newyorker--2020-05-18--Barry Blitt’s “Natural Ability”

Barry Blitt’s “Natural Ability”

In March , during a tour of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , in Atlanta , President Trump theorized that he might have a “ natural ability ” for medical science .
The magazine ’ s latest cover explores that possibility .
The image is by Barry Blitt , who started contributing to The New Yorker in 1993 , and who , in May , won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning .
Blitt recently spoke to us about the cover .
You ’ ve drawn Trump in a wide variety of situations .
Did you ever think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
I try not to think about what guises or situations I ’ m going to draw him in next .
But let ’ s just say that nothing would surprise me .
I can ’ t believe I haven ’ t drawn him as one of the Rockettes yet .
Or as part of Winnie the Pooh ’ s inner circle , say .
You ’ ve become an expert at skewering politicians and their hypocrisy .
Does creating political cartoons feel different in this era ?
I don ’ t know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s panic time whenever I start the next cartoon .
And it ’ s hard not to feel like drawing caricatures is a little trivial at a time like this .
But what else am I going to do ?
Surgical masks have become the norm in public life .
How does that affect the task of a cartoonist ?
Good question .
This was the first cartoon I ’ ve drawn that required recognizable likenesses despite half the face being obscured .
One thing I learned is that Jared Kushner looks almost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mask on .
You live in rural Connecticut .
Has quarantine life been a change of pace or is your routine largely the same ?
I hate to admit that I ’ ve been social-distancing for decades .
The bulk of my time is spent at my drafting table , or pacing around my studio , talking to myself out loud .
When the UPS man comes to the door , I hide to avoid conversation .
This is nothing I ’ m proud of , but it ’ s old hat for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , see below :

In March, during a tour of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, President Trump theorized that he might have a “natural ability” for medical science. The magazine’s latest cover explores that possibility. The image is by Barry Blitt, who started contributing to The New Yorker in 1993, and who, in May, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. Blitt recently spoke to us about the cover.
You’ve drawn Trump in a wide variety of situations. Did you ever think you would draw him as a surgeon?
I try not to think about what guises or situations I’m going to draw him in next. But let’s just say that nothing would surprise me. I can’t believe I haven’t drawn him as one of the Rockettes yet. Or as part of Winnie the Pooh’s inner circle, say.
You’ve become an expert at skewering politicians and their hypocrisy. Does creating political cartoons feel different in this era?
I don’t know about being an expert. It’s panic time whenever I start the next cartoon. And it’s hard not to feel like drawing caricatures is a little trivial at a time like this. But what else am I going to do?
Surgical masks have become the norm in public life. How does that affect the task of a cartoonist?
Good question. This was the first cartoon I’ve drawn that required recognizable likenesses despite half the face being obscured. One thing I learned is that Jared Kushner looks almost exactly the same with and without a mask on.
You live in rural Connecticut. Has quarantine life been a change of pace or is your routine largely the same?
I hate to admit that I’ve been social-distancing for decades. The bulk of my time is spent at my drafting table, or pacing around my studio, talking to myself out loud. When the UPS man comes to the door, I hide to avoid conversation. This is nothing I’m proud of, but it’s old hat for me.
For more covers by Blitt, see below:


Is Capitalism Racist?

Before the Civil War , Southern slaveholders used to claim that their labor system was more humane than “ wage slavery ” in the factories of the industrializing North .
They didn ’ t win that argument , but the idea took root that the South , during and after slavery , did not have a true capitalist economy .
In 1930 , twelve Southern writers ( all white men ) published a collection of essays , titled “ I ’ ll Take My Stand , ” that opened with a declaration that they “ all tend to support a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be called the American or prevailing way ; and all as much as agree that the best terms in which to represent the distinction are contained in the phrase , Agrarian versus Industrial.
” To believe that the South was economically different didn ’ t entail being a defender of slavery or segregation ; it didn ’ t even have to mean you were a political conservative .
When I was growing up in New Orleans , among the descendants of antebellum sugar and cotton planters , efficiency and industriousness were not highly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indicia—income , health , education—were much lower than they were in the North .
This condition seemed connected to the exploitation and political disempowerment that went along with a racial caste system .
It was worse than capitalism , not part of capitalism .
But for many years now historians have disputed the old Southern agrarian notions about how the South related to capitalism .
This form of revisionism , which has blossomed in the academy and beyond during the past decade or so , takes its inspiration from “ Capitalism and Slavery @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Williams , a young historian who later became the first Prime Minister of an independent Trinidad and Tobago .
The book , which argued for the centrality of slavery to the rise of capitalism , was largely ignored for half a century ; now its thesis is a starting point for a new generation of scholarship .
Large-scale Southern slaveholders are today understood as experts in such business practices as harsh , ever-increasing production quotas for workers and the creation of sophisticated credit instruments .
Rather than representing an alternative system to industrial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , providing the textile mills of Manchester and Birmingham with cotton to be spun into cloth by the new British working class .
As Walter Johnson , one of our leading historians of slavery , wrote in 2018 , “ There was no such thing as capitalism without slavery : the history of Manchester never happened without the history of Mississippi.
” The new history of slavery seeks to obliterate the economic and moral distinction between slavery and capitalism , and between the South and the North , by showing them to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Inevitably , this view has generated intense arguments , not only about how integral the slave plantation was to the national and global economies but also about whether we should regard the end of slavery as an important breakpoint in American history or merely a rearranging of an oppressive system into an altered but still essentially oppressive form .
Critics of the new history of slavery chastise it for downplaying developments like Britain ’ s abolition of slavery in its colonies and the American Civil War , and for overstating slavery ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early American economy , even if the plantation was a particularly ruthless business enterprise .
The arguments about slavery imply larger arguments about America .
At least among respectable academic historians , the days of triumphant historical accounts of the greatness of the United States are long past .
But for some the national enterprise can still be seen as a slow and often interrupted progression toward a more just and democratic society ; for others , it amounts to a set of variations on racial hierarchy and economic exploitation .
Once slavery @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American capitalism , the country ’ s subsequent history can be depicted as an extension of this basic dynamic .
This is what Walter Johnson does in his new book , “ The Broken Heart of America : St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States ” ( Basic ) .
The study demonstrates both the power of the model and its limitations .
Johnson , who grew up in Missouri , tells us that he was moved to write the book by the events in Ferguson in the summer of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unarmed black teen-ager , by a police officer named Darren Wilson , and the period of local unrest and national attention that followed .
In Johnson ’ s account , Ferguson emerges as the distillation of a vexed history that goes back to the city ’ s beginnings .
Johnson ’ s earlier work presented slavery as the furthest thing from a “ peculiar institution ” set apart from the American mainstream ; here , he makes a similar case for the centrality of St. Louis .
“ St .
Louis has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he writes .
“ Much of American history has unfolded from the juncture of empire and anti-Blackness in the city of St. Louis.
” Johnson ’ s guiding concept is “ racial capitalism ” : racism as a technique for exploiting black people and for fomenting the hostility of working-class whites toward blacks , so as to enable white capitalists to extract value from everyone else .
For his purposes , St. Louis is a case study in the pervasiveness and the longevity of racism outside the formal boundaries of slavery .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ The history of racial capitalism , it must be emphasized , is a history of wages as well as whips , of factories as well as plantations , of whiteness as well as blackness , of ‘ freedom ’ as well as slavery.
” A small French outpost situated just below the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers , St. Louis became part of the United States in 1803 , owing to the Louisiana Purchase .
Thomas Jefferson soon put in motion the Lewis and Clark expedition , which set off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In Johnson ’ s account , St. Louis in its early decades becomes the staging area for the brutal taking of the American West .
For blinkered whites like William Clark , the complicated realities of the West were “ subordinated to a racially fundamentalist understanding of the world ( red , white , and black ) and the politics of white settler imperialism and ethnic cleansing.
” The Missouri Compromise , in 1820 , admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state , and , Johnson points out , Missouri ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ black people , preventing free blacks from settling in the state .
A parade of men ( most of them , in Johnson ’ s telling , closely connected to St. Louis ) who were long presented to schoolchildren as the heroes of American history are revealed to be anything but .
The iniquities of Jefferson and of Lewis and Clark are a mere prologue to those of Andrew Jackson , “ the nation ’ s most prominent Indian hater ” ; John C. Frémont , the explorer and the first Presidential candidate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was an imperialist and , by any modern standard , a war criminal ” ; and Ulysses S. Grant , whose essential military technique was “ murderous fury.
” Abraham Lincoln comes off no better .
He began his career as a “ settler militiaman , ” and , for the rest of his life , “ remained committed to ethnic cleansing.
” Lincoln developed a winning political platform for the Republicans in which slavery was opposed mainly because it competed with the economic interests of white farmers and laborers ; Lincoln ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whites-only frontier to the “ white supremacist , imperialist , and removalist ” Republican base .
Horace Greeley ’ s Liberal Republican movement , following the Civil War , was based on a “ white nationalist ” ideology whose “ predictable result ” was genocide .

Before the Civil War, Southern slaveholders used to claim that their labor system was more humane than “wage slavery” in the factories of the industrializing North. They didn’t win that argument, but the idea took root that the South, during and after slavery, did not have a true capitalist economy. In 1930, twelve Southern writers (all white men) published a collection of essays, titled “I’ll Take My Stand,” that opened with a declaration that they “all tend to support a Southern way of life against what may be called the American or prevailing way; and all as much as agree that the best terms in which to represent the distinction are contained in the phrase, Agrarian versus Industrial.” To believe that the South was economically different didn’t entail being a defender of slavery or segregation; it didn’t even have to mean you were a political conservative. When I was growing up in New Orleans, among the descendants of antebellum sugar and cotton planters, efficiency and industriousness were not highly valued, and all the general social indicia—income, health, education—were much lower than they were in the North. This condition seemed connected to the exploitation and political disempowerment that went along with a racial caste system. It was worse than capitalism, not part of capitalism.
But for many years now historians have disputed the old Southern agrarian notions about how the South related to capitalism. This form of revisionism, which has blossomed in the academy and beyond during the past decade or so, takes its inspiration from “Capitalism and Slavery,” published in 1944 by Eric Williams, a young historian who later became the first Prime Minister of an independent Trinidad and Tobago. The book, which argued for the centrality of slavery to the rise of capitalism, was largely ignored for half a century; now its thesis is a starting point for a new generation of scholarship. Large-scale Southern slaveholders are today understood as experts in such business practices as harsh, ever-increasing production quotas for workers and the creation of sophisticated credit instruments. Rather than representing an alternative system to industrial capitalism, American plantations enabled its development, providing the textile mills of Manchester and Birmingham with cotton to be spun into cloth by the new British working class. As Walter Johnson, one of our leading historians of slavery, wrote in 2018, “There was no such thing as capitalism without slavery: the history of Manchester never happened without the history of Mississippi.”
The new history of slavery seeks to obliterate the economic and moral distinction between slavery and capitalism, and between the South and the North, by showing them to have been all part of a single system. Inevitably, this view has generated intense arguments, not only about how integral the slave plantation was to the national and global economies but also about whether we should regard the end of slavery as an important breakpoint in American history or merely a rearranging of an oppressive system into an altered but still essentially oppressive form. Critics of the new history of slavery chastise it for downplaying developments like Britain’s abolition of slavery in its colonies and the American Civil War, and for overstating slavery’s importance to the growth of the early American economy, even if the plantation was a particularly ruthless business enterprise.
The arguments about slavery imply larger arguments about America. At least among respectable academic historians, the days of triumphant historical accounts of the greatness of the United States are long past. But for some the national enterprise can still be seen as a slow and often interrupted progression toward a more just and democratic society; for others, it amounts to a set of variations on racial hierarchy and economic exploitation. Once slavery is positioned as the foundational institution of American capitalism, the country’s subsequent history can be depicted as an extension of this basic dynamic. This is what Walter Johnson does in his new book, “The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States” (Basic). The study demonstrates both the power of the model and its limitations.
Johnson, who grew up in Missouri, tells us that he was moved to write the book by the events in Ferguson in the summer of 2014—the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen-ager, by a police officer named Darren Wilson, and the period of local unrest and national attention that followed. In Johnson’s account, Ferguson emerges as the distillation of a vexed history that goes back to the city’s beginnings. Johnson’s earlier work presented slavery as the furthest thing from a “peculiar institution” set apart from the American mainstream; here, he makes a similar case for the centrality of St. Louis. “St. Louis has been the crucible of American history,” he writes. “Much of American history has unfolded from the juncture of empire and anti-Blackness in the city of St. Louis.”
Johnson’s guiding concept is “racial capitalism”: racism as a technique for exploiting black people and for fomenting the hostility of working-class whites toward blacks, so as to enable white capitalists to extract value from everyone else. For his purposes, St. Louis is a case study in the pervasiveness and the longevity of racism outside the formal boundaries of slavery. As he wrote in an earlier essay, “The history of racial capitalism, it must be emphasized, is a history of wages as well as whips, of factories as well as plantations, of whiteness as well as blackness, of ‘freedom’ as well as slavery.”
A small French outpost situated just below the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, St. Louis became part of the United States in 1803, owing to the Louisiana Purchase. Thomas Jefferson soon put in motion the Lewis and Clark expedition, which set off from St. Louis, in 1804. In Johnson’s account, St. Louis in its early decades becomes the staging area for the brutal taking of the American West. For blinkered whites like William Clark, the complicated realities of the West were “subordinated to a racially fundamentalist understanding of the world (red, white, and black) and the politics of white settler imperialism and ethnic cleansing.” The Missouri Compromise, in 1820, admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state, and, Johnson points out, Missouri’s new constitution restricted the rights of black people, preventing free blacks from settling in the state.
A parade of men (most of them, in Johnson’s telling, closely connected to St. Louis) who were long presented to schoolchildren as the heroes of American history are revealed to be anything but. The iniquities of Jefferson and of Lewis and Clark are a mere prologue to those of Andrew Jackson, “the nation’s most prominent Indian hater”; John C. Frémont, the explorer and the first Presidential candidate of the Republican Party, who “was an imperialist and, by any modern standard, a war criminal”; and Ulysses S. Grant, whose essential military technique was “murderous fury.” Abraham Lincoln comes off no better. He began his career as a “settler militiaman,” and, for the rest of his life, “remained committed to ethnic cleansing.” Lincoln developed a winning political platform for the Republicans in which slavery was opposed mainly because it competed with the economic interests of white farmers and laborers; Lincoln’s first priority was to deliver a whites-only frontier to the “white supremacist, imperialist, and removalist” Republican base. Horace Greeley’s Liberal Republican movement, following the Civil War, was based on a “white nationalist” ideology whose “predictable result” was genocide.
At the World’s Fair of 1904, hosted by St. Louis, Johnson finds a literal exhibit of this enduring legacy: an elaborate celebration of the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase that was “designed to domesticate the restive immigrant workers of St. Louis by turning them into white people,” and to insure white workers’ “proper alignment with the course of freedom-through-capitalism and imperial progress.” Such racial capitalism led to the city’s most notorious incident of racial violence before Ferguson, the East St. Louis massacre of 1917, which left dozens of black people dead and thousands more displaced, and which was sparked by the hiring of black replacement workers during an aluminum-ore processors’ strike. “The white workers of East St. Louis kept on somehow believing that the city belonged to them rather than their corporate overlords,” Johnson writes. “They believed it with such force and passion, such a sense of beleaguered entitlement, that when the time came, they would prove more than willing to kill for it.” And this massacre, Johnson says, “forecast” a series of violent post-First World War incidents in other American cities.
Indeed, as Johnson moves through the twentieth century, he consistently treats what are often taken to be national trends as toxic gifts from St. Louis. In the early years of the century, St. Louis voters passed one of the country’s first public referendums to institute residential segregation. Later, the city made copious use of restrictive covenants that barred black home buyers from white neighborhoods; the 1948 Supreme Court opinion that declared restrictive covenants legally unenforceable—a decision that was widely ignored—originated in St. Louis. Harland Bartholomew, the St. Louis version of mid-century urban master planners like Robert Moses, used his “malign genius” to become “the segregation and suburbanization czar of the United States.” The bulldozing of black neighborhoods that looked to whites like slums (such as the one where the Gateway Arch now stands) and their partial replacement by high-rise public-housing projects, aggressive policing, mass incarceration, and the use of business-friendly, community-unfriendly tax abatements to revitalize older cities—all this, in Johnson’s telling, was pioneered in St Louis.
Racial capitalists conquered the West; racial capitalists waged the Civil War; racial capitalists industrialized St. Louis, and then deindustrialized it, at every step exploiting black people just as brutally as slaveholders did. It’s a big, all-explanatory theory that is serviced by the tone of Johnson’s account, which is forcefully didactic at every moment. “The Broken Heart of America” is a history populated by good guys and bad guys—many more of the latter. Johnson doesn’t hesitate to use terms that didn’t exist at the time to describe the motivations of historical actors: “genocide,” “settler colonialism,” “ethnic cleansing”—terms given a honed edge by being relieved of historical specificity. Even one of the few entities he approves of, an “urban guerrilla” organization called ACTION, which staged public demonstrations to protest, for example, the lack of black construction workers hired to build the Gateway Arch, in the mid-nineteen-sixties, is reprimanded for being “racist, sexist, and heteronormative” in its embrace of the view “that a male breadwinner was the keystone figure of healthy Black family life.”
Johnson’s propensity for pasting condemnatory labels on his characters displays a concern that, without his firm guidance, readers may not draw the proper conclusions from the material he is presenting. He is disinclined to describe any situation as ambiguous. In the case of Michael Brown, Johnson doesn’t hesitate to call it a murder. Darren Wilson, he suggests, stopped Brown for jaywalking, and then, “after a short scuffle in the street, Brown ran away. When Wilson shot him, several witnesses later asserted, Brown had his hands raised in the air.” Johnson is polite about the Obama Justice Department’s 2015 report on the Ferguson police department’s systemic racial bias, but only in the endnotes does he mention the Justice Department’s second, simultaneously issued report, on the incident itself, which concluded that the facts of the case didn’t warrant federal prosecution. Giving particular weight to witnesses whose testimony was consistent with the forensic evidence, investigators concluded that Wilson heard of a robbery at a local market, that Brown reached into Wilson’s car and tussled with him, and that Brown was approaching Wilson when he was fatally shot. (Many of these points are intensely in dispute.) Without addressing the specifics, Johnson writes that the report “is, at best, a legalistic restatement of the extraordinary latitude provided police officers who shoot unarmed people in the United States and, at worst, a complete misunderstanding of the full circumstances surrounding the shooting.”
In the craft of history, tendentiousness is an ever-present temptation; Johnson is as insistently moralizing in his way as previous generations of romantic, heroic historians of the West were in theirs. A story centered on a transhistorical force of oppression—spotlighting St. Louis as the capital of racial capitalism—offers an all-encompassing explanation but doesn’t leave much room for racism untethered from capitalism or capitalism untethered from racism. Other scholars have found different ways of explaining the same parlous present-day conditions in distressed black neighborhoods. James Forman, Jr., in “Locking Up Our Own” (2017), showed how a series of late-twentieth-century policing and sentencing techniques, widely endorsed by tough-on-crime public officials, black and white, wound up putting many more black people in prison and making things worse in black communities. In “The Origins of the Urban Crisis” (1996), a work centered on postwar Detroit, the historian Thomas Sugrue insisted on an approach to urban history that took into account a range of factors, including not obviously racial ones like deindustrialization; in its introduction, he wrote, “The coincidence and mutual reinforcement of race, economics, and politics in a particular historical moment, the period from the 1940s to the 1960s, set the stage for the fiscal, social, and economic crises that confront urban America.” The implication of these books is that significant policy changes would help black communities. They have that in common with many previous books about urban black America in the twentieth century, including the greatest of them all, St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton’s “Black Metropolis,” from 1945. Johnson, impatient with such particularity, always goes both smaller, in the sense of depicting St. Louis as a fulcrum of history, and bigger, in the sense of making racial capitalism an eternal, all-powerful force, floating free of any specific time or place.
The idea that racism can be connected to capitalism has been around for a long time; the question is how the connection works, and whether the two are inextricable. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his great speech on the steps of the Alabama statehouse at the conclusion of the Selma-to-Montgomery march, in 1965, said, “The segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land.” King was at that moment pushing for the passage of the Voting Rights Act and other civil-rights legislation, so he had a reason to locate the nexus of race and capitalism specifically in the Southern Jim Crow system. Within a year, he was leading demonstrations against slumlords in hyper-segregated Chicago, and advocating new forms of national legislation, like the Fair Housing Act. In 2018, more than ninety per cent of African-American voters in Missouri cast their ballots against Josh Hawley, the victorious Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate; Hawley now presents himself as a critic of global capitalism without ever mentioning race. It’s possible to be anti-capitalist without being anti-racist, and anti-racist without being anti-capitalist. Johnson might say that both positions are deluded, but they have appeared regularly in our country’s history.
Through it all, black neighborhoods, especially poor black neighborhoods, still bear the weight of a malign history. Reading “The Broken Heart of America” inevitably prompts the question of how what’s broken might be repaired. Does a politically charged history come with a politics for the here and now?
Historically, Johnson doesn’t find many people to admire. Among whites, the main exceptions are a few Communists and radically inclined labor organizers. He takes a dim view, too, of mainstream black organizations like the N.A.A.C.P. and the Urban League. Liberal politicians hardly attract his notice, except when, as in the case of Lincoln, their reputations require revising downward. But after laying out a relentlessly bleak history he ends, jarringly, on a hopeful note. During the unrest following Michael Brown’s death, he tells us, “the disinherited of St. Louis rose again to take control of their history.” Since then, a number of activists—Johnson provides thumbnail sketches of them—have launched efforts in poor black neighborhoods meant to reverse, or at least resist, the pernicious workings of racial capitalism. Today, Johnson writes, “I have never been to a more amazing, hopeful place in my life.” Underlying his stated optimism is an implicit conviction that it wouldn’t do much good to look for help from the larger society; the victims of oppression must find a way forward by themselves.
As a child in the Jim Crow South during the civil-rights era, growing up in a conservative white milieu, I often overheard bitter adult conversations about the hypocrisy of white liberals in the North. Were they really any better than Southern segregationists, to go by their lived behavior? Walter Johnson, coming from the left, offers a good deal of empirical support for opinions like that. His account discourages us from drawing much hope from past events like the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, the major civil-rights victories of the sixties, or the election of Barack Obama as President; the regime of racial capitalism, in his vision, always manages to reconstitute itself. Broader reforms that aimed, at least, to smooth the roughest edges of capitalism—like the regulation of business excesses or the creation of Social Security and Medicaid—are, we gather, no match for white supremacy.
Democratic politics, especially in a country with a racial history like ours, is necessarily messy, impure, and capable of producing no more than partial victories, and, even then, only when pushed hard by political movements. But deflating and deriding the progress it has made in the past and the promise it might hold for the future invites the hazards of defeatism. It distracts from the kinds of economic, educational, and criminal-justice reforms that mainstream progressives hope to enact. These are the tools we have at hand. It would be a shame not to use them. ♦


newyorker--2020-05-18--Soundtrack to a Lost New York

Soundtrack to a Lost New York

If you wake up anxious at four in the morning , as you may be wont to do these days—assuming that you fall asleep in the first place—you are likely to hear birdsong .
That wouldn ’ t be remarkable in , say , Larchmont , but it ’ s downright eerie in most precincts of New York City , where dawn ’ s twitters and chirps are usually drowned out by the hum of traffic , the rumble of garbage trucks , the clatter of subway trains , the echoing complaints of whoever is out and about .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is what an old song called the “ lullaby of Broadway , ” and , no offense to the birds , its absence during lockdown has been disconcerting .
To help fill this void , the New York Public Library recently issued its first-ever widely available album , on Spotify , titled “ Missing Sounds of New York.
” Once again , you can thrill to the pulsing roar of a crowded bar or a packed baseball stadium .
You can also be soothed by the calmer but perhaps even more evocative tones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lively side street—children playing , dogs barking , basketballs bouncing , passersby conversing in different languages .
Did you ever think you ’ d miss the subway ?
You may be surprised at the bittersweet longing stirred by a cut that takes you through a rush-hour station and onto a train , metal-shredding brakes and all , where a hip-hop dance crew suddenly launches into a between-the-poles performance .
There are eight tracks in all , full of hustle and clangor ; they might even work as alternative sound-machine tones for sleepers immune @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rain Falling on Fern Fronds.
” “ I think there ’ s a poignancy about ‘ Missing Sounds ’ that resonates with so many people , ” said Carrie Welch , who , as the library ’ s chief external-relations officer , oversees marketing and communications , among other areas .
“ The album wasn ’ t meant to make people sad , ” she added , but it seems to , a little .
Welch and her staff helped develop “ Missing Sounds ” with Mother New York , an independent creative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ library on a now postponed campaign celebrating its hundred-and-twenty-fifth anniversary .
You could argue that the album also honors tenacity .
Corinna Falusi , Mother New York ’ s chief creative officer , said , “ We all have a feeling of grieving for normality , and this felt like a comfort .
It ’ s a reminder that at some point this will be over , and we ’ ll listen to that again.
” She said that she cried the first time she heard the album .
Anyone who has watched @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of pre-Covid New York that pique nostalgia , even if they ’ re only from February .
Audio tracks , the thinking went , could be even more Proustian .
“ When you listen , your imagination brings you to those places and situations even more intimately , ” Falusi said , echoing a generation of grandparents who disapproved of TV because they grew up listening to “ The Shadow ” on the radio .
Mother New York assembled the “ Missing Sounds ” tracks from scratch , utilizing the agency ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ It was a lot of trolling friends ’ Instagrams and being , like , ‘ I saw you were in Central Park six months ago—do you have video ?
’ and then pulling audio from that , ” Kim Chavez , a producer at the agency , explained .
Others were corralled into recording stray noises and dialogue .
“ When we were doing the ballgame track , we needed a lunatic screaming , ‘ Are you kidding me ?
How is that not a strike ?
’ ” Chavez said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dude sitting up in the Bronx who would scream that for me.
” Her best friend can be heard muttering an annoyed “ Excuse me ” on the crowded-bar track as well as on the rush-hour track ; the friend ’ s father can be heard getting into a taxi and requesting , “ 110th and Third Ave. , please.
” Chavez added , “ I take it very seriously when I say there are no fake New York accents on this album.
” The entire album was produced in a single hectic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the wayside .
“ We wanted to do a bodega so bad , ” Chavez said .
“ But that was one where we just couldn ’ t get the energy , the insanity , of being in a bodega.
” Worse , she feared that the requisite bodega cat would come off sounding like a “ Muppet cat.
” According to Welch , copyright issues were another obstacle .
One victim : the notoriously singsongy Mister Softee truck jingle , which had to be expunged from the side-street track .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re all familiar with , ” she said .
“ I can ’ t say I love it , but I kind of miss it.
” Well , yes .
Exactly .
♦ • Twenty-four hours at the epicenter of the pandemic : nearly fifty New Yorker writers and photographers fanned out to document life in New York City on April 15th .
• Seattle leaders let scientists take the lead in responding to the coronavirus .
New York leaders did not .
• Can survivors help cure the disease and rescue the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ revealed about American medicine .
• Can we trace the spread of COVID-19 and protect privacy at the same time ?
• The coronavirus is likely to spread for more than a year before a vaccine is widely available .
• How to practice social distancing , from responding to a sick housemate to the pros and cons of ordering food .
• The long crusade of Dr. Anthony Fauci , the infectious-disease expert pinned between Donald Trump and the American people .
• What to read , watch , cook , and @ @ @ @ @

If you wake up anxious at four in the morning, as you may be wont to do these days—assuming that you fall asleep in the first place—you are likely to hear birdsong. That wouldn’t be remarkable in, say, Larchmont, but it’s downright eerie in most precincts of New York City, where dawn’s twitters and chirps are usually drowned out by the hum of traffic, the rumble of garbage trucks, the clatter of subway trains, the echoing complaints of whoever is out and about. That sometimes glorious, sometimes aggravating all-hours din is what an old song called the “lullaby of Broadway,” and, no offense to the birds, its absence during lockdown has been disconcerting.
To help fill this void, the New York Public Library recently issued its first-ever widely available album, on Spotify, titled “Missing Sounds of New York.” Once again, you can thrill to the pulsing roar of a crowded bar or a packed baseball stadium. You can also be soothed by the calmer but perhaps even more evocative tones of a bustling city park or a lively side street—children playing, dogs barking, basketballs bouncing, passersby conversing in different languages. Did you ever think you’d miss the subway? You may be surprised at the bittersweet longing stirred by a cut that takes you through a rush-hour station and onto a train, metal-shredding brakes and all, where a hip-hop dance crew suddenly launches into a between-the-poles performance. There are eight tracks in all, full of hustle and clangor; they might even work as alternative sound-machine tones for sleepers immune to “Gentle Surf” or “Rain Falling on Fern Fronds.”
“I think there’s a poignancy about ‘Missing Sounds’ that resonates with so many people,” said Carrie Welch, who, as the library’s chief external-relations officer, oversees marketing and communications, among other areas. “The album wasn’t meant to make people sad,” she added, but it seems to, a little. Welch and her staff helped develop “Missing Sounds” with Mother New York, an independent creative agency that had been working with the library on a now postponed campaign celebrating its hundred-and-twenty-fifth anniversary. You could argue that the album also honors tenacity. Corinna Falusi, Mother New York’s chief creative officer, said, “We all have a feeling of grieving for normality, and this felt like a comfort. It’s a reminder that at some point this will be over, and we’ll listen to that again.” She said that she cried the first time she heard the album.
Anyone who has watched TV in quarantine has likely caught scenes of pre-Covid New York that pique nostalgia, even if they’re only from February. Audio tracks, the thinking went, could be even more Proustian. “When you listen, your imagination brings you to those places and situations even more intimately,” Falusi said, echoing a generation of grandparents who disapproved of TV because they grew up listening to “The Shadow” on the radio. Mother New York assembled the “Missing Sounds” tracks from scratch, utilizing the agency’s extensive sound library and sometimes just crowdsourcing. “It was a lot of trolling friends’ Instagrams and being, like, ‘I saw you were in Central Park six months ago—do you have video?’ and then pulling audio from that,” Kim Chavez, a producer at the agency, explained.
Others were corralled into recording stray noises and dialogue. “When we were doing the ballgame track, we needed a lunatic screaming, ‘Are you kidding me? How is that not a strike?’ ” Chavez said. “And I knew the perfect dude sitting up in the Bronx who would scream that for me.” Her best friend can be heard muttering an annoyed “Excuse me” on the crowded-bar track as well as on the rush-hour track; the friend’s father can be heard getting into a taxi and requesting, “110th and Third Ave., please.” Chavez added, “I take it very seriously when I say there are no fake New York accents on this album.”
The entire album was produced in a single hectic week. Naturally, some tracks fell by the wayside. “We wanted to do a bodega so bad,” Chavez said. “But that was one where we just couldn’t get the energy, the insanity, of being in a bodega.” Worse, she feared that the requisite bodega cat would come off sounding like a “Muppet cat.” According to Welch, copyright issues were another obstacle. One victim: the notoriously singsongy Mister Softee truck jingle, which had to be expunged from the side-street track. “That’s a sound we’re all familiar with,” she said. “I can’t say I love it, but I kind of miss it.” Well, yes. Exactly. ♦
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-05-18--Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Island on Fire , by Tom Zoellner ( Harvard ) .
In May , 1832 , Samuel Sharpe , the leader of Jamaica ’ s greatest slave rebellion , was executed .
Sharpe had been an “ elite ” slave : a literate Baptist deacon who travelled around the country delivering powerful sermons to other slaves .
The previous December , Sharpe and his followers had covertly organized a nonviolent labor strike .
Although the rebels lost the ensuing military struggle , a five-week-long ordeal that laid waste to dozens of plantations across the colony , the impact of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use of primary sources , and illustrates how the atmosphere of energetic political reform and events like Sharpe ’ s rebellion converged to end slavery in the “ agricultural prison camp ” of Jamaica , and in the British Empire at large .
Stray , by Stephanie Danler ( Knopf ) .
After nearly a decade in New York , the author of this memoir returns to the canyons of Los Angeles , where she was born , to await the publication of her début novel , “ Sweetbitter.
” In California , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a married man , and her book excavates the dynamics that have shaped her patterns of heedless behavior , examining how her father ’ s drug addiction and her mother ’ s alcoholism inform her own substance abuse and her problems with fidelity .
The family portrait that emerges is unsparing , but it is tempered with the tenderness of Danler ’ s language , and with her willingness to reserve her harshest rebukes for herself .
The Eighth Life , by Nino Haratischvili , translated from the German by Charlotte Collins and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a picturesque nation squeezed between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea , was once considered a wine-soaked playground for the Soviet upper crust .
This multigenerational epic , framed as a gift from the embittered narrator , Niza , to her wayward niece , provides a more nuanced view .
It begins with Niza ’ s bourgeois great-grandmother , whose dream of becoming a ballerina is derailed by Lenin ’ s revolution .
Her descendants are likewise transformed by upheavals of the twentieth century : Stalinist purges , the Second World @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s independence , and the subsequent civil war .
Through these events , the novel offers not only a critique of Soviet and Russian imperial ambitions but a necessary reappraisal of Georgian history .
Fracture , by Andrés Neuman , translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia ( Farrar , Straus & Giroux ) .
This novel begins on the afternoon , in 2011 , when the Tōhoku earthquake hit Japan .
A retiree , anxiously watching TV in his apartment in Tokyo , sees tsunamis destroy coastal villages @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A native of Nagasaki , he lost his family in the atomic bombings of 1945 ; he has not returned in the six decades since , while a job at a Japanese electronics company sent him around the world .
Filled with insights into cross-cultural intimacies , the book is charged with the man ’ s distaste for what history does to tragedies : turning injuries of flesh and blood into crude symbols .

Island on Fire, by Tom Zoellner (Harvard). In May, 1832, Samuel Sharpe, the leader of Jamaica’s greatest slave rebellion, was executed. Sharpe had been an “elite” slave: a literate Baptist deacon who travelled around the country delivering powerful sermons to other slaves. The previous December, Sharpe and his followers had covertly organized a nonviolent labor strike. Although the rebels lost the ensuing military struggle, a five-week-long ordeal that laid waste to dozens of plantations across the colony, the impact of their protest was substantial. Zoellner makes deft use of primary sources, and illustrates how the atmosphere of energetic political reform and events like Sharpe’s rebellion converged to end slavery in the “agricultural prison camp” of Jamaica, and in the British Empire at large.
Stray, by Stephanie Danler (Knopf). After nearly a decade in New York, the author of this memoir returns to the canyons of Los Angeles, where she was born, to await the publication of her début novel, “Sweetbitter.” In California, she carries on a damaging affair with a married man, and her book excavates the dynamics that have shaped her patterns of heedless behavior, examining how her father’s drug addiction and her mother’s alcoholism inform her own substance abuse and her problems with fidelity. The family portrait that emerges is unsparing, but it is tempered with the tenderness of Danler’s language, and with her willingness to reserve her harshest rebukes for herself.
The Eighth Life, by Nino Haratischvili, translated from the German by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (Scribe). Georgia, a picturesque nation squeezed between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea, was once considered a wine-soaked playground for the Soviet upper crust. This multigenerational epic, framed as a gift from the embittered narrator, Niza, to her wayward niece, provides a more nuanced view. It begins with Niza’s bourgeois great-grandmother, whose dream of becoming a ballerina is derailed by Lenin’s revolution. Her descendants are likewise transformed by upheavals of the twentieth century: Stalinist purges, the Second World War, the Prague Spring, Georgia’s independence, and the subsequent civil war. Through these events, the novel offers not only a critique of Soviet and Russian imperial ambitions but a necessary reappraisal of Georgian history.
Fracture, by Andrés Neuman, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). This novel begins on the afternoon, in 2011, when the Tōhoku earthquake hit Japan. A retiree, anxiously watching TV in his apartment in Tokyo, sees tsunamis destroy coastal villages and hears talk of a nuclear meltdown. A native of Nagasaki, he lost his family in the atomic bombings of 1945; he has not returned in the six decades since, while a job at a Japanese electronics company sent him around the world. Filled with insights into cross-cultural intimacies, the book is charged with the man’s distaste for what history does to tragedies: turning injuries of flesh and blood into crude symbols.


newyorker--2020-05-18--“Demolition,” by Fiona McFarlane

“Demolition,” by Fiona McFarlane

“ The Biga house is coming down , ” Gerald said .
“ Finally.
” He took the tray from Eva ’ s lap .
With a finger , Gerald lifted one slat of the horizontal blinds .
He held the tray in his other hand and peered out the window .
“ What ’ s lovely about it ?
” he said , and the tray tilted .
“ Gerald !
” Eva called , and he righted the tray without looking at her .
“ The Japanese maple with the crimson leaves.
” “ They dug it up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Worth a fortune , a tree like that.
” Eva wheeled herself to the window .
“ I ’ ll pull the blinds , ” Gerald said , but he went away first , into the kitchen with the tray , and , until he came back , she studied the dust on the edges of the blinds—the very thin rim of it .
But who could fault Gerald , who was tremendous with the housework and had said , “ What ’ s wrong with curtains ?
Blinds ’ ll only catch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her have them installed ?
Now he came back and leaned over the couch the way you had to and fiddled with the strings until the blinds were open just enough for Eva to see the Biga house .
“ So many cars , ” she said , and Gerald snorted .
A man approached the Biga house and stopped at the front gate .
He said something to the workmen inside the fence , and , when they answered him , he turned to the letter box—an ordinary metal letter box—and , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off its post .
Then he cradled it against his stomach the way you might a heavy watermelon and carried it to a car parked down the street .
But he stayed at the window to watch for the excavator .
When it came around the corner , the doors of the cars parked on the street all opened up , and people rose out of them .
They held cameras and camcorders , and they wore clothes in muted colors , like the ones you see on TV journalists in war zones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As if they wanted to hide themselves .
And all there to watch that little house come down .
Eva had been a girl inside that house , visiting the Laineys .
And , after the Laineys moved to Sydney , she had seen tenants come and go , the shutters loosen and tighten , the maple tree ’ s red turn on and off each year .
Some tenants had raked the leaves , and others hadn ’ t .
Some of her students had lived there with their families , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ windows were lit and music came out of them , and fatty smoke from grilling lamb chops .
Christmas trees in the front window .
So many women standing at the gate , calling children ’ s names .
And sometimes pets—the Bigas themselves had had a dog , and later Paul Biga had all those birds .
All of that , today , would go .
The street was getting crowded now .
Workers in hard hats called out for people to stay back , and along came Jim Grant , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , like a big , red-cheeked tenth grader .
Behind him was a woman Eva thought she knew , a short woman in a navy suit , who seemed almost superstitiously not to look toward the Biga house—and , yes , it was their house , Eva and Gerald ’ s , that she was looking at , their gate she opened , their path she stepped onto .
“ Who ’ s this , then ?
” Gerald said .
He liked to get to the door before a visitor .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doorway—Eva knew how wonderful it was to see him waiting there , with his big voice calling “ Welcome !
, ” and how imposing he was if he withheld the welcome .
She rolled back across the room to her usual place and listened to him say hello , and he was gracious as he said it ; his tone was affable .
So he approved of the short woman , and would admit her .
“ You ’ ve got a visitor , ” he said , coming back in from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ type who put her head around the door before she entered a room : here was her head , light hair , sharp nose , and now here was her body .
Was it to conceal her shortness ?
Eva understood these strategies ; she didn ’ t like people to see her wheelchair before they saw her face .
“ Hello , Mrs. Forsythe , ” the woman said , bending to kiss Eva ’ s cheek , perhaps because Eva had lifted her face .
“ This is a Miss Kate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Says you ’ re old mates.
” “ Oh , no !
” the woman said .
She wore a bag across her body—it flattened one breast .
“ I mean—I wonder if you remember me ?
” “ One of your old students , love ?
” Gerald said .
But Eva knew now who she was : she was the woman who ’ d written the book about Paul Biga .
Her hair was lighter , but otherwise she looked the same .
“ I might pop out , ” Gerald @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all right ?
See how old Terry ’ s getting on.
” Terry , Eva could see—Terry Jarrett , next-door-neighbor Terry , with whom Gerald was at war but only on Monday evening , garbage night—was standing on his lawn to watch the Biga house come down .
So Gerald went and joined him , and there they stood—Gerald Forsythe and Terry Jarrett , legs apart , arms crossed high on their chests , as if they were supervising the demolition .
Which could now proceed .
The short woman waited while Eva @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Perhaps you don ’ t remember , Mrs. Forsythe .
We spoke some years ago , here in this room , about Paul Biga.
” “ Yes , I remember , ” Eva said .
“ But was that years ago ?
” “ I was writing a book .
Did you ever receive a copy ?
I gave the publisher your address.
” “ You know , I think we did.
” Eva gestured at the bookshelf and Kate Hawkins , unexpectedly , walked toward it , and there , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Kate pulled it off the shelf and handed it to Eva : a black jacket , red letters .
Eva held it out , away from her face , until she could read it .
“ Hunter on the Highway : The True Story of a Monster Among Us.
” The cover was a closeup of Paul ’ s adult face .

“We couldn’t have afforded for him to come every day.”
“Your neighbors,” Kate said, “on this side”—she pointed in the direction of the Jarrett house, Terry Jarrett of the sloppy garbage bins—“remember him coming nearly every day.”
Cartoon by Roz Chast Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Well, yes, there had been a summer when he came most days, without asking for extra payment. You would look out a window and see him deadheading the daisies, or you’d hear a sound and it would be Paul sweeping the front path. If you opened the door and offered him a cup of tea, he always said no. There was only one task he refused, and that was killing stinkbugs. It was Eva who had picked the stinkbugs off the kumquats by hand and dropped them in a jar of methylated spirits. Gerald had offered to spray, but she didn’t want chemicals on the fruit trees, and Paul was too disgusted to touch the stinkbugs, even with gloves on (Paul, who would allow spiders on his bare palms and throw snails hard against the fence to crack their shells and keep them out of her irises). But Eva had been fascinated, had noted the frantic waving of the stinkbugs’ striped antennae, had made herself dizzy with the fumes of metho and stink that rose from the jar, had watched as valiant bugs pulled themselves to apparent safety on rafts made of other bugs until she tilted the jar, creating terrible tsunamis. The jar was full of clinging death and gave her great satisfaction. The kumquat tree, no longer under attack, had put forth fruit and blossom and been visited by bees; the marmalade Gerald had made (an excellent maker of jams, Gerald) was delicious spread on toast or on thick slices of Cheddar cheese. She had dumped the bodies of the bugs in the garden and, after the alcohol evaporated, the ants had made feasts of the softer flesh.
“Four hours a week,” Eva said. “Usually on Saturday mornings. That’s what we paid him for. But haven’t I already told you everything I can about Paul? I didn’t know him well, especially once he grew up. The Bigas moved in their own circle.”
“Of course,” Kate said. “But living across the road—” She gestured toward the window, where Eva had avoided looking. Through the half-open blinds, she saw a yellow machine clambering over the rubble that used to be the front room of the Lainey house. The windows in that room had been set with small squares of stained glass; she and Josie used to find it funny, in the afternoons, to lie on the floor so that the squares of blue and red light fell on their chests, exactly where their breasts would one day be. The tender pucker of Josie’s breasts. Looking back on that last year with Josie—1945 and into 1946—Eva marvelled at how chaste they’d been, how pure. Even their kisses, full of heat, had been wholesome. The stained-glass windows had been removed before the demolition.
What Kate meant, of course, was that you learn things about people when you live so close to them, even if you don’t spend time together. That you notice things, without meaning to—surely you notice things. Nobody wanted to believe Eva when she said that Paul Biga had seemed like a perfectly ordinary boy. And he had, although one of the things Eva had learned as a teacher and a principal was that there are no perfectly ordinary adolescents, that each of them is strange, and bewildered, and in mourning, because they’re all in exile from their childhoods, just as they always longed to be. There had been only one thing that marked Paul Biga as unusual, and Eva had never told it to anyone—not even Gerald. At the end of that summer when he’d come to the garden every day, Paul had written Eva a letter on those thin sheets of paper—so thin that if your hands were even a little damp the paper became translucent or tore, the paper that people used when they were sending letters overseas and wanted to keep the weight down. The things he said he’d planned for them: a farm, and horses, an aviary, of course, and, because he knew she loved the maple tree in his front garden, he would dig it up to bring with them, he would plant it outside their bedroom window and every night he would, and she would, and then he would, and would, and would—
How detailed he was—her cunt, her arse, her tits—how well he spelled when he spelled her body out, and how lonely that seemed, to spell “cunnilingus” right and “specific” wrong. In what film, what TV show had he seen the farm with the gentle, sexual, older wife, or learned about love letters, so that he could approximate one now, for her? What was the sign he’d wanted her to give him? A candle in the window, or something just as ludicrous—as if Gerald wouldn’t have noticed a candle! As if a candle in the window wouldn’t catch the curtains on fire and burn down the house, as if someone walking along the street wouldn’t see a candle in the Forsythe window with the lights all off and think, I’d better knock on the door. They’ve gone to bed with a candle burning. And the terror, then, lying in bed, that he would come anyway, would be a candle himself waiting at the door, coming into the house, standing over her in the bedroom. Would you save Eva Forsythe if her house was on fire?
She could have told someone, told Gerald or spoken to Paul or to his father, but she hadn’t. That had been irresponsible of her, she knew, but Paul had just graduated from school, his mother was very ill that summer, and the letter was so passionate, so precise, that she worried that anyone reading it would assume she’d encouraged him. She convinced Gerald that they no longer needed Paul in the garden; she pretended not to see Paul if she passed him in the supermarket, though she still waved at Jan Biga if they were both out on the street. Glancing into their windows, she saw the blue TV, the yellow wallpaper, the paintings crooked on the wall after Lucinda died. The maple tree dressed and undressed, blazing up and down again, while Paul—quiet behind the curtains—grew older, stronger, better-looking, began spending time with girls his own age, acted civil behind his father’s lawnmower on Sundays, as if there had never been a letter, as if she had imagined it. She had torn the letter into hundreds of pieces, placed those pieces in an envelope, taped the envelope shut, and concealed it in a box of cereal, which went into the bin and was collected early one Tuesday morning. She listened to the garbage truck trundle up and down the street, Gerald snoring, Terry carrying out his bin in a last-minute panic, and all the birds in Paul’s aviary greeting the pretty dawn.
Kate, on the couch, her hand still pointing to the house across the road, waited with a look of bright expectation on her face, as if she had offered an extra serving of cake and was watching to see if Eva would be greedy enough to accept it. Imagine her glee if Eva were to say, “There was one strange thing. Paul wrote me a letter.” Imagine her looking at her second-grade daughter and remembering Eva saying, “I had my children” and thinking, then, of the letter.
“I know it’s dull of me,” Eva said. “But, really, they were a very quiet family.”
Outside, the people watching the demolition began to applaud—not the way they might at the end of a football match but as they did when one of the Sydney orchestras visited on a regional tour and the townspeople felt obliged to attend the concert. There was liberation in the applause, but also deflation—as if the spectators had expected rapture and, once again, been disappointed.
“That must be the last wall down,” Kate said.
It felt to Eva as if the whole life of the Lainey house would now be on display to the world; as if everyone who had ever lived in it was still there, all at once, going about his or her intimate business, completely unaware that the walls were missing. Like in a doll’s house. And in the room that everyone knew had been Paul’s, people would see him—what? Making his plans? Dreaming his violent dreams? And they would see Josie and Eva in Josie’s little bed, loving each other, very gentle, very pure; they would see Mrs. Lainey opening the door (if there were still doors in the Lainey house) and crying out, the two girls sitting up in bed; and, oh, would they watch as the girls pulled on their summer dresses, as Mrs. Lainey took Josie’s hand and led her into the front room, as Mr. Lainey said, “All right, Evelyn, you’d better go on home now”?
“Would you like to go outside and see?” Kate asked.
“Oh, no,” Eva said.
“Are you sure?” Kate stood and adjusted the strings to open the blinds even wider. Eva looked again at the photo on the back of the book. Kate’s hand was positioned under her chin in a way that made it look as if her head had been impaled on a fleshy spike. But that was unkind.
“Reduced to rubble,” Kate said. “How does it feel to know it’s down?”
Eva regarded the actual Kate, who had propped one knee on the arm of the couch in order to get closer to the window. Her hair was pulled back into a girlish ponytail and, from behind, her creased navy jacket looked like a school blazer. “Would you be pleased? If you were me?” Eva asked, in the voice she had perfected over years of teaching: affectionately stern, lightly curious, and prepared at all times for disappointment.
“God, yes,” Kate said. Then she turned to look at Eva and gave a short, unexpected laugh. “Of course I would.”
Now a new house would be built: larger, uglier, and filled with the inexplicable lives of other people.
“You won’t have to look at it every day,” Kate said.
Josie lying in the heat under the maple tree, balancing an apple on her forehead, saying, “Never getting married, never never.” Every freckle like a small, warm sun.
“Anyone would be relieved,” Kate said. She laughed a second time and said, “But I can’t quote myself. Let me ask you again, how do you feel about the Biga house coming down?”
“The Lainey house,” Eva said.
“The Lainey house.”
“I feel,” Eva said, “completely indifferent.”
The front door opened and closed. Gerald and Terry came staggering in, each carrying a milk crate full of bricks that were the liverish-brown color of the Lainey house.
“I’m going to build you an outdoor pizza oven,” Gerald said.
Kate turned off her Dictaphone. Terry grinned above his crate, as if he could already feel the heat of the oven. Eva looked at him and thought she wouldn’t save him, Terry Jarrett—not even if his house was on fire. ♦


newyorker--2020-05-18--“Ramy” ’s Comedy of Spiritual Errors

“Ramy” ’s Comedy of Spiritual Errors

The sexy cleric is ascendant .
In HBO ’ s “ The New Pope , ” Paolo Sorrentino ’ s baroque vision of the papacy , Jude Law is Pius XIII , a fetish object who rises out of the sea in a Speedo like a male Venus .
A chic oppressor , he is either a saint or a sadist .
He may have transcended the need for sex , but the sight of his obscured face , as he pontificates from the Vatican balcony—or the appearance of his likeness , or even the suggestion of his likeness—is enough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could be more attractive than someone who has sworn off doing it ?
In the second season of Phoebe Waller-Bridge ’ s “ Fleabag , ” the antiheroine falls for a priest—yes , the hot one , played by Andrew Scott—whose lack of temperance has brought him only closer to his forever partner , the Almighty .
Even in lighter sitcom fare , like “ Derry Girls , ” the priest , Father Peter , is a figure of charged fascination , dreamy precisely because he ’ s sexless .
The conflation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trope , but these shows ’ portrayals of yearning for the spiritual feel contemporary .
The secular has left us with no rules to break and , therefore , no more thrills to gain .
Tradition titillates the aimless .
In the era of “ Girls , ” sex was bad , in the sense that it was mundane .
What better than faith to inject a hint of the sublime into the everyday , to elevate longing to the metaphysical ?
The second season of “ Ramy , ” a charming and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ramy Youssef , benefits greatly from the arrival of Mahershala Ali as Sheikh Ali , the black American leader at a new Sufi center in northern New Jersey .
“ I want to change , ” Ramy , played by Youssef , tells his mystical new guide .
“ And I heard you can help me.
” “ Ramy ” has a more homespun texture than the torridly glamorous “ Fleabag , ” but it is a similarly toothsome meditation on the verboten .
It ’ s a sincere comedy , about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end of the first season , which débuted a year ago , Ramy , a Muslim twentysomething in New Jersey , is sojourning in Egypt , hoping to be cured of his dirtbag tendencies ; he ’ d like to be devout , but he also likes having sex .
In Cairo , he hallucinates in the desert on the way to see his grandfather , who he hopes will reveal the mysteries of the universe .
His grandfather dies before they can talk .
Bereaved and confused , Ramy falls for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ let ’ s just say , problematic .
The new season , which premières at the end of the month , opens with Ramy back at home with his parents and sister .
A Muslim Portnoy , he masturbates chronically .
( In a flashback episode in Season 1 , a middle-school-aged Ramy worries that 9/11 was punishment for his discovery of self-pleasure . )
A dopey white convert suggests that he consult with the Sufi leader , and the sheikh doesn ’ t disappoint ; he speaks softly , in layered koans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gives hot chocolate to white supremacists protesting outside the center .
“ Our bay ’ ah , our bond , requires that we try to help those that are lost , ” he lectures , after recounting to an incredulous Ramy a parable about the Prophet ’ s infinite love .
When Ramy and the sheikh attempt to track down a dog trapped in an abandoned car , Ramy is ready to smash a window ; the sheikh says a prayer and grins when he finds that the door is unlocked .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s obsession with his new teacher .
Ramy ’ s sister , Dena , voices the subtext : “ Your sheikh is fucking hot.
” When the sheikh rebukes Ramy for his immaturity and dishonesty , Ramy is heartbroken .
After a brief separation , Ramy is reunited with his spiritual crush .
“ I miss you , ” he says , his eyes turning to dark pools .
The show , a co-production of A24 and Hulu , draws from Youssef ’ s standup material , which is drawn from the comedy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Youssef is a practicing Muslim , a diaspora kid who has spoken of being profoundly changed by the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment after 9/11 .
As a storyteller , he alternately resists and embraces the role of representative for all Muslim-Americans .
“ Just make your story narrow !
” Youssef said recently , in an interview with GQ .
“ Stop trying to make something that ’ s this rallying cry.
” In “ Ramy , ” Youssef ’ s persona is a contradictory mess—by turns holy , horny , and prone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ season , when Ramy ’ s parents set him up with a Muslim woman , her sexual agency freaks him out and he cowers , unable to bring himself to please her .
“ I ’ m in this little Muslim box in your head , ” she laments .
“ I ’ m the wife or the mother of your kids , right ?
I ’ m not supposed to come.
” In the second season , the bumbling Ramy is on a quest to confront his own hypocrisies .
As the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grasp of Islam is superficial , Ramy , wanting badly to impress , ends up becoming only more destructive .
His well-intentioned white lies take on mythological proportions when he convinces himself that he is in love with the sheikh ’ s daughter , Zainab .
The two families meet in a living-room tribunal , the Arab-American unit sizing up the sheikh and Zainab , who , wryly amused by their new acquaintances ’ breezy racism , gently call them out on their ideas about “ the blacks.
” You should stop here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ although you will have seen the ending coming .
Ramy , still using Islam to serve his own needs , wrecks the marriage before it has even begun—but , heartbreakingly for Zainab , after it has been consummated .
“ The Prophet had multiple wives , salla allahu alayhi wa sallam , ” Ramy tells her on their wedding night .
“ So I ’ m just looking at the whole path.
” The day after the union , Ramy wakes up to the imprint of his new wife on the mattress , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The sheikh is sitting at his bedside , murder in his eyes : “ Fuck you , Ramy .
Fuck you.
” The title of Youssef ’ s show primes the viewer to expect that its star will provide the center of gravity , as Louis C.K .
did in “ Louie.
” But Youssef has the confidence to let his character recede into the background , if not entirely disappear , for whole episodes at a time .
In January , Youssef won a Golden Globe for best actor in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is best defined not by genre but by form—it ’ s an anthology of delicate , interwoven fables .
Some are failed experiments in shock comedy .
Take the Season 1 episode in which Steve , a truthtelling asshole played by Youssef ’ s real-life close friend Steve Way , who has muscular dystrophy , arranges a date with an underage girl .
( Its mirror episode in the second season , set at Ramy ’ s bachelor party , in Atlantic City , is a more sophisticated exploration of sexuality and disability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ embellishes the show ’ s occasional surrealism with an underbaked wokeness .
“ Mia Khalifa , ” an episode set at the estate of an eccentric millionaire in Connecticut , is an indulgent fantasy sequence justified only by the fact that the titular former porn actor agreed to play herself .
But , at their best , episodes stand alone as quietly voyeuristic flights of mindful empathy .
Youssef takes particular pleasure in his middle-aged secondary characters .
I loved , in the new season , the heartbreaking character study of Ramy ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a jolly brute who owns a jewelry store in the diamond district , and has secret rendezvous in the sauna at his local gym .
In another episode , Ramy ’ s father , Farouk ( Amr Waked ) , who hasn ’ t informed his family that he ’ s now unemployed , fills out job applications at a coffee shop , where he tells the white barista that his name is Frank .
The episodes devoted to Ramy ’ s mother , Maysa , are jewel-like .
Maysa ( Hiam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lavishes attention on her son but shuns her overachieving daughter .
When Maysa starts driving for Lyft , she becomes intoxicated by the diversity of the outside world , and particularly infatuated with a French passenger , who makes her feel young .
Later , she encounters a young nonbinary person who upends her cloistered politics .
Abbass is stunning , locating the comedy in flustered yearning , the tragedy in cultural assimilation .
And , in this season , she ’ s got a monologue , whispered at a photograph of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its profanity .
♦

The sexy cleric is ascendant. In HBO’s “The New Pope,” Paolo Sorrentino’s baroque vision of the papacy, Jude Law is Pius XIII, a fetish object who rises out of the sea in a Speedo like a male Venus. A chic oppressor, he is either a saint or a sadist. He may have transcended the need for sex, but the sight of his obscured face, as he pontificates from the Vatican balcony—or the appearance of his likeness, or even the suggestion of his likeness—is enough to make his followers swoon.
Who could be more attractive than someone who has sworn off doing it? In the second season of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag,” the antiheroine falls for a priest—yes, the hot one, played by Andrew Scott—whose lack of temperance has brought him only closer to his forever partner, the Almighty. Even in lighter sitcom fare, like “Derry Girls,” the priest, Father Peter, is a figure of charged fascination, dreamy precisely because he’s sexless. The conflation of religious and sexual desire is an old trope, but these shows’ portrayals of yearning for the spiritual feel contemporary. The secular has left us with no rules to break and, therefore, no more thrills to gain. Tradition titillates the aimless. In the era of “Girls,” sex was bad, in the sense that it was mundane. What better than faith to inject a hint of the sublime into the everyday, to elevate longing to the metaphysical?
The second season of “Ramy,” a charming and melancholic autofiction written by the Egyptian-American comedian Ramy Youssef, benefits greatly from the arrival of Mahershala Ali as Sheikh Ali, the black American leader at a new Sufi center in northern New Jersey. “I want to change,” Ramy, played by Youssef, tells his mystical new guide. “And I heard you can help me.” “Ramy” has a more homespun texture than the torridly glamorous “Fleabag,” but it is a similarly toothsome meditation on the verboten. It’s a sincere comedy, about the struggle to find meaning. At the end of the first season, which débuted a year ago, Ramy, a Muslim twentysomething in New Jersey, is sojourning in Egypt, hoping to be cured of his dirtbag tendencies; he’d like to be devout, but he also likes having sex. In Cairo, he hallucinates in the desert on the way to see his grandfather, who he hopes will reveal the mysteries of the universe. His grandfather dies before they can talk. Bereaved and confused, Ramy falls for a woman whose relationship to him is, let’s just say, problematic.
The new season, which premières at the end of the month, opens with Ramy back at home with his parents and sister. A Muslim Portnoy, he masturbates chronically. (In a flashback episode in Season 1, a middle-school-aged Ramy worries that 9/11 was punishment for his discovery of self-pleasure.) A dopey white convert suggests that he consult with the Sufi leader, and the sheikh doesn’t disappoint; he speaks softly, in layered koans. Intimidatingly pious and patient, he gives hot chocolate to white supremacists protesting outside the center. “Our bay’ah, our bond, requires that we try to help those that are lost,” he lectures, after recounting to an incredulous Ramy a parable about the Prophet’s infinite love. When Ramy and the sheikh attempt to track down a dog trapped in an abandoned car, Ramy is ready to smash a window; the sheikh says a prayer and grins when he finds that the door is unlocked. There is a sensual charge to Ramy’s obsession with his new teacher. Ramy’s sister, Dena, voices the subtext: “Your sheikh is fucking hot.” When the sheikh rebukes Ramy for his immaturity and dishonesty, Ramy is heartbroken. After a brief separation, Ramy is reunited with his spiritual crush. “I miss you,” he says, his eyes turning to dark pools.
The show, a co-production of A24 and Hulu, draws from Youssef’s standup material, which is drawn from the comedy of errors that is his life. Youssef is a practicing Muslim, a diaspora kid who has spoken of being profoundly changed by the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment after 9/11. As a storyteller, he alternately resists and embraces the role of representative for all Muslim-Americans. “Just make your story narrow!” Youssef said recently, in an interview with GQ. “Stop trying to make something that’s this rallying cry.” In “Ramy,” Youssef’s persona is a contradictory mess—by turns holy, horny, and prone to light chauvinism. In the first season, when Ramy’s parents set him up with a Muslim woman, her sexual agency freaks him out and he cowers, unable to bring himself to please her. “I’m in this little Muslim box in your head,” she laments. “I’m the wife or the mother of your kids, right? I’m not supposed to come.”
In the second season, the bumbling Ramy is on a quest to confront his own hypocrisies. As the sheikh endeavors to show Ramy that his grasp of Islam is superficial, Ramy, wanting badly to impress, ends up becoming only more destructive. His well-intentioned white lies take on mythological proportions when he convinces himself that he is in love with the sheikh’s daughter, Zainab. The two families meet in a living-room tribunal, the Arab-American unit sizing up the sheikh and Zainab, who, wryly amused by their new acquaintances’ breezy racism, gently call them out on their ideas about “the blacks.” You should stop here if you want to avoid spoilers, although you will have seen the ending coming. Ramy, still using Islam to serve his own needs, wrecks the marriage before it has even begun—but, heartbreakingly for Zainab, after it has been consummated. “The Prophet had multiple wives, salla allahu alayhi wa sallam,” Ramy tells her on their wedding night. “So I’m just looking at the whole path.” The day after the union, Ramy wakes up to the imprint of his new wife on the mattress, and her ring on the hotel nightstand. The sheikh is sitting at his bedside, murder in his eyes: “Fuck you, Ramy. Fuck you.”
The title of Youssef’s show primes the viewer to expect that its star will provide the center of gravity, as Louis C.K. did in “Louie.” But Youssef has the confidence to let his character recede into the background, if not entirely disappear, for whole episodes at a time. In January, Youssef won a Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy; the show, though, is best defined not by genre but by form—it’s an anthology of delicate, interwoven fables. Some are failed experiments in shock comedy. Take the Season 1 episode in which Steve, a truthtelling asshole played by Youssef’s real-life close friend Steve Way, who has muscular dystrophy, arranges a date with an underage girl. (Its mirror episode in the second season, set at Ramy’s bachelor party, in Atlantic City, is a more sophisticated exploration of sexuality and disability.) In other episodes, Youssef embellishes the show’s occasional surrealism with an underbaked wokeness. “Mia Khalifa,” an episode set at the estate of an eccentric millionaire in Connecticut, is an indulgent fantasy sequence justified only by the fact that the titular former porn actor agreed to play herself.
But, at their best, episodes stand alone as quietly voyeuristic flights of mindful empathy. Youssef takes particular pleasure in his middle-aged secondary characters. I loved, in the new season, the heartbreaking character study of Ramy’s uncle Naseem (Laith Nakli), a jolly brute who owns a jewelry store in the diamond district, and has secret rendezvous in the sauna at his local gym. In another episode, Ramy’s father, Farouk (Amr Waked), who hasn’t informed his family that he’s now unemployed, fills out job applications at a coffee shop, where he tells the white barista that his name is Frank. The episodes devoted to Ramy’s mother, Maysa, are jewel-like. Maysa (Hiam Abbass) is a suffocating nurturer who lavishes attention on her son but shuns her overachieving daughter. When Maysa starts driving for Lyft, she becomes intoxicated by the diversity of the outside world, and particularly infatuated with a French passenger, who makes her feel young. Later, she encounters a young nonbinary person who upends her cloistered politics. Abbass is stunning, locating the comedy in flustered yearning, the tragedy in cultural assimilation. And, in this season, she’s got a monologue, whispered at a photograph of a smiling demagogue, that is divine in its profanity. ♦


newyorker--2020-05-18--Cruise the Greek Islands with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon

Ten years ago , the British comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon went on a culinary tour of northern England , which the director Michael Winterbottom filmed as both a BBC miniseries and a movie , called “ The Trip.
” Coogan ( English , undermining ) and Brydon ( Welsh , eager ) played themselves , only pettier , dining at Michelin-starred restaurants and competing over Michael Caine impersonations .
More trips , and films , followed—to Italy and Spain .
The final installment , “ The Trip to Greece , ” out on demand this week , finds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Athens , and Hydra , and it may have to substitute for your cancelled summer vacation—if you don ’ t mind tagging along with two passive-aggressive middle-aged comedians .
The other day , the pair caught up over Zoom .
Both were self-isolating at home , Coogan in Sussex and Brydon in Twickenham , about fifty miles apart .
( “ And that feels right , ” Brydon said . )
Coogan was in his office , his hair grown to a salt-and-pepper shag , and Brydon sat in his kitchen , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ photographs .
He held one up , of him with Bruce Springsteen .
“ Rob is very keen on Bruce Springsteen , and I ’ m happy to share that enthusiasm by proxy , ” Coogan said .
“ When we were doing ‘ The Trip to Greece , ’ I was playing him ‘ Western Stars , ’ the new album , in the car , ” Brydon said .
“ He came to admire it .
I would go so far as to say he loved it .
At the end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vinyl.
” “ I have it in this very room , ” Coogan said .
“ It ’ s over there , behind something.
” He disappeared for a moment and returned with the album , still in plastic wrap .
“ It ’ s all about the anticipation , isn ’ t it ?
” To re-create their shared dining adventures , both had received an identical delivery of Grecian snacks : pita , feta , olives , dried oregano .
Brydon drank a glass of rosé .
He had been spending @ @ @ @ @ @ @ watching old movies , while Coogan had been filling his hours with Skype screenwriting sessions .
Neither man ’ s palate had suffered ; Brydon ’ s wife , Clare , loves to cook , as does Coogan ’ s twenty-three-year-old daughter , also named Clare .
“ So , for both of us , Clare is taking care of the food , and that is good , ” Brydon said .
Coogan winced at the slant rhyme .
“ If my daughter wasn ’ t here , ” he said , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ precooked thing , like a fish pie , and then steam my own broccoli and pretend that I ’ ve made a meal.
” “ When you say ‘ steam your own broccoli , ’ it reminds me of when we were at that beach resort in Greece , ” Brydon said .
“ And that rather lugubrious-looking waiter came over and told us what he had , and at the end he said , ‘ And I have two soft lobsters.
’ ” “ No , he didn ’ t , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ And I have two flat lobsters.
’ And Rob said , ‘ I ’ m very sorry to hear that.
’ ” “ That ’ s right , ” Coogan conceded .
“ It was said with sympathy .
Very pure malapropistic comedy .
‘ Malapropistic ’ ?
That ’ s got to be a word .
It ’ s timeless comedy , because it ultimately doesn ’ t mean anything , and therefore it ’ s sort of liberating.
” In Greece , they visited the Temple of Apollo at Delphi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Greek philosophy .
“ I have a greater and deeper knowledge of ‘ Grease ’ the movie than he does , ” Brydon said .
“ I ’ d happily admit that , ” Coogan said , and returned his thoughts to the ancients : “ Aristotle , Socrates.
” “ Aristotle talks about striving for excellence , ” Coogan said .
“ It was a noble human pursuit , just to perfect whatever it is you do.
” “ The title song from ‘ Grease ’ wasn ’ t in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , nibbling on feta .
“ Frankie Valli , of course .
It was written by Barry Gibb , specifically for the film.
” “ Yeah , ” Coogan said .
“ It ’ s important in comedy not to duplicate skill sets.
” Did they have a favorite Greek god ?
“ Zeus , ” Coogan answered , “ because he is flawed.
” “ Does he remind you of anyone ?
” Brydon prodded .
“ You ’ re not going to lure me into comparing myself to a god , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if you put a gun to my head and said , ‘ Which kind of god do you identify with , Steve ?
, ’ I ’ d say , ‘ Not the Christian one.
’ ” Brydon was struggling with some pistachio shells .
“ Don ’ t your nails start to get sore pulling them apart ?
” Coogan asked .
“ It ’ s all about technique , ” Brydon said .
“ You ’ ve got to know where on the shell to apply the pressure .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So you are really into philosophy , just not Greek philosophy , ” Coogan said , not quite impressed .
“ You ’ re into pistachio philosophy.
” Brydon , pleased with his progress , displayed his bowl of nuts .
♦

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon Illustration by João Fazenda
Ten years ago, the British comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon went on a culinary tour of northern England, which the director Michael Winterbottom filmed as both a BBC miniseries and a movie, called “The Trip.” Coogan (English, undermining) and Brydon (Welsh, eager) played themselves, only pettier, dining at Michelin-starred restaurants and competing over Michael Caine impersonations. More trips, and films, followed—to Italy and Spain. The final installment, “The Trip to Greece,” out on demand this week, finds the duo eating their way through Lesbos, Athens, and Hydra, and it may have to substitute for your cancelled summer vacation—if you don’t mind tagging along with two passive-aggressive middle-aged comedians.
The other day, the pair caught up over Zoom. Both were self-isolating at home, Coogan in Sussex and Brydon in Twickenham, about fifty miles apart. (“And that feels right,” Brydon said.) Coogan was in his office, his hair grown to a salt-and-pepper shag, and Brydon sat in his kitchen, in front of a fridge covered with photographs. He held one up, of him with Bruce Springsteen. “Rob is very keen on Bruce Springsteen, and I’m happy to share that enthusiasm by proxy,” Coogan said.
“When we were doing ‘The Trip to Greece,’ I was playing him ‘Western Stars,’ the new album, in the car,” Brydon said. “He came to admire it. I would go so far as to say he loved it. At the end, I presented him with it in vinyl.”
“I have it in this very room,” Coogan said. “It’s over there, behind something.” He disappeared for a moment and returned with the album, still in plastic wrap.
“Unopened,” Brydon observed.
“It’s all about the anticipation, isn’t it?”
To re-create their shared dining adventures, both had received an identical delivery of Grecian snacks: pita, feta, olives, dried oregano. Brydon drank a glass of rosé. He had been spending his quarantine tending to his garden and watching old movies, while Coogan had been filling his hours with Skype screenwriting sessions. Neither man’s palate had suffered; Brydon’s wife, Clare, loves to cook, as does Coogan’s twenty-three-year-old daughter, also named Clare. “So, for both of us, Clare is taking care of the food, and that is good,” Brydon said.
Coogan winced at the slant rhyme. “If my daughter wasn’t here,” he said, “I would probably buy a very high-end precooked thing, like a fish pie, and then steam my own broccoli and pretend that I’ve made a meal.”
“When you say ‘steam your own broccoli,’ it reminds me of when we were at that beach resort in Greece,” Brydon said. “And that rather lugubrious-looking waiter came over and told us what he had, and at the end he said, ‘And I have two soft lobsters.’ ”
“No, he didn’t,” Coogan countered. “He said, ‘And I have two flat lobsters.’ And Rob said, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’ ”
Brydon wagged a finger. “What I said was, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ ”
“That’s right,” Coogan conceded. “It was said with sympathy. Very pure malapropistic comedy. ‘Malapropistic’? That’s got to be a word. It’s timeless comedy, because it ultimately doesn’t mean anything, and therefore it’s sort of liberating.”
In Greece, they visited the Temple of Apollo at Delphi and other ruins, where Coogan expounded on Greek philosophy. “I have a greater and deeper knowledge of ‘Grease’ the movie than he does,” Brydon said.
“I’d happily admit that,” Coogan said, and returned his thoughts to the ancients: “Aristotle, Socrates.”
“Olivia Newton-John, John Travolta.”
“Aristotle talks about striving for excellence,” Coogan said. “It was a noble human pursuit, just to perfect whatever it is you do.”
“The title song from ‘Grease’ wasn’t in the original stage production,” Brydon offered, nibbling on feta. “Frankie Valli, of course. It was written by Barry Gibb, specifically for the film.”
“Yeah,” Coogan said. “It’s important in comedy not to duplicate skill sets.” Did they have a favorite Greek god? “Zeus,” Coogan answered, “because he is flawed.”
“Does he remind you of anyone?” Brydon prodded.
“You’re not going to lure me into comparing myself to a god,” Coogan said. “But, if you put a gun to my head and said, ‘Which kind of god do you identify with, Steve?,’ I’d say, ‘Not the Christian one.’ ” Brydon was struggling with some pistachio shells. “Don’t your nails start to get sore pulling them apart?” Coogan asked.
“It’s all about technique,” Brydon said. “You’ve got to know where on the shell to apply the pressure. It’s a bit like life.”
“So you are really into philosophy, just not Greek philosophy,” Coogan said, not quite impressed. “You’re into pistachio philosophy.” Brydon, pleased with his progress, displayed his bowl of nuts. ♦