Dead Christ famous face, and the freedom that comes the world’s decorative traditions. During
in the Tomb”—a landmark of morbid with directing attention to being its ob- the same period, he expanded into new
realism—in a register of down-low ject. The one portrait of Wiley that I mediums, like sculpture and stained
homoeroticism, envisioning Black men saw in his apartment—a heavily Photo- glass; new Old Masters, like Hans Mem-
in attitudes of saintly repose. Beatz’s ac- shopped print by David LaChapelle— ling; and, starting in 2011, a new gen-
quisition featured a particularly beau- depicts the painter as a macho athlete der, as he returned to Harlem to paint
tiful figure, Wiley reminisced, with a admiring his own reflection, flanked by women in custom gowns by the Italian
twisting torso and exposed Hanes briefs Pamela Anderson and the trans perfor- designer Riccardo Tisci. The resulting
beneath a cascade of golden passion- mance artist Amanda Lepore. show, which featured in a documentary,
flowers. “But where the hell would I It’s a tellingly chameleonic image. was called “An Economy of Grace.” But
hang a twenty-foot painting?” Wiley seems to draw strength from the many critics saw only economies of scale,
Then there’s his edition of “Rumors contradictory glosses that attach to his the endless recycling of a gimmick.
of War,” the enormous statue of a dread- identity: court painter and populist, icon- Then, in the mid-twenty-tens, Wi-
locked rider that he created, in 2019, as oclast and canon junkie, crusader for ley’s career caught a major thermal.
a riposte to Confederate monuments. inclusion and art-world cynic. He’s a Black figuration swept to national prom-
(The original, first exhibited in Times man who seems equally at ease among inence, buoyed, from one direction, by
Square, is now outside the Virginia Mu- the people of Ferguson, Missouri— the rude awakening of the Ferguson
seum of Fine Arts, in Richmond.) He’s where he painted a series in honor of uprising and, from another, by the
thought about installing it at his new Michael Brown—and posh friends like trickle-down glamour of the Obama
Black Rock campus, in Nigeria, but the conservative socialite Princess Glo- White House. The representation of
modesty, so far, has constrained him. ria von Thurn und Taxis. Blackness became a national conver-
“I’d prefer to have it somewhere in the Directly behind me was a porcelain sation, reviving the œuvres of Wiley’s
forest,” he said, alluding to his property statue of Chairman Mao with his legs predecessors, like Kerry James Marshall
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 53
out you making me look like Napoleon.”
The curtain came down on a bower-
side chat with America’s supreme con-
fidant. The President sits, sans tie, with
arms folded in a posture of vigilant wel-
come, surrounded by flowers symbol-
izing Chicago, Hawaii, Indonesia, and
Kenya. Obama’s feet don’t touch the
ground; the author of “Dreams from
My Father” seems to levitate on an an-
tique chair of the kind that Freddie
Mae once stocked among the house-
plants at My Father’s Business. The
artist cried as he thanked his mother
from the podium.
Wiley has made many works that
imitate devotional icons, but his image
of Barack Obama, like Amy Sherald’s
of Michelle, sparked a national pilgrim-
age. According to Kim Sajet, the direc-
tor of the National Portrait Gallery, the
portraits tripled the museum’s atten-
dance. A security guard observed an el-
derly woman get on her knees and pray
to Obama’s portrait. “People cry and
say, ‘I miss him,’” the guard wrote in a
sketch that she shared on Instagram.
In June, 2021, the portraits began a five-
city tour of museums across the coun-
try, drawing hundreds of thousands of
visitors. Unveiled in the second year of
the Trump Administration, and trav-
elling in the shadow of COVID-19, they
served, in a way, as a locus of mourn-
ing—not for Obama, who was com-
“Portrait of Jorge Gitoo Wright,” from 2022. fortably podcasting and constructing
his Presidential library, but for a vision
and Charles White; elevating contem- of Old Master empowerment also of the country that had withered with
poraries like Kara Walker to stardom; gained relevance in an America pre- his departure from the White House.
and launching the careers of dozens sided over by a Black family in a neo-
of young artists, such as Toyin Ojih Palladian manse. iley painted Obama solo. But for
Odutola, who were challenging the
epidermal biases of Western portrai-
On a bureau in the foyer of Wiley’s
apartment is a photograph of him and
W years most of his portraits have
been extensively prepared with others,
ture through formal experiment. Barack Obama. Not long after Wiley’s at coördinating studios in New York,
Wiley’s glossily photorealistic treat- retrospective, the National Portrait Gal- Dakar, and Beijing. The flagship studio
ment of Black skin dovetailed perfectly lery began considering him to paint occupies a second-floor space near the
with the era’s emerging peau idéal. In Obama’s Presidential portrait. His se- Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Wil-
2014, the producer Lee Daniels featured lection, announced in October, 2017, was liamsburg. When I visited this summer,
his work in the hit television show “Em- historic: America’s first Black President assistants wearing earbuds filled can-
© KEHINDE WILEY / COURTESY SEAN KELLY
pire.” The next year, he received a major would sit for its first Black Presidential vases in silence, sitting at varying alti-
survey at the Brooklyn Museum, “A portraitist. For an artist who’d made his tudes along a wall that runs the length
New Republic.” It seemed to varnish mark posing the powerless, the osten- of the room. A young woman added
early provocations with a new sobriety: sible challenge was depicting a man who jewel-green birds to an oval-shaped com-
“Napoleon Leading the Army over the wielded the real thing. At the portrait’s position with a mask of tape obscuring
Alps” had débuted against the back- unveiling, on Lincoln’s birthday the the central figure. Other works showed
drop of the Iraq War in a show that following year, Obama recalled warn- only silhouettes, as though their sub-
mocked martial masculinity; in 2015, ing Wiley to leave out the “partridges jects had been raptured from the frame.
the work was reborn as an insurgent and scepters,” teasing the artist that he The paintings begin life in Photo-
paean to Black resistance. Wiley’s idylls had “enough political problems with- shop. Wiley sends initial shots of mod-
54 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
els to a graphic designer, along with travelled to the Musée d’Orsay and mer courthouse ought to become a per-
decorative motifs and detailed instruc- opens at the de Young Museum, in San manent art space: “All it would take
tions for creating a backdrop. After the Francisco, this coming March.) Moses would be for a bank to get involved.”
mockup earns his approval, assistants Sumney sang a Hebrew lament at the Dakar was initially a layover on vis-
trace it onto the canvas, then begin star-studded opening, where Chance its to see family in Nigeria. But through
their painstaking work on the fashion, the Rapper bought a puffer jacket, which the years Wiley fell in love with the sto-
the flora, and the filigree. Individuals he later wore in a music video, from the ried seaside metropolis, which hosted
focus on particular works, but also serve exhibition’s pop-up store. For Wiley, it the continent’s first pan-African festi-
as floating detail specialists. The bird was still only a prelude to the year’s val in 1966. Inspired by his formative
painter was brought on for her knowl- most important biennial. residency at the Studio Museum, he
edge of Japanese landscape painting; carved out a foothold in the city eight
the clothing expert, who has worked n May, Wiley made his début in years ago, buying a vacant waterfront
at the studio for seventeen years, dou-
bles as a quality-control inspector, in-
I Dakar as a global patron of the arts.
His Pan-African Xanadu, Black Rock
property on the advice of a friend and
local museum director named Boubacar
suring that every Wiley looks like a Senegal, had opened three years ear- Koné. Dakar, with its style and its dy-
Wiley. The process has become intui- lier, with an all-night party where mu- namism, fit his budding project “like a
tive, she told me: “I’m his hand, almost sicians performed and models walked glove,” Wiley told me. He recognized
like a human printer.” a floating runway. Henry Taylor painted that, “just like New York or London,”
Generally, by the time a painting visitors; Alicia Keys tried on jewelry it had the potential to become a place
reaches Wiley everything except the by the Senegalese designer Sarah Diouf. where the “world comes to discover who
figure is finished. The artist is free to Wiley boasted in the Times that, while they are.”
refine his own specialty: skin, or, in El- photographs of the Met Gala “got old Almost every evening of the bien-
lisonian terms, the Blackness of Black- after two days,” people were still post- nial’s opening week ended with cock-
ness. Wiley was trained to mix under- ing pictures from his celebration weeks tails at Black Rock. The pumice-colored
painting—a preliminary layer that many after the guests had gone home. compound looks like any other villa
artists use as a chromatic keynote—in Soon he began welcoming trios from its unmarked entrance, at the end
shades of burnt umber, terra-cotta, and of artists for one- to three-month stays, of a quiet alley. But inside is a verdant
sienna, a spectrum that he described as with plans to curate an exhibition of courtyard of palm, banana-leaf, and
a “scaffolding” for white skin. After years their work at Dak’Art, Africa’s longest- monkey-puzzle trees. The buildings
of working with darker models, he began running biennial, in 2020. Instead, Wiley were designed by the Senegalese archi-
to experiment with blues and reds, em- spent more than a year with a cohort tect Abib Djenne, who took inspira-
phasizing the resonances between con- of fellows in lockdown, sketching em- tion from the nearby shore’s volcanic
trasting hues. “It’s not just pulling up, ployees and captaining weekly fishing rocks: three multistory artists’ apart-
like, Mars Black,” he said. “You’re cre- trips to pass the time. (At Art Basel, ments; private studios with panoramic
ating a series of emotional temperatures his fish fries have become an institu- ocean views; and a main house with
that either feel good or don’t.” tion; Chaka Khan performed at the one twenty-foot-high doors of gleaming
Wiley’s surfaces have grown more he held this year.) The artist grew so tropical hardwood.
elaborate even as his themes turn in- attached to life in Senegal that only Wiley calls them the Doors of
ward. “I’ve sort of inherited my younger Naomi Campbell could force him out, Return, alluding to the Door of No
self,” he said of his reputation for bom- with a summons to judge at Lagos Fash- Return, which commemorates victims
bast; in recent years, he’s experimented ion Week. “ ‘Get your ass on a plane,’” of the slave trade, and his nightly
with smaller canvases, oval frames, and Wiley recalled her saying. “So I got my gatherings had the air of a glamorous
landscape. (“Colorful Realm,” which ass on a plane.” family’s never-ending reunion. Guests
opens next month at Roberts Projects, Now he was back, determined to daz- lounged in an art-filled great room as
in Los Angeles, will depict models in zle the rescheduled Dak’Art with a group waiters in black-and-gold uniforms cir-
natural settings inspired by the Japa- show called “Black Rock 40.” Wiley culated with seafood caught by the host.
nese scroll painter Itō Jakuchū.) Early zipped up and down the Corniche— The window walls offered aquarium
career motifs have returned in mood- Senegal’s answer to the Pacific Coast views of a patio and a kaleidoscopically
ier guises: a guarded youth in armor Highway—in a flurry of planning and lit infinity pool. “This is home,” Brian
whose dreadlocks tangle with colum- schmoozing: hors d’œuvres at a seaside Keith Jackson, the novelist, declared one
bines, or an equestrian statue of a rider hotel with a gaggle of returning fellows; evening, grandly gesturing toward a
thrown from his horse. a merchandising shoot with local mod- group of artists by a unicorn f loatie.
“Archaeology of Silence,” Wiley’s els on a picturesque beach; a charm of- Nearby, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, a painter
satellite show at the 2022 Venice Bien- fensive at the biennial’s grand opening, and former fellow, stared out at the
nale, reprised the odalisques of “Down” which took place at the Ancien Palais ocean, where whitecaps gleamed in the
as larger-than-life martyrs, in a sepul- de Justice. Wiley mixed with artists like darkness. “This is the shit that changed
chral presentation that fused Renais- Barthélémy Toguo and Abdoulaye our lives,” he said.
sance funerary luxury with Black grief Konaté in a colonnaded hall open to the In the art world, an invitation to
and grievance. (The show subsequently breeze, observing that the imposing for- Black Rock is something of a golden
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 55
ticket. The experience is almost genie- white shalwar kameez, he strode around filmed the encounter in anticipation of
like in its breadth of accommodation: the party like the captain of a ship, giv- a joyful reunion, but Obot was cagey
chef-prepared meals, a gym and a sauna, ing orders to kitchen staff and tsk-tsk- and skeptical of his intentions—a let-
bespoke excursions with local guides ing his boyfriend—a towering Nige- down that inspired a now missing se-
which fellows have used to study in- rian model and aspiring designer in a ries of portraits. Even so, the trip was
digo dyeing and Sufi brotherhoods. sequinned pink-and-green ensemble— pivotal. Wiley met long-lost half sib-
It’s a land of pure imagination that for slipping upstairs: “Another costume lings and committed more broadly to
leaves many overwhelmed with grati- change, Kenneth?” (They met on a dat- reëstablishing his African roots.
tude. (The photographer Nona Faus- ing app in Lagos, where Kenneth sus- A project that originated in the
tine described her residency in a guest- pected that his match might be using search for family has since become in-
book as “the most profound experience a celebrity’s identity to catfish.) Wiley extricable from it. Wiley often cooks
of my life, outside of giving birth to finally settled down next to Taiwo and meals for the fellows; recently, he began
my daughter.”) Beyond material assis- his old friend Scott Andresen on a chaise sponsoring the son of a single mother
tance and cultural immersion—and, longue by the pool. Andresen asked who works for him as a housekeeper,
for many, a sense of diasporic home- the artist about meeting his father for assuming a paternal role in the boy’s
coming—the residency functions as an the first time during a trip to Nigeria life. The next stage of Wiley’s home-
entrée into the extended Wiley clan, a in 1997. “I thought he was going to be coming odyssey will take him back to
carrousel of notables who make Black bigger,” Wiley said. “He was a small Nigeria, where he and Taiwo have built
Rock feel less like an arts nonprofit man with a big desk.” a fifteen-acre estate in a village near their
and more like a royal court. Wiley, Jack- It was his first trip to Africa. Be- father’s ancestral home. “The first thing
son told me, “plays in the vernacular cause he and Taiwo could afford only I do is jump into that river,” Wiley said
of empire, and he’s positioned himself one ticket between them, Wiley went of his visits to the property, which in-
where he’s the king.” alone, searching city after city for a man cludes fruit orchards, a piggery, and a
Absent like Gatsby the first night I whose face he’d never seen. He finally fishery stocked with tilapia and catfish.
visited, Wiley descended from his up- found his father at the University of “I’m literally going to be a farmer.”
stairs residence to mingle on the eve of Calabar, where he was serving as chair The plan is for his farm to supply
his exhibition. Dressed in a f lowing of the architecture department. Wiley Black Rock Nigeria, a second, larger
residency that will open next year in
Calabar. “Nigeria is home, so I better
show out,” Wiley told me, thumbing
through architectural renderings on
his iPhone. Artists will live in semi-
detached town houses, each with its own
entrance to a common pool, in a river-
side complex shaped like the region’s
ancient nsibidi script. The project has
become such an obsession that Wiley
demands daily video updates from the
construction site. And he hasn’t ruled
out plans for residencies in other reaches
of the diaspora: today, Black Rock Ni-
geria; tomorrow, Black Rock World.
“I wouldn’t bet against him,” his
friend Antwaun Sargent, a director at
Gagosian, told me. He situated Black
Rock in a growing constellation of res-
idencies established by Black artists on
both sides of the Atlantic, including
Amoako Boafo, Theaster Gates, Rick
Lowe, Julie Mehretu, and Yinka Shoni-
bare. Their retreats are beachheads in
an art world that still feels as fickle as
the tides in its embrace of Black art-
ists. “People always talk about, like, ‘It’s
just a moment,’ or ‘We’ve been here
before,’ ” Sargent said. “What they’re
missing is that this time folks are build-
ing really, really dynamic institutions.”
“Customers who bought this item also bought this item.” He praised Wiley for serving as a bridge
between scenes, continents, and gen- to dissect the self-presentation strate- niche; it takes a few moments to no-
erations. “The job isn’t just for one of gies of those who rule. The labyrin- tice that she is holding an iPhone. Wiley
us to make it,” he concluded. “The job thine exhibition space will evoke the looks forward to the “decay” of these
is to create a network.” “trappings of power.” Wiley also plans time-stamped touches. “I love seeing
to incorporate landscape into the paint- those frilly collars in old Dutch paint-
ore than fifteen hundred people ings, offering glimpses of the African ings,” he said, comparing them to the
M attended the “Black Rock 40”
opening at the Douta Seck cultural
cityscapes that are home to a rapidly
growing fraction of the world.
oversized sportswear in his early works.
“The culture is always changing.”
center in Dakar’s Medina district. There Wiley wouldn’t disclose his sub- Last winter at the National Gallery
were young stars like the designer Tel- jects. But in the past decade he’s had in London, I saw Wiley’s exhibition
far Clemens and heavyweights like Sir audiences with Presidents Macky Sall, “The Prelude,” an exploration of nature
David Adjaye, the Ghanaian British of Senegal; Nana Akufo- and the sublime which
architect. The V.I.P.s networked on a Addo, of Ghana; Alpha envisions Black wanderers
private veranda as Wiley, just across a Condé, of Guinea (until he amid the mountains and
crowded lawn fringed with palm trees, was overthrown, last year, seascapes of such nine-
jogged onstage in a wax-print suit. “Bon by a military junta); and teenth-century Romantics
soir, Dakar!” he exclaimed. Later, the Paul Kagame, of Rwanda, as J. M. W. Turner, Winslow
Nigerian singer Teni kicked off the whom he visited in March. Homer, and Caspar David
entertainment with a song for all the (Kagame, who officially Friedrich. For most of his
stressed-out creatives. “Sometimes it won his last election with career, Wiley conspicuously
feels like success is a drug,” she crooned. ninety-nine per cent of the omitted landscape from his
Black Rock fellows posed for pic- vote, wants to be painted paintings, pointedly substi-
tures inside the exhibition, where paint- as a herdsman, possibly an tuting decorative patterns
ings and photographs shared space with allusion to the cattle-based iconog- for the land and chattels that loom be-
sculptures and video installations. Near raphy of Rwanda’s traditional mon- hind many Old Master portraits. It was
the entrance was a quilted canvas by archs.) All were reassured that there a liberation of style from property and
the Ghanaian artist Zohra Opoku, de- would be no irony or political agenda privilege. Recently, though, he’s aban-
picting a winged Egyptian figure. In in the portraits—a complex promise doned the constraint. The shift is a call
the middle of the room, Hilary Balu, from an artist who has always worked for Black people to take up space in the
a Congolese artist, exhibited two reli- at the bleeding edge between critique world, which doubles as a wink at his
quary statues made of unrefined sugar, and complicity. own vertiginous climb.
an allusion to the slave-trade wealth The exhibition culminated in a
reflected in the lavish tomb of a Kon- iley’s detractors often invoke a six-screen video installation, which I
golese monarch.
Snapshots ricocheted across Insta-
W quotation from Audre Lorde:
“The master’s tools will never disman-
watched in a darkened room just off
the main gallery. In the film, a group of
gram, but more important networks tle the master’s house.” The appeal of Black Londoners hike through glacial
were forming in the room, where the a Black-cast canon has lost currency at Norway, struggling against the elements
dance between art and material power— a time when the promised panacea of and their allegorical exclusion from a
so integral to Wiley’s paintings—seemed “Black faces in white spaces” has come sharp white background of snowscapes.
to have leaped off the canvas. Among under fire. In 2018, when Beyoncé and An extended sequence of closeups show
those present were bankers, an oil ex- Jay-Z filmed a video for their single the models smiling against a freezing
ecutive, the U.S. Ambassador, and two “Apeshit” at the Louvre, it was a tri- wind, tears streaming from eyes tinted
French-Togolese sisters with connec- umph of Wiley’s new Old Masters aes- blue by contacts. They were the grin-
tions to major museums, who had pre- thetic. Skeptics wondered what was so ning, lying masks of Paul Laurence
viously introduced Wiley to Togo’s Pres- revolutionary about two billionaires gal- Dunbar’s verse—Black expression pain-
ident, Faure Gnassingbé. livanting through a treasury of art. fully conforming to oppressive stan-
The introduction was for a show that But Wiley, who once described him- dards—but transposed to a key of tri-
has been in the works for more than a self as a manufacturer of “high-priced umphant appropriation.
decade, and which opens next Septem- luxury goods for wealthy consumers,” Midway through this alpine fanta-
ber, at the Musée du Quai Branly, in never promised anyone empowerment. sia, I noticed a young Black woman
Paris. Called “A Maze of Power,” it will In a way, his has been the classic fate in the audience with a pajama-clad
feature portraits of current and former of the court painter: conscripted as a daughter in her lap. Onscreen, two
heads of state from across Africa, paired propagandist—by the royalists, the re- women conjoined by intricately fused
with videos that document the negoti- formers, and the revolutionaries—when plaits played patty-cake amid the fjords
ations around each sitting. his real passion is for capturing the fleet- and mountains. Cool Norwegian light
“I didn’t really want to make a show ing postures of his era. One of the most bathed the child’s face like underpaint-
about applauding the nice guy who’s striking sculptures in “Archaeology of ing as she watched the scene with com-
done good things in Africa,” Wiley Silence” depicts a young woman lying plete absorption. She reached up and
told me; instead of moralizing, he aims in what appears to be a mausoleum’s tugged her mother’s braid.
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 57
FICTION
C O N D É N A S T T R AV E L E R
WOMEN
WHO
T R AV E L
A CRITIC AT LARGE
BLOOD LINES
Seventy-five years after Indian Partition, have we learned how to say what happened?
BY PARUL SEHGAL
efore it was an edict, and a death in that period, brings such a camp to Three months later, his wife died—
one in Delhi to which my grandmother are no records of those who died of subcontinent.”
escaped in the night, alone with her heartbreak. My family migrated from Partition literature fills a long shelf.
children, feeding the baby opium, the an area not far from Thoa Khalsa. Only There is early fiction by survivors and
story goes, so he would not cry. Bhisham my great-uncle remained; he lay be- spectators: realist narratives (Singh’s
Sahni’s “Tamas,” a 1973 Hindi novel set headed in the courtyard of his home. “Train to Pakistan”), feminist epics
64 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
The moral power of Partition writing has come from its sustained confrontations with violence, especially against women.
ILLUSTRATION BY ANAGH BANERJEE THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 65
(Yashpal’s “This Is Not That Dawn”), came to distinguish the episode, and liberation—the domestic spaces to which
stripped-down, nightmarish short sto- its stamp was the targeting and torture women were confined could protect but
ries (Saadat Hasan Manto’s “Black Mar- of women. also imprison, as Daisy Rockwell notes
gins”). In the nineteen-eighties came a What we call Partition fiction might in the afterword to her translation of
new flourishing, with now canonical nov- be more pointedly described as one of Khadija Mastur’s 1962 novel, “The Wom-
els by Salman Rushdie (“Midnight’s the most extensive bodies of literature an’s Courtyard.” As early as 1950, Am-
Children”), Amitav Ghosh (“Shadow committed to cataloguing rape and rita Pritam’s novel “Pinjar” examined
Lines”), and Bapsi Sidhwa (“Ice Candy sexual terrorism—the frenzy that left the refusal of families to take back wom-
Man”). Certain tropes and tendencies corpses riddled with bite marks, preg- en and girls who had been abducted
repeat. There is a reliance on coming- nant women slit open, and religious slo- and “contaminated.” The sexual viola-
of-age stories, in which the loss of the gans branded upon faces and genitals. tion of men during that period remains
nation’s innocence maps neatly onto a What Nehru dismissed as labor pains, a taboo subject; I find mention of cas-
character’s; twins illustrate a conjoined what films dealt with obliquely, and trations in “Train to Pakistan” and al-
fate; a dead woman personifies the frac- some families not at all, is bluntly doc- most nowhere else.
tured motherland. (These tropes are so umented in the novels—the grisly dis-
alluring that a recent American young- covery in “Ice Candy Man,” for exam- his is the work of the novel: to no-
adult novel about Partition, Veera Hi-
ranandani’s “The Night Diary,” com-
ple, of a bag stuffed with severed breasts.
Novels filled in the extensive gaps in
T tice, knit, remember, record. The
novel confers wholeness and unity to a
bined all of them, in a coming-of-age the archives. “There were no trials for story of division. The novel—it cannot
story about a twin born to a mother who perpetrators of violence, the authorities help itself—reconciles. But it was only
dies in childbirth.) took no statements, and very little data by taking a truncheon to the form that
But the unity, and moral power, of was gathered,” the historian Manan some of the greatest Partition fiction
the genre derives from its sustained Ahmed has written. “Even the trains, was created. Out of the rubble of the
confrontations with the violence of Par- which ran covered in blood across the cities and the scorched fields emerged
tition. The official narrative of indepen- Punjab border, were scrubbed clean. . . . Saadat Hasan Manto’s glittering, ra-
dence was one of celebration. “Before In fact, the only physical traces left are zored shards. A recent collection, “The
the birth of freedom we have endured the people themselves. And they too Dog of Tithwal,” gathers classics by the
all the pains of labor and our hearts are shucked their old identities for fear of Urdu master of the short story. Born in
heavy with the memory of this sorrow,” more violence.” 1912 to a Kashmiri family in the north-
Jawaharlal Nehru announced on Au- If it seems crude to treat literature ern state of Punjab, Manto fell under
gust 14, 1947, as independence and Par- as testimony, we cannot ignore the fact the spell of Gorky and Poe, not to men-
tition were imminent. “Nevertheless, that some writers conceived of them- tion the rotgut that would kill him at
the past is over and it is the future that selves as eyewitnesses. They shared a the age of forty-two. Fluent in almost
beckons to us.” The killings were por- commitment to preserve not only what every genre, he wrote while sitting on
trayed as a spasm of collective madness, went unsaid but what felt unsayable— the family sofa, his daughters climbing
a regrettable development on the path that the violence of Partition was not over him as he churned out polemics,
to progress. In fact, it was the efficiency necessarily an aberration in the lives of screenplays, and twenty-two volumes of
and organization of the attacks that women, for one. The upheaval could be short stories marked by a warm, coarse,
and occasionally menacing sexuality that
so agitated the censors. He was tried for
(and acquitted of ) obscenity six times;
his story “Khol Do” was condemned as
an incitement to rape. Partition tore him
from Mumbai, his home and muse. Ma-
rooned in Lahore, he began writing fu-
riously about what he had seen. The
most famous of these stories, “Toba Tek
Singh,” tells the tale—based in fact—
of India and Pakistan dividing up pa-
tients of mental institutions according
to their religion. One Sikh inmate can-
not figure out which country his village
belongs to; he roots himself between
the barbed-wire fences of each border,
and dies on a patch of unclaimed earth.
Manto established his distinctive
form in the book “Black Margins” (1948):
thirty-two sketches of compressed power,
some no more than a few sentences long,
which brought to life the obscene logic the doctor notices and the father can families. This was Partition seen from
of the new world. In “The Advantage not—the threshold we keep encounter the perspective of women, children,
of Ignorance,” a sniper takes aim at a ing in his stories about Partition. Dalits, all those left out of the grand
child. His companion objects, but not Manto’s fiction routinely blurs the political narratives, and told with the
for the expected reason. “You are out of line between life and death, sanity and kind of feeling and detail that, as the
bullets,” he exclaims. In “Double Cross,” madness. Characters merge with their scholar Deepti Misri writes, could never
a character complains about being sold weapons. (In “The Last Salute,” a pla have made it into Statistics Babu’s led
bad petrol—it won’t set fire to any shops. toon leader “felt as though he had ger. The testimonies compiled by Bu
The stories are not just expressions of turned into a rifle, but one whose trig talia—as well as by Ashis Nandy, Veena
shock; they are modes of refusal—a re ger was jammed.”) Weapons act as Das, Ritu Menon, and Kamla Bhasin—
sponse to facts that will not, ought not, agents in their own right. rippled with complexities
be easily assimilated into a narrative. (From “Mishtake”: “Rip and contradiction. Memo
The ink feels fresh, wet. Manto remains ping the belly cleanly, the ries of loss exist, sometimes
our eternal contemporary, his capacity knife moved in a straight queasily, alongside memo
to unnerve undiminished. line down the midriff, in the ries of gain—the birth of
Even his admirers can be caught try process slashing the cord nations, the pride of sur
ing to tame him—pushing him into which held the man’s paja vival, the unexpected op
earnest ethical stances. In the introduc mas in place.”) These trans portunities created in the
tion to the recent collection, the poet formations occur beyond upheaval. I was weaned on
Vijay Seshadri describes Manto’s Urdu the characters’ awareness. stories of my family’s Par
as firm, spare, and “easily accessible to You will cross the threshold tition: my beheaded kins
translation.” In truth, Manto frightens without knowing, Manto man; my grandmother
his translators. The rehabilitation mis seems to say. You will not be able to see wheedling extra rations for her chil
sion starts with them. Khalid Hasan what you have become. There is no self dren in the camps; the two young girls,
begins his translation by defanging the knowledge or remorse, no greater sense sisters, who went missing. Beneath these
title of “Khol Do,” which Manto is said of justice than there was in 1947. Nor stories pulsed the uncomfortable knowl
to have considered his best work. Hasan does the author permit himself the re edge that the very tumult of Partition
names it “The Return,” instead of the prieve of moralizing. There are only allowed some families like mine, living
literal translation, “Open It”—the com loops of retribution. “Bitter Harvest” under the boot of brutal feudal hierar
mand issued in the story’s chilling cli begins with a Muslim father screaming chy, their first opportunity to prise
max. As it begins, a Muslim girl has the name of his young daughter, who themselves free.
clearly been abducted by a Hindu mob. has been raped and murdered: “Shari In the past few decades, popular
Men from her community go in search fan! Sharifan!” The story ends with him chroniclers influenced both by fiction
of her. When her father spots them ac seizing, raping, and strangling a Hindu and by oral history have taken up
companying a body, the reader under girl, leaving her father to find the body polyphonic approaches. Yasmin Khan’s
stands that the girl, Sakina, has been and scream her name: “Bimla, my daugh “The Great Partition” and Vazira Fazila
attacked again, by the very men who ter, Bimla.” Yacoobali Zamindar’s “The Long Par
promised to rescue her. She is brought tition and the Making of Modern South
to a hospital, seemingly lifeless. A doc n the past generation, though, Par Asia,” both published in 2007, at the
tor enters the small, stifling room, and
gestures to a window: “Open it.” There
I tition “shimmered away as a suitable
subject” for fiction, in the words of
sixtieth anniversary of the event, syn
thesized Statistics Babu’s facts and fig
is a jerk of movement; Sakina’s hands the literary critic Nilanjana Roy. The ures with the testimonies of survivors.
move to untie the drawstring of her mantle was taken up by oral historians. More expansive histories of Partition
pants and lower them down her thighs. Recurrent eruptions of violence re began to be told, attending to the links
Her father exults—“She is alive”—and awakened memories of the killings of between 1947 and the IndoPakistani
the doctor breaks into a cold sweat. 1947—its unfinished business, the rot war of 1971, the migration of Dalits, and
There’s a crucial line in the story. In in the wound. The 2002 Gujarat riots, the effects of Partition on tribal com
Urdu, it reads, “Sakina ke murda jism in particular, shared the grammar of munities, on Kashmir, on the diaspora.
mein jumbish hui.” Hasan has variously Partition violence: the frenzy masking At its seventyfifth anniversary, Par
translated it as “The young woman on careful coördination, the targeting of tition has found still more eclectic forms.
the stretcher moved slightly” and “Saki women, the impunity. The feminist The new generation coming to the
na’s body stirred.” A more faithful trans writer and publisher Urvashi Butalia’s story—midnight’s grandchildren—are
lation would be something like “There “The Other Side of Silence” (1998) had not scholars, for the most part. They
was a movement in Sakina’s corpse.” It been sparked by the Sikh massacres of typically have no specialized credentials.
was Hasan who respectfully refers to 1984, which led her to think more deeply Theirs is a different qualification: this is
Sakina as “the young woman,” Hasan about her family’s history. Through in their inheritance. They include the New
who wants her still to be Sakina. Manto terviews with survivors, Butalia traced York rapper Heems, who describes him
refers to her corpse. He is interested in a story of Partition as its meaning was self as a “product of Partition”; the in
the threshold that she has crossed, what shaped (and evaded) in private life, in stallation artist Pritika Chowdhry, who
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 67
constructs “anti-memorials”; Sharmeen pearls, a sword. These objects are not musicians from across the border to
Obaid-Chinoy, an Oscar-winning film- relics; many are pointedly, movingly, collaborate. He cites a teacher of his
maker and the founder of the Citizen still in use. Her grandmother travelled who taught him that metaphors “help
Archive of Pakistan (CAP); and Guneeta across the border with a small folding us to dialogue across distances.” Song,
Singh Bhalla, a physicist who has estab- knife given to her by her family, who he says, is a space we can live inside.
lished a crowdsourced library of testi- told her to use it against attackers or Just as the little knife of Malhotra’s
monies. It’s no longer enough for fic- on herself. The same blade, “swallowed grandmother was repurposed, the train
tion to fill the silences. These self-taught by rust,” now accompanies Malhotra’s station in the “Chandni Raat” video has
archivists search for whatever evidence grandmother on her morning walks, as been, too—a place of death reconceived
they can find; they build on the work of she slices leaves from an aloe plant— as a place of reconciliation.
oral historians like Butalia, finding the the weapon transformed into an agent Violence has long felt emblematic
archives in the last remaining survivors. of healing. of the story of Partition—it was what
Their ranks are thinning. That young lurked in Manto’s “black margins”—
woman, so startled by the rumors, who he music video opens in a train and that history of violence is now de-
f led with her children—my grand-
mother—died in 2006. Her eldest child,
T station—the archetypal setting of
Partition horror. The windows are shat-
ployed as a political weapon, stoking
suspicion, retribution. Anam Zakaria,
the child who could walk—my aunt— tered; debris lies scattered on the floor. who works on cross-cultural exchange
died last year. Organizations like Obaid- The waiting area fills with passengers, between India and Pakistan, describes
Chinoy’s CAP and Bhalla’s 1947 Parti- looking at one another warily. A man younger generations—who have grown
tion Archive gather testimonies with sitting alone on a bench begins to sing up in the shadow of war—as even more
fresh urgency. Online communities in- a ghazal by the Pakistani poet (and hostile toward one another than the
vite survivors to upload their stories Partition migrant) Saifuddin Saif: generation who survived Partition. In-
or find childhood friends. Project Das- “This moonlit night has been a long dia’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi,
taan, an organization formed by stu- time coming /The words I want to say recently declared August 14th to be
dents at Oxford, not only collects tes- have been a long time coming.” The Partition Horrors Remembrance Day.
timonies but also offers refugees a mood warms. A traveller darns anoth- By choosing the date of Pakistan’s in-
chance to “visit” their homeland using er’s torn clothing; a woman admires dependence day (India celebrates Au-
virtual-reality headsets. another’s baby. gust 15th as its day of independence),
This cohort of oral historians has “Chandni Raat,” an Urdu single from and by carefully referring to those de-
confronted a reticence born not only of the Pakistani American singer Ali Sethi, nied “cremation,” Modi framed it as
suffering but also of shame, arising from was released in 2019, just days before an occasion to mourn only Hindu and
complicity, intimate betrayals—Man- fighting broke out between India and Sikh victims, and to single out Mus-
to’s thresholds. “The true horror is not Pakistan. Once again, war seemed im- lims as aggressors. A younger gener-
what your neighbors did to you,” the minent. The YouTube comment sec- ation struggles not just to devise new
historian Faisal Devji notes, “but what tion of the accompanying music video modes of accessing and telling the
your own family members might have became a gathering place much like story of Partition but also to prevent
done out of force of necessity: Leave the train station’s waiting area. Strang- it from being used to justify further
somebody behind who was handicapped, ers congregated, invoking the song’s bloodletting. They want to return the
who was unable to walk or flee.” message of unity. “It became kind of event to survivors and their families—
In “Remnants of Partition” (2019), an anthem,” Sethi says. “It felt genu- and to highlight memories and emo-
Aanchal Malhotra, a Delhi-based art- inely miraculous.” tions that have been occluded by the
ist turned oral historian, devised a The son of prominent journalists, fixation on carnage. Malhotra asks,
method to sidestep the silences. Her Sethi grew up in Lahore—“a haunted “Why do we immediately think of the
grandparents, Punjabi migrants from city,” he calls it. The old part of the city trains? Why don’t we think of the
Pakistan, were skillful at thwarting her was full of signs of the people who fled, friendship left behind or the love af-
questions about their journey, but con- some sixty per cent of the population; fairs that may have gotten cut?” Ka-
versations suddenly bloomed when she home alcoves once reserved for shrines vita Puri, a BBC journalist, similarly
asked what they carried with them. Her now held a refrigerator or an electric wants to see beyond the brutalities:
great-uncle produced a ghara, a metal- fan. “For me, turning to Hindustani “Partition, though filled with horror
lic vessel for churning yogurt, and a music was the only way I could unpar- in so many ways, is also a story about
gaz, a yardstick from the family tailor- tition myself—go back to a place that love.” Can the story of Partition be
ing business. He absently handled the was not only pre-Partition but pre- told in a different genre? Will love sto-
objects as he spoke; they stimulated colonial,” he says. Hindustani music, as ries keep the blood at bay?
memories of a rich, associative, unex- he describes it, is sacred and secular, a
pected kind, full of longing. Malhotra mongrel of Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim n “Tomb of Sand,” the winner of the
took the same question to her grand-
mother, and to other survivors. Her
traditions. He was taught by two re-
nowned singers, both Partition mi-
I 2022 International Booker Prize, Gee-
tanjali Shree pays homage to Partition
book is a history of Partition told in grants, and during the COVID lockdown fiction, imagining the great novelists
twenty-one possessions: a string of he used social media to bring together gathering near the border. “The group
68 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
of Partition writers has come to sit in
a row, and every person has a name card
at their place like at a formal banquet. BRIEFLY NOTED
Bhisham Sahni. Balwant Singh. Joginder
Pal. Manto. Rahi Masoom Raza. Shaani. If Walls Could Speak, by Moshe Safdie (Atlantic Monthly).
Intizar Hussain. Krishna Sobti. Khush- This richly detailed autobiography by the renowned architect
want Singh. Ramanand Sagar. Man- weaves together memoir, a tour of select projects, and philo-
zoor Ehtesham. Rajinder Singh Bedi.” sophical meditations. Born in Haifa in 1938, Safdie moved to
Yet Shree also explores the possibility Canada with his family when he was a teen-ager, and attained
of writing one’s own story of Partition. success at a young age: his master’s thesis, a system of modu-
Ma, the central figure in the novel, an lar housing units, was realized as Montreal’s Habitat 67 resi-
eighty-year-old widow, spends more dential complex. It brought together many of his lasting pre-
than a hundred pages of the book lying occupations, including access to nature and high urban density.
in bed, her back to the reader, before fi- Safdie’s reflections on his other projects, which range from Je-
nally, heroically, reclaiming her life, by rusalem’s Holocaust History Museum—a structure built into
going back across the border to Paki- a mountain, “cutting through like a spike”—to Singapore’s Ma-
stan and falling in love. rina Bay Sands, combine intellectual convictions with intuitions
“A border,” she proposes, about the effects of space, light, sound, earth, and water, illu-
minating the impulses that have shaped his revolutionary works.
does not enclose, it opens out. It creates a
shape—it adorns an edge. This side of the edg-
ing blossoms, as does that. Embroider the bor- The Island of Extraordinary Captives, by Simon Parkin (Scrib-
der with a shimmering vine. Stud it with pre- ner). Between 1940 and 1945, as Great Britain warded off a
cious stones. What is a border? It enhances a Nazi invasion, it imposed a cruel irony at home: fearing do-
personality. It gives strength. It doesn’t tear mestic German sympathizers, authorities imprisoned thou-
apart. A border increases recognition. Where
two sides meet and both flourish. A border or-
sands of “enemy aliens”—many of them Jewish refugees who
naments their meeting. had fled Hitler’s persecution. Parkin, a New Yorker contribut-
ing writer, focusses on a camp on the Isle of Man, where the
Partition stories offer few consola- internees included scholars, engineers, and artists who forged
tions; one wants to hold this one tightly a miniature society, with lectures, soccer matches, theatre per-
in hand, like Grandmother’s little knife. formances, and even a debate society. Parkin’s account, with
But what is that folded blade but its well-chosen central figures and attention to the trauma that
sheathed violence? Has it completed some of the imprisoned carried for decades, is testimony to
its work? How does one begin to tell human fortitude despite callous, hypocritical injustice.
a tale so turbulently in progress? “It
will jump, it will cross over, the story Dr. No, by Percival Everett (Graywolf ). Professor Wala Kitu
will not end,” Shree writes. Manto’s (Tagalog and Swahili for “Nothing Nothing”) is a specialist
shards, unblunted by any urge toward in nothing. At the outset of this waggish novel, he has been
narrative neatness, find their mark for hired by a billionaire with the “idiotic” goal of becoming a
a reason. Bond villain, who needs help breaking into Fort Knox—not
There’s a quiet detail in “The Dog for the gold, but to steal an empty box. Everett’s riffs on the
of Tithwal,” one planted delicately, as maximalism of Ian Fleming’s franchise include inexplicable
if designed to be lost amid the gaudy location changes, double crosses—one courtesy of the priest
violence. The Pakistani Army and the from “The Exorcist”—a shark pool as a murder weapon, and
Indian Army gather on two hills, fac- the casual extermination of large civilian populations.Through-
ing each other. Between bursts of gun- out, he mines the concept of nothing not just for comedy but
fire, the soldiers sing. Only the reader also for the rich conundrums it presents in mathematics,
can know that they are both singing a physics, philosophy, and life.
folk song of romance and longing. The
reader experiences, at first, a frisson of No One Left to Come Looking for You, by Sam Lipsyte (Simon &
recognition—ah, to be so alike, on either Schuster). In this novel, set in 1993, a bassist in his early twen-
side of a divide. But how little it mat- ties sporting the stage name Jack Shit investigates the disap-
ters, once the action of the story is under pearance of his drug-addled bandmate and his stolen Fender.
way. Both sides send a dog back and As he pursues the mystery, Lipsyte takes the reader on a jour-
forth, frightening and torturing it to ney through the East Village at the height of the post-punk
death. The dog cannot hear the sing- era, filled, in the bassist’s words, with “all of us kids who
ing; he cannot name the song. Sing moved to New York years too late.” Though his cohort pri-
whatever you like while you can, the marily frequents establishments in Alphabet City, they oc-
writer seems to say. The black margins casionally venture farther afield. “By the time you find what
are closing in. you’ve been seeking,” Jack observes, “you’re a different seeker.”
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 69
Cornell University, he discovered art
THE ART WORLD and art-making, and soon he was pro-
ducing a painting a day, hitchhiking
Bronx Portraits” (at the Bronx Mu- whole. Ahearn, who makes plaster-cast rating was, among other things, its re-
seum) so remarkable is that it reminds sculptures of Black and Hispanic peo- fusal to follow the museum and gal-
you of two things that made New York ple he has known and admired in the lery formula. There were no wall labels,
City, predevelopment, so remarkable: four decades that he’s worked in the no neat divisions between genres and
chance and faith. Back in 1961, Jane Ja- South Bronx, captures some of what time periods. The show happened res-
cobs, in her prescient study “The Death Jacobs celebrated: the intelligence that olutely in the now—in an era when
and Life of Great American Cities,” goes into not only surviving the streets you could go out to pick up the news-
argued that urban planning—high- but making them feel like home. For paper, say, at Gem Spa, in the East
ways, high-rises, and malls—came at Ahearn, God is in the people. Village, and run into friends who were
a terrible price. By obliterating com- Born in Binghamton, New York, in enthusing about a John Sex perfor-
munities, you obliterated all that they 1951, Ahearn grew up in a middle-class mance or the latest issue of Just An-
fostered: the happy accidents and im- neighborhood, the child of a conser- other Asshole, and that conversation
promptu encounters that could lead to vative doctor. As an undergraduate at would lead to word of a show in an-
other part of town and you wouldn’t
“Maggie” (1984). Ahearn’s works are almost a spiritual exchange with their subjects. get home until two or three in the
70 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023
morning, but what was wrong with Bronx.”) But, like anywhere under been painted a deep cobalt blue so that
that? Every event was a natural pro- siege, the neighborhood was also a the mounted sculptures would stand
gression of the day itself; culture was real community—families, lovers, and out, and they do. (There are a number
an open field, and the best, most illu- friends who stuck together because of dramatic freestanding pieces as well.)
minating aspects of it weren’t defined they were all they had and all they had Ahearn is a great colorist, and although
or validated by commerce. to hope for. the skin tones of his subjects are true
Among the works I recall seeing at As Ahearn explored his new form, to life, they’re also the product of his
“The Times Square Show” were sculp- Torres became a creative partner, and hyperrealist brush, and of his fascina-
tures by John Ahearn. The pieces were an essential one. Torres, who lived on tion with what makes a body, what
lifelike depictions of faces, with partial Walton Avenue, too, was a local and makes a face, and what goes into self-
torsos executed in plaster, then painted Ahearn wasn’t. Working together, the representation. You can’t look at an
in beautiful colors: browns and blacks sculptors had a better chance of get- early work like “Luis and Virginia Ar-
and golds. They were vivid and alive, ting the people in the neighborhood royo” (1980), which shows a husband
those heads, like icons in a church de- to trust them enough to sit for them and wife in a warm embrace, and not
voted to a new kind of Jesus, hip and and be depicted in the work—work see how much of themselves the sub-
sporting ecclesiastical jeans. Looking that spoke to and about Ahearn’s in- jects gave to the project and how much
up at them, you felt their presence so terest in their lives, at a time when there Ahearn wanted to repay that trust—a
strongly that it was as if the subjects was scant evidence that anyone out- spiritual exchange that amounts to an
were speaking to you, like neighbors side the Bronx was interested at all. object lesson in faith.
on your stoop telling the story of us. The current argument about seeing
n “Swagger and Tenderness,” the or not seeing oneself represented in art
on TV. In his youth, Dan entered the hero of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s “Be-
military, hoping to travel. Instead, he got tween Riverside and Crazy,” is a through A DVERTI SE MENT
stationed at Fort Des Moines, stuck right and through drunk. He drinks whiskey
back where he started. “Less than seven out of a china teacup at breakfast, along-
WHAT’S THE
blocks from the hospital I was born in,” side a slice of pie, and lets the logic of
he says. “I used to go over there to the the bottle slide through the rest of his
hospital I was born in and eat in the caf-
eteria sometimes.”
day, coloring his tangy jokes and harsh
language. After dinner, and just before
BIG IDEA?
Small space has big rewards.
These people need a catharsis, and a titanic confrontation, he offers a guest
quickly. The whole play, for better and a cup of coffee spiked with Cognac. Ev-
for worse, feels like an excuse to get them erybody around him knows that, de-
TO FIND OUT MORE, CONTACT
drinking together. Parties create pair- spite the constant drink and the barbs JILLIAN GENET 305.520.5159
ings. Father Michael, who likes to put in his conversation, he’s a softie, even jgenet@zmedia-inc.com
on makeup and go to gay bars at night, quite emotional, at heart.
has a strong, strange kinship with Dan Walter lives in an old, formerly grand
and Marta’s granddaughter, Jimmy (a apartment on Riverside Drive with his
slyly Dionysian Hari Nef, who knows son, Junior (Common), Junior’s friend
how to have—and to goad on—a good Oswaldo (Victor Almanzar), and Ju-
time onstage). Jimmy has recently had nior’s skimpily dressed girlfriend, Lulu
a botched sex-reassignment surgery that (the fantastic Rosal Colón). They’ve all
has left her in a wheelchair. “My tail- had bad brushes with the law, and all of
bone never woke up,” she says. “I’m sure them call Walter “Pops,” or “Dad.” Wal-
it’s having a beautiful dream.” Michael ter’s in the middle of a long-running
and Jimmy get Mrs. Drinkwater, the feud with the N.Y.P.D., where he used
widow, downing what they call “depth to work as a cop, until he was shot by a
chargers”—shots of whiskey plopped white officer. As the force—in the per-
into glasses of beer, the perilous concoc- son of his former partner, Detective Au-
tion chugged whole. drey O’Connor (Elizabeth Canavan),
The play gives way to the loose, dream- and her fiancé, Lieutenant Dave Caro
like, only notionally sequential structure (Michael Rispoli)—doubles down on
of a sloppy night in. Several turns of ka- its effort to get him to settle his lawsuit
raoke are taken—lengthy renditions no against the city, Walter, in a sequence of
less intense than the microwave mo- tough conversations, paints a portrait of
ment—a beer bottle smashed, sadnesses himself as a hard, stubborn, all but un-
shared. It’s especially interesting to watch movable motherfucker.
Mrs. Drinkwater, the only Black person Guirgis’s writing and pacing are, as
in the show, open up and drop her guard. ever, hilariously quick and spot-on. Aus-
(It’s funny, too, that her name bespeaks tin Pendleton directs the actors with the
a Puritan restraint nowhere on offer accuracy of a hectic but precise dance.
during this fortuitous night.) Simms has The most heartening thing about this
a patient physicality that helps her play whirlingly accomplished character study
at shyness while slowly, then suddenly, is the self-knowledge of its main char-
revealing a streak of mischief. Marta and acter. “Do I like myself? Hell no!” Wal-
Dan are sort of obsessed by Mrs. Drink- ter says at the outset of one of his ti-
water’s race—“The black widow is a rades. “Do I drink? Hell yes!”
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 73
tom of her more advanced malaise. A
ON TELEVISION former men’s-magazine writer and now
a dissatisfied stay-at-home mom in New
DOLOROUS HAZE
Jersey, Libby narrates “Fleishman” in a
suffocatingly relentless and writerly voice-
over. (The character bears a biographical
“Fleishman Is in Trouble,” on FX on Hulu. resemblance to Taffy Brodesser-Akner,
who once worked for GQ and has trans-
BY INKOO KANG lated—or perhaps transliterated—her
best-selling book for the screen.) As
Libby claws for an escape from subur-
ban predictability and, in the process,
imperils her marriage to an agreeable
enough lawyer ( Josh Radnor), she be-
gins to dread going home. Wandering
the city after a platonic sleepover at To-
by’s, she says, “I always returned to the
museum of my youth, trying to find the
last place I’d seen myself.”
Rachel, the least solipsistic of the trio,
would say that she can’t possibly squeeze
another crisis into her schedule. As her
ex-husband attempts to solve the mys-
tery behind her vanishing, the show drops
clues to its much larger reveal: that Toby
has been an unreliable narrator of his
marriage, and that, while his years with
Rachel were disappointing, hers were
harrowing. (Perhaps fittingly, the boyish
Eisenberg and the balletic Danes never
look quite right as a couple, even in their
characters’ meet-cute chapter.) Because
Rachel is a hard-charging talent agent—
an “ambition monster,” as he calls her,
with a blond bob so severe and exact it
could’ve been cut by a scalpel—Toby is
often blind to her vulnerabilities. When
telling Libby and their mutual friend
Seth (Adam Brody) about a time when
Rachel was roofied at a work event, Toby
he TV adaptation of the novel come products of the Upper East Side: maintains that “nothing had happened
T “Fleishman Is in Trouble” begins
with the mildest and least interesting
his daughter (Meara Mahoney Gross)
screeches that the clothes her mother
to her,” explaining that she had been
brought home by a colleague. It’s not the
of the simultaneous midlife crises plagu- packed for her are more suitable for the last time he minimizes a humiliation or
ing the show’s three main characters. Hamptons than for camp, and even his violation experienced by his wife. Over
On a cloudless summer day in Man- sweetly soft son (Maxim Swinton) asks the years, as Toby persists in judging his
hattan, Toby Fleishman ( Jesse Eisen- for golf lessons. Toby is overwhelmed, partner, rather than trying to understand
berg), a recent divorcé, wakes up in his but he is also a wealthy, trim doctor in her, Rachel’s behavior and motivations
sparsely furnished apartment, alarmed his early forties. A nonentity to women only grow more inscrutable. When we
that he is “suddenly, somehow, no lon- during his youth, he is so consumed by finally revisit the marriage’s milestones
ger living with Rachel,” his wife of fif- the endless prospects on a dating app from her point of view, contextualized
teen years. His angry confusion that that it takes him several days to realize in her needs and desires, they are devas-
Rachel (Claire Danes) has dropped off that Rachel has disappeared. tating in their coherence.
their preteen children at his place, in Toby’s longtime friend Libby (Lizzy
the middle of the night with little warn- Caplan) is equally captivated by the pos- hich Fleishman is in trouble?
ing, briefly distracts him from his gen-
eral dismay that his offspring have be-
sibilities that have opened up for him
since his divorce. Her envy is a symp-
W That we must first consider Toby’s
grievances is part of Brodesser-Akner’s
multipronged gender critique. The show
Toby’s years with Rachel were disappointing; hers with him were harrowing. is set in 2016, and the ubiquitous Hil-
74 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 2 & 9, 2023 ILLUSTRATION BY LAURA LANNES
lary signs in the background allude to mental presence, even when she’s home.
the leniency that society tends to grant The middle-aged body takes a bleaker
men at the expense of women. It’s a tes- form in Rachel’s tale, where it becomes
tament to how quickly social move- a site of accumulated trauma. The se-
ments can crest that the criticism al- ries’ freshest observations—and emo-
ready feels slightly dated. The series tional wallops—center on the accrual of
misses the opportunity to interrogate
where this “himpathy”—the reflexive
the sometimes uncategorizable breaches
that women are expected to quietly en- 1 IN 5
sympathizing with men in heterosexual
disputes—comes from, especially as it
dure and the isolation that results when
loved ones don’t acknowledge their pain. CHILDREN
pertains to Libby, the character most
outwardly suspicious of women. In the
An early red flag goes up when Toby
turns Rachel’s complaints about her SUFFERS
Internet parlance of the late Obama era,
Libby was probably a “cool girl,” a young
chauvinistic boss into a rant about his
emasculation by the same man.The med- FROM HUNGER.
COVID,
female writer who aspired to make her ical invasion that Rachel later suffers
mark primarily among men and whose by an imperious ob-gyn during her first
literary hero was a celebrity journalist— childbirth is distressing in its believ-
played, in a casting coup, by Christian ability, and becomes more tragic when CONFLICT AND
Slater—once acclaimed for his misog- Toby’s misinterpretation of her helpless
ynistic divorce memoir. Until Libby
opens her mind to Rachel’s version of
earliest hours as a mother chips away at
their union for the next decade. Danes,
CLIMATE CHANGE
events, her only meaningful friendships
are with men. But her seeming aversion
a powerhouse crier since “My So-Called
Life,” wrenchingly conveys the gradual
HAVE MADE
to other women, and especially to other
moms, goes noticeably unexplored in
stripping of the self that Rachel under-
goes when it becomes more convenient
GLOBAL HUNGER
this series about the overlooked layers
of female interiority.
for the men in her life to treat her—an
unhappy wife, an incensed patient, a
EVEN WORSE.
And yet it’s hard to deny how com- wronged employee—less like a person
passionately, even beautifully, Libby’s and than like a problem to be dealt with.
Rachel’s midlife crises are rendered. Pre- But it’s a vexing slog until the sea-
viously, television’s foremost chronicler of son’s turning point, and Toby’s joyless-
women at a graying crossroads was argu- ness, Eisenberg’s familiar punchability,
ably Joey Soloway, whose series “Trans- and Brodesser-Akner’s apparent distrust
parent” and “I Love Dick” (the latter of the actors to do their jobs make for
co-created by Sarah Gubbins) were dis- wearisome viewing. Only in the penul-
tinctly horny; their characters embarked timate episode, when Rachel tells her
on ethically messy pursuits of sexual re- side of the story, does the stock satire of
discovery, the intoxication of their libidi- tony private schools and ski-resort com-
nal potential matched by the destruction parisons fully pay off—though I did
wrought on their families. But, despite relish a scene in which one of Toby’s
all her clever reflections on online dating, self-righteous lectures to his kids about
Brodesser-Akner is less interested in the privilege veers into a galaxy-brain ha-
erotic. “Fleishman” is also contemporary rangue about why “sunsets are also prob-
enough to ditch the cinematic clichés of lematic.” There are other pleasures along
aging women: the fretting over fading the way. The visual template set by the
desirability and the long frowns in the directing team of Jonathan Dayton and
mirror at emerging wrinkles or drooping Valerie Faris, who helm several episodes,
body parts (not that Caplan or Danes finds an appealing balance between urban
possesses either). Libby obsesses over romance and naturalistic warmth, and
her youth because that’s when her days the composer Caroline Shaw’s gorgeous,
didn’t feel so prewritten; in one of the hopeful-melancholy score climbs and
most effective instances of her voice-over, sighs with the action. But, as a critic, I’m
she says, “I didn’t realize the real power reluctant to recommend a show that
I had was that I had no obligations. . . . sticks you with fairly grating characters
I can’t believe how briefly I held it, and who spend their time arguing about, say,
how quickly I gave it away.” Her com- whether a physician’s salary of three hun-
pulsive nostalgia leads to a housewifely dred thousand dollars is sufficient. The
haze, enabled by marijuana and mono- series teaches, in more ways than one,
mania, that deprives her family of her that impatience can also be a virtue.
Li), though Fay’s very public smooching
THE CURRENT CINEMA of a woman is more of a nod to Marlene
Dietrich, in “Morocco” (1930). As for
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Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose
three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by J. C. Duffy,
must be received by Sunday, January 8th. The finalists in the December 12th contest appear below. We
will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the January 23rd issue. Anyone age
thirteen or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.
“ ”
..........................................................................................................................
“Was it funny for you?” “You always think everything is about you.”
Faith Everhart, Tyrone, Pa. Frank Poppe, Washington, D.C.
THE 17 18 19
CROSSWORD 20 21 22
23 24 25 26
A beginner-friendly puzzle.
27 28 29 30 31
BY CAITLIN REID
32 33 34
35 36
ACROSS
1 Gobbled up 37 38 39 40 41
4 “Ghost” actress Moore
8 Snatch 42 43 44
14 Sidestep
49 50 51 52 53
16 “Stormy Weather” singer Horne
17 Unable to make a decision 54 55 56
18 Deserve
57 58 59
19 Signs, as a contract
20 Spot surrounded by sea
60 61 62
21 Waist of space?
23 Whispered sweet nothings
25 And others: Abbr. DOWN 39 Relevant
26 “Golly!” 1 Scout and Jem’s father, in “To Kill 40 1984 war movie with a 2012 remake
a Mockingbird” starring Chris Hemsworth
27 They’re usually open only on rainy days
2 Couple 41 Pithy response to “Are we clear?”
30 She sheep
3 Common spot for a piercing 42 Thingamabob
32 “Isn’t it obvious now?”
4 ___ reel (compilation of an actor’s 43 Posh neighborhood in Los Angeles
33 Tilt to one side
best work)
34 They’re buzzy and busy 44 Cola with a Nitro variety
5 At any point
35 Clothes line? 45 Hearty hot-dog topping
6 Title queen played by Kirsten Dunst in
37 Traffic tieups 47 Does some lawn work
a 2006 Sofia Coppola film
38 Yours and mine 7 “The Complete ___ Guide to . . .” 50 Shaggy Himalayan bovines
39 Shape of a rainbow (book series) 51 ___ cut (lesser-known track)
42 Blind ___ 8 Insincere, in a way 52 Roughly
43 Massive scoop? 9 Goes back (on)
45 Coquettish 10 Body parts that socks may or may Solution to the December 19th puzzle:
46 “You said it!” not cover M A L T O R B S J E F E S
11 Moisten, as a turkey A L A R M B E L L E X I L E
48 Like someone who reads the dictionary
S O C I A L C U E N O R M A
for fun, say 13 Apt rhyme for “jeer”
K E E P Y O U R P A N T S O N
49 “Gadzooks!” 15 Sicilian stratovolcano W A N T T R A I T
53 Escape ___ (features of sci-fi spaceships) 22 Hits the snooze button, say I D L I N G C O M I C C O N
Notion D E A R S S A V O R H B O
54 24 Salami or bologna, e.g.
E L S E W A D E R T A I L
55 You can’t live without it 28 Part of a camera or an eye A C T W A F E R T R I T T
56 Tiff 29 The “L” of U.N.L.V. S O M E R S E T C O U R S E
57 Like a beanpole 31 Teeny I N E P T C O P E
F A N T A S Y F O O T B A L L
58 UNESCO World Heritage ___ 34 One for whom talk is cheep?
I N U I T T I N K E R T O Y
59 The Hawkeye State 35 Comforting touch N O T C H I N G E N E R A L
60 Vows exchanged at the altar 36 Hairpiece, so to speak K N E E S P E A R D A N E
61 Form of debt collection, for short 37 Former late-night TV host who co-wrote Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
62 Sketch-comedy show since 1975, briefly the book “Leading with My Chin” newyorker.com/crossword
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