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 THE FICTION ISSUE
JULY 10 & 17, 2023

4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

11 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Jelani Cobb on the affirmative-action ruling;
a fifteen-hundred-mile paddle; remembrance of meals past;
part-time poulterers; shoes fit for shamans.
LIFE AND LETTERS
Zadie Smith 16 Killing Dickens
The inevitability of the English historical novel.
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS
Alex Barasch 25 Toy Story
Mattel’s movie ambitions go beyond Barbie.
PROFILES
Julian Lucas 32 Galaxy Brain
Samuel R. Delany’s pioneering science fiction.
FICTION
Hiromi Kawakami 19 “The Kitchen God”
Jhumpa Lahiri 44 “P’s Parties”
Camille Bordas 56 “Colorín Colorado”
COMING TOGETHER
Mary Gaitskill 21 Night of the Happy Bodies
Souvankham Thammavongsa 37 The Ice-Cream Truck
Sam Lipsyte 51 A Lesson for the Sub
Jamil Jan Kochai 61 A Family Wedding
Rebecca Curtis 65 Roberta at the Morrison
THE CRITICS
A CRITIC AT LARGE
Parul Sehgal 68 Do we need to hear another story?
BOOKS
Casey Cep 74 The early works of Tennessee Williams.
77 Briefly Noted
MUSICAL EVENTS
Alex Ross 78 Stimulating the brain and the senses in San Francisco.
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 80 “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Biosphere.”
POEMS
Tayi Tibble 38 “Creation Story”
Alex Dimitrov 52 “Someone in Paris, France Is Thinking of You”
COVER
Sergio García Sánchez “On the Same Page”

DRAWINGS Liza Donnelly, P. C. Vey, Andy Friedman, Amy Hwang,

Frank Cotham, Zoe Si, Will McPhail, Roland High, Roz Chast, Evan Lian, Barbara Smaller,
Drew Panckeri, Benjamin Schwartz, Robert Leighton SPOTS Till Lauer
 CONTRIBUTORS
Julian Lucas (The Talk of the Town, Zadie Smith (“Killing Dickens,” p. 16)
p. 15, “Galaxy Brain,” p. 32) became a is the author of the forthcoming book
New Yorker staff writer in 2021. “The Fraud.”

Souvankham Thammavongsa (“The Ice- Alex Barasch (“Toy Story,” p. 25) is a

Cream Truck,” p. 37) won the 2020 Sco- member of the magazine’s editorial staff.
tiabank Giller Prize for her short-story
collection, “How to Pronounce Knife.” Mary Gaitskill (“Night of the Happy
Bodies,” p. 21) has written three novels
Jamil Jan Kochai (“A Family Wedding,” and three short-story collections. Her
p. 61) is the author of “99 Nights in most recent book is “The Devil’s Trea-
Logar” and “The Haunting of Hajji sure.”
Hotak and Other Stories.”
Sergio García Sánchez (Cover), a pro-
Tayi Tibble (Poem, p. 38 ) is an Indig- fessor of fine arts at the University of
enous writer from Te Whanganui-a- Granada, is a cartoonist, an artist, and
Tara, Aotearoa. She is the author of an author. He collaborated on this cover
two poetry collections, “Poūkahanga- with his wife, the artist Lola Moral.
tus” and “Rangikura.”
Casey Cep (Books, p. 74) is a staff writer

BE A
Sam Lipsyte (“A Lesson for the Sub,” and the author of “Furious Hours:
p. 51) teaches writing at Columbia. He Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of

FORCE
most recently published “No One Left Harper Lee.”
to Come Looking for You.”
Jhumpa Lahiri (“P’s Parties,” p. 44) won

FOR GOOD Rebecca Curtis (“Roberta at the Morri-

son,” p. 65) is the author of the story
collection “Twenty Grand: And Other
the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for
“Interpreter of Maladies.” Her most
recent collection of short stories, “Roman
Tales of Love and Money.” Stories,” is due out in October.
Your name can live on
as a champion of the
causes, communities, THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM
and places dear to
you...for generations
to come.
LEFT TO RGIHT: SHUHUA XIONG, BRIAN ULRICH, TIMO LENZEN

THE THERAPY ISSUE

Kickstart your charitable legacy An exploration of the talking cure and
with NYC’s community foundation. other pursuits of feeling better.
New pieces publish daily, July 10th-16th.
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(212) 686-0010 x363

giveto.nyc Visit newyorker.com/therapy and sign up to receive articles as they publish.

 THE MAIL
BEATING THE YIPS dium in the back of a Suburban with
no seat belts, wearing cutoff shorts, a
Louisa Thomas, in her profile of the T-shirt, and dirty flip-flops; my parents
pitcher Daniel Bard, provides a step for- were nowhere to be seen, and when the
ward for the sports community as it car broke down we hitchhiked home
seeks to destigmatize mental-health is- from the Vince Lombardi rest station.
sues (“Comebacker,” June 19th). As I’m grateful that young Swifties feel the
someone whose baseball career was de- same “intense parasocial bond” that
railed by the yips—basically, a sudden Deadheads do, but I wonder how they’d
loss of control—fifteen years ago, in feel about a forty-five-minute set break
high school, I found Bard’s story ca- or a thirty-minute “Drums/Space” jam,
thartic. For an athlete who lacks access or if they’d appreciate shows that look
to informed coaches or staff, this afflic- and sound different each night, with-
tion can be terribly isolating. out fireworks or other pyrotechnics.

1
Despite their goofy name, the yips Liz Matthews
can strike fear in the hearts of even the Southport, Conn.
toughest and most accomplished com-
petitors—hence the culture of silence SPEECH PATTERNS
surrounding them. Hopefully, fore-
grounding stories like Bard’s will help Reading Zach Helfand’s Talk of the
the sports community figure out a way Town piece about pronunciation made
to combat, or at least manage, the yips. me grateful for my tenure as a former
With his commitment to honesty, Bard chorister for the San Francisco Sym-
joins athletes such as Simone Biles and phony Chorus, for which I served as a
Naomi Osaka in opening a conversa- professional pronouncer ( June 19th). As
tion about the cognitive side of sports we prepared masterworks, most of them
performance. in European languages, it was impor-

1
Skyler Schain tant to accurately convey the sounds of
Brooklyn, N.Y. the original language. Our weapon of
choice was the International Phonetic
DIFFERENT ERAS Alphabet, which enabled us to pronounce
foreign words with great accuracy.
I appreciated Amanda Petrusich’s ac- English speakers are famous for
count of her recent experience attend- butchering foreign languages. To this
ing part of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour day, I can’t understand the concept
(Pop Music, June 19th). As a parent ac- of what we call Americanization; why
companying a group of tweens and teens change how our names sound, just be-
to the same concert, at MetLife Sta- cause we’ve moved geographical loca-
dium, I, too, noted that the crowd “was tions at some point in our family his-
ecstatic, doting, and very sober.” I felt a tory? The DeSantis variations cited in
surge of connection when Petrusich Helfand’s piece (whether it’s “Duh-San-
talked about fans’ efforts to secure tick- tis,” or “Dee-Santis,” or something else
ets and plan their perfect outfits. (My altogether) may all be valid, but, just for
daughter and her friends texted inces- the record, we in the United States are
santly about what to wear.) very often wrong!
I think the comparison of Swifties True Rosaschi
to Grateful Dead fans, though, is some- New York City
what off. Deadheads showed up for the
band’s serendipitous set lists and for •
Jerry Garcia’s sleight of hand. Many Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
paid for their thirty-dollar tickets by address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
selling grilled cheese sandwiches and [email protected]. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
tie-dyes in the parking lot. When I was any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
my daughter’s age, I rode to Giants Sta- of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
 JULY 5 – 18, 2023

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Boasting Thurston Moore as a record-label honcho and having shared bills with Bikini Kill and
Sleater-Kinney, Big Joanie feels like an honorary member of an indie world of yore. Yet this chic, po-
litically vibrant U.K. trio’s sophomore album, “Back Home,” has a contemporary sheen. Despite a host
of critical huzzahs, events conspired to keep Big Joanie away from New York stages until this year;
the group débuts as headliners in the city at Baby’s All Right ( July 10) and at Union Pool ( July 12).

PHOTOGRAPH BY ZOE MCCONNELL

 1
As ever, it’s advisable to check in advance as straightforward a talent as it seems.) The sizers that have long been associated with his
to confirm engagements. sweet, sleek Japanese kitsune “Fox,” the sump- home town are the through line in his work.
tuously knotty “Scholar Figure,” and the stone On Escobar’s recently aired set for BBC Radio
“Head,” from New Guinea, are three carvings 1’s “Essential Mix,” he selects records heavy

1
that Levine acquired, dated 2023, and signed as on echo, with effects drawn from eighties free-
ART her own. I still wonder who made them.—J.K. style, house-music piano riffs from the nineties,
rhythms that strut like runway walkers, and
women singing through wispy filters. That un-
Kevin Beasley ruffled mix showcases one end of Escobar’s scope
At the heart of this prodigious show of sculp- MUSIC as a d.j.—he’s just as liable to play it rowdy and
tures by the thirty-eight-year-old artist is “In rough.—Michaelangelo Matos (House of Yes; July 7.)
an effort to keep,” an audio installation built
inside a small, enclosed room in the gallery. Eli Escobar
In Beasley’s hands, preservation is an act of HOUSE The New York native Eli Escobar pro- MIKE’s Young World III
perception, as full of grace as it is quixotic, even duces and plays a wide array of dance music, HIP-HOPThe Brooklyn rapper MIKE insti-
twisted. (I recall the gutting sight of hooded but the nervous energy and twinkling synthe- gated his annual Young World festival with
sweatshirts at once memorialized and mummi-
fied in resin in “A view of a landscape,” his 2018
exhibition at the Whitney Museum.) To create
the sixteen-hour soundscape presented here, IN THE MUSEUMS
Beasley invited five performers—among them
the choreographer-artist Ralph Lemon and the
instrumentalist-composer L’Rain—to spend two
days together, then recorded their conversations
and the ambient noises of their shared space.
One of the work’s many feats is how it casts its
audience as both silent confidants and inter-
lopers. All thoughts and feelings about what it
means to eavesdrop on Black people will depend
on who’s listening, and on what they think they
overhear. Plan to sit and stay awhile.—Jennifer
Krasinski (Casey Kaplan; July 28.)

Blaise Cendrars
This tiny but potent one-room exhibit surveys
the artistic and literary fallout surrounding the
work of this willfully combustible twentieth-cen-
tury Swiss poet and publisher. At the center of
the show is Cendrars’s seminal collaboration
with the artist Sonia Delaunay-Terk: a glorious
book, from 1913—printed vertically, and rising
here like the Eiffel Tower—that pairs Cendrars’s
poem “The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of
Little Jeanne of France” with Delaunay-Terk’s
abstract watercolors. Together, they lurch and
roll to rhythms as unyielding as the locomotive
that a teen-age Cendrars rode through Russia.
Mesmerized by modernity, and by how its many As staged and as intimate as any family portrait, “The Sassoons”
new machines bent time and perception, Cen- (at the Jewish Museum, through Aug. 13) offers a history in objects
drars championed, and conspired with, those from four generations of the illustrious line. Co-curated by Claudia J.
equally possessed by the spirit of the age. Works
by such artists as Robert Delaunay, Alexander Nahson and Esther da Costa Meyer, the exhibition begins with David,
Archipenko, and Tarsila do Amaral hang along- the paterfamilias, who left Baghdad for Mumbai in the early eigh-
side poster advertisements by A. M. Cassandre, teen-thirties to escape religious persecution. No great fortune has ever
illustrated books, printed programs, and more—
once state-of-the-art creations that somehow feel been amassed via good deeds—Sassoon made his in the opium trade.
as if they’ve arrived from the future.—J.K. (The Mesmerized by the family’s illuminated books and gleaming silver
COURTESY HOUGHTON HALL COLLECTION / ARTEFACT / ALAMY

Morgan Library & Museum; Sept. 24.) Torah and haftarah cases, one might wonder how and why faith moves
humans to collect exquisite things. By the late nineteenth century, the
Sherrie Levine Sassoons who had settled in England became essential to the country’s
This indefatigable member of the Pictures cultural and political weft, and their tastes conformed accordingly.
Generation—whom the great critic David
Rimanelli once cheekily christened the Frank- (See: paintings by the inimitably wonky Thomas Gainsborough.) The
lin Mint of Modernism—presents “Wood,” a exhibition’s offerings are eclectic, even oddball: three canvases by the
small exhibition of works old and new which hobbyist Winston Churchill look less “impressionistic” than wanly
presses her long-standing interrogations
of authorship and originality ever onward. myopic. John Singer Sargent’s portraits of the socialite Sybil, Countess
“Fitz: 1-12,” from 1994, is a suite of paintings of Rocksavage (née Sassoon) and Aline de Rothschild, Lady Sassoon
on cherrywood panels, each replicating the (pictured above), bestow on his patrons the artist’s signature luminosity,
same image of a crabby cartoon dog. The pup
doesn’t change from piece to piece, but the but it’s the muzzy brown atmosphere of smoke and mustard gas in
wood grain does—because nature, that author- one of the two paintings he made at the front lines of the First World
less creator, never duplicates itself precisely. If War which stops viewers in their tracks. “The Sassoons” leaves off at
the conceptual allure of found objects dulled
long ago, what remains sharp is Levine’s eye the Second World War, as the family aids Jewish refugees, their story
for that which should be looked at. (It’s not having come woefully full circle.—Jennifer Krasinski

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 5

the intent of inspiring Black youth to pur- Tanglewood Stompers. And, for fanciers of music that
sue creative passions and foster their own stretches to before the First World War,
communities. This third iteration enlists CLASSICAL Even as the Boston Symphony Or- there is Terry Waldo’s Gotham City Band
a kindred spirit in Chicago’s Noname, an chestra experiences changeful times—it wel- (on July 13), ready to deliver a healthy mess
astute m.c. as well as a community organizer comes its third president and chief executive of ragtime.—Steve Futterman (Arthur’s Tav-
and an outspoken critic of capitalism. On in two years this fall—its beloved summer ern; July 9-13.)
her album “Room 25,” from 2018, Noname tradition remains unaltered. The ensemble
incisively confronted herself and the world. returns to Tanglewood, its seasonal home in
Then she put music on hold, devoting recent the Berkshires, for a festival of open-air con- Twice
years to her Noname Book Club—dedicated certs under the aegis of its music director, POP Since 2016, the bubbly K-pop girl group
to sending books to incarcerated readers— Andris Nelsons. Daniil Trifonov guest-stars Twice has been one of the biggest acts in
which maintains chapters across the country. in Prokofiev’s spirited Piano Concerto No. 3, South Korea, trailing only the more rap-
Her third full-length, “Sundial,” is set for on July 7; July 9 features appearances by adjacent and American-embraced jugger-
imminent release, though details remain Hilary Hahn, in Brahms’s Violin Concerto, nauts BTS and Blackpink. The group’s twee
elusive. First, she headlines Young World, and Julia Bullock, in Jessie Montgomery’s appeal has always been clear, but the unit
a free SummerStage show that also fea- “Five Freedom Songs.” The following week- didn’t find its balance until 2018, with a string
tures the jazz and soul visionary Georgia end, Nelsons and the orchestra show a flair of increasingly poised and sophisticated re-
Anne Muldrow and the psychedelic rapper for the theatrical with Mozart’s “Così Fan leases that adopted slick electro-pop and
454. “Hey young world,” a flyer reads, “The Tutte” (July 15), starring Nicole Cabell and pushed into lustrous takes on bossa nova
world is yours.”—Jenn Pelly (Herbert Von King Kate Lindsey as the opera’s fickle sisters, and and disco. Twice performs songs in Korean,
Park; July 15.) Orff ’s “Carmina Burana” (July 16), with the Japanese, and English, and it has hits in each
soloists Erin Morley, Reginald Mobley, and language, wielding the last on the recent
Will Liverman.—Oussama Zahr (Tanglewood, single “Moonlight Sunrise,” which marries
The Smile Lenox, Mass.; July 7-16.) R. & B. and Miami bass. Onstage, the sing-
ROCK Of the many Radiohead side projects, ers take turns under the center spotlight,
the Smile, which convened in the wake of covering contemporary pop songs—but the
the pandemic lockdowns, is easily the most Traditional Jazz at members of Twice are most effective as the

1
compelling. It’s the first to feature multiple limbs of a single, integrated organism mov-
members of the band—Thom Yorke and Arthur’s Tavern ing in synch.—S.P. (MetLife Stadium; July 6.)
Jonny Greenwood, joined by Tom Skin- JAZZ Once upon a time in New York, tradi-
ner—as well as the group’s producer Nigel tional jazz—Dixieland, to its followers—
Godrich, with music that’s akin to Radio- wasn’t all that hard to find. Long-gone
head’s woozy, sometimes alien work. But the establishments such as Jimmy Ryan’s and DANCE
Smile sound veers off into unusual spaces; Nick’s were meeting places for diehard
melancholy and atmospheric, with a touch players and fans who yearned to imbibe
of orchestral grandeur, the songs can range the music of twenties-era New Orleans and American Ballet Theatre
from twitchy post-punk (“A Hairdryer”) to Chicago, untainted by swing or bebop. Now- If evening-length ballets based on legends
symphonic electronica (“Waving a White adays, however, names like Muggsy Spanier and ghost tales are your thing, look no further
Flag”). Rhythmically dynamic, melodically and Miff Mole don’t ring much of a bell. But than the Metropolitan Opera House, where
complex, and vocally uncanny, the Smile Arthur’s Tavern is still holding down the A.B.T. is serving up “Giselle” (July 3-8) and
is constantly drawing the listener into its fort. Nestled among more contemporary “Swan Lake” (July 10-15), two mainstays of
artists’ bold individual performances, only attractions at the august bar are ensembles the ballet repertory. The company’s pro-
to zoom out onto a chilling, spectacular dedicated to antique sounds. The Creole ductions are traditional and, especially in
array.—Sheldon Pearce (Forest Hills Stadium; Cookin’ Jazz Band kicks up dust on July 9, the case of “Swan Lake,” very grand. Both
July 7.) followed the next night by the Grove Street works are ballerina vehicles, so casting mat-
ters. Each week includes débuts. On July 4,
Devon Teuscher, a dancer with an instinct
R. & B. for character and drama, performs the role
of Giselle—a peasant girl who, felled by a
broken heart, is transformed into a dancing
The wondrous voice of Bettye LaVette spirit—for the first time in New York. Cath-
erine Hurlin débuts as the demure Giselle
is prickly, fervid, and doused in cynicism. at the July 5 matinée. Hurlin returns the
She nails Dylan; letting her loose on following week, on the evening of July 12,
more guileless material seems cruel— for her début as the Swan Queen in “Swan
Lake.” On July 10, Isabella Boylston, a dancer
give her the Mister Rogers songbook of fluent musicality and refreshing sponta-
and she might excavate irony or doom. neity, returns as the Swan Queen, partnered
Although LaVette struck the match on by Daniel Camargo, who not only dances
with panache but can also act.—Marina Harss
her recording career in 1962, it didn’t ig- (Metropolitan Opera House; through July 22.)
nite until the years surrounding the Iraq
War. That seems fitting: her film-noir BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!
croon belongs to an unsettled world. In The Philadelphia hip-hop master Rennie Har-
recent outings, the soul veteran, who ris comes to this free festival in Prospect Park
plays City Winery on July 7, has spe- with “Nuttin’ but a Word,” a suite of dances
ILLUSTRATION BY RACHELLE BAKER

that emphasize subtlety and creativity. Harris

cialized in disembowelling canonical consistently swerves away from stereotypes,
works until they seem foreign. Her and here he pointedly skips around disparate
new LP, “LaVette!,” which is devoted to musical styles, but his terrific crew of danc-
ers always stays in the groove.—Brian Seibert
compositions by the roots utility player (Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park; July 13.)
Randall Bramblett, flips the script—she
delves into obscurities with such lived-in Caleb Teicher and Veronica Swift
gusto that you’d swear they’re shadowy As part of the 92nd Street Y’s Midsummer
hits from long ago.—Jay Ruttenberg MusicFest, the tap dancer Caleb Teicher and

6 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023

 the jazz vocalist Veronica Swift join forces
for the first time. They’re both young talents OFF BROADWAY
who can make styles of the past feel present.
A swing-dance party with live music fol-
lows.—B.S. (92NY; July 13.)

Fire Island Dance Festival

The annual benefit for Dancers Responding to
AIDS offers a potent combo of starry dance,
sea views, and a worthy cause. This year, Alan
Cumming is the host; the lineup includes the
shape-shifting New York City Ballet principal
dancer Taylor Stanley, members of Boston
Ballet, and the musician serpentwithfeet,
who accompanies a work choreographed by
Raja Feather Kelly.—B.S. (Fire Island Pines;
June 14-16.)

Pilobolus
More than fifty years ago, some Dartmouth
students and their dance teacher formed a
company named after a phototropic fungus
that launches fast-moving spores that stick
where they land. The appellation proved apt.
The group’s fresh style of physical theatre—
gymnastic, dramatic, a little strange—found
fame and acclaim quickly. As the founding
members gradually left, however, Pilobolus Near the beginning of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” published
seemed to get stuck—and stuck it has stayed. and set almost a century ago, the wealthy, enigmatic Jay Gatsby invites his
A delayed anniversary program at the Joyce neighbor Nick Carraway to a soirée at his Long Island mansion. In Im-
mixes some repertory with New York pre-
mières that follow the company’s hit-and- mersive Everywhere’s “The Great Gatsby - the Immersive Show” (at the
miss strategy of recent decades: bringing in Gatsby Mansion in the Park Central Hotel New York), for which the novel
outside collaborators, namely Darlene Kascak, has been adapted and directed by Alexander Wright, Gatsby’s party is the
of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, and Jad
entry point. Audience members, clad in all manner of dress, from feathered

1
Abumrad, of “Radiolab.”—B.S. (Joyce Theatre;
July 11-30.) headbands to sweatshirts, enter an Art Deco atrium with a bar, where they
can order an Old “Sport” Fashioned. (Prohibition be damned.) Nick’s col-
lege classmate Tom Buchanan (Shahzeb Hussain) shows up, as do Tom’s
THE THEATRE wife, Daisy ( Jillian Anne Abaya), and the celebrity golfer Jordan Baker (an
effervescent Stephanie Rocío). They periodically pull spectators into side
Grey House rooms where they play out reminiscences and matchmaking schemes. The
A married couple, wandering through the woods most consequential pairing, of course, is that of Daisy and Jay ( Joél Acosta,
after getting in a car accident, come across a smoothly commanding), who were lovers before her marriage. Fitzgerald’s
cabin. Nobody answers the door, so they let
themselves in. “I’ve seen this movie,” the hus- glorified soap opera plays differently today, national optimism having given
band says, surveying the cluttered interior. “We way to existential dread. What this production mainly offers is, ironically,
don’t make it.” He has the right idea, but in this an escape into the Jazz Age libertinism that the novel skewers.—Dan Stahl
case it’s a play: Levi Holloway’s “Grey House,”
as smart as it is scary. The cabin turns out to
be inhabited by the foulmouthed Raleigh (an
unnervingly crotchety Laurie Metcalf), plus strengths as a writer and a performer is his forces from without and within. For all its un-
four oddball girls and a silent boy who might exceptional eye for the absurd, not least in deniable appeal, “Rock & Roll Man” is not that
be her children. There’s also a basement door the way he details his hunger for approval, show. Constantine Maroulis plays Freed with
that keeps opening by itself (the creepy, creaky even when surrounded by neo-Nazis. Like all a nice mix of swagger and sincerity, a terrible
set is by Scott Pask) and a fridge filled with “the great comedy sets, this one contains a bunch wig, and, like everyone in the cast, a powerful
nectar of dead men,” if you believe the girls. of fake-outs: a barrage of self-described “dumb voice. But the book, by Gary Kupper (who also
They’re frighteningly convincing, as are most jokes” that are actually pretty smart; a seem- wrote the original songs sprinkled among the
of the ghoulish effects and all the performers. ingly offhand, meandering yarn that turns out irresistible rock and R. & B. classics), Larry
Joe Mantello directs one hell of a show.—Dan to be minutely constructed; a goofy spiel that Marshak, and Rose Caiola, doesn’t give Ma-
Stahl (Lyceum; through Sept. 3.) doubles as an unusually penetrating and in- roulis a chance to play the dark side. The point
sightful interrogation of what it means to be of the evening—expertly choreographed by
a Jew.—Alexandra Schwartz (Hudson Theatre; Stephanie Klemons and directed by Randal
ILLUSTRATION BY LAURA EDELBACHER

Just for Us through Aug. 19.) Myler—is to celebrate Freed’s part in the indel-
David Yosef Shimon ben Elazar Reuven Alex- ible triumphs of such artists as Little Richard
ander Halevi Edelman—he goes by Alex Edel- (Rodrick Covington), LaVern Baker (Valisia
man—is, as he will hasten to confirm, a very Rock & Roll Man LeKae), Chuck Berry (Matthew S. Morgan), Bo
obviously Jewish comedian. In his one-man Alan Freed could be the subject of a tragic rock Diddley (Eric B Turner), and Jerry Lee Lewis
show, directed by Adam Brace (transferred, opera: a struggling small-market radio d.j. finds (Dominique Scott), all of whom are honored in
after an extended run at the Cherry Lane in himself in a culturally fertile place and time these performances. With Joe Pantoliano mak-
2021-22, to Broadway), he tells the insane and (Cleveland in the fifties), has the nerve and ing hay playing both Leo Mintz, a Cleveland
uproarious tale of the night he gate-crashed the dedication to introduce great Black music record-store owner, and Morris Levy, a sleazy
a meeting of sixteen white nationalists in an to a white audience, seeks fame and fortune New York record executive.—Ken Marks (New
apartment in Queens. Among Edelman’s many in the big city, and is brought low by powerful World Stages; open run.)

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 7

1
MOVIES
ies—lays the film’s philosophical ground-
work. Wrangling with the very identities
lives of its makers—including the man who
was both its enabler and its destroyer. Tan
of his characters, Kiarostami suggests that incorporates generous clips of the original
neither personal freedom nor changed cir- film, which are enchanting, inspired, and
Certified Copy cumstances can liberate a soul from itself. explosively imaginative, and in which she
For his first feature made outside Iran, Released in 2010.—Richard Brody (Playing finds echoes of such later movies as “Rush-
Abbas Kiarostami offers a shimmering ro- July 12 and July 18 at MOMA and streaming more” and “Ghost World.” Tan interviews
mantic fable of second chances and eternal on the Criterion Channel, Tubi, Kanopy, and the film’s participants to re-create its joyful,
returns. He sets the story in Italy, where a other services.) troubled, turbulent production, as well as
British writer (played by the opera singer their lives and the state of Singapore at the
William Shimell) is discussing his recent time. The artistically energized and psy-
art-history book with a small but apprecia- Shirkers chologically insightful documentary offers
tive audience that includes a French antique In Singapore, in 1992, a nineteen-year-old a group portrait of longtime friends and a
dealer (Juliette Binoche), who passes him prodigy named Sandi Tan—a precocious film wistful glimpse of lost chances—in life and
her phone number and lures him on an ex- critic and a graphic artist—got together with in the history of cinema.—R.B. (Streaming
cursion to a jewel box of a town. There, her two best friends to make an independent on Netflix.)
the story shifts radically, portraying them film called “Shirkers”—a science-fiction,
as a long-married couple working through serial-killer, teen-riot comedy that was also
years of grudges. The movie is a sensual a memoir of people and places she loved. Stars in My Crown
and conceptual delight. Kiarostami’s calmly But the adult filmmaker who had helped This historical drama, from 1950, by the
confrontational images play ravishingly with them make it absconded with the footage, French-born director Jacques Tourneur, is
light, shadow, and reflections, and the ac- and Tan and her friends struggled to get on one of Hollywood’s frankest and fiercest
tors virtuosically shift language and tone with their lives. Then, decades later, Tan depictions of racist violence. The story, set
to match the director’s sly comic timing. got the footage back; her 2018 documentary in a Southern town soon after the Civil War,
The writer’s book—about art and its cop- recounts the making of the movie and the involves a new preacher, the quick-witted,
tough-minded, sharp-humored J. D. Gray
(Joel McCrea), who, as soon as he arrives,
ON THE BIG SCREEN stands up to a white mob, in a saloon, with
a pair of six-guns. His principles and his
courage are then put to an even sterner test
when a local tycoon—backed by Klansmen—
tries to steal land that belongs to a Black
farmer called Uncle Famous Prill (Juano
Hernandez). The movie is also a warm and
lofty vision of a family of kindred spirits:
Ellen Drew, as the preacher’s wife, matches
McCrea quip for quip, and Dean Stockwell
plays their foster son, who is the movie’s
narrator. Tourneur exalts a hearty, earthy
Christianity that both stirs the soul and
advances charity, compassion, and commu-
nity; a raging typhoid epidemic reveals the
preacher to be a virtual scientist, offering
antibodies to hatred and paranoia even as his
faith yields something like a miracle.—R.B.
(Playing July 7 on TCM and streaming on Prime
Video, Apple TV, and other services.)

Y Tu Mamá También
The director Alfonso Cuarón’s 2011 film, set
in his homeland of Mexico, is a stripped-
down road movie: two teen-age friends,
one rich (Diego Luna) and one poor (Gael
García Bernal), borrow a car and set off to
find the perfect beach, in the company of
Closeups are the beating heart of the cinema, and those of the actress a Spanish woman (Maribel Verdú) who is
Tia Nomore in “Earth Mama” (opening on July 14) are among the most older and married but seems inexplicably
vital in recent movies. Nomore—a rapper, in her first film role—plays happy to take either, or both, of them to bed.
All the boys’ dreams, in other words, have
Gia Wilson, a young Black woman, living in the Bay Area, whose two come true, and they can hardly handle it.
young children are in foster care; she sees them only weekly, in one- What ensues is a sad and sexy picaresque, as
hour supervised visits. Her efforts to regain custody are tied up in an everyone’s illusions are peeled off along with
their clothes. Cuarón’s style is so open and
impossible bureaucratic tangle, as mandatory classes and therapy sessions relaxed, and his actors are so attuned to one
prevent her from working longer hours and earning more money. Gia is another, that not until the final scene, with
pregnant and, fearful of losing custody again, is considering putting the its litany of revelations, do we see that what
felt life-affirming has also been a meditation
newborn up for open adoption. The writer and director Savanah Leaf on the slide of time, and on the offstage
dramatizes Gia’s conflicts in scenes of trenchant dialogue—including presence of death. Unrated, and therefore
an impassioned documentary-like sequence featuring the testimony full of sex, with all the improprieties in-
tact.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of

1
of former foster children—which give voice to the multigenerational 3/18/02.) (Streaming on Prime Video, Apple TV,
traumas of Black families torn apart for political purposes. But it’s the and other services.)
COURTESY A24

extended, intimate closeups that render Gia’s inner turmoil in the form
of active, self-aware thought, as she bears the burdens at hand and plans For more reviews, visit
for a brighter future.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town

8 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023

 Blue Hill at Stone Barns farm, to design counterparts to the rich liver mousse, and
Rigor Hill Farm, a year-round organic to a pull-apart walnut pain de mie with
operation with seven full-time farm- the fluff of a Parker House roll. Duck
ers. It now provides much of the pro- breast with perfectly crisped skin was a

1
duce used at One White Street, which mere sideshow to a pool of Kelly-green
Johnson opened in 2021, in a gorgeously garlic-scape sauce and an umami-bomb
gut-renovated nineteenth-century Tri- emulsion of farm-produced black garlic,
TABLES FOR TWO beca town house (with a history as the for which heads are cured and cooked at
fictional embassy address of John Len- a hundred and seventy-six degrees for
One White Street non and Yoko Ono’s conceptual country three weeks.
1 White St. Nutopia, no less). If this isn’t enough, Johnson has also
Johnson’s original idea was to dedicate parlayed a sidewalk farm stand he’s been
The chef Austin Johnson, who grew up the two upper floors to a tasting menu, running for the past few years into Rigor
in Omaha, Nebraska, kick-started his but his plans have evolved in response to Hill Market, a to-go café next door to
career at the storied restaurant Canlis, in the community’s obvious preference for the restaurant which sells breads, pas-
Seattle, which led to stints on an Alaskan a neighborhood hangout. Now only the tries, sandwiches, salads, and soups, as
salmon-fishing boat (lucrative) and at second floor is reserved for the tasting well as a vast selection of the farm’s fruits,
Eleven Madison Park (nine dollars an menu, with the third and ground floors, vegetables, herbs, microgreens, and flow-
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHELSEA KYLE FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE

hour). Later, in Paris, his trajectory to along with extensive outdoor seating, ers. As you might expect in Tribeca, the
executive chef at the tasting-menu restau- offering a more casual, but commensu- prices reflect the socioeconomic status of
rant Frenchie mirrored its ascent to be- rately vibrant, à-la-carte menu. the “White Lotus”-mom, finance-bro,
coming one of the hottest places in town. The menus shift with the micro- moneyed-creative-class clientele—the
There, across the cobblestoned Rue du seasons. You can count on bread—house- seven-course tasting menu is a hundred
Nil, Frenchie’s owners opened a wine bar made sourdough, perhaps, or well-oiled and eighty-eight dollars, the (excellent)
(with snacks such as a merguez Scotch focaccia stuffed with leeks and mozzarella double cheeseburger is thirty, and market
egg), and specialty stores followed—that and showered in Parmesan, with a rich tomatoes can run eight dollars a pound.
block is now “foodie central,” Johnson tomato sauce for dipping—and a seed But the cost also reflects the immense col-
told me, where discerning locals shop for catalogue’s worth of vegetables. Salads lective effort behind this glorious bounty.
produce, meat, fish, cheese, and bread. It galore include, of late, showcases for snap Where else could you find the tini-
was at Frenchie that some of Johnson’s peas, snow peas, green peas, and favas. est white elderflowers and Rigor Hill
repeat American customers made the One stalwart dish is the oddly refreshing strawberries? They both recently jazzed
offer of a lifetime: they had hundreds of Shaved Fennel, for which a tangle of thin up One White Street’s strawberry des-
acres near Hudson, New York, and they fennel curls, hiding plump anchovies and sert, where they topped a disk of me-
wondered, did he want to set up a farm soft blue cheese, is dusted with crushed ringue-layered sponge cake beside a
on ten of them, to supply his own dream pistachios and fennel pollen. quenelle of buttermilk ice cream. But you
New York City restaurant? On a recent evening, the Foie Gras could also pick them up next door, and
He definitely did. Johnson enlisted Presse accompanied rhubarb three ways: bring home something just as beautiful.
the small-agriculture specialist Eliot in a gelée, poached, and in a smooth (À la carte $16-$46.)
Coleman, who helped develop the marmalade—all delightfully tart-sweet —Shauna Lyon
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 9
No. 6 Six-part series of global actions

WE DEFEND
FRESH WATER
WITH FRESH
THINKING

Changing the natural flow of rivers legal strategies, funding plans, Help support global
threatens ecosystems and nearby and more. The plan has already action at nature.org
communities. But right now, only succeeded in the Balkans, and soon
17% of Earth’s rivers are protected. may be applied to rivers everywhere.
So we’ve created a first-of-its- Together, with legislative and
kind framework that empowers community partners, we find a way.
communities to protect rivers with
 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT patent unfairness of these racial consid- the median net worth of Black house-
AFTER AFFIRMATIVE ACTION erations. (The gender considerations of holds—a disparity driven by decades of
affirmative action, which were intro- restricted access to education, employ-
ny proper obituary for affirmative duced by the Johnson Administration, ment, and housing. These disadvantages
A action (1961-2023) in higher edu-
cation would be obliged to note that it
have been targeted in different ways.)
Even its supporters were commonly am-
were not simply the product of economic
class—middle-class Black students in
had been in decline for years before it bivalent. In the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger the United States are still more likely to
met its ultimate demise last week. The case, which challenged admissions prac- attend schools with fewer resources than
policy had weathered successive legal tices at the University of Michigan Law their middle-class white peers. Crucially,
challenges dating back to the nineteen- School, the Supreme Court narrowly in the wake of the 1978 Regents of the
seventies. It was often difficult to tell defended the policy. Justice Sandra Day University of California v. Bakke case,
whether the effect of these suits was to O’Connor wrote, “We expect that 25 one of the first significant challenges to
inspire more nuanced and legally sus- years from now, the use of racial prefer- affirmative action, these factors were dis-
tainable approaches for insuring diver- ences will no longer be necessary to fur- carded as a rationale for the policy in
sity or to better define the target oppo- ther the interest approved today.” place of a more nebulous (and, presum-
nents were aiming at. As with other Yet “How long?” was always the wrong ably, more palatable) pursuit of social and
untimely passings, the scale of what has question. It presupposed that there was institutional “diversity.” It’s worth not-
been lost is difficult to assess in the mo- a standard speed at which groups whose ing that the two suits that Students for
ment. But not entirely impossible. disadvantages were the product of cen- Fair Admissions brought, against Har-
The term “affirmative action” was in- turies of social engineering were meant vard and the University of North Caro-
troduced in an executive order issued by to recover and achieve. The salient met- lina, which alleged, among other things,
President John F. Kennedy on March 6, ric was progress, not time. It matters that, discrimination against Asian American
1961, articulating a policy of proactively half a century after the end of the civil- applicants, and which gave the Court’s
impeding discrimination in hiring. In rights movement, the median net worth conservatives the opportunity to disman-
the ensuing years, there have been many of white households was still ten times tle affirmative action, were heard in the
iterations of this practice: numerical tar- midst of a concerted multi-state assault
gets, or “quotas,” in the early days; in- on the edifice of diversity that has sprung
creasingly sophisticated formulas pegged up in the decades since Bakke.
to goals of diversity more recently. But The Supreme Court telegraphed its
the common thread was a sober, if im- 6–3 vote last October, when the argu-
perfect, attempt to grapple with the abid- ments were heard. A Times headline
ing inequality in American society and blurted, “Supreme Court Seems Ready
to navigate closer to equitable represen- to Throw Out Race-Based College Ad-
tation in our institutions and opportu- missions.” Notably, Justice Clarence
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA

nities. It yielded significant results as an Thomas, whose contempt for affirma-

engine that drove integration in the wake tive action dates back decades, to his
of the civil-rights movement and helped years at Yale Law School and the in-
expand the Black middle class. scrutable idea that the policy was re-
Yet, almost from the outset, critics of sponsible for the dearth of job offers he
the policy could be seen impatiently tap- received after graduation, specifically
ping their watches, questioning how long questioned the utility of diversity as a
(white) society was meant to endure the goal during oral arguments. “I’ve heard
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 11
the word ‘diversity’ quite a few times, University of California system stripped ity of the public supports—in a recent
and I don’t have a clue what it means,” away race, gender, and ethnicity as a fac- poll, sixty-three per cent of Americans
Thomas said. “It seems to mean every- tor in admissions, the number of Black said that the Supreme Court should allow
thing for everyone.” This is a specious and Latino students enrolled at its most colleges to consider race and ethnicity
argument. The many diversity programs selective schools, Berkeley and U.C.L.A., in admissions—but that the majority of
in higher education have as their goal dropped by some forty per cent. This conservatives wished to see ended. The
fostering heterogeneous communities was not just a product of there being Dobbs decision, last year, furthered sus-
across lines of nationality, background, fewer minority students admitted; fewer picions that this Court, with its 6–3 super-
interests, talents, and experiences. Of the highly qualified Black and Latino stu- majority of conservatives, operates sim-
hundred and sixteen people who have dents even applied, perhaps thinking ply to translate Republican priorities into
served on the Supreme Court, only two— that they wouldn’t get in. It’s not im- the law of the land. By last fall, faith in
Justices Thurgood Marshall and Clar- probable for a national version of this the Court had fallen to a new low—just
ence Thomas—knew what it felt like to phenomenon to crop up in coming years. forty-seven per cent of Americans placed
attend a segregated school as a Black It is also possible that the proportion of “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in
person. This perspective inarguably ben- Black and Latino students at less well- the federal judiciary, reflecting a twenty-
efits a body dedicated to adjudicating resourced colleges, which generally have point drop from the results of a similar
cases that affect the entire society. The lower graduation rates, will increase. It poll just two years earlier. This ruling
reasoning is not difficult to grasp, even would not be surprising for this ruling will potentially exacerbate that distrust,
if it is, apparently, difficult to uphold. to generate a tide of applications at his- and with good reason. Two decades have
The ultimate impact of this decision torically Black colleges and universities, passed since Justice O’Connor set a timer
will become clearer over time, but it is albeit for reasons that signify less over- for affirmative action’s viability, but the
safe to predict that the result will be all opportunity. train seems to have arrived in the sta-
fewer students from traditionally un- The implications of this decision are tion early. The ruling marks a new de-
derrepresented minorities on college not confined to future generations of parture, and we’re heading in the oppo-
campuses, particularly at the most com- students. As with abortion rights, this site direction from progress.
petitive institutions. In 1998, after the case deals with a policy that the major- —Jelani Cobb

HERE TO THERE DEPT. bolt of lightning struck the ground less National Geographic, about the history
BIG-ASS CANOE than a mile from where they were hud- of the canoe, from birchbark to big-ass.
dled, beneath the canoe’s hull. Soon, “I try to remind everybody that the canoe
after a harrowing passage around Breezy really is a Native American invention,”
Point, amid four-foot swells, they were Wilkinson told a few Nyack sailors over
at Brighton Beach. “Russian mafia,” a picnic dinner of sloppy joes. “One of
Ranco said. “We slept with one eye open, the first things the Pilgrims did when
in shifts. All these Russians are asking they landed in 1620 was help themselves
he speed limit on the Shinnecock me who’s paying their tax. I just walked to a canoe to cross a river while they
T Canal, in Hampton Bays, is five
miles per hour, which a group of hardy
away. Ate a lot of hot dogs and went to
the amusement park.”
had some armloads of stashed corn that
they had found in the sand dunes.”
paddlers in a thirty-one-foot canoe were Ranco, a forty-two-year-old carpen- Wilkinson’s wife, Janet, and children
improbably exceeding the other day, ter when not afloat, was recounting this were among the picnickers, having driven
when “the shit went down,” as one of at the Nyack Boat Club, where he and down from New Hampshire to check in
them, Ryan Ranco, recalled. A power- the other paddlers had tied up for the on the group’s progress, and to belatedly
boat named Just Chillin’ appeared from night after a seventeen-mile ascent of celebrate Father’s Day. The host sailors,
around a corner. “It was in our lane, on the Hudson, from Inwood. It was day meanwhile, swooned over the visitors’
the left side of the canal,” Ranco said. forty-one of a uniquely looping voyage, derring-do while occasionally noting their
“We kind of had a little game of chicken a fifteen-hundred-mile circumnaviga- own feats (“I once hiked Mt. Marcy”),
going. He went far right, zigzagging, tion of the Northeast that had begun in and wondered how canoeists heading up
and as he went by us he, like, hit the Old Town, Maine, on the Stillwater the Hudson might find their way back
gas—you could see his bow go up.” The branch of the Penobscot River. Ranco to Maine. Roughly speaking: turn left up
narrow canal frothed like an ocean, and is a member of the Penobscot tribe. He the Mohawk River, at Troy, and push all
the canoeists were sent swimming. “Yard invoked his ancestral language when the way to Oneida Lake; follow the Os-
sale,” Ranco said. Some of their gear—a mentioning a nickname for their vessel: wego River to Lake Ontario, and then
pair of shoes, a VHF radio, a wampum “Chi Jeckin Agwiden, or Big-Ass Canoe.” descend the St. Lawrence as far as Que-
sash worth several thousand dollars— The crew included members of four na- bec City before hooking sharply right on
now resides on the canal’s bottom. tions of the Haudenosaunee Confeder- the Chaudière; a couple of portages, back
Undeterred, the paddlers proceeded acy and one self-described “white guy,” into the Penobscot watershed, and Bob’s
west, eventually reaching Great South Freddie Wilkinson, a professional moun- your uncle. A guest asked Ranco if the
Bay, and paused at Fox Island, where a tain guide who is writing a book, for paddlers had a due date back in Old Town.
12 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
“Freddie’s wife said September 1st,” Ranco Hebrew Association (items included a job at DuPont, two years after the re-
said. Nearby, Wilkinson’s four-year-old “circumcise cocktail”), for Ellis Island lease of “The Graduate.” (“One word . . .
son, Oscar, was strutting with a “He-Man to greet arrivals, for San Quentin State plastics!”) “I’m the only person in the
sword,” as Ranco called it, that the pad- Prison to celebrate Chinese New Year, entire audience that said, Oh, some ca-
dlers had fashioned from driftwood they’d for a Pennsylvania chapter of the Ku reer advice,” he recalled. As retirement
found beneath the Palisades. Klux Klan’s dinner dance (ham sand- approached, he needed a hobby. eBay
Rain and more lightning were in the wiches with catsup), for New York’s Ich- was new; menus seemed interesting.
forecast. On the plus side, this augured thyophagous Club in 1884 to “overcome Voigt uses a menu as a starting point
fewer yahoos in powerboats to contend prejudice directed towards many kinds for historical investigation. On an iPad,
with as the Hudson narrowed, beyond of fish” (suprême of shark, essence of devil- he scrolled to a favorite: a dinner planned
Haverstraw. But the storms also thwarted fish), and for the American Vegetarian for the National Association of Credit
the ambitions of a waterborne pilgrim Society, whose 1852 feast (pumpkin pies, Men, on a pleasure cruise aboard an East
who might have crossed paths more ami- melons) was, alas, cancelled and replaced River steamship called the General Slo-
ably with the determined canoeists. by a foodless “feast of reason.” Voigt was cum. The meal was to be enjoyed on
Philip Katz, a sixty-three-year-old pack- grabbing lunch the other day at the Up- June 16, 1904. “But on June 15th the Gen-
aging entrepreneur, had launched a per East Side bistro La Goulue, whose eral Slocum caught fire,” Voigt said.
standup paddleboard in Burlington, Ver- menu he mostly ignored. “Sometimes I “More than a thousand people died,
mont, on Lake Champlain, and hoped, don’t even look,” he said. “I often say, mostly women and children. One of the
as he put it, to “see how much is left in ‘Well, what are you selling?’” He ordered worst disasters in the history of this
my tank” en route to New York City. He two off-book specials: leek soup and country. So, I wondered, Well, what did
floated more than a hundred miles be- soft-shell crab. these guys do?” He paused. “They rented
fore renting a U-Haul, in Mechanicville, Voigt, who is seventy-six, had taken another boat!” The menu called for the
and driving home, dejected. “The last the Amtrak from Delaware, where he indomitable credit men to eat cream of
thing I want to be is a lightning rod,” lives, to check on an exhibition of his new asparagus, Philadelphia squab, and
Katz said. He added that he had recently menus nearby, at the Grolier Club. (He assorted cakes. “They were still fishing
got off the phone with Dan Rubinstein, stands outside incognito and asks depart- bodies out of the river!” he went on.
a forty-nine-year-old Canadian writer ing visitors if the show is worth seeing.) “This kind of stuff just makes my day.”
who was camped on an island near He wore a sports coat with khakis and He took a slurp of leeks. “This is
Plattsburgh, amid his own paddleboard- boat shoes and smiled approvingly at the good soup!” he said.
ing mission to New York and back, from restaurant’s stern Moroccan maître d’. What contemporary menus might
Ottawa. “There’s a lot more of us than “I’m in my element,” he announced. interest future historians? “It’s hard to
you think,” Katz said. When informed Why menus? He shrugged. “I was identify in your own life,” Voigt said.
that the canoeists were still at it, he ex- interested in food and wine,” he said. “I Perhaps the first haute-cuisine tasting
claimed, “Holy smokes!,” and began spec- was interested in the history of every- menu, from 1879, which promised dishes

1
ulating about a renewed attempt. day life. So those things came together.” “served in Lilliput quantities” (“real ar-
—Ben McGrath Voigt hadn’t been a history buff, but, tificial fish,”“individual beans”), débuted
as a fourteen-year-old, he sneaked into to little fanfare at an unassuming hotel
SQUIRRELLING DEPT. the Kennedy Inauguration: “I sat be- in Massachusetts. Still, Voigt has culti-
À LA CARTES hind Eleanor Roosevelt!” In 1969, he got vated a modern collection, procured, in

enry Voigt is maybe the world’s

H preëminent collector of historical
menus, with some ten thousand pieces,
including menus from love hotels and
cabarets, luaus and chop-suey halls, se-
cret societies and utopian communes,
one-cent restaurants, grand banquets,
gentlemen’s ordinaries, ladies’ teas, riv-
erboats, airplanes, weddings, the Har-
vard-Yale game, an American Can Com-
pany banquet, Walt Whitman’s favorite
bar, J. P. Morgan’s brownstone, menus
made of silk, menus made by Tiffany,
menus prepared for the Coney Island “If this is goodbye forever, don’t take all the good towels.”
part, in person—Jean-Georges, Momo- lars, Rent the Chicken will deliver a “You should put some sawdust down in
fuku, Eleven Madison Park, Daniel. chicken coop, two to four “egg-laying- the nesting box for them,” he suggested.
“We went to Per Se. It’s a ripoff,” he ready” hens, more than a hundred pounds “I bought special silicon pads, but
said. “I said, ‘Oh, I’m just doing research.’ of feed, and instructions on “how to keep they haven’t come yet,” Rich said. “That
My wife said, ‘Bullshit.’” He went on, your chickens happy.” From their farm reminds me: we need to work on your
“Cipriani, I have a great menu from in Wallingford, Connecticut, DeFran- upsell strategy, Joe, because I keep hav-
1995. They asked the women to please cesco, or Homestead Ida, as she is known ing to go to Amazon for all my acces-
not wear strong perfumes. They asked to her customers, and her husband, Joe sories.” Nearby sat one recent purchase:
you to please not use your cell phone at (Farmer Joe), provide a growing num- a small picnic bench (for the chickens
the table because it interferes with the ber of families in the Hamptons with “to sit at”), where, according to Rich,
risotto. The pantheon of lost causes.” the chance to enjoy farm-fresh eggs and “Oliver likes to mix a special concoction
Voigt isn’t worried about QR-code a pet that can be returned by Labor Day. of saliva and worms for the chickens.”
menus: it’s harder to upsell desserts. On a recent Sunday, Homestead Ida Chicken check done, Ida and Joe got
“Nobody wants to fish their phone out and Farmer Joe were busy checking in in their S.U.V. to look in on the next
of their pocket,” he said. A waitress on some of their rentals. flock, in Westhampton. Ivy, an anesthe-
came by with a dessert display platter. The pair, wearing matching Rent the siologist from New Jersey, opened a gate
He improvised again. “I would like Chicken T-shirts, pulled up in a red wearing a wide-brimmed green visor
some ice cream with chocolate sauce S.U.V. to a shingle-style home in Bridge- and bicycle shorts. Four chickens ran
and whipped cream,” he said. Upsell: hampton. They’d brought gifts: a bushel frantically around the yard, purring. (“Yes,
successful. of lavender (“It helps them when they’re chickens purr,” Joe said.) Ivy’s children
Voigt doesn’t know how much he’s feeling broody,” Joe explained) and a bag and grandchildren were staying with her
spent on his collection. His finds come of dried mealworms (“their favorite high- in June. “The short-term chicken rental
from the Internet, ephemera dealers, protein snack,” Ida said). was just perfect for us!” Ivy said.
booksellers, auction houses. “There was Alina, a leveraged-buyout attorney Ivy’s son, Kevin, a surgical intern,
one hoarder’s home,” he said. Menus turned stay-at-home mom, strode out came out wearing a pink bathing suit
range from a couple of dollars to hun- in a tie-dyed caftan, with a stack of di- and neck chains, and introduced him-
dreds. Sometimes the price gets bid up amond bracelets. “If you want to know self. “I’m the Chicken Daddy,” he said.
by a mysterious rival: “He’s a recluse.” anything about the chickens, you’ll have Ida asked if the children had named
Voigt’s biggest expenses come when to ask my four-year-old,” she said. The the chickens. Brayden, Ivy’s four-year-
he steps onto other collectors’ turf. “Gold- four-year old, Oliver, was clinging to his old grandson, replied, “Yes, they’re called
rush-California people go crazy,” he said. au pair in the pool. “Be Prepared,” the Chicken, Ry-Ry, Rocky, and . . .” No-
“Confederate menus aren’t cheap.” In coup anthem from “The Lion King,” body remembered the name of the fourth
2006, he quietly scored a menu from boomed through outdoor speakers. Rich, one. Ivy chimed in, “Wasn’t it . . . Bubba?”
Lincoln’s second Inauguration, for fif- Alina’s husband, who runs a renew- Close by, a chicken turned her back
teen hundred dollars, on eBay. Lincoln able-energy business, emerged from the to Abby, Ivy’s granddaughter, and squat-
collectors were outraged. “They’re still kitchen in a bright-blue bathing suit, ted, splaying her feathers. “What’s she
bitching at me,” Voigt said. “One of the holding a tequila on the rocks. doing?” Ivy asked.
extant copies is said to have been saved “Hey, Ollie, can we put on some- “She’s submitting,” Ida said. “She
by President Lincoln himself. I think thing a little less ominous, please?” he thinks Abby is the top girl and has es-
this one belongs to Gideon Welles, the said. He stretched out on an outdoor
Secretary of the Navy, but I haven’t sofa and explained how he’d heard about
chased it down all the way.” Determin- Rent the Chicken: “I was at a polo
ing provenance is key. “Otherwise, it’s match where a guy was telling me about

1
just a list of foods,” he said. leasing horses, which turned me on to
—Zach Helfand his whole incredible world of renting
animals.” The family will return their
BARNYARD DEPT. rental chickens in August, when their
RENT-A-FOWL children, Oliver and Ellis (“like the is-
land,” Alina said), go back to school in
Houston.
Rich told Ida that he was concerned
about the chickens’ recent habit of dig-
ging in the dirt. “A dirt bath,” Ida said.
“They love that.”
“ I could talk about chickens all day
long,” Ida DeFrancesco, a farmer
Rich looked relieved. “I just wanted
to check and make sure it wasn’t some
and an affiliate of Rent the Chicken, an form of depression,” he said.
all-inclusive chicken-rental service, said Joe inspected the coop—a six-foot-
not long ago. For twelve hundred dol- long structure resembling a mini-barn. Joe and Ida DeFrancesco
14 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
tablished her as high in the pecking “ ‘Oh, this is the beginning of our jour- ADG7 while she was in the bathroom
order.” Abby beamed. ney!’” She extended her arms like wings. of a Domino’s Pizza in Seoul. On tour,
Conversation turned to the subject “Then we landed at the airport in Chi- she said, the exuberance of foreign au-
of death. (The company’s Web site has cago . . . disaster.” Gone, too, were their diences startled her. It was as though
an F.A.Q. page that includes the ques- instruments: drums, flutes, gongs, two they’d been given “a new toy,” she said.
tion “What if my Rent The Chicken varieties of zither, and a towering mouth Hong wants to reach people in North
dies?”) “Well, they are living beings, so, organ with pipes like city spires. Korea, where the music that inspired
yes, they sometimes die,” Ida said. “Some- Miraculously, a Korean cultural as- the band, she was told, is no longer
times families will request that we de- sociation managed to provide everything played. She mentioned a North Korean
liver a chicken that looks like the de- they needed; by the time they played an propaganda Web site that denounced
ceased one so that the kid doesn’t know.” outdoor performance at Lincoln Cen- the band as sellouts, in an article mem-
One of the biggest problems the ter, they had the crowd enthralled. The orably titled “The Overflowing Yankee
chickens face: overindulgence. “We can band’s clangorous, soulful sound fuses Culture Obliterates Folk Music.” Hong
always tell when spouses don’t talk,” Ida age-old genres called gut and minyo with said, “They know us! We were shocked
said. “A chicken will never turn down a alt-rock rhythms and a bouncy show- about that.” Defectors who’ve attended
second meal, so if families aren’t com- manship reminiscent of the B-52s. They
municating the chickens come back to call it “shamanic folk pop.” Perhaps the
us heavy and waddling.” most galvanizing track on their two al-
She turned to see Abby feeding an- bums is “Hee Hee,” a celebration of
other one of the chickens. “Look!” she laughter in which ululations spiral in
said. “She’s eating out of the palm of hypnotic rounds. The yips and yelps

1
your hand!” build and then, when a rasping zither
—Parker Henry called the ajaeang hits, all but catch fire.
This year’s tour had taken them to
DEPT. OF FUSION so many far-flung destinations that Hong
MUDANG CHILE had to be reminded of their last stop.
They had a gig at (Le) Poisson Rouge
later that evening, after the shopping
trip. Then they were off to the Glaston-
bury Festival in a lineup that included
Elton John and Lil Nas X.
ADG7—whose full name, Ak Dan
here in New York does one find Gwan Chil, refers to the seventieth an-
W shoes fit for a shaman? At Meer-
min, in SoHo, Hong Ok, a singer in the
niversary of Korea’s liberation from
Japan—was formed eight years ago, by ADG7
Korean folk-pop band ADG7, confessed members of a folk ensemble interested
recently that she and her bandmates in ritual songs from present-day North their concerts, where audiences are asked
usually shop at Zara or H&M. “Shut Korea. “The shaman’s character is so to close their eyes and make a wish, have
up!” Yoo Wol, another vocalist, playfully charismatic and so powerful,” Hong ex- written prayers for reunification.
admonished, sliding over in nylon socks plained. But their music wasn’t reach- At noon, the band gave up shoe shop-
to press a finger against her lips. Nearby, ing many people in its canonical form. ping and retreated to the Washington
the bandleader, Kim Yak-dae, inspected Why not use it to express their hopes Square Diner. Hong looked impressed
a pair of patent-leather loafers, a brace- for a unified peninsula, and to summon as she flipped through the eight-page
let of skulls turning on his wrist. The a wider audience? menu: “I think I saw this type of restau-
store’s understated selection seemed to The band left Meermin empty- rant in soap operas.” Over burgers, they
confuse them. Wasn’t there anything handed and headed for Camper, on discussed Rihanna’s pregnancy (“sexier
with high heels? Prince Street. Yoo, a cherubic twenty- than before”), Lizzo’s crystal flute, and
Onstage, ADG7’s three singers re- something in a cable-knit sweater, stared ADG7’s future (“groovy,” Kim pro-
semble a coven of glamorous witches, down the barrel of a chunky hot-pink nounced). Afterward, in the park, a jazz
donning scarves, sunglasses, and the elab- boot. “So big!” she exclaimed. Yoo never trio played near the fountain. “Busk-
orately tiered hats that men wore during intended to become a pop singer. Her ing?” Yoo asked; Hong retrieved a zip-
Korea’s Joseon dynasty. They are meant mother was tattooing eyebrows in In- lock of dollars.
to look like mudang, or mediums, whose cheon when a client, overhearing Yoo’s A few days earlier, the band had per-
gender-bending attire changes depend- singsong greeting, observed that her formed in Louisiana. Did they know
ing on which spirits they serve. Last year, voice had a perfect traditional timbre. Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile”? In a
an airline lost the band members’ cos- A degree at Korea’s National University way, Hong replied, “all art, all artists, all
tumes during their first tour of the United of Arts followed, which might have led the stage, I think, came from the sha-
States. “We were so excited,” Hong, wil- to a quiet career in a conservatory had man ritual.”
lowy and wearing a denim skirt, recalled. she not received a surprise call from —Julian Lucas
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 15
 LIF E AND LET TERS Johnson’s famous formulation—“tired
of life.” But I was definitely weary of
London’s claustrophobic literary world,
Killing Dickens or at least the role I had been assigned
within it: multicultural (aging) wunder-
Why I wrote a historical novel. kind. Off I went.

BY ZAD I E S M I T H ike many expats, we thought about

L returning. Lots of factors kept us
abroad, not least of which the compli-
or the first thirty years of times answer with a joke: Because I don’t cation of a child, and the roots she swiftly
SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM GETTY; WELLCOME COLLECTION

my life, I lived within a one- want to write a historical novel. Perhaps put down. Still, periodically, we would
mile radius of Willesden it was an in-joke: only other English give in to fits of regret and nostalgia, two
Green Tube Station. It’s true novelists really understood what I meant writers worrying away at the idea that
I went to college—I even by it. And there were other, more obvi- they had travelled too far from the source
moved to East London for ous reasons. My English father had died. of their writings. After all, a writer can
a bit—but such interludes were brief. I My Jamaican mother was pursuing a ro- be deracinated to death. . . . Sometimes,
soon returned to my little corner of North mance in Ghana. I myself had married to make ourselves feel better, we’d make
West London. Then suddenly, quite an Irish poet who liked travel and ad- the opposite case. Take Irish writers—
abruptly, I left not just the city but En- venture and had left the island of his we’d say to ourselves—take Beckett and
gland itself. First for Rome, then Bos- birth at the age of eighteen. My ties to Joyce. See also: Edna O’Brien. See also:
ton, and then my beloved New York, England seemed to be evaporating. I Colum and Colm. Didn’t they all write
where I stayed ten years. When friends would not say I was entirely tired of about home while living many miles
asked why I’d left the country, I’d some- London. No, I was not yet—in Samuel away from it? Then the doubt would
creep back in again. (The Irish always
In nineteenth-century London, all roads seemed to lead back to Charles Dickens. being an exceptional case.) What about
16 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 ILLUSTRATION BY JAVIER JAÉN
French writers? Caribbean writers? Af- at once had my name all over it. It con- Whenever I asked him how it was going,
rican writers? Here the data seemed less cerned a court battle of 1873—among he would say it was exhausting and the
conclusive. Throughout all this equivo- the longest in British history—in which hardest thing he’d ever done in his life:
cation, I kept clinging to the one piece Arthur Orton, a butcher from Wapping, “Like doing a Ph.D. and writing a novel
of data about which I felt certain: any claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne, the simultaneously. So many notes!” I did not
writer who lives in England for any long-missing, presumed-drowned heir like the sound of that. Generally speak-
length of time will sooner or later find to the Doughty-Tichborne estate. ing, I don’t make notes. I sit down. I write
herself writing a historical novel, whether The plight of the Tichborne Claim- a novel. But already this non-novel that
she wants to or not. Why is that? Some- ant, as he came to be known, was a cause I was refusing to write had generated a
times I think it’s because our nostalgia célèbre of its day, not least because the drawer full of notes and a shelf of books.
loop is so small—so tight. There are, for Claimant’s star witness and stoutest de- I said to myself: my studying days are
example, people in England right now fender turned out to be a Jamaican ex- over. I said to myself: if you let this hap-
who can bring themselves to Proustian slave called Andrew Bogle, who had pen it will play to your worst, your most
tears at the memory of the Spice Girls worked for the Tichbornes and insisted long-winded, your most Dickensian in-
or MiniDiscs or phone boxes—it doesn’t that he recognized Sir Roger. Now, one stincts. Already every Tichborne thread
take much—and this must all have an might imagine that the court testimony I pulled seemed to lead to yet another
effect on our literary culture. The French of a poor black man in 1873 would be rich tapestry of nineteenth-century life,
tend to take the term nouveau roman lit- met with widespread skepticism, but one that required yet more books to be
erally. Meanwhile, the English seem to the British Public—like its cousin, the ordered, and another folder of notes to
me constitutionally mesmerized by the American People—is full of surprises, be made. I was already profoundly bor-
past. Even “Middlemarch” is a histori- and having seen so many working-class ing the members of my household: “Did
cal novel! And though plenty English defendants mistreated by bourgeois ju- you know that in 1848 . . .” I said to my-
myself, I retained a prejudice against the ries, Etonian lawyers, and aristocratic self: Zadie, your novels are long enough
form, dating back to student days, when judges, the people were more than ready when they’re about nothing! What’s going
we were inclined to think of historical to support a poor man’s claim to be a to happen when actual facts are involved?
novels as aesthetically and politically rich one. Huge crowds filled the court- Walk away, Smith, walk away!
conservative by definition. room, eager to see one of their own win,
If you pick up a novel and find that for once. (A perverse sentiment, per- anging over all this anxiety was
it could have been written at any time
in the past hundred years, well, then,
haps, but one we might recognize from
the O.J. trial.) Bogle and his butcher
H the long shadow of Dickens. To
be my age, bookish, and born in En-
that novel is not quite doing its self-de- became national heroes. gland was to grow up under that tire-
scribed job, is it? Surely, it’s in the very This extraordinary story struck me somely gigantic influence. Dickens was
DNA of the novel to be new? So I have like a found art object: perfect for my everywhere. He was in school and on
always thought. But, over time, the spe- purposes. One of those gifts from the the shelves at home and in the library.
cious logic of these student arguments universe a writer gets once in a lifetime. He invented Christmas. He was in pol-
has come under some pressure, specif- But it was eight years before I finally sat itics, influencing changes in labor law,
ically after I read several striking exam- down at my desk to unwrap it. In the educational law, even copyright law. He
ples of the genre. “Memoirs of Hadrian,” meantime, I did everything I could to was the original working-class hero—
by Marguerite Yourcenar, is not written avoid writing my historical novel. I stayed radiant symbol of our supposed meri-
in Latin, and “Measuring the World,” in America, far from British libraries and tocracy—as well as a crown jewel of the
by my friend Daniel Kehlmann, is not court transcripts. We had another child. English Heritage tourist industry. (In
in old German. Even the language of I wrote four more books. But, through it other words, he was posthumously ma-
“Wolf Hall” has very little to do with all, I continued to lurk around the sub- nipulated by many different sections of
real Tudor syntax: it is Mantellian ject in a casual way, like a nervous woman British society to score a variety of po-
through and through. All three bring on a dating app, never quite swiping right. litical points.) He was also everywhere
news. Not all historical fiction cosplays I would read a few history books, make I wanted to be: in the theatre, in Italy,
its era, and an exploration of the past some notes, get anxious, put the idea back in America. Televised versions of his
need not be a slavish imitation of it. You in the drawer. I still did not want to write books were on rotation—there is a case
can come at the past from an interrog- a historical novel. I feared the amount of to be made that Dickens is the reason
ative angle, or a sly remove, and some work involved. This worry was not eased that we have prestige-TV miniseries in
historical fiction will radically transform by watching my New York neighbor— the first place—and he was in the
your perspective not just on the past but the aforementioned Daniel Kehlmann— goddam Muppets and all over Holly-
on the present. These ideas are of course doing the necessary reading for another wood, in conscious adaptation and un-
obvious to long-term fans of historical historical novel, “Tyll,” set in Germany conscious theft. I personally read far too
fiction, but they were new to me. I laid during the Thirty Years’ War. He did it much of him as a child, and though I
down my ideological objection. Which at the N.Y.U. playground, while his child grew up to have all the usual doubts and
was lucky—and self-serving—because played with ours. He did it on park caveats about him—too sentimental,
around 2012 I stumbled upon a story benches. He did it in libraries. He seemed too theatrical, too moralistic, too con-
from the nineteenth century that I knew to do it day and night for about five years. trolling—I was also never able to quite
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 17
get out from under his embarrassing in- pauper’s grave of the Tichborne Claim- won’t be hanging around and you won’t be
fluence, as much as I’ve often wanted ant, as well as the corner of King’s Cross making any witty speeches or imparting
to. So it went with my surreptitious re- where Bogle breathed his last. It was any wisdom. I was as good as my word,
search. No matter where I found my- 2020 outside but 1870 in my head. I had killing him in a paragraph, in a very brief,
self in nineteenth-century London, I’d effectively completely conceded: I was un-Dickensian chapter titled “Dickens
run into Dickens. In the main chapters, back in England and I was writing a his- Is Dead!” Immediately, I felt that sense
in the index, in parentheses or out of torical novel. My pride rested now on of catharsis which people often believe
them—all roads led back to Charles. one principle: no Dickens. This meant— writing brings but which I myself have
There didn’t seem to be a nineteenth- at the very least—no orphans, no lengthy experienced only rarely. Look at me! (I
century pot he didn’t have his finger in. Dickensian descriptions, and absolutely said to myself.) I just killed Dickens! (By
I could be minding my own business no mean women called Mrs. Spitely or describing his sudden death and subse-
reading about, say, an uprising in Jamaica, cowards called Mr. Fearfaint, or what quent burial at Westminster Abbey.) But,
and suddenly there he was again, signing have you. To insure this, I was careful to not long after I wrote that triumphant
a petition on the matter. I’d be reading reread no Dickens, and, aside from his scene, for practical reasons (a flashback)
about a long-dead, long-forgotten writer, frequent appearances in my research ma- Charles made his inevitable return, ap-
William Harrison Ainsworth—a resident terials, I tried my best to put the man pearing as a younger and even more ir-
of my neighborhood—and there Dickens out of my mind. But one of the lessons repressible force than he had been forty
would be, befriending him. I’d read a of writing fiction is that truth is stranger pages earlier. At that point, I gave up. I
book about American slavery and discover than it. The fact that a real person I was let him pervade my pages, in the same
him in the footnotes! At which point I’d writing about was called Eliza Touchet— way he stalks through nineteenth-cen-
find myself saying, Oh, hi, Charles, like and that this same woman was begin- tury London. He’s there in the air and
an actual crazy person. Then lockdown ning to bloom in my mind, until she the comedy and the tragedy and the pol-
arrived, and like everyone else I went a dwarfed all the other characters—meant itics and the literature. He’s there where
little crazy. I hunted down every out-of- that I now had to face the prospect of he had no business being (for example,
print William Harrison Ainsworth novel. my novel strongly featuring a woman in debates about the future of Jamaica).
(He wrote more than forty; they’re mostly whose name even Dickens would have He’s there as a sometimes oppressive,
awful.) I grew increasingly interested in considered a bit too on the nose. Touché, sometimes irresistible, sometimes de-
William’s housekeeper, a woman called Mrs. Touchet! But that wasn’t even the lightful, sometimes overcontrolling in-
Eliza Touchet. I became obsessed with last joke Dickens had to play on me, fluence, just as he was in life. Just as he
the plantation on which Andrew Bogle from beyond the grave. has always been in my life. But child-
had been enslaved—the Hope Estate— About halfway through my research, hood influences are like that. They drive
and the long, brutal entanglement be- his name started leaping up out of the you crazy precisely because your debt to
tween England and Jamaica. I read several footnotes and into the main body of the them is far larger than you want to know
books about the Tichborne Claimant text, as a real-life actor in the events I or care to admit. See also: parents.
and thought a lot about fraud: fake iden- was concerned with, and it became clear Eleven years later, at the very end of
tities, fake news, fake relationships, fake to me that in order to tell the whole of the long gestation and writing period of
histories. When I tried to explain to any- my true story there was really no way my historical novel, I closed my laptop
one what all these subjects had in com- to entirely avoid Mr. Charles Dickens and said to myself: I know he often infuri-
mon, I did not sound like a person writ- making an actual appearance in my ates you, but the truth is you never could
ing a historical novel as much as a person actual pages. For several years, he was a have written this without him. With this
who had entirely lost the plot. Or per- regular dinner guest of Ainsworth’s. He debt in mind, then, I decided to do some-
haps: who had rediscovered plot. I called was involved in a debate about the fu- thing I have avoided doing all my Lon-
my novel “The Fraud.” And then, in May, ture of Jamaica. (He was on the wrong don life: I made a pilgrimage to West-
2020, just as I finally put finger to key- side of the debate.) Most mind-bog- minster Abbey. Walked around the back
board, we moved back to England, in glingly, Doughty Street—where Dick- to Poets’ Corner and stood right on
time to join the British lockdown. ens once lived—is in that corner of South Charles Dickens’s grave. Oh, hi, Charles.
With nothing to do and nowhere to East Bloomsbury which belongs to the Feeling my debt, but also hoping that it
go, I took my regulation walk through Doughty-Tichborne estate. Which meant was paid in full, at long last. And when
the streets like my fellow-Britons, but that Dickens’s former home was a piece I got back home, completely finished
with the small difference that my eyes of what my Claimant was trying to claim. with the unavoidable Mr. Dickens and
always remained above shop level: trained Dickens was everywhere, like weather. his influence and wanting to do some-
upward to the eaves and the cornices thing that required no reading and no
and the chimneys.Toward the nineteenth ometimes, in writing, you have to give notes and no research at all—something
century, in other words, which is every-
where in North West London, once you
S up control, take a Zen attitude, and
go where you’re being led, which is often
like watching a bit of telly—I turned on
the good old BBC, and what was on the
start looking. I began haunting the local right back to where you came from. So menu? A new “Great Expectations.” A
graveyards. I found William Ainsworth’s I said to Mr. Dickens: Look. You can have “color-blind” version, sure, but still “Great
grave and Eliza Touchet’s grave, and a walk-on part, but then I am killing you Expectations.” Oh, hi, Charles. Hello and
could point on a map to the unmarked in the following chapter, straightaway. You goodbye and hello again. 
18 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
 long for a kitchen god to show up. This
kitchen god, however, was unlike the
one I had grown up with: the three faces
were different, as was the sound of his
voice, and its cadence.
“He’s here,” I told my mother.
“He’s present, you mean,” she said
sternly.
“So, they’re everywhere,” I said.
“ You mean, they are present
everywhere.”
“It seems they’re present everywhere.”
“Yes, they are present.”
My mother lowered her voice. “It’s
because you have the right attitude,
Izumi,” she said.
“Attitude?”
“Yes, kitchen gods only inhabit the
kitchens of women who display the
proper attitude.”
My mother hung up with a satis-
fied click. But was my attitude really so
proper? Just that morning, I had stolen
a pack of plum chewing gum and an
Extra-Large container of miso-flavored
Cup Ramen from the convenience store
in front of the train station. I was an old
hand at shoplifting, a skill I had picked
up in junior high. An Extra-Large Cup
Ramen was a difficult target, however:
FICTION the package rustled, and its size made
it hard to squeeze into my bag.
Shoplifting always leaves me feeling
The Kitchen God disappointed. It’s not a “Damn, I’ve gone
and done it again!” kind of thing. And
BY H I RO M I K AWAK AM I it’s not that I feel let down once the ex-
citement of the moment has passed. Or
even that I wish I had ripped off some-
tried peeling the kitchen faces, and lives in the dark corners of thing more valuable. Rather, it’s a vague,
wall with my fingernails, the kitchen. The first time I saw one, I nonspecific form of disappointment.
but that didn’t work, so screamed, which earned me a scolding From the convenience store, I hopped
I pressed hard with my from my mother. That was before I on my bicycle and pedalled back to the
fingers and a flake of the started first grade. My mother then was company apartments. There, waiting for
“stucco,” which is what I younger than I am now. me under the middle staircase, the one
call it, fell off. I don’t know if it’s really “You must never be scared of the that leads up to my fifth-floor apart-
stucco or not, or even what stucco is, pre- kitchen god, or neglect him, either,” my ment, was a collapsible plastic box from
cisely, but I like the snappy sound of the mother said. the local Shoppers’ Co-op. I’m a mem-
word, and that’s good enough for me. Were kitchen gods common, I won- ber of the Co-op. They deliver every
I popped the stucco into my mouth. dered. Did they inhabit other people’s Thursday. My order tends to draw at-
Then I chewed and chewed until, fi- kitchens, too? My mother never in- tention because it’s so skimpy—I might
nally, I was able to swallow it. structed me to keep my mouth shut get only a bag of Co-op madeleines, or
Once you dislodge the first piece, about ours; nevertheless, I didn’t breathe perhaps a jar of Co-op strawberry pre-
the rest is easy. Over and over, I stripped a word about him to Ayaka, who lived serves. You could never act so dainty and
flakes of stucco from the crumbling wall next door, or to my cousin, Shō. refined, one of the housewives in the
and ate them. I’m a grown woman now, but in all building told me, if you had children of
“You shouldn’t be eating that!” said these years I haven’t told a soul about your own. When my kids were in pre-
a voice from under the refrigerator. the kitchen god. After I got married, I school, she went on, I loaded one child
That had to be the kitchen god. moved into this company apartment on the front of my bike, the other in the
A kitchen god is small, has three with my husband, but it didn’t take back, and then we wobbled down the
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY NI OUYANG THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 19
street with five cartons of tissues and a for me, listing in order the units I must mens and philodendrons, as well as a
jam-packed supermarket shopping bag call on, and a second column that the yucca and a “tree of good fortune.” A rug
in the front basket. That was how she residents have to stamp with their seal. sat in the front entranceway.
explained it to me. I didn’t say anything, The okusan tittered when I suggested Was the weasel visiting the trash-dis-
just nodded in response. that we trap the weasel and sell it. I posal area the same kind of weasel as the
We all call one another okusan. An thought she looked even cuter when she one in Aunt Arika’s kitchen? I could feel
okusan has blemish-free skin and mus- laughed. When I added that the wea- my thoughts beginning to stray as I pon-
cular arms. She puts her Co-op order in sel’s pelt might be worth something, dered this question. Alarmed, I joined
a reusable bag and lugs it up to her apart- though, she stopped laughing and my hands in prayer to the kitchen god.
ment. I stuff my order—Co-op ketchup walked off with her nose in the air. My mother had often warned me not to
and Co-op mini doughnuts this time I decided to climb back up to my apart- allow empty spaces to form in my mind.
around—in my tote bag and trudge up ment to prepare the circular. The air in- When that happens, she taught me, all
the staircase. When I show the kitchen side was warm and humid. I watered the kinds of bad things can sneak in. If you
god what I bought, he snorts in disgust. spider plants. They’ve been growing like prayed to the kitchen god, however, he
“Sweet stuff again, huh?” he says. crazy. I got the original cutting from the could drive those bad things away for you.
I like sweets, it’s true, but I like stucco okusan who lives on the floor below me.
even more. I boiled water for the Extra- Living rooms that have potted spi- •
Large Cup Ramen I had pilfered that der plants, cyclamens, and philoden- Mr. Sanobe and I got together at a cof-
morning. Stucco tastes great, but it drons I call “aunts’ living rooms.” My fee shop called the Olive Tree, which
doesn’t fill me up. I then devoured the mother’s elder sister Aunt Katsura had was situated in the building above the
ramen, right down to the last drop of big pots of those plants scattered around train station.
broth, polished off a whole bag of sugar- her living room, as did Aunt Nana, as I had been introduced to Mr. Sanobe
coated biscuits, stuffed six sticks of plum- did Aunt Arika. All three aunts also by an okusan who lived in the building
flavored gum in my mouth, and clasped made sure to lay down small rugs in their two down from mine. It seemed that
my hands in prayer to the kitchen god. front entranceways. Glass jars full of he worked as a salesman of textbooks
My mother trained me to pray to him potpourri were placed on their bath- and other educational materials. He and
every morning, noon, and night. I heard room shelves. Cowrie shells and glass I had gone to a hotel together three
him growl underneath the fridge. Then figurines of horses graced their kitchen times. After each meeting, Mr. Sanobe
everything went quiet. counters. At Christmastime, cards from had given me twenty-five thousand yen.
abroad were lined up on top of the shoe “Why are you giving me money?” I
• racks in the entranceway. had asked him.
“Okusan!” called a voice from behind me. I never felt comfortable in my aunts’ “You know, your breasts are awe-
It was an okusan from the building homes. They were always patting me some” was his response. He never an-
next to mine. The one whose eyes were on the head and forcing chocolate- swered my question.
set very far apart. I thought that sepa- chip cookies on me. None of their Right after our first meeting, when
ration made her look cute. I like cute kitchens seemed to have a god in it, but I was wending my way home with the
things. If it’s sweet or cute, it’s for me. once, when Aunt Arika slipped into her extra twenty-five thousand in my purse,
“Did you hear tell what’s going on kitchen to add hot water to a pot of I bumped into the same okusan from
in the trash-disposal area?” apple tea, I heard a squeaky voice through the building two down from mine in
Did I hear tell? I hadn’t come across the crack in the door. front of the station. She was carrying a
that phrase since I read “Little Women” “Aunt Arika, is someone in your tiny handbag. Too tiny to contain even
when I was young. I shook my head. kitchen?” I asked when she came out. the smallest coin purse.
“The crows are bad enough, but, to “It’s a weasel, Izumi,” she replied “What a cool handbag,” I said, where-
make matters worse, now it seems we with a smile. “A scary, scary weasel. If upon she laughed and extracted from
have a weasel.” you go in the kitchen, it’ll catch you it a single small stone. It was white and
I opened my mouth wide. “Oh, that’s and eat you up.” She arched her eye- smooth to the touch.
terrible,” I said, opening my eyes wide brows, the smile still frozen on her face. “Here, it’s yours,” she said.
as well. “Is it an old weasel?” I asked, but all “For me?” I asked. She nodded.
“It looks like this,” the okusan said. that earned me was another chocolate- “Take good care of it.”
Hunching her back, she began running chip cookie. “I will!” I answered.
around in small circles. My living room bore a slight resem- “How was Mr. Sanobe?” the okusan
“Oh, that’s terrible,” I said again. The blance to the living rooms of Aunt Arika asked.
okusan handed me a clipboard. As I’m and my other aunts, but without the sweet, “He gave me money,” I said. Her
in charge of looking after the staircases cloying atmosphere that filled their homes. eyes widened.
this year, it’s my job to distribute a cir- All my living room had was spider plants, “Don’t ever say that out loud,” she said.
cular with all relevant information to pots and pots of them, with a little kitchen “Should I give it back?”
the residents, starting on the first floor: god scampering around in between. The “No, it’s just something that we have
in addition, the clipboard has a sheet of okusan who lived below me, however, did to keep to ourselves.”
paper with two columns, one column have an aunt’s living room, with cycla- “O-oh, I see,” I said, laughing. She
20 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
C O M I N G T O G E T H E R MARY G AI T S K I L L so I was worried when I didn’t see Sarah at the rib joint
until the last minute, when she walked in smiling.
We stuffed ourselves with ribs and cocktails and
Night of the Happy Bodies then headed to the bar. In the middle of a conversation,
I glanced at the dance floor and saw Jeff and Sarah.
Dancing. The energy between them seemed conciliatory,
communicative—and assertive on Sarah’s part.
This struck me as wonderful and brave of Sarah.
And then the d.j. put on a nineties banger, “You Suck,”
by Consolidated (featuring Yeastie Girlz), a pleasurable
mashup of lust and aggravation toward men who won’t
perform oral sex, and a ton of women hit the floor,
including me. I was drunk, and though I started out
dancing with a Ph.D. student, soon I was switching
partners rapidly, pretty much dancing with everybody.
The next thing I recall is that a large, purposeful woman
was suddenly dancing at me, very close and very angry.
I could read her expression, but it made no sense
to me, and I was feeling so good that I could only
grin incongruously and dance back at her, inviting her
to feel good, too. I’m not sure how the conversation
started, but I’m pretty sure she led with “You looked
like you were having a good time dancing with my
girlfriend,” causing the situation to snap into focus. I
think I replied, “I’m having a good time dancing with
everybody!” Maybe she said, “I didn’t like the way you
were moving with her,” and maybe I replied, “I’m sorry,
I didn’t know.” The only thing I’m certain of is that we
like parties where you sit around and talk talked and that, while we talked, she began to dance
to people. But I love parties where you with me. I moved my shoulders forward and back; she
dance and make noise with people. This moved hers. We turned sideways and bumped our hips
may seem strange for a writer, but I can together. I think we even turned our backs and bumped
find spoken words overly complex and our butts together, then faced each other again. Did I
unwieldy, especially in the fast-moving currents of a grind on her leg? Maybe! At some point, I told her that
party. Movement and sound are the natural language it was my birthday, and, when the song ended, she said
of a group, because they give instinctive access to the in a somewhat menacing yet melancholy tone, “Watch
heart and to our primal need to connect with our own yourself, friend,” and walked off the floor. A student
species—whether in friendship or in animus. who had been keeping an eye on us expressed her relief,
One night in 1997, when I was teaching at the and I realized that several students had been close by
University of Houston, I experienced a connection that the whole time.
involved friendship and animus. My graduate students Regardless, if that woman had come up to me in the
took me out for my birthday, to an outdoor rib joint same manner while I was sitting down in talk mode,
and to a lesbian-leaning bar with a capacious dance things would have gone very differently. I wouldn’t have
floor. They were a congenial group, ranging in age from smiled at her. My guard would have been up instantly.
early twenties to mid-forties. However, perhaps a week I likely would have hardened and spoken with reserve,
earlier, a white male student (I’ll call him Jeff ) had got and who knows how she would have responded? But,
into a nasty quarrel in our workshop with a woman (I’ll because I was dancing, my body was in charge, and my
call her Sarah), the only Black student in the class. The body knew that it could reach her good side. And I’m
quarrel was over a passage Jeff had written that Sarah guessing that she knew, by much the same means, that I
found racist; it escalated fast, and soon Jeff was yelling was neither disrespectful nor an easy victim; the hostility
at Sarah. I stood up, banged my hands on the table, and channel just wasn’t open either way.
shouted, “Stop it, Jeff! Be quiet!” He lowered his head Professors aren’t supposed to dance with their students
in a defensive stance. Sarah sat up and back in a posture now, and, in general, they probably shouldn’t. Maybe
of intense alertness. As a class, we processed the matter Sarah shouldn’t have danced with Jeff, shouldn’t have
politely and inadequately; afterward, I called Sarah and been so vulnerable and generous. Maybe that angry
Jeff separately to discuss it further. (Nowadays, admin woman was right, and I should have watched what I
would likely get involved, but nothing like that was in was doing and with whom. But, that night, there were
place then.) I encouraged them to talk to each other no shoulds or shouldn’ts: there were few words, and our
about what had happened and both seemed amenable, bodies could be trusted. 
ILLUSTRATION BY LEONIE BOS THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 21
 three of his faces nodded in approval.
I took a plastic cup of Co-op custard
from the fridge. The only things left
inside were beer, a bag of oden that I
had stolen from the convenience store
the week before, and four soft-boiled
onsen eggs. I gave the god a bit of
my custard. He sucked it up, sprinted
around the spider plants, and disap-
peared under the fridge. I took a bath
and immediately fell asleep.
•
How nice to be childless—you stay so
young, said the okusan who lived in the
apartment kitty-corner to mine on the
floor below.
It’s rare for a childless woman to be
asked, Don’t you want children? It’s
common, though, for a mother with
one child to be asked if she intends to
have a second.
I don’t like the idea of “making” chil-
“Alas, poor Yorick, he was a good patient.” dren anyway, my neighbor says from
time to time. We are blessed with them,
right? I mumble my assent and nod.
• • That very morning, I had lifted a car-
ton of milk and a plastic bottle of green
laughed with me. We walked back to “I want us to be lovers,” he said tea from the convenience store. They
the company apartments together, our immediately. made my tote bag so heavy I swore
steps matching. She was still laughing “What do you mean, lovers?” never to pilfer drinks again.
as she climbed the stairs to her apart- “You know, going to movies together, The okusan living kitty-corner to me
ment. I rolled the small white stone she taking trips, hanging out on the phone.” on the floor below came up beside me
had given me between my fingers for a “Sure.” in the hallway. This week, it was my
moment. Then I tossed it in the gutter. Mr. Sanobe gasped in surprise. “Well, turn to clean the trash-disposal area, so
Mr. Sanobe was sipping his iced cof- then, next time we’ll meet as lovers. It’s I was walking along carrying an empty
fee in the Olive Tree. It was always iced a promise, right?” His forehead was glis- bucket, a dustpan, and a broom.
coffee for that guy. tening as he took me in his arms. I kissed “That weasel is a serious problem,”
“How do you feel about me, Izumi?” the sweaty skin with a loud smack. she said.
he asked. I stopped by the flower store in the I hadn’t seen the weasel myself. These
“I like you,” I answered. “I think station on my way home and used the days, though, it was a common topic
you’re cute.” I especially liked the way twenty-eight thousand yen Mr. Sanobe of conversation for the okusan commu-
his hair was thinning in front. had given me to buy the biggest philo- nity in our company apartments. It’s a
“Does your husband have any idea dendron they had. There was still a lot lot worse than the crows, they com-
what’s going on between us?” of money left over, so I picked up a plained. Ripping up garbage bags is bad
“No, none at all.” fancy box lunch with salmon roe and enough, but squeezing through the mail
“Are you sure?” grilled salmon as well. slot to get into someone’s apartment
“Let’s go to the hotel,” I said, ris- When I got home, I put the plant and then laying waste to the kitchen?
ing from my seat. Mr. Sanobe followed on the small table next to the living- That’s another thing altogether. It’s ab-
right on my tail. I tried a few new things room window. Then I unwrapped the solutely dreadful. Weasels invading our
in our hotel room, stomping on him, crinkly packaging of the box lunch kitchens—how do you deal with some-
slapping him around, and calling him and ate the contents. I picked off the thing like that?
some nasty names. He loved it. Before grains of rice stuck to the box and the The okusan stood there leaning
we left, he gave me twenty-eight thou- wooden cover and ate them, too. The against the cinder-block wall next to
sand yen. kitchen god came out from under the the trash cans, chattering while I filled
“I hope we can make this last for- fridge and ran a quick circle around my bucket with water from the hose
ever, Izumi,” he said, as we headed out the table with the new plant on it. and splashed it over the concrete floor.
the door. When I showed the god how clean the “Have you ever seen the weasel?” I
“I hope so, too,” I replied. box and the wooden cover were, all asked her.
22 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
 “No, but don’t you think it’s a ter- Olive Tree, but when I started for the building when it hit me—he hadn’t
rible situation?” she replied. hotel he tugged at my sleeve. given me money this time around.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t met “Let’s go to the game arcade,” he said.
anyone who had laid eyes on the “What would we do at a game ar- •
animal. cade?” I asked. I placed a pot of cyclamens in my liv-
“I wonder if it really exists,” I mut- “You know, play games and stuff,” he ing room. The red flowers seemed to
tered, refilling my bucket with water. answered, sweat beginning to ooze from strike a chord with the kitchen god.
“Weasels multiply like crazy, too,” his forehead. His sprints around the room became
she went on, still leaning against the We walked for a while, turned down more frequent.
cinder-block wall. what looked like an alleyway, and there, The okusan next door had just left.
She kept watching me as I went sure enough, was a game arcade. Maybe She’d stopped by for tea with a loaf of
through the process of cleaning the area. because it was the middle of the day, banana bread that she had baked her-
“How does the weasel find its way no customers were inside. Mr. Sanobe self. The banana bread wasn’t very sweet.
out of the kitchen once it has gotten won a stuffed animal playing the UFO “My, what a lot of green!” she ex-
inside?” I asked.The concrete I’d splashed Catcher game. claimed when she saw my apartment.
with water was gleaming black. “What a cute dog,” I said. “Not all that much,” I said.
“What are you doing about the “It’s a raccoon,” he said. He gave She took a sip of tea.
storage problem in your kitchen?” she it to me. I found nothing at all cute “It must take a lot of looking after,”
asked, ignoring my question. “There about it, however. I crammed it into she went on.
just isn’t enough shelf space in these my handbag. Mr. Sanobe moved on to “Not all that much,” I repeated. The
buildings, is there?” I described the the car-driving game. I stood behind kitchen god came running into the room.
long, narrow shelves designed for small him watching until he crashed, for my He scampered about among the spider
spaces that I had purchased online. She benefit, it seemed. plants, philodendrons, and cyclamens.
praised the equally narrow shelves she “Aren’t you going to give it a name?” “Green plants aren’t easy, getting them
had bought that boasted an even greater he asked. to grow properly.” Had she seen the
storage capacity. I murmured a few “Give what a name?” kitchen god or not? She sounded a bit
“uh-huhs” and nodded. “The raccoon.” distracted.
“Does a god live in your kitchen?” “Oh,” I muttered vaguely. “My husband’s home late every night
I blurted out. What on earth induced “Let’s call him Peter,” Mr. Sanobe and my children are busy with their
me to mention the kitchen god to a chirped, after receiving no response own lives, so I was thinking maybe I’d
near-stranger that way? I myself have from me. So, Peter it was. He kissed take a course in gardening, but the chil-
no idea. It just slipped out. me, right there in the back of the ar- dren’s expenses are going to keep mount-
“It’s so gross, leaving footprints all cade. Then we headed off to the hotel, ing. I’d like to find work, but I’m afraid
over the kitchen.” where, like before, I gave him a good I’m too old,” she said as she shovelled
“What?” trampling. in the banana bread.
“They eat fish right down to the “Do you ever think about divorce, I sat there and nodded.
bones, you know. And that’s not all.” Izumi?” he asked. We were in bed, “Don’t you work?” she asked me.
She was still talking about the wea- “I’m not really qualified for any-
sel. I studied her face as I gathered up thing,” I replied. The kitchen god was
the cleaning tools. This okusan had a racing madly around the cyclamens. I
prominent nose. And she was as thin was suddenly overcome by an urge to
as a rail. vomit. I held it back, though, and the
“Are weasels at all cute?” I asked her. feeling passed.
“Weasels can make themselves flat. The okusan left not long after that.
There isn’t a crack that they can’t get I plopped down on my kitchen floor
through,” she replied. I bowed in her and began munching the stucco. I tossed
direction and started up the steps. She what remained of the banana bread in
returned the bow but continued to stand and I was just drifting off to sleep. the garbage. The kitchen god circled
there, propped against the wall. “What?” I snapped. It was pure the garbage can, sniffing its contents. I
When I got back to my apartment, reflex. picked up the god and pressed my cheek
I asked the kitchen god if he’d seen a “I love you, Izumi,” he said, pulling to his. All six of his cheeks, I should
weasel, but he didn’t make a sound. I me closer to him. “I really mean it.” say. It felt as though bad things were
clasped my hands and prayed to him— I held my breath. I hate it when I’m trying to steal into my mind, so I put
prayed and prayed, wiping all else from lying down and someone slips an arm the god down and began praying to
my mind. under my shoulder like that. him with all my might.
• A few minutes later, Mr. Sanobe When I walked back into the liv-
began to get dressed. I put on my bra ing room, the thick, musty smell of the
Mr. Sanobe phoned, hoping to get to- and panties. We had already said good- potted plants rose to greet me. They
gether. We met at our usual place, the bye and I was shopping in the station blanketed the floor so tightly it was
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 23
hard to move around. I edged my way I smothered a laugh. He fell quiet, philodendron when he forced himself
to the table and placed the cups and waiting for an answer. I said nothing. on me.
dishes the okusan and I had used on a The silence was driving him crazy—I Mr. Sanobe finished up quickly and
tray. I figured it was a good time to could tell. hurried out the door. When he left, he
pedal over to the convenience store and “You and I are lovers, right, Izumi?” bowed and, in a loud voice, called out,
shoplift something. I grabbed my tote I hung up immediately. “Please think it over, okusan. You will
bag and thumped down the stairs. After that, I stopped answering the not be disappointed in the quality of
phone altogether. Wordless messages our merchandise, I guarantee it.”
• were left on my answering machine, I slammed the door and headed for
I began to get calls from Mr. Sanobe but those ended after a few days. my bedroom, skirting the living room
during the day. He phoned every hour, I went to the kitchen and began to and its wall-to-wall plants. I threw my-
sometimes every ten minutes. peel small flakes of stucco off the walls. self on the bed. The bedroom floor,
Every third call or so, he would say “You shouldn’t eat that stuff,” the too, was almost completely covered. I
something along the lines of “Is a man kitchen god warned me. The walls in fell asleep the moment my head hit
there with you?” and I would answer, the kitchen were turning dark. I had the pillow.
“Fat chance,” which would set him laugh- stripped off almost all the stucco. Un- When I awoke, I could see the win-
ing. Then he would change the subject, derneath, the plaster surface was gray ter sky outside my window. The sun
and ask if I had seen the big home run and bumpy. had gone down since Mr. Sanobe’s visit,
on TV the night before, or tell me he I went to the convenience store. but night had not yet fallen. Some-
was thinking of quitting his job. An okusan followed me in. She wanted thing shot past the window. The wea-
“How is Peter?” he inquired. My to talk, so I couldn’t shoplift. When sel, perhaps? I went to the kitchen. The
memory was hazy, but I knew I had she finally left, another okusan took kitchen god was running around. All
tossed the stuffed raccoon in the gutter her place. The weasel was on her mind, three of his faces looked angry. Taken
at some point. so she gabbed on about that. Not long aback, I clasped my hands and prayed.
“I treasure the little guy,” I answered. afterward, a third okusan showed up, When I went to scrape some stucco
He laughed happily. Then he went also interested in the weasel situation. off the wall, though, there was hardly
into his “I love you, Izumi, I really do” With all the talk about weasels, I any left—all I could manage were a
routine. had no chance to steal anything. I was few tiny bits. I leaned against the naked
The okusan who lived in the build- going nuts. wall, my mind a blur.
ing two down from mine, the one who’d Apparently, weasels were running “Are you happy?” the kitchen god
introduced me to Mr. Sanobe, moved rampant throughout our building com- asked.
out. Apparently, she had purchased a plex. They were impossible to drive The kitchen god was prone to ask
custom-built home. The next time the out, no matter how many times you hit out-of-the-blue questions of that sort.
Co-op delivery arrived, the okusan gath- them. They laid waste not just to kitch- I sensed that my mind was vulnerable
ering around the boxes that held our ens but to everything—living rooms, to bad things entering, so I prayed to
orders gossiped about her. How could bedrooms, nowhere was safe. him with all my might. Was I happy? I
she have afforded such an extravagance? I was finally able to pilfer a pack of had never given that question a thought.
Weren’t we in an economic slump? Bo- safety pins and leave the store. The sky My mind was growing more and more
nuses had shrunk, right? Maybe she was a cold, wintry blue. Wisps of cloud scattered. I knew that bad things could
had inherited some money. She had floated high overhead. My eyes were sneak in when I was in this condition,
all the luck! bleary, unfocussed. so I scrambled to focus on something.
We wasted no time dividing up our I went to the kitchen to pray to the Since I wasn’t sure what that something
purchases. The wall of our building was kitchen god. Recently, I had been blank- should be, though, I prayed for the peo-
turning gray, I thought, as I leaned over ing out a lot, which meant it was easy ple in my life:
the rim of the plastic box. I could feel for bad things to find their way in. I May Mr. Sanobe find happiness.
my mind beginning to wander. Alarmed, prayed and prayed to the god every day. May my mother find happiness.
I tried to focus on a package of Co-op May Aunt Katsura find happiness.
flour. Then I shifted to a box of the • May Aunt Nana find happiness.
Co-op chestnut-and-bean-paste sweets. Mr. Sanobe showed up. May Aunt Arika find happiness.
If I could just keep focussing on exter- I didn’t have a chance to ask how he May all the okusan find happiness.
nal objects like those, I thought, then had found me, for the moment he closed The kitchen god scampered as I
bad things couldn’t sneak into my mind. the front door he pushed me down on prayed. He circled the philodendrons,
my back right there in the entranceway. the spider plants, the cyclamens in their
• I smiled sweetly at him. He wasn’t pots. Around and around he ran. 
Mr. Sanobe started asking if he could looking at my face, though, but at the (Translated, from the Japanese,
visit me at home. philodendrons, cyclamens, and spider by Ted Goossen.)
“C’mon,” he said on the phone one plants that had overflowed my living
day. “Tell me where you live. Then I room and spilled into the entranceway. NEWYORKER.COM
can come and visit.” My head almost banged into a potted Hiromi Kawakami on communalism in Japan.

24 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023

 toured the center in 2018, wanted to con-
tinue playing. She’d signed up for a Bar-
bie movie, and had approached Gerwig
about writing the script. She saw in Ger-
wig’s filmography the right combination
of intelligence and heart: “You watch
something like ‘Little Women,’ and the
dialogue is very, very clever—it’s talking
about some big things—but it’s also ex-
tremely emotional.” The project wasn’t
an obvious fit for someone whose screen-
plays included the subtle dramas “Lady
Bird” and “Frances Ha,” and Gerwig wa-
vered for more than a year. At one point,
Dickson called her when she was mix-
ing “Little Women” in New York. “I don’t
have a ton of friends in corporate Amer-
ica,” she told me, over Zoom. “But he
was very excited. It was sweet.” She fi-
nally agreed to come to El Segundo.
The Design Center is divided into
such sectors as Girls, Wheels, and Ac-
tion Play, but Barbie is a realm unto
itself—the largest in the building. It’s de-
marcated by a signature pink: Pan-
tone 219 C. Gerwig was shown a display
called the Barbie Wall of Fame, whose
O N WAR D A N D U P WA R D W I T H T H E A RT S entryway was emblazoned with the
brand’s mission statement: “to inspire &
nurture the limitless potential
Toy Story in every girl.” Framed photographs
captured Barbie posing with everyone
Barbie’s now a movie star. Can Mattel gin up plots for Hot Wheels and UNO? from Diahann Carroll to Dean Martin,
but Gerwig was most struck by a series
BY AL EX BAR A S C H of shots of historical models, including
an all-Barbie Presidential ticket, from
1992. “Oh, wow,” Gerwig said. “We’ve
n 2019, Greta Gerwig be- offer a “brand immersion”—a crash course had a Barbie President, I see.” A Mattel
came the latest in a line of in a Mattel property slated for adapta- employee proudly replied that Barbie had
writers, directors, and pro- tion. When a V.I.P. visits, Richard Dick- been to space before most earthly women
ducers to make a pilgrim- son, a tall, bespectacled man who is the had a credit card.
age to a toy workshop in company’s chief operating officer, plays As Gerwig peppered Dickson with
El Segundo, California. the role of Willy Wonka. He’ll show off questions, a concept began to take shape.
Touring the facility, the Mattel Design the sixty-five-year-old machines that are “Barbie” could be a meta-comedy that
Center, has become a rite of passage for still used to affix fake hair to Barbies; moved between the idealized, plastic realm
Hollywood types who are considering he’ll invite you to inspect life-size, road- of the dolls and the human world of the
transforming one of the company’s prod- ready replicas of Hot Wheels cars. The company that had created them. Just like
ucts into a movie—a list that now in- center even boasts a giant rendering of the Design Center exhibition, the film
cludes such names as J. J. Abrams (Hot Castle Grayskull, the fearsome ancestral could bring together Barbies from across
Wheels) and Vin Diesel (Rock ’Em Sock home of He-Man. “The brand immer- the decades: Robbie could be one of many.
’Em Robots). The building has hundreds sion is the everything moment,” Dick- Gerwig would go on to write and di-
of workspaces for artists, model-makers, son told me. “I have met with some of rect “Barbie,” and her brand immersion
and project managers, and it houses elab- the greatest artists, truly, in the world. . . . left some visual imprints. The colorful
orate museum-style exhibitions that doc- And, if you don’t walk out drinking the conference room where she and Dick-
ument the company’s history and core Kool-Aid, then it was a great playdate, son chatted after her tour informed the
products. These displays can help a toy but maybe we don’t continue playing.” look of the fictional Mattel’s inner sanc-
designer find inspiration; they can also The actress Margot Robbie, who had tum. “It was a combination of, like, ‘Oh,
this is a corporation, and it’s all very of-
A Mattel executive said, “I.P. is king. Pre-awareness is so important.” ficial’ and ‘It’s bright pink,’” Gerwig told
ILLUSTRATION BY TIM PEACOCK THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 25
 ing the rights to Barbie from Sony, where
a satirical take on the doll had long been
in the works, cycling through such stars
as Anne Hathaway and Amy Schumer.
A film that ridiculed Barbie, Kreiz be-
lieves, would have been disastrous for
the brand. “Barbie is aspirational, inspi-
rational—not something you want turned
into a parody,” he said. Within two
months of his appointment, control of
Barbie had reverted to Mattel, and Kreiz
had a meeting with Margot Robbie.
Robbie, who played the scandal-prone
skater Tonya Harding in “I, Tonya,” is
attracted to roles that moviegoers already
have strong feelings about—positive or
negative. She told me, “There are peo-
ple who adore Barbie, people who hate
Barbie—but the bottom line is everyone
knows Barbie.” She wanted a film adap-
tation to confront those “sharp edges, ”
but when she met with Kreiz she led
with her desire to take the brand seri-
ously. Two and a half hours later, they
were in business together. Soon, Warner
Bros. had expressed interest in financ-
ing the project.
“ You guys like calamity and misfortune?” Kreiz, meanwhile, hired a veteran of
Miramax, Robbie Brenner, to head up
the newly minted Mattel Films. Her first
• • task: assemble a team of development
executives to rummage through Mattel’s
me. “I thought, This is so cinematic.” (In pany,” he said. “When we don’t, you see toy chest and identify I.P. that could be
the film, Mattel execs huddle in a “Dr. a blip. What you start to realize is: This fodder for Hollywood studios. Mattel
Strangelove”-style war room—with a is a pop-culture company.” would help match properties with writ-
heart-shaped table.) ers, actors, and directors; studios would
I met Dickson at the Design Center hen the Israeli-born businessman provide all the funding. The brands, and
last November. At the start of my visit,
he suggested that we race miniature Hot
W Ynon Kreiz became the head of
Mattel, in 2018, he was its fourth C.E.O.
audiences’ familiarity with them, were
their own form of currency. Brenner told
Wheels cars on a sloping, multistory or- in four years. Toys R Us had recently me, “In the world we’re living in, I.P. is
ange track with six successive loop-the- gone bankrupt, causing a slump in sales; king. Pre-awareness is so important.”
loops. Both our cars got marooned on Kreiz’s predecessor had resigned after At the start of the “Barbie” process,
it. Dickson was embarrassed by the “un- Mattel suffered a loss of three hundred Gerwig decided to write the screenplay
satisfactory play experience,” but he re- million dollars. Kreiz, whose résumé in- with her partner, the writer-director Noah
bounded as he guided me along a wall- cludes a stint at Fox Kids Europe, saw Baumbach. Mattel and Warner Bros.
mounted time line that juxtaposed major an opportunity for growth. Mattel, he ar- insisted on seeing a preview of the script’s
political and cultural events with semi- gued, had a children’s-entertainment cat- contents. The couple balked—they
nal Mattel releases. (The year 1961 was alogue “second only to Disney.” Just as needed the freedom to experiment. Jer-
marked by both the Bay of Pigs inva- Marvel had gone from ailing comic-book emy Barber, an agent at U.T.A. who rep-
sion and the creation of Ken, Barbie’s publisher to Hollywood behemoth, the resents Gerwig and Baumbach, is close
boyfriend.) The display, he explained, toymaker could leverage its intellectual with Brenner, so he could be blunt. “Are
served as a reminder to Mattel design- property at the multiplex. Kreiz told me, you crazy?” he told her. “You should’ve
ers to aim for relevance. As the cultural “My thesis was that we needed to tran- come into this office and thanked me
conception of women’s roles had changed, sition from being a toy-manufacturing when Greta and Noah showed up to
so had Barbie: stewardess outfits had company, making items, to an I.P. com- write a fucking Barbie movie!” In the
been supplanted by lab coats and plas- pany, managing franchises.” end, Gerwig presented executives with a
tic safety goggles. “When our toys con- Before Kreiz took over, Mattel had poem in the style of the Apostles’ Creed.
nect to what’s happening in the world, licensed its flagship properties to an array They agreed to take their chances—and,
you see significant growth in the com- of studios, and he was intent on reclaim- after the script came in, the budget was
26 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
set at about a hundred million dollars. me—the company’s main rival, Hasbro, tel assembles doesn’t deliver, and quickly,
The gamble now looks like a smart had turned a faded toy-robot line, Trans- it can be disbanded, allowing the toy-
one.The hyper-saturated trailers for “Bar- formers, into a multibillion-dollar movie maker to move on.
bie” have sparked endless memes, and franchise. They made no mention of the More important, in the intervening
interest in the film’s aesthetic sensibility, catastrophe that followed. In 2008, a year years, the opportunities available to am-
which mimics the look of Mattel play after the release of Michael Bay’s “Trans- bitious directors have narrowed further.
sets, is so intense that the hashtag #Bar- formers,” Hasbro struck a six-year deal The notion of a starry, C.G.I. “Bambi”
biecore trended on TikTok for months. with Universal, which secured the film reboot has gone from a joke on the HBO
The movie, which opens in mid-July, is rights to a grab bag of other toys and Max industry satire “The Other Two”
tracking to be one of the blockbusters of games, including Monopoly and Candy to an actual movie that Sarah Polley
the summer. Meanwhile, Mattel has Land. The arrangement was mocked re- is making in the wake of her Oscar-
amassed a long slate of other projects. lentlessly in the press—would Russell winning film “Women Talking.” During
Daniel Kaluuya, for example, has agreed Crowe land the role of Uncle Pennybags, the pandemic, multiplexes collapsed. The
to produce a feature about Barney, the the mustachioed man on the Chance future of moviegoing now seems increas-
purple dinosaur. Thirteen more films cards? After Ridley Scott signed on to ingly tenuous, and studios have leaned
have been publicly announced, includ- direct “Monopoly,” he told a reporter that on pre-awareness as a means of drawing
ing movies about He-Man and Polly it might center on a Donald Trump-type people to theatres: a nostalgia play like
Pocket; forty-five are in development. character, adding, “Greed becomes, hope- “Hot Wheels” is seen as a safer bet than
(Some of the projects have an ourobo- fully, hysterically funny.” He also hinted an original concept. The box office has
ros quality. Tom Hanks is supposed to that it might have a futuristic look, like borne this out: the ten highest-grossing
star in “Major Matt Mason,” which will his film “Blade Runner.” Vulture com- films of 2022 were all reboots or sequels.
be based on an astronaut action figure piled Scott’s tortured efforts to explain Disney’s much derided strategy of re-
that has been largely forgotten, except the project in an article with the subhead making “Aladdin” and other animated
for the fact that it helped inspire Buzz “go directly to jail.” Transformers classics as live-action spectacles has
Lightyear—one of the protagonists of lent themselves naturally to an action- largely paid off; by contrast, Pixar’s re-
Pixar’s “Toy Story” franchise.) movie treatment; board games did not. cent attempt at an original story, “Ele-
Barber told me that Mattel had fig- The only picture to emerge from the deal mental,” bombed. On an earnings call
ured out how to “engage with filmmak- was “Battleship”—and everyone hated it. last November, David Zaslav, the head
ers in a friendly way.” Gerwig, mean- (The movie, dizzyingly nonsensical, fea- of Warner Bros. Discovery, emphasized
while, was looking to move beyond the tured an alien invasion.) In 2012, Univer- that “a real focus” of his was to revive the
small-scale dramas she was known for. sal reportedly paid millions to nullify the conglomerate’s most popular franchises.
“Greta and I have been very consciously partnership, accepting a penalty from “We haven’t done a Harry Potter movie
constructing a career,” Barber explained. Hasbro and off-loading the rest of the in fifteen years,” he said. (In fact, there
“Her ambition is to be not the biggest I.P. it had acquired. Candy Land went to have been six.) The mandate for audi-
woman director but a big studio director. Sony, which tried unsuccessfully to turn ence recognition has pushed artists to
And Barbie was a piece of I.P. that was it into a vehicle for Adam Sandler. take increasingly desperate measures—
resonant to her.” As the Vulture article put it, “It’s including scrounging up plotlines from
Although Barber was pleased with plenty of fun to imagine teams of screen- popular snacks. Eva Longoria recently
the “Barbie” partnership, he was clear- writers, locked away on major-studio directed the Cheetos dramedy “Flamin’
eyed about its implications. “Is it a great Hot”; Jerry Seinfeld is at work on “Un-
thing that our great creative actors and frosted: The Pop-Tart Story.”
filmmakers live in a world where you can I.P.-based filmmaking has become
only take giant swings around consumer so commonplace that Gerwig—who
content and mass-produced products?” made her name acting in tiny mumble-
he said. “I don’t know. But it is the busi- core projects—was caught off guard by
ness. So, if that’s what people will con- complaints that she’d sold out. (One
sume, then let’s make it more interesting, viral tweet: “i know this is an unpopu-
more complicated.” He wondered aloud lar opinion but i feel like . . . completely
whether such directors as Hal Ashby and repelled by the barbie movie. branded
Sydney Pollack would be making mov- lots, chugging coffee while grappling content with a wink and movie stars is
ies with Mattel if they were alive today: with how to graft plots onto stuff like still branded content!”) Gerwig told me
“It’s a super-interesting question. It’s also the View-Master.” A View-Master film, that adapting Barbie felt as natural as
an argument that we’ve lost already.” as it happens, is one of Mattel’s current adapting “Little Women,” though she
projects. But in other respects the com- did use a toy metaphor to describe the
reiz’s thesis that Mattel should be- pany has apparently learned from Has- process: creating “a story where there
K come an I.P. factory wasn’t revolu-
tionary. Lego had created a series of hit
bro’s misadventure, by partnering with
a range of studios and enshrining a se-
hadn’t been a story” felt like solving “an
intellectual Rubik’s Cube.” The audi-
animated films, and—as Kreiz and other ries of timed “development gates” in each ence has shifted along with the indus-
Mattel executives repeatedly noted to contract. If the creative team that Mat- try. Whereas Scott’s “Monopoly” was
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 27
shamed into nonexistence, advance that included such lines as “I’m a blond the point. “The fact that she’s stepping
screenings of “Barbie,” billed as “blow- bimbo girl in a fantasy world.” A Ninth out of the literal and figurative box is
out parties,” are selling out. Neverthe- Circuit judge ruled against the toy- important for the journey,” she told me.
less, the film’s slogan—“If you love Bar- maker, concluding, “The parties are ad- Gerwig, too, had a clear vision for
bie, this movie is for you. If you hate vised to chill.” what a toy movie could be. The story is
Barbie, this movie is for you”—is indic- Mattel itself sometimes reinforced initially set in a world called Barbie Land,
ative of the tightrope it has to walk. the bimbo stereotype: in the nineties, a which she infused with “authentic arti-
“Barbie” is somehow simultaneously a talking Barbie sparked backlash over ficiality.” Shots lack interiority, actors’
critique of corporate feminism, a love its ditzy declaration that “math class is movements are exaggerated, and visual
letter to a doll that has been a lightning tough.” By the twenty-tens, the doll was effects are achieved with painted back-
rod for more than half a century, and a reviled as an antiquated vision of fem- drops and other lo-fi technology, call-
sendup of the company that actively ininity—and sales were at their lowest ing attention to the fake environment.
participated in the adapta- point in a quarter century. (The fact that milk never leaves Bar-
tion. “It’s a tall order,” Rob- Dickson, the C.O.O., pre- bie’s glass when she lifts it to drink also
bie admitted. “The danger- sided over a radical about- helps.) When Robbie’s character ven-
ous thing about making face. Since 2016, after years tures beyond Barbie Land, Gerwig ex-
something for everyone is of criticism for her improb- plained, the film’s visual language also
that you ultimately make it ably slender waist, Barbie changes: “The way the camera moves
for no one.” has been sold in “petite,” and the way it feels is different once
“tall,” and “curvy” incarna- we’re in the real world.”
arbie débuted in 1959, tions, and designers have Mattel was sometimes uneasy with
B with a behind-the-scenes
assist from the film world—
continued to expand the
options available in terms
Gerwig’s interest in the brand’s missteps.
In 1964, the company released a doll
the head of makeup at Uni- of race, ethnicity, and body named Allan, whose packaging marketed
versal was enlisted to tone down her heavy type. By 2022, when Gerwig’s movie him as “Ken’s buddy,” with the tagline
eyelashes and bee-stung lips, insuring was in production, Barbie was the best- “All of Ken’s clothes fit him!” Allan was
that she had an “all-American” look. Her selling fashion doll in the world. soon pulled from shelves. When Ger-
creator, the Mattel co-founder Ruth Han- Though Dickson was excited to work wig learned about him, she found the ad
dler, had her own Hollywood connec- with Gerwig, he was also nervous about copy both sad and amusing. In “Barbie,”
tion: she’d once been a secretary at Par- damaging the brand. He went to Lon- Allan is played by Michael Cera, and
amount. Whereas other dolls of the era don, where the film was largely shot, a much is made of the fact that his rela-
were babies or toddlers, Barbie invited half-dozen times, spending days on set tionship to Ken is his main identifying
fantasies of adulthood. Commercials en- and engaging in lengthy discussions feature. The company, Gerwig remem-
couraged girls to “make believe that I am about the highs and lows of the doll’s bered, required some convincing: “There
you,” or to “get both Barbie and Ken, and history. Once, he flew in to hear dia- was just an e-mail that went around where
see where the romance will lead.” Sales logue from the script which worried him. they said, ‘Do you have to remind peo-
took off, and Mattel threw itself into the Robbie told me that the conversation ple that this was on the box?’”
development of different Barbies—surfer around the exchange—in which her The film is studded with such false
girl, C.E.O.—with each reboot designed character is lambasted for hurting girls’ starts from Mattel history. Barbie’s side-
to tap into a new cultural trend. self-esteem—was “about six hours long.” kick Midge—who, two decades ago, was
Barbie was far from universally be- It stayed in. briefly sold as a doll with a baby bump—
loved. Some mothers found her ana- Early on, Gerwig had declared, “I is introduced in voice-over, before the
tomically impossible figure inappro- want this movie to feel like you can reach narrator changes her mind: “Let’s not
priately sexual; others objected to her in and pick everything up.” A team was show Midge, actually. She was discon-
perfectly coiffed blond hair. Feminists assembled to produce doll-house-size tinued by Mattel because a pregnant doll
argued that these qualities reinforced miniatures of palm trees and street lamps, is just too weird.” Kate McKinnon’s char-
gendered stereotypes and unforgiving and Gerwig was in constant communi- acter, a doll disfigured by her overly en-
beauty standards. In the seventies, “I am cation with designers at Mattel. Archi- thusiastic human playmate, lives on the
not a Barbie doll” became a refrain of val material—Dreamhouses, vintage fringes of Barbie Land with other cast-
women’s-rights protesters. Other peo- clothes—was shipped from El Segundo offs, including Tanner, a toy dog whose
ple came to see Barbie as a tool for em- to London. Dickson told me that he in- 2006 play set was recalled when the ac-
powerment—a proto-girl-boss. sisted on some guardrails, including “a companying Barbie’s pooper-scooper
Mattel, which now makes $1.5 bil- degree of modesty” in the costume de- proved to be a choking hazard. Gerwig
lion annually from Barbie, is fiercely signs for both Barbie and Ken. But when told me, “Barbie seems so monolithic,
protective of the brand. Its legal team Mattel objected to Robbie’s character and there’s a quality where it just seems
once went after a company that tried being called Stereotypical Barbie, and as if she was inevitable, and she’s always
to sell “Barbie-Que” chips. In 1997, Mat- requested that she be called Original existed. I think all the dead ends are a
tel sued M.C.A. Records over the Aqua Barbie instead, Robbie held firm, argu- reminder that they were just trying stuff
song “Barbie Girl,” a Euro-pop parody ing that the negative connotation was out.” Although she understood why Mat-
28 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
 Your Anniversary
tel wanted “to protect Barbie,” she felt inely collaborative. (It was an advantage, Immortalized
in Roman Numerals
that “dealing with all the strangeness of perhaps, that there weren’t too many fan-
it is a way of honoring it.” boys who regarded old He-Man story 3-Day Rush Available!
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scribed as acts of “world-building.” making, you know, the tenth of the se-
The ever-expanding Barbie universe an- ries. It feels like ours.” For many early-
ticipated this trend: each new play set career directors, this has become a best-
and outfit offered a new narrative for case scenario. If Mattel execs had a habit
children who owned the doll, and also of flagging figures that might be squeezed
further inscribed the brand’s pink-plas- into the plot, the Nees didn’t mind. “One
tic aesthetic. Mattel’s use of this strategy of our big goals—the same as Mattel’s—
deepened in the eighties, in response to is to be building a huge, world-building
a setback. A rival, Kenner, was having franchise,” Adam said.
runaway success with “Star Wars” action When Kreiz became C.E.O., Mas-
figures, and Mattel scrambled to launch ters of the Universe had lain dormant
a science-fantasy saga of its own. Play- for more than a decade, and reviving it
testing had revealed that young boys fix- had been among his top priorities. “It’s
ated on the notion of “power,” and that as big as Marvel and DC,” he told me,
a muscle-bound hero was more appeal- citing an official encyclopedia of He-
ing than the slighter action figures of the Man lore, which, he believes, contains
era. This intelligence yielded He-Man seeds for sequel after sequel. “It’s hun-
and the Masters of the Universe. When dreds of pages of characters and sorcerers
a retailer pointed out that kids would and vehicles and weaponry—you name N A U T I L U S LO U N G E C H A I R
have no idea who these characters were— it. And then you flip through the pages, G O O D D E S I G N ® AWA R D W I N N E R

even then, pre-awareness was a consid- and here’s a movie, and here’s a movie, M A I N E | C H I LT O N S . C O M
eration—Mattel hastily produced comic and here’s a TV show. . . . It’s endless!”
books that explained their backstories.
The lore was incoherent—akin to “Conan ne afternoon in October, I attended
the Barbarian” on another planet—but
kids bought it.
O a development meeting at Mattel
led by Robbie Brenner. She left Miramax
The toys were a hit, as was a syndi- in the early two-thousands, then moved
cated cartoon series. Mattel responded among studio jobs and independent pro-
Connecting

©2020 KENDAL
by rushing new characters to market, but ductions until Kreiz invited her to build
supply soon outstripped demand, and in a film division of her own. For many peo- generations.
1987 a live-action adaptation, starring ple in her circle, the jump to Mattel had
Dolph Lundgren, flopped. (One review: been a surprising one, but she’d clearly Experience a retirement community
“The first film to be based on a line of absorbed the El Segundo world view. She that’s bringing generations together
toys, this might not be the last, but it’d told me that she’d identified which Mat- —engaging at every age and stage.
take something awful to replace it as the tel brands were both “commercial and
worst.”) Kids moved on. But Masters of theatrical,” adding, “If it’s something that
1.800.548.9469 EQUAL HOUSING

the Universe had been, briefly, a billion- could be toyetic, obviously that’s a great
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kao.kendal.org/intergenerational
dollar business. bonus.” (One executive noted that the
Adam and Aaron Nee, the directors term “toyetic,” which describes movies
of the recent Sandra Bullock rom-com and TV shows that generate merchan-
“The Lost City,” were among the chil- dising opportunities, was a recent addi- Introducing . . .
dren enraptured by He-Man. The broth- tion to Brenner’s vocabulary.)
ers, who used to borrow a neighbor’s
camera and shoot short films with their
Brenner hopes to build on Robbie’s
successful wooing of Gerwig, and told THE MEADOWS AT PENNSWOOD VILLAGE
action figures, are now poised to start me that Guillermo del Toro was the
production on a new Masters of the Uni- type of director who “would lend him- Pennswood Village unveils The Meadows,
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Aaron told me that he and Adam had Films’ first partnerships, including one Reservations are underway.
had “many, many meetings” with the with Akiva Goldsman, had emerged Learn More,
company’s designers and executives. from contacts that Brenner has nurtured Call 855-944-0673
“Other branded I.P. can be very rigid, over the decades. Goldsman had pitched www.pennswood.org
dogmatic, and inflexible,” he said; the her Major Matt Mason—a toy from his Located in Beautiful Bucks County, PA
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THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 29
I.P. shortlist. (The novelist Michael be “surrealistic”; he compared the con- McKeon returned the conversation
Chabon, a fellow-fan of the astronaut, cept to the work of Charlie Kaufman to Boglins. “We’re thinking ‘Gremlins’-
has written a treatment.) and Spike Jonze. “We’re leaning into the ish, but with a twist,” he said. Given that
Brenner’s team consisted of six exec- millennial angst of the property rather the toys had capitalized on the success
utives, some of whom had initially ex- than fine-tuning this for kids,” he said. of “Gremlins,” the project could also be
pressed uncertainty about what Mattel “It’s really a play for adults. Not that it’s considered a reboot in disguise. “Boglins,”
was doing. One hire, Elizabeth Bassin, R-rated, but it’ll focus on some of the he hoped, would be the company’s “big
told her, “I don’t really know how to make trials and tribulations of being thirty- Halloween movie.” Before approaching
commercials.” Brenner replied, “That’s something, growing up with Barney— writers, he went on, “we’ll get some tonal
great. We don’t make commercials.” just the level of disenchantment within comps. We’ll build a deck. We’ll figure
Brenner sat at the head of a long table the generation.” He told me later that out what the over-all story could be.”
while her right hand, Kevin McKeon, he’d sold it to prospective partners as an Talk turned to a few recent pitches
provided updates on various projects. His “A24-type” film: “It would be so daring that had surprised the team. “Somebody
descriptions sometimes sounded like a of us, and really underscore that we’re just asked me about Bass Fishin’, which
Hollywood version of Mad Libs.A screen- here to make art.” (Kaluuya declined to is, like, a toy fishing rod,” Bassin said. The
writer, he informed the group, was at work speak with me about the project.) pitch was for an “intense sports drama
on an American Girl script that would There was also a legal victory to dis- about this cheating scandal in competi-
be “ ‘Booksmart’ meets ‘Bill & Ted.’ ” cuss: after ten months of negotiations, tive fishing”—an attempt, it seemed to
Jimmy Warden, the screenwriter of “Co- Mattel had secured control of Boglins, me, to Trojan-horse a story that the writer
caine Bear,” had devised a horror-comedy a set of toy puppets from the late eight- actually wanted to tell into a conceit that
about the Magic 8 Ball. (One can imag- ies. Numerous millennial directors and might be green-lighted.
ine the chilling moment when a charac- screenwriters had expressed interest in After the meeting, McKeon told me
ter shakes the ball and gets the message the property. Andrew Scannell, the that it was possible to incorporate complex
“outlook not so good.”) The ap- team’s resident genre nerd, explained, characters and emotions into toy-based
proach, Brenner told me afterward, had “This is a new activation for us—they’re properties, though not every brand could
been a subject of some debate. “We’re not these really weird, fleshy monster crea- support mature themes. “Thomas the
going to make any rated-R movies,” she tures. I had a bunch of them. They’re Tank Engine isn’t going on a bender with
promised. Although the Magic 8 Ball very bizarre.” his friends,” he said. But “Major Matt
script “walks the line a little bit,” she went “They’re a little gross,” Bassin ven- Mason” could be reimagined as a “Close
on, “we’re not going to make anything tured. (Indeed, it was a bit hard to imag- Encounters of the Third Kind”-esque
that feels violent, or that is alienating to ine A-list stars playing Boglins, which drama for adults: “It’s prestige-y and asks
families. . . . We want to stay within the have names like Dwork, Vlobb, and really pointed questions about life and
parameters of what Mattel is.” Drool.) She joked that a movie based on our place in the universe.” He went on,
McKeon seemed most excited by Pooparoos—a Mattel line of tiny, anthro- “Our top priority is to make really good
Kaluuya’s Barney project, which would pomorphized toilets—was inevitable. movies—movies that matter, and that
make a cultural footprint. Our second
priority is to make sure that we do no
disservice to the brands.”
Whereas Gerwig and Baumbach had
secured creative autonomy in developing
the “Barbie” script, Mattel Films execu-
tives are typically present when a mov-
ie’s plot is conceived. After a feature about
Matchbox cars landed at Skydance—a
driving force behind “Top Gun: Maver-
ick”—members of Mattel’s team took
turns commuting to the home of the Sky-
dance executive Don Granger, where five
writers camped out for a week with a
whiteboard and a collection of Match-
box play sets, trying to gin up a story.
Later, Brenner proudly informed me that
she had inspired the movie’s villain.

n June, Gerwig was back home in

I Manhattan, putting the finishing
touches on “Barbie” and caring for her
newborn son, whom she cradled in her
“What’s the big deal? We pull all-nighters all the time.” arms as we talked. When Margot Rob-
bie first approached her about the adap- be other adaptations in her future—she thematic material on which to draw, other
tation, she noted, she’d been in a similar has a deal with Netflix to write and di- Mattel brands present more of a chal-
place: in postproduction on another film, rect at least two films based on C. S. Lew- lenge. If some movies are toyetic, many
with another infant in tow. She said of is’s “The Chronicles of Narnia”—but she toys are in no way cinematic: there’s pre-
“Barbie,” “After four years of working on wasn’t likely to make another movie about cious little human drama to be mined
it, it feels like mine—but I always re- a toy: “It would have to be something from such games as Flushin’ Frenzy or
member that Margot is the person who that has some strange hook in me, that UNO. “Look, my kids and I played UNO
invited me to the party.” feels like it goes to the marrow.” She every night during the pandemic. I love
Even when working with generic I.P., added, “I don’t know if there’s a doll that it,” Barber said. “Is there an UNO movie?
an auteur like Gerwig can’t help but im- anyone is as mad at.” (This is perhaps I don’t know!”
print herself on her source material. “My bad news for Lena Dunham, whom Mat- When I met Marcy Kelly, a cheer-
feeling was always that I don’t need to tel has lined up to helm “Polly Pocket.”) ful thirty-eight-year-old who has be-
make a Barbie movie,” she said. “I want come Mattel’s de-facto screenwriter and
to make this one.” Her preparations for attel insists that its films aren’t punch-up artist, last November, she re-
the adaptation extended far beyond
learning Barbie lore; among other things,
M designed to boost toy sales, but
the corporate synergy is undeniable.
called the moment when Kevin Mc-
Keon asked her if she wanted to pitch
she read “Reviving Ophelia,” a best- Major Matt Mason action figures re- a script based on the card game: “My
selling 1994 book about the social and surfaced at last year’s Comic-Con, and reaction was the reaction that every-
psychological pressures facing adoles- He-Man has returned to toy stores. After body has, which is ‘What?’” McKeon,
cent girls, and watched Powell and Press- Kaluuya’s “Barney” was announced, Mat- she said, sent her a slide deck that “high-
burger’s “Stairway to Heaven,” to study tel—which had inherited the rights to lighted how cross-cultural the game is,
how the directors had harnessed old- the purple dinosaur in an acquisition and funny things about how seriously
school visual effects to create a sense of but had never produced any related people take it, and little seeds of ideas
theatricality. Some inspiration came from toys—relaunched the brand. At a re- for things to work into a movie,” in-
closer to home: Gerwig instructed Ryan cent investor presentation, plans were cluding “a meme of Beyoncé holding
Gosling, who plays Ken, to cry the way unveiled for a Barney “animated pre- UNO cards.” The mandate, inexplica-
her four-year-old son cries. school series,” which would be “followed bly, was for a heist movie.
Gerwig’s Barbie Land is a post-fem- by film, music, apparel, and, of course, Kelly got to work. The script she
inist utopia, or perhaps a prelapsarian a new line of toys.” Kreiz—who is fond emerged with wasn’t quite what Mat-
one. “You live in a place where there’s no of pointing out that “we’re at ‘Fast & tel had had in mind. She’d set “UNO”
pain, and nothing dies, and there’s no Furious 10’ and ‘Hot Wheels 0’ ”—in- in Atlanta’s hip-hop scene. “The first
suffering, and you are not separate from troduced a short, uncomfortable video draft that I sent in was ‘fuck’-heavy,”
your environment, and you have no in which J. J. Abrams struggled to de- she recalled, sheepishly. An executive
shame. And then, all of a sudden, you scribe the new franchise. “For a long flagged every instance of the obscenity
have shame,” she said, laughing. “I mean, time, we were talking to Mattel about in the screenplay. “It was something like
we know the story! It’s in some books Hot Wheels, and we couldn’t quite find fifty pages,” she said. “And then the next
people have heard of.” the thing that clicked, that made it wor- draft had one. I got my one, well-placed,
The best way to incorporate this tragic thy of what Hot Wheels—that title— PG-13 ‘fuck.’”
arc into a joke-dense comedy, Gerwig deserved,” he said. “Then we came up Kelly stressed that, despite such cen-
decided, was to heighten the dissonance. with something . . . emotional and sorship, Mattel had given her real cre-
“I wanted Margot and Ryan to play it as grounded and gritty.” (A script has yet ative freedom. “They’ve been open to
if they were in a drama on some level,” to materialize.) so many kinds of unexpected ideas,” she
she told me. Early in the movie, Robbie’s Gerwig’s “Barbie,” for all its gentle said. She’d submitted screenplays for
Barbie begins to experience intrusive mockery of Mattel, has already paid div- four titles, and ran the writers’ room for
thoughts about death, interrupting a suc- idends for the company. A fifty-dollar several others, including one about Bob
cession of “perfect days” and immacu- doll resembling Robbie as she appears the Builder. The work had helped her
lately coördinated girls’ nights. Later, when in the film, unveiled in June, has sold find her footing in the industry; before
her feet—until now perennially arched, out; so has a seventy-five-dollar model joining the company, she was best known
the better to fit in her heels—go flat, the of Stereotypical Barbie’s pink Corvette. for her contributions to the mobile game
scene plays like body horror. Ken, too, Brand collaborations have yielded a glut Mean Girls: Senior Year.
has an awakening ahead of him. “Instead of Barbie-themed offerings, from can- If Kelly sometimes struggled to please
of women not having, you know, jobs or dles to luggage and frozen yogurt. Mattel, the executives didn’t always seem
credit cards or power in the world, it’s Kreiz is “like a Medici,” Jeremy Bar- to know what they wanted, either. Not
the Kens,” Gerwig said. “And then they ber, the agent, told me. Artists, he said, long after we spoke, her “UNO” script
realize, ‘Wait a minute. I don’t just want need patrons; Kreiz needs cultural cap- was set aside, and a one-day writers’ room
to look good all day and wait for you.’” ital. “He’s betting his whole kingdom on took another run at a concept. A heist,
Gerwig’s son began to fidget; she rose it.” But the spectre of Hasbro’s failures Mattel reasoned, might not be the way
to hand him off to Baumbach, then re- looms. Where Barbie and Masters of the forward after all. Some bank vaults can’t
turned to the living room. There would Universe offer a cast of characters and be cracked. 
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 31
 P RO F I L E S

Galaxy Brain
How Samuel R. Delany reimagined science fiction.
BY J U L IA N L U CA S

ast September, while work- tured, cerebral novels like “Babel-17” hovel” via Zoom: “No secret pile will be
ing at his desk in Philadel- (1966) and “Dhalgren” (1975). Others left unexplored.” Yet a central theme in
phia, Samuel R. Delany know the revolutionary chronicler of gay his work is “contact,” a word he uses to
experienced a mysterious life, whose autobiography, “The Motion convey all the potential in chance en-
episode that he calls “the of Light in Water” (1988), stands as an counters between human beings. “I pro-
big drop.” His vision faded essential document of pre-Stonewall pose that in a democratic city it is im-
for about three minutes, and he felt his New York. Still others know the profes- perative that we speak to strangers, live
body plunge, as if the floor had fallen sor, the pornographer, or the prolific es- next to them, and learn how to relate to
away. When he came to, everything looked sayist whose purview extends from cy- them on many levels, from the political
different, though he couldn’t say exactly borg feminism to Biblical philology. to the sexual,” he wrote in “Times Square
how. Delany, who is eighty-one, began There are so many Delanys that it’s Red, Times Square Blue” (1999), a land-
to suspect that he’d suffered a mini-stroke. difficult to take the full measure of his mark critique of gentrification which
His daughter, Iva, an emergency-room influence. Reading him was formative centered on his years of cruising in the
physician, persuaded him to go to the for Junot Díaz and William Gibson; Oc- adult theatres of midtown Manhattan.
hospital, but the MRI scans were incon- tavia Butler was, briefly, his student in a His novels, too, turn on the seren-
clusive. The only evidence of a neurolog- writing workshop. Jeremy O. Harris in- dipity of urban life, adopting the “marx-
ical event was a test result indicating that cluded Delany as a character in his play ian” credo that fiction is most vital when
he had lost fifteen per cent of his capac- “Black Exhibition,” while Neil Gaiman, classes mix. Gorgik, a revolutionary
ity to form new memories—and a real- who is adapting Delany’s classic space leader in Delany’s four-volume “Return
ization, in the following weeks, that he adventure “Nova” (1968) as a series for to Nevèrÿon” series, rises from slavery to
was unable to finish his novel in prog- Amazon, credits him with building a crit- the royal court in an ancient port city
ress, “This Short Day of Frost and Sun.” ical foundation not only for science fic- called Kolhari, where he learns that seem-
After publishing more than forty books tion but also for comics and other “paralit- ingly centralized “power—the great power
in half a century, the interruption was, erary” genres. that shattered lives and twisted the course
he told me, both “a loss and a relief.” Friends call him Chip, a nickname he of the nation—was like a fog over a
For years, Delany has begun most gave himself at summer camp, in the meadow at evening. From any distance,
days at four o’clock in the morning with eleventh year of a life that has defied con- it seemed to have a shape, a substance,
a ritual. First, he spells out the name vention and prejudice. He is a sci-fi child a color, an edge. Yet, as you approached
Dennis, for Dennis Rickett, his life part- prodigy who never flamed out; a genre it, it seemed to recede before you.”
ner. Next, he recites an atheist’s prayer, best-seller widely recognized as a great In January, Delany finally allowed me
hailing faraway celestial bodies with a literary stylist; a dysgraphic college drop- to visit him at the apartment complex
litany inspired by the seventeenth-cen- out who once headed the Department that he now rarely leaves. A hulking beige
tury philosopher Baruch Spinoza: “Na- of Comparative Literature at the Univer- structure near the Philadelphia Museum
tura Naturans, system of systems, sys- sity of Massachusetts, Amherst; and an of Art, it looms like a fortress over the
tem of fields, Kuiper belt, scattered disk, outspokenly promiscuous gay man who row houses of the Fairmount. I crossed
Oort cloud, thank you for dropping me survived the AIDS crisis and has found a lobby the length of a ballroom and
here.” Finally, he prepares oatmeal, which love, three times, in committed, non- rode the elevator to the fourth floor. As
he faithfully photographs for the friends monogamous relationships. A story like I walked down the hallway, I noticed a
and fans who follow him on Facebook. Delany’s isn’t supposed to be possible in small man behind a luggage trolley tak-
Every so often, when the milk foams, our society—and that, nearly as much as ing my picture. It was Delany, smiling
he sees Laniakea—the galactic super- the gift of his writing, is his glory. in welcome with his lively brown eyes
cluster that’s home to Earth. It took several months to persuade and strikingly misaligned front teeth.
In the stellar neighborhood of Amer- him to meet. Delany has polemicized With long white hair, heavy brows,
ican letters, there have been few minds against the face-to-face interview, rea- and a chest-length beard that begins
as generous, transgressive, and polymath- soning that writers, who constitute them- halfway up his lightly melanated cheeks,
ically brilliant as Samuel Delany’s. Many selves on the page, ought to be ques- Delany has the appearance of an Eastern
know him as the country’s first promi- tioned there, too. He warned in an e-mail Orthodox monk who left his cloister for
nent Black author of science fiction, who that a visit would be a waste of time, of- a biker gang. Three surgical-steel rings
transformed the field with richly tex- fering instead a tour of his “three-room hang from the cartilage of his left ear;
32 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
Delany believes that sci-fi’s primal impulse, like poetry’s, is the “incantatory task of naming nonexistent objects.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY RAHIM FORTUNE THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 33
on his left shoulder is a tattoo of a dragon staccato laugh. He would have accepted plot but finds the prose “sluggish.” I asked
entwined around a skull. Under a sizable had Sturgeon found them a motel. him which of his unfinished projects he
paunch dangled a heavy key chain, which Books, and a lunchtime delivery of most wished he had completed. “Every
jingled as he shook my hand. Leaning shrimp and grits, piled up on the table as single one of them,” he replied. “They all
on his cane, he led me inside, where mist Delany darted between our conversation would have been good.”
from an overactive humidifier hazed the and his overflowing shelves. He ran his
dim entrance. fingers through his beard as he adduced amuel Ray Delany, Jr., was born in
As I bent to remove my shoes, he took
more pictures: memory aids, but also con-
names and dates, his gaze shifting rest-
lessly as though in search of a signal. Every
S Harlem on April 1, 1942. He grew up
above his father’s prosperous funeral home,
tributions to Delany Studies, which he other question sent him skittering across on Seventh Avenue, where he played with
later posted to Facebook. a personal web of texts, from “Conan the Black kids on the block, but was also
“I’m promiscuously autobiographical,” Barbarian” to “Finnegans Wake.” When whisked off in the family Cadillac to at-
he explained. “But it’s never gotten me I left, he gave me a copy of “Big Joe,” a tend the tony private elementary school
into trouble.” slim volume of award-winning interra- at Dalton. “Black Harlem speech and
The room, which does triple duty as cial trailer-park erotica that he’d dedi- white Park Avenue speech are very dif-
foyer, dining area, and library-office, had cated to the boy “who started it all on ferent things,” he once wrote, describing
the unmistakable clutter of a place de- the first night of summer camp” in 1952. a social vertigo that made him aware from
voted to writing. Stacks of books lit- Over the next few months, I got to an early age of language’s infinite mallea-
tered every surface; one, the height of a know a man willing to discuss nearly bility. A charming extrovert then as now,
small child, leaned perilously in a chair anything but his own literary signifi- Delany moved between realms easily; not
near narrow windows, which let in a cance. Openly sharing the most inti- long after he thrilled to the discovery of
stingy helping of winter sun. The only mate minutiae of his life—finances, Sturgeon’s novel “More Than Human”
indication that I wasn’t in the lair of hookup apps, Depends—he recoiled (1953), a tale of multiracial outcasts who
some industrious graduate student was with Victorian modesty whenever I fuse into a psychic super-being, he was
the prizes crowning the bookshelves: a asked why he’d written his books or elected Most Popular Person in Class.
Lambda, the Nicolás Guillén Award for what they meant to his readers. Delany’s grandfather had risen from
Philosophical Literature, the Anisfield- “I write, I don’t speculate about slavery in North Carolina to become a
Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award. what I’m writing,” he reminded me a bit bishop in the Episcopal Church. One of
Opposite stood Delany’s literary battle sharply after an interpretative question. his aunts, who knew Greek and Latin,
station, a desktop computer with a rain- For Delany, decency entails remember- was among the first Black teachers in the
bow-backlit keyboard. Within easy reach ing that the author is dead even when New York City school system; in 1993, at
were a book scanner, a back scratcher he’s sitting across the table. more than a hundred years old, she pub-
shaped like a bear claw, a biography of On indefinite hiatus from writing lished a best-selling autobiography with
Flaubert, and a robust collection of gay novels, he claims to spend most of his her sister called “Having Our Say.” His
fetish porn on DVD. time watching TV shows and movies, uncle was the first Black criminal-court
We settled at a circular table cluttered especially those starring Channing Tatum. judge in New York State—and railed
with papers and pills. Delany produced In an essay on aging and cognitive de- against perverts at the dinner table, Delany
family photos, a pro-choice installment recalls. Repression was a shadow over his
of “Wonder Woman” that he’d scripted childhood’s precarious talented-tenth
in the seventies, a New York City tarot privilege. Delany’s father beat him vi-
deck featuring him as the Hanged Man, ciously, often using the bristle side of a
and the original volumes of his “Nevèrÿon” hairbrush until he bled. He started run-
series, which Bantam dropped after its ning away from home regularly at six.
third volume addressed the AIDS crisis. Summers brought respite, whether
“What can I say?” Delany said. “Bantam with relatives in Sag Harbor and Mont-
is out of business. I’m in business.” (A clair, New Jersey, or at a progressive camp
once mighty paperback publisher, Ban- where Pete Seeger performed for the
tam has since merged with several other cline, he describes himself as in transi- kids. It was there, after an exciting fra-
imprints at Penguin Random House.) tion “between someone who writes and cas in the boys’ bunks, that he first iden-
Mostly, he wanted to talk about other someone who has written.” Yet old hab- tified himself as a “homosexual,” a word
writers: Guy Davenport, a “brilliant” styl- its die hard. Delany recently finished he looked up in every dictionary he could
ist unjustly neglected; Joanna Russ, one compiling “Last Tales,” a collection of find. In 1956, he tested into the Bronx
of the peers he misses most; and Theo- short fiction, which includes a story par- High School of Science, where his un-
dore Sturgeon, his first lodestar in sci- tially set in a near-future Tulum that has usual brilliance quickly became appar-
ence fiction, who fired the young Dela- been reduced to anarchy by social-media ent. “I wanted to be everything,” he said
ny’s imagination with his prose and once misinformation. Not long ago, he de- in one of our conversations. “I wanted
propositioned him on the way to lunch. cided to rewrite a historical novel by the to be a poet. I wanted to be a symphony
“It was like getting hit on by Shake- late Scottish author Naomi Mitchison, conductor. I wanted to be a psychiatrist
speare!” he reminisced, with a gasping, an old acquaintance, because he loves the and I wanted to be a doctor, and, if not,
34 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
possibly a mathematician.” Gradually,
fiction won out. He filled notebooks with
stories, observations of classmates—es­
pecially rough boys who bit their nails,
Delany’s signature fetish—and homo­
erotic fantasies “of kings and warriors,
leather armor, slaves, swords, and brocade.”
He met his match in Marilyn Hacker,
a Jewish girl from the Bronx and the
most talented poet in school. Delany
was besotted with her effortlessly mu­
sical verse, and the two quickly grew
close, critiquing each other’s work and
sharing an interest in prodigies like Ar­ “How long are you going to sit there admiring
thur Rimbaud and Natalia Crane. Al­ the absence of visual clutter?”
though Hacker was aware of Delany’s
orientation, they also experimented sex­
ually, and married after she became preg­
• •
nant. (She eventually miscarried.)
They moved to a run­down apartment editor once told him that there was noth­ ing in communes in New York and San
on the Lower East Side, where they be­ ing in his urban tales of criminals and Francisco, Delany wrote the novels that
gan a bohemian married life and creative folksingers that would resonate with the made his name in American science fic­
partnership that Delany recounts in “The “housewife in Nebraska.” (For a time, tion. He won his first Nebula Award for
Motion of Light in Water.” Their guests Delany tried folksinging himself, and “Babel­17,” the story of a poet­linguist’s
ranged from W. H. Auden (who started was once billed to open for a then little­ race to decipher a consciousness­scram­
a fire by flicking a cigarette into their known Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village.) bling language virus aboard a starship
kitchen trash) to the sundry young men He turned to science fiction only after called the Rimbaud. He won a second
whom Delany brought home—where Hacker found a job as an editorial assis­ for “The Einstein Intersection” (1967), a
they sometimes found their way into tant at Ace Books, a publisher special­ retelling of the Orpheus legend set on
Hacker’s poems: “He/was gone two days; izing in science fiction and fantasy. She a future Earth where alien settlers who
might bring back, on the third,/ some gave her boss a manuscript of her hus­ venerate the Beatles strive to “template”
kind of night music I’d never heard:/Sonny band’s—a post­apocalyptic­quest novel themselves on their vanished human
the burglar, paunched with breakfast titled “The Jewels of Aptor”—under the predecessors. Delany’s precise language
beers;/olive­skinned Simon, who made pretense that it had been pulled from the and iridescent imagery—flying motor­
fake Vermeers.” slush pile. Soon, Delany had the career bikes called “pteracycles,” space cur­
One shared infatuation, with a Flo­ in “genre” fiction that had been denied rents cast as “red and silver sequins flung
ridian machinist in flight from jail, went him in literary fiction; he likes to say that in handfuls”—distinguished him in a
on to anchor award­winning books by genre chose him. genre whose authors still often boasted
both authors. But free love offered no His early efforts were fantastical tales about never revising their work. Major
escape from the familiar fictions of pen­ that mostly took place on Earth. After critics soon recognized him as one of
niless young writers sharing a household. “Aptor,” Delany proved his stamina with the most talented science­fiction writ­
Delany’s autobiography idealizes Hack­ “The Fall of the Towers” (1963­65), a ers of his generation.
er’s intellect, but rather bluntly portrays trilogy about a war against incorporeal Even before Delany “came out” to
her as a moody layabout obsessed with beings, which spoke to the xenophobia readers—a post­Stonewall rite of pas­
nonexistent slights, who read “Middle­ of the Cold War. All were apprentice sage that he’s criticized as oriented to­
march” in her pajamas while he cooked, novels, quick and colorful but occasion­ ward the straight world—his fiction ex­
cleaned, and toiled away as a clerk at ally spiralling into jejune moral grandi­ plored homosexuality in the context of
Barnes & Noble. Hacker remembers osity. Still, with their motley cities and polyamory, sadomasochism, and specu­
Delany as an often wonderful partner, craggy, sensuous prose, they were al­ lative future kinks. (In “Babel­17,” which
but characterized his account of their ready recognizably Delany. In 1965, he drew on his marital threesome, only
youth as score­settling. “Middlemarch” set out on an adventure of his own, tem­ throuples can reliably crew starships,
was reading for a course at N.Y.U., she porarily leaving his marriage to hitch­ learning their daredevil coördination
added via e­mail: “I apologise to posterity hike to the Gulf Coast of Texas. He from the intricacies of group intimacy.)
for doing homework before I got dressed.” worked on shrimp boats for a summer His books were also matter­of­factly
By the age of twenty, Delany had al­ before flying to Europe, where he spent diverse. Rydra Wong, the protagonist
ready written ten realist novels, one of the next year on a formative trip through of “Babel­17,” was an Asian woman,
which had earned him a place at the the Mediterranean. while his later characters included La­
Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. But In the late nineteen­sixties, semi­sep­ tino cable layers, a Korean American
publication eluded him; a sympathetic arated from Hacker and occasionally liv­ philosopher, and a Black woman scholar
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 35
who served as Delany’s critical alter ego. Bantam for a quintet of space operas ny’s literary life, to such an extent that
The race of his characters cost Delany about planetary revolutions. “The coun- he hasn’t read any of his science fiction.
several publishing opportunities, while terculture triumphed over all,” he re- “I have to see the special effects,” he said,
his own led to awkward, tokenizing mo- called in one of our conversations. “But so he’d have to wait for the adaptations.
ments like Isaac Asimov’s flat-footed it was going to be five versions of the Delany also paces and recites his work
“joke” at the 1968 Nebula Awards: “You same story, and who wants to write that?” so often that Rickett finds opening the
know, Chip, we only voted you those He started to reflect on what he really books redundant. “Why do I have to?”
awards because you’re Negro!” Yet his wanted to achieve. Science fiction had Rickett said. “I hear it.” He never knows
use of race also served as a model for begun as the path of least resistance; whether he or a fictional character is the
science fiction’s next generation. now Delany began to wonder what his one who’s being addressed. “And then
“We all drink at the Delany trough,” earlier literary ambitions might look like there are times when he is talking to me,
LeVar Burton, who sought out the au- if transposed into the genre that had and he says, ‘Why don’t you listen?’”
thor’s books around the time he began chosen him. He stopped publishing nov- Delany gave him a look of unguarded
acting in “Star Trek,” told me. “A lot els for five years—what seemed, in the affection. “He puts up with me, I put
of us just aren’t aware of the source of world of science fiction, like a lifetime. up with him,” he said. “We’re both very
the water.” Burton recently performed a patient people.”
staged reading of Delany’s “Driftglass,” ometime this year, Delany plans to In 1991, Rickett, who struggled with
a story about gill-equipped divers called
“amphimen.” The tale inspired a young
S get married. The news of imminent
nuptials was a surprise coming from an
alcoholism, was living on the streets of
Manhattan, where he earned a pittance
Junot Díaz to pursue writing, as he re- octogenarian liberationist, who once be- doing magic tricks and custom calligra-
counts in the introduction to Delany’s lieved that the fight for gay marriage phy. Mostly, he sold secondhand books
forthcoming “Last Tales”; now the two was a distraction. But Delany has the out of a box. One day, Delany, who’d for-
are good friends. He praised Delany for ring to prove he’s no joker—a novelty gotten his wallet, bought one on store
exploring the complexity of human dif- replica of Tolkien’s One Ring to Rule credit; Rickett was astonished when he
ference beyond the consoling rhetoric of Them All. He’s hoping to protect the actually returned to pay. Chats progressed
self-representation. “Chip is interested future of someone who, when they met, to marathon hotel stays and culminated
in the labyrinth,” Díaz told me. “He’s in- thirty-two years ago, was homeless. in an invitation to move in with Delany,
terested in how the only path to any kind I was introduced to Dennis Rickett, who was dividing his time between the
of understanding is to get lost.” whom Delany calls “the big guy,” on Upper West Side and a lonely rented
The culmination of Delany’s early pe- my second visit to Philadelphia. Rick- room in Amherst, where he commuted
riod was “Nova,” a straightforwardly ett, sixty-nine, is a tall man with a trim by bus to teach. Rickett accepted after
thrilling narrative by a writer who would white goatee, a thick Brooklyn accent, reassuring himself that his professorial
soon demand much more of his audi- and thirty-three electric guitars—in- suitor wasn’t a serial killer. “If it wasn’t
ence. It’s a race between playboys from cluding a replica of B. B. King’s guitar for this guy here, I wouldn’t have my
powerful galactic dynasties, who are in- Lucille. He brought it out just as Delany I.D.,” Rickett said, alluding to the sev-
tent on seizing a strategically important handed me three books by Guy Dav- eral years that Delany spent replacing his
mineral from the core of a collapsing enport, interrupting an impromptu lec- government documents. “He’s given me
star. (The protagonist, Lorq von Ray, is ture with a few bluesy chords. more than my family.”
one of science fiction’s most memorable Delany looked shocked, then smiled: The story is movingly recounted in
heroes, a Senegalese-Norwegian space- “You have now heard Dennis play in Delany’s “Bread & Wine” (1997), a graphic
ship captain who is equal parts Ahab, front of you more than any other human memoir illustrated by the couple’s friend
Mario Andretti, and Aristotle Onassis.) being except me.” Mia Wolff. She made them strip naked
“Nova” was an entry in an old-fash- Rickett frowned at his unplugged in- to draw the fantastically stylized sex
ioned genre, the space opera, which had strument. “It sounds better with the dis- scenes; not since Isis raised Osiris from
reached its peak in the nineteen-fifties. tortion,” he said. the dead has there been anything quite
Yet its vision of people directly plugging His second, no less impressive collec- like the sequence that starts with Delany
into technology had a crucial influence tion is of custom T-shirts, emblazoned giving Rickett his first hot shower in
on cyberpunk, which arose in the eight- with waggish messages like “Straight months. Nothing was off limits, Wolff
ies. His style was just as galvanizing. “I Outta the Closet” and “What Would told me, except for one sketch of a kiss,
was used to very functional prose,” Neil Elvis Do?” Rickett showed me one that which Delany found sentimental. “He
Gaiman told me. “Chip felt like I’d taken featured a dashing photo of Delany at fools people with all the blatant sexual-
a step into poetry.” Reading Delany em- twenty-four years old. “I was wearing this ity,” she said, comparing Delany to the
boldened him to attempt a similar so- in my friend’s guitar store and a Black openly libidinous but privately sensitive
phistication in comics, he said: “There woman comes in and goes, ‘He’s fine,’” French novelist Colette. “He’s protective
was no limit to how good you could be Rickett said. He claims that “the big drop” of his heart—he doesn’t care about his
in your chosen area.” hasn’t affected Delany as much as he fears. genitals.” The kiss stayed.
After “Nova,” which earned a record- “I don’t think he has no memory,” he said. For years, they lived happily in Dela-
breaking advance of ten thousand dol- “I think he has too much to remember.” ny’s eight-room corner apartment on
lars, Delany signed a lucrative deal with Rickett mostly steers clear of Dela- Eighty-second Street and Amsterdam
36 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
COMING TOG ETH ER “You hear that?” my brother asked me.
S O U VA N K HAM T HAM MAVO N G SA “What?” I said.
“The ice-cream truck.”
I listened. And there it was. That tinny little sound
The Ice-Cream Truck twinkling somewhere nearby.
When you hear an ice-cream truck on your street, it
means that someone has thought of you. It means that
someone thinks you deserve something good in the
world, and you don’t have to imagine that for yourself
all by yourself.
That day, the ice-cream truck came to our street.
I slid the chain off the door and unlocked it. I grabbed
my brother and we ran outside to the curb. The sound of
the ice-cream truck was so loud, so close. My brother and
I waved it down.
The ice-cream truck stopped for us.
We were frantic in our joy, screaming out what we
wanted to eat, and for some reason the man in the truck
made it for us. We got what we asked for and ate quickly,
trying not to let the summer heat take it away from us.
We licked our fingers, hands, wrists. And we laughed for
no reason other than that we could.
We hadn’t noticed the ice-cream truck leaving. We
hadn’t noticed its loud music pulling away, growing distant.
My brother looked over at me with sudden worry, and
said, “I forgot to pay. Did you?”
I forgot, too.
I understood then why ice-cream trucks maybe didn’t
come to our street. Why, when we’d heard the ice-cream
truck before, it was always a street over, where there were
brick houses with front lawns and sprinklers and bright
flowers.
We promised each other that we wouldn’t tell our
parents. We wouldn’t tell them that we’d gone outside.
That we’d eaten ice cream. That we hadn’t paid. We
ot a lot of good sounds could be heard on spent the rest of the afternoon watching cartoons about
our street. Police sirens and ambulances. small blue people who lived inside mushrooms.
Next door, a man often yelled, his shouts I am forty-four years old now. I will be forty-five
sometimes quickly followed by a soft this summer. I hadn’t heard an ice-cream truck in my
thump. On our television, a movie played: neighborhood in years, but a few weeks ago there it was.
a building being blown up, gunfire, and flames. We Faint, twinkling. There was no one to ask, “You hear
weren’t supposed to watch things like that, but my that?” I could go outside now without having to tell
brother and I were home alone. I was ten years old and someone. I grabbed some cash and ran.
he was eight. I didn’t know exactly where the ice-cream truck was,
Our parents had told us to keep the television loud but I moved to where its music felt loudest. I closed my
so that it would sound as if there were an adult with eyes and followed what I felt.
us. They’d shown us the places we could hide together, When I opened my eyes, I saw someone who looked
if we felt scared. In the bathtub with the shower like my brother. A little boy, running. I knew he wasn’t
curtain drawn. In the closet beneath a pile of clothes. my brother. I reminded myself that my brother had
Under the kitchen sink with some pots and pans. grown up, and that he had died just last year. Whoever
When they were not at home, we weren’t allowed to this little boy was, he knew where he was going. So I
go outside. We couldn’t ride our bikes or look for ran in the same direction.
pretty marbles on the ground. And there it was, the ice-cream truck, in a parking lot. I
It was summer. There was no school to go to, and it got in line like everyone else. When it was my turn to pay,
cost too much to hire a babysitter to cover the time my I gave the man in the ice-cream truck everything I had, a
parents worked, even just a teen-ager saving up for a prom twenty-dollar bill, and I told him to keep the change. The
dress. We didn’t live near grandparents. There were no man gave me a standing ovation.
cousins next door, no aunts or uncles in the neighborhood I took my ice cream with me and ate it in the sunshine.
to go to. So it was just the two of us. I deserve this joy, I said. I deserve it all. 
ILLUSTRATION BY LEONIE BOS THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 37
 CREATION STORY

You can never live the same party twice & that makes me want to cry.
That makes me want to get so high that even the stars start trying it on.

Searching for Te Kore until I’m fully gone. Now we can start again.
Kick the night up from the earth, in our platform boots, & let the light in.

This is what made me tender like a pork bone boiling in every situation
I could barely sit in. On the flax mat going at god for hours & hours.

On the whenua calming Ruaumoko, while the police lasso the land.
In the car outside the station, my mother dependent on his rib. I had

my hands out the window, weighing the air to see if it felt like a Saturday night
or a Sunday, wondering if Dad would be let out of his cage in time

to see god today. I see atua today in everything. This is what made me. Watching
their descendants drop it lower than their expectations. They could never

sit in our situations which is why they can’t get up & break it down like we do
& this song made from Polynesian mystics, deceptive transformers, delivers us

back to when we were down on ourselves doing ugly little things. Rolling
our eyes at the singing. Avoiding the sun. Just as our mothers had done

when their mothers spent generations powdering themselves pretty

in the image of the father, ignoring both her mother & the whenua in her.

I should have held my fist up then, a palmful of protest, but that’s why I keep
my hands up, my hands up in the air now & this fresh set of fire reminds me

Avenue. There were so many thousands the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writ- Center City Gayborhood which Delany
of books, Rickett told me, that he made ers Association. His fellow-writers sent had kept from his Temple days. Two
Delany buy fire extinguishers. (“Not to him off with a Festschrift titled “Stories years later, Iva bought the larger but
put out any fires,” he clarified, “but just so for Chip,” with contributions from Kim more isolated condo where he and Rick-
we could fight our way out.”) Now most Stanley Robinson and Nalo Hopkinson. ett now reside.
of them have been sold, to Yale’s Beinecke The only complication involved a pen- Delany is still close with Iva, but wasn’t
Library—a “lobotomy,” as Delany de- sion that Delany thought he’d earned shy about saying that the episode had
scribes it, forced on him a few years after from the university; it didn’t exist. soured his final years. “You know the old
he left New York. “Part of me still thinks, His daughter, Iva, invited Delany and W. C. Fields joke about Philadelphia?”
What are you doing in Philadelphia?” he Rickett to move into her big stone house he asked me. It’s about a contest where
told me. “And what are you doing in the in the Philadelphia suburbs, where they the third prize is three weeks in the city
Fairmount of Philadelphia? You know, I could enjoy room and respite. Delany and the first prize is only one. “I won
came here because of a mistake.” accepted, even selling the lease of his some prize that we don’t even know
It began eight years ago, when Delany rent-controlled apartment to a landlord about.” The real issue might be that
retired from Temple University, where who had long schemed to evict him. But Delany no longer lives in the city whose
he’d been teaching literature and creative the arrangement collapsed in about a singularity makes his own legible.
writing since 2001. His retirement, mark- year. Iva told me that her father’s “friendly
ing the end of four decades in academia, chaos” of clutter and colloquy drove her n 1975, Delany published “Dhalgren,”
should have been a celebratory occasion,
coming shortly after he received the
husband, a “neat freak” who worked from
home, crazy. One day, Iva simply asked
I an eight-hundred-page trip through
the smoldering carcass of an American
Damon Knight Memorial Grand Mas- Delany and Rickett to leave. They re- city called Bellona. It was primarily in-
ter Award for lifetime achievement from treated to a pied-à-terre in Philadelphia’s spired by the wreckage of Harlem after
38 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
 of how Nanny Pearl had nails so long it used to freak me out & now
I’m like wtf was I even on about & every time I see my nail tech

it’s an homage & an apology for every time I didn’t listen, bit the apple &
felt abandoned, & then abandoned me & me & me. But here we are now

created, & on fire like Mahuika. This is what made me. Trying to weave
perfect sentences, forming mountains I don’t have the answers for. I’d ask

my ancestors, but I’m not sure they know. All we have ever done is our best
with the materials on hand: heat, water, soil. A smattering of words &

this is what made me drag myself upward from the ocean like Pania.
Fresh-faced & curious. This is what made me worshipful & marvellous, able to

stand upright, & some of that time I was dancing. This is what made me.
A duplicate of Hineahuone, our blood of red sand. No matter how hard we

sculpt ourselves, in the end we will always collapse back, & in the meantime
it is my friends who make me bow. Get on my hands & knees for

mop their drink up from the floor, kiss their beautiful ankles.
My god, you are so talented, embodied & creative. This is what

made me let down my ancestral knot, let my hips rock with all the rhythm
of the wind, this party beating & cultured in the space between

the sky & the land. Get high while you can. You have travelled
very far. I saw you coming in my mind born from the last burst star.

—Tayi Tibble

the riots of the late sixties, but he fin- Joan Baez,” Gibson told me. “Dhalgren,” Somehow, while mired in a fugue
ished it in London, where he and Hacker with its communes and street gangs, re- that never lifts, the Kid becomes a leg-
gave their unorthodox marriage one last newed his faith. “I have never under- end, publishing a book of poetry with
try. The relationship never quite got stood it,” he wrote in a foreword to a the help of an Auden-like visitor and
back on track, but their reconnection reissue, describing it as less a novel and assuming leadership of a multiracial
resulted in offspring: their daughter, Iva; more a shape-shifting “prose-city.” street gang that loots houses and de-
Hacker’s “Presentation Piece” (1974), “Dhalgren” both is and is not diffi- partment stores while cloaked in holo-
which won the National Book Award cult to read. The Kid, a twenty-seven- graphic shields. Delany never resolves
for Poetry; and “Dhalgren,” which lifted year-old poet who has forgotten his own whether Bellona’s strange distortions
both Delany and his genre toward a name, wanders through the city—where are artifacts of the Kid’s psyche or
complex new maturity. streets change places, and a second moon glitches in the city itself, “the bricks, and
William Gibson, the author of “Neu- appears—equipped with a notebook and the girders, and the faulty wiring and
romancer” (1984) and a pioneer of cy- a multi-bladed weapon called an orchid. the shot elevator machinery, all conspir-
berpunk, first saw “Dhalgren” at a cam- A series of encounters befall him: sex ing together to make these myths true.”
pus bookstore while studying at the with men and women in parks and aban- By delivering his most challenging
University of British Columbia. At the doned buildings; barroom chats with work at the zenith of his mass-market
time, he’d drifted away from an early draft dodgers, an astronaut, and other popularity, Delany created that unicorn
ambition to write science fiction, which refugees from the outside world; and a of publishing: an experimental door-
he felt had failed to capture the anar- stint working for a middle-class family stopper that sold more than a million
chic side of living through the sixties. who, like zombies, go on reënacting their copies. The Times Book Review hailed
“It’s difficult to get the same kick out drab daily routines in denial of the sur- it as an unprecedentedly sophisticated
of Heinlein when you’re listening to rounding catastrophe. work of science fiction with “not a trace
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 39
 As his novels grew increasingly am-
bitious, Delany’s life, too, assumed so-
lidity. On the invitation of Leslie Fiedler,
a scholarly champion of genre fiction,
he took a position at the University of
Buffalo, the first in a series of appoint-
ments. Over the years, he developed
workshops that emphasized grammar
and syntax, and made aspirant science-
fiction writers read literary authors like
Flaubert. Academic life, though, bored
him to tears. “I thought the university
was a place where a lot of intelligent
people spent a lot of time talking intel-
ligently,” he told me, but colleagues
seemed uninterested in discussing ideas
outside the classroom. He preferred
Manhattan, where neighborhood book-
sellers were always available for an in-
tellectual quickie.
In the mid-seventies, Delany moved
into the West Eighty-second Street
apartment, where he remained for forty
years. He also began a seven-year rela-
“We’ve convened this meeting today to admire the ball, and tionship with an aspiring filmmaker
we will probably do the same thing again tomorrow.” named Frank Romeo, who moved in
with him and co-parented Iva. (Hacker,
who shared custody, lived nearby.) They
• • collaborated on several short films, and
Delany’s next far-future novel, “Stars in
of pulp in it”; Delany’s idol, Theodore pulse, mirroring poetry’s, was the “incan- My Pocket Like Grains of Sand” (1984),
Sturgeon, called it the best book ever tatory task of naming nonexistent ob- was in part a celebration of their rela-
to come out of the genre. Some purists jects.” Delany also claimed the mantle tionship, which fell apart in the late
denounced it: too long, too smutty, too of social criticism, arguing that while lit- eighties when Romeo became physi-
scienceless, and above all too literary. erature’s conventions subordinated the cally violent. Delany never finished the
Delany, though, was already redrawing world to individual psychology, science planned sequel, or wrote another novel
the parameters of science fiction. fiction’s directed the attention outward, set in outer space.
In a series of essays that established toward systems, societies, and difference. Heartbreak wasn’t the only factor in
him as one of the field’s leading theo- He elaborated these ideas in vigorous his terrestrial turn. In 1979, Delany began
rists, Delany argued not only that style exchanges with peers like Thomas Disch, publishing his sword-and-sorcery “Re-
was central to science fiction but that Roger Zelazny, Ursula K. Le Guin, and turn to Nevèrÿon” series, a genre even
science fiction had more linguistic re- Joanna Russ, whom journalists were be- more disregarded than science fiction.
sources at its disposal than realism. ginning to identify as American science Again, Delany reinvented a form, ex-
Genre, in his view, was a mode of read- fiction’s New Wave. ploiting its setting on the cusp of “civi-
ing, and science fiction’s allowed words He also began to synthesize the mod- lization” to probe the origins of gender,
to express more meanings than any other ernist density and the adult themes of race, and class, and especially written lan-
genre yet devised. He elegantly illus- “Dhalgren” with the otherworldliness guage, which is promulgated, in the world
trated the argument by close-reading a and brio of his work from the genre’s of the tales, by an old woman with de-
single sentence: “The red sun is high, so-called Golden Age. Just a year after constructionist ideas whose contribution
the blue low”—nonsensical in a natu- emerging from the heavy haze of Bel- is gradually forgotten.
ralist novel, but for “s.f.” readers an ex- lona, he dashed off the effervescent The series opens with an imposing
oplanet in eight words. “Trouble on Triton” (1976), a space com- metafiction that frames its narrative as
His redefinition implied a new gene- edy of manners set in a bubble city with an interpretation of an ancient text in
alogy of the genre. H. G. Wells and Jules more than forty recognized sexes. The Linear B. Yet the tales themselves have
Verne had merely described the future, protagonist is a weak-willed man who a clarity and a stylistic precision that
Delany wrote; it was American pulp mag- resents his society’s freedom of self-defi- surpassed his previous work, weaving
azines, with their much derided jargon nition because he lacks confidence in their ideas into the lives of slaves, ac-
of marvellous gadgetry, that had truly his own desires—a composite, Delany tors, merchants, and other ordinary den-
spawned the genre. And its primal im- told me, “of all the straight guys I knew.” izens of Kolhari. They also announced
40 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
a deepening interest in the slippage it tore the scrim of fantasy, interleaving and Brodkey’s “heartfelt lies” threatened
between lived experience and its repre- Nevèrÿon with disquieting scenes from to further stigmatize gay men.
sentation, from the misprisions of his- the streets of contemporary New York. He retorted with a pornographic tome
tory to society’s erasure of relationships Delany described murders of the home- called “The Mad Man” (1994), an aca-
deemed “unmentionable.” less, who were widely seen as carriers; demic mystery novel whose orgiastic es-
week-to-week shifts in medical acronyms capades violate countless taboos but ex-
n a chilly day in March, I accom- and hypotheses about the disease’s trans- clude acts that present a significant risk
O panied Delany to the unveiling of
his portrait at Philadelphia’s William
mission; the intensified prejudice faced
by gay men; and the dreadful assump-
of H.I.V. transmission. The book cul-
minates in a scene of consensual erotic
Way L.G.B.T.Q. Community Center, a tion that his own days were numbered. degradation that results not in madness
nonprofit housed in conjoined brown- He also spirited the epidemic into Kol- but in communion, as the narrator, a
stones in Center City. Delany, in a denim hari, smiting the city with a parallel illness Black graduate student in philosophy,
jacket with gray cotton sleeves, climbed to reflect on the myriad, class-stratified puts his home and his body at the dis-
a short flight of steps toward the en- ways that societies respond to contagion. posal of a group of homeless men. As
trance, where a group of teens jostled The novel concluded with an appendix an appendix, Delany included a study
past; unfazed, he proceeded into a spa- that was, essentially, a public-service an- from The Lancet, which concluded that
cious, high-ceilinged parlor. The direc- nouncement, telling at-risk readers that oral sex—his own exclusive preference—
tor greeted Delany and made introduc- “total abstinence is a reasonable choice.” does not transmit the disease.
tions. Rickett, in a bucket hat and a leather Reaction was swift, with bookstore Delany had previously written por-
jacket, cracked wise about an exhibition chains refusing to stock the new volume nographic works—such as the brutal
of student art. Finally, we took our seats and Bantam discontinuing the series. “Hogg”—but this one had a political
facing a small lectern, behind which a Delany hasn’t published another origi- vision, aiming to cleave the prudish
pinched, vaguely Delany-ish visage in a nal work of fiction with a major com- conflation of disgust and danger. He
plain wood frame loomed. A young trans mercial imprint since. Taking banish- pitched his vision to a wider audience
woman in a striped sweater spoke of the ment as an opportunity, he began to write with “Times Square Red, Times Square
inspiration that Delany’s work gives to almost exclusively about the lives of gay Blue,” which argued that bulldozing a
queer people, by depicting “worlds that men, starting with his own. “The Mo- red-light district to build a “glass and
are not real but could be.” tion of Light in Water” was, on the one aluminum graveyard” was symptomatic
Delany thanked the center for its ser- hand, a beautifully wrought literary or- of gentrification’s attack on the cross-class
vice and scholarship, and for the honor igin story, laced with reflections on the interactions that stabilized urban life.
of having his likeness installed a block chancy enterprise of autobiography. At “Contact is the conversation that starts
away from his old apartment. “I’m not the same time, Delany recounted his in the line at the grocery counter with
going to tell you any of the off-color sto- coming of age in a vanishing world, where the person behind you,” he wrote. “It is
ries I could about the neighborhood,” he sex with thousands of men at theatres, the pleasantries exchanged with a neigh-
said slyly. “But there were lots and lots bathhouses, piers, and public rest rooms bor . . . as well, it can be two men watch-
of them.” He signed original paperbacks had awakened him to the infinite breadth ing each other masturbating together in
for a cluster of shy twentysomethings, not only of desire but of social possibil- adjacent urinals of a public john.”
then posed with them for a picture, say- ity. “Once the AIDS crisis is brought under He freely discussed his own sexual
ing, “Come, let’s pretend to be old friends.” control,” he predicted, such a world would history in books and speeches, from
We exited onto a narrow street with return, and give rise to “a sexual revolu- lighthearted cruising anecdotes to the
a huge mural commemorating the strug- tion to make a laughing stock of any so- harrowing memory of being raped by
gle for L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Steam billowed cial movement that till now has borne two sailors as a young man. None of it
from a vent in the sidewalk, dissipating, the name.” was confessional in tone. Deeply skep-
as we neared, to reveal a blanket-covered Language, Delany believed, would tical of biography’s emphasis on “defin-
heap. People were sleeping outside all be key to this revolution, and he resolved ing” moments and all-explaining inner
over the neighborhood, which, before its to speak clearly and publicly about even truths, he employed his own life as a
gentrification, had been a red-light dis- the “most marginal areas of human sex- lens on the variety of human experience,
trict. Delany, as usual, pulled out his phone ual exploration.” So he was outraged lavishing attention not only on the de-
to take a picture; across the way, a group when he read, in an issue of this mag- sires but also on the everyday struggles
of smartly dressed young women shot azine in 1993, Harold Brodkey’s account of the many men he’d known and blown.
him a reproachful look. of contracting AIDS. Brodkey, who was His tolerance could go alarmingly far.
“Could you not?” one said. married, wrote that he was “surprised” Delany once praised a newsletter pub-
Rickett crossed his arms and smiled: to have the disease, because his “adven- lished by NAMBLA, the pedophile-
“He’s never seen a homeless person tures in homosexuality” had ended de- advocacy group, for its “sane thinking”
before.” cades ago—a claim that Delany found about the age of consent. Unlike Allen
Perhaps the first novel about AIDS medically preposterous. “I literally threw Ginsberg, he never belonged to the or-
was “The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals,” the thing across the room,” he told me. ganization. Yet he has refused to retract
an installment of Delany’s “Nevèrÿon” “AIDS, especially at that time, was some- the comments—in part because of his
series. Written between 1983 and 1984, thing that you could say anything about,” own sexual experiences with men as an
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 41
underage boy, which he refuses to char- a lonely and impoverished New York Greg Tate, who’d once considered De-
acterize as abusive. existence, it doubles as a furtive satire lany almost an “Oreo,” rediscovered him
Delany’s own lifelong preference has of the capital-“L” literary novel. Here, as “the ultimate ghetto writer”—Black,
been for “bears” who look at least as old Delany seems to say, is what I might have gay, genre, and writing slave narratives
as he does. “Through the Valley of the written, and who I might have become, in space. More personally significant
Nest of Spiders” (2012), his sprawling had I colored within the lines. was his embrace by a younger cohort of
career capstone, is, among other things, Delany’s eclipse as a writer of mass- Black gay writers, like the poet John
a meditation on aging as part of a gay market fiction coincided with his rebirth Keene. The two became friends after
couple. The novel began as a response as an intellectual icon. Wesleyan Uni- both read at an event for the Dark Room
to Vladimir Nabokov’s observation that versity Press revived his “Nevèrÿon” se- Collective of Black poets around Bos-
one “utterly taboo” theme in American ries, which drew praise from Fredric ton in 1989.
literature was a “Negro-White mar- Jameson and Umberto Eco, in the early “Chip has given any number of writ-
riage which is a complete and glorious nineties. It also published a series of essay ers permission,” Keene told me, describ-
success.” Delany queered the conceit, collections that established him as a lead- ing Delany as a “peerless stylist” and a
imagining two teens from early-twenty- ing theorist of paraliterary genres, from radical theorist whose ideas served as a
first-century Georgia who fall in love, science fiction to comic books to por- bulwark in the reactionary eighties and
establish a multiracial “pornotopia” in nography. Gayatri Spivak, the decon- nineties. The influence went both ways.
a rural town called Diamond Harbor, structionist scholar, was so impressed After seeing Keene read a work of his-
and live long enough to support each with Delany’s work that she asked him torical fiction, Delany was inspired to
other through the ravages of senility in to sire her baby. Ever obliging, Delany write “Atlantis: Three Tales” (1993), a col-
a transformed future. left her a deposit at a sperm bank, and lection of novellas that he dedicated to
The book’s millennials are not en- would have gone through with the ar- Keene. It was a kind of homecoming.
tirely convincing, and, whatever one’s rangement, he told me, if she hadn’t in- The stunning opener fictionalizes the
kinks, it’s hard to endure so many orgies sisted on his accepting legal paternity. arrival of Delany’s father, a country boy
described with the density and detail of Spivak wasn’t the only one looking from North Carolina, in nineteen-twen-
the Sistine Chapel. But, amid a pleni- to Delany as a father figure. He was also ties New York, whose subways and sky-
tude of gay fiction hemmed in by the claimed as the progenitor of Afrofutur- scrapers leave him speechless with their
conventions of literary realism, there re- ism, an emerging discourse that framed “honied algebra of miracles.”
mains something awe-inspiring in Dela- the global displacements of Black history
ny’s commitment to imagining the world as intrinsically science-fictional. (He de- ars of light swept over Delany’s face
otherwise. Ironically, his most acclaimed
late novel embodies pornotopia through
scribes Afrofuturism as a “well-intentioned,
if confusing marketing tool.”) Others
B as we sped through the Lincoln
Tunnel. “And that’s why Spinoza was
its absence. In “Dark Reflections” (2007), came to Delany through the success of declared an atheist,” he said, wrapping
a closeted Black poet from a bourgeois his onetime student Octavia Butler; the up a soliloquy. “There is some reason-
family spoils every chance that life of- two appeared on so many panels to- able explanation for why the waters
fers him for erotic fulfillment, unable to gether that Delany, who admired her parted and the Hebrews got through.”
overcome his fear of blackmail and his stories but felt that they had little in It was early May, and I had been driv-
morbid attachment to the memory of a common beyond race, saw the pairing ing for about two hours, accompanying
respectable aunt. A sensitive portrayal of as essentialism. The influential critic him to visit an old friend of his in Dover
Plains, New York. I was also taking him
to see his city. Bellona, Tethys, Morgre,
Kolhari—beneath their doubled moons
and artificial gravity, amid ancient mar-
kets and interspecies cruising grounds,
the metropolises of Delany’s fiction are
all faces of New York. “God,” he said,
as we neared the tunnel’s mouth. “I
haven’t been here for years, and it looks
just the same.”
We made a pit stop at the Port Au-
thority Bus Terminal, which Delany de-
scribed as his old “briar patch.” He
claimed to have once known where
“every homeless guy slept” in the build-
ing, whose bathrooms and other con-
veniences have since been drastically
curtailed. “People assume that the home-
less have enough control over their lives
that if they really don’t like moving began to wonder if they’d ever see each I returned in the morning to find
around a particular place they can hitch­ other again. Delany dozing in an armchair as Mason
hike somewhere else,” he said. “That’s He’d first mentioned Mason to me fiddled with an impressive box of tools.
not the way it works.” in Philadelphia, complaining that his as­ He’d grown up in the area and first gone
Back in the car, we crawled up Eighth sistant, a very kind but “very straight” to the adult theatres of New York City
Avenue, f lanked by ambulances and young man, had declined to make the in his twenties as a kind of initiation.
crowds emboldened by the warmth nearly two­hundred­mile trip to Dover He’d since lived with two long­term
of spring. Delany pointed out the for­ Plains out of a misguided concern that partners. His deceased first husband
mer sites of sandwich shops and adult it would be an adulterous betrayal of was in a blue urn near the television.
theatres. “This is where the Capri was,” Rickett. (The assistant says he simply His current boyfriend was asleep in the
he said, indicating a parking lot. “Now, didn’t feel like driving.) No­ next room; far from object­
you know, it’s nothing.” A Starbucks on body else he could ask had ing to Delany’s visit, he’d
Forty­seventh Street had once been a a car, Delany said—and I asked him to sign a copy of
successful restaurant owned by a Black thought of my own, sitting “Bread & Wine.” I asked if
woman named Barbara Smith, whose uselessly in Brooklyn. A few the neighbors had given
annual Fourth of July picnics in River­ weeks later, I offered to take him any trouble for his flag.
side Park had been a highlight of Dela­ him. Rickett gave his bless­ “They can’t, because it’s
ny’s neighborhood until the authorities ing as we set out: “You don’t under the First Amendment,”
shut them down. have to bring him back!” Mason thundered. Besides,
I observed that he was an encyclo­ In Dutchess County, we he went on, he knew a judge,
pedia of the city. “An encyclopedia of sped by pastures, a mini­ and had a trans friend across
failed attempts by the city,” Delany cor­ golf course, a weight­loss the park. New York City,
rected me. “People trying to do good retreat that Delany once attended with on the other hand, he now preferred to
things and the city . . . ‘Well, we just can’t Romeo, and a sprawling complex owned avoid—too much violence, especially
let that happen.’ ” He asked me who the by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Trump from the police.
current mayor was, and, once I’d finished 2024” and “Blue Lives Matter” f lags As we said our goodbyes, it felt like
describing Eric Adams, with his friend­ winked from the greenery. A one­lane we’d just emerged from one of Delany’s
liness to developers and subway crack­ bridge over a burbling stream led straight late novels. Their pastoral pornotopias,
downs, he assured me that he had no to a large house draped in signage that conjured as though from the homoerotic
trouble imagining such a person. decried the “perverts” in Washington subtext of “Huckleberry Finn,” had more
After stopping for lunch on Eighty­ and implored passersby to “Make Amer­ of a basis in reality than I’d suspected,
second Street, where a luxury cosmetics ica God’s Again.” one hidden by the shopworn map that
shop occupies the ground floor of Dela­ I asked Delany if he felt comfortable divides the country into poor rural tra­
ny’s old building, we continued to Route in the area. “The philosopher is he who ditionalists and libertine city folk. Delany
9A. The city fell away to the sounds of aspires to be at home everywhere,” he hadn’t abandoned science fiction to wal­
Carole King, Bobbie Gentry, and Mar­ answered, quoting Novalis. “And I still low in pornography, as some contended;
tha & the Vandellas—Delany’s play­ like to think of myself as a bit of a phi­ he’d stopped imagining faraway worlds
list—as we raced up the Hudson. When losopher.” I recalled that Delany had once to describe queer lives deemed unreal
“Eight Miles Wide,” by Storm Large, hitchhiked across the South in the wan­ in this one.
came on, he laughed and began to sing ing years of Jim Crow, with only his light It was a six­hour drive back to Phil­
along: “My vagina is eight miles wide, complexion and the loneliness of truck adelphia. We stopped for lunch at a Cre­
absolutely everyone can come inside.” drivers for protection. ole restaurant in Kingston, where Delany
His mood grew expansive. On the Saw Shortly before nightfall, we arrived declared our server, a green­haired young
Mill River Parkway, the trumpets of at a trailer park surrounded by a pali­ man with piercings, “cute as a button.”
Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathus­ sade fence. Nobody seemed to be out­ Back in the car, he said that he hadn’t
tra” sounded from his shirt’s front pocket. side. Circling, we passed barbecue grills, spent so much time talking about him­
It was a call from his friend Mason. cars asleep under tarps, and one Amer­ self in years. In a sense, it was true. But
Delany met Mason at the Variety ican flag after the next. Eventually, I no­ I’d heard so much more about lovers, ed­
Photoplays Theatre in 1983. He was one ticed that one mobile home’s occupants itors, neighbors, friends, and strangers
among thousands, but so close to Dela­ had also run up the rainbow, which flut­ that I began to wonder where in the
ny’s rugged ideal, and so affectionate, tered in the breeze over a blue porch crowded theatre of Delany’s memories
that they had seen each other as often strung with Christmas lights. I pulled I’d find the man who’d cared to know
as they could for decades. Age, however, into the drive. Delany clambered out. them all in such detail. I was reaching
had cast a shadow on their bond. Delany As I shut off the engine, a door swung for the question that would get us back
couldn’t take the train as easily as he open to reveal a heavyset man in sus­ on track, back to the science­fiction
once had. Although they occasionally penders with a cleft lip and a yellowing Grand Master and the private singular­
spoke on the phone, correspondence was mustache. Mason bounded down the ity of his imagination, when he pulled
difficult because of Mason’s illiteracy. stairs and threw his arms around Delany out his memo pad. “Now,” Delany an­
Especially after “the big drop,” Delany with a cry of “Chippie!” nounced, “I’m going to interview you.” 
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 43
44 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 PHOTOGRAPH BY BEA DE GIACOMO
 FICTION

P’s Parties
BY J H U M PA L AH I R I

should note straightaway line seas in July. They’d pick up a de- doctor, always among those invited to
that P’s parties took place cent smattering of our language, adapt the party, ended up saving her life with
every year at her house, to the food, forgive the daily chaos. Over- a tricky surgery. From then on, this yearly
on a Saturday or Sunday night, they’d become minor experts in gathering became a constant: this sunny
afternoon, during the the historical events we’d memorized as afternoon around her birthday, this
mild winters we typically kids and had all but forgotten—which merry, lavish lunch that brought together
enjoy in this city. emperor succeeded which, what they a wide range of people. P liked to fill
Unlike the slog of other winter hol- accomplished. They had a strategic re- the house and churn her friends to-
idays spent with family, always arduous, lationship with this city without ever gether—relatives, neighbors, parents of
P’s birthday, at the beginning of the New fully being a part of it, knowing that her children’s classmates. She liked to
Year, was an unpredictable gathering, sooner or later their trip would end and throw open the door at least fifty times,
languorous and light. I looked forward one day they’d be gone. offering something to eat, playing host,
to the commotion of the crowded house, They were so different from the group exchanging a few words with everyone.
the pots of water on the verge of boil- I belonged to: those of us born and raised It was thanks to my wife, then, that
ing, the smartly dressed wives always in Rome, who bemoaned the city’s alarm- I went to that house once a year, a some-
ready to lend a hand in the kitchen. I ing decline but could never leave it be- what secluded house on the city’s out-
waited for the first few glasses of pro- hind. The type of people for whom just skirts. To get there, you took a curved,
secco before lunch to go to my head, moving to a new neighborhood in their picturesque road, lined with cypresses
sampled the various appetizers. Then I thirties—going to a new pharmacy, buy- and tumbling ivy. A road that swept you
liked to join the other adults out on the ing the newspaper from a different news- away, an urban road that ferried you to-
patio for a little fresh air, to smoke a cig- stand, finding a table at a different cof- ward the sea and put the frenzied city
arette and comment on the soccer game fee bar—was the equivalent of departure, far behind. At a certain point there was
the kids played without interruption in displacement, complete rupture. a sharp right turn; you had to keep an
the yard. eye out, it was easy to miss. After that
The atmosphere at P’s party was was an old friend of my wife’s. it became a sort of residential labyrinth,
warm but impersonal, owing to the num-
ber of people invited, who knew one an-
P They’d known each other for many
years before we started dating, having
with narrow, shaded, unpaved streets.
You couldn’t see the houses, just tall gates
other either too well or not at all. You’d grown up on the same block lined with and the house numbers etched in stone.
encounter two distinct groups, like two grand palazzi. As kids they played to- P’s house, where she lived with her
opposing currents that crisscross in the gether until dark; they went to the same children, her husband, and their two
ocean, forming a perfectly symmetrical elementary school and then the same dogs, was at one end of this labyrinth. A
shape, only to cancel each other out a challenging high school; they wandered spacious home, recently constructed, airy,
moment later. On one side, there were off to buy contraband cigarettes from a with large, open rooms and plenty of
those like me and my wife, old friends shady guy behind a piazza that was quiet space for a hundred-plus people to move
of P and her husband who came every in those days. They went to the same about. At first glance—the house sat on
year, and on the other, our counterparts: university and, after graduating, rented a vast lawn, with no other structure in
foreigners who’d show up for a few years, a fifth-floor apartment in the thick of sight—it resembled a big, white, square-
or sometimes just once. the city center. In the summers they shaped rock jutting out of a green sea.
They came from different countries, travelled together to other countries— In the distance you could glimpse the
for work or for love, for a change of experiences they still loved to talk about. faint outline of the city where my wife
scenery, or for some other mysterious Then matters of the heart intervened: and I and nearly all the other guests lived.
reason. They were a nomadic popula- my wife met me at a New Year’s Eve It had a certain effect on me, coming to
tion that piqued my interest—proto- party, while P married a staid but friendly that house from our pleasant but com-
types, perhaps, for one of my future sto- lawyer, a man of average height, good- pact apartment, where every book, every
ries, the kind of people I’d have the looking but slightly cross-eyed, and be- spoon, every shirt had its proper place,
chance to meet and casually observe came a mother of four—three boys in where I knew every shelf and hinge, and
only at P’s house. In no time at all they’d quick succession, and then, like a sim- seating ten at the dinner table was a
manage to visit nearly all parts of our ple but welcome dessert after a three- squeeze. An apartment whose windows
country, tackling the smaller towns on course meal, a girl. looked out only onto other apartments,
the weekends, skiing our mountains in Not long before the girl was born, P other windows, other lives like ours.
February, and swimming in our crystal- had a brush with death. A renowned My memories of the past five or so
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 45
parties had blurred together. Each year younger and older kids playing out in cream, a new novel that everyone was
was different, and each year, for the most the yard, in the sun. Their coats were talking about. After we chatted a min-
part, was the same. I made the same strewn on the grass, like towels left on ute, the doorbell rang again, and we were
small talk I’d forget a minute later, I the beach while everyone goes for a swim. ushered down the hall. We took off our
practiced my two rusty but still passable The grade schoolers and teen-agers ran coats and threw them on the couch, atop
foreign languages, which I’d always brush around in good spirits, sweating, and P’s an already precarious, promiscuous
up on a bit. I indulged, perhaps a little pair of dogs were barking and chasing mound of fabric. It was warm in the
too much, in the same delicacies arrayed after them. house, but my wife, who is sensitive to
on the buffet table, circling back for I thought of our own boy with a cold and was wearing a sleeveless dress,
more, with no regard for the extra kilos pang of nostalgia, the one child my wife decided to keep her pearl-gray wool
I’d put on and fret over after all those and I had brought into this world. Just shawl around her shoulders.
holiday meals. I said hello to friends and the other day he’d have come with us, We found our way to the bar and
kissed the cheeks of women and he, too, would have picked up two glasses of prosecco. We
in their forties and fifties played in the yard without made a toast, locking eyes for a moment.
who staunchly refused to his coat. But now he was a Then, with no hard feelings, for the rest
turn into signore. I absorbed grown man, a college grad- of the afternoon my wife and I moved
the scent of their expensive uate, a few months into his through the party in separate circles,
perfumes, made brief con- new life abroad, pursuing paying each other no mind.
tact with the warm skin of further studies at a foreign I began wandering about the house
their shoulders, admired the university. as if it were a favorite haunt, a place I
elegant, form-fitting dresses My wife didn’t mourn knew fairly well but always partially, en-
they could still get away his absence—if anything, countering one friend after another. It
with at their age, at our she was eager for him to was only in this house, at this party, that
age. At P’s parties I felt em- become more and more in- we—mired in our responsibilities, in the
braced, cared for, and at the same time dependent. According to her, the fact personal and professional obligations
blissfully ignored, free. We were detached that he was getting by on his own for that devour us, that define us—found
from our flawed, finely tuned lives, from the most part, and now had a woman the calm and the time to catch up. We
our frustrations. I could sense time in his life, and was far from us, was a ate, shared our news, chatted aimlessly.
lengthening and the suspension, at least much deserved and happy ending to our All the while I was paying close at-
for a few hours, of all responsibility. long and exhausting road as parents. It tention to that other group: my poten-
I wouldn’t have been able to distin- meant that we’d done a good job, and tial fictional characters, the foreigners
guish one party from the next, the in- this was a milestone worth celebrating. with whom I’d exchange just a few words,
cidents, the particulars, until one year I found her lack of worry astonishing: or more glances than words, really. I was
when something out of the ordinary oc- she who’d hovered over our son his whole intrigued by their point of view. They
curred, an ultimately banal disruption life, who’d taken such exacting care of fascinated me precisely because, even
that remains a caesura in my life. his every meal, every soccer game, every though we were crammed into the same
test, every report card. But then I real- house, celebrating the same mutual
hat year, I remember everything very ized that she was always looking ahead, friend, partaking in the same collective
T precisely. I remember, for example,
that there was more traffic than usual,
very rarely behind, which was why she
now had her sights on his career, his
ritual, we remained two species, distinct
and unmistakable. Eventually they’d
which meant that we got there an hour love life, his future children—in short, drift off into their relaxed and secluded
late. It didn’t matter; at P’s it was always his complete separation from us. While, conversations, and we into ours. They
buffet style. I remember that my wife for me, not seeing him every day, not seemed proud of their decision to up-
was telling me a story, talking ceaselessly hearing his voice around the house, or root their lives, to acquire, in middle age,
as I drove, and that I was tuning her out. even his mediocre violin playing, not new points of reference. They evoked a
In fact, her slightly hoarse voice and her knowing what he was up to, not adding world beyond my horizons, the risky
tendency to be long-winded were get- his favorite juice to the grocery cart— steps I’d never taken: a world that had
ting on my nerves. She managed an art it all came as a blow. I was proud of him, perhaps snatched my son away for good.
gallery. I’d have preferred to drive that yes, I was excited about his prospects, After making the rounds inside, I
scenic stretch of road in silence, but she but I still had a hole in my heart. went out onto the patio. I stole a ciga-
went on about clients and promising We rang the bell even though the rette, one of the few I allow myself on
young painters. Before getting out of the door was ajar. We kissed cheeks with P occasion when unwinding away from
car, she changed her shoes, trading her and her husband, who were there to home, and I joined the others watch-
comfortable flats for a fancier pair with greet us at the entrance as always. P was ing the mix of younger and older kids
heels, partly to gain an extra inch or two in fine form, radiant, wearing a printed still playing soccer, making a racket in
and become just a touch taller than me. dress from the seventies that had be- the yard. The trees scattered around the
Because P always invited all her chil- longed to her mother, with a leather belt lawn were turning gold in the light. At
dren’s friends, the first thing we saw, walk- to accentuate her waist. We’d come bear- first, we were all men. Then P joined
ing up to the house, was a swarm of ing a few gifts: a scented candle, body our conversation for a minute, to make
46 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
sure we had everything we needed, some- some young boy, twelve or so, his hair of her language and ours, but it was easy
thing to drink, something to eat. She dishevelled, legs splayed—it didn’t look enough to follow.
treated each of us like a lifelong friend, good. Had he fainted? Or had some- “And then?”
even though she hardly knew most of thing worse happened? We had no in- “He said his head was spinning, and
her guests. formation. Then the doctor arrived, the that he couldn’t hear anything for a few
“You’ve got a fantastic lawn. It would one who’d saved P’s life years before. A seconds, that everything went silent.”
be nice to put a pool back here,” one of tall, lanky man with black hair grazing “Give us a little space, please,” the
the men said to her. his shoulders, a dangling mustache, a doctor said.
“It’s not worth it. Every summer we steady, good-natured demeanor. The crowd backed off. Only the boy
spend two months at the sea,” P replied. Next to the boy was a pale-faced and his mother remained, with the doc-
“Oh, where?” woman. The mother, I assumed. I hadn’t tor and P. I took a few steps back my-
“A tiny island, rather remote, still noticed her before—we hadn’t crossed self, but then I froze, paralyzed by the
quite primitive. You have to take a boat paths, despite having just spent at least thought that the same thing could just
to buy groceries.” an hour in the same crowded house, in as easily happen to my son—why not?—
“You don’t mind?” the same rooms, circling the same table, playing soccer in the park on a Sunday,
“Not at all. It’s the inconvenience I eating the same food. with no parent at his side.
crave. I’ve been going there since I was She was a foreigner, you could tell No one spoke for a minute or two.
a little girl.” right away by her facial features. She The doctor examined the boy, lifted his
“How wonderful.” was wearing a summery dress unsuited feet, felt his forehead, his wrist. After a
“In August the entire island smells to the season; a heavy and complicated little while, the boy sat up on his own
of rosemary. There’s a small lighthouse, necklace adorned a triangle of bare skin. and had a sip of water.
a pool in the middle, the sea all around, She wore very little makeup—with the “It’s not too serious, signora,” the doc-
and that’s about it,” P said. exception of wine-colored nail polish— tor explained.
I’d never been to that island, but I’d and had a kind of prematurely weath- “But why? He’s always been an
heard about it from my wife, who used ered beauty. Her dark hair was tied up active boy, nothing like this has ever
to go there for a week or so every sum- in a bun at her nape. She must have happened.”
mer as a guest of P’s family. Then one been around ten years younger than my “Your son suffered a mild shock. Per-
year—my wife told me—a man, a great wife, with a sharper gaze and, I felt, a haps he didn’t eat enough lunch. Kids
swimmer who did twenty laps in the more turbulent inner life. are always running around non-stop
pool twice a day, died right there in the “What happened?” the doctor asked without thinking. This kind of thing
water, while racing a friend, struck by her. can happen sometimes when we get
a heart attack in front of all those young “I have no idea. I was inside while he overexcited. Did your son have break-
kids and the teen-agers, including his was playing. Then one of his friends came fast this morning?”
own children. My wife, traumatized by and told me he wasn’t feeling well. By “Yes.”
the scene, never wanted to go back. the time I got here he was trembling— “Is he an anxious boy?”
And even though we did travel with P he seemed shaken and disoriented.” I got the impression that she didn’t
and her family from time to time, The woman spoke in a strange mix understand the question. In any case, she
spending a weekend together in the
countryside, we’d never gone to visit
them on that island.
“And I don’t really like swimming in
pools,” P added, as if she’d been listen-
ing to my thoughts.
“Why not?”
“There’s no life in that water.”
We talked about other seas, other is-
lands, the pleasures of boating versus
going to the beach: the frivolous patter
of people with money. But as we spoke
we became aware that a strange calm
had descended over the yard. The chil-
dren weren’t yelling anymore. Some-
thing had happened.

e went down to see. A group of

W kids, a dozen or so, stood frozen
in the distance. In the middle of their
circle, someone was lying on the ground.
As we inched closer, we saw a hand- “While you were preheating the oven, I pre-ate the cookie dough.”
didn’t respond. Her son was back on his front of me—facing away, but I recog- “Not really. Sometimes I have no pa-
feet now, a little embarrassed, insisting nized her immediately, her hair in a bun, tience for meeting new people.”
he was fine. His speech was normal. He her taut neck. She was alone, staring at “There were so many foreigners, more
had braces. He’d accepted a sandwich the yard, where a handful of kids, in- every year.”
from someone and was eating. cluding her son, were still out playing. “They must be the parents of her
“Can I keep playing?” he asked the She was smoking a cigarette. When she kids’ friends, who go to the same inter-
doctor. Unlike his mother, he spoke our turned to see who was there, she, too, national school.”
language perfectly well, and even had a seemed to recognize me right away. From “A good school?”
touch of our city’s accent. the blanched look on her face, I could “Expensive, and a little overrated if
“Of course you can. Just take it easy.” tell she was still distraught. you ask me. I trust our school system.”
And that was that. The party went “What exactly does ‘a mild shock’ Then she told me about a friend of
on. We went back inside, they brought even mean?” she asked me at once. ours—he, too, a regular at P’s yearly
out the cake, we sang “Happy Birthday,” “A state of confusion, perhaps. A mo- party—who was thinking of quitting
raised our glasses to P. Her kids gave ment of psychosomatic distress.” his job as the dean of a small suburban
her a stiff gold bracelet. Then there was “I thought he was going to die. In university to open a wine store in a for-
a real surprise: her husband stood on a the middle of a party, at this house filled eign capital.
chair and sang a short, sweet love song with people I barely know.” It would have been inappropriate to
out of tune, while P, overwhelmed, in “Don’t worry, it’s over now, I heard turn to P for any information. My wife
tears, burst out laughing, then gave her what the doctor said.” I addressed her was probably right, the woman who’d
husband a long kiss, eyes closed, in front with the formal pronoun. spoken to me was most likely the mother
of everyone. “I used to be such a centered person. of one of P’s kids’ classmates. The more
The crowd inside the house began to I knew how to run my life. But these I thought about our conversation on
thin, guests were starting to leave. I re- days, in this country, I can hardly man- the patio, the more I was struck by our
joined my wife, who told me that she, age a thing.” strange synchronicity in that moment,
too, was ready to head home. We said “How did you end up here?” as if she were expecting me, as if she
our goodbyes to P and her husband, “My husband is a journalist. He likes knew, beforehand, that my wife would
thanked them for the pleasant afternoon, Rome. He says he loves this city more have forgotten her shawl, and that she’d
and returned to our car, where we waited than he loves me.” send me back to the house to retrieve
for the long line ahead of us to budge. “And you, how do you like it?” it. In the end, it was the only conver-
“It’s late. Did you have fun?” my wife “I’m not happy and I’m not unhappy. sation of any real substance I’d had at
asked me. Mind if we use the tu?” the party. We’d looked each other in
“I had a pretty good time. How “Of course.” the eye, we’d been alone, our bodies
about you?” “Why did you stay with my son and close, but I’d never even introduced my-
“Did you drink?” me the whole time?” self. I’d grabbed my wife’s shawl, mum-
“Not much.” “What do you mean?” bled something awkward, and then I’d
She looked me up and down. “On the grass. You didn’t walk away slipped away.
“Let me drive.” with the others.” Over time, the memory began to dim.
I was tired, and handed her the keys “I was worried, like you. That’s all.” I went on living with my wife, in the
without protest. We switched places. “Do you also have a son?” house where we’d raised our son. I made
She adjusted the seat, the mirror. She “Yes. He lives abroad.” love to her still slender body, I invited
put on her seat belt, the comfortable “So you’ll understand.” the same friends over for dinner, cooked
shoes she liked to drive in. She was just “Understand what?” the same reliable recipes. While my wife
about to start the car when she realized “Today I brushed up against the worst went to the gallery or away on the oc-
that she’d left her shawl in the house. thing that could possibly happen.” casional business trip, I worked at home,
“I don’t feel like getting out. Will in the corner of our bedroom, making
you go?” or the next few days, I was left reel- slow progress on my fifth novel, my ar-
“Any idea where it is?”
“Check on the patio—I think I
F ing from that abrupt exchange of
words. Who was that woman? Why had
ticles, my tepid reviews. When she re-
turned in the evenings, I’d pour us some
draped it over the back of a chair.” she been so open with me, so unguarded, wine and pretend to listen while she
The house was empty, silent, filled instantly bridging the solitary distance gave me the full rundown of her com-
with abandoned glasses and soiled, crum- between two strangers? Why had she plicated days. On Saturdays, once a
pled paper napkins. P and her family revealed to me, out of the blue, that she month, we’d go to hear classical music,
must have retired to one room or an- was in crisis? What was her name? When then out to a restaurant, or else to the
other. My wife was right, the shawl was and how had she met P? Where was opening of a new art exhibit. I would
there, hanging limp as a fresh sheet of this husband she’d spoken of, who loved go to the library, and we’d go on vaca-
pasta over the back of a patio chair, not Rome more than he loved her? tion: to the mountains every year, for
far from where I’d listened to P rave One evening, after some hesitation, her birthday, and to the sea, in the
about her island, before the boy felt sick. I asked my wife, “Did you meet anyone off-season, for mine.
The boy’s mother was standing in interesting at P’s this year?” At Christmas we travelled abroad to
48 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
visit our son. He showed us his drab stu-
dio apartment, where he lived happily,
and introduced us to his first girlfriend,
an attractive young woman with parents
from two different continents. He’d met
her at the university. The two of them
took us to a sprawling, noisy restaurant
they loved. I noticed that my son, taller
than I was now, was looking bulkier even
though he’d become a vegetarian. He
preferred beer over wine. The photo of
a gawky boy which greeted me every
time I picked up my cell phone, taken
on a fishing boat the previous summer,
looked nothing like him anymore.
Because of the girlfriend, we never
spoke to each other in Italian. He gushed
about the multiethnic neighborhood
where they lived, where they’d go out
every night of the week to eat food from
seven different countries. His answers
to my questions were polite but brief.
We conversed in a language I struggled
to keep up with, a sensation that I en-
joyed at P’s house but that here, with
my own son, felt frustrating and artifi-
cial. For Easter, he told me, he planned
to go hiking with his girlfriend among
• •
castles and sheep. In the course of a day
or two I could sense his tacit rejection phone, I realized that it was just the two different shirt, the one I’m wearing
not only of Rome but of our way of life, of us again, except this time with no de- doesn’t do much for me. The agitation
of all the effort we’d put into raising him sire to have a child, without that life proj- I’d experienced after the abrupt exchange
a certain way. ect to tie us together, as it had until now. on the patio was back. I could picture
He was thriving in this new city— What was she reading? Who was writ- it clearly now: the flattering but unsea-
but, even so, I didn’t like the thought of ing to her? Hundreds of messages poured sonable dress, the complicated necklace,
him in that drab apartment, at those in every day from mysterious senders. A the color of her fingernail polish. As if
loud restaurants, eating bizarre and ex- densely inhabited world, buzzing with the year gone by were nothing, nothing
pensive food, with his wisp of a girl- activity, hers alone. But at a certain point the passage of time. We hadn’t even
friend smiling beside him. I didn’t like she raised her head and reminded me of shaken hands, there was just that flash
the thought of him in the crush of a the date for P’s next party. of understanding. So why was I feeling
subway car, or walking the streets alone a little guilty?
and a little drunk at three in the morn- nly once we were in the car, on the An ancient, ridiculous memory came
ing, or going to the park on Sundays to
play soccer with no breakfast in his stom-
O way to P’s house, did I recall that
distraught mother, that unexpected con-
back to me then, from just before I met
my wife. I was going to a gym with a
ach. I worried that he wasn’t mature fession on the patio. It had been nearly pool at the time, and every week, by the
enough, that deep down he felt unhappy, a year since I’d thought of her. I’d left pool’s edge, the same girl would smile
that he’d end up in some kind of trou- my curiosity back at P’s, as if it were an at me and say hello. She swam in the
ble. But that naïve and vulnerable boy umbrella, or the shawl my wife had asked lane that I’d take over. For a few months
was not my son: he was me. Or rather, me to retrieve: the kind of thing whose my entire week revolved around that
he was the version of me I’d never al- absence you feel for a little while and brief encounter by the pool, to the point
lowed to form, that I’d neglected, blocked then easily let go of. But now that I was where I’d even rush to the locker room
out—a version that, even without ever about to return to that house, again I to make sure I didn’t miss her. We never
having existed, had defeated me. With sensed that she and I shared some se- talked about anything. She’d just say
this thought in my head, I strolled around cret link. Have a good swim, or something like
my son’s new city, patiently admiring My foot was heavy on the gas, I was that. But every time she looked at me
bridges, gardens, and monuments, be- distracted. I missed the sharp right turn, and spoke to me, it felt as if I were the
neath a low and leaden sky. took another road, had to put the car in center of her world. We ran into each
On the plane, before taking off, watch- reverse, as my wife’s irritation grew. I other in this way for a few months, then
ing my wife check her e-mail on her was thinking: I should have chosen a she stopped showing up. A couple of
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 49
months later I met my wife—but early dités, some sliced salami. I was trying months later my wife informed me that
on, in bed, I’d picture the swimmer’s to make my presence felt. I couldn’t hear P was having another party.
eyes, her smile. That’s all. her, all I could hear was my wife’s grav- “So soon? What’s that about?”
Parking the car, I thought: Maybe elly voice, which worked its way under “She said she’s been teaching her
the distraught woman won’t even be my skin even amid all those people. oldest son to dance, which got her
here, maybe she wasn’t invited this time When her husband stood to find a thinking that she’d like to throw a dif-
around, or maybe she had another en- trash can where he could toss their plate, ferent kind of party. At night this time.
gagement. Her presence was hardly a I looked at her, waiting for her to look No kids.”
given. But as soon as we entered, after back. Hoping for what, I don’t know—a “Did we ever teach our son to dance?”
P and her husband had welcomed us in, smile like the one the girl by the pool “Maybe?”
as my wife was already chatting with- would give me? But she remained ab- “Do you know who’s coming?”
out me in the adjoining room, I caught sorbed in her anecdote. “The usual slew of people, I imagine.”
sight of her. I continued staring, and she kept
She was sitting in the dining room, talking. Her husband was gone, my wife he weather was terrible that eve-
beneath a window, in one of the chairs
lined up against the wall so that guests
in the next room. The more I looked,
the more she evaded me, unfazed. Until
T ning. I felt queasy the entire day.
I couldn’t eat, couldn’t concentrate at
could circulate. Next to her was her hus- all of a sudden she lifted her gaze, for my desk.
band—a tall, handsome man with shiny an instant, and revealed her eyes to me— “It’s been a long week, I can’t shake
white hair, a young-looking face, tan filled (I thought) with fury and exas- this headache,” I said to my wife.
even in January. It had to be her hus- peration, blinding eyes that were shin- “And so . . . ?”
band because they were sharing a plate ing (I hoped) for me. “What do you say we stay in for the
of food; that way, each could hold a glass night?”
of wine in the other hand. She wasn’t he idea appealed to me: a relation- I already knew my suggestion was
talking to him. She was turned toward
two other women seated to her right—
T ship punctuated with gaps; a fixed
date, ours alone, in the middle of the
futile. She was taking her time getting
ready, wearing a short dress she hadn’t
but there was too much noise, I could party. It seemed like an acceptable form pulled out in years.
barely even make out her voice. of infidelity, entirely forgivable, a bit like “Tonight we dance and let go. Time
She was utterly changed. She was when I thought of the girl from the pool to perk up.”
laughing, telling a funny anecdote about while I was already with my wife. In In the dark, P’s house seemed like a
herself, while her husband listened and truth I wasn’t looking for trouble. Just a new destination—even more out of the
held the plate. He seemed like an atten- few blazing hours spent together, checked way, more alien. The drive was stressful,
tive guy, amiable but a little bit tense. by a year of separation. the charming road slick with rain. And
She was speaking with abandon, with I’d never betrayed my wife, in this the spring air felt wrong to me. I couldn’t
irony. She didn’t strike me at all as a city where everyone’s always cheating get my bearings.
woman in crisis. on everyone. With the exception of my “Did you hear that their house was
She was dressed in black, like nearly little crush on the girl from the pool, I’d robbed recently?” my wife said as I was
all the other women at the party. No always been a faithful man; I was used parking the car behind a long line of
necklace, just that triangle of bare skin. to being the one who got dumped or vehicles.
She wore a pair of tight-fitting pants cheated on, even before I met my wife, “Who?”
that matched the season, and hammered and not the other way around. I didn’t “P’s family. They were gone for three
leather boots. Her hair, longer now, was have infidelity in me, I suppose I lacked days, all the jewelry was taken.”
streaked with gray, which she clearly the impulse. I accepted my wife’s activ- “They didn’t have it in a safe?”
didn’t mind. She was thinner, even more ities, her obligations—the constant mes- “No, unfortunately, she’s always been
beautiful—that weathered sort of beauty, sages on her phone, her dinners with- a bit disorganized.”
which flattered her. Like my son, she out me, her work trips abroad, her quick The house, too, was nearly dark, un-
had morphed over the past year into a jaunts to other cities—while also admit- familiar. They’d removed most of the
sunnier, more confident version of her- ting the likely consequences: a quickly furniture to make room. P’s daughter
self. We lived in the same not particu- forgotten one-night stand with some greeted us at the door and whisked our
larly large city, and yet we’d never bumped guy, lunch and a stroll through the bo- coats off to who knows where. I stuck
into each other, not in a restaurant, not tanical garden with another. But since to my wife’s side. We went to get our
at a pharmacy, not on the street or at I wasn’t jealous by nature, my conjec- first glass of prosecco together, to fill
the gym. Our paths crossed only at this tures never took hold of me. As with our plastic plates with slices of bread,
house, only at P’s party. any couple, things left unsaid enter in slivers of cheese, honey. We were at-
“Hey, we’re on the patio, it’s nice to maintain your aging affection. Which tached at the hip as if we were a shy
out there,” an old friend said, running was how we’d survived twenty-three couple on an early date.
into me. years together with no major disrup- I saw all the known and unknown
“Be there in a minute.” tions, no earthquakes. faces that were always at P’s. Apart from
I made a leisurely loop around the I repeat, I’d have been fine dragging the new setup, the empty rooms, the
table, picking up some cheese, some cru- out that trifling dalliance. But just a few scene was more or less identical, and yet
50 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
C O M I N G T O G E T H E R SAM L I P SY T E breast cancer, in remission for more than a decade and
now in her bones. It was a good thing I was home, she
said. She needed my help.
A Lesson for the Sub So began these odd, indelibly heightened few years
during which clarifying routine and caregiving replaced
the ecstatic murk of earlier days. I subbed and ran
errands and went to appointments with my mother.
After chemotherapy, her markers would improve, decline,
hint at new improvements. She could still manage
many things on her own, and then she couldn’t, but she
remained herself throughout: brave, funny, mean, kind,
smart, neurotic, judgmental, depressed, empathetic,
annoying, and sometimes, when we’d lie beside each
other on her bed and talk, deeply sweet. We liked to
discuss the O.J. trial.
When I was alone, I struggled with my sentences.
They were bad, mannered. But maybe they pointed
somewhere new. About twenty of us gathered weekly
at an apartment off Washington Square Park. Lish
would lecture for five hours or more. Stories, literary
theory, philosophy, jokes, reprimands, and exhortations
would pour out of him. Afterward, we would read from
our work. He’d usually stop us after a line or two, our
utterances already stale with stock phrases or feeling.
But once in a while, if you’d finally “gotten it,” he’d let
you read on. And you could hear it yourself, how your
prose, because of its strangeness, its differentiation, its
“right wrongness”—syntactically fresh but also coherent
uring my mid-twenties, I hit what you and honest—had maybe dilated time a little bit. There
might call a bottom. Since college, I’d was talk of time, of fear and desire, of death. Sure, it was
partaken too liberally in wine and song, a cult. But not the Jonestown kind. More like a Roman
although in this case the wine was cheap mystery cult. I loved it.
beer and street drugs and the song was One day, my mother, worn down by the cancer and
my self-sabotaging punk band. When the band broke the treatment, went to the hospital with chest pains.
apart, I cleaned up and moved back in with my mother. Myocardial ischemia, the doctor said. Her body was
I got a job as a substitute teacher. One period I might shutting down. We were told to say goodbye. My mother,
be covering a history class, the next running a chemistry manic, announced that she had no regrets. Also, tiny
lab. I was grateful to the student who said, “Mr. Lipsyte, robed monks were flitting about the hospital room. And
I really think you should wear protective goggles during could she have some strawberry sorbet? Fear, desire—it
this experiment.” I was not as grateful to the one who all poured out of her, incoherently. Her mind was going,
said, “My dad told me all subs are losers.” and she was in pain. The hospital put her in a palliative
Not all subs, I thought, but quite possibly me. I was coma. She lived another week, friends and family
eager, in fact, for a quiet, unambitious existence, a long, gathered around her bed. When she died, I called Lish
boring, soul-mending sojourn. I didn’t foresee that two from a pay phone on the corner.
events would infuse this period with an intensity I “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Too young. Too young.”
haven’t quite known since. It occurred to me that they were about the same age.
First came a phone call from Gordon Lish, the I went back to class the next week. I didn’t want to
famous fiction editor. I’d received encouraging sit around the silent apartment. My mother, the writer,
rejections from his magazine in college, but I’d lost my the prodigious talker, would understand. Lish mused on
drive and nerve for writing fiction. Now I began to death again. There is never enough time. There is only
rediscover it, and after I sent in a new story he offered now, in life and on the page. “Ask Sam’s mother,” he
me a spot in a private seminar that some considered a snarled, as though angry on my behalf, or on hers. Was I
cult. I had already attended twelve-step meetings and offended that he’d used my grief as a teachable moment?
they’d helped me, so I figured there were good cults I wasn’t. But I did feel myself float weirdly above the
and bad cults. My mother, a journalist and a novelist, proceedings. Even in my numb state, in this baby stage
had reservations about the class, but also seemed of bereavement, the truth about the precarity of our lives
happy that somebody had taken an interest in her rippled through me with a deep, gentle electricity. I had
no-longer-so-promising son. “gotten it.”
The second event was the return of my mother’s I’d forget the lesson soon enough. 
ILLUSTRATION BY LEONIE BOS THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 51
I couldn’t manage to wedge my way into
conversations as I usually did; search-
ing for that woman left me discombob- SOMEONE IN PARIS, FRANCE IS THINKING OF YOU
ulated. She was standing next to her
husband, on the other side of the room. This poem is happening in Paris, France
And this time she didn’t avoid my gaze. where it’s raining and we’re all so drunk
She was looking straight at me through that it’s impossible to keep a secret.
the crowd, registering my presence with- Every morning the waiters say bonjour
out smiling, without budging, without and every morning I drink my coffee
communicating anything. with a kind of American sadness
After dinner, the dancing began. P’s they’ve started saying hello.
older son chose the music, a string of Hello, beautiful man I’ll never have
inane songs from our younger days. I on Rue Charlot. Hello, woman smoking
danced with my wife, the woman with by the Seine and closing her eyes
her husband. P’s other kids danced be- between drags. We’re all lost, even in Paris,
tween us, they danced with P and her and if this place won’t take my mind off you
husband. P danced with my wife, and I guess I’m in love and in for more rain.
then with me. She was a little drunk, You are the man on Rue Charlot
barefoot, affectionate, shimmering, even somewhere in Brooklyn, peeling an orange
without a bit of jewelry on. I really love and thinking of buying a suit.
you two, she said to me and my wife, as I would like to be an orange in that suit.
the three of us danced together. I would like all the men on Rue Charlots
The music felt liberating, at moments across the world to put in their resignations
wrenching. It levitated us magically and stop torturing me. Let me chase fire
above the cramped and craggy present, on another street, in another country
it restored a glimmer of hope. We were, where someone takes out the orange
all of us, each on our own, replaying our and peels it. And puts it slowly to their mouth.
previous lives: lives still in progress, fool- There’s a pause. The woman closing her eyes
ish, makeshift, splendid lives. I glanced opens them. The lights on the boulevards come on.
around at the women who refused to Someone smiles. Someone sighs. Someone lingers.
assume the role of signora, who’d kept Someone in Paris, France is thinking of you.
up their looks. And yet we weren’t get-
ting any younger, we were accumulat- —Alex Dimitrov
ing wrinkles, health scares, disappoint-
ments. The songs took us back—to our
first kiss, our first relationship, ancient kind of ominous ultrasound, ripe with She shrugged. “ ‘Forever’ is a big word.”
emotions, our first heartbreak, minor meaning but completely indecipherable. They went to grab their purses, they
grievances we’d buried, unresolved, but When I returned, I noticed that the pulled out their phones. Right there on
had never shaken off. lights were on. The barren room, only the spot they exchanged numbers, sched-
She and I danced, together, on our recently vacated, reminded me in some uled a date.
own. It was a torment, also a triumph. ways of my son’s apartment. No one was
We would lock eyes for a moment, here dancing anymore, the music had stopped. nd this is where my story takes an
and there I’d feel my body brushing hers,
a shoulder, a hip. The two of us were
In the old days we’d have merely taken
a break, but we were already worn out.
A unexpected turn. This stranger,
with whom I’d had only one conversa-
still nailed to our respective lives, but My wife was over by the table. She tion, a fevered and fragmentary ex-
underneath it all I sensed that we were was eating dessert. And she was talking change, and with whom I’d felt an in-
being reckless, conspiratorial. to her. They didn’t notice me. My wife explicable bond from that moment on,
Outside it was still raining, but in- said, “I was just admiring your necklace despite never having learned her name,
side it was hot, oppressively hot. I was while we were dancing, it’s extraordi- became my wife’s friend. They met for
covered in sweat. I told my wife I could nary. Can I ask where you bought it?” lunch once a month, then went shop-
use a little water. I went to the bathroom, “In a cute little shop, not far from ping for clothes and shoes together.
rinsed my face. Then I went to the where we live.” She remained a secondary, casual friend
kitchen to find a glass. There I noticed “How long have you two lived in for my wife. Not someone she’d invite
a complex surveillance system mounted Rome?” over to the house, or fold into our ev-
on the wall, for monitoring the house’s “Three years now.” eryday lives, but a person she’d spend
entry points. It had multiple tiny screens, “Are you here for work?” time with on her own now and then,
each with a different view: the front gate, “My husband, yes. He’d like to live in her own way.
the yard, the patio. At night, in the heavy here forever.” Through their friendship I learned
rain, every image looked to me like a “What about you?” a few things: her name—L—and the
52 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
neighborhood where she lived (San it was clear by now—those spirited oc- shared an apartment, before they were
Giovanni). One day she mentioned how casions, those restorative afternoons I married and had kids. P’s husband came
often her husband had to travel, racing held so dear, were tainted. out on the weekend but left again for
back and forth between cities. They had work. The kids played Ping-Pong all day
one son, the boy who’d felt sick in the ut late that summer, once again, P or horsed around on the beach or tried
yard. As my wife had intuited, he went
to the same school as one of P’s sons.
B suddenly changed the script. My
wife and I were already back from va-
out reckless dives at the pool or wan-
dered off alone to some secret spot.
L used to have a job herself, as a mag- cation, had stashed away our bathing Our bungalow was very charming,
azine editor, but here she spent her days suits and beach towels and sandals. For picturesque, a bit dim inside but airy. It
diligently studying our language and my own part, I was looking forward to had belonged to one of P’s uncles, he,
belonged to a group of foreign women the firm and reassuring light of autumn, too, a writer, and I discovered many old,
who relentlessly visited the city’s infinite the plates of puntarelle at the trattorie, well-loved books there, marked up in
monuments, attractions, and ruins. Apart the starlings that dart in the sky, appear- pencil. It was a cozy space, masculine in
from these details, my wife never spoke ing and disappearing like tornadoes or feeling, just one room, really, with no
of her new friendship. ribbons or giant tadpoles made of ash, kitchen and one square window that
I knew that it was normal, even when P offered us a last-minute invita- looked out on the sea and opened like
healthy, to cultivate these kinds of friend- tion to the island where she and her the door to a cupboard. The furniture
ships outside a marriage. It wasn’t like family spent two months each year. She had never been replaced—soft, faded
there was anything sexual involved. And had access to a spare bungalow with an armchairs, dark, glossy wood, a musty
yet I agonized over it. My writing suf- ocean view—the usual tenants had can- smell, all of it frozen in time.
fered, I began missing deadlines for my celled—and she was certain that it would As soon as I stepped inside I felt bet-
projects, I envied my wife. make an ideal spot for my writing, hav- ter; the space was invigorating, and had
I envied my wife and yet at the same ing heard from my wife that I’d been in an effect on me similar to that of P’s
time I was grateful. There was no way, a long slump. house, except here there was no party.
when they went out together on their “You know, I wouldn’t mind going This was a refuge where I could hole up
walks or to see an art exhibit, that L back there either, finally putting an end and concentrate. Which got me think-
didn’t think of me. No way my wife didn’t to my childhood fear,” my wife an- ing, a bit peeved: It would have been
speak of me, of our long marriage filled nounced, referring to that poor man she’d truly ideal to have had a place like this
with the predictable ups and downs, of seen die in the pool, decades earlier. at our disposal, a place to write, if only
the flings she’d probably had with other And given that it was a particularly my wife hadn’t been avoiding this island,
men, of our strained relationship with stifling summer, and that my wife and I if only she’d brought me here before. Our
our son. No way I didn’t factor in to really had nothing to do but idle around son would have liked it, too, in the past,
some extent. After more than twenty the apartment, we packed our suitcases but now there was no room here for him
years of marriage, I knew what happened again, drove down to the harbor, and and his girlfriend, there were just two
when women talked—all that archived boarded a ferry. The island was a rock in couches, one across from the other, that
information which loosens in the vapor the middle of nowhere, a bit like P’s house. became beds—two separate singles, one
of friendship, which floats to the surface For several days we did nothing but for me and one for my wife.
while they’re out buying shoes, eating enjoy luxuriant, late-morning swims, light As soon as we were settled in, I hit a
salads, admiring paintings. and refreshing lunches, and sunset strolls stride with my writing, hunched over a
But what was I hoping for? An ac- down to the lighthouse. The water was tiny desk against a wall, or else lying back
tual affair with L? A date, a few hours as clear as glass, filled with dark sea ur- on one of the sofa beds. I skipped lunch
in a hotel, in bed together? I don’t think chins. A beautiful path ran the length of with P and my wife, instead grabbing a
so. Even after the dancing I never the island, but in certain stretches you sandwich at the snack bar around three,
thought of her body, her hands. What had to beware of clefts in the rock. Once, my mind humming. I was pleased with
I fixated on was our conversation on P told us, a woman had fallen to her this second summer of ours, with the in-
the patio, when she was distraught, sick death while taking a photo of her hus- spiration I found on that island, in that
with worry over her son, when she con- band. We floated around the island on cozy and comfortable bungalow.
fided in me. That moment seemed more a rubber dinghy and ate baked fish on The mistral arrived, as expected: three
transgressive than any erotic act. What the terrace, with coils and citronella can- days of non-stop wind, of deafening gusts.
had we shared? An intimate exchange, dles to repel the mosquitoes. On the storm’s first day I started a new
inexplicably charged. And now, just as P and my wife took the boat every short story about L, set at P’s house. In
inexplicably, we shared my wife. day, either before or after lunch, to pick my invented version things took a more
Soon enough the spring had gone up groceries. They wore f lared linen predictable course: she and I had a real
by, an entire season. I remained passive, dresses, and always came back with a lit- affair. Staring out at the white shelf of
cagey, lying in wait for a new develop- tle something extra: a clever bracelet sea lashing the shore, I thought back to
ment: a dinner together, plans for a night made of cork, a perfume that smelled of our conversation on the patio—in the
at the theatre with L and her husband. salt, silicone kitchen utensils in various fake version we kissed immediately—
But what I was really waiting for was colors. They cooked together, reminisc- looking for ways to stretch the details.
winter, and P’s next party, even if—and ing about the happy years when they’d I inserted the scene where we danced
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 53
together, and also on our own—it felt one of P’s boys, the thirteen-year-old. With the task complete and the motor
like a critical juncture in the plot—and “How’s it going, all good?” he asked. spent, they said their hellos. L had picked
I left out L’s friendship with my wife, “A boat nearly ran me over.” up a tan, her husband, too. Their son had
which proved an unwieldy development. “Were you swimming alone?” outgrown both his parents. I glimpsed
I molded and massaged the facts until it “I was.” L’s dark, muscular legs, a scar on her
felt like a vaguely appealing story, the “Best to stay close to shore.” thigh. She was barefoot, sweaty, her hair
kind a literary magazine might take. All “What about you guys? You having a windblown mess. She quickly slipped
I needed was the ending, the grand finale. fun?” into a sheer beach coverup, a pair of el-
One morning I decided to go for a “It gets a bit boring. I’d like to go egant but well-worn sandals.
swim, to clear out my head before sit- somewhere else next year, but my mom I wanted to break up the scene right
ting down to write. The mistral had just always wants to come here.” then and sneak down into the cabin, on
moved on, and the water was once again “Hang in there.” that boat, with her. As if driven by the
a sheet of glass. I climbed in from a small “At least my friend’s coming tonight.” mistral, like the waves beating steadily
sheltered cove, first checking for jelly- “Oh, who’s that?” in one direction, an impulse intensified
fish. My destination was a red buoy, which “This foreign kid I go to school with. by my own imagined version of our af-
I swam toward through a beautiful patch He’s on a boat trip with his parents, his fair, I now yearned to kiss her mouth, to
of green sea, following a school of min- dad’s a really good navigator.They’re stop- taste her salty skin, to solidify our con-
nows. I was out in the middle of that ping at the island and staying for dinner.” nection at last without having to share
patch when I saw a motorboat heading it with anyone else. Instead, when she
straight at me. I stopped and waved an t sunset we walked down to the stepped off the boat, we greeted each
arm, but the boat kept coming. I didn’t
shout, it would have been pointless. Out
A harbor to greet them. It was a
beautiful motorboat. They were drop-
other with a handshake, and all she said
to me was “Ciao.”
that far, all sounds are swallowed by the ping the fenders. Her husband was at We took our seats out on P’s terrace.
sea’s silence. Feeling slow, weak, fright- the helm, her son hanging their wet There were five of us—P’s husband would
ened, I somehow managed to move out things on a drying rack, L clambering be back the next day, and L’s son had
of the way, and I made it to shore. around the boat. She was moving swiftly, rushed off to meet his friend in the small
I walked back to the house, stricken, asking her husband what to do before piazza. We spoke in Italian. By now, after
pale, still unnerved. But my wife wasn’t they docked. She was wearing a spe- all their meticulous studying, L and her
there, and P’s place was empty, too. On cial pair of gloves for handling the an- husband could speak it more or less flu-
the little desk was a note: Out getting gro- chor chain. I admired how deftly she ently. The windstorm had swept away
ceries, catch up with you later. My head was tied and untied the mooring line. I no- the mosquitoes. The air felt crisp, re-
spinning. I felt like I needed a fresh glass ticed the ease and economy of com- freshing. I was sitting next to L, at the
of orange juice. At the snack bar I ran into munication between husband and wife. head of the table, with P and my wife
on one side and L and her husband across
from them.
We drank heavily that night, though
L a bit less than we did, since she was
suffering from land sickness. Her hus-
band weighed in on the recent elections,
and told of their boating adventures, de-
scribing their favorite islands and inlets.
At sea, he said, you live with less but
have it all.
We ate a rice salad, followed by some
fish and a few slices of melon. L passed
me the fruit, the bottle of mirto. And
while we ate and talked, while we looked
at the stars and listened to the waves,
while my eyes strayed now and then to
that same triangle of bare skin, that ex-
traordinary divot of flesh outlined by her
collarbone and shoulders, I learned some-
thing new. In a month they’d be return-
ing to their country; their time in Italy
had come to an end. The reasons they
gave were practical: her husband was
tired of the constant travel, their son was
“And that’s when I realized I had two of everything I needed, about to start his first year of high school,
right in front of me, this whole time.” and L, it turned out, was missing the
working life that she’d sacrificed to be whole lot of them were witnesses—and, woman, radiant, the only one with
here. They were sad to go, already speak- worse, even with the whistling wind the strength to bring us all together.
ing with nostalgia about certain things, and the crashing waves, they’d proba- To open the door a thousand times,
but you could see that the decision to bly heard us fighting until dawn. For to fill the house and churn the crowd.
reactivate their old life had restored the days, back in the city, I cursed my own Aside from the absence of P and her
family balance, and that the cliff’s edge stupidity, steeped in embarrassment, hospitality, things were essentially the
they were once teetering on was no lon- but my wife never brought it up again, same. The funeral, too, was a kind of
ger a threat. and soon the unpleasant feeling faded. party. The kids, after a while, went out
“Maybe we’ll come back around New We fell back into our old routines, to play in the yard. Food covered the
Year’s. It would be nice to get a little though for months I was adrift. I aban- big oval table in the room with many
winter sun, have some panettone and doned the short story— windows, all the chairs lined
pandoro, eat lunch outdoors in January.” with those pages, I real- up against the walls so that
“Perfect. That means you’ll be here ized, I’d been luring myself guests could circulate.
for my party,” P said. onto a precipice. What We ate, we conversed.
We accompanied them back to the had happened between L But in the wake of a death
harbor, said our goodbyes on the dock. and me made for a dull even your own breath, your
“Ciao,” L said to me again—nothing premise, it never would own shadow come as a
else—and in that moment of confusion have worked. Yet for a mo- shock. Everything feels in-
I kissed her, at first on the cheek, but ment, on that island, my appropriate, indecent, for
then my mouth drifted down toward the embellished version of a while.
salty skin of her collarbone, planting it- events had fused with re- This would be the last
self in that sunken triangle. I latched on ality: it had driven me to time we ever set foot in
to her for a few seconds, then I lifted wound and demean my wife, in a way that house. It was already up for sale.
my head, mortified, and muttered, “For- that she, with her discreet behavior, P’s husband, her children, couldn’t
give me.” had never done to me in our long bear to live in it anymore.
She immediately stepped back. And years of marriage. L wasn’t there. Which didn’t sur-
she may have glared at me then as she I’d already decided, before Christ- prise me. As a peripheral figure, an
had once before, her eyes filled with mas, that I wouldn’t be going to P’s occasional guest, she wasn’t invited to
fury and exasperation, but it was too party that winter. On the off chance the funeral. I saw only a few mem-
dark to tell. that L and her family were in town, bers of her group, the people who
After she hugged and thanked every- I had my excuse prepared. But then, spoke other languages, who passed in
one else, after she said her goodbyes to just before Christmas, P got sick again. and out of our lives. Just like P, what-
my wife and P, she left with her family Her decline was rapid, until the same ever had happened between us—that
to spend the night on their boat, by a good doctor who’d saved her life said stalemate, that non-starter, brought
secluded grotto, in a tiny cabin beside there was nothing left to do. to an end by my foolish gesture—was
her husband. My wife, meanwhile, who’d Soon thereafter, I found myself at no longer.
glimpsed that errant kiss, started ha- the funeral, and afterward at the house I can’t complain. Unlike me, P, to
ranguing me as soon as we entered the where we’d celebrated P so many whom I owe these pages, didn’t make
bungalow and kept at it until dawn. times. Yet again on a bright and balmy it out of the story. She’ll never visit
“Is there something going on with winter day. A Saturday afternoon, a her children in other countries, or cry
you two?” few weeks before her birthday, with about distances or the passing of days,
“Nothing, I barely know her.” all the guests from her previous par- that merciless, automatic plot device
“You imbecile, she was my friend.” ties, all of her closest friends. which propels us forward and brings
“And she still is.” My wife was devastated, she’d prac- us to our knees. Her parties, however,
“I doubt it. The whole reason I came tically lost a sister. We clasped hands have stayed with me, and the thought
out here was to lay down an old burden, before entering the house. All the of them still quickens the heart: the
and now, thanks to you, I’ve picked up women, wearing black, were stone- secluded house packed with people,
another.” faced. P’s children, who’d been so the sunlit lawn, those hours of sub-
“I’m sorry.” drunk with joy on the island, who’d lime detachment. A setting I cher-
My wife refused to calm down. She had so much fun that summer, were ished, a promising start I tried to fin-
went on attacking me, then burst into standing still in a row, in one of the ish, to put into words, in which I’d
tears, transforming my creative sanctu- rooms. The littlest one started weep- been, briefly, a wayward husband, an
ary into a hell. ing when my wife went to hug her. inspired author, a happy man. 
“It was important to her, the party,” (Translated, from the Italian,
he next day, earlier than planned, her husband said to me. “She looked
T we, too, left the island, in a rush.
There was no need to explain our de-
forward to it every year.”
“Me, too,” I replied.
by Todd Portnowitz in collaboration
with the author.)

parture to P, given that I’d kissed L in We spoke about P. About how she NEWYORKER.COM
front of her and her children, too. The was a singular person, a singular Jhumpa Lahiri on parties as parentheses.

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 55

56 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 PHOTOGRAPH BY RYAN FRIGILLANA
 FICTION

Colorín Colorado
BY CAM I L L E B O R DA S

SHOULD THEY HEAR THIS? “Do your readers need to know this?” it’s over, but then it starts again, more
Loiseau had answered, the way he’d an- vigorous than before. There’s some spit-
he day they came for swered all my questions—not taking a ting and heavy throat clearing, too, which
the interview, I woke split second to think about them. I try not to think about. He smokes a
up too early, thinking “Pardon me?” lot. I launched another Loiseau video.
about Bernard Loi- “Your readers—should they hear “What’s that guy so happy about?”
seau. This happens this? Do they want to know this?” my husband asked, when he joined me
when I’m nervous— He didn’t mean to shame me, I don’t in the kitchen.
not thinking about Loiseau, specifically, think. His dimples were still showing. I “He’s poaching eggs,” I said.
but thinking in my sleep, waking up changed the subject. We talked for an- This got him interested. Eggs interest
mid-thought. other hour. I observed dinner service. I him. We watched in silence as Loiseau
The thought was in fact a memory. watched Loiseau shake hands with every spoke of egg curvature. When it ended,
I write fiction now, mostly, but back single one of his employees after it ended. my husband saw as well as I did which
in the nineties I worked for a magazine I felt inadequate the whole time. Not be- videos YouTube suggested I watch next.
in New York, one that sent me to France cause I was a journalist in a three-star They were all talk-show clips of my for-
to profile Bernard Loiseau, after he kitchen but because I was a journalist mer student Addie. Addie interviewed
earned his third Michelin star. I was who hadn’t once asked herself what her about her films, Addie interviewed about
picked because I was half French and readers wanted to know. I’d operated success. I felt betrayed by my computer,
spoke the language, not because I was under the assumption that my readers that it would so casually let my husband
good. But I wanted to be good, and writ- would want to know what I wanted to know how much research I’d been doing
ing a profile was a major step for me, so know. In Loiseau’s case, I was probably on Addie the past few days. Computers
I did a lot of research on Loiseau. I con- right—probably my readers would want know too much about us, of course. I un-
cluded that interviewing him would be to know which chefs he hated, who he derstand that certain people find com-
easy: the guy was funny, passionate, gen- thought was a hack. But did I want to fort in that, but it’s hard for me not to
erous in his answers. The piece would write for people who wanted to know think of the machines as intently trying
write itself. A piece that wrote itself was this? For people like me? I quit and moved to shame us, the way they give other peo-
dubious to me, though, even as a mostly back in with my father, back to Chicago. ple glimpses of our search histories, or
inexperienced young writer. I needed to I never wrote the profile. In my father’s allow that family-vacation photo to slip
introduce conflict, I thought, something guest room I wrote a novel about bitter into our PowerPoint presentations.
abrasive, get Chef Loiseau off balance. journalists in Manhattan. It was surpris- “He looks like Gandolfini a little,” my
I asked him about food, of course, but ingly well received. husband said, of Loiseau. He was letting
then I quickly jumped to questions of Now, thirty-some years later, woken me save face, walking away from my
ambition, of jealousy and envy. Those up by a memory of Loiseau asking again, screen to make us coffee. “Who is it?”
were the kinds of things that were on “Should they hear this?,” I was at my “It’s that chef I interviewed a hun-
my mind at the time. I was seeing too kitchen table, watching videos of him on dred years ago. Bernard Loiseau.”
many people around me sign book deals YouTube. I kept the volume low so as “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Bernie the Bird.”
and make connections while I was stuck not to wake my husband. It was still pitch My husband and I met not long after
cataloguing everyone else’s successes in black out, the birds weren’t even up. I my journalist years, but I almost never
hundred-words-or-less reviews for our watched Loiseau talk about success (he spoke of them. I’d mentioned Loiseau
culture pages. That was my story back was on top because being on top was the only once, in 2003, when I heard of his
then: twenty-four years old and already only thing on his mind), I watched Loi- suicide. My husband had instantly trans-
bitter. I don’t remember exactly how I seau peel carrots, cook sole and mashed lated his name back then, too. “Bernie
phrased it to Bernard (he’d asked me to potatoes. I watched him being asked the Bird.” Oiseau being one of perhaps a
call him that), but I remember the sen- what came first, the chicken or the egg, hundred French words he could recognize.
timent, I remember wanting to get this and heard his confident answer: the “He killed himself, right?”he asked now.
honest man, this man who’d done noth- chicken, of course. La poule, bien sûr. I confirmed and closed the YouTube
ing but work hard and make it to the At some point, the trash collectors tab. I understood as I did so that in a
top, to talk shit. I wanted to know if he came. I heard my husband get up, our few months, when the documentary
was angry at another chef ’s success, if bedroom door creak, the sounds he made about Addie came out, the documentary
there were dishes that others got famous in the morning. No one brushes his teeth for which I was about to be interviewed,
for which he thought were crap. for longer than my husband. You think I would be offered recommendations to
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 57
 I was sorry my books hadn’t touched her,
and I meant it. I was always sorry when
people felt they’d wasted time reading me.
“You said in class that fiction was a
stream of causes and consequences,” Addie
said, “but your stories, they’re always just
about people talking and thinking.”
I had indeed just told my class about
causes and consequences—repeated the
dyad cause/consequence, cause/conse-
quence too many times, clapping my
hands every time I said “cause” and every
time I said “consequence,” while one stu-
dent took furious notes, as if he thought
I’d been listing the exact number of causes
and consequences a good piece of fic-
tion should contain.
“Thoughts and language have con-
sequences, too,” I told Addie.
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But in your
“ You do meet my needs, but I’m looking for stories the consequences of language
someone who anticipates my needs.” and thoughts are always just more lan-
guage and more thoughts.”
Addie, I would later learn, wrote crime
• • novels. She wrote about rape, dismem-
bered women, violence leading to revenge
watch it, or clips from it, perhaps the bad, like I’d opened a Pyrex of egg salad. leading to epiphany leading to closure.
very clips in which I would be talking “I don’t mean I spent years working “I guess I didn’t understand why they
about her. non-stop on one story,” I explained, al- were stories,” she added, referring to mine.
“He looked like a nice guy,” my hus- ready defending myself, already modifying What she was saying, albeit politely,
band added. “Bernie the Bird.” the wisdom I’d just tried to impart (writ- was: Why did you bother?
“He must not have thought so,” I said. ing took time, writing was serious). “I’m Should they hear this?
always working on several things at once.” “They’re well written,” she went on.
COLORÍN COLORADO “What about novels?” Addie asked. “But it’s like there’s no beginning or end,
“How long does it take you to write a really, only middle. At some point, it just
I met Addie the year my fourth book novel, on average?” ends, like . . . colorín colorado.”
came out, a collection of stories. I was I said there was no average. I’d written “Like what?”
teaching by then (I still am), and she my first novel in eight months, my sec- “Colorín colorado. It’s something we
was an undergraduate student, taking ond in six years, my third in three years. say in Mexico at the end of children’s sto-
Fiction Writing for the first time. The “There’s always an average,” Addie ries. Colorín colorado, este cuento se ha aca-
roster said Adriana, but she insisted we said. “The average of the numbers you bado. It’s kind of our version of And they
call her Addie. It had long stopped sur- just gave me is about thirty-eight and lived happily ever after. Except it doesn’t
prising me how intent Americans were a half months. That’s the average time mean anything at all, so it’s confusing.”
on having everyone they met use their it takes you to write a novel.” Because the word combination colorín
diminutives, how intent on projecting I was silent for a moment. I guess I colorado carried no meaning and had been
friendliness right away. I’d come around was trying to do the math she’d just chosen only because it rhymed with aca-
to the Sams, the Dans, and the Steves, done, adding all the months I’d suffered bado, Addie had grown up thinking that
but it felt a shame to shorten Adriana, through, then dividing them neatly. she was missing the point of every story.
and so for a while I didn’t. Addie cor- “It’s a long time,” she noted. “I’m sure you understood the stories
rected me every time. She herself had written nine novels fine,” I said.
After the first day of class, she stuck in high school. I didn’t know if I was talking about
around to make sure she’d understood By the following week, Addie had read my stories or those from her childhood.
how little would be expected of her. Re- everything I’d ever published. She stayed I was always dumb and exhausted after
ally, she asked, all she had to do was to talk to me about it after class. She tried teaching. I wanted to go home. Watch
write two short stories? For the whole not to be insulting, but she was twenty years a movie with my husband.
semester? I told her that two stories were old. She was still looking for meaning “What makes you decide when a
a lot, that some stories had taken me everywhere and hadn’t found any in my story is done?” Addie asked. She wasn’t
years to write, and, for a second, Addie writing. It was all about normal people tired. “When do you decide the mes-
made a face like something smelled to whom life happened, she said. I said sage has been conveyed?”
58 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
 “I object to the word ‘message,’” I said. said I’d give it a shot. I would write a that made her famous but the videos
Messages were for ads and propaganda, plot-heavy story and share it with her. I she’d posted in the years before—short,
I didn’t say. Messages were for politicians. heard myself thank her, too, the way I extremely low-budget adaptations of the
For Hollywood. For babies. For selling sometimes thanked people who bumped crime stories she wrote, in which she
something to someone you considered into me on the train. played all the roles (victims, witnesses,
a little or a lot less intelligent than you. “Thank you, Adriana,” I said. cops, lawyers, and perpetrators). Addie
“Art is not here to give lessons.” She said it was Addie. had gained a cult following while still
“What is it here for?” Addie asked. in college, and worldwide attention not
I remember avoiding eye contact. THE ALIENS IN SKOKIE long after she graduated, when one of
Looking down at my satchel, wishing her “films” was shared by a then influ-
I had more things to pack back into it. The camera crew arrived at 10 A.M. sharp. ential (now disgraced) comedian. He’d
That peculiar mix of feelings—shame The men were immediately at ease in meant to make fun of Addie (for the
and superiority in equal measure. my apartment, took control of the living bad lighting, the terrible sound effects),
I knew what art was for. I just didn’t room with the confidence of movers on but the Internet had shamed him for
think it was the kind of thing you said moving day. They had a job to do. A shaming a young woman, an unknown
out loud. frame to set up. I was the one with no artist, and deemed Addie’s work fear-
“Art is—” I stopped right away. I could business here. I made coffee, I made tea, less and radical. Studio interest had
feel my face redden, the shame over- but no one went near it. followed naturally after the buzz, a
coming the superiority. I was fine with Around 10:30, the director sat me streaming-platform contract after that.
people not understanding art or what on the couch and asked for my story. Cinephiles and critics, unsure what to
it was for. I had friends like that. It was “My story with Addie?” I said. do with Addie’s work, had deemed the
the people who didn’t and wanted to “No, just your story for now. Just a person herself a fad, but now her pre-
that worried me. I felt they were trying warmup.” mature death at the age of thirty-four
to trick me, to expose the charade of my Two cameras were pointed at me, was turning her into an icon of sorts,
life. Because maybe I didn’t know what but I don’t think they were rolling yet. her art (it was now art) into something
art was for, after all. Maybe Addie knew, “I don’t know where to start,” I said. that would last and define our time, in
and she was about to humiliate me with “My father was from here, from Chi- retrospect. I suspected Addie would get
the answer. Maybe my conviction ex- cago. My mother was French.” a reel, not a still, in the Oscars’ “In Me-
isted only when left alone in the dark “That’s amazing,” the director said. moriam” segment next month.
and disappeared the second someone It was a stretch, but I told him I “Let’s put you in the armchair, actu-
asked for it to come out. actually used to do what he did. Inter- ally,” the director said to me. “I love the
“It’s O.K. to write plot,” I ended up view people. I said, “I used to write pro- almond green. It will be nice with your
saying. “This class is about asserting files for a magazine.” gray hair.”
your own taste. Recognizing what you “Who’s the most famous person you He made a phone call while the crew
like and why you like it.” ever interviewed?” he asked. “We just rearranged the shot. They were done
“But what about your taste?” Addie did Jennifer Lopez last week. Very nice before him, and one of the cameramen
said. “Is that what happened to you? woman, very down to earth.” said he was going downstairs for a cig-
You didn’t like plot, and so you just de- “Well, no one near that,” I said. I arette. I told him it was cold out, and
cided to forget about it?” couldn’t say Bernard Loiseau, now that the he could just go into my husband’s of-
“I love plot,” I said. “I’m just inca- fice. I regretted it immediately. My hus-
pable of conceiving of one.” band wouldn’t want anyone left alone
“When’s the last time you tried?” in his office. I would have to keep the
Addie asked, but she didn’t wait for my cameraman company while he smoked,
answer. “You should try again.” which he would take for what it was: a
She wanted to make a deal: she sign that I didn’t trust him. Unless I
would write a story in which people smoked with him, I thought, as we
just talked if I wrote one in which some- walked together to my husband’s office.
thing happened. Then he would think we were bonding.
“That’s not how this class works,” I hadn’t smoked in years.
I said. name Jennifer Lopez had been produced. “This is nice,” he said, lighting his
“I know. This would be between us.” “You could tell she was genuinely cigarette by the window. “I haven’t
She thought it was too sad that I sad about Addie,” the director went on. smoked indoors since college.”
had given up on plot. She thought that “Even off camera.” I took a cigarette from an open pack
there was a chance I’d be good at it I should have said earlier that Addie on my husband’s desk. Perhaps I could
now, for some reason. died last summer. I’m bad at this. I should just hold it for a minute, I thought, pre-
“We change all the time,” she said. have led with that. Addie died on set tend that I wanted to smoke and then
She needed to believe this a little while filming the last part of the trilogy pretend to change my mind, keep the
longer. that had made her famous. Although charade up long enough that Jay (his
I surprised us both, I think, when I that’s not correct: it wasn’t the movies name was Jay, or maybe J., come to think
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 59
of it) wouldn’t question my motives for son’s funeral, in Los Angeles, the woman and I a brainwashed wife making ex-
keeping him company. had explained, an event she’d considered cuses for him. Recently, though, over
“It must be pretty depressing to come attending but had ultimately decided dinner, he’d told the story to an old friend
film me after Jennifer Lopez,” I said. would be too much for her, emotionally. of ours, and I’d realized it had been more
I’m not sure J. heard me. He was She’d watched the service at home on than twenty years. Bernard Loiseau was
staring at my husband’s shelves, at all TV, alone. She’d cried all day. still poaching eggs then, and I hadn’t yet
the books. He asked if I was a teacher. “And then the aliens came for her,” met Addie. Now they were both dead,
“I’m mostly a writer,” I said, though J. said. “You can’t make that shit up.” and I couldn’t remember the last time
I’m not sure what I meant by “mostly.” I “Obviously someone can,” I said. I’d gone to sleep holding my husband’s
spent more time teaching than writing. “I mean yes, someone can, but you hand. He was likely taking his break now,
I made more money teaching than writing. can’t make her up is what I’m saying. smoking outside with his grad students.
“What kinds of books do you write?” The emotional older lady who cries for Picturing him made me want the ciga-
“Just old-school novels,” I said. “About Michael Jackson and gets abducted by rette I was holding.
made-up, normal people.” aliens. There’s no connection there. It “You know,” J. said, “I’m a teacher, too.”
“I love it,” J. said. “Nobodies are the would be too much in a book, no one I assumed he gave classes on tech-
best kind of people.” would believe it was the same person.” nical film stuff—lenses, focal lengths—
He pulled a book from my husband’s He ashed in the metal ashtray my but, when I asked where he taught, he
shelves but put it back immediately, as husband and I had brought back from looked far into the distance and said,
if he’d mistaken it for another. His af- France the last time we went. I’d just quit “Everywhere,” and I understood he was
fect was exactly that: you start waving smoking back then; the smell had started high as a kite.
at someone you think you recognize bothering me. We’d thought that the
on the street, but it’s not her at all. He hinged cover on the ashtray would keep TOUCHING THE CEILING
asked me how novelists went about the problem contained.
making people up. “Do you take a lot “Novels always want to simplify,” J. The week after we made our pact, Addie
of meetings with nobodies, to soak in went on. “Here’s another example: be- came to me after class having written
their randomness?” cause of novels, we pretend to agree peo- not one but three stories in which noth-
I don’t know why he insisted on say- ple think in whole sentences. She thought, ing happened. She asked for my action-
ing “nobodies.” I’d said “normal people.” I thought . . . and then a perfectly shaped packed one.
He told me he’d met an interesting observation. But, like, if I’m on a date “I thought I had the whole semes-
nobody the night before. and I say something stupid I just want ter,” I said.
“Older lady at the bar,” he said. “I to disappear, right? I don’t actually think She gave me a two-week extension.
wasn’t flirting.” the words I want to disappear.” Addie’s stories were all about her
The older lady had played a song J. “You remind me of Addie,” I said. grandmother. In one, her grandmother
liked on the jukebox, and they’d started “How so?” showed her how to make flan. In an-
talking, finding that they had a lot in “It’s something she could’ve said.” other, they went to McDonald’s after a
common. They’d both just been to Mex- “Everything is something anyone doctor’s appointment. In the third, they
ico, they both loved musicals. could’ve said,” J. said. “That’s my point.” made twenty piñatas in their garage, ful-
“Then, out of nowhere,” J. said, “she I missed my husband in that moment. filling a last-minute order from richer
tells me she was abducted by aliens a And J. was right, I didn’t think the words neighbors. The stories weren’t great, but
few years back.” “I miss my husband,” but a series of ex- I thought that, if Addie got rid of ninety
It was the first time he had really terior stimuli (what J. was saying, the flat per cent of the metaphors—the grand-
talked to someone like this, J. said, some- winter light turning the white book- mother’s “papery skin,” the “bleeding
one whom most other people would shelves gray, the hum of the fan that ex- sunset,” if she took a hard look at “the
have deemed insane, but because they’d pelled the cigarette smoke out onto the flan was shivering on the plate”—and
just been bonding over normal things street) transited through my brain and cut the dialogue in half, she could be left
he’d engaged with the alien-abduction bounced around in my body as emotions, with something worth starting from. The
story, and surprised himself, not believ- shortcuts to old memories. Landing back piñata story was the most promising. It
ing it, exactly, but being interested in on Earth, J. had said, the lady had bro- was actually so focussed on one thing
meeting the woman within the mem- ken her hand. The only bone I’d ever (the making of the piñatas) that I be-
ory she was sharing. He didn’t want to broken was in my left hand, years ago, came jealous. For all that I praised con-
make fun of her, even in his head—he in arguably opposite circumstances. My cision, I sometimes had trouble keeping
truly wanted to know where the abduc- husband and I had gone to bed holding my stories contained. There were no met-
tion had happened (Skokie), what the hands (we were still a young couple), and aphors or useless descriptions in the
woman had seen (shadows, five-knuck- he’d squeezed mine too hard in his sleep. piñata story. The balloons Addie and her
led alien fingers), how long it had lasted Even through the pain, I’d thought it grandmother inflated to form piñata base
(only a minute or two before the aliens was a great story, he held my hand so hard shapes were just that: balloons. Once full
had thrown her off the ship—she’d bro- it broke, but my husband had made me of air, they rose up to touch the ceiling—
ken a hand in the fall). The abduction promise not to tell anyone. People would not to brush it, not to kiss it—and, when
had happened shortly after Michael Jack- think he was secretly violent, he’d said, time came to work on a new piñata, Addie
60 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
C O M I N G T O G E T H E R JAM I L JA N KO C HAI witness, but I wasn’t exactly sure what that responsibility
entailed, and I was too embarrassed to ask anyone.
Mostly, I just followed Farhad’s lead.
A Family Wedding Broad-shouldered, curly-haired, and boyishly handsome,
Farhad was my twenty-two-year-old uncle (mother’s side)
from Logar. He had spent the first two weeks of my visit
shepherding me from Kabul to Logar to Kabul to Logar
again, reënacting many of the treks we had taken through
his village when I had visited as a twelve-year-old. Back
then, he had been the leader of our clan of little boys, and
I had been his follower. I think he felt responsible for me
now, too, his teen-age nephew from America. The tide of
the war was turning. The Taliban were surging in Logar. At
night, they controlled the interior roads and alleyways, so
Farhad always made sure we returned home before sunset.
On the day of the wedding, the hall was packed. We
had expected about three hundred guests, but more than
six hundred arrived. We were running out of tables, and
there were fears that some guests might go hungry. My
older uncles kept losing their temper, shouting at waiters
and managers and guests and one another. More money
was needed. Loans were hashed out in the parking lot.
Deals were made, lies told. And the hall got paid.
Ultimately, every crisis was resolved. The guests were
fed. The attan was performed. The nikkah was complete.
My aunt walked down the aisle and ate her cake.
Toward the end of the wedding, as the guests were
filing out and waiters were cleaning tables, Farhad and I
sat somewhere on the second floor, exhausted but cheerful,
holding hands. After a few moments, I gently pulled my
hand away from his. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings,
but I had never got used to the way friends held hands in
Afghanistan.
Outside the hall, the war raged on. Afghan soldiers
manned a checkpoint a block away. Bombers traversed
here were three floors in the wedding hall the sky, unseen. The Taliban were reconquering the
in Kabul. countryside. Sixteen Afghans, nine of them children,
On the first, my uncles and I greeted massacred by a U.S. staff sergeant, lay in graves in
guests and directed them to the staircases Kandahar.
(for men) or the elevators (for women). On Six months after the wedding, Farhad was killed
the second floor, the men sipped tea and cracked jokes in a shooting just yards outside his compound in
and sat waiting for food. Although our guests supported Logar. He was on his way home to celebrate his recent
various factions in the long war—the Afghan National graduation from college. He died, innocently, amid great
Army, the Americans, even the Taliban—everyone seemed expectations of joy. May Allah have mercy on his soul.
to be getting along. The real party was on the third floor, Farhad was a wholeheartedly affectionate young man. He
where my aunts and girl cousins organized dances and never feared vulnerability. On car rides through the city, he
orchestrated the bride’s entrances. Nothing had been would rest his head on my shoulder and, on walks through
rehearsed, but my family seemed happy to improvise the the countryside, he would take my hand and point out
wedding as it went along. I knew that, at some point, they memories. “This was the stream where we used to swim,” he
were going to need me to walk down the aisle with the might say. “And this is the orchard where we picked apples.
other groomsmen and the bridesmaids in my sweaty, ill- And this is the field where we had rock fights. And this is
fitting suit. In the meantime, I kept busy, rushing up and the road where we found Budabash. Do you remember?”
down the stairs, transporting dresses or chairs or tables I didn’t.
or platters of food, my right hand on my chest, singing Though I was heartened by the thought that Farhad
“Salaam” to anyone I passed. imagined me in that moment of triumph, I wasn’t there
It was 2012. I was nineteen years old. My aunt (father’s when my uncles found Budabash, their missing guard
side) was marrying my uncle (mother’s side), and I had dog, in that summer of 2005. I was far away, lost, and
flown in from Sacramento for the big wedding. Technically, sitting under a mulberry tree on a dark road, petrified
I was there on behalf of my aunt, to act as her shaheed, or and lonely, just waiting for my uncles to find me. 
ILLUSTRATION BY LEONIE BOS THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 61
and her grandmother simply pulled on out at me when time came to revise, but we had an understanding, that the sto­
a string to bring a balloon to their level, it flowed, and it stayed. I almost cut it at ries she’d given me in class were mine to
pasted layers of newspaper on its surface the last minute, not because I had sto­ use, and the one I’d sent her, hers. In order
with a mixture of flour and water, re­ len it but because I worried I’d get in for this line of defense to work, however,
peating the process balloon after balloon trouble for using a cliché of Mexican life there needed to be a story by me in Ad­
while the previously lathered ones dried. for a Mexican character. I told myself die’s in­box. I got to work.
The story went nowhere, but it did so at that was my crime—not the plagiarism A week or so later, I received a call
a fascinating pace. When the shells had but bringing piñatas into it. Why not from another former student, John. He
hardened and holes for pouring candy have the character wear a sombrero while wanted to apologize for the way he’d
were cut out, the balloons inside the piña­ I was at it? Sing “Ay, ay, ay, ay /Canta y behaved in class years earlier.
tas popped with the intensity of gun­ no llores”? I asked my husband if he “Are you doing the twelve­steps
shots (an image that jumped to the read­ thought it was a problem, to have a Mex­ thing?” I said.
er’s mind, not one that Addie used). The ican American character making piña­ I was joking, but John confirmed.
story also gave you instructions on how tas in Pilsen with his grandmother as a “I was an idiot in college,” he said.
to make something, and so, no matter child, and he said it depended on the “I wasn’t living in the real world.”
what you thought of it, you hadn’t wasted writing. He didn’t see anything in the The way I remembered it, John had
your time reading it. You’d learned the writing that was wrong, he said, or con­ once said in class that I shouldn’t be
steps to making a piñata, and that was descending, or essentializing, or exoti­ teaching writing, because I’d never had
more than what most writing gave you. cizing. It was just a strong scene. I didn’t a best­selling book.
When I next saw Addie, I told her mention that I hadn’t written it. “I humiliated you,” he was now say­
to keep doing that, to see where it led, I didn’t get in trouble. The novel sold ing to me on the phone.
to perhaps apply the same focus to the well, but not well enough for any kind He hadn’t.
flan story, if she wanted to make this of controversy. As for the plagiarism, no “You have nothing to apologize for,”
a larger project, a series of shorts in one but Addie could have noticed, and I said, but John had a script to go through.
which she made different things with I doubt she had time for contemporary He explained that he’d been sober for
her grandmother, but she stopped me. fiction. She did send a message of con­ a year. He went through the list of all the
“I’ll never write about myself again,” gratulations when the book came out, substances he’d ingested since high school,
she said. “It’s too hard to hear what though, teasing that in the time it had matching different drugs to different be­
people think of your life. I don’t know taken me to produce two hundred and haviors. Alcohol had made him mean to
how you do it.” fifty pages she’d made and posted thir­ women, cocaine violent toward friends.
I told her I didn’t. My stories weren’t teen short films on YouTube, become “I don’t want to sugarcoat how much
autobiographical. an Internet celebrity, and signed a Holly­ of a dick I was,” he said. “I never hit a
“You know what I mean,” she said. wood deal. She concluded her e­mail woman, but I punched through walls
“People think they are. Because they the way she’d concluded all e­mails since next to them. I enjoyed scaring them.”
could be.” graduation: “You still owe me a story!” In an attempt to care about what he
I said that writing was supposed to was saying, I tried to remember what
be hard, and that she should keep dig­ THE REAL WORLD John looked like. He had sharp incisors,
ging at the piñata story—there was I believed. A weird bump on his neck,
something there. She could add fic­ I tried to hold up my end of the bargain big as a quail’s egg. Tattoos spilling out
tional elements if she wanted, murders, back then, to give Addie a story in which from his T­shirt—a howling wolf, a bird.
even, if it felt comfortable. things happened. I tried writing about a “I found God,” he went on, and I
“You keep them,” she said, when I missing child, about blackmail . . . I even heard him unzip something, his hoodie,
handed back her pages with my notes. tried a Second World War story. Every perhaps, as if God had been under there
“I never want to think about these sto­ week after class she asked me what I had, all along. “I tried to kill myself, and He
ries again.” and every week I gave her a list of aborted saved me.”
She might have said, “Do whatever ideas. When the semester ended, I said, Instead of reaching out to make
you want with them,” I’m not sure. Not “You win,” but Addie said it hadn’t been amends to those he’d hurt, John could
that it would change much. Not that I’m a contest. She made me promise that I simply have appreciated his luck at that
looking for excuses. A year or so later would keep trying for plot. She gave me point, but the option didn’t sit well with
(Addie had graduated by then), I used her personal e­mail address. I don’t think him. “That’s not how the real world
about seven hundred words of the piñata I meant to use it, or to send her a story, works,” he said.
story in my novel “Six Corners.” I put but maybe I did. In any case, I didn’t try It was the second time he’d used that
them, pretty much verbatim, in the mouth again until “Six Corners” came out. I must phrase, “the real world.” He meant “the
of one of my characters, as a childhood have thought at that point that finally movies,” of course. That’s not how it
memory. It was supposed to be a place­ sending Addie a story would absolve me, worked in the movies. But the real world?
holder, something to help me move for­ or at the very least (if Addie ended up As far as I could tell, John had experi­
ward before going back to tweak later— suing me for the words I’d stolen) offer enced a pretty basic version of it. He’d
you know the plagiarist story. I was plausible deniability. If she accused me expected consequences for his actions,
convinced that the stolen part would leap of anything, I could pretend that I thought like in books, like in movies, and noth­
62 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
ing had happened. People had got over (“I have a job to do”). I had her think- was a quirk, like I belonged in a mu-
what he’d done, or plain forgotten about ing she’d be in and out, but got the plot seum for knowing grammar and stick-
it. That was how the real world worked. to catch up to her, her family’s past emerg- ing with it. And perhaps she was right.
Not everything you did mattered, not ing in the client’s files, her mother per- Perhaps grammar was passé. It seemed
every conversation was remembered by haps still alive, having been forced to more and more writers (including writ-
the rest of the cast. Most bad deeds went fake her own death after getting in with ers whose style critics praised) were treat-
unpunished. You got away with a lot. But the wrong crowd. . . . I didn’t shy away ing its rules as ballpark suggestions.
John had wanted to be wronged back, from cliché. The story became a novel— Browsing through one of the books by
to be asked to explain himself in a long to this day, my best-selling work. I never the author who had been onstage be-
monologue. Hunting down those he’d sent it to Addie. fore me, I’d read the following sentence:
wronged (or those he thought he’d “From the outside, our love is an im-
wronged) was his last-ditch attempt to ROCK BOTTOM pregnable fortress, only we know the
not be alone with his shame and regrets, truth—peace on the surface, the illusion
to make it all mean something. No one Last time I saw her (the last time I would of calm waters: below it, we fight about
was asking him for an apology? The steps see her) was when I attended a literary a misplaced dish.”
now gave him an excuse to force one on festival in New York. Addie lived there, Addie and I went for a walk and talked
us, to force us to listen to him again. He and showed up for my talk on Stanley about precision in language, correct syn-
was still a bully. Elkin. The organizers had given me tax. Addie tried to humor me, to make fun
I forgave him for his in-class com- carte blanche—an hour on the author of what I kept calling lazy writing by of-
ment, and he asked if I had Addie’s of my choice—but I could tell that Elkin fering a silly defense of it.“Wanting verb
number. He wanted to apologize to her had disappointed them. It wasn’t a name to agree with subject is so reactionary! ”
for something, too. I told him I didn’t that would draw crowds. On the same she said. “There is no subject anymore.
have it and hung up. stage, panelists before me had talked Everything is fluid.” She was laughing,
It was one thing to feel used in some- about motherhood, about “writing from but I wondered whether she had a point.
one else’s redemption montage, but had the body,” about identity. It had gone Maybe it wasn’t lazy writing, after all.
John called me only to get Addie’s contact? well. When I talked to the same audi- Maybe there was intention behind it.
A conversation like this would usu- ence about the supreme quality of El- “Isn’t grammar just like a corset?”
ally have ruined my focus for the day, kin’s verb choices and sentence-shape Addie went on. “Didn’t we all agree
but I was too angry not to try to use variations, the emotion that arose from to get rid of those? Who wants to see
the anger. I went back to work on the his ac- and decelerations . . . many peo- tits pushed up to shoulder level any-
story I planned to send Addie as retro- ple left the room. more?” She pushed up her own breasts
active payment. Afterward, Addie came up to tell me as she said this. “Who wants to read
The story exaggerated the reasons how much she’d liked my talk. She’d al- tight sentences?”
I’d left France at age twelve: my moth- ways enjoyed hearing me break apart It had rained and the streets smelled
er’s death (she’d been in a car crash with paragraphs, she said, to see how much clean. Addie had just finished shoot-
a man she shouldn’t have been in a car I cared about words. She said it like it ing her second film, and she seemed
with), the shame it brought to her par-
ents, the family feud over who got what.
In the story, I made my mother’s fam-
ily even richer than it had been—and
my and my father’s departure from Eu-
rope, after they cut us off, a steeper de-
motion. Not that it hadn’t been steep.
I planned to end the story right there
(my exile in America with poor dad), but
I wanted to see what happened if I de-
viated from real events, if I wrote a ver-
sion of me who took action, who sought
revenge against her mother’s family. I
had my protagonist grow up to be tough,
excel at boxing, study law at Harvard,
defend high-profile criminals. After many
years, instead of going back to France to
interview Bernard Loiseau she went at
a wealthy client’s request, to help him
mount his defense in a murder case. I
had her hesitate at first (she’d decided
long ago to never set foot in France “We should probably get going—or weigh in
again!), then do the professional thing on their argument, whatever you want.”
happy—happier than I’d ever seen her. show you to your quarters. There’s no many options, Addie said. She was in
“Who wants form over content?” she room that I can build to John’s exact New York because she’d grown up hear-
said. “Don’t we all want freedom? Isn’t specifications up there.” Addie tapped ing that’s where the artists were, but art-
this the twenty-first century? Who wants at her forehead. “The human brain re- ists lived everywhere now. In New York,
thoughts expressed clearly? Who wants fuses to know anyone deeply. It’s like it you found only the ones who complained
clarity? Who wants thoughts?” knows it’s a bad idea.” that the city wasn’t what it used to be.
We lived in the century of feelings. She’d been staring at a SpongeBob- “They were already complaining
Blurry emotions. Blobs of interiority shaped piñata since we’d come in. about that in my day,” I said. “It’s a trick,
spilling out. Everyone was unique and “How do you get them down?” she to discourage newcomers.”
infinite, everyone wanted to be under- said. “I can’t see any strings.” At a crosswalk in Dumbo, Addie
stood, and no one had time to shape I told her they were piñatas, not bal- noted three things. One: night had fallen.
and carefully carve out explanations. It loons. They weren’t floating. Two: artists who moved to New York
was a fast-moving train, being alive, “They’re hooked to the ceiling,” I said. used the demands of the city as an ex-
knowing people, Addie said. You hopped “Right,” Addie said. cuse to stop making art. Three: she didn’t
on and grabbed on to what you could. I couldn’t tell what she was on. I’d know what to make of her piñata.
I couldn’t tell whether she was still never been interested in knowing that “I don’t know why I bought this,”
disparaging the aesthetic she described kind of thing, not even with my mother. she said.
or agreeing with it now. I hadn’t seen My mother—I couldn’t put my eyes in She thought perhaps we could fill it
her first movie. I didn’t know how her my pocket when she came home trem- and find a kid whose birthday it was. We
writing had evolved, what she stood for bling and delirious, but nothing said I encountered a party store a few blocks
these days. had to stare at her, either. later, solidifying her plan. We bought
“Remember John?” she asked me. “How do you say ‘rock bottom’ in miniature versions of all the candy bars
Addie had seen him recently, and French?” Addie asked me. in existence, we bought M&M’s, con-
she told me that his sobriety hadn’t “Toucher le fond,” I said. fetti, and small plush toys. At the check-
lasted. Since our phone call a few years She said it was the same in Span- out, the cashier wanted to charge us for
earlier, he’d relapsed and recovered, re- ish, that French and Spanish speakers the piñata itself, but Addie said we’d
lapsed and recovered. merely touched bottom, didn’t hit it. She bought it in Chelsea.
“John keeps hitting Pause on his life, was still talking about John, how many “ Why would you buy a piñata
hoping that it’ll give people time to re- times he’d used the phrase with her, a in Chelsea and the filling in Brook-
ally look at and understand him,” Addie cliché he’d at least spared me. lyn Heights?”
said. “Meanwhile, the train is moving “It’s so American,” Addie said. “This It was hard not to hear judgment in
without him. Isn’t that sad? He wants idea of momentum. Even when Amer- his voice, yet the question seemed valid:
to be understood.” icans are collapsing, they do it at great we hadn’t found anything special in Chel-
Did he think the rest of us were? speed.” sea—his store carried the same piñata.
“Maybe if John’s syntax were per- “And he tried to kill himself !” she “It takes time for a plot to come into
fect, people would understand him bet- added, about John, from under Sponge- focus,” Addie said.
ter,” I said. Bob’s cardboard feet. “What a moron! The cashier didn’t ask any more
“That is such an élitist thing to say,” Who does he think he is? Suicide should questions.
Addie said. only be for geniuses and the terminally We filled the piñata on the sidewalk,
We stopped at a mini-mart for gum. ill, don’t you think?” giving some of the treats away to amused
Addie liked to chew gum while she Who was being élitist now? passersby. Two teen-age girls recognized
smoked. She said all the face movement “I think it should be for everybody,” Addie and asked for an autograph. It was
was conducive to new thoughts. The I said. “The option, I mean.” all good fun until something about the
place sold piñatas shaped like cartoon The cashier asked us if we wanted candy hole started bothering Addie. She
characters, and for a moment I thought a piñata today. I guess Addie and I brought the piñata under the street light’s
that Addie was onto me, that she’d had been looking at the ceiling an un- weak orange beam and stared into it.
planned this, and was going to confront usual amount. “It’s just a fucking cardboard box!”
me about stealing lines from her. “Not today,” I said, and the man she said. “Someone just pasted crêpe
“The problem, of course, is that you seemed to understand reasons behind paper on a cardboard box!”
can never understand anyone else,” she my refusal that I hadn’t hinted at. “As opposed to what?” I said.
said, looking up at the piñatas. “And you “I’ll take one,” Addie said. “They didn’t even use a balloon!”
can’t tell people how to see you, either. We walked out with the SpongeBob She sat SpongeBob on a stoop and
That’s not how it works. Our brains can piñata. We walked for miles, all the way explained to me how piñatas were made,
only hold about a hundred different to Brooklyn. Every time Addie lit a new the importance of the balloon, the bal-
people, did you know that? After a hun- cigarette, I offered to carry the piñata, loon as scaffolding for the papier-mâché
dred, it starts typifying. You’re the fifth but she kept refusing. We talked about shell. Once the shell was dry, she said,
Canadian I meet? You’ll be packed with some famous actors she’d met, how tall you burst the balloon underneath. It
Canadians. The third guy I know to go or short they really were. We talked about had fulfilled its role.
through a twelve-step program? Let me art, and where to live. There were so I didn’t know whether to pretend I
64 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
C O M I N G T O G E T H E R R E B E C CA C U RT I S and the benefits of activated-oxygen therapy. A distance
runner said that Roberta had become stuck up. She gave
zillions of charity concerts for children. Why’d she help
Roberta at the Morrison kids instead of—the runner gestured around—her friends?
Lou Reed came in sometimes; no one cared.
Denise adjusted the runner’s tubing.
Roberta walked in, using a cane, and sat beside me. A
lawyer remarked that Michelle Obama had spent oodles on
a trip to Spain. To respect workers, she should have stayed
low-budget.
Roberta put down her genmaicha. Michelle hadn’t seen
her best friend in ten years, she said loudly. The Obamas
paid personal costs themselves.
Her hand trembled. It wasn’t easy to be known, she
remarked. Sometimes, she said, she wore sweatpants to the
bodega, and strangers criticized her for looking dowdy. How
must it be for the President? He couldn’t fly commercial.
People shrugged. Still, they said. So much golf ?
Irked, Roberta turned to me.
Why was I here? Lyme? Why hadn’t I recovered?
I shrugged, sheepish. Didn’t know, I said. Depressed
immune system? Bad childhood?
Her brow furrowed. Bad how?
Lyme fog filled my brain. My mother never bought
juice, I mumbled. Just Kool-Aid.
Kool-Aid ? Roberta’s luscious voice asked. That was trauma?
When she was small, she said, kids from her neighborhood
ne day in 2010, I dropped in to the Morrison played in an empty lot, and her mother sent her out to play
Center, in Union Square. The office was high- without a top. When she explained to her mother that other
ceilinged and light-filled, and its I.V. room girls wore shirts, her mother said, They have their shirts, and
contained potted ferns and many recliners. you have yours. When she’d needed a church dress, her
That day, I scored a corner chair. I’d come for a mother got her a used one, but it dragged on the ground. She
heavy-metal detox to assist my recovery from Lyme disease. protested, and her mother said, Shut up and wear the dress.
I usually had brain fog, but, after an EDTA drip, paragraphs She mentioned that when she was ten she stopped
flowed through my head. I worked as a teacher, lived with growing, and the doctors found a pituitary tumor, but did
roommates, and couldn’t afford the treatment, so I put it on nothing. She graduated from school early, and, through
credit cards and hoped that healing my brain would pay off. piano playing, won a full college scholarship, but took time
The center’s patients varied—Lyme, chronic fatigue, off to help her mother. She was playing piano in church
lupus, Alzheimer’s, M.S., A.L.S., cancer—but we all followed when a man told her that she should play pop music at a
Dr. M.’s dictates: avoid sugar, grains, gluten, dairy, alcohol, bar across the bridge. When she protested that she was a
fruit, and overexcitement. Getting infusions stank. Still, we classically trained pianist, he said, That’s O.K., you should
harbored hopes: having your favorite nurse stick you, or still play at the bar. So she did. And she loved it. One day,
scoring Dr. M.’s special genmaicha tea. she noticed there was a long line outside the bar. When she
Denise brought my I.V. stand. A man I’ll call Hector, a asked why, the manager said, They’re here for you, Roberta.
middle-aged screenwriter, said, Denise, is Roberta coming To hear you sing.
today? What was my story? she eventually asked. Was I
Denise shrugged. married? Why not? How old was I?
She said she’d jam with me, Hector explained. I I blanched. Said, Thirty-six.
brought my guitar. Well, she said, she found hers. It didn’t work forever, but
Roberta was sick, Denise told Hector gently. Also, she found it and had it. She sipped tea. You’re not young. She
seventysomething. If she came in, Hector should let her peered at me. You’re not ugly, she said. Better get out there.
get her medicine. Denise unhooked her. She walked away slowly, in pain.
Hector was underweight and allergic to most food. Still, She was performing that evening, Denise said. For charity.
his request was absurd, incredibly presumptuous. Jam with She needed rest.
Roberta Flack? “Killing Me Softly,” arguably the best singer The Live Morrison JamFest happened soon afterward.
alive? Hector played guitar; Roberta sang, as did everyone else.
I asked for genmaicha tea. Only two packets, Denise The party was euphoric, excessive, spanned from hymns and
said, saved for—she whispered—Roberta. Krishna Das to Bob Dylan, included forbidden beverages,
The room filled. Regulars chatted about politics, war, and went quite late. 
ILLUSTRATION BY LEONIE BOS THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 65
was hearing this for the first time, re- ing to principles that remained unclear tled as I did the dishes. I checked the
mind her of her story, or say that I had to me. She poured us bourbon and dis- time and the weather—two hours until
myself written about the process two appeared upstairs, to change shirts. After my husband came home, thirty-two
novels ago. twenty minutes, I went to check on her. degrees. If I walked to campus, I could
Addie said that, when she was a kid, She’d fallen asleep in the bathroom. I catch him after office hours, ride the
her grandmother had always let her washed her face with a towel and warm El home with him.
burst the balloon, but that they’d con- water, which half woke her. She nod- I took Grand all the way downtown.
sistently disagreed on what to do with ded when I asked if she wanted me to For a few blocks, the wind carried a
it afterward. The grandmother wanted put her to bed. I didn’t know it would smell of chocolate from the Blommer
to take the limp thing out, Addie wanted be the last time I saw her. She didn’t factory. I was glad not to have lit that
it to stay in, for children to find on the ask me to stay by her bedside (in fact, cigarette with the cameraman earlier. If
ground later among the candy, when after I found her in the bathroom she I ever smoked again, it would have to
the piñata broke. She thought it was the didn’t say another word), but I sat there, be with my husband, I thought, when
real prize, that leftover knotted piece of anyway, until she started snoring evenly. he made me a cocktail, or when a book
rubber, the piñata’s origin story, trapped On my way out, I turned off only of his or mine came out. He was work-
within it until the whole thing was de- the lamps I remembered her turning ing on a book right now, about synop-
stroyed. It all started and ended with on. She’d left the piñata in the foyer, tic compositions in art. Synoptic com-
that primordial knot. next to our shoes, and I considered get- positions had always interested him—in
“Everyone is cutting corners now,” ting rid of it, let her wonder in the morn- fact, he’d told me about them on our
she said. “What kind of origin story is ing if she’d dreamed the whole thing. first date. They combined different time
a cardboard box?” I’d encouraged her to leave it on the lines in a single image, telling a story or
She sat on the stoop next to the stoop earlier, or to give it to the next a myth in such a way that the eye could
SpongeBob piñata. She hadn’t included family that walked by, but she’d insisted catch all of its main beats simultane-
anything about the knot in her story on taking it home. We couldn’t give a ously: a battle being planned, fought,
back then. It wouldn’t have been as in- cardboard box to a kid, she’d said. This and won all at once; a man dying, and
teresting if she had, the symbolism too wasn’t a real piñata. It wasn’t real. his funeral. I often felt like my husband’s
on the nose. fascination with the synoptic said some-
“Do you remember the story you EGGS IN A BASKET, EGGS IN A HOLE thing about the way he perceived time.
gave me once?” I said. “About piñatas?” It did often feel like he knew something
“I never wrote about piñatas,” Addie None of this did I tell the cameras, in I didn’t about the future. For example,
said. “Must’ve been another of your my living room, from the almond-green he’d started saying only weeks into our
Mexican students.” chair. I talked about Addie’s work, how marriage that marrying me was the best
“It was part of our pact,” I said. “It playing every role herself in her first decision he’d ever made. He’d repeated
was a really good story.” movies had been the opposite of ego- it many times since. I always pretended
She couldn’t have been less inter- mania. I made up something about the to be flattered, but the truth was it made
ested. She took her face in her hands, human struggle for coherence, how we’d me uneasy that he could be so sure I
and I worried that she was going to all once had the experience of not quite wouldn’t one day hurt him beyond re-
cry. After a minute, though, I worried pair, or be the source of his biggest dis-
that she’d fallen asleep. Her breathing appointment. He liked his life and was
had slowed. The air coming in and out confident that the future stood still, wait-
of her kept getting caught on the same ing to give him more of the same,
patch of mucus in her throat, and I whereas I either moved head first and
thought of amber, of trapped insects. in terror toward what came next or
We still had bags of candy in our hands. showed it my back, eyes on the past, like
“You’re bleeding,” I said, and that got the Angel of History, being pushed into
Addie out of her state. A red line trick- the future by the storm of accumulated
led from her nose, between her ring and catastrophe. How different could my
pinkie fingers. She wiped the blood on recognizing ourselves. How Addie’s husband’s view of time be that he knew
her shirt. I wanted to call her a cab, but early work had taken that idea to an ex- how to judge his decision to marry me
she said we were only a few blocks from treme. I said things anyone else could before I died, or he died, or something
her house, and asked me to walk with have said about her. ended? How could I ask him such a
her the rest of the way. When the crew left, I felt empty, question without alarming him?
Addie’s place was devoid of books the way I did after teaching. Whatever I made it to school and ran into
and full of lamps. Arc lamps, tree lamps, I’d been afraid of hadn’t happened— Eric, my husband’s favorite Ph.D. stu-
piano lamps, Tiffanys, low-hanging fix- no one had confronted me, no one had dent, in the lobby.
tures. Many were on already. Shadows asked me point blank if I’d ever stolen “I hear they came to film you this
moved in confusing ways, but visibility Addie’s writing. I tried to convince my- morning!” he said. “How does it feel
was high. She switched on a couple of self that the emptiness I felt was relief, to be a movie star?”
new lights when we walked in, accord- and the relief lightheartedness. I whis- I wondered why anyone said things
66 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
like that. Maybe I made him nervous.
Even though he studied art history, Eric
had once asked my opinion of a novel
he was writing, and I hadn’t been as en-
couraging as he’d hoped. His novel had
been about the characters in famous
works at the Art Institute coming alive
at night—Hopper’s barflies waxing lyr-
ical at the gift shop, Grant Wood’s stern
farmer wandering the hallways with his
pitchfork while his daughter experi-
enced profound transformation study-
ing van Gogh’s “The Bedroom.” The
book was full of useless details about
famous painters. I’d told Eric that the
adage “Write what you know” didn’t
mean that one had to write everything
he knew about what he knew. We hadn’t
really spoken since.
In the lobby now, I told Eric how ex-
hausting it all was. How no one should
ever have to be on camera. “Goodnight room, goodnight moon. Goodnight kittens,
“Did it feel intrusive?” he asked. “Did goodnight mittens. Goodnight stars, goodnight air. Goodnight
they ask you weird questions?” drawn-out bedtime rituals everywhere.”
“I wonder why they came to inter-
view me at all.”
I knew Addie had thanked me in • •
a speech years ago, when she won her
first award, but, apart from that, there aliens with long fingers, the way that know nothing had gone wrong with the
wasn’t much out in public to connect poor woman had—the one who’d been interview, wouldn’t even have thought
us. I told Eric they’d interviewed Jen- abducted in Skokie. Perhaps my hus- to worry that anything could. I would
nifer Lopez . . . why would they come band would know. I became certain that never tell him about stealing from Addie.
for me? he would be in the next elevator to open In that way, it was already possible to
“Why interview the college profes- on my right. I could almost see him say that stealing from Addie was the
sor?” I said. “In these situations, you there, the way I could almost see that worst decision I’d ever made.
go for the first-grade teacher, the drama moment in the past when I learned that The elevator dinged, a sound simi-
teacher from high school . . . those are Addie was dead. I’d wanted to cancel lar to that of our old cooking timer, the
the important ones. No college pro- the rest of class that day, but to do what? one my father had used every morning
fessor ever made an impact on any- I’d gone back in, thinking I wouldn’t be of his life when soft-boiling eggs. Four
one’s life.” able to talk to my students about pac- minutes. It was one of two egg dishes
I was standing precisely where I’d ing and tension and imagery, but I had. (if you could call a soft-boiled egg a
been when I learned of Addie’s death— I had been able to. I’d been able for an dish) my father had taught me to make—
facing the glass doors to the street, bul- hour to forget that Addie had just died, along with eggs in a basket, which my
letin board and elevators to my right. the same way I’d been able, for count- husband called eggs in a hole. With a
I’d been on my way out for fresh air less days and months before that, to for- cookie cutter or a small drinking glass,
during a class break when I found out. get she was alive. Running errands, say- you made a hole in the middle of a slice
“That is nonsense!” Eric said. “Your ing things, looking at herself in mirrors. of bread. You heated a tablespoon of
husband, for one, has had a tremen- It’s a cliché to have characters forget butter in a pan. Once it melted, you
dous impact on my life.” that their mother has died, to have them added a few drops of olive oil (my fa-
“Grad school is different,” I said. I try to give her a call years after the fact, ther’s secret). You fried the slice of bread
wasn’t sure where I was going with this. but in my experience it’s much more in the butter-oil mixture for a minute
I usually tried to think before I spoke, common to forget that someone we before breaking an egg over the hole.
but that guardrail was gone now. “Col- know, or used to know, is alive and You added a pinch of salt and let the
lege professors, though . . . we come in breathing somewhere. egg set, a minute or so. You flipped the
either too early or too late.” One of the elevators was coming whole thing, cooked for twenty more
The bulletin board was advertising down from the fourth floor. In a few seconds. You served immediately. 
the film club’s feature of the month, and seconds, its doors would open on my
the poster of “E.T.” got me wondering husband, I knew that now. He’d be sur- THE WRITER’S VOICE PODCAST
why it was that we could only imagine prised to see me, but not alarmed. He’d Camille Bordas reads “Colorín Colorado.”

THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 67

 The Critics

A C R I T I C AT L ARG E

Tell No Tales
Storytelling has been sold as the solution to everything. But it comes at a cost.

BY PAR U L S E H G AL

fter a millennium, she Do we dare define it? “Storytell- and villains, conflicts and resolutions,
remains the hardest- ing”—as presently, promiscuously de- climaxes and happy endings,” accord-
working woman in ployed—comprises fiction (but also ing to Yuval Noah Harari. Story is now
literature. It was not nonfiction). It is the realm of playful so valued that, in many realms, it has
enough to be saddled fantasy (but also the very mortar of become compulsory—consider the rec-
with a husband who identity and community); it traps (and itations required of asylum seekers or
had the nasty habit of marrying and liberates); it defines (and obscures). rape victims, who are penalized or dis-
murdering a new virgin every day to Perhaps the most reliable marker is missed if the parameters of their sto-
assure himself of spousal fidelity. Nor that little halo it has taken to holding ries do not readily conform to the genre.
was it enough to produce a series of above its own head, its insistent aura And if a story betrays us? The solu-
nested stories under such deadlines of piety. Storytelling is what will save tion, it seems, is to cast about for a bet-
(truly, I complain too much), stories so the kingdom; we are all Scheherazade ter one. The journalist Nesrine Malik
prickly and tantalizing that the king now. Among the other entities story- makes this case in the 2019 book “We
postponed her murder every night to telling has recently been touted to save: Need New Stories”: “It is pointless to
wait for the next installment. That’s to wildlife, water, conservatism, your busi- fight fake facts, or true but cynically
say nothing of the entirely forgotten ness, our streets, newspapers, medicine, twisted facts, with other facts. The new
three children she bore over those thou- the movies, San Francisco, and mean- stories we need to tell are not just the
sand and one nights. Who recalls that ing itself. Story is our mother tongue, corrections of old stories, they are vi-
there was always a new baby in Sche- the argument runs. For the sake of com- sions.” Narrative Initiative, which is
herazade’s arms? prehension and care, we must be spo- dedicated to “durable social change,” is
Scheherazade has earned her rest, ken to in story. Story has elbowed out one of a number of organizations de-
but she remains booked and busy, ob- everything else, from the lyric to the voted to such strategies; “impactful, en-
sessively renamed and reclaimed. She logical argument, even the straightfor- during social change,” it holds, “moves
is dusted off and wheeled out wher- ward news dispatch. In 2020, the Times’ at the speed of narrative.”
ever the “magic of storytelling” is con- media columnist wrote that the pub- Anyone in my line has every incen-
jured, irresistible to any writer traffick- lication was evolving “from the stodgy tive to fall in step, to proclaim the
ing in “wonder” or “enchantment.” Her paper of record into a juicy collection supremacy of narrative, and then,
ghost floats through the work of Dave of great narratives.” modestly, to propose herself, as one
Eggers, Colum McCann, and Salman All sorts of studies are fanned out professionally steeped in story, to be
Rushdie in strenuous if harmless hom- in defense: we are persuaded more by of some small use. Blame it on the cor-
age. But she has also been claimed by story than by statistics; we recall facts tisol, though: there’s no stanching the
new constituencies and put to unsa- longer if they are embedded in narra- skepticism. How inconspicuously nar-
vory new uses. The narrator of “The tive; stories boost production of corti- rative winds around us, soft as fog; how
Arabian Nights” must find herself be- sol (encouraging attentiveness) and efficiently it enables us to forget to
ABOVE: ANTONIO GIOVANNI PINNA

wildered at being name-checked in oxytocin (encouraging connection). We look up and ask: What is it that story
Karl Rove’s “Scheherazade Strategy,” are pattern-seeking, meaning-making does not allow us to see?
as well as in articles about brand man- creatures, who project our narrative
agement, serialized content, mastering needs upon the world. “Homo sapiens ometimes, as Wittgenstein sug-
the attention economy—the unwitting
inspiration, and occasional face, of the
is a storytelling animal that thinks in
stories rather than in numbers or graphs,
S gested, a troublesome word doesn’t
need to be retired or humiliated; it just
shifty and shifting tangle of alibis that and believes that the universe itself needs to be sent out for cleaning be-
goes by “storytelling.” works like a story, replete with heroes fore being returned to circulation. That’s
68 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
A fixation on narrative—Scheherazade’s life-extending legacy—has crowded out other forms of knowing, and caring.
ILLUSTRATION BY BEN WISEMAN THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 69
 Nike soccer balls—incited consumer
outrage. Management mavens argued
that corporations could no longer pro-
duce mere products or brands. There
was a feeling that “brands concealed
stories,” Salmon writes. “Ugly stories.”
In 1998, Nike’s C.E.O., Phil Knight,
admitted that the company had be-
come “synonymous with slave wages,
forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse.”
The brand clearly needed to be asso-
ciated with something sturdier than a
logo or a slogan. Nike recruited a se-
nior staffer at a prominent anti-child-
labor program, and a form of organi-
zational storytelling was launched, in
which the corporation produced and
controlled its own counternarratives.
Meanwhile, the story skeptics trace
how we have learned to live—as Jona-
• • than Gottschall writes in “The Story
Paradox”—in “unconscious obedience”
to the grammar of story. Story lulls. It
a tricky task when it comes to a word Chaudhuri said at a 2018 symposium encourages us to overlook the fact that
as shop-soiled as “story,” the literary he convened called “Against Storytell- it is, first, an act of selection. Details
scholar Peter Brooks can attest. Brooks ing.” This coincided with globaliza- are amplified or muted. Apparent ir-
spent most of his career trying to im- tion, he said, and the insistence of the relevancies are integrated or pruned.
press upon readers the particular power special importance of storytelling to Each decision is an argument, each ar-
of narrative, sliding under the chassis so-called minority communities (the gument an imposition of meaning, each
of the big novels—“Great Expecta- demand that Indian writers, say, should imposition an exercise of power. When
tions,” “Heart of Darkness”—and tak- “tell our own stories”) was a contriv- applied to history, it is a process that
ing apart their engines of narrative mo- ance of “literary marketing.” It favored the late scholar Hayden White termed
mentum to reveal how they run and the creation of particular stories—spiced “emplotment”—in which experience is
how they carry the reader along with with “local” f lavor and ready for ex- altered when squeezed into even the
them. In his most recent book, “Se- port—and punished work that was most rudimentary beginning-middle-
duced by Story,” he describes the hor- formally challenging. If communities end structure. Memoirists are increas-
rifying feeling of having succeeded all needed easily parsed stories in order to ingly conscious of the toll that such
too well. be heard, we were told, people needed arcs exact. The American poet Maggie
It was shortly before George W. them in order to heal. “My story has Smith, in her new book, “You Could
Bush’s Inauguration in 2001, and Brooks value,” the comedian Hannah Gadsby Make This Place Beautiful,” notes wryly,
was watching Bush introduce his Cab- said in their Netflix special “Nanette,” “It’s a mistake to think of my life as
inet nominations, delivering accolades describing their experiences of violence plot, but isn’t this what I’m tasked with
with moist emotion: “a great Ameri- and misogyny. “Stories hold our cure.” now—making sense of what happened
can story”; “I love his story.” The Pres- In the past quarter century, the nar- by telling it as a story?” She goes on,
ident spoke warmly about the “stories rative turn has spread to economics, “At any given moment, I wonder: Is this
that really explain what America can law, and medicine. (Columbia estab- the rising action? Has the climax already
and should be about.” Brooks writes, lished a Narrative Medicine program happened or are we not even there yet?”
“It was as if a fledgling I had nourished in 2001.) Increasingly, narrative has It’s not just the unruliness of life
had become a predator.” It was a “nar- been a business strategy. Today, con- that is ill-served by story and its co-
rative takeover of reality”—an evoca- sultants regularly counsel that a “com- ercive resolution. In a withering re-
tion and understanding of the world pelling brand story” is vital to a success- view of a Brooklyn Museum show on
which was purely narrative, which could ful I.P.O. In “Storytelling: Bewitching Picasso’s legacy that Hannah Gadsby
not see that living and telling might the Modern Mind” (2017), Christian helped organize, the critic Jason Farago
be different things. Salmon traces the way corporations examined the encroachment of story-
When did the so-called narrative moved aggressively into storytelling, telling upon art. “ ‘Nanette’ proposed
turn—the doctrine of narrative suprem- sometimes as a form of damage con- a therapeutic purpose for culture,” he
acy—go mainstream? “At a certain point trol. Campaigns against sweatshop wrote, and the creed disserved the art-
in history, people started saying, ‘We labor—and images of Pakistani chil- ists whose works were gathered at the
are born storytellers,’” the novelist Amit dren hunched over, stitching together exhibit. “Howardena Pindell, on view
70 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
here, is much more than a storyteller; forters” try to escape from the very tale their questions and unease echo and
Cindy Sherman, on view here, is much that gave her existence, skipping ap- rhyme and join with one another; I
more than a storyteller,” he went on. pointments that the plot had made hear a chorus.
“They are artists who, like Picasso be- for her. Graham Greene’s and Ian Mc-
fore them, put ideas and images into
productive tension, with no reassur-
Ewan’s characters seem most in their
element when wringing their hands
“ I am worried about you,” a biogra-
pher friend of mine tells me. “This
ance of closure or comfort.” about the dangers of fictional form. piece of yours—what is the alternative
In truth, suspicion of story is an- Rachel Cusk’s cool abstractions draw to story?” Must we throw in with the
cient. Plato urged the exile of all story- attention to the cruelty of story; David bloodless quantifiers, wizards of line
tellers for candying over their ideas Markson’s anti-narratives draw atten- graphs and charts, replacing plots with
with devious manipulations and seduc- tion to its irrelevance. Hernan Diaz’s scatter plots? Nothing so drastic. There
tions. (Scheherazade kept the king’s at- novel of finance, “Trust,” structured as is no jettisoning narrative. But what
tention not just by using cliffhangers a set of interlocked tales that sell one happens when “story” comes back from
but by scumbling the edges of each another short, is an exercise in narra- the laundry, cleaned and pressed?
story, making it difficult to see where tive mistrust. Resistance to story even Return to storytelling’s primal scene:
one ended and the next began.) Nor crops up from time to time in marketing Scheherazade telling tales in order to
has story been quite as dominant as the and design, although less frequently. live to see another dawn. Before it is
story supremacists maintain. Religious “Now everybody’s a storyteller,” the anything else, a story is a way we can
texts were delivered as often in riddles Austrian graphic designer Stefan Sag- speak to one another without neces-
as in parables; much of the Quran is meister said in a much circulated 2014 sarily being ourselves; that is its risk
non-narrative. Classics of ancient lit- speech. In his industry, the term had and relief, its portable privacy. The fact
erature do not always evince story in a taken on “the mantle of bullshit.” that children ask for stories at night is
conventional sense: “Gilgamesh” is This is the red thread I find myself used to defend the notion of storytell-
woven out of speeches; “Beowulf ” following through literature today— ing as natural, deeply human—a de-
scarcely has a causal plot. For centu- that flash of warning, a sensitivity to fense against the dark. But Margaret
ries, Scheherazade’s stories, collected story which tips into wariness. Among Wise Brown, the author of “Goodnight
as “The Arabian Nights,” were excluded the skeptics, story’s innocence is never Moon,” was convinced that children
from the canon of Arabic literature pre- presumed. Story is frisked. Story is didn’t care much about plot; it was their
cisely because they were stories, classi- marched to the dock. “Every crisis is parents who did. When children ask
fied as khurafa—fantasies that were fit in part a storytelling crisis,” Rebecca for stories, what they’re asking for is
only for women and children, that sat Solnit wrote in the Guardian earlier the presence of the adult. One won-
in the shadow of poetry, the revered this year. “This is as true of climate ders just whom Scheherazade was re-
genre of the time. chaos as anything else. We are hemmed galing in that room. When did her gaze
Aside from the reservations of phi- in by stories that prevent us from see- shift from the king to the children, as
losophers, from Plato to Hannah Ar- ing, or believing in, or acting on the it must have? What kind of armor did
endt, there is also the robust lineage possibilities for change.” In “How the she think she was providing them?
of authors appalled or plain bored by Word Is Passed,” Clint Smith meets Somehow, here we are, tangled up
narrative manipulation. E. M. Forster with mothers once again. (They are,
found something unseemly about story, perhaps, story’s only rivals when it comes
that “lowest and simplest of literary or- to hosting our outsized expectation
ganisms,” a veritable “tape-worm,” with and disappointment.) Our era’s great
its dankly primordial “and then . . . and case study of narrative hunger is Prince
then.” We were, he feared, “all like Sche- Harry’s memoir, “Spare.” What Harry
herazade’s husband, in that we want to grieves is not just the loss of Princess
know what happens next.” For him, Diana; he grieves the absence of sto-
there was no avoiding that “naked worm ries about her: “She was mainly just a
of time.” The writer David Shields, hole in my heart.” It is a terrible emp-
fulminating against the novel form, tour guides at historical sites such tiness he describes, and his memoir is
judged that its mechanisms were “un- as Monticello and Louisiana’s Whit- a chronicle of auditioning other stories
believably predictable, tired, contrived, ney Plantation to survey the narrative that might hold and sustain him—all
and essentially purposeless.” choices made by the people who shape these metaphors of containment recall-
Of course, the most persistent and and share the story of the past, and ing the maternal body. He becomes ad-
imaginative rebellions against narra- what it means to work with the ab- dicted to the tabloid tales, palace plots,
tive have been staged by novelists them- sences and erasures of the archives. In Army jingoism, and fairy tales, until he
selves, inexorably drawn to individual “Ordinary Notes,” Christina Sharpe’s alights upon his own. “I considered all
acts of sabotage, even after movements mosaic of fragments mutinies against of the previous challenging walks of
like modernism or the nouveau roman the progressive arc of narrative. Such my life—the North Pole, the Army ex-
have hardened into history. Muriel scattered dissenters form nothing ap- ercises, following Mummy’s coffin to
Spark had her heroine in “The Com- proaching a movement. But I hear the grave—and while the memories
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 71
were painful, they also provided conti- from time to time, following the birth he wrote. “My anger is a secret that
nuity, structure, a kind of narrative spine of a child, when I feel myself, for stays away from the light of day be-
that I’d never suspected. Life was one months on end, more place than per- cause the square is bright with the
long walk. It made sense. It was won- son. That snarl of time, thought, and smiles of white people passing by as
derful.” It is also a strange, inadvertent sensation—uncombed experience—is they view the dead man on display. I
echo of Peter Pan. Peter cannot grow what theorists call “the unstoried self,” feel disgust and disgrace and rage and
up, he tells Wendy, because he was never what Annie Ernaux calls “the pure im- every emotion that makes me cry with-
told stories: “None of the lost boys know manence of a moment.” out tears and scream without sound. I
any stories.” Without being imparted It is easy to dismiss the cotton wool don’t make a sound.” It is a moment
a sense of narrative, he cannot estab- as inarticulate and unprocessed, instead that he doesn’t experience as story; it
lish his own. of acknowledging that it may have an is lightning and grief that he describes,
It’s a curious thing: in making the authority of its own. The ethical proj- bottled in his body, but protected, too—
case against story, we rely on—what ect of Ernaux’s memoirs forbids the kept from the bright, white smiles, kept
else?—story. Brooks, for example, de- telling to supplant the living. It rejects intact, kept his. Then he picks up a gui-
scribes watching George W. Bush’s the old saws about memoir—about its tar and finds that notes, not words, can
press conference so vividly; I drag in potential for reconciliation or restitu- contain these meanings. The notes, and
Peter Pan and my poor biographer tion. Her approach is marked by a re- the blues, specifically, did not permit
friend, who would disapprove of being coil from narrative; she allows herself one meaning, one tone to pretend to
used so callowly to make a point. Even nothing “gripping” or “moving.” Exca- offer an explanation; they permitted
in contestation, we cannot resist the vation, not imposition, is her mode. everything, all at once. The poet Yusef
potency of story: its ingredients of scene, “Naturally I shall not opt for narrative, Komunyakaa writes of “the days
character, charm. Instead of trying to which would mean inventing reality when a man / would hold a swarm of
resist story, perhaps we should learn instead of searching for it,” she writes. words / inside his belly, nestled / against
to be a better custodian of it. Stories “Neither shall I content myself with his spleen, singing.”
are commonly used to enact a kind of merely picking out and transcribing Swarm, not story: when a heroine
care—to forestall forgetting—but they the images I remember; I shall process in Elena Ferrante’s work loses the plot
can impose another kind of forgetting. them like documents, examining them or floats free from it, it is that very word
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s best-selling from different angles to give them she reaches for—“swarm.” “Frantu-
“Braiding Sweetgrass” twines together meaning. In other words, I shall carry maglia”—a jumble of fragments—is
scientific and Indigenous knowledge out an ethnological study of myself.” what Ferrante titled a collection of her
of what it means to care for the earth Her objective is not to record but to nonfiction writing, deploying an ex-
and, in doing so, thinks deeply about restore the past. “I am not trying to re- pression that her mother would use to
what it means to use and pass on sto- member,” she writes. “I am trying to be describe being “racked by contradic-
ries, how every story invariably dis- inside. . . . To be there at that very in- tory sensations that were tearing her
places some existing body of knowl- stant, without spilling over into the be- apart.” A swarm possesses its own dis-
edge. What forms of attention does fore or after.” cipline but moves untethered. Noth-
story crowd out? The memoirist’s binocular vision ing about the notion of a swarm com-
lets the reader experience the story forts or consoles. It doesn’t contain, like
uch of life is the narrative equiv- from two points of view: the writer as a story. It allows—contradiction, dis-
M alent of dark matter, and Vir-
ginia Woolf had a name for it. “Often
character in the moment and as nar-
rator after the fact. The narrating self,
sonance, doubt, pure immanence, move-
ment, an open destiny, an open road.
when I have been writing one of my very often the adult self—who shapes Does anyone recall that, in the
so‐called novels,” she recounted, “I have story out of raw hunks of observation original version of the tale, it’s unclear
been baffled by this same problem”: and partial understanding—is typically whether Scheherazade survives? The
privileged, congratulated for its dis- Arabic manuscripts offer no resolution;
That is, how to describe what I call in my pri- cernment and given all the good lines. the convention of a happy ending came
vate shorthand—“non-being.” Every day in-
cludes much more non-being than being. . . . But that unstoried self understands a from the revisions imposed by Euro-
As a child then, my days, just as they do now, great deal in its commotion, in its in- pean translators. What a different an-
contained a large proportion of this cotton ability to keep anything compartmen- cestor storytelling would have if we
wool, this non-being. Week after week passed talized, and it loses something when knew Scheherazade not as a trium-
at St Ives and nothing made any dint upon experience is squeezed to release trick- phant, silver-tongued heroine but as a
me. Then, for no reason that I know about,
there was a sudden violent shock. les of insight. B. B. King, in his mem- woman controlling her terror as she
oir, returned in this way to a moment nurses her smallest baby and minds the
This is what the writer Lorrie Moore from his childhood in Mississippi. Run- other two, telling a story not because
refers to as “unsayable life,” when “nar- ning an errand for his mother, he saw she thinks it will save the world, or her-
rative causality” feels like “a piece of the dead body of a Black man, hoisted self, but because there is nothing else
laughable metaphysical colonialism up by a lynch mob gathered around a she can do. We can even wonder about
perpetrated upon the wild country of makeshift gallows. He stayed silent. what swarm may have nestled against
time.” It is what I have experienced “Deep inside, I’m hurt, sad, and mad,” her spleen. But that’s another story. 
72 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
 THE SMILE • ALVVAY
S• PERFUME GENIUS
LEIKELI47 NATIO
N OF LANGUAGE
ROC MARCIANO
& THE ALCHEMIST
YOUTH LAGOON
RIC WILSON
GRACE IVES JLIN
AXEL BOMAN (LIVE)
MAVI SEN MORIM
OTO CONTOUR
NOURISHED BY TIM
E

• KIN G KRULE
EYES BLOOD
•W
BIG THIEF BEAR + SO N IC BOOM
IL PANDA
SNAIL M A
T TE A D IGÉRY &
LIN C HARLO
JULIA JAC
K
J LE N D ERMAN
VAG ABON M
PUL OUT
BOLIS PU AG L E SC
BLA CK BELT E E
YAYA BEY D E EPER O F FE
PALM • K
700 BLISS L E LA
• K E M AFIA
E R P EG C TAR
N I V E J MO
B O RM
I K D O U
I L L E F
M T T IES
K R AF I HO
FORE RIF
F I N AT ALT
M A D
R RAY TH
I LLU RE CI
HU RAP LUC
C K S T I ST E T I NA
JO FLO
R
R I E LZ
IO • A
L G A R
SOU A N AY
A C HIK
R
 ism, he’d spent the fall of 1932 through
the spring of 1935 as a clerk at the Inter-
national Shoe Company, in St. Louis.
His father, a sales manager there, got him
the position, which Williams described
as “hard labor,” though it mostly involved
dusting sample shoes in the morning
and typing factory orders for the rest of
the day. He took a smoke break every
half hour and got paid sixty-five dollars
a month. “The job was designed for in-
sanity,” he later remembered. “It was a
living death.” He therefore felt entitled
to excise that period from his personal
history. That’s why Tennessee was three
years younger than Tom, and eligible to
enter the playwriting contest that brought
him to the attention of East Coast agents
and West Coast directors.
But all that is only a technical expla-
nation of how Tom became Tennessee.
The deeper questions about Williams’s
transformation are the stuff of endless
debates and dissertations, fuelled by inter-
views, letters, memoirs, biographies, and
Williams’s own writing, including post-
humous publications. Most of us don’t
mind literary grave robbing, especially
when it comes to authors we love, in which
case we don’t mind cradle robbing, either:
BOOKS the boyhood diary of F. Scott Fitzgerald,
the miniature books of the young Brontë
sisters, the childhood newspaper of Vir-
Becoming Tennessee ginia Woolf. In this spirit, New Directions
is publishing a volume of the early work
A portrait of the playwright as a young artist. of Tennessee Williams, who died forty
years ago. Slightly less jejune than the
BY CA S EY C E P abovementioned efforts, this set of short
stories is more like the university-era po-
etry written by T. S. Eliot in the note-
f you ever have to lie about whose brother was the first governor of book he titled “Inventions of the March
your age, try to do it with Tennessee. But he decided to instead keep Hare,” or Vladimir Nabokov’s blank-verse
as much creativity and his last name and change only his first. play “The Tragedy of Mister Morn,”
conviction as Tennessee “Mr. ‘Tennessee’ Williams got a tele- which he wrote as a twentysomething.
Williams. When he was gram last night,” he wrote to his mother “The Caterpillar Dogs and Other
nearly twenty-eight, the a few months later, in March, 1939, let- Early Stories” includes seven works of
playwright submitted a handful of one- ting her know that he’d won the contest, short fiction by Williams, culled from the
VANDAMM STUDIO© BILLY ROSE THEATRE DIVISION /

act plays to a contest for writers under receiving a hundred-dollar prize from seventy-six boxes of his archival materi-
twenty-five. Worried that his deception the Group Theatre, in New York City. als at the University of Texas at Austin’s
would be discovered, he changed his name “Do not spread this around till the checque Harry Ransom Center. They are intro-
and mailed the submission not from has arrived, as some of my ‘friends’ . . . duced by Tom Mitchell, an emeritus the-
St. Louis, where he lived, but from Mem- might feel morally obliged to inform the atre professor at the University of Illinois
NYPL FOR PERFORMING ARTS

phis, using his grandparents’ home there Group that I am over 25.” Urbana-Champaign who previously
as the return address. Born Thomas La- If Williams had any scruples of his adapted several of Williams’s stories for
nier Williams III in Mississippi, he first own, he shed them with an elegant ex- the stage. Written during the Great De-
considered calling himself Valentine Se- planation. After dropping out of the Uni- pression, the stories are mostly from the
vier, after an ancestor on his father’s side versity of Missouri School of Journal- era of Tom’s life that Tennessee erased,
when he was living in what he called the
Early stories offer sketches of the spinsters and sirens whom Williams made famous. City of St. Pollution, writing in the eve-
74 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
nings after work, hopped up on black cof- ents’ sour exchanges that he was able to “In short, I’ve decided to move to Saint
fee and cigarettes, struggling to find a parrot their arguments in a prize-winning Louis!” Settling into a furnished apart-
form and an audience for his art. essay that responded to the prompt “Can ment, he determines that it’s O.K. to
Like the early sketches of a great por- a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?” “In re- leave a nudie painting on the wall, for-
traitist, these stories feature the outlines counting my own unhappy marital ex- gets to say grace before his first supper,
of the characters—spinsters, sirens, hot- periences,” the teen-ager wrote, “perhaps and—although his parishioners couldn’t
heads, and ministers—whom Williams I can present convincing answers.” afford radios and waged a war against
later made famous in plays like “The Williams was born in 1911 and named picture shows—delights in knowing that
Glass Menagerie,” “A Streetcar Named for his father’s father, though he disap- he can enjoy risqué comedians on his
Desire,” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” pointed his paternal line by being shy wireless and double features at the theatre
The promise of juvenilia is that it will and sickly, confined to bed for more than across the street. (The story’s title comes
reveal how the person became the art- a year with diphtheria and nephritis. C. C. from the theatre’s sign.) If those enter-
ist, exposing the sometimes awkward ridiculed his sensitive son by calling him tainments are a foretaste of some new
process by which he fashioned himself Miss Nancy. Life wasn’t any easier on life of debauchery, we never hear about
through apprenticeship and experimen- Williams’s older sister, Rose, who was it; all that happens is that the Reverend
tation. “The Caterpillar Dogs” fulfills born in 1909. She was a happy, mischie- writes a slightly dishonest letter to his
that promise, but its real appeal is some- vous child, but then she withdrew; she daughter.The story ends with a hollowed-
thing else entirely: not a revelation but dropped out of high school and was even- out summoning of the last words of
an affirmation, the chance to be reminded tually given a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Christ: “ ‘Now it is all finished,’ he whis-
of what we loved about Williams in the She received insulin shock treatments, pered softly, ‘and I can go to sleep!’”
first place. which were pronounced unsuccessful, It’s as if Williams gathered all the
and underwent a bilateral prefrontal lo- kindling he needed but forgot to bring
he Williams family moved to Mis- botomy. She never lived outside an in- a match. This is especially disappointing
T souri in 1918, when its patriarch, Cor-
nelius Coffin Williams, known as C. C.,
stitution again. Their younger sibling,
Walter, was born in 1919, and went by his
when you learn that, around the time he
wrote this story, Williams, then living
was offered a stay-put position with the middle name, Dakin. He became a law- with his grandparents in Memphis after
International Shoe Company. Before that, yer and dabbled in politics but called a nervous collapse, witnessed a curious
he’d worked as a travelling salesman, leav- himself “a professional brother,” though incident involving his grandfather. One
ing his wife, Edwina Dakin Williams, he and Tennessee were estranged for the morning, the retired minister answered
and their children behind with her par- last decade of the playwright’s life, after the door to find two men waiting for
ents, generally in the parsonage of what- Dakin had him committed for psychi- him; he disappeared for the rest of the
ever Episcopal parish her father happened atric evaluation and drug rehabilitation. day and returned that night to announce
to be serving.The Reverend Walter Dakin “Everyone in the family is crazy, but Da- that he had given the pair nearly all the
and his wife, Rose, were lodestars of a kin’s the craziest,” Tennessee once in- family’s savings, some five thousand dol-
sort, providing stability and a semblance sisted, according to an exchange recorded lars. The next morning, he made a hand-
of prosperity, if not financially then at in The Tennessee Williams Annual Review. ful of trips into the attic to fetch his old
least socially, given their prominence in “Maybe so,” Dakin replied, “but I’m the sermons, then threw them into an ash-
every community they called home. Their one who got in the car and drove all of pit in the back yard and lit the whole pile
grandson later compared them to Bau- them to the mental institutions.” on fire—his wife pointedly refused to
cis and Philemon, the humble couple in watch. According to John Lahr’s magis-
Ovid’s Metamorphoses who unknow- n his early stories, Williams was al- terial biography, “Tennessee Williams:
ingly host Zeus and Hermes.
Williams once said that the best of
I ready arranging and rearranging these
family members on the page. Take “Every
Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh,” Williams
told his friend Gore Vidal that he believed
his work was thanks to his father, who Friday Nite Is Kiddies Nite,” which fea- “his grandfather had been blackmailed
taught him to hate, and not to his mother, tures the Reverend Houston, a dead because of an encounter with a boy.”
who taught him to expect more love from ringer for the Reverend Dakin, whose But none of that intrigue or upset
the world than he would ever be able to beloved silk handkerchiefs appear here is captured in “Every Friday Nite Is
give in return. Really, his writing emerged as flamboyant pajamas, the only extrav- Kiddies Nite.” Although Williams him-
from the combustible combination of an agance of a man who is leaving the min- self was gay, these early stories are ex-
emotionally manipulative and sexually istry after almost fifty years of pastoring cessively and unconvincingly hetero-
inhibited minister’s daughter and an emo- a rural church in Missouri. “What will sexual. In “Till One or the Other Gits
tionally volatile and sexually insatiable poor old Reverend Houston do with Back,” a set of hillbilly twins fight over
alcoholic gambler, who once lost half his himself now that he can’t preach the a woman, culminating in the attempted
ear in a fight over a poker game. Mod- Gospel anymore,” his parishioners won- murder of one by the other on a state
els of addiction, madness, and sadomas- der. As we quickly learn, he’s planning highway near the laughably named
ochism were as available to the young to abandon the sticks for the city. “I’ve Dead Man’s Curve. Another story is
Williams as the works of Milton, Dick- received a divine warning that the time titled “They Go Like a Thistle He Said”:
ens, and Shakespeare were. By the age has come for me to prepare myself for “they” refers to young women; “go like
of sixteen, he was so pickled in his par- the World Beyond,” he tells his daughter. a thistle” is a phrase Williams borrowed
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 75
from D. H. Lawrence and repurposed placed in obscure journals, stories he could remember.” Edward tried to run
as a euphemism for promiscuity; and submitted to contests, plays he man- away when he was ten, but a police of-
“he” is a Catholic priest who breaks the aged to get produced by the local Mum- ficer dragged him home, and his mother
bad news about promiscuous girls to a mers theatre group—and found his way gave the man permission to beat him,
would-be artist whose heart has been back to school, auditing classes and then forever clipping the boy’s wings: “He was
broken by one of them. enrolling at Washington University, in a rebellious spirit who lacked the cour-
Two stories, “Season of Grapes” and St. Louis, before transferring to the Uni- age to rebel.”
“Ironweed,” feature college-age stand- versity of Iowa, where he finally earned Edward’s only attempt at rebellion
ins for Williams. One, enjoying a last a bachelor’s degree. is his writing, and his suicide comes after
summer in the Ozarks before his fresh- Although Williams didn’t count his colleagues discover it. He had been a
man year, is shaken by his sexual awak- wage-work years in the time line of his scribbler since high school, and his poems
ening with a vacationing stenographer. life, he did draw on them for his writ- and stories were so good that his teach-
The other, home from the state univer- ing. In “Stair to the Roof,” his fictional ers initially doubted he had written them,
sity, is jilted by a neighbor before he can avatar isn’t an aspirational student but though one complained that he didn’t
propose to her. Both have puzzled over a despondent shoe-factory clerk named “write about things as they really are.”
Nietzsche and considered the meaning- Edward Schiller, who lives for his fur- Her admonition became Williams’s mis-
less meaningfulness of life. But these sto- tive attempts at poetry and his glimpses sion: “You should try to write of things
ries never sit with the ferocious emo- of the cityscape from the roof of his that actually happen in life, stories about
tions that fill Williams’s later works; even workplace, the Continental Shoe Com- real men and women. Otherwise your
when their plots feature the same up- pany. The everywhere fog of Dickens’s talent will be wasted.”
heavals as those of the plays, they only London becomes the inescapable smoke
gesture toward the explosions that Wil- of St. Louis, filling Washington Ave- illiams often said that he feared
liams would bring to the stage. nue and tickling the Eads Bridge as Ed-
ward sneaks his cigarette breaks upstairs,
W being institutionalized like his
sister, but “Stair to the Roof ” reveals a
“ H ow absurdly inimical this whole
world was to the dignity of lov-
escaping the drudgery of his typing to
“look out over the eastern horizon with
different fear: unrealized talent. Edward’s
family, teachers, and co-workers are all
ers,” one of those undergraduates thinks, its hazy intimation of lands stretching adversaries of his art, and the city itself
articulating what was already Williams’s beyond the river and the city and per- is indifferent to both his potential and
credo. It would be years before the au- haps continuing in beautiful, clean un- his plight. That wasn’t Williams’s fate,
thor fully realized that tragic theme, but dulations until it reached the ocean.” and it wasn’t even the final version of his
he comes closest in “Stair to the Roof,” If elsewhere Williams struggled to fictional clerk’s life. A compulsive reviser,
the last and most autobiographical of light a fire, this story is all ashes. Imme- Williams later made the tragic “Stair to
the stories in this collection. An alterna- diately following an epigraph from Edna the Roof ” into a surrealistic play called
tive title for that story was “Episodes in St. Vincent Millay, two nuns and a candy “Stairs to the Roof: A Prayer for the
the Life of a Clerk,” and Mitchell repur- vender are nearly hit by Edward’s dis- Wild of Heart That Are Kept in Cages.”
poses it for his introduction, which nicely membered body parts after he jumps to In that version, the clerk doesn’t have to
traces the outlines of St. Louis during his death from the roof of the twenty- kill himself to escape a life sentence as
the Depression: “A riot outside City Hall five-story factory. The story’s macabre a human calculator for the corporate
led to the death of a Black man shot first lines read, “It made an oddly fluid, executives of the Continental Branch
by police while protesting the city gov- splattering sound as it struck the con- of Consolidated Shirtmakers—Mr. P,
ernment’s lack of compassion for the crete. One limb, amputated by the cor- Mr. D, Mr. Q , and Mr. T. All the hero
poor. Labor strikes shut down major nice, slid several feet along the walk.” has to do is follow his heart, undertak-
companies. Unemployed youth hopped Top marks for the creative molding, ing a series of romantic adventures ob-
aboard freight cars that crisscrossed the but, as a beginning, it just doesn’t work. served by a bizarre figure named Mr. E,
city. A ‘Hooverville’ of makeshift shel- Before Williams introduces Edward by who ultimately spirits the clerk and his
ters stretched along the Mississippi River name, we get the newsboy version of new love to a faraway star.
where the Gateway Arch now stands. what’s happened: “Somebody just done That ending isn’t so unlike the end-
Racial and ethnic neighborhoods shifted a Steve Brodie off the Continental roof!” ing of the play that would catapult Wil-
as the economy displaced residents.” Williams finds his stride here only liams to a different kind of stardom: “The
Williams was witness to all that pov- when he turns to autobiography, show- Glass Menagerie” concludes with the
erty and strife without directly experi- ing Edward to be made equally misera- fragile, failing Amanda Wingfield tell-
encing it. Mitchell calls him “a roman- ble by an overbearing mother and by ing her son, Tom, “Go, then! Then go to
tic proletarian,” and suggests that he modern office life. Mrs. Schiller, for the moon—you selfish dreamer!” In his
was a man who befriended labor activ- whom Edward feels “a bitter hatred,” final monologue, Tom confides to the
ists and Communists without becom- runs a boarding house in the town cen- audience, “I didn’t go to the moon, I went
ing one, and who was surrounded by ter; Mr. Schiller, for whom he feels “a much further.” Fired for writing poetry,
political radicals and progressive theatre vague pity,” is “a sallow, defeated speci- he flees St. Louis, becoming the artist
types but never protested or marched. men who some obscure malady had con- who could tell this story, announcing
Instead, Williams wrote—poems he fined to the house as long as anyone haughtily and naughtily at the play’s be-
76 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023
ginning, “Yes, I have tricks in my pocket,
I have things up my sleeve.”
That was Williams in 1944, only BRIEFLY NOTED
a few years after writing the stories in
“The Caterpillar Dogs,” when he’d fi- The Lost Sons of Omaha, by Joe Sexton (Scribner). This anat-
nally sloughed off the corporate respon- omy of a killing in 2020, at a Black Lives Matter protest, tries
sibilities his father expected him to ful- to recover the essences of two men involved, who were “re-
fill and escaped the domestic torments duced to grotesques” in the distorting landscape of social media.
his mother heaped on him. “The Glass During a struggle, James Scurlock was shot and killed by Jake
Menagerie” drew on several other early Gardner, who died by suicide a few months later. Thanks to
works, too, including, most notably, a duelling political narratives and outright disinformation, Scur-
short story called “Portrait of a Girl in lock became “a hoodlum who provoked his own death” and
Glass,” in which Williams was sorting Gardner a “bloodthirsty white supremacist.” Sexton marshals
out his feelings about his sister—not only a remarkable volume of investigative material to disentangle
her mental health but also what role his fact from fiction, even though he fears that, in this moment,
father’s absences and his mother’s abuses we may find it hard to see the genuine tragedy, which arises
had played in her breakdown. from “flawed characters caught up in disastrous circumstances.”
Unlike some perfectionist writers, Wil-
liams was never embarrassed by his trail Natural Light, by Julian Bell (Thames & Hudson). The artist
of false starts. He allowed his apprentice Adam Elsheimer, who was born in Frankfurt in 1578 and died
plays to be performed, and acknowledged in Rome at the age of thirty-two, left only a small corpus of
the lesser tributaries of the great plays in paintings, all but one executed in oil on copper, and most of
prefaces and introductions throughout them diminutive. (In Rome, he was called “the devil for lit-
his career. “Writers usually speak depre- tle things.”) Yet his expertise was revered, not least by his
catingly of their ‘early works,’ for they friend Rubens, who worked on a much larger scale, and
like to feel that their talents have greatly Elsheimer’s reputation has endured. This study does discern-
expanded with maturity,” he wrote in the ing justice to his achievement. Bell’s focus is not just on
program for “Stairs to the Roof ” when Elsheimer’s registering of natural details, as the title suggests,
the Pasadena Playhouse staged it, in 1947. but also on his evocation of the supernatural—never richer
“It is certainly true that the continued than in his final masterpiece, “The Flight Into Egypt,” with
exercise of a craft breeds competence in its miraculous interfusing of homeliness and immensity.
it, but in writing there are other things
besides competence. There are certain A History of Burning, by Janika Oza (Grand Central). The
organic values, such as intensity of feel- inciting incident of this epic début novel—spanning four
ing, freshness of perception, moral ear- generations, five countries, and nine voices—comes in 1898,
nestness and conviction. These are vir- when Pirbhai, a thirteen-year-old Gujarati boy, is tricked into
tues that may exist in beginning writers indentured servitude and becomes one of many Indians la-
and unfortunately they may exist more boring on the East African Railway, in British-ruled Kenya.
in the beginning than in the later stages.” Pirbhai’s descendants must navigate a complex social and ra-
If intensity appears at the begin- cial hierarchy. Children are born, daughters are married off,
ning of an artist’s career and ability ac- and elders are mourned against the backdrop of Pan-Afri-
crues over time, at least one thing en- canism’s rise and the British Empire’s retreat. Oza shows each
dures throughout: the inner world from generation of Pirbhai’s family grappling with what to pass
which all the work emerges. Williams on to the next—a sense of complicity in colonialism; heir-
was always Williams, and he was for- looms and stories from homes long left; anxieties and hopes
ever writing about the same themes. for the future—and what to let die with them.
That’s why, if you love his late work,
then you’ll love his early work also— The Book of Eve, by Carmen Boullosa, translated from the
not necessarily because it’s good, but Spanish by Samantha Schnee (Deep Vellum). After a prologue,
because it’s him. Gerard Manley Hop- in which a nun denounces what follows as having been writ-
kins, in one of his sonnets, wrote, “Each ten “to please the Devil,” this novel embarks on a sensuous
mortal thing does one thing and the retelling of the Book of Genesis from Eve’s perspective. Ac-
same: / Deals out that being indoors cording to Eve, Eden “wasn’t desirable, desire didn’t exist
each one dwells / Selves—goes itself; there”; “there was no serpent”; and Cain’s offering was “light
myself it speaks and spells, / Crying and joyful” while Abel’s was “unbreathable smoke.” She calls
What I do is me: for that I came.” That’s Adam’s idea that earthly life is our punishment for sin a “stu-
the pleasure of reading this little col- pid lie”; for her, the crackling energy of the planet is an in-
lection of juvenilia—to catch Tennes- exhaustible pleasure. “Life is good,” Cain says to Adam. “How
see in his early days, already selving.  can you say what Eve has given us is bad?”
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 77
 ditions—never mind the full houses that
prevailed in Milk’s time. Nevertheless,
the orchestra seats appeared mostly
full at two events I attended in June. A
program sponsored by the heirs of Ray
Dolby, the sound guru, may have helped:
at each performance this season, at least
a hundred prime seats were made avail-
able to Bay Area residents who hadn’t
been to the opera in the past three years.
The tickets cost ten dollars—their price
in 1932, when the Opera House opened.
San Francisco Opera has a strong rec-
ord of presenting new work. John Adams,
who resides in nearby Berkeley, has seen
five of his operas produced at the house,
three of them world premières. For the
centennial, the company presented Ga-
briela Lena Frank’s “El Último Sueño
de Frida y Diego,” a magic-realist med-
itation on the lives and love of Frida Kahlo
and Diego Rivera. The opera, which had
its première in San Diego last fall, re-
veals a significant music-theatre talent.
Frank, a Berkeley native, has mastered
the intricacies of operatic construction
on her first attempt, producing a confi-
dent, richly imagined score that is free
of lapses and longueurs. Let’s hope that
more opera commissions come her way.
M U S I CAL EV E N T S The libretto, by the playwright Nilo
Cruz, is set in Mexico City, on the Day
of the Dead, in 1957. Rivera is at the grave
Lives of the Artists of Kahlo, who died three years earlier. A
hooded flower-seller glides through the
Gabriela Lena Frank’s “El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego,” in San Francisco. cemetery; she turns out to be Catrina,
the Keeper of the Dead. (The skeletonic
BY A L EX RO S S figure of La Catrina appears in Rivera’s
mural “Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in
the Central Alameda.”) In the under-
an Francisco Opera, which epoch-making gay politician Harvey world, Catrina assembles a motley crew
just finished celebrating Milk was assassinated in his office at of the dead for their annual pilgrimage.
its centennial season, oc- City Hall. A lavish memorial was held Kahlo, still traumatized by earthly life, at
cupies the War Memorial for him at the Opera House, becoming first refuses to join the expedition, but
Opera House, a Roman- part of tumultuous demonstrations on when she hears Rivera’s distant pleas she
columned edifice designed behalf of gay rights and against police is persuaded to go. Rivera, on meeting
after the fashion of the Palais Garnier, brutality. Milk had seen “Tosca” there her, decides that his own time is up, and
in Paris. Across the street is City Hall, two nights before his death, and wrote the two artists descend together.
another heap of aspirational Beaux-Arts to a friend, “The crowd went so wild The challenge of intermingling bi-
architecture. No other major American that Mick Jagger would have been jeal- ography and myth might have defeated
city gives such prominence to its opera ous. . . . Ah—life is worth living.” a less adroit composer; one can imag-
house; the juxtaposition of culture and Forty-five years on, San Francisco ine a score cluttered with Mexican folk-
power is European in spirit. When I vis- Opera is facing the same struggles as loric effects and supernatural noises. In-
ited last month, Pride festivities had performing-arts institutions across the stead, Frank establishes a dreamlike,
overtaken the Civic Center area, and I country. Subscriptions plunged during liminal mood from the start, with cor-
thought back to the company’s most the pandemic and show no immediate uscating dissonances that call to mind
charged political moment. In 1978, the sign of returning even to pre-2020 con- the late Kaija Saariaho. Spiky trumpet
lines hint at mariachi, but for the most
Frank’s operatic voice is distinctive: limpid, mercurial, haunting, never heavy. part Frank favors an abstracted sense of
78 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 ILLUSTRATION BY CRISTINA DAURA
 sullivan + associates
A R C H I T E C T S
musical locale. Although a few too many to a shaky start, though she later settled
reminiscences of “Peter Grimes” intrude, into a majestic groove. Strauss’s sonic
a distinctive voice emerges: limpid, feast remained intact, bewitching the
mercurial, haunting, never heavy. Rivera senses even as the brain rebelled.
martha’s vineyard
first speaks to Kahlo across a magically
spooky texture of xylophone, marimba, cross the street, in Davies Hall, the
celesta, and harp—the River Styx as
painted by Monet.
A San Francisco Symphony sounds
wide awake under the direction of Esa­
The production—directed by Lorena Pekka Salonen. To be sure, this orches­ A DV ERTISE ME NT

Maza, with sets by Jorge Ballina, cos­ tra was in no need of a renaissance, hav­
tumes by Eloise Kazan, and lighting by ing prospered during the long, genial
Victor Zapatero—is as visually seduc­ reign of Michael Tilson Thomas and,
tive as any staging I’ve seen in the past before that, under Herbert Blomstedt.
few years. Imagery from Rivera’s and But Salonen’s crystalline technique and
Kahlo’s paintings is integrated into tab­ passionate intelligence would benefit
leaux that seem ready for museum dis­ any ensemble. The question is whether WHAT’S THE
play themselves. Daniela Mack was lus­
trous and keenly expressive as Kahlo;
San Francisco knows what a prize it
has. There should have been no empty BIG IDEA?
Alfredo Daza lent a mournful nobility seats at his recent performances of Fer­ Small space has big rewards.
to Rivera, even if the lower end of his ruccio Busoni’s Piano Concerto, an ar­
voice sounded faded. Yaritza Véliz deliv­ cane masterpiece that happens to be
ered a fierce, funny, coloratura­enhanced wildly entertaining.
portrayal of Catrina; the countertenor This sublime monstrosity, which had
Jake Ingbar achieved piercing poignancy its première in 1904, in Berlin, surfaces
as Leonardo, a deceased actor who spe­ rarely enough that each revival turns into TO FIND OUT MORE, CONTACT
JILLIAN GENET | 305.520.5159
cializes in impersonating Greta Garbo. an occasion. It lasts seventy minutes, [email protected]
Roberto Kalb conducted with a sure feel­ sprawls across five movements, and re­
ing for pace and balance. quires not only a pianist of uncanny pow­
Brilliant color persisted the following ers but also a male chorus. Salonen, who
night, when the stage was given over to has long been fascinated by the work,
a revival of David Hockney’s 1992 designs has found a suitable collaborator in the
for “Die Frau ohne Schatten,” the mon­ volcanically creative German pianist Igor
umental fairy tale by Hugo von Hofmanns­ Levit. I’ve heard the concerto four times
thal and Richard Strauss. Sadly, this “Frau” live and listened to a dozen recordings;
has turned out to be Hockney’s final opera Salonen and Levit’s triumph may mark
production; when he was active in the the point at which the piece ceases to be
field, his deep pastel tones and light­ a freak phenomenon and begins to take
limbed forms animated everything from its place in the repertory.
“The Magic Flute” to “Turandot.” In the The dark jewel of the score is the fourth
case of “Frau,” Hockney liberates Strauss’s movement, marked “All’Italiana: Taran­
lyrically supercharged music from the re­ tella.” It is diablerie of the highest order,
actionary clutter of Hofmannsthal’s li­ a bonfire of Romantic vanities, the music
bretto, which promotes marital concord Nietzsche wished he could have written.
in the name of efficient childbearing. The If the preceding forty­five minutes fail
other hero of the evening was Donald to catch fire, though, the night grows
Runnicles, San Francisco’s former music long. Salonen succeeded in teasing out a
director, who marshalled Strauss’s poten­ unified symphonic structure. The agitated
tially cumbersome score without stinting grandeur that he elicited in the huge mid­
on its opulence. dle movement, the Pezzo Serioso, proved
“Frau” is a difficult piece to cast, and so absorbing that the Tarantella came as
among the leads only Linda Watson, as a delirious jolt. Levit, for his part, sup­
the Nurse, exhibited full­on dramatic plied not only unflagging virtuoso pyro­
flair. Nina Stemme, as the Dyer’s Wife, technics but also long­breathed lyric lines:
was vocally formidable but emotionally nothing was disjointed or excessive. Above
cool; Johan Reuter, as Barak, sang with all, the performance was vital; it glowed
warmth but little fire; David Butt Philip, with belief. The exuberant response of
as the Emperor, fought to project his el­ the crowd might not have reduced Mick
egant, focussed tenor over the orchestra; Jagger to jealousy, but it did make life
Camilla Nylund, as the Empress, got off seem eminently worth living. 
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 79
 sor, and his daughter, Helena, has inher-
ited the craving. As played by Phoebe
Waller-Bridge, Helena is spirited, game,
and happy-go-plucky, with a saving touch
of goofiness. On and off, she joins forces
with Indy, who is her godfather, but here’s
the catch: unlike him, Helena is scruple-
free. She treasures nothing grander than
hard cash and gaily scorns the idea that
the dial, like other rarities, belongs in a
museum. She also refers to Jones as “an
aging grave robber.” Is she wrong?
There is an argument that the entire
chronicle of Indiana Jones has been a
canny exercise in the art of looting, all
the more brazen for being wrapped in
the principle of noble and disinterested
valor. Because we love and trust Harri-
son Ford, construing even his grumpi-
T H E C U R R E N T C I N E MA ness as a shield against the lure of low
motives, we are primed to assume that
he is a better custodian of exotic bounty
Last Gasps than anyone who dwells in the deserts,
jungles, and monuments where he roams.
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and “Biosphere.” The Ark may wind up in a crate, but,
by God, at least it’s an American crate;
BY A N T H O N Y L A N E what safer haven, for the holy of holies,
than the Xanadu of the West? For a
while, I wondered if the villains, in the
ew York, 1969. Asleep title is not, as you might expect, “Indi- new film, would turn out to be daredevil
in a chair, Indiana Jones ana Jones and the Bathroom Break of agents of a covert restitutions squad,
(Harrison Ford) is awo- Doom” or “Raiders of the Lost Slipper” snatching scarabs and cuneiform tablets
ken not by an explo- but “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Des- out of the Met and smuggling them
sion, or by gunfire, but tiny.” It’s a movie of two minds, marked back to their rightful homes, with Indy
by a blast of “Magical with hints of the hero’s mortality—“Ev- in scandalized pursuit. It would make a
Mystery Tour” from a nearby apartment. erything hurts,” he says near the end— change from Nazis.
As he rises to remonstrate, he is shown and yet determined to convince itself, But no. It’s Nazis. Here they come
naked to the waist, visibly worn, and and us, that he is the exception to the again. The baddest is Dr. Voller (Mads
stripped of both mystery and magic. The rule of universal entropy. Once Jones Mikkelsen), who, in the wake of the war,
years have taken their usual withering gets going, his exploits acquire a desper- has reinvented himself as a mastermind
revenge. Having spent his life hunting ate edge that wasn’t there in the earlier of the U.S. space program. Shades of
antiquities, Jones is at risk of becoming movies. Maybe he fears that, were he to Wernher von Braun, although I doubt
one himself. He pours a slug of booze pause for breath, he might expire. whether von Braun would have remarked
into his coffee, and a document, glimpsed Every quest needs a whatchamacal- to an American waiter, as Voller does,
in passing, reveals that he is divorced lit, be it the Ark of the Covenant or the “You didn’t win the war. Hitler lost it.”
from his wife, Marion (Karen Allen). Holy Grail, and the latest object of de- Sure that he can improve on the Führer’s
Soon afterward, we see him teaching at sire is the Dial of Destiny—also known feeble efforts, Voller needs only the dial
Hunter College, where the students doze as the Antikythera or, as Jones calls it, to bring his plans to fruition. We meet
through his lecture. In honor of his years “an ancient hunk of gears.” (It bears only him, festooned with henchmen, in New
of service, he receives a clock, which he the flimsiest relation to the actual An- York, where the astronauts of Apollo 11
gives to a homeless man in the street. tikythera mechanism, discovered in 1901 are being welcomed back from the moon
Time be damned. in a sunken Roman ship.) Devised long with a ticker-tape parade. They are over-
These sorry scenes come from the ago by Archimedes, we are told, it comes taken by Jones, who, stirred from senes-
fifth and almost certainly final chapter in two parts, which, once meshed to- cence, thunders down the avenue on a
of a franchise that began in 1981. The gether, enable the user to scoot through horse, with Nazis on his—and its—tail.
new film is directed by James Mangold time. The dial was an obsession for Basil He rides into the subway, at Fifty-ninth
rather than by Steven Spielberg, and the Shaw (Toby Jones), an Oxford profes- Street, and canters along the tracks. If,
like me, you are bucked up by horse-
Harrison Ford stars in the franchise’s fifth installment, directed by James Mangold. out-of-water sequences, you are bound
80 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 ILLUSTRATION BY TOMER HANUKA
to thrill to this jape, the best of its breed don’t need the Antikythera at all. For- though sometimes larky in tone, is also
since 1994, when Arnold Schwarzeneg- get the myth. Screw Archimedes. All a frowningly intense venture that never
ger rode his steed through a hotel and you need is the movies. stops being about itself. There are no
into an elevator, in “True Lies.” stray cultural references here, nothing
From here, the new movie, like its ll of Mel Eslyn’s début movie, “Bio- casual or loose; every detail is rigged to
predecessors, trots the globe, insuring
that we are never in one place long
A sphere,” takes place in what might
be called the Dome of Destiny. It’s a cozy
beef up the main dramatic predicament.
The only novel that we see Billy read
enough to get a feel for it. We are whisked sphere, sealed and self-sustaining, in is Manuel Puig’s “Kiss of the Spider
off to Morocco, and then to Greece, where which a former Republican President of Woman,” which tells of two cellmates in
Jones teams up with an old pal, played the United States, Billy (Mark Duplass), an Argentinean jail, and of sexual stir-
by Antonio Banderas and described as and one of his senior advisers, Ray (Ster- rings in their relationship. Sure enough,
“Spain’s greatest frogman.” There is no ling K. Brown), eke out what remains of Eslyn’s film—which she wrote with Du-
higher accolade. Next is Syracuse, in Sic- their lives. They share the space with to- plass—proceeds to chart the blundering
ily, and the Ear of Dionysius, a real-life mato plants, copies of Shakespeare (no onset of homoerotic tension between
cave with a fictional tomb inside. Last, beach reads, much to Billy’s chagrin), and Billy and Ray. One describes the other
a visit to the sacred realms of the down- a pond stocked with nutritious fish, named as his secret sauce. Game on.
right ridiculous, on which I shall not ex- for characters from “Cheers.” There’s a The list of themes that “Biosphere”
pand. Wherever Jones and Helena go, Diane, a Woody, and a Sam, one of whom does not address is impressively long.
Voller and the gang seem to be one step is cooked and consumed near the start Aside from the lack of interest in the
behind, and the pattern grows oddly mo- of the film. If there was a Norm and a apocalypse, nuclear or pestilential, there’s
notonous. Even deadly peril can be rote. Cliff, I guess they got eaten long ago. nothing about politics, unless you count
You should, nonetheless, make a date As far as one can gather, Billy and Ray’s admission that he was a registered
to watch Mangold’s film, and, if you Ray are the last two people on earth. We Democrat, or Billy’s crowing cry of
have to duck out after an hour because never quite learn what befell the rest of “Dude, I ran the fucking country”; no
you’ve left something in the oven, no mankind, though Billy does hint, now discussion of race, although, as in the
matter. The story is front-loaded with and then, that he was to blame. “That “Lethal Weapon” saga, one hero is Black
good stuff—not least a combustible pre- was me,” he says, raising his hand as if and one is white; no ravening aliens or
lude, set at the butt end of the Second confessing to a coffee spill. He seems a maleficent computers; and not a crumb
World War, in which a youthful Jones decent guy, if none too bright, and emo- of metaphysical awe. Instead, the whole
escapes hanging, dodges innumerable tionally far from equable. “I do not freak emphasis of the film is on gender. Billy
bullets, and leaps from a car to a motor- out!” he exclaims, totally freaking out, says, “I am way more masculine than
bike to a train, which then attacks itself. and he’s disconcerted when Ray, a sci- you.” Ray says, “That mold of men and
(A machine-gun emplacement, near the entist by training, uses words such as of manliness—it is so ingrained in me,
front, set ablaze by an Allied bomb, fires “palatable” or “purview.” They’ve been bro.” The mold breaks. We hear talk of
on its own rear carriages as the train friends since childhood, and they often “accelerated evolution.” The plot drifts
rounds a bend. Hell yeah.) And how, still behave like kids, squabbling over the into areas of bio-fantasy that will strike
you may ask, is the youthfulness achieved? TV remote. By way of leisure, they watch some viewers as whimsically hopeful and
By digital trickery, with Ford’s face re- “Lethal Weapon 2” (1989)—“Best movie others as modishly comical. You reckon
juvenated before our eyes. To be honest, ever,” according to Ray—and play Super that the fish, at least, will wriggle free of
he was never boyish, so the transfigura- Mario Bros. this ideological net? Think again. 
tion is hardly extreme, and I found it Note that both of those products, the
surprisingly moving. If you really want buddy-cop flick and the video game, rely NEWYORKER.COM
to rove back and forth through time, you upon a central male pairing. “Biosphere,” Richard Brody blogs about movies.

THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2023 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

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THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10 & 17, 2023 81

 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 Will McPhail,
must be received by Sunday, July 16th. The finalists in the June 26th contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the July 31st 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

“ You know, the Joneses have a bike lane.”

Aria Een, New York City

“I see they’ve redrawn the congressional-district line.” “All we need now is to find a port.”
Frank Poynton, Van Nuys, Calif. Darren Shickle, Leeds, England

“We’re not separated. We’re perforated.”

Joan Taylor Schliewenz, East Stroudsburg, Pa.
evergreen favorites, limited-edition items, and more.
P U Z Z L E S & G AM E S D E P T. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16

Genre Studies 17 18 19

A themed crossword.
20

BY C HA N D I D E I T M E R 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30
ACROSS
1 It’s heard at the beginning of “Cecilia” 31 32 33 34

6 “Now!”
35 36 37
10 MTV show once hosted by Carson Daly,
for short
38 39 40 41
13 Whom Carrie marries, in “Sex and the
City”
42 43 44 45 46
14 Agile
16 Topping for blini
47 48 49 50 51
17 Artificial intelligence gone rogue or a
time-travel snafu, e.g. 52 53 54 55
20 Flagon of ale at a goblin’s tavern, e.g.
21 Self-importance 56 57 58 59
24 Hi-___
25 Privy 60 61 62

26 “___ or Leave It” (political podcast

hosted by a former Obama speechwriter) 63 64 65

28 Nursery cry
30 Cheap-ticket letters
5 F/X specialist 44 Sea colloquially called “the Ditch” by
31 Jordanian’s neighbor Kiwis and Aussies
6 One-armed bandits
32 “Olympia” and “Luncheon on the
7 “Better Be Good to Me” singer Turner 46 John : English :: ___ : Irish
Grass,” for two
8 Some transports for wadi tours, for short 48 School fund-raising org.
35 Searching for clues and interviewing
suspects, e.g. 9 Singular or plural pronoun pair 49 On the way
38 Sign of infamy 10 Pre-Olympics events 50 Unwelcome cloud at a picnic
39 Make into law 11 Person whose services are provided on 53 Emperor in “Quo Vadis”
42 Codswallop the house? 54 Bone by the humerus
45 It may be noble or natural 12 Gave for a while 55 Empty, as a mathematical set
46 Stand the test of time 15 Lead-in meaning “within” 57 Maven
47 Pass 18 Tech site with the tagline “Your guide to 58 ___ Alpha (cohort that’s younger than
50 Part of the White House’s address? a better future” Zoomers)
51 Duds at an award ceremony, perhaps 19 Race whose competitors put on shoes 59 Eon subdivision
52 Wedding of a cowboy and a saloon girl, partway through, casually
e.g. 21 Starts to live, laugh, and love Solution to the previous puzzle:
56 “I’ve never felt this way before” or “You 22 Indian state on the Arabian Sea
complete me,” e.g. I C A R E G A Z E M I T T
23 Egg, anatomically M O N E Y M O V E S A M I E
60 “___ prochaine!” (“Until our reunion!,” in
Réunion) 27 Breyers competitor A R T D E A L E R S R P M S

28 Takes a liking (to) C I S H Y D R O M I R E S

61 Lit
M O O S E M I N O L E
62 Gastroenterologist’s concern 29 Taylor-Joy of “The Menu”
W H I L S T S A M O V A R
63 Gel ___ 32 Ultra G O O S E A L I K E G P A
64 Parts of some Hulk Hogan costumes 33 Magazine that gave each member of One O N T O T B O N E M A S C

65 Ferrante who wrote, “There are people Direction his own cover, in 2012 E G G J E L L O W E M E T
who leave and people who know how to 34 Smooth, in a way S K A C O R E N O O N E S
be left” 36 Baby Bengal, for one D A R E I A S K B O D
U R B A N C A N I D S P F
DOWN 37 Like a tense thriller
T W A S C A R E E R F A I R
1 Texting format, for short 40 Word on a bottle of French wine C A G E O P E N S O U R C E
2 Middle-earth monster 41 ___-Mex H I E D X E N A W R I S T

3 Org. with agents 42 Adjust a sarong, say Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
4 Spat 43 Cheer at an estadio newyorker.com/crossword
 J ULY 15 – 2 3, 2 02 3

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