The New Yorker 4 Oct
The New Yorker 4 Oct
The New Yorker 4 Oct
4, 2024
4 GOINGS ON
7 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Dhruv Khullar on the body politic;
a city braces; the Trump family’s hair looms;
Madonna’s personal d.j.; door knocking.
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS
Julian Lucas 12 Take Me Home
Mati Diop and the cinema of impossible returns.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Jay Martel 19 Nextdoor Reacts to the Rapture
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Dorothy Wickenden 20 The Last Mile
How aid workers risk their lives in Gaza.
PROFILES
Benjamin Wallace-Wells 26 The Convert
Is J. D. Vance the new face of MAGA? A crime
THE POLITICAL SCENE committed.
Nicholas Lemann 36 The Big Deal
What Bidenomics is building. A crime
forgotten.
FICTION
Yukio Mishima 48 “From the Wilderness” A crime
THE CRITICS unpunished.
BOOKS
Kathryn Schulz 54 What other creatures understand about death.
Adam Gopnik 60 The Enlightenment’s great female intellect.
65 Briefly Noted
DANCING
Jennifer Homans 66 Compulsion, complicity, and the art of Bunraku.
THE THEATRE
Helen Shaw 68 “Sunset Blvd.,” “Romeo + Juliet.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Justin Chang 70 “Blitz.”
SEASON 3
POEMS
Diane Mehta 31 “Backbend”
Laura Kolbe 42 “Pregnancy on Street-Cleaning Day”
Listen wherever you
COVER
get your podcasts.
Lorenzo Mattotti “Strides” newyorker.com/season-3
DRAWINGS Pia Guerra and Ian Boothby, Seth Fleishman, Adam Douglas Thompson,
Johnny DiNapoli, Tom Chitty, Elisabeth McNair, P. C. Vey, Roland High,
Liana Finck, Sarah Kempa, Frank Cotham, Meredith Southard, Guy Richards Smit,
Roz Chast, Drew Dernavich, Asher Perlman, Sam Gross SPOTS Edward Steed
Scan to listen.
Yukio Mishima (Fiction, p. 48), a Jap- Julian Lucas (“Take Me Home,” p. 12), a
anese writer, died in 1970. His fiction staff writer, began contributing to the
includes the “Sea of Fertility” series magazine in 2018.
and the story collection “Voices of the
Fallen Heroes,” due out in January. Dhruv Khullar (Comment, p. 7), a con-
tributing writer, is a practicing physician
Bob Morris (The Talk of the Town, p. 10) and an associate professor at Weill
first contributed to the magazine in Cornell Medical College.
1995. His books include “Assisted Lov-
ing: True Tales of Double Dating with Jennifer Homans (Dancing, p. 66 ), the
My Dad” and “Bobby Wonderful.” magazine’s dance critic, is the author
of, most recently, “Mr. B: George Bal-
Laura Kolbe (Poem, p. 42), a medical anchine’s 20th Century.”
doctor and a writer, is the author of
the poetry collection “Little Pharma.” Diane Mehta (Poem, p. 31 ) is the
author of the forthcoming “Happier
Brooke Husic (Puzzles & Games Dept.) Far: Essays.” She is poet-in-residence
is the crossword editor at Puzzmo. at the New Chamber Ballet.
By Michael Schulman
Read this digital-only story on the New Yorker app, the best place to find
the latest issue, plus more news, commentary, criticism, and humor.
ART | For some time now, Dietmar Busse has at Wigstock or people lounging on Harlem MOVIES | Edward Berger’s plush thriller “Con-
been painting his photographs until the origi- stoops.—Vince Aletti (Amant; through Feb. 16.) clave,” based on a novel by Robert Harris,
nal image nearly disappears, but when he first details a fictional meeting of cardinals at the
arrived in New York, in the early nineties, AFROPOP | For more than four decades, the Be- Vatican, after the death of a Pope, to choose
after a childhood in a farming village in Ger- ninese French singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo his successor. Ralph Fiennes stars as Cardinal
many, he made mostly small, black-and-white has been a titanic figure working to dispel the Thomas Lawrence, who is working behind the
Polaroids. More than a hundred of these, Western myth of “world music.” From the 1991 scenes to prevent the victory of a reaction-
plus some knockout blowups, are included album “Logozo” to three Grammy-winning ary (Sergio Castellitto). But an outspoken
in the sprawling, sensational show “Dietmar LPs—“Eve” (2014), “Sings” (2015), and “Mother liberal (Stanley Tucci) has trouble winning
Busse Fairy Tales 1991-1999.” Mostly, but never Nature” (2021)—Kidjo has fiercely advocated for votes, and the resulting action involves deft
merely, snapshots, Busse’s pictures were taken African music, from Afrobeat to Afropop, jazz, coalition-building and the papal equivalent
on bike trips around the city, and the curios- and classical. She is joined on the first U.S. stop of October surprises. The drama is clever but
ity on both sides of the camera makes them of a tour celebrating her forty-year career by the stodgy, spotlighting picturesque settings and
vibrate. There are a number of editorial as- Colour of Noize Orchestra, directed by Derrick arcane rituals, and relying on a formidable cast,
DAN REST
signments, including subjects such as Pedro Hodge, and the funk ambassador Nile Rodgers, which also includes John Lithgow and Isabella
Almodóvar and Ultra Naté, but they can’t the Chic front man who worked on hits for Rossellini, to invest stock characters with a sem-
really compete with a trio of homely queens Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna, Beyoncé, blance of life.—Richard Brody (In wide release.)
Lalo Rodriguez. Garcia formerly worked beg to be picked up with the fingertips
in the front of the house at Eleven and eaten, lustily, out of hand. A pair of
Madison Park. Rodriguez put in time bright-red peppers, stuffed with tangy
PHOTOGRAPH BY EVAN ANGELASTRO FOR THE NEW YORKER;
at Cosme. During the pandemic, out tuna confit, are plated leaning against
of their jobs, they sold tacos out of their one another, almost romantically. Mole
then apartment in Harlem. That venture negro, ladled over a confited leg of duck,
evolved into a supper club, also called is as enrapturing as quicksand, luxu-
Cocina Consuelo, serving food rooted in riously smooth and complex, with a
Rodriguez’s childhood in Puebla, Mex- welcome edge of bitterness. With their
ico. It’s been wonderful, during the past elegant plating and sophisticated fla-
few years, to see scrappy projects from vors, these dishes wouldn’t feel out of
that uncertain era—among them Wiz- place at a ritzy downtown dining room,
ard Hat Pizza, the taquería Border Town, but they fit in just as seamlessly here, in
and the bakery L’Appartement 4F—live Cocina Consuelo’s multicolored space,
on and form a thriving new generation surrounded by personal touches in a NEWYORKER.COM/NEWSLETTERS
of New York City food culture. room full of music. ($12-$32.) Get expanded versions of Helen Rosner’s reviews,
Cocina Consuelo serves breakfast —Helen Rosner plus Goings On, delivered early in your in-box.
many rallies in 2024 as he did in 2016. been less central to this election than to
Over time, Trump’s language has be- any in a generation. Bill Clinton fought
come angrier, simpler, less focussed, more for universal health care, and George W.
violent, and more profane. According to Bush secured prescription-drug coverage
the Times, his rally speeches are, on av- for seniors. Barack Obama oversaw the
erage, about twice as long as they were passage of the Affordable Care Act, and
in 2016, and he swears nearly seventy per Trump nearly orchestrated its demise.
cent more often, a trait that can be asso- This year, a health-care transformation
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2024 7
GUT CHECK of George Templeton Strong, a wealthy brutes and devils. This is very bad in-
VERY BAD INDEED nineteenth-century New York City law- deed.” Of the events, the shopkeepers
yer, and his eyewitness account, from at the edge of what is now Stuyvesant
1863, of the Draft Riots, in Manhattan. Town were entirely unaware. Those
This was the insurrection, the week after houses are long gone. Neither Marcos
the Battle of Gettysburg, of mostly poor, Lopez, a Trump supporter from Wash-
mostly Irish New Yorkers against Lin- ington Heights, working the wine racks
coln’s new policy of conscription into at the Rouge & Blanc liquor store, nor
week and change until Election the Union Army. A class riot (the Beverly Wilpon, a Harris partisan and
A Day. How you feeling, N.Y.C.? Is
it fair to say that people seem anxious,
wealthy could buy exemptions) became
a race riot (Black residents bore the
one of the owners of Ess-a-Bagel, a cou-
ple of doors down, had heard of the
afraid, weary, angry, and confused, and brunt). Buildings were looted and burned Draft Riots, and so perhaps were dis-
yet also (or otherwise), in some corners, to the ground; more than a hundred inclined to imagine such scenarios.
oddly complacent, blinkered, fatalistic, people were killed, including eleven During the George Floyd protests of
or detached? How to gauge the mood lynchings. It was, arguably (Tulsa would 2020, both shops had declined to heed
in a town of eight million moods, espe- like a word), the bloodiest riot in Amer- the advice to board up their windows.
cially when the moods, like the polls, ican history, and, as Kevin Baker, the The liquor store’s was smashed. Wil-
keep swinging? author of “Paradise Alley,” a novel set pon said, “We were spared. Apparently,
It’s hard to believe much of anything, during the riots, put it the other day, they weren’t looking for bagels.”
with the slanted data and wishful think- “the worst thing New Yorkers ever did On the first days of the riots, Strong
ing swirling around. The only certainty to other New Yorkers.”The mind scrolls worked his way uptown, toward the epi-
seems to be that, whatever comes to pass, through old baseball rivalries and pine- center of the violence. “Reached the seat
we’re in for a mess: a month—O.K., apple pizza toppings and concedes that of war at last, Forty-sixth Street and Third
maybe a lifetime—of ugly partisan war- this must be so. Avenue,” he wrote. “Three houses on the
fare, bloodless or not. This, then, is the Last week, an apprehensive citizen Avenue and two or three on the street
week we put tape on the windowpanes. set out in Strong’s footsteps. On First were burned down.” A few blocks away,
Will we tear ourselves to pieces, or go Avenue, near Nineteenth Street—in a mob burned down a building that
on living, imperfectly, as we have done 1863, the rioters dominated the terrain housed a draft-lottery barrel (operated
so many times before? The mind shuf- east of there—Strong described how by a blindfolded man, to insure fairness)
fles through decades of horror and farce, some of his fellow-Unionists were “fired and then, when the police superinten-
conjuring worst cases. upon from houses, and had to leave six- dent arrived, beat him nearly to death.
For an example of one such case, a teen wounded men and a Lieutenant Last week, at the former seat of war,
friend suggests a dive into the diaries Colonel Jardine in the hands of these two men working a street-food cart
8 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2024
Ishefistheprefers
movie hairstylist Michelle Côté
going to work on a period picture,
the restrained elegance of
big hair came with a move to Montreal,
in 1985: “I was working downtown in a
big salon with women coming in at
real hair, Côté said. “He has very, very
thick hair—beautiful hair. No way we
could have done this with his own hair.”
the nineteen-fifties. But neither restraint lunchtime. That was the time of teas- Côté had three wigs at her disposal:
nor elegance was on hand with a recent ing, and we were also doing perms and one for young Donald, one for pre-
job, for which she was tasked with re- frosty highlights.” scalp-reduction-surgery Donald, and
creating the pouffy locks of the nineteen- Thus, though Côté rarely takes time one for post-scalp-reduction-surgery
eighties. The movie was “The Appren- to style her own hair, she was intimately Donald. “The second one was thinner,”
tice,” which dramatizes Donald Trump’s familiar with the various cloud forma- Côté explained. “The effects-makeup
rise from outer-borough hustler to the tions and conchlike structures that swad- people put a bald plate underneath it,
pinnacle of, if not status or wealth, at dled Ivana Trump’s head through much so we could see his scalp.” In other words,
least Trump Tower. of the nineteen-eighties. Bakalova’s ac- Stan’s real hair was covered in part by
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2024 9
Doorbell camera fortunately caught the so quiet where I live. So sick of their lation during which Antichrist will
whole thing. Be on the lookout—they bugling and flitting around. Plus, their rise from Hell and trigger Armaged-
may be the porch pirates who’ve been altars of fire are making air quality don? Maybe he can do something about
stealing our Amazon packages. worse—not to mention all the litter! the litter!
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2024 19
IthenAhmad
an unheated warehouse in Rafah,
Najjar ran a power cable from
battery of a banged-up company car
one for a desk, where he propped his lap-
top to set up a distribution plan. The
supplies were urgently needed. After half
personnel to staff them. In one note,
Najjar said that he and his team had
saved a man’s leg from amputation by
to his laptop and sat down to work. a year of war, fewer than a dozen hospi- treating a suppurating wound, but had
Najjar, a thirty-eight-year-old pharma- tals in Gaza remained functional, and to turn away a mother whose child had
cist, is a medical-donations officer for then just barely. Nurses used dishcloths hemophilia. “This is out of our hands
American Near East Refugee Aid, a as bandages; surgeons operated by cell- because we don’t have the medication,”
nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. It phone light, steadying themselves against he wrote. Najjar was known for a buoy-
was a cold day in March, and he wore the booms of incoming shells. ant sense of humor, but he could man-
MOHAMMED SALEM / REUTERS / REDUX
a jacket and a vest as he inventoried tow- The organization Najjar worked for, age only a resigned equanimity: “We
ers of shrink-wrapped cartons of dona- known as Anera, was founded in 1968, have success days and fail days.”
tions. There were blood-pressure cuffs, to provide aid to Palestinian refugees of
disinfectant, and medicine, but no the Six-Day War. Today, it has a perma- efore the war, Anera’s work in Gaza
crutches or oxygen cylinders. Trucks
headed for Gaza that contain any metal
nent staff of twelve in Gaza and a hun-
dred in the region, supplemented by vol-
B was focussed less on saving lives
than on improving them. It funded early-
are sent back at the border. unteers and contractors as needed. Anera childhood education programs, trained
Najjar had jerry-rigged a workstation: disperses about a hundred and fifty mil- adults in software engineering, and
two stacked boxes for a chair and a larger lion dollars a year in humanitarian and supported entrepreneurial ventures by
20 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2024
THE CONVERT
The sudden rise of J. D. Vance has transfixed conservative élites. Is he the future of Trumpism?
BY BENJAMIN WALLACE-WELLS
O
n a warm, gray morning in Yuval Levin, a Vance ally, said, “J.D. is west from within. Vance’s partnership
mid-September, a small group the single most successful member of his with Trump, whom he once derided, rep-
of reporters waited under the generation in American politics.” resented his shift to a more tribal poli-
wing of a plane at a private terminal at At Yale Law School, where the Vances tics. Remember, the adviser said, even in
Ronald Reagan National Airport, antic- met, Usha, who had been a Yale under- Vance’s Never Trump days he hadn’t re-
ipating the arrival of the Vice-Presidential graduate, operated as an interpreter of ally opposed Trump on policy: “His ob-
candidate J. D. Vance. Earlier in the week, Ivy League folkways for the rougher- jection was that he thought Trump didn’t
a would-be assassin had tried to ambush hewn J.D. She kept a spreadsheet of mean anything he said.”
Donald Trump on his golf course in West things she thought he should try, a mu- But this theory is complicated by how
Palm Beach, the second attempt on tual friend of theirs recalled—“I remem- perfectly Vance’s rightward turn has
Trump’s life this summer, and the appa- ber one of them was Greek yogurt.”Vance tracked the fixations of conservative ac-
ratus accompanying Vance had the feel talked with another friend about becom- tivists and élites. His rise has been backed
of an armed brigade. The travelling party ing a househusband; he had not had a by the billionaire investor Peter Thiel,
included a dozen staffers and about the father, and it was important to him to Elon Musk, and Donald Trump, Jr.,
same number of Secret Service officers. become a good one. (In an echo of Bill whose complaints about woke politics
When Vance’s motorcade pulled up to Clinton’s experience, Vance used the last and tech censorship Vance has ampli-
Trump Force Two—a Boeing 737 with name of a stepfather, Hamel, until after fied on the trail. In the view of one of
the names of anonymous donors (Ed- college.) But, as he began to consider a his old friends, Vance, in becoming a
ward M., Victoria W.) painted on the political career, it was Usha, a former national figure, has also become more
tail fin—it contained twelve cars. In the clerk to two Supreme Court Justices, thin-skinned, not unlike many of the
only other political campaign that Vance who moved to Ohio. When he joined tech titans who support him. Some com-
had run, for the United States Senate, Trump’s ticket, she left her job at a pres- mentary on Vance’s political transforma-
in 2022, he had ridden to events in an tigious law firm. At this year’s Republi- tion after the 2020 election identified the
aide’s old Subaru. Now he and his wife, can National Convention, Usha, the beard he had started to grow as a sym-
Usha, accompanied by their ten-month- daughter of Indian immigrants, sat next bol of his newly bristling politics. But at
old dog, Atlas, emerged from a long black to Trump as her husband said that “Amer- least as noticeable is the weight he’s lost
Suburban, both trim and elegantly ica is not just an idea” but a people bound and the fitted suits he now wears. Such
dressed for the campaign trail. by a “shared history.” The scene would a change isn’t unusual for powerful peo-
Vance’s selection as Trump’s running have been unimaginable to many of her ple in the Ozempic era, but it also sug-
mate had punctuated an astounding rise. friends just a few months earlier. “I’m gests the ways in which Vance, who po-
Born in the small manufacturing city of not sure what deal J.D. made with Usha,” sitions himself as an enemy of the élite,
Middletown, Ohio, he was raised by a a person close to the couple told me. “But is still a part of it.
drug-addicted mother and his beloved it had to be something, because they On the tarmac, Vance let Usha board
Appalachian-born grandmother, Mamaw. make every decision together.” the plane first and then lumbered up the
He worked his way up through storied Vance, too, had only recently made a stairs, somewhat more in the manner of
American institutions: the Marine Corps, full accommodation with Trump. A long- his dog than of his wife. He turned to
Yale Law School, Silicon Valley. “Hill- time political adviser to Vance told me, the cameras and let his right hand vi-
billy Elegy,” the best-selling memoir “The problem that J.D. had always been brate in a quick tremor of a wave. He
Vance published in 2016, made him fa- trying to solve is what to do about the was making two stops that day, first in
mous, and his denunciations of Trump decline of the Midwest.” Many of his Grand Rapids, Michigan, a long-stand-
as “cultural heroin” for the white work- prior solutions, the adviser went on, had ing conservative bastion where Demo-
ing class even more so. A few years later, simply not worked. “Hillbilly Elegy” had crats had lately made inroads, and then
he was a senator from Ohio, the Repub- been, in part, an attempt to make liberal in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. More than
lican Party’s most effective spokesman readers sensitive to the plight and the one of Vance’s advisers told me that his
for Trumpism as an ideology, and—both anger of rural whites. Vance’s subsequent selection as the Vice-Presidential can-
improbably and inevitably—the Vice- efforts to establish an addiction-treat- didate had depended partly on poll num-
Presidential nominee. “If you think about ment nonprofit in Ohio and a heartland- bers in July, which had suggested that
where he came from and where he is, at focussed venture-capital fund were, in Joe Biden posed a bigger threat in Penn-
forty years old,” the conservative analyst this view, intended to rebuild the Mid- sylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin than
26 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2024
After the 2016 election, a friend recalled, “he thought that he wasn’t going to have a political future with Trump in charge.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK PETERSON THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2024 27
From the
Wilderness
Yukio
Mishima
BOOKS
BY KATHRYN SCHULZ
T
he Virginia opossum, accord- to begin its Oscar-worthy performance, new. Monsó traces its origins to 2008,
ing to John Smith—that ex- does it know that it is in mortal dan- when sixteen chimpanzees at a rescue
plorer of all things Virginia— ger? Does the implacable fact of death center in Cameroon huddled together
“hath a head like a Swine, & a taile like have any purchase whatsoever on its and watched, in utter, un-chimplike si-
a Rat, and is of the Bignes of a Cat.” possum-y heart? And if it does not— lence, as a deceased member of their
Had Smith looked closer, he might which seems likely, given its unusually cohort was wheeled away. A photo-
have discovered that it also has oppos- small brain—what of all the other crea- graph of the scene, published in Na-
able thumbs, fifty teeth (more than any tures that feign death: frogs, snakes, tional Geographic the following year,
other land mammal except the equally spiders, sharks, swifts? And what of all triggered an explosion of sympathy and
improbable giant armadillo), and, if fe- the other creatures in general? The oc- curiosity, both among the general pub-
male, thirteen nipples, which are ar- topus, the elephant, the great horned lic and among scientists, psychologists,
ranged like a clockface, with twelve in owl, the house cat, the giant tortoise, and philosophers who were interested
a circle and one in the middle. These the chimpanzee: who, in all the vast in ascertaining what exactly those seem-
nipples are concealed inside a pouch animal kingdom, joins us in having in- ingly bereft chimps were feeling.
on its belly, because the Virginia opos- timations of mortality? That photo also captured, acciden-
sum is a marsupial, the only one native That is the animating question of tally, one of the fundamental difficul-
to North America. “Playing Possum: How Animals Un- ties with studying what animals under-
All this is strange, but none of it is derstand Death” (Princeton), a new stand about death: you have to be there
as strange as the behavior for which this book by the Spanish writer Susana to watch them. In theory, you could
possum is most famous: playing pos- Monsó. She is not a biologist or a zo- conduct all kinds of experiments to help
sum. Contrary to what you might imag- ologist; she is a philosopher, with a par- gauge their comprehension, but only if
ine, that does not simply entail curling ticular interest in the nature of animal your curiosity is considerably stronger
up and holding still. A possum that is minds. And yet, though “Playing Pos- than your moral compass. You could,
playing possum keels over to one side, sum” parses with sometimes excruciat- for instance, present various creatures
its tongue hanging out, its eyes open ing precision the possible inner states with decapitated animals that have been
and unblinking. Saliva drips from its of an entire menagerie of creatures, it stuffed and rigged to move around; you
mouth while its other end leaks urine is our own intellectual and emotional could use hidden speakers to expose
and feces, together with a putrescent condition that haunts its pages. How mothers to prerecorded audio of their
green goop. Its body temperature and much, the book implicitly asks, can any dead babies.
heart rate drop, its breathing becomes living being, human or otherwise, truly Both experiments have been pro-
almost imperceptible, and its tongue grasp about what it means to die? posed, although mercifully not per-
turns blue. If, in a fit of sadism or sci- formed, overt cruelty and gruesome-
entific experimentation, you cut off its he field into which Monsó has ness having mostly faded from favor in
tail while it is in this state, it will not so
much as flinch.
T ventured in “Playing Possum” is
known as comparative thanatology—
academic circles. But that leaves com-
parative thanatology largely reliant on
Idiomatically, “playing possum” the study of how different species re- anecdotal evidence—incidents like that
means “pretending to be dead,” but what spond to death. This question is not of the chimps in Cameroon, witnessed
ABOVE: PIERRE BUTTIN
exactly playing possum means to a pos- new: “Who can say,” Charles Darwin by chance and recorded with varying
sum is considerably harder to say. Does mused, in “The Descent of Man,” “what degrees of accuracy and acuity. Partly
the possum have any idea what it means cows feel, when they surround and stare as a result of this, and partly because of
to be dead (to say nothing of what it intently on a dying or dead compan- its emotionally potent subject matter,
means to pretend)? When it is moved ion.” The discipline, however, is very the field is extremely susceptible to
54 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2024
G abrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de
Breteuil, as she was born in 1706,
came from the top of French society;
the very grand Duc de Richelieu, who
remained a lifelong friend, and then
Jean François de Saint-Lambert.
book about happiness, sometime in the
seventeen-forties, that remains the most
vivid record of her mind. A perfect in-
she was introduced to the world in Among the intellectual luminaries stance of French wit, with its mixture
what is now the Place des Vosges in a of the time, Voltaire was the big “get,” of sharp candor about human motives
building that still survives on that and she got him. In 1730, just back from and sincere sentiments about the human
matchless square of matched red brick a prudent self-imposed exile in En- heart, she briskly lists the necessities
homes, which was among the earliest gland, he had succeeded Fontenelle in for happiness as good sense, good
modular urban developments in Eu- the French role of maître-penseur. He health, good taste, and a capacity for
ropean history. She had an unusually was a passionate Anglophile—French self-deception, since “we owe the ma-
happy childhood, with a family bent Anglophilia, with its Savile Row suits jority of our pleasures to illusions.” She
toward the sciences. Bernard de Fon- and Scotch in preference to cham- went on, “Far from seeking to make il-
tenelle, the great Academician and the pagne, being at least as passionate a lusion disappear by the torchlight of
author of one of the first books of pop- pursuit as English Francophilia—and reason, let us try to thicken the veneer
ular science, the “Conversations on the had become enamored of Newton’s it places upon the majority of objects.”
Plurality of Worlds,” was a regular at physics and Locke’s laws. Yet, however thick the veneer, she writes
her father’s table, and was said to de- A preoccupation of du Châtelet and plaintively and honestly about the great
light in conversing with Émilie. (Al- Voltaire’s, in the château and then in love of her life. “I was happy for ten
ready old when he knew her, Fon- later households in the Faubourg Saint- years through the love of someone who
tenelle lived in good health into his Germain, was a highly abstract one had subjugated my soul; and these ten
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2024 61
Iontnorhappiness
is neither du Châtelet’s love affair
the wise, melancholy little book
that makes her reputa-
nian physics than Voltaire did. New-
ton was right, she understood, not be-
cause he saw farther than anyone else
but the biographer does not always
keep the two senses straight; to be fair,
neither did du Châtelet.
tion in scholarly circles today. Instead, but because his weird idea was open The view that the models of celes-
it’s her “Foundations of Physics”—orig- to public inspection by people capable tial mechanics proposed by Leibniz,
inally published as “Institutions de Phy- of criticizing it. Edmond Halley could Descartes, and Newton all contain truth
sique”—which she wrote while she was show that Newton’s physics predicted is appealingly broadminded; it is not,
still with Voltaire and finished toward the paths of comets, and experiments unfortunately, true. Descartes’s legible,
the end of their affair, in 1740. The work conducted by Pierre-Simon Laplace sensible view that it took one thing to
is a formidable read, and it has only re- could show that Newton’s theory about push another just isn’t so, while New-
cently been translated into English in the speed of sound was basically right, ton’s weird idea—that action can take
full, by a collective of women scholars. once some adjustments were applied. place in a vacuum through occult at-
Exactly what the book is about is hard It was this understanding of science traction—describes the way the world
to say; some insist that it is a search for as a collaboration across time that in- works, and not just the world but the
the metaphysical foundations of phys- spired du Châtelet to offer a memo- whole damn universe. A pluralistic
ics, others that it is a search for the rable aphorism: “Physics is an immense marriage of the two is no more possi-
physical foundations of metaphysics. building that surpasses the power of a ble than is a true marriage of Lamarck
Janiak, though, fairly summarizes single man.” (who thought that giraffes grew tall
its importance as the first blossoming Her understanding of science as a by seeking to eat the tops of tall trees)
of a pluralistic, social view of the growth social enterprise was genuinely pre- and Darwin (who guessed that they
of scientific knowledge. “Voltaire’s vi- scient. She grasped, as early as anyone, developed long necks by chance and
sion of science and of Newton’s heroic the critical difference between science stepwise selection, with the treetop
role in helping to make it a modern as a specific set of ideas and science as eating a lucky and lingering after-
site of intellectual progress is far more a peculiar kind of social practice. That effect). The pluralistic souls who tried
familiar today than du Châtelet’s al- was the point of her architectural met- to augment Darwin with some idea of
ternative vision of science as a collab- aphor. Many hands make light work, transgenerational acquired traits were
orative endeavor that exceeds the pow- the old saw has it, and many heads ex- wrong—sometimes catastrophically
ers of even the greatest genius,” he plain light. Her chapter on the role of wrong, as with the rise of Lysenkoism
writes. “When confronted with a de- the hypothesis would by itself be in Stalinist Russia. (Various modern at-
bate among the revolutionaries of the enough to earn her a large place in the tempts to rescue neo-Lamarckism have,
past, whether it concerns hypotheses, history of the philosophy of science: so far, failed, or been subsumed by the
the nature of matter, the large-scale recognizing the imaginative central- neo-Darwinian synthesis.) Science is
62 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2024
Irian“Sunset
Billy Wilder’s ur-camp masterpiece
Boulevard,” from 1950, Glo-
Swanson plays Norma Desmond, an
Andrew Lloyd Webber débuted his
musical adaptation of “Sunset Boule-
vard” (co-written with Don Black and
live camera tails Francis from his dress-
ing room down through the guts of the
building, then into the street. The com-
aging grande dame of silent film, who Christopher Hampton) in 1993, return- pany glides behind him as he sings and
slides from self-regarding eccentricity ing to the dark sensibility of his then strides along, staring down the camera’s
into homicidal delusion. Intent on a recent mega-hit, “The Phantom of the barrel. It’s been done before—Lloyd
comeback, Norma has seduced a young Opera.” Webber might have felt on fa- sent Jessica Chastain out of “A Doll’s
screenwriter named Joe Gillis (William miliar ground.The Phantom and Norma House”; Ivo van Hove did a live walk-
Holden), but, when both he and the stu- are both attention-hungry spiders in and-talk video in “Network”—but here
dio reject her, she swerves into a perma- glittering lairs; both are fantasists whose the spectacle is so precise, the superim-
nent dream. “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m faces, either twisted or simply aging, position of Broadway on L.A. so droll,
ready for my closeup,” she famously become their obsessive focus. that Lloyd turns the cliché fresh again.
purrs to a wall of crime-scene photog- Faces—gigantic, black-and-white A camera makes its own decisions
raphers, her face smoothed flat with ones—are certainly the main scenery about who has star quality. Francis, as
grease and powder. In the film, Gillis of the director Jamie Lloyd’s souped-up a physical presence, can be recessive,
still narrates—though he’s just been shot and stripped-down “Sunset Blvd.,” but there’s a silvery charisma in his pro-
dead, like Jay Gatsby, in the pool. newly transferred from London to the jected image that his co-stars never find.
For all her beauty, Scherzinger onscreen
Nicole Scherzinger is Norma Desmond in Jamie Lloyd’s cinematic production. remains unexceptional; she mugs for
68 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2024 ILLUSTRATION BY MANDDY WYCKENS
Social Media Pakistan 0342-4938217
the camera, like a TikTok influencer the costume designer Enver Chakar-
taping a reaction video. But, in the final tash include Hello Kitty backpacks, mesh
mad scene, she abandons sarcasm, tanks, and lots of baggy pants—they’re
drenches herself in blood, and turns already avatars for Gen Z romance.
into a terrifying harpy. Tellingly, she’s But the couple must also kindle
best when she stops vamping for the something together. I found myself
camera’s attention and starts reaching, thinking wistfully of the National The-
her fingers curled into claws, for the atre’s recent film with Jessie Buckley
people in the room. and Josh O’Connor, in which Buckley’s
For much of the previous two hours, clever Juliet reads as being capable of
though, she’s been rolling her eyes. diverting O’Connor’s Romeo from his
Maybe she can’t believe how shoddy a violent path. Here, Zegler and Connor
big-deal musical can be? Despite its many both seem like innocents, with a kind
lush passages, Webber’s sung-through of inverse chemistry—as they get far-
score is bloated with repetitive vocal fig- ther away from each other onstage, their
ures, and the lyrics by Black and Hamp- connection appears to strengthen. Their
ton fall flat in comparison with lines finest moment is their first one, when
lifted from Wilder and his co-writers, they’re almost a full twenty feet apart.
D. M. Marshman, Jr., and Charles Brack- Zegler sings a song (written for the show
ett. For instance, Norma’s iconic “I am by the über record producer Jack An-
big. It’s the pictures that got small” is tonoff) at a Capulet party, and her per-
followed almost immediately by the lyr- formance roots Romeo, an otherwise
ics “No words can tell /The stories my flighty fellow, to the spot.
eyes tell/Watch me when I frown /You After his work at Circle in the Square
can’t write that down.” with “An Enemy of the People,” Gold
If Webber’s uneven musical is a grainy has clearly taken the measure of in-the-
copy of Wilder’s film, this production is round space, and so the rough-and-
an intentionally distorted copy of a copy. tumble Montague gang—which in-
But Lloyd is less interested in the spe- cludes the wonderful Gabby Beans as
cifics of either work than in the chthonic Mercutio—clambers around in the cat-
rage underneath. For the folks giving walks overhead, dropping down near
standing ovations during the show, the theatregoers in the standing-room sec-
strategy seems to work. Scherzinger’s
voice does contain a terrific power: in-
tion. Connor is particularly deft at in-
teracting with the audience: he plays THE REAL
ACTION IS
stead of phrasing lines as thoughts, she Romeo as an inexperienced softboi, of-
attacks every clause with big, jackham- fering the whole room his flustered cour-
mering blows. I was reminded that she tesy. (When he does a chin-up to kiss
has been a judge on “The X Factor”—
there’s a sense of desperate competition
in the way she delivers her numbers,
Juliet on her balcony, his biceps bulg-
ing, the audience gasps. All that flirting
really pays off.)
OFF THE
holding nothing in reserve. The audi-
ence responds gratefully to this level of
self-abnegation, and the frankly chilling
Gold and his company seem most
comfortable in these swoony sections.
The fights are silly; the final scene in
COURT
sounds that come out of her. That’s all the tomb is bizarrely quick and awk-
Norma Desmond wanted! She doesn’t ward. But, earlier, the mood is wonder- GET TO KNOW THE
mind suffering, as long as the people in ful, and Antonoff’s electronic underscor-
the dark love her for it. ing gives everything a kind of fuzzed-out,
BIGGEST ATHLETES
after-midnight sweetness.There’s a lovely ON EARTH AT
eanwhile, “Romeo + Juliet,” at the moment when the circular black stage GQ.COM/SPORTS
M Circle in the Square, takes a more
straightforward approach to its star cast-
floor flips itself over to show a field of
flowers. (The set design is by the col-
ing. Sam Gold’s inventive, emo-lite pro- lective called dots.) I know that the “bank
duction features Rachel Zegler, from where the wild thyme blows” line is from
the recent film version of “West Side a different play, but it somehow feels as
Story,” as Juliet, and Kit Connor, from if it belongs to this production. The cast
the teen-Brit TV show “Heartstopper,” here is most believable as young peo-
as Romeo. The moment we see them, ple—enemies or not—who stay up all
running full-tilt out of a shouting gang night and then fall asleep in a pile, like
of rowdy youths—the 2024 stylings by puppies in long grass.
THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2024 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
VOLUME C, NO. 36, November 4, 2024. THE NEW YORKER (ISSN 0028792X) is published weekly (except for four planned combined issues, as indicated on the issue’s cover, and other com-
bined or extra issues) by Condé Nast, a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: Condé Nast, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. Eric Gillin, chief business
officer; Lauren Kamen Macri, vice-president of sales; Westcott Rochette, senior vice-president of finance; Fabio B. Bertoni, general counsel. Condé Nast Global: Roger Lynch, chief executive officer;
Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, chief revenue officer; Anna Wintour, chief content officer; Nick Hotchkin, chief financial officer; Stan Duncan, chief people officer; Danielle Carrig, chief communica-
tions officer; Samantha Morgan, chief of staff; Sanjay Bhakta, chief product and technology officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Canadian Goods
and Services Tax Registration No. 123242885-RT0001.
POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO THE NEW YORKER, P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037. FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS, OR BACK ISSUE
INQUIRIES: Write to The New Yorker, P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037, call (800) 825-2510, or e-mail help@newyorker.com. Give both new and old addresses as printed on most recent label. Subscribers:
If the Post Office alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. If during your subscription term or up to one year after
the magazine becomes undeliverable you are dissatisfied with your subscription, you may receive a full refund on all unmailed issues. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within four weeks after receipt of
order. Address all editorial, business, and production correspondence to The New Yorker, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. For advertising inquiries, e-mail adinquiries@condenast.com. For submission
guidelines, visit www.newyorker.com. For cover reprints, call (800) 897-8666, or e-mail covers@cartoonbank.com. For permissions and reprint requests, call (212) 630-5656, or e-mail image_licensing@condenast.com.
No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the consent of The New Yorker. The New Yorker’s name and logo, and the various titles and headings herein, are trademarks of Advance Magazine Publishers
Inc. To subscribe to other Condé Nast magazines, visit www.condenast.com. Occasionally, we make our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services that we believe would
interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, advise us at P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037, or call (800) 825-2510.
THE NEW YORKER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS,
UNSOLICITED ART WORK (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICITED
MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, ART WORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS,
UNLESS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY THE NEW YORKER IN WRITING.
Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three
finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Liza Donnelly,
must be received by Sunday, November 3rd. The finalists in the October 21st contest appear below. We will
announce the winner, and the finalists in this week’s contest, in the November 18th issue. Anyone age
thirteen or older can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.
“ ”
..........................................................................................................................
“I come here a lot . . . but you probably know that.” “Just be glad we don’t live in the Southern Hemisphere.”
Paul Angiolillo, Weston, Mass. Christopher Jablonski, Dublin, Ireland
THE 15 16
CROSSWORD 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24
A moderately challenging puzzle.
25 26 27
BY BROOKE HUSIC
28 29 30
31 32 33
ACROSS
1 Accessory with a medallion 34 35 36
8 Consume eagerly
13 Las Vegas football players 37 38
14 Pass gingerly
39 40 41 42 43
15 No fewer than
16 Refrigerator drawer for produce 44 45 46 47
17 Deep space?
48 49 50 51
18 Ladybug’s prey
20 Reason to do something 52 53
Scan to listen.