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Tim Judah and Fintan O’Toole on War Crimes in Ukraine
May 26, 2022 / Volume LXIX, Number 9
Ruth Franklin: Who Betrayed Anne Frank?

Laura Miller: Olga Ravn’s Workers in Outer Space
Cass Sunstein: Three Cheers for the Administrative State!
Brenda Wineapple: The Mysterious Mary Lumpkin
E. Tammy Kim: POW Archives of the Korean War
Susie Linfield: How Radical Movements Begin
“Lahiri explores her relationship “The picture of Mann that emerges “This engaging, illuminating, “The most authoritative
with literature, translation, and the from his book is rich, multilayered and encouraging book proposes single-volume treatment of
English and Italian languages in and always fascinating.” realistic reforms.” the religious order.”
this exhilarating collection.”
—Costica Bradatan, Washington Post —Steven Poskanzer, President —Simon Ditchfield, University of York
—Publishers Weekly, starred review Emeritus, Carleton College
“A fascinating biography of one “This much-anticipated “A thorough, unflinching look at “These aphorisms proceed
of the most outrageous figures in volume brings us Sahlins what it would take to eradicate in a way that feels at once
modern Jewish intellectual life.” at his iconoclastic best.” racial barriers in American unexpected and profound.”
higher education.”
—Vivian Liska, author of German- —Marilyn Strathern, —Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone
Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife author of Relations —Library Journal Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
“[This] book shows us why “Alpert bridges philosophy and “Dreams of a Lifetime compellingly “Old Truths and New Clichés
Tocqueville remains a self-help to envision something argues that dreams tell us about is game-changing for
vital, necessary figure for that seems to be slipping from our essences—who we are and our understanding of
understanding our world.” our grasp: a livable world.” who we want to be.” Isaac Bashevis Singer.”
—David A. Bell, author of —Gabriel Winant, author of —Terence E. McDonnell, coauthor of —Debra Caplan, author of
Men on Horseback The Next Shift Measuring Culture Yiddish Empire
Contents
4 Geoffrey O’Brien Molière: The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations
10
14
Fintan O’Toole
Laura Miller
Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes
The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn,
translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken
THE
16
17
Camille Ralphs
Julian Bell
Poem
Surrealism Beyond Borders an exhibition at Tate Modern, London
EMBODIED
Catalog of the exhibition by Stephanie D’Alessandro and Matthew Gale,
with contributions from Dawn Ades, Patricia Allmer, and others
MIND
20 Ruth Franklin The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation by Rosemary Sullivan
23 Joshua Jelly-Schapiro Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman
25 Susie Linfield The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas
by Gal Beckerman
30 Brenda Wineapple The Devil’s Half Acre: The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated
the South’s Most Notorious Slave Jail by Kristen Green
32 E. Tammy Kim The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History
by Monica Kim
34 Gavin Francis Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self by Julie Sedivy
Alfabet/Alphabet: A Memoir of a First Language by Sadiqa de Meijer
42 Tim Judah The Russian Terror
48 Cass R. Sunstein The Chevron Doctrine: Its Rise and Fall, and the Future of the
Administrative State by Thomas W. Merrill
NOG A A R IK H A
49 Dan Chiasson Poem
51 Helen Epstein Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story by Fanny Pigeaud
and Ndongo Samba Sylla, translated from the French by Thomas Fazi THE CEILING
The CFA Franc Zone: Economic Development and the Post- Covid Recovery
by Ali Zafar OUTSIDE
54 Letters from Robert Goldman and Wendy Doniger
The Science and Experience
CONTRIBUTORS of the Disrupted Mind
JULIAN BELL is a painter based in Lewes, England. His E. TAMMY KIM is a contributing writer at The New Yorker,
new book, Natural Light: Adam Elsheimer and the Horizons a 2022 Alicia Patterson Fellow, and a Fellow at Type Media
of 1600, will be published later this year. Center. She is a cohost of the podcast Time to Say Goodbye.
DAN CHIASSON’s fifth book of poetry is The Math Camp- SUSIE LINFIELD teaches cultural journalism at NYU. She
“Astute, compassionate,
ers. He teaches at Wellesley. is the author of The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Po- and brilliant, The Ceiling
HELEN EPSTEIN is Visiting Professor of Human Rights litical Violence and The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left
and Global Public Health at Bard. She is the author of An- from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky. Outside is finally an
other Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Ter- LAURA MILLER is a Books and Culture columnist for
ror and The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Slate. She is the author of The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s
adventure story in the
Against AIDS in Africa. Adventures in Narnia and editor of The Salon.com Reader’s bewildering drama of being.”
Guide to Contemporary Authors.
GAVIN FRANCIS is a primary care physician in Edin-
burgh. His most recent book, Recovery: The Lost Art of GEOFFREY O’BRIEN’s latest books are Where Did Poetry — S IR I HU S T V E D T,
Convalescence, was published in the UK in January. Island Come From and the poetry collection Who Goes There. author of Memories of the Future
Dreams: Mapping an Obsession was published in Italian last FINTAN O’TOOLE is a columnist for The Irish Times and
year. the Leonard L. Milberg Professor of Irish Letters at Princeton.
RUTH FRANKLIN’s latest book, Shirley Jackson: A His new book, We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal His-
Rather Haunted Life, won the 2016 National Book Critics tory of Modern Ireland, was published in the US in March. “Noga Arikha is a poet
Circle Award in Biography. She is writing a biography of CAMILLE RALPHS’s poetry pamphlets are Malkin: An and a painter with the soul
Anne Frank. Ellegy in 14 Spels and uplifts & chains. She is the Poetry Edi-
JOSHUA JELLY-SCHAPIRO is the author, most re- tor at the Times Literary Supplement. of a scientist.”
cently, of Names of New York and, with Leah Gordon, CASS R. SUNSTEIN is the Robert Walmsley University —ANTONIO DAMASIO,
PÒTOPRENS : The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince. He Professor at Harvard and Senior Counselor at the US De-
teaches at NYU. partment of Homeland Security. author of Feeling and Knowing
TIM JUDAH is the author of In Wartime: Stories from BRENDA WINEAPPLE’s most recent book is The Im-
Ukraine. He has reported for The New York Review from peachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a
Ukraine, the Balkans, Niger, Armenia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Just Nation. She teaches in the School of the Arts at Columbia. “With grace, rigour, and
Editor: Emily Greenhouse Publisher: Rea S. Hederman imagination, Arikha brings
Deputy Editor: Michael Shae Associate Publisher, Business Operations: Michael King
Executive Editor: Jana Prikryl
Senior Editors: Eve Bowen, Julie Just, Andrew Katzenstein, Hasan Altaf
Associate Publisher, Marketing and Planning: Janice Fellegara
Advertising Director: Lara Frohlich Andersen
together the languages
Contributing Editors: Prudence Crowther, Gabriel Winslow-Yost Editor-at-Large: Daniel Mendelsohn
Art Editor: Leanne Shapton of mind, brain, and
Lauren Kane, Managing Editor; Lucy Jakub and Max Nelson, Online Editors; Daniel Drake, Associate Editor; Nawal Arjini and Willa Glickman, Assistant
Editors; Jazz Boothby and Edgar Llivisupa, Editorial Interns; Sylvia Lonergan, Researcher; Will Palmer and Sean Cooper, Copyeditors; Will Simpson, Type embodied human experience
Production; Kazue Jensen, Production; Maryanne Chaney, Web Production Coordinator; Sharmaine Ong, Advertising Manager; Nicholas During, Publicity;
Nancy Ng, Design Director; Janis Harden, Fulfillment Director; Andrea Moore, Circulation Manager; Angela Hederman, Special Projects; Diane R. Seltzer,
Office Manager; Patrick Hederman, Rights; Max Margenau, Comptroller; Vanity Luciano, Assistant Accountant; Teddy Wright, Receptionist. to give us a book that
Founding Editors: Barbara Epstein (1928–2006) and Robert B. Silvers (1929–2017)
fascinates on every page.”
Ŷ Walker Mimms: Saul Steinberg’s Drafting Table Ŷ Jeet Heer: The Anarchist Art of Martin Vaughn-James
— L I S A A P P IG N A N E S I ,
What’s new on
Ŷ Cristina Florea: Ukraine and the USSR’s Long Collapse Ŷ Julian Lucas: Black Cowboys Out of Egypt author of Mad, Bad and Sad
nybooks.com Plus: Christopher Benfey on Stanley Cavell, Carson Ellis on drawing from nature, and more . . .
basicbooks.com
On the cover: Ronan Bouroullec, Untitled, 2020 (Ronan Bouroullec). The top painting on page 18 is © 2022 Remedios Varo, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
York/ VEGAP, Madrid.
The New York Review of Books (ISSN 0028-7504), published 20 times a year, monthly in January, July, August, and September; semi-monthly in February, March, April,
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3
Schemes Gone Awry
Geoffrey O’Brien
that’s there in the original.” Charac-
teristically, he chose to approximate
Molière’s rhymed couplets as closely as
possible, only substituting iambic pen-
tameter for alexandrines. He saw this
as far more than a matter of personal
preference, laying out in his introduc-
tion to The Misanthrope a multitude of
aspects otherwise lost, not least
the frequently intricate arrange-

ments of balancing half-lines,
lines, couplets, quatrains, and
sestets. There is no question that
words, when dancing within such
patterns, are not their prosaic
selves, but have a wholly different
mood and meaning.
His translations even on the page sug-

gest an operetta whose music resides
entirely in the volleying of words. They
capture precisely Molière’s sustained
cadence of argument and counterar-
gument, punctuated by the percussive
thrust and counterthrust of monosyl-
labic interjections and ripostes. There
are no rests—even when Molière’s char-
acters hesitate or temporize, they do so
with urgency—and it is easy to move
through these volumes, from scene to
scene and play to play, as if on a single
gust. The particular merit of Wilbur’s
versions is the cohesive fluency with
which they progress from beginning to
end, a fluency that encompasses, beyond
meter and rhyme, textures of speech
and movements of thought. “I spent so
much time,” he once commented, “try-
ing to figure out how to translate lines
that an actor would like to speak.”
His language neither updates nor
historicizes: “The diction mediates be-
tween then and now, suggesting no one
period.” There is a ’twould here and
a naught there, but the overall tone is
never antiquarian. On the other hand,
Molière; illustration by Emmanuel Pierre Wilbur was resistant to aggressive at-
tempts to drag Molière into the present
Molière: The Complete years with the Thirty-Sixth Infantry T hese are not the first translations day, complaining about productions
Richard Wilbur Translations Division; and afterward, at Harvard, to figure in Library of America; pre- recasting Tartuffe as a beaded 1960s
Library of America, he became more deeply involved with vious volumes include Tocqueville’s guru or The Misanthrope’s Alceste as
2 volumes, 1,086 pp., $70.00 French poetry through his friendship Democracy in America newly rendered “a hippie who ‘tells it like is.’” As much
with the poet André du Bouchet. by Arthur Goldhammer and Ezra as possible he goes for a pointed, plain-
When Richard Wilbur undertook in The Misanthrope translation was pro- Pound’s Poems and Translations, con- spoken exactness:
1952 to translate Molière’s The Mis- duced with great success by the Poets’ taining those versions from the Chi-
anthrope, it was as compensation for Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, nese, Greek, and Provençal that in so You could at least have beaten me
his inability (despite having received in 1955, and when Eric Bentley included many ways expanded the possibilities more gently. (The Bungler)
a grant for the purpose) to write verse it in his anthology The Classic Theatre: of American poetry. But this new set
plays of his own: “They didn’t come Six French Plays (1961) he described seems to open wider the welcoming We have but one death, and it
off. They were very bad, extremely it—voicing an opinion widely shared— prospect of more volumes addressing lasts so long! (Lovers’ Quarrels)
wooden.” With his first two books of as “perhaps the first Molière in English literary translation as an art not mar-
poetry, The Beautiful Changes (1947) to be a delight from beginning to end.” ginal but central, and still too rarely Let’s put off friendship, and
and Ceremony (1950), Wilbur had been Over the next five decades Wilbur (who recognized as such. get acquainted first. (The
promptly recognized as an important died in 2017) translated nine more—all In Pound’s case, translation and orig- Misanthrope)
young poet working with total confi- the major verse plays along with the inal poetry were mutually enmeshed,
dence in traditional forms, and in the prose Don Juan—which are now col- different facets of the same project. For He manages to make speaking in
age of T. S. Eliot and Christopher Fry lected in a two-volume set from Library Wilbur, while translation was likewise rhymed couplets the most natural thing
verse drama seemed a promising move. of America, along with his illuminating a constant practice—his poetry colin the world:
As it turned out, translating Molière introductions.1 lections are interspersed with versions
became a lifelong commitment, an op- of poets from Villon and Baudelaire All this fine talk, so flowery and
portunity virtually to inhabit a thor- 1 to Borges and Brodsky—a line of sep- so polished,
Of the verse plays, he omitted only
oughly congenial alternate identity. the “heroic comedy” Dom Garcie de aration was clearly drawn. If Pound Is something I’d be glad to see
An exciting production of The Misan- Navarre and the spectacularly staged sought the freedom of radical recast- abolished.
thrope at the Comédie Française in 1948 “comedy ballets” written wholly or ing, not only of the original text but of It’s a vile custom: most men waste
had first drawn Wilbur to the work, but partly in verse. Dom Garcie was for English poetic diction, Wilbur asserted two- thirds
his involvement with France and French understandable reasons a catastrophic that “one shouldn’t bother with it at all Of every day exchanging empty
flop in its day—Molière’s otherwise in-
theater went further back. As a teenager unless one is willing to be slavish to words. (The School for Wives)
fallible theatrical instincts desert him
he was impressed by Walter Hampden in this humorless portrait of paranoid try to get over into English everything
in Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, in jealousy, but it would have been inter- And he achieves the uncluttered trans-
Brian Hooker’s rousing verse transla- esting to see what Wilbur would have obviously important to Molière, who mission of lines of argument, so that
tion; during World War II he had come done with its unusually knotty verse incorporated chunks of it into The even the most elaborate speeches of The
to know France when serving for three and obsessive quibbling. The play was Misanthrope. Misanthrope do not get lost in syntactic
4 The New York Review

“A terrific read and an
invaluable reference in
the debate of human
verses robotic space-
“An invaluable flight.”
historical example —BBC Sky at Night
of the creation of a
scientific conception
of race.”
— Washington Post
“The book advocates for

positive political change . . .
A Brief History of Equality
is a route into Piketty’s
arguments in his earlier
books.”
—Financial Times
“Prasad’s analysis is the

best single point of entry “Exceedingly well-
for those interested in researched, wide-
the nitty-gritty of digital ranging, provocative
finance.” in its conclusions, and
magically compact, it
—Foreign Affairs
is riveting from start to
finish.”
—Susannah Cahalan,
author of Brain on Fire
hup.harvard.edu
May 26, 2022 5

thickets, as in Célimène’s mocking ob- anthrope he was testing the limits—it genres, and begun to supply the com- refute the Don’s atheism—“I’d like to
servations on a frequenter of her salon: would end not with a last-minute rev- pany with scripts of his own, steeped in ask you who made those trees, those
elation or ingenious bit of trickery to the influence of commedia dell’arte. rocks, this earth, and the sky we see
A man of mystery from top to toe, save the day, but in the harsh reality of The earliest plays translated by Wil- up there, and if all those things created
Who moves about in a romantic bitter old men marrying reluctant wards, bur, The Bungler and Lovers’ Quar- themselves?”—he becomes caught up,
mist hypocrites engaged in predatory seduc- rels, draw directly on Italian sources. like one of Molière’s farcical doctors or
On secret missions which do not tion and property theft in the name of From the outset Molière was a perpet- philosophers, in his own argumentation:
exist. religion, honest men vengefully accused ual scavenger of plots, character types,
His talk is full of eyebrows and of political disloyalty, and children sac- situations, and jokes, mined in Plautus Isn’t it marvelous that I’m here, . . .
grimaces; rificing their own happiness to the irra- or Terence or his Italian, Spanish, and and can make my body do whatever
How tired one gets of his momen- tional demands of authoritarian parents. French predecessors and contempo- it likes? I can choose to clap my
tous faces; When Wilbur writes of Molière’s words raries. French scholars have dutifully hands, lift my arms, raise my eyes
He’s always whispering something “dancing within such patterns,” he pro- tracked down every appropriated scene to Heaven, bow my head, shift my
confidential vides by extension a definition of the or line, although few have contested that feet, move to the right, to the left,
Which turns out to be quite playwright’s singular genius for durable out of that mass of borrowed material forward, backward, turn around . . .
inconsequential; comic delight in a world whose patterns something distinctly and consistently
Nothing’s too slight for him to were, as the plays constantly imply, laid original was made. This was not a body In so doing he falls to the ground, giv-
mystify; down with capricious ferocity. of work created in leisurely calm. The ing Don Juan the punch line: “There
He even whispers when he says Versailles Impromptu’s self-portrait of lies your argument with a broken nose.”
“good- by.” an overworked showman is no exaggera- The gag surely got a laugh, but for some
T he plays Wilbur translated do not tion, given that in addition to the steady must have left an unsettling aftertaste.
Wilbur’s aim was “thought-for- constitute the full range of Molière’s stream of plays supplied to Parisian To execute such a gag effectively
thought fidelity,” and, given his self- theatrical life. Clearly he preferred the theaters in the 1660s, Molière was on required a virtuosity acquired over
imposed limits of lineation and rhyme particular challenge of verse transla- call to produce material for ever more decades, applying the techniques of
scheme, any gloss or clarification must tion, but it would have been interesting elaborate celebratory royal pageants. farcical pantomime to a very different
fit within a narrow groove, never weigh- to see what he did with The Ridicu- These were full-fledged musical affairs end: a pratfall embedded in a theologi-
ing down the life of the line. He achieves lous Précieuses, The Doctor in Spite with ballet and song, framed by the cal discussion. By contrast, in The Mis-
this with acrobatic grace. A similar mas- of Himself, The Trickeries of Scapin, deployment of fireworks and immense anthrope, the highest of high comedies,
tery can be found in his lyrics for Leon- George Dandin, and the great final trio stage machinery, and at times cameo Molière avoids low devices entirely
ard Bernstein’s Candide, with “Glitter of comically unbalanced protagonists appearances by king and courtiers. One except for some patented vaudeville
and Be Gay” a supreme example. One in The Miser, The Bourgeois Gentle- can think of the playwright as a perfec- involving Alceste’s dim-witted valet to
might also bear in mind his training as man, and The Imaginary Invalid. I tionist working under extreme pressure, bring the curtain down on act 4. The
a military cryptographer and his predi- particularly regret that he did not turn taking whatever he needed from his ca- Misanthrope—admired but not espe-
lection for crossword puzzles. He spoke his hand to those two one-act pendants pacious store of materials and devices to cially successful in its day—represents
more than once of an entire day spent to The School for Wives (written in achieve the precise effect envisioned. an ultimate refinement of style, going
translating a couple of lines, but the re- response to the controversy stirred by beyond jokes and even plot to sound out
sults convey an air of spontaneity. that play’s alleged lewd suggestiveness, the nuances of its characters’ interrela-
In its modes and imagery, Wilbur’s insults to women, and mockery of the Molière was insider and outsider, at tions. The stage becomes a prism where
own poetry could not be more remote sacredness of marriage), The Critique once royal favorite and someone who, everyone can be viewed from multiple
from what is found in Molière. His first of the School for Wives and The Ver- being an actor, was deemed unwor- angles; above all Alceste, the most
books especially bring an almost ro- sailles Impromptu. In the first of these thy of burial in consecrated ground; sympathetic of Molière’s obsessives,
coco artifice to bear on matters of life Molière put on stage a salon full of a merchant’s son mingling with nobil- who insists on an honesty of speech
and death; in “The Death of a Toad,” his own fiercest critics (with himself ity and sometimes taking mockery too that would upend all ordinary social
he opens on “A toad the power mower playing the most fatuous), and in the far. Surviving by talent alone, dodging relations, yet can hardly be faulted for
caught,/Chewed and clipped of a leg” second his own troupe in chaotic and scandalous allegations and accusations disdaining the fawning, complacent,
and within a few lines has him gazing constantly interrupted rehearsal, offer- of impiety, he imparted to his plays the and finally treacherous aristocrats who
“Toward misted and ebullient seas/And ing a glimpse of himself as a harried dynamic of a balancing act in circum- flutter around the irresistible but thor-
cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia’s professional, beleaguered by his actors’ stances always fraught. If he celebrated oughly unreliable Célimène. Wilbur
emperies.” The elegance establishes the complaints and struggling to keep up anything it was the triumph of intelli- makes the most of the marquis Acaste’s
poem as a separate realm of language with the demands of his royal patron— gence over pedantic obscurantism, and third-act monologue, turning it into a
into which the evidence of the senses is the patron who at the play’s end rescues clear-sighted honesty over delusion and patter song of inane self-regard:
translated: bird voices “fountaining in him by granting more time to rehearse. obsession; but the plays resist being re-
air,” fallen leaves “held in ice as dancers The plainness of the dialogue might duced to any simple formulation, and I’ve wit, of course; and taste in
in a spell.” Even while he preserves an be taken for realism, while bearing in he was too wary a strategist to be easily such perfection
ordered surface, he does not deny the mind that the production was staged for pinned down. When Tartuffe was re- That I can judge without the least
deceptiveness of surfaces, as in “Mined the Sun King in the first place. One pre- peatedly banned as “absolutely injurious reflection,
Country,” where French children after sumes that Louis XIV was sufficiently to religion and capable of producing very And at the theater, which is my
the war walk cautiously through tran- amused by Molière’s long speech to dangerous effects,”4 he asserted vigor- delight,
quil countryside in fear of land mines: his actors about the urgency of getting ously that it was nothing of the kind, and Can make or break a play on
“Some scheme’s gone awry./Danger is the show in shape: “What kings like then followed it in 1665 with the quickly opening night,
sunk in the pastures, the woods are sly.”2 is prompt obedience. . . . We shouldn’t prohibited Don Juan, whose fascination And lead the crowd in hisses or
Molière’s verse, as Wilbur notes, is consult our own convenience in the consists precisely in the way it provokes bravos,
“almost wholly free of metaphor.” It things they ask us to do. We are here opposite readings that resist resolution. And generally be known as one
is free of natural imagery as well. His only to please them.”3 Molière’s ability The Don is “indeed a monster,” as who knows.
plays are restricted to the human sphere to keep the king amused was essential Wilbur has it, a libertine foreshad- I’m clever, handsome, gracefully
(putting aside the antique gods of Am- to upholding his always precarious po- owing the protagonists of Laclos and polite;
phitryon and the supernatural visita- sition as favored entertainer, at once Sade. Consider his declared intentions My waist is small, my teeth are
tions of Don Juan). Neither weather actor, writer, manager, and impresario. regarding a couple he has just caught strong and white.
nor flora nor fauna enter into them, Such a position must often have sight of: “Never had I seen two people
nothing but human cravings and anx- seemed a remote prospect during the so enchanted by each other, so radiantly The play’s delicacy can be gauged by
ieties staged in a generic setting, city long stretch when, after the failure of in love. . . . From the moment I saw how much it hinges on Alceste’s un-
street or drawing room, for maximum his Parisian company L’Illustre Théâtre them I found their shared happiness favorable critique of a sonnet, and its
comic effect. Of schemes gone awry in 1645 and a very brief imprisonment intolerable; . . . I began to consider how force by an ending that for once refuses
there are many—almost their whole for debt, he toured the provinces with I would mar their felicity.” Yet he totally to restore even a semblance of harmo-
concern is schemes gone awry—but as his fellow players for a dozen years. He dominates a play in which there is no nious resolution. After everyone’s bluff
long as the play lasts, there is no harm had walked away from the career his one else to root for except, at moments, has been called, and Célimène has fi-
done. This is not life but comic theater, family intended for him—to inherit his clownish servant Sganarelle (played nally told Alceste that she really is not
where lovers can be expected to scam- his father’s profession as a master up- originally by Molière), whose seemingly prepared to live alone with him in a
per off happily freed from all obstacles holsterer—and definitively chosen the sincere expressions of naive goodwill “wild, trackless, solitary place,” he sim-
and clever servants to be left relishing theater, evidently with the ambition and religious faith are undermined by ply bolts, leaving his friends with the
the success of their stratagems. of succeeding as a tragic actor. By the his submissive complicity and trans- unlikely hope that they might somehow
If it were not comic theater, of time the troupe returned to Paris in parent corruption. Master and servant change his mind.
course—and by the time Molière got 1658, Molière had long since assumed seem locked together; even the exuber-
to Tartuffe and Don Juan and The Mis- its leadership, absorbed a vast amount ant nihilist Don Juan needs someone to
of repertoire and technique in all talk to. When Sganarelle undertakes to In his introductions and interviews,
2
All quotes are from Richard Wilbur, Wilbur emphasizes that the plays, being
3 4 “thoroughly written,” need not rely on
Collected Poems 1941–2004 (Harvest, Eight Plays by Molière, translated by As reported in La Gazette, May 17,
2004). Morris Bishop (Modern Library, 1957). 1664. physical business to make their points

Mark Fox
Vale, 2021
Oil on prepared paper on panel
28.5 x 22.5 in, 72.4 x 57.2 cm
[email protected]
May 26, 2022 7

or get their laughs. This is certainly the is the nonanswer answer, brought into
case with the verse plays he translated. play when the real answer is not known,
They are woven of argument, quar- or if given would lead to a beating.
rels, pointed accusations and rebuttals,
coaxing and protests. Much crucial ac-
tion occurs offstage, like the slapstick T he casual bravura is breathtaking.
episode in The School for Wives of At the end of Sganarelle, as Wilbur
Horace falling from a ladder as he at- notes, “the four principals converge,
tempts to climb into the bedroom of his each speaking out of a different—or
beloved Agnès. In Tartuffe, we learn differently weighted—misunderstand-
only at second hand how the religious ing of the situation,” all this interwo-
hypocrite gained his ascendancy over ven with as much musical deftness as a
THE WALL
the affluent bourgeois Orgon; by the Mozart quartet, but a lot more noisily.
time Tartuffe finally appears onstage In The School for Husbands, Isabelle,
(in the third act) we’ve been given, engaged against her will to her de-
BY MARLEN HAUSHOFER from various sides, an almost novel-
istic sense of what he has wrought in
tested guardian Sganarelle, must reject
her preferred suitor Valère while her
TRANSLATED BY SHAUN WHITESIDE this particular family. Later, when Tar- guardian watches. She manages this by
AFTERWORD BY CLAIRE LOUISE-BENNETT tuffe attempts to seduce Orgon’s wife, delivering a long speech perfectly con-
Elmire, the dramatic effect lies not in trived to mean one thing to Sganarelle
his frustrated gropings, however much and the opposite to Valère.
“The Wall is a wonderful novel. It is as they lend themselves to sight gags, but Balzac, who alluded to Molière more
absorbing as Robinson Crusoe.” in her calling him out in words as he than to any other writer, admired his
—Doris Lessing does so, and he in turn unloading a se- ability to present both sides of a given
ries of outrageously specious justifica- situation.6 The audience is invited to
tions for his predatory moves. laugh at the gulling of the self-beguiled,
In the one-act farce Sganarelle, or yet the plays strike a tenuous balance be-
The Imaginary Cuckold, Wilbur notes, tween derision and sympathy. Arnolphe
“much of what might have been ex- in The School for Wives is a middle-aged
pressed by physical violence . . . is real- bachelor so consumed with the fear of
ALINDARKA’S
ized instead on the verbal plane.” Yet being cuckolded that he adopted a four-
the Punch-and-Judy threat of physical year-old girl to be his future wife, raising
CHILDREN
violence is always latent. In Molière’s her in total ignorance—“I told the nuns
vocabulary one word recurs frequently what means must be employed /To keep
at crucial junctures: batôn. To beat her growing mind a perfect void”—on
BY ALHIERD BACHAREVIČ someone with a stick, or threaten to do
so, is the last resort after verbal persua-
the theory that a clever wife is “unbeat-
able at plots and strategies.”
TRANSLATED BY JIM DINGLEY & PETRA REID sion has failed: this world is thoroughly From the start it is clear his plan
accustomed to husbands beating wives, will come to nothing, as the innocent
fathers beating children, masters beat- Agnès displays a natural gift for plots
“A dark fantasy by one of Belarus’s most ing servants. In Amphitryon a god and strategies to unite her with young
original contemporary writers.” —Jaroslaw beats a mortal, and in Tartuffe a female Horace; Arnolphe, even when apprised
Anders, New York Review of Books servant even threatens a bailiff serv- of Horace’s desires, is so blissfully con-
ing a legal writ: “Monsieur Loyal, I’d fident of controlling the situation that
love to hear the whack/Of a stout stick he deigns to feel pity for the young
across your fine broad back.” man doomed to disappointment in
Language has its limits, and Molière love. While Arnolphe thinks he has
tests how far it is possible for his char- the upper hand, the spectators know
CHINATOWN
acters to go before transgressing them. he does not: a double cruelty, with both
We are given speech as combat, se- audience and lovers in league against
duction, sales pitch, con job, menacing him. The domineering ogre thus be-
BY THUʜN aggression, calculated outburst; a vir-
tual taxonomy of the uses and misuses
comes a victim and unavoidably an ob-
ject of some sympathy, especially when
TRANSLATED BY NGUYʴN AN LÝ of language. Specialized jargons are he realizes that he has truly fallen in
brought into play, of law enforcement, love with Agnès and tries fumblingly to
real estate, religious precept, philo- woo her in a romantic rather than dom-
“Chinatown is a fever dream, a sophical speculation, formal etiquette, ineering spirit. Not being of the servant
hallucination, a loop in time and life. I and literary pretension. The literary class, Arnolphe will not be beaten with
was completely immersed in this spell- vanity of the strenuously ungifted, male a stick, but he will undergo the excruci-
binding novel.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen or female, coupled invariably with the ating alternative of public ridicule.
snobbery of the fierce social climber, Many of the plays describe conspir-
was a frequent target. It is a repertoire acies to thwart the overreaching au-
of routines, deployed in successive thority of the seriously deluded and
episodes that are (in the playwright unbalanced, conspiracies in which those
Jacques Audiberti’s phrase) “traps for with nothing to lose—desperate lovers,
characters.”5 Some fall into the trap; oppressed wives and daughters—often
others wangle a way out; others, having rely on the assistance of cunning ser-
BLOOM
set one trap, go about setting another. vants with a talent for deception. Since
(“Long live chicanery and artifice!” the authority of parents cannot be legit-
declares Mascarille in The Bungler.) imately defied, it must be evaded and
BY XI CHUAN Characters regularly misunderstand,
or mishear, or do not hear at all. “Think-
subverted by every form of subterfuge.
After all the concealment, imperson-
TRANSLATED BY LUCAS KLEIN ing himself alone” (a favorite stage di- ation, and sleight of hand comes the
rection), a dupe will reveal his thoughts scandal of truth-telling. This moment
“Xi Chuan’s surprising poems reach into in monologue to a nearby eavesdropper may arrive through perfunctory means:
or, fooled by appearances, will enthu- an improbable revelation of hidden par-
tight corners of mind and matter, imper- siastically help to bring about the out- entage, or a last- ditch bit of mischief in-
sonal but intimate, new to be heard but come he least desires. A self-absorbed volving veils or forged documents. All
also oddly familiar.” person will mistake terse noncommit- that matters is that, at last, deference and
—Gary Snyder tal interjection for heartfelt agreement. circumlocution are sidelined, the truth
A coward will stoutly resolve to face up cannot be denied, and as a result mono-
to a confrontation before predictably maniac guardians lose their power and
caving in. Two people will endlessly hapless dupes have their eyes opened.
delay coming to the point by means of What has been going on all along is out
exaggerated politeness. And then there in the open and the comedy is done. Q
5 6
Molière, Dramaturge (Paris: L’Arche, Graham Robb, Balzac: A Biography
1954). (Norton, 1995), p. 375.

Earthlings Partial Truths
Imaginative Encounters How Fractions Distort Our Thinking
with the Natural World JAMES C. ZIMRING
Hard Rain ADRIAN PARR Chimpanzee Memoirs
“[Zimring] engages the reader in
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and the Meaning of History which to examine our glorious and classic mistakes of human reasoning, Our Closest Living Relatives
battered planet.” due to our innumeracy. ... A handy,
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insightful, eminently readable guide
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in Dialogue ecologist, CNRS, France
May 26, 2022 9

Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes
Fintan O’Toole
There is the war, and then there is the reporters to repeat the question and
Andrea Bruce/ NOOR /Redux

war about the war. Vladimir Putin’s then replying in the affirmative. Sig-
assault on Ukraine is being fought in nificantly, Biden was responding not
fields and cities, in the air and at sea. to ground-level assaults by Russian
It is also, however, being contested troops on civilians but to the shelling of
through language. Is it a war or a “spe- Ukrainian cities. This may perhaps ex-
cial military operation”? Is it an un- plain his hesitancy: civilian casualties
provoked invasion or a human rights from aerial assaults by drones, rockets,
intervention to prevent the genocide of and bombs are a sore subject in recent
Russian speakers by Ukrainian Nazis? US military history.
Putin’s great weakness in this linguis- Having crossed the line and made
tic struggle is the unsubtle absurdity of this charge directly, Biden had little
his claims—if he wanted his lies to be choice but to raise the stakes when the
believed, he should have established terrible images from Bucha were circu-
some baseline of credibility. But the lated. First, on April 4 he went beyond
weakness of the West, and especially deeming Putin a criminal by calling
of the United States, lies in what ought specifically for him to face a “war crime
to be the biggest strength of its case trial.” Then on April 12 he pressed the
against Putin: the idea of war crimes. nuclear button of atrocity accusations:
It is this concept that gives legal and genocide. “We’ll let the lawyers decide,
moral shape to instinctive revulsion. internationally, whether or not it quali-
For the sake both of basic justice and of fies [as genocide], but it sure seems that
mobilizing world opinion, it has to be way to me.” He also referred to an un-
sustained with absolute moral clarity. folding “genocide half a world away,”
The appalling evidence of extraju- clearly meaning in Ukraine.
dicial executions, torture, and indis- Biden did so even though his national
criminate shelling of homes, apartment security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had told
buildings, hospitals, and shelters that a press briefing on April 4:
has emerged from the Kyiv suburb
of Bucha and from the outskirts of Based on what we have seen so far,
Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Sumy gives we have seen atrocities, we have
weight and urgency to the accusation Town council leader and lawyer Khalid Salman by the graves of his sister and her children, seen war crimes. We have not yet
that Putin is a war criminal.* By late who were among the twenty-four Iraqi civilians killed by US Marines in the seen a level of systematic depriva-
April, the UN human rights office had 2005 Haditha massacre, Haditha, Iraq, 2011 tion of life of the Ukrainian people
received reports of more than three to rise to the level of genocide.
hundred executions of civilians. There belligerents by international law, but it Russia, much of the world will take
have also been credible reports of sex- flows from the fact of victory.” Warren refuge in a comfortable relativism. If Sullivan stressed that the determina-
ual violence by Russian troops and of quoted with approval another eminent war crimes are not universal violations, tion that genocide had been committed
abductions and deportations of civil- American authority, James Wilford they are merely fingers that can point required a long process of evidence-
ians. According to Iryna Venediktova, Garner, who had written that “it is only in one direction—at whomever we gathering. He cited the recently an-
Ukraine’s prosecutor general, by April simply a question of policy and expedi- happen to be in conflict with right now. nounced ruling by the State Department
21 Russia had committed more than ency, to be exercised by the victorious And never, of course, at ourselves. that assaults on the Rohingyas by the
7,600 recorded war crimes. belligerent or not.” “In other words,” military in Myanmar/Burma consti-
Yet the US has been, for far too long, Warren added, “the question is purely tuted genocide. That conclusion was
fatally ambivalent about war crimes. political and military; it should not be E ven before Putin launched his inva- reached in March 2022; the atrocities
Its own history of moral evasiveness treated as a judicial one or as arising sion on February 24, the Biden admin- were committed in 2016 and 2017. The
threatens to make the accusation that from international law.” As the Polish istration seems to have had a plan to State Department emphasized in its an-
Putin and his forces have committed lawyer Manfred Lachs, whose Jew- use Russian atrocities as a rallying cry nouncement that it followed “a rigorous
them systematically in Ukraine seem ish family had been murdered by the for the democratic world. That day, The factual and legal analysis.”
more like a useful weapon against an Nazis, wrote in 1945, this idea that the New York Times reported that “admin- It is obvious that no such analysis
enemy than an assertion of universal prosecution of war crimes is “a matter istration officials are considering how to preceded Biden’s decision to accuse
principle. It also undermines the very of political expediency” would make continue the information war with Rus- Putin of genocide. When asked about
institution that might eventually bring international law “the servant of poli- sia, highlight potential war crimes and genocide on April 22, a spokesper-
Putin and his subordinates to justice: tics” and “a flexible instrument in the push back on Moscow’s propaganda.” son for the UN High Commissioner
the International Criminal Court (ICC). hands of politicians.” This was not necessarily cynical— for Human Rights said, “No, we have
There have long been two ways of It is hard to overstate how import- Putin’s appalling record of violence not documented patterns that could
thinking about the prosecution of war ant it is that the war crimes that have against civilians in Chechnya and Syria amount to that.” Biden’s careless use of
crimes. One is that it is a universal duty. undoubtedly been committed already and plain contempt for international the term is all the more damaging be-
Since human beings have equal rights, in Ukraine—and the ones that are law made it all too likely that his forces cause, however inadvertently, it echoes
violations of those rights must be pros- grimly certain to be inflicted on inno- would commit such crimes in Ukraine. Putin’s grotesque claim that Ukraine
ecuted regardless of the nationality or cent people in the coming weeks and But this anticipation of atrocities, and has been committing genocide against
political persuasion of the perpetra- months—not be understood as “a flex- deliberation about how to make use of Russian speakers in Donbas.
tors. The other is that the right to iden- ible instrument in the hands of politi- them, underlines the administration’s The problem with all of this is not
tify individuals as war criminals and cians.” They must not be either shaped perception of the accusation of war that Biden is wrong but that it distracts
punish them for their deeds is really around or held hostage by “policy and crimes as a promising front in the ideo- from the ways in which he is right. This
just one of the spoils of victory. It is expediency.” This is a question of jus- logical counterattack against Putin. As overstatement makes it far too easy for
the winner’s prerogative—a political tice. Those who have been murdered, early as March 10, well before the un- those who wish to ignore or justify what
choice rather than a moral imperative. tortured, and raped matter as individ- covering of the atrocities at Bucha, the the Russians are doing to dismiss the
Even during World War II, and in uals, not as mere exemplars of Putin’s US ambassador to the United Nations, mounting evidence of terrible crimes
the midst of a learned discussion about barbarity. The desire to prosecute their Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the in Ukraine as exaggerated or as just an-
what to do with the Nazi leadership killers and abusers stems from the im- BBC that Russian actions in Ukraine other battleground in the information
after the war, the American Society of perative to honor that individuality, to “constitute war crimes; there are at- war. In appearing overanxious to inject
International Law heard from Charles restore insofar as is possible the dignity tacks on civilians that cannot be justi- “war criminal” into the international
Warren, a former US assistant attorney that was stolen by violence. fied . . . in any way whatsoever.” discourse about Putin and making it
general and a Pulitzer Prize–winning But it is also, as it happens, a ques- A week later, and still a fortnight be- seem like a predetermined narrative, the
historian of the Supreme Court, that tion of effectiveness. If accusations of fore the first reports from Bucha, Biden US risked undermining the very stark
“the right to punish [war criminals] is Russian war crimes are seen to be in- was calling Putin, in unscripted re- evidence for that conclusion. By inflat-
not a right conferred upon victorious strumental rather than principled, they marks, a “war criminal.” At that point, ing that charge into genocide, it substi-
will dissolve into “whataboutism”: Yes, he in fact seemed a little unsure about tuted rhetoric for rigor and effectively
*For more on the atrocities in Ukraine, Putin is terrible, but what about . . . In- the wisdom of making the charge—ini- made it impossible for the US to endorse
see Tim Judah’s “The Russian Terror” stead of seeing a clean distinction be- tially, when asked if he would use the any negotiated settlement for Ukraine
in this issue. tween the Western democracies and term, he replied “no,” before asking that leaves Putin in power: How can

RICHARD PRINCE
Hoods
Gagosian New York
May 26, 2022 11

you make peace with a perpetrator Specifically, it was a gross over- their commanders received any serious cepted its jurisdiction. That leaves two
of genocide? Paradoxically, it also sight not to notice and critically punishment. countries that ended up in precisely the
risked the minimization of the actual examine a tragic event so far out of Perhaps most importantly, nothing same contradictory position: Russia
atrocities: If they do not rise to the level the norm. I recommended letters that happened in these or other atroc- and the US. Both signed the Rome stat-
of the ultimate evil, are they “merely” of censure for the division com- ities in Iraq or Afghanistan changed ute—Russia in September 2000, the
war crimes? mander—a major general—and the way that deliberate acts of vio- US three months later. And both then
two senior colonels. lence against foreign civilians are pre- failed to ratify it. Putin, presumably
sented in official American discourse. because of international condemnation
What makes these mistakes by Biden Mattis nowhere uses phrases or words The enemy commits war crimes and of war crimes being committed under
truly detrimental, however, is that the like “war crime,” “massacre,” “atroc- lies about them. We have “tragic inci- his leadership in Chechnya, declined
moral standing of the US on war crimes ity,” or “cover-up.” He was determined, dents,” “tragic mistakes,” and, at the to submit it to the Duma in Moscow.
is already so profoundly compromised. too, to exonerate the lower-ranking sol- very worst, a loss of discipline. When George W. Bush effectively withdrew
The test for anyone insisting on the diers who participated in the violence bad things are done by American from the ICC in May 2002, follow-
application of a set of rules is whether at Haditha that day. “You did your armed forces, they are entirely untyp- ing the US-led invasion of Afghani-
they apply those rules to themselves. It best,” he reassured them, “to live up to ical and momentary responses to the stan and his declaration that “our war
matters deeply to the struggle against the standards followed by US fighting terrible stresses of war. The condition- against terror is only beginning.”
Putin that the US face its record of hav- men throughout our many wars.” ing that helps make them possible, the The US then began what Yves
ing consistently failed to do this. How does the “tragic incident” at deep-seated instinct to cover them up, Beigbeder, an international lawyer
On November 19, 2005, in the Iraqi Haditha differ from the murders of ci- and the repeated failure to bring per- who had served at the Nuremberg Trial
town of Haditha, members of the First vilians by Russian forces in Ukraine? petrators to justice are not to be under- in 1946, called “a virulent, worldwide
Division of the US Marines massacred There are some important distinctions. stood as systemic problems. Nowhere is campaign aimed at destroying the le-
twenty-four Iraqi civilians, including gitimacy of the Court, on the grounds
Charles Alexander/US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C./ NARA

women, children, and elderly people. of protecting US sovereignty and US
After a roadside bomb killed one US nationals.” Against the backdrop of the
soldier and badly injured two others, “war on terror,” Congress approved
marines took five men from a taxi and the American Service-Members’ Pro-
executed them in the street. One marine tection Act (ASPA) of 2002, designed
sergeant, Sanick Dela Cruz, later testi- to insulate US military personnel (in-
fied that he urinated on one of the bod- cluding private contractors) from ICC
ies. The marines then entered nearby jurisdiction. The ASPA placed numer-
houses and killed the occupants—nine ous restrictions on US interaction with
men, three women, and seven children. the ICC, including the prohibition of
Most of the victims were murdered by military assistance to countries coop-
well-aimed shots fired at close range. erating with the court. Also in 2002,
The official US press release then the US sought (unsuccessfully) a UN
falsely claimed that fifteen of the ci- Security Council resolution to perma-
vilians had been killed by the roadside nently insulate all US troops and of-
bomb and that the marines and their ficials involved in UN missions from
Iraqi allies had also shot eight “in- ICC jurisdiction. In late 2004 Congress
surgents” who opened fire on them. approved the Nethercutt Amendment,
These claims were shown to be lies prohibiting assistance funds, with lim-
four months later, when Tim McGirk ited exceptions, to any country that is a
published an investigation in Time party to the Rome statute.
magazine. When McGirk initially put These attacks on the ICC culmi-
the evidence—both video and eyewit- nated on September 2, 2020, when the
ness testimony—to the marines, he Trump administration imposed sweep-
American army staffers organizing stacks of German documents to be used as evidence in
was told, “Well, we think this is all al- ing sanctions on Fatou Bensouda, a
prosecuting war crimes at the Nuremberg Trial, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945–1946
Qaeda propaganda.” former minister of justice in Gambia,
This was consistent with what seems who was then the ICC’s chief prosecu-
to have been a coordinated cover-up. Unlike in Russia now, the US had media American exceptionalism more evident tor, and Phakiso Mochochoko, a lawyer
No one in the marines’ chain of com- organizations sufficiently free and in- or more troubling than in this compart- and diplomat from Lesotho, who heads
mand subsequently testified that there dependent to be able to challenge the mentalizing of military atrocities. a division of the court. The US acted
was any reason to suspect that a war military’s account of what happened. It under an executive order that declared
crime had occurred. Lieutenant Col- had elected politicians who were will- their activities a “national emergency.”
onel Jeffrey Chessani, the battalion ing to condemn the atrocity—in 2006, T he only way to end this kind of The emergency was “the ICC’s efforts
commander, was later charged with for example, Joe Biden suggested that double standard is to have a single, to investigate US personnel.” Trump’s
dereliction of duty for failing to prop- then defense secretary Donald Rums- supranational criminal court to bring secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, de-
erly report and investigate the inci- feld should resign because of Haditha. to justice those who violate the laws nounced the ICC as “a thoroughly bro-
dent. Those charges were dismissed. Senior military commanders, including of war—whoever they are and what- ken and corrupted institution.”
Charges against six other marines were Mattis, were obviously repelled by the ever their alleged motives. This idea A year ago, the Biden administration
dropped, and a seventh was acquitted. atrocity. Putin ostentatiously decorated has been around since 1872, when it lifted these sanctions against Bensouda
Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who led the Sixty-Fourth Separate Motorized was proposed by Gustave Moynier, and Mochochoko, saying they were “in-
the squad that perpetrated the killings, Rifle Brigade for its “mass heroism one of the founders of the Interna- appropriate and ineffective.” But the
was demoted in rank to private and lost and courage” after that unit had been tional Committee of the Red Cross. US did not soften its underlying stance,
pay, but served no time in prison. accused by Ukraine of committing war It seemed finally to be taking shape in which is that, as Biden’s secretary of
In his memoir Call Sign Chaos (2019) crimes in Bucha. There was no such of- the aftermath of World War II and the state, Antony Blinken, put it,
the former general James Mattis, who ficial endorsement of the First Marine Holocaust, when a statute for an inter-
took over as commander of the First Ma- Division. These differences matter— national criminal court was drafted by we continue to disagree strongly
rine Division shortly after this massacre false equivalence must be avoided. a committee of the General Assembly with the ICC’s actions relating to
and later served as Donald Trump’s sec- Yet uncomfortable truths remain. of the UN. This effort was, however, the Afghanistan and Palestinian
retary of defense, calls what happened One of the most prestigious arms of the stymied by the USSR and its allies. In situations. We maintain our long-
at Haditha a “tragic incident.” It’s clear US military carried out an atrocity in a the 1990s the combination of the end standing objection to the Court’s
that Mattis believed that at least some of country invaded by the US in a war of of the cold war and the hideous atroc- efforts to assert jurisdiction over
the marines had run amok: choice. No one in a position of authorities committed during the breakup of personnel of non-States Parties
ity did anything about it until Time re- Yugoslavia and in Rwanda gave the such as the United States and Israel.
In the chaos, they developed ported on it. No one at any level of the proposal a renewed impetus. This led
mental tunnel vision, and some chain of command, from senior leaders to the conference in Rome in June and In principle, this hostility to the ICC
were unable to distinguish gen- down to the soldiers who did the kill- July 1998, attended by 160 states and is rooted in the objection that the court
uine threats amid the chaos of ings, was held accountable. And such dozens of nongovernmental organiza- is engaged in an intolerable effort to
the fight. . . . In the moments they minor punishments as were imposed tions, that finally adopted the charter bind the US to a treaty it has not rat-
had to react, several Marines had seem to have had no deterrent effect. for the ICC . This statute entered into ified—in effect, to subject the US to
failed, or had tried but were un- In March 2007 marines killed nineteen force in July 2002, and the ICC began laws to which it has not consented. If
able, to distinguish who was a unarmed civilians and wounded fifty to function the following year. this were true, it would indeed be an
threat and who was an innocent. near Jalalabad, in Afghanistan, in an Of the five permanent members of unacceptable and arbitrary state of
I concluded that several had made incident that, as The New York Times the UN Security Council, one (China) affairs. But this alleged concern is
tragic mistakes, but others had lost reported at the time, “bore some strik- opposed the adoption of the ICC’s groundless. The ICC does not claim
their discipline. . . . The lack of dis- ing similarities to the Haditha killings.” statute. Two (the United Kingdom any jurisdiction over states—it seeks to
cipline extended to higher ranks. Again, none of the marines involved or and France) supported it and fully ac- prosecute individuals.

This distinction was vital to the people. This means that if there is to be the past, but there have been other all kinds of relativism and equivocation
Nuremberg Tribunal, which stressed any prospect of bringing Putin and his examples in other conflicts of other can lodge and grow. The longer the US
that “crimes against international law accomplices to justice for murder, rape, mechanisms being set up.” He prom- practices evasion and prevarication, the
are committed by men, not by abstract and torture, it must lie with the ICC. The ised that “the appropriate venue for easier it is for Putin to dismiss Western
entities, and only by punishing individ- “war crime trial” that Biden called for accountability” would be decided “in outrage as theatrical and hypocritical,
uals who commit such crimes can the on April 4, if it were ever to be possible, consultation with allies and with part- and the more inclined other countries
provisions of international law be en- could be conducted only at The Hague. ners around the world.” Yet all of those will be to cynicism.
forced.” Moreover, the US is already The Biden administration knows this significant allies are members of the It has been said repeatedly since Feb-
a party to the treaties that define the very well. On April 11 Charlie Savage ICC , and the most important of them, ruary 24 that if the democracies are to
crimes the ICC is empowered to pros- reported in The New York Times that Ukraine, has specifically given the defeat Putin, they must be prepared to
ecute. The ICC follows the precedents officials are “vigorously debating how court the job of trying to bring the per- sacrifice some of their comforts. Ger-
and practices of international crimi- much the United States can or should petrators to justice. many, for example, has to give up Rus-
nal tribunals that the US enthusiasti- assist an investigation into Russian Why continue to avoid this obvious sian natural gas. What the US must give
cally supported and participated in: atrocities in Ukraine by the Interna- truth? A yawning gap has opened be- up is the comfort of its exceptionalism
the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after tional Criminal Court.” But the admin- tween Biden’s grandiloquent rhetoric on the question of war crimes. It can-
World War II, and the courts estab- istration is simultaneously spreading a about Putin’s criminality on the one not differentiate itself sufficiently from
lished in the 1990s to prosecute those fog of vagueness over this very ques- side and the deep reluctance of the US Putin’s tyranny until it accepts without
responsible for atrocities in Yugoslavia tion. In his April 4 press briefing Jake to lend its weight to the institution cre- reservation that the standards it applies
and Rwanda. If the ICC is illegitimate, Sullivan, the national security adviser, ated by the international community to to him also apply to itself. The way to
so were those courts. said, “Obviously, the ICC is one venue prosecute such transgressions of moral do that is to join the ICC . Q
where war crimes have been tried in and legal order. It is a chasm in which —April 28, 2022
T he brutal truth is that the US aban-

doned its commitment to the ICC not
for reasons of legal principle but from
the same motive that animated Putin. It
was engaged in aggressive wars and did
not want to risk the possibility that any
of its military or political leaders would
be prosecuted for crimes that might
be committed in the course of fight-
ing them. That expediency rather than
principle was guiding US attitudes be-
came completely clear in 2005. The US
decided not to block a Security Coun-
cil resolution referring atrocities in the
Darfur region of Sudan to the ICC pros-
ecutor. (It abstained on the motion.) It
subsequently supported the prosecution The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers bids fond farewell to the
at the ICC of Sudanese president Omar
al-Bashir and the use by the Special Class of 2021–2022
Court of Sierra Leone of the ICC facil-
ities in The Hague to try former Libe- Rich Benjamin Jonas Hassen Khemiri
rian president Charles Taylor for crimes
committed in Sierra Leone. David Wright Faladé Maaza Mengiste
This American support was welcome, Julia Foulkes Nara Milanich
but it has been almost as damaging to
the ICC as the outright hostility of the Kaiama L. Glover Michael Prior
US had been. It suggested that in the David Greenberg Josephine M. Rowe
eyes of the US, the only real war crimes
were those committed by Africans. Lewis Hyde Avi Steinberg
To date, the thirty or so cases taken Karl Jacoby Madeleine Thien
before the ICC all involve individuals
from Central African Republic, Côte Matthew Karp
d’Ivoire, Sudan, Democratic Republic
of the Congo, Kenya, Libya, Mali, or ͽ
Uganda. This selectivity led the African
Union to label the ICC a “neo-colonial …and welcomes with pleasure the
court” and urged its members to with-
draw their cooperation from its prose- Class of 2022–2023
cutions. However false the charge, it is
easy to see how credible it might seem Rozina Ali Patrick Phillips
when the US has alternately endorsed
the legitimacy of the ICC in prosecuting Daphne A. Brooks Daniel Saldaña París
Africans and called the same court cor- Colin Channer Maurice Samuels
rupt and out of control when it explores
the possibility of investigating war Raghu Karnad Brandon Taylor
crimes committed by Americans. Margaret Kelleher Erin L. Thompson
After the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, more than forty member Claire Luchette Francesca Wade
states of the ICC, most of them Euro- Neil Maher C Pam Zhang
pean but also including Japan, Chile,
Colombia, and Costa Rica, formally Sarah Maza
asked the court “to investigate any acts
of war crimes, crimes against humanity
and genocide alleged to have occurred
on the territory of Ukraine from 21 No- The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in
vember 2013 onwards.” The ICC pros- honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W.
ecutor Karim Khan has begun to do Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, The von der Heyden Family Foundation, John and
this. Crucially, though Ukraine is not
itself a party to the ICC, it had already Constance Birkelund, and The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and with additional gifts from Helen
accepted the court’s jurisdiction in re- and Roger Alcaly, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Arts and Letters Foundation Inc., William W. Karatz,
lation to war crimes on its territory, Merilee and Roy Bostock, and Cullman Center Fellows.
first in 2014 and again in 2015, the sec-
ond time “for an indefinite duration.”
It is Ukraine’s choice that the ICC
be the body that investigates and pros-
ecutes Russian atrocities against its
May 26, 2022 13

Under Their Skin
Laura Miller
The Employees: have all these thoughts if the job I’m
A Workplace Novel doing is mainly technical?” he asks.
of the 22nd Century “Why do I have these thoughts if the
by Olga Ravn, translated reason I’m here is primarily to increase
from the Danish by Martin Aitken. production?”
New Directions, 125 pp., $19.95 Meanwhile, the humans brood over
their memories of Earth. This problem
The first fictional spacecraft were has been anticipated by the organiza-
thrilling, vehicles for exploration and tion; one of the crew says he was hired
discovery, but it wasn’t long before “to make sure the human section of the
writers realized that spaceships would crew don’t buckle under to nostalgia
also be workplaces like their water- and become catatonic.” Holograms of
borne counterparts, with tight quarters children have been supplied as consola-
where repetitive tasks and interper- tion to those whose own children have
sonal friction are occasionally inter- died, and some have become almost
rupted by interludes of existential peril. addicted to them. Others seem to have
The most familiar pop- cultural depic- left living children behind, but offer no
tion of this, Ridley Scott’s 1979 film explanation for why they have chosen
Alien, opens with the groggy crew of to do so.
Nostromo, a star freighter and ore re- The presence of the objects increases
finery en route to Earth, coming out of the humans’ pining for Earth. All of
stasis to scratch, stretch, make coffee, them miss the weather, descriptions of
and bicker about money—until, that is, which haunt their statements: the pink
they are terrorized and picked off by a mists of morning, rain on the beach,
hideous unknown creature. blue light pouring over trees, “the
Gnomic and elliptical where most smell of the soil, and warm asphalt,
science fiction is expository, Olga the sounds of animals and birds.” The
Ravn’s The Employees follows a not sterile physical environment of the ship
dissimilar pattern. It is the first book matches the corporate language of the
by the Danish poet, novelist, and liter- committee and the organization, a lan-
ary critic to be translated into English guage that constructs the crew’s con-
and was shortlisted for the Interna- Olga Ravn; illustration by Olivier Schrauwen
ceptual environment. They inhabit an
tional Booker Prize in 2021. Presented idea of life that consists only of work.
as a collection of records, primarily Even the most fundamental bodily
the transcripts of statements made by Since research is the motive for most The rest are “made,” humanoids rather functions must be disciplined. “I find it
the crew of the Six Thousand Ship to a fictional and real-life space travel, the than humans, and this difference will hard to sleep, which I hope you’ll for-
committee of unspecified composition, assumption that the mission of the Six eventually determine the fate of the give me,” one statement reads. “I real-
it documents the breakdown of the Thousand Ship is to gather information ship. ize sleep is our own responsibility here
ship’s mission after the vessel arrives about the objects comes easily, almost At first, however, the great contrast on the ship, and I am actually trying to
at a planet called New Discovery and unconsciously, into the reader’s mind. is between the language and expecta- do something about it.”
the crew brings aboard a selection of But it is not so. The crew members de- tions of the organization and the pre-
objects found there. scribe the rooms where the objects are occupations of the crew members who
But the objects—which are referred kept as “recreation rooms,” not cargo have fallen under the influence of the Into this artificial kingdom seeps the
to only as “the objects,” the most re- holds or labs. objects. Early on, a humanoid em- organic. At the end of the book, the
ductive and nondescriptive term for What the employees on the ship have ployee expresses bafflement when his corporate jargon framing the state-
pretty much anything—aren’t mon- been hired to produce remains a mys- human coworker remarks that there’s ments dilates, unfolding itself into
sters and don’t chase the crew members tery. Unlike the objects, which they more to a person than the work they prefabricated clauses stripped of speci-
around. None of the speakers offer a struggle to describe, the nature of their do. “But what else could a person be?” ficity and emotion:
full description of these things (or crea- work is taken for granted by interview he asks the committee. “Who would
tures?), but Ravn has said they were in- subjects and interlocutors alike. They keep you company? How would you In the case that this idea of uti-
spired by the sculptures of the Danish may talk about production and tasks get by without work and without your lizing the present record for edu-
artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund, with and workflows, but only three mem- coworkers? Would you be left standing cational purposes is pursued, the
whom she has collaborated. From the bers of the support staff—a laundress, in a cupboard?” The first three ques- collection of empirical material
fragments of information offered, they a cleaner, and a funeral director—dis- tions might have come from any worka- may fruitfully be continued, inso-
appear to resemble living stones. (Hes- cuss in any detail what they’ve been holic American, but the last betrays the far as the afterreactions of readers
telund’s marble sculptures look like hired to do by the firm known only as speaker as an appliance. may be taken to provide a basis for
fleshy blobs.) They come in varying col- “the organization.” Purpose-built, the humanoids know deeper understanding of the influ-
ors, patterns, and textures. They hum, nothing but work and needn’t worry ences exerted by the objects.
and they change temperature. One about wasting their lives on it when
secretes a resinlike substance when T he fragmented, disorienting narra- their memories can be downloaded So reads the committee’s conclusion.
exposed to sunlight. Another inter- tive of The Employees arises from ev- into a new body once their current one By contrast, in their statements, the
mittently produces what appear to be erything the characters know that the wears out or is destroyed. Nevertheless, crew members increasingly describe
eggs. Above all, they emit fragrances reader does not. The transcripts are strange thoughts and desires creep into intense dreams of being pursued by or
that most (but not all) of the crew find uniquely numbered, and the speaker of the humanoids’ statements. One gets encased in plants, of trees with leaves
soothing. Some crew members like to each is unidentified, although at times caught up in a spiral of neurotic wor- “that turn and spin like mirrors in the
sleep with their faces covered by cloths the speaker in a previous transcript ries that he might unwittingly act in a summer air.” The language they use to
saturated in the resin. (the funeral director, the captain) is ev- way that would at a later point contra- describe their dreams and memories is
At the outset, the committee ex- idently interviewed again. Some state- vene the interests of “the program,” compressed and vivid, the language of
plains that it has collected statements ments are multiple pages long, some the organization’s overarching mission a poet in Martin Aitken’s crystalline
from the employees “with a view to as brief as a sentence or two. Certain (whatever that is!). “If I carry out an English translation. When their state-
gaining insight into how they related to events, particularly the “transfer” of action,” he tells the committee, ments escalate into strings of clauses,
the objects and the rooms in which they “the third officer” and “Cadet 04,” the result is not numbing but incan-
were placed.” The ultimate purpose of bother several of the speakers and in- that unbeknown to me is counter- tatory, an ecstasy of remembrance,
this is “to assess to what degree” the deed have unsettled the whole crew, active to the program’s momen- mourning, and hope:
objects but the reason for the transfers—or tum, I can do nothing but hate
how exactly someone can be trans- myself for it. But since I have no And what would it mean to know
might be said to precipitate reduc- ferred from a ship so far out in space way of knowing whether an ac- that these two rooms contained
tion or enhancement of perfor- that many of the crew expect to die on it tion in any given instance is anti- every space we ever occupied,
mance, task-related understanding, before it returns to “Homebase”—also programmatic, how am I to know every morning (November on
and the acquisition of new knowl- goes unexplained. What the reader can if I’m to hate myself or not? Earth, five degrees Celsius, sun
edge and skills, thereby illuminat- quickly ascertain is that only some of dazzling low in the morning sky,
ing their specific consequences for the crew will die, because only some Perhaps, he muses, he should just pre- the child in the carrier seat on
production. of them were born in the first place. emptively hate himself. “Why do I the back of the bicycle), every day

Great Performances:
Anything Goes
May 13 9/8c
Enjoy Cole Porter’s classic musical
led by Tony winner Sutton Foster
directed by Kathleen Marshall
Great Performances: Merry Wives Great Performances: Keeping Company

May 20 9/8c with Sondheim — May 27 9/8c
Experience Shakespeare’s comedy from the An inside look at the re-imagined
Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park. production as it returns to Broadway.
pbs.org/broadwayonpbs
May 26, 2022 15

(the ivy reddening in the frost on has been made without “reproductive For their part, the humans languish oid complains, “even though no one
the outside of the office building) organs,” because these were deemed in terrestrial nostalgia, reminisc- I know loves in that way, or lives that
and every night (in the room below “ethically unjustifiable to duplicate.” ing about strawberries, concerts, TV kind of a life. Yet these are the dreams
the stone pines, someone’s breath Smell, like taste, is a scent dependent shows, and that perennial subject, the you’ve given us.”
upon your eyelid), and that every on penetration and merging. To smell weather—although this talk is far from The rebellion happens in the can-
place you ever knew existed there something is to absorb tiny particles small. Several express the weary senti- teen, a violent event whose details are
in these two recreation rooms, of it into the membranes of the nose ment that their time is over, that they only alluded to. It results in one human
like a ship floating freely in dark- and to breathe it into the lungs. A hu- don’t expect humanity “as a category” death, and the humanoid who commits
ness, encompassed by dust and manoid describes the unfamiliar at- to survive, and that the future belongs this murder tells the committee that it
crystals, without gravity, without tachment she feels toward one of the to the humanoids. “I want to stop. I felt good to do it. “I’m a pomegranate
earth, in the midst of eternity; objects as “like a ticklish splinter close can’t go on any longer,” the captain ripe with moist seeds,” the humanoid
without humus and water and to the heart, a splinter travelling slowly complains. continues, demonstrating an align-
rivers, without offspring, with- through the flesh.” There are amusing echoes here of ment with creatures that cluster and
out blood; without the creatures the sort of intergenerational work- teem, “each seed a killing I’m going
of the sea, without the salt of the place conflicts that newspaper feature to carry out at some future time.” The
oceans, and without the water lily Yet when morale aboard the Six reporters like to write about, stories in infestation of the Six Thousand Ship
stretching up through the cloudy Thousand Ship finally breaks down, which managers from an older genera- is complete. Like any property owner
pond toward the sun? the conflict isn’t over the objects. Per- tion puzzle over the manners and ex- confronted with a termite’s nest or rat
haps the objects have caused it by in- pectations of their younger colleagues droppings, the organization does what
Just how much of this imaginative sinuating unprecedented thoughts and while acknowledging that eventually has to be done.
invasion can be put down to the influ- feelings into the humanoids, or perhaps these perplexing people will be run-
ence of the objects? In an interview, they have simply drawn forth a division ning things. In what must be the most
Ravn acknowledged that the cause that was lying dormant. The human- alarming development for their cor- T he most striking aspect of this weird,
could instead be the committee’s ques- oids begin to separate themselves from porate masters, the humanoids exhibit beautiful, and occasionally disgusting
tions about how the work is going. The their human coworkers in the canteen. inklings of collective bargaining. “You novel is not, as its subtitle implies, its
very suggestion that it’s possible for They speak only to one another. “Some wouldn’t like to know what’s going on portrayal of working life on the space-
the workers to have a range of feelings of them are friendly,” a human crew in our wing,” a humanoid tells the com- ship. Most of Ravn’s characters are too
about what they’re doing is like an in- member observes, “others seem as mittee. “No, that’s not a threat. We’re obsessively inward-looking to get up
fection that encourages them to self- though they’re being torn up inside by negotiating, that’s all.” to much in the way of office politics or
reflect, to consider which feelings they rage. Some are on the brink of tears. What are the humanoids? At first banter. Rather, it’s the objects them-
might prefer instead. And yet there is Others are completely out of it.” they appear to be robots or cyborgs, selves—impossible to visualize or fully
something about the objects that gets The humanoids regularly upload but despite the uploads and updates, it imagine, so unlike any form of known
under the skin, literally. their memories and receive software turns out they’re not machines. Instead, life that not everyone on board the Six
In The Employees, the organic is a updates, but the updates aren’t working according to one speaker, they were Thousand Ship is sure they’re alive at
vital alternative to the totalizing life- as they once did. A humanoid tells the “hatched from a series of violet pods of all. They are utterly alien, and yet for
lessness of the organization—a famil- committee that she has experienced biomaterial” in a lab back in Denmark. most of the crew members the objects
iar motif—but it can also be terrifying “sadness” at the knowledge that she’ll The speaker recounts tending to the are also comforting, even familiar.
and repellent. There’s something awful never have a child, but that ripening pods, talking to them and in- The organization has cataloged them
about the relentless ways other species jecting them with “the good hormones” with numbers, but the crew has given
reproduce. One crew member recalls it’s not hard to bear; it’s more like so that they would become attached to each one a name: peculiar names, like
pulling up some floorboards back on a delicacy. Another reason I appre- their human makers. But their origins “the Reverse Strap- On” and “the Half-
Earth to find “a puffy white mold” that ciate such a sadness is that I know link them to plants, insects, fungi— Naked Bean,” but also human ones,
“had been growing right under our feet it’s a deviation from the emotional all the nonhuman life-forms whose like Rachel, Ida, and Benny.
without us knowing. Growing in the behavior I was allocated, and I procreative methods give the human The valley on New Discovery where
dark, it was. We got rid of it, only it kept know too that deviating emotional crew members the creeps. Humans the objects were found is even more en-
coming back.” behavior can be a sign that you’re have programmed them with a limited trancing. As the ship orbits the planet,
Recurring symptoms among the starting to disengage from the set of emotions, some of which are as the crew gathers to watch the valley
human employees are “skin eruptions” update. dysfunctional as the acculturation of come into sight from a viewing deck,
and dreams that black seeds are em- human beings. (Ravn has written in the “humans and humanoids,” as one state-
bedded in their pores. (This is not a Some humanoids’ statements to the past about how ill-fitting she finds the ment describes it, “one big bunch of us
novel for trypophobes.) Images of in- committee take an ominous tone. received model of womanhood, which together, all of us uplifted by the sight
human fertility torment a crew mem- “Impending violence is by no means leads, as she told one interviewer, “to of the valley, it’s the same every time.
ber prone to staring at the objects for inconceivable,” one remarks. “We’re having a feeling of being synthetic or It looks quite like what we know from
minutes at a time: only just beginning to understand what false.”) “All of us here are condemned home.” It’s a pleasure in which “the cat-
we’re capable of.” to a dream of romantic love,” a human- egories don’t apply.”
Does a human being need to have That humanity should travel to the
been born? Or can I be a living ends of the universe only to find a place
human expelled from a sac of that feels like home and creatures that,
slime, hatched out of an accumu- however strange, seem to welcome
lation of roe, a clump of spawn in a us—this ought to be a blessing. So why
pond, a cluster of sticky eggs con- does it all go so wrong? Perhaps the ob-
cealed among cereal crops or wild jects are not what they seem, are a kind
grasses? AFTER GEORGE HERBERT of booby trap, but I’m inclined instead
to agree with one of the humans, who
Because the objects also come in points out, “It’s a dangerous thing for
Come, my Motorway, my Equals Sign, my Higher Race,
clusters, described as multiplying on an organization not to be sure which of
Such a Motorway as wheels with stars,
the hillsides of New Discovery like “a the objects in its custody may be con-
kind of eczema,” these afflictions do Such an Equals Sign as time plus space, sidered to be living. It raises questions.”
seem related to their presence. One of Such a Higher Race as cable cars. Some of those questions have to
the crew members, convinced that “the do with the status of the humanoids,
best way of establishing contact with Come, my Bedside Light, my Takeaway, my Calloused Hand, several of whom insist, in response to
the objects is through smell,” chews bay Such a Bedside Light as lanternfish, apparent disbelief, that they, too, are
leaves upon entering the room in which Such a Takeaway as takes a stand, alive. But what The Employees cap-
they are stored, encouraged by the Such a Calloused Hand as makes a wish. tures best is humanity’s ambivalence
scent the objects produce in response. about life itself, its sticky messes and
To some employees, the objects’ scent Come, my Costume Play, my I Will Yes, my Organ Note, unappealing functions, the goo that
is pleasant, like “citrus fruit, or the connects us to everything that crawls
Such a Costume Play as none can dress,
stone of a peach,” while to others it is and mindlessly self-propagates, not to
Such an I Will Yes as none can quote,
sinister. “The fragrance in the room mention that obliterating payoff at the
has will and intention,” one statement Such an Organ Note as plays in yes. end of it all. It is our best beloved and it
reports. “It’s the smell of something old turns our stomachs. We build antiseptic
and decomposing, something musty. —Camille Ralphs vessels like the Six Thousand Ship, or
It’s as if the smell wishes to initiate the for that matter the organization itself,
same process in me: that I become a to control its chaos, and then pine for
branch to break off, rot, and be gone.” it once we’ve shut it out. “I’m not sure I
A humanoid crew member declares still feel pride in my humanity,” one of
the room and its smells “erotic,” al- the crew members confesses. And who
though we later learn that her kind can blame him? Q
An Impulse Felt Round the World
Julian Bell
Surrealism Beyond Borders
Jan Švankmajer
an exhibition at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York City,
October 11, 2021–January 30, 2022;
and Tate Modern, London,
February 24–August 29, 2022.
Catalog of the exhibition by Stephanie
D’Alessandro and Matthew Gale,
with contributions from Dawn Ades,
Patricia Allmer, and others.
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
383 pp., $65.00; $40.00 (paper)
(distributed by Yale University Press)
“The surreal today is measured on the

scale of our defeats.” Georges Henein,
a founding member of a Cairo group of
Surrealists, was responding to a ques-
tionnaire that a Paris review had sent
him concerning the state of the move-
ment in 1946, twenty-two years on from
André Breton’s inaugural Manifeste du
surréalisme. What defeats had Henein
in mind? For him and his painter col-
leagues in al-Fann wa-l-Hurriyya (Art
and Freedom), the recent clashes of
foreign armies on Egyptian soil had not
been the issue. Rather, what they faced
now, as the war against Nazism made
way for Stalin’s triumph and the age of
atomic terror announced at Hiroshima,
was a pervasive global power system
more outrageous in its operations—in
that sense, more “surreal”—than any-
thing artists could dream up.
Henein’s sympathies were with
the politics of Leon Trotsky, as were
Ivan Kraus in Jan Švankmajer’s film The Flat, 1968
Breton’s, and the socialist cause now
seemed terminally cornered, if so-
cialism entailed “the right not only Mozambique, Haiti, the Philippines, noisseurs. Staggered but persuaded by a global interlock of power, money,
to bread but to poetry” that the Rus- and Turkey— a constellation of non- their assiduity, I accept that the show’s mechanization, and mass media. This
sian revolutionary had demanded. As convergent points across the globe. incoherence gathers a certain cohesive condition, which Breton termed “ratio-
Henein went on to explain, “Nearly D’Alessandro and Gale are proposing flavor. nalism,” seemed to underpin all extant
everything we still consider desirable that the thoughts voiced by Breton in forms of governance, whether capitalist,
is claimed or bargained away by the 1924 were latent in multiple disparate Stalinist, colonial, or fascist. (A sliding
current state of the world. The result is urban centers, only awaiting his coin- W hat tang might that be? If some- scale, argued the Martinican Surreal-
this everyday surreality, made of all the ing of a movement identity. thing is “beyond borders,” it is not to ist Aimé Césaire, for the violence the
moves not made by us.” When it came Their curiosity, trained chiefly though be defined. Yet a characteristic tac- Nazis inflicted on Europe simply built
to those desiderata, Breton had defined not exclusively on the succeeding half- tic united, say, the African American on the precedent of violence inflicted
them as “the future resolution of these century, has been heroic. They have “Surrealist jazz poet” Ted Joans cutting by Europeans on others.) Surrealism
two states, dream and reality.” Com- hunted down, for instance, some photo- away the heads from shots of social oc- offered a certain route out of that his-
pleting a further questionnaire, Henein collages that illustrated a self-help col- casions to create “outographs,” Artur torical claustrophobia. Flaunting your
held out for some “point of extreme umn in a 1950s Buenos Aires women’s Cruzeiro Seixas in Luanda inscribing anomaly—your disobliging, disagree-
purity at which literature replaces life.” weekly; a magazine that was handmade verses on a shell fragment mounted on able x—you not only affirmed your
The Coptic intellectual’s impos- in the home of a Utrecht artist during a buffalo’s hoof, and the Tokyo-based personal intransigence but also signed
sibilism offers one prospective han- the Nazi occupation of Holland—a sin- artist Koga Harue painting a Pop Art– on to an energizing counterconspiracy.
dle on an exhibition about a creed gle copy per issue; and some tiny Po- like montage of imported publicity Most famously, via the collaborative
of bewilderment that has itself been laroids discreetly transmogrified by the materials. drawing game invented by the original
designed to bewilder. “Surrealism Be- filmmaker Kaveh Golestan not long The Surrealist, as characterized by Surrealists that was known as cadavre
yond Borders,” jointly conceived by the before the Iranian Revolution. D’Alessandro and Gale, liked to posit exquis. Joans’s largest project, pursued
Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Steph- The chase runs wild. As it happens, an x, a variable not in algebra but in over three decades, was to persuade
anie D’Alessandro and Tate Modern’s Golestan, so a Tate caption informs discourse and visual culture. His or every sympathizer he encountered to
Matthew Gale, has now moved from me, “did not identify with Surrealism.” her gesture was to reach for anoma- sketch little caprices— spooky, sexy,
her museum to his in London. Across Nor, the curators concede, did others lous content and hold out a handful of or sardonic— onto slips of computer
eleven galleries, the curators have whose works have been included, such the bizarre or the serendipitous that paper that could be pasted together
tumbled out a delirium of films, pho- as Rafael Ferrer in Puerto Rico. But could be brandished as nonnegotiable. to form a single continuous strip: the
tos, drawings, paintings, pamphlets, no matter. When, as cited in the cata- In theory— and Breton was a voluble result, nearly thirty-five feet long and
and what Alberto Giacometti liked to log, the Argentinian artist Julio Llinás theoretician—that item in its uncanni- involving 123 friends and luminaries,
call “disagreeable objects.” Besides a argued in 1952 that “Breton must be ness could serve as a release valve for is as near as the exhibition comes to a
wooden assemblage by that artist—his shown that Surrealism is not him,” he the unconscious, but how many Surre- backbone. A great feat of organization
so- called Cage—you may chance upon was only continuing a tussle with the in- alists actually kept Freud in their sights on Joans’s part, it is clear, and in fact
Salvador Dalí’s Lobster Telephone, tellectual impresario that was as old as is uncertain. What was more constant the corporate nature of the Surreal-
Max Ernst’s painted construction Two the movement itself and that had like- was the background for the gesture, ists’ collective adversary is suggested
Children Are Threatened by a Nightin- wise been pursued by Breton’s Paris and here Henein’s perspective has by the way they aped its administra-
gale, and sundry other curios by those adversary Georges Bataille. For every purchase. tive procedures—their fretting over
who, between the world wars, joined printed “declaration” (and the Tate’s You opened your eyes and looked membership lists and directives and
Breton’s table at Montmartre’s Café Le vitrines exhibit many), there awaited a around— supposing that you were questionnaires; their “Bureau de re-
Cyrano. contradiction. young and critically alert, wherever cherches surréalistes” in Paris, staffed
Pieces by the luminaries they looked In which case, let confusion flourish, you might stand in that constellation by officials who were required to keep
up to, Picasso and Duchamp, also fea- and let D’Alessandro and Gale, who of twentieth- century urban centers— the doors open six days a week from
ture. But a greater swirl almost sub- boast that their survey is “neither sin- and a diagnosis suggested itself. You 4:30 to 6:30 PM ; their resourceful
merges these fixtures of Paris- centric gular in its narrative nor unbroken in were witnessing an accountancy- driven media strategies. Which might lead
art history: the surrealisms of Korea, its chronology,” have license as its con- compression of human potential within to public success, which in turn might
May 26, 2022 17

lead to Surrealism’s co- optation by escaped and that déjà vu is another branes, then emerge. A pod in the ever may happen, the same situation at
the world as it stood, “claimed or bar- form of the uncanny. Švankmajer’s dark band swells and multiplies and last returns.*
gained away” by the very forces it op- was an old, old Prague, and the sources spews into the white a twisting spawn.
posed. For this worldwide subculture, of his phlegmatism lay far deeper Suddenly these two separated entities
defeat forever hovered in the wings. than the passing political dramas crystallize into schematic skeletal fig- Here, then, was an artist from settler
of 1968. ures. Now the son’s pincer arms lunge stock leaning on Oceanic traditions.
In fact Surrealists, on this exhibition’s backward to pierce or possess the Elsewhere, because of the reverence
D ream and reality would regu- evidence, generally preferred dilapida- mother in her lair. A mortal struggle that Surrealists felt for it, we are shown
larly hook up, decades before Breton tion to lucid form. The weathered and ensues, climaxing in explosion: rings Picasso’s Three Dancers (1925), an
launched his dating agency, within the the fractal looked promising as ways of burst, collapse, recede to a final black achievement ultimately informed by
medium of cinema, and it is in the film resisting “rationalist” modernity. And hole. African art; and then we are shown Wi-
shorts on view that you most fredo Lam’s Bélial, empéreur
Remedios Varo/Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco

dramatically face the tensions des mouches, a similarly large
of Surrealism—the tug between canvas from 1948 in which the
the wish to escape reductive Cuban quasi- Surrealist redi-
definition and the expecta- rected Picasso’s example to
tion that you must eventually deliver a fresh mythological
submit. synthesis, more answerable to
At Land, shot on Long Is- his own African roots.
land in 1944 by the young The curators’ global outlook
Ukrainian-born cinéaste Maya entangles them in the convo-
Deren, puts forward some char- luted debates about “primitiv-
acteristic Surrealist promises. ism” that these examples could
A protagonist, a dreamer— prompt. Facing Tusalava they
Deren herself— emerges from place a wall text lamenting the
the sea, a castaway dashed by “fantasy of shared perspectives”
waves onto a beach, and fi- in which works from local tradi-
nally exits into the light, a fig- tions across the world, “included
ure fleeing over its sun- dazzled for their perceived aesthetic
sands. In between she meets value within a European context,
shape-shifting impediments. were stripped of place, maker
Dead branches over which and their original meaning.” As
she clambers lead to a dining far as it concerns the makers
table across which she crawls, themselves, the “stripped” in
amid oblivious chattering so- that phrasing is an idle reproach.
cialites. From a chessboard on This is simply what artists are al-
that table a pawn drops, only ways bound to do: look at what
to reappear on the shoreline other artists have been mak-
after other figures— a walking ing, wherever it may have come
companion of inconstant vis- from, and make products in re-
age, a father dying in a shroud- sponse that will inevitably bear
draped bedroom— have passed differing connotations.
by on the heroine’s cryptic In fairness, however, an ex-
pilgrimage, while harsh rock Remedios Varo: Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle, 1961 hibition examining a cultural
faces and burdensome stones movement interprets artifacts
NgƗ Taonga Sound & Vision/Len Lye Foundation

likewise confront her. All is ob- that have already been inter-
stacle, yet she herself remains preted, and in the case of the
inviolate, assured in possession Surrealists, this was by voices
of her own photogenic allure. In so insistently political that their
Deren’s romantic salute to spir- rhetoric can hardly go unques-
itual freedom, the object world tioned. Some of the clamor came
and the social world are them- from makers voicing their own
selves no more than contents of agendas, yet the overall tone—
a dream. despite the curators’ wish to de-
The Flat, the product of an- center the narrative— stemmed
other young filmmaker—Jan from the so- called Pope of
Švankmajer, in the Prague of Surrealism himself. For it is re-
1968—inverts the tale of me and markable how Breton is rarely
not-me into nightmarish slap- more than one degree of sepa-
stick. The door slams behind a ration away, whichever regional
sublimely hangdog comedian nexus the survey alights on. His
(Ivan Kraus; see illustration on persiflage— portentous, prickly,
page 17), leaving him trapped shot through with flashes of
inside a moldering apart- warmth— inspired cardinals of
ment in which everything— the church ranging from Henein
via Švankmajer’s stop-motion and Joans to Eugenio Granell, a
legerdemain— contradicts his fighter for the Spanish Republic
demands. He turns on a tap and who, following its defeat, fled to
it spurts not water but coal. He the Caribbean, where he prop-
hungrily raises a soupspoon and agated Surrealism among many
it drains like a colander. A mir- an island flock.
ror merely shows him the back And from pontiff to vil-
of his head. The bed he lies lage priest, this creed was
down in crumbles, burying him A still from Len Lye’s animated film Tusalava, 1929 anticolonialist and— as Effie
in sawdust, and then between Rentzou argues in her catalog
battered doorways a mysterious mus- yet the sensibilities on display could Lye was not an enrolled group essay—“universalist.” She attributes
tachioed maître d’ glides through, twist the styling quite otherwise. One member, but he had certainly read Surrealism’s “exceptional longevity”
vouchsafing him an axe. of the earlier pieces included is a ten- his Freud. He had also, en route from to its willingness to take on the fun-
Our hero uses the axe to break down minute animation released in London Christchurch to London, spent time in damental question “What is man?”
one of the doors, only to face a wall on in 1929, the debut of a New Zealander Samoa and in a Sydney library study- The more it “bypassed national struc-
which many a previous prisoner has named Len Lye. Flaunting a radical ing books about Aboriginal art. He tures” and rationalist mores, the more
penciled his name. “JOSEF,” he deject- new graphic idiom, his Tusalava is as was fusing its dots, concentric loops, it amassed “ethical urgency.”
edly adds, and the film closes just as he brash and immediate as anything by and “X-ray” figures with the graphics
begins the downstroke of the succeed- Disney. Its screen is split into vertical of cellular biology to present a myth of
ing letter “K.” This arch nod to Kafka’s bands in contrasting shades. Seed- evolution in fast-track: a myth not *See Ann Stephen’s illuminating essay
The Trial merely underlines what the shaped blobs swim up them, then link of upward progress but of circular self- “The Oceanic Primitivism of Len Lye’s
film’s Keaton- era styling and dowdy to form wriggling water-worms, whose cancellation. Tusa lava, Lye explained, Animation Tusalava (1929),” Art His-
decor imply— that retro is never to be insides and outsides, nuclei and mem- is a Samoan phrase implying that what- tory, Vol. 40, No. 3 (June 2017).

We might feel awkward about these out of step with a movement that
ambitions with hindsight. We might claimed to seek “magic,” and the rebuke
POLICING THE CITY

berate— along with Partha Mitter in to outward reality issued by her painting
his catalog essay—the Café Le Cyrano overlaps with that of Deren’s film.
seditionaries for imputing a naive ex- From the buoyant art scene that Varo
pressivity to non-European art, rather settled down in we are also presented
than the sophisticated agency these with a tremendous still life by Maria
Parisians considered themselves to
possess. We might reckon that the Sur-
realists’ fondness for Trotsky was for a
Izquierdo, closer in manner to those
of the Mexican muralists. Elsewhere,
there is the classically ambitious Wi-
AN ETHNO-GRAPHIC
mere mosquito politics of scant social fredo Lam, among other modernizers
benefit. But such judgments fall in with of the business of figure composition.
a “conventional time-based narrative” And disarmingly, a trompe l’oeil ex-
that D’Alessandro and Gale want to es- ecuted by the Parisian circle’s Marcel
cape with their “transhistoric” project, Jean greets you in the show’s opening
and at points they do convey what it’s gallery—wardrobe doors opening onto
like to break free. distant horizons, a delightful touch of
Most spectacularly, they include a magic indeed.
seven-minute clip from a documentary But the longer I browsed the framed
made by the New York filmmaker Wil- canvases that succeeded, the more a
liam Klein about the Pan African Festi- frustration set in, as if from eating too
val that was held in Algiers in July 1969. many spicy snacks with no entrée in
This event, staged by the Organization sight. Surrealism, being a cult of sur-
of African Unity at a moment when it prise, worshiped play, generating many
looked as if familiar hegemonies might a new game to be explored: yet for the
be upended, became a crossroads for a artists who subscribed to it, an agenda
hundred postwar dreams of liberation, of work still remained, delivering gal-
drawing in the hopeful from across the lery items by which to earn a living.
Sahara, the Mediterranean, and the The dominant format for these items—
Atlantic. We meet Joans again, now the main dish—is represented in the
on stage with his friend Archie Shepp, show by that canvas the Surrealists
who, djellaba’d and raining sweat in looked up to, Picasso’s Three Dancers.
the roasting summer night, rips deep Here, as elsewhere in the easel paint-
gouges on his tenor sax, his footholds ing tradition, you are invited to relish
on the wall of percussion behind him— a rectangle’s worth of internal formal
Gnawa drummers from the Maghreb, relationships and to freight them as you
beating rhythms sideways to jazz. will with your knowledge of the world.
Klein’s camera cuts to onlookers: The distinctively Surrealist aim,
pale Parisian hipsters in their shades; however, was to thwart that process of
jet-set girls in beehives and slinky imaginative digestion, as if to insist,
Motown-style outfits; Black Panther “This painting is not about what you
brothers raising fists in zealous awe; already know.” Of necessity, the rect-
lines of haughty Tuareg women, scowl- angles they put up for sale retained
ing in dark satins. That disdain of theirs formal relationships, but Surrealists
only underlines the message that this is tended to deal with these in an off-
a night that has veered into the radi- hand or parodic manner. The show’s
cally unexpected and that normal time sole Magritte, his steam-train-through-
has broken down. Here, if anywhere, fireplace canvas entitled Time Trans-
we witness the triumph of the Surreal. fixed, provides an obvious instance. A
fine stand-alone shock: but shocks in “A MUST-READ…LUCIDLY WRITTEN
AND EXPERTLY ILLUSTRATED,
multiplicity hardly amount to a fulfill-
T hat is not exactly what the exhibi- ing diet. I began longing for richer fare,
tion’s static imagery has to offer. I was in line with those many painters who
introduced to many haunting little pho- moved on from youthful Surrealism to Policing the City is a provocative exploration of
tographs and to a few arresting paint- a deeper respect for the terms of their the expansion of police power and criminalization
ings—in particular, to Embroidering own trade. of nonwhite and immigrant communities.”
the Earth’s Mantle (1961) by Reme- It is not that the exhibits here lack
dios Varo. Her canvas depicts a Gothic savor. You encounter so many differ- —Max Felker-Kantor, author of Policing Los Angeles:
aerie in which a sisterhood sits stitch- ent defiances as you tour what virtually Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD
ing, obedient to an abbot with a book amounts to an alternate history of the
and an alembic who is himself surveyed
by a shrouded background watcher.
twentieth century: the paintings of He-
nein’s 1940s colleagues, for instance. “BY EXPOSING THE REALITIES
OF EVERYDAY ‘ANTICRIME’ POLICING,
The needlewomen’s handiwork winds The concerned young Egyptians of al-
through apertures to descend into the Fann wa-l-Hurriyya—men and women,
DIDIER FASSIN EXPLODES THE MYTH

mists outside—fabric that unfolds to be- from both Muslim and Christian stock—
come our physical world below. If Plato adopted, as a vehicle for their anxieties
had stopped penning his allegory of the about the nation’s predicament, the
cave to pick up a brush instead, the results
might have looked somewhat similar—
naked female figure. Fouad Kamel
mutilates her, Kamel el-Telmissany nails THAT POLICE ARE THE SOLUTION
not simply because of the shared ideal-
ism, but because it is expressed through
such an intricately developed artistry.
her to a tree, Amy Nimr dissects her
corpse. Their sour post-sunset palettes
of red and yellow stains against cyan
TO SERIOUS CRIME.”
—Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing
The micro-engineering of Varo’s tower and black ratchet up the pathos. It is like
workshop and her beeswing-fine veils of overhearing a distressing conversation,
siennas and cold blues stretched my ex-
pectations of what a twentieth-century
glimpsed through a door ajar that you
might not wish to fully open. But part of “URGENT AND PROVOCATIVE”
painting might deliver. the pathos is projected: it turns on the —Publishers Weekly
Varo was a Spanish artist painting fact that you stand outside and are not
“HIGHLY RECOMMENDED”
in Mexico City, having arrived there quite sorry to remain so.
by a path crisscrossing those of many Whatever “everyday surreality” our
Surrealists: early years in a Barcelona digital age may possess is different in
cenacle who styled themselves “the logic- texture to that of the foregoing cen- —Library Journal (starred review)
fearers”—los Logicofobistas; departure tury. In this sense, not all that much of
for boho life in Paris with Breton and “Surrealism Beyond Borders” achieves
gang; then leaving Marseilles, come a “transhistoric” liftoff, away from the
1941, on a boat bound for the New piquancy of retrospect. But then, it is OTHER PRESS OTHERPRESS.COM
World. Her turn to the esoteric— she exactly history’s business to be handed
joined a Gurdjieff group—was hardly the last word. Q
May 26, 2022 19
Beyond the Betrayal
Ruth Franklin
The Betrayal of Anne Frank: In 2016 the Dutch filmmaker Thijs
A Cold Case Investigation Bayens and the journalist Pieter van
by Rosemary Sullivan. Twisk opened a new inquiry, building
Harper, 383 pp., $29.99 a team of some two dozen Dutch inves-
tigators, historians, and researchers.
On the morning of August 4, 1944, Seeking the perspective of someone “in-
everything seemed normal at Prin- dependent,” they also hired an Ameri-
sengracht 263, a tall, narrow building can, Vince Pankoke, who had recently
along a canal in Amsterdam’s Jordaan retired from a twenty-seven-year ca-
neighborhood. On the ground floor, reer as an FBI special agent. Pankoke
the workers in the warehouse of a pec- treated the Anne Frank House not as
tin and spice producer formerly known a museum but as a crime scene, ana-
as Opekta/Pectacon—now registered lyzing the little remaining physical ev-
under a false name, since its Jewish idence. He noticed a mark on the floor
founder, Otto Frank, was no longer al- in front of the bookcase that revealed,
lowed to own a business—had the doors to a policeman’s trained eye, the pres-
open to the summer warmth. Upstairs, ence of something behind it—meaning
the office employees were filling orders that even if the Nazis had gone straight
and doing other paperwork. A little for the bookcase, that didn’t necessar-
after 9 AM, Miep Gies, a secretary, went ily prove they had been tipped off to its
to the back room of the second floor significance.
and pushed aside a bookcase against With the help of specially designed
the far wall, revealing a secret door. software that used artificial intelli-
When Gies ascended the staircase, gence to seek out data patterns humans
the eight people living in the back half might miss, Pankoke and his “Cold
of the building were waiting for her. Case Team” spent several years comb-
They were always eager to see her, one ing through historical records and po-
of their few points of contact with the lice files, interviewing witnesses and
outside world. As the Nazi persecution their descendants, and analyzing new
of the Dutch Jews intensified in early theories. Among their discoveries was
1942, Otto Frank had decided to cre- at least one of great value to historians:
ate a hiding place for himself, his wife, a cache of nearly a thousand receipts
Edith, and their two daughters, Margot held in a collection of captured Nazi
and Anne, in the unused annex of his documents in the US National Ar-
own office building. The annex, with chives, evidence of reward money paid
two levels of living space and an attic, to Dutch Jew-hunters—the equivalent
was big enough for another family to of around forty-seven dollars per head.
join them—Otto’s colleague Hermann In a “highly secure” office space
van Pels, his wife, Auguste, and their outfitted with a 3D model of Prinsen-
son, Peter. Later the Franks and Van Illustration by Ruth Gwily gracht 263 and a soundproof “Mute-
Pelses also took in Fritz Pfeffer, Gies’s Cube,” Pankoke’s team examined all
Jewish dentist, after he told her he was ward a small wooden box. Looking for planted at museums and memorials, the previous suspects as well as a new
looking for a place to hide. a place to store its contents, the SS offi- including Manhattan’s Ground Zero. list of their own, promising to assess
That morning, as usual, Gies visited cer picked up Anne’s briefcase, dump- Yet many elements of her story remain each against three criteria: Did this
her friends and took any requests they ing on the floor her diaries and the unknown, among them the exact date of person have the knowledge necessary
had for food, books, or other supplies. manuscript in which she had spent the her death, which took place in Bergen- to betray the Franks, the motive to do
Then they all returned to their daily rou- past few months reworking them. Later Belsen sometime in February or March so, and the opportunity? Meanwhile,
tines. Margot and Anne, ages eighteen Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, another 1945, only weeks before the war ended. HarperCollins—which, together with
and fifteen, probably read or studied. office worker who helped hide the One of the most enduring of those the city of Amsterdam and private do-
Upstairs, Otto helped seventeen-year- Franks, found Anne’s papers, which mysteries is exactly how the Franks’ nors, provided financial support for the
old Peter with his English spelling. were then edited by Otto and published hideout was exposed. Who might have operation—recruited Sullivan, the au-
Across the city, Karl Josef Silber- in Dutch in 1947. With the assistance, made that phone call to Dettmann, and thor of the well-received biography Sta-
bauer, an SS sergeant of the Sicher- in part, of Barbara Epstein, who was what was the source of that person’s lin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and
heitsdienst (SD) Referat IV B4—also then a young editor at Doubleday (and knowledge? Over the years, numerous Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
known as the “Jew-hunting unit”—was later cofounded The New York Re- theories have been proposed. Anne, as well as numerous other books, to
at his desk in Amsterdam’s Gestapo view), they were published in English together with the rest of the house- embed with the team and chronicle
headquarters. As Rosemary Sullivan in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl. hold, worried that Willem van Maaren, their investigation.
describes the scene in The Betrayal of an employee in the warehouse, might In line with the secrecy surround-
Anne Frank, Silberbauer’s superior, be untrustworthy; a 1948 inquiry con- ing the entire operation, the book was
Lieutenant Julius Dettmann, phoned In the decades since, Anne Frank has ducted by the Amsterdam police into under strict embargo so that the team
him to pass along a tip that had just become an icon. Her chronicle of the pe- the betrayal of the Franks focused on could announce their conclusions in a
been called in: Jews were hiding in riod she spent in hiding, now with more him but turned up nothing conclusive. carefully orchestrated publicity rollout
a “warehouse complex” located at than 30 million copies in print in seventy Carol Ann Lee, who wrote a biography that began on January 16 of this year
Prinsengracht 263. Silberbauer was languages, is the most famous work of of Anne and another of Otto Frank, with a lengthy segment on 60 Minutes,
assigned two Dutch policemen and a literature to arise from the Holocaust, made a case against Tonny Ahlers, a two days before the publication date.
detective to join him on the raid. required reading for several gener- Dutch Nazi sympathizer and petty crim- The likely betrayer, they said, was Ar-
At around 10:30 AM, the men arrived ations of schoolchildren. Her image inal, who is known to have blackmailed nold van den Bergh: a wealthy Jewish
at the building and entered through the can be seen on statues and billboards Otto.1 Melissa Müller, the author of notary who belonged to the Jewish
open warehouse. One of the men may worldwide; her name is synonymous another biography of Anne, suspected Council, a group that, like its better-
have shouted, in Dutch or German, with courage, with resistance to perse- Lena Hartog, the wife of one of Van known counterparts in Warsaw, Łód Ĩ,
“Where are the Jews?” At least one of cution, with the death of an innocent. Maaren’s assistants. Joop van Wijk, the and elsewhere, served as a liaison be-
the office workers later recalled that Crowds gather to pay homage to her at son of Bep Voskuijl, has accused Bep’s tween the Nazi occupiers and the Jew-
they went right to the bookcase. Otto Prinsengracht 263, which since 1960 has sister Nelly, who had close connections ish community whom the Nazis all but
heard footsteps on the stairs to the been known as the Anne Frank House, with soldiers in the Wehrmacht.2 exterminated.
upper floor. The door opened, and he a museum established by Otto Frank
and Peter found themselves face to face that now welcomes more than a million
with a plainclothes policeman pointing visitors per year. An asteroid discovered 1
Carol Ann Lee, Roses from the Earth: T he announcement was explosive—
a gun at them. in 1942, the year she went into hiding, The Biography of Anne Frank (Viking, though not in the way the team had
Downstairs, the rest of the house- was named after her in 1995; saplings 1999) and The Hidden Life of Otto hoped. The book came under immedi-
hold was gathered with their hands from the chestnut tree in the courtyard Frank (Viking, 2002). ate and intense attack from Dutch his-
up. Silberbauer asked where they kept behind the building, which she gazed 2 torians and others, including employees
Melissa Müller, Anne Frank: The Bi-
their valuables, and Otto gestured to- at through the attic window, have been ography (Metropolitan, 1998). of both the Anne Frank House and the

Anne Frank Foundation (a separate ings bordering the courtyard. Pankoke no intention of removing the entire
organization based in Switzerland, also later told a reporter that instead of who Jewish community from the Nether-
founded by Otto Frank, that holds the tipped off the police, the real question lands and that the council’s role was From the
copyright to most of Anne’s writings). was how the inhabitants of the Secret to protect those in the most danger.”
Critics argued that Pankoke’s team Annex—Anne’s name for the hide- Later, Cohen admitted that he had mis- Man Booker
had made unjustified assumptions and out—stayed hidden. judged the “unprecedented, murderous
relied too heavily on circumstantial Indeed, the number of possible sus- intentions of the Nazis.” But he was far
International Prize-
evidence. “Although the research is pects demonstrates just how dangerous from the only one to make that mistake. winning author of
impressive, the story simply has too the situation was for Jews in the Neth- The council tried to play for time.
many loose ends,” Johannes Houwink erlands. Despite the widespread per- They haggled with the Nazis over how CELESTIAL BODIES
ten Cate, a professor of genocide and ception of the Dutch as a nation that many Jews needed to report for each
Holocaust studies at the University of
Amsterdam, said in an interview with
largely resisted the Nazi occupiers—a
perception that has been deeply chal-
transport and tried to finagle as many
exemptions as possible, including for
Jokha Alharthi
Agence France-Presse. lenged by historians in recent years— council employees. In retrospect, many
Ambo Anthos, the publisher of the around 75 percent of Dutch Jews were have seen the desire to protect their
book’s Dutch translation, quickly an- murdered during the war, the highest own as reflecting poorly on the council.
nounced that it was halting further death rate of any Western European “After the war, many people accused
printings. Two months later, after a country. As of early 1941, when the the Jewish Council of cooperation,
group of prominent Dutch historians Nazis required Dutch Jews to register indeed almost collaboration, with the
published a sixty-nine-page “refuta- with the authorities, the community Germans,” Sullivan writes. The fuzz- “A GORGEOUS AND
tion” of the book on the website of numbered around 140,000. About iness here—how does one define “al-
INSIGHTFUL STORY
NIOD, the Dutch Institute for War, 107,000 were subsequently deported most collaboration”?—is indicative of
Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, 3 to camps, of whom fewer than 6,000 a larger lack of sensitivity to the im- OF LONGING.”
Ambo Anthos decided to pull it from returned. About two thirds of the possible position in which the council —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
the shelves entirely. The book is still for 25,000 or so Jews who went into hiding found itself.
sale elsewhere, including in Germany survived. In the summer of 1942, Auschwitz
and the United States. Historians have posited a number II/Birkenau, the extermination divi-
The Betrayal of Anne Frank is badly of factors to explain the low survival sion of the camp, had just been estab-
organized and facilely written; it takes rate of Dutch Jews. The Netherlands lished. (Auschwitz I, the original labor
a strikingly uncritical tone toward Pan- is a low-lying, flat country without camp and administrative headquar-
koke and his team and seems to track the dense forests that partisans and ters, was created in 1940.) Reports of
every tedious dead end in the investi- others were able to take advantage of mass extermination in Poland—the gas
gation. Worse, it offers little historical elsewhere in Europe. Since Dutch so- trucks that were running at Chełmno
analysis of life in Amsterdam during ciety was relatively segregated, Jews and Beł Īec—were still rumors. Going
the war years, particularly regarding were unlikely to have close non-Jewish into hiding, too, was dangerous; people
the role of the Jewish Council, whose friends who would help them find hid- believed that those who were caught
members made the fatal but under- ing places or support them in hiding. would be deported immediately to
standable gamble of cooperating with (This was not true for the residents of penal camps. (In reality, nearly all
the Nazi authorities, hoping that by the Secret Annex, who were sustained Dutch Jewish deportees had the same
doing so they could mitigate the worst by Otto’s employees.) But most signif- destination: Auschwitz or Sobibór, an-
of the persecution and buy extra time icant seems to have been the general other extermination camp on Polish
for the Jewish population. My own Dutch propensity—among Jews as well territory.) As Bart van den Boom, one
reading turned up poor annotation as non-Jews—to comply with the law. of the historians who contributed to the
and sloppy factual errors, including This is precisely what the Jewish report challenging the findings of Pan-
mischaracterizations of the circum- Council, formed in Amsterdam in 1941, koke’s team, has written:
stances around the writing and editing has been criticized for. Chaired by
of Anne’s diary. Abraham Asscher, the heir to a major The reality of Auschwitz and So-
But the problems with this project diamond company, and David Cohen, bibór was far beyond the imagina-
are bigger than either the book or the a professor and former president of the tion of most of the Dutch. . . . It was
investigation it purports to cover. The Committee for Jewish Refugees, the conceivable that the slow death
goal of the search, according to Bayens, council provided services to the com- that loomed with deportation was
was to “begin a public conversation” munity that the Dutch government was less of a risk than the quick death “BLAZES WITH
about tolerance and distrust as a bul- no longer permitted to offer, such as that would follow if you went into
wark against “incipient fascism” in Eu- education and health care. The council hiding and got caught. THE STRENGTH OF
rope and elsewhere, while at the same also created a newspaper that served as GENERATIONS OF
time seeking justice for the Franks. a central organ to disseminate informa- Many also thought that the Germans
OMANI WOMEN . . .
That conversation has not happened. tion about new Nazi regulations, from would be defeated within a few months.
To the contrary: by focusing police- the surrender of businesses and prop- After the war, the Jewish Honor AN ILLUMINATING,
procedural style on the identification erty to the prohibition on using swim- Court for the Netherlands, which was IMPORTANT WORK.”
of a single culprit—a Jewish one, at ming pools and sports facilities. When appointed by the Jewish community and
that—the search for the betrayer of the Nazis imposed the yellow star, the had moral weight but not legal authority, —Kali Fajardo-Anstine,
Prinsengracht 263 obscures the larger council was given 569,355 cloth stars to investigated suspected collaborators, in- author of Sabrina & Corina
political realities of the Holocaust, in distribute—four per person, to be paid cluding members of the Jewish Council.
the Netherlands and elsewhere. for with ration coupons. Cohen was the only one who appeared
On a Friday in late June 1942, mem- in person; Arnold van den Bergh and
bers of the Jewish Council were sum- four others were judged in absentia
T he software created for Pankoke moned at 10 PM —a standard power when they chose not to participate. For
and his team projected potential sus- play by the Nazi administration, which having “assisted in a number of anti-
pects onto a map of Amsterdam as seemed to enjoy forcing them to break Jewish measures, including distributing
colored dots, with members of the NSB the Sabbath—and told that “police- the Jewish star, unfairly determining the An Omani student
(Dutch Nazi Party) appearing as blue, controlled labor contingents” were re- lists of exemptions, and participating
collaborators red, and informants yel- quired for service in Germany. Margot in the selection of deportees,” Van den at a British university is
low. The dots were “so close together,” Frank, then sixteen, was part of this Bergh was deprived for five years of the caught between the past
Sullivan writes, “that they appeared first group to be called up; her sum- right to hold Jewish office or participate
as one large mass” over the neighbor- mons, which arrived on July 5, precip- in honorary functions in the commu- and the present in this
hood surrounding Prinsengracht 263. itated the family’s flight into hiding. nity. (The court drew a distinction be- profound exploration
An SD informant owned a bike shop a The previous year, as punishment for tween members of the council, such as
block and a half away. A waiter whose an anti-Nazi demonstration, the Nazis Van den Bergh, and the co-chairmen, of social status, wealth,
name appeared on the Resistance’s had rounded up several hundred Jewish Asscher and Cohen, who were judged desire, and female agency.
“wanted list” lived a few doors down. men and deported them to Mauthau- more severely.) Soon after the verdict,
Numerous NSB members lived in build- sen, a concentration camp in Austria. Van den Bergh was diagnosed with
None returned. Largely because of throat cancer; he died in 1950.
3 this, the council members hypothesized
“‘The Betrayal of Anne Frank’: A
Refutation,” a report by Bart Wallet, that “labor service,” despite all its un- ON SALE NOW
Petra van den Boomgaard, Bart van knowns, was preferable to what they Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the
der Boom, Raymund Schütz, Laurien believed to be certain death in a con- eight people hiding at Prinsengracht
Vastenhout, and Aaldrik Hermans, centration camp. As Sullivan writes, 263, was liberated from Auschwitz in
March 2022. they “assumed that the Germans had January 1945 and slowly made his way
May 26, 2022 21

back to Amsterdam, arriving home she continues. “With Miedl now . . . was exposed by the Nazi hunter Simon
that summer. The case for Arnold van unable to protect him, Van den Bergh Wiesenthal. This was a man so insen-
den Bergh as his betrayer starts with an might have needed to find some addi- sitive and ill-informed that he looked
anonymous note that Otto may have tional insurance.” through Anne’s diary after it was pub-
received later that year. (The cold case That’s a lot of conditionals, but more lished to see if his own name was men-
team dates the note to late 1945, but the are coming. In order to protect his fam- tioned. He may well have fabricated
historians’ report casts doubt on this ily, the team alleges, Van den Bergh sup- details to protect himself or others.
detail, as on many others.) It read: plied the Nazis with a list of addresses If Silberbauer’s testimony is consid-
of Jews in hiding that he had supposedly ered unreliable, a host of other possi-
Your hideout in Amsterdam was been holding on to since his time with bilities opens up, including a scenario
reported at the time to the Jüdische the Jewish Council. Sullivan writes: postulated recently by researchers at
Auswanderung [Jewish Emigra- the Anne Frank House: that the SS
tion] in Amsterdam, Euterpestraat, It’s almost certain that the Jewish were expecting to find stolen goods
by A. van den Bergh, a resident at Council had lists of addresses of and discovered the people in hiding by
the time at Vondelpark, O Nassau- Jews in hiding. Through his key chance. The idea that Anne’s fate was
laan. At the J.A. was a whole list of position on the Jewish Council, sealed by a random accident is difficult
addresses he submitted. Van den Bergh would have had to swallow; far more satisfying to have
access to those lists. He may also a person to blame. We want to believe
Van den Bergh worked as a notary, have had access to the lists of ad- that things happen for a reason, regard-
a profession with duties in the Nether- dresses collected . . . at Camp West- less of whether we ascribe the explana-
$17.95 | SPECULATIVE FICTION lands that are more elaborate than those erbork. Prinsengracht 263 could tion to God, superstition, or human
9781771837187 | 240 PAGES
of contemporary American notaries. He easily have been on a list in 1943 or action. But that theory strikes me as
“A remarkable achievement…. was responsible for authorizing business 1944, placed there by a member of the most convincing, both because of
an intriguing story with a deals, including witnessing contracts. the resistance who’d been turned the evidence presented and because it
page-turning finish.” Among the transactions over which he or by an informant. is truer to the way the Holocaust actu-
-Peter Singer presided was the notorious sale of the ally unfolded in the Netherlands.
art collection of Jacques Goudstikker, As the historians demonstrate, it’s far Contrary to how most people imag-
“I greatly enjoyed 6 < /!
0/0/. …a novel of ideas, it
a Dutch Jewish dealer in Old Masters, from certain that the Jewish Council ine it, the Nazi administration was not
turns into an exciting escape to Hermann Göring. As of February had such lists. The evidence on which a well- oiled extermination machine.
drama, with a sting in the tail.” 21, 1941, Jewish notaries were required the team relies is testimony from a There was a master plan for the Final
-Richard Dawkins to officially surrender their public func- German translator who “claimed to Solution, but how it would be imple-
tions, but Van den Bergh, like Otto have overheard” a sergeant in the mil- mented was not self-evident. Decisions
“A fascinating exploration of Frank and many other Jews, seems to itary police talking about the council in were made at every step of the way that
ideas…. 6 < /! 0/0/ is have found ways to continue working. grossly anti-Semitic terms. Mail from determined the fates of thousands of
compulsively readable….” As a member of the Jewish Council, Westerbork, the transit camp where people, from the granting of deporta-
-Deborah Willis Van den Bergh, together with his wife Dutch Jews were held before deportation exemptions to the number of peo-
and their three daughters, was initially tion to the east, did not go through the ple dispatched on each train. At any
“LePan’s novel challenges us to
occupy the liminal space
exempt from deportation. (The council Jewish Council, and even if it had, there point, those outcomes could have been
between…human and disbanded in September 1943 when al- is no evidence that any was sent to Prin- different. For instance, Anne’s friend
non-human animal.” most everyone involved with it was de- sengracht 263, whose inhabitants knew Hanneli Goslar survived Bergen-
-Laura Wright ported, including Cohen and Asscher.) better than to reveal their address to the Belsen because her family was able
As an additional protection, he applied outside world. The unrevised version of to buy Paraguayan passports, which
A MiroLand book from
Guernica Editions for and obtained “Calmeyer status,” Anne’s diary includes several pages of meant that they could be exchanged
which allowed him to be declassified as heartbreaking letters she wished she for German prisoners of war and thus
Jewish: under Nazi law in the Nether- could send to a close friend, as well as had special privileges in the camp; if
lands, Jews could be exempt from per- an imaginary reply from the other girl. the Franks had bought those passports,
secution if they could prove they had Pfeffer did exchange letters with his fi- they too might have survived.
one non-Jewish parent. Many Dutch ancée, but Gies served as courier. Those who went into hiding were
Jews sought to exploit this loophole, Even more incomprehensibly, Pan- perhaps even more at the mercy of
creating elaborately forged revisions to koke’s team uses statements by Gies others. Anne was unusual in having a
their family trees. The cases were ad- and Otto Frank that seem to implicate stable hiding place together with her
judicated by a German lawyer named Van den Bergh as evidence against him, family; most Dutch Jewish children
Hans Georg Calmeyer, who saved sev- such as Otto’s telling a Dutch journal- were sent into hiding alone, since they
eral thousand Jews by allowing many of ist in the late 1940s that the family was were easier to hide than adults. There
these forgeries to pass. “betrayed by Jews.” But such state- are many stories of abuse and exploita-
Van den Bergh’s Calmeyer status ments demonstrate only that Frank and tion of these children by their hosts, in
also offered protection to his family. Gies may have believed Van den Bergh addition to the larger risks that hiding
However, he lost that status in early to be the betrayer, thanks to the anon- entailed. Picture all those dots on the
1944 when J.W. A. Schepers, a Nazi ymous note—not that he actually was. map: any one of those people could po-
who was assigned to take over his no- (Note also the plural, “Jews,” which tentially have betrayed the Franks.
tary business, denounced him to the would suggest that there was a group of Of course, the Nazis were ultimately
For 30 years Meeka Walsh has been the Editor of
authorities. (According to Pankoke et betrayers, rather than only one.) Most responsible for Anne Frank’s death,
the Canadian art magazine Border Crossings. This al., Schepers was angry because Van devastating to the team’s argument is from Hitler and Eichmann all the way
carefully selected compilation of her much-admired den Bergh played a “Jew trick” on him the historians’ revelation that Van den down to the lowly functionary Sil-
essays makes for a thoughtful and engaging book—
rich, broad, and far-ranging. In his introductory
by making the business files inaccessi- Bergh, together with his whole family, berbauer and his henchmen. But on a
essay Barry Schwabsky notes that, “To write an ble; the historians explain the problems was actually in hiding by early 1944. So global level, Anne Frank was betrayed
essay—an essay in the classic sense, that of with the takeover differently.) much for both motive and opportunity. by all those who had the ability to
Montaigne or Hazlitt—means to take a thought out
for a walk. It gets interesting when you don’t know
Pankoke’s team argues that this is help Jews and chose not to. The Dutch
where it’s going—when it’s digressive, mercurial. when things started to fall apart for queen betrayed her by abandoning the
Walsh writes essays that way.” Van den Bergh. Desperate, he is said to If not Arnold van den Bergh, who did nation; one can imagine a different
Collapsing the boundaries between “criticism” and
have called in favors from Nazi connec- betray the Franks? It is hard to imag- outcome had Queen Wilhelmina, like
the “personal essay”, Walsh’s writings are stunning tions he developed through his business ine that this question could ever be an- King Christian X of Denmark, stood
examples of how to look, how to feel, how to see. dealings and his former position on the swered conclusively, simply because so up to the Nazi occupiers and defended
— Chris Kraus
Jewish Council. He found his young- few of the facts relating to the case can the Jews. The US government betrayed
With this collection of forty-seven pieces on est daughter a hiding place through be relied upon. Indeed, it’s possible that her by declining to approve visas for
literature, painting, photography, music and a the Resistance, but he allegedly went the initial scenario, according to which the Frank family to travel via New
multitude of other fascinations, hauntings and
obsessions, Meeka Walsh stakes out a position as
on the run: perhaps, the team suggests Dettmann receives a tip-off call and York to Cuba in 1941—the only real
one of today’s most omnivorous and original lyric- without offering evidence or expla- passes the information to Silberbauer, chance they had to escape the Neth-
essayists. Her work is airborne, bearing aloft nation, to Castle Nijenrode, an estate did not unfold the way Sullivan describes erlands. The Allies betrayed her by
Robert Frank, Walter Benjamin, Fleur Jaeggy,
Clarice Lispector, Rilke and Caravaggio on flights south of Amsterdam owned by Alois it. The team argues that the phone call declining to bomb the railway lines to
that never fail to nail their landings. I love this book. Miedl, a German art dealer with whom to Dettmann is a reason to rule out any Auschwitz. The nations of the world
— Guy Maddin Van den Bergh had worked closely. The suspect without Nazi connections, since betrayed her by turning away Jewish
Malleable Forms: Selected Essays
castle was a hideout for “anybody that it was unusual both that the call came refugees. In imagining that a single
Meeka Walsh feared persecution in Germany,” in- directly to him and that the SD immedi- person could have been responsible for
978-1-927886-60-1 cluding former collaborators, Sullivan ately acted on the information. But the Anne Frank’s death—and not the tidal
$29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD
Order: [email protected] writes. “If the Van den Berghs were at information about the call comes from a wave of fascism that once threatened to
arpbooks.org
the castle, sharing space with German police interrogation of Silberbauer him- engulf the world and may do so yet—
fugitives could hardly have felt safe,” self in 1964, after his part in the arrest are we not betraying her still? Q
Shadows Across the Decades
Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
Monkey Boy confusing, that go back to the people
by Francisco Goldman. who were closest to him in his boyhood
Grove, 323 pp., $27.00; $17.00 (paper) and that have remained crucial to the
mature writer, and thus the novelist, he
Some way through Francisco Gold- would become.
man’s Monkey Boy, the novel’s narra-
tor—an accomplished writer in middle
age called Francisco Goldberg, whose F rancisco Goldman was born in Bos-
name isn’t his only resemblance to the ton to a Guatemalan mother and a
author—recalls “the day I became a Jewish father whose parents were from
journalist.” As an aspiring writer of fic- Ukraine and whose abusive treatment
tion in his early twenties, he left New of his family, recounted in scary detail
York for his mother’s homeland in Cen- in Monkey Boy, goes some way to ex-
tral America, intending to hole up in a plaining why “Frankie,” as he became
house her family owned there and hone known in the Anglo world of his youth,
his craft. But the year was 1979. The fled home as soon as he could. His
country was Guatemala. And those first reported piece for Esquire led to
two facts—as students of cold war his- a decade covering Central America’s
tory know now but most Americans wars, which also gave him the mate-
were scarcely aware of then—meant rial for his first novel, The Long Night
that young Francisco wasn’t arriving of White Chickens (1992), whose nar-
in a bucolic backwater. He was plung- rator’s mother is a guatemalteca much
ing into what was fast becoming one like his own, and whose plot stretched
of the era’s darkest proxy wars, a hor- from Massachusetts to Mesoamerica
rific conflict that was first sparked in and back again. Two ensuing novels
the 1950s by the United States’ covert spanned similar geographies but drew
removal of Guatemala’s left-wing pres- less from his own life than from history
ident, Jacobo Árbenz, and that over and the news. The Ordinary Seaman
the ensuing decades claimed the lives (1998) is the tale of a Nicaraguan vet-
of 200,000 people, displaced a million eran of Central America’s wars who
more, and unleashed the guns and finds himself, with fourteen fellow
gangs that rule the country now. marineros, trapped on a freighter off
The cottage by a lake to which the Brooklyn that’s been abandoned by
young writer hoped to repair, it turns its owner. The Divine Husband (2004)
out, is off-limits: the area is rife with conjures the life and loves of José
guerrilla activity and the military’s Martí, the nineteenth- century Cuban
wanton repression. Young Francisco, statesman, polymath, and poet whose
stuck in Guatemala City, stuffs short migrations involved stints in both Gua-
stories set back home into envelopes temala and New York. Then came The
addressed to prospective publishers and Art of Political Murder and a personal
MFA programs in the US. The violence tragedy that would be the subject of
worsens. Devastating the countryside’s Goldman’s next book.
indigenous peoples, it also spits so many On a beach vacation in Oaxaca in
maimed victims onto the capital’s streets 2007, Goldman and his beloved young
that on some days, a medical student wife, the writer Aura Estrada, were
with whom Francisco is friendly tells playing in the waves when she had a
him, their corpses have “to be stacked freak accident and broke her neck.
like firewood” in the city’s morgue. Goldman’s grief at Estrada’s death
One day she sneaks him in to see: left him, by his own account, suicidal.
But he wrote a heartbreaking memoir
There weren’t bodies stacked of their love and her death that—be-
like firewood that day, but there cause he felt the need to modify certain
were corpses laid out on three of Francisco Goldman; illustration by Edel Rodriguez scenes and craft dialogue from Estra-
the concrete autopsy tables. The da’s journals in order to convey, as he
cement floor had a wet sheen, as and women especially, and why. he received the thrilling news that Es- put it, the “emotional truth” of what
if just hosed. . . . On the autopsy Then what difference could it make quire wanted to buy two of those sto- happened—he published as a novel,
table closest to us lay the corpse to see it for yourself? Because to ries he had submitted by airmail from Say Her Name (2011). It was notable,
of a young man with a trimly witness something like that impli- Guatemala City—and when an editor in Goldman’s oeuvre, for the raw im-
muscular body, a handsome face cates you, it allows that reality to there also wondered, intrigued by the mediacy of its prose composed in grief.
with Amerindian features, eyes go on living inside you, growing talented young man with that return (He has since published another book
serenely closed, skin youthfully darker, more impenetrable, unless address, if he might like to write a re- of nonfiction, 2014’s The Interior Cir-
toned and damp, a black mustache, you accept the challenge of living ported piece about what he was seeing. cuit: A Mexico City Chronicle, and
soft-looking instead of bristly, and with it and trying to make it clearer Goldman has toggled ever since be- much reporting on the unexplained
wisps of chin hair. His torso and instead of ever darker and more tween the divergent but linked demands deaths of young people in Mexico,
arms were speckled with brown- confusing. of imaginative fiction and investiga- where he now lives.) But Say Her Name
ish dots . . . cigarette burns. What tive reporting, and he has increasingly also seems to have given him a mode of
looked like a popped blister, circu- These lines, appearing as they do in a come to operate in the fruitful murk “self-writing” that he has found useful
lar and pink, was where his penis book by Francisco Goldman, can’t but between them. Monkey Boy is a book for reckoning not merely with recent
should have been. make one think of his work as an in- whose narrator shares its author’s biog- traumas but with aspects of his deeper
vestigative reporter who has produced raphy and whose cover has a photo of past that may explain why, for example,
What’s striking about Francisco’s rec- vital chronicles of some of this hemi- him in his awkward youth, staring out he wasn’t able to have a relationship of
ollection of the experience, though, is sphere’s worst atrocities (including a from under the title that is the nick- real loving depth until he met Estrada,
how it changed what he wanted to write. brave inquest into the 1998 murder of name he was given, as a big-eared Jew not long before he was fifty.
This was the day he became a journal- Bishop Juan Gerardi, the leading inves- with a funny name and olive skin, by “Autofiction” has in recent years be-
ist, he explains, not because seeing this tigator of human rights abuses during the cruel kids with whom he grew up come a popular term for novels whose
murdered young man sent him down the Guatemalan civil war*). But Gold- in a working- class suburb of Boston. writer-narrators share much with their
a rabbit hole of ready questions—who man, like his alter ego in Monkey Boy, It’s clear that we are to take the voice authors. Books by Ben Lerner and
was he, who had done this to him, and is a writer whose career began when and memories of this book’s narrator Rachel Cusk, among others, have also
why?—but for other reasons that had as its author’s, and though Goldman’s prompted confusion among readers
to do, at bottom, with himself: *The Art of Political Murder: Who experience as a journalist is vital to his and critics who wonder what exactly
Killed the Bishop? (Grove, 2007); re- backstory here, his focus in Monkey this vague label describes if not au-
Probably all of Guatemala knew viewed in these pages by Aryeh Neier, Boy predates that day in the morgue. thors’ melding, in ways that are as old
who was doing that, to young men November 22, 2007. It involves other realities, dark and as authorship, of real scenes from their
May 26, 2022 23

lives with a frame they make up. The ful thoughts of the future. At forty- niña bien from the tropics like you ever proud of you, Mami,” says her son.
critic Christian Lorentzen has sug- nine, Goldberg may be “the sort of end up in a joint like this?” “That you were brave enough to do
gested that the autofiction label is best self-sufficient man people think must that, to have your love affair.”
used to describe works in which “the not really require or especially want Frankie and his father eventually
book’s creation is inscribed in the book anyone to be close to.” The writer has T he answer reaches back to her ambi- found, before Bert’s death, a kind of
itself,” and Monkey Boy certainly qual- his books, after all, “and an eventful tious parents in Guatemala City, who equilibrium, if not love, in a relation-
ifies. It’s a book about, and also by, a past to ruminate on, just look at him, helped run a thriving toy store and en- ship that “was a failure in pretty much
writer journeying across space but also invited on the radio to talk about his rolled her in the city’s Colegio Inglés every way.” It’s to the writer’s great re-
back in time, at least in his mind, to the enemy General Cara de Culo.” But he’s Americano, before sending her and lief that he hasn’t become his father in
places that made him. ready to try again. Or so he imagines as her brother to college in California; to the way he treats his intimates. But he
he sends the cute Mexican woman he’s Boston, where in the 1950s she landed also wonders at how, in certain ways, he
recently met in Brooklyn hopefully- in a Catholic boardinghouse after her has become his mother—an immigrant
F rancisco Goldberg’s dusky trek funny text messages about pelicans and mother determined that she wouldn’t whose life has spanned two cultures
across New England in winter begins bike rides, and he checks his phone at marry any of her pie- eyed suitors back and countries and who perhaps found,
in the dingy men’s room at New York’s anxious intervals throughout the week- home, and where she worked as a bilin- after years had passed, that she never
Penn Station, where, he recalls, Louis end to see if she’s replied. gual secretary for the Guatemalan con- felt at home in the United States but no
Kahn died of a heart attack. We get The train crosses into Massachusetts. sul; to her brief ensuing stint, before longer fit in her homeland either. “One
the sense, from the writer’s musings He ponders its bygone Amerindian sa- she found a career teaching Spanish of the strangest things I’ve done with
on the great architect’s sad end and chems and remembers Proust describ- at the Berklee School of Music, in the my own life,” he reflects, “has been to
the soppressata hero he grabs from his ing how “a man, during the second half employ of a denture company whose follow her path, in a sense willfully di-
go-to salumeria on Eighth Avenue for of his life, might become the reverse technicians included an athletic Jew vesting in order to pour myself into that
his train ride to Boston, that he’s fa- of who he was in the first.” Finally he who told her tales of his own immigrant mold of divided.”
miliar with this itinerary. Goldberg is reaches Boston’s South Station. His past at Boston’s best restaurants, while
going to visit his mother in her nursing feet lead him from the station’s doors, they were courting, before he moved
home and give an interview on public as he says they always do here, to a re- her, after they wed, to the lonely suburb O n his last night in town, after shut-
radio about a Guatemalan general who stored eighteenth- century brig in the where she’d remain. ting down the hotel bar, he finds his
had a bishop murdered there and hates harbor nearby. In high school he had Some of this the writer learns from weekend’s denouement on a late-night
Goldberg’s guts. His memories of the a job there teaching tourists about the eighty-year- old Mamita, who’s more walk down darkened streets. Through
sad town where he grew up “amid rocky Boston Tea Party; the vessel holds an- willing, as her memory dies, to mine the glowing window of a brownstone in
field and cold forest” will animate this other telling memory, too. After his its contents for her Frankie. He knows Back Bay, the writer glimpses a paint-
journey; he woke up in Brooklyn think- first novel came out, he’d returned to more from his sister and from his uncle. ing that prompts him to conjure a scene
ing about the sounds his father, Bert, the city on a book tour and was con- Over the weekend, he learns more still that’s drawn not from memory but from
made when he rose at dawn, in the writ- tacted by a reporter from The Boston from one of the au pairs who lived in his whiskey-warmed imagination. It
er’s boyhood home, before rumbling Globe. Thinking the reporter wanted the room Bert built in their house’s involves his young mother having her
off in his Oldsmobile to his job crafting to profile him, he proposed meeting basement, and who tell him over coffee portrait painted, in a townhouse like
porcelain dentures for the Potashnik by this boat where it all began. But the about how many times “Yoli” packed this one, by a war-hero friend of her new
Tooth Company in Cambridge. Being reporter, when he arrived, was glum: her bags and tried to leave, only to be husband’s. The sequence’s dreamlike
reminded of the man whose anger de- “We received a fax at the newspaper scared at the last minute into staying; leaps, in a narrative whose revelations
fined his boyhood, “feeling like his that makes a serious allegation.” The about how after she had brought her have up to now felt finely measured,
shadow is falling across the decades,” woman who’d sent it, having read the young son home to “Guate” it was her threaten to lose the reader. It’s almost as
doesn’t augur well for the trip ahead. Globe’s review of his novel, was an devout Catholic mother, his Abuelita, if the creator of this narrator who’s con-
The train leaves the city’s sprawl and old classmate from high school: “Lana who insisted she return to Boston when vinced us that the events he’s recounted
enters Connecticut. On the seat next Gatto alleges that you are not a His- little Frankie came down with tubercu- all occurred during one weekend rather
to him, Goldberg has his sandwich and panic, err, or a Latino. She says that in losis; and about how the true source of than over several visits, as perhaps
a novel by Muriel Spark. But there’s high school your name was Frank and Bert’s rage, when she returned and he seems more likely, wants to remind
nothing like gazing from a moving that you’re Jewish.” began abusing her, was his impotence. us that we’re reading a work of fiction
train or, here, contemplating “the ruin The bemused writer’s riposte to this To the people with whom Francisco whose author’s name isn’t Goldberg but
and splendor of Bridgeport,” for turn- nonsense was sharp: “I admit it. I am grew up, the Latino side of his heritage Goldman. But this is the prerogative of
ing one’s mind to where one’s been. As Jewish, and all these years I’ve been toward which he would gravitate was a novelist. And it may be the imperative
the train rolls from New Haven to the hiding my true identity behind the last even more confounding than his Jew- of this one, who is both the son of a soci-
gray seascape of Mystic, he recounts name Goldberg.” The reporter skulked ishness. But he’s often wondered, he ety “that somehow collectively realized
parts of his past that will fill the en- off. But the problem captured in his admits, why as a young author he didn’t there was a certain kind of truthfulness
counters of his weekend with meaning: queries (which also find the writer just adopt his mother’s surname (who it was essential to do without” and a
dining with a girl he adored in tenth patiently explaining why he didn’t go wants to be “another Jewish writer”?) writer who, as Goldman once told an
grade, now a prosperous lawyer in Bos- around Boston suburbs in the 1970s to avoid confusing the philistines, as interviewer, has “never liked the mem-
ton; sitting with his “Mamita” in her waving a Guatemalan flag and insisting common in publishing as they are in life, oir form because I tend to think that
nursing home as she giggles in demen- on being called “Francisco”) persists. who want us all to be “just one thing.” memory fictionalizes anyway.”
tia’s face; meeting with another guate- The Irish and Italian kids with whom It was only through reading other Jew- Either way, the memoir-as-novel
malteca who spent years in their house he grew up, having embraced a white ish writers who were steeped in Cath- Goldman has written about the people
as a kind of au pair, and who knows identity their forebears couldn’t, po- olic mores, he says, that he learned to who made him breathes with expiation.
things about the sources of Mamita’s liced its edges fiercely. Young Frank’s embrace what Natalia Ginzburg called It’s an unloading of truths that no lon-
sadness and Bert’s rage their son never first joyous experience of making out her pathos ebraico—a fortifying sense ger feel heavy, in a life that has landed,
did. He recalls a motel where his father with a girl turned into the deep hurt of of his Jewishness, alongside the other as this book’s end suggests, in a good
brought the family (“Was that motel showing up at school to find everyone parts of himself, as feeding his outsid- place: his crush texts him back.
around here, in Mystic? Falmouth? repeating a rumor that she’d said kiss- er’s sense for always seeing how no one Today Goldman has a new partner
Woods Hole?”), from whose balcony ing Monkey Boy was like being chewed is “just one thing.” and a young daughter. He’s beloved by
he looked down “into the pool where by an ape. He shares with his mother an old a generation of younger writers who
Mamita was swimming laps in a light- Little wonder that he was unable to photo he got from a distant cousin in have built careers based on his con-
blue bathing suit, her hair tucked under try to kiss anyone for years afterward— Guatemala, which attests that her own ception of America as composed of the
a bathing cap.” or that his first “reunion” with anyone criollo clan isn’t as white as “good fami- essential bonds, often violent, that join
Most of the memories, though, that from high school is the dinner, on his lies” in that part of the world all pretend: the United States to the lands and peo-
ramify through this landscape and have first night in Boston, with a girl from it depicts her mustached grandfather ples to our south. As a member of that
echoed through his life are darker—the back then with whom he’s happily able and his wife from the country’s coastal generation who’s also a half Jew from
first time Bert, enraged by his ten-year- to recall shared traumas and express lowlands, who’s plainly of African de- New England, I share even more with
old son raiding his coin collection to tender memories. As his consciousness scent. Mamita giggles in her wheelchair. Goldman than his sense of “Ameri-
buy Matchbox cars, hit him; his moth- moves backward and forward in time, She giggles louder when Frankie asks can” as a word that connotes not one
er’s chirped protests during all the he remains tied to Boston Common her if it’s true that, back when her only country but a hemisphere. And reading
beatings that followed (“Bert! Not in in March, with its frozen grass and air escape from Bert’s house was the read- this painful, refractive, beautiful book,
the head!”); his uncanny ability, as of “everything tired of being dead.” ings and talks she attended at the Latin I couldn’t but be reminded of when I
a young reporter, to “flatten out” in And he remains tied, too, to the quest American Society in Boston, she’d met met him for the first time, a few months
dangerous situations, which he now that will find him, the next afternoon, a man there. She takes another cookie. after his beloved Aura’s death, when he
attributes to the ways he trained him- bringing a tin of his mother’s favorite “Yes, I did.” Miguel was from Mexico was still raw with grief. He had come to
self, as a boy, to weather the fists of a butter cookies to the Green Meadows City and worked for Honeywell, which Berkeley to discuss The Art of Politi-
father who was a kind mentor to several retirement home out by Route 128, sent him to Boston to learn about com- cal Murder. When he said then through
kids in their neighborhood but couldn’t where she’s concluding her life a long puters. He had long hair and liked to watery eyes that if the murderers he’d
stand his own. way from where it began. He makes her read, and she loved him. They’d spent fingered in that book wanted him dead,
There are also memories, from later, laugh by asking her, as he does every a few months, before he went home, he was ready to die, I believed him.
of women loved and lost, and hope- time he visits, “Ay, Mamita, how did a meeting at the Hilltop Sheraton. “I’m He’s not ready now. Q
How Do Whispers Become Movements?
Susie Linfield
The Quiet Before:

On the Unexpected Origins
of Radical Ideas
by Gal Beckerman.
Crown, 331 pp., $28.99
The most thrilling part of Ten Days

That Shook the World (1919), John
Reed’s account of the Bolshevik Rev-
olution in 1917, is not the storming of
the Winter Palace or Leon Trotsky’s
impassioned speeches. It is the citi-
zens’ debates— described as “hot,”
“endless,” “violent,” and “stormy”—
over what course the revolution should
take, or even whether it should take any
course at all:
Lectures, debates, speeches—in

theatres, circuses, school-houses,
clubs, Soviet meeting-rooms, Union
headquarters, barracks. . . . Meet-
ings in the trenches at the Front,
in village squares, factories. . . . For
months in Petrograd, and all over
Russia, every street-corner was a
public tribune. In railway trains,
street-cars, always the spurting up of
impromptu debate, everywhere. . . .
Conversation, at least in Reed’s excit-

ing and highly partisan telling, was at
the heart of the revolutionary process
in its very early days. This was democ-
racy in action, democracy in the streets
(which we, of course, know would soon
be brutally stifled).
Seven decades later, this culture of
disputation emerged as a central theme
in Timothy Garton Ash’s The Magic Geoff McFetridge: Untitled Study, 2019
Lantern, his eyewitness report on the
Eastern European revolutions of 1989. stagram influencers, but where are the his experiment, Peiresc collected—via into a new way of seeing, of knowing,
In Prague’s Civic Forum, all the exi- passionate whisperers of today? letters— a wide-ranging group of col- of experiencing the world?
gent issues— socialism versus a mar- laborators, including a priest in Syria, In spite of the formidable logistics,
ket economy, free elections and a free a former cardinal’s secretary (and for- the experiment worked. On the night
press, the rule of law, parliamentary Beckerman’s first chapter is a profile mer slave) in Tunis, a Jesuit in Quebec, of August 28, 1635, Peiresc’s far-flung
democracy—were debated by an ex- of the natural philosopher and proto- and various interlocutors in France, correspondents documented their mea-
traordinary group of students, actors, globalist Nicolas- Claude Fabri de Germany, and the Netherlands. surements of the lunar eclipse, then
workers, economists, philosophers, Peiresc. The place is Aix- en-Provence; For the longitude experiment, (slowly) sent them to him. He and his
poets, historians, playwrights. “To the year is 1635. Peiresc had a daunt- Peiresc needed to teach his would-be amateur scientists discovered the Med-
watch all this,” Garton Ash wrote, “was ingly capacious intellect; among his colleagues a new way of thinking, in iterranean’s true shape, which differed
to watch politics in a primary, sponta- projects, Beckerman observes, were which the acquisition of knowledge significantly from the depictions on
neous, I almost said ‘pure’ form.” would be based on skepticism, ob- contemporary maps. Those who read
Gal Beckerman, too, is interested in an investigation of ancient weights servation, and reason, rather than on his findings were, Peiresc wrote, “rav-
political talk. His new book, The Quiet and measures, a study of the religious dogma or fealty to the past. ished and almost beside themselves.”
Before, is essentially a history of con- Roman calendar of 354 . . . , a cat- Beckerman explains: Beckerman’s subsequent subjects
versation, beginning in seventeenth- alog of gemstones that he and the are wildly eclectic. They include Fear-
century France and ending in Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens Redrawing a map might sound like gus O’Connor, a charismatic leader of
modern- day Cairo, Charlottesville, had been compiling together, the a mundane cause upon which to Britain’s nineteenth- century Chartist
Miami, and Minneapolis. Beckerman publication of all the Samaritan concentrate such intense attention, movement for universal male suffrage;
concentrates not on the revolutionary versions of the Pentateuch in He- but the letters tell a different story. Mina Loy, a British-born artist, writer,
moment, though—the capture of the brew, Aramaic, and Arabic, and an Peiresc had to gently pull these po- and fellow-traveler of the Italian Fu-
Bastille, say, or Fidel Castro’s trium- exhaustive history of Provence. tential observers toward a new re- turists; Natalya Gorbanevskaya, a poet
phant arrival in Havana—but on the lationship with nature, one not at and Soviet dissident who documented
antecedents of transformative politi- That’s a partial list. all familiar or safe. human rights abuses in an under-
cal change. “The incubation of radical Beckerman focuses on Peiresc’s “ob- ground publication called the Chroni-
new ideas,” he writes, “is a very distinct session with longitude,” by which he Letters were slow, which means that for cle and was imprisoned in a psychiatric
process with certain conditions: a tight sought to calculate the exact dimen- Peiresc’s purposes they were perfect. hospital in the early 1970s1 ; and the
space, lots of heat, passionate whisper- sions of the Mediterranean Sea. This “The ruminative aspect of letters, the punk-rock Riot Grrrls of the 1990s.
ing, and a degree of freedom to work challenging task—which would be of embedded patience of them,” Beck- The movements they were involved in
toward a common, focused aim.” invaluable help to sailors, traders, and erman writes, “avoided what might weren’t necessarily, or at least immedi-
The conversations that he documents explorers—required the simultane- otherwise feel like the locked horn con- ately, successful. Some met with violent
occur not just in person—indeed, rarely ous observation, from multiple geo- frontation of one system of truth trying opposition; others, like Italian Futur-
in person— but through letters, peti- graphical locations, of a lunar eclipse. to overtake another.” Indeed, Beck- ism, veered ignominiously into fascism.
tions, newspapers, manifestos, samizdat Peiresc was working in the early days erman calls this chapter “Patience,” What interests Beckerman in each
journals, and feminist zines. And they of the scientific revolution, which de- though it reads like a thriller. How case is how groups of people emerge into
take place, these days, on social media. manded an epistemological and eth- could Peiresc find his collaborators,
Whether this constitutes a continuation ical transformation— one that was and how convince them of his strange 1
Beckerman’s first book, When They
of the radical tradition or its negation is extraordinarily dangerous. (See, for project’s worth? Would they all show Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic
a— perhaps the— crucial question that instance, Galileo, who was hauled be- up at the right time and understand Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (Hough-
Beckerman explores. We know of the fore the Inquisition for daring to state his instructions? Could they take this ton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), was a
Twitter ranters, Facebook trolls, and In- that the earth circles the sun.) To stage seemingly small yet monumental step study of Jewish refuseniks in the USSR.
May 26, 2022 25

political self-consciousness through dis- it was also the means by which Accra’s
— Available from all booksellers and nyrb.com or dorothyproject.com — cussion and debate, and the particular teachers, civil servants, and others could
modes of communication they develop begin to define themselves through
that enable them to do so. The process questions and answers, controversy and
is both individual and collective: each dispute; many of its pages consisted of
person who participates is changed, but anonymous contributions from read-
develops only in concert with others. ers. Like Peiresc, Zik sought to instill a
And only through recognizing others, new sensibility: one that would lead his
too; each of these movements addressed readers to “see beyond their fractured
a kind of loneliness. state as a collection of tribes.”
Of the Chartist petition campaign, The paper’s subjects were cultural as
Beckerman asserts: much as political— as if the two could
be disentangled. Which Dickens novel
The petition had given this newly was best? What were the benefits of life
self-aware working class an aim, insurance? Which was better: polyg-
had bound them together, turning amy or “the European form” of mar-
the particles of anger that hung riage? In short, Beckerman writes:
in the air above factory floors and
in the small, dank living spaces of How much of traditional culture
coal miners into something more. and practice would have to be
NEW AND SELECTED REVENGE OF THE The act of signing their names to thrown off to seize upon a modern
STORIES SCAPEGOAT: A NOVEL this document had unified them, national identity? These questions
Cristina Rivera Garza Caren Beilin taking their inchoate frustration . . . snaked through every column and
and sharpen[ing] it into a common reader response.
Trans. by Sarah Booker and others
“The author lands on an infectious purpose.
“The stories in this collection are as and perfect blend of cultural criti- It may seem strange to us— exhausted as
varied as Rivera Garza’s remarkable cism, wry writing advice (‘Don’t Gorbanevskaya’s typewritten publica- we are by the rancorous chatter on cable
career, and this book is an excellent bother writing a character since tion, Beckerman notes, would similarly television and Twitter—that in Accra,
introduction to a unique writer who people change’), and magnificently help Russian dissidents “pick up the unfettered debate was seen as the en-
weird storytelling. Beilin’s account of scattered pieces and put them together, abler, not the enemy, of unity. “It was
deserves to be recognized not just in
fixing their attention on the construc- the arguing that allowed them to peek
Mexico, but all over the world.” reemergence manages to be both hi-
tion of an ongoing argument. . . . Each over the dividers of tribe or social status
—Kirkus, starred review larious and deeply moving.”
saw their plight as unique. Now they and establish new allegiances,” Becker-
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
would literally be on the same page.” man observes. Conflict, disagreement,
“This hypnotic, riveting collection of Reading, circulating, and contribut- altercation, intellectual friction— call it
new and previously published stories “Animated with the moxie and wit of ing to the Chronicle brought its par- what you will: these were the building
from MacArthur Fellow Rivera Garza Acker and Tillman, Caren Beilin is ticipants closer to one another and blocks of solidarity, political awareness,
. . . ought to earn [her] the wider at- one of the most bizarre and fearless fostered a kind of psychic cohesion, and a shared sense of citizenship and
tention she deserves.” writers of her generation.” “shattering the distinctly Soviet feeling nation.
—Publishers Weekly, starred review —Catherine Lacey of having two selves.” It was the pre- Like most courageous editors, Zik ran
condition for what Václav Havel called into trouble. In 1936 he printed an arti-
Dorothy, a publishing project living in truth. cle titled “Has the African a God?” The
Distributed through New York Review Books British authorities, already eager to shut
down the troublesome paper, indicted
Beckerman’s wide range is impressive Zik for sedition. But he was eventually
and makes The Quiet Before the most acquitted, and the affair was regarded
original book I’ve read in a long time. as a great victory by anticolonial intel-
One particularly fascinating chapter lectuals. Kwame Nkrumah, the leader
focuses on Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Ni- of Ghana’s independence movement,
gerian editor of The African Morning described the trial and acquittal as “the
Post, an anticolonialist newspaper in first warning puff of smoke that a fire
1930s Accra, the capital of what was had been lit, a fire that would prove im-
B.B. then the Gold Coast (now Ghana). possible to extinguish.”
Paperback • $12.99 • For ages 8–12 The Gold Coast, a British colony, had This is where Beckerman ends his
On sale May 31st a small but burgeoning middle class. Its story, though he notes that, decades
members were immersed in local cul- later, Azikiwe became the first presi-
ture and traditions, but they also loved dent of independent Nigeria. The post-
Hollywood films and Shakespeare, and script to the postscript is less happy: in
they sought “a fast track to modernity.” 1966 he was ousted by a military coup
Part fantasy, part ecological parable, The Little Grey Men Go Down the Bright Stream was But how to get there— and more im- and barely escaped assassination, and
first published in 1948 and remains as exciting, poignant, and far-seeing as ever. portant, what did this mean? The Af- Nigeria has been racked by exactly the
Sneezewort, Baldmoney, Dodder, and Cloudberry are the last gnomes in Britain. Life rican Morning Post became the forum kind of tribal and ethnic violence that
along the Folly Brook, where the gnomes live companionably with the birds and beasts, is through which they could debate the Azikiwe fought against so valiantly.
wild and wet, just the way they like it. But one spring day, waking up from a long winter construction of an independent, mod-
sleep, the gnomes are confronted by an inescapable fact: Their brook is drying up and ern Africa: one that neither supinely
will soon be uninhabitable. mimicked nor resentfully rejected the It’s a long way from there to here: from
A sequel to B.B.’s award-winning The Little Grey Men, this novel is about the gnomes’
West. Azikiwe— affectionately known the “healthy friction” fostered, at least
perilous and daring search for a new home. Warwickshire and the rest of their beloved
as “Zik” to his colleagues, readers, sometimes, by predigital forms of com-
country has been despoiled by men, and the gnomes must find another place as wild and
and countrymen— became the man to munication to the decidedly unhealthy
wet as their home once was.
guide this dialogue. friction of today’s social media world,
Azikiwe was born in 1904 in Nigeria. with its energetic invective, charac-
“A couple of years ago I found myself gazing at the cover of a book I’d loved as a child . . . I To further his education, in 1925 he trav- ter assassinations, fog of lies, and
braced myself in case its magic had faded in the 40 years since it had been read to me at eled to the US, where he encountered attention- challenged TikTok junkies.
bedtime. . . I loved B.B.’s illustrations, the precise and detailed rendering of the natural black intellectuals like Alain Locke, This is the subject of Beckerman’s final
history in the book, and most of all the feeling it gave me of a secret world to which I was Ralph Bunche, Thurgood Marshall, chapters— and, as he notes in his intro-
being granted privileged access. I needn’t have worried. As I turned the pages I found myself and Langston Hughes. He attended duction, the troubled inspiration for his
enchanted all over again.” —Melinda Harrison on The Little Grey Men, The Guardian several universities and was eventu- book. He recalls how, while marching
Also by B.B.
ally accepted into a Ph.D. program at with his wife and daughters to protest
Columbia, but his place, he felt, was Donald Trump’s election, he noticed,
The Little Grey Men
“My dad bought the beautifully illustrated book The Little Grey Men,
Africa. “I shall dedicate my life to the “in a moment of cynicism or clarity, that
by B.B. (ages 8 to 12), for me when I was 8 or 9. It’s about three gnomes emancipation of the continent of Africa everyone around me was incessantly
searching for their long-lost brother. Aside from being a rattling good from the shackles of imperialism, and to posing for their camera phones. . . .
adventure story, it’s a wonderful sort of nature study, following gnomes the redemption of my country from the For all the power social media has lent
through the seasons.” —Julie Andrews, Parents Magazine manacles of foreign rule,” he wrote. In to movements . . . it has also stunted
1934 he moved to the Gold Coast and them.” The last section of The Quiet
Available from booksellers and www.nyrb.com became editor of the Accra paper. Before brings us close to the present.
By American standards, The African Beckerman discusses the alt-right or-
Morning Post was unsophisticated. But ganizers of the 2017 Charlottesville

demonstration, the democracy activists dred Morsi supporters during a sit-in.2 Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement, of ur- evil. (Black Visions defines crime
of Cairo’s Arab Spring, and the racial- Today, under the rule of General Abdel formed in 2008 to support striking as “a colonial concept used to control
justice movements that gained momen- Fattah el- Sisi, Egypt is a police state; workers, he ignores years of political oppressed people” that is “usually em-
tum after George Floyd’s murder. the repression is worse than ever; many organizing by farmers, civil servants, bedded in white-supremacist, capitalist,
In a chapter called “The Torches,” of the young activists are in exile or jail. students, and neighborhood activists. ableist, patriarchal logics.”) As the orga-
Beckerman describes how, in the Beckerman views this as a cautionary The Quiet Before is a study of radical nizers emerged from their social-media
months before the Unite the Right tale about the limits of organizing via so- movements’ antecedents; here the au- cocoons, their fellow citizens told them
rally in Charlottesville, leaders of var- cial media, which thrives on conflict, im- thor gives them short shrift. some unwelcome things.
ious alt-right groups created a small, mediacy, sensationalism, superficiality, There are more substantial problems “People were basically, like, we need
invitation- only chat room— a safe drama, and anonymity. These are not with the Tahrir Square chapter. Beck- more police,” Gilmer told Beckerman.
space!—to discuss organizational strat- democracy’s building blocks. Thus, by erman has been strongly influenced by “And it was really jarring for me. . . .
egies. (Andrew Anglin, a particularly their very nature, Facebook and similar the media theorist Marshall McLuhan Social media definitely obfuscated how
notorious neo-Nazi, cited the commu- platforms “proved extremely ineffective and his oft- quoted motto that “the me- we were thinking about those things.”
nity organizer Saul Alinsky as his in- at allowing people to focus, to organize dium is the message”; indeed, The Quiet In Minneapolis, Noor, too, discovered
spiration.) They were preoccupied with their thoughts, to become ideologically Before is essentially an exploration of the “uncomfortable reality” that “most
how to reach, rather than alarm, po- coherent, to strategize, to pick leaders,” that idea. Beckerman concentrates on people did not understand or like the
tential supporters. Thus, swastikas and Beckerman argues. “In short, the revo- Tahrir’s secular, educated, tech-savvy, notion of abolishing the police.” Never-
hoods were to be strictly avoided; after lutionaries were denied everything they anti-authoritarian youth, whom he theless, Black Visions raised $30 million
much debate, a uniform of white shirts needed if they were going to win the greatly admires. (So do I.) But Tahrir in donations and pushed hard for Ques-
and khakis was approved. “This seems day—a tall order in any circumstance.” showed— as did Charlottesville—that, tion 2— abolition of the Minneapolis
trivial, but it also represented the first The Tahrir movement’s experience ultimately, the message is the message, police, which Noor described as part of
of several small victories enabled by of a fast rise and precipitous fall was and that it will subsume the medium. “a people’s agenda”—to appear on the
the platform,” Beckerman comments. preceded by Iran’s Green Movement of Egypt is a culturally rich but extremely ballot last November. Beckerman con-
“What everyone agreed upon is that 2009, though Beckerman does not dis- poor, socially conservative, religiously cludes this chapter with the optimistic
they should look like nice young men.” cuss this. There, too, young, educated observant country with a far too low lit- observation that these organizers were
Burning flags— even a “fag flag”— opponents of the repressive regime or- eracy rate. There is little indication that now “drawing on a different metabo-
was debated and rejected. (“A terrible ganized via social media and thronged, most Egyptians yearn for the secular de- lism and, even if slow, it was working.”
idea,” one participant wrote, arguing peacefully but with elation, into the mocracy of which the young organizers But in Minneapolis, the abolition refer-
instead for “intelligent and level rea- capital’s streets; there they met violence dreamed. That is why the “Arab Spring” endum was defeated by twelve points—
soning, and civilized manner.”) Ditto and defeat at the hands of the army, the moniker, with its echoes of 1848 and with the margin of rejection far higher in
book-burning, which “will accomplish police, and the Revolutionary Guards. Prague 1968, was itself a misnomer.4 the three districts that are majority- or
nothing other than making us look like At the time, the Green Movement was plurality-black. Once again, it was the
we’re scared of literature.” lauded— glibly and obnoxiously— as message, not the medium, that prevailed.
Of course, we know that the Char- the “Twitter Revolution” by some in Beckerman’s penultimate chapter
lottesville rally was anything but intel- the Western press. The revolutionaries focuses on two racial-justice organi-
ligent, reasonable, or civilized, and this in Tehran knew better, and criticized zations: Dream Defenders, which was O urs is hardly the first era to be daz-
was not just a case of bad optics. Anti- themselves for their reliance on social founded in Miami after the 2012 kill- zled, excited, bewildered, and fright-
Semitic and other racist slogans were media technologies. ing of Trayvon Martin, and Black Vi- ened by rapid technological changes.
chanted by demonstrators carrying lit The activist Afsaneh Moqadam ex- sions, founded in Minneapolis in 2017. The 1950s may seem, in retrospect, to
torches, Nazi and Confederate flags pressed this self- critique in his pseud- Some striking parallels with the Tahrir be an age of technological innocence,
abounded, dozens of counterprotesters onymous book Death to the Dictator! movement emerge. There was the same but things felt different at the time. In a
were injured, and one of them, Heather (2010): suspicion of leadership; Beckerman 1957 essay ominously titled “The Ene-
Heyer, was killed. The presumed calm- rather gently calls this “horizontalism,” mies of the Novel,” the critic Granville
ness of the movement’s cyber- debates Iranians discover that they have an though he allows that this can become Hicks lamented:
was overwhelmed by the fury of its ac- ambivalent attitude toward tech- “a fetish.” There was the same use of
tual politics. In my view, this chapter nology. Cell phone cameras, Face- brutal visuals, especially the gruesome Technology has opened the whole
is therefore a warning about the limits book, Twitter, the satellite stations: phone video documenting George world to us, and has laid the prob-
and illusions of cyberspace rather than the media are supposed to reflect Floyd’s agonized last minutes. And lem of every part of it on our
an example of its success. what is going on, but they seem, in there was the same growing recognition doorstep. Inattention becomes
What interests Beckerman, though— fact, to be making everything hap- that the movement’s reliance on memes, indispensable to survival. . . . The
what, frankly, impresses him—is what pen much faster. There’s no time to hashtags, and tweets— all fostering an danger is that we shall lose, or per-
happens when “a self-selecting group argue what it all means—what the addiction to the sugar high of imme- haps never acquire, the ability to
retreats to a quieter, slower, more pri- protesters want, if they’re ready to diate, short-lived attention—was less pay attention to anything, to listen
vate, and less performative sphere” to die. The movement rolls forward, a reflection of real power than a dead fully, with all our being.
work out its politics. This is something, gathering speed, and no one really end. Beckerman quotes Rachel Gilmer,
he shows, that proved difficult for the knows where it’s going. a Dream Defenders organizer: “Social He probably would have appreciated
democratic movements in Cairo and media is constantly fueling and draining Johann Hari’s new book, Stolen Focus:
Minneapolis. Cairenes were soon to learn this bitter our egos— making us feel hyper belit- Why You Can’t Pay Attention— and
lesson. Beckerman quotes Alaa Abd tled and narcissistic at the same time,” How to Think Deeply Again. 5
el-Fattah, one of Egypt’s most per- she wrote to her followers in 2015. In re- Yet our situation, and our anxieties,
It is in Beckerman’s chapter on the 2011 sistent and most persecuted democracy sponse, the Dream Defenders retreated are qualitatively different, not simply a
protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that his activists, who spoke to an interviewer in from social media and began organizing reiteration of the past; as Beckerman
harshest, most direct criticisms of social 2019 while briefly released from prison. the old-fashioned way: speaking one-on- writes, “In the same way that a car was
media emerge. He narrates the events: (As of this writing, he’s back in jail for a one to people in the black community. never really just a faster horse, talking
how the gruesome photograph of Khaled new five-year term.) El-Fattah rued the In Minneapolis, an exhausted Black online was not just a virtual café.” Dig-
Said, a young computer programmer “regression” of Egyptian politics since Lives Matter organizer named Miski ital technologies have changed our love
tortured to death by the Egyptian po- Tahrir: “It’s not the fault of Egyptians; Noor, a Somali immigrant, had come to lives and our politics, not to mention the
lice in 2010, inspired a Facebook page it’s the medium they are using. You’re a similar conclusion about the political ways in which we talk, think, imagine,
called “We Are All Khaled Said,” which just swallowed up by Facebook. . . . This limits of social media. In response, Noor study, read, write, cook, eat, shop, dress,
rapidly gained hundreds of thousands is a trap.”3 and six others founded a new group photograph, draw, invent, teach, work,
of followers; how a giant demonstration Beckerman’s analysis of the Tahrir called Black Visions, “a Black-led Queer play, have sex, and raise our children.
that seemed to bridge Egypt’s religious, events is right as far as it goes, but it is and Trans centering organization,” (No doubt I’ve left out a lot.) Beck-
cultural, and political divides was orga- also disappointingly limited. An enor- which concentrated on what might be erman contends that the Internet “is
nized online; how the jubilant days in mous amount has been written about called slow organizing. “If Black Lives where we live our lives in the twenty-
the square led to the previously unimag- the so- called Arab Spring by Western Matter found itself contorted by social first century. It has almost completely
inable: President Hosni Mubarak’s exit. observers, Arab journalists, and par- media’s impulses,” Beckerman writes, annihilated”— a startling word—“all
Quickly, though, problems emerged: ticipants; Beckerman adds little that is “Black Visions set its own rhythm.” those other modes of communication.”
sharp differences among the initial new. And though he briefly mentions But the problem, as with Tahrir, was Some of us fear that an untamable
protesters became clear; elections were to be found not only in these groups’ use monster has been unleashed. Perhaps
hastily called, which the well-organized or misuse of technologies. Something that is, as my students would say, a gen-
Muslim Brotherhood won; the new 2
See Yasmine El Rashidi, “Egypt: The was amiss with the vision. Black Visions erational thing—social media, they tell
president, Mohamed Morsi, rapidly Misunderstood Agony,” The New York and Dream Defenders are dedicated to me, is essential to their personal and
though predictably established an au- Review, September 26, 2013. defunding—indeed abolishing—police intellectual lives. But the experiences
thoritarian Islamist regime. This led to 3
For more on Alaa Abd el-Fattah, see and prisons, which they view as a kind of the young activists in Tehran, Cairo,
an enormous recall movement, the ar- Ursula Lindsey’s review in these pages Miami, and Minneapolis suggest that
my’s intervention, and the 2013 Rabaa of his You Have Not Yet Been Defeated: 4
See Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, they too share that fear. Q
massacre, in which, on a single day, Selected Works, 2011–2021 (Seven Sto- “This Is Not a Revolution,” The New
5
security forces killed at least nine hun- ries, 2022), April 21, 2022. York Review, November 8, 2012. Crown, 2022.
May 26, 2022 27

May 26, 2022 29
A Fable of Agency
Brenda Wineapple
Special Collections, University of Virginia Library

The Devil’s Half Acre: self compulsory, is commandeered by
The Untold Story of How One a despot who could sell the enslaved
Woman Liberated the South’s woman and her children at the drop
Most Notorious Slave Jail of a hat. Acknowledging this, and rec-
by Kristen Green. ognizing that we don’t know much—
Seal, 332 pp., $30.00 and definitely not how Mary herself
regarded this liaison— Green reports,
In The Allure of the Archives (1989), accurately, that she learned to read and
a gem of a book, the French historian write. Where and how she learned is
Arlette Farge talks about unearthing, not known.
insofar as it’s possible, a past that’s not In 1856 Mary’s two daughters, aged
quite past— particularly in relation to about eleven and nine, were sent to the
the lives of women, whose histories Ipswich Female Seminary in Ipswich,
have often been hidden, forgotten, or Massachusetts. Regrettably, this is one
written over, women spoken about of the instances where Green glides
but whom we seldom hear speaking. from speculation into assertion: since
Combing through the judicial archives Mary “undoubtedly worried” about
at the Préfecture of Paris, Farge reads her daughters as they approached pu-
the sullen or angry answers that or- berty, Green surmises that “Robert
dinary eighteenth- century Parisian Lumpkin may also have wanted to
women, some of the city’s poorest and protect them from the fate he imposed
most vulnerable, give to the police who on Mary— being sexually abused and
have arrested them. And she knows forced to have children.” This leads her
that to understand what they say, or to conclude that Robert “knew that he
don’t say, we need to care and not to needed to get them to safety,” reiterat-
care: to distance ourselves with empa- ing that he knew that “moving his girls
thy while we set aside expectations and Lumpkin’s Jail; engraving from A History of the Richmond Theological Seminary, 1895 out of Richmond was the best way to
assumptions. Deciphering what’s left protect them.”
in the archives, Farge writes, “entails a ents might ask Lumpkin to “see that the One, a young girl named Mary There are documented cases of such
roaming voyage through the words of negroes wash & fix up as well as they Jane, was so well thought of by the hypocrisy; that this wealthy white
others, and a search for a language that can for the market.” And from the scant proprietor that he decided to keep slave trader might educate his racially
can rescue their relevance.” ledgers that remain, it’s evident that he her on. Saved from the terrors of mixed, enslaved family was not anom-
Piecing together stories about kept meticulous records. One planter the cotton country, the girl did all alous. As Green points out, Richmond
women who managed the uncertain- boarded at Lumpkin’s for more than she could to show her gratefulness, slave traders like Bacon Tait, Silas
ties and privations of their situations is a month while he bought six people. even when she discovered what her Omohundro, and John Hagan took as
even more difficult when the women in Some of the buyers preferred to con- chief duty was to be. their common-law wives women whom
question have been enslaved and thus duct their transactions at the jail rather they “owned” and then educated their
forbidden even the basic rights that an than attend auctions, out of discretion. Mary bore five children while at the children or moved them north. Green
eighteenth- century Parisian laundress The hypocrisies were overwhelming; Devil’s Half Acre, and though Green might have reflected on the psycho-
enjoyed. That is Kristen Green’s task in the business, loathsome. rightly reminds us that Robert Lump- logical contortions that allowed a man
her impassioned The Devil’s Half Acre, Fugitive slaves were delivered to kin was an enslaver and a rapist, she also to buy and sell other human beings,
which she calls “the untold story of how Lumpkin’s Jail, the most famous being speculates that Mary and the children and to beat them, while paying for his
one woman liberated the South’s most Anthony Burns, who long remembered occupied what seems to have been a daughters’ education in the free state of
notorious slave jail.” the Devil’s Half Acre. Having escaped genteel Victorian household: “She and Massachusetts.
Green is a journalist and also the from slavery in Virginia only to be seized the children probably lived in the main
author of Something Must Be Done in Boston in 1854, outraging much of house on the jail property,” and they
About Prince Edward County (2015), the city, Burns was shipped to Rich- “may have had the freedom to move A part from the accounts of his repul-
a personal account of how that Virginia mond and locked away for four months about the grounds.” Supposing too that sive profession and his ruthlessness, we
county defied Brown v. Board of Ed- in a tiny cell in Lumpkin’s Jail, where, Lumpkin “may have set aside a space know almost as little about Robert as
ucation and shut down its schools for chained and manacled, he was given dry in the main house to give her and the we do about Mary Lumpkin. In 1857,
almost five years rather than integrate cornbread and rancid bacon to eat, a children some privacy,” Green muses the same year as the Supreme Court’s
them. In The Devil’s Half Acre, she bucket of water once a week to drink, that “he may have furnished it with or- baleful Dred Scott decision, the Rich-
recovers the life of Mary Lumpkin, an and a rude bench on which to sleep. The nate furniture and pretty linens,” and mond court registration records list
enslaved woman of mixed race born in Reverend Armstead Mason Newman that “he likely bought instruments and Mary Lumpkin as a “free woman of
1832 who, likely by 1840, was held in also grimly remembered Lumpkin’s provided musical instruction, along color,” according to Hannah Cather-
bondage at Lumpkin’s Jail, a chamber Jail, where he’d been viciously whipped with tutoring and French lessons.” Per- ine Craddock in her fine master’s thesis
of horrors located between Franklin as a boy, his hands and feet shackled by haps, she adds, he bought Mary silk on Black female landowners in Vir-
and Broad Streets in Shockoe Bottom, metal rings attached to the floor. stockings. ginia.* Interestingly, that same year,
the central slave-trading quarter in Words like “may have” and “likely” with money from Robert, Mary pur-
Richmond, Virginia. and “perhaps” and “maybe,” which ap- chased a brick house in Philadelphia
Owned by Robert Lumpkin, the But despite Green’s admirable sleuth- pear as many as nine times in a single under the name Mary F. Scott, which
property consisted of four brick building, we don’t know much about Mary paragraph, seriously damage Green’s was, according to Green, “presumably
ings on about a half acre of land: the Lumpkin. There are few direct sources credibility, as do certain blanket gener- either her birth surname or the name
Lumpkin residence, a boardinghouse of enslaved women speaking in their alizations. Referring to Thomas Jeffer- of a previous enslaver.” Her daughters
for traders who’d come to town to buy own voice until Reconstruction, when son’s relationship with Sally Hemings went to live there, not Richmond, after
and sell human beings, a building with a number of depositions were taken, and a 1995 movie, Jefferson in Paris, they left school. And in the 1860 cen-
a kitchen and tavern, and the fourth and even these were mostly from men. in which it was romanticized, Green sus, the Lumpkins were listed as white,
building, two stories high, which was Green uncovers some of the available warns us not to consider the relationship although, as Green emphasizes, that
the jail itself. Men were confined on the reminiscences: Burns remembered her between Mary and Robert Lumpkin a designation was made by the census
lower floor, women on the upper, all of as Lumpkin’s “yellow wife.” The Rev- love affair. “The desire to take some- taker, not the person herself.
them behind thick bars until they were erend Newman recalled her as a “splen- thing deeply despicable and make it pal- While in Ipswich, the Lumpkin
sold at auction or purchased privately. did looking” woman who regarded atable is an American pathology,” she daughters were said to pass as “white
Nearby were Lumpkin’s stables and the him with pity when he was brought to continues in a sweeping broadside. “At ladies,” the Reverend Charles Corey
kennel where he kept his bloodhounds. Lumpkin’s Jail. The Reverend Nathan- every step, white America wants to san- later recalled. (In the federal census
A tall fence with iron spikes enclosed iel Colver, who met her after the war, itize the trauma and abuse of slavery— of 1870, they were also designated as
the entire area, which Blacks dubbed described her as a “large, fair-faced trauma and abuse that Mary Lumpkin white.) “Perhaps they passed,” Green
the Devil’s Half Acre. freed-woman, nearly white.” And in surely suffered.” writes, “to receive an excellent educa-
Born around 1806, Robert Lumpkin the documents assembled by the Works Certainly, the relationship between tion.” Yet to her, “the emotional costs
was, as a young man, already purchas- Progress Administration of Virginia, master and slave is a particular circle of denying their Blackness, and some-
ing enslaved men and reselling them at there’s this wrenching recollection: of hell for the slave, even if absurdly
a profit. By 1844, he had made enough staged as a love affair or a genteel *“Black Female Landowners in Rich-
money to be able to buy the jail from Early in the 1850s Lumpkin bought Victorian household, with nice linens mond, Virginia 1850–1877,” master’s
the slave trader Bacon Tait. There, cli- an especially fine batch of slaves. and a piano. After all, the liaison, it- thesis, William and Mary, 2012, p. 23.

times their families, were high.” This received a pardon from President An- so that the same shall not be liable for ology, the American Baptist Home
is a central motif in her book. “What drew Johnson a mere three days after the contracts, debts or engagements Mission Society charged the estate for
must it have been like to live in a neigh- requesting one. Infuriated by this, of any husband they may then have or converting it to a school: “taking irons
borhood surrounded by other multi- Green claims that had Lincoln lived, thereafter take.” Strangely, he seems out of 28 Window frames,” “putting in
racial people?” she asks rhetorically. he might not have been so generous, to be saying that no other man—no steps,” and “cutting out & putting in
Hinting that the Lumpkin family may which is questionable, since Lumpkin husband of Mary’s or his daughters’— 2 Doors.”
have been ashamed of their “relation- had not fought for the Confederacy or should deprive them of their inheri- In 1869, after the Reverend Charles
ships with white slave traders,” Green overtly conspired against the Union. tance. Here again, it would have been Corey took over the school from
writes that, “perhaps feeling that they In fact, Green herself had noted that useful for Green to reflect on the crude Colver, Lumpkin asked for an advance
couldn’t tell anyone else about what on Lincoln’s visit to liberated Rich- racial hypocrisies embedded in white on the rent. As she explained, “I have
had happened to them, they erased mond, he “wanted to rally his broken southern society and the warped think- to raise $200 by next month, and if
pieces of themselves in order to make country around a promise to rebuild ing of those who profited from and per- you could it will help me very much.”
life work in the North.” But around and a plan to reincorporate the South petuated slavery. She no doubt hoped that the Baptists
one another, she imagines, “they could into the United States. He promoted would buy her property outright when
be their true selves, confiding . . . and inclusion and suggested not placing the lease expired in 1870. Certainly
commiserating about their shared blame.” In the spring of 1867, hoping to open she needed the money. But the society
experiences.” According to testimony assembled a Bible school for the freedmen, the didn’t renew. The number of pupils had
Whether or not this is true, the by the Federal Writers’ Project, Mary abolitionist Dr. Nathaniel Colver, for- increased, the nearby creek overflowed
Lumpkins did live among a mixed-race and Robert Lumpkin were married merly a pastor at Boston’s Tremont onto the land, and Richmond news-
population in Philadelphia’s Seventh after the war. That’s doubtful, even Temple, went to Richmond. In despair papers referred to the whole Shockoe
Ward. As W. E. B. Du Bois observed though there were other similar re- over not finding a building to house it, Bottom neighborhood as disease-
in The Philadelphia Negro (1899), his infested, crime-ridden, and “disreputa-
Lumpkin’s Slave Jail Site

study of the area, the city supported a ble.” The society, with the assistance
range of Black immigrants from var- of the Freedmen’s Bureau, then pur-
ious southern states— and from dif- chased Richmond’s once-fashionable
ferent classes. And in both Richmond United States Hotel for $10,000. “It
and Philadelphia, the church offered was a proud day when the students and
camaraderie as well as educational op- teachers of Lumpkin’s Jail marched up
portunities. “Maybe the women joined out of that slave-pen,” exclaimed Rev-
Black churches,” Green comments, erend Corey. Green wryly comments
“which set expectations about how that the “symbolism of a slave jail as
they should behave and provided shape a school had weighed on him, and on
to their lives as they sought to remake the students too.” She’s undoubtedly
the image of Black men and women right.
into one of upstanding citizens.” Draw- By 1872 part of the Lumpkin prop-
ing on Erica Armstrong Dunbar’s A erty had been sold, but selling the rest,
Fragile Freedom: African American even subdivided and at public auction,
Women and Emancipation in the Ante- proved difficult: the buildings were
bellum City (2008), Green outlines the “neither fit for residence for white
mutual aid organizations, social net- persons nor for any business purpose
works, and churches available to Mary except possibly as the site for some
Lumpkin that she may— or may not— manufacturing establishment.” Ac-
have joined. cording to Hannah Craddock, Lump-
In Philadelphia, Lumpkin mysteri- Excavations at the site of Lumpkin’s Jail, Richmond, Virginia, 2008 kin eventually sold the property for
ously listed herself as a widow in the about half its appraised value to a hotel
1861 city directory, “which may have ports. A white minister said that after he described meeting a group of Black proprietor, Andrew Jackson Ford.
been the story she told people,” Green Richmond fell, Lumpkin “did the hon- women gathered near the First African When the jail was finally torn down,
suggests. Subsequently, though Green orable thing of marrying her, and so le- Baptist Church, whom he told of his the school had been long gone from the
does not mention this, Robert Lump- gitimized her and her children.” But as predicament. Mary Lumpkin stepped premises.
kin reappears in the 1862 Philadelphia Green points out, interracial marriages forward and offered to lease the for- Mary Lumpkin had by then returned
directory as a “gentleman.” And while were prohibited in Virginia. Besides, in mer jail to Colver for three years at to Philadelphia and in 1869 left for New
he disappears in 1863, he reemerges in his will, Lumpkin referred to Mary not $1,000 per year. The Reverend James Orleans, where she evidently lived for
the 1864 and 1865 directories, euphe- as his wife but as the woman “who re- H. Holmes, assistant pastor at the three years. She then headed to Ohio
mistically called a “merchant.” What- sides with me.” If she was known to be church, said he first introduced Colver and the vibrant Black community in
ever the listings, during the war years his wife, as a Black woman she could be to Lumpkin, and Colver’s descendants New Richmond. Green says she may
Lumpkin was obviously in Richmond, accused of fornication since, as Green recalled that she leased the property have been following a Union veteran—
still prepared to jail runaway men and notes, “marriages between white and “for five hundred dollars a year less “perhaps her one true love.” In 1892,
women or sell young boys for a profit. Black people had been prohibited since than she could have rented it to others.” Ford sold the rest of the old jail to the
When Richmond fell to the Union 1691 by Virginia law and would not be Though Lumpkin could do what she Richmond Iron Works, which covered
Army in the spring of 1865, Lump- allowed until 1967.” Or Lumpkin could wished with the real estate she now the site with dirt to fill it out. Eventu-
kin chained together about fifty men, have been protecting his posthumous owned, what she essentially inherited ally it was paved over by the construc-
women, and children and marched reputation. were insuperable expenses: taxes, doc- tion of the Richmond and Petersburg
them to the railway station, hoping he’d When he died in the fall of 1866, tors’ bills, and upkeep of the buildings. Turnpike, now Interstate 95.
be able to flee the city with them. But at his obituary politely identified him as By 1872 she had not paid taxes for several
the depot he was stopped by sentinels, “the proprietor of Lumpkin’s Hotel.” years, and the men to whom she owed
who prevented them from boarding the There’s no reference to the jail. “His money had placed liens on the prop- In 2008 a team of archaeologists
train, which happened to be carrying ownership and management of a slave erty. No wonder, then, that she was began to excavate the Devil’s Half
Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. “Oh, jail that housed and tortured thousands eager to lease the jail to the (white, Acre, and in 2014 the National Trust
what a loss was there!” a reporter sar- of Black people were forgotten,” Green male) American Baptist Home Mission for Historic Preservation declared it a
castically noted. “It would have been protests. “His scandalous history was Society, a northern institution founded “site of conscience” that would recog-
fifty thousand dollars out of some- wiped clean.” Not entirely. In 1888 the in 1832 to preach the gospel, especially nize “this dark chapter of American
body’s pocket in 1861.” demolition of the infamous jail was na- to the destitute and dispossessed. And history.” Indeed, Mary Lumpkin is an
The slaves were taken back to Lump- tional news, and it continued to be de- she was herself a member of the First integral part of that chapter, and Green
kin’s Jail, and the next day Black Union scribed as a place “more widely known African Baptist Church, which she does not want her forgotten, even by
soldiers flooded the city. “The doors of through the south in slave days than again joined when she later moved to her descendants, whom she has touch-
the slave pens were thrown open, and any similar edifice here.” New Orleans. ingly tracked down. Green understand-
thousands came out shouting,” recalled As for Lumpkin, he left Mary his Soon the jail was a school, the cells ably wants to help preserve this site of
the formerly enslaved Garland H. entire estate, which included the prop- refitted as classrooms. “No longer conscience, and each page of her story
White, chaplain of the Twenty-Eighth erty in Shockoe Bottom, the house in would there go up from within those is written with a principled sense of ur-
United States Colored Infantry, which Philadelphia, and a house in Alabama, walls from brokenhearted men, torn gency and mission.
helped free them. “Slavery chain done as well as stock in the Richmond and from their families forever, an ago- But she at times exceeds the evi-
broke at last!” they sang. Danville Railroad and in a bank he’d nized wail to Heaven,” Colver report- dence at hand. Noting more than once
founded. Should Mary wed after his edly exclaimed. But the record suggests that Mary Lumpkin “must have been
death, his and Mary’s children, whom that the school’s early founders, except proud that she was able to take the old
T hat July, having affirmed that he’d he named in his will, would inherit the possibly Colver, felt no real indebted- slave jail and turn it into something
held no civil or military office in the estate. Moreover, Lumpkin stipulated ness to Lumpkin. According to court good,” Green is certainly proud; it’s
Confederacy and estimating his real that his bequest to his two daughters records recently discovered by the the raison d’être of her book. But it
estate to be worth $20,000, Lumpkin “be held in trust for their separate use, James River Institute for Archae- wasn’t Mary Lumpkin who liberated
May 26, 2022 31

or transformed the jail. Black troops she “accomplished something incredi- lives of enslaved women run counter to The choices that Mary Lumpkin had
unlocked its doors in 1865, and the ble” creates a fable about someone who the tales we tell or to the roles assigned to make, the mysterious drama of her
Baptists converted it into a school, “exercised her agency.” Such language them, then and today: that is, a world internal life, the consequences of being
which ultimately became Virginia unfortunately shoehorns Mary Lump- where rifts open between what one is sold, exploited, and assaulted— or of
Union University, one of America’s kin into a neat story about an episode supposed to be and what one is, even dwelling in fear— are often unimag-
historically Black universities—“born that may or may not have meant much within the pernicious institution of slav- inable and steeped in horror, courage,
in the bosom of Lumpkin’s Jail,” said to her. ery; a world in which the lives of Blacks acumen, and anguish. Her persistence
W. Franklyn Richardson, the pres- “We cannot bring back to life those and whites were entangled socially, eco- is a testament to her bravery and her
ent chair of the university’s board of whom we find cast ashore,” writes Ar- nomically, physically, and psychologi- humanity, and to salute it, we need not
trustees, whom Green quotes. Unques- lette Farge. But in Mary Lumpkin, who cally through a sadistic, depraved system pretend that she liberated a slave jail or
tionably Lumpkin facilitated that con- fleetingly appears and then disappears of exploitative labor, and in which, under founded a school. What she did, what-
version, and though she may very well from view, we can now glimpse an in- the most unthinkable of circumstances, ever she did, just to survive is no small
have been proud, Green’s alleging that tricate, jangly world in which the actual people retained their dignity. thing. Q
A Permanent Battle
E. Tammy Kim
Corporal Paul E. Stout/National Archives and Records Administration

The Interrogation Rooms Korean troops, he convinced them that
of the Korean War: he was not a soldier or a guerrilla. They
The Untold History took him as a prisoner of war.
by Monica Kim. Both sides of the conflict wanted
Princeton University Press, not only to get information but also to
435 pp., $35.00; $24.95 (paper) promote their cold war ideology. They
used coercion to prove the superiority
On New Year’s Day, I went to a book- of their cause. Americans and their al-
store in Cheonan, South Korea, to buy lies interrogated South Koreans as well
a wall map of the country. The label as North Korean and Chinese soldiers.
said, simply, “Map of Korea,” so when Across the border, the North Koreans
I got home and unfolded it, I was sur- and Chinese questioned Americans, UN
prised to see that it showed both North forces, and South and North Koreans.
and South—the entire peninsula and Where “no category—whether refugee,
its hundreds of surrounding islands. POW, anti- Communist, Communist—
The wars of the twentieth century had was stable,” Kim writes, every prisoner
turned one country into two, mutually became a target of persuasion.
cordoned off and inaccessible; South Camp Number 1 on Geoje Island
Koreans are not permitted to visit (each camp had a number) was the
North Korea, or even its websites, and largest run by the US and UN Com-
vice versa. My new map felt strangely mand. At its peak, it held 170,000 peo-
aspirational. The armored boundary ple, segregated by nation, ideology, and
between the two Koreas, the Demili- gender, including women and children
tarized Zone that meanders along the who were “suspected of being spies.”
38th parallel, was just a thin, red dotted Truman’s Psychological Strategy Board
line, hard to make out. saw interrogation as a form of counter-
That red line was first drawn at the A young Communist woman being questioned by a soldier in a prisoner-of-war camp,
insurgency. There were, in addition to
end of World War II, when Korea was Gurijae, South Korea, 1951 repeated interviews, film screenings
freed after decades of Japanese rule and group discussions.
and cracked into Soviet and Ameri- peninsula (despite the occasional skir- prisoners’ allegiances were, more than North of the 38th parallel was Camp
can halves. In 1948 the Democratic mish, rocket launch, and military drill), anything, a matter of survival. Just as Number 5, the largest camp operated
People’s Republic of Korea was estab- but neither is there a peace treaty. This on my wall map, the divide between by China and North Korea—though
lished in the North and the Republic of fragile détente is held in place by an the Korean people was, and is, imposed still much smaller than Camp Number
Korea in the South. The Great Powers extraordinary buildup of arms, some and often thin. 1—where prisoners were put in homes
installed authoritarian leaders to their of which are American. Nearly 30,000 that had been evacuated along the Yalu
liking, giving ordinary people little US troops are still stationed in South River. In early 1951 the Chinese mili-
say. Leftists in the south of the penin- Korea, ostensibly to defend it in the Two primary archives ground Kim’s tary began subjecting these POWs to
sula formed underground communes event of another invasion. research: investigation reports from the intensive political education, including
and waged guerrilla struggles. Tens The Korean War was “the war that largest POW camp run by the US and on “American plans for world domi-
of thousands were massacred by US- was not a war,” writes Monica Kim in UN, and files of more than one thou- nation; how capitalism got started and
backed South Korean forces. The Interrogation Rooms of the Ko- sand US POWs who were interrogated why it should be stopped.” Every day,
In 1950 troops from Soviet- rean War: The Untold History. Kim, a by the US Counterintelligence Corps the prisoners attended mandatory lec-
controlled North Korea crossed into Korean American historian at the Uni- after returning from Chinese and tures and study groups.
the US- controlled South. The Chinese versity of Wisconsin at Madison, delves North Korean camps. Reading through In large camps like the one on
army later entered the war to support into a large archive of prisoner- of-war these documents, Kim finds time and Geoje, officials interviewed, exam-
the North, and the US worked through case files recently declassified by the again that loyalties were blurry. There ined, and photographed every POW
a nascent UN to recruit infantrymen US. She also draws on memoirs in En- was no intrinsic difference between a upon entry. US and South Korean
from fifteen other countries. (Officially, glish and Korean, interviews, even pe- North Korean and a South Korean or soldiers divided them into numbered
President Truman did not ask Con- titions written in blood. What results a Korean leftist and a Korean right- compounds and summoned them for
gress for a war declaration, calling UN is a composite tale of the hundreds of ist— or, for that matter, a Korean sol- questioning— sometimes inside, some-
intervention in support of the South a thousands of POWs—rank-and-file soldier and a Korean civilian. times outside; sometimes peacefully,
“police action.”) Many Koreans found diers and “civilian internees”—who Kim begins the book with the story sometimes under duress. In one (pos-
themselves fighting for one side or the were captured and held in sprawling, of Oh Se-hui, who, in October 1950, sibly staged) photo taken at a camp
other simply by chance. In the three miserable camps on both sides of the was twenty years old and “making his in Gurijae, which Kim found in the
years that followed, some four million 38th parallel. way back to his home” in southern National Archives, a young Korean
people, most of them civilians, were For Kim, the newly revealed stories Korea, after serving in the North Ko- woman sits next to a helmeted South
killed. Millions more were injured or of these POWs help us understand the rean army. Knowing that he would en- Korean soldier at an outdoor table,
separated from their families, and the Korean War as an intimate civil con- counter North Korean, South Korean, an expanse of dirt and fencing be-
landscape was razed. The Korean War flict, not just a proxy battle between and UN forces on his long journey, hind them. He looks at her and takes
ended in a stalemate and an armistice superpowers. In POW camps and in- “he had stashed away four different notes with a fountain pen; she holds
that was meant to be temporary. terrogation rooms on the North–South pieces of paper in strategic places on up a document. “A communist woman
This was nearly seventy years ago. border, soldiers and civilians were sub- his body”— each proof of a different leader, aged 20, formerly a student in
There is no longer active warfare on the jected to constant questioning. But the affiliation. Stopped on a road by South Pusan,” the caption reads.

The US (representing South Korea to come here. I didn’t come here by Western news readers reacted with fear and engaged him in a Communist
and UN allies), China, and North Korea choice.” and fascination to these brazen “reds,” study group; his white countrymen,
began to discuss a cease-fire early on, Many Korean POWs in UN camps but Dodd later reported that the worst meanwhile, called him “nigger.”2
in the summer of 1951, but the parties like Geoje felt similarly misplaced. They he suffered was a broken fountain pen. After Adams settled in China, he at-
could not agree on what to do with the told their captors that they were anti- The hostage-takers soon released him, tended college, married a professor of
people held across enemy lines. Prison- Communist— maybe sincerely, maybe on the condition that the US and UN Russian, and recorded broadcasts that
ers of war had always been a feature of as a gambit—then took extreme steps agree to recognize them as representa- encouraged Black soldiers in the Viet-
fighting, but now an expanded regime to prove their fealty to Washington and tives of the North Korean and Chinese nam War to resist American empire.
of international law dictated how they Seoul. They tattooed South Korean flags POWs. But in 1966 he and his wife and two
should be treated— and the cold war on their torsos and sent officials petitions “In the days following Dodd’s re- children returned to the US, to escape
made the US less willing to follow the for release that were written in their own lease,” Kim writes, “the US Army the Cultural Revolution. Adams was
rules. Under the 1949 Geneva Con- blood. Kim locates one of these peti- launched the longest investigation of interrogated at length, but without
vention relative to the Treatment of tions in the National Archives (kept a POW-related incident conducted incident, by the House Un-American
Prisoners of War, every prisoner was in the same climate- controlled storage during the Korean War,” resulting in Activities Committee and later
supposed to be returned to his coun- room as Jackie Kennedy’s bloodstained a five-hundred-page case file of inter- opened several Chinese restaurants in
try of origin. But where was home for Chanel suit): “We are anti- communist rogation transcripts and witness state- his hometown.
a North Korean who had fought for the young men. Let’s have discharge, so that ments. Several weeks later, American Through the accounts of men like
South, or a young man from southern we may be able to go front line.” Chinese Miyamoto and Adams, Kim presents a
National Archives and Records Administration

Korea whose family ended up north of anti-Communist soldiers acted out simi- “bottom-up,” people- centered history
the 38th parallel? lar blood rituals, to convince the US to of the first hot war of the cold war. Her
Yi Chong-gyu was a Christian teen- send them to Taiwan. book catalogs the torn, often arbitrary
ager forced to join the North Korean allegiances of the Korean people—like
army a few months into the war. After so many people split apart by mass
Yi’s unit was repelled by General Before the Korean War, the US had violence. In the case of the Koreas,
MacArthur’s Incheon Landing in Sep- vowed to abide by the Geneva Conven- though, that divide has only hardened
tember 1950, he was captured by South tions. Yet when cease-fire negotiations since the 1950s. Today, stockpiles of
Korean soldiers. They “took him aside began at the border between the two missiles and large standing armies sit in
for interrogation and asked him to re- Koreas, the Truman administration re- wait on either side of the Demilitarized
cite the Lord’s Prayer,” Kim writes, to fused to repatriate North Korean and Zone. 3 Families are estranged across
prove his (implicitly anti- Communist) Chinese prisoners as a matter of course. the border. Yet the postcolonial vision
religiosity and thus gain a kind of ref- The US Psychological Strategy Board of coexistence and exchange, if not uni-
ugee status. When he did, they spared recommended a policy of “voluntary fication, persists.
his life and took him to Geoje Island. repatriation,” or letting POWs choose In the US, this vision was, however
where to return. If, in the process of ironically, sharpened by President
interrogation, some Korean Commu- Trump’s volatile engagement with
The interrogators were themselves nists could be convinced to choose
A Korean prisoner of war with tattoos
of the national flag of South Korea and North Korea. Two years into his term,
often unsettled in their views and un- South over North Korea, Kim writes, the words ‘Patriotism’ and ‘Eradicate progressive members of Congress,
comfortable with their orders. Many it would “validate the US project of Communists,’ Camp Number 1, including California representatives
of the US soldiers tasked with exam- liberation through military occupa- Geoje Island, South Korea, 1952 Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee and
ining Korean prisoners were Japanese tion in the south.” Behind this strategy New York representative Alexandria
American. Officials assumed that they was National Security Council Paper paratroopers used “tanks, tear gas, gre- Ocasio- Cortez, introduced House Res-
could communicate with Korean cap- 68 (1950), the founding document of nades, and flamethrowers” to storm the olution 152, “calling for a formal end
tives who had been required to use the cold war, which called for “a more camp. Thirty-five people were killed. of the Korean war”— a peace treaty
Japanese during the colonial period. rapid build-up of political, economic, In July 1953 the UN Command signed to replace the armistice. The bill ac-
Many of these Japanese Americans and military strength . . . to resist Soviet an armistice with North Korea and knowledges that, as Kim’s history of
had just emerged from World War II expansion” around the world. Korea China, and both sides began to clear out interrogation suggests, the war was
internment camps, yet were expected was the testing ground for an emerg- their camps. Despite all parties’ invest- muddier and less rigid in its dividing
to smoothly transition from captive ing US strategy: a permanent battle for ments in propaganda and loyalty tests, lines than Americans have always as-
to patriotic captor. The interrogators, hearts and minds— and a permanent prisoners largely chose to return home: sumed. Among the lead sponsors of the
not unlike the prisoners they interro- network of global bases—in the name 99 percent of Americans, 96 percent of bill was a first-term congressman from
gated, were forced to play a part, Kim of liberal democracy. South Koreans, and 91 percent of North New Jersey, a “proud son of Korean
observes. North Korean POWs were President Syngman Rhee, Washing- Koreans. The exception were the Chi- immigrants” who spoke of bringing
pressured to switch sides, and South ton’s man in Seoul, was sympathetic to- nese, only 33 percent of whom opted for “peace to the Korean peninsula.” His
Koreans were pressured to prove their ward anti- Communist POWs and eager mainland China; the rest went to Tai- name was Andy Kim, and his sister,
fidelity. Everyone was cast in a role of to incorporate them into his new police wan. The Chinese were dealing with the Monica, had just published an espe-
self-justification. state. He even approved the release aftermath of their own civil war. cially relevant book. Q
One such interrogator was Sam Mi- of 25,000 such soldiers from multiple
yamoto, a California-born Japanese UN camps without first consulting the
American whose family had been im- Americans. “These Korean POWs did Prisoners made their choices in a final 2
See Clarence Adams, An American
prisoned in an internment camp in Pos- not simply vanish into thin air,” Kim set of interrogation rooms that were Dream: The Life of an African Amer-
ton, Arizona, in 1942. The following writes. Many belonged to the rightist erected along the 38th parallel at the ican Soldier and POW Who Spent
year, the Miyamotos were directed to youth groups that had collaborated end of the Korean War. Groups of Twelve Years in Communist China,
board “the SS Gripsholm as parties to with the US military’s Counterintel- POWs were led into a holding area, then edited by Della Adams and Lewis H.
a POW/hostage exchange, where Japa- ligence Corps and the South Korean brought, one by one, into a UN “ex- Carlson (University of Massachusetts
nese nationals and Japanese Americans army before the Korean War— and planation booth,” a large tent. There, Press, 2007).
were exchanged for white American continued to do their work.1 This form each POW was interviewed by a panel 3
Kim’s book contributes to a grow-
businessmen, journalists, and mission- of “anti- Communist fascist mass orga- of officials from “neutral nations” and ing literature on the international re-
aries,” Kim writes. Miyamoto, then a nization,” Kim explains, held a “mo- allowed to voice his desire: repatri- verberations of the Korean War. The
teenager, witnessed the devastation of nopoly of violence in post-1945 Korea.” ation or non-repatriation. Earlier in Oberlin historian Sheila Miyoshi Jager
Allied bombing in Tokyo and Hiro- In the Geoje camp, pro- Communist the war, when the US had demanded a examines the effect of the war on Mao
shima. He was effectively stateless in Koreans and Chinese also agitated for system of voluntary repatriation, India Zedong and the emerging Chinese
Japan, pawned off by the US but not political recognition. Their “single, had devised a third- country compro- state in Brothers at War: The Unending
Conflict in Korea (Norton, 2013). Tessa
legally Japanese, and thus unable to most important demand” was that the mise: POWs could choose to be sent
Morris- Suzuki, of the Australian Na-
register for school. US military stop “repatriation screen- home, into enemy territory, or some- tional University, collects the wartime
In 1949 Miyamoto managed to se- ing,” Kim writes. In 1952 a group of where else altogether. Seventy-six Ko- views of people in Mongolia, Manchu-
cure a return to the US to attend these prisoners famously took hostage rean POWs opted for a third country ria, Okinawa, and Japan (including the
UCLA. From there, he applied for a an American camp commander, Briga- and were eventually settled in India, improbable journey of the only Japanese
transfer to UC Berkeley to study law dier General Francis Dodd, to publicize Brazil, Argentina, or Mexico. POW) in her edited volume The Korean
and attempted to put the indignities the violation of their right to manda- Twenty- one American POWs, mean- War in Asia: A Hidden History (Row-
of internment behind him. But in that tory repatriation under the Geneva while, made the startling choice to stay man and Littlefield, 2018). And David
unlucky interval of disenrollment, he Conventions. The commander would behind Communist lines. This group Cheng Chang’s The Hijacked War: The
was drafted, trained as a military lin- “not be harmed if P[O]W problems are included Clarence Adams, an Afri- Story of Chinese POWs in the Korean
War (Stanford University Press, 2019),
guist, and sent to serve in the Korean resolved,” the prisoners’ banner read. can American who grew up in Mem-
a complement to Kim’s book, draws
War. Miyamoto was assigned to Geoje phis, under what he called “these cruel on interrogation records and extensive,
Island—his second prisoner camp, his 1
Kim notes that Kim Du-han, a member slave laws of the southern states.” In multilingual oral histories to follow the
second war. In an interview with Kim, of one such group and a notorious mur- Communist Camp Number 5 on the winding experiences, and allegiances,
he recalls telling his Korean prison- derer, became Rhee’s bodyguard, then a Yalu River, Adams’s Chinese captors of prisoners connected to both the Chi-
ers, “I’m here because I was ordered member of the National Assembly. had let him manage the prison library nese mainland and Taiwan.
May 26, 2022 33

The Babel Within
Gavin Francis
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Memory Speaks: become more effortful for you
On Losing and Reclaiming to speak than this new language
Language and Self is now. . . . You will become a lin-
by Julie Sedivy. guistic orphan, a person without
Belknap Press/Harvard a mother tongue.
University Press, 346 pp., $29.95
To an individual the loss of a
Alfabet/Alphabet: language is a calamity, but it is
A Memoir of a First Language dwarfed by the catastrophe of an
by Sadiqa de Meijer. entire group’s loss of language.
Windsor, Ontario: Palimpsest/ She quotes Marie Smith Jones,
Anstruther, 153 pp., the last native speaker of the
$14.95 (paper) Alaskan language Eyak who, on
being asked how she felt to be
A few weeks ago I was invited to the last speaker of a language, re-
the book festival in Trieste, in plied, “How would you feel if your
northeast Italy, a city of divided baby died? If someone asked you,
loyalties and complicated history. ‘What was it like to see it lying in
At its center is an old Austro- the cradle?’”*
Hungarian port; some of its street
signs are bilingual, in Italian and
Slovenian. The city was “Tergeste” or de Meijer, to speak English F
to the Romans, founded on the site every day is to live in a state of
of a former settlement as a fortress chronic abstraction—though she
against Illyria, and it has been is fluent in the language, Dutch
variously dominated by Frankish, has remained much more domi-
Venetian, Balkan, Italian, and nant in her thought and speech.
Austrian influences in the centu- Joyce Wieland: O Canada, 1970 She agrees with the Polish Ca-
ries since. After World War II it nadian writer Jowita Bydlowska
was a free zone administered by the US “milk language”—the language of lul- her dominant language—the language that her second language is an “exo-
and UK, and rejoined Italy only in 1954. labies and nursery rhymes. in which she most easily functions. It skeleton”— a tough hide of words that
I learned Italian from my wife, who took her many years to realize the sig- shield her from feeling. The poet in her
grew up in Lombardy, and my pre- nificance of what she had lost with that is shocked by the incongruity between
sentation at the festival began with an Sedivy, who now teaches in Calgary, fracture. Her father eventually moved the associations her two languages
apology for my accent— a bizarre amal- arrived in Canada before the age of six from Canada back to his hometown evoke. One of her poems, written origi-
gam of the flattened vowels of Lombard from Czechoslovakia via Austria and in Moravia, and on her infrequent vis- nally in English, contains the word har-
dialect with the rolled r’s of my native Italy. She writes of the “clutter” of lan- its there in adulthood (beginning with bour, which “conjures a generic image;
Scots. There was a ripple of indul- guages that had introduced themselves her first visit since early childhood, to there are ships, docks, and gulls, but it
gent laughter from the audience, who before she began to learn English at an academic linguistics conference in is nowhere that I can name.” Translat-
also seemed relieved after two years school: German in preschool, Italian 1994) she was startled by the degree ing the poem herself, she substitutes
of Covid to have foreigners return to with friends, French in the streets of to which she had lost her command of the Dutch haven, and effects a magical
speak in their town— even a town re- Montreal. De Meijer moved from the Czech. Decades later the death of her transformation:
nowned for its international research Netherlands at the age of twelve. For father occasioned mourning not just for
institutes and its proximity to borders. these writers the forgetting, remem- a parent but for one of her few remain- I saw our former river harbour, a
I’d rehearsed what I would say, but as bering, and relearning of language is ing connections to the language: charmless place of silos and con-
my presentation progressed I began to one of the most binding and alienating crete piers . . . a bicycle ride on an
lose words, phrases, grammatical con- elements of their immigration experi- It was as if the viola section in the overcast afternoon, during which
structions. Conditional tenses slipped ence: binding because of the pressing orchestra had fallen silent—not my youngest brother sat in a seat
away from me, and circumlocutions requirement both writers felt to achieve carrying the melody, it had gone un- on my father’s handlebars. I was
crept in. I heard myself utter the phrase fluency in English, and alienating be- noticed, but its absence announced being somewhat reckless, biking
“that plastic that goes around electric cause of all the ways their native lan- how much depth and texture it had in a slalom between the moorings,
wires” instead of the Italian word for guages continued to hold claims over supplied, how its rhythms had lent near the sheer drop to the water.
“insulation,” then “that mythical is- them, marking them out from peers coherence to the music.
land that sunk” instead of the word for and neighbors. De Meijer realizes with a jolt that
Atlantis. A childhood between two places has Relearning Czech as an adult offered English offers her little in the way of
It had been more than two years led Sedivy to feel most comfortable redemption, and Sedivy’s book is in part access to memories of her childhood
since I’d last been in the country, and among junctures and transitional spaces; an account of how through that act of self. Passing on news of her grand-
the Italian I use at home was too do- her book describes how she found her- learning she has found ways to bind dis- mother’s death in English, de Meijer’s
mestic to explore the concepts of the self discontented with the study of pure parate aspects of her identity. Becoming voice is “monotonous, composed”; she
book I was there to discuss. At the same linguistics and with the study of psychol- fluent again in her milk language feels herself to be coping well with
time, I had the strong sense that, were I ogy, but at home in a field that borders the bereavement. It is only when she
permitted to stay on in Italy a few years, the two disciplines, able to harvest the has deepened and calmed my sense tells an acquaintance in Dutch that
speaking only Italian, it would be En- insights of both. “I’m drawn, like a of who I am, forging a peace treaty the full force of grief breaks through:
glish words that would begin to recede moth flinging its body against a light between the various, fragmented “The pain was immediate and furious.
through lack of use—not that they’d be bulb, to in-between spaces and inter- parts of myself. And it has cast a A flood of tears, unstoppable. Early
entirely forgotten, but they’d be overlain sections, to hyphenations, to situations new light on the old question of words, along primal neural pathways,
with Italian constructions and vocabu- in which there will always be two sides,” how to make a home in a place that imprinted when I still meant every-
lary used more often in day-to-day life. she writes. “This is, for me, where is foreign to your ancestors. thing I said.”
For my trip to Trieste I had packed all the heat and light can be found.” A language learned in early child-
perhaps the most appropriate reading (As if to underscore her rejection of This is a question that for Sedivy, as hood is privileged with an emotional
material possible for someone living black-and-white distinctions, the word a Canadian, is particularly delicate, intensity that a language learned later
and moving between two languages— šedivý, in Czech, means “gray.”) When given the extent to which the First in life— even in adolescence, as En-
Memory Speaks by the academic psy- it comes to our identities and our sense Nations peoples of that country have glish was for de Meijer— cannot match.
cholinguist Julie Sedivy and Alfabet/ of belonging, language is the natural been culturally dislocated, and how in- “When we learn a language in child-
Alphabet by the poet Sadiqa de Meijer. place to start. digenous Canadian languages are now hood,” Sedivy writes,
Both writers moved to Canada as chil- As a child trying to fit in with her new among the world’s most vulnerable.
dren, and though their books are very surroundings, Sedivy quickly forgot “Here are the things that no one tells it is by throwing our full selves—
different, both examine their compli- much of her Czech. “The inescapable a six-year- old immigrant child speak- bodies, emotions, familial entangle-
cated relationship with their adopted truth is that a language both binds and ing to her baby sister in English: Be ments, social duties, and all—into
language: the gifts of bilingualism, but excludes,” she writes, and she wanted careful,” Sedivy writes. the task. . . . A language learned
also the visceral sense of unmooring to bind herself to the new. Czech was
they experienced as each lost touch and is her mother tongue, her milk If you continue down this path, *Elizabeth Kolbert, “Last Words,” The
with what Ghita El Khayat called the language, but English quickly became your ancestral tongue will one day New Yorker, June 6, 2005.

S P RI N G 2 02 2
NEW BOOKS
FRO M U N IV ERSIT Y PRE S S E S
AFRICAN AMERICAN AND BLACK STUDIES ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES
Afrodiasporic Forms Water Thicker Than Blood

Slavery in Literature and Culture of the African Diaspora A Memoir of a Post-Internment Childhood
Raquel Kennon George Uba
Afrodiasporic Forms explores the epistemological possibilities of “This is a lovely addition to the rich literature somehow cre-
the “Black world” paradigm and traces a literary and cultural ated out of a moment in history where an entire generation
cartography of the monde noir and its constitutive African of Japanese Americans had every dream they’d ever had tak-
diasporas across multiple poetic, visual, and cultural permu- en from them, all at once.” —Cynthia Kadohata, Newbery
tations. Examining the transatlantic slave trade and modern Medal– and National Book Award–winning author of Kira-
racial slavery, Raquel Kennon challenges the US-centric fo- Kira and The Thing about Luck
cus of slavery studies and draws on a transnational, eclectic Pub June 2022. 6 × 9 in. 230 pp.
archive of materials from Lusophone, Hispanophone, and Temple University Press
Anglophone sources in the Americas to inspect evolving, 978-1-4399-2258-3 Paper, $29.95; 978-1-4399-2257-6 Cloth, $110.50
multitudinous, and disparate forms of Afrodiasporic cultural
expression.
Pub June 29, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 336 pp.
Louisiana State University Press
978-0-807-17681-8 Paper, $35.00
BIOGRAPHY
Buy Black
How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture
James Dickey
Aria S. Halliday
A Literary Life
“A compelling analysis of the role American Black women Gordon Van Ness
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ture.” —Ms. Magazine
Ness shows Dickey’s artistic beginnings and the rise and fall
A volume in the series Feminist Media Studies
of his career, the man as a writer. Dickey’s life was indeed
Pub April 26, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 208 pp.
complicated, but his words endure, and they merit the highest
University of Illinois Press
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978-0-252-08635-9 Paper, $24.95; 978-0-252-05326-9, e-book $14.95
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Mercer University Press
978-0-881-46826-7 Cloth, $45.00
ART
I Got Mine
Confessions of a Midlist Writer
Image-Thinking John Nichols
Artmaking as Cultural Analysis
Mieke Bal “This is an intimate portrait of a man as writer. No other
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rist Mieke Bal takes us on a journey through the range of Pub May 15, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 280 pp.
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Sharing a lifetime of experience of writing about art, making
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This is Bal at her most personal and her best.
Pub March 31, 2022. 9.6 × 6.7 in. 512 pp.
Edinburgh University Press
978-1-474-49423-6 Paper, $39.95
May 26, 2022 35

EDUCATION FICTION
Higher Education for Democracy Close-Up

The Role of the University in Civil Society A Novel
William G. Tierney Michelle Herman
Democracy and higher education are inextricably linked: uni- In this artful, expansive novel, we follow five protagonists—
versities not only have the ability to be key arbiters of how de- Jacob, Martin, Caroline, Jeanie, and Jill—through love, mar-
mocracy is advanced, but they also need to ref lect democratic riage, parenthood, and the romance of friendship as they
values in their practices, objectives, and goals. Framed by the struggle to make sense of themselves and each other and of
COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing crisis of structural what makes for good art, good magic, and a good life. What
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in advancing democracy by using a cross-national comparison of loneliness and longing, of rifts and reconciliations and re-
of Los Angeles, New Delhi, and Hong Kong to develop strat- demption. Close-Up depicts the fraught entanglements of the
egies that universities can employ to strengthen democracy relationships we’re born into and those we choose.
and resist fascism. Pub March 15, 2022. 5.5 × 8.5 in. 376 pp.
Pub July 1, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 310 pp. Columbus State University Press
SUNY Press distributed by the University of Georgia Press
978-1-438-48450-1 Paper, $29.95 978-0-5789-0528-0 Paper, $24.95
use code NYRB22 and save 30% at www.sunypress.edu
GENERAL INTEREST
ENVIRONMENT/CONSERVATION
MLA Guide to Digital Literacy
Reckoning with the U.S. Role in Global Ocean Second Edition
Plastic Waste Ellen C. Carillo
By Committee on the United States Contributions to Global
Ocean Plastic Waste; The National Academies of Sciences, The second edition of this best-selling classroom guide helps
Engineering, and Medicine students understand why digital literacy is a crucial skill for
their education, future careers, and participation in democ-
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This book calls for a national strategy by the end of 2022 to question; effectively conducting searches on Google and on
reduce the nation’s contribution to global ocean plastic waste at library catalogs and databases; finding peer-reviewed publi-
every step—from production to its entry into the environment. cations; evaluating primary sources; and understanding dis-
Pub April 2022. 7 × 10 in. 250 pp.
information and misinformation, filter bubbles, propaganda,
National Academies Press
and satire in a variety of sources.
978-0-309-45885-6 Paper. $60.00
Pub August 2022. 6 × 9 in. 168 pp.
Modern Language Association
978-1-603-29605-2 Paper, $22.00
Requiem for America’s Best Idea
National Parks in the Era of Climate Change
Michael J. Yochim; Foreword by William R. Lowry Next Time There’s a Pandemic
“This book highlights the beauty of the natural world and Vivek Shraya
its status as an invaluable commodity that all humans share. In Next Time There’s a Pandemic, artist Vivek Shraya ref lects
Recommended for all nature enthusiasts.” —Library Journal, on how she might have approached the COVID-19 pandemic
starred review differently, and how challenging and changing pervasive ex-
Pub March 15, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 304 pp. pressions, attitudes, and behaviours might transform our lives.
High Road Books | An Imprint of the University of New Mexico Press For instance, what might happen if, rather than urging one
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With generosity, Shraya captures the dissonances of this mo-
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better prepared for the next time . . . and for all times.
Pub March 1, 2022. 5.25 × 9 in. 64 pp.
University of Alberta Press
978-1-77212-605-1 Paper, $12.99
Surveying the Anthropocene

Art and Photography Now
Patricia Macdonald
Surveying the Anthropocene presents a range of approaches to
image-making concerning the environment by some of the The Mexican Chile Pepper Cookbook
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Pub March 31, 2022. 9.4 × 12.5 in. 248 pp.
University of New Mexico Press
Edinburgh University Press
978-0-8263-6351-0 Paper, $24.95
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HISTORY/AMERICAN LABOR/WORKFORCE ISSUES
A Century of Repression Transforming Trajectories for

The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press Women of Color in Tech
Ralph Engelman and Carey Shenkman By the Committee on Addressing the Underrepresentation of
Women of Color in Tech; Evelynn Hammonds, Valerie Taylor,
How the weaponized Espionage Act chills free speech.
and Rebekah Hutton, Editors; National Academies of Sciences,
“This study of the history and abuses of the Espionage Act—
Engineering, and Medicine
past and present—is urgently needed if we are to remain a
truly democratic society. I even learned a lot about my own Transforming Trajectories for Women of Color in Tech identifies
case. A riveting eye opener and must read.” —Daniel Ellsberg systemic issues that negatively affect outcomes for women of
A volume in The History of Communication series color in tech and provides guidance for transforming existing
Pub August 23, 2022. 6.125 × 9.25 in. 344 pp. systems and implementing evidence-based policies and prac-
University of Illinois Press tices to increase the success of women of color in tech.
978-0-252-08663-2 Paper, $24.95; 978-0-252-05356-6 e-book, $14.95 Pub March 2022. 6 × 9 in. 280 pp.
National Academies Press
978-0-309-26897-4 Paper, $35.00
The Creole Rebellion

The Most Successful Slave Revolt in American History
Bruce Chadwick
LANGUAGE/LINGUISTICS
“This informative and well-written book provides a rendering

Linguist on the Loose
of this turning point that must not only be read, but studied.”
Adventures and Misadventures in Fieldwork
—Gerald Horne, author of Negro Comrades of the Crown
Lyle Campbell, Foreword by Wade Davis
Pub March 1, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 268 pp.
University of New Mexico Press Lyle Campbell’s linguistic fieldwork has taken him to numer-
978-0-8263-6347-3 Cloth, $27.95 ous countries, sometimes in challenging circumstances. Writ-
ten with humour, heart, and a clear dedication to endangered
languages and their speakers, Lyle’s vivid memoir is a lesson
not only on life in the field but on the importance of language
documentation.
“Linguist on the Loose does for linguistics what Indiana Jones
does for archaeology with the advantage that Linguist is all
true: an impassioned plea for language documentation and a
call to adventure.” —Prof. Judith Maxwell, Tulane University
Pub March 2022. 8.5 × 5.5 in. 304 pp.
HOLOCAUST STUDIES Edinburgh University Press
9781474494151 Paper, $19.95; 9781474494175 e-Book (ePub)
The Cigar Factory of Isay Rottenberg

The Hidden History of a Jewish Entrepreneur in Nazi Germany
Hella Rottenberg, Sandra Rottenberg. Afterword by Robert
Rotenberg. Translated by Jonathan Reeder LITERARY COLLECTIONS/LATIN STUDIES
“Two granddaughters search for the hidden history of their
Jewish grandfather and uncover an amazing story: how he Home in Florida
bought a cigar factory near Dresden as the Nazis came to Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness
power in Germany and fought defiantly to keep it operating, Edited by Anjanette Delgado
at the risk of his life. An astonishing portrait of what life was
This anthology features contemporary Latinx writers who
like for a Jewish businessman in Nazi Germany, and an exem-
capture the diversity of immigrant experiences in Florida,
plary example of how two determined women stripped aside
including Patricia Engel, Richard Blanco, Jaquira Díaz, and
family mythologies and arrived at the surprising truth about
many others.
the family patriarch.” —Michael Ignatieff
Pub Nov 16, 2021. 6 × 9 in. 286 pp.
Pub Jan 11, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 228 pp.
University of Florida Press
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
978-1-68340-250-3 Cloth, $26.95
978-1-77112-550-5 Paper, $24.99
IMMIGRATION STUDIES
Jamón and Halal

Lessons in Tolerance from Rural Andalucía
Christina Civantos LITERARY CRITICISM/
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
“This is a book that is both a personal account and a rigorous
academic study. It is a model for the kind of engaged human-
istic work we are now beginning to see as a hallmark of the Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature
post-theory moment, and one that remembers the hard lessons Edited by Carol Mejia LaPerle
of ethnographic fieldwork as well as the challenging founda- Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature puts critical
tional work from philosophically-tinged theory.” —Debra A. race studies and affect theory into dialogue. By investigat-
Castillo, and Emerson Hinchliff Professor of Hispanic Studies, ing how race feels, this book offers new ways of reading and
Cornell University interpreting literary traditions, religious differences, gendered
Pub April 11, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 258 pp. experiences, class hierarchies, sexuality, and social identities.
Amherst College Press So far scholars have shaped the discussion of race in the early
978-1-943208-36-4 Paper, $21.99; 978-1-943208-37-1 open access ePub modern period by focusing on topics such as genealogy, lan-
guage, economics, religion, skin color, and ethnicity. This
book, however, offers something new: it considers racializing
processes as visceral, affective experiences.
Pub March 30, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 180 pp.
ACMRS Press
978-0-866-98658-8 Paper,$19.95
May 26, 2022 37

Race and Romance MEMOIR
Coloring the Past
Margo Hendricks
Dead Woman Pickney
Race and Romance: Coloring the Past explores the literary and A Memoir of Childhood in Jamaica, Second Edition
cultural genealogy of colorism, white passing, and white pre- Yvonne Shorter Brown
senting in the romance genre. The study ranges from Helio-
Dead Woman Pickney chronicles Yvonne Shorter Brown’s life
dorus’ Aithiopika to the short novels of Aphra Behn, to the
growing up in Jamaica between 1943 and 1965. Told with
modern romance novel Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins. Hen-
stridency and humor, the stories include both personal experi-
dricks engages with the troublesome racecraft of “passing”
ence and history. The author’s quest to understand the absence
and the instability of racial identity and its formation from
of her mother and her mother’s people from her life are at the
the premodern to the present. Race and Romance is a bridge
heart of the narrative. In this updated edition she adds a coda,
between early modern studies and scholarship on twenty first
“finding mother,” constructed from archives, genealogy, let-
century romance novels.
ters, and journals. Foreword by Sonja Boon, author of What
Pub April 5, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 160 p.
the Oceans Remember.
ACMRS Press
Pub April 1, 2022. 5.25 × 8 in. 340 pp.
978-0-866-98659-5 Paper, $19.95
978-1-77112-547-5 Paper, 24.99
LITERATURE/DRAMA Scratching River

Michelle Porter
Romeo and Juliet Scratching River braids the voices of mother, brother, sister, an-
Play On Shakespeare cestor, and river to create a story about environmental, per-
William Shakespeare. Translated by Hansol Jung. sonal, and collective healing. This memoir revolves around
a search for home for the author’s autistic and schizophrenic
“For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and
brother, and an unexpected emotional journey that led to ac-
her Romeo.” In this version of Romeo and Juliet, Hansol Jung
ceptance, understanding and, ultimately, reconciliation. Mi-
breathes new life into Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. Jung il-
chelle Porter brings together the oral history of a Métis ances-
luminates a more nuanced world than we have come to ex-
tor, river morphology studies, and news clippings about abuse
pect from the well-known tale of star-crossed lovers. Play On
her brother endured in a group home to tell a tale about love,
Shakespeare, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, commis-
survival, and hope.
sioned new translations of Shakespeare’s plays. Enlisting the
Pub April 15, 2022. 5.25 × 8 in. 184 pp.
talents of a diverse group of contemporary artists and drama-
turges, this series reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first
978-1-77112-544-4 Paper, $19.99
century.
Pub June 14, 2022. 5 × 7.75 in. 136 pp.
ACMRS Press
978-0-866-98771-4 Paper, $9.95
MUSIC
Sharkey
LITERATURE/ESSAYS When Sea Lions Were Stars of Show Business (1907-1958)
Gary Bohan Jr.
On Our Way Home from the Revolution The incredible, true story of the twentieth century’s greatest
Reflections on Ukraine performing sea lion and the man who trained him. Sharkey
Sonya Bilocerkowycz tells the compelling story of an unusually gifted, trained sea
lion who shared the stage with practically every important
Featured in USA Today’s “Ten Books to Help Better Under-
performer of the first half of the twentieth century—from
stand What’s Happening in Russia and Ukraine”
Bob Hope to Ella Fitzgerald, from Broadway to Hollywood.
“A remarkable work of lyric inquiry and brutal empathy. A
Readers follow Sharkey and his f lippered colleagues as they
carefully crafted collection that paints a loving but honest
travel the world. Meticulously researched Sharkey is a quirky
portrait of family, country, and self through the eyes of a bril-
slice of New York and entertainment history sure to delight.
liant young writer unafraid to look directly into the blistering
Pub April 1, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 326 pp.
stare of a Chernobyl sunset or the red sunrise of a fire-fueled
SUNY Press
revolution.” —Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas, author
978-1-438-48712-0 Paper, $24.95
of Don’t Come Back
use code NYRB22 and save 30% at www.sunypress.edu
Pub September 23, 2019. 5.5 × 8.5 in. 232 pp.
Ohio State University Press
978-0-8142-5543-8 Paper, $19.95
NON-FICTION
Ripe
Essays One by One, the Stars
Negesti Kaudo Essays
Ned Stuckey-French
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2022.
“Ripe is a testament to the expansiveness of Black life—a very One by One, the Stars, presents new, highly personal essays
specific expansiveness that offers generous glimpses into Black tracing Stuckey-French’s childhood in Indiana and a bur-
womanhood, Black Midwesternness, Black place, and place- geoning interest, during adolescence, in politics and social
lessness.” —Hanif Abdurraqib justice to his life as a father, teacher, and writer. Thematic
“With unf linching honesty and vulnerability, Kaudo docu- threads connect these elements, and foremost is his grow-
ments her journey to becoming her bolder self. . . . A deeply ing commitment to activism on behalf of the disadvantaged,
intimate meditation on millennial Black womanhood and a overlooked, or threatened. The volume also features some of
righteous indictment of how this country treats Black girls Stuckey-French’s “greatest hits” as a public scholar and writer,
and women. Timely, unapologetic, and intense, in all the best including his popular essay on his Facebook addiction.
ways.” —Kirkus (starred review) Pub May 1, 2022. 5.5 × 8.5 in. 240 pp.
Pub April 18, 2022. 5.5 × 8.5 in. 224 pp. University of Georgia Press
Ohio State University Press 978-0-8203-6180-2 Paper, $24.95
978-0-8142-5818-7 Paper, $19.95

The Sum of Her Parts POETRY
Essays
Siân Griffiths
Natural History
The Sum of Her Parts explores how women’s body parts and Poems
the roles/parts that women play have been deployed toward José Watanabe
political ends. Griffiths uses humor and sincerity to approach
Beloved by lovers of poetry across the globe, José Watanabe
the topic of the female body through a wide variety of essay
(1946–2007) is one of Peru’s most celebrated twentieth-
forms, blending lyric and narrative modes. Using fragmenta-
century poets. Of his variegated repertoire, which includes
tion and argumentation, the collection invites the reader to
articles, screenplays, and children’s books, Watanabe is best
think ambiguously and explosively, allowing complication
known for his seven original books of poetry, of which Natu-
rather than easily connected dots. The result is a discussion
ral History is the first to be rendered into English. Here, the
of the female body that is varied, complex, nuanced, and
starkly lyrical poems are presented in dual-language format
thoughtful.
and alongside pen-and-ink drawings by the Lima-based art-
Pub May 1, 2022. 5.5 × 8.5 in. 144 pp.
ist Eduardo Tokeshi, which appeared in the original volume.
University of Georgia Press
Pub May 1, 2022. 5.5 × 8.5 in. 128 pp.
978-0-8203-6233-5 Paper, $19.95
University of Georgia Press
978-0-8203-6216-8 Paper, $19.95
Quit Smoking Weapons of Mass Distraction

Simon Chapman
An estimated 75% of smokers quit without drugs or profes-
sional help. Yet smoking cessation is a global phenomenon POLITICAL SCIENCE/PUBLIC AFFAIRS
serviced by multibillion-dollar industries that promote their
own products and try to undermine smokers’ agency to quit A Call to Dissent
unassisted. In Quit Smoking Weapons of Mass Distraction Simon Defending Democracy Against Extremism and Populism
Chapman AO, one of Australia’s foremost experts on strate- Stuart Sim
gies to minimise harm from tobacco, reviews the early history
of quitting smoking and the rise of assisted quitting. He also A Call to Dissent defends dissent as an essential part of democ-
provides actionable policy solutions to help people actually racy. Stuart Sim argues that the political left is falling into
quit smoking. despair in the face of growing right-wing populism and ex-
Pub July 01, 2022. 8.5 × 6 in. (210 x 148 mm). 396 pp. tremism, rather than challenging and standing up to it. He
Sydney University Press identifies how dissent works in philosophy, religion, science,
978-1-743-32853-8 Paper/e-Book, $40.00 (AUD) and the arts, as well as in politics. Ultimately, he calls on all
of us to become dissenters ourselves in order to challenge au-
thority and counter the growth of prejudice and bigotry in
public life.
Pub May 1, 2022. 8.5 × 5.3 in. 216 pp.
PHILOSOPHY/RELIGION Edinburgh University Press
978-1-474-49495-3 Paper, $19.95
Contribution to the Correction of the Public’s
Judgments on the French Revolution
J. G. Fichte; Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by Jef- Battling the Prince
frey Church and Anna Marisa Schön A Woman Fights for Democracy
The reception history of the French Revolution in France and Claire Snyder-Hall
England is well documented among Anglophone scholars; In this political memoir, Claire Snyder-Hall shares lessons
however, the debate over the Revolution in Germany is much learned from eight years in party politics. She tells the story
less well known. Fichte’s Contribution played an important role of organizing a grassroots campaign for state senate in a Dela-
in this debate. Presented here for the first time in English, ware district dominated by good ole boys, of a political milieu
Fichte’s work provides a distinctive synthesis of Locke’s “pos- in which a letter to the editor results in a smear campaign and
sessive individualism,” Rousseau’s general will, and Kant’s broken friendships, and of battling a party establishment more
moral philosophy. This eclectic blend results in an unusual concerned about shoring up its own power than engaging ev-
rights theory that at times veers close to a form of anarchism. eryday people or fighting for their needs.
Pub July 1, 2021. 6 × 9 in. 280 pp. Pub January 1, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 248 pp.
SUNY Press SUNY Press
9781438482163 Paper, $32.95 978-1-438-48464-8 Paper, $32.95
use code NYRB22 and save 30% at www.sunypress.edu use code NYRB22 and save 30% at www.sunypress.edu
Plasticity Democracy’s Rebirth

The Promise of Explosion The View from Chicago
Catherine Malabou Dick Simpson. Foreword by Lori Lightfoot
This career-spanning collection of essays, many previously “His proposals represent nothing short of the rebirth of our
unpublished, showcases the work of leading French philoso- democracy on both a local level and the national level—
pher Catherine Malabou. She articulates a coherent concep- values that I have personally fought for in my mayoral cam-
tualization of “plasticity” by merging neurobiology and me- paign and administration. Democracy’s Rebirth: The View from
dicinal sciences with the history of philosophy and political Chicago helps illuminate both our past and our way forward
theory. She carves a philosophical space between structural- toward a government and society that are more fair, equitable,
ism, deconstruction, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis and and effective for all its residents, and a successful future that
speculative realism, demonstrating the plastic transformability we can all equally engage and benefit from.” —Mayor Lori E.
at the heart of these disciplines. Includes an introduction situ- Lightfoot, from the Foreword
ating her work within contemporary philosophy by Ian James. Pub April 26, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 272 pp.
Pub May 31, 2022. 9.2 × 6.1 in. 344 pp. University of Illinois Press
Edinburgh University Press 978-0-252-08638-0, Paper $19.95; 978-0-252-05329-0 e-book, $14.95
978-1-474-46212-9 Paper, $29.95
May 26, 2022 39

The House That Madigan Built REGIONAL STUDIES
The Record Run of Illinois’ Velvet Hammer
Ray Long. Foreword by Charles N. Wheeler III
The Spirit of New York, Second Edition
“An amazingly timely book that puts into perspective the his- Defining Events in the Empire State’s History
toric events of last week — the federal indictment of the most Bruce W. Dearstyne
powerful figure in Illinois politics.” —Shia Kapos, Politico
Bruce W. Dearstyne presents New York State history through
“Long’s account of Madigan’s legacy is a study of the practi-
an exploration of nineteen dramatic events. From the launch
cal application of power.” —Garin Cycholl, Chicago Review
of the state government through the musical play Hamilton,
of Books
Dearstyne puts the fascinating people who made history at the
Pub March 22, 2022. 6.125 × 9.25 in. 312 pp.
center of the story: John Jay, the lead writer of the first state
University of Illinois Press
constitution; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the irrepressible cru-
978-0-252-04447-2 Cloth, $29.95; 978-0-252-05348-1 e-book, $14.95
sader for women’s rights; Glenn Curtiss, New York’s aviation
pioneer; Jackie Robinson, the first Black man to play baseball
for the Brooklyn Dodgers; and Lois Gibbs, an environmental
activist.
Pub February 1, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 482 pp.
SUNY Press
978-1-438-48714-4 Paper, $29.95
POPULAR CULTURE use code NYRB22 and save 30% at www.sunypress.edu
The Tacky South

Edited by Katharine A. Burnett and Monica Carol Miller
The Tacky South presents eighteen fun, insightful essays that WOMEN’S STUDIES
examine connections between tackiness and the American
South, ranging from nineteenth-century local color fiction This Bridge Called My Back,
and the television series Murder, She Wrote to red velvet cake Fortieth Anniversary Edition
and the ubiquitous inf luence of Dolly Parton. Charting the Writings by Radical Women of Color
gender, race, and class constructions at work in regional aes- Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa, editors
thetics, The Tacky South explores what shifting notions of
Reissued here, forty years after its inception, this anniver-
tackiness reveal about US culture as a whole and the role that
sary edition contains a new preface by Moraga ref lecting on
region plays in addressing national and global issues of culture
Bridge’s “living legacy” and the broader community of women
and identity.
of color activists, writers, and artists whose enduring contribu-
Pub June 15, 2022. 6 × 9 in. 280 pp.
tions dovetail with its radical vision. Further features help set
Louisiana State University Press
the volume’s historical context, a statement written by Gloria
978-0-807-17789-1 Paper, $35.00
Anzaldúa in 1983, and visual art produced during the same pe-
riod by Betye Saar, Ana Mendieta, Yolanda López, and others,
curated by their contemporary, artist Celia Herrera Rodríguez.
Pub November 1. 2021. 6 × 9 in. 342 pp.
SUNY Press
978-1-438-48828-8 Paper, $34.95
use code NYRB22 and save 30% at www.sunypress.edu.
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Frost Library 500 5th Street NW University of Illinois Press
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Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
der Frauen und also wohl auch der Götter; er fabriziert aus
goldgleißendem Messing, das er um schnöden Mammon von der
Küste erhandelt, jene massiven, wuchtigen Fuß- und
Handknöchelringe, die an den schlanken Gliedern der Schönen
meine staunende Bewunderung stets von neuem erregen. Wie jeder
ordentliche Meister trug der Mann sein gesamtes Handwerkszeug
bei sich: 2 Blasebälge, 3 Schmelztiegel, 1 Hammer, das war alles.
Bitten ließ er sich nicht lange; eins, zwei, drei waren die beiden
Blasebälge am Boden befestigt. Es sind einfache Ziegenbälge,
deren Extremitäten durch einen Knoten in sich verschlossen sind,
während die obere, für die Luftzufuhr bestimmte, weite Öffnung von
zwei Holzleisten eingefaßt wird. Am anderen Ende des Balges ist
eine schmale Öffnung gelassen; in dieser steckt eine Holzröhre.
Rasch hat der Fundi aus der nächsten Hütte einen Haufen
Holzkohlen erborgt; schon hat er auf die Mündungen der zwei
Holzröhren — es kommen stets zwei Blasebälge zur Anwendung,
um einen dauernden Luftstrom zu erzielen — eine Tondüse gesetzt;
mit einem derben Schlag treibt er einen Holzhaken über den
Holzröhren in die Erde. Jetzt füllt er den einen seiner kleinen, bereits
stark verschlackten Tontiegel mit dem gelben Material, setzt ihn ins
Zentrum des Kohlenherdes, der einstweilen nur schwach glimmt,
und dann beginnt die Arbeit. In raschem Wechsel fahren die Hände
des Fundi mit den Schlitzen der Blasebälge auf und nieder; hebt er
die Hand, so spreizt er den Schlitz breit auseinander, so daß die Luft
ungehindert in den Fellsack hineintreten kann; drückt er die Hand
nieder, so schließt er den Sack, und fauchend bläst die Luft durch
Bambusrohr und Düse in das rasch erstarkende Kohlenfeuer. Doch
der Mann bleibt nicht bei der Arbeit; schon hat er einen andern
herangewinkt, der ihn beim Blasen ablöst. Im Gleichtakt sausen die
Hände auf und nieder, der Fundi aber hat aus seinem Rucksack,
einer großen Felltasche, noch ein paar Werkzeuge geholt; mit
Verwunderung sehe ich, wie er zunächst mittels eines glatten,
fingerstarken Rundstabes ein paar Löcher senkrecht in den reinen
Sand des Waldbodens drückt. Dies mag nicht schwer sein,
gleichwohl entwickelt der Mann dabei bedeutende Sorgfalt. Darauf
ein rasches Niederknien, ein paar Schläge auf ein paar kleine
Holzhaken; an den Boden genagelt sehe ich eine kleine, niedliche
Mulde. Ein Stück Bambusrohr ist es, der Länge nach halbiert, so daß
die beiden Endknoten den Miniaturtrog abschließen. Endlich ist das
gelbe Metall flüssig genug; mit zwei langen, durch Aufsplittern
zangenartig gegabelten Stäben hebt der Fundi den Tiegel vom
Feuer: eine kurze, rasche Wendung nach links, ein Neigen des
Tiegels, unter Zischen und starker Rauchentwicklung fließt das
Metall zunächst in die Bambusform, sodann in die Erdlöcher.
Das Verfahren dieses hinterwäldlerischen Meisters mag
technisch nicht auf der Höhe stehen; es läßt sich indes nicht
leugnen, daß er mit den geringsten und einfachsten Mitteln
vollkommen Ausreichendes zu erzeugen versteht. Die vornehmen
Damen hierzulande, d. h. die, welche es sich leisten können, tragen
zweierlei Arten dieser schweren, massiven Messingringe: eine im
Querschnitt halbkreisförmige und eine kreisrunde. Jene erzeugt der
Fundi in genialster Weise in der Bambusform; Peripherie: rund,
Oberfläche: horizontal; die andere in seinem kreisrunden Sandloch.
Das Anlegen an die Gliedmaßen seiner Kundinnen ist einfach; mit
leichten Schlägen seines Hammers legt der Meister das biegsame
Metall ohne weitere Belästigung für die Trägerinnen um Arm und
Knöchel herum.
Formen des Topfes.
Glätten mit dem Maiskolben.
Schneiden des Randes.
Ausarbeiten des Bodens.

Letztes Glätten vor dem Brande.
Anzünden des Holzstoßes.
Anbrennen auf der Gegenseite.
Wenden des glühenden Gefäßes.

Wanyassa-Töpferei in Massassi.
Eine Technik, die immer und überall das Interesse jedes
Kulturhistorikers erwecken muß, eben weil sie so eng einesteils mit
der Kulturentwicklung der Menschheit zusammenhängt, sodann weil
gerade die Rekonstruktion unseres eigenen vorgeschichtlichen
Kulturbildes sich in hohem Grad auf ihre Reste stützt, ist die
Töpferei. Mit Vergnügen denke ich an die zwei oder drei
Nachmittage zurück, wo in Massassi Salim Matolas schlanke,
freundliche Mutter mir mit rührender Geduld die keramischen Künste
ihres Volkes in konkretem Beispiel erläutert hat. Ist das ein
urwüchsiges Verfahren! Einzige Hilfsmittel: in der Linken ein Patzen
Ton, in der Rechten eine Kürbisschale mit folgenden Kostbarkeiten
als Inhalt: dem Fragment eines ausgelutschten Maiskolbens, einem
taubeneigroßen, eiförmigen, glatten Kiesel, ein paar Stückchen
Flaschenkürbis, einem handlangen Bambussplitter, einer kleinen
Muschelschale und einem Päckchen eines spinatartigen Krautes.
Das ist alles. Mit der Muschel kratzt die Frau in den weichen, feinen
Sandboden ein kreisrundes, flaches Loch. Inzwischen hat eine
frische Negermaid das Kürbisgefäß mit Wasser gefüllt; die Frau
fängt nun an, den Klumpen zu kneten. Wie durch Zauberhand
entwickelt sich dieser zu einem zwar rohen, aber doch immerhin
bereits formenreinen Gefäß, das lediglich einer kleinen Nachhilfe mit
jenen Instrumenten bedarf. Gespannt habe ich nach irgendwelchen
Anfängen der Drehscheibe ausgeschaut; hapana, gibt es nicht.
Ruhig und fest steht der Topfembryo in jener kleinen Vertiefung;
tiefgebückt umwandelt ihn die Frau, ganz gleich, ob sie mit dem
Maiskolben die größeren Unreinlichkeiten, kleine Steine und
dergleichen entfernt oder Innen- und Außenfläche mit dem
Bambussplitter glättet, ob sie später, nach eintägiger Trockenzeit des
werdenden Gefäßes, mit zugeschliffenem Kürbisstück die
Ornamente einsticht oder den Boden ausarbeitet; ob sie mit
scharfem Bambusmesser den Rand schneidet, oder das nunmehr
fertige Gefäß noch einer letzten Revision unterzieht. Unendlich
mühselig ist dieses Frauengeschäft, aber es ist zweifellos ein
getreues Spiegelbild des Verfahrens, wie es auch unsere
neolithischen und bronzezeitlichen Vorfahren geübt haben.
Die Frau hat das unschätzbare Verdienst, die Erfinderin der
Töpferei zu sein. Rauh, roh und rücksichtslos schweift die
Männerwelt des Wildstammes durch das Gefilde; mit vereinter List
haben die Jäger soeben das Wild zur Strecke gebracht; keinem fällt
es ein, die Beute zum Wohnplatz zu schaffen. Schon prasselt, vom
kraftvoll gequirlten Bohrstab hervorgerufen, ein helles Feuer zu ihrer
Seite; kunstgerecht ist das Tier ausgeweidet und zerlegt; bald wird
es als knapp angerösteter Braten hinter den scharfen Zähnen der
Männer verschwinden; an Frau und Kind denkt niemand von der
Schar.
Frau und Kind! Kommt, laßt uns unseren Kindern leben! erschallt
der Ruf von der einen Seite; ehret die Frauen! von der anderen. Das
gilt aber nur von uns, die wir auf diesem Gebiet wirklich die Träger
höchster Vollkultur sind. Wie jammervoll und kläglich hat sich
dagegen die Urfrau und noch mehr die Urmutter durchhelfen
müssen! Ewig nur den Küchenzettel, den eine zwar gütige, aber
doch auch nur einseitige Natur darbietet, das hält nicht einmal ein
Urmagen aus! Von irgendwo hat Frau Urahne Kunde von den
wohltätigen Wirkungen heißen Wassers auf die Mehrzahl
altbewährter, aber doch schwer verdaulicher Gerichte erhalten. Die
Nachbarin hat es auch versucht. Die sonst so harten Knollenfrüchte
hat sie in einer mit Wasser gefüllten Kalebasse — oder war es ein
Straußenei, oder gar ein schnell improvisierter Rindenzylinder? —
über Feuer gehalten, da wurden sie viel weicher und schmeckten
viel besser als vorher; leider aber hat das Gefäß nicht ausgehalten,
sondern ist dabei elendiglich von außen verkohlt. Dem kann mit
Leichtigkeit abgeholfen werden, denkt sie, und schon hat sie eine
Schicht bildsamer, nasser Erde um ein ähnliches Gefäß
herumgestrichen. Nunmehr geht es besser, das Kochgefäß bleibt
unversehrt, nur hat es sich in dem heißen Feuer in seiner Umhüllung
gelockert. Also herunter damit! Ein Griff, ein Ruck, Kern und Hülle
sind getrennt — die Töpferei ist erfunden!
Doch zu einer verständnisvollen Benutzung der hartgebrannten
Tonhülle selbst hat vielleicht ein um ein weniges anderer Weg
geführt. Straußeneier und Kalebassen gibt es nicht überall auf der
Erde, dagegen hat der Mensch es überall verstanden, sich aus
biegsamen Bestandteilen, Rinde, Bast, Blattstreifen, Ruten und
dergleichen, Behälter für seinen Haushalt herzustellen. Auch unsere
Erfinderin hat kein wasserdichtes Naturgefäß. „Macht nichts;
streichen wir den Korb von innen aus.“ Auch so geht es; aber o weh,
das Korbgeflecht verbrennt über dem hellodernden Feuer
jämmerlich; immer ängstlicher schaut die Frau dem Kochprozeß zu;
sie befürchtet jeden Augenblick ein Leck, aber nichts von alledem.
Das Gericht ist geraten und mit besonderem Appetit verzehrt; halb
neugierig, halb befriedigt wird das Kochgefäß gemustert. Der
vordem so bildsame Ton ist jetzt steinhart geworden, zudem sieht er
gut aus, denn das nette, saubere Geflecht des so schmählich
verbrannten Korbes zeichnet sich in hübschen Mustern auf ihm ab.
So ist mit der Töpferei gleichzeitig auch ihre Ornamentik erfunden
worden.
Wir sind heute galant; aber wären wir es auch nicht, eine tiefe
Verbeugung geziemte der Frau auch aus dem folgenden Grunde.
Der schweifende Mann ist der Entdecker der willkürlichen
Feuererzeugung; mit kraftvollem Arm zaubert er den göttlichen
Funken aus jedem Astwerk hervor. Das kann ihm die Frau nicht
nachtun. Sie ist dafür Vestalin von Urzeit herauf; nichts verursacht so
viel Sorge wie die Erhaltung des glimmenden Spans. Und nun gar im
Lager erst. Die Männer sind fern. Drohend ballen sich schwere
Regenwolken zusammen; schon fallen die ersten dicken Tropfen;
wirbelnd rast der Sturm über die Ebene daher. Unruhig zuckt das
kleine Flämmchen des glimmenden Astes, das der Frau seit jeher
mehr Sorge bereitet als das eigene Kind. Was tun? Ein blitzschneller
Gedanke, rasch steht eine primitive Hütte, aus Rindenstücken
gefertigt, da; noch immer zuckt zwar die Flamme, doch die Gefahr
des Verlöschens in Regen und Wind ist glücklich abgewandt.
Einem solchen oder einem ähnlichen Vorgang ist zweifelsohne
die Erfindung des Hauses im Prinzip zu danken; sie der Frau
abzusprechen, hat selbst der hartgesottene Weiberfeind nicht das
Recht. Der Schutz des glimmenden Herdfeuers gegen das
unfreundliche Walten der Natur ist das Hauptmotiv zu
Weiterentwicklung der menschlichen Behausung. Der Mann ist an
diesem Fortschritt kaum beteiligt, oder doch erst sehr spät. Noch
heute ist im ganzen Osten Afrikas das Bestreichen der Hauswand
mit Lehm ausschließlich Sache der Frau, wie die Herstellung aller
Tongefäße; zwei Überbleibsel, aber zwei sehr bezeichnende. Auch
unser europäischer Gemüsegarten ist ein solches gutes, altes
Reliquienstück aus den Anfängen höherer menschlicher Wirtschaft,
die ich mit dem Einsetzen der Kochkunst beginnen lasse; er
interessiert noch heute den deutschen Hausherrn wenig, er geht ihn
genetisch ja auch gar nichts an, denn auch er ist eine Erfindung der
Frau. Mochten die schweifenden Männer ihr rohgeröstetes Fleisch
selbstsüchtig in rauher Tafelrunde unter sich vertilgen, ihr blieb die
nette, kleine Auswahl grünender Kräuter und rauschender Ähren, die
sie im Laufe der Jahre als genießbar und schmackhaft
herausgefunden hatte. Im Wesen ist es noch heute so; selbst das
Urgerät dieser alten Beetkultur, die Hacke, steht bei diesem Zweig
unseres Feldbaues noch in vollem Gebrauch.
Die edelste Errungenschaft aber, die wir dem anderen
Geschlecht verdanken, ist doch die Technik und die Kunst des
Kochens selbst. Nur das Rösten ist eine alte Kunst, eine von den
Männern der Natur bequem abgelauschte zudem; der vom
vernichtenden Waldbrand angeschmorte Kadaver des von der
raschen Flamme überholten Tieres hat ihnen den Hinweis gegeben.
Das Kochen, d. h. der Veredelungsprozeß organischer Stoffe unter
Zuhilfenahme des zum Sieden gebrachten Wassers, ist eine weit
jüngere Errungenschaft. Sie ist so jung, daß sie selbst heute noch
nicht einmal überall hingedrungen ist; versteht doch der Polynesier
wohl zu dünsten, d. h. sein Gericht, sauber in Blätter gewickelt, im
Erdloch zwischen heißen Steinen unter Luftabschluß und hie und da
unter Besprengung der heißen Steine mit etlichen Tropfen Wassers
garzumachen, aber kochen kann er nicht. Ehre sei also der Frau und
Dank für alle diese Wohltaten, mit denen sie die werdende
Menschheit überhäuft hat!
Jedoch nie hat die böse Männerwelt der Frau das alles gedankt.
Noch heute ist sie die Hüterin des Herdes, ganz gleich, ob dieser die
Hütte des Negers, den Wigwam des Indianers, den Pfahlbau des
Malaien zum behaglichen, von Mann und Kind erstrebten Mittelpunkt
des täglichen Lebens gestaltet. Im Dunkel Afrikas und in den
Urwäldern Amerikas hat sie freilich noch heute das zweifelhafte
Vergnügen, Haus und Küche nicht nur zu erhalten und zu besorgen,
sondern auch beide im wesentlichen selbst herzurichten; doch
schnöde, undankbar und pietätlos hat die moderne Kultur die Frau
aus der keramischen Werkstätte verbannt. Und wenn es die höchste
Betätigung kulinarischer Kunst gilt, so ist auch da nicht mehr die
Frau die berufene Trägerin dieses Könnens, sondern, uneingedenk
ihrer alten Verdienste, stellen wir Köche an und erniedrigen die Frau
zur bloßen Hilfeleistung. Wir sind ein undankbares Geschlecht.
Die schlanke Wanyassafrau hat nach einem letzten, prüfenden
Blick den fertiggeformten Topf zum weiteren Trocknen in den
Schatten gestellt. Als sie mir am nächsten Tage durch ihren stets
gegenwärtigen Sohn Salim Matola entbieten läßt, sie wolle das
Gefäß jetzt brennen, da erblicke ich sie beim Heraustreten aus
meinem Hause schon eifrig beschäftigt. Sie hat eine Schicht
daumenstarker, sehr trockner Knüppel auf die Erde gebreitet, den
matt gelbgrauglänzenden Topf daraufgesetzt und umtürmt ihn
nunmehr mit weiterem Geäst. Hilfreich und entgegenkommend
überreicht ihr mein treuer Pesa mbili, der Trägerführer, den schon
bereitgehaltenen Feuerbrand; unter beiderseitigem Blasen fachen
sie den Stoß unter dem Winde an; schon zuckt die Flamme empor,
da übertragen sie den Brand auch auf die Luvseite. Bald ist das
Ganze ein einziges Feuermeer. Doch rasch verzehrt sich der trockne
Stoff, der Stoß sinkt in sich zusammen, glühend ragt aus ihm das
Gefäß hervor; mit langem Scheit wird es von der Frau gewendet,
bald so, bald so, damit es gleichmäßig erglühe. Bereits nach 20
Minuten rollt sie das Kunstprodukt aus dem Aschenhaufen heraus,
ein Griff nach dem Spinatbündel, das zwei Tage lang in einem
Wassertopf gelegen hat; ein Schwung wie mit einem Weihwedel; laut
zischen die Tropfen auf dem glühenden Ton auf. An die Stelle des
gleichmäßigen Braunrots sind jetzt regellos verteilte schwarze
Flecke getreten.
Mit einem Seufzer der Erleichterung und mit sichtlicher
Befriedigung hat die Frau sich emporgereckt; sie steht genau in
einer Linie mit mir und der Flamme. Eine Rauchwolke steigt empor;
ein Druck auf den Gummiball der Kamera, es knipst, die Apotheose
ist gelungen — eine Priesterin ihres erfinderischen Geschlechts, so
steht die schlanke Frau da, zu Füßen das Feuer des Herdes, den sie
uns geschenkt; zur Seite die Erfindung, die sie für uns gemacht; im
Hintergrunde das Heim, das sie uns errichtet!
Makuatöpferei in Newala mit den

Anfängen der Töpferscheibe.
Auch in Newala habe ich mir die Herstellung keramischer
Erzeugnisse vorführen lassen. Technisch war das Verfahren besser,
denn hier kennt man bereits die ersten Anfänge der Drehscheibe,
die es im Tiefland anscheinend nicht gibt; wenigstens habe ich keine
gesehen. Von der Herstellung einer Vertiefung zur Aufnahme des zu
bildenden Gefäßes sieht die Künstlerin, eine furchtbar stumpfsinnige
Makuafrau, ab; dafür rückt sie mit einer großen Topfscherbe an, die
sie mit einer gewissen Wichtigkeit an der improvisierten Arbeitsstelle
niedersetzt. Auf dieser Scherbe entwickelt sich alles weitere in
ziemlich den gleichen Bahnen wie bei Salims Mutter, nur daß die
Töpferin hier des mühseligen Herumlaufens um das Gefäß enthoben
ist; in aller Bequemlichkeit kauert sie dabei und läßt Topf und
Scherbe um sich selbst rotieren; es ist also der Anfang einer
Maschine. Aber wollt ihr glauben, daß der Topf etwa dadurch
regelmäßiger und schöner geworden sei? Freilich ist er schön rund
und ganz ansehnlich geworden, aber alle die zahlreichen großen
und kleinen Gefäße, die ich in den „rückständigen“ Gebieten
gesehen und zum Teil auch gesammelt habe, sind es nicht minder.
Wir modernen Menschen bilden uns immer ein, um Hervorragendes
schaffen zu können, seien Präzisionsinstrumente nötig. Geht hin in
die prähistorischen Museen und Sammlungen und seht euch die
Töpfe, Urnen und Schalen unserer Vorfahren aus grauer Vorzeit an,
dann werdet ihr sofort eines Besseren belehrt sein!
Heute ist fast die ganze Bevölkerung Deutsch-Ostafrikas in
eingeführte Kattune gekleidet. Dem war nicht immer so; noch heute
gibt es im Norden einige Gebiete, wo das gewalkte Tierfell als
Bekleidungsstoff vorherrscht, im Nordwesten aber, östlich und
nördlich vom Tanganyika, liegt eine Zone, wo Rindenstoffe auch
heute noch nicht ganz verdrängt sind. Nur wenige Generationen
mag es her sein, daß solche Rindenstoffe neben Fellschurzen auch
im ganzen Süden das einzige Bekleidungsmaterial gewesen sind.
Auch heute ist dieses leuchtend rote oder fahlgelbe Material noch
massenhaft vorhanden; will man es aber sehen, so muß man schon
in die Vorratsbehälter, auf die Trockengerüste und in die Hütten der
Eingeborenen kriechen; dort führt es ein bescheideneres Dasein,
nämlich nur noch als Packmaterial für besonders sorgsam zu
behandelnde Sämereien und Früchte. Auch das Salz von Massassi
wird in große Rindenstoffstücke geschlagen und in ihnen
kunstgerecht für den Ferntransport verpackt.
Ritzen der Rinde am Baum.
Abziehen der Rinde vom Baum.

Putzen der abgehobenen Rinde.
Klopfen der Rinde.
Geschmeidigmachen des geklopften

Stoffes.
Rindenstoffherstellung in
Newala.
Wo es irgend ging, habe ich auch die Technik der Herstellung
dieses Stoffes studiert. Mit einem zwei bis drei Meter langen,
schenkeldicken Knüppel kommt der bestellte schwarze Mann an;
sonst trägt er weiter nichts als einen merkwürdig gestalteten
Hammer und das übliche lange, scharfe und spitze Messer, das alle
Männer und Knaben, ohne Scheide horribile dictu! — auf dem Kreuz
im Gürtel tragen. Stumm läßt er sich vor mir nieder; mit zwei raschen
Skalpierschnitten hat er im Abstand von zwei Meter den
mitgebrachten Baum umzirkt, dann fährt er mit der Spitze des
Messers auf dem Baum lang dahin. Mit sichtlicher Sorgfalt hebt er
rings um den Stamm mit Hilfe des Messers die äußere Borke ab, so
daß nach Verlauf einer guten Viertelstunde die erstrebte innere
Schicht sich leuchtend zwischen den unberührt gebliebenen
Stammenden heraushebt. Mit einiger Mühe und vieler Vorsicht löst
er die Rinde an dem einen Ende ab, er öffnet den Zylinder; sodann
steht er auf, ergreift den freigewordenen Rindensaum mit beiden
Händen und zieht dem langen Knüppel langsam, aber mit
Nachdruck das Fell über die Ohren. Ich erwarte, der so grausam
Geschundene möchte achtlos beiseite geworfen werden; das
geschieht aber nicht, sondern er wird belassen, wo er liegt. Für den
Künstler beginnt nun die mühsame Arbeit des Säuberns; er schabt
alle überflüssigen Borkenteile von der Außenseite des langen,
schmalen Rohstoffes ab und unterzieht ihn auch auf der Innenseite
einer sehr vorsichtigen Durchsicht nach Fehlstellen. Jetzt endlich
geht’s an das Klopfen; auf einen Wink hat ihm ein Freund eine
Schale mit Wasser zur Seite gestellt; mit diesem feuchtet der
Künstler das ganze Stück ein, greift darauf nach seinem Hammer,
legt das eine Ende des Stoffes auf die glatteste Stelle des
entrindeten Baumes und hämmert langsam, aber stetig darauflos.
Höchst einfach, denke ich, das würdest du sicher auch können;
später aber werde ich anderer Meinung: das Klopfen ist doch eine
Kunst, falls es nicht zu einem Z e r klopfen werden soll. Um das zu
verhüten, faltet der Künstler den Rohstoff mehrfach der Quere nach
und bildet dergestalt eine mehrfache Lage, die dem Zerschlagen der
Fasern entgegenwirken soll. Endlich ist der gewünschte Endzustand
erzielt; entweder ergreift der Fundi allein den immer noch gefalteten
Stoff an beiden Enden und ringt ihn tüchtig durch, oder er ruft einen
Gehilfen herbei, der ihn bei dieser Schlußarbeit unterstützt. Das so
entstandene Zeug ist lange nicht so fein und regelmäßig wie der
berühmte Rindenstoff von Uganda, aber es ist immerhin schön
weich und vor allen Dingen billig.
Jetzt sehe ich mir auch den Hammer an; mein Künstler verfügt
über die einfachere, aber bessere Form: auf dem Hammerstiel steckt
als wirksame Masse ein derber Holzkegel, dessen breite Basis, die
Schlagfläche, kreuz und quer mit mehr oder minder derben Riefen
versehen ist. Bei der ursprünglichen Form ist der Kegel ebenso
gestaltet, aber er ruht in einem kunstvoll verflochtenen System von
Baststreifen, die ihn an einem aufgespaltenen Bambusstab als Stiel
befestigen. — Die völkerkundliche Erfahrung, daß alte Sitten und
Gebräuche sich am längsten im Kult und im Kinderleben erhalten,
finden wir auch bei diesem Rindenstoffe bestätigt; wie ich sehr bald
erzählen werde, wird er noch während des Unyago getragen,
nachdem er unter bestimmten Zeremonien höchst feierlich erzeugt
worden ist; auch legt manche Mutter, wenn sie sonst nichts hat,
ihrem Sprößling noch hie und da ein Rindenschürzchen an. Das
sieht dann viel schöner und weit afrikanischer aus als der lächerliche
Lappen aus Uleia.
Makua-Masewe in der Boma von Newala.
Fünfzehntes Kapitel.
„Und will sich nimmer erschöpfen
und leeren.“
Newala, Anfang Oktober 1906.
Ein paar Tage lang hat es geschienen, als wolle unser deutscher
Altweibersommer vom fernen Uleia aus uns hier oben einen Besuch
abstatten, so frisch-kühl schien die Sonne auf Weiße und Schwarze
hernieder, und so windstill war es um unsere Barasa. Jetzt aber
umbraust wieder der altgewohnte eisige Novemberost die Boma von
Newala, und geregnet hat es gerade am Michaelistage auch schon.
Das muß wohl ein hierzulande allgemein verstandenes Signal für
jung und alt gewesen sein, denn weder die unvermeidlichen Knaben
belagern mich, noch kehren auch meine Gelehrten wieder.
Erfreulicherweise habe ich die alten Herren im Laufe der letzten
Wochen so auspressen können, daß ich schon jetzt, im
unanfechtbaren Besitz einer Unsumme von Aufzeichnungen und
Notizen, vollauf befriedigt von dannen pilgern könnte, hielten mich
nicht die Sprachaufnahmen, in die ich mich nun einmal verbissen
habe, noch für eine kurze Spanne zurück. Ganz unmöglich ist es, an
dieser Stelle auch nur die knappste Skizze von dem zu geben, was
ich, der nunmehr wissend Gewordene, von allen diesen mehr oder
minder seltsamen Sitten und Gebräuchen in mein vor Glückseligkeit
jauchzendes Gemüt aufgenommen habe. In amtlichen und
nichtamtlichen Schriften, zu denen ich sicherlich die Muße manchen
Semesters werde opfern müssen, ist der Platz für alle Einzelheiten;
was ich hier bringen kann, darf und will, ist lediglich ein Hervorheben
gerade dessen, was vermöge seiner Eigenart jeden Kulturmenschen
fesseln kann und wohl auch wird.
Ein unbegrenztes Forschungsfeld sind die hiesigen
Personennamen. Wo der Islam bereits Fuß gefaßt hat, herrscht auch
die arabische Benennungsweise; da marschiert neben dem
Makonde-Askari Saidi bin Mussa sein Kamerad vom Nyassasee Ali
bin Pinga, und hinter dem Yaoträger Hamisi zieht Hassani aus
Mkhutu seines Weges fürbaß. Bei den Binnenstämmen waltet als
soziales Prinzip die Sippeneinteilung vor; daher tritt selbst noch zu
dem Vornamen der zum Christentum Bekehrten der Name des
Clans. Daudi (David) Machina nennt sich der schwarze Pastor von
Chingulungulu, und Claudio Matola heißt der präsumtive Nachfolger
Matolas I. und Matolas II. Über diese Namen des Innern gleich mehr.
Ebenso fesselnd wie die Namen selbst ist oftmals ihre
Bedeutung; schon meine braven Träger haben mir in dieser
Richtung manch fröhliche Minute verursacht; sie führen zum großen
Teil auch gar zu drollige Bezeichnungen. Pesa mbili, Herr
Zweipfennig in deutscher Währung, ist uns ebensowenig ein
Fremder mehr wie seine Freunde Kofia tule, der lange Mann mit
dem flachen Käppchen, Herr Kasi uleia, der Mann, der beim
Europäer Arbeit nimmt, und Herr Mambo sasa, die „Sitte von heute“.
Mambo sasa ist und bleibt für mich die lebendige Illustration zu
meiner mitgenommenen Phonographenwalze aus der „Fledermaus“,
die ihr „Das ist nun mal so Sitte“ wohl aus dieser Ideenassoziation
heraus jetzt häufiger ertönen lassen muß als früher. Außer diesen
Getreuen laufen unter meinen zwei Dutzend schwarzen Kameraden
noch folgende Gentlemen herum: Herr Decke (Kinyamwesi:
Bulingeti, verderbt aus dem englischen blanket); Herr Cigaretti
(bedarf keines Kommentars); Herr Kamba uleia (keck, aber sehr frei
übersetzt: du deutscher Strick); Herr Berg oder Hügel (Kilima), und
die Herren Kompania und Kapella. Ins Seemännische fallen die
Namen Maschua (Boot) und Meli (vom englischen mail, das
Dampfboot); ins Arithmetische Herr Sechs (Sitta). Den würdigen
Beschluß macht Mpenda kula, Herr Freßsack.
Den Namen der Binnenstämme fehlt der merkbare europäische
Einschlag dieser Trägernamen, doch spaßig will uns auch hier
mancher erscheinen. Ich bemerke dabei, daß diese Namen
durchweg nicht die ersten sind, die ihren Träger zieren; wie sooft bei
Naturvölkern, auch heute noch bei den Japanern, haben wir auch
hier die Erscheinung, daß jeder einzelne im Anschluß an die
erlangte und festlich begangene Mannbarkeit einen neuen Namen
bekommt. Den hiesigen Eingeborenen ist die ursprüngliche
Bedeutung dieses Wechsels nicht oder nicht mehr bekannt, doch
geht man wohl nicht fehl in der Annahme, daß die neue Benennung
auch einen neuen Menschen bedeutet; jede Erinnerung an den alten
Adam ist damit ausgelöscht, der neue Mensch aber steht in ganz
anderem verwandtschaftlichen Verhältnis zu seinen Angehörigen
und Stammesgenossen als der frühere. Offiziell ist jeder erwachsene
Yao, Makua, Makonde oder Matambwe berechtigt, sich als Pate
anzubieten, doch erweckt mir die Mehrzahl der Namen den
Eindruck, als seien sie in Wirklichkeit Spitznamen, die ihrem Träger
gelegentlich aus dem Bekanntenkreis anfliegen; der Neger hat
bekanntlich ein sehr feines Gefühl für die Schwächen und Blößen
des anderen.
Chelikŏ́ sue, Herr Ratte, ist uns von seinen Heldenliedern von
Chingulungnlu her schon bekannt; zu ihm gehört der Namenklasse
nach Chipembēre, Herr Nashorn. Dieser neigt zum Jähzorn wie
jener Dickhäuter, daher sein Name. An die ursprüngliche
Stammeszugehörigkeit, nämlich zu den Wandonde, erinnert der
Name des alten Biervertilgers Akundonde. Der Sieger im Gefecht ist
Chekamĕ́ nya; Freude herrschte über die Geburt des Machīna;
Makwenja rafft alles an sich; Chemduulăgá macht hingegen wenig
aus sich, er ist die verkörperte Bescheidenheit. Ebenso ist Mkotima
ein ruhiger Mann; Siliwindi ist nach dem gleichnamigen guten
Sänger unter den Vögeln des Landes genannt; Mkokora endlich
trägt den Schmutz mit den Händen weg.
Das sind Wayao-Männernamen. Von den Frauennamen dieses
Stammes will ich nur folgende hervorheben: Frau Chemā́ laga; sie ist
ganz allein zurückgeblieben, alle ihre Angehörigen sind gestorben;
Frau Chechelajēro, die es immer schwer hat; Frau Chetulāye, die
schlecht lebt, und schließlich Chewaŏ́ pe, sie ist dein.
Die Personennamen der übrigen Völker sind im großen ganzen
desselben Charakters: Kunanyupu, Herr Gnu, ist ein alter Makua,
der nach seiner eigenen Aussage in seiner Jugend viele Gnus erlegt
hat; Nantiaka ist der Don Juan, der von einer zur andern flattert.
Geistesverwandt ist Ntindinganya, der Spaßvogel, der anderen in die
Schuhe schiebt, was er selber ausgeführt hat; Linyongonyo ist der
Schwächling ohne Kraft, Nyopa aber der Ehrgeizige, der danach
strebt, daß andere ihn fürchten; Madriga ist der Betrübte, der
Hypochonder; Dambuala der Faule.
Unter den Frauen ist Aluenenge die Selbstbewußte; ihr Herr und
Gebieter hat sich zwar noch ein zweites Weib genommen, aber bei
der wird er, das weiß Aluenenge ganz bestimmt, nicht bleiben,
sondern reuevoll zu ihr zurückkehren. Weit weniger glücklich ist
Nantupuli dran; sie läuft in der Welt herum, bekommt aber nichts,
weder einen Mann, noch sonst etwas. Wieder zur Kategorie der
Unglücklichen gehören dann Atupimiri und Achinaga; jene besitzt
einen Mann, der wenig seßhaft ist; immer ist er auswärts, nur von
Zeit zu Zeit kommt er, um seine Frau zu „messen“, d. h. zu sehen,
ob sie sich gut oder schlecht beträgt. Achinagas Mann aber ist stets
krank und kann nicht arbeiten; so muß sie alles allein machen. Eine
Pesa mbili gibt es auch unter den Makondefrauen; „früher stand ich
hoch,“ so besagt der Name, „in der Wertschätzung der Männer, jetzt
aber bin ich nur noch zwei Pesa wert; ich bin alt geworden.“
Schönheit steht eben auch beim Neger im Preise.
Ein sehr dankbares, aber auch recht schwierig zu beackerndes
Forschungsfeld ist für mich allerorten die Feststellung der
Gebräuche, die den einzelnen in seinem Dasein von der Wiege bis
zum Grabe begleiten.
In der mütterlichen Hütte ist das kleine Negerkind, das noch gar
nicht schwarz, sondern ebenso rosig aussieht wie unsere
Neugeborenen, zur Welt gekommen; der Herr Vater ist weit vom
Schuß; ihn haben die weisen Frauen beizeiten gehen heißen.
Säuberlich wird das Baby gewaschen und in ein Stück neuen
Rindenstoffes gewickelt. Dabei salbt man seine Ohren mit Öl, damit
es hören soll; das Bändchen unter der Zunge aber löst man mit dem
landesüblichen Rasiermesser, damit es sprechen lerne. Knaben
werden wie überall gern gesehen; in bezug auf Mädchen verhalten
sich die Stämme und, genau wie bei uns, auch die einzelnen
Familien verschieden. In der Völkerkunde ist oft zu lesen, daß die
Naturvölker die Geburt von Mädchen aus rein mammonistischen
Gründen freudig begrüßten, brächten doch die erwachsenen
Mädchen dem Elternpaar bei der Heirat den Kaufpreis ein. Bis zu
einem gewissen Grade mögen derartige Momente auch hierzulande
mitspielen, im allgemeinen aber sind Mädchen schon deswegen
gern gesehen, weil sie der Mutter bei den mannigfachen Arbeiten in
Haus und Feld frühzeitig an die Hand gehen können. Nach ihrer
Verheiratung wird der Herr Schwiegersohn zudem zum treuesten,
unentgeltlichen Diener des mütterlichen Hauses. Hier, im Lande der
Exogamie, der Außenehe, siedelt nämlich die junge Frau nicht mit in
das Heim des Ehemannes über, sie tritt auch nicht in seine
Verwandtschaft hinein, sondern gerade umgekehrt: der Mann verläßt
Vater und Mutter und zieht entweder direkt ins schwiegermütterliche
Haus oder baut sich doch unmittelbar daneben an; in jedem Fall
aber sorgt er, bis seine eigenen Familienumstände es anders
bedingen, mit voller Kraft jahrelang für die Erhaltung des
schwiegermütterlichen Anwesens; er besorgt die Aussaat und die
Ernte, macht neue Felder urbar, kurz, er sieht der Schwiegermama
jeden Wunsch an den Augen ab. Er trägt sie auf Händen.
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