newyorker--2020-10-08--What Happened When Medical Residents Asked for Hazard Pay

As a child in Southern California , Nicholus Warstadt spent a lot of time in emergency rooms on account of his severe asthma , and he often wondered how doctors knew how to make people feel better .
After college , he went to Stanford Medical School and decided to specialize in emergency medicine .
This past spring , Warstadt was a second-year resident at N.Y.U .
Langone Health .
“ My favorite thing about my specialty is that I take care of everyone , regardless of their ability to pay , ” he told me .
His own pay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a little more than sixty thousand dollars per year , roughly the median household income in Manhattan .
He often worked sixty hours in a week , meaning that he was making about twenty dollars per hour .
He will be able to earn many times that in a few years , as a board-certified emergency physician , but only after completing more than a dozen years of higher education and accruing about three hundred thousand dollars in student loans .
The average debt for medical-school graduates is about two hundred thousand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is delayed , a lot of it due to finances , ” Warstadt said .
“ I wouldn ’ t want this for my kids , because of the stress.
” Medical residents suffer from unusually high rates of depression , anxiety , and suicidal ideation .
When the coronavirus came to New York City , in mid-March , Warstadt was redirected from a pediatrics emergency room to a COVID-19 respiratory unit , where he worked about four twelve-hour shifts per week .
By April , hundreds of New Yorkers were dying from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fellows were working new and expanded jobs , which reduced the time they spent learning .
“ I think the hardest part was not knowing if or when it was ever going to end , ” Warstadt said .
Some private hospitals began offering hazard pay .
N.Y.U .
Langone Health—a private , nonprofit , multibillion-dollar hospital system with dozens of locations in New York and a few in Florida—did not .
Many of N.Y.U .
Langone ’ s nearly seventeen hundred trainee physicians spend part of their time at the city-funded Bellevue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employed by the city and are unionized ; Warstadt is a union delegate at Bellevue .
In early April , a handful of residents drafted a letter asking for hazard pay , increased life and disability insurance , and protections for those who contract COVID-19 .
“ As the demand placed on our hospital systems skyrockets , our risk of hospital-acquired infection increases , ” the letter said .
“ We are honored and willing to take on these greater clinical responsibilities .
But along with this comes an increased risk for disability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with trainees across the hospital system , initially by text message .
More than five hundred trainee physicians , including Warstadt , signed it .
While the letter was circulating among residents and fellows , it leaked to Michael Ambrosino , the associate dean for graduate medical education , and to Steven Abramson , a vice-dean and chair of N.Y.U .
Langone ’ s Department of Medicine .
Ambrosino and Abramson e-mailed residents on April 9th , declining their requests .
During a pandemic , Ambrosino and Abramson wrote , insurance companies were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ given the increasing financial uncertainties for all of our institutions , ‘ hazard pay ’ is not feasible at this time.
” Abramson told me that administrators were focussed on averting layoffs and furloughs for the hospital system ’ s employees .
“ We understood how hard these residents were working in very difficult circumstances , ” Abramson said .
“ What we did in response was to give them our reasons.
” After responding to the letter , Abramson exchanged e-mails with hospital leaders as they prepared a more detailed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money at an alarming rate , and was facing a potential billion-dollar deficit if the coronavirus outbreak did not improve by June .
The letter from residents had argued that all front-line workers deserved increased compensation—but , even so , Abramson proposed a response that emphasized the unfairness of giving hazard pay to one group of hospital workers and not others .
He also circulated an e-mail that one of the medical chairs had sent to his department .
“ Now is the time to accept the hazards of caring for the sick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ making a few extra dollars , ” that e-mail read .
“ I am not indifferent to your anxieties but personally feel demanding hazard pay is not becoming of a compassionate and caring physician.
” Later that day , these e-mails were sent to medical residents by mistake .
“ I can ’ t even express how deeply wounding it is to have my compassion , caring and maturity called into question by my leadership , ” Colleen Farrell , then a third-year internal-medicine resident , wrote on Twitter , after reading them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letter from trainee physicians . )
Warstadt told me , “ We felt like we were just being gaslit , like we were crazy for thinking about these things.
” In one of the accidentally forwarded e-mails , a director asked which of his department ’ s fellows had signed the letter—which struck Warstadt and others as threatening .
( Abramson , who told me that he saw the letter before it had any signatures attached , disagreed , saying that the director had simply wanted to understand the fellows ’ concerns .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the letter to remove their names , for fear of retaliation .
In the end , the list of names , which included almost a third of the hospital system ’ s residents and fellows , was not sent to senior leadership .
On April 10th , N.Y.U .
Langone held a virtual “ town hall ” to discuss the concerns of trainees .
The meeting was tense .
“ Not a single resident felt comfortable asking a question , ” an internal-medicine resident told me .
Instead , participants texted the chief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ raise questions anonymously .
That same day , the leaked e-mails were posted anonymously on Reddit , where they drew tens of thousands of views and dozens of critical comments .
Abramson told me that whoever leaked the e-mails had “ unscrupulously weaponized internal documents on social media , out of context , to shame and defame other devoted physicians.
” Three days later , in a follow-up e-mail to the trainees , Abramson and Ambrosino announced that a previously planned pay increase for trainee physicians , which was scheduled for July 1st @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1st .
In other words , medical residents would receive between thirteen and twenty-two hundred dollars in extra pay , depending on their year ; some senior fellows would receive more .
Abramson told me that the pay increase was a way to compensate trainees for the added responsibilities of the COVID-19 crisis but that it was not hazard pay .
“ Philosophically , we had trouble with the term ‘ hazard pay , ’ ” he said .
A few days after the additional pay was announced , an eighteen-year-old journalism student @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a college paper , the Washington Square News , criticizing the hospital system ’ s media policy—which bars employees from speaking to the media without authorization—and arguing that its trainees deserved hazard pay on top of the retroactive raises .
The Times , Bloomberg , and the Intercept had already reported on these topics , but the piece was thinly sourced and contained inaccuracies , and , three days later , the Washington Square News received a letter to the editor signed by Kenneth Langone , the billionaire and benefactor who serves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system .
It was also signed by Abramson and five other top administrators .
“ We believe this ‘ opinion piece ’ ironically is ‘ FAKE NEWS ’ and an egregious misrepresentation that actually harms the efforts of heroic individuals working tirelessly to care for our patients , ” they wrote , demanding its retraction .
The newspaper published the letter and issued a correction , but responses continued to pour in .
At the request of an N.Y.U .
Langone spokesperson , about thirty hospital administrators sent their own critiques to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dozen trainees e-mailed the paper in support of the piece .
“ I was happy that the student was trying to stand up for us , and it seemed to me like she was in tune with the sentiment among the residents , ” Warstadt told me .
“ It ’ s just a very surreal response to a student newspaper article.
” On April 24th , the Washington Square News retracted the piece .
“ Physicians have recognized that The Match inculcates a culture of disenfranchisement , and the resulting lack of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Ajay Major , an oncology fellow at the University of Chicago , wrote in a recent opinion piece for STAT .
Too often , Major told me , residents and their more experienced counterparts , fellows , are labelled unprofessional if they demand better conditions .
“ Residents and house staff don ’ t feel like they can advocate for pay , basic necessities , benefits—where you would be able to in any other workforce , ” he said .
Major believes that a broader house-staff union movement could help trainees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for structural change come at an exceptionally difficult time for hospital finances .
According to one estimate , U.S. hospitals were losing fifty billion dollars per month at the start of the pandemic , in part because COVID-19 halted so many profitable , non-urgent medical services .
( Through the end of July , N.Y.U .
Langone had realized operating losses of $ 1.4 billion across its hospitals and medical school , according to a spokesperson .
It has received $ 570.1 million in government support , which covers less than half of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fellow Physician Union — Northwest , a union for residents and fellows , was trying to negotiate for cost-of-living raises when , early in the pandemic , U.W .
Medicine projected potential losses of half a billion dollars .
“ We certainly lowered our sights once COVID happened , ” Brandon Peplinski , the union ’ s president , told me .
Still , Peplinski believes that COVID-19 could bolster nascent organizing efforts by making the struggles of health-care workers more visible .
He said that , in the past year , his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from at least two dozen programs , and he expects many of them to unionize in the future .
Other medical workers , such as nurses and medical technicians , have launched or accelerated union campaigns in response to the pandemic .
According to many trainees I spoke with , the calls for hazard pay were not an end in themselves but a reflection of structural inequality in the medical profession .
The N.Y.U .
Grossman School of Medicine no longer charges tuition to the hundred medical students it admits each year , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medical school may cost a quarter-million dollars over four years .
This helps explain why a quarter of incoming medical students come from the top-earning five per cent of households , and only thirteen per cent come from the two-fifths of families that earn the least , according to the Association of American Medical Colleges .
The A.A.M.C .
also found that Black , Hispanic , and indigenous doctors are badly underrepresented among active doctors .
One N.Y.U .
Langone resident , a union delegate on the Bellevue payroll , who spoke on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particular predicament of medical workers during COVID-19 .
When the city ’ s crisis was at its worst and workers were most in need of support and protection , they had even less time and energy than usual to advocate for better working conditions .
At the time , the resident was completing twelve-hour shifts at 7:30 P.M. each evening , getting home at 8:30 P.M. , and then spending an hour catching up on messages from other residents , who did most of their organizing between 9 P.M. and midnight .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perhaps it has been—several trainees told me that they were tired of fighting and eventually moved on to broader causes not specific to their work , including the nationwide protests for racial justice .
There was one moment , however , when the weariness disappeared from the resident ’ s voice , and he sounded hopeful that change might be coming .
He talked about building solidarity with other front-line workers , from nurses to environmental-services staff—and with other public institutions , from Lincoln Hospital , in the Bronx , to Coney Island @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t be business as usual anymore , ” he told me .
“ I think this moment makes that clear .
If we are not well , and we are not cared for , then we can ’ t do our job.
” Residents also said that they were bothered by graduation remarks that the C.E.O .
of N.Y.U .
Langone , Robert I. Grossman , had made .
“ You are physicians and as such benefit from the respect of the public , ” Grossman had said .
“ It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that respect throughout your career .
Transactional behavior—driven by self-interest and/or ulterior motives—demeans you and our calling.
” The resident turned this criticism back on N.Y.U .
Langone , calling the hospital system a prime example of corporate medicine .
The hospital system operates as a tax-exempt nonprofit , but its annual earnings are usually in the hundreds of millions of dollars ; in 2017 , Grossman received just over ten million dollars in total compensation .
“ It ’ s a business disguised as a calling , ” the resident told me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that , in response to the pandemic , hospital executives had taken a forty-per-cent pay cut . )
In September , I called Warstadt at home .
He was cooking dinner .
Compared with the last time we had spoken , he sounded upbeat .
He is now a third-year resident , and his salary has risen to about seventy-five thousand dollars per year .
Morale among the house staff has improved , he told me , and he felt proud of the care that N.Y.U .
Langone and Bellevue have provided @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he described a dissonance between his pride in his work and his experiences as a worker .
The reaction to the letter , he said , left him with a lingering feeling that house staff don ’ t matter to N.Y.U .
Langone .
“ The administration ’ s response is the one thing that doesn ’ t really sit right , ” he told me .
I thought back to my conversation with Steven Abramson , the hospital administrator , and his objection to the concept of hazard pay .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this is the obligation of the doctor , to take care of the patient , ” Abramson had said .
“ You can either be part of the profession or not.
” • Surviving a severe coronavirus infection is hard .
So is recovering .
• Some hospitals have postponed cancer surgeries because of the coronavirus crisis .
How do doctors assess urgency during a pandemic ?
• It is not too late to go on the offense against the coronavirus .
This five-part public-health plan may be the key .
• The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in New York .
• To fill the vacuum left by the federal government , doctors are relying on informal networks to get the information and support they need .
• Conflict and confusion reign at New York hospitals over how to handle childbirth during the pandemic .
• In countries where the rate of infection threatens to outstrip the capacity of the health system , doctors are confronting ethical quandaries for which nothing in their training prepared them .

As a child in Southern California, Nicholus Warstadt spent a lot of time in emergency rooms on account of his severe asthma, and he often wondered how doctors knew how to make people feel better. After college, he went to Stanford Medical School and decided to specialize in emergency medicine. This past spring, Warstadt was a second-year resident at N.Y.U. Langone Health. “My favorite thing about my specialty is that I take care of everyone, regardless of their ability to pay,” he told me. His own pay, when he began the residency, was a little more than sixty thousand dollars per year, roughly the median household income in Manhattan. He often worked sixty hours in a week, meaning that he was making about twenty dollars per hour. He will be able to earn many times that in a few years, as a board-certified emergency physician, but only after completing more than a dozen years of higher education and accruing about three hundred thousand dollars in student loans. The average debt for medical-school graduates is about two hundred thousand. “So much of your life is delayed, a lot of it due to finances,” Warstadt said. “I wouldn’t want this for my kids, because of the stress.” Medical residents suffer from unusually high rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.
When the coronavirus came to New York City, in mid-March, Warstadt was redirected from a pediatrics emergency room to a COVID-19 respiratory unit, where he worked about four twelve-hour shifts per week. By April, hundreds of New Yorkers were dying from COVID-19 each day; medical residents and fellows were working new and expanded jobs, which reduced the time they spent learning. “I think the hardest part was not knowing if or when it was ever going to end,” Warstadt said. Some private hospitals began offering hazard pay. N.Y.U. Langone Health—a private, nonprofit, multibillion-dollar hospital system with dozens of locations in New York and a few in Florida—did not. Many of N.Y.U. Langone’s nearly seventeen hundred trainee physicians spend part of their time at the city-funded Bellevue Hospital. Some of them are technically employed by the city and are unionized; Warstadt is a union delegate at Bellevue. In early April, a handful of residents drafted a letter asking for hazard pay, increased life and disability insurance, and protections for those who contract COVID-19. “As the demand placed on our hospital systems skyrockets, our risk of hospital-acquired infection increases,” the letter said. “We are honored and willing to take on these greater clinical responsibilities. But along with this comes an increased risk for disability and death.” They shared the letter with trainees across the hospital system, initially by text message. More than five hundred trainee physicians, including Warstadt, signed it.
While the letter was circulating among residents and fellows, it leaked to Michael Ambrosino, the associate dean for graduate medical education, and to Steven Abramson, a vice-dean and chair of N.Y.U. Langone’s Department of Medicine. Ambrosino and Abramson e-mailed residents on April 9th, declining their requests. During a pandemic, Ambrosino and Abramson wrote, insurance companies were unwilling to increase their coverage, and, “given the increasing financial uncertainties for all of our institutions, ‘hazard pay’ is not feasible at this time.” Abramson told me that administrators were focussed on averting layoffs and furloughs for the hospital system’s employees. “We understood how hard these residents were working in very difficult circumstances,” Abramson said. “What we did in response was to give them our reasons.”
After responding to the letter, Abramson exchanged e-mails with hospital leaders as they prepared a more detailed statement. N.Y.U. Langone was losing money at an alarming rate, and was facing a potential billion-dollar deficit if the coronavirus outbreak did not improve by June. The letter from residents had argued that all front-line workers deserved increased compensation—but, even so, Abramson proposed a response that emphasized the unfairness of giving hazard pay to one group of hospital workers and not others. He also circulated an e-mail that one of the medical chairs had sent to his department. “Now is the time to accept the hazards of caring for the sick . . . rather than focusing on making a few extra dollars,” that e-mail read. “I am not indifferent to your anxieties but personally feel demanding hazard pay is not becoming of a compassionate and caring physician.”
Later that day, these e-mails were sent to medical residents by mistake. “I can’t even express how deeply wounding it is to have my compassion, caring and maturity called into question by my leadership,” Colleen Farrell, then a third-year internal-medicine resident, wrote on Twitter, after reading them. (Farrell had not signed the letter from trainee physicians.) Warstadt told me, “We felt like we were just being gaslit, like we were crazy for thinking about these things.” In one of the accidentally forwarded e-mails, a director asked which of his department’s fellows had signed the letter—which struck Warstadt and others as threatening. (Abramson, who told me that he saw the letter before it had any signatures attached, disagreed, saying that the director had simply wanted to understand the fellows’ concerns.) Some signatories asked the organizers of the letter to remove their names, for fear of retaliation. In the end, the list of names, which included almost a third of the hospital system’s residents and fellows, was not sent to senior leadership.
On April 10th, N.Y.U. Langone held a virtual “town hall” to discuss the concerns of trainees. The meeting was tense. “Not a single resident felt comfortable asking a question,” an internal-medicine resident told me. Instead, participants texted the chief residents who supervised them and who could raise questions anonymously. That same day, the leaked e-mails were posted anonymously on Reddit, where they drew tens of thousands of views and dozens of critical comments. Abramson told me that whoever leaked the e-mails had “unscrupulously weaponized internal documents on social media, out of context, to shame and defame other devoted physicians.”
Three days later, in a follow-up e-mail to the trainees, Abramson and Ambrosino announced that a previously planned pay increase for trainee physicians, which was scheduled for July 1st, would be implemented retroactively from April 1st. In other words, medical residents would receive between thirteen and twenty-two hundred dollars in extra pay, depending on their year; some senior fellows would receive more. Abramson told me that the pay increase was a way to compensate trainees for the added responsibilities of the COVID-19 crisis but that it was not hazard pay. “Philosophically, we had trouble with the term ‘hazard pay,’ ” he said.
A few days after the additional pay was announced, an eighteen-year-old journalism student at N.Y.U. published an opinion piece in a college paper, the Washington Square News, criticizing the hospital system’s media policy—which bars employees from speaking to the media without authorization—and arguing that its trainees deserved hazard pay on top of the retroactive raises. The Times, Bloomberg, and the Intercept had already reported on these topics, but the piece was thinly sourced and contained inaccuracies, and, three days later, the Washington Square News received a letter to the editor signed by Kenneth Langone, the billionaire and benefactor who serves as a board chairman of the hospital system. It was also signed by Abramson and five other top administrators. “We believe this ‘opinion piece’ ironically is ‘FAKE NEWS’ and an egregious misrepresentation that actually harms the efforts of heroic individuals working tirelessly to care for our patients,” they wrote, demanding its retraction. The newspaper published the letter and issued a correction, but responses continued to pour in. At the request of an N.Y.U. Langone spokesperson, about thirty hospital administrators sent their own critiques to the paper. Meanwhile, about half a dozen trainees e-mailed the paper in support of the piece. “I was happy that the student was trying to stand up for us, and it seemed to me like she was in tune with the sentiment among the residents,” Warstadt told me. “It’s just a very surreal response to a student newspaper article.” On April 24th, the Washington Square News retracted the piece.
The term “resident physician” stems from the nineteenth century, when trainees often lived in the hospital and were seen as in-house workers, or “house staff.” Today, when medical-school graduates start a residency program, they begin receiving a salary. But incoming residents don’t have the opportunity to negotiate or weigh competing offers: at the end of medical school, they arrive at a career-defining juncture known as the Match. In order to complete their training, they must submit a list of preferred residency programs to a private nonprofit called the National Resident Matching Program, which assigns each successful applicant to a single residency that will last at least three years. “On the same day, every medical student across the country opens an envelope, and that’s where you’re going,” Warstadt told me. “Individually, every resident doesn’t have a lot of power to make a change.” Because residents cannot easily pick up and go somewhere else, residency programs have less incentive than they might otherwise to compete with one another on pay or benefits, or to place limits on the twenty-four-hour shifts and eighty-hour work weeks that they are allowed to assign.
“Physicians have recognized that The Match inculcates a culture of disenfranchisement, and the resulting lack of bargaining power sets the stage for abuse,” Ajay Major, an oncology fellow at the University of Chicago, wrote in a recent opinion piece for STAT. Too often, Major told me, residents and their more experienced counterparts, fellows, are labelled unprofessional if they demand better conditions. “Residents and house staff don’t feel like they can advocate for pay, basic necessities, benefits—where you would be able to in any other workforce,” he said. Major believes that a broader house-staff union movement could help trainees regain their bargaining power.
But calls for structural change come at an exceptionally difficult time for hospital finances. According to one estimate, U.S. hospitals were losing fifty billion dollars per month at the start of the pandemic, in part because COVID-19 halted so many profitable, non-urgent medical services. (Through the end of July, N.Y.U. Langone had realized operating losses of $1.4 billion across its hospitals and medical school, according to a spokesperson. It has received $570.1 million in government support, which covers less than half of the deficit.) The Resident & Fellow Physician Union — Northwest, a union for residents and fellows, was trying to negotiate for cost-of-living raises when, early in the pandemic, U.W. Medicine projected potential losses of half a billion dollars. “We certainly lowered our sights once COVID happened,” Brandon Peplinski, the union’s president, told me. Still, Peplinski believes that COVID-19 could bolster nascent organizing efforts by making the struggles of health-care workers more visible. He said that, in the past year, his union has been in touch with trainees from at least two dozen programs, and he expects many of them to unionize in the future. Other medical workers, such as nurses and medical technicians, have launched or accelerated union campaigns in response to the pandemic.
According to many trainees I spoke with, the calls for hazard pay were not an end in themselves but a reflection of structural inequality in the medical profession. The N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine no longer charges tuition to the hundred medical students it admits each year, but, for most aspiring doctors, medical school may cost a quarter-million dollars over four years. This helps explain why a quarter of incoming medical students come from the top-earning five per cent of households, and only thirteen per cent come from the two-fifths of families that earn the least, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The A.A.M.C. also found that Black, Hispanic, and indigenous doctors are badly underrepresented among active doctors.
One N.Y.U. Langone resident, a union delegate on the Bellevue payroll, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described the particular predicament of medical workers during COVID-19. When the city’s crisis was at its worst and workers were most in need of support and protection, they had even less time and energy than usual to advocate for better working conditions. At the time, the resident was completing twelve-hour shifts at 7:30 P.M. each evening, getting home at 8:30 P.M., and then spending an hour catching up on messages from other residents, who did most of their organizing between 9 P.M. and midnight. The effort sounded impossible to sustain, and perhaps it has been—several trainees told me that they were tired of fighting and eventually moved on to broader causes not specific to their work, including the nationwide protests for racial justice.


newyorker--2020-10-08--The D. H. Lawrence We Forgot

The D. H. Lawrence We Forgot

How that phoenix rose !
Before his death , Lawrence was a pariah , living outside the herd and throwing bombs into it .
After his death , he was reborn as a Byronic hero : W. H. Auden described the carloads of women who , having lurched across the Taos desert and up the Rocky Mountains , stood in reverence before a memorial chapel to Lawrence , wondering “ what it would have been like to sleep with him.
” Back in England , the young Philip Larkin held that Lawrence “ had more genius—more of God , if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to handle , ” and the critic Raymond Williams reported how “ if there was one person everybody wanted to be after the war , to the point of caricature , it was Lawrence.
” The mania peaked in 1960 , when Lawrence ’ s 1928 novel , “ Lady Chatterley ’ s Lover , ” became the subject of a historic obscenity trial , turning him into a mascot of the sexual revolution .
Then—bang—it was all over .
In 1970 , Kate Millet published “ Sexual Politics , ” which skewered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the self-declared priest of love as one of the Shitty Men of Literature .
Lawrence was once again a pariah .
But was he really snuffed out by second-wave feminism ?
When I discovered Lawrence , in the late seventies , he was a harmless peculiarity from a distant age .
And there was still much to admire : born in 1885 , Lawrence was the first English working-class novelist , the son of a coal miner .
He was raised in Eastwood , a small town in the Midlands , and won @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just a few miles away .
Lawrence had as good an education as any middle-class boy , which he furthered by—in Larkin ’ s phrase—hurling himself upon the corpus of the local library .
By the time he was twenty , he had read his way through Western literature , from Virgil to Oscar Wilde .
Ford Madox Ford , who first published Lawrence in The English Review , in 1909 , said that he had “ never known any young man of his age who was so well read in all the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Eliot.
” Ford had imagined Lawrence to be a forelock-tugging ingénue , but the wily creature who turned up at his office was , he discovered , “ a fox ” preparing “ to make a raid on the hen-roost before him.
” It was Ford who encouraged Lawrence to write about the world he knew , and Lawrence would have continued down the path of social realism—the mode that defined such early work as “ Sons and Lovers , ” from 1913—had he not met Frieda Weekley , the freewheeling daughter of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of Lawrence ’ s former professors .
It was Frieda , with whom Lawrence eloped and then wandered the globe , who convinced him to discard his former self and rise again , as a prophet and sexual guru .
Even a brief engagement with Lawrence ’ s subsequent work— “ The Rainbow , ” “ Women in Love , ” and so on—will reveal that Lawrence had something to say about sex , though I was never quite sure what it was .
But then , any novel by Lawrence , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imperfect , uneven , and self-sabotaging creature .
He said this himself , when he warned us , in his 1923 book “ Studies in Classic American Literature , ” to “ trust the tale ” and not “ the artist.
” Lawrence contradicts and quarrels with himself , and the fact that he had no idea where his strengths as a writer lay made him thrillingly unpredictable .
He aimed high and wavered in the balance ; reading one of Lawrence ’ s opening lines is like watching a man on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fleet , utterly certain of their step ; he begins “ The Poetry of the Present ” with “ It seems when we hear a skylark singing as if sound were running into the future.
” “ Sea and Sardinia ” is even better : “ Comes over one the absolute necessity to move.
” Can he maintain this poise , or will he start writing about quivering wombs ?
When Lawrence falls off the wire , his readers , white-knuckled , hold out for the next sentence , at which point the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Lawrence was always strong enough , perverse enough , to survive Kate Millett ’ s attack .
But he was not strong enough to survive a defense .
What doomed Lawrence , in the long run , was not an accusation of phallocentrism but his elevation to the canon .
There he was , comfortably positioned as the Modernist maverick , much loved and much hated , when F. R. Leavis , the Cambridge critic whose judgments bestowed a moral hierarchy on the world of letters , elected him , in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ successors of Shakespeare.
” Starched and stiffened , Lawrence was duly placed in Leavis ’ s “ Great Tradition ” alongside Jane Austen , Henry James , George Eliot , and Joseph Conrad .
Leavis had no interest in the many-tentacled eccentric whose first published works were lyric poems and whose final book , “ Apocalypse , ” was a critique of the Book of Revelation .
Leavis ’ s Lawrence was a novelist , period—hence the dictatorial title of his 1955 study , “ D .
H. Lawrence : Novelist.
” From @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more D. H. Lawrence the travel writer , naturalist , short-story writer , poet , critic , essayist , dramatist , or philosopher .
Having cauterized him once , Leavis cauterized him again : the canonical Lawrence was not the author of many uneven novels , which made sense only in relation to one another , but of two major works : “ The Rainbow ” and “ Women in Love.
” Leavis consigned the rest of Lawrence ’ s œuvre to the periphery , where it has mostly remained ever since .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ whatever Lawrence ’ s supposed subject , the grand theme of his essays is what it was like to be Lawrence .
“ And here I am , ” he says in “ Indians and an Englishman , ” written in New Mexico , “ a lone lorn Englishman , tumbled out of the known world of the British Empire onto this stage.
” “ Here sit I , ” he says in “ The Novel and Feelings , ” “ a two legged individual with a risky temper.
” “ It always @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Return to Bestwood , ” “ to come to my native district .
Now I am turned forty and have been more or less a wanderer for nearly twenty years , I feel more alien , perhaps , in my home place than anywhere else in the world.
” But he feels alien everywhere , and , the moment he stops feeling alien , he feels the absolute necessity to move .
In fact , the first essay in Dyer ’ s selection , “ Christs in the Tirol , ” catches @ @ @ @ @ @ @ September , 1912 , and Lawrence is crossing the Alps , from Germany to Italy , where the road is lined with crucifixes .
Though some are factory-made , others , carved in wood by peasants , hold Lawrence ’ s attention .
“ It seems to me , they create an atmosphere over the northern Tirol , an atmosphere of pain , ” he writes .
One such Christ , with “ broad cheek-bones and sturdy limbs .
.
.
hung doggedly on the cross , hating it , ” and Lawrence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ realized him.
” A later version of “ Christs in the Tirol ” was published in his travel book “ Twilight in Italy , ” but the piece is more than just travel writing .
Lawrence was twenty-six when he started this journey , and on the run with Frieda , whose husband was pursuing them with threatening letters .
They had been accompanied for part of the way by two strapping twentysomethings , one of whom had sex with Frieda in a hayloft .
So the fox ’ s own hen-roost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ smarting from the shock .
Having long identified with Christ ( “ Why were we crucified into sex ?
” he asks in his poem “ Tortoise Shout ” ) , Lawrence now considered himself tied to the cross of Frieda .
Essays like these further suggest that Lawrence invented the genre we call autofiction , though genre was irrelevant to him .
Everything he wrote , as Dyer puts it , was a “ kind of story , ” and his stories , like Lawrence himself , were shape-shifters .
His essays @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are also essays on places ; essays on places are also pieces of autobiography.
” In the same way , Lawrence ’ s poems are dramas , his dramas are memoirs , and his memoirs are novels .
This last form was key : though Lawrence found stories everywhere , the novel was , for him , the “ one bright book of life.
” Four of the five essays on the novel in “ The Bad Side of Books ” were written in 1925 , the year Lawrence was diagnosed with tuberculosis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the future of the novel and partly about the future of Lawrence .
“ Nothing is important but life , ” he says in “ Why the Novel Matters ” : For Lawrence , novels were a form of higher intelligence— “ You can ’ t fool the novel , ” he wrote—though he was frustrated by how narrowly the form was defined .
“ You can put anything you like in a novel , ” he noted .
“ So why do people always go on putting the same thing ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ chicken !
” If something did qualify as a novel , it was the highest form of praise .
“ Plato ’ s Dialogues are queer little novels , ” Lawrence writes in “ The Future of the Novel , ” and he discusses both the Divine Comedy and “ Hamlet ” in the same way .
“ It ’ s a pity of pities , ” he writes , of the Bible , “ that Matthew , Mark , Luke , and John didn ’ t write straight novels .
They did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
.
.
.
Greater novels , to my mind , are the books of the Old Testament , Genesis , Exodus , Samuel , Kings , by authors whose purpose was so big , it didn ’ t quarrel with their passionate inspiration .
”

If the reputation of D. H. Lawrence were to be measured like a heartbeat on an EKG, the graph would show a sharp rise after his death, in 1930, followed by a headlong fall, in 1970, and then fifty years of flatlining. The decline would come as little surprise to a man whose personal symbol was a phoenix. “The Phoenix renews her youth / only when she is burnt, burnt alive, burnt down / to hot and flocculent ash,” Lawrence wrote in a poem. For him, regeneration was just a matter of time.
How that phoenix rose! Before his death, Lawrence was a pariah, living outside the herd and throwing bombs into it. After his death, he was reborn as a Byronic hero: W. H. Auden described the carloads of women who, having lurched across the Taos desert and up the Rocky Mountains, stood in reverence before a memorial chapel to Lawrence, wondering “what it would have been like to sleep with him.” Back in England, the young Philip Larkin held that Lawrence “had more genius—more of God, if you like—than any man could be expected to handle,” and the critic Raymond Williams reported how “if there was one person everybody wanted to be after the war, to the point of caricature, it was Lawrence.” The mania peaked in 1960, when Lawrence’s 1928 novel, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” became the subject of a historic obscenity trial, turning him into a mascot of the sexual revolution. Then—bang—it was all over. In 1970, Kate Millet published “Sexual Politics,” which skewered Lawrence’s work and singled out the self-declared priest of love as one of the Shitty Men of Literature. Lawrence was once again a pariah.
But was he really snuffed out by second-wave feminism? When I discovered Lawrence, in the late seventies, he was a harmless peculiarity from a distant age. And there was still much to admire: born in 1885, Lawrence was the first English working-class novelist, the son of a coal miner. He was raised in Eastwood, a small town in the Midlands, and won a scholarship to Nottingham High School, just a few miles away. Lawrence had as good an education as any middle-class boy, which he furthered by—in Larkin’s phrase—hurling himself upon the corpus of the local library. By the time he was twenty, he had read his way through Western literature, from Virgil to Oscar Wilde. Ford Madox Ford, who first published Lawrence in The English Review, in 1909, said that he had “never known any young man of his age who was so well read in all the dullnesses that spread between Milton and George Eliot.”
Ford had imagined Lawrence to be a forelock-tugging ingénue, but the wily creature who turned up at his office was, he discovered, “a fox” preparing “to make a raid on the hen-roost before him.” It was Ford who encouraged Lawrence to write about the world he knew, and Lawrence would have continued down the path of social realism—the mode that defined such early work as “Sons and Lovers,” from 1913—had he not met Frieda Weekley, the freewheeling daughter of a German baron and the wife of one of Lawrence’s former professors. It was Frieda, with whom Lawrence eloped and then wandered the globe, who convinced him to discard his former self and rise again, as a prophet and sexual guru.
Even a brief engagement with Lawrence’s subsequent work—“The Rainbow,” “Women in Love,” and so on—will reveal that Lawrence had something to say about sex, though I was never quite sure what it was. But then, any novel by Lawrence, even a great one, is an imperfect, uneven, and self-sabotaging creature. He said this himself, when he warned us, in his 1923 book “Studies in Classic American Literature,” to “trust the tale” and not “the artist.” Lawrence contradicts and quarrels with himself, and the fact that he had no idea where his strengths as a writer lay made him thrillingly unpredictable. He aimed high and wavered in the balance; reading one of Lawrence’s opening lines is like watching a man on a high wire. His first words are fleet, utterly certain of their step; he begins “The Poetry of the Present” with “It seems when we hear a skylark singing as if sound were running into the future.” “Sea and Sardinia” is even better: “Comes over one the absolute necessity to move.” Can he maintain this poise, or will he start writing about quivering wombs? When Lawrence falls off the wire, his readers, white-knuckled, hold out for the next sentence, at which point the tension begins again. In other words, Lawrence was always strong enough, perverse enough, to survive Kate Millett’s attack.
But he was not strong enough to survive a defense. What doomed Lawrence, in the long run, was not an accusation of phallocentrism but his elevation to the canon. There he was, comfortably positioned as the Modernist maverick, much loved and much hated, when F. R. Leavis, the Cambridge critic whose judgments bestowed a moral hierarchy on the world of letters, elected him, in the fifties, as belonging to the “successors of Shakespeare.” Starched and stiffened, Lawrence was duly placed in Leavis’s “Great Tradition” alongside Jane Austen, Henry James, George Eliot, and Joseph Conrad. Leavis had no interest in the many-tentacled eccentric whose first published works were lyric poems and whose final book, “Apocalypse,” was a critique of the Book of Revelation. Leavis’s Lawrence was a novelist, period—hence the dictatorial title of his 1955 study, “D. H. Lawrence: Novelist.” From now on, there would be no more D. H. Lawrence the travel writer, naturalist, short-story writer, poet, critic, essayist, dramatist, or philosopher. Having cauterized him once, Leavis cauterized him again: the canonical Lawrence was not the author of many uneven novels, which made sense only in relation to one another, but of two major works: “The Rainbow” and “Women in Love.” Leavis consigned the rest of Lawrence’s œuvre to the periphery, where it has mostly remained ever since.
A recent selection of Lawrence’s work, “The Bad Side of Books” (New York Review Books), addresses this problem directly. “One way to rebalance the books,” Geoff Dyer suggests in his introduction, “is to extend the critical catchment area beyond the fictive straits of F. R. Leavis’s ‘great tradition’ to include forms of writing that are considered ancillary or minor.” These forms of writing include, as Dyer puts it, what “might be called essays,” which encompass chapters from Lawrence’s lesser-known books, introductions by Lawrence to other peoples’ lesser-known books, an introduction by Lawrence to a bibliography of his own lesser-known books, samples of his book reviews, fragments of memoir, and reflections on art, pornography, contemporary poetry, the whistling of birds, the future of the novel, the Englishman at breakfast, and why Lawrence hates living in London. Dyer has rightly prioritized the “harder-to-find pieces” over those, such as “Studies in Classic American Literature,” that are widely available in print.
What becomes quickly apparent is that, whatever Lawrence’s supposed subject, the grand theme of his essays is what it was like to be Lawrence. “And here I am,” he says in “Indians and an Englishman,” written in New Mexico, “a lone lorn Englishman, tumbled out of the known world of the British Empire onto this stage.” “Here sit I,” he says in “The Novel and Feelings,” “a two legged individual with a risky temper.” “It always depresses me,” he writes in “Return to Bestwood,” “to come to my native district. Now I am turned forty and have been more or less a wanderer for nearly twenty years, I feel more alien, perhaps, in my home place than anywhere else in the world.” But he feels alien everywhere, and, the moment he stops feeling alien, he feels the absolute necessity to move.
In fact, the first essay in Dyer’s selection, “Christs in the Tirol,” catches Lawrence on the wing. It is September, 1912, and Lawrence is crossing the Alps, from Germany to Italy, where the road is lined with crucifixes. Though some are factory-made, others, carved in wood by peasants, hold Lawrence’s attention. “It seems to me, they create an atmosphere over the northern Tirol, an atmosphere of pain,” he writes. One such Christ, with “broad cheek-bones and sturdy limbs . . . hung doggedly on the cross, hating it,” and Lawrence, himself a great hater, instantly “realized him.” A later version of “Christs in the Tirol” was published in his travel book “Twilight in Italy,” but the piece is more than just travel writing. Lawrence was twenty-six when he started this journey, and on the run with Frieda, whose husband was pursuing them with threatening letters. They had been accompanied for part of the way by two strapping twentysomethings, one of whom had sex with Frieda in a hayloft. So the fox’s own hen-roost had been raided, and Lawrence was smarting from the shock. Having long identified with Christ (“Why were we crucified into sex?” he asks in his poem “Tortoise Shout”), Lawrence now considered himself tied to the cross of Frieda.
Essays like these further suggest that Lawrence invented the genre we call autofiction, though genre was irrelevant to him. Everything he wrote, as Dyer puts it, was a “kind of story,” and his stories, like Lawrence himself, were shape-shifters. His essays on writers, Dyer writes, “are also essays on places; essays on places are also pieces of autobiography.” In the same way, Lawrence’s poems are dramas, his dramas are memoirs, and his memoirs are novels. This last form was key: though Lawrence found stories everywhere, the novel was, for him, the “one bright book of life.” Four of the five essays on the novel in “The Bad Side of Books” were written in 1925, the year Lawrence was diagnosed with tuberculosis. As such, they are partly about the future of the novel and partly about the future of Lawrence. “Nothing is important but life,” he says in “Why the Novel Matters”:


newyorker--2020-10-08--A Straightforward Vice-Presidential Debate About a Catastrophic Presidency

There have been plenty of times during this election campaign when Republican and Democratic partisans alike have wished that they were running their Vice-Presidential nominee at the top of the ticket .
Mike Pence ’ s sonorous talk of a liberated free market suits the traditional Republican base better than spectacles such as that of this afternoon , when Donald Trump , his face thick with bronzer that didn ’ t quite cover his ears , gave a pepped-up four-minute speech about his own experiences with COVID-19 that made it sound like he was the only American who ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a blessing from God ” —and trumpeted an antibody cocktail that ’ s manufactured by a member of his Westchester golf club .
Kamala Harris makes Democrats proud at the moments when Joe Biden makes them wince , with her willingness to support progressive policies without nostalgia or equivocation , and—most plainly—to embody the country ’ s present rather than its past .
In Wednesday night ’ s Vice-Presidential debate , Harris started stronger .
That was no surprise : a week into the unraveling disaster of the coronavirus outbreak in the White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ material .
The moderator , Susan Page , of USA Today , opened by asking Harris about the Trump Administration ’ s handling of the coronavirus pandemic .
Harris called it “ the greatest failure of any Presidential Administration in the history of our country.
” She has a much more precise , pointed vocabulary than her running mate , and she kept using words like “ exposed.
” Like Biden in the first Presidential debate , last week , she often looked directly at the camera , while Pence looked at her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : she reminded viewers that Trump said he had misled the country about the pandemic because he wanted people to remain calm .
“ They knew what was happening and they didn ’ t tell you , ” Harris said , and asked the audience , “ How calm were you when your kids couldn ’ t see your parents because you were afraid they could kill them ?
” The Commission on Presidential Debates had placed two plexiglass screens between the two Vice-Presidential candidates ; the screens were so small and flimsy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the camera angle was right you could see the candidates reflected on them .
When Pence was speaking , Harris sometimes displayed a smile of incredulous rage ; Pence occasionally pinched his lower lip with his teeth , like Bill Clinton once did in debates , but he scarcely ever smiled .
At one point a fly landed on Pence ’ s head and settled on his snow-white head for two full minutes .
Pence didn ’ t flinch .
Harris ’ s plan seemed to be to keep the focus on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the death and the suffering .
She cited journalists : Bob Woodward , who reported that Trump knew the virus was airborne by early February , and the Times reporters who published the details of Trump ’ s tax returns .
Pence favored a more abstract plane .
The Democrats favored “ mandates , ” he said , and the Republicans “ freedom.
” Some of his jabs were botched , as when he tried to claim that Harris , in criticizing the White House ’ s management of the pandemic , was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” But the Vice-President did find some places where Harris and Biden were mismatched , and he kept boring in on them .
For all of Biden ’ s talk of protecting American workers , Pence asked , wasn ’ t Harris one of ten senators to vote against Trump ’ s revision to NAFTA , the U.S.M.C.A.
?
( She was , saying that it had insufficient environmental protections . )
Biden kept trying to placate voters in western Pennsylvania by telling them he wouldn ’ t ban fracking , but wasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transformative climate agenda ?
( She was , during her own campaign , but said twice in the debate , “ Joe Biden will not ban fracking.
” ) Harris didn ’ t clearly answer these charges , perhaps because she and Biden were not perfectly aligned .
As the debate crossed the hour mark , Pence hadn ’ t really strengthened , but Harris had receded .
It was a little hard , by the end of the night , to see either of these politicians effectively leading a national ticket .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ended up with an election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden , despite their obvious flaws .
He talked over the moderator and Harris but without any real vehemence .
Pence avoided explicitly defending the President ’ s reactionary politics ; he so often drifted into conservative pablum , as if he was pretending that there was a generic Republican in the White House , instead of the actual Administration .
Somewhat surprisingly , he declined to say that he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade , though he has said it before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He is a bloodless figure in a party currently defined by bloodlust .
Harris was the more intriguing figure coming in , and by the end she seemed a capable complement to Biden , and an effective critic of Trump .
But she also fit the role that the Republicans wanted for her : a generic Democrat against whom they could make a generic Republican case .
By the end of the evening the Vice-Presidential nominees had already drifted into the background , leaving the race more or less as it was .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The argument isn ’ t between the Republicans and the Democrats but about more specific figures : Joe Biden , pointedly ecumenical and in command of the race , and Donald Trump , home from the hospital and flailing .
Read More About the 2020 Election • The fall and rise of Kamala Harris .
• When a sitting President threatens to delay a sacrosanct American ritual like an election , you should listen .
• To understand the path Donald Trump has taken to the 2020 election , look at what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • What happens if Trump fights the election results ?
• The refusal by Mitch McConnell to rein in Trump is looking riskier than ever .
• Sign up for our election newsletter for insight and analysis from our reporters and columnists .

There have been plenty of times during this election campaign when Republican and Democratic partisans alike have wished that they were running their Vice-Presidential nominee at the top of the ticket. Mike Pence’s sonorous talk of a liberated free market suits the traditional Republican base better than spectacles such as that of Wednesday afternoon, when Donald Trump, his face thick with bronzer that didn’t quite cover his ears, gave a pepped-up four-minute speech about his own experiences with COVID-19 that made it sound like he was the only American who’d ever caught it—Trump called his infection “a blessing from God”—and trumpeted an antibody cocktail that’s manufactured by a member of his Westchester golf club. Kamala Harris makes Democrats proud at the moments when Joe Biden makes them wince, with her willingness to support progressive policies without nostalgia or equivocation, and—most plainly—to embody the country’s present rather than its past.
In Wednesday night’s Vice-Presidential debate, Harris started stronger. That was no surprise: a week into the unravelling disaster of the coronavirus outbreak in the White House, she was working with stronger material. The moderator, Susan Page, of USA Today, opened by asking Harris about the Trump Administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Harris called it “the greatest failure of any Presidential Administration in the history of our country.” She has a much more precise, pointed vocabulary than her running mate, and she kept using words like “exposed.” Like Biden in the first Presidential debate, last week, she often looked directly at the camera, while Pence looked at her. Unlike Biden, Harris sounded outraged: she reminded viewers that Trump said he had misled the country about the pandemic because he wanted people to remain calm. “They knew what was happening and they didn’t tell you,” Harris said, and asked the audience, “How calm were you when your kids couldn’t see your parents because you were afraid they could kill them?”
The Commission on Presidential Debates had placed two plexiglass screens between the two Vice-Presidential candidates; the screens were so small and flimsy that they looked absurd, but when the camera angle was right you could see the candidates reflected on them. When Pence was speaking, Harris sometimes displayed a smile of incredulous rage; Pence occasionally pinched his lower lip with his teeth, like Bill Clinton once did in debates, but he scarcely ever smiled. At one point a fly landed on Pence’s head and settled on his snow-white head for two full minutes. Pence didn’t flinch.
Harris’s plan seemed to be to keep the focus on the pandemic, the dawning economic crisis, the death and the suffering. She cited journalists: Bob Woodward, who reported that Trump knew the virus was airborne by early February, and the Times reporters who published the details of Trump’s tax returns. Pence favored a more abstract plane. The Democrats favored “mandates,” he said, and the Republicans “freedom.” Some of his jabs were botched, as when he tried to claim that Harris, in criticizing the White House’s management of the pandemic, was in fact criticizing “the American people.” But the Vice-President did find some places where Harris and Biden were mismatched, and he kept boring in on them. For all of Biden’s talk of protecting American workers, Pence asked, wasn’t Harris one of ten senators to vote against Trump’s revision to NAFTA, the U.S.M.C.A.? (She was, saying that it had insufficient environmental protections.) Biden kept trying to placate voters in western Pennsylvania by telling them he wouldn’t ban fracking, but wasn’t Harris devoted to a more transformative climate agenda? (She was, during her own campaign, but said twice in the debate, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking.”) Harris didn’t clearly answer these charges, perhaps because she and Biden were not perfectly aligned. As the debate crossed the hour mark, Pence hadn’t really strengthened, but Harris had receded.
It was a little hard, by the end of the night, to see either of these politicians effectively leading a national ticket. The debate showed why we’ve ended up with an election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, despite their obvious flaws. Pence talked over the moderator and Harris but without any real vehemence. Pence avoided explicitly defending the President’s reactionary politics; he often drifted into conservative pablum, pretending that there was a generic Republican in the White House, instead of the actual Administration. Somewhat surprisingly, he declined to say that he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, though he has said it before (and surely will again). He is a bloodless figure in a party currently defined by bloodlust.
Harris was the more intriguing figure coming in, and by the end she seemed a capable complement to Biden, and an effective critic of Trump. But she also fit the role that the Republicans wanted for her: a generic Democrat against whom they could make a generic Republican case. By the end of the evening the Vice-Presidential nominees had already drifted into the background, leaving the race more or less as it was. The pandemic is still the central topic. The argument isn’t between the Republicans and the Democrats but about more specific figures: Joe Biden, pointedly ecumenical and in command of the race, and Donald Trump, home from the hospital and flailing.
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-10-08--Should Trump Have Been Given Access to Regeneron’s Experimental COVID-19 Drug?

So activists led by ACT UP ( the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power ) , and helped greatly by Anthony S. Fauci , who then , as now , ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , forced the F.D.A .
to adopt a new way of dispensing experimental medicines before they were approved .
The system , called Parallel Track , permitted desperate patients , who genuinely had no alternative , to gain access to drugs that proved to be safe but had not yet been shown to be effective .
Donald Trump used that same system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ become , according to the Washington Post , one of fewer than ten Americans to be granted compassionate use of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals ’ new COVID-19 drug , REGN-COV2 .
It is hardly news that medical treatment in the United States varies widely , largely based on wealth .
And it would be naïve to expect that a President would not—or even , perhaps , should not—get better care than the other seven million people in this country infected with the coronavirus .
But it ’ s essential to remember that experimental drugs are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of them prove to be dangerous and are never approved .
So why was Donald Trump given the Regeneron drug ?
It is a cocktail of two cloned antibodies , one copied from a recovered COVID-19 patient and one from a genetically modified mouse .
The antibodies bind to the spike proteins on the surface of the virus , which they use to attach to host receptors , preventing the virus from interacting with human cells .
The approach , which is highly experimental , holds much promise , though , so far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ study of the drug publicly available .
The study has not yet been peer-reviewed , but it demonstrates that REGN-COV2 can lower the amount of virus in rhesus macaques and golden hamsters .
That is a good preliminary sign , but animal evidence does not always translate to success in humans .
( About two thousand people are currently participating in clinical trials that will determine whether the drug works in humans and , if so , in what ways . )
It is also worth noting that reduced viral load in patients @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be clinical benefits .
Only hospital-discharge and mortality data could prove that , and as of yet there is none .
“ Many observers seem to think that because he ’ s the President we ought to pull out all the stops , ’ ’ Peter Lurie , the president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest , wrote recently on the center ’ s COVID-19 blog .
During the Obama Administration , Lurie served as the Associate Commissioner for Public Health Strategy and Analysis at the F.D.A .
But , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t discriminate between the President and mere mortals , as the President ’ s infection so aptly demonstrates .
The President is no less likely to experience adverse effects and no more likely to derive benefit from unproven drugs than anyone else.
’ ’ On Wednesday evening , Trump released a bizarre , five-minute video , during which he described the drug as a “ cure ” and called his infection with the coronavirus a “ blessing from God.
” He promised to get the drug to hundreds of thousands of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not yet been approved and the company has said that it will not have that many doses available for months .
After Trump ’ s video was released , Regeneron immediately filed for an Emergency Use Authorization , which would permit early distribution of REGN-COV2 .
Yet the President has no way of knowing what effect , if any , that drug has had on his health .
It may have worked , but he is just guessing , since there are no facts to support his assertion .
Earlier this year , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a preventive measure , despite clear evidence that it has no positive effect on people with COVID-19 and that , for some , it can be dangerous .
He pushed the F.D.A .
to issue an Emergency Use Authorization for the medication .
Rick A .
Bright , a pandemic expert , was fired from his job as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority when he resisted signing off on the request .
He has filed a whistle-blower suit against the government .
The F.D.A.
’ s current approach @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It takes time to prove that a drug is safe and effective .
That is why so few people have been granted compassionate use of the medicine .
Maybe there should be a special national-security exemption to the compassionate-use process for Presidents and other essential leaders .
But there isn ’ t one , and the first sentence of Regeneron ’ s original statement regarding the authorization in this case makes it clear that the process did not apply to the President .
The company noted that compassionate-use requests are “ intended for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do not have any viable or available treatment options , and are unable to participate in ongoing clinical trials.
” According to Trump , of course , and despite the deaths of more than two hundred and ten thousand people in this country , COVID-19 is neither serious nor life-threatening .
He has stated repeatedly that the disease is just not that big a problem—that “ ninety-nine per cent ” of all COVID-19 cases are inconsequential—and he has stressed , both before his hospitalization at Walter Reed and after , that people shouldn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In fact , the President received nearly every drug currently dispensed to patients who have been most seriously affected by COVID-19 .
According to his doctors , in addition to the Regeneron drug , he was treated with remdesivir and dexamethasone , a steroid that is usually given to patients with a severe form of the disease .
Both medications have been shown to offer some effectiveness , and steroids can , for short periods , make sick people feel fine , and even euphoric .
The President also has been taking zinc @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been demonstrated to help COVID-19 patients .
It ’ s worth remembering the original ACT UP demands for expanded access .
In a 1989 document called “ A National AIDS Treatment Research Agenda , ” which was released at the fifth International Conference on AIDS , in Montreal , the group stated that patients who were granted compassionate-use treatment should be : • People with a condition for which there is no standard treatment .
• People who can not tolerate the standard treatment for their condition .
• People who are failing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ qualifications apparently applied to Trump last weekend—although , because his doctors have been unwilling to release many details of his treatment or the results of his many tests , we don ’ t know what his condition really was , or is .
Parallel Track was a revolutionary idea in the eighties .
Over the years , it has helped speed the drug-approval process considerably .
But this approach was always meant to be used by people who would almost certainly die without it .
It was never intended to be used at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with access to the world ’ s finest medical care .
Nor was it imagined for a man who pretends , after having his system flooded with steroids and other drugs , to be immune to the most ruinous virus the world has seen in a century , and who has shown no compassion for the many people he governs who are sick , or for the families of those who have died .
More on the Coronavirus • To protect American lives and revive the economy , Donald Trump and Jared Kushner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trash him .
• We should look to students to conceive of appropriate school-reopening plans .
It is not too late to ask what they really want .
• A pregnant pediatrician on what children need during the crisis .
• Trump is helping tycoons who have donated to his reëlection campaign exploit the pandemic to maximize profits .
• Meet the high-finance mogul in charge of our economic recovery .
• The coronavirus is likely to reshape architecture .
What kinds of space are we willing to live and work in now @

By the late nineteen-eighties, after AIDS had killed thousands of gay men in America, only one drug, AZT, had been approved to treat the H.I.V. virus that caused the disease, and patients quickly developed resistance to it. The Food and Drug Administration’s glacial drug-approval process, however, insured that thousands more would die before another treatment emerged.
So activists led by ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), and helped greatly by Anthony S. Fauci, who then, as now, ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, forced the F.D.A. to adopt a new way of dispensing experimental medicines before they were approved. The system, called Parallel Track, permitted desperate patients, who genuinely had no alternative, to gain access to drugs that proved to be safe but had not yet been shown to be effective. Donald Trump used that same system, now called Expanded Access, to become, according to the Washington Post, one of fewer than ten Americans to be granted compassionate use of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ new COVID-19 drug, REGN-COV2.
It is hardly news that medical treatment in the United States varies widely, largely based on wealth. And it would be naïve to expect that a President would not—or even, perhaps, should not—get better care than the other seven million people in this country infected with the coronavirus. But it’s essential to remember that experimental drugs are just that: experiments, and many of them prove to be dangerous and are never approved. So why was Donald Trump given the Regeneron drug? It is a cocktail of two cloned antibodies, one copied from a recovered COVID-19 patient and one from a genetically modified mouse. The antibodies bind to the spike proteins on the surface of the virus, which they use to attach to host receptors, preventing the virus from interacting with human cells. The approach, which is highly experimental, holds much promise, though, so far, the company has made one principal study of the drug publicly available. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed, but it demonstrates that REGN-COV2 can lower the amount of virus in rhesus macaques and golden hamsters. That is a good preliminary sign, but animal evidence does not always translate to success in humans. (About two thousand people are currently participating in clinical trials that will determine whether the drug works in humans and, if so, in what ways.) It is also worth noting that reduced viral load in patients does not automatically indicate that there will be clinical benefits. Only hospital-discharge and mortality data could prove that, and as of yet there is none.
“Many observers seem to think that because he’s the President we ought to pull out all the stops,’’ Peter Lurie, the president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, wrote recently on the center’s COVID-19 blog. During the Obama Administration, Lurie served as the Associate Commissioner for Public Health Strategy and Analysis at the F.D.A. But, he added, “Drugs and viruses don’t discriminate between the President and mere mortals, as the President’s infection so aptly demonstrates. The President is no less likely to experience adverse effects and no more likely to derive benefit from unproven drugs than anyone else.’’
On Wednesday evening, Trump released a bizarre, five-minute video, during which he described the drug as a “cure” and called his infection with the coronavirus a “blessing from God.” He promised to get the drug to hundreds of thousands of people quickly, even though it has not yet been approved and the company has said that it will not have that many doses available for months. After Trump’s video was released, Regeneron immediately filed for an Emergency Use Authorization, which would permit early distribution of REGN-COV2. Yet the President has no way of knowing what effect, if any, that drug has had on his health. It may have worked, but he is just guessing, since there are no facts to support his assertion. Earlier this year, Trump announced that he had taken hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure, despite clear evidence that it has no positive effect on people with COVID-19 and that, for some, it can be dangerous. He pushed the F.D.A. to issue an Emergency Use Authorization for the medication. Rick A. Bright, a pandemic expert, was fired from his job as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority when he resisted signing off on the request. He has filed a whistle-blower suit against the government.
The F.D.A.’s current approach to drug approval is not arbitrary. It takes time to prove that a drug is safe and effective. That is why so few people have been granted compassionate use of the medicine. Maybe there should be a special national-security exemption to the compassionate-use process for Presidents and other essential leaders. But there isn’t one, and the first sentence of Regeneron’s original statement regarding the authorization in this case makes it clear that the process did not apply to the President. The company noted that compassionate-use requests are “intended for patients with serious or life-threatening conditions who do not have any viable or available treatment options, and are unable to participate in ongoing clinical trials.”
According to Trump, of course, and despite the deaths of more than two hundred and ten thousand people in this country, COVID-19 is neither serious nor life-threatening. He has stated repeatedly that the disease is just not that big a problem—that “ninety-nine per cent” of all COVID-19 cases are inconsequential—and he has stressed, both before his hospitalization at Walter Reed and after, that people shouldn’t worry about the virus. In fact, the President received nearly every drug currently dispensed to patients who have been most seriously affected by COVID-19. According to his doctors, in addition to the Regeneron drug, he was treated with remdesivir and dexamethasone, a steroid that is usually given to patients with a severe form of the disease. Both medications have been shown to offer some effectiveness, and steroids can, for short periods, make sick people feel fine, and even euphoric. The President also has been taking zinc and vitamin D, which have not been demonstrated to help COVID-19 patients.
It’s worth remembering the original ACT UP demands for expanded access. In a 1989 document called “A National AIDS Treatment Research Agenda,” which was released at the fifth International Conference on AIDS, in Montreal, the group stated that patients who were granted compassionate-use treatment should be:


newyorker--2020-10-08--Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Martin on Comedy and Paying Attention

In a moment dominated by anxiety , their conversation centered on comedy : not politics , not the pandemic—though both came up—but the careers of these standup superstars and the development of their sensibilities .
You can see segments of their conversation in the video above .
For Seinfeld , who is best known as the star of his long-running , Emmy Award-winning sitcom , comedy ’ s essence is irritability .
Everyone feels frustration , he said , but “ the comedian gives it a candy shell , like a peanut M & M. ” Audiences relish the sugar-coating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re kind of releasing that pressure for them.
” Martin , a comedian as well as a musician , actor , and writer , who co-authored the upcoming book “ A Wealth of Pigeons ” with the New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss , draws not just on irritation but all perceptions for material .
It ’ s a lesson he learned in his late teens , touring with the entertainer Gary Mule Deer .
“ He would be funny just kind of looking around .
He would see something and pick it up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ look at the view and come up with a joke , ” Martin said .
“ I learned you just keep your eyes open and your ears open.
” Morrison did eventually steer the funnymen toward present tragedies .
“ What about the pandemic ?
” she asked .
“ What do you two make of what we ’ re all going through right now ?
” Seinfeld had an optimistic outlook : “ When we can come back , we ’ ll come back—and people will make jokes about it .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ catharsis.
” Seinfeld and Martin ’ s conversation with Morrison was one of sixteen Festival events being held through Sunday .
Like most of the Festival lineup , their appearance will be available for viewing , in its entirety , through October 13th with the purchase of a ticket .

Two comedians and an editor walk into a Zoom room. That was the premise of Wednesday night’s New Yorker Festival event featuring Jerry Seinfeld, Steve Martin, and The New Yorker’s Susan Morrison.
In a moment dominated by anxiety, their conversation centered on comedy: not politics, not the pandemic—though both came up—but the careers of these standup superstars and the development of their sensibilities. You can see segments of their conversation in the video above.
For Seinfeld, who is best known as the star of his long-running, Emmy Award-winning sitcom, comedy’s essence is irritability. Everyone feels frustration, he said, but “the comedian gives it a candy shell, like a peanut M&M.” Audiences relish the sugar-coating of their irritations because “you’re kind of releasing that pressure for them.”
Martin, a comedian as well as a musician, actor, and writer, who co-authored the upcoming book “A Wealth of Pigeons” with the New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss, draws not just on irritation but all perceptions for material. It’s a lesson he learned in his late teens, touring with the entertainer Gary Mule Deer. “He would be funny just kind of looking around. He would see something and pick it up and say something about it, or look at the view and come up with a joke,” Martin said. “I learned you just keep your eyes open and your ears open.”
Morrison did eventually steer the funnymen toward present tragedies. “What about the pandemic?” she asked. “What do you two make of what we’re all going through right now?” Seinfeld had an optimistic outlook: “When we can come back, we’ll come back—and people will make jokes about it. And that’ll probably be a huge catharsis.”
Seinfeld and Martin’s conversation with Morrison was one of sixteen Festival events being held through Sunday. Like most of the Festival lineup, their appearance will be available for viewing, in its entirety, through October 19th with the purchase of a ticket.


newyorker--2020-10-08--Milt Gross: A Cartoonist’s Cartoonist

Milt Gross: A Cartoonist’s Cartoonist

There are not many cartoonists who can remain cool-headed when they see a drawing such as the one above , a typical example of Milt Gross ’ s carefree and animated pen line .
“ He is one of the all-time great cartoonists because he makes the craft integral to the entire endeavor look so easy , even enjoyable , ” the theoretician and practitioner of comics , Ivan Brunetti , writes in the introduction to an upcoming collection of Gross ’ s work , “ Gross Exaggerations : The Meshuga Comic Strips of Milt Gross.
” Gross also had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that surrounded him during his youth , in New York City .
Throughout the twenties , in full-color pages for the Sunday comics section of various newspapers , Gross introduced the tight-knit and tightly wound Feitelbaum family ( “ Nize Baby ” ) , a man who leaves the asylum where he resides only to find that it ’ s the outside world that lacks common sense ( “ Count Screwloose of Tooloose ” ) , and the schemes and dreams of those who frequent a bustling deli ( “ Dave ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the Bronx at the tail end of the nineteenth century , a time when gag strips spread like memes among the masses .
He rose from humble beginnings , drawing cartoons in the back room of a pool parlor that functioned as his studio , eventually cementing himself as a household name through his work as a syndicated cartoonist , illustrator , humor writer , and screenwriter ( he worked on “ The Circus ” for Charlie Chaplin ) .
Nowadays , we must socially distance ourselves from much of his century-old @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racism , and sexism were used liberally to get the yuks in the early twentieth century .
As Brunetti argues in the introduction , Gross ’ s most enduring legacy may lie in his pen lines .
His trademark irreverence and his devil-may-care American absurdism may guarantee that his work—after staying fresh for decades—continues to be so for centuries , or at least as long as there are other cartoonists around to appreciate and savor it .
This excerpt is drawn from “ Gross Exaggerations : The Meshuga Comic Strips of Milt Gross @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out this November from Sunday Press .

There are not many cartoonists who can remain cool-headed when they see a drawing such as the one above, a typical example of Milt Gross’s carefree and animated pen line. “He is one of the all-time great cartoonists because he makes the craft integral to the entire endeavor look so easy, even enjoyable,” the theoretician and practitioner of comics, Ivan Brunetti, writes in the introduction to an upcoming collection of Gross’s work, “Gross Exaggerations: The Meshuga Comic Strips of Milt Gross.” Gross also had a good ear for the musical Yinglish that surrounded him during his youth, in New York City. Throughout the twenties, in full-color pages for the Sunday comics section of various newspapers, Gross introduced the tight-knit and tightly wound Feitelbaum family (“Nize Baby”), a man who leaves the asylum where he resides only to find that it’s the outside world that lacks common sense (“Count Screwloose of Tooloose”), and the schemes and dreams of those who frequent a bustling deli (“Dave’s Delicatessen”).
Gross was born in the Bronx at the tail end of the nineteenth century, a time when gag strips spread like memes among the masses. He rose from humble beginnings, drawing cartoons in the back room of a pool parlor that functioned as his studio, eventually cementing himself as a household name through his work as a syndicated cartoonist, illustrator, humor writer, and screenwriter (he worked on “The Circus” for Charlie Chaplin). Nowadays, we must socially distance ourselves from much of his century-old humor and content: ethnic humor, racism, and sexism were used liberally to get the yuks in the early twentieth century. As Brunetti argues in the introduction, Gross’s most enduring legacy may lie in his pen lines. His trademark irreverence and his devil-may-care American absurdism may guarantee that his work—after staying fresh for decades—continues to be so for centuries, or at least as long as there are other cartoonists around to appreciate and savor it.
September 18, 1927.
October 24, 1926.
January 6, 1929.
January 25, 1929.
August 25, 1929.
April 14, 1929.
April 8, 1931.
October 25, 1931.
October 6, 1931.
This excerpt is drawn from “Gross Exaggerations: The Meshuga Comic Strips of Milt Gross,” edited by Peter Maresca, out this November from Sunday Press.


newyorker--2020-10-08--How Louise Glück, Nobel Laureate, Became Our Poet

It was still the fly ’ s fifteen minutes when , into the Twitter storm of Emily Dickinson-meets-Mike Pence jokes ( “ I heard a fly buzz—when I lied— ” ) , there interposed the news from Stockholm : Louise Glück had won the Nobel Prize in Literature .
Right on cue , you saw the limits of the written word .
I tweeted , “ WHHHHHAAAAAATTTTTT.
” Others whose life calling it is to manage language were similarly eloquent .
The novelist Brandon Taylor wrote “ OH .
MY .
FUCKING .
GOD .
OH MY GOD .
OHHHHH @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ HOLY SHIT ” ’ s .
Tweets referred to , but couldn ’ t embody , the emotions : several writers reported that they were crying .
My own emotions hadn ’ t arrived yet at whatever their final form would be .
( They still haven ’ t . )
I ran into our front yard to attempt to hail my wife ’ s car as she and my two sons headed out of the driveway , on the way to the bus .
I was too late .
I shouldn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pants .
The reasons for the widespread joy are both simple and deep .
Simple , because Louise Glück is a great writer who deserves the prize .
Her work is thrilling and surprising ; it ’ s both intimate and grand ; she appeals to people who read only poetry and to people who read almost no poetry .
It is various enough to appeal to all temperaments , often in the same poem : here is a line for the skeptic , here ’ s one for the pushover .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s like to fall in love , to have an abortion , to have a child , to be seriously ill , to get divorced , to shop for cheese , to weed , to plant , to grieve for your parents and teachers : you can find it in Glück ’ s work .
Her poems are anathema to easy comfort , and often seem to ban or forbid the going and conventional emotional logic .
And yet people read them to know the contours of their own inner lives .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; here , though , is a short demonstration , as in a late-night infomercial , of what her poems can do .
Several individual poems from her great volume of 1999 , “ Vita Nova , ” carry that book ’ s title , borrowed from Dante , whose own “ new life ” began when he first glimpsed Beatrice , his great love .
In the final poem of the book , Glück imagines a comic-brutal custody negotiation over a dreamed dog .
“ In the splitting up dream / we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the dog , / Blizzard ” : “ This is all material ” is both the specious consolation people offer to suffering artists and writers and , as these very lines demonstrate , the simple truth .
Even anorexia , which nearly killed Glück as a young woman , can be a punch line .
( Elsewhere in the poem , the dog—a granola , like the mistress who does do the rhumba—won ’ t touch “ the hummus in his dogfood dish.
” ) Is it a good or a bad thing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ?
( Today , it certainly seems like a good thing . )
But the poem doesn ’ t end there ; its final lines must be some of the most gorgeous sentiments ever expressed about a bitter romantic adversary : The poem keeps attaching addenda , as though unable to settle on a final note .
The seasons provide the model for this abrupt , almost humiliating renewal : winter destroys us , utterly routs us—and then spring pops up all cheerful , like , What was that all about ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ behind us !
When I heard the news this morning , I considered another reason for people ’ s joy .
Glück—like the last American woman to win the prize , Toni Morrison—is a teacher , a sage for thousands of students at a variety of institutions , from Goddard College , in its hippie prime , to Williams , Yale , and Stanford .
“ Teaching , ” for figures of her calibre , is often a word that means giving scripted lectures and then fleeing into the wings , or charging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a resort .
Glück is a classroom teacher , at home in a small group , around a table .
Dozens of great books , winners of awards , were shaped by her vigilant editing in the classroom , which often continues in her apartment and garden in Cambridge .
This is part of why so many people seemed to feel that their own lives had somehow been recognized by the announcement of the Nobel .
When I was growing up in Vermont , a few mountains over from her , Glück ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feels to me like a seventies figure , something in the key of Joni Mitchell , because of all the bookshelves and coffee tables of that era where her books were found .
She was “ our ” poet .
Now I think of all the waiters and cheesemongers and cabbies and neighborhood people in Cambridge who know her , and think of her as “ their ” poet .
Over many long dinners , I learned from her how to listen , how to formulate a meaningful insight , how to resist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
After attending our wedding , Louise said she ’ d had a great time because she “ loved spectacles of good intention.
” When I told her how a friend was courting his new , young wife by reading aloud poems from her book “ The Wild Iris , ” she laughed and said something like “ that book is very useful for people who prefer to view their carnal needs in spiritual terms.
” Mommy ’ s too ironic , but today we ’ re all pretty blissed out that Louise @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Louise Glück’s work is thrilling and surprising, intimate and grand. Photograph by Robin Marchant / Getty
It was still the fly’s fifteen minutes when, into the Twitter storm of Emily Dickinson-meets-Mike Pence jokes (“I heard a fly buzz—when I lied—”), there interposed the news from Stockholm: Louise Glück had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Right on cue, you saw the limits of the written word. I tweeted, “WHHHHHAAAAAATTTTTT.” Others whose life calling it is to manage language were similarly eloquent. The novelist Brandon Taylor wrote “OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD. OH MY GOD. OHHHHH MY GOD.” There were multiple context-free “HOLY SHIT” ’s. Tweets referred to, but couldn’t embody, the emotions: several writers reported that they were crying. My own emotions hadn’t arrived yet at whatever their final form would be. (They still haven’t.) I ran into our front yard to attempt to hail my wife’s car as she and my two sons headed out of the driveway, on the way to the bus. I was too late. I shouldn’t have stopped to pull on pants.
The reasons for the widespread joy are both simple and deep. Simple, because Louise Glück is a great writer who deserves the prize. Her work is thrilling and surprising; it’s both intimate and grand; she appeals to people who read only poetry and to people who read almost no poetry. It is various enough to appeal to all temperaments, often in the same poem: here is a line for the skeptic, here’s one for the pushover. If you want to know what it’s like to fall in love, to have an abortion, to have a child, to be seriously ill, to get divorced, to shop for cheese, to weed, to plant, to grieve for your parents and teachers: you can find it in Glück’s work. Her poems are anathema to easy comfort, and often seem to ban or forbid the going and conventional emotional logic. And yet people read them to know the contours of their own inner lives.
I’ve written about Glück at length; here, though, is a short demonstration, as in a late-night infomercial, of what her poems can do. Several individual poems from her great volume of 1999, “Vita Nova,” carry that book’s title, borrowed from Dante, whose own “new life” began when he first glimpsed Beatrice, his great love. In the final poem of the book, Glück imagines a comic-brutal custody negotiation over a dreamed dog. “In the splitting up dream / we were fighting over who would keep / the dog, / Blizzard”:
Blizzard,
Daddy needs you; Daddy’s heart is empty,
not because he’s leaving Mommy but because
the kind of love he wants Mommy
doesn’t have, Mommy’s
too ironic—Mommy wouldn’t do
the rhumba in the driveway. Or
is this wrong. Supposing
I’m the dog, as in
my child-self, unconsolable because
completely pre-verbal? With
anorexia! O Blizzard,
be a brave dog—this is
all material; you’ll wake up
in a different world,
you will eat again, you will grow up into a poet!
“This is all material” is both the specious consolation people offer to suffering artists and writers and, as these very lines demonstrate, the simple truth. Even anorexia, which nearly killed Glück as a young woman, can be a punch line. (Elsewhere in the poem, the dog—a granola, like the mistress who does do the rhumba—won’t touch “the hummus in his dogfood dish.”) Is it a good or a bad thing to “grow up into a poet”? (Today, it certainly seems like a good thing.) But the poem doesn’t end there; its final lines must be some of the most gorgeous sentiments ever expressed about a bitter romantic adversary:
Life is very weird, no matter how it ends,
very filled with dreams. Never
will I forget your face, your frantic human eyes
swollen with tears.
I thought my life was over and my heart was broken.
Then I moved to Cambridge.
The poem keeps attaching addenda, as though unable to settle on a final note. The seasons provide the model for this abrupt, almost humiliating renewal: winter destroys us, utterly routs us—and then spring pops up all cheerful, like, What was that all about? Let’s just put that unpleasantness behind us!
When I heard the news this morning, I considered another reason for people’s joy. Glück—like the last American woman to win the prize, Toni Morrison—is a teacher, a sage for thousands of students at a variety of institutions, from Goddard College, in its hippie prime, to Williams, Yale, and Stanford. “Teaching,” for figures of her calibre, is often a word that means giving scripted lectures and then fleeing into the wings, or charging mega-dollars for a sun-drenched guru experience at a resort. Glück is a classroom teacher, at home in a small group, around a table. Dozens of great books, winners of awards, were shaped by her vigilant editing in the classroom, which often continues in her apartment and garden in Cambridge. This is part of why so many people seemed to feel that their own lives had somehow been recognized by the announcement of the Nobel.
When I was growing up in Vermont, a few mountains over from her, Glück’s work was everywhere; she still feels to me like a seventies figure, something in the key of Joni Mitchell, because of all the bookshelves and coffee tables of that era where her books were found. She was “our” poet. Now I think of all the waiters and cheesemongers and cabbies and neighborhood people in Cambridge who know her, and think of her as “their” poet. Over many long dinners, I learned from her how to listen, how to formulate a meaningful insight, how to resist the romance of easy or convenient feelings. After attending our wedding, Louise said she’d had a great time because she “loved spectacles of good intention.” When I told her how a friend was courting his new, young wife by reading aloud poems from her book “The Wild Iris,” she laughed and said something like “that book is very useful for people who prefer to view their carnal needs in spiritual terms.” Mommy’s too ironic, but today we’re all pretty blissed out that Louise Glück grew up into a poet.