The New Yorker October 21 2019

THE MONEY ISSUE
OCTOBER 21, 2019
7 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

21 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Amy Davidson Sorkin on Republican loyalty to Trump;
rescuing a President’s résumé; Ralph Fiennes, undercover;
gingers resist extinction; musicals made while you watch.
ANNALS OF SHOPPING
Susan Orlean 28 After a Fashion
TheRealReal gives luxury goods a second life.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Ian Frazier 33 Once and Future Prince
PERSONAL HISTORY
Colton Wooten 34 The Florida Shuffle
How the recovery industry profits off relapse.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Charles Duhigg 42 The Unstoppable Machine
Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s relentless growth.
PORTFOLIO
Hashem Shakeri 60 Ghost Towers
with Robin Wright Iran’s failed plan for a housing paradise.
FICTION
David Means 72 “Are You Experienced?”
THE CRITICS
POP MUSIC
Hua Hsu 76 Vagabon’s immersive sound.
BOOKS
James Wood 79 A neglected Danish masterpiece.
83 Briefly Noted
THE ART WORLD
Peter Schjeldahl 84 MOMA reopens.
THE THEATRE
Vinson Cunningham 86 “Heroes of the Fourth Turning.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 88 “Parasite,” “Gemini Man.”
POEMS
Rae Armantrout 36 “Hang On”
Ed Skoog 50 “Pittsburgh”
COVER
Mark Ulriksen “Towering Wealth”
DRAWINGS Robert Leighton, George Booth, Carolita Johnson, Harry Bliss, Edward Koren,
Liana Finck, Roz Chast, Emily Flake, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Seth Fleishman, Charlie Hankin,
Barbara Smaller, Brooke Bourgeois, Kaamran Hafeez and Al Batt SPOTS Rose Wong
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CONTRIBUTORS
Charles Duhigg (“The Unstoppable Ma- Hashem Shakeri (Portfolio, p. 60) is a
chine,” p. 42) is the author of “The Power visual artist, a photographer, and a film-
of Habit” and “Smarter Faster Better.” maker based in Tehran. His work was
He was a member of the Times team selected to appear in Foam Magazine’s
that won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for annual Talent Issue, which will be pub-
explanatory reporting. lished in December.
Susan Orlean (“After a Fashion,” p. 28) Colton Wooten (“The Florida Shuffle,”
is a staff writer and the author of “The p. 34) is a writer living in Raleigh. This
Library Book,” which came out in pa- is his first piece for the magazine.
perback this month.
Hannah Goldfield (Tables for Two,
David Means (Fiction, p. 72) has writ- p. 19) is the magazine’s food critic.
Celebrate the ten several books, including “Hystopia,”
a novel, and the short-story collection Peter Schjeldahl (The Art World, p. 84)
leaders and “Instructions for a Funeral.” has been the magazine’s art critic since
changemakers Tyler Foggatt (The Talk of the Town,
1998. In June, he published “Hot, Cold,
Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings, 1988-
who are p. 22) is an editor of the Talk of the 2018.”
Town section.
pushing the Ed Skoog (Poem, p. 50) is the author
world forward. James Wood (Books, p. 79) teaches at
Harvard. In November, he will publish
of, most recently, “Run the Red Lights.”
He will publish “Travelers Leaving for
“Serious Noticing,” a selection of essays. the City,” a book of poems, in 2020.
Mark Ulriksen (Cover) is an artist and Robin Wright (Portfolio, p. 60), a dis-
illustrator. On October 24th, he will tinguished fellow at the Woodrow Wil-
SUMMIT: speak about his work at the Big Draw son International Center for Scholars,
A DAY OF CONVERSATIONS Festival, in San Francisco. has covered the Middle East since 1973.
& EXPERIENCES
November 10
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In France, mail carriers have a new Amanda Petrusich on Joni Mitchell’s
job: checking in on the elderly. new book of early lyrics and drawings.
Download the New Yorker Today app for the latest news, commentary, criticism,
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4 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2019
Our members
THE MAIL return each year
SACRED COWS explain why moderating beef consump-
as faithfully as
tion is necessary to solve climate change. the tides.
Tad Friend, in his piece on Impossible Estimates of the carbon footprint of
Foods, a startup that makes imitation American beef production typically focus
meat in the hope of solving climate on things like cattle burps and manure,
change, writes, “Every four pounds of which account for roughly four per cent
beef you eat contributes to as much global of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. But
warming as flying from New York to these estimates ignore the climate costs
London” (“Value Meal,” September 30th). of land use. Although some cattle graze
As a professor who studies the environ- on dry, native grasslands, most beef pro-
mental impact of livestock production, duction relies on wetter pastures or crop-
I was surprised that Friend relied on such lands that have been converted from for-
a high per-pound emissions rate for beef, ests, wetlands, and other habitats. These
since most estimates are much lower. Ac- conversions transfer to the air large quan-
cording to a recent paper in Agricultural tities of carbon that these habitats stored
Systems, the carbon footprint of four in plants and soil. Counting this hidden
pounds of U.S. beef is equivalent to about cost adds about fifteen per cent to the
eighty-eight pounds of carbon dioxide. average American’s greenhouse-gas emis-
Per passenger, a flight from New York sions over thirty years.
to London adds roughly 1,980 pounds Because climate solutions call for sav-
of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, ing and restoring forests even as a grow-
about twenty times more than the pro- ing global population demands more
duction of four pounds of beef. food, any plausible path forward requires
Friend’s data come from Timothy D. two things: farmers must produce more
Searchinger, whose research assumes that beef per acre and consumers in wealthy
beef consumption leads to deforestation. countries must eat less beef. That’s why
According to Searchinger’s theory of America’s land-efficient beef farming is
marginal-land use, cutting beef consump- valuable and needs to supply more of the
tion in the U.S. will cause American pro- world’s rising demand. But that’s also
ducers to export more, thereby reducing why Americans should eat less beef. Since Situated on 2,500 acres of unspoiled
the global demand for pasturelands in the seventies, the population of the U.S. paradise, Ocean Reef provides a long list
places like the Amazon, where defor- has grown, but its total beef consump- of unsurpassed amenities to its
estation is rampant. Historically, how- tion has remained roughly the same. This Members including a 175-slip marina, two
ever, this hasn’t happened. Since the sev- has undoubtedly saved forests here and 18-hole golf courses, tennis facilities,
enties, Americans have reduced their abroad. Continuing deforestation reflects state-of-the-art medical center,
beef consumption and U.S. exports have the growth in global population and grow- K-8 school, private airport and more.
risen, but deforestation abroad has only ing food demands. But this hardly proves
increased, as demand in China and other that Americans’ reduction in beef-eating There are only two ways to experience
countries has soared. Solving our climate has no effect. Americans still eat vastly Ocean Reef Club’s Unique Way of Life –
crisis is important, but it’s unlikely that more beef than almost everyone else in as a guest of a member or through
imitation beef is our savior. Arguing oth- the world, yet beef makes up only three the pages of Living magazine.
erwise distracts from the damage being per cent of our calorie intake. Shifting Visit OceanReefClubMagazine.com
done by major polluters and inhibits half of that to plant-based meats could or call 305.367.5921 to request your
progress toward real solutions. do a great deal of good. complimentary copy.
Frank Mitloehner Timothy D. Searchinger
University of California, Davis Princeton University
Davis, Calif. Princeton, N.J.
Friend’s beef-to-aviation numbers are •

drawn from a paper that I published in Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
Nature, in 2018. For a report published address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
recently by the World Resources Insti- themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
tute, the World Bank, and the U.N., I led any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
a team that expanded on that research to of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
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OCTOBER 16 – 22, 2019
GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
Tina Turner is seventy-nine and happily retired in Switzerland, but her story and her music are still rever-
berating to the rafters in “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” which is playing in London, in Hamburg, and
now on Broadway. The show, in previews at the Lunt-Fontanne, traces the singer’s beginnings, in Nutbush,
Tennessee; her Motown rise to fame; and, of course, her turbulent partnership with Ike Turner, whose creative
control and physical abuse she escaped in the mid-seventies. Adrienne Warren (above) plays the title role.
PHOTOGRAPH BY GRANT CORNETT

1
ART
small stack of books. Their spines are often
turned away, but some visible titles (such
Amy Sherald
as “Ark of Bones,” by Henry Dumas) sug- Hauser & Wirth
gest that Hewitt’s improvised pedestals rely CHELSEA The subjects of the eight strong oil
Roy DeCarava on African-American literature. Additional portraits here impress with their looks, in both
objects—snapshots, rocks, a conch shell— senses: striking elegance, riveting gazes. In six of
Zwirner contribute to an aloofly allegorical air; on the pictures, people stand singly against bright
CHELSEA The tremendous shows of DeCarava’s the floor, bright-white geometric sculptures monochrome grounds. (The other two works are
black-and-white work currently on view at of folded sheet metal serve as handsome foils more complicated.) Sherald activates the double
two locations—“Light Break,” on West Nine- to the enigmatic photographs. The exhibition function of portraiture as the recognition of a
teenth Street, and “the sound i saw,” on East continues in the gallery’s bookstore, where worldly identity and, in the best instances, the
Sixty-ninth Street—are the first large-scale Hewitt is staging a series of events with writ- surprise of an evident inner life. All of her sub-
exhibitions of his photographs to be mounted ers, artists, and musicians.—Johanna Fateman jects are African-American. Should this matter?
in New York since a 1996 retrospective at (Through Oct. 26.) It does in light of the artist’s stated drive to seek
the Museum of Modern Art, and the timing “versions of myself in art history and the world.”
couldn’t be more ideal. It’s wonderful, during Race anchors Sherald’s project in history. She
this age of agitprop and questions about who Shona McAndrew represents it strategically, rendering the skin of
gets to speak for whom, to be reminded of the her subjects grisaille, and thereby apostrophiz-
delicacy that one can find in art, a fineness Chart ing America’s original sin and permanent crisis:
of sensibility that eludes a blatantly political DOWNTOWN The rituals of contemporary the otherizing of the not white, regardless of gra-
reading. Not that DeCarava, who died in courtship, with its nude-selfie exchanges, dations. Three years ago, Sherald was plucked
2009, will escape those readings entirely; the meet the sexual politics of nineteenth-cen- from low-profile but substantial status as an
majority of his subjects are black, like the tury French painting in the impressive artist when Michelle Obama chose her to paint
artist, which means that much of the response portraits of this young Philadelphia-based her official portrait. On view at the Smithsonian
to his images will be, de facto, sociological, artist. For the nine sumptuously detailed National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, D.C.,
addressing the so-called marginalization of canvases (and three small papier-mâché it is a tour de force. Even so, it didn’t prepare
the people depicted. But there is no such sculptures) here, McAndrew photographed me for the more intense eloquence of the can-
thing as the marginal in DeCarava’s pho- herself in poses borrowed from works by vases here—I had a dizzy sensation at Sherald’s
tographs. Women, musicians, vegetation, Manet, Ingres, and Delacroix, among others. show of ground shifting under my feet.—Peter
Harlem: all of it is alive with the experience Then she e-mailed the images to female Schjeldahl (Through Oct. 26.)
of being.—Hilton Als (Through Oct. 26.) friends, asking them to stage their own ver-
sions and send them to her. Thrice removed
from their art-historical sources and depict- Sarah Sze
Leslie Hewitt ing a diverse selection of bodies (many of
them tattooed) in intimate surroundings, Bonakdar
Galerie Perrotin McAndrew’s compositions transform the CHELSEA Just as a crescent moon can be either
DOWNTOWN This New York-based photogra- female muse from a hidebound cliché into waxing or waning, Sze’s phenomenal installa-
pher’s long fascination with the centuries-old a vibrant figure of autonomy. In “Chey- tion “Crescent (Timekeeper)” seems to be both
painting genre of vanitas isn’t immediately enne,” McAndrew’s gifted fellow-painter coming together and falling apart—a remem-
apparent in her new show. In contrast to Cheyenne Julien is seen sitting at the edge brance and a forgetting. It’s the centerpiece of
the gloom of those religious still-lifes, with of a pink bathtub against a background of the American artist’s new show, a towering yet
their skulls and dying flowers, each image teal tile—it’s a detail lifted and reinter- delicate metal scaffold of small moving images,
in her new suite of sunlight-suffused pic- preted from a scene by Jean-Léon Gérome, in which real-time observation and prerecorded
tures is dominated by a central square of a graceful riposte to his Orientalist “harem” documentation blur (thanks in part to an inge-
blond plywood, raised from the floor by a tableaux.—J.F. (Through Nov. 2.) nious use of water). Larger images float by on
the surrounding walls, reinforcing the fugacious
mood. Sze (who represented the U.S. at the
IN THE MUSEUMS 2013 Venice Biennale) has taken over the entire
gallery, including the building’s exterior. Her
increasingly ambitious approach—a proposition
The business of art gets a bad rap, that drawing, painting, installation, and sculp-
ture are all just as time-based as film—recalls
thanks in part to the mind-numbing Robert Rauschenberg’s maxim about art and
price tags at auction, from which liv- life: “I try to act in the gap between the two.”
ing American artists don’t see a dime. In several works here, fragmentary pictures of
Sze’s sleeping husband and daughters recur—
(The laws differ in Europe.) The ex- dreamers in an unfinished, ungraspable, beau-
hibition “Edith Halpert and the Rise tiful world.—Andrea K. Scott (Through Oct. 19.)
of American Art,” at the Jewish Mu-
seum (opening on Oct. 18), is a story Henry Taylor
of selling gone right. Halpert, who
Blum & Poe
COURTESY GUILD HALL MUSEUM, EAST HAMPTON,
was born in Odessa, Russia, in 1900,

UPTOWN This L.A. artist paints with flat acrylic
became the first important female art color and a speedy but nuanced gestural sim-
dealer in the U.S. when she opened plicity that can break effortlessly into passages
NEW YORK, GIFT OF VIRGINIA ZABRISKIE
the Downtown Gallery, in Greenwich of surprising detail. A selection of new por-

traits here, from the series “Dakar, Senegal,”
Village, in 1926. For the next forty-two are installed salon-style and initially evoke
years, Halpert helped to establish some family snapshots, though none of them fea-
of the big shots of modernism, Stu- ture groups and many are cropped as tightly
as passport photos. Taylor has thrown one
art Davis, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia wild-card self-portrait into the mix, but his
O’Keeffe, and Ben Shahn among relationship to his other subjects remains
them. The sculptor William King’s purposefully unclear. The exhibition’s title,
“Niece Cousin Kin Look How Long It’s Been,”
1959 terra-cotta likeness of Halpert suggests a diasporic theme, underscored by a
is pictured.—Andrea K. Scott wall-spanning mural of a world map in which

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crosssection of those genres. Highlights in
AVANT POP clude the ambientnoise meister Not Waving,
who also hosts a fabulous monthly show for
London’s NTS Radio (Good Room, Oct. 18);
Void Vision, who amplifies her snarling synth
pop with a fearsome stage presence (Saint
Vitus, Oct. 19); and the emerging techno
producer Abby Echiverri (Good Room, Oct.
20).—Michaelangelo Matos (Oct. 17-20.)
Universal Jazz Ensemble

Appel Room
Joe Lovano’s prowess as a saxophonist is matched
only by his nearobsessive craving for fresh mu
sical experiences. The Universal Jazz Ensemble
is yet another newly minted group from the mu
sician; this one features a fusion of longestab
lished improvisers—including the pianist Kenny
Werner, the drummer Andrew Cyrille, and the
vocalist Judi Silvano—with such younger talents
as the drummer Tyshawn Sorey, the bassist John
Patitucci, the guitarist Liberty Ellman, and the
cornettist Graham Haynes. Their collective
avantleaning slant lends a tantalizing edge to
the proceedings.—S.F. (Oct. 18-19.)
A dilemma facing any pop star is how to make glossy songs with the
potential to become chart-scaling anthems while also remaining unique Kai Alcé
and creatively honest. The singer-songwriter Charli XCX has spent her Public Records
career trying to navigate those murky waters. On the one hand, her knack There’s been some confusion in recent years
for predicting (and steering toward) pop music’s next frontier has made about the meaning of “deep house,” which
her a captivating presence; on the other, being an early adopter has often the postE.D.M. generation has hijacked as
a synonym for bassheavy techhouse. But
meant she’d long moved on by the time the rest of the world caught up. the term has long denoted house records with
Her latest album, “Charli,” released in September, nestles into a sweet heavy gospel, jazz, and soul overtones—a more
spot that feels both polished and spontaneous. The production on even apt name might be “grown folks’ house.” The
Detroitraised, Atlantabased d.j. and pro
its most danceable tracks maintains a sharp edge—metallic E.D.M. and ducer Kai Alcé has steadfastly purveyed this
sci-fi sound elements are littered throughout—and provides a quirky sound for more than three decades; agree
backdrop for some of her finest writing yet. Pop music may have finally able tempos, sweetly aching vocals, snatches
of horns, and casually strutting bass are his
risen to her challenge, casting Charli XCX in an even brighter spotlight, trademarks.—M.M. (Oct. 19.)
but she is already winking out the door.—Briana Younger
Altin Gün
Africa is rendered dark brown and emblazoned and joy, the homegrown and the imported— Elsewhere
with a dollar sign. Migrating birds, transat to holiday songs.—Jay Ruttenberg (Oct. 17.) A few years ago, the Dutch bassist Jasper Ver
lantic trade routes, a headless security guard, hulst was touring Turkey—and, apparently, its
multiracial sunbathers, and found photos record stores—when he became entranced by
complete a vibrant, pointed meditation on George Coleman Quartet the country’s folk music. Upon returning to
1
colonial history, the legacy of slavery, and the Amsterdam, he recruited the Turkish singers
impact of tourism.—J.F. (Through Nov. 2.) Smoke Erdinç Ecevit and Merve Daşdemir for Altin
The unexpected death of the accomplished Gün, a sextet that recasts Turkish standards
pianist Harold Mabern, in September, makes in a juicy psychedelic haze. The musicians’
the tenor saxophonist George Coleman—Ma subsequent pair of albums evoke their hippie
NIGHT LIFE bern’s boyhood friend and frequent collabora forebears who electrified old folk and blues
tor—one of the last surviving members of the songs: a mission of trippy studiousness.—J.R.
Musicians and night-club proprietors lead celebrated musical contingent that emerged (Oct. 19.)
complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in from Memphis, Tennessee, in the late fifties.
advance to confirm engagements. A recently released recording, “The Quar
tet,” celebrates the spirited cohesion that the Jim James / Teddy Abrams
ColemanMabern alliance achieved through
Los Lobos the decades. For this engagement, the greatly Le Poisson Rouge
mourned pianist will be replaced by Michael In a performance at the Louisville Orchestra’s
ILLUSTRATION BY KELSEY WROTEN
St. George Theatre Weiss.—Steve Futterman (Oct. 17-20.) Festival of American Music last year, the front
For nearly half a century, Los Lobos have man of My Morning Jacket, Jim James, collab
performed nimble roots music, shifting the orated with his hometown orchestra and its
genre’s center of gravity from Nashville to Interzone Festival young music director, Teddy Abrams, on a song
East Los Angeles via breezily innocuous cycle that grapples with man’s place in the nat
sounds with a subtle political tilt. But can Various locations ural world. Perhaps even bolder, James, rarely
any American band endure this long without The increasing clubland commingling of starved for ambition, sang a pair of songs associ
issuing a Christmas album? Of course not. On house, techno, and darkwave now has a festi ated with Nina Simone. That concert is now an
“Llegó Navidad,” Los Lobos apply their trade val. The inaugural Interzone, a joint effort by album, “The Order of Nature,” whose grandeur
mark mixture—English and Spanish, longing six New York promoters, offers a substantial accentuates the singer’s perennial air of wonder.

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James reunites with Abrams and members of his a folksy intimacy to his songs that keeps them “Desire”
orchestra for this intimate show.—J.R. (Oct. 20.) grounded, the lyrics plunging straight into the
heart. Broken troubadours ripping open their Miller Theatre
chests may be a tale as old as time, but Kennedy Nearly a decade ago, the then fast-rising com-
1
Lee Konitz Nonet is a compelling case for making room for one poser Hannah Lash created a penetrating
more.—Briana Younger (Oct. 22.) chamber opera, “Blood Rose,” featuring the
Jazz Gallery alto Kirsten Sollek and the JACK Quartet (in
With his cool tone and exacting phrasing, its original configuration). On a commission
Lee Konitz, a brilliant alto saxophonist who from Columbia University’s Miller Theatre,
diverged from Charlie Parker in the late for- CLASSICAL MUSIC the now well-established and celebrated Lash
ties, still sounds like no one else on the horn. enlists Sollek and the present JACK lineup
The ninety-two-year-old icon has found an for her newest venture: “Desire,” a chamber
invaluable collaborator in the saxophonist and “El Barbero de Sevilla” opera in which a secret garden and a mysteri-
arranger Ohad Talmor; Talmor’s charts, which ous stranger figure into an interior journey of
will be re-created at this performance, anchor Teatro LATEA discovery, doubt, and self-empowerment. The
Konitz’s weaving improvisations on the recent Seville had a certain exotic appeal for eigh- countertenor Daniel Moody and the baritone
album “Old Songs New.”—S.F. (Oct. 20.) teenth- and nineteenth-century composers Christopher Dylan Herbert complete the cast;
and their audiences, with such operas as “Don Rachel Dickstein directs, and Daniela Candil-
Giovanni,” “Le Nozze di Figaro,” and “Car- lari conducts.—Steve Smith (Oct. 16-17 at 8.)
Dermot Kennedy men” set in the Andalusian city. In 1901, the
Spanish composers Gerónimo Giménez and
Kings Theatre Manuel Nieto flipped the script, adapting “Concrète Jungle”
The singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy, who Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” into a zar-
began his career busking on street corners in zuela with a new libretto and copious musical Invisible Dog Art Center
his native Ireland, has a voice made of soul references to the original bel-canto comedy. Dan Siegler—a composer whose early expo-
and husk, perfectly suited for guy-plus-guitar New Camerata Opera stages “El Barbero de sure to avant-garde jazz, Public Enemy, and
musings. Even when his production expands Sevilla” in a bilingual production featuring No Wave would inform his subsequent ven-
to include splashier electronic and pop in- English dialogue; Rod Gomez directs, and tures in theatre, television, and dance—took
fluences—as it often does on his recently re- Pablo Zinger conducts.—Oussama Zahr (Oct. his cues from vintage musique-concrète tape
leased début album, “Without Fear”—there is 16 and Oct. 18-19 at 7:30 and Oct. 20 at 3.) assemblage when constructing his newest piece.
“Concrète Jungle,” which Siegler began work-
ing on as his father was slipping into dementia,
employs urban sounds, sampled and reorga-
AT THE OPERA nized, to evoke a bygone New York City. Live
contributors include the choreographer and
dancer Pam Tanowitz, the vocalist Christina
Campanella, the violinist Tomoko Omura, and
the bassist Greg Chudzik.—S.S. (Oct. 17-18
at 7:30.)
George Lewis
N.Y.U. Skirball
Any new piece by the composer George Lewis
is cause to celebrate, both for the fecundity of
his imagination and for the way his ingenious
conceptions bring out the best in his collabo-
rators. Here, the International Contemporary
Ensemble—which has proved an ideal vehicle
for Lewis’s creations, both onstage and on rec-
ord—gives the first local performances of two
recent works driven by big ideas: “Soundlines:
A Dreaming Track,” based on a travel journal
kept by Steven Schick (who narrates) during
a seven-hundred-mile walk, and “P. Multitu-
dinis,” whose organizational properties are
derived from the political philosophy of Spi-
noza.—S.S. (Oct. 18-19 at 7:30.)
With “Manon,” Jules Massenet gave the story of a pleasure-seeking young New York Philharmonic
woman the scope of a Greek tragedy, charting her rise and fall among the David Geffen Hall
Parisian demimonde in five precisely written acts. The Cuban-American Just over a year ago, the New York Philharmonic
soprano Lisette Oropesa, who takes on the role in the Met’s current revival named the South Korean composer Unsuk
Chin the latest recipient of its Marie-Josée
ILLUSTRATION BY AMANDA BERGLUND
(Oct. 19 and Oct. 22), ties together the narrative’s disparate threads—
Kravis Prize for New Music, a prestigious
Manon’s covetousness, young heartbreak, glamorous reign atop high society, award that includes a commission for a future
spiral into greed, and ultimate redemption in death—with a voice that’s as season. With that unknown work looming,
light as gossamer and as sure as steel. The director and costume designer the orchestra sets the stage with another Chin
piece. “Šu” showcases Wu Wei on the sheng,
Laurent Pelly dresses up the production, which also stars the inconsistent a traditional Chinese mouth organ. Susanna
tenor Michael Fabiano and the elegant baritone Artur Ruciński, in Belle Mälkki, a vital and exacting conductor, also
Époque finery, but he finds moments to critique the way men of means leads Haydn’s Symphony No. 22 in E-Flat
Major (“The Philosopher”) and Strauss’s “Also
acquire and discard women. The conductor Maurizio Benini draws out Sprach Zarathustra.”—S.S. (Oct. 18-19 at 8 and
the score’s opulence, and the chorus sounds dynamite.—Oussama Zahr Oct. 22 at 7:30.)

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variety of styles rather than blockbusters like
CONTEMPORARY DANCE “Swan Lake” or “Giselle.” There are more
new ballets this season than usual, too, in-
cluding a Twyla Tharp opus, her seventeenth
for the company. Entitled “A Gathering of
Ghosts,” it is, in large part, a tribute to the
principal dancer Herman Cornejo, who is
marking his twentieth season with the com-
pany. On Oct. 26, in a program organized in
his honor, Cornejo will also dance George
Balanchine’s 1928 piece “Apollo” for the first
time in New York. Both James Whiteside, a
principal dancer in the company, and Gemma
Bond, recently retired, have produced new
works: “New American Romance,” by White-
side, and “A Time There Was,” by Bond.
And, from Jessica Lang, there is a jazzy,
full-throttle duet to “Fly Me to the Moon,”
made for the rapidly up-and-coming danc-
ers Catherine Hurlin and Aran Bell. Alexei
Ratmansky’s “The Seasons,” a cornucopia
of dances set to richly textured music by
Alexander Glazunov, returns, as does the
thrillingly formal “Theme and Variations,”
by Balanchine.—Marina Harss (Oct. 16-20
and Oct. 22. Through Oct. 27.)
In the nearly two decades since the Twin Towers collapsed, many dances
have tried to evoke the enormous loss associated with September 11th. Koosil-ja
“The Day,” making its New York début at the Joyce Theatre (Oct. 22-27), Roulette
is as much a musical response as a physical one. The idea comes from A few years ago, in “I Am Capitalism,” the
Maya Beiser, a cellist who combines contemporary-music credibility choreographer Koosil-ja took on the subject
with pop-star and opera-diva glamour. She plays two pieces composed of capitalism and its influence on the way
we move, interact, and make art. Now the
for her by David Lang: one created in response to 9/11, the other with choreographer, who uses everyday technol-
text about memory, crowdsourced from the Internet. Onstage with her is ogy and text in addition to movement in
no less than Wendy Whelan, the not-quite-retired New York City Ballet her work, is going beyond capitalism to the
data that underpin it. In “Open Data Story
luminary, executing geometric, affecting choreography by no less than of Profit and Death,” she explores the infor-
the august postmodernist Lucinda Childs. It’s an exceedingly handsome mation that has come to define us, constantly
production, with stage design like a memorial and video haunted by ghosts. harvested, commodifying our every move.
The piece uses cell phones, projections, and
If it ultimately falls short of its subject, focussing too much on its stars, the the Internet to take a satirical look at the
stars do shine.—Brian Seibert relationship between people and technolo-
gy.—M.H. (Oct. 15-17.)
Iestyn Davies Mivos Quartet do the honors, on a program

that also features Rihm’s Schumann-inspired A.I.M
Carnegie Hall “Fremde Szene II” and his settings of poems
The five-person viol consort Fretwork, which by Mörike and Rückert.—S.S. (Oct. 19 at 7:30.) Joyce Theatre
replicates the configuration of early-music Kyle Abraham may have changed the name
string bands, joins the expressive counter- of his company, formerly Abraham.In.Mo-
tenor Iestyn Davies for a concert in Car- Latonia Moore / Ryan Green tion, to an acronym, but he’s still its guiding
negie’s Weill Recital Hall. The program is force and greatest dancer, a real shape-shifter.
a thorough exercise in the commingling of Morgan Library & Museum When he débuts a solo, as he’s doing this
instrumental and vocal timbres in Renais- Latonia Moore and Ryan Speedo Green, season, it’s something to see. This time, it
sance and Baroque music, with madrigals fresh off memorable performances in the will also be something to hear, since he’s
by Gesualdo, consort songs by Byrd, pieces Met’s fall run of “Porgy and Bess,” open the accompanied by a live gospel choir. Abra-
by Johann Christoph Bach and Purcell, and George London Foundation’s recital season. ham’s dancers, though, aren’t far behind him.
new orchestrations of arias by Handel. Re- The soprano and the bass-baritone present a Whether it’s the entire company responding
imagined versions of Vaughn Williams’s “The heavy-hitting program of opera excerpts (in- to one another’s commands in Trisha Brown’s
Sky Above the Roof” and “Silent Noon” add cluding the explosive “L’altra notte,” from Boi- tricky “Solo Olos” (1976), or Tamisha Guy
a dash of twentieth-century lyrical directness to’s “Mefistofele”) and major songs (Duparc’s and Marcella Lewis alternating in Abraham’s
to the evening.—O.Z. (Oct. 19 at 7:30.) sublime “L’Invitation au Voyage” and Wolf’s “Show Pony,” this is a troupe of extraordinary
1
gnarled “Michelangelo Lieder”); Ken Noda movers. On opening night, they’re joined by
ILLUSTRATION BY HARRIET LEE-MERRION
accompanies them.—O.Z. (Oct. 20 at 4.) one more: Misty Copeland, performing a

“Strange Scenes” slippery, sensual solo that Abraham created
for her for the Fall for Dance Festival.—Brian
DiMenna Center Seibert (Oct. 15-20.)
The eminent German composer Wolfgang DANCE
Rihm wrote “Et Lux” in 2009, setting frag-
ments of the Latin Requiem Mass to music “Swan Lake / Loch na hEala”
that shifts restlessly between modes of succor American Ballet Theatre
and discord. A decade later, the U.S. première BAM Harvey Theatre
of the hour-long work, with its baked-in con- David H. Koch The Irish theatre director and choreographer
tradictions, might feel even more of the mo- During the fall season, A.B.T. dancers get Michael Keegan-Dolan’s work is steeped in the
ment; the vocal ensemble Ekmeles and the to play a little, dancing shorter works in a atmosphere and the traumas of his native land,

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rooted in both its mythical past and the pres
ent day. His retelling of “Swan Lake,” made
1
THE THEATRE
the production—presented by Ensemble Stu
dio Theatre, Youngblood, and Radio Drama
for Teac Damsa, the company he founded on Network—is a sombre core, about loneliness,
the Dingle Peninsula, has little to do with the brokenness, and addiction, but the play doesn’t
familiar ballet and much to do with the gritty All My Fathers take the time to mine that fascinating ground,
urban realities of the Irish Midlands. Jimmy, instead opting for a quick, calculable resolu
the protagonist, is a depressed, unemployed La MaMa tion.—Maya Phillips (Through Oct. 27.)
young man, tormented by his mother and con In the hilarious first half of Paul David Young’s
templating suicide. There are magical swans new play, David (Richard Gallagher), a version
here, too, but their predicament is linked to of the playwright, pays a reluctant visit to his The Glass Menagerie
a local legend (“Children of Lir”), and also to childhood home, in Kentucky. His monster
the trauma visited upon children by abusive of a mother, Regina (a spectacular Deborah Wild Project
priests. Plastic sheeting, chairs, and concrete Hedwall), announces, through the fog of In anticipation, perhaps, of Halloween, this
blocks create a grim everyday setting, while her dementia, that David’s true biological revival of Tennessee Williams’s great mem
a musical ensemble animates the scene with father was his (now dead) pediatrician, Dr. ory play, from 1944, is advertised as being
its keening IrishNordic folk music.—M.H. Woodman (a perfectly doctorly Brian Has “spooky.” But Austin Pendleton and Peter
(Oct. 15-20.) tert), and not her longsuffering husband, Bill Bloch, the codirectors of the show, which
(touchingly performed by Jonathan Hogan). runs two hours without an intermission, do
In the rambling second half, Regina and Dr. not add any spinetingling ambience to “The
Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana Woodman revolt against the way that David Glass Menagerie,” unless dim lighting and
has told the story, with Woodman pointing a tinkly underscore qualify (they do not).
Le Poisson Rouge out that the script borrows countless snippets At times, the oversensitive Laura Wingfield
One of the best ways to experience flamenco of dialogue from famous family dramas to tell (Alexandra Rose) stands behind a scrim like a
is in the intimacy of a café cantante or a tablao, this purportedly autobiographical tale. The forlorn ghost, staring into space as her mother,
close to the sparks but cooled by a beverage. play is about the anxiety of influence, both Amanda (Ginger Grace), and brother, Tom
Flamenco Vivo replicates that experience at genetic and literary—but, as directed by Evan (Matt de Rogatis), argue about her future
Le Poisson Rouge, with wine and cocktails Yionoulis, David gets a bit buried under all and the family’s dire situation. The show is
for purchase and musicians and dancers from those words.—Rollo Romig (Through Oct. 20.) respectful and hits its marks, in a journeyman
Spain, including Lucía Alvarez, Isaac Tovar, way, but it never triggers the deeper, almost
Fanny Ara, and Emilio Ochando.—B.S. (Oct. primal emotional response that more accom
16-18.) Freestyle Love Supreme plished productions of Williams’s story can
unlock.—Elisabeth Vincentelli (Through Oct. 20.)
Booth
Yanira Castro In this new improvised rap show on Broadway,
directed by Thomas Kail and created by Kail, Katsura Sunshine’s Rakugo
New York Live Arts Anthony Veneziale, and LinManuel Miranda,
Since Castro founded her company, a canary there is no playwright, only rappers (Veneziale, New World Stages
torsi, ten years ago, she has been playing with Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Aneesa Folds), a pair There are more than eight hundred Japanese
the interaction between performers and audi of beatboxers (Chris Sullivan and Kaila Mul masters of the thousandyearold comicsto
ence, going beyond participation and into col lady), and two keyboardists (Arthur Lewis and rytelling tradition called rakugo, but only one
laboration, with viewers contributing material Ian Weinberger). Veneziale, who is the show’s living foreigner: a big, burly, blond Canadian
and affecting decisions in the creative process. m.c. in addition to participating in the free with a bellowing, rapidfire style, whose own
She now extends that project in “Last Audi styles, moves crisply from one set piece to the master gave him the name Katsura Sunshine.
ence,” a work that draws on Greek tragedy and next; Ambudkar most ably turns his barrage of Kneeling onstage with only fans and hand tow
requiems. Each performance is unique, and all words into workable narrative and clearly felt els as props, rakugo performers tell a variety of
are free with a reservation and preceded by a emotion. In one segment, they riff on audience tales, some original, some traditional: here,
communal meal.—B.S. (Oct. 16-20.) members’ deep irritations—daylightsaving one (written by Sunshine’s master) is about a
time, mayonnaise, and boys, one night. In reincarnation gone wrong; another (traditional)
another, an audience member tells a story of is about a grouchy friend tricked into eating
Kayla Farrish regret, which the ensemble acts (and raps) out rotten tofu. (Sunshine will tell ghost stories
straightforwardly and then reinvents coun next month, family stories in December, and
Danspace Project terfactually to “correct” it. At a recent show, bawdy stories in January.) Funnier than the
In the past few years, Kayla Farrish has distin LinManuel Miranda was a “special guest” tales themselves, though, is Sunshine’s expla
guished herself as a supple, powerful dancer (there will be several throughout the run). He nation of rakugo—an explanation that is, he
while performing with Kyle Abraham, among was rapping as he entered, but you couldn’t notes, a traditional part of rakugo—which he
others. But her artistic pursuits and talents make out the words over the applause—it didn’t has fashioned into an entertaining essay about
also include choreography, photography, and matter what he was saying, only that he was the foibles of translation, easing qualms about
film. All those interests feed into “The New there.—Vinson Cunningham (Reviewed in our cultural appropriation with a heavy dose of
Frontier (My Dear America) Pt. 1,” which issue of 10/14/19.) (Through Jan. 5.) selfdeprecation.—R.R. (Through Jan. 4.)
dances along the line between trauma and
tenderness in black experience, looking at
America’s history and its future, sometimes Georgia Mertching Is Dead Linda Vista
with a satirical lens.—B.S. (Oct. 17-19.)
Ensemble Studio Theatre Hayes
The three women of this new comedy—the hi In this new play by Tracy Letts, directed by
Ben Munisteri lariously foulmouthed, very pregnant Gretchen Dexter Bullard, a particularly vicious mid
(Diana Oh), the quirky, juvenile Whitney life crisis leaves all kinds of mess in its wake.
92nd Street Y (Layla Khoshnoudi), and the selfdestructive, Wheeler (a funny Ian Barford) is a loudmouth
The veteran downtown choreographer pre selfhating Emma (Claire Siebers)—could have wriggling his way toward divorce; he doesn’t
sents “Elemental Complexity,” a program of their own sitcom. Catya McMullen’s script, spend enough time with his kid, but he does
new and recent works that reflect his primary about a road trip that the three friends (all with find opportunities to land himself in a series
interest in shapes, patterns, and spatial ar various vices) undertake to North Carolina, for of sexual scrapes. Letts is a proven purveyor
chitecture. “Petrichor” (2015), for example, a friend’s funeral, is funny, engaging, and occa of jokes, and the script of “Linda Vista” is
lays out, weaves together, and layers a small sionally vicious, especially when it dives into dense with laughs, maybe more than the richly
number of movement phrases in continually its characters’ ugly, vulnerable moments. The flawed Wheeler deserves. His friends Paul (Jim
pleasing ways, all to a cool electronic sound acting, under Giovanna Sardelli’s direction, is TrueFrost) and Margaret (Sally Murphy) set
score by Pogo. A new work, “Permafrost,” is adept until it becomes selfconsciously stagy. him up with a pretty life coach, Jules (Cora
set to Satie piano pieces.—M.H. (Oct. 18-20.) Beneath the charming, if familiar, premise of Vander Broek), but, despite the aptness of the

match, Wheeler finds a way to screw things ing through rapids on a slippery raft. Still, a Schultz (James Remar) and falls for Schultz’s
up. At about two and a half hours, the play story pushes through. Duran (Joshua Henry) mistress, Vera Cicero (Diane Lane). Another
feels too long, and, by the end, the audience and Mariana (Ciara Renée), two sweethearts al- mobster, Owney Madden (Bob Hoskins), who
has had lots of laughs but hasn’t learned much most crushed by life on the peripheries of Reno, owns the Cotton Club, in Harlem, comes to
it didn’t know by minute three about poor Nevada, have blessedly found one another, but his aid—and launches him as a movie actor.
Wheeler.—V.C. (Through Nov. 10.) Mariana’s ex-husband (Ryan Vasquez), a car- Meanwhile, the tap dancer Sandman Wil-
toonish criminal with a murderous streak, won’t liams (Gregory Hines) faces racist abuse at
let go easily. The songs are well-wrought pop clubs where he’s performing; his romance with
Slave Play sweets—each harmony exact, each structure Lila Rose Oliver (Lonette McKee), a light-
shapely. Henry sings especially well. But the skinned singer, is thwarted by her efforts to
Golden
1
characters, unlike their notes, never make it off pass for white. Coppola can’t avoid a dash of
Jeremy O. Harris’s tonally uneven yet intellec- the page.—V.C. (Through Nov. 17.) mythology when filming brutal killings, but
tually ruthless play, directed by Robert O’Hara, he also looks grimly at the Mob’s role in pop-
has transferred to Broadway after premièring, ular artistry—and in enforcing racial barriers.
last winter, at New York Theatre Workshop. In Laurence Fishburne, as a Harlem mobster,
the first, tense act, the mirrored set reflecting MOVIES steals the show in one scene; Larry Marshall
both a vista of a Southern plantation and the thrillingly impersonates Cab Calloway; and
audience, three couples in antebellum cos- Stephen Goldblatt’s phantasmagorical cin-
tumes enact sexual battles of sorts: Kaneisha The Cotton Club Encore ematography often outpaces the schematic
(Joaquina Kalukango) is a black slave who Francis Ford Coppola’s newly reëdited ver- action.—Richard Brody (In limited release.)
wants the white “Massa” Jim (Paul Alexander sion of his musical gangster film, from 1984,
Nolan) to call her “Negress” while he orders adds ten minutes of footage that boosts its
her to clean the floor; Phillip (the hilarious Sul- potent ideas but can’t help its often cartoonish The King
livan Jones) is a light-skinned black slave sum- tone. It’s based on real-life tales of Prohibi- The monarch of the title is King Henry V, though
moned by his unhinged white mistress, Alana tion-era bloodshed and New York night life. it’s quite a while before he ascends to the En-
(Annie McNamara), for violin playing and The musician Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere) glish throne. In the earlier passages of the story,
much more; and Gary (Ato Blankson-Wood) is forcibly befriended by the gangster Dutch he is Prince Hal (Timothée Chalamet), a noted
is a black slave commanding the white inden-
tured servant Dustin (a genially showboating
James Cusati-Moyer) to do his kinky bidding.
When the couples are revealed to be part of OFF BROADWAY
an academic therapy study—led by Téa (the
pitch-perfect Chalia La Tour) and Patricia
(Irene Sofia Lucio)—Harris’s trenchant, raw
exploration of the long, inescapable shadow
that America’s past casts on even the most
intimate relationships unfolds in devastating
increments.—Shauna Lyon (Through Jan. 19.)
Victor
Axis Theatre
“Those were happy days,” Edgar Oliver intones
in his unplaceable lilt, somehow both animated
and deadpan, as his hand drifts downward
like a falling leaf. “Why do we survive them?”
Like a dying breed of downtown New Yorker
crossed with an extraterrestrial ghost, Oliver
has rematerialized to deliver his latest fond,
funny, strange, elegiac memoir-monologue
about “the sorrows of men who live alone in
rooming houses,” this time about his beloved
friend and neighbor Victor Greco, who died
in February and who was homeless for the last
ten years of his life. Sensitively directed by
Randy Sharp, with a suitably sepulchral set
(by Chad Yarborough) and lighting (by David
Zeffren) and live music by a guitar-cello-piano
trio led by Paul Carbonara, the show gives the
impression that the shy loner onstage has had The playwright and director Richard Nelson creates dramatic worlds not
a far richer social life than most of us will ever so much play by play as house by house. His “Apple Family Plays,” which
have.—R.R. (Through Oct. 26.) appeared between 2010 and 2013, chronicled four evenings in the life of a
fictional family in Rhinebeck, New York, where Nelson lives; each was set on
The Wrong Man a historic date, such as the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.
Robert W. Wilson MCC His next project, “The Gabriels,” followed another Rhinebeck family through
Theatre Space the 2016 campaign season as it unfolded in real life; the last installment,
ILLUSTRATION BY IRINA PERJU
This musical, with lyrics, book, and music by “Women of a Certain Age,” premièred on (gulp) Election Night. But Nelson’s
the hitmaker Ross Golan (he’s written for Ari- plays don’t bellow about the march of history; they are understated ensemble
ana Grande and Justin Bieber), might be better
classified as an opera-in-power-ballads, or even pieces, in which history echoes faintly in the background. He continues his
just an album—a “live album experience”—of “Rhinebeck Panorama” with “The Michaels” (starting previews on Oct. 19,
uncommon thematic and narrative coherence. at the Public), set in 2019, in the kitchen of a third family, headed up by
Nobody stops for even a word of spoken dia-
logue; the audience rides from chord to chord, Rose (Brenda Wehle), a renowned choreographer. The cast includes the
one melisma to the next, like passengers crash- Nelson regulars Maryann Plunkett and Jay O. Sanders.—Michael Schulman
THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2019 17
reprobate and a disappointment to his reigning career because of a prescription-drug addic- director in late middle age. (Many of the
father (Ben Mendelsohn). David Michôd’s film tion dating back to her childhood stardom, details are autobiographical.) He lives alone
borrows boldly from Shakespeare, stripping Garland desperately seeks custody of her chil- in Madrid, attended by aches and pains of
away the verse and reordering the sequence dren, Lorna and Joey Luft, but is penniless and every description; it is only in meeting figures
of events; Falstaff (Joel Edgerton), for exam- homeless. She only accepts the London gig to from his past—an actor with whom he once
ple, not only carouses with Hal but survives earn enough money to support them. Although worked; a former lover—that he rediscov-
to fight alongside him, after his coronation, at she flings herself devotedly into the concerts, ers his creative strength. Now and then we
the Battle of Agincourt. The scenes of combat her initial triumphs crumble in the face of fresh are spirited back into that past, and to the
are, in fact, the best thing about the movie, troubles, including an unhappy new marriage happiness that enveloped Salvador, as a boy
displaying a precision and an intensity that are and failed business plans. Flashbacks to her (played by Asier Flores), in the company
wanting elsewhere. Chalamet, so finely vulner- teen-age years at M-G-M reveal the abusive of his mother, Jacinta (Penélope Cruz). No
able in “Call Me by Your Name” (2017), is not studio regime that brought her worldwide fame one is more dexterous than Almodóvar at
the most plausible of rakes; a more enjoyable at the expense of her private life. Tom Edge’s slipping to and fro across time, and never be-
turn comes from Robert Pattinson, who seems script, based on a play by Peter Quilter, lapses fore has he, or the rueful Banderas, conjured
at once menacing and foppish as the Dauphin into clichés, but the dialogue is often sharp, so convincing an air of autumnal regret. A
of France.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue and Zellweger offers it up with flair and fury. lovely performance from Julieta Serrano, as
of 10/14/19.) (In limited release.) She also sings, and, though her voice hardly the elderly Jacinta, is wholly in keeping with
resembles Garland’s, she commands the stage the mood. In Spanish.—A.L. (10/14/19) (In
majestically. Directed by Rupert Goold.—R.B. limited release.)
Judy (In wide release.)
Renée Zellweger’s passionate and vulnerable
incarnation of Judy Garland energizes this em- Wild Rovers
pathetic, nuanced, yet patchy drama centered Pain and Glory The director Blake Edwards, best known for
on the singer’s London concert series in 1968, The latest film from Pedro Almodóvar stars his comedies, made this rowdy yet haunted
the year before her death. Struggling with her Antonio Banderas as Salvador Mallo, a movie Western, from 1971, about two gunslinging
cowboys, the grizzled Ross Bodine (William
Holden) and the dandyish Frank Post (Ryan
O’Neal), who are sent on a grim mission: to
AT THE MOVIES transport the body of a fellow ranch hand
who was kicked in the head by a balky horse.
Their hyperbolically antic dialogue en route,
about life and death, fate and hopelessness,
evokes Vladimir and Estragon on the prai-
rie—until, frustrated by their ill-paying labor,
they turn to crime. The cowboys’ comedic
bravado masks the absurdity in their bursts
of violence. Edwards’s West is grossly phys-
ical: gunshots shatter bodies, punches leave
bruises, drinks go down hard, and drunken-
ness is an ugly mess. Bodine and Post exult in
the transcendent wonder of the vast landscape
and revel in the illusory joys of their outlaw
freedom; their solitude and boredom on long
rides through uninhabited country drive them
to delusion and destruction.—R.B. (Metro-
graph, Oct. 19, and streaming.)
Will
This drama, by the director Jessie Maple,
from 1981—one of the first features directed
by a black American female filmmaker—is
a blunt cinematic instrument of immense
power. It’s set in Harlem and centered on
Will Jennings (Obaka Adedunyo), a young,
unemployed former college-basketball star
The Cameroonian-born, Belgium-based director Rosine Mbakam’s two who is a heroin addict attempting to kick
documentary features, “The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman” (2016) and the habit cold turkey. He lives with his wife,
“Chez Jolie Coiffure” (2018), both opening at Anthology Film Archives Jean (Loretta Devine), who keeps the family
on stable financial footing and is increasingly
on Oct. 16, form an extraordinary diptych of the migrant experience. The exasperated with him. Will’s friends, also ad-
earlier film is boldly and intricately personal. Mbakam, accompanied by dicts, are trying to get a twelve-year-old boy
her white European husband and their toddler son, returns to her native called Little Brother (Robert Dean) hooked,
too; Will draws him away, brings him home,
city, Yaoundé, to visit her mother, whose recollections delve deep into and cares for him. Yet Will faces formidable
the intimate nexus of politics and tradition—including her marriage to obstacles, both institutional and personal,
a polygamous man and the principles of female independence that she in his struggles with drugs and in his search
for work and, above all, a sense of purpose,
imparted to Mbakam. A crucial institution there is the tontine, a financial which Maple presents plainly, frankly, and
self-help group for women, which also comes to the fore in “Chez Jolie confrontationally. Will’s crisis has a spiritual
dimension, and Maple evokes it, dramati-
COURTESY ICARUS FILMS
Coiffure,” filmed in a Brussels hair salon that is managed by a Cameroonian

cally and symbolically, in a wide-ranging and
1
woman named Sabine and serves as a meeting place for African residents. documentary-based view of Harlem.—R.B.
Sabine speaks to Mbakam about her arduous clandestine journey to (Metrograph, Oct. 20.)
Europe and her experience of racism in Belgium. Mbakam’s camerawork
makes brilliant use of mirrors and windows—and, in the process, catches For more reviews, visit
a terrifying police raid against undocumented migrants.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town

(made with Middle Eastern spices, choc- cooking—particularly in Los Angeles,
olate, and harissa), and the Dead Sea home to lauded restaurants like Kismet
#2 cocktail (guava, mezcal, mint, lime) and Mh Zh—Miss Ada deserves to be
is basically an Israeli margarita—and part of the conversation.
1
sometimes the za’atar-crusted salmon And it’s not alone in Brooklyn. If
is accompanied by Japanese eggplant. Miss Ada, with its house-made blueberry
Across the board, what comes out of kombucha, is speaking in the vernacular
TABLES FOR TWO the kitchen tends to be lovely. At other of the moment, then Golda, a Middle
restaurants, skewers can feel like ripoffs; Eastern-ish all-day café in Bed-Stuy, is
Miss Ada / Golda here they are reasonably substantial and texting in it. Opened in 2017 by the late
184 DeKalb Ave., Brooklyn; easy to share. The short ribs are fork- restaurateur Danny Nusbaum, whose
504 Franklin Ave., Brooklyn tender and, strewn with sliced pickles, family started Pick A Bagel, it offers a
reminiscent of pastrami; a complexly number of almost parodically millennial
The tantalizing combination of brown seasoned ground-lamb kofta kebab is touchstones, including açai yogurt and
butter and fried sage may have its origin impaled, cleverly, on a long, tapered cin- chia-seed oatmeal with date-oat milk.
in Italy, but it turns out to work just as namon stick. There’s a satisfying snap to But, surprise, the matcha spritzer,
well with pita as it does with pasta. At the salmon’s za’atar crust as it gives way to made with fresh-squeezed orange juice
Miss Ada, a restaurant in Fort Greene, silky pink flakes. The fillet sits on a smear and seltzer, accomplishes the seemingly
it gets spooned, nutty and fragrant, over of labneh, an ingredient that it would impossible task of making matcha taste
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARY KANG FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
a sweet but earthy carrot hummus, and seem the kitchen were overusing if each good. And just because the cauliflower
again over a bowl of fluffy whipped ri- dish it popped up in were not so inargu- looks fantastic on Instagram—its cru-
cotta. The pita—warm, puffy, chewy— ably suited to it. My favorite is the labneh ciferous treetop fried until it appears to
goes perfectly, too, with a rich, stretchy mousse, as airy as Italian meringue and have been spray-painted gold, placed
stracciatella cheese, its milky surface crisscrossed with seasonal-fruit granita. upon a pool of tahini dyed electric fuch-
marbled with little golden ponds of olive To say that Miss Ada has been sia with beet juice, and finished with
oil and topped with, depending on the overlooked wouldn’t be quite accu- forest-green chermoula and jewels of
season, heirloom tomatoes, basil, cucum- rate. It’s difficult to get a prime-time dried apricot—doesn’t mean it’s not
bers, and red onion, or snap peas, blood dinner reservation there. But the rea- absolutely delicious.
orange, ground-cherries, and kumquat. son I first tried it only recently, more Golda began serving dinner recently,
“Mediterranean with a twist” is how than two years after it opened, is that and the menu is a bit disappointing, per-
the restaurant describes its food. The its success has been relatively quiet. I haps because Nusbaum isn’t there to
chef and owner, Tomer Blechman (late went not because of the usual P.R. blitz oversee it. Still, the all-day offerings,
of Bar Bolonat, Gramercy Tavern, and or the big-name-chef-driven buzz but including a fried-chicken sandwich
Maialino), is originally from Israel, and because I kept hearing about it through pulsing with the heavenly perfume of
the menu is rooted in the traditions and trusted word of mouth. After a couple Aleppo pepper, are enough to recom-
flavor profiles of the Middle East. Some- of meals, I felt ready to join the whisper mend it. And there’s always Miss Ada
times the twist is Italian, sometimes it’s network. At a time when young chefs at night. (Miss Ada, dishes $8-$28. Golda,
Mexican—the sauce beneath the short- are getting attention for putting modern dishes $5-$21.)
rib skewer is described as “Israeli mole” and inventive spins on Middle Eastern —Hannah Goldfield
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT can, of course, defend Trump, but they voters think that Trump should be “im-
PARTY ON THE LINE can also question and confront him. One peached and removed” from office.
of the crucial issues in the impeachment (Trump tweeted, in response, “Who-
resident Trump has an idiosyncratic drama is whether they will do so. ever their Pollster is, they suck.”)
P view of what he calls “rights,” which
he seems to conflate with any power,
They might start by objecting to a
President’s asking a foreign leader to
If articles of impeachment are passed,
which seems increasingly likely, it will
mechanism, or maneuver that will allow investigate the family of one of his op- take sixty-seven votes in the Senate to
him to avoid legal jeopardy. In a letter ponents.Trump has more or less bragged convict Trump, which means that at
sent last Tuesday to Nancy Pelosi, the about doing that in a phone call with least twenty of the fifty-three Repub-
Speaker of the House, and to several President Volodymyr Zelensky, of licans will have to walk away from him.
committee chairs, Pat Cipollone, the Ukraine, regarding Joe Biden and the That number still seems distant. The
White House counsel, said that Trump business dealings of his son Hunter. In- Washington Post keeps a tally: as of last
would not comply with requests from stead, congressional Republicans have week, no Republican senators publicly
the House’s impeachment inquiry, owing either remained silent or tried to show supported impeachment, thirty-nine
to his duty to “preserve the rights” of fu- that it’s the Democrats who are at fault. were unequivocally behind Trump (for
ture Presidents. The inquiry itself is un- Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority example, calling the investigation a
constitutional, the letter charged—al- Leader, said on “Fox and Friends” that “witch hunt”), and only fourteen ex-
though the Constitution expressly gives “more people in America want to in- pressed some concern about the alle-
the House the right to conduct it. On vestigate what Biden has done with his gations. Mitt Romney, of Utah, has been
Wednesday, Trump said that he would son than want to impeach this Presi- the most critical; Ben Sasse, of Ne-
consider coöperating only “if they give dent.” Actually, a Fox News survey last braska, who has broken with the Pres-
us our rights,” echoing a tweet from the week showed that fifty-one per cent of ident before, said that some aspects of
previous day, in which he said that he Trump’s call with Zelensky are “terri-
couldn’t let a key witness, Gordon Sond- ble,” but also that the House investiga-
land, the U.S. Ambassador to the Eu- tion is a “partisan clown show.”
ropean Union, be deposed by congres- Yet, in the same week, Republicans
sional investigators because he “would were as openly angry with Trump as
be testifying before a totally compro- they have ever been when he announced,
mised kangaroo court, where Republi- after a phone call with the Turkish Pres-
can’s rights have been taken away.” ident, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, that the
By “Republican’s rights,” the Presi- United States would step aside as Tur-
dent may just be referring to himself key launched a military offensive in
and to his grand delusion that he has northern Syria. The move was seen by
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA
unmatched prerogatives. If he thinks many in both parties as a betrayal of

that his party can simply halt all inves- Kurdish militias that have been a valu-
tigations into his behavior, that’s wrong, able partner in the fight against ISIS,
too—wrong even if the Republicans but have long been targeted by Turkey.
had a majority in the House, and even Air strikes began within days of the an-
though they do have a majority in the nouncement. Senator Lindsey Graham,
Senate. Republicans in both chambers of South Carolina, ping-ponged be-
are entitled to shape the process. They tween saying that the Administration
had “shamelessly abandoned” the Kurds please contribute before the deadline!” Probably not, but, with Trump, they had
and pledging to hold a hearing to allow Trump relies on the appearance of a good reason to fear something extreme.
Rudy Giuliani, the President’s volatile united party to validate his ever more That experience should be a warn-
lawyer, to lay out his conspiracy theo- corrosive policies—and his tirades— ing to Republicans defending Trump
ries related to Ukraine. Two days later, with voters. If that unity falters, things at a time when the full extent of his
two of Giuliani’s associates were ar- could move quickly. Yet what’s remark- recklessness is only just being revealed.
rested on criminal charges alleging that able is that more Republican senators His refusal to participate won’t put an
they had tried to funnel foreign money who are not facing reëlection, or are se- end to the impeachment inquiry; it will
into American election campaigns. cure in their seats, have not spoken out only initiate more fights about subpoe-
It’s as though any dissent on mat- as a matter of principle. Some may be nas and witnesses, defiance of court or-
ters of policy requires a greater show of boxed in by positions they staked out ders, and obstruction of justice. This
loyalty on impeachment. In this, the earlier in Trump’s Presidency. In the will all go to the heart of Congress’s
Republicans’ intended audience is not course of the Mueller investigation, right to conduct oversight, and may pro-
only Trump but his electoral base. Sen- many congressional Republicans de- vide separate grounds for impeachment.
ator Mitch McConnell, who is up for manded that the Justice Department (One of the draft articles of impeach-
reëlection next year, sharply criticized aggressively investigate the investiga- ment in Watergate concerned Richard
Trump’s decision on Syria, but also ran tion’s origins, which, they suggested, Nixon’s failure to honor subpoenas.)
an online campaign ad in which he would show that Trump had been Trump has already referred to the im-
claimed that impeachment is proceed- wronged. Did they know that this pur- peachment inquiry as a coup. This is
ing because “a left-wing mob” has Pe- suit might take the form of Trump’s not a moment for Republican legisla-
losi in its clutches. “The way that im- asking Zelensky for “a favor” regarding tors to stand by and watch as a consti-
peachment stops” is with “a Senate a phantom Democratic Party server, or tutional crisis unfolds. That is some-
majority, with me as majority leader,” Attorney General William Barr’s play- thing they have no right to do.
McConnell said. “But I need your help: ing detective in Rome and London? —Amy Davidson Sorkin
YOU’RE FIRED! I use a résumé?’” Corcodilos said. One of qualifications: “Political Leader with
TRUMP, UNEMPLOYED tip: copy the job description and paste it decades of experience developing sophis-
at the end of your résumé. If the com- ticated policies and advocating for United
pany does a keyword search, it’ll match states citizenry.” A projects section fea-
every word they’re looking for. “Now, tured Trump University and the Don-
that’s sneaky,” he said. “But it’s a game.” ald J. Trump Foundation—the fact that
He continued, “So, what should Don- both are defunct was omitted—and a list
ald Trump do? I don’t know what he’s of accomplishments included “Star on
onald Trump, in a recent phone call talking about. He’s never applied for a the Hollywood Walk of Fame” and “Have
D with House Republicans, expressed
the concern that impeachment is a “bad
job. I don’t think the guy’s ever had a ré-
sumé in his life.”
never filed for personal bankruptcy.” In-
stead of an e-mail address, Trump’s Twit-
thing to have on your résumé.” Truth is, Corcodilos had a point. A correspon- ter handle was listed.
we’ve all been there. But, whether it’s a dent went on Fiverr, a Web site for free- But the résumé—designed as though
piddling score on the SAT, a history of lance workers, in search of résumé writ- Trump had been booted from office
drinking on the job, or a “constitution- ers for hire. One user, Brooke_resumes, early—screamed “impeached,” just as
ally illegitimate” congressional inquiry, offered services for just five dollars. The Trump had feared. The POTUS section
there’s always a way to put a positive spin correspondent explained that the résumé (“Signed the biggest tax cut in history,”
on it when searching for the next gig. would be for Trump. “Made treaties with foreign nations”)
“The joke is that nobody reads the “I’ll do it for $150,” Brooke_resumes was dated “January 2017–December
résumé,” Nick Corcodilos, a professional responded. Another vender, Stivstiv, was 2019”—a black mark in soft gray italics.
recruiter based in New Jersey, said. “It’s hired instead, for fifty bucks. Stivstiv’s Nancy Brout, the author of “Losing
scanned by a machine.” Corcodilos runs real name is Steve. In 2005, Steve received Your Job and Finding Yourself: Mem-
a Web site called Ask the Headhunter an M.B.A. from Arizona State University. oir, Myths, and Methods for Inventive
and is known for what he describes as The résumé, delivered the next day, Career Transitions,” had a fix. “I always
his “iconoclastic techniques.” He can help was in a modern two-column format— recommend just using years without
you get a job, but he’s more interested in the kind that would make a Wharton months on your résumé,” she said. “And,
dismantling our broken hiring system. career counsellor’s face go purple. Its if there are time gaps between positions,
He charges two hundred and eighty-five color palette—blue, gray, and white— take anything you did on the side—con-
dollars for an hour-long phone call. had a calming effect, while simultane- sulting or volunteer work—and fill them
“I do workshops for executive-M.B.A. ously arousing suspicions that the in.” (Trump could mention his real-estate
programs at Harvard, Cornell, Whar- template was from Microsoft Word. business.) Brout added that, if you weren’t
ton. These are sophisticated people who “Donald John Trump” was in big letter- in a job for very long, you might leave it
ask me, ‘How do I get in the door? Should ing at the top, followed by a summary off your résumé altogether. “It’s not lying,”
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she said. “It’s just not part of your story.” Fiennes didn’t have time to learn lines,
Should Trump, then, omit the Presi- but that wasn’t called for, either. Instead,
dency from his résumé? Damian Birkel, he showed up for a few hours of film-
the founder of a support group called ing in the Savoy Hotel, where he sat in
Professionals in Transition, said that an armchair to which a piece of chintz
Trump should include it because he’s had had been stapled, to replicate the one
the job for more than a year: “He couldn’t used by the original crew for its inter-
get away with not listing it, because of views, which were conducted in the same
all the things that have occurred under location. Fiennes, who, in the film, wears
his stewardship of the United States.” jeans and an ancient-Roman beard, did
Birkel, who has lost his job five times, not pretend to be Darbyshire. He sim-
suggested that Trump prepare a “bridge ply read from the transcript, which the
story,”a short, unemotional statement ex- film crew had placed out of frame. The
plaining why a person was let go: “Some- result is an energizing conceit: Dar-
thing like ‘As a highly successful and very byshire, who acknowledges responsibil-
rich and shrewd businessman, I can tell ity for running the coup—and who
you that, when it comes to closing a deal, calmly admits to having had Mossa-
there are terms that don’t involve money. degh’s chief of police killed—is animated
As I was negotiating with Volodymyr Ralph Fiennes by Fiennes’s flinty glamour and peerless
Zelensky, I reinforced our relationship dramatic chops. “I was not trying to be
and asked him to do me a favor. This is born filmmaker Taghi Amirani. The film him,” Fiennes said. “I read the lines, but
something I’ve done throughout my ca- concerns the little-known role played by I try to give them some kind of life. It’s
reer, and, if you go back and read up on the British secret service in orchestrating a weird sketch-in of an idea of who some-
it, it’s a proven fact that I did no wrong. the overthrow, in 1953, of Iran’s left-wing one might be. It’s a surmise.”
And, if I had an opportunity to do it Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossa- Typically, Fiennes delves deep into
again, I wouldn’t change a thing.’” degh. In particular, it reveals the critical research for a character—he’s been bi-
The correspondent submitted Trump’s part played by a British agent, Norman cycling around Suffolk and chatting with
résumé, along with the bridge story, to Darbyshire, who was in charge of hand- villagers in pubs, preparing to play Basil
Laura Medeiros, the director of faculty ing out the money that precipitated the Brown, the archeologist who, in 1939, ex-
appointments at Harvard’s Kennedy violent ouster of the country’s democrat- cavated the site of a seventh-century
School. At press time, Medeiros had not ically elected leader in favor of the more Anglo-Saxon burial ship at Sutton Hoo.
1
yet extended an offer. tractable Shah. “Coup 53” pieces together But, in the case of “Coup 53,” no such
—Tyler Foggatt this murky episode from multiple sources, preparation was possible. “We don’t know
including footage long buried in the ar- who Norman Darbyshire was,” Fiennes
CURTAIN CALL DEPT. chives of the British Film Institute: a se- said. Fiennes draws upon type, deliver-
A SURMISE ries of interviews with former spies, con- ing Darbyshire’s revelations with the ar-
ducted thirty-five years ago for a TV rogance and patrician manner of the mid-
documentary. Mysteriously, an incendi- century British establishment: “Timing
ary interview with Darbyshire, in which is always of the essence, and secrecy.” A
he acknowledges Britain’s role in the pause, the slightest of shrugs. “Persians
coup, didn’t appear in the final cut of the aren’t very good at either.”
program, nor was it to be found in the Why the recording of Darbyshire’s
ven before being cast as Gareth Mal- bowels of the B.F.I. interview went missing, and where it
E lory, otherwise known as M, the head
of M.I.6, in the James Bond franchise,
Left with only a transcript of the in-
terview, Amirani pulled off a bit of a
now is, are questions Amirani was un-
able to resolve. The mystery also remains
Ralph Fiennes, the English actor, was coup of his own: landing Fiennes to read as to why Darbyshire chose to speak so
intrigued by the motivations of spies. Darbyshire’s recollections aloud. This freely to a TV crew after a lifetime of si-
“Agents have to create intimacies, rela- was achieved thanks to the intercession lence. In the film, Lord David Owen,
tionships, trusts with other people—that of the film’s editor, Walter Murch, who who was the British Foreign Secretary
they then have to go and exploit,” Fiennes was the sound designer on “Apocalypse in the late nineteen-seventies, during the
said the other day, talking in the garden Now,” among other storied movies. “I period of the Iranian Revolution, spec-
of a restaurant near his home in Shoreditch, knew Walter from ‘The English Patient,’” ulates that Darbyshire didn’t like the fact
London. How does a spy justify, or even Fiennes said. “They sent me the tran- that the U.S. had acknowledged its own
tolerate, such a betrayal, Fiennes won- scripts and showed me what they were involvement in the coup. “We all like
dered—ideology? Sociopathy? “As an doing, and I was hooked.” At the time of recognition for what we’ve done,” Owen
actor, you ask, ‘What is going on inside?’ ” filming, Fiennes was playing the lead in said. “He was fed up with being told that
The occasion for Fiennes’s reflections “Antony and Cleopatra” at the National this was the Americans. He wanted a
on spycraft was the release of “Coup 53,” Theatre. “I said, ‘I can’t change my beard,’ good old British view—he wanted them
a documentary directed by the Iranian- but they didn’t want that,” he explained. to get some credit for it.” Fiennes spec-
ulated that it may have been the actor nect the dots of her freckles with perma- the novels on which the series was based
in Darbyshire who sought out the lime- nent marker; and a Conor McGregor and a “distinguished whitehead”—a spir-
light. “If I play Antony, I am creating look-alike named Jason Eveleth, whom itual cousin. On the count of three, echo-
that mask for those three hours. But, if Crary offered as an alternative to the so- ing a line from the show, the crowd
you are a spy, you are creating a whole called Ed Effect. This was more quack- shouted, “Gingers are kissed by fire!”
persona that you have to be, for days on ery, attributing a recent uptick in the As a troupe of fire dancers prepared
end,” he said. “It is like the supreme act- self-reported sex lives of male redheads to perform, Crary received word that
ing challenge. And you get no curtain to the celebrity of Ed Sheeran. Crary there was a “random red” on the prem-
call.” He went on, “Norman Darbyshire noted that, whereas female redheads have ises—a potential member who had ar-
1
wanted a curtain call.” historically been hypersexualized (think rived unwittingly. “We get one every
—Rebecca Mead Jessica Rabbit), their male counterparts year,” he said. This one, named Cath-
have been stereotyped as dweebs (think erine Keighery, was from Ireland, and
MINORITY REPORT Alfred E. Neuman). “Ed Sheeran is not was visiting friends in Albany. She’d
NIGHT OF THE WALKING RED a real macho guy,” Crary said. Eveleth, gone hiking that morning in Vermont,
on the other hand, has a mobster’s nose and then stopped off in Troy for din-
and twenty-inch biceps. He objected to ner, on impulse. “Some ginger guy with
Crary calling him a bodybuilder, on a beard and a dog stopped me and said,
grounds of political correctness. “I’m a ‘Are you going to the Redhead Night?’”
professional fitness athlete,” he said. she explained.
The red tide soon numbered two hun- Keighery’s bangs shone like copper
very so often, word circulates on the dred and spilled onto the back deck. Crary wire. “In Ireland, once a year, we have a
E Internet, and in the peripheries of
the mainstream media, that people with
climbed a fire escape and called the meet-
ing to order. “There are two items on
Kiss a Ginger day,” she said. “And the
wise guys, they kick—‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’
red hair, like polar bears and coral reefs, our agenda,” he said. “And the first one they say. ‘I misheard.’ Because we are a
are not long for this world. The argu- is ‘us.’” He singled out a local real-estate marginalized group, as I’m sure you
ments tend to involve pseudoscience— agent who brandished a fresh tattoo of know.” She gestured at Anasha Cum-
speculation about the effects of increased the club’s logo—a Rubik’s-like quadrant mings, a hirsute Troy councilman who
sunlight over the British Isles in a warm- of red, orange, umber, and white—on his was elected after distributing his cam-
ing climate, misunderstanding of the forearm. The second item was “them.” paign platform printed on the backs of
nature of recessive genes—and can often Crary mentioned “Game of Thrones,” wearable red-beard cutouts. “Were you
be traced, like much quackery, to profit and said, “Red-headed characters did bullied as a child?” she asked.
motive. An interest in selling ancestry pretty well, didn’t they?” to whoops of “I was homeschooled,” he said.
tests, say, or hair dye. Duncan Crary, a applause. He proposed a “special toast Crary presented Keighery with a
red-bearded redhead in Troy, New York, for George R. R. Martin,” the author of League membership card. “There’s no
gets particularly energized when dis-
cussing an extinction-forecasting study
produced more than a decade ago by the
Oxford Hair Foundation—a group
funded by Procter & Gamble. “It’s a P.R.
scam!” he says. Crary likes to refer to his
fellow-gingers, who represent between
one and two per cent of the global pop-
ulation, as a “permanent minority.”
Shortly before 6 P.M. the other day,
Crary surveyed the crowd at a riverside
bar in Troy, exposed the whites of his
green eyes with mischievous delight, and
muttered, “The red tide is coming.” It
was the seventh annual meeting of his
club, the League of Extraordinary Red
Heads, which convenes in October be-
cause of pumpkins and rusty foliage.
Among the attendees were an eight-year-
old boy sporting a T-shirt that read
“MC1R,” a reference to the gene respon-
sible for his Day-Glo follicles; a mother
of three blue-eyed gingers—“the rarest
combination,” she said—who recalled the “Just once, I’d like a raise that didn’t feel insignificant
efforts of a childhood nemesis to con- in the grand scheme of things.”
dues to pay, because you already paid a break, I would go in and be, like, ‘Let’s ing. Subjects, which have included sev-
them growing up,” he said. freestyle,’” Veneziale said. “I finally wore eral members of Freestyle Love Supreme,
“So true!” Keighery said. “You know, him down and was, like, ‘Hey, I think we lie in fMRI machines and play associa-
the gingers are a dying breed. We’re get- should do this in front of people.’” tive word games. Activity tends to cool
ting bred out. It’s a fact.” The group that became Freestyle in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,
Crary snorted.“That’s been debunked!” Love Supreme was set to perform its which, Veneziale explained, acts as your
he said. “We are not going extinct, girl. first show at the Peoples Improv The- “monitoring-critic voice,” while the me-
I think we predate humans. Neanderthals atre, in August, 2003. The day before, a dial prefrontal cortex—“your creative
may have been redheads.” blackout hit the Northeast. Veneziale’s flow”—heats up. In 2013, Veneziale
“So we don’t all have to go ridin’ a friend Abe was supposed to come in co-founded a company called Speech-
redhead?” Keighery asked, sounding from Queens and d.j., but the trains were less, which runs improv workshops at
disappointed. down, so Miranda’s roommate Bill Sher- such companies as Google, ESPN, and
Nearby, a dark-haired man bummed man stepped in to play keys and saxo- Walmart; it has taught more than sixty
a light from a bald man, who nodded in phone. Twenty people showed up; the thousand people, on every continent ex-
approval. “Another leper,” he said, refer- group bought them all beer and per- cept Antarctica. (A workshop is planned
ring not to the shared absence of ginger formed in the basement of the Drama for the McMurdo Station, an Antarctic
1
but to the cigarette habit. Book Shop, which had regained power. research base.) “I do believe it’s a beau-
—Ben McGrath They got a regular Friday-night gig at tiful adaptogenic skill,” Veneziale said.
the P.I.T. and gained a following. Mean- It was forty-five minutes until show-
MAKING IT UP DEPT. while, careers started exploding: Sher- time. Veneziale went downstairs, where
COMEDY CORTEX man became the musical director of that evening’s cast was waiting in a psy-
“Sesame Street”; Miranda applied his chedelic lounge. Before every perfor-
freestyling skills to the Founding Fa- mance, they do a warmup designed to
thers. Both appear as part of Freestyle stimulate the proper parts of the cortex.
Love Supreme’s rotating Broadway cast, They gathered around a coffee table and
along with the “Hamilton” alumni Chris- began with a “sound bomb.”“Be informed
topher Jackson and Daveed Diggs. by each other and by the mo-mo,” Vene-
hen Anthony Veneziale was a Improv is hard enough; making it ziale instructed. They closed their eyes
W sophomore at Wesleyan, he got
cut from the soccer team and decided to
rhyme requires special prowess. Accord-
ing to Veneziale, it all has to do with
and communicated with pfffffffts and
pows and za-za-zas, sounding like a hip-
audition for an improv group called Gag loosening up the mind. “I’m fascinated hop Rube Goldberg machine. Next, they
Reflex instead. He got in. One of his fa- with brains,” he said, after putting on his passed around a bucket filled with left-
vorite exercises was the Song Game, in costume (blue fedora, pink tropical shirt). over word suggestions from that day’s
which the performers would pause a For the past two and a half years, he has dress rehearsal. Each performer fed words
scene, ask the audience to shout out a been working with an otolaryngologist to the next person, who would then con-
musical genre, and then make up an aria at the University of California, San Fran- jure up a verse. “Here we go: ‘Star Wars,’”
or a country ballad on the spot. “And this cisco, to study which parts of the brain Veneziale said to a beatboxer named
was the late nineties, so rap was ubiqui- are activated and deactivated by freestyl- Kaila Mullady, who freestyled, “Yeah,
tous,” Veneziale said recently. That’s how they call me Princess Leia. / Like Darth
he got into freestyle improv comedy. Vader, ’cause you know that I’m a slayah!”
Veneziale, who is now forty-three, Veneziale drew the word “plantain.” “In-
was in his dressing room at the Booth sane!” Mullady rapped. “It looks like a
Theatre, where his group, Freestyle Love banana / but it does not taste the same.”
Supreme, was about to perform its first After the exercises, the performers
preview on Broadway. In the show, Vene- took their places. Had their cortexes been
ziale (his rap name is Two Touch) and scanned right then, Veneziale conjec-
his castmates ask for words and anec- tured, “we’d see deoxygenated hemoglo-
dotes from the audience and then spin bin leaving parts of their brains.” An-
them into hip-hop sketches. Back at drew Bancroft (stage name: Jelly Donut),
Wesleyan, Veneziale went on, he was a who wore a black hoodie, said, “I love
teaching assistant for a film class, and the science of it. But I like to dumb it
one of the students was Lin-Manuel Mi- down a little and say, ‘Oh, that little voice
randa. “I had heard that he was a really that says “you can’t do this” or “that per-
good freestyler,” he recalled. After grad- son’s better than you”—he might still be
uation, Veneziale and his classmate there, but he’s grumpy in the corner, be-
Thomas Kail formed a production com- cause he doesn’t really have any volume
pany in New York, and their first proj- right now.’ The volume, for me, is: What’s
ect was an early version of Miranda’s mu- Anthony Veneziale going to happen? What’s next?”
sical “In the Heights.” “Any time he had and Lin-Manuel Miranda —Michael Schulman
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sider her options. Saunders, who lives
ANNALS OF SHOPPING in a cheery apartment in the San Fer-
nando Valley, had laid out the shoes
AFTER A FASHION
and bags in question on her sofa and
was perched beside them. She and Ro
chatted about how they’d first met (at
TheRealReal brings high-end goods into the “circular economy.” the jewelry counter at TheRealReal’s
brick-and-mortar store in West Hol-
BY SUSAN ORLEAN lywood) and about how Saunders’s
work as a model and actress was going
(she’d just shot an ad campaign for the
beauty retailer Ulta).
Saunders had previously consigned
jeans and sweaters at a local used-cloth-
ing store, but this was her first time
with TheRealReal. Ro explained how
the consignment process worked: She
would take Saunders’s items and send
them to the main warehouse, in the
San Francisco Bay Area, where they
would be evaluated, priced, photo-
graphed, and posted on the site. When
they sold, Saunders would receive a
check for fifty-five per cent of the price.
(The rate can vary between forty and
eighty-five per cent.) “I’m not trying
to get rid of anything for the money,”
Saunders said to Ro. “For me—well, I
just love to shop. And right now I have
my eye on a Y.S.L. bag that I saw on
TheRealReal.” She chuckled and held
up one of the Louboutin booties. It
was eye-popping, with a long shiv of
a heel and a bulging toe.
“Look at that!” Ro exclaimed.
“I know! I mean, if I’m going to
spend two thousand dollars on a shoe,
I want to step out as a star,” Saunders
said. The bootie glimmered in her hand.
“I love them, but I’m not for sure for
our Birkin bag, your Chanel flats, time and yet were hankering for an sure about them anymore. I feel some-
Y your Alaïa bandage dress, your Rick
Owens leather leggings—all your ex-
Anita Ko climber.
One recent Wednesday morning, a
one else will love them.”
Ro nodded encouragingly and said,
pensive so-called investment clothing young woman named Chasity Saun- “I’m here when you’re ready.”
was, in the olden days, an investment ders was addressing a situation like Saunders paused for a moment, and
in name only. If you went up a size or this. She had a pair of bedazzled mul- then said, with a sigh, “O.K., I think
down a size or just experienced a fash- ticolored Christian Louboutin booties I’m ready.” She opened a Louboutin
ion rethink, there was no recourse; your that she loved but no longer love-loved, shoebox, pulled out a satin bag, placed
wardrobe was largely illiquid. Other and she had mixed feelings about a the booties inside, shut the box, and
terrible things could happen. You might pair of Fendi pumps and a Tom Ford handed it to Ro. “Bye-bye, I loved you!”
be an influencer and your followers could foldover tote, and was concerned that she said to the shoes. The two women
get tired of seeing you drag around the a gold ring from an ex-boyfriend might were quiet for a moment. Then, sud-
same Gucci clutch, but it cost so damn be blocking her energy in such a way denly, Saunders reached for the box.
much that you had to wring all the value as to inhibit her from starting a new Ro looked stricken. “Can I have them
out of it. Or you might realize that you relationship. She was meeting with back for a minute?” Saunders said. “I
weren’t giving every Cathy Waterman Sarah Ro, who works for the luxury just want to do an Instagram story
stud in your collection sufficient ear consignment site TheRealReal, to con- with them.” Ro relaxed and handed
the box to her. Saunders positioned a
The company’s “luxury managers” help clients decide what to sell. shoe against her white sofa for a beauty
28 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2019 ILLUSTRATION BY LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
shot, and zoomed in on it with her for inventory. “I called all my friends downturn at Prada to the thundering
phone. “I’m consigning today with The- and said, ‘I need you to send me any- drumbeat of bad news from malls and
RealReal,” she narrated, “and these are thing you’re not using.’ I met stylists department stores. But news about
a pair of my favorite shoes. So watch and asked them to send us their cli- the clothing-resale business is posi-
for them!” ents.” She collected for two months tively merry. According to a report by
before opening the business. The re- the consignment company ThredUp,
n 2011, Julie Wainwright, an e-com- sponse was so enthusiastic that Wain- which used research from GlobalData,
I merce entrepreneur, founded The-
RealReal, a platform for selling previ-
wright was worried she would run out
of things to sell. Unexpectedly, she got
a retail-analytics firm, resale was a
twenty-four-billion-dollar market in
ously owned luxury goods. Selling used a call from a stylist saying that one of 2018, and will grow to sixty-four bil-
clothing wasn’t a new idea; vintage and her clients, who had so many clothes lion dollars by 2028, making it one and
used-clothing stores have been around that she stored them in a warehouse, a half times the size of the behemoth
forever, and some have even gotten big. had decided to get rid of some of them. fast-fashion business—the Zaras and
Buffalo Exchange, which is based in Wainwright got a U-Haul truck and H&Ms and Forever 21s of the world.
Tucson, began selling used jeans and picked up nine hundred articles of Luxury companies make no money
flannel shirts in 1974, and now has fifty clothing and shoes. “This woman was from the resale of their items. So far,
locations across the country; Cross- very tiny, so we got a lot of size-2 dresses,” they have ignored resellers like The-
roads Trading, which opened in 1991, she said. “But she wore a very standard RealReal, or grudgingly appreciated
has thirty-seven. A few renowned shops, size-7 shoe.” that people who get in the habit of
such as Decades, in Los Angeles, have buying Louis Vuitton secondhand
specialized in very expensive used de- hopping for used clothing had al- might eventually graduate to buying
signer goods in an atmosphere in which
much is made of a gown’s provenance,
S ways been a hit-or-miss affair, since
the supply relied on getting consign-
retail. In a few instances, though, the
relationship has been prickly: Chanel
especially if, as is often the case, the ments from whoever lived near the is currently suing TheRealReal, claim-
previous owner was a celebrity. But, shop. Putting used clothing online, ing that the site has no authority to
generally speaking, resale businesses though, meant that the Louboutin verify the authenticity of Chanel prod-
were little local shops that catered to booties consigned by Chasity Saun- ucts, and therefore doesn’t have the
aficionados, hipsters, and people on a ders in the San Fernando Valley could right to claim that the Chanel items
budget. Wainwright decided to go be seen and bought by anyone in the it offers are real. The site said, in a
global and high-end. world. Using the Internet to sell sec- statement, that it “stands behind its
“My parents loved beauty, and they ondhand clothes really began in 1995, authenticity guarantee.” The suit is cur-
hated things going to waste,” she told with the launch of eBay, but you had rently in federal court.
me recently. Her father owned an art- to search through millions of listings Some people might think buying
and-design business in Indiana. In his to find what you wanted. TheRealReal used clothing is icky, but nine million
spare time, he liked digging through offered only luxury clothing and jew- more people bought secondhand
the town dump to see what he could elry, and, unlike eBay, it took posses- clothes in 2017 than in 2016, and, ac-
salvage and refashion into, for instance, sion of consigned items and guaran- cording to “Rise of the Fashion Resale
a chandelier. “Both of my parents loved teed that they would be examined by Marketplace,” a report released earlier
reusing things,” Wainwright said. She authenticators, to rate their condition this year by the investment bank Ray-
studied management at Purdue; her and to eliminate counterfeits, by check- mond James, sixty-two per cent of
first job out of college was a position at ing brand markings and serial num- women say that they have bought or
Clorox. After a few years there, she took bers. Clothes were photographed in a are willing to buy secondhand. The-
a chance on joining a tech startup in studio on headless mannequins against RealReal is just one of many thriving
San Francisco. She ended up running a white background, so that the site clothing resellers (although, like many
Pets.com, a site for pet supplies. It folded looked clean and consistent, as op- new Internet-based businesses, it has
in 2000, during the first e-commerce posed to the D.I.Y. pictures that ap- yet to turn a profit). Poshmark, which
collapse, but by 2010 the economy had pear on eBay—a genre that can in- was also founded in 2011, has sold a
steadied and Wainwright felt that it clude items spread out on a bed and billion dollars’ worth of merchandise
was time to get back into business. She half obscured by a cat that wandered so far; Vestiaire Collective, based in
decided to pivot from pets to luxury into the frame. In its first year, The- France, focusses on the international
goods, a category that she thought was RealReal sold ten million dollars’ worth market; Rebag offers only handbags;
not well represented online. of clothing and jewelry. It has since StockX is the leading sneaker reseller;
On a shopping trip with a friend, sold more than eight million items, ThredUp, which sells used casual cloth-
she noticed a rack of used fancy clothes and when it went public last June— ing, adds fifteen thousand items to
at the back of a boutique. After doing the first clothing reseller to do so—it its site every day. The London-based
some homework, which included sell- had a valuation of $1.5 billion. Depop describes itself as “a global con-
ing some of her jewelry at pawnshops, Fashion has had its struggles in the duit” where “creative influencers” can
to see what the experience was like, she past few years, ranging from Forever buy and sell items and also “like” list-
hired a few people and began hunting 21’s recent bankruptcy filing to the ings, just to show their enthusiasm and
to feel part of the Depop community. was, she thought for a moment and ebullient, was wearing a summery Ra
Unlike TheRealReal consigners, Depop then said, “Passivity! That’s what Julie chel Comey dress that she had bought
sellers write their own listings. “Super always says. Having things in your closet on TheRealReal. Dillie has long blond
cute 100% linen Peter Pan collar crop just sitting there, rather than clearing hair and a sunny air. She was wearing
ped jacket in grey blue, perfect for frol them out and consigning!” When she a floral Ganni shift, Givenchy sun
icking in a field,” one recent listing said that, it occurred to me that resale glasses, Chanel flats, and a Gucci watch,
began, followed by a sterner request: sites are in the interesting position of all of which she had bought on The
“ONLY ‘LIKE’ IF YOU’RE INTERESTED not making anything or owning any RealReal. The two women swore that
IN PURCHASING I NEED TO MAKE thing: they are just the passthrough they had not planned their outfits; they
RENT THIS MONTH.” point for products, a sort of transpor both just happen to buy most of their
In the Raymond James report, shop tation hub for luxury goods. Conse clothes on the site. “It’s very danger
pers said that they bought secondhand quently, the company needs to cultivate ous to work here,” Santy said. “We
because it cost less than re people willing to consign don’t get an employee discount.”
tail, they could find things their belongings just as ac Dillie has an M.B.A. from Yale and
that were unique, they could tively as it needs to culti had worked at Sotheby’s before The
buy brands they normally vate customers; there’s a bit RealReal asked her to launch the de
couldn’t afford, and it turned of selling on both ends of partment. The company had been ex
shopping into something the process. panding, first adding menswear, then
of a treasure hunt. Thirty Wainwright believed children’s clothing, then home décor
per cent said that buying that TheRealReal would and art. Because more people were ask
resale is an environmentally succeed only if she could ing it to help sell the contents of en
responsible choice. Fashion convince people that con tire households, a trustsandestates
is one of the world’s most signing was easy. Instead department was the natural next step.
polluting industries. Ac of having to schlep your Dillie now travels at least two weeks
cording to the Ellen MacArthur Foun bag of unwanted clothes to the local a month for the job. She has cleared
dation, an organization promoting reuse vintage shop, you could mail them in, out an estate in California that con
and recycling, the equivalent of one or, even better, a “luxury manager” from tained dozens of Hermès Birkin bags,
garbage truck full of textiles is incin the site, like Sarah Ro, would pick a house in Michigan with hundreds of
erated or added to a landfill every sec them up from your home. (Most other pairs of collectible sneakers, and a Ten
ond. Fast fashion—clothes that are resale sites, including Poshmark, are nessee mansion packed with Chanel.
made cheaply and tend to go out of “peertopeer”—that is, the company “I did an estate in Connecticut a while
style after a season of wear—is a big doesn’t take possession of your belong ago whose owner must have been very
culprit. Extending the life of an article ings, and you are responsible for sending polite to his personal shopper and never
of clothing or a pair of shoes, making them to buyers.) There are a hundred sent anything back,” Dillie said. “The
it part of the “circular economy,” keeps and eighty luxury managers working closets were just filled with suits with
it out of the trash. for TheRealReal, based in cities across the tags still on.”
TheRealReal now has the tagline “A the country. Many previously worked Dillie knew that Blake had been
Sustainable Luxury Company,” and last in fashion or in actual stores; they were an enthusiastic shopper who loved Ju
year it developed what it calls a “sus in the business of persuading people dith Leiber handbags, but otherwise
tainability calculator,” which for each to buy. Now they are in the business she wasn’t sure what to expect. A dream
item of women’s apparel notes how of persuading people to sell. A num scenario would be if, among Blake’s
much is saved in water (used in man ber of them have regular clients whom possessions, there was a Gucci Dio
ufacturing) and in driving miles (the they collect from as often as once a nysus suède mini bag (an envelope
carbon offset, as estimated by the En month, and they become defacto clutch that is one of the most sought
vironmental Protection Agency) by buy fashion consultants, helping clients after handbags on TheRealReal and
ing the item used rather than new. For decide what should stay and what can sell for more than fifteen hundred
instance, according to the calculator, a should go. dollars), or an Hermès Avalon blan
Monse woolblend plaid skirt given a ket (twelve hundred dollars or more,
second life saves 50.81 litres of water ne recent morning, I joined Santy and one of the most desired home
and 15.18 driving miles, versus produc
ing a new one. This doesn’t take into
O as she drove from Los Angeles
to Palm Desert with Karin Dillie, who
items), or a Goyard dog collar (an
other favorite, and usually priced at
account the possibility that you could is the head of TheRealReal’s trusts more than five hundred dollars). Bucket
skip the Monse woolblend plaid skirt andestates department. Dillie was hats have been enjoying a big increase
altogether and save even more water visiting a home in Palm Desert that in searches on the site this year (up
and driving miles, but not shopping at had belonged to a woman named Jean three hundred and sixtyfive per cent),
all is a different calculation entirely. Blake, who had recently died. Blake but Dillie knew it was unlikely that a
When I asked Erin Santy, the head left no will, and one of her nieces was woman in her eighties had had any
of communications for TheRealReal, trying to make arrangements for her Kangols in her closet.
what the company’s biggest challenge belongings. Santy, who is lanky and Blake’s house was a low rectangle
of sugary-pink stucco in a tidy gated and pulled out an orange Chanel blazer.
community called Marrakesh Coun- “Orange was her color,” she said.
try Club, which doesn’t allow garage “Wow, she lived the California life,”
sales, so emptying an estate there Dillie said, photographing the blazer.
presents challenges. Liquidators had “The California colors, California style,
offered a few thousand dollars to take the whole thing.”
the contents of the house, but Cindy After a few minutes, they sat down
Ellsworth, Blake’s niece and executor, with Blake’s jewelry box. Dillie passed
thought that it had to be worth more. on the pearls and jade pieces (“Sorry,
“She had beautiful things,” Ellsworth but the market for them is really soft,”
said, meeting us at the door and lead- she said. “Maybe one of the nieces would
ing us into the living room. The place want them?”). Ellsworth showed Santy
was quiet and dim, with a static, un- a gold brooch that featured a pair of
inhabited air. The living room was well poodles, then handed it to Dillie.
appointed and old-fashioned, chock- “She had two poodles,” Ellsworth
ablock with paintings and sculptures said. “I’m sure she loved this pin.”
and lamps and tables and books and Dillie admired it for a minute and
mirrors and bowls and baskets. Ells- turned it over. “Ooh, it says ‘Tiffany,’”
worth, who lives in Germany, recounted she said, brightly. “Nice surprise! I love
the experience of meeting with the liq- surprises!” She packed up the poodles.
uidators. As she was telling the story, The women had been working for
her face crumpled and she choked up. about two hours, and Dillie had col-
“You know, my aunt was a nurse. She lected about fifty items. It was a good
worked her whole life for these things. haul, but relatively modest; her record
To have someone tell you they’re not
worth anything . . . ”
is three thousand. She told Ellsworth
that they could look at some of the
TURN YOUR
Dillie said, “That’s not the case. It
is absolutely worth something. Where
do we want to start?” Ellsworth ges-
paintings and sculptures, too, but Ells-
worth wanted to take a break, and said
she would call when she was ready to
CONCERN
tured toward several Lalique and Bac-
carat crystal figurines on an end table.
keep going. “There’s just so much,” she
said, with a sigh. “I can’t pack it up and
INTO IMPACT.
Dillie murmured approvingly, took snap- take it to Germany with me!”
shots for the receipt, and slipped the
figurines into padded bags. Then they here are currently about six hun-
headed into the master bedroom. The
bed was strewn with handbags.
T dred and twenty thousand items
by fifty-five hundred different design- We can help
“It seems like Judith Leiber is sell-
ing,” Ellsworth said. “Isn’t it?”
ers on TheRealReal’s Web site, rang-
ing from a four-hundred-and-eighty- maximize your
“It’s a little more of a narrow de-
mographic,” Dillie said, “but yes.” She
eight-thousand-dollar loose ruby to
a fifty-dollar Marc Jacobs headband. charitable giving.
photographed all the Leibers, as well Every listing is unique and requires its
as a Prada and a Louis Vuitton, and own sku—stock-keeping unit, which
put them in a large collection bag. She is how all stores keep track of inven-
then picked up a red Hermès purse tory—so inventory control is some-
and examined the lining. “This one thing of a technological feat. The com-
Contact Jane at
I’m not sure about,” she said, showing pany also has three stores (two in New (212) 686-0010 x363
Ellsworth some cracks in the leather. York City, as well as the one in West or giving@nyct-cfi.org
“You wouldn’t expect to see this in a Hollywood), which add the complica- for a consultation.
real Hermès.” tion of a store shopper approaching
They peered inside the bag and fin- the cash register with something that
gered the cracks. an online shopper in Australia just
“If you’re sure,” Ellsworth said. bought. There is now a system for
“I’m pretty definitely sure,” Dillie “freezing” an item online while some-
said. “Believe me, we play the real-or- one in a store is trying it on.TheRealReal
faux game at work all the time.” She plans to open one or two new stores a
mentioned that people often send in year. This might seem to contradict the
rings from ex-husbands only to dis- Internet-based nature of the business,
cover that the diamonds are fake. Ells- but it gives consigners somewhere to www.giveto.nyc
worth laughed, walked over to the closet, drop things off in person, and serves
as a street-level advertisement for the watches either on consignment or as carried an Yves Saint Laurent bag from
company. Also, the stores sell a lot of an outright sale. Malinauskas opted to TheRealReal. She told me that her first
clothes. In fact, everything in the stores sell. “For the Rolex, we can give you client was a single woman living in a
is for sale, including the lights and the $15,995,” Hunt said. Malinauskas smiled. modest apartment, who surprised her
staff ’s desks and chairs; if a shopper She added, “The Zenith El Primero, by having a load of designer accesso-
buys one of the store fixtures, a replace- we can offer you $7,595, and the Bell & ries. (“She was consigning so she could
ment is often found on the Web site, Ross, $2,795.” save up and buy a Rolex—and I was
in an actual demonstration of the cir- “Excellent,” Malinauskas said, “be- so proud of her, because she got it!”)
cular economy. cause I have my eye on a Rolex Day- Now her regular clients include Insta-
The day after the trip to Palm Des- tona stainless steel.” gram influencers. “I haven’t met a lot
ert, I stopped by the West Hollywood of the influencers. I just deal with their
store, where a young man named Aidis efore I left the store, I consigned teams,” she said. We moved through
Malinauskas, a business-analytics con-
sultant, was meeting with Lauren Hunt,
B a few things of my own (a pair of
sandals and some trousers) and then
sludgy traffic and then pulled off the
freeway into the residential section of
a jewelry and watches valuation man- joined Sarah Ro, the luxury manager, Manhattan Beach. Monaghan’s house
ager, to consign a few things. “I’m a and we headed down to Manhattan was breezy and beachy, decorated in
watch fan,” Malinauskas said. “You Beach to visit another consigner. Ro many shades of white. Monaghan, who
could call it a hobby, or a passion—or has a degree in interior design and used is a stylist and a fashion editor for a
maybe a bit of craziness.” He took two to own a home-goods store in New regional magazine, was dressed in a
boxes out of a tote and handed them York City. She began her relationship sleek black turtleneck and jeans, with
to Hunt. “I see this as an opportunity with TheRealReal as a consigner. One no shoes. She greeted Ro, and after
to evolve my collection. My budget is day, in the middle of handing off some they talked for a few minutes about
not infinite.” He added, “I have some of her unwanted clothes to her luxury their children she led us upstairs. All
exciting pieces here. ” He opened one manager, she realized that she wanted three of us plus a chair fit inside her
of the boxes. Hunt’s eyes widened. to be on the other side of the transac- bedroom closet. The clothes were or-
“A Rolex GMT-Master II, released tion. She loves the part of her job that ganized by color, each item hanging
in 2013,” Malinauskas said, with a involves finding new business. The the same precise distance from the next.
flourish. consigner we were going to see, Tanya “Gorgeous closet!” Ro said. “Look
“The Batman!” Hunt exclaimed. Monaghan, was the mother of one of at this!”
“Yes, the Batman,” Malinauskas said. her children’s school friends. “I let the “That’s the danger of being a styl-
“Very hard to get one. I’m consigning idea of consigning just develop organ- ist,” Monaghan said, laughing. She
it because, honestly, it doesn’t get as ically, when Tanya was ready,” Ro said. mentioned that she had been consign-
much wrist time as others in my col- “I didn’t push.” ing since she was in college. “I would
lection. Also, I have my eye on some- Sometimes, though, Ro does go with consign my jeans and tops, because I’d
thing new.” He explained that his a little push. She has been known to get bored with stuff,” she said. She
grandfather had given him a watch walk up to a well-dressed person at, say, started handing clothes to Ro.
when he was in first grade, which started the Century City mall and announce, “Nice,” Ro said, looking at a velvet
him down the path of watch collect- “I love what you’re wearing, and we jacket. “Ulla Johnson?”
ing. In the meantime, Hunt was tap- would take everything!” This approach Monaghan nodded. She pulled out
ping away on her laptop, looking up has often worked. If she goes to an ap- a few more hangers, handing Ro a Ra-
prices and discussing the watch on Slack pointment in a nice apartment build- quel Allegra lace top, a Tibi dress, and
with the rest of her department. Ma- ing, Ro finds the manager on her way a half-dozen other pieces. “I think that’s
linauskas opened the second box, which out, and asks to do a pop-up consign- about it,” she said. We were heading
contained a Bell & Ross Regulateur ment event or to have the manager call out of the closet when she stopped and
with a big, moony face and a stainless- her if someone is moving out and might said, “Oh, wait!,” and gathered up sev-
steel bezel. want to off-load some goods. She has eral evening bags. “These can go,” she
While Hunt was looking up the a salubrious and encouraging effect on said. She then went back to the hang-
Bell & Ross, I asked Malinauskas about her clients. “At one appointment, this ing clothes and ran her hand over them,
the watch he was wearing. “It’s a Ze- woman was literally throwing shoe- touching each one lightly, like some-
nith with four complications,” he said, boxes at me, she was in such a hurry,” one looking through a produce bin for
pointing to four small dials on the watch Ro said. “I’ve had people get so excited the ripest avocado. She extracted an
face. I’m not sure if he came in that that they’ve decided in the moment to Isabel Marant dress. Tilting her head,
morning planning to sell the Zenith, consign thirty-thousand-dollar watches. she studied it and then passed it to Ro,
but after talking about it for a few min- I’m especially good at helping them who held it up and said she thought it
utes he slipped it off and handed it to go through their jewelry boxes. We was beautiful.
Hunt. She glanced at it, then sat up want to be able to provide a full closet “Yes, it’s beautiful,” Monaghan said.
straight and began talking pricing. clean-out.” “But I’m sick of it. And I’m trying to
TheRealReal sells clothing and jew- That day, Ro was wearing a long limit my closet.”
elry strictly on consignment, but takes taupe dress she had got in Korea and “That’s what I’m here for,” Ro said. 
2077 . Citing “impossible” weather,
SHOUTS & MURMURS aliens leave, causing loss of confidence
in global markets, financial panic. Re-
lease of Prince’s updated greatest-hits
album postponed.
2083. Mass extinctions, desertification
of Europe, nuclear war. Critical opin-
ion of Prince’s newest, “Little Red Sus-
tainable Electric-Powered Self-Driving
Corvette,” questions album’s faithful-
ness to his original vision.
2085-86. Warmest nuclear winter ever
recorded in Northern Hemisphere.
Prince’s special “Dark ’N’ Ashy” Christ-
mas album falls flat.
2097 . Human race facing extinction.
Carbon-dioxide-breathing bots discover
Prince, start their own Prince fan site.
0. Carbon-dioxide-breathing bots
discard old calendar, establish binary cal-
ONCE AND FUTURE PRINCE

endar beginning at zero. Bot-produced
album of outtakes, “Prince +-==-+,”
results in five hundred million bot
BY IAN FRAZIER downloads.
1 . Flush with cash, bot-owned record
The seven-time Grammy Award winner re- 2065 . Carbon-capture technology company builds huge monuments to
portedly left behind a vault containing so much purchased by ExxonMobil, mothballed. Prince in non-spatial dimensions.
music his estate could put out an album a year Heirs resolve dispute. “U R Prince” 10 . Anti-bots from black-hole galaxy
for the next century.
—ABC News. gets respectable numbers on Arctic- invade planet formerly known as Earth,
Antarctic Spotify. make peace with resident bots through
2025 . Wildfires again sweep the West 2069 . Aliens land super-air-condi- mutual love of Prince.
Coast. Windstorms bearing sand and tioned spaceship on last remaining part 100. Fungus brought by anti-bots be-
ash cause mass evacuations in South- of New Mexico desert still above water. gins to wipe out Earth bots. Fungus
ern California. Title track from Prince’s X6y2 Craniums, alien High Commander, found in ordinary bathroom grouting
latest album, “Rain of Colors Other reveals that Prince’s newest, “AstroMusi- ravages anti-bots. Surviving bots and
Than Purple,” reaches No. 17 on Bill- Kology,” is a personal favorite. anti-bots unite to wire entire planet into
board’s Top Forty. 2071 . Final melting of tundra leads to single intercontinental cold-fusion-
2043. Last remaining Antarctic ice flooding of Central Asia and displace- powered sound system to play Prince.
shelf slides into the ocean, leading to ment of millions. Discovery of previously 110 . Last remaining human Prince
an additional two metres in sea-level unknown Prince symbol in a secret fan is honored by bots and then ritu-
rise and total inundation of lower Man- drawer requires redesign of “Raspberry ally dematerialized. Global sound sys-
hattan. “Prince 2 Infinity,” released in Hazmat Beret” CD cover. tem plays A.I.-generated Prince mix-
time to qualify for the 2043 awards sea- 2072 . Aliens announce that they be- tapes around the clock, commercial-free.
son, wins Best New Secret-Vault Album lieve strongly in Earth’s future, plan to 111 . Bot archeologists discover hid-
of the Year. stay and open Prince-themed water park den trove of unreleased Billy Ray Cyrus
2052 . Canada, accepting the inevita- and cyclotron. music. Bot mass suicides depopulate
ble, cedes the lower half of its territory 2073 . Last tuna-salad sandwich on planet.
to migrant caravans from the United planet is eaten by coal-industry lobby- 11011 . “=+==#=+=#Prince Farewell
States. Prince’s single “Love EvN Sex- ist in Winnipeg, new U.S. capital. Re- Album+-=-=+” becomes a megahit on
ier” becomes migrants’ unofficial anthem. alistic hologram of Prince accepts Post- several planets of Alpha Centauri. New
2055 . Nunavut, the Native nation Lifetime Achievement Award at Rock visitations of aliens land in former Min-
above the Arctic Circle, begins construc- and Roll Climate-Controlled Deep- neapolis, initiate dune-buggy-and-
tion of forty-foot-high steel wall. Pub- Underground Survival Bunker of Fame. bathysphere tours of important sites in
licity for the double-album set “Piece 2076 . Typhoons bury Japan in plas- career of Prince.
O’ Prince” generates international buzz. tic from the Greater Pacific Gyre (for- 11111 . Unblinking eye of God appears
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
2064 . Carbon-capture technology mer Pacific Ocean). Hundreds of Prince in heavens; the other eye and facial fea-
finally begins to make dent in atmo- impersonators perform his “Hot E-Nuff tures resemble Prince’s.
spheric carbon dioxide. No Prince album 4 U??” at Super Bowl CIX, in Gander, INFINITY SIGN . Alpha and Omega, the
released because of dispute among heirs. Newfoundland, U.S.A. End of Time. Prince goes on forever. 
ers to New Jersey, one to wake up in the
P E R S O N A L H I S TO RY morning to find that his girlfriend had
died beside him in the night, high on
THE FLORIDA SHUFFLE

heroin, having aspirated her vomit. The
rest of us—those without jobs, school,
or families calling us home—moved
Cycling through relapse and recovery under a blazing sun. into sober homes in South Florida.
South Florida—the densely populated
BY COLTON WOOTEN area comprising Palm Beach, Broward,
and Miami-Dade counties—has four
hundred and seventy-eight licensed fa-
cilities for drug treatment. There are
more treatment centers than public el-
ementary schools. It’s difficult to live
here for long without hearing some-
one’s sad story: the Lyft driver who loved
cocaine and still does, but from a distance
now; the anesthesiologist who studied
at Johns Hopkins and shot up fentanyl
before it was popular.
For the next few months, I moved
between recovery and relapse, cycling
through the Twelve Steps, then going
off in search of drugs. I would walk out
of group therapy in a huff and then, days
later, check into another detox for what-
ever length of time insurance would
cover. After inpatient rehab, I’d move to
sober housing and enroll in an outpa-
tient program at a nearby clinic. As long
as I was insured, I didn’t have to touch
money. There’s a name for this peripa-
tetic life style: clinicians, clients, and local
officials call it the Florida Shuffle.
I spent the month of May in Delray
Beach, in an antebellum-style mansion
with Spanish moss hanging from the
trees in the front yard, spiral staircases
indoors, and large white vitrified tiles in
the dining room. This was a partial-hos-
n February, 2017, I stepped off a plane who met me that I would die, simply pitalization program, where people are
I in Tampa, drunk and dope-sick. I was
twenty-four, and for the past eight years
die, of withdrawal; when, on day twenty-
three, I had a seizure, I thought, Yes, I
sent after they detox from a relapse. We
recited the Serenity Prayer before we
I had been shooting up heroin, cocaine, am really dying, but then I lived. ate, pleased by the way we felt ourselves
and all manner of pills: Dilaudid, Opana, We had access to dietitians and per- rising to the occasion. Many of us were
OxyContin, Desoxyn, Ritalin. Now I was sonal trainers, yoga sessions and intra- not yet twenty-five, but we had lived in
on my way to River Oaks, an addiction- venous vitamin therapy; pharmacogenetic a disorderly way, and because of that we
treatment center, where I would spend testing determined which medications felt ancient, as if we had survived some-
the next forty-five days. River Oaks was worked best with our DNA. When it thing, which we had. It was only hon-
on a gated campus, surrounded by a small was time to leave, I had become so com- orable that we should try to live well.
forest with trails running through it. I fortable that I walked the grounds bare- In June, I found myself living, for the
was withdrawing from heroin and ben- foot, making laps around the Serenity second time, in an old residential motel
zodiazepines at the time, and mornings Trail, feeding apples to the horses by the in Boca Raton, which had been con-
were the worst: I woke in the dark at stables where we met for equine ther- verted into apartments for drug addicts
6 a.m., the pain of withdrawal not yet apy, on Wednesdays. and alcoholics passing between rehab
mediated by the day’s first dose of Sub- I made a few friends there, but we and polite society. The apartments were
oxone or Librium. I promised anyone soon dispersed, some to Baltimore, oth- on a street called West Camino Real;
nearby, houses sell for about a million
For treatment centers, addiction can be turned into a constant flow of revenue. dollars and even the grocery store offers
34 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2019 ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN STAUFFER
valet parking. My building was tiny, ray Beach, a city of sixty-eight thousand, peers meant the possibility of a home.
spare, and utilitarian. Each day, we were as “a funky outpost of sobriety,” and “the Though each house had its own rules
required to attend four hours of group epicenter of the country’s largest and and standards, the Twelve Steps of
therapy; each week, we had our urine most vibrant recovery community.” Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics
tested for drugs. Both of these services This community began to take shape Anonymous were universal.
were billable to insurance. in the late sixties, when a doctor, a phar- And so it went, for some thirty years,
In our spare time, in the desolating macist, and a police officer—Frank that parents would send their prodigal
heat, we would sit at a picnic table in the Kucera, Bill Plum, and Bill Cochran— sons or daughters—whenever their lives
parking lot to chain-smoke and drink assembled the Drug Abuse Founda- had become untethered in New Jersey
Red Bull and play spades or poker. I tion, a small group of volunteers con- or Philadelphia or Ohio—to Florida,
smoked forty cigarettes a day—Marlboro cerned with drug-use-prevention efforts. first to dry out in treatment, and then
Red 100s, the long ones. Struggling to In the following years, the main sub- to live in a sober home. They would
bury how lonely we were, and how afraid, stances abused were alcohol, cocaine, make new friends; find low-stress re-
we traded war stories, recalling the drugs barbiturates, and amphetamines— covery jobs, waiting tables in diners,
we had done and loved, and the times Quaaludes, Miltown, Dexamyl, Dexe- folding jeans at the mall, or answering
they took us down—each of us striving drine. Responding to a mounting pub- phones at a call center; and subscribe
to top his neighbors’ wretchedness, to lic need, Palm Beach County started to the Twelve Steps. Eventually, hav-
prove himself exceptional in his ability the Comprehensive Alcohol and Re- ing survived their addictions into adult-
to ruin himself totally. It was easy to get habilitation Programs, in 1967. Several hood, many of them would return home.
lost, to lose track, to lose time between new halfway houses opened, funded by Others would remain in Florida and
the weeks and days and palm-tree after- the county, but many of their rehabili- open sober homes of their own.
noons. News of relapses, of overdoses and tation methods were experimental, such
deaths, was always breaking, and so the as forcing residents to wear a sign around came to Florida after a long stretch
emergencies that one day held us rapt
were soon supplanted by new ones.
their neck if they broke a house rule.
Still, South Florida appealed to pri-
I of lunacy in Brooklyn, where I was
living in a building beside the J train,
We spoke about emotions, trauma, vate residential-rehab facilities, which its tracks parallel to my window. I would
illness, about whether we had succumbed developed outpatient treatment plans sit on my air mattress with my heart
to influences, experiments, pressures— of their own. Soon, people came from gone arrhythmic and look at the trains
or whether we had been born this way. across the United States to Delray Beach going by. The mattress, my only furni-
Perhaps the source of our addiction lay to open what would be called “recov- ture, was held together with electrical
deep in our genes, beyond poppies or ery residences.” John Lehman, a con- tape, which covered the perforations
cartels or Big Pharma. Or perhaps we sultant for the Recovery Outcomes In- made by syringes and corkscrews and
had simply made bad choices. stitute, a research agency and mentorship smoldering cigarettes that often fell into
One day, I get a phone call from Mi- program, told me, “What emerged in bed with me.
chelle, whom I know from River Oaks. Delray Beach was a very robust Twelve Every day, I injected at least a bun-
(Some names have been changed.) She Step community, a lot of A.A. and N.A. dle of heroin—ten bags, each weighing
moved to South Florida the week after meetings. Those meeting rooms were around a tenth of a gram. If the dope
I did, at the age of nineteen, after twelve filled with individuals who were com- was cut with fentanyl, I might overdose
trips to detox in the previous five months. ing from all over the world to live in after two bags. I couldn’t always under-
Now she says that she left her sober recovery residences, and it flourished— stand my dealer when he spoke, because
housing the night before, with her boy- it just grew—and people were doing he sometimes removed his teeth to
friend, Dylan, and that since then they really well.” smoke crack, but he had a valiant heart
have been shooting heroin in his car, This method, which came to be and once called an ambulance for me
where, she supposes, they live now. But called the Florida Model, offered a when I overdosed on his corner. I woke
the dope was so good, she says, that she cheaper alternative to residential rehab up in the hospital, pulled the I.V. out
had to use only a quarter of her usual programs—such as Silver Hill Hospi- of my arm, and took the subway home.
dose to wreck herself. tal, in Connecticut, or Betty Ford Cen- I started smoking crack cocaine to
It isn’t as if Michelle is pressuring ter Drug Rehab, in California—where save money, although it never quite
me to get high with her, but she reminds patients lived on large campuses. In the worked out that way, and soon I was
me of drugs, of their purchase on total Florida Model, after detox and inpa- dissolving it in vinegar and injecting it
escape. She reminds me that I wish I tient rehab, clients would move into re- as well. There was something sacra-
were on drugs right now. covery residences, or sober homes, and mental about preparing a shot and hit-
“And you’re getting more?” I ask. attend outpatient therapy. ting a vein, then pulling the plunger
Sober living presented an appealing back to catch a plume of blood bloom-
or many years, South Florida’s option for young people in recovery, ing into clouds of crimson. Cocaine
F addiction-treatment landscape was
celebrated as a haven for Twelve Step
who might have criminal records or bad
credit and could not afford, or manage,
psychosis led me to Bellevue, then to a
homeless shelter, then to begging on
programs. In 2007, the Times described to live alone. These were people for the street in Greenwich Village.
the constellation of sober homes in Del- whom structure and a community of When I called my mother, finally, to
ask for help, I had been shooting her-
oin all night in a stranger’s apartment.
It was on that stranger’s mattress, with HANG ON
only one dose remaining, that it struck
me: This is how people die. They over- Domestic as
dose in unknown company, and their an empty shopping cart
bodies are shoved into coat closets in parked on a ledge
dilapidated buildings and aren’t discov- above a freeway.
ered for months. I felt wretched for im-
plicating my mother in my situation.
What had she done to deserve this? I *
would always be the boy in the princi-
pal’s office, calling for a ride, or in jail, Artifactual as
needing to make bail. My life, looking an acorn barnacle.
back, seemed to consist of scenes spliced
together from emergency rooms, psy- “What is the purpose of barnacles?”
chiatric wards, doctors’ offices, pharmacy people ask the Internet.
queues, holding cells, therapists’ couches,
street corners, pawnshops. My life scared Barnacles are filter feeders.
me; it scared me to death.
Later, at River Oaks, during an ex- They’re fish-tank décor.
ercise in which we were asked to re-
count what rock bottom looked like for A plaque of barnacles
us, and how it felt, I’d share my mem- on top of a toilet—
ory of those days, the last before rehab,
of my becoming a vagrant, the plot of this cluster
which seemed to align with the redemp- of brittle puckers,
tion narrative that our therapist was
steering us toward. But, even then, I clinging
knew that it is useless to talk about rock to its old idea,
bottom so early in recovery: no matter
how bad things get, they might well get these craters striped
worse. And then they get better, and pale lavender
then worse again, and I seemed to have
a high tolerance for suffering. There was for some
the week I spent on dialysis, the eight unlikely eye.
times I went to rehab, the spring I got
some reading done in solitary confine- —Rae Armantrout
ment, and all the times I almost died
on the street.
in the dark, exhausted, in her fifties, see now—but I did not see them then.
s the biracial child of a single raising a teen-age boy. In another room, My mother lamented my not hav-
A mother, I was an anomaly in the
suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina. We
I, too, lay in the dark. That was my im-
pression of family life and of adult-
ing a male influence, and so forced me
to play soccer and baseball and basket-
were, for a long time, one of the only hood; I supposed that, in the future, ball. I sang soprano in the Raleigh Boy-
families of color in the area that we instead of going to school, I would have choir, until my voice changed. I had
knew of. My mother conceived me when some sort of job, and on the weekend friends, even best friends, at times. But
she was thirty-eight, using sperm from I would sleep. the feeling with which I returned home,
an anonymous donor. My mother, who My outlook was myopic, given the always, was of being alone. I took what
is black, chose a donor who was white— example my mother had set. When she felt like every medication for A.D.H.D.
Italian and Irish, according to docu- was in graduate school, in the early over the years—Ritalin and Adderall
ments—and so my childhood seemed eighties, a teacher told her, with racial and Dexedrine and Desoxyn—and
to evolve from an odd genetic question. condescension, that she might find doc- Prozac for depression, which in time I’d
I was often lonely and alone and toral work too rigorous. She was the come to recognize as intractable.
filled with hate. Nothing gratified me. only black student in her classes, and In high school, I was not a nerd and
There was always this matter of time she ultimately earned a Ph.D. in edu- I was not a jock, and although I was a
happening, this question of how cation. She had lived fully, embracing junkie, I was not quite a burnout—I did
to spend it. On weekends, when my a life of work in public education, and not smoke pot or even cigarettes. I played
mother was not at work, she lay in bed of great love. She had dimensions, I the clarinet in the school band, but I
was too lazy to march at football games. gle mothers. We were both alone in the plications. It’s possible to regard the Flor-
I was openly gay, often pugnaciously so, world, it sometimes seemed, but we were ida Shuffle as a by-product of drug-
and my failure to make an earnest bid doing it together, whatever it was. addiction treatment.
for acceptance only alienated me from The Affordable Care Act, which be-
my peers. I would listen to “Lonely Planet or the first eight months that I lived came law in 2010, has changed the land-
Boy,” by the New York Dolls, jump into
the tightest jeans by Cheap Monday,
F in Florida, as I hopped from one
detox clinic or sober home to another, I
scape of addiction treatment, requiring
that insurance companies cover services
and get into cars with strange men twice had no notion of the industry in which for substance-use disorders. (It also al-
my age, who found me exotic because I I was enmeshed. In 1986, there were ap- lows children to remain on their par-
was tall and bronze and underage, black proximately seven thousand treatment ents’ policies until the age of twenty-six.)
and white and very thin, a predator’s wet facilities for substance abuse in the U.S.; Building on the Mental Health Parity
dream, with sad eyes and father issues. today, there are at least fifteen thousand, and Addiction Equity Act, of 2008, the
The first time I did heroin I was six- a figure that doesn’t include most sober A.C.A. prohibits insurers from enforc-
teen. My friend Rebecca, a senior at a homes. In the same period, the addic- ing stricter benefit limitations than those
nearby high school, came over to my tion-treatment industry’s revenue rose applied to manifestly physical ailments,
house. After getting into college, Re- from nine billion dollars to more than such as a knee replacement or cataract
becca had started using heroin every fifty billion dollars. In Palm Beach surgery. It also prohibits limiting treat-
day. I was a sophomore and already tak- County, addiction treatment is a bil- ment on the basis of a preëxisting con-
ing amphetamines and cocaine; wiry lion-dollar industry, and the profusion dition. Roughly sixty-two million peo-
and enervated, I was ready to come down. of sober homes, treatment centers, and ple received new access to mental-health
One Friday afternoon in the spring, she detox facilities overlaps with South Flor- and behavioral care. Today, addiction it-
brought over some dope. ida’s most lucrative industries—tour- self doesn’t count as a preëxisting con-
I snorted the powder off the jacket ism, real estate, construction. Iatrogen- dition, but a relapse can make it one.
of a book about raising boys, one of my esis, which derives from the Greek for Relapses are common among ad-
mother’s child-psychology volumes. Re- “brought forth by the healer,” refers to dicts, even when things seem to be going
becca shot up. Taking a syringe from a a medical phenomenon in which efforts well, and treatment is expensive. A
bundle of about thirty held together to treat an illness only cause further com- month of inpatient rehab can cost tens
with rubber bands, she gripped the rig
between her teeth and untied a blue rib-
bon from her hair. After wrapping the
ribbon around her bicep, she pulled it
taut, and, holding the syringe like a pen-
cil, she lowered it into a vein in the crook
of her elbow. I was squatting on the
floor, staring up at her; as the sun came
through the bay window behind her, il-
luminating dust, she looked beautiful.
During my senior year, I worked at
a bar downtown, to afford the heroin
that I used every day. I made about two
hundred dollars a night and spent it all
on dope. By the time I got to college,
in New York, my drug use had escaped
control. In the morning before classes,
I’d shoot cocaine strong enough to get
me off the floor, where I’d passed out
hours before, after banging too much
heroin. With everything silenced except
for a clear note in my head, I’d sham-
ble to the bathroom and vomit blood
that looked like coffee grounds, the re- Rembrandt van Rijn, The Rat Catcher, etching and drypoint, 1632. Estimate $12,000 to $18,000.
sult of organ damage. Old Master Through Modern Prints Oct 29

On that stranger’s mattress in Brook- Featuring Rembrandt Etchings from the John Villarino Collection
lyn, I was desperate and alone and knew
to call my mother. Only by dint of her Old Master Drawings Nov 5
emphatic competence was I able to ac- Featuring 19th-Century French Drawings from The Eric Carlson Irrevocable Trust
cess the kind of help I needed. We had Todd Weyman • tweyman@swanngalleries.com
our differences, my mother and I. We 104 East 25th St, New York, NY 10010 • tel 212 254 4710 • SWANNGALLERIES.COM
were both only children, raised by sin-
formed using test strips; a typical dip-
stick test, which changes color to reflect
a positive or negative reading, costs some
five dollars and can be done anywhere.
Sending urine to a laboratory, which uses
gas or liquid chromatography to render
results more accurately, can cost thou-
sands of dollars.
In 2011, Frank Cid, an owner of high-
end treatment programs in South Flor-
ida, opened his own lab. He recruited
detox centers to send him urine—they
would be reimbursed by insurance com-
panies for collecting it, and he would
bill the companies for testing it. Ac-
cording to court documents, in 2014, an
affiliate of Goldman Sachs that wanted
to buy Cid’s business valued it at more
than thirty-two million dollars. (The
deal ultimately fell through.)
Soon, many of the facilities that had
been sending urine to Cid began to open
labs of their own. Sober-home owners
quickly followed suit. It was an extraor-
“The frame is too Louie-Schmooie.” dinarily lucrative business. A patient tested
three times a week could generate twenty
• • thousand dollars a month. Between April
and July, 2017, Addiction Labs of Amer-
ica, Lab Geeks, and Physicians Group of
of thousands of dollars; in the past, this that of the height of the AIDS crisis. That Boca Raton billed my insurers more than
kind of treatment was mostly limited year, as the National Civic League gave seventy-five thousand dollars.
to the wealthy. The A.C.A. made it eas- Delray Beach the All-America City Between 2011 and 2015, prosecutors
ier for the owners of treatment centers Award, the Times, NBC, and the Palm allege, staff at Good Decisions Sober
to bill insurers, and rehab, suddenly dem- Beach Post described the city as the cen- Living, a sober home in Palm Beach
ocratic, fell within reach of the well- ter of an opioid-overdose epidemic. An County, filed a hundred and six million
insured middle class and its children. analysis by Peter Haden, of WLRN, dollars in claims for urine drug screens
Because there is no federal licensing Miami’s public-radio station, found that with eighty insurance companies, and
framework for addiction-treatment cen- the money that the Delray Beach Fire insurers paid out $31.1 million. Accord-
ters, insurance companies trust the fa- Department spent on naloxone, which ing to an indictment, Kenneth Bailyn-
cilities to abide by state regulations. But is used to treat opioid overdoses, rose son, the owner of Good Decisions, had
little in medicine is as ill defined or as thirteen hundred per cent between 2013 opened his own lab and taken over the
anecdotal as addiction treatment. Most and 2016. People who had come to South sprawling Green Terrace Condomini-
rehab centers are not hospitals.The coun- Florida for recovery were suddenly dying ums, where he housed dozens of recov-
sellors are often not psychologists. The en masse. One month in 2016, there were ering addicts; he used the clubhouse by
medical directors can submit instruc- “ninety-eight overdoses reported and the pool as a collection site for urine.
tions from a distance. eighteen deaths believed to be over- The Palm Beach Post reported that
dose-related in Delray Beach,” Marc Bailynson turned Green Terrace into
few years ago, as the opioid crisis Woods, a city official, recalled. “an armed camp, where guards with
A became the heroin crisis—now we
keep it simple by calling it the overdose
Like any industry in a period of ex-
plosive growth, addiction treatment at-
guns made sure addicts did not leave.”
At his detention hearing, Jim Hayes,
crisis—a variety of fentanyl analogues, tracted wrongdoers. Insurance fraud be- the Assistant U.S. Attorney for the
with names like carfentanil and acetylfen- came rampant. The most profitable kind Southern District of Florida, described
tanyl, began augmenting heroin to poi- involves inflated charges for urinalysis Good Decisions as a “piss farm,” in busi-
sonous degrees. The elevated potency of reports—a practice that has come to be ness “only to harvest residents’ urine.”
street drugs meant that relapses were called the “liquid gold rush.” Urine tests (Bailynson has pleaded not guilty. His
frequently deadly. In 1999, seventeen provide evidence to rehab centers that lawyer declined to comment.)
thousand Americans died from drug clients are drug-free, but there aren’t any As the urinalysis business grew, own-
overdoses. In 2017, more than seventy regulations that define standard practice. ers of sober-living facilities started com-
thousand did—a death count exceeding Traditionally, urinalysis has been per- peting with one another for patients.
They began to lure addicts with incen- was supposed to be weatherproof. As is designated by the D.C.F. to assess
tives: an iPhone, perhaps, or a gift card the palm fronds lashed in the wind, we and certify sober homes, which hap-
for groceries every week, or reduced or became friends. Haley was tall and pens on a voluntary basis. Yet FARR has
free rent. Brochures touted properties blond, and had voted for Donald Trump only four field assessors.
on the Intracoastal Waterway. in 2016, but the #MeToo movement In 2016, to address the crisis of pa-
The kids who arrived for treatment caused her to consider feminism. tient-brokering, Aronberg, the state’s
soon saw that their insurance policies When she disappeared, she had been attorney for Palm Beach County, es-
could be used as expense accounts for dating a patient-broker named Greg. tablished the Sober Homes Task
detox or sober living. John Lehman, of She lived with him in a sober home in Force, a joint effort between prosecu-
the Recovery Outcomes Institute, told West Palm Beach. In practice, it was a tors and local law enforcement. “We
me, “They also learned that these pred- flophouse, with seven rooms housing kept hearing about people with sub-
ators didn’t care if they stayed sober.” It twenty people. The landlord worked at stance-use disorder being exploited
was possible to leave a sober home in a treatment center nearby, where he sent by bad actors who take advantage of
Delray Beach, get high by the ocean in tenants who relapsed—this happened well-intended federal laws, like the
Miami, and, whenever things grew dicey, all the time, because he funded much Americans with Disabilities Act and
book a room at a detox facility in West of their drug use. Haley would tag along the Affordable Care Act, and that
Palm Beach, whose staff would send a with Greg until 7 A.M., chasing bodies they keep them in an endless pattern
car to pick up patients. South Florida to deposit at the detox facilities. of relapse to siphon off their insur-
had become, as Lehman put it, “the re- Haley described how Greg and other ance benefits,” Aronberg told me. “The
lapse, rather than the recovery, capital patient-brokers would entice addicts. rogue sober homes don’t have to reg-
of the world.” “They’d be, like, ‘Why don’t you do this ister; they don’t have any mandatory
“So long as you got into the van to and I’ll pay you,’ just to get somebody certifications or inspections.”
go pee in cups,” Lehman said, “and as to go in, or ‘We’ll get you high and then Lehman spent three years trying to
long as insurance was still reimbursing we’ll take you in,’” she said. The land- get local and state law-enforcement
for those drug tests,” it became possible lord “would cut them a check for a cou- agencies to investigate the bad actors in
to live on the dole of one’s health plan. ple grand. So he knew what they were the recovery industry, and finally suc-
He has seen facilities where a person doing, but he turned his head to act ceeded in meeting with the state’s lead-
could “smoke crack in the bathroom, like he didn’t.” ing insurance-fraud investigator, who
shoot dope on the porch, and drink Jack Haley told me later that, at the contacted the F.B.I. Lehman told me,
Daniel’s on the living-room couch.” Dave house, “the only rule was don’t get high, “I just dumped all this frustration, all
Aronberg, the state’s attorney for Palm but then, when you broke that rule, it these different cases that were in vari-
Beach County, described relapse as “more was, like, they would work with you ous different states of data collection on
profitable than sobriety.” for a while.” Haley said she returned our end, and they asked me to provide
The competition for well-insured pa- to detox five times between August them with a list of the top ten offenders.”
tients can veer into what’s known as pa- and September. He said that six of the ten names that
tient-brokering. The Florida Patient Greg disappeared with Haley’s car, he gave were among those indicted by
Brokering Act prohibits people and and she traded her phone for drugs. She the Department of Justice last year, in
health-care facilities from offering any trundled through strange part of the largest crack-
kind of “commission, bonus, rebate, kick- neighborhoods, smoking down on health-care fraud
back, or bribe, directly or indirectly, in crack and seeing stars amid in American history. Fed-
cash or in kind,” in exchange for patient the slums of Boynton Beach, eral authorities charged a
referrals. Depending on the number of and we all wondered where hundred and twenty-four
paid referrals, patient-brokering can be she was. She couldn’t have people in South Florida
a first-degree felony in Florida, result- told us. alone, and dozens of sober
ing in a sentence of up to thirty years in homes were shut down. (No
prison. But the practice remains com- lorida’s Department of facilities certified by FARR
mon. Many patient-brokers pick up
young drug users from the street. The
F Children and Families
licenses treatment facilities,
were implicated in the crack-
down.) “The sober houses
castaways of treatment centers are easy but it has no authority over had all the protections of
to spot as they walk around, their bed- sober homes. The Americans with Dis- the Americans with Disabilities Act,
rolls wrapped in black garbage bags, wild abilities Act treats those enrolled in re- and were warehousing kids for their in-
and disconsolate from loitering all day covery programs as a protected class, surance cards,” Marc Woods, the Del-
in the heat. and the Fair Housing Act mandates ray Beach official, said.
that neighborhoods make accommoda- In 2017, Kenny Chatman, who ran
ast August, Haley went missing. I tions for people in recovery who want several treatment centers and sober
L had met her in 2017, during Hur-
ricane Irma. The owner of our sober
to live together. This makes it difficult
to regulate sober homes. The Florida
homes, went on trial for money laun-
dering, sex trafficking, and insurance
home had moved us to an empty house, Association of Recovery Residences, a fraud. He pleaded guilty, after evidence
on a golf course in Coral Springs, which nonprofit, is the only organization that surfaced that he had held female clients
hostage for sex work. One victim testified Rehab Riviera, around Los Angeles, is house, settling in for a few days or weeks
that she had been bound in shackles in estimated to have at least two thou- before they relapsed, or moved else-
the basement of one of Chatman’s houses sand sober homes. where, or died.
while men paid to rape her. “I recall My friend Brandon, who had moved
close to 150 in total different faces of he Florida Shuffle is not just about into the house in August, left one night
rapists abusing me daily over a period
of 3-4 weeks,” she wrote. “I was unre-
T moving from one bad place to an-
other; it is about doing so without aim
in February without telling anyone.
He visited my room to ask for a ciga-
strained for brief periods, only to be or sense of place. It is about people rette before leaving, and I wonder now
cleaned up of bodily fluids. I thought I who, at the end of a twenty-eight-day what was crossing his mind as he stood
was going to die there.” course of rehab, or a stint at detox, find there, leaning against the doorframe.
Chatman, who was sentenced to that they have nowhere to go. It is about Later that night, I walked down the
twenty-seven years in prison, owes mil- never growing up. To spend one’s twen- street to 7-Eleven to look for him. Peo-
lions of dollars in damages to thirty- ties moving between clinical settings ple often wound up there, by the dump-
two insurance companies, including and halfway houses is fundamentally sters—always the dumpsters, an un-
eight million dollars to Blue Cross arresting. Sometimes people return official annex of the departed. None
Blue Shield. home after years of “working on them- of my housemates would come with
There are signs that the local and selves” to find that they do not quite me; they sat looking at their phones,
federal crackdowns have had some fit in anywhere. The Florida Shuffle and then at the TV, sighing, having
effect. Between 2017 and 2018, opioid becomes a way of moving through life, washed their hands of Brandon. The
deaths in Palm Beach County fell by and the only lens through which one stragglers by the dumpsters, the pawn-
forty per cent, and the number of re- understands it. shop, and the laundromat all said that
ported overdoses in Delray Beach have Last winter, I was living in a sober I’d just missed Brandon; he’d breezed
fallen to an average of seventeen a home on the border of Pompano Beach by about seven minutes earlier.
month. According to Woods, about and Deerfield Beach—a few streets Brandon was diabetic, and had never
half the sober homes in Delray Beach down from the motorcycle dealership been able to manage his disease—that
have closed. In April, the managers of where the rapper XXXTentacion was is, even when he could afford insulin,
the facilities where I stayed in Delray shot to death, the previous June. When along with the ancillary drugs that he
Beach and Boca Raton were arrested I moved in, the oldest tenant in the required for neuropathy. Around 1 A.M.,
on charges of patient-brokering, and house had lived there for six years, the he called me. He was drinking stolen
both residences have since closed. But, house manager for two, another tenant red wine behind a Target, where he
as the treatment industry has retreated for ten months. This stability is rare. was planning to sleep before going to
in Florida, it has expanded in other But then, between August and March, work at Panera Bread, in the morning.
states. California, home to the so-called twenty-one people passed through the There was a spigot in the alley where
the freight trucks dock, a benefit of
choosing Target over Walmart.
A few days later, Eddie, a housemate
who had been clean since July, over-
dosed and died in a motel room in
Deerfield Beach. He had left in frustra-
tion on a Saturday and was dead by
Wednesday. I can still see him bound-
ing around corners—his forehead framed
in grease and dirt and sweat from the
garage where he worked, his tattoos be-
ginning in a sleeve around his neck and
ending at his ankles. They had set him
back something like twenty thousand
dollars through the years, he said. We
liked the same music, and on the speak-
ers in the back yard we would play
Townes Van Zandt and Bruce Spring-
steen, John Prine and Warren Zevon:
“Carmelita, hold me tighter/I think I’m
sinking down / And I’m all strung out
on heroin, on the outskirts of town.”
It robs you of something, after a while,
to see this sort of thing happen, over
and over. When Eddie died, not know-
“Son, why don’t you switch to my shampoo and conditioner?” ing how to express our emotions, or how
to apprehend them properly, we said to
one another, “That’s crazy about Eddie.”
Most young addicts I knew didn’t
get funerals with a viewing; they were
burned to bits in furnaces and, as ashes,
thrown into the ocean or tossed to the
wind from a mountaintop. I wonder, if
I had the opportunity to look on my
dead friends one last time—if I could
see them as they were in the end, as pale
bodies—whether that might startle me
into something like closure.
Instead, I see them on Facebook,
the dead I have known and still know.
I have become obsessed with death; I
see it everywhere.
A couple of weeks after Eddie’s death,
I ran into Brandon walking down a side-
walk in Pompano. He was wearing a
waiter’s uniform, from the restaurant
where he worked at night, and carrying
an old patent-leather satchel that I had
given him. He was heading to a liquor
store that sold cheap margaritas on Fri-
days. He said he was going to San Diego
soon, to live in a motel where the rooms
cost twenty-seven dollars a night. The
sky was orange and roseate as we parted.
We said, “I love you, man,” and prom-
ised to keep in touch, but we never did. • •
fter Michelle calls me in June, I
A walk from West Camino Real to
Palmetto Park Road, where Michelle,
from 7-Eleven. He declines, saying that
he is coming up on a sobriety anniver-
tanyl—and it isn’t lovely and it isn’t ter-
rible, either, but it is not the same as it
who is driving Dylan’s car, is stalled in sary, of six months or whatever, and, used to be. End-stage addiction fore-
traffic. She doesn’t have a license, and after all, he is driving. I am aghast. “Why closes novelty.
she doesn’t know how to drive a stick are you here with us, then?” I ask. “Be- We go everywhere that day with
shift. I can’t drive stick either, and I cause Michelle said you guys needed our dirty blood and hot bodies and Mi-
haven’t driven at all since I was nine- my help,” he says. Jacob drives us to the chelle’s pretty dark hair falling down
teen, when a judge revoked my license pawnshop, where we pawn Dylan’s Xbox her back in greasy skeins, and I hate
after I was arrested a couple of times for sixty dollars, and to the dealer, to who we are. Somehow, we are on the
for driving drunk. But I take the wheel, buy heroin. Jacob doesn’t use with us, beach, and I wish we were young and
and we manage to move the car to a nor does he regard us with disdain. fun, svelte and bronze, and maybe I even
parking spot in front of Boca Raton’s Soon we are shooting up in the car, say this aloud. I wish I liked the beach.
City Hall. taking turns with the syringe. The tip If we minded how we lived, the con-
In order to afford drugs, we must is frayed and curling backward, so that sideration was mild. If we worried that
drive to the pawnshop to trade in Dylan’s it snags against the flesh; removing the our sober home might evict us for using
Xbox, so Michelle calls Jacob, who lives needle reminds me of excising an in- drugs, we also understood that we could
in the apartment below mine, and whom grown hair. In my eight years of intra- fall back into detox, where we could
we know from our recovery groups; in- venous drug use, it is the first time I watch Netflix over Gatorade and Va-
viting anybody to join our hateful dis- have shared a syringe. Never again, I lium, and then have chicken cordon bleu
solution seems unwise, but she tells me tell myself, but, a few months later, I do. in bed. Then we could transfer to yet
that it’s fine. Here I am again, still hung up on this another treatment center or sober home.
“We should go to 7-Eleven while adolescent outlaw kick of mine, slouched Beyond one place, another like it stood,
we wait for him,” I say. “And get for- by the window in the back seat of Dylan’s and whether or not we said goodbye
ties.” Somehow, I never can get past car, crowded with tools and clothes— seemed not to matter—we trusted that
age seventeen. everything he owns, I suppose, as he no we would meet again. So long as we
When Jacob arrives, I offer him some longer lives anywhere—my head now were not dead, we were fine, there was
of the Four Loko that I have stolen dropping low. The heroin is likely fen- hope—we would make it, after all. 
A R E P O R T E R AT L A R G E
THE UNSTOPPABLE MACHINE

Politicians want to rein in Amazon. But Jeff Bezos is ready to use his power to fight back.
BY CHARLES DUHIGG
n 2017, a few months after Forbes cluding on eBay and Etsy. Amazon’s to a sleek, muscled mogul whose em-
I named Jeff Bezos, the founder of

Amazon, the world’s richest man, a
rumor spread among the company’s ex-
Web-services division powers vast por-
tions of the Internet, from Netflix to
the C.I.A. You probably contribute to
pire included a television-and-movie
studio. (Bezos declined to be inter-
viewed for this article.) Amazon exec-
ecutives: Bill Gates, the former wealth- Amazon’s profits whether you intend to utives comforted themselves with the
iest person on earth, had called Bezos’s or not. Critics say that Amazon, much thought that, even if the story about
assistant to schedule a lunch, asking if like Google and Facebook, has grown the Bill Gates lunch was true, at least
Tuesday or Wednesday was available. too large and powerful to be trusted. their boss wasn’t reckless, like, say, Elon
The assistant informed Bezos of the Everyone from Senator Elizabeth War- Musk or Travis Kalanick or Adam Neu-
invitation, and told him that both days ren to President Donald Trump has mann. Many admired Bezos’s dedica-
were open. Bezos, who had built an depicted Amazon as dangerously un- tion to his wife and children, and saw
empire exhorting employees to be “vo- constrained. This past summer, at a de- it as an embodiment of the company’s
cally self-critical,” and to never “believe bate among the Democratic Presiden- integrity. Still, they whispered, what if
their or their team’s body odor smells tial candidates, Senator Bernie Sanders his flywheel has gone off track?
of perfume,” issued a command: Make said, “Five hundred thousand Amer- The notion of the flywheel—the
it Thursday. icans are sleeping out on the street, heavy disk within a machine that, once
Bezos’s power play was so mild that and yet companies like Amazon, that spinning, pushes gears and production
it likely wasn’t noticed by Gates, but made billions in profits, did not pay one relentlessly forward—is venerated with-
within Amazon the story sparked a nickel in federal income tax.” And Ste- in Amazon, as Ian Freed learned on
small panic (and, later, an official de- ven Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, his first day of work, in 2004. Freed had
nial). Such a willful act of vanity felt declared that Amazon has “destroyed initially glimpsed the power of the In-
like a bad omen. At Amazon’s head- the retail industry across the United ternet as a Harvard student, when he
quarters, in Seattle, the company’s four- States.” The Federal Trade Commis- guessed an e-mail address in Indone-
teen Leadership Principles—painted sion and the European Union, mean- sia that led him to strike up a corre-
on walls, posted in bathrooms, printed while, are independently pursuing in- spondence with the country’s minister
on laminated cards in executives’ wal- vestigations of Amazon for potential of telecommunications. After graduat-
lets—urge employees to “never say antitrust violations. In recent months, ing, Freed built computer networks in
‘that’s not my job,’ ” to “examine their inquiries by news organizations have Russia and drafted policy papers for
strongest convictions with humility,” documented Amazon’s sale of illegal the World Bank and the United States
to “not compromise for the sake of or deadly products, and have exposed Agency for International Development.
social cohesion,” and to commit to how the company’s fast-delivery pol- He felt that every organization he ad-
excellence even if “people may think icies have resulted in drivers speed- vised failed to take advantage of all the
these standards are unreasonably high.” ing down streets and through intersec- opportunities created by the Internet.
(When I recently asked various em- tions, killing people. Company insiders He moved to the West Coast, where
ployees to recite the precepts, they did were accustomed to complaints from he became an expert in streaming net-
so with alarming gusto: “ ‘Frugality rivals at book publishers or executives works. Then he joined Amazon, as a
breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, at big-box stores. Those attacks rarely director of its fledgling mobile-services
and invention!’ ”) A former executive felt personal. Now, a recently retired team. During an orientation that in-
said, “That’s how we earn our suc- Amazon executive told me, “people cluded a warehouse stint unloading
cess—we’re willing to be frugal and are worried—we’re suddenly on the boxes of shampoo and stocking shelves
egoless, and obsessed with delighting firing line.” with toothpaste, he realized that peo-
our customers.” Amazon executives were also con- ple at the company saw things in a fun-
Amazon is now America’s sec- cerned about dramatic changes within damentally different way.
ond-largest private employer. (Walmart the company. In 2015, Amazon had Most firms have a mission state-
is the largest.) It traffics more than a roughly two hundred thousand em- ment that even the C.E.O. has trou-
third of all retail products bought or ployees. Since then, its workforce had ble remembering. Amazon employees,
sold online in the U.S.; it owns Whole nearly tripled. Bezos, now fifty-five, Freed discovered, studied the Leader-
Foods and helps arrange the shipment had transformed as well, from a pudgy ship Principles like Talmudic texts. Dur-
of items purchased across the Web, in- bookseller with an elephant-seal laugh ing his first few years, he occasionally
Bezos, reportedly worth a hundred and fourteen billion dollars, has donated less than three per cent of his wealth to charity.
ILLUSTRATION BY TODD ST. JOHN THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2019 43
pulled colleagues, and even Bezos, aside ever Amazon moved to new offices, stumble at Amazon, as long as the ex-
to ask questions. What, for example, Bezos had them furnished with cheap perience yielded strategic insight. After
does “leaders are right a lot” really mean? desks made from wooden doors. overseeing the Kindle, Freed was asked
Bezos explained, “If you have a really Whereas other tech companies sup- to help lead a team developing the com-
good idea, stick to it, but be flexible on plied employees with an array of free pany’s first smartphone. Bezos had be-
how you get there. Be stubborn on your meals and snacks, Amazon offered only come enamored of a sophisticated dis-
vision but flexible on the details.” Ex- coffee and bananas. (In a statement, play that approximated 3-D. For four
ecutives at other companies tended to Amazon said that it is “frugal on be- years, Freed oversaw a group that grew
lay out definitive plans. But Bezos urged half of our customers.”) to a thousand employees, and spent
his people to be adaptable. “People who Freed and other Amazonians were more than a hundred million dollars.
are right a lot change their mind,” he delighted by the company’s quirks. But when the Amazon Fire Phone was
once said. “They have the same data Bezos amused his colleagues when he released, in 2014, it was a flop. No mat-
set that they had at the beginning, but humble-bragged about being such a ter: when Freed had presented an early
they wake up, and they re-analyze things sci-fi nerd that he owned a Jean-Luc prototype of the phone’s software to
all the time, and they come to a new Picard uniform from “Star Trek: The Bezos, he’d shown him how it included
conclusion, and then they change their Next Generation.” And staffers loved voice recognition that could hear, and
mind.” Freed often felt an impulse to it when Amazon offered a promotion, then play, any popular song whose title
answer his subordinates’ questions, but known as Share the Pi, in which cus- a user said aloud. “I can ask for any
at Amazon leaders are encouraged to tomers were given a discount of 1.57 song?” Bezos asked. “What about ‘Hotel
let team members puzzle out problems per cent (3.14 divided by two). When California’?” The tune began playing.
on their own. Amazon leaders joined the low-carb “This is fantastic,” he said.
About a year after joining the com- craze, they ended meetings debating A few days after that presentation,
pany, Freed became Bezos’s techni- the finer points of ketosis, and raced Bezos asked Freed to help build a cloud-
cal assistant, which gave him entrée one another up the stairs. It wasn’t fair based computer that responded to voice
to almost any meeting and provided to call Amazon a cult, but it wasn’t en- commands, like the one in “Star Trek.”
a deep education in the company’s tirely unfair, either. “We never claim Freed started amassing a team that even-
culture. Amazon’s internal processes that our approach is the right one,” tually reached two hundred people, and
were “mechanisms,” Freed learned, as Bezos wrote, in a 2016 letter to share- was given a fifty-million-dollar bud-
in “What’s the mechanism for talking holders. “Just that it’s ours.” get. The Fire Phone’s voice-recognition
to the press?” Executives were expected Above all, Freed loved Amazon’s technology had been licensed from an-
to reduce “complexifiers,” and some- focus on spinning its flywheels faster, other firm, and wasn’t an exact fit for
one who failed to suggest ways to sim- and finding new markets where they what Amazon was seeking. So Freed
plify a process might be interrupted could whirl. “Amazon’s culture is de- and his team hired speech scientists
by Bezos asking, “Are you lazy or just signed to prevent bureaucracies,” he and artificial-intelligence experts, and
incompetent?” told me. “Everything Jeff does is to created new software that could com-
The Leadership Principles were stop a big-company mentality from prehend someone from Louisiana as
never paraphrased; when a question taking hold, so that Amazon can con- well as someone from Liverpool—and
over wording arose, the tinue behaving like a group distinguish the babble of a toddler from
laminated cards were often of startups.” Among the parents talking with food in their
whipped out. PowerPoint worst sins was doing any- mouths. The team chose a name (and
was discouraged. Product thing that slowed the com- a “wakeup” word) for the device by con-
proposals had to be writ- pany down. (As the Lead- sidering hundreds of possibilities, be-
ten out as six-page narra- ership Principles put it, fore landing on Alexa—a name that
tives—Bezos believed that “Speed matters.”) Freed was sufficiently familiar yet unusual
storytelling forced critical was soon assigned to help enough to avoid too many accidental
thinking—accompanied by oversee the creation of a commands. Just four months after re-
a mock press release. Meet- new e-reader, the Kindle. leasing the disastrous Fire Phone, Freed
ings started with a period of His team expanded quickly revealed the Echo, a voice-activated
silent reading, and each pro- (“Hire and Develop the speaker that can tell you the weather,
posal concluded with a list of F.A.Q.s, Best”), came up with dozens of con- compile a grocery list, remind you to
such as “What will most disappoint the cepts and prototypes (“Invent and Sim- take a pie out of the oven, and play
customer on the first day of release?” plify”), and, in just a few years, deliv- “Hotel California.” The initial price
Tech companies are often profligate, ered a device of startling simplicity and was a hundred and ninety-nine dol-
but Amazon had an ethic of thrift. Freed elegance. W hen the Kindle was lars. Today, you can buy one for half
learned to anticipate the eye rolls that launched, in 2007, it sold out in less that, and fifty million homes have them.
greeted new employees who printed on than six hours, and soon became one Around the time of the Echo’s
just one side of paper, or the admon- of the most popular gadgets of the past launch, Amazon wrote off more than
ishment coming to anyone who wanted quarter century. a hundred and seventy million dollars
to book a business-class seat. When- As Freed learned, it was also fine to in costs associated with the Fire Phone.
Bezos told Freed, “You can’t, for one
minute, feel bad about the Fire Phone.
Promise me you won’t lose a minute of
sleep.” By 2015, Freed was a vice-pres-
ident and Amazon was the most valu-
able retailer in the world.
Identifying and building flywheels
became second nature to Freed. When
a junior executive came by his desk with
an idea—“What if we made a streaming
device that you could plug into a tele-
vision?”—Freed invited him to lunch,
coached him through writing a mock
press release, and took him to pitch the
idea to Bezos. They reminded Bezos
that, with existing streaming devices,
searching for content was difficult. “It’s
really hard to type ‘Gene Hackman
movies from the nineteen-seventies’
when you’re using a remote control,”
Freed explained. Amazon’s product, he
said, would allow customers to simply
say what they wanted to watch. The
flywheel began spinning. If Amazon
sold a streaming device, it could col-
lect more data on popular shows; if
Amazon had that data, it could begin
profitably producing its own premium
movies and television series; if Ama-
zon made that content free for Prime
members—customers who already paid
ninety-nine dollars per year for two-
day delivery—then more people would
sign up for Prime; if more people signed
up for Prime, the company would have
greater leverage in negotiating with
UPS and FedEx; lower shipping costs
• •
would mean bigger profits every time
Amazon sold anything on its site. The along the way. In 2006, the company couldn’t otherwise attract much atten-
Amazon Fire TV, as the device was had launched Fulfillment by Amazon, tion on Amazon.com, or ship prod-
named, soon became one of the most an initiative in which outside sellers— ucts inexpensively enough to compete
popular streaming devices on the planet. everyone from mom-and-pop venders with rivals.
Amazon Studios began producing pre- to major Chinese manufacturers— Today, Amazon.com lists more
mium shows, and before long it had housed inventory inside Amazon’s giant than three hundred and thirty million
won two Oscars for “Manchester by warehouses and paid a fee for Ama- products sold by other companies. Scott
the Sea” and eight Emmys for “The zon to handle logistics, such as pack- Needham, whose company, BuyBoxer,
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” In 2017, the ing and shipping products and field- sells about seventy thousand products
number of Amazon Prime subscribers ing customer-service calls. Companies on Amazon, ranging from toys to sport-
surpassed a hundred million. enrolled in Fulfillment by Amazon of- ing goods, paid the company roughly
Although Freed was thriving at ten appeared in the Buy Box, the top twenty million dollars in fees last year.
Amazon, he could see that there was search listing on Amazon.com. To par- “There’s really no other choice,” Need-
something dizzying about its flywheel ticipate, many venders had to pay about ham said. “There’s a lot of things I don’t
mentality. “It was hard,” he said. “That’s two dollars per item. They also had to like about Amazon, but that’s where
the culture—do whatever it takes, even let Bezos collect valuable data on which all the customers are.” Recently, the
if it seems impossible.” Amazon’s ob- products were becoming popular and U.S. House of Representatives and the
session with expansion made it the cor- which companies were having trouble European Union began scrutinizing
porate equivalent of a colonizer, ruth- satisfying demand. Soon, some ven- Fulfillment by Amazon and similar pro-
lessly invading new industries and ders felt as though they had to partic- grams, out of concern that they impede
subjugating many smaller companies ipate in Fulfillment by Amazon; they competition. “Amazon is the gatekeeper,”
ask questions about “what exactly will
get them fired, and the responses are
so vague that you basically know that
if you’re not constantly moving, you’re
probably gone.” Employees line up at
vending machines that dispense free
overthecounter painkillers. For years,
some Amazon warehouses lacked suf
ficient airconditioning; this changed
only after reports emerged, in 2011,
of workers passing out and requiring
emergency medical treatment for heat
related problems.
William Stolz, who has worked for
two years at an Amazon warehouse in
Shakopee, Minnesota, told me that he’s
expected to grab an item every eight
seconds, and has seen coworkers in
jure their wrists, knees, shoulders, and
backs by repeatedly kneeling, or by
rushing up and down ladders. “There’s
a constant pressure to hit your num
bers,” he said. If you get four writeups
within ninety days for falling below the
expected productivity rate, you will be
fired. Stolz said, “I’ve seen people who
“My situation may not be the greatest, but I’ll tell you aren’t even thirty years old get injuries
this—I’m worth two of you!” they’re going to have for the rest of
their lives, but whenever we ask for the
• • speed of work or the repetitive motions
to be changed we’re told that’s not going
to happen.”
Needham said. “It makes all the rules.” is digitally tracked and evaluated, When Safiyo Mohamed moved from
Tim Wu, a law professor at Colum meaning that if someone falls behind— Somalia to Minnesota, in 2016, at the
bia, said, “Amazon is a microecono even for just a few minutes—it can be age of twentytwo, she found work at
mist’s wet dream. If you’re a consumer, grounds for reprimand. Many employ the Shakopee warehouse, sorting prod
it’s perfect for maximizing the efficiency ees carry handheld scanners that de ucts and moving boxes on and off con
of finding what you want and getting liver a constant stream of instructions, veyors. The job was taxing and the pres
it as cheap and fast as possible. But, the such as a countdown clock detailing sure relentless, she said. One day, when
thing is, most of us aren’t just consum how many seconds remain until the she picked up a heavy box, she tore an
ers. We’re also producers, or manufac next item must be plucked from a shelf. intervertebral disk in her back. The
turers, or employees, or we live in cit Workers can walk more than fifteen pain was excruciating, but Amazon
ies where retailers have gone out of miles a day, and their breaks, includ didn’t offer her time off; her managers
business because they can’t compete ing trips to the bathroom, are brief and seemed not to care. “If you can’t work
with Amazon, and so Amazon kind of closely measured. A company docu all the time, you are nothing to them,”
pits us against ourselves.” ment explains, “Amazon’s system tracks she said. A doctor told her that the in
the rates of each individual associate’s jury was pinching a nerve, and that the
reed loved how things whizzed productivity and automatically gener discomfort might never abate. She quit
F along at Amazon headquarters, but
he understood that the “Speed mat
ates any warnings or terminations re
garding quality of productivity with
Amazon, and got an office job that al
lows her to pause, or stretch, when her
ters” credo meant something different out input from supervisors.” A former back hurts. “How am I going to have
at the warehouses. “Is it the role of a warehouse employee told me that she a baby when I can’t pick him up, when
company to only do what’s best for knew of people who got fired largely I’m worried about being pregnant?”
shareholders?” he asked me. “Yes, share “because they were too old, or their Mohamed said. “I’m so angry. Amazon
holders are critical, but it’s also impor knees started acting up, or they just doesn’t want humans, they want robots.
tant to understand the impact on em had a bad week.” She added, “Manag I will have this forever because of them.
ployees.” More than a hundred thousand ers are always vague about what will They don’t care at all.”
people work at Amazon’s fulfillment get you fired, which creates this para At Amazon’s corporate headquar
centers, and nearly everything they do noia.” Employees, she said, sometimes ters, many executives’ performances are
similarly quantified and ranked. “It can the company as a symbol of capitalism another was responsible for incisions
be a hard place for women,” a former gone awry. (On Twitter, Biden recently along the shoulder. The knives never
executive told me. “If you have a kid, said of Amazon, “No company pulling stopped moving as the animals sped
it’s a disadvantage to your career, un- in billions of dollars of profits should through the plant. When the Ford em-
less your husband is the primary par- pay a lower tax rate than firefighters ployee returned to headquarters, he told
ent.” (Amazon said, in a statement, that and teachers.”) Jeff Wilke, one of his colleagues, “If they can kill pigs and
it “disagrees strongly with this perspec- Bezos’s top lieutenants, told me that cows that way, we can build cars that
tive,” and noted that it offers twenty Amazon “tries to be a good corporate way.” The man’s boss, Henry Ford, a
weeks of paid parental leave.) A for- citizen,” and added, “We’ve built a for- lifelong tinkerer, had developed a rad-
mer senior female executive told me profit enterprise that is improving the ical new product: an automobile, with
she counselled younger colleagues that lives of customers and taking great care an inexpensive internal-combustion en-
“it’s not the company’s job to create a of employees. There’s a lot to be proud gine, that could be manufactured in a
work-life balance—it’s your job,” add- of.” The company, he said, has com- couple of days and sold for less than a
ing, “The idea of a company as a care- mitted to spending seven hundred mil- thousand dollars. When Ford manag-
taker is not our culture.” There is only lion dollars to train its workers in such ers heard about the meatpacking plant,
one woman on Amazon’s S-Team, the subjects as coding and robotics. One they began work on another major
group of eighteen executives who largely senior Amazon executive said of its innovation: the mechanized assembly
run the firm. The lack of female rep- warehouses, “It’s a hard economy for line. Within four years, Ford’s plants
resentation is a sensitive topic at the people without college degrees right could manufacture a car in less than
company. A current high-ranking ex- now. We can’t run a philanthropy, but two hours and sell it for about four
ecutive told me, “I’m not sure it would we’re trying to be the best of those bad hundred dollars.
be any different for a woman at an in- kinds of jobs.” Another top executive In 1918, a man named Alfred P. Sloan
vestment bank or a big law firm. The suggested that Amazon was merely a began working as an executive at a much
pace is fast, yes, and it’s not for every- cog in the American economic ma- smaller company, General Motors. Sloan
one or every stage of life, but these are chine—and inevitably reflected how wasn’t especially interested in automo-
highly compensated people who know contemporary inequality had created biles. He loved making money—and
they can easily get other jobs. No one winners and losers. “We’re doing what figuring out how to manage people
works at Amazon—at least, in corpo- we can,” he said. “But ultimately this in order to make profits grow faster.
rate—unless they want to.” is a problem only the government can Once installed at G.M., Sloan staged a
Amazon argues that criticisms of really solve—by changing how the econ- coup by way of a memo, “Organization
working conditions in its warehouses omy works.” Study,” which eventually reoriented the
are unfair. Dave Clark, the senior Amazon has always been unabashed firm around himself and a set of foun-
vice-president for worldwide opera- about being a cutthroat competitor. dational credos that included five “objec-
tions, told me that work expectations When the company started, in 1995, tives.” A chart of eighty-nine boxes con-
at its facilities “are very achievable for with fewer than a dozen employees, nected by a blizzard of lines mapped out
folks.” He said that the company has Bezos considered naming it each executive’s place in the
increasingly automated its warehouses, Relentless. (The company hierarchy. It was the first
to ease physical tasks. “We make mis- still owns the URL for re- org chart of its kind. Sloan’s
takes,” Clark said. “And, when we do lentless.com—it redirects theory was that G.M. could
hear about it, we learn from it, and we you to Amazon.com.) Am- codify the processes that
go out and fix it.” Amazon pays all azonians know that outsid- delivered information up
U.S.-based employees at least fifteen ers want them to change, to headquarters and guid-
dollars an hour—more than the min- but listening to outsiders is ance down to managers. “If
imum wage in many places—and full- not one of the Leadership the whole General Motors
time warehouse workers have access to Principles. One executive central organization should
the same health and retirement plans told me, with barely sup- be hit by an atomic bomb,
as executives. A company statement pressed resentment, “What Pontiac could go on just ex-
noted that workers at Amazon begin has made us great for so long is sud- actly the same,” Sloan boasted to a re-
and end every shift with a short meet- denly being seen as something we ought porter. Soon, the company had standard
ing and a group stretching session; it to be ashamed of !” procedures for budgeting, hiring, firing,
also said that employee performance prototyping, promoting, and resolv-
is evaluated over extended periods, not- n 1913, an employee of the Ford Motor ing disputes. Within this rigid frame-
ing, “We would never dismiss an em-
ployee without first ensuring that they
I Company went to the Swift & Co.
meatpacking plant, in Chicago, to study
work, executives were given the free-
dom to be creative; G.M. essentially
had received our fullest support, in- how hogs moved through the facility became the first company to segment
cluding dedicated coaching.” on conveyor belts while butchers stayed the automobile market, selling Chev-
Many Amazon executives have be- in place, making the same cut again rolets to the middle class and Cadillacs
come defensive about the fact that even and again. Someone prepared the car- to the wealthy.
centrist politicians like Joe Biden see cass; another person cut the left haunch; When Sloan joined the company,
G.M. was on the verge of bankruptcy. uct companies. Google invented two from ad sales and other activities too
Within a decade, it had outpaced Ford, products—a spectacular search en numerous to list in financial filings.
becoming the nation’s largest carmaker, gine and a set of algorithms for match No other tech company does as many
and for the next eighty years it dom ing people’s online behavior to ads— unrelated things, on such a scale, as
inated the auto business and, even that today deliver eightyfive per cent Amazon.
tually, a wide variety of other indus of its revenue. Facebook invented (and Amazon is special not because of
tries. Sloan’s systems made G.M. one acquired) addictive socialmedia prod any asset or technology but because
of the country’s biggest loan finan ucts and then basically imitated Goo of its culture—its Leadership Princi
ciers and a powerful realestate in gle’s admatching algorithms, and gets ples and internal habits. Bezos refers
vestor, and placed it among the largest ninetyeight per cent of its revenue from to the company’s management style
manufacturers of refrigerators, indus those products. as Day One Thinking: a willingness
trial magnets, home appliances, aero Amazon is a process company. Last to treat every morning as if it were the
nautic equipment, military gear, and year, it collected a hundred and twenty first day of business, to constantly reëx
medical equipment. In 1952, G.M. two billion dollars from online retail amine even the most closely held be
made the first mechanical heart. Sloan sales, and another fortytwo billion liefs. “Day Two is stasis,” Bezos wrote,
launched a sophisticated corporate by helping other firms sell and ship in a 2017 letter to shareholders. “Fol
polling division—another first—that their own goods. The company col lowed by irrelevance. Followed by ex
uncovered customer tastes that other lected twentysix billion dollars from cruciating, painful decline. Followed
companies had overlooked; the R. & D. its Webservices division, which has by death. And that is why it is always
department used this information to little to do with selling things to con Day One.”
create new products. The same play sumers, and fourteen billion more from For many entrepreneurs, Amazon
book that dreamed up Cadillac’s space people who sign up for such subscrip has been a godsend. David Ashley,
age tail fins was soon designing sleek tion services as Amazon Prime or Kin who sells handcrafted address signs
Frigidaire iceboxes. G.M., in other dle Unlimited. Amazon is estimated from Jackson, Mississippi, told me,
words, was adept at creating flywheels. to have taken in hundreds of mil “We probably wouldn’t be in business
It sold plenty of cars, but, unlike Ford, lions of dollars from selling the Echo. without Amazon.” The 2008 reces
it wasn’t a product company—it was a Seventeen billion came from sales at sion almost killed Ashley’s small com
process company. such brickandmortar stores as Whole pany. Then he began selling his signs
Silicon Valley is filled with prod Foods. And then there’s ten billion on Amazon and discovered that—
for forty dollars a month and fifteen
per cent of each sale—Amazon would
handle such tasks as processing credit
card transactions, identifying poten
tial customers, and helping to insure
that products were delivered on time.
“But the biggest thing is that people
trust Amazon,” Ashley said. “And so
they trust us.” More than 1.9 million
small businesses in the United States
take advantage of Amazon’s services.
Last year, nearly two hundred thou
sand sellers earned at least a hundred
thousand dollars each on the site.
Other retailers, however, don’t share
Ashley’s enthusiasm. When David
Kahan became the chief executive of
Birkenstock Americas, in 2013, he began
to discover how thoroughly Amazon
had changed his industry. Kahan had
started his career as a shoe salesman
at Macy’s; he went on to become a
sales manager at Nike and, eventually,
a top executive at Reebok. Birkenstocks
have been made by hand, in Germany,
for two hundred and fortyfive years—
thirtytwo workers touch every pair.
When Kahan became C.E.O., Ama
zon was among the company’s top three
shoe sellers. “They sold millions of dol
lars’ worth of our shoes,” Kahan told thing on earth for us. Amazon is the to create imitation products. Europe’s
me. “But during my first year I was sit- shopping mall now, and, normally, if top competition regulator, Margrethe
ting in my office, where I can hear the you open a store in a shopping mall, Vestager, told me that Amazon is “host-
customer-service department, and we you can expect certain things—like ing thousands and thousands of smaller
were getting a flood of people saying the mall operator will clean the hall- businesses, but at the same time it is a
their shoes were falling apart, or they ways, and they’ll make sure Foot competitor to them.” She added, “This
were defective, or they were clearly Locker isn’t right next door to Pay- deserves much more scrutiny.”
counterfeits, and, every time the rep less, and if someone sets up a kiosk in In a statement, Amazon said that
asked where they had been purchased, front of your store and starts selling many other retailers also produce their
the customer said Amazon.” fake Air Jordans, they’ll own versions of best-sell-
Kahan investigated, and found that kick them off the prop- ing items, that such goods
numerous companies were selling coun- erty.” He continued, “But make up only one per cent
terfeit or unauthorized Birkenstocks Amazon is the Wild West. of Amazon’s sales, and that
on Amazon; many were using Fulfill- There’s hardly any rules, Rain Design’s stands con-
ment by Amazon to ship their prod- except everyone has to pay tinue to sell well, despite
ucts, which caused them to appear Amazon a percentage, and competition from Ama-
prominently in search results. “We you have to swallow what zon’s stand—which, it in-
would ask Amazon to take sellers they give you and you can’t sists, isn’t a replica. The
down—or, at least, tell us who is coun- complain.” company added that it does
terfeiting—but they said they couldn’t Hundreds of other com- not use “data about individ-
divulge private information,” Kahan panies have told Amazon ual sellers to decide which
told me. about counterfeiting or what they see products to launch.” (Company insid-
Kahan also discovered that Ama- as unfair competition—some of it gen- ers, however, told me that Amazon does
zon had started buying enormous num- erated by Amazon itself. In the early use aggregate data from multiple sell-
bers of Birkenstocks to resell on the two-thousands, a San Francisco firm ers to make such decisions.)
site. The company had amassed more named Rain Design began selling an Kahan, of Birkenstock, eventually
than a year’s worth of inventory. “That aluminum laptop stand that had a decided to take extreme measures. He
was terrifying, because it meant we graceful curve, and it became an un- announced that his firm would no lon-
could totally lose control of our brand,” expected best-seller on Amazon. Am- ger sell shoes on Amazon, and he sent
he said. “What if Amazon decides to azon then released its own stand, with a letter to retailers declaring that if they
start selling the shoes for ninety-nine a nearly identical design, under the listed Birkenstock products on Ama-
cents, or to give them away with Prime brand AmazonBasics, at half the price. zon they would be “severing” their
membership, or do a buy-one-get-one- Rain Design’s sales fell. In 2016, Wil- “relationship with our company.” Ac-
free campaign? It would completely liams-Sonoma had started selling a cording to Kahan, Amazon began con-
destroy how people see our shoes, and low-backed mid-century-modern chair tacting authorized retailers, inviting
our only power to prevent something called the Orb. A year later, Amazon re- them to sell their supply of Birken-
like that is to cut off a retailer’s supply. leased an almost identical chair, which stocks to the site. Kahan wrote to his
But Amazon had a year’s worth of in- they also called the Orb. Last Decem- retailers, “To me, the solicitation is quite
ventory. We were powerless.” ber, Williams-Sonoma filed a lawsuit frankly a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing.’ . . .
Kahan spent months trying to ne- claiming that “Amazon has unfairly I take their desperate act as a per-
gotiate with Amazon executives in Se- and deceptively engaged in a wide- sonal affront and as an assault on
attle. At the Birkenstock Americas spread campaign of copying.” Earlier decency. . . . Amazon can’t get Birken-
office, in Marin County, California, he this year, a judge denied Amazon’s mo- stock by legitimate means so why not
and his deputies would spend hours tion to dismiss the case, ruling that the dangle a carrot in front of retailers who
preparing arguments about why stop- company might be “cultivating the in- can make a quick buck.”
ping unauthorized sellers would help correct impression” that ersatz products Kahan’s outrage hardly mattered.
Amazon’s customers, and then they’d were authorized by Williams-Sonoma. Today, despite Birkenstock’s refusal to
crowd around Kahan’s desk and turn Critics say that Amazon uses the do business with Amazon, there are
on the speakerphone. Sometimes the torrent of data it collects each day— numerous resellers—some overseas,
Amazon executives would let them go how long a customer’s cursor hovers others with names that obscure their
on; other times, they’d cut them off over various products, how much of a true identities—offering Birkenstocks
midsentence. It wasn’t Amazon’s place price drop triggers a purchase—to di- on Amazon. Kahan has no idea who
to decide who could and couldn’t sell vine which products are poised to be- these resellers are, and Amazon won’t
on the site, the executives explained, come blockbusters, and then copies tell him. Birkenstock requires authorized
as long as simple guidelines were met. them. In July, the E.U. announced an retailers to charge roughly a hundred
“They basically didn’t care,” Kahan investigation into whether Amazon and thirty-five dollars for its classic Ar-
said. “We’re just one company, and uses “sensitive data from independent izona sandal. On October 8th, Arizo-
there’s millions of companies they deal retailers who sell on its marketplace” nas were going on Amazon for as lit-
with every day. But this is the biggest to unfairly promote its own goods, or tle as fifty dollars—which is great for
customers looking for cheap shoes but
potentially disastrous for Birkenstock,
which relies on those higher prices to PITTSBURGH
pay for marketing, product design, and
the salaries of customer-service em- isn’t there anymore
ployees (who replace defective shoes
for free). rode by it
Amazon says that it has spent on the gray horse and instead
hundreds of millions of dollars on a place where they go sick
anti-counterfeiting efforts, includ-
ing machine-learning technology that a place of only mist
identifies suspicious items. Neverthe-
less, the site remains full of dubious To properly understand the twelve
products. A recent investigation by Pittsburghs of the heart
the Wall Street Journal identified thou-
sands of products for sale on Ama- but nothing to grasp or die for
zon that “have been declared unsafe and when the adults told me to cry
by federal agencies, are deceptively la- I sang on the uneven riser that swirls
beled or are banned by federal regu- like northern lights in the ear
lators,” including children’s toys con-
taining dangerous levels of lead. Many In 1955
of these products were shipped from my mother’s father, a steelworker,
Amazon warehouses, some through was shot and killed in his hotel
the Fulfillment by Amazon program.
And Birkenstock’s customer-service intervening in an attempted abduction
department still gets calls from cus- the shooter “crazed and lovesick” according
tomers who bought fake sandals on to his mother
Amazon and expect Birkenstock to my mother only met him
provide a refund. a few times, the last time
Amazon says that it cannot accom- shortly before the murder, she said
modate the demands of Birkenstock she took a train.
and other companies that wish to “limit
availability of competitively priced In the testimony of another tenant
products.” In a statement, Amazon said his face, after he staggered
that it is not its role to decide who is, out of the apartment, had “an iron color.”
and is not, authorized to sell various He fell into her arms. “I was
items. Amazon isn’t a mall, a current holding him, trying to help,” she said.
executive told me. He described it as “But he was dead.” The kidnapper
a Web site that offers unlimited shelf escaped with his ex
space for an almost unlimited number and they drove the outskirts of Pittsburgh
of products and sellers. Some might Tarentum, Aspinwall, Turtle Creek
call this a platform. Other tech giants, all night
such as Facebook and Twitter, describe before she talked him into turning
themselves as platforms, partly as a himself in at dawn
way of justifying spotty oversight of
their sites.
Kahan told me that, with the rise of owns the marketplace. They can do dozens of questions about Bezos’s in-
Amazon, the give-and-take that has whatever they want. That’s not capi- volvement with Lauren Sanchez, a he-
long undergirded the retail economy talism. That’s piracy.” licopter pilot who had founded a com-
has become lopsided in a titan’s favor. pany, Black Ops Aviation, that filmed
“Capitalism is supposed to be a system n January 7, 2019, as public criti- promotional videos for Bezos’s rocket
of checks and balances,” he said. “It’s a
marketplace where everyone haggles
O cism of Amazon’s excesses grew
louder, Jeff Bezos received an e-mail
company, Blue Origin. Reporters for
the Enquirer had been trailing Bezos
until we’re all basically satisfied, and it from Dylan Howard, the chief con- and Sanchez for months, the e-mail in-
works because you can always threaten tent officer of American Media, the dicated, photographing them in hotels
to walk away if you don’t get a fair deal. parent company of the National En- and at airports, and compiling a dos-
But when there’s only one marketplace, quirer. “I write to request an interview sier of trysts. Bezos and Sanchez were
and it’s impossible to walk away, ev- with you about your love affair,” the both married, and the Enquirer was
erything is out of balance. Amazon message began. Howard then asked prepared to expose it all.
ticed, and he often attended events
without MacKenzie. Now the En-
clouds are in a composition useful quirer was accusing Bezos and San-
to fill space around the invisible chez of hiding their assignations from
in moonlight the murderer MacKenzie and from Sanchez’s hus-
and the owl who buries and the bull who rings band, Patrick Whitesell, a powerful tal-
ent agent whom Bezos had socialized
drove rural Allegheny County with as Amazon expanded into Holly-
wood. A former American Media ex-
stopped at midnight for hot dogs and milk ecutive said of the Enquirer investiga-
according to the transcript tion, “It was a kind of weird story for
of the trial us. Enquirer readers don’t really care
heard the luminous about C.E.O.s. But everyone was all
processes of the dashboard worked up and excited about it—cack-
ling about blackmail and dick pics. It
I suppose he sang was like the unpopular kids had finally
like a scarf found something embarrassing about
gone out long behind the quarterback.”
like magnetism Two days after Bezos received How-
ard’s e-mail, he posted a message on
like thorn bushes Twitter. “We want to make people aware
of a development in our lives,” he wrote,
like wind in a note co-signed by MacKenzie. “Af-
around a highway sign ter a long period of loving exploration
he went up and and trial separation, we have decided
asked if anyone was dead again to divorce and continue our shared lives
why they have to as friends.” Hours later, the Enquirer
assert themselves started publishing articles about the
even after we told them about sorrow affair, making reference to “sleazy pho-
think my grandfather’s ghost rode tos” and “X-rated selfies” exchanged by
alongside them eleven miles Bezos and Sanchez. The tabloid quoted
some texts that he had sent her—“I
peering in want to smell you”—which suggested
before departing that his or her phone had been com-
promised. But the tabloid did not end
who wasn’t with him the night he was killed up publishing racy photographs; it ran
mundane images of Bezos and San-
like hearing a stranger’s headphones chez, some of which had already ap-
in the spirit of cancelled flight and a storm coming peared online. According to the for-
she missed mer American Media executive, the
the beard he was growing publication might not actually have
we put our gods in clouds had explicit images. “If we had pics of
we hide in clouds Jeff Bezos’s dick, I would have seen
—Ed Skoog them,” the former executive told me.
“That’s standard operating procedure—
you pass them around. But whenever
Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, a spirational. Like, if they could stay to- I asked I was told, ‘Well, we don’t ac-
novelist, had been together for twenty- gether and keep their family sane, with tually have them here right now.’ I was,
seven years. When executives went to all the work and money and stress, then like, ‘You’re bluffing the richest man in
their house for weekend meetings, it the rest of us could, too.” the world?’ ” (A representative of the
wasn’t unusual to see them reading the Around the time that Bezos became Enquirer said that the publication had
newspaper together or helping their the world’s richest man, his life style “acted lawfully and stands by the ac-
kids with homework. “They seemed to changed. He appeared on television curacy of its reporting.”)
have the perfect marriage,” a former at the Academy Awards. He bought a Marriages break up all the time, yet
Amazon executive told me. “I once saw mansion in Beverly Hills, and he threw many of Bezos’s colleagues felt disori-
them get out of the car at our holiday a party co-hosted by Matt Damon. He ented by the fact that he had been so
party, when they thought no one was was following an intense weight-train- undisciplined as to let his personal life
looking, and hold each other’s hand. It ing and diet regimen. He was in Se- become tabloid fodder. “The basis of
was that kind of relationship, real in- attle less frequently, employees no- Jeff ’s stature was a lot of things, but
integrity was No. 1,” a former colleague worked, as part of what it said was a Groups unrelated to organized labor
told me. “The way he dealt with his broader reorganization. In 2014, when also had an incentive to embarrass
family, and customers, and the people a group of technicians at an Amazon Bezos. In 2018, when Seattle’s city coun-
around him—that was at the core of warehouse in Delaware petitioned the cil, facing a homelessness crisis, unan-
why we respected him so much. And National Labor Relations Board to imously passed a measure that would
then this thing happened, and it was allow them to vote on whether to have required the city’s largest compa-
so hard to make that fit into the pic- unionize, Amazon hired a law firm nies to pay a tax of two hundred and
ture of the person we knew.” Even that specialized in fighting organized seventy-five dollars per local worker to
Bezos’s friends were concerned. “It labor, and held meetings warning that build homeless shelters and affordable
was like Jeff had been ab- unionization could be bad housing, Amazon balked. The law
ducted by aliens and re- for workers’ jobs. Employ- would have initially cost Amazon less
placed,” one told me. “It’d ees voted against joining than twenty million dollars per year, at
been going on for about a the union. According to a time when its annual revenue ex-
year—the bodybuilding the Times, when other ceeded two hundred and thirty billion
stuff, and Hollywood, and workers in Delaware tried dollars. Before it passed, Amazon an-
just a big change in how to unionize, their manager nounced that it had halted construc-
he was—and then this gave an emotional speech tion on a new tower in Seattle and was
came out, and I still don’t about his youth: after his reconsidering an expansion into seven
know how to process it.” father had died, steps from hundred thousand square feet that it
Once Bezos’s affair be- his front door, the union had leased. A company spokesperson
came public, more main- had offered no support. implicitly blamed the tax for these
stream publications began digging The speech apparently worked—em- shifts, telling local reporters that Am-
around. When the Wall Street Journal ployees did not authorize a union azon was “apprehensive about the fu-
prepared a story about how Bezos’s vote. After the speech, outside or- ture created by the council’s hostile
divorce might affect his company, ganizers found an obituary of the approach and rhetoric toward larger
Amazon’s P.R. department, which had man’s father: he had been a partner businesses.” Amazon donated twen-
been known for using mild language, at an insurance agency, not a union ty-five thousand dollars to No Tax on
responded acidly. The company’s member, and had died while jog- Jobs, a group opposing the initiative.
communications and policy chief, Jay ging, on vacation in South Carolina. The tax’s supporters pushed back, ac-
Carney, told the paper, “I didn’t real- After Amazon bought Whole Foods, cusing Bezos and others of being “O.K.
ize the Wall Street Journal trafficked in 2017, and workers began exploring with the city having shantytowns and
in warmed-over drivel from super- unionization, store managers report- favelas,” but within a month the city
market tabloids.” Meanwhile, Bezos edly received a video explaining that council surrendered, and repealed the
launched an internal audit of his cell- “you might need to talk about how tax measure. “This is not a winnable
phone data. If someone had gained ac- having a union could hurt innovation, battle at this time,” one councillor ex-
cess to his private texts, what else had which could hurt customer obsession, plained. “The opposition has unlim-
been collected? E-mails? Business which could ultimately threaten the ited resources.” Seattle’s homeless pop-
plans? Bezos ordered his personal head building’s continued existence.” The ulation rose four per cent that year. The
of security, the consultant Gavin de union push stalled. city has the third-largest population of
Becker, to scrutinize electronic records Dave Clark, the senior vice-presi- homeless residents in the nation.
and to conduct interviews. Was the dent for worldwide operations, told me Activists have also noted that Bezos
breach part of a sophisticated attack that Amazon already provides many of is much less philanthropic than many
whose purpose was larger than simply the benefits that a union would de- of his peers. Among America’s top five
to embarrass Bezos? mand, and so “there’s really no reason billionaires, he is the only one who has
to put an interstitial layer between em- not signed the Giving Pledge—a pro-
ezos had plenty of enemies, and ployees’ ability to directly come tell gram, created by Bill Gates and War-
B not just aggrieved companies like
Birkenstock. For years, he had been
their manager that something is bro-
ken.” Amazon, in a statement, said that
ren Buffett, that encourages the world’s
wealthiest citizens to give away at least
battling various groups, from pro- it complies with the National Labor half their wealth.
union organizers to activists critical Relations Act, and that any member Amazon, meanwhile, has drawn par-
of Amazon’s tax practices, and some of the public can sign up for a free tour ticular criticism for its approach to fed-
of the clashes had been nasty. Labor of its warehouses. “Our direct connec- eral taxes. Financial filings show that
organizers had been a particular source tion with our people is the most valu- Amazon likely paid no U.S. federal in-
of conflict. In 2000, when the Com- able way to run the business,” Clark come tax in 2018. The company re-
munication Workers of America tried said. “It’s the fastest way to run the ported a negative federal-tax charge on
to unionize four hundred of Amazon’s business. It’s the most innovative way $11.2 billion in profits, in part because
customer-service representatives in to run the business.” He added, “I can’t it received tax benefits by paying em-
Seattle, the company closed down the see how unions add any value to our ployees in stock rather than in wages,
call center where those employees current operations.” giving it a $1.1-billion deduction, and
because of research-and-development lead Jeff threatened to leave. It’s how be counted among decent men.” Soon
credits that yielded a four-hundred- he sees the world.” afterward, G.M. agreed to recognize
and-nineteen-million-dollar tax break. Every billionaire has critics and en- the union.
Most large tech firms avail themselves emies, but, when the Enquirer pub- In 1937, the Treasury Secretary ac-
of similar opportunities—and Ama- lished Bezos’s secrets, people close to cused Sloan of “moral fraud”—“the de-
zon, unlike Apple or Google, doesn’t him wondered if the disclosure might feat of taxes through doubtful legal de-
transfer profits to foreign countries, be part of a gambit to embarrass him vices.” Sloan insisted that he’d actually
thus avoiding U.S. taxes. However, the and weaken him at, say, the union bar- paid sixty per cent of his income from
company’s low reported tax bill has in- gaining table, or to force him to change the previous year in taxes, and given
furiated its detractors on the left. In his philanthropic habits. Such tactics half of what remained to charity, but
one of several criticisms levelled at Am- have a surprising history of success. the attack further blighted his reputa-
azon in a recent Democratic debate, When Alfred Sloan and G.M. were tion. Eventually, Sloan caved. He do-
Andrew Yang said that Amazon was fighting labor unions and tax foes, in nated fifteen per cent of his wealth—
closing “America’s stores and malls and the nineteen-thirties, the company’s the modern equivalent of a hundred
paying zero in taxes while doing it.” critics began providing tabloids with and eighty million dollars—to fund
(Amazon says that last year it paid $1.2 photographs of G.M. executives en- the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and he
billion in income taxes globally, but de- joying their luxury sailboats and ca- eventually gave hundreds of millions of
clines to disclose how much it has paid vorting with showgirls. In 1936, the dollars more to universities and other
in the U.S.) United Auto Workers staged a weeks- organizations.
Some of Bezos’s close friends and long sitdown strike in Flint, Michi- Bezos, who is reportedly worth a
colleagues say that Amazon’s tightfist- gan, and labor activists smuggled gos- hundred and fourteen billion dollars,
edness reflects his political leanings. sip about Sloan to reporters. Walter has so far donated less than three per
“Jeff is a libertarian,” a close acquain- Lippman soon declared that Sloan was cent of his wealth to charity. Three
tance, who has known Bezos for de- a “bungling” menace. When Sloan re- months after the homelessness-tax in-
cades, told me. “He’s donated money fused to meet with union representa- cident, he pulled a Sloan-like move: he
to support gay marriage and donated tives, the Secretary of Labor, Frances announced the launch of a two-billion-
to defeat taxes because that’s his basic Perkins, took him to task publicly, yell- dollar foundation named the Bezos
outlook—the government shouldn’t ing at him, “You are a scoundrel and a Day One Fund. Since then, it has given
be in our bedrooms or our pocket- skunk, Mr. Sloan! You don’t deserve to grants to advocates for the homeless,
books.” One of Bezos’s earliest public
donations was to the Reason Founda-
tion, a libertarian think tank and pub-
lisher. In 2013, he bought the Wash-
ington Post and invested heavily in its
editorial operations, which remain in-
dependent; the effort has helped re-
store the paper’s journalistic lustre (and
expanded its readership). Yet he also
froze the company’s pension plan—a
move that offered no real financial
benefit to Bezos, given that the plan
was already significantly overfunded—
leaving some Post employees with the
prospect of fewer benefits when they
retired. Fredrick Kunkle, a reporter
who is part of the newsroom’s union
leadership, said of Bezos, “He doesn’t
think companies have obligations to
employees beyond paying wages while
they work.” Bezos’s close acquaintance
agrees: “There’s an empathy gap there,
something that makes it hard for him
to see his obligations to other people.
Seattle is filled with businesspeople—
Gates and the Costco founders and
the Boeing leadership—who have in-
vested in this city. But the one time
Amazon could have pitched in, on the
homelessness tax, instead of taking the “Oh, God—I can finally do laundry!”
and it is creating a network of Mon- conversation is because Amazon has curate than the reporting in his lobby-
tessori-inspired preschools in low-in- been expanding the pie for the people ist newspaper, the Amazon Washing-
come communities. left behind.” ton Post.”
Fortunately for Bezos, the labor Reporters at mainstream publica-
movement does not have as much avin de Becker concluded that tions found little evidence to substan-
power as it did in Sloan’s day. When,
earlier this year, Amazon cancelled
G the National Enquirer’s publica-
tion of Bezos’s personal data was in-
tiate de Becker’s claims. The Enquirer,
which was having financial difficulties,
its plans to open a second headquar- deed intended to serve political ends— was wary of getting drawn into a pos-
ters, in New York City, in part be- but he didn’t blame Amazon’s critics sibly expensive political fight. (It was
cause of disputes with local unions, on the left. De Becker began speak- easy to imagine subpoenas coming from
some politicians, rather than attacking with reporters, claiming that he Capitol Hill.) The publication strenu-
ing Amazon, blamed the unions for had evidence that the Enquirer’s re- ously denied de Becker’s accusations.
scuttling the deal. In an open letter, porting was “politically motivated.” He The former American Media execu-
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget eventually claimed that the exposé was tive said, “We were hundreds of mil-
director wrote, “Some labor unions related to Bezos’s ownership of the lions of dollars in debt, our hedge-fund
attempted to exploit Amazon’s New Washington Post. owner was getting freaked out, and it
York entry. . . . The union that opposed In March, de Becker laid out his ac- was, like, what’s the endgame here?
the project gained nothing and cost cusations in the Daily Beast. “Our in- This had been a bad idea from the be-
other union members 11,000 good, vestigators and several experts con- ginning. They wanted out.”
high-paying jobs.” Amazon currently cluded with high confidence that the A representative of American Media
has more than a hundred and fifty Saudis had access to Bezos’s phone, and sent a private communication to Bezos:
warehouses, and many of them are in gained private information,” de Becker if he would release a statement saying
economically depressed areas, where wrote, alleging that there were links that he had “no knowledge or basis for
employment is scarce and politicians between the hacking and a conspiracy the suggestion” that American Media’s
and workers are less likely to com- related to the 2018 murder of the Post “coverage was politically motivated or
plain. Emily Guendelsberger, a jour- columnist Jamal Khashoggi, inside a influenced by political forces,” Ameri-
nalist who briefly worked in an Am- Saudi consulate in Turkey. “The Saudi can Media would agree “not to pub-
azon warehouse in 2015, said, “People government has been intent on harm- lish, distribute, share or describe un-
really want those jobs. It’s gruelling, ing Jeff Bezos since last October, when published texts and photos.” In a
miserable work—I was taking Advil the Post began its relentless coverage separate letter, Dylan Howard, the
like candy. But one woman told me of Khashoggi’s murder,” de Becker American Media chief content officer,
she drove an hour each way because wrote. Now the Saudi government, with described images that he claimed to
Amazon paid more than the pizza help from the Enquirer, was “trying to have, among them a “below the belt
place in her home town.” strong-arm an American citizen.” Pre- selfie—otherwise colloquially known
Some economists say that focussing cisely why the Saudis wanted Bezos’s as a ‘d*ck pick.’”The company provided
on Amazon’s miserliness or on the con- selfies, and what they hoped to accom- no evidence of having such photographs.
ditions inside its warehouses obscures plish by passing them to a tabloid, (Their existence has never been verified.)
larger, more positive truths. Michael de Becker did not say. (Nobody con- “It would give no editor pleasure to
Mandel, an economist at nected to the internal in- send this email,” Howard wrote to
the Progressive Policy In- vestigation would discuss Bezos’s representatives. “I hope com-
stitute, told me, “These are in detail any of its findings.) mon sense can prevail.”
hard jobs, no one disputes De Becker, in his article, Howard’s strategy backfired. Bezos
that. They are definitely pointed out that in recent posted the tabloid’s correspondence on
harder than office jobs, and years the Enquirer had be- the Web site Medium, alongside an
they are harder than work- come overtly political. It open letter. “Rather than capitulate to
ing in a clothing store or was so closely aligned with extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided
at a movie theatre. But Donald Trump that, dur- to publish exactly what they sent me,
wages in clothing stores ing the 2016 Presidential despite the personal cost and embar-
have been declining for race, its publisher paid hush rassment they threaten,” he explained.
forty years, and wages have money to silence one of (The letter was written by Bezos and
also gone down in manufacturing, and the candidate’s alleged mistresses. edited by his lawyers.) “It’s unavoid-
what I see is Amazon creating tens of When the Enquirer’s stories on Bezos able that certain powerful people who
thousands of jobs that pay thirty per appeared, President Trump—who has experience Washington Post news cov-
cent more than competitors, that offer accused Bezos of buying the Post to erage will wrongly conclude I am their
real benefits, that help high-school wield political influence and keep Am- enemy. . . . If in my position I can’t
graduates get skills they need. Even- azon’s taxes low—tweeted, “So sorry stand up to this kind of extortion, how
tually, workers will demand that Am- to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being many people can? . . . I don’t want per-
azon’s pie gets divided more evenly. But taken down by a competitor whose re- sonal photos published, but I also won’t
the only reason we’re even having this porting, I understand, is far more ac- participate in their well-known prac-
tice of blackmail, political favors, po-
litical attacks, and corruption. I prefer
to stand up, roll this log over, and see
what crawls out.”
It was a brilliant act of jujitsu. For
the first time in years, Bezos was widely
hailed in the mainstream media. (A
typical tweet was “Just in: Jeff Bezos’
dick pic reveals he has balls of steel.”)
Meanwhile, reporting by the Wall Street
Journal and other outlets offered a sim-
pler explanation for the hacking: the
purloined messages had come from
Lauren Sanchez’s brother, Michael, a
reality-television talent agent. The En-
quirer had paid him two hundred thou-
sand dollars for the texts. Michael San-
chez was a Trump supporter, and it
was possible that the Enquirer had
learned of the affair and had urged him
to peek at his sister’s phone. De Becker,
however, still believed that his boss was
• •
the victim of a plot, and said that he
was forwarding his intelligence to fed- of local drivers and courier firms, in family.’ But we were growing so fast,
eral officials. For most Americans, cities across the country. and there was so much pressure, and
though, the mystery seemed solved: a The benefit of outsourcing was that if we tried to build this internally it
tabloid, not for the first time, had paid Amazon could build a delivery network would have taken at least a year. And
for gossip. quickly. Brittain Ladd, a former Am- so a decision was made that the risk
Within six weeks, the owners of the azon senior manager who specialized was worth it.”
Enquirer had announced its sale. Jeff in logistics and operations, told me ear- Amazon tried to work solely with
and MacKenzie Bezos finalized their lier this year that “it was really easy to courier services that met basic safety
divorce in July, and she received a thirty- scale up—there’s thousands of courier requirements, according to a current
eight-billion-dollar settlement. Shortly services out there, and so once you figure executive who helped establish the pro-
afterward, she announced that she was out the model you can expand it al- gram. But Amazon pushed only so far,
signing the Giving Pledge. most overnight.” deciding that it wasn’t practical to com-
Still, some people within Amazon, pel firms to give drivers regular drug
ezos’s personal tumult distracted including Ladd, thought that these tests or to require extensive training.
B Amazon’s leaders at a particularly
fraught time. The company’s headlong
partnerships were a bad idea: it would
be impossible for Amazon to insure
Local courier services are often run by
inexperienced businesspeople. Mean-
growth has led to a series of scandals, that delivery companies were hiring while, the pressure to expand remained
and executives have been unsure how responsible drivers and using rigorous intense. “We were moving very, very
to contain the damage. Like other pro- safety protocols. “Frankly, you have very fast,” a former manager who helped
cess companies, Amazon is learning little control over these individuals,” build the network recalled. “We were
that a flywheel, once spinning, is very Ladd told me. He said that he had learning as we went.”
hard to stop. hand-delivered to multiple colleagues In 2015, Amazon contracted with a
Several years ago, Amazon built a a memo, marked “PRIORITY: HIGH,” courier company called Inpax Shipping
vast network of independent couriers in which he expressed “grave reserva- Solutions, and it began delivering pack-
to provide what’s known as “last-mile tions” about relying on contractors, ages for the company in Atlanta, Cin-
delivery”: the final leg of a package’s warning, “I believe it is highly proba- cinnati, Miami, Dallas, and Chicago.
journey to a customer’s door. For years, ble that accidents will occur resulting Amazon executives apparently failed
Amazon had relied upon UPS, FedEx, in serious injuries and deaths.” He rec- to note that Inpax’s chief executive had
and the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ommended instead that the company once pleaded guilty to conspiracy to
packages. But in 2013 that system broke carefully build its own last-mile-deliv- distribute cocaine, and had declared
down; at Christmastime, tens of thou- ery network, one with a “zero-toler- bankruptcy after defaulting on debts.
sands of orders were stranded in ware- ance policy” for safety violations. Ladd After Amazon signed the deal, its ex-
houses. Amazon began constructing a said to me, “I attended meetings, and ecutives seemed not to notice that the
delivery network of its own. Rather I told them that the last thing you want Department of Labor was investigat-
than build internally, however, the com- is a newspaper article reading ‘Ama- ing Inpax, or, later, that federal regula-
pany signed contracts with hundreds zon driver high on drugs hits and kills tors had found that the company had
thrown together. They asked me for
advice, and I was saying, ‘There’s an-
other way to do this.’ ” If Amazon had
found another way, Ladd said, “it would
have been a hell of a lot better for the
people who were killed—but once the
machine starts moving it takes on a life
of its own.”
As Amazon executives were be-
coming increasingly worried about the
hazards of warp-speed growth, other
pressures inside the company kept
ratcheting up. Earlier this year, Am-
azon announced that it would soon
start guaranteeing to many customers
delivery in one day, rather than two,
putting even more stress on couriers
and workers.
growing number of regulators in

A Washington, D.C., and in Europe
argue that Amazon, along with other
tech giants, needs to be reined in. Until
the nineteen-seventies, many process
companies were constrained by a fear
of U.S. antitrust enforcement. Alfred
Sloan always kept a close eye on the
size of G.M.’s market share. “Our bogie
is forty-five per cent,” Sloan told a re-
porter, in 1938. “We don’t want any more
• • than that.” His trepidation was justified.
The federal government repeatedly
committed numerous labor violations. icies, and takes action “when they sued G.M., once charging Sloan per-
Amazon also overlooked a lawsuit filed aren’t meeting our high bar for safety sonally with criminal antitrust activity.
by an Inpax employee against his boss, and customer experience.” The com- Almost none of the suits prevailed in
which was documented in public records. pany has terminated its relationship court, but they cowed the company.
On December 17, 2016, a dispatcher with Inpax. (Inpax and Gray declined Sloan died in 1966, and, in the de-
working with Inpax received an e-mail to respond to questions.) cades that followed, the government’s
from Amazon declaring that “we are ProPublica has identified more than attitude toward antitrust enforcement
officially into ‘no package left behind’ sixty accidents involving Amazon, all changed. During the Reagan Admin-
territory.” Five days later, an Inpax since 2015, that resulted in serious in- istration, regulators and courts decreed
driver, Valdimar Gray, was rushing to juries or deaths. Reporters at BuzzFeed that antitrust decisions should largely
deliver Christmas packages in Chicago have found records naming Amazon be based not on a company’s size or on
when he flew through a crosswalk, hit- in at least a hundred lawsuits related its bullying tactics but, rather, on any
ting Telesfora Escamilla, an eighty- to accidents involving package deliv- price hikes imposed on customers. By
four-year-old woman walking home eries, which have included at least six the time Facebook and Google ap-
from a hair salon. Escamilla, who was deaths. Those are likely just a fraction peared, giving away their products for
dragged under the van, died. Escamil- of such collisions, because in many cases free, and Amazon arose, with its devo-
la’s grandson Anthony Bijarro, who was delivery vehicles were unmarked, and tion to keeping prices down, antitrust
at the scene, told me, “Amazon killed victims weren’t aware of Amazon’s role. enforcement was a remote concern. The
my grandmother because they wanted Ladd, the former senior manager, said, legal scholar Lina Khan, writing in the
packages delivered a little faster. Am- “Amazon could have built this network Yale Law Journal in 2017, observed, “It
azon doesn’t care who’s driving, they in-house, or they could have acquired is as if Bezos charted the company’s
don’t care if they’re reckless.” Escamil- a logistics company to really teach them growth by first drawing a map of an-
la’s family has sued Inpax and Ama- last-mile delivery, or they could have titrust laws, and then devising routes
zon. Amazon, in a statement, said that chosen partners more slowly, to make to smoothly bypass them.”
it regularly audits its delivery partners sure the right safety procedures were Things began changing earlier this
to insure that they are in compliance in place. But this was not a well-oiled year. In June, the head of the U.S.
with the law and with Amazon’s pol- machine—this was a bunch of people Department of Justice’s antitrust divi-
sion, Makan Delrahim, a Trump ap- have a fair shot to sell their products Senator Amy Klobuchar, the rank-
pointee and a respected authority on on Amazon without the fear of Ama- ing member of the Senate’s subcom-
economic competition, gave a speech zon pushing them out of business.” mittee on antitrust, told me that such
declaring that antitrust regulators would Other regulators and lawmakers are reforms are bound by a central idea:
no longer be constrained by “the in- more measured in their proposals and “The big tech companies are com-
correct notion that antitrust policy is their rhetoric, but a loose consensus pletely reshaping the way we buy goods
only concerned with keeping prices has emerged around a group of con- and sell goods in the marketplace, our
low.” Delrahim’s address was the equiv- cerns, which some people refer to as privacy rules, and our democracy rules,
alent of firing a starter’s pistol. In a re- the Four “C”s. The first is concentra- without any checks and balances from
cent conversation, he told me that tech tion. A high-ranking F.T.C. official told the government.” She continued, “So
companies “should think very seriously me, “The bigger a tech company be- many people are finally getting tired
about their conduct,” adding, “If you’re comes, the more they can bully, so we of the dominance. When Amazon starts
one of the big guys, you should be care- need to put hard caps on how big com- owning Whole Foods, when they con-
ful to make sure you don’t snuff out panies like that can grow, on what they trol the producers, when they control
competitors because you think that’s can acquire.” all the parts of the supply chain—peo-
good for your business. That’s not what Rohit Chopra, one of the F.T.C.’s ple deserve a level playing field.” Amer-
free markets really mean, and we’re five commissioners, told me that the ican history, Klobuchar said, shows
going to come down on you like a ton second “C” is the conflict of interest that such imbalances can spark wide-
of bricks if that’s what you do.” that comes from “both controlling the spread activism. “This goes back to the
Soon after Delrahim’s speech, it was pipe and selling the oil.” Chopra, who Founders and the Boston Tea Party,”
reported that the F.T.C. had issued agreed to speak only about antitrust she said. “These are highly emotional
subpoenas for data regarding third- generally and not about Amazon spe- political moments.”
party sales on Amazon. In July, the cifically, explained, “If you do both, you
E.U. declared that it was investigat- will structure your marketplace in a mazon has responded to the
ing Amazon, and the U.S. House of
Representatives held a hearing and in-
way that ultimately is self-dealing, and
you will use the data from those who
A mounting political threat by ex-
panding its lobbying efforts. Federal
terrogated an Amazon lawyer about sell on your marketplace to benefit your- records indicate that, in 2018, Amazon
how the company harvests data. Rep- self.” There’s a long history of the gov- lobbied more government bodies than
resentative David Cicilline, a Demo- ernment forcing industries to separate any other U.S. tech company. It has
crat from Rhode Island, asked the law- distribution and sales; for years, movie made its case across Washington, to
yer, “You’re saying that you don’t use studios have generally been prohibited senators, representatives, the Treasury
that in any way to promote Amazon from owning movie theatres. Department, the Department of Jus-
products? I remind you, sir, you’re under The next area of concern is con- tice, even nasa. Much of Amazon’s
oath.” The attorney replied that the tracts. Big tech companies often make lobbying has been devoted to win-
firm shows customers only the best highly restrictive deals with smaller ning government contracts: it is a lead-
product, regardless of who profits from venders. Amazon retains a contractual ing contender for a ten-billion-dollar
the sale, and that Amazon did noth- right to hold sellers’ reve- project to centralize the
ing untoward. nues for long periods after a Department of Defense’s
Many members of Congress suspect sale, and imposes limits on cloud computing. But a for-
otherwise. Cicilline, who chairs the what data sellers can share mer federal official who
House’s antitrust subcommittee, told with other companies. An- works on antitrust issues
me, “There’s bipartisan consensus that other F.T.C. commissioner, told me that the company’s
we have a responsibility to get these Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, other lobbying was “about
markets working again. More compe- told me, “There are a lot of telling us that, if you even
tition means better protection of pri- terms that go into boiler- think about breaking up
vacy. It means better control of your plate contracts that con- Amazon, you’re going to
data. It means more innovation.” Eliz- sumers or workers don’t re- make markets less efficient,
abeth Warren, one of the most force- ally have an opportunity to and there are going to be
ful critics of the tech industry, has said negotiate. It is absolutely appropriate for a lot of lost jobs—and Amazon em-
that, if she wins the Presidency, she in- us to be thinking about banning those.” ploys a ton of people in your district.”
tends to break up Amazon, Facebook, Lastly, regulators worry about the Amazon has a Twitter account de-
and Google. She has proposed making complexity of current antitrust law. “You voted to cheery photographs and vid-
it illegal for companies such as Ama- really have to be an expert, or hire an eos of lawmakers touring warehouses,
zon to own online marketplaces and at expert attorney, if you feel like one of posing alongside rows of Amazon
the same time to sell goods on those these companies is acting inappropri- trucks, and putting items in boxes. (If
platforms. “Amazon crushes small com- ately,” an F.T.C. official said. “The law the videos are any indication, legislators
panies,” Warren wrote, in a plan for ex- only works when it is simple enough are permitted to work much more slowly
panding online competition. If she is for the little guy to bring an action on than Amazon productivity standards
elected, she said, “small businesses would their own.” require.) Such theatrics used to serve
the company well. However, a regula- Amazon and the sellers and vendors in the nineties, he said, was that it was
tor who is familiar with Amazon’s lob- who work with us.” dismissive. But few of the current Am-
bying said that “there’s been a bit of Executives at Amazon have argued azon executives I spoke with said that
hubris, because, in the past, they were to regulators and lawmakers that the the company needed to make major
able to tell a story about how consum- company is distinct in fundamental changes. And few believed that regu-
ers love them. But now that’s chang- ways from Facebook and Google. lators would compel them to do so.
ing, and it’s very concerning to them.” Whereas those firms essentially cre- After all, Amazon employs hundreds
According to Amazon insiders, ated their industries, Amazon’s realm— of thousands of people across the na-
Bezos adamantly refuses to consider the retail marketplace—has existed tion, many of them voters, and has ware-
slowing the company’s growth, fearing since the dawn of commerce. “The idea houses in dozens of states. A tech lob-
that its culture will break down if the that there is only one marketplace is byist told me, “Neither Facebook nor
pace slackens. He is determined to de- demonstrably false,” the company wrote Google has that. Sometimes you sur-
fend his creation aggressively. For years, in a statement, noting that Walmart vive just because there are other targets
Amazon was largely content to remain still brings in more revenue than it to absorb the blows.”
silent amid criticism—one Leadership does. Amazon executives point out
Principle is “We accept that we may be that, if you ignore the distinction be- ezos, after attracting scandal ear-
misunderstood for long periods of
time”—but the company now responds
tween online and real-world sales, Am-
azon is responsible for about four per
B lier this year, has lately sought to
recede. His media appearances have
to nearly every provocation. In June, cent of U.S. retail transactions. “If we become rare and highly scripted. When
after Representative Alexandria Ocasio- do not compete on prices, selection, he was onstage this past summer at one
Cortez said on television that Bezos’s delivery speed and customer service, of his few recent public outings—an
wealth is “predicated on paying people customers will choose other competi- Amazon conference in Las Vegas—the
starvation wages and stripping them tors,” the company statement noted. performance was studiously boring, a
of their ability to access health care,” Part of Amazon’s defensiveness stems clear attempt to rob himself of glam-
Amazon’s communications and policy from executives’ conviction that regu- our. While Bezos was droning on, a
chief, Jay Carney, went on the attack, lators’ concerns are based not on logic protester jumped on the stage, shout-
tweeting, “All our employees get top- but on a misguided understanding of ing something about chickens and ter-
tier benefits. I’d urge @AOC to focus retail. One executive told me that the rible conditions on industrial farms.
on raising the federal minimum wage real problem is that Amazon is dispro- Bezos froze, as if worried that the small-
instead of making stuff up about Am- portionately popular among lawmak- est bacterium of controversy might
azon.” That month, the Times ran ers. Congressional aides, high-profile prove contagious. After the woman was
an article accusing the company of “a journalists, and other élites often use removed, he glanced around and said,
kind of lawlessness” in its bookstore: Amazon to buy kitchen supplies and “I’m sorry—where were we?”
counterfeit medical textbooks were for Christmas gifts. They watch “The Within Amazon, there are concerns
sale, and Amazon seemed unconcerned Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and shop at that, no matter how strenuously Bezos
with “the authenticity, much less the Whole Foods. They don’t even know embraces banality, he can’t be dull
quality, of what it sells.” A long rebut- the location of the nearest Walmart, enough. “We have all this attention now,”
tal appeared on Amazon’s the executive said, and a former executive complained. Since
blog, arguing that “noth- therefore think that Am- Bezos and Lauren Sanchez went pub-
ing could be further from azon is much more pow- lic with their relationship, they have
the truth” and accusing erful than it really is. regularly appeared in gossip columns.
the reporter of cherry- Perhaps it’s true that The New York Post’s Page Six has re-
picking examples. Last policymakers would have ported on the swimsuit that Bezos wore
year, Amazon tapped a a broader perspective if in Saint-Tropez (“quirky, octopus-print
group of warehouse work- they logged more hours at trunks”), and how he met Sanchez’s
ers to be a kind of Twit- Costco. But, in any case, parents at the N.F.L. Hall of Fame
ter rapid-response army, Amazon now has such a (“This all leads Amazon sources to
deputizing them as “am- severe image problem that ponder how long it will be before the
bassadors.” When a Bernie Sanders it can no longer count on being able to couple say ‘I do’ ”).
supporter tweeted that Amazon was anti- do whatever it pleases. High-ranking The government’s scrutiny of Gen-
union, a fulfillment-center employee, executives allow that there are some eral Motors never scored any fatal hits—
@AmazonFCJanet, fired back, “Unions limited concessions Bezos is willing to one antitrust lawsuit dragged on for
are thieves.” make, such as donating more of his years, ending in a dismissal—but the
Amazon offered few specifics on its wealth to charity. And Amazon may scar tissue was damaging enough. David
lobbying activities. “There is abundant agree to strengthen its oversight of driv- Farber, a University of Kansas histo-
competition in the retail sector, and ers and of workers’ safety. One execu- rian who wrote a biography of Alfred P.
many retailers are thriving,” the com- tive told me that Amazon is determined Sloan, told me that the G.M. exec-
pany wrote in response to questions. to remain open-minded and polite with utive “didn’t see himself as someone
“There is no power imbalance between regulators; one of Microsoft’s missteps that needed to be loved or respected
by the public, but eventually even he
gave in.” He noted a pattern in Amer-
ican history: “There’s an economic rev-
olution, it creates amazing new oppor-
tunities, and then the companies that
seize those opportunities become so
powerful that the people revolt—they
say the winners have become too pow-
erful, they start attacking the people
who are the embodiments of winning,
sometimes with gossip, sometimes with
facts. And then we have an era of con-
straint enforced by the federal govern-
ment.” We may be at a breaking point
now. “It’s like the eighteen-eighties or
the nineteen-thirties all over again,”
Farber said. “The pressure is going to
continue building, the powerful are
going to continue being watched and
criticized and gawked at, until some-
thing pops.”
Jeff Wilke, the Bezos deputy, told
me that all process companies eventu-
ally falter. The challenge is to stave off
decline as long as possible. Day Two,
he said, “is inevitable—the question is
when.” When Day Two does arrive at
Amazon, at least Ian Freed, the exec-
utive who oversaw the Kindle and the
Echo, won’t have to suffer through it.
A few years ago, he consulted an inter-
nal Amazon application called the Old
Fart Tool, which shows employees how
many new people have been hired since
their first day, and discovered that more
than three hundred thousand workers
had joined Amazon since he started “Open it.”
there. Freed had come to Amazon be-
cause he loved being at a place that
moved fast and did the impossible. He
• •
was proud of his work—once, while on
vacation in Mexico, he had peeked into they seemed satisfying enough. And feel like I’m contributing in a differ-
his sons’ hotel room and seen their Freed no longer had to worry about ent way. If this succeeds, we’ll bring
Game Boys lying on the nightstand earning a salary: during his tenure at education to parts of the world where
while they read on their Kindles. “That Amazon, its stock price had gone from you can’t get print books, where com-
was pretty special,” he told me. “For forty-three dollars to $1,052 a share. panies don’t deliver things overnight,
the rest of my life, I can tell my grand- And so in 2017 he quit Amazon, and where it’s not even guaranteed that
children that I built the Amazon Kin- not long afterward he founded Bam- people are literate.”
dle and the Amazon Echo.” boo Learning, a company that builds Freed is building something that is
Yet Amazon had changed, and Freed voice-activated education software. neither strictly a product company nor
missed the old days. He wanted to One product teaches kids how to do a process company. It will be both
spend more time living by Leader- division when they say, “Alexa, open grander and more modest in its ambi-
ship Principles that were loftier than Bamboo Math.” The startup has only tions than Amazon, which Bezos has
simply selling everything as fast and two full-time employees. Freed just famously described as “the everything
as cheaply as possible. He wanted to signed his first big contract, with the store.” Freed told me, “It’s another
see if his next flywheels could power a publisher Highlights for Children. “It chance to change the world. A smaller
project with higher ideals. Such goals just got to the point where I wanted change, but it’s real, and it feels im-
wouldn’t likely have satisfied Ama- to do something different,” he told me. portant to me. It’s something that de-
zon’s constant hunger, but to Freed “I wanted to work with nonprofits and serves all of what I’ve learned.” 
PORTFOLIO
GHOST TOWERS
The view from Iran’s housing crisis.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY HASHEM SHAKERI

fter the Iranian Revolution, in 1979, the posed to come and live there, I couldn’t even
A theocracy called on women to breed a

new Islamic generation. It lowered the
marriage age to nine for girls and fourteen for
breathe.” In 2016, he began to photograph the sat-
ellite towns and their residents. He started in
Pardis; the name is Persian for “paradise.”
boys; it legalized polygamy and raised the price “Most of the people who came there had lost
of birth control. By 1986, the average family had something in their lives,” Shakeri said. “They had
six children. A leading cleric said that the govern- been employees who used to receive monthly pay-
ment’s goal was to increase the number of people ments. After the economic crisis, they couldn’t
who believed in the Revolution in order to pre- make ends meet.” There were few parks, play-
serve it. The population surge coincided with mass grounds, or social outlets, and limited signs of life
migration to Iran’s cities, spurred first by Iraq’s in- outside the high-rises. To capture the sterility and
vasion, in the eighties, and then by the lure of jobs the eerie quiet in the satellite towns—including
and education, in the nineties. The government Pardis and Parand—he took the photographs using
introduced family planning, which brought the medium-format film, in direct sunlight, and over-
average family size down to two children, but Iran exposed them.
still struggled to feed, clothe, educate, employ, and He said, “I wanted my audience to see the bit-
house its people. Four decades after the Revolu- terness that applies to all of those towns,” many
tion, the population has grown by almost fifty mil- of whose residents travel hours each day to jobs
lion; the number of households has quadrupled. in Tehran. “There is a recurrent, vicious cycle where
Teeming, polluted Tehran can no longer hold all people are sleep-deprived—they have to wake
those who need or want to live there. early and work until late to commute to Tehran,
The government responded to the housing which takes a lot of time. They only sleep in the
shortage by building satellite towns of sterile high- towns. Like Sisyphus, they have to repeat the cycle
rises on barren land far from the capital. They over and over.”
were supposed to be affordable, ready-made uto- The country’s housing crisis deepened after
pias with modern utilities for low-income and President Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear
middle-class workers who couldn’t afford Tehran. deal, in May, 2018, and reimposed economic sanc-
But the early apartments had faulty sewage sys- tions six months later. The rial is now down by
tems and heating, inadequate access to water, and sixty per cent, and real-estate prices in Tehran
only intermittent electricity. Many were destroyed have more than doubled. Yet tens of thousands of
in the earthquake of 2017. apartments in the new towns are empty, because,
Hashem Shakeri first glimpsed some of these though they are cheaper, many Iranians still can’t
ghostly concrete towers on a weekend drive in afford them. Shakeri, like other Tehran residents,
2007. He was baffled by the idea that Iranians feels the squeeze. He told me that, as he took the
would be expected to live in the austere structures. photographs, “I was worried that I may be one of
“They were like a remote island,” he told me. the people who have to leave Tehran and move
“When I thought about the people who were sup- into one of these apartments.”
—Robin Wright
Previous spread In Pardis, a satellite city northeast of Tehran, nearly half the buildings remain
unfinished. Right A man sells balloons at an ad-hoc street market in Parand.
On the outskirts of Parand,
a makeshift fruit stall sits
next to a billboard depicting
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
the Supreme Leader of Iran.
There is no subway between
Tehran and the satellite cities.
For residents who work in
the capital, the commute can
take hours each way.
Above In Abshenasan, parks, playgrounds, and gathering places are scarce.
“Children have no space for self-actualization, to develop, to grow,” Shakeri said.
Right A family packs up its tent after a camping trip on the outskirts of Parand.
“I asked people if they were
satisfied living in these cities,”
Shakeri said. “Most of them
answered, ‘Thank God—we
have no other way.’ ”
FICTION
TYPOGRAPHY BY DAN CASSARO
72 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2019 PHOTOGRAPH BY EUGENE RICHARDS

hey dropped late in the morn- station—the kind with old pumps and Billy’s uncle lived in one of these, just
T ing and then sat for an hour si-

lently waiting for the kick in Bil-
ly’s boarding-house room, the grove of
a grease pit—he might rob outside Al-
pena. A package store near Benton Har-
bor, set back among weeping willows,
down from the Board of Water & Light
building, on a plot of land held above the
sidewalk by a crumbling retaining wall.
aspen trees on the edge of the field out- that was dying for a stickup. A blueberry I’m really not sure about this, she told
side quivering in the summer breeze. The farm near the Indiana border that would Billy as they swung up the driveway and
house was situated along the old road to offer easy pickings if they were ever spotted a brutal-looking farm imple-
the beach, not much more than ten miles blighted with hunger. He spoke of these ment, hook-shaped blades attached to
from Lake Michigan. Inside, she sat look- plans using the words he had acquired a long wooden handle, leaning against
ing at the poster Billy had tacked to the during his year at a prep school out East the side of the house. She stared at it
wall: a cartoon figure with a big leg ex- before he’d returned home to work for and glanced around for signs of move-
tended, presenting an oversized shoe and, a year at Checker Cab. As he liked to ment. Billy looked the house over, took
below the heel, the words “Keep On explain it, he had come home and begged a drag on his cigarette, and began to ex-
Truckin’.” She was waiting for it to move, his parents to disown him, saying, Please, plain: We’re not going to steal, if that’s
which it did, eventually, dancing in a way please, let me go, cast me out, I beg of you, what you’re thinking. You’ve got to un-
that seemed remorseful, trying to lure go down to the police station and list me as derstand that. We’re not the types to go
her in, until it turned into an aberration incorrigible, if you do anything. I’ve always in and take something from old folks,
that somehow mirrored Billy himself, wanted to be incorrigible. Do it for the sake not at all. We’re upstanding end-of-the-
thinning out into a slim boy, with a never- of our lineage, for the entire family right era hippies who just need some help,
ending array of plans, brilliant with his down the line. Cast me out in honor of the that’s all, so look at it like that, Meg,
own energies, performing a little gyrat- toil and tribulation of our forefathers. In look at it like a simple thing, like see-
ing dance—the heavy shoes falling away, honor of the original Miles Thomas, who sawing, or jumping jacks, or doing cart-
becoming dainty little feet (because Billy never foresaw a guy like me, a long-haired wheels. We’re not going to upset the sta-
did have small feet), the hand waving at hippie. Not in his wildest fantasies. tus quo, because money passed between
her to come on in, to join the fun, the Beside her that night, in bed, he family members sustains stability.
way you’d expect an older man to lure a began to talk out his latest scheme: My Billy would’ve gone on that way if
girl in—and she was a kid that summer, Uncle Rex and Aunt Minerva were she’d let him, waxing philosophical,
just sixteen, and Billy was at least nine- farmers, he said. But now they live in bending the truth, trying to fit the round
teen and, unbeknownst to either of them the city of Lansing. We’ll distract my peg of their need into the square hole
at the time, about to head off to war. uncle, get him talking, and I’ll go up of his uncle’s life, so finally she said,
Billy held himself over her dramati- and get the box of cash he has up there Let’s go on in and say hello, and she got
cally, tossing back his hair, gazing with under the floorboards, the old farm out of the car, closed the door softly,
his blue eyes, giving out a single hoot- money he just doesn’t have the heart to and went up to the front porch.
like laugh when he came. When he was spend. Money that came from the soil, At the front door, he had his knife
in bed, and high, he was a gentle and and all that, because he lost his farm a out and was sliding it around the latch,
beautiful boy, with a faraway look in his few years back and he’s still not over it, flicking it urgently, until there was a click
eyes, and irresistible sandy-blond hair, so it’s just sitting there, with no real use. and the latch gave, opening into a stale
long and tangled. (Some said he looked She listened and sank deeper into darkness, a vestibule filled with the smell
a little bit like Jim Morrison, but, really, the bed, wondering how they’d pull up of wet wool, rubbing ointments, dust,
the resemblance lay in the way he moved, and away from the coziness of the room, moth flakes, and furnace oil. A door led
suddenly swaying his hips in his leather with the darkness outside and dawn to a large hall with a stairway that went
pants, radiating a charisma that seemed scratching at the horizon. Eventually, up past a stained-glass window. They
on the very edge of violence, launching they found the energy, got up and pulled stood for a moment at the foot of the
into fits of jubilation.) Part of what held on their jeans, got dressed, and scrawled stairs, listening to the silence of sleep-
her in his thrall, she’d later think, was a note for the landlord: Dear Dan: Went ing inhabitants, until Billy called up, say-
the way he seemed able to grapple time on an adventure to re-establish our funds. ing, Uncle Rex? Aunt Minerva, Uncle
into submission by proposing schemes; We will be returning by evening, and upon Rex, Aunt Minerva? From upstairs there
he operated on constant speculation, al- our return we will be fully equipped to re- came a grunt, the clearing of phlegm, a
ways heading into the future, and that imburse you for the back rent. Faithfully cough or two, more grunting, and then
night after they made love, as they came yours, Meg and Billy. a voice that said, Who’s that? Who’s
down from their highs, he flipped onto there? It was a tart, central-Michigan,
his side and began talking about reality, hen they got to Lansing the sun farmhand voice, confined within the
about prospects for cash, about keeping
their experiment—as he called it—in
W still wasn’t up, and the heavy gov-
ernment buildings were straining to ma-
nose. (Meg didn’t know it at the time,
but she was hearing the intonations of
alternative consciousness up and run- terialize out of the dark, their white lime- a widower, the voice you’d hear from
ning and financially viable. stone walls emitting an eerie iridescence someone interrogating himself in the
She listened as plans emerged from while a few sad orphaned houses stood mirror with total contempt: a voice that
Billy in soliloquies that sometimes lasted nearby, shabby and out of place, shed- made complete sense when the old man
for hours: he rambled on about a sad gas ding shingles and curlicues of lead paint. finally came down the stairs, dressed in
a tattered old maroon robe, and pre- lor amid the clutter of knickknacks and Your aunt’s dead, the old man said.
sented a toothless mouth set in a gaunt tchotchkes, old souvenirs from across What? Aunt Minerva’s dead?
face. Staying on the bottom step, he the country, spoons and miniature stat- She died peacefully in her sleep. Last
looked at Billy, coughed twice, and said, ues, a plate that said “Kentucky, Abra- year. I woke up and she was gone.
What the hell do you want from me?) ham Lincoln Birthplace” above an etch- When, exactly, was this?
Billy tossed the hair out of his eyes ing of a log cabin; another plate that I believe it was last July.
and said, We were just in the neighbor- said “Virginia” below a gold-leaf min- Jesus, no one told me a thing, Billy
hood and thought we’d pay a friendly iature of Monticello; a horseshoe from said. I’m sorry. Really, Uncle Rex. I’m out
visit to say hello and see how you were Wisconsin with the words “Good Luck.” of the loop. I didn’t know or I would’ve
and how the crops are this year. At the windows, heavy drapes held back come and said a few words at the ser-
A look of thoughtfulness entered the the dawn light. A velour love seat, two vice or something.
old man’s face, and while his lips mulled small straight-backed chairs, and, in the There wasn’t any service, he said. Her
his answer he went to the window, parted corner, against the wall, a pump organ. ashes are upstairs in the bedroom.
the curtains, and gazed up at the sky Billy looked at the pump organ, said, Well, in that case, you just go ahead
visible between the buildings. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Then he and give me the skinny on the farm,
Since when did you ever give a damn sat down and began pedalling, filling Billy said. Just lay it all out, Uncle Rex.
about farming? the bladder with air until the instru- The old man cleared his throat and
I’ve got farm blood and a farming ment was wheezing and panting. He began to speak, going into detail about
soul, Uncle Rex, Billy said. So get the continued pumping, throwing his head his farm and its operation and the price
coffee going and then come back to the back dramatically, holding his hands up of feed corn on the Chicago exchange,
parlor and fill me in on the details, give above the keys until finally he unleashed and the crooked Detroit bank, and the
me a complete crop report, the whole an organ riff, da da da, da da da dadada, seven-year drought, starting back in ’51,
thing, right down to the latest commod- and began singing the Doors’ song that caused a plague that spread over the
ity update, or whatever. I’m eager to hear. “Touch Me,” twisting himself down on land. As he spoke, a wistful tone entered
Meg wants to hear, too. There’s nothing the little stool, wagging his head around, his voice. You’ll want to rebuild the barn,
like farming. It’s the only respectable consumed with the music. make it a post-and-beam mortise-and-
profession left, that’s for sure, and there The percolator is going, the old man tenon with queen posts, and don’t put a
are plenty who are returning to the soil, said, materializing suddenly in the door- ridgepole in to support the rafters, you
Uncle Rex. You know me well enough way. The coffee should be ready shortly. won’t need that, and put plenty of ven-
to know I’ve got farm blood. I’ll buy that Billy got up and went to him, told tilation louvres along the forebay walls,
farm back, rebuild it, and get it up and him to sit, and then said, What about and get one of those steel Martin silos
running again. You won’t have to do a the farm? Give me the lowdown, please. in, too, and maybe a manure-cleaning
thing but sit in your chair on the front I need to know everything so I can go system, and clear out the burdock grow-
porch and give me occasional advice. and help. I’ll hire out the combining to ing through the windows, and the stalls
Uncle Rex went down the hall to the Hank. I’ll get the whole thing operat- will need new railings, and the corn crib
kitchen and began banging around making, and then I’ll come and get you and needs new chicken wire, and the old wind
ing coffee while they stood in the par- Aunt Minnie and bring you over, he said. pump needs lubrication and a new valve,
and the tractor needs a new camshaft;
you’ll want to intercrop carrots in with
the rye and barley, get them in close to
protect the young seedlings; and so on
and so forth, while out in the kitchen
the percolator sputtered.
When Meg got back from the kitchen
with the coffee, the old man was sitting
alone in the parlor expounding on soil
types and the history of soil itself, the
glacial loess deposits and how Paw Paw
soil was better than the upstate junk
spodosol, with a pure O horizon, the
best you could hope for. Then he talked
about soybean rust and luck farming, as
opposed to chance farming, as his father
had called it. If someone had been there
taking notes, they might’ve reconstructed
the farm in its entirety, from the foun-
dation of the farmhouse itself to the raf-
ters of the barn and to the fields, which
“So where do you see yourself fitting into late-stage capitalism?” the old man insisted were square and
stately, just outside of Paw Paw, in par- said. We got him started, but it was just Upper Peninsula; the problems of get-
cel No. 55, State of Michigan, Van Buren the beginning. Uncle Rex is a store- ting the Detroit supply line going during
County, a farm that sent its produce to house of wisdom and knowledge on the the aftermath of the riots; how hard it
the granary in Dowagiac, which in turn subject of his farm, he said, leaning down, was, back in the mid-seventies, to get a
was freighted to the exchange in Chi- plucking seeds, rolling joints atop the dependable connection in Chicago. He’d
cago, just one more load from the hin- Hendrix album cover. His idea was to be going on in that soft, speculative
terlands thrust into the great maw of roll twenty fat joints and hand them voice, landing hard on the specifics, the
commerce. From the way he was talking, around in the morning as a good-will price of STP in the Keweenaw Penin-
it seemed he was determined to unfold gesture, to open up the hearts of his cus- sula; the Traverse City acid freak-out;
the entire history of agriculture from the tomers. He sprinkled and rolled, sprin- the Grand Rapids meth crisis; the Gay-
first primal seed on, because he was still kled and rolled, stopping only to lick lord sheriff ’s department’s pot bonfire;
speaking as they left the house, mum- the papers and to smooth and tighten, and he’d mention her, too, little Meg
bling something about cut nails, circa working with a fantastic efficiency, Allen, who got slapped in the face by
1850, and then a few words about the cuffing the loose weed with the side of her mother and took off on an adven-
use of clapboard peaks as a way to ward his palm, keeping it neatly in the cen- ture, and he’d say that he had this old
off shingle damage. His voice was bright, ter of the album cover obscuring the lady back then who was useful, busi-
happy to be drawing upon past experi- circle with Hendrix and his band. nesswise, this girl, just sixteen and in
ence, making something from words, at Yeah, for sure. Uncle Rex is still talking thrall to his body and voice; a girl who
least, detailing the material of his for- up a storm, but he’s closing in on the end made wild love and was pure as soap.
mer life while they went out to the car, now. He’s getting to the finest of partic- Then he’d go deeper into his story, in
got in, started the engine, and drove up ulars. He’ll be too tired to talk much lon- the most spectacular precision, the way
the wide Lansing streets. ger. He’s building up to the grand finale. his tongue tasted when he was tripping
He was still talking while in the car He’s talking about the financing. About and the various vagabond colors that
they pried open the cash box and saw the interest rates, farm subsidies, and the came flowering up out of the quaking
the tightly bound stacks of green, neatly Nixon Administration. He’s talking corn aspens as they lifted their wet leaves in
arranged, with tags on them that named prices in the month of May, the Year of the lightning.
the years they were earned. Hard-won our Lord Nineteen Sixty-one. That’s On the bed that night, as Billy rolled
money that he’d hoarded and hidden when it all came down for him. He’s his joints and kept on speaking, ignor-
away from his creditors at the bank. talking up the numbers, big time, and the ing the wind that was swishing the cur-
That’s wholesome cash, Billy said. fact that he had to take out a second tains, bringing the smell of the trees and
It’s money that won’t mind being spent. mortgage on the farm. Most likely, right the lake inside, all this became clear.
It’s not from a downer source. It’s not about now, he’s getting to the part about While the stacks of cash on the bed be-
factory money, or slave money. That walking his property line from point to side her ruffled and the tags—each with
green came out of the soil itself, the point, and how he likes to stand there on a date, 1955, 1959, 1960—fluttered. While
bountiful fucking fruit of Mother Earth. the western side, at the windbreak of oaks, his fingers busily swept the pot into lit-
That’s money that came out of sun and and connive over how he might force the tle formations. While the breeze tried
sky. There’s no guilt in this money be- Nugent farm into a buyout. The old fuck to brush the pot off Jimi Hendrix’s face
cause it’s devoid of weight, he said, as was always trying to buy the Nugent and onto the bedspread, she imagined
she counted it carefully, leaving the tags farm. He hated Nugent. him alone in some dusky house, baking
on each stack in case they wondered Billy went on like that, expounding in an eternal heat, in Kansas or Nebraska,
what year they were spending. No, that’s on Uncle Rex’s story, until suddenly, hiding out from the law, which had long
money that came from sunlight and air through the rattle of his words, it be- since stopped looking for him, in an age
and dirt, nothing else. came clear to her (and it did come on that was cleaner and tidier, working him-
like that—a fearsome revelation, a sud- self into a fit over what had happened
ack in Billy’s room that night, they den sharp insight that she would carry on this day, August 5, 1971. He was alone
B were speculating about Uncle Rex.
Was he still there, ten hours later, in that
with her into the future) that he and his
uncle had the same habits of mind, the
in that house, without her and without
love, trying to reconstruct what was gone
house in Lansing, continuing to lay out same inclination to fall into a ramble, a while those who had started him speak-
the statistics and data of his farm? Out- widower’s intonations. It wasn’t just the ing in the first place, who had offered
side, the wind was lifting through the drugs, either. Cosmic forces wouldn’t up the initial opening question, were
fields, turning up the silvery leaves on save him from the kind of fate his uncle long gone with his loot, the earnings of
the aspens. In the clouds to the west, had faced, and she felt sure he’d be there, an entire life, heading west toward the
heat lightning fluttered and laced. All one day, husky-voiced after telling his California coast, leaving a cloud of dust
day the heat had thickened. It would tale in the same way, going on and on in their wake, laughing at the image of
break soon. In a few minutes, most cer- about it for days on end after some fuck- him back there, somewhere, still ram-
tainly, they’d be in the middle of a storm. ups came in to loot his cash box. Instead bling on about his life. 
Everything would cool down and shift. of farming, he’d be talking about drugs:
I think he’s sitting in that parlor in the price of a lid in Bay City back in THE WRITER’S VOICE PODCAST
that chair, rattling on. I’m sure of it, Billy the day, dime bags and shortages in the David Means reads “Are You Experienced?”

THE CRITICS
POP MUSIC
WHO SINGS ALONG?

Vagabon’s circuit of outsiders.
BY HUA HSU
n 2014, Laetitia Tamko, who records to her singing, and to the way that her recorded pop, drawing comparisons to
I as Vagabon, released an EP called
“Persian Garden.” Her singing was fitful
snarling electric guitar takes up the lines
that she leaves unresolved. The songs
artists like Frankie Cosmos and Mitski,
who make up something like a circuit
and jagged, soaring one moment and feel deliberate, like she wants to enter of outsiders. People are drawn to these
sighing the next, all of it matching the into the world at her own pace. She is musicians’ imperfections and emotional
flickers and moans of her electric gui- the protagonist of her own story. rawness—seeing someone who is com-
tar. She measured out small helpings fortable with discomfort can be life-
of her transcendent voice, rather than t’s remarkable that Tamko, who is changing. Music has always been a fickle,
showing it off all at once. The album
ended with a song called “Sharks,” which
I twenty-six, makes such uninhibited
music, given the secrecy that surrounded
unpredictable career path, yet the dis-
tance between writing a song, or mak-
she rerecorded and released under the her artistic evolution. She was born and ing a beat, and finding faraway admirers
name “The Embers” a few years later. raised in Cameroon, and her family has been radically compressed. Increas-
“I feel so small,” she sings over a meek moved to the United States when she ingly, the challenge isn’t just in getting
guitar line, sounding resigned but not was in her teens. At the time, she didn’t your art out there but in dealing with
despondent. “My feet can barely touch speak English. After a spell in Harlem, the logistics: being homesick, eating
the floor / On the bus, where everybody the family settled in Yonkers. When she well on the road, and negotiating the
is tall.” But then the band crashes in, was in high school, her parents bought projections and scrutiny of others. Per-
and her voice surges from a shy whis- her a guitar from Costco. She figured haps you’ve captured in words some-
per to a wailing laugh. “Run and tell that it was an easy and quiet enough in- thing others can only feel or sense. But
everybody/Run and tell everybody that strument to teach herself, and she did, you’re still the same work in progress,
Laetitia is / A small fish,” she cries out, watching tutorials on DVD. But the splitting time between careers, uncer-
delicately leaning into the syllables of idea of being a proper musician seemed tain of what to do now that you’re in a
her own name and stretching out the impossibly far away. Her sense of the state-of-the-art recording studio.
word “is” as though her whole being de- world then was that you were either Be- This sudden immersion has become
pended on it. She basks in being the yoncé or someone messing around in part of Tamko’s narrative. She left her
“small fish.” “You’re a shark that hates your bedroom, and that there was noth- job as a computer engineer and went on
everything,” she sings, breaking into a ing in between. While in college, how- tour to promote “Infinite Worlds,” which
teasing giggle. ever, she found kindred spirits in a small included many of the first songs she had
When I first heard her say her own D.I.Y.-rock scene in Brooklyn. At home, written. But she began experimenting
name, I felt chills. I couldn’t remember she played the part of a model student, with music that strayed from the guitar-
hearing a singer do that in a way that but the late nights supposedly spent at driven indie she was known for. She
felt tentative and even a bit hopeful, the library were actually spent at re- composed and self-produced her new
rather than bold and boastful, like it hearsals with her band. Her first per- album, “Vagabon,” largely while she was
was just branding. It was as if she were formance—at the Silent Barn, an event on the road. Where her previous songs
reminding herself that these songs space in Bushwick—was also her first boomed and crashed, her new songs
were primarily for and about her—that concert. Until the release of “Persian wobble and glow. Many of them mix
she needed them more than we did. Garden,” Tamko’s parents didn’t know the raw materials of R. & B. and dance
Throughout “Persian Garden” and “In- that she was a professional musician. tunes, producing something a bit quieter.
finite Worlds,” her full-length album Tamko found an audience among There’s a familiar earnestness to a
from 2017, there is a playful hesitancy enthusiasts of intimate, often home- singer cradling a guitar, a ready-made
Pop songs are often about the listener; in the songs of Laetitia Tamko, the listener is a witness as she figures things out.
OPPOSITE: PHILIPPE PETIT-ROULET
PHOTOGRAPH BY JESSICA PETTWAY THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2019 77

sullivan + associates
A R C H I T E C T S
aesthetic of mopey vulnerability. But a that this moment happened. Pop songs
person trying to conjure an orchestra are often about our place in the world;
using a laptop can appear even more the listener dreams of being somewhere
solitary. “Even if I run from / it I’m still or somebody else. Yet, in Tamko’s songs,
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the sense that she’s encircling some- Massarweh, of the German-Canadian
thing that she can’t quite reach. Her band Monako, sings a reprise of “Full
singing offers structure to textures that Moon in Gemini,” which closes “Vag-
are ethereal, moody, and ever-shifting. abon.” In his version, the song becomes
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Extraordinary... tions seem at odds with each other.
“Please Don’t Leave the Table” proceeds
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the last songs on the album is “Every
over a soft gurgle of a beat and an en- Woman.” “All the women I meet are
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A DVERTISE MENT
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“ V “Full Moon in Gemini.” Tamko “Vagabon” feels like a small world—the
sings about bodies lying under the moon, view from a car window while driving
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over a lover. She invokes scenes of “driv- macy of a warm bed. “Every Woman”
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and the mountains I wrote this about.” alize that it could be a sing-along. It’s
She pulls you out from inside the song, just Tamko, a guitar, and whoever chooses
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BOOKS tined to follow the serial emaciations of
“Hans in Luck,” one of the Grimms’ fairy
SHOOTING AT JESUS
tales, in which Hans, having been paid
in gold by his master, is persuaded to ex-
change his gold for a horse, then his
The great Danish novel and its deeply perverse hero. horse for a cow, then his cow for a pig,
and so on, until finally he loses every-
BY JAMES WOOD thing, and returns home happy and un-
encumbered. His luck is his reduction.
The hero of this novel comes to the
conclusion that all worldly treasures
“lost their worth as he got closer to
them.” He spends his final years living
in virtual isolation in a remote rural area
in the north of the country. After his
untimely death, a notebook of his is
found, which contains these beautiful
words of fatalism and rebellion:
When we are young, we make immoderate
demands on those powers that steer existence.
We want them to reveal themselves to us. The
mysterious veil under which we have to live
offends us; we demand to be able to control
and correct the great world-machinery. When
we get a little older, in our impatience we cast
our eye over mankind and its history to try to
find, at last, a coherence in laws, in progres-
sive development; in short, we seek a mean-
ing to life, an aim for our struggles and suffer-
ing. But one day, we are stopped by a voice
from the depths of our beings, a ghostly voice
that asks “Who are you?” From then on we
hear no other question. From that moment,
our own true self becomes the great Sphinx,
whose riddle we try to solve.
This shattering, sometimes unbear-

ably powerful novel, completed in 1904,
was written by Henrik Pontoppidan,
who won the Nobel Prize in 1917. It is
considered one of the greatest Danish
magine a novel about an ambitious, figure from a different, luckier tale, an novels; the filmmaker Bille August
I slightly coarse, provincial young man,
determined to make his name in the
Aladdin (as one of his friends crowns
him) who will surely prosper and tri-
turned the story into a nearly three-hour
movie called, in English, “A Fortunate
capital city. He is tall and strong, with umph. The novel describes this journey. Man” (2019). The novel was praised by
uncanny blue eyes—“sea-cold,” “mer- Now imagine that the novel system- Thomas Mann and Ernst Bloch, and is
man” eyes. He talks too loudly. One of atically subverts the swelling arc of the effectively at the center of Georg Lukács’s
the capital’s most polished journalists bildungsroman—that, on the cusp of classic study “The Theory of the Novel”
dismisses him as a “swaggering farm- each achievement, some ghostly hand (1920). In Danish, it is called “Lykke-
boy.” Even the rich heiress who almost pulls our hero back from victory. He is Per”; in German, it was given the title
marries him agrees with him that he is about to leave his mark in the capital of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale “Hans
like a mountain troll from a fairy tale; city, but eventually withdraws. He is about im Glück.” And in English? In English,
her sister, on first meeting him, noticed to marry the rich heiress, but calls off it didn’t exist, having gone untranslated
his “slightly provincial shoes.” But he the engagement. He returns to the coun- for more than a century, until the scholar
has brilliance and will, and others wel- try and starts a family with a modest Naomi Lebowitz administered the trans-
come this young engineer with a head country girl, but he isn’t happy there, ei- lator’s equivalent of a magic kiss and
full of projects as “the prototype of the ther: “He was like a clock whose insides roused it from shameful oblivion. Pub-
active man of the twentieth century,” a had been carefully removed, piece by lished nine years ago in academic for-
mat, “Lucky Per” has finally appeared
Henrik Pontoppidan, a winner of the Nobel Prize, completed “Lucky Per” in 1904. in Everyman’s Library, in Lebowitz’s
ILLUSTRATION BY HUGO GUINNESS THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2019 79
fluent and lucid version, with an excel- sisters mutter their prayers “in a sort of to quest, and destined to fail. With a
lent introduction by the novelist and underworld blindness to the light and steady, returning beat, closer to allegor-
critic Garth Risk Hallberg. Our luck full of a dread of life and its glory,” Per ical verse than to realist fiction, the novel
has caught up with everyone else’s. is a singular, rebellious life force. He reminds us of its guiding theme: the
Have I spoiled the plot by revealing sneaks out of the house to go sledding, homelessness of its hero, condemned to
the ending? The critic only gives away he flirts with a local girl. When a pa- spend his life in the lonely quest for a
in silver what the great novel eventually rishioner complains to the pastor that metaphysical safe harbor. So is Per’s
releases as gold. Besides, it’s almost im- Per has been stealing apples from his curse a religious curse or a fairy-tale
possible to discuss “Lucky Per” without garden, the wayward son is severely ad- curse? And what is the difference be-
discussing the shape of its plot, because monished at family dinner, warned that tween the two?
the radical oddity of the book is so bound he could end up like Cain, the first mur- Per’s odd life path might simply be
up with the hero’s final renunciations. derer, whom God cursed thus: “You will the result of being born into the Side-
At first sight, “Lucky Per” looks like a be a wandering fugitive in all the earth.” nius family. The Sideniuses, we learn at
stolid work of realism. It is almost six His siblings weep in dismay, but Per si- the novel’s opening, trace their lineage,
hundred pages long. Through its ample lently scoffs. At the age of sixteen, he through generations of ministers, all
halls moves a large cast of characters, escapes this prison, and goes to Copen- the way back to the Reformation. It’s
from several layers of Danish society— hagen to study engineering at the Poly- a family tree of unimpeachable piety
middle-class clergymen, rich merchants, technic Institute. The coming-of-age and dreary episcopal conformity, with
lawyers and politicians, writers and in- novel, Per’s sentimental education, will one exception. An ancestor, also a pas-
tellectuals. There is much conversation now begin in earnest, as the dark, reli- tor, known as Mad Sidenius, somehow
about the coming century: the fate of gious family grotto recedes into the dis- went off the rails. He drank brandy with
the nation, the future of technology. tance of legend. the peasants, and assaulted the parish
But one reason it’s generally unwise Alas, the past cannot be escaped so clerk. In a novel haunted by insanity
to talk about a single style called “real- easily. Fable and allegory curl themselves and suicide, the memory of this family
ism” is that prose narrative is so often like creepers around our hero’s feet. Per outcast is important. The potentially
lured away from conventional verisimil- has, in effect, been exiled from Eden, blasphemous question rears its head
itude by rival genres, notably allegory for the Adamic sin of stealing apples. again: if it’s a curse to be a Sidenius, is
and fairy tale. The book’s opening chap- But his home wasn’t Edenic, and be- Per cursed by generations of unerring
ter is at once familiarly “realistic” and sides, he doesn’t share his father’s Chris- piety, or by that ancestral aberrant flash
heavy with the ironic fatalism of the tian faith. If he hasn’t committed a sin, of madness?
folktale. In a small market town in East how can he be cursed? All the secular
Jutland, Per Sidenius is one of eleven energy of this novel—and it has a mag- enrik Pontoppidan’s life began
children growing up in an austerely re-
ligious family. His father is a pastor with
nificent, liberating secular power—
pushes against the reality of the pastor’s
H much like his fictional hero’s. He
was born in 1857, the son of a Jutland
an ascetic hatred of the body. His mother Old Testament damnation. Yet Per is pastor, into a family that had produced
is bedridden. While his brothers and cursed: he’s destined to wander, destined countless clergymen. Unlike Per, Pon-
toppidan seems to have remained on
friendly terms with his family, despite
drifting away from his inherited Chris-
tianity. In his memoir, published in 1940,
three years before his death, he declared
himself to be an out-and-out rational-
ist, dismayed by the tenacity of religious
superstition. Like Per, he left the prov-
inces to study engineering at the Poly-
technic Institute in Copenhagen.
Copenhagen of the eighteen-seven-
ties and eighties has been described (by
the critic Morten Høi Jensen) as “the
first real battleground of European Mod-
ernism.” A parochially Protestant cul-
ture was beginning to do intellectual
trade with the rest of Europe: French
realism and naturalism, Darwinism
and radical atheism were the imported
goods. The two most talented conduits
of these new freedoms were the novel-
ist Jens Peter Jacobsen and the critic
“O.K., it’s time you guys got your own HBO subscriptions.” Georg Brandes, both of whom make
appearances in fictionalized form in afraid of love’s joy and the body’s force, ship is passionately erotic and ardently
“Lucky Per.” Jacobsen translated Dar- created in its monstrous imagination.” intellectual; Jakobe, again like some her-
win’s major work into Danish, and wrote The Anglophone reader is sometimes oine out of D. H. Lawrence, is help-
what is surely one of the most fanati- reminded of Thomas Hardy or D. H. lessly attracted to Per, despite the blar-
cally and superbly atheistic novels in ex- Lawrence. Per exults in the healthy sec- ing correctives from her conscience. The
istence, “Niels Lyhne” (1880). A lyrical ularism of the body: “The embrace of couple have in common their commit-
aesthete and a Flaubertian prose pol- man and woman was the heaven in which ted atheism, their hatred of the estab-
isher, he is pictured, in “Lucky Per,” as there is oblivion for all sorrows, forgive- lished church, and a sense of being “cho-
the sickly poet Enevoldsen, fussing with ness for all sins, where souls meet in sen”—by theology, by race, by similarly
his lorgnette at a Copenhagen café while guiltless nakedness like heroic notions of destiny.
worrying about “where to put a comma.” Adam and Eve in the gar- Garth Risk Hallberg, in
Jacobsen was championed by Brandes, den of paradise.” his introduction, says that
whose lectures at the University of Co- With the ruthlessness Jakobe Salomon is “as in-
penhagen in 1871 were an inspiration for of the provincial hero, Per telligent as anyone out of
a generation of Scandinavian writers. decides that marriage to James, as bold as anyone
(Brandes and Pontoppidan corresponded an heiress of the vast Salo- out of Austen, as perverse
for decades.) Brandes had read Mill, mon merchant fortune will as anyone out of Dosto-
Hegel, Feuerbach, Strauss. A fervent speed him on his way. At yevsky,” and adds that,
atheist, he introduced Danish readers to first, though, he stirs in Ja- “with all due respect,” the
Nietzsche and, late in life, wrote a book kobe a deep-seated hatred frankness and amplitude
entitled “Jesus: A Myth” (1925). He was of Christian culture, and of Pontoppidan’s depiction
an advocate of European naturalism, and she treats him with an insulting haugh- of the Salomon household leaves George
of fiction that attended to the social and tiness. Bookish, sensitive, twenty-three, Eliot’s Daniel Deronda “in the dust.” I
political moment. It was time, he argued, and already considered a bit of an old like it when writers are made to run races
to open Denmark up to the outside—a maid by her family, Jakobe had been a with one another, precisely because we’re
movement that became known as the sickly child, and the target of anti-Semitic supposed to be above such competitions,
Modern Breakthrough. In “Lucky Per,” bullying. Per triggers in her a memory, and I also think that Hallberg is right.
Brandes appears throughout the novel, at once sharp and hallucinatory, nar- Jakobe is utterly alive and complex, and
more invoked than encountered, as the rated with dreamlike indulgence by Pon- burns at the living center of the book.
dominating Dr. Nathan, sometimes nick- toppidan, and one of the novel’s most Pontoppidan endows her with an ex-
named Dr. Satan. Brandes was Jewish, potent scenes. Four years earlier, Jakobe traordinary intellectual restlessness, and
and Pontoppidan, remarkably alert to had been in a Berlin railway station. allows her some of the most movingly
European anti-Semitism throughout Her eye was caught by a group of “piti- lucid secular proclamations I have ever
the novel, writes that Per had kept his able, ragged people surrounded by a cir- encountered in fiction.
distance from Dr. Nathan because of cle of curious, gaping onlookers.” When One of these statements, a long let-
this: “He simply didn’t like that foreign she asked a station official how to get ter that she writes to Per, becomes an
race, nor did he have any leaning to- to the waiting room, he replied that with eloquent, scalding testament to her athe-
ward literary men.” her nose she should find it easy to smell ism and her faith in the known limits
But Per’s life will soon be changed her way there. On the floor of the wait- of our worldly existence. She excoriates
by another Jewish character, and one ing room were hundreds more desper- Christianity’s “exaggerated anxiety about
who shares the bulk of the novel with ate, emaciated paupers. Suddenly, she death” and, following Nietzsche, com-
him: the fierce, brilliant, troubled Jakobe realized that they were Russian Jews, plains about the link between the fear
Salomon. Per meets Jakobe through her on their way to America via Germany. of death and “slave morality”:
brother, Ivan, who decides, early in the She had heard of the pogroms, and was
novel, that Per has the potential of a astounded that this “infamy crying out Never will I forget the impression that
Caesar on whose brow God has written to heaven could happen right before some plaster casts of bodies excavated in Pom-
peii made on me. There were, among others,
“I come, I see, I conquer!” Per’s imperial Europe’s eyes with no authoritative voice a master and his slave, both evidently caught
impulses are manifest in his vast uto- raised against it!” Per’s Nordic frame by surprise in the rain of ash. . . . But what a
pian engineering project, which envis- and blue eyes make her think of two difference in the facial expressions! On the
ages “a system of canals on the Dutch police officers she glimpsed in Berlin, slave’s face, you could read the most confus-
model” that will connect Denmark’s riv- who seemed the embodiments of the ing puzzlement. He was overturned on his
back, his eyebrows were raised up to his hair-
ers, lakes, and fjords with one another, “brutal self-righteousness” of the Chris- line, the thick mouth open, and you could vir-
“and put the cultivated heaths and the tian society she lives in. tually hear him screaming like a stuck pig. The
flourishing new towns into contact With great ironic power, Pontoppi- other, by contrast, had preserved his mastered
with the sea on both sides.” His dream dan convinces us that Jakobe and Per dignity unto death. His almost-closed eyes,
is a physical enactment of Brandes’s must inevitably hate each other, and the fine mouth pressed shut, were marked by
the proudest and most beautiful resignation in
Modern Breakthrough. He also shares then, soon enough, that these two dam- relation to the inevitable.
Brandes’s atheism. “There was no hell,” aged creatures could have found com- My primary complaint against Christiani-
Per reflects, “other than what mankind, fort only in each other. Their relation- ty’s hope of eternal life is that it robs this life

er’s death—he is pulled back toward
his inherited faith, repenting his lust
for worldly success and begging for-
giveness from God. But fifty or so pages
later his recoil from Christian self-
sacrifice is palpable once again; he is
repelled, for instance, by Thomas à Kem-
pis’s lament, in “Imitation of Christ,”
that “truly, it is an affliction to live in
the world.” Per reflects that he is at
home neither among ascetic Chris-
tians—the piety of the Sideniuses—nor
among “the children of the world”: the
luxury of the Salomons. And yet, trou-
bled by this very homelessness, he feels
that one must choose: on one side, re-
nunciation; on the other, the world.
Which is it to be? For it is necessary to
take a stand, to “swear fidelity . . . to the
cross or champagne.”
In the end, Per surrenders to the re-
ligious impulses of a faith he seems to
“I’d like to give you an allowance, but who carries cash anymore?” stand outside of. We have been here be-
fore, in this world of a deformed and
contradictory atheism. Raging heroes
• • in Dostoyevsky, Jacobsen, and Hamsun
enjoy denouncing a God they don’t be-
of its deep seriousness and, with that, its beauty. the image of Jesus, while yelling, “Now lieve in. But Per Sidenius is stranger
When we imagine our existence here on earth I shoot in the new century!” As the cross still, because he seems to want to imi-
as only a dress rehearsal for the real perfor- splinters, a second, hollow boom sounds tate a Christ he doesn’t believe in.
mance, what remains of life’s festiveness?
through the valley, like “infernal thun- Thomas Mann praised Pontoppidan as
The powerful secular argument of der.” Per blanches, and then laughs, re- a kind of gentle prophet, for having
the novel resides in the freedom and in- membering the signposts he had seen “judged the times and, like the true poet
tensity of Per and Jakobe’s brief rela- earlier: “Take notice of the echo!” which he is, pointed toward a purer hu-
tionship. There’s a marvellous scene in manity.” In a suggestive afterword, the
the Austrian Alps, where Per has trav- eavy, God-infested, magnificently novel’s translator, Naomi Lebowitz,
elled after the couple’s engagement, and
where Jakobe has arrived without no-
H metaphysical, unafraid to court
ridicule, and playing for the highest
notes how Per “restlessly evicts himself ”
from all those places which could offer
tice. The time they spend together in possible stakes—they don’t write like him refuge. Subtler than Mann, she also
the Alps constitutes their true marriage, that anymore. They didn’t write much sees Per’s journey as the discovery of,
“a new birth and baptism.” One day, out like that in 1904, though Knut Ham- finally, “an authentic and transparent
walking, they come across a crude sun, in 1890, and Jens Peter Jacobsen, sense of self . . . the need to be himself,
wooden cross, a simple hillside shrine in 1880, and above all Dostoyevsky, the by himself.”
with a rough painting of Jesus. Per tells great progenitor, had all sounded some- The novel encourages such readings.
Jakobe a fable that he heard as a child, thing like this, not so long before. Given Per’s notebook, written in his final years,
about a farm boy who wants to become the novel’s astonishingly raw atheism, contains the following entry: “Honor
a great shot, a “magic marksman.” But how are we to read the “religious” re- to my youth’s expansive dreams! And I
in order to achieve this the boy must go nunciation of its ending? At the nov- am still a world conqueror. Every man’s
out at night, find an image of Christ, el’s close, Jakobe and Per appear to be soul is an independent universe, his death
and shoot a bullet through it. Every time living alone, and each is now commit- the extinction of the universe in min-
the lad tries to do it, his confidence wa- ted to a life of religious seriousness, iature.” In this reading, “Lucky Per,”
vers, his hand shakes, and he fails the though neither is a religious believer: though rather Scandinavian in its reli-
test. He remains “a common Sunday Per in the remote north, living in monk- gious intensity, is a still familiar version
hunter” for the rest of his life. ish retreat, and Jakobe in Copenhagen, of the bildungsroman, in which our hero
Per turns back to the hillside shrine. where she has founded a charity school ventures out into the world, tastes suc-
“Look at that pale man hanging there!” for poor children. cess, tastes the ashes of success, and re-
he says. “Why don’t we have the cour- Throughout, Per is hard to compre- treats to ponder, on his own authentic
age to spit from disgust right in his face.” hend in his cloudy questing. At one terms, the riddle of the self that has al-
Per takes out his revolver and fires at moment—around the time of his moth- ways preoccupied him. Fredric Jameson
has suggested that we should see this
as a happy ending, albeit an ironic one,
in which Per has “managed to get be- BRIEFLY NOTED
yond success or failure.”
Yet how can we accept the ironic The Secret Commonwealth, by Philip Pullman (Knopf ). Lyra
wisdom of this ending without smoth- Silvertongue, the child protagonist of Pullman’s beloved tril-
ering the vital force of the novel’s ear- ogy “His Dark Materials,” is an undergraduate at Oxford in
lier secularism? Where have the “magic this, the second installment of a follow-up trilogy. The plot
marksmen,” willing not only to spit at again involves the theocratic Magisterium (Pullman is an out-
Christ but to shoot at Christ, gone? spoken atheist) and a cosmology in which everyone has a “dae-
Where has Jakobe’s proud Roman mas- mon”—an externalized soul in animal form. What is new here
ter scuttled away to? You don’t have to is the relationship between Lyra and her daemon, a pine mar-
be a fully paid-up Nietzschean to feel ten called Pantalaimon, who disapproves of the philosophies
that if you no longer believe in the that captivate her at university. The antagonism between the
Christian God you should no longer two, which borders on rejection, suggests that the adjustments
believe in that Christian God’s slave of adulthood may become an important theme in the trilogy.
morality. If you have rejected the con-
tent of the faith, why mimic its more Song of Songs, by Sylvie Baumgartel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).
self-punishing practices? Per’s imag- “You have shot your sunlight into my life,” a narrator named
ined choice between cross or cham- Sylvie tells her absent lover, in the prose poems of this star-
pagne is not only a false choice but a tlingly intimate début. She recounts the thrills and the mun-
mutilated one, posed by a reduced ver- danities of her daily life—cooking, doing dishes and laundry,
sion of Christianity. In fact, “Lucky Per” masturbating—and launches into explicit, guileless descrip-
emerges as a savage critique of the per- tions of sex, in which she cultivates a language that is both
sistence, in Danish culture, of a certain playful and ferocious. The conventional power dynamics of
Kierkegaardian masochism, in which heterosexual love appear in grotesque extremity (“I want to
all choices are made religious rather live forever chained at your feet”), but Sylvie’s wit and charm
than secular, purifyingly negative rather make them more farcical than troubling. The result is a study
than complicatedly affirmative. Kierke- of devotion and a celebration of the rewards that come from
gaard said that one had to be a kind of loving with abandon.
lunatic in order to be a true Christian.
Is there a difference between this form JGV, by Jean-Georges Vongerichten with Michael Ruhlman (Nor-
of religious madness and actual mad- ton). Vongerichten, after years of working in Michelin-starred
ness? “Lucky Per” inserts its secular, restaurants in France and Asia, arrived in New York in his
novelistic lever into just this question. late twenties. It was 1986, and chefs, as he writes in this mem-
What if Per’s final renunciation is a oir, were just beginning to come “out of the kitchen” and es-
narrative false flag? Instead of looking tablish themselves as brands. The fusion cuisine that he de-
at Per, we should perhaps look toward veloped in the next years made him a star. Lush recollections
Jakobe, whose own renunciation takes of how he dreamed up combinations like foie gras with mango
her into the world, not away from it, are the book’s most obvious delight. (Recipes are included.)
and who seems to manage this turn But there is also an absorbing narrative of empire-building.
without compromising her defiant sec- Vongerichten, who has opened more than seventy restaurants
ularism. She is the novel’s true hero. worldwide, provides a window into the mechanics of a glo-
How do you get back to Eden? Back to balized restaurant industry that is based as much on licens-
the place you inhabited before the orig- ing and celebrity as on food.
inal religious curse? Back to a home be-
fore religion made it a home you could Me & Other Writing, by Marguerite Duras, translated from the
be exiled from? If you are a wandering, French by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan (Dorothy). Duras
homeless Christian, scarred by original was famous for recycling her life in her fiction, and this non-
sin, the answer might be: in the arms fiction collection shows her evaluating such figures as her
of a wandering Jew—but one whose difficult mother, who “had all the attributes of a great char-
own itinerancy is unseduced by the lure acter.” The book ends with a series of articles describing the
of religion, whose own secularism is not summer of 1980. As Duras tells us about the Moscow Olym-
tempted by the simplicity of religious pics, shipyard strikes in Gdańsk, her hopes for a proletarian
masochism. In the strange switchback revolution, and her despair at the “misfortune of mankind,”
of their lives, Per and Jakobe each re- she weaves in a tender narrative about a small boy and the
defined the meaning of luck. The shame adolescent girl who looks after him. This is entirely fictional—a
was that they could not share it. Lucky characteristic ploy from a writer who believed that under-
Jakobe, unlucky Per.  standing suffering was an act of the imagination.
In addition, the design provides flex-
T H E A R T WO R L D ible space for temporary installations
that will serve the museum’s duty to en-
REHAB
tertain. A spectacular affair by the South
Korean artist Haegue Yang in the mu-
seum’s still space-squandering atrium
The Museum of Modern Art enlarged. features wheeled assemblages that jin-
gle as, at intervals, they are pushed
BY PETER SCHJELDAHL around by performers, and colorful vinyl
reliefs that cling to the high walls like
mutant lepidoptera. The work’s politi-
cal, spiritual, and whatnot themes are
arcane, but never mind. It makes for an
elating circus atmosphere, hospitable to
audiences only cursorily versed in art
history. Popular engagement has be-
come a necessary face, or fate, of any
current art-making that isn’t adjudi-
cated by a plutocratic market. Without
it, contemporary art is a buyers’ club.
Decisions to stitch works of for-
merly segregated mediums, such as
graphic art, photography, design,
architecture, artists’ books, and film,
into the historic course of painting
and sculpture come off pleasantly—
the museum owns gems in all fields—
though you sense the strain of the
forced equivalencies of art and arti-
facts. Moma laid the groundwork for
this dilemma nine decades ago, when
the founders envisaged an encyclope-
dic approach to products of moder-
nity, eliding bohemian studios with
commercial industries. That mandate,
though still guiding new acquisitions,
has devolved from evangelical avant-
gardism to the preservation of multi-
tudinous brainstorms of yesteryear.
The adorable 1945-vintage Bell heli-
he Vatican, Kremlin, and Valhalla American artist Faith Ringgold, with copter, acquired in 1984, yet hovers
T of modernism—home of the faith,
the sway, and the glamour—that is the
Picasso’s gospel “Les Demoiselles d’Avi-
gnon” (1907). The renovation is a big deal
above the stairs to the second floor,
gamely signifying something epochal,
Museum of Modern Art is reopening, for the global art world, and certainly or not so epochal, or bizarre, depend-
after an expansion that adds forty-seven for New York. It runs up against prob- ing on your predilection. So vast is the
thousand square feet and many new lems old and new. Generously enlarged frame of reference adopted at the mu-
galleries, inserted into a moma-owned quarters will only marginally relieve a seum’s outset that, by now, no survey
apartment tower next door and built chronic crush of visitors, the museum of the collection can amount to more
on neighboring land gobbled from the victimized by its own charisma. En- than a walk-through brochure of choice
late, by some of us lamented, digs of hanced representations of art by women, examples. Obligatory breadth renders
the American Folk Art Museum. Far African-Americans, Africans, Latin- depth moot. There’s no help for this.
more, though still a fraction, of moma’s Americans, and Asians can feel tenta- It’s time to say that the reconfigura-
nonpareil collection is now on display, tive, pitched between self-evident jus- tion of the museum is, all in all, terrific,
arranged roughly chronologically but tice and noblesse oblige. But such efforts and that I don’t care very much about
studded with such mutually provoking are important and must continue. We the strenuous calculations that deter-
juxtapositions as a 1967 painting that will have a diverse cosmopolitan cul- mined it. This is only another chap-
fantasizes a race riot, by the African- ture or none worth bothering about. ter in the life stories of all of us who
were imprinted by our initial epipha-
Masterpieces dulled by overfamiliarity spring to second lives by being repositioned. nies with the museum’s treasures. Some
84 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2019 PHOTOGRAPH BY WARD ROBERTS
of the rehangs electrify, notably in the only art—but the experience leaves a continuous present tense: the tumbling
first room of the permanent collection, moral residue of the strivingly good condition of culture both lofty and de-
where a sequence of Symbolist work, and true. motic since the rock-and-roll, corpo-
by the likes of Redon, Vuillard, Ensor, ratizing, brutally divisive nineteen-six-
Munch, Gauguin, and Henri Rousseau, he best time to visit the revamped ties. But history avenges itself as history
leaps (after a de-rigueur pause for van
Gogh) to Cézanne, who comes off more
T moma is your first, punctuated
with reintroductions to old artistic com-
does, freezing the breaks for freedom
in their bygone day.
than ever as revolutionary. An old for- panions. Masterpieces dulled by over- After this, avant-gardes turn inward.
malist chronicle of the era thus gives familiarity in an account that had be- Disproportionate space is given to con-
way to the torrid poetic intensities of come as rote as a college textbook spring ceptual artists of the seventies: fledg-
the nineteenth-century European fin to second lives by being repositioned. ling baby boomers, for the most part,
de siècle. But it’s plenty enough for me (I left out, while describing the collec- who presumed to conjoin art and life
to come upon Piet Mondrian’s “Broad- tion’s first room, the presence of six lyr- in the moment but mainly muddled
way Boogie-Woogie” (1942-43) freshly ical ceramics by George E. Ohr, the them with work that, as if on perverse
recontextualized, as an outrigger to nineteenth-century “Mad Potter of Bi- principle, is visually boring. To be im-
an eye-opening historical show of loxi”—one of several invigorating nods portant then as much as entailed being
Latin-American art, “Sur moderno: to formerly scanted outsiders.) Re- unappealing. This is a gross generaliza-
Journeys of Abstraction,” which in- freshed, Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, tion, unfair to many, but the impression
cludes work by the ingenious Brazil- and Pollock reaffirm, by our awe, their of a slough in art history is unshakable.
ians Lygia Pape and Hélio Oiticica. trailblazing toward a future that, never The apposite galleries document the for-
(The rationale for Mondrian’s place- arriving, continues to beckon even as mation of a bubble culture that, coast-
ment there is a Latin-American pref- it recedes in time, like the Doppler ing on institutional and academic em-
erence, after the Second World War, effect of a train passing by. Anew, I braces, drifted afield of aesthetic appe-
for European rigor over New York’s come to a dead stop in front of Ma- tite, which, from the eighties onward,
perfervid painterly originalities.) tisse’s “The Piano Lesson” (1917), an has become the criterion of a market-
How did Mondrian do it? And what idyll of bourgeois family life and an ex- defined alternate tradition of epicu-
is it, exactly, and how does whatever ercise of formal audacity, made at the rean chic. A few artists, such as Cindy
that may be matter? The fifty-inch- same time that the abattoir battles at Sherman and (for a while) Jeff Koons,
square canvas presents rectangular Verdun were unfolding, some hundred now and then split the difference be-
blocks and little squares of red, yellow, and sixty miles away. tween artistic challenge and commer-
and blue paint in and across asymmet- The Matisse, like Arshile Gorky’s cial catnip.
rically gridded horizontal and vertical “Diary of a Seducer” (1945), a plunge I’m veering around here, as you will
bands, against an off-white ground. into angst-ridden sensuality in another in your turn. So many stories! One that
Boogie-woogie is apt, like the left and time of crisis, is about art as a frivolity thrills me is that of a room devoted to
right hands at a piano seeming to ig- indispensable to a civilization that pe- the work, the influence, and the aura
nore each other but generating intri- riodically verges on bloody collapse—a of the moma curator and major Amer-
cate, exuberant rhythmic agreements. modest but robust instance of poise ican poet Frank O’Hara. His acciden-
The term “abstract” feels too dry— amid rushing, dire events. Or don’t you tal death, in 1966, at the age of forty,
the painting is so concretely active and feel that way? Can we talk? Moma’s re- ripped the heart out of an overlap of
urgently optimistic. It motors along as vision of its master narrative should artistic and literary communities in
you look, engaging your attention in trigger no end of conversations about New York. He couldn’t be replaced.
hops, skips, and jumps. The excruciat- issues of the century past and how they Prints by leading artists from a memo-
ingly hard work that’s evident (try to preface, or fail to, our anxiety-prone rial book that the museum issued in
imagine any detail scaled, placed, or times. Not despite but because the focus 1967, “In Memory of My Feelings,” em-
colored differently) bespeaks a convic- is “only art,” it supplements serious anate the deep charm of a moment
tion so compelling that your heart thought about the world with registra- when a fully fleshed, buoyant, demo-
pledges allegiance to it without your tions of what it’s like to live in it—the cratic sophistication seemed afoot. I
mind having any clear idea of what out-there of news squared up to the in- know. I was a kid poet and tyro critic
that involves. Call the value utopian here of spirit. After absorbing the gen- then. I met O’Hara. He inscribed my
modernity. Call it anything. Only lux- eral themes of the reinstallation, which copy of a catalogue that he had writ-
uriate in the good luck of having eyes will take time, we can get down to the ten the introduction to: “For Peter with
to see with and a body that responds quibbling that is the elixir of art talk in palship, Frank.” He made pals of all
to bopping suggestion. “Broadway the big city. Go with a gabby friend or the world. He drank too much, as peo-
Boogie-Woogie,” by a starchy Dutch- two, to jump-start your share. ple then tended to, gesticulating with
man enamored of the foxtrot and ideal As ever, the sharpest departure in cigarettes in their other hands. For
democracy, feels foundational, as if the hanging’s tale is between future-ori- many, with O’Hara gone, New York
nothing in the world quite eludes its ented modernism and the shocks of took on the trembly cast of an inter-
gravitational tug. The excitement fades Pop art and minimalism, which com- minable hangover. Moma’s inclusion
from the mind as you turn away—it’s menced to bask or to brood in a dis- of him gladdens. 
the town in western Wyoming where
T H E T H E AT R E they attended a small conservative Cath
olic college known for the rigors of its
STAGE RIGHT
classical education. They trade lines
from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s great
poem “God’s Grandeur,” drop adoring
Degrees of conservatism in “Heroes of the Fourth Turning.” references to “my gal Flannery O,” and
ask one another questions like “How’s
BY VINSON CUNNINGHAM your soul?”
As the party rambles on and the
guests flit in and out of the house, a
warm, yellow stream of light comes
from the door, heightening the drama
of shadow and light. Everybody’s face
is half lit. (Isabella Byrd offers a mas
terpiece of lighting design, rich with
portent and glinting significance.) Peo
ple step out of shadows, having heard
things not meant for their ears. Hop
per becomes Caravaggio, and “Heroes,”
a formally lovely, subtly horrifying play
about the death rattle of ideologies and
the thin line between devotion and de
lusion, echoes the interplay between
those two painters of profound psycho
logical depth. Each of the characters is
in some ways terribly alone, like Hop
per’s city zombies, vacant about the eyes,
but each one’s heart, poked into flame
by conversation, is, like the doubting
disciple in Caravaggio’s “The Incredu
lity of Saint Thomas,” reaching out for
something solid to match the intensity
of his or her hopes and ideas.
They’re all conservatives, bewildered
by a world that no longer takes its shape
from the political and metaphysical as
sumptions they share. Young though
they are, the spirit of the age is pass
ing them by. Much of the thrill of the
“ H eroes of the Fourth Turning,”
the new play by Will Arbery,
Horizons theatre—the onstage scene
looks like a rural Hopper. The silence
play comes in hearing ultraconservative
ideas—scarce on New York stages—
directed by Danya Taymor, opens on a around the man almost speaks, and its discussed in earnest, and carried to their
stage so dark that your eyes grope for intimations of impending loss are awful. most ominous conclusions. The timing
an anchor. They seize slowly into focus, After the shot, the man guts his vic of the party, set in the very recent and
and you start to see a Doppler map of tim—a deer—but noticeably lacks any miserably memorable past, lends even
finely parsed grays. At farthest stage hint of sporting exuberance. His hand more symbolic weight: it’s just a week
right, there’s the back door of a house shakes, and he needs to steady himself. after the whitesupremacist riot and
and a tiny patio. Off to the left, past a Afterward, he’s mostly worried about murder in Charlottesville, Virginia.
dead campfire and some chairs, is the the blood on the ground. Steve Bannon’s just been fired from the
true dark of the woods. By the door, The shooter’s name is Justin ( Jeb White House.
it’s just light enough to see the figure Kreager), and, in the next scene, he’s
of a man sitting improbably still, hold hosting a fraught party that’s begin ike Justin, Emily ( Julia McDer
ing a rifle.
In the moments before he shoots the
ning to wind down. A group of young
acquaintances—not quite friends in
L mott) still lives in Wyoming. She’s
sick with a disease that’s never named
gun—a real one (with blanks), startling every case, but they share a kind of com but which leaves her body in constant
and resonant in the small Playwrights pulsory intimacy—have converged on pain and her mind, as we see it inexo
rably revealed, open to a raw and some
Will Arbery’s play reveals the thin line between devotion and delusion. times unwelcome empathy with the
86 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2019 ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE RÖSCH
world beyond this circle of friends. Her moment of the play: you’ve got to dis
mother, Gina (Michele Pawk), is the tinguish dark from dark, and perceive
college’s newly inaugurated president, a thousand darknesses in between.
and the person in whose honor the group
has ostensibly gathered. rbery—who has said that he was
Kevin ( John Zdrojeski) works for a
publisher of Catholic textbooks whose
A brought up by “articulate, brilliant,
poetic” Catholic conservatives, and there
bland accounts of the lives of the saints fore knows whereof he writes—seems
have become his bane. He’s too drunk, to communicate his own frustration
close to a breakdown, and revelling in most clearly when it comes to race. Jus
the selfhatred and the religious anguish tin, Emily, Teresa, and Kevin have been
that have become his entire personal sticking around with the understand
ity. Incommensurably, he wants both a ing that Gina, the woman of the hour,
girlfriend and a priest’s collar. will be swinging by the house. When,
Teresa (Zoë Winters) lives in Brook belatedly, she does, feelings have been
lyn among the heathens, a Bannonite hurt, and everybody’s looking to strike.
rose grown from concrete. (“He’ll be Gina’s an oldschool Republican—a
back,” she says of her fired hero. And, Goldwater girl, and a former member
who knows, she might be right.) Her of the John Birch Society, but, temper
sentences are harsh, fascistic bullets, and amentally, she thinks, she’s a moderate.
Pictured: American Airlines team members surviving and
she advocates a Schmittian war against Trump will come and go, she hopes more co-surviving cancer with SU2C ambassador, Tim McGraw
abortionists and other apostates. Un than sincerely believes. When she real
like the softhearted, ecumenical Emily, izes just how radical Teresa’s stance has
she sees Trump as a life raft; to her, he’s become, she comes down hard on the
a “Golem molded from the clay of mass younger woman. But what she intends
media, and he’s come to save us all.” as a thorough and effective rebuke only Join American Airlines and Stand Up
Winters plays Teresa with unnerving goes to show how thin the tissue be
precision, carefully walking the line be tween their politics is, how her edifice To Cancer in our mission to help make
tween naturalism—some of us are truly of decency hides a rotten foundation.
both this anxious and obnoxiously con “You call us racist, we’ll call you racist,” everyone diagnosed with cancer a
fident—and a kind of stentorian, hys Teresa says, playing out the argument
terical Fox News presentation. in her head. “You call us white, we’ll call long-term survivor. Donate $25 or
Justin is gentle but equally afraid of you black.” Gina doesn’t like the words, more and you’ll receive 10 American
the outer world. He wants to withdraw but she doesn’t refuse to accept “us” and
into a localism that sounds uncomfort “black” as racial and ideological oppo Airlines AAdvantage® Miles for every
ably like doomsday prepperdom. He sites. To her, as much as to Teresa, these
cites the “Benedict Option”—a strate will never be equivalent terms. To say dollar you give.
gic Christian retreat promoted by the “conservative” here is also to say “white.”
writer Rod Dreher—and gives a short Justin never quite forgets that blood
speech that cools the blood: “There are on the patio, or the difficulty he had kill
more of them.” More of the godless and ing the animal. That’s never happened
progressive, he means. “We lost the pop before—hunting is a favorite pastime— Visit
ular vote, by a lot. . . . And they’re mo and he sees the change in himself as just StandUpToCancer.org/
bilizing. In many ways, they are in power. one more sign of the times’ palsying
And they’re trying to wipe us out.” effect on the simplicity of the old ways. AmericanAirlines
There’s just enough ideological and But nothing in this richly allusive to learn more.
attitudinal space between these char play is exactly as it seems at first glance.
acters to make for revealing arguments Justin’s fixation on the early sacrifice—
in each direction—for example: Can he keeps trying to scrub away the blood
one be prochoice and, in any mean when he thinks nobody’s watching—
ingful way, also be a good person?— put me in mind of Cain, fretting over
and to reveal the despair lurking be the spilled blood of his innocent brother,
hind their rhetorical and emotional Abel. Perhaps the blood in Charlottes
poses. To catch the nuances in their ville, too, is crying out, however quietly,
differences—and to imagine what these from the ground. Whatever Justin’s be
nuances might mean for the future of liefs, a war of all against all might not
people like these, and therefore for the suit his gentle nature, or sit right in his
future of our country—is a bit like the simmering conscience. Maybe the guilt Stand Up To Cancer is a division of the Entertainment Industry
Foundation, a 501(c)(3)charitable organization.
corneal adjustment required in the first he can’t shake is a kind of grace.  American Airlines, the Flight Symbol logo and the Tail Design are
marks of American Airlines, Inc. ©2019 American Airlines, Inc.
All rights reserved.
perennially and pompously confident
THE CURRENT CINEMA that something will turn up. “We’re
gathered here today to celebrate the
INTRUDERS
reconnection of our phones and this
bounteous Wi-Fi,” he declares. Every-
one is impressed, therefore, when Ki-
“Parasite” and “Gemini Man.” woo is visited by an old school friend,
who, unlike him, went on to college—
BY ANTHONY LANE and who, moreover, arrives with a solid
proposal. Would Ki-woo care to take
nce upon a time, there were two The poor family is the one we en- over a private tutoring gig? He’s cer-
O families. One was rich and the
other was poor. So, to redress the bal-
counter first. Their very first action, in-
deed, defines their plight. Inhabiting a
tainly bright enough. The trouble is
that he doesn’t have any suitable doc-
ance, the poor family, who liked the cramped apartment below street level, umentation, such as a printed diploma.
idea of not being poor, moved in with with meagre resources, they rely on free Correction: he does have a diploma,
the rich family. Strange to tell, the rich Wi-Fi from surrounding businesses, thanks to his sister. She’s always been
family didn’t even notice. For a while, and, at this moment, the hunt is on for a whiz at Photoshop.
but only for a while, the two families a signal. It’s the enterprising daughter The air in the Kim household is alive
dwelt in peace. To say that they all lived of the family, Kim Ki-jung (Park So- with what you might call hecticity, and
Bong—whose compositional eye and
nose for atmosphere are keener than
ever—insures that, as Ki-woo walks to
his job interview, we sense the advent
of a blessed calm. Encastled behind
lofty walls and girdled by greensward
(sprinklers feed the greenness, with a
gentle hiss) is the home of Park Dong-ik
(Lee Sun-kyun) and his wife, Yeon-kyo
( Jo Yeo-jeong), who is somewhat less
serene than her surroundings. Their
offspring are Da-hye ( Jung Ji-so), the
girl whom Ki-woo will teach, and her
younger brother, Da-song ( Jung Hyun-
jun), who is a pest. He has a yen for all
things Native American, and there’s a
brief prick of unease as the new tutor
is shown around by a housekeeper. Stuck
to the wall is an arrow, tipped with a
Domestic work links a poor family and a rich one in Bong Joon-ho’s film. sucker: a leftover from the kid’s unruly
games, though you wonder if it points
happily ever after, or even that they all dam), who finally gets a connection, by the way ahead. Will there be further
lived, would not be quite true. crouching on a raised platform at one attacks, and will they all count as play?
Such is the tale told by the Korean end of the bathroom, beside the toi- Ki-woo fares well in his appointed
director Bong Joon-ho in his new movie, let—which will, before the movie is task, and thereby establishes a pattern.
“Parasite,” which won the Palme d’Or done, erupt under the force of flooded Through cunning and calculation, his
at the Cannes Film Festival this year. sewers. To add to the charm, the apart- sister is soon enlisted as an art thera-
The judges at Cannes are no more in- ment has an issue with stinkbugs. pist for Da-song; his father is hired as
fallible than the voters at the Academy When a fumigator approaches, up goes a driver; and his mother, to complete
Awards, but in this case the laurels were the cry “We’ll get free extermination!” the set, finds herself running the opu-
well deserved, and, amid the plaudits, What a boast. lent home, supplanting the luckless
there was a shade of relief. I know many Ki-jung has an older brother, a quiet housekeeper. (Not that we’ve seen the
people who were captivated by “The lad named Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik). last of her.) What matters is that each
Host,” Bong’s twisted fable of eco-mu- Their mother and father, Chung-sook of them pretends to be unrelated to
tation, but that came out in 2006, and ( Jang Hye-jin) and Ki-taek (Song the others. As a result, although the
since then, especially in “Snowpiercer” Kang-ho), are flustered and foul- nest is under siege, the Parks have no
(2013) and “Okja” (2017), his fantasti- mouthed. At present, the family’s sole idea that they are being invaded by the
cal ventures have strayed toward the source of income derives from folding Kims. The collective noun for cuckoos,
wanton. Now, with “Parasite,” he is back pizza boxes, although Ki-taek, like Mr. by the way, is an asylum.
on track with a vengeance. Micawber, in “David Copperfield,” is What sort of movie is this? It’s not
88 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 21, 2019 ILLUSTRATION BY LEONARDO SANTAMARIA
a home-intrusion thriller, like “Unlaw- smell.” So says Dong-ik, who prefers wish her harm, you merely gather fuzz
ful Entry” (1992) or “Panic Room” to lounge in the back of his chauffeured from the soft skin of the fruit and waft
(2002), though it’s often spikily tense. Mercedes. Yet Bong doesn’t set out to it over her, like perfume. By contrast,
It’s not a comedy of social upheaval, paint the wealthy—for all their hau- the main menace to Henry Brogan
like “Boudu Saved from Drowning” teur—as monsters, or the impoverished (Will Smith), the hero of “Gemini
(1932), though it does have wit to spare. as saints, and you don’t emerge from Man,” is bee stings. Any assailants must
(Ki-woo praises one of Da-song’s hid- his film feeling bullied. You feel wor- get hold of some venom, presumably
eous paintings, saying, “It’s a chimpan- ried and seduced. after putting in a polite request to the
zee, right?” “A self-portrait,” his dot- “Parasite” is too long, but then, these bee, add the stuff to a dart, and then
ing mother replies.) And it’s not a days, what isn’t? When was the last fire the dart at Henry. Jeez, what a fuss.
horror flick, despite a passing resem- time that a movie left you wanting How about offing the guy with a reg-
blance to Jordan Peele’s “Us,” released more? In this case, to be fair, the length ular bullet?
this year. Like Peele, Bong makes the is a pardonable fault, for there is plenty No chance. Henry is all but invin-
eerie suggestion that the underclass here on which to feast. I loved the wide cible. As a distinguished assassin, near-
might literally exist below the feet of walls of glass, in the Parks’ residence, ing the dusk of his career, he is alert to
the bourgeoisie. Both directors are at with a commanding view of the gar- every threat. That is a problem for his
pains to explore what lies beneath, in den. (Da-song pitches a tepee there: a brooding boss, Clay Verris (Clive
cellars and basements, though Bong disturbing spectacle.) When Dong-ik Owen), who entertains the hope that
goes one better with a sublimely cho- and his family go on vacation, Ki-taek Henry will not simply retire but expire
reographed sequence in which three of and his family take their place, unbid- as well. In a bold gesture, and with the
the Kims, needing to hide in a hurry, den, and it’s with deep satisfaction that covert assistance of special effects, Ver-
seek refuge under a low table in the he sits and surveys the scene. “Rain ris dispatches a younger, whippier
living room—lying there and listening falling on the lawn, as we sip our whis- Henry—also played by Smith—to kill
while the master of the house and his keys,” he says. As his wife remarks, the older man.
wife, in matching gray silk pajamas, money is like an iron: it smooths out Imagine what wicked sport the
make out on the couch. “Buy me drugs,” the wrinkles. Whether Ki-taek’s relish Smith of yore would have had with this
she suddenly moans, at passion’s peak. of illicit pleasures makes him the ulti- conceit. Imagine, that is, the Fresh
That explains a lot. mate rebel or a gullible stooge for the Prince of Bel-Air making fun, not just
Bong, in short, is a merchant of sweet life is open to debate, and it’s no mincemeat, of his middle-aged self. Re-
stealth. There is no more frenzy in the surprise that, with half an hour to go, grettably, as we know from Smith’s per-
editing of “Parasite” than there are the plot of “Parasite” could yet turn in formance in “Suicide Squad” (2016), the
shudders in the motion of the camera, many directions. In this unequal world, effusive joy that once ran through his
and, as with Hitchcock, such feline it could be heading for class war or a veins appears, for reasons unknown, to
prowling toys with us and claws us into brokered peace—for savagery or still- have leaked away, and “Gemini Man”
complicity with deeds that we might ness, or both. Which path Bong se- is largely a sad affair. Fans of double
otherwise fear or scorn. In paraphrase, lects, of course, I have no intention of characters should stick with Austin
the politics of the movie (not to men- revealing. Go and find out for yourself. Powers, who, in “The Spy Who Shagged
tion the title) may smack of the sim- Me” (1999), enjoys the rare privilege of
plistic, and some of the dialogue lands he one thing that links “Parasite” meeting the person he was ten minutes
with a thud: “An opening for a secu-
rity guard attracts five hundred univer-
T to the latest Ang Lee film, “Gem-
ini Man,” is a dread of allergic reac-
ago. “You,” he says, “are adorable.” 
sity graduates,” for instance, or, “Peo- tions. The housekeeper in Bong’s film NEWYORKER.COM
ple who ride the subway have a special is so sensitive to peaches that, if you Richard Brody blogs about movies.
THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2019 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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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 David Borchart,
must be received by Sunday, October 20th. The finalists in the October 7th contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the November 4th 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
“Well, don’t put it on the menu if you can’t catch one.”

Liam Cornwell, Los Angeles, Calif.
“Aren’t you going to write this down?” “I always knew we’d wind up together.”
Marcel Dijkers, Berkley, Mich. Adam Wagner, Santa Monica, Calif.
“Is it too late to cancel the salmon?”

Martin Smith, Tewkesbury, England
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