AUGUST 8, 2022

4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

11 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Bill McKibben on the stakes of the climate bill;
Starbucks closures; comedians and exotic animals;
a rebrand for the Actors Fund; Charles Lloyd.
PROFILES
Calvin Tomkins 16 Becoming Modern
Salman Toor’s figurative paintings.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Jenny Allen 23 Come On to My House
ANNALS OF SOUND
John Seabrook 24 On Alert
Are electric vehicles too quiet?
AMERICAN CHRONICLES
Tad Friend 30 The Hard Sell
A salesman’s quest to elevate his profession.
LETTER FROM UKRAINE
Masha Gessen 42 The Law of War
Prosecuting Russia for large-scale atrocities.
FICTION
Ian McEwan 52 “A Duet”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
Nikhil Krishnan 62 Cultural influences on emotion.
65 Briefly Noted
Zoë Heller 67 Should feminists care about male suffering?
THE ART WORLD
Peter Schjeldahl 70 “New York: 1962-1964,” at the Jewish Museum.
THE THEATRE
Alexandra Schwartz 72 “Into the Woods,” “Hamlet.”
ON TELEVISION
Doreen St. Félix 74 “P-Valley.”
POEMS
Joy Harjo 36 “An Ordinary Morning”
Simon Armitage 57 “I Am Simon Armitage”
COVER
R. Kikuo Johnson “Double-Parked”

DRAWINGS Zoe Si, Liana Finck, P. C. Vey, Lars Kenseth, Suerynn Lee,
Zachary Kanin, Roz Chast, Michael Maslin, Robert Leighton,
Brendan Loper, Benjamin Schwartz, Arantza Peña Popo, Jon Adams,
Carolita Johnson, Matt Reuter, Michael Shaw SPOTS Kevin Lucbert
 CONTRIBUTORS
Tad Friend (“The Hard Sell,” p. 30) has Masha Gessen (“ The Law of War,”
been a staff writer since 1998. His mem- p. 42) became a staff writer in 2017.
oir about his search for his father, “In Their books include “Surviving Autoc-
the Early Times: A Life Reframed,” racy” and “The Future Is History,” which
came out in May. won the 2017 National Book Award.

Joy Harjo (Poem, p. 36) served three John Seabrook (“On Alert,” p. 24) is the
terms as the United States Poet Lau- author of four books, including, most
reate. Her latest book is the memoir recently, “The Song Machine: Inside
“Poet Warrior.” the Hit Factory.”

Calvin Tomkins (“Becoming Modern,” Doreen St. Félix (On Television, p. 74)
p. 16), a staff writer, published “The has been a staff writer since 2017, and
Lives of Artists,” a six-volume collection is The New Yorker’s television critic.
of his profiles, in 2019.
Ian McEwan (Fiction, p. 52) will pub-
Zoë Heller (Books, p. 67) has written lish his seventeenth novel, “Lessons,”
the novels “Notes on a Scandal,” “The in September.
Believers,” and “Everything You Know.”
Jenny Allen (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 23),
R. Kikuo Johnson (Cover) teaches car- a writer and a performer, is the author
tooning at the Rhode Island School of “Would Everybody Please Stop?,”
of Design. His graphic novella “No a book of her humor pieces.
One Else” won the 2022 Los Angeles
Times Book Prize. Simon Armitage (Poem, p. 57) is the
Poet Laureate of the U.K. and a profes-
Alexandra Schwartz (The Theatre, sor of poetry at the University of Leeds.
p. 72), a staff writer since 2016, is a His next collection, “New Cemetery,”
theatre critic for the magazine. is due out in 2023.

THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM

LEFT: HAYLEY WALL; RIGHT: CHIP SOMODEVILLA / GETTY

PERSONAL HISTORY OUR LOCAL CORRESPONDENTS

Lorraine Boissoneault’s heart palpita- Eric Lach reports on why thousands
tions came and went like the weather, of people are left out of New York
but no one could tell her why. City’s daily homeless census.

Download the New Yorker app for the latest news, commentary, criticism,
and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008.
 THE MAIL
THE NEXT TRUMP? governor to go out of his way to punish
people for disagreeing with him—that is
In Dexter Filkins’s Profile of Florida’s the sinister mark of a wannabe dictator.

1
governor, Ron DeSantis, a former De- Shi-Ling Hsu
Santis associate attributes the Gover- Tallahassee, Fla.
nor’s detached affect to his anger at hav-
ing been denied advantages afforded to ONCE UPON A MATTRESS
others (“Party Crasher,” June 27th). He
“has a chip on his shoulder,” the former I was crying tears of laughter as I read
associate says. What exactly has DeSan- Patricia Marx’s piece about how to find
tis been denied? Reading Filkins’s piece, a new mattress without “a Ph.D. in chem-
one learns that DeSantis was raised by istry” (“Tossed and Turned,” June 27th).
two involved parents in a working-class I really cried when I read about fifty-
neighborhood, was a star student-ath- thousand-dollar horsehair mattresses. I
lete in high school, was captain of the bought one in 1972 for a mere hundred
baseball team at Yale, and graduated from dollars. It was the most comfortable
Harvard Law School. He was elected to mattress I’ve ever had. To my chagrin, I
both Congress and the governorship on threw it out because I thought it was
his first attempts, and has become a dar- old-fashioned! Thank you to Marx for
ling of Fox News and Republican bil- the thorough research.

1 BE A
lionaire donors. He has a beautiful fam- Elaine Ryan
ily and a great head of hair. And he may Brooklyn, N.Y.

FORCE
well be our next President! Donald Trump
has long been my go-to example of the FLEEING UKRAINE
aggrieved, I-deserve-it-all white man.
Thanks to Filkins’s excellent reporting,
I’m reconsidering.
Mark Sloan
Ed Caesar’s story of a Ukrainian mother
and her daughters finding welcome in
Poland and Germany evokes a sense of
FOR GOOD
Santa Rosa, Calif. shared humanity in wartime (“Sanctu-
ary,” June 27th). It also resonates with With a bequest to
Filkins skates over some of DeSantis’s me on a personal level. In the summer
authoritarian impulses. Among the Gov- of 1995, I worked in Ukraine for the
The New York
ernor’s reprehensible actions is the abo- Peace Corps. One day, I left my apart- Community Trust,
lition of Disney’s special tax status after ment, near the center of Kyiv, to walk you can champion
the company publicly opposed Florida’s around the city. When I returned, after the causes and
“Don’t Say Gay” law. He also vetoed dark, I found myself locked out. Faced
thirty-five million dollars in state fund- with the prospect of spending the night communities you
ing for a Tampa Bay Rays spring-train- in the hallway, I knocked on the door care about—for
ing facility after the team denounced re- of the apartment opposite. A young generations to come.
cent mass shootings and pledged fifty woman—sharing a cramped space with
thousand dollars to the gun-violence- her two children and her mother—let
prevention group Everytown for Gun me spend the night on their sofa. The
Safety. I am ambivalent about whether family’s act of kindness had the effect
the Walt Disney Company should get of uplifting me during the remainder
special tax treatment, or whether taxpay- of my time in Ukraine.
ers should be subsidizing a professional Peter Carney
baseball team. But the Governor’s chest- Warwick, R.I.
thumping, and the explicit link between
his retaliatory actions and these institu- • Kickstart your charitable legacy
tions’ exercise of free-speech rights, shows Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, with NYC’s community foundation.
him to be particularly small-minded. It address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]
could be a political virtue, as Filkins writes, [email protected]. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in (212) 686-0010 x363
quoting a Republican consultant, that any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
DeSantis “doesn’t give a fuck.” But for a of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
giveto.nyc
 AUGUST 3 – 9, 2022

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

When was Rockaway Beach discovered by surfers? One charming, if perhaps apocryphal, story
claims that the first person to paddle out was none other than Duke Kahanamoku, in 1912. Undis-
puted: the father of modern surfing passed through Queens on his way home to Hawaii, after win-
ning a gold medal, in swimming, at the Stockholm Olympics. It’s also true that, a hundred and ten
years later, the surf break off the Rockaways is the only legal spot in New York City to catch a wave.
PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER FISHER
 1
As ever, it’s advisable to check in advance a work celebrating the Samoan visual artist Fatu to Saturday. On Aug. 3, it’s Les Ballet Afrik,
to confirm engagements. Feu’u.—Brian Seibert (Joyce Theatre; Aug. 2-7.) founded by the voguing star Omari Wiles, who
was born in Senegal and combines West African
dance styles with Afrobeat, house dance, and
Erasing Borders Dance Festival vogue. The following day, the spirited dancers
THE THEATRE This yearly festival of classical Indian dance is of Indigenous Enterprise perform their rein-
one of the best places to experience a wide range vigorated, virtuosic spin on Native American
of styles from India and the South Asian dias- dances. Soles of Duende (Aug. 5), from East
The Kite Runner pora. The upcoming edition features two days Harlem, features three women dancers, each of
The Afghan American novelist Khaled Hos- of live performances, at Ailey Citigroup The- whom focusses on a different tradition within
seini’s best-selling début, published in 2003, atre, Aug. 6-7, plus, on Aug. 8, a virtual program percussive dance—tap, flamenco, and kathak.
is a sprawling yarn spanning decades and con- of works from India and beyond, available to At the Ted Shawn Theatre (Aug. 3-7), Alonzo
tinents, with a narrative engine fuelled by stream. In the live section, standout performers King Lines, a company of sleek, fluid, shock-
betrayal and guilt. Turning “The Kite Runner” include Bhavana Reddy, a young dancer-chore- ingly beautiful contemporary-ballet dancers
into a play must have been a challenging en- ographer who specializes in Kuchipudi, a dance from San Francisco, performs a program of
deavor, but this new Broadway production does style with a particular lilt and buoyancy, and works by its founder.—M.H. (Becket, Mass.;
well, for the most part, by the source material, Mythili Prakash, a dancer of great focus and Aug. 3-7.)
even if it can be frustratingly earthbound. fluidity who draws from the rich repertory of
Matthew Spangler’s adaptation, directed by bharata natyam. In addition, the Ailey II en-
Giles Croft, tracks the physical and emotional semble performs the duet “Saa Magni,” by the Benjamin Akio Kimitch
journey of Amir (Amir Arison, in a marathon Ailey dancer Yannick Lebrun.—Marina Harss In previous works, Kimitch has alluded to
role), an Afghan refugee in the United States (iaac.us; Aug. 6-8.) his Japanese American heritage with Asian
who is haunted by the fact that he deserted imagery. For “Tiger Hands,” presented in
his best friend, Hassan (Eric Sirakian), at a the Shed’s “Open Call” series, he gets more
time of great need. The first act is sustained Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival explicit. Scrutinizing his early training in
by efficient storytelling; the downgrading of The festival’s pleasant outdoor stage showcases Chinese dance, Kimitch casts a curious eye
the character Assef (Amir Malaklou), however, a different company each day from Wednesday on the meaning of tradition and on Asian
from the sociopath he was in the book to a
garden-variety bully, is indicative of a general
timidity on the production’s part.—Elisabeth
Vincentelli (Hayes Theatre; through Oct. 30.) ON TELEVISION

Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play

“The Simpsons,” a starting point for Anne Wash-
burn’s 2012 play, has been on TV for thirty-two
years, only slightly shorter than the Hudson
Valley Shakespeare Festival made its home at
Boscobel House and Gardens, about an hour
north of New York. Now the company’s tent is
pitched a few miles away, on the former Gar-
rison Golf Course. The town of Springfield,
where “The Simpsons” is set, is dominated by
a nuclear power plant owned by Mr. Burns, and
the town of Garrison is just up the road from
the plant at Indian Point, a site mentioned in
Washburn’s intriguing work, which explores the
forces of pop culture and myth. The setting is
not just post-electric but post-apocalyptic, as a
group of strangers uses storytelling as a means
of survival, trying to remember the details of a
“Simpsons” episode. The play’s director, Davis
McCallum, leads an excellent cast through a
landscape of humor and dread. By the third act,
with music by Michael Friedman and the talents
of the Shades of Springfield Chorus, the group
has expanded into a full-blown Greek tragicomic

1
ensemble.—Ken Marks (Hudson Valley Shakespeare
Festival, Garrison, N.Y.; through Sept. 17.) “Surface” is a fitting title for this Apple TV+ drama, a psychological
thriller that’s as slick and polished as a new MacBook. The eight-episode
show, from the creator Veronica West, follows a wealthy woman named
DANCE Sophie (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who wakes up every morning in a ritzy San
Francisco house with a beautiful marble kitchen and a scruffy husband
Black Grace ready and waiting with a cup of coffee. The problem is, she doesn’t quite
Following its exhilarating début at the Joyce, in understand how she got there. Having survived a suicide attempt—in
2019, this innovative and indefatigable company
ILLUSTRATION BY XIAO HUA YANG

from New Zealand returns. The group’s open- which she flung herself off the bow of a moving boat into the Pacific—
hearted dancers channel extraordinary energy Sophie has lost her memory, including the reason she wanted to kill
into the choreography, which the ensemble’s herself. She tries to piece her life back together with the help of a friend
artistic director and founder, Neil Ieremia,
who is of Samoan descent, calls “traditionally and a therapist—and a few very hunky love interests—but the more she
inspired.” He takes material from the South learns, the more confused she becomes. Amnesia is a time-weathered
Pacific and develops it in contemporary ar- device for creating narrative tension, and “Surface” isn’t breaking any
rangements that are both intricate and built for
speed. This program features a take on Samoan new ground, but it does provide a pretty, gleamy veneer to gaze upon
slap dance, a piece set to Vivaldi’s “Gloria,” and while the mystery unfolds.—Rachel Syme
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 5
 the concept of disability in a radical light, re-
AT THE GALLERIES jecting the pursuit of a so-called normal body
or life. (The exhibition, titled “Requiem for the
Norm,” was curated by the trans philosopher
Paul B. Preciado.) Böttner drew using her feet
and her mouth, and the academic tradition of
life drawing takes an exceptionally graceful,
transgressive turn in large pastels of her non-
conforming figure. One of these compositions,
from the mid-eighties, depicts the artist in a red
gown, which she’s left open, exposing her flat
chest; in another, she is seen feeding an infant
from a bottle secured between her shoulder and
her head. On a video monitor, documentation of
a 1986 performance titled “Let Me Live” features
a scene in which Böttner is violently accosted by
a man and a woman. She resists their imposition
of both masculine dress and prosthetic arms—a
powerful moment that expresses her struggle to
live as herself.—Johanna Fateman (Leslie-Lohman
Museum of Art; through Aug. 14.)

Robert Colescott
“Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert
Colescott,” a clamorous retrospective at the
New Museum, bodes to be enjoyed by practi-
cally everyone who sees it, though some may
be nagged by inklings that they shouldn’t. For
A portrait of Fran Lebowitz (pictured), taken by Peter Hujar, in 1974, in more than three decades, until he was slowed by
her childhood bedroom, where it looks as if she just woke up, opens the health ailments near the end of his life—Cole-
disarmingly wonderful “Stuff,” a description-defying exhibition at the Pace scott died in 2009, at the age of eighty-three—
this impetuous figurative painter danced across
gallery through Aug. 19. The sculptor Arlene Shechet, who recently proved minefields of racial and sexual provocation,
her curatorial chops in a similarly free-associative show at the Drawing celebrating libertine romance and cannibalizing
Center, has corralled more than five dozen pieces by almost as many artists, canonical art history by way of appreciative par-
ody. In a mood to be rattled? Contemplate two
spanning nine decades. (The earliest work on view is a Man Ray photo, works from 1975: “Eat Dem Taters,” an all-Black
from 1934-35, of a weird mathematical model; the newest is a starkly ele- recasting of van Gogh’s “Potato Eaters” with an
gant sculpture, made this year by Arthur Jafa.) The tone is intimate, and so aura of minstrelsy, and a race-switching pas-
tiche of Emanuel Leutze’s nationalist chestnut
is the scale of most of what’s here; one towering exception is a dirty joke in “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” in which
lamp form, by the irrepressible Lynda Benglis. Claes Oldenburg, who died the pioneering botanist George Washington
in July and is best known for gargantuan public monuments to the everyday, Carver stands in for the Founding Father. A
lot goes on in the pictures on view, starting
is represented by “Ghost Fan,” a two-foot-wide soft sculpture from 1967. with how they are executed, in a fast and loose,
“Stuff ” is not for those craving N.F.T.-adjacent tech innovation (for that, juicy Expressionist manner and by means of
go downstairs, where John Gerrard has a concurrent exhibit of portentous a blazing palette that runs to saturated pink
and magenta and thunderous blue. Colescott
digital simulations). If Shechet’s show has a manifesto, Oldenburg wrote shrugged off abstract and conceptualist fash-
it, in 1961: “I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, ions, guaranteeing himself a marginal status
that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy in the mainstream art world. As if in sweet
revenge, his atavistic style and what-the-hell
and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.”—Andrea K. Scott nerve began to influence younger artists in
the late seventies and continue to do so today.
Without the spur of Colescott’s breakthrough
American identity, wielding swords with a ler, Kayla Farrish, Vinson Fraley, Nicole Man- audacity, it’s hard to imagine the triumphs of,
thoughtful, contemporary sensibility.—B.S. narino, Chalvar Monteiro, Jie-Hung Connie among others, the fearlessly satirical artists
(The Shed; Aug. 4-6.) Shiau, and Maleek Washington—all of them Kerry James Marshall and Kara Walker.—Peter
© PETER HUJAR / COURTESY THE ARTIST / ARS / PACE GALLERY

exceptional dancers, is an impressive reminder Schjeldahl (New Museum; through Oct. 9.)
of the talent he has attracted and helped de-
Oyu Oro velop. The reunion offers an opportunity to

1
Danys Pérez, also known as La Mora, founded trace family resemblances and the influence Sonia Gechtoff
an experimental Afro-Cuban dance ensemble of Abraham.—B.S. (Hearst Plaza; Aug. 6-7.) This Ukrainian American painter is often
in Cuba and later relocated it to New York. labelled an Abstract Expressionist, but a se-
That troupe, Oyu Oro, has gained a reputa- lection of her works, spanning almost sixty
tion as one of the city’s strongest exponents years—Gechtoff died in 2018—reveals a versa-
of Afro-Cuban dance. A free show at Lincoln ART tile talent who didn’t limit herself to any single
Center’s Summer for the City is a good chance approach. Her surfaces can be scumbled or
to see why.—B.S. (Hearst Plaza; Aug. 3.) Lorenza Böttner impasto, the paint handling feathery or hard-
edged, and a composition can as easily evoke
Self-portraiture is the cornerstone of a fas- landscape or architecture as it does non-ob-
“Reunions” cinating, often moving survey of this under- jective space. Gechtoff’s color sense is always
For this free outdoor event, part of Lincoln known Chilean German trans artist, at the beguiling, whether the mood is Cimmerian or
Center’s Summer for the City, the choreogra- Leslie-Lohman Museum. Böttner, who died crystal bright. The artist lived in New York
pher Kyle Abraham showcases work by alumni of AIDS in 1993, at the age of thirty-three, lost City for most of her life, but she spent her
of his company, A.I.M. That he can gather both of her arms in a childhood accident; during formative years in San Francisco, among the
seven former members of his tribe—Rena But- the course of her brief career, she represented Beats, a close-knit scene that was hospitable to

6 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022

 idiosyncrasy. The earliest canvas on view, from of an unaccompanied choir.—Oussama Zahr whose sure-handed hooks and finely layered
1958, was made in the Bay Area—a towering (Fisher Center at Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, rhythms earned Nia Archives a win for Best
vertical storm of black-and-white pigment, N.Y.; Aug. 5-7 and Aug. 12-14.) Producer at the NME Awards, in March. Ma
with a smeary, starlike clot of red at the center, Sha and Sister Zo open the show.—Michaelangelo
titled “The Widow.” Twenty-five years later, by Matos (Elsewhere; Aug. 4.)
then in New York, Gechtoff made “Wild Wave,” Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society
a series of acrylic-and-graphite works on paper, JAZZ In a world where maintaining even a com-
whose delicately detailed craggy forms, adrift pact jazz outfit now seems like a monumental Rage Against the Machine
in vivid seas, convey the artist’s lifelong eclec- achievement, it’s particularly impressive that RAP METAL Like a Twinkie prepared by a gourmet
ticism, command of structure, and, especially, the composer and arranger Darcy James Argue chef, Rage Against the Machine has long reigned

1
penchant for drama.—J.F. (55 Walker; through has kept his big band—the Secret Society—on over the widely disparaged genre of rap metal.
Aug. 26.) its feet since its 2009 début. That this large The quartet’s take on the sound—propelled by
group traffics strictly in the sonic environs of Tom Morello’s distinctive whipsaw guitar and
new jazz is all the more noteworthy. Uniting the thunderous leftist angst built into the mu-
his imaginative charts with the heft of a com- sic’s foundation—is more eccentric than what
MUSIC mitted orchestra and the prowess of its fine came in its wake. In the early nineties, the battle
soloists, Argue makes a dual case for creativity cries of the rapper Zack de la Rocha could seem
and determination.—S.F. (Dizzy’s Club; Aug. 9.) histrionic; emerging from a decade of hiberna-
Andrew Cyrille Quartet tion to a nation in flames, Rage Against the Ma-
JAZZ Andrew Cyrille came to fame as one of the chine suddenly appears understated and calm.
more empathetic drummers associated with the Nia Archives Part of agit-pop’s destiny is to fall on deaf ears
iconoclastic pianist Cecil Taylor. Since becom- ELECTRONIC The British d.j. and producer Nia and dilute with time, and this group is no ex-
ing a bandleader, some six decades ago, Cyrille Archives is one of the brightest talents to emerge ception: earlier in the summer, the Winklevoss
has proved himself an individualist, whose in the once again burgeoning field of drum ’n’ twins serenaded a Hamptons crowd with “Kill-
recent albums have ventured into meditative bass. Her selections tend toward the gleeful—a ing in the Name.” The long-awaited return of the
vistas far removed from Taylor’s turbulent recent mix for London’s dance bellwether Rinse intact quartet, accompanied by the like-minded
waters. For this prestigious gig, he’s joined by FM evokes nothing so much as U.K. pirate radio opener Run the Jewels, offers an opportunity for
the bassist Ben Street and the pianist David circa 1994. Even better, so do her original tracks, a course correction.—Jay Ruttenberg (Madison
Virelles (both of whom also attend to the syn- most recently on the EP “Forbidden Feelingz,” Square Garden; Aug. 8-9, Aug. 11-12, and Aug. 14.)
thesizer), along with the guitarist Bill Frisell,
whose ECM collaborations with Cyrille testify
to their shared sensibilities.—Steve Futterman
(Village Vanguard; Aug. 2-7.) HIP-HOP

Erykah Badu
SOUL There may be no more perfect venue for
Erykah Badu than the outdoors in the summer.
The queen of neo-soul earned that accolade by
writing timeless songs about artistic friends and
incense, wisdom and spirituality, for her iconic
début, “Baduizm,” in 1997, and its essential
follow-up, “Live.” Badu’s sleek songbook—with
its grooves that boom and clack, its warmth
and crackle—feels just right while swaying in
accordance with the August breeze, under trees
and the night sky. She has become such a fixture
of music festivals of all stripes that, lately, she
has called herself “not a recording artist” but
a “touring artist,” at home in motion. Badu
assumes her throne at this Celebrate Brooklyn!
show in Prospect Park, featuring an opening set
from the Brooklyn rap quintet Phony Ppl, ben-
efitting the local arts organization BRIC, whose
music programming is typically free.—Jenn Pelly
(Lena Horne Bandshell; Aug. 5.)

Bard Music Festival

CLASSICAL “Rachmaninoff and His World,”
the theme of this year’s Bard Music Festival, Since emerging as a superstar auteur with his major-label début, “good kid,
honors the last great Russian Romantic with m.A.A.d city,” in 2012, the rapper Kendrick Lamar has one-upped himself
two weekends of concerts exploring his output at nearly every turn, winning Grammys and then a Pulitzer Prize, in 2018,
and his milieu. This week’s lineup shines a
light on Rachmaninoff the composer, who pro- for his dense, gripping work. In that same period, he evolved into a dynamic
duced Piano Concerto No. 2 (Aug. 6), a mag- live performer, reimagining his songs with funky live-band arrangements,
nificently stormy mainstay of the keyboard staging his concerts with explosive dance numbers, and demonstrating
repertory, and reams of darkly lyrical art songs
(Aug. 7). Then Bard turns its attention to otherworldly breath control. Lamar brings his rich catalogue, including
ILLUSTRATION BY JAMIEL LAW

Rachmaninoff the piano virtuoso, who toured his most recent album, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” to Barclays
America (Aug. 13) and attended the world Center for a pair of shows, Aug. 5-6. “Mr. Morale,” his first record under
première of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”
(Aug. 12). After all the buffet-style programs his own label, pgLang, is also the first to challenge his own celebrity, with
sampling works across decades and composers, provocative music that’s at times as tangled as it is transformative, and he
the festival’s final day brings a stand-alone uses his gigs to probe the artist-audience relationship even further. Is it
presentation of Rachmaninoff ’s “Vespers”—a
spiritual work that he wanted excerpted at his worship or is it communion? The rapper Baby Keem—Lamar’s rambunc-
funeral—which builds cathedrals of sound out tious cousin—and the pgLang signee Tanna Leone open.—Sheldon Pearce

THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 7

1
MOVIES
Paxinou, and Mischa Auer, conjures a postwar
world of displaced persons and lost souls.
captured by the cinematographer, Hoyte van
Hoytema, and because Kaluuya, a master of
Though the gleefully orotund Arkadin volubly underreactive cool, conveys not just fear but
reveals nothing, the film’s love stories—un- also curiosity and cunning. The film takes
Mr. Arkadin tender tussles—are sources of sad memories risky diversions along the way; a subplot about
Acting on a tip from a dying man in Naples, and bad faith. Welles, though just forty, plays a former child star (Steven Yeun), who owns
Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden), a small- Arkadin Lear-like, with the grief and the re- a cruddy theme park nearby, hooks up with
time grifter with a Flatbush accent, tracks gret to match.—Richard Brody (Playing Aug. 5 the motif of the worn-out West, yet slows the
down a feared global potentate, Gregory on TCM and streaming on HBO Max, the Cri- narrative gallop. The climax, fortunately, is
Arkadin (Orson Welles), who hires him for terion Channel, and Apple TV.) bracing, prodigious, and, in every sense, far-
a sensitive job: to investigate Arkadin’s own out.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of
mysterious past. The grandee is pained by 8/1/22.) (In theatrical release.)
“a conscience and no memory at all,” but his Nope
conscience doesn’t prevent the bodies from The new Jordan Peele movie is set in Cali-
piling up as Van Stratten, trawling Europe’s fornia. On a remote ranch, a taciturn fellow Sharp Stick
underworld, unwittingly unleashes the centu- named O.J. (Daniel Kaluuya) and his sister, Lena Dunham’s first feature since “Tiny Fur-
ry’s political monsters, along with Arkadin’s Emerald (Keke Palmer), a more effervescent niture,” from 2010, is a realistic fairy tale about
intimate demons. Welles’s 1955 drama—a frac- soul, run a horse-training business. It’s not a woman’s belated sexual and social coming of
tured “Citizen Kane,” built of frames within going too well; an early scene shows the sib- age. Kristine Froseth brings a sweetly lunar
frames and mirrors within mirrors—comes lings losing a job, and the threat of racial an- disconnection to the role of Sarah Jo, a twen-
to life in his later style, born of low budgets tipathy is in the air. But something else, too, ty-six-year-old Los Angeles woman who lives
and high anxiety, its grotesque closeups and hovers over them. A spaceship, would you with her sister, Treina (Taylour Paige), and
sharp diagonals suggesting times and minds believe, keeps swooping through the skies their mother, Marilyn (Jennifer Jason Leigh),
askew. The piquant international cast of vet- above the homestead, with evil intent. If you in lovingly hermetic isolation. Sarah Jo is
eran actors, including Akim Tamiroff, Katina do believe, it’s because the peril is so smoothly a caring and capable aide to special-needs
children; traumatized by a hysterectomy at
fifteen, she has no experience with men and
fixates on Josh (Jon Bernthal), the stay-at-
WHAT TO STREAM home father of one of her students. Dunham
satirically sketches the city’s milieu of cavalier
funsters and arrogant heirs while looking with
grateful admiration at people who take work
and people seriously—including within the
porn industry, which intersects with Sarah
Jo’s private path as she dashes headlong into
erotic experience. For all the sex in the story,
Dunham’s main concern is emotional inti-
macy and the construction of a self-image;
the cast, which also features Scott Speedman,
Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Luka Sabbat, and Dun-
ham herself, brings the substantial conceit to
life, overcoming its somewhat rushed treat-
ment.—R.B. (In theatrical release.)

Show People
King Vidor’s antic yet wise comedy—a last-
gasp silent film, from 1928—stars Marion Da-
vies as Peggy Pepper, an eager young woman
from Georgia who goes to Hollywood to be-
come a movie tragedian but makes her screen
début getting pies in the face. She falls in
love with a slapstick glad-hander (William
Haines), but, when she ascends to thespian
fame at High Arts Studio, she changes her
name to Patricia Pepoire and is wooed by her
The unruly spirit of artistic creation gets a bittersweet comedic workout co-star (Paul Ralli), a nominal count (and
in “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing,” from 1987, the first feature by the former waiter), leading to romantic compli-
Canadian filmmaker Patricia Rozema. (It’s streaming on the Criterion cations that Vidor infuses with raw passion.
Meanwhile, he offers droll and tangy glimpses
Channel and other services.) Sheila McCarthy stars as Polly Vandersma, behind the scenes, contrasting the threadbare
a solitary and awkward thirty-one-year-old temp in Toronto, who is also sets of knockabout comedies with the richly
a dedicated and secretly ambitious photographer. When Polly gets a job appointed décor of melodramas. Winking
cameos abound: Davies takes a second role,
at an art gallery run by the elegant and worldly intellectual Gabrielle as herself; Vidor plays himself, too; Char-
(Paule Baillargeon), her life takes off and comes apart at the same time: lie Chaplin, slight and exquisite, brings a
COURTESY THE CRITERION COLLECTION

she falls in love with Gabrielle, dreams of winning Gabrielle’s admiration Shakespearean grace to his self-portrayal as
a humble moviegoer; and a long tracking shot
for her photos, and—by way of the secrets gleaned in her secretarial of stars at a studio banquet table plays like a
work—intrudes in Gabrielle’s professional life, becoming the temp cinematic death row, displaying such lumi-
who knows too much. McCarthy endows Polly with an inadvertent naries as Renée Adorée, William S. Hart, and
Mae Murray, just before they were swept away

1
whimsy that masks the unrecognized artist’s melancholy and frustration, in waves of sound.—R.B. (Screening Aug. 6 and
and Rozema—blending Polly’s naïve obstinacy with poignantly loopy Aug. 8 at Film at Lincoln Center.)
humor—constructs elaborate black-and-white fantasy sequences, com-
plete with miracles conjured through special effects, to fill in the inner For more reviews, visit
life that fuels Polly’s quietly furious drive.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town

8 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022

 for kids—except, of course, for a list of leftovers for the chive butter that I had
cheekily named cocktails, such as the also brought home, from a small grocery
Summer Break (a prosecco spritz) and selection in the bakery, at the back of
the Parent Teacher Conference (Scotch- the restaurant.

1
and-soda with umeboshi). For dessert: baby’s first float, a gen-
“O.K., but don’t spoil your appe- erous scoop of dense vanilla ice cream
tite,” I found myself scolding, for the served in a frosty Dad’s Root Beer
TABLES FOR TWO first time in my parenting career, as stein, with a glass bottle of the soda
my son shovelled potato chips into (first manufactured in Chicago, now
Patti Ann’s his mouth. The chips—Jays brand, sourced from Indiana) to pour on top.
570 Vanderbilt Ave., Brooklyn originally made in Chicago—were With the check comes a “report card,”
poured, from a single-serving bag, assigning your table grades for subjects
Do small children belong in restaurants? into a cut-crystal bowl (“Tastes better including Manners, Clean Plate, and
On a recent Saturday, I decided to test if you decant it, for some reason,” the Mathematics.
the premise of a new place that seems server quipped), to accompany “goop,” On another night, without the kids,
to invite them in: Patti Ann’s Family a cream-cheese-fortified French onion the whole shtick was slightly less charm-
Restaurant and Bakery, the latest Pros- dip, which Patti Ann herself makes for ing. (The fact that my grades were lower
PHOTOGRAPH BY KRISTA SCHLUETER FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE

pect Heights venture from the chef Greg company, and which my sauce-averse didn’t help.) For a more adult taste of
Baxtrom (known for Olmsted and Mai- progeny refused in no uncertain terms. Chicago, you could try Emmett’s on
son Yaki, both nearby), complete with My son also rejected the Cobb Dip Grove, in the West Village. A spinoff
stroller parking. At 5 P.M., I unleashed my “salad,” leaving more for his parents, of Emmett’s, in SoHo, which offers a
brood—son, three years old, and daughter, who marvelled at its blue-cheese base, Chicago-style Italian beef sandwich in
eleven months—on its spacious, cheer- aerated to the texture of Cool Whip addition to deep-dish pizza, the signifi-
ful dining room. A pair of stylish high (much better than it sounds), topped cantly swankier Grove Street iteration is
chairs materialized immediately. Crayons with neat rows of bacon bits, egg, and av- modelled on a mid-century Midwestern
and activity books were dropped with ocado, and served with endive leaves for supper club, with a red-sauce bent and a
the menus. “Feel free to make a mess!” scooping. He turned his nose up at mus- focus on Chicago’s lesser-known thin-
a host urged genially, as my son made a tard, but not at the pig in a blanket atop crust, square-cut tavern pizzas. On a
beeline for shelves displaying an enticing it—an almost absurdly thick-cut slab of recent visit, the acoustics were criminal
array of picture books and toys. bacon in a beautiful coil of puff pastry. and the spaghetti was a touch shy of al
Baxtrom, who grew up on a farm Is ketchup a sauce? Please, nobody tell dente, but the Grasshopper, a play on the
south of Chicago, named Patti Ann’s him. A gently packed, palm-size sphere classic, creamy after-dinner drink, was
after his mother, whose home cooking of meat loaf, made from a whole roast spot on. Call it a cocktail or call it a float:
and general eating habits inspire much duck and glazed in house-made cherry an enormous Easter-egg-green swirl of
of what is offered here. (“Chef Greg ketchup, was happily devoured by every vanilla ice cream blended with crème de
is in the Midwest at a Cracker Barrel member of the family. So, too, was a bowl menthe and crème de cacao, finished ta-
with his parents as we speak!” a server of mashed potatoes so high in fat that, bleside with a splash of Fernet-Branca.
reported.) There is no kids’ menu; the the next morning, my husband swiped (Patti Ann’s dishes $8-$28.)
whole menu is suitable, theoretically, some on his toast, mistaking the chilled —Hannah Goldfield
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 9
October 7-9
 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT age—the remains of what started out 2005 levels by the end of the decade.
HIGHS AND LOWS as the Green New Deal, before slim- Taken as a whole, the bill is a tri-
ming down to Build Back Better, and, umph. It would be the most ambitious
he longest-maintained tempera- now, the Inf lation Reduction Act— climate package ever passed in the U.S.,
T ture readings of any location on
earth are in the Midlands of England.
looked dead last month, when Man-
chin flatly rejected parts of it, includ-
and would allow the country to resume
a credible role as an environmental
A monthly tally began in 1659, and the ing the climate protections. leader. Yet it reflects not just the grow-
daily record dates back to 1772. One can The pushback was severe, however— ing strength of the climate movement
imagine mutton-chopped clerics and among other things, the President sug- but also the lingering power of the fos-
ruddy-faced retired colonels, in the cen- gested that he might declare a “climate sil-fuel industry, containing provisions
turies since, tromping out to take those emergency” and enact what measures such as one stating that, for the next
readings; some days it was hot and some he could by himself. Now, assuming decade, no offshore wind lease can be
days it was cold, but, until last month, that the Democrats stand together, as sold unless an offshore oil and gas lease
the highest daily mean ever measured early as next week we could see an end of a certain size has been sold during
there was 25.2 degrees Celsius, or about to that long legislative drought. The the previous year. The political trade-
77.4 degrees Fahrenheit, in August of bill penalizes oil and gas companies off is worth it, in carbon terms, but
2020. Then, on July 19th, as an epic heat that fail to cut methane emissions, but there’s no denying that it will set a prob-
wave swept across the British Isles, the it doesn’t actually pressure energy util- lematic example around the world.
mark was reset at 28.1 Celsius, or 82.6 ities to abandon coal and gas. (Man- Last week, the Democratic Republic
Fahrenheit. If that hadn’t happened, chin vetoed that provision, the Clean of the Congo announced that it hopes
topping the previous high by a full 5.2 Electricity Performance Program, last to become “the new destination for oil
degrees Fahrenheit would have seemed year.) Still, analysts say that it would investments,” and scheduled an auction
statistically impossible. The fact that it cut emissions to forty per cent below of oil and gas leases in its vast rain for-
did happen is frightening—a sign of a est, including parts of the biologically
world coming unstuck. diverse Virunga National Park, a sanc-
But, more happily, a different sort of tuary for endangered mountain gorillas.
record fell last week—the thirty-four- The government also aims to allow drill-
year stretch that saw no major legisla- ing in the nation’s extensive peatlands,
tive action on the climate in the U.S. which are an effective storehouse for car-
Congress. It began in 1988, when the bon; in fact, they hold as much carbon
NASA scientist James Hansen informed as the entire world emits in three years.
the Senate of what was then called the Opening the region up to drilling
“greenhouse effect,” and it appears to wouldn’t just add fuel to the fire—it would
have come to a close last Wednesday, shut off a hose that fights the flames.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA

when Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat Still, in addition to doing whatever is

of West Virginia, finally agreed to Pres- possible to dissuade the D.R.C. from al-
ident Joe Biden’s big budget reconcili- lowing that, it’s worth viewing the an-
ation package. The bill contains hun- nouncement as a trolling of other na-
dreds of billions of dollars in tax credits tions, such as this one, that continue to
and grants for the transition to solar think they have a right to expand fossil-
and wind power, electric vehicles, effi- fuel production. Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu,
cient home heating, and more.The pack- Congo’s longtime climate representative,
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 11
has been at every big global climate meet- project, on Alaska’s North Slope, which South but has not delivered in full. In
ing since 2007, so he no doubt knew ex- could produce six hundred million bar- the case of Congo, that means helping
actly how much controversy he’d unleash rels of oil. As scientists pointed out in a develop, as safely and benignly as pos-
when he told a reporter from the Times letter to the Secretary of the Interior, sible, the mining of cobalt, which is used
last week that his country’s priority is to Deb Haaland, the project would be a in batteries that are crucial to clean-en-
generate revenue to fight poverty—“not “carbon bomb” of enormous proportion. ergy technology. But we must also pre-
to save the planet.” What’s the difference between the vent new fossil-fuel boondoggles of our
It seems likely that the D.R.C.’s goal D.R.C. and the United States or Can- own. It’s possible that the reconcilia-
may be to sweeten a multiyear agree- ada? For one thing, the gross domestic tion package has exhausted Washing-
ment that it entered into last November, product per capita in the D.R.C. is less ton’s energy to tackle the climate crisis
at the Glasgow climate conference, to than six hundred dollars, versus sixty- for the time being, but politicians aren’t
protect the rain forest, in return for five nine thousand dollars in the U.S., and the only players. When the Trump Ad-
hundred million dollars in international fifty-two thousand in Canada. For an- ministration rushed to auction off parts
investments. (The oil beneath the forest other, the average resident of the U.S. of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
is doubtless worth far more.) If so, the emits some fifteen metric tons of car- for drilling, no major oil companies sub-
gambit is a powerful one, because few bon dioxide a year, while the average mitted bids, in part because environ-
countries have the moral standing to tell Congolese emits about 0.03 metric tons. mental campaigners made the project
Congo off. In April, for instance, Can- In other words, the average American too toxic for them and for their poten-
ada announced plans to allow drilling in is responsible for about five hundred tial financiers. Civil society will need to
a basin off the coast of Newfoundland times more climate damage than the continue stepping up in the years to
and Labrador that could access three average Congolese is. come, because, if countries keep dig-
hundred million barrels of oil. The Biden The right response, then, is to pro- ging up their oil and gas, every record
Administration itself last month sig- vide the climate aid that the Global broken will likely be a baleful one.
nalled support for the Trump-era Willow North has long promised to the Global —Bill McKibben

L.A. POSTCARD And, if not, more power to him. It only proves: “You’re making coffee, and you’re
CAFFEINATED takes one glance.” He gestured toward face to face with someone who’s totally
a man dancing alone. “God bless him, out of it, and you will have some tools
whatever he’s going through,” he said. you can rely on,” he said. Baristas, he
“He doesn’t bother me.” added, “should all have jujitsu and ka-
Indolos started hanging out at Star- rate on their résumés.”
bucks twenty-two years ago. “I’m from “This one’s not that different from
Hollywood,” he said. “I hitched my horse Hollywood and Highland, where peo-
ast week, six Starbucks locations in here.” His regular order is an iced Amer- ple are coming in half naked, yelling at
L Los Angeles closed forever, because
of what the company calls “a high vol-
icano with chocolate foam. He used
to work in the animation industry, and
the top of their voice,” he said. “I feel
cool about it.”
ume of challenging incidents.” “It’s a now works in the office of a mental- And now? “I guess I’ll have to drink
whole thing every day,” one barista said. health facility. He went on, “I mean, it’s coffee on the street.” Some people spec-
He went on, “People get violent with us. not like a hotbed for the Mafia or any- ulate that the closures are a response to
People steal stuff. It’s very aggressive.” thing like that. It’s not so much crime baristas’ efforts to unionize. A Starbucks
“They spit on us,” another said. A as disturbance.” representative disputed this: “Look,
common concern among baristas is hav- “Starbucks is a window into Amer- there are plenty of other Starbucks in
ing drinks thrown at them. ica,” Howard Schultz, the Starbucks Los Angeles.”
“Better iced tea than hot tea—look C.E.O., said last month, in remarks to Starbucks has, over the years, taken
on the bright side,” Ray Indolos, who his staff. “We are facing things which various measures to deter people from
spends several days each week sitting the stores were not built for.” At the lingering, such as covering electric out-
and drawing in various Starbucks around branch on Hollywood and Western, two lets and encouraging the use of its mo-
Los Angeles, said. “I’m super bummed monitors showed customers live video bile app. Indolos doesn’t see the point of
out. Some of my favorite Starbucks are of themselves: a woman in leopard-print a drive-through Starbucks. He usually
the ones closing.” At the location in the leggings ordering at the register, another spends two or three hours at the coffee
Little Tokyo section of downtown, In- woman going through the garbage and shop. “As an artist, I’m observing people
dolos sat at a table with two fountain fishing out a half-smoked cigarette. At here. I want to know what their deal is,”
pens, ink brushes, and a sketch pad spread a Little Tokyo location, an employee was he said. “Some people are standing in
out in front of him. “I do my art work. jabbed by a used hypodermic needle while this different way—they don’t have this
I thrive on the whole vibe here, the en- emptying the trash. look of ‘I gotta go pick my kids up.’”
ergy of people,” he said. Starbucks has plans to offer de- “Gone are the days of Starbucks being
He looked around the shop. “My first escalation training at those locations open until 2 a.m.,” he went on. “That’s
assessment is: Is this guy gonna stab me? which will remain open. Indolos ap- the stuff of legends. Now it’s usually
12 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
6 P.M. or 8 P.M., for safety. Total killjoy.” a big lizard,” per Kandel, and “trainable
Outside the Hollywood and Vine as a dog,” per Sosnick), a bearded dragon,
Starbucks, on the Hollywood Walk of geckos, tarantulas, a stick bug, a ferret,
Fame, celebrity-bus-tour workers stood chinchillas, and a dove.
around on break. Next to Spike Jonze’s “The dove acts up,” Kandel said, add-
star, an unhoused man sat on a blanket ing, ruefully, “I used to like the dove.”
with a Starbucks iced tea. A barista said, “Pooped on a guy at the last show,”
“People come in here, they make a lot Sosnick recalled. “He took it like a
of noise, they bang on the walls, they champ.” He went on, “We have a sur-
yell at us. People come in with their prise animal tonight—by far the most
hands in their pants. There was a fight dangerous thing we’ve ever had onstage.”
outside. A guy was completely covered “We’ve had no accidents, though,”
in blood. A guy had an iPad, and he was Kandel said.
taking a picture of the behinds of the “I got bit once, but it was a very
two girls I was taking an order from. I minor”—boa-constrictor—“bite,” Sos-
was, like, ‘What are you doing?’ And he nick corrected him.
said, ‘Give me a water.’ I said, ‘Get in Kandel and Sosnick were both in a Charlie Sosnick and Michael Kandel
line, and I’ll give you a water.’ People standup troupe, at the University of
lock themselves in the bathroom. Once Pennsylvania, called Simply Chaos, When Ranger Eric, in a camo fish-
it gets dark, we lock the doors, we draw though they didn’t overlap. When they erman’s hat and a tan safari shirt, arrived
the shades, and we just use the window. connected in New York, post-gradua- with his entourage, Sosnick, backstage,
We got the security guards, and it didn’t tion, they decided to launch a comedy attempted to wrangle the distracted co-
really help.” She went on, “People visit show with a shtick, “because otherwise medians. “The thing we have to clear
Hollywood and they say, ‘This is not no one would come,” Sosnick said. (A up first is who wants the big boa,” he

1
what I expected.’” rejected idea involved a magician.) In- said. “Truth be told, it weighs a lot.”
—Antonia Hitchens spired by Jack Hanna, they Googled an- Rufat Agayev, a comedian in a Yan-
imal handlers. kees T-shirt and a Nascar hat, stared at
SUPPORTING PLAYER DEPT. “We found all these people who do, the giant snake warily. “I mean, I would
ANIMAL ACT like, school assemblies,” Sosnick said. do it, but I just came off a back injury
“And that’s how we found Ranger last week,” he said.
Eric”—Eric Powers, who drives in from “Ranger Eric will be up there help-
Long Island with a van full of cages ing you, like, in the corner,” Sosnick said.
and crates. “So, if at any point you guys don’t feel
“Ranger Eric’s animals are just from, comfortable, or if you’re nervous at all—”
like, people on Long Island who get “Like in a sketch group!” the come-
nimals have been upstaging their them, and then they get too big, and dian Sara Hennessey exclaimed. She
A comedic scene partners for years—
consider the San Diego Zoo lady’s in-
they don’t want them anymore,” Kan-
del explained.
made a play for the bearded dragon
(billed as “very chill, very easy”), but her
continent horned toad on Johnny Car- “This boa that we have now was from crop top was too skimpy for him to cling
son, Hammer the Pitbull bowling a strike this guy who was going to jail and had to. “He could scratch the shit out of your
on Letterman, or Tracy Morgan yelling this big animal collection and just un- arms,” Ranger Eric warned. She wound
at a parrot on “Saturday Night Live.” leashed them,” Sosnick said. A neighbor up performing with a dove named Lovey,
(“That bird is a liar!”) The only prob- discovered the snake in his barbecue. who perched on her head for the big-
lem—sometimes the animal steals the “And now it’s a star,” Kandel said. gest applause of the night.
whole show. “People want to see bites, poops, a The surprise guest, a small alligator,
The other evening, the human co- drop,” Sosnick said. “Dropping is bad. emerged from his portable dressing room
medians Charlie Sosnick (twenty-four, Dropping’s the biggest way to lose the (a cat carrier), and the comedian Rachel
wearing a nose ring and a T-shirt ad- audience. We’ve never had a bad drop. Coster greeted him with a coquettish
vertising the Lemon Ice King of Co- We’ve had a chinchilla jump.” “Hey, Mama!” (She wound up onstage
rona) and Michael Kandel (twenty-nine, “No animals have ever been harmed,” wearing the sixty-pound boa, Julius
goatee, button-down) discussed this di- Kandel noted. “The last show, the dove Squeezer.) Ranger Eric deftly put a band
lemma at Lucky Dog bar, in Williams- actually laid an egg backstage.” around the gator’s jaws and then handed
burg, before their monthly comedy show, The duo stepped out into the ninety- it to Agayev, who quietly asked, “Sir, am
“Petting Zoo,” which features a rotat- one-degree (cold-blooded-friendly) I holding him correctly?,” a number of
ing lineup of comedians attempting to night and headed to an un-air-condi- times before the reptile peed on the rug.
perform their sets while handling ex- tioned performance space. (The next Agayev later took the stage with a dainty
otic animals they just met. So far, the “Petting Zoo” show is August 5th, at the corn snake slung over his shoulders.
menagerie has included boas, corn City Reliquary, and it is, for better or for “Is anyone listening?” Sosnick asked.
snakes, a blue-tongued skink, a teju (“just worse, outdoors.) “This always happens. Can we just bang
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 13
out the lineup?” (Kandel whispered, “He hundred and thirty-eight years feel like album that Mitchell released in 2019.
goes into Howard Hughes mode before “a dress rehearsal.” In 2020 and 2021, the Kindt grinned as Mitchell’s baritone
every show.”) organization distributed some twenty- warmed the room, booming, “There’s no-
The tarantula was removed from the five million dollars in emergency assis- o-o-o business like sho-o-o-ow business!”
program, because of whirring fans. “She tance to some eighteen thousand peo- In addition to Kindt, the clinic is

1
does not like wind,” Ranger Eric said. ple, and it provided medical care, job staffed with a gynecologist, a sports-med-
—Emma Allen workshops, and housing support to tens icine specialist, a family doctor, a nurse
of thousands. practitioner, and a podiatrist, Louis
FOOTLIGHTS DEPT. Mitchell was among those people Galli. “He works on everybody’s feet
NAME CHANGE who sought help. “What’s that hair-club on Broadway,” Mitchell said, of Galli.
thing they say?” he said, searching for Members of Local One, a stagehands’
his line. “ ‘I’m not just the chairman, I’m union, can be seen at the clinic with-
also a client’?” After coming down with out a co-pay. “They are a unique group
COVID-19 in March, 2020, Mitchell called of guys—lots of lifting and lugging,”
Jason Kindt, the director of the Fund’s Kindt said. “That’s the reason they’re
medical clinic. Mitchell’s fever was 104.8: changing the name. We want to be here
rian Stokes Mitchell, the Broadway “I asked, ‘Shouldn’t I be dead?’ He said, for everybody.”
B baritone, was strolling through the
Times Square offices of the Actors Fund
‘Well, organ failure doesn’t start until a
hundred and five, a hundred and six.’”
Mitchell and Kindt talked about the
past few years. The clinic had remained
the other day, discussing the nineteenth Kindt had an oximeter sent to Mitch- open throughout the pandemic, and
century. “Back then, ‘actor’ was a pejo- ell, and advised against going to the hos- telemedicine became crucial to its work.
rative term used for anybody in show pital. “They don’t know what to do with “I would say fifty per cent of my pa-
business, basically,” he said, describing you yet,” he said. Mitchell recovered, tients weren’t in New York anymore,”
the circumstances of the Fund’s found- and for ten weeks, after his neighbor- Kindt said. “The chorus kids went home
ing, in 1882. “People refused to bury ‘ac- hood’s 7 p.m. applause for essential work- to their parents. Everybody scattered.”
tors’ in consecrated ground.” Initially, the ers, he sang “The Impossible Dream” Like many doctors, Kindt tried to man-
charity provided funeral expenses for from his living-room window. age mental-health issues for patients
members of the theatrical profession. Broadway theatres reopened last year, who couldn’t afford therapy. Antide-
Today, it offers career counselling and but the industry is still feeling the ef- pressants. Anxiety counselling. And
health-care services to people in theatre, fects of the pandemic. Some things will then there was COVID-19 itself. “Omi-
film, television, radio, music, dance, opera, never be the same. The Actors Fund, cron, in December and January—I
and the circus. It also operates a senior for instance, decided to change its name. think everybody in every show got it,”
home in New Jersey and a medical clinic, Since May, it’s been known as the En- Kindt said.
in partnership with Mount Sinai, in the tertainment Community Fund. The Before taking this job, five years ago,
same building as its offices. term “actor” ceased being a pejorative Kindt worked at an urgent-care center.
Mitchell, famous for his performances long ago, but the organization felt that He moved to New York from Pennsyl-
in “Ragtime,” “Man of La Mancha,” and the old name didn’t capture the scope vania to be closer to Broadway, but he
“Kiss Me, Kate,” has been the chairman of its services and ambitions. “We were never dreamed he’d be working directly
of the board since 2004. The pandemic, always saying, ‘But it’s not just for ac- with the people under, above, and be-
he said, made the Actors Fund’s first tors!’” Mitchell said. Turning a corner, hind the lights. “I’m just a fan, I’ve got
he ran into Joseph Benincasa, the orga- no talent,” he said. Mitchell shook his
nization’s president and C.E.O. Benin- head, saying, “He probably has more

1
casa had fresh evidence in support of fans than any of us do, now.”
the name change. “Last night, I’m up at —Eric Lach
the Jacob Burns Film Center with James
Lapine,” he told Mitchell. “And he goes, LIFE’S WORK
‘Boy, the Actors Fund. I wish I were an A BEGINNER’S MIND
actor.’” Mitchell groaned.
On his way to the medical clinic,
Mitchell checked his phone. His son
had just been accepted to college, where
he intends to study aeronautical engi-
neering. “My dad was actually a Tuske-
gee Airman,” Mitchell said. t has been a vintage year for vintage
At the clinic, he greeted Kindt. Every
morning, the doctor, who was a theatre
I musicians. Paul McCartney and Brian
Wilson both turned eighty in June, and
nerd as a kid, selects a CD of show tunes both have been touring. Please give it up
to play in the waiting room. That morn- as well for Charles Lloyd, the eighty-
Brian Stokes Mitchell ing, he’d put on “Plays with Music,” an four-year-old saxophonist who not only
14 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
toured Europe this summer but is also
releasing three new albums, each recorded
with a different trio—“Trio of Trios.”
Lloyd was recently in town, and on
a steamy Sunday night he played a sold-
out two-and-a-half-hour show, perform-
ing with one of his trios and also with
a quintet. The venue was Sony Hall, in
a Times Square basement space that
was once home to the showgirls of Billy
Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe, back when
Lloyd was a kid in Memphis. He seemed
to have the passing decades on his mind
when, before his first number, he told
the audience, “I thought, when I was a
junior, that by the time I was an elder
things would be straightened out.” He
laughed. “But we have the music,” he
added, a benediction.
People often describe a teen-age
fuddy-duddy as an old person in a young “This fifth wine has bright apple and pear notes, with
person’s body; Lloyd is a young person just the barest hint of a blinding headache.”
in an old person’s body. With wisps of
white hair peeking out from underneath
a gray toque, he appeared frail at times,
• •
and he took breathers on a bench while
his colleagues soloed. But he also shim- he re-upped his service to his own muse festival in Antibes, France, sharing a
mied and bounced on the balls of his in the mid-eighties, and has since re- hotel with Ellington and his band. “Duke
feet when he was feeling the music. His leased a string of albums, playing with heard me play,” Lloyd recalled. “And
pleasure was infectious, his playing both groups of jazz musicians and world mu- said something to the effect of ‘If he
cerebral and exuberant. sicians, in addition to Willie Nelson, keeps stirring the soup, one day he’s
Two days later, at a hotel suite in Norah Jones, and Lucinda Williams. going to have something.’ He didn’t re-
SoHo, Lloyd was listening to Chopin The first song he played at Sony Hall alize I was the kid whose house he’d
on his laptop. Dorothy Darr, his wife, was “Blood Count,” by Billy Strayhorn, stayed at.” During the festival, Elling-
manager, producer, and general creative Duke Ellington’s longtime arranger and ton’s musicians took Lloyd under their
partner—she did the paintings on the collaborator. The piece, a pensive, swell- wing; some of them brought him to the
“Trio of Trios” covers—ducked in and ing ballad, was Strayhorn’s last, written nearby grave of Sidney Bechet. Of the
out. Lloyd has a unique conversational in a hospital bed while he was dying of Ellingtonians, Lloyd said, “They were
style, veering off on tangents—memo- esophageal cancer, in 1967. It has a spe- just magical beings to me.”
ries leading to musicology leading to cial resonance for Lloyd. When he was “What keeps me younger than spring-
metaphysics—and finding his way back growing up, his mother boarded per- time is that I’m still learning, I’m still
to an initial point. “My file cabinet has formers who were barred from Mem- growing,” he went on. “I’ve got experi-
been exploded now” is how he described phis’s segregated hotels, Ellington among ence, but I’ve got a beginner’s mind, and
his thought processes. them. Lloyd, besotted with the saxo- that’s a blessing.” Still, he admitted, the
His career arc has a missing middle. phone since stumbling on one in his hassles of touring continue to weigh on
After some plum apprenticeships, he grandfather’s house at the age of three—“I him—especially now that he and Darr
formed a quartet in 1965, with Keith Jar- saw those pearl keys!”—hung on the mu- have a beautiful house on a mountain in
rett, then an unknown, on piano. The sicians’ every word. “I was in heaven,” he Montecito, California, up the road from
group had multiple gold records on At- said. “I would wait for those guys to get Oprah Winfrey. (He has yet to run into
lantic and crossed over to rock audiences, up in the morning because I had so many the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, also
playing the Fillmore in San Francisco in questions.” One day, his mother told El- neighbors.) He’s thought about slowing
1967 (three years before Miles Davis did). lington that her son wanted to be a mu- down—at some point. “The Creator has
But touring got to Lloyd; so did Atlan- sician. “Duke said, ‘No, he has to be a a carrot on a stick,” he said. “And He
tic’s “plantation system”; so did drugs. doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief, because says, ‘Not yet, Charles.’ I’m trying to get
He holed up in Big Sur “on sabbatical” this stuff is too hard—the life. Don’t let there, you know, and I’m always falling
for much of the seventies and eighties. him do it.’ But by that time I was bit by short. That’s another reason I never
“I needed to heal,” he said. He sat in with the cobra, and there was no turning back.” stopped, because I never got good enough
the Beach Boys, and remains friendly A couple of decades later, in 1966, to quit.” The soup still needs stirring.
with Brian Wilson and Mike Love. But Lloyd’s first quartet was playing the jazz —Bruce Handy
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 15
 duties as a crusader.” Toor’s painting,
PROFILES as he describes it, is “a pile of laundry
filled with things from different parts

BECOMING MODERN
of my imagination, things that, to me,
sum up an exhaustive heap of greed
and lust. I also wanted it to have a
How Salman Toor left the Old Masters behind. slightly dark humor.” “Fag Puddle” is
predominantly green, with vivid de-
BY CALVIN TOMKINS tails in yellow and red. Figurative but
not realistic, it shows, in addition to
the items in the title, a feather boa,
an open book, a dildo, a disembodied
foot, a head with a clown nose, a striped
necktie, a hanging light bulb, a pearl
necklace, a light-emitting iPhone on
a tripod, and a man’s head face down
in the groin of a nude, upside-down
male figure. These unrelated images
are painted with such panache and flu-
ency that they seem to belong together.
My immediate reaction was that this
artist could paint anything and make
me believe in it.
Toor is a newcomer to art-world
stardom. Slim, dark-haired, and thirty-
nine years old, he has a quiet self-con-
fidence that puts him at ease with most
people. He was born in Lahore, Paki-
stan, but he has lived mainly in New
York since he graduated from the Pratt
Institute, in 2009. In the early years of
his career, he had little interest in mod-
ern art. He painted technically daz-
zling, contemporary versions of Old
Master portraits, landscapes, and genre
scenes, from the Renaissance to the
eighteenth century, and his pictures
found ready buyers in Pakistan and in
the United States. “I thought a lot of
modern art was just crap—boring and
hree weeks before Salman Toor’s tion” with “Rinaldo and Armida,” and, deliberately depressing,” Toor told me.
T “No Ordinary Love” opened at the
Baltimore Museum of Art, on May
while his show is on view elsewhere at
the museum, the two paintings will be
“In school, I had been fascinated by
Renaissance art because of the basic
22nd, the twenty-six paintings in the facing each other on opposite walls of thing it had mastered—the realism. I
exhibition were still in his Brooklyn the same Old Master gallery. wanted to be as good as those paint-
studio, and the largest work, “Fag Pud- “ ‘Rinaldo and Armida’ is based on ers.” He had also, independently, stud-
dle with Candle, Shoe and Flag,” rested a poem by Tasso, about the adventures ied classical Indian painting—he loved
against a pillar near the center of the of Christian soldiers in the Crusades,” the exquisite miniatures of the Mughal
room. Ninety-three inches high by Toor explained. It was typical of the school, with their stylized renderings
ninety inches wide, it is the same size, Baroque, he added, full of bodies and of princes and maidens in lush gar-
Toor told me, as Anthony van Dyck’s tumult and weather conditions—“a dens—but European realism was the
“Rinaldo and Armida,” a Baroque paint- storm coming, the sunset, a mermaid, tradition that caught and held his in-
ing that is in the museum’s permanent and the spellbound kiss that’s about to terest. In 2012, for reasons that were
collection. Toor had been obsessed with happen between the sleeping soldier not clear to him at the time, he began
this picture when he was an art stu- and Armida, an enchantress descend- to experiment with simple, almost car-
dent. He had painted “Fag Puddle” with ing to seduce this guy and take him to toon-like images of his friends in con-
the idea that it would be “in conversa- an island of love where he’ll forget his temporary settings. He didn’t show
these for several years, but he kept doing
Toor in his studio. He finds drawing as natural and essential as talking. them now and then, and in 2015, when
16 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL SHEA
he put a group of them in an exhibi- ing gait—“sashaying,” as he calls it. Salman. He was unafraid to be him-
tion in New York, at Aicon Gallery, he There were a few occasions when he self at a very young age.”
realized that he was onto something. was pushed around and roughed up, Sethi’s father was an outspoken jour-
Toor’s breakthrough came in 2020, when but nobody ever hated him, and things nalist and a publisher, whose criticism
the Whitney Museum showed fifteen improved in the middle school at of the authoritarian government in Pa-
of these works. The return of figurative Aitchison, when his ability to draw kistan led to several jailings. He and his
art and storytelling, which was picking brought him respect and admiration. wife also collected art and had many art
up momentum in the nineteen-nineties, “A lot of kids completely changed their books in their house. This was where the
took a new direction with Toor’s un- mind about who I was,” he said. Older four boys found Norman Mailer’s 1995
abashed, queer subjectivity and its basis students asked him to make nude por- “Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man,”
in the history of Western art. traits of their imagined girlfriends. which came as a revelation to them. “We
The whole school became aware of read it together, and we copied things
oor is one of those gifted souls Toor when he turned sixteen and took from it in the art room,” Toor recalls.
T who find drawing as natural and
essential as talking. From the age of
the O-level exams—an imperial tra-
dition (they’re now officially known as
(They were all bilingual in English and
Urdu.) “That book brought a sense of
five, he drew constantly. His favorite I.G.C.S.E.s)—and earned world dis- deliciousness, a simplified idea of what
subjects, borrowed from his mother’s tinction, scoring in the one-hundredth an artist’s life was like.” More than a
fashion magazines, were pretty young percentile in art. “Salman was prodi- decade later, when Toor was starting
women with flowing hair. “My aunt giously talented,” Komail Aijazuddin, to move beyond Old Master models,
encouraged me to draw sports cars in- one of his schoolmates, told me. “He the monochrome twilight of Picasso’s
stead, so I drew a boxy, badly imagined knew light and shape in a way that was Blue Period became a recurrent mood
vehicle with a girl’s head sticking out almost irritatingly intuitive.” in his paintings.
the window,” he recalls. “I was very, very Art classes at Aitchison were op- All three of Toor’s friends were
femme growing up, and I often felt in- tional for high schoolers, and few stu- going to college in Europe or North
timidated and ostracized.” He was the dents took them. Toor signed up for America. Toor, who was expecting to
firstborn of three children in a well- every one that was available, and he go from Aitchison to the National
to-do family in Lahore. His father, who spent most of his free time in the art College of Arts, in Lahore, persuaded
owns a Honda dealership there, is tall, room, drawing and painting. This was his parents to let him apply to several
handsome, conservative, and emphat- where he met the three boys who are American schools. Yale, Amherst, and
ically masculine. His mother is a house- still his closest friends—Aijazuddin, Columbia turned him down (his hun-
wife, “very doting and cuddling,” Toor Ali Sethi, and Leo Kalyan. “I think we dredth percentile in O-level art wasn’t
said. When Toor was fifteen, he tried were all trying to protect Salman,” Sethi enough to offset less impressive results,
to tell his parents that he was gay. “They said. “He was the most vulnerable one, two years later, in the A-level exams
didn’t accept that,” he told me. “They because he didn’t have any defense for physics and economics), but Ohio
said, ‘You’re not developed yet, you just mechanisms. I was the tallest person Wesleyan accepted him and offered a
don’t know.’” Although both of them in the class, I was a teacher-pleaser, but scholarship, and he arrived there in the
eventually came to terms with his sex- Salman was guileless. When boys made fall of 2002. “The college is in a very
uality, they did so, Toor said, more with fun of him, he couldn’t fight back.” small town, and there wasn’t anything
tolerance than with understanding. Ho- Kalyan, who was born in London like gay life there,” Toor recalls. “And
mosexual activity is a punishable of- and lived there until he was eleven, I was totally fine with that. I had never
fense in Pakistan. Although the law is when his family moved back to La- been to the U.S., and for the first year
not strictly observed, gay behavior in hore, recalls the art room as the one I was just taking everything in.” Once,
public can be dangerous, as Toor makes place in the school where the friends in his junior year, he was beaten up at
clear in his painting “Car Boys,” in felt safe. “I used to call Salman Demi a frat party, but over all he was happy,
which a uniformed policeman shines Moore, and he called me Kate Wins- living in an on-campus, mixed-gender
his flashlight into a stopped car with let,” he told me. “We were all made fun house he describes as the “hippie base.”
two young men in it. What gave him of for being girlie.” Kalyan was star- He kept in touch with Sethi, who was
the courage to come out to his parents tled, though, when Toor told him and at Harvard, and Aijazuddin, at New
when he was fifteen? “I just felt like, Sethi that he was gay. “My reaction York University, and when he could
yeah, I can do it,” he recalls. “I can was I’m not gay,” Kalyan said. “It was afford it he made weekend trips to see
do anything.” a couple of years before I could say out them. Toor became more and more
At Aitchison College, a boys-only loud that I was. I was scared every sin- certain that New York, with its poly-
institution, built by the British when gle day at school. People would write glot mix of cultures, was where he
Pakistan was part of India and Britain stuff about us on the blackboard. The wanted to live.
ruled the subcontinent, Toor’s femi- only refuge we had was the art room Leo Kalyan earned his undergrad-
ninity made him the butt of teasing and each other. It’s a miracle that we uate degree in England, at King’s Col-
and bullying. Every day, students fol- were there together. Without Ali and lege London. Toor stayed with him
lowed him down the halls, talking in Salman, there would be no me, and when he went to London in the sum-
high voices and imitating his swing- without me there would be no Ali and mer of 2004. He spent his days at the
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 17
National Gallery and other museums, wife, Dodie, called Rachel Feinstein, rived without McEnroe, who had to
but his nights, he said, were “like a Currin’s artist wife, whom she knows be at a tennis event in North Carolina.
crash course in mainstream gay cul- well, and Feinstein invited the three Currin jumped up to greet her, and
ture.” Kalyan, Sethi, Aijazuddin, and of us to have dinner at their town then he said, “I’m going to move away
Toor were all dating, but they weren’t house in Manhattan. from the fire. I like the aesthetics of a
dating one another. This changed six It was a warmish night in early May. fire but not the heat.”
years ago, when Sethi and Toor realized The house has five floors, and there are There was talk about the art mar-
that they belonged together. Although Currin paintings on almost every wall. ket and how you could avoid paying
they live in different New York apart- A larger-than-life sculpture by Feinstein, astronomic prices for Old Master paint-
ments, the bond between them is very of the Italian clown Punchinello and his ings. “You can get things if there’s a
deep. “I knew I had found family, fills the entrance hall. penis, or a naked man’s butt,” Feinstein
the person I wanted to be When Toor arrived, wear- said. “And, if there’s a lot of the color
with for good,” Toor told ing a loose, saffron-colored green, they’re affordable.”
me. They have all done well linen shirt over matching Currin looked at Toor. “I have bad
in the world. Aijazuddin, pants, Feinstein showed him news,” he said. “You use a lot of green,
who became an artist and around. “These are portraits and there are guys’ asses. Learn now
a writer, now lives chiefly of the kids that John’s been to hang drywalls is all I’ve got to say.”
in New York; Sethi and doing over the years,” she “John is doing his point-counter-
Kalyan are both singers and said. “This is one of me point,” Smyth said. “As Johnnie Mac
songwriters, well known when I was thirty—before would say, ‘I challenge.’”
for their innovations in tra- the kids. Now my portraits “Salman’s paintings are in my view
ditional South Asian music. look like I’m angry.” Toor a weird mixture of very retrograde,
(Sethi’s most recent single, “Pasoori,” recognized almost every painting by post-Impressionist handling,” Currin
has drawn more than two hundred and name, from reproductions he’d seen. said. “What I like about them is that
ninety million viewers on YouTube.) Currin joined us in the sitting room, there’s a kind of easy glamour. This is
The four friends continue to keep in and shook hands with Toor. They sat me and my friends, and we have a
touch, talking on the phone or the In- down near a blazing fire. “John wants cool life.”
ternet nearly every day. the drama of fires even when it’s a thou- “It’s a glam-rock thing,” Toor said,
sand degrees outside,” Feinstein ex- ironically. He added, “I have a ques-
s Mark Twain might have said, plained. “He turns up the air-condition- tion for you. With all the flesh in your
A the widespread reports on the
death of painting in the nineteen-
ing beforehand.”
“That’s such a painter’s drawing,”
paintings, is it always white under-
neath? And then you put the cosmetic
seventies were greatly exaggerated. Toor said, of an exquisite portrait of layer on top?”
Video art, process art, performance Feinstein above the fireplace. “I feel Currin, laughing: “Cosmetic layer.
art, land art, social-practice art, and that in the hair and the eyes.” Currin That’s the best way to put it.”
other conceptual modes took up a lot laughed, and said, “It’s really old, like The conversation moved on to paint-
of artistic oxygen in those years, but 1996.” Always a robust presence, Cur- ers they liked and didn’t like. “John
painting on canvas survived, and in rin has started to look a bit grizzled, can’t stand Sargent,” Feinstein observed.
the eighties and nineties painters with thinning hair on top and a full, “Me, neither,” Toor said. He admitted
found new forms and revived old ones, grayish beard and mustache. “I didn’t that he had come to think Jan van Eyck
including portraiture and storytell- see your work until the show at the was “beautiful but a little tedious.”
ing. John Currin, an American artist Whitney, which was very good,” he “Not van Eyck, sorry,” Currin said.
in the generation before Toor’s, mined told Toor. “I think van Eyck is the greatest artist
classical art for techniques and sub- Toor said that when he was an art in the world. Care to step outside?”
ject matter that he then applied to his student “there were only four or five Toor, unruffled, went on to say that he
often startling explorations of con- people doing what you do”—meaning was well out of his Vermeer phase. He
temporary life, and his influence on figurative paintings of real people. had been obsessed with Vermeer in col-
Toor and other young painters was “There was you, and—” lege, he said, and hugely honored that
prodigious. Toor had spoken to me “Kerry James Marshall,” Currin said. the Frick Collection, as part of an on-
of his admiration for Currin. “I looked “Yes, and Nicole Eisenman.” going project, had hung one of his own
at his painting very closely after I “Right. Lisa Yuskavage.” paintings in a room with two Vermeers.
graduated from the Pratt Institute,” “Hernan Bas was there,” Toor added. “But if you paint figuratively most peo-
he said. “I saw that he had an amaz- “So few people. I just thought, Why ple go through a Vermeer phase.”
ing technique, and I just wanted to is it important? What makes bodies Feinstein mentioned that her mother
look at the surfaces of his paintings important? And now f iguration is had recently met Toor on a f light
and see how he made this material everywhere.” to Miami. “The plane had landed,”
contemporary. I felt like there was so Feinstein had also invited the rock Toor explained. “We were waiting to
much I could learn from him.” Cur- singer Patty Smyth and her husband, move out, and a lady across the aisle
rin and Toor had never met, so my John McEnroe, to dinner. Smyth ar- was talking to her seatmate about
18 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
her daughter, Rachel, an artist who New York was where he belonged, yer, saying that his green card had come
was married to an artist, and I had to he felt certain, but his student visa was through. Overjoyed, Toor returned to
say something.” about to expire. He went to an immi- New York in 2011. While he looked for
“Rachel’s mom is the Zelig of our gration lawyer and filed a petition for a place to live, he stayed with a former
day,” Currin said. a green card. He was asked to supply classmate of Sethi’s at Harvard, Alex-
When dinner was announced, Toor more information, which he did. A andra Atiya, in a small apartment on
and Currin were having an intense year went by, and Toor was losing hope. Horatio Street. She and Toor got on
conversation, oblivious of Feinstein’s He packed up all his paintings and so well that they decided he should
repeated calls. After they finally stood everything else he owned, and moved stay on indefinitely. “I think it was kind
up, I heard Currin’s booming voice back to his family’s house in Lahore. of comforting for him to live with a
ask Toor, “Who are you ripping off Almost immediately, he participated friend,” Atiya told me. “We both value
right now?” in a two-person show at the Canvas our introspective time. He likes talking
Gallery, in Karachi, which is bigger to people, but he also likes time alone.
hen Toor graduated from Ohio than Lahore, and more commercial. Sometimes we would have people come
W Wesleyan, in 2006, he went to
New York. Komail Aijazuddin was still
Toor’s contribution was keyed to Pa-
kistan’s independence. “I did a portrait
and stay. It was preposterous but a lot
of fun.”
at N.Y.U., living in a two-bedroom of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the coun- Toor was fascinated by Atiya’s ex-
apartment in Greenwich Village, and try’s founding father, a large-scale nude otic beauty. “Her father is Egyptian,
Toor and Ali Sethi, who had just grad- bust of him looking raggedy and old, her mother is Argentinean,” he told
uated from Harvard, moved in with like a homeless person on the L train,” me. “She reminded me of an Orien-
him. Toor got a job in the marketing Toor recalls. This might seem quite talist painting. She’s also queer. I made
department of a now defunct art mag- risky in a country as conservative as many portraits of her. She would come
azine. It was the only job he ever had. Pakistan, but nobody objected, and to my studio to read—she read every-
“Within a couple of months, I felt like after that Toor showed at Canvas reg- thing, and she was always bringing me
I was wasting my time,” he told me. “I ularly. The previous summer, Aicon books. We made good roommates. I
didn’t have any time to paint, so I just Gallery in New York, which special- got a monastery-size bed for the living
stopped. I applied to a bunch of grad izes in contemporary art from South room, and she had the bedroom. While
schools, and got into Pratt. Incredibly, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, put we were living together, I read Mar-
my father decided to pay for it. I did Toor’s work in a group exhibition at jane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis,’ which was a
tell him that this level of education its London branch. Toor had been in graphic novel, and we started joking
would make it easier for me to make Lahore for less than a year when he and thinking about writing a graphic
a living. But I’m still surprised. got a call from the immigration law- novel together.” Atiya remembers that
“At Pratt, I wanted to continue look-
ing at Old Master paintings, and that
was fine with my professors,” he said.
Toor describes his student work as
“non-risky and non-threatening,” but
he was developing a virtuoso personal
style, with layered surfaces and subtle
underpainting that came from his im-
mersion in art history. He would study
a scene by Tintoretto or another of his
idols, and reimagine it, using people
he knew or invented. Watteau’s tech-
nique captivated him. He went back
to London and saw the Watteaus in
the Wallace Collection and at the Na-
tional Gallery. “I liked the sweetness
in the first stages of the rococo, before
it got super-saccharine,” he told me.
“All those élite people in gardens, flirt-
ing and making love.” For his thesis
show, which was all portraits, he painted
himself in the style of a Velázquez
self-portrait. “The colors were so Span-
ish Reformation,” he said. “I thought,
I can do this. I can control paint to
make it do some of the things those
Spanish painters did.” “It’s nice to sit down after a long day of sitting down.”
 dent Alien” pictures were too much for
some of his regular clients. I counted
fifty-three men and women and five
ghosts in “Rooftop Party with Ghosts,”
a seventeen-and-a-half-foot-long trip-
tych in which the figures mingle ami-
ably, sip drinks, flirt, argue, smoke, work
cell phones, tell jokes, or just enjoy the
night air, under a dark sky that is pop-
ulated with letters from the Persian al-
phabet. Many of the subjects have long,
pointed noses—a detail that was be-
coming a Toor trademark—but other-
wise the faces are highly individualized,
with expressions that were keenly ob-
served and true to life. “For Allen Gins-
berg,” a diptych, is almost as densely
populated as “Rooftop Party.” In my
view, these paintings mark a bold de-
parture that doesn’t quite go anywhere.
“I don’t really know how to make a big
picture,” Toor told me. “I make small
• • pictures within the big picture.” He
was going to keep trying, he said,
and if it didn’t work he would be happy
this happened in 2013, after Toor’s first table, resting in a pool of shiny black to be an artist of small paintings, like
solo show at Aicon’s New York gallery. oil. Three other figures sit around the Elizabeth Peyton.
“There were paintings of people in cars table, two of them women, but nobody Toor explained that a few years ago
and in all sorts of settings, and there is talking. The background is a jumble he had started looking for new solu-
seemed to be a story behind all these of mostly inexplicable objects and tions to the way he was thinking. “I
characters,” she said. Toor and Atiya shapes: a large painting of a dark-haired wanted to have parts of the painting
have been co-writing (and rewriting) young woman, a distant procession of that responded to my need for real-
the graphic novel ever since, although men in white, an explosion of some ism, and other parts that were delib-
they slowed down after Atiya moved sort, gathering clouds, far-off build- erately sketchlike and a bit irreverent,”
to Canada, in 2014, for postgraduate ings including a minaret and several he said. The solution came unexpect-
studies in medieval literature at the domes. The colors are muted. “I was edly in 2016. Toor was living in an
University of Toronto. thinking about my family, about my East Village apartment that he had
Not long after Toor’s return to New dad,” Toor said. “That really got my rented when Atiya left for Canada.
York in 2011, he made a large painting juices flowing. I felt that this was some- He had never wanted his own work
that was unlike anything he had done thing very real that I had done.” He in places where he lived, but for a while
before. The title, “9PM, the News,” sug- kept the painting in his Brooklyn stu- he hung some of the new, “straight-
gests current events, but the painting dio for three years. “An Old Master forward” paintings on the walls of his
is deeply personal. “I wanted to re-create expert from London saw it and said, apartment. These were the images that
a sense of depression through a family ‘No—please no, you’re going modern,’ came out of his head, without fine-
dinner table,” he told me. “It was my but the artists I knew were, like, ‘Now art sources. “I’ll just paint whatever I
first completely imaginary painting. I you’re talking.’” feel like,” he told me he had decided.
had used art-historical sources for “I’m not going to ban anything. And
a very long time, a very enjoyable oor continued to paint (and sell) what I ended up doing were very sim-
time. For a decade, I didn’t want to do
anything else, but it was just getting
T art-history-sourced pictures for
several years after that, but every so
ple, illustrative, graphic-novel-like
images.” He painted himself and his
less exciting over the years. I thought often he would do another work that friends at dinner tables and bars, on
this one would be just for me—I came completely from his imagination. front stoops and street corners. The
wouldn’t show it.” In 2015, deciding that the new paint- figures are realistic but not entirely so.
In the painting, a bearded man wear- ings should be seen, he put twenty-three He painted them directly on the can-
ing a dark sweater-vest over an orange of them in a show called “Resident vas, with no preliminary drawings or
shirt sits at a table, smoking a cigarette Alien,” at Aicon Gallery. The Tate, in sketches. “I draw with the brush,” he
and looking troubled. To his left is a London, bought “9PM, the News,” and said. “I didn’t want to plan.” (He jots
skinny, naked, equally depressed-look- most of the other paintings found buy- down visual ideas for paintings in small
ing chap who has both hands on the ers, but according to Toor the “Resi- notebooks, using a ballpoint pen, but
20 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
when he starts a new painting he works father was very proud, and, in the nic- perience of brown men,” she told me.
from memory or from invention.) His est way, rather humble. This was the “There was an intimacy about them
new paintings were small, and they first time he saw that Salman had a that I hadn’t seen before.” When Trasi
didn’t take very long to do. “I was think- future as an artist.” and Lew returned to Toor’s studio for
ing less about how to play with form a second visit, they asked him if he could
and more about what I urgently needed asked Toor about his fondness for be ready for a show in the Whitney’s
to paint,” he said. “When I put a group
of these pictures together on a wall,
I green, which is the dominant color
in many of his paintings. “It was an
lobby gallery in six months. Toor was
thrilled. He had gone many times to
they did create a cloud of meaning, emotional thing that happened in the the old Whitney, on Madison Avenue,
so I started going more and more in studio in 2018,” he explained. “I had but he hadn’t yet seen the new build-
that direction.” been using green to make shadows, ing, which overlooks the Hudson River
There had been hints of queer re- and it occurred to me, Why not do the at Gansevoort Street. At first, he thought
lationships in some of Toor’s paint- whole painting in green?” He made a Trasi and Lew were asking him to put
ings. The pools of dark liquid in “9PM, painting of three young men dancing a few pictures in the lobby, but when
the News” and several other pictures in an apartment, using olive green for he visited the museum and saw the size
represented, for Toor, “something about the figures and viridian for the back- of the lobby gallery it dawned on him
guilt spreading like slime in a culture ground, and he knew immediately that that his life was about to change. The
of shame.” In a 2018 show at Aicon Gal- he would be doing more like this one. Whitney wanted to show fifteen paint-
lery, the queer theme became overt, and He said, “One of the things I like about ings, five that already existed and ten
guilt-free. “Time After Time” (which green is that it can be very hot and new ones. Toor took a deep breath and
is also the show’s title) depicts two very cold. Blue is cold, and it belongs said he would do it.
young men sitting close together, fac- to Picasso. With green, there’s a flick- In the months before the show’s
ing each other, their arms touching, ering light that’s nocturnal, and poi- scheduled opening, in the spring of
deep in an emotional conversation. In sonous (think of absinthe), and also 2020, Toor’s anxieties mounted. He was
“Reunion” and “The Green Bar,” men jewel-like—emeralds and jade.” still virtually unknown in the New York
embrace openly and publicly. “This Toor’s green paintings are often art world. Toor left Aicon that January
was the first time I did it deliberately melancholy. In “Thunderstorm,” four (amicably, he says) because he wanted
and articulately,” Toor told me. He women sit on the front porch of a house his work to reach a larger audience; sev-
was careful about how and where the sipping tea, while a man stands apart eral other New York galleries were in-
new pictures were seen. Invited to be from them and looks at a younger man terested in showing him, but nothing
in the first Lahore Biennale, in 2018, a few yards away, dancing alone in the was certain, and a failure at the Whit-
he said, he “decided to show some rain, connected but distant. “It’s the ney could be disastrous. “I was very re-
of the gay pictures that didn’t have a house I grew up in,” Toor said. “I’d been lieved when the opening was postponed
dick in them.” A year later, in a solo thinking about doing this painting for because of the pandemic,” he said. He
exhibition at the Nature Morte gal- a long time. It helped me believe I could needn’t have worried. The delayed open-
lery, in New Delhi, the boy in “Lav- paint forever.” Sometimes he feels that ing, in November, drew rapturous re-
ender Boy” lay naked on white sheets, his work is too heavy and dark, and views. The Times critic Roberta Smith
and the show included another ver- he tries to remedy that by introducing called it a “brilliant New York institu-
sion of Toor’s painting of a police- humor and satire, such as the long noses, tional debut,” and went on to laud his
man shining a flashlight into a car the cartoonish look of his skinny, bone- narrative skills and his “delicate, caress-
with two young men in the front seat. less characters, and his calling several ing brush strokes and intriguing tex-
Relations between India and Paki- paintings “Fag Puddles.” Ali Sethi re- tures.” The New York Review of Books
stan were dangerously strained in 2019. lates this impulse to the problems of put Toor’s “Four Friends” on its cover,
Toor did not attend his New Delhi queer identity. “People like us don’t re- and ran an essay by Sanford Schwartz.
opening for that reason, but there ally belong anywhere,” he said to me. “What makes these pictures distinctive
were no incidents, and the show did “You create your own safe space, and and absorbing is that while homosex-
well, with several paintings going to you need the relief of comedy.” uality is hardly new to art, Toor brings
an Indian museum. Ambika Trasi, a young curatorial a sense of soft-spoken, ingenuous, ev-
Toor returns to Lahore at least once assistant at the Whitney Museum, first eryday intimacy to this material that
a year, to stay for a few weeks. “Some- saw Toor’s work at Aicon Gallery in feels new,” Schwartz wrote. The fifteen
times I feel that there is more of his 2015. She kept up with his appearances paintings took viewers into the world
father in him than he would like to in group shows, and in 2018, after see- of the South Asian diaspora, where
admit,” Sethi confided. “Salman has a ing “Time After Time” at Aicon, Trasi dark-skinned young men stand for-
sense of honor, and so does his father.” and Christopher Y. Lew, a Whitney lornly in immigration offices, dance and
The summer after Toor’s freshman year curator she worked with, visited Toor’s cuddle in small apartments, and meet
of college, Sethi helped Toor hang a Brooklyn studio. “His paintings were one another in bars.
show of his paintings in the basement so evocative about life in New York “Parts and Things,” a green paint-
of his father’s Honda dealership. “It City, those moments of isolation and ing of sundry items of clothing and
sold out,” Sethi remembers. “Salman’s community that were clearly the ex- body parts piled on the floor of a closet,
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 21
previewed Toor’s semi-abstract “Fag it worked,” he told me. “I definitely derpainting, and how it had influenced
Puddle” series. In “Sleeping Boy,” a haven’t given up on big paintings.” The his own use of green. “And this is a
young man who resembles Toor lies on new landscape will début later this photo of me trying to do a sissy walk.”
white sheets so lusciously painted that year, in a solo show he is having at the The discontinuities in a Toor slide
they look edible, his face and his naked M WOODS 798 contemporary-art mu- show can be epic. I saw photographs of
body illuminated by light from an open seum in Beijing. a burly, “really handsome” construction
laptop. Toor’s virtuoso handling of paint For our last conversation, Toor had worker doing manly things in Lahore,
brings the images to life, and the sto- prepared a slide show (on his computer) and of Toor’s uncle’s wedding in the
ries they tell, whether simple or com- of paintings, drawings, photographs, nineteen-sixties, also in Lahore. “This
plex, catch and engage viewers’ atten- and other images that he thought I is a miniature from the nineteenth cen-
tion. The Whitney show launched Toor should see. The first was a painting of tury, after the East India Company was
as an international art star, a role that his called “Three Friends in a Cab,” established and the English were the
he has no intention of playing. He which is in the show at the Baltimore lords and masters of India,” Toor ex-
joined the Luhring Augustine gallery Museum. “These guys are at the end plained. “A style of painting developed
in 2020, but instead of doubling or tri- of a night out, and they’re being rowdy at that point, called Company Paint-
pling his prices on the primary mar- and maybe that’s a Muslim cabdriver ing; it was done by local artists, and
ket Toor and the gallery agreed to keep who doesn’t like them,” he said. “I showed the overlords with their ser-
them relatively low and increase them want to do more of these. I’m definitely vants and possessions. There’s a power
gradually. “I don’t want a big, intimi- interested in cabdrivers.” Moving on, relationship here that I’m very inter-
dating number to enter my head while he brought up a work by the seven- ested in.” We looked at paintings of his
I’m in the studio,” he said to me. “That teenth-century Dutch artist Gerard ter friend Alexandra Atiya, and examples
would really destroy the process.” Borch. “This is ‘A Glass of Lemonade,’ of ancient Gandhara sculptures, which,
one of my favorite paintings,”Toor said. he said, have “a particular hair style I
oor became an American citizen “I just couldn’t believe it was in Balti- love—a bun in the center of the head,
T in 2019. He loved the drama of
the ceremony, hands over hearts as the
more. The young man is stirring a glass
of lemonade for the young lady, and
and the hair that cascades down—you
also see that in Buddhist art.” On and
group recited the pledge. He consid- their fingers are just touching—it’s an on it went: an early painting by Philip
ers himself an American artist and amazingly sensual scene.” The slide Guston, and one by Alice Neel (“I just
longs to see more of his adopted coun- show was going to be unstructured, I love the speed of it”); Nicole Eisenman’s
try. The pandemic put a damper on could see. Toor can seem mild-man- rendering of a dinner party; Toor’s 2017
travel, but Toor had visited San Fran- nered and deferential, but he has iron- portrait of Ali Sethi, singing.
cisco in 2018, and was astonished by clad confidence in his own impulses. The last group of images were scenes
the blown-up images of civil-rights Flipping to “Thunderstorm,” his from the graphic novel that Toor and
demonstrations on the walls of the painting of the house he grew up in, Atiya are writing. Toor has made a
Harvey Milk Terminal. “There was he said, “It’s about the division between great many drawings for it—black-
this huge poster that said ‘Straights for an artist’s life and a kind of cozy fam- and-white at first, and then in color—
Gays.’ I want to create a link somehow ily life. When I started this painting, of school buildings and playing fields
to the gay-rights movement, and make the whole idea was that it would be and students in short pants, jackets,
a painting that relates to it,” he told about lightning, like Giorgione’s ‘The and neckties. “The more we refined it,
me. “In my fascination with European Tempest.’” Next up, a photograph he the closer it came to our lives,” Toor
stuff, I missed out on a chunk of Amer- had taken in a gallery at the Uffizi, of said. He draws rapidly and sponta-
ican artists, whom I’m opening up to a seventeenth-century painting by Ger- neously, catching emotions in closeups
now.” He mentioned Winslow Homer, rit van Honthorst. This and the other of faces. “Salman can get a lot of com-
Albert Pinkham Ryder, and John Sloan. Honthorst paintings, he said, “were so plexity into a single image,” Atiya told
I suggested that the new work I had much bigger than I thought, and to be me. They got an agent for the book in
seen in his studio looked quite differ- honest I was a little disappointed by 2018. “And then my life started mov-
ent from the paintings in his Whitney how tightly painted they were.” Then ing really fast,” Toor said. “The novel’s
show—less direct and clear-cut. “Right,” came a lighthearted scene by Nicolas premise is not completely autobiograph-
he said. “I want some parts of it to be Lancret, a follower of Watteau, called ical. It’s a semester in high school, ex-
a little more abstract, a little more open “The Servant Justified.” Toor went on, ploring the story of two ninth-grade
to interpretation. I don’t want anyone’s “I like how the young man is reaching boys trying to figure out who they are.
face to be very pronounced, because I to the fallen maid. She’s fallen so pret- And together, by making art and being
feel that faces, for me, become very tily, and he’s reaching out in what’s al- themselves, they overcome the intol-
powerful, and then I go overboard most an embrace. I’ve used that kind erance and violence around them. It
trying to describe them in every way. of thing a lot in my paintings, and I’ll was originally called ‘Paradise Villas,’
I can’t resist it.” This summer, he tried continue to look at this image.” Ve- an ironic name for a neighborhood that
another large painting, a landscape, lázquez’s “The Supper at Emmaus” used to be wealthy and isn’t anymore,
ten feet wide by five and a half feet evoked a brief dissertation on the green- but now I think it should be called
high. “I’m very happy to report that ish tone of the Spanish Master’s un- ‘The Art Room.’” 
22 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
 dancing practice. There’s nothing like
SHOUTS & MURMURS it to help you focus in the present
moment and to melt your cares away.
I do it for three hours. Join me if
you like!
I work every day, at my desk, but
it’s O.K. with me if you work at home,
too. Just find someone else’s home.
Kidding! You can work on your side
of the bed, or in the bathtub, like Dal-
ton Trumbo. Living alone, I admit,
has made me a little sensitive about
ambient noise while I’m trying to con-
centrate, which is why I wear two sets
of headphones, one on top of the other.
Even if you say nothing, I will be able
to feel the vibrations of you tiptoeing
around in your socks, or even think-
ing of tiptoeing around in your socks,
so avoid doing that.
When I’m taking a break, you’re
more than welcome to move around
the apartment freely or listen to the
radio. Please don’t switch the station
from NPR. Ever. I keep it on NPR
so that I can be ready to listen to “Fresh
Air” every afternoon and yell at Terry

COME ON TO MY HOUSE
Gross for not asking her guests the
questions I would have asked.
Topper and I believe in a civilized
BY JENNY ALLEN dinner hour, so we sit at the table,
Topper in his high chair and me in a
alling all cute guys! Guess what? whatever I fell asleep watching, a half- regular chair, and talk over the events
C I’m ready to have a new man in
my life! I’ve been on my own for a
eaten bag of Herr’s potato chips, and
nail clippers. Now that side is going
of the day. I don’t like Topper to feel
bad, so I don’t use utensils. If you’re
while now, but I feel totally ready for to be your side. You can just shove all more comfortable with a fork and a
a relationship. And I guess it’s time, that stuff over to my side. I won’t mind! knife, go right ahead. But Topper and
before I get stuck in my ways. That way it’ll be right there when I I, we eat straight from the plate. Then
What “ways”? I don’t have any wake up, which I do six or ten times we lick ourselves.
“ways”! I’m easy! Like, if you hang a a night, and turn on all the lights to After dinner, we enjoy a game of
towel on the bathroom doorknob after entertain myself or trim my toenails. Scrabble. Some people think cats can’t
you’ve taken a shower, or forget to Also, my side of the bed has a big, play Scrabble, but that’s nonsense. It
close the kitchen cupboards, or screw body-shaped dip in it because I’ve may look like Topper’s just swatting
on the top of the peanut-butter jar in slept on that side for a long time. Your at his letters and cuffing them onto
an uneven way, I won’t be mad. Not side is a lot higher, so you might roll the floor, but he always makes a word,
too mad. But don’t do it. into my side while you’re sleeping. even if that word is “za” or “gi” or “bo,”
Will you be bringing a lot of ran- Don’t do that. Just go into the other which are all legitimate Scrabble
dom stuff with you when you move room and sleep on the couch with words. As Topper well knows!
in? Clothes and shoes and whatnot? Topper, a.k.a. the Greatest Cat Who Warning: we have a mean couple
That’s fine! I have an extra bedroom Ever Lived. Don’t try to move him, living just below us, so be prepared.
closet for you! You’ll have to keep the though. Cats have claws, and those They won’t say hello, and, if they’re
door open for ventilation, because sharp little teeth, for a reason. in the elevator and see me coming
Topper’s kitty-litter box is in there, I have a very full schedule every through the lobby, they never hold
but I don’t think Topper will mind. day. I’m up at dawn to do my Mind- the door. They’re “bothered” by the
I’ll ask him first, though. ful Tap Dancing practice, which tap dancing, they tell me. I’ve ex-
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ

Speaking of the bedroom, it’s true I do in the bedroom so I can watch plained that we all live here together,
that I sleep with the other side of the myself in the full-length mirror. in community, but you know how
bed strewn with books and maga- Honestly, I don’t know how I’d make some people are, thinking only of
zines, my phone, my laptop playing it through the day without my tap- themselves. 
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 23
 of the meaningless noises as possible.
ANNALS OF SOUND Researchers into the neurobiology
of hearing explain this phenomenon in

ON ALERT
terms of novelty and adaptation. Fa-
miliar and regularly patterned sounds,
such as internal-combustion engines
Should quiet cars be heard? and air-conditioners, don’t wake us; a
new or irregular disturbance stands out,
BY JOHN SEABROOK at least at first, amid the sonic clutter.
In a 2005 paper, Ellen Covey, a psy-
chologist at the University of Wash-
ington, and her co-authors identified
these subconscious arbiters of sound
and noise as the brain’s “novelty detec-
tor neurons.”
But a novel or useful alert can be-
come a meaningless repetitive noise
over time. The beeping emitted by the
new Walk / Don’t Walk signals, which
were recently installed on the corners
of my block, initially struck me as abra-
sive; now I tune it out. Other, more
aggressive sounds, such as back-up
beepers on trucks, have been designed
to resist assimilation, because that
would diminish their efficacy as audi-
ble beacons. Far from blending to-
gether into a kind of acoustic ecosys-
tem, city noises tend to compete with
one another to be heard—an auditory
cage match wherein the loudest sound
eventually wins.

he electrification of mobility pre-

T sents humanity with a rare oppor-
tunity to reimagine the way cities might
sound. Electric motorcycles, cars, trucks,
and vans are legally mandated to re-
place all internal-combustion-engine
(I.C.E.) vehicles in New York, L.A.,
sleep on the second floor, in a bed- Vinny,” trying to sleep in rural Ala- and other cities by mid-century—a
I room facing a residential street in
Brooklyn. Through the years, my sleep-
bama: “What the fuck is that?”
Unlike vision, smell, and taste, all of
shift that will profoundly alter the
acoustic texture of urban life. The
ing brain has grown used to the night- which dim when consciousness shuts internal-combustion engine, in addi-
time noises of motor vehicles: mainly down for the night, hearing is a 24/7 tion to being the single largest source
the growls of engines, but also the operation. For early humans, who were of CO2 emissions, is the leading cause
squeaks of truck springs wheezing trying to rest outdoors with predators of global noise pollution, which stud-
over the street’s speed hump, and the around, this trait was presumably a life- ies have shown to have a similarly cor-
wheedling of open-door chimes from saver. For people trying to sleep in the rosive effect on human health. When
late-night Uber drop-offs. city that never does, though, all-night moving at higher speeds, electric vehi-
Fire engines, cop cars, unmuff led listening is mostly a liability. The brain cles, or E.V.s, produce roughly the same
Harley-Davidson motorcycles, not to must disregard a lot of ordinary met- wind and road noise that I.C.E. vehi-
mention unhappy couples arguing and ropolitan white noise, while remaining cles do, but at lower speeds they oper-
the occasional lost soul screaming at alert to unusual sounds that might be ate in near-silence: electricity f lows
ghosts—none of that noise bothers me. of vital importance. The waking brain from the battery to the motor, which
On my first night in the country, how- performs a similar filtering function in spins with a barely audible hum. Therein
ever, I’m like Joe Pesci in “My Cousin the urban soundscape, ignoring as many lie the promise and the peril of E.V.s
for city dwellers.
Electric vehicles offer a vast new stage for acoustic designers, both inside and out. A zero-emissions vehicle has obvi-
24 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY EGE SOYUER
ous benefits for the environment, but by recording an electric fan through a special attention to sounds moving to-
a quiet car is a mixed blessing for the long metal pipe; the full alert references ward the listener, automatically calcu-
public good. Automobile engines, how- the sumptuous soundscapes of the film lating what Rosenblum calls “time-to-
ever annoying non-driving citizens find “Tron” and its sequel. arrival.” He published an account of
them, are rich in information, provid- Other alerts tilt more toward nature. his work in a 2010 book, “See What
ing a protective web of sound that cush- Danni Venne, the head designer be- I’m Saying: The Extraordinary Pow-
ions us from collisions as we navigate hind the Nissan Leaf ’s Canto sound ers of Our Five Senses.”
the streets. Not only does engine noise palette, said in a Business Insider video With a grant from the N.F.B.,
announce a vehicle’s presence; it can that “you really have to go for instru- Rosenblum set up an experiment in
also convey its direction, its speed, and ments that don’t have a hard attack to which blindfolded subjects stood next
whether it is accelerating or decelerat- them. Wind instruments, flutes, oboes, to a roadway and listened as both a
ing. The same disturbances that my clarinets . . . can kind of waver a bit.” gas-powered Honda Civic and a hy-
brain ignores while I’m sleeping help Elon Musk has suggested that Teslas brid Prius running on its battery drove
guide me when I’m cycling in traffic could make goat noises, or, perhaps, past. Subjects were told to press but-
and can’t take my eyes off the road to clopping-coconut sounds, like those tons on a device to indicate when they
glance back. And, for pedestrians dis- made by the crusaders in “Monty Py- could hear a vehicle and to identify its
tracted by their phones, engine sounds thon and the Holy Grail” because they direction. The results, Rosenblum told
are everyday lifesavers, as the tiger’s dis- lack actual steeds. me, “couldn’t have been clearer. People
tant roar was for napping early humans. Only one in twenty new cars sold in could hear the Honda when it was still
Except that the predators are motor the U.S. is an E.V., so these alerts are twenty feet away, whereas they couldn’t
vehicles—and the new ones are virtu- still a rarity in New York, but one day hear the Prius until it had passed them.”
ally silent. everyone will live with them. I’m al- At its headquarters, in Baltimore,
In response to this threat, Congress ready wondering how I’m going to sleep. the N.F.B. established a committee to
passed the 2010 Pedestrian Safety En- investigate the problem of quiet cars.
hancement Act, a law that few Amer- t took a lot of effort to make natu- Discussions were held with automotive
icans paid attention to at the time, and
that took almost ten years to imple-
I rally quiet vehicles noisier. The cam-
paign that led to the Pedestrian Safety
regulators and auto-industry engineers.
“Smart” solutions were proposed in-
ment. As a result of the legislation, every Enhancement Act began at the grass- volving sensors, cameras, and in-cabin
E.V. and hybrid manufactured since roots level. One November morning in alerts that would warn an E.V.’s driver
2020 and sold in the U.S. must come 2003, a friend dropped by the Illinois of an impending collision. The sonic
equipped with a pedestrian-warning home of Deborah Kent Stein, a blind plague of back-up beepers unleashed
system, also known as an acoustic ve- writer and an activist with the National by Ed Peterson’s mid-sixties invention,
hicle alerting system (AVAS), which Federation of the Blind, or N.F.B. The the Bac-A-Larm, has been tempered
emits noises from external speakers when friend wanted to show Stein and her by back-up cameras in newer trucks
the car is travelling below eighteen and family his new Toyota Prius, a hybrid and vans, which warn only the driver,
a half miles per hour. (Similar regula- vehicle. “It’s completely silent when it’s and not the rest of the street, if some-
tions apply in Europe and Asia.) running on its battery,” he announced. one is behind the vehicle. Couldn’t E.V.
Automakers have enlisted musicians “No kidding—you can’t hear a thing.” alert systems work similarly, especially
and composers to assist in crafting pleas- Stein later described this fateful en- with the proliferation of sensors and
ing and proprietary alert systems, as counter with the automotive future in cameras in the latest models? But the
well as in-cabin chimes and tones. Hans an essay she published on the N.F.B.’s blind community strongly opposed that
Zimmer, the film composer, was in- Web site: approach, in part because it was pred-
volved in scoring branded sounds for I stood at the curb and listened as our friend icated on an imminent collision, rather
BMW’s Vision M Next car. The Volks- climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the than on preventing such incidents from
wagen ID.3’s sound was created by Les- door. I waited to hear the Prius hum into life occurring in the first place.
lie Mándoki, a German-Hungarian and move forward. I heard the chatter of spar- At one meeting, an automotive
prog-rock/jazz-adjacent producer. The rows; the distant roar of a leaf blower; and, after engineer made a suggestion. Since
a minute or two, the opening of the car door.
Atlanta-based electronic musician Rich- “When are you going to start?” I asked. maximum-noise laws for gas-powered
ard Devine was brought in to help in “I did start,” our friend answered. “I drove automobiles already existed, why not
making the Jaguar I-Pace’s voltaic purr. down to the end of the block, and then I backed establish a minimum-noise standard
Some automakers cooked up sounds past you and drove up in front of you again.” that E.V.s had to meet? “It was a rev-
entirely in-house. The Porsche Taycan I felt a cold sense of dread. I thought, we’ve olutionary idea,” Stein wrote.
got a real problem.
Turbo S has one of the boldest alerts: But, in order to convince Congress
you’re in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab as he A few years later, Lawrence D. to consider a law requiring a minimum-
flips the switch to animate the mon- Rosenblum, a professor of psychology noise standard, the N.F.B. needed data.
ster. Engineers in the Audi Sound Lab at the University of California, River- And in the nineties and early two-thou-
made the lower frequencies of the Audi side, read something about the danger sands, with so few hybrids and E.V.s
E-Tron GT Quattro’s alert by algorith- of quiet cars. He had done acoustic on the road, the number of accidents
mically mixing different tones produced research showing that the brain pays involving pedestrians, visually impaired
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 25
 specify what a car sounds like. How do
you put into regulatory legal language
that a car should sound like a car?”

any electrical appliances make

M sounds, although few are scored
by famous composers. My family’s
seven-piece kitchen ensemble, for ex-
ample—dishwasher, electric oven, mi-
crowave, refrigerator and freezer, elec-
tric kettle, and coffee maker—creates
a discordant symphony of simple beeps,
tones, and chimes of clashing frequen-
cies and rhythms throughout the day
to inform us when the machines have
begun or completed the particular tasks
they were designed for. An acoustic
ecosystem it’s not.
Electric vehicles offer a vast new
stage for sound designers, both inside
and outside the vehicles. As sensors,
computer vision, and cloud-based al-
gorithms take over more and more of
the driving, sound will become a user’s
primary interface with such machines.
“I’m really trying not to freak out about every little cataclysm.” If a car can drive, its user won’t need
to look up from her book or wake from
a nap unless there’s an audible alert.
• • Many newer cars, outfitted with semi-
autonomous features that assist a driver
or not, was statistically negligible. The low-up report in October, 2011, using in adjusting the speed or changing lanes,
N.F.B. did collect many anecdotal a larger sample size, found that hy- already make in-cabin sounds when
reports about close calls, and even ac- brids and E.V.s had a thirty-five per they perform these actions, mainly to
counts of minor injuries. “But anec- cent greater likelihood of accidents reassure the driver and any passengers
dotal evidence isn’t statistical engineer- with pedestrians, and a fifty per cent that the vehicle is executing a plan, and
ing evidence,” John Paré, the N.F.B.’s greater likelihood of accidents with not just randomly drifting. (In psycho-
executive director for advocacy and pol- cyclists. Most of these incidents oc- acoustic research, these are known as
icy, who served as the national coördi- curred not on the road but in parking “priming” sounds.) There are also more
nator of the campaign against quiet lots and driveways, when a driver was urgent collision-avoidance alerts, should
cars, told me. reversing or turning. a car’s cameras or sensors detect ob-
Without real-world data proving The Pedestrian Safety Enhancement jects close by.
that quiet cars could be dangerous, the Act, calling for a “sound or set of sounds Nicolas Misdariis is the head of the
National Highway Traffic Safety Ad- for all vehicles of the same make and Sound Perception and Design group
ministration, the federal agency charged model,” was passed in the last hours at the Institute for Research and Co-
with reducing deaths, injuries, and eco- of the 111th Congress, and President ordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM),
nomic losses on the nation’s roadways, Barack Obama signed it into law on in Paris, a world center of psychoacous-
could do nothing. The breakthrough January 4, 2011. The Act did not spec- tic research. Since 2008, his team has
came later in the decade, when the ify what those alerts should sound like. worked with the Renault Group, de-
N.H.T.S.A. investigated crash rates That question took six years for the signing sounds for the French auto-
for hybrids and E.V.s in incidents in- N.H.T.S.A. to resolve, and resulted in maker’s lineup of electric cars, both pro-
volving sighted pedestrians and cy- three hundred and seventy-two pages totypes and vehicles in production.
clists, and compared those with crash of mostly numerical acoustic rules and IRCAM’s office is next to the Pom-
rates for I.C.E. vehicles in similar in- parameters. What took so long? pidou Center, in Paris’s Fourth Ar-
cidents. The results, which were pub- “We thought that they had to sound rondissement, and as I walked there
lished in a 2009 report, based on lim- to some degree like cars—otherwise, one day in February to visit Misdariis
ited data from 2000 to 2007, showed the alerts won’t provide safety,” Paré I kept mostly to the streets, because the
that hybrids and E.V.s were twice as told me. “Society has already been narrow sidewalks were overflowing with
likely as I.C.E. vehicles to be involved trained to know what cars sound like.” pedestrians and electric-scooter riders.
in accidents with pedestrians. A fol- However, he added, “it’s really hard to I listened to the whine of diesel-fuelled
26 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
cars and the whokada-whokada of two- acoustics of a city. He envisions an urban tionally, when tuning a Cadillac, Moore
stroke mopeds behind me—engines soundscape modelled on birdsong in and his colleagues would try to make
that give European cities a different au- nature, in which, instead of competing the engine as quiet as possible, because
dible flavor from American urban en- to be heard, different sounds fit into an quiet signifies luxury to the classic Cad-
vironments—in order to know when over-all acoustic ecosystem. By analyz- illac buyer. In tuning a Corvette, Chev-
to get out of the way. The only close ing soundscapes around the world, Cera rolet’s “muscle car,” on the other hand,
calls I had were with the shareable told me, he has identified “these little the engineers want some of the bang-
e-bikes that Paris, like New York, has niches where you could put a little sound bang-bang of internal combustion to
embraced since the pandemic. E-bikes so that you could be present without come through, because that conveys
are not legally required to emit sounds being loud. Just a tone, not a melody.” power to the driver.
when moving—yet—although some The sounds he and the IRCAM team The engine’s sound isn’t the only
proactively do. have designed for Renault aim to thing that the engineers work on. Many
When the researchers first began complement those niches. He added, prospective buyers’ first experience of a
working with Renault, Misdariis told “If the soundscape is very chaotic— car or a truck is the CLICK ker-CHUNK
me, the collaborators struggled to find cars, phones, horns, radios—the best that the driver’s-side door makes when
a common language in which to talk way to be noticed is to be still.” they close it, followed by a faint har-
about acoustic design. “When a graphic IRCAM’s Renault sounds were, in- monic shiver given off by the vehicle’s
designer says to you, ‘This is a red tri- deed, surprisingly mellow, although per- metal skin. The door’s weight, latches,
angle,’ there is no different interpreta- haps less like birdsong than like a wash- and seals are carefully calibrated to cre-
tion possible,” he said. “But if you say, ing machine set to the delicates cycle. ate a psychoacoustic experience that
‘I would like a warm sound’—what is The Parisian soundscape will surely conveys comfort, safety, and manufac-
a warm sound? What is a round sound? benefit from them. But would anyone turing expertise.
What is a rough sound? A green sound? hear these élégantes French alerts in In designing electric versions of pop-
What is a smiling sound? We know New York, particularly over the bed- ular brands, U.S. automakers have to
what happy music is, but what is a two- lam and blare of all the gas-powered decide whether to make the E.V.s
second sound that is happy?” Misdariis vehicles in its traffic-clogged streets? mimic their gas-driven counterparts or
added, “It is the sound designer’s job whether, like Renault, to divert from
to translate high-level visual represen- n automobile powered by inter- the familiar sound. The Passenger
tations into sound parameters—this is
a very tricky point of our discipline.”
A nal combustion makes a racket.
The induction of air, its compression
Safety Enhancement Act directives
allow automakers to craft their own
The Renault team eventually developed inside the piston sleeves, the explosion branded alerts, so long as they meet
tools for visually sketching sounds, fre- of the vaporized gasoline, and the ex- certain specifications.
quencies, and modulations. “We needed pulsion of CO2 exhaust (“suck, squeeze, Moore’s first E.V. project was the
these tools to create efficient sound de- bang, and blow,” in car talk) produce 2012 Chevy Volt, which emitted a pe-
sign,” he said. loud, low-frequency reports, rumbles, destrian alert years before the law re-
The IRCAM researchers also investi- and vibrations. quired one—a vacuum-cleaner-like
gated fundamental issues such as whether At General Motors, engineers in the hum that increased in frequency as the
E.V. sounds should be sonic metaphors Noise and Vibration Center are respon- car sped up. “I have new colors to paint
for the noise of internal combustion, sible for fine-tuning that din. Douglas with,” Moore said. “Instead of a pal-
similar to a cell phone’s synthetic bell ette of internal-combustion sounds,
or the reassuring paper-crumpling that I have a palette of AVAS sounds. But
indicates you’ve discarded a document it’s the same approach. Now, instead
on your MacBook—a form of acoustic of generating them with the physical
design known as skeuomorphism. An- components of the car, which has its
other option was to use “ear-cons”—au- pros and cons, we’re generating them
dible symbols, such as the abstract clicks electronically.”
a Geiger counter makes, which every- Moore is also the longtime chair of
one recognizes as the sign of radioac- a group within the Society of Auto-
tivity. Misdariis’s team developed and motive Engineers called the Light Ve-
tested options in both categories. They Moore, a senior expert in exterior noise hicle Exterior Sound Level Standards
discovered, he said, that “metaphors are at G.M., started working at the com- Committee, which helps develop tests
easy to understand but hard to remem- pany in 1984, when he was still an un- that regulators use to measure safety
ber, whereas symbols are harder to un- dergraduate at Michigan State. He has on the road in the U.S. His group led
derstand but easier to imprint.” spent all but eight years of his career the investigation into developing min-
The IRCAM team worked with An- with G.M., where his job, and that of imum-sound standards for E.V.s and
drea Cera, an Italian music producer his Noise and Vibration colleagues, has hybrids, and establishing parameters to
and composer. Cera said that he views been to silence, dampen, and modulate govern the decibel level, pitch, and mor-
the electrification of mobility as a chance the sounds made by internal combus- phology of the warning signals. Moore
to fundamentally rethink the chaotic tion, depending on the brand. Tradi- once came to the N.F.B. headquarters
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 27
and tried navigating in traffic when dicates the volume of air pressure that imal. How would the blind tell the street
blindfolded. His N.F.B. instructor was the sound waves displace, and they can from the sidewalk if electric cars spoke
impressed that the engineer could iden- also adjust the sound’s pitch, or fre- or barked?
tify a 2005 Chevrolet Camaro and a quency. Both decibel level and pitch de-
2009 Cadillac Escalade by their dis- termine the intrusiveness of that sound. y permitting automakers the lat-
tinctive engine sounds.
Moore explained the S.A.E.’s rela-
The danger is that you create a sound
that cries wolf, as it were: it works at
B itude to brand their alerts, the
N.H.T.S.A. rules have created a new
tionship with federal highway-safety first, but after a while people tune it out, design form: acoustic automobile styl-
regulators by saying, “We figure out so you have to pump up the volume. ing. Pedestrians and cyclists won’t just
how to measure things. N.H.T.S.A. Although humans are capable of hear the vehicle coming; they’ll know
says how much.” I asked Moore why hearing frequencies between twenty what kind of car it is. For acoustic de-
the regulations don’t require that E.V.s and twenty thousand hertz, we hear in signers, both the pedestrian alerts of
more closely resemble I.C.E. vehicles, “octave bands,” in which the highest E.V.s and their rich in-cabin menus of
since, as the N.F.B.’s John Paré had frequency is double the lowest one. (In sonic information represent the dawn
noted to me, we’re already used to those a musical C octave, the high C is twice of a new age. “I feel fortunate that I get
noises. Moore replied, “The purpose of the frequency of the low C.) The reg- to work on features that will influence
this sound is to provide information ulations specify that AVAS sounds must the way the world will sound,” Jigar Ka-
about what the vehicle is doing. And cover four separate, nonadjacent octave padia, the creative-sound director for
there’s more than one way to provide bands. A so-called broadband sound of General Motors, told me.
that.” He paused. “Yes, we’ve learned this type, such as the staticky squawk Kapadia, who studied electronics
internal-combustion sounds over a hun- that Amazon delivery vans recently and telecommunications engineering at
dred years,” he continued. “But before began making when reversing, is less Mumbai University and has a master’s
cars were around we knew that the clip- piercing, more robust, and easier for the in music technology from N.Y.U., col-
clop of horses meant the wagon was hearer to locate directionally than an laborates with Moore and others at
coming. So, there’s nothing inherent in alert that occupies a narrow frequency G.M.’s sound lab in Milford, Michigan.
those engine sounds.” range, such as the back-up beepers on For each sound, the team comes up with
A well-designed alert reaches the Con Ed trucks. Not incidentally, the about two hundred variations and then
people who need to hear it, without an- nonadjacent-octave-band rule precludes tests them on their colleagues in the jury
noying those who don’t. To thread this using a musical phrase as an alert—the room, until they have arrived at a few
sonic needle, engineers can vary a par- pitch-shifting would sound awful—as finalists they can road test on vehicles.
ticular sound’s decibel level, which in- well as any vocal alerts, human or an- Kapadia likens an alert-system sound
to a perfume. “Just like a perfume, it un-
folds,” he told me. “The alert has a base
note, a middle note, and a top note.” He
added, “These layers are amalgamated
together to bring out a cohesive organic
sound, or a futuristic sound, based on
what kind of brand we are focussing on.”
He noted that the pedestrian alert on
the 2023 Cadillac Lyriq, the first electric
version of G.M.’s long-standing luxury
car, was made with a didgeridoo, an an-
cient Australian wind instrument that
is based on the musical interval known
as a perfect fifth. However, for G.M.’s
nine-thousand-pound electric Hum-
mer, which recently went on sale, Ka-
padia said, “we wanted a more distorted
sound.” He paused, and then added, “A
bold Hummer sound.” The Hummer’s
forward-motion alert made me think of
church, when the organist launches into
the next hymn. The back-up sound is
something like its dystopian twin.
At the Ford Motor Company, in order
to find out what car buyers thought
electric vehicles should sound like, en-
gineers and consultants conducted “cus-
“But I’m one of the cool ones!” tomer clinics” and launched a Facebook
campaign. Judging from the number of ing heavy objects: metals, stone, things which was released in December, 2020,
responses, Ford fans were keen to make that have weight. You want something as part of a software update, allows Tesla
their opinions known. My own survey, with low-end distortion that hits you drivers, according to its promotional lit-
largely based on reading comments in the chest. We also worked with more erature, to “delight pedestrians with a
under YouTube videos of various branded organic elements, like wind and water variety of sounds from your vehicle’s
E.V. sounds, is that most people think sounds, and clay and wood. We really external speaker,” including goat bleats,
that E.V.s should not resemble I.C.E. leaned on a lot of the organic material ice-cream-truck music, applause, and
cars. Higher frequencies are thought to for the in-car alerts.” flatulence. In early 2022, the N.H.T.S.A.
signify clean energy and software-driven I asked Moore about the possibility found the Boombox feature noncom-
intelligence; E.V.s ought to whoosh and that, by allowing for a unique identity pliant with its rules. Musk called regu-
zoom like the flying personal vehicles for each of the sixty major lators the “fun police,” but
of science-fiction films such as “The auto brands in the world, Tesla nonetheless issued a
Fifth Element,” “Gattaca,” “Blade Run- we were setting ourselves firmware update that pro-
ner,” and, of course, “Star Wars.” In many up for a sonic catastrophe— hibits the use of Boombox
cases, in fact, Foley artists created those a cacophony of compet- when driving, although
futuristic vehicles’ sound effects from ing thrums and whirs and hackers will probably find
recorded I.C.E. noise. In Ridley Scott’s chimes and tones. If every a way around it. Teslas can
“Blade Runner 2049,” the twist is that car is emitting a unique still fart when parked.
Ryan Gosling’s flying vehicle sounds branded alert as it passes Another possibility is
like a broken-down I.C.E. jalopy. under my bedroom win- that New York City is just
Ford’s Brian Schabel, a sound engi- dow, aren’t my novelty de- too loud for the relatively
neer who, like Moore at G.M., has spent tectors going to go haywire? civilized decibel levels
his career in Noise and Vibration, was I described my street to Moore, noting established for the alert systems by
part of the group that worked on the that there is a traffic light about twenty N.H.T.S.A. regulations. Douglas Moore
Mustang Mach E, Ford’s sporty but yards away, where there are often six or told me that “the levels are set to where
practical electric S.U.V. “We knew we eight cars waiting. Once the cars are all a normal person would be able to hear
wanted to keep some aspect of that low- E.V.s, will I need to move to an apart- it in a normal situation. It is not ex-
frequency modulation and link it to the ment at the top of the nearby ninety- pected to be heard in all places”—such
past,” he told me. “And then we looked three-story Brooklyn Tower just to get as construction zones—“at all times.
at everything out there. Machinery— some sleep? Otherwise, you’re in the death spiral of
what do people associate powerful elec- Moore replied, “I think with inten- just cranking the levels up.”
tric motors with? Formula E vehicles tional-design thinking we can actually, But a death spiral could be what we
are very high-pitched, raw-sounding. maybe, make the world quieter. That’s get. Because, after all, what’s the point
How can we blend those two pieces to- my goal.” However, he added, “we could of an alert if you can’t hear it? I bor-
gether? We didn’t want something that wake up in five years with eighty per cent rowed a Mach E not long ago, and took
was too ‘Batman’ or ‘Blade Runner.’ ” E.V.s, and it’s a cacophony of sound and it for a spin around Brooklyn with a col-
Mach E’s forward sound put me in mind dissonance if these cars are all singing league who was planning to record the
of a hovering dragonfly. The back-up different tunes, in different key signa- car in motion. He jumped out on Kent
sound is like a broadband cricket. tures and pitches.” Moore speculated that Street, in Williamsburg, and stood with
In creating the company’s new pal- cities might one day have to designate a his microphone as I drove past, but the
ette, Ford collaborated with Listen, an particular key for all the alerts made in Mach E’s forward-motion alert barely
audio-branding firm based in Brook- their streets. (I nominate F-sharp major, registered. As a second-story sleeper, I
lyn. One member of the Listen agency, the key of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’s “Em- was reassured. As a cyclist, not so much.
Connor Moore (no relation to Doug- pire State of Mind.”) On second thought,
las), is the founder of CMoore Sound,
and has worked with Google on Fire-
Moore said, “maybe, you know, that would
potentially drive people crazy.” J ust before six the other morning,
while I was still asleep, my hearing
fly, its self-driving-car project, as well Then there is the question of how picked up a novel sound coming toward
as with Tesla, Lucid, Uber, and other customizable a vehicle’s alert system me: a thud-thUD-THUD, reverberat-
tech companies. An electronic musi- should be. In 2017, automakers peti- ing off the façade of the apartment build-
cian, Moore explained that he uses the tioned the N.H.T.S.A. to be allowed to ing across the street, getting louder as
same process and production tools for offer drivers a range of options that they it came closer.
cars that he relies on to make music, could select from. The agency, after a Was it an E.V. alert? I woke up just
mixing synthetic tracks with recordings public-review period, denied the request long enough to grasp that it was some-
of physical objects and nature sounds. for safety reasons, but the issue could one bouncing a ball down the mid-
“With the F-150 Lightning,” Moore come up again. If Boombox, a software dle of the street. After passing under
said, discussing the electric model of feature in Teslas, is any indication of my window, the THUD-THud-thud
Ford’s immensely popular pickup, “you’re what’s on the way, it will be difficult to faded until the street was quiet again.
thinking about the size and the scale of limit the sounds that drivers play through At 6:45 a.m., the first of the garbage
the car. So some of that means record- E.V.s’ external speakers. Boombox, trucks came by. 
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 29
 AMERICAN CHRONICLES

THE HARD SELL

A door-to-door salesman’s quest to rebrand his profession.
BY TAD FRIEND

or eight minutes, Sam Taggart a purchase. Encyclopedia salesmen once In his second year selling alarms, he

F had them all hooked. Relaxed

and sincere, he roamed the stage
at the Salt Palace Convention Center,
practiced an “ascending close” that re-
quired summoning forty-two yeses—
but even that Joycean crescendo of ac-
said, “I just was getting beat up.” He
was “bageling”—recording no sales.
Then he met “this old guy named Phil,”
selling fifteen hundred door-to-door quiescence didn’t guarantee a sale. in Canadian, Texas, a town in the Pan-
salesmen on selling. It was a crisp Jan- “Direct-to-home is the hardest job in handle. “Do you guys know that cus-
uary morning at the fifth D2DCon, an the world, outside of being in the mil- tomer that’s, like, ‘I’m not buyin’ any-
annual conference in Salt Lake City itary,” Vess Pearson, the C.E.O. of Ap- thing, but I’m bored and lonely, live by
that’s the centerpiece of Taggart’s cam- tive Environmental, which dispatches myself, and I just want to talk to some-
paign to elevate a profession reviled by some seventy per cent of the knockers body’?” There were chuckles. “I’m, like,
nearly everyone. You can hang up on a in pest control, told me. “You’re work- ‘Sir, Phil, you need this’ ”—a medical
telemarketer, but not on the insistent ing for free every day until you make a pendant, bundled with a fire alarm and
young man who won’t leave your door- sale. The job is repetitive and mundane. door sensors for just fifty bucks a month.
step until you buy some goddam thing— And you get rejected over and over and Phil scoffed, saying that his gun was all
pest control, an alarm system, solar over—you’ll probably only sell two out he needed: “ ‘We don’t even lock our
panels, a new roof, magazines, scented of a hundred knocks.” doors.’ And I’m, like, ‘Sir, Phil, you need
candles, paintless autobody dent repair, Selling is instinctual to Taggart. At this! If you were to fall, and you were
or perhaps tri-tip steaks from a deliv- thirty-two, he has talked his way out of to be by yourself, you could potentially
ery van that, he swears, just broke down dozens of speeding tickets. When he die.’” Taggart gazed imploringly into
in front of your house. knocks at a Hispanic family’s door, he’ll the dark, imbuing the salesmen with
The best door-to-door salesmen can blurt a halting phrase in Spanish: “Estoy his concern, just as he had with Phil.
earn more than a million dollars a year, aprendiendo, ah . . . sorry!” Then he’ll “Somehow, with my mind wizardry,”
but it’s a punishing way of life. Unlike ask if it’s O.K. to practice the language he went on, “I sell the guy.” A year later,
the salesman who hawks minivans or as he goes into his spiel, miraculously back in Canadian, he knocked on a
enterprise software, the door knocker achieve fluency, and walk off with a sale. woman’s door: “I’m, like, ‘Hi, I’m Sam,
can’t network at the Rotary Club, make Gracias, mis nuevos amigos! He knows I’m with Vivint, I’ll be super-quick.’
a catchy commercial, or research his exactly how to inveigle customers into And she’s, like, ‘Wait—Sam? The alarm
prospect’s needs. He faces an unknown buying a better way of life. “Everything guy?’ ” Starting to cry, the woman said,
and often hostile customer with only is selling,” he told me. “You find the “Last year, you set up my dad, and he
his own brain for backup. person’s problem—‘My skin isn’t good’ fell, and he pressed that medical pen-
“Is selling good?” Taggart asked, from or ‘I got broken into’ or ‘I don’t believe dant, and it saved his life.” The woman
the stage. He wore a Beckett & Robb in anything’—and you solve it through led Taggart up the street to her father’s
suit, and his auburn hair was spiked your product.” house, and “immediately Phil breaks
with American Crew gel. “Say yes!” Taggart’s audience was largely bearded down in tears.”
“Yes!” everyone yelled. young men with fade haircuts wearing “I changed my mentality about sell-
“Is getting sold good? Say yes!” jeans, Henley T-shirts, expensive sneak- ing that day,” Taggart said. “That was
“Yes!” ers, and watches that tracked their steps. the year I finished No. 1” in sales at
Salesmen are particularly suscepti- Fit, focussed, and wired on energy drinks, Vivint. “I said, ‘I’m going to sell every-
ble to the American impulse to turn they whooped when a speaker’s exhor- one, because selling is amazing, and I
every art into a science. Taggart’s com- tation resonated—“There’s gold behind believe in what I sell. Because I’m not
pany, the D2D Experts, has an online that wall of fear!”—then inscribed the God, I don’t know who’s going to have
“university” of hundreds of videos that new mantra in their bullet journals. a fall, a fire, a break-in,’” he went on.
show sales reps exactly what to say and When someone on their team won a “ ‘So, therefore, every single person I
how to say it. One trusty method is the Golden Door, a trophy for élite levels talk to I need to change and bless their
“yes train,” an idea formalized in the of annual sales, they roared and dapped. life with what I’m pitching.’ Does that
eighteen-eighties by John H. Patterson, But Taggart wanted to discuss make sense? Say yes!”
who founded National Cash Register. failure. He’s been swung at in Cabot, “Yes!”
Patterson believed questions that elicit Arkansas; arrested in Dimmitt, Texas; Taggart’s intensity kept building.
a “yes” prime the customer to agree to called scum in more than forty states. “I want you guys to stand up if you
30 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
Every salesman has an arsenal of ploys to gain an advantage. Sam Taggart likes to rely on “the Grandson Effect.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID WILLIAMS THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 31
believe in what you’re selling!” Stand- terly salesman—one who exploits every exactly why you do need it!” “It’s a jab
ing, cheering. “On the count of three, frailty in the human psyche—and still to the nose that leaves them stunned,”
you’re going to pound your chest and bring light to dark places. “Sam is the he told me.
say, ‘I’m the greatest salesman in the face of door-to-door,” Graham Wood, He concluded by explaining that
world!’ One, two, three!” the founder of Fluent Home, which sells joining the Circle normally costs about
alarm systems and solar panels, told me. thirty-five thousand dollars, but that
alt Lake is the home of modern door- “He has such a strong message of ‘Do this year you could buy in for just fif-
S to-door, in large part because it’s the
home of the Church of Jesus Christ of
it proper, do it clean.’ Everyone else’s
message is ‘Money, money, money.’ ”
teen thousand (plus monthly payments
that would more than double the cost).
Latter-day Saints. Bryce Roberts, a local Onstage at D2DCon, Taggart began Meet me at the back of the hall, he
venture capitalist, told me, “You’ve got pitching Xperts Circle Mastermind, his cried: “I’d love to help you make more
seventy thousand kids going out every élite program for door-to-door C.E.O.s money than you have ever freakin’ made!”
year for their two-year missions and who meet regularly to learn how to im- Taggart hustled offstage to his
getting trained on knocking doors, deal- prove their performance and inspire their booth—but only five people followed
ing with rejection, and selling a very teams. After plugging the Circle’s ben- to sign up. “I didn’t prepare the sub-
difficult product—Jesus.” As a result, efits, he employed a “pullback”—a door- conscious mind-control tricks well
he said, the Salt Lake area has become to-door staple, based on the conviction enough,” he lamented afterward. He
“the Silicon Valley of direct sales and that customers want a product more if watched dejectedly as his wayward flock
multilevel marketing”—sometimes they think they might be denied it. Your streamed past. He’d tried to sell them
known as pyramid schemes. house may not qualify for solar panels— a better version of themselves, but they
Every May, the Salt Lake area’s “sum- my engineers will have to check. Fear of weren’t buying.
mer bros” disperse across the country. loss drives more sales than hope for gain.
Summer is the time of college vacation, Taggart’s pullback was bold: I can wo hundred years ago, the peddler
of long daylight hours for knocking,
and of rampageous insects that need
teach you to be killer salesmen—but are
you sure you want that? Last year, he
T James Guild discovered that peo-
ple would happily pay a quarter for scis-
killing. The salesmen often view their confided, he got divorced. “Those that sors that they’d scorn if they cost twelve
customers as prey, too, and speak the are closest to me would say, ‘Sam found cents. The value of the scissors derived
language of guns and ammo and mak- himself in 2021.’” There were shouts of from how they were positioned. In this
ing resistance futile—the language of “We love you!” He continued raggedly, view, without salesmen to point out fea-
locker rooms and poker tables and com- “I lost my wife—but I found love. I lost tures and build value, customers would
edy clubs. “Most salespeople actually my house—but I found a home. . . . I never buy anything except food and a
believe that what they are doing is wrong lost time with my kids—but I found change of clothes. Belief that the huck-
and unethical,” the sales guru Grant fatherhood.” He went on, “But the big- ster was the linchpin of capitalism was
Cardone observes in his book “Sell or gest thing I noticed is that I had lost particularly strong in the nineteenth
Be Sold,” “and because they believe that myself chasing the wrong shit. Because, century. When a smiling chap with a
what they are doing is a bad thing they for me, none of the money, the fun, the sample case rattled up in his wagon to
will fail at it.” The industry’s conflicted offer you Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegeta-
self-image is embodied by Vivint Smart ble Compound or Ulysses S. Grant’s
Home, the company that Taggart sold memoirs, you were buying progress. At
for in Texas. Vivint has its name bla- the World’s Salesmanship Congress in
zoned across Salt Lake’s largest indoor 1916, President Woodrow Wilson urged
arena—and for the past eleven years the congregants to “go out and sell goods
has also sat atop the Better Business that will make the world more com-
Bureau’s list of most-complained-about fortable and more happy, and convert
companies in the region. them to the principles of America.”
Taggart was raised in the L.D.S. With the advent of mass advertis-
Church. At nineteen, he flew to Argen- flash, the suits, matters anymore.” He ing, businesses had easier ways to sell
tina for his mission and in the first six stared into the darkness: “Last year, I their goods, and observers predicted
weeks converted an extraordinary six- woke up to my internal poverty.” that door-to-door was doomed—a pre-
teen Argentineans. But after he started His pitch had reversed field—was diction that recurred with the rise of
on the doors he gradually realized that being the greatest salesman in the world magazines, telephones, radios, and tele-
his new trade facilitated the breaking of a path to plenitude or to crushing in- visions. These death notices were al-
nearly every commandment. “Satan’s sufficiency? But selling is not an inher- ways premature, until the nineteen-
pathway to gain hold of a person is hook- ently rational process. One of Taggart’s eighties and nineties, when they finally
ers, blow, money, and fame,”Taggart told favorite whammies is the “Instant Re- weren’t. Once Internet shopping arrived,
me. “And door-to-door guys are on the verse Close.” When the customer raises customers had instant access to prod-
road, alone, having success really young, a powerful objection—“We don’t need uct specs and competitive pricing; only
so they’re super-vulnerable.” His mis- home security, because we’re moving a rube buys a Chevy Silverado without
sion is to prove that you can be a mas- out next month”—he replies, “That’s Googling the dealer’s cost. The sales
32 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
expert Daniel Pink calls this “informa-
tion parity,” which has replaced “infor-
mation asymmetry,” where the sales-
man knew a lot more than the customer.
The past two decades, however, have
witnessed a resurgence in door-to-door.
Tom Karren, the founder of Vantage
Marketing, which has more than a thou-
sand reps selling pest control, said,
“Twenty-two years ago, I was told after
my first summer on the doors—by my
family, my professors, my mentors—
that door-to-door was a dying indus-
try. Now it’s at least fifty times bigger.”
Industry leaders estimate that between
fifty and a hundred thousand knockers
go out every summer. The boom was
fuelled in part by the advent of the na-
tional “Do Not Call” list, in 2003, which
dampened phone solicitation, and in
part by the very information glut that
helped cripple door-to-door in the first “I find it relaxes me to chuck these stress balls
place. To deter customers from doing at Dave’s head every now and then.”
research—to reconstruct the gloriously
profitable world of information asym-
metry—companies need to catch them
• •
unawares. Who among us, when we
answer the door, has any inkling of the ten kids. I couldn’t take that chance.” sternly. You steamroll the gatekeeper to
actual cost of a treatment for ants, Pest control is the quickest, easiest get to the decision-maker.
roaches, and mice in a three-thousand- sale—“eight to ten minutes, door to A middle-aged woman appeared,
square-foot house? Shopping online is done”—and salesmen can make seven wearing a tartan shirt. “I like the fes-
about finding the best price; shopping hundred dollars on a one-year plan. An tive jammy top!” Taggart said, and she
on your doorstep is about being bowled alarm contract, which takes about an beamed. A friendly icebreaker makes
over by someone with all the answers. hour to complete, can yield eight hun- the customer feel seen, and buys an-
Because a sale is a successful trans- dred. Solar, a two-visit sale that takes other ten seconds in which the sales-
fer of enthusiasm to the customer, the some ninety minutes all told, is the man can explain, with calibrated can-
salesman is ultimately his own leading most lucrative commodity, and the main dor,“I’m just here about the net-metering
product. But even someone who can sell driver of the boom in door-to-door. On program” (solar), or “I’m with the new
anything needs to decide what to sell. a six-kilowatt system, a salesman can crime-prevention program” (alarms),
Kenny Brooks may be the country’s earn three thousand dollars. A mid- or “We’re the public adjusters inspect-
most recognizable door-to-door sales- dling solar salesman can make two hun- ing the damage after the big hailstorm”
man, famous online for a persona that dred thousand a year, and a great one (roofing).
he described to me as “the funny sales- far more. You just have to get them to Many top salesmen employ a matter-
man from inner-city Detroit who’s try- hear you out. of-fact “contractor’s voice” to establish
ing to reach my goals.” A video of him that they have other places to be, and
selling Advanage, a wonder cleaner, has am Taggart rapped on the door of they avoid uptalk, which can sound
been viewed more than a hundred mil-
lion times. Loose-limbed and quick-wit-
S a house in the Salt Lake City sub-
urbs, then stepped off the porch. To re-
nervous. But Taggart’s tone was uptalk-
adjacent, and his smile was warm. He
ted, Brooks once sold a hundred and assure the customer that you’re not a told me, “I call my style ‘the Grandson
twelve bottles of Advanage in a day. threat, you angle your body to appear Effect.’ Innocent little soft pretty boy.
“But I only made six thousand dollars— smaller and gaze at your iPad. Then My perfect customer is the tender mom,
and a lot of that was from bets with you look up and smile—but not before and my greatest strength is intentional
other salesmen,” he said. “In solar, guys you catch the customer’s eye, because stupidity.”
who sell three deals in a day can make that looks creepy. At the door, he said, “You’ve prob-
twenty thousand!” However, he acknowl- A man answered the door, and Tag- ably had a bunch of solar people come
edged, “In solar, you’ve got to learn the gart asked if he was the homeowner. by, right?” He was anticipating the wom-
product, the customer, the financing, “No, she is,” the man said, gesturing be- an’s objection—a time-honored tech-
and all about credit, so you can go three hind him. nique that he calls “8 Mile,” for the film
months without selling anyone. I’ve got “Could you get her?” Taggart said in which Eminem wins a rap contest
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 33
by raising his weaknesses before his op- tricity comes from burning coal. So they to make the salesman go. When I can-
ponent can. have these big smokestacks, and it’s two vassed with Taggart, I often felt anx-
“Oh, sure!” thousand fricking twenty-two! If there’s ious: They really want us to leave! But
“Well, what we’re doing is a little dif- a cheaper and more efficient way to he interpreted every objection as an ap-
ferent. I’m not here to sell you anything.” harness the sun, don’t you think that’d peal for further information. He heard
What the customer thinks is hap- be better?” “I can’t afford it” as “Show me how I
pening on the doors is often the oppo- “Oh, sure!” can afford it,” and “I already have a gun
site of what’s actually happening. She “So we’re here today because there’s and a mean dog” as “What else do I
may feel shielded by her “No Soliciting” a big push to get panels on roofs through need to fully protect my family?”
sign, but salespeople see it as an invita- the new program.” A customer’s questions are always
tion: the resident feels vulnerable to being She frowned. “My husband won’t do taken as a sign of interest. A salesman’s
sold. Often, the salesman’s task is to per- it, because we’re faced the wrong way.” questions, on the other hand, bait you
suade the customer that she has an ur- The ideal house has a rear roof that into selling yourself: Would you use your
gent need that she isn’t aware of: Your faces south: more sun, no panels visi- alarm system more when you’re away and
situation is much worse than you thought. ble to passersby. Salesmen call such the house is empty, or at night when you’re
Roofers, Taggart’s videos suggest, should houses “solar boners.” sleeping and your family is vulnerable?
stress “the invisible damage that’s actu- “Here’s the thing,” Taggart said. These are “tie-downs”: questions whose
ally a silent killer.” Pest-control sales He leaned against the doorway, and answers leave you trammelled. Even an
trade on such hard-to-verify anxieties the woman leaned against its opposite outright “No!” is a buying sign. Sales-
as mud daubers in the eaves “that push side—a signal that she felt more com- men believe that customers need the
up inside that fascia.” fortable. “What’s your name?” freedom to say no as many as six or
Taggart began to evoke the cost of “Kay.” seven times; rejection is a necessary stop
doing nothing. “It’s, like, where in life “Every kiss begins with ‘K’!” They on the road to submission.
do we say, ‘Yay, let’s pay more than we both laughed. “So, actually, your house Taggart now told Kay, “We do solar
have to, to go with the monopoly where is perfect for it!” He hadn’t even glanced so you make money on Day One. Be-
we’re locked in forever, right?’ ” The at her roof. “And you’re already saying cause you’d rather pay money into
woman nodded.“And do you know where yes to ‘I want power on my house,’ right?” your account than to Rocky Moun-
we get most of our power in Utah from?” “Right! But my husband made his tain Power, right? Does that make
“Electricity?” decision. I’m sorry!” sense?” That question is the keystone
“Exactly, right,” Taggart said, mo- Usually, once the customer realizes of Taggart’s “grandson” pitch; he asks
seying onto her porch. “And the elec- she’s being pitched, she’ll say anything it with a worried frown, as if English,
too, were a language he was just be-
ginning to explore.
“Why, yes!”
Taggart looked relieved. “My fa-
vorite people to set up are accountants
and financial planners, because they
see right away that it makes sense—
you make money, you own your own
power, and you stick it to the power
company, O.K.?” He nodded enthu-
siastically, so Kay did, too. In his book
“ABC’s of Closing,” from 2017, Tag-
gart writes that you “kind of want them
to feel like an idiot for not buying,”
because smart people “had those same
concerns and conducted research, but
still moved ahead.” He bent to his
iPad: “So what was your husband’s
name?” Having made a return appoint-
ment to see Kay when her husband
was home, Taggart high-fived her, a
form of concurrence that, he believes,
registers “in the unwritten book of
awesomeness—we high-fived on that,
you can’t back out now!”
As he turned away, animation drained
from his face. “Kay is a classic Mormon
mom,” he told me. “I don’t like knock-
ing in Utah. They’re super-nice, but money! Who does that?’” A lot of peo- dollars—enough to persuade him to drop
they’ll talk for an hour and not buy, be- ple, it turns out, including Zinck, who out of school. He was newly married,
cause they’re also super-cheap.” began selling pest control. Prosperity is and he and his wife, Katie, soon had three
lauded dozens of times in the Book of daughters. He shifted to solar and found
he renowned salesman Zig Ziglar Mormon, so knocking for commissions increasingly lucrative managerial posi-
T wrote that Jesus Christ “was the
greatest Salesman and the greatest
can feel almost sacerdotal. “I actually
hate knocking doors,” Zinck said, “but
tions. A millionaire by twenty-five, he
began investing in real estate and crypto—
Teacher who ever lived.” But even pros- I’m obsessed with the financial freedom standard moves for salesmen, when
elytizers for eternal life need to keep it provides.” She is one of just a hand- they’re not putting it all into “pay zero
body and soul together. Methodist ful of people who’ve won Golden Doors tax” schemes—but he wasn’t happy. Tag-
preachers used to support themselves in two product categories. gart said that there was an imbalance of
by selling books as they rode their Sam Taggart’s father, Paul, was an power in the couple’s marital arguments:
circuits, and the Gideons, famed for entrepreneur who once sold Kirby vac- “A normal human being would feel like,
placing Bibles in hotel rooms, were orig- uums door-to-door and later helped ‘I can’t beat Sam, I’m always getting sold.’
inally travelling salesmen from Wis- launch Ogio bags and a home derm- I was winning in business, winning in
consin. In “Birth of a Salesman,” an il- abrasion unit. In 2014, he began serv- life, but my marriage sucked. God was
luminating history of the field, Walter ing as a mission president. He told me, telling me to get divorced for a long time.”
Friedman writes, “The connection be- “We’d train these eighteen- to twenty- His older sister Abi Ayres told me,
tween selling and evangelism was par- year-old men how to knock, to stand “I look at Sam and I think, You’ve never
ticularly clear in sales of life insurance, six feet back from the door, and then been poor, you’re super good at every-
a business with antecedents in church- to say, ‘Hey, listen, we know you’re busy, thing, you’re charming, you’ve got the
operated societies that pooled money but we’ve got a quick question for you.’ perfect body. But the one thing that
for the indigent”—and a business pred- You hold up the Book of Mormon and was always so hard for him was mar-
icated on the fear of loss. say, ‘We noticed the bikes. Do you have riage. He was starving for attention and
When Joseph Smith, who’d once kids? Wow, sounds like you’re a really love, but it was also really hard for him
made his living searching for buried good mother/father.’ Then, ‘You ever to get close to people. On Christmas
treasure, founded the Mormon church, wondered where you’d be with your kids Eve at the Taggarts’, Sam would show
in 1830, one of its core missions was to in a thousand years?’” He leaned in: “If up an hour late, talk about his business,
spread the Gospel. The church expected I were to promise you that there is a then leave early. In the industry, Sam
the world to end within a few years, so life after death where you could be with was a god, but his family was, like, ‘How
at first the pitch was wild-eyed: convert your family, would you be interested?” do we take you seriously?’ ”
or perish! As decades passed and the When Paul and his wife, Jane, had Taggart grew increasingly dismayed
Apocalypse receded, missionaries began Sam, their fourth child, in 1990, they by his industry’s gold-rush morality. He
to rely on secular sales techniques. In felt certain that he was destined for a told me that, in 2016, his solar company
1936, a Mormon salesman named Earl special purpose. Jane told me, “Every- owed him two hundred and fifty thou-
W. Harmer published a guide for mis- thing came very easy to Sam.” Grow- sand dollars. When he complained, he
sionaries that included exercises to over- ing up in Park City, however, he pre- got fired, so he took seventy-five sales-
come “heavy jaw,” warnings against body ferred playing his guitar in his room to men with him to another firm. In 2017,
odor, and a form to grade themselves studying. “Avoidance was my emotional on a three-day fasting-and-meditation
in seventy-seven categories, from mirth- home,” he said. “My mom was always, retreat in the Utah desert, he had a vi-
fulness to intellectual continuity. Harmer like, ‘Don’t be sad, see the rainbow in sion of himself speaking onstage before
wanted to arm his emissaries with “all everything,’ and that’s become the cus- thousands of people. He decided that
the best methods of commercial sales- tomer-service, people-pleasing part of God was sending him a message “to
manship in addition to that power which me that can suffocate everything else.” up-level door-to-door.” He quit his
you have that no ordinary salesmen pos- At eleven, Taggart sold coupon books six-hundred-thousand-dollar job and
sess: THE POWER AND PRIESTHOOD door-to-door for businesses including began organizing his first convention.
OF ALMIGHTY GOD!” a local bowling alley and the Utah Jazz; Ayres, who ran four conventions for her
In 2004, the Church adopted a more at fourteen, he started a business sten- brother, said, “D2DCon was Sam’s way
improvisatory approach, which included cilling curbs with property owners’ ad- of saying, ‘I want everybody in this in-
outreach to lapsed members and, even- dresses. “I brought six guys, and I’d di- dustry to be taken seriously.’” She added,
tually, social-media campaigns. But sav- vide out territories,” he said. “I gave “But it’s mostly bros who care only about
ing strangers was still the main goal. them the objections script, and it was their bodies and their sales numbers.
Suli Zinck, who grew up on welfare, the same objections you get now for a It’s such a vain, sad industry.”
converted more than a hundred people seventy-thousand-dollar solar deal: ‘I
during her mission. When it ended, in don’t have any money,’ ‘I need to talk wo days after D2DCon, a hun-
2008, she told me, she was recruited by
Church members at alarm and pest-con-
to my husband,’ ‘Maybe later.’ ”
At Utah Valley University, he spent
T dred or so knockers gathered at a
cabin in Heber City, an hour southeast
trol companies: “I said, ‘No! I knocked summers selling alarms, and, in 2013, he of Salt Lake. Their hosts were Danny
for Christ—I’m not going to knock for made five hundred and fifty thousand Pessy and Taylor McCarthy, topflight
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 35
salesmen in their thirties, who recently
launched a curriculum called Knock-
star University. Their program is closely AN ORDINARY MORNING
based on Taggart’s D2D University.
“Sam paved the path, and now we’re We left for the park a little later than usual,
crushing it with a very similar setup,” My old father and I, though
Pessy told me. We knew the war was on us. Blood hunger
One of Pessy and McCarthy’s mes- Has an endless stomach. I wanted to keep
sages was that door-to-door burns you The morning from its mouth. He
out fast, so become a manager and re- Needed his walk to soften his joints.
cruit reps, because you get a percent- And we had a daily appointment with the birds.
age of their commissions. The pair ad-
dressed such topics as wealth, life style, New green was peeking from the winter earth.
and family, and then McCarthy softly The birds who had not scattered to the forests after
added a last category: love. McCarthy The first detonations kept to their early-spring
is best known for tactical brilliance Rituals. Like us, they were beginning to sing
and for an insistent politeness that bor- Their spring songs and were making new ones.
ders on rudeness (“Sir, are you upset?
The last thing I want to do is cause We could not let war steal everything.
you emotional hardship”). So his sug-
gestion that sales could be a form of In the park, my old father, hobbled by an older
moral redemption—Taggart’s mes- War, by worries over the evil let loose
sage—was a surprise. Among us, found joy in watching the children,
Pessy offered a parable of the dan- Feeding the birds, and telling the stories
gers of conducting business without He never tired of—and for us who loved him,
love: “Every year, I’d be, like, ‘I sold Well, those old stories made a circle
three hundred, man, I’m the best man- Of knowledge and affection.
ager ever!’ ” He raised his hand for a
high five and mimed being left hang- We bought a loaf of bread.
ing. “And my reps were, like, ‘Dude, The baker stayed on to help keep the ritual of our lives
you don’t give a shit about me.’” He in- Fastened into place. Our genealogies of bones
haled. “Sorry, I’m getting emotional, Are stacked in the graveyard, and live
but I’ve lost so many friends because In the stories we shared this morning, the baker and us.
of this job—I’ve fucked ’em over, I’ve
stolen deals from my reps.” But, he We will go on, even if there is only one standing
added sombrely, “when I die, I can’t In a sea of blood and loss, one who will tell
take this watch with me”—he displayed The story of who we were and how we fought
his Breitling. “I can’t take the fancy cars, For an ordinary morning like this one.
the limo with twenty-five women.
They’re gone. It’s the friends.”
The perspective from the limo, like
that in the room, was decidedly mas-
culine. Less than ten per cent of door- technique. In a D2DU video, he ex- He clicked to a photo of a Porsche
to-door reps are women. Makenna plains that, if he hasn’t quite closed a Panamera alongside a Gulfstream III.
Halls, a pest-control knocker whose customer, then it’s “just time to make “All the big influencers say, ‘What is
team made $2.5 million last year, told shit up” (somewhat glossing over all your why?’” he said. “The why, to me,
me that at D2DCon “the men only the shit he’s already made up). He turns is to find a nine-figure mind-set. A
talk to the men, and then they say, to the “Last Bullet in the Gun” close, nine-figure balance sheet gives you
‘Oh, do you sell, too? Or are you just teasing the possibility of a price cut: “I the opportunity to have any life style
a wife?’ ” (The more festive world of don’t know if I can get this approved. you can possibly imagine without
direct sales—which is dominated by If I were able to, could we move for- having to work. You’re also preserving
multilevel marketing, in which people ward?” He then deploys the venerable generational wealth, which is the way
sell leggings or essential oils to their “Manager Call Close,” in which the you’re going to start thinking when
friends and acquaintances—is seventy- rep dials a number—which, for the you use ‘Think and Grow Rich’ as a
six per cent female.) scrupulous salesman, could even be an textbook.” That book, a touchstone for
Pessy and McCarthy introduced actual manager’s—and pleads the cus- salesmen, is Napoleon Hill’s account
Michael O’Donnell, the country’s best- tomer’s case. of the secrets he gleaned from inter-
known salesman in solar and a propo- In the cabin, O’Donnell diverged viewing such Gilded Age titans as An-
nent of a hugely inf luential closing from Pessy and McCarthy’s theme. drew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and
36 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
 sales as a path to redemption is that re-
demption, in turn, increases your sales.
Pessy told his disciples that, once he
got physically and mentally and emo-
When the earth was beginning to wake tionally stronger, he became such a great
From its cold season. salesman that “my boss bought me this
cool-ass Breitling that cost ten thou-
Old father, you tore off a piece of bread sand dollars”—he held up his watch
For the birds gathered at your feet. again. “I wear it all the time to remind
They knew to find us here, myself that the real wealth is health.”
This park bench, this prayer of blessing
For the continuum of living. hen Sam Taggart was selling

The fire took you first, old father.

W Kay on solar, he instantly sized
her up as a lamb, using the BOLT sys-
I was stunned. tem, which sorts people into bulls, owls,
The sun exploded. lambs, and tigers. A bull’s force must
Then I was gone, following you be met with equal power; as the pest-
The way I always did, control salesman Parker Langeveld puts
First with my eyes, then it, you “stand your ground and redirect,
When I learned to toddle: and then mount the back of the bull
while he’s disoriented.” Owls study
A bird with breadcrumbs in its beak product specs and buy reluctantly, if at
Fled to the top of the closest all. Owls, Taggart told me, “are usually
Standing tree. Jews, or Asian dudes. My first two years
My mother, your wife, knocking, if an Indian opened the door
Was a girl again. I’d say, ‘Wrong house.’ ” Lambs want
Then you left the wedding feast to be told what to do. And with tigers
As you walked hand in hand you chitchat and reassure them that
To begin a story. they’re getting the latest tech. Bulls
drive a black Dodge Charger, owls a
I was a thought in the shape Toyota that gets great gas mileage,
Of a spring flower and lambs whatever the salesman
Emerging from a blood-soaked earth. wanted off the lot. Tigers leave their
garage door open so everyone can ad-
How we lived, and lived, and lived mire their red BMW.
And loved our living. As I considered my own place in
this taxonomy, I realized that I’m an
We did not want to let it go. owl. I want to know every detail. I also
realized that my self-image as a savvy,
—Joy Harjo unpersuadable New Yorker was dead
wrong. All a salesman has to do is lis-
ten to my concerns and I’ll start giv-
John D. Rockefeller. “We must mag- that the ultimate goal is “abundance,” ing serious thought to buying his
netize our minds with intense desire a roomy word that comprehends not tropical-fish subscription or backhoe.
for riches,” Hill declares. The popular- just wealth but also family life, char- I’m susceptible even as I’m being shown
ity of this belief is undimmed by the ity, and well-being. Knockers remove how the trick is done. In one D2DU
fact that Hill was a con man who made impediments to abundance by contin- video, a solar salesman named Pistol
up his research. ually taking up new disciplines. They Pete Winston pitches Taggart, demon-
O’Donnell’s pep talk got a loud ova- pump weights, try intermittent fasting strating how to bulldoze the “one-leg-
tion, but Pessy was nonplussed. “That or paleo, adopt Wim Hof breathing ger”—the solo homeowner who won’t
mind-set never lasts, long term, be- techniques, and undertake 75 Hards, make a decision without his spouse.
cause the kicks in the nuts become too seventy-five-day programs requiring After Winston sets a follow-up ap-
much,” he told me. “If you don’t get to twice-a-day workouts, abstention from pointment with a forced-choice ques-
the nine figures, you’re a total failure. alcohol, and immersion in self-help tion (Is Wednesday afternoon or Thurs-
Whereas if your mind-set is about re- books. If you’re betting on yourself, day morning better for you?), he insures
moving impediments, then not achiev- then everything you do to make your- the spouse’s attendance: “As much as
ing nine figures is just a stepping stone self faster and tougher and more fo- this is about helping you save money
to becoming a better person.” cussed improves your odds. and increase the value of your home,
Motivational speakers often tell reps Perhaps the biggest obstacle to using if you qualify, it’s also about sharing
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 37
with you what the community is doing dence against self-doubt. Self-doubt ing the town clean like the Pied Piper
to help the environment, and they just leads to failure, and failure is unaccept- of Hamelin.
ask that both of you be here for that.” able. When reps bagel, the penalties Schanz, who grew up in a Mormon
A grin spreads across Taggart’s face: can range from having to lip-synch to family, is exceedingly precautious about
“So you make it about the community.” Britney Spears to having to shave their acts of God, but he remains an opti-
“And ‘they’ just ask . . .” Winston beard and consume the clippings. mist about humanity. “In the meanest
notes, drawing Taggart’s attention to Failure is abhorrent because it can neighborhoods of Brooklyn, where you
the masterstroke of his coercive piety. induce a contagious loss of faith in the live,” he told me, “I can knock on any
“Who? ‘They.’” I’d buy solar panels from whole enterprise. Managers teach sales- door and get the people to let us bor-
Pete Winston. And I live in an apart- men to avert this death spiral by imag- row their car and drive to McDonald’s
ment building. ining that they’re getting paid for re- to get a milkshake. It’s amazing how
Perhaps eighty per cent of salesmen jections. If you get five thousand dollars awesome people are when you give
are tigers, as Taggart is, so they’re drawn for a solar sale, but you sell only one them a chance!” And yet, when he
to the latest persuasive techniques. out of a hundred prospects, then con- started on the doors, he said, “I saw
When Taggart filmed an online com- dition yourself to believe that you’re salesmen tricking old people, and liars
mercial for a D2D sales summit in getting paid fifty bucks for each no. and cheaters being rewarded. It’s a
March, he did a tongue-in-cheek prac- Michael O’Donnell, successful as he flashy, trashy industry.” After his sec-
tice take: “Do you want to pull some- is, told me, “I want to throw up in the ond year, he told me, “I called my
one’s brain out of their head and mold bushes half the time. The only way I mother in tears and said, ‘The Cinder-
it and put it back in their skull? Have get myself out of my house is that I ella story is a lie, Mom. What you taught
you ever heard that sales is bad because made a sacred commitment to get one me is bullshit.’ ” Schanz’s mother en-
it’s a manipulation technique for mak- person to say no to me every day, and couraged him to stay true to himself,
ing people do whatever you want, and I try to experience that no as an up- and he redoubled his efforts, reading
thought, How can I learn that?” lifting event that I’m getting paid for.” every sales book he could, setting three
His actual ad wasn’t much differ- appointments after nine each night, ex-
ent: a promise to reveal “how you break here are two types of door-to-door plaining the fine print so that custom-
into the subconscious mind of your
customers to master the art of selling.”
T salesmen: those motivated by
money or by the call of their persua-
ers couldn’t possibly be confused. He
radiated a passion for his product that
Rather than preying on the custom- sive gift, and those simmering for a shot few people feel for their families, let
er’s fear of loss, you reframe his out- at redemption. Taylor McCarthy had alone for a seven-inch touch-screen
look using “wordsmithing.” Avoid say- a high-school G.P.A. of 1.8; Michael panel with two-way voice and 24/7
ing “problem” (instead, use “challenge” O’Donnell was an alcoholic; Luke Ward, monitoring and support. Three years
or “situation”), “contract” (“service who in 2021 made $1.4 million selling later, when he sold five hundred ac-
agreement”), “chemical” (“product”), solar, was convicted of several felonies counts in a summer, he called his mother
“sell” (“provide”), or “sign” (“initial”). during his years of heroin and meth again and said, “Mom, it’s legit! I’m the
Not The customer wouldn’t sign the con- addiction. “The obsessive quality that best in the world at this!”
tract because it cost too much, but The made me an addict is also what makes It’s easier to sell, of course, if you
head of the family I served O.K.’d the me great at sales,” Ward told me. “That, fiddle with the truth. That’s why ev-
form once she grasped the unparalleled and the competitive need I have—that eryone at your door announces himself
investment opportunity. “Bucks” sounds all great salespeople have—to be rec- as “the regional manager,” even if the
cheaper than “dollars,” so you build ognized as the best.” region under management is just the
value in dollars, then promote in bucks: Adam Schanz, the founder and space occupied by his own body. Last
This service is two hundred and forty-nine C.E.O. of Alder Security, is the sim- year, Vivint Smart Home paid $23.2
dollars, but because we’ve got technicians mering sort. His ability to sell alarm million to the Department of Justice
in the area today I can give it to you for systems elicits wonder. Sam Taggart and the Federal Trade Commission, to
ninety-nine bucks. said, “Adam is the best door knocker settle allegations that some of its sales-
A fancier-sounding form of condi- in history.” Schanz requires his execs men had been fudging credit reports,
tioning is neurolinguistic programming. to knock doors for a week each year; including “white paging” to make sure
Taggart suggests making seemingly an- in 2019, he spent his own week in a that customers passed a check—that is,
odyne observations—“Hey, whether town in northeast Louisiana and sold borrowing the superior score of an un-
you do it or don’t do it, it would make two hundred and five accounts—a total witting person with a similar name.
sense to just do it, right?”—that, oper- that might take a merely great sales- Another legendary industry workaround
ating on the same frequency as sublim- man half a year. He installed systems was to go to the local graveyard and
inal advertising and homeopathic med- for local officials and paid them a hun- run a likely name: the dead frequently
icine, brainwash the prospect into dred dollars for each referral who retained their credit rating, and the
obedience. There’s no real scientific ev- bought in, got more leads from church tombstone supplied a birth date.
idence for these techniques, but they congregants after he dropped a thou- When home-security salesmen seek
have a powerful placebo effect, and sand dollars in the collection plate, and to take over another company’s account,
salesmen need a thick buffer of confi- then raced from house to house, sweep- they sometimes tell the customer that
38 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
they’ve come “from the alarm company” Earlier that afternoon, after Taggart portunity to recuperate all that money.”
to upgrade her system. Schanz himself had convinced a bull named Bob that “Why don’t we wait until we see
founded a business called APT, which he needed a new alarm system, he’d told what the monthly power bill is?” Geo
sounds a lot like ADT, the nation’s larg- me, “Once I get inside, it’s done. The said, weakly offering his final objection.
est security company. He contends that saying is ‘On the door you’re a pest, in “Well, right now you’re getting a
his reps never pretended to be from the home you’re a guest.’” winter power bill, and that’s going to
ADT: “Our whole thing was to clown Taggart sat in the living room cater- be less. You wait a year to see your an-
on their equipment and service—to win corner to Geo and laid out the advan- nual power costs, you just wasted four
accounts by doing the opposite.” Un- tages of solar. “So would you be doing thousand dollars. See what I mean?”
persuaded, ADT sued four times. “Their this more for the savings, the indepen- “Yeah, I see, I see,” Geo said, ninety-
goal was to crush me,” Schanz said, even dence, or saving the planet?”—a clas- five per cent sold. Taggart took his in-
as he acknowledged that his company sic tie-down. formation and said he’d get him a quote.
paid seven million dollars to settle the “If it has the affordability. What’s On the street, he told me, “Say he has
lawsuits: “I admit that I’m not perfect.” the total cost for a home like this?” to pay thirty bucks more a month to
On the doors, the ends frequently Taggart explained net metering: each get solar.” Many solar salesmen prom-
justify the means. In a Knockstar Uni- month, the power company credits you ise lower total bills, but that usually
versity video, Taylor McCarthy tells for the electricity your panels generate proves true only in states with high
trainees, “It is never O.K. to be pushy and charges you for the electricity you electricity costs, such as California.
in selling. Unless it’s a life-or-death use. “So we want to size the system to “Then I’d say, ‘If you had to pay twelve
situation,” he clarifies. Or, he further offset the power you’d use over the year. hundred dollars a month for your mort-
clarifies, “if you feel as if it’s a life-or- Does that make sense?” gage, or eleven-hundred-seventy a
death situation—if you’re selling home “Yeah, I get what you’re saying.” Geo month for rent, which would you do?”
security, if you’re trying to protect the asked a few more questions, then said, He looked at me.
environment,” or “if you’re trying to “It’s an option to explore, but—” Cast as Geo, I said, “The mortgage.”
protect somebody’s lawn.” Danny Pessy “The numbers have to make sense,” Taggart grimaced and said, “Why
told me, “If your intention is to deceive Taggart said, nodding sagely. “Say you would you pay more every month?
the customer—if you’re saying your pay a hundred a month in electricity, That’s dumb.”
meat truck broke down, and it’s actu- and you move after five years, how much “Because that way I own my house,”
ally meat from Ralphs that you repack- have you paid?” I said, annoyed that he was being so dense.
aged—that’s a no. But, if your inten- “Six thousand dollars.” He grinned. “Exactly. You get them
tion is to serve them, then you can say “And that’s if prices don’t go up! selling you.”
whatever you have to say to get them So I say, Hey, look, give me a shot, we The next day, Taggart texted Geo
to buy the amazing product that you run a proposal and give you the op- and asked him to take photos of his
believe in.”

s Taggart ambled into a develop-

A ment not far from his office, he
noted with pleasure that new owners
were still moving in. “You can sell these
people anything,” he said. “They need
Internet, they need alarms, they need
pest, they need solar.”
At the first house, a man named Geo
answered Taggart’s knock. He wore
baggy shorts and had a phlegmatic air.
Taggart, pegging him as a lamb, started
his pitch gently: “Where normally you’d
pay up to sixty thousand dollars, in this
neighborhood we’re setting up standard
kits to fit on the roof sizes. Is it cool if
we step inside and show you? It takes,
like, two seconds?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Taggart gave me a smile: the sales-
man’s first goal is to get into the house.
Alfred Fuller, the founder of the Fuller
Brush Company, wore shoes a size too
large so he could slip them off and be
inside before housewives could protest. “The heathens are no longer at the gate, sire. They’re now at the food truck.”
 a guy in Serbia, two chicks in the Phil­
ippines, and a guy in Nigeria whose job
is putting inspirational quotes on pho­
tos and videos of me. The guy in Ni­
geria is also writing my book.”Taggart’s
new book of entrepreneurial advice is
inspired by Matthew 7:7: “Ask, and it
shall be given you; seek, and ye shall
find; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you.” Taggart said, “The problem is it’s
too good, too ecclesiastical. It needs to
be dumbed down for the sales world.”
After D2DCon, he convened his
team in his private office, which was
decorated with an acoustic guitar, a suit­
case, and a jug of protein powder. The
convention had been a success, netting
about two hundred thousand dollars.
Next year, Taggart said, “my goal is to
sell twice as many tickets, and have just
two speakers on the main stage—me
and Tony Robbins.” Some of his em­
“But I don’t feel safe.” ployees glanced at one another: Is he
kidding? “I have an in, a guy who sells
Tony hats,” Taggart explained. After­
• • ward, he told me, “Tony Robbins is peo­
ple’s modern­day Jesus. I grew up be­
roof for the engineer’s estimate; getting spect a roof. “It was a ploy. She sold me.” lieving in modern prophets, like Joseph
customers to perform tasks for you is Pheonix said that on their second Smith, and Tony Robbins is one. I’d like
the kinetic equivalent of the “yes train.” night together “I put my hands on Sam’s to be seen at that level.”
And then Taggart lost interest. “It’s ter­ chest and put love into him: ‘You are More than anything, he’d decided,
rible that I haven’t closed him, because so powerful—you’re going to change he was selling inspiration. At an Xperts
it’s easy money,” he admitted a few weeks the world!’ He started bawling, and I Circle Mastermind gathering in Park
later. But his focus had begun to shift. literally saw a zombie come back to City, he stood by the woodstove of a
life.” She began knocking doors for Tag­ rented chalet and spoke to eighteen
few months after Taggart and his gart’s solar company, Agoge (named for C.E.O.s. “Too much of sales is about
A wife separated, in 2020, he got an
Instagram message from an efferves­
the Spartan warriors’ training program),
then started a lab­grown­diamond en­
‘How much money did I make?’ ” he
said. “But I hope you see this weekend
cent woman named Mia Pheonix. Pheo­ terprise, then launched a podcast while as ‘Let’s become better humans and up­
nix, who’d changed her last name from assisting Taggart with his seminars. level everyone else along with us.’” He
O’Neil to honor her soul’s continual “Knocking had served its purpose by suddenly shouted, “It’s our duty to fix
rebirth, had seen Taggart’s D2DU vid­ leading me to Sam,” she said. “God is all these roofs, because if we don’t fix
eos in Tampa, where she was learning working through us to change lives, and them no one will!”
to sell solar. Her message asked how to I genuinely see Sam and me becoming “And somebody else is going to pay
get into roofing sales. In truth, she sus­ two of the most influential humans who for it!” a roofer named Joshua Blanch
pected that Taggart was the man she’d ever lived, along with Beyoncé, Oprah, added, to laughter.
been magnetizing her mind for. Her Elon Musk, Einstein, and Aristotle.” Taggart began to discuss how to coach
original list of desirable qualities in­ Taggart is still some ways from a employees. “Pain is a bigger driver than
cluded “luscious hair,” “really beautiful global empire. When I visited the D2D pleasure,” he said. “It’s sad, but that’s how
bone structure,” “ripped & strong,” Experts office, in a mini mall south of we motivate our customers: ‘A black
“making 200k + a year,” and “50k + fol­ Salt Lake, it looked as if he and his fif­ widow is going to bite your kid one day.’
lowers” on Instagram, but it had grown teen employees could move out of it in The obvious employee problem is that
to encompass “spirituality/God,” “busi­ ten minutes. Yet his efforts to expand people will do anything not to knock,
ness savvy,” and “musical ability.” his sphere of influence are relentless. because they associate doors with pain.
When she and Taggart met up a few The office had a gong you banged when Our job is to reframe that, so doors be­
weeks later in Utah, he told me, “I re­ you made a sale; when Taggart banged come the doorway to your future.”
alized she’s, like, four foot eleven—‘You it, he filmed himself for his more than He turned to Amy Walker, one of
really want to do roofing sales?’” Height a hundred and forty thousand Insta­ two women present. Walker owns a
helps when you’re raising a ladder to in­ gram followers. He explained, “We have roofing company in Tulsa with her hus­
40 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
band, Paul, who had stayed home, them, as if they were accountants or flourished overseas. Paul Giannamore,
doubting much would come of her ef- Realtors. He hoped that three hundred an adviser to the pest-control industry,
forts at self-improvement. Taggart now companies would support his initiative; told me, “Because you already have six
cast her as an underperforming sales he said that only fifty had. This year, at or seven door-to-door companies sell-
rep, and Walker looked stricken. Her D2DCon, he didn’t even raise the topic. ing on top of each other in the same
company had plateaued at two million “I can’t carry the whole industry on my suburb of Wichita, you’re seeing teams
dollars in revenue, and she had resisted back,” he told me. “So, if you’re not going go to Canada now. I’m getting calls,
knocking for new customers. Playing to help me to police it, then F you.” ‘What about Australia?’ A bunch of
Walker’s boss, Taggart informed her, “If It’s a business scant on deep loyal- American kids knocking doors in the
you go two more weeks with this per- ties. Once the salesman leaves and his outback—that would get the home-
formance, we gotta let you go.” He told injection of confidence wears off, cus- owners’ attention!”
the others, “It’s the pain piece: ‘Don’t tomers often feel obscurely tricked; Taggart expressed his own restless-
cut me, Coach!’ And the pleasure piece what seemed like a conversation was ness by hiring a new ghostwriter for his
is the promise of renewed connection.” only a transaction after all. That’s why book and breaking up with Mia Pheo-
He turned back: “Hey, girl, we all want the salesman pressures his technician nix. “Mia unlocked a whole new ver-
to feel close to you, but we need you to to spray the house or install the alarms sion of what I can be in a relationship,”
keep up and be an all-star, like us.” that same day. In solar, where the nec- he said. “And I’m excited for the next
After some introspection, Walker essary permits take weeks, the salesman one.” To elevate his life, in the past year
announced, “I’m going to go on the will often give the owner brownies or he learned how to dunk, became a vegan
streets!” and everyone whooped. Back a smart thermostat to hold the inter- for six months, and completed a mar-
home in Tulsa, though, she kept put- personal glue in place. River Skinner, athon and an Ironman. He intends to
ting it off. Finally, in February, she could the vice-president of sales at Fluent gain fourteen pounds of muscle and be
no longer stand “having life run me,” so Solar, said he’ll send “an emoji of my at ten-per-cent body fat by the end of
she walked into her neighborhood and face with a thumbs-up—because friends August and then to get certified in yoga
began knocking. “One guy was a total text with emojis—or a handwritten card and jujitsu. His new longer-term goal
asshole,” she reported, but within hours saying that it meant a lot. Because, if is to accrue fifty million dollars by age
she’d booked a job. She found herself you have an intimate moment with forty, move to Los Angeles, and host a
doing the math: what would it take to someone you’re attracted to, you wouldn’t game show in the vein of “The Amaz-
win a Golden Door? She’d need a hun- want to never hear from them again.” ing Race” or “Survivor.”
dred and fifty-seven sales this year, an Regret lingers, though, and it threat- He now subscribed to his parents’
average of three a week. “Freaking ens the business model. As a rule, door- belief that God has a plan for him.
scary—but I’m going to do it!” she said. to-door pest-control companies lose “Grant Cardone’s motto is to ‘10X your-
“And my other mission for this year is roughly a third of their customers in the self,’” he said. “But why cap it at ten? I
helping women get into this industry— first year. Many pest and alarm compa- like the idea of ‘InfinX.’” He went on,
forming a tribe!” nies have launched solar divisions to re- “I’m a huge fan of mindfulness—and
Her husband, Paul, said, “Amy hates tain their top salespeople; solar is where of coupling that with success. Religion
ladders and heights, so this change is the money is. Yet, with federal tax cred- sees money as the root of all evil, but I
pretty bold.” Inspired, he quit drinking believe you can have it all, the spiritu-
and started a modified 75 Hard with ality and driving a Lamborghini. Call
her; he even teamed up with her for one it religion, call it personal development,
of Taggart’s door-knocking competi- call it whatever, but I’m called to go be-
tions. “I still don’t feel comfortable over- yond the hundred thousand door knock-
coming objections, because I sympa- ers in America. I feel called to compete
thize with the Stop it, go away! ” he told with the Tony Robbinses to impact mil-
me. “But I recognize that I was lazy and lions around the world, by teaching them
miserable, and that I need to scratch to sell themselves on life!”
and claw to keep up with Amy.” Selling fulfillment door-to-door
its set to expire in 2024, the boom may wouldn’t scale, so Taggart has turned,
very salesman is proving something be brief. The growth of door-to-door is inevitably, to a Silicon Valley solution:
E on the doors. Taylor McCarthy
wants to demonstrate that he’s smarter
also menaced by the saturation of local
markets and by customer disenchant-
“We’re building out a goal-setting life-
management system with accountabil-
than you, Adam Schanz that he can be- ment—the retiree who writes a Face- ity that’s pretty dope. It’ll tell you, ‘Did
friend you, and Sam Taggart that he book screed about her alarm salesman I expand my life or not?’ and then de-
can charm you. Yet Taggart has grown is unlikely to want another system. liver content into your app.” Once Tag-
sufficiently frustrated with his industry Door-to-door companies have begun gart’s app goes live, your phone will be-
that he no longer cares about ingrati- to look abroad, following the path of come a doorway to the next level. And
ating himself with everyone in it. For other American innovations—Spam, then all the happiness that a salesman
years, he’s tried to launch an initiative Agent Orange, subprime mortgages— can promise will be not a brisk knock
to train sales reps in ethics and certify that ran into resistance at home but away but only a gentle tap. 
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 41
 LETTER FROM UKRAINE

THE LAW OF WAR

What does justice look like for the victims of Russia’s atrocities?
BY MASHA GESSEN

efore the war, one could have used fire—and, some said, Molotov cocktails

B the western suburbs of Kyiv to

study the history and aspirations
of modern Ukraine. Bucha, Irpin, and
thrown by residents—destroyed about
a hundred Russian vehicles, including
about a dozen on Vokzalna Street. The
smaller towns and villages formed along- soldiers burned alive in their tanks as
side a railroad constructed in the early missiles and molten armor flew through
twentieth century. During the Soviet pe- the air, striking roofs and shattering
riod, Bucha, which had a glass factory windows. Ludmila and Valeriy hid in
that manufactured canning jars, became the cellar. After a few days, the explo-
a minor industrial center. In neighbor- sions quieted, and Ludmila ventured
ing Irpin, where century-old pines dom- out to inspect the smoldering Rus-
inated the landscape, the Soviets built sian tanks. On March 3rd, a group of
sanatoriums and a writers’ resort. Boris Ukrainian soldiers raised the country’s
Pasternak wrote in a 1930 poem, “Irpin flag in front of city hall. Ludmila thought
is the memory of people and summer, the war was over.
of freedom, of escape from oppression.” That day, the Russians returned—a
In this century, the suburbs became column of tanks surrounded by para-
a site of bourgeois ambition. Entrepre- troopers on foot. A group of nine local
neurs and high-ranking officials built men who were staffing a checkpoint on
houses with forest views and in-ground Yablunska Street took refuge in a nearby
pools. Developers erected high-rises house. Only some of them had officially
that appealed to young families who enlisted with Territorial Defense, an
were priced out of Kyiv. Traffic jams all-volunteer force within the Ukrainian
started to clog the bridges connecting military, and it’s unclear how many of
the suburbs to the city. Big-box stores them were armed. The next day, they
and tiny espresso bars popped up around were captured by Russian soldiers, led
the towers. to a small courtyard beside an office
Ludmila Kizilova lived with her hus- building on Yablunska—secluded just
band, Valeriy, near the corner of Vokzalna enough not to be visible from a nearby
and Yablunska Streets, at the southern parking lot—and lined up in a row. The
end of Bucha. The land had been in soldiers released one of the men, who
Ludmila’s family for generations. Her had agreed to switch sides, and told the
mother built the couple’s brick house, rest of them to kneel, with their hands
which they had coated with honey-col- behind their backs. Then they shot them.
ored stucco. Ludmila, who is sixty-seven, Ludmila and Valeriy had heard gun-
chose red metal shingles for the roof— fire throughout the day. They went back
an unnecessary expense, perhaps, but to the cellar. It was very cold. Ludmila
she loved the matte look. Along the pe- put on every jacket she had. Valeriy
rimeter of the property, they had a sum- drank whiskey, which he kept offering
mer kitchen, a brick toolshed, and a cel- her. “How can you drink in the middle
lar where Ludmila kept her pickled of this?” she snapped.
vegetables and jams. In the summer, she After several hours, Valeriy went up-
sold flowers from her garden at an out- stairs into the yard to talk on the phone.
door market near the railroad station. From the cellar, Ludmila heard a gun-
Valeriy complained that it made him shot. Valeriy didn’t come back. Lud-
look bad, like she needed money. mila waited until dark and then went
On February 27th, Russian troops upstairs. She looked under a spruce
entered Bucha, and were quickly am- tree, where Valeriy said he got the best
bushed by Ukrainian forces. Artillery reception. Then she crawled along the Svitlana Kostrykina’s husband and brother-
42 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
in-law were shot by Russian soldiers in Irpin. An investigator told her that she “might see a case in The Hague in ten years.”
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MILA TESHAIEVA THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 43
side of the house with a flashlight. She ferent men, each in civilian clothing, Three of the soldiers led Oleg to the
found Valeriy under their bedroom win- with a white sack over his head, being couple’s side of the house, where thick
dow. Ludmila covered him with a towel brought into the house. From the cel- black smoke was billowing from a win-
and sprinkled sand on the blood that lar, he and his daughter could hear the dow. The remaining soldier, who seemed
had pooled around his head. Then she sounds of Russian soldiers in their to be in command, held Iryna and Volo-
returned to the cellar. kitchen, beating captives and threaten- dymyr at gunpoint. He asked if there
ing to kill them. were Nazis around. Then he asked about
he Russians set up command posts Iryna Abramova, who is forty-eight, Oleg: Had he fought the Russians? Iryna
T in Bucha’s glass factory and in the
office building next to the courtyard
lived with her husband, Oleg, a forty-
year-old welder, in part of a small brick-
said that Oleg never even did his man-
datory military service.
where they’d executed the men from and-cinder house, with a postage-stamp The man headed toward the street.
the checkpoint. Russian tanks rolled yard and a narrow gate that opened Iryna followed. The gate was open. The
through the town, crashing through onto Yablunska Street. Iryna’s father, three other soldiers sat on the curb, pass-
fences and parking in the front yards Volodymyr, lived in another part of ing around a plastic bottle of water. Oleg
of private homes, where troops took the house, which faced a side street. was lying on the ground. Iryna thought
up residence. On March 5th, as the fighting outside that the soldiers had beaten him un-
Ludmila’s neighbor across the street, seemed to intensify, Iryna and Oleg conscious. Then she saw black blood in
Vitaliy Zhyvotovsky, stayed in his cel- grabbed their go bags and their cat, his ear and a puddle of bright-red blood
lar with his twenty-year-old daughter Simon, and went next door to shelter around his head. She started screaming,
while more than thirty Russian soldiers with Volodymyr. pleading with the soldiers to shoot her
lived in his house. They allowed Zhyvo- They heard an explosion, some gun- and the cat. One of the soldiers said,
tovsky to step outside once a day, to shots, and then a man’s voice: “Come “We don’t kill women.” The others, she
feed his German shepherd, who was out!” Four Russian soldiers in well-fit- later said, sat impassively, like they were
locked in the garage, and to empty the ting uniforms and tan nubuck boots watching a show.
bucket that he and his daughter used stood in the yard. Oleg and Volodymyr Iryna Havryliuk and her extended
as a toilet. During Zhyvotovsky’s brief put their hands up as they walked out- family lived in a neighborhood called
daily outings, he saw at least seven dif- side. Iryna continued holding the cat. Lisova Bucha, or Forest Bucha. Iryna
and her mother, Olga, fled on March 5th,
ultimately taking refuge in the Carpa-
thian Mountains. Iryna’s husband, Ser-
hii Dukhlii, and her brother Roman
stayed behind to keep an eye on Iryna
and Serhii’s two dogs and six cats, and
to wait to be called up: they were among
those who, in the first days of the inva-
sion, had tried to enlist with Territorial
Defense but were turned away because
there were no weapons.
About a week after Iryna fled, Roman
called to say that he and Serhii were all
right, though a Russian soldier had shot
one of the dogs. A neighbor, the mother
of a friend of Iryna’s, was cooking meals
for the remaining residents over a fire
in her yard. Several days later, Iryna
heard from the friend: Serhii and Roman
hadn’t come around to eat in three days.
No one could check on them, because
Russians started shooting anytime a
person stepped into the street. Iryna
later learned that there were bodies in
her front yard. Her twenty-four-year-
old son, Yuriy, was serving in Territo-
rial Defense in Irpin. On April 3rd, he
managed to get to Bucha. He called his
mother: “Yes, it’s Roma and Dad.”There
was a third body, too—that of a younger
man who had turned up in Bucha, in
“My advice to young people just starting out? Goo goo ga ga.” March, with a pet rabbit. He had fled
Irpin and taken refuge in the family’s less than two years apart, were physical husband to avenge the losses they had
house. Iryna’s neighbors called him the opposites: Konstantin was tall and lanky, suffered on Vokzalna Street. But there
“rabbit guy.” Oleksandr short and round. Svitlana is a simpler explanation: this is how
worried that it would be even harder to Russia fights wars.
n Irpin, Svitlana Kostrykina lived get Oleksandr’s heavy body in the wheel- Alexander Cherkasov, the former
I with her husband, Konstantin, who
served as a caretaker for a disused chil-
barrow. But, when they went back for
him, the soldiers said that his body was
head of the Memorial Human Rights
Center, a Russian organization that
dren’s sanatorium. When fighting began mined and could not be moved. since the early nineties has documented
in their neighborhood, about ten peo- The Russian forces occupied Bucha human-rights violations in conf lict
ple gathered in the sanatorium’s main and Irpin for a month. Most of the dead zones—and which was shut down by
building, including their thirty-two- lay wherever the killings the Kremlin, in the spring—
year-old son, Serhii, and Konstantin’s had occurred. A resident of said that the atrocities in
brother, Oleksandr. The space was Yablunska Street told me Ukraine had direct paral-
warm—Svitlana kept a woodstove that, when he stepped out lels to those in Chechnya
going—and had a thick-walled central of his yard on March 8th, and Syria. I covered the
room with no windows. After every- he saw a road strewn with wars in Chechnya, between
one’s phone died, the group nailed a bodies and heard music. 1994 and 2001, and saw
sheet of paper to a wall and drew a cal- It was coming from cell indiscriminate bombing
endar for the month of March. Each phones ringing in the pock- and shelling of residential
night, they crossed out a day, “to show ets of the dead. The bodies neighborhoods, and roads
that we had survived,” Serhii said. Svit- of the eight men executed covered with the bodies of
lana later heard that, by the end of the near the office building re- civilians. Many families
month, their patch of Irpin had changed mained in the courtyard. The Russians told me of men who were led away by
hands several times. who occupied the building threw trash Russian soldiers and never seen again.
On the morning of March 16th, Kon- out the windows, which landed on top In theory, international bodies have
stantin made breakfast over a fire out- of the corpses. the authority to prosecute war crimes
side. Afterward, he filled a plastic bag wherever and whenever they occur. But
with food and left to deliver it to a dis- ussian troops withdrew from Bucha Russia has not meaningfully had to ac-
abled neighbor. Minutes later, ma-
chine-gun fire sounded. Oleksandr ran
R on March 31st. Within days, as jour-
nalists gained access to the area, the
count for atrocities committed during
earlier conflicts. In Syria, Russian troops
toward the sanatorium fence, shouting town’s name became synonymous with fought on the side of the government.
his brother’s name. Almost as soon as Russian war crimes. According to Chechnya is legally a part of Russia. In
he was out of sight, there was ma- Roman Abramenko, the executive di- neither case would senior officials be
chine-gun fire again. Then it was quiet. rector of Truth Hounds, a Ukrainian prosecuted domestically, and Russia, as
Two days later, Svitlana and Serhii N.G.O. that documents war crimes, a permanent member of the United Na-
crept along the sanatorium’s fence, Russian troops have perpetrated simi- tions Security Council, could veto any
searching for the men. They didn’t find lar atrocities, on a comparable scale, in attempt by the U.N. to launch a tribu-
them. After another two days, a neigh- nearly every place that his organization nal. Russia also has not ratified the Rome
bor told Svitlana that the men’s bodies has visited. “I have been doing this for Statute, which gives the International
were lying in a nearby park where Rus- more than seven years, and I still am Criminal Court, in The Hague, juris-
sian soldiers had set up a checkpoint. shocked by the meaningless brutality,” diction over its signatory states.
Svitlana tied a white rag to her sleeve Abramenko said. “ ‘If you are in the Until recently, Russia was under the
and walked toward the soldiers. “Stop!” range of my weapon, I will shoot at you, jurisdiction of the European Court of
one of them shouted. She explained on no suspicion of being armed or being Human Rights, but, in March, it an-
that she was there for the bodies. “Come a spy.’ Why shoot people? Why throw nounced that it was leaving the Coun-
back tomorrow,” the soldier said. hand grenades in a cellar where people cil of Europe, which empowers the court.
“All right,” Svitlana said. “I’ll come are hiding? Why not let people bury In 2005, the E.C.H.R. ruled, in a case
back tomorrow with my son and a wheel- their dead?” brought by Memorial, that Russian
barrow. Please don’t shoot.” For the survivors, the thought that troops had knowingly bombed a civil-
The next day, Svitlana and Serhii re- the killings are entirely gratuitous is un- ian convoy in Chechnya in 1999. The
trieved Konstantin’s body and rolled it bearable. Svitlana and Serhii, at the san- E.C.H.R., which has the power only to
for several blocks. They took the long atorium, wondered if the Russian sol- order governments to pay monetary
way, which was paved. Konstantin’s body diers somehow had it in for Konstantin, damages, imposed fines totalling about
was hard to fit in the wheelbarrow—his and shot Oleksandr to eliminate a mur- seventy thousand euros. But even such
arm kept swinging out. Serhii had spent der witness. Ludmila surmised that minor interventions were rare. “Between
the previous day digging a grave, mak- Valeriy, while on his phone call, had three and five thousand people dis-
ing it deep enough for the two broth- scared a Russian soldier who was loot- appeared in Chechnya during the sec-
ers and often jumping inside of it to ing their house. Iryna Abramova thought ond war,” Cherkasov said. “There is a
wait out gunfire. The brothers, who were that the three soldiers had killed her total of four court decisions, making for
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 45
Iryna Havryliuk and her mother, Olga, in Bucha. Eleven people from four houses in their neighborhood were killed.

an impunity rate of 99.9 per cent.” In Allies in 1945. The charter codified overruling the principles of national
Ukraine, Russia is using not only the three types of crimes: aggression (also sovereignty. But the trials of the twen-
same tactics as in past conflicts but, in known as crimes against peace); vio- tieth century—Adolf Eichmann’s, in
many cases, the same people: a number lations of the laws and customs of war Jerusalem, in 1961; the International
of senior officers commanding the war (such as murder, “wanton destruction,” Criminal Tribunal for the former Yu-
in Ukraine fought in Chechnya. and “devastation not justified by mil- goslavia; and the International Crimi-
Parts of Ukraine have been under itary necessity”); and crimes against nal Tribunal for Rwanda—yielded only
occupation since 2014, when Russia an- humanity. The legal scholar Lawrence a few verdicts. The International Crim-
nexed Crimea and began a war in the Douglas has observed that the defi- inal Court, which came into existence
Donbas region. Occupying authorities nitions of these crimes were hardly twenty years ago, has issued arrest war-
have employed forced conscription, kid- clear at the time. Some of the draft- rants for some fifty people, only ten of
nappings, detentions, and torture. But ers may have intended “humanity” to whom have been convicted. Four have
international legal bodies have been mean “all of humankind,” while oth- been acquitted, and five people died be-
slow to get involved, and Ukraine has ers may have meant “the quality of fore a verdict could be reached.
made little progress prosecuting crimes being human”—in other words, either Never before have investigations and
from the earlier phase of the war. Last the scale of the crime or the brutal- trials begun within weeks of the crimes,
year, Ukraine’s parliament voted to ity of it. (The original charter in Rus- as they have in Ukraine. A unique set of
amend the criminal code to better de- sian uses the word “chelovechnost,” circumstances has made this possible:
fine war crimes and to outline punish- which means “the quality of being Ukraine has an intact judicial system; in-
ments for them, but the law has yet to human,” though later documents have vestigators have had nearly immediate
take effect. used the word “chelovechestvo,” which access to crime scenes and evidence, in-
The modern history of prosecut- means “humankind.”) cluding copious amounts of video foot-
ing war crimes dates back to the The Nuremberg trials were based on age; and Ukraine is holding several hun-
Nuremberg trials, which were estab- a radical new premise: some crimes are dred Russian prisoners of war, some of
lished by the charter of the Interna- so heinous that the international com- whom are or will be suspects in war-
tional Military Tribunal, signed by the munity must step in to restore justice, crime investigations.
46 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
 The first trial took place in Kyiv in they had a case number. “We don’t,” Na- ject of an investigation is rarely the
May. Vadim Shishimarin, a twenty-one- taliya Verbova, whose husband, Andriy, person who pulled the trigger.
year-old Russian sergeant, stood accused was killed, answered. Nataliya is tall, The Ukrainian government wants
of violating the rules and customs of war with jet-black hair, and she wore black to undertake large-scale prosecutions
by killing a civilian in the Sumy region. jeans, a black blouse, and a black satin for crimes of aggression and genocide.
Shishimarin and several other soldiers bomber jacket. “We had eight men ex- It claims to have identified more than
had lost their vehicles in battle and com- ecuted,” she said. “We want to know six hundred suspects in Russia’s politi-
mandeered a car from a local resident. who is investigating their cases.” A sec- cal and military leadership, but the clear
Almost as soon as they started driving, ond guard asked if they had an appoint- target is President Vladimir Putin, who,
Shishimarin shot a sixty-two-year-old ment. They did not. before the war, asserted that Ukraine
man pushing a bicycle. In court, Shishi- After about twenty minutes, Maksym has no right to exist. Wayne Jordash, a
marin, dressed in a hoodie, sat alone in Romanchuk, a senior investigator, came war-crimes lawyer who lives in Kyiv,
a glass cage, his shaved head down, his out to talk to the group. He had a neatly told me that the atrocities committed
hands wedged between his knees. He trimmed beard and wore a black Karl in cities like Bucha and Irpin may rise
seemed younger than his age, tiny and Lagerfeld sweater. He assured them that to the level of genocide. But proving
ordinary. According to his testimony, the S.B.U. was prioritizing the case. Ka- Putin’s guilt will be a painstaking pro-
two officers had separately ordered him teryna Rudenko, a short woman with cess. “In order to prove genocide, you
to shoot the man. Shishimarin disobeyed brown hair, had recognized her son, have to prove intent,” Jordash said. “But
the first officer’s order but then com- Denys, in the photo. She fished in the intent is rarely proven by one unequiv-
plied with the second. “It was a stress- pockets of her tan windbreaker and pulled ocal piece of evidence—rarely do per-
ful situation, and he was yelling,” Shishi- out handfuls of individually wrapped petrators say it and do it.” Instead, pros-
marin explained. candies, which she handed out to the ecutors need to piece together a story
Douglas has written that the con- others. It’s a Ukrainian tradition for fam- that shows a clear escalation in the
cept of prosecuting war crimes, by elim- ilies of the dead to offer treats, “so it may Kremlin’s tactics, so that “by the time
inating the statute of limitations and be sweeter for them up there.” you get to Bucha or Irpin there’s no
by extending jurisdiction beyond na- Romanchuk leads a team of about other explanation for the violence other
tional borders, upends “law’s spatio-tem- ten detectives who are currently inves- than an intent to destroy.”
poral coordinates.” The Nuremberg tri- tigating all the war crimes in the Bucha As for the crime of aggression,
als were designed to prosecute crimes district, which has a population of some Ukrainian investigators need to estab-
that were not seen as crimes by the peo- three hundred and fifty thousand. By lish a chain of command that would
ple who carried them out. Russian atroc- early June, Romanchuk’s group had doc- lead them to the Kremlin. Perhaps the
ities in Ukraine—their ubiquity, the umented about twenty-five hundred po- best-known effort to prove such cul-
speed and apparent ease with which tential war crimes and was expecting to pability, in the International Criminal
they are committed—present the world record a thousand more. Family mem- Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia,
with the same problem: the Russian bers asking for updates, and demanding ended inconclusively: Slobodan Mi-
troops seem to believe that this is just action, were showing up at the S.B.U. lošević, the presumed mastermind of
how war works. The challenge facing almost every day. Serbian atrocities in the Balkans, died
prosecutors and investigators is to break The Ukrainian investigators with before a judgment could be rendered—
the spatial and temporal bubble that whom I spoke seemed confident about but not before evidence emerged of a
has long shielded Russia, and to end their cases. The evidence—surveillance- complicated chain of command that
what Cherkasov called “a chain of crimes camera footage, bodies of people with distributed responsibility among sev-
and a chain of impunity.” their hands tied and gunshot wounds in eral of his subordinates.
the back of their heads—seems incon- A relatively recent addition to inter-
he office of the Ukrainian security trovertible. All that’s left is to identify national criminal law is the crime of
T service (S.B.U.) for Kyiv and the
surrounding region is situated in a six-
the perpetrators and to bring them to
trial or to try them in absentia, which is
starvation, the deprivation of essential
civilian resources as a means of war.
story concrete building near the sealed- possible under Ukrainian law. Ukraine may become the first place
off government quarter where the But war crimes differ from domes- where this crime is prosecuted. Starva-
Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelen- tic crimes not merely in scale. Not every tion appears to have been a deliberate
sky, has lived and worked since Febru- killing of a civilian is a war crime: civil- part of the Russian strategy in Mariu-
ary. On May 31st, I arrived there with a ians killed as part of an attack on a mil- pol, which was under siege for months.
small group from Bucha—three women itary target are collateral damage. Con- Russian forces are accused of shelling a
and a man, each of whom, two months versely, the killing of a combatant can humanitarian corridor and cutting off
earlier, had seen a photograph on Tele- be a war crime if the combatant was the city’s power. Thousands of civilians
gram of the bodies beside the office build- “out of combat,” as was apparently the were killed, many of them owing to a
ing on Yablunska, surrounded by refuse, case with the men from the checkpoint. lack of food, shelter, and water.
and recognized a loved one. More important, war crimes are, gen- One of the most difficult crimes to
At the entrance to the S.B.U. build- erally, components of a system, not in- prosecute will be the forced transfer of
ing, a guard in a glass booth asked if dividual violations, and the ultimate ob- Ukrainian civilians to Russia. Heading
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 47
toward Russian-occupied territory is ings about the scale of this,” he told me. war crimes into more and less impor-
often the safest route out of a battle Seventy prosecutors are working under tant ones. “The human-rights activist
zone, in part because the Russians pro- him, and his office has identified about in me is dying little by little,” he said.
vide buses. They then put displaced peo- twenty-five thousand possible war crimes. His team in Kyiv is focussed on larger-
ple through a process called “filtration,” “If you have twenty-five thousand proj- scale atrocities, such as the bombing of
apparently designed to weed out unde- ects and tomorrow you are going to have a theatre in Mariupol where hundreds
sirables. Those who pass filtration, which fifty thousand projects, then you have of people were sheltering; at least a dozen
can take weeks, are transported to dor- to set priorities,” he said. “But that’s very civilians were killed.
mitories or underused resorts in Rus- hard to do, because for any human being The bulk of the war-crime cases in
sia, and largely left alone. the loss of a loved one or a Ukraine—individual killings and prop-
Some seek help settling in house that’s been destroyed erty destruction—will be managed by
Russia, while others scram- is top priority.” regional prosecutors. “There are so many
ble, with the aid of networks Another unusual aspect crimes that even the best judicial sys-
of volunteers, to escape to of the response to war tem in the world couldn’t possibly han-
Western Europe, or perhaps crimes in Ukraine is how dle them all,” Oleksandra Matviichuk,
back to Ukraine. quickly the international the head of the Center for Civil Liber-
Is the forced transfer of community has offered help. ties, which is documenting war crimes
Ukrainians to the country Jordash, the war-crimes at- in Ukraine, said. “And we’ve never had
that displaced them, de- torney in Kyiv, is coördi- the luxury of living with the best judi-
stroyed their cities, and nating an effort, funded by cial system in the world.” International
killed their loved ones a the U.S., the U.K., and the experts can help only so much: “If your
crime against humankind? Is it a crime European Union, to set up “mobile jus- car is out of gas, not even the best driver
against the quality of being human? Ac- tice teams,” units that will pair Ukrainian in the world is going to get it started.”
cording to Tanya Lokshina, the associ- officials with international lawyers and On July 17th, Zelensky fired Vene-
ate director of the Europe and Central investigators. Ukraine has not ratified diktova, along with Ivan Bakanov, the
Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, the Rome Statute, but it has accepted head of the S.B.U., amid reports of trea-
the transfer of people to Russia is difficult the International Criminal Court’s ju- son in their ranks. Venediktova was the
to classify: “It’s not deportation. People risdiction for crimes committed on its first woman to serve as the prosecutor
aren’t made to board buses at gunpoint. territory. The court’s chief prosecutor, general in Ukraine. She would apparently
But the choice effectively amounts to Karim Khan, has visited Ukraine and remain in government, but the firings
dying under shelling or obeying orders.” sent his own investigative team. The were a reminder of how embattled
Hannah Arendt, in a 1946 letter to I.C.C. will likely look for cases that have Ukrainian law-enforcement structures
the psychiatrist and philosopher Karl high-profile potential, either because have been during the war. Matviichuk
Jaspers, wrote, “Nazi crimes, it seems to they are particularly egregious or be- told me, “War hasn’t made the judicial
me, explode the limits of the law; and cause they represent clear links to system better.”
that is precisely what constitutes their high-ranking Russian officials. This ef-
monstrousness.” Russian atrocities in fort will set important precedents and n early June, I travelled with a group
Ukraine explode the human ability to
digest, legally and emotionally, the gra-
help keep the spotlight on Russian war
crimes in Ukraine, but it will not bring
I of Truth Hounds to Kryvyi Rih, a
mining city in central Ukraine that’s
tuitous nature of the crimes and their justice to most, or even many, victims. close to the front line. Two research-
literally unimaginable number. Iryna Havryliuk, in Bucha, told me ers, Yaroslav and Stanislav (both of
that she had a case before the I.C.C., whom asked that their full names not
n late May, the Ukrainian prosecu- and was represented by a lawyer named be used), were there to interview peo-
I tor general, Iryna Venediktova, ap-
pointed Yuriy Belousov to lead her of-
Achille Campagna. I contacted Cam-
pagna, whose office is in San Marino.
ple displaced from the east and the
south of the country. Truth Hounds
fice’s war-crimes effort. Belousov, a He told me that when he heard about has been operating in Ukraine since
former human-rights activist who joined the crimes in Ukraine he wanted to help; 2014, documenting war crimes in
the prosecutor’s office three years ago he found a Ukrainian attorney to re- Crimea and the Donbas. Stanislav, who
to devise a strategy to combat law-en- cord Iryna’s account. If the I.C.C. takes is thirty-nine, skinny, and tense, has
forcement abuses, particularly torture, up a case in which Iryna is considered worked as a war-crimes researcher for
was surprised by his new appointment. a victim, the court could choose to hear nearly all of that time. Yaroslav, a
“Last year, they added abuses in the pen- her testimony. But Campagna acknowl- twenty-five-year-old academic histo-
itentiary system to my responsibilities,” edged that such an outcome is unlikely. rian, is quiet, nerdy, and rosy-cheeked.
he said. “And then this bomb dropped.” Svitlana, at the sanatorium, told me that Earlier this year, he was living with his
I met with Belousov at an upscale an S.B.U. investigator who came to in- girlfriend in Mariupol; they left the
Italian restaurant in a quiet part of cen- terview her said that she “might see a city before the Russian invasion. “We
tral Kyiv. At the time, he had been on case in The Hague in ten years.” listened to Biden,” Yaroslav said. His
the job for less than two weeks. “I have In the meantime, Belousov has been girlfriend went to study in Germany,
no printable words to describe my feel- forced to triage cases, dividing suspected and Yaroslav joined Truth Hounds.
48 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
 In Kryvyi Rih, they met with Vic- the interviewers wrote down every “A prosecutor is trained to focus on the
tor Apostol, a retired police detective name, every address, and every other facts and say little else,” he said. “What
from the nearby village of Vysokopil- conceivable detail that the narrator kind of empathetic person can do that?”
lia, who was staying in a friend’s apart- could recall. On the other hand, he added, “a pros-
ment with his wife and ten-year-old The work is delicate, and distinct ecutor who has too much empathy will
son. They talked in a gazebo that had from what criminal investigators usu- lose his mind.”
burgundy walls and a lot of graffiti— ally do. The victim of one war crime is Dozens of organizations fielded
mostly tags interspersed with the pop- likely also a witness to others, and the missions in the suburbs of Kyiv start-
ular slogan “Putin khuylo,” or “Putin is interviewer must create opportunities ing in March, and it wasn’t until June
a dickhead.” Yaroslav and Stanislav for that information to emerge. “You that most had moved on to other re-
opened their laptops and read back to have to have the time,” Jordash said. gions. Some, like Truth Hounds, had
Apostol a chronology that they had put “You have to ask people what happened years of experience and a highly trained
together after speaking with him for that day but also what happened yes- staff. Other groups were relative new-
five hours the day before. terday. You have to always keep the comers. Even so, I never heard about
Apostol and his family were hiding door open.” anyone stepping on toes. Nataliya Gu-
in the basement of their apartment A good interviewer also knows how menyuk, a director of the Ukraine-based
building when Russian soldiers arrived. to end a conversation if it gets too hard. Public Interest Journalism Lab, which
They detained Apostol and interrogated “Sometimes you have to be cunning,” has recently formed groups that record
him, demanding that he divulge infor- Jordash continued. “You can’t interview victim and witness statements, told me,
mation about Nazis. One of the soldiers a woman about being raped when her “There is enough to go around.”
shot him in the leg. They then locked husband is next door. You might have
him in an outdoor shower stall, where to concoct a reason for the woman to ar crimes happen to the poor.
he spent the next four days. For part of
that time, Apostol shared the stall with
travel to the next town, to go to the
market, and interview her there.” You
W Ukraine’s wealthiest citizens left
before the fighting began, and, once
another prisoner, who had also been also have to know how to package the Russia attacked, people who had their
shot in the leg. After Apostol was re- testimony for legal proceedings. Bel- own cars, connections abroad, and
leased, he and his family fled on bicy- ousov, at the prosecutor general’s office, money to travel were more likely to
cles. His wife and son shared one, and said that one of his concerns was teach- leave than those who didn’t. Some of
Apostol pedalled his with one leg. ing prosecutors to work with victims. Kyiv’s most prized real estate was in
As Yaroslav read the narrative, he
and Stanislav asked questions and filled
in details. They were building a chronol-
ogy not only of Apostol’s captivity but
of the occupation of Vysokopillia. “The
Russians set up mortars near the hos-
pital,” Yaroslav read. “They used two
armored vehicles and a Kamaz truck
to block the road. Which road was it,
the one by the hospital?”
“Not the road, no,” Apostol said.
“They were blocking the view of the
hospital’s yard, so that one couldn’t see
where they fired from.”
“Right, we had that firing location
marked,” Yaroslav said. “And where did
they put the two armored vehicles? You
said your neighbor walked by them every
day. What was the neighbor’s name?”
The process of reviewing and anno-
tating Apostol’s story took two hours.
Later that day, I watched the pair in-
terview a man from a village in the Lu-
hansk region. Terrible things had hap-
pened to him—he had escaped with
his elderly mother, who suffered a se-
ries of strokes along the way, losing her
eyesight and much of her speech—but
none of it sounded like a potential war
crime. Still, the technique was the same: “They’re from Earth. I wonder if they know Dan?”
 sentences, twenty sentences of life in
prison, and ninety-eight finite prison
terms. Eichmann was hanged in Israel
in 1962. Since then, European coun-
tries, including Ukraine, have abolished
the death penalty.
Vadim Shishimarin, the twenty-one-
year-old Russian who killed a civilian,
pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life
in prison. Jordash considers that sen-
tence excessive. “He should have got-
ten time off for plea, for remorse, for
the fact that he was taking orders,” Jor-
dash said. “In the International Crim-
inal Tribunal for the former Yugosla-
via, he would have gotten five to eight
years. War-crimes sentences tend to be
incredibly low.”
There are pragmatic reasons for this.
Prosecutors need to give prisoners of
war an incentive to coöperate. And they
need to be able to increase the possible
punishment proportionately. “When
you capture Putin, is he going to get the
same sentence as the guy who shot the
cyclist?” Jordash said. At the same time,
“They will remember me as a good plant dad.” the impossibility of a punishment that
fits the crime creates a sort of wartime
discount: “What kind of sentence are you
• • going to give people who held seven
people in a cellar, brutalized them, raped
its western suburbs. But the people writes, “It is hard to deny a troubling them, and then shot them?”
whose loved ones were killed—the peo- disconnect between the radical and cre- What justice, then, can a war-crimes
ple who stayed even after the Russians ative efforts to gain legal dominion over trial offer if it’s neither a suitable pen-
came—were, by and large, from fami- acts of atrocity and the deeply conven- alty for the criminal nor compensation
lies who had lived in the area for gen- tional outcome of the process: incarcer- for the victim? Matviichuk, of the Cen-
erations. They had been the gentrified, ation.” The traditional rationale for in- ter for Civil Liberties, suggested that
not the gentrifiers. carceration is that time behind bars war-crime trials might facilitate a more
When I asked these victims what reforms prisoners. But surely no one just end to the war itself. “The Russian
justice would look like for them, they hoped to reform the engineers of the regime is trying to win this war by caus-
often suggested financial compensation. Holocaust. Incarceration takes criminals ing intolerable suffering to civilians,”
Iryna Havryliuk talked about the many out of social and political circulation, but Matviichuk said. “Our duty is to keep
things that Russian soldiers had stolen war-crime trials, Douglas argues, are an reminding the world of the brutality and
from her house. “What about the kill- extravagantly expensive means of achiev- the scale of these crimes.”
ings?” I asked at one point. “What about ing that relatively modest end. Is the This is an argument for war-crime
the killings?” she responded. “A lot of purpose of punishment deterrence? “It trials as media, as theatre—and it is an
people were killed in Bucha.” seems dreadfully obvious,” Douglas argument for why these trials should be
Writing in this magazine almost sixty writes, “that the Nuremberg and Eich- organized right now. “Western politi-
years ago, Arendt seemed to deride the mann trials did little to deter Pol Pot,” cians keep saying that we should cede
notion that a war crime should be re- and that the work of the International part of our territory to Putin,” Matviichuk
dressed through compensation to the Criminal Tribunals for the former Yu- said. “We have to remind them that they
victim. The Eichmann trial, in her view, goslavia and Rwanda have “done little are talking about dooming people to the
devolved into a showcase of grievances. to put a brake on genocide in Darfur.” horrors that we have been documenting.”
The criminal, she argued, “must suffer Or, one could add, to prevent Russian
for what he has done, not for what he atrocities in Chechnya, Syria, or Ukraine. fter Oleg was killed, Iryna Abram-
has caused others to suffer.”
The authors of war-crime prosecu-
In Arendt’s letter to Jaspers, she
wrote that, for Nazi crimes, “no pun-
A ova went with her father and her
cat to a friend’s house, in a part of town
tions spent more time thinking about ishment is severe enough.”The Nurem- that hadn’t seen much fighting. For the
crime than about punishment. Douglas berg trials ended with twenty-four death next three weeks, she kept imagining
50 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
Oleg’s body being crushed by tanks or Konstantin on its list of victims. When water hookups, but there was talk that
ripped apart by dogs. She promised her- her son, Serhii, got there, he was in- the hookups wouldn’t work with the
self that she would try to salvage some- vited to climb into a refrigerated wagon local system, and that the houses would
thing, if only a single bone. And then and to look inside body bags until he be unbearably hot in summer and cold
a woman came by and said that the found his father. in winter. Most of them appeared to
Russians were gone. The women now had to think about be parked at the train station.
Iryna ran to where her house had how they would live. They had lost
been. She felt like she was flying, even their breadwinners. Their houses had ataliya Verbova was finally able to
as she found herself stepping over bod-
ies on Yablunska Street—at least three
been looted and damaged. Ludmila’s
was destroyed by fire, apparently as
N return home on May 10th—more
than a month after she saw the photo-
on the sidewalk, a woman beside a bi- Ukrainian soldiers fought to retake the graph of her husband’s body. She and
cycle, plus several in a car that had been city; she has furnished a sleeping space other mourners had been visiting the
shot full of holes. Her house was now in what had been the summer kitchen— site of the execution every day and lay-
a pile of pale rubble, with the burned- she scavenged a door, but she has strug- ing flowers where the bodies of their
out shell of a washing machine on top. gled to scrape together enough money loved ones had been. Nataliya usually
Oleg was where the soldiers had left to buy a latch. Abramova is staying cried softly when she came. If anyone
him. The month of March had been with her father. Havryliuk’s home was addressed her, she told the story of her
cold, so his body was intact. Iryna wrote struck by shelling and is missing all of loss in a rushed monotone. Some days,
his name and age and the location of its windows. There may not be a sin- journalists were at the scene, their tele-
his death on a piece of paper for the gle intact roof remaining in Bucha— vision cameras set up on an out-of-sight
body collectors. the shelling and shooting went on for patch of pavement, ready to roll when
Iryna Havryliuk made her way back a month. a mourner showed up.
to Forest Bucha the day after her son’s One day in late May, I followed Kat- During the first week of June, an in-
call. The bodies of her husband, her eryna Ukraintseva, a member of the vestigator from the S.B.U. came to in-
brother, and the rabbit guy were in the Bucha city council, to a five-story apart- terview Nataliya and the other women
yard. Then she found a charred pile of ment building on Yablunska Street. In whose husbands and sons had been
what she realized were the remains of early March, two dozen residents there killed beside the office building. He met
six more people: her cousin, his wife, had crowded in the building’s base- them at the scene of the crime. The in-
their child—Iryna’s godchild—and three ment. Many of them found ways to get vestigator, who asked me not to use his
members of the family who had been out of Bucha, and eventually only six name, was pudgy and looked to be in
cooking for the others. The bodies were men and two women remained. Rus- his mid-twenties, with a still-sparse
burned and mutilated: the lower half of sian soldiers shot and killed three of beard. He set up a makeshift office on
Iryna’s godson had been sawed off, and the men, in three separate incidents— a bench, using an old chair as a desk.
her cousin’s legs were chopped off below one in his apartment and two in the He spoke to Nataliya for about an hour,
the knee. The neighbors were also miss- building’s stairwell. Now most of the then called out, “Next!” Kateryna
ing limbs. Altogether, in their little cor- other residents were back. Ukraintseva Rudenko sat down with him and started
ner of Bucha, eleven people from four was delivering a heavy roll of canvas dictating her personal details.
houses were killed. Nataliya finally had a case number.
Havryliuk stayed with a friend for She walked toward the low granite
two days, until the police came and took steps in front of the office building and
the bodies. Then she moved back into sat down next to Olga Prykhidko,
her house and, with some apprehen- whose husband, Anatoliy, was also ex-
sion, went down to the cellar where she ecuted there. He had been a furniture-
had spent the first days of the invasion. maker. Olga was the deputy director
The light of her cell-phone flashlight of a food store that Russian troops had
caught two eyes in the darkness. She looted and then destroyed. She has two
was terrified for a moment, then real- daughters, ages five and eleven. Olga
ized that the eyes belonged to the pet donated by the Red Cross, to spread and the girls had left when the Rus-
rabbit, which had survived. across the roof of the building—for the sians came, and Anatoliy stayed back
After authorities collected the dead, moment, this was the best remedy they to join Territorial Defense. Olga had
families were once again forced to search could find. checked with the conscription office;
for them. When Abramova eventually During my visits to Bucha, I was Anatoliy was not on the rolls. She wor-
found Oleg—weeks later, in a morgue surprised at how little construction there ried that this meant she would not re-
fifty miles from her home—his body was. I saw a single crew, putting up a ceive compensation.
was marked as “unidentified.” Svitlana store where one had burned down, and Both women cried as they exchanged
and a neighbor called every morgue in I heard a bit of hammering here and stories. “Next!” the investigator called.
the area, asking for the location of Kon- there. A shipment of modular homes He was done talking to Kateryna Ru-
stantin’s and Oleksandr’s bodies. Even- had arrived from Poland, neat-looking denko. Olga walked toward the bench.
tually, they found a morgue that had metal containers with electrical and Kateryna handed out candies. 
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 51
 FICTION

A Duet Ian McEwan

52 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY BILL BRAGG

 erners, like most schools, was neither impressed by nor contemptuous like the tamed unicorn behind its circu-

B held together by a hierarchy of

privileges, infinitesimally graded
and slowly bestowed over the years. It
of those who were.
In a dormitory shared with nine oth-
ers, the expression of difficult feelings—
lar fence—the art master had shown the
class a picture of the famous tapestry.
The unicorn must never be free of its
made the older boys conservative guard- self-doubt, tender hopes, sexual anxiety— chain, never leave its tiny enclosure.
ians of the existing order, jealous of the was rare. As for sexual longing, that was After three years of two hours a week
rights they had earned with such pa- submerged in boasts and taunts and ex- with Mr. Clare, Roland was a promis-
tience. Why bestow new-fashioned fa- tremely funny or completely obscure jokes. ing pianist. He was working his way
vors on the youngest when they them- Whichever, it was obligatory to laugh. up the grades. After scraping through
selves had tolerated privations to earn Behind this nervous sociability was the Grade 7, Roland was told by his teacher
the perks of greater maturity? It was a boys’ awareness of a grand new terrain that he was “almost precocious” for a four-
long, hard course. The youngest, the spread out before them. Prior to puberty, teen-year-old. Twice he had accompa-
first- and second-years, were the pau- its existence had been hidden and had nied hymns on Sunday, when Neil Noake,
pers and had nothing at all.Third formers never troubled them. Now the idea of a by far the school’s best pianist, was down
were allowed long trousers and a tie with sexual encounter rose on the horizon like with a cold. Among his peers, Roland’s
diagonal, rather than horizontal, stripes. a mountain range, beautiful, dangerous, status hovered just above average. Being
The fourth-years had their own com- irresistible. But still far away. As they mediocre in sport and in class held him
mon room. The fifth exchanged their talked and laughed in the dark after lights- back. But he sometimes said something
gray shirts for drip-dry white, which out, there was a wild impatience in the witty that was repeated about the place.
they scrubbed in the showers and draped air, a ridiculous longing for something And he had less acne than most.
on plastic hangers. They also had a su- unknown. Fulfillment lay ahead of them,
perior blue tie. they were cocksure of that, but they he fourth-form common room had
Lights-out time advanced by fifteen
minutes each year. To start, there was the
wanted it now. In a rural boarding school
for boys, not much chance. How could
T one table, eleven wooden chairs,
some lockers, and a notice board. A fur-
dormitory shared by thirty boys. Five they know what “it” really was when all ther entitlement the boys had not ex-
years later, that was down to six. The their information came from implausi- pected appeared each day after lunch—a
sixth form could wear sports jackets and ble anecdotes and jokes? One night, a newspaper, sometimes the Daily Express,
overcoats of their own choice, though boy said into the darkness, during a lull, sometimes the Daily Telegraph. Discards
nothing colorful was tolerated. They also “What if you died before you had it?” from the staff common room. Roland
had a weekly allowance of a four-pound There was silence in the dormitory as came into the room one afternoon to see
block of Cheddar cheese to be divided they took in this possibility. Then Ro- a friend sitting with his legs crossed,
among a dozen boys, and several loaves, land said, “There’s always the afterlife.” holding in front of him an open broad-
a toaster, and instant coffee, so they could And everybody laughed. sheet, and he realized that they were
entertain themselves between meals.They When the dormitory talk trailed away grownups at last. Politics bored them, as
went to bed when they pleased. At the into the beginning of sleep, he retreated they liked telling one another. As a group,
apex of the hierarchy were the prefects. into his special place. The piano teacher, they went for human interest, which was
They were entitled to take shortcuts across who no longer taught him, who had why they preferred the Express. A woman
the grass and shout at anyone lower down kissed him full on the lips when he was set on fire by her hair dryer. A madman
the scale who dared to do the same. eleven, pinched his thigh once, unbut- with a knife shot dead by a farmer, who
Like any social order, it seemed to all toned his shorts to tidy his rumpled shirt, ended up in prison, to general disgust.
but revolutionary spirits to be at one with did not know she led a double life. There A brothel unearthed not far from the
the fabric of reality. Roland did not ques- was the woman, the real one, Miss Mir- Houses of Parliament. A zookeeper swal-
tion it at the start of the academic year iam Cornell, the one who had invited lowed whole by a python. Adult life.
in September, 1962, when he and ten oth- him to lunch in her cottage when he In that time, moral standards were
ers in his house took possession of their was twelve. He had been too frightened high in public life and so, therefore, was
fourth-form common room. After three of her to turn up. He saw her occasion- hypocrisy. Delicious outrage was the gen-
years’ service, this was their first signifi- ally when he was near the sick bay, the eral tone. Scandals became part of their
cant step up the ladder. Roland, like his stable block, or the music rooms. She sex education. The Profumo affair was
friends, was becoming naturalized. He would be alone, walking to or from her less than a year away. Even the Telegraph
had acquired the easy manner the school little red car, after or before a lesson. He carried photographs of smiling girls in
was noted for, with hints of the nuanced never actually passed by her—he made the news with bouffant hair and eye-
loutishness expected of the fourth-years. sure of that. Then there was the woman lashes as thick and dark as prison bars.
His accent was changing from his moth- of his daydreams, who did as he made Then, in late October, politics in the
er’s rural Hampshire. Now there was a her do, which was to deprive him of his fourth-form common room became in-
touch of Cockney, a smaller touch of will and make him do as she wished. He teresting. Unusually, the two newspapers
BBC, and a third element that was dif- had to accept that she was now embed- arrived together on the table after lunch.
ficult to define. Technocratic, perhaps. ded in a special region of fantasy and Both were well thumbed, dog-eared, the
Self-sure. He recognized it years later longing, and that was where he wanted newsprint softened by many hands, and
among jazz musicians. Not posh, and her to remain, trapped in his thoughts both showed the same photograph on
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 53
their front pages. For boys who had re- room affected genuine grown-up con- believed. One by one, his classmates
cently visited Lakenheath, the nearby cern at this new state of things, the words looked and saw it, too. Others had im-
U.S. Air Force base, on open day and had “thermonuclear warhead” conjured for portant theories of their own of what
touched the cold steel nose of a missile, them, like towering thunderclouds at should be done, and what must happen
the way some might a holy relic, the story sunset, a thrilling reckless disruption, a when it was.
was compelling: spies, spy planes, secret promise of ultimate liberty by which Classes went on as usual. No teacher
cameras, deception, bombs, the two most school, routines, regulations, even par- referred to the crisis, and the boys were
powerful men on the planet ready to face ents—everything—was to be blown away, not surprised. These were separate realms,
each other down, and possible war. The a world wiped clean. A boundless ad- school and the real world. James Hern,
photograph could have come from the venture was at hand. They knew they the stern but privately kind housemas-
triple-locked safe of an intelligence mas- would survive; they discussed rucksacks, ter, did not mention in his evening an-
termind. It showed low hills, square fields, water bottles, penknives, maps. Roland nouncements that the world might soon
wooded terrain scarred white by tracks was by then a member of the photogra- be ending. The somewhat put-upon
and clearings. Narrow rectangular labels phy club and knew how to develop and matron, Mrs. Maldey, did not speak of
had helpful pointers: “20 long cylindri- print. He had clocked some hours in the the Cuban missile crisis when the boys
cal tanks”; “missile transporters”; “5 mis- darkroom working on multiple versions handed in their laundry, and she was
sile dollies”; “12 prob guideline missiles.” of a view across the river, with oak trees usually irritated by any threat to her com-
Flying their U2 reconnaissance jets at and ferns, six inches by four, rather fine plex routines. Roland did not write about
impossible heights, using cameras with except for an annoying brown streak the situation in his next letter to his
exciting telescopic power, the Americans across the center that he had failed to mother. President Kennedy had an-
had revealed to the world Russian nu- eliminate. He was listened to with re- nounced a “quarantine” around Cuba;
clear missiles on Cuba, only ninety miles spect as he examined the fresh U2 photo Russian vessels, with a cargo of nuclear
from the Florida coast. Intolerable, every- that appeared on the second day. This warheads, were heading toward a flotilla
one agreed. A gun to the head of the one had new labels: “erector/launcher of American warships. If Khrushchev
West. The sites would have to be bombed equipment”; “8 missile trailers”; “tent did not order his ships back they would
before they became operational, then the areas.” Someone passed him a magnify- be sunk, and the Third World War could
island invaded. ing glass. He leaned in closer. When he begin. How could that make sense along-
What might the Russians do? Even discovered the mouth of a tunnel that side Roland’s account of planting nurs-
as the boys of the fourth-form common the C.I.A. analysts had missed, he was ery fir trees with the Young Farmers Club
on boggy land behind the dormitory?
Their letters crossed, and hers were as
innocent as his. The boys had no access
to TV—that was for the sixth form only
on certain days. No one listened to or
knew about serious radio news. There
were some breezy announcements on
Radio Luxembourg, but essentially the
Cuban missile affair was a drama con-
fined to the two newspapers.
The first rush of boyish excitement
began to fade. The official school silence
was making Roland anxious. He was
most affected when alone. A moody stroll
through the oaks and bracken beyond
the ha-ha didn’t help. For an hour he sat
at the foot of the statue of Diana the
Huntress, looking toward the river. He
might never see his parents again, or his
sister Susan. Or get to know his brother
Henry better. One evening, after lights-
out, the boys were discussing the crisis
as they did every night. The door opened
and a prefect came in. It was the Head
of House. He didn’t tell them to quiet
down. Instead, he joined their conversa-
tion. They began to ask him questions,
which he answered gravely, as if he him-
“After surveilling the subject, I’ve learned he is not actually self were just back from the Crisis Room
too busy to hang out with you after work.” in the White House. He claimed insider
knowledge, and they believed everything newly launched on a splendid truculent was warm and almost cloudless. Clear
he said and were flattered to have him revolt. It was liberating to be or feel lout- enough to watch missiles sailing in from
to themselves. He was already a full mem- ish. Satire, parody, mockery were their the east. He came down the slope to-
ber of the adult world, and their bridge modes, ludicrous renderings of author- ward the church at speed, holding his
to it. Three years ago, he had been one ity’s voice and stock phrases. They were breath against the smell of warmed pig
of them. They couldn’t see him in the scathing, merciless with one another, too, swill from the sty, and at the Berners
darkness, only hear his low certain tone even as they were loyal. All of this, all of School lodge turned left toward Shot-
coming from the direction of the door, them, soon to be vaporized. He did not ley. After a mile, he was looking out for
that school voice of softened Cockney see how the Russians could afford to his shortcut, a farm track on his right
touched with bookish confidence. He back down when the whole world was that would take him across flat fields,
told them something startling, which watching. The two sides, protesting that past Crouch House, along Warren Lane
they should have worked out for them- they stood for peace, would, for pride to the duck pond and Erwarton Hall.
selves. In an all-out nuclear war, he said, and honor’s sake, stumble into war. One Every boy at school knew that Anne
one of the important targets in England small exchange, one ship sunk for an- Boleyn had been happy there, visiting
would be the Lakenheath airbase, less other, would become a lunatic confla- as a child, and that the future King
than fifty miles away. That meant that gration. Schoolboys knew that this was Henry had come to court her. Before
the school would be instantly obliter- how the First World War had begun. she was beheaded in the Tower of Lon-
ated, Suffolk would become a desert, and They had written essays on the subject. don at his command, she asked for her
all the people in it would be—and this Each country had said it didn’t want war, heart to be entombed in Erwarton
was the word he used—vaporized. Va- and then each had joined in with a fe- church. It was said to be in a little heart-
porized. Several boys echoed the word rocity the world was still trying to un- shaped box buried underneath the organ.
from their beds. derstand. This time there would be no At the hall, Roland stopped, propped
The prefect left, and the talk slowed one left to try. Then what of that first his bike by the ancient gatehouse,
and stumbled into the night as sleep took sexual encounter, that beautiful danger- crossed the road, and walked up and
hold. Roland remained awake. The word ous mountain range? Blown away with down. Her house was only minutes
would not let him sleep. It made sense. the rest. As Roland lay waiting for sleep, away. He wasn’t ready. It was important
Mr. Corner, the biology teacher, had told he remembered his friend’s question: not to arrive sweaty and out of breath.
the class not so long ago that the human What if you died before you had it? It. He had spent so much time thinking
body was ninety-three per cent water. The next day, Saturday, 27th Octo- about and avoiding Erwarton that he
Boiled away in a white flash, the remain- ber, was the beginning of half-term. No felt as if he, too, had spent his child-
ing seven per cent coiling in the air like Saturday lessons, no games, was the ex- hood here. Minutes later, he was pass-
cigarette smoke, dispersed on the breeze. tent of it. School would resume on Mon- ing a pub and some scattered houses
Or whipped away by the bomb’s blast. day. Some of the London boys had par- and soon after he was outside her cot-
There would be no heading north with ents coming down. A sixth former had tage. He knew it by her red car parked
his best friends, rucksacks loaded with a copy of the Guardian and let Roland on the grass. There was a white picket
survival rations, fleeing like Daniel De- look. In the Caribbean, the Americans gate and a brick path that led with a
foe’s citizens escaping London in the had allowed a Russian oil tanker bound slight curve to her front door. He leaned
plague year. Roland had not believed in for Cuba to pass. It was assumed that his bike against the car, pulled his trou-
the survival adventure, anyway. But it it contained only oil. The Russian ships sers free of his socks, and hesitated. He
had kept him from dwelling on what carrying missiles brazenly strapped to felt watched, though there was no move-
might really happen. their decks had slowed or stopped. But ment at the two downstairs windows.
He had never contemplated his own Russian submarines were reported in Unlike the other cottages around, this
death. He was certain that the usual as- the area and new reconnaissance pho- one had no net curtains. He would have
sociations—dark, cold, silent, decay— tos showed that work was continuing preferred her to come out to him. Greet
were irrelevant. These were all things on the Cuban sites. The missiles were him and do all the talking.
that could be felt and understood. Death ready for firing. There was a buildup of After a moment, he pushed open
lay on the far side of darkness, beyond American military forces in Florida, at the gate and went slowly toward the
even nothing. He was dismissive of the Key West. It looked likely that the plan door. The borders that ran along the
afterlife, like all of his friends. They sat was to invade Cuba and destroy the path had the ruined look of a forgot-
through the compulsory Sunday-eve- sites. A French politician was quoted as ten summer. She hadn’t yet dug out the
ning service in contempt of the earnest saying that the world was “teetering” on dying plants. He was surprised to see
visiting vicars and their wheedling and the brink of nuclear war. Soon it would old plastic flowerpots on their side and
beseeching of a nonexistent God. It was be too late to turn back. sweet wrappers trodden into the dead
a point of honor with them never to utter leaves. She had always seemed a neat
the responses or close their eyes, bow oland’s bike was on a raised pave- and organized person, but he knew
heads or say “Amen” or sing the hymns,
although they stood and opened the hym-
R ment behind the school kitchens,
a rusty old racer with twenty-one gears
nothing about her. He was making a
mistake and should turn back now, be-
nal at a random page out of a residual and a slow leak in the front tire that he fore she saw him. No, he was deter-
sense of courtesy. At fourteen, they were could never be bothered to fix. The day mined to tie himself to his fate. His
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 55
hand was already lifting the heavy the black jeans that Brian Jones wore. it was visible. But she was on her feet
knocker and letting it fall. And again. What other changes might Miss Cor- and going toward the piano.
He heard rapid muffled thumps as she nell have noted? Voice newly broken. “I’ve got just the thing. Mozart.”
descended the stairs. There was the Long, solemn face, full lips that some- She was already sitting at the piano,
sound of a bolt withdrawn. She pulled times trembled, as though he were sup- and he was still on the sofa in a daze of
the door open so fast and wide that he pressing certain thoughts, greenish- embarrassment. He was about to fail and
was instantly intimidated and couldn’t brown eyes behind National Health be humiliated. And sent away.
meet her gaze. The first thing he saw Service specs, whose plastic rims he had “Ready?”
was that she was barefoot and her toe- prised off long before John Lennon “I don’t really feel like it.”
nails were painted purple. thought of doing the same. Gray Har- “Just the first movement. It’ll do you
“It’s you.” She said it neutrally, with- ris Tweed jacket with elbow patches no harm.”
out hesitation or surprise. He lifted his over a Hawaiian shirt with palm-tree He could see no way out. He rose
head and they exchanged a glance, and motif. Drainpipe gray flannel trousers slowly, then squeezed behind her to
for a confused moment he thought he were the closest substitute for tight black take the left side. As he passed, he felt
might have knocked at the wrong jeans that the Berners dress code would the warmth coming off the back of her
house. Sure, she recognized him. But permit. His Winklepicker shoes had a head. When he was sitting down, he
she looked different. Her hair was loose, medieval look. He smelled of a lemony became aware of a ticking clock above
almost to her shoulders. She wore a cologne. That day he was free of acne. the fireplace, as loud as a metronome.
pale-green T-shirt under a cardigan, There was something indefinably un- Against it, keeping time in a duet would
and jeans that ended well above her wholesome about him. Something lean be a challenge. Against both would be
ankles. Her Saturday clothes. He had and snakelike. his agitated heart. She arranged the
prepared something to say, an open- Where he sprawled back uneasily music before them. D major. A Mozart
ing, but he had forgotten it. on the sofa, she was upright, and now four-hander. He had played some of it
“Almost two years late. Lunch is cold.” she leaned forward. Her voice was sweet once with Neil Noake, perhaps six
He said it quickly. “I had a long and tolerant. Perhaps she pitied him. months before. Suddenly, she had a
detention.” “So, Roland. Tell me about yourself.” change of mind.
She smiled, and he blushed with help- It was one of those adult questions, “We’ll swap. More fun for you.”
less pride in his smart reply. It had come impossible and dull. As he politely She stood and stepped away, and he
from nowhere. pushed himself up into a position more slid along to his right. As she sat down
“Come on, then.” like hers, he could think of nothing to again, she said in that same kindly voice,
He stepped past her into a cramped talk about other than his piano lessons “We won’t take it too fast.”
hallway, with a steep run of stairs in front with Mr. Clare. He explained that he With a slight tilt of her whole body,
of him and doors to the left and right. was getting an extra hour and a half a and raising both hands above the key-
“Go left.” week for free. Lately, he told her, he had board and dropping them, she brought
He saw the piano first, a baby grand been learning— them in, and off they went at what
squashed into a corner but still taking She interrupted him, and, as she did seemed to Roland a hopeless pace. Like
up a good part of the room. Piles of so, she pulled up her right leg and tucked tobogganing down an icy mountain.
music on two chairs, two small sofas He was a fraction behind her on the
facing each other over a low table, opening grand declaration, so that the
stacked with books. Today’s newspa- piano, a Steinway, sounded like a bar-
pers were on the floor. Beyond, a door room honky-tonk. In his nervousness
through to a tiny kitchen that gave onto he gave a snort of smothered laughter.
a walled garden. He caught up with her, and then, too
“Sit,” she said, as if to a dog. A joke, earnest, he was slightly ahead. He was
of course. She sat opposite and looked clinging to a cliff edge. Expression, dy-
at him intently, seeming vaguely amused namics were beyond him—he could do
by his presence. What did she see? no more than play the right notes in
In later years, he often wondered. A it under her left knee. “I hear you got the right order as they careened across
fourteen-year-old boy, average height your Grade 7.” the page. There were moments when
for his age, slender build but strong “Yep.” it sounded almost good. As they tossed
enough, dark-brown hair, long for the “Merlin Clare says your sight-read- back and forth a little figure in an ex-
times thanks to the distant influence of ing is good.” tended throbbing crescendo, she called
John Mayall and, later, Eric Clapton. “I don’t know.” out “Bravo!” What a din they were mak-
During a brief stay with his sister, Ro- “And you’ve come all this way on your ing in the tiny room. When they reached
land had been taken by his cousin Barry bike to play duets with me.” the end of the movement, she flipped
to the Ricky Tick Club at Guildford He blushed again, this time at what the page over. “Can’t stop now!”
bus station to hear the Rolling Stones. he thought was innuendo. He also ex- He managed well enough, picking
It was there that Roland’s look had been perienced the beginnings of an erection. his way through the lilting melody while
consolidated, for he was impressed by He moved a hand across his lap in case she played a gentle Alberti bass that
56 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
 Then she came back and took his hand.
“Come on, then.”
I AM SIMON ARMITAGE She led him to the foot of the stairs,
where she paused and looked at him in-
I am Simon Armitage. I am tently. Her eyes were bright.
Aiming Maestro, “Are you frightened?”
Airiest Gammon. I am “No,” he lied. His voice was thick. He
needed to clear his throat, but he didn’t
Armani Egotism, dare do it in case it made him sound
Ammonia Tigers, weak or stupid or unhealthy. In case it
Grim Anatomies. woke him from this dream. The stair-
case was narrow. He held on to her hand
I am German Otis, as she went before him and towed him
I am Inmost Rage, up. On the landing, there was a bath-
I am Moist Anger. room straight ahead and, as downstairs,
doors to the right and left. She pulled
Granite Mimosa I am, him to the right. The room excited him.
Reaming Maoist, It was a mess. The bed was unmade. On
Marmite Saigon, the floor by a laundry basket was a small
heap of her underwear in various pas-
Mismanage Riot, tels. The sight of it touched him. When
Origami Stamen, he knocked, she must have been folding
Omega Martinis, her washing for the week ahead, the way
people did on Saturday mornings.
I am More Giants, “Take your shoes and socks off.”
I am Groin Meats, He did as he was told. He did not
I am Me Roasting. I am like the way his pointed shoes rose up
at the tips. He pushed them under
Soaring Tammie, a chair.
Steaming Moira, She spoke in a sensible voice. “Are
Emigration Sam. you circumcised, Roland?”
“Yes. I mean, no.”
I am a Snog Timer. “Either way, you’ll go in the bath-
I am Sir Megaton. room and have a good wash.”
Against Memoir I am. It seemed reasonable enough and,
because of that, his arousal drained away.
—Simon Armitage The bathroom was tiny, with a pink
bathmat, a narrow bath, and a glass-
fronted shower cubicle at a slight lean,
bore him along. She pressed against leaned down, and whispered in his ear, and, on a chrome rack, thick white tow-
him, leaning to her right as they lifted “You’re going to be all right.” els of a kind that reminded him of home.
into a higher register together. He re- He wasn’t sure what she meant. She On a shelf above the basin he saw a
laxed a little when she almost fumbled crossed the room and went into the curvy bottle of her perfume and its name,
a run of notes, a private game of mis- kitchen. Seeing her bare white feet, rosewater. He was thorough in his prepa-
chievous Mozart. But the movement hearing the scuffing sound they pro- rations. Displeasing her in any way was
seemed to last hours, and at the end the duced on the flagstones, made him feel what he dreaded most. As he was get-
black dots that signalled a repeat were weak. A couple of minutes later, she ting dressed, he peered out a small leaded
a punishment, a renewed jail sentence. came back with glasses of orange juice, window under the gable. He had a view
The weight on his attention was be- made from actual crushed oranges, a across wide fields to the Stour, nearing
coming unbearable. His eyes were smart- novel taste. By then, he was standing low tide, with its mudbanks emerging
ing. Finally, the movement sank away uncertainly by the low table, wonder- from the silver water like the humped
into its final chord, which he held for ing if he was now expected to leave. backs of monsters, and sea grasses and
a crotchet too long. He would not have minded. They drank circling flocks of seabirds. A twin-masted
Immediately, she stood. He felt close in silence. Then she put her glass down sailboat was in mid-channel running
to tears with relief that they were not and did something that almost caused out with the flow. Whatever was hap-
going to play the allegro molto. But she him to faint. He had to steady him- pening here in this cottage, the world
hadn’t spoken, and he sensed that he had self against the arm of a sofa. She went would go on, anyway. Until it didn’t.
disappointed her. She was close behind to the front door, knelt, and sank the Perhaps within the hour.
him. She put her hands on his shoulders, heavy door bolt into the stone floor. When he returned, she had tidied the
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 57
room and turned back the covers. “That’s her T-shirt, were green. Cotton, not silk. back in sensual wonder, reaching for her
what you’ll do every time.” The T-shirt was a large man’s size, and hands, unable to speak. Probably only
Her suggestion of a future excited perhaps he should have worried about a minutes passed. It seemed as if he had
him again. She gestured to him to sit be- rival. The folds of the material, brushed been shown a hidden fold in space where
side her on the bed. Then she put her cotton, seemed to him voluptuous in his there was a catch, a fastener, and that as
hand on his knee. heightened state. Her eyes were also he released it and peeled away the illu-
“Are you worried about contracep- green. He had once thought there was sory everyday he saw what had always
tion?” something cruel about them. Now their been there. Their roles—teacher, pupil—
He did not answer. He hadn’t given color suggested daring. She could do the order and self-importance of school,
it a thought and was ignorant of the anything she wanted. Her bare legs had timetables, bikes, cars, clothes, even words:
details. traces of a summer tan. Her round face, all of it a diversion to keep everyone from
She said, “I could be the first woman which once had the quality of a mask, this. It was either hilarious or it was tragic
on the Shotley Peninsula to be on now had a soft and open look. The light that people should go about their daily
the pill.” through the small bedroom window business in the conventional way when
This, too, was beyond him. His only picked out the strength of her cheek- they knew there was this. Even the head-
resource was the truth, what was most bones. No lipstick this Saturday morn- master, who had a son and a daughter,
obvious at that moment. He turned to ing. The hair she had worn in a bun for must know. Even the Queen. Every adult
face her and said, “I really like being lessons was very fine and strands of it knew. What a façade. What pretense.
here with you.” As the words left him, floated up when she moved her head. Later, she opened her eyes and, gaz-
they sounded childish. But she smiled She was looking at him in that patient, ing down at him with a faraway look,
and drew his face to hers and they kissed. wry way she had. Something about him said, “There’s something missing.”
Not for very long or very deeply. He amused her. She pulled her T-shirt off His voice came faintly from beyond
followed her. Lips then, glancingly, tips and let it fall to the floor. the cottage walls, “Yes?”
of tongues, then just lips again. She lay “Time you learned to take a girl’s “You haven’t said my name.”
back on the bed against the pillows and bra off.” “Miriam.”
said, “Get undressed for me. I want to He knelt beside her on the bed. “Say it three times.”
look at you.” Though his fingers shook, it turned out He did so.
He stood and pulled his Hawaiian to be obvious enough, how to lift the A pause. She swayed, then she said,
shirt over his head. The old oak floor- hooks from the eyes. She pushed the “Say something to me. With my name.”
boards creaked under him when he stood blankets and sheets away. She was hold- He did not hesitate. It was a love let-
on one leg to pull off his trousers. Ta- ing his gaze, as if to prevent him from ter, and he meant it. “Dear Miriam, I
pered by his mother to keep him in fash- gaping at her breasts. love Miriam. I love you, Miriam.” And
ion, they were tight over the heels. He “Let’s get in,” she said. “Come here.” as he was saying it again she arched her
was in good shape, he thought, and not She lay on her back with her arm back, gave a shout, a beautiful tapering
ashamed to stand exposed in front of stretched out. She wanted him to lie on cry. That was it for him, too. He followed
Miriam Cornell. it, or within it. With her free hand she her, just one step behind, barely a crotchet.
But she said sharply, “All of it.” pulled up the covers, turned on her side
So he pulled down his underpants and drew him toward her. He was un- e went downstairs ten minutes after
and stepped out of them.
“That’s better. Lovely, Roland. And
easy. This was more like a mother-and-
child embrace. He sensed that he should
H her. His head was clear, his tread
was light, and he took the steep stairs
look at you.” be in a more commanding position. He two at a time. The clocks had not yet
She was right. He had never known felt strongly that he shouldn’t let him- been turned back and the sun was still
such anticipation. Even as she frightened self be babied. But how strongly? To high enough. It was not even one-thirty.
him, he trusted her and was ready to do be enveloped like this was sudden, un- It would be a delight now to be on his
whatever she asked. All the time he had expected bliss. There was no choice. She bike, taking a different route to school,
spent with her in his thoughts and, be- drew his face toward her breasts and now the Harkstead way, at speed, passing close
fore that, all the intimidating lessons at they filled his view and he took her nip- by the pine wood that contained the se-
the piano had been a rehearsal for what ple in his mouth. She shuddered and cret lake. Alone, to prize the treasure that
was about to happen. It was all one les- murmured, “Oh, God.” He came up for no one could take from him, to taste it,
son. She would make him ready to face air. They were face to face and kissing. sift it, reconstruct it. To get the measure
death, happy to be vaporized. He looked She guided his fingers between her legs of the new person he was. He might ex-
at her expectantly. What did he see? and showed him, then took her hand tend the ride, take the farm tracks to
The memory would never leave him. away. She whispered, “No, gently, slower,” Freston. The prospect was sweet. But,
The bed was a double by the standards and closed her eyes. first, a goodbye. When he arrived in the
of the time, less than five feet across. Two Suddenly, she pushed the bed covers sitting room, she was bending down to
sets of two pillows. She sat against one away and rolled on top of him, sat up— gather up the papers from the floor. He
set with her knees drawn up. While he and it was complete, accomplished. So was not too young to sense a shift of
was undressing, she had taken off her simple. Like some trick with a vanish- mood. Her movements were quick and
cardigan and jeans. Her knickers, like ing knot in a length of soft rope. He lay tense. Her hair was tied back tight. She
58 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
straightened and looked at him and knew. frantic, even angry. The terrible thought turned to obey, she pulled him back by
She said, “Oh, no, you don’t.” came to him that there might be some- the collar of his shirt and kissed him
“What?” thing wrong with her. She saw him and on the cheek.
She came toward him. “You abso- waved at him to come out. She went indoors to prepare lunch
lutely don’t.” When he got to her, she said, “Don’t while he pushed a wheelbarrow with
He started to say, “I don’t know what just watch. This thing is bloody heavy.” his rake around the house and set to
you mean,” but she spoke over him. “Got Together, they stored the table in the work out front. It was harder here. The
what you came for and heading off. Is shed. Then she put a rake in his hands leaves were massed between and be-
that it?” and told him to sweep up the leaves hind thorny rose shrubs along the bor-
“No. Honestly. I want to stay.” and put them on the compost heap ders. The rake’s head was too wide.
“Are you telling me the truth?” at the bottom of the garden. While He had to go down on all fours and
“Yes!” he raked beech leaves from next door’s scoop the leaves out with his hands. He
“Yes, Miss.” tree, she was busy in the borders with gathered up the empty plastic flower-
He looked to see if she was making her secateurs. An hour passed. He was pots, the sweet wrappers, and other rub-
fun of him. Impossible to tell. dumping the last of the leaves on the bish that had blown in. Just beyond her
“Yes, Miss.” compost. Across the open space, he front gate was her car and his bike lean-
“Good. Ever peeled a potato?” could make out a slice of the river, part ing against it. He tried not to look at
He nodded, not daring to say no. of an inlet, tinted orange. It occurred it. Perhaps it was hunger that was mak-
She led him into the kitchen. By the to him to step over the low fence into ing him irritable. That and the fiddly
sink, in a tin bowl, were five big dirty the field, walk around to the front of nature of the job.
potatoes. She gave him a peeler and a the cottage, retrieve his bike, and be off. When he was done at last and had
colander. “Did you wash your hands?” Never come back. It would hardly mat- returned the rake and the wheelbarrow
He tried to sound curt. “Yes.” ter if the world was ending. He could to the shed, he went indoors. Miriam
“Yes, Miss.” do all that. But it was simple—he was basting the lamb.
“I thought you wanted me to call you couldn’t. His urge to leave surprised him “Not ready yet,” she said, and then
Miriam.” as much as his inability to. It was a mat- she saw him. “Look at the state of you.
She gave him a look of exaggerated ter of courtesy to help out, to stay for Your trousers are filthy.” She took his
pity and continued. “When they’re done lunch. He was hungry; the leg of lamb hand. “You’re all scratched. You poor dar-
and rinsed, chop them into four and put he had seen in the kitchen would be far ling. Get your shoes off. Into the shower
them in that pot.” superior to anything at school. It helped, with you!”
She stepped into some clogs and or simplified matters, minutes later, He let himself be led upstairs. The
went into the back garden, and he when Miriam told him to rake the front backs of his hands were indeed bloody
started work. He felt trapped, bewil- garden also. He had no choice. As he from the rose thorns. He felt cared for
dered, and at the same time he thought
he owed her a great debt. Of course, it
would have been wrong, appalling bad
manners, to leave. But even if it had
been right he would not have known
how to withstand her. She had always
frightened him. He had not forgotten
how cruel she could be. Now it was
more complicated; it was worse, and
he had made it worse. He suspected
that he had brushed against a funda-
mental law of the universe: such ec-
stasy must compromise his freedom.
That was its price.
The first potato was slow. Like wood
carving, at which he had always been
useless. By the fourth, he thought he had
the hang of it. The trick was to ignore
the detail. He quartered and rinsed his
five potatoes and put them in the pot of
water. He went to the kitchen’s half-
glazed door to see what she was up to.
The light was golden. She was dragging
a cast-iron table across the lawn toward
a shed. Pausing, then dragging a few
inches at a time. Her movements were
 He considered carefully. He was so
full of food, and he was also a new per-
son—a man, in fact—and at that mo-
ment he was not really bothered. But
he said, “We might all be dead tomor-
row. Or tonight.”
She pushed her plate aside and folded
her arms. “Really? You don’t look very
scared.”
His present indifference was a heavy
weight. He forced himself to remember
how he had felt the day before, and the
night before that. “I’m terrified.” And
then, suddenly feeling the rich aura of
his new maturity, he returned her ques-
tion, in a manner that would never have
occurred to a child. “What do you think?”
“I think Kennedy and all of Amer-
ica are behaving like spoiled babies. Stu-
pid and reckless. And the Russians are
liars and thugs. You’re quite right to be
frightened.”
Roland was astonished. He had never
heard a word against the Americans. The
President was a godly figure in every-
“Did we do it? Did we actually look like one thing Roland had read. “But it was the
of those couples who run together?” Russians who put their missiles—”
“Yes, yes. And the Americans have
theirs right against the Soviet border
• • with Turkey. They’ve always said that
strategic balance was the only way to
and just a little heroic. In her bedroom, but he nodded. She poured him some keep the world safe. They should both
he undressed in front of her. homemade lemonade. At first, they ate pull back. Instead, we have these silly
Her tone was warm. “Look at you. in silence, and he was nervous, for he dangerous games at sea. Boys’ games!”
Big again.” She drew him toward her was beginning to understand how quickly Her passion astonished him. Her
and fondled him while they kissed. her moods shifted. It was also worrying cheeks were red. His heart was racing.
The shower was not a good experi- that he was without his clothes. The He had never felt so grown-up. “Then
ence. The water came out in a dribble, washing machine was turning, making what’s going to happen?”
with a hair’s-breadth turn of the tap be- little moaning sounds. But soon he did “Either some trigger-happy idiot out
tween icy and scalding. When he re- not care, because he had a plate of roast at sea makes a mistake and it all blows
turned to the bedroom, towel round his lamb, pink, even bloody in places, which up, just like you fear. Or they do the deal
waist, his clothes were gone. He heard was new to him. And seven large pieces they should have done ten days ago, like
her coming up the stairs. of roast potato and much buttery cauli- proper statesmen, instead of driving us
Before he could ask, she said, “They’re flower. When it was offered, he accepted all to the brink.”
in the washing machine. You can’t go another plate of meat and then a third “So you think a war might really
back to school covered in mud.” She and a total of fifteen potato chunks and happen?”
passed him a gray sweater and a pair of most of the cauliflower. He would have “It’s just possible, yes.”
her beige slacks. “Don’t worry. I’m not liked to pick up the half-full gravy boat He stared at her. His own position,
lending you my knickers.” and drink it all, because it was surely that they might all die tonight, was largely
Her clothes fit well enough, though going to be thrown away. But he knew rhetorical. It was what his friends and
the slacks looked girlish around the his manners. the sixth formers said at school. There
hips. There was an odd little loop that Finally, she raised the subject, the only was comfort in having everybody say it.
was supposed to go under his heel. He real topic. Since it had been the cause of But hearing it now from her was a shock.
let it drag. As he followed her down the his visit, he had automatically assumed She seemed wise. The newspapers were
stairs, the thought that they were both the matter buried. saying the same kind of thing, but that
barefoot pleased him. At their very late “I don’t suppose you read the papers.” mattered less. Those were stories, like en-
lunch she had a glass of white wine, which “I do,” he said quickly. “I know what’s tertainments. He began to feel shivery.
she said she preferred at room tempera- happening.” She placed a hand on his wrist, turned
ture. He did not know the rules of wine, “And what do you think?” it, and found his fingers and interlocked
60 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
them with hers. “Listen, Roland. It’s very, He dressed quickly in the clothes she deal till cuba missiles are made
very unlikely. They might be stupid, but had lent him and went downstairs. The useless.” She gave him a glass of or-
both sides have too much to lose. Do first thing he saw was his bike propped ange juice and made him play another
you understand?” against the piano. She was in the kitchen, Mozart duet with her, this time the
“Yes.” finishing the washing-up. F major. He sight-read all the way. Af-
“Do you know what I’d like?” She She called to him. “Safer in here. I terward, she said, “You play the dotted
waited for his answer. spoke to Paul Bond. Did you know I notes like a jazz musician.” It was a re-
“What?” teach his daughter? It’s fine for you to buke he took as praise.
“I’d like to take you upstairs with stay overnight.” She came toward him When, at last, they sat down to eat
me.” She added in a whisper, “Make you and kissed his forehead. and she turned on the radio for the news,
feel safe.” She was wearing a blue dress of fine the story had moved on. The crisis was
So they rose without letting go, and corduroy, with darker blue buttons down over. They listened to a deep voice, rich
for the third time that day she towed the front. He liked her familiar perfume. in authority, issue the deliverance. There
him up the stairs. In the fading light of Now it seemed that for the first time he had been an important exchange of let-
the late afternoon it happened all over really understood how beautiful she was. ters between the leaders. The Russian
again, and again he wondered at him- “I told him we’re rehearsing a duet. ships were turning back, and Khrushchev
self, how earlier in the day he had been And we are.” would order that the missiles be removed
so eager to get away, to regress and be- He wheeled his bike through the from Cuba. The general view was that
come a kid on a bike. Afterward, he lay kitchen into the garden and propped it President Kennedy had saved the world.
on her arm, his face level with her breasts, by the shed. It was a night of stars and The Prime Minister, Harold Macmil-
feeling a growing drowsiness begin to the first touch of winter. Already the lan, had phoned his congratulations.
smother him. His attention drifted in beginning of a frost was forming on the It was another cloudless day. The low
and out of what she was quietly saying. lawn that he had raked. It crunched un- afternoon sun, well past the equinox,
“I always knew that you’d come. . . . derfoot as he moved away from the blazed through the glazed upper half of
I’ve been very patient, but I knew . . . kitchen light in order to see the smudged the kitchen door into the little sitting
even though you didn’t. Are you listen- forked road of the Milky Way. A Third room and spilled across the table. As
ing? Good. Because now that you’re World War would make no difference Roland ate his omelette, he felt again
here you should know. I’ve waited a very to the universe. the insidious desire to be off, hurtling
long time. You’re not to speak about this Miriam called to him from the along the route he had in mind. Out of
to anyone. Not to your closest friend, kitchen door. “Roland, you’ll freeze to the question. He had already been told
no boasting about it, however tempt- death. Get inside.” that while she ironed his clothes he would
ing it is. Is that clear?” He went immediately toward her. be washing the dishes. She had earned
“Yes,” he said. “It’s clear.” That evening they played the Mozart the right to tell him what to do. But
again, and this time he was more expres- she’d had it from the beginning.
hen he woke it was dark outside sive and followed the dynamic markings. “What a relief,” she kept saying.
W and she had gone. The bedroom
air was cold on his nose and ears. He
In the slow movement, he tried to imi-
tate her smooth and seamless legato
“Aren’t you happy? You don’t look it.”
“I am, honestly. It’s amazing. What
lay on his back in the comfortable bed. a relief.”
From downstairs he heard the front door Thirty years later, he would under-
open and close and then a familiar tick- stand the damage, how derailed his life
ing sound that he could not place. He was by her, how distorted his expecta-
lay for half an hour in loosely associ- tion of love. When he was twelve, she
ated daydreams. If the world did not had touched and unwound a little coil
end, then the school term would, in in his being and, without having to do
fifty-four days. He would make the jour- more, she had possessed him. Two years
ney to his father’s latest Army posting, later, pursued by fear and childish van-
in Germany, to be with his parents for ity and incoherent desire, he had run to
the Christmas holidays, a prospect of touch. He thundered his way through her. It would take him half a lifetime to
comfort and boredom. What he liked the allegro molto and the cottage seemed frame it in such simple terms. But now,
was to think about the stages of the to shake. It hardly mattered.They laughed here at the sunlit lunch table, many lay-
journey, the train from Ipswich to Man- about it. At the end, she hugged him. ers below his outward decorum, and
ningtree, where the River Stour ceased The next morning, he slept late. By barely available to the ignorant boy, was
to be tidal, change there for Harwich the time he came downstairs, it was even a mere suspicion that he had been cheated
to get the night boat to the Hook of late for lunch. Miriam was in the kitchen of something. The world would go on,
Holland, walk across the railway lines preparing eggs. The pages of the Sun- he would remain unvaporized. He needn’t
on the quayside and climb up onto the day paper, the Observer, were spread have done a thing. ♦
train to Hanover, at all stages checking across an armchair and the floor. There
the inside pocket of his school blazer was no change; the crisis continued. The NEWYORKER.COM
to make sure his passport was still there. headline was clear—“kennedy: no Ian McEwan on global events and private lives.

THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 61

 THE CRITICS

BOOKS

AFFECTIVE DISORDER
Some psychologists contend that our emotions are culturally specific. How should we feel about that?

BY NIKHIL KRISHNAN

here’s nothing like migration despair’)?” It took her time to feel at home last phrase, much beloved of philoso-

T to reveal how things that seem

natural may be artifacts of cul-
ture. When I left India for college in En-
with the word: “I now no longer draw a
blank when the word is used. I know
both when distress is felt, and what the
phers, echoes a line in Plato’s Phaedrus.
It captures the hope that our human con-
cepts correspond to something “out there,”
gland, I was surprised to find that pinch- experience of distress can feel like. Dis- natural kinds that exist independently of
ing my Adam’s apple didn’t mean, as I tress has become an ‘emotion’ to me.” whatever we happen to think or say about
had thought it meant everywhere, “on For Mesquita, this is an instance of them. The biologist Ernst Mayr thought
my honor.” I learned to expect only mock- a larger, overlooked reality: emotions that species concepts in biology were
ery at the side-to-side tilts of the head aren’t simply natural upwellings from joint-carving in this way. He was im-
with which I expressed degrees of agree- our psyche—they’re constructions we pressed by the fact that “the Stone Age
ment or disagreement, and trained my- inherit from our communities. She urges natives in the mountains of New Guinea
self to keep to the Aristotelian binary of us to move beyond the work of earlier recognize as species exactly the same en-
nod and shake. researchers who sought to identify a small tities of nature as a western scientist.”
Around that time, I also learned— set of “hard-wired” emotions, which were Are “anger” and “fear” like Mayr’s exam-
from watching the British version of universal and presumably evolutionarily ples of chickadees and robins?
“The Office”—that the word “cringe” adaptive. (The usual candidates: anger, Here, Mesquita—joining her some-
could be an adjective, as in the phrase “so fear, disgust, surprise, happiness, sad- time co-author Lisa Feldman Barrett
cringe.” It turned out that there was a ness.) Mesquita herself once accepted and other contemporary construction-
German word for the feeling inspired by that, as she writes, “people’s emotional ists—enlists linguistic data to undermine
David Brent, the cringe-making boss lives are different, but emotions them- the universalist view of emotions. Japa-
played by Ricky Gervais in the show: selves are the same.” Her research ini- nese, Mesquita points out, has one word,
Fremdschämen—the embarrassment one tially looked for the differences else- haji, to mean both “shame” and “embar-
feels when other people have, perhaps where: in the language of emotion, in rassment”; in fact, many languages (in-
obliviously, embarrassed themselves. the forms and the intensity of its expres- cluding my own first language, Tamil)
Maybe possessing those words—“cringe,” sion, in its social meaning. make no such distinction. The Bedou-
Fremdschämen—only gave me labels for Over time, though, her conviction ins’ word hasham covers not only shame
a feeling I already knew well. Or maybe began to weaken. “What would it mean and embarrassment but also shyness and
learning the words and learning to iden- that emotions are the same?” she asks. respectability. The Ilongot of the Phil-
tify the feelings were part of the same Working with Turkish and Surinamese ippines have a word, bētang, that touches
process. Maybe it wasn’t merely my vo- immigrants to the Netherlands, and later on all those, plus on awe and obedience.
cabulary but also my emotional range being an immigrant herself, in the United It gets worse. According to Mes-
that was being stretched in those early States, she came to believe that the idea quita, “There is no good translation for
months in England. of a culturally invariant core of basic self-esteem in Chinese.” Native speak-
Many migrants have such a story. In emotions was more of an ideology than ers of Luganda, in East Africa, she tells
“Between Us: How Cultures Create Emo- a scientific truth. For one thing, Mes- us, “use the same word, okusunguwala,
tions” (Norton), the Dutch psychologist quita notes, “not all languages have a for ‘anger’ and ‘sadness.’” Japanese peo-
Batja Mesquita describes her puzzlement, word for ‘emotion’ itself.” ple, she says, are shocked to learn that
ABOVE: LALALIMOLA

before arriving in the United States, at What about words for particular feel- English has no word that’s equivalent
the use of the English word “distress.” ings? “If we were to find words for anger, to amae: “a complete dependence on
Was it “closer to the Dutch angst (‘anx- fear, sadness, and happiness everywhere,” the nurturant indulgence of their care-
ious/afraid’),” she wondered, “or closer to she writes, “this could be a sign that lan- giver.” When the Japanese psychoana-
the Dutch verdriet/wanhoop (‘sadness/ guage ‘cuts nature at its joints.’” That lyst Takeo Doi told a colleague about
62 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
Emotions can be thought of as “relational acts between people,” Batja Mesquita writes, rather than as mental states inside us.
ILLUSTRATION BY MARÍA MEDEM THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 63
this inexplicable lacuna, the colleague non-Western, non-industrialized socie- “folk theory” that’s implicit in the way
exclaimed, “Why, even a puppy does it.” ties. As you might expect, the contrast we talk about our emotions. And there
Mesquita concludes that “languages or- is very much to the West’s disfavor. Jap- is something confused in those theories.
ganize the domain very differently, and anese athletes interviewed after compet- It’s just that constructionists like Mes-
make both different kinds as well as dif- ing “reported many more emotions in quita, captive to their own theory, may
ferent numbers of distinctions.” the context of relationships,” compared be offering the wrong diagnosis—and
with American athletes. Western soci- the wrong course of treatment.
n Mesquita’s book, Westerners have eties, by placing emotions on the inside Start with her parade of sociolinguis-
I succumbed to a mode of thinking suf-
ficiently widespread to be the subject of
rather than on the outside, have made it
difficult to understand, let alone sympa-
tic examples. Mesquita’s interpretation
of them courts what in similar connec-
a Pixar film. In “Inside Out,” a little girl, thize with, other ways of having, or tions has been termed the “lexical fal-
Riley, is shown as having a mind popu- “doing,” emotion. lacy.” What are we supposed to take away
lated by five emotions—Joy, Sadness, One reason people resist the notion from the fact that another language doesn’t
Fear, Disgust, and Anger—each assigned that emotions might be different in dif- have different words for shame and em-
an avatar. Anger is, of course, red. A ferent cultures, Mesquita acknowledges, barrassment? That its speakers have no
heated conversation between Riley and is a desire for inclusivity: the worry is way of knowing which situations call for
her parents is represented as similar red that “to say that people from other groups which emotions? Does my embarrass-
figures being activated in each of them. or cultures have different emotions is ment at an undone zipper turn into shame
“Inside Out” captures, with some visual equivalent to denying their humanity.” when I am around other Tamil speakers?
flair, what Mesquita calls the MINE model On the contrary, she argues: it’s the in- Is my shame at forgetting my mother’s
of emotion, a model in which emotions sistence on cultural invariance that has birthday modulated into embarrassment?
are “Mental, INside the person, and Es- the tendency to exclude. The MINE Do all my English friends, for that mat-
sentialist”—that is, always having the model, by obscuring non-Western ways ter, have a firm grasp on the distinction?
same properties. of talking about and conceiving of emo- (Try to make it yourself.)
In a passage where she sets out her tions, ends up implying that what non- English has a single word for home-
working methods, she tells us about some Western people have must really be sickness. So does German (Heimweh).
empirical results that had puzzled her. something other than emotion. And so But French doesn’t. Does that make the
Asked to list “emotion words,” her re- the inclusivists, she contends, end up pain a French emigrant feels at an un-
spondents from Turkish and Surinam- treating those who are different as ef- derbaked croissant any less acute than
ese families were especially inclined to fectively nonhuman. Only by accepting the pain of an Englishman in New York
list words that referred to behaviors. And that emotions are culturally specific, she faced with a lukewarm cup of tea?
so words for “laughing” appeared more thinks, can we truly understand the peo- Mesquita makes much of the claim
often than “joy,” and “crying” more often ple with whom we share this planet. Ac- that Luganda has a single word that re-
than “sadness.” Some thought terms for cordingly, she offers a prescription: “Do fers to anger and sadness. Doesn’t the
“yelling” and “helping” were emotion not assume that a person who does not English term “upset” have the same range?
words. What all this established, for Mes- behave the way you expect is suppress- (Luganda speakers dispute her account,
quita, is that “cultural differences go be- ing their authentic, real emotion. Ask.” and note that the language readily marks
yond semantics”; that emotions lived the distinction between the two.) The
“ ‘between’ people rather than ‘within.’” he critical tendency that Mesqui- English word “modesty” covers much the
Mesquita wants us to consider this
alternative model. Instead of treating
T ta’s book represents has cast a long
shadow over the intellectual culture of
same range as the Bedouins’ hasham, and
a clever translator can find ways of get-
emotions as mental and “inner,” perhaps the West in the past century. Where we ting us to see the range of the Ilongot’s
we should conceive of them “as acts hap- naïvely supposed there to be human bētang, which can be used to connote an
pening between people: acts that are universals, the critics—anthropologists, “I’m not worthy!” sense of bashfulness or
being adjusted to the situation at hand,” philosophers, and now, it seems, psychol- submission. The practice of translation—
rather than “as mental states within an ogists—urge us to see diversity, relativ- undertaken daily by millions of migrants
individual.” Instead of seeing emotions ity, “incommensurable paradigms,” and talking about their experiences—should
as bequeathed by biology, we might see “radical alterity.”Translation between the leave us with more hope for what we can
them as learned: “instilled in us by our emotional lexicons of different languages, say with the words we have.
parents and other cultural agents,” or which we’d thought was an everyday ac- Some translations of this sort will end
“conditioned by recurrent experiences tivity, comes to seem an impossible en- up being more like paraphrases. But even
within our cultures.” In this model of deavor. Not even our deepest feelings if my language needs two or three words
emotions, they are “OUtside the person, turn out to be free of the shaping hand where yours needs only one, it hardly fol-
Relational, and Situated”—OURS. of language and convention. lows that we cannot understand each
For Mesquita, the MINE model of Mesquita’s psychological research, like other without first learning the other’s
emotion goes naturally with the individ- the earlier work in anthropology and so- language. The temptation to be resisted
ualist orientation of the West, while the ciolinguistics she draws on, is clearly in- is to take as a starting point the emotion
“globally more common” OURS model tended to overturn orthodox theories of words indigenous to a particular lan-
belongs to the collectivist approach of emotion, both academic theories and the guage. (When they are indigenous: the
64 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
noun amae, in the sense Mesquita in-
vokes, was given currency by Takeo Doi,
as part of a psychoanalytic theory about BRIEFLY NOTED
the Japanese psyche.)
What’s an alternative approach? Alan The Last Resort, by Sarah Stodola (Ecco). Delving into the his-
Fiske, a psychological anthropologist at tories of more than twenty beachfront locales, from the Jersey
U.C.L.A., has proposed that we begin shore to Indonesia, this chronicle of corrosive tourism describes
with a made-up term that can be given a pattern of overdevelopment that, in our current ecological
a precise theoretical definition, and then moment, “implies an end to the beach vacation as we know it.”
look to the linguistic evidence to see what The “nautical playgrounds” that Stodola surveys face coastal
the words of natural languages have in erosion, rising sea levels, wastewater leakage, and even Atlantis-
common with our construction. As an like submersion. They also tend to segregate tourists from lo-
example, Fiske appropriates a Sanskrit cals. Correctives such as taxing long-haul flights and transplant-
term, kama muta, to refer to “the emo- ing man-made coral onto vanishing reefs can help, but Stodola
tion evoked by sudden intensification of believes that the resorts of the future will be “prohibitively ex-
communal sharing,” and then proceeds pensive” and pushed back from the shore: the “paradise fan-
to see whether and how it relates to such tasy” must be reimagined, with the beach in a less central role.
terms as “heart warming, moving, touch-
ing, collective pride, tender, nostalgic, Brown Neon, by Raquel Gutiérrez (Coffee House). In these es-
sentimental, Awww—so cute!” says by a poet, arts writer, and self-identified “queer brown
Along these lines, we might do bet- butch,” encounters in Los Angeles and the Southwest with
ter to look at clusters of words related aging punks, border activists, lesbian legends, and others give
by meaning rather than at words in iso- rise to explorations of Latinx identity, cultural resistance, and
lation. Mesquita briskly reports that Pol- the role of art. In one essay, Gutiérrez recounts a foray into
ish has no word for disgust. In fact, it the desert with a group of aid workers supplying water to mi-
has a cluster of words related to disgust, grants, and reflects on the “deep and complex matrices” that
just as English does; we simply shouldn’t connect her to immigrants, including her Mexican father and
expect precise lexical correspondences Salvadoran mother. “I have been spared the experience of cross-
between the clusters. There are differ- ing the desert,” she writes. Still, the landscape cannot be sep-
ences of usage among English terms arated from its history of violence, and there is no desert vista
such as “disgusting,” “revolting,” “repul- “that doesn’t have the uncanny attached to it.”
sive,” “distasteful,” and “repugnant,” and,
as Polish speakers tell us, their terms, Girls They Write Songs About, by Carlene Bauer (Farrar, Straus &
too, have particular niceties of usage. Giroux). This prickly-coy novel centers on two women who
Given that cross-cultural understand- move to New York in the nineteen-nineties to become writ-
ing has always required a holistic atten- ers—or, as one of them, the narrator, puts it, “to be seen as an
tion to larger structures of significance, overpoweringly singular instance of late-twentieth-century
it’s curious that Mesquita’s approach is womanhood.” The women meet and become friends while
so atomistic, proceeding as if essences working at a music magazine, but the narrator opens her ac-
embodied in individual words were the count by telling us that she and the other woman no longer
ultimate source of meaning. speak. What shattered the friendship? Bauer is a crackerjack
Ludwig Wittgenstein saw a common chronicler of the slide into humility which follows ravenous
fallacy here. Highly abstract questions early adulthood, when “we felt that we owed the books we’d
such as “What is meaning?,” he said, read proof that we were as open and free as they had com-
tend to “produce in us a mental cramp. manded us to be.”
We feel that we can’t point to anything
in reply to them and yet ought to point An Honest Living, by Dwyer Murphy (Viking). Set amid New
to something.” He went on, “We are up York’s rare-book trade, this slow-burning début crime novel
against one of the great sources of phil- is also an atmospheric homage to the film “Chinatown.” The
osophical bewilderment: a substan- narrator, a former corporate lawyer who now undertakes quasi-
tive”—a noun—“makes us look for a legal freelance work, is hired by a woman to investigate her
thing that corresponds to it.” husband’s plans to sell a collection of old books owned by her
Suppose speakers of a certain language family. The case leads him to A. M. Byrne, “the best Amer-
were able to say, “I want,” “I wish,” “I ican novelist under the age of fifty,” and to Byrne’s father, a
prefer,” and “I’m hungry,” but lacked a wealthy businessman who has a scheme to redevelop the
noun that could be translated as “desire”? Brooklyn waterfront. The book is driven less by its plot than
Should we conclude that the concept of by a conflict between yearning and resignation. “Sometimes
desire wasn’t readily accessible to these a conspiracy is just another word for life carrying on without
speakers? Suppose, for that matter, that you noticing it,” the narrator says.
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 65
a language had no word equivalent to the for instance. Our ways of talking about tercultural imperative: “Do not assume
English “intention,” but people could talk such moods tend to emphasize what that a person who does not behave the
about their plans for the weekend, say they feel like. But many of our emotion way you expect is suppressing their au-
that they’d meant to wash the dishes but words aren’t distinguished by what some- thentic, real emotion. Ask.”Yes, we should
forgot or that they broke someone’s cup thing feels like. When we’re suspicious, be cautious when making assumptions
“accidentally.” Are these really people who appalled, or possessive, we’ll describe about the psychologies of others. But is
don’t have the concept of intention? Or the emotion as involving a relation to- asking a sensible solution? What are we
do they just have different ways of ex- ward some object or person. Does rage, to ask, precisely? Can we be sure the ask-
pressing that they have it? for instance, feel different from outrage? ing won’t offend or mystify or, indeed,
Can we always tell disgust from repug- prompt cringey embarrassment? More
any people can talk sense with nance just by the experience? (Which to the point, if Mesquita is right that
“ M concepts but cannot talk sense feeling, exactly, does Harvey Weinstein people, wherever they come from, can
about them,” the philosopher Gilbert elicit?) The outraged man, but not every reliably make their emotions intelligible
Ryle once remarked. They use the con- angry one, believes that a norm he cher- to others, how culturally specific can
cepts, “but they cannot state the logical ishes has been violated. We can’t indi- those emotions really be?
regulations governing their use.” The viduate the emotion without talking
challenge, as Ryle’s student Bernard about its social features. he real moral of all this research may
Williams once summarized it, is to draw
“a firm line between what we think and
In the West, too, feelings are routinely
rendered as exterior. Don’t we claim to
T be rather modest. People are com-
plicated, and different from one another.
what we merely think that we think.” see that a gurgling baby is happy? Many Some of the differences are those among
That distinction is helpful when it of our emotion terms are references to language communities, with their vari-
comes to assessing Mesquita’s larger states of the body—we’re downcast, bent ous norms and conventions. Some of
claim—about the MINE model of the out of shape, head over heels, shaken up, them are differences within language
benighted West and the OURS model fa- down in the mouth—which have slowly communities. Among people who speak
vored by the rest. Start with that word rigidified into dead metaphor. English, there are those who (as we say)
“emotion.” As Mesquita has noticed, Mesquita notes that it wasn’t only her let it all hang out. Others prize the leg-
many communities seem to manage fine non-Dutch respondents who got mud- endary stiff upper lip. Nothing about
without a lexical equivalent. But, if her dled when asked to list emotion words. speaking English, or thinking in it, tells
research is to have a stable subject mat- Many of her Dutch-born respondents, us which of these attitudes toward emo-
ter, she can hardly do without it. So she she says, “mentioned gezellig (the unique tion people have—which etiquette of
treats “emotions” as referring to some- Dutch word that describes a social set- emotion governs them. No surprise there.
thing, and devotes herself to finding a ting and a feeling at the same time) and In learning something about how peo-
location for that something: either the aggressief (‘aggressive’).” That’s an excel- ple in other places “do” emotion, we might
“inside” or the “outside.” lent example of people from the West indeed come to learn something about
Describing mental life as “inner” is talking OURS sense with their concepts, how we do it. Our contemporary con-
an old and quite natural way of talking. even if they adopt a MINE model when structionists are right about this. What
The contrast is a matter not so much of called on to state their views on emo- matters is what we do—not what we
spatial location as it is of knowledge. I tion in the abstract. think we think about what we feel. Pan-
know what burnt toast tastes like to me, Once we start trading in examples icky extrapolations from dictionary dis-
how painful my headache is, how ur- rather than in abstractions, we come closer crepancies have to be squared with the
gently I need to use the toilet. I know to learning what we really think. And what unglamorous reality: I have interviewed
these things “immediately.” Inner, in we learn is that our language for talking a student in Kashmir who wanted only
other words, means “private.” Outer, by about emotions is already “situated,” al- to talk about “Squid Game,” and have
contrast, is “public.” ready “relational,” already involves a judg- discovered that I shared my appalled fas-
Emotions are, in an obvious way, not ment about the world “outside” our minds. cination at David Brent with Tamil-
always public. I can be happy (or angry Like many other inventions thought to speaking cousins in Chennai. The sense
or sad) without doing anything visible— come from another part of the planet, the in which emotions are culturally specific
as, for instance, when I look at my cards OURS model of emotion turns out to be isn’t a terribly exciting one. In the real
in a tense game of poker. But surely I am a common human inheritance. world, differences are commonplace but
happy (or sad or disappointed) when I Where does this leave the big civili- don’t defy understanding. I told a Ko-
see them. My happiness, we suppose, zational contrast that Mesquita believes rean lawyer at a party last month that
must exist somewhere. Where if not “in- she has discovered? Her evidence doesn’t my “stomach burned” on finding that the
side” the mind? show that the West has a mistaken or an coat I’d bought at full price was now on
That’s what we think we think, any- impoverished way of having emotions. sale for fifty per cent off. I was, I real-
way. But look closer and the picture It shows only that we are bad at theoriz- ized a second too late, translating liter-
changes. Mesquita’s claims about the ing them. But is anyone other than a the- ally a Tamil expression. He paused a mo-
MINE model are buttressed by a relent- orist any good at theorizing anything? ment, perhaps wondering which one of
less focus on what we might call object- Indeed, how good are the theorists at it? us was guilty of an ignorance of English
less emotion words: “happy” and “sad,” It’s worth returning to Mesquita’s in- idiom, then said, “I know the feeling.” 
66 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
 fessional women out and working-class
BOOKS women shackled.”
Men, especially conservative men, con-

REIGNING MEN
tinue to wring their hands over the male
condition, of course. (Tucker Carlson ap-
propriated the title of Rosin’s book for a
How toxic is masculinity really? documentary, advertised this past spring,
about plummeting sperm counts.) But
BY ZOË HELLER feminist patience for “twilight of the
penis” stories has run out. “All that time
they spend snivelling about how hard it
is to be a poor persecuted man nowadays
is just a way of adroitly shirking their re-
sponsibility to make themselves a little
less the pure products of patriarchy,” Pau-
line Harmange wrote in her 2020 screed,
“I Hate Men.” More recently, the Brit-
ish journalist Laurie Penny, in her “Sex-
ual Revolution” (Bloomsbury), notes the
systemic underpinnings of such snivels:
“The assumption that oozes from every
open pore of straight patriarchal culture
is that women are expected to tolerate
pain, fear and frustration—but male pain,
by contrast, is intolerable.” Penny is care-
ful to distinguish hatred of masculinity
from hatred of men, but she nonetheless
defines the fundamental political strug-
gle of our time as a contest between fem-
inism and white heterosexual male su-
premacy. In “Daddy Issues” (Verso),
Katherine Angel calls for #MeToo-era
feminists to turn their attention to long-
overlooked paternal delinquencies. If the
patriarchy is to be defeated, she argues,
women’s reluctance to criticize their male
parents must be interrogated and over-
come. Even the “modern, civilized fa-
ther” must be “kept on the hook,” she
en years ago, Hanna Rosin’s book, of Roe v. Wade—have had a sobering recommends, and daughters must reckon
T “The End of Men,” argued that
feminism had largely achieved its aims,
effect on this sort of triumphalism.
The general tone of feminist rhetoric
with their “desire for retribution, revenge
and punishment.”
and that it was time to start worrying has grown distinctly tougher and more The combative tone taken by these
about the coming obsolescence of men. cynical. Cheerful slogans about the fe- writers is hardly a surprise. One might
American women were getting more maleness of the future have receded; argue that a movement currently scram-
undergraduate and graduate degrees the word “patriarchy,” formerly the pre- bling to defend some vestige of wom-
than American men, and were better serve of women’s-studies professors, en’s reproductive rights can be forgiven
placed to flourish in a “feminized” job has entered the common culture. Last for not being especially solicitous of
market that prized communication and year, in an article about women’s exo- men’s sperm counts. One might argue
flexibility. For the first time in Amer- dus from their jobs during the pan- that it isn’t feminism’s job to worry about
ican history, they were outnumbering demic, Rosin recanted her previous how men are doing—any more than it’s
men in the workplace. “The modern thesis and apologized for its “tragic the job of hens to fret about the con-
economy is becoming a place where naïveté.” “It’s now painfully obvious dition of foxes. But two recent books
women hold the cards,” Rosin wrote. that the mass entry of women into the claim otherwise. “A History of Mascu-
The events of the past decade—the workforce was rigged from the begin- linity: From Patriarchy to Gender Jus-
rise of Trump, the emergence of the ning,” she wrote. “American work cul- tice” (Allen Lane), by the French his-
#MeToo movement, the overturning ture has always conspired to keep pro- torian Ivan Jablonka, and “What Do
Men Want?: Masculinity and Its Dis-
Two recent books argue that feminism should pay attention to male suffering. contents” (Allen Lane), by Nina Power,
ILLUSTRATION BY ALAIN PILON THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 67
a British columnist with a background Jablonka’s thesis about how patriar- top it all, a diminished life expectancy.”
in philosophy, both contend that the chy arose is a fairly standard one. Pa- Feminism has been slow to empathize
drift toward zero-sum war-of-the-sexes leolithic societies already had a sexual and collaborate with men, Jablonka claims,
language is a bad thing for feminism. division of labor—Spanish cave paint- because too many in the movement re-
Although their diagnoses of the prob- ings from as early as 10,000 B.C. show main wedded to a “Manichean world
lem are almost diametrically opposed, male archers hunting and women gath- view” of male oppressors and female vic-
both authors make the case for a more ering honey—but it was relatively be- tims. Some feminists are unreconstructed
generous and humane feminist discourse, nign. In the Neolithic era, with the ad- leftist types, who reject any evidence of
capable of recognizing the suffering of vent of agriculture and the move away women’s progress as “mystification de-
men as well as of women. Hens, they from nomadic existence, birth rates in- signed to hide the persistence of male
acknowledge, have legitimate cause for creased and women became confined domination.” Others are duped by a “pro-
resentment, but foxes have feelings, too. to the domestic sphere, while men women romanticism” into believing that
started to own land. From then on, each women are innately nicer and more pro-

J ablonka’s dense, copiously researched

book, which became a surprise best-
seller in France when it was published
new development, be it metal weapons,
the rise of the state, or even the birth
of writing, further entrenched the power
gressive than men. Jablonka rejects this
sort of essentialist thinking, which he
says provides a spurious biological ratio-
there, in 2019, takes an ambitious, key- of men and the subjugation of women. nale for traditional gender roles. If women
to-all-mythologies approach to its sub- Until now, that is. “Patriarchy has are naturally kinder and more nurturing
ject. Jablonka, who is a professor at the declined,” according to Jablonka, but than men, and if men are “intrinsically
Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, begins men remain caught in “pathologies of imbued with a culture of rape,” why bother
in the Upper Paleolithic, examining its the masculine,” trying to live up to a trying to change the status quo? Testos-
mysterious, corpulent “Venus” figurines, symbolic role that doesn’t reflect their terone and other androgens may “have
and moves suavely across the millennia reduced dominance. The result is an “al- something to do with” a male propensity
all the way to the successive waves of mod- most tragic” level of alienation, he writes, for aggression, he concedes, but “human
ern feminism. He has an eye for striking, and feminists, instead of mocking or beings are hostage neither to their biol-
often grim, details—under the Babylo- dismissing male anguish—thereby leav- ogy nor their gender.” Men’s history of
nian Code of Hammurabi, a daughter ing men vulnerable to the revanchist brutish behavior is the product of patri-
might be killed as punishment for a mur- fantasies of Tucker Carlson and his ilk— archal culture, and only by insisting on
der committed by her father—and rel- should recognize this moment as a cru- “the fundamental identity” between men
ishes drawing parallels across eras. From cial recruitment opportunity. Now is and women can feminism realize its
ancient times to the present day, it seems, the time to convince men that their proper aim—a “redistribution of gender,”
the central totems of masculinity—weap- “obligatory model of virility” has im- in which “new masculinities” abound and
ons, locomotive vehicles, and meat (par- miserated them far more than it has the selection of any given way of being
ticularly rare meat)—have remained re- empowered them. “The masculinity of a man becomes “a lifestyle choice.”
markably consistent. Likewise, from the domination pays, but it comes at a high To claim that masculinity is a patri-
fall of Rome to the Weimar Republic, cost: an insecure ego, puerile vanity, dis- archal “construct,” however, is not so much
men have consistently attributed politi- interest in reading and the life of the an explanation as the postponement of
cal disaster and cultural decline to the mind, atrophied inner life, the narrow- an explanation. Who or what created the
corrupting influence of feminine values. ing of social opportunities . . . and to patriarchy? Evolutionary biologists main-
tain that our earliest male ancestors had
an evolutionary incentive to maximize
the spread of their genes by violently
competing for, and monopolizing access
to, women. Jablonka is eager to avoid
such biological imperatives, but in doing
so he reaches for a kind of just-so story
that renders much of the history he has
laid out beside the point. Patriarchy, he
speculates, was motivated by simple re-
sentment of women’s wombs. “Deprived
of the power that women have, men re-
served all the others for themselves,” he
writes. “This was the revenge of the males:
their biological inferiority led to their
social hegemony.”
Thus it is that successive patriarchal
élites have spent the past several millennia
shoring up their illegitimate rule, by de-
“What’s saved to the cloud gets printed in Hell.” fining manliness as a set of superior qual-
ities denied to women. Not that Jablonka of coherence, how she thinks a “grace- Power’s book, being of the “pendu-
thinks there is only one, eternal mascu- ful playfulness” between men and women lum’s swung too far” variety, is rather too
line style; rather, all models of masculin- might be restored. Power finds terms quick to declare all the meaningful equal-
ity since antiquity have been mechanisms like “the patriarchy” and “male privilege” ities already won, all the necessary re-
for asserting and imposing patriarchal nebulous, and believes they obscure more forms of male manners accomplished.
power. The extroversion and swagger of than they reveal when applied to poor “Male behavior has shifted radically,” she
the toreador look very different from the and working-class men. Liberal femi- writes. “What man would today flirt with
gallantry of the Victorian gentleman, nism, she argues, has proved all too com- a female co-worker?”—which is the kind
which is, in turn, quite distinct from the patible with the interests of corporate of facetious remark that only a person
laconic glamour of the cowboy, but they capitalism, precisely because it is more who has mistaken her bien-pensant bub-
are all equally culpable expressions of the interested in how people “identify” than ble for the world could make. Neverthe-
masculine-superiority complex. in who owns the means of production. less, the “graceful playfulness” that she
Jablonka’s desire to trace all the world’s Power’s main interest, however, is not hopes can be preserved between the sexes,
hierarchies, injustices, and conflicts back in persuading feminism to be more in- and even some of the more benign as-
to one prehistoric fit of reproductive jeal- tersectional in its critique of men. “I in- pects of old-school masculinity, are prob-
ousy leads to a good deal of muddle as creasingly think that we need to think ably more widely shared than is gener-
things proceed. One of his more bi- less in terms of structures,” she writes, ally acknowledged. Jablonka argues rather
zarre—and ahistorical—claims is that “and much more in terms of mutual re- unconvincingly that women read roman-
the masculine hegemony has deemed spect.” She believes that exaggerated com- tic fiction because it sweetens the pill of
four masculine types inferior: “the Jew,” plaints about the toxicity of men—their their subordination and helps them ac-
“the loser,” “the Black,” and “the homo- mansplaining and manspreading and so cept the “inevitability of masculine
sexual.” It is, of course, impossible to ex- forth—have become a kind of tribal habit power.” But romantic fiction isn’t pro-
plain the historical oppression of poor among women. In addition to eliminat- duced by the Commission for the Con-
people, Black people, gays, and Jews en- ing much of the pleasure and charm of tinuation of the Patriarchy. It sells be-
tirely in terms of gender politics, and, in everyday male-female interactions, the cause it speaks to a persistent female
trying to do so, Jablonka has to make constant demonizing of men has led us attraction to the benignly dominant male.
any number of ludicrous assertions, in- to lose sight of what is valuable and gen- Whether that attraction has its roots in
cluding that white men enslaved Black erative in male and female difference. nature or in culture, one has only to read
men in part because they considered Where Jablonka wants to help men es- Joan Didion describing her girlhood
them “feminine” and “non-virile.” The cape the “obligatory model of virility” dreams of John Wayne, or listen to Amy
book’s cocky bid for comprehensiveness that has given them a bad name, Power Winehouse singing “You should be stron-
proves to be its undoing. asks us to consider what might be worth ger than me,” or overhear contemporary
retaining from that model. In our haste teens mocking “soft bois” on social media
n keeping with his anti-essentialist to declare masculinity a redundant arti- to know that it is there.
I view of the sexes, Jablonka maintains
that women are, deep down, no less ca-
fact, she says, we have lost sight of some
of its “positive dimensions”—“the pro-
Some years ago, the conservative Har-
vard philosopher Harvey Mansfield, in
pable of greed and racism and warlike tective father, the responsible man.” Al- his book “Manliness,” defined protec-
behavior than men, but this view is though we’re often told that modern so- tion as a defining task of masculinity. “A
somewhat at odds with his central con- cieties have outgrown the need for male man protects those whom he has taken
tention—that a world without patriar- muscle and aggression, we still rely on in his care against dangers they cannot
chal masculinity would be an infinitely men to do the lion’s share of physically face or handle without him,” he wrote.
more just and peaceable place. In an ap- arduous and dangerous jobs, including For Jablonka, such a role is inextricable
parent attempt to square this contra- the fighting of wars. (Even in Jablonka’s from patriarchy: “Polite gestures of pro-
diction, he expresses the vague hope gender-fluid future, he acknowledges, tection partake of a benevolent sexism
that powerful women of the future will men will do the heavy, dirty, “thankless” that complements hostile sexism.” Power
avoid some of the worst practices of work. To insist on a literal-minded gen- suggests that the charming, sexy aspects
powerful men of the past, and that gen- der parity would be “absurd,” he says.) If of masculinity—violent, sure, but still
der justice might be “translated into the we still expect men to do the dirty work, “compatible with the flourishing of oth-
principle of an equality of positions, re- Power asks, shouldn’t some value be at- ers”—can be brought out only as needed,
ducing inequalities between the various tached to male strength? Women in het- allowing men and women to live on terms
socio-economic statuses.” erosexual relationships, she claims, re- of scrupulous equality the rest of the
According to Nina Power’s “What spect a degree of responsibly channelled time. Is this plausible? Can women enjoy
Do Men Want?,” such inattention to aggression in their partners. “However the warm embrace of he-men without
questions of class inequality is a typical tough you feel, however independent you having to endure bossiness and swagger?
weakness of modern gender politics. Her might be, when it comes down to it, you Harvey Mansfield didn’t think so. “Honor
short but slightly meandering work of would like a man to be able to stand up is an asserted claim to protect someone,
cultural criticism takes aim at several for you, physically at least,” she writes. and the claim to protect is a claim to
strands of contemporary feminist doc- “Violence is not as far away from care rule,” he wrote. “How can I protect you
trine and lays out, with varying degrees as we might like to imagine.” properly if I can’t tell you what to do?” 
THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 69
 stract painters like Frank Stella and Ken-
THE ART WORLD neth Noland. Solomon organized the U.S.
exhibition at the 1964 Venice Biennale,

TIME CAPSULE
where Rauschenberg was awarded the
Grand Prize for painting, a coup that ce-
mented New York’s ascendance. If you
“New York: 1962-1964” captures a period of creative preëminence. weren’t here, you all of a sudden risked
seeming provincial.
BY PETER SCHJELDAHL Poor Paris, where I spent most of a
disillusioning year, spanning 1964 and
1965, was slow to recover from a tantrum
of (to apply the appropriate phrase for it)
lèse-majesté. As late as 1983, a prominent
book by the French-born art historian
Serge Guilbaut, “How New York Stole
the Idea of Modern Art,” elided the truth
that, following the Second World War,
“the idea” had been up for grabs. (Find-
ers keepers.) Guilbaut attributed the trans-
atlantic larceny to conspiratorial inter-
ventions by the U.S. government, some
agencies of which did, to be sure, view
American expressive liberty as a soft
weapon in the Cold War and supported
its exposure overseas, at times covertly.
That’s accurate enough as far as it goes,
but it was only one among many con-
verging circumstances.
In truth, New York rainmakers like
Solomon, the quick-witted dealer Sid-
ney Janis, and the European-émigré power
couple of Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonna-
The Jewish Museum mounted a Robert Rauschenberg retrospective in 1963. bend—whose split, in 1959, resulted in
separate galleries (one in Manhattan, one
his is where I came in. A spectacular by a copy of Frank O’Hara’s definitive in Paris) that amplified the sway of their
T historical show of art and documen-
tation, “New York: 1962-1964,” at the Jew-
book, “Lunch Poems” (1964), and by pip-
ing in recorded readings. My favorites
bold and exacting, complementary tastes—
needed no cloaks or daggers to broker art
ish Museum, addresses the exact years of were and remain Ron Padgett and the that made every decisive case by and for
my tatterdemalion arrival, from the Mid- late, exquisitely laconic artist-poet Joe itself. Open-minded young Germans,
west, as an ambitious poet, a jobber in Brainard, both from Oklahoma. Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Amer-

COURTESY THE JEWISH MUSEUM / © ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG FOUNDATION / ARS

journalism, and a tyro art nut. I gravita- With Pop art and nascent Minimal- icans, Asians, and even certain French
ted through the time’s impecunious Lower ism, New York artists were turning no artists were electrified. An influx to New
East Side poetry scene into the booming end of tables on solemnly histrionic Ab- York of foreign talents which had started
though not yet oligarchic art world. Art- stract Expressionism, which had estab- by happenstance in wartime swelled to
ists, writers, dealers, patrons, and assorted lished our town as the new wheelhouse an invasion. Some, such as the Bulgarian-
intellectuals, alert to momentous changes of creative origination worldwide. Instru- born Christo and his French wife, Jeanne-
in the world at large, rubbed shoulders mental to the moment was a brilliant Claude, became stars. Others encoun-
at parties that were a lot more stimulat- critic and curator, Alan Solomon, who tered tough sledding. In 1973, after fifteen
ing than those attended by my second- died too soon, at the age of forty-nine, eventful but lean years, the sensual, often
generation New York School coterie. in 1970. As the director of the Jewish Mu- environmental Japanese sculptor Yayoi
It was an era of season-to-season—at seum during the years bracketed in the Kusama retreated to her homeland and
times almost monthly or weekly—ad- present show, he consolidated what he began a rise to international eminence
vances in painting, sculpture, photogra- called “The New Art,” mounting the first that is still under way.
phy, dance, music, design, fashion, and museum retrospectives of the trailblaz-
such hybrid high jinks as “happenings.” ers Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns ew York: 1962-1964” was con-
The exhibition honors poetry, too, by dis- and elevating such newbie Pop phenoms
“ N ceived by the globe-trotting Ital-
playing some of the scrappy, mostly mim- as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and ian critical macher Germano Celant,
eographed little magazines that agitated James Rosenquist in tandem with aggres- before his death, in 2020, as a sampler
for vernacular language in verse, anchored sively large-scale, radically formalist ab- of exemplary works surrounded by pic-
70 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022
torial and written evidence of coinci- porary Meaning in Art: get it while it’s
dent political and social contingencies. hot or miss it forever, at a cost to your
A curatorial team at the Jewish Mu- sophistication. Others, at the margins of
seum, along with Celant’s studio, has fame, hung fire for unjustly belated rec-
seen his eclectic scheme through. Civil- ognition, as demonstrated in this show
rights campaigns, the sexual revolution, by the achievements of the Spiral Group,
emergent second-wave feminism, the a cadre of Black artists who banded to-
Cuban missile crisis, the J.F.K. assassi- gether in 1963 and were led along differ-
nation, forebodings of disaster in Viet- ent but likewise terrific stylistic tracks
nam, and much else, torn from the pe- by the populist collage specialist Romare
riod’s headlines, make their pressures Bearden and the surpassingly versatile
felt. (I might have thought that I was abstractionist Norman Lewis. The group
done with shedding tears at Martin Lu- attained some art-world renown, but it
ther King, Jr.,’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” was fleeting. Meanwhile, few women at
speech, but a wall-size projection of it the time were given their due, which
in the show proved otherwise.) The should accrue to them in retrospect. New
global contexts rhyme in energy if not to me is a garish relief painting, from
in direct relevance with an insurgent 1963, by the underknown Marjorie Strider,
avant-gardism in New York which, while of a glamour girl chomping on a huge
rarely polemical (art for art’s sake re- red radish, that could serve as an icon of
mained a persistent ideal), rejected mod- Pop glee and sexual impertinence crossed
ernist detachment in order to engage with proto-feminist vexation.
lived realities. As Solomon observed, Strengths of the show include re-
“television commercials, comic strips, corded performances of the dance rev-
hot dog stands, billboards, junk yards, olutionary Merce Cunningham; photo-
hamburger joints, used car lots, juke- graphs of the irrepressible live-action
boxes, slot machines, and supermarkets,” provocateur Carolee Schneemann, who
channelling “probably most of the aes- liked cavorting naked to oddly enno-
thetic experience for 99 percent of Amer- bling effect; and the orgiastic, often of-
icans,” became regnant almost overnight. ficially censored film “Flaming Crea-
Emblematic of this, in the show, are tures” (1963), by Jack Smith. The last
items from “The Store” (December, signalled a seething gay underground
1961), by the recently late, and lamented, that Susan Sontag touched on, the fol-
Claes Oldenburg: a pop-up storefront lowing year, in her depth-charge essay
emporium, on East Second Street, of “Notes on ‘Camp.’ ” Apart from such
consumer goods represented in lumpy highlights, I was annoyed at first blush
plaster and slapdash paint. Poeticized by the surrounding profusion of non-
by uselessness, the work bridges gee- art-historical matter that I knew very
whiz delight and sardonic irony, seem- well already. Of course, I had been on
ing at once to brag of and to complain hand for the precipitating events, con-
about the virulently commercialized suming newspapers (there were at least
culture that was both crowning and seven dailies in Manhattan back then)
roughing up America’s peak power, and television (in black-and-white, suit-
prosperity, and—face it—hubris. I must able to the avuncular charisma, which I
admit to a false memory, now that I re- sorely miss, of Walter Cronkite).
flect on it, of having seen “The Store” I imagine, and quite hope, that nu-
and a number of Solomon’s rousing merous teen-age school groups will visit
exhibitions in person. I was way too the show and be introduced to a time
disorganized even as I was absorbing line that undergirds worldly and creative
the period’s torrential excitements— developments, enthralling or distressing
soundtracked by Bob Dylan and Mo- or both at once, across the subsequent
town—at first vicariously and then by six decades. Personally, recalling the chaos
way of a nascent career that I had never of my early-twenties existence checkers
imagined for myself. my nostalgia for much of that. But I urge
The eruptive early sixties launched you who are young (most everybody these
many folks on all sorts of trajectories. days, relative to me) to explore the ex-
After intriguing for a trice, some quickly hibition and to imagine what experienc-
flamed out or stalled, suggesting to me ing the rampant stormy weather that it
a theory, which I kept to myself, of Tem- invokes would have been like for you. 
 meat pies had a taste for the nastier
THE THEATRE Brothers Grimm bits that get left out
of standard Disney fare: sliced-off toes

CHARMING PRINCES
bleeding into fancy slippers, princes
blinded by briar thorns. Sondheim and
Lapine’s Cinderella likes to talk to cute
The fraught fantasies of “Into the Woods” and “Hamlet.” little birds, as the animated version
does—but here the birds helpfully peck
BY ALEXANDRA SCHWARTZ out her stepsisters’ eyes.
Immediately wonderful, as the cur-
tain rises on deBessonet’s revival, is the
sight of the fresh and simple set, de-
signed by David Rockwell. There is no
pit; the fine musicians of the Encores!
Orchestra occupy the center of the stage,
with the actors stationed along a shal-
low lip at the front and sent skipping, or,
in the case of the hapless Cinderella (Phil-
lipa Soo), tripping, through a wood rep-
resented by birch trunks that light up
like lanterns. A fairy tale is a told thing,
as the Narrator (David Patrick Kelly)
who presides over the action reminds us;
its magic sprouts best in the mind. With-
out being annoyingly meta about it, the
show delights in its handmade human-
ness. The stealth star here is the whiz
puppet designer James Ortiz, who con-
jures the giant as a pair of mammoth
hobnail boots and has constructed an
uncannily emotive Milky-White (skill-
fully manipulated by the actor Kennedy
Kanagawa) from little more than some
slices of cardboard. Watching this emi-
nently fake animal happily bob its papier-
mâché head along to the music makes
the heart surge.
Sondheim’s show is consumed with questions of social and familial responsibility. The heart and its foolish, intractable
longings are the show’s first big theme.
he latest spectacle to mark New who, depending on your metaphorical Everyone starts out wishing for some-
T York’s protracted season of Sond-
heim celebration is Lear deBessonet’s
mood, might stand in for the ills of cli-
mate change or of capitalism, or the
thing: Cinderella to go to a festival at the
palace; the overgrown boy Jack (Cole
delectable revival of “Into the Woods” AIDS crisis (which was in full force when Thompson) to coax his beloved Milky-
(at the St. James). The show was born the musical first came to town, in 1987), White to produce some milk for his fam-
in the spring as a lauded Encores! pro- or the current pandemic, or some other ily; and his mother (Aymee Garcia) to
duction at City Center and, like Milky- disaster either brought about or exacer- sell the unfortunate cow at market. Lit-
White, the cow raised from the grave bated by human confusion, pigheaded- tle Red Riding Hood ( Julia Lester) wants
in the first act, has been brought back ness, and greed. But there’s no need to to buy a loaf of bread to take to her
to life on Broadway. If your heart is feel- get too crazy about the symbolism. granny—actually, she’d rather snack on
ing wintry while your too too solid flesh Sometimes, as Sondheim insisted, a giant it herself—while the Baker (Brian d’Arcy
melts in the oppressive heat, if you’ve is just a giant. James), who gives it to her, wants a child.
been overtaken by midsummer malaise What Sondheim was after was a quest Too bad: he and his wife are barren, thanks
and end-times doldrums, if you can deal story, something fun and fanciful. It was to a curse placed on them by the Witch
with the dropping of Broadway’s mask- the inspired idea of his collaborator James who lives next door (the ravishing Pa-
ing policy and are ready to brave the Lapine, who wrote the book, to braid tina Miller). To appease her and break
BA.5 sniffles, go see it. It’s a tonic. Sure, several classic fairy tales into a two-act the spell, the couple hauls off into the
“Into the Woods” has a body count that’s piece that begins as farce and then takes woods on a kind of scavenger hunt that
nearly as high as “Hamlet”’s, its char- a turn toward the tragic. Naturally, the has them colliding with their fantastical
acters victimized by an enraged giant, man who made a musical about human fellows. A wolf is slain; some magic beans
72 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY ALICE PIAGGIO
are traded; a maiden called Rapunzel is not to decide.” To be a princess or
(Alysia Velez) gets an impromptu hair- not to be a princess? Hamlet might
cut. Everybody ends up happy and sing- have made a better match for her than
ing about it. That is Act I. In Act II come Prince Charming.
the consequences of so much wish ful- Speaking of Hamlet, he’s back in
fillment, and the show’s second big theme, town, dithering at the Park Avenue Ar-
Sondheim’s personal favorite: the jour- mory in a sensational production star-
ney from innocence to knowledge, the ring Alex Lawther and directed by Rob-
ambivalent process of growing up. “Isn’t ert Icke. The staging is stylish, with the
it nice to know a lot!” Little Red sings, king’s ghost spotted on security cam-
fresh from her adventure inside the wolf ’s eras, the palace done up in mid-century-
belly. “And a little bit not.” modern décor, and the action punctu-
“Into the Woods” is an ensemble ated by Bob Dylan tunes. The cast is FEED HOPE .
FEED LOVE .
piece, and this ensemble is terrific and topnotch. But the big excitement here
knows it. There’s a collective revelry to is the way that Icke, with a blend of
the performances, a special shared cha- close reading and clever invention, re-
risma. Lester’s maximally sassified Lit- veals new riches in the play, exposing
tle Red, possessed of a blunt belting layers of the text that often get stamped
voice and attitude up to her ears, is a out by the practical exigencies of per-
highlight; the duo of vain princes, played formance. (This one runs nearly four
by Gavin Creel and Joshua Henry, pull hours.) What if Rosencrantz and Guil-
off “Agony” to preening perfection. Even denstern were a couple? What if Guil-
when the giant starts stomping around denstern (Tia Bannon) were even, as
and the cast goes boom-squish, you Icke suggests, Hamlet’s ex-girlfriend?
still find reasons to laugh. But the hi- Their betrayal is now infinitely more
larity is tempered by the Witch’s high fraught and egregious, no mere foot-
drama and a dose of skeptical sense. On note. I was especially struck by Icke’s
the night I saw the show, the Baker’s emphasis on Claudius (Angus Wright)
Wife was played by Mary Kate Moore as a confident, Machiavellian monarch
(subbing for Sara Bareilles) with the who justifies his self-interest in the name
grounded pragmatism of a woman who of rationality. “’Tis a fault to heaven,/A
refuses to mistake reality for a fairy tale fault against the dead, a fault to na-
until she discovers she’s been sucked too ture,/To reason most absurd” is not a
far into one to escape. nice thing to say of someone’s grief at
“What is the moral? / Must be a losing a father, but the man does have
moral,” Sondheim wrote in “A Funny a kingdom to run.
Thing Happened on the Way to the Aside from the murdering-his-
Forum,” the project that taught him, as brother business, Claudius keeps a cool
a young man, what a tricky business it head, a useful quality in a ruler. Cer-
is to make a farce that flies. That show tainly he makes a better one than the
doesn’t have one, but “Into the Woods” Prince would. Lawther, at twenty-seven,
is practically a morality play, consumed is all jittery, brainy energy, a hot-blooded
with questions of social and familial re- Hamlet—a juicy extratextual kiss with
sponsibility—of what we all owe one an- Ophelia (Kirsty Rider) lets him flaunt
other. “Children will listen” is one of the his sensual side. Thin, slight, and pale,
show’s famous adages; “No one is alone” with a sharp chin and sardonic, slant-
is another. These are moving messages. ing eyes, he seems wildly unpredictable
Are they being sung into the wind? even to himself. Look at Hamlet after
he kills Polonius. The full foulness of
neasy lies the head that wears a the impulsive murder unhinges him; he
“ U crown.” Another adage—Shake- transforms in a moment into a terrify-
speare’s, not Sondheim’s, but Cinder- ing, terrified child. There’s something
ella can relate. Hesitating on the steps worrying, even fearsome, about this mag-
of the palace, she can’t choose whether netic boy who won’t act, even as he is
to run home to her scullery-maid life acting all the time. Is this the real life,
or to stay and embrace the unknown or is this just fantasy? Lawther’s Ham-
of a royal bed: “Then from out of the let hardly knows, and he keeps us sus-
blue, / And without any guide,/ You pended alongside him in the nebulous
know what your decision is,/ Which in-between. ♦
 maw, a heaven and a hell. Inside, fan-
ON TELEVISION tasy names replace government ones.
We can almost smell the club’s odor.

DOWN SOUTH
(There’s a running joke about burnt
chicken wings.) Money makes noise.
Bands of cash, smacked down on sur-
“P-Valley,” on Starz. faces, sound like bricks; loose bills, col-
lected by a dancer, rustle like leaves.
BY DOREEN ST. FÉLIX No Southern fiction is complete
without a haunting. Here, our ghost is
Autumn Night (Elarica Johnson), a
mysterious stranger who rides into
Pussy Valley on the current of a flood.
After winning an amateur night at the
club, she becomes our window into the
Pynk. The club is not only a structure
but an axis on which society spins its
pleasures, and from which “P-Valley”’s
themes—colorism, land restitution, the
business of Christianity and the busi-
ness of sex, domestic violence, gender
fluidity—radiate outward. The show
revels in the physicality, the muscula-
ture, of its Black women stars; the cam-
era sticks to the actors (and their stunt
doubles) as they scale the pony doing
tricks that, as the lyric goes, you’ve never
seen. The pilot ended with an inge-
nious sequence. Mercedes (Brandee
Evans, a marvel), the club’s veteran
headliner, strides onstage. She fastens
herself onto the pole, and then, grad-
ually, the music drops out, and the
camera pushes in. We hear her pri-
vate noises—the panting, the grunt-
ing. “P-Valley” refuses to reduce strip-
ping to smooth dancing, done to the
grooves of modern feminist rhetoric;
it depicts stripping as a feat of hard
athleticism. “It art,” Mercedes tells her
he deluxe melodrama of “P-Val- of placation; the vibe is otherwise un- abusive mother, Patrice, a hypocritical
T ley,” on Starz, created by the play-
wright Katori P. Hall, ages me three
apologetic. The series, which is in its
second season, premièred in the sum-
church lady played by Harriet D. Foy.
“I transport motherfuckers.”
decades. Tracking the dazzling maneu- mer of 2020, prompting comparisons The show’s language, or “slanguage,”
vers of the dancers at a strip club called with the film “Hustlers,” Lorene Sca- as Hall, a Memphis native, has tagged
the Pynk, and whooping stupidly at faria’s stripper crime caper, which had her vernacular, is cocksure, confronta-
the ferocity onscreen, I become my come out the previous year. Both proj- tional. “I like your consonance,” the
mother, the type of woman who lov- ects are enveloped in the same helio- trap rapper Lil Murda (the excellent
ingly refers to her favorite shows as tropic glow. And yet, save for Jennifer J. Alphonse Nicholson) tells Mercedes
“her stories.” The possessive fits. Are Lopez’s opening number, “Hustlers” in the first season. “I like your asso-
there other dramas that trounce the distances its drama from the act of nance, too.” Murda has come to the
series in writing and in plot? Yes. But stripping itself. Most of the time, we club to test out his single for the only
few have dug their heels into my heart are denied entry to the club. tastemakers who matter. (“You gotta
as intractably as “P-Valley.” “P-Valley,” on the other hand, lives make something these bitches wanna
Hall adapted “P-Valley” from her in the shake joint. The Pynk, in the twerk to,” a fan advises him.) Although
2015 stage play, “Pussy Valley.” The eu- fictional town of Chucalissa, in the the spectacle in “P-Valley” is predom-
phemism in the title is the single mark Mississippi Delta, is a refuge and a inantly visual—often, the episodes
are preceded by strobe-light warnings,
After a two-year hiatus, the second season of the drama premièred in June. and the club, a controlled swarm, is
74 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY MONET ALYSSA
drenched in a palette of night shades, When her stunt double comes on, to tor. Uncle Clifford dashes around the
of intoxicating blues—it is also aural. twerk on the supine body of another town, struggling to secure P.P.E. be-
The sounds of Southern gothic, of rap, dancer, who is balancing on a third fore the inspector returns. But other
of roots, form a music that parallels dancer, who is hanging upside down facets are spectral; we get the sense that
the actual soundtrack, which is teem- on the pole—a tripartite formation that the writers want to endow our national
ing with fully realized songs—“Fal- Uncle Clifford likes to call “the Trinitay- illness with a lore. Loretta Devine plays
lin”; “Mississippi Pride,” performed by ay-ay”—the camera must retreat, to Granmuva Ernestine, Uncle Clifford’s
Lil Murda—that scan as some of the make the seam invisible, but we miss maternal figure, a blind woman who
best made-for-television rap I’ve heard. Evans’s intensity. Other performers owned the Pynk decades ago, when it
“P-Valley,” a soap about Black en- come from the stage: Nicholson, whom was a juke joint. Ernestine gets COVID.
tertainment, sends me back to the time viewers might recognize from his role In her delirium, she journeys to a river,
when Cookie, of Lee Daniels’s “Em- in “A Soldier’s Play,” on Broadway, un- where she begs to be cleansed. She calls
pire,” was king. But Hall queers the dergirds his doe-eyed rapper with an out to her daughter, Clifford’s dead
scene. Uncle Clifford, played by Nicco August Wilson loner. The assemblage mother, and soon Clifford is seeing vi-
Annan, is the nonbinary proprietor of provokes a meta-consideration: what sions in her Cadillac’s rearview mirror.
the Pynk, whose wigs sit atop her head truly separates the stripper from the Clifford was initially willing to be
like sculpture, with her facial hair carved actor, the club from the theatre? vulnerable only around Ernestine. Then
like the waves in an Edo print. To Mer- love came along, making her weak.
cedes, Keyshawn (Shannon Thornton, fter a two-year hiatus, “P-Valley”’s There is no relationship on television
a beauty with anime eyes), Gidget (Sky-
ler Joy), and the other girls, Uncle Clif-
A second season premièred this June.
We had to wait one episode to return
that I am more invested in than that
of Uncle Clifford and Lil Murda. Nich-
ford is like a headmistress, a discipli- to the Pynk. The coronavirus, or “the olson has made Murda, who is clos-
narian and a confidante, a warden and rona,” has invaded Chucalissa. Uncle eted, a pathos figure nonpareil. A re-
a mother. At night, her sex-industry Clifford and Autumn Night, the Pynk’s curring gesture, the flashing and the
authority brings Black and white men new co-owner—at the end of Season 1, removal of his gilded mouth, functions
to their knees, but, in the daylight, the she miraculously saved the club in an as a metaphor for his anguished exis-
economy flips, and her turf is threat- auction—have set up a mobile oper- tence. Murda is the ticket out for his
ened. The arc of the first season re- ation. A client, bored with his fam- boys, the gangster with a future. He
volves around the planned develop- ily in quarantine, may steer his vehi- passes as straight because of his ap-
ment of a casino that will displace the cle through a car wash, where masked pearance and his posture, but to any-
Pynk. Decked out in a red petticoat women will give him a neon-lit show. one in the know he looks like “trade.”
and sporting a red parasol, Clifford The COVID story lines this season far Clifford is in the know, drawn to the
prances onto a cotton field to confront exceed much of what I’ve seen since bifurcation—Lil Murda, the industry
Corbin Kyle (Dan J. Johnson), one of television writers began broaching our finesser, and LaMarcus, the fragile
the orchestrators of the deal. Kyle, the pandemic reality. “P-Valley” meditates dreamer. In Season 1, Murda pursued
biracial son of a dead plantation owner, on the culture of pandemic life—the Clifford in secret, and their romance
is “high yella.” Clifford purrs to him, paranoia, the illness, and the economic ended in quiet despair. Privately dev-
“Get you some sunscreen. We don’t precarity it wrought and continues to astated, Murda goes on a regional tour
want you getting black now.” wreak—by incorporating it into the this season. He is driven in a hearse,
The crackling unsubtlety of “P-Val- preëxisting action. both a flex and an omen. The interior
ley” works because of its cast. Evans, a A lot of the rona riffing is darkly is papered with roses. A tragedy causes
professional dancer, can do what many funny. One dancer sneezes on a client, Clifford and Murda to reconvene. Their
actors cannot: emote with her body. who turns out to be a health inspec- sex scene brought me to tears. 

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THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 8, 2022 75

 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose
three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Felipe Galindo,
must be received by Sunday, August 7th. The finalists in the July 25th contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the August 22nd issue. Anyone age thirteen
or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

“ ”
..........................................................................................................................

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“The key is to stay hydrated.”

LiHao Zhang, Arcadia, Calif.

“A few more years, and all this will be ours.” “Why don’t you ever leave the house?”
Dustin Charles, Washington, D.C. John F. Davis, Yonkers, N.Y.

“And you wanted to go to the mountains.”

Paul Nesja, Mount Horeb, Wis.
Browse the store.
 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.

13 14

THE 15 16

CROSSWORD 17 18 19

20 21
A lightly challenging puzzle.
22 23 24

BY ERIK AGARD
25 26 27 28

29 30 31
ACROSS
1 Exfoliating treatment
32 33 34
10 Video-art pioneer ___ June Paik
13 Go on 35 36 37 38
14 Person who goes on and on, say
15 Prepare for air travel, like some nervous 39 40 41

fliers
42 43 44 45 46
16 Gymnastics great Dominique
17 Chopping tool
47 48 49
18 Doesn’t share
19 New Orleans sandwiches 50 51
20 Mononymous author of “The Sex
Chronicles: Shattering the Myth” 52 53

21 Monarch’s representative
22 Writes quickly
DOWN 31 “As ___ saying . . .”
23 Haudenosaunee Nationals’ sport,
1 Sonic the Hedgehog company 36 Tight closures
informally
2 U.S. soccer star Morgan 38 Beverage brewed in natural light
24 Glaring omission from a slate of
nominations 3 “Too little, too ___” 40 Commercials
25 Country that celebrates Boun Bang Fai 4 “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” 41 If you’re on it, you’re undecided
network
26 Bundles of hay 43 Self-involved
5 “We’re just leaving things where they
28 Heavy bird are, then?” 44 Soda in some floats
29 Singer whose EP “Heaux Tales” topped 6 Sings sentimentally 45 “Gucci” singer Runway
many “Best Albums of 2021” lists
7 Singer’s span 46 Focal point of an evening news show’s
32 “Back That ___ Up” (Juvenile hit) set
8 People with a Uintah band
33 Poke fun at 48 Married title
9 Where someone might drop their phone
34 Blown away on their face 49 Imposed maximum
35 Alkaline cleaning solutions 10 “Time to make a decision!”
37 Prefix akin to mono- 11 Sheepish question after an accidental
Solution to the previous puzzle:
38 Train at a boxing gym offense
Effortless-looking updo S O M E W A Y T I D A L
39 Unpaid debts 12
P R E S A G E M O R E S O
41 Commotion 14 Term of endearment
A D A S T R A P I K A C H U
42 Papel ___ (Mexican folk art with 16 Nonfiction film, for short M E N A C E A R N E L A D
intricate cutouts) 19 Small part onscreen? S A T H E A D O N L A N E
43 Unload emotions 20 Camera function L I S P N O M T A R T S

44 Major chemical component of weed, for 21 Worth T H A N K S I H A T E I T

short A R A L S U M O
22 Fitness portmanteau for more than fifty
K I D S T H E S E D A Y S
47 The lesser of two ___ (option that’s still years
U N I T Y B A M G A T S
extremely bad) 23 Drink with salted and mango varieties
M D M A C O M E T O A N A
48 Mythical human-lion-scorpion hybrid 25 Sedate ride at a water park B U M S H O E A T H R O B
50 Storied loch 26 Food often soaked before cooking A C E D O U T N I C E T R Y
51 Gluten-free main ingredients of 27 Hit comedy? Y E S I A M I N H A L E S
tteokbokki 29 Ingredient in some cornbread recipes A S T E R B O I L E R S

52 Resource that sounds like a conjunction 30 Branch of science that studies the brain, Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
53 Rhyming preview for short newyorker.com/crossword
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