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29, 2024
 JANUARY 29, 2024

4 GOINGS ON
9 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Benjamin Wallace-Wells on Trump’s trial talk;
Lubavitch-mansion expansion; Tony Hawk;
hands-on mathematics; cornering U.F.O.s.
PERSONAL HISTORY
David Sedaris 14 Goodyear
Tires, toenails, and a lifelong friendship.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Bill Scheft 17 We’re Sorry to See You Go
ANNALS OF POLITICS
Evan Osnos 18 Ruling-Class Rules
How to thrive in the élite—while bashing it.
PROFILES
Rachel Syme 24 Crème de la Crème
Sofia Coppola’s films of gilded adolescence.
LETTER FROM SPAIN
D. T. Max 36 Cave Woman
She lived underground for five hundred days.
SKETCHBOOK
Navied Mahdavian 41 “Avoiding the Evil Eye”
FICTION
Anne Carson 46 “Poor Houdini”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
Margaret Talbot 50 When psychedelics go mainstream.
55 Briefly Noted
Jill Lepore 56 The architect of today’s divided Supreme Court.
Parul Sehgal 61 Why do twins fascinate us?
THE ART WORLD
Jackson Arn 64 The sane genius of Emily Mason.
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 66 “Tótem,” “I.S.S.”
POEMS
Hala Alyan 29 “Habibti Ghazal”
Jericho Brown 42 “Aerial View”
COVER
Roz Chast “Bird Bath”

DRAWINGS Liam Francis Walsh, Teresa Burns Parkhurst, J. C. Duffy,

Liana Finck, Carolita Johnson, Justin Sheen, Stephen Raaka, Bruce Eric Kaplan,
Brendan Loper, Lars Kenseth, Roland High, Michael Maslin,
Colin Tom, Suerynn Lee, Glen Baxter, Barbara Smaller SPOTS James Yates
 fabulous CONTRIBUTORS
Rachel Syme (“Crème de la Crème,” D. T. Max (“Cave Woman,” p. 36) is a
p. 24), a staff writer, has covered style, staff writer. He most recently pub­
culture, and Hollywood for The New lished “Finale.”
Yorker since 2012.
Evan Osnos (“Ruling-Class Rules,” p. 18)
David Sedaris (“Goodyear,” p. 14) began writes about politics and foreign affairs
contributing to the magazine in 1995. for the magazine.
His essay collection “Happy­Go­Lucky”
was published in 2022. Bret Anthony Johnston (The Talk of the
Town, p. 11) is the director of the Mi­
Roz Chast (Cover), a longtime New chener Center for Writers at the Uni­
Yorker cartoonist, is the author of versity of Texas. His novel “We Burn
several books, including “I Must Be Daylight” is due out in July.
Dreaming” and “Going Into Town: A
Love Letter to New York.” Hala Alyan (Poem, p. 29), a clinical psy­
chologist, is the author of two novels
Jericho Brown (Poem, p. 42) won the and five poetry collections, including
2020 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his “The Moon That Turns You Back,”
collection “The Tradition.” He is the forthcoming in March.
editor of a forthcoming retrospective
of the work of Reginald Shepherd. Bill Scheft (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 17)
has written five novels. He began con­
Sophia Hollander (The Talk of the Town, tributing to the magazine in 1998.
p. 12) has contributed to the Times and
the Wall Street Journal. Navied Mahdavian (Sketchbook, p. 41),
my best friends a cartoonist and a writer, is the author
always tell me Anne Carson (Fiction, p. 46) will pub­ of the graphic memoir “This Country:
that I have good taste lish the collection “Wrong Norma” in Searching for Home in (Very) Rural
in people, February. America.”
and if being fabulous
could be taught
you’d be
my favorite teacher. THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM

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 THE MAIL
MORE TO LOVE the same living standard regardless of
who did what in the business.
I loved Jennifer Wilson’s refreshingly Wilson ends her piece lamenting that
generous overview of recent depictions “changing the world takes more than
of polyamory (Books, January 1st & 8th). spreading the love; you have to spread
As a psychotherapist who has long worked the wealth, too.” We attempted to cre-
with couples exploring non-monogamy, ate a movement in which the savings
I have found that one of the most help- our life style generated funded social-
ful things about these depictions, even justice and environmental projects. We
when they are flawed, is that they spur weren’t able to maintain our project for
important conversations. All couples can more than twenty years, but it is my
benefit from reflecting together on what deepest hope that others are inspired to
fidelity and commitment mean to them, build the movement that we couldn’t.
so long as they do so in a curious, open- Eva Konigsberg
minded way—something that films, tele- Portland, Ore.
vision shows, podcasts, and books can
help them with. One recent film that Wilson’s piece is the first one I have
might have this effect is “Maestro,” Brad- come across to suggest that polyamory
ley Cooper’s brilliant study of Leonard in America is as rigid an arrangement
Bernstein’s unconventional marriage, as the monogamy it purports to improve
which portrays a deep, loving fidelity upon. Her friend’s comment that poly
that is not measured by sexual exclusiv- people “just have a scheduling fetish”
ity. What an exciting era we live in, with was only the first of several observations
so many cultural offerings that explore in her review that rang true for me.
creative ways we can love one another. I was reluctant to participate in poly-
Wayne Scott amory. Then something old-fashioned
Portland, Ore. happened: I fell in love. I began a rela-
tionship with a married man who also
I would like to clarify some points re- had another girlfriend. What I discov-
garding Kerista, which Wilson refers ered then was that I had never felt true
to as a “free-love movement that grew loneliness until I was added to the ros-
to prominence in San Francisco in ter of a weekly calendar designed by the
the sixties.” Although various groups central couple. When I voiced my mis-
adopted the Kerista moniker in the fif- givings, my sweetheart, an otherwise
ties and sixties, the most successful and lovely man, said, “It’s not what you’re
longest-lasting was the intentional com- saying that bothers me; it’s your tone.”
munity known as the Kerista Com- I was startled silent by one of the most
mune, which was founded in 1971. Wil- traditional male rebukes imaginable.
son describes Jud Presmont as Kerista’s I have come to think that marriage,
“leader,” but the commune was started like life itself, is both short and long,
by Presmont, the cartoonist Eve Furch- often thrilling and sometimes tedious.
gott, the poet Lynne Barnes, and me. But what richer, sexier, more creative
It was a group accomplishment. challenge exists than that of devoting
Wilson emphasizes Presmont’s ideas oneself to lifelong partnership with an-
about Western competition with the other person?
Soviets, implying that Kerista’s spirit Jenny DeBell
was ultimately capitalistic. Indeed, the Charlottesville, Va.
commune ran a successful company—
circa 1990, it was Apple Computer’s •
twentieth-largest domestic retail dis- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
tributor. But our greatest achievement, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
second only to the family structure we [email protected]. Letters may be edited
for length and clarity, and may be published in
created, is that we practiced genuine any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
economic equality. All of us enjoyed of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
 DANCE | New York City Ballet continues its march
through its seventy-five-year history with a
GOINGS ON season that combines the old and the new. Two
freshly minted works will be unveiled, one by
JANUARY 24 – 30, 2024 a leading dancer in the company, Tiler Peck
(Feb. 1), her first on her home turf, and the
other by City Ballet’s incoming artist-in-resi-
dence, Alexei Ratmansky (Feb. 15). Additional
ballets in the season include one of the most
striking premières of this century, Christopher
Wheeldon’s spare, mystery-filled “Polyphonia”
What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. (2001), and two Balanchine masterworks—the
abstract “Four Temperaments” and the intimate
and grand “Liebeslieder Walzer.”—Marina
The dancers of Compagnie Hervé Koubi, which is based in Calais, could Harss (David H. Koch Theatre; Jan. 23-March 3.)
be mistaken for gods. They glide, spin, toss one another in high arcs OFF OFF BROADWAY | Over the past several years,
through the air, exhibiting an uncanny mastery of the body, and a gravitas the smooth, palpably clever performer Eric
that renders their movements into poetry. Unlike Koubi’s previous works, Berryman has devoted himself to a project of
his latest, “Sol Invictus,” includes women. At times, these grave, heroic cultural retrieval. With the Wooster Group,
using field recordings preserved on rare LPs,
figures hold their fingers to their brows in a shape that suggests a crown he reënacts songs and folk oratory from the
of sun rays; perhaps the idea is that we each contain a god within. The African American past. Back in 2019, he put
piece is animated by the unfashionable and romantic notion that a com- out “The B Side: Negro Folklore from Texas
State Prisons.” Now, directed by Kate Valk,
mon humanity unites us all.—Marina Harss ( Joyce Theatre; Jan. 23-28.) comes “Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like
Me,” Berryman’s performance of “toasts”—
rhyming, rhythmic ballads, with assistance
from the drummer Jharis Yokley, heralding
the outsized deeds, often sexual, of trickster
and badman heroes. Berryman acts as a kind
of cool, genial radio DJ, but he’s also the
crooner who delivers the preacherly, proto-
hip-hop goods. It’s a variety show, a history
lesson, and an almost spiritual reëmbodiment
all at once.—Vinson Cunningham (The Perform-
ing Garage; through Feb. 3.)

ART | An antique marble fireplace, a model

of a human intestine, a 1.5-ton boulder, park
benches, rainbow fibreglass blobs, carpets
coated in oozy tie-dye video projections: the
contents of the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s
two-gallery exhibition, “Prickling Goosebumps &
a Humming Horizon,” are as flashy and exhaust-
ing as a casino, though she’s been consider-
ate enough to include couches and pillows,
too. Gallerygoers who come to take a load
off may be surprised to find the eccentric ob-
jects curiously forgettable; what sticks with
you instead is the mood of grim, compulsory
whimsy. Hollywood movies, it’s been said,
are becoming more and more like theme-park
rides. Perhaps avant-garde art is, too?—Jackson
Arn (Luhring Augustine through Feb. 24; Hauser &
Wirth through April 13.)
ABOUT TOWN
MOVIES | Mani Haghighi’s new film, “Subtrac-
ROCK | For nearly four years, across four albums, ty-five, created some of the more complicated tion” (playing in the Iranian Film Festival New
the Asheville, N.C., rock band Wednesday has and awe-inspiring drawings of the twentieth York), reinforces the notion that the highest
distilled shoegaze and alt-country into a little century, in part because his bold, graphic work form of surrealism is realism with a twist.
vortex. The writing of the singer and guitarist reflects so much of the horror of the times, with It’s centered on a young woman in Tehran,
Karly Hartzman is full of haunted memory frag- fervor, curiosity, and raw power. The grandson of a driving instructor, who thinks that she sees
ments of the American South, too damaged to be Holocaust survivors, Mandelbaum always drew, her husband entering another woman’s apart-
narratives but so evocative that they seem scenic, and in his pictures of family members, Jews, and ment. But he has an ironclad alibi, and when
with many images of things coming to ruin. “We Nazi war criminals, one can see the influence of he investigates, he discovers that he and his
had to add it to the tab / To die we’d have to settle Ralph Gleason and Art Spiegelman, artists who, wife are doubles of the other woman and her
up,” she sings on “Quarry,” from the band’s most like Mandelbaum, tackled big questions about husband. Haghighi unfolds in meticulous detail
recent album, the striking “Rat Saw God.” Hartz- identity and survival but provided no answers: to the identical couples’ differing circumstances
man operates in tandem with three other gui- each, history is open-ended, and life continues. (one couple has a child, more money, and legal
tarists—MJ Lenderman (lead), Xandy Chelmis Mandelbaum’s strong hand and imagination are trouble); the tense plot involves their risky
NATHALIE STERNALSKI

(lap steel), and Ethan Baechtold (bass)—and the evident everywhere in these fifty-seven works, and deceitful efforts to use their resemblances
drummer Alan Miller to summon both noise artfully arranged by the Drawing Center’s direc- to solve their problems. By way of deft and
and quiet, seeking escape from an endless mal- tor, Laura Hoptman. Part of the show’s force de- seamless C.G.I., the doubles appear together, to
aise.—Sheldon Pearce (Brooklyn Steel; Jan. 25.) rives from Mandelbaum’s love of women; his de- jolting and outrageous effect; Haghighi’s suave,
pictions of various lovers are so visceral, you can taut images shudder with cosmic humor and
ART| The brilliant Belgian-born artist Stéphane taste his joy and amazement in every line.—Hil- seethe with danger.—Richard Brody (Screening
Mandelbaum, who died in 1986, at the age of twen- ton Als (The Drawing Center; through Feb. 18.) Jan. 26 at IFC Center.)

4 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024

 1
PICK THREE
The staff writer Michael Schulman
shares his current obsessions.
1. One historic night in 1985, more than forty
music superstars convened in a Hollywood
recording studio to sing the anthem “We Are
the World,” to raise money for famine relief
in Africa. Bao Nguyen’s documentary “The
Greatest Night in Pop” (arriving on Netflix
on Jan. 29) retraces the evening’s logistical
nightmares and sonic magic, using extensive
archival footage and new interviews with such
luminaries as Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lau-
per, and Lionel Richie, who wrote the song
with Michael Jackson.
1
TABLES FOR TWO
with a spoon whose bowl was made from
the creature’s dried foot. Are there giant 2. The life of a drama critic isn’t typically one
whelks swimming around New York? Is of thrills and chills, but the Times journalist
Ilis there something profound in making a Alexis Soloski imagines otherwise in her noir-
150 Green St., Brooklyn whelk taste, quite pleasingly, like sour-
ish début novel, “Here in the Dark.” Drawing on
a real incident from Soloski’s time at the Village
Midway through a recent meal at Ilis, the cream-and-onion chips? Voice—a young man asked to interview her, then
new, dramatic tasting-menu restaurant A meal at Ilis is remarkable, full of apparently went missing after their meeting—
the book follows an icy, vodka-swilling theatre
run by the Danish chef Mads Refslund, fantastical flourishes and clever manipu- critic who gets entangled in a mystery. (The
I looked up from a piece of carmine-red lations, and some of the dishes I tried are Broadway star Laura Benanti reads the audio-
bigeye-tuna loin, mirror-glazed in stone- among the most satisfying I’ve had in ages. book.) Think “The Flight Attendant,” with
Sophocles jokes.
fruit vinegar and only barely cooked atop That glazed bigeye tuna melted on the
a square of kombu, and wondered, for a tongue into a glossy slick of seawater and 3. After releasing the demented Thanksgiving
moment, exactly where I was. I knew, of fat and sweetness; a stern-looking dessert special “Our Home Out West,” a parody of
small-town melodrama, the impish comedic
course, that I was in a cavernous former porridge made of rye and dark chocolate dynamo Cole Escola takes on the role they
warehouse in Greenpoint, but there was was extraordinarily subtle. Other dishes were born to play: Mary Todd Lincoln. In
something about the evening that was are less thrilling, though perhaps this is an “Oh, Mary!” (starting Jan. 26, at the Lucille
Lortel), Escola embodies the former First
disorienting, that smacked of elsewhere. unfortunate upshot of their exquisite con- Lady—complete with gowns and histrionics—
The placelessness that suffuses Ilis is, text. Antelope tartare, intriguing in theory, in the days leading up to the assassination of
I suspect, part of the design. Much has tasted flat and underseasoned. A fluke her husband (Conrad Ricamora), telling the
tale “through the lens of an idiot.”
been made of Refslund’s involvement ceviche, presented early in the meal, was

ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRISTOPH NIEMANN (TOP); MARTHA VERSCHAFFEL (BOTTOM)

with Noma, the high-concept Copen- overwhelmed by enormous hunks of citrus
hagen restaurant that became famous interleaved with the thinly sliced flesh.
for turning hyper-local ingredients into I thought that I’d booked the shorter
bite-size, highly specific documents of of Ilis’s two tasting menus, but as the
the natural world. There’s a bit of Noma’s courses rolled in I started to doubt
PHOTOGRAPH BY WILLIAM JESS LAIRD FOR THE NEW YORKER;

DNA at Ilis, not just in the Scandinavian myself. I tried to count, but lost track
aesthetic but in the audacity of its creative somewhere around a dish of Brussels
ambition, its sense of cooking as a form sprouts “on the cob” (spice-encrusted,
of art—but where Noma was all about fantastic; I ate them off the stalk with
anchoring the ephemerality of food to the intensity of a pig rooting for truffles).
concrete notions of place and time, Ilis There was no printed menu to refer to,
seems to be committed, body and soul, and the bill, when it came, was hand-
to abstraction. written on a scrap of paper. But what’s
“Mads loves the idea of using part a few hundred dollars and a half-dozen
of an animal as the tool to eat it,” a courses between friends? Swirling in
chef-cum-server said, as she laid down the vortex of Refslund’s culinary vision,
a preparation of giant whelk with chive there is simply nothing to do but give in. NEWYORKER.COM/GO
oil and a buttery foam. It had been piped (Tasting menu $195-$295.) Sign up to receive the Goings On newsletter,
into the whelk’s shell, and was presented —Helen Rosner curated by our writers and editors, in your in-box.

6 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024

Intelligent political
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(For once.)
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 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT when potential jurors were asked whether to consolidate the support of the Party
TRIALS AND THE TRAIL they believed that the 2020 election had before his most serious cases get under
been stolen, three raised their hands (none way, so that he can campaign against the
s a way of launching the race for the was selected), and Trump raised his hand, charges as partisan fictions. This may ex-
A Republican Presidential nomina-
tion, the Iowa and New Hampshire con-
too. On Wednesday, Carroll’s lawyer said
that Trump was disrupting the proceed-
plain his curiously subdued performance
after his win in Iowa, which derailed the
tests offer a neat thematic juxtaposition: ings by “muttering” loudly enough for campaign of Ron DeSantis, his only real
in the Midwest, candidates fight for the jurors to hear him say that the trial was challenger on the right. Speaking at the
social-conservative vote; in New England, a “con job” and a “witch hunt.”The judge Hotel Fort Des Moines, Trump praised
for the support of small-business own- threatened to throw him out. “I’d love both DeSantis and Nikki Haley, and re-
ers. Last week, after winning the Iowa that,” Trump replied. But, as he has been peatedly urged the Party to “come to-
caucus by thirty points, Donald Trump pointing out on the campaign trail, the gether.” In recent campaign appearances,
complicated the story by ping-ponging indictments and trials have had a way of Trump has tended to stand alone on the
between New Hampshire and a Man- strengthening his support among Re- stage and deliver a harangue, but in Des
hattan courtroom, where a jury is con- publicans. Trump’s first Presidential cam- Moines he was flanked by his sons Eric
sidering the amount of damages he now paign, in 2016, was launched in an atmo- and Don, Jr., and devoted part of his me-
owes E. Jean Carroll for defaming her by sphere of displacement and rage. This andering victory speech to the sports
saying that she lied when she accused one is being conducted in a posture of preferences and tall height of his young-
him of rape. “Here’s my schedule for the relentless victimhood. est son, Barron. Donald Trump, politi-
next four or five days,”Trump told a crowd Maybe that’s a more effective posi- cal conciliator and family man? It would
in Atkinson, New Hampshire, on Tues- tion than at first it sounds. One way to be a real turn. But organizing his cam-
day evening. “I come here, I meet with interpret it is that the trials have imposed paign around the idea that the trials are
great groups in New Hampshire. I then a deadline and he is in a race to beat it: a Democratic setup means that Trump
get on the plane late at night when it’s has to get the whole Party behind him,
snowing and freezing out—wonderful. even those members who have long found
And the pilot says, ‘Sir, it’s gonna be tough.’ him immoral, vindictive, or extreme.
And I get there early in the morning, I Trump isn’t really running as a pop-
go to a Biden witch hunt, then I come ulist insurgent this time. He’s acting like
here in the afternoon.” Trump’s trials, in something closer to a conventional leader
which he faces ninety-one felony counts, of the Republican Party—though it’s a
have often been described as a potential party, of course, that he has completely
distraction for the candidate. But Trump, remade. His reëmergence as its front-run-
who complained in Atkinson that he has ner in this election, after he tried to
been indicted more times than Al Ca- overturn the results of the last one, has
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA

pone, did not sound distracted or gloomy required both capitulations within the
about the prospect of spending that time Party (from Mitch McConnell’s failure
in court. Quite the opposite. to push G.O.P. senators to convict
Trump wasn’t required to appear at Trump during his second impeachment
the Carroll trial at all. But he found it trial to Marco Rubio’s and Ted Cruz’s
politically advantageous to be there, not endorsements, last week, of the can-
so much menacing the courtroom as didate they once denounced) and
Dennis-the-Menacing it. On Tuesday, mistakes made outside it. The Biden
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 9
Justice Department’s yearlong slow roll tie was the last Republican contender short of overwhelming. His events are
of its January 6th investigation, out of to criticize Trump over January 6th, and held mostly in hotel ballrooms and coun-
a “wariness to appear partisan,” as the the former President probably expects try clubs, rather than the arenas of yore;
Washington Post put it, now looks a lit- that, if he keeps attacking judges and he says little that is new; the crowds tend
tle naïve. The trouble for Biden isn’t just prosecutors, and pushing grandiose to thin noticeably as he rambles on. They
that Trump remains the central figure claims of immunity (such as that, ab- chuckle when he says “crooked Joe
in U.S. politics. It’s also that, to some sent an impeachment conviction, he Biden,” but there is nothing like the cas-
voters, Biden’s inability to move his pre- wouldn’t be criminally liable even if, as cading chants of “Lock her up!” directed
decessor offstage just demonstrates the President, he had ordered Seal Team at Hillary Clinton in 2016. Even Trump’s
ineffectualness of his Administration. Six to assassinate a rival), most of the Iowa “landslide” consisted of just fifty-
Trump’s unity stance may be super- remaining holdouts in the Party will, if six thousand votes, and half of Republi-
ficial—not even a full day after his Iowa not support him, shuffle their feet and cans wanted someone else. Lately, Trump
win, he was back to mocking DeSantis look the other way. has been working into his stump speech
and Haley—but it seems that it can still Is it clever, or deluded, for Trump to an attack on Fani Willis, the Fulton
have an effect. The religious conserva- see his trials as a political opportunity? County D.A., who indicted him for con-
tives who helped defeat him in Iowa in He has already been found liable for sex- spiring to pressure Georgia officials to
2016 largely supported him this time; at ual abuse, in the Carroll case, and he still invalidate his loss in the state in 2020—
Davos, mainstream business leaders in- faces charges of financial fraud, taking and whom one of his co-defendants has
cluding Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of JP- documents marked classified from the accused of an alleged conflict of inter-
Morgan Chase, found ways to praise White House and refusing to give them est. For Trump, the attraction of the tri-
him. On Friday, Senator Tim Scott, who back, and conspiring to overturn a fed- als, in an election characterized so far by
has been viewed as an approachable mod- eral election—not exactly a winning ros- general indifference, may be quite basic.
erate, endorsed Trump over Haley, his ter. On the icy campaign trail this month, They give him something to talk about.
fellow South Carolinian. Chris Chris- Trump’s presence has been something —Benjamin Wallace-Wells

IF YOU BUILD IT mostly aboveground. In a move that a judge, and went to prison for tax eva-
A SHUL IS A SHUL IS A SHUL has tickled architectural historians, he sion. The mansion was repossessed by
encouraged the construction of nu- the bank, which sold it to the Rebbe’s
merous replicas of 770 Eastern Park- father-in-law, a rabbi who had just fled
way around the world, in Los Angeles, the Nazis in Poland and was looking for
Aspen, Cleveland, Tacoma, Jerusalem, a headquarters for the Lubavitchers. He
São Paulo, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Milan, didn’t buy the house for its old-timey de-
Montreal, Melbourne, and Dharamkot, tails (stained-glass sailboats, inset quatre-
ecently, in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights India, where it sits not too far from the foils, an oriel window, ornamented span-
R neighborhood, a ye-olde Tudor-style
mansion at 770 Eastern Parkway made
Dalai Lama’s temple. The distinctive fa-
çades have become a worldwide sym-
drels, rumors of a crucifix). The deciding
factor? The Rebbe’s father-in-law, who
headlines when a group of young Ha- bol of Hasidic Judaism. They also look had been tortured by the Soviets, required
sidic men were filmed brawling with po- as if Henry XIII could’ve lived there. an elevator, and the mansion had one.
lice after emerging, improbably, out of a The building came into the Lubavitch-
homemade subterranean passageway in ers’ hands in 1940. “The doctor who first
a basement shul. The Times: “Alterca- owned the building had interesting taste,”
tion over secret synagogue tun- a Hasidic architect named Eli Meltzer
nel.”The Post: “SubVEY! cha‘bad’ boys said on a snowy afternoon last week, look-
spark hole-y war by digging ille- ing up at the shul. Meltzer had joined
gal tunnel under 2rooklyn syna- some rabbis for a history lesson about
gogue.” The tunnel in question, which Lubavitcher H.Q. In the nineteen-thir-
is about the length of a bowling lane, ties, the doctor, a Jew, commissioned the
became the subject of intense public in- three-story, triple-gabled, neo-Gothic
terest, as the incident involved several Tudor revival (other historians have ar-
Lubavitcher extremists, vile antisemitic gued that it’s more neo-Jacobean) mansion
conspiracy theories, and cops dropping from an architect named Edwin Kline.
Yiddish. The radicals who built it be- The style telegraphed Old World wealth,
lieved they were carrying out the wishes like a proto-McMansion. Kline also built
of the Moshiach—the Chabad-Lubavitch a Tudor revival for Oscar Hammerstein,
Messiah, the late Rebbe Menachem on Long Island. As the Jewish news out-
Mendel Schneerson, who often spoke let the Forward has chronicled, the doc-
of his wish to expand the movement. tor, who performed illegal abortions in
In fact, the Rebbe did expand—but the house, lost his medical license, bribed 770 Eastern Parkway
10 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
 “This is the elevator!” Meltzer said, a building that would be able to contain ine and go, ‘That’s Mark Mothersbaugh!’”
standing in 770’s foyer, pointing to a everyone,” he said. The rabbi laughed. he recalled. “And she looked at the others
wooden door next to the late Rebbe’s of- “There’s no place to go. That’s why some at his table and said, ‘And that’s Devo!’”
fice, which was locked. Meltzer wore a kids started to dig!” Meltzer, the archi- Last summer, Hawk’s teen-age daugh-
black kippah, black pants, black Sorel tect, said that he preferred new construc- ter attended theatre camp in the city, and
boots, and a green Gore-Tex jacket over tion projects: “We like to build, man.” the family rented a place on the Lower
a black blazer and a white shirt. After —Adam Iscoe East Side. Hawk was also finishing what
the father-in-law died, Meltzer explained, 1 would become his farewell “video part,”
the Rebbe took over; until his death, in VISITING DIGNITARY the skateboarding equivalent of a writ-
1994, his mission was expansion—more SKATER LOVE er’s final novel. The part, “Tapes You
worshippers, and more places to wor- Leave Behind,” required more than four
ship. That meant more iterations of the years to complete—for one thing, Hawk
very goyische 770 Eastern Parkway. Each took a hiatus from filming while he un-
new temple is a near-copy of the origi- derwent two major surgeries. The first
nal Crown Heights mansion: three ga- procedure occurred after he miscalcu-
bles, a central bay window, reddish brick. lated his landing on an aerial and broke
Starting in 2004, the photographers couple of diehard skaters were un- his femur—“I tried getting up, but my
Andrea Robbins and Max Becher spent
a decade surveying them. “We photo-
A deterred by the slushy weather in
the Andy Kessler Skate Park, near the
leg didn’t come with me. It was point-
ing in the wrong direction.” The second
graphed them up close, so that one could Henry Hudson Parkway. They weren’t surgery was less than a year later, the
see what was carried over,” Robbins said together, and each moved in his own consequence of returning to skating
recently. In the Milan temple, the central loose orbit, trying different tricks and before his femur had healed. A docu-
oriel became a balcony; in Los Angeles, a carving around puddles. One was a teen-
sort of red brick mansion was built atop a ager dressed for the cold—beanie, parka,
parking garage. The 770 replica in Aspen, and pillowy snowboard gloves. The other,
Colorado, looks more like a ski chalet than a lanky middle-aged man shivering in
an English revival. “They’re filled with jeans and a hoodie, was Tony Hawk.
compromise,” Robbins said. “That’s part of “My schedule’s so jammed that I
the spirit of putting one up.” Meltzer, who didn’t want to waste time going back to
designed a 770 in El Paso with an Alamo- the hotel for warmer clothes,” Hawk
style false façade, said, “Every detail must said, rubbing his hands together. “That
be preserved, but for any number of rea- might’ve been a mistake.” At fifty-five,
sons they can’t be—and, by divine prov- Hawk is a philanthropist, an entrepre-
idence, it ends up being something else.” neur, the titular character in a bil-
Robbins and Becher, whose other proj- lion-dollar video-game franchise, and
ects include a study of Cracker Barrels, the most iconic skateboarder ever to
also photographed each replica from a have lived. He’d flown in from Califor-
distance. The red brick 770 in Jerusalem, nia the night before and spent the morn-
stuck amid a hillside of white limestone ing at City Hall, lobbying for public
houses, suggests “Where’s Waldo?”; São skate parks. That evening, he was being
Paulo’s doll-house-style 770 is sandwiched honored at a gala, and he would fly home,
between two modern high-rises. Like the to San Diego, the next day to record an Tony Hawk
Zabar’s building, an incongruous half-tim- episode of his podcast, “Hawk vs Wolf.”
bered Tudor-style structure on upper This was his only window for skating. mentary about his recovery is currently
Broadway, the architecture of the repli- “My first trip to the city was in the being shopped around Hollywood.
cas feels out of place with their standing mid-eighties, on a Bones Brigade tour,” “After I’d recovered enough to be
as Jewish landmarks. “To my mind, there’s he said. “Back then, there was nowhere creative, I remembered I’d been work-
something a little Waspy about anything to skate, so we just stopped at CBGB ing on a part,” he said. “Once I com-
that’s an English revival,” Louis Loftus, to buy T-shirts and got back on the mitted to finishing, I realized it was
who briefly researched the 770 replicas road.” He dropped into a half-pipe. “Ev- going to be more difficult—and ex-
as an architectural-history Ph.D. student erything’s changed for the better,” he hausting—than I’d ever imagined. I
at Princeton, said last week. said. “This city cares about skaters.” didn’t set out for this to be my final
Back at the Lubavitcher H.Q. in Hawk and his wife, Catherine, first vis- project, but here we are.
Crown Heights—the O.G. 770—Rabbi ited New York together in 2010. They’d “That term, ‘video part,’ used to make
Chaim Halberstam, who wore a long gray arrived late and headed straight for Blue sense, by the way,” Hawk said. “It was
beard and a longer black coat, showed off Ribbon Brasserie. When they walked in, a your three or four minutes in an hour-
a photograph that he had taken in 1976— diner in bottle-thick glasses slid back his long video with other skaters. Full-length
the shul, filled with thousands of elated chair to block their path. Hawk recognized skate videos are a lost art form because
worshippers. “Today, I don’t think there’s the man immediately. “I turn to Cather- of costs and logistics, so now the part is
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 11
the whole. Part of what, though? The put down his board and pushed toward about fifteen hundred figures in his
Internet, I guess.” the embankment.The teen-ager followed. Upper West Side apartment. He pho-
As a cold wind whooshed through “It’s a rad park for sure,” Hawk said. tographed them and began digitally
the park, Hawk flowed from the half- “Oh, definitely,” the kid said. “Every stitching the images together to form
pipe to the street section and back. He time I skate here, you’re here, too.” constellations of figures that zoom out
improvised routes in order to hit every —Bret Anthony Johnston to reveal patterns—sinewy loops be-
obstacle, as if collecting tokens in a video 1 coming a field of lace that expands into
game. Despite his injury, he looked age- DEPT. OF KNOTS an amoeba-like colony of bulbous or-
less on his board. When he snapped a STRINGING ALONG ganisms. “These are like little sacred
lofty ollie over an embankment, the teen- clowns for me,” he said, flipping through
ager finally clocked who’d been skating the photographs on an iPad.
with him; he started patting his pock- His string creations recently found a
ets for his phone. wider audience when the Whitney Mu-
“I feel humbled and, I don’t know, lib- seum asked him to lead a family work-
erated?” Hawk said about skating after shop, part of the programming connected
the release of “Tapes.” “It doesn’t feel like n 1979, the artist James Inoli Murphy to “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The
I have some herculean goal to reach every
session. I used to get obsessed and, like,
Iures—those
tried out the idea of using string fig-
cat’s-cradle games of loops
Art of Harry Smith,” an exhibition of the
work of the Beat polymath, which in-
angry. I’d get this intense tunnel vision, and knots—to teach math to recalcitrant cludes some of Smith’s own string figures.
and people have told me, after the fact, students. “It is a pleasure, it is an active Murphy, who is eighty-five, arrived at the
that I’ve made them uncomfortable when meditation, and it is an entire ballet—a museum dressed in mismatched socks that
we skated together. Now it can kind of hand dance that you are doing,” he said coördinated with strings wrapped around
feel like I’m coasting, and I’ve never liked the other day, slipping a string off his his wrists. He knew Smith in the old days;
coasting, but I’m trying to embrace it. wrist and sliding it around his crooked the workshop would teach people how to
I’m thinking of it as a new trick. It’s fun.” fingers. The students in the remedial Top- make some basic string forms. “This is
The teen-ager skated up, dragging ics in Math class that he taught at La- not my art that I’m showing here. That’s
his toe to slow down while casually ex- Guardia, the city’s performing-arts high my art,” he said pointing to the iPad. But,
tending his glove for a fist bump. Then school, took to the approach. “The dance as an educator, he said, “this is the cul-
he asked for a selfie. “I met you here over department fell in love with me,” he said. mination of what I’ve been trying to do.”
the summer,” he said. Murphy, who is Cherokee and wears Families sprawled on rugs were al-
“Good to see you again,” Hawk said his hair in a long white ponytail, retired ready fiddling with museum-issued
with practiced courtesy. “You been skat- from full-time teaching in 1996, but strings. The grownups squinted in con-
ing much?” never stopped making string figures. A fusion, while the children whipped their
“Yeah, but this is actually only my sec- few years ago, he began using a spray-on hands through the air.
ond time at this park,” he said. Light was acrylic fixative to preserve them. During Andrew Lampert, who has co-edited
fading, but there was still enough. Hawk the pandemic, he estimated, he made a book about Smith’s string work, intro-
duced the workshop. “Harry Smith was
fascinated with these games and string-
figure formations and sought to find out
why they existed across so many differ-
ent cultures,” he said. Smith was a kid
in the Pacific Northwest when he vis-
ited a reservation and saw Native Amer-
icans doing string figures.
In the nineteen-eighties, when Mur-
phy was diving deeper into strings, he
looked up Smith, who was down on his
luck and living on and off with Allen
Ginsberg. Murphy wanted to see some
out-of-print string-work books in Smith’s
collection. “He had them but he wouldn’t
show them to me,” Murphy said. “He
took notes on what I did.” They began
hanging out together anyway. “I wasn’t
getting anything out of him, but I like
talking strings, and he liked talking
strings,” Murphy said. “And he liked beer.”
Rani Singh, the director of the Harry
“It seems like all we talk about anymore is the weather.” Smith Archive and a co-curator of the
Whitney show, smiled. “Harry was a it should also branch out into smart- they were using machine learning to
gleaner of information, not a sharer,” she phone apps, for crowdsourcing sightings. assign a score to sightings, based on
said. (Last summer, Singh travelled to a The creator of one such app, Enigma factors such as credibility and uniden-
string-figure workshop in Zurich, where Labs, was not named in the report, but tifiability. The algorithm is still a work
she revealed the existence of a thou- its authors have met with the company. in progress. A recent browsing of sight-
sand-page manuscript by Smith, detail- Enigma’s founder and C.E.O. is ing reports included one, from Dela-
ing all his string knowledge.) something of an unidentified anoma- ware City, which began, “Watching
At the workshop, Murphy introduced lous phenomenon herself. Publicly, she vintage baseball game, spotted 4, sta-
himself and said, “I just want you to see goes by a single initial, “A.” “It has al- tionary, metallic objects to the north of
what it looks like live.” With a flour- lowed me to really focus,” she said of the our location.” A photo reveals what look
ish, he brandished a series of diamonds pseudonym recently, at Enigma’s offices, like marker balls on power lines. (Score:
between his hands. The crowd gasped. on the Lower East Side, “because there’s 36 out of 100.)
Murphy flexed his wrists and the figure so much noise out there. The Internet’s Another user posted a video of a black
unravelled. As he moved on to the next full of keyboard warriors.” dot in a blue sky, perhaps a bag in the
figure, he noticed that no one was watch- Citizens report U.A.P. sightings on breeze, near the Empire State Building.
ing anymore. “In my class, I would make the Enigma app and can also view reports “It’s like doing a breaststroke motion,”
everybody put the strings down when I clustered by location. An augmented- the observer commented. “It kind of
talked,” he said. He shrugged. “They’re reality lens lets users point a phone up- looked like it was swimming through
playing with strings, they’re not listen- ward, and then displays and I.D.s planes, gravity waves.” (Score: 19.)
ing to me. It’s just the way strings are.” satellites, and other mundane objects. A, Two outside guests attended an all-
Around the room, ropy figures formed who is tall and thin, said, “It’s Shazam hands meeting. One, Nick Pope, who in-
and then disappeared between flicking fin- for what’s in the skies.” There’s also a vestigated U.A.P.s at the U.K.’s Ministry
gers, winking in and out like fireflies.There camera feature that records uncompressed of Defense and now does media com-
were occasional calls for help. Like a yoga video and embeds metadata, such as film- mentary for such TV shows as “Ancient
instructor making adjustments, he obliged. ing location and angle, for later descrip- Aliens,” described alien sightings as “al-
Nancy Salomon Miranda, a teacher tion and verification of phenomena. most the ultimate low-probability, high-
at P.S. 146, in Brooklyn, watched from a A expects the app to inspire a growing impact scenario.”The other, Josh McFar-
chair at the side of the room. Murphy movement. “It’s no different from peo- land, a venture capitalist, gave a business
had taught strings to her fifth-grade class ple who go to Burning Man or are into pep talk. “You’re looking for speeds, ma-
before the pandemic. “Math is extremely wellness, meditation, yoga, psychedelics, neuvers, and accelerations outside of the
frustrating,” she said. “If you can work all that stuff,” she said. “What we’re re- natural envelope,” he said. “That’s the
through your frustration with the strings, ally banking on is this movement that I definition of a startup.”
you probably can work through your frus- think SpaceX, the Webb telescope, all of “If I was Sean Kirkpatrick,” Pope said,
tration with math.” While the group kept this, is driving, which is just as interest- naming the then director of the Depart-
twiddling, someone asked Murphy, “Do ing—Are we alone?” She described the ment of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly
you know anything about string theory?” range of experiences that users report: “At Resolution Office, “I would be saying,
Murphy shook his head. “That’s phys- the very casual end, it’s, ‘I was drunk and ‘Please take this for us.’ Because you’ll get
ics,” he said. saw a Starlink,’ or whatever. On the very some good stuff, but you get the crazies.
—Sophia Hollander extreme end, it’s, ‘This moment was the There’s no way he can do his job if he’s
1 biggest moment in my life.’” While im- inundated with public data, yet Congress
BRAVE NEW WORLD plementing data science, the team wants has kind of mandated you to do that job.”
LOOK UP to offer a safe space for users who may feel “Well, the congressmen know us
traumatized and isolated. Enigma Labs pretty well,” A said. “I’ve met with a lot
decided not to mark cases on the app as of them, and they love us. ”
resolved (when, say, the U.A.P. is clearly a Employees keep their levels of belief
balloon); they won’t harsh anyone’s buzz. to themselves. A isn’t interested in try-
“We’re in listening mode,” A said. ing to explain stubborn U.A.P. cases;
As opposed to Martian hunters who she’s happy to entertain the possibility
re aliens among us? Last Septem- fixate on little green men, A said, “we see of ancient aliens, future humans, ad-
A ber, NASA released its Unidentified
Anomalous Phenomena Independent
ourselves as a quite clean break from the
past, and just approaching it as a Silicon
vanced fighters, billionaires’ antigravity
toys, multidimensional projections, or
Study Team Report. (“U.A.P.” is just a Valley startup would approach any prob- humdrum drones. “U.A.P. is a new field,”
rebranding of “U.F.O.,” without the fly- lem.” Enigma is in talks with government she said. “It can’t be a category until you
ing-saucer baggage.) The study team rec- agencies about combining its reports with have data to work with. We’re doing the
ommended that NASA collect and ana- radar and satellite data. She went on, “The picks and shovels of that. And hopefully
lyze more types of data in more types of holy grail is to have the low-side civilians we’ll empower a lot of people to come
ways than ever before. The agency has and the high-side eyes on the same thing.” up with their own theories. We’ll leave
long had satellites and supercomput- Two Enigma data scientists joined that to the Nobel Prize winners.”
ers at its disposal; the report said that A in a conference room to discuss how —Matthew Hutson
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 13
 the front hall of our dormitory at Kent
PERSONAL HISTORY State, and Dawn was a year younger.
We know each other’s siblings, and
before they all died we knew each oth-
GOODYEAR er’s parents as well. Dawn’s father was
a jazz musician who fell to his death
On tires, toenails, and walks with an old friend. in a skydiving accident when he was
fifty. Her mother was a former flight
BY DAVID SEDARIS attendant who doted on her two sons
but constantly picked at her daugh-
ter’s appearance, though I’ll never un-
derstand why. Dawn dresses like a
Swiss person. That is to say, she looks
at all times as if she is headed to the
airport, where she will f ly business
class. Everything matches or is color-
coördinated, usually in earth tones.
When I tell people that her wedding
dress was brown, she corrects me, say-
ing, “Not brown—driftwood.”
Which is brown.
She makes all her own clothes,
Dawn, save for some socks and un-
derwear, though she could likely turn
those out as well. Of everyone I know,
she’d fare best if forced to live in a se-
cluded cabin or fifteenth-century Eu-
rope. She just has that look about her—
wiry and no-nonsense. Doesn’t own
any makeup. Smells like a cardboard
box. Dawn grows her hair out, then
chops it off to donate it to cancer pa-
tients. What remains is naturally straw-
colored—not a touch of gray—and
easy to imagine beneath a bonnet or
a snood. She hasn’t used an A.T.M.
since 1990, when the machine ate her
card, and as for a phone, forget it. Can’t
make calls but can make yarn, paper,
ink, and some kind of non-dairy ice
t was a midsummer afternoon and an hour ago,” never moans that her cream that tastes like fallen leaves.
Iwalking
my old friend Dawn and I were
from an un-air-conditioned
feet are tired or so swollen that her
shoes no longer fit. The farther the awn travels with me quite often
Nepalese restaurant to our hotel in
the dull, flat town of Montrose, Col-
better, that’s our motto.
Our record is forty-three miles in
D when I’m on tour. She likes work-
ing the line, writing people’s names
orado. The sun seemed larger than a single day—ninety-one thousand on Post-it notes and sticking them
usual, and brighter. It felt as if we steps, according to our Fitbits. “Where to the title pages of the books to
were under a broiler. The road we did you do this?” people ask when I be signed.
were on was six lanes wide, or maybe boast about it. It’s a question that baf- “Who was that . . . woman?” some-
eight. There was no sidewalk, so we fles me. If someone told me he’d eaten one will invariably ask, implying that
were pressed right up against the curb, seventy-five corn dogs in one sitting, Dawn had been strict or unfriendly.
being passed by flatulent motorcy- my response wouldn’t be “Where?” Once, in Uruguay, I forced her to
cles—their riders helmetless—and but “Why not seventy-six corn dogs? take a test that would determine
eighteen-wheel trucks that were Why not eighty?” whether she was autistic. I’d had my
equally loud but at least generated a We always talk about breaking our suspicions but became certain after we
breeze. One of the many good things record—going for a hundred thou- spent a Halloween together and I
about Dawn is that she never com- sand steps—but now I worry that we watched her hand miniature staplers
plains about walking, never says, “You might be too old, and how weird is and homemade granola bars to the
told me it was only another few blocks that? I was nineteen when we met in trick-or-treaters who came to her door.
14 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY MIKEL JASO
 “Kids don’t want crap like that,” I It was exactly what I would do. “I “. . . you’ve lost a toenail,” Dawn said.
told her as one after another stomped wonder what percentage of people “Sometimes I’ll tape mine back on,”
off into the dark. would put it off to the last minute,” I she continued. “It gives the little mem-
“Sure they do,” she said. “I mean, said. “Can you imagine? Time is al- brane underneath more protection as
it’s the kind of stuff I’d want.” most up. You have a knife in one hand, it grows.”
“Yes, well, you’re strange.” a fork in the other, and are staring This was something that I hadn’t
To my great surprise, Dawn turned down an untouched radial tire think- known. “You tape your toenails back on?”
out not to be autistic. ing, Fuck!” She looked down at her feet. “Well,
What puts people off is most likely A convertible roared by, and we sure, but not all of them.”
her body language—the way she crosses could briefly hear the music the driver The young woman’s next question
her arms over her chest, for example, was playing, a song that neither of us had to do with pH balance. Dawn got
makes her look impatient. Also, her would ever voluntarily listen to. “That’s that answer right, too, though it may
voice can be kind of flat. Totally flat, what my brother would do—put it have been luck. I mean, it was multi-
actually, if she doesn’t know you. off,” I told her. “Then, there’d be peo- ple choice.
“What?” she says when I point it out. ple who’d wait until the last minute
“I’m friendly. I’m always friendly!” and beg you to help them. It’s the Ant e were in Montrose because we
During the height of the pandemic,
a woman spit on Dawn. “We were in
and the Grasshopper, when you re-
ally think about it, and, though I’m
W had to fly out very early the next
morning, and so it seemed smarter to
the grocery store, and I hadn’t done not proposing this, if you had to cull stay near the airport than in Telluride,
anything to her,” she told me. “I guess the population, I think this would where my reading would take place.
she didn’t like that I had a mask on.” be a pretty good way to do it. Those Because I never got my license and
One of Dawn’s lungs collapsed when who eat their tire by the deadline stay. Dawn is, admittedly, a hopelessly bad
she was in her late fifties, so she was Those who put it off and make ex- driver, a man named Kevin had been
super cautious about Covid—kept her cuses die.” hired to chauffeur us. He was sixty, I
face covered long after everyone else “That seems fair,” Dawn said, add- guessed, and had graying hair gath-
had returned to normal. We were in ing that kids could be given bicycle tires. ered into a foot-long ponytail. When
Chicago together, at O’Hare, in the Kevin was young, he and his brothers
spring of 2022, when I told her she ur hotel in Montrose was so would set traps and catch muskrats
needed to take it off.
“But—” she said.
O close to the airport we could
hear car doors slamming as passen-
and beavers. Mountain lions as well.
“Then we’d skin ’em out and sell the
“Let it go,” I told her. “Everyone gers were dropped off at the termi- pelts for clothes and school supplies,”
else has.” nal. “Love you.” “Call us when you he told us.
I felt like a director coercing an get there.” Dawn, sitting beside me in the back
actress to unhook her bra for a sex It was a boxy chain place, meat- seat, mending a shirt that I had torn,
scene. “Come on,” I said. “You can do locker cold and smelling of chlorine. adjusted her glasses. “Killing mountain
this. Start by just . . . lowering it to But the young woman at the front lions! I don’t like that one bit!”
your chin.” desk, who had a streak of blue in her I didn’t like it, either, but what do
She took off her mask, and then of hair and wore enough makeup for I know of life in the West, of grow-
course immediately got Covid—a bad three people her size, was efficient and ing up poor on the back of a horse?
case, too. All my fault, but she’s never welcoming. While checking in earlier Then, too, I’m just not confronta-
held it against me. that afternoon, we’d learned that she’d tional. If someone told me he kept a
soon be taking the exam for her cos- dozen teen-age girls locked in his
ifteen months later, walking along metology license. Her study book was basement as sex slaves, I’d likely ask,
F the busy highway in Montrose, Col-
orado, we came upon three eighteen-
beside her when we came in after
lunch, so we asked her to throw us a
“Does it cost a lot to feed them?” Not
Dawn, though.
wheelers parked on a dusty lot. The few test questions. “The other night, we were in Bea-
doors of one were open, and inside were “O.K.,” she said, and glanced down, ver Creek,” I said to Kevin, hoping to
stacks of new-smelling tires. “If you squinting. “How long does it take for change the subject. “Have you been?
had a year, do you think you could eat a lost toenail to grow back?” They have a store there that sells wine
one of those?” I asked, pausing to wipe “A year,” Dawn said quickly, the and spirits and is called Beaver Liquors.
the dirt and sweat off my forehead with way a contestant on a game show No joke!”
a bandanna I’d been carrying. “If you might, adding that she and I lose them As he laughed, we came upon a
had to, I mean.” all the time. mean-looking town where, we were
Dawn looked inside the truck. “A The young woman took a half step told, “True Grit” had been filmed. The
tire? Sure, if it didn’t kill me. First thing back. “Why?” hills surrounding it were scrub-covered
I’d do is cut it into three hundred and “Because we walk so much,” I told and severe—crawling with snakes, I
sixty-five pieces, then divide each of her. “Every other month, I’ll pull off a suspected. A sign in front of a church
those into pill-size portions I’d eat sock, feel something hard inside of it, read “It’s Not Hot as Hell.”
throughout the day.” and realize . . .” A bit farther along, the land was
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 15
 greener, and Kevin pointed out Ralph the kid, who’d be in mandatory coun-
Lauren’s nearly seventeen-thousand- selling for the rest of her life.”
acre Double RL Ranch. Then he It’s startling to age and hear your-
showed us a spot where, a few nights self talking like this: “When I was
earlier, he’d come upon a bear and her young, a child could have a lonely adult
cub crossing the road. “They was tak- bachelor as a friend!”
ing their sweet time, too,” he said. “I “He had a lot of javelins in his
Conversations stopped right yonder and waited for house,” Dawn recalled. “It turned out
them to reach the other side.” he’d thrown them at the ’64 Olympics.”
that change The land changed again an hour or “That makes it even better!” I
so later, as we neared Telluride. Now said, brushing some cottonwood fluff
your world. there were steep mountains with red
cliffs visible through the aspens. “Prong-
from the back of her dress, then leav-
ing my hand to rest for a moment on
horns get up there, then kick damn her shoulder.
rocks down on you,” Kevin said. I had
been on the fence about him but now hen people ask how I know
felt certain that, given a year, he would
have not only eaten his tire but helped
W Dawn, I sometimes say, “She
was my girlfriend my second year of
someone else eat theirs. college.” I always worry, though, that
it makes her look dumb, especially if
ecause of its film festival, I’d thought I’m at the theatre after a reading and
B Telluride might be good-sized,
but in fact it’s dinky—only two and
am wearing a sports coat that for all
intents and purposes is a gown. She
a half thousand year-round residents. was my girlfriend, though. Held my
We had arrived early and had an hand as someone in our dorm base-
hour to wander about before return- ment pierced my ear. Wrapped her
ing for sound check. Know someone arms around my waist as we sledded
for as long as I’ve known Dawn and down the campus’s one decent hill.
you figure you’ve got pretty much ev- Stayed up nights to help me with
erything covered, at least in your pasts. sculpture projects. Everyone knew us
So it surprised me, during our walk, as a couple. We were in love. Back at
to learn that when she was seven she Kent State, loving Dawn meant hat-
Join The New Yorker’s
befriended a man of twenty-six who ing myself—for being gay, for being
editor, David Remnick, lived not far from her family in Mar- too cowardly to admit it, and, ulti-
for in-depth interviews ion, Ohio. “I don’t remember where mately, for hurting her the way I did.
we met. He was single, and I’d go to I will forever be grateful that she for-
and thought-provoking
his house after school. Maybe we’d gave me, and that we can be in love
discussions about politics, play board games or go on bike rides, again. “How’s your little wife?” Hugh
culture, and the arts. depending on the weather. He was a will ask after she and I have spent
lot of fun.” time together.
We had discovered Telluride’s out- Does Dawn’s husband, Matt, be-
door pool and were looking at the swim- have this way? I often wonder. The
mers through the chain-link fence. thing is that she and I knew each other
“What did your parents think?” I asked. first—before Hugh and Matt. Before
“For a long time, they didn’t know,” Reagan and AIDS. Before computers
Dawn said. “Then my dad found out. and Fox News and Run DMC. My
After the two of them finally met, he feelings toward her are proprietary.
came to me saying, ‘You didn’t men- Though currently on loan to her hus-
tion that your friend Howard is deaf.’ I band and stepchildren in the city of
was, like, ‘Really? I just thought he Red Wing, Minnesota, Dawn is mine,
was quiet.’ ” and although we’ve never discussed it,
“Quiet is letting the other person I’m pretty sure I’m hers as well. I know
do most of the talking,” I told her. “Deaf because I can feel it. When we’re trav-
is letting them do all of it. That aside, elling and when we’re apart. In high-
I love that no one made a big stink altitude Telluride and sea-level Sin-
about it. Can you imagine that hap- gapore. In Japan and the United Arab
pening now? The man would be ar- Emirates. In Argentina and Iowa and
rested, along with the parents. Every- all the places we go just so we can
one would go directly to jail except for walk our toenails off and be together. 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
 ⃞ You understand Pets.com doesn’t
SHOUTS & MURMURS exist anymore, right?
⃞ I don’t think storing boxes of stolen
confidential government files in a
bathroom should be considered
“staging” the bathroom for prospec-
tive buyers.
⃞ Your e-mails may cause drowsiness.
⃞ I have a problem with the women
on “Abbott Elementary” having that
kind of wardrobe on a public-school
teacher’s salary.
⃞ I am not a proofreader, and I know
pronouns are a delicate subject, but
“youse” is not a pronoun.
⃞ I don’t want to be inundated. I want
to be desired.
⃞ Exactly why does a marketing com-
pany need my platelets?
WE’RE SORRY ⃞ For the life of me, I have no idea
what “Chansons” is. Or are.
TO SEE YOU GO ⃞ Because “Come on, I’ll lose my job,
bro . . .” failed to charm me.
BY BILL SCHEFT ⃞ I don’t believe the Civil War was
fought over minimum wage.
Please select the reason you wish to ⃞ I think we should start seeing other ⃞ Seriously, there’s a show called “So
unsubscribe: e-mails. Help Me Todd”?
⃞ I thought this subscription was like ⃞ I had to. Today’s Wordle was SCRAP.
⃞ I didn’t sign up for these e-mails. Netf lix, where you drop all the ⃞ Why would a faith-based organiza-
⃞ I get too many of these e-mails. e-mails at once. tion offer me five hundred dollars
⃞ I don’t get enough of these e-mails. ⃞ I didn’t get an e-mail last month in free bonus wagers?
Yeah, that’s it. when my aunt died. Nice. ⃞ It’s all explained in my video, “Why
⃞ I receive enough of these e-mails, ⃞ And, yes, I checked my spam folder. I’m unsubscribing!,” recorded by
but I don’t “get” them. ⃞ I find the font you use in the sub- George Santos for five hundred
⃞ I don’t remember signing up for these ject line overly aggressive. Not bold. dollars.
e-mails. Aggressive. Big difference. ⃞ And I don’t mean five hundred dol-
⃞ I don’t remember signing up for these ⃞ I’m an autumn. lars in free bonus wagers. I mean
e-mails. But that may be the gummy ⃞ I’m an enigma. five Benjis, Jackson.
talking. ⃞ I’m an enigmautumn. ⃞ So, let me get this straight. You can
⃞ Uh, I mean gummies. ⃞ I don’t believe 94% cotton is the send me e-mails whenever you want,
⃞ These e-mails are no longer relevant. same as 100% cotton. I’m funny but I can’t reply by sending you a
⃞ Who am I kidding? I’m no longer that way. full-color flyer for my one-man show,
relevant. ⃞ For the gajillionth friggin’ time, “Whine Spectator”? (And not just
⃞ These e-mails no longer apply to me. weather is NOT climate. a flyer. A flyer with a coupon for a
⃞ You know who these e-mails would ⃞ Did you say something? No? Yeah, comped ticket.)
absolutely apply to? My ex-wife’s I thought so. . . . ⃞ Some of your e-mails, and I’m not
father, Marvinthegreat@hotmail. ⃞ Thanks for taking my call. I’m going saying all of them, smell like ass.
com. to hang up and listen. ⃞ DO NOT DRIVE THIS CAR
⃞ These e-mails are condescending. ⃞ I don’t think it’s anybody’s business INTO MEXICO!
Maybe don’t open with “Are we going when I drive my niece in the mid- ⃞ That QR code you sent me two
too fast?” dle of the night from Fort Worth to months ago? I found the tepee, the
⃞ Does this e-mail look infected? Carroll Gardens. Greek letter rho, Example IV(a) in
⃞ What are you, writing a book? ⃞ I think we have wildly different con- the male-pattern-baldness diagram,
⃞ I have no idea why you think my cepts of the term “bundle.” and the former corporate logo for
name is Narcissus. ⃞ I could give a crap about Taylor Swift Atari. Still have not received my
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ

⃞ I have a salt deficiency. and Travis Kelce. cash prize. And don’t act like you
⃞ I have a nut allergy. ⃞ I don’t believe the Bill of Rights was don’t have my routing number.
⃞ And although I see where you’re an inside job. ⃞ Can I finish?
going, that includes salted nuts. ⃞ It’s complicated. ⃞ But HER e-mails . . . 

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 17

 developed a dark new mantra. “Amer-
ANNALS OF POLITICS ican decline is the story of an incom-
petent ruling class,” he told his audi-
ence, in 2020. “They squandered all of
RULING-CLASS RULES it in exchange for short-term profits,
bigger vacation homes, cheaper house-
How to thrive in the power élite—while declaring it your enemy. hold help.” It was an audacious mes-
sage from a man with homes in Maine
BY EVAN OSNOS and Florida, a reported income of ten
million dollars a year, and Washington
s a young man in the nineteen-eight- later married) the headmaster’s daugh- roots so deep that the Mayflower Hotel
A ies, Tucker Swanson McNear Carl-
son set out to claim his stake in the es-
ter. His college applications were re-
jected, but the headmaster exerted in-
honored his standing order for a be-
spoke, off-menu salad. (Iceberg, heavy
tablishment. His access to money and fluence at his own alma mater, Trinity on the bacon.) But Carlson framed his
inf luence started at home. His step- College, and Carlson was admitted. He advantages as proof of credibility; he
mother, Patricia, was an heir to the Swan- did not excel there; he went on to earn told an interviewer, “I’ve always lived
son frozen-food fortune. His father, Dick, what he described as a “string of Ds.” around people who are wielding au-
was a California TV anchor who be- After college, he applied to the C.I.A., thority, around the ruling class.” His or-
came a Washington fixture after a stint and when he was rejected there, too, his igins helped give fringe ideas—such as

American politics is full of élites assailing the élite, but behind the name-calling is a real and urgent problem.

in the Reagan Administration. For for- father offered some rueful advice: “You the conspiracy theory that George Soros
tunate clans like the Carlsons, it was “A should consider journalism. They’ll take is trying to “replace” Americans with
Wonderful Time,” to borrow the title of anybody.” Soon, Carlson was writing migrants—the ring of inside truth. His
a volume of contemporaneous portraits for the Policy Review, a periodical pub- eventual firing from Fox only fortified
of “the life of America’s elite,” which in- lished by the Heritage Foundation, fol- his persona as a dissident member of
cluded “the Cabots sailing off Boston’s lowed by The Weekly Standard, Esquire, the power élite.
SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM GETTY

North Shore, and Barry Goldwater on and New York, while also becoming the In declaring war on the upper class
the range in Arizona.” youngest anchor on CNN. that made him, Carlson joined a long,
As a teen-ager, Carlson attended St. But, in 2005, Carlson’s CNN show volatile lineage of combatants against
George’s School, beside the ocean in was cancelled, and, after a period of the élite. From the beginning, the United
Rhode Island, one of sixteen American wandering—including a failed program States has had a vexed relationship to
prep schools that the sociologist E. on MSNBC, a cha-cha on “Dancing distinctions of status—a by-product of
Digby Baltzell described as “differenti- with the Stars,” and an effort to build what Trollope called our “fable of equal-
ating the upper classes from the rest of a right-wing answer to the Times—he ity.” Americans tend to root for the
the population.” Carlson dated (and found success at Fox News. There, he adjective (“élite Navy SEALs”) and re-
18 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY JAVIER JAÉN
sent the noun (“the Georgetown élite”). turned his Mar-a-Lago estate into a power radiating from the White House
What’s different these days is that so private club, he still resented those who and the politburo; the coercive power
many of the attacks come from inside had sniffed at him, telling an inter- resident in the police and the military.
the palace walls. Senator Josh Hawley, a viewer, in a tone rarely employed after (Security forces constitute the stron-
Missouri Republican, grew up comfort- the age of twelve, “I have a better club gest branch of élites in much of the
ably (his father was a bank president), than them.” world but the weakest in America.)
graduated from Stanford and from Yale When Trump ran for President, he Looming over them is economic power,
Law School, taught at a British school adopted the expected criticism of “media which has occupied a fluctuating posi-
for “gifted boys,” and met his wife when élites,” “political élites,” and “élites who tion in the West—worshipped, except
they both clerked for Chief Justice John only want to raise more money for global when it is scorned.
Roberts. But he ignores these creden- corporations.” But, after he took office, In ancient Athens, wealthy citizens
tials when he criticizes what he calls “the he didn’t seem to want to do away with supported choruses, schools, and tem-
people at the top of our society.” As a re- the idea of an élite; he just wanted his ples, on pain of being sentenced to exile
ligious conservative, he believes that his own people to be on top. During a 2017 or death. From the late Middle Ages,
values leave him disadvantaged, writing speech in Arizona, he told the crowd, philosophers proposed that, instead of
in 2019, “Our cultural elites look down “You know what? I think we’re the élites.” banishing the rich, society should ex-
on the plain virtues of patriotism and The term is now invoked so ubiqui- ploit their bounty. The Tuscan human-
self-sacrifice.” The Florida congressman tously that it can seem to crumble ist Poggio Bracciolini argued, in “On
Matt Gaetz—the son of a wealthy health- through our fingers. As George Orwell Avarice,” that in times of public need
care entrepreneur who for years served wrote, about a frequent accusation of the prosperous élite could be made to
as the head of the state senate—called the nineteen-forties, “The word Fas- serve as a “private barn of money.”
his rival Kevin McCarthy “the most elite cism has now no meaning except in so This idea prevailed for centuries.
fund-raiser in the history of the Repub- far as it signifies ‘something not desir- During the American bank crisis of
lican caucus.” This was instantly under- able.’” But, if our élites are undesirable, 1907, a group of tycoons that included
stood to be an insult. what would a better élite look like? John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan
Even as the ruling class has become What, exactly, are élites for? put up personal funds to bail out the
a preoccupation of the right, it remains financial markets. But that crisis also
a concern on the left. Senator Bernie t the turn of the twentieth century, marked the end of an era: it spurred the
Sanders had such an abundant audience
for his latest book, “It’s OK to Be Angry
A the Italian economist Vilfredo Pa-
reto, living as a wealthy recluse in Swit-
creation of the Federal Reserve, which
relieved the economic élite of an “onus
About Capitalism,” that his royalties zerland, was at work on some of the they had carried since medieval times,”
nearly matched his salary for represent- earliest statistical research into what we according to Guido Alfani, the author
ing Vermont. Alexandria Ocasio-Cor- now call income inequality. By his count, of “As Gods Among Men,” a new his-
tez, who entered Congress denouncing twenty per cent of the population of tory of wealth in the West. Freed of
the “tippy-top of the one per cent,” has Italy owned about eighty per cent of that responsibility, the rich of the early
become a target of activists further to the land. He found a similar ratio in twentieth century became both more
the left, who accuse her of turning into another, more eccentric area: twenty entrenched and more extraneous, at-
an “Establishment liberal.” Critiques of per cent of the pea pods in his garden tracting criticism from regulators, muck-
the élite now emanate from so many yielded eighty per cent of the peas. Pa- rakers, and the growing ranks of orga-
angles that it’s difficult to know who re- reto took to describing these imbal- nized labor. Alfani notes a pattern that
mains to be critiqued. ances as a “natural law,” known as the unfolds “repeatedly and systematically
Nobody in American public life has “80/20 rule.” across history”: when economic élites
a more unsettled relationship to status Pareto wanted a pithy term for his become ingrown, impenetrable, and “in-
than Donald Trump. For years, as he concept, but “ruling class” was out—it sensitive to the plight of the masses,”
elbowed his way into Manhattan and had been popularized by his archrival, societies tend to become unstable.
Palm Beach, he touted the exclusivity the scholar Gaetano Mosca. Instead, he To prevent that kind of instability,
of his golf courses (“the most elite in adopted élite, a French word derived Pareto believed, the upper echelons of
the country”) and hotels (“the city’s from the Latin eligere, which means “to power must stay open to new contes-
most elite property”), and he promoted choose.” Pareto intended it to be nei- tants, in a process that he called the “cir-
Trump University with the message “I ther a pejorative nor a compliment; he culation of élites.” Hugo Drochon, a
want you to become part of an elite believed that there were élite scholars, historian of political thought at the Uni-
wealth building team that works under élite shoe shiners, and élite thieves. versity of Nottingham, told me, “Pare-
my direction.” (He later agreed to a Under capitalism, they would tend to to’s metaphor was the river. If it is not
twenty-five-million-dollar settlement be plutocrats; under socialism, they moving anymore, and it’s becoming crys-
with former students who described would be bureaucrats. tallized, then you are more likely to have
Trump U. as a scam.) None of his élite His formulation suggests several va- a revolt, because of forces rising up.”
talk endeared him to what he called rieties of élite influence. There is the That risk—of a stagnant, crystal-
“the tastemakers,” who dismissed him cultural power wielded by scholars, think lized ruling class—inspired the sociol-
as a boorish trespasser. Even after he tanks, and talkers; the administrative ogist C. Wright Mills, who explored
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 19
the American implications in his 1956 servation. What he was predicting was our elites, for fewer people, less energy,
book, “The Power Elite.” (As the term not an end to the élite but, rather, its and more suffering and death.”
gained currency in English, many pub- constant regeneration. Amid the competing accusations, you
lications, though not all, dropped the may find yourself quietly wondering: Am
accent from the “e.”) The élites “accept
one another, understand one another,
marry one another, tend to work and to
T hese days, the feuding hierarchies—
of capital, authenticity, virtue, vic-
timhood—generate separate corps of re-
I in the ruling class? For Americans, that
tends to be a touchy question. When
Paul Fussell, a historian and a social critic,
think if not together at least alike,” he cruits for the ruling class. Who would was writing his 1983 satire, “Class: A
wrote. Once ensconced, they rarely lost fare better in the ongoing cultural con- Guide Through the American Status
power, he warned; they simply swapped test of Who’s the Élite? John Fetterman System,” he noticed that people he men-
seats, moving among industry, academia, or Ron DeSantis? Ibram X. Kendi or tioned it to responded as if he had said,
media, and public office. Britney Spears? Chris Rock “I am working on a book urging the beat-
Mills laid the foundation or Kid Rock? ing to death of baby whales using the
for the idea of a “mili- Even identifying who is dead bodies of baby seals.”
tary-industrial complex,” eligible for the élite has Fussell, undeterred, catalogued the
which Dwight Eisenhower grown more complicated. markers of the upper class: frequent
popularized in a 1961 speech. Conservatives venerate the house guests (“implying as it does plenty
(According to some histo- building of wealth and po- of spare bedrooms to lodge them in and
rians, Eisenhower wanted litical power but see them- no anxiety about making them happy”);
to add “scientific” or “con- selves as persecuted by in- tardiness (“proles arrive punctually”);
gressional” to that complex, tellectuals and bureaucrats. and, as in the case of the young Tucker
but it was nixed.) DeSantis, in his memoir, Carlson, rumpled bow ties. (“If neatly
An invective was born. “The Courage to Be Free,” tied, centered, and balanced, the effect
Scholars on the left used it against con- defines élites as those who “control the is middle-class,” Fussell wrote.) He com-
servatives who opposed the rise of Black federal bureaucracy, lobby shops on K posed lists, including one that delin-
and women’s studies. Conservatives, tap- Street, big business, corporate media, eated the “only six things” that can be
ping into the decline of public trust in Big Tech companies, and universities.” made of black leather without causing
authority since Vietnam and Watergate, But, in a feat of rhetorical gerrymander- “class damage to the owner.” (Belts,
turned the government, the media, Wall ing, he excludes Supreme Court Justice shoes, handbags, gloves, camera cases,
Street, and the Ivy League into the Clarence Thomas, arguing that, although and dog leashes.) He ended the book
swamp, the fake news, the globalists, and Thomas occupies the “commanding with a system for evaluating the class
the ivory tower. The élite became who- heights of society,” he “rejects the group’s valence of the goods on display in your
ever is peering down on us, judging us, ideology, tastes, and attitudes.” house: “New Oriental rug or carpet:
manipulating us. Thomas, for his part, focusses his ire subtract 2 (each). Worn Oriental rug or
A century after Pareto laid down the on academia, lambasting “know-it-all carpet: add 5 (each).’’
concept, he is rarely read, but Branko elites” and declaring that he prefers Forty years after Fussell’s “Class,” its
Milanovic, a former economist at the “Walmart parking lots to the beaches”— most striking feature is its prescience.
World Bank, believes that this is a mis- though he evidently makes exceptions Before we could see the full contours of
take. In his book “Visions of Inequal- for certain beaches. Last year, ProPublica our new Gilded Age, Fussell sensed that
ity,” a history of thinking on the distri- reported that for decades Thomas has the middle class was “sinking,” pulled
bution of wealth, Milanovic notes that taken undisclosed luxury vacations, paid down by “unemployment, a static econ-
Pareto’s era “strongly resembles current for by the Republican donor Harlan omy, and lowered productivity.” A gen-
capitalist societies.” Pareto was writing Crow, including tropical sojourns on eration whose parents had clambered
at a time when vast, entrenched in- Crow’s superyacht and visits to the se- out of the working class was amusing
equality in Europe and America fuelled cretive California retreat Bohemian itself to distraction in a world of prolif-
calls for radical upheaval. He was ini- Grove, where Thomas befriended the erating screens and cheap consump-
tially sympathetic to demands for Koch brothers. (Another tycoon helped tion—“prole drift,” Fussell called it. The
change, but he came to see socialist fund the forty-foot R.V. in which Thomas class divide was widening once more,
leaders as a new élite and was courted visits those Walmart parking lots.) and the greatest gap was the one sepa-
by the Fascists. He ran unsuccessfully Some of the combatants’ definitions rating Americans who could protect
for office, his wife ran off with the cook, of “élite” are almost perfectly opposed. themselves with money from those who
and, eventually, he lived as a hermit in In recent writings, Bernie Sanders could not. Fussell quoted the work-
a villa with dozens of cats. blasted the “billionaire class, the corpo- ing-class father of a man killed in Viet-
His “disappointments may have dark- rate elites, and the wealthy campaign nam: “You bet your goddam dollar I’m
ened his frame of mind,” Milanovic donors”; Marc Andreesen, the billion- bitter. It’s people like us who give up
writes, but they unlocked his insights. aire venture capitalist and campaign our sons for the country.”
“History is the graveyard of élites,” Pa- donor, enumerated “enemy” ideas that These days, some of the signifiers
reto wrote, in perhaps his most oft- block the advance of technology, includ- have changed; there are fewer takers for
quoted—and oft-misunderstood—ob- ing “the nihilistic wish, so trendy among a tastefully worn rug. In New York City,
20 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
the press has documented the rise of Each dispute has its own esoteric stakes, Elites, and the Path of Political Disin-
private kitchen staff, rotating teams of but, taken together, they make up a per- tegration.” Trained as a theoretical
nannies, and in-home laundresses who petual American undercard, feeding our biologist, he now mines a vast histori-
will devote half an hour to ironing a cravings for entertainment. Peter Turchin, cal data set, called CrisisDB, for insights
single shirt. For those days when a foray an emeritus professor at the University into how societies encounter chaos. The
outside the home becomes unavoidable, of Connecticut, calls this an age of “in- crux of his findings: a nation that fun-
the Aman hotel offers the private ref- traelite conflict.” nels too much money and opportunity
uge of a members-only club, which He explains it as a game of musical upward gets so top-heavy that it can tip
charges a two-hundred-thousand-dol- chairs: each year, we get fresh graduates over. In the dispassionate tone of a sci-
lar initiation fee and fifteen thousand from Stanford and the Ivy League, bored entist assessing an ant colony, Turchin
dollars in annual dues. hedge-fund executives, restless tycoons— writes, “In one-sixth of the cases, elite
Yet the deepest drive is not for stuff all angling for seats. Year by year, their groups were targeted for extermination.
but for the social rank that stuff conveys. numbers accumulate, but the chairs do The probability of ruler assassination
The musician Moby, who sold twelve not, and the losers become “frustrated was 40 percent.”
million copies of his album “Play,” once elite aspirants.” Eventually, one of them In fifteenth-century England, he
said that he kept courting success in the will cheat—by faking a kid’s college ré- notes, a long spell of prosperity minted
music business not to make more money sumé, trading on an inside tip, or try- more nobles than society could absorb,
but to “keep being invited to parties.” In ing to overthrow an election. Others and they took to brawling over land
the 2022 book “Status and Culture,” the will catch on and begin to wonder if and power. The losers were beheaded
journalist W. David Marx argues that they’re the last suckers in the bunch. on muddy battlefields. During the three
we are hardwired to pursue status, be- Things fall apart. grisly decades of the Wars of the Roses,
cause it delivers a steady accretion of es- That’s the pattern that Turchin ex- three-quarters of England’s élites were
teem, benefit, and deference. In ancient plores in “End Times: Elites, Counter- killed or driven out by “downward
Rome, élites were permitted to recline
at dinner, while children sat and slaves
stood. More recently, the champion golfer
Lee Trevino remarked, “When I was a
rookie, I told jokes, and no one laughed.
After I began winning tournaments, I
told the same jokes, and all of a sudden,
people thought they were funny.”
Status can be frustratingly ephem-
eral. As you get closer to the top of a
pyramid, the steps get crowded. Just ask
the senators who peer longingly down
Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Oval
Office, knowing that they are contes-
tants in a zero-sum game. “For every
person who goes up,” Marx writes,
“someone must go down.”

Jwardockeying in a hierarchy, no matter

how lofty, occasionally swerves to-
the physical. Not long before be-
coming President, Joe Biden offered to
take Trump out “behind the gym” and
beat him senseless; Trump, asserting
that he had a “much better body,” in-
sisted he’d win. In a Senate hearing last
fall, Markwayne Mullin, of Oklahoma,
told an invited witness, the president of
the Teamsters union, “If you want to
run your mouth, we can be two con-
senting adults—we can finish it here.”
Their taunts barely registered above
the din of other élite standoffs in recent
years: Kanye West vs. Taylor Swift,
Chrissy Teigen vs. Alison Roman, Lau- “Now, let’s get out there and walk really fast
ren Boebert vs. Marjorie Taylor Greene. to places we don’t want to be.”
social mobility”—an estimate that North’s tycoons prospered, the South’s enties, a period that scholars call the
scholars reached by studying the de- went into decline, and the country suf- Great Compression, economic inequal-
clining imports of French wine. Even- fered incalculable damage. ity narrowed, except among Black
tually, Turchin writes, “the most vio- Half a century later, America was Americans, who were largely excluded
lent were killed off, while the rest riven once more. In the nineteen-twen- from those gains.
realized the futility of prolonging the ties, suspected anarchists bombed Wall But by the nineteen-eighties the
struggles and settled down to peace- Street, killing thirty people; coal min- Great Compression was over. As the
ful, if not glamorous, lives.” ers in West Virginia mounted the larg- rich grew richer than ever, they sought
In America’s case, history holds two est insurrection since the Civil War. But to turn their money into political power;
examples with wildly different out- this time American élites, some of whom spending on politics soared. The 2016
comes. In the early nineteenth century, feared a Bolshevik revolution, consented Republican Presidential primary in-
old-line Southern élites, who profited to reform—to allow, in effect, greater volved seventeen contestants, the larg-
from slavery and from exports of cot- public reliance on those “private barns est field in modern history. Turchin calls
ton, faced competition from Northern of money.” Under Franklin D. Roo- it a “bizarre spectacle of an elite aspi-
élites, who made their money in min- sevelt (Groton, Harvard), the U.S. raised rant game reaching its logical culmina-
ing, railroads, and steel. They battled taxes, took steps to protect unions, and tion.” It was a lineup of former gover-
first in politics—some ran for office, established a minimum wage. The costs, nors, sitting senators, a former C.E.O.,
others funded candidates—but the élites Turchin writes, “were borne by the a neurosurgeon, the offspring of polit-
proliferated faster than politics could American ruling class.” Between 1925 ical and real-estate dynasties—all com-
accommodate them. Between 1800 and and 1950, the number of American mil- peting to convince voters that they de-
1850, the number of America’s million- lionaires fell—from sixteen hundred to spised the élite. Their performances of
aires soared from half a dozen to roughly fewer than nine hundred. Between the solidarity with the masses would have
a hundred. During the Civil War, the nineteen-thirties and the nineteen-sev- impressed the Castros.
When Trump reached the White
House, he ushered in allies with simi-
lar credentials: Wilbur Ross (Yale), Ste-
ven Mnuchin (Yale), Steve Bannon
(Harvard Business), Mike Pompeo
(Harvard Law), Jared Kushner (Har-
vard). Though Bannon, the chief strat-
egist, had earned his fortune at Gold-
man Sachs and in Hollywood, he billed
himself as an outsider and sounded every
bit the dishevelled count from the Mid-
dle Ages. “I want to bring everything
crashing down,” he liked to say, “and de-
stroy all of today’s establishment.”
Turchin ends his book with a sober-
ing vision. Using data to model scenar-
ios for the future, he concludes, “At some
point during the 2020s, the model pre-
dicts, instability becomes so high that
it starts cutting down the elite num-
bers.” He likens the present time to the
run-up to the Civil War. America could
still relearn the lessons of the Great
Compression—“one of the exceptional,
hopeful cases”—and act to prevent a
top-heavy society from toppling. When
that has happened in history, “elites
eventually became alarmed by incessant
violence and disorder,” he writes. “And
we are not there—yet.”

n the summer of 2023, the tussling

Ientered
between two noted American élites
the realm of burlesque. For
years, Elon Musk and the Facebook
“What will it take for me to get you beneath the wheels of this car today?” co-founder Mark Zuckerberg had pri-
vately grumbled about each other. Zuck-
erberg yearned for the innovator’s cred
that Musk enjoyed, and Musk lamented
(initially) that he was not as wealthy
as Zuckerberg. In public, Musk has
mocked Zuckerberg’s understanding
of A.I. as “limited” and said that Face-
book “gives me the willies.” Last June,
after Musk, the owner of Twitter, purged
its staff and plunged it into turmoil,
Zuckerberg’s company announced plans
for a “sanely run” alternative. Musk re-
sponded by proposing a “cage match,”
and Zuckerberg, who had been train-
ing in Brazilian jujitsu, replied on Insta-
gram, “Send Me Location.” Soon, Musk
and Zuck—worth a combined three
hundred and thirty-five billion dol-
lars—were posing for sweaty gym pho-
tos. The Italian government discussed
hosting the fight at the Colosseum, and
tech bros divided into rival fandoms.
Eventually, Musk put off the fight—
he acknowledged that he was out
of shape—and Zuck declared that it
was “time to move on.” But, even in-
terrupted, the billionaire cage match
showcased some of the rivalries and
insecurities already at work in the next
80/20 society. The gentry of new tech-
nologies have displaced the industrial • •
and media barons of an earlier age, but
the new hierarchies are still in flux. In
Silicon Valley, it’s common to hear the historian Ramsay MacMullen wrote, But Carlson is not just overlooking his
prediction that artificial intelligence it could be “compressed into three history of falling short; he is trying to
will yield a world of two broad classes: words: fewer have more.” rebrand it as righteousness. In his
those who tell the A.I. what to do and Democracy is meant to insure that broadcasts, first on Fox and now on X,
those whom the A.I. tells what to do. the élite continue to circulate. But no he specializes in giving voice to fellow
Technology won’t spare us a ruling democracy can function well if people frustrated élite aspirants: former gen-
class—and, in any case, it’s hard to en- are unwilling to lose power—if a gen- eral Michael Flynn, former Represen-
vision a thriving society in which no eration of leaders, on both the right tative Tulsi Gabbard, and, of course,
one is allowed to aspire to status. But, and the left, becomes so entrenched former President Trump, the last of
instead of continuing to exhaust the that it ages into gerontocracy; if one of whom is toying with naming Carlson
meaning of “the élite,” we would be two major parties denies the arithme- as his running mate. (“I would, because
better off targeting what we really re- tic of elections; if a cohort of the rul- he’s got great common sense,” he said
sent—inequality, immobility, intoler- ing class loses status that it once en- in November.)
ance—and attacking the barriers that joyed and sets out to salvage it. Together, these counter-élites con-
block the “circulation of élites.” Left Which brings us back to Tucker jure a pervasive conspiracy—of immi-
undisturbed, the most powerful among Carlson. When he tells the story of grants, experts, journalists, and the F.B.I.
us will take steps to stay in place, a pat- America’s élites, he often scorns them It’s a narrative of vengeful self-pity, a
tern that sociologists call the “iron law as “mediocre” and “stupid.” But he pining for the wonderful times gone by.
of oligarchy.” Near the end of the frames his own failures—the strings Carlson’s old friends in the ruling class
Roman Empire, in the fourth century pulled on his behalf, the rejected ap- occasionally wonder how much of his
A.D., inequality had become so en- plications, the cancelled shows—as shtick he really believes, and how much
trenched that a Roman senator could jaunty diversions on the path to suc- he simply grieves for having lost the
earn a hundred and twenty thousand cess. To be fair, we are all bad at esti- game of musical chairs to faster, shrewder,
pieces of gold a year, while a farmer mating our own abilities. (In a study more capable élites. The latter, at least,
earned five. The fall of Rome took five of college professors, ninety-four per would make his desperation understand-
hundred years, but, as the distinguished cent rated themselves “above-average.”) able: he is being replaced. 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 23
 PROFILES

CRÈME DE LA CRÈME
Sofia Coppola’s path to filming gilded adolescence.
BY RACHEL SYME

W
hen Eleanor Coppola went been a producer on all her movies. funding.” Her voice was quiet, and her
into labor with her third When she made her début, “The Vir- face—high cheekbones, Roman nose—
child, on May 14, 1971, at a gin Suicides,” in 1999, she was able to was placid. “It’s a real drag,” she said. “I
hospital in Manhattan, her husband, cast an established star, Kathleen Turner, thought they had endless resources.”
the director Francis Ford Coppola, was with whom she’d appeared as a teen- During the project’s development, she’d
on location in Harlem, shooting a scene ager in her father’s movie “Peggy Sue gone back and forth with executives
for “The Godfather.” Hearing the news, Got Married.” She got permission to (“mostly dudes”) on everything from
he grabbed a camcorder from the set shoot “Somewhere,” her fourth film, the budget to the script. “They didn’t
and raced over to capture the moment. inside the clubby Hollywood hotel the get the character of Undine,” she re-
“When they say, ‘It’s a girl,’ my dad Chateau Marmont because in her youth called. “She’s so ‘unlikable.’ But so is
gasps and nearly drops the camera,” she was a regular there, and even had Tony Soprano!” She added, “It was like
Sofia Coppola told me recently, of her a private key to the hotel pool. Still, no a relationship that you know you prob-
birth video. “My mom is there, just try- director can get a project green-lighted ably should’ve gotten out of a while
ing to focus.” The footage—which has at a snap of the fingers, especially in ago.” (Apple did not respond to request
been screened by the family multiple today’s franchise-glutted Hollywood, for comment.)
times over the years, and as part of a and especially as a female director in Coppola grew up watching Francis
feminist art installation designed by an industry that remains dominated by do battle with movie studios. The suc-
Eleanor—was the first of many in- men. Coppola is self-aware enough to cess of the “Godfather” films hardly
stances in which Sofia would be seen know that it would be bad manners for assured him funding equal to his am-
through her father’s lens. When she someone in her position to complain. bitions, and he often went to harrow-
was just a few months old, Francis cast But she told me, “It’s not easy for any- ing lengths to get his projects made
her in her first official film role, as the one in this business, even though it independently, driving himself to the
infant in the dénouement of “The God- looks easy for me.” brink of bankruptcy or nervous break-
father,” in which Michael Corleone, When we first met, in the fall of down. “Hearts of Darkness,” a docu-
the ascendant boss of the Corleone 2021, for breakfast near her home in mentary co-directed by Eleanor about
crime family, anoints the head of his the West Village, Coppola had spent the notoriously tortured production of
newborn nephew as his associates mur- the previous two years at work on her “Apocalypse Now,” is subtitled, only a
der rival gangsters one by one. most ambitious venture to date, a mini- bit hyperbolically, “A Filmmaker’s
There are plenty of distinguished series, for Apple TV+, based on the Apocalypse.” (At the age of eighty-
bloodlines in the history of Holly- Edith Wharton novel “The Custom four, Francis is financing a new film,
wood—the Selznicks and the Mayers, of the Country,” from 1913. Coppola “Megalopolis,” with a hundred and
the Warners, the Hustons, the Bergman- had adapted the book into five epi- twenty million dollars of his own
Rossellinis, the Fondas—but very few, sodes and cast Florence Pugh in the money, freed up by the sale of a por-
like the Coppolas, in which one fa- lead role of Undine Spragg, a Mid- tion of the family’s wine business.) Cop-
mous director has spawned another. western arriviste on a desperate quest pola absorbed from her father the ethos
After an early life spent in front of the to infiltrate Gilded Age Manhattan that it was never worth it to cave to
camera, Sofia Coppola made a career society. Coppola, like Wharton, is the creative demands of executives. In
behind it, becoming one of the most known for her gimlet-eyed portrayals 2014, she agreed to make a live-action
influential and visually distinctive film- of a rarefied milieu, and for her in- version of “The Little Mermaid” for
makers of her generation, with eight sight into female characters who enjoy Universal Studios, but amid disputes
features to her name. Her second, “Lost enormous privilege but little auton- during development (including, she
in Translation,” from 2003, earned her omy. “Marie Antoinette,” her most ex- said at the time, an executive asking
an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay pensive movie, had a budget of forty her, “What’s gonna get the thirty-five-
and a nomination for Best Director, million dollars, still modest by Hol- year-old man in the audience?”) she
making her the first American woman lywood standards; for “Custom,” she walked away from the job. “I don’t ac-
recognized in that category. Her ca- was planning for, as she put it, “five tually want a hundred million dollars
reer, of course, has been bolstered by ‘Marie Antoinettes.’ ” to make a movie,” she told me, of studio
an unusual wealth of resources. Fran- At breakfast, though, she told me, deals with strings attached. “I learned
cis’s company, American Zoetrope, has “Apple just pulled out. They pulled our it’s better to do your own thing.” She
24 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
From Marie Antoinette to Priscilla Presley, Coppola’s protagonists enjoy enormous privilege but little autonomy.
PHOTOGRAPH BY THEA TRAFF THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 25
 vet button-down. She led me through
the hangarlike space and into the er-
satz Presley home. The entrance was
flanked by two large lion statues. In
the gaudy living room, she pointed to
a floral arrangement. “Those are real
orchids,” she said. “It surprised me, with
our budget. How extravagant.”
Coppola’s team had budgeted for
forty days of shooting, already a squeeze,
but at the last minute a piece of financ-
ing had fallen through, and she’d had
to slash the story to be filmed in just
a month, for less than twenty million
dollars. Much of the movie is set in the
Memphis summer, but they were film-
ing as winter approached, which was
cheaper, so Coppola had to coach her
cast, shivering through outdoor scenes
in their bathing suits, to “act warm.”
Instead of filming two long shots she’d
wanted in Los Angeles, of Priscilla driv-
ing a convertible down a palm-lined
street and swan-diving into a pool, Cop-
pola saved money by borrowing foot-
age from a Cartier commercial she’d
shot in 2018, with an actress who kind
of looks like “Priscilla” ’s lead, Cailee
Spaeny, at least from behind.
Whether set in a luxury hotel in
“What’s the cutoff age for just calling instead of texting?” Tokyo, like “Lost in Translation,” or in
suburban Michigan, like “The Virgin
Suicides,” Coppola’s films are sumptu-
• • ous but also slightly clinical. One of
her œuvre’s visual hallmarks is a pro-
refuses to take on projects unless she months. A rhinestoned frenzy of a tagonist gazing out a window, sealed
is guaranteed the right to choose her bio-pic, Luhrmann’s movie portrayed off from the world beyond. “You know
creative team and control the final cut. Priscilla as a marginal character and a I can’t resist a trapped woman,” she
In January of 2022, after trying in happy helpmate. Coppola called Pres- said. Yet, even when her female char-
vain to secure alternative funding for ley and said, “That’s not how I see you acters are confined, they achieve a de-
“Custom,” Coppola moved on to a new at all,” and after hearing Coppola’s vi- gree of self-definition through adven-
project, an independent film adapted sion Presley signed on as a producer. tures in style. No filmmaker has so
from Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir, “Marie Antoinette” was filmed in- astutely depicted the cloistered atmo-
“Elvis and Me.” Presley’s relationship side the real Versailles, a cinematic coup. sphere of teen-age girlhood or the ex-
with Elvis began when she was just four- For “Priscilla,” the Elvis Presley estate, pressive power of its trappings. She is
teen. Like Marie Antoinette, she found wary of a film told from Priscilla’s per- a master of the messy-bedroom mise
herself unhappily married to a King. spective, denied Coppola access to en scène: piles of clothing and imprac-
Paging through the book while in bed Graceland. Coppola’s production team tical shoes, poster-plastered walls, van-
with a case of Covid, Coppola had begun instead constructed the façade and the ities cluttered with perfume bottles and
to see the picture unfolding in her mind. interiors of Elvis’s Memphis mansion porcelain figurines. The director Chloé
“I just thought about her sitting on that on a soundstage outside Toronto. I vis- Zhao, who won Best Director at the
shag carpet all day,” she recalled. She ited one afternoon in November of 2021 Oscars for her film “Nomadland,”
wrote a draft of the script quickly and 2022, as the shoot was under way. Off told me that she admires Coppola for
told her longtime producer, Youree Hen- set, Coppola, who is fifty-two, dresses “world-building that isn’t just based on
ley, that she wanted to be done shoot- with understated elegance—Chanel facts but on emotions.” She added,
ing by the end of the year. She was un- slingbacks, collared blouses. Now she “There’s a receptivity to her work. To
deterred by the coming release of Baz was wearing her only slightly less pol- have a commitment to that kind of
Luhrmann’s eighty-five-million-dollar ished “set uniform,” gray New Balances femininity is hard.” The director Jane
film “Elvis,” which was due out in a few and a black Carhartt fleece over a Char- Campion, who counts “The Virgin
26 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
Suicides” among her favorite films, told quality.’ And when I saw the film, sure what Eleanor, who has been married
me that Coppola’s light touch with ac- enough, I wanted to eat the goddamn to him for sixty years, described to me
tors and her attention to surfaces can furniture.” as “an Italian approach—very theatri-
be deceptive. “Her work is very pow- Coppola led me down a hallway to cal, throwing stuff up in the air and
erful to me, because it’s got deep roots,” a room where the film’s costume de- screaming.” Sofia said that she finds
she said. But Coppola’s films have some- signer, Stacey Battat, was floofing out such flourishes “so unnecessary.” The
times struck critics as longer on style Priscilla’s wedding gown, which Cop- protagonists in her films tend to ob-
than on substance, and too close to the pola had asked the fashion house serve more than they speak, and Sofia
privileges they depict to effectively cri- Chanel to design for the movie as a comports herself in much the same
tique them. A few months ago, Cop- favor. The dress, with a high-necked way. The people who’ve worked with
pola sent me an e-mail, unprompted, lacy bib, closely resembles the original, her, however, describe an impressive
in which she took issue with a notion but among Coppola’s assets as a film- resolve beneath the diffidence. The ac-
that has resurfaced throughout her maker is a preternatural aesthetic as- tress Elle Fanning, who starred in
twenty-five-year career: “I don’t under- surance, even when it comes to taking “Somewhere” and “The Beguiled,” told
stand why looking at superficiality liberties with her source material. “I’ve me, “She doesn’t freak out, ever. She’s
makes you superficial?!” always known what I like,” she told me. not going to scream at you across the
The opening shot of the film is a closeup room. But she’s unwavering.” Bill Mur-
oppola told me she could see her- of Priscilla’s feet stepping across a fuzzy ray, a star of “Lost in Translation” and
C self, in an alternative life, as the
editor of a magazine, “like Diana Vree-
expanse of shag carpet, which she made
a rosy hue, though in the real Graceland
“On the Rocks,” gave Coppola the nick-
name “the velvet hammer,” for her sub-
land,” who commanded Vogue in the there was no such rug. “In my mind, it tle stubbornness about getting her way.
sixties. Coppola is an avid curator of was pink,” she told me. She hadn’t vis- Henley, the producer, who was sit-
images and looks; Campion recalled ited Graceland to prepare for the film, ting in a director’s chair near a video
that once, when they were both judges but a friend had taken a tour and had monitor, recalled a day when he and
at Cannes, Coppola offered to help sent her a picture of poodle-print wall- Coppola were scouting ice rinks for
style her, and the next day two huge paper. Coppola decided to re-create it “Somewhere.” Coppola said of one,
boxes from the luxury fashion brand for a shot in which Priscilla languishes “This is great—um, where should we
Celine arrived at Campion’s hotel. in the tub, waiting for Elvis to return. have lunch?” Afterward, Henley men-
Coppola begins every film project by “It probably wasn’t in a bathroom tioned a few more possible rinks to
gathering visual inspiration. In her in Graceland,” Coppola said. “But visit, and Coppola looked puzzled; she’d
makeshift office on the soundstage, whatever.” already chosen. Henley told me, “I
she had covered a large bulletin board The lighting on set was dim. A play- wasn’t able to read her softness as well
with imagery including the Presleys’ list of songs, selected daily by Coppola as I can now.”
wedding photographs, a glamour shot to “set a vibe,” played over the sound Coppola and her team were rehears-
of Priscilla as a teen-ager, and several system—Curtis Mayf ield, Aretha ing a scene in the Presleys’ bedroom,
William Eggleston pictures of an Franklin, and the French where a large mirror hung
empty Graceland. There is a famous indie-rock band Phoenix, behind the bed. Jacob
Bruce Weber photo of Coppola’s styl- which is fronted by Cop- Elordi, the actor playing
ishly bestrewn home office at the time pola’s husband, Thomas Elvis, took his place on the
of “The Virgin Suicides,” and this work- Mars, who is also a music King-size mattress, his six-
space bore some resemblance. On her supervisor for her films. In foot-four frame nearly dan-
desk were pink Post-it notes, a Fuji- one corner, crew members gling over the edge. Spaeny,
film Instax camera, and a half-burned were playing pickleball on who was twenty-four but
Diptyque candle; on the floor lay wine a court that Coppola had petite enough to pass for a
bottles from the Coppola vineyard insisted on installing during teen-ager, hovered in the
(which also makes a “Sofia” champagne the first week of shooting. doorframe. The scene takes
that comes in tiny pink cans with indi- She had played in the crew’s place shortly after Priscil-
vidual straws). The director Quentin tournament, and her team, the Smash- la’s arrival at Graceland. She has gone
Tarantino, whom Coppola dated in ers, won. “Pickleball paddles are so ugly,” shopping and bought a dress, but re-
the two-thousands, recalled her once she commented. “Maybe I’ll design a turns it after Elvis deems it unflatter-
showing him the look book for “Marie new line of them.” ing. “Once again I’d compromised my
Antoinette.” “It was exquisitely put to- Coppola told me that she learned own taste,” Presley writes of that mo-
gether, yet you could still tell it was from her father how to create “a warm ment in the memoir, which in Coppo-
handmade,” he said, “by the loving set,” and borrowed from him a ritual la’s world is the worst kind of fate.
hands of a fine artist.” He went on, he picked up in drama school: to kick Kathleen Turner told me, of work-
“She had a page of donuts with a pink off every production, stand with the ing with Coppola on “The Virgin
glaze. I asked her, ‘What’s with the cast and crew in a circle, hold hands, Suicides,” “She would never tell an
donuts?’ She said, ‘I like that shade of and recite the nonsense word “puwaba” actor what she wanted specifically,
pink, and I want her sofa to have that three times. But the elder Coppola has and, boy, that can be very tough.” She
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 27
added, “Francis is a bulldozer, a very years, remembers a time when Cop- next to the late fashion designer Yves
good bulldozer who knows what he pola didn’t turn in a paper: “Her teacher Saint Laurent. “He was a friend of a
wants. Sofia lets you do, and then lets said she had the best excuse, which friend of my parents,” she said.
you know if that’s what she wanted.” was ‘I left it on the plane coming back There is an old-world flavor to the
Elordi, who is twenty-six, told me he from the Oscars.’” On matters of taste, Coppolas’ relationship to the family
interpreted Coppola’s lack of instruc- though, Coppola was precociously flu- business: just as cobblers beget cob-
tion as a sign of trust. She cast him ent. She gave herself the nickname blers, movie people beget movie peo-
after meeting him just once. “Sofia Domino and insisted that she be cred- ple. Roman, Sofia’s brother and fre-
never checked in before we were film- ited as such in several of her father’s quent collaborator, is a filmmaker and
ing. She never texted or called about pictures. While on the set of “One from has written screenplays with Wes An-
the voice or the look or the walk,” he the Heart,” she created her own pub- derson. Talia Shire, who starred in the
said. When he arrived on set, excited lication, The Dingbat News, to distrib- “Godfather” movies and the “Rocky”
to show Coppola the Elvis accent he’d ute among the cast and crew. She col- franchise, is her aunt. Her niece Gia
been working on for months, she said, lected photography and decorated her has directed two features. Her first cous-
“Wow, you really look and talk like walls with pictures from foreign mag- ins include the actors Jason Schwartz-
him,” and left it at that. azines. “I was the only girl in Napa Val- man, whom she cast as a dweeby Louis
Coppola called, “Action!,” and Elordi ley with a subscription to French Vogue,” XVI in “Marie Antoinette,” and Nico-
looked at Spaeny: “What is that dress? she said. Francis described her as hav- las Cage. Other Coppolas coach actors,
It does nothin’ for your figure.” He ing “very, very big opinions” even as a write screenplays, make music, and pro-
glanced toward Coppola, who was little girl, adding, “It was never diffi- duce or distribute films. Sofia ascribes
standing with her cinematographer. cult to know what she preferred and the field’s popularity within the fam-
“Was that all right, Sofia?” he drawled, what she didn’t prefer.” Francis’s best- ily to Francis’s contagious passion. “My
remaining in character. “Should I be known films took place in hypermas- father is just so into filmmaking that
laughing at her? I don’t want to be too culine precincts—the Army, the Mob. he thinks everyone should be doing it,”
dramatic.” Coppola was drawn to high-femme she said. Even Francis’s father, a com-
“It was not too much,” Coppola re- self-expression. At her parents’ dinner poser, ended up working on scores for
plied. She paused and placed her hand parties, she was always more interested his films, winning an Oscar (with Nino
on her chin. “It might have been a lit- in the “wives and girlfriends,” she said. Rota) for “The Godfather: Part II.”
tle Elvis-y.” “They had the best Bakelite jewelry.” One member of the family who
Francis recalled that he and Elea- struggled to find her way in the busi-
rancis’s life as a director was peri- nor maintained a home base outside of ness was Eleanor. In “Notes,” the first
F patetic, and he did not believe in
leaving his family behind for more than
Hollywood to create a semblance of
normality for the kids. Nonetheless,
of two memoirs she has written, she
described meeting Francis on the set of
ten days at a time. So the rest of the many of the stories Coppola told me his début feature, the horror film “De-
nuclear unit—Eleanor, Sofia, and her about her childhood took place in the mentia 13,” in 1962. He was the direc-
brothers, Roman and Gian-Carlo, or world of famous adults: Richard Gere, tor, she was the assistant art director,
Gio—lived away from their home in a star of Francis’s “The Cotton Club,” and she thought that they might work
Northern California for months, and on films together for years to come. In-
sometimes years. One of Sofia’s first stead, within a few months she found
memories is of riding in a helicopter out she was pregnant with Gio. She
in the Philippines during the filming and Francis were married the follow-
of “Apocalypse Now.” During the mak- ing weekend, and Francis, as Eleanor
ing of “One from the Heart,” when she put it to me, “made it very clear that
was in the fourth and fifth grade, they my role was to be the wife and the
relocated to L.A. After that, for “The mother.” She writes in “Notes” of a feel-
Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish,” they ing of living in waiting—“waiting for
went to Tulsa, Oklahoma. “We were Francis to get a chance to direct . . .
circus people, basically,” she said. “I kind swam in the family’s pool; George Lucas waiting to go on location, waiting to go
of mark my childhood by the movies.” was “Uncle George”; Anjelica Huston home.” (“At that point, I didn’t even
Coppola never excelled academi- assured Coppola that she would grow know I could have a career, much less
cally, in part because of all the moving into her nose. One afternoon last year, whether my wife would,” Francis said,
around. She left one school before during a visit to an L.A. bookstore, by e-mail, adding, “I knew she was cre-
learning multiplication, and by the time Coppola showed me a volume called ative and from day one I always pro-
she enrolled in a new one she’d missed “Height of Fashion,” a collection of no- vided full time childcare and a studio
the same unit. Coppola recalled, “I never table people’s most stylish snapshots. for Ellie’s artwork.”) Sofia described a
really learned math, and I’m what they Coppola had submitted a picture of time when her mother visited the set
call a ‘challenged’ reader.” Anahid herself at fourteen—gawky and beam- of “Priscilla” and observed a scene in
Nazarian, a researcher and producer ing, with an asymmetrical haircut—sit- which Elvis is preparing to go on tour,
who has worked with Francis for forty ting at the tony Parisian restaurant Davé while Priscilla will stay with their daugh-
28 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
 so that you don’t have to count on the
movies for that.”) Coppola and Mars
HABIBTI GHAZAL spend part of the year in Paris, and she
could have just stayed in her apartment
Nineteen’s slow violence. Your arm a tusk slicing the air—whoa, habibti— across town. But the Ritz was closer to
for that first Jack-and-Coke. Here we go, take it slow, habibti. Barrie’s offices, near the Place Ven-
dôme, and she relished the opportu-
Soon, you’ll become an emergency: I.V. bag and emerald bruise. nity to hole up there by herself. “Lost
First love hammering your door, but you’re no habibti, in Translation” and “Somewhere” por-
tray hotels as sites of both listless sus-
no bait turned proposal. On the third page of an old journal, pension and electric potential. “I love
the same question in pale ink: Can I be my own habibti? an in-between place,” she said.
When Coppola was fifteen, in 1986,
You glaze-eyed. You lit like a county fair. The long twine Francis arranged a summer internship
of a decade, hold the tattoo needle to skin and sew habibti. for her at Chanel. A month before she
was supposed to leave for Paris, Gio, her
Even the sea rots here. This prop city with its prop heart. oldest brother, was killed in an accident.
The hot-eyed men whistling the streets: Hello, habibti. He was twenty-two and had been as-
sisting his father on the film “Gardens
Hello, cream. Hello, daughter of men. Hello, almost-wife. of Stone,” set at Arlington Cemetery,
I can’t teach you about metaphor; I’m stuck in the future. O, habibti, and on a day off had gone boating with
one of the film’s co-stars, Griffin O’Neal.
I want to see those legs running. There’s the oncoming headlight of boy: While driving between two other boats,
Ribcage. Fist. War. It’s time, habibti. Please, habibti. Go, habibti. O’Neal drove into a towline that struck
Gio. (O’Neal was replaced in the film
—Hala Alyan and later charged with manslaughter,
but was ultimately acquitted.) Francis’s
producers offered to shut down the film
ter, Lisa Marie. Eleanor told her, “I’ve whether her style of communication shoot, but he wanted to press on. In her
been there.” Eleanor recalled to me, is cannily evasive or simply a natural memoirs, Eleanor recalls his hope that
“When Elvis said to Priscilla, ‘You have product of valuing the visual over the keeping busy “would prevent the tor-
everything you need to be happy,’ that’s verbal. “I think sometimes she gives turous reality of Gio’s loss from pervad-
exactly what I was feeling at the time. people enough rope to hang them- ing every moment.” Roman, then a film
I went to the psychiatrist and said, ‘Why selves with just by not responding,” student at N.Y.U., cancelled his sum-
am I unhappy?’ Not one single person Fiona Handyside, a British film scholar mer plans to step into Gio’s job on the
said to me, ‘You are a creative person.’” and the author of “Sofia Coppola: Cin- film, but Coppola’s parents decided that
With his daughter, however, Fran- ema of Girlhood,” has said.) When I she should still go abroad. Eleanor told
cis made a point of offering creative told Coppola about the feelings of me, “She was right at that age where
encouragement, including by expos- stuckness that Eleanor had shared with she was trying to pull away from me,
ing her, along with her brothers, to the me, and that seemed to percolate and so I thought she needed to get
technical aspects of f ilmmaking. through Coppola’s films, she said, “I away from home, and all the things
“There’s a traditional Italian thing with think so many people can relate to that, that surrounded the aftermath, and,
women, but I wasn’t raised like that,” especially women.” Then she added, frankly, me as a mom.”
Coppola said. “I was raised the same of her mom, “I’m sure seeing my first The Coppolas recruited Susie Lan-
as the boys.” She and her mother didn’t impression of womanhood as a woman dau Finch (the twentysomething daugh-
discuss the gap in their experiences at who felt trapped, and her sadness, is ter of the actor Martin Landau), who’d
the time, and Coppola isn’t inclined related to the women in my films, more been working for Francis’s film com-
to analyze the themes that she explores than to a side of myself.” pany, to chaperone Sofia to Paris. Lan-
in her work. Roman told me, “I’ve never dau Finch recalled that Gio’s young fi-
heard Sofia say, ‘I want to show this ne morning last July, I met Cop- ancée, Jacqui de La Fontaine (now
isolation through this thing.’” Francis
has always advised her that filmmaking
O pola in the lobby of the Ritz Paris,
where she was staying before a meet-
Jacqui Getty), who was pregnant at the
time with their daughter, Gia, came to
should be close to the bone—as he ing about an upcoming line of gar- stay with them in Paris, and they spent
told me, “the more personal, the bet- ments she’d designed for the Scottish many afternoons lying around the apart-
ter.” But, when I asked about the per- knitwear brand Barrie, which is owned ment in a daze. “The two of them re-
sonal element of her movies, Coppola by Chanel. (She told me that her dad, minded me a lot of what Sofia would
often fell back on abstractions or let who has earned much of his fortune later depict in ‘The Virgin Suicides,’”
her sentences trail off mid-thought. through wine and hotels, “taught us Landau Finch said. “The ennui of being
(Other writers have speculated about how to make money doing other things, overcome by emotion, that kind of
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 29
internalizing of tragedy.” Eventually, previous films, though only in small and utters a disbelieving “Dad?” Fran-
Landau Finch invited Rainer Judd, her roles; in “The Godfather: Part II,” she cis later admitted to the Times, “The
husband’s niece and the daughter of had been “Child on Ship.” She often daughter took the bullet for Michael
the sculptor Donald Judd, to join them, found being on camera excruciating, Corleone—my daughter took the bul-
and she and Coppola spent the follow- and liked film sets mostly for the chance let for me.” Sofia absorbed the bad
ing weeks “eating croissants and drink- to hang around the costume depart- press with characteristic sangfroid. “It
ing Orangina and staying out until ments. Still, she was eager to take on was embarrassing to be so publicly crit-
dawn clubbing,” Judd recalled. She the role of Mary, in part because she icized for ruining my dad’s movie,” she
added, “I think there was an awareness was bored at college and her father said, but “I wasn’t devastated, because
of the loss and heaviness, had promised her that she acting wasn’t my dream.” She went on,
but we were also still play- wouldn’t have to go back. “I think that the experience helped me
ful kids looking at boys and A team of acting and as a director. I know how vulnerable it
fancy clothes.” public-speaking coaches feels to be in front of a camera.” Kirsten
At the Barrie offices, a was hastily assembled, Dunst, who starred in “The Virgin
phalanx of employees was among them Freck Vree- Suicides” at the age of sixteen, and later
preparing for a model fit- land, the son of Diana, to in “Marie Antoinette” and “The Be-
ting. The following day, the train Sofia for a scene in guiled,” recalled, of first working with
brand would be shooting which Mary delivers a Coppola, “I remember her telling me
an ad campaign at the speech at the Corleone how much she loved my teeth. I thought
Hôtel de Crillon, where family foundation. Vree- I had crooked teeth, but she was, like,
Coppola once f ilmed a land recalled that Sofia was ‘They are so cute.’ She gave me confi-
party scene for “Marie Antoinette.” at first so shy that “she couldn’t proj- dence about things I didn’t necessar-
Coppola walked over to a rolling rack ect her voice, much less assert herself ily have, and I’ve carried that with me.”
of clothes and stroked a pink cash- in the way a successful speaker would.” In the following years, Coppola had
mere jumpsuit priced at nearly three Sofia told me that she was mortified the kind of aimless early adulthood par-
thousand euros. A velvet-lined tray on by a scene that required her to “kiss ticular to the offspring of the Holly-
a nearby table held gold-and-porce- Andy Garcia in front of his wife, with wood élite. She enrolled in ArtCenter
lain buttons monogrammed with “SC.” my dad standing there.” Eleanor’s mem- College of Design to study oil paint-
An employee pulled out a double- oirs quote her own diary from the time, ing but dropped out after a teacher told
breasted jacket and handed it to Cop- in which she noted how Sofia (who, her she was “no painter.” She audited
pola. She slipped it over her shoulders by all accounts, is not much of a crier) a course with the photographer Paul
and looked in the mirror. “Oh, my God, would sometimes burst into tears be- Jasmin, whom Coppola cites as “the
I love it,” she said. tween shoots. She wrote, “Well-mean- first person outside my family who told
Afterward, as we were driving to ing people tell me I am permitting a me I had any taste.” She became some-
lunch in a chauffeured black car, we form of child abuse . . . and that in the thing of an L.A. It Girl, making cam-
passed the Place de la Concorde. Cop- end she will be fodder for critics’ bad eos in music videos and being featured
pola was gazing quietly out the win- reviews that could scar her for years.” in newspaper style sections. In inter-
dow. “That’s where Marie Antoinette Compounding the pressure was the views, she made blithe pronouncements.
was guillotined,” she said. “I always love film’s climactic death scene, when, on (Likes: Karl Lagerfeld, hot rods. Dis-
driving by.” the steps of the Teatro Massimo, in likes: bras, Twelve Steppers.) At twen-
Palermo, Mary Corleone is shot by a ty-three, she bought herself a black Ca-
hen Francis was working on hit man targeting her father. Compared dillac Seville and dubbed it her “Mafia
W “The Godfather: Part III” (1990),
Sofia was his model for the character
with Pacino, who brought his signa-
ture shouty theatrics to the scene, Cop-
princess car.” She spent a lot of time
floating around the pool at the Cha-
of Michael Corleone’s daughter, Mary. pola seemed barely to be acting at all. teau Marmont, making use of her pri-
Studio executives encouraged him to When the film came out, Eleanor’s vate key. In 1994, she launched a fash-
cast Winona Ryder, but when Ryder fears proved founded. In 1991, Cop- ion line called Milkfed, which produced
arrived in Rome, where the movie was pola won two Razzie awards, for Worst ironic items like a baby tee printed with
filming, she collapsed with exhaustion Supporting Actress and Worst New the phrase “I ♥ Booze.” That same year,
and was pronounced unable to work. Star. Entertainment Weekly ran a cover she and her friend Zoe Cassavetes, the
Sofia had enrolled at Mills College, in story with the teaser line “Is she ter- daughter of the director John Cassave-
Oakland, to study art history, but was rific, or so terrible she wrecked her tes and the actress Gena Rowlands,
in Rome for winter break. Francis in- dad’s new epic?” Whatever one thought hosted a Comedy Central series called
formed her that she would need to play of Coppola’s performance (Pauline Kael “Hi Octane.” (When I asked Coppola
Mary instead. Paramount executives appreciated her “unusual presence”), if she has any friends who don’t have
f lew to Cinecittá studios to inform the fracas lent a metatextual poignancy celebrities for parents, she said, some-
Francis that they did not think she was to Coppola’s final moment in the film, what vaguely, “It’s definitely not, like,
up to the task, but Francis held firm. when, just before she crumples on the a through line with all of my friend-
Sofia had appeared in nearly all his theatre steps, Mary looks at Michael ships,” but acknowledged a special af-
30 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
finity for others who have “big macho mous—was shot partly inside Paris Hil- accounts until they’re eighteen, but
powerful artist dads.”) The series, in ton’s mansion, where the camera gawks Romy, the older child, had a rogue viral
which the pair undertook stunty ad- at throw pillows emblazoned with im- moment last year, when—sounding,
ventures and interviewed their famous ages of Hilton’s face and a “night-club many observers noted, a bit like one of
acquaintances, was cancelled after a few room” equipped with a dancer’s pole. Coppola’s restless protagonists—she
episodes. Francis recalled that Sofia The film is a note-perfect millennial posted a plucky TikTok video saying
once asked him, “Dad, am I going to period piece, channelling the haywire that she’d been grounded for attempt-
be a dilettante forever?” intersection of celebrity worship and ing to charter a helicopter with her
A breakthrough came when Cop- consumerism at the dawn of social dad’s credit card “because I wanted to
pola wrote a short film, called “Lick media. But Coppola said, of its milieu have dinner with my camp friend.”
the Star,” about a clique of teen-age of Ugg-boot-wearing teens and the re- Coppola, who values privacy and the
girls who revere, and then violently os- ality stars they worship, “I wouldn’t call mystery it can afford, called the video
tracize, their queen bee. Her cast fea- it hideous—that sounds snobby—but “the best way to rebel against me.” (She
tured some of her father’s associates, a big part of my motivation is making seemed excited, though, to confirm that
including Peter Bogdanovich as a school beauty.” To her chagrin, “The Bling Romy had filmed a small speaking role
principal. The finished film, released Ring” is her daughters’ favorite among in Francis’s upcoming movie.)
in 1998, runs only thirteen minutes and her movies. “They think it’s really glam- Coppola had set out scalloped short-
is shot in black-and-white, but it con- orous and cool,” she said, then added, bread cookies on a dainty plate (“I love
tains the seeds of Coppola’s lush cin- with a shudder, “They’ve started ask- Italian fancy-lady dishes”) and a floppy
ematic vocabulary. She told me, “I knew ing me for boot-cut jeans.” stack of paper, the manuscript of a
a little bit about photography, a little She did not show me the girls’ bed- coffee-table book, “Sofia Coppola Ar-
bit about clothing design, and a little rooms, but she later told me that she’s chive,” which she released last fall. The
bit about music. I was annoyed that I begun photographing their messes for finished volume, as thick and pink as a
could never pick one thing. And then, posterity. “It’s like set dressing for one slice of princess cake, is a scrapbook of
when I made my short film, I realized of my movies,” she said. The girls are Coppola’s career, with short, elliptical
it was a way to work with all of it.” forbidden to have public social-media introductions to each film followed by

Ia rednandNew York, Coppola lives with Mars

their two teen-age daughters in
brick town house whose narrow
façade makes it look deceptively hum-
ble from the outside. One morning last
March, she met me at the entranceway
with the family’s golden retriever, Gnoc-
chi, and guided me into a wide, white-
walled living room. Coppola’s home
décor, like her fashion sense, is classic
with a whimsical feminine touch. The
mantel over a gray marble fireplace held
a large porcelain chinoiserie vase filled
with an architectural array of pink roses
and anemones. (They were high-end
fakes.) A floor-to-ceiling bookcase was
organized into sections on fashion, New
York, photography, and French history.
In between books she had wedged
framed art works, including a drawing
made by the director Mike Mills for
the poster of “The Virgin Suicides” and
a Polaroid of Princess Caroline of Han-
over taken by Andy Warhol.
Coppola told me that her least fa-
vorite film to make was “The Bling
Ring,” her fifth feature, because the
world in which it’s set was out of synch
with her own sense of taste. The
movie—based on the true story of a
group of L.A. high schoolers who
robbed the homes of the rich and fa- “I ran away from a life of pole-vaulting.”
a cascade of Polaroids, hand-written ‘Shit, O.K., now I have to figure it out.’” the Sundance Film Festival to critical
notes, contact sheets, script marginalia, “Virgin,” filmed over a month in the acclaim, but, according to Coppola,
costume sketches, and other ephemera. summer of 1998, for a budget of four her American distributor, Paramount
The f irst chapter opens with a million dollars, was a remarkably as- Classics, did little to promote it. “They
behind-the-scenes image of Dunst smil- sured début, from its opening shot: thought teen-age girls were going to
ing in the grass of a football field. Cop- Dunst lingering on the hot street eat- kill themselves if they saw it,” she said,
pola was in her early twenties when she ing a cherry Popsicle, like a latter-day adding, “It barely came out here.”
read Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel “The Lolita, as the synthy sounds of the band Coppola told me that every film she
Virgin Suicides,” from 1993, about five Air kick in. From there the film un- makes is a reaction to the one before.
adolescent sisters in nineteen-seventies folds at an unhurried pace. The sisters’ After “Virgin,” she wanted to work
Michigan, who languish under the stric- sadness is scarcely externalized, but the from an original story. She considers
tures of their ultraconservative parents creeping ooze of their despair pervades “Lost in Translation,” her next film, to
and all die by suicide in a single year. every frame, including a striking shot be her most personal. She chose Japan
Coppola said that when she read the of a wooden crucifix with a pink lacy as its setting based on trips she’d taken
book she thought, I hope whoever bra slung across it to dry. Eugenides to promote her Milkfed line, and came
makes this into a movie doesn’t ruin it. formulated the story as a hazy mem- up with the story of a twentysomething
Then she realized that maybe she could ory, narrated by a chorus of neighbor- American woman, Charlotte, who
be the one to do it. hood boys who idolize the sisters but bonds with a famous older actor named
Coppola had started writing the know nothing of their inner lives. Cop- Bob at the Park Hyatt Tokyo. She wrote
script before she learned that a pair of pola’s script used a single narrator and the script with Bill Murray in mind as
producers had already bought the rights allowed the camera to peek into the Bob, then spent a year trying to track
to the book and were working with a private spaces where the boys could him down. (The actress Rashida Jones,
male writer-director. “I could hear my never go. “Archive” reproduces an e-mail a friend and collaborator of Coppola’s,
dad saying, ‘Don’t ever try to adapt she received from Eugenides in 1998, recalled, “She had an assistant whose
something you don’t have the rights expressing concerns that the script job it was to hold her phone and tell
to,’” she recalled. “He told me to move lacked “the necessary support around her if Bill Murray called.”) Charlotte,
on to something else.” Instead, Cop- that story, which of course means the played by Scarlett Johansson, is smart
pola sent her script to the producers boys, the passage of time, the disjunc- but lacking direction. She tells Bob, “I
and asked them to consider her for the tive narrative, and the right tone.” (She tried taking pictures, but they’re so me-
directing job should the current ar- also includes a recent message that Eu- diocre.” She is married to a hot-shot
rangement fall through. A year later, genides wrote in response to her re- music photographer (Giovanni Ribisi),
she got the call. “I was young and naïve quest to print the letter, in which he and she sits bored at the hotel bar as
and didn’t really know what I was get- says, “What a whiny little bitch I was he schmoozes with Hollywood types.
ting into,” she told me, “but I was, like, in those days.”) The film premièred at At the time, Coppola was married
to the director Spike Jonze, whom she’d
met in the early nineties through her
friends Kim Gordon and Thurston
Moore, of the band Sonic Youth. But
the two were in the process of sepa-
rating. Jonze released his own feature
directorial début, “Being John Malko-
vich,” the same year that “The Virgin
Suicides” premièred, and while Cop-
pola’s film had a modest return his be-
came an indie sensation. She recalled
feeling, in their relationship, an echo
of her mother’s experiences. Jonze and
a few of his friends had discussed
launching a directors’ collective, and,
according to Coppola, they didn’t even
invite her to join. “I don’t want to em-
barrass Spike and those guys,” she said.
“I think it’s just about understanding
the dynamic there, which was a very
nineties, dudes’-club dynamic. I was
going around with Spike to promote
his films, and I was just kind of the
wife.” ( Jonze could not be reached for
“Slowly move into the pose that everyone can do except Ron.” comment.)
 She was surprised when “Lost in
Translation” became a runaway hit, not
only winning her an Oscar but earn-
ing more than a hundred million dol-
lars worldwide on a four-million-dol-
lar budget. “I thought I was writing
this really indulgent piece,” she recalled.
“I mean, who cares about some rich
girl trying to find herself ?” But audi-
ences connected to the film’s fuzzed-
out mood of dislocation and the tragi-
comic pleasures of two lost people
finding each other for a moment in
time. At the end of the film, Bob and
Charlotte share a kiss, and he whispers
something inaudible into her ear. “I
never even wrote that line,” Coppola
said. “Bill always said that it was some-
thing that should stay between them.”

here is an adage in Hollywood that “What happened to your signature look?”

T actors want to win awards to boost
their egos, whereas directors want to
win awards to boost their budgets. After
• •
“Lost in Translation,” Coppola found
herself courted by the major studios. Coppola’s film, released in 2006, tells through the frosting of a layer cake and
The producer Amy Pascal, who was a the story of the profligate, unfeeling then delivers the camera an insolent
top executive at Sony Pictures at the monarch from the history textbooks as stare. When Coppola showed her fa-
time, told me, “I was desperate to work an intimate coming of age, following ther an early cut of the film, he advised
with her.” When they met, in 2014, she her from the time she was shipped to her to give Louis XVI more lines. Like
asked Coppola what project she dreamed Versailles from her home in Austria as Eugenides, he was missing the male
of making. Coppola answered imme- a fourteen-year-old peace offering be- perspective. “I was, like, ‘Um, Dad, no,’”
diately: “Marie Antoinette.” tween nations to her departure from Coppola remembered, adding, “I hon-
Not long after the release of “The the palace, nineteen years later, as the estly don’t care about anyone else’s point
Virgin Suicides,” Coppola had read an French Revolution set in. Coppola told of view. Just hers.”
advance copy of a biography of the me that she wanted to capture the idea Coppola and Mars began dating
French queen, by the British historian of “the kids taking over the kingdom.” during the film’s making. Mars, who
Antonia Fraser, and had written to Fra- She allowed Dunst to retain her Amer- was born and raised in the town of Ver-
ser asking to option it. “I know I will ican accent and filled the film with sailles, recalled, “It’s like living in a mu-
be able to express how a girl experi- anachronistic music and energetic mon- seum. You can’t disturb anything. It’s
ences the grandeur of a palace, the tages, including a feverish shopping not welcome.” With “Marie,” there was
clothes, parties, rivals, and ultimately scene set to a remix of “I Want Candy.” excitement in seeing Versailles “em-
having to grow up,” she wrote. “I can (Roman, her brother, who shot most of brace something new.” But not all
identify with her role of coming from the film’s closeups, planted a pair of French people appreciated the result.
a strong family and fighting for her Converse sneakers among the rococo At a press screening at Cannes, some
own identity.” At first, Coppola en- mules.) When an angry mob grumbles viewers booed. Many critics dismissed
deavored to make her script biograph- about the queen’s infamous (and likely the movie as an ahistorical powder puff,
ically comprehensive, covering Marie apocryphal) line “Let them eat cake,” an impudent exercise in vibes-first film-
Antoinette’s life all the way up to the Dunst tells her girlfriends, “That’s such making. Others thought it was a mas-
guillotine. Fraser, writing later in Van- nonsense, I would never say that!” The terpiece. The response was so divided
ity Fair, recalled telling Coppola that movie is almost obscenely beautiful; that the Times made an unorthodox
the script seemed to lose energy in its every shot has the composed luscious- decision to publish duelling reviews
final act, as if Coppola had been un- ness of a box of petits fours. The brac- from its two chief movie critics. Manohla
interested in “the mature woman’s tragic ing opening sequence—Coppola has Dargis, in the “anti” camp, wrote, “The
fate.” Fraser went on, “When she asked never missed on an opening shot—was princess lived in a bubble, and it’s from
me lightly, ‘Would it matter if I leave inspired by a Guy Bourdin photograph inside that bubble Ms. Coppola tells
out the politics?,’ I replied with abso- of a model in repose: lounging in a petti- her story.” For some, though, the film’s
lute honesty, ‘Marie Antoinette would coat, with an attendant massaging her reception only reinforced Coppola’s
have adored that.’” feet, Dunst’s Marie swipes her finger claim to its thematic substance, as a
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 33
 takes place during the Civil War, about
a group of white Confederate women
who are driven into an erotic fervor
when a wounded Union soldier arrives
at their boarding school in an isolated
mansion. Both the original film and
the novel on which it is based also fea-
ture an enslaved Black woman who
works in the house. Coppola, fearful of
perpetuating stereotypes, decided to
omit the character altogether, and ex-
plained away the absence with dialogue
at the beginning of the film: it was near-
ing the end of the war, and “the slaves
left.” In the U.S., the release was dom-
inated by discourse about the charac-
ter’s erasure; at Slate, the writer Corey
Atad lambasted the film for its “white-
washing of slavery.”
The fallout forced Coppola to con-
sider that there are hazards to writing
only what you know, or “leaving out the
politics,” if doing so means waving away
inconvenient complexities. The critic
Angelica Jade Bastién, of New York and
Vulture, told me, “What Coppola does
best is also her greatest weakness: she
creates fables about modern white fem-
ininity.” She went on, “Art is political
whether the artist wants it to be or not.
Coppola is someone studying white-
ness, but who doesn’t perhaps under-
• • stand her own whiteness very well. It
is because of that contradiction that her
woman who knows a thing or two about perficial, inappropriately erotic, or un- work doesn’t get deeper.” Coppola told
the distorting effects of public expo- intelligible,” as Homay King, a film-stud- me, “I admit it was probably stupid to
sure. (One of her close friends, the fash- ies professor at Bryn Mawr, wrote in do something on the Civil War.” But
ion designer Marc Jacobs, told me, “It’s Film Quarterly. King wondered what she also suggested that her “creative li-
so easy to throw around these titles like level of awareness Coppola had brought cense” with the source material had been
‘nepo baby.’ What do you do, kill your- to this portrayal: Did the tone of be- “misinterpreted as insulting.” She’d been
self because you come from a good fam- wildered Orientalism belong to her interested in portraying the unravelling
ily? Do you just not make art?”) Roger characters or to her? Coppola defended of a group of cossetted women when
Ebert saw the movie’s slim perspective her depiction to the Los Angeles Times there were no men around or slaves left
as a strength: “Every criticism I have by saying, “My story is about Ameri- to tend to them. “It’s the kind of world
read of this film would alter its fragile cans in Tokyo. After all, that’s all I I like, really claustrophobic,” she said,
magic and reduce its romantic and know.” But she didn’t seem to reckon adding, “They were so used to being
tragic poignancy to the level of an in- with the inherent sensitivities of de- taken care of, and they didn’t know how
structional film.” picting another culture from a distance. to do anything for themselves.”
How one feels about Coppola’s nar- “I did wonder if all the ‘r’ and ‘l’ switch-
row approach to storytelling might de- ing would be offensive,” she said back uring one conversation, Coppola
pend, in part, on where one stands in
relation to her field of vision. When
then. “But my crew thought it was
funny.” (“It was a different time,” she
D confessed, “Sometimes I feel like
I make the same film over and over,
“Lost in Translation” came out, some told me. “I haven’t thought about how and I’m probably becoming a cliché of
Asian and Asian American critics took I would approach it now, but probably myself.” In some ways, “Priscilla” re-
issue with the film’s depiction of Japa- not in the same way.”) sembles her previous movies, but in
nese culture through the eyes of West- Coppola confronted a similar back- contrast to a film like “Marie Antoi-
ern visitors. Accented English was lash more recently, to a movie set on nette,” with its baubles and brocades,
played in the movie for laughs. Tokyo American soil. “The Beguiled,” from the new film is strikingly joyless in its
establishments were portrayed as “su- 2017, is a remake of a 1971 movie that depiction of life inside a gilded cage.
34 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
In part because Coppola was denied film’s protagonists—the divorcé movie statement in her stead: “I’m so sorry to
the rights to Elvis’s music, the exuber- star Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) not be there with you, but I’m with my
ance of rock and roll is all but absent and his eleven-year-old, Cleo (Elle Fan- mother, to whom this film is dedicated.”
from the film. Priscilla interacts with ning)—order every flavor of gelato from
Elvis mostly at home, where he’s dressed room service, “which is just the sort of ne recent evening, hundreds of
down, needy, and sporadically abusive.
Through the murmurings of tertiary
thing my dad would do,” and enlisted
the Chateau Marmont’s late “singing
O Coppola fans lined up at a Barnes &
Noble in central L.A. for an “Archive”
characters, Coppola laces the film with waiter” Romulo Laki to serenade Cleo book signing. Coppola is, as her daugh-
reminders of Priscilla’s tender age, which with Elvis’s “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy ters recently informed her, “big on
was troubling even if you believe, as Bear,” the same song that Laki used to TikTok,” and some Gen Z fans have
Presley claimed in her book, that she sing to Sofia when she was young. “On taken to calling her “Mother,” an influ-
and Elvis did not consummate their the Rocks,” by contrast, is both funnier encer to the influencers. (One viral video
relationship until they were married, and pricklier, charting Laura’s struggle shows a young woman ranting about
when she was twenty-one. One of the to define herself outside of her dad’s cleaning her room: “When a boy’s room
film’s strongest sequences shows Spaeny overwhelming orbit. Drinking a Mar- is messy, it’s, like, ‘Oh, my God, he’s
trying to occupy herself in Graceland tini at Bemelmans, Felix tells Laura filthy,’” she says, adding, “When a girl’s
while Elvis is away. She ambles around that he is going deaf to the frequency room is messy? It’s Sofia Coppola.”) At
in a doll-like white dress and too-big of female voices. Laura yells at the end the bookstore, the crowd was largely
matching heels. She tries out various of the film, “You have daughters and made up of teen-agers, many of whom
seats in the living room and plunks a granddaughters, so you’d better start had donned costumes: gossamer pink
single key on Elvis’s baby grand. She is figuring out how to hear them!” tutus and oversized hair bows that
less a kid taking over the kingdom than Eleanor has often shot behind-the- evoked Marie Antoinette’s style; chok-
a child left home alone. scenes footage on Sofia’s films, as she ers with heart pendants like one Spaeny
Just as Coppola rarely concerns her- did for Francis. She has eighty hours wears in the “Priscilla” trailer. One wore
self with events beyond her characters’ from the making of “Marie Antoinette,” a vintage T-shirt by Milkfed, Coppo-
sequestered worlds, she doesn’t show which Sofia told me she’s helping turn la’s fashion line, which she sold years
what happens to the ones who escape into a documentary. In 2016, at the age ago but which has, in recent years, be-
the waiting room of their lives. The of eighty, Eleanor also released her first come a cult brand among a new gen-
final shot of “Priscilla” shows Spaeny feature, a comedy called “Paris Can eration of fans, including the pop star
driving out of the gates of Graceland. Wait,” becoming the oldest American Olivia Rodrigo.
We hear Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always woman to make a directorial début. A young woman wearing a skirt cus-
Love You,” both mournful and trium- But lately Eleanor has been ill, and the tom-printed with a still from “The Vir-
phant. Coppola has hinted at a desire family has been shuttling back and gin Suicides” reached the front of the
to, as she put it in one interview, “grow forth to her bedside in California. On line and held her hand to her chest.
up and do other subject matter,” be- Sofia’s birthday last year, which coin- “You literally invented ‘aesthetic,’” she
yond adolescence, but she gave me lit- cided with Mother’s Day, the two “sat said to Coppola, using slang for the kind
tle sense of what that might look like, in the hospital and ate tuna sand- of exquisitely curated look that teens
besides, perhaps, teaming up again with wiches,” Eleanor told me. Last Octo- strive for on social media. There was an
Dunst, who is now in her early forties. amusing mismatch between the fans’
Coppola’s past films have romanticized gushing and Coppola’s low-key energy.
the bonds between famous older men She did not say much more than a warm
and younger women, but she told me “oh, thank you” or “that’s so sweet” as
that her attitude about such connec- she received their compliments.
tions has shifted with the times. Her Leaving the bookstore, at dusk, Cop-
project before “Priscilla,” “On the pola said that she was looking forward
Rocks,” from 2020, centered on a forty- to ordering room service at the Bev-
ish writer, Laura (Rashida Jones, who erly Hills Hotel, whose menu she knew
is the daughter of the music producer from childhood breakfasts spent talking
Quincy Jones), and her big-time art- ber, “Priscilla” had its American pre- filmmaking there with her father. (The
dealer dad, Felix (Bill Murray). The mière at the New York Film Festival. eggs Benedict is apparently first-rate.)
character of Felix, whom Coppola said The strikes in Hollywood meant that We walked together toward a black car
she based on her “dada and his bud- there were almost no actors on the red waiting for her at the curb. After the
dies,” is a gregarious man of style, who carpets, but, because “Priscilla” involved harsh fluorescent lighting in the book-
wears silk scarves and considers caviar no major-studio funding, Coppola was store, the L.A. streets looked pleasingly
a road snack. He is also an attention among the few directors given special subdued. I pointed at the sunset, which
hog prone to errant flirting and chau- dispensation to have her film’s stars do was a shade of powdery pink.
vinist soliloquies. “Somewhere” was promotion. Elordi and Spaeny were at “Oh, yeah,” Coppola said, her eyes
tinged with nostalgic sweetness about the première, but Coppola herself was moving lackadaisically toward the sky.
fathers and daughters: Coppola had the missing. Henley, her producer, read a “It’s a little like I directed it.” 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 35
 LETTER FROM SPAIN

CAVE WOMAN
Beatriz Flamini liked solitude so much that she decided to live underground for five hundred days.
BY D. T. MAX

W
hen Beatriz Flamini was and she learned first-aid skills, special- that other people took of her. In one
growing up, in Madrid, she izing in retrieving people from deep image, she is dangling by a purple guide
spent a lot of time alone in crevices and other perilous locations. rope hundreds of feet above a rocky
her bedroom. “I really liked being there,” Speed and precision were crucial. She cliff bottom. “Coming from where I’ve
she says. She’d read books to her dolls told me, “After a fall, the short elastic been lets me decide where I’m going,”
and write on a chalkboard while giv- cords of the harness hold you in place. she wrote. Her signature hashtag was
ing them lessons in math or history. They act like a tourniquet. You have #autosuficiencia (“self-sufficiency”). She
As she got older, she told me, she some- twenty minutes to get out.” She sliced enjoyed social-media interactions: she
times imagined being a professor like the air sideways to indicate what fol- presented herself the way she wished
Indiana Jones: the kind who slipped lowed if you didn’t: amputation. Flamini to be and could ignore responses that
away from the classroom to “be who was also an avid climber and hiker, and made her uneasy.
he really was.” she told me that she’d once helped save When the pandemic arrived, in 2020,
In the early nineteen-nineties, while someone who’d been buried by an av- Flamini drove her camper to the moun-
Flamini was studying to be a sports in- alanche. Another time, she witnessed tains of Catalonia and set herself up in
structor, she visited a cave for the first the death of a hiker who’d been struck an abandoned pre-Romanesque her-
time. She and a friend drove north of by lightning. “There’s nothing you can mitage. She told me that she loved “its
Madrid to El Reguerillo, a cavern known do,” she recalls. cemetery, its rows of dead, dusk fall-
for its paleolithic engravings. “We stayed Flamini found her work arduous ing,” adding, “It’s a tranquil place.”
until Sunday and came out only because but satisfying. She had moments of in- Flamini would speak on the phone to
we had classes and work,” Flamini re- tense intimacy with other people but an old friend and hear how bad the
calls. El Reguerillo was dark but cozy, spent most of her time by herself. She covid-19 situation was in Madrid; then
and inside its walls she experienced an even fell out of touch with her family. she’d go hiking among wolves.
overwhelming sense of love. “There Flamini began living in a camper van In July, 2021, just after lockdowns in
were no words for what I felt,” she says. and loved it, especially in the winter, Spain ended, Flamini thought about
After graduating, Flamini taught when the doors occasionally froze shut, coming down from the mountains. But
aerobics in Madrid. She was admired leaving her trapped inside until the her real desire was to go somewhere
for her charisma and commitment. temperature rose. “There were times more remote: the Gobi Desert, in Mon-
“Everyone wanted me for their classes,” when I’d be stuck in there for three golia. Only one European had ever
she says. “They fought over me.” By days, waiting,” she says. To get warm, crossed it alone on foot, she’d learned.
the time she turned forty, in 2013, she she’d turn on a small stove in the back She moved to northern Spain and began
had a partner, a car, and a house. But of the van; if it was too cold for the training for the Gobi expedition by
she felt unsatisfied. She didn’t really stove to work, she’d cocoon herself in hiking steep mountain trails while car-
care about financial stability, and, un- blankets, alternating between reading rying a backpack weighed down by
like most people she knew, she didn’t and sleeping. bottles filled with water. She soon de-
want children. She experienced an ex- The outside world wouldn’t always cided that she was prepared physi-
istential crisis. “You know you’re going leave her alone. Twice, thieves tried to cally—she could carry twice her weight
to die—today, tomorrow, within fifty break into her camper while she was at six thousand feet—but not mentally.
years,” Flamini told herself. “What is elsewhere in the mountains. After the The longest stretch she’d ever spent
it that you want to do with your life second attempt, she told me, she dented alone was ninety-five days, in the Can-
before that happens?” The immediate the side panel of her vehicle—“four tabrian Mountains. (A passing shep-
answer, she remembers, was to “grab kicks, pow-pow-pow-pow”—because herd had told her to go home.)
my knapsack and go and live in the “no one would bother a car like that.” Flamini thought about test runs that
mountains.” Flamini, an enthusiastic photogra- might prepare her for the extended sol-
pher, was proud of her mountain ad- itude of the Mongolian desert. Spend-
lamini moved to the Sierra de Gre- ventures, and she maintained an Insta- ing time in a cave, she decided, could
F dos, in central Spain, where she
worked as a caretaker at a mountain
gram feed full of her exploits in rugged
locales. “I didn’t do it out of narcissism,”
provide useful lessons in endurance and
focus. She’d gone spelunking numer-
refuge. She became certified in safety she told me. “I expressed what I felt.” ous times since El Reguerillo, and in
protocols for working on tall structures, Sometimes she posted photographs the late nineties she’d spent longer stints
36 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
The cave, in Andalusia, was protected by a drop exceeding two hundred feet. Animals and people couldn’t stray in.
ILLUSTRATION BY ANTOINE COSSÉ THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 37
with groups of cave explorers, serving Flamini would not take any device that was curious to see how different fab-
as their photographer. She’d never had permitted someone to send messages rics would fare in the underground air.
a bad time in a cave. back or to otherwise have real-time She added a toothbrush and unscented
She read on the Internet about peo- contact with her. This left her at some deodorant. She also decided to bring
ple who had survived in caves for ex- degree of risk: she could break a leg a stick—her “Harry Potter wand,” as
tended periods. The modern record out of reach of the panic button or the she called it—which she had kept in
was four hundred and sixty-three days. cameras and be unable to summon help. her van, for luck, and two stuffed toys:
It had been set in 1970 by Milutin Velj- But she accepted—even welcomed— a little bear and a witch. She promised
ković, a Serbian man who had gone the danger in the scenario. She tried herself that she would not treat them
underground near the town of Svrljig. to visualize contending with a catastro- as confidants in the cave. As she ex-
But nobody had inhabited a cave in phe: “how to stay calm in the face of plained to me, “I did not want a Wil-
the way Flamini was envisaging. “They pain, in the face of desperation, as death son”—a reference to the volleyball that
either wore a watch or talked on the draws near.” becomes Tom Hanks’s sole compan-
phone every day,” she told me. “Or their Her basic goal remained intact: to ion in the 2000 film “Cast Away.” She
families brought them food, or they neither see nor speak to another human was not looking for surrogate company.
had a pet for company.” Veljković, for being for five hundred days. She didn’t “I was going to be my own Wilson,”
example, had remained in contact with even want to see her own face. “I wanted she told me. “Those kinds of conver-
his nearby village, thanks to a phone total disconnection,” she says. If her sations—I wanted to have them only
with an extremely long cord, and he expedition worked as planned, it would with myself. ‘What should we eat
kept up with world events by listening feel somewhat like spending a year and today?’ ‘What seems appealing?’ ‘Look,
to the radio. Flamini decided to not a half inside a sensory-deprivation tank. we’ll have beans.’ ‘No, I don’t want
only beat Veljković’s record but do it She got in touch with a spelunking beans.’ ‘Come on!’ ‘O.K.’ Everything in-
in a way that felt right to her. She re- club near Granada that knew of an side my head.”
calls settling on “five hundred days, just ideal cave in the mountains north of
to round it up—because I knew I could, Motril, a town overlooking the Anda- hough Flamini had devised an id-
I just knew it.” lusian coast. The cave was humid but
not wet, and it stayed a habitable tem-
T iosyncratic and deeply personal
experiment, she realized that the ex-
iven that autosuficiencia was Flami- perature year-round. It was protected tremity of the exercise would be of in-
G ni’s watchword, she initially imag-
ined that she would identify a cave in
by a drop near its entrance exceeding
two hundred feet: amorous teen-agers,
terest to others. She invited research-
ers at two institutions in Andalusia—the
Spain that had never had human vis- or foxes or weasels looking for shelter, University of Granada and the Univer-
itors, bring down more than a year’s couldn’t stray in. At the cave’s base was sity of Almería—to monitor her during
worth of food and water, and come a long gallery that was about a hun- her prolonged isolation in the dark, in
back up when she’d consumed it all. dred feet by thirty feet, with a ceiling case it could prove beneficial to science.
Then she’d buy that ticket to Mongo- forty feet high. Though the space was After all, humans might one day travel
lia. But when Flamini sought advice the size of a luxury loft, it was dark and in space capsules to Mars. The academ-
from experienced spelunkers, they told dank, and the floor was covered in un- ics were excited by Flamini’s idea, and
her that it was impossible to furnish a agreed to collect and analyze data from
cave for five hundred days in one go— her experience. The scientists would
she’d need two thousand rations and focus on different aspects of her phys-
more than two hundred and fifty gal- ical and psychological state: how her
lons of water. Moreover, how would cognitive skills fared under extended
she get garbage out without seeing day- pressure; how living in darkness af-
light? She would need a team to help fected her circadian rhythms; how she
her. And, once accomplished spelunk- made sense of any mental decline. Julio
ers got involved, it would be against Santiago, an experimental psychologist
their safety codes to allow her to re- at Granada, who planned to examine
main underground by herself with no even rock shards. The group offered to changes in Flamini’s temporal and spa-
recourse in case of an emergency. resupply Flamini via a natural shelf tial perceptions, told me, “You don’t
Flamini had not built a life of com- midway down the vertical drop: vol- very often find someone who wants to
promise, but she saw that in this in- unteers from Motril could go down be isolated and disoriented like this.”
stance some concessions would be nec- with necessities, and she could then The scientists subjected her to a bat-
essary. She consented to the installation climb up by rope to get them. The vol- tery of interviews and preliminary tests,
of two security cameras, a panic but- unteers would also monitor her well- and gave her a bracelet that would track
ton, and a computer at the cave site, being, and rescue her if she became se- her circadian rhythms, by measuring
for sending one-way communications riously ill. A catering company offered her distal body temperature and deter-
to people aboveground. To allow for to donate precooked food and deliver mining whether she was lying down or
the transmission of data, a Wi-Fi router it for the course of the expedition. standing. To further prepare for the ad-
would have to be installed as well. But Flamini packed a lot of clothes; she venture, Flamini met with Débora
38 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
Godoy Izquierdo, a sports psycholo-
gist. Godoy gave her tips on how to
recognize hallucinations, so that she
wouldn’t be scared by them, and en-
couraged her to verbalize her thoughts
while in the cave, to give herself a greater
sense of reality.
María Dolores Roldán-Tapia, a neu-
ropsychologist at Almería, invited
Flamini to visit her laboratory for two
days. Flamini, wearing skin sensors and
a virtual-reality headset, guided a space-
ship and searched for planets while deal-
ing with mechanical breakdowns and
overcoming other hurdles. These sim-
ulations helped establish her baseline
states, from stress and surprise to bore-
dom and fatigue. In addition, Roldán-
Tapia gave Flamini something called
the Iowa Gambling Task, in which a
subject chooses cards from a set of decks.
The goal is to infer which decks are
more advantageous than the others and
thereby maximize winnings. Flamini
scored well, winding up with fifty dol-
lars in thirty minutes. Roldán-Tapia “Forty-minute wait in the next dimension. I say we just stay here.”
found Flamini “a very decisive person—
very motivated and disciplined.”
Flamini also invited Dokumalia, a
• •
Spanish production company that spe-
cializes in outdoor-adventure series, to and a small group of volunteers gath- entered it. “Who bought the beers last
create a video record of her experience. ered at the cave’s mouth. Joy and anx- Friday?” she had joked on exiting. The
Dokumalia provided her with two iety flitted across her face, as though baby fat on her cheeks was gone—she
GoPro cameras, whose screens had she wasn’t sure if she was going on va- had lost twelve pounds—but the spar-
been removed, to make a diary of her cation or to jail. Using her phone a final kle in her brown eyes was still there.
time in the cave. The footage could be time, she left a voice mail for a friend The initial impression she gave off
mined by both Dokumalia and the sci- who had wanted to wish her well; her was that her stay on the cave floor had
entists. Electricity would be supplied eyes glistened as she said, “Enjoy the been a breeze. At a press conference,
by solar-charged batteries sent down Internet and Pinterest and your vid- she described her time in the cave as
the vertical shaft with other provisions, eos. Thanks for crossing my path.” “excellent” and “unbeatable,” and she
allowing Flamini to turn on a couple She put on a spelunking helmet, told me that she’d enjoyed the experi-
of lights, and the Wi-Fi router would slung a large duffelbag on her back, ence so much that she had “left the
be placed on a wall at the bottom of hooked a carabiner to a guide rope, and cave singing.” She had read dozens of
the shaft. Flamini gave her project the prepared to rappel down the vertical books, drawn pictures, knit hats, and
name Time Cave. shaft. The cave’s opening was such a exercised—it could practically be called
In mid-November, 2021, Flamini small slit that Flamini had to struggle a staycation. Underground, she had
posted on Instagram, “On Saturday, to fit inside. As she lowered herself down turned forty-nine, and then fifty, alone,
November 20th, the boat sets sail again,” the long, narrow chute, she looked up but she told me that she’d never really
adding coyly, “We’ll be in touch again at the volunteers, stuck out her tongue, celebrated her birthday anyway. “My
in April/May 2023.” By this point, the and joked, “See you in just a night.” mother loved it—she could save money,”
Motril volunteers had cleared a space Her Instagram account was silent Flamini joked.
for a helicopter to land by the cave’s for the next five hundred days. Some professional spelunkers had
mouth, in case an emergency evacua- expressed incredulity at the notion
tion became necessary. In a nod to the first met Flamini in May, 2023, at that the experience had been easy.
many people who were helping her
now, Flamini added, “#ni_sola_ni_en_
IHierro
the Hospital Universitario Puerta de
Majadahonda, in a suburb
They’d looked for holes in Flamini’s
narrative. A veteran caver named Mi-
autosuficiencia”—“neither alone nor in northwest of Madrid. She had emerged guel Caramés told the Spanish news-
self-sufficiency.” from the cave on April 14th, almost paper El Mundo that he would never
When it came time to descend, she exactly five hundred days after she’d attempt such an adventure “in the
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 39
most inhospitable environment a human At first, she’d suggested having lunch feeling of autosuficiencia. “This is way
can experience” and urged Flamini to at a Japanese restaurant, but she’d for- bigger than my van,” she noted. “It’s a
“explain with more detail the logistics gotten that Moralzarzal didn’t have mansion!” (Her own camper was still
of the challenge.” Others dismissed the one. We settled on a place with typi- parked in Motril.) I asked her if she’d
stay as a stunt. As one extreme-sports cal Spanish food, at the intersection seen “Nomadland,” the 2020 movie in
authority pointed out to me, “The fact of two busy roads. which Frances McDormand plays a
of being in a cave doesn’t turn you into I asked her, in Spanish, if she wanted woman who goes from job to job in a
an expert spelunker.” (Flamini has al- to sit outside, thinking that she must camper, but Flamini hadn’t heard of it.
ways acknowledged that she is not a have had enough of interiors. She said, As we chatted, she said of the van, “Here
caving expert.) “Me da igual”—“It doesn’t matter.” We you don’t have to reach for anything.
On Instagram, she posted a list wound up at a table by a large window, You’re nice and toasty. There is no
of favorite songs that she’d played in watching cars whiz past. She explained waste.” She compared it to how relaxed
the cave, among them tracks by Joe that she was staying with friends nearby life in the cave had been.
Bonamassa and Jon Bon Jovi. All told, while she underwent the series of As the sun moved across the sky
her story felt like a heightened version evaluations at the hospital. She liked and we drank our coffee, I noticed her
of many people’s lives during the pan- the suburban hospital more than those observations growing more sombre.
demic—which she hadn’t even known in Madrid because Moralzarzal was The cave experience was not some-
had receded until she resurfaced. Her green and its residents “ran and biked thing that she “would recommend to
cave adventure seemed to suggest that and skated.” anyone,” she said, adding, “I didn’t ex-
humans were naturally resilient and Flamini told me that she had en- actly lose consciousness, but the dark-
built to survive. joyed her time in the cave so much that ness saps you of life.” She went on,
In the hospital, Flamini was ebul- she had not wanted to leave. She often “The solitude, the social uprooting, it
lient as doctors ran tests on her. “Blood felt nostalgic about a ritual that she consumes you. Or, to put it a better
pressure, normal—nutritional levels, had performed underground: before way, you eat—you down nutrients—
ideal,” she told me. “Electrocardiogram going to bed, she would turn the panic but you consume yourself.” A year and
perfect. And the psychiatrists said noth- button on and off, to let her minders a half in the Motril cave had been sur-
ing was wrong.” She laughed and said, know that her imminent inactivity vivable, she continued, but if she’d
“Everyone thought I’d come out a zom- would mean only that she was asleep. stayed underground for five years she
bie, but no!” In the cave, Flamini said, she’d expe- would have died. She had brought down
She had on the same sunglasses that rienced the overwhelming love that she some elastic bands to exercise with, but
she had worn after emerging from the had first felt in El Reguerillo. she had quickly lost the will to use
cave, and they gave her a glamorous I asked her what she’d missed down them. “I had a scale for measuring my
Alpine look. I noticed that she walked below, and she told me roast chicken weight,” she remembered. “I would do
unevenly, and that she was stooped. She with French fries—“the kind where ten pulls on the bands, and then I’d
told me that her balance was still off you can soak the bread and the pota- have to lie down because I had noth-
after five hundred days in a place where toes in the sauce.” The caterer had sent ing left. I’d wake up and I’d lost weight.”
normal walking wasn’t possible, and down decent food, but never that. Over At the beginning, Flamini had writ-
that her pupils hadn’t yet readjusted to all, she insisted, the time had passed ten a journal on the computer and shared
bright light. And there had been other quickly: “For me, it was just a mo- it with the researchers, but this didn’t
detrimental effects. Her short-term ment—a single night. I didn’t have time last. She initially tried to keep track of
memory, she admitted, had become to miss anyone.” In a vibrant, emotive the passing days, but by the middle of
dodgy in the cave, and remained so. voice, she spoke about her happiness the second month her sense of time
She had also lost much of her periph- underground so adamantly, and repeat- had become thoroughly distorted. The
eral vision while underground; a friend edly, that it was a little hard to believe. scientific experiments also faltered. Be-
had driven her to the hospital on the After lunch, we had coffee outside fore descending, she had promised to
day we met, because she couldn’t drive the house where she was staying, a low use the computer to do the Iowa Gam-
safely yet. Flamini noted, “Sudden stucco home with a garden. “It’s a mag- bling Task and other cognitive exercises
noises from the back frighten me— ical place,” Flamini said, as she led me at regular intervals, but Roldán-Tapia
anything that comes at me without my to an arbor where birds were chirping. told me that after a couple of weeks
seeing it.” In the cave, she explained, She did not know bird sounds very well, Flamini started sending messages “com-
there had been no light beyond that of she told me, but she had a sixth sense plaining that the computer didn’t work.”
her camping lamps. Most of the time for when a bear or a wolf was nearby. The researcher added, “Then she began
she just wore a headlamp, meaning that Her hosts, rock climbers who knew her making up random or imaginary pass-
she mostly saw only what was directly habits, had lent her a van to sleep in. words.” The Time Cave group asked
in front of her. “I spent a lot of time In the back of the van, she showed the Motril spelunkers to leave a request
looking that way,” she said. me a kitchen area, where she was stor- for Flamini to resume using the com-
We drove twenty miles north, to ing clothes; there were also various puter, but she ignored it.
Moralzarzal, a small town in the foot- cacharritos—cheap tools, such as pots One time, Flamini, desperate for
hills of the Guadarrama Mountains. and pans, that gave her a pleasurable contact, told a story aloud to the Motril
40 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
SKETCHBOOK BY NAVIED MAHDAVIAN

THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 41

team through one of the security cam-
eras—which the volunteers moni-
tored—even though they did not trans- AERIAL VIEW
mit sound. But she never did this again,
concluding that it violated the spirit People who romanticize an Africa
of her pledge of solitude. She told me They’ve never seen
that she could remember few details Like to identify themselves
of what happened after the first few With lions. It’s all roar and hunt,
months. Ninety-five per cent of her Quick fucks and blond manes.
time in the cave, she estimated, had People love the word pride.
been spent just sitting or lying in the Haven’t you seen the parades?
darkness or in the dim light from her Everybody adores a lion
battery-powered lamps. “I went into But me. I want to be a giraffe.
hibernation,” she said. I’m already tall and long-necked.
In the real Sahara, a giraffe beats
lamini did keep turning on her A lion’s ass every day
F GoPros, however, and Dokumalia
let me watch a bit of the footage. In
On Instagram. I’ve seen
A giraffe shake the leaping cat
her first few days underground, you Off its back and toss it like litter.
can see her trying to impose order on I’ve seen a giraffe stomp hooves
a new life with no responsibilities. She Down hard on the lion’s face
neatly tends to her campsite, with its Before it got the chance
kitchen, dining area, sleeping tent, ex- To meow. I want to be a giraffe
ercise area, and computer station. Each And eat greens of every variety
setup is separated by twenty feet or so, Straight out the tree. I already
to keep her moving. She clearly ex- Like to get high. Lions need
pects to excel at the challenge before Animals like us. We need no prey.
her. Shortly after she goes down, for I already won’t chase anybody
instance, she uses a set of markers to For my food. But maybe
draw on a stick. “This is to maintain I can still be romantic. Maybe
my sense of color,” she declares. At I can still be romantic in spite
one point, she stares into the distance, Of my pride. Someone will notice.
explaining that she is doing an exer- Up the sky, not down the street.
cise to preserve her long-range vision. You can watch me while I watch you
But the élan fades quickly. Record- And the rest of the savanna
ing herself with one of the GoPros, From my aerial view. Lord,
she notes how hard it is not to know Let me get higher. Just one of me
whether it’s day or night in the per- Is a parade.
petual gloom of the cave. “It’s always
four in the morning,” she complains. —Jericho Brown
As the days pass, her body also grows
confused; she sometimes goes three
days without signalling to the team holds up the thermos and exults, “Café!” placed by baby ones. One day, she has
that she is going to bed. The footage takes some surreal turns. an urge to collect all the stones on the
The weirdness does not always make While tucked into her sleeping bag, cave f loor, and concludes this must
her unhappy. “I’m fucked but in love,” she thinks that she might be hearing mean that it’s harvest time aboveground.
she brags to the GoPro early in her drums beating beneath her head, and (In fact, it’s summertime.) Flamini con-
stay. In another video, she explains that imagines that some sort of shaman is siders documenting her menstrual cycle
she knows “where I am and what my trying to send her signals of welcome. as a way of tracking time, but her pe-
goals are,” adding, “There’s no loss of On what she thinks is day nineteen— riod is too irregular to serve as a cal-
motives for why I’m here.” Another she’s actually been underground for endar. The roots of her dyed-red hair
time, she is cradling a big silver ther- nearly twice as long—she says to the grow out, but she has no mirror with
mos while wearing a blue down jacket; camera, “I’m convinced that if I get which to inspect her new appearance.
she theatrically turns toward the walls past day thirty it’s a done deal!” Flamini’s campsite quickly becomes
of her cave and intones, “How hand- Ostensibly, she wants to disconnect strewn with clothes, blankets, books,
some you are. You’re lovely! And how from time and its demands, but clues and pots and pans. She wonders aloud
welcoming! You’re kind and full of that the seasons are changing keep at- what her autosuficiencia concept has to
crickets—I think they’re crickets. tracting her attention. Big spiders on do with a project that involves eating
You’re a delight!” In another video, she the cave’s walls disappear and are re- hundreds of precooked meals lowered
42 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
into her cave by volunteers. Too often, (Godoy told me that she never shared me. “ ‘A while ago I was born.’ ‘A while
her experience feels to her more like the others’ worries, and believed that ago I was going to visit Mongolia.’
filming reality television than like cross- Flamini had dealt appropriately with There is no past, there is no future. Ev-
ing the Mongolian desert by herself. the hallucinations, “even if they might erything is present, everything is a while
Suddenly, she offers a hymn of praise be strange experiences for most peo- ago, and it’s all brutal and strange.”
to her favorite brand of ready-to-eat ple in their daily lives.”) One temporal marker remained.
food. “They provide a gustatory edu- Flamini righted herself, but at times After five defecations, she would carry
cation!” she gushes. The meals, she she returned to a psychologically del- her waste, in plastic pouches, up to
jokes, offer a rare sensory rush in an icate state. In other footage, a swarm the exchange point, and then hurry
environment where there are no novel of flies has deposited larvae in her food, back down. “If there was food, I’d bring
flavors or smells, “except for an occa- and she holds back tears as she rubs it,” she recalls. “Otherwise, I’d just
sional little fart you let out.” her eyes in despair. She leaves a note come back.”
As the months pass, things get for the Motril volunteers, begging for Flamini grew achy and stiff—in
bleaker. Flamini battles a persistent help. They lower a roll of flypaper onto April, 2022, she complained to the
fear of the dark, and at many points the rock shelf. She initially planned to GoPro that she could barely raise her
she seems on the verge of breaking make it through the five hundred days legs. She began spending a large amount
down in tears from the stress. Weeks without any music, relying on medita- of her time in her tent—a cave within
go by in which she doesn’t make a new tion and visualization exercises to calm a cave. She remembers sleeping for very
video. When she does resume record- herself. But soon after she enters the long stretches, often having vivid
ing, it’s clear that her resolve is crack- cave she asks for someone to send down dreams. Flamini told me about one in
ing. In the sealed world of the cave, an MP3 player that she left with the which she imagined herself standing
small things cause big irritations, as if team. Flamini loves blues music, and outside the cave. I told her that this re-
she were a passenger stuck in a mid- her favorite songs help hold back her minded me of perhaps the most fa-
dle seat during a transoceanic flight. fear of the dark. (For a while, she sleeps mous scene in Spanish drama, from
The random noises that at first charmed with a light on.) She starts keeping her Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s 1635 play,
her, like the shaman’s drums, begin to MP3 player in her first-aid kit. “La Vida Es Sueño.” A prince wakes
grate. She thinks that the floor of the Soon after her descent, the walls of to find that he’s locked in a tower; when
cave may be moving. the cave grow so wet that the Wi-Fi he asserts that he was once free, he is
In January, 2022, she starts hearing router begins to act up. The Motril tricked into believing that it was only
a strange sound. It resembles a duf- spelunkers drop a luminescent bottle a dream, and despairs. Flamini told me
felbag being dragged—perhaps it’s an through a hole in the cave roof with a that she was actually pleased when she
animal. In a GoPro video, she urges the handwritten message explaining the woke up and realized that she was still
Motril team to send down a device problem. The plunk of the bottle hit- in the Motril cave: she had not failed
with which to document the noise. ting the rocks as it comes down the in her challenge.
“This is not paranoia,” she says to the shaft startles Flamini. The message in- By this stage, Flamini was capable
GoPro. “This is not hallucinations.” structs her to go to a corner of the cave only of sporadic bursts of activity. She
Shortly afterward, her eyes wide with where she will not see the spelunkers drew some cartoons about her experi-
anxiety, she invites the group down to ence—one depicted the Time Cave
listen and says, “Fuck this shit. If it’s team members picking out books for
an animal, it’s a big animal. Maybe it her at the library—but left out every-
fell in. Maybe it got in through a hole. one’s facial expressions. Whenever she
I don’t know.” She starts sleeping with drew herself, she placed a blindfold
a knife in her tent. over her eyes. “I was denying myself,”
The members of the Dokumalia she told me. She knit wool caps for
team who watched the GoPro foot- friends. She read the books that the
age were disconcerted, as were the sci- Motril team had got from the library.
entists for whom she was supposed to (They explained to the librarians that
perform the computer tests. Some coming to replace the router. Never- the reader was in an unusual place and
people on the team felt that her ap- theless, as they perform the repair, she might need to keep books for longer
parent auditory hallucinations sug- can hear them breathing. than the standard loan.) She read sixty
gested deep distress, and expressed titles, though she told me that she re-
concerns about her stability. There fter six months or so in the womb calls almost none of them—one excep-
were discussions about bringing her
out of the cave. But Godoy, the sports
A of the cave, Flamini succumbed
to its rhythms. She stopped trying to
tion was “Endurance,” an account of
Ernest Shackleton’s failed attempt to
psychologist, argued that the halluci- track time, because doing so had only reach the South Pole, which she had
nations weren’t especially troubling, added to her anxiety. She became nei- brought with her and read soon after
and endorsed the idea that the team ther hopeful nor despairing. “In the arriving in the cave. Life passed as a
simply send down puzzles and more cave, the line of time disappears, and series of tamped-down states. There
books to help Flamini maintain focus. everything floats around you,” she told came a moment, she told me, when she
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 43
thought that she was dying. It felt like more and more friendly. I realized I librium in the cave. They found her
an act not of suicide but of release: have a new superpower—I can talk to increasingly fixated on the thought
“There was no difference between what myself by telepathy.” that she was almost finished. She be-
I was feeling then and what I under- came snappish on her GoPro record-
stand as death.” he replacement Wi-Fi router ings, then apologized for her rudeness,
What kept Flamini going, it seems,
were the two GoPros. She needed a
T brought new troubles: she per-
ceived that it was giving off inaudible
then became snappish again. Two
months after her second descent, she
Wilson after all. She would curl up sonic waves. She began to have head- recorded a ten-minute harangue in
with a camera and perform for it against aches. Her sinuses hurt, and her nose which she accused a Motril team mem-
a backdrop of stalactites. She’d smile began to bleed. Using a security cam- ber of changing a knot in the rope
at the lens and even flirt with it. She’d era, she tried to communicate how used to lower items onto the rock shelf
primp her hair and joke about having bad she felt. David Reyes, the head of without telling her. “For the love of
a new hair style. And she’d do silly im- the Motril spelunking team, told me, Christ!” she says. “Being a spelunker
itations of the bats that moved around “We saw her in front of the camera isn’t a game! This is a serious error!”
the cave, calling them “pobrecitos.” At for a little while,” but, because the She wipes her forehead in stress. “How
one point, she explains to the GoPro camera recorded no sound, “we didn’t many accidents occur from bullshit
how disorienting the passage of time know what she was saying.” In early like this?” (She later acknowledged to
is becoming for her: she’s stopped shav- September, 2022—nearly three hun- me that she had been the one to re-
ing her armpit hair, and has tried to dred days into her adventure—she jigger the knot, and had forgotten about
use its length as a proxy, but it doesn’t carried her tent up the shaft, then it.) Sonia Jaque, one of the filmmak-
seem to be growing. Is she confused pitched it right at the cave’s exit. She ers at Dokumalia, told me, “We didn’t
about how long she’s been under- went back down to retrieve food and give her outburst any importance, be-
ground, or does a body need light to water, then resurfaced. Six days after cause she was angry about everything
grow hair? (In fact, hair grows more she left the cave, Reyes visited the site during this period.”
quickly in the sun.) and discovered her tent. She briefly Flamini may have no longer been
Except for a few periods when explained to him what had happened. in love with the cave, but she stayed
Flamini was deeply depressed, she ral- The exchange compromised one of underground long enough to reach her
lied herself for the GoPro recordings. the key terms of F lamini’s self- goal. On the five hundred and eighth
The camera confessionals became the imposed isolation. While a new router day, at 6 P.M., Reyes dropped down
underground equivalent of social-media was acquired and installed, she stayed into the gallery to tell her that it was
posts: a one-sided substitute for con- inside the tent. The interlude outside finally time to leave. Flamini told me
versation, with a self-presentation that the cave would likely upend her at- that she was “just drifting off ” when
she could shape. In one video, she speaks tempt to surpass Veljković’s effort, but he arrived, but his voice roused her. She
of her previous life, and notes, “On the she was nonetheless determined to re- had saved a package of risotto, which
mountain, you’re alone, but every so turn underground and complete five she had fantasized about serving to any
often someone appears. Here, I’m re- hundred days. After eight days, she guests. She explained to me, “I wanted
ally, really alone. Every day I’m hap- went back down. to say, ‘Before we go, would you like
pier with myself, and every day the Her minders noticed that it was something? You’re in my home!’” But
conversations between me and me are difficult for Flamini to regain her equi- the Time Cave team was eager to wrap
up the mission. Keeping watch over ers, in a WhatsApp video message, that The Time Cave team members still
Flamini had been hard work for every- she was putting a halt to participating hope to analyze the data that they’ve
one. The next day, Reyes helped her in any more sessions. Her experience, collected—whether Flamini’s feat is
gather some of her belongings, leaving she reminded them, “was unique in a world record or not, it’s still an as-
behind her tent, her sleeping bag, and history,” and she had to heal in her tonishingly rare experience. The data
her drawings for later retrieval. At own way. The scientists could no lon- might provide information on, say,
9 a.m., she left the cave singing. Flamini ger publish anything about her with- whether survival on the dark side of
had been reading “Twenty-One Years out her explicit permission, she told the moon is possible, or how feasible
Among the Papuans,” by André Dupey- them. “We are the Time Cave team,” a long retreat underground would be
rat. When I met with her, in May, no she said. “I am the leader of the team.” in the event of a catastrophic nuclear
one had yet gone back to the cave to She had found an agent, and it was blast. Santiago, the psychologist at the
get the book or the other personal items clear that she was done giving away University of Granada, pointed out
that she left on the cave floor. her story for free. The re- that Flamini’s stay in the
Flamini had anticipated a quiet exit searchers, who had put in cave was analogous to “lots
from the cave, but her tantalizing good- many hours of work—and of situations on Earth as
bye on Instagram had reached not just had spent nearly as much well, like living in solitary
her friends but also Spanish journal- time worrying about her confinement, or in a sta-
ists, who were interested to learn more well-being—were baffled tion in Antarctica, or in a
about her attempt to beat Veljković’s and upset. submarine.” He was ready
world record. When she climbed out In the video message, to give Flamini a test to
of the cave’s mouth, about a dozen re- Flamini appeared very see if alterations in her
porters were waiting for her. A few tense, and some Time Cave sense of time had affected
hours later, Flamini gave an impromptu members saw this as con- her sense of space. “We
press conference. For someone who had firmation that she’d had a know the two are closely
spoken only to herself for a year and a trying time in the cave and did not want connected in the human mind,” he
half, she handled the experience sur- to relive it. (Flamini herself told me noted. Somewhat plaintively, Santi-
prisingly well. Her grin was even wider that she could not stand to watch the ago urged me, “Press her to connect
than when she’d gone in. Her red hair raw GoPro footage.) They guessed that with her team again so we can com-
was pulled back with the kind of head- the breakup was a defense mechanism, plete our work.”
band she’d worn underground. She as was the frenetic positivity of many
looked simultaneously anxious and re- of her interview responses. (Flamini he final time that I communicated
lieved; her face seemed to say that she
had just landed on a foreign planet and
told me that she has no memory of the
press conference.) Shortly after the press
T with Flamini, by messaging her
on WhatsApp, her medical examina-
was glad the inhabitants were so friendly. conference, she had collapsed. An am- tions at the hospital continued to be
When a member of the press asked her bulance came, but instead friends drove going well. She still maintained that
if there had been a time when she her to the hospital a couple of days later. her cave adventure had been a positive
wanted to give up, she replied, “Not Roldán-Tapia, the neuropsychologist at experience, because she had more or
once!” Everyone applauded. Some jour- the University of Almería, spoke with less achieved her goal. “We extreme-
nalists filled her in on major world Flamini just before the incident. “What’s sports people don’t do things to suf-
events that she had missed: Russia had happened since she left the cave shows fer,” she insisted. “We do it because it
attacked Ukraine; Queen Elizabeth II all the signs of post-traumatic stress feels good.” It was clear that she had
had died. These were not the types of syndrome,” Roldán-Tapia told me. “Her conquered her fears, like Shackleton,
things that Flamini particularly cared survival in the cave was traumatic, even and had defied bourgeois expectations,
about, so no revelation rattled her. She if she entered it of her own free will.” like Indiana Jones.
did lose her cool, however, when a radio She added, “There’s a lot of data that Flamini was not sure when she
journalist later asked her how she had makes me think what she experienced would get to Mongolia. She had lost
sexually satisfied herself in the cave. there was basically negative.” (Because a lot of muscle mass in the cave, and
The Time Cave research group was of Flamini’s change of heart, Roldán- had regained only some of it. No backer
eager to get to work. Flamini had de- Tapia and the other researchers could had stepped forward to finance a trip
clined to put on a circadian-rhythm not conduct tests to investigate this to the Gobi Desert. The documentary
bracelet she had originally been given, hypothesis.) had not found funders, either. I wanted
complaining that it smelled, but shortly It appears that Milutin Veljković’s to ask Flamini if the whole Motril ex-
after her stint aboveground she’d record will stand. The tent interlude perience had left her disappointed, but
agreed to wear another one. This gave is an obvious issue. Flamini has none- before I could she was off the grid
the researchers some useful data, as theless applied to be designated the again, driving back to the mountains
did the hundreds of GoPro record- female record holder, and a spokes- of Cantabria in her van. Soon, I was
ings that she had made. person for the Guinness Book of Rec- following her posts on Instagram once
But, a month or so after emerging, ords told me that the application is more. One day, she posted, “No es Huir.
Flamini told the Time Cave research- being considered. Es Ser”: “It’s not Fleeing. It’s Being.” 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 45
 FICTION

46 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN PETERS-COLLAER

F
our very thin trees stand above swallow. She is not, as we say, herself. ger ale? Yes, she answered. The woman
their own reflections and hesi- The crow watches from the yew tree. closed her eyes. Opened them again.
tate, as cold girls do. She thinks He knows she knows he knows. Off to And ice cream? Yes, surely.
of rhymes for girls do. Whirls through. your next rot pile, crow! she yells, stand-
Pearls anew. Use it in a sonnet? Eddy’s ing in the kitchen doorway. When Eddy ddy has a back porch, but he never
mother lives by a lake. It is a gray and
glassy evening. Supper was all reminis-
asked her to house-sit, he gave instruc-
tions about laying out toast on the back-
E sits out there. Eddy is a guy you live
with? No, just a friend. I worked for him
cences, Eddy recalling slow white mists porch railing every evening. She feels awhile, doing research. Not anymore.
drifting over the schoolyard each day at bad that she hasn’t done it. The crow is Ah. I like him a lot—no, well, I like him
five, when the chemical plant inciner- regarding her tightly. Suddenly it drops sometimes, I don’t know. Few weeks
ated its Styrofoam, and how he broke backward off its branch, turns one full ago, I met his brother. And? And I liked
his collarbone and no one believed him somersault in air and strikes, right side his brother, too. I like them both, to-
for three days, his mother at the head up, on a nearby branch. She stares. The gether, different parts of them, you know?
of the table smiling and continuing with crow does it again. Vaulting to a closer Better than separately—too bad you
her fruit cup, his brother sitting oppo- branch. She holds her breath. Crow does can’t do that, stack up different parts of
site with his head down, a man tall and it a third time and lands on the porch people and make one good one. Oh, I
thin as a door, closed like a door. He ate railing, drilling her with a yellow eye. don’t know, it’s nice to stay between
as if expecting more. Four, chore, whore, Dirty business, crows! the crow cries. A them—there’s a slot for me. Am I being
underscore ran through her mind perk- laugh breaks from her, which the crow weird? Probably.
ily. She mumbled something, got up immediately mimics, then they both They are sitting on the balcony. It
from the table, and left. Now, at the lake, stop, contemplating this new, complex has been rebuilt. The day is large and
no one swimming, she watches the water mood. A long moment passes. Two sharp, like the edges of tin cans. It’s hot
slide from slate to black. branches on the yew tree quiver and are for May, like being at the beach. They
What does your brother do? she asks still. The crow hops a little way down lounge back in shady chairs. The wom-
Eddy on the way home, and Eddy says the railing and back. Hops farther down an’s name is Vern. Who’s Antonioni?
he has three paper routes. Paper routes? the railing and back. Few more hops. she asks Vern. Why do you ask? Eddy
A grown man? Isn’t he twenty? Says he Does the crow want her to go some- mentioned him. Vern says she doesn’t
doesn’t need much to live on. And we where? She steps out. Crow clatters off like Antonioni, or women in men’s mov-
both got something when the old man around the corner of the house. ies generally, those taut blondes so bored
died. He lives on that? No, he bought The sunset is a red-gold rumpus on and terrified, not sure if they’re coming
a Bugatti. Shit, where’s he keep a the western sky. It has rained. The crow or going. Soon she is telling Vern about
Bugatti? Oh, he crashed it or gave it tosses itself from branch to branch, pole how she resolved not to go over to Ed-
away, I forget. So he stays with your to pole, glistening on its pace, and she dy’s place anymore unless invited and
mom? Trailer out back. Where I saw follows. They are soon far from where then went anyway, the stupidity of this,
the chickens? Mom would rather he they began, streets unfamiliar to her, an the stupidity of extreme states of being
didn’t keep chickens. Did you all eat older part of town, crossed by alleys female. Stupidity of tiptoeing around
supper together all the time growing where forms flit. There is the stillness what you want. I don’t know what I
up? Yes, he says. She likes the idea of after rain. Rank risings rise. Trees drip. want. I spill things, she says. Vern says,
her and Eddy learning about each oth- Street lamps loom. Night takes on a Want to go get tacos?
er’s childhood. She starts to tell him polish, a pure power. She glances into On the way to the taco place, she calls
about her mother’s voice crackling from windows as she goes. Blaze of an empty Eddy. He likes tacos. They sit outside.
the intercom every night at six, the meal kitchen. A man reading. Old Christmas Eddy, this is Vern. Vern, this is Eddy.
laid out on plates on the kitchen counter, tree in a corner. It feels secret. The sky How was your day? O.K., how was yours?
all of them shuffling off to their rooms is clearing overhead. She feels secret, The wind is running its fingers over the
with their plates to eat alone. He glances too. She feels tremendous. trees. Shivering, she watches them. She
at her vaguely and speeds up to take Afterward, talking of that night, she is curious how this will work, Vern and
the ramp onto the highway. They are can’t remember how she found her way, Eddy. Will he do his tough-guy act?
driving through early-spring croplands. with the darkness complete and the Things tilt when two become three. Vern
She stares out. The fields look shaved. crow no longer visible in upper branches. is opaque. Eddy tells them he found an
We had chewing and long silences, he There was a kind of buzzing at the back arm bone today. Eddy is a forensics guy.
says. It’s not much better. of things, she tells Eddy. How she found He was investigating a house. Adult fe-
the woman, how she knew which alley male. Where? Kitchen cupboard. How?
sentence. Any sentence. Even a sin- to go down, how she lifted her and car- What do you mean how? How did it
A gle word. She needs to be writing,
not writing anything special, just writ-
ried her out, she couldn’t say. Sometimes
it happens with these older buildings
look? Dry, old, polished. Maybe an ar-
cheologist lived there, she says. Sharp
ing. Her mind is a lead patio gleaming that a balcony just collapses, she tells laugh from Eddy. Yes, maybe so, he says
from end to end. Thoughts skitter across him. In the ambulance, she held the in a funny tone. She wipes salsa from
it like dry leaves, disappear. Ticktock woman’s hand. Once, the woman opened her chin. They talk of porches and tacos
smell of clock. She can’t sleep, she can’t her eyes and said, They’ll give me gin- and then of writing, because Vern is
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 47
writing a book, and Eddy asks did she iff—and it was nothing! Anticlimax! tree, cocking its head and holding some-
tell Vern about the sonnets, get some Where was this? Manistique, Michi- thing on one side of its beak, as if to peer
advice? She is shocked, dumb. What is gan, the county jail. Poor Houdini, she at it with the left eye. You used not to let
he up to? Does he think he’s helping? said. You should write a poor Houdini it get to you, she thinks. What happened?
No, I don’t show things to people, she sonnet, Vern said. I hate it when peo- Eddy hands her back the page. He turns
says, people I don’t know. She blushes. ple tell me what I should write, she said. away. Her head is full of blood and thun-
Don’t know well. Vern gives her a clear I bet, Vern said. But still. dering. She goes out to the back porch.
look. Now there is no step she can take Some months later, she shows it to Since it is in her hand, she reads the son-
in any direction. She weeps suddenly, Vern, being rather pleased with the line net to the crow. No direct response. The
stops suddenly, laughs. Sorry! I’m empty. “none of us knew how to wrap a shroud,” crow is teaching itself how to slice a forked
I mean, tired. Today. Inside her chest ev- and Vern says she likes it, so she shows twig from the yew tree into a three-
erything is ablaze. it to Eddy, who says he’ll have to read pronged tool for digging grubs out of a
it again, which means, well, she doesn’t tree trunk. If I were you, she says, oh, boy.
t the pool, she swims a mile then know what it means. She waits a week. What a life I’d have. The crow confers
A rests at the wall, watching the rest
of the pool doing what Eddy calls “the
She makes another copy and forgets it
in his car, in case he does want to read
on her its sky-filled eye.

arm ballet.” Arms and hands are idio- it again. Another week goes by, noth- round this time, it seems to her,
syncratic in swimming. An arm can
smash or scoop or scythe. A hand can
ing. Finally, she asks him. Had a chance
to look at my sonnet? Well, he says.
A Eddy gets sadder. No more rants.
He gradually vacates himself. When she
cut the water as a blade or a paddle or Well. The thing is, the swimming part, starts sleeping with his brother, there is
a frying pan. Some strokes have a little that part’s good, the rest is crap. Epiph- no more chitchatting with either of them
curled-wrist action at the top, perhaps anies! You want epiphanies? Five guys about the other. The brother’s name is
only on the left. Underwater is a differ- got beheaded downtown last night. James. She calls him James Taylor be-
ent world. All bodies are beautiful there. Don’t ask me why—they’re imitating cause his phone message is five seconds
They balance like big blue toys outlined ISIS now, who the crazyfuck knows? from “Up on the Roof.” I thought of
in silver bubbles. She glances over at the They’re fifteen years old, no one’s been using that once, she says. Then I didn’t.
family pool that lies alongside the lap to school for years, dictators are every- How much younger is he? asks Vern.
pool, with shallow water and some steps where, dictators are us, and us grabbing I don’t know, she answers. And I don’t
down to a sort of basin at one end. There, everything, the grabbing is the whole want to know. She tells Vern some of
underwater jets create a circling current. story, everyone’s story, everyone who the things he’s said: I have to see you
She wonders how strong the jets are, survives. All that bright-light-coming- again!—whispered to her in the drive-
what it feels like. Just now she sees five down-and-all-God’s-creatures-are-one- way that first time they went for sup-
people caught in the current and cir- stressed-and-unstressed-fancypants stuff per at his mother’s. More hilariously,
cling helplessly, looking at one another, of yours notwithstanding. Put your rub- watching her walk to the bathroom
as surprised as if they’d burst into flame. ber mask on, girl, and slap down some naked one night, Great, no cellulite! They
Loose evening light falls from high win- real sound! Nobody’s dancing so far! form a corner to study him, she and
dows, and, as the jets carry them around And the thing is—you want to talk Vern, two girls versus the enemy. Hard
and around, they seem to be gazing down to dial that back, she knows, but she
at their own arms and legs, saying, Look needs this friend, this Vern. With James
at us, look, we turned out perfect after all! Taylor, she merely needs to keep things
Later that evening, she tries to re-cre- in motion. When she falters, he falters,
ate this for Vern, but it loses voltage in and faltering is uglier for the older one.
the telling. They end up talking of Eddy, They have tender ways together (view-
as usual. Then she walks home. Goes ing the moon while holding hands) and
past her house. The sky is huge and raw. awkward ways (sex), but best is just lying
What do you want from Eddy, really? side by side all night, sleeping and wak-
Vern had asked, and she said, I want ing, like fishes, he says, moved this way
him to look me in the face and ask me epiphanies—the thing is, they called and that by the stream.
something. Ask you what? Doesn’t mat- me too early. I get there and one of the Calling Eddy while his brother is in
ter. That could be disappointing, Vern dead guys isn’t dead yet. Beheading’s the shower is less exciting than she ex-
said. My dad saw Houdini once—did not so simple—you don’t master the pects. Eddy had left messages. His sad-
I ever tell you this? He said it was much mechanics off a ten-minute YouTube ness foams in her ear. She pats at it. Ev-
like you’d expect. They tied him up this video. You need a fucking scimitar and eryone is aware of what is going on—of
way and that way, ropes, cables, locked the arm strength of an Olympic boxer, course they are. James Taylor comes out
him in a jail cell, then before you knew you know what I’m saying? I’m saying of the shower. He is extra tense. They
it came the sound of bolts dropping to the neck is a tough old tube of bone order Chinese. It arrives with three for-
the ground and locks flying off, and the and gristle. I’m saying it was a long night. tune cookies. Is that unlucky? he says in
great Houdini emerged. He just came While he talks, she looks out the win- an ashy voice. No, no, she says, no, no.
walking out three paces behind the sher- dow. The crow is on a branch of the yew Eddy’s sadness has a hold on her, no
48 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
question, but this other thing, the
brother, his passion is a scent coming
along the ground. She is a hound, nose
down, starving for it, trampling herbs
and grasses on the track. When he acts
young and chaotic, she gets scared, her
own reprimands sound to her like those
of a faded aunt. They have fights on the
phone that leave them gasping. Other
times, he quotes the Tao Te Ching at
her. I am a patient person, he says, and
she says, You are not! They brace and
glare, then dissolve laughing—this hap-
pens early on. Later, there are hard rocks
under the surface.
She fails him in serious ways, he
makes clear. You’re good at being cold,
he says. She has to allow that this is true.
You’re always thinking up bits for some
sonnet, aren’t you? You’re only half here.
Also true. His voice is high and soft
with suffering. To feel she has to have
pity on him enrages her. She looks at
this rage, it feels stony, she cannot move “But, all dopiness aside, what do you do for a living?”
it. The higher and softer his voice, the
more she wants to simply be gone from
the room. Then comes the night he sees
• •
her track and swat a mosquito, initiat-
ing a Taoist crisis. His mouth twists he put in her fridge, in the egg carton. most beautiful movie she has ever seen.
aside like a smeared rose. She tries to It shows the international distress sig- A seated man looks up at a woman
recall his mouth when he was saying, I nal for “DON’T UNDERSTAND.” This swirling past him and opens his mouth
have to see you again. A small horror knob scrap she doesn’t show to Vern. She in a soundless bark. His eyes tear her
settles between them. keeps it for years. open. He is powerless. She swirls on.
She doesn’t so much think about Eddy How do they become people entrusted
as have a constant Eddy-atmosphere in inter. She gets new headache to one another, entrusted with one an-
her mind. He’s jealous is why he’s call-
ing all the time, Vern says. Jealous, air-
W pills, little red ones, and tries to
reconnect with her routine at the uni-
other, how does anybody? She can smell
damp church basement, wool, sweat,
less, scare us. No, I don’t think so, she says, versity before her research grant runs Vol de Nuit, cigarette butts, the priest
but there is a feeling deep down like a out. She borrows a lot of movies from at the back of the room thinking of
detonation. Then Eddy begins asking the library and watches them with half sin, his greasy winter cassock. Because
her friends to intercede. She’ll have no attention. She goes to a daylong con- I trust you I press my body upon yours
good of the guy! he cries at Vern. Vern ference on the concept of “panic” and and we dance, buoyant and scarcely
hangs up on him. The men are reliably hears how the ancient Greeks dumped ourselves in clouds of whatever this is,
startling, aren’t they? Vern says to her. the whole hot mess into a god named this brightness of Aphrodite’s needle
She decides to end it with James Tay- Pan, saturator of noon and demon of as it flashes in and out of living skulls.
lor. This proves harder than she thought. mad space. Late that night, she starts She deletes the last line. Precious. Who
She dreams of a sweat-soaked bird work- a movie without noticing what it is. calls love “Aphrodite” nowadays? A
ing its wings against a hot black night Hot dry Sicily washes over her eyes. sonnet needs a far eye and a close eye
and wakes exhausted. They have several The characters are dusty and taciturn. at the same time, but gods? No. Any-
final conversations. Her room smells Sicily has too much noon. Then it is way, “no results are found” in the on-
like adolescence. Sometimes he is calm New Year’s Eve, a dance. There is a fu- line rhyming dictionary. The movie
and noble, giving her bits of Tao. Other riously energetic band, but their sound ends. She sits a long while. Turns the
times he slopes in her armchair, sob- has been turned off. The dancers, TV off. Closes her notebook. Outside
bing. Apologizes for being boring, curses masked, drift around an ugly basement a dog cries against the dark. She rises,
her, sends wild small poems, sends sev- dance hall, out of synch, with some stiff now, puts on a coat, and goes out.
en-paragraph denunciations, back and other (wrong) music laid on top, bump- Deep-blue dawn. A whitish gold light
forth it goes. She counts the paragraphs ing into one another, all covered in a is just beginning. Frozen grass under-
to tell Vern. Her wings hang down on shiny stuff like stardust. The whole foot has the soft bristle of walking on
either side. She finds a scrap of paper thing looks rough, deformed. It is the a sandwich with lettuce. 
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 49
 THE CRITICS

BOOKS

ACID REFLUX
When America first went tripping.

BY MARGARET TALBOT

O
ne evening in September of drugs shut all that down. This earlier psychoactive compound in hallucino-
1957, viewers across America history encompasses not only the now genic mushrooms, and in 2020 Oregon
could turn on their television notorious C.I.A. research into mind- became the first state to legalize it for
sets and tune in to a CBS broadcast altering drugs but also a lighter, brighter, use in therapy. Voters in several other
during which a young woman dropped more public dimension of better living localities, from Santa Cruz to Detroit
acid. She sat next to a man in a suit: through chemistry, buoyed by postwar to Washington, D.C., have since ap-
Sidney Cohen, the researcher who had scientific optimism and public rever- proved similar initiatives. This year, the
given her the LSD. The woman wore ence for expertise. “Timothy Leary and F.D.A. will consider approving MDMA,
lipstick and nail polish, and her eyes the Baby Boomers did not usher in the the drug many of us know in its street
were shining. “I wish I could talk in first psychedelic era,” Breen writes. form as Ecstasy (and may still associ-
Technicolor,” she said. And, at another “They ended it.” ate with raves), for the treatment of
point, “I can see the molecules. I . . . I’m So the era we’re living in now is not post-traumatic stress disorder. Even big
part of it. Can’t you see it?” “I’m try- the first in which LSD and other psy- pharmaceutical companies are looking
ing,” Cohen replied. chedelics were poised to enter the main- to get in on the action.
Were some families maybe—oh, I stream. In the twenty-twenties, psyche- The contemporary psychedelic
don’t know—eating meat loaf on TV delics sit comfortably within politely movement shimmers, in other words,
trays as they watched this nice lady un- au-courant circles of wellness culture, with next-big-thing energy, much of it
dergo her mind-bending, molecule- startup capitalism, and clinical research. centered less on freestyle tripping than
revealing journey through inner space? Some Gen X-ers are as likely to try on medicalized treatment. But Breen,
Did they switch to “Father Knows Best” ayahuasca for a midlife crisis, or sub a professor at U.C. Santa Cruz, whose
or “The Perry Como Show” afterward? out their Lexapro for microdoses of previous book was on the history of the
One of the feats that the historian Ben- LSD, as they might once have been to global drug trade, establishes that the
jamin Breen pulls off in his lively and troop into the woods behind campus feeling of déjà vu is real. We have been
engrossing new book, “Tripping on the day after finals with a few friends on this trip—or a version of it—before.
Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and a freezer bag full of shrivelled mush- For anyone who has closely followed
and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic rooms. A number of recent studies have the sinuous cultural, legal, and scien-
Science” (Grand Central), is to make a shown that psychedelics hold promise tific saga of LSD, the outlines of its
cultural moment like the anonymous for treating depression, easing end-of- story will not come as a revelation. The
woman’s televised trip seem less incon- life anxiety, and helping people cope C.I.A.’s MK-ULTRA program—which,
gruous, if no less fascinating. with grief. The best-selling 2018 book headed by the chemist Sidney Gottlieb,
In Breen’s telling, the buttoned-down about this new science and its ramifi- conducted covert experiments into mind
nineteen-fifties, not the freewheeling cations, “How to Change Your Mind,” control via hypnosis and psychoactive
nineteen-sixties, brought together the by Michael Pollan, has been so influ- drugs—has attracted many chroniclers
ingredients, some of them toxic, for the ential in piquing hopes for hallucino- since it first came to light, in the mid-
first large-scale cultural experiment with gens that scientific papers have identi- seventies. (Recent examples include the
consciousness-expanding substances. fied what they call the Pollan Effect. investigative reporter Stephen Kinzer,
The psychedelic flowering of the six- (It describes the high expectations that in the 2019 book “Poisoner in Chief:
ABOVE: LALALIMOLA

ties has, it turns out, a prequel—a rich some subjects bring to psychedelic stud- Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search
and partly forgotten chapter before ies, which can potentially influence how for Mind Control,” and the documen-
the hippie movement, before the sha- they report their experiences.) In 2019, tarian Errol Morris, with his eerie six-
manistic preening and posturing of Denver became the first U.S. city to part Netflix series, “Wormwood,” about
Timothy Leary, and before the war on decriminalize the use of psilocybin, the Frank Olson, a biowarfare scientist and
50 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
Long before the hippies, mainstream figures such as Cary Grant and Clare Boothe Luce became one with the universe.
ILLUSTRATION BY M FATCHUROFI THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 51
 years. Mead had close relationships with
C.I.A. and other government officials;
she had a security clearance; she was a
prominent and widely admired scien-
tist. She must have worried, Breen ar-
gues, that she’d risk it all by letting slip
an avowal of her bisexuality.

ateson was an anthropologist who

B developed a specialty in systems
theory and cybernetics, and he served
in the O.S.S., the precursor of the
C.I.A., during the Second World War.
He mainly worked on propaganda mis-
sions in Burma, but his stint in the
agency brought him into contact with
intelligence figures who were interested
in the military applications of mind-
altering drugs. He and Mead remained
in touch with these shadowy figures
and with a broader circle of research-
ers who met regularly at inf luential
conferences, sponsored by the Josiah
Macy Jr. Foundation, on subjects such
as neuroscience, cybernetics, hallucino-
gens, and the future. In 1959, Bateson
set Allen Ginsberg up on the poet’s
first psychedelic trip, at a lab near Palo
“Should I wear my usual pants, or the same pants but newer?” Alto. “It was astounding,” Ginsberg
wrote home to his father, a school-
teacher in Paterson, New Jersey. “I lay
• • back, listening to music, & went into
a sort of trance state . . . and in a fan-
C.I.A. employee who plunged to his and elsewhere, was part of a long- tasy much like a Coleridge World of
death from a Manhattan hotel room in standing interest in psychedelics. After Kubla Khan saw a vision of that part
1953, nine days after Gottlieb furtively conducting field work with the Omaha of my consciousness which seemed to
dosed him with LSD.) people in Nebraska in the nineteen- be permanent transcendent and iden-
Breen extends this hall of mirrors, thirties, she wrote respectfully about tical with the origin of the universe—a
though. For one thing, he anoints the their ritual use of peyote to promote sort of identity common to every-
anthropologists Margaret Mead and social cohesion, foster enlightenment, thing—but a clear & coherent sight of
her third husband, Gregory Bateson, and respond to social stresses. In the it. Rather beautiful visual images also,
as the book’s principals, a role he allows mid-fifties, by which time Mead was a of Hindu-type gods dancing on them-
they would “likely have been surprised” well-known public intellectual, she was selves.” Ginsberg urged his father, who
by. (It’s true that they don’t turn up intrigued enough by LSD to observe was also a poet, to try it. Less success-
much in previous histories of psyche- its administration to a young volunteer fully, Bateson worked for a time with
delics.) They belong here as spiritual in an MK-ULTRA lab experiment. Drugs the marine researcher (and inventor of
guides, weaving in and out of a check- such as LSD could be “integrative and the sensory-deprivation tank) John Lilly,
ered story, Breen explains, owing to insight-giving,” she wrote in a letter to who once administered LSD to dol-
“their shared vision of science as a tool a colleague, so long as they were pur- phins. It’s a sad story: four of the seven
for expanding human consciousness.” sued in “a responsible experimental dolphins subsequently died, or, as Lilly
Mead, for one, thought it was crucial spirit.” Mead told other colleagues that put it, delusively, “committed suicide”
that, as she wrote, we “reach an aware- she planned to take LSD herself. What by “refusing to eat or breathe.”
ness which will give us a new control ultimately dissuaded her, Breen sus- Both Bateson and Mead had entan-
over our human destiny” and “learn pects, was the drug’s reputation as a glements with the dark side of what
consciously to create civilizations within truth serum. In 1955, five years after her Breen calls “the psychedelic Cold War.”
which an increasing proportion of marriage to Bateson dissolved, Mead They were personally and profession-
human beings will realize more of what would move in with her romantic part- ally close to top MK-ULTRA person-
they have it in them to be.” ner Rhoda Métraux, an anthropologist. nel. Still, they remain the most sympa-
Her study of trance states, in Bali They lived together for the next twenty thetic figures in the book, thanks to
52 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
their open-minded fascination with cul- cotics investigator from Pasadena who 1938. By 1949, little bottles of the stuff
tural differences, their fluid conceptions ran some of the real-world testing of were rolling off a Swiss assembly line,
of gender and sexuality, and their ded- LSD for the C.I.A., setting up bache- bound for labs and doctors’ offices
ication to facts. Timothy Leary would lor pads in the West Village and in the around the world. (Officially, only li-
argue, for instance, that homosexuality Marina neighborhood of San Francisco censed physicians who were engaged in
was a pathology that LSD could “cure”; where unsuspecting individuals could research could get hold of it, but it didn’t
he claimed—oops—that it had cured be surreptitiously dosed with the drug take long for it to filter into other net-
Allen Ginsberg. By contrast, Mead, who (in their drinks, food, or cigarettes) while works.) In a period before the develop-
was a generation older, appeared in 1961 agents observed and secretly recorded ment of modern antidepressants or, in-
on a nationally syndicated TV broad- their behavior. Breen offers this quick, deed, of many psychoactive drugs at
cast, “The Rejected,” where, Breen memorable sketch: “The 35-year-old all—boom times were on the way, start-
writes, she surrounded herself with New White, who has been likened to ‘an ex- ing with the first tranquillizers to come
Guinean artifacts and “challenged the tremely menacing bowling ball,’ had on the market, in the early sixties, but
notion that homosexuality and trans- pale blue, Siberian husky eyes set in a they hadn’t quite arrived yet—LSD
gender identities were ‘unnatural,’ ” gin-blossomed face, a boundless appe- seemed like a wonder drug, radiant with
rather than “part of the rich diversity tite for intoxicants, and a lifelong fas- scientific promise. Aldous Huxley, in
of human potential.” cination with Chinese culture.” his 1954 memoir, “The Doors of Per-
Bateson, for his part, dragged a heavy ception,” could compare psychedelics
weight of family expectations around ne impression such portraits leave favorably to alcohol and barbiturates.
with him most of his life. He was one
of three sons born to William Bateson,
O the reader with is that the nineteen-
fifties and the early sixties were much
“To most people,” Huxley wrote, mes-
caline “is almost completely innocuous.”
a prominent English biologist (he was weirder than you might imagine if you Psychedelics, for many who tried
the first to use the term “genetics” to were still taking your cues from “The them, held not only the promise of fix-
describe the study of heredity), who Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” Peo- ing a clinical problem but of opening
wanted all three to make great scien- ple who worked with psychedelics seem those doors of perception to some nou-
tific discoveries. But both of Bateson’s to have been especially adroit at pro- menal realm otherwise hidden to us.
brothers died young—one in a hope- jecting authoritative normality while After taking a tiny amount of LSD,
less infantry charge just a few weeks conducting some very screwy and some- Huxley recalled that “what came through
before the end of the First World War, times quite sinister business behind the the closed door was the realization—
and one by suicide four years later. As scenes. Harold Abramson, a low-pro- not the knowledge, for this wasn’t ver-
Breen tells it, Bateson’s preoccupation file physician at Mt. Sinai Hospital, in bal or abstract—but the direct, total
with attaining the scientific glory for New York, whose expertise was in al- awareness from the inside, so to say,
which he and his brothers were des- lergies, led a life that was “outwardly of Love as the primary and fundamen-
tined led him down some blind alleys, conventional, a model of midcentury tal cosmic fact.”
including a misconceived family-dy- domesticity.” He and his wife, who had It was true that people sometimes
namics theory of the etiology of schizo- four children, “collected Japanese net- freaked out, on trips that seemed to mire
phrenia and that unfortunate spell with suke carvings, carefully cultivated the them in apocalyptic hellscapes. The dis-
Lilly. But Bateson could also be remark- lawn of their palatial home solution of ego commonly
ably prescient. At an ultra-hip 1967 con- in suburban Long Island, experienced on acid—a
ference in London called “The Dialec- and he played bridge with sensation that the C.I.A.
tics of Liberation”—it was attended by, their neighbors once a wanted to put to use for in-
among others, the Black Power leader week.” But Abramson was terrogation purposes—
Stokely Carmichael, the Buddhist monk also a chemical-weapons could be frightening. But
Thich Nhat Hanh, the anti-psychiatry expert who fed LSD to the people who experimented
crusader R. D. Laing, and Ginsberg— Siamese fighting fish he willingly with LSD often
Bateson gave a speech about fossil-fuel- kept at his lab (as well as to reported feelings of warm,
caused global warming, in what one willing guests at his dinner oceanic well-being or im-
historian thinks might have been the parties), and played a key ages of incomparable, re-
“first instance of climate change being role in the MK-Ultra pro- demptive beauty. In 1959,
discussed before a lay audience.” Bateson gram. Breen thinks he may have been Cary Grant gave a series of interviews
lamented that people were seeking the most influential researcher into psy- to a newspaper columnist in which he
“short cuts to wisdom” through LSD, chedelics of the twentieth century. revealed that he had been transported
but, given the environmental catastro- And yet the late fifties and early six- by LSD. “All the sadness and vanities
phe we faced, he said, he could under- ties were also a kind of golden age for were torn away,” he said. “I was pleased
stand the impulse. earnest, out-in-the-open exploration of by the hard core of strength I found in-
Breen has an eye for the telling de- psychedelics. Chemists at Sandoz Lab- side me.” On his seventy-second trip,
tail, and a gift for introducing even oratories, in Basel, Switzerland, first Grant, speaking into a dictaphone in
walk-on characters with brio. One is synthesized an experimental compound the office of his Beverly Hills doctor,
George Hunter White, a former nar- known as lysergic acid diethylamide in riffed on space f light and Hegelian
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 53
dialectics: “Everything creates its oppo- noting “no currently accepted medical day of legal and scientific psychedelics
site,” he said, “and therefore cyclicly it- use and a high potential for abuse.” In research. One important contributor to
self.” (I like thinking of Grant, wearing 1971, President Nixon declared a war on the field, the psychologist Betty Eisner,
an ascot, perhaps, intoning these dreamy drugs—including heroin and marijuana, helped develop the idea that “set and
revelations in clipped, patrician tones.) but also LSD, the substance that his setting” shaped the quality of psyche-
Clare Boothe Luce, the former Re- old friend Clare Boothe Luce had taken delic therapy. The emphasis she placed
publican congresswoman and ambas- and touted, and that medical authori- on soft lighting, comfortable furnish-
sador, and the wife of the publishing ties had once embraced as a psychiat- ings, and the right music, customized
tycoon Henry Luce, became an LSD ric drug of great promise. for the individual, helped determine the
booster, turning to it many times for re- Does it matter for our present mo- protocols used today. (According to Ido
lief from depression and grief over her ment that psychedelics had a respect- Hartogsohn’s book, “American Trip,”
daughter’s death in a car accident. And able, scientifically sanctioned past? from 2020, Eisner found that Beetho-
she was quite the establishment figure: Today, there is much enthusiastic media ven concertos were preferable to Gre-
while tripping on acid for the first time, coverage about so-called classical psy- gorian chants, which often “evoked
she had to refuse a phone call from chedelics, such as LSD and psilocybin, strong feelings of guilt.”) But Eisner’s
Vice-President Richard Nixon, who was and newer ones, such as MDMA, fo- own approach to psychedelic experi-
seeking her political advice. cussing on their specific mental-health ences became increasingly mystical. In
applications—studies showing that they 1964, she wrote to a colleague that she
y the mid-sixties, though, LSD was help some people with treatment-resis- had become interested in “material”
B taking on a new aura, gaining a
groovy reputation as a pathway to uto-
tant depression and so on. Since they
pose little risk of addiction, since de-
revealed on trips that seemed to “come
from past lives and certain aspects of
pia. The Pied Piper of that movement pression and anxiety are on the rise, and the patient which appear to come from
was Leary, who co-founded the Har- since the pharmaceuticals we have at outer space.”
vard Psilocybin Project in 1960. In a our disposal don’t work for everybody In short, psychedelics have never been
1967 debate with the neuroscientist Je- or sometimes cause unwelcome side and will never be like other pharmaceu-
rome Lettvin, Leary declared that “the effects, this focus makes sense. (More ticals. “Although efforts to bring
real goal of the scientist is to flip out.” broadly, for many people now, psyche- psychedelics to the market as FDA-
LSD, cut loose from its medical moor- delics might evoke an association with approved psychiatric treatments are well
ings and ties to power, acquired a last- wellness—the kind of purposeful, ho- underway, it is doubtful whether the
ing association with hippie youth, which, listic hygiene a person might also pur- category of ‘prescription drug’ will ever
in turn, made it more vulnerable to moral sue through silent retreats, mindful be able to contain them, because of their
panics and political crackdowns. By the eating, or yoga.) varied uses,” Breen observed in an essay
end of 1967, several states had banned It’s worth remembering that LSD for the Washington Post last year. Nei-
psychedelics, and in 1970 Congress clas- was never fully medicalized, not even ther, though, are they likely to reëmerge
sified them as Schedule I drugs, con- in the late nineteen-fifties, the first hey- as modern-day accessories to spiritual
trance states, the sort of shamanistic
practices in which, as Mead had writ-
ten, “people take a great many precau-
tions in selecting and ritually training
those who will engage regularly in trance
and in controlling where and under what
circumstances trance may be induced.”
Inasmuch as psychedelics generate both
medical interventions and spiritual
quests, and maybe other experiences as
well, then, as Breen says, we may need
new categories to accommodate them.

ne of the striking motifs in Breen’s

O book is the optimism with which
many of the scientists he writes about,
including Mead, saw the future. Psy-
chedelics were among the forces that
they believed could heal cultural rifts
and advance the evolution of civiliza-
tions. It’s hard to imagine replicating
that kind of optimism today. We know
far too much to trust in the purity of
“The sugary cereal goes in the cart or this goes in the memoir.” science, the transparency of govern-
ment, the good will of pharmaceutical
companies, or the power of individual
enlightenment to melt cultural barriers BRIEFLY NOTED
and repair the world. But perhaps there’s
hope in the kind of skepticism that can Come and Get It, by Kiley Reid (Putnam). Agatha Paul, the
make us approach matters in smarter narrator of this fizzy campus novel, is the acclaimed author
ways this time around. of a book on “physical mourning.” During a visiting professor­
Reading about the recent studies of ship at the University of Arkansas, she intends to conduct
LSD’s positive effects, for example, we research on weddings. Yet the subject prickles—she is still
know to be at least a little circumspect. reeling from a painful separation—and she soon pivots to a
Many of the studies involve a small new topic: “How students navigate money.” Paul herself
number of subjects, who’ve been very quickly becomes an object of fascination for many of the stu­
tightly screened. It’s hard to keep such dents, and the stakes are raised when one of them offers Paul
research double­blind, since people in the use of her room to eavesdrop on conversations between
the placebo arm of a hallucinogenic the undergraduates. Almost on a whim, Paul accepts, and
trial can often guess that they didn’t get small transgressions soon give way to larger ones.
the stuff that would have made them
trip. A recent academic article by two Disillusioned, by Benjamin Herold (Penguin). This intrepid
psychologists at Leiden University, inquiry into the unfulfilled promise of America’s suburbs
Michiel van Elk and Eiko L. Fried, posits that a “deep­seated history of white control, racial ex­
identified no fewer than ten “pressing clusion, and systematic forgetting” has poisoned the great
challenges” to the validity of current postwar residential experiment. It anatomizes a geographi­
psychedelic studies—including con­ cally scattered handful of failing public schools, incorporat­
flicts of interest (especially since phar­ ing the author’s conversations with five affected families.
maceutical companies have joined ac­ Herold, a white journalist raised in Penn Hills, a Pittsburgh
ademic groups in conducting them), suburb, peels back layers of structural racism, granting that
inadequate reporting of adverse events, “the abundant opportunities my family extracted from Penn
small sample sizes, lack of long­term Hills a generation earlier were linked to the cratering for­
follow­up, and the difficulty of creat­ tunes of the families who lived there now.”
ing persuasive placebos. But van Elk
and Fried are not raising these prob­ Poor Deer, by Claire Oshetsky (Ecco). This novel follows a
lems to try to shut down psychedelic sixteen­year­old­girl named Margaret and her attempts to
research; they aim to improve its “rigor reckon with the death of her best friend in childhood, for
and credibility” with specific recom­ which she was partly responsible. In time, Margaret’s role in
mendations: “Our hope is that new the tragedy was relegated to rumor; when she confessed, her
studies may find credible evidence that mother told her, “Never repeat that awful lie again.” Now, in
psychedelic therapy can be a useful tool adolescence, Margaret attempts to document the incident
for specific groups of patients.” honestly, accompanied by Poor Deer, the physical embodi­
In 1966, Sidney Cohen, Eisner’s col­ ment of her guilt, who intervenes whenever Margaret begins
league and the psychiatrist who had to gloss over the truth. The author renders the four­year­old
provided Luce with her LSD, expressed Margaret’s inner life with sensitive complexity, depicting an
his worry that psychedelic research had alert child logic that defies adults’ view of her as slow and
gone astray: “We are seeing accidents unfeeling. In the present day, the novel considers whether its
happen. We are frightening the pub­ narrator’s tendency to reimagine the past might be repur­
lic. We are getting laws passed [ban­ posed to envision her future.
ning the drug]. We are not using the
anthropological approach of insinuat­ Nonfiction, by Julie Myerson (Tin House). The narrator of
ing a valuable drug of this sort into this raw­nerved and plangent novel, a fiction writer who goes
our culture . . . gradually demonstrat­ unnamed, addresses much of the book to her drug­addicted
ing the goodness of the thing.” Maybe and intermittently violent adolescent daughter. Woven
we know enough now to proceed not throughout her ruminations on her daughter’s struggles are
with messianic hype but with testable the writer’s cascading reminiscences of her own fragmented
hope, the kind that won’t risk a war­ childhood and the romance she rekindled with a married ex­
on­drugs backlash, or promise utopia, lover when her daughter was young. Set in and around a
or put powerful hallucinogens into the muted London, the novel is a sustained meditation on the
hands of clandestine medical­ethics­ trials of family, marriage, and creativity. Writing is an act “of
flouting researchers, but that could still insane self­belief,” the narrator says. “The moment you lis­
end up demonstrating the goodness ten to the opinions of others . . . you risk breaking the spell
of the thing.  and, if you’re not careful, sanity creeps in.”
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 55
 essentially every case that reached its
BOOKS chambers; it had little choice. “Ques-
tions may occur which we would gladly
avoid; but we cannot avoid them,” John
THE CHIEF Marshall, the longest-serving Chief
Justice, wrote in 1821. A century later,
How William Howard Taft remade the Supreme Court. in a country whose population had
grown tenfold, the Court, still obliged
BY JILL LEPORE to hear most cases brought before it,
was overwhelmed by its backlog. Taft
convened a committee that he charged
with drafting legislation that would ra-
tionalize the Court’s docket. In what
became known as the Judges’ Bill, the
Justices proposed the certiorari system,
by which they would, in most areas of
law, be able to exercise their discretion
to choose which cases they deemed
worthy of their attention. Taft went be-
fore the House Judiciary Committee
to explain the importance of “letting
the Supreme Court decide what was
important and what was unimportant.”
Congress passed the bill in 1925. “Eas-
ily one-half of certiorari applications
now presented have no justification at
all,” Taft reported in the Yale Law Jour-
nal nine months later.
The executive branch had the
White House and the legislature the
Capitol, but the Court had no home
of its own and had long met in a
cramped room, the old Senate cham-
ber. Taft persuaded Congress to au-
thorize funds for the construction of
a building for the Court alone, befit-
ting the status of the judiciary. Taft
himself chose the seven-acre site. The
new building was touted as having
more marble than any structure in the
world, an austere and imposing mon-
“ M rs. Justice Holmes died on
Tuesday night,” the Supreme
guess.” In the end, it was Taft who went
first, dying less than a year later, at the
ument to the rule of law. It looks like
a Grecian temple, restored. SOURCE PHOTOGRAPH FROM UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE / GETTY

Court’s Chief Justice, William How- age of seventy-two. Taft, in short, got things done. In
ard Taft, reported on May 5, 1929. William Howard Taft is the only May, 1929, when Holmes’s wife died,
Mr. Justice Holmes—Oliver Wendell Chief Justice of the United States to Taft wrote to his son, “I have had re-
Holmes, Jr.—had relied on his wife, have served as its President. If he can- ally to take charge of the funeral ar-
Fanny Bowditch, for nearly everything. not be said to have had the keenest rangements, because Holmes can not
They’d been married for fifty-seven legal mind, he had the strong and steady attend to anything of that sort with
years. Her death “seems like the be- arm of an experienced executive. He any comfort.” But Taft also had the
ginning of my own,” Holmes wrote. ran the Court for only nine years, but good sense to know that Holmes, how-
And yet, on the very day of her death, during that time he ushered in sweep- ever distraught, wasn’t helpless, and
Holmes, eighty-eight, drafted an opin- ing reforms, changing not only how that what he needed most was some-
ion for the Court and sent it to the many cases the Court hears but also thing to do. He’d already assigned
Chief. “I suppose there are a good many where it operates, elevating its power, Holmes at least one opinion that term,
who are counting on his retirement,” its prestige, and, not least, its mystique. but Taft told his son, “I don’t know
Taft mused. “If so, they miss their Originally, the Supreme Court heard but I shall give him another one be-
fore the month ends.”
His tenure set the tone for the institution, even into the twenty-first century. In an age of efficiency, Taft made
56 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY NINA BUNJEVAC
the Supreme Court more efficient, Court,” Robert C. Post argues in his this interpretation as both preposter-
and mightier, but it remains the most landmark two-volume study, “The Taft ous and dangerous. And when Wilson
secretive branch of the federal gov- Court: Making Law for a Divided Na- nominated the nation’s leading Pro-
ernment. When it grants or denies tion, 1921-1930” (Cambridge). The book gressive lawyer, Louis Brandeis, to the
cert, it offers no explanation; it sim- is an attempt to rescue the Taft years Court, in 1916, Taft vigorously opposed
ply follows a “rule of four”—if at least from oblivion, since, as Post points out, the nomination. “It is one of the deep-
four Justices want to hear the case, most of its jurisprudence had been “ut- est wounds that I have had as an Amer-
the Court takes it. This past Decem- terly effaced” within a decade of Taft’s ican and a lover of the Constitution
ber, the special counsel Jack Smith death, and was soon engulfed by “an and a believer in progressive conser-
asked the Court to grant cert in a case obscurity so deep that most law stu- vatism, that such a man as Brandeis
concerning the question of whether dents cannot now name more than ten could be put on the Court,” Taft wrote,
Donald Trump, as a former President, Taft Court decisions.” But, if Mar- calling Brandeis a muckraker, a hyp-
is immune from prosecution for ac- shall’s Chief Justiceship established ocrite, and a socialist. He solicited the
tions undertaken during his Presi- what the Court would be in the nine- signatures of six other former presi-
dency. In January, Trump asked the teenth century, Taft’s established what dents of the American Bar Associa-
Court to grant cert to hear an appeal it would be in the twentieth, and even tion for a letter that he wrote oppos-
of a decision by the Colorado Su- the twenty-first. ing Brandeis’s nomination. (Much of
preme Court which banned him from the objection to Brandeis was antise-
the Republican primary ballot. The illiam Howard Taft was a law- mitic; much was political.) “I think as
Court said no to the first, for now,
and yes to the second. No word or
W yer and a judge before he be-
came President, and he was a lawyer
ill of WHT’s morals now as of his in-
tellect,” Brandeis wrote to his wife in
hint as to its motivations is ever of- and a judge after he was President. He 1910. Privately, Brandeis referred to the
fered. Supreme Court deliberations was born in Ohio in 1857, the year the walrus-mustached Taft, who tipped
are held behind closed doors. Its ses- Supreme Court decided Dred Scott, the scales at about three hundred
sions are not broadcast. The Justices and went to Yale before studying at pounds, as “the fat man.”
are expected to avoid the glare of pub- the Cincinnati Law School. He’d In 1921, Taft delightedly accepted
lic attention. They don’t campaign, or served three years on Ohio’s superior an invitation from Warren G. Hard-
at least they’re not supposed to. They court when, in 1890, he became the ing to serve as Chief Justice. He joined
don’t write tell-alls. No law requires youngest ever U.S. Solicitor General. a Court that, beginning with its de-
them to preserve their papers or, if He argued eighteen cases before the cision in Lochner v. New York, in 1905,
they do preserve them, to make them Supreme Court, and won fifteen. In had struck down as unconstitutional
available to the public. So tight-lipped 1892, he was appointed as a federal state and federal laws regulating labor.
is the Court that, in 2022, when some- judge for the Sixth Circuit. While serv- Most notoriously, from the vantage of
one leaked a draft of the Court’s de- ing as governor of the Philippines, he Progressives, the Court had, in 1918,
cision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s was twice offered a position on the declared an act of Congress that reg-
Health Organization, an internal in- Supreme Court; he declined both ulated child labor unconstitutional.
vestigation was unable to identify the times. Elected President in 1908, he Taft, seated in 1921, navigated by these
leaker. The Supreme Court is at once failed to win reëlection in 1912, after same stars. On May 15, 1922, in Bai-
the most closely scrutinized branch which he joined the faculty of Yale ley v. Drexel Furniture Co., the Court
of the federal government and the Law School. His best-known academic issued Taft’s majority opinion, strik-
least. It makes its own rules, like the work is a series of lectures published, ing down a federal law that had at-
Code of Conduct it released last fall, in 1916, as “Our Chief Magistrate and tempted to restrict child labor through
and, in a sense, it also writes its own His Powers,” a critique of the Presi- a punitive tax. Weeks later, in a speech
history: the accumulation of its opin- dencies of Theodore Roosevelt and before the American Federation of
ions. Most other accounts of the Woodrow Wilson masquerading as Labor, the Wisconsin senator Robert
Court’s history are written by law- what Taft described as a “careful study La Follette, decrying what he called
yers, a litany of cases with the occa- from an unbiased standpoint of the “judicial oligarchy,” proposed a con-
sional vivid portrait of a Justice or, historian and the jurist.” stitutional amendment that would
less often, a litigant. Much that lies Taft had long wanted to restructure grant Congress the right to nullify
within the Court’s history remains the federal judiciary, and he was also Supreme Court opinions. La Follette
unknown, partly because it’s never keen to defend the Constitution from had campaigned against Taft’s bid for
been known outside the Justices’ what he considered to be the excesses reëlection in 1912, and had voted
chambers, and partly because even of Progressivism. In 1913, when Charles against his confirmation to the Court.
what’s known is quite often entirely Beard published “An Economic Inter- He was also a close friend of Louis
forgotten. The law writes over itself, pretation of the Constitution of the Brandeis’s. The Court had repeatedly
like an old floppy disk. United States,” arguing that the Fram- defied the will of the people, expressed
“Taft’s presidential perspective ers had, in 1787, crafted a system of through state legislatures and through
forever changed both the role of the government designed to protect their congressional action, La Follette said.
chief justice and the institution of the own property interests, Taft denounced “We should not have to amend the
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 57
 ers. “Young men must be taught that
America is much more than the re-
sult of class interests and sectional in-
fluences,” Warren maintained. “They
must learn that the men who made
America had aspirations and beliefs
apart from their personal fortunes.”
In 1922, he published a three-volume
book called “The Supreme Court in
United States History.” “No one can
read the history of the Court’s career
without marveling at its potent effect
upon the political development of the
Nation, and without concluding that
the Nation owes most of its strength
to the determination of the Judges to
maintain the National supremacy,” he
argued. In 1923, the book won the Pu-
litzer Prize.
Every history of the Supreme Court
takes a position on the nature of its
authority. Warren’s work not only
placed the Court at the center of Amer-
ican history but also defended it against
Progressive critics. “The Taft Court”
is a search for the origins of the Court’s
current divisions. Post, a professor of
constitutional law who has a Ph.D. in
American Civilization and is a former
dean of Yale Law School, argues that
the Taft Court wrestled with four dif-
ferent ways of interpreting the Con-
stitution and exercising judicial review.
The most conservative theory granted
the Court authority to overrule legis-
lation in order to make sure the law
accorded with custom and tradition.
Holmes’s intellectual commitments
• • limited judicial review to cases where
it was required by “the literal mean-
Constitution every time we want to and not be frightened because of threats ing and plain intent of a constitutional
pass progressive laws,” he argued. against its existence.” text”: “The justification of a law for
Progressives called for all manner The historian Charles Warren came us cannot be found in the fact that
of remedies, including a child-labor to the Court’s defense. “There is no our fathers have always followed it,”
amendment and an amendment that novelty in these attacks,” Warren de- he wrote. “It must be found in some
would require Justices to be elected clared of the criticisms advanced by help which the law brings toward
and to hold office for ten-year terms. men like La Follette and Borah, in- reaching a social end which the gov-
The Idaho senator William Borah, sisting that “no functioning body erning power of the community has
pointing out that roughly forty “ex- under our Government has been more made up its mind that it wants.” Taft’s
ceedingly important” cases had been subjected to continuous assault than rule for whether a law could be de-
decided by a 5–4 majority in the last the Supreme Court.” Warren, a for- clared unconstitutional had to do with
thirty years, proposed that any deci- mer Assistant U.S. Attorney General his equation of progress with the ac-
sions that would overturn an act of who had co-founded the Immigra- cumulation of wealth—property and
Congress ought to require a seven-Jus- tion Restriction League—and a Bos- contracts had to be protected at all
tice majority. Taft was distressed, but ton Brahmin who was so dedicated costs. The fourth theory was the most
confident. “Meantime,” he wrote to a to Harvard that he was rarely seen progressive and, in the nineteen-twen-
fellow-Justice, “there is nothing for the without a crimson bow tie—agreed ties, advanced only by Brandeis, who,
Court to do but to go on about its busi- with Taft’s denunciation of Charles as Post puts it, “held that the purpose
ness, exercise the jurisdiction it has, Beard’s interpretation of the Fram- of the American Constitution is to
58 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
create a successful democracy.” This born pacifist and feminist named Ro-
appears to be Post’s position, too. sika Schwimmer, deeming her insuf-
Rich with close readings of cases ficiently “attached to the principles of
that rely on sources scarcely ever used the Constitution” to be naturalized.
before—including docket books only Holmes wrote, “If there is any princi-
recently discovered in a locked trunk ple of the Constitution that more im-
—and benefitting from deep and fruit- peratively calls for attachment than
ful quantitative analysis absent in most any other, it is the principle of free
studies of the Court, “The Taft Court” thought—not free thought for those
restores the nineteen-twenties as a who agree with us, but freedom for
turning point in the Court’s history, the thought that we hate.” Amen.
the hinge between laissez-faire con- Post’s analysis—along with his
servatism and the duel between the amazing data—reveals the depth of
Court and the New Deal in the nine- Taft’s disagreements with Holmes. It
teen-thirties. The luminaries on Taft’s also captures the distance between
court were Holmes and Brandeis. Holmes and Brandeis. Holmes “ap-
Holmes described Taft’s opinions— proved progressive legislation only be-
between 1921 and 1928, there were two cause he believed that a judge should Drive Out Cancer
hundred and forty-nine of them, com- defer to legislative judgments,” Post With Your Car
pared with two hundred and five by writes, but Brandeis advocated for eco-
Holmes and a hundred and ninety- nomic reform in the interest of social Donation
three by Brandeis—as “rather spongy.” justice. “He bullies me a little on that
Did you know you can donate
Brandeis, with a nod to the abolition- from time to time,” Holmes once said.
ist Wendell Phillips’s description of Post is subtle on this distinction. your used car to Stand Up To
Abraham Lincoln (a “first-rate sec- “Holmes never developed any compa- Cancer and help fund cancer
ond-rate man”), said that Taft had “a rable concept of the public good,” he research? It makes a significant
first-rate second-rate mind.” But Taft’s writes, contrasting him with Brandeis. impact. Your donation brings us
opinions were the Court’s opinions. “Holmes sought only to channel social one step closer to a world
Post reports that Taft “authored or contestation by subjecting it to orderly
without cancer. Do something
joined the opinion for the Court in processes of law.”
98.7 percent of its decisions.” Taft tried to rein Brandeis in. “Our good, skip costly repairs, and
Taft ran an amiable bench. Once Constitution is not a strait-jacket,” free up space in the garage.
he’d joined the Court, he took the ini- Brandeis wrote in the draft of a dis- We accept all types of vehicles,
tiative of forging a peace, and even a sent in United States v. Moreland, in running or not.
friendship, with Brandeis. “I’ve come which he was joined by Holmes. “It is
to like Brandeis very much indeed,” he a living organism. As such it is capa-
wrote to his daughter, and Brandeis, ble of growth—of expansion and of
for his part, was charmed. That didn’t adaption to new conditions. Growth
Donating is easy,
mean they agreed. Post’s data reveals implies changes political, economic and your gift is
that, with one exception, Brandeis was and social. Growth which is signifi-
the least likely member of the Court cant manifests itself rather in intellec- tax-deductible.
to agree with the majority, his dissents tual and moral conceptions than in
nearly always informed by his commit- material things. Because our Consti-
ment to democracy over prosperity. tution possesses this quality of adap- Call:
Taft spoke for the majority, Holmes tion, it has endured as the fundamen- 844-866-SU2C (7822)
and Brandeis for the minority. “If tal law of an ever developing people.” or visit:
Holmes’ dissents in constitutional cases Taft asked him to take these sentences
had been followed,” Taft wrote to his out because “they are certain to be used standuptocancer.org
brother, “we should have no Consti- to support views that I could not sub-
tution.” Holmes was a better writer scribe to.” To secure the Chief Justice’s
than Taft; one measure of this is that concurrence in his opinion, Brandeis
he was briefer. Taft’s opinions aver- omitted them, with regret.
aged nearly nine pages, Holmes’s just This was exceptional; Taft hated
over three. (“Strike the jugular and let dissents and, Post reports, “himself
the rest go,” Holmes said.) In May of dissented less than any chief justice
1929, right after his wife died, Holmes except John Marshall.” In 1924, when
wrote one of his most blistering dis- La Follette ran for President on a Pro-
Stand Up To Cancer is a
sents. The majority had ruled in favor gressive ticket whose platform in- 501(c)(3) charitable
of denying citizenship to a Hungarian- cluded Supreme Court nullification, organization.
the Chief Justice wrote wryly to a in good health, had a heart attack in any Supreme Court decisions lately,
friend that the Wisconsin senator 1924 and another one in 1926. In 1927, he said, “Not a damn one.”
“could find a good deal of material in the year he turned seventy, he confided Meanwhile, Holmes wrote a new
Brandeis’s dissenting opinions.” And, to his daughter, “My mental faculties will. He had no heirs, and, although
as Post suggests, the attacks on the are dulling a bit.” Less able to think he bequeathed small gifts here and
Taft Court likely contributed to a di- independently, he deferred to the more there, he left about half of his consid-
minishing number of dissents in the conservative Justices on the Court, Wil- erable estate—some two hundred and
first half of the decade. lis Van Devanter and Pierce Butler. sixty thousand dollars, or nearly six
Taft led the Court to the right, es- Very precipitously, Taft slipped into million dollars today—to a single ben-
pecially after La Follette lost his bid dementia. “The truth is that Taft for eficiary, the United States, in what was
for the Presidency. “Taft allowed con- some time had really lost his grip,” the largest unrestricted gift ever made
servatives on the Court to overplay Brandeis wrote to a friend and col- to the federal government. Holmes
their hand,” Post concludes. “The re- league. “The fear was entertained that died of pneumonia in 1935, two days
sult was an ever-growing if unexpressed unless he resigned at once he might before his ninety-fourth birthday.
anger at the Court’s increasingly ag- lapse into a mental condition which F.D.R. called on Congress to assign
gressive conservative agenda. There would make it impossible for him to the bequest to “some purpose worthy
would eventually be the devil to pay resign and in which he might continue of the great man who gave it.” It took
for such overreaching decisions.” But for an indefinite period,” Hughes wrote; twenty years, but eventually a congres-
that devil would come dunning in the he was nominated for Chief Justice on sionally appointed Oliver Wendell
nineteen-thirties, during the battles the very day that Taft resigned. The Holmes Devise committee determined
between New Dealers and the Court former Chief died only weeks later, on that the money should be used to pre-
led by Charles Evans Hughes. On March 8, 1930, on Holmes’s eighty- pare a definitive history of the Supreme
May427, 1935, in one of its last sessions ninth birthday. Weirdly, another Jus- Court. Robert Post’s book on the Taft
in the old Senate chamber, the Hughes tice on the Taft Court, Edward San- Court is the last of the originally
Court struck down the most impor- ford, only sixty-four, collapsed and died planned volumes to be published. Writ-
tant elements of the New Deal in three that same day. “Such events,” Holmes ing the Holmes Devise History of the
unanimous decisions that F.D.R. de- said, “must be accepted in silent awe.” Supreme Court of the United States
scribed as the most fateful decisions has taken nearly a century.
the Court had made since Dred Scott.
When the Court moved into its new
“ T he Taft Court” exists because of
a decision that Holmes made
“History sets us free,” Holmes once
wrote. One day, if the Holmes Devise
building—a building so ostentatiously near the end of his life. On March 8, committee assigns scholars to write
self-important, down to the last trim- 1931, on his ninetieth birthday, he spoke volumes on the Rehnquist and Rob-
mings, that reporters likened it to an on the radio for the first and only time. erts Courts, they’ll have to examine
icebox decorated by a mad uphol- Talking into a microphone on the desk those Courts’ inventions of some
sterer—the Justices struck down more in the study of his red brick house in brand-new theories about the relation-
than a dozen laws in eighteen months. Washington, D.C., he coughed and ship between history and the law, a
F.D.R., pledging “to save the Consti- then proceeded slowly and precisely. text-history-and-tradition test that is
tution from the Court, and the Court “To express one’s feelings, as the end far more reactionary than any custom-
from itself,” proposed enlarging the draws near, is too intimate a task,” he and-tradition notion used by the con-
Court by naming one new Justice for began, sounding something like John servatives on the Taft Court. “It is re-
every sitting Justice older than seventy, Barrymore if Barrymore were playing volting to have no better reason for a
which described six of them, includ- King Lear. Rosika Schwimmer sent rule of law than that so it was laid
ing the Chief. him a telegram wishing him a happy down in the time of Henry IV,” Holmes
It’s hard to say quite how much re- birthday. (After the Court’s decision wrote. “It is still more revolting if the
sponsibility Taft bears for the Court in U.S. v. Schwimmer, she’d written grounds upon which it was laid down
crisis of the thirties. The Hughes Court to thank him for restoring her faith have vanished long since and the rule
was in crucial ways a product of the in “the inherent idealism” of the na- simply persists through blind imita-
Taft Court, and especially of Taft him- tion to which she’d hoped to belong, tion of the past.” History in the guise
self: Taft, as President, had appointed and they’d struck up a friendship.) of originalism is a tyrant.
Hughes to the Court, in 1910; Hughes Not long after that birthday, Holmes In February of 1930, during Taft’s
had resigned in 1916, to run for Presi- retired. He remains the oldest person last illness, the Justices sent him a let-
dent, but Taft urged Herbert Hoover ever to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. ter of thanks, composed by Holmes.
to name Hughes as the new Chief Jus- Schwimmer visited him and sent him “We call you Chief still,” Holmes
tice. If Taft hadn’t seized so much power a copy of Erich Kästner’s best-selling wrote, expressing affection for the man
for the Court in the twenties, it would mystery “Emil and the Detectives.” by way of his title. “We can not let
have had less to exert in the thirties. Holmes loved mystery novels. “This you leave us without trying to tell you
And the Taft years also focussed pub- fellow is the best of them all,” he wrote how dear you have made it.” Taft al-
lic attention on the age and diminish- on his copy of a Nero Wolfe mystery, most certainly never read it. He was
ing capacity of the Justices. Taft, never by Rex Stout. Asked whether he’d read already gone. 
60 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
 our gaze and testify to the experience
BOOKS of twindom from the inside out. De
Bres invokes twins from life and leg-
end—the conjoined twins Chang and
DOUBLE VISION Eng Bunker; Tweedledum and Twee-
dledee; her own identical twin and her-
The mystique of twins. self—to examine how multiples com-
plicate our notions of personhood,
BY PARUL SEHGAL attachment, and agency.Twins have been
critical to our understanding of our-
selves, she argues; they are present in
the founding myths of great cities. Rom-
ulus and Remus gave us Rome. The
twins of the Hindu epic the Ramayana,
Lava and Kusha, established Lahore
and Kasur. Twins have been worshipped,
killed at birth, paraded as curiosities,
pricked and probed and experimented
on. They have been treated as subhu-
man and superhuman, and seen to per-
sonify every possible duality: collabora-
tion and bitter competition, the purest
as well as the most morbidly enmeshed
forms of love. And they continue to un-
settle our notions about where bodies
end and begin, about whether person-
alities, even fates, are forged or found.
The Minnesota Study of Twins
Reared Apart, launched in 1979, famously
found striking similarities in the lives
of its subjects. The study began in re-
sponse to the case of a set of identical
twins who were separated at birth and
reunited at thirty-nine—“the Jim twins.”
It emerged that both were given the
same name and that each had first mar-
ried a woman named Linda and then a
Betty. Each named his dog Toy and his
son James Alan (or James Allan). They
drove the same kind of car, enjoyed the
alf a century later, they still return finder, the sisters appear less like two same hobbies, worked in the same field,
H our gaze, staring back at us in their
dark dresses and white stockings, their
separate children than like split aspects
of the same soul, simultaneously inno-
and even vacationed at the same beach
in Florida. The twin study provided a
white headbands pinned in place. The cent and foreboding. “I mean, it resembles data-driven heritability index for such
seven-year-old identical twins Cathleen them,” their father told a reporter at a features as job satisfaction, schizophre-
and Colleen Wade stand side by side, 2005 retrospective of Arbus’s work. “But nia, propensity to divorce, and alcohol-
pressed together as if to create the illu- we’ve always been baffled that she made ism. And there were other perplexing
sion that they are conjoined. One twin them look ghostly. None of the other parallels: pairs of reunited twins discov-
smiles; the other appraises the photog- pictures we have of them looks anything ered sharing such rituals as flushing the
rapher. There are remnants of choco- like this.”The photograph reportedly in- toilet before using it and insisting on
late cake in the creases of their mouths. spired Stanley Kubrick’s depiction of the walking into the ocean backward.
Diane Arbus took this portrait, “Iden- eerie sisters in “The Shining.” “How to Be Multiple” has a twin of
tical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1966,” at a Christ- In “How to Be Multiple: The Phi- its own: “Twinkind: The Singular Signif-
mas party for families of multiples held losophy of Twins” (Bloomsbury), Hel- icance of Twins” (Princeton), by William
at a Knights of Columbus hall. She’d ena de Bres aims to rescue twins from Viney, a handsomely produced anthology
been lurking at such events, prospecting the gothic, from horror movies, and from of twin representations—vaudeville per-
for twins and triplets. Through her view- singleton scrutiny, the better to return formers, subjects of torture, and, yes,
the blue dresses with the puffed sleeves
Sisters attending the Twins Days Festival, in Twinsburg, Ohio, in 1998. worn by the “Shining” twins. Viney also
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARY ELLEN MARK THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 61
collaborates with his identical twin, who the pandemic. Julia is a linguistics lec- De Bres’s relationship with her sister
contributes a foreword. The two books turer in New Zealand and contributed only deepens with time, as they endure
share many sources, and the same data illustrations; de Bres, who teaches phi- complications from a shared disability
crop up, the same stories and studies. losophy at Wellesley, lives in Massachu- and both come out later in life. They
You’ll find the same gentle injunction to setts. As a philosopher, she is drawn to also retain their effortless capacity to
contemplate, and to learn from, the frac- a metaphysics of twinhood: Can per- collaborate. We “executed our missions
tal nature of twin identity. sonhood be spread across two bodies? jointly, with almost no friction,” she
When twins aren’t being regarded as Do we ever freely choose, when so much writes. “It was like having an extra jet-
carbon copies, they are slotted (or slot about us exists outside our control? She pack strapped to your will.”
themselves) into opposing roles, which illuminates her discussions with stories One wishes, occasionally, that de Bres
de Bres uses as an entry point for a chap- from a close, and cloudless, sibling bond. had a navigation device along with the
ter on the psychology, the temptations, “She makes me feel my membership jet pack. She is a vivacious, self-aware,
and the costs of binary thinking. In her status in the universe is active, as if I’ve busy writer, tap-dancing to hold our at-
own family, de Bres became the writer already passed some crucial cosmic test tention, following every moment of phi-
and the introvert, while her twin, Julia, and every later qualification is optional,” losophy with a joke (in one case, a play-
was the artist and the adventurer. Evi- de Bres writes of her sister. “Just think- ful exegesis of the Drake verse “If you
dently, this is a standard division of ing of her calms me down, the way I had a twin I would still choose you”).
roles—one twin becomes Minister for imagine the thought of God, Gaia, or She also packs our itinerary too ambi-
the Exterior, in the psychologist René eternal flux does for believers, mystics, tiously; we sometimes find ourselves in
Zazzo’s view, and the other is Minister and Buddhists.” thickets of debates miles from our pu-
for the Interior. For the de Bres sisters, Such equanimity is merely one of tative subject. For all that, she stitches
this cleft formed early: “In ‘The Wind the apparent benefits conferred by twin- the project together with brio, a sense
in the Willows,’ I was Mole to Julia’s dom. On average, adult twins seem to of stupefied luck at having a twin, and
Ratty; in ‘The House at Pooh Corner,’ be healthier and more content than sin- an insistence that anyone can reap sim-
Piglet to Julia’s Pooh. Julia got Mickey gletons. They have higher life expec- ilar benefits by acknowledging our in-
Mouse, I got Donald Duck; I got Bert, tancies and a lower incidence of suicide. terdependence, relaxing the need to be-
she got Ernie.” De Bres explains, “I went The benefits are particularly notable in lieve in our singularity. “The traditional
for the cautious, anxious, or melancholy the case of male twins, one theory being Western picture is surely right about
types, the ones who trotted after the that they take fewer physical risks, out something: intimate relationships can
sunny or manic hero, providing assistance of concern for their twin’s feelings. (“For result in domination, even annihilation,”
and advice and raising useful objections.” the love of Zeus!” de Bres imagines a she writes. “But our culture tends to
The book itself began life as a way modern-day Pollux bellowing at Cas- take that concern to extremes. Why
for the sisters to work together during tor. “Step away from that chariot, bro!”) think that autonomy and sociality are
always opposed, that mutual enmesh-
ment must ever reduce the self rather
than expand it? Maybe if we were less
defensive about our boundaries, less in-
clined to fear those who challenge our
sense of who we are, we’d be less likely
to marginalize and stigmatize those we
see as different from us.”
It’s an unimpeachable aim. Who
would be so churlish as to find fault?
I don’t, quite, but, flickering along the
edges of de Bres’s enthusiasm, some-
thing f lashes, a glimpse of another
story—something shyer, lonelier, un-
formed, motivated more by puzzle-
ment than by prescription. “A photo-
graph is a secret about a secret,” Diane
Arbus once said. “The more it tells
you, the less you know.” A book can
be the same.

Itinewas likely a twin once, a fact I learned

only recently, when I underwent rou-
testing during a pregnancy. Genet-
ically distinct DNA was detected and
“How much for coffee without a backstory?” explained to me as being the possible
remnant of a prenatal twin, a boy, who or abuse than non-twins.” Yet, again,
did not survive, and whose tissue I had she wheels around to claim, “It’s not RESCUING AND
absorbed into my own. It has been es- only our bodies, but also our hearts DELIVERING
timated that some fifteen per cent of us and souls that are under suspicion.” As
were once a twin. (One theory holds evidence, she quotes Petrushka, from FRESH FOOD
that all left-handed singletons are the Dostoyevsky’s “The Double,” who is no
surviving members of a vanished twin one’s idea of a sane character witness:
IN NYC TO
pair.) We can add this figure to the rise “Good people live honestly, good peo- EMPOWER A
in actual twin births in industrialized ple live without any faking, and they
countries: in the three decades after never come double.”
STRONGER
1980, the incidence of twins in the U.S. As the reasoning writhes around, one TOMORROW.
roughly doubled, re1ecting the use of fact becomes clear. For de Bres, to be a
assisted reproduction and women choos- twin was to be seen. It was, indeed, the
ing to have children later in life (which social currency she possessed, as she re-
THAT’S HOW WE
increases the odds of multiples). Only
in the past few years has the incidence
veals with self-deprecating charm. She
recalls how, as 1ower girls in matching
FEED GOOD.
begun to drop; we have evidently reached dresses, she and Julia “coolly dominated”
Peak Twins. a wedding; how, in school, being a twin
If twins are no longer very rare, sta- meant that everyone knew who they
tistically speaking, de Bres is intent on were (“though not necessarily who we
stressing their distinctiveness, border- each were”), giving them “a lifetime back-
ing on an Arbus-like sense of freakish- stage pass to semicoolness.” She and
ness: “We identical twins, then, are tricky, Julia performed their twinhood ener-
disruptive, even seditious creatures. We getically—auditioning to be twin pre-
are the perfect crime. Most people only senters for a teen-age breakfast program,
run into us occasionally, but the expe- serving as extras in a television show
rience of doing so, or the simple idea of featuring twin contestants, endlessly
twins, can enflame broader anxieties performing “twintuition.” Even today,
about the fragility of everyone’s capac- she mentions “my twin sister” on her
ity to stably identify anyone.” At such Web site. These details exemplify so
moments, she steps on her own feet, many of the themes of the book, includ-
complaining that twins have been scru- ing the more elastic form of personhood
tinized and exoticized while resolutely that twins can share. But, at the mar-
doing just that. The temptation, of gins of these cheerful stories of twin-
course, is real. It is an eerie feeling, dom, de Bres allows us glimpses into
thumbing through “Twinkind,” to real- open, unresolved questions that she has
ize how its images of twins tend to show about herself—her discomfort with sex
them, as Arbus did, shoulder to shoul- and the body when she was younger,
der, facing the viewer, presenting them- her appetite for solitude, her tendency
selves for our inspection. Only a hand- to push people away. All are troubles
ful show twins looking at each other. massing at the borders of the single self.
And how different those tender images As a “we,” as a multiple, de Bres is all
of mutual regard feel—they lack the strength, but, despite her thesis, this
charge of the conventional twin pose, twin’s capacity for closeness, trust, and
underscoring the tension Viney remarks collaboration does not prove so easily
between the actual “mundane” nature transferrable to others.
of being a twin and the titillated fasci- Could it be otherwise for a philosopher-
nation it inspires. twin? Her accident of birth sent so many
To de Bres, twins amount to a mi- questions spinning into the air. Twins
nority group—they are, she writes, oth- remain a potent and beguiling symbol; RESCUING FOOD FOR NYC
ered, and policed. Even as she borrows even now, they have the power to unset-
the terms, she immediately amends: “To tle and surprise. Not even twins are im-
be clear, this othering reaches nothing mune. In high school, de Bres and Julia
like the oppression faced by racial and once found themselves in adjacent bath-
gender minorities, disabled people, and room stalls without knowing it. They
women. There’s no widespread asym- threw open the doors at the same time.
metrical power structure with single- Confronted in the mirror by two iden-
tons at the top and twins at the bottom. tical fifteen-year-olds in identical school
Twins aren’t at greater risk of violence uniforms, they screamed.  CITYHARVEST.ORG
 count, alas, Mason failed to deliver—
THE ART WORLD not a single affair with Clement Green-
berg or drunken piss at a party. “One
of the least angry people I’ve ever
TONE CONTROL known,” the critic David Ebony said,
“and least bitter about things that had
The sane genius of Emily Mason. gone wrong for her in the art world.”
I’m not trying to be rude, but she and
BY JACKSON ARN the artist Wolf Kahn, her husband of
sixty-plus years, appear to have had a
happy, stable marriage. The juiciest gos-
sip I could find: at first, Mason’s mother
was surprised that she’d chosen to co-
habit with a figurative painter.
In her art, as in her life, clearhead-
edness was the rule. At “The Thun-
der Hurried Slow,” the second Mason
exhibition at Miles McEnery since
her death, the oil paintings astonish
but never quite swoon with the ef-
fort; their breathing is more level.
Most are medium-sized and seem not
only painted but built, with lots of
sturdy squarish shapes inlaid in the
frame. Any seventh grader can tell
you that a diagonal line conveys move-
ment, but in “Pleasure Garden” (1970)
the snug carpentry of two central
slashes, one yellow and one red, keeps
things static and holds the painting
steady—if you shook it hard, nothing
would fall out. (Even the blue splat-
ter in the upper right seems fastened
securely in place.) Depending on your
predilections, the title might sound
like a misnomer, but there’s a lot of
pleasure to be had in crisply balanced
moderation, just not the kind that
tends to turn living artists into leg-
ends. Mason was named for a great
“ W hy isn’t she more famous?” The
question has bugged me since
thaler. Many artists have deserved glory,
but few of them had Elaine de Koon-
American poet, and she named many
of her paintings for this poet’s phrases,
I first saw the work of Emily Mason, ing for a babysitter. Where’s nepotism so here’s the inescapable analogy: if
one of the most ravishing post-New when you need it? Pollock was the rollicking Walt Whit-
ALICE TRUMBULL MASON FOUNDATION / MILES McENERY GALLERY

York School abstract painters, and my The simplest explanation is that man of American abstract art, she was
nominee for the most underrated. Not Mason, who died in 2019, at the age its Emily Dickinson.
that these things are ever very fair; it’s of eighty-seven, was born a genera-
just bizarre that an artist who knew tion too late for stardom. By the time ith Mason, you come and stay
W
© EMILY MASON / COURTESY EMILY MASON AND

everyone, and whose family everyone she’d come into her own—the early for the colors. She prepared
knew, ended up so close to unknown. Reagan years, I would say—abstract them in cat-food tins, stirring and di-
Her distant ancestor John Trumbull painting’s stock was sagging. To make luting until they were ready to be
painted a portrait of Alexander Ham- matters worse, she shows every sign poured over the canvas and shaped
ilton that should look familiar to any- of having been the most embarrassing with a brush or, sometimes, a T-shirt
one who’s handled a ten-dollar bill, thing an American painter can be: or a finger. At their best, they feel both
and her mother, the abstract painter sane. When deciding who belongs in surprising and inevitable; at their worst,
Alice Trumbull Mason, hung out with the pantheon, we like a wild life at they are merely very, very nice to look
Jackson Pollock and Helen Franken- least as much as good art, and on this at. The earliest work in “The Thun-
der Hurried Slow” was completed in
In works such as “Pleasure Garden” (1970), Mason made color seem like a story. 1968, the latest in 1979, and there is
64 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024
something more than a little seventies painting may be the most illuminat-
about the mold and mustard hues on ing one in the exhibition, though, clar-
display. I learned from the exhibition ifying what succeeds in a Mason by
catalogue that Mason visited the cave demonstrating what doesn’t. It trails
paintings at Lascaux in her early twen- off suggestively, and Mason’s style
ties; this tidbit seems almost too on works best when it says what it’s try-
the nose for an artist who made paint ing to say without a stutter.
look old and vibrant at once. This may sound like an insult, and
It’s a rare art show that evokes both in fact many of the finest Mason paint-
stagf lation and the prehistoric, but ings are very close to the third-rate
Mason’s work inspires this kind of ones. (Sanity has a tiny margin of
free-associating. You can’t stare at her error.) Her technique is always in dan-
colors without feeling a twitch of ger of coming across as too pat, but
recognition—clocking their turquoise that’s part of what makes it so thrill-
and terra-cotta, I felt more like a na- ing when it pays off. Working your
tive Southwesterner than I had in a way from the left to the right side of
while—and you can’t keep staring with- the small, square “Like Some Old
out those initial impressions slipping Fashioned Miracle” (1972-74), you first
away. I sometimes get the idea that, find bright yellow and blue cheek to
for Mason, color was a form of story- cheek with hunter green, simple as
telling: a pink feels like a plot twist, two plus three equals five. In the cen-
an orange like a blunt ending. I enjoy ter, everything goes wonky. The blue
her paintings most when she makes ripens, the shade of green switches
an unlikely pair of colors scrape against from hunter to rusty penny, and the
each other and then smooths things yellow disappears altogether, only to
over with a third. In “Greener Lean” emerge on the other side bearing a
(1978), the odd couple are a thick, too little penny rust itself. The shapes are
sugary green and a sickly yellow, and solid-looking for the most part but a
the deus ex machina is a drizzle of red little fuzzy around the edges, as though
in the lower right, which gives the yel- eroded by the elements. (Again, I de-
low a little life and the green a little tect the influence of that trip to Las-
nuance. And I’m not sure I can say caux.) As usual, the painting’s title
why the royal purple poking out of the
sides of “A Paper of Pins” (1974) hits
comes from Dickinson, but I’m re-
minded more strongly of the Song-dy- THE REAL
ACTION IS
me so hard. It gives me the same quiet nasty poet Wei T’ai, who accidentally
shock as the legs poking out of the sea summed up Mason’s whole raison
in the Northern Renaissance master- d’être when he said that poetry “should
work “Landscape with the Fall of
Icarus”: the sense that the big, oper-
atic things in life will always be hap-
be precise about the thing and reti-
cent about the feeling.”
The wonder of this painting is that,
OFF THE
pening somewhere else, and that this
is maybe for the best.
When Mason’s paintings come up
by not trying to overwhelm, Mason
overwhelms. Time, and the way it
chews at the grand and the modest
COURT
short, it’s usually because they are try- with the same appetite, is her subject.
ing too hard to be uncontrolled and Even as she sets out to deal with it GET TO KNOW THE
can’t shake their nature. Sanity goes frankly, she can’t help but transmit
slumming but tricks nobody. “Defiant strong feeling; for me, it’s something
BIGGEST ATHLETES
of a Road” (1972) has too much going like the melancholy jolt of rummag- ON EARTH AT
on and not enough—the colors talk ing through the closet and finding an GQ.COM/SPORTS
over one another as they wait for a old, yellowing diary. Mason was not
resolution that never arrives. “Quiet an especially innovative artist. She pi-
Fog” (1976) does have something like oneered no major aesthetic school, and,
a resolution; I just don’t buy it. Yellow although she taught painting at Hunter
and red and blue melt into the same College for more than thirty years, has
shimmery gray, so that nothing spe- no obvious imitators on the scene today.
cific to the drama between one color She’s just the person who made “Like
and its co-stars gets worked out—if Some Old Fashioned Miracle,” and
this were the ending of a movie, it that should be—and should have
would be “It was all a dream!” The been—more than enough. 
 sita Sánchez, returns here in the role of
THE CURRENT CINEMA Cruz, Tona’s nurse, who is the soul of
sensible patience; notice how calmly she
mentions, as the party winds down, that
NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD she hasn’t been paid in two weeks.
“Tótem” is more relaxed than “The
“Tótem” and “I.S.S.” Chambermaid,” often crowded but rarely
confounding, and Avilés homes in on
BY ANTHONY LANE solitary figures amid the throng. The
camera watches, weaves, and waits—
he heroine of “Tótem,” a new film wish. Sol, without prompting, admits, not so much sticking its nose in, like a
T from the Mexican director Lila
Avilés, is a girl by the name of Solecito
“I wished for Daddy not to die.” Tona
has cancer, and, when we meet him, we
meddlesome guest, as making sure that
people are attended to, if only with a
(Naíma Sentíes), or Sol for short. We believe as much; he is little more than glance. Should their actions be of no
are never told her age: seven or eight, a skeleton with a smile, and this birth- great consequence, better still; look at
perhaps, though she’s one of those nat- day will almost certainly be his last. Roberto, straining to pull on a sock, or
urally grave children who seem a little Hence the family that assembles around Sol taking a furtive slug of wine and
older and wiser than they ought—or him, later swelled by friends. Tona’s sib- pulling a face. At one point, the adults
would choose—to be. In Sol’s case, the lings include Alejandra (Marisol Gasé), do that stupid thing of parcelling their
speech into bits (“che-mo-the-ra-py”),
in the hope that the kids won’t under-
stand what’s going on. Yeah, right. Sol
listens in, and instantly breaks the code.
Parents in the audience will recognize
the dilemma: when you lock children
out from what you fear they cannot bear
to learn, are you protecting them or
storing up harm in their hearts? And
don’t they always turn the key and find
out anyway?
The surprising thing about this film,
given its potential for devastation, is
how funny it can be. As you’d imagine,
the humor wells up from anxiety; that’s
why Alejandra, the most credulous of
the grownups, hires a psychic to walk
around the house and cleanse it of bad
energy. This involves belching, buckets
In Lila Avilés’s film, a girl attends a birthday party for her terminally ill father. of water, and the ceremonial torching
of a bread roll—summarized by Ro-
wisdom is hard-won. She has moments who is first seen dyeing her hair, and berto as “satanic bullshit”—and costs
of foolery and giggling, but much of the Nuri (Montserrat Marañón), who is two and a half thousand pesos. (“I also
time she keeps quiet, or abstracts her- baking a cake and icing it to resemble sell Tupperware,” the psychic adds.)
self from the proceedings. The final third van Gogh’s “Starry Night”—an excuse, And all on the day of a party! What
of the movie depicts a birthday party mainly, to stay in the kitchen and get Tona’s loved ones are doing, of course,
for her father, Tonatiuh, or Tona (Mateo drunk. Also present is Nuri’s daughter, as recorded by “Tótem” in a welter of
García Elizondo), and where do we find Esther (Saori Gurza), who is younger detail, is fending off the prospect of his
Sol, as the revels get under way? Roost- than Sol and more clinging; she sits death by cluttering his environment
ing on high, at rooftop level, gazing atop the fridge, holding a cat, and hangs with life. For good measure, some of
down at the fun. Somebody sends a on to her mother’s legs when Nuri tries that life is animal. The cat shatters the
camera up on a drone, for a laugh, to to leave the room. Tona’s elderly father, fourth wall, as cats will; Sol receives a
capture Sol on her perch. “Stop filming Roberto (Alberto Amador), is there, too, goldfish named Nugget, which doesn’t
me!” she exclaims. “Leave me alone!” with a face of thunder, obsessively clip- bode well; a shy scorpion scurries into
The tenor of “Tótem,” in which the ping a bonsai tree. Has he always, we a crack; and the end credits are punc-
solemn is wreathed with the festive, is wonder, been so impossible to please? tuated by drawings of various creatures.
established in an early scene. Sol is being Avilés’s previous movie, “The Cham- The only poor performance is that of
driven to the party by her mother, Lucía bermaid” (2019), was set in a hotel in a stick insect, which keeps waving its
(Iazua Larios), and they play a game in Mexico City, and shot with astringent arms about. Or its legs. It should have
the car: hold your breath and make a care. The most genial of its stars, Tere- paid attention in drama class.
66 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY DIEGO MALLO
 There isn’t much music in “Tótem,” whales in captivity. When I first heard tive is to take control of the I.S.S.”
and what there is gets piled up in the about this new project, I hoped, fool- Meanwhile, his Russian counterpart,
closing stretch. In an extraordinary act ishly but fervently, that she might have Pulov (Costa Ronin), gets much the
of ventriloquism, we hear a rendition hitched a ride on a shuttle and smug- same order from his terrestrial superi-
of “Spargi d’amaro pianto” (“Sprinkle gled her cameras onto the actual I.S.S. ors. The rest of the movie finds the two
with bitter crying”), from the mad scene Where better to study the feral behav- teams tussling for supremacy, with only
in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.” ior of trapped humans? No such luck. Kira and her opposite number, Vetrov
Raise your hand if you were expecting Instead, this is a feature film, with ac- (Masha Mashkova), known as Nika,
that. Who the ventriloquist is, and how tors portraying a resident crew of six: risking a tenuous pact. To be on the
the aria slots into the plot, I leave for three Russians plus—or, increasingly, I.S.S., according to Nika, can be “a spir-
you to discover. Suffice to say that some- versus—three Americans. Just arrived itual awakening.” No longer. Now it’s
how, for reasons that I’m still mulling on board is Dr. Kira Foster, played by a straight fight.
over, the madness touches the quick of Ariana DeBose. Moviegoers will rec- As a thriller, regrettably, “I.S.S.” fails
this sad and lively tale. All that remains ognize DeBose from “West Side Story” to fulfill its mission. Any air of plausi-
is for the film’s composer,Thomas Becka, (2021), in which, as Anita, she sported bility soon leaks out of the plot, and the
to herald the climax with a surge of a bright-yellow halter-neck dress as whole thing drifts into silliness, tricked
sounds at once jungly and industrial, opposed to a spacesuit. She also re- out with familiar tropes. (As any sci-fi
and for Sol—a hauntingly thoughtful marked to Tony, after he met and made fan can tell you, space walks never go
child rather than a dreamy one, with nice to Maria, “Do you want to start as planned, and we even get a closeup
way too much on her mind—to stare World War Three?” of someone deciding whether or not to
straight at us, by the light of the can- Fancy that. Here is World War Three, snip a crucial wire.) Now and then, how-
dles on her father’s cake. She doesn’t in all its finery. Gazing out of the Cu- ever, there are fragments of authentic
want them, or anything else, to be pola, the primary viewing platform on strangeness and wit; with a documen-
snuffed out. the I.S.S., Kira notices a sudden fiery tarian’s hungry eye, Cowperthwaite feeds
bloom of what she takes to be a vol- on the challenges of zero gravity. If you’re

Itryfgathering,
you seek another awkward social
on a slightly higher plane,
Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s latest
cano, down on the surface of the Earth.
Then another bloom. And another.
Holy smoke! It’s the Jets and the Sharks
dozing off, for instance, and you don’t
fancy being cocooned like a pupa in a
vertical sleeping bag, stuck to a wall,
movie, “I.S.S.” The title refers not to all over again, this time with nuclear your other option is to float in a fetal
the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, warheads. Before long, most of the world curl, as if awaiting birth. In the matter
which ceased to exist under that name is lit up by conflagrations, and the film of death, look and learn as one astro-
in 1921 and could probably use a re- is graced with an unintended and some- naut stabs another in the neck with a
vival, but to the International Space what unfortunate irony: from afar, the screwdriver; blood, rather than spurt-
Station—the clunky modular con- apocalypse is quite a pretty sight. ing or flowing, emerges in little red bub-
struction, orbiting our planet at a dis- At this juncture, you might think bles—life just fizzing away. Most teas-
tance of some two hundred and fifty the astronauts should thank their lucky ing of all is a conversation about sex in
miles, that has become a byword for stars. How about clubbing together to space. “I can’t say that physics is exactly
harmony and peace. I mean, where enjoy their heavenly haven, away from on your side up here,” Kira says. Moon
else can you go to the toilet in a mod- the inferno? Not a chance. The senior shots and money shots: if any film cries
ule called Tranquility? American on the station, Barrett (Chris out for a sequel, it’s this one. 
Ten years ago, Cowperthwaite made Messina), receives a secret message, pre-
a serious splash with “Blackfish,” a doc- sumably from a government bunker, NEWYORKER.COM
umentary about the treatment of killer with an instruction: “Your new objec- Richard Brody blogs about movies.

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THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 29, 2024 67

 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three
3nalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Dahlia Gallin Ramirez,
must be received by Sunday, January 28th. The 3nalists in the January 15th contest appear below. We
will announce the winner, and the 3nalists in this week’s contest, in the February 12th & 19th issue. Anyone age
thirteen or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

“ ”
..........................................................................................................................

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“Gentlemen, I don’t think drinking

is going to solve your differences.”
Christopher Schadt, Pasadena, Calif.

“Just one round, or two out of three?” “John 3:16 still the time to beat!”
Erin Viehl, Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. Douglas Finkelstein, Redondo Beach, Calif.

“Pay up front. I know how this ends.”

Sean Kirk, Bellingham, Wash.
 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

PUZZLES & GAMES DEPT.

14 15 16

THE 17 18

CROSSWORD 19 20

21 22
A beginner-friendly puzzle.
23 24 25 26 27 28

BY ROBYN WEINTRAUB
29 30 31 32

33 34 35
ACROSS
1 Does some roadwork
36 37 38
6 Orgs. that might plan school walkathons
10 Squabble 39 40
14 Orchard with fruit prized for its oil
16 Grocery chain with a stylized “A” logo 41 42
17 Words followed by a number on a
highway sign 43 44 45 46 47 48 49
18 “We ___ a Little Christmas” (holiday
standard originally from “Mame”) 50 51
13 Sriracha, Tabasco, and Cholula
20 Birthplace of Giorgio Armani and 52 53
Gianni Versace
21 Daisy Ridley’s “Star Wars” role 54 55 56

22 Clean a whiteboard, say

23 Fearful
5 Last name of the comedic siblings Amy 40 “Red, White & ___ Blue” (2023 rom-
27 ___ Tussauds
and David com about the U.S. President’s son and a
23 Birds on Canadian one-dollar coins British prince)
6 What “$$$$” means in a restaurant
30 Woos with song review 41 Retailer that sells pythons and parakeets
33 Largest branch of the U.S. military 7 “Give it ___ straight” 42 Venomous flying insects
34 “You’re Still the One” singer Shania 8 Hertz alternative 43 Emulate an eagle
35 Travelled by horse or hoverboard 3 Where a director shouts “Action!” 44 Esteemed expert
36 Person working behind the scenes on 10 Ship that sailed alongside the Niña and 45 Bridle strap
Broadway Pinta 46 Ready to be picked
38 Watch a whole season in one sitting, say 11 “I’m begging you, stay out of it!” 47 Jazz songstress Fitzgerald
33 Feature of some adults-only beaches 12 Mononymous singer of “Skyfall” 48 Alda in the Television Academy Hall of
40 Requiring adult supervision for 13 Uncluttered Fame
moviegoers under seventeen 15 Adhered together, as model-airplane 43 Simon ___ (children’s party game)
41 Hunts for dinner, with “on” pieces 51 Football-game div.
42 “___ is me” (Shakespearean lament) 20 Country that shares the first three letters
43 Middle name of the “Green Eggs and of its name with a neighboring country
Solution to the previous puzzle:
Ham” author Theodor Geisel 22 Paradise in the Book of Genesis
44 Situations that aren’t black and white 23 “Oh, dear,” to King Lear M O L T S W I F I P O S H

Soul singer Redding I M A H U G E F A N A B L Y

50 24 Word before Lauderdale or Ticonderoga
C A S A B L A N C A S L I P
51 Cheesy Mexican dish 25 The Colosseum, the Circus Maximus,
A N T I H E R O E S S I D E
52 Hormonal ___ (skin condition) and the like
E A S T T A T T E R
53 Baseball feat that always ends an inning 26 “Somebody want to take a stab at it?” T H E B A N D A S H E R
54 Supreme leader? 27 Bugs ___ (aptly named bully in the O I L E D G A T H E R U P
55 Puts one’s hat in the ring “Encyclopedia Brown” series) O G L E F L A M E H A L E
56 University bigwigs 28 Dry as a desert T H I R T I E S L A T E R
30 Hit, as a mosquito C O B U R N D E T E S T
DOWN 31 Part of a jigsaw puzzle frequently R O T A T E D A R N
1 Ritzy assembled first I M P S O N E M A N S H O W

2 Brand that makes Come & Get It! dog 32 Sesame or chia product L E A H P I N A C O L A D A

food 34 “___ is not a drill!” E D G E A N T S O N A L O G

D Y E S L E S S S M O R E
3 ___ Than Nguyen (Pulitzer-winning 37 Ice-cream brand also sold as Dreyer’s
author of “The Sympathizer”) 38 Like Wiener schnitzel, chicken katsu, Find more puzzles and this week’s solution at
4 December 24th and 31st, for two and Scotch eggs newyorker.com/crossword
This Year, You’re Invited

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