Innholdsfortegnelse for February 5, 2018 i The New Yorker

Rachel Aviv (“The Death Debate,” p. 30) won the 2015 Scripps Howard Award for “Your Son Is Deceased,” her story on police shootings, which appeared in The New Yorker. Michael Chabon (“The Recipe for Life,” p. 20) is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of fourteen books. This piece is an excerpt from his latest essay collection, “Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces,” which comes out in May. Tess Gallagher (Poem, p. 34) is the author of, most recently, the poetry collection “Is, Is Not,” forthcoming in 2019. Mark Ulriksen (Cover) has contributed more than fifty-five covers to the magazine since 1994. Amy Davidson Sorkin (Comment, p. 15), a staff writer, is a regular contributor to Comment. She also writes a column for newyorker.com. Jeffrey Eugenides (Fiction, p. 50) is the author of,…

Arthur Mitchell, the eighty-three-year-old founder of Dance Theatre of Harlem, has said that when he was young, “there was a fallacy that blacks couldn’t do classical ballet, because they had big butts and they had flat feet, and... all like that.” This belief has not been retired altogether, as was made clear recently, when Misty Copeland, a soloist at American Ballet Theatre, felt she had to hire a public-relations firm to help her get promoted to principal. But we shouldn’t forget that at our country’s other top-tier company, New York City Ballet, this color line was crossed half a century earlier, by Arthur Mitchell. Mitchell knew early that he wanted to become a dancer, but, probably because of the “fallacy” he speaks of, he studied just about every technique except…

Jennifer Mendelsohn, a freelance writer based in Baltimore, has a low tolerance for bad faith. Last summer, after Stephen Miller, the White House senior policy adviser, went on television to support a bill that would penalize immigrants who didn’t speak English, Mendelsohn took to Twitter. “Miller favors immigrants who speak English,” she began. “But the 1910 census shows his own great-grandmother couldn’t.” Her tweet, which included a photograph of a census document indicating that Miller’s ancestor spoke only Yiddish, went viral. “It’s hilarious how easy it is to find hypocrisy,” Mendelsohn said. “And I’m a scary-good sleuth.” Miller wasn’t the only person she skewered after scouring the Internet for clues. She searched articles in local papers for the names of anti-immigrant activists’ family members, then plugged the information into search…

On a wintry weekday morning, the actor John Lithgow stopped by Roosevelt Barber Shop, on the Upper West Side, for a hot-towel shave. The barber, who introduced himself as Ralph, peered at his customer. “I think I know you. TV?” he asked. He pointed outside, to where Lithgow’s driver waited, and said, “Somebody in the car? It’s a noparking zone. No mercy on this side!” Lithgow was wearing a beret and a long overcoat. He hung these on a rack and sat down in one of the shop’s two chairs. There were mirrors on all sides. Ralph was wearing jeans, a down vest, and a beanie on top of a yarmulke. He grew up in the former Soviet Union, and spoke with an accent. “Well, all right,” he said. He…

Black Tudors, by Miranda Kaufmann (Oneworld). Seeking to overturn the common assumption that there were no black communities in Britain before Caribbean immigration after the Second World War, Kaufmann presents characters such as John Blanke, a trumpeter at the court of Henry VIII, and Reasonable Blackman, a London silk weaver who lost two children in the plague of 1592. Many slaves fled Spanish or Portuguese territories in the New World, boarding ships bound for England after hearing rumors that all men there were free; one helped Sir Francis Drake recruit Africans for attacks on the Spanish. Kaufmann speculates about cultural aspects: three decades after Drake’s ship abandoned a pregnant African woman on an island, Shakespeare created Sycorax, the mother of Caliban. Cræft, by Alexander Langlands (Norton). A pressing question…

THE ART OF TRANSLATION Jiayang Fan, in her review of the novelist Han Kang’s work, questions whether Han’s success has depended, in part, on liberties taken by her English translator, Deborah Smith—a question that has been debated passionately since Han and Smith were jointly awarded the Man Booker International Prize for Han’s first novel, “The Vegetarian,” in 2016 (Books, January 15th). I’ve read “The Vegetarian” in Korean and in English. I was awed by the spare beauty of Han’s writing in the original, and also by the book’s structure and its themes of feminism and vegetarianism. Han’s prose bristles with a quiet anger that would require a finely calibrated ear to capture in translation. Smith’s version may have problems—what translation doesn’t?—but it is also fluid and natural. All translators…

Ass Juice, a rather unpleasantly named punch, is one of the specials at this Alphabet City dive. Ask a bartender, emerging from a trapdoor behind the bar, what’s in it. “It’s a secret recipe,” she’ll reply. Ask her what it tastes like. “It’s very sweet.” Horribly so—no wonder this establishment has a sign that reads “You puke you clean up.” The concoction is also deceptively priced: one is four dollars, and two are nine. The ingenious valuation recently led a former hedge-fund manager to declaim, “It’s very New York!” Around him, a mix of yuppies and leather-clad locals clustered at the bar while televisions above them alternated between shots of rowdy concerts and graphic pornography. “Is that legal?” a drunk patron queried, of the questionable fare onscreen. Nearby, a man…

As far as revolutionary fashion goes, Che Guevara has the T-shirt market covered. But the six daughters of Malcolm X—Attallah, Qubilah, Ilyasah, Gamilah, Malikah, and Malaak— recently announced a clothing line, called Malcolm X Legacy, that rebrands their father’s message for the pussy-hat era, in the form of sweatshirts, hats, and T-shirts bearing slogans such as “By Any Means Necessary” and “A Man Who Stands for Nothing Will Fall for Anything.” “My father was always very clean-cut: suit and tie, wingtip shoes,” Qubilah, the second oldest, said the other day. “He really never let his hair down.” The daughters are all in their fifties now (Malikah and Malaak, twins, were born seven months after their father was assassinated), and legacy protection is a team effort. “We all understand that our…

“You want to be a doctor, too?” the patient asks me, pushing up his left shirtsleeve the way my father has instructed him to do. He is an older man with jowls and a silvery crewcut, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a necktie, and he is pinned to a kitchen chair by the boulder of his abdomen. The tap drips water into a cup in the kitchen sink. The smell of the patient’s dinner lingers, raw meat and fat against cast iron. When I don’t immediately reply to his question, the patient looks up at my father, who has come to his home this evening to conduct an insurance physical. My father reaches into his black bag for his sphygmomanometer, unrolls the cuff, and uncoils the rubber tubing. Like many…

I forgave him the debt of having to explainwhere he came from, who his angry fatherand his loving mother were, or I relieved himfrom any excuse and satdozens and dozens of years ago at the counterof Zak’s, Broadway and 103rd,he on the other side, his sleeves rolled up,his hands, his arms, in steaming water, washingdishes and frying pans and talking music,his dream of studying at Juilliard,the tiny practice room a rich ladyfrom the Upper East or Upper West Side paid for,listening all afternoon to him playingthe small piano, his large romantic gestures,his hair wild, his hands and fingers amazing,classic Polish, he was from Little Italy,a high-school dropout, me a graduate studentat Columbia, then I left for a year in Europeand when I came back I looked him up at Zak’s,the…

NIGHT LIFE ROCK AND POP Musicians and night-club proprietors lead complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in advance to confirm engagements. Jane Birkin This English actress, musician, and style icon became famous for her provocative musical collaborations with Serge Gainsbourg, beginning when she was in her early twenties, in the nineteen-sixties. But she didn’t play her first concert until the age of forty. “Serge was there, and he kept lighting his cigarette lighter to make everybody put their lighters on when I sang ‘Fuir le Bonheur,’” Birkin recently reminisced. “People should never think it’s all over when you’re very young.” At Carnegie Hall, she’ll perform with the Wordless Music Orchestra from her album “Birkin/Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique,” a tribute to her late collaborator and partner. (Seventh Ave. at 57th St.…

Winter Village Bryant Park, renovated in 1992 to discourage crime and welcome midtown strollers, is now one of the city’s cherished winter destinations, hosting various activities around its seasonal ice rink. College Skate Nights offer two-for-one skate rentals with a school I.D.—themes include Mardi Gras and Battle of the Boy Bands. Scavenger hunts, pop-up shops, and the requisite family-friendly performances also dot the schedule; this week, a Winter Carnival brings back popular attractions including a silent disco and curling. (42nd St. at Sixth Ave. wintervillage.org. Through Feb. 4.) AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES Works by the Old Masters are forever in fashion, or so Sotheby’s would have us believe this week, when it offers a series of sales featuring luminous views of Venice, voluptuous still-lifes, lively genre scenes, and the like…

At some point in the next few weeks or so, unless President Donald Trump stages a constitutional crisis— something that, given his habits, can hardly be ruled out—he will almost certainly have to take questions from Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. The details— whether the interview will be in writing or in person, and, if the latter, where it will be, who will be present, and whether it will be recorded on video— have yet to be settled. (Replies via Twitter will presumably be disallowed.) “I would love to do it,” Trump said last Wednesday, just before leaving for Davos, “subject to my lawyers, and all of that.” That is a significant caveat: on Thursday, the Times reported that, last June,…

Though better known as Richard Hell, the punk-rock persona he created in the mid-seventies, Richard Lester Meyers has spent more years as a small-press publisher and a poet than as a professional musician. In 1966, he arrived in New York, a prep-school dropout from Lexington, Kentucky, and started a literary magazine called Genesis : Grasp. He typeset some of the issues himself on a Varityper machine. He followed that with Fun, a folder of poetry broadsheets, all written by him. Meyers’s best writing, published under three different noms de plume, Richard Hell, Ernie Stomach, and Theresa Stern, evokes the lushness of youth and its excesses. His work has improved as age has relieved him of having to be the living embodiment of a generation—the Dionysus of the East Village, shirtless…

A few weeks ago, Catherine Deneuve wrote an open letter, signed by a hundred other French women, calling the #MeToo campaign a “witch hunt.” Brigitte Bardot also attacked the movement, claiming that actresses who complain of sexual harassment are only looking for publicity. “The vast majority are being hypocritical and ridiculous,” Bardot told the magazine Paris Match. Would you like to be able to dismiss an epidemic of sexual harassment just like these powerful French women? Here’s how! Portion Control French women don’t publicly demonstrate their dismissal of how women have historically been treated by men in power by making one giant hashtag statement. They make dozens of small, idiotic statements throughout the day. Be Multilingual Unlike Americans, many of whom speak only English, the French woman knows multiple languages.…

Those dogs chuffing down black dirtat the end of the driveway,seeming to grin with deliciousintake—I knew earth wasn’twhat it seemed. Envious, I could get downon my knees and join their feast. Tailswave, one paws the ground openfor the other.The display ends as suddenly as itbegan. They’re off, lifted legsmarking territory. Some dogsare only human. Yet what they didthere with their teeth and mouths stayswith me through the day. I see them as I can’tsee myself, finding what they needjust under the surface—digging for it, eagerly, letting mewonder at sufficiency,at certain insatiable hungers.Needing a few bites of earthto settle us out.…

The college freshman, being high, was also a little paranoid. Therefore, as he boarded the Amtrak Colonial he had the impression that people could tell. Why was everyone staring? Some smiling, some raising eyebrows, a few shaking their heads. Do I reek? Eugene thought. I used Binaca. Then he remembered what he was wearing. The white fur coat. The pink sunglasses. The striped collegiate scarf knotted at his neck. Sort of a new look for him, part glam, part New Wave. Eugene’s little secret? He wanted to be beautiful. If that didn’t work, noticeable would do. He unzipped his coat and fanned himself, hot from running down the platform. It was a late-November afternoon, in the confusing year of 1978, and Eugene was headed back to school after a wild…

Martin Amis has in his life generally toed what he calls “the Flaubertian line”—the belief that writers generate their boldest imaginative success by keeping things stable and routine at home. His novels contain little coziness and much mass murder, their daring perhaps leveraged by his own domestic regularity. Amis’s more serious tabloid brushes—over a change of literary agents, in the nineties, and a change in residence, from London to Brooklyn, in 2010—have been widely spaced and personally resented. He fights an inclination toward grudges (“acrimony pageants”) and, now and then, with weariness or exasperation, has had to cudgel back against charges of misogyny and, more lately, Islamophobia. (“What I am is an Islamismophobe.”) He remains needlessly concerned about “left-handedness”— the slackening that can happen “when writers of fiction turn to…

In 2009, Vicki and Darrell Gatwood, of St. Anne, Illinois, were preparing to renovate an abandoned house on the outskirts of town. The structure was in poor condition: vandals had ransacked it, and a fallen tree had torn a hole in the roof. In a part of the house that had remained dry, the Gatwoods made a curious discovery: piles of musical manuscripts, books, personal papers, and other documents. The name that kept appearing in the materials was that of Florence Price. The Gatwoods looked her up on the Internet, and found that she was a moderately well-known composer, based in Chicago, who had died in 1953. The dilapidated house had once been her summer home. The couple got in touch with librarians at the University of Arkansas, which already…

The first person we meet on “The End of the F***ing World,” on Netflix, is James, a dour, pie-faced seventeen-year-old who is “pretty sure” he’s a psychopath. At nine, James tells us in voice-over, he stuck his hand into a tub of boiling oil, just to feel something. At fifteen, he brought his neighbor’s cat into the woods. We watch him commit the latest in a series of murders of small animals, whose corpses are arrayed against a bare background, a queasy vision of his inner life. The cat “probably had a name,” James tells us. That intro seems to promise a familiar modern television genre: the comedy so cruel that it doubles as an endurance test. Instead, “The End of the F***ing World”—which is written by Charlie Covell, adapted…