newyorker--2020-08-23--Did the Democratic National Convention Go Too Smoothly?

Last week , when the Democratic National Convention , in its virtual state , nominated Joseph R. Biden as its Presidential candidate , Donald Trump decided to let his supporters in on a secret .
“ Joe , look , he doesn ’ t know where he is , ” the President said , leaning toward a microphone that had been set up in front of Air Force One , in Yuma , Arizona , where he had come to accept the endorsement of the union representing border-control agents .
Biden , he said , wouldn ’ t be able @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new boss , ” Bernie Sanders .
In Yuma and elsewhere , in speeches that grew darker and stranger as the week progressed , Trump pounded on the same theme : Biden was “ a puppet , ” a “ Trojan horse for socialism , ” the smiling , cognitively unsound prop of a left-wing mob intent on tearing the country down .
Trump seemed desperate to persuade Americans that what they were seeing in the Zoom squares of the Convention was an illusion .
That Trump would try this gambit wasn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Joe Biden was looking pretty good .
The risk of a remote Convention was that it would feel as if it were taking place anywhere or nowhere .
But Biden appeared to know exactly where he was : Delaware , the state he represented in the Senate for more than three decades .
Standing onstage in the empty Chase Center , on the Wilmington waterfront , he spoke with groundedness , delivering remarks that were both genial and forceful .
Trump , Biden said , had put America on a “ path of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country , he had subjected it to his divisiveness , his bigotry , his selfishness , and—in his botched response to the pandemic—his deadly incompetence .
“ It didn ’ t have to be this bad , ” Biden said .
What was striking was how careful many Convention speakers were not to disparage voters who had thought , in 2016 , that Trump himself wouldn ’ t be this bad .
Michelle Obama , the former First Lady , said that he had been given “ more than enough time to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” only to show that “ he can not meet this moment.
” She urged people to vote for Joe Biden “ like our lives depend on it.
” Trump , in response , gleefully pointed to her statement that the pandemic had cost “ more than a hundred and fifty thousand ” lives .
He took this to be proof that her remarks had been prerecorded , since the number of deaths had , at the time of the Convention , exceeded a hundred and seventy thousand—treating the passing of twenty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , not a tragedy .
Kristin Urquiza , the daughter of a Trump voter who succumbed to COVID-19 , said in a short , passionate video that her father , whose “ only preëxisting condition was trusting Donald Trump , ” died feeling “ betrayed ” by the President .
Urquiza , who stressed the disparate impact of the pandemic on communities of color , was joined by a raft of Republicans who avowed their own sense of dismay at Trump ’ s leadership .
John Kasich , the former governor of Ohio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explain that the country was at a crossroads .
Colin Powell , George W. Bush ’ s Secretary of State , said that he believed that Biden would restore the country ’ s “ moral authority.
” The prominence of such voices made a certain amount of strategic sense : if Biden is going to win , he needs to reach voters in the middle .
The coronavirus has taken so much away from so many Americans ; one goal of the Democratic Convention was to convince the President ’ s supporters that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an electoral price .
In Arizona , Biden is ahead , and Mark Kelly , the astronaut , is poised to take a Senate seat away from a Republican , Martha McSally—another reason for Trump ’ s Yuma trip .
( Kelly ’ s wife , the former congresswoman Gabby Giffords , who survived a shooting a decade ago , spoke at the Convention ; gun control was an area where the Party gave the stage to activists . )
Still , Biden ’ s edge of support over Trump in swing states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wisconsin , and Florida remains fairly narrow .
In that context , the brief speaking time allotted to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—she made an appearance to second the nomination of Sanders—was as deliberate as the decision to give Cindy McCain twice as long to recall how much fun Biden and her late husband , Senator John McCain , used to have together .
Yet the Party can not run so scared of Trump ’ s smears about “ left-wing mobs ” that it shies away from its values or its future .
Progressive voters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In this respect , the Convention—with its mixture of recorded and live speeches , actress moderators , musical acts , and a roll call that doubled as a tour of the country—went almost too smoothly .
An in-person Convention can expose conflicts , but it can also give a party a chance to address them , in Convention-center hallways .
The fractures in the Democratic Party do not always fall neatly along ideological , generational , or cultural lines .
Observers of this Convention , though , could sometimes be left with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cabinet secretaries and the Squad .
What ’ s absent in a Zoom D.N.C .
is the same thing that ’ s absent in many virtual communications : the moments and the places in between .
That ’ s a particular loss for Biden , who thrives in such spaces .
Indeed , that people know Joe , and that he knows them , is emerging as a central message of the campaign .
Barack Obama , making the case for his Vice-President ’ s foreign-policy expertise , said , “ Joe knows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” but most often what people knew is that Biden treated them with respect .
A retired Amtrak conductor described how Biden had befriended the train crew during his commute , over the years , between Wilmington and Washington .
The former contenders in the Democratic primary joined a Zoom rap session to talk about “ the Joe we know.
” Sanders , who called for unity in the face of “ authoritarianism , ” said he knew Joe well enough to trust him .
Focussing on Biden ’ s real decency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was a way for Democrats to blur differences in ideology .
That may be enough to win the election , because Trump ’ s indecency has been so great and the consequences of his pandemic bungling so severe .
Biden and his party do know where they are : a lot closer than Donald Trump to winning the election in November .
But they also need to figure out who they are—and what they will fight for .
♦

Illustration by João Fazenda
Last week, when the Democratic National Convention, in its virtual state, nominated Joseph R. Biden as its Presidential candidate, Donald Trump decided to let his supporters in on a secret. “Joe, look, he doesn’t know where he is,” the President said, leaning toward a microphone that had been set up in front of Air Force One, in Yuma, Arizona, where he had come to accept the endorsement of the union representing border-control agents. Biden, he said, wouldn’t be able to resist the commands of “his new boss,” Bernie Sanders. In Yuma and elsewhere, in speeches that grew darker and stranger as the week progressed, Trump pounded on the same theme: Biden was “a puppet,” a “Trojan horse for socialism,” the smiling, cognitively unsound prop of a left-wing mob intent on tearing the country down. Trump seemed desperate to persuade Americans that what they were seeing in the Zoom squares of the Convention was an illusion.
That Trump would try this gambit wasn’t surprising, because the reality of Joe Biden was looking pretty good. The risk of a remote Convention was that it would feel as if it were taking place anywhere or nowhere. But Biden appeared to know exactly where he was: Delaware, the state he represented in the Senate for more than three decades. Standing onstage in the empty Chase Center, on the Wilmington waterfront, he spoke with groundedness, delivering remarks that were both genial and forceful. Trump, Biden said, had put America on a “path of shadow and suspicion.” Instead of protecting the country, he had subjected it to his divisiveness, his bigotry, his selfishness, and—in his botched response to the pandemic—his deadly incompetence. “It didn’t have to be this bad,” Biden said.
What was striking was how careful many Convention speakers were not to disparage voters who had thought, in 2016, that Trump himself wouldn’t be this bad. Michelle Obama, the former First Lady, said that he had been given “more than enough time to prove that he can do the job,” only to show that “he cannot meet this moment.” She urged people to vote for Joe Biden “like our lives depend on it.” Trump, in response, gleefully pointed to her statement that the pandemic had cost “more than a hundred and fifty thousand” lives. He took this to be proof that her remarks had been prerecorded, since the number of deaths had, at the time of the Convention, exceeded a hundred and seventy thousand—treating the passing of twenty thousand American lives as a time stamp, not a tragedy.
Kristin Urquiza, the daughter of a Trump voter who succumbed to COVID-19, said in a short, passionate video that her father, whose “only preëxisting condition was trusting Donald Trump,” died feeling “betrayed” by the President. Urquiza, who stressed the disparate impact of the pandemic on communities of color, was joined by a raft of Republicans who avowed their own sense of dismay at Trump’s leadership. John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio, stood at a grassy crossroads to explain that the country was at a crossroads. Colin Powell, George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, said that he believed that Biden would restore the country’s “moral authority.”
The prominence of such voices made a certain amount of strategic sense: if Biden is going to win, he needs to reach voters in the middle. The coronavirus has taken so much away from so many Americans; one goal of the Democratic Convention was to convince the President’s supporters that Trump and his party ought to pay an electoral price. In Arizona, Biden is ahead, and Mark Kelly, the astronaut, is poised to take a Senate seat away from a Republican, Martha McSally—another reason for Trump’s Yuma trip. (Kelly’s wife, the former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who survived a shooting a decade ago, spoke at the Convention; gun control was an area where the Party gave the stage to activists.) Still, Biden’s edge of support over Trump in swing states such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Florida remains fairly narrow. In that context, the brief speaking time allotted to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—she made an appearance to second the nomination of Sanders—was as deliberate as the decision to give Cindy McCain twice as long to recall how much fun Biden and her late husband, Senator John McCain, used to have together.
Yet the Party cannot run so scared of Trump’s smears about “left-wing mobs” that it shies away from its values or its future. Progressive voters can help win elections, too. In this respect, the Convention—with its mixture of recorded and live speeches, actress moderators, musical acts, and a roll call that doubled as a tour of the country—went almost too smoothly. An in-person Convention can expose conflicts, but it can also give a party a chance to address them, in Convention-center hallways. The fractures in the Democratic Party do not always fall neatly along ideological, generational, or cultural lines. Observers of this Convention, though, could sometimes be left with a sense that the choice was between Bush Cabinet secretaries and the Squad. What’s absent in a Zoom D.N.C. is the same thing that’s absent in many virtual communications: the moments and the places in between.
That’s a particular loss for Biden, who thrives in such spaces. Indeed, that people know Joe, and that he knows them, is emerging as a central message of the campaign. Barack Obama, making the case for his Vice-President’s foreign-policy expertise, said, “Joe knows the world and the world knows him,” but most often what people knew is that Biden treated them with respect. A retired Amtrak conductor described how Biden had befriended the train crew during his commute, over the years, between Wilmington and Washington. The former contenders in the Democratic primary joined a Zoom rap session to talk about “the Joe we know.” Sanders, who called for unity in the face of “authoritarianism,” said he knew Joe well enough to trust him.
Focussing on Biden’s real decency, like decrying Trump’s incompetence, was a way for Democrats to blur differences in ideology. That may be enough to win the election, because Trump’s indecency has been so great and the consequences of his pandemic bungling so severe. Biden and his party do know where they are: a lot closer than Donald Trump to winning the election in November. But they also need to figure out who they are—and what they will fight for. ♦


newyorker--2020-08-23--As the World Turns

As the World Turns

Scientists at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory ( L.D.E.O . )
work with data on computers , so most have been @ @ @ @ @ their research during confinement and the COVID-19 crisis .
The labs in their research facility @ @ @ @ @ , part of Columbia University , are slowly reopening with new safety measures .
I @ @ @ @ @ shared their passion for their work .

Scientists at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory (L.D.E.O.) work with data on computers, so most have been able to keep up with their research during confinement and the COVID-19 crisis. The labs in their research facility in Palisades, New York, part of Columbia University, are slowly reopening with new safety measures. I painted seven scientists, who shared their passion for their work.


newyorker--2020-08-24--What the Coronavirus Pandemic Means for the Future of Broadway

The last time I attended a Broadway show—a buzzed-about revival of “ West Side Story ” —was on March 6th .
Even then , a night at the theatre felt like a calculated risk : riding the A train , sitting close to strangers in the audience , going out for a post-theatre drink .
The next Thursday , amid reports that a part-time Broadway usher had tested positive for COVID-19 , Broadway shut down completely .
Theatre is ephemeral , but the idea of Broadway—a $ 1.8-billion industry and a major part of the city ’ s ( and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like a soap bubble was hard to fathom .
“ It was unimaginable that New York would not have theatre , would not have shows on Broadway , and crowds in Times Square every night , ” the actor John Lithgow says in the video above .
Since then , theatre artists and crews have been hard hit .
The Actors Fund , which serves the needs of entertainment workers , received fifteen thousand requests for aid in the first three months of the pandemic , and has distributed some thirteen million dollars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the last industries to come back , the financial impact on its makers will be incalculable .
Even worse , the theatre community has sustained devastating human losses , among them the actor Nick Cordero and the Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally , who was one of the first well-known people to die of the coronavirus , in late March .
“ The first thing I thought was , Oh , my God , the lights of Broadway won ’ t dim for Terrence McNally , because they ’ re already out , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nevertheless , theatre people are famed for their irrepressible spirit , and , in isolation , there have been fascinating attempts to figure out how “ virtual theatre ” can work .
The playwright Richard Nelson has released Zoom editions of his “ Apple Family ” plays .
A ninetieth-birthday concert for Stephen Sondheim , aptly titled “ Take Me to the World , ” brought a bounty of musical-theatre experiments , notably a booze-soaked rendition of “ Ladies Who Lunch , ” featuring Baranski , Meryl Streep , and Audra McDonald .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ either work and be very funny or it ’ ll end our careers , ” Baranski says . )
Other forms of lockdown theatre sprang up organically .
Brian Stokes Mitchell , whose Broadway roles include Don Quixote , in “ Man of La Mancha , ” marked his recovery from COVID-19 by singing the musical ’ s anthem , “ The Impossible Dream , ” from his window , as part of the nightly cheer for essential workers .
“ This was just going to be a one-off , ” he recalls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I came back again and I noticed , Oh , there ’ s a crowd of people gathering on the street .
And then the crowd got bigger and bigger and bigger.
” The Broadway drought , which at this point seems certain to last into 2021 , has coincided with another upheaval : the Black Lives Matter protests and the calls for change that they ’ ve inspired in the arts .
Newly formed collectives such as Black Theatre United and We See You , White American Theatre have demanded active measures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
No one is cheering the prolonged pause , but the shutdown might help to open up space for a deeper reckoning than would be possible with Broadway in full swing .
“ Once it is possible to begin bringing audiences back , it may also be the case that we have to think about lowering ticket prices , and maybe we will have a younger audience , and maybe we will have a more diverse audience , ” the playwright David Henry Hwang says .
“ Out of all this tragedy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Broadway .
”

The last time I attended a Broadway show—a buzzed-about revival of “West Side Story”—was on March 6th. Even then, a night at the theatre felt like a calculated risk: riding the A train, sitting close to strangers in the audience, going out for a post-theatre drink. The next Thursday, amid reports that a part-time Broadway usher had tested positive for COVID-19, Broadway shut down completely. Theatre is ephemeral, but the idea of Broadway—a $1.8-billion industry and a major part of the city’s (and the country’s) artistic lifeblood—disappearing like a soap bubble was hard to fathom. “It was unimaginable that New York would not have theatre, would not have shows on Broadway, and crowds in Times Square every night,” the actor John Lithgow says in the video above.
Since then, theatre artists and crews have been hard hit. The Actors Fund, which serves the needs of entertainment workers, received fifteen thousand requests for aid in the first three months of the pandemic, and has distributed some thirteen million dollars. Since theatre might be one of the last industries to come back, the financial impact on its makers will be incalculable. Even worse, the theatre community has sustained devastating human losses, among them the actor Nick Cordero and the Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally, who was one of the first well-known people to die of the coronavirus, in late March. “The first thing I thought was, Oh, my God, the lights of Broadway won’t dim for Terrence McNally, because they’re already out,” the actress Christine Baranski says.
Nevertheless, theatre people are famed for their irrepressible spirit, and, in isolation, there have been fascinating attempts to figure out how “virtual theatre” can work. The playwright Richard Nelson has released Zoom editions of his “Apple Family” plays. A ninetieth-birthday concert for Stephen Sondheim, aptly titled “Take Me to the World,” brought a bounty of musical-theatre experiments, notably a booze-soaked rendition of “Ladies Who Lunch,” featuring Baranski, Meryl Streep, and Audra McDonald. (“We thought, This will either work and be very funny or it’ll end our careers,” Baranski says.) Other forms of lockdown theatre sprang up organically. Brian Stokes Mitchell, whose Broadway roles include Don Quixote, in “Man of La Mancha,” marked his recovery from COVID-19 by singing the musical’s anthem, “The Impossible Dream,” from his window, as part of the nightly cheer for essential workers. “This was just going to be a one-off,” he recalls. “And then the next day I came back again and I noticed, Oh, there’s a crowd of people gathering on the street. And then the crowd got bigger and bigger and bigger.”
The Broadway drought, which at this point seems certain to last into 2021, has coincided with another upheaval: the Black Lives Matter protests and the calls for change that they’ve inspired in the arts. Newly formed collectives such as Black Theatre United and We See You, White American Theatre have demanded active measures to counter structural racism onstage and off. No one is cheering the prolonged pause, but the shutdown might help to open up space for a deeper reckoning than would be possible with Broadway in full swing. “Once it is possible to begin bringing audiences back, it may also be the case that we have to think about lowering ticket prices, and maybe we will have a younger audience, and maybe we will have a more diverse audience,” the playwright David Henry Hwang says. “Out of all this tragedy, there might be some silver linings for Broadway.”


newyorker--2020-08-24--A Transit Worker’s Survival Story

A Transit Worker’s Survival Story

On the morning of March 23rd , Terence A. Layne drove a half-empty M116 bus across Manhattan , starting on the Upper West Side .
He went around parked cars and stopped at red lights , all the while contemplating COVID-19—the “ microbial enemy , ” as he called it , that was sweeping through New York City .
Most of Manhattan ’ s workers were staying home , and many of its wealthier residents had fled the city , but Layne and his fellow transit workers were still showing up to their jobs each day , in order to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subways running .
Layne knew that his colleagues were terrified of contracting COVID-19 , and as he drove along 116th Street he tried to imagine what he might say to them to lift their morale .
Layne , who is fifty-five , wore the bus operator ’ s winter uniform—navy tie , sky-blue dress shirt—and a knit hat with a patch for his depot , Manhattanville , in West Harlem .
After his last passengers exited , he propped his phone in the bus ’ s front window and began recording a video @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and sisters , ” he said , standing in the aisle of the bus , “ I want to thank you all for stepping up and coming to work today and showing what leadership looks like .
We are performing an essential and invaluable task.
” He reminded his co-workers that they were not only delivering hospital personnel to their jobs .
“ What about the person that needs dialysis ?
What about the person who needs regular cancer treatments ?
” he said .
“ We are helping all of these people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He went on , “ Ordinarily we ’ re not appreciated .
We ’ re not valued .
Let ’ s face it : the squeegee man of the crack era is held in greater regard and higher esteem than a New York City transit bus operator .
.
.
.
We just have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that sometimes the only recognition you ’ re going to receive is from the woman or man reflected back to you in the mirror as you are preparing for work.
” He added @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you , if no one else recognizes you , know that I do.
” He uploaded the video to three Facebook groups for transit workers and continued on his route .
Layne has been navigating a bus through the streets of New York City for twenty-one years , and he knew how thankless the job could be .
Every veteran bus operator has stories about customers who screamed at them , or cursed them out , or spat on them .
As a rookie , Layne was attacked by an irate motorist wielding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Throughout March , the sound of passengers coughing added stress to the job .
Then , on March 26th , Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union , which represents the city ’ s subway and bus workers , announced its first two deaths from COVID-19 : Peter Petrassi , a forty-nine-year-old subway conductor , and Oliver Cyrus , a sixty-one-year-old bus operator .
Layne knew Cyrus ; they both worked out of the Manhattanville Bus Depot .
At the depot , Cyrus was known as a quiet man who could often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ locker room .
Layne was at the depot when he heard the news .
“ I was shocked , ” he recalled .
“ At this point , now it had come home.
” During the next ten weeks , the pandemic would act like a slow-moving Triangle Shirtwaist fire , rippling through the ranks of the Metropolitan Transit Authority and killing more than a hundred of its employees .
This spring , the M.T.A.
, which runs the city ’ s buses and subways , endured a significantly higher death toll from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York City , including the police and fire departments .
Transit workers kept the subways and buses moving while New York City was on lockdown , and , as the city began to reopen , they were once again on the front lines .
In the midst of all of this stood Terence Layne , a native New Yorker whose life had imbued him with a deep understanding of the challenges confronting his city .
“ People think of front-line workers—the grocery workers , transit workers , the first responders , cops , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
But that ’ s not what happened , ” he said .
“ We helped the city survive it.
” For the past century , a bus depot has stood in Manhattanville , on the far west side of Harlem .
There is no marker , however , to indicate that a crucial moment in the city ’ s history took place there .
In the nineteen-thirties , two private bus companies had their offices at the 132nd Street Depot , as it was called then , and they refused to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In March of 1941 , the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell , Jr. , and other community leaders held a rally with more than a thousand people at the Abyssinian Baptist Church to call for a bus boycott .
Supporters picketed bus stops in Harlem , urging people to stay off the buses .
“ Don ’ t Ride Here !
Ride Where Negroes Can Work , ” one placard declared .
Another urged , “ Walk so that Negro men may live.
” The Transport Workers Union came out in support of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s bus workers had recently gone on strike , and Harlem leaders had supported them . )
On April 12th , the New York Age , a Black newspaper , reported that the boycott was working : the bus companies “ are suffering a tremendous financial loss due to the drop of patrons.
” A month after the boycott began , its leaders , the union , and the bus companies signed an agreement at the 132nd Street Depot .
The two companies committed to hiring a hundred Black drivers and seventy Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Blacks held seventeen per cent of jobs , roughly reflecting their share of Manhattan ’ s population .
The leaders of the boycott declared , “ This is not the end but merely the beginning in the historic struggle of the Negro people of the 20th century to assert their rights.
” Today , the Metropolitan Transit Authority operates the city ’ s bus lines , and Blacks make up nearly half of the forty thousand M.T.A .
workers in Local 100 .
Five years ago , Layne took a course at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history of the transit system , and he makes a point of informing other bus operators about what he learned .
“ Before the early forties , Black people could not even operate buses .
We were restricted to either being caretakers or janitors or porters , ” Layne told me .
“ The union , the T.W.U.
, was a fundamental part in kicking that door in and making it possible for people like myself and my forebears to find employment in higher titles.
” Layne is now Local 100 ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ I just believed it was my duty to preserve this for generations to come , ” he said .
The M.T.A .
runs twenty-eight bus depots , each of which has a distinct personality .
Manhattanville , where some five hundred and fifty bus operators work , is known for its collegial spirit .
“ There ’ s a lot of camaraderie , and we in Manhattanville have a reputation for standing up to management when necessary , ” Layne said .
The depot has four levels : mechanics work on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ third floors hold the parked buses ; and the top floor is known as “ the penthouse.
” Managers have offices there , and the bus operators have their “ swing room , ” where they hang out when they ’ re on break .
The swing room can be a noisy , rollicking place , where workers eat together and play pool .
“ We spend time either commiserating or swapping stories about what we ’ ve dealt with , ” Layne told me .
Some of the stories are about misbehaving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an operator , get off the bus , and suffer no consequences .
Layne likens the operator ’ s predicament to that of the waitstaff in a restaurant .
“ There are certain positions that our society has identified as those kinds of people that we can abuse and mistreat simply because we are having a bad day or maybe because we are dissatisfied with the service , ” he said .
“ And the bus operator falls into that category .
”

On the morning of March 23rd, Terence A. Layne drove a half-empty M116 bus across Manhattan, starting on the Upper West Side. He went around parked cars and stopped at red lights, all the while contemplating COVID-19—the “microbial enemy,” as he called it, that was sweeping through New York City. Most of Manhattan’s workers were staying home, and many of its wealthier residents had fled the city, but Layne and his fellow transit workers were still showing up to their jobs each day, in order to keep the city’s buses and subways running. Layne knew that his colleagues were terrified of contracting COVID-19, and as he drove along 116th Street he tried to imagine what he might say to them to lift their morale.
Layne, who is fifty-five, wore the bus operator’s winter uniform—navy tie, sky-blue dress shirt—and a knit hat with a patch for his depot, Manhattanville, in West Harlem. After his last passengers exited, he propped his phone in the bus’s front window and began recording a video message to his colleagues. “Brothers and sisters,” he said, standing in the aisle of the bus, “I want to thank you all for stepping up and coming to work today and showing what leadership looks like. We are performing an essential and invaluable task.” He reminded his co-workers that they were not only delivering hospital personnel to their jobs. “What about the person that needs dialysis? What about the person who needs regular cancer treatments?” he said. “We are helping all of these people live and survive this global pandemic.”
He went on, “Ordinarily we’re not appreciated. We’re not valued. Let’s face it: the squeegee man of the crack era is held in greater regard and higher esteem than a New York City transit bus operator. . . . We just have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that sometimes the only recognition you’re going to receive is from the woman or man reflected back to you in the mirror as you are preparing for work.” He added, “If no one else thanks you, if no one else recognizes you, know that I do.” He uploaded the video to three Facebook groups for transit workers and continued on his route.
Layne has been navigating a bus through the streets of New York City for twenty-one years, and he knew how thankless the job could be. Every veteran bus operator has stories about customers who screamed at them, or cursed them out, or spat on them. As a rookie, Layne was attacked by an irate motorist wielding the steering-wheel lock known as the Club. Throughout March, the sound of passengers coughing added stress to the job. Then, on March 26th, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, which represents the city’s subway and bus workers, announced its first two deaths from COVID-19: Peter Petrassi, a forty-nine-year-old subway conductor, and Oliver Cyrus, a sixty-one-year-old bus operator. Layne knew Cyrus; they both worked out of the Manhattanville Bus Depot. At the depot, Cyrus was known as a quiet man who could often be found reading a book in the locker room.
“I’m through sending friendly reminders, Jerry. Are you coming to the potluck or not?” Cartoon by Evan Lian Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Layne was at the depot when he heard the news. “I was shocked,” he recalled. “At this point, now it had come home.” During the next ten weeks, the pandemic would act like a slow-moving Triangle Shirtwaist fire, rippling through the ranks of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and killing more than a hundred of its employees. This spring, the M.T.A., which runs the city’s buses and subways, endured a significantly higher death toll from COVID-19 than other government agencies in New York City, including the police and fire departments.
Transit workers kept the subways and buses moving while New York City was on lockdown, and, as the city began to reopen, they were once again on the front lines. In the midst of all of this stood Terence Layne, a native New Yorker whose life had imbued him with a deep understanding of the challenges confronting his city. “People think of front-line workers—the grocery workers, transit workers, the first responders, cops, firefighters—as having helped the city get through it. But that’s not what happened,” he said. “We helped the city survive it.”
For the past century, a bus depot has stood in Manhattanville, on the far west side of Harlem. There is no marker, however, to indicate that a crucial moment in the city’s history took place there. In the nineteen-thirties, two private bus companies had their offices at the 132nd Street Depot, as it was called then, and they refused to hire Blacks as bus drivers or mechanics. In March of 1941, the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and other community leaders held a rally with more than a thousand people at the Abyssinian Baptist Church to call for a bus boycott. Supporters picketed bus stops in Harlem, urging people to stay off the buses. “Don’t Ride Here! Ride Where Negroes Can Work,” one placard declared. Another urged, “Walk so that Negro men may live.”
The Transport Workers Union came out in support of the boycott. (The union’s bus workers had recently gone on strike, and Harlem leaders had supported them.) On April 12th, the New York Age, a Black newspaper, reported that the boycott was working: the bus companies “are suffering a tremendous financial loss due to the drop of patrons.” A month after the boycott began, its leaders, the union, and the bus companies signed an agreement at the 132nd Street Depot. The two companies committed to hiring a hundred Black drivers and seventy Black mechanics, and promised to insure that Blacks held seventeen per cent of jobs, roughly reflecting their share of Manhattan’s population. The leaders of the boycott declared, “This is not the end but merely the beginning in the historic struggle of the Negro people of the 20th century to assert their rights.”
Today, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority operates the city’s bus lines, and Blacks make up nearly half of the forty thousand M.T.A. workers in Local 100. Five years ago, Layne took a course at the City University of New York on the history of the transit system, and he makes a point of informing other bus operators about what he learned. “Before the early forties, Black people could not even operate buses. We were restricted to either being caretakers or janitors or porters,” Layne told me. “The union, the T.W.U., was a fundamental part in kicking that door in and making it possible for people like myself and my forebears to find employment in higher titles.” Layne is now Local 100’s chief shop steward at the Manhattanville depot. “I just believed it was my duty to preserve this for generations to come,” he said.
The M.T.A. runs twenty-eight bus depots, each of which has a distinct personality. Manhattanville, where some five hundred and fifty bus operators work, is known for its collegial spirit. “There’s a lot of camaraderie, and we in Manhattanville have a reputation for standing up to management when necessary,” Layne said. The depot has four levels: mechanics work on the first floor; the second and third floors hold the parked buses; and the top floor is known as “the penthouse.” Managers have offices there, and the bus operators have their “swing room,” where they hang out when they’re on break. The swing room can be a noisy, rollicking place, where workers eat together and play pool.
Layne cleans his glasses as he prepares to leave home for work. Photograph by Kholood Eid for The New Yorker
“We spend time either commiserating or swapping stories about what we’ve dealt with,” Layne told me. Some of the stories are about misbehaving passengers. A customer can curse out an operator, get off the bus, and suffer no consequences. Layne likens the operator’s predicament to that of the waitstaff in a restaurant. “There are certain positions that our society has identified as those kinds of people that we can abuse and mistreat simply because we are having a bad day or maybe because we are dissatisfied with the service,” he said. “And the bus operator falls into that category.”
Driving a bus in New York City is also physically more taxing than passengers might imagine. In the driver’s seat all day, bouncing over potholes and uneven pavement, bus operators are prone to an ailment known as “whole-body vibration.” (“If you think of a box of crackers—if you shake it up really hard, those crackers are going to begin to disintegrate,” Layne said. “That pretty much is what happens to our skeletal system over time.”) Older operators often develop problems with their back and their legs. Some limp as they walk through the depot. Layne said, “You can just tell the way they’re moving, which is slowly, that they’re in pain.”
Despite the challenges of being an M.T.A. bus operator, Layne, who has three children, says that he has “one of the best jobs in New York.” He explains: “There are few jobs where you can make a very decent living, get really good health coverage, and earn a pension after twenty-five years of service that don’t require a college degree.” Starting pay for a New York City bus operator is $24.87 an hour. After five years on the job, the pay rises to $35.53 an hour, or seventy-four thousand dollars a year for a forty-hour week. With overtime, some bus operators make more than a hundred thousand dollars a year.


newyorker--2020-08-24--Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Summer , by Ali Smith ( Pantheon ) .
Shuttling between the Covid-19 crisis and the Second World War , the final installment of Smith ’ s Seasonal Quartet follows two pairs of siblings : Sacha and Robert Greenlaw , teen-agers in present-day Britain , and Daniel and Hannah Gluck , who were separated by the country ’ s wartime internment program .
As the novel unfolds , the teen-agers and the now elderly Daniel are drawn together by a theft that took place decades before .
Both time lines examine catastrophes—unethical immigration policies , climate change—and the linguistic distortions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the Earth ’ s devastation , considers the face masks of the pandemic : “ They ’ re like nothing at all , dead leaves , blowaway litter , compared to the real masks , the ones on the faces of the planet ’ s liars.
” Antkind , by Charlie Kaufman ( Random House ) .
The protagonist of this début novel , by the screenwriter of “ Being John Malkovich ” and “ Adaptation , ” is a film critic , B. Rosenberg , who becomes the sole audience for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ months to watch .
When its enigmatic creator , Ingo Cutbirth , dies mid-screening , Rosenberg takes it upon himself to bring the reels to show his editor , but they combust en route , leaving him with a single frame .
His quest to reconstruct the film is continually interrupted by vaudevillian set pieces , hypnotism sessions , and his own digressive rants on the nature of cinema , including several about Kaufman ’ s works .
The result is an unmistakably Kaufmanesque metafictional fantasia .
God ’ s Shadow , by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Ottoman Empire as pivotal in shaping the Western world , this history casts developments such as the Reconquista , the Inquisition , the Reformation , and exploration of the New World as responses to rising Islamic power .
Mikhail focusses on Selim , who , in 1517 , became the first Ottoman ruler to be both sultan and caliph , and whose military and administrative skill tripled Ottoman territory , making it the largest and most powerful empire in the world .
Though the Ottomans generally granted religious freedom , European rulers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the influence of this paranoia on the Islamophobia that continues to inform American politics .
Memorial Drive , by Natasha Trethewey ( Ecco ) .
“ To survive trauma , one must be able to tell a story about it , ” the author writes , in a memoir that sets the story of her mother ’ s murder , by an abusive partner , in 1985 , in the context of the inequities suffered by Black women in the South .
In Georgia , monuments of the Confederacy loom amid the writer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the apartment where a chalk outline of her mother ’ s body was once traced , reminding her “ what is remembered here and what is not.
” Trethewey examines patterns of neglect—the murder occurred after a police officer who was supposed to be monitoring their apartment left his post—and concludes , “ They could have saved her .
”

Summer, by Ali Smith (Pantheon). Shuttling between the Covid-19 crisis and the Second World War, the final installment of Smith’s Seasonal Quartet follows two pairs of siblings: Sacha and Robert Greenlaw, teen-agers in present-day Britain, and Daniel and Hannah Gluck, who were separated by the country’s wartime internment program. As the novel unfolds, the teen-agers and the now elderly Daniel are drawn together by a theft that took place decades before. Both time lines examine catastrophes—unethical immigration policies, climate change—and the linguistic distortions that accompany them. Sacha, terrified by the Earth’s devastation, considers the face masks of the pandemic: “They’re like nothing at all, dead leaves, blowaway litter, compared to the real masks, the ones on the faces of the planet’s liars.”
Antkind, by Charlie Kaufman (Random House). The protagonist of this début novel, by the screenwriter of “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation,” is a film critic, B. Rosenberg, who becomes the sole audience for a wildly ambitious film that takes three months to watch. When its enigmatic creator, Ingo Cutbirth, dies mid-screening, Rosenberg takes it upon himself to bring the reels to show his editor, but they combust en route, leaving him with a single frame. His quest to reconstruct the film is continually interrupted by vaudevillian set pieces, hypnotism sessions, and his own digressive rants on the nature of cinema, including several about Kaufman’s works. The result is an unmistakably Kaufmanesque metafictional fantasia.
God’s Shadow, by Alan Mikhail (Liveright). Seeing the Ottoman Empire as pivotal in shaping the Western world, this history casts developments such as the Reconquista, the Inquisition, the Reformation, and exploration of the New World as responses to rising Islamic power. Mikhail focusses on Selim, who, in 1517, became the first Ottoman ruler to be both sultan and caliph, and whose military and administrative skill tripled Ottoman territory, making it the largest and most powerful empire in the world. Though the Ottomans generally granted religious freedom, European rulers obsessively feared Muslim expansion; Mikhail traces the influence of this paranoia on the Islamophobia that continues to inform American politics.
Memorial Drive, by Natasha Trethewey (Ecco). “To survive trauma, one must be able to tell a story about it,” the author writes, in a memoir that sets the story of her mother’s murder, by an abusive partner, in 1985, in the context of the inequities suffered by Black women in the South. In Georgia, monuments of the Confederacy loom amid the writer’s personal monuments, such as the apartment where a chalk outline of her mother’s body was once traced, reminding her “what is remembered here and what is not.” Trethewey examines patterns of neglect—the murder occurred after a police officer who was supposed to be monitoring their apartment left his post—and concludes, “They could have saved her.”


newyorker--2020-08-24--A “Beowulf” for Our Moment

A “Beowulf” for Our Moment

Afew weeks ago , during a visit to the doctor , I laughed out loud when the online check-in portal suggested Old English as my language preference , and not only because I happened to have with me Maria Dahvana Headley ’ s “ Beowulf ” ( MCD ) , a new translation of the long poem that is one of the oldest surviving works of literature in the language .
Without serious study , no speaker of contemporary English could converse in or even read Old English ( also known as Anglo-Saxon ) , a language as distinct from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Of Germanic origin , it contains numerous elements that don ’ t appear in the modern English alphabet : the diphthong “ æ ” ( ash ) , as well as two letters that represent the “ th ” sound , “ þ ” ( thorn ) and “ ð ” ( eth ) .
Its unintelligibility is evident from the first line of “ Beowulf ” : “ Hwæt wē Gār-Dena in geārdagum.
” Even without understanding the meaning ( roughly , “ We of the Spear-Danes in the days of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a few things about Old English poetry .
Each line is broken up into two half lines , separated by a caesura ; the focus is on metre and alliteration , not rhyme .
J. R. R. Tolkien , in his lecture “ Beowulf : The Monsters and the Critics , ” called the structure of Old English literature “ more like masonry than music.
” ( In addition to writing “ The Hobbit ” and the “ Lord of the Rings ” trilogy , both distinctly inflected by Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythology @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Old English . )
The effect , when read aloud , is something like boots marching on gravel , with Yoda-style inversions .
James Joyce famously parodied it in “ Ulysses ” : “ Before born babe bliss had.
” Headley , a novelist known primarily for her works of fantasy for young adults , is the most recent of the dozens of modern English translators who have taken on the poem , which runs three thousand one hundred and eighty-two lines long .
They range from scholars like Tolkien ( who spent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to publish it ; it appeared posthumously in a 2014 edition put together by his son Christopher ) to the poets Seamus Heaney and Stephen Mitchell , both of whom have produced lyrical and critically admired versions .
Very few of these translators are women , which is unsurprising .
“ Beowulf ” —in which the eponymous hero , a man of gigantic , and perhaps supernatural , strength , defends King Hrothgar and the Danes against Grendel , a part man , part monster who is plaguing the kingdom—tends to be perceived @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and its ethics those of the battleground and the mead hall .
( If I had wanted to discuss spears or honor codes with the doctor , Old English would have served just fine . )
The men in “ Beowulf ” drink and boast and fight ; the women , even the queens , exist mainly to pass around the mead cup and to mourn their fallen kinsmen .
There is one notable exception .
As the warriors sleep off their drunken celebration of Grendel ’ s defeat at Beowulf ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up to avenge her son ’ s death in a surprise attack .
Headley writes that , as a child “ on the hunt for any sort of woman warrior , ” she came upon this character in an illustrated encyclopedia of monsters and assumed , naturally , that Grendel ’ s mother was the focus of the story .
When Headley finally read the poem , she was dismayed that scholars had treated the character as a marginal figure , an extension of her child , or as only partially human .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mere Wife , ” an astonishing novel in which she reimagines the “ Beowulf ” story , setting it in modern times and placing the female characters at its center .
Grendel ’ s mother becomes an Iraq War veteran , her child likely the result of rape , while Wealhtheow , Hrothgar ’ s queen , is represented by Willa , a wealthy suburban housewife who posts photographs of her home-cooked meals and suppresses her fantasies of violence .
The novel is both a brilliant investigation of the man-monster dichotomy—the line between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might think—and a caustic sendup of contemporary family life .
In their own way , the novel suggests , all women are warriors , even if their armor takes the form of a sequinned cocktail dress .
Dedicated to “ Anonymous and all the stories she told , ” “ The Mere Wife ” includes some tantalizing snippets of “ Beowulf ” as translated by Headley .
Now we have the full version , and it is electrifying .
The lack of scholarly apparatus is deceptive : Headley has studied the poem deeply @ @ @ @ @ @ @ text ’ s most obscure details .
Though she comes to “ Beowulf ” from a feminist perspective , her primary purpose is not polemical or political but , as she writes , to render the story “ continuously and cleanly , while also creating a text that felt as bloody and juicy as I think it ought to feel.
” Headley ’ s version is more of a rewriting than a true translation , reënvisaging the poem for the modern reader rather than transmitting it line for line .
It is brash @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with passages of sublime poetry punctuated by obscenities and social-media shorthand—Grendel is “ fucked by fate , ” Wealhtheow , “ hashtag : blessed.
” Not everyone will admire all the linguistic and stylistic choices she has made ; that crunching noise in the background is the sound of her predecessors rolling in their burial ships .
Hrothgar ’ s thanes are his “ fight-family , ” Wealhtheow admires Beowulf ’ s “ brass balls , ” treasure is “ bling.
” But the over-all effect is as if Headley , like the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , were storming the dusty halls of the library , upending the crowded shelf of “ Beowulf ” translations to make room for something completely new .
“ Hwæt , ” the first word of “ Beowulf , ” has no direct equivalent in modern English .
Tolkien described it as “ a note ‘ striking up ’ at the beginning of a poem , ” calling the listener or reader to attention .
In his translation , he rendered it as “ Lo !
, ” following John Mitchell Kemble , whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earliest in modern English .
Stephen Mitchell avoided picking any single word , apparently in response to new linguistic research arguing that “ hwæt ” was not an interjection but , rather , imparted an exclamatory tone to the entire sentence .
Heaney went for “ So , ” explaining that he wanted his version of the poem to sound as if one of his Irish relatives were telling the story : “ So .
The Spear-Danes in days gone by / and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ heroic campaigns.
” Other translators have opted for “ Attend , ” “ Listen , ” “ Behold , ” “ Yes !
” and—unfortunately— “ What ho !
” Bro ?
In Headley ’ s vision , the “ Beowulf ” narrator is “ an old-timer at the end of the bar , periodically pounding his glass and demanding another.
” Indeed , the poetic tradition from which the poem arises is an oral one , in which poetry may have been sung by bards—called “ scops ” —who entertained the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Headley ’ s intervention is not only humorous and attention-grabbing but also historically justified .
The poem , she points out , was probably composed by a man for a largely male audience .
But she also hears a satirical quality in the boasts and pledges that constitute much of the characters ’ speech .
The men of “ Beowulf ” —not least the protagonist—are preoccupied with definitions of masculinity : what makes a man , or how a man can make himself .

Afew weeks ago, during a visit to the doctor, I laughed out loud when the online check-in portal suggested Old English as my language preference, and not only because I happened to have with me Maria Dahvana Headley’s “Beowulf” (MCD), a new translation of the long poem that is one of the oldest surviving works of literature in the language. Without serious study, no speaker of contemporary English could converse in or even read Old English (also known as Anglo-Saxon), a language as distinct from its modern equivalent as many foreign tongues. Of Germanic origin, it contains numerous elements that don’t appear in the modern English alphabet: the diphthong “æ” (ash), as well as two letters that represent the “th” sound, “þ” (thorn) and “ð” (eth). Its unintelligibility is evident from the first line of “Beowulf”: “Hwæt wē Gār-Dena in geārdagum.”
Even without understanding the meaning (roughly, “We of the Spear-Danes in the days of yore”), we can notice a few things about Old English poetry. Each line is broken up into two half lines, separated by a caesura; the focus is on metre and alliteration, not rhyme. J. R. R. Tolkien, in his lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” called the structure of Old English literature “more like masonry than music.” (In addition to writing “The Hobbit” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, both distinctly inflected by Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythology, Tolkien was a prominent scholar of Old English.) The effect, when read aloud, is something like boots marching on gravel, with Yoda-style inversions. James Joyce famously parodied it in “Ulysses”: “Before born babe bliss had.”
Headley, a novelist known primarily for her works of fantasy for young adults, is the most recent of the dozens of modern English translators who have taken on the poem, which runs three thousand one hundred and eighty-two lines long. They range from scholars like Tolkien (who spent decades revising his translation before deciding not to publish it; it appeared posthumously in a 2014 edition put together by his son Christopher) to the poets Seamus Heaney and Stephen Mitchell, both of whom have produced lyrical and critically admired versions. Very few of these translators are women, which is unsurprising. “Beowulf”—in which the eponymous hero, a man of gigantic, and perhaps supernatural, strength, defends King Hrothgar and the Danes against Grendel, a part man, part monster who is plaguing the kingdom—tends to be perceived as a masculine poem, its vocabulary and its ethics those of the battleground and the mead hall. (If I had wanted to discuss spears or honor codes with the doctor, Old English would have served just fine.) The men in “Beowulf” drink and boast and fight; the women, even the queens, exist mainly to pass around the mead cup and to mourn their fallen kinsmen.
There is one notable exception. As the warriors sleep off their drunken celebration of Grendel’s defeat at Beowulf’s hands, Grendel’s mother shows up to avenge her son’s death in a surprise attack. Headley writes that, as a child “on the hunt for any sort of woman warrior,” she came upon this character in an illustrated encyclopedia of monsters and assumed, naturally, that Grendel’s mother was the focus of the story. When Headley finally read the poem, she was dismayed that scholars had treated the character as a marginal figure, an extension of her child, or as only partially human.
In 2018, Headley published “The Mere Wife,” an astonishing novel in which she reimagines the “Beowulf” story, setting it in modern times and placing the female characters at its center. Grendel’s mother becomes an Iraq War veteran, her child likely the result of rape, while Wealhtheow, Hrothgar’s queen, is represented by Willa, a wealthy suburban housewife who posts photographs of her home-cooked meals and suppresses her fantasies of violence. The novel is both a brilliant investigation of the man-monster dichotomy—the line between them is not as clear as we might think—and a caustic sendup of contemporary family life. In their own way, the novel suggests, all women are warriors, even if their armor takes the form of a sequinned cocktail dress.
Dedicated to “Anonymous and all the stories she told,” “The Mere Wife” includes some tantalizing snippets of “Beowulf” as translated by Headley. Now we have the full version, and it is electrifying. The lack of scholarly apparatus is deceptive: Headley has studied the poem deeply and is conversant with some of the text’s most obscure details. Though she comes to “Beowulf” from a feminist perspective, her primary purpose is not polemical or political but, as she writes, to render the story “continuously and cleanly, while also creating a text that felt as bloody and juicy as I think it ought to feel.”
Headley’s version is more of a rewriting than a true translation, reënvisaging the poem for the modern reader rather than transmitting it line for line. It is brash and belligerent, lunatic and invigorating, with passages of sublime poetry punctuated by obscenities and social-media shorthand—Grendel is “fucked by fate,” Wealhtheow, “hashtag: blessed.” Not everyone will admire all the linguistic and stylistic choices she has made; that crunching noise in the background is the sound of her predecessors rolling in their burial ships. Hrothgar’s thanes are his “fight-family,” Wealhtheow admires Beowulf’s “brass balls,” treasure is “bling.” But the over-all effect is as if Headley, like the warrior queen she admired as a child, were storming the dusty halls of the library, upending the crowded shelf of “Beowulf” translations to make room for something completely new.
“Hwæt,” the first word of “Beowulf,” has no direct equivalent in modern English. Tolkien described it as “a note ‘striking up’ at the beginning of a poem,” calling the listener or reader to attention. In his translation, he rendered it as “Lo!,” following John Mitchell Kemble, whose influential 1837 translation was one of the earliest in modern English. Stephen Mitchell avoided picking any single word, apparently in response to new linguistic research arguing that “hwæt” was not an interjection but, rather, imparted an exclamatory tone to the entire sentence. Heaney went for “So,” explaining that he wanted his version of the poem to sound as if one of his Irish relatives were telling the story: “So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by / and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. / We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.” Other translators have opted for “Attend,” “Listen,” “Behold,” “Yes!” and—unfortunately—“What ho!”
Headley’s version opens:
Bro! Tell me we still know how to talk about kings! In the old days,
everyone knew what men were: brave, bold, glory-bound. Only
stories now, but I’ll sound the Spear-Danes’ song, hoarded for hungry times.
Bro? In Headley’s vision, the “Beowulf” narrator is “an old-timer at the end of the bar, periodically pounding his glass and demanding another.” Indeed, the poetic tradition from which the poem arises is an oral one, in which poetry may have been sung by bards—called “scops”—who entertained the kings and their entourages after feasts. Headley’s intervention is not only humorous and attention-grabbing but also historically justified. The poem, she points out, was probably composed by a man for a largely male audience. But she also hears a satirical quality in the boasts and pledges that constitute much of the characters’ speech. The men of “Beowulf”—not least the protagonist—are preoccupied with definitions of masculinity: what makes a man, or how a man can make himself.
The narrator is at once looking back and looking forward; the poem may have been composed as early as the eighth century A.D., but it describes, with fantastic touches, a world that existed a couple of hundred years earlier. He interrupts himself to comment on the action, to foreshadow events to come, or to add a Christian gloss. “I mean, personally?” he says after Beowulf’s defeat of Grendel, as Hrothgar rains gifts down like “pennies from Heaven” on the hero. “I’ve never seen anything / like it, so many treasures. . . . No fighting? No fury? Nope, bro, this was / a certain type of night.” (Cue “Oh What a Night” on the jukebox.) “Anyone knows how fair it was: / bro, more than fair” is his assessment of Beowulf’s reward. (For comparison, Heaney: “A fair witness can see how well each one behaved.”)
But we get ahead of ourselves. The story opens with Hrothgar, King of the Spear-Danes (in modern-day Denmark), building a magnificent hall, Heorot, to celebrate his successes in war and to reinforce his dominance. (There are echoes here of the Tower of Babel.) Grendel, whom Headley calls a “woe-walker”—the poem doesn’t describe him physically, except to suggest his prodigious size and strength—is enraged to hear the men drinking and singing. Why? The original text doesn’t give a reason. “Grendel hurt, and so he hunted,” Headley suggests. He so terrorizes the Spear-Danes that they abandon Heorot after dark, leaving the great hall deserted.
After twelve years of this, “News went global.” Across the sea, in Geatland (modern-day Sweden), Beowulf gathers “fourteen fists for hire” and sails for Hrothgar’s kingdom. The watchman who greets them at the cliffs might be a bouncer at a bar more exclusive than the one where the narrator hangs out: “There’s a dress code! You’re denied.” “Kindly give us / directions and we’ll get gone,” Beowulf assures him.
Headley is obviously enjoying herself, and never more than when she’s speaking in the voice of her hero, “hard-core in his helmet,” who might have apprenticed with Omar from “The Wire.” His speech is ridiculous, glorious, and irresistible. Here, having come to relieve Heorot from its “early curfew,” he introduces himself to Hrothgar:


newyorker--2020-08-24--When the Ice-Cream Man Goes Rogue

When the Ice-Cream Man Goes Rogue

“ ANOTHER BLOODY WEEK IN THE BIG APPLE , ” read a recent headline in the Post .
New York , it would seem , is a lawless town this summer .
Shootings are up .
Rat sightings , too .
The cops are besieged .
It ’ s enough to rattle even the most diehard New Yorker .
Take a case that started on Pacific Street , a peaceful , brownstone-lined lane in Boerum Hill , Brooklyn .
City Hall had closed the street to traffic because of the lockdown , and , behind protective wooden barricades , kids @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the roadway .
Things were good .
“ And then , ” Alberto Lizzi , who lives on the block , said , “ Mister Softee arrived.
” Lizzi was home one afternoon when he heard a noise .
The noise was followed by shouting .
Soon , the entire block was yelling .
Lizzi ran outside in his Birkenstocks .
He started shouting , too .
An ice-cream truck was speeding away .
In the street , the barricades lay in splinters .
Witnesses said that the driver had approached the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through them , his tinkly music providing a taunting soundtrack .
Soon , he struck again , and again—five or six times—and neighbors added new accusations : shouting matches , near-fistfights , pedestrians almost clipped when the truck swerved onto the sidewalk .
Fortifications were discussed .
A strip of nails ?
Residents worried that someone could get hurt .
“ You have these little three-foot people that are hard to see , ” Emily Fisher , a mother of two , said .
But what was most unsettling was the peculiar willfulness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ illogical .
“ You ’ d be running over your customer base , ” Fisher said .
A resistance formed .
Fisher designed T-shirts : Mister Softee ’ s waffled face , grinning menacingly , was slashed with a big red “ X.
” A thirty-eight-year-old father named Dan decided to confront the driver .
He did , twice : no dice .
Dan did not want to give his last name , for fear of retribution .
( Old-timers told tales of ice-cream men in the nineties defending their turf with baseball @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dan gave chase on his skateboard .
“ That ’ s when I said , ‘ You ’ re done !
’ ” he recalled .
“ The driver just laughed and said , ‘ Oh , I ’ m done ?
’ ” Reporters were tipped off .
A stakeout was planned .
“ Everybody ’ s out there , ” Dan said .
“ We ’ re hiding between cars.
” But Mister Smashee was onto them .
When he rolled up , he exited the vehicle and carefully moved the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police opened an investigation .
The precinct captain called in eyewitnesses .
The dragnet was closing in .
Mister Smashee proved easy to track down , though .
An amateur gumshoe , following the woozy clinking of the out-of-tune jingle , caught up with him near a park in Cobble Hill .
He was handing a vanilla soft-serve cone with rainbow sprinkles to a kid on a scooter .
( “ Bye , buddy !
” he called , as the boy scooted off . )
Cornered , the presumed Mister Smashee said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he ’ d been doing ice cream for a couple of years .
He was feeling embattled , he said : “ Everything ’ s fucked up.
” He insisted that he was the victim of a case of mistaken identity .
He said that he was from Uzbekistan and that he employed a part-time driver , also an Uzbek , who looked a lot like him .
The employee , he maintained , was the guy who ’ d been smashing through barricades .
Gary said that he ’ d told the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Smashee doppelgänger theory sounded fishy .
As proof , Gary , who has a neat black beard , pulled out what he said was the ex-employee ’ s driver ’ s license , which had been left behind in the truck .
There was a resemblance , although Gary refused to remove his finger from the license , where it blocked the alleged Mister Smashee ’ s real name .
Gary said that he used to like this town .
“ If they don ’ t want an ice-cream truck over there , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , of the Boerum Hill gang .
“ They never buy.
” He went on , “ To be honest , I ’ m tired of New York , bro .
I just want to get the fuck out of here.
” Another lead turned up a man named Dennis , who is in charge of the Mister Softee territory where Gary operates .
Dennis confirmed that Gary occasionally used a fill-in .
Presented with these findings , the ice-cream resistance was unmoved .
Lizzi and Dan had spoken with Mister Smashee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were certain that Gary was their guy .
“ Unless it ’ s two identical twins , ” Lizzi said .
Dan had an ace up his sleeve : an iPhone video of one of the barricade-crashing incidents .
In a grainy , Zapruderish screenshot , the driver looked like Gary—kind of .
“ If you didn ’ t know him , I ’ m not sure that you ’ d know that it ’ s him , ” Dan said .
“ But it ’ s him.
” A late tip led @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who oversees every Mister Softee in Brooklyn .
He had the goods .
“ I don ’ t buy his story , ” Doc said .
“ I told Dennis , we ’ ve got to get rid of Gary .
I ’ m not going to service his vehicle anymore.
” Open and shut .
But was it ?
Whoever Mister Smashee might be , and however many Mister Smashees there are , is Pacific Street still vulnerable ?
The resistance needed a breather .
Dan left for Maryland .
Lizzi was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The other day , the amateur gumshoe was strolling down Pacific when he heard something suspicious .
Was it just the wind ?
The sound grew louder until it could not be denied : a plinky melody , twinkling through the summer night .
♦

Illustration by João Fazenda
“ANOTHER BLOODY WEEK IN THE BIG APPLE,” read a recent headline in the Post. New York, it would seem, is a lawless town this summer. Shootings are up. Rat sightings, too. The cops are besieged. It’s enough to rattle even the most diehard New Yorker. Take a case that started on Pacific Street, a peaceful, brownstone-lined lane in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. City Hall had closed the street to traffic because of the lockdown, and, behind protective wooden barricades, kids played soccer and splashed in inflatable pools on the roadway. Things were good. “And then,” Alberto Lizzi, who lives on the block, said, “Mister Softee arrived.”
Lizzi was home one afternoon when he heard a noise. The noise was followed by shouting. Soon, the entire block was yelling. Lizzi ran outside in his Birkenstocks. He started shouting, too. An ice-cream truck was speeding away. In the street, the barricades lay in splinters. Witnesses said that the driver had approached the barriers, stopped, then slowly plowed through them, his tinkly music providing a taunting soundtrack.
“Mister Smashee!” a neighbor shouted.
Soon, he struck again, and again—five or six times—and neighbors added new accusations: shouting matches, near-fistfights, pedestrians almost clipped when the truck swerved onto the sidewalk. Fortifications were discussed. A strip of nails? Residents worried that someone could get hurt. “You have these little three-foot people that are hard to see,” Emily Fisher, a mother of two, said. But what was most unsettling was the peculiar willfulness of it all. It was also illogical. “You’d be running over your customer base,” Fisher said. A resistance formed. Fisher designed T-shirts: Mister Softee’s waffled face, grinning menacingly, was slashed with a big red “X.”
A thirty-eight-year-old father named Dan decided to confront the driver. He did, twice: no dice. Dan did not want to give his last name, for fear of retribution. (Old-timers told tales of ice-cream men in the nineties defending their turf with baseball bats.) The third time, Dan gave chase on his skateboard. “That’s when I said, ‘You’re done!’ ” he recalled. “The driver just laughed and said, ‘Oh, I’m done?’ ”
Reporters were tipped off. A stakeout was planned. “Everybody’s out there,” Dan said. “We’re hiding between cars.” But Mister Smashee was onto them. When he rolled up, he exited the vehicle and carefully moved the barricades. Foiled. Next, the police opened an investigation. The precinct captain called in eyewitnesses. The dragnet was closing in.
Mister Smashee proved easy to track down, though. An amateur gumshoe, following the woozy clinking of the out-of-tune jingle, caught up with him near a park in Cobble Hill. He was handing a vanilla soft-serve cone with rainbow sprinkles to a kid on a scooter. (“Bye, buddy!” he called, as the boy scooted off.) Cornered, the presumed Mister Smashee said that his name was Gary and that he’d been doing ice cream for a couple of years. He was feeling embattled, he said: “Everything’s fucked up.” He insisted that he was the victim of a case of mistaken identity. He said that he was from Uzbekistan and that he employed a part-time driver, also an Uzbek, who looked a lot like him. The employee, he maintained, was the guy who’d been smashing through barricades. Gary said that he’d told the man to get lost.
The Mister Smashee doppelgänger theory sounded fishy. As proof, Gary, who has a neat black beard, pulled out what he said was the ex-employee’s driver’s license, which had been left behind in the truck. There was a resemblance, although Gary refused to remove his finger from the license, where it blocked the alleged Mister Smashee’s real name.
Gary said that he used to like this town. “If they don’t want an ice-cream truck over there, it’s O.K.,” he said, of the Boerum Hill gang. “They never buy.” He went on, “To be honest, I’m tired of New York, bro. I just want to get the fuck out of here.”
Another lead turned up a man named Dennis, who is in charge of the Mister Softee territory where Gary operates. Dennis confirmed that Gary occasionally used a fill-in.
Presented with these findings, the ice-cream resistance was unmoved. Lizzi and Dan had spoken with Mister Smashee several times, up close. They were certain that Gary was their guy. “Unless it’s two identical twins,” Lizzi said. Dan had an ace up his sleeve: an iPhone video of one of the barricade-crashing incidents. In a grainy, Zapruderish screenshot, the driver looked like Gary—kind of.
“If you didn’t know him, I’m not sure that you’d know that it’s him,” Dan said. “But it’s him.”
A late tip led to a man known as Doc, who oversees every Mister Softee in Brooklyn. He had the goods. “I don’t buy his story,” Doc said. “I told Dennis, we’ve got to get rid of Gary. I’m not going to service his vehicle anymore.”
Open and shut. But was it? Whoever Mister Smashee might be, and however many Mister Smashees there are, is Pacific Street still vulnerable? The resistance needed a breather. Dan left for Maryland. Lizzi was in Maine. Defenses were down. The other day, the amateur gumshoe was strolling down Pacific when he heard something suspicious. Was it just the wind? The sound grew louder until it could not be denied: a plinky melody, twinkling through the summer night. ♦


newyorker--2020-08-24--What Brings Elena Ferrante’s Worlds to Life?

The pseudonymous Italian novelist Elena Ferrante has written profoundly about two subjects for some thirty years : the fraught bond between mothers and daughters , and the brutality of life in proletarian Naples .
Her latest work of fiction , “ The Lying Life of Adults ” ( Europa ) , is a surprising deviation for her .
Its narrator , Giovanna Trada , is a woman on the brink of middle age who is recounting the disaffections of her privileged adolescence , some thirty years ago .
The teen-ager she conjures is obsessed with her looks , about which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Just as doggedly , she moons after a local heartthrob who is dating a skinny friend .
Familial rancors , long simmering , lead to the revelation that her parents are flawed human beings .
Ferrante has a gift , perhaps even a genius , for making great literature out of melodrama .
But the overwrought language of her new book doesn ’ t illuminate the anguish that it seeks to plumb .
Giovanna admits , in the first paragraph , that she is clueless about her own story : it may , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ snarled confusion of suffering.
” Had this been a young writer ’ s coming-of-age story , one could praise its abundant flashes of brilliance and forgive its excesses .
Coming from a master , its puerility is a mystery .
What does it mean to write like a woman ?
Ferrante posed that question , partly to herself , thirteen years ago , in an interview with the Italian magazine Io Donna .
She had not yet published her Neapolitan quartet , an epic bildungsroman in four volumes , narrated by a writer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sixteen million copies .
But her earlier novels— “ Troubling Love , ” “ Days of Abandonment , ” and “ The Lost Daughter , ” a triptych of stories about women in extremis—were a preview of her power .
This body of work defies the conventions of writing “ like a woman ” as radically as did Mary Shelley ’ s “ Frankenstein.
” In “ Days of Abandonment ” ( 2002 ) , the narrator , Olga , who once had literary ambitions but shelved them when she married and had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ question .
“ To write truly , ” she reflects , “ is to speak from the depths of the maternal womb.
” Ferrante has an attunement to her characters that one might call maternal , yet she accepts no constraints on what a female can say , and , more fundamentally , on what she can feel .
Her fiction rattles the cage of gender .
Interviews suggest that Ferrante found her vocation on the late side , around forty .
Nothing verifiable is known about her youth , but , she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to write by reading mainly works by men.
” Their heroines ( she specifies Emma Bovary , Anna Karenina , and Chekhov ’ s lady with a little dog ) engaged her more fully , she said , and seemed more like “ real women ” than did the female protagonists of women novelists .
There are writers of her sex whom Ferrante admires—Elsa Morante and Virginia Woolf among them .
Those who disappoint her appear to have a common failing .
“ I always read stories by women with trepidation , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I expect something that seemed unsayable to appear miraculously on the page.
” The unsayable is either what you may not say , because of who you are , or what you can not admit , because you have internalized a taboo .
Ferrante ’ s style is blunt—at times even careless—as if she were deliberately rejecting centuries of preciosity in women ’ s prose .
“ When I write , it ’ s as if I were butchering eels , ” she told Io Donna .
“ I pay little attention to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ word “ revulsion ” recurs so often in her pages that it is almost a tic .
She revels in descriptions of incontinence : leaking tampons and spastic ejaculations .
Women novelists before her have seethed at the benevolence expected of them—the Brontë sisters are a notable example .
But Ferrante is a brawler , not a seether .
She co-opts the pugnacity of a male voice to express the unsayable about female dilemmas , and this belligerence feels revolutionary .
A Ferrante novel typically begins with the violent rupture of a primal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discovery of how enslaved she has been to it .
Delia , in “ Troubling Love ” ( 1992 ) , is unhinged by her mother ’ s apparent suicide .
Olga becomes deranged when her husband deserts her for a younger woman .
Elena learns , in the opening pages of “ My Brilliant Friend ” ( 2011 ) , the quartet ’ s first volume , that her best friend from childhood has abandoned her , after sixty years , by vanishing without a trace .
Parents , children , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from which they lash out—sometimes viciously .
But they are , above all , caged in their own bodies , taut to bursting with rage and shame .
Ferrante perceives their claustrophobia as a conflict between their imperative desires and those of others , to whom their identity is beholden .
In that respect , they are not unlike Shelley ’ s monster .
There is a vast bibliography of analytic theory on this subject , much of it dating to the nineteen-seventies , when it electrified the young feminists of Ferrante ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its influence .
The theory situated the roots of misogyny in an infant ’ s conflicting impulses toward a mother ’ s body : to devour , penetrate , and possess ; to be cherished , mastered , and contained .
Only later are these desires rigidly classified as male or female .
Most cultures can ’ t tolerate the ambiguity for long .
A boy is socialized to suppress his “ female ” yearnings , and is rewarded for it with the prestige of maleness ; a girl ’ s reward for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At their most unforgiving , these asymmetries help to sustain archaic patriarchies like that of Ferrante ’ s Naples .
Male authors may have taught Ferrante to write , but none of them grew up as a girl .
“ A secret cord that can ’ t be cut binds us to the bodies of our mothers , ” she wrote in a newspaper column .
“ There is no way to detach ourselves , or at least I ’ ve never managed to.
” But there is a way .
Ferrante suggested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a question about Olga ’ s battles with her daughter : they lead her to accept her child ’ s “ hostile love as a vital feeling.
” Hostile love is also vital to literature .
The characters who seem most “ real ” to us were created by a writer unafraid of its contradictions .
Freud defines “ the uncanny ” as the terror of what is most familiar—what frightens us most about home , even as it compels us to return there .
The Naples of Ferrante ’ s work has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a mother ’ s body , pungent and labyrinthine , loathsome and beloved , from which she can not detach herself .
It was there that I first read Ferrante in Italian .
Italians have been notably less smitten with Ferrante than her foreign fans have .
They are famously pious about maternity , and Ferrante ’ s narrators tend to be bad mothers who are emancipated by their neglect .
Reading her in English isn ’ t the same experience .
Ann Goldstein has translated all of Ferrante ’ s work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she has improved the prose .
It may not be a coincidence that Ferrante has called translators her “ only heroes.
” Translation , she wrote recently , “ draws us out of the well in which , entirely by chance , we are born.
” Goldstein has nearly perfect pitch for Ferrante ’ s voice , yet it has an accent on the page that English can not quite capture , which is itself the echo of another language—the harsh , often obscene dialect of Campania .
Ferrante balks at using dialect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imprint like the welt marks of a slap .

The pseudonymous Italian novelist Elena Ferrante has written profoundly about two subjects for some thirty years: the fraught bond between mothers and daughters, and the brutality of life in proletarian Naples. Her latest work of fiction, “The Lying Life of Adults” (Europa), is a surprising deviation for her. Its narrator, Giovanna Trada, is a woman on the brink of middle age who is recounting the disaffections of her privileged adolescence, some thirty years ago. The teen-ager she conjures is obsessed with her looks, about which she despairs for three hundred pages. Just as doggedly, she moons after a local heartthrob who is dating a skinny friend. Familial rancors, long simmering, lead to the revelation that her parents are flawed human beings. Ferrante has a gift, perhaps even a genius, for making great literature out of melodrama. But the overwrought language of her new book doesn’t illuminate the anguish that it seeks to plumb. Giovanna admits, in the first paragraph, that she is clueless about her own story: it may, she says, “merely be a snarled confusion of suffering.” Had this been a young writer’s coming-of-age story, one could praise its abundant flashes of brilliance and forgive its excesses. Coming from a master, its puerility is a mystery.
What does it mean to write like a woman? Ferrante posed that question, partly to herself, thirteen years ago, in an interview with the Italian magazine Io Donna. She had not yet published her Neapolitan quartet, an epic bildungsroman in four volumes, narrated by a writer named Elena, which has sold some sixteen million copies. But her earlier novels—“Troubling Love,” “Days of Abandonment,” and “The Lost Daughter,” a triptych of stories about women in extremis—were a preview of her power. This body of work defies the conventions of writing “like a woman” as radically as did Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”
In “Days of Abandonment” (2002), the narrator, Olga, who once had literary ambitions but shelved them when she married and had children, answers her author’s question. “To write truly,” she reflects, “is to speak from the depths of the maternal womb.” Ferrante has an attunement to her characters that one might call maternal, yet she accepts no constraints on what a female can say, and, more fundamentally, on what she can feel. Her fiction rattles the cage of gender.
Interviews suggest that Ferrante found her vocation on the late side, around forty. Nothing verifiable is known about her youth, but, she told Io Donna, “I learned to write by reading mainly works by men.” Their heroines (she specifies Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, and Chekhov’s lady with a little dog) engaged her more fully, she said, and seemed more like “real women” than did the female protagonists of women novelists.
There are writers of her sex whom Ferrante admires—Elsa Morante and Virginia Woolf among them. Those who disappoint her appear to have a common failing. “I always read stories by women with trepidation,” she told another Italian magazine. “I expect something that seemed unsayable to appear miraculously on the page.” The unsayable is either what you may not say, because of who you are, or what you cannot admit, because you have internalized a taboo.
Ferrante’s style is blunt—at times even careless—as if she were deliberately rejecting centuries of preciosity in women’s prose. “When I write, it’s as if I were butchering eels,” she told Io Donna. “I pay little attention to the unpleasantness of the operation.” The word “revulsion” recurs so often in her pages that it is almost a tic. She revels in descriptions of incontinence: leaking tampons and spastic ejaculations. Women novelists before her have seethed at the benevolence expected of them—the Brontë sisters are a notable example. But Ferrante is a brawler, not a seether. She co-opts the pugnacity of a male voice to express the unsayable about female dilemmas, and this belligerence feels revolutionary.
A Ferrante novel typically begins with the violent rupture of a primal attachment, and a woman’s discovery of how enslaved she has been to it. Delia, in “Troubling Love” (1992), is unhinged by her mother’s apparent suicide. Olga becomes deranged when her husband deserts her for a younger woman. Elena learns, in the opening pages of “My Brilliant Friend” (2011), the quartet’s first volume, that her best friend from childhood has abandoned her, after sixty years, by vanishing without a trace. Parents, children, and men back these women into corners, from which they lash out—sometimes viciously. But they are, above all, caged in their own bodies, taut to bursting with rage and shame. Ferrante perceives their claustrophobia as a conflict between their imperative desires and those of others, to whom their identity is beholden. In that respect, they are not unlike Shelley’s monster.
There is a vast bibliography of analytic theory on this subject, much of it dating to the nineteen-seventies, when it electrified the young feminists of Ferrante’s generation, and she has acknowledged its influence. The theory situated the roots of misogyny in an infant’s conflicting impulses toward a mother’s body: to devour, penetrate, and possess; to be cherished, mastered, and contained. Only later are these desires rigidly classified as male or female. Most cultures can’t tolerate the ambiguity for long. A boy is socialized to suppress his “female” yearnings, and is rewarded for it with the prestige of maleness; a girl’s reward for surrendering to passivity is male approval. At their most unforgiving, these asymmetries help to sustain archaic patriarchies like that of Ferrante’s Naples.
Male authors may have taught Ferrante to write, but none of them grew up as a girl. “A secret cord that can’t be cut binds us to the bodies of our mothers,” she wrote in a newspaper column. “There is no way to detach ourselves, or at least I’ve never managed to.” But there is a way. Ferrante suggested it, cryptically, in response to a question about Olga’s battles with her daughter: they lead her to accept her child’s “hostile love as a vital feeling.” Hostile love is also vital to literature. The characters who seem most “real” to us were created by a writer unafraid of its contradictions.
Freud defines “the uncanny” as the terror of what is most familiar—what frightens us most about home, even as it compels us to return there. The Naples of Ferrante’s work has precisely this gothic allure. The city is a mother’s body, pungent and labyrinthine, loathsome and beloved, from which she cannot detach herself. It was there that I first read Ferrante in Italian.
Italians have been notably less smitten with Ferrante than her foreign fans have. They are famously pious about maternity, and Ferrante’s narrators tend to be bad mothers who are emancipated by their neglect. Reading her in English isn’t the same experience. Ann Goldstein has translated all of Ferrante’s work, and many bilingual readers feel that she has improved the prose. It may not be a coincidence that Ferrante has called translators her “only heroes.” Translation, she wrote recently, “draws us out of the well in which, entirely by chance, we are born.” Goldstein has nearly perfect pitch for Ferrante’s voice, yet it has an accent on the page that English cannot quite capture, which is itself the echo of another language—the harsh, often obscene dialect of Campania. Ferrante balks at using dialect explicitly, yet her prose bears its imprint like the welt marks of a slap.
Ferrante’s early novels are rooted in the notion that primal attachments shape the way that human beings dominate and submit to one another. In the quartet, she gives that premise a vivid embodiment in the hostile love—empowering and subversive, jealous and reverent, steadfast and treacherous—between two friends whom we meet as girls of eight, in the slum where they were born, and follow for six decades, through the upheavals of postwar Italian society. Elena Greco and Raffaella Cerullo (Lenù and Lila) seem fated from the outset to become their mothers—weary drudges brutalized by their men, who wreak that violence on their daughters, if not by blows then by disparagement. In that respect, each of them has been invisible to herself until her friend gives her the gift of being seen.
Lila, a self-taught prodigy, will make her fortune as a pioneer of computer technology, but not before an abusive teen-age marriage cuts short her education. She survives a hellish interlude in a sausage factory, which engages her in the violent class struggles that polarized Italy in the seventies. Her life is a series of insurrections against male despotism, beginning with her father’s. Just as she threw rocks at the local boys who tried to bully her, she rebels against the institutions that do the same: daughterhood, wifehood, maternity, capitalism, the Camorra (Naples’s Mafia). Not even love can hold Lila fast. She understands it as a form of martyrdom like all the others. When she disappears, leaving her best friend bereft, it isn’t a surprise to Lenù: that is how Lila has always lived, beholden to no one.
Elena lacks Lila’s courage for sacrilege; she is a female version of Balzac’s provincial strivers, whose climb out of poverty is enabled by a vigilant false self and a talent for ingratiation. Decades pass, and she matures into a sexually liberated intellectual who juggles motherhood and a career. Her books on working-class Naples, appropriated from Lila’s hardships, make her a famous writer. But whenever the story shifts away from Lila it loses a mythic dimension and becomes something more ordinary: a bourgeois novel.


newyorker--2020-08-24--“To Antigone, a Dispatch,” by Valzhyna Mort

Antigone , dead siblings are set .
As for the living , pick me for a sister .
Landlady , I make the rounds of graves keeping up my family ’ s topnotch properties .
On a torture instrument called an accordion I stretch my fingers into those of a witch .
My guts have been emptied like bellows for the best sound .
Once we settle your brother , I ’ ll show you forests of the unburied dead .
We ’ ll clean the way only two sisters can clean a house : no bones scattered like dirty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of kneecaps .
Why bicker with husbands about dishes when we ’ ve got mountains of skulls to shine ?
Brought up by dolls and monuments , I have the bearings of a horse and a bitch , I ’ m waterproof , I ’ m cement in tears .
You can spot my graves from afar , marble like newborn skin .
Here , history comes to an end like a movie with rolling credits of headstones , Every ditch , every hill is suspect .
Pick me for a sister , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have a bright shovel of a face .

Audio: Read by the author.
Antigone, dead siblings
are set. As for the living,
pick me for a sister.
I, too, love a proper funeral.
Drag, Dig, and Sisters’ Pop-Up Burial.
Landlady,
I make the rounds of graves
keeping up my family’s
topnotch properties.
On a torture instrument
called an accordion
I stretch my fingers
into those of a witch.
My guts have been emptied
like bellows
for the best sound.
Once we settle your brother,
I’ll show you forests
of the unburied dead.
We’ll clean the way only two sisters
can clean a house:
no bones scattered like dirty socks,
no ashes at the bottom of kneecaps.
Why bicker with husbands about dishes
when we’ve got mountains of skulls to shine?
Labor and retribution we’ll share, not girly secrets.
Brought up by dolls and monuments,
I have the bearings of a horse and a bitch,
I’m waterproof,
I’m cement in tears.
You can spot my graves from afar,
marble like newborn skin.
Here, history comes to an end
like a movie
with rolling credits of headstones,
like a movie
with nameless credits of mass graves.
Every ditch, every hill is suspect.
Pick me for a sister, Antigone.
In this suspicious land
I have a bright shovel of a face.