Innholdsfortegnelse for December 23, 2019 i The New Yorker

Dictatorship has, in one sense, been the default condition of humanity. The basic governmental setup since the dawn of civilization could be summarized, simply, as taking orders from the boss. Big chiefs, almost invariably male, tell their underlings what to do, and they do it, or they are killed. Sometimes this is costumed in communal decision-making, by a band of local bosses or wise men, but even the most collegial department must have a chairman: a capo di tutti capi respects the other capi, as kings in England were made to respect the lords, but the capo is still the capo and the king is still the king. Although the arrangement can be dressed up in impressive clothing and nice sets—triumphal Roman arches or the fountains of Versailles—the basic facts…

TRUTH AND JUSTICE Jennifer Gonnerman’s article about the Parole Preparation Project deserves applause for raising awareness about our broken parole system, and for describing the reality faced by thousands of “long-termers” in prison (“The Interview,” December 2nd). After working for the New York City Board of Correction, I sat on the New York State Board of Parole for twelve years. There, I met hundreds of people applying for a second chance at life, and I worked closely with the political appointees to the board, who mostly came from law-enforcement backgrounds. Recent community conversations have centered on facilitating “decarceration” through bail reform, increased probation monitoring, and the closing of Rikers Island—all of which are necessary fixes to our justice system. But, until paroling becomes a professional discipline, release decisions will continue…

Inside the cast-iron fence that surrounds the Riverside Oval—a tiny park near the western end of 156th Street—is a low granite octagon, maybe twenty feet across and a foot and a half high. A neighborhood volunteer group, the Riverside Oval Association, stores gardening paraphernalia inside it, but sometime after the park was created, a little more than a century ago, the octagon enclosed a fountain, which was designed to feature a statue of a cherub and a mermaid, called “Music of the Waters.” The sculptor’s model for the mermaid was Audrey Munson. In the early nineteen-hundreds, Munson posed for so many sculptors, painters, and photographers in the city that she was called Miss Manhattan and Venus of Washington Square. She was born in Rochester in 1891. Her parents divorced when…

Staring at the flames of the woodstove fireguarded by its glass door, I’m trying to rememberwhat I’m good at—surprised when it occurs to meI’m good at making this fire out of kindlingI’ve split, plus one piece of fir and two of oak, cutfrom the large branches of the neighbor’s oakthat fell across the road two years agoon a winter evening. We were driving homewhen we saw the flashlights telling us to slow,the road impassable. It was then I lost my glassesclimbing over a downed tree, and when wereached our house I called my neighbor,not yet home from work, to tell him his treehad fallen and, at first, he thought it had fallenon his house, as if he already saw our oak glancingoff his roof a year later during the ice…

Three kinds of hair in the brush one lovehas left on the kitchen counter.Four kinds of cries when it occurs as oneto blow off school and go to the mountains.And later, over the river, when the upturned ducknever turns over, five kinds of silence. Always our elsewheres are also here,like tributaries so intuitive they seemalmost incidentally literal, tiny tricklesin wildernesses too immense to enter,the cold clefts and the drastic drops,cliffs of unthinkable ice. Three kinds of sleep in the hum homedown the dark valley back to New Haven.Four kinds of dreams behind the headlights,the world springing into being ten feet at a time.Five kinds of time when one love wakes upand wonders where we are, and one wonderwakes up another, and another, and another.…

The Ambassadors, by Paul Richter (Simon & Schuster). This book, by a veteran diplomatic correspondent, considers America’s entanglements in the greater Middle East since 9/11 by examining the experiences of ambassadors who served in what the author argues are the world’s “most important and difficult posts.” Focussing on four diplomats, who worked in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, and Libya, Richter documents efforts to piece together governments, broker unlikely compromises, and forestall civil wars. Rebuking the current Administration’s “hostility” toward the State Department, the book captures an era during which Middle East policy was carried out by a robustly staffed diplomatic corps who may not have had “all the answers” but were able to discern, better than most, “which of Washington’s decisions brought progress and which led to disaster.” The…

Showtime’s “Work in Progress” opens on a dark note, with its heroine threatening to kill herself in a hundred and eighty days if happiness doesn’t come her way. “I mean, I’m forty-five,” Abby gripes to her therapist. “I’m fat. I’m this queer dyke who has done shit in her life—and that is my identity?” In a funny, curmudgeonly monologue, Abby describes herself as an unfinished building ruining a good neighborhood—“an eyesore.” When she glances up, her shrink, still grinning supportively, has dropped dead. It’s a Borscht Belt gag, but, then, Abby’s whole life feels like a punch line. Still, buried in that Eeyore-ish lament, there’s something else: Abby’s girlish fantasy of herself as a “fucking damsel” longing for rescue—by a prince or a princess, the details don’t matter. Magically, that’s…

During Agnès Varda’s sixty-five-year career, the director, who died in March, at the age of ninety, redefined the art of filmmaking as both personal and political. She freely blended experience and fantasy, documentary exploration and aesthetic confection, as in her 1977 feature, “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t” (above, on set), a musical drama about two women’s longtime friendship amid the rise of feminism and the fight to legalize abortion. It screens in Lincoln Center’s retrospective of her films, which opens on Dec. 20. ART “Private Lives, Public Spaces” Museum of Modern Art This wonderful show of home movies and other overlooked footage in MOMA’s collection may be the sleeper hit of the museum’s reopening. Many hours of mostly Super-8 and 16-mm. works are shown across a hundred screens—a taste of…

A few months ago, in a house near Vancouver, nine actors in festive aprons gathered around a kitchen island to shoot a montage for the Hallmark Channel movie “Christmas in Evergreen: Tidings of Joy.” The island was covered in cookie-making ingredients. The director, Sean McNamara, a veteran of Hallmark movies and Disney kids’ series, sat at monitors nearby. “O.K.!” he called out. “You’re having fun, you’re making cookies, it’s Christmas, and action!” The actors rolled dough and picked up cookie cutters. The montage would be dialogue-free, overlaid with music; to set the tone, McNamara cued up “Jingle Bell Rock.” The cast began to bob. “Good, but we probably shouldn’t be dancing!” McNamara yelled. One actor, looking serious, lifted an icing bag. “Remember, you’re having fun, and there’s funny stuff going…

By November, Iowa and New Hampshire begin to feel as cold as they will in February, when the first votes in the Presidential race will be cast there. On November 10th, in Berlin, New Hampshire, the sun set at 4:22 P.M. In Littleton, on the far side of the White Mountains, there was a crust of snow on the ground. Among Democratic campaigns and voters, the carnival pageantry of the summer, of state fairs and parades, gave way to an intense theatre of hope, winnowing, and dread. More than a dozen candidates were competing for the nomination, but none had convincingly demonstrated that he or she could build a strong Democratic coalition, let alone defeat Donald Trump. Joe Biden—who, as Barack Obama’s Vice-President, was his most natural successor and who…

All I said was that she must like beige a lot. I was trying to put my finger on why I disliked her so much. Audrey. My brother’s new girlfriend. I thought maybe it was the different shades of beige she’d been wearing all week. “You must really like beige,” I said, and she said: “What do you mean?” “Your pants,” I said, “your shirts—all beige. Or … oatmeal, maybe.” “Oatmeal” sounded less aggressive. I’d been told I was a little mean at times, in my choice of words. “My pants are green,” Audrey said. “Jeanne is right,” my brother said, and it was the first time he’d agreed with me all year. “Your pants aren’t green, babe.” Just like that, Audrey found out that she was color-blind. She spent…

Sometimes it seems that life in the big city is one long dance of looking and looking away. An illuminated window high off the ground excites the gaze and plucks at the imagination. A panhandler enters a subway car, and every eye turns to the floor as smoothly as the slats of a venetian blind sliding shut. What’s that determined non-noticing about? It’s a personal barricade—don’t approach—but also an instinctive attempt to preserve privacy, for the asker as well as for the asked. How can anyone break through that kind of willed blindness and be seen? Lately, I’ve been thinking about the performance required of the urban miserable. I mean “performance” descriptively, not cynically. The situation calls for an actor’s ingenuity: a well-managed entrance, an efficiency of motion, a monologue…