The New Yorker - September 19, 2022

88 Pages·2022·45.3 MB·English

PRICE $8.99 SEPT. 19, 2022

FALL BOOKS
SEPTEMBER 19, 2022
5 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
The long reign of Queen Elizabeth II;
London mourns; word reaches the Village;
extreme rowboating; pawpaw mania.
ANNALS OF GASTRONOMY
Tribe to Table
Carolyn Kormann 22
Indigenous cuisine goes mainstream.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
N.Y.C. Has Changed in the Two Hours Since I Arrived
Lana Schwartz 29
PERSONAL HISTORY
Critical Distance
Darryl Pinckney 30
Learning to write with Elizabeth Hardwick.
DEPT. OF READING
Now What?
Leslie Jamison 36
The ethical realism of Choose Your Own Adventure books.
SKETCHBOOK
“After the Fire”
Tucker Nichols 43
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Damages
Casey Cep 46
Johnson & Johnson and the war on consumer protection.
FICTION
“The Secret Source”
Ben Okri 58
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
Adam Gopnik 63 The mysteries of Inspector Maigret.
Laura Miller 69 Elizabeth Strout’s “Lucy by the Sea.”
Briefly Noted
71
Alexandra Schwartz 72 Andrew Sean Greer’s gay farces.
Lauren Michele Jackson 76 Namwali Serpell reinvents the elegy.
PODCAST DEPT.
Hua Hsu 78 The hip-hop interviews of “Drink Champs.”
A CRITIC AT LARGE
Hilton Als 80 “Moonage Daydream.”
POEMS
“Dusk in Drought”
Jorie Graham 50
“Dad Poem X”
Joshua Bennett 60
COVER
“Figurehead”
Malika Favre
DRAWINGS Jared Nangle, Lars Kenseth, Maddie Dai, Barbara Smaller,
Asher Perlman, Trevor Spaulding, Juan Astasio, Michael Maslin, Roz Chast, E. S. Glenn and Colin Nissan,
Liana Finck, Benjamin Schwartz, William Haefeli, Daniel Kanhai SPOTS Iker Ayestaran
CONTRIBUTORS
Casey Cep (“Damages,” p. 46) is a staff Darryl Pinckney (“Critical Distance,”
writer and the author of “Furious Hours.” p. 30) will publish the memoir “Come
Back in September: A Literary Edu-
Ben Okri (Fiction, p. 58) won the 1991 cation on West Sixty-seventh Street,
Booker Prize for “The Famished Manhattan” in October.
Road.” His new novel, “The Last Gift
FEED HOPE . of the Master Artists,” will be out in Carolyn Kormann (“Tribe to Table,”
November. p. 22), a staff writer, has contributed to
FEED LOVE .
The New Yorker since 2012. She is at
Leslie Jamison (“Now What?,” p. 36) has work on a book about bats.
published four books, including “The
Recovering” and “The Empathy Exams.” Adam Gopnik (Books, p. 63) has been
She teaches at Columbia University. a staff writer since 1986. His books in-
clude “At the Strangers’ Gate” and “A
Joshua Bennett (Poem, p. 60) is the au- Thousand Small Sanities.”
thor of “The Sobbing School,” “Owed,”
“Being Property Once Myself,” and Malika Favre (Cover), an illustrator
“The Study of Human Life,” which is based in London and Barcelona, pub-
due out this month. He is a professor lished her first cover for the magazine
of English at Dartmouth College. in 2016.
Lana Schwartz (Shouts & Murmurs, Hua Hsu (Podcast Dept., p. 78) is a staff
p. 29) published the humor book “Build writer. His new memoir, “Stay True,”
Your Own Romantic Comedy: Pick comes out this month.
Your Plot, Meet Your Man, and Di-
rect Your Happily Ever After” in 2020. Jorie Graham (Poem, p. 50) teaches at
Harvard. She is the author, most re-
Tucker Nichols (Sketchbook, p. 43) is an cently, of the poetry collection “[To]
artist based in Northern California. The Last [Be] Human.”
THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM
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Louisa Thomas reports on New Yorker writers discuss the TI
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W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner. the death of Queen Elizabeth II. N;
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THE MAIL
I KNOW THE FEELING
Not only does the emotional impact of
many words differ from one language to
Nikhil Krishnan’s piece about the uni- another, but within just one language the
versality of emotions is a precise guide emotional impact of a word may change
to the question of whether emotions from one era to the next. For example,
are the product of nature or of nurture the word “condescension” once had an
(Books, August 8th). As a psychoana- altruistic connotation. Noah Webster, in
lyst in the U.S. who grew up speaking 1828, defined it as “voluntary descent from
Kannada, a South Indian language na- rank ... hence, courtesy.” Condescend-
tive to some forty-five million people, ers thus felt virtuous, while condescend-
I am persuaded by Krishnan’s approach ees felt grateful. Now, however, the sense
to this topic. Primal emotions are not of superiority suggested by “condescen-
easily dislodged by the past few thou- sion” gives it a negative connotation.
sand years of cultural trends and geo- In many ways, Western culture of
politics. Krishnan’s comparison of lan- previous centuries can seem as alien to
guages captures humans’ unending us as other cultures do today. Putting
quest to voice the unspeakable, to build aside nuances, the emotions that peo-
bridges with one another, and to sus- ple felt back then—virtue, gratitude, su-
tain authenticity whenever possible— periority—are essentially the same as
be it through phrases or a single word. the emotions that people everywhere
I find it heartening that we have more have always felt.
1
complex feelings in common than our Samuel Reifler
languages might initially indicate. Rhinebeck, N.Y.
Dwarakanath Rao
SALES PITCH
Ann Arbor, Mich.
I teach courses on emotional intelli- Tad Friend’s piece about door-to-door
gence. I wish that Krishnan’s presen- selling underscores the major challenge
tation of the debate over whether our that I face every semester as a market-
most basic emotions are the same across ing professor who teaches professional
all societies, or whether they are me- sales: overcoming the negative percep-
diated by language and culture, had tion of the profession (“The Hard Sell,”
given more consideration to the fact August 8th). Our culture is awash in
that emotions are subjective experi- stereotypes (e.g., the greasy used-car
ences that arise in the physical body. salesman) and stock Hollywood char-
Most of us can agree that emotions, acters (e.g., the Wall Street tycoon), and
at their core, are felt internally and my first job in class is to dispel them.
externally. The stories that we tell our- I teach my students that salespeople
selves about our emotions are deter- are not pushy, unethical hucksters try-
mined by both inner and outer con- ing to persuade you to buy something
ditioning; even so, the most exact name you don’t need. They are well-trained,
for an emotion cannot stand for the trustworthy consultants helping you
experience itself. It’s all too easy to solve a problem. But Friend’s deep dive
abandon our subjective emotional ex- into Sam Taggart’s world of sales has
perience in favor of analysis, but in me rethinking my lesson plan.
doing so we may lose the opportunity Colin Gabler
to benefit from our feelings directly. Auburn, Ala.
That’s why I offer my students a sim-
•
ple saying to help them get the best
out of both their emotions and their Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
perceptions about emotions: Feel first,
[email protected]. Letters may be edited
think next, talk and act last.
for length and clarity, and may be published in
Raphael Cushnir any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
Portland, Ore. of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
THRILLING PLAYS. A DAZZLING NEW SEASON.
JOIN US THIS FALL AT MTC.
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THE COLLABORATION (cid:5)(cid:6)(cid:4)(cid:3)(cid:4)(cid:2)(cid:1)
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WHERE THE MOUNTAIN
MEETS THE SEA
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SEPTEMBER 14 – 20, 2022
GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
Little Amal,
Standing twelve feet tall, a ten-year-old Syrian girl designed by South Africa’s Handspring Pup-
pet Company, has travelled through Europe, meeting with Pope Francis, Jude Law, and Ukrainian refugees in
Poland. Inspired by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s play “The Jungle,” from 2017, about a migrant camp in
Calais, France, the puppet has become a symbol of the struggles of refugees. She begins her New York walk
this week—in search of her uncle Samir, from Aleppo—appearing at fifty-five events across the five boroughs.
PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL DORSA
1
As ever, it’s advisable to check in advance sonal archive. (Bernd died in 2007 and Hilla but united by their conceptual rigor and
to confirm engagements. in 2015.) A selection of the artists’ notes, their interweaving of emotions, erotics,
Polaroid studies, and correspondence lends and politics. At MOMA (in a selection of
this otherwise staunchly formalist show, in contemporary works from its collection),
which people never appear, a human pres- McClodden exhibits a B.D.S.M.-inflected
ART
ence. The inclusion of a grid of sixty-four tin video installation from 2017, in which she
squares, a floor piece by the Bechers’ friend is seen reciting the poem “On Subjugation,”
Carl Andre, from 1976, underscores the pair’s written in 1988, by the late Black gay poet
Bernd and Hilla Becher
affinity with Minimalism and its emphasis on Brad Johnson, while she hangs upside down.
This German couple met as art students in seriality and industrial materials. The show At the Shed, a sprawling sculptural installa-
Düsseldorf, in 1957. Two years later, they is vast, even unrelenting, and, seen during tion pairs four portable dance floors with big
married and embarked on their lifelong proj- what will likely be the coolest summer ofthe screens showing films of Black performers.
ect: an exhaustive, profoundly influential rest of our lives, its no-comment index of (The piece is an homage to the Brooklyn
photographic typology of industrial architec- the abandoned, landscape-marring means Academy of Music’s legendary Dance Black
ture (a subject they described as “anonymous of extraction and combustion feels as ominous America festival, held in 1983.) In Tribeca,
sculpture”). The Bechers’ singular focus was as it does awe-inspiring.—Johanna Fateman at 52 Walker, McClodden dispenses with
the imposing water towers, grain elevators, (Metropolitan Museum of Art; through Nov. 6.) specific historical subjects to more broadly
blast furnaces, lime kilns, coal bunkers, steel reflect issues of trauma and self-protection.
mills, and frame houses of Western Europe Here, the practice of shooting a gun without
Tiona Nekkia McClodden
and North America, the world-changing ammunition, known as dry-fire training,
structures that defined the modern era, The unsettling, contemplative show “Mask/ becomes an aesthetic and rhetorical prompt
which they documented dispassionately, in Conceal / Carry,” at 52 Walker, is the most for video works, drawings, and leather-and-
black-and-white. The Met’s posthumous complex of three exhibitions by this Phil- plastic casts of components of an AR-15-style
retrospective of the duo’s taxonomical epic adelphia artist, now on view across New rifle, bathed in ghostly blue light. McClod-
is the first one with full access to their per- York City, which are thematically distinct den opens the show with a framed text de-
nouncing the concept of trigger warnings,
committing herself to complexity, in spite
of the risk, when she writes, “I’d rather make
AT THE GALLERIES
a statement and stand behind that position,
no matter the difficulty.”—J.F. (52 Walker and
the Shed; through Oct. 20 and Dec. 11. Ongoing
at MOMA.)
“New York: 1962-1964”
This spectacular historical show of art and
documentation addresses an era of season-
to-season—at times almost monthly or
weekly—advances in painting, sculpture,
photography, dance, music, design, fashion,
and such hybrid high jinks as “happenings.”
With Pop art and nascent Minimalism, New
York artists were turning no end of tables on
solemnly histrionic Abstract Expressionism,
which had established the city as the new
wheelhouse of creative origination world-
wide. Instrumental to the moment was a bril-
liant critic and curator, Alan Solomon, who,
as the director of the Jewish Museum during
the years bracketed here, consolidated what
he called “The New Art,” mounting the first
museum retrospectives of the trailblazers
Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns
and elevating such newbie Pop phenoms as
Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and James
Rosenquist in tandem with radically formal-
Fifty years ago, a posthumous retrospective of a New York photographer ist abstract painters like Frank Stella and
broke attendance records for a one-person show at MOMA. Crowds lined Kenneth Noland. The eruptive early sixties
launched many folks on all sorts of trajec-
up around the block to see a hundred and thirteen black-and-white pictures
tories. Some artists, at the margins of fame,
by Diane Arbus, a relative unknown whose brilliance was already an open hung fire for unjustly belated recognition,
secret among her peers. (Before she took her own life, in 1971, at the age of as demonstrated here by the achievements
of the Spiral Group, a cadre of stylistically
forty-eight, Arbus had few collectors, but they included Richard Avedon,
diverse Black artists who banded together in
Jasper Johns, and Mike Nichols.) The exhibition generated both rave reviews 1963. Few women at the time were given their
and hot takes; dissecting Susan Sontag’s scathing essay “Freak Show,” pub- due, which should accrue to them in retro-
spect. A garish relief painting, from 1963,
lished in 1973, is now almost an academic subgenre unto itself. On Sept. 14,
by the underknown Marjorie Strider, of a
the Zwirner gallery, in collaboration with Fraenkel, in San Francisco, opens glamour girl chomping on a huge red radish,
S
“Cataclysm: The 1972 Diane Arbus Retrospective Revisited,” reuniting could serve as an icon of Pop glee and sexual BU
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impertinence crossed with proto-feminist A
all the images from the exhibition (“Woman with a veil on Fifth Avenue, E
vexation.—Peter Schjeldahl (Jewish Museum; N
A
N.Y.C. 1968,” above, among them). It’s accompanied by the new publication through Jan. 8.) DI
F
“Diane Arbus: Documents,” a doorstop scrapbook that reproduces a half O
E
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century’s worth of writing about an artist who, as Avedon once observed, “Water Memories” TA
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“made the act of looking an act of such intelligence, that to look at so-called The Lakota expression mní wičóni—“water E E
H
ordinary things is to become responsible for what you see.”—Andrea K. Scott is life”—was heard around the world during © T
6 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 19, 2022
AbbVie
Here.
Now.
Jennifer
Chronic lymphocytic
leukemia patient
super-talented entertainer who has yet to find
PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL
her breakout role. This isn’t quite it: the show,
which runs long at eighty minutes, starts to
sag with repetition, and the clever concept
yields diminishing returns. What’s for sure is
that Berlant is worthy of the spotlight. “She’s
trying something new tonight. I respect that,”
one of her characters says. So do I.—Alexandra
Schwartz (Connelly Theatre; through Oct. 8.)
Once Upon a (korean) Time
An excellent cast and a video-rich design an-
imate the playwright Daniel K. Isaac’s sensi-
tively structured epic, which traces the way
that grief moves through a bloodline, and
how storytelling (the most abused term in
art) actually functions. In 1930, two Korean
soldiers (David Lee Huynh and Jon Norman
Schneider) escape the horrors of war by re-
peating folktales; in the forties, three “comfort
women” (Teresa Avia Lim, Sasha Diamond,
and Jillian Sun) reënact a story to distract
themselves from their sexual enslavement. In
the fifties, a little girl (Sonnie Brown) hides
from the Korean War as her imaginary friends
Tiger and Bear occupy her with a myth about
grief and rescue; she grows up and does the
same for a Korean American child (Sun, again)
The French Institute Alliance Française pops up in venues through-
whom she cannot fully understand. Stories
out the city for its annual Crossing the Line Festival, a rare and all- do not console, exactly, in Ralph B. Peña’s
exquisitely judged production, for Ma-Yi
too-brief opportunity to see French-speaking artists making theatre,
Theatre Company, but their structures do
music, art, and dance. This year, the lineup includes Marion Siéfert’s
serve as bridges, carrying a person from one
_ _ _
multimedia Instagram monodrama, “ jeanne dark ,” in which a unthinkable moment to the next. The play
works the same way, moving us swiftly across
persecuted sixteen-year-old defends her virginity to her demanding
images that catch at us, and lodge, and recur,
online followers (Sept. 14-15, at Florence Gould Hall); Étienne Mi- 1
even after the play is over.—Helen Shaw (La
noungou in “Traces—Speech to African Nations,” with a text based Mama’s Ellen Stewart Theatre; through Sept. 18.)
on the writings of the Senegalese economist and poet Felwine Sarr
(Sept. 21, at Abrons Arts Center); the musical-theatre work “Free-
dom, I’ll have lived your dream until the very last day,” featuring Sarr DANCE
himself, a hugely influential figure in the art-repatriation movement
(Sept. 24, at Florence Gould Hall); and the première of “Fire in the New York City Ballet
Head,” a tribute to Vaslav Nijinsky rooted in the collaboration between City Ballet returns after a summer hiatus for
a month of mixed programs, beginning on
Indonesian shadow puppeteers and the artist Christopher Myers
Sept. 20. Its first week back is devoted, as
(Sept. 29-30, at the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association).
usual, to ballets by the company’s founding
—Helen Shaw
The festival runs through Oct. 28. choreographer, George Balanchine. Most wel-
come is the return, after several years, of “La
Sonnambula,” with its famous solo in which a
1
the Standing Rock protests. Now it echoes of the Parker Dam.—Andrea K. Scott (Met­ ballerina glides across the stage in tiny bourrée
through the halls of the Met, thanks to this ropolitan Museum of Art; through April 2.) steps, as if in a dream. (The music is by Vit-
small but momentous exhibition, organized torio Rieti, after the opera composer Vincenzo
by Patricia Marroquin Norby, the muse- Bellini.) It shares a program with the delicate
um’s first curator of Native American art; “Divertimento No.15,” set to Mozart’s epony-
as a woman of Purépecha heritage, Norby THE THEATRE mous work, and the lively “Scotch Symphony,”
is also the first full-time Indigenous curator set to Mendelssohn’s pretty “Scottish” Sym-
in its American Wing. The show traverses phony. The following week, the company un-
Kate
six centuries in a scant forty art works and veils two new ballets at its fall gala (Sept.28),
artifacts by both Native and non-Native The comedian Kate Berlant goes meta in this one of which, by the young choreographer
creators. An exquisite oil of a foamy wave by one-woman show, directed by Bo Burnham, Gianna Reisen, is set to a score by the singer
the American modernist Arthur Dove, from which takes the premise of an autobiographical and composer Solange.—Marina Harss
1929, assumes a mournful edge in the com- confessional and twists it like taffy. Since she (DavidH. Koch; through Oct. 16.)
pany of a shimmering sculptural installation was a child, in the small seaside town of Santa
by the Shinnecock ceramicist CourtneyM. Monica (ever heard of it?), Kate has dreamed
Nora Chipaumire
Leonard, from 2021, that eulogizes the dec- of being a Hollywood actress, but her mother NI
imation of the sperm-whale population off insists that her “big, crass style of indication Incarnating formidable female spirits has long AT
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Long Island’s East End, where Dove made has no place on camera.” Can Kate overcome been a specialty of this Zimbabwean-born A
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his painting. Poetry and protest are insepa- her self-doubt—and her career-crippling in- choreographer and performer. In “Nehanda,” S
WI
rable in all of the contemporary pieces here, ability to cry on command? Berlant, who has a receiving its U.S. première at Peak Perfor- T
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including the Chemehuevi photographer Lucille Ball-level prowess for physical comedy, mances, Chipaumire tells the story of Charwe B
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Cara Romero’s oneiric 2015 scene of Pueblo plays the show’s multiple characters, as well as Niyakasikana, who led an uprising against O
corn dancers reckoning with a collective multiple versions of herself: the starry-eyed the British colonial powers of Southern ATI
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water memory: the flooding of thousands ingénue, the tyrannical diva, the Warholian Rhodesia in the eighteen-nineties; she was T
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of acres of tribal land by the construction performance artist, and, truest to life, the said to be a medium of Nehanda, a powerful L
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8 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 19, 2022