Innholdsfortegnelse for November 18, 2019 i The New Yorker

Ensign Spock, a young half-Vulcan science officer fresh out of Starfleet Academy and newly posted to the Enterprise, found himself alone in a turbolift with the ship’s formidable first officer, a human woman known as Number One. They were waiting for me to rescue them from the silence that reigns in all elevators, as universal as the vacuum of space. I looked up from the screen of my iPad to my father, lying unconscious, amid tubes and wires, in his starship of a bed, in the irresolute darkness of an I.C.U. at 3 a.m. Ordinarily when my father lay on his back his abdomen rose up like the telescope dome of an observatory, but now there seemed to be nothing between the bed rails at all, just a blanket pulled…

The Supreme Court of the United States performs its duties with a theatrical formalism. Every session opens with the Marshal of the Court, in the role of town crier, calling out “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” and “God save the United States and this Honorable Court!” Even when the nine Justices meet privately, once or twice a week, to discuss cases “in conference,” there is a rigid protocol. In order of seniority, they reveal how they are likely to vote; nobody may speak twice until everyone has spoken once. The most junior Justice goes last. She or he takes notes, by hand, on what is discussed and decided, since clerks (and laptops) aren’t allowed in the room. If there is a rap on the door, because, say, one of the Justices has…

In Beijing, he boiled the water. It was August, so the hottest month of the year. He put the water into a thermos and carried the thermos on a sling. He called himself a cowboy because he thought he looked dumb. Other people in the group carried a thermos, too, though his wife did not. Their tour guide was Felix. Like Felix the Cat, Felix said, and he replied, O.K. He had been to Europe before, the six-hour time change was fine, but when thirteen happened something yellow crusted around his eyes. The bus was air-conditioned. He dozed off, woke up, and by then his wife had finished his cowboy water. On the Great Wall, he had to run, since she was sprinting. She had come here long ago with…

The more sentimental believers in the “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom focus on synchronous developments in American and British politics during the past century. The Second World War, in this telling, was won by a pair of anti-fascists whose alliance and friendship made the world safe for democracy. Even more jaundiced observers cannot help but notice commonalities. In the nineteen-fifties, two moderately conservative regimes turned their countries slightly to the right, while establishing a decades-long, bipartisan commitment to the welfare state. A generation later, the conservative revolution arrived in both countries, with Margaret Thatcher triumphing over an enfeebled Labour government, in 1979, and Ronald Reagan routing Jimmy Carter, in 1980. In the nineteen-nineties, two slick center-left politicians, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, transformed their parties;…

A decade ago, Jane Moss, the artistic director of Lincoln Center, A launched the White Light Festival, intending to foster a reflective, spiritually tinged mode of spectatorship in an age of digital frenzy. The festival’s name came from a remark by the composer Arvo Pärt: “I could compare my music to white light, which contains all colors.” Initially, the concept inspired a few giggles around town; one heard the title pronounced in a breathy, yoga-instructor murmur. Yet Moss was prescient in how she analyzed the cultural landscape of the early twenty-first century. At a time when many people clung to naïve notions about the liberatory capacities of total connectivity, she spoke about the damage that social media and mobile devices were doing to our inner lives. Now we know…

READING THE STARS Christine Smallwood’s article on astrology fails to mention a crucial fact—that astrology is nonsense (“Starstruck,” October 28th). In terms of intellectual respectability, astrology falls somewhere between flat-earth conspiracy theories and belief in intelligent design. To treat it as “a literary language whose truth can neither be validated nor invalidated by empirical science” is a mistake. Science has thoroughly documented the weaknesses in human psychology that lead people to believe in astrology, such as the Barnum effect and confirmation bias. Meanwhile, there is no empirical support for the claims of astrology. The fact that an increasing number of Americans make life decisions based on such a belief system is cause for concern. Society will improve only to the extent that we engage with reality to solve our individual…

A desiccated daffodil.A pigeon cooing on the sill.The old cat lives on love and water.Your mother’s balanced by your daughter:one faces death, one will give birth.The fulcrum is our life on earth,beginning, ending in a bed.We have to marry love and dread.Dark clouds are roiling in the sky.The daily drumbeat of the lie,steady—no, crescendoing.This premature deceptive spring,forsythia’s in bloom already.The challenge: balance. Keep it steady,now sniffing daffodils’ aroma,now Googling a rare sarcoma.The ghost cat’s weightless on my lap.My mother’s ghost floats through my nap,as, dearest heart, we lie in bed.Oh, we must marry love and dread:must shield our senses from the glareand clamor of chaos everywhere.Life bestows gifts past expectation.It’s time to plan a celebration:dance at the wedding, drink and sing,certain that summer follows spring,that new life blossoms from the…

Last night we ended up on the couchtrying to rememberall of the friends who had died so far, and this morning I wrote them downin alphabetical orderon the flip side of a shopping listyou had left on the kitchen table. So many of them had been swept awayas if by a hand from the sky,it was good to recall them,I was thinkingunder the cold lights of a supermarketas I guided a cart with a wobbly wheelup and down the long strident aisles. I was on the lookout for blueberries,English muffins, linguini, heavy cream,light bulbs, apples, Canadian bacon,and whatever else was on the list,which I managed to keep grocery side up, until I had passed through the electric doors,where I stopped to realize,as I turned the list over,that I had forgotten…

The Lost Art of Scripture, by Karen Armstrong (Knopf). This unusual, often dazzling, blend of theology, history, and neuroscience argues that our hyper-rational, left-brain-dominated society has become incapable of engaging with the “mythos” of Scripture. In a tour of religious practice spanning centuries of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Confucianism, Armstrong writes that past cultures viewed myths as a “programme of action,” which, when enacted ritually or ethically, helped develop right-brain “habits of empathy.” To demonstrate how close the link between religion and action was, she quotes the Liji, an ancient Chinese text: “Rites obviate disorder, as dykes obviate floods.” Shadow Network, by Anne Nelson (Bloomsbury). Having grown up in Oklahoma and gone East for college, the author of this account of “the secret hub of the radical right” saw…

The flamenco dancer Soledad Barrio (above) doesn’t need dry ice, multiple costume changes, or loud amplification—all staples of modern flamenco shows. What Barrio offers is more impressive: deep focus and raw power. This is flamenco as unapologetic high drama, as urgent conversation between the dancer and the guitarists and singers who feed her with their energy. Barrio’s company, Noche Flamenca, returns to the Joyce, Nov. 19-Dec.1, with “Entre Tú y Yo” (“Between You and Me”), an evening of solos, duets, and ensemble pieces. NIGHT LIFE Musicians and night-club proprietors lead complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in advance to confirm engagements. Roy Haynes Blue Note Sitting down to reminisce with the magisterial drummer Roy Haynes would be a singular experience: he’s the only musician alive who can tell you what…

On the door of a white R.V. that serves as the Wabash Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center’s mobile unit are the stencilled words “No Cash, No Narcotics.” The center, in Terre Haute, Indiana, is one of more than twenty-five hundred such C.P.C.s in the U.S.—Christian organizations that provide services including free pregnancy testing, low-cost S.T.D. testing, parenting classes, and ultrasounds. Sharon Carey, the executive director of the Wabash Valley center, acquired the van in January, 2018, for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, after finding a company that retrofits secondhand vehicles with medical equipment. That May, Carey began to dispatch the van to rural towns whose residents often cannot afford the gas needed to drive to the C.P.C. or to a hospital. Carey has selected parking spots in areas with high…

It would be a shame if “Ford v Ferrari” were to attract an audience composed of no one but motorheads. The title doesn’t help. In some countries, the movie is being released as “Le Mans ’66,” which isn’t much better. It’s undeniable that cars, or discussions of cars, feature in almost every scene, and that one car is pushed so close to its limits that its wheels, inside their rims, glow like the heart of a forge; yet this is not, in essence, an automotive film. It’s a film about pride—about being as proud of your own flesh and blood as you are of your metal machines, and about the craziness that flares up whenever pride gets hurt. Exhibit A: the face of Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts). It’s the…

Toward the start of a 1993 recording of “Proud Mary,” Tina Turner—who, by then, had been performing the number for decades, across the globe—gives a charismatic, gently teasing forecast of the song to come. “We’re gonna take the beginning of this song and do it easy. But then we’re gonna do the finish rough,” she says. “That’s the way we do ‘Proud Mary.’” Her voice, sharp and feline and cunning, rushes forward, tossing each syllable into a fast-moving current, until she stops to hold a choice word—easy; rough—up to the warm light of her attention. Her diction, in its variance, mirrors what she’s disclosing about the song. Somehow the road map does nothing to dissipate the impact of the moment when the rolling thrum of guitars that dominates the first…