Innholdsfortegnelse for August 21, 2017 i The New Yorker

Raffi Khatchadourian (“Man Without a Country,” p. 36) has been a staff writer since 2008. Bob Hicok (Poem, p. 46) is the author of nine books, including “Hold,” which will be published in 2018. Amanda Petrusich (Pop Music, p. 78), a writer for newyorker.com, is the author of “Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records.” River Clegg (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 29) contributes to McSweeney’s, the Onion, ClickHole, and newyorker.com. Evan Waite (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 29) is a writer for “The President Show,” the Onion, Funny or Die, and Mad Magazine. Will McPhail (Sketchbook, p. 49) has contributed more than sixty cartoons to the magazine since 2014. He is the recipient of this year’s Reuben Award for best gag…

Elsa 136 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn (917-882-7395) Walking into the reincarnation of the beloved Alphabet City bar Elsa, which closed in 2014 and reopened this spring, in Cobble Hill, is like having a lucid dream: the space feels familiar and, then again, not at all. The new layout is nearly identical to that of the original, but its mostly white interior is now punched up with mirrors, marble, and burgundy leather. One can easily imagine the bar’s namesake, Elsa Schiaparelli, lounging in the exceedingly charming back yard, with its high white walls, creeping vines, and cream-colored bistro chairs. If the original bathrooms, lined by dark wooden slats, were striking, the new bathrooms, with slats made of mirrors, are irresistible in the age of the selfie—the bar’s Instagram geotag is full of self-portraits…

Randy Newman, the singer-songwriter and composer, stopped in at the Rose Center for Earth and Space the other day, in the hope of glimpsing some dark matter. Newman, who is seventy-three, has just released “Dark Matter,” the first album of his own songs in nine years. These days, his second career, writing music for Pixar films, takes up much of his time. The Hollywood Randy Newman, the composer of light matter such as “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” from the first “Toy Story” film, occasionally steps aside to make way for the more brooding voice found in Newman’s classic al bums from the seventies, such as “Good Old Boys” and “Sail Away.” Newman’s movie work (he has two Oscars) also allows him the privilege of collaborating with real orchestras.…

President Donald Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow recently told me that the investigation being led by Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, should focus on one question: whether there was “coördination between the Russian government and people on the Trump campaign.” Sekulow went on, “I want to be really specific. A real-estate deal would be outside the scope of legitimate inquiry.” If he senses “drift” in Mueller’s investigation, he said, he will warn the special counsel’s office that it is exceeding its mandate. The issue will first be raised “informally,” he noted. But if Mueller and his team persist, Sekulow said, he might lodge a formal objection with the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein , who has the power to dismiss Mueller and end the inquiry. President…

One foggy May morning, the Joy Makers, a team of scientists employed by Driscoll’s, the world’s largest berry company, gathered at its research- and-development campus, which is known as Cassin Ranch, in the small agricultural town of Watsonville, on California’s Central Coast. Before them was a table laden with plastic clamshells: red, white, and pink strawberries for the pipeline. Phil Stewart, an affably geeky, sandy-haired strawberry geneticist, offered me a yellowish-white specimen with rosy stains, like a skinned knee when the blood starts seeping through. The Joy Makers watched expectantly as I tasted it. The fruit, an unpatented variety referred to as 21AA176, was juicy and soft, mildly astringent but tropical, reminiscent of white tea. “It goes back to a variety called White Carolina, which is maybe the oldest strawberry…

Queen of Bebop, by Elaine M. Hayes (Ecco). The early years of Sarah Vaughan’s career coincided with the waning of the swing era, and this biography shows how the change both fuelled and limited her career. In 1946, the producer John Hammond offered to turn Vaughan into the next Bessie Smith, but she rebuffed him. Having already forged creative partnerships with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, who admired her impeccable pitch, her four-octave range, and her vocal improvisations, Vaughan had no interest in singing any way but her own. Later, she struggled under label pressure to re-create hits like “Whatever Lola Wants,” and was also hindered by a habit of installing her husband or current romantic partner as her manager, with unfortunate professional and personal results. The Ends of…

ART IN MOTION Anthony Lane seemed so unaware of Jacob Lawrence’s magisterial “Migration Series,” from 1941, that he did not recognize the animated version that Kathryn Bigelow used to open her new film, “Detroit” (The Current Cinema, August 7th & 14th). Neither the original paintings nor Bigelow’s renditions of them are “crude” or like “a children’s picture book,” as Lane wrote dismissively. Certainly, the images’ abiding power to communicate both facts and truths about important times and places in twentiethcentury American history extends to all, including children, but that is because they are a towering achievement of American art. The New Yorker’s editing process let Lane down by not catching this gaffe. Stephen McFarland Brooklyn, N.Y. THE TRUTH ABOUT COUNTRY As a lifelong fan of country-and-Western music, and a…

Brooklyn Comedy Festival This annual showcase argues that the heart of comedy lies in Brooklyn, and puts together an eclectic program of standup, improv, sketch performance, and short film to prove it. The festival, founded by the performers Julian Kiani and Chris Nester and the producer Ashleigh Walker, has staked its claim over the years by nabbing such big names as Reggie Watts, Vanessa Bayer, and Hannibal Buress, along with surprise guests who pop in for quick gags. This year, it kicks off with a show at the Bell House headlined by Sasheer Zamata, formerly of “Saturday Night Live,” with special guests including Ilana Glazer, of “Broad City,” Eman El-Hussein, and the comedian and selector DJ Donwill. (149 7th St., Brooklyn.bkcomedyfestival.com. Aug. 20 at 8.) Hudson River Park Blues…

Toshikazu Kenjitsu Nakagaki, a fiftysix- year-old Buddhist priest who lives near Brighton Beach, watched with frustration as swastika flags unfurled in some far-right circles after Trump’s election. In the Jodo Shinshu tradition of Japanese Buddhism, which Nakagaki practices, the swastika is a sign of peace and good luck. A year earlier, a book he’d written on the three-thousand-year history of the symbol, “The Buddhist Swastika and Hitler’s Cross,” was dropped by his New York publisher. (A Holocaust scholar had raised concerns.) This April, finding no other takers—he’d brought out a Japanese edition in 2013, without incident—he self-published the book on Amazon. “After Mr. Trump became President, hate crime increased, and more people talk about this symbol, the swastika,” Nakagaki, who is slight and soft-spoken, with a shaved head, said the…

Into this sky which has more airplanes than other skies I look and see half a dozen small whitenesses passing like tired stars through the blue. I watch them instead of watching the woman swimming in an oversized Tshirt that clings to her body like slime, instead of seeing the child splashing in his inflatable sleeves while his parents puff on elaborate ecigarettes. Instead of speaking, I lie back in my chair that’s turned to face the sun’s full strength and try to become browner. In this sky, planes fly low and heavy, back and forth from the base, practicing war. I’m afraid I’m finally all right knowing good things in me have died.…

The Ecuadorian Embassy in London is situated at the end of a wide brick lane, next to the Harrods department store, in Knightsbridge. Sometimes plainclothes police officers, or vans with tinted windows, can be found outside the building. Sometimes there are throngs of people around it. Sometimes there is virtually no one, which was the case in June, 2012, when Julian Assange, the publisher of Wiki Leaks, arrived, disguised as a motorcycle courier, to seek political asylum. In the five years since then, he has not set foot beyond the Embassy. Nonetheless, he has become a global influence, proving that with simple digital tools a single person can craft a new kind of power—a distributed, transnational power, which functions outside norms of state sovereignty that have held for centuries. Encouraged…

Z. had emptied half the carton of juice, and now I was holding it as he poured the vodka into the plastic funnel at the top. We had laughed at the way he threw his head back and drank, sucking the juice down even as he grimaced at the taste, which was sickly sweet. He refused to dump it in the gutter: My grandfather is Russian, he said, we never waste anything. And that, too, had made us laugh, though he was serious now as he poured, tilting the plastic flask so that the barest ribbon of liquid threaded perfectly into the carton. He didn’t want to waste that, either, and I was so absorbed in holding the carton still—and absorbed in Z., too, who stood close to me, our…

NIGHT LIFE ROCK AND POP Musicians and night-club proprietors lead complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in advance to confirm engagements. Juan Atkins Most young laptop musicians may find it difficult to imagine producing music without a computer screen and the technologies that correct and simplify the process—which makes the precision and emotion found on the pre- P.C. tracks of Juan Atkins, known as the Godfather of Techno, and his Detroit ilk all the more impressive. “Clear,” which Atkins released with Richard Davis, as Cybotron, in 1982, is yanked forward by an uphill arpeggio, which was liberally sampled on dozens of records throughout the next three decades—a literal sound of the future. His Korg MS-10 experiments were soon dubbed “techno,” and, even then, Atkins stressed that his output was a…

For nearly eight decades, the Kosciuszko Bridge, a six-thousand-foot span of rusted steel connecting Brooklyn and Queens, was the coronary occlusion of New York traffic—a persistent clot of exhaust and frustration a hundred and twenty-five feet above Newtown Creek, a federal Superfund site. In April, the state closed down the Kosciuszko (customary pronunciation, “kos-kee-ah-sko”; accurate pronunciation, “kosh-choosh-ko”) and opened its like-named successor, a flashy construction with geometric arrays of cables and colored L.E.D. lighting, adjacent to the original. Rumor had it that the state planned to blow up the old bridge. Scores of motorists took to the Internet to rejoice. “After commuting over that cursed structure for 10 years I want to be the one who flips the switch for the demolition charges,” one typical comment read. Brian Hersey, a…

In the nineteen-sixties and seventies, Hampton Fancher appeared on more than fifty TV shows and starred in several obscure films. Only two obstacles kept him from becoming a true leading man. One was his hair, a thick brown thatch like an oriole’s nest. “You couldn’t even find the scalp,” Fancher said the other afternoon, in his Brooklyn loft. “So, because I was also tall”—nearly six feet five—“I got cast as the oddball: the firebug, the rapist, the coward.” The second obstacle was his personality. “I exuded a lazy superiority that came from the trembling part of me I kept hidden from myself—from the fear that I was an asshole.” Always charismatic—he had a long relationship with Barbara Hershey and shorter relationships with many, many other women—he was the smoldering figure…

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority . . . will award three $1 million prizes for the brightest ideas for improving New York City’s subway system. —The Times. CHANGE TRAINS TO PLANES Planes are much faster than trains. So, if we turn those slow trains into fast airplanes, people will get to their stops more quickly. Plus, flying airplanes in underground tunnels will be less scary for pilots, since there isn’t as far to fall if something goes wrong. ALTER THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY Many people have to commute to work, but if that no longer had to happen people could stay home. REDUCE OVERCROWDING BY HIRING UNSKILLED BREAK-DANCERS It’s simple: people are less likely to travel by subway if they’re worried about getting kicked in the face. And the threat of…

Metal shavings on the bottom of his wingtips, my father would come home in the dark and take his shoes off, I’d slip shoe trees in and put them in the closet. The next morning at four, he’d put his shoes back on and leave in the dark. Every few months, I’d pull the shavings out with needle-nose pliers. Never asking, Shouldn’t a shoe tree grow shoes, and why aren’t you allowed to see the sun? My father the vampire. My father the bank. My father the black keys played all at once. I saved those shavings for years and pounded them into a spoon that only cuts my lips a little to remind me I’m the child of a drill press and lathe. Without the automobile, I’d never have…

That winter of 2003—you remember it, and so do I—the world assembled, arms linked, to protest the prospect of war in Iraq. What times those were, and how the passions swelled. The fervor of the public reached a peak on February 15th, when millions of people in more than sixty countries claimed the streets, voicing their opposition. “LISTEN TO US,” a sign in London read. In New York, demonstrators stormed the avenues with a huge inflatable globe. Young and old turned out, and citizens and foreigners. A few weeks later, the United States was at war. Whatever. Less than a decade later, in New York, Occupy Wall Street arose to attack the misdeeds of the finance industry, the stranglehold of corporate power, and the predations of inequality. For two months,…

The upward-springing hair, bright polyester shirts, and merry cackle of Peter Sellars, the American director, are once again in evidence at the Salzburg Festival, which means that change is in the air. In recent years, this most sumptuous of classical-music gatherings has reverted to its default identity as a parade of musical celebrities with no clear artistic destination in sight. Last year, though, the progressiveminded Austrian pianist and impresario Markus Hinterhäuser took over as Salzburg’s artistic director, and he is stirring memories of the festival’s most vital period—that of the nineteennineties, when Gerard Mortier presided over a superb array of provocations, including an avant-garde series that Hinterhäuser co-curated. Sellars was a star of the Mortier era, staging Olivier Messiaen’s “Saint François d’Assise” in 1992 and the première of Kaija Saariaho’s…