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 SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

13 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
David Remnick on the legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev;
diplomacy at a snail’s pace; new kids on the (jazz) block;
tokenizing Anthony Hopkins; a day at the pool.
LIFE AND LETTERS
Jennifer Homans 20 The Return
George Balanchine’s 1962 tour of the Soviet Union.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Seth Reiss 27 Ranking My COVID Testers
ANNALS OF NATURE
D. T. Max 28 Fish Kebabs
On the hunt for invasive lionfish.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Rachel Aviv 34 Impaired Judgment
A sexual encounter results in conflicting claims.
SKETCHBOOK
Roz Chast 39 “Food ‘Poems’”
LETTER FROM EL SALVADOR
Jonathan Blitzer 44 Strongman of the People
President Nayib Bukele’s tough stance on crime.
FICTION
Joan Silber 56 “Evolution”
THE CRITICS
A CRITIC AT LARGE
Adam Gopnik 64 Can democracy be more democratic?
BOOKS
Leslie Jamison 70 Kathryn Scanlan and the art of reduction.
73 Briefly Noted
THE THEATRE
Helen Shaw 74 A reimagining of “As You Like It.”
ON TELEVISION
Doreen St. Félix 76 “Katrina Babies,” “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist.”
POEMS
Andrea Cohen 52 “Roosevelt Dargon”
Harkaitz Cano 61 “Reasons”
COVER
John Cuneo “Top Dog”

DRAWINGS Amy Hwang, Akeem Roberts, Edward Steed, Bruce Eric Kaplan,
P. C. Vey, Frank Cotham, Drew Dernavich, E. S. Glenn and Colin Nissan, Ellis Rosen, Paul Noth,
Liana Finck, David Sipress, Mads Horwath SPOTS Rose Wong
 CONTRIBUTORS
Rachel Aviv (“Impaired Judgment,” Jonathan Blitzer (“Strongman of the Peo-
p. 34), a staff writer, will publish “Strang- ple,” p. 44) became a staff writer in 2017.
ers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and He is at work on a book about the U.S.
the Stories That Make Us” this month. and Central America.

D. T. Max (“Fish Kebabs,” p. 28) has Jennifer Homans (“The Return,” p. 20)
been a staff writer since 2010. His new is the magazine’s dance critic. Her book
book, “Finale: Late Conversations with “Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Cen-
Stephen Sondheim,” will be out in tury” is forthcoming in November.
November.
Joan Silber (Fiction, p. 56) has published
Andrea Cohen (Poem, p. 52) is the au- ten books, including the novels “Secrets
thor of seven poetry collections, in- of Happiness” and “Improvement.”
cluding “Everything” and “Nightshade.”
Roz Chast (Sketchbook, p. 39), a long-
John Cuneo (Cover) has contributed to time New Yorker cartoonist, is the au-
the magazine since 1994. An exhibition thor, with Patricia Marx, of “You Can
of his drawings, “Paperwork,” will be on Only Yell at Me for One Thing at a
display at Manjari & Partners, in Paris, Time.”
starting September 14th.
Harkaitz Cano (Poem, p. 61) is a Basque
Leanne Shapton (Sketchpad, p. 17) is an writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
artist and a publisher. Her “Swimming His latest book of poems, “Good Wolf,
Studies” won the 2012 National Book Bad Wolf,” was translated into English
Critics’ Circle Award for autobiography. by Kristin Addis.

Adam Gopnik (A Critic at Large, p. 64), Helen Shaw (The Theatre, p. 74) became
a staff writer, is the author, most re- a theatre critic for the magazine in
cently, of “A Thousand Small Sanities.” August.

THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM

LEFT: ANA MIMINOSHVILI; RIGHT: KEVIN COOLEY / REDUX

ANNALS OF MEDICINE A WARMING PLANET

Matthew Hutson writes about Ingfei Chen on the terrifying
whether we can predict which viruses choices that Californians living
will leap from animals to humans. under the threat of wildfires face.

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
SEEKING JUSTICE IN UKRAINE dovan Karadžić, and their military leader,
Ratko Mladić. The I.C.T.R., in turn, in-
Masha Gessen’s grim account of Rus- dicted ninety-three people and sentenced
sia’s war crimes in Ukraine makes plain sixty-two, including a former Prime Min-
the invaders’ brutal tactics (“The Law of ister of Rwanda, Jean Kambanda. The
War,” August 8th). More than two de- tribunal also secured the first-ever con-
cades ago, I co-wrote a human-rights re- victions for genocidal rape, as well as con-
port on Russia’s atrocities in Chechnya— victions for inciting the genocide through
an early indication of Putin’s way of war. radio broadcasts.
Gessen rightly asks whether punishments While these successes are worth ac-
for such acts can ever fit the crimes, knowledging, it is undeniably a shortcom-
whether prosecutions can deter further ing that we fail to hold to account the
atrocities, and whether victims can ever largest and most powerful countries—
gain closure or adequate compensation. such as China, Russia, and the United
The piece suggests that quick prosecu- States. As Gessen indicates, bringing
tions might bring about a more just end Russians to justice for their crimes in
to the war in Ukraine. Yet there is an- Ukraine represents a crucial test for the
other, equally profound, reason to pur- human-rights movement.
sue justice: doing so formally expresses Aryeh Neier
to the world that such horrors cannot be Co-founder

1
inflicted with impunity. Human Rights Watch
Leonard Rubenstein New York City
Professor of the Practice
Bloomberg School of Public Health SOUNDS OF SILENCE
Johns Hopkins University
Alexandria, Va. I read with great interest John Seabrook’s
article about making sounds for electric
I admire Gessen’s reporting, and I gen- vehicles, or E.V.s (“On Alert,” Au-
erally share their skepticism about the gust 8th). Although I learned much about
likelihood of bringing to justice the Rus- how these soundscapes are made, I was
sians responsible for the war crimes and disappointed that Seabrook did not men-
crimes against humanity being commit- tion the deaf and hard-of-hearing com-
ted in Ukraine. As someone who has munities. The million deaf people in the
been deeply involved for four decades in U.S. typically cannot hear internal-
the global struggle to hold perpetrators combustion-engine vehicles, or even
of such deeds accountable, I am disap- their horns—yet we manage to survive!
pointed in what we have achieved. Even Silent E.V.s put the public in the same
so, I feel that Gessen slights the accom- precarious situation that deaf people
plishments of two of the instruments that have been in since the automobile was
were intended to serve this purpose: the invented. Perhaps our perspectives, and
International Criminal Tribunal for the the skills we’ve developed to protect our
former Yugoslavia (I.C.T.Y.) and the In- lives, could usefully inform the work of
ternational Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda those thinking about the future of
(I.C.T.R.). Gessen writes that some of E.V.s—as well as heighten the aware-
the major war-crimes trials of the twen- ness of anyone encountering these cars.
tieth century “yielded only a few verdicts.” Madan Vasishta
Yet the I.C.T.Y. was relatively successful: Ellicott City, Md. Survivors:
it indicted a hundred and sixty-one in-
dividuals. Some were acquitted, some • Faces of Life
were referred elsewhere, and some—such Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, After the Holocaust
as the former Serbian leader Slobodan address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
Milošević—died in custody. Ninety were [email protected]. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
sentenced. They include the wartime ci- any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
vilian leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Ra- of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
 SEPTEMBER 7 – 13, 2022

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

New York’s roller discos may have dwindled since the Koch era, but this summer a sparkly throwback
called the DiscOasis has materialized at Central Park’s Wollman Rink, complete with mirror balls and
Donna Summer anthems. Lorded over by the disco-funk veteran Nile Rodgers, who curated the music,
the roller rink welcomes both tentative date-nighters and seasoned skaters (such as Harry Gaskin, above),
with interspersed dance routines by a cast of thirteen, through Oct. 2. Neon-bright attire encouraged.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JONAH ROSENBERG

 1
As ever, it’s advisable to check in advance Buchla 100 synthesizer. By 2016, Smith had without sounding as though he is straining to
to confirm engagements. grown into her sound, and she released “Ears,” inhabit a lower tessitura. The experiment con-
a whirring odyssey that blends the analog and tinues with this recital at the Armory’s Board
the digital, and “Sunergy,” a serpentine collabo- of Officers Room, where Spyres and the pianist
ration with the synth trailblazer Suzanne Ciani. Mathieu Pordoy perform song cycles associ-
MUSIC Smith has since expanded ever outward—she ated with a range of voice types—Beethoven’s
has made an LP of cosmic exploration and, “An die Ferne Geliebte,” Liszt’s “Tre Sonetti
with the composer Emile Mosseri, a surging di Petrarca,” and Berlioz’s “Les Nuits d’Été,”
Derrick Carter ambient record. Smith’s description of her whose soaring lines make it a favorite among
HOUSE Derrick Carter tends to give the side-eye fun new album, “Let’s Turn It Into Sound,” sopranos and mezzo-sopranos.—Oussama Zahr
to heavy pronunciamentos about his music, as a puzzle is apt; it is a tough record to crack (Park Avenue Armory; Sept. 7 and Sept. 9.)
but there’s little question that his work as a open, riddled with bending layers of overlaid
producer and, especially, as a d.j. defines Chi- voice and tricky synth work. This is eclectic
cago house. There’s a consistent playfulness music that never stops changing shape. At its Vincent Herring & the
whenever Carter gets on the decks: the hi-hats most scintillating, each transformation reveals
slip around as if on ice, the horns tend to sound a new dimension.—Sheldon Pearce (Streaming Something Else! Band
rhythmically smeared rather than triumphal, on select platforms.) JAZZ Drawing inspiration from one of the great
and the swing is as severe as a John Malkovich albums of the late fifties, Cannonball Adderley’s
line reading. Carter closes Golden Hour, a “Somethin’ Else,” the newly organized collective
day-into-evening outdoor party; Bears in Space Michael Spyres Vincent Herring & the Something Else! Band
and Dee Diggs get things started.—Michaelan- CLASSICAL An American singer best known wears its hard-bop heart on its sleeve. Bringing
gelo Matos (3 Dollar Bill; Sept. 10.) for high Rossini repertoire, Michael Spyres together the saxophonists Herring and James
began his operatic life as a baritone before find- Carter, the trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, the guitarist
ing success as a tenor. Last year, he released Paul Bollenback, the pianist David Kikoski, the
The King Khan & BBQ Show “Baritenor,” an album that narrowed the gulf bassist Essiet Essiet, and the drummer Johna-
ROCK If rock and roll is a seesaw teetering be- between the two vocal categories. The title than Blake, this packed-to-the-gills outfit taps
tween sweetness and debauchery, King Khan employs a term more commonly used to classify into a classic repertoire of funk-tinged tunes
& BBQ are the kids leaping on both sides Broadway singers today, but the record rep- by the likes of Bobby Timmons, Horace Sil-
with a bit too much force. Arish Khan (the resents an intriguing experiment: Spyres brings ver, and Lou Donaldson. It practically dares
self-proclaimed king) and Mark Sultan (BBQ) lightness and suavity to beloved baritone roles, audiences to sit still and remain on their best
glimmer with wickedness in their comically such as Mozart’s Almaviva and Rossini’s Figaro, behavior.—Steve Futterman (Birdland; Sept. 7-10.)
donned S & M costumery; pity the unsuspect-
ing journalist who once phoned for a scheduled
interview only to be greeted by a loudly uri-
nating Khan. Yet the duo’s music tempers any
FESTIVAL
ungentlemanly instincts with tenderness and
nostalgia. Their new single, “Going Down,”
works blue while paying loving homage to
doo-wop, like an old under-the-counter party
record performed with heartfelt panache. They
crackle onstage, with the flamboyant Khan
on guitar and vocals while BBQ, in a feat of
coördination, simultaneously sings, drums, and
plays guitar. The coolly noirish garage band
Miranda and the Beat opens.—Jay Ruttenberg
(Brooklyn Made; Sept. 10.)

Lee “Scratch” Perry:

“King Scratch”
REGGAE The retrospective “King Scratch
(Musical Masterpieces from the Upsetter
Ark-ive)” concentrates on the late sixties
and seventies work of Lee “Scratch” Perry,
the dub pioneer who helped codify the reg-
gae beat. The collection, available in vari-
ous configurations, is best heard in its most
luxuriant form—a box containing four LPs
plus four CDs. The vinyl features a sharply
selected best-of, and the first two compact
disks offer a surprising number of gems that The Afropunk Brooklyn festival has shape-shifted radically since it began
haven’t been anthologized to death elsewhere. in the mid-two-thousands as a grassroots celebration of Black alternative
Working with Junior Byles, Max Romeo, the
Congos, and also on his own, Perry was the music rooted in punk. Now expanded, with a capacious spirit of commu-
era’s most adventurous and fecund record pro- nity manifested in iterations around the world, Afropunk emphasizes the
ducer.—M.M. (Streaming on select platforms.) vastness of Black musical expression, with acts representing rap, soul, pop,
ILLUSTRATION BY MATT WILLIAMS

rock, jazz, R. & B., and Afrobeats. This year’s summit at Commodore
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Barry Park, Sept. 10-11, marks Afropunk’s first home-town installment
“Let’s Turn It Into Sound” since 2019. The Nigerian pop singer Burna Boy and the hip-hop darlings
EXPERIMENTAL The Washington composer and the Roots, whose performance promises to encompass its storied career,
producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith studied sound headline. The festival offers a wellness initiative and a bevy of merchants,
engineering and composition at Berklee Col- as well as sets from the prismatic rappers Earl Sweatshirt and Pink Siifu,
lege of Music in Boston, but she didn’t discover
her love of micro-tuned electronic music until the hip-hop miniaturist Tierra Whack, the indie-rock fusionist Bartees
a neighbor back home introduced her to the Strange, and the ferocious Tennessee rapper BbyMutha.—Jenn Pelly
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 5
11
DANCE THE THEATRE
peating folktales; in the forties, three “comfort
women” (Teresa Avia Lim, Sasha Diamond,
and Jillian Sun) reënact a story to distract
themselves from their sexual enslavement. In
Miguel Gutierrez Into the Woods the fifties, a little girl (Sonnie Brown) hides
The works of this beloved choreographer and Lear deBessonet directs this delectable revival from the Korean War as her imaginary friends
performance-art charmer have always been of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s mu- Tiger and Bear occupy her with a myth about
strong on song. “Sueño” started as a music proj- sical from 1987, which braids several classic grief and rescue; she grows up and does the
ect, with dreamy songs in English and Spanish, fairy tales into a two-act piece that begins as same for a Korean American child (Sun, again)
high on harmony, melancholy, and longing. For farce and then takes a turn toward the tragic. whom she cannot fully understand. Stories
this free performance, Gutierrez adds dance Everyone starts out wishing for something: do not console, exactly, in Ralph B. Peña’s
inspired by early modern and expressionist Cinderella (Phillipa Soo) to go to a festival exquisitely judged production, for Ma-Yi
(and sometimes campy) choreographers such at the palace; the overgrown boy Jack (Cole Theatre Company, but their structures do
as Ted Shawn and Harald Kreutzberg.—Brian Thompson) to coax his beloved cow, Milky- serve as bridges, carrying a person from one
Seibert (The High Line; Sept. 12-14.) White (skillfully manipulated by the actor unthinkable moment to the next. The play
Kennedy Kanagawa), to produce some milk works the same way, moving us swiftly across
for his family; Little Red Riding Hood (Julia images that catch at us, and lodge, and recur,
John Jasperse Projects Lester) to buy a loaf of bread to take to her even after the play is over.—Helen Shaw (La
The dances of John Jasperse, always intelligent granny; the Baker (Brian d’Arcy James), who Mama’s Ellen Stewart Theatre; through Sept. 18.)
and formally intriguing, are often allusive sells her the loaf, to have a child. Too bad—he
and eccentric. In his new work “Visitation,” and his wife (Sara Bareilles) are barren, thanks
he trains his eye on séances, mesmerism, and to a curse placed on them by the Witch (the Two Jews, Talking
the occult, swinging between inward reflec- ravishing Patina Miller). In Act II come the An old Jew of Moses’ tribe shuffles onto a
tion and outward explosion. The score, by consequences of so much wish fulfillment, set that evokes “Godot”—some boulders and
Jasperse’s longtime collaborator Hahn Rowe, and Sondheim’s personal favorite theme, the a scraggly tree—soon followed by a fellow-
is infused with doses of Wagner, summoning journey from innocence to knowledge. Lester’s wanderer. Lou (Hal Linden), a cynic, and
the unsettling, multivalent associations of maximally sassified Little Red is a highlight; Bud (Bernie Kopell), patient, hopeful, and
his music.—B.S. (N.Y.U. Skirball; Sept. 9-10.) the duo of vain princes, played by Gavin Creel faithful, have been thirty years in the desert
and Joshua Henry, pull off “Agony” to preen- together. Bud trusts in Moses and believes in
ing perfection. Even when the giant starts the promised land. Lou thinks Moses doesn’t
Bijayini Satpathy / “Dohā” stomping around and the cast goes boom- have a clue, has been taking them in circles,
In Hindustani poetry, a dohā is a couplet, a squish, you still find reasons to laugh. It’s a and is, in fact, lost, “l-o-s-t in the desert,” as
single thought laid out in two lines of rhyming tonic.—Alexandra Schwartz (Reviewed in our he likes to say. So begins a joke-filled debate
verse. The renowned Odissi dancer Bijayini issue of 8/8/22.) (St. James; through Oct. 16.) on subjects theological and mundane, rang-
Satpathy has taken this form—two lines by the ing from the Ten Commandments to dietary
Urdu poet Mir Taqi Mir—and spun it into an laws and beyond. After a pause, the rocks are
evening of dance whose underlying theme is the Once Upon a (korean) Time replaced by a park bench, and the players
balance between prayer and play. The solo was An excellent cast and a video-rich design an- return as Marty and Phil, strangers but ba-
developed in the course of Satpathy’s artistic imate the playwright Daniel K. Isaac’s sensi- sically the same guys, a few thousand years
residency at the Metropolitan Museum during tively structured epic, which traces the way later. The talk turns to health, Heaven, family,
the past year; in a way, the museum’s spaces have that grief moves through a bloodline, and and, again, faith. The writer, Ed. Weinberger,
been her muse. The forty-five-minute solo is set how storytelling (the most abused term in who’s been concocting quality comedy since
to recorded music by the young Indian com- art) actually functions. In 1930, two Korean the sixties, has modelled the script with a
poser Bindhumalini Narayanaswamy.—Marina soldiers (David Lee Huynh and Jon Norman comfortable Borscht Belt rhythm. He and
Harss (Metropolitan Museum of Art; Sept. 13.) Schneider) escape the horrors of war by re- the director, Dan Wackerman, give deadpan
Kopell (“Get Smart,” “The Love Boat”) some
of the biggest laugh lines, but it’s Linden—
PODCAST DEPT. whose theatre bona fides stretch back to 1957,
on Broadway opposite Judy Holliday in “Bells
Are Ringing”—who kills. Comic timing like

1
The Icelandic musician Björk makes al- you wouldn’t believe. The b-e-s-t.—Ken Marks
(Theatre at St. Clements; through Oct. 23.)
bums that are difficult to classify. Are they
rock? Folk? Experimental pop? A dreamy
mishmash of performance, visual, and
ART
outsider art? On the new podcast “Björk:
Sonic Symbolism,” from Talkhouse and
Nina Beier
Mailchimp Presents, the woodland-fairy-
Tucked into the High Line’s summer prai-
voiced singer works through these ques- rie garden near the elevated park’s entrance
tions. Each episode explores the creation at Little West Twelfth Street is an unusual
of one album—beginning with her first, fountain—at once a slapstick comedy and a
horror show—by this Danish artist. Titled
fittingly titled “Debut”—with Björk, in “Women & Children,” it’s an ensemble of sal-
conversation with her friends the writer vaged bronze statues transformed into weeping
Oddný Eir and the musicologist Ásmun- nudes, thanks to water streaming from holes
bored into their pupils. The mix of patinas
ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL LIÉVANO

dur Jónsson, serving as a whimsical guide and styles, ranging from the classical to the
through her musical mind. This is a rare contemporary, makes the dozen or so figures
chance to listen in as one of the most a ragtag bunch. But, despite their apparent
displacement and unlikely recombination (not
mysterious and mystical artists work- to mention their tears), the over-all mood isn’t
ing today explains herself—but never one of distress. Instead, the statues’ relaxed
so clearly as to totally unravel her own poses call to mind a group of benignly ghoulish
bathers, a witty counterpoint to the title’s allu-
mythology. Björk keeps it weird; would sion to a helpless crowd waiting to be rescued.
you have it any other way?—Rachel Syme In Beier’s wryly transhistorical vision, the act

6 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

 Perhaps. Still, generic characters in melo-
IN THE MUSEUMS dramatic poses strategically depersonalize
subjects to the benefit of thematic punch and
decorative finesse. The results exalt audacity
and breathe beauty. Howe seldom repeated
himself. Each work can feel one-off, fulfilling
a special mission to a fare-thee-well. If any
quality is consistent, it’s suddenness.—Peter
Schjeldahl (National Museum of the American
Indian; through Sept. 11.)

“Matisse: The Red Studio”

What remains to be said about a familiar
icon of modern art painted by Henri Ma-
tisse in 1911? Quite a lot, as this jewel box
of a show at MOMA proves. The exhibition
surrounds “The Red Studio,” a rendering
of the French artist’s atelier, with most of
the eleven earlier works of his (paintings,
sculptures, a ceramic plate) that, in freehand
copy, pepper the canvas’s uniform ground of
potent Venetian red. The ensemble immerses
viewers in the marvels of an artistic revolution
that resonates to this day. Gorgeous? Oh,
yeah. Aesthetic bliss saturates—radically, to
a degree still apt to startle when you pause to
reflect on it—the means, ends, and very soul
of a style so far ahead of its time that its full
In the nineteen-eighties, after four decades as a psychotherapist in influence took decades to kick in. (It did so
decisively in paintings by Mark Rothko and
St. Louis, Helen Kornblum began collecting photographs by women other American Abstract Expressionists in
artists; in 2021, Kornblum donated a hundred pieces to MOMA, where the years after the museum’s acquisition, in
“Our Selves,” a rich exhibition excerpting that gift, is on view through 1949, of “The Red Studio,” which had, until
then, languished in obscurity.) The works that
Oct. 10. The show’s title recalls that of the feminist health bible “Our are visually quoted in the piece cohabit with
Bodies, Ourselves,” published in 1970, but the pictures, which span the furniture and still-life elements. Contours
twentieth century, tend to portray bodies obliquely. Louise Lawler’s “Sap- tend to be summarily indicated by thin yellow
lines. Part of a pale-blue window obtrudes.
pho and Patriarch,” from 1984, is an ingeniously framed, starkly moody But nothing disrupts the composition’s essen-
image of Greek statuary which foregrounds a draped female figure to tial harmony, the details striking the eye all at
make a pointed statement about gender and power dynamics in Western once, with a concerted bang.—P.S. (Museum
of Modern Art; through Sept. 10.)
art history, as well as in the conventions of museum display. Surrogates
also feature in the Italian photographer Tina Modotti’s dramatic black-
and-white image “Yank and Police Marionette,” from 1926, in which two “Writing a Chrysanthemum:
puppets cast towering shadows, a tableau inspired by a scene in Eugene The Drawings of Rick Barton”
O’Neill’s anti-capitalist play “The Hairy Ape.” The Navajo-Tuskegee Three months before the Morgan Library
artist Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (who is also a professor and a museum opened its doors to the public, in 1928, Rick
Barton—a remarkable draftsman who died
director) addresses the erasure of Native American identity and the in obscurity in 1992—was born a few blocks
hollow spectacle of televised game shows in her photo collage “Vanna away. Now, thanks to the discerning eye and
Brown, Azteca Style” (above), from 1990, by reimagining the “Wheel of considerable detective work of the museum’s
associate curator Rachel Federman, a selection
Fortune” hostess as an Indigenous beauty in dancing regalia. In Lorna of Barton’s deeply affecting ink-and-brush ren-
Simpson’s salon-style installation “Details,” from 1996, twenty-one poet- derings of crowded cafés, lonely rooms, and
ically captioned archival photogravures, many of them cropped views of majestic architecture is on view for the first
© HULLEAH J. TSINHNAHJINNIE / COURTESY THE ARTIST / MOMA

time ever. An autodidact, Barton dropped out

hands, evoke dispersed fragments of a family album.—Johanna Fateman of high school to haunt the city’s museums;
works in the show slip in references to Dürer,
Hokusai, and Vermeer. A teen-aged stint in
of crying becomes decoratively symbolic—an ethnic authenticity and internationalist the Navy brought the artist to China, where
absurdist critique of outmoded, dismissive derring-do, although condescension from he was introduced to the fine-brush form of
clichés about the allegedly fairer sex.—Johanna establishment institutions and proprietary pen-and-ink drawing that he quickly mastered.
Fateman (The High Line; through April.) tribute from some sectarian advocates have Discharged from the service (probably owing
hindered his recognition as a straight-up ca- to mental illness), he settled in the Bay Area,
nonical modernist. Crisply curated by Kath- like so many gay men of his generation. He
“Dakota Modern: leen Ash-Milby, the show consists almost worked there with near-graphomaniacal in-
exclusively of works on paper, in tempera, tensity during the nineteen-fifties and sixties,
The Art of Oscar Howe” watercolor, gouache, or casein. The execution attracting a small circle of acolytes before van-
This overdue retrospective of the remarkable is phlegmatically deliberate. The upshot is ishing from the scene. As the late artist Etel
Yanktonai Dakota painter Oscar Howe, who a channelling of sheer, visionary imagina- Adnan wrote in an essay from 1998, excerpted in
died in 1983, at the age of sixty-eight, graces tion, as if the artist were taking dictation the Morgan’s excellent catalogue, “Rick Barton
the always enthralling New York branch of from an unseen demiurge. Do some of the should have been a San Francisco legend.” With
the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the effects seem cartoonish, with figuration that this intimate, astonishing exhibition, he finally
American Indian. Howe is a frequently mis- anticipated popular styles of graphic fiction is.—Andrea K. Scott (Morgan Library & Museum;
understood American master who bridged which took hold in the nineteen-seventies? through Sept. 11.)

8 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

1
MOVIES
able society both embodies and conceals. In
Archibaldo’s gloriously imagined, carefully
far more of their life than they’d intended.
Meanwhile, the pair face competition from
planned, and meticulously staged schemes, a church in which another husband and wife
the art of murder and the art of movies ap- (Conphidance and Nicole Beharie), a younger
The Criminal Life of pear to be closely aligned. In one of the most couple, are co-pastors. The Childses are
ludicrously harrowing and repellently exu- flamboyantly, profligately materialistic, and
Archibaldo de la Cruz berant scenes ever filmed, Archibaldo—an Lee-Curtis—railing against “the homosexual
In Luis Buñuel’s gleefully perverse mock amateur ceramist—finds a killer app for his agenda”—proves brazenly hypocritical. Ebo
melodrama, the wealthy Mexican dilettante kiln. Released in 1955. In Spanish.—Richard doesn’t look closely at the church’s business
of the title rediscovers—through the made- Brody (Streaming on HBO Max starting Sept. 12.) side or the protagonists’ inner lives; none-
leine-like device of a long-lost music box—his theless, Hall provides the film with a solid
childhood fantasies of erotic violence, which emotional core as she embodies Trinitie’s
he now plans to put into action. Archibaldo Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. mighty and poignant struggles to maintain
(Ernesto Alonso) never manages to do so, The first feature by Adamma Ebo deploys her fervor, and her composure, in the face of
but, with a guilty conscience, he confesses mockumentary and sketch comedy for a se- humiliation and doubt.—R.B. (In theatrical
to the authorities nonetheless. His stifling rious subject. Lee-Curtis Childs (Sterling K. release and streaming on Peacock.)
courtship of the pious hypocrite Carlota, his Brown) is the pastor of a Baptist megachurch
dalliance with the married playgirl Patricia, in Atlanta who, in the wake of a sex scandal,
and his ardent pursuit of the wittily practical has lost almost all of his parishioners; Trin- 9
Lavinia are all shrouded in the profound evil itie Childs (Regina Hall), his wife, works Shane Acker’s 2009 animated science-fiction
of his comically thwarted intentions. Against with him to reëstablish the community’s drama begins with an ending: the world re-
a background of revolution and restoration, trust. While arranging a legal settlement duced to a dead zone of rusted, unpopulated
Catholic mysteries and aristocratic manners, with Lee-Curtis’s victims, the couple hire townscapes, the result of some ancient clash
Buñuel unfolds, in images akin to Freudian a documentarian (Andrea Laing) to make between triumphalist politicians and ma-
X-rays, the repressed desires that respect- a promotional film that ends up recording chines. The machines have won. No organic
beings remain, just a bestial contraption
that stalks the streets, and, crouching in its
shadow, a group of toylike creatures, patched
WHAT TO STREAM together from leftover materials and known
only by the numbers on their backs. Against
the advice of 1 (voiced by Christopher Plum-
mer), who hides in a ruined church, the daunt-
less 9 (Elijah Wood), the spunky 7 (Jennifer
Connelly), and a handful of others set out
to vanquish the mechanical brutes and pre-
pare to resume normal existence. How they
achieve this is, to say the least, nebulous:
something to do with hidden codes and the
mint-green wraiths of their dead companions.
But the film is itself given life by the wit
and exactitude of the computer animation,
which finds real texture and pathos in the
fantastic.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our
issue of 9/14/09.) (Streaming on Prime Video,
Apple TV, and other services.)

The River’s Edge

This lurid quasi-Western, from 1957, starts
as a film-noir twist on “Green Acres.” Meg
Cameron (Debra Paget), a stylish city woman
who’s out of jail on probation, is miserable on
a Southwestern desert ranch with her gruff but
worshipful husband, Ben (Anthony Quinn).
Then a pink convertible bearing her ex-lover
and former partner in crime, Nardo Denning
Morgan Freeman earned his first Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a (Ray Milland), rolls up. Meg can’t get him
violent, scarily manipulative pimp called Fast Black in Jerry Schatzberg’s out of her system; Nardo, with an aluminum
hard-edged 1987 drama set in New York, “Street Smart” (streaming on briefcase full of cash, wants to escape with
her to Mexico and forces Ben at gunpoint
Tubi and on Pluto TV). The character, rooted in stereotypes, anchors a to get them there. The drama morphs into
story that holds a mirror up to them. Christopher Reeve stars as Jonathan raw survivalism, with the two men bound
Fisher, a Harvard-educated journalist who escapes from the life-style in a violent standoff pitting Ben’s country
wiles against Nardo’s psychopathic menace.
beat by profiling a pimp named Tyrone—whom he made up. When Fast The director, Allan Dwan, fills the sunbaked
Black is charged with a murder, he is assumed to be the basis for Tyrone, landscape with an acrid haze of moods and a
and his attorney (Frederick Rolf ), knowing that he isn’t, subpoenas suffocating tangle of emotions, which he con-
jures with sharp, stark images of stifled frenzy.
Jonathan’s notes in order to turn the criminal case into a “constitutional One sequence in particular, of a border-patrol
confrontation”; then Fast Black lures Jonathan into his inner circle and inspection gone bad, is an anthology piece of
forces the issue. The plot focusses on the oblivious—and almost all- efficient, expressive action filmmaking; in a
few slashing brushstrokes, Dwan captures

1
white—mainstream media, immured in its glass towers, whose reporters the ecstatic horror of life on the edge.—R.B.
and editors are anything but street-smart. It takes one of the few Black (Streaming on the Criterion Channel.)
journalists on the scene (Donna Bailey) to call Jonathan out; Freeman,
EVERETT

investing the Machiavellian schemer with high-wire control and pent-up For more reviews, visit
fury, hints at worlds that Hollywood could hardly fathom.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town

10 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

 side. Gugu Room’s food is infused with bone-in beef shank) was voluptuous
some of this more-is-more pizzazz, with rather than unctuous. In fact, one of
an eclectic, expansive menu that includes the choicest bites of the entire meal
items portable enough to carry onto the was an unladylike gnaw of the gen-

1
dance floor. erous gristle on a bone followed by a
When I consulted a server on what to spoonful of marrow-thickened soup,
try the other night, he didn’t pause before bobbing with cubes of cleansing daikon.
TABLES FOR TWO referring me to the skewers, the most If the best things on the menu are
memorable of which were porcine. It is organic celebrations of mostly Filipino
Gugu Room customary to give short shrift to offal, but inspiration, the less successful dishes
143 Orchard St. forsake the tenga, or pig ears, at your own taste like concessions to the fusion nar-
risk. At Gugu, slices are marinated in rative. The chicken inasal, marinated
The Filipino-Japanese izakaya Gugu banana ketchup and grilled on binchotan and grilled, is pallid and without con-
Room, on the Lower East Side, has a charcoal, lending their gelatinous exterior viction, and the agedashi tofu, with its
few origin stories. The most romantic a crispiness that matches the wink of tired, gummy exterior, tasted like an
has to do with José Rizal, a national hero cartilage crunch on the inside. On the afterthought.
of the Philippines, who had a brief love other end of the texture spectrum is the There are no sweets on the Gugu
PHOTOGRAPH BY KENYON ANDERSON FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE

affair with a Japanese samurai’s daughter, isaw, or intestines: wrinkly whorls that menu, but there is an impressive and
in 1888, during a six-week pit stop in give off a wild musk inextricable from the varied cocktail list that seems designed
Japan on his way to the U.S. (No one organ’s primal umami. I could have eaten to prepare you for the after-hours dance
knows if the two lovebirds discussed half a dozen skewers if I hadn’t wanted floor. On a recent evening, while sipping
fusing their cultural cuisines, though.) to leave room for the longanisa, a descen- a Wasabi Mar-Gari-Ta (tequila, cala-
The most glamorous involves the actor dant of Spanish chorizo; the fragrance mansi honey, lime, wasabi), I watched
Adrien Brody, a friend of one of the and the flavor of the meat—smoky and a group of twentysomethings haltingly
restaurant’s owners, who, I’m told, pro- sweet, with notes of smoked paprika and find their groove (presumably after
posed the Japanese-Filipino mashup garlic—were broadened by the heat of drinking a respectable number of wasabi
at a Manny Pacquiao boxing match, as an open flame. margaritas themselves) under the disco
a way to make Filipino food more ac- The most persuasive dishes unapol- ball while I justified an order of fried
cessible to a New York audience. My ogetically layer richness upon richness. intestines as a savory dessert. Around
favorite story, though, is the plainest: Lengua gyutan, or beef tongue, soaked the room, skewers of meat were being
“We wanted to bring Filipino night life in a creamy mushroom gravy, seemed delivered at a fast pace, some rapturously
to the Lower East Side,” the restaurant’s destined to cloy but turned out to be waved into the frames of gleeful selfies.
twenty-nine-year-old Manila-born chef, smooth, balanced, and savory. Similarly, The music was revving up, and the place
Mark Manaloto, told me. “Good dinner the short-rib udon with bone mar- was slowly if indubitably thrumming
and party afterward.” row, which inspired an anticipation of to life. It was close to 11 p.m. when I
This helps explain the chaotic, merry heartburn, delighted from the first sip; left—the end of my isaw spelling the
décor—a silvery disco ball and a bust of punctuated by peppercorn, fish sauce, end of my night—but the party had only
José Rizal inside, a frenzy of red lanterns and white shoyu, the bulalo-style broth just begun. (Dishes $6-$25.)
and cherry-blossom-adorned cabins out- (traditionally, a heavy Filipino stew of —Jiayang Fan
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 11
 VILLASEÑOR
MELISSA
NOV 10
HUGH
JESSICA

OCT 2
KRUGMAN
PAUL
JACKMAN
OCT 23 VOSK
NOV 5–7

TYLER

DEGRASSE
PERRY

DEC 13
SCHIFF
STACY
SEP 21

TYSON
OCT 19
NEIL
KEN BURNS
SEP 14

JANN WENNER
& BRUCE
SPRINGSTEEN
SEP 13

ANGELA
HEWITT
NOV 17

JOSHUA
BELL &
LARISA
MARTINEZ
OCT 20

OCT 27
CELEBRATION
YURIKO:
BRANFORD
MARSALIS
JAN 26
SEP 19
RUBENSTEIN
DAVID

FIENNES
RALPH
DEC 5

TOM
STOPPARD
SEP 18
WENDELL
PUEBLO

PIERCE
YUNG

OCT 3
OCT 7

The 92nd Street Y,

SEE THE FULL New York
FALL 2022 SEASON New York’s global center
for culture, connection
AT 92NY.ORG
92NY Center for Culture & Arts 92NY Center for Community 92NY Bronfman Center for Jewish Life
and enrichment.
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 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT reasserting Kremlin authority over Rus- bachev and had a conversation with him
FIRST AND LAST sian institutions, Russian citizens, and about it. Taubman admitted that he was
former Soviet republics. He calls the struggling. Gorbachev was sympathetic:
hen word came last week that collapse of the Soviet Union “the great- “Gorbachev is hard to understand,” he
W Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and
last President of the Soviet Union, had
est geopolitical catastrophe” of the twen-
tieth century, and he doubtless blames
said, using the grandiose third person.
What is truly hard to understand is how
died, it was front-page news in the West the “necessity” of invading Ukraine on Gorbachev, the son of peasants, became
and a matter of studied indifference in Gorbachev. The regression is profound. himself—how a young Soviet politician
official Moscow. After issuing a tepid While Gorbachev initiated the end of promoted by Party bosses and K.G.B.
acknowledgment of Gorbachev’s pass- the Cold War and greatly diminished chieftains set out to replace “reptilian
ing, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmi- the risk of nuclear conflagration, Putin values with human ones,” as the Russian
try Peskov, announced that the Rus- now wages his proxy war with the West journalist Oleg Kashin put it.
sian President’s “work schedule will not on Ukrainian territory and, in doing so, Gorbachev was born in 1931, in Privol-
allow him” to attend the funeral. In- he has threatened the use of atomic noye, a village in southern Russia. While
stead, Putin paid his respects by drop- weapons and destabilized control of the he was an infant, famine killed nearly
ping by the hospital where Gorbachev reactors at Zaporizhzhia. half the inhabitants, including two of his
had died. He placed a bouquet of flow- By his own admission, Putin was, uncles and an aunt. These were the Sta-
ers near the casket, lingered for half a and remains, a product of the K.G.B. lin years. Both of Gorbachev’s grandfa-
minute, and, his obligation fulfilled, Gorbachev was a far more complex thers were arrested on bogus charges and
headed for the exit. Gorbachev, in his human being. He was, as he once put it, sent to prison: Andrei Gorbachev for
time, not only attended a memorial for both a “product” and an “anti-product” failing to fulfill an agricultural quota,
Andrei Sakharov, the country’s most of the Soviet system. In 2006, William Pantelei Gopkalo for belonging to “a
prominent dissident, he stood in the Taubman, a scholar who had written an counter-revolutionary Trotskyite organi-
rain at the foot of Sakharov’s coffin, in exceptional biography of Nikita Khru- zation.” Both were released after rela-
a prolonged gesture of humility. shchev, was researching a book on Gor- tively short terms, but they had suffered
Considering Putin’s contempt for miserably. Gorbachev, in his memoirs,
Gorbachev, one should be grateful that wrote of Gopkalo’s plight, “The interro-
he didn’t toss the bouquet through the gator blinded him with a bright lamp,
window of his speeding limousine. In broke his arms pressing him against
his eyes, Gorbachev was contemptibly the door, and beat him brutally. When
weak, a heedless custodian of a great these ‘standard’ tortures didn’t work, they
empire. He was naïve. He fetishized thought up new ones: they wrapped
foreign democratic values. He failed grandfather tightly in a wet sheepskin
to see the United States and Europe coat and placed him on a hot stove.”
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA

as bastions of hypocrisy and aggressive As a young man, Gorbachev went to

intent. In the course of a seven-year Moscow to study law and to climb the
reign, Gorbachev, Putin clearly believes, ladder of the Party apparatus. By the late
granted the people freedoms they did nineteen-fifties, the Party was filled with
not deserve and reduced a superpower mediocrities who had eluded the worst
to the level of a global supplicant. predations of the Stalin era. Khrushchev
Putin seems to view himself as the tried to inch the Party and Soviet society
anti-Gorbachev, an imperial revivalist beyond the Stalinist system, inspiring a
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 13
network of shestidesyatniki, “people of the local authorities sought to cover up their Reagan and arms-control agreements
sixties,” relative liberals within the system, negligence, and the Kremlin authori- with the West; a military withdrawal
to begin—quietly, cautiously—to discuss ties, in turn, did not acknowledge the from Afghanistan; the liberation of East-
the possibility of reform. This was Gor- accident for two days. Gorbachev said ern and Central Europe from Soviet con-
bachev’s world, an ambiguous realm that nothing publicly for two weeks. Finally, trol; multi-party elections; a reassessment
combined ambition, cynicism, compro- that July, he went into a Politburo meet- of Soviet history that included criticism
mise, and measured idealism. These were ing and berated everyone concerned. of Lenin; increased independence for the
people who eventually concluded that “They all fucked up,” Gorbachev de- Baltic states and other Soviet republics.
all was ruin, that neither Communist clared. “The day after the explosion, Gorbachev, of course, made mistakes,
ideology nor its foundation of coercion weddings were still being held nearby. serious ones. He tried, for too long, to
and violence promised any degree of Children were playing on the streets.” reconcile irreconcilable ideas and power
prosperity or a sustainable future. “Chernobyl was not like the Com- bases. He failed to reform the K.G.B.,
After a series of decrepit General munist system. They were one and the which led a coup against him, in Au-
Secretaries—Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri same,” Yuriy Shcherbak, a physician and gust, 1991. And so on. Yet he possessed
Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko–– a journalist who later became Ukraine’s both the idealism and the political skill
died in rapid succession, Gorbachev ambassador to the U.S., said a couple of to generate something in the world that
came to office, in March, 1985. He was years afterward. “The system ate into our is, at this dark historical moment of
confident, lively, eager to project a sense bones the same way radiation did.” Such global illiberalism and malevolence, ex-
of hope; his ability to stand upright and metaphors and realities were not lost on ceedingly rare: a sense of decency and
talk with people on the street was con- Gorbachev. In the dramatic years that promise. Here was someone raised in a
sidered positively Kennedyesque. But it followed, his initiatives came in stunning totalitarian system who came to believe
was not until thirteen months after his succession: the release of dissidents from in democracy, the rule of law, and the
rise to power, when Reactor No. 4 at prison or exile; the policy of glasnost, peaceful and orderly transfer of power.
the Chernobyl nuclear facility exploded, which permitted unprecedented free- Imagine. The hope is that, around the
that he came to understand fully the doms for the press, writers, artists, and world, his example will prevail.
corruption of the Soviet system. The scholars; summit meetings with Ronald —David Remnick

VISITING DIGNITARY nian gymnast and filmmaker residing

SLOWLY, SLOWLY in Germany, said. “It’s important for
Iran to have U.S. as enemy, and for the
U.S. it’s very important to have Iran as
an enemy. And that’s so sad. But it’s not
important. Important is to make friend-
ships between normal people.”
Making friendships between normal
hings between the United States and people, such as when a journalist living
T Iran are tense: groups affiliated with
Tehran have warned that its missiles could
in Harlem spots a man with a gymnas-
tics wheel—loaded with waterproof duf-
turn New York City into “hellish ruins”; fels containing camping equipment,
Salman Rushdie was brutally attacked by clothes, video cameras, and a 4K quad-
a young man allegedly executing a fatwa copter drone—standing in the rain, and
issued decades ago by Iran’s former Su- offers him a place to spend the night. It Shahin Tivay Sadatolhosseini
preme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. But was one o’clock in the morning, and Sa-
optimists suggest that diplomacy remains datolhosseini’s salt-and-pepper beard was happy that I’m here. In the morning, I
possible, and diplomacy can take many soaked. “A pleasure to meet you,” Sadat- don’t know where I’m sleeping. Every
forms. (Greatest hits: Ping-Pong, panda olhosseini said. “This is one hundred per night, it’s the same.” He laughed. “I meet
bears, space travel, and the Guinness Book cent the universe.” The journalist wel- people in the street, or I’m staying out-
of Records.) The other day, an amateur comed the amateur ambassador inside. side in the nature.”
diplomat, Shahin Tivay Sadatolhosseini, Accommodations: a sleeping bag next In 2015, on the winter solstice, Sa-
arrived in New York after spending more to a coffee table, and a bike lock to se- datolhosseini set out walking from his
than a thousand days walking across Eu- cure Sadatolhosseini’s wheel to an iron home in Aachen, Germany, bound for
rope and the Middle East. His mission: railing out front. Beer and water were Tehran. Six hundred and twenty-five
restoring U.S.-Iranian relations. His offered. Sadatolhosseini, who wore black days, almost four thousand miles, all the
method: pushing a two-metre-tall gym- sandals, gardening gloves, and a felt while pushing the wheel. “I’m like a
nastics wheel, which he’d named Roci- bowler hat, said, “Can you give me the snail. A snail is moving very slowly, but
nante, for Don Quixote’s horse. Wi-Fi code?” can manage what other animals can’t,”
“You know, all people should be Inside, after a cold Budweiser, Sadat- he said. “That first travel to Iran was
friends,” Sadatolhosseini, who is an Ira- olhosseini said, “I am very surprised and like a pilgrimage to my roots—the first
14 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
time I go to Iran after thirty-three years.” Someone took a selfie. Someone else year old sheep investigator”). They per-
Sadatolhosseini and his mother fled asked to do a pullup on the wheel. form canonical jazz standards (“Giant
Tehran in 1983, during the Iran-Iraq Two hundred and seventy miles later, Steps”) but announce them with non-
War. “I was a young boy when I left. In Sadatolhosseini arrived at the White canonical titles (“Giant Nuts”). They
my mind, it was a horrible country,” he House with a torn tendon in his left leg dress like humanoids from “The Fifth
said. “I come to Europe, and I love my (“I limp,” he said), a sense of accom- Element”—nylon tracksuits, ski masks,
home city, in Aachen, but I’m not true plishment (“I make bridge between Iran huge Dickies overalls—but they talk like
German. When Germany football plays and U.S., and I make new friendships”), normal swaggering kids. “We don’t only
Italy, I’m more German than Italian, but and a new goal (“I will climb the high- want our shows to be cold and brainy,
when Iran and Germany will play foot- est mountain in Iran”). He’d slept on full of jazz dudes who know exactly what’s
ball I’m definitely more Iranian.” Last nineteen couches and eaten a lot of going on,” Degalle said.
year, on the summer solstice, Sadatol- Burger King, while dodging big trucks “We want seven-year-olds and sev-
hosseini started walking from Aachen on the freeway. Back in New York, the enty-year-olds,” Beck said.
to Washington, D.C.—a diplomatic art journalist received a text from Sadatol- “We want people going, ‘I don’t know

1
project called “YavashYavash,” which is hosseini: “ ,” he said. “ .” what the fuck this is, but I like it!’” De-
Persian for “Slowly Slowly.” —Adam Iscoe galle said.
“The deeper meaning is ‘Be respect- When Beck was six or seven, he said,
ful. Think before you do something,’” JAZZ DEPT. he “mostly listened to rock and R. &
he said. “To be enemies is the wrong DISPUTABLE B., but then the YouTube algorithm
way to do something.” would start pushing me down a jazz
He had arrived at J.F.K. after three rabbit hole, or some random video-game
hundred and fifty-three days of wheel- theme or J Dilla beat, and I just learned
pushing through Europe: “I f ly with to play all of it. If I have one big influ-
American Airlines!” He spent a few days ence on my playing, it would have to
trekking across Queens and Brooklyn, be the YouTube algorithm.”
and through midtown. “Now that I’m
here, the most important part is the re- J azzdebates
fans are notorious for navel-gazey
about what constitutes “real
Degalle moved to the U.S. to attend
the Berklee College of Music (inter-
action of the people,” he said. “The re- jazz.” DOMi & JD BECK, indisputably mittently—her senior recital was called
action of the normal people is so fantastic.” the buzziest new duo playing disputable “DOMi Finally Graduates”). “In school,
After resting in Harlem, he set off jazz, preëmpt the debates by being both they love to analyze: ‘This sounds good
for the Guggenheim, before heading more and less real than the competition. because it has this structure or that
south to Washington. “When I’m roll- They use their real first names, abbrevi- tempo,’” she said. “Me and JD, we don’t
ing, you’ll see that it looks very stupid. ations and caps-lock glitches aside. fucking think about any of that. We just
There definitely exists a more easier way Domitille Degalle, twenty-two, is from sit around and play and play, and we
to travel,” Sadatolhosseini said. “Get France; JD Beck, nineteen, is from Dal- end up with, like, a verse in 7/4, a hook
ready for a rumble!” las. In an age of studio ghostwriters and with a bunch of vocal harmonies, and
Rocinante tumbled down the side- digital sleight of hand, they are a true a drum-and-bass outro.”
walk, and a few neighbors watched from duo, and a virtuosic one: she plays keys, “Shit either works or it doesn’t,” Beck
their stoops. Women in a passing car he plays drums, and their four hands and said.
hollered, “Can we try it?” Then a deliv- four feet cover a lot of ground. The bios Recently, they booked two nights at
eryman on an electric bicycle pulled over on their Web site are a jumble of bold the Blue Note, on West Third Street.
to gab. “I’m from Zagreb, Croatia! I trav- truths (“domi is a . . . prodigy from On the second night, they were still
elled from Croatia on a bicycle,” the guy France”) and blatant lies (“jd beck is a 6 worried that their shit wouldn’t work.
said. “I was on a trash boat. You know “That one was really hard,” Beck said,
trash boat? It’s very cheap.” after finishing a blazingly fast tune in
Down the block, a middle-aged man a variety of inaccessible time signatures.
in a wheelchair shouted, “Watch out for “And this next one is way harder.”
monkeypox! It’s in the Bible, man. These Degalle said, “It’s called ‘Pussy with
are probably the final days.” Sadatolhos- Balls.’”
seini smiled politely, and rolled Roci- “That’s not what it’s called,” Beck said.
nante onward. It was actually called “NOT
Later, two violinists, Aniela and Re- TiGHT”—the title track from their
becca, stopped to chat about violins and album, which came out in July. “We had
small German towns. a version three years ago that was sort
“Give me your left hand,” Sadatol- of done, and we almost put it out,” Beck
hosseini said to Aniela, and proffered a said. Their mentor and label head, the
bracelet he’d made. musician Anderson .Paak, dissuaded
“Amazing! Wow, I love it,” she said. them with a Solomon-like stunt. “He
“Yavash, yavash!” A crowd had gathered. JD Beck and Domitille Degalle invited us to his family’s Easter party,
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 15
and started playing a track from the a fedora. Hopkins wore textured black Now, in the world of N.F.T.s, I never
album,” Degalle said. When they balked, loafers and had a fuzz of white hair. have to blame my parents for throwing
.Paak said, “If you’re embarrassed to play “Now, monster!” Romany called. Hop- my shit out. If you own an N.F.T. of An-
it in public, you’re not ready to release kins made his eyes wide. “Now, strength thony Hopkins, he’s immortalized on
it.” They kept working, often out of and happiness!” Hopkins flexed his bi- the blockchain. It’s not going anywhere.”
.Paak’s home studio in Los Angeles. “I’d ceps. “Now, savior!” Hopkins extended “It’s almost like ‘Westworld,’ isn’t it?”
get back, late night, with my guests, and an arm and unfurled his fingers, the big Hopkins chimed in, settling into an
they’d be, like, the after-hours enter- bad wolf in Bottega Veneta. Aeron chair across from Broome. He
tainment,” .Paak said recently. “I had “Oh, my God, that is so scary,” Stella held a mug of hot water.
Puff in there rocking with them,” he Arroyave, Hopkins’s wife, said. She wore “Tape disappears,” Broome said. “It
later added. That would be Puff Daddy, brown clogs and had her hair in a pony- gets digitized, but it does go away. This
a.k.a. P. Diddy, a.k.a. Love. “Janelle tail. “Evil, evil savior!” Nearby, crew mem- is a very unique way of taking a legend
Monáe rocked with them. Bruno would bers mingled between a squat black couch and bringing him to life.”
sit in and make ’em do Michael Jack- and a table of picked-over taco salads. A lifelong doodler, Hopkins made a
son covers.” That’s Bruno Mars, .Paak’s Hopkins had agreed to star in a series more concerted investment in produc-
bandmate in the pop-R. & B. super- of N.F.T.s, or digital art works, “built on ing art twenty years ago. “Over the years
group Silk Sonic. “Bruno and I did have Jungian archetypes,” according to one of of doing films, I had scripts, and I used
conversations with them, like, ‘Can’t you his recent tweets, but also derived from to do drawings on the blank pages op-
guys just write a straight-ahead joint?’ his best-known Hollywood characters. posite the text,” he said. “Stella found
But eventually I realized, you wouldn’t “You obviously know the iconic Han- them before we got married. She said,
go to Basquiat and be, like, ‘This is cool, nibal Lecter,” said Dante Ferrarini, a co- ‘You’re an artist. I want you to do some
but can you just make a straight-ahead founder of Orange Comet, the com- paintings for our wedding.’” Hopkins
portrait of my friend?’” pany producing the N.F.T.s. “But we’re churned out seventy-five, including ren-
In the Blue Note’s greenroom after not going to be able to use that exact derings of the Welsh countryside in which
the set, Degalle and Beck were visited mask.” (Copyrights and intellectual he grew up. “Then she said, ‘Now you’re
by the pianist Robert Glasper, along property being among the least fungi- going to start painting.’” Hopkins pro-
with his young son. “Y’all were smash- ble things there are.) Instead, Ferrarini tested: “ ‘I’m not an artist.’ She said, ‘Of
ing,” Glasper said. He complimented and Hopkins came up with archetypes course you are.’” Now his canvasses sell
their rendition of “My Favorite Things,” associated with Hollywood movies— for as much as eighty thousand dollars.
which led to a discussion about how to the Jester, the Narcissist—that Hopkins A bit later, Hopkins found himself
play standards—when to trade fours, would embody with facial expressions in a house formerly occupied by another
when to comp, when to lay out. “This and physical movement. hobbyist painter who didn’t quit his day
may be the nerdiest conversation I’ve “Now, do a three-hundred-and-sixty- job, Henry Miller. (The house is now a
ever been a part of,” Beck said. degree turn,” Romany commanded, while library that Hopkins called “a small Cal-
Sitting nearby was Cameron Cele- Hopkins finger-wagged to “Staying ifornia treasure.”) “Miller said, ‘Paint
buski, a college student who had taken Alive.” The footage will be combined and die happy.’ I took it as a principle:
the train from Berwyn, Pennsylvania. with renderings of paintings by Hop- the more we think about it, the less likely
Degalle and Beck are gamers, and they kins—a triangular self-portrait; a mo- we are to accomplish it,” Hopkins said.
have a Discord server with nearly fif- rose visage—as well as digital art works “The point is to leave the critic behind
teen thousand members; Celebuski is by others. and just paint. I’m a prolific painter be-
a moderator. How had he discovered “We’re bringing the darkness of hu- cause I don’t know what the hell I’m
their music? “Oh, the YouTube algo- man nature, the— What are we even doing. I have no training, and that’s the
rithm,” he said. “They’re the only thing calling the collection?” Dave Broome, best freedom I have.”

1
I’ve found that literally never gets old.” Orange Comet’s other co-founder, called He went on, “It’s what I say to young
—Andrew Marantz out to the crew. He had close-cropped actors. You know, ‘We’re all gonna die
black hair and wore a black-diamond- and it’s not important.’”
L.A. POSTCARD studded dog tag. Hopkins said he didn’t own any N.F.T.s.
FUNGIBLE “Anthony Hopkins, the Eternal Col- (He has subsequently bought a few.) “It’s
lection,” Ferrarini said. all completely new to me. It’s all Aaron
A thousand units of the Eternal will Tucker,” he said, referring to the C.E.O.
be made available to online buyers in of Margam Fine Art, the Los Angeles
October. Starting price: about a thou- gallery that represents him. “They started
sand dollars. “I was a baseball-card col- this project and they got it together. I just
lector as a kid,” Broome, whose credits came in as a, you know, ‘Move here.’” He
he other day, Anthony Hopkins include producing “The Biggest Loser,” wiggled his fingers, as if to indicate an
T stood before a green screen in a Cul-
ver City film studio, contorting his face
said. He put his cards in a shoebox. He
went to college. The shoebox went to
actor for hire. “I mean, I don’t quite get
the whole gist of it,” he added, with a
and arranging his limbs according to the the garage. “Eventually, it went to the shrug. “It’s an extraordinary age we’re in.”
demands of Ramy Romany, a director in garbage can,” he said. “Gone forever. —Sheila Yasmin Marikar
16 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
SKETCHPAD BY LEANNE SHAPTON
THE SWIMMING SCENE: SUNSET PARK POOL

11:00 A.M. “We’re waiting for the cops,” 12:45 P.M. Sixty-one swimmers, three 1:00 P.M. A woman with a tattoo of
a woman standing in line says. in bikinis and four in burkinis. A sign a fox on her thigh spreads a towel and
“They’re usually late.” A man, armpit- states what is allowed: Towels. Books / opens a book. Another woman does
deep in the water, is vacuuming the magazines. Not allowed: Street clothes. laps, stands, and adjusts her bikini
pool. A squirrel sniffs the edge and runs Flotation devices. Newspapers. Food. cups. A man in a prayer cap splashes
away. Two cops arrive; pool’s open. Electronics. Glass. a child in a Speedo and a head scarf.

2:00 P.M. For anyone under eighteen, 2:45 P.M. The lifeguards blow their 4:05 P.M. Twenty people in the pool.
free lunches are offered. Choices: chips whistles to clear the pool for an hour. Then forty. More families, more small
and hummus, a chicken or peanut-but- A breaststroker wearing prescription children in swim diapers. With no
ter wrap. Each bag has a bean salad, glasses gets out. The two cops sit diving board, the most popular move
yogurt, a fat-free chocolate milk, pre- in the shade and chat from behind is running hard to the edge and
sliced apples, a cookie, and baby carrots. their aviators. jumping. Splashing like cymbals.

5:00 P.M. Clouds roll in and the 6:11 P.M. Forty-nine swimmers. 6:45 P.M. Four people are reading
sky is dark mauve behind the treetops. The air is filled with one alto voice paperback books. The lifeguards begin
Eighty-nine people in the pool. shouting “Marco!” and eight bassos collapsing umbrellas and whistle
A teen-ager does a handstand. shouting “Polo!” Loungers to clear the pool. Shadows are long.
Two friends link elbows and fall sit askew, draped in towels from A child sleeping beneath a pink
backward into the water. Portugal, Puerto Rico, Malibu. towel wakes up.
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 17
 awaited him, with klieg lights, flashing
LIFE AND LETTERS cameras, Soviet officials, American dip-
lomats, and a press corps eager to re-

THE RETURN
cord his return. The sparring began im-
mediately: “Welcome to Russia, home
of classical ballet,” one of his hosts
Touring the Soviet Union, George Balanchine confronted his homeland’s fate. began, and Balanchine proudly re-
sponded, “No, Russia is home of Ro-
BY JENNIFER HOMANS mantic ballet, America is the home of
classical ballet,” by which he meant his
modern ballet.
It was Cold War code: culturally, the
war was being fought in part on the
battlefield of abstraction, and Balanchine
was taking a defining role. Stalin’s doc-
trine of socialist realism had long de-
fined art in the U.S.S.R., and in dance
this meant lavish narrative “drambalets,”
often with socialist themes. Balanchine
had pushed classical technique and the
human body to new physical extremes,
especially in his recent plotless dances,
“Agon” (1957) and “Episodes” (1959),
performed in simple practice clothes
on an empty stage. In the U.S.S.R., such
abstraction was still deemed a political
threat, a slippery artistic form danger-
ously free of any fixed meaning that
could be approved or censored. (Who
could say exactly what “Agon” was
about?) Balanchine flashed his Amer-
ican passport in case anyone didn’t get
the message. But his attention was not
fully there. He had seen his brother An-
drei, who was standing patiently to one
side, waiting.
“Andruska! It’s you,” he said, as they
Balanchine in Tbilisi. The more he was applauded, the more depressed he became. embraced, and his expression softened
with emotion. They had not seen each
n October 6, 1962, the members brought to light one of the great themes other for some forty years, since the
O
HARVARD THEATER COLLECTION / HOUGHTON LIBRARY / HARVARD UNIVERSITY /
of New York City Ballet boarded of his life: he had set his own path Revolution had torn their family apart.
a plane in Vienna, bound for Moscow, away from the Marxist materialism He was surprised that Andrei was so
the first stop on an eight-week tour of the Bolshevik Revolution, and qui- short, and it was true that Balanchine,
that had been arranged by the State etly built, in N.Y.C.B., a village of an- who thought of himself as small, seemed
Department. The party numbered gels and a music-filled monument to to tower over him. At fifty-seven, An-
around ninety, including the dancers, faith and unreason, to body and beauty drei was already gray, and next to his
BARBARA HORGAN AND THE GEORGE BALANCHINE TRUST

the conductor Robert Irving, two moth- and spirit. It was his own counter- dapper sibling he appeared aged and
ers (escorting underage dancers), sev- revolutionary place, an alternative vi- shy, in a rumpled suit with drooping,
eral translators, the company doctor, sion of the twentieth century. oversized pockets (stuffed with tobacco,
and the company’s co-founder and ar- The dancers had stocked up on pea- cigarette papers, and homemade filters
tistic director, George Balanchine. Bal- nut butter, candy, tuna, Spam, toilet composed of cotton and sugar). Al-
anchine had not wanted to go. Born paper, and other necessities. Balanchine though he was younger than George,
in St. Petersburg in 1904, during the had also asked that they please dress he looked like an old man.
reign of the last tsar, he had experi- well, since he wanted his company to Andrei, who lived in Tbilisi, had fol-
enced cold and starvation in revolu- present an elegant image. When they lowed the path of their father, Meliton
tionary Russia, before fleeing the coun- landed at Sheremetyevo, Balanchine Balanchivadze, a Georgian composer
try, in 1924, going first to Europe and emerged from the Jetway in a suit and who had spent his career collecting tra-
then, in 1933, to America. The U.S.S.R. bow tie, a trenchcoat draped casually ditional Georgian music and forging a
filled him with dread, and his return over his arm. A full-court reception style influenced by it. By now, Andrei
20 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
was a well-known composer in Geor- the bugging apparatus for the whole audience solemnly stood for the Rus-
gia, but his life had nonetheless been building, and on each floor a uniformed sian national anthem, followed by “The
constrained by the harsh realities of So- matron sat at all times (with a cot for Star-Spangled Banner,” with Robert
viet existence—and by his brother’s sleeping), controlling keys and entry. Irving at the podium conducting an
American success. In the eyes of the Once a guest passed muster, the walk orchestra of Soviet musicians. Bal-
state, Balanchine was a traitor, and a cur- to a room could seem miles long, down anchine had chosen a program of four
tain of fear had fallen between him and dreary carpeted corridors, and the rooms ballets, all plotless: “Serenade,” “Inter-
his family. Fear, in his mind, of recrim- themselves were decorated in a worn play” (by Jerome Robbins), “Agon,” and
ination; in theirs, of association and dis- Biedermeier style with Oriental throws. “Western Symphony.” For this momen-
appearing into a Soviet night. Since leav- Everyone had been told that the ceil- tous opening night, he wore his Sun-
ing, Balanchine had received only one ings were lined with bugging devices, day best: a Mississippi riverboat gam-
letter from his brother, and it had been and the dancers made a sport of dis- bler’s pegged pants with a rodeo rider’s
delivered to him by a man he suspected covering them. silver-embroidered shirt and string tie.
of being an agent of the secret police. In They ate at the restaurant in the The response to the performance,
it, Andrei had implored George to re- lobby: pirozhki, dark bread, cucumbers, by this audience of officials, was polite
turn to the U.S.S.R., but George sensed, pickles, borscht, chicken Kiev (“gray but restrained, and Balanchine found
correctly, that his brother had written leather,” one of the dancers said), bot- himself devastated, confused, and angry
the letter under duress and ignored it. tled sweet sodas, Russian ice cream. that he was angry or that he cared at
Andrei had also sent a terse cable noti- Balanchine asked for Borjomi, a sulfu- all. Once the official contingent finally
fying him of their mother’s death. That rous mineral water he remembered from cleared out, however, a group of stu-
had been the extent of their communi- childhood; to the dancers, it reeked of dents from the upper balconies rushed
cation. It was a peculiar fact of exile and rotten eggs, but he guzzled it down. A enthusiastically to the front and ap-
the Cold War that, in order to care for pall of surveillance hung over every- plauded the dancers. A fancy reception
each other, they couldn’t know each other. thing. Their movements outside the followed, hosted by the American Am-
The only protection they had was si- hotel were tightly controlled, and buses bassador, Foy D. Kohler, at his elegant
lence—its own kind of family tie. carried them to rehearsals every morn- residence, Spaso House, formerly a mer-
The brothers went to dinner together ing, as well-wishers shouted, “No pol- chant’s palace. The gracious, imperial-
at a nearby restaurant that served Geor- itic, no politic!” A few of the dancers style rooms were crowded with danc-
gian food. Balanchine eagerly selected ignored the restrictions and walked ers and the Soviet artistic and political
favorite dishes from the menu, only to through the wide streets and crowded élite—including, it was noted, Khru-
be told each time that the item was not markets anyway. The requisite “inter- shchev’s son-in-law, whom Balanchine
available, so they finally settled on co- preters” (undercover secret police) were studiously avoided in order to mini-
riander chicken—all that was on offer their constant companions and occa- mize any political complications.
that evening. The Hotel Ukraina, where sional adversaries in chess matches, The next day, the production moved
Balanchine was staying with the com- played with ice hockey blaring on TV to the gigantic, six-thousand-seat Pal-
pany, had a similar empty grandeur. It in the background. Contact with fam- ace of Congresses, which had been sold
was monumental, a fortresslike com- ily back home was difficult. Mail ar- out for days. It was an impressive, if
plex in yellow stone with eight turrets rived erratically via diplomatic pouch, cold, new theatre, a huge stone-and-
and a central tower with a high spire usually already opened, and making an glass structure originally built to host
topped by a Soviet star. One of the international phone call could take the Twenty-second Congress of the
“Seven Sisters” commissioned by Sta- hours. If the caller was lucky enough Communist Party, in 1961. The dancers
lin to compete with American skyscrap- to get a connection, it was often only were amazed to find air-conditioning,
ers (and modelled in part on the Man- one-way—the person in Moscow could a fully stocked restaurant, and marble
hattan Municipal Building), the Hotel hear but not be heard, as operators bathrooms with plenty of toilet paper.
Ukraina was devoid of human scale, seemed to be controlling the flow of Seeing the cavernous stage, Bal-
built in a style that Lincoln Kirstein, information leaving the U.S.S.R. anchine immediately pulled the planned
the company’s co-founder, called “Stali- dancers for “Serenade,” who could barely
noid Gothic.” Completed in 1957, it al- n October 9th, after three days of be seen in the vast auditorium, and re-
ready felt old and run-down.
The enormous gray marble lobby
O rehearsals, N.Y.C.B. opened at the
Bolshoi Theatre—elegant, Old World,
placed them with taller ones. This time,
and for most of the rest of the run, the
resembled a train station, with a large plush red and gold, with crystal chan- Soviet people stood and cheered for the
restaurant emitting a pervasive Soviet deliers—to a house packed with So- company, urging on their favorite art-
smell of onions and cabbage. The thirty- viet brass, including Yekaterina Fur- ists by chanting their names (“Meetch-
seven floors and more than a thousand tseva, the Minister of Culture, a tough ell! Meetch-ell!” for Arthur Mitchell)
rooms were served by only a few very and cultivated woman neatly dressed à and, at the end, calling for Balanchine
slow elevators, manned by stolid ladies la Ninotchka, whom Balanchine grew to take a bow—“Ba-lan-chine! Ba-lan-
in suits, and the wait could be more to like. Nikita Khrushchev, the U.S.S.R.’s chine! Spa-si-bo! Spa-si-bo!”—until he
than half an hour to travel a few floors. leader, was notably missing from his appeared from the wings and bowed
The thirteenth floor was said to house private box. As the evening began, the modestly. As the Russian crew began
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 21
to extinguish the lights, he gently im- night and that the radio would sud- American cities. He coolly announced
plored the audience to go home; the denly turn on. He was haunted by night- a strict quarantine of the island and the
dancers needed to rest. mares about losing his passport or being readiness of the United States to retal-
He had to admit his immense sat- thrown into prison or suffocating. “A iate on Soviet soil in the event of a nu-
isfaction that audiences especially loved little green devil is following me,” he clear strike. When the news of this ter-
“Episodes” and “Agon,” his new ab- said, and he was not joking. He was rifying standoff reached the Embassy
stract dances to largely atonal Webern losing weight fast and looked notice- in Moscow, Kirstein, Balanchine, and
and Stravinsky scores. The dancer Al- ably gaunt, and bursitis was making his a couple of others were informed of
legra Kent was even dubbed “the Amer- shoulder inflamed and painful. the situation. Kirstein and Betty Cage,
ican Ulanova,” a reference to the be- His temper flared. One night, after who helped run the company, quickly
loved Soviet dancer Galina Ulanova. a bravura technical performance by Ed- came up with a disaster strategy. Plan
Critics were more ideologically con- ward Villella in “Donizetti Variations,” A was to charter a plane; if the word
strained and complained that these the cheering audience called Villella came from the Embassy, the dancers
dances were cold and lacked the warmth back for bow after bow, until he finally could board waiting buses to the air-
of theatrical dress and a human story. performed an impromptu encore. Bal- port and take off immediately. If they
Balanchine patiently endured interview anchine was beside himself with rage couldn’t get to the airport, they’d resort
after interview, tirelessly explaining his and stood in the wings fuming. Such to Plan B: get everyone inside the Em-
approach to beauty and the human fig- a deviation from the score was every- bassy. Plan C was to then arrange a
ure. His un-Sovietized Russian flowed, thing he had fought against, and he “prisoner swap” with the Bolshoi danc-
and, at times, even the facial tic that was as angry as the company had ever ers, who were on a cultural-exchange
had been with him since childhood—a seen him. As he later put it, “This is tour in New York. When Kirstein shared
kind of nervous sniff ing and nose not circus.” The dancers were on edge, these wildly unrealistic scenarios with
twitching—melted away as he metic- too: one got so drunk at a reception the Ambassador’s staff, the response
ulously answered in his native tongue that he started smashing glasses and was swift: “The first thing we will know
those who called his work mechanical, bad-mouthing “America of purple at the Embassy is that the phone will
grotesque, or “repulsive.” But when a mountains majesties,” until he was es- be cut off.”
prominent critic told him that his bal- corted out and put on a plane back to For the moment, he was told, there
lets had no soul he sharply retorted that the United States. Allegra Kent recalled were no plans for evacuation, and the
since Soviets didn’t believe in God they “horsing around in crazy ways,” and Ambassador would attend rehearsals
couldn’t know about the soul. And, other dancers remembered her per- to allay any panic. As a comfort, the
when a delegation from the Ministry forming an “improvised beatnik twist” Embassy kitchen was made available
of Culture asked him, please, to cancel for a gathering crowd of astonished to the dancers, who occupied them-
“Episodes” because “the people” couldn’t Russians. There were whispers of danc- selves eating hamburgers and steaks,
understand it, he responded, in a rare ers having affairs with their K.G.B. and in a touching sign of solidarity the
show of temper, with a Russian equiv- handlers and falling in love with So- staff at the Ukraina placed vats of flow-
alent of “Fuck you” and walked out. viet musicians. The dancer Shaun ers on the tables for the company. While
It all wore on him—the daily petty O’Brien was arrested for taking pic- N.Y.C.B. continued to perform at the
humiliation of waiting in the freezing Palace of Congresses, Khrushchev and
cold while some guard, who by then other officials went to see an Ameri-
knew exactly who Balanchine was, dou- can singer at the Bolshoi Theatre—a
ble- and triple-checked his papers be- way of signalling calm while still snub-
fore allowing him into the Kremlin or bing Balanchine. (Kirstein nervously
the theatre. One day, he forgot his of- scuttled back and forth.)
ficial pass, and the guard turned him On October 27th, “Black Saturday,”
away, leaving a gaggle of frustrated an American U-2 reconnaissance air-
journalists shouting from the other side craft was shot down over Cuba and the
of the barrier, a scene that delighted pilot killed. Information was not widely
him by exposing the comedy of Soviet tures of pigeon tracks in the snow and available, and secret negotiations were
officialdom. Everything seemed grim held in custody for hours, where he was under way, but the surprise downing of
and gray, he said—the food, the dress, questioned at length about Little Rock, the plane (by a local commander) fur-
the way people warily checked their Marilyn Monroe—and Cuba. ther frayed nerves in Washington, Mos-
every movement, even while walking cow, and Havana. By then, the United
down the street. His stomach clenched uba. On October 22nd, in the mid- States was already at DEFCON 2, one
when an old friend invited him to his
home, two cramped and dingy rooms,
C dle of the company’s Moscow run,
President Kennedy went on national
level below war; U.S. long-range mis-
siles and bombers were on alert; and
and proudly showed him that he had TV to inform the American people planes carrying atomic bombs were tak-
his own bathroom. Balanchine com- that the U.S.S.R. had installed offen- ing off around the clock, prepared to
plained that the phone in his hotel room sive nuclear missiles in Fidel Castro’s move on targets in the U.S.S.R. In Cuba,
rang mysteriously in the middle of the Cuba that were capable of reaching surface-to-surface missiles and nuclear
22 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
warheads were ready in the event of
war, accidental or otherwise.
In Moscow that afternoon, in a sep-
arate incident, Soviet troops moved into
place around the American Embassy
to protect protesters who were throw-
ing ink and eggs in a large demonstra-
tion against the imperial capitalist
United States. (The protest was staged,
it later transpired, by Soviet authori-
ties, who bused in confused students
and workers for the event and supplied
them with posters and things to throw.)
The American Embassy told the danc-
ers to stay away and informed Kirstein
that, if war broke out, it would be pow-
erless to help them, and they would all
have to use their wits to survive. Offi-
cials warned that the audience that night
might rush the stage and advised the “I can’t believe I’d been carrying them in my mouth.”
company to be prepared to immedi-
ately bring down the heavy safety cur-
tain in the event of a riot.
• •
That evening, the dancers, aware
of some vague but imminent danger, and spoke quietly into the hushed au- his heart sank when he saw that the
nervously gathered at the theatre. Bal- ditorium. He thanked them all and once beautiful house of worship across
anchine was strangely calm and com- then asked them to please go home; the street was now a factory. Worse, the
mented dryly that he hadn’t yet seen the dancers were tired and would be mighty Kazan Cathedral, which they
Siberia. He never believed there would back tomorrow. had passed on the way, had been con-
be a war, he later explained, because nei- When tomorrow came, Armaged- verted into an anti-God museum. Still,
ther Khrushchev nor Kennedy wanted don had been averted. Kennedy and he raced to the Imperial Theatre School,
one, but there was more to his detach- Khrushchev had reached an agreement, on Rossi Street—but to his companions’
ment than that. Russia had held a gun and late that afternoon the news was surprise he stopped short at the entrance.
to his head once before, with the Rev- broadcast in Russia and around the His mind locked, and he couldn’t go in-
olution, and this time he had been train- world. As it happened, that night was side. How would he manage the mem-
ing himself for years to expect death N.Y.C.B.’s last performance in Mos- ories that were so tightly packed inside
and to live only in the present moment. cow, and after the cheering and chant- this old building? He found a small
That “now” for him was one of the ing at the end of the show Balanchine church that was still open and lit a can-
greatest skills in ballet. (He liked to say took the stage again. This time, he gra- dle there instead.
to his dancers, “What are you saving it ciously invited the audience to follow The people he had known were still
for? You might be dead tomorrow!”) the company to its next destination, alive; he just didn’t recognize them—
As the curtain rose on Bizet’s “Sym- which would be Petrograd, he said, deli- didn’t want to recognize them, perhaps.
phony in C,” the dancers stood for a berately using a name for St. Peters- His once beautiful young teacher Eli-
moment in disciplined anticipation, burg that predated the Revolution. De- zaveta Gerdt, for example, was now
staring into the blackened house of the spising Lenin, Balanchine refused to an old woman, he sadly noted. He had
theatre. Irving was poised at the po- use the name Leningrad for his beloved wanted to see the choreographer Kasyan
dium, baton raised for the downbeat, native city. Goleizovsky, an idol of his youth, but
and at that moment the audience sud- when he saw Goleizovsky’s “Scriabin-
denly grew larger than itself and rose he moment they arrived and iana” performed by the Bolshoi he was
in spontaneous applause. With the first
note, an adrenaline rush brought on by
T checked into the Hotel Astoria,
Balanchine grabbed a couple of com-
so embarrassed that he cancelled the
visit. He didn’t want to meet a feeble
pent-up fear and relief flowed through pany friends, saying, “Let’s go to my old and wrinkled old man and preferred his
the dancers’ bodies, and they danced house”—by which he meant his aunt’s memories of this crucial iconoclast. In
with the energy of life-giving release. old rooms on Bolshaya Moskovskaya, Leningrad, he met a few members of
At the end of the piece, Bizet and Bal- across from the old Vladimir Cathedral, his first dance company, Young Ballet,
anchine’s exuberant and decisive close which he had often visited while a stu- but now they just seemed to him “old
elicited rhythmic chanting from the dent at the Imperial Theatre School. and brown and bent like mushrooms.
audience, until finally Balanchine, look- The apartment building was still there, How can you feel affectionate and sen-
ing small and thin, stood center stage and he could see his aunt’s window, but timental about a mushroom?” He did
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 23
want to see Fyodor Lopukhov, whose scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s “Ivan the and drank noisily during the perfor-
“Dance Symphony” had been such a Terrible.” “Do you remember that mance and didn’t care a whit for what
formative influence, but the old chore- scene?” he said to a journalist. “Ivan is they were seeing—something that was
ographer declined a visit. Balanchine’s on his throne. The nobles bow down manifestly untrue. One night, he stood
obsession with aging was irrational, of before him; they heap gold upon him. immobilized in the wings as the crowds
course, and he was older, too, but he And he sits there, implacable—he is chanted, and when one of the dancers
couldn’t stand that his colleagues, who absolutely implacable.” urged him to go onstage he refused to
had been so lovely and vibrant, had Balanchine was also tense, moody, move, saying, “What if I were dead?”
grown old and “dumpy,” as if the ruin competitive, and despondent. When he Betty Cage thought that Balanchine
of their bodies was part of the ruin of taught class at the theatre, he seemed was on the verge of collapse and had
Russia itself. distracted, and the dancers watched qui- already arranged for him to skip Kyiv,
The more he was fêted, applauded, etly as he peered out the window in a the company’s next stop, and return to
and celebrated, the more depressed, daze, vacantly recalling how he had New York for a week before rejoining
self-controlled, and in charge he be- watched the tsar’s uniformed parades the company for its final performances,
came. When he learned that students out of these very windows as a child. in Tbilisi and Baku. He needed a break.
and artists couldn’t get tickets for the Ironically, the company happened to be For him, Kirstein said, being in Russia
company’s performances, he arranged there for the anniversary of the Bolshe- was “a kind of crucifixion.”
a free performance of his most radical vik Revolution, which brought out the
works at the Palace of Culture: “Apollo,” Soviet fleet, flags, tanks, banners, huge alanchine flew to Helsinki on No-
“Agon,” and “Episodes.” He met with
Soviet choreographers to discuss the
photographs of Lenin, parades, loud
slogans, and carousing crowds. What
B vember 8th, spent the night, and
left the next morning for New York.
principles of his art, and when the Balanchine remembered of the Revo- Eugenie Ouroussow, a White Russian
youngest among them asked for more lution were piles of bodies in the street, princess who ran Balanchine’s school,
he met them again informally at the and people eating dead horses and rats. met him at Idlewild, and reported in
theatre. When Konstantin Sergeyev, At the theatre, the celebrations were a letter to her son the two “main points”
the artistic director of the Kirov Bal- marked by the cancellation of “Epi- he had made on the car ride home: that
let (and an apparatchik), obsequiously sodes” because the musicians were too the company had produced an artistic
presented him with a silver samovar drunk. It was hard for Balanchine not revolution in Russia, and that Russia
and flowers onstage, noting that Len- to see everything through the lens of had “crushed” Balanchine. That week,
ingrad was Balanchine’s home town, 1917, or else through the rose-tinted glass he and his wife, Tanaquil Le Clercq,
Balanchine pointedly accepted on be- of the tsar’s empire, and he angrily com- entertained guests constantly, as if
half of New York and America. It all plained that the theatre was full of cooking and hospitality could repair
reminded Kirstein of the coronation dowdy working-class people who ate his battered mind. Barely a week later,
he departed again for the U.S.S.R.,
bags stuffed with extra pointe shoes
for the dancers.
He rejoined the company in Kyiv
just in time to board the plane for Tbilisi,
where, again, Andrei was waiting, this
time with family in tow. It was a look-
ing-glass moment, the life he might
have had. Suddenly, he was little Georgi,
and he met the relatives he did not know:
Andrei’s glamorous wife, their darkly
handsome sons (one named after Bal-
anchine), and their daughter, a dancer.
There was also Apollon Balanchivadze,
George’s half-brother from his father’s
first marriage, whom he had known
briefly as a child. Talking freely was dif-
ficult. They were shadowed, and at
Andrei’s apartment George nervously
pointed to the ceiling, indicating that
everything was bugged and they couldn’t
speak. Still, in snatches and pieces, he
learned the story of his family’s sad fate.
Worst of all: his sister, Tamara. His
voice later turned ashen when he spoke
“I would kiss you, but there can only be one hot person in a relationship.” of her, in the only recording we have of
his account of her tragic end. George Tbilisi. Meliton was away much of the at 7 A.M., and Molostwoff later recalled
had last seen her as a child, and, in the time, and she ended up living modestly that their car was full of “wild Geor-
years after he left Russia, Tamara had on a small street in an old church con- gians,” who flocked around Balanchine,
grown tall and angular, with intense, verted by the Bolsheviks into apart- taking pictures, talking, touching, cele-
skeptical eyes and none of her mother’s ments. The frescoes were still on the brating their lucky encounter with this
fragile beauty. She had become a set de- walls, and some of the nuns who had famous artist. When they finally arrived
signer and, after marrying a German once made fresh Communion bread in in Kutaisi, exhausted, Balanchine in-
who deserted her to return to Germany, the front rooms resided there, too. Often sisted that he and his brothers go alone
ended up working in theatre in Mos- alone, she wore a brooch with pictures to Meliton’s grave, at the Green Flower
cow and Leningrad. The last the fam- of Tamara, George, and Andrei, and Monastery (Mtsvane Kvavila). Their
ily heard from her was in 1941, just days would sit anxiously by the radio listen- escorts waited at the tall iron gates to
before the German siege of Leningrad ing for word of her Georgi—would they the cemetery.
began. She may have been killed during ever let him come home? She watched The story of Meliton’s death, it turned
the siege, or she may have died of ill- the mail closely and couldn’t understand out, was not simple. Andrei told George
ness or starvation or perhaps on a train why he wrote to say how much he hoped that Meliton had died, in November,
in the war zone trying to get back to to receive letters from her but didn’t 1937, of a gangrenous leg he’d refused to
Georgia. No one quite knows. She sim- send a return address. In a letter to An- have amputated, and recalled finding
ply disappeared. drei, she worried that they had lost the their father lying in bed at home say-
Andrei was a survivor. Like his “thread of connection to Georgi. Where ing that death was a beautiful girl who
father, Meliton, he was outgoing and is he?!” She faded away as quietly as she was coming to take him in her arms,
prone to excessive toasts and speeches, had lived, and Andrei arranged a small and that he was looking forward to it.
and he had a wonderful singing voice. plot in a large and prestigious cemetery But it was later whispered among grave
He won Soviet medals and honors for in Tbilisi, as befitting his stature as a keepers that Meliton had been taken
his Georgian-style music, and occasion- famous Georgian composer. away in the night and shot before being
ally enjoyed arraying them on his jacket ceremoniously buried—not here, but in
like a general’s insignia. At the right alanchine wanted to visit his fa- the “Pantheon” of famous Georgians
moment, he would strip them off, grin-
ning, make some loud anti-Soviet dec-
B ther’s grave. Not his mother’s—she
had always been a kind of spirit figure
under a large pine tree at the foot of
the Bagrati Cathedral, a magnificent
laration, and then restore them all again. in his mind, and he didn’t need her bones. church turned into a museum by the
He played at the margins, calculating He had her snowy ethereality instead. Bolsheviks. It wasn’t true that he was
in part that the cost to the authorities It was his father whose photo had sat shot: Meliton most likely died of gan-
of arresting the brother of the famous propped on his bedside table for years, grene, as Andrei had said, but the ru-
George Balanchine would be too high. and yet Meliton had often been absent mors were a sign of the violence engulf-
But in fact he also did everything he as a father, and he had doted not on ing Georgian life at the time, and they
was supposed to do: led the composers’ George but on Andrei, as his musical cast an additional pall over Meliton’s
union, taught at the academy in Tbilisi, son and successor. The image of his fa- passing. It was the height of the Great
composed music in the correct style, ther, next to his icons, perhaps wasn’t Terror, led in Georgia by Lavrentiy Beria,
and won the requisite awards. So they really there for comfort; rather, it was one of Stalin’s cruellest henchmen and,
let him play the jester—within limits. there so that George could show him. like Stalin, a Georgian. In the year be-
His career was celebrated, but he was See me. Watch me. I am a musician, fore Meliton’s death, Beria had begun
rarely permitted to travel to the West. too. And now George wanted to see his purging the local Party and intelligent-
He must not defect, and he never tried. father’s grave. Not because he loved sia, a process which accelerated in the
Apollon was older and less fortu- him—seeing is not the same as lov- next two years. Thousands were killed
nate. Arrested and indicted in 1924 for ing—but because his father was music, or sent to the Gulag, including family
fighting in a special gendarmes unit of which was what he had become, whereas and friends of Meliton and Andrei. In
the White Army, he had spent years in his mother was the soft inner sanctum 1936, at a dinner before a performance
prison, in isolation, and although he that was destroyed, or left behind, that of Andrei’s ballet “Heart of the Moun-
was eventually released, he was arrested he could get to only through women tains,” Beria allegedly poisoned the Party
again in 1942 and this time sent for ten and dance. Besides, his father was his stalwart Nestor Lakoba (who had fallen
years of hard labor in Kazakhstan. Upon roots, his soil, and he wanted to see and from Stalin’s favor) and then escorted
his release, he became a quietly prac- smell the Georgian heritage he had him to the elegant Moorish-style opera
ticing priest, and kindly organized a claimed for so long as his own. Meli- house, where the Tbilisi élite witnessed
vespers service at a local church spe- ton was buried in Kutaisi, near the Bal- the spectacle of his agonized convul-
cially for George. anchivadze family enclave of Banoja, sions as the ballet continued; he died
George knew that his mother, Maria, some few hours west of Tbilisi, and the following morning.
had died three years earlier, but he knew George went there with Andrei, Apol- Friends of Meliton whom Georgi
little of her sad life. He had last seen lon, and his colleague Natasha Mo- and Andrei had met in their home as
her when he was eighteen, in 1922, when lostwoff, accompanied by the inevita- children had been victims, too. Mamia
she left Petrograd to join Meliton in ble K.G.B. posse. They departed by train Orakhelashvili, who had become highly
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 25
placed in the Party, was arrested on las, and the astonishing Church of the figure—or movie star. The police had
June 26, 1937, and tortured and shot in Nativity of the Virgin. This was what been summoned, in anticipation of a
front of his wife, Maria. By one account, Balanchine came from and believed crush of people pushing their way in,
she was forced to watch as her hus- in—these were his saints—and although but the crowds were orderly and civil as,
band’s eyes were gouged out and his formal worship was not permitted and night after night, they pressed into the
eardrums perforated before his execu- the monks had long since dispersed, he packed house. On the last night, after
tion. She and her daughter were then and his entourage were allowed inside the final curtain fell, Balanchine stepped
arrested and sent to the Gulag, and her the Church of the Nativity. There they onto the apron of the stage to thank
daughter’s husband, the famous con- found themselves under a massive arch them all. Before the dancers boarded the
ductor Evgeni Mikeladze, was blind- that seemed to reach as high as Heaven, train to Baku, they piled their extra tights,
folded, tortured, and eventually exe- with light flooding in through the small leotards, leg warmers, and pointe shoes
cuted. There were show trials broadcast windows onto the faded but still color- into a bin and left them for the local
by radio, and Beria’s agents had quotas ful ancient frescoes. An intricate mo- dancers, who had none.
and routinely slaughtered hundreds of saic of the Virgin and Child with the “Baku or bust”: for the company,
“enemies” in a single night. No one was archangels Michael and Gabriel ap- Baku was a countdown. They marched
safe. Closer to home, Meliton’s nephew peared high in the apse, and a photo through four days of performances, and
Irakli Balanchivadze was arrested later shows George in his trenchcoat stand- on the final night a group of them stayed
that year for “Trotskyism” and shot. ing stoically before them. up until dawn dancing and playing strip
But not Meliton, who was probably By the time they left Kutaisi, on poker with no heat and the hot-water
too old and too studiously apolitical to the night train back to Tbilisi, it was faucets running full blast until the walls
matter. Official reports did not men- pouring rain, but Balanchine had seen sweated. On December 2nd, the com-
tion his gangrene and merely noted that what he had come for: his father’s Geor- pany packed into buses to the airport,
his dead body lay in state in the main gia was now his own. It felt to him pri- then departed on a rickety plane for
hall of the music school he had founded mal, a Biblical land, and he even en- Moscow. It was snowing hard as they
in Kutaisi, and that a small service was thused to some of the dancers that after changed for a flight to Copenhagen,
performed by a local folk choir before Noah’s flood there had been a flight destination New York, and by this time
he was interred under the pine tree at to the Caucasus. Ancient Greece, he the dancers were all chanting in uni-
Bagrati. Then, in 1957, in a macabre fi- said, was settled by Georgian tribes, son: “Go, go, go, go!” As the jet lifted
nale, Meliton’s bones were dug up and and these were his tribes, his people. off the icy tarmac at Sheremetyevo, the
reinterred in a new, official Pantheon at Being Georgian was another way, too, exhausted company broke into cheers,
the Green Flower Monastery, where he of setting himself against Russia. No relieved to, as one of the dancers later
now lay near a small church used by the wonder some of the dancers were sure put it, “get the hell out of the U.S.S.R.”
Bolsheviks, it was said, to store cement. that he had been born there. He had No one was more relieved than the gaunt
His grave, unlike the others around it, told them so. At moments, he may even Balanchine. “That’s not Russia,” he said.
was left unmarked except for a large have believed it. “That’s a completely different country,
rock and a miniature carving of piano None of this seemed to deepen his which happens to speak Russian.”
keys. The K.G.B. didn’t give George or relations with Andrei, who enthusias- Soon after landing at Idlewild, Bal-
Andrei much time with their father, but tically proposed that they make a bal- anchine made a trip to Washington,
before they left the brothers poured let together, as they had put on shows D.C., for a debriefing at the State De-
some wine and spilled the first glass as children. After dinner one evening partment. By all accounts, the tour had
over the grave in the Georgian way. at his home, Andrei hopefully played been a personal and political victory,
recordings of his music for George and but Balanchine was unmoved. To him,
hey also visited the medieval Ge- even sat at the piano and regaled his the company’s success meant nothing.
T lati Monastery, high on a moun-
tain above Kutaisi. Founded in 1106, it
brother with his prize-winning com-
positions. Balanchine sat bent, with his
Instead, this was the moment when a
mirror broke in his mind. He could no
had been closed by the Communists in head buried in his hands, and said noth- longer hold a nostalgic ref lection of
1923 but preserved as a historical mon- ing. Finally, in frustration and despair, himself and an imagined tsarist past.
ument, because kings were buried there. Andrei stopped and waited in painful That image, which had sustained him
Among them was the king who ordered silence, before awkwardly changing the even as he also stood against it, no lon-
the monastery’s construction, David IV, subject. Natasha Molostwoff, who was ger existed, and for all his proclama-
revered by Georgians as “the builder,” there, was appalled: couldn’t Balanchine tions of Americanness he was left feel-
the architect of their country’s medie- just say something nice, anything at all? ing even more homeless and unmoored
val Golden Age. David envisioned Ge- He couldn’t. than he had felt before he set out. Rus-
lati as a “second Jerusalem,” and it be- The N.Y.C.B. performances were sia really had disappeared. There was
came a center of Christian culture and sold out, and on opening night the streets no more place to be exiled from. Exile
especially of Neoplatonism. Its misty around the opera house were thick with was no longer a state of being; it was a
grounds, practically in the clouds on a crowds. A sea of people parted for Bal- flight—a flight into the pure glass-and-
wooded hillside, include the Church of anchine as he made his way into the mirrored realm of the imagination, its
St. George, the Church of St. Nicho- theatre, as if he were some kind of Christ own kind of home. 
26 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
 No. 6: Albert Einstein hair. Like,
SHOUTS & MURMURS exactly.
No. 5: Here’s what happened: I en-
tered the testing area looking pretty
bad—coughing, not breathing well,
weak. I said, “Look, I’m pretty sure I
have Covid.” (Full disclosure: I have
not been vaccinated, because I believe
every single reason that one should not
get vaccinated. You may ask, “Why
would someone who doesn’t believe in
vaccination get tested so much?” And,
well, hey, I’m bored and it’s a lonely
life.) Where was I? I said, “I’m pretty
sure I have Covid,” and then added,

RANKING MY COVID TESTERS

“But, if you could find it in your heart
to make sure I test negative, maybe
switch the vials with the person in front
BY SETH REISS of me, that would be great. See, I have
to take my monthly maskless flight to
ere are the people who have tested museums in Belize. I felt like an idiot. Toronto so I can look at the city from
H me for Covid, ranked from worst
to best.
When I left, I overheard him talking to
the next patient about the trip to Belize.
the CN Tower, and I don’t care who I
infect.” And he did it.
No. 77: Some guy. Eyes: brown. Upper Nos. 69-64: Not great, not terrible. No. 4: I said to the woman doing my
cheeks: fleshy. Ears: uniform. Only said No. 63: “So, how was your trip to Be- test, “I’m sorry, I know this is weird, but
“Next.” Didn’t ask “How’s your day lize?” I asked. And, when he looked at do I know you? Your eyes, upper cheeks,
been?” Decent hair, though. me with that blank expression in his hair, and ears look awfully familiar.” She
No. 76: A woman. Normal hair, nor- eyes (blue-green; upper cheeks: pudgy; looked around to see if anyone was
mal upper cheeks, normal eyes, normal hair: brown), I realized he didn’t re- watching, and I whispered, “The coast
ears. Swab work inconsistent. Swirled member me. I was just a number. is clear,” which is something I’ve always
the left nostril one more time than the I said, “In case you ever tested me wanted to whisper. Then she lowered
right. Did she lose count? Also confirmed for Covid again, I was prepared to ask her mask to reveal her mouth. It was . . .
my birthday in a monotone I didn’t like. you about the Actun Tunichil Muknal.” Jennifer Aniston.
No. 75: Forget the gender. Forget the He said, “What?” And I said, “It’s a cave I said, “I thought I recognized you!”
upper cheeks, eyes, ears, and hair. Re- in the Tapir Mountain Nature Reserve. She blushed and gave—I’ll just say it—a
member an offhand remark about how In Belize.” And he said, “Oh. We stayed very Rachel-like shrug. I asked, “What
dry the inside of my nose was. I said, at the beach.” are you doing here giving Covid tests?”
“That’s none of your fucking business.” No. 62: Woman. Eyes: fine. Upper And she said, “Hey, it’s a lonely life.”
Well, I thought it. cheeks: fine. Hair: fine. Ears: average. And I said, “I’m not vaccinated,” and
No. 74: Self-tested. I hate myself. No. 61: Another woman. Eyes: hol- she said, “Neither am I.” And then she
No. 73: Male. Made a show of the lowed-out holes. Upper cheeks: charred. confirmed my birth date, tested me for
way he affixed the adhesive label with Hair: singed: Ears: gone. Covid, and we dated for a year.
my name around the vial containing the Nos. 60-9: These are foggy, because No. 3: Matt LeBlanc. Not from
pinkish Covid liquid. It just felt very during this time my father and I were “Friends.” A different Matt LeBlanc.
performative. in conflict. I don’t want to get into it No. 2: “I did remember you the sec-
No. 72: I’ll spare you the details, but much, for legal and personal reasons, ond time I tested you,” he said. “I was
I left bleeding from my eyes, ears, nose, but, long story short: My father is ig- trying to play it cool.” It was the man
and mouth. Not ranked the worst be- noring me. Are you familiar with the who went to Belize. “See, I thought
cause bleeding is something I enjoy. film “Jaws”? My father directed it. He I laid it on too thick about Belize. So,
No. 71: They say the eyes are the win- is pretending not to know who I am when I saw you again, I decided to pull
dows into the soul. Not with this person. and has sent word through his legal rep- back. Anyway, of course I went to the
No. 70: Some guy who was very ex- resentatives that I am not his son. This Actun Tunichil Muknal. The cave con-
cited about his upcoming trip to Belize. is hurtful, as you can imagine. So, apol- tains several sets of human sacrificial
He kept talking about Belize and what ogies for the vagueness here. remains, one of which—known as the
he was going to do there. I felt at a dis- No. 8: Glasses! My first one with glasses! Crystal Maiden—has been entirely cov-
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ

advantage because I’ve never been to Be- And not just protective goggles! Glasses ered in calcite crystals.”
lize, nor had I ever thought about going underneath the goggles. I never thought “Yeah, I know all that,” I said.
to Belize, so I couldn’t add anything ex- I’d see the day. No. 1: Some woman who also watches
cept to ask whether they have any good No. 7: British accent. “Better Call Saul.” 
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 27
 ern Atlantic—and this is bad news: they
ANNALS OF NATURE are destructive to native species, devour-
ing other sea creatures and upending

FISH KEBABS
the equilibrium of reef life. Although
there is an obvious conservation bene-
fit to eliminating lionfish, Bowman does
Is massacring an invasive species a virtuous sport? not think of herself primarily as an en-
vironmentalist. She sees her targets as
BY D. T. MAX invaders, and considers it her job to repel
them. “What you’re hunting isn’t prey—
it’s the enemy,” she told me, adding, “Isn’t
it nice to be on the side of the good
guys?” She also appreciates the fact that
there are no regulations about lionfish
killing. “No bag limits, sex limits, sea-
sons, boat limits, gear limits,” she said.
“Lionfish is the only species that is one-
hundred-per-cent wide open.” Hunt-
ing them is a throwback to an era when
you could go into the water and come
out of it with whatever you wanted—
to an era, paradoxically, before conser-
vation measures were needed.
Lionfish divers are a close-knit com-
munity, staying in one another’s houses,
trading diving stories, and amiably com-
peting for who can kill the most fish.
Their goal is a balanced, usable ecosys-
tem: killing a lionfish saves a yellowtail
snapper that, in turn, can be caught for
dinner. Hunting lionfish is satisfying
but labor-intensive. They won’t chase a
hook, and a dragnet is impractical, be-
cause it would snag on the reefs where
they live. Lionfish must be killed one
by one, with a pole spear: a metal rod,
with jagged prongs at the end, that you
launch through the water by deploying
a rubber sling. There are many varia-
“What you’re hunting isn’t prey,” a lionfish diver told me. “It’s the enemy.” tions on these poles—three-foot, seven-
foot, three-pronged, five-pronged—and
achel Bowman is a diver who spe- terns on their fins and faces. They look they have such names as the Lionfish
R cializes in the hunting, catching, and
killing of lionfish, a species native to Indo-
at once sleek and tacky. Bowman, who is
forty-three, recalls that, in 2012, “when
Buster and the Lionator.
In the past two decades, many divers
Pacific waters. Off the coast of Indone- I first saw one, I thought it was a fish have made hunting lionfish their obses-
sia or Australia, an adult typically grows dressed up for Mardi Gras.” She wasn’t sion, but nobody appears to have done
to about twelve inches; groupers, eels, and staring through aquarium glass, though, it with the intensity of Bowman. In the
sharks are its natural predators, and in or diving off Japan. She was in the wa- ten years that she has been diving, she
many countries divers cannot spear one ters of the Florida Keys, a few miles from has gone out roughly three times a week.
without a permit. Lionfish have also long where she lives. An image of a lionfish spear is tattooed
been popular in aquariums. Tens of thou- At some point in the past half cen- on her arm. On the Internet, there is a
sands of American homes have them in tury, somewhere in the warmer latitudes photograph of Bowman holding a pole
saltwater tanks. Lionfish spend their days of the Western Hemisphere, lionfish spear studded with more than a dozen
hovering in the water, which makes them jumped from aquariums to natural salt freshly killed lionfish—a gaudy fish kebab.
particularly well suited to the job of being water. The first recorded sighting was Lionfish can be dangerous: their spines
looked at. They are also striking, with in 1985, off Dania Beach, just north of contain one of the most powerful neu-
shimmery white bodies overlaid with Miami. Lionfish have succeeded might- rotoxins in the aquatic world; their Mo-
bold red or orange stripes, a Mohawk of ily in their new environment—there are hawk is venomous, as are the two spikes
spikes on their backs, and clashing pat- now many millions of them in the West- on their pelvic fins and the three by their
28 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY JOHNNY DOMBROWSKI
anal glands. Like most lionfish hunters, FishTank site warns about “the ten- It took quite a while for Americans
Bowman has been stung repeatedly—at dency of the lionfish to eat any fish to realize that the arrival of lionfish wasn’t
least thirty times, she told me. She wears small enough to fit in its mouth.” The just a colorful accident but a serious prob-
gloves when she dives, but that makes upshot of this behavioral trait was ex- lem. At first, concern centered on their
little difference. “You can tell me you pulsion from aquariums—and freedom. venomous spines. In 2002, the Charlotte
have a puncture-proof glove, blah blah Steve Gittings, the science coördinator Observer described the lionfish as “a beau-
blah,” she said. “But I’m gonna laugh at for the marine-sanctuaries program of tiful but dangerous new addition” to local
you.” In rare cases, the venom can cause the National Oceanic and Atmospheric waters, warning, “The fish are slow, but
paralysis in humans. Being stung, Bow- Administration, who leads the agency’s they are also capable of rapidly lurching
man said, “feels like your bones and joints efforts to control lionfish, told me, “I’ve forward a few inches, making them dan-
are pushing out—it’s a fucking misery.” got to believe that people saw them eat- gerous to swimmers who move too close.”
She keeps four Vicodin in her dive bag. ing all their other fish and just threw Only in the late two-thousands did div-
Frequent diving strains the sinuses, them in a canal.” ers begin noticing that, when they saw
and Bowman spends so much time un- After the initial sighting off Dania a lot of lionfish, they sometimes didn’t
derwater that she uses industrial quan- Beach, there was a gap of some years see other fish that they expected to see.
tities of Sudafed and bromelain, an en- before the presence of lionfish became Had the lionfish chased them away?
zyme derived from pineapples, to keep palpable. They reached Bermuda by Taken their habitat? Eaten them? Lion-
her air passages open; she often gets fa- 2004, Cuba by 2007, and the Yucatán fish appeared no more aggressive in nat-
cial massages. She recently sent me an Peninsula by 2009. Their spread was ural water than in aquariums, yet the
image of herself on a dive boat during helped by the fact that their eggs, en- same eerie complaint kept being made
last year’s Emerald Coast Open Lion- cased in oily sacs, remain on the surface whenever divers compared notes: where
fish Tournament—a gruelling two-day of water, allowing them to drift on ocean once there was abundant and diverse
competition off Destin, in the Florida currents. Lionfish have been seen as far life—the arrow blenny, the purple chro-
Panhandle, that is the largest such event north as Rhode Island, though they do mis—now there was a disturbing pre-
in the world. In the photograph, her not last the winter there, and they re- dominance of lionfish.
lower face is streaked by a bright-red cently made it to the Brazilian coast. Around 2007, researchers started to
smear of blood, the result of ruptured Since lionfish tend to congregate take stock of the scale of the damage,
nasal capillaries. Nevertheless, she won around any sunken object, it’s reason- and data about the negative effects of
the Open—her third victory. able to guess that there are millions of lionfish populations began pouring forth
At this year’s event, there was even them near submerged structures that from academia. Holden Harris, a marine
more money at stake: almost a hundred no humans have ever visited. In 2014, ecologist at the University of Florida
thousand dollars in total. The team that Alex Fogg, the organizer of the Destin who was on Bowman’s team in this year’s
caught the most lionfish was to receive tournament, was a master’s student Emerald Coast Open, told me, “Lion-
a cash award of ten thousand dollars. A in biology at the University of South- fish are probably the most studied ma-
five-thousand-dollar prize would be given ern Mississippi, studying lionfish. In a rine invasive species ever.” Scientists’ find-
to whoever caught the largest lionfish. GoPro video taken that year, Fogg, who ings have been alarming. A female
Lionfish are edible and marketable, so is now the coastal-resource manager for lionfish lays an average of twenty-seven
the winners would also make thousands Destin-Fort Walton Beach, is diving thousand eggs every two and a half days.
of dollars selling their catch. More than for lionfish southwest of Destin. He de- In Asian waters, the lionfish’s diet is lim-
a hundred and forty-five people had reg- scends about a hundred feet to a small ited to a narrow range of smaller reef
istered and were getting ready to dive as military aircraft that he has just discov- fish, but in the Atlantic and the Gulf it
often as ten times a day, sometimes to ered on the bottom of the Gulf of Mex- will eat Nassau grouper, parrot fish, yel-
depths of two hundred feet. Bowman ico. The area around the wings and the lowtail snapper, banded coral shrimp, ju-
and her team of three, competing under fuselage is carpeted by lionfish—they venile spiny lobster, octopus, slippery
the name of Lionfish University—a non- look as thick and sluggish as sea ur- dick, and sandfish, among a hundred and
profit that was sponsoring them—were chins. Fogg spears two hundred crea- seventy or so species. They corral their
up against squads they’d competed with tures, in two trips, before returning to prey into a corner, using their ornate pec-
previously, sporting such names as the his boat. They make no effort to elude toral fins, then swallow them whole. They
DeepWater Mafia and Alabama Jam- him. Though the name lionfish sug- can blow water at their prey to make the
min’. During the tournament, the con- gests a fearsome quality, killing one is victims turn and face their hungry, dis-
testants were expected to kill more than not reminiscent of Papa Hemingway in tended mouths.
ten thousand lionfish. As Bowman put Africa. Lionfish go quietly. They do not A 2008 study in the Bahamas calcu-
it to me, “This is the biggie.”   scatter when their neighbors disappear. lated that lionfish arriving at a new reef
The best comparison might be stink- can eliminate more than eighty per cent
he most likely reason for the suc- bugs on a wall, another invasive species of other species within five weeks. The
T cess that lionfish have had cross-
ing over into Atlantic waters is precisely
that doesn’t know enough to flee. (Fogg
has posted his video on YouTube, and
researchers were amazed to see one lion-
fish eat twenty wrasses in half an hour.
what makes them so harmful today: it has been watched more than a mil- Other studies have revealed additional
their insatiable appetite. The RateMy- lion times.) remarkable qualities. A lionfish can
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 29
 During the past decade, as the inva-
sion grew worse, a new consensus
emerged: humans had created the lion-
fish problem, and humans would have
to clean up their own mess. Some pro-
posed solutions were ingenious. In 2016,
iRobot, the company famous for the
Roomba autonomous vacuum, designed
an unmanned submersible robot that,
it said, could kill lionfish by zapping
them with an electric pulse. The exec-
utive director of the project told the
Web site LiveScience, “They won’t see
us coming.” But they did. As Alex Fogg,
of the Destin tournament, put it to me,
the robot was too “clunky”: “When lion-
fish see this large thing coming at them
with a lot of lights and jets, they’re going
• • to move.”
The general idea carried the day,
though. “Be the predator”—a phrase
expand its mouth to accommodate prey though lionfish want to eat everything, coined by the Florida Fish and Wild-
more than half its own body size, and nothing in American waters seems to life Conservation Commission in 2015—
its stomach can expand up to thirty want to eat lionfish, at least not in quan- became the rallying cry, even among
times its normal size, allowing it to gorge tity—either because the native fish do ecology-minded groups that usually
at length. But a lionfish can also exist not recognize the foreign species as food confine themselves to education and
on nothing for three months, by put- or because they are deterred by the ven- beach cleanups. Probably the foremost
ting itself into a kind of hibernation. omous spines.  environmental organization to endorse
When lionfish occupy a reef, they vac- To environmentalists, the moral was lionfish hunting is Reef Conservation
uum up not just fish but also larvae, di- clear: pet owners, by thoughtlessly re- International, a U.S. nonprofit that op-
minishing the variety of future gener- leasing lionfish into Atlantic waters, erates in Belize. For the past fifteen
ations. One of the lionfish’s favorite had upset the order of nature—just as years, on a private island there, the group
meals is young parrot fish; the species other pet owners had when they let has taught a course in lionfish popula-
plays a key role in cleaning a reef of loose the pythons now destroying Flor- tion control. Volunteers, many of them
algae, and its absence can lead to reef ida’s Everglades. The best path forward, young people from Europe and Amer-
damage or death. many conservationists argued, was to ica, train by using their spears on co-
Americanized lionfish, researchers redouble our commitment to leaving conuts, then go after lionfish on local
have learned, sometimes behave differ- nature in peace. “Kill, kill, kill . . . is not reefs. (My son recently went on one
ently from their Indo-Pacific forebears. the solution,” Sylvia Earle declared. such trip and killed eighteen.) The pro-
Most notably, lionfish in American wa- “Lionfish have replaced a void created gram’s director, Anthony Saner, esti-
ters are not afraid of other fish or of by the loss of apex predators. The best mates that his volunteers have killed
divers. They hang motionless when ap- way to protect the ocean reefs is to cre- more than six hundred thousand lion-
proached—just as they do in an aquar- ate more Marine Protected Areas . . . to fish—and possibly many times that.
ium. They also grow larger in Ameri- bring back healthy numbers of preda- “We can definitely see, with the areas
can waters than in the Indo-Pacific, tors that will, in turn, bring balance back that we patrol, a rebound in native fish
sometimes up to nineteen inches. Many to the reef.” population—there is a serious increase
American reefs are artificial and have At first, it seemed that a more hands- in native coral reefs,” Saner told me.
more nooks than natural ones, allow- off approach would work. Conserva- “Their numbers are controlled.” I asked
ing lionfish to pack themselves as much tionists tried to gently goose nature. him if other environmental organiza-
as a hundred times more densely. West- They experimented with teaching grou- tions objected to his approach. He said
ern Atlantic lionfish can live for fifteen per to eat lionfish. But the practice didn’t no, adding that taking direct action
years, and can descend a thousand feet appear to catch on. In a similar vein, amid so many overwhelming environ-
or more. (Sylvia Earle, the noted ocean- teams in Cuba, Honduras, St. Kitts, and mental crises appealed to nearly every-
ographer, told me that once, when she the Bahamas attempted to encourage one. “It’s real,” he said. “It’s tangible.
was exploring the Bahamas in her sub- sharks to develop a taste for the invader And I’m not going to deny it’s fun.”
mersible, she passed a lionfish at twelve by having divers offer them skewers with To some hard-core wildlife-resource
hundred feet.) One study found that speared lionfish on them. This didn’t managers, all these approaches remained
lionfish can even survive in estuaries, really work, either, and the sharks grew insufficient. I asked Fogg what the ideal
where the water is barely salty. And, al- distressingly interested in the divers. solution would be. He mentioned a trap
30 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
that Steve Gittings, the marine-sanc- from authorized providers. (That way, boat together.” (She contrasted the fel-
tuaries coördinator, had been working if there is an illness, the source can be lowship she felt among lionfish hunt-
on for the past six years. It would rest traced.) She recalled, “The wonderful ers with the behavior of other conser-
open on the ocean bottom and close people at F.W.C.”—the Florida Fish vationist types: “Turtle people treat each
slowly enough for other fish to escape and Wildlife Conservation Commis- other like shit and backstab each other.”)
while clueless lionfish remained inside; sion—“reached out and said, ‘Hey, what Bowman became an exceptional lion-
an attached rope would allow people to you’re doing is awesome. It’s also ille- fish diver—fast and focussed. Another
haul the catch onto a boat. The device gal.’” Instead of fining her, though, they diver told me, “Rachel is sitting on the
could be deployed in deep water where encouraged her to sell her fish through gunwales, ready to go, as soon as the
spearing is not a realistic option. Git- proper channels, and with supporting captain says we’re on the spot.” Many
tings’s team had brought a sample of paperwork. lionfish divers have a methodical grace
the trap to the Emerald Coast Open. In May, 2016, Bowman became the to their movements: after closing in on
Fogg told me that he had published first person to sell lionfish to Whole a fish, they release their spear from the
more than two dozen research papers Foods. For a while, her photograph ac- sling, carefully unthreading each victim
on lionfish, enough to know that do- companied a display of lionfish dump- and placing the body in a container be-
gooder environmentalists and weekend lings at the supermarket chain. Bow- fore resuming the hunt. Bowman and
lionfish warriors were not going to solve man’s father died before this happened, I recently watched a 2021 video of her
this problem alone. “You’ve got to get but she thinks he would have been thrilled diving, and in the clip she looks fre-
commercial fishermen to slaughter the to find that she had also ended up a com- netic, almost angry. Sometimes she skips
hell out of them,” he said. mercial fishing captain. “That would have the sling and dispatches her prey with
been the moment I finally made up for a quick jab of the prongs. She said of
owman, the daughter of a commer- not being a boy,” she told me. The Whole the process, “It’s like picking up gar-
B cial shrimp-boat captain, grew up
in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.
Foods purchase became an important
crossover moment for eating lionfish. Al
bage along the side of the road.” In the
video, her arms and legs are often at
In her early twenties, she wanted to be Massa, who is the chef at Brotula’s, a sea- odd angles, and her container seems
a music journalist, but after 9/11 she fled food restaurant in Destin, told me, “A about to float away. “I used to think I
conventional life and its goals. She lionfish’s sweet, flaky light-white meat was this elegant mermaid,” she told me.
moved to the Florida Keys and enjoyed can take a wide variety of sauces, from “But I look like a turd trying to float
the raffish vibe there, tending bar at a classic beurre blanc to a roasted-red- the wrong way down the river.”
joint called Barracuda Grill. A few pepper broth or a yellow-tomato gazpa- In 2017, she went to Destin to par-
months after she arrived in the islands, cho.” (In 2017, Gordon Ramsay filmed ticipate in the event now known as the
Adolphus Busch IV, one of the scions himself incorporating lionfish into a Ca- Emerald Coast Open. She and the two
of the Budweiser brewing family, had a ribbean seafood curry.) other women on her team speared a
drink at her restaurant and asked her Thanks to lionfishing, Bowman thousand fish in two days, winning the
to run his boat. In 1998, Busch, who had started making real money. She bought tournament. Bowman was thrilled, but
a house in the area, had paid to sink a a boat of her own, a twenty-five-foot it bothered her that “a huge big deal
two-hundred-and-ten-foot cargo ship vessel that she named the Britney Spears. was made not because we won it but
near Looe Key, thus creating an artifi- And she soon found a community. Her because it was three girls.” (One online
cial reef. Bowman would watch Busch headline: “cuties confront lion-
dive to the wreck and emerge with lion- fish menace.”)
fish on his spear. “I saw him getting out During these years, Bowman was so
of the water with these bizarre-looking competitive that she took risks she now
fish,” Bowman remembers. “I thought, sees as foolish—she’d dive for too long,
Maybe there’s something down there or she’d go too deep for someone with
for me, too.” She received her diving her level of experience. Another diver
certification in 2011. By this time, lion- remembers her using shoddy equipment.
fish had been in the Keys in quantity She grew out of many of these habits,
for a decade. but on a dive two years ago disaster still
Bowman found that local restaurants catches became an important source of struck. She was diving with a friend who
were happy to accept a lionfish catch. harvest data and fish samples. She was came up too quickly. “He had what we
“They’re low in mercury and have some thanked in peer-reviewed publications. call a ‘hit,’” she told me. He couldn’t feel
of the highest omega-acid content of “Rachel is absolutely magical,” Gittings his fingers when he got on the boat, and
any fish,” she told me. It was not par- told me. Other Gulf divers sometimes couldn’t remember Bowman’s name. To
ticularly important to her that her ac- found Bowman too intense, but she fit treat decompression sickness, you are
tivity could be described as environ- in with the lionfish researchers—and supposed to administer oxygen from extra
mental activism. “I’m just a bartender even got to play the cutup. The lionfish tanks kept on the deck—but Bowman
who goes diving,” she said. Nor did she community is “really collaborative,” she had forgotten to bring any. The friend
know that she was breaking the law— told me. “You become friends—you’re was medevacked to a hospital in Miami,
restaurants can serve only fish acquired dive buddies shitting off the back of the but he suffered lasting nerve damage to
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 31
his spine. Bowman vowed to be more finder—he has thousands of reef sites Festival, and in my hotel lobby at night
careful. She told me, “How can it not logged—and motored west for another T-shirts bearing the slogan “LIONFISH
change you—how I dive, how I look at half a mile. The team dived again. PATROL” clashed with tricornes.
my divers?” They repeated this all morning, with- Fogg, who is thirty-four, wants peo-
out much success. Conditions improved ple to have fun at the Open—he likes
n the first day of the Emerald Coast in the afternoon: each team member was the fact that lionfishing has become a
O Open, I went to a pier in a resi-
dential part of Destin to see off Bow-
regularly getting about thirty lionfish
per dive. Around 5 p.m., when Wall was
sport, but a casual one. At the same time,
he is also trying to educate the public.
man and her teammates: Holden Har- on her ninth dive of the day, she saw This year, he gave top Destin restau-
ris, the University of Florida researcher; something huge pass overhead. An ex- rants free lionfish, in return for their
a biologist named Kara Wall; and a young perienced diver, she thought it was a training servers to explain to customers
diver, Casey Brann, whose day job was great white shark. (Later, she demoted why the species is an invasive pest (and
at Amazon. It was five in the morning. it to a fourteen-foot dusky.) They called how tasty one can be). Fogg had also
Harris, his girlfriend, and Bowman had off the last dive and headed home as it set up an information booth on the wa-
stayed at Alex Fogg’s house the previ- started to rain and lightning lit up the terfront. A veteran sea captain explained
ous night; I had stopped by, and rum- sky. They had speared five hundred and the lionfish problem to passersby on
pled beds, air mattresses, and a barking forty-two lionfish, which rested on ice their way to dolphin tours or funnel
puppy gave it the feel of off-campus in coolers belowdecks. On the way in, cakes. It had taken a while for local of-
housing. At the house, Bowman had Bowman asked Howard to call around ficials to realize that ecology could be a
prepped some spaghetti and meatballs and see how they were doing against the tourism draw, Fogg said, but they were
for the first evening of the tournament. competition. “Everyone’s cagey,” Bow- beginning to understand the potential.
Harris’s girlfriend, an astrophysicist who man explained to me later. “You sniff The water off Destin was the most
doesn’t dive, would heat it up before the around a little, but nobody’s giving out vivid shade of emerald I’d ever seen. The
team got home, late that night. numbers.” She went on, “We felt like we beaches looked like snow. It took us about
The team members felt that they were had done good. But you don’t get too half an hour to reach our intended spot
in a strong position to win. Their boat’s hyped up one way or another.” in the Gulf. Coral cannot survive at such
captain, Kyle Howard, was in control of northern latitudes—the majority of dives
what everyone saw as the most valuable wo days before the competition off Northwest Florida are to wrecks or
item on board—a G.P.S.-equipped “fish-
finder,” which uses sonar technology to
T started, I went out on a dive boat
with Alex Fogg, the event’s organizer,
to artificial constructions. Out of sight
below us were chicken coops that had
identify objects deep beneath the waves. to try my luck as a lionfish hunter. I had been sunk more than a decade ago. Fogg
The key to winning the Open, Bowman expected to dive to the bottom of the put on a camo-patterned wetsuit and
told me, was not the diving. It wasn’t Gulf, but, as an uncertified diver, I would dived in while I put on fins and a snor-
about who was the fastest diver or the be limited to a depth of fifty to sixty kel. A few minutes later, he came up
best diver: “It’s about who has the spots— feet, and in Florida lionfish tend to be with a few small lionfish and a floun-
who has those G.P.S. numbers.” How- found in deeper waters. So we agreed der. “Someone must have hit that reef,”
ard was both a local and a beneficiary of that we would go about six miles off- he said, meaning that there had been
Fogg’s unparalleled knowledge. As How- shore, where the depth was around spearing there shortly before. It takes
ard backed out of the boat-launch pier, eighty feet, and if Fogg dived and found several months for a lionfish population
Bowman was putting on her wetsuit. She any lionfish he’d deposit them at the at a given structure to recover.
sniffed her booties. “They smell like fish,” surface. I would be snorkeling, armed Figuring out how to use the pole
she said. “That’s a good sign.” The sun and ready to deliver the coup de grâce. spear took some work. It was shock-
began to peek above the horizon. We set off from the harbor and ingly fast once you released it, and by
More than an hour away was the headed for a bridge that marked the accident I shot one over the stern. When
first stop: an artificial reef of prefabri- entrance to the Gulf. There were doz- I asked for a longer pole, I was told it
cated modules, almost a hundred and ens of boats in the bay, all of them would cost me four hundred dollars if
fifty feet below the surface. On the way, devoted to fishing, to drinking, or to it followed the other, so I settled for a
Howard opened a beer to celebrate. He fishing and drinking. There were day two-foot sticking pole. With some prac-
put Cheez Doodles in his nose to keep cruisers, cabin cruisers, skiffs, banana tice, I was able to control its release. It
the mood light. About twenty-five miles boats, Jet Skis, octagonal tiki barges that had three nasty prongs on the end—far
out, he idled the boat, and Bowman and floated along under thatched roofs, and scarier than a lionfish.
Wall went into the water. When they yachts—with water slides and without. My prey was floating by the stern of
came up, Howard moved the boat a Tourism has become one of the re- the boat, stunned by the sudden change
quarter mile or so; then Harris and gion’s largest businesses: the Destin area in water pressure. But the chop was
Brann went in. The sky was clear and has more than fourteen thousand rooms strong, and I kept losing sight of the
the water visibility was excellent—you for rent, the biggest charter-fishing fleet fish once I was in the water. I tried to
could see the bottom from eighty feet in the country, and a terrible traffic prob- kill it several times with my spear but
above. But each diver surfaced with only lem. The week of the tournament over- kept missing. In the wavy sea, it was
six fish. Howard consulted his fish- lapped with the Billy Bowlegs Pirate hard to align the shot, easy as it looked.
32 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
Finally, I got close and released the spear. some,” Bowman told me. “We are com- to me, “A lot of people would call us fool-
The lionfish twitched briefly and died. petitive, but we will drop our shit and ish for diving that much in a day. We
I brought it up on the end of my stick take care of another team in a heartbeat.” were pushing the limits.” Shivers told me
like a discarded party favor. For Bowman’s boat, the second day that his team had made a profit of eigh-
You could say that I’d just helped was more productive than the day be- teen thousand dollars, after accounting
protect an ecosystem, but I didn’t ex- fore. On one dive, Harris nabbed six- for the price of two hundred and fifty
actly feel heroic. The artificiality of my ty-two lionfish. His teammates cheered. gallons of fuel. The environmental cost
spearing experience only underscored Bowman topped out at thirty-one. The of the gas did not matter to him. “I’m not
the artificiality of the entire reef eco- final dive of the day was her worst; she a tree hugger,” he said, though he added
system. The Destin reefs had been cre- came up with only two fish. “In the end, that he cared about marine conservation.
ated by humans—and, if you got rid of it’s the luck of the draw,” she said. “We In the end, the participants all agreed,
them, you’d get rid of most of the lion- are relying on pinpoints on a map.” In the DeepWater Maf ia had simply
fish. But, at another point in the day, as total, Bowman’s team caught nearly thir- wanted the win more. Most of the sites
I stared down toward the submerged teen hundred fish in two they dived at were publicly
modules of a different fake reef, I could days—just under the win- known; it’s just that they
see all sorts of native life swirling around: ning total from 2021. When went to a higher number
grouper and snapper, tomtate and an- the tournament was over, of them. “They did the
gelfish. If you wanted to keep all this the group headed in sing- work and earned it,” Liv-
around, maybe you had to treat the Flor- ing along to a rap track by ingston said.
ida coast like an aquarium. At least Fogg Lil Jon, jumping up and Later, I reached Bow-
was making the cleanup fun. He knew down in their wetsuits. man at her home, in Mar-
his audience. He told me, “We added a They stopped to give a athon Key. She surprised
beer festival this year—to lure people.” stranded boat a tow, and me by saying that the de-
didn’t arrive at the pier until feat had felt good. “I was
he second day of the Emerald Open nine-thirty. They still had on a team that is not über-
T dawned with even better weather
than the first. Bowman’s team put its
to get their boat out of the water and
carry out the tanks and the coolers of
competitive, and they made this week-
end fun for me,” she said. She now re-
boat in the water just before sunrise and fish. By then, the high had evaporated. gretted how wound up she had been
was soon out at the reefs.This time, How- Bowman was groaning, trying to stretch in previous tournaments. She’d twisted
ard took the group about twenty miles her back by folding herself across the herself in knots for the wrong reasons.
to the west of where they had started the pier. “The level of exhaustion, frustra- “I don’t have a first-place trophy this
day before. The tanks that Bowman had tion, and fear you feel!” she said. “Did time,” she said. “But I had so much
dived with on the first day had been too we do enough? Should we have done fucking fun. My face hurts from laugh-
bulky for her—she is only five feet tall— more? It’s now out of our hands.” ing.” As ever, it was the social aspect
and she had pulled her back out. On the The next day, Fogg and his staff that she loved. One year, she mentioned
way in that night, as soon as they were counted the fish. DeepWater Mafia, to me, Steve Gittings had come down
in cell-phone range of the shore, she which had taken sixth place the previ- to the Keys to do research. “Why is
had called a diver named Josh Living- ous year, won by nearly three hundred the chief science off icer from the
ston, perhaps the most storied lionfish and fifty fish—a significant victory. It N.O.A.A. staying in my spare bed-
hunter in the world. Livingston, who is turned out that Bowman had been room?” she marvelled.
thirty-seven, has killed more than a hun- wrong: the fish-finder wasn’t what mat- Bowman had already planned her
dred thousand lionfish—“To be honest, tered most.This wasn’t the fishing equiv- next expedition, to the Flower Garden
it’s a hundred per cent commercial for alent of Moneyball. “There’s only so Banks National Marine Sanctuary, off
me,” he told me, adding that he’d made much G.P.S. can do for you,” Josh Liv- Galveston, Texas, in June. She makes
a quarter of a million dollars from their ingston explained to me after the tally the trip every year to cull lionfish for
sale—but he was sitting out the Open was finalized. He had advised the Deep- scientific study. (The fish are dissected
this year. It was physically too draining. Water Mafia to prioritize how many on the boat and then sent to a lab in
Informally, though, he was advising the dives it got in. You had to be out at the Galveston.) The goal, in part, is to de-
chief competition to Bowman’s team: reefs early, Livingston said, and get in termine the impact of lionfish on other
the DeepWater Mafia. That team con- and out of the water faster. The Deep- species at a remote reef. On this trip,
sisted of four divers from Mississippi: Water Mafia ended up going out in two the group—about two dozen divers—
a plumber, a used-car wholesaler, and boats; as a result, each diver was able to speared only two hundred and twenty-
two contractors. average eighteen dives a day, compared eight lionfish. But, as she wrote to me
Nevertheless, when Bowman ex- with ten for Bowman’s team. afterward, Fogg “landed the new Texas-
plained to him her problem with the Diving that many times in a single lionfish size record,” with a seventeen-
heavy tanks, he got up from his dinner day can be dangerous—you’re more likely and-a-half-inch catch. And, for three
and went to fill some smaller tanks for to get an overload of nitrogen in your days, everyone was hanging out together
her, then left them at Howard’s garage. blood. Tim Shivers, who headed the on the water. “It was really cool,” she
“That’s what makes this community awe- DeepWater Mafia team, acknowledged said. “Like camp.” 
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 33
 A REPORTER AT LARGE

IMPAIRED JUDGMENT
Arica Waters believed she had been taken advantage of sexually. Why was she on trial?
BY RACHEL AVIV

ut-in-Bay, a village on an island got the perfect disposition.” (The mayor “Do he need an assistant?? lol,” her

P off the northern coast of Ohio,

is sometimes called the Key West
of the Midwest. In the winter, the pop-
responded, “Noted. Little interaction
I’ve had with her it makes sense.”)
Berman’s house was next to the is-
friend responded. “Is he a sugar daddy???”
“Girl yes,” Waters responded.
The next morning, a little before
ulation is roughly three hundred, nearly land’s airport, a small runway in a field eight o’clock, Berman texted Waters, “If
all white. In the summer, hundreds of near the water. When Waters and an- it’s in the equation, I would love to have
thousands of tourists arrive by ferry or other guest said that they had never a round two.”
private plane to drink at the island’s been in a private plane, Berman called Waters said that she was hung over
fifty-two bars. Men celebrating bach- a friend who runs an aviation business. and needed to sleep. An hour later, Ber-
elor parties go around in golf carts, car- Within fifteen minutes, a helicopter man texted that he was driving by the
rying inflatable naked women. The po- had landed near the pool. Berman bunkhouse where she and other em-
lice chief told me that he’s known as handed Waters three hundred-dollar ployees lived.
“the guy who pulls people over and de- bills to give to the pilot. “I honestly still don’t feel good,” she
flates the blow-up dolls.” “I’m in a helicopter holy crap,” Wa- told him.
In July, 2020, Arica Waters, the only ters texted her mother from the air. Twenty minutes later, he wrote, “I
Black female cop on the island, was in- She told her mom that the trip—a lap don’t have a long time but let me pick
vited to a pool party. She was twenty- around the island—had been arranged you up.”
seven and had been hired five weeks by “the rich cop.” Waters said that she had her period,
before, as a seasonal employee without “I don’t get it,” her mom, who lived but offered, “I can service you though!”
benefits. She was ebullient and quick in Cleveland, responded. He drove her back to his friend’s
to make friends. “Some people say, “He also just texted the mayor and apartment, and they had sex again.
‘Oh, Waters is a flirt,’” she told me, “but told her to hire me full time,” Waters Twenty minutes later, she was back at
that’s just my personality. I’m a friendly wrote. “He just said he has noticed my the bunkhouse. She called her friend
person. I give out compliments. I like abilities.” Monifah Lamar and said that she felt
to hype people up.” Meri LeBlanc, a When the ride was over, Berman exploited. “She was really torn up and
bouncer on the island, said that Waters and Waters sat in his neighbor’s hot tub, wanted to know, ‘Did I put myself in
was open about her sexual desires, freely drinking. She had several mixed drinks this situation?’” Lamar said.
expressing her attraction to women and and then took off her bikini top. At She tried to process what had just
men. “She wasn’t plain,” she said. “She dusk, the party migrated to a bar. Wa- happened through dozens of texts to
wasn’t the square cut of what they ters rode with Berman in his golf cart, her friends. Their interpretation of the
thought a police officer should be.” but, instead of going to the bar, they encounter led her to modify her origi-
The party was hosted by Jeremy Ber- stopped at an empty apartment owned nal assessment. She realized how be-
man, a detective in the department, by one of Berman’s friends. They quickly holden to Berman she had felt, given
who had a house on a private road over- had sex, and then Berman drove home what she perceived as his power on the
looking Lake Erie. Berman’s wife and to his family and Waters went to the island. In a text to a friend, she described
young son were there, but he seemed bar alone. it as “sexual assault due to job title.” She
to be paying extra attention to Waters, The captain of the police department, felt like she’d been groomed. “Bottom-
who wore a long yellow sundress. In a Matthew Mariano, was at the bar, and line I need to get out of this depart-
text message to a friend, Waters wrote, he observed that Waters was so intoxi- ment and go home,” she wrote.
“The rich ass dude definitely has a thing cated that “she could barely talk.” He Waters had made three allegations
for me lolol.” had learned to be cautious with what he of sexual assault as an adult; two of them
As they were sitting by the pool, Wa- and others called “Berman drinks”: they had involved situations in which she had
ters told Berman, who was close with were so strong that, at the pool party, he consented to some degree of intimacy
members of the village’s government, had secretly poured two of them out. but, when the sexual encounter esca-
that she was hoping to get a full-time That night, lying in bed drinking lated, she had felt violated. No charges
job in the department. Berman offered Gatorade, Waters texted her friends that were brought in any of the cases. When
to put in a good word. “I think she would she had just had sex with the “richest a friend suggested that she report the in-
be fantastic for a full-time position,” he person on this island.” She wrote, “He cident with Berman, she wrote that she
texted the mayor from the party. “She’s will give me whatever I want.” would just “live with it.” She knew that
34 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
Waters, the only Black female cop in her department, said, “Something happened, you know, and I don’t remember all of it.”
PHOTOGRAPHS BY RYAN CARDOSO THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 35
she had drunk too much. “I’m not going who often handled sexual assaults for the in college, she saw an ad seeking partic-
through that process again,” she wrote. sheriff’s office in Ottawa County, which ipants for “Catfish,” and she contacted
“Who is going to believe me.” includes Put-in-Bay. Waters recognized the show to tell her story. She had just
that, in the eyes of law enforcement, she gone through a period of depression, and,
he next day, however, Waters spoke was not a “good victim.” But she felt she said, “I had this idea that I needed
T with a friend who was an emergency
medic on the island, and he, too, encour-
harmed, and she wanted to tell someone.
Perhaps on some level she was also seek-
to acknowledge what I had done by show-
ing the world that I could own up to it
aged her to report what had happened. ing a remedy for wrongs that hadn’t been and have an open conversation. And hon-
He mentioned that the island had a his- acknowledged when she was a child. “I estly I shouldn’t have. But at the time I
tory of sexual assaults that the police de- really don’t know what to do, but it’s also, felt like this was a way to close a chap-
partment had not properly investigated. like, I need to do something,” she told ter and move on, because a lot of the
An article in the Cleveland Scene, from Gloor on the phone. She explained that bullying when I was young was on the
2014, about the problem was titled “Roo- she felt as if Berman “holds my job in his Internet, so it all felt connected.”
fie Island: A Summer of Reported Drug- hands.” She went on, “This isn’t O.K. You On the show, Waters apologized to
gings and Rapes.” Waters didn’t neces- outrank me. Something happened, you the person whom she had pretended to
sarily think that she had been drugged, know, and I don’t remember all of it.” be, a white woman from Utah, explain-
but she no longer felt comfortable at work, Although Waters did not use the word ing that when she’d used the profile she’d
and she was motivated by the thought of “rape”—she said that she felt “completely been despondent and lost. “I’m not ex-
other women who had felt disregarded. taken advantage of ”—Gloor took her to pecting anyone to feel bad,” she said. “I’m
She had been adopted and brought up get a rape exam on the mainland. Then just explaining to you what it is, and, in
by a single mother—after being removed Waters signed a form granting Ottawa a sense, what judgments you make from
from her biological mother’s custody by County permission to search her cell- there you have that right.” (Some of Wa-
the state—and, as a preteen, she was the phone records. ters’s friends had used the profile, too,
object of sexual advances by adult men The next day, Gloor tried to interview to check if their boyfriends were being
whom she had met on chat-line services Berman, but he declined to answer her unfaithful.) Waters said that she had
advertised on TV. “I understood what I questions. Not long afterward, he put already deactivated the profile, but the
was looking for—affection,” she said. “But himself on administrative leave. “I was show dramatized and distorted the events,
I didn’t understand why these guys were taking time away from the situation, to making her ruse look more consequen-
answering what I was looking for.” It allow it to work out properly,” he later said. tial. In her notes, Gloor wrote that she’d
wasn’t until she described these sexual That week, a private investigator, Rob- been informed that Waters “took the
encounters to her mental-health coun- ert Slattery, left a message on Gloor’s voice identity of a white female for years.”
sellor that she was told that what had mail. “I have been retained by Mr. Jer- Gloor reviewed messages that Wa-
happened was a crime. Her counsellor emy Berman to gather some information,” ters had sent to Berman, and to family
accompanied her to the police to report he said, in a recording obtained through and friends. A few of the messages con-
the incidents, but charges were never public-records requests. “I would like to tained nude selfies. The sheriff of Ot-
brought; one man was mentally disabled, actually pass some information on to you.” tawa County, Stephen Levorchick, said
and another was untraceable. Slattery sent Gloor footage from Ber- that at one point, as he was walking by
She believed that she had been abused man’s neighbor’s surveillance cameras, Gloor’s desk, she asked him to look at
as a preteen in part because she had gone her computer. On the screen was a naked
through puberty too early. “I was a five- picture of Waters that showed her va-
foot-two, bra-wearing fourth grader with gina. Levorchick said that Gloor told
a deep voice,” she told me. “I didn’t look him, “Look at this. You’ve got to see this.
like a child, and there were men who This is disgusting.” (Citing pending lit-
saw me and didn’t fully acknowledge igation, Gloor declined to comment.)
that I was a child, or didn’t care.” Mon- In October, shortly after Waters had
ifah Lamar, who went through puberty finished working the summer season in
early, too, said, “Sometimes, when peo- Put-in-Bay, Gloor invited her to a sec-
ple see you in that sexualized way, you ond meeting. It had been three months
kind of mold yourself into that.” Waters one of which had been pointed toward since their last interview, and Gloor had
was bullied throughout school: for her the hot tub and showed Waters topless. talked with other guests at Berman’s party
deep voice, for coming out as bisexual, He also told Gloor about an episode of who said that Waters seemed happy to
for being “fast,” as she put it. She wanted the MTV reality show “Catfish” on which have his attention. Gloor said that she
to help troubled kids in her work as an Waters had appeared. When she was was struggling to understand why, given
officer, but Lamar wondered if the job fourteen, she had dated an eighteen-year- Waters’s texts, particularly the one about
also appealed to her because “it was the old, and, after her mother forced her to whether Berman was a sugar daddy, she
symbolism that stuck with her—no one break it off, she secretly stayed in touch had reported the incident. “I guess this
is going to mess with a cop.” with him by creating a fake Myspace is where, literally—I’m not sure where
The emergency medic gave Waters the profile, using the face and name of an- we take this,” Gloor said.
number for a female sergeant, Amy Gloor, other girl. Years later, when Waters was Waters said that the subject of sugar
36 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
daddies came up because her friend had
tried that kind of arrangement. “That’s
her thing,” she said. “I don’t knock her
for it.” She acknowledged that the texts
were confusing, but she said that she had
still been drunk and in shock: “It was me
trying to cope with the whole situation.”
“I mean, you’re a police officer,” Gloor
said. “How do you put that together?
How do you make that look like some-
thing different?”
“I mean, as you know, every rape case
is hard,” Waters responded. “Any sexual-
assault case is hard.” She told Gloor,
“I’ve been through other traumatic ex-
periences, honestly, worse than this.”
But, she asked, “I guess where I’m con-
fused is, where does someone’s impair-
ment come in? So are people saying I
wasn’t impaired?”
“People are saying that you were not “I invited a lot of industry people.”
as impaired as you said that you were,”
Gloor responded.
“I don’t understand how people were
• •
saying that I wasn’t as impaired as I was
when I damn near fell out of the hot come, she moved into public housing. “Thank you for your service to the island.”
tub”—a moment that the surveillance The attorney general’s office told her Levorchick, the Ottawa County sher-
camera had captured. “I know I slipped.” that if she pleaded guilty and gave up iff, told me that he had welcomed the
“You did slip,” Gloor said. “But you her police certification she would not investigation into whether Berman had
caught yourself.” serve any jail time, but she refused. (The been unjustly accused. “In law enforce-
Two days later, a Put-in-Bay officer attorney general declined to comment.) ment, you better have integrity—other-
texted Waters to ask if she was O.K. and Jessica Dress, the mayor of Put-in-Bay, wise you shouldn’t be in this job,” he told
then sent her a screenshot from the docket said that she was shocked by the turn me. “The minute I heard that she lied,
of the Ottawa County Court of Common of events. “To go after her like that— I’m no longer thinking of her as a vic-
Pleas. Waters read it repeatedly, confused. that was unbelievable,” she told me. She tim. My initial thought was anger at her.”
She had been indicted for the felony of sensed that Berman “had been pushing
“making false alarms”—for reporting an his agenda.” he offense of making a false re-
offense despite “knowing that such of-
fense did not occur.” She faced up to eigh-
Berman had an unusual arrangement
in the department: he was said to be
T port—punishable by law in most
states—was originally applied to peo-
teen months in prison. The charge had paid a dollar a year, and he worked mostly ple who had wasted public resources by
been brought by the office of Dave Yost, on the weekends. He told Gloor that he reporting nonexistent fires or catastro-
the attorney general of Ohio. was the liaison between the island com- phes. But beginning in the seventies,
Waters was booked into the Ottawa munity and the police. He used his own when the women’s movement was ad-
County jail, where her department took golf cart when he was on duty—he had vocating for a broader understanding of
many suspects. Her right to carry a fire- put the department logo on the vehicle sexual assault, these statutes began to
arm was immediately suspended. She and equipped it with a siren. In 2018, his be adapted to allegations of rape. Ac-
was released that day under bond con- first year on the force, he had hosted a cording to Joanna Bourke, a British his-
ditions that forbade her to leave the state, ceremony at his house where he won torian of rape, “a large group of femi-
go to a bar, stay out past 10 p.m., or have Officer of the Year. During the week, he nists were turning to the carceral state
contact with her victim. Next to the word lived in Findlay, Ohio, where he co- to prosecute abusers, but abusers were
“victim,” the court magistrate had writ- owned a prosthetics business and worked also turning to it: to prosecute women
ten Jeremy Berman’s name by hand. as a prosthetist, fitting artificial limbs. making these claims.” In “The Word of
In a text to a member of the village a Woman?,” from 2004, the cultural his-
aters was terminated from the council, Berman explained that he was torian Jan Jordan described how “a new
W police department. She had put
herself through the police academy by
“targeted & accused of something that
I did not do,” but that he had been “of-
breed of rape ‘victim’ has been champi-
oned: the falsely accused man.”
working as an Uber driver, but, because ficially cleared.” He sent a screenshot of There are no data, either at the state
of her felony indictment, Uber no lon- the indictment. “So happy with this out- level or nationally, about the number of
ger let her drive. Without a steady in- come,” the council member responded. people who have been prosecuted for
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 37
falsely accusing someone of sexual as- charged with f iling a false report. had sex. One of the men recorded a
sault. Lisa Avalos, a law professor at Grigsby told me, “It is a rural county, video of the encounter without her
Louisiana State University who studies and it doesn’t take very long for people knowledge. Two months after she made
false-rape prosecutions, told me, “It ab- to hear that story and decide, I’m not her report, a pair of detectives came to
solutely happens regularly throughout calling the police if I get raped.” her house and interviewed her alone in
the country, but it’s an ad-hoc system.” The legal system generally puts sex- the basement using interrogation tech-
With the help of a researcher, Cleuci ual intercourse into two categories— niques designed to elicit confessions
de Oliveira, I filed public-records re- rape or not rape—a binary that is at from criminal suspects. They lied to her,
quests in every county in Ohio and found odds with the way these things often telling her they had other video foot-
that, in the past fifteen years, at least unfold: two drunk people with unequal age from that night which didn’t actu-
twenty-five people have been prosecuted power who find themselves sexually in- ally exist. “I want you to really tell me
for the crime, including one who was volved for reasons that are complex and the truth, because I have this on video,”
thirteen years old. Nearly all of them unstated. Such encounters are rarely not a detective named Walberto Cotto said.
pleaded guilty. The only false-alarms confusing. It may be impossible to lo- “I saw what I saw.” He told her, “Peo-
rape case in Ohio known to reach an cate an objective truth about each par- ple don’t get this opportunity.”
appeals court involved a woman who ticipant’s state of mind. And yet the “I know,” she said.
had been convicted of the crime, in 1997, spectre of the lying, manipulative woman “We’re talking about people’s lives,”
after she reported that a man she had is sufficiently pervasive that reports of he said. “And we’re talking about yours
met at a bar had followed her home and assault that lack evidence can get wrongly as well.”
forced her to have sex. She and her al- classified as acts of willful mischief or When she explained that she’d been
leged rapist agreed on most facts of their revenge. The most comprehensive anal- scared in the bathroom, he told her,
encounter except whether the sex was ysis of sexual-assault reports, published “Come on. I’m not—you can’t trick
consensual.The appeals court overturned by the Home Office in the U.K. in 2005, me.” He said, “In the bathroom, you
the woman’s conviction and questioned found that, in a sample collected during pulled your pants down. You said yes.”
the “wisdom and fairness” of charging a fifteen-year period, the police had la- “Uh-huh,” she said quietly.
someone with making false alarms when belled about eight per cent of rape com- “And it’s not that far-fetched. It’s ac-
the crucial question—whether an en- plaints “false,” but often for shaky rea- tually common.” He went on, “If you
counter was rape—“depends on whose sons, such as the complainant being think you’re the only college girl that
version of the event is believed.” (The inconsistent or mentally ill. Jordan, the went with athletes . . . let’s nip what got
court wrote that the police “believed author of “The Word of a Woman?,” out of control now.” He asked, “Were
from the outset that [the woman] was told me that even when a complaint is you forced to have sex?”
lying and proceeded to investigate a false the circumstances that give rise to “No, but I would consider it—I would
claim against her rather than the re- the report rarely indicate malice. She consider it peer-pressured into it.”
ported rape.”) said, “Women with past abuse histories “So what? I mean, so what? I mean,
False-allegation prosecutions offer a may conflate past trauma with present come on. We’re eighteen years old.”
response to the imperative, popularized experiences, so the falseness comes from He told her, “So let’s stop the peer-
by the #MeToo movement, to believe a place of genuine confusion and sig- pressure nonsense, because they didn’t
women. News of the cases often circu- nals high vulnerability, not vindictive- force you.”
lates on men’s-rights Web sites, provid- ness.” We expect victims to have un- “No, but I wasn’t comfortable
ing a counternarrative: women are vin- blemished histories, in part because with it—”
dictive and desperate for attention, and sexual violence is addressed at the indi- “There’s a big difference between
believing them is a waste of public re- vidual level, where, for good reason, the being comfortable—” the other detec-
sources. Nancy Grigsby, who has worked burden of proof is high; less attention tive said.
for forty years in organizations that is paid to the social and structural rea- “Being comfortable and being forced,”
address violence against women, said sons that people become victims—the Cotto continued. “And if you want to
she has observed that, in the wake of imbalances of power that shape identi- say that you’re comfortable because you
#MeToo, “the eye rolls are bigger now, ties over a lifetime. don’t want people to think you’re less
like ‘Here they come with their libera- In some cases, women are accused than, you know, less than a wholesome
tion stuff.’ ” Last year, in the county of lying about rape if they are thought girl or whatever.” He asked her, “You
where Grigsby lives, in Ohio, a woman to be promiscuous—an assumption that went in there to have sex?”
reported to the police that her ex-boy- overlooks how this reputation can con- “Yes, that’s what I assumed at that
friend had raped her and then forced tribute to a social context in which their point,” she responded.
her to go to stores to return gifts that protests may be ignored. In 2016, in Con- “You’re the one who did it,” he said.
he had given her. But when video foot- necticut, an eighteen-year-old named “Not a third person. Not a person out-
age at a mall showed that the woman Nikki Yovino had just started college side of you who is Nikki.”
did not appear the way the police imag- when she reported that she’d been raped She agreed, but said the situation
ined a rape victim to look, the police by two football players. She had met was so upsetting that she cried when
dropped their investigation against the them at a party, and ten minutes later it was over.
ex-boyfriend. Instead, the woman was they all went into the bathroom and “I’m going to tell you when you
38 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
SKETCHBOOK BY ROZ CHAST

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 39

 lieved she had been the victim of a crime,
thirteen years earlier. Tovar had been
raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. “I was very
naïve—the type of loner nerd who stayed
at home writing poetry and sending let-
ters to sick people in the congregation,”
she told me. In 2008, a year after leaving
the Jehovah’s Witnesses, she went to a
networking event, at a bar and grill in
Findlay called the Landing Pad, for peo-
ple in the assisted-living industry. She
had had one or two drinks when a man
who she assumed was a bartender handed
her one more. Suddenly, she felt more
drunk than she’d ever been in her life.
She didn’t know the man’s full name, but
he guided her out of the bar and drove
her to his office, which had a large bed
in a finished basement where they quickly
had sex. Then he returned her to the bar.
She remembered little from the encoun-
ter except that when they had left the
bar he had told her, “I want to hurry and
get you back here before anyone notices
you’re missing.” She said, “Those words
kept ringing in my ears, and the more I
repeated them the more I realized what
happened was very calculated.”
A few months later, Tovar took her
father to get his foot fitted for a pros-
thetic limb. When the prosthetist en-
tered the exam room in a white lab coat,
she said, she recognized his face: he was
the man from the bar. It seemed to her
Sharon Tovar said, “I came forward when they were about to try Arica Waters.” that he was avoiding eye contact. “It was
as though he were looking through me,
started crying,” he said, “because I know lawyer, Ryan O’Neill, told me, “When like I didn’t exist,” she said. The prosthe-
this for a fact.”The real reason she cried, you’re a young lady who has made a re- tist was Jeremy Berman.
he said, was that she thought a male port to a trusted authority figure and he At the time, Tovar, who was recently
friend would judge her for what she didn’t believe you, why would you—re- separated, was raising four children on
had done. gardless of your own feelings about guilt her own. “I didn’t have time to sit around
“No,” she said. “I was upset at the or innocence—face the risk of going in and dwell on something that I only re-
situation.” front of another group of strangers and membered the half of,” she told me. As
“That you created?” ask them to believe you?” O’Neill sensed her children grew older, she became ac-
“What happened,” she said. that law enforcement in Connecticut had tive on Facebook groups for former Je-
“That you created?” wanted to send a message that women hovah’s Witnesses who were struggling
“Yeah.” can’t get away with lying about rape, but with depression and with experiences of
“Upset over your embarrassment,” he didn’t understand why Yovino’s case childhood sexual abuse. Through letters
the other detective said. had become the vehicle. “It’s like, Is this and petitions to lawmakers, she advo-
She was charged with making a false really the best you can come up with?” cated for bills to extend the statute of
report, a misdemeanor, and with “tam- he said. “A scenario where there is a gen- limitations for reporting sexual assaults.
pering with or fabricating physical evi- uine perception from both sides that may In 2021, after years of encouraging other
dence,” a felony—for requesting a rape lead to opposite results?” women to go to the police, Tovar de-
exam that, the state said, she didn’t ac- cided that she should do so, too.
tually need. She pleaded guilty to the n June, 2021, Sharon Tovar, a white Tovar told her story to a Hancock
misdemeanor, and the prosecution agreed
to drop the felony charge. Nevertheless,
I forty-seven-year-old home-health
aide, called the sheriff’s office in Han-
County detective, but after a while she
became anxious that she wasn’t hearing
she was punished with half a year in cock County, about seventy miles from any updates about her complaint. As
prison and three years of probation. Her Put-in-Bay, and reported that she be- she waited for news, she searched on-
40 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
line to see what had become of Ber- “Doesn’t ring a bell at all,” he said. “I’ve Then she e-mailed Waters’s attorney to
man. At that point, there had been only never spiked anyone’s drink. I haven’t say that she had spoken with two other
one article that mentioned Arica Wa- done anything of that sort.” alleged victims of Berman. She wrote,
ters, a brief summary of her indictment, Berman told Seem, “There’s also “Their stories are similar and validate
seven months earlier, and Berman’s name ramifications for false allegations, too. each other’s claims.”
was not included. But Tovar did find I hope you’re looking at that.” He
an article in the Sandusky Register not- warned, “Moving forward, unfortunately, he third woman, whom I’ll call Brid-
ing that Berman had won “detective of
the year.” The article also described the
this is a serious felony accusation.”
After the meeting, Slattery, the pri-
T get, had gone to the police and got
a rape exam in 2008, but several days
problem of unsolved roofie rapes in Put- vate investigator, sent an e-mail to Seem later she decided that she did not want
in-Bay. “My mind was reeling,” she told proposing that Tovar and Waters were to “pursue this matter any further,” Le-
me. “I was, like, What the hell? He’s a conspiring. The two women had been vorchick, the sheriff, wrote. “She told me
doctor during the week and a detective in California at roughly the same time— she believed that she had too much al-
on roofie island on the weekends?” She evidence, he said, that they may have coholic beverage to drink on the date of
called the editor of the paper, Matt been planning their allegations in con- the incident and that she believed that
Westerhold, to ask for more informa- cert. “They both seem to be professional she could have been an active participant
tion. She said, “I wasn’t planning on victims that use and abuse people and in the sexual behavior, although it is quite
telling him, but the next thing you know strain the justice system with these false unlike her. Especially since she has had
I was, like, ‘This is what he did to me.’” complaints,” Slattery wrote. The areas no sexual activity for over one year.” She
Westerhold had always been curious of California that the women had vis- asked Levorchick to tell her the results
about Berman’s arrangement with the ited were more than three hundred miles of her urine test, because she was con-
Put-in-Bay police department. “I had apart, but Seem took the allegations se- cerned that a drug had been put in her
never heard of such a thing,” he told me. riously enough to request that the Han- drink, but it’s unclear if the test was ever
“It didn’t sit well with me.” He wanted cock County prosecutor issue a sub- completed. Seven months after Bridget’s
to read Tovar’s complaint, so he called poena for Tovar’s phone records. The report, the urine analyst called Levor-
Levorchick, the sheriff of Ottawa County, subpoena was granted, but the records chick to ask what he should do with her
mistakenly thinking that the incident revealed no communication between sample. The analyst wrote in his notes,
had happened there. Levorchick assumed the two women. “He told me not to proceed with anal-
that Westerhold was asking about Wa- Not long afterward, Seem sent his as- ysis of evidence since she doesn’t want
ters, and he explained that her rape com- sault report to the county prosecutor, to prosecute.”
plaint wasn’t credible and that she had who determined that Berman should not Bridget signed a form stating, “Of
been charged. be charged, because of insufficient evi- my own free will, and after careful con-
Westerhold called Tovar to share the dence, and Seem closed the case. When sideration, [I] choose to no longer pur-
news that she wasn’t the only woman Tovar received a copy of her closed-case sue the case.” But a statement that she
who had complained about Berman’s sex- report, she saw a reference to a “second had written by hand contradicted the
ual behavior. Tovar told me, “I don’t even investigation from 2008” that had “some description of her as an “active partici-
know if a God really exists, but the fact similarities to this one.” She called pant.” She wrote that she had been at a
that I came forward when they were about Westerhold and said that it appeared as bar on an island near Put-in-Bay when
to try Arica Waters—and no one knew if a third woman had accused Berman she began talking with Berman, who of-
about it, because they had all kept it of sexual assault. Westerhold was skep- fered her a job and then invited her to
quiet—makes me think maybe there is.” tical. “It was almost like ‘I don’t want to his condominium on the mainland,
know,’” he said. “This is a rabbit hole. It where he gave her a drink. “The next
everal weeks later, a Hancock County just goes deeper and deeper.” thing she remembers is ‘coming to’ while
S sergeant named Jason Seem went to
Berman’s prosthetics office to ask about
Westerhold sometimes consults a
woman named Tracy Thom, who is
in the hot tub,” Levorchick’s report said.
She was naked. A friend of Berman’s
Tovar’s complaint. “She thinks that you known in the area as a kind of volun- was having sex with her, and Berman
spiked one of her drinks and brought teer victims’ advocate—she began the was touching her sexually. “I broke down
her back here and sexually assaulted her,” work after struggling to get a restrain- I began to cry really hard I was telling
he said, according to a recording of their ing order against an ex-boyfriend. Al- Jeremy that this is not me,” she wrote.
interview. (Tovar wasn’t sure that her though Thom likes to refer to herself “I would never do this.”
drink was spiked, but she remarked that as a “dumb blonde with an iPad,” she Berman declined to be interviewed,
she didn’t understand how a few drinks is a rigorous investigator, who, having though he did say that all three allega-
had made her feel “that out of it.”) seen how hard it is to navigate the legal tions are false. Bridget also chose not to
Berman groaned softly. “Never hap- system alone, tries to help others in her speak with me, saying that the idea caused
pened,” he said. free time. She read through Tovar’s rec- her distress. James VanEerten, Ottawa
Berman did confirm that he had a ords, concluded that there was indeed County’s prosecutor, said that he recently
bedroom in his office basement and that a third woman, uncovered the woman’s discussed the case with Bridget and that
he’d once co-owned the Landing Pad. name and number, and then called her. she did not want it reëxamined. He said,
But he didn’t know who Tovar was. They talked for more than an hour. “She told me, ‘I was sexually assaulted. I
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 41
know I was sexually assaulted. But I made dragged through the mud on all their to acknowledge what had happened and
a conscious decision not to pursue the past sexual history,” he said. Referring to create an internal record, in case the
case. I still stand by that.’ ” VanEerten to Tovar, he wrote, “She is 100% lying behavior escalated or other women came
was made uneasy, however, by evidence to support the sexual assault narrative.” forward. The report was not public, but,
suggesting that the sheriff’s department four days later, the defense attorney re-
had mishandled her allegation, and, after lthough the phone records did not ceived a phone call informing him that
he asked the court to consider appoint-
ing a special prosecutor, an investigation
A uphold the theory that Tovar and
Waters had planned their complaints
he was the subject of a complaint. He
called a friend, a retired homicide detec-
was launched into possible irregularities together, Slattery, the private investiga- tive, and asked him to look into the re-
in her case. (Levorchick denies that Ber- tor, argued that there may have been port; after learning the details, the de-
man received special treatment.) another channel of communication: he fense attorney called the chief of the
Tovar created a petition on Change. suggested that Waters’s defense attor- Special Units Division in the Lucas
org to demand that Yost, Ohio’s attor- ney, Sarah Anjum, had been a kind of County prosecutor’s office and requested
ney general, stand on the “right side mastermind, coördinating the reports an investigation into whether Anjum
of sexual assault.” She wrote, “Three against Berman. He told Seem about had lied. In an interview with two in-
women who do NOT know each other, the episode of “Catfish” that featured vestigators, the defense attorney said,
who live in different cities, who have Waters. “The entire history of Arica “I’m not telling you guys how to do your
never talked to each other, but all 3 Waters makes it very believable that she job at all or what the conclusion should
women have accused the same man.” could and would attempt to help her be, but there needs to be a consequence
She posted a glamorous photograph of criminal defense,” Slattery wrote. for what she’s doing to me and my fam-
herself—she was wearing makeup and Anjum had never spoken with Tovar. ily, and I don’t know what it is. I’m hope-
her hair was windswept—next to Wa- She was alarmed by the allegation and ful that you guys can figure out some
ters’s mug shot. “I had a big old grin on the possibility of a private investigator way to show that she’s lying.” He also
my face,” she said. “And Arica Waters delving into her life. She had taken on said, “She is either a liar, crazy, or both.”
had a forlorn look and she was in an Waters’s case, pro bono, because she, Anjum was called in for an interview
orange jumpsuit.” Tovar didn’t think too, had once been accused of filing a with the investigators, but she was never
that her case had been handled well, false report. “I wanted to be there for charged. Still, to avoid encounters with
but, “when I saw the two pictures, it re- Arica in the ways that no one had been the attorney, she stopped working on
ally hit me—this is how a white woman there for me,” she told me. cases in her own county and went a year
is treated, and this is how a Black woman In 2017, when Anjum was thirty-two, with barely any income. In an anony-
is treated,” she said. she had gone to the Toledo Police De- mous article on Medium, she wrote that,
In an e-mail to the prosecutor, Ber- partment to report that a prominent local after she was groped the first time, “I
man complained that he was being defense attorney had repeatedly groped did the sane thing—absolutely nothing.
treated worse than a rape victim. “They her. She told the police that she did not I knew that he was the more powerful
don’t let rape victims be slandered and want to press charges—she just wanted player, and reporting meant additional
harm to myself.” But, even after calcu-
lating the risks and benefits of report-
ing, she had never expected to be put
in the category of potential criminal
suspect. “I’m really not asking for much,”
she wrote. “I would like my friends and
colleagues to have backbones. I would
like to matter. I would like to be able to
work again.”
Now she worried that Slattery would
dig into her own history, she said, and
“use it, because one way to hurt Arica’s
case is to take out her legal team.” She
considered removing herself from the
case. “I didn’t understand how Slattery
could call in with these ridiculous al-
legations that I was somehow the ring-
leader of these women and that it was
enough to get an investigation going,”
she said. But she also felt that she had
a duty to see the trial through. “I just
kept thinking, It ought not to be me
defending Arica, because I understand
“I told you not to wear the bear hat.” this feeling of trying to deal with your
own trauma while trying to protect your decided to stop holding his commis- that she’s providing the bottom line, ‘I
own reputation and ability to work,” sion, a requirement to maintain active can let you use my body for your sexual
she said. “I felt like it couldn’t be me— status as a police officer. Berman had pleasure.’” The sentence expressed “no
but also, having walked this path, it had since found a different department in joy, no materialism, no attraction,” she
to be me.” Ohio to hold his commission. said. “There’s just obligation.”
Anjum filed a motion asking that Recalling the encounter with Waters, She acquitted Waters, saying that it
Tovar and Bridget be permitted to tes- Berman said that he hadn’t made her appeared as if Berman had been “groom-
tify at the trial, as evidence that Berman any drinks, and that she wasn’t drunk at ing her to do what he wants.” She added
had a “modus operandi of assaulting in- all. “She was clear, concise, articulate,” that Berman’s account of events had
toxicated women.” In response, the state’s he said. “She knew exactly what she was been shaped by a “built-in bias be-
attorney, Drew Wood, wrote, “There is doing.” Once they were in the apart- cause . . . well, let’s put it this way: Mr.
a time and a place for JB”—Berman’s ment, he said, Waters had unbuckled his Berman can only tell one story, because
initials—“to be held accountable for shorts and performed oral sex on him. the other story makes him a person who
sexual assaults he may have committed A lawyer named Laura Dunn had could be charged with a serious first-
in 2008. But it is not the Defendant’s joined Waters’s defense team a few weeks degree felony.”
trial for Making False Alarms.” The re- before the trial, on a pro-bono basis, and Wood texted Berman, who was not
quest was rejected. she asked Berman why he had picked in the courtroom: “Not guilty.”
In a pleading, the state explained that up Waters at her bunkhouse for “round “Fuck,” Berman responded.
the question before the court had little two.” She said, “She actually did not want “Remember, when you weren’t charged
to do with Berman’s own behavior. “The to meet you, did she?” with rape, you won your battle,” Wood
primary issue,” Wood wrote, “will be “I did not get that tone or that feel- encouraged him. “This was something
Defendant’s knowledge—did she know ing,” Berman said. different.”
that she had not been raped?” “So she didn’t say, ‘I’m not feeling
well. I need to sleep before work’?” aters has never met the other two

W aters waived her right to a jury,

and a bench trial was held in De-
“She did say that.”
“So she was declining,” Dunn said.
W women who made accusations
against Berman, but she feels a sense of
cember, 2021. Tovar and Thom, the vic- “You call it declining—I didn’t take camaraderie. “I think we are all kind of
tims’ advocate, sat in the courtroom, to it that way,” he said. He added that, after doing the same thing—waiting for each
show their support for Waters, though having sex, he told Waters he’d had a other to make that step,” she told me.
they had never spoken to her. “I felt vasectomy. “On her face, you could see Tovar is still trying to get her case re-
so bad that she had to sit there all prim just the disappointment,” he said. “I felt opened, though she is unlikely to suc-
and proper with her hair just so—pulled she had ulterior—” ceed. Westerhold, of the Sandusky Reg-
back, straightened,” Tovar told me. “We’re not here for feelings,” the ister, said, “I keep telling her, ‘You’ve done
“She couldn’t just be herself without judge, Janet Burnside, interrupted. your job—none of this would have hap-
being judged.” Two former Put-in-Bay officers who pened without you. They thought they
The state argued that the government had been at Berman’s party testified: one could run Arica Waters out of town.’”
had wasted $14,340.58 investigating Wa- described Waters as having been blacked Waters has applied to about a dozen
ters’s allegation and that Berman had in- out, and the other said that she was only police departments throughout Ohio.
curred more than twenty-five thousand moderately drunk. Amy Gloor, who had When Lamar, her friend, learned that
dollars in fees for his lawyer and private raised the possibility of bringing charges she planned to return to law enforce-
investigator. (In an e-mail to Wood, Ber- for false-rape accusations in at least two ment, “I was, like, Girl, what the hell?”
man said that the total was actually higher, previous cases, acknowledged that Wa- But she also told her, “I get it. That’s
because he hadn’t included the costs of ters had not used the term “rape.” “She what you went to school for—that’s your
“private aviation to handle the allega- felt coerced,” Gloor said, explaining that dream, your life plan, your sense of self.”
tion.”) Wood told the judge, “The de- Waters had felt intimidated by “Jeremy With an indictment on her record,
fendant knew she had not been raped. Berman’s power, money, and what he had Waters has struggled to secure a new
She knew it in the moment. She knew over the department.” job. She feels cautious asking for refer-
it afterwards, and she never forgot it.” Burnside deliberated for thirty min- ences, knowing that the names of peo-
He said her texts showed that she was utes. When she returned, she said, “I was ple she admires could somehow be sul-
after Berman’s money—“whether by be- floored yesterday when I heard that the lied by association. “I need to be honest
coming a sugar baby or perhaps through defendant did not accuse Jeremy Ber- and say, ‘This is what your name will
some future civil liability for quid-pro- man using the word ‘rape.’” She went be attached to,’ ” she said. She is re-
quo sexual harassment.” on, “I’m not sure she was altogether clear minded of the way she felt in her early
On the first day of the trial, Berman, what exactly had happened, but certainly twenties when, after years of being bul-
who has short brown hair and a bulky by the time she doesn’t want to go with lied, it finally stopped. She tries to re-
chest and neck, testified. After his ad- him for round two—and yet says ‘I can assure herself with the thought that,
ministrative leave in the summer of service you though’—she was getting a when a department finally hires her, it
2020, he had tried to return to his job, fair indication of what this was all about.” will be a sign that “this time you’re going
but the chief of the Put-in-Bay police She said, “Look at this interesting way to have my back.” 
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 43
 LETTER FROM EL SALVADOR

STRONGMAN OF
THE PEOPLE
How President Nayib Bukele rode an
authoritarian crackdown to become Latin
America’s most popular leader.
BY JONATHAN BLITZER

Outside El Penalito, the little jail. El Salvador has long been ravaged by gang violence. In recent months, Bukele’s government
44 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
 l Penalito, the little jail, is a squat

E concrete structure on a busy

commercial street in San Salva-
dor, the capital of El Salvador. On the
morning of April 7th, a Thursday, fifty
women were lined up along its front
wall, wearing surgical masks and hold-
ing umbrellas against the sun. They’d
been gathering there all week. It was
nine-thirty, and about ninety degrees.
Most of the women had been waiting
since eight to reach a small window
where a police official shared informa-
tion on the whereabouts of their sons
and husbands.
Toward the back of the line, wear-
ing a long denim skirt and a red T-shirt,
was a middle-aged woman with dark,
lined skin and deep-set eyes. Her name
was Yanira, and her son, she said, was
a twenty-year-old with autism. He’d
been arrested three days earlier, at home,
where the two had been working
throughout the pandemic, cleaning and
reselling discarded plastic sleeves that
hold bottles of hand sanitizer. Yanira
rarely leaves him alone, but she had to
run an errand. When she returned, thirty
minutes later, the police had taken him
away. “Sometimes he’ll wander into the
street without his shoes,” she told me.
“All the neighbors know him. But some-
one who doesn’t might think he’s a crim-
inal, or crazy.”
A week before, members of El Sal-
vador’s largest gang, MS-13, had mur-
dered eighty-seven people in three days.
The country has long been ravaged by
gang violence, but these killings were
unusual in their ruthlessness. People
with no ties to crime were targeted: a
fruit seller, a surf instructor, a home-
maker, a cobbler. The gangsters went
after everybody, but their message was
directed at one person—the country’s
President, Nayib Bukele, who has prom-
ised to radically reduce crime and to
change El Salvador’s image abroad. Gang
members left a corpse on the road lead-
ing to Surf City, a stretch of beachfront
real estate on the Pacific Coast which
Bukele had refurbished and renamed to
attract international tourists.
In recent decades, every Salvadoran
President has contended with the gangs.
One administration sent soldiers to poor
neighborhoods and filled the country’s
prisons, under a policy it called mano
has declared a state of emergency and detained some fifty thousand people. dura, or “strong hand”; another reprised
PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRED RAMOS THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 45
it as super mano dura. When Bukele was ers without this assistance eat only in- in Latin America and embodied a new
the mayor of San Salvador, he called termittently.) Yanira’s daughter returned national beginning. At his inauguration,
these responses “immoral” and “imprac- just in time to press a receipt for three his heavily pregnant wife stood beside
tical.” But now he declared war. Just after meals into her mother’s hand before they him as he instructed crowds of ecstatic
midnight on the second day of the ho- reached the window. Farther down the voters to raise a hand along with him
micide spike, the National Assembly, block, a group of soldiers armed with ri- after he swore the oath of office. Three
which Bukele’s party controls, instituted a fles had stopped a public bus and were of his recent predecessors had been ei-
“state of exception,” under which author- ordering the male passengers to step out ther arrested or indicted, and all of them
ities could arrest anyone they considered and lift up their shirts. They were check- came from El Salvador’s two main po-
suspicious. Detainees were ing for tattoos that might litical parties, which had governed with-
not entitled to a legal de- indicate gang membership. out interruption for more than two de-
fense. The right to gather in As the official at the cades. It had been a period of chronic
groups larger than two was window examined her son’s poverty, violence, and mass emigration.
suspended, and all minors records, Yanira stood ram- “If you left to live in the United States
would be tried as adults. On rod straight. Suddenly, she and returned twenty years later, you’d
his Twitter account, Bukele, recoiled; when she turned find the same politicians,” Amparo Mar-
who is forty-one years old away from the window, her roquín, a professor at the Central Amer-
and has an approval rating eyes were wide. “Izalco” was ican University, in San Salvador, told me.
of more than eighty per cent, all she could say, and she “They were dinosaurs.” Bukele, who’d
shared a running tally of the staggered off, sobbing. It defected from one of the main parties,
arrests that followed, along was the name of a maxi- pitched himself as an anti-corruption re-
with scabrous commentary, posting pho- mum-security prison that houses hard- former. His campaign slogan—“There’s
tographs of tattooed men in handcuffs ened gangsters. Her son had been sent enough money to go around as long as
and underwear (“little angels”), some of there earlier that morning. no one steals”—is a line that he has used
whom appeared to have been roughed for almost as long as he’s been in public
up (“He must have been eating fries with hile the women waited outside life. He began his career at the age of
ketchup”). Critics of the new policy—
whether common citizens, journalists,
W El Penalito, another crowd was
gathering, at the Miami Beach Con-
thirty, as the mayor of a town of fewer
than ten thousand people. After a sin-
or foreign governments—supported “the vention Center. It consisted of inves- gle term, he ran for mayor of San Sal-
terrorists,” he wrote. tors and tech entrepreneurs, who were vador. Fresh off that job, at thirty-seven,
Yanira’s son was one of six thousand there to see Bukele, a keynote speaker he was elected President.
people arrested in the first week. By the at an annual Bitcoin conference. Last Bukele, who wears leather jackets
time I met her, the total had risen to summer, he announced that El Salva- and backward baseball caps and has
about nine thousand. A month and a dor would be the first country in the a beard, invokes Alexander the Great
half later, it would reach thirty thou- world to accept bitcoin as legal tender. and Steve Jobs, and his brand is meant
sand. Bukele conceded that one per cent Within a few months, there were some to be a bit of both: a potentate with an
of the roundups might result in wrong- two hundred special A.T.M.s set up anti-establishment streak. At the United
ful arrests, but the public could only take across the country, and the government Nations General Assembly in 2019, he
his word for that figure. “As we con- had launched an app, called the Chivo took a selfie from the dais, mid-address,
tinue arresting more gangsters, more Wallet, on which each Salvadoran was reminding the world leaders in atten-
people are going to protest,” Bukele said. given thirty dollars’ worth of bitcoin. dance that a “couple of images on Insta-
“Because there will always be a mother At the conference, Bitcoiners, techno- gram can have a greater impact than
of a gangster, a family member, or a utopians, and libertarians assembled to any speech in this assembly.” Social
friend who isn’t going to like that we hear about a series of ambitious proj- media, he once said, “has shown us what
are cleansing that cancer.” ects that Bukele had been promising people really are.” Before, “everybody
Yanira was joined in the line by her ever since. They would have to wait a was pretending.”
daughter, who’d been missing work at a little longer. The conference, Bukele During the years of his ascent, the
clothing shop to help locate her brother. wrote in an apologetic note, was “one public heard from him constantly—on
The previous day, the daughter told me, of the biggest celebrations of the power Twitter and Facebook, and in a contin-
they’d spent six hours visiting court- of freedom, decentralization, and ual procession of ribbon cuttings and
houses, searching for him. “We’re not human ingenuity in its fight against other public appearances. As the mayor
the kind of people who have any expe- ignorance, centralization, and dogma.” of San Salvador, he cleaned up parts of
rience in these sorts of places,” she said. But, owing to the state of exception, the city’s ramshackle downtown; reno-
She crossed the street while Yanira held he needed to stay put. “Everything hap- vated a trio of historic plazas; opened a
their place in line. A bodega in front of pens for a reason,” he went on. “Hope- high-end market, which has escalators
El Penalito offers food and hygiene pack- fully we’ll be able to learn soon why and rooftop restaurants, in addition to
ages for detainees, ranging from a single this had to happen this way.” a library equipped with computers and
meal ($2.50) to basic toiletries ($7.00) or When Bukele was elected President, play areas for children. At one point, he
a change of underwear ($15.50). (Prison- in 2019, he was the youngest head of state unveiled a twenty-four-million-dollar
46 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
public-works project, called 100% Ilu- ticians who robbed public coffers, the the military, trained and advised its of-
minado, to install lamps on every street gangs that sowed terror, the institutions ficer corps, and covered up their worst
corner. “You can call it PR if you want that never worked. “It’s a kind of revan- abuses. For twelve years, the guerrillas
to be a little cynical. But I’m talking chism,” Juan Antonio Durán, a judge, fought the U.S.-backed government to
about inspiration,” he told the Virginia told me. He was demoted last year, after a stalemate, and some seventy-five thou-
Quarterly Review, in 2016. “I’m talking criticizing the President for forcing a sand civilians died. Eighty-five per cent
about something sublime.” third of the federal judiciary into early of the killings were committed by the
Usually, public adoration dims as the retirement. By then, at least fifty gov- military and the security forces, which
realities of governing set in, but Bukele’s ernment officials and high-profile crit- massacred large numbers of the rural
support has grown. He is now the most ics had had to leave the country, accord- poor for sympathizing with the guer-
popular leader in Latin America. In ing to Revista Factum, a Salvadoran news rillas. Bukele was ten when peace ac-
part, this is the result of his war on the magazine. Bukele, after many accusa- cords were signed, in 1992. Nearly a quar-
gangs, his handling of the pandemic, tions that he was concentrating power, ter of the Salvadoran population ended
public-infrastructure projects, an in- changed his Twitter bio to “the coolest up moving to the United States.
crease in the minimum wage, and low dictator in the world.” A member of his Bukele grew up in San Salvador, as a
gas prices. It is also the product of a party identified himself on social media privileged outsider. His father was a Mus-
mammoth propaganda campaign. But, as “Minister of Trolls.” Bukele’s voters lim businessman of Palestinian descent,
more profoundly, Bukele has succeeded expected him to have enemies, a mem- who opened the country’s first McDon-
in generating a palpable sense of col- ber of Congress told me. “What the ald’s franchise, ran a textile company,
lective expectancy and pride: the coun- President is selling the people is revenge.” helped build four mosques, and owned
try is finally getting its act together. a public-relations firm. He was also a
The United States, the European ll through the nineteen-eighties, polygamist with six wives. Bukele, who
Union, and the Organization of Amer- A El Salvador was a place of obses- has three brothers and seven half sib-
ican States have criticized Bukele’s most sive U.S. interest. Ronald Reagan said lings, went to a bilingual private school.
audacious acts as President. These in- that it was “on the front line of the bat- Most of his well-heeled classmates shared
clude threatening members of Congress tle that is really aimed at the very heart their families’ conservative outlooks. But
with troops, and firing Supreme Court of the Western Hemisphere, and even- Bukele’s father was a man of the left and
magistrates and replacing them with tually at us.” When fighting broke out a supporter of the guerrilla forces, called
judges who have allowed Bukele to run between the country’s right-wing gov- the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Lib-
for a second term despite a constitu- ernment and leftist guerrillas, the U.S. eración Nacional, or the F.M.L.N., which
tional ban. But the foreign criticism has sided with the government; it armed became one of the two major political
enabled Bukele to unify Salvadorans
against a common enemy, and has put
him, and his country of six and a half
million people, on the map. “Why are
they so concerned about a country so
small?” he has said. In 2021, Time in-
cluded Bukele in its list of the world’s
most influential people, alongside Na-
rendra Modi, Donald Trump, and Naf-
tali Bennett. “Ok boomers,” he recently
tweeted, in English, at members of the
U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Com-
mittee. “You have 0 jurisdiction on a
sovereign and independent nation. We
are not your colony.”
For much of his career, Bukele has
basked in the limelight of the press: vis-
its to Washington, to address the Amer-
icas Society and the Heritage Founda-
tion, interviews with Jorge Ramos and
Ben Smith. When the coverage turned
critical, however, he stopped engaging
with international journalists. I was no
exception. As one of his advisers put it,
“Why talk to you when he can speak
directly to the people?”
Bukele may represent the future, but
he talks a lot about the past—the poli- “I’ve been extra nice to people—I should be getting some thank-you notes.”
parties after the war. Muslim leftists stood paigning. He erected a large stone sign you’d want to get something done, and
out in Salvadoran high society. In the with a white “N” engraved in a circle at when you’d go in to meet with the mayor
late nineties, after Al Qaeda gained in- the entrance to Nuevo Cuscatlán. He you’d find a long table full of council
ternational notoriety, the Bukele family also opened a twenty-four-hour medi- members, lots of bureaucracy. With
was stopped by customs agents at cal clinic, a library, and a community cen- Bukele, you’d sit down at the same long
the airport because of their suspicious- ter. Each month, seniors received a free table, but it would just be him with an
sounding name, according to a deep in- basket of food. Bukele vowed to donate assistant. On the one hand, it was great
vestigative profile by the journalist Ga- his entire salary to a new program fund- because it was just one guy. On the
briel Labrador. If the incident rattled ing grants for students to take classes in other, you’d leave thinking, Uh-oh, it’s
Bukele, he refused to let on. Popular English and computer science.The town’s just one guy.”
enough to be elected president of his debt ballooned, but his popularity soon Bukele came to regard any investi-
high-school class, he captioned his year- eclipsed that of the Party elders. gation into his leadership as a personal
book photograph “Class terrorist.” The F.M.L.N. encouraged him to run attack. Edwin Segura, a pollster and a
Bukele’s political apprenticeship be- for mayor of San Salvador, a job widely political columnist, told me, “Anytime
gan after he dropped out of college and seen as a stepping stone to the Presi- the media put out something question-
was managing a night club in down- dency. “The leader of the Party told ev- ing his accomplishments, it was because
town San Salvador. He took over his eryone that Nayib’s candidacy would get they were against him.” Bukele started
family’s public-relations firm, whose key us two or three more seats in Congress,” building an alternative media landscape:
client was the F.M.L.N. The Presidency a former Party official told me. “They all TV programs, a network of trolls on
and the Assembly were controlled by thought that it would help them.” Twitter, an army of YouTubers, and sev-
the Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, Bukele, who felt his power growing, eral publications that posted pro-Bukele
or ARENA, which was founded, in the shut the Party out of his campaign, re- stories on Facebook.
early eighties, by a member of a right- lying instead on family members and Bukele’s portrayal of himself as a con-
wing death squad. The Party catered old friends. One of them was Ernesto trarian truth-teller was effective, but it
primarily to the business élite, but its Castro, his chief secretary in Nuevo Cus- was a falling out with the F.M.L.N. that
members included ex-military men and catlán, who now serves as the president turned him into a political juggernaut.
religious conservatives. An accumula- of the National Assembly. Another was In the fall of 2017, an argument broke
tion of corruption scandals sank ARENA, his younger brother Karim. In public, out in a San Salvador city-council meet-
in 2009, allowing the F.M.L.N. to gain Nayib was polished and poised, but in ing over the issuance of a building per-
power, which it held on to for the next private meetings he tended to be dis- mit for a revitalization project. Accord-
decade. In 2011, Bukele launched a self- tracted and jittery. He checked his phone ing to reporting by Labrador, Bukele
funded bid for mayor of Nuevo Cus- constantly, drank four Red Bulls a day, accused the council’s legal director, a
catlán, an old ARENA stronghold out- kept odd hours, and struggled to focus lawyer with the F.M.L.N., of conspiring
side the capital. “Don’t get involved in on individual tasks. A former associate against him. At one point, she claimed,
politics,” his father had once warned told me, “If an idea occurs to him, and he threw an apple at her and said, “Take
him, according to an interview recov- he thinks it’s brilliant, he does it. Then, this apple, you witch!”
ered by the investigative newspaper El afterward, if it’s illegal? Oops!” Karim The incident led to a formal vote ex-
Faro. “Politicians who lose are . . . thrown would sit quietly before making calm, pelling Bukele from the Party, but the
away. You’ll be damaged goods.” authoritative pronouncements. “It wasn’t F.M.L.N. was divided. “The leaders
But Bukele already had a plan: he a meeting unless Karim was there,” the were also scared that Bukele might re-
would run on the F.M.L.N. ticket while former Party official said. Together, the sign,” the official told me. “He was so
downplaying his associations with the brothers reprised the high points of the popular. He had this huge reach on so-
Party. “I did not live the war,” he said in Nuevo Cuscatlán campaign—the same cial media. The breaking point was when
a television interview during the cam- colors, the same insignia (“N”), and the he wanted to be President. They used
paign. “I’m of the postwar generation, a same slogan (“New Ideas”). By the time the apple to cover it up.”
generation that has new ideas.” His pol- Bukele won, he had developed a recog- Shortly afterward, Bukele, at a
itics were leftist—progressive taxes, in- nizable brand and had more Twitter fol- gathering in the U.S. with Salvadoran
creased public spending—but he avoided lowers than the country’s President did. immigrants, said, “ARENA and the
the F.M.L.N.’s hoary pronouncements When journalists dug into Bukele’s F.M.L.N. are really the same.” He an-
about revolution. He also rejected the accomplishments in office—the mar- nounced the formation of a new party,
Party’s trademark colors of red and white, ket downtown, the revitalization of San Nuevas Ideas. In February, 2019, he was
instead blanketing the streets with cam- Salvador’s historic commercial district— elected President with fifty-three per
paign materials that featured his name they found evidence of irregularities. cent of the vote.
in white against a backdrop of light blue. The mayor’s office had disregarded per-
“I have friends who are conservative, and mits and zoning ordinances. It paid in- he arm—bare and handcuffed at
they’d never vote for the F.M.L.N.,” he
told one of his advisers.
flated prices to contractors, and kept
information from the city council. One
T the wrist, the hand in a fist—came
into view on a two-lane road leading
Bukele won by less than two per cent, businessman who worked with Bukele from the capital to San Vicente. It was
and governed as if he were still cam- at the time told me, “Before Bukele, jutting out from the back of a police
48 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
“What the President is selling people is revenge,” a member of Congress said. His voters expect him to have enemies.

pickup truck that was driving past a father of three in his mid-forties who arrived in Distrito Italia, a community
store called Tulita’s Classic Sweets. A runs a small business in the capital. of ten thousand people about an hour
man was lying in the bed of the truck, The last time I’d seen him—about six north of San Salvador, on a Monday
but all that was visible was his arm, years earlier, at the start of Bukele’s evening, to f ind a cordon of some
chained to a rack attached to the cab. mayoral term—he made trips down- twenty soldiers in combat fatigues and
One of the strangest aspects of the town only during daylight hours, be- armed with semi-automatic rifles. They
state of exception was how infrequent cause it was too dangerous after dark. had set up a checkpoint for anyone en-
sightings like this were, unless you went He was encouraged by the President’s tering or leaving the residential area.
looking for them. The government was actions during the state of exception, Soldiers searched bags and checked
broadcasting its harshest acts, and on as is more than ninety per cent of the I.D. cards, and as people returned from
Twitter there was a flood of photographs, population, according to recent polls. work the line grew long. The com-
videos, and menacing announcements. “Nayib is fighting,” he said. “Of course manding officer sought me out as soon
But on the main streets of the country’s he has his critics. He’s doing new things, as I arrived. “If you haven’t done any-
biggest cities nothing seemed out of the radical things. It’s all on the up and up. thing wrong, you’ll be fine,” he said.
ordinary. “The state of exception is di- People are always trying to be so down “People outside El Salvador probably
rected at the poor, marginalized areas,” on El Salvador. But I don’t hear Sal- don’t understand.”
Rina Montti, the director of investiga- vadorans talking about leaving, like be- A few minutes later, I noticed a
tions at Cristosal, a human-rights group, fore.” At the pool hall, it was Eighties woman in a green striped shirt, with
told me. “These are stigmatized com- Night, and a d.j. played the Sugar Hill dark, frizzy hair, standing at a slight re-
munities with people who are seen as Gang and Run-DMC while people move from the crowd. Her two sons—
having dudosa confiabilidad”—“question- danced and ate tapas. We left after mid- ages eighteen and twenty-one—were
able trustworthiness.” She continued, night. As we strolled through the illu- returning from work, and she was wait-
“You hear people say, ‘Surely they must minated downtown plazas, he snapped ing to meet them, so that they could all
have done something if they’re being photos of the Art Nouveau National walk home together. Mostly, she felt
taken away.’” Theatre. alivio—“relief ”—she said: “There are
On a Saturday night, an old Sal- In the zonas marginalizadas, where soldiers inside patrolling.” When I asked
vadoran friend of mine proposed that the gangs had been in control, how- her whether she worried that her sons
we shoot pool at a billiard hall in San ever, residents were effectively trapped might get arrested, she shrugged. “Until
Salvador’s historic downtown. He is a between them and the government. I it happens to you, it doesn’t matter what
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 49
 the homicide rate dropped for almost
eighteen months, but revelations of the
talks incited public outrage. The next
President, who also came from the
F.M.L.N., renounced the deal, and the
government negotiators were eventu-
ally prosecuted for their involvement.
In 2020, Munguía Payés was arrested
for “unlawful association.” Other mem-
bers of the F.M.L.N. and ARENA have
faced jail time for making ad-hoc deals
with the gangs, either to enforce higher
turnout at election time or to period-
ically blunt the death count.
As the mayor of San Salvador, Bukele
made an agreement with members of
Barrio 18, who controlled the area around
the Mercado Cuscatlán, according to
El Faro. The government gave them
space among the venders’ stalls, and, in
return, the gang allowed the market to
operate. Bukele has denied this, and as
“Can you roll it back for nine more minutes?” President he adopted visible measures
to combat the gangs. He called his pol-
• • icy the Territorial Control Plan; it in-
creased the police presence in some
municipalities and declared a state of
happens to someone else,” Verónica Cliques from Southern California emergency inside the national prisons,
Reyna, a security expert who works at arrived in El Salvador, bringing their ri- which had the immediate effect of mix-
a nonprofit called Servicio Social Pa- valries and their turf wars with them. ing rival populations that had long been
sionista, told me. “It’s a survival instinct. “They consumed everything in their kept apart. At the start of the pandemic,
The more violence people live with, the path,” the anthropologist Juan José the authorities arranged hundreds of
less they can care about other people. Martínez d’Aubuisson has written. bare-chested prisoners in their under-
Getting involved in other people’s lives “Piecemeal neighborhood gangs saw no wear, pressed tightly together in rows,
is deadly.” choice but to join one of the two for for a photo opportunity. One of the
Gangs have dominated life in El their own survival. The alternative was President’s advisers told me, “Look how
Salvador since the late nineties, but complete annihilation.” By 2015, there he’s treating the gangs. How could he
they didn’t originate there. MS-13 and were some sixty thousand gang mem- be talking to them?”
Barrio 18 both began in Los Angeles, bers in El Salvador, and seventy per cent But Bukele started negotiating with
at least a decade earlier, as hundreds of of the country’s businesses were being MS-13 as soon as he became President,
thousands of Salvadorans fled the civil extorted, leading to annual losses of four according to another story in El Faro.
war. Many of the teen-agers, adrift billion dollars, according to estimates During his first year in office, he didn’t
when they arrived, turned to crime in by the Salvadoran Central Reserve Bank. have a majority in the Assembly, and
the inner city, where Mexican and Black The homicide rate was higher than it for his fledgling party to win seats he
gangs enforced a brutal racial hierar- had been during much of the civil war. needed the homicide rate to fall. “The
chy. After thousands of Salvadoran A series of Salvadoran administra- big drops in homicides were never just
youths were arrested, the Clinton Ad- tions launched dramatic crackdowns the work of the government,” Verónica
ministration saw an opportunity to that played well with the public but Reyna told me. “Bukele learned the les-
demonstrate its toughness both on im- failed to curb the violence. In 2012, son from what happened before. He
migration and on crime. It deported David Munguía Payés, who had served closed ranks. No one had access to the
violent offenders without telling the as a general during the war and was prisons for a year and a half.”
Salvadoran government who they were. now the Minister of Security in an The El Faro story relied on hundreds
“The United States lets these danger- F.M.L.N. government, decided that of pages of prison documents, in addi-
ous types out and tells them, ‘Go back the gangs, like the guerrillas, couldn’t tion to logbooks from facilities where
to where you came from,’” the Presi- be beaten with force alone. He brought secret meetings were held between gang
dent of El Salvador said in 1997. “But in a former guerrilla, a Catholic bishop, leadership and government representa-
we have no way to try them or jail and a representative from the Organi- tives. In an intercepted message, one
them . . . and so we must not only let zation of American States to negoti- leader of MS-13 told another, “Things
them in but let them go free.” ate with them. A deal was reached, and are going step by step.” The govern-
50 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
ment, he said, was increasing enforce- thirty-five journalists and human-rights more suspected gang members, which
ment to keep up appearances, so that advocates to discover that their cell he was calling the Terrorism Confine-
the negotiations could continue. “These phones had been infected with the sur- ment Center.
measures are just a coverup,” he went veillance software Pegasus.
on. “They’re looking out for the well- The government could deny press t’s taken as an article of faith that the
being of us homies.”
Less than a week after the story was
reports, but certain facts remained. Last
year, Bukele refused a U.S. request to
I public cares about such abstract prin-
ciples as the rule of law and the health
published, Bukele announced that the extradite fourteen top-ranking mem- of public institutions. But voters also
government would investigate El Faro bers of MS-13. The Salvadoran gov- want to see their man win, because it
for money laundering. Since then, he ernment secretly released some of the means that they’re winning. Often, au-
has attacked the newspaper relentlessly, men from prison, and they are now at thoritarian tactics play better than high-
sometimes calling out journalists by large. According to a joint investiga- minded poise does. On February 9, 2020,
name. A few of them have been forced tion by La Prensa Gráfica and InSight eight months into Bukele’s term, a crowd
into exile; many others have adopted Crime, one of the gangsters, whose of a few thousand demonstrators gath-
the practice of leaving the country after nom de guerre is Crook of Hollywood, ered outside the National Assembly,
publishing a story and waiting to re- walked out of the country’s most se- which was not in session. They’d ar-
turn until the threats have died down. cure prison during a crime wave last rived in government vehicles and in
The newspaper has a large interna- November. The following month, ho- buses driven by soldiers, and were there
tional following, but inside El Salva- micides decreased. to protest the refusal by members of the
dor Bukele’s campaign against it has Recently, the journalist Carlos Mar- Assembly to fund a key plank of Bukele’s
succeeded. Many people have come to tínez published a story in El Faro based security budget. Shortly after 4 p.m., a
see El Faro as partisan and unreliable. on seven audio recordings of conversa- caravan of S.U.V.s pulled up, and Bukele
The night before I arrived in El Sal- tions between members of MS-13 and a emerged. Surrounded by bodyguards,
vador, the National Assembly passed government negotiator close to Bukele. he strode to a stage set up at the end of
a sweeping law to block news outlets The code name they use for the Presi- an alley leading to the chamber, and the
from reporting on the gang situation. dent is Batman. There are explicit refer- crowd roared. “Wait here,” he told them,
Journalists could now face up to ten ences to two years of secret talks, and the then headed inside. Armed soldiers in
years in prison if they “reproduced” or official takes pains to describe everything combat fatigues followed him.
“transmitted” information that might he’s done for the gang to prove his “loy- While the troops fanned out across
have come from gang sources or could alty and trustworthiness.” What caused the gallery, Bukele called a symbolic ses-
otherwise “panic” the public. The law the killing spree in March, according to sion to order. “I think it’s clear who’s in
was ambiguous by design, César Fago- three gang members cited in the story, control of the situation,” he said into a
aga, then the president of the Associ- was the arrest of a group of gangsters microphone. He put it down and bowed
ation of Journalists of El Salvador, told who were travelling in a government ve- his head in prayer. After a few seconds,
me. “This isn’t a legal problem—it’s a hicle. They felt betrayed because they’d he rose and returned to the crowd out-
political problem,” he said. “They want been promised “safe passage.” side. This time, when he approached
to control the only thing they don’t Uncharacteristically, the government the stage, half a dozen soldiers stood
have—journalism.” Claudia Ortiz, a did not attack the article when it came beside him, their rifles drawn.
first-term congresswoman from a fledg- “I asked God, and he told me, ‘Pa-
ling party called Vamos, told me, “The tience,’” Bukele said. He’s never made
real opposition right now that’s doing clear which religion he practices, yet
substantive things is outside the As- he frequently invokes God, projecting
sembly. It’s investigative journalism, the a firm but flexible piety. (“It’s one of
universities, social organizations expos- his key characteristics,” Marroquín, of
ing real problems.” the Central American University, told
In the nine days that I spent in El me. “He can seem Catholic or Prot-
Salvador in April, three more journal- estant, Christian, or even Muslim.”)
ists had to leave the country after being Bukele’s religious rhetoric generally
falsely accused by the President and out. In June, 2022, Patrick Ventrell, the sways the public, but this crowd was ex-
members of his party of conspiring with American Chargé d’Affaires, gave a pecting something more dramatic. Peo-
the gangs. One of them—a reporter press conference in San Salvador at ple started to groan. “Patience, patience,”
named Bryan Avelar, who works with which he said, “The best way for the he repeated. “These sinvergüenzas,” he
the New York Times—was the target of government of El Salvador to show continued, gesturing behind him in ref-
a viral campaign that claimed his brother that it is serious” about fighting the erence to the obstructionist congress-
was a prominent gangster. (He doesn’t gangs “is to extradite the most danger- men. “We’ll get rid of them democrat-
have any brothers.) “They know that ous leaders.” Later in the summer, ically. . . . In several months, we’re going
they can have us arrested if they feel like Bukele extradited two of them with to have the Assembly.”
it,” Julia Gavarrete, a reporter with El little fanfare. This news was eclipsed In Central America, the symbolism
Faro, told me. Last year, she was one of by the construction of a prison to hold was lost on nobody: a head of state had
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 51
just breached another branch of the gov-
ernment with troops. “The whole thing
got out of hand,” a former government ROOSEVELT DARGON
official told me. But those people who
thought Bukele would suffer conse- Roosevelt Dargon, how often I have thought of you
quences were mistaken. “The most sig- and your leg. We were driving that last stretch
nificant thing wasn’t what happened but of slow road home, in snow and ice, in the blue
what didn’t,” Johnny Wright, a congress- Vista Cruiser—what was I, five?—when your big
man with the party Nuestro Tiempo, rig crashed. We didn’t see it happen, but got there
told me. “That was the moment when right after, before the ambulance and cops, before
he knew, he tested that he would not the snarl of cars that would have kept us from
have resistance.” reaching you. I say us, but what I mean is my father,
Hours after the incursion, Bukele re- who told my brothers and me, Stay here, while my mother
ceived a text message from his former toggled between static and Tommy Dorsey and he ran
attorney Bertha Deleón. “You’ve gone to the jackknifed cab and found you pinned in there,
too far,” she wrote. When he didn’t reply, left leg mostly severed but tethered enough under
she decided to tweet. His response was the crushed front dash to keep several bigger men
swift. “Delete this,” he told her. “You’re from pulling you out. There was a lot of blood you
attacking us.” Deleón refused, and the were losing, and the tumbled lumber and concrete
government launched a smear campaign blocks from the load you’d been hauling, and the smashed
against her. She was a trending topic glass of cling peaches in syrup from the truck you’d
on Twitter for days, accused of protect- swerved into, and all around you fuel was pooling,
ing the gangs and of abetting criminals. collecting, threatening to catch fire, and I have to imagine
People shouted at her on the street. “I what you would have heard: my father’s voice, calm
worked for the prosecutor’s office for and measured, saying, I’m a doctor. He might not have
years on organized crime,” she said. said a psychiatrist. What he showed you was
“Old colleagues came up to me saying, his Swiss Army knife, what he did was ask
‘Now we’re supposed to be investigat-
ing you. Fix this, or leave.’” Months later,
with multiple corruption charges lodged which officials claimed to have been travention of the judges’ orders. “The
against her and an Interpol warrant out reviewing before Bukele pushed for the inflection point was the pandemic,” the
for her arrest, she told me the story from change in status.) former government official told me.
Mexico, where she had recently been A few weeks after Bukele’s stunt at “That’s when Bukele really started tak-
granted asylum. the National Assembly, the first case ing advantage.”
of Covid-19 was detected in El Salva- The public was too overwhelmed with
ukele’s most conspicuous enabler dor. On March 21st, Bukele declared a its own survival to worry about the finer
B during this period was the Trump
Administration. The American Am-
state of exception, issuing strict guide-
lines for a national quarantine. Those
points of governance, and El Salvador’s
infection rate stayed low compared with
bassador to El Salvador was a former people who violated its terms were ar- those of neighboring countries. In June,
mid-level C.I.A. staffer named Ronald rested and sent to “containment cen- a gleaming new hospital for Covid pa-
Johnson, whose relationship with Bukele ters.” In theory, the centers were re- tients went up, billed as the biggest such
was characterized by friendly informal- served for Salvadorans who’d been facility in Latin America. (It remains un-
ity. All Trump cared about, a former travelling abroad and needed to be finished.) The military distributed food
Administration official told me, was tested. But they soon became de-facto to poor areas, and Bukele gave three hun-
immigration, and Bukele acted accord- jails, where returning travellers and dred dollars in cash relief to more than
ingly. In 2019, he was so eager to com- anyone accused of ignoring the rules a third of the country. “The people are
ply with a deal on asylum processing were held indefinitely, in many cases seeing that he is working hard and doing
that his advisers e-mailed a signed copy for longer than a month. Ten thousand things for the public,” a thirty-three-
of the agreement straight to the De- people were detained in the early year-old named Gisele de Hernández,
partment of Homeland Security. U.S. months of the pandemic. who worked in a tortilla shop, told the
officials had to call them back to ex- The Supreme Court twice declared Spanish newspaper El País. Another per-
plain that the protocol was more in- Bukele’s measures unconstitutional, but son said, “Bukele isn’t dividing El Sal-
volved. In return, Bukele “really wanted he ignored the rulings and accused the vador. The country is already divided.”
the State Department to lower the judges of threatening public health. “If The following February, when El
threat level for travel to El Salvador,” I really were a dictator, I would shoot Salvador held legislative elections, Nue-
the former Administration official told all of them,” Bukele said. “You save thou- vas Ideas won fifty-six of the eighty-
me. “That was a really big thing to him. sands of lives in exchange for five.” He four seats—a super-majority. The new
He was promoting Surf City.” (Even- publicly commanded the police and the members of the Assembly were a mix-
tually, the U.S. reduced the threat level, military to make more arrests, in con- ture of true believers and opportunists,
52 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
 named Mike Peterson launched an ex-
perimental charity. Its financing came
permission to finish what the accident had started— from an anonymous philanthropist who
to cut the tendon, cleanly, to free you. I guess imposed a single condition: the money
we never know which part of ourselves we’ll had to be distributed entirely in bit-
have to sacrifice, or when we might need to say coin. Soon, mom-and-pop businesses,
to a stranger with a pocketknife, I’d be obliged. markets, and food stalls in the area were
And that was that. They pulled you out. Someone accepting the currency. El Zonte came
may have grabbed the mangled leg as an after- to be known as Bitcoin Beach.
thought, but this was 1966, before the age In the spring of 2021, Bitcoin Beach
of reattachments. My father knelt in the snow drew a minor crypto celebrity—Jack
and wiped his knife blade clean. This was before Mallers, a twenty-seven-year-old tech
there would be people on the road we could entrepreneur who was building an app
not help, before the next Christmas, and the ones called Strike. The service allows users
after that, when a crate of oranges would come to make money transfers, with no fees,
from Baltimore, with a card that said Best on Lightning, a high-speed network
wishes from the leg and me, never specifying that is linked to the technology behind
which leg you meant—the one you kept Bitcoin. El Salvador fascinated Mal-
or the one you let go. What the mind lers for reasons that went beyond Bit-
keeps, it keeps. I still have my mother coin Beach. Twenty per cent of the
humming “I Thought About You,” still country’s gross domestic product comes
have my brothers punching each other from remittances sent by Salvadorans
in the wayback, still have my father, living abroad, mostly in the U.S. But
still running with his Swiss when immigrants use Western Union
Army, as if he could, in some to transfer money they typically pay a
coming blizzard, save us all. hefty fee. “Lightning solves that,” Mal-
—Andrea Cohen lers has said. “It costs nothing to send
one dollar or one thousand.” After liv-
ing in Bitcoin Beach for a month, he
but all were united in their loyalty to changed. “When we tried to normalize started spending time in San Salvador.
the person who had brought them to the relationship, he felt like we were pull- He was having a sushi dinner with
power. “Bukele is the Party,” a senior ing the rug out from under him,” the friends one night when he noticed a
U.S. official told me. senior U.S. official told me. “We didn’t direct message on Twitter. “Hi, Jack,
The new legislators went after their have the red carpets out, so he thought this is a message on behalf of Presi-
first target on the day of their swearing it was a deliberate attempt to embarrass dent Bukele,” it began. A few days later,
in. They arrived at nine in the morning, him.” The Biden Administration began Karim Bukele, wearing a hoodie,
and the session ran past midnight. “We drawing up a list of sanctions against greeted Mallers and introduced him to
entered without knowing anything,” members of Bukele’s administration, for his brother.
Claudia Ortiz, of Vamos, told me. The actions including corruption and con- At the Bitcoin Conference in Miami
Supreme Court magistrates who had spiracy with the gangs. Bukele contin- that summer, Mallers presented Bukele,
opposed Bukele’s pandemic measures ued to meet Johnson, the previous Am- who addressed attendees by video, in
were summarily fired, for acting against bassador, in Miami, and he retained fluent English. He announced that El
the best interests of the public. The another American adviser, who shared Salvador would begin accepting bit-
Nuevas Ideas bloc also fired the Attor- the view that the Democrats wouldn’t coin, and presented a heady case for
ney General, whose term was up at the control the White House for long. When how Bitcoin could solve some of El
end of the year. The President’s personal Bukele decided to give a big interview Salvador’s problems. Seventy per cent
lawyer told an opposition lawmaker in in the winter of 2021, it wasn’t to the Sal- of Salvadorans don’t have bank ac-
private, “We have to be disruptive. Peo- vadoran news media or to CNN but to counts, but more than half of them use
ple voted for us for a reason.They wanted Tucker Carlson. “He’s trying to ride the cell phones. “El Salvador has not been
us to change things radically. We’re going culture war,” the senior U.S. official told the country that’s recognized to be the
to change this place for good.” Four days me. “But El Salvador does not have the first in innovation,” Bukele later told
later, the Assembly approved a law block- luxury of deciding that one party is going the podcaster Peter McCormack. “But
ing all investigations into the govern- to protect its interests forevermore.” why not this time?” Championing the
ment’s pandemic spending and shield- currency has turned him into a global
ing officials from corruption charges. or the past three years, crypto evan- cult hero, a crusader against U.S. he-
Bukele had assumed office saying that
his relationship with the U.S. was “the
F gelists from all over the world have
made a pilgrimage to a rustic beach in
gemony. “This is just exercising our
sovereign right to adopt legal tenders,
No. 1 priority for us.” But the U.S. had El Salvador called El Zonte, where a like we adopted the U.S. dollar in the
a new President, and both countries had middle-aged surfer from California year 2001,” he continued. “In 2001, it
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 53
was probably done for the benefits of There were some red flags. Bitcoin the words “El Presidente.” The aes-
the banks, and this decision is done for users need both a public key and a pri- thetic was somewhere between a Kiss
the benefits of the people.” vate one to access their money, and many concert and an I.P.O. “When Alexan-
Salvadorans found out about the people rely on a “digital wallet” to store der the Great was conquering the world,
Bitcoin policy from news reports after these keys. The government created its he established ‘Alexandrias,’ ” Bukele
the Miami announcement. The fol- own—the Chivo Wallet app—but shared said. “These Alexandrias would be like
lowing September, the Bukele admin- virtually no information about who was beacons of hope for the rest of the
istration presented its Bitcoin Law, designing it or how it would work. world. We should build the first Alex-
which Mallers helped shape, and the One afternoon, I was walking through andria here, in El Salvador. So we were
National Assembly passed it without the main plaza in Usulután, a small city thinking of building”—a pause for ef-
debate or modification. in the country’s southeast, when I saw fect—“Bitcoin City.”
Bitcoiners are skeptical of govern- two soldiers standing guard outside a Bitcoin City would be an actual mu-
ments and central banks, but their goal gleaming blue Chivo A.T.M. The un- nicipality, powered by the geothermal
is the universal adoption of the cur- used machine looked like a monument, energy of a nearby volcano and funded
rency, and they need more countries to or a shrine. The businesses that accept by a new financial instrument called
follow El Salvador’s lead. Even so, some bitcoin tend to be large international Bitcoin Bonds, or Volcano Bonds,
of them were troubled by its example. corporations (Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, which will pay yields tied to the sale
The rush to create the Bitcoin Law re- Starbucks); a recent survey by the Cham- of bitcoin. The issuance of these bonds,
sulted in confusing provisions: one ar- ber of Commerce found that eighty-six according to Bukele, would raise a bil-
ticle mandates that all merchants ac- per cent of the country’s commercial lion dollars. The rush of investment
cept bitcoin, but another seems to hedge businesses have never conducted a bit- would help fund schools, hospitals, and
on that requirement. “The government coin transaction. public works—in theory, at least. The
operated on a startup’s timeline—move Last November, during Bitcoin question was who would invest in the
fast and break things,” Jill Gunter, the Week in El Salvador, Bukele made an- bonds, given that, by most accounts,
chief strategy officer at Espresso Sys- other announcement, this one from a their returns were no better than those
tems, a blockchain company, told me. beachfront stage rigged with strobe of the alternatives. Matt Levine, a col-
“But you’re talking about an actual sov- lights and jets of smoke. The sky lit up umnist at Bloomberg, wrote, “People
ereign nation, with the well-being of with fireworks, and on a giant screen who like crypto will buy them and trade
millions of people at stake.” behind him, in neon-blue letters, were them with each other and feel a sense
of kinship and community and fun.
They are HODLers and whales, they
get to hang out with the president of
a country on a Saturday night.”
In attendance at the announcement
was an American investor and early
Bitcoin adopter named Max Keiser,
who runs a fund called El Zonte Cap-
ital. He’s part of a group of interna-
tional financiers who are selling the
image of a dynamic new El Salvador.
When we spoke, Keiser had just dined
with Bukele at the Presidential Palace.
He had flown in with his wife for the
occasion, on a plane belonging to “Uncle
Ricky,” the Mexican businessman and
TV magnate Ricardo Salinas Pliego,
who is a passionate Bitcoiner and a
pro-Bukele partisan. Keiser tends to
see conspiracies in high places. He sug-
gested to me that the U.S. State De-
partment had been involved in the gang
killings in March, but he praised
Bukele’s state of exception as “phe-
nomenal.” “Some suggest human rights
have been violated. I would say that the
human rights of seven million Salva-
dorans are what matters,” he said.
“Imagine J.F.K. if he had Bitcoin to do
“Man needlessly dressed in professional cycling outfit on your right.” battle with the C.I.A. and central
banks—and what you get is President among the clouds. Ulloa, a short man ing to local reporters to publicize the
Bukele today. El Salvador is the new with long hair and a copper-colored case, but nothing changed. When she
Camelot.” beard, is a constitutional scholar with first told me the story, we were hunched
Since El Salvador adopted bitcoin, degrees from universities in three coun- over a small table in the food court of
the currency’s value has fluctuated wildly. tries. He is thirty years older than the a mall, her face teary.
But Bukele continued to buy more of President he serves, and a veteran of We stayed in touch as the state of
it with state funds, including a hundred left-wing causes. exception kept getting extended. It
coins last November and five hundred “I have been a social warrior all my is still in effect, even though daily ho-
more in early May, after the price life, and I fought not just with words— micides have dropped. Each month,
dropped. “El Salvador just bought the we took up arms,” he told when the Assembly has to
dip!” he wrote on Twitter. The country me. This was a reference renew it, the Speaker con-
now holds some twenty-four hundred to the war years, when he venes the body with an an-
bitcoins, worth approximately forty- was a student radical. “We nouncement on Twitter.
eight million dollars, or roughly half fought against a dictator- Nuevas Ideas members
what Bukele paid for them. ship. . . . Those who say this reply enthusiastically, with
Short-term losses are hardly the big- is a dictatorship don’t know emojis and updated profile
gest danger to the Salvadoran economy. what a dictatorship is.” He pictures. Most of them
The International Monetary Fund, from continued, “We spent the retweet Bukele, who rou-
which El Salvador sought a $1.3-billion two years of the pandemic tinely announces days with
loan, considers bitcoin a threat both to clashing with Congress.” It zero homicides. “Seguimos,”
the global financial system and to the was “an assembly domi- he says, at the end of each
country’s immediate solvency. In Janu- nated by the two parties which blocked one—“Onward.” Fifty thousand peo-
ary, 2023, El Salvador will need to make everything the President proposed.” ple have now been detained.
one eight-hundred-million-dollar bond We spoke for an hour, during which “There’s no official policy beyond
payment, followed by another, in 2025. he delivered a litany of economic- giving people blanket sentences and
“The financial markets now see El Sal- growth figures, improved homicide sta- keeping them detained,” Rina Montti,
vador as much riskier than before,” the tistics, and news of prominent foreign of Cristosal, told me. “We’ve been to
economist Ricardo Castaneda told me. investors who had visited the country. hearings where there are between three
“The reasons are failures of democratic Tourism was up, and preparations were hundred and five hundred people being
institutions, the adoption of bitcoin, and under way for an international surfing tried en masse. But there’s no actual
the lack of certainty about plans for pay- competition. But all topics led back to criminal investigation.” Cristosal has
ing off the country’s debt.” The former a fact that no one could refute: the Pres- been documenting detention condi-
government official told me, “Bitcoin ident and his party had won their elec- tions based on individual complaints
investment is a cloud that doesn’t exist. tions and continued to enjoy over- brought by family members of detain-
The state reserves are the last resource whelming public support. Until Bukele ees. At least seventy people have died
for the government to pay for basic lost a vote or rigged an election, the while in custody.
needs. Maybe it can get them to the rest was academic. At the end of the Karen has two small children, and she
2024 elections.” month, the state of exception was due was now caring for them while working
to expire. Would the Assembly extend two jobs—her own and her husband’s.
uevas Ideas shows no signs of it? I asked. “During the war, we lived In the first weeks after his arrest, she
N losing its super-majority in Con-
gress, yet its members live in fear of
six years with a state of exception,” he
replied. There was “nothing strange”
found time every morning to visit Izal-
co, the prison where he was being held.
misspeaking. Late last year, two of the about doing it again. It was a two-hour trip, and she made it
Party’s congressmen were recorded On a recent night, I was speaking to prove her vigilance, since the prison
sharing concerns over the phone about with a woman named Karen, whose didn’t allow visitors. The crowds of
losing their travel visas as a result of husband had been arrested during a women who’d once gathered outside small
U.S. sanctions. Both have been forced work break at a taxi stand in a town police precincts were now reassembling
from their jobs and are currently under near San Salvador. He and his employee each day in front of Izalco and Mariona,
investigation. were eating pupusas on the street, and, the two prisons, both overcrowded, where
The only member of the Bukele gov- when a cook from the food stall walked nearly everyone had been sent.
ernment willing to speak with me was over to collect their money, a group of The last time Karen and I spoke,
the Vice-President, Félix Ulloa, Jr. He officers converged on the three of them. she told me that she could no longer
received me one morning at his official The charge was “illegal gathering.” A make the trips to see her husband. “Too
residence, in an upscale neighborhood jealous neighbor may have called in a much work,” she said. Her voice was
of San Salvador. He sat in a high-backed tip—Karen’s husband had never been dry, almost raspy with exhaustion. “Ev-
wood chair with blue velvet trim. On arrested, and he was a fixture at their eryone is getting six months” in prison,
the wall was a surrealist painting of local church. He had also enthusiasti- she added. He was now more than half-
Lady Justice, blindfolded, with her body cally voted for Bukele in 2019. Baffled, way through, though his crime remained
floating in three unconnected pieces Karen tried everything, including speak- a mystery. 
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 55
 FICTION

56 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY KATE DEHLER

 was ten when my mother had to the waiting area for the emergency called the man’s name, my mother said,

I take me to the emergency room.

I’d sort of skidded on our fire es-
cape while I was recklessly dancing
room. “We’re O.K. now, sweetie,” my
mother said.
We had to wait. “She needs atten-
“Just let my daughter go in instead.
You have to let her. We can’t wait while
you figure out what to do.”
around on it, showing off for the kid tion,” my mother had to tell them over Had I ever seen my mother cheat
in the apartment across the way. I’d and over. She filled out a form, she like this? I understood that she was
done a bump-de-bump, and I was sing- kept walking up to some desk to ask cheating for my sake. But if he died
ing “whoopty-whoopty” and starting questions. I hated this room. A man because of us, what then? I was sure
a foxy little move while waving the was shouting that the President of our we’d never forget, though I think now
ends of my bathrobe sash when I country wanted to kill everyone here, that people do forget such things.
slipped on the rusted flooring that was and that he was doing a good job, too. The nurse was stumped for a few
splashed with snow, and collapsed on Nobody said one of the doctors would seconds. “Hey, Edward,” I said, and I
its see-through slats in an unnatural be with us very soon. There was no shook his shoulder, in a rough way, as
crumple. The back yard was three floors soothing behavior in this room. Wait if I were just a kid making fun of him.
below, too visible. or die waiting. Take it or leave it. It hurt my leg when I moved. The man
I screamed when I tried to get up. Ahead of us in the line of chairs was made a choking, burbling sound, des-
I wanted my mother to hear me. She a man with a mustache, with his arm perate and liquid. He terrified us then.
was watching TV, she thought I was around a man who was slumped against He was alive, but he was a dying mon-
asleep—how would she guess where I his chest. The leaning man was wear- ster. The nurse got an orderly to move
was? I knew I had done something ing his sweater inside out, and he was him onto a gurney, and she was wheel-
very bad to my leg. Fortunately, Nini sleeping. Maybe he wasn’t sleeping. ing him away from us before we knew
Seidenbaum, for whom I’d been show- Maybe he was dead. Would you bring what was happening. And then we had
ing off, screamed for her own mother. someone dead to a hospital? Did peo- to wait again.
In the frozen air between our build- ple do that? •
ings, I heard her wail that I was dead. The mustached guy was talking to
Every part of me was shaking. It him. “I know you hate St. Vincent’s, I left there with a huge plaster cast on
was winter in New York and I’d been but it was the closest. We’re almost in, my leg, and I looked forward to hav-
fluttering around in my nightclothes. don’t go under. Hear me, Eddie?” ing all my friends sign it. I had broken
And now I’d gone from entertainment They could’ve been brothers, but I and splintered my tibia in a fairly major
greatness to being a heap of cracked thought they were friends. My own way. But what I took from that night
bones in the wind. When my mother friend Nini had yelled to high heaven most of all was the shock at the man
finally appeared, she carefully dragged to save me. If no one else had been walking out on his unconscious friend,
me over the black metal slats and lifted around, she would’ve phoned someone the silent story of it. My mother said
me through the window. I was still to help. And if she’d been the one to the man probably had reasons we
trembling too much to speak, but I fall I would’ve dragged her outside and couldn’t know. Which was definitely
could see that my mother’s face was talked a taxi into taking us. I had more true. But what I held on to was the
pale and weird. I understood that nerve than she did and was better at lasting certainty that I was going to
dying, which I might be about to do, persuading people. have to look out for myself.
was something I’d have to manage My leg was on fire now, even when It wasn’t my mother’s fault; she never
alone, and no one had taught me how. I didn’t move it. I told my mother this, neglected me, before or after the di-
I was angry about this. “I’m fine,” I and she went up to the desk one more vorce, or led me to think that she would.
said, not that nicely, either. time. Meanwhile, the guy next to us But I saw what the world was. I saw
had got to his feet and was settling how things could get. Nobody’s sweet-
• his limp (maybe drugged-out) friend ness could take that away.
Because this was New York in Febru- into the molded plastic chair, getting
ary of 1974, nobody bothered to call an him positioned so he didn’t fall to the •
ambulance—you’d get old waiting— floor. He smoothed his friend’s hair I ran away with a boy when I was
so Nini’s mother ran to get us a taxi. down, he patted his head. And then sixteen. He was three years older, and
Her father, whom I’d always liked, car- he edged out of the row and along an I was enormously f lattered that he
ried me down the stairs. But when he aisle and headed through a hallway. wanted me to run off with him. We
jostled my leg handing me to my Where was he going? He was gone! didn’t say we loved each other—we
mother I screamed again. When I told my mother, she said, “Oh, didn’t bring that up—but my lust for
“Why did you do this, Cara?” my he’ll come back.” him was great and constant. Lust was
mother kept saying. She said it as we But he didn’t. The friend was alone. a big deal in the world around me; peo-
moved through traffic, and she said it Well, they weren’t friends, were they? ple believed in sex in a way that they
as she carried me into the hospital, into A long time went by. I knew people don’t quite anymore. Did we run that
the big scuffed hall, crowded with New did terrible things—I lived in New idea into the ground, overplay it? I
York at its bad-news worst (a man held York, and I’d always been warned about could not have been prouder of my-
a bloody towel to his neck), which was what they might do. When a nurse self, in those days, to be following sex
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 57
as my guiding star. I thought that it He made fun of my mother, called mother had said she hated seeing
was an exalted idea, as well as a source her the mouse mother because she me hang all over him, like a doting
of beautiful sensations. I thought that worked in a library. They’d met a few idiot, and why wasn’t he with some-
anyone who didn’t have my opportu- times, when he came over, and it had one his own age? Did I know how pa-
nities was living a lesser life. gone O.K., normal terse exchanges. He thetic I looked, flinging myself at him?
I should have paid more attention told her his favorite kind of books to This insult had broken my loyalty to
to Brody, the boy in question. I was read were true-crime books. “I like ac- my mother. So I could go wherever I
much too abstract in the way that I tion and death,” he said. wanted, couldn’t I? I’d never been far-
viewed him. We both worked at a “True crime is a very popular genre,” ther away than Washington or Boston.
doughnut shop on West Eighth Street. I said. My mother was horrified that I
Ronald, the owner, was never there and Brody said I should just lie to her was so unlike the Cara she’d always
told me to do whatever Brody said. We about seeing him. So I did. The only known, but that was what elated me,
had the long weekend shifts, busy in person who knew I had a secret life the new depths I’d found in myself.
the morning and dull in the late after- was Nini. What scared her about Brody My untapped capacities. I thought
noon. “Do you care about the hostages was the way he got money. At work, my mother had probably never had
in Iran?” I asked him. This was a lead- he sometimes rang up his own version really good sex.
ing question—I didn’t care all that of sales, but not too often. His other, Brody had ideas about what clothes
much myself. Was I bragging about more ambitious scam was stealing items I should bring to Arizona. It was early
how heartless I was? Probably, and it from department stores and then re- June in New York—not really hot
drew Brody’s interest. He said, “They’ll turning them for cash. Once a cash- yet—but we’d do better picking up
be O.K. Getting skinny though.” mere sweater, once a silk shirt, once a rides if I brought some of the nice
How pleased we were to be indif- watch. “No one ever really goes to jail things I had that showed my figure.
ferent together. I said they were proof for that,” I informed Nini. I was a small, skinny girl with a big
the U.S. wasn’t as powerful as it thought They were allied in my mind, the bust, and he admired the sundress
it was. Brody said, “People keep discov- new bodily thrills and Brody’s lawless- with the plunging neckline and the
ering that over and over. Like it’s news ness. Sometimes we smoked weed in T-shirt that was tight and orange. Oh,
each time.” “Totally,” I said. I was so the park. I was very adamant about not also the ripped jeans with the tear
thrilled when I went to get more boxes drinking. I thought civilization had ad- near the crotch. “We have to think
from the back and he found me be- vanced beyond alcohol, which made ahead,” he said.
hind the storage shelves. For weeks people violent, to more peaceful drugs In the end, a friend of his drove us
after, the shop was our love shack. Up like cannabis. An evolutionary change. as far as the New Jersey Turnpike, and
to a point. We kept our clothes on, Smoking pot made me nestle in Bro- I stood by the highway in my little or-
though we did a lot of reaching around dy’s arms on the park bench, curve ange T-shirt and jeans, with Brody
and under them. What delights we hid against him in delight. lurking behind a tree. How smug I felt
in that back room! I thought of them when a large truck stopped right away,
whenever I wasn’t with him. Then he • and Brody suddenly ran up to get in
decided we should start cutting school, By May, Brody had finished a year of with me. The driver was an old fat guy,
and I sneaked him back to the apart- community college, allegedly studying and we squashed ourselves next to him
ment while my mother was at work. business administration, and he said by having Brody put me on his lap. My
I had slept with two other boys, a mother thought I was on a class trip
few times each, so I knew something to the Adirondacks.
but not that much; the male anatomy “You cozy?” the man said. He had
was still an unfolding mystery to me. a growly voice, and snorted when he
From the get-go, my mother had said heard that we were heading all the way
Brody was too old for me, and, when to Arizona. Did we know how far that
she found out I was cutting school (I was? “Watch out for the rattlesnakes,”
did it too many times), she banned him he said, when he let us off five exits
from our apartment and tried to get further. We had to wait much longer
me to promise never to see him, which there, and the guy in a Ford van who
wasn’t even the sort of thing she did. he’d had it with school crap. “Want to finally stopped had me sit in the front
“Cutting school,” she said, “is the gate- hitch to Arizona?” he said. “It wouldn’t and Brody in the back, and he patted
way to a lot of things I hate to have to be hard.” He had a friend there we my knee the whole way and began to
think about.” In fact, she was right could stay with. It was a good place to stroke the zipper and put his finger
about that. live. He’d heard. The wide expanse of into the ripped spot. I didn’t say a word.
Brody hardly ever talked about his the desert. I thought it was my job to be polite
family. His father drove a truck for the We had found a new place to have and friendly. I got more worried as his
New York Post; that was all I knew. sex—Nini’s bedroom, when her par- hand got more insistent, and I had en-
Brody’s mother stayed home, so there ents weren’t home—and he said this dured quite a lot by the time he let us
was no sneaking off to his place. after a long, intricate session. My off near Pennsylvania.
58 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
 Brody thought it was funny when
I told him, and I said, “Oh, men.” I was
unhappy about it, but I wasn’t fright-
ened. Whatever happened was some-
thing I could put up with.
Our next rides were guys who just
wanted to talk, and Brody made up
stories for them. We were going to Ar-
izona so we could work on a date farm.
We were going to Arizona to help man-
age his uncle’s silver mine. We were
going to Arizona to work in his grand-
mother’s hotel and I was going to sing
in the hotel’s restaurant. He had me
sing for the driver. I could carry a tune
O.K., and I did “Home on the Range”
and “Muskrat Love” without my voice
cracking. I liked this part.
And what were we going to do when
night fell? How trusting I was. Brody
had the driver drop us at a strip mall
somewhere at the edge of Ohio, where
a motel advertised rooms for twelve
dollars a night. He told the clerk we’d
pay in the morning, when we checked
out, but the clerk said, “I don’t think
so.” Brody said we were going to eat “ You’ll work nights and the pay is garbage.”
first and come back.
I was starving and very glad to be
chomping down on a Filet-O-Fish
• •
at the nearby McDonald’s. “Hits the
spot, doesn’t it?” Brody said. We were then we rounded the corner and saw that we were nature’s dearest creatures,
going to be on the road for the next it dark at last. Brody put a blanket its adepts, its glowing initiates. My bat-
three or four days at least, he added, down on a bench for me, and he set- tered self slept on Brody’s chest.
and we didn’t have money for hotel tled himself on another bench, and On the way to Oklahoma the next
rooms if we wanted to eat. We were we held hands under the table. Brody day, we had a creepy driver who told
eating indoors at McDonald’s, but the lit a roach and we passed it back and dirty jokes and laughed at the punch
Rancho DeLuxe restaurant a few doors forth. I fell asleep on that plank of lines—“It was her pussy all along!” He
down had picnic tables outside. We wood, like a passenger on a boat. didn’t try to touch me, but he kept re-
had to wait till everything closed and peating the lines and grinning. When
we could sleep on the benches—no • he dropped us off at a rest stop, I de-
one would even see. It was a nice night, But how were we ever going to have cided I had nine dollars in my wallet
just a little chilly. sex if we never had a bed? Brody that we could spend for a motel.
I was only sorry that we’d have to solved this for us one night some- “You are such a princess,” Brody
sleep on separate benches. “What a where in Missouri by deciding we said.
great girl you are,” he said. McDon- could camp out at a rest stop, behind “We’re starting to smell,” I said.
ald’s didn’t stay open much longer, a giant bush at the end of a parking “Excuse me, Miss Royalty.”
and then Brody had us hike laps lot. Though I had the blanket under We fought over this until I thought
around the strip mall, to keep us in me on the grass, once Brody got going, he really was going to sleep outside
our beautiful health. He carried the the pounding, pounding of the act by himself, but in the end he let me
pack with our things in it, and we had was more than I wanted, and I won- check us in. And I took a rapturous
our arms around each other’s waist as dered what aim of evolution was shower, for so long that the hot water
we walked, and I was in a glorious served by designing it this way. What ran out on Brody. Who had no inter-
moment of my life. We walked past force of nature wanted Brody’s en- est in making love that night. O.K.,
the dark stores, with neon signs still thusiasm to leave welts on my back? if that was how he felt. I slept poorly
lit, and past a few eating joints whose When it got too bad, I shifted around and sadly, hearing the murmur and
brightness stayed on. The Rancho so I was on top, which Brody liked whistle of his breath.
took forever to close—we went around fine, but I was already battered. Our last day in Texas was steamy hot
the mall any number of times—but And yet I believed, more than ever, and had one unpleasant incident. Brody
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 59
tried to steal a pack of American cheese Brody said. “It just feels freer here. I felt sure that we could find jobs in
and three pepperoni sausages from a The air.” this city. Russell worked in a Xerox
gas-station grocery, and the guy fol- I fell asleep in the car, with the free store a few days a week—we could do
lowed us to the door and said, “People air blowing on my head, and Brody that. Brody and I could be a couple,
get shot for less.” I was terrified. Brody woke me up later to walk me into a living together.
said nothing and kept his head down very small adobe house, cluttered with We got a bit lost walking back to
as he gave up the goods. furniture I couldn’t see. I was put in an the house, and once we were there I
armchair to sleep, and I didn’t wake up washed fast and then collapsed on the
• till bright daylight got me, and I could armchair and fell asleep. I woke up—
Arizona was thrilling to see outside hear voices from what turned out to who knew when?—with Brody nes-
the windows—there really were cacti!— be a kitchen alcove. tled next to me and his hands all over
but it was midnight on a dark desert “The girl is awake,” Brody said, look- me, ready for action. He was lifting
night by the time we got close to Tuc- ing over at me. my T-shirt over my head, unhooking
son, where his friend lived. “He won’t The two guys were laughing about my bra. I was doing my part, in glee
mind our showing up so late?” something (that was good) and eating and reunion, rising to our bodily cel-
We’d been let out at a bare strip of toast, and Brody actually gave me a ebration, when I heard the sound of
closed snack joints along the highway. piece from his plate. I scarfed it down water running in the kitchen sink, and
There were two pay phones, and one without even speaking—I hadn’t known I knew then (with my eyes closed) that
of them worked. Brody fed it all his how hungry I was. Russell said I could Brody had us performing for his friend.
change and dialled a number that rang finish the loaf if I went out for sup- I went on with it anyway, but the
and rang. After what seemed like hours, plies afterward with Brody. A fifteen- arousal was like a bad dream, a fric-
I heard him say, “Russell? Yeah, it’s me. minute walk to the grocery store, and tion with a burn to it. I did what I
Really. I told you.” we could admire the scenery. could to speed him on—I wanted it
He wanted Russell to come pick I saw that Russell’s cube of a house over. We were coiled in the armchair,
us up, wherever we were, but Russell was one room, with too many chairs in a twisted pose that was hard on my
apparently wanted us to hitch to his in it. In the corner was a mattress with bad leg, and when he collapsed against
house. So we stood with our thumbs blue sheets, which seemed to be where me he said into my neck, “You liked
out, but no vehicle of any kind was Russell slept. that, didn’t you?”
stopping at this hour. Brody got more “You know what I think?” Brody I had never really loved Brody, if
change from me and went back to the said. “You know that retreat we were love requires adoration, but everything
pay phone to call again. And in the on? They were right about one thing.” about his body was very dear to me.
wee hours of the morning an old “Father Mike. Don’t remind me.” What a simple life I’d tried to lead.
Dodge Dart came out of the black “He said that nature was how God “You were great,” I said. Why was I
highway and stopped for us. “What revealed Himself to us. Have you been afraid to make him angry? Maybe I
an asshole you are,” the driver said. He outside yet? What kind of God wants just always took what I thought was
looked O.K., skinny in his T-shirt, it to go up to ninety-seven by noon?” the easy road.
wearing a straw cowboy hat to keep Russell said, “Well, the great thing Russell was gone by the time we
out the sun to come. is, this house has a swamp cooler—you stirred ourselves and got up from the
“Russell, my man, so good to see know how they work? You’re only swel- chair. He came back sometime later,
you,” Brody said. tering a little, right?” when we were trying to make a din-
“Who’s the girl?” “You’ve gone very local,” Brody said. ner out of hot dogs and bread and some
“Cara. Isn’t she cute?” I was still thinking about God and cheese we found in his fridge. “The
“Not really,” he said. nature. I had my own secret theory, girl is a great cook,” Brody said, offer-
I was in the back seat, they were in that sexual feeling existed to impress ing him some.
the front, and Brody looked back at on humans the sense of a beyond, the Russell chomped on it and said,
me, scowling. reality of another plane. There was no “How long did you think you could
“I don’t even know you,” Russell other reason for it to be the way it stay here? What was your plan?”
said, “and you’ve got me driving all over was. I certainly wasn’t going to say “Five or six years,” Brody said.
the state for you.” any of this to Brody, though I’d once Russell didn’t laugh. “You have an-
They had met, by Brody’s account, talked to Nini about it. other day,” he said. “That’s it.”
at a retreat in Nebraska that his high He offered recommendations. There
school, St. Somebody’s, had had with • was a Y, there was a homeless shelter,
other Catholic schools. He and Rus- I sort of loved the landscape—so flat there were places where you could camp
sell had sneaked away from the syl- you could see forever—with its clus- but you shouldn’t have anything valu-
van premises together and had been ters of houses, the vivid blue sky, and able on you. “You have each other,” he
sent home in disgrace, thereby form- a horizon with mountains on one side. said. I wasn’t sure how ironically he
ing a lifelong bond, or so Brody had And I liked the little bodega where we meant that.
decided. pooled our money to get bread and “You know, I have a friend in Phoe-
“I’m so happy to be in Arizona,” peanut butter and hot dogs and milk. nix,” Brody said. “We can hitch there.”
60 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
 He wasn’t there when I woke up,
and I was glad to have the bathroom
REASONS to myself, though I didn’t hog the
shower for too long. The little house
15 REASONS TO REMAIN SILENT was very quiet when I emerged. I
thought it was soulful of Brody to
Because I have nothing to say. stay on after sunrise, still looking at
Because, though I’ve got plenty to say, you’re not paying attention. whatever the vista was. Maybe I’d
Because I’d rather listen to what you’re saying. walk a little myself. I was looking for
So as not to talk to myself. my baseball hat—everybody said you
So as not to talk to the wall. needed a hat here—but I couldn’t
So as not to talk to the crack in the wall. find our backpack. Not anywhere.
So as not to waken the cricket who lives in the crack in the wall. Had I put my hat in my shoulder
Because they’ve sealed my lips with honey. bag? My bag was on the floor, with
Because I’m kissing you. its contents spilling out. My wallet
Because I’m sulking. was still there, right on top, and I
Because I’m sulking and I’m kissing you. could see immediately that the bill-
Because I like to remain silent. fold was empty.
Because our breath is speaking all on its own. I was suddenly very afraid that a
Because I’m keeping a secret larger than words. robber had come in, while we slept,
Because my heart is in my mouth. and I wanted to tell Brody. As if Brody
weren’t gone. I went back to the bath-
15 REASONS TO YELL room to check—no Brody shampoo,
no Brody shaving cream. He’d made a
Because you haven’t let out a yell in ages. clean sweep.
To make sure all your vowels are still in their proper places. In the kitchen there was a note on
Because you’re alone and in desperate need of an echo. the table. Looks like your asshole boy-
To measure the height of a Gothic cathedral. friend is gone. I’m at work, see you later.
To cheer on an Italian cyclist. Here’s a key—DO NOT leave the door
To shoo off a grouchy mouse. unlocked if you go out. R. There wasn’t
So they hear you from the last row of the theatre. much food left—three slices of bread,
So they hear you from the other side of the creek. two slices of cheese. And that was the
So the fishes caught in the fish trap hear you. moment when I couldn’t stand it. I
When you’re in water up to your neck, to call for a ring buoy. was weeping, little soft sobs that
To measure the depth of a bottomless well. turned louder; I heard myself howl.
To invite the wolves to your birthday party. Brody had left me without anything,
So everyone knows that yelling is not so easy. in the middle of nowhere. Brody
Because some others are unable to yell. whose penis had been in every por-
So that the woods will learn your name. tal of my body, Brody whose skin I’d
licked and loved the taste of. Whose
—Harkaitz Cano smell was in my clothing.
I took Russell’s key and walked
(Translated, from the Basque, by Elizabeth Macklin.) outside, past trees with branches like
gnarled fans and houses the color of
sand and rust, but I didn’t get very
“You never told me!” I said. “That’s lived in a big house, with a great view, far in the heat. Without a hat, too.
great.” according to Brody. “Good night, babe,” Where had Brody looked at any
“Plan B,” he said. “Since some peo- he said, when we were done, and he sunrise? I was heading back and I
ple don’t know what friendship is.” fell asleep in seconds, with his weight knew what I was going to do. My
That night, in our big armchair, on my chest. mother was at the library, at her job,
he was a force of non-stop ardor, a • but she’d be home by six, which was
zealot of every orifice. More than ever three here, and I could call her col-
before. I didn’t forget that Russell In what seemed like the middle of the lect. I’d given my mother a bad scare,
was there, on his mattress across the night, I woke to feel Brody twisting and I was sorry now.
room. A f lush of horror came and around and getting up. By the time I I got the door to Russell’s house un-
went, but I did what we were doing. opened my eyes, he was standing nearby, locked, which wasn’t easy, and when I
I was used to it. pulling on his pants. “I’m going out to went back inside I was hoping that
And I thought that Phoenix would see the sunrise,” he said. “Sleep on, my Brody would be there, but of course he
probably be better. The friend there girl.” Which I did. wasn’t. How could I keep on longing
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 61
for him? Well, I could. I knew he had “You’ll be home soon, sweetie,” she said. and I hoped she was going to make
dishonored the power of our bodies “Arizona’s not a bad state,” I said. me pancakes, the way she’d done when
by running away. I’d stayed faithful “Oh, Cara,” my mother said. I came back from science camp.
to my beliefs. I buoyed myself with “You have no idea what you put me
this truth while I waited for Russell • through,” she said. “Do you?”
to get home. Russell was not happy about my stay- And I had to go be a junior again,
• ing one more night, and when he drove with three weeks left in the semester.
me into town the next morning to get I was a walking ghost. I couldn’t talk
My poor mother. Russell had been the money order he said, “I think you to anyone except Nini. Nini said, “You’ll
home for a while—he’d been grouchy owe me some for room and board.” never be the same, will you?”
but had fed me some spaghetti—when I peeled off a twenty and said, “I’ll But, after a while, I had stories for
I finally tried phoning her. “Oh, Cara,” never forget you,” which was true if those who asked. “The thing about
she said, when she heard my voice. not kindly meant. He took me to the hitching,” I told people, “is that you
“Why did you do this?” She had pes- airport; he could’ve been much worse. can’t let drivers leave you in some no-
tered and plagued Nini (who would where spot. You have to speak up.” I
say only that we were on the road), she • told them that a person could get by
had called Brody’s family (who thought All those hours of travel, I was longing on no money at all. “My boyfriend said
he was at a friend’s but weren’t sure), for Brody. I had to switch planes in Phoe- I was too reckless, but we came out of
she had called the police (who took nix—I’d never done such a thing alone— it fine.” Who in my class had done
the details but said it was difficult to and of course I kept looking for him in what I’d done? (Well, it was 1980; some
track runaways across state lines). the airport. Wherever I was, I occupied had done worse.) I was good at report-
“You’re O.K.?” she said. “Tell me how myself by remembering all that we’d ing certain scenes—me singing songs
you are.” done in bed or in that ridiculous easy for a truck driver, Brody stealing deli-
“I’m totally O.K., I’m fine,” I said. chair. My mind was furnished with Brody. cious food for us from a gas station,
And she knew how to send me a My mother met me at the gate, and Brody bragging about me to his friend.
money order, she knew how to buy she crushed me to her in a long hug, My mother was afraid I was going to
me a plane ticket that I could pick up, saying, “Do not do this again.” In truth, escalate, take off into drugs and crime,
she knew how to get me out of there. I was really very happy to be home, dare myself into bigger trouble. And I
might have, but I didn’t. Not then. Why
didn’t I? I was still hungry for Brody for
a long time, and I wasn’t sure I liked any-
thing else. I knew perfectly well that he
was an asshole—I’d sort of always known
it—but I thought that what we’d had was
a tremendous thing. In its way. It had
taken me more than two thousand miles
across the country; it had caused me to
sleep on the ground, on benches, in chairs,
without even minding; it had led me to
eagerly slip into dozens of vehicles driven
by strangers; it had its own unnamed
beauties of feeling. I didn’t have to call it
love, and I didn’t, but even as I thought
pretty poorly of him, I believed it was
something. I’d been through my days and
nights of initiation, testing my mettle,
and I took pride in that. I had now passed
beyond a lot of what went on around me.
•
I turned out to be much closer to nor-
mal than my poor mother ever expected.
I got into cocaine a little in college and
some of my boyfriends were alarming,
but I was all right; I never held up a
bank or O.D.’d on anything or joined
a cult or even dropped out of school. I
did things I still regret—I slept with
“We can do this the smooth way, or we can do it the crunchy way.” the best friend of a boyfriend I really
liked, I slept with a professor my dear Brody had been killed some years ago, to fly cross-country to help, but I wouldn’t
female pal was in love with. I did this when he drove through a stop sign right let her. This was stupid of me, actually.
because I could, and because such ad- into another car somewhere in Maine. Six years later, after I had my sec-
ventures were still irresistible to me. Brody had a car? In Maine? ond daughter, Elena, my mother said,
I thought that I was onto something “I thought you two were friends,” “I thought you were smarter than me.
that had been known throughout his- Ronald had to say again. You were.”
tory but never acted out as candidly. “Life is not all progress,” I said.
Nini, who was studying anthropology • In fact, I have loved being the mother
at N.Y.U., pointed out to me that sex- And then I was walking down Eighth of two daughters. Amazing creatures,
ual behavior was always a social con- Street, with the cruller in my hand. My with distinct characters, ever changing.
struct. “O.K., I’m a creature of my first thought was to be struck with re- As teen-agers, they confided in me
times,” I said. Actually, Nini had had morse for the mean things I’d said in much more than I would have expected.
affairs with women and was much more How innocently upbeat I’d been
up-to-date than I was. about sex, compared with them. Well,
I knew what they knew, but I had other
• terms for it, other measures. Isabel lived
I lived at home during those years—I with her raging disappointment—her
took the subway up to City College, in entirely correct moral horror—at the
Harlem—and I let my mother meet only state of the world, and said that hetero-
one of the boys I dated, if you could call sexual sex (she didn’t like other kinds)
it dating. He was a nice guy, anyone was marked by selfishness and prone to
could see that, nerdy but alluring, who violence. Violence? I couldn’t get her to
talked to my mother about geophysical our fights. (Brody, I’m sorry.) And my give me a for instance, except to say that
research. She thought it was fine when next thought was to want back what choking was sort of a thing. It wasn’t
I went off to Berkeley for grad work, he’d stolen—my hat that I liked and a freedom to her, this sex. Elena hated the
following him, though we split up mid- favorite scarf that had been in the back- way certain people were always posting
way through the first semester. pack. No Brody to blame anymore. Brody their intimate reports on social media.
Northern California, it turned out, was gone. How could it be that even if And yet most of the time they had
was a great place for me. What a pleas- I’d never planned to see him again our crushes on various men. They managed,
ant and civilized climate, what cool peo- story was a different story now? in their ways. My clever, despairing girls.
ple. So when I came home to frozen New He’d been dead for years without my
York for Christmas break, I felt distant even knowing, which made me feel ig- •
and older. Long ago, I had lived here. But norant and shallow. I hoped he’d thought When I was ten and jumping around
I was happy to see Nini again, and I fondly of me, often and well, in whatever time on the fire escape, doing my foxy little
walked by my old high school, even he’d had. Was I allowed to hope that? I moves, what did I think I was doing?
stopped by the doughnut shop on Eighth would’ve liked to do something in his As my mother asked. Putting on my
Street that had once been rash enough memory, set down a bunch of flowers power: that’s what I thought I was doing.
to employ me. My old boss, Ronald, was somewhere, but I couldn’t really think of I remembered Nini wailing to her
behind the counter, a little balder and a symbolic spot. Nini always said Amer- mother that I was dead. Ha ha, I wasn’t.
more creased. “Look at you!” he said. “You icans were totally feeble in their death But I was taken to the land of the
were a pipsqueak when I saw you last, rituals. Her senior thesis had been on dead, that demented emergency room.
and now you’re a grown woman.” Bali, which had big cremation ceremo- My mother tried to edge me away from
“How’s it been going without me?” nies that even the tourists went to. Ac- the worst, the bleeding and the rant-
I said. cording to Nini, Balinese Hindus thought ing. Later, I told Nini it was all very
Business was down, Eighth Street cremation freed the soul to enter the upper interesting. I acted as if I’d wanted to
wasn’t what it once was, but he was realm, where it might eventually be re- know everything, though I didn’t—who
always glad to see his old workers. Crul- leased from the cycle of birth and death. does? When I was back in school with
lers weren’t selling, did I want one for Evil residents of the lower realm were al- my plaster cast with all the signatures
free? I did. ways trying to claim the soul. It would be on it, I’d look at those names and feel
“It was so sad about Brody, wasn’t just like Brody to walk into such a battle. superior. For having been in that room,
it?” he said. I did light a candle for him in my with its evidence of what the body was.
What? room, but I didn’t tell my mother, and I believed my tibia would grow back
Brody had never been completely I never told Nini, either. fine—I was a confident girl—but bone
out of my thoughts, and I used to guess didn’t last forever, did it? I kept this
how far he’d hitched and where he’d • question to myself, as if no one were
ended up. Las Vegas? Baja? Ronald, In California, a decade later, I had my in on the mystery but me. 
who couldn’t get over my not knowing— daughter Isabel four weeks earlier than
“I thought you two were friends”—fi- anyone expected. My ex didn’t even know NEWYORKER.COM
nally got to the sentences about how that he was the father. My mother wanted Joan Silber on the mystery of the body.

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 63

 THE CRITICS

A CRITIC AT LARGE

SYSTEM UPGRADE
Can we find a better model of government than liberal democracy?

BY ADAM GOPNIK

emocracy is the worst form of the greatest of lines on the social per- fortunate line about betraying one’s
“D of government,” Churchill
is said to have said, “except
ils of privilege: “Take physic, pomp,/Ex-
pose thyself to feel what wretches feel.”
country before betraying one’s friends,
a kind of motto on the shield of the
all those other forms that have been Dr. Johnson thought that democracy Cambridge spies for Stalin—he has a
tried.” Actually, what he excepted was was obviously silly, and Dr. Johnson, let nearly religious faith in the power of
“all those other forms that have been us remember, was a prescient, 1619 kind voting. Although his allusive manner
tried from time to time,” with that last of guy, seeing the impending Ameri- makes it hard at times to distinguish
phrase implying that democracy is the can Revolution as a slaveholders’-pro- the background of the argument from
root form, and the others mere occa- tection enterprise. (“How is it that we the point of the argument, what he has
sional experiments. It was an odd no- hear the loudest yelps for liberty among in mind would be distant from the lib-
tion, but was perhaps called for by the the drivers of negroes?”) It is not only eral democracy we know.
times in which he was speaking, the possible to be an anti-liberal and not At first, Purdy’s account seems a
mid-nineteen-forties, when a war was be reactionary but easily done. fluently erudite version of a familiar
won for democracy at a nearly unbear- These days, liberal, representative leftist critique of “procedural” liberal-
able cost. The art historian Kenneth democracy—moribund in Russia, fail- ism. Liberals underestimate (or are fa-
Clark recalled appearing in those years ing in Eastern Europe, sickened in tally disingenuous about) the real role
on a popular BBC radio quiz program, Western Europe, and having come one of money in bourgeois representative
“The Brains Trust,” and fumbling a marginally resolute Indiana politician politics; politics in America, in par-
question on the best form of govern- away from failing here—seems in the ticular, has been wholly “colonized”
ment. The “right” answer, given by all gravest danger. Previously fringe views by capital. Our legislative assemblies
the other panelists, was “democracy,” certainly find new forums, with mon- are filled with rich people who mainly
but this seemed to Clark “incredibly archists speaking loudly, if a touch the- talk to other rich people. Reagan and
unhistorical”; he had, after all, studied atrically, but that is mostly strut and Thatcher, or their financiers, brought
the rise of Botticellian beauty in the noise. What would a plausible alterna- about an era of plutocratic planetary
Medici-mafia state of Florence, and of tive actually look like? “We’d all love to rule, which hasn’t been reformed since.
Watteau and rococo under the brute see the plan,” John Lennon sang sen- Blair and Clinton were mere handmaid-
dynastic rule of France, and generally sibly about revolution. ens of the market, neoliberals making
valued those despotic regimes where And so, in search of a better blue- their peace with globalization and its
more great art and music got made than print for governance, we race back to inequality. Purdy treats the Occupy Wall
has ever been created under a bourgeois Athens, the birthplace of the demos, to Street movement with admiration, as a
democracy. Wrong answer, nonetheless. figure out what went wrong and how torch that burned too briefly. Obama
He was never again trusted to be a Brain. it might be set right. It’s a model that was a failure who raised hopes and then
One doesn’t have to look far, even “Two Cheers for Politics” (Basic Books), defaulted on them; the first Sanders
within the received canon of English by the political essayist and law profes- campaign was an authentic but also
literature, to find impatient dissent from sor Jedediah Purdy, keeps in sight, if somehow dashed hope. Trump, signifi-
the idea of the natural superiority of in varying focus. Purdy sets out a pro- cantly, is downgraded to a mere epi-
democratic government. Shakespeare gram for fundamental change rooted phenomenon, a symptom rather than
ABOVE: LALALIMOLA

found nothing good to be said for de- in the virtues often thought to repose a cause—a predictably decadent exten-
mocracy or egalitarian impulses, trust- in the Athens of the fifth century B.C.E. sion of neoliberal nihilism.
ing entirely to order and compassion to Borrowing his title from E. M. Forster’s Yet Purdy does think that Trump’s
lubricate the joints of the state, even famous collection “Two Cheers for campaign, like those of Obama and San-
though he is the author, in “King Lear,” Democracy”—which included the un- ders, signalled an appetite for democratic
64 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
Democracy was always the wrong ideal, Kōjin Karatani argues; far superior was the isonomia of the ancient Ionians.
ILLUSTRATION BY BERKE YAZICIOGLU THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 65
 the people and their decisions; if you
wanted to convict Socrates of impiety—
or finance the Parthenon with tribute
from the Ionians—you cast your vote
and the democratic deed was done. Purdy
recognizes that the Athenian system was
far from perfectly democratic; the vot-
ing population couldn’t all fit into the
spaces for public assembly, and the pol-
ity did not include women or slaves. But,
for the Athenians, it was effectively dem-
ocratic: it functioned as a “synecdoche,”
not as a metaphor, in a striking formu-
lation of Josiah Ober’s. A small part of
the citizenry stood for the whole.
The villain of the story, then, is not
just the interposition of a “representa-
tive” class but the idea of representa-
tion itself, with its guaranteed declen-
sion into bureaucracy and élite rule. Nor
is this an abstract or merely historical
• • issue. Any New Yorker who has walked
into his voting station to vote, only to
confront a choice of unknown names
renewal, and a revival of “political ener- the complaint, presumably having ar- listed for dimly understood offices—
gies that had receded far from the cen- rived at a way of separating bold free- the deliverance of an inscrutable Dem-
ter of public life”: thinkers deserving of their place from ocratic Party machine—can share the
those dastardly meritocrats.) emotion that precedes the argument.
In each case, some core of listeners felt
“Yes! This is real. This is what it’s actually
Books of this kind, as all who write If Purdy does not have a very detailed
about.” The campaigns grew through the dis- them know, invariably call up remote plan, he has at least a plan for a plan.
covery that the listener was not alone: the po- philosophical figures and have them hover He wants to transform American life
litical epiphany was shared. People felt freer about the text like f loats at a Macy’s through mass participation in engaged
to say things that they had kept to themselves Thanksgiving Day parade, to be shown and shared decision-making, of the sort
or not quite known they believed and to take
stances they had shied away from, assuming
off or else deflated with a peashooter. So presaged by Zuccotti Park. To get where
no one would join them. we get the usual run of Hobbes said this we need to go, he argues forcefully for
and then Locke said this and then Rous- a reformed Supreme Court and a new
The dead wasteland of a procedural seau said the opposite and now here we Constitutional Convention every three
liberalism managed by an élite, Purdy are with Donald Trump having been decades, to rewrite the whole damn thing.
believes, has produced a crisis that only elected President. A sensitive and sub-
true politics—a popular belief in the tle account of Adam Smith is followed he familiar parts of Purdy’s polemic
possibilities of common purpose—can
solve. For the worst form of capitalist
by a less subtle, and less sympathetic, ac-
count of Friedrich Hayek, two centuries
T have familiar rejoinders. Occupy
Wall Street was a marginal, not a mass,
depredation is exacted in the realm of later. Walter Lippmann comes on, and movement, never gaining popular sup-
the political imagination: “It has to do Tocqueville, of course, is everywhere. port, and Sanders ran twice and lost
with whether we believe that we can Yet a more radical thesis at last twice. Purdy blames “market coloniza-
decide the shape of our shared world.” emerges, and with it the originality of tion” for the Supreme Court’s reaction-
He is angry at the élites who supervise Purdy’s position: he is not merely in ary decision-making, but the Court’s
the bureaucratic capitalist state on be- favor of a renewed egalitarianism but most reactionary decisions have little to
half of their overlords while keeping up disgusted with “representative” democ- do with the desires of capitalism or, any-
an elaborate masquerade of equality of racy in all its forms. way, of capitalists: the Goldman Sachs
opportunity. Harvard gets hit particu- Rejecting the Founders’ faith in con- crowd is fine with women’s autonomy,
larly hard here: slots at Harvard Col- stitutional self-governance, he believes being significantly composed of liberal
lege, he tells us, are bought and sold, that a form of direct democracy must women, and would prefer fewer gun
while its Crimson meritocrats go on to replace it—a “rough-hewn” kind, tradi- massacres. And though the struggle to
staff “Democratic administrations,” the tionally associated with what the ancient maintain democratic institutions within
Times, and, well, The New Yorker. (Purdy Athenians enjoyed, when any citizen a capitalist society has been intense, the
was a chaired professor at Columbia might be called on to take immediate struggle to maintain democratic insti-
Law School when he wrote the book, part in the decisions of the whole. There tutions in anti-capitalist countries has
and, curiously, Columbia is left out of seemed then to be little space between been catastrophic. We do poorly, but
66 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
the Chinese Communist Party does in- and coaxing Manchin (whose replace- positions, but to deny that they were
finitely worse, even when it tilts toward ment would be incomparably farther to popular is to pretend that a two-decade
some version of capitalism. the right) to make a green deal so long Tory reign, in many ways not yet com-
For that matter, would our demo- as it was no longer colored green. The pleted, and a forty-nine-state sweep in
cratic life really be improved by a new difficulty with the Athenian synecdo- 1984 were mass delusions. Although pro-
Constitutional Convention—to which che is that getting the part to act as the witch Munchkins may be called collab-
Alex Jones’s followers, demanding to whole presupposes an agreement among orators after their liberation, they persist
know where the U.F.O.s are being kept, the whole. There is no such agreement. in their ways, and resent their liberators
are as likely to show up as Elizabeth Trumpism and Obamaism are not two quite as much as they ever feared the
Warren’s followers, demanding that cor- expressions of one will for collective ac- witch. “Of course, I never liked all those
porations be made to pay their fair share tion; they are radically incommensura- scary messages she wrote in the sky with
of taxes? The U.S. Constitution, un- ble views about what’s needed. her broom,” they whisper among them-
democratic though it is, is surely an ad- Purdy’s faith in “collective rational- selves. “But at least she got things done.
ditive to the problem, not the problem ity” as the spur to common action—his Look at this place now. The bricks are
itself. Parliamentary systems, like Can- less mystical version of Rousseau’s gen- all turning yellow.”
ada’s, have also been buffeted by pop- eral will—leaves him not entirely im-
ulist and illiberal politics, while Brexit, mune to what could be called the urdy’s vision of democracy would, of
a bit of rough-hewn majoritarian pol-
itics in a country without a written con-
Munchkinland theory of politics. This
is the belief that although the majority
P course, omit the bugs in the Athe-
nian model: the misogyny, the slavery,
stitution, shows the dangers of relying population of any place might be in- the silver mines. But what if the origi-
on a one-night plebiscite. timidated and silenced by an oppres- nal sin of the democratic vision lies right
Purdy’s basic political position seems sive force—capitalism or special inter- there—what if, by the time we got to
to be that politics would be better if ev- ests or the Church—they would, given Athens, democratic practice was already
eryone shared his. Those of us who share the chance, sing ding-dong in unison fallen and hopelessly corrupted, with
his politics might agree, but perhaps and celebrate their liberation. They just the slaves and the silver mines and the
with the proviso that the kind of shar- need a house dropped on their witch. imperialism inherent to the Athenian
ing he is cheering for has more to do The perennial temptation of leftist model? This is the hair-raising thesis ad-
with the poetics of protest than with politics is to suppose that opposition to vanced by the illustrious Japanese phi-
politics as generally understood. Politics, its policies among the rank and file must losopher Kōjin Karatani. In his book
as he conceives it, is a way of getting all be rooted in plutocratic manipulation, “Isonomia and the Origins of Philoso-
the people who agree with you to act in and therefore curable by the reassertion phy,” Athenian democracy is exposed as
unison. This is a big part of democratic of the popular will. The evidence sug- a false idol. He does not see this from
societies. Forming coalitions, assembling gests, alas, that very often what looks like some Straussian point of view, in which
multitudes, encouraging action on ur- plutocratic manipulation really is the Plato’s secret compact of liars is a better
gent issues: these are all essential to a popular will. Many Munchkins like the form of government than the rabble
healthy country, even more than the witch, or at least work for the witch out throwing stones at Socrates. On the con-
business of filling in the circle next to a of dislike for some other ascendant group trary, he is a staunch egalitarian, who be-
name you have just encountered for an lieves that democracy actually exempli-
office you know nothing about. fies the basic oppressive rhythm of “ruler
But the greatest service of politics and ruled.” His ideal is, instead, “isono-
isn’t to enable the mobilization of peo- mia,” the condition of a society in which
ple who have the same views; it’s to en- equal speaks to equal as equal, with none
able people to live together when their ruled or ruling, and he believes that such
views differ. Politics is a way of getting an order existed around the Ionian Is-
our ideas to brawl in place of our per- lands of the seventh and sixth centuries
sons. Though democracy is practiced B.C.E., before the rise of Athens.
when people march on Washington and If Purdy is susceptible to the Munch-
assemble in parks—when they feel that of Munchkins. (Readers of the later kinland theory of social change, Karatani
they have found a common voice—pol- L. Frank Baum books will recall that is tempted by what might be called the
itics is practiced when the shouting turns Munchkin Country is full of diverse and Atlantis theory of political history. Once
to swapping. Politics was Disraeli get- sometimes discordant groupings.) The upon a time, there was a great, good
ting one over on the nineteenth-cen- awkward truth is that Thatcher and Rea- place where life was beautiful, thought
tury Liberal Party by leaping to elec- gan were free to give the plutocrats what was free, and everyone was treated fairly.
toral reform for the working classes, they wanted because they were giving This good place was destroyed by some
thereby trying to gain their confidence; the people what they wanted: in one case, kind of earthquake—perhaps visited
politics was Mandela making a deal with release from what had come to seem a from outside, perhaps produced by an
de Klerk to respect the white minority stifling, union-heavy statist system; in internal shaking of its own plates—and
in exchange for a peaceful transition to the other, a spirit of national, call it tribal, vanished into the sea, though memories
majority rule. Politics is Biden courting self-affirmation. One can deplore these of it remain. The Atlantis in question
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 67
may be Plato’s original idealized island, is that Ionian trade wasn’t captured by everything was made of water, was mak-
or it may be the pre-patriarchal society a state monopoly but conducted through ing an essentially empirical attempt to
of Europe, or the annual meeting of Vi- networks of makers and traders. The understand the world without recourse
king peasants in nightless Iceland. In earnings of trade, under those condi- to fate or divine supervision. (So, for
every case, there was once a better place tions, were more evenly distributed, Karatani, was Heraclitus, a century
than this one, and our path to renewal and the freedom of movement put a later, who thought everything was made
lies in renewing its tenets. limit on abusive political arrangements. of fire.) Karatani insists that the pre-
Karatani’s Atlantean view is plausibly “The reason class divisions multiplied Socratic physics is inseparable from an
detailed. The settlement around the Io- under the money economy in Athens Ionian political ideology. Ionian phys-
nian Islands in the centuries after Homer was that from the outset political power ics posited an equilibrium of forces,
(but before the imperial ascent of Ath- was held by a land-owning nobility,” not a hierarchy of them with a mysti-
ens) was marked by an escape from clan he writes. “That kind of inequality, and cal overseer. Anaximander, Thales’
society; the islands welcomed immi- ruler-ruled relation, did not arise in protégé, “introduced the principle of
grants of all kinds. Free of caste con- Ionia. That is to say, isonomia obtained. justice (or dikē) as the law governing
nections and tribal ties, the Ionians were If in a given polis such inequality and the natural world.” The play of forces
able to engineer a new kind of equal- ruler-ruled relation did arise, people in the physical world, fluid and forever
ity.They didn’t become hunter-gatherers, could simply move to another place.” in exchange, mimicked and governed
but they “recuperated nomadism by the For Karatani, working in a Marx- the forces in the social world. Isono-
practice of foreign trade and manufac- ian tradition, ideas tend to mirror the mia was at the root of it all.
turing.” Like fourteenth-century Ven- economic exigencies of their contexts, Isonomia in Ionia—it has the rhythm
ice or seventeenth-century Amsterdam, and he thinks that in Ionia they did. of a song lyric. One feels again the
Ionia was a place where there wasn’t The line of philosophers who came of shape of a familiar and accurate his-
much land to till, let alone a landed ar- age around the islands, usually called torical meme: trading and manufac-
istocracy to own and exploit the terrain the pre-Socratics, were notably uncon- turing centers tend to be markedly more
and its tillers, and so people had to earn cerned with hierarchy or with religious egalitarian than landholding ones.
a living making and trading things. As mysticism. They imagined the universe Democratic practices of one kind or
a result, they were open in ways that as governed by material, transactional another—though limited and oligar-
mainland Greece was not. exchanges. Thales, who lived in the Io- chic in Venice, bloodied by sporadic
A key point, in Karatani’s account, nian city of Miletus and thought that religious warfare in Holland—usually
take root in such places, only to be
trampled as power consolidates and an
élite takes hold.

as Karatani’s Atlantis, that uto-

W pia of isonomia, actually any-
thing like this? Early on, he cheerfully
admits that “there are almost no histor-
ical or archaeological materials to give
us an idea of what Ionian cities were
really like.” But he suggests that we can
argue by indirect evidence and by draw-
ing “inferences in world history from
cases that resemble Ionia.” These turn
out to include medieval Iceland, also a
refuge for exiles, with its famous Þingvel-
lir, or meeting place, and pre-Revolu-
tionary New England, settled by refu-
gees as well, and marked by its isonomic
townships and town meetings.
It is an odd way to argue history and
has odd results. In Iceland, you can visit
the Þingvellir, where the Viking dem-
ocrats gathered—and the next thing
you are shown is the drowning pool,
where women were executed. The
drowning pool came into use later, to
be sure, but is part of a similar social
inheritance. Rough justice, the sagas
“ You said it. I heard it. There’s no taking it back, Harold!” make plain, is as much an Icelandic tra-
dition as shared goods are. And one has ruler to ruled, in a way that shames more cafés in an Italian town tells us more
only to read Hawthorne to have a very timid liberal imaginations. about its prospects than the wisdom of
different view of life in those New En- And if real-world isonomia seems the laws in its statute book does. Such
gland townships, especially for people likely to produce a group of refugees per- institutions involve gatherings of equals
who did not quite fit the pattern. petually on the run as they flee one ty- where authority matters less than argu-
Karatani’s historical approach—pro- rant after another? This may not be a ment, and where originality is prized—
jecting his ideals upon an idealized past— plausible basis for a polis, but it is a plau- we want to hear from the guy who thinks
has other confounding consequences. sible description of a globalized intel- everything is made of fire, since we have
What are we to make, for instance, of ligentsia. Here one comes to a really had enough of the one who thinks it’s all
his insistence that the poems of Homer, striking thing about books like Karatani’s. wet. Those gatherings aren’t as charged
the bard of Ionia, are not aristocratic? They reflect the existence as the ones Purdy heralds in
In truth, the force of the occasional of an absurd luxuriance “Two Cheers for Politics,”
protests against aristocratic practices in of liberal and open institu- but they matter in their very
Homer are moving because of their rar- tions, which, for the moment everydayness. Without the
ity, rather like the cries of the peasants at least, still engirdle the values, the practices are mere
in “King Lear.” “Blood will tell” is pretty planet. In a translator’s note mummery, as in Russia; with
much the motto on every inspired page. to “Isonomia,” Joseph Mur- the values, societies can re-
But Karatani needs Homer to be iso- phy tells us that “the text in- main open, even if the dem-
nomic and will make him so. More prac- corporates extensive quota- ocratic practices are for a
tically, how did Ionians resolve the tion from Greek, German, time limited—as in late-sev-
perpetual fact of political conflict? Per- Japanese, French and Chi- enteenth-century France or
petual secession seems to be the answer; nese sources,” and he ex- even (look at that election
when things get bad, simply go to an- plains his elaborate methods of render- list again) contemporary New York. Lib-
other island. (The old liberal huff “I’m ing all these quotations into one text. We eral institutions, what Frederick Law
moving to Canada!” is more serious when take it for granted that a Japanese scholar Olmsted imagined as commonplace civ-
“Canada” is just a rowboat ride away.) will write about them all, in Japanese, ilization, are embodied in the circles of
This is not always ridiculous advice—a and that his translations will be rectified participation that silently surround both
series of successive secessions in New with existing ones, and that Slavoj Žižek books. The effort to keep these institu-
England is how we got Rhode Island— will be reached to blurb the work in his tions healthy, to keep the presses running
but it doesn’t seem like much of a plan hideaway in Slovenia, and that Duke and the coffee coming, is work we can do
for settled modern countries. University—named for a toxic tobacco every day, and some small ground for hope.
Greek islands before the rise of Ath- family—will label it Marxist theory, and Churchill was right: better than all
ens, chilly and isolated medieval Iceland, that grumpy liberals will critique it. That the others that have been tried, from
the New England townships of the Co- this network exists, on a scale unknown time to time, and here we are, in one of
lonial era: these sound like oddly sparse to previous eras, is in itself astounding. those times again. But is there ever any
and remote spots to build a dream on. Liberal institutions—and nothing is other kind of time? The nature of poli-
Perhaps all such dreams can be built only more of a liberal institution, in its small tics is to be permanently stressful. In Oz,
so. Reading Karatani’s account of ancient way, than a university press—matter as once the house had dropped on the witch,
Ionia, one recalls the parallel dream of much to our isonomic prospects as dem- Dorothy would discover that the Mayor
ancient Sparta, the militaristic state that ocratic practices do. Karl Popper’s point of Munchkinland and the Leaders of
so inspired authoritarians from Plato to in his 1958 essay “Back to the Pre-So- the Lollipop Guild (not to mention the
Hitler. An isonomic Ionia is infinitely cratics” (although Karatani is critical of oppressed women of the Lullaby League)
preferable to an authoritarian Sparta but Popper, he echoes him here) is that what had violent differences in values and
seems of the same imaginative kind. We matters is not the content of the scien- views, which the witch did not cause,
can’t build back better from a place that tific theories of the Ionian philosophers though she might have exploited them.
didn’t really exist. Certainly, from what (everything really isn’t made of water) Politics, as opposed to pure power grabs,
little we do know, the Ionians seem not but their “second order” traditions, their involves an acceptance of the truth that
to have been egalitarian at all in the sense tolerance of dissent and appetite for ar- these conflicts can never be cured but
we mean and have gone far toward gument. What matters is that, by argu- only contained, and made as peaceable
achieving—the aim of equality between ing it out without feuds or heresy hunts, as humanly, or as Munchkinly, possible.
the sexes, or among religious groups, or they eventually arrived at the theory of Politics is stress. The objective of
among ethnicities or sexualities. Yet the the atom, of which everything is made. practicing it should be to keep the stress
basic inquiry into the possibility of human These institutions of open inquiry are from turning into cardiac arrest. Politics
relationships that Karatani undertakes foundational to the practice of democ- is, in this respect, a more desperate and
is moving, even inspiring. Though he racy. As Amartya Sen argues, good pri- tragic pursuit than those who pursue
doesn’t cite them, his Ionians most re- mary schools contribute as much to de- utopian ideals in its place may take it to
semble the classic anarchists, of the mocracy as strong political parties do, be. The first cheer for politics is surely
Mikhail Bakunin or Emma Goldman and, as Robert Putnam has shown many for getting people to act in unison; the
kind: repudiating all power relations, times, the presence of choral groups and second is for getting them to stop. 
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 69
 descriptions with unsettling compari-
BOOKS sons, and distorts time by stretching it
like taffy or compressing it into sear-

OBJECT LESSONS
ing instants. Her work traffics in mo-
ments and lifetimes, but rarely in the
in-between units (days, weeks, years)
Kathryn Scanlan’s violent compression. that compose most narratives.
Scanlan’s books are hard to slot into
BY LESLIE JAMISON traditional genre categories. Her début,
“Aug 9-Fog,” which appeared in 2019,
consists of fragments whittled from a
diary that Scanlan found at an estate
sale. It recounts a year in the life of an
eighty-six-year-old woman in rural Il-
linois, seasons spent tending a home
and nursing a dying husband: “He
called. Not so good. Bleeding again.
Trying to knit pincushion.” The next
year, Scanlan published a collection,
“The Dominant Animal,” that shrank
the short story to its barest bones: forty
stories in just a hundred and forty pages.
These narrative shards lay bare the
menace and desperation lurking inside
mundane moments: a boy sticking his
hand between his cousin’s legs; a con-
stipated boyfriend trying to eat enough
salami to “force it out”; a daughter
bending to pick up her mother’s stray
white hairs after the overdue installa-
tion of an air-conditioner. (“It couldn’t
help her because she was dead.”) An-
imals are everywhere—as mysteries,
nuisances, accomplices—but the human
characters, as the book’s title suggests,
are the most animal of all. The stories
are wry, startling, and feral, full of mal-
ice and hunger, where “Aug 9-Fog” is
full of pragmatism, curiosity, and quiet
engines of domestic wonder.
hen I was a child, my grand- “two of the same animal, large and Scanlan’s new book, “Kick the Latch”
W mother and I played a game that
involved walking around her neighbor-
small, grown and juvenile,” or an ordi-
nary tart as a wild creature at rest: “The
(New Directions), interlaces the dark
threads of violence that run through
hood pretending to be aliens, from a thing I’ve made is resting. It has a pow- “The Dominant Animal” with the un-
planet called Algernon, trying to dis- der I don’t like to disturb, but I cut it sentimental rituals of caregiving that
cern the nature of every object we saw. apart and set it between us.” The “thing” anchor “Aug 9-Fog.” “Kick the Latch”
That garden hose? It was a snake that and its eerie pronouns, the casual vio- is perched ambiguously between novel
spewed poisonous tears from its rusty lence of its dissection, the lurking beast- and oral history. In an author’s note,
mouth. Those tree roots? They were baby of a playhouse—all these turns of Scanlan calls it a “work of fiction” based
the knobby fingers of a giant sleeping phrase are saturated by the quiet men- on interviews that she conducted with
under the sidewalk. ace that Scanlan brings to her estrang- an Iowa-born horse trainer named
Nothing has brought back the thrill ing evocations of daily life. Scanlan Sonia. The book narrates Sonia’s life in
of these walks—the pleasures of exca- makes art about ordinary living—or- a series of vignettes that play out across
vating strangeness from banality—as dinary people, ordinary days, ordinary the gritty, intoxicating fever dream of
sharply as reading the prose of Kath- events—by distorting it: she distorts the horse-racing world, as Sonia trav-
ryn Scanlan, who describes a suburban narrative arcs by alighting on jagged els from race to race, living in trailers
home and its back-yard playhouse as arrangements of anecdotes, distorts her and motels. It’s a landscape full of ex-
hausting labor and habitual violence,
Scanlan’s evocation of a horse trainer’s life sits between fiction and oral history. but also ecstatic devotion and joy. Sonia
70 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY CAMILO HUINCA
trains a one-eyed horse named Dark itself as some object sitting on a shelf,” she graduates from high school, travel-
Side to victory; a racetrack band called she has said. Her prose has a cool ef- ling the circuit with her “racetrack
the Bug Boys (jockey singer, trainer ficiency, the kind of spare disclosure family”—a greenhorn amid seasoned
drummer) plays at local bars; priests that makes you feel ashamed to want “grooms, jockeys, trainers, racing secre-
come to bless the legs of the horses. more, as if you were asking for a third taries, stewards, pony people, hot walk-
Fleeting characters are sketched with serving of dessert. Her minimalist style ers, everybody,” all of them hitting
unsparing but often fond attention: accomplishes a sleight of hand. At first the same grocery stores, laundromats,
“Thorby was gentle but when he got glance, her compression seems to elide and bars at every stop, for every race.
drunk he’d pick a fight with a cigarette the evidence of its making—reticent Sonia’s life is bound by the constant,
machine or a jukebox.” in its concision, rather than broadcast- gruelling rhythm of her work: “Four
The idea that ordinary life can be ing its artifice. Yet this radical brevity o’clock feed, seven days a week.” The
the subject of great art has long been ultimately demands that we see it as a jockeys are experts at starving them-
accepted when it comes to poetry and crafted thing. The efficiency is both selves for minimum weight and max-
literary fiction—in these genres, its sta- graceful and aloof. The crude repeti- imum velocity, a process that feels not
tus as a worthy subject feels self-evi- tions of need and desire become ele- entirely dissimilar to Scanlan’s craft:
dent—but it can still raise hackles in gant asides; the mess of years becomes “The jockeys flip their food or they
creative nonfiction. An invented life a single sentence. don’t eat at all. They get so good at
can be ordinary, but an actual life had puking they brag about it—I can flip
better be seasoned by either extraor- canlan, who is forty-two, lives in the rice but leave the beans! ” This is
dinary suffering or particular achieve-
ment. Scanlan, however, is almost in-
S Los Angeles but grew up in Iowa.
Her mother came from a family of
Scanlan’s particular skill: flipping the
rice but not the beans. Getting rid of
sistently drawn to ordinariness. The farmers, her father from a family all the language that isn’t absolutely
shortest vignette in “Kick the Latch” of racehorse trainers—the itinerant necessary but keeping the essential
is titled “Racetrackers,” and it’s just a world of races, jockeys, and groomers details that fuel the text, and give it
single sentence: “You’re around some that Scanlan takes up in “Kick the life. The visceral specificity of her writ-
really prominent people and some are Latch.” Her writing sits at the conflu- ing, by refusing to sanitize our phys-
just as common as old shoes.” Sonia’s ence of two artistic lineages: the art of ical presence in the world, makes the
own allegiance is clear—to the old the ordinary and the art of distillation. ordinary strange. It’s like saying a fa-
shoes, the jukebox fighters, and the One is a tradition of form, the other miliar word so many times that it
Bug Boys. of content. She is an inheritor of the starts to sound as if it were from a
In all her books, Scanlan writes poignant terseness of Lydia Davis and foreign language.
about ordinary life in extraordinary Diane Williams (she has been pub- Sonia emerges as a compelling char-
ways by compacting it radically, like lished many times in Williams’s liter- acter: kind beneath her gruff exterior,
pressurizing carbon into diamonds. ary journal, NOON ) but also of the charmed by surprising things (a
When Sonia describes the force ab- documentar y poetr y of Charles Thanksgiving turkey roasted in a motel
sorbed by a single hoof in every stride Reznikoff and Muriel Rukeyser, the bathroom, for example), dry as a bone
of a horse’s gallop—“a thousand pounds rural dramatic monologues in Edgar and cool as a cucumber, consistently
of pressure held up by that one thin Lee Masters’s “Spoon River Anthol- understated about her own pain. De-
leg”—she could also be describing ogy,” and the grotesque character scribing a riding accident that puts her
Scanlan’s syntax: compact phrases hold- sketches of Sherwood Anderson’s in a coma, she says simply, “I was at
ing so much pressure. The work is “Winesburg, Ohio.” Scanlan has cited the bottom of the pile.” When Sonia
structured by recurring themes: the vi- Walker Evans’s declaration that his eventually leaves the racetrack life, she
olence and pleasures of intimacy, the “photography was not ‘documentary’ moves back home to take care of her
balm and exhaustion of hard work, our but ‘documentary style,’” and her de- ailing parents and ends up working as
bonds with animals and with our own scription of this aesthetic could also a corrections officer at a maximum-se-
animal natures—those surges of de- describe her own: it gives off “the raw, curity prison. “I tried to be a normal
sire and aggression that unseat and re- immediate feel of the unedited every- person,” she explains. Yet the racetrack
arrange us. day,” but “you quickly realize how still occupies what W. B. Yeats might
But the effect of Scanlan’s work rises shaped it is.” call her deep heart’s core. “People say
as much from its form as from its con- In “Kick the Latch,” Scanlan’s you never get racing out of your blood,”
tent. As with a sculpture, you’d be as anecdotes (with titles such as “Pick- she remarks. “I still dream about it
likely to describe it in terms of its shape led Boiled Eggs,” “Call Your Owners, most nights.”
as its materials. Reading Scanlan often Call Home,” and “Gallon of Blood”) Whenever Sonia is talking about
feels like encountering something akin do not unfold quite like a traditional horses, tenderness cuts through her
to Wallace Stevens’s jar on a hill (“it plot, with deepening relationships stoicism like vinegar through oil.
did not give of bird or bush”): forceful and a narrative arc. They are more like She describes birthday celebrations
in its presence but hard to penetrate, rosary beads, each a tiny, contained for her horse Rowdy (“frosting on his
self-contained and opaque. “I try to unit. Born in 1962, Sonia starts work- muzzle”) and nursing a “skin and
write a sentence as unbudging and fully ing full time at a horse farm just after bones” mustang named Chico, rescued
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 71
from a rodeo sale: “I got some weight “little yipping chihuahuas”; Sonia re- who made jam anyway—and took
on him, some calm.” She has a soft members “sixty, seventy chihuahuas care of those chihuahuas, who some-
spot for underdogs who have been without stretching it a bit.” The ex- how survived the winter.
cast aside, mistreated, reviled, or deemed tended memory of Bicycle Jenny not
unworthy of care, from horses like only allows us to register Sonia’s tough- n a vignette called “I Seen Him Every
Rowdy and Chico and Dark Side to
the incarcerated men at the prison
minded empathy (“How’d they not
freeze in the winter? I didn’t think
I Day,” Sonia describes a man break-
ing into her trailer in the middle of the
where she works. Or like the drunk nothing of it when I was a kid but I’m night when she was a teen-ager: “He
grandpa who lived on her block when thinking of it now—how’d the dogs was taking pills. He was a jockey trying
she was young; she let him stay in survive?”) but also illuminates how to cut weight. He told me he’d just shot
her room when his daughter kicked our lives are often shaped by seem- a dog.” He puts a gun to her head. She
him out. ingly unimportant figures, the kinds says, “I got raped,” and not much more
The longest vignette in the book of relationships and moments that are than that—to anyone in her commu-
describes Bicycle Jenny, a figure from frequently overlooked. Bicycle Jenny nity, or to the reader. In closing, she says
Sonia’s childhood, a woman whose takes up more textual room than any only, “The guy sobered up, I knew him,
house burned down: of Sonia’s romantic partners or fam- I seen him every day, I knew exactly who
What was left of her house was a scorched ily members, more room even than it was—it was bad, but anyway, I sur-
concrete hole in the ground. That’s where she the racetrack accident that leaves her vived. I cut my hair real short after that.”
lived. . . . She had clothes-pins and wire hang- in a coma. This is trauma stripped to its essen-
ing from trees. Down in her hole in the ground When life becomes art, it can tials: the silence, the daily exposure, the
was an old-fashioned bathtub and a little cast- honor the disproportionate impact of curt “it was bad,” the shorn hair as a
iron camp stove. She had test tubes with rub-
ber stoppers, little blue bottles, jars of jellies those peripheral moments and fig- wordless articulation of damage. The
she made from her raspberry bushes. . . . Her ures which end up composing us— title “I Seen Him Every Day” reveals
voice was high, cracked, eerie like a witch’s. She even if we have no ready-made lan- the handprint of an author who is ex-
had her big men’s work gloves, her hat and her guage for their inf luence. Bicycle plicitly absent from these pages but is
other hat, and she’d usually have some chihua- Jenny mattered because she survived always choosing what to include and
huas stuffed in her coat.
and bore her hardship without a fuss, what to leave unsaid, what to juxta-
In her burned-out home, Bicycle because she was a woman with noth- pose, where to end. The title forces us
Jenny keeps an incredible number of ing but a charred hole in the ground to spend a moment longer in that di-
mension of Sonia’s trauma—to ac-
knowledge it. No introspection or ca-
tharsis, only the hair cut “real short,”
and the white space afterward—so that
everything unsaid can fill the silence.
Sonia’s penchant for understatement
and Scanlan’s stylistic compression go
hand in hand, tonal collaborators, to
the point where it becomes hard to tell
if Sonia’s consciousness—the under-
statement that seems so crucial to her
character—is a function of her own
sensibility or of Scanlan’s. But does it
matter? In these pages, Sonia is a char-
acter, not a faithful representation of a
person in the world beyond.
Wherever it comes from, this com-
pression amplifies the effect of violence
rather than diluting it—the way a blade
gets sharper the more precisely it’s
ground. No extra words offer solace, dis-
traction, or epiphanic recuperation. This
violence is often gendered: a horse owner
forces a new girl to jerk off his stallion
while bystanders gawk; Sonia’s ex-lover
Mister Baker tries to strangle her, stalks
her, and then kills her cat. Gendered vi-
olence also courses through “The Dom-
“It may be easier to brew it here, but I say we go inant Animal,” from the casual degra-
to that expensive coffee shop over yonder.” dation of an offhand phrase (“I bet you
like to fuck”) to the malicious amuse-
ment that a girl observes in a group of
boys as they hold her underwater (“I un- BRIEFLY NOTED
derstood this as their birthright”). Over
and over again, characters turn back to Elizabeth Finch, by Julian Barnes (Knopf ). The title charac-
the very things that harm them, refus- ter of this cerebral novel is an enigmatic professor whose
ing plotlines of resolution or catharsis. personal papers are inherited, after her death, by the narra-
These stories are about living alongside tor, Neil, her former student. The book begins with a finely
darkness. When a woman calls her doc- drawn character study of Finch, a freethinker idolized by
tor after expelling the “clotted, rotted her students. Neil, overwhelmed by adoration, failed to turn
wad of gauze” that he used to stop her in his final essay, a task to which he now applies himself.
bleeding after giving birth, she tells him, That essay, on Rome’s last pagan emperor, Julian, makes up
“I think you forgot something.” He re- a full third of the book. What would the world be like, it
plies, “You survived, didn’t you?” asks, if Julian had succeeded in halting the rise of Christi-
Sonia, too, has survived. In her short anity? Barnes boldly resists providing answers, inviting the
sentences, we can hear both the im- reader to ponder the ways in which history shapes our lives.
perative to simply endure all this vio-
lence (“I seen him every day”) and the Autoportrait, by Jesse Ball (Catapult). A novella-length un-
rage of enduring it. The day after Mis- broken paragraph of observations and recollections, this lat-
ter Baker attacks Sonia—leaving her est work from a gleeful absurdist toggles between matters
gurgling blood, with bruises around philosophical (“I don’t believe books are about anything. A
her neck—the police release him from frog is also not about anything”) and mundane (“I like to see
jail, informing her, “This is just to let people boiling pasta. I find it exciting”). The most telling
you know that Mr. Baker—Mister moments come when seemingly inconsequential thoughts
Baker—has been released.” The italics bump up against weightier ones: “Once, some years ago I
belong to Sonia, and the title “Mister was mean to my mother and she cried. I never wear watches.
Baker” belongs to Scanlan: both female I believe I stopped about twenty years ago.” The cumulative
narrators are calling him to task, ex- impression is of a scaldingly droll, unredacted personal in-
posing his violence, and insisting on ventory of likes, dislikes, body parts injured, pets formerly
the dignity of saying exactly as much owned, and loved ones lost.
as they’d like about him, nothing more.
The relationship between Sonia and The Newlyweds, by Mansi Choksi (Atria). This examination
Scanlan, subject and writer, becomes of love in India follows three couples whose relationships con-
briefly explicit near the end of the book, travene societal norms concerning religion, caste, and sexual-
when Sonia, for the first time, addresses ity. In India, where marriage is seen more as an act of duty than
a “you”: “This week I’ve been busy, but as one of passion, the families of people who buck expectations
I’ve got to get those pictures of Rowdy can suffer harassment and violence. Choksi’s couples run away
in the mail for you.” In this turn toward to be together but must then reckon with the costs of their ac-
the “you”—an address that could easily tions. A woman who marries into a less prosperous family no-
have been excluded from the text but tices her mother-in-law’s “empty-stomach stench”; another
was instead preserved—we are reminded woman’s frustration at people’s refusal to recognize her same-
of the interview process that Scanlan sex partner morphs into dangerous cruelty; a couple leaves their
has told us about. The “you” of Scanlan village only to return later. Choksi writes that each of her sub-
has been shaping the story all along, of jects “is tormented by one central question: Was it worth it?”
course, choosing, arranging, and perhaps
even transforming everything we see. Shadowlands, by Matthew Green (Norton). The author of
In the closing lines of the book, Sonia this “itinerary of destruction” visits eight ruined British settle-
observes that “a racetracker doesn’t say ments, including Wharram Percy, “Europe’s best-known de-
We won a race. A racetracker says We serted medieval village,” which barely survived the Black Death
win. It’s not proper English. . . . The and was then obliterated by greedy landlords who took its
race is over, it’s already won, but we say fields for sheep pastures; Norfolk villages cleared in 1942 to
We win, we win, we win.” Every world serve as an ersatz German town used for military training; and
develops its own ways of speaking. Hirta, a remote Scottish island, whose inhabitants, seen as
Every experience demands its own ways noble savages by Enlightenment thinkers, had to be evacuated
of being spoken. This text, in its final in 1930, when life there became untenable. For Green, such
breath, invokes the literary present lost places are not mere historical curios, filled “with emotional
tense—like a spell, or an incantation. preoccupations and present-day concerns”—they provide cau-
Once a life becomes text, it no longer tionary tales about sustainability and remind us that “many of
has a body. But it can live forever.  our communities . . . are ghost-towns-in-waiting.”
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 73
 The lines characters say are razored-
THE THEATRE down, heavily edited Shakespeare, but
some context and the musical numbers

FOLLY IN THE PARK

are new. In the original, Orlando wins
Rosalind’s heart at a wrestling contest;
here, the bout is a pro-wrestling match,
Music, high jinks, and community in “As You Like it.” with the (actual) Bronx Wrestling Fed-
eration providing the talent. Orlando’s
BY HELEN SHAW opponent is a masked lucha-libre cham-
pion who, after a bit of gentle fighting,
basically body slams himself. No one
seems more surprised by this victory
than Orlando, played by Ato Blankson-
Wood as a shy jock who is only newly
aware of his effect on women. When
he imagines proposing to Rosalind (the
hilarious “Will U Be My Bride”), four
backup dancers rise from the stage to
preen and body roll as he murmurs silk-
ily into a microphone, doing his best
(de) Boyz II Men:
Girl, I feel like I confused you earlier with
that flower metaphor
so let me put it a different way
my love for you is like . . .
a hamburger
rare, but also well-done

Clearly, the emphasis in the produc-

tion (directed by Woolery) is on ador-
ability: Myung Hee Cho’s set is a story-
book forest of three cheerful trees with
gauzy, loofah-pouf foliage. The costume
designer Emilio Sosa has dressed ev-
eryone in bright, poppy hues. A larger-
than-life lioness and some yellow deer
are the cuddly work of the gifted James
Ortiz, who designed the rambunctious
Rebecca Naomi Jones stars as Rosalind, one of Shakespeare’s sharpest heroines. dinosaur for “The Skin of Our Teeth.”
“There’s no clock in the forest,” says
f on a warm September night you Rosalind (Rebecca Naomi Jones), Orlando, and, indeed, there’s nothing
I amble through Central Park, you
might find a group of hopeful people
one of Shakespeare’s sharpest heroines,
has fled a hostile court for the Forest
to do but picnic, participate in a weird
courtship game in which Ganymede
gathered around the Delacorte, wait- of Arden. Her father, the usurped Duke pretends to be Rosalind (who, of course,
ing for free tickets to Shakespeare in Senior (Darius de Haas, in swinging, he actually is), and poke fun at the lo-
the Park. Inside the open-air theatre, welcome-to-my-key-party mode), has cals. Rosalind in disguise is the mean
there’s a late-summer-amusement-park sought refuge there, too, but she barely girl of Arden, self-lacerating and bit-
spirit to Shaina Taub and Laurie Wool- looks for him. Instead, she and her ter about womanhood. Underneath her
ery’s musical adaptation of “As You plucky cousin Celia (Idania Quezada) glittering comic technique, Jones seems
Like It,” which comes merrily stuffed and the jester Touchstone (Christo- complex and wounded, her voice catch-
with absurdities like shepherds with pher M. Ramirez) are in search of ro- ing hoarsely at such lyrics as “Even
no sheep and a hippie commune run mance and freedom. In order to enjoy though your heart is breaking / Act like
by a hierarchy-averse Duke. The audi- their Rumspringa safely, Rosalind dis- you’re alright.” In a musical full of goof-
ence is greeted with maximalist may- guises herself as a young man, Gany- balls, cartoons, and luchador contests,
hem as the stage shakes beneath an mede, and Celia pretends to be a com- she’s a person staring, clear-eyed, at her
enormous cast, which includes some moner. Everybody falls in love with options. What is this real, frightened
seventy singing-and-dancing everyday someone, with the exception of Rosa- woman doing here in Candyland?
New Yorkers. Is this theatre? A com- lind: she’s already entranced by the Well, she’s in a Public Works pro-
munity pageant? A parade? It’s hard young Orlando de Boys, who turns up duction. This Public Theatre program,
to tell. It’s hot—definitions melt. under the trees as well. now a decade old, is an interlocking set
74 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY HOKYOUNG KIM
of workshops and meetups that culmi- ples: Touchstone falls for a hot local
nates in a musical at the Delacorte, per- guy instead of for the daffy, rustic Au-
formed by hundreds of amateur actors drey; the lovestruck shepherd Silvius
from all over the city, members of local is recast as Silvia (a clear-voiced Bri-
performance groups (like those Bronx anna Cabrera). Love is love is love—
wrestlers), and a handful of Broadway although Shakespeare’s plot does con-
stars. These shows, which are typically tinue to require a certain amount of
performed at the end of the Shakespeare hetero panic about cross-dressing.
in the Park season and have included Taub herself plays Jaques, the skep- A n n u a l Su m m e r -E n d S a l e T h r o u g h S e p t e m b e r 2 5
“Twelfth Night” and “The Winter’s tic who witnesses everything with a gim- M A I N E | C H I LT O N S . C O M
Tale,” involve plenty of homespun spec- let eye. At least, that’s what Shakespeare’s
tacle and little kids doing step-touch character does. Taub and Woolery have
choreography. I worked on the first of buffed away much of that negativity.
these, “The Tempest,” in 2013, and, Jaques’s Seven Ages of Man speech,
watching “As You Like It,” I was struck which finishes with a nightmarish image AD VE RT I S EM EN T

by the way the program fosters long- of old age (“Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans
term engagement: some of the current taste, sans everything”), is turned into a
ensemble members go back to the early heartfelt curtain-raiser: WHAT’S THE
days. The 2020 documentary “Under
the Greenwood Tree” makes clear the All the world’s a stage BIG IDEA?
and every day, we play our part Small space has big rewards.
pain of losing this production—first acting out our heart
performed in 2017 and originally slated year by year, we grow
for a longer 2020 revival—to the COVID learning as we go
TO FIND OUT MORE, CONTACT
shutdown. It also suggests that Public
Works doesn’t really need a big show. Taub, dressed in patchwork overalls, JILLIAN GENET
305.520.5159
“We have community,” Christine Yvette sings while younger versions of Or- [email protected]
Lewis, a longtime Public Works partic- lando and Rosalind parade past. It’s a
ipant, says. “How could that be broken?” celebration instead of a nihilistic view
Public Works has a signature aes- of life’s grim predictability. Even the
thetic—the stage design is colorful, the couple’s senior selves, revealed in the
storytelling straightforward, the mood “All the World’s a Stage” reprise, look
buoyant and breezy and meant for a like #retiredcouplegoals. What could
summer night. For those of us in the they possibly be without? Maybe they’re
audience, this can be broken, or at least sans stress?
fractured. In the sometimes awkward The lines from Shakespeare that re-
case of “As You Like It,” a viewer has main, though, keep fighting against the
to ignore a certain amount of the text ice-cream sweetness of the production.
to embrace the Public Works spirit. The In her wild truth-telling mood, Rosa-
play is an end-of-the-Elizabethan-age lind still says terrible things about
work, full of wry contempt for its own women, and mismatched couples still
pastoral form and rueful melancholy wind up blithely marrying in the com-
for a golden age already in sunset. Be- edy’s four-way-wedding finale. Happy,
neath its effortful bumptiousness (the happy, happy goes Woolery’s show, which
British director Peter Brook once called crescendos into a thrilling crowd dance
it “a sort of advertisement for beer”) lie choreographed by Sonya Tayeh. But
bleak thoughts: Eden isn’t an escape; Taub and the juggernaut Jones have done
poetry is “feigning”; lovers lie. too good a job of portraying Rosalind’s
There’s a struggle between the source ambivalence for us to believe lyrics like
material’s cynicism and the produc- “love makes magic real.” Taub is on
tion’s determination to be nice. Taub firmer ground with, well, the ground it-
and Woolery’s ninety-five-minute ad- self. Her eyes light up when she sings
aptation is brisk, tuneful, and inclusive. about the Forest of Arden, particularly
As a lyricist, Taub, who also wrote the its theatre-like state as a place both un-
recent voting-rights musical “Suffs,” real and real. Like Public Works—whose
defaults to earnestness; her infectious deeper project of community building
melodies, which draw from hoedowns, is unconcerned with passing criticism—
Levantine wedding songs, and vintage Arden is best suited to recovery and uto-
cabaret, tend to rollick and repeat. Many pian thinking. It also looks, unsurpris-
of the lovers now are in same-sex cou- ingly, a lot like Central Park. 
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 75
 that communicate the depth of loss and
ON TELEVISION dislocation. When we first meet him, he
is primping a living room: attending to

LOST YOUTH
a throw blanket, organizing photos. Near
the film’s end, the camera zooms out to
reveal that the living room is a set, one
Two new documentaries on HBO Max and Netflix. that the crew comes to disassemble.
Although the mayor of New Orleans
BY DOREEN ST. FÉLIX issued a mandatory evacuation order
shortly before the hurricane, thousands
of residents stayed, lacking the resources
to leave. The Buckles family left town at
the last minute, at the sudden urging of
Buckles’s mother, whose son claims she
has a knack for prophetic visions. Would
Buckles have stayed, had he been an adult
with the ability to make his own choices?
He recalls being told by an elder, while
watching footage of the storm in horror,
that everyone he knew back home must
be dead. He maintains a survivor’s guilt,
even though the storm made him a ref-
ugee, in Lafayette. Obliquely, “Katrina
Babies” is a study of the autonomy of the
Black child, and of how the government
abuses its youngest citizens.
One survivor, who stayed in New Or-
leans with her family during the storm,
remembers hearing a loud sound, fol-
lowed by eerie silence. The levees had
broken. When she awoke the next morn-
ing, the street was flooded. Non-New
Orleanians think this is a story they can
understand, rooted in the universality of
a merciless natural event. But “Katrina
Babies” refuses to feed the notion that we
all felt Katrina equally. Buckles stays close
to the ground, letting the first-person tes-
timonies accrete. Survivors recall spend-
ing days in their attic waiting to be res-
hat makes a generation a gener- observation that becomes something of cued. Others describe the chaos at the
W ation? Collective identity is often
forged through catastrophe. In the
a refrain: “Nobody ever asked the chil-
dren how they were doing.”
Superdome, the football stadium that was
turned into a public shelter. One high
United States, we bicker over cohort- In the late summer of 2005, Buckles point is Buckles’s interview with twenty-
establishing events: an endless war, eco- was thirteen years old. The director’s wist- six-year-old Arianna Evans. The docu-
nomic collapse, the onslaught of illness. ful narration captures the back-to-school mentary includes footage of Evans, at age
“Katrina Babies,” a documentary by Ed- excitement in the neighborhood. He goes nine, delivering an impassioned speech
ward Buckles, Jr., released on HBO Max to a relative’s house for games and rice to a reporter about the conditions at the
before the seventeenth anniversary of and gravy; it would be the last family Superdome: “We just need some help out
Hurricane Katrina, argues for the ordi- gathering at the house, which was soon here.” (At the time, Evans’s grandmother
nation of the storm as a defining Amer- destroyed. Much of “Katrina Babies” con- was running out of insulin.) In the pres-
ican tragedy. Buckles’s memory piece sists of archival disaster footage inter- ent day, Evans’s reserve is striking. She is
springs from a well of frustration. The woven with modern interviews; Buckles no longer the prophet child.
director, a Katrina baby himself, and his shot the film over a period of seven years, “Katrina Babies” is deeply conver-
subjects, other Black survivors of both beginning in 2015, as the oldest of his sant with “The Shock Doctrine,” Naomi
the storm and the government’s oppor- peers were entering their late twenties. Klein’s exploration of how governments,
tunistic response to the storm, make an He frames his film with correlative scenes in the wake of disaster, take advantage
of a stunned populace to fulfill a polit-
“Katrina Babies” is a study of how the government abuses its youngest citizens. ical agenda. Buckles argues that P.T.S.D.
76 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY LEONARDO SANTAMARIA
from Katrina was not inevitable; the ex- his grandmother and of his girlfriend, The documentary has a mandate,
perience of young people in New Or- which had occurred on the same day. which is to eliminate all suspicion that
leans was essentially engineered by an Months later, after it was revealed that Te’o was involved in the “hoax.” We need
inhumane government. “Katrina Ba- his late girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, was to believe his naïveté, in order to under-
bies” also thoroughly indicts Bush-era a fake Internet persona created by Naya stand why he would maintain a relation-
media for its criminalization of Black Tuiasosopo, Te’o became a pariah. Di- ship with Lennay, who dodged requests
New Orleanians. Survivors of the hur- rected by Tony Vainuku and Ryan Duffy, to meet him in person, and why he fell
ricane were shuttled to trailers contam- this latest iteration of the explainer se- for an elaborate scenario involving a car
inated with formaldehyde. They were ries “Untold” is a tenacious, sometimes crash, a cancer diagnosis, death, and res-
forced to relocate to nearby cities that lyrical dissection of sports media. But urrection. We need to link that naïveté
were not equipped to take them in. And, as a portrait of forbidden love? It halts. to football fanaticism. And we must be-
when they tried to return to New Or- Te’o did not just agree to speak for come repelled by the institutions—from
leans, they discovered that their city had the documentary; he offered up his big, Notre Dame to the N.F.L. to sports media
been taken from them by gentrification beautiful body to the production. In vi- like ESPN and Deadspin, which broke
prospectors and post-disaster tourists. sual interludes that stud the conven- the story—that chewed up and spat out
Buckles is now thirty. He is support- tional sequences of archival footage and a vulnerable boy. Afterward, Te’o, the pre-
ing the generation behind him—those talking-head interviews, he is made to sumed first-round draft pick, fell to the
who have no active memory of the storm genuflect on a church bench and float second round. His image as a leader was
but have had to reckon with its after- in the sea. He is elevated to a sacrificial utterly shot. It’s a tragedy, with no death.
effects all the same. When he filmed the figure. Te’o, his parents, and his friends “The most fucked up thing for me
documentary, he was a high-school teacher provide his biography. As a child, Te’o was what was the point in all of this?”
in New Orleans, trying to get his pupils was a disciplinarian’s wet dream. When Te’o’s childhood friend laments. He can’t
into filmmaking. The kids are exuberant, his father asked him what he wanted to fathom the possibility that Tuiasosopo
when we meet them, but it takes only a be when he grew up, Te’o replied, “The may not have had a clear endgame in
few minutes of interviewing for their anx- best.” A gifted high-school athlete, he mind. He certainly can’t imagine that
ieties to surface. How many generations was heavily recruited by colleges, and she was just as love-drunk and irratio-
of Katrina babies might there be? went to Notre Dame, where he became nal as Te’o was. “The Girlfriend Who
a star. He navigated an intense triangu- Didn’t Exist” has gone viral, echoing the
he football player Manti Te’o is lation—the expectations of Polynesian, original hysteria; this time, however, in-
T now a saint. He was canonized by
LeBron James. A week after the release
Mormon, and football cultures—with
grace. Tuiasosopo, born into a similar
stead of being pilloried, Te’o has been
exalted. It’s a different moment, one that
of “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t matrix, struggled by comparison. “I truly Te’o, an emotionally intelligent and gen-
Exist,” a two-part Netflix documentary believed in my heart, being a natural- erous man, is fit to represent. In his will-
about Te’o, a wunderkind linebacker born male, I could never be who I ingness to forgive Tuiasosopo, he is the
whose life was torn asunder by a cat- wanted,” she says, recalling her alien- ideal hetero victim. Tuiasosopo, too,
fishing scandal, James tweeted, “Manti ation from “faith, family, and football.” seems to have forgiven herself her tres-
Te’o you good brother!!,” with a raised- Smartly, the documentary presses lightly passes—an act that carceral minds can’t
fist emoji. “Good” as in exonerated, on its main “twist,” which is that Tui- abide. And so she has emerged as the
granted entrance again to a fraternity asosopo, who was exposed as Te’o’s male trans villain. No wonder, as the film side-
that had ejected him from its halls. In catfisher in 2013, has since transitioned. steps the fragile truths of this tale, which
2012, Te’o, a native son of Hawaii, was The light touch is out of respect, but are that all love is maintained on distor-
a public hero for his resolve: he played also out of provocation: it suggests Tu- tions, and that Lennay was real to the
a game while mourning the deaths of iasosopo and Te’o as mirror images. only two people who mattered. 

THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2022 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

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THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022 77

 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 Liza Donnelly,
must be received by Sunday, September 11th. The finalists in the August 29th contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the September 26th 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

“Do you mind if I bounce something off you?”

Amy Harr, Riverside, Conn.

“I almost didn’t recognize you without the graffiti.” “I haven’t heard from you since we were kids!”
Mark Strout, Norwell, Mass. Edgar Grove, Bristol, Conn.

“Can I offer you some constructive criticism?”

Ryan Burns, Burien, Wash.
 Call with Dr. Gonzales

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 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.

14 15 16

THE 17 18 19

CROSSWORD 20 21

22 23 24
A beginner-friendly puzzle.
25 26 27 28

BY ROBYN WEINTRAUB
29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37
ACROSS
1 “Your Majesty”
38 39 40
5 Funny-bone location
10 Emulates a lumberjack 41 42
14 Tech site that says it reports on “what’s
new and why it matters” 43 44 45 46
15 Way to go
16 Landed, as a bird on a branch 47 48 49 50 51
17 X-ray units
18 Something that helps everyone, in a 52 53
nautical metaphor
20 Off-roader’s ride, for short 54 55 56

21 “Keep going . . . you’re almost there!”

57 58 59
22 Fancies more
24 Witches’ ___ (concoction in a cauldron)
25 Catwoman portrayer Berry DOWN 40 Word in the name of Iowa’s capital city
26 Bobby who co-founded the Black 1 Junk-yard pile 42 Food additive that imparts umami flavor,
Panther Party for short
2 Hypnotized
29 Deadly sin that sounds like a postal 43 “___ Holmes” (Netflix adaptation about
3 Type of cake whose distinctive color
abbreviation Sherlock’s younger sister)
sometimes comes from beets
30 Dramatic inning ender 4 Aliens, for short 44 Person who’s toast
35 “Snoopy Flying ___” (video game with 5 Fielder’s goof 45 Bashful or Sneezy, by trade
aerial combat) 46 App whose logo is a stylized camera,
6 Butcher-shop selections
36 Racing vehicle at the Circus Maximus informally
7 Go over twenty-one, in blackjack
37 Texter’s “Here’s what I think” 8 “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” 47 Decorative pillow cover
38 Labor of love, perhaps singer-songwriter Redding 48 Pies, in a slapstick fight
40 Footballer Flutie or magician Henning 9 Took one’s turn 49 Basic layout for a model-train track
41 ___ numerals (symbols that can be used 10 Free Khan Academy offering for college- 50 ___ Star State (nickname for Texas)
to spell “mix,” “livid,” and “civil”) bound H.S. students 53 Cells that may be fertilized by sperm
42 High-I.Q. society whose name means 11 Basic skirt style
“table” in Latin 12 Black ___ (Natasha Romanoff’s Solution to the previous puzzle:
43 Fragile ones may need to be massaged superhero moniker)
45 Bad error for a gymnast on a balance 13 Goulash or bœuf bourguignonne L I E D G O O F F A C T

beam B U R R O A R M A D I L L O
19 Wineglass fit for a queen
O C E A N M A G N O L I A S
47 Growing at an exponential rate 21 “Look at Me, I’m Sandra ___” (“Grease”
M I N S T R E L D E L A Y S
51 “I ___ Man of Constant Sorrow” (song song)
B E E G A S P O S E
in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”) 23 Soar
A B O U T D A M N T I M E
52 Goes away with a new spouse 26 “Pull over!” sound
O R D E A L O R S O S I X
53 Bit of foreshadowing 27 Tale on a grand scale M I L A N A N T T R U C E
54 Amber or pale quaffs 28 Many I C E Y O L O S C O P E S
55 Impressionist known for his paintings of 30 Yorke of Radiohead T H R O W F O R A L O O P
water lilies and haystacks 31 Indian prince W H A T G U M O D E
56 Unload one’s grievances 32 Really big cat person? W H A L E S C O M P O S E D

57 Planet with the moons Phobos and 33 Type of park that’s not especially H O V E R O V E R U P E N D

Deimos conducive to relaxation E S O T E R I C A T E S T Y

Athleisure bottoms T E N S T E E S E N O S
58 “La Bohème” or “La Traviata” 34

59 Newspaper section with theatre and film 36 Bandmate of Stills, Nash, and Young Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
reviews 39 Skill newyorker.com/crossword