Innholdsfortegnelse for November 20, 2017 i The New Yorker

Sheelah Kolhatkar (“The Disrupters,” p. 52) became a staff writer in 2016. She recently published her first book, “Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street.” Victor LaValle (“Crossed Wires,” p. 72) is the author of six books, including “The Ballad of Black Tom” and, most recently, “The Changeling.” Sally Rooney (“A Drinking Problem,” p. 56) published the novel “Conversations with Friends” earlier this year. Junot Díaz (“Waiting for Spider-Man,” p. 42) is the author of “This Is How You Lose Her” and the upcoming picture book “Islandborn.” Malika Favre (Cover) is a French illustrator who lives in London. This is her fifth cover for the magazine. Tad Friend (“Getting On,” p. 46) has been a staff writer…

Winter Village Bryant Park, renovated in 1992 to discourage crime and welcome midtown strollers, is now one of the city’s cherished holiday destinations, hosting various winter activities around its seasonal ice rink. College Skate Nights offer two-for-one skate rentals with a school I.D., with themes including Mardi Gras and Battle of the Boy Bands. Scavenger hunts, pop-up retail shops, and the requisite tree-lighting extravaganza dot the schedule, along with family-friendly performances. (42nd St. at Sixth Ave. wintervillage.org. Through Jan. 2.) Grand Central Holiday Train Show At this annual train show, now in its sixteenth year, the M.T.A.’s history is brought to life as scale models of classic red subway cars, double-letter trains, and even commuter- rail cars race through iconic stops and dart through labyrinthine tunnels. Back by popular…

Last week, Alec Baldwin caused a Twitter uproar after he tweeted, to one of Harvey Weinstein’s victims, “If you paint every man w the same brush, you’re gonna run out of paint or men.” Another thing happened last week that may shed light on why Baldwin had paint—and grievance—on the brain. Mary Boone, the New York gallery owner, agreed to write him a seven-figure check to settle a civil-fraud case that he had filed against her last year over a painting. Like many lawsuits, this one began as a love story. In 1996, the artist Ross Bleckner painted “Sea and Mirror,” a large canvas dotted with shimmering shapes. Some years later, Baldwin re- ceived an invitation to a show of Bleckner’s work; it featured a photograph of “Sea and Mirror.”…

O ne day in 2013, AJ Vandermeyden drove to Tesla’s corporate headquarters, in Palo Alto, California, sat down on a bench outside the main entrance, and waited, in the hope of spotting someone who looked like a company employee. Vandermeyden, who was thirty years old, had been working as a pharmaceutical sales representative since shortly after college, but she wanted a different kind of job, in what seemed to her the center of the world—Silicon Valley. She knew that Tesla’s ambitious, eccentric co-founder Elon Musk was managing companies devoted to space flight and solar energy, in addition to running Tesla, which was producing electric cars, and she was inspired by his mission. Tesla was growing quickly and offered numerous opportunities for employees to advance. The company, Musk liked to say,…

Carbon Engineering, a company owned in part by Bill Gates, has its headquarters on a spit of land that juts into Howe Sound, an hour north of Vancouver. Until recently, the land was a toxic- waste site, and the company’s equipment occupies a long, barnlike building that, for many years, was used to process contaminated water. The offices, inherited from the business that poisoned the site, provide a spectacular view of Mt. Garibaldi, which rises to a snowcovered point, and of the Chief, a granite monolith that’s British Columbia’s answer to El Capitan. To protect the spit against rising sea levels, the local government is planning to cover it with a layer of fill six feet deep. When that’s done, it’s hoping to sell the site for luxury condos. Adrian…

One night in April, 1983, an Englishwoman, twenty-nine, stepped off a plane at J.F.K. and hailed a cab. She had come to the United States for business, though she would have been hard pressed to say what kind. She already missed her husband and the clatter of his typing back at home. As the cab headed toward Manhattan, Dr. Ruth’s show blared on the radio. You “tek it in the mouth und move it slowly, slowly up und down,” the good doctor advised. The woman in the cab was Tina Brown, and this was her initiation into the world of media in New York. In the years since that spring night, Brown has become synonymous with the last great renaissance of American print magazines. At Vanity Fair and then at…

SELLING ADDICTION I thought I was inured to the skulduggery of Big Pharma, but then I read Patrick Radden Keefe’s article about how the philanthropic Sackler family promotes opioid addiction through its company Purdue Pharma (“Empire of Pain,” October 30th). It is time for the beneficiaries of the Sacklers’ name- buying largesse—the Metropolitan Museum, Harvard, Columbia, and the Louvre, to name just a few—to scrutinize the provenance of large donations. They might also consider installing in the lobby of each Sackler Wing, Gallery, Museum, and Institute a large plaque reading “This building is thanks to the generosity of the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma, which started and continues to fuel the epidemic of prescription- opioid addiction that is responsible for two hundred thousand overdose deaths.” Burns Woodward Waban, Mass.…

Current State Janet Jackson resumes her world tour, returning to a stage she helped create. Just after Halloween, Sony announced that a new model of Aibo, the beloved robot pup that swept holiday seasons at the turn of the millennium, would be available in Japan next year. The original Aibo, released in 1999, recognized its owner, responded to orders, and performed tricks that mimicked the movements of a real dog. It became something of a pop-culture icon, a kitschy symbol of the consumer-tech future we clawed toward then, and which we seem to have reached today: in a world where Siri and Alexa are always listening for your next command, what’s novel about a rechargeable pet? If we’re lucky, Aibo’s return means we’re closer to the bulbous, pastel metropolis conjured…

On a recent Friday night, John A. (Junior) Gotti, Jr., arrived at the Twin River Casino, in Lincoln, Rhode Island, north of Providence. The former crime boss, who led the Gambino family after his father’s conviction, in 1992, was not there to play craps or to catch the Rat Pack Christmas Show. (That’s not until later this month.) He had come for a mixed-martial-arts fight. His son, twentyfive- year-old John Gotti III, was making his professional début, on C.E.S. M.M.A. 46, a fight series sponsored by a Providence-based promoter called Classic Entertainment and Sports. Gotti, Jr., who is fifty-three, looks like an accountant who spends most of his free time in the weight room. He wore glasses, a black tracksuit, and pristine white sneakers, and he carried a small leather…

The St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, in upstate New York, sits at the U.S. border with Canada, and most of its residents are citizens of both countries, as well as of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne, a territory that includes land on the Canadian side of the border. Much of the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation’s income comes from a casino, but its revenues have lately flattened, and the unemployment rate on the reservation is twice that of Franklin County, which abuts it and is itself one of the poorest parts of the state. Recently, however, the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe acquired a major new source of revenue. It has become the owner of six patents for Restasis, a drug for dry-eye syndrome that is the second-highest- selling product of the pharmaceutical…

Prince Charming, from “Cinderella” When the king throws a ball to gather all the eligible maidens in the land, Prince Charming is, like, “Uh, a ball full of maidens? That’s really demeaning to women.” The prince starts a #BallsFullOfMaidens hashtag, for women to share their stories about being seen as only wives or girlfriends. It goes viral, and, without consulting any of the maidens, Prince Charming signs a seven-figure “Balls Full of Maidens” book deal. He later marries Cinderella because it makes him look like he has socialist bona fides, even though Cinderella technically comes from money. Prince Phillip, from “Sleeping Beauty” Prince Phillip would never touch a woman without her consent. He knows that a woman in a magically induced coma cannot consent, even if she was flirting with…

To make it right Vermeer painted then painted overthis scene a woman alone at a table the cloth pushed backrough folds at the edge as if someone had risenin haste abandoning the chair beside her a wineglassnearly empty just in her reach Though she’s been calledidle and drunken a woman drowsing you might seein her gesture melancholia Eyelids drawnshe rests her head in her hand Beyond her a still-lifewhite jug bowl of fruit a goblet overturned Before thisa man stood in the doorway a dog lay on the floorPerhaps to exchange loyalty for betrayalVermeer erased the dog and made of the mana mirror framed by the open door Pentimentothe word for a painter’s change of heart revisionon canvas means the same as remorse after sinWere she to rise a mirror…

While Paulette was getting ready upstairs, Robert took charge of dinner, which entailed pouring the sparkling water and calling for the children, after which Kiki appeared with the halibut and Brussels sprouts, spinach salad on the side. “Looks delicious,” Robert said, placing his phone face down on the table and then interlacing his fingers, as though this public denial of electronics were commensurate with saying grace. “Right, guys?” “Thank you, Kiki,” Lana said. “Thanks, Kiki,” Friedrich said. “Yes, thanks,” Robert concluded with a warm, conspiratorial smile. Kiki whom he paid on the books. Kiki from Tibet. My goodness, the calm essence of those people. The work ethic. Plus she happened to be an excellent cook, almost better than Chef Gary. “Where are you going tonight?” Lana asked. “The Harrisons’,”…

A Legacy of Spies, by John le Carré (Viking). The first George Smiley novel in more than twenty years, this thriller revisits intelligence operations from le Carré’s masterpieces “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” through the eyes of a Smiley disciple, Peter Guillam. We see Guillam—romantic Lothario, empathetic mercenary— both during the Cold War and in retirement, reckoning with events in which he participated. Le Carré meticulously unspools the two narratives, and creates tantalizing mystery around the ghostly absence of Smiley. The dénouement is less powerful than in earlier books, but le Carré remains unmatched at showing complex characters caught between human nature and inhuman institutions. Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf). In this début story collection, Machado…

In November, 2012, the Azerbaijani soccer team FC Baku hired a Swedish immigrant named Vugar Huseynzade to oversee the scouting and acquisition of new players. Although Baku’s history included two league titles, along with appearances in prestigious European competitions, the club was now struggling, and facing financial ruin. Anything was worth a shot—even entrusting the team to Huseynzade, who was unknown within the professional soccer establishment. He was a twentyone- year-old college graduate, whose primary qualification was that he excelled at Football Manager, a computer game. The first edition of the game— then known as Championship Manager— was released in 1992. Its creators were two British brothers, Paul and Oliver Collyer, who, in the late eighties, were dissatisfied with the simulation games that existed. “These games tended to make you…

In 1985, Roger Troutman sang of finding “Computer Love” in the glowing eyes emanating from newfangled screens. This May, Poppy, who plays Music Hall of Williamsburg on Nov. 15, fell for the machine itself. “I’ve got a thing for my laptop computer,” she sings on one of her many meta-songs, uploaded to her YouTube channel alongside hundreds of sterile, cybernetic monologues. Portrayed by Moriah Rose Pereira, Poppy reads the Bible, interviews plants, and denies belonging to a cult. Her followers remain undeterred. CLASSICAL MUSIC OPERA Metropolitan Opera Luis Buñuel’s absurdist 1962 film, “The Exterminating Angel,” skewers the comforts and complacency of the leisure class by forcing a group of guests to endure a never-ending dinner party that slowly drives them mad. Thomas Adès, in his gripping operatic adaptation, turns…

Do or Dive 1108 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn It appears that no expense was spared to make this relatively new bar in Bed-Stuy look thoroughly sleazy. The tufted red pleather booths seem like they could have hosted orgies in the nineteen-seventies. The bathroom downstairs is a black hole with a mirror completely obscured by graffiti. Countless vintage neon beer signs hang from the ceiling and on the walls. Not long ago, the space was the home of the hipster restaurant Do or Dine, famous for serving goose-liver doughnuts. The drink offerings here are equally berserk. There are no menus, so a certain level of trust is required, and knowing what to ask for is essential. On a recent Thursday evening, the bartender—receding hairline, long, curly dark hair, a sleeveless undershirt—explained that…

One morning at an upper-Manhattan TV studio, the writer, performer, and life-style guru Amy Sedaris was in her dressing room on the set of her new joys-of-domesticity show, “At Home with Amy Sedaris,” on truTV, getting ready to change into her fish-gutting pinafore. “Mary Adams, who designs wedding dresses, made it for me,” she said. “I had these dinner napkins”—nautical, with anchors, sailboats, and lighthouses—“and she made this. It’s a good one, right?” In the show’s first episode, in preparation for making a fish dinner, Sedaris entertains a “knife man” (David Pasquesi) and a fishmonger (Kurt Schreiber) and talks about the importance of lamb chops. (“As it turns out, a lot of people don’t like fish.”) “We keep saying it’s a cooking show, but I haven’t turned the oven on…

One humid morning this past summer, Omeed Dariani drove his black Tesla sedan through the foothills east of San Diego, looking apprehensive. Dariani is the founder and C.E.O. of Online Performers Group, a talent-management company dedicated to professional video-game streamers, who broadcast their game play and commentary live over the Internet. He is thirty-eight, with a dry, ironic wit and a nervous habit of twirling his goatee, which is rapidly going gray; his clients are, for the most part, young, boisterous, and unpredictable. That day, he was on his way to meet the streamer Roberto Garcia, who was supposed to be at home but had instead gone to a casino outside the city to celebrate his girlfriend’s birthday. Dariani’s speedometer crept toward ninety miles per hour. “We just need to…

Early in his career, Paul Newman personified a young man in a hurry forced to wait his turn. His go-getter characters infiltrated the old-boy network, wore the gray flannel suit, and toiled away before finally, in midlife, grabbing the brass ring and coasting for home. In “The Young Philadelphians” (1959), for instance, Newman played Tony Lawrence, whose mother, over his cradle, gloats, “Someday, he’ll take the place in this city that belongs to him.” Young Philadelphians, it’s clear, are merely old Philadelphians in the making. While Tony is at Princeton, a silver- haired Philadelphia lawyer so venerable he has a British accent tells him, “I’m confident that in due time you’ll become a partner in Dickinson & Dawes.” As Tony shinnies up the greasy pole at an even more eminent…

I set out over the unknowable earth once more. Everything still underfoot. A mat of fallen and unfallen matter. Things flinch but it is my seeing makes them flinch. Before, they are transparent. Now they line my optic nerve. I feel them enter. Brain flinch husk groove. Subject. Honeysuckle, bramble, vine, vibration and web-tremble. How will the real let me drop just in time. How will it pay me out, pass me along to the next I? I walk down the hill where I feel my letting-go go into the down of the hill. I know I will have to leave the earth—my difference running around wildly looking for where it ends. That is life I say humming, idling, mind’s engine dozing in me, its squint, that sweet way of…

In March, 1893, John Galsworthy—a product of Harrow and Oxford who had recently passed the English bar exam—was boarding the passenger ship Torrens, in Port Adelaide, when he noticed a small man with black hair boisterously loading cargo. In a letter home, a month into the voyage, he described “a capital chap,” Polish, somewhat odd-looking, with “a fund of yarns on which I draw freely.” Galsworthy’s sister credited this encounter with turning him away from the law. By early 1897, Galsworthy had assembled a book of short stories, and his Polish friend, who had engineered a midlife career change of his own from British seaman to English novelist, under the name Joseph Conrad, was writing to Edward Garnett, who worked as a publisher’s reader— a sort of grand scout—asking him…

Shortly before “The Colbert Report” premièred, in 2005, Stephen Colbert claimed that he would play a generic cable- news blowhard, a character drawn from a variety of sources—the “manliness” of NBC’s Stone Phillips, the “folksiness” of CNN’s Aaron Brown, the “commonsense” simplicity of MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. After a while, Colbert acknowledged the simpler truth: he was essentially doing a Bill O’Reilly impression. On air, Colbert started referring to O’Reilly as Papa Bear, and Papa Bear, though hardly known for easygoing self-effacement, seemed to take the ribbing relatively well. The two men formed a mutual-deprecation society, trading barbs and, eventually, guest appearances on each other’s shows. At the time, this felt transgressive—an infiltrator in enemy territory!—but, in retrospect, it seems almost inevitable. After all, Colbert and O’Reilly were in the same…