Innholdsfortegnelse for May 24, 2021 i The New Yorker

William Finnegan (“Blood on the Tracks,” p. 30) became a staff writer in 1987. His book “Barbarian Days” won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for biography. Jill Lepore (“It’s Just Too Much,” p. 26), a professor of history at Harvard, is the host of the podcast “The Last Archive.” Her fourteenth book, “If Then,” came out last year. Gürbüz Doğan Ekşioğlu (Cover) is a Turkish artist. Joan Acocella (Books, p. 60) has been a staff writer since 1995. Her most recent book is “Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints.” Peter Kuper (Sketchbook, p. 21), the 2020-21 Jean Strouse Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1993. Rachel Hadas (Poem, p. 56) will publish a new book of poems, “Love and Dread,” and…

In March of last year, Dolly Meckler, like so many others, decided to try her hand at sourdough. “And then I read a recipe,” she told me the other day, “and I saw this thing called starter, and I was, like, ‘Hell no.’ I was not about to grow something in a jar for two weeks.” Her thoughts turned to sweet, egg-rich, braided challah, which she hadn’t made since Jewish summer camp but remembered as being easier. Indeed, for challah, she didn’t need a starter, but she did need yeast, which was scarce across the country; Meckler had recently moved to Los Angeles, from her native Manhattan, to look for jobs in social-media marketing. An odyssey, on foot, through the grocery stores of West Hollywood, which she documented on Instagram,…

Elizabeth Shvarts, a sixteen-year-old from Staten Island, was standing in the rain outside the Puma flagship store, in midtown, reciting a spoken-word poem to calm her nerves: Mother pheasant pluckers will peck the eyes of/pleasant feather-fisted phuckers we lap dance/under lion’s gaze. It was Sunday, and at 10 A.M. a store manager ushered Shvarts inside and up a neon-lit escalator, past a mannequin wearing a Cooladapt tank top ($40) and Velocity Nitro shoes ($120). A microphone, a tripod, and a professional videographer awaited her arrival. “This is my first slam!” she said. “It’s nice to be doing something outside the house.” By ten-fifteen, Shvarts, who wore cuffed jeans and a denim jacket, had removed her mask, checked her lipstick on her iPhone’s camera, and begun to read: My mother doesn’t…

The sun was still low in the sky on the spring morning last year when Martin Papworth, an archeologist for the National Trust, arrived in the village of Cerne Abbas. Setting off along a wooded path at the foot of Giant Hill, he carried in each hand a bucket loaded with excavation tools. Cerne Abbas, in a picturesque valley in Dorset, about three hours southwest of London, is an ancient settlement. At one end of the village, beneath a meadow abutting a burial ground, lie the foundations of what was, a thousand years ago, a thriving abbey. Close by is a spring-fed well named for St. Augustine, a monk who was sent by Rome in the sixth century to convert Britain to Christianity, and who became the first Archbishop of…

What happened at the Breeders’ Cup World Championships in late 2019 looked like the end of horse racing in California, maybe in America. It was the twelfth and final race of a two-day series, at Santa Anita Park, the storied track near Los Angeles. Sixty-eight thousand people packed the Art Deco grandstand, the apron, the infield, the high-priced suites. The “handle”—the total betting for the day—was a healthy hundred and seventeen million dollars, but thoroughbred racing itself was on life support. Since the beginning of the year, thirty-five horses had died at Santa Anita. Public dismay had risen to the point that Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, had told the Times that racing’s “time is up” if it did not reform. Dianne Feinstein, the state’s senior senator, had released a letter…

ACROSS 1 One with a password5 Tense type?9 Longtime “Reading Rainbow” airer12 City that’s home to the House of the Seven Gables14 Earthen cooking pots16 Electric ___17 “Father of video art” known for his work with television monitors19 Eponym of an Italian-restaurant franchise and a pasta-sauce brand20 Smirnoff competitor21 Makes a mess on one’s bib, maybe23 “Eh … pass”25 Maneuver with skill27 2017 black-comedy bio-pic about an Olympic figure skater29 “Oh, this ___ thing?”30 Mark an item as discounted, say32 What sports geeks geek out on33 Socialist labor organizer who ran for President five times35 Attacked37 “Splendor in the Grass” director Kazan38 Had the nerve40 Feature of many jeans42 Cheeseburger spring rolls or mozzarella sticks, for short43 Tool for a seafood chef45 Techniques47 Mold in the freezer?49 Customer-appreciation event, perhaps50…

Nobody should mistake Liz Cheney’s expulsion from the leadership of the Republican Conference in the House of Representatives for a sign that she is headed out of her party, to some unknown, possibly moderate political destination. Cheney grew up in a firmly conservative and politically partisan household, and never noticeably rebelled. She has been in the family business—government—since she was in her twenties, and she will run next year to keep the Wyoming seat that her father, Dick Cheney, held for years. The cause of her divorce from her House colleagues is not some incipient shift in her core identity; it is Donald Trump. Cheney has said that she voted for Trump in November, but it could not have been with enthusiasm. His florid, undisciplined style and utter lack of…

Of all the time-worn New York institutions that finally gave out during the pandemic, few inspire the cultish affection of Gem Spa, the cigarette-and-candy shop that stood at the corner of Second Avenue and St. Marks Place, under various names, for a century. Like Patti Smith, who went there for egg creams with Robert Mapplethorpe, the place harked back to the tattered cool of bygone countercultures, which it attracted in waves: Beats (Allen Ginsberg mentioned Gem Spa in a poem), then hippies, then punks. Madonna filmed a scene there for “Desperately Seeking Susan”; Jean-Michel Basquiat named a painting for the place. Until it packed up, last May, the shop still sold egg creams, which, lore had it, originated there. “We never thought this store would not be with our family,”…

Sheets are the undergarments of the bed.—The Times’ real-estate section. As the foremost professional interior stylist in the proudly gated community of East Albacore, Florida, I, Clarisse Harbley-Gargle (pronounced “Garjelle”), could not agree more with this statement. In fact, I’d add that pillows are the breast implants of the headboard, and a well-considered duvet is the tongue of the boudoir. Civilians don’t realize that assembling a tasteful homescape is a scientific challenge, which is why I wear a crisp white lab coat over my leopard-print chiffon jumpsuit when creating an open-concept kitchen/great room, or, as I call it, Clarisse Without Borders. Our Great Room must include a sectional sofa, which is the lower colon of the sitting area. Atop the sectional, contrasting yet coördinated throw pillows serve as the militia…

I quite enjoyed Frieze New York, the recent edition of the annual (except last year) international art fair, housed at the Shed—the arts complex in Hudson Yards, on Manhattan’s far West Side—rather than, as in past years, inside a colossal tent on Randall’s Island. This was unusual for me, because I hate art fairs: they strike me as upscale bazaars, almost immediately exhausting, that reek of quiet desperation. They are a global phenomenon of the last quarter century, born partly out of the competition that dealers face from auction houses, which have recognized—and juiced—the skyrocketing prices of works that may be more or less fresh from studios. Brick-and-mortar galleries can no longer count on preëminence as the farm system of the art industry. To retain top artists and to preserve…

One recent Monday evening, Jessica B. Harris sat at the counter at Reverence, a tasting-menu restaurant on a leafy Harlem corner, gazing down at a small bowl. The restaurant is normally closed on Mondays, but for Dr. J., as Harris’s fans call her, the chef and owner, Russell Jackson, had opened. Harris is arguably America’s leading scholar of Black culinary history. She is a professor emerita at Queens College and a prolific author. Her twelfth book on food, “High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America” (2011), is the inspiration for a four-part series, which débuts on Netflix next week. “Did you say this was an oyster?” Harris asked Jackson, considering the bowl. “I can’t do shellfish, I’m so sorry.” Jackson, horrified, whisked the plate away and…

David Byrne sat alone on the second floor of the Park Avenue Armory, wearing a blue jumpsuit and his trademark shock of white hair. The room he was in, like most rooms in the armory, was ornately appointed—trompe l’oeil ceilings, mahogany woodwork—but he didn’t seem to notice. “I got much better at cooking,” he said, of his pandemic year. “I learned how to bake fish in paper.” He also spent time with his daughter, upstate, and explored the city by bicycle. “Forty years in New York, and you never run out of stuff to see,” he said. Still, even for the professionally curious there’s a point at which solitude starts to yield diminishing returns. “Rhythm, live music, getting people together and getting them moving—that’s always been a part of me,”…

How many crimes have been committed before “The Dry” begins? One barbarous act we know about for sure: a man named Luke Hadler (Martin Dingle Wall) has been found dead, with a shotgun beside him, outside the town of Kiewarra. (It’s a fictional place, but the movie, adapted from the novel of the same name by Jane Harper, and directed by Robert Connolly, was filmed in the Australian state of Victoria.) Back at Luke’s house are the bodies of his wife and son, and it is presumed—for want of a better theory—that he killed them before taking his own life, though he left no note. The only blessing is that his baby daughter was spared. If she were old enough to give evidence, what would she say? The second notable…