RESCUING AND

DELIVERING
FRESH FOOD
IN NYC TO
DECEMBER 2, 2024
EMPOWER A
STRONGER
4 GOINGS ON TOMORROW.
7 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Dhruv Khullar on R.F.K., Jr.,’s ideas; THAT’S HOW WE
Ukrainian wine; Tyler, the Creator’s carnival;
carbon-negative vodka; Wilson and Washingtons. FEED GOOD.
LETTER FROM THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY
Stephania Taladrid 12 The Texas Exodus
Why ob-gyns are fleeing the state.
AMERICAN CHRONICLES
Daniel Immerwahr 18 Deadline Extension
Old age, reborn.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
John Kenney 23 Withholding Sex From My Wife
BRAVE NEW WORLD DEPT.
James Somers 24 Getting a Grip
Robots learn to use their hands.
U.S. JOURNAL
Paige Williams 32 Wild Side
The bears of Lake Tahoe.
FICTION
Shuang Xuetao 42 “Paris Friend”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
Jackson Arn 52 John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers.
57 Briefly Noted
Thomas Meaney 58 The sunny origins of the Frankfurt School.
ON TELEVISION
Inkoo Kang 62 “The Franchise,” on HBO.
THE THEATRE
Helen Shaw 64 “Death Becomes Her” and “Burnout Paradise.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Justin Chang 66 “Wicked” and “Gladiator II.”
POEMS
Larry Levis 38 “Homage to Willie Mays” RESCUING FOOD FOR NYC
Jorie Graham 46 “The World”
COVER
Tom Toro “Incognito”

DRAWINGS Emily Flake, Brendan Loper, Greg Nussbaum,

Roz Chast, Jared Nangle, Edward Koren, Ellie Black,
David Borchart, Jeremy Nguyen, Johnny DiNapoli, Tyson Cole,
Zachary Kanin, Liana Finck SPOTS Nishant Choksi CITYHARVEST.ORG
 CONTRIBUTORS
Paige Williams (“Wild Side,” p. 32), James Somers (“Getting a Grip,” p. 24),
a New Yorker staff writer since 2015, a writer and a programmer, 9rst con-
received a 2024 Mirror Award for her tributed to The New Yorker in 2018.
story about a father-son reporting duo
in Oklahoma. Stephania Taladrid (“The Texas Exo­
dus,” p. 12), a contributing writer for the
Daniel Immerwahr (“Deadline Ex­ magazine, was a 9nalist for the 2023
tension,” p. 18), a contributing writer, Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
teaches at Northwestern and is the
author of “How to Hide an Empire: Thomas Meaney (Books, p. 58) is the
A History of the Greater United States.” editor of Granta.

Shuang Xuetao (Fiction, p. 42) has Boris Fishman (The Talk of the Town,
published seven volumes of fiction. p. 8 ) teaches creative writing at the
“Hunter,” a new book of stories, is due University of Austin. His books in-
out in English next year. clude the new novel “The Unwanted,”
which will be released in March.
Tom Toro (Cover) has contributed to
the magazine since 2010. His latest John Kenney (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 23)
children’s book, “Crocodiles Need has been contributing to the magazine
Friends, Too!,” comes out in May. since 1999. His forthcoming novel,
“I See You’ve Called in Dead,” is due
Inkoo Kang (On Television, p. 62), a out in April.
sta3 writer, has been a television critic
for The New Yorker since 2022. Larry Levis (Poem, p. 38 ), who died
in 1996, was an award-winning poet.
Jorie Graham (Poem, p. 46) teaches at “Swirl & Vortex,” a volume of his col-
Harvard. She is the author of, most lected works, edited by David St. John,
recently, the poetry collection “To 2040.” will be published in 2026.

THE NEW YORKER INTERVIEW

Daniel Craig on Going from Bond to Burroughs

CATHERINE OPIE

By Isaac Chotiner

Read this digital-only story on the New Yorker app, the best place to find
the latest issue, plus more news, commentary, criticism, and humor.
 THE MAIL
LOST AND FOUND ing (Dispatches, November 18th). Le­
pore contrasts her father’s efforts to
I enjoyed reading Sam Knight’s arti­ help teen­agers who needed abortions
cle about the people who dedicate their with her mother’s opposition to abor­
lives to searching for sunken treasure tion, and offers her mother’s indepen­
(“The Shipwreck Detective,” Novem­ dent beliefs as an indication of how
ber 11th). Knight mentions what many Democrats this year condescended to
consider the holy grail of colonial ship­ women by assuming to know their views
wrecks—the San José, a ship loaded on the issue. Yet American women
with gold bullion that was sunk off the should not continue to separate the
coast of Cartagena by the British naval abortion issue from other issues affect­
squadron of Commodore Wager, in ing our lives. We may have fond mem­
1708—and writes that it was discov­ ories of skirt markers stashed in attics,
ered by the Colombian government in but nostalgia can be dangerous; there
2015. In fact, I feel sure that it was pos­ is a through line from the skirt marker
itively located by my father, Eugene to being required to travel to another
Lyon, in the early nineteen­eighties. state for basic reproductive care. To
My father, who passed away in 2020, quote Lepore’s mother, women are still
was arguably the most successful being told to make “idiotic” adjustments.
“shipwreck detective” of his era. (I don’t Jessica Kovar
think he would have used that term, New York City
but it is, in essence, the profession he
helped pioneer.) He had been focussed George Saunders, in his election essay,
on the San José project for a number provides an example of how the same
of years after his location and salvage twenty thousand people can be primed
of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, off to be antagonists at a political rally
the Florida Keys. Working from his yet be fairly good­natured toward one
research in both the General Archive another in a less charged environment,
of the Indies, in Seville, Spain, and the such as a baseball game (Dispatches,
U.K.’s Public Records Office (now the November 18th). He then asks us to
National Archives), his team found the think of ways to address our national
wreck, and obtained a lease from the disease of poisonous division and dis­
Colombian government to proceed course. I propose a year of mandatory
with the salvage operation. But the post­secondary­school national ser­
composition of the Colombian gov­ vice. The service could be civilian or
ernment changed, and the project en­ military, here in the U.S. or abroad.
tered a long purgatory (the negotia­ Aside from teaching useful job skills,
tions at one time even involved Gabriel the service would be structured to cre­
García Márquez); in the end, the lease ate interaction and involvement be­
expired, funding dried up, and the lo­ tween participants from various loca­
cation of the San José was “lost.” Fi­ tions and social strata over an extended
nally, decades later, it was found again. period. The only way to break down
Kenny Lyon divisions is to learn to live with “the
Los Angeles, Calif. other.” Let’s start this with all of our
1 young people.
WHAT COMES AFTER Elizabeth Cohen
New York City
Jill Lepore’s description of her moth­
er’s quirky Election Night tradition— •
bringing out her Singer skirt marker Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
and changing hemlines in front of the address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
television—illustrates two important [email protected]. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
American traits: we are scrappy, and any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
we are too good at compartmentaliz­ of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
 for companies around the world, the Armory
represents a huge canvas. For “Dear Lord,
GOINGS ON Make Me Beautiful,” Abraham fills the mas-
sive Drill Hall with sixteen dancers, moving in
NOVEMBER 26 – DECEMBER 3, 2024 the sensual, urban, and gestural style for which
he is known. Despite the epic surroundings,
his subject is intimate: the passage of time, the
joys and the loss that come with age. For the
first time in recent years, Abraham himself
will dance. There is no greater, nor more sub-
tle, interpreter of his silken movement phrases
What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. than Abraham. The dance is complemented by
immersive visuals (by Cao Yuxi) and music by
the contemporary ensemble yMusic.—Marina
Luna Luna was a short-lived amusement park in Hamburg, Germany, that Harss (Park Avenue Armory; Dec. 3-14.)
featured attractions designed by artists including Salvador Dalí, Jean-Michel
Basquiat, Keith Haring, and David Hockney. The passion project of a poet- BROADWAY | In our moment of A.I. anxiety,
Hue Park and Will Aronson’s musical “Maybe
songwriter-pop star named André Heller, the park (pictured) opened to Happy Ending” has the audacity to suggest that
the public in 1987, largely funded by a gossip rag, and stayed that way for a bots have feelings, too. Granted, the models
summer. Whatever else it was or wasn’t, it was a masterpiece of networking— depicted haven’t been invented yet, but the
Seoul inhabited by Oliver (Darren Criss,
Heller used his connections to Dalí and Andy Warhol to recruit a veritable marvellously machinelike yet loving) and
Ocean’s 11 of famous artists young and old. After spending thirty-five years Claire (Helen J Shen), two obsolete “Helper-
in shipping containers, the park has been partly reassembled at the Shed, in bots” consigned by their human owners to a
retirement home for sentient machines, isn’t
the exhibition “Luna Luna, Forgotten Fantasy,” through Jan. 5.—Jackson Arn hard to picture. That’s thanks in part to the
sleekly designed production, particularly the
canny video projections, whose black-and-
white renderings of the Helperbots’ memories
give the futuristic technology the shimmer
of nostalgia. The whole show, under Michael
Arden’s adventurous direction, revels in such
juxtapositions while exploring what robots are
capable of feeling for their owners, owners for
their robots, and robots for one another.—Dan
Stahl (Belasco; open run.)

ART | Staged photography, the large-scale cine-

matic style that dominated the medium at the
turn of the millennium, has seemed exhausted,
if not dead, for some time now. But Jeff Wall,
one of its most accomplished proponents, is
here to remind us how sharp and engaging it
can be. In a show of new and old work, includ-
ing three small early landscapes in light boxes,
the most arresting images slip between fact
and fiction so convincingly that they feel like
remembered dreams or forgotten fairy tales.
In one, a gray-haired woman sits, about to
darn a sock, in a bookstore aisle; in another,
a dazed, shirtless man sprawls on the ground,
surrounded by a menacing crew. Nothing here
looks gimmicky or overproduced, and the
knockout picture is the simplest: a colossal
black-and-white portrait of a young guy,
ABOUT TOWN soaking wet, a pathetic Everyman, at once
defeated and heroic.—Vince Aletti (Gagosian;
through Dec. 21.)
INDIE ROCK | Few bands have come storming CLASSICAL | Fretwork, the early-music ensemble
out of the gates quicker than Interpol, a bas- and self-described “consort of viols,” made its MOVIES | “A Traveler’s Needs,” the third collab-
tion of indie music in New York during the Carnegie Hall début back in 2012, during a sea- oration of Isabelle Huppert and the South Ko-
early two-thousands. The band’s début album, son that was opened by Yo-Yo Ma. This winter, rean director Hong Sangsoo, is the sparest and
“Turn On the Bright Lights” (2002), which the two are programmed on the same night. At most idiosyncratic of the trio. Huppert plays
came at the crest of the post-punk revival, Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, Fretwork reunites with a French woman named Iris, who recently
SABINA SARNITZ / COURTESY LUNA LUNA

felt like a paradigm shift, fiercely rhythmic, the renowned British countertenor Iestyn Da- arrived in Seoul and is teaching French with
vaguely melancholic, and a bit melodramatic. vies, to share selections from their collaboration an original method, insistently questioning
The subsequent Interpol records—“Antics” “Lamento,” with the early-music specialist Silas her students (in English) and transforming
(2004) and “Our Love to Admire” (2007)— Wollston on organ and virginals. A skip away, in their personal confessions into poetic reveries,
only bolstered the band’s epic bona fides with the Stern Auditorium, Yo-Yo Ma returns to his in French, which she has them study. But Iris
more locked-in, thrumming arrangements well-worn spot as a soloist, playing Dvořák’s herself is a mystery—her younger students are
and bolder hooks from the singer Paul Banks. emblematic Cello Concerto in B Minor with open to her probing curiosity, but middle-aged
By the time one of the band members left, in the Czech Philharmonic. Patrons will have to people (including her roommate’s mother)
2010, Interpol had already become a monu- make a choice, but there isn’t a bad one.—Jane are skeptical of her motives. As Hong evokes
ment of its era; the band taps into that history Bua (Carnegie Hall; Dec. 3.) the risks of a life lived artistically, Huppert,
as it winds down a tour celebrating “Antics” with energy and determination, invests a rest-
turning twenty.—Sheldon Pearce (Brooklyn DANCE | Even for the highly successful cho- less creative drive with blunt force.—Richard
Steel; Dec. 3-4.) reographer Kyle Abraham, who makes dances Brody (Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center.)

4 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024

 CELEBRATING THE HOLIDAYS

“Christmas Spectacular” tering robes and wings carved out of wood float (St. Ignatius; Dec. 6 and 8); and the Manhattan
above them. The Met displays its vast collection Choral Ensemble for a chilly, Nordic­themed
A theatrical tradition, even one in its nineties, of these eighteenth­century figures around a program (Trinity Baptist Church; Dec. 6-7).
has to change a little with the times. Recent grand Christmas tree in the medieval wing.
years have seen the Radio City Rockettes and (Metropolitan Museum of Art; Nov. 26-Jan. 6.)
the animals of the Living Nativity surrounded “Peter & the Wolf ”
by more digital projections and such technolog­ The Guggenheim’s “Works & Process” has
ical innovations as fairy drones that fly over the “The Nutcracker” invented its own holiday ritual, its yearly per­
audience. But the old verities retain the most People return to New York City Ballet’s “George formance of Sergei Prokofiev’s cautionary tale
durable magic, especially the well­maintained Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” because they “Peter and the Wolf,” accompanied by Ensem­
precision of the dancers and the built­to­last know what to expect: the tree will grow extrav­ ble Connect and recited by Isaac Mizrahi. The
construction of the “Parade of Wooden Sol­ agantly, Marie will vanquish the Mouse King action, whimsically choreographed by John
diers” number, which has been collapsing with with her slipper, Dewdrop will dazzle with her Heginbotham, is depicted by a cast of eight
a comforting continuity since 1933. (Radio City windswept jumps and spins. The combination of dancers, costumed as the animals that young
Music Hall; through Jan. 5.) Tchaikovsky’s music and Balanchine’s choreog­ Peter encounters on his morning stroll through
raphy elicits an almost Pavlovian response: de­ the “big green meadow”—here, Central Park.
light, and a craving for wintry things. (David H. The clever twist is that each animal has a musical
“The Dead, 1904” and “A Child’s Koch Theatre; Nov. 29-Jan. 4.) “The Hard Nut,” counterpart, offering a lesson in the instruments
Mark Morris’s version of the story, is far more of the orchestra. (Guggenheim Museum; Dec. 6-8.)
Christmas in Wales” knowing. Morris places the opening holiday fête
The Irish Rep welcomes back adaptations of two in nineteen­seventies American suburbia. The
holiday­forward literary works. An immersive adults drink too much and make out; the kids “Messiah”
treatment of “The Dead” (American Irish His- brawl. But Morris is not immune to emotional More than two hundred and eighty years after
torical Society; through Jan. 5), James Joyce’s not outpourings. His “Snowflake Waltz,” in which its début, Handel’s “Messiah” shows no sign of
so short story about a family party that induces the dancers, in meringue headdresses, pop into waning in popularity. It has become synonymous
marital revelations, invites attendees to dine the air and spray glittery confetti, is pure magic. with the holiday season, when it is ubiquitous,
alongside the characters. And a staging of Dylan (Brooklyn Academy of Music; Dec. 12-22.) showcased in churches and halls across the city.
Thomas’s prose poem (Irish Repertory Theatre; Performances include the New York Philhar­
Dec. 4-29) ornaments the writer’s childhood monic joined by Musica Sacra (David Geffen Hall;
memories with carols. “A Very Sw!ng Out Holiday” Dec. 11-14); the early­music ensemble New York
In the joyful 2021 production “Sw!ng Out,” the Baroque Incorporated with the Saint Thomas
tap dancer Caleb Teicher, along with musicians Choir of Men and Boys (St. Thomas Church;
“A Christmas Carol” and dancers including LaTasha Barnes, presented Dec. 10); the Orchestra of the Bronx with the
In December, 1867, Charles Dickens visited New swing dancing, born in nineteen­twenties Har­ Bronx Opera Chorus (Lehman College; Dec. 8);
York City, an event that forms the basis of Sum­ lem, as a form very much alive in the present. It Trinity Baroque Orchestra and the Trinity Choir
moners Ensemble Theatre’s adaptation of his hol­ had a variety­show format, accompaniment by (Dec. 11); and, if you’d like to join in, a “Sing­In”
iday classic about a miser turned benefactor. John the Eyal Vilner Big Band, and a fluid approach at Lincoln Center, featuring seventeen different
Kevin Jones plays Dickens himself in a solo show to gender, leaders, and followers. Now comes conductors and many festive audience members
at the Merchant’s House Museum, a landmarked “A Very Sw!ng Out Holiday,” a festive variation with creative interpretations of pitch (Dec. 17).
nineteenth­century home whose candlelit par­ that maintains the original ending: dancing that
lor makes a period­appropriate venue. Also ac­ the audience can join. (Joyce Theatre; Dec. 3-15.)
cessible via pay­per­view; not recommended “The 8 Nights of Hanukkah
for children under twelve. (Nov. 26-Dec. 29.)
Holiday Carols with Yo La Tengo”
ILLUSTRATION BY RIIKKA LAAKSO

Although it’s charming, no doubt, to huddle In recent years, Yo La Tengo’s run of Hanuk­
Baroque Neapolitan Crèche with your co­workers at a holiday party, trying kah shows has become one of the most beloved
In Naples, the art of the Nativity scene, or presepe, to remember the words to “Silent Night” (are musical holiday traditions in the city. Each iter­
is about much more than putting together a few there really six verses?), sometimes carolling ation brings its own wonderful set of surprises.
figures to depict the birth of Jesus. These genre is best left to the professionals. This season, But just as thrilling, and endearing, are the re­
scenes, which you can find in many churches, cheer abounds, including performances by curring rituals: special guests each night, and a
are sprawling cityscapes peopled by hundreds the New York Choral Society and the Brook­ rendition of “My Little Corner of the World,”
of characters. Bakers, shepherds, and townfolk lyn Chamber Orchestra for traditional car­ performed by Ira Kaplan’s mother, Marilyn,
go about their lives, mingling with the three ols (St. Ann & the Holy Trinity; Dec. 14); the bringing the series to a heartfelt conclusion.
wise kings and their retinue. Angels with flut­ Chanticleer ensemble for ditties old and new (Bowery Ballroom; Dec. 25-Jan. 1.)

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 5

 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT extend into virtually every corner of the ers, recently published a study showing
MEDICAL ALERT nation’s health-care infrastructure, from that vaccines have saved more than a
messaging on public health and invest- hundred and fifty million lives in the

Icausenafter2018, two children in Samoa died

receiving measles vaccines, be-
the nurses who administered them
ment in biomedical research to the ap-
proval of new drugs and the delivery of
medical care. Trump, who in April called
past half century, or about six lives a
minute.) Amid the rising threat of bird
flu—this month, a teen-ager in Can-
had mistakenly mixed the vaccine pow- Kennedy a “Radical Left Lunatic,” re- ada was infected and hospitalized in
der with a muscle relaxant. Local vac- cently encouraged him to “go wild” on critical condition—Kennedy has sug-
cine skeptics seized on the tragedy, and health, medicines, and “the food.” Ken- gested that we should relax restrictions
the government temporarily suspended nedy seems poised to oblige. on the sale of raw milk, which, because
its immunization program. Children’s In the past few months, Kennedy it is unpasteurized, can potentially spread
Health Defense, an organization chaired has indicated that he intends to reëx- the virus.
by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., posted about amine safety data for approved vaccines, In another era, the sheer volume of
the events on Facebook, where the group advise municipalities not to add fluo- Kennedy’s bizarre and misleading state-
was one of the largest purchasers of anti- ride to their water supply, halt infectious- ments might have disqualified him from
vaccine advertisements. The Samoan disease research at the N.I.H. and fire running the local wellness spa, let alone
government reinstated the program, fol- six hundred of its employees, and re- the world’s largest health apparatus. The
lowing an investigation. But immuni- verse the F.D.A.’s “aggressive suppres- pro-Trump editorial board of the New
zation rates remained perilously low, sion” of, among other things, discred- York Post, which met with Kennedy last
with less than a third of infants getting ited COVID remedies such as ivermectin year, wrote that his views amounted to
vaccinated, and, a few months later, the and hydroxychloroquine. Earlier this a “head-scratching spaghetti of . . . warped
country experienced a devastating mea- year, Kennedy said that he would seek conspiracy theories,” and concluded that
sles outbreak. Nearly six thousand peo- to prosecute medical journals if they “he’s nuts on a lot of fronts.” Kennedy
ple were infected, and more than sev- didn’t “start publishing real science.” has insinuated that H.I.V. isn’t the cause
enty children died. Kennedy, who had (The Lancet, one of the alleged offend- of AIDS, that Wi-Fi induces “leaky brain,”
meanwhile visited the island, sent the that chemicals in the water are respon-
Prime Minister a letter raising the “re- sible for “sexual dysphoria,” and that An-
grettable possibility that these children thony Fauci and Bill Gates led a cartel
are casualties” of vaccination—not of a to prolong the covid pandemic and
lack of it. He later called the outbreak “amplify its mortal effects in order to
“mild,” and branded a Samoan vaccine promote their mischievous inoculations.”
opponent a “medical freedom hero.” The trouble—and the opportunity—
President-elect Donald Trump has with Kennedy is that, although he has
now nominated Kennedy to lead the many bad ideas, not all his ideas are bad.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA

U.S. Department of Health and Human He appears deeply concerned about the
Services. If confirmed, he will oversee staggering rates of chronic disease in
thirteen operating divisions, including this country, and correctly condemns
the National Institutes of Health, the the long-standing failure to meaning-
Centers for Disease Control and Pre- fully reform the American food system,
vention, the Food and Drug Adminis- which is characterized by a glut of ultra-
tration, and the Centers for Medicare processed products, owing partly to un-
and Medicaid Services. His reach would healthful agricultural subsidies. (The
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 7
U.S. heavily subsidizes commodity crops, ture,” which is sure to hit a sour note community.” Membership isn’t a matter
such as corn and soy, that often end up with corporations that deploy legions of being right on every issue, but it does
as sweeteners and additives.) Kennedy of lobbyists to shape regulations. Mean- require adhering to practices that reli-
has also railed against gross conflicts of while, his support for reproductive ably, if imperfectly, bring us closer to the
interest in health care and against the rights—he has argued that abortion truth: subjecting one’s claims to scru-
malign influence of corporations, espe- should be legal until a fetus is “viable tiny, critically appraising available data,
cially pharmaceutical companies that outside the womb,” and that bureau- correcting errors when the weight of
aggressively market their products and crats and judges aren’t “better equipped evidence contradicts prior stances—the
use dubious tactics to extend patent pro- than the baby’s own mother to decide” norms that animate the scientific method.
tections and keep drug prices high. Pol- when to terminate a pregnancy—has With Kennedy, it isn’t clear how he ar-
itics is about principles, but it is also rankled some conservative activists, rives at his views, or what it would take
about priorities—if Kennedy chooses to which may further complicate his con- to change them. For years, he has prop-
elevate these issues during his tenure, he firmation in a Republican-led Senate. agated half-truths and outright false-
is likely to find common cause with many Still, blocking Trump appointments on hoods in an environment of mistrust that
physicians and public-health officials. any ground would require an uncom- he helped to create, and he will now be
And yet the irony of our political mon level of daring from G.O.P. law- abetted by a cadre of MAGA influencers
moment is that Kennedy’s more rea- makers, who have mostly been unwill- who share his passions and proclivities.
sonable positions are the ones that could ing to defy even the most brazen whims When it comes to reducing human suf-
sink his candidacy. Politicians in both of the President-elect. fering, the scientific method may be the
parties receive enormous sums of money The fundamental problem with Ken- most important idea in history. We could
from the food, agriculture, and pharma- nedy—the deficiency that unites his soon be forced to test whether scientific
ceutical industries. Kennedy has prom- strange and sundry views—is that he institutions can function with a leader
ised to free regulatory agencies from doesn’t subscribe to what the writer Jon- who rejects it.
“the smothering cloud of corporate cap- athan Rauch has called the “reality-based —Dhruv Khullar

SMUGGLING DEPT. ers, played twenty-four hours a day. In What few magnums remain are avail-
UKRAINIAN BUBBLES May, 2023, the music stopped. able only through charity auction, and
“When the Russians get close, ev- fetch as much as thirty-five hundred
eryone at Artwinery argue what to do,” dollars each.
Lysenko, who lives in Kyiv, said, in her The Soloking was a brilliant gold
accented but capable English. (She stud- color and smelled like toast and almonds,
ied it as a girl in Ukraine to defy her with hints of green apple and stewed
father, a domineering engineer: “It was peach. Corrigan held up her glass. “It’s
t a benefit concert for Ukrainian the one subject he didn’t know.”) “We the Ukrainian Dom Pérignon,” she said.
A children, at Carnegie Hall, Nathalie
Lysenko and Gayle Corrigan walked up
thought, We have to blow it up,” Ly-
senko went on. “But we couldn’t do it.”
Six million Artwinery bottles remain
under Russian control; Lysenko has
to the bar and paid forty-six dollars for Working in the mine three shifts a heard that the caverns were turned into
two glasses of a Ukrainian sparkling wine day, the company’s employees managed a field hospital for Russian soldiers, and
that Lysenko had helped smuggle out of to ready some three hundred thousand that the winemaking equipment was
Bakhmut under Russian bombardment. bottles for rescue. “When the first bot- being carted away, to Moscow. “When
“I didn’t realize they were charging tles go above, the Russians are shelling,” the Russians take over, there is no water
for it,” Corrigan said. Lysenko said. Some got to a railway point; running, so they used the wine to flush
“It’s a good cause,” Lysenko said. the tracks were shelled. Surviving bot- their toilets,” Lysenko said. “We should
Lysenko, who is tall and has large, tles were taken to a warehouse; that, too, have blown it up.”
round eyes, is the export manager for was shelled, destroying the last Ukrainian It was time for the show. Liev Schreiber,
Artwinery, which until recently was one bottles of Soloking, Artwinery’s most the m.c., spoke with urgency about waning
of the largest wineries in the former So- prized cuvée, made partly from the last interest in Ukraine around the world. The
viet Union. Corrigan, who wore a black grapes harvested in independent Crimea, Orchestra for Ukraine and a chorus per-
cocktail dress, is her American importer. and aged for seventy-two months. But formed Beethoven’s Ninth and, for some
Before the Russians occupied Bakhmut, eighteen months after Corrigan placed reason, a part of the “Star Wars” score.
the city was a major center of sparkling- an order for them, thirty thousand bot- At the after-party, Lysenko and Corri-
wine production. During the Cold War, tles from Artwinery made it to her ware- gan waited to take photos with Schreiber.
Stalin, facing a champagne ban, ordered house, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. They had spent the week on what Cor-
the establishment of a high-end facil- “When Gayle tell me she receive the rigan called a “ ‘Thelma and Louise’ tour”
ity there, in a former gypsum mine more shipment, it was happiest day of my life,” of the Eastern Seaboard. They feasted
than two hundred feet underground. Lysenko said. Corrigan still had a bit of on varenyky and eggs at Veselka, in the
Classical music, which was thought to Soloking from an earlier order, which East Village. “It was very good,” Lysenko
be calming for the wines and the work- she donated to the Carnegie Hall gala. said. “But in Ukraine no one give you
8 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
varenyky and eggs from one bowl.”They
drove to Washington and cried at the
Holodomor memorial to the Ukrainian
famine orchestrated by Stalin. They
wrecked Corrigan’s dad’s Honda Ridge-
line in a parking garage. They saw many
Halloween decorations. “This is some-
thing very strange for me, because ev-
eryone is trying very hard to get scared,
and putting fake blood on the car, and
things like that,” Lysenko said. “But this
is reality of life in my country.” At a
friend’s house in Pennsylvania, as they
ate s’mores around a campfire, Lysen-
ko’s phone went off, alerting her to air-
raid sirens in Kyiv. “It was like the five
stages of grief,” Corrigan said. “We bur-
ied Bakhmut on that trip.”
Lysenko corrected her: “We’re still
fighting for it.”
When they reached Schreiber, Ly-
senko thrust a black box at him. It was
inscribed, “Hello, Mr. Schreiber. We
• •
had to smuggle this sparkling wine out
of Ukraine.” like each other for that first moment,” high overhead, twisted, and flipped over
“Do you like sparkling wine?” Ly- Wilson said. “I was, like, ‘Damn, this its axis. “It’s a little spin spin twin,” Wil-
senko asked. dude’s loud and annoying.’ I found out son said, giggling. A minute later, he
“I’m an Irish-whiskey drinker,” he lived across the street from me, and buttoned his sunglasses into a pocket of
Schreiber, who wore a gray suit and then somehow we bonded over a couch his cargo pants and strapped in. As the
glasses with clear frames, said. Inside the we were trying to ollie over.” pendulum began to move, arcing up fast
box was a bottle of Artwinery’s Brut Na- Wilson goes by the name Jasper Dol- and dropping back suddenly, he said
ture Grand Reserve, aged sixty months. phin. He became the hype man for Ty- something about the treetops, and ad-
“It’s the only bottle Nathalie brought,” ler’s hip-hop collective, Odd Future; a vised looking at your shoes. When the
Corrigan said. The bottle had been prankster on Tyler’s TV show “Loiter ride shuddered and reversed, he mut-
dressed in felt of blue and gold, the Squad”; and, eventually, Tyler’s d.j. (In tered, “Aw, naw, naw, naw.” At the mo-
Ukrainian colors. February, he’ll join Tyler on tour to pro- ment of crisis, he screamed, “The Brit-
“We will give a bottle like this, but mote his album “Chromakopia.”) Wil- ish are coming, y’all!” The chaperon
big, a six-litre methuselah, to President son, who is thirty-four and wears a prayed that it would end.
Zelensky,” Lysenko said. “So he opens clipped goatee and a stud in each ear, “My legs feel very light—that was
on Victory Day.” has a jaunty, down-for-whatever air. He great,” Wilson said afterward. “What
“I thought Zelensky doesn’t drink,” has bungee jumped from a hot-air bal- d’you guys wanna mob now?” The party
Schreiber said. loon, ridden a bull, and performed pain- headed over to a tent in the parking lot,
“On Victory Day, he might drink,” ful stunts in “Jackass Forever.” where there was an exhibition of pho-
Corrigan said. One recent Sunday afternoon, two tos from the early days of Odd Future,
—Boris Fishman teen-age boys and their middle-aged taken by Brick Stowell, their tour man-
1 chaperon met up with Wilson in the ager at the time. Wilson tried to remem-
L.A. POSTCARD parking lot of Dodger Stadium. Camp ber the full name of the group. “Odd
HIGH JINKS Flog Gnaw, a music festival and carni- Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, Don’t
val that Tyler founded and Wilson at- Give a Fuck, Loiter Squad, Little Life,
tends religiously, was in full swing: bal- Bacon Boys, Sneaky Snake Ninjas?” he
loon darts, corn dogs, Playboi Carti. ventured. “Something like that.”
“Hey, what ride should we get on?” On display were Vans sneakers that
Wilson asked. Tyler had doodled doughnuts on, and
“I was feeling that one,” one of the a large spray-painted piece of a Christ-
avon Wilson met Tyler Okonma— teens said, nodding toward a pendulum mas tree with a penis in place of the star.
D the hip-hop impresario known as
Tyler, the Creator—at the Dirty, a skate
with screaming people attached to one
end. “I’m with that,” Wilson said. “I’m
“That dick doesn’t need to be there,”
Wilson said, a little wistfully. Kids. The
park in Hawthorne, California, when with that a lot.” The chaperon watched members of Odd Future are still his
both were fifteen. “We actually didn’t apprehensively as the pendulum swung closest friends. “We’re still in a group
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 9
text,” he said. “In the morning, some- On the last wall was a case contain- fied to produce food for astronauts, and,
body’s, like, ‘Food?’ And everybody’s, ing a jumbo water gun—the reason later, refashioned to make fuel for planes,
like, ‘Food, food.’ And we go get food.” Odd Future was kicked out of Coach- automobiles, and rocket ships. Back in
Wilson stopped in front of a group ella in 2011. Long story short: they the lab, an Air Company chemist, brew-
shot centered on Earl Sweatshirt (given sprayed a security guard in the face and ing a batch of carbon-neutral fuel, had
name: Thebe Kgositsile.) “This is New got their wristbands cut, right before a said, “The petroleum industry took crude
York, when Thebe first came back from performance by the rapper Lil B. But, oil out of the ground, and they fraction-
boarding school in Samoa. Tyler had a as they were leaving, an industry friend ated it. They were, like, ‘Let’s make plas-
broken hand right there. He broke his gave them new wristbands. They ran tics! Let’s make diesel!’ We can do that
hand because he socked me in the face back in, and crowd-surfed to the stage with CO₂!” The startup’s “synthetic
on accident. I was, like, ‘My head is for Lil B’s set. crude” can be similarly fractionated. “We
harder than your hand.’” The sun was going down, and Wil- have the ability to be selective, depend-
Then there was the incident with a son had to go meet his mom. But there ing on the customer, on what kind of
firework on Fairfax Avenue, where Odd was something he wanted to do first. fuel we want to produce,” Constantine
Future used to have a store. “No names, He wanted to hit that ride again. said. In 2023, the company scored a sixty-
but somebody burned down a tree in —Dana Goodyear five-million-dollar contract from the
front of the store,” Wilson said. “They 1 Pentagon; it has tested its fuel in an Air
felt bad afterward, because they were DEPT. OF FRACTIONATING Force drone and aboard a Navy vessel.
young and dumb. Fire department came JOYRIDE That morning, Constantine would be
and everything. The tree was on fire. It showing his fuel to the Army.
was falling down. It was landing on the At West Point, a career fair of sorts
awning of the building next to ours. was under way. Representatives from
And then that caught on fire.” each of the Army’s seventeen branches
Stowell, who is wiry and energetic, had assembled with rifles, heavy artil-
came up and embraced Wilson. Did he lery, and helicopters, to recruit cadets.
remember that time when the guys n a recent morning, near a ramen Near a Patriot-missile launcher, an en-
bought a bunch of knives and ninja stars?
And put them in Stowell’s backpack with-
O shop in East Williamsburg, at 0700
hours, a truck loaded with live chick-
listed soldier, who said he had spent the
past sixteen years taking orders from
out telling him, right before they crossed ens coughed diesel exhaust. Across the twenty-two-year-old West Point grads,
the Canadian border? “I was tour man- street, at the site of a former night club, said, “We’re here to sell them snake oil.
ager, staff photographer, his babysitter, in a room dominated by a massive ma- We all brought our cool, shiny toys to
got his weed for him,” Stowell said. In chine that has been rumored to convert get the bright-eyed cadets to say, ‘I want
Europe, he would steer them away from water and carbon dioxide into alcohol, to do this! ’” At a table piled with body
American fast food, and make them visit a curly-haired Australian man wearing armor, scopes, and medical equipment,
monuments. “They’d be, like, ‘The fucking a long blue fireproof lab coat said, “It’s a soldier demonstrated Microsoft’s ho-
camp counsellor who wants to take pho- never too early for a shot of vodka!” lographic-lens augmented-reality de-
tos of us,’” he said. “Now they’re, like, Then he downed one—“To another vice mounted on a helmet; nearby, a
‘God, I’m so glad you did this for us.’” successful demonstration,” he said— yellow chemical-sniffing Boston Dy-
hopped in the back of an S.U.V., and namics robot dog waited for action.
headed up to the United States Mili- Freshmen—known as “plebes”—took
tary Academy at West Point. selfies with Stinger-missile launchers
Gregory Constantine, the man in and an Abrams tank.
the lab coat, is a co-founder of the At the Office of the Chief of Engi-
startup Air Company; he explained that neers tent (not to be confused with the
the vodka had been produced by com- Army Corps of Engineers tent, which
bining carbon dioxide and hydrogen featured a ten-ton amphibious truck that
with a propriety “catalyst” (“our secret could launch a bridge-erecting boat), an
sauce,” one employee calls it) to make expert on mobile nuclear power plants
ethanol, which was then made into shouted, “You may not know, but the
vodka. “The world’s cleanest, highest- D.O.D. is the largest emitter of green-
quality, and first carbon-negative spirit,” house gases in the world.” Several ca-
Constantine said. dets laughed. “We’re looking for solu-
The recipe was devised by Air Com- tions to that issue, but that’s really the
pany’s other co-founder, Stafford Shee- cherry on top. This is all about keep-
han, a chemist who studied artificial ing our soldiers and our sailors there
photosynthesis at Yale. During the pan- safe.” The Pentagon likes Air Com-
demic, Air Company switched from pany’s fuel because it can be produced
distilling vodka to producing hand san- anywhere, on demand. According to
Davon Wilson itizer. The process was further modi- a 2009 D.O.D. report, at least ten per
10 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
cent of Army casualties in Iraq and Af- called “nuts-and-bolts research”—scraps of renovation and demolition. With his
ghanistan occurred during the transpor- of dialogue written on napkins, corre- production designer, David J. Bomba,
tation of water or fossil fuels. Someday, spondence with editors. He’d tried to he’d worked to re-create the Hill circa
Air Company’s fuels might be produced see Pittsburgh as Wilson had seen it. “I 1936 on a film set in Atlanta. He pointed
in the back of a truck in a war zone, or remember coming in one day for, like, at an empty lot. “They’ll just tear shit
at a C.I.A. black site, though for now three hours, to look at maps,” he said down and leave it,” he said.
its synthetic fuel is produced with grid Having time to kill before a screen- Inside the chicken shop, the two
electricity (from Con Edison), in Brook- ing of “The Piano Lesson” that evening, owners greeted Washington effusively.
lyn, at the cost of more than a hundred he strolled out to the back yard. He Everyone caught up, and the direc-
dollars a gallon. (“Every batch of fuel pointed up at the three-story building. tor did some on-the-ground market-
thus far has been handcrafted by Ph.D.s. “This was August’s crib,” he said. As a ing for his film.
That’s why it’s so expensive,” Sheehan kid, Wilson lived there, with his mother “Is your dad in it?” one of the own-
said. “Screw Tito’s.”) and five siblings, in a two-room apart- ers asked.
Shortly before 1300 hours, the cadets ment with no running water. After they “No,” Washington said. “But Sam
watched as an Air Company employee moved out, in 1957, the building fell into Jackson’s in it.” He ordered six wings—
poured fuel into an old sand-colored disrepair. In 2020, Denzel helped raise “three buffalo, three fried”—and in-
buggy, which had been repurposed by five million dollars to restore it. Mal- vited the owners to the screening later.
the West Point Spirit Team (“beat colm Washington has inherited his fa-
navy!”) for football season. Then a sol- ther’s fascination with both Wilson and
dier in a battle helmet took the vehicle his home town. “It’s like the Lewis and
on a joyride, zipping up and down a Clark expedition started here,” Wash-
sidewalk, at one point slowing down for ington said. “At the turn of the century,
a professor on a bicycle. there’s more millionaires here than in
Later, Sheehan said that he’d just New York City. And it’s a release valve—
been at Cape Canaveral; Air Company or a receiver—of the Great Migration.”
has a deal with NASA to make rocket He is a fan of Jane Jacobs, and quoted
fuel. His contact had introduced him to her, apropos Pittsburgh: “She’s, like, ‘A
SpaceX’s procurement team, hoping to busy sidewalk’s a safe sidewalk.’”
persuade Elon Musk to use Air Com- Before getting the gig to direct “The
pany’s fuel to fly home from Mars. Piano Lesson,” Washington had to pitch
—Adam Iscoe his father, who, as a producer, is on a
1 mission to adapt all ten of Wilson’s
THE PICTURES plays for the screen. After he wooed his
LEGACY IN PITTSBURGH brother John David and Samuel L. Jack-
son to act in the movie, he approached
Netflix about directing. He feels a con-
nection to the story, which concerns
family members at odds over an heir-
loom procured by their enslaved ances- Malcolm Washington
tors. “I’m somebody who has, my whole
he filmmaker Malcolm Washing- life, been acutely aware of the idea of While he waited for his food, he strolled
T ton, son of Denzel and Pauletta,
flew to Pittsburgh the other day, and
legacy,” he said. “And my connection to
my parents.” He went on, “In my home,
over to the house that his father had
used for “Fences,” a block away. The
went straight from the airport to the growing up, my mom’s dad was like a owner had spruced the place up. “She
August Wilson House, in the city’s his- hero. My dad’s mom was a hero, a leg- took the location money and did some
torically Black Hill District. He had last end. Their grandparents were legends.” upgrades,” he said.
been to the place—a community center So far, Denzel has put three of Wil- As he returned to the chicken shop
that celebrates the legacy of the late play- son’s plays on film. He directed and to pick up his order, John David pulled
wright—two years ago, before he began starred in “Fences,” for which Viola up. He’d been craving wings, too. “Hey!
directing a movie adaptation of Wilson’s Davis won an Oscar. Asked why his dad How you doing?” John David shouted.
play “The Piano Lesson.” didn’t want to direct “The Piano Les- Like his brother, he wore his hair in plaits.
Washington, who is thirty-three, wore son,”Washington said, “He wasn’t in that When the food was ready, John David
a blue jacket, stiff jeans, and leather zone. He just wants to get them made.” reached for a box. “This is me right here?”
Nikes, and had plaits pulled into a po- With time to spare, Washington de- he asked. He glanced enviously at his
nytail. At the Wilson House, he sur- cided to grab a bite.“There’s a chicken brother: “He got two boxes, huh?” They
veyed a new exhibition on “Jitney,” Wil- place,” he said, pointing down the street. laughed. Then they found a stoop on a
son’s eighth play. Prepping for his movie, The “Fences” crew had introduced him nearby corner and dug into their din-
the director had spent days digging to it. Driving over, he gazed out the win- ner. It was a family meal.
through Wilson’s archive for what he dow and took in the Hill, a mishmash —André Wheeler
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 11
 Then she rose and left the room, with-
LETTER FROM THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY out saying a word.
Alone, Garcia couldn’t resist exam-
ining the images. The baby was curled
THE TEXAS EXODUS into a ball, looking eerily still. Instinc-
tively, Garcia snapped a photo and texted
Amid stringent abortion laws, ob-gyns are fleeing the state. it to her husband, Erick Escareño, a
manager at a supermarket chain. He
BY STEPHANIA TALADRID was checking inventory as he opened
the text and told himself, “This isn’t
real.” Then a doctor walked in and in-
formed Garcia that her daughter’s heart
had stopped.
Garcia was fifteen weeks into her
pregnancy, and, in cases of miscarriage
in the second trimester, the safest treat-
ment is a surgical removal or a medical
induction of labor. Instead, she was “dis-
charged to home self-care,” as her chart
notes. All Garcia could do was wait until
she had a natural miscarriage. The
thought of it terrified her. What if she
hemorrhaged in the middle of the street?
Or in the car, picking up her children
from school? Her doctor’s only depart-
ing instructions were: if you start bleed-
ing or develop a fever, check into the
hospital immediately. (The doctor did
not respond to requests for comment.)
A mournful silence settled in Gar-
cia’s home. Escareño busied himself, but
there were only so many times he could
empty the trash or mow the lawn. Gar-
cia spent most of her days lying in bed.
In a corner of their bedroom sat pur-
chases she had made for Vanellope: di-
apers, a snuggly blanket, and now a
small urn.
Garcia’s situation was not unique.
Across Texas, reports were surfacing of
ight months after the fall of Roe v. to catch a glimpse of her daughter, whom women being sent home to manage
E Wade, Vanessa Garcia lay on a hos-
pital table in Texas’s Rio Grande Val-
she had named Vanellope. Before driv-
ing to appointments, she got in the habit
miscarriages on their own. In 2021, the
state had passed a law known as S.B. 8,
ley, as a technician performed an ultra- of drinking half a gallon of water, hop- banning nearly all abortions after elec-
sound. Garcia had given birth to two ing that it would contribute to a clearer trical activity is detected in fetal cells,
children with no complications, but her image. During scans, she gazed at the which typically happens around the
third pregnancy seemed alarmingly dif- monitor, watching raptly when Vanel- sixth week of gestation. The law en-
ferent. The ultrasound revealed that her lope lifted her hand to her eyes, as if couraged civilians to sue violators, in
placenta was covering her cervix—a gently rubbing them. exchange for the possibility of a ten-
condition, known as placenta previa, At the start of her second trimester, thousand-dollar reward.
that heightened her risk of hemorrhage Garcia returned to the hospital and fol- From a medical standpoint, the treat-
or preterm birth. lowed a now familiar routine, uncov- ment for abortion and miscarriage was
Garcia was referred to a maternal- ering her belly and resting on a table. the same—and so, even though miscar-
fetal expert at D.H.R. Health Women’s On this visit, though, the technician riage care remained legal, physicians
Hospital, in Edinburg, Texas, and began kept moving the probe across her skin began putting it off, or denying it out-
going in for weekly ultrasounds. She for an unusually long time, without ever right. After Roe was overturned, the laws
approached the visits as an opportunity turning the monitor to face Garcia. in Texas tightened further, so that abor-
tion was banned at any phase of preg-
Dr. Tony Ogburn helped build a residency program. Last year, it collapsed. nancy, unless the woman was threatened
12 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER LEE
with death or “substantial impairment home, she put the diapers, the blanket, bed to get to a hogan out in the middle
of a major bodily function.” Violations and the urn in storage, and replaced of nowhere,” Ogburn said. “Nobody was
could send practitioners to prison for life. them with Vanellope’s prints, set in a there to make a lot of money. They were
After a week of increasing pain and wooden frame. there to provide good health care.”
anxiety, Garcia noticed that her belly Garcia felt grateful to have been re- After finishing his residency, Ogburn
seemed to be flattening, and she couldn’t ferred to Ogburn, but there were few moved to Gallup, New Mexico, with
help wondering if Vanellope was still other choices: hardly any physicians in his wife, Jane, planning to stay a year or
there. Finally, she asked Escareño to the Valley were trained to perform a two. Instead, they spent six years there,
drive her to the hospital. In the emer- D. & E. Amid the tightening restric- and had two children. Ogburn’s next
gency room, a nurse advised her just to tions on maternal care, doctors had job, at the University of New Mexico,
keep waiting and “let the tissue pass.” started leaving Texas; others were con- lasted almost two decades. Early on, he
Garcia shot back, “Tissue or baby? Law- templating early retirement. Within a worked part time at a clinic on the Kirt-
wise, it’s a baby, but now you’re telling few months, Ogburn would leave the land Air Force Base, east of Albuquer-
me it’s a tissue?” Valley, too, and the program he’d started que. It was a “socialized-medicine en-
Eventually, her family doctor referred would be shut down. vironment,” he said. Neither he nor his
her to another physician: Tony Ogburn, patients had to worry about whether
the founding chairman of the ob-gyn
department at the nearby University of
Texas Rio Grande Valley. Ogburn, a tall
Iliftednontheastheir
summer of 2016, Ogburn looked
fifty-five student physicians
right hands to recite the
they could afford imaging tests or pre-
scriptions—the government bore all
medical costs. The university, too, used
man of sixty-four, with white hair and Hippocratic oath. They were the inau- a portion of its public funding to care
rimless glasses, had come to the Valley gural class at the University of Texas for the indigent. “It was a place where
eight years before, with a mission to im- Rio Grande Valley’s medical school— the social determinants of health, which
prove health care for women. When he a new facility that, in the words of uni- we didn’t have vocabulary for back then,
read Garcia’s file, he was outraged. After versity officials, promised to “forever came into play,” Eve Espey, a longtime
carrying the dead fetus for weeks, she transform the lives of our children and colleague of Ogburn’s there, said.
risked needing a full hysterectomy. Why grandchildren.” Ogburn conducted studies on how to
had she had to wait this long? For years, aspiring medical students improve health outcomes for women,
When they met, though, Ogburn re- in the Valley had moved to San Anto- and advocated for abortion care to be a
assured Garcia that she had options: his nio, or farther north to Houston, Aus- part of every medical student’s educa-
team could induce delivery, or perform tin, or Dallas.They rarely returned home. tion. He eventually became a leader of
a dilation and evacuation—a D. & E., The United States averaged almost three the university’s obstetrics-and-gynecology
as it’s known.The latter option was “emo- hundred practicing doctors for every practice. In 2015, a recruiter called to tell
tionally better for most patients,” Og- hundred thousand people; even in the him about the effort to build a medical
burn told me. In his experience, it was most populous county of the Rio Grande school in the Rio Grande Valley. The re-
traumatic enough for a mother to lose Valley, the ratio was less than a third of gion faced needs that were similar to
a child, without having to go through that. Though the Valley included some New Mexico’s, but it had never had an
labor to deliver a corpse. “For a lot of of the poorest cities in the nation, there ob-gyn residency program. Would he
people, the tipping point is, ‘You mean wasn’t a single public hospital.The school want to start one?
I can go to sleep, and when I wake up intended to turn things around. To at- The idea was to create a practice
it’ll be done?’” tract residents, the administrators called staffed by doctors who would also teach
Garcia was torn. For weeks, she had in Ogburn, who had spent a career pro- at the med school and oversee residents
sustained the hope of holding Vanel- viding care in underserved places. at the hospital. Ogburn visited medical
lope at least once. But she couldn’t sum- Ogburn had begun thinking about facilities around the country, seeking
mon the resolve to go through labor and what doctors owed their patients before talent. His pitch was meant to counter-
return home without her child. Ulti- he finished medical training. As a stu- act the stereotype of the Valley as a re-
mately, she opted for surgery, and the dent, in the nineteen-eighties, he served gion defined by clashes between smug-
procedure was scheduled for the next for a month at Kayenta Health Center, glers and Border Patrol agents—what
day. “I’m sorry,” Ogburn told her. “You in Arizona. Situated on the Navajo Ogburn described as “people with ma-
should never have gone through this reservation, the center served a commu- chine guns driving around in pickup
alone at home.” nity of about twenty thousand people. trucks.” But what stood out most was
In the recovery room, when the an- Some patients rode horses to appoint- the moral urgency of his message. “He
esthesia wore off after the surgery, Gar- ments. Others—who didn’t have run- was the only person that talked about
cia’s eyes filled with tears. “My first ning water at home, much less a phone— human rights,” Zoe Kornberg, one of
thought was, She’s gone,” she said. But hailed rides from strangers. the residents he recruited, said. She
Ogburn had provided a memento: with Each week, Ogburn was sent into the emerged with a galvanizing idea: “It’s a
her permission, he had recorded Vanel- countryside with a translator and a nurse, radical act to make somebody feel cared
lope’s hand- and footprints on a sheet who carried a list of people who had for and empower them, if they’ve never
of paper. “I didn’t get to carry her, but I missed appointments. “We would drive had that before.”
have that part of her,” Garcia said. Back twenty miles down a washboard creek Most of the Valley’s population
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 13
occupies a string of cities connected by where heart rates tend to slow. It was, to bring in patients. “Volume means
Highway 83, known locally as the world’s in a way, a prelude to the first breath. money,” Ogburn said. When he began
longest main street. The region is bor- When Ogburn and his team started working with D.H.R., the hospital was
dered by vast ranches and fields of mes- working at D.H.R., they quickly dis- averaging about eight thousand annual
quite, as well as colonias, where thousands covered that it was “practicing how most deliveries, making its maternity ward
of agricultural workers live in trailer hospitals did twenty years ago,” he said. one of the busiest in Texas.
homes. The area is defined less by vio- They found that episiotomies, or per- The volume of patients presented an
lence than by poverty: the per-capita in- ineal incisions, which were regarded as opportunity for the new residents: the
come hovers around twenty thousand an outdated practice, were not unusual more conditions they were exposed to,
dollars a year. there. C-section rates were high—ex- the more they learned. Ogburn insured
Even in Texas, which has the largest ceptionally so among some doctors. Og- that anyone who walked in, irrespective
share of uninsured residents in the na- burn said that women who came to the of her ability to pay, could see a resi-
tion, the Valley had unusually high num- E.R. with heavy bleeding were typically dent. “It was a win for the patient, it
bers. Women suffered and died from given a transfusion and then sent home, was a win for the residents, and it was
cervical cancer at inordinate rates. One only to return later with even more se- a win for the hospital,” he said. Soon
ob-gyn routinely performed surgeries vere hemorrhages. When he performed after he arrived at D.H.R., it became
on cancer patients without being board- pelvic exams on a group of these women, the first institution in the Valley to have
certified in oncology. “You’re talking he determined that they all had cervi- ob-gyns on-site around the clock. In
about a huge chunk of Texas where cal cancer. (D.H.R. declined to com- the past, doctors were hardly ever at the
you didn’t have a place for physicians ment on specific patient encounters but hospital at night, so they had to be called
to pursue a medical education—noth- stated that it was “committed to pro- in for after-hours emergencies; often,
ing,” Adela Valdez, a respected doctor viding prompt, compassionate care in they ended up just giving nurses instruc-
in the Valley, said. “It was an area that accordance with Texas state law, main- tions over the phone. Now if a wom-
was forgotten.” taining evidence-based practices.”) an’s uterus ruptured halfway through
Residents and physicians around the Ogburn’s colleagues noticed simi- labor, there would be someone to treat
country signed on to Ogburn’s program, larly troubling patterns. Jennifer Sal- her. Eventually, the hospital qualified
convinced that he would instill a higher cedo, an ob-gyn who left a practice in for Level IV status, signifying that it
standard. In the fall of 2015, Ogburn and Honolulu to move to the Valley, re- was equipped to handle the highest-
his team began working at D.H.R. called that early on she was rushed into risk pregnancies.
Health Women’s Hospital, a sand- an operating room where a physician Part of Ogburn’s goal was for resi-
colored building with a colonnaded en- had attempted to perform a D. & E. dents to “serve beyond the walls of the
trance. They focussed on starting the but hadn’t fully dilated the woman’s hospital.” That included holding com-
residency program and building a series cervix—a mandatory first step. “He was munity health clinics and working with
of practices, including one in complex just kind of standing beside the pa- institutions connected with underserved
family planning, designed to treat some tient,” Salcedo said. “There was over a populations. Among the uninsured pa-
of the most delicate complications that thousand millilitres of hemorrhage.” tients who turned up at D.H.R. were
arise in pregnancy. The consensus, ac- (Women hemorrhage in less than six referrals from Holy Family, one of the
cording to Valdez, was that Ogburn per cent of D. & E. procedures, and oldest birthing centers in Texas. Previ-
would institute “the kind of health care when they do they generally lose only ously, physicians had rarely wanted to
for women that they deserved.” collaborate with Holy Family—mid-
wifery was viewed in the Valley as a
t the hospital, Ogburn was a calm, pseudoscience. According to Sandra
A observant presence. One night
during my visit, he stopped by a glass-
de la Cruz-Yarrison, the center’s exec-
utive director, if a patient faced a life-
panelled room, known as the fishbowl. threatening complication or received
Inside was a wall lined with screens a midpregnancy diagnosis of cancer,
showing the heartbeats of mothers about and couldn’t afford care, there was no-
to deliver. One of the lines was peak- where to refer her to. “They all went
ing constantly—a sign, Ogburn said, untreated,” she told me. After Ogburn
that the mother was in the middle of half that much blood.) Salcedo real- arrived, she said, “his support got us
contractions. Right above it was the ba- ized that the doctor had used tools re- through that door.”
by’s heartbeat. “If it’s wiggly and has served for an early pregnancy, even
what are called accelerations, it’s fine,” though the patient was well past the ot everyone at D.H.R. was happy
he said. “When it’s straight, or low, it
might not be.” Near the center of the
twentieth week.
Like many other hospitals in the Val-
N about the university’s influence.
According to Efraim Vela, the hospi-
wall, one mother’s monitor flashed a ley, D.H.R. was a for-profit institution. tal’s chief medical officer, some saw res-
dipping line. It was a variable deceler- It was also physician-owned, which idents as “ten-year-olds with sharp
ation, Ogburn explained, meaning that meant that doctors took a cut of the knives in their hands, running around
the baby was likely in the birth canal, proceeds—giving them an incentive the house.” Others rolled their eyes
14 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
whenever a Holy Family patient walked
through the door. “I didn’t join D.H.R.
to practice at an indigent hospital,” Og-
burn was repeatedly told.
The staff tried to contain these ten-
sions, but they became harder to ignore
with the passage of S.B. 8, which had
the controversial provision that encour-
aged anyone suspecting a person of “aid-
ing or abetting” an abortion to file a
lawsuit. In some instances, nurses openly
challenged doctors, invoking their right
to sue. “People were so hair-triggered
to be looking for a crime,” Zoe Korn-
berg, the resident, said.
Ogburn began meeting with patients
behind closed doors and instructing his
residents not to offer counselling over
the phone. “You never know who’s on
the other end listening,” he told them.
By then, “nobody felt comfortable talking
about anything,” Elissa Serapio, one of
the ob-gyns, said.
The list of conditions that could be
treated narrowed substantially. If a
woman came to the hospital with a le-
thal fetal anomaly, she had no option
but to carry the pregnancy to term. The
outcome was traumatic for both the
mother and her doctors. “Several peo- “I just feel like a failure if I don’t achieve a milestone of human
ple had babies die in their arms,” Og- creativity in the fifteen minutes I have to myself each day.”
burn said. Doctors were even reluctant
to treat life-threatening complications
such as ectopic pregnancies. “It’s the
• •
standard of care everywhere in the
world,” Ogburn remembers telling an of state. But it took weeks, if not months, to do it. By that time, the person has
anesthesiologist. “And you’re telling me for many women to secure the money bled out and could die.”
you can’t treat an ectopic?” and the free time to travel hundreds of Some of Ogburn’s colleagues were
A majority of women didn’t know miles for care. When patients made it applying for their board certifications
that the laws had changed, and many to Albuquerque, Espey said, the most in complex family planning. What if
of those who did know were not in a vulnerable of them presented hemor- they didn’t meet the requirements after
position to seek care out of state. A some- rhages so severe that only a hysterec- operating in such a constrained envi-
what simpler solution was to cross the tomy could keep them alive. ronment? Residents who were inter-
border into Mexico and buy abortion In the coming months, a new real- ested in family-planning programs had
pills over the counter. Misoprostol, which ity set in for ob-gyns in Texas. As Og- similar concerns. To minimize the dam-
causes uterine contractions, often comes burn told his colleagues, “The standard age for them, Ogburn reached out to
in blister packs of twenty-eight. Women of care can now be construed as a fel- colleagues around the country and
would call the hospital to ask if the ony.” Many of the doctors had moved found rotations in states that offered
twenty-eight pills should all be taken cross-country to join him at the univer- clinical abortion training, like Califor-
at once. The answer was no—four was sity, but now the law complicated their nia or Connecticut.
typically the recommended dosage. But work. “I see horrible things go wrong But the new laws were already hav-
even such vital counsel could now be all the time in people’s pregnancies, and ing an effect on the health-care system.
construed as aiding and abetting. the law has made it so that there’s no Across Texas, residency applications in
Ogburn referred patients to his for- guarantee that the right thing can be ob-gyn dropped significantly. Data from
mer colleague Eve Espey, who had gone done,” Serapio told me. Even after get- the Gender Equity Policy Institute re-
on to lead the University of New Mex- ting all the mandatory clearances from vealed a fifty-six-per-cent spike in ma-
ico’s ob-gyn department. She, too, was lawyers and administrators, she added, ternal deaths in the state between 2019
feeling the effects of S.B. 8: the major- “you still don’t know if you’re going to and 2022. When the Supreme Court
ity of her patients now came from out have an anesthesiologist who will agree overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas was no
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 15
longer an outlier; in the weeks after the round of calls to medical leaders out- emergency, her parents would drive
ruling, thirteen states moved to ban abor- side the Valley, to find hospitals where across the border into Nuevo Laredo.
tion. By then, Serapio and Salcedo had his residents could finish their training. That’s what they had done when, as a
already left Texas. Another ob-gyn at the Nearly all of them would end up leav- toddler, she dropped her father’s ma-
practice, Pam Parker, would follow soon. ing Texas. chete on her foot, and when, years later,
The clinic was uncharacteristically she developed an ovarian cyst. “I ended
year after the fall of Roe, Ogburn quiet when I visited; Ogburn had stopped up having surgery in Mexico, as a med-
A sat in his office surrounded by
empty cardboard boxes, which he was
seeing new patients. No one was com-
paring notes in the hallway or hustling
ical student in the United States,” she
told me. Now her parents had insur-
filling with the records of his work in from one examination room to another. ance, but it was still cheaper for them
the Valley. D.H.R. was ending its part- The offices adjacent to Ogburn’s, which to see a doctor across the border, she
nership with the medical school. The had belonged to three ob-gyns who had said. They were the reason why her re-
hospital didn’t offer an official explana- followed him to the Valley, were all empty. action to D.H.R.’s decision wasn’t “Fuck
tion, but the motives weren’t hard to The doctors had relocated to New York, Texas, I’m out.”
guess. “Our healthcare mission no lon- California, and Arizona. On a shelf fac- That night was Ogburn’s last time
ger aligns with a for-profit, physician- ing Ogburn’s desk was a pile of unopened on call at D.H.R. He put on scrubs and
owned health system like DHR Health,” dilators, which are used to perform toured the hospital’s corridors. At the
the university’s president, Guy Bailey, D. & E.s. He arranged them in a box fishbowl, he waved to the residents, who
declared at the time. The residents were and taped it shut. would also be gone the next day. He
dismayed. Many had purchased homes Down the corridor, in a room ringed and his wife had just put their house on
there; some had signed mortgages with computers, two residents were typ- the market. He planned to take a year-
shortly before the decision was an- ing in the records of their last patients. long break, then move to San Antonio,
nounced. Ogburn convened an all-hands Martha Chapa, a thirty-year-old with where his daughter was doing a resi-
meeting to discuss what to do. long brown hair, was the only member dency in orthopedics. He would work
No other hospital in the region had of her class to pursue a practice in Texas. at a hospital there part time, caring for
as high a volume of patients as D.H.R., Chapa had been born in the border women who came to deliver—his ver-
so the program couldn’t simply be trans- town of Laredo, and remained commit- sion of an easy schedule.
ferred elsewhere. Besides, Ogburn had ted to improving health care in the Valley. His cell phone rang: it was Kornberg,
already lost half his full-time faculty to During her youth, Chapa explained, who was also on call. A patient had come
S.B. 8. He spent weeks making a new whenever there was a family medical in through the E.R. with severe bleed-
ing and cramping, but, when Kornberg
asked a nurse what her cervical check
had shown, she got a blank stare. The
nurse admitted that she hadn’t examined
the woman. Did she feel comfortable
doing so? Kornberg asked. The answer
was no—so Kornberg took over the pa-
tient’s care. Ogburn thanked her warmly.
Neither mentioned that in twenty-four
hours they would both be gone.
Close to midnight, I caught up with
Kornberg. There were three women in
the antepartum unit whose amniotic
sacs had ruptured before the fetuses were
viable, she told me. Their babies had lit-
tle chance of surviving, and elsewhere
the women would have been given the
option to terminate their pregnancies.
“I can’t do that in this state,” Kornberg
said. Instead, the women were all told,
“We’re going to give you these medica-
tions, to give the baby the best chance,
though it may not survive.” The reality,
Kornberg added, was even bleaker: “You
have a baby that’s probably not going
to survive, and we’re going to keep you
here. And you’re going to sit alone in
this room for three, four months, and
maybe you’ll die of sepsis.”
 Kornberg was moving to Los An- tals have stopped providing labor and ADVERTISEMENT

geles to finish her residency. Like the delivery services. In Louisiana, three-
doctors who had left before her, Korn- quarters of rural hospitals no longer
berg had come to see herself as “part of offer maternity care. Half a year after SHOWCASE
the problem,” she said. “I have the Ogburn left the Valley, another doctor FIND OUT MORE ABOUT NEW PRODUCTS AND
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knowledge, all the support staff, every- submitted her resignation. The school’s
thing to be able to help this person avoid Department of Obstetrics and Gyne-
one of these horrible outcomes—and cology was folded into a new unit: the
they’re begging me to do it, but I’m not Division of Women’s and Children’s
allowed to.” The bans felt like a per- Health. By then, the department had
sonal attack, she said: “The state sees shrunk to three doctors, one of whom
you as a felon.” When the act of caring plans to leave next spring.
for pregnant women in Texas could After the departures, I sat down with
carry the same penalty as murder, the Efraim Vela, the chief medical officer,
inevitable conclusion for Kornberg was to talk about D.H.R.’s future. A burly,
“You don’t want me here? Fine, I’ll leave.” clean-shaven man of seventy, with gray-
ing hair and a slight limp, Vela com-
exas authorities are not keeping pared the severed relations between his
T track of the exodus of doctors, at
least not officially. Yet among practi-
hospital and the school to a tumultu-
ous divorce. “The kids will obviously
tioners there is a quiet sense of doom. suffer,” he said.
“The pipeline is drying up,” Charles Patients had shown up at Ogburn’s
Brown, a maternal-fetal expert and a clinic only to find a closed door. Oth- KENDAL AT OBERLIN
former Texas regional chair of the Amer- ers had come for appointments and
Located less than a mile from
ican College of Obstetricians and Gy- learned that the residents they knew had Oberlin College and Conservatory,
necologists, said. A growing number of moved on. “They’re going to be an asset Kendal at Oberlin is a vibrant Life
residents who trained in the state were to someone else, somewhere else,” Vela Plan Community serving older adults
leaving, Brown told me, and many es- said, fighting tears. in the Quaker tradition.
tablished doctors were contemplating After more than four decades of prac- KAO.KENDAL.ORG | 440.775.0094
it, too. “We’re just not going to have ticing in the Valley, Vela understood that
enough people to take care of women it was singularly difficult to draw peo-
in this state,” he said. ple there. Ogburn had managed to do
A report released last month by it, and, Vela said, doggedly, “I’m hoping
Manatt Health, a health-care consul- to rebuild.” D.H.R. had attempted to
tancy based in Los Angeles, confirmed start its own ob-gyn residency program
Brown’s fears. Manatt surveyed hun- twice since Ogburn’s departure, and on
dreds of ob-gyns in Texas to examine the second attempt the organization that
the impact of abortion bans. Seventy- accredits such programs had approved
six per cent of respondents said that the application. Even so, it would be five
they could no longer treat patients in years before the residents could gradu-
accordance with evidence-based med- ate and start a practice in the Valley.
icine. Twenty-one per cent said that Until then, with the residents gone
they were either considering leaving and so many specialists departed, it was
the state or already planning to do so; unclear how high-risk pregnancies would
thirteen per cent had decided to retire be handled at D.H.R. Vela had initially
early. The report found “historic and asked seven doctors to take turns cover-
worsening shortages” of ob-gyns, which ing night shifts, and then brought in a SULLIVAN + ASSOCIATES
“disproportionately impact rural and hospitalist to work full time. D.H.R.’s ARCHITECTS
economically disadvantaged commu- Level IV status is set to expire next year, Creating architectural designs that
nities.” As in the Rio Grande Valley, but Vela was adamant that the hospital articulate aesthetics and function.
the bans were shrinking the field’s fu- would not lose it—“as long as I sit here,”
SULLIVANASSOCIATESARCHITECTS.COM
ture workforce: residency programs he said, gripping the sides of his chair.
across Texas have seen a sixteen-per- Where, I wondered, would uninsured
cent drop in applications. patients turn now? Vela said that D.H.R.
Texas is among the twenty-one states was still accommodating those with Med-
where abortion is banned or severely re- icaid, and doing what it could for the
stricted. In Idaho, nearly a quarter of rest. But, he concluded, echoing the most
the state’s ob-gyns have left since the skeptical voices at D.H.R., “we can’t run
ban went into effect, and rural hospi- a charity hospital.” 
@NEWYORKERPROMO
 “I was figuring women who were
AMERICAN CHRONICLES sixty to seventy,” Harris later recalled.
She gulped when she realized that the
network expected to see women in their
DEADLINE EXTENSION forties—her age. A compromise was
reached. When “The Golden Girls”
Old age, reborn. débuted, in 1985, one of the lead actors,
Rue McClanahan, was in her fifties,
BY DANIEL IMMERWAHR and the others—Bea Arthur, Betty
White, and Estelle Getty—were in
their sixties. Usually, television con-
signed such women to unf lattering
supporting roles. Here, they were the
stars, with nary a young or male co-
star in sight. (A gay live-in cook ap-
peared in the pilot but promptly van-
ished. Coco, you are not forgotten.)
The feminist Betty Friedan praised the
show for defying the “universal gray-
out of older women on network TV.”
It was the right moment. The Pres-
ident, Ronald Reagan, was a septua-
genarian who made a show of chop-
ping wood and riding horses. More
generally, healthy seniors—the “well-
derly”—were on the rise. Popular cul-
ture’s usual parade of toothless cod-
gers and crones increasingly seemed
obsolete. “The Golden Girls” (1985-
92) joined a silver surge of television
shows featuring energetic older pro-
tagonists, including “Murder, She
Wrote” (1984-96), “Matlock” (1986-
95), and Susan Harris’s “Empty Nest”
(1988-95).
“The Golden Girls” was particularly
adored. It ranked among the ten most
watched shows for six of its seven sea-
sons. Emmys rained down: three awards
for best actress in a comedy, in three

Iof taitsstarted, like many good things, as

joke. NBC was filming a preview
1984 lineup, and Selma Dia-
tensibly “over the hill” characters who
were nonetheless “young in attitude.”
Witt brought the idea to the writer
consecutive years, for White, McClan-
ahan, and Arthur, and a supporting-
actress award for Getty. In ratings and
mond, a comedian in her sixties, had Susan Harris, his wife, who came up acclaim, “The Golden Girls” blew
been tasked with introducing “Miami with a pilot script. Harris had already “Miami Vice” and its speedboats clear
Vice,” a flashy affair of Ferraris, co- pushed television’s limits with a show out of the water.
caine cartels, and designer sports jack- featuring an openly gay character Not bad for a show that was al-
ets. She pretended to misunderstand. (“Soap”), a show about a lusty divorcée most militantly unglamorous. The
“ ‘Miami Nice’?” At last, a show about (“Fay”), and a controversial story Golden Girls had old-lady hair, wore
retirees, with their mink coats and line about abortion (on “Maude”). Hav- loose clothes, and joked about their
SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM GETTY

cha-cha lessons. She got a laugh. And ing written four seasons of “Soap” ep- faltering bodies. A much loved scene,
some execs thought it might not be a isodes, she was drained and planning written by Harris, has the Girls con-
terrible idea. to leave television. Still, a sitcom about sidering the effect of various body po-
The network proposed Diamond’s older women was hard to resist. Here sitions on the sagging of their faces
concept to two producers, Paul Junger was another barrier to smash, Harris and breasts. There was a burlesque
Witt and Tony Thomas. The show, an felt—“a demographic that had never quality to this but also defiant pride.
executive explained, should feature os- been addressed.” Here was a senior subculture, with its
own fashion, politics, and humor.
The Golden Girls took trips and lovers, ignoring taboos and reframing senior life. It also had some continuities with
18 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY CRISTIANA COUCEIRO
what the historian Steven Mintz calls Americans was over sixty-five. Now A.A.R.P. flourished on the strength of
the “youthquake” of the postwar years. it’s one in six. The number of Social that market.
The baby boomers developed “intense Security beneficiaries nearly equals If Chappel is critical of the A.A.R.P.,
generational self-consciousness,” Mintz the combined populations of Califor- he has more sympathy for the Gray
writes, as they came to identify more nia and Texas. Panthers. They were, in the words of
with their peers than with their par- We are taking longer to die. This their founder, Maggie Kuhn, the only
ents. Something similar happened at is perhaps a dubious achievement; national old-age group that “also speaks
the other end of the age spectrum—a “flogging the patient” is what some out against the size of the defense
geriatric rumble. “Older Americans are doctors call the invasive procedures budget.” The Gray Panthers formed,
now historically in the process of that keep people going in groggy, in- in 1970, to protest mandatory retire-
changing from a category into a group,” tubated misery. The main story isn’t ment but soon took on the Vietnam
the sociologist Arnold Rose observed, the prolongation of death, though. It’s War, nuclear arms, and student loans,
presciently, in 1965. the prolongation of life. With artifi- too. The Panther organization was
The emergence of senior politics cial joints, cataract surgeries, hearing smaller and more pugnacious than
is chronicled in James Chappel’s new aids, supplemental oxygen, Viagra, and the A.A.R.P.—a Chihuahua to the
book, “Golden Years” (Basic). Chap- maybe a squirt of Botox, seniors stay A.A.R.P.’s St. Bernard—but shared the
pel, who’s a historian at Duke (I over- in the game. The pickleball years, as larger group’s fixation on highly active
lapped with him briefly at another some think of them, can last decades. seniors. The white-haired Kuhn was a
university), describes how older peo- No group has trumpeted this truth spark plug: she appeared on “Saturday
ple changed the narrative about aging more loudly than the American As- Night Live,” joined picket lines, and
and created “perhaps the most power- sociation of Retired Persons, founded got herself thrown out of a Social Se-
ful interest group in twentieth-century in 1958. Fifty years earlier, the very idea curity commission hearing. At rallies,
America.” Today, he notes, they re- of a national league for the retired she’d have followers stand up, raise their
ceive about a third of federal spend- would have made little sense. But by arms, and growl.
ing. “Golden Years” is a highly per- 1988 the A.A.R.P. claimed nearly half Both groups recoiled at the image
ceptive account, the most substantial of the age-eligible population as mem- of old people as frail or needy. See-
one we have, of how seniors rose to bers, and its magazine was the widest- ing them that way was “ageism,” a
become a dominant force in the circulating in the country. “Only the term invented in 1969. “Anything
United States. Roman Catholic church had more young people can do, you can do too”
“The Golden Girls” captured this Americans on its rolls,” Chappel notes. is how Chappel summarizes the
gung-ho spirit. Estelle Getty recalled In the late nineties, Washington in- A.A.R.P.’s message to its members.
letters from older viewers who found siders ranked the A.A.R.P. as the coun- The Gray Panthers ran a Media Watch
the show “tremendously liberating.” try’s most powerful lobby, over the that scolded television shows for por-
Yet, with the boomers now fully in the N.R.A., the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and AIPAC. traying the elderly as helpless, con-
Golden Girl age range—the youngest It’s “similar to the Mafia,” the humor- fused, or decrepit. “The Golden Girls”
are now turning sixty—it’s worth ask- ist Dave Barry wrote, “but more con- scored high marks. “You’re only as old
ing where this liberation leads. cerned about dietary fiber.” as you feel,” the eldest Golden Girl,
And about travel discounts. The Sophia, insists, after staying up late
n 1932, the journalist Walter B. Pit- A.A.R.P.’s growth was a triumph of dancing with the residents of a retire-
IBegins
kin published the best-seller “Life
at Forty.” With better technol-
consumerism more than advocacy. The
organization started by offering insur-
ment home.
The fight against ageism, like the
ogy and working conditions, he imag- ance deals to seniors; this blossomed one against racism, required repeat-
ined people living well even into their into the country’s largest group insur- edly updating terms. Chappel ex-
sixties. Pitkin himself lived to seventy- ance plan. The A.A.R.P. mentioned its plains that, at the start of the twen-
four. His son, Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., members’ hardships when lobbying tieth century, seniors were “the aged”
published a follow-up, in 1965, “Life Washington to protect Social Security, or sometimes “the aged and infirm.”
Begins at Fifty,” and lived to nearly but it ultimately “saw itself less as a A less stigmatizing term, “senior cit-
ninety-four. Other books pushed fur- pressure group” than as a “lifestyle or- izens,” entered common use in the
ther: “Life Begins at 60,” “Life Begins ganization,” Chappel writes. To its cor- middle of the century. Yet even this
at 70.” Is there a limit? Politicians today porate partners—selling hotel stays, failed to capture the A.A.R.P. vision,
seem unsure whether life begins at cruises, and the like—it presented its because it suggested the old were cat-
conception or at eighty. members as hedonistic, affluent buy- egorically distinct from their juniors.
This is the so-called longevity ers who (in the words of an A.A.R.P. The A.A.R.P. preferred “older peo-
revolution. Medical advances, reduced media kit) were “spending on self-ful- ple,” which strategically blurred the
child mortality, and life-style improve- fillment NOW” rather than “leaving line. After the organization success-
ments have increased life expectancy large sums behind.” Of course, only a fully lobbied to end mandatory re-
by three decades since 1900, from fortunate fraction, largely white, had tirement, in the nineteen-eighties, it
forty-seven to more than seventy- the health and the wealth to live their soft-pedalled talk of retirement, too.
seven. Back then, one in twenty-five later years as hyper-consumers. But the In 1999, it shortened its name from
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 19
the American Association of Retired With the exception of the mother- homes feature widened doors, floor
Persons to just AARP, a string of let- daughter pair of Estelle Getty’s So- lighting, and showers without steps.
ters standing for nothing. AARP has phia and Bea Arthur’s Dorothy, the But these aren’t marketed as accom-
the same relationship to retirement Golden Girls were conspicuously dis- modations, the man explained: they
that KFC has to chicken. connected from their descendants. are “lifestyle features” or luxury up-
For Susan Harris, “The Golden Their children and grandchildren ap- grades. “Tell them that it’ll make life
Girls” was a chance to speak for the peared occasionally but quickly passed easier when their parents visit,” he ad-
marginalized. Yet old people were mov- from view. The show’s writers, like dis- vised. The central fact of selling re-
ing rapidly from the margins to the tracted parents, lost track of their names tirement homes to seniors is handled
center. It’s not hard, given this, to un- and how many there were. Clearly, the lightly. Officially, “these folks aren’t
derstand why NBC’s executives loved bonds that mattered weren’t the verti- seniors, and they’re not retired either.”
the show. It was a bid for a lucrative, cal ones, linking the Golden Girls to
untapped demographic. other generations, but the horizontal n urban myth holds that the Vil-

he opening credits of “ The

ones, linking them to one another. The
show’s memorable theme song, “Thank
A lages has the country’s highest rate
of sexually transmitted infections. Not
T Golden Girls” start with a shot
of a plane f lying, presumably to
You for Being a Friend,” commends
older women for supporting each other,
true, but the snickering about the Vil-
lages corresponds to a lingering squea-
Florida. The characters have moved not their grandchildren. mishness about senior sex. At mid-cen-
there from New York, Minnesota, and There are undeniable pleasures to tury, Chappel explains, there was a
Georgia. This pattern is familiar but being free of family and surrounded powerful taboo against the subject.
possibly, on reflection, bizarre. Why by peers. Hence, for those who can Susan Harris met the taboo head
should old people congregate in the afford them, retirement communities. on. The Golden Girls had sex, Byronic
same state? Shouldn’t they, instead, The first development to prohibit res- quantities of it. “You know, Dorothy,
live near their children? idents below a certain age, ironically there is a thin line between having a
Apparently not. The late twenti- named Youngtown, was built in Ar- good time and becoming an obvious
eth century saw an unprecedented izona in the nineteen-fifties. Within wanton slut,” Rue McClanahan’s
separation of the generations. The old decades, there were thousands of Blanche says. “I know—my toe’s been
and the young drifted apart when age-restricted developments, espe- on that line.” Blanche boasts of hav-
middle-aged people moved to the cially in the Sun Belt. Just as legal ra- ing had a hundred and forty-three par-
suburbs in search of new homes, or cial segregation was falling in the amours. The writer Erin Donnelly
to different regions in search of new South, legal age segregation was ris- watched every episode and counted a
jobs. Or when their parents headed ing. The new towns were, by design, hundred and sixty-five depicted or re-
south in search of new lives. Maggie communities without children. ferred to, though questions remained
Kuhn, of the Gray Panthers, com- The largest is an hour northwest about the precise number of Flying
plained of college students “who have of Orlando, and now nearly half Or- Fanelli Brothers. “Oh, back off, Blanche.
never known an old person.” lando’s size. What was once a small Not all of us are classified by the Navy
Kuhn exaggerated, but she had a community called Orange Blossom as a friendly port,” Dorothy harrumphs.
point. The historian Katherine Otis has Gardens ballooned when a new de- Yet, by Donnelly’s count, Dorothy
studied expert advice given veloper renamed it the clocks in at forty-three, and even her
to grandparents and found Villages and made it into mother, Sophia, an octogenarian, does
that, in the nineteen-fifties something he billed as respectably, at twenty-five.
and sixties, at the apex of “Disney World for active Any discussion of later-in-life sex
the nuclear family, seniors retirees.” Instead of mono- must acknowledge an immense dou-
were chided for meddling. rails, though, the Villages ble standard. A few months before
“Advice books cautioned has golf carts. The vehicle “The Golden Girls” débuted, Roger
grandmothers against baby- is suggestive of the pro- Moore starred as James Bond in “A
sitting more than once or verbial “active life style,” View to a Kill.” As Bond, Moore snow-
twice a week,” Otis writes. having a sport in its name. boarded, raced in a steeplechase, and
(Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 But it’s basically a com- played love scenes with actresses
thriller, “Psycho,” sounded a promise between a car twenty, twenty-two, twenty-nine, and
more dramatic alarm about overinvolved and a mobility scooter, available for thirty years his junior. Few took this
elders.) Yet by the seventies the gener- those too old to drive. The Villages is as a can-do message about aging, but
ations had parted so thoroughly that a low-speed gerontopia of golf-cart maybe they should have. Moore was
experts tended to accuse seniors of ne- rallies, golf-cart drill teams, and golf- fifty-seven—exactly the right age to
glect. “One of the reasons we have as cart overpasses. be a Golden Girl. He was just four
bad a generation gap today as we do,” Andrew D. Blechman interviewed years younger than Estelle Getty, who
the anthropologist Margaret Mead a veteran of the retirement-commu- played the purse-clutching great-grand-
explained, “is that grandparents have nity industry for his 2008 book about mother, Sophia. Frankly, James Bond
copped out.” the Villages, “Leisureville.” Typical was a less interesting romantic lead
20 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
than Sophia Petrillo. Audiences were
inured to older men with attractive
younger women, but it meant some-
thing when Sophia, in Season 2, went
out with Burt Reynolds.
The Golden Girls’ sexuality was
subversive. At the height of the AIDS
crisis, they lived in a chosen family
and had nonmarital, nonreproductive
sex of the sort that society found dis-
comfiting. Unsurprisingly, the show
gained a queer following. A performer
who played Dorothy in a long-run-
ning San Francisco drag tribute ex-
plained the allure: “Four strong fe-
male characters with questionable
fashion sense who sit around and talk
about sex over cheesecake? Any gay
man can relate.”
It was, in truth, hard for older
women to have fulfilling love lives
within socially acceptable bounds. The
longevity revolution had extended their
lives more than men’s. Combine this
with the propensity of straight men
to date younger women and the result
was a dating pool drained of men. On
the show, three of the Golden Girls
are widows, and the fourth, Dorothy,
had been left by her husband for a
much younger woman. Reality did not
lag far behind. When the show dé-
buted, only one of its actors, Getty,
was married. McClanahan had di-
vorced five times, White’s husband had
• •
died, and Arthur’s ex had married a
woman twenty-five years her junior. the show’s high spirits, Chappel per- such places. (The show later intro-
What were their options? The ceives “a sadness at its core.” Retirement duces the possibility that Sophia
Older Women’s League, a spinoff of communities, sitcoms, the A.A.R.P., burned down the nursing home her-
the Gray Panthers, suggested mastur- and the Gray Panthers all promised self.) Whenever Sophia acts out, her
bation, lesbianism, and group sex. that “active” seniors could work, love, daughter reins her in with a threat:
Maggie Kuhn bragged that, while in play, travel, and raise hell better than “Shady Pines, Ma.”
her seventies, she’d dated a twenty- anyone. This ebullience, however, re- Sophia won’t go back. “The Golden
one-year-old. (“There was a spark be- quired keeping bleak thoughts at bay. Girls” conjures a fantasy of old age
tween us.”) Betty Friedan had been Friendship aside, the Golden Girls had that is not only largely free of chil-
notoriously hostile to sexual noncon- moved in together because they were dren but also largely free of doctors.
formity within the women’s move- aging and had lost husbands. “It may Chappel notes how often the show
ment. But, by the nineteen-nineties, not be too long,” Blanche observes in expresses animosity toward medical
her ex-husband had married a woman a rare moment of introspection, “be- institutions and, instead, solves prob-
forty-four years younger than her, and fore we’re elderly ourselves.” lems with friendship. An episode
a worn-down Friedan conceded that about a friend languishing in a state-
heterosexual monogamy was serving oss of independence is the re- funded nursing home ends when the
older women poorly. Might it not be
better, she ventured, to find several
L pressed horror that haunts “The
Golden Girls.” In the pilot, Sophia
Golden Girls finance her move to an
upscale facility and then resolve to
“intimate people” to supply “the phys- arrives on Dorothy’s doorstep as a “take care of each other” to the end.
ical touching we need”? refugee from the Shady Pines nurs- “The show was a celebration of self-
The Golden Girls rose to that chal- ing home, which had caught fire. It care as an alternative to physicians’
lenge, dating widely without necessar- was an allusion to a recent spate of care,” Chappel writes.
ily seeking new husbands. Yet, for all fires and other harrowing scandals in Self-care works for seniors who are
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 21
basically healthy. But they aren’t One sees this in f ilms. In 1986, something. They are, after all, quite
always, not in real life. Estelle Getty the year after “The Golden Girls” old themselves. The average age in
started suffering from Lewy body premièred, Martin Scorsese released the Senate is now sixty-seven. Re-
dementia during the show and strug- “The Color of Money.” It was a se- cent Presidents have been older. The
gled to memorize scripts. When she quel to the 1961 film “The Hustler,” baby boom refers to those born within
flubbed lines, White would turn to which had starred Paul Newman as a an eighteen-year span, yet there was
the studio audience, point to Getty, cocky young pool shark, Fast Eddie a twenty-eight-year run of boomer
and make a “she’s been drinking” Felson. “The Color of Money” fea- Presidents, broken only by Joe Biden,
gesture. When Getty requested cue tures the baby boomer Tom Cruise as a pre-boomer. (We will now return
cards, McClanahan remembered the a similarly brash upstart. (He brought to boomers.) But age has not com-
cast being “appalled” by the unpro- the same irrepressible energy to “Top pelled action, and federal long-term
fessionalism. Getty’s character, So- Gun,” also released that year.) Yet even care remains essentially what it was
phia, was in her eighties yet essen- the luminescent Cruise can’t outshine in the sixties, even as the elderly
tially impervious. Getty herself died Newman, as Felson again, now hand- population has ballooned. Politicians
at eighty-four, after a long slide into somely wrinkled and gray. Felson can seem as afflicted with age denialism
incoherence. no longer dominate at pool, and so he as everyone else.
Susan Harris had watched her own must come to grips with his place as Or maybe they have it worse. The
parents die protracted deaths, and she a mentor. Newman won an Oscar for Democratic Party, particularly, is prone
herself suffered from a disabling adre- his portrayal of the tormented elder. to shipwrecking on the shoals of un-
nal condition. As “The Golden Girls” “ The Color of Money ” has a retiring seniors. One thinks of the oc-
entered its final season, she created a twenty-first-century counterpart, the togenarian Ruth Bader Ginsburg gam-
darker sitcom, “Nurses,” in 1991, about critic Wesley Morris has pointed out: bling on her own longevity and losing.
an understaffed hospital. The first ep- the 2022 blockbuster “Top Gun: Mav- Or the octogenarian Biden, with his
isode joked about a patient lying in his erick.” There, Cruise is around sixty, aviator sunglasses and wolfish “Still
own feces. Will people watch “jokes as Newman had been in “Color.” got it!” grin, refusing to acknowledge
about death and decay and impotence Cruise plays a flight instructor, Mav- his own obvious decline, no matter
and paranoia week after week?” a critic erick, charged with preparing the next the cost to the country.
asked. “My guess is no.” The show generation of élite Navy pilots. But What people said about Biden is
scraped by for three seasons before Maverick refuses to step aside. In- that he was too old. Maybe he wasn’t
being cancelled. stead, he leaps into action, cheerfully old enough: he lacked the putative
Harris had hit the limits of what elbowing his juniors out of the frame, maturity of an elder. Since “The
viewers would accept. Older women and saves the day. This isn’t a reflec- Golden Girls,” we have reinterpreted
with boyfriends, yes; older women with tion on age so much as a repudiation old age as continued youth. No lon-
bedpans, no. Susan Jacoby, who spent of it. Cruise looks eerily boyish in the ger a time of decline, it is one of danc-
two decades writing for magazines film, more rubbery but otherwise un- ing, dating, and travel. But it is pos-
that targeted older readers, arrived at changed since the first “Top Gun,” sible that we’ve twisted the dial so far
the same conclusion. Seniors have been thirty-six years earlier. as to lose touch with the other virtues
sold “a concept of aging that ends Tom Cruise in his sixties is the of age, those that come from reckon-
where the more disabling, restrictive face (the otherworldly, well-moistur- ing with finitude.
stage of old age begins,” Jacoby argues ized face) of an aging society in de- The closest the Golden Girls get
in her book “Never Say Die” (2011). nial. The effects are spelled out in in- to this is in the episode about the
Even media that celebrate seniors en- stitutions. Chappel observes that, nursing home. After the characters
gage in what Jacoby calls a “selective although the United States boasts “a vow to always support one another, a
form of ageism”: they exalt the healthy relatively developed and successful” realization dawns. “But what happens
and scorn the rest. system for healthy older people, its when there’s only one of us left?” Betty
This messaging is now aimed support for those requiring long-term White’s Rose asks. Sophia, a genera-
straight at the baby boom, a genera- assistance is “catastrophically under- tion older than the rest, replies non-
tion identified strongly with youth. (It developed.” Families that don’t qual- chalantly, “Don’t worry, I can take care
has the word “baby” in its name.) As ify for Medicaid pay small fortunes, of myself.” The audience roars, and
teens, the boomers didn’t trust anyone not infrequently draining their sav- the credits roll. 
over thirty; after thirty, they found ings, to get professional care. Nurs- 1
their inner child. Now they are seniors, ing homes, meanwhile, are under- Block That Metaphor!
with enormous generational wealth, staffed and poorly regulated. Their From the Washington Post.
and a vast media and marketing ap- inadequacies became clear with
paratus is trained on them. Predict- COVID-19. Fourteen states saw more “I just think we have jumped the shark,
ably, the old-age experience sold to than ten per cent of their nurs- crossed the Rubicon and now we’re on the
crazy train about to run into the ice cliffs that
them is not about maturation. It is, ing-home population die of the virus guard the flat earth,” Riggleman said. “I think
rather, a deadline extension, more years in the year 2020 alone. the flirtation with crazy comes with wanting
of not getting old. One might expect politicians to do to get votes.”

22 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024

 in Miami, from which she texts photos
SHOUTS & MURMURS of herself by the pool. In a bathing suit.
But I will not be lured. Well, I would.
But she’s in Miami. I consider flying
there. But principles cannot be broken.
Also, I would have to connect through
Phoenix, with a six-hour layover.

DAY 14: The conversation starts innocently.

But I know my wife. And I won’t budge.
Because I want to make the point that
I, too, believe in whatever she believes
in, which is something I know but am
spacing on at this moment.
“Oh, I meant to tell you,” she says ca-
WITHHOLDING SEX sually but also sexually, if you listen very
closely, as she unloads bags from Trader
FROM MY WIFE Joe’s. “You know Howard and Vivian?”
It’s so funny to me, because she asks
BY JOHN KENNEY this as if sex isn’t on her mind. Her body
all but screams sex, underneath her flan-
In the wake of [the] election, progressive glance suggested that she had, in fact, nel shirt, sweatshirt, and fleece.
women, who are outraged over Donald Trump’s seen me and was drawn to me sexually “No,” I say, having no idea who How-
victory at the ballot box, have taken to social (or possibly not), when she said, “What’s ard and Vivian are.
media with public, vengeful vows of chastity.
wrong with your face? Are you sick?” “Don’t be dumb,” she says. “Two streets
—The Free Press.
She got into bed, turning her back to over. Older couple. Always gardening.”
D AY 1: So it begins. Call it a protest if you me (a sign?), and, sighing loudly, mut- It turns out I do know them. “Oh,
like. I call it principle. We’ll see who cares tered, “I’m so tired I could kill myself.” sure,” I say, knowing we’ll most likely be
more about this election. And by elec- having sex soon, because although I want
tion I mean sex. And by sex I mean me DAY 7: I feel I’m doing what I must, even to stand by my principles, I also want to
withholding it to make a point. That if I don’t understand what I’m doing. I be a good husband when my wife clearly
point being . . . I’m not exactly sure. Maybe haven’t even thought about sex much wants to have sex.
that I can go without sex to prove that I over the past six days and ten hours. Has “Howard died yesterday,” she says.
am in support of what my wife is in sup- my wife? Her coquettish behavior would (Sure he did.)
port of, both politically and also in terms suggest that she has. When I enter our “So you want to have sex,” I say.
of not wanting to have sex with me much. room, wearing just a towel, I sense, from “What? What is wrong with you?”
my wife’s mud mask and Invisalign mouth “Wait. You’re serious? Howard died?”
DAY 4: Still no sex, which of course is fine guard, that the sexual energy is palpable “He had a heart attack in the garden
by me. That’s the plan. Surprised it’s been but that I will have to say no. Or maybe and fell into a wheelbarrow, which rolled
only three days (feels longer?). Is my wife make an exception. “What are you doing?” into the street, where he was hit by a car.”
aware of the plan? Hard to say. Last night, I ask seductively. Maybe not seductively. “Oh, my God.”
I was reading in bed as she entered the Maybe just regular. “I know!”
room, engaging in our usual foreplay “What?” she asks, looking at her “So do you want to have sex or not?
banter. “It would kill you to switch the phone, drooling a bit from the mouth You’re sending mixed signals.”
clothes from the washer to the dryer?” guard. I’ve been standing with one arm
she said. “Seriously?” leaning against the doorframe. My wife DAY 18: I decide to test her resolve by lur-
I heard what she was saying. But I also does not look up. My arm begins to tin- ing her, as she sometimes lures me, by
heard sexual tension. Or maybe just ten- gle from the reduced flow of blood. I re- wearing form-fitting clothing. (“I’m just
sion. Come to think of it, it was definitely vert to a tactic I know she can’t resist: wearing yoga pants,” she protests at these
more annoyance. But I think buried way taking handfuls of my stomach fat, push- times. Protests too much, methinks.)
down under that annoyance (and quite ing them together, and speaking in the At breakfast, I say, casually, “How
a bit of drawer slamming) was a long- voice of Belly Man, who this evening about that election and my principled
ing for sex. Which is why I was trying to has chosen the lyrics to Rod Stewart’s stand against the things you are against?”
maintain a look that said, “I am a sexual “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” She looks up “What are you even talking about?”
man but also will not be used for your and appears to have developed a resis- she asks. “And why are you wearing my
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ

pleasure, because I have principles, but tance to Belly Man, then resumes texting. yoga pants? Are you drunk?”
please know that I will make exceptions.”
My wife did not appear to see me as DAY 10:She hasn’t cracked yet, but that DAY 21: Wait. Is my protest still valid if
she put away clothes, but then a quick could be because she’s on a business trip I forgot to vote? 
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 23
 BRAVE NEW WORLD DEPT.

GETTING A GRIP
Robots learn to use their hands.
BY JAMES SOMERS

I
n the first days of my son’s life, during something in the dark, you can basi- fee filter, a robot might need to navigate
the fall of 2023, he spent much of cally draw it.” around a kitchen island, recognize a cup-
the time when he wasn’t sleeping or I remember the week that my son’s board, and open the cupboard door with-
eating engaged in what some cognitive hands came online. We had a spherical out ripping it off its hinges. Simply peel-
scientists call “motor babbling.” His arms toy with a rattle inside, and for weeks ing apart the sides of a coffee filter was
and legs wiggled; his eyes wandered and he limply ignored it. One day, though, long considered a feat of unfathomable
darted, almost mechanically. One night, as if by accident, he managed to paw at difficulty. A hopelessness hung over the
as he was drifting off to sleep, he smiled it.The next day, he could hold on. Within whole enterprise.
for the first time. As I admired him, won- a week, he grasped for it with some in- Then some of A.I.’s achievements
dering what he might be thinking about, tention, and after two weeks he was turn- began spilling into robotics. Tony Zhao,
his expression suddenly went blank— ing it over in his hand. The remarkable a robotics researcher who started his ac-
and then, in quick succession, he looked thing about this progression is its ex- ademic career in A.I., at U.C. Berkeley,
upset, then surprised, and then happy treme rapidity. How can one learn to remembers reading about GPT-3, a large
again. It was as if the equipment were use so complex a piece of equipment in language model that OpenAI introduced
being calibrated. That is apparently the just two weeks? My son himself seemed in 2020, and feeling that he was a wit-
purpose of motor babbling: random impressed. He would look at his palm ness to history. “I’d seen language mod-
movements help the brain get acquainted and flex his fingers, as though wonder- els before, but that was the first one that
with the body it’s in. ing, What is this thing, and what else felt kind of alive,” he told me. Petron,
Our intelligence is physical long be- can it do? the M.I.T. researcher, was working on
fore it is anything else. Most of our brain In the nineteen-eighties, Hans Mora- another project at OpenAI—a robotic
mass exists to coördinate the activity of vec, a Canadian roboticist, described a hand that could delicately spin the faces
our bodies. (Neuroscientists have found paradox: the tasks that are easiest for hu- of a Rubik’s Cube. In August, 2022, re-
that even when you navigate an abstract mans to perform, such as using our hands searchers from Google showed that
space—contemplating, say, your compa- to grasp things, are often the hardest for L.L.M.-powered robots had a surpris-
ny’s org chart—you use the same neural computers to do. This is still true even ing amount of common sense about
machinery you’d use to navigate a real now that many refined tasks, such as physical tasks. When they asked a robot
space.) A disproportionate amount of writing prose or computer code, have for a snack and a drink, it found a ba-
the primary motor cortex, a region of practically been conquered already. In nana and a water bottle in the kitchen
the brain that controls movement, is de- my job as a programmer, I use an A.I. to and brought them over.
voted to body parts that move in more quickly solve coding tasks that once would Roboticists increasingly believe that
complicated ways. An especially large have taken me an afternoon; this A.I. their field is approaching its ChatGPT
portion controls the face and lips; a sim- couldn’t type at my keyboard. It is all moment. Zhao told me that when he
ilarly large portion controls the hands. mind and no body. As a result, the most ran one of his latest creations he im-
A human hand is capable of mov- “A.I.-proof ” professions may actually be mediately thought of GPT-3. “It feels
ing in twenty-seven separate ways, more old ones: plumbing, carpentry, child care, like something that I’ve never seen be-
by far than any other body part: our cooking. Steve Wozniak, the co-founder fore,” he said. In the top labs, devices that
wrists rotate, our knuckles move in- of Apple, once proposed a simple test once seemed crude and mechanical—
dependently of one another, our fin- that has yet to be passed: Can a robot robotic—are moving in a way that sug-
gers can spread or contract. The sen- go into your house and make you a cup gests intelligence. A.I.’s hands are com-
sors in the skin of the hand are among of coffee? ing online. “The last two years have been
the densest in the body, and are part of Until a few years ago, robotics seemed a dramatically steeper progress curve,”
a network of nerves that run along the to be developing far more slowly than Carolina Parada, who runs the robotics
spinal cord. “People think of the spinal A.I. On YouTube, humanoid forms team at Google DeepMind, told me.
column as just wires,” Arthur Petron, a developed by Boston Dynamics, an Parada’s group has been behind many
roboticist who earned his Ph.D. in bio- industrial-robotics company, danced or of the most impressive recent robotics
mechatronics at M.I.T., said. “No. It’s leaped over obstacles, doing a sort of breakthroughs, particularly in dexterity.
also brain tissue.” The hand, in partic- mechanical parkour. But these movements “This is the year that people really real-
ular, is so exquisitely sensitive that “it’s were scripted—the same robots couldn’t ized that you can build general-purpose
a vision sensor,” he said. “If you touch make you a cup of coffee. To fetch a cof- robots,” she said. What is striking about
24 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
“This is the year that people really realized that you can build general-purpose robots,” a Google roboticist said recently.
ILLUSTRATION BY TAMEEM SANKARI THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 25
these achievements is that they involve hands makes reorienting things much with purpose toward the shirt, like the
very little explicit programming. The ro- easier,” Tompson suggested. magic broomsticks in “Fantasia.”
bots’ behavior is learned. I had forgotten I even had a left hand. The right claw grabbed one corner
I practiced opening and closing the left of the shirt, motor whirring, and lifted
n a cool morning this summer, I claw and found that I could easily pass it toward a little plastic coatrack with a
O visited a former shopping mall in
Mountain View, California, that is now
the diamond back and forth. Driess
chimed in: “You see it has no force feed-
hanger on it. The other claw grabbed the
hanger. The next steps were to thread
a Google office building. On my way in- back, but you realize that it doesn’t mat- the hanger into one shoulder, secure that
side, I passed a small museum of the ter at all.” When I closed the grippers side, and do the same with the other
company’s past “moonshots,” including around the diamond, I couldn’t feel any- shoulder. The robot halted a moment,
Waymo’s first self-driving cars. Upstairs, thing—but I finally managed to fit the then recovered. Finally, it placed the shirt
Jonathan Tompson and Danny Driess, shape through the hole. and hanger on the rack.
research scientists in Google DeepMind’s Gaining confidence, I grabbed a high- “I’ll call that a success,”Tompson said,
robotics division, stood in the center of lighter in my left claw and pulled the cap tapping the right pedal. I could see the
what looked like a factory floor, with off with my right. Tompson said that intricacy of the task: your eyes help your
wires everywhere. they’d given a similar task to their oper- hands make tiny adjustments as you go.
At a couple of dozen stations, oper- ators. Near my feet were two pedals, one ALOHA is one of the simplest and cheap-
ators leaned over tabletops, engaged in labelled “Success,” the other “Failure.” est sets of robotic arms out there, yet op-
various kinds of handicraft. They were You might cap and uncap highlighters erators have pushed the boundaries of
not using their own hands—instead, for hours, tapping the right pedal if you robotic dexterity with it. “You can peel
they were puppeteering pairs of metal- got it and the left if you fumbled. Then eggs,”Tompson said. Zhao had managed
lic robotic arms. The setup, known as the A.I., using a technique called imita- to fish a contact lens out of its case and
ALOHA, “a low-cost open-source hard- tion learning, could try to mimic the suc- place it on a toy frog’s eye. (Other precise
ware system for bimanual teleoperation,” cessful runs without anyone behind the tasks, such as sewing, remain difficult.)
was once Zhao’s Ph.D. project at Stan- claws. If you’ve ever seen a tennis instruc- In the early days of Google Books,
ford. At the end of each arm was a claw tor guide a student’s arm through a proper roomfuls of contractors turned millions
that rotated on a wrist joint; it moved backhand, that’s imitation learning. of pages by hand in order to unlock
like the head of a velociraptor, with a I eyed a computer underneath the the knowledge inside. The roomful of
slightly stiff grace. One woman was using table. Driess explained that there are ALOHAs was unlocking the subtle phys-
her robotic arms to carefully lower a four cameras that gather data, along ical details of everyday life, arguably one
necklace into the open drawer of a jew- with sensors that track the orientation of the last expanses of unrecorded human
elry case. Behind her, another woman of the robot in space. The data are dis- activity. The data they generate will help
prized apart the seal on a ziplock bag, tilled by a series of neural networks into to train what roboticists have taken to
and nearby a young man swooped his what’s called a policy—essentially a calling “large behavioral models.”
hands forward as his robotic arms folded computer program that tells a robot I asked Tompson and Driess to show
a child’s shirt. It was close, careful work, what to do. An assembly-line robot arm me the policy that their robot had be-
and the room was quiet except for the might have a very simple policy: rotate come famous for. “There is a professor,
wheeze of mechanical joints opening ten degrees clockwise, pick up an item, a very good professor, who said that he
and closing. “It’s quite surprising what drop it, rotate back, repeat. The poli- will retire as soon as a robot policy can
you can and can’t do with parallel jaw cies being trained here were far more tie shoes,” Driess said. Tompson plunked
grippers,” Tompson said, as he offered complex—a summation of all the op- a shoe down on the table.
me a seat at an empty station. “I’ll show erators’ successful runs. When the claws came alive, they
you how to get started.” Driess began typing at a console grabbed the two ends of the shoelace,
I wrapped my fingers around two nearby. He wanted to show me a policy formed them into loops, and wove them
handles. When I pushed or pulled with that put shirts on clothes hangers. “This through each other.As the claws came apart,
one of my hands, its robot-claw coun- policy was trained on how many demon- we cheered: the robot had tied a shoelace.
terpart followed suit. Tompson put some strations?” Tompson asked. “So did he retire?” I asked. Appar-
toys and a highlighter on the table. With “Eight thousand,” Driess answered. ently not. One of the ultimate dreams
my right hand, I pawed weakly at a small I imagined an operator hanging a of A.I. is generalization: how does your
plastic diamond, hoping to push it shirt eight thousand times. Behind us, policy do when pushed beyond its train-
through a diamond-shaped hole in a someone arrived for a new shift and shook ing data? They’d trained the policy on
block. “This is kind of tough,” I said. My his wrists out. “They never operate for only two or three shoes.
brain had decided with impressive speed more than an hour at a time without an “If I gave it my shoe,” I ventured,
that these claws were my new hands, but hour break in between,” Tompson said. “would it just totally fail?”
hadn’t yet wired them up correctly. The When the policy was ready, Tomp- “We could try,” Tompson said. I re-
diamond would not do what I wanted. son laid a child’s polo shirt on the table moved my right sneaker, with apologies
I felt for my son, who’d had the same and Driess hit Enter. Suddenly, the to anyone forced to handle it. Tompson
trouble with one of his first toys. ALOHA I’d been driving began driving gamely placed it on the table, while Driess
“Passing it back and forth between itself. The hands came alive and moved reloaded the policy.
26 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
 “To set expectations,” Driess said, me and my son is that most of my pre- For this reason, imitation learning
“this is a task that is thought of as being dictions are accurate. I don’t reach for a seems to have an edge over simulation.
impossible.” stream of water thinking I might be able Figure, an American startup, has raised
Tompson eyed his new experimental to hold on to it. The exceptions stand more than six hundred million dollars
subject with some trepidation. “Very short out. Not long ago, at a restaurant, a friend to build an elaborate “humanoid” robot
shoelaces,” he said. told me to poke a sculpture that appeared with a head, a torso, arms, legs, and
The policy booted up, and the claws to be made of glass, and it wobbled, al- five-fingered hands. Its most impressive
set to work. This time, they poked at most like rubber. Model updated. feat of dexterity so far is “singulating a
the shoelace without getting a grip. “Do We can tie shoelaces better than pepperoni,” according to Brett Adcock,
you give consent for your shoe to be ALOHA not because it has primitive, un- Figure’s founder: it can peel one slice
destroyed?” Driess joked, as the hands sensing claws but because every shoe— from the rest of the sausage. “If you want
grabbed at the tongue. Tompson let them every arrangement of laces, the way they to do what humans can do,” Adcock told
try for a few more seconds before hit- bend and fall each time you lift them— me, “then you need a robot that can in-
ting the Failure pedal. is different. There is no Internet-size ar- teract the same way humans can with
chive of the ways in which physical ob- that environment.” (Tesla, 1x, Agility,
xperts in child development like to jects interact. Instead, researchers have and dozens of Chinese competitors
E say that at around nine months old
babies develop the pincer grip, or the
come up with several competing meth-
ods of teaching robots.
have built humanoids.) Geordie Rose,
a co-founder of Sanctuary AI, a robot-
ability to hold something small between One camp is betting on simulation. ics and artificial-intelligence startup
their thumb and forefinger. That frames Nvidia, the giant A.I. chipmaker, has based in Vancouver, argued that it’s eas-
the problem in terms of the hand. Equally made software for creating “digital twins” ier to collect data for robots that move
important, though, is the knowledge the of industrial processes, which allows like us. “If I asked you to pick up a cup
maneuver requires. Children have to learn computers to practice motions before with, say, an octopus robot with eight
how hard you can squeeze a piece of av- robots actually try them. OpenAI used suction-cup tentacles, you’d have no idea
ocado before it slides out of your fingers, simulated data when training its robotic what to do, right?” he said. “But, if it’s a
or a Cheerio before it crumbles. hand to spin a Rubik’s Cube; copies of hand, you just do it.” Sanctuary’s sleek
From the moment my son was born, the hand, practicing in parallel, carried humanoid, called Phoenix, learns partly
he’s been engaged in what A.I. research- out simulations that would have taken by being tele-operated by humans. The
ers call “next-token prediction.” As he a real robot ten thousand years to per- “pilot” dons haptic gloves, an exosuit that
reaches for a piece of banana, his brain form. The appeal is obvious: all you need covers the upper body, and a virtual-
is predicting what it will feel like on his to generate more data is more comput- reality headset that shows what the robot
fingertips. When it slips, he learns. This ing power, and robots can learn like Neo “sees.” Every movement, down to the
is more or less the method that L.L.M.s in “The Matrix,” when he downloaded slightest bend of the pilot’s pinkie, is
like ChatGPT use in their training. As kung fu. Robot hands and Rubik’s cubes replicated on the robot. Phoenix learns
an L.L.M. hoovers up prose from the can’t be simulated perfectly, however. in much the same way as ALOHA, but
Internet, it hides from itself the next Even a paper towel becomes unpredict- it’s far more expressive.
chunk of text, or token, in a sentence. able when you crumple or rip it. Last Of course, if robots have to be taught
It guesses the hidden token on the basis year, Nvidia published a paper showing every skill by hand, it’s going to take
of the ones that came before, then un- that researchers could teach a simulated a long time, and a lot of exosuits, for
hides the token to see how close its robot hand to spin a pen in its fingers, them to become useful. When I want
guess was, learning from any discrep- the way a bored student might, an ac- to bake bread, I don’t ask Paul and Prue
ancies. The beauty of this method is tion that essentially requires the pen to from “The Great British Bake Off” to
that it requires very little human inter- be in flight most of the time. But the come over and pilot my arms; I just watch
vention. You can just feed the model paper makes no mention of whether an episode of the show. “It’s the holy
raw knowledge, in the form of an In- an actual robot could perform the trick. grail, right?” Tompson, from the ALOHA
ternet’s worth of tokens.
As grownups, we have an indescrib-
ably rich model of the physical world,
the result of a lifetime of tokens. Try this:
Look at any object or surface around you
and imagine what it would taste like. You
are probably right, and that has some-
thing to do with the years you spent
crawling around, putting everything in
your mouth. Like all adults, I practice
dexterity without even meaning to: when
I manage to put a duvet into its cover;
when I open a sealed bag of dog treats
with one hand. The difference between “Relax, you’re not in it.”
 a deep, fast crosscourt shot, which sailed
just past the end of the table.
“It’s pretty savage, this thing,” I said.
It seemed to be trying to paint the corners.
“We changed it to make it more com-
petitive,” Sanketi said. “In the process,
what happened is that it’s more aggressive.”
A lot of its balls were going long. I
took some pace off my own shots, and
suddenly it found its range. Now that it
was getting into rallies, it went for steeper
and steeper angles. More balls were going
to my backhand side. “You can feel it
adapting to you,” I said.
As it exploited my weakness, I tried
to exploit back, putting some cut on the
ball. It blew its return into the net. “Spin
it doesn’t like,” I said. The team had tried
“His poetry is good—but a little dark.” to use a motion-tracking system to es-
timate the tilt of paddles as players struck
the ball, but it wasn’t sensitive enough.
• • There were other limitations. “It’s
very risky to get close to the table,” San-
project, said. “You can imagine a model paddle. On the afternoon of my visit, keti said, so the robot always hovers at
watching YouTube videos to learn basi- Saminda Abeyruwan, a research engi- least two inches above the table, which
cally whatever you want it to do.” But a neer, was sitting at a computer console reduces the amount of topspin it can
YouTube video doesn’t tell you the precise on the other side of the net, and Pannag put on its returns. A lot of my balls were
angle of a baker’s elbow or the amount Sanketi, a software engineer, told him to coming in fast and low, thank you very
of force in her fingers as she kneads. To “turn on the binary.” The arm whirred much, and the robot had a hard time
take advantage of demonstrations at a to attention. getting under them. Sanketi suspected
distance, a robot would need to be able Videos of this robot from 2022 had that this explained many of the long
to map its hands onto a person’s. That not made me excited to play against misses. But there was also just the fact
requires a foundation: a mental model it. In the lingo of my middle-school ten- that it had never played me before. In
of the physical world and of the body nis team, the robot appeared to be a the lingo, my playing style was “out of
in it, and a repertoire of simple skills. “pusher”—cheaply returning the ball, distribution,” like shoes with unusually
Early in our lives, humans learn how with no ambition, and barely challeng- short laces.
to learn. A few months ago, my son was ing beginners. But apparently the sys- “The way that we would fix this is,
sitting on a rocking horse, disappointed tem had improved in the past two years. we have all the balls that it missed,” San-
that it wasn’t moving. He looked over Fei Xia, another researcher, warned me, keti went on. “We put it in the flywheel
his shoulder and saw a girl on her own “Be careful with the forehand.” and train again. Next time you come, it
horse kicking her legs to make it rock. Abeyruwan hit a practice serve to the will play better.” In the course of four
Monkey see, monkey do. After a few machine. The whole apparatus—the arm weeks this summer, with data from only
tries, the horse started going, and a smile was mounted on a gantry—moved like a couple of dozen players, the robot had
broke out on his face. Practitioners of a printer head, loudly, and faster than progressed from dopey beginner to high
A.I. like to talk about “the flywheel,” an seemed plausible. The paddle swung intermediate. “Is the goal to get it to su-
analogy to a disk that, once it gets going, through the air with a lovely, rising stroke, perhuman performance?” I asked.
is hard to stop. When the flywheel is re- shooting the ball back across the net. “Yeah,” Sanketi said. Behind him,
ally spinning, robots explore the world Abeyruwan, quick on his feet, rallied, but there was another Ping-Pong table with
more efficiently, and they start to im- on the third shot the arm ripped a fore- a similar setup, except that there was a
prove more quickly. That is how a robot hand at an angle. 0–1. robot on each side. I could see where this
might leap from one regime, like need- “I don’t want to play it too much,” was going.
ing to be puppeteered, to another, like Abeyruwan said. “It’s going to adapt to my DeepMind, which was founded as a
learning on its own. weaknesses.” He offered me the paddle. London-based A.I. research laboratory
One downside of not being a robot in 2010, is best known for a model called
ne of the older buildings on the is that you can’t just load a policy into AlphaGo, which beat the world cham-
O Google campus contains a Ping-
Pong table with a big industrial robot
your memory. It usually takes me about
fifteen minutes to find my rhythm at a
pion in the ancient board game Go. Al-
phaGo was originally fed a database of
arm on one side—the kind you’d see in Ping-Pong table. I lobbed a ball to my matches so that it could imitate human
a car factory, but in this case holding a opponent, hoping to warm up. Back came experts. Later, a newer version trained
28 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
solely via “self-play,” sparring with a copy ers to stretch their abilities without ut- able robot can’t explore the physical world
of itself. The model became an aston- terly failing? In a simulated game of Go, like a baby can. (Babies are surprisingly
ishingly efficient learner—the crowning there are a finite number of moves and tough, and parents usually intervene be-
example of a technique known as “rein- specific conditions for victory; an algo- fore they can swallow toys or launch
forcement learning,” in which an A.I. rithm can be rewarded for any move themselves off the bed.)
teaches itself not by imitating humans that leads there. But in the physical world For the past several years, Shadow
but by trial and error. Whenever the there are an uncountable number of Robot has been developing what looks
model chanced onto a good move, the moves. When a robot attempts to spin like a medieval gauntlet with three fingers,
decisions that led it there were reinforced, a pen, where there are so many more all of which are opposable, like thumbs.
and it got better. After just thirty hours ways to fail than to succeed, how does A layer of gel under the “skin” of the fin-
of this training, it had become one of the it even determine that it’s making prog- gertips is decorated with tiny dots that
best players on the planet. ress? The Rubik’s Cube researchers had are filmed by an embedded camera; the
Collecting data in the physical world, to manually engineer rewards into their pattern deforms under pressure. This
however, is much harder than doing so system, as if laying bread crumbs for the helps the robot’s “brain” sense when a fin-
inside a computer. Google DeepMind’s robot to follow: by fiat, the robot won ger touches something, and how firmly.
best Go model can play a virtual game points for maneuvers that humans know Shadow’s original hand needed to be
in seconds, but physics limits how fast a to be useful, such as twisting a face ex- re-started or serviced every few hours,
ball can ping and pong. The company’s actly ninety degrees. but this one has been run for hundreds
Ping-Pong robots take up an entire room, What’s mysterious about humans is of hours at a time. Walker showed me
and there are only three; the researchers that we intrinsically want to learn new a video of the fingers surviving blows
had to invent a Rube Goldberg contrap- things. We come up with our own re- from a mallet.
tion using fans, funnels, and hoppers to wards. My son wanted to master the use On a recent video call, I saw a few of
feed loose balls back into robot-vs.-robot of his hands because he was determined the new Shadow hands in one of Goo-
games. Right now, Sanketi explained, the to taste everything in sight. That moti- gle DeepMind’s labs in London, hang-
robots are better at offense than defense, vated him to practice other new abili- ing inside enclosures like caged squid.
which ends games prematurely. “There’s ties, like crawling or reaching behind his The fingers were in constant motion,
nothing to keep the rally going,” he said. back. In short, he designed the curricu- fast enough that they almost blurred.
That’s why the team had to keep train- lum himself. By the time he attempts I watched one of the hands pick up
ing their robots against people. something complicated, he has already a Lego-like yellow block and attempt
A Ping-Pong robot that could beat developed a vocabulary of basic moves, to slot it into a matching socket. For a
all comers sounded like classic Deep- which helps him avoid many obviously person, the task is trivial, but a single
Mind: a singularly impressive, whimsi- doomed strategies, like twitching wildly— three-fingered robotic hand struggles to
cal, legible achievement. It would also the kind of thing that an untrained robot reposition the block without dropping
be useful—imagine a tireless playing will do. A robot with no clear curricu- it. “It’s a very unstable task by construc-
partner that adjusts as you improve. But lum and no clear rewards accomplishes tion,” Francesco Nori, the engineering
Parada, the robotics lead, told me that little more than hurting itself. lead of DeepMind’s robotics division,
the project might actually be winding The robots of our imagination— explained. With just three digits, you
down. Google, which acquired Deep- RoboCop, the Terminator—are much frequently need to break contact with
Mind in 2014 and merged it with an in- the block and reëstablish it again, as if
house A.I. division, Google Brain, in tossing it between your fingers. Sub-
2023, is not known for daring A.I. prod- tle changes in how tightly you grip the
ucts. (They have a reputation for pro- block affect its stability. To demonstrate,
ducing stellar and somewhat esoteric re- Nori put his phone between his thumb
search that gets watered down before it and forefinger, and as he loosened his
reaches the market.) What the Ping- grip it spun without falling. “You need
Pong bot has shown, Parada told me, is to squeeze enough on the object, but
that a robot can “think” fast enough to not too much, because you need to re-
compete in sport and, by interacting with orient the object in your hand,” he said.
humans, can get better and better at a sturdier than humans, but most real ro- At first, the researchers asked oper-
physical skill. Together with the surpris- bots are delicate. “If you use a robot arm ators to don three-fingered gloves and
ing capabilities of the ALOHAs, these to knock a table or push something, it is train their policy with imitation learn-
findings suggested a path to human lev- likely to break,” Rich Walker, whose com- ing, ALOHA style. But the operators got
els of dexterity. pany, Shadow Robot, made the hand tired after thirty minutes, and there was
that OpenAI used in its Rubik’s Cube something un-ergonomic about oper-
obots that teach themselves, by way experiments, told me. “Long-running re- ating a hand that was only sort of like
R of reinforcement learning, were long
thought to be a dead end in robotics. A
inforcement-learning experiments are
abusing to robots. Untrained policies are
your own. Different operators solved
the task in different ways; the policy
basic problem is what’s called curricu- torture.” This turns out to profoundly they trained had only a two-per-cent
lum design: how do you encourage learn- limit how much they can learn. A break- success rate. The range of possible moves
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 29
was too large. The robot didn’t know something like speech transcription or Chelsea Finn, a Stanford robotics
what to imitate. image recognition. Each had its own re- professor who contributed to the early
The team turned instead to reinforce- search teams or companies devoted to development of ALOHA, worked at Goo-
ment learning. They taught the robot to it. Then large language models came gle for several years. But she left the
mine successful simulations in a clever along. Shockingly, they could not only company not long ago to co-found a
way—by slicing each demonstration into translate languages but also pass a bar startup called Physical Intelligence,
a series of sub-tasks. The robot then prac- exam, write computer code, and more which aims to build software that can
ticed the sub-tasks, moving from those besides. The hodgepodge melted into a control any robot. (Driess, who’d shown
that were easier to those that were harder. single A.I., and the learning accelerated. me the ALOHAs, joined her.) About a
In effect, the robot followed its own curric- The latest version of ChatGPT can talk month ago, Physical Intelligence an-
ulum. Trained this way, the robot learned to you aloud in dozens of languages, on nounced its first “generalist robot pol-
more from less data; sixty-four per cent of any topic, and sing to you, and even gauge icy.” In a video, a two-armed robot emp-
the time, it fit the block into the socket. your tone. Anything it can do, it can do ties a clothes dryer into a basket, wheels
When the team first started running better than stand-alone models once the basket over to a table, and then folds
their policy, the block was bright yellow. dedicated to that individual task. shirts and shorts and places them in a
But the task has been performed so many The same thing is happening in ro- stack. “The first time I saw the robot
times that dust and metal from the ro- botics. For most of the history of the fold five items in a row from a laundry
bot’s fingers have blackened the edges. field, you could write an entire disserta- basket, it was probably the most excited
“This data is really valuable,” Maria tion about a narrow subfield such as vi- I’ve been about a research result,” Finn
Bauza, a research scientist on the proj- sion, planning, locomotion, or the really told me. The A.I. driving this remark-
ect, said. The data would refine their sim- hard one, dexterity. But “foundation mod- able display, called π₀, can reportedly
ulation, which would improve the real- els” like GPT-4 have largely subsumed control half a dozen different embodi-
life policy, which would ref ine the models that help robots with planning ments, and can with one policy solve
simulation even more. Humans wouldn’t and vision, and locomotion and dexter- multiple tasks that might challenge an
have to be anywhere in the loop. ity will probably soon be subsumed, too. ALOHA: bagging groceries, assembling
At Google, as at many of the leading This is even becoming true across dif- a box, clearing a dinner table. It works
academic and industrial research labs, you ferent “embodiments.” Recently, a large by combining a ChatGPT-esque model,
can start to feel as if you’re in a droid re- consortium of researchers showed that which has broad knowledge of the world
pair shop in “Star Wars.” In Mountain data can be shared successfully from one and can understand images, with imi-
View, while I was watching one of the kind of machine to another. In “Trans- tation learning. “It’s definitely just the
ALOHAs in action, a friendly-looking lit- formers,” the same brain controls Opti- start,” Finn said.
tle wheeled bot, reminiscent of something mus Prime whether he’s a humanoid or a When we think about a future with
from “WALL-E,” stood by. Around the truck. Now imagine that it can also con- robots, we tend to imagine Rosie, from
corner was a gigantic pair of arms, which trol an industrial arm, a fleet of drones, “The Jetsons”: a humanoid doing chores.
a researcher on the project described or a four-legged cargo robot. But the robot revolution isn’t going to
as capable of breaking bones “without The human brain is plastic when it end with people-shaped machines fold-
too much difficulty.” (The comes to the machinery it ing shirts. I live in New York City, and
robot has safeguards to pre- can command: even if you almost everything I can see was made by
vent it from doing so.) It was have never used a prosthetic human hands. Central Park looks nat-
stacking blocks—a sort of limb, you have probably felt ural, but it was once a mostly feature-
super-ALOHA. The Lon- a wrench or a tennis racquet less swamp. Thousands of laborers spent
don lab is home to a team become like an extension of years creating the reservoir, the lake, the
of twenty-inch-high hu- your body. Drive past a rolling hills. Their hands pushed shov-
manoid soccer bots. His- double-parked car and you els into the ground to build hillsides, lit
torically, every make and know, intuitively, whether fuses to blast rock away, and nestled sap-
model of robot was an is- your passenger-side mirror lings into the soil.
land: the code you used to is likely to get clipped. A few years ago, at a recycling center
control one couldn’t control There’s every reason to be- near the airport in Zurich, Switzerland,
another. But researchers are now dream- lieve that a future generation of A.I. will a very large hand was at work. It was an
ing of a day when a single artificial in- acquire the motor plasticity of a real autonomous excavator, developed by re-
telligence can control any type of robot. brain. “Ultimately, what we will see is searchers at ETH Zürich, and it was
like one intelligence,” Keerthana Gopal- building a retaining wall. With a hydrau-
omputer scientists used to develop akrishnan, a research scientist who works lic gripper on the end of its arm, it picked
C different models to translate be-
tween, say, English and French or French
on robots at Google DeepMind, told
me. To this end, Figure, the humanoid
up a boulder, turning it as if contemplating
a piece of fruit. The excavator motored
and Spanish. Eventually, these converged startup, has partnered with OpenAI to toward a growing pile—the wall-to-be,
into models that could translate between give large language models corporeal which followed a plan laid out in soft-
any pair of languages. Still, translation form; OpenAI has begun hiring a ro- ware—and an algorithm predicted how
was considered a different problem than botics team after a years-long hiatus. the new stone would settle onto the
30 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
others. The excavator, loosening its grip,
placed the stone just so, then lumbered
back to pick up another. When the sixty-
five-metre wall was finished, it contained
almost a thousand boulders and pieces
of reclaimed concrete. It formed the edge
of a new park. The robot worked about
as quickly as an experienced laborer with
an excavator.
Ryan Luke Johns, a lead researcher
on the project, runs a company called
Gravis Robotics, whose motto is “Tap
your finger, move a mountain.” He fore-
sees that “adaptive reuse” of materials
could displace concrete, and that con-
struction will become cheaper and more
charming. Robots could make new Cen-
tral Parks. It’s easy to see the appeal—
and to imagine the risks of loosing so
much strength upon the world. Already
we have found A.I. difficult to control. “Awfully strange coincidence that you spot a distress
For safety reasons, chatbots are restricted signal every time I try to talk about us.”
from producing certain kinds of con-
tent—misinformation, pornography, in-
structions for building bioweapons—but
• •
they are routinely “jailbroken” by ama-
teurs with simple prompts. If an A.I. that lives, too. I spoke to the founder of a small learned to spin a pen: in an empty class-
talks about weapons is dangerous, picture startup that is developing a semi-auton- room in Mason Hall, on the University
an A.I. that is a weapon: a humanoid omous humanoid housekeeping robot. of Michigan campus. I had seen a friend
soldier, a sniper drone, a bomb that can The idea is that, when you’re at work, the do it, then practiced. It took a few hours.
think. If robotics models turn out to be robot could wheel out of your closet and If other people want to learn the same
embodiment-agnostic, the same kind of tidy up; if anything goes wrong, an op- trick, they also have to practice. But, if
policy that today beats people at Ping- erator in India or the Philippines could roboticists lift physical know-how into
Pong might someday shoot somebody. take over. This approach could save a lot the virtual plane, they will be able to dis-
“The drone manufacturers are dealing of time and money. On the other hand, it tribute it as easily as a new smartphone
with this now,” one M.I.T. scientist told could take jobs away from people. When app. Once one robot has learned how to
me. “They can say, ‘We will only sell to I asked what would become of house- tie shoes, all of them can do it. Imagine
certain folks, and we will never sell a keepers who make a living doing such copying and pasting not just a recipe for
drone with a weapon.’ That doesn’t re- work locally, the founder said that they an omelette but the very act of making it.
ally stop somebody from, you know . . .” could apply to receive dividends. “There Early in my son’s life, he had a blood
In the war in Ukraine, consumer drones is an incentive within capitalism to re- test come up wonky, and we had to take
designed for aerial photography have place labor by capital, to replace people him to a series of blood draws. It is not
been turned into remote-controlled ex- by machines,” Mark Coeckelbergh, a easy to draw blood from the arm of an
plosives. If such drones become auton- philosophy professor at the University eight-week-old. In the midst of one fairly
omous, militaries could claim that they of Vienna, who specializes in the ethics horrific episode, we protested so much
did not order this or that attack—their of A.I., told me. He pointed out that the that one phlebotomist said to another,
robots did. “You cannot punish an inan- word “robot” comes from the Czech ro- “Should we get Marsha?,” speaking of a
imate object,” Noel Sharkey, an emeri- bota, for “forced labor.” “But not all tasks nurse who was particularly good at find-
tus professor of computer science at the should be taken over by robots. We have ing a vein. In Marsha came, and she found
University of Sheffield, in England, has it in our hands. It’s kind of an exercise to the vein without further fuss. She should
written. “Being able to allocate respon- think, What kinds of jobs do we want have her hands insured.
sibility is essential to the laws of war.” humans to do?” One day, an A.I. will guide a whirring
It is estimated that more than ninety Speculating on the future of A.I.- hand made of metal, perhaps with gel in
countries have military robot programs, powered robots is like trying to imag- its fingertips, toward a newborn’s arm to
mostly involving drones. Several of the ine the Industrial Revolution from the draw blood. It’s hard to know whether to
world’s leading military powers have not perspective of a nineteenth-century hat- celebrate or fear that day. I may never have
agreed to a U.N. resolution that could maker. We are just too used to physical to reckon with it. I suspect my son will,
constrain their use of these robots. know-how being confined in one body. though. When the thought occurs to me, I
Peaceful robots could unsettle our I remember where I was when I first put his little hand in mine, and squeeze. 
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 31
Wildfires, overdevelopment, and easy access to garbage have brought Tahoe’s bears into increasingly close contact with their human
32 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
 L
ake Tahoe, “the jewel of the Si-
erra Nevada,” is an unusually clear,
deep alpine lake that is twelve
miles wide and twenty-two miles long.
It straddles two states: California on the
west shore, which is damper and greener,
and Nevada on the east, which gives way,
almost immediately, to high desert. “A
kind of heaven,” John Muir called Tahoe,
in 1878, after raving about the diameter
of its snowflakes and “lusty exercise on
snow-shoes.” Tahoe is about a third of
the size of Yosemite National Park, yet
attracts three times the number of an-
U.S. JOURNAL
nual visitors. During the pandemic, sev-
eral thousand people, including a lot of
WILD SIDE Bay Area tech types, fully relocated to
the lake, joining seventy thousand or so
locals. Tahoe couldn’t handle it. The traf-
Is Lake Tahoe’s bear boom getting out of hand? fic, the noise, the illegal parking—the
trash. Last year’s Fourth of July crowds
BY PAIGE WILLIAMS
left an unprecedented four tons of gar-
bage on the beaches alone. Fodor’s named
Lake Tahoe one of the world’s “natural
attractions that could use a break in order
to heal and rejuvenate,” and suggested
that outsiders avoid visiting for a while.
The other day in Tahoe, I learned a new
word: “touron,” a combination of “tour-
ist” and “moron.”
The Tahoe basin is also home to one
of the continent’s densest populations
of black bears, Ursus americanus. The
species flourished after its chief preda-
tor, the grizzly, was extirpated there, in
the early twentieth century. Grizzlies are
not to be fucked with. Black bears, which
can be brown, reddish, or blond, are de-
fensive and lazy, smart and resilient, rav-
enous and opportunistic. All they really
want to do is eat. They lived mostly on
grasses, berries, and insects until humans
showed up. Why spend all day disman-
tling a yellow-jacket nest for the paltry
reward of larvae when there’s dumpster
pizza to be had?
Even if something is not edible, bears
will try to eat it—scented air freshen-
ers, cherry lip balm. The black bear is
the terrestrial equivalent of a shark, the
sharpest nose in the ocean; its sense of
smell is seven times better than a blood-
hound’s, several thousand times better
than a human’s. A bear that detects so
much as a Tic Tac will remember the
location of that score forever—and teach
it to her cubs. “Think about the wrap-
pers in your car, the candy in your pocket,
neighbors. One local described a bear as “a five-hundred-pound police battering ram.” in your backpack, in your tent, the stuff
PHOTOGRAPHS BY COREY ARNOLD THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 33
 and help themselves to picnic food, with
humans standing feet away, casually vid-
eoing, and that they can spook hikers
into dropping their snack-filled packs.
This spring, a bear snatched a construc-
tion worker’s cooler from the bed of a
pickup and ate the man’s lunch in front
of him. A Tahoe friend of mine once
turned her back while unloading grocer-
ies and lost a fifteen-pound Christmas
roast; the bear left nothing but a greasy
scrap of butcher paper in the driveway.
A black bear’s short, curved claws
function as miniature crowbars, capable
of leveraging the slightest crevice to pry
open a window or shred a garage door.
An unsecured crawl space is an invi-
tation. A bear will make confetti of a
doorjamb. In vacant houses—which
are plentiful in resort communities like
Tahoe—bears turn on faucets and burn-
ers, usually by bumbling into them. Last
year, a utility-company employee noticed
a spike in water use at one home; bears
had moved in. “They had defecated ev-
erywhere. The walls and carpet were
covered in mold,” another state employee
said at Bear Fest. Bears that den beneath
homes and businesses can dislodge in-
“The Rock God era is over—you have to go back to just being God.” sulation and wiring, some of which keeps
the pipes from freezing. Bears are “ca-
pable of breaking down anything they
• • want” in their quest for calories, Welch
told me. “There’s nothing bear-proof—I
behind your garage door—they can smell it’s at the hummingbird feeder, the next don’t care how thick a door is, or if it’s
all of that, even if it’s unopened cans, it’s at your fridge. Through no fault of metal. I describe a bear as a five-hundred-
unopened wine bottles, beer bottles,” a its own, the bear could become a target pound police battering ram.”
California State Parks employee said in for euthanasia. “A fed bear is a dead
September, at Tahoe’s inaugural Bear bear,” wildlife biologists like to say. he person who clued me in to “tou-
Fest, a public event about how not to be
stupid in bear country.
In autumn, bears enter hyperphagia:
they must eat at least twenty thousand
T rons” was Devon Barone, a Marin
County native who recently finished her
It is illegal to feed a bear, no matter calories (the equivalent of thirty-six Big graduate studies in natural resources at
how cuddly or sickly it looks, or how Macs) a day before they den. The fe- Oregon State University, with a special
strong the impulse to Instagram. Un- males are on a deadline to store enough interest in human-wildlife conflict. Bar-
secured trash exposes bears to the in- fat to sustain themselves, and a preg- one, who is thirty, has mermaid hair and a
testinal torments of metal and glass. nancy, until spring, though in Tahoe, tattoo of diving penguins. She wears bal-
One recent afternoon, a bear advocate where there’s plenty of touron food year- loon pants from Kathmandu and drinks
named Kathi Zollinger and I were walk- round, bears hardly have to hibernate yerba maté out of a handmade granite
ing in the woods at the south end of anymore. Bears have learned how to un- cup that she brought home from Chile,
Lake Tahoe when she pointed out what screw lids. They know how to open slid- where she used to live. In May, Barone
resembled a giant chocolate-oatmeal ing glass doors. They’ll prowl from car began working as the executive assistant
cookie with silver sprinkles—bear poo, to car, trying handles. Ryan Welch, the to Ann Bryant, who co-founded a Tahoe
flecked with tinfoil. Bear scat also often founder of Tahoe’s oldest bear-deterrent nonprofit called BEAR League, in 1998,
contains plastic. (Bears “aren’t opening company, Bear Busters, told me about a after a government trapper enraged the
the bag gingerly to get what’s in it,” woman who reported her Prius missing; community by killing a mother bear and
Zollinger said.) Dozens of bears are hit the police found the car at the bottom her cub and then lying about it. (The
by cars every year in Tahoe. A bear that of the hill that she’d parked it on, with animals had not been “relocated,” as the
gets comfortable around humans may a bear inside. Bears have learned that trapper had claimed.) Bryant introduced
become increasingly brazen—one day they can wander onto a crowded beach Barone to the league’s hundred and forty-
34 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
six thousand Facebook followers by say- very powerful.” The state euthanizes you vacuum it. She installed the lawn
ing that she had “studied and traveled all fewer bears today than it has in gener- because the forest canopy was too thick
over the world, learning about people’s ations past, in part because BEAR League, for grass to grow, and she got sick of
complex relationships with everything and other organizations like it, has mud. Around the property are little seat-
from elephants to mountain lions” and pushed wildlife agencies to be more ju- ing areas, as in a cemetery. In summer,
other “large and sometimes misunder- dicious. “They kill, we save,” Bryant said. Bryant can often be found beneath a
stood (and often feared) animals.” Bryant implores humans to adjust massive cedar, drinking a Red Bull or a
BEAR stands for Bear Education Aver- their own behavior instead of expecting margarita. Lots of Tahoans have festive
sion Response. Bryant, who is in her wild animals to change. At the end of white globe lights strung across their
seventies, has spent the past twenty-five her driveway stands a steel garbage bin outdoor spaces; Bryant’s are red.
years showing Tahoans how to avoid at- that resembles a large safe—a bear box. Nearly all of BEAR League’s finances
tracting bears, and what to do if they BEAR League has long advocated for the come from donations. Years ago, major
fail. About two hundred of the league’s boxes to become standard throughout contributors, along with the group’s trea-
twenty-five hundred members are trained Tahoe, often encountering resistance surer, encouraged the creation of an en-
to respond to calls. “We answer twenty- from residents who dislike the way they dowment, which has grown to nearly
four-frickin’-seven,” she told me. Bry- look. In Tahoe Keys, a private marina two and a half million dollars. Bryant,
ant herself may show up: to fire a paint- community, the H.O.A. rejected bear who takes no salary, told me, “Our plan
ball gun, flush a bear from a crawl space, boxes because homeowners were wor- was to not break into this piggy bank
harangue a human to keep a clean grill ried about parking and snow storage in until I’m gone.” She has been called “the
and bring in the birdseed at night. their small, densely spaced lots, and be- Mother Teresa of bears”—and a fanatic.
Bryant worked in wildlife rehabilita- cause they didn’t want to see a “wall of Twice, the league has been sued for ha-
tion before starting BEAR League, but steel.” Then, in late 2021 and early 2022, rassment and defamation. In 2015, a Tahoe
these days she’s more likely to lean on dozens of Keys homes had break-ins. couple claimed to have received death
her college studies in psychology. When Neighbors blamed a five-hundred-pound threats from people associated with the
someone sees a bear on their lawn, or at bear that everyone called Hank the Tank. league after a Nevada Department of
their door, or in their kitchen, it can be Hank turned out to be female, and she Wildlife official euthanized a bear that
hard to remember, in the moment, that wasn’t the only culprit—two other known had broken into their car. In 2017, the
the average black bear can be treed by a bears were in the area. They had been agency official in charge of bear trapping
Chihuahua, and that a bear’s huffing, drawn there at the start of the pandemic, and euthanasia, Carl Lackey, accused the
bluff-charging, grunting, and teeth- when garbage pickup was suspended, league and the administrators of two
clacking are usually nothing more than and when, in 2021, a bullet ignited a wild- Facebook pages (Lake Tahoe Wall of
messages to back off. The correct human fire that destroyed nearly two hundred Shame and NDoW Watch: Keeping
response is confidence and noise. Yell. and twenty-two thousand acres of nearby Them Transparent) of participating in a
Raise your arms—look big. Never turn forest. After the entire town of South smear campaign against him. In one of
your back on a bear. Stand your ground Lake Tahoe evacuated, bears wandered the Facebook comments cited in the suit,
but also slowly retreat. Never block a through the orange haze, searching the the league claimed, without evidence,
bear’s exit—bears leave the same way hastily abandoned buildings for food. that Lackey took “under the table cash
they came in. Bryant tells people, “You Bryant lives in Homewood, on the for bringing trophy bears into the hunt
gotta be aggressive, dominant, mean.” west shore, in a bungalow with a verdi- zone.” (Both Nevada and California allow
Around Tahoe, Bryant is known as seasonal bear hunting in designated
“the bear lady,” because she is always areas.) Another commenter wrote,
talking about bears or being talked about “Maybe time for assassination.” Lackey
for talking about bears. She has appeared dropped his case against the league, but
on PBS, the BBC, Animal Planet, Na- went on suing the other defendants, and
tional Geographic, and in countless local lost. The Nevada Commission on Eth-
newscasts. Her bright blond hair, worn ics reprimanded him for trying to use
long, with bangs, is so distinctive that his government position to crowdfund
I wondered if it was a wig, until the his legal bills, and, last year, a judge or-
wind blew and I saw scalp. (Bryant is dered him to pay more than a hundred
a native Minnesotan of Scandinavian gris copper roof. Her property is lake- and fifty thousand dollars to cover his
heritage.) Every time I visited her, she front once removed, the water just visi- opponents’ expenses and various court
had on black leggings, a black hoodie, ble from her deck. She moved to Tahoe costs. This and other conflicts have con-
black Crocs. Even indoors, and always decades ago, with her husband at the tributed to an undercurrent of old beefs
on TV, she wears gold-rimmed sun- time, who later decided that high alti- in Tahoe’s bear community.
glasses and fingerless leather gloves— tudes and wild animals weren’t for him The league’s only full-time staff
beige one day, black the next. They re- and decamped to South Padre Island, member is Barone, who lives, rent-free,
minded me of bear paws. Texas. Much of Bryant’s front yard is in a tiny house to the side of Bryant’s
One California elected official told eternally and perfectly green, because it driveway. A studio apartment above
me, of BEAR League, “Politically, they’re is golf-course turf. You don’t mow it— Bryant’s two-car garage serves as BEAR
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 35
League headquarters. The league used “unwelcome mat.” Balison loaded it into with nothing below it. Greg said, “If it
to train dozens of volunteers each year. his trunk and drove it to a house nearby. got its head up high enough to butt
Bryant now selects only a handful; she I followed him through a cluttered side the window, it would have shattered
says this allows her to get to know (and yard to where the property owner, whose it immediately.”
better manage) the people she’s work- name was Greg, stood staring up at a “They have the strength of, like, ten
ing with. Her denlike domain reflects broken window. Enormous paw prints football players,” Balison offered.
what she calls her “reclusive” personal- climbed the wall. “They could probably lift a car up if
ity. Before founding the league, she said, Greg, a general contractor in his sev- they wanted to,” Greg said. “I mean, they
“I did my grocery shopping during enties, lived at the house and among can tear a door off a car.”
the dead of night, because I didn’t like other properties that he and his wife, “And they can fit their bodies into
crowds of people.” Kathy, were remodelling. Their dog, anything they can put their heads
which reliably scared bears away, had through,” Balison said.
ne Sunday morning, I got a text died over the summer. On Friday, a bear Greg told me, “You’d be absolutely
O from Bryant saying that the league
had just received a call about a bear
had tried to get into the house. On Sat-
urday, Greg had run a bear off by using
amazed at how fast they move. See that
fence? See the stump? I’ve seen a bear,
that had nearly been hit by a car on the bear spray and throwing rocks. This at a full-tilt run, jump on that, vault its
road that rings the lake. “It’s Bernardo,” morning, he had come home to find that back legs onto the fence, and then roll
she wrote. a bear had finally succeeded. “The over the top of it—that fast.” Usain Bolt
A state wildlife biologist recently told kitchen is just strewn,” he told me. “It topped out at 27.8 miles an hour; bears
me, “We don’t name bears.” Tahoans do got a forty-pound bag of cat food, a can hit thirty. Greg was awed, not angry.
name them—Clementine, Tiny Tim, thing of roasted garlic, my package of Bears were “just trying to live, and this
Buddha Mom, Julie, Baldy, Lupita, cookies. It got into the coffee. It got into is free food. So, if you don’t protect it, it’s
Sunny, Za. Bryant claims to recognize a five-gallon bucket that Kathy saves your fault.”
individual bears the way we humans butterscotch and chocolate chips and Greg now had no choice but to for-
recognize one another. A bear may have stuff in. Didn’t eat a lot of those, but it tify his property. Holding a cordless
a distinctive muzzle or a patch of col- spread them all over the floor. It didn’t screwdriver, he said, “I should have done
ored chest fur. A bear with an old in- get into the honey. It got into the olive this years ago, but I was trying to make
jury may limp. “They have personalities,” oil. I’ve come into houses where a bear a living and handle two kids going to
Bryant said. “Each one of them is unique has torn the range hood off, torn the college.” He climbed a teetering metal
in their own way, intelligent in their microwave off. The shelves are all bro- ladder, wearing a cannula in his nose
own way, goofy in their own way, just ken and everything’s collapsed, or the and a portable oxygen tank on his belt.
like we are.” doors are gone and the whole cabinet’s He’d just told me, “Let’s see, I have neu-
Bryant dispatched a volunteer, Mason off the wall. Turned over refrigerators. ropathy, kidney disease, diabetes,
Balison, to shoo the bear deeper into the A house here burned down because a P.T.S.D., C.O.P.D., tinnitus. My eyes
forest. By the time he arrived, the bear bear broke in and knocked the stove are almost shot.” Balison handed up
had moved near the trailhead of a pop- over. The electric igniters went off. It rectangles of plywood, sheet by sheet.
ular mountain-biking corridor. When I tore the gas line open—gas started spew- Greg bolted the panels to the window
got there, cyclists were unloading gear ing. I heard this snapping and popping. like a triptych. Balison had brought the
from their vehicles and setting out on It’s ten-thirty at night, and I’m going, bear mat from his trunk; he now posi-
rides, and Balison was sitting behind the What the hell? I walked out in the street tioned it beneath the window, and
wheel of a small S.U.V. marked “BEAR and could see the flames. By then, the showed Greg how it worked.
League,” its hazards flashing. Thirty yards whole house was engulfed. The fire de-
away, a large bear lay in the woods the partment saved the foundation.” n animal that steps on a bear mat
way a Labrador might rest between
fetches. “I’ve been watching him rip apart
Insurance companies usually cover
property damage caused by bears, though
A receives a nasty zap. So does a bare-
foot human. Welch, the Bear Busters
pinecones,” Balison told me, after we got it is becoming harder to get some types founder, an electrical contractor in his
out of our cars. “This is good behavior of insurance in California, because of forties, came up with the device four-
for him, to be over here eating all these wildfires. Recently, an insurer received teen years ago, when he was servicing
nuts and stuff.” a claim that a bear had vandalized a and repairing hot tubs for a living and
The bear heard us, lifted his head, Rolls-Royce; investigators showed se- kept finding the aftermath of bear break-
stood up, sat down, scratched his chin curity footage of the incident to a wild- ins at clients’ unoccupied houses. Home
with a hind paw, then got back on his life biologist, who determined that the remedies, such as Pine-Sol and “these
feet and went on eating. Balison walked perpetrator was a human in a bear cos- ridiculous motion-sensor dog-barking
toward him, clapping and yelling, “Come tume. (Additional claims were filed for machines,” were no longer effective. One
on, Bernardo!” The bear bounded off. other luxury cars; four people have been day, Welch noticed an electric fence—
Afterward, Balison stopped by the charged with fraud.) the kind that ranchers use to contain
league’s office to grab a bear mat: a strip Greg’s bear had used its upper-body livestock—and parlayed that principle
of rubber and metal wired to a small strength to reach the window, which into the bear mat. He said, “People would
transformer box. This is also called an stood about seven feet off the ground, tell me, ‘What are you gonna do when
36 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
this kills my kid?’ I’d look at them and
say, ‘I’m a licensed and insured contrac-
tor. Do you think I’d be insured if this
was dangerous?’ We do not have fried
tourists all over the place.” The shock
wounds only the pride.
A bear mat typically goes for a few
hundred dollars. Welch has sold around
five thousand of them, and is now on
the third iteration. The mats are getting
lighter, prettier, and more customizable.
Black bears can be found throughout
the United States, and lately Welch has
been shipping mats to Connecticut and
South Carolina. Customers place them
anywhere that they don’t want bears—
stairs, doorsteps, garages, surrounding a
parked car. On the Bear Busters You-
Tube channel, home-security videos of
notable jolts have been viewed nearly
two million times. (One shows a man
on all fours, searching for a house key
and recoiling—“Son of a bitch!”—when
he gets zapped. In the comments, some-
one suggested using bear mats to thwart
porch pirates.) BEAR League buys elec-
tric mats in bulk, then loans and some-
times delivers them, for free, to anyone
who asks. The devices should work until
bears figure out how to wear shoes.
Welch also created bear wires—thin,
electrified cables that are strung hori-
zontally across windows and doors. They
attach like bungee cords and, like the
mats, can be switched on and off from Devon Barone, of BEAR League, checks a crawl space for signs of a break-in.
inside or outside a residence. Welch drove
me around the lake’s west shore and ple of thousand dollars, a large one tens boxy white clapboard rental cottages
showed me some of the thousands of of thousands. Bear Busters stays busy. I with forest-green trim which the owner,
places that he has wired, from a prop- spent most of one Monday watching Erik Mason, described as “old-school
erty so exclusive that I’m not allowed to Welch count entry points on dwellings Tahoe.” Mason lives in Sacramento and
say more to cabins that appeared aban- and fill out cost estimates on an iPad. sells chargers for electric vehicles. When
doned. People don’t always love how the He has only eight employees but strug- his parents bought the cottages, in 1973,
wires look, but the alternative is a bear gles to keep them. Tahoe lost a lot of its bears rarely came around. Now they reg-
in your house. Zollinger, the bear advo- affordable housing during the pandemic. ularly show up at the windows and doors.
cate, who oversees the league’s volun- Many lower-wage earners now have to Welch looked at several bungee cords
teers in South Lake Tahoe, told me, “I commute from Reno and Carson City that had been stretched across the cot-
heard someone say, ‘We shouldn’t have if they choose to continue working in tages’ stairs and politely avoided saying
to turn our houses into fortresses be- Tahoe. Businesses have had to cut back how pointless they were. Another D.I.Y.
cause of bears.’ To me, yeah—if you want their hours for lack of staff. Welch said, solution looked medieval: plywood sheets
to live in Lake Tahoe, you need to se- “Our cost of living here has quadrupled spiked with nails.
cure the home so that bears don’t come in the past five years, since COVID started Welch and Mason walked around,
in. That’s the responsible thing to do. and the tech industry decided they’re liv- searching for outlets. Bear mats and wires
We live in the forest! People call and say, ing up here full time.” have to be plugged in. We passed an
‘I’ve lived here thirty, forty, fifty years Welch is lanky, with stick-straight apple tree, and, on one stoop, a potted
and I’ve never had a problem with bears.’ blond hair and light eyes. He had on vine loaded with cherry tomatoes, which
I’m, like, Well, now we have fires, and jeans, a big-buckled belt, a long-sleeved were now impossible to see as anything
they have no habitat anymore, and we T-shirt, a baseball cap, and hiking boots, other than bait. I wondered aloud whether
continue to develop.” and was driving an unmarked white util- bears ever go in through the roof. “I’ve
A small wiring job might cost a cou- ity truck. I followed him to a scrum of seen ’em go in through a skylight,” Welch
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 37
said. “Dropped twenty feet through the
house, then ransacked it, and broke a
window to get out. Like, how’d they not HOMAGE TO WILLIE MAYS
break a leg with that?”
“They’re very athletic,” Mason said. I used to go to games in Candlestick Park
Just for a little rest, a little solitude
etween 2017 and 2020, humans in Away from her voice so I could write
B Tahoe reported, on average, six hun-
dred and seventy-four encounters with
A poem for her. The poem I never finished.
I didn’t like or dislike baseball, I simply
bears per year. That number more than Didn’t understand it. It was a good place
doubled between 2021 and 2022. (It’s To work until it got too exciting. I mean,
possible that more people are reporting Sometimes the game got too exciting: you’d
their experiences.) Last year, when Bog- See Mays trotting in from the outfield,
dan and Stephanie Yamkovenko moved This relaxed look on his face, & suddenly
to Tahoe from Washington, D.C., their You knew the exceptional was about to happen.
next-door neighbor, Randall Tobey, Even after we broke up, agreeing we were just
warned them about bears, which had Too different (she liked money; I preferred,
broken into his house a few years back In those days, drugs), I still went out there,
and made a mess. The Yamkovenkos Such was the nature of my devotion to
considered bears a bonus. They work This task, all readiness with my fountain pen—
from home, for Khan Academy, the on- Modest in size but everlastingly erect—
line education company, and had cho- A Parker 51 with a gold nib where
sen Tahoe because they wanted to live My angel resided, & a yellow legal pad
in a place where they could easily take With no left margin, the pages faded a little
long walks with their hundred-pound By the sunlight, just the way I liked them,
dog, a Bouvier des Flandres named And I was in the middle of saying something
Balthasar. Their rental house, in South Important about the way her bare shoulders
Lake Tahoe, backed up to the forest that Looked in sunlight as she strolled up Telegraph
had been devastated by the wildfire in In the bottom of the seventh when Mays stepped up
2021. On the day that I visited, this part And connected, & mailed one to Oakland,
of the woods lay golden and still. And then another, later, to the mudflats
The Yamkovenkos had a second-floor On the river beyond Martinez, & then
deck with a barbecue grill and an um- Everyone was standing up, cheering him,
brellaed table, where they liked taking And suddenly I was aware that I, too,
calls and eating meals. Next door, they Was standing up, whistling & applauding
could see Tobey’s place, a one-story cot- A man whose swing was sweet dignity,
tage with antlers mounted over the en- And one who’d liberated me forever
trances. Tobey, a semi-retired landscaper From writing a lament so unforgettable
in his sixties who used to work ski pa- Soft light fell through that perfect air
trol at some of the local resorts, had lived And the English language had no words for it.
there since the early nineties. The Yam-
kovenkos liked him well enough until —Larry Levis (1946-96)
they heard him refer to bears as “pests”
and describe them as “worse than go-
phers.” It surprised and dismayed them twenty-eight in 2017, fifty-three last bears getting kicked out of the nest and
to find themselves living alongside the year—and permit holders hardly ever doing whatever they can to survive.”The
kind of Tahoan who showed no interest killed as many bears as they were autho- couple took photos and videos, but kept
in coexisting with wildlife. rized to. The Yamkovenkos could not their distance, marvelling at the fact that
By law, a property owner can ask the fathom killing even one. “We’re very this bear was smaller than their dog.
state for a depredation permit to kill a much O.K. with bears, because they’re On Memorial Day, the Yamkovenkos
problem bear, though in 2022 the Cali- not aggressive,” Bogdan told me. “They spent the morning watching the yearling
fornia Department of Fish and Wildlife run away. They don’t come to you, they sleep on a high branch of a lodgepole pine
began prioritizing a nonlethal approach don’t antagonize you.” in Tobey’s back yard. They were about
and attempting to educate residents about This spring, a blond yearling started to sit down to lunch when they saw the
alternatives, such as keeping doors and sniffing around the Yamkovenkos’ back bear scamper down the tree and stroll
windows either electrified or locked. (Re- door. Yearlings are bears that have just over to Tobey’s house, then poke its nose
locating bears doesn’t work; they just separated from their mothers. A Cali- through the open door. Bogdan banged
come back.) The state was issuing fewer fornia wildlife official recently described on the lid of his grill to scare it off. The
and fewer permits—three hundred and them as “really clueless, young teen-age yearling looked up, but didn’t leave. Bog-
38 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
dan saw the bear inch forward, then back closed. I knocked with the fish, and Tobey line and mentioned that Miller may want
out of the house and run. “That’s when came to the door with a shy mutt named help, too. A game warden contacted
I heard the first shot,” he said. Rosie. Tobey has white hair and brown Miller to see if she was interested in a
Bogdan sprinted over to Tobey’s place, eyes; he stood with a slight bend in his depredation permit. Miller ultimately
screaming, “What are you doing?” knees, like a skier still in his boots, chew- declined. “She liked all animals,” Patty
A second shot. ing on a shard of venison jerky. When told me. The warden, having learned that
The yearling scrambled back up its I asked about the bear, he reflexively Miller’s house was dilapidated and full
tree, then let go and fell, landing with a looked away, raising his hands like a per- of garbage, cautioned her to keep the
sickening thud. Bogdan saw the bear son under arrest, and said, “I just didn’t property clean and to stop feeding her
lying, conscious, on the ground, bleed- feel good about it at all. It was bad news, cats on the porch. Instead, Miller in-
ing from a hole in its side. By then, Steph- all the way around.” For a second, this stalled iron bars on her kitchen window.
anie was on the phone, trying to reach tracked as regret. I asked Tobey if he’d She apparently also leaned a heavy beam
a wildlife veterinarian and the police. kill the bear if he had it to do over again. against another entrance.
“Don’t do anything,” Bogdan said that “Yeah!” he said. “Fuck, it was in my Miller routinely walked to the gro-
he told Tobey, who replied, “No, I gotta kitchen! ” I asked why he kept his door cery, which a friend owned, to buy alco-
put him out of his misery.” As Tobey open. He said, “When it’s eighty degrees hol. In early November, the grocer called
raised his rifle, Bogdan turned his head. out and you don’t have air-conditioning, the sheriff to say that she hadn’t seen
A state game warden arrived, along you’ve gotta open up everything.” Miller in days. The Halls were already
with a deputy from the El Dorado wondering why Miller’s porch light no
County Sheriff’s Department. Tobey had ast year, throughout the spring and longer came on at night. A sheriff’s dep-
already called 911 to report that he had
just shot a bear that had come into his
L summer, bears were strolling around
Downieville, an old gold-rush town, sev-
uty, Malcolm Fadden, went to the house
on the afternoon of November 8th. On
home and threatened him and his dog. enty miles northwest of the lake, that has the front steps, he found a punctured
“He scared me!” Tobey reportedly told reinvented itself as a mountain-biking garden hose, spurting water. He turned
the dispatcher. (The sheriff refused to destination. Downtown, where the North off the spigot and went to the door. When
release the 911 audio to me.) Yuba River forks, there is a grocer, a the- he looked through a window and saw
It is a felony to intentionally kill a atre, a bike shop, and, above a hair salon, blood on the floor, he drew his service
bear without a hunting license for any the offices of the Mountain Messenger, weapon and stepped inside.
reason other than self-defense. Investi- California’s oldest continuously operat- In the living room, Fadden found bear
gators concluded that Tobey had had no ing weekly newspaper, where Samuel Cle- scat, a foot in diameter. In the kitchen,
choice but to shoot because the bear was mens supposedly published a few items he found Miller dead. Her naked body
inside his house—a finding that did not before becoming Mark Twain. The bears was gashed with claw marks; her left
fully match what the Yamkovenkos had in town “weren’t necessarily showing ag- arm and most of her right leg had been
witnessed. They’d never lost sight of the gression toward people,” Mike Fisher, the eaten down to the bone. The security
bear’s hind legs. sheriff of Sierra County, said recently. “But bars on the window hung by a single
The couple tried to put themselves in they weren’t afraid of people.” bolt. The cabinets were de-
the mind-set of someone who panicked That fall, a retired con- stroyed. In the bedroom,
at the sight of a bear at the door, and con- tractor named Patrice Miller, Fadden saw paw prints and
cluded that, even if rattled, Tobey might who rented a yellow frame soil, and, on the bed, feces
have made other choices. “He could have house on a wooded lot near and urine. Miller’s laptop was
just thrown his shoe, or the remote con- downtown, swatted a bear still plugged in and open.
trol, or a water bottle,” Stephanie told me. away from her window, de- Fadden wrote in his report
(BEAR League would have provided elec- scribing it as “a big bastard.” that she appeared to have
tric mats for free.) She and Bogdan had Miller was seventy-one and been dragged off her bed
been hoping to buy a house in the neigh- lived alone. She grew orchids after she was already dead.
borhood, but now they just wanted to and dyed her own knitting That afternoon, the De-
move. Seeing bears in their back yard was yarn with chrysanthemums partment of Fish and Wild-
no longer “this magical thing,” Stepha- and tree bark, and, in her aboveground life sent a game warden, Zeke Awbrey.
nie said. The Yamkovenkos hung a sail basement, she had set up a woodshop. Game wardens are sworn peace officers
shade on their deck, to avoid having to She had moved to Downieville a de- who primarily enforce conservation laws
look at Tobey. It bothered them that his cade earlier, from the Coast. Miller was but may also handle matters involving
version of the story became accepted as aware of bears because, early on, a cou- public safety. Awbrey and Fadden met
fact in the media based on what they con- ple who lived across the street—Rob- at the sheriff’s office, where Fadden ex-
sidered a flawed investigative report. They ert Hall, a co-captain of the fire depart- plained what was going on and, accord-
worried that others would emulate him. ment, and his wife, Patty—had warned ing to Fish and Wildlife case notes,
One afternoon, I went to Tobey’s her about them. “She said, ‘Oh, it’ll be raised the possibility that a bear had
house and found his storm door propped fine. I have my air horns,’” Patty told me. “potentially killed Miller.” They went
open. The inner door—wooden, with a One day, a neighbor was reporting a to the scene, where Miller’s body still
brass knocker shaped like a fish—was problem bear to the state’s wildlife hot- lay in the kitchen, next to a couple of
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 39
crushed soup cans. Awbrey noted “large terrible teeth (or ‘tooth’ I should say).” The report did not indicate whether
pools of blood and bloody drag marks” The trap at Miller’s house caught a death was instantaneous, only that Miller
in the living room, and the presence of bear the next day. Fisher met the trapper was alive when the bear struck. (Koby-
fat and skin throughout the house. He and a state wildlife biologist there. The lanski is no longer employed by Placer
sent the soup cans and swabs from three lab had found that the DNA on Miller’s County, and she did not respond to my
of Miller’s wounds to a forensics lab for body belonged to a male bear; the biol- attempts to reach her.)
DNA testing. ogist said that the bear in the trap ap- Fisher was looking at evidence of
In the days that followed, neighbors peared to be female. Tranquillize it, lift the first confirmed killing of a human
reported that a bear was still hanging out its leg, and check, the sheriff suggested. by a black bear in California, and he
around Miller’s house. On November The biologist wasn’t certified in what still didn’t know for sure whether they
13th, Fisher, the sheriff, called a state Fish and Wildlife calls “chemical im- had put down the right animal. Fish
wildlife official to ask permission to set mobilization,” and, according to the and Wildlife was requesting a copy of
a trap there, and was told that only the agency, “was not able or authorized to the autopsy report, but he didn’t want
homeowner or the tenant could make tranquilize the bear.” It became clear to provide it until the agency sent the
such a request. Fisher explained that the that the state intended to let the bear DNA results. The impasse was ongo-
tenant was dead. He assigned Fadden to go, so the sheriff seized and padlocked ing—and the public was unaware of
track down the owners, who lived an the cage. When the state ordered him it—when, in mid-May, an elderly man
hour away, in Grass Valley. In the mean- to release the bear, Fisher said that he’d woke up from a nap and found a bear
time, Fisher, who also functions as the do so only after calling a TV station to standing in his living room. Fisher, hav-
county coroner, announced Miller’s death document what was happening. “I was ing flashbacks to Miller, declared the
on Facebook, writing, “Preliminary in- told that I was grandstanding, that I was bear a threat to public safety. Then a
vestigation indicates that she passed away being inhumane to this bear, and that I bear tried to get inside a Downieville
prior to the bear’s involvement,” adding needed to release it immediately,” he school while kids were present; depu-
that the bear may have been “drawn by later said during a radio interview. Fish ties tracked it down and shot it. Fisher
the scent or other factors.” Fisher’s work- and Wildlife sent for a properly certi- was irritated with Fish and Wildlife,
ing theory was not implausible: Miller fied biologist, who, after administering later saying, “It shouldn’t have to fall on
had had significant health problems, and the tranquillizer, revealed that the bear the local sheriff to do their job.”
no one on record had ever been killed was male. (Its testicles were undescended, On May 21st, the Mountain Messen-
by a black bear in California. Black bears which may have explained the confu- ger published a front-page story about
had killed about sixty people since 1900 sion.) The bear was shot that night. Fisher’s frustrations. The next day,
in all of North America. Fisher said, “Public safety is No. 1. Wild- state wildlife officials sat down with the
Miller had been dead for nearly a life management is No. 2.” sheriff, in a meeting attended by Sierra
week, but her body still awaited autopsy The biologist swabbed the bear’s County’s assemblywoman, Megan
in the morgue in Placer County, which cheek and drew a blood sample, then Dahle. Only then did they exchange
encompasses part of Lake Tahoe. “Any sent the materials to the forensics lab, information about the bear that had
update on the bear lady?” Fisher asked to see if the bear that they’d just eutha- been euthanized at Miller’s house: it
the medical examiner, Kelly Kobylanski, nized was the one whose DNA had been was, as Fisher had suspected all along,
in an e-mail on November 15th. “I’m found on Miller. Fisher was still wait- the one that killed her. The state ap-
fighting with Fish and Wildlife regard- ing for the results when, on December peared to have known this since No-
ing the bear. They are dragging their feet 4th, Kobylanski, who hadn’t yet signed vember, 2023. According to lab notes
wanting confirmation she didn’t die as a off on her autopsy report, e-mailed again, that I obtained through a public-re-
result of a bear attack.” By this point, to say that a colleague had reviewed cords request, a lab tech wrote, on No-
Fadden had found the landlords, who some of Miller’s injuries: “We both agree vember 20th, “Complete profile of male
requested a depredation permit. Fish and that, while most of the injuries appear bear, consistent with profile detected
Wildlife granted it, and a trapper planted to be inflicted postmortem, the hemor- on deceased!” The public, and the sher-
a ventilated cage baited with marshmal- rhage in the neck wound(s) make that iff, began to learn the fuller story six
lows and fish in Miller’s driveway. more suspicious. It is possible the one months after the fact.
The following morning, Kobylanski swipe at the neck killed her and then he Devon Barone had just started her
replied to Fisher, writing, “I think the enjoyed his ‘cache’ in the following days. job at BEAR League. She and Bryant
bear ‘attack’ was most likely postmor- I can’t be positive but I’m prepared to wondered why the pathologist’s con-
tem. He’s probably been eating her gar- call it probable bear mauling with ex- clusions didn’t match Fisher’s original
bage that she leaves outside her window tensive postmortem predation or some- statement. (Autopsies and other foren-
every night and this night maybe she thing to that effect.” sic findings can contradict conclusions
forgot (maybe because she was dead) to drawn by a county coroner.) The in-
put the beam against it and he noticed obylanski signed her report on Jan- consistencies and the long wait for an-
she was lying peacefully on her bed.”
The examination had shown heart dis-
K uary 4th, listing Miller’s cause of
death as “perforating sharp and blunt
swers convinced Bryant and Barone
that someone was hiding something;
ease, renal failure, cirrhosis, a “NASTY force crushing injuries consistent with they didn’t know that part of the murk-
liver,” Kobylanski added. “Not to mention bear mauling and subsequent predation.” iness was due to the communication
40 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
In recent years, the number of human-bear encounters in Tahoe has doubled—and California recorded a gruesome first.

breakdown between the sheriff and could see the door being pulled,” the I’d been in Downieville weeks ear-
the state. dispatcher noted. lier and had not seen or heard of any-
Fisher, who grew up in Downieville The sheriff and state wildlife offi- one using bear mats or wires. I saw only
and has worked for the Sierra County cials started meeting every other week. a couple of bear boxes; both were down-
Sheriff’s Office for twenty-four years, Their relationship vastly improved. (A town, and one had been left ajar. A
was contending with a more intense spokesman for Fish and Wildlife told well-defended property would have
bear situation than he had ever seen. In me that the agency’s complex task of mats, wires, and a bear box, which al-
June, a bear turned up at a wedding and protecting both humans and animals— together would cost upward of several
destroyed a car, ran off with somebody’s and preventing deaths like Miller’s— thousand dollars. The per-capita income
luggage, and came back for the recep- depends, in part, “on educating and in Sierra County is less than thirty-
tion. Between July 18th and August 2nd, encouraging Californians.”) In late Oc- eight thousand dollars a year.
his office received thirty-four calls about tober, nearly a year after Miller’s death, Miller’s house was still boarded up.
one or more bears in Downieville, Si- state biologists and game wardens trav- It had been gutted by a hazmat team
erra City, Loyalton, and other commu- elled to Downieville to appear with hired by the owners’ insurance com-
nities in his jurisdiction. Bears were Fisher at a town hall. Fisher assured pany. The yard was overgrown. The
trying to get into homes, and into a re- the audience, “Do I think that every cats were gone. Miller’s body had been
sort cabin at Sierra Shangri-La. A caller bear that comes into our town is a threat cremated by the Chapel of the An-
who reported a bear trapped inside his to public safety? No.” A state supervi- gels. “I am still convinced that the bear
Chevy Equinox got mad when the 911 sor explained that the “crux” of the prob- did not kill her,” Bryant said when I
dispatcher, who had no available dep- lem was access to human food. Bleach called her in November. But the bear
uties to send, suggested opening the your garbage cans, he said; take in your did kill Miller, according to the au-
door and letting the bear out. A woman Halloween pumpkins. Fisher, without topsy report, even if it hadn’t come for
found a bear swimming in a neighbor’s mentioning Miller, suggested that res- her. Bryant was as heartbroken for
pool. A bear walked up to a barbecue idents encourage one another to keep Miller as she was for the bears. “Peo-
and ran off when someone rang a cow- their property clean. “We, the people, ple are gonna be more fearful, rather
bell. At about three o’clock one morn- need to take responsibility, and we need than getting a grip on their fear,” she
ing, a woman fired a rifle at her front to speak up if our neighbors are, you said. She ended our call as she often
door after a bear tried to get inside. “She know, living like slobs,” he said. did: “Stay safe.” 
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 41
 FICTION

42 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY JOEY YU

X
iaoguo had a terror of thirst, so couldn’t run a marathon, she still be- have become a coach. I only swim oc-
he kept a glass of water on the lieved in my talent and gave me the cash casionally these days, she added. I pre-
table beside his hospital bed. to shoot my first feature. She said I could fer literature. I’m writing a five-hun-
As soon as it was empty, he asked me do anything I liked, as long as I made dred-thousand-word novel. Does it need
to refill it. I wanted to warn him that a film. When her husband was still alive, to be that long? I said. It didn’t start out
this was unhealthy—guzzling water all they watched movies every day. Some- that long, she said, I just kept going. If
night long puts pressure on the kidneys, times at the art-house cinema near their I didn’t give myself a limit, it would end
and pissing that much couldn’t be good place, sometimes DVDs at home. Since up even longer. Can I see some of it? I
for his injury. He was tall, though, so I he passed, she hasn’t seen as many. Turns asked. Wait till I’m done, she said. O.K.,
decided his insides could probably cope. out it wasn’t the movies she liked—it I said. Thanks for your suggestions for
Even though he was a Beijinger, was watching them with her husband. my story. Some of the details reminded
Xiaoguo didn’t have a hint of an accent. I lost all the money she gave me play- me of our city when I was a kid, she
He told me he’d sung Peking opera for ing cards. I made an ultra-low-budget said. You wrote about trucks full of cab-
a few years as a kid, but then he got too reel of street scenes, dubbed in a voice- bages parked by the hutongs, and peo-
tall and his voice broke. It was a shame over, and sent it to her. Marguerite Duras ple would come up with their carts to
because not many kids can sing Lord made a film like that. The Wenzhou buy vegetables for the winter. I remem-
Guan the way I did, he said, as he shuf- woman never responded, and I never ber all that. Some people ripped the rot-
fled a deck of cards. You need an air of saw her again. ten leaves off the cabbages so they’d
dignity. Unfortunately, even Lord Guan weigh less. Your writing isn’t good
isn’t allowed to be as tall as I got. s for how I ended up in a hospital enough yet. If it were better, I’d help you
And so, at the age of twenty, he went
to study film in France, where he lived
A room in Paris talking to Xiaoguo:
two years ago, I got to know a Chinese
translate it. If I manage to write another
story, I said, I’ll send it to you.
in Versailles. Each day, he headed out girl on MSN who was studying in All this time, I had no idea what she
with one of the school’s cameras and France. Like me, she was from the looked like, which pained me. Each day,
shot a bunch of footage, then went back northeast and liked writing. After chat- I looked up flights from Beijing Capi-
to the studio and tried to edit it into ting for a couple of months, we real- tal to Charles de Gaulle. Ten hours,
sense. After doing this for a while, he ized that our parents had worked in the eighteen thousand yuan round trip, an
began getting asked to take wedding same factory, though in different work- astronomical sum to someone who’d just
videos for Chinese people living in rooms. When she was ten, her parents started interning at a newspaper. Then
France. Mostly Wenzhou people, he had sold everything they had in S— there’d be the cost of a few days in Paris,
said. They love weddings. Perhaps be- and gone to work in New Zealand. After where I’d heard a bottle of beer costs
cause of his height, everyone seemed to they got settled there, they opened a five or six euros. If I sat down for a chat
think they were getting their money’s swimming school. Your father liked to with her, even if she had only one beer,
worth; such a substantial person came swim? I asked. He learned in New Zea- I’d need at least five to get sufficiently
with an elevated point of view. One of land so he could make a living, she re- relaxed. That was almost four hundred
the Wenzhou women noticed that he plied. In the first half of his life, he was yuan just on booze, even if we didn’t eat
always captured unforgettable moments: a fitter; in his early forties, he became anything. Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t
a groom’s fleeting anxiety, a bride inad- a decent athlete. shake the thought of visiting her. I had
vertently revealing her hatred for an- I sent her a short story I’d been writ- no clear goal in mind. I was single at
other woman. Once, he even caught ing, and she gave me some notes. I was the time—it had been a year since I’d
someone stealing a stack of red enve- stunned by her Chinese fluency—she split up with my college girlfriend. Apart
lopes from a bridesmaid’s handbag. He was even able to sort out some confu- from going to the office, interviewing
didn’t raise the alarm right away, just sion I’d had with personal pronouns. people, and cranking out articles, all I
sent the footage to the client. That’s How could someone who’d left China did was sit in my rented Dongba apart-
called letting the film speak for you, he in fifth grade have kept up her mother ment, writing away. Whenever I fin-
said. The Wenzhou woman was forty- tongue so well? I couldn’t understand ished a story, I’d submit it to a maga-
seven years old and owned three an- it. I’d been struggling with this story for zine and immediately start a new one.
tique shops in Paris. Her husband, a the better part of a year; it was now ten If I didn’t have some success within five
Korean gangster, had died of a stroke thousand words long, and I had no idea years, I’d walk away from literature al-
when she was forty. how to end it. She said, What if the girl together, quit journalism, and go back
She once shot someone and took a walks into the sea and swims across the home to open a convenience store or
lot of drugs, he said. But she was quite strait to a different country, where she noodle restaurant or something. A trip
healthy when I met her. After her hus- starts a new life? How is that possible? to Paris would obviously disturb the
band died, she started running mara- I said. I could do it, she said. As long as rhythm of my work. I’d never even left
thons. She asked me to go jogging with I didn’t encounter any sharks or jelly- the country; the farthest I’d gotten was
her once. It was raining heavily, but we fish. You could swim dozens of kilome- a visit to Hong Kong with my girlfriend
set out anyway. I made it ten minutes, tres? I asked. Yes, she said. I can swim after graduation. The air-conditioning
then I got a taxi to the end point and for a day and a night. If I hadn’t loved there gave me a fever and I didn’t get
waited for her there. Even though I swimming so much, my ba would never to do anything, though my girlfriend
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 43
had a pretty good time. She went on all a while now, she’s been my only reason I got the nickname. Then, one day, I
the rides at Disneyland. to go on living. I shocked myself with thought, Why not change it? So now
Paris. The city of Hemingway, Stein, those last words. They didn’t sound like Zhou Cang is the name on my I.D.
and Camus. Of Godard and Jean-Pierre something I would say, but perhaps this After hanging up, I marvelled at
Melville. That’s not the main point, just utterance had left my lips because I was Xiaoguo’s social circle. It looked like
some context. The main point was that talking to a stranger. He paused for a I’d picked the right person to go search-
Li Lu (that was her name, Li Lu) lived moment and said, Getting the visa will ing for Li Lu.
in Paris. I couldn’t stop thinking about take a while. Write down this number.
having a cup of coffee with Li Lu who It’s a friend of mine who can help you he next day was Saturday, the day
lived in Paris, each of us talking about
our lives. One evening, I suddenly re-
out. What’s the woman’s name? Li Lu,
I said. She’s studying comparative liter-
T of the week when I usually found
Li Lu online. She sometimes popped
membered an older Peking-opera per- ature at the Sorbonne Nouvelle. Which up on a weekday, but always at random
former I’d interviewed who’d happened Lu? he asked. Lu as in jade, I said. She times and never for long. We chatted
to mention that her son was studying should be easy enough to track down, on Saturday at two or three in the morn-
in Paris. Her name was Han Fengzhi, he said. I’ll give you a call when I have ing, Beijing time. Maybe I was just one
and she’d been retired for five years. She news. How’s my ma doing? Not too of many people she chatted with, I don’t
occasionally made a cameo, but mostly bad, I said. When I went to see her, she know, but she always showed up punc-
she stayed at home, watching TV. So I was having dinner with her neighbors. tually. That afternoon, I went to see Han
summoned up my courage and phoned When you have a moment, help me hire Fengzhi with some cleaning supplies:
her. She said, Call his dorm late at night a cleaner to give her place a good going washcloths, a broom, fridge deodorizer,
his time, to make sure you get him. His over, he said. Especially the fridge. And toilet spray. She opened the door for me
name is Xiaoguo. Tell him you’re one her bedding will need changing. She and made her way back to the sofa. I
of my fans and we hang out talking injured her leg training when she was watched her walk, and this time noticed
about opera. He’ll do anything for you. young, so she should walk around more. the limp in her right leg. My head hurts,
I got up very early the next day. It She can’t just sit around watching TV maybe I caught a draft last night, she
was the middle of April, still a little all day. All right, don’t worry, I said. I’ll said. The couple across the way had an
chilly in Beijing. It had been a while go visit her again tomorrow. argument in the middle of the night,
since I’d been awake at six in the morn- That afternoon, I phoned the num- and I watched them from the balcony
ing. I opened the window for some fresh ber he’d given me and introduced my- for a while. Have a rest, I said. I’ll help
air, brushed my teeth, and washed my self as Xiaoguo’s friend who needed a you clean the apartment. If you don’t
face, then tapped the number Han Feng- French visa. O.K., the guy said. No charge feel better soon, I’ll take you to the doc-
zhi had given me into my cell phone. It for Xiaoguo’s friends. Give me your tor. No need for all that, she said. Xiaoguo
rang a couple of times, then someone e-mail address and I’ll send some forms asked me to hire you a cleaner, I said. I
picked up and said something in a for- over, let me know if there’s anything you thought about it, but you probably don’t
eign language. I said, in Chinese, I’m don’t understand. I feel like I ought to want a stranger here messing with your
looking for Xiaoguo. Xiaoguo? the voice pay you, I said. It’s O.K., he said. When stuff. If you trust me, I’ll do it. Now I
said. Yes, I said, Xiaoguo. The voice you go to France, you can help me take know Xiaoguo, we’re friends.
shouted, Xiaoguo! Then more foreign something to Xiaoguo. Just a small thing, Within fifteen minutes, she had
words, though the person’s pronuncia- less than two kilograms. I might not end dozed off on the sofa. She was very thin,
tion of Xiaoguo was quite accurate. with slender legs and sparse hair. Age
Someone else picked up and said, Who spots showed on her neck and the back
is this? Hi, Xiaoguo, I said. I’m a fan of of her hands. She didn’t look great, per-
your mother— That’s not possible, he haps from lack of exercise, and she let
interrupted. My mother doesn’t have out little whimpers as she slept, as if she
any fans left. Who are you really? My ached somewhere. I tried not to make
name is Li Mo, I said. I’m a reporter too much noise as I cleaned and didn’t
from Beijing. I interviewed your mother. open any of the drawers so as not to in-
I was hoping you could help me have a vade her privacy; I just tidied up the
look at a woman I know in Paris. Can’t things she had out. The fridge was full
you just ask her for a photo? he said. up going, I said. You can do it when- of expired food and frozen meat that
No, I said, It’s too awkward, and also ever you do go, he said. All right, I said, didn’t have a date on it, plus some cooked
this isn’t about her appearance. I just I won’t insist. What’s your name? Zhou food that had been put in without any
want to check that this person actually Cang, he said. You can call me Zhou. kind of covering. I tossed it all. There
exists, and if she does whether her life You mean like Lord Guan’s sword- was so much grease caked on the ex-
is how she described it to me. If every- bearer? I said. That’s the one, he said. tractor fan that I could barely see the
thing is O.K., then I’m going to apply It’s not the name I was born with. switch, half the chopsticks had mold on
for a visa and buy a plane ticket. Xiaoguo used to sing the part of Lord them, and I spotted some cockroaches
So you get on well? he said. You could Guan, and since my surname is Zhou scurrying along the water pipes. On
say that, I said. You could say that, for and we hung out all the time as kids, her bedside table were some Zoloft
44 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
pills and a bottle of melatonin, as well
as a notebook containing notes on cer-
tain individuals:
A: 68, 178cm, 78kg. Likes cycling, cancer
survivor, talkative.
B: 66, 170cm, 75kg. Handsy. One child—
civil servant, department level, works in Tianjin.
C: 75, artist, amateur opera singer. Walks
with a limp, heart disease. Wife and child have
emigrated. Lives with 40-year-old housekeeper.

I propped the front door open with

a slipper and went to the mini-mart across
the road to buy Mr. Muscle, roach re-
pellent, gloves, and a mask. Ms. Han was
still asleep when I got back, in exactly
the same position, and I returned to clean-
ing. Before I knew it, it was dark, and I
was out of energy—I felt like I might
faint if I kept going. I sat in the living
room and downed half a bottle of min-
eral water, then went to wake Ms. Han.
She opened her eyes and said, Have you
had dinner? I’ll have something at home, “And they lived happily ever after, so long as he
I said. I put out roach repellent in your listened to her problems without trying to solve them, and she
kitchen—watch out for it. Get home laughed at his tired jokes in front of company.”
early and don’t drink too much, she said.
All right, I said. Then her eyes shut and
she dozed off again.
• •

Ifivefelt sad on the metro, then quickly

fell asleep. When I woke up, I’d gone
stops too far and was in a neigh-
I said. I saw you as a kid, she said. That’s
not possible, I said. Our parents worked
at the same factory, but so did a few
Huilongguan, I said. All summer long,
I hoped my ma would come and see
me, but she never showed up. We
borhood I didn’t know at all. I went back thousand others, and they never knew brought fruit and milk, she said. Your
to sleep until the train reached its ter- one another. That’s right, she said, but door was ajar. I saw you, all alone in
minus, then struggled to my feet and we did meet. You can meet without that room, hooked up to a drip and
crossed the platform to board a train in knowing each other, can’t you? skinny as a stick. I was twenty-five ki-
the opposite direction. I glanced at my When? I said. You were ten and I lograms at my lightest, I said. I went
watch: almost ten. Normally, I’d be full was nine, she said. July, 1993. That’s even right up to you, she said. You were asleep.
of beans at this time, and either read- less likely, I said. I was seriously ill that Your name was at the foot of your bed:
ing or writing, but that night I felt ex- summer, I spent two months in a hos- Li Mo, Food Avoidant, Emotional Dis-
hausted. When I got home, I set my pital in Beijing. Yes, she said, that’s where order, Six Weeks. We didn’t wake you,
alarm and collapsed into bed without I saw you. You’d stopped eating because we just left our gifts.
even getting undressed. Then I jerked of your parents’ separation? That’s right, Why didn’t you wake me? I said. To
awake five minutes before my alarm I said. How did you know? Your ba be honest, she said, the way you looked
went off, drenched in sweat and at full asked his boss for a loan to pay for your frightened me. I didn’t know what I’d
strength again. I splashed some water treatment, she said. His boss didn’t want say to you if you were awake. I see, I
on my face, made Cup Noodles, booted to pony up, so he started a donation said. I was close to death all that month.
up my computer, and logged into MSN. drive instead. My ba put in five yuan, When you get to the last stages of hun-
Li Lu was already there, earlier than even though he was in a different work- ger, it doesn’t hurt at all. You lose all the
usual—had she realized something was room. He can’t remember how he heard strength in your body, but your brain
up? Did she want to say something to about this or why he gave money to a keeps churning, and when you’re asleep
me? I lifted the plastic lid of my noo- stranger. Anyway, that July we set off you dream non-stop. Many things that
dles. I would take three mouthfuls, and for New Zealand. Our flight left from would never normally have come to
if she hadn’t said anything by then I Beijing, and my ba somehow remem- mind popped into my head, like how I
would say hello. I was on my second bered that was where you were and asked learned to walk, my ma humming a
mouthful when Li Lu typed, Are you if I wanted to see you. I said O.K., and tune in the kitchen, pissing my bed. I
there? Yes, I replied. I thought of some- he asked another co-worker for the forgot all these things again after I got
thing, she said. I phoned my ba today name of the hospital—I remember it better, and now I can’t recall those mo-
to check and he confirmed. What is it? was a psychiatric facility. It was in ments at all—I only know that they
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 45
happened. How did you get better? she
said. I ate the fruit you left behind, of
course, I said. Bullshit, she said. O.K., THE WORLD
I said, it wasn’t really anything in par-
ticular, I just had a dream of myself as didn’t change much
an adult, obviously not looking the way at first. At
I am now, but I knew it was me as a first it
grownup. Then I woke up and wept be- didn’t change
cause I wanted to grow up, I wanted to
know how my life would turn out, I much, at first I
wanted to see the world of the future. didn’t—I don’t—
My ba was staying at a small hotel next change much.
to the hospital. I asked the doctor to At first we
call him and say I was turning a cor-
ner. The first thing I ate was fruit, a didn’t & they
green tangerine, very sour. It was on my didn’t & the atmosphere
bedside table, I’m not sure if you left it. stayed the same
I seem to remember we bought green or enough to seem
tangerines, she said. My ba said green
tangerines got rid of heatiness. We sat the same. The same.
before our respective screens in silence I say the word
for the next five minutes. out loud to my-
It was late night in Beijing. Occa- self. Who changed I
sionally, someone would speed by out-
side on an e-scooter. Trucks full of gravel think. What started out & then
rumbled by my window. They accom- disappeared without
panied me each night, the brr of their actually dis-
engines branded on my heart, part of appearing. It’s so quiet
the rhythm of the city. Your short story
was actually O.K., she said. There’s no in here. It’s so
need to say that, I said. It’s not a ma- quiet now. The now
ture work, but there are good things in used to be a noisy
it, she said. I’ve tried writing in English place & now
and French, but neither worked. I can
live my life in those languages, I can it is so
even write my dissertation in them, but still. Where is everyone
I can only manage fiction in Chinese. I think. What is it
Chatting with you has improved my that is dis-
mother tongue. I typed slowly when we
first started talking, maybe you thought possessed. Can it ever be re-
I was being aloof, but actually I just
couldn’t think up the right words. I cried possessed. Never?
at my computer several times. It’s em- Now and again your soul
barrassing to admit this now. wakes up in
I’m happy to be your guinea pig, I said. spurts asking
She laughed. I could sense through
the screen that she was laughing. what is—or is there—a just
Should we exchange pictures? she
said. I don’t mean anything by that. I
just think it’d improve our chats if we to every season in France. I understand, kid, you sure know a lot of fancy words.
each knew what the other looked like. I said. Beijing is full of pollen these I need to go write my dissertation, she
You go first. Sure, I said. That would days. I have no idea why they plant so said. I’m only a couple of months from
definitely be an improvement. A mo- many trees. finishing my master’s. Bye. Sure, I said.
ment of silence. I’m very short, she said. Like I said, I sort of remember you What are your plans for after gradua-
I’m not tall either, I said. How tall? she as a kid, she said, though obviously those tion? I haven’t thought about it, she said.
said. A hundred and seventy-five cen- were special circumstances, I’m not going Maybe I’ll find a newspaper or a pub-
timetres, I said. That’s not short, she to let them set a precedent. “Special cir- lishing house in Paris to work at for a
said. I’m truly short, and my skin has cumstances” and “set a precedent”? I while, and write my novel on the side.
been bad recently. I seem to be allergic said. For someone who left China as a That sounds like a plan, I said. I’m off
46 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
 ing into a film clip, or at least a collec-
tion of stills.
struggle. Then you, Before my ma left, she told me that
then I, cry out I would be a man, which meant I had to
where are you rely on myself. I remember how, after
everyone. We were in one world work, she liked to lounge on the kang
reading the papers, or sometimes she’d
& then was it u or read an old book from the factory library.
us or them or no one in I thought, But I don’t want to be a man,
particular—in I want to rely on you, I want you to love
particular my heart me and take care of me forever. Instead,
I said, Ma, I’m already a man. She smiled
leaps at that—oh and said, That’s my Little Mo, I knew
in particular—but no one you’d be the best. I never saw her again
answers & no one after she left. She was still quite young
came along in the end. at the time—she was only twenty-one
when she had me. One day, my ba told
And that was when me she’d been working in Ningbo, but
the end began. she was in a bad way after being exposed
I only just realized to toxic metals; half a year after that she
it. Only just heard moved on to some other place and broke
off contact with us. My ba said they’d
no one survived—or is it they never actually divorced. I thought, This
still hide, above has nothing to do with me. But what I
the cries, no said to him was, Yes, you did the right
child, no one thing. I thought, To this day, I still haven’t
become a man. I need love, I need to be
replies, no one not taken care of. I need someone to stay put
blind, confined, so I can love them, that’s the only thing
lined up, wired up, piled that could bind me to this world. Was I
up, made to really a hundred and seventy-five centi-
metres? More like a hundred and sev-
comply, des- enty-three. It was almost dawn. I went
pised, compromised, the soul perpetually dis- back to my computer and started edit-
guised, the words even ing my short story. Or, really, rewriting
the right words it. I imagined myself as Li Lu the child
had seen me, standing by the bed of a
cannot be un- ten-year-old, unable to communicate,
able only to describe her own observa-
furled from breath from tions and feelings. Li Lu was offline, but
mind oh I sent her the story anyway.
memory no cannot be The next day, I slept till the after-
dug up dug up from noon, then had breakfast and went for
a walk in a nearby park. My method of
this buried world. working out was to walk as fast as I could
for an hour or so, then slow down and
—Jorie Graham have a stroll. After half an hour, around
two o’clock, Xiaoguo phoned and said,
I couldn’t find Li Lu. What do you mean?
to work on my dissertation, she said. up a bit of self-awareness. The person I said. Either she’s been out of town for
See you. Let’s swap photos first? I said. I’d been as a child felt like a box I owned, a few days, he said, or she was lying to
No, she said, and went offline. whose contents only I knew—a jumble you. The second possibility is more likely.
of objects. I’d never considered how I’d If she were in Paris studying at the Sor-

Ididn’thad trouble falling back asleep that

night, which didn’t really matter—I
have any interviews the next day,
come across to other people back then,
or rather I should say I’d never thought
I would be observed and remembered
bonne Nouvelle, I’d have found some
trace of her. No one at the university has
heard of her. Comp Lit has only had
so I’d just be writing at home. Maybe I’d by them. But isn’t it perfectly natural that two Asian students in the last two years,
slept for too long on the subway, or maybe I would? As long as you’re alive, you’ll one Japanese and one Vietnamese. The
my conversation with Li Lu had stirred enter other people’s consciousnesses, turn- Japanese student graduated and returned
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 47
home. I spoke to the Vietnamese guy of him staying by my side? A mother a little parcel of three books. They’re not
for a while, and he was certain that there and her child only share a destiny up to banned, he said. I just need you to take
wasn’t a Chinese woman named Li Lu a certain point, from when she gives them over. I figured that he’d hardly tell
in their department. Maybe I got the birth to him to when he’s ready to leave me if they contained drugs or anything
name of her school wrong, I said. Thanks the nest, that ought to be enough. I like that, only an idiot would accept a
for cleaning my ma’s apartment, he said. should go back to the way I was before package from a stranger. Meanwhile,
I thought you’d just hire a cleaner. It’s I had him, to when I was single. If only Xiaoguo still hadn’t tracked down Li Lu
fine, I said, I needed the exercise. Your I could find my way back there, but I’m and suggested that I feel her out on MSN.
ma’s always been so friendly to me, I old now, I can’t go back. Don’t think I’m He’d checked every university in Paris,
wanted to do it myself. Did Li Lu ask suffering. I have enough to eat and drink. and there were no Chinese students by
you for money? he said. No, I said. Did I have friends—if I want someone to that name in any of them. That Satur-
you brag about how much money you have a beer with, I only have to make a day, I logged onto MSN and saw that
have while you were chatting? he said. phone call and three people will come Li Lu had left me a message: she had
No, I said, I have no money to brag about. round. It just all seems meaningless. bronchopneumonia and needed to spend
I just sent her a short story. I’m sure she’s Being close to people, being separated a week in the hospital. Nothing to worry
around my age and from S—. Are you from them, it’s too much hassle—that’s about, but she was going to be offline
sure she’s a woman? he said. I feel like the worst thing at my age. Xiaoguo re- for a while. There was something sloppy
she’s female, I said. Can’t prove it, though. ally misses you, I said. He’s a good son, about this message—she didn’t even men-
How old are you? he said. Thirty-five, I she said. It’s just that we don’t talk much tion the story I’d sent her—which felt
said. O.K., he said, I’ll scour Paris for a on the phone—he doesn’t know what quite different from her previous behav-
thirty-five-year-old northeasterner, pref- to say and neither do I, so it ends up ior. If you’d asked me to sum up her per-
erably from S—. More soon. If Ms. Han feeling awkward. I’ve always known he sonality—I mean her online personali-
wants me to come visit, I can pop by doesn’t like Beijing or our home. The ty—I’d have said she was artless and
one afternoon, I said. No need, he said. words that come out of his mouth just open, yet there was something oddly glib
I’ll do everything I can to help you. These tell me what’s on his mind, not what’s about this last message. I lay in bed read-
are unrelated, I said. I’m happy to hang in his heart. His actions speak volumes— ing for a while. After two hours, I grabbed
out with Ms. Han or take her shopping. look how far away he ran. I grew up my phone and bought a plane ticket to
Why don’t you ask her yourself? he said. here and I’ll die here. I’ve accepted my Paris, leaving the following night.
I will, I said, as long as she doesn’t find fate. It takes a bit of intelligence to ac- First thing the next day, I phoned
me annoying. I’ll call when I have news, cept your fate, did you know that? I my boss and said that I was going on
he said. Bye. wanted to know what Xiaoguo was a trip. Where to? he asked. And how
That weekend, I took Ms. Han to a learning in France, so he sent me some long? Paris, I said. Maybe a week. What
vegetable market, and then we had din- pictures he’d taken of a Wenzhou cou- are you doing in Paris? he said. Visit-
ner together. She seemed much less ple’s wedding, that rascal. Just call me ing a friend, I said. He thought for a
friendly than before, but after all I didn’t if you need me, I said. My time is flex- moment. If you see anything interest-
really have any connection to her. Tell ible. Let’s not put pressure on each other, ing, write an article about it. Then I can
Xiaoguo I’m doing well, she said after she said. Whatever you do, don’t think cover part of your expenses. I’ll see what
the meal. She’d ordered a bottle of beer of me as a friend. Cheers. I can find, I said. You can have a week
and had half of it; I finished the rest. Zhou Cang came through with my off, he said. Take one day more than
Sometimes I wish he’d spend more time visa: multiple entries into the E.U., ex- that and you can forget about coming
with me, she said. But what’s the point piring in a year’s time. He also sent me back to my department.

Iwerepretty much passed out on the plane,

though the cabin was chaotic. There
a lot of migrant workers on my
flight, speaking all kinds of languages,
stuffing plastic bags of foraged vegeta-
bles and cooked food onto the luggage
rack. Some of the older folks kept get-
ting up to walk around and chat with
their friends. Even so, I was able to sleep,
perhaps because I was so anxious, per-
haps from the worry of not knowing
what I was doing. My body was filled
with exhaustion, which had possibly been
accumulating ever since I’d gotten to
know Li Lu online.
We landed at Charles de Gaulle
“Maureen says I need glasses, but I don’t know. What do you guys think?” around noon. I hadn’t checked a bag, so
I was one of the first passengers to leave dependent bookshop owned by one of Just friend, good friend. She nodded and
the airport. A strapping man stood out- the Frenchmen. I’d seen the film it was said, You’ll find her. No one can stay hid-
side with a sign that said, in Chinese, named after, something about French den in Paris.
“Mr. Li Mo.” I went over to him and people’s understanding of Buddhism. That night, I watched the card game
said, Xiaoguo? Yes, the large man said, There were two clerks, both twentyish for a while, then curled up in a chair and
as he took my luggage. And that’s how Parisians, a man and a woman. They fell asleep. It was dawn when Xiaoguo
I met Xiaoguo. Startlingly, he really seemed to know Xiaoguo well, though woke me, and through the windows I
did look a lot like Lord Guan. I couldn’t I couldn’t understand a word of their could see old people walking dogs in the
have told you exactly how—Lord Guan conversation. Xiaoguo went into the street. I followed Xiaoguo from the room
is traditionally bearded and red-skinned, back room around half past one, while as the other cardplayers left, too. How
whereas Xiaoguo was clean-shaven and I browsed the bookshelves. did it go? I asked. Normal,
pale, and he lacked a horse between his They didn’t carry a single he said. I have a friend who’s
legs. Still, something about him had an Chinese book. out of town, and you can
air of Lord Guan. Maybe it was the sheer Li Lu definitely existed— stay at his place. I have a
dignity visible in his narrow eyes or the I believed this sincerely. I key. As long as it’s no trou-
faint arrogance he had every right to feel. also firmly believed that she ble, I said. I’ll get an Uber,
He wore a black T-shirt, white trousers, had met me before. The way he said. A few minutes later,
and white sneakers, moved with loose- that she had described see- we were in a car. Do you
limbed ease, and had gel in his hair. ing me in my hospital bed need money? Xiaoguo
Did you get any sleep on the plane? couldn’t simply have come asked. I’m O.K., I said. I got
he said. Plenty, I said. So you’re full of out of thin air. Those de- some euros before I left. I
energy, then? he said. Pretty much, I said. tailed truths, the atmosphere mean in general, he said. I
My butt and back ache a bit, though. of my childhood—no one who hadn’t can pay you monthly to go see my ma
O.K. then, he said, let’s go play cards. I been there could possibly have described and keep her company. I hope you’re not
don’t know how, I said. I want to put them so accurately. She was somewhere offended. What I mean is I’d like you
down my luggage and go to the Sor- in Paris. Maybe she hadn’t gotten into to see her more often, but I don’t want
bonne Nouvelle. Listen to me, he said. the university she’d mentioned, maybe to trouble you. Do you know what I’m
The person you’re looking for isn’t at the she wasn’t a writer like she claimed to saying? She doesn’t need my company,
Sorbonne Nouvelle. I have another lead, be, but she was here. I said. I’m a burden to her. You shouldn’t
I’ll take you there tomorrow. Walking I’d felt this as soon as I stepped off worry so much. I’ve met her a couple of
fast alongside him, I said, What lead? the plane. This was the Paris she’d talked times, and she may be a little unhappy,
Can’t you tell me now? There’s some- about, an ancient city of art, a place that but that’s normal. She’s not a pathetic
one who might have seen her, he said. championed égalité while hoarding person. He nodded and said, You’re right,
We’ll go and talk to them tomorrow. power. Surprisingly, I hadn’t felt out of she’s always been like that. My friend’s
Did you bring Zhou Cang’s package? place or wary here, perhaps because of place is large, or at least it feels large be-
It’s in that suitcase, I said. He immedi- Xiaoguo’s ability to set people at ease, cause of the high ceiling. There’s a short
ately laid my carry-on on the ground perhaps from the knowledge that this staircase leading up to the loft bed. You
and asked me to unlock it. Right now? was where Li Lu lived and studied. Look- won’t be sharing with anyone. He handed
I said. Yes, he said. I opened the suit- ing through the shelves of the bookstore, me a key and said, I’ll come get you this
case, and he ripped open the package. I felt that I could write every bit as well afternoon. It’ll take us about a half hour
Inside were twenty identical sets of play- as these authors. I have no idea where to get to this person who may have met
ing cards, which he put in a plastic bag this bizarre confidence sprang from. The Li Lu. We can all have dinner together.
he’d brought. I only play with this kind female clerk was in charge of keeping That gives you five or six hours to sleep.
of card, he said. The set I had was com- the place tidy and engaging with cus- Is that enough? Yes, I said. Everything
pletely worn to pieces, so I asked Zhou tomers, while the man dealt with ac- you need should be in the apartment,
Cang to send over twenty more. This counts and occasionally patrolled the he said. Use whatever you want. You can
isn’t cheating—it’s an art. How do you shop, looking for anything else that drink the tap water here.
do it? I asked. By touch, he said. I can needed doing. The woman asked, in En- I slept for two hours and woke up
feel the aces as I’m shuffling, which gives glish, if I was Xiaoguo’s friend, and I said with my heart thumping. I came down
me an advantage, though only when it’s yes, though this was my first time meet- from the loft and opened the curtains to
my turn to deal. I’ve been doing this ing him. She told me that she’d seen one let some sunlight in. After pacing the
since I was a kid. of his short films, an interesting piece apartment for a while, I felt a little bet-
The card game went on all night about a wedding ceremony. Oh, I said, ter. Close to noon, a phone in the living
long. Apart from Xiaoguo, there were maybe it was truth? (I couldn’t think of room rang, startling me. They still had
two Koreans, two Frenchmen, and a the English word for documentary.) landlines here? I saw a black, wall-
Moroccan, all of them young. They Maybe, she said. Anyway, it was fasci- mounted phone. I hesitated a moment
played Texas hold ’em with a five-euro nating. What are you here for? To find before picking it up, but there was no
small blind. The game took place in the a friend, I said. A girl. I cannot contact sound. Then I realized that it was purely
back room of Le Cercle Rouge, an in- her. Your girlfriend? she said. No, I said. decorative, and the ringing was actually
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 49
coming from an alarm clock on the cof- bles, only a couple of them empty—busi- I asked. Are you still in danger? I almost
fee table. Three o’clock came and went, ness was brisk. The owner, an Asian died this afternoon, he said, but now I’m
but Xiaoguo never showed up. I kept woman, came over and said something fine. As I lay dying, all I could think was
calling him, but he wasn’t answering. It in French. Do you speak Chinese? I that I hadn’t helped you get this done.
didn’t seem feasible for me to go search asked. Sure, she said. I’m looking for a I’m not being melodramatic—it’s just
for Li Lu alone. I wasn’t scared; I just Chinese woman, I said. She often comes that my mind was so clear in those few
had no idea where to start. Instead, I in here to write. Around my age, prob- seconds. I don’t know why I didn’t think
opened my laptop and reread our recent ably living nearby. Do you remember about my ma, only you. She’s left Paris,
chats, even though I’d already pored over her? Are you a northeasterner? she asked. I said. I’m going back to China tomor-
these repeatedly, trying to work out how Yes, I said. You, too? Yes, she said. I moved row. Which hospital are you in? Are you
she felt about me. here ten years ago. Is your name Li Mo? giving up? he said. Yes, I said. She’s cov-
Something she’d said a month ago How did you know? I asked. The per- ered her tracks well. At least you didn’t
caught my eye: I’d asked where she went son you’re looking for told me, she said. come here for nothing, he said. I’ll text
to write, and she’d said that the dorm If someone named Li Mo came here, I you the hospital address. Buy me a pack
was too noisy, so she usually went to was to give him this magazine. She of cards on your way here. Any brand.
the university library or occasionally to started flipping through the little note- The noodles were made in the north-
a nearby Chinese restaurant. Why? I’d book she took down orders in. It’s a well- eastern way: cook them in boiling water
asked. It was a café by day and a restau- known literature magazine, she said. Ev- with a little chicken broth, and when
rant by night, she’d said, but, because eryone in France who loves Chinese they’re almost done add tomatoes,
she was Chinese, they would make her literature reads it. She translated your greens, salt, chopped scallion, and cilan-
a bowl of noodles at lunchtime. There short story and published it there. I don’t tro. I had a bowlful and asked for a lit-
probably weren’t too many places like know anything about all that. I’m just tle more. I was drenched in sweat, com-
that. I grabbed my passport and wallet, telling you what she said. pletely recovered from my jet lag, light
and went out to hail a taxi. I told the The owner went behind the counter and at ease, as if someone had given me
driver, Restaurant night, coffee day, Chi- and, after rummaging around for a while, a shot in the arm. I could have run five
nese food. The driver shook his head. handed me an exquisitely designed mag- kilometres right then. The owner cleared
Non, I don’t know. I searched for Le Cer- azine in a clear plastic sleeve. I recog- my plate, and I went over to the counter
cle Rouge on my phone and showed him. nized the author featured on the cover: to pay my bill. She taught me how to
You go to watch movie? he asked. No, I Maupassant. Flicking through the pages, make noodles like that, the owner said.
said, bookstore. He nodded. Google map, I found my story through the illustra- Who did? I said. The person you’re look-
he said. It didn’t take him long to drive tion. It took up three pages, accompa- ing for, she said. She was about my age,
me over. The owner and salesclerks were nied by an image of a very scrawny Chi- fifty-six or seven. I hadn’t expected that,
all there. Before I could speak, the owner nese guy lying in bed. What’s she like? I said. She’s suffered quite a lot, she said.
came over and shouted something I didn’t I asked. How can I find her? Could you She’s only been able to enjoy life these
understand.Two Eastern European-look- call her and tell her I’m here? No, she last couple of years. What does she look
ing men came out from the back room said. She came in for the final time a like? I said. I can’t describe her, she said.
and stood behind me. I held up both week ago and told me that she and her And there wouldn’t be any point if I
hands and said, I want to find a woman. husband were leaving France. They move did. She just sat there writing. I often
I need you help. A woman? the owner to a different country every few years. saw her weeping.
said. Yes, I said. A friend. I fly here to She asked me not to tell you anything My tears were also flowing, and no
find her. Your wife? the owner said. No, about her; she values her privacy. Hus- wonder: I’d had these noodles as a kid,
I said. Old friend. band? I said. Yes, she said. Were you close? and I knew only one person on earth who
One of the Eastern Europeans, a Pol- I said. We knew each other well, she said, made noodles that tasted like this. A
ish guy, had been to the restaurant be- but I wouldn’t say we were good friends. group of Chinese tourists with several
fore and offered to take me there. He Could I have a coffee? I said. Take a seat, noisy infants entered, and the owner went
drove a red Chevrolet, and the passen- she said. What kind of coffee? Anything, to seat them. I walked out with the mag-
ger seat smelled pungently of a woman’s I said. I don’t know much about coffee. azine and squatted by the side of the road
perfume. Why are you so angry? I asked. I sat there till evening. The owner until I’d calmed down. There was a su-
Nothing, he said. Do you love her, your came over and said, Would you like permarket across the street. In a moment,
old friend? I thought about it. Yes, I love something to eat? Sure, I said. Noodles? I would go in and buy a packet of tissues,
her, I said. I never see her, but I love her. she said. Great, I said. With tomatoes a bottle of water, and a set of playing
Not Internet love, true love, family love. or greens? she said. Both, I said. I phoned cards for Xiaoguo. Maybe he’d let me in-
He nodded. I see somebody every day, Xiaoguo again, and this time he an- terview him for the newspaper. Maybe
he said, but I don’t love her. She no love swered. Where were you? I said. I’ve just he’d teach me how to play his game. 
me, too, but we see each other every day. woken up, he said. You were asleep for (Translated, from the Chinese,
We arrived at the restaurant. He ges- fifteen hours? I said. I got stabbed, he by Jeremy Tiang.)
tured for me to get out and drove off said. I had a little surgery. I’ve just woken
the second I shut the door. The restau- up from the anesthetic. Did you go look- NEWYORKER.COM/FICTION
rant wasn’t too large, maybe a dozen ta- ing for your friend? Who stabbed you? Sign up to get author interviews in your in-box.

50 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024

 THE CRITICS

BOOKS

NOW YOU SEE ME

John Singer Sargent’s strange, slippery portraits of an art dealer’s family.

BY JACKSON ARN

I
f you remember anything about What does Asher Wertheimer think kinds of socialites Sargent painted and,
this painting, may it be that the about all this? He’s too smart to miss come Season 3, Sargent himself.
dog’s name is Noble. The black the ironies of an art dealer made art, He has never really gone away. That’s
poodle in the bottom left greets us as but whether they taste sweet or bitter the mixed blessing of painting every-
a silhouette with a few shiny parts: he won’t say. His red lips are freshly one from Gilded Age to Progressive
teeth, eye, damp nose, pink tongue. The licked, and his eyes shoot out at us as Era: Henry James, Robert Louis Ste-
teeth could crack bone; the tongue vigorously as his cigar. People have venson, Theodore Roosevelt, Wood-
wants to be friends. Not a very digni- stared at his stare and found warmth, row Wilson, Fort Knoxes’ worth of
fied pose for a creature called Noble, or greed, or amusement, or wickedness, Morgans and Rockefellers and Van-
but humans love to saddle animals with but there is a deliberateness to that ex- derbilts. If you were fumbling for con-
teasingly grand names—Rex, Princess, pression, whatever it is. Some inter- versation with an heiress, it used to be
King, Queenie. It’s one of our many preted the painting as a Jewish carica- said, you could always ask her, “And
little ways of being modest and boast- ture, and condemned or praised it how do you like your Sargent draw-
ful in the same breath, of displaying accordingly, which did nothing to stop ing?” As modernism bloomed and the
our possessions and hinting that we Asher from paying Sargent to give his Gilded Age became a punch line, so,
are, in both senses, above it all. family the same treatment. “What a inevitably, did its premier portraitist.
The man girthily looming over tiresome thing,” the artist wrote, “a per- D. H. Lawrence thought that his stuff
Noble is not a noble. You might be fectly clear symbol would be.” was “nothing but yards of satin.” Pi-
able to tell by his coat, which blends casso made him look antique. Even at
into the blackness as easily as his pet’s
fur. But his hands are the bigger give-
“ F amily Romance: John Singer Sar-
gent and the Wertheimers” (Far-
the end of the twentieth century, when
modernist aesthetics had long since
away—he’s no manual laborer, yet you rar, Straus & Giroux), Jean Strouse’s gone the way of whalebone corsets,
sense that he uses them all the time. new book about Asher, Asher’s por- Sargent’s cheerleaders mostly seemed
They speak every language, know clas- trait, and the eleven that followed, is to accept the premise that he was a
sical rhetoric and differential calculus, neither the trough nor the crest of our docile ennobler of rich oafs, if a very
have interesting opinions about the current wave of Sargentolatry, which talented one. “He had no interest in
Berlin Conference. One sinks a thumb so far has seen major shows at the Bos- politics past or present,” Robert Hughes
in his pocket. The other pokes at us ton Museum of Fine Arts, the Na- wrote, in 1999, “was completely with-
with a cigar. Wordlessly, both announce, tional Gallery, the National Portrait out class resentment and seemed to be
“We know exactly what we’re talking Gallery, the Jewish Museum, the Gard- devoid of irony.”
about.” They belong to a man named ner, and Tate Britain. Next year, the “No interest” . . . “completely with-
Asher Wertheimer, and in the years centennial of the artist’s death, the out” . . . “devoid of ”—it’s easy to talk
leading up to this portrait’s unveiling, Met opens its second Sargent block- about the past in all-or-nothing for-
in 1898, he became fantastically wealthy buster in a decade; to these we can add mulations. When we laud an artist for
by dealing art. To celebrate his talent things like “The Man in the Red Coat,” being “a shrewd observer of his times,”
for persuading people to buy expen- the 2019 study of the surgeon Samu- say, we usually mean that he stood apart
sive objects, he has hired the famous el-Jean Pozzi that Julian Barnes was from them and, if they’re as easily
John Singer Sargent and done what moved to write after laying eyes on mocked as the Gilded Age, sneered.
nobles do: converted himself into an Sargent’s portrait, and HBO’s “The This is a roundabout way of putting
expensive object. Gilded Age,” starring precisely the the present’s ultimate compliment: that

In works like “Asher Wertheimer” (1898), Sargent seems to capture both glamour and the strain of those trying to sustain it.
52 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
 COURTESY TATE / PRESENTED BY THE WIDOW AND FAMILY OF ASHER WERTHEIMER
IN ACCORDANCE WITH HIS WISHES, 1922 / PHOTOGRAPH BY TATE; OPPOSITE: PIERRE BUTTIN

THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024

53
the artist is one of us. Even if that were sion is worth well over a hundred mil- bilt, in New York, and to the major na-
possible, I don’t know why we’d prefer lion dollars.) The only stable currency tional collections in Berlin. The mar-
it. Aren’t the most interesting people was human insecurity, and those who ket for beautiful objects had changed
the ones who can’t make up their minds trafficked in it did very well for them- so much in a generation that it barely
about their world, who sometimes sneer selves. It seems almost superfluous to counted as the same job. Authenticity
and sometimes grovel? Each of Strouse’s add that the late nineteenth century was hot, hot, hot: the Rothschilds who
previous books is about a person like saw the birth of our current, jumpy hired Samson had been satisfied with
this: J. P. Morgan, the pitiless financier, art market. shiny new furniture in the style of the
who said, “I owe the public nothing,” eighteenth century, but the robber bar-
but donated entire museums of mas-
terpieces anyway; Alice James, who saw
“ F amily Romance” swats away easy
summary. Its barely two hundred
ons adding to Asher’s fortune wanted
to pad their pedigrees with originals.
the hollowness of marriage in her so- and fifty pages are not a biography of For that they needed authenticators,
cial circle yet believed that matrimony Sargent, or a definitive history of the and for those they had to rely on deal-
was “the only successful occupation Gilded Age or its trappings, or a de- ers who could convey a suave, chummy
that a woman can undertake.” Seeing finitive account of anything. The in- trustworthiness. Polish was half the
through their age’s markers of value citing incident is Asher’s decision to job, minimum.
was no barrier to being seduced. leave Sargent’s portraits of his family Not everyone liked that about it.
“Looking back on one hundred years to the British state (ten reside at Tate Art dealing, Edmond de Goncourt
of its own history in 1876, the United Britain), and most of the rest orbits the wrote, in 1877, “is no longer, in the per-
States did not yet have much aesthetic little we know of his life the way big, son of the seller, in a position of infe-
tradition or taste; it did have ardent bright stars orbit a black hole. riority vis-à-vis the buyer, who on the
cultural nationalism, and its cities were He was born in London in 1843 and contrary seems beholden to the seller.”
becoming vital centers for the arts.” completed his formal schooling in Paris. Another way of putting this is that the
This sentence, from “Morgan: Amer- His father, Samson Wertheimer, was material rewards for bending the truth
ican Financier,” would be equally at born in Bavaria, at the time one of the about old art could have made the Dalai
home in Strouse’s other books. Where few parts of Europe where Jewish busi- Lama a con man. In the most acidly
some have found stuffiness in the de- ness flourished, but he moved to En- delightful chapters of “Family Ro-
cades leading up to the First World gland when he was a young man. While mance,” we’re told how a whole gen-
War, she sees flux, ambition, a socio- his children were still coming of age, eration of elegant weasels, from the art
pathic need for recognition—more Samson made his reputation selling historian Bernard Berenson to the
precisely, she sees stuffiness as the tru- chairs and cabinets to the Rothschilds. dealer Lockett Agnew, of Thomas
est sign of these things, revealing them In 1874, the year he turned sixty, the Agnew & Sons, paid for their summer
by stubborn denial. Nothing was steady Duke of Edinburgh commissioned him houses by suckering clueless patrons.
in those years. Not the American econ- to decorate his mansion; had the gig Agnew’s favorite trick was to acquire
omy, which twitched from panic to tri- come earlier, he might have sent Asher a painting attributed to the “school of ”
umph to panic and, in 1907, had to be to Oxford instead. an Old Master, give it a clean, persuade
bailed out with private funds from The second-generation tycoon, clas- some hired gun with a doctorate to re-
Morgan and his associates. Not the sically, mimics the founder’s work ethic categorize it as an Old Master, and
European aristocracy, which surren- but adds polish. (Generation three is sell. Berenson charmed Isabella Stew-
dered much of its wealth to industri- art Gardner into spending thirty thou-
alization and estate taxes. At times, sand pounds (something like six mil-
beautiful objects must have seemed the lion dollars today) on a trio of Dutch
only constants: porcelain, pearl neck- oils she could have got for twenty-five.
laces, Louis XIV furniture, Old Mas- After the sale went through, Berenson
ter oils. A well-trained artist could pocketed the difference, plus a two-
make himself useful on both sides of thousand-dollar bonus for his integ-
the Atlantic, confirming with his brush rity. Later on, he accepted a contract
that a new-money banker suddenly with a firm that gave him “a financial
had real status and that a penniless incentive to ‘upgrade’ attributions.”
duchess still hung on to some. when things start getting sad.) At the Whether he actually did, Strouse does
Not that beautiful objects were age of twenty-seven, Asher made what not say and doesn’t need to. If you’re
steady, either. Strouse tells of how the they used to call “a brilliant marriage” still inclined to trust him, or at least
Cartier mansion, in midtown Man- to Flora Joseph, the daughter of an- to pray that this kind of mischief no
hattan, was purchased, in 1917, with a other Jewish art-dealer dynasty, and longer goes unpunished, I can think of
pearl necklace valued at $1.2 million. when his father died, in the eighteen- a certain painting—bought for four
A few years later, when cultured pearls nineties, he inherited the contempo- figures, cleaned, promptly bumped from
were becoming popular, the necklace rary equivalent of tens of millions of “school of Leonardo” to genuine arti-
had to be sold for a pathetic fraction dollars. By this point, he was selling cle, and sold, in 2017, for half a billion
of that sum. (Today, the Cartier man- Old Masters to William K. Vander- dollars—that might be of interest.
54 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
 Where was Asher in all this? It’s
not always easy to know, Strouse ac-
knowledges, since his firm’s records
have been lost. By and large, though,
her suspicion is that he was “playing
by gentlemanly rules in a newly cut-
throat market.” It’s the same problem
that every minority pioneer faces—
how to conduct yourself in a society
that already expects you to misbehave—
with the further, infuriating twist that
lying very nearly was the rule in Wert-
heimer’s industry. Devious, new money,
rootless, greedy: what bothers us most
about other people is, usually, what we
hate most in ourselves. Reading Strouse,
you get the impression that the antise-
mitic slurs that Wertheimer tried to
avoid were secret self-portraits of a so-
ciety that had resorted to inventing
roots for itself, one bogus Old Master
at a time. By the early twentieth cen-
tury, Asher seems to have decided that “Can we be done camping?”
the simplest way to insure continuity
of business, besides acting honorably,
was to remove his name from deals
• •
his firm secured. It worked, too well.
Within a few decades, “Wertheimer” Apollo,” at the Gardner, the most re- like a little cut that refuses to heal.
had disappeared from art dealing, and velatory recent Sargent show and one Often, the instability is spatial; no mat-
the firm along with it. Agnew’s is still of several determined to slay his repu- ter how many times I return to Sar-
going strong in 2024. tation for squareness. The best com- gent’s “Staircase in Capri,” there is al-
parison here is his friend Henry James, ways a split second in which I can’t tell
“ C osmopolitan,” another key an-
tisemitic word of the era, was
whose image as cold-blooded Master
began to thaw with the rise of queer
whether we’re at the top staring down
or the bottom staring up. In 1896, he
often applied to Sargent. He was born theory, in the eighties. We now open completed a portrait of Adèle Meyer
in Florence in 1856, grew up all over “The Portrait of a Lady” and chuckle and her two children; in a cartoon ver-
the continent, spoke English, French, at big, stiff Caspar Goodwood and sion, published in Punch the following
Italian, and German, and seemed to Ralph Touchett, who ogles his cousin year, she’s about to slide off the couch
be at ease anywhere, as long as there from behind and shows her his can- and out of the picture entirely. Just a
was a butler. Strouse doesn’t do too dlestick, and wonder how anybody ever parody, of course, but, as with any good
much huffing and puffing to acquit missed the obvious. We still look at parody, it exaggerates what was already
him of prejudice, which is merely to Sargent and miss away. He can be so in the original, which does indeed get
say that he was innocent in some ways naughty, flinging filthy jokes at an au- slantily stranger the longer you spend
and guilty in others. He painted a large dience unsure if it’s allowed to laugh. with it. Adèle clutches her son’s hand,
number of Jewish sitters and took his His portrait of Pozzi, the playboy gy- while her daughter’s hand keeps him
lumps from Jew-haters for doing so. necologist who insisted on manually steady. All three, you begin to sense,
He took them from Jews, too, after he examining his patients, shows the “Love hold on for dear life.
painted a mural of a feeble hag who Doctor” (his actual nickname!) finger- “Devoid of irony”? Only if you’re
represented their religion. In his ing the string of a scarlet dressing gown. not looking for any to begin with. Sar-
thrilled insistence that the skin of his “The f lashiness,” Elaine Kilmurray gent has plentiful similarities with
patron Sybil Sassoon was “positively wrote, in 2015, “is offset by the refine- Henry James, but the figure he most
green,” it is hard to hear much but ment of his finely drawn surgeon’s reminds me of is the seventeenth-cen-
garden-variety exoticizing. hands.” Until distinguished art histo- tury Dutch portrait-meester Frans Hals,
We are about halfway through a rians catch up with puerile eighth-grade whose work he studied up close on a
big Sargent rethink, I hope. The yards boys, I’m afraid, Sargent will stay square. trip to Holland in 1880. Hals, too,
of satin are still being excavated: the If pressed to sum up his paintings painted the faces of a new secular élite
rediscovery of steamy nude portraits in a word, you could do worse than “in- that sought to flatter itself with the
of the young Black model Thomas stability.” Not an obvious, overpower- permanence of oil painting; Hals, too,
Eugene McKeller inspired “Boston’s ing kind—something much subtler, caught the abundance as well as the
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 55
wobbling precarity of his clients’ world, and fifty-four years later, just as Asher but also the desperate little strain of
the sense that all this could tumble is collecting a tab worth twenty-three that chin trying to lift itself prettier. I
down tomorrow. The big irony, for Hals million contemporary dollars, Strouse get the satin rustle but also the glam-
and Sargent: expensive stuff is a splen- reminds us of the earlier incident, and orous self-torture of posing for hours,
did way of demonstrating that you mat- there is a real sense of history unfold- itching and sweating under your cloth-
ter but also that, in the long run, you ing, not just time passing. I read and ing. Ena’s left hand—always study the
don’t. Surrounding yourself with lux- shivered and tried, unsuccessfully, to hands in Sargent—grips the top of that
ury implies that you are rich enough think of other sub-three-hundred-page lustrous jar, and I feel the swagger of
to afford it, and even that you resem- works of nonfiction that deserve to be the gesture but also the hissed insinu-
ble it—posing with a blue porcelain called epic. ation of frailty: she’s holding the fan-
vase, say, is supposed to mean that you’re It’s strange, though, how un-strange ciest cane money can buy.
a beautiful, delicate heiress; sitting in the art is made to seem. Strouse ap- Turn-of-the-century high society
an authentic eighteenth-century chair provingly quotes Max Beerbohm’s claim is a hard place to get comfortable in.
means that your family is old and re- that Sargent was the “supreme inter- Few Sargent sitters seem completely
spectable. And yet you are not your preter” of a “restless, nervous age,” and at home there, though not so distressed
stuff, and the fancier it is the more yet the man behind the paintings she as to up and leave. Few seem at home
likely it is to outlive you, remorselessly. describes—such wonky, uneasy things in their own clothes, even. The jewels
It honors your achievements and mocks when you explore them for yourself— pull, the gowns prickle and squeeze.
your mortality. The vases in Sargent, I comes off as a mix of Hughes’s irony- Everyone seems to be breaking in a
am not the first art critic to observe, allergic virtuoso and Lawrence’s soul- brand-new costume. Their only way
would make rather chic funeral urns. less fogy. We are treated to one too out, since they refuse to walk out, is to
many helpings of satin: when intro- acknowledge the charade and no lon-

Stheirtrouse has an astute eye for the era’s

swerves and twists—Gentiles aping
stereotypes for Jews, old money
ducing, for example, “Ena and Betty,
Daughters of Asher and Mrs. Wert-
heimer” (1901), the double portrait that
ger try quite so hard to impress. Which
is why the most comfortable-seeming
Sargent figures are those like the ac-
mocking new money, new money aping gives her book its cover image, Strouse tress Ellen Terry, who is dressed in the
old money by mocking newer money— notes the “Chinese jar lustrous with literal costume of Lady Macbeth, or
and she’s at least as good at spotting gilt highlights” and tall, lovely Ena, the two children in “Carnation, Lily,
pathos. Early in “Family Romance,” who “radiates vitality, her chin raised, Lily, Rose,” who are still young enough
we encounter a young, struggling Sam- lips parted, color high,” and, but of that any article of clothing is a kind
son Wertheimer, who has been reduced course, the “satin skirts,” so vivid they’re of costume, or Ena Wertheimer in “A
to sending one of his patrons a deli- “practically audible.” It’s not that these Vele Gonfie” (1904), whose billowing
cately worded bill for twenty-seven things aren’t there. They are, but each cloak Sargent told her to hold up with
pounds; a hundred and thirty-two pages casts its own shadow. I get the vitality a broomstick, “simulating the volume
and motion of her original entrance.”
You can see the stick toward the lower
right side of the painting, and Ena sees
it, too, since this time her gaze points
down and over instead of up and out.
She has nothing she feels a need to
hide, which isn’t the same as freedom
but is in the vicinity.
We could add Asher to this bunch.
His coat and cigar and gold watch
chain are, make no mistake, as much
of a costume as anything Ellen Terry
ever wore, and when I see the glint
in his eyes I suspect that he knows it.
As for whether he is going as “stereo-
typical avaricious Jew” or “completely
uncontroversial modern businessman,”
by this point in his career, surely, he
has figured out that they are one and
the same—the confusions of a soci-
ety so muddled in its prejudices that
it can barely decide if “cosmopolitan”
is a compliment or an insult. The hon-
est, by-the-book Asher Wertheimer
“It’s sad—he used to be able to blow down a whole straw house.” whom Strouse has reconstructed, you
will have noticed, is not much like
the cunning Asher Wertheimer of the
painting. He couldn’t afford to be, not BRIEFLY NOTED
in a milieu that distrusted him even
when doing business with him. But, On the Calculation of Volume (Book I), by Solvej Balle, trans-
in a painting, cunning was safe enough. lated from the Danish by Barbara Haveland (New Directions).
For all we know, it may have been his This philosophical novel consists of the diary entries of a
favorite part. woman for whom the days have ceased to pass. After a seem-
ingly quotidian afternoon in Paris, the antiquarian bookseller

Sin onelf-awareness doesn’t last very long.

You can acknowledge that you are
the joke of your costume, and
Tara Selter wakes up in her hotel room the next morning
only to find the same day happening again. As Tara relives
the day—November 18th—she tinkers with variations, con-
even preserve the moment in oil on siders possible explanations, describes her plight to her hus-
canvas, but after that you are free to band, and writes. At once a meditation on climate change
fall in love with the costume all over (because Tara’s calendar never turns, neither does the weather)
again. You can understand, by the same and an experiment with fictional form, Balle’s novel is also
token, how meaningless social respect- a startling exploration of profound questions about language,
ability is—how flimsy its symbols, how human connection, and time.
bogus its rituals, how cheap its entrance
fees—and still care, desperately, about The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl from Milan, by Do-
being respectable. Sausage-makers do menico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky
not always renounce the consumption (Europa). The narrator of this wonderfully off-kilter novel, an
of sausage. It does and it doesn’t make elderly man, recalls his doting grandmother and his boyhood
sense, in other words, that Asher Wert- infatuation with a girl who danced on the balcony opposite
heimer bequeathed his Sargents to his family’s apartment, in Naples. Starnone’s prose captures
Britain, with the expectation that they the feverishness and weird juxtapositions of a child’s inner life.
hang immortally in a museum, bask- “Coherence doesn’t belong to the world of children, it’s an ill-
ing in attention. ness we contract later on, growing up,” he writes, and indeed,
Legacy can make even an ironical as a boy, the narrator spent a season searching for a “pit of the
man do sentimental things. It seems to dead” evoked by his nonna. Now he tries to cement his expe-
have done so with Wertheimer, and it riences in words: “The problem, if there is one, is that the plea-
may have had a similar effect on Sar- sure of writing is fragile, it has a hard time making it up the
gent, who later renounced portraiture slippery slope of real life.”
and poured his talents into Large, Im-
portant, Historical paintings and mu- Burdened, by Ryann Liebenthal (Dey Street). This granular his-
rals. The results, visible at the Imperial tory of education policy traces a century of decisions that caused
War Museum, in London, and the Bos- American college education to become as expensive as it is
ton Public Library, among other places, today. The book’s sometimes surprising list of villains includes
are large and historical, at least. As for the G.I. Bill and Joe Biden, who, as a senator, argued for bank-
important, “Gassed,” completed in 1919, ruptcy legislation that would “reward corporate creditors” in-
shows armed soldiers with bandaged stead of debtors. Its heroes—to the extent that Liebenthal has
eyes staggering over duckboards in the patience for incremental progress—include Maxine Waters and
evening. The blind leading the blind, Elizabeth Warren. The book lingers on how student debt came
a cold little sun—what was it the man to be thought of as a matter of consumer protection rather than
said about perfectly clear symbols? of basic rights, and dismissed as a problem for unserious young
Asher died in 1918 and left the equiv- people rather than seen as a barrier to a flourishing society.
alent of a hundred and forty million
dollars in his will. His youngest child, Linguaphile, by Julie Sedivy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The
Ruby, lived long enough to find out author of this engaging memoir is a linguist who focusses on
how little her society cared about them. the relationship between language and psychology. In explo-
For most of the nineteen-thirties, she rations of language acquisition, ambiguity, and linguistic cre-
lived in the luxurious Hotel Excelsior ativity, Sedivy transforms academic observations about lan-
Gallia, in Milan, but by August, 1940, guage—a “daily miracle”—into broadly relevant insights. For
she had been sent to an internment instance, verbal fillers such as “um,” she explains, do not im-
camp. She died the following year, aged pede fluent communication but, rather, sharpen a listener’s
fifty-two, and left behind an impres- alertness by signalling the complexity of the upcoming thought.
sive collection of dresses, hats, furs, and She applies the conclusion to her encounters with sexism in
gold bracelets. How she held on to the scientific community—where she might have benefitted,
them nobody knows.  she suggests, from being clearer about the difficulties she faced.
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 57
 a work holiday in a better climate, to
BOOKS get away from family obligations, and
to see how far their Reichsmarks could
go. In particular, they were attracted
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS to Naples and also to Capri, where,
earlier in the century, Maxim Gorky
The surprisingly sunny origins of the Frankfurt School. and a faction of Bolsheviks had founded
a Communist academy that brief ly
BY THOMAS MEANEY made the island a hub of revolution-
ary activity.
Martin Mittelmeier’s “Naples 1925:
Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer
That Made Critical Theory” (Yale),
translated by Shelley Frisch, is a kind
of intellectual history by way of Vita-
min D synthesis. He examines how
this group of thinkers was changed by
the Italian environment. Although they
had projects planned (Mittelmeier gives
a rundown of the vast personal libraries
they lugged along), they could not an-
ticipate how Italy would operate on
them. Coming from Germany, one of
the most advanced industrial countries
in the world at the time, Adorno, Ben-
jamin, and the others witnessed a so-
ciety that stubbornly resisted modern-
ization as they knew it—or, as they
came to feel, that found its own way
through. “The experience of the city
of Naples became an essential check-
point for the analysis of modernity,”
Mittelmeier writes. His book claims
that the landscapes and the peoples of
Naples and Capri are the forgotten
“source code” for some of the most in-
fluential diagnoses of modern life.

or Benjamin, the time on Capri

ne of the more reliable chemical welled in his eyes; he felt like some-
F was decisive. In a grocery shop on
the island, he encountered the Latvian
O reactions in European culture oc-
curs when particles of German men-
one approaching death, yet “saved at
the last moment.”
Bolshevik and theatre director Asja
Lācis. She did not know the Italian
tal matter enter Italy. Suddenly, Ger- When, in the mid-nineteen-twenties, word for “almonds,” which Benjamin
man writers discover that life is worth a group of German academics took a handily supplied. He insisted on car-
living again, as they succumb to the series of extended holidays in southern rying her shopping home for her, which
view from the veranda. For going on Italy, they knew they were following he dropped on the piazza. She knew
three centuries, the Italian scene has in a distinguished tradition. Theodor she had attracted an intellectual, com-
disarmed some of the most distinctive Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried plete with “spectacles, which cast light
spirits from the north. Goethe, Heine, Kracauer, Ernst Bloch, and other fig- forth like small headlights”; he knew
Johann Joachim Winckelmann, and ures, many of whom would come to he was in love. Lācis, as a disciple of
Theodor Fontane were each its will- constitute the body of Continental Brecht’s radical political theatre in Mu-
ing captive. Even Nietzsche, master thought known as the Frankfurt nich, was dismayed to learn that her
exposer of escape fantasies, treated Italy School, all felt stymied in the infla- new admirer spent his days studying
as a life preserver. “How have I merely tionary pressure cooker of the Weimar Baroque German tragic drama and was
endured living until now!” he wrote. Republic. They were young, Jewish, considering immigrating to Palestine.
Beholding the sky over Naples, tears and Marxist, and they wanted to take “I was speechless,” she recalled in her
memoir years later. She instructed him,
For German intellectuals between the wars, Italy offered a different view of life. “The path of thinking, progressive per-
58 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY SIMONE MASSONI
sons in their right senses leads to Mos- modern world. In one of the article’s in which that person was embedded.
cow, not to Palestine.” scenes, a Catholic priest accused of in- Fascism encouraged its followers to
Ultimately, it would be the attrac- decent offenses is described being led worship a concocted, false social whole;
tions of Paris more than Moscow that down a street while a crowd shouts in- liberalism, they contended, encouraged
kept Benjamin from Jerusalem, but the sults at him. Suddenly, when a wed- its adherents to banish the idea of any
“liberation of vitality” he received from ding procession passes by, the priest social whole in favor of abstractions
Lācis, as well as “the extremely pow- gives the sign of a blessing, and his like “the economy,” as if they were en-
erful forces that emanated from her pursuers fall to their knees. tities existing independently of human
hands,” marked him for the rest of his As Mittelmeier notes, the “Naples” life. Ernst Bloch, when asked what the
life. She seemed unburdened by the essay is best known for making “po- opposite of porosity was, had a ready
petrified cultural heritage of Europe rosity”—the style of dialectically at- reply: “The bourgeoisie and its culture.”
and came to represent for him the pos- tuned analysis that resists resolution—
sibility of building a new culture out a significant concept in critical theory. he “Naples” essay set off a lively
of next to nothing. In restaurants, Ben-
jamin was thrilled by the savage way
The city, built near Mt. Vesuvius, sits
on a bedrock largely made of a sub-
T competition among Benjamin
and Lācis’s circle for who could write
she would lick her knife or the plate. stance known as tuff, a compacted form the best essay about southern Italy.
Lācis taught him that, no matter how of volcanic ash which allowed Neapol- Bloch, one of the more mystical mem-
progressive he might claim to be, his itans to build without great strain into bers of the group, produced an account
political commitment would continue their natural environment. As Benja- of his time in Naples and its environs
to be regressive as long as his solidar- min and Lācis write: in which there are stirrings of his later
ity with the working people was sim- concept of “simultaneous non-simul-
As porous as this stone is the architecture.
ply a matter of conviction—or of so- Building and action interpenetrate in the court- taneity,” the idea that people—includ-
cial performance—and not grounded yards, arcades, and stairways. In everything ing Neapolitans—could live in differ-
in his actual experience. they preserve the scope to become a theater ent temporalities in the same place, at
Together, Benjamin and Lācis toured of new, unforeseen constellations. The stamp the same time: seventeenth-century
Paestum and Pompeii, and co-authored of the definitive is avoided. No situation ap- social life but with telephones. He,
pears intended forever, no figure asserts its
the essay “Naples,” which appeared in “thus and not otherwise.” too, was impressed by the porousness
the Frankfurter Zeitung, in August, 1925. of life in the south. Watching a group
The piece inaugurated one of the most The concept of porosity might seem of Neapolitans arrive at a restaurant
original series of urban portraits of the like a wispy metaphor for the kind of and effortlessly enter the conversa-
last century, with Benjamin later apply- comprehensive operation that Benja- tions already under way, he said, was
ing the techniques he developed in it— min and Lācis—as well as Adorno and “a true lesson in porosity; there is noth-
what he called a Denkbild, a thought- their other companions—wanted to ing aggressive about it, rather all is
image—to his native Berlin, as well as perform on European philosophy and friendly and open, a diffuse, collective,
to Weimar, San Gimignano, Moscow, art. Mittelmeier does not help matters gliding.” (One cannot help thinking
Marseilles, and, most sustainedly, to with exaggerated claims on behalf of that the observation reveals more about
the Paris of his “Arcades Project.” “Ben- tuff, as when he writes, “A significant Germany than about Italy.) Adorno,
jamin’s Naples essay is extraordinary,” aspect of the great appeal of Benjamin’s in his own writing about his time in
Adorno wrote to Kracauer, before going writings—their antisystematic nature, Italy, was more sensitive to the kind
on to belittle Benjamin’s co-author: the openness of their compositional of willful projections his countrymen
“And who is Asja Lācis? . . . A cabbal- style, which allows for various inter- were making onto the place, which
istic ibbur conjured up by Walter’s pretive possibilities—originated in the was already overrun by tourism. There
schizophrenia?” porous Neapolitan stone.” The idea of was a Capriote f isherman named
Benjamin and Lācis’s “Naples” gives porosity was not only Benjamin and Spadaro, who had been photographed
its readers a glimpse of a unified world Lācis’s way of explaining how Naples so many times for postcards that,
of cross-relationships, in which discon- did not accept modern capitalism’s strict Adorno wrote, “he himself has been
tinuous elements are somehow all im- distinctions between work and leisure, symbolically lit up . . . [and] made the
plicated in one another and intermin- personal and communal, and public sea and stars unnecessary.”
gled. In their telling, Naples, with its and private. In an important respect it The most formidable follow-up
“rich barbarism,” blissfully flouted the was also what set their thinking at odds essay produced by the group—the only
bourgeois norms of northern Europe with the twin traditions that they, one that rivals “Naples”—was written
without knowing it. Streets were treated Adorno, and the others opposed. The by a hanger-on among them, Alfred
as living rooms and living rooms were first was the rigidities of fascism, which Sohn-Rethel, whom Mittelmeier
treated as streets; festivals invaded every divided the world into the vital and brings sharply into focus. Sohn-Rethel
working day; the division between night the decadent, the essential and the dis- was the most thoroughgoing Marxist
and day was never neatly observed. To cardable, the us and the them. The sec- of the bunch. The child of a storied
Benjamin and Lācis’s delight, Neapol- ond was the rigidities of liberalism, family of painters, he had requested
itans had not received the news about with its emphasis on the individual at the complete edition of Karl Marx’s
the evacuation of the sacred from the the expense of the network of relations “Das Kapital” for Christmas while a
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 59
teen-ager, and proceeded to spend two be used and abused, run down until gin of all abstract human thought—a
monastic years in a line-by-line study there’s practically nothing left of it.” deeply radical claim that continues to
of the text. By the time he met Adorno The career of a commodity in Naples kindle the interest of some contem-
and Benjamin, he had determined to rarely went according to plan. Accord- porary Marxists.
devote his life to, as he put it, placing ing to Sohn-Rethel, “Mechanisms can- Adorno, for his part, was more in-
Marx on a firmer foundation in the not, in this city, function as civiliza- terested in the ways in which the brute
twentieth century. tion’s continuum, the role for which facts of commodity exchange were bol-
In Naples, Sohn-Rethel discovered, they are predestined: Naples turns ev- stered by myths that naturalized the
to his astonishment, a kind of Techni- erything on its head.” capitalist world order, making any chal-
color supplement to “Das Kapital.” The lenge to it seem as pointless as chal-
very nineteenth-century manufactories
that Marx described—with a different
worker manually forging, shaping, and
Ithetmanticism
is tempting to sense a touch of Ro-
in Sohn-Rethel’s essay;
same goes for Benjamin and Lā-
lenging the laws of motion. “Existence
in late capitalism is a permanent rite
of initiation,” Adorno later wrote. “Ev-
finishing metal in a long line to pro- cis’s view of cheerful Neapolitan pov- eryone must show that they identify
duce a product for sale—were still in erty. But what most retains its force in wholeheartedly with the power which
operation on the streets of Naples. Sohn-Rethel’s writing of the time is beats them.” Benjamin, too, believed
Workers were heavily exploited, as they his assault on functionalism; namely, capitalism was “a purely cultic religion,
were elsewhere, but Sohn-Rethel also the idea in sociology that form follows perhaps the most extreme that ever ex-
detected a remarkable aversion to com- function, and that the evolution of the isted.” But the tack he took toward it
modification and alienation in every- market in modern societies is driven by differed from Adorno’s. In the talis-
day Neapolitan life. In one neighbor- the need to produce ever more sophis- manic quality of certain commodities,
hood, for instance, people distrusted ticated solutions for our increasingly Benjamin spied the buried dreamworld
milk in bottles, and wanted the cow to complex needs. For Sohn-Rethel, prog- of the bourgeoisie—symptoms of uto-
be milked in front of them. In his essay ress was not merely a technical prob- pianism in denial—which, despite its
“The Ideal of the Broken-Down,” he lem of satisfying desires; the struggle conscious avowals to the contrary, could
describes how Neapolitans mocked between opposed interests in society not do without longing for a new col-
light bulbs for working too hard. was unavoidable. A cohort of thinkers lective life, and whose energies, if some-
The point for Sohn-Rethel was not currently responsible for a small recon- how awakened by the proletariat, could
to indulge in northern stereotypes about sideration of Sohn-Rethel’s Italian es- still bring that life into existence.
the indolent, easygoing life in the south, says are writers about digital technol- Adorno and Benjamin were, how-
but something far stranger. He was fas- ogy, such as Evgeny Morozov, who ever, far from political revolutionaries.
cinated by how Neapolitans refused to experienced firsthand what came to be They were what became known as
be overwhelmed and remade by indus- memorialized as the quasi-Naples of Western—as opposed to Eastern—
trial commodities that flooded their the pre-monopolized Internet, and then Marxists. For their generation, the fail-
city. He gave the example of a motor- witnessed its transformation into a ure of the military gambits of the Ger-
ized wheel he saw, which, “liberated blasted heath of wealth extraction, where man Communists after the First World
from the constraints of the profit motive reaches War had spelled out the idea that rev-
some smashed-up motor- down into the last private olution in Western Europe was not an
bike, and revolving around zones of individual life. immediate, or even near, prospect. In
a slightly eccentric axis, From a late-in-life in- the East, Lenin and Trotsky had es-
whips the cream in a lat- terview that Sohn-Rethel tablished the Soviet Union, and the
teria.” It was the kind of gave to a radio station in Chinese Communists were not far be-
practice that the French Bremen in 1977, his long hind, but in the West the forces of the
anthropologist Claude discussions with his phil- left had been checked in their ambi-
Lévi-Strauss would, in an- osophical elders sound as tions. What was the job of the West-
other context, popularize if they were an intermina- ern Marxist, then, if revolution was off
decades later as “bricolage.” ble seminar on Hegel. Mit- the table? The answer for both Adorno
The Neapolitans fixed up telmeier points to the one and Benjamin was making connec-
their cars without manuals, jerry- unmistakable subject on which Adorno, tions, writing in such a way that showed
rigging them to go the next mile, sub- Benjamin, and Sohn-Rethel all con- their contemporaries, in ever new con-
stituting in a piece of wood where it verged. Each of them wanted to reckon stellations, that the social whole might
suited, and generally shunning “tech- with how deftly capitalism concealed no longer be visible, that it might be
nical presumptuousness.” “The vio- its dark side. A buyer could purchase denied, that it might not even be con-
lence of incorporation has to be acted an industrial good without thinking ceivable, but that it could still be a sub-
out every hour in a victorious crash,” of the late-night labor, the unattended ject of thought. “Thinking dialectically
Sohn-Rethel writes. Because, after all, children, the workplace injuries in- means nothing more or less than the
“one never really owns something until volved in producing it. For Sohn-Rethel, writing of dialectical sentences,” the
it has really been knocked around, oth- the exchange of goods, along with the Marxist critic Fredric Jameson once
erwise it is just not worth it; it has to advent of coinage, was itself the ori- wrote. It was this kind of relentless
60 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024
critical project that Adorno called “neg-
ative dialectics”—to keep the idea of
the social whole alive while dispelling
the pretensions of any actually exist-
ing systems.

ittelmeier’s “Naples 1925” is part

M of a wave of historical writing
that has lately swept over the German
reading public. In books such as Volker
Weidermann’s “Ostend: Stefan Zweig,
Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before
the Dark,” Florian Illies’s “1913: The
Year Before the Storm,” and Philipp
Felsch’s “The Summer of Theory: His-
tory of a Rebellion, 1960-1990,” Euro-
pean thinkers are gathered into group
biographies that leisurely unspool their
thoughts while supplying piquant de-
tails from their personal lives. It is al-
ways summer in these books, which
seem aimed at German feuilleton read-
ers who like to have a little Kant or
Adorno with their morning coffee.
Mittelmeier doesn’t make up interior
dialogues for his subjects—his impulse
toward the beach-read-ification of the
Frankfurt School doesn’t extend that
far—but in his bald claims about how
the Italian landscape infiltrated the
thought of Adorno and Benjamin he
privileges poetic license at the expense
of trying to grasp how the mind might
actually digest physical experience. It
may be diverting to consider how the “Baby-led weaning is a start, but my goal is baby-led revolution.”
lack of hierarchies in the streets of Na-
ples influenced Adorno’s thorny syntax,
but “Naples 1925” makes Adorno and
• •
his companions into much more com-
forting figures than they need to be. nomic information about Nazi Ger- gether. Yet, of all Benjamin’s compan-
Still, that their time in the south many to the clique around Winston ions at the time, she may have been
marked them is undeniable. Adorno Churchill. Sohn-Rethel’s thinking the most transformative, and Benjamin,
would go on to be the postwar con- briefly came back into fashion in the of all the young German academics
science of Germany, where, more than sixties, when it was revived by the same clustered in Italy in the mid-twenties,
twenty years later, he helped reëstab- left-wing students at Frankfurt who was the most deeply influenced by his
lish the Institute for Social Research, maligned his former mentor Adorno time there. He returned to images and
which became the headquarters of crit- as an insufficient supporter of the pro- memories he had forged in Naples
ical theory. Many of the insights of his tests of 1968. right up until 1940, when, in f light
later years—into philosophy, music, Asja Lācis maintained an on-again, from the Nazis, he died, presumably
and art—were sharpened by encoun- off-again affair with Benjamin. After by suicide. The “prodigious beauty” of
ters in his Italian journeys. Sohn- their first summer together, she was Capri and the “unprecedented splen-
Rethel spent the nineteen-thirties shocked one day to find him standing dor” of its cliffside villas and cerulean
working as a Communist spy in a Ger- at her door in Riga unannounced. Lācis sea filled his correspondence. Even be-
man business association that allowed spent a decade in Stalin’s Gulag be- fore he reached the island, he had de-
him a stunning view into how the Nazi fore returning to Latvia to resume her cided it was his “most vital” journey,
war economy coördinated its conflict- work in theatre. She died in obscurity and after returning from the trip he
ing industrial sectors. In 1937, in En- in 1979, and Adorno, the first editor noted with satisfaction that “people in
gland, where he’d had to take refuge, of Benjamin’s works, took her name Berlin are agreed that there is a con-
he was commissioned to supply eco- off the essay that they had written to- spicuous change in me.” 
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 61
 their dues, meaning that no one sees
ON TELEVISION it as his or her responsibility to insure
that “Tecto” is any good.
If “The Franchise” ’s premise of
ANTI HEROES small­time machinations on the fringe
of the big time makes it sound like a
“The Franchise,” on HBO. Hollywood version of “Veep,” that may
be by design. The show’s creator is Jon
BY INKOO KANG Brown, a former “Veep” producer, and
it counts among its executive produc­
ers Armando Iannucci, the creator of
the earlier series. The two shows share
plots of frenzy amid insignificance, and
both abound with florid insults, rapid­
fire banter, and acid appraisals. (One
of Adam’s co­stars bristles at having
been given little to do in front of the
camera that day except “silently nod­
ding, like a wife at a party.”) Above all,
the two comedies are united in a bone­
deep cynicism that can be unexpect­
edly invigorating; “Veep” seldom saw
anything worthwhile in politics, and
“The Franchise” doesn’t bother asking
what kinds of pleasures comic­book
tales might provide, which itches they
may scratch. Across eight episodes, the
début season doesn’t furnish enough
details about “Tecto” to add up to a
logline. It doesn’t care. It’s a series for
the haters.
Is its appeal too narrow? That’s
a question I kept returning to as I
watched the first few episodes, which
sometimes felt as if they were primar­
ily meant to elicit grim chuckles of rec­
ognition within the industry itself. (I
thought it strained credulity that Eric
would have begun rolling the cameras
on such a costly production without
t ’s f itting that the title of the actor, Adam (Billy Magnussen), is bet­ finalizing the script, but friends in the
Imakes
new HBO comedy “The Franchise”
no direct reference to the super­
ting that it’ll be the vehicle that cat­
apults him onto the A­list. The pro­
business, instant fans of the show, have
told me that this wasn’t unrealistic at
hero movie around which it revolves. ducer, Anita (Aya Cash), wants its suc­ all.) The subplots feature a litany of
That would be “Tecto: Eye of the cess to open doors for her to make “ac­ labor issues, some ripped from the
Storm,” a hundred­and­fifty­million­ tual movies,” with the likes of Sofia headlines: overworked VFX artists, car
dollar work in progress that has already Coppola. The very German director, accidents after long days on set, skin
been deemed an also­ran by its Marvel­ Eric (Daniel Brühl), nurses fantasies inflammation from costumes attached
like studio. The executives view it as a that the film, which is set on a distant with toxic adhesives. An episode in
money grab—an opportunity to dan­ planet populated by fish­human hy­ which Anita has to “woman the woman
gle before fans a three­minute cameo brids, will offer meaningful commen­ problem”—that is, clean up the mess
by a character from one of the studio’s tary on fracking, or feminism—he hasn’t that her male predecessors made in
more popular tentpoles in the hope really decided, but perhaps he’ll have sidelining female characters so often
that they bite. Accordingly, no one ac­ done so by the time he figures out the that the studio became notorious for
tually working on “Tecto” is thrilled ending, a feat he attempts, sporadically, it—tackles a quandary that’s less overt
about being there, regarding it, instead, between takes. Most of the people os­ but more pernicious.
as a means to an end. The film’s lead tensibly in charge are just there to pay The show ingratiates itself with
viewers by displaying undiluted con­
Himesh Patel stars in a comedy series created by the “Veep” alumnus Jon Brown. tempt for how Marvel and DC have
62 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY GUSTAVO MAGALHAES
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BIG IDEA?
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not much fun having your disdain spat yielding. Anita gets her orders via Pat
back at you. from an offscreen studio exec who won’t
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ne reason “The Franchise” gets obey, she risks never working again.
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acters get fleshed out into something the film that precedes “Tecto” in the
beyond archetypes. Anita’s liaison to franchise, leaving Eric scrambling, as
the studio, Pat (Darren Goldstein), is the finned folk were to carry much of
a proud philistine who mistakes Ing- the “thematic luggage” in his script.
mar Bergman for an unknown super- From Pat on down, the cast and crew
hero named Berg Man. The actors are are made to feel as if they have little
stupid and vain or stupid and greedy. to no control; they’ll also be punished
Adam takes experimental steroids pre- for screwing up.
scribed by a doctor peddling his own One of Iannucci’s signature moves
cryptocurrency, and the actor who plays is to explore how far people are will-
his onscreen nemesis, Peter (Richard E. ing to go along with something they
Grant), uses his time off to film com- know to be absurd, until they end up
mercials for the Libyan tourism board. in some pretty dark depths. In certain
(In a running joke, neither star is able ways, “The Franchise” is no exception.
to describe the plot of the movie.) The But it’s not unremittingly pessimistic,
thankless task of corralling all these either, granting Daniel the possibility
personalities falls on the first assistant of real input in a genre notorious for
director, Daniel (Himesh Patel), who’s stifling idiosyncrasy and authorship.
too busy trying to keep the production Other characters develop alongside
A crime
on schedule to let himself care about him—in particular, Adam, whose soft- committed.
the story they’re telling. When the film’s ness shines through his insecurities,
A crime
new third assistant director, Dag (Lolly and Dag, whose incessant, often delu- forgotten.
Adefope), notes that Adam looks asi- sional cheerfulness finally clinches her
nine miming the invisible jackhammer a true win. Even the unseen studio big- A crime
unpunished.
wielded by his character, Daniel quickly wig has some of his godlike impreg- SEASON 3

shuts her down. “We don’t have an nability chipped away. Hearing that
opinion, O.K.?” he insists. “We just Martin Scorsese has said franchise mov-
keep the trains running. Who cares ies “killed cinema” (a fictional exagger- Listen wherever you
get your podcasts.
what’s on them?” ation of views that Scorsese has ex- newyorker.com/season-3
Of course, he has to care, eventu- pressed in real life), the exec is stricken
ally. Usually, when stamping out the with guilt. Pat concedes, “We ran the Scan to listen.

various fires that flare up on set, his data, and we think he might be right.” 
THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 63
 Madeline Ashton (Megan Hilty, escap-
THE THEATRE ing Streep’s ice-queen shadow by run-
ning hot) greets her old chum and rival,
the drab wannabe writer Helen Sharp
LET’S MAKE A DEAL ( Jennifer Simard), backstage after a
Broadway show. Madeline instantly han-
“Death Becomes Her” and “Burnout Paradise.” kers after Helen’s fiancé, the plastic sur-
geon Ernest Menville (Christopher Sie-
BY HELEN SHAW ber), and, when Ernest allows himself to
be stolen away, Helen snaps.
She reappears years later, in Los An-
geles, after a (magically) extreme make-
over, and the two women do battle. Mi-
chelle Williams, from Destiny’s Child,
plays Rossellini’s part, the witchy pur-
veyor of an elixir of eternal youth, which
she sells to both Madeline and Helen.
Freshly gorgeous and now unkillable, the
two women inflict “Looney Tunes”-level
damage on each other, and Ernest finds
himself forced into service as a kind of
pit-stop mechanic, spackling gunshot
holes and spray-painting dead flesh.
The musical retains touches of the
film’s dialogue, which was written by
Martin Donovan and David Koepp:
certainly no one would dare cut the death-
less gibe “En garde, bitch,” first snarled
by Hawn as she and Streep brandished
shovels at each other. A zillion other
jokes—many of them packed into Mat-
tison and Carey’s deft, sometimes filthy
or fourth-wall-breaking lyrics—are new,
though, each one given thrilling life by
Hilty and Simard. “Love her like a twin—
who stole my nutrients in the womb,”
Helen murmurs to Ernest, explaining
her “friendship” with Madeline. For her
part, Madeline is unapologetically self-
serving. “Let’s look at me!” she trills at
n a Faustian bargain, there’s little sus- to come: a quick change for an actress every opportunity.
IDevil
pense about how things will end. The
doesn’t hand anything over—
into a Judy Garland-as-Dorothy cos-
tume, complete with a stuffed Toto tossed
Both actresses are Tony-nominated
comic divas of the first order. Hilty, a su-
beauty, knowledge, power—without first up into her arms from the orchestra pit.) perb, silvery soprano, is basically playing
laying down some heavy hints. And so Rossellini is not physically in this show— Madeline as Miss Piggy in Mae West
it goes as the lights dim for the musical she played the Mephistopheles figure mode, abetted by the costume designer
“Death Becomes Her,” by the songwrit- in the Robert Zemeckis film, from 1992, Paul Tazewell, who briefly puts her in a
ers Julia Mattison and Noel Carey and on which the musical is based—but leopard-print peignoir-and-pant outfit
the book writer Marco Pennette, at the her vocal cameo reverberates. As with so just so she can match her leopard-print
Lunt-Fontanne. As thunder rumbles many of these adaptations of movies, the couch. (Derek McLane designed the set,
and lightning flickers, Isabella Rosselli- makers want to summon our nostalgia which recalls a Gothic pop-up book,
ni’s disembodied voice, insinuating and for the source, without necessarily jog- often lit, by Justin Townsend, in deep
delicious, purrs a warning: “Silence your ging our memory of its flaws. electric purples.) Meanwhile, Simard’s
cell phones.” The narrative bones of the Zemeckis paranormal upgrade turns her into Rita
The camp-o-meter is already over- film, which starred Meryl Streep and Hayworth in “Gilda,” if Gilda had oc-
loading, and the show, directed by Chris- Goldie Hawn as homicidal frenemies, casionally played her own breasts, bongo
topher Gattelli, hasn’t even begun. (Soon remain intact. The self-obsessed actress style, for emphasis. A veteran of “For-
bidden Broadway,” and one of our fin-
Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard are comic divas of the first order. est physical comedians, Simard has de-
64 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY EERO LAMPINEN
veloped a stunning Bernadette Peters reimagines them as, eventually, discov-
impression, and we hear a brassy whis- ering that they are soul mates. “You’re
per of that in her no-holds-barred per- my person,” Madeline sings, finally, as
formance, which also includes deadpan Ernest falls by the wayside. “Oh no,”
shadings of Madeline Kahn and—espe- Helen protests, but you can tell she’s
cially when Simard does a weird little going to come on board. I don’t think
broken-robot toddle—Kate McKinnon. it’s a coincidence that Simard has re-
Gattelli’s production makes a pact corded her own podcast about “The
with us early on. It will use body dou- Golden Girls,” that canonical text on
bles for special effects—from tricks aging in America. Simard’s shoulders
played in Madeline’s first big dance square into a familiar Bea Arthur line,
number, we know that if she turns her as Hilty flutters at her à la Rue Mc-
back we should assume we’re watching Clanahan. We would spend another
a doppelgänger—and we will choose not hundred hours with these gals if given
to notice. By the time the cartoonish vi- the chance, so why would they blink
olence begins, we’re delighted for the at eternity?
stage “magic” to be as obvious as possi-
ble. In Zemeckis’s C.G.I.-larded movie,
a gruesome fall down a marble staircase
“ B urnout Paradise,” at Brooklyn’s
St. Ann’s Warehouse, also strikes
required various cinematic interventions. a bargain with its audience, but it’s rather
Here, good old stagecraft suffices: Made- more explicitly laid out. Four actors in
line enters from offstage, curiously un- the Australian experimental collective
willing to move her hair out of her face, Pony Cam introduce themselves and
and then “Madeline” somersaults tumble- their treadmills, each labelled with an
bumble-CRACK down the stairs in slow aspect of life that they struggle to keep
motion. This is part of the fun—we look in balance: Survival, Admin, Performance,
at a patently fake surface and collectively and Leisure. In rotating ten-minute bursts
agree it’s the real thing. on the machines, the actors—Claire Bird,
Speaking of that ability, it’s not “Death William Strom, Dominic Weintraub,
Becomes Her”’s fault that you cannot and Hugo Williams—attempt four am-
swing a mascara wand on Broadway right bitious tasks (on the Survival treadmill,
now without hitting a woman who hates preparing a three-course meal; on Admin,
her face. “Tammy Faye” is crying makeup
all over the Palace; Norma Desmond, in
completing and submitting a grant ap-
plication) while jogging. If they can’t hit THE REAL
ACTION IS
the new version of “Sunset Blvd.,” is their goals and surpass their collective
weeping blood. In movie theatres, the personal-best mileage, the time-keeper,
body-horror film “The Substance” imag- Ava Campbell, promises our money back.
ines that Demi Moore would rather rip
off her skin than see it in closeup. Clearly,
“icon” status for women of a certain age
I watched most of this goofy show
applauding, quietly and delightedly. No
one could hear me, because the room
OFF THE
requires them to turn gorgon, at which
point the audience can scream both for
and at them. Crepey skin—so monstrous!
was in utter mayhem. The actors require
the audience’s constant assistance: when,
racing along on Leisure, Williams needed
COURT
Smoothed skin—so uncanny! It’s humi- someone to wash his hair, a guy hopped
liation disguised as elevation, the all too up to help; other theatregoers were dash- GET TO KNOW THE
common Faustian deal that’s made when ing forward to offer Weintraub their
a woman over forty lands a good part. C.V.s to beef up the grant application. I
BIGGEST ATHLETES
Still, “Death Becomes Her” fights hate to overclaim for a show that’s seem- ON EARTH AT
hard to keep its bitter humor sweet. The ingly just a very silly, very escapist hour GQ.COM/SPORTS
musical takes several important strides with a bunch of clowns. But lately I have
away from the original: it cuts the fat been feeling a little burned out, too. I
jokes, and it recalculates the central re- found it hugely useful to be reminded
lationship. (Also, because neither woman of two things. First, whether it’s ten min-
actually changes much on taking the utes or four years, time passes more
potion, the secret to supernatural glam- quickly when you’re counting it down
our here seems to be avoiding a bob hair- together. And, second, if a group of
cut.) Most important, instead of bind- strangers can rally for a bit of collective
ing Madeline and Helen together as a action, they have a chance at beating the
kind of hellish punishment, this team clock—not to mention the Devil. 
 Wicked Witch steps out from behind
THE CURRENT CINEMA the curtain—and, lo, she is Elphaba
Thropp (Cynthia Erivo), an intellec-
tually gifted, morally courageous, and
BADDIE ISSUES grievously misunderstood outcast,
whose only crime is having been born
“Wicked” and “Gladiator II.” with a complexion of chlorophyll.
Much of “Part I,” scripted by Winnie
BY JUSTIN CHANG Holzman (who wrote the book for the
musical) and Dana Fox, unfolds at the
ne of the movie industry’s many the whirligig showmanship he brought ill-named Shiz University—Hogwarts
O recent laments is that 2023 has given
us no Barbenheimer—no box-office
to “In the Heights” (2021) and “Crazy
Rich Asians” (2018), kicks off a two-
with Munchkins—where Elphaba ar-
rives as a caregiver for her newly enrolled
showdown between two thrillingly brainy part adaptation of a hit Broadway mu- sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode), who has
blockbusters, cemented together in the sical, which was itself loosely based on a disability. But Elphaba’s irrepressible
cultural imagination and in the com- Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, “Wicked: talents catch the attention of the school’s
mercial stratosphere. And yet, just in The Life and Times of the Wicked headmistress, Madame Morrible (Mi-
time for Thanksgiving, here come two Witch of the West.” All yellow brick chelle Yeoh), prompting a rivalry with
wishfully galumphing epics, “Wicked” roads lead back to L. Frank Baum’s Galinda (Ariana Grande, billed as Ariana
Grande-Butera), a shallow, self-absorbed
classmate who will eventually become
Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.
Elphaba and Galinda are forced to be
roommates, and they go together like as-
paragus and bubble gum. But Galinda is
more than just a walking dumb-blonde
joke: she’s the secret seriocomic weapon
of “Wicked,” and Grande balances her
delightful queen-bee insouciance with a
porcelain vulnerability worthy of Baum’s
own China Princess. Beneath every ex-
aggerated hair toss, she unleashes a poi-
gnant frisson of panic.
When the two witches finally set
their differences aside (cue “Popular,”
the deftest and funniest of Stephen
Schwartz’s songs), Galinda’s joy is un-
feigned; her friendship with “Elphie”
Jon M. Chu directs a two-part adaptation of the Broadway musical. fills a real void. Erivo makes you believe
it. Her coolly magnetic stare is her on-
and “Gladiator II.” One is a revisionist “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” though screen superpower, and here it serves to
fantasy of Oz, the other a revisionist his- the classic 1939 film adaptation exerts modulate the narrative clutter swirling
tory of Rome, and both are chockablock the mightiest influence, having immor- around her. As a fastidiously retconned
with political conspiracies, authoritar- talized the Wicked Witch as a green- “Wizard of Oz” prequel, “Wicked” has
ian abuses, and foul-tempered monkeys, skinned, broomstick-riding cackler— its puzzle-box pleasures: the uninitiated
none of which adds up to a full-blown played by Margaret Hamilton, in one can muse over the narrative significance
phenomenon. If “Barbie” and “Oppen- of the most primally terrifying movie- of, say, a terrified lion cub, a bicycle bas-
heimer” struck blows for risk and orig- villain performances. ket, or a hunky prince (an assured Jon-
inality in Hollywood, the slickly refur- Evil this delectable can no longer athan Bailey) who foretells his future
bished wares of “Wadiator”—or, if you be simply savored; it must be decon- with the lyric “Life is painless / for the
prefer, “Glicked”—suggest a safe retreat structed, and lucratively prequelized, in brainless.” As a parable of political rad-
to known quantities. Choose your own the manner of sympathetic villain ori- icalization, however, the movie soon
adventure, but, whether it leads to the gin stories like “Maleficent,” “Joker,” turns lumbering and obvious. Oz is in
Colosseum or to the Emerald City, you’ve and “Cruella.” It makes sense that the grip of creeping totalitarianism, and
surely been there before. “Wicked,” a forerunner of this trend the more Elphaba grasps the stakes, the
In “Wicked”—or, as it appears on- on the page and the stage, has now more pointed the hats she has to wear
screen, “Wicked: Part I”—that famil- found its place on the screen, where the become: she’s a feminist crusader, an
iarity is entirely the point. The movie, story can shoulder its full weight in animal-welfare activist, and, in time, a
directed by Jon M. Chu with some of cinematic Baumbast. And so the real full-blown resistance leader, with the
66 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA DEGNBOL
not so wonderful Wizard of Oz (a well- the Emerald City—in the dust. “Part II” visceral and emotional force, that’s be-
cast Jeff Goldblum) as her target. looms next year; until then, Elphie has cause it serves us our revenge-thriller
Given the story’s insistence on not left the building. poison straight; to see the mighty gen-
judging a witch by her color, is it churl- eral Maximus (Russell Crowe) smack
ish to say that I wish “Wicked: Part I” he lesson of “Wicked,” should you down the unambiguously loathsome em-
looked better? (And also that, at two
hours and forty minutes, there were
T happen to miss it, is that the ap-
pearance of villainy can be deceiving.
peror Commodus ( Joaquin Phoenix) re-
mains an irreducible pleasure. As “Glad-
less of it to look at?) The visual bar here “Gladiator II,” in its own punchy, stabby, iator II” opens, Maximus has been dead
is admittedly high; no new movie can neck-chomping way, upholds the same for fifteen years, and, though his fight-
be expected to match the dazzling Tech- principle. Directed by Ridley Scott, nearly ing spirit becomes a guiding light of sorts
nicolor brilliance of “The Wizard of a quarter century after he steered the first for Lucius, their bond never feels more
Oz,” a picture I’ve seen so many times “Gladiator” (2000) to smash returns and than circumstantial. The lead role is a
that even its flaws feel like old friends: Oscar glory, this is the sword-and-sandal stretch for Mescal, but a good one. After
the lopped-off lines, the mismatched epic as both sequel and shell game. Clean the art-house melancholy of “All of Us
edits, the shot in which Hamilton’s good-vs.-evil demarcations are a thing of Strangers” and “Aftersun,” he tears into
Witch, about to vanish in a poof of the past, and motives and alliances can be Lucius’s red-meat physicality with vora-
smoke, misses her mark by a second or murderously tricky to suss out. The hero, cious fury, as if it were his first and pos-
two. These imperfections, far from di- at least, is no mystery: he is Lucius (Paul sibly last meal; all the sadder, then, when
minishing the experience, give the older Mescal), a fierce young warrior of Nu- that fury suddenly evaporates in the face
film a material weight, a conviction midia, who, after experiencing crushing of narrative expedience.
about its own magic, for which the pris- defeat and tragic personal loss, is hauled Even so, we are not not entertained.
tine digital surfaces of “Wicked” can off to Rome as a prisoner of war. Soon There is, for one, the invigorating if
conjure no equivalent. It’s not easy being he will be a gladiator in the Colosseum, empty-calorie flash of Denzel Wash-
green screen, but, even so, there is lit- where a bloody quest for vengeance begins. ington, who will play Othello on Broad-
tle in this movie’s muted palette and But vengeance against whom? Is his way next year, and who might have seen,
washed-out backlighting to make you enemy Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), in the warrior-whisperer role of Macri-
muse, even for a second, “What a world, the general who inflicted his particular nus, an opportunity to channel his inner
what a world.” agony—or do Pascal’s soft eyes and grave Iago. The arena battles have an agree-
Near the end, though, “Wicked” sighs signal us to look elsewhere? Per- ably batshit, can-you-top-this concep-
does surge to a kind of life. The climax haps Lucius should blame the emper- tual absurdity; you won’t soon forget a
is protracted but darkly thrilling: ugly ors Geta ( Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla scene in which Lucius fends off a de-
secrets spill into the open, winged mon- (Fred Hechinger), monstrous twin ty- ranged baboon, or when the Colosseum
keys screech and scatter, and Elphaba rants who have sent the empire spiral- is reconfigured into a kind of third-cen-
comes into full possession of her pow- ling into decadence. And what of Ma- tury Sea World, complete with snapping
ers. “It’s time to try defying gravity,” crinus (Denzel Washington), a wily sharks. In planting us squarely in the
she belts to the skies, and the film slaveowner who casts Lucius into the splash zone, Scott and his collaborators
shrewdly follows suit, with a vertigi- arena, recognizing a total killer when pander so unabashedly to our bloodlust
nous airborne number that doesn’t just he sees one? What’s his long game? that it rings all the more hollow when
feel like Oz—it feels like Vegas. You’d After a while, it barely seems to mat- “Gladiator II” suddenly fancies itself a
want to see it projected onto the Sphere, ter, and “Gladiator II,” following a pro- civics lesson, entreating its characters to
perhaps with Elphaba soaring on a pulsive opening stretch, recedes into the mourn their failing empire and dream
rhinestone-studded broomstick and long shadow of its predecessor. If the of its glorious rebirth. We get it, we get
then leaving the MGM Grand—sorry, first “Gladiator” still retains much of its it: there’s no place like Rome. 
THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2024 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

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THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2024 67

 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 E. S. Glenn,
must be received by Sunday, December 1st. The finalists in the November 18th contest appear below. We
will announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the December 16th 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

“No one moves until he signs the lease.”

Chuck Russell, Houston, Texas

“ You should see the size of the ones in the subway.” “Thank you for coming. We don’t entertain often.”
Phillip Kirschen-Clark, Brooklyn, N.Y. Phil Clutts, Harrisburg, N.C.

“We have a basement?”

George Corrigan, Austin, Texas
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(For once.)

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

PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.

14 15 16

THE 17 18

CROSSWORD 19 20 21

22 23
A beginner-friendly puzzle.
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

BY ROBYN WEINTRAUB
31 32 33

34 35 36 37
ACROSS
1 Comic-book legend Lee who cameoed in
38 39 40
many Marvel films
5 First month, alphabetically
41 42 43 44 45
19 ___ butter (seed fat used in
moisturizers)
46 47
14 State that’s home to the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall
48 49 50 51 52 53 54
of Fame
15 Gets out of Dodge 55 56 57 58
15 Prohibits
18 Solicit donations in a low-tech way 59 60
13 Diagram used by Web developers
21 Vine-grown fruits related to cucumbers 61 62 63

22 Gauff who was a U.S. flag bearer at the

Paris Olympics
23 Outside of a kumquat 3 “You ___ kiddin’!” 43 Pre-Columbian Peruvians who built
4 Common knowledge Machu Picchu
24 Robert Frost poem about choosing
between diverging paths 5 Cousin of a llama 44 Dangle a carrot in front of
Edible vegetable container 45 Diner seating options
31 Less well done, as steak 6
48 Equinox and Planet Fitness, for two
32 “The Fault in ___ Stars” (John Green 5 Rule enforcers in dorms, for short
novel) 43 Tender cut of meat
8 Drips in the O.R.
33 “If you ask me . . . ,” in a text 59 Auto brand with a four-ring logo
3 “I’d like to give it a shot”
34 Make some revisions 52 ___, Dewey, and Louie (Donald Duck’s
19 Blanche’s sister in “A Streetcar nephews)
35 Showing one’s claws, so to speak Named Desire”
53 Canal in upstate New York
35 Word that can follow fast or junk 11 Snack cake with a spiral cross-section 54 Features of convection ovens and air
38 The “N” in U.N.L.V.: Abbr. 12 “Moulin Rouge!” actor McGregor fryers
33 “Lord of the Rings” brute 13 Tiny workers in giant colonies 56 Homer Simpson’s “I screwed up!”
49 Bow ties and wagon wheels, e.g. 16 What may become a homemade toga or 55 “Sure!,” at the Sorbonne
41 Trifling amount, all things considered ghost costume
46 Feeling associated with the color green 29 “The Tragedy of Othello, the ___ Solution to the previous puzzle:
45 Alaska gold-rush city of Venice”
W E I G H C P U P V C
48 Fleeting look 23 Look sad
I C O N O C L A S T L I A R
51 Cooking-competition show featuring 24 Topic for a style influencer
D O N U T H O L E S U C L A
Tom Colicchio as a judge 25 “S.N.L.” alumnus Bill E N S T E S S H A I K U S
55 “Keep going!” 26 Cynthia who plays Elphaba in the film P O R E M I N G L E S
58 Surrounding glow adaptation of “Wicked” G E O R G I E P O R G I E
53 Metaphorical ability to succeed in 25 V-shaped carving R O D E O N O L T E B O P
seemingly any venture 28 Mall stall I N D Y C O I L S L A N E

69 Bridle attachment 23 Be melodramatic N S C M O U S Y B O C C E

O R A N G E C H I C K E N
61 Haircut sound 39 Acknowledge with a slight head
S Q U E L C H O A T S
62 ___ away from (avoids) movement
Y U P P I E E D I T A Y E
63 Isn’t naturally blond, say 35 Where mothers and sisters live together L I L O D A Y D R E A M E R
36 Ostentatiously highbrow P E E T E A R L Y R I S E R
DOWN 35 King, queen, or jack H T S H E E S L O T S

1 Bawls 49 Dispenser at a gas station Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
2 Language spoken in Bangkok 42 Ballpoint cover newyorker.com/crossword