newyorker--2020-08-31--Is Staying In Staying Safe?

Is Staying In Staying Safe?

Porcupines like to live alone , but in winter they sometimes hole up in long-snouted little gangs inside hollow trees and logs , in cavities made by cracks in boulders , beneath piles of brush , or under your front porch , as sneaky as thieves .
A gang of porcupines is called , magnificently , a prickle .
They hardly ever venture out .
Inside , in the damp and ratty dark , fallen-out quills carpet the floor .
In spring , female porcupines raise their babies in those dens .
A baby porcupine is called a porcupette .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a porcupine den , but I humbly propose calling it a quiver , except when it ’ s a nursery ; then it ’ s a pokey .
The animal kingdom is a densely settled city-state of hives , burrows , lairs , nests , webs , caves , pits , and dens .
Lodgings come in all sizes and for every length of stay , no security deposit required , from a grotty single bed for the night to fancy permanent quarters for a colony .
Quivers are , generally , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ order of mammals that are , as a rule , unkempt .
The celebrated insouciance of the honey badger , a weasel , is nothing to the equanimity of the porcupine .
Porcupines are fully armed , near-blind , and imperturbable .
They leave their scat outside their front door , piling up .
They don ’ t care who sniffs them out .
Maine , New Hampshire , and Vermont used to offer bounties to hunters , fifty cents a snout , forty cents for a pair of ears , twenty-five cents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since that practice ended , decades ago , porcupines have had few predators , aside from the sort of dog that ’ s too dunderheaded to know any better , which , I confess , forlornly , describes every cur of my acquaintance .
Porcupines , in their dens , aren ’ t really hiding ; they ’ re just staying snug , in homes they haven ’ t so much built as come by , like squatters , or Goldilocks , or Airbnbers , lovers of the great indoors .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ admirable architect is the beaver .
Beavers build lodges out of sticks and mud , complete with ventilation and underground entrances .
Domesticated animals live in houses built by people ( etymologically , that ’ s what it means to be domesticated ) , from cow barns to pigpens .
One reason some people don ’ t eat meat is that on big farms animals are forced to spend so much time crowded together indoors .
Factory-farmed chickens , raised in giant sheds stacked with thousands of cages—ten to a cage the size @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have room to spread their wings , and most spend every last , miserable moment of their lives inside .
That only started in the nineteen-fifties , and , recently , lots of people have been going back to raising their own chickens .
Since the quarantine , there has been a rush on chicks and back-yard coops .
( Enthusiasts who have never met a hen are well advised to read Betty MacDonald ’ s 1945 memoir , “ The Egg and I , ” in which she recounts , “ By @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hated everything about the chicken but the egg.
” ) A D.I.Y .
coop consists of a roof , a roost , and nesting boxes .
Translucent roofing is recommended , the idea , apparently , being that if chickens can see the sky they ’ ll forget that they ’ re indoors .
Chickens like to roost inside at night , but among the many reasons for letting them out during the day is that otherwise they might peck one another to death .
That ’ s what it means to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chickens polli ruspanti .
A wandering chicken is a happy chicken .
People are no longer ruspante .
We build lean-tos and huts and shanties and houses and motels and condominiums and apartment buildings .
Lately , we ’ ve been stuck in them , like a prickle in a quiver , chickens in a coop , bears in a den , waiting out our desolate hibernation .
Even before the quarantine , Americans and Europeans spent about ninety per cent of their time indoors , as Joseph G. Allen and John D. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity ” ( Harvard ) .
Homes , cars , prisons , schools , buses , factories , trains , airplanes , offices , museums , hospitals , stores , restaurants : how much of your life have you spent indoors , not counting the quarantine ?
Multiply your age by 0.9 .
If you ’ re forty , you ’ ve spent thirty-six of your years indoors .
About a third of that is time spent sleeping , but still .
Most humans who live @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more time indoors than some species of whale spend underwater .
It may be that the minutes you spent walking to and from the subway on a Tuesday in January tallied up to fewer minutes than a whale spent on the surface , filling its lungs , that same day .
This trend won ’ t reverse itself after the pandemic ends .
“ Unlike the outdoor world , the indoor world is expanding , ” the journalist Emily Anthes reports , in “ The Great Indoors : The Surprising Science of How @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Happiness ” ( Farrar , Straus & Giroux ) .
“ Over the next forty years , the United Nations estimates , the total amount of indoor square footage will roughly double worldwide.
” Nevertheless , the indoors is the poor stepchild of the outdoors , at least in terms of environmental activism and regulation .
Staying indoors , long before our present woes , was not always and not even very often a choice , including for schoolchildren , prisoners , factory and office workers , and hospital patients .
Entire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , China issued “ stay indoors ” warnings for seventy-nine cities , owing to air pollution .
And from Los Angeles to Shanghai air quality has sometimes been so bad that the elderly are advised to stay inside , and , at schools , recess is cancelled .
But how much better is it behind closed doors ?
For all the attention paid to outdoor pollution , Allen and Macomber point out , most people experience outdoor pollution while they ’ re inside—it seeps in—and yet the indoor environment , which produces its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few rules .
Allen teaches at Harvard ’ s T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Macomber teaches at Harvard Business School .
Lately , they ’ ve been preparing reports and providing advice on whether and how to safely reopen schools .
“ Healthy Buildings ” advises businesses about how to make their buildings more salubrious , on the back of the investor-directed argument that healthier buildings make for more productive employees and more profitable companies .
One report from Allen ’ s lab , “ The 9 Foundations of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over air quality , dust and pests , lighting and views , moisture , noise , safety and security , thermal health , ventilation , and water quality .
Allen and Macomber want to establish national standards , and they make a series of precise and persuasive recommendations for everything from insulation and window shades to water filters and vacuum cleaners .
Given that most pollution is produced by the burning of fossil fuels , and that climate change is a major force in driving people indoors ( where they still get sick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , Allen and Macomber also extoll the green-building movement .
One study they cite shows that in six countries within the span of twenty years , green buildings , compared with their non-green counterparts , averted fifty-four thousand respiratory symptoms , twenty-one thousand lost days of work , sixteen thousand lost days of school , eleven thousand asthma exacerbations , up to four hundred and five premature deaths , and two hundred and fifty-six hospital admissions , a savings that amounted to “ $ 4 billion in health and climate co-benefits , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in energy savings , for a total benefit of $ 10.7 billion.
” ( Better ventilation uses more energy , but they insist that this is offset by the energy savings of green-building practices . )
Still , “ Healthy Buildings ” also offers a vision of the future that many readers will find disturbing :

It costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in. . . . A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
It is hard living with masks and scarcely ever touching anyone. But, reading these books, you begin to see how methods of separation are likely to proliferate, in the form of products and practices being sold not to stop a pandemic but to sell panic, for profit. Is it too late to avoid a world where only the poor go outdoors while the rich live in zones of personalized indoor health, each with its own temperature and moisture controls, earbuds and light visors and HEPA filters, its own customized light-diffusing curtains and dust-catching doormat? Will there be no room left by the postpandemic threshold for a cheap, recycled rubber, one-size-fits-all WELCOME mat?
Having a roof over your head is one thing: a home is a human right. Living almost entirely indoors is something else. The Great Confinement varies by place and by wealth, and, historically, it’s new. “Over several millennia, humans have evolved from an outdoor species into an indoor one,” Allen and Macomber write. Citing E. O. Wilson, they explain, “We evolved in the African savannah’s wide-open expanses, intimate with nature and seeking protection under tree canopies,” and so “our genetic hardwiring, built over millennia, still craves that connection to nature.” To satisfy this craving, photographs of redwoods adorn hospital waiting rooms; you can pop into the Grand Canyon via Zoom. I used to think these dodges were better than nothing, but I’ve changed my mind. Zoom is usually not better than nothing.
Velux, a Danish company, calls the twenty-first-century human being the Indoor Generation, and ascribes a plague of depression and disease to the stuffiness and dampness and mold and darkness of living indoors. (The company sells skylights, the kind of thing you’re supposed to put in chicken coops to stop your chickens from going stir-crazy.) Its Web site features a spooky, M. Night Shyamalan-style video of a pale and sickly little girl explaining, “It all started the day we left nature behind.” We feathered our nests, with espresso machines and flat-screen televisions and Spotify. “Our homes became places you would never want to leave,” the girl says, the shadows under her eyes grown darker. “But we had closed ourselves in, to a point where nothing could get out.” We started getting sick. Itchy, cough-y, sleepless. “Many of us even started to feel sad.” And that was in the beforetime.
Benjamin Franklin, who was forever advising his friends to crack their windows open, would have agreed. “It has been a great Mistake, the Sleeping in Rooms exactly clos’d and in Beds surrounded by Curtains,” he wrote to a lady friend. At the time, this went against the advice of much medical thought and many books of learning, some dating to the plague years of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For the many who believed disease to be caused by miasmas, the best solution was to keep “bad air” out. Even Franklin had succumbed to the prejudice that he called “Aerophobia,” “and clos’d with extreme Care every Crevice in the Rooms I inhabited,” he recalled. But “experience has convinced me of my Error,” he explained. Shutting up the sick made sense in order to keep them from infecting other people, but shutting them up from the outdoors often only made them sicker.
During and after the yellow-fever epidemics of the seventeen-nineties (five thousand people died in Philadelphia, then the U.S. capital, in 1793 alone), doctors and scientists, observing the patterns of diseases in cities, began studying the relationship between housing density and epidemics, with many subscribing to a contagion theory of disease. Cities installed public water and sanitation systems, and also designed parks, to encourage people to spend more time outdoors, in fresh air and sunlight. Living indoors itself became a sign of disease. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” published in 1839, is an indictment of medieval architecture. The narrator, on arriving at Usher’s house, notices that “dark draperies hung upon the walls,” and that it was impossible even to open the windows: “The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within.” In a vault inside that building, Usher seals his sickly sister in a coffin, unaware that she is still alive.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, American cities like Denver and Phoenix and rural resorts in states like Montana boasted that they offered, along with fresh air and sunlight, relief from such diseases as asthma, hay fever, and tuberculosis, as the historian Sara Jensen Carr explains in “The Topography of Wellness,” a dissertation that will be published as a book next year. Informed by the British Garden City movement, which urged the setting aside of green space, cities across the country planted trees. A promotional tract for Santa Barbara, published in 1878, promised a change from the consumptive conditions in cities: “The absence of sunlight is a frightful cause of the prevalence of the disease. The streets are so narrow and the houses so high that sunlight seldom reaches the sitting rooms. The schoolhouses are so situated that children can scarcely ever see the sun.” In much the same spirit, Victorian-era builders added “sleeping porches” to the backs of houses (sleeping outdoors was thought to prevent tuberculosis), and hospitals, schools, and asylums were built on rural estates, where inmates might be encouraged, or required, to grow their own food, at places like Vermont’s Brattleboro Retreat.
Much of the reform of hospitals came at the direction of Florence Nightingale, who argued that “to shut up your patients tight in artificially warmed air is to bake them in a slow oven.” She also advocated windows, for the sake of light. But, Anthes reports, these reforms didn’t last: “As germ theory and the concept of antisepsis gained ground, hospitals sealed themselves off from the natural world, relying on antibiotics and chemical disinfection, rather than sunlight and fresh air, to reduce the spread of disease.”
Carr states the nature of this reversal more baldly. Where “miasma was an affliction of the public realm and consequently encouraged an era of social ethics and responsibility,” the advent of germ theory “suddenly shifted the burden of health from the external to the internal, and more implicitly, from the state to the individual.” In the age of the microbe and the antiseptic, “health became the burden of the individual, associated with personal exposure and responsibility.” Instead of addressing the urban pollution caused by automobiles, architects built skyscrapers set back from the smell of the street. Le Corbusier, in “The Radiant City” (1933), advocated replacing the actual (i.e., pestilential) street with streetlike features inside buildings—corridors and hallways and elevators—and treating inhabitants with doses of light and air. Postwar white flight and concern about urban “blight” led to suburban sprawl. Later, New Urbanists celebrated cities for their “walkability.” More recently, architects have been engaged in “active design,” trying to encourage, for instance, the use of stairs, by making stairwells wider and more brightly lit, and piping music into them, while making elevators slower.
If “industry” was the watchword of building design in the nineteenth century, and “efficiency” the watchword in much of the twentieth, “wellness” has been the watchword of the twenty-first century. Wellness is a swindle. Many of the architectural experiments chronicled and the building-design reforms advocated in “The Great Indoors” and “Healthy Buildings” advance an anti-universal, hyper-individualized medical model, in which architecture is seen as therapeutic, building by building and person by person. Allen and Macomber date the origin of their field to the nineteen-eighties, when people began talking about “sick building syndrome,” defined in the dictionary as “a set of symptoms (such as headache, fatigue, and eye irritation) typically affecting workers in modern airtight office buildings that is believed to be caused by indoor pollutants (such as formaldehyde fumes or microorganisms).” Anthes, who describes herself as “unapologetically indoorsy,” embraces the possibility of building design as a cure-all: “The promise of improving our health and extending our life spans, even just a little, without ever leaving the house? Well, I found that idea irresistible.” She visits schools and apartment buildings specially designed to address aging, obesity, and depression. She gamely reports on smart offices and smart homes and floating cities and proposed villages on the moon and the new field of “indoor ecology” (the study of subjects like the mites to be found in your pillow). “The more I read about the world of indoor microbes, the more I found myself obsessing over my own invisible roommates. I contemplated fungi as I cooked, bacteria as I bathed,” she writes. “I began to feel like a stranger in my own home, humbled by how little I knew about what was happening under my roof.” The recommendations of that research? “Open a window. Get a dog.”
Building design is also increasingly driven by personal data, collected and held as a commodity, and used to improve business performance and productivity. Ethical objections to this type of data collection, suspended during the pandemic, are unlikely to recover their strength when it’s over, which means that, if you ever go back to the office, you may be monitored in ways you used to consider a violation of your rights. Anthes profiles an analytics company called Humanyze, which “makes software and hardware that enables companies to analyze their employees’ digital and in-person interactions.” Among its products is the “sociometric badge,” which is worn on a lanyard around your neck, and can detect conversations between two co-workers. The badge “contains a microphone, an accelerometer, and Bluetooth and infrared sensors, which can track the badge-wearer’s location as well as the direction that he or she is facing,” she writes. “When two badge-wearers are in close proximity, facing each other and engaged in an alternating pattern of speaking, they’re probably having a chat.” Humanyze uses the data gathered on its badges to produce reports for its clients. It has suggested, for instance, that people who sit near one another in an office are more likely to have face-to-face conversations than those who sit at a distance from one another, and made recommendations for the division of departments between floors and the size of lunch tables. More recently, the company’s president has been writing about how working remotely has reminded many of us of the importance of all those casual office interactions that we took for granted, and now sorely miss. A sociometric badge sounds terrible to me. But a lunch table sounds so good.
Anthes also recounts the work of Daniel Davis, “WeWork’s slight and stylish director of research,” who uses his company’s data to fix office problems. A Washington, D.C., WeWork featured a “funky, bright yellow wallpaper” that elicited a lot of negative comments, perhaps even from readers of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” about a woman whose husband, a physician, hopes to make her well but instead drives her insane by locking her in a yellow-papered room. (“The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.”) Anthes reports: “Armed with that Feedback, WeWork can switch out or paint over that wallpaper and make a note not to use it again.” (Currently, WeWork appears to be on the verge of bankruptcy.) The woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” peels it all off with her bare hands.
Are better-designed buildings the solution to all that ails the Indoor Generation? The wellness model is not without its critics, who include Giovanna Borasi and Mirko Zardini, the curators of a 2011 exhibit at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, in Montreal, and the editors of an accompanying book of essays, called “Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture.” “An ever increasing number of urban, environmental and architectural problems are treated as medical, and remedies are sought for increasingly specific solutions,” Borasi and Zardini write. “Tailoring requirements to particular groups of ill, or presumably ill individuals leads to conflicting, contradictory solutions, and finally to even greater segregation of various demographic groups.” Fighting disease is a public-health crusade; leading a healthier life is, very often, a private one. Or, rather, it was. It isn’t anymore.
A pandemic upends everything, including the relationship between the private and the public, the rich and the poor, the city and the country, and the outdoors and the indoors. The coronavirus acts like a miasma and a germ, all at once. It’s in the air, it’s on surfaces, it’s inside us. There is nothing so wild as a virus and yet no creature so relentless in its search for a home, no matter how unwelcoming the host. Meanwhile, living indoors all the time is driving people crazy, staring at the wallpaper, peering out windows, craving nature, and one another, whimpering and howling inside.
No one knows for certain where the COVID-19 virus came from, but one murky, unconfirmed theory has it that a pangolin, dragged from its den, caught in a snare, or tracked by a dog, contracted the virus from a live bat, a winged mammal that sleeps, upside down, in places where even the days are dark: chimneys, caverns, crevices in rocks. A colony of bats is sometimes called a camp, as if they’d pitched tents. Pangolins are anteaters, nocturnal and reclusive; scaly, long-snouted, near-blind, and solitary, they are not altogether unlike porcupines. Their scales protect them from stings and bites, and when a lion or a tiger comes near they curl up into a ball, like a prickly burr. Females give birth in dens; pangolin babies cling to their mothers’ tails with their sharp-clawed, five-toed paws, much the way a koala joey clutches its mother’s shoulders. Before China shut down the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, in Wuhan Province, in January, a wildlife section there sold live porcupines, beavers, snakes, badgers, and, possibly, pangolins. Maybe a pangolin, or some other wild animal, contracted the virus from a bat in that market, where peddlers stacked all sorts of animals in cages, cramped, wretched, filthy, desperate, in stall after stall, as if they had built a little city, half outdoors, half indoors, a mayhem. ♦
More on the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-08-31--“The Couple,” by Jane Shore

“The Couple,” by Jane Shore

Jay and Linda moved to Plateau Road and brought with them a pair of horses : old Kahlua and his longtime mare .
When her heart failed suddenly , Kahlua— a paint the color of the Mexican liqueur and swaybacked like a hammock— went on a hunger strike .
Fearing that he might die from loneliness , Jay and Linda heard about a donkey housed unhappily an hour north , whose spouse likewise had died .
Donkeys are stoic , disguising their pain , and we know grief is pain .
They hauled him home , installed him in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could get along , the Odd Couple of Central Vermont .
Nickolai , a Slavic name , means “ victorious ; conqueror of the people , ” and , if that ’ s so , he ’ s won us over , my husband and me , Jody and David , Cathy and Eric , and other long-marrieds of Peck Hill Road .
Driving to town for groceries and gas , I shift my Subaru into neutral to admire our two old bachelor uncles free-ranging along the electric fence .
Their partnership so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fur , mottled gray and white like burnout velvet , gets waterlogged when it rains ; Kahlua ’ s is waterproof .
Nickolai ’ s lovely floppy donkey ears are much larger than Kahlua ’ s , and he has a stiffer mane ; his bray is not Kahlua ’ s pleasant whinny— his hee-haws , like a wheezing accordion , reverberate off our bedroom walls .
I once saw Kahlua bare his teeth , like Mr. Ed , the TV horse who could talk .
But they say that donkeys are more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dogs .
So it ’ s easy to forget that he ’ s a jackass— confined to the barn all freezing winter , tired of nipping at Kahlua ’ s flanks , he stomped Jay ’ s pet rabbit to death .
From afar , you can not tell which one ’ s the boss , albeit equal on the equine scale .
On days when it isn ’ t thundering , you ’ ll find them both civilly ensconced , silhouettes grazing against the sunset , the moon rising over Max Gray @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or tail to head , their long tails ticking metronomes , flicking flies away from the other ’ s eyes , their warm sides barely touching .
Facing opposite directions , they ’ ll age in place , bickering , companionable— a photo on a country calendar .

Audio: Read by the author.
Jay and Linda moved to Plateau Road
and brought with them a pair of horses:
old Kahlua and his longtime mare.
When her heart failed suddenly, Kahlua—
a paint the color of the Mexican liqueur
and swaybacked like a hammock—
went on a hunger strike. Fearing
that he might die from loneliness,
Jay and Linda heard about a donkey
housed unhappily an hour north,
whose spouse likewise had died.
Donkeys are stoic, disguising their pain,
and we know grief is pain. They hauled
him home, installed him in the barn,
to see if the widowers could get along,
the Odd Couple of Central Vermont.
Nickolai, a Slavic name, means “victorious;
conqueror of the people,” and, if that’s so,
he’s won us over, my husband and me,
Jody and David, Cathy and Eric, and other
long-marrieds of Peck Hill Road.
Driving to town for groceries and gas,
I shift my Subaru into neutral
to admire our two old bachelor uncles
free-ranging along the electric fence.
Their partnership so far so good.
Nickolai’s fur, mottled gray and white
like burnout velvet, gets waterlogged
when it rains; Kahlua’s is waterproof.
Nickolai’s lovely floppy donkey ears
are much larger than Kahlua’s,
and he has a stiffer mane; his bray
is not Kahlua’s pleasant whinny—
his hee-haws, like a wheezing accordion,
reverberate off our bedroom walls.
I once saw Kahlua bare his teeth,
like Mr. Ed, the TV horse who could talk.
But they say that donkeys are more personable
than horses. More affectionate than dogs.
So it’s easy to forget that he’s a jackass—
confined to the barn all freezing winter,
tired of nipping at Kahlua’s flanks,
he stomped Jay’s pet rabbit to death.
From afar, you cannot tell which one’s
the boss, albeit equal on the equine scale.
On days when it isn’t thundering,
you’ll find them both civilly ensconced,
silhouettes grazing against the sunset,
the moon rising over Max Gray Road.
They stand head to tail, or tail to head,
their long tails ticking metronomes,
flicking flies away from the other’s eyes,
their warm sides barely touching.
Facing opposite directions, they’ll
age in place, bickering, companionable—
a photo on a country calendar.


newyorker--2020-08-31--“Basho & Mandela,”  by Juan Felipe Herrera

As Basho has said — it is a narrow road to the Deep North — as Mandela has said the @ @ @ @ @ well-orchestrated segregation — as Basho has said the journey began with an attained awareness that @ @ @ @ @ become a weather-exposed skeleton — think of us in this manner these are notes for @ @ @ @ @ as bowls of kindness from journeys of bravery the will to seek & find the @ @ @ @ @ dawn-eyed

Audio: Read by the author.
As Basho has said —
it is a narrow road to the Deep North — as Mandela has said
the haphazard segregation later became a well-orchestrated
segregation
— as Basho has said the journey began with an attained
awareness
that at any moment you can become a weather-exposed skeleton
— think of us in this manner
these are notes for your nourishment — hold them
as bowls of kindness
from journeys of bravery
the will to seek & find the sudden turning rivers & the dawn-eyed
freedom


newyorker--2020-08-31--“We Can Solve Our Own Problems”: A Vision of Minneapolis Without Police

When the Minneapolis City Council pledged “ to end policing as we know it , ” the announcement was made at Powderhorn Park , on the south side of the city , just blocks from where George Floyd was killed by local officers in May .
Many people wondered what , exactly , an alternative to policing would look like .
That question is being answered at the park , too .
Every night , volunteers patrol the area , where , in the months since Floyd ’ s death , there has been an uptick in shootings and break-ins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pact not to call the police .
Pouya Najmaie , a forty-six-year-old environmental lobbyist , is one of the founders of the patrol , called the Powderhorn Safety Collective , which has around forty active members .
“ We can solve our own problems , ” Najmaie said .
“ We don ’ t have to bring the police in here.
” For example , he said , the collective recently helped a woman get away from a man who had been stalking and threatening her .
Some of the calls have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a tip about a suspicious vehicle with no plates , and five Black teen-agers were seen getting out of the car .
The collective made the decision to stand down .
Najmaie explained that , although the car had possibly been stolen , they couldn ’ t trust the police to handle the situation without escalating it .
“ That ’ s one of our principles , ” he said .
“ Life over property.
” The other night , at the start of the 11 p.m. shift , a few volunteers dressed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can in an alley near the park ’ s entrance .
On top of the can was a container filled with treats—Hostess cupcakes , cookies—left out for the team by a sympathetic neighbor .
“ I feel like a raccoon every time we do this , ” Gaea Dill-D ’ Ascoli , a thirty-five-year-old artist who wore her hair in French braids , said , as she grabbed a Nutter Butter .
Dill-D ’ Ascoli , Najmaie , and another volunteer , T. A. Tracanna , were the “ surveyors ” that night @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” would alert them to any activity in the neighborhood and direct them where to go .
( They use Discord servers and WhatsApp channels to communicate ; there are more than eleven hundred users on a community server that was made in the days after Floyd ’ s death . )
Dill-D ’ Ascoli rode a teal bicycle ; Najmaie and Tracanna crossed the park on foot .
They headed toward the area known as George Floyd Square , which was barricaded by protesters in late May and is open only to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he said that he had heard about someone getting shot nearby .
“ Did you see something on Discord ?
” Najmaie asked .
“ No , it was something on Citizen ” —a crime-reporting app—the bicyclist said .
Dill-D ’ Ascoli rode ahead to scout out the area .
“ The idea is to get eyes on what ’ s going on , to be witnesses in case the police show up and something happens , ” Najmaie said .
“ Jamar Clark was killed during one of those incidents.
” There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ call 911 .
Some volunteers are nurses and medics , and many of the patrollers carry first-aid kits , but in the case of a medical emergency the protocol is to phone for help , even if it means that the police will come .
( “ We don ’ t want to take responsibility for someone who ’ s , like , ‘ That ’ s not what I wanted you to do with my life !
’ ” Najmaie said . )
The group is undecided on what to do in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arisen yet—but Najmaie is wary of members ’ engaging in physical force : “ It ’ s a Rubicon to cross—you know , a whole other ballgame.
” A stream of gunshots rang out .
“ That almost sounded like a semi-automatic , ” Najmaie said .
Moments later , the bicyclist returned , saying shots had been fired at the corner of Thirty-fifth and Chicago .
“ It doesn ’ t feel like it ’ s over , ” he warned .
Najmaie put his phone up to his face and relayed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Zello , an app that simulates radio communications .
“ Be safe , ” Najmaie said to the bicyclist , as he and Tracanna went to investigate .
“ Yeah , I ’ m part of the block crew up in my hood , ” he responded , riding away .
Najmaie and Tracanna passed a small candlelit tribute on the sidewalk .
“ I wonder if it has to do with this memorial up here , for a seventeen-year-old Latinx kid that was murdered , ” Najmaie mused .
He received a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ block over , a group of teen-agers had been spotted running .
A young Latino man in jeans and a gray sweatshirt emerged from a nearby alley .
“ Have you seen my boys ?
” he asked , as he walked past .
Najmaie pointed east , adding , “ If someone ’ s hurt , let us know , we ’ ve got med kits with us , O.K .
?
” “ Awesome , ” the man replied , signing a grateful gesture with his free hand .
He kept @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the outline of a gun bulged .
Dill-D ’ Ascoli , who had watched the encounter from a few blocks away , radioed Najmaie : “ I think that guy was looking for them , not with them.
” The bicyclist , looping back around , said that it had looked to him as though the kids were being chased .
“ Oh , ” Najmaie said , bewildered .
“ Well , that ’ s fucked up.
” The group headed east .
Dill-D ’ Ascoli rode parallel to the other volunteers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eyed the armed man from a distance .
“ He ’ s cool , ” Tracanna said .
“ He ’ s just doing his thing.
” They lingered for a while , but the man didn ’ t seem to be up to anything .
Eventually , they moved on .
As the night wound down , a slow-moving squad car rolled by—a rare sight these days .
( According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune , cops have referred to George Floyd Square and the surrounding area as a “ no-go zone.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that were carrying guns , the cops , like , creeping around still make me more nervous , ” Tracanna said , with a laugh .
Everyone agreed .
♦

When the Minneapolis City Council pledged “to end policing as we know it,” the announcement was made at Powderhorn Park, on the south side of the city, just blocks from where George Floyd was killed by local officers in May. Many people wondered what, exactly, an alternative to policing would look like. That question is being answered at the park, too. Every night, volunteers patrol the area, where, in the months since Floyd’s death, there has been an uptick in shootings and break-ins, and residents have made an informal pact not to call the police. Pouya Najmaie, a forty-six-year-old environmental lobbyist, is one of the founders of the patrol, called the Powderhorn Safety Collective, which has around forty active members. “We can solve our own problems,” Najmaie said. “We don’t have to bring the police in here.” For example, he said, the collective recently helped a woman get away from a man who had been stalking and threatening her.
Some of the calls have been trickier. Last week, volunteers got a tip about a suspicious vehicle with no plates, and five Black teen-agers were seen getting out of the car. The collective made the decision to stand down. Najmaie explained that, although the car had possibly been stolen, they couldn’t trust the police to handle the situation without escalating it. “That’s one of our principles,” he said. “Life over property.”
The other night, at the start of the 11 p.m. shift, a few volunteers dressed in reflective vests headed toward a trash can in an alley near the park’s entrance. On top of the can was a container filled with treats—Hostess cupcakes, cookies—left out for the team by a sympathetic neighbor. “I feel like a raccoon every time we do this,” Gaea Dill-D’Ascoli, a thirty-five-year-old artist who wore her hair in French braids, said, as she grabbed a Nutter Butter. Dill-D’Ascoli, Najmaie, and another volunteer, T. A. Tracanna, were the “surveyors” that night; others who volunteered as “dispatchers” would alert them to any activity in the neighborhood and direct them where to go. (They use Discord servers and WhatsApp channels to communicate; there are more than eleven hundred users on a community server that was made in the days after Floyd’s death.) Dill-D’Ascoli rode a teal bicycle; Najmaie and Tracanna crossed the park on foot. They headed toward the area known as George Floyd Square, which was barricaded by protesters in late May and is open only to pedestrians. A bicyclist stopped them; he said that he had heard about someone getting shot nearby. “Did you see something on Discord?” Najmaie asked.
“No, it was something on Citizen”—a crime-reporting app—the bicyclist said. Dill-D’Ascoli rode ahead to scout out the area. “The idea is to get eyes on what’s going on, to be witnesses in case the police show up and something happens,” Najmaie said. “Jamar Clark was killed during one of those incidents.”
There are circumstances under which the collective would call 911. Some volunteers are nurses and medics, and many of the patrollers carry first-aid kits, but in the case of a medical emergency the protocol is to phone for help, even if it means that the police will come. (“We don’t want to take responsibility for someone who’s, like, ‘That’s not what I wanted you to do with my life!’ ” Najmaie said.) The group is undecided on what to do in a violent situation—the issue hasn’t arisen yet—but Najmaie is wary of members’ engaging in physical force: “It’s a Rubicon to cross—you know, a whole other ballgame.”
A stream of gunshots rang out. “That almost sounded like a semi-automatic,” Najmaie said. Moments later, the bicyclist returned, saying shots had been fired at the corner of Thirty-fifth and Chicago. “It doesn’t feel like it’s over,” he warned. Najmaie put his phone up to his face and relayed the news to Dill-D’Ascoli through Zello, an app that simulates radio communications. “Be safe,” Najmaie said to the bicyclist, as he and Tracanna went to investigate.
“Yeah, I’m part of the block crew up in my hood,” he responded, riding away.
Najmaie and Tracanna passed a small candlelit tribute on the sidewalk. “I wonder if it has to do with this memorial up here, for a seventeen-year-old Latinx kid that was murdered,” Najmaie mused. He received a message from Dill-D’Ascoli: one block over, a group of teen-agers had been spotted running. A young Latino man in jeans and a gray sweatshirt emerged from a nearby alley. “Have you seen my boys?” he asked, as he walked past. Najmaie pointed east, adding, “If someone’s hurt, let us know, we’ve got med kits with us, O.K.?”
“Awesome,” the man replied, signing a grateful gesture with his free hand. He kept the other in his pocket, where the outline of a gun bulged.
Dill-D’Ascoli, who had watched the encounter from a few blocks away, radioed Najmaie: “I think that guy was looking for them, not with them.” The bicyclist, looping back around, said that it had looked to him as though the kids were being chased. “Oh,” Najmaie said, bewildered. “Well, that’s fucked up.”
The group headed east. Dill-D’Ascoli rode parallel to the other volunteers down a different block, as Najmaie eyed the armed man from a distance. “He’s cool,” Tracanna said. “He’s just doing his thing.” They lingered for a while, but the man didn’t seem to be up to anything. Eventually, they moved on.
As the night wound down, a slow-moving squad car rolled by—a rare sight these days. (According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, cops have referred to George Floyd Square and the surrounding area as a “no-go zone.”) “Even with those people that were carrying guns, the cops, like, creeping around still make me more nervous,” Tracanna said, with a laugh. Everyone agreed. ♦


newyorker--2020-08-31--Susan Choi on How Much She Can Leave Out

Your story in this week ’ s issue , “ Flashlight , ” revolves around a ten-year-old girl , Louisa , who has lived through the trauma of losing a parent .
The adults around her are desperate for her to confront her grief .
Are her resistance and her “ bad ” behavior a defense mechanism against that ?
I think that ’ s fair to say , although I think it might be equally fair to say that , for Louisa , resisting adults and behaving badly have come to seem like perfectly rational responses to a world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the extremity of trauma isn ’ t even a necessary ingredient .
Louisa knows that certain behaviors are labelled “ good , ” others “ bad , ” but—for reasons that may include trauma or that may not—the labels have lost meaning for her .
Do you think the adults have failed Louisa ?
Or is she failing herself ?
That ’ s such a fascinating question .
Right away , it turns into another question for me : Is it even possible for young children to fail themselves ?
I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and power with children and young people .
They do have agency , and the hyper-articulate ones , like Louisa , can sometimes appear to have as much agency as an adult .
But this is still a young child , in the power of others .
I guess that ’ s a long-winded way of saying that I don ’ t think it ’ s possible for Louisa to fail herself .
You—I assume deliberately—don ’ t give us much information at all on the parents .
We don ’ t know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ethnicity they are , what illness has disabled the mother , why she has had no contact with her brother , and so on .
Why leave these perhaps crucial elements out of the story ?
Background information—and how much we really need—is something I think about a lot .
I used to just pile it on , with the feeling that readers could never possibly “ understand ” unless they had all this information—but then where do you stop ?
At some point , reading writers like Jenny Erpenbeck and Alice Munro @ @ @ @ @ @ @ backstory question from the opposite direction : How much can you leave out ?
Now , instead of adding more and more , I keep taking things away , up to the point at which , I hope , the story still has that tensile quality of holding together but nothing extraneous .
Why does Louisa repeatedly deny that her mother is even ill ?
To make you ask that question !
Is her mother really ill ?
Hmm .
.
.
.
The opening scene—the only one in which we see Louisa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tense , even though , chronologically , it predates the rest of the story , which is told in the past tense .
What guided that choice ?
I don ’ t tend to choose which tense I use where ; it just happens , and then I see if it continues to feel right .
With that scene , I wrote it in the present tense without thinking about it , and then the sense of immediacy that the present tense brings was just right for what the scene turned out to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Louisa ’ s life at which she suddenly lost her father .
Louisa can ’ t get perspective on that moment , so it ’ s stuck in the “ present.
” You mentioned that the events of the story take place in the seventies .
Why is it important that it be set then ?
I do like to strip out as much backstory as I can—but that doesn ’ t mean that the backstory doesn ’ t exist .
There ’ s something terrible lurking in the background of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mostly to the late seventies , and that will be revealed more fully if the longer version of this ever comes into focus ( see below ) .
Are you tempted to turn this story into something longer ?
Or is this where we leave Louisa ?
See above !
I ’ ve been wrestling with this material for years , trying to figure out what it wants to be—a short novel , or a long novel , or stories , or one story , or maybe just a bunch of files on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ glad that at least one part of it—this part—has come together .

Photograph by Igor Vidyashev / ZUMA / Alamy
Your story in this week’s issue, “Flashlight,” revolves around a ten-year-old girl, Louisa, who has lived through the trauma of losing a parent. The adults around her are desperate for her to confront her grief. Are her resistance and her “bad” behavior a defense mechanism against that?
I think that’s fair to say, although I think it might be equally fair to say that, for Louisa, resisting adults and behaving badly have come to seem like perfectly rational responses to a world that makes no inherent sense. Perhaps the extremity of trauma isn’t even a necessary ingredient. Louisa knows that certain behaviors are labelled “good,” others “bad,” but—for reasons that may include trauma or that may not—the labels have lost meaning for her.
Do you think the adults have failed Louisa? Or is she failing herself?
That’s such a fascinating question. Right away, it turns into another question for me: Is it even possible for young children to fail themselves? I’m always fascinated by the interplay of agency and power with children and young people. They do have agency, and the hyper-articulate ones, like Louisa, can sometimes appear to have as much agency as an adult. But this is still a young child, in the power of others. I guess that’s a long-winded way of saying that I don’t think it’s possible for Louisa to fail herself.
You—I assume deliberately—don’t give us much information at all on the parents. We don’t know why they were in Japan, what ethnicity they are, what illness has disabled the mother, why she has had no contact with her brother, and so on. Why leave these perhaps crucial elements out of the story?
Background information—and how much we really need—is something I think about a lot. I used to just pile it on, with the feeling that readers could never possibly “understand” unless they had all this information—but then where do you stop? At some point, reading writers like Jenny Erpenbeck and Alice Munro, I started to see the whole backstory question from the opposite direction: How much can you leave out? Now, instead of adding more and more, I keep taking things away, up to the point at which, I hope, the story still has that tensile quality of holding together but nothing extraneous.
Why does Louisa repeatedly deny that her mother is even ill?
To make you ask that question! Is her mother really ill? Hmm. . . .
The opening scene—the only one in which we see Louisa’s father—is narrated in the present tense, even though, chronologically, it predates the rest of the story, which is told in the past tense. What guided that choice?
I don’t tend to choose which tense I use where; it just happens, and then I see if it continues to feel right. With that scene, I wrote it in the present tense without thinking about it, and then the sense of immediacy that the present tense brings was just right for what the scene turned out to be: the undigested, uncomprehended moment in Louisa’s life at which she suddenly lost her father. Louisa can’t get perspective on that moment, so it’s stuck in the “present.”
You mentioned that the events of the story take place in the seventies. Why is it important that it be set then?
I do like to strip out as much backstory as I can—but that doesn’t mean that the backstory doesn’t exist. There’s something terrible lurking in the background of this story, a historical reality that belongs mostly to the late seventies, and that will be revealed more fully if the longer version of this ever comes into focus (see below).
Are you tempted to turn this story into something longer? Or is this where we leave Louisa?
See above! I’ve been wrestling with this material for years, trying to figure out what it wants to be—a short novel, or a long novel, or stories, or one story, or maybe just a bunch of files on my desktop? I’m so glad that at least one part of it—this part—has come together.


newyorker--2020-08-31--Back to School with Mario Dedivanovic

Back to School with Mario Dedivanovic

He began the class by manicuring the model ’ s eyebrows .
The trick for getting the brows to stay put , he said , is to use the latex adhesive Pros-Aide .
A few members of the audience gasped .
“ This glue is very strong , ” he said .
“ I don ’ t want you to all go out and buy this if you ’ re not used to it , because it will stay on your hands for days.
” Around hour three , he started applying eyeliner .
“ Do you want me to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asked .
Several people in the crowd yelled out , “ Brown !
” “ Because it ’ s softer !
” one woman yelled from the back of the theatre .
“ You guys need to stop acting like you ’ re not all drag queens , ” Dedivanovic teased ; for all his emphasis on restraint , he is aware that something else made him famous .
“ I know what you guys wear , I know how you wear your makeup .
You guys want to act all chic and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ Black !
” started to come from various corners of the room .
Dedivanovic laughed .
“ You see how the truth comes out ?
” he said .
In the years since Dedivanovic started doing West ’ s makeup , influencers have become some of the most powerful people in the beauty business .
Zoella Sugg , a British “ hauler ” —a term used to describe people who show off their purchases in videos—has more than eleven million subscribers on YouTube .
Jeffree Star , a rainbow-haired electro-pop musician @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he migrated to YouTube , where he now has more than seventeen million subscribers ; since 2014 , he has had his own line of Day-Glo cosmetics .
Huda Kattan , an Iraqi-American from Oklahoma , started her beauty empire with a WordPress blog in 2010 ; she now has more than forty-seven million followers on Instagram .
She also has her own gondola at Sephora , and , in 2017 , Time named her one of its “ 25 Most Influential People on the Internet.
” On TikTok , an even younger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their own hyper-specific skills : ethereal raver pastels inspired by the HBO show “ Euphoria , ” neon cut creases , cosplay cosmetics , makeup you can apply to your character in the popular Nintendo video game Animal Crossing .
Just this summer , a group of TikTok-famous beauty influencers , including La Demi and Cole Carrigan , decided to move into a Beverly Hills mansion they call the Glam House , from which they will broadcast primping content around the clock .
As the Internet has opened up new avenues of experimentation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a multibillion-dollar business .
The makeup-line “ drop ” is akin to the release of a limited-edition sneaker or a pop album .
When Rihanna released her line , Fenty Beauty , in Sephora stores , in 2017 , the brand pulled in more than a hundred million dollars in less than forty days .
KKW Beauty , West ’ s own brand , which launched in 2017 as well , sold $ 14.4 million in contour kits in less than three hours .
Influencers get in on the action , too , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including Anastasia Beverly Hills and Morphe .
Sephora remains a valuable showroom for products , but newer , direct-to-consumer brands , like the minimalist line Glossier , have also flourished .
Dedivanovic claims not to be in competition with any other brand , but a stroll through Sephora on a drizzly afternoon last October told a slightly different story .
As he walked past a glittery , highly pigmented eyeshadow palette , he took a swipe of an acid-green color with his finger and wrinkled his nose .
He lingered over the Nars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legendary makeup artist who launched his brand in 1994 , an inspiration .
Dedivanovic is most drawn to product lines developed by other successful makeup artists : Troy Surratt , Pat McGrath , Laura Mercier , Bobbi Brown .
In late 2019 , he hired Alicia Valencia , a beauty executive , to serve as his global president .
Valencia had overseen the global expansion of McGrath ’ s and Brown ’ s lines , and worked at Estée Lauder for twenty-three years .
She told me , “ Mario is , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brown .
It ’ s , like , yes , he could glam it up so much more than Bobbi did , but , I mean , the reality is that he does things in a way where it ’ s easy to understand , and there ’ s a why to every product and technique.
” In December , Dedivanovic released a technical brush collection with Sephora ; it was , a representative told me , the fastest-selling collaboration in the store ’ s history .
What Dedivanovic is really selling , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the trust they put in him .
The new beauty influencers , by contrast , don ’ t need to touch stars ’ faces ; they are the stars .
The hugely successful twenty-one-year-old YouTuber James Charles , who , at seventeen , became the first male face of CoverGirl , makes elaborate videos for his sixteen million subscribers , but , as he told me , he is neither a makeup artist nor a professional teacher .
“ What I do is make entertainment content that happens to be about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He admires Dedivanovic , he hastened to add : “ I think it ’ s always important to , like , respect your elders.
” The beauty-influencer world is rife with cliques and feuds , scandals and dethronements .
Dedivanovic has , for the most part , resisted such drama .
He refused to put his Masterclasses online , even as the pandemic wiped out his live-event revenue ; he was waiting for a way to stream that could catch the micro-movements of his brushes .
He had never used himself as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out his product line on his own face .
As he insists to his students , it is control and consistency , not gimmickry , that make for a sustainable cosmetics career .
He opens every Masterclass by telling attendees that , above all , he wants them to be able to make money doing timeless , glamorous makeup for weddings or quinceañeras .
He also warns them that it took him two decades to perfect what he is about to do .
“ I tell you that , ” he says , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up on your dream , or on yourselves.
” There are fewer weddings happening during the pandemic .
And yet , as Dedivanovic put it , “ we all have more time now.
” There is a savviness to his business model , which relies on the language of education and mastery .
Time-intensive , absorbing hobbies—sourdough baking , calligraphy—give everyone what he called an “ instant hit of dopamine.
” It was the playful , addictive side of makeup that Dedivanovic learned from Sephora , where amateurs were given the opportunity to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have this gondola at Nineteenth and Fifth , right in the front of the store , ” he told me last fall , when we were walking through the Sephora near his apartment .
He shut his eyes , recalling the moment when he felt he had become an artist .
“ It was like a rainbow of lipstick .
I mean , yellow , green , blue , any color you can imagine .
And that was the area where a woman asked me to help her choose a lipstick.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” for the customer , who tried it on and told him she loved it .
“ That was the first time I thought , I can actually do this , ” he said , his voice breaking .
“ It was like an epiphany : This is it .
This is what I want to do.
” A moment later , several salespeople—these days known as “ beauty advisers ” —nervously approached Dedivanovic to ask for selfies .
One young brunette , with a bright streak of magenta eyeliner running across her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ re from the Bronx , and your parents are immigrants , and you really didn ’ t have much when you first started.
” She took a breath .
“ I can relate to that .
My parents are from Colombia , and I was born on Long Island.
” “ Yes !
” Dedivanovic said , nodding along emphatically .
She told him that she planned to work for free , doing makeup at children ’ s hospitals .
“ I worked for free for many years myself , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take the job you have here and use it to your benefit .
This will make you a stronger person , a stronger artist , a stronger woman.
” Another employee , with a slicked-back ponytail and understated makeup in a sandy shade , tapped Dedivanovic on the shoulder .
“ Is it really you ?
” she asked .
He nodded , staring at her face .
“ How did you put together your look ?
” he asked .
“ These are three-dollar lashes , ” she said , giggling .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he pursed his lips and softly inhaled , a small gesture of delight .
“ Her look was very editorial in her own little way , ” he said .
“ Like , she ’ s a glam girl , with full coverage on .
But she did it in a way which is almost reminiscent of how I like it , where she left a lot of elements out .
No liner , no shadow.
” He looked suddenly reinvigorated .
“ I love it .
That ’ s what gets @ @ @ @

In 1953, Marilyn Monroe asked her longtime makeup artist Allan Snyder to sneak into the hospital where she was briefly admitted after filming “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” so that he could powder her nose. According to Snyder, Monroe also asked that he do the same after her death, and gave him an engraved money clip to remind him to get to her while she was “still warm.” In 1962, Snyder touched up Monroe’s visage for her funeral, and served as one of her pallbearers. Not long ago, Mario Dedivanovic, who has spent twelve years painting the face of the reality-TV mogul Kim Kardashian West, and who considers Snyder a spiritual mentor, texted me an article from a women’s magazine revealing Snyder’s “eight beauty secrets.” He noted that Snyder had used Vaseline as a highlighter—Dedivanovic does, too, though he prefers another emollient jelly, Elizabeth Arden’s Eight Hour Cream, which is the color and consistency of linden honey. Snyder was known to dust the tip of Monroe’s nose with blush in order to give it the impression of being more snubbed; Dedivanovic often engineers a similar trompe l’oeil on West’s nose, applying dark powder onto either side—part of the process known as contouring—to make it appear narrower. “Omg the similarities are uncanny,” Dedivanovic wrote. “I often wonder what it was like. I can imagine actually what it was like.”
West, who has a hundred and eighty-six million Instagram followers (only five people, including West’s half sister Kylie Jenner, have more), has inspired countless women to sport the “soft glam” look that Dedivanovic first gave her in 2008: airbrushed skin, sculpted cheekbones, peachy-pink blush, a “bronzy eye,” long false eyelashes, and dewy highlighter, all “baked”—an industry term for setting with loose powder—to a matte finish, like the shell of a cage-free egg. Dedivanovic’s method is a twist on a practice that dates back to the Elizabethan era, and that was later adopted by the drag community. Contouring was ideal for black-and-white film, a medium of light and shadow, and was used in early Hollywood by makeup artists such as the Polish beautician Max Factor (né Maksymilian Faktorowicz). It also proved, a century later, to look great on Instagram. West started using the app to post selfies in 2012, and her signature look seemed to replicate spontaneously on the site: countless mini-Kims with pouty nude lips (dubbed, with no small amount of snickering misogyny, “duck face”), beige on every surface, and hair pulled back into a bun so severe that it doubled as an eye lift.
In 2015, contouring was a “priority category” at Sephora, which began to sell a wide variety of contouring “palettes,” featuring powders and creams in tones from vanilla to espresso bean. Some kits came with instructions: paint stripes of dark color on features you want to recede (jowls, hairline, chin) and light color where you want to draw focus (cheekbones, the bridge of the nose, the philtrum), then furiously blend. The backlash came swiftly. The legendary makeup artist Bobbi Brown said in an interview in 2015, “When I see contouring on people’s faces, it looks like dirt.” That year, Pati Dubroff, a makeup artist for Charlize Theron and Dakota Johnson who now works for Chanel, posted a picture on Instagram of a contoured face in progress, which was striped like the skin of a lionfish, and wrote, “i would NEVER SUFFOCATE THE SKIN or create a MASK LIKE CREATURE like this.”
The Kardashian family face continued to flood the visual field. (With the exception of Kendall Jenner, a high-fashion model, West’s sisters all wore the look.) Previously, makeup artists had worked almost in secret; Dedivanovic soon found himself in an unexpectedly public position. West seemed genuinely fascinated by Dedivanovic’s ability to mold her face into different shapes, and she spoke often about his work, to anyone who would listen, with the giddy enthusiasm of a college student who has just discovered existentialism. When Dedivanovic would casually mention a product in an interview, such as Ben Nye’s “banana powder,” a pale-yellow talcum mixture from a theatrical-makeup brand that has been in business since 1967, it would sell out, or quickly triple in price. (Dedivanovic, for his part, uses banana powder less than he once did, having found that the daffodil color, on certain skin tones, turns slightly garish when illuminated by flashbulbs.)
Dedivanovic, who is thirty-seven, grew up in the Bronx. His parents are Albanians from Montenegro. He has an angular, lupine jawline and the bifurcated mustache of a young Errol Flynn. He is soft-spoken and, by his own admission, sometimes insecure. He is prone to crying, particularly when talking about his mother. For years, he hated the way his nose looked, and contemplated rhinoplasty. He did not talk at all in interviews or videos about his private life, and maintained the same discretion with his celebrity clientele. “Mario is probably one of the only people that I could trust—like really trust, like ‘Oh, my God, don’t tell anyone I’m pregnant’ kind of trust, you know?” West told me last year by phone, from Los Angeles. “I’m not pregnant, by the way,” she added.
Dedivanovic came up in the industry before the advent of “beauty influencers”—online personalities who present cosmetics tutorials on platforms like YouTube and TikTok—but he is arguably at ground zero for contemporary Internet beauty culture. Arabelle Sicardi, a journalist who is currently writing a book about the concept of “beauty as terror,” described Dedivanovic to me as “the Venn-diagram middle point of Internet and celebrity.” His client roster has expanded beyond West to include other famous women, such as Kate Bosworth, Naomie Harris, Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek, and Demi Lovato. He did Lovato’s makeup for the most recent Grammys, where she shed a single tear during her performance. Dedivanovic, who was watching her on a monitor from about twenty feet away, told me that he briefly feared that his “career would be over” if her mascara ran. It stayed put.
Dedivanovic is perhaps best known for the Masterclass, a live event attended by aspiring makeup artists, who pay as much as seventeen hundred dollars (when West sits as the model) to observe him doing makeup for up to eight hours. A natural pedagogue, Dedivanovic told me that he feels his main purpose now is to educate other artists on how to pare back the excess that he himself partially inspired. He uses contouring only sparingly these days, and never, he told me, on very pale skin. Earlier this year, he taught a group of students in a small workshop in Chelsea. “My goal was to get them in there and see the type of work that they’re doing and then help them to sort of elevate a little bit,” he said. “And I literally, you know, I went one by one to all the students, like, ‘No, don’t contour her nose. No, don’t contour her chin.’ I probably redid ninety per cent of the eyebrows.” Makeup can be a form of personal expression, but, for a professional makeup artist, one of the allures of the job is the ability to have total control—over how a person looks and over products that require precise implementation. What bothered Dedivanovic most about watching the contouring trend explode, he told me, was that it “took on a life of its own”—one that he could not contain.
In November of last year, Dedivanovic accepted the Artistic Achievement Award at the second annual American Influencer Awards, in Los Angeles. West, dressed in a scarlet Dior gown with a high neck, presented him with the prize. “We’ve worked together for eleven years,” she said. “Eleven years of fights. You guys, we fight like, you don’t even understand, we fight like brother and sister. But he’s created some of my most magical memories, and really, I believe, made me who I am today.”
In his speech, Dedivanovic came out in public, calling himself “a proud gay man.” He said that, in the summer of 2018, he had purchased a plot of land in rural Montenegro, where his father was born. “But I can’t build the home that my father dreams of,” he said, weeping openly, “because I still feel ashamed when I set foot on that land.” The revelation might have seemed a relic of another time—but, the following month, Dedivanovic told me that it had changed everything. “I was always ashamed,” he said, as we sat in his office space in midtown. “In my mind, I was in a prison.” He no longer wanted a nose job. “I love my nose right now—I would never change it,” he said. “And I would go naked right now, honestly, in the middle of the street, and not give a shit. My life has opened up. Every block that I had built, every defense mechanism that I’ve built from the age of two or three, has just one by one been coming down.” His sister had given him a pumpkin pie, and he offered me a slice. “I eat pie now,” he said.
He was also ready to realize a dream that he had been harboring for two decades: to launch a makeup line of his own. While some have suggested that the beauty market is so saturated that even a major name like Dedivanovic’s could have trouble drawing customers, he explained to me that what would make his line stand out was his almost maniacal attention to detail. Dedivanovic had spent years testing and refining products. Most laboratories allow the brands they work with to make three tweaks on a product before it is manufactured. Dedivanovic told me that he had far exceeded that number, often asking for dozens of tweaks.
The packaging for his brand, Makeup by Mario, had been finalized when, in March, New York City went on lockdown. Overnight, Dedivanovic, who lives on the Upper East Side, found himself without an income. He cancelled his celebrity bookings and scuttled the remaining Masterclass sessions on the calendar. The industry was in chaos. It seemed ludicrous to painstakingly dab on concealer that would be covered by a mask. Still, he believed that there was a need for a line that would enable beauty enthusiasts to do their faces like professionals. When things are chaotic, order and ritual become even more crucial. “I’m creating a legacy brand,” he told me. “Every product is going to help people out there to fix things and to clean things up.”
The Masterclass is run by Dedivanovic’s older sister Marina, his cousin Diana Benitez, and another cousin’s wife, Gina Dedivani. On a sweltering day last summer, Dedivanovic met them at the Bronx home of his parents, to discuss an upcoming class in Chicago. The house, which is ranch style, in a suburban neighborhood called Country Club, smelled of potpourri and fried sausages. Lula, Dedivanovic’s seventy-three-year-old mother, a petite woman with a chestnut bob, had set out a full Albanian buffet, including a bowl of boiled beets and a tray of pickled cabbage.
In the dining room, Marina, a forty-year-old former nurse, with straight ash-blond hair and wire-framed glasses, sat at the head of a cherrywood table in a black cardigan, taking notes on a laptop. Dedivanovic sat across from her in a white T-shirt and baggy black athletic shorts, stroking the tiny skull of a Chihuahua perched on his lap and worrying about the quality of the projector at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre. Next to Marina sat the Masterclass’s social-media manager, Bana Beckovic, who is not related to Dedivanovic (although, he told me later, “she is also Albanian”). Beckovic was the only person at the table wearing the type of heavy makeup, including false eyelashes, that evoked West’s. In the living room, Dedivanovic’s father, Tom, a tall, gruff man with a woolly mustache, sat on the couch watching Fox News.
Lula took a seat next to Dedivanovic. “Mario is the best child,” she said, beaming. “The best one.” Lula grew up in a shepherding family in a mountain village called Tuzi, in Montenegro, a tiny country wedged between Serbia and Albania. She did not go to school. She knew of Tom, who worked as a mail carrier, through a cousin. She saw him when he came to ask her father for her hand in marriage, she explained, and “maybe one other time, in church.” The next time she saw him was on their wedding day. The Dedivanovics emigrated in 1974. Tom eventually found work as the superintendent of an apartment building in the Bronx, where he, Lula, and their three children—Mario is the youngest—occupied a small apartment. When Mario was three years old, Lula went to work as a cleaner in Manhattan, in lavish Upper East Side homes and at the corporate headquarters of the cosmetics conglomerate L’Oréal. Lula didn’t wear makeup—she still doesn’t—but she often brought free products home from work for her two daughters.
Dedivanovic remembers an early attraction to the L’Oréal swag. “I would see a product in the bathroom or somewhere in the house when I was alone, and I would pick it up and feel it,” he said. “I wouldn’t have dared to touch my face with it, but I definitely swatched and touched and felt them.” When he was in elementary school, he often asked his father to drive him north of the Bronx to see “the beautiful gardens in Westchester,” which he liked for their symmetry. “My dad wasn’t really fond of it,” he said. Dedivanovic was twelve when he got his first job, bagging groceries. His next job was at the Bronx Zoo, where he sold pretzels and was later promoted to manager of the hot-dog stand. He then began busing tables on the weekends at a red-sauce restaurant in Little Italy. In 2000, when he was seventeen, he and his mother walked past the tri-level Sephora flagship store, on Fifty-first Street and Fifth Avenue. The French multinational beauty chain, whose black-and-white striped exterior resembles a travelling-carnival tent, had opened its first outlets in Manhattan the year before. It was a novelty concept: half department store, half professional supply cabinet.
That day, Dedivanovic applied to become a Sephora “cast member.” (Sephora’s terminology has an operatic quality: the store is known as “the stage,” the shelves are called “gondolas.”) He got a job in the fragrance department of the Nineteenth Street store. Cast members at the time wore a single black glove; female employees had to wear red lipstick. Dedivanovic bleached his hair and got a fake I.D. so that he could go to downtown clubs like Limelight and the Roxy with his new co-workers. Karina Capone, who now works in product development for cosmetics companies including Estée Lauder and Revlon, worked in makeup—what Sephora calls the “color department.” Dedivanovic, Capone recalled, was “this slick, skinny blond kid who kind of looked like Leonardo DiCaprio, but super nice, you know?” She continued, “Slowly, I could see makeup was pulling him in. Always, when we had a shortage of staff on the floor, he was very excited and willing to help the customers that were looking for the foundation.”


newyorker--2020-08-31--Sima Taparia’s Matchmaking Business Booms in Lockdown

Is it possible to find love in 2020 ?
Yes , according to Sima Taparia , the star of “ Indian Matchmaking , ” a new reality series that is to “ The Bachelor ” what chai is to White Claw .
Taparia maintains a database of South Asians who claim that they want to settle down .
Her clients , who are based around the world , come with such demands as “ good-natured , ” “ not a lawyer , ” and a working knowledge of geographic phenomena .
“ He didn ’ t know Bolivia had salt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Houston lawyer , says of a failed suitor in one episode .
“ She thinks finding a life partner is like ordering from a menu , ” Taparia tells viewers .
“ She wants open-minded , she wants that , this .
Many of these things are not very important for a happy married life.
” The show premièred in July , on Netflix , but Taparia has been a matchmaker since 2005 .
( Previously , she imported and arranged artificial flowers . )
She is actively trying to match more than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experts , such as a “ face reader ” who , upon squinting at a head shot of Shewakramani on a cell phone , declared her to be “ obstinate and stubborn.
” “ The business is growing in lockdown , ” Taparia said the other day , on a video call from her home , in Mumbai .
She wore a kurta and lipstick—both red .
Her initial fee is typically a few hundred dollars ; she receives a lump sum if she facilitates a marriage .
“ My system is , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ house , I see their way of living , how they are financially , ” she said .
Lately , she has had to make do with video calls .
“ At least it ’ s satisfying that we see each other on FaceTime .
I don ’ t work as though I ’ m a broker or in some type of finance—it ’ s all emotion.
” She has made “ two big matches ” during the pandemic , both stalled since the betrothal .
“ Only fifty people are allowed at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we want to do a big fat wedding , a huge fat wedding.
” Smriti Mundhra , the executive producer of “ Indian Matchmaking , ” joined the call from Los Angeles .
She had a shoulder-length bob ; children ’ s drawings hung on cabinets behind her .
Mundhra , who is forty and grew up in L.A. and Mumbai , had been tracking reactions to the series .
“ There are a lot of people tweeting that this upholds a very narrow , caste-ist infrastructure , ” she said .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ultimately , it ’ s where Indians are as a culture , and I ’ d rather talk about it and engage with it than just pretend it doesn ’ t exist.
” Mundhra ’ s aunt introduced her to Taparia in 2008 .
“ She said , ‘ Please find a match for her , ’ ” Taparia recalled .
After eighteen months , they called off the search .
“ I had given her a few matches , but Smriti is full of character , ” Taparia said .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” “ There were a couple people I would ’ ve considered , who rejected me , ” Mundhra said .
“ I was never the ideal body type , ” she added , “ but I have light-skinned privilege .
My family would talk about that— ‘ Oh , she ’ s a little chubby , but she has good fair skin.
’ ” Taparia nodded knowingly .
“ In India , they still want fair skin , ” she said , despite recent campaigns against popular skin-lightening creams such as Fair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ height .
They want good education .
They want good family—everything , they want .
You know Aishwarya Rai ?
” she asked , referring to the actress , model , and former Miss World winner— “ I explain to them , you will not get Aishwarya Rai.
” Mundhra ended up marrying “ a Brazilian-Irish guy ” from her Columbia University M.F.A .
program and filming a documentary about arranged marriage , “ A Suitable Girl , ” featuring Taparia ’ s daughter .
Afterward , Mundhra told Taparia , “ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ show.
” She pitched “ Indian Matchmaking ” to Netflix in 2017 ; the series became one of the ten most watched on the platform in the U.S. and in India .
Shewakramani joined the videoconference from Houston .
After a late night— “ I watched Episodes 1 through 5 and got a couple hours of sleep ” —she had decided to take a personal day .
“ I said I had a bad headache , and like half my office got COVID , so they were , like , ‘ Oh , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
’ I was , like , ‘ I don ’ t know , maybe , bye.
’ ” “ Aparna , you have such a good sense of humor , ” Taparia said .
Shewakramani met six men over the course of the series ’ filming , but none of them stuck .
She remains hopeful .
“ I mean , yeah , the world situation right now is not ideal , ” she said .
“ But that doesn ’ t mean that you can ’ t find love.
” Taparia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ begun to arrange meetings over FaceTime .
Mundhra suggested , “ If you like a guy , you can let him stand at the end of your driveway.
” Shewakramani considered this .
“ Maybe he ’ ll have a boom box over his head , ” she said .
“ Maybe that ’ s what I need.
” ♦

Sima Taparia Illustration by João Fazenda
Is it possible to find love in 2020? Yes, according to Sima Taparia, the star of “Indian Matchmaking,” a new reality series that is to “The Bachelor” what chai is to White Claw. Taparia maintains a database of South Asians who claim that they want to settle down. Her clients, who are based around the world, come with such demands as “good-natured,” “not a lawyer,” and a working knowledge of geographic phenomena. “He didn’t know Bolivia had salt flats,” Aparna Shewakramani, a Houston lawyer, says of a failed suitor in one episode.
“She thinks finding a life partner is like ordering from a menu,” Taparia tells viewers. “She wants open-minded, she wants that, this. Many of these things are not very important for a happy married life.” The show premièred in July, on Netflix, but Taparia has been a matchmaker since 2005. (Previously, she imported and arranged artificial flowers.) She is actively trying to match more than a hundred clients—often with the help of experts, such as a “face reader” who, upon squinting at a head shot of Shewakramani on a cell phone, declared her to be “obstinate and stubborn.”
“The business is growing in lockdown,” Taparia said the other day, on a video call from her home, in Mumbai. She wore a kurta and lipstick—both red. Her initial fee is typically a few hundred dollars; she receives a lump sum if she facilitates a marriage. “My system is, I go to the client’s house, I see their way of living, how they are financially,” she said. Lately, she has had to make do with video calls. “At least it’s satisfying that we see each other on FaceTime. I don’t work as though I’m a broker or in some type of finance—it’s all emotion.” She has made “two big matches” during the pandemic, both stalled since the betrothal. “Only fifty people are allowed at a wedding right now. Here, we want to do a big fat wedding, a huge fat wedding.”
Smriti Mundhra, the executive producer of “Indian Matchmaking,” joined the call from Los Angeles. She had a shoulder-length bob; children’s drawings hung on cabinets behind her. Mundhra, who is forty and grew up in L.A. and Mumbai, had been tracking reactions to the series. “There are a lot of people tweeting that this upholds a very narrow, caste-ist infrastructure,” she said. “They’re not wrong. But, ultimately, it’s where Indians are as a culture, and I’d rather talk about it and engage with it than just pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Mundhra’s aunt introduced her to Taparia in 2008. “She said, ‘Please find a match for her,’ ” Taparia recalled. After eighteen months, they called off the search. “I had given her a few matches, but Smriti is full of character,” Taparia said. “Those matches didn’t match her.”
“There were a couple people I would’ve considered, who rejected me,” Mundhra said. “I was never the ideal body type,” she added, “but I have light-skinned privilege. My family would talk about that—‘Oh, she’s a little chubby, but she has good fair skin.’ ” Taparia nodded knowingly. “In India, they still want fair skin,” she said, despite recent campaigns against popular skin-lightening creams such as Fair & Lovely. “They want good height. They want good education. They want good family—everything, they want. You know Aishwarya Rai?” she asked, referring to the actress, model, and former Miss World winner—“I explain to them, you will not get Aishwarya Rai.”
Mundhra ended up marrying “a Brazilian-Irish guy” from her Columbia University M.F.A. program and filming a documentary about arranged marriage, “A Suitable Girl,” featuring Taparia’s daughter. Afterward, Mundhra told Taparia, “We’re going to get you a show.” She pitched “Indian Matchmaking” to Netflix in 2017; the series became one of the ten most watched on the platform in the U.S. and in India.
Shewakramani joined the videoconference from Houston. After a late night—“I watched Episodes 1 through 5 and got a couple hours of sleep”—she had decided to take a personal day. “I said I had a bad headache, and like half my office got COVID, so they were, like, ‘Oh, God, is it . . . ?’ I was, like, ‘I don’t know, maybe, bye.’ ”
“Aparna, you have such a good sense of humor,” Taparia said. Shewakramani met six men over the course of the series’ filming, but none of them stuck. She remains hopeful. “I mean, yeah, the world situation right now is not ideal,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that you can’t find love.” Taparia suggested virtual dating; she’d begun to arrange meetings over FaceTime. Mundhra suggested, “If you like a guy, you can let him stand at the end of your driveway.”
Shewakramani considered this. “Maybe he’ll have a boom box over his head,” she said. “Maybe that’s what I need.” ♦


newyorker--2020-08-31--Grace Lynne Haynes’s “Trendsetters”

Grace Lynne Haynes’s “Trendsetters”

Just a few weeks ago , the artist Grace Lynne Haynes painted her first cover for the magazine , a portrait of Sojourner Truth that marked the hundredth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment .
Haynes , who is based in New Jersey , returns for the Fall Style & Design Issue , which opens with a flash of color and a very big bird .
We recently talked to Haynes about the role color and pattern play in her work .
Your images often display luminous colors .
Do colors have a personality for you ?
Yes , colors are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can both create a story and send a message ; each one brings a new dimension to the paintings .
I ’ m especially fascinated by the idea of dark and light existing in one image .
When I was an undergraduate , I couldn ’ t find information on how to paint darker-brown skin tones , so I began painting my characters in a deep black .
Since then , the color black has been the focus of my paintings .
I want to challenge the notion that black represents evil and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pure .
Your paintings tend to minimize facial expressions ; you give figures collaged eyes and the outline of a plain mouth .
Are you trying to give the body more expression by abstracting the face ?
The eyes , which are collaged from photos , are the most realistic part of my paintings , but they ’ re rarely the focal point of a piece .
The spirit of my paintings resides in color and in the positioning of figures .
I simplify the face to draw attention to other parts of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society , our identity seems to lie in the color of our skin , but I strive to find identity in the colors we choose to surround ourselves with , the colors we ’ re attracted to .
You incorporate birds into many of your paintings .
When did that start ?
I ’ ve had an attraction to birds since I was a child—specifically hummingbirds .
The hummingbird was my grandmother ’ s favorite bird ; for her , it symbolized tranquility , beauty , and peace .
She was born during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but she still managed to thrive , and I like to honor her strength and legacy by showcasing birds in my work .
Where do you find inspiration for your images ?
My inspiration comes from a wide variety of sources , from fashion on the runways to urban streetwear .
I ’ m deeply inspired by the ways people from all walks of life adorn themselves .
The patterns I see in nature—in botanics , cellular microbodies , or various surface textures—also trigger my creativity .
And because my work focusses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m often inspired by the women I meet who live life on their own terms .
Their aura is what I want to capture in my paintings .
See below for more covers that celebrate fashion and style :

Just a few weeks ago, the artist Grace Lynne Haynes painted her first cover for the magazine, a portrait of Sojourner Truth that marked the hundredth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. Haynes, who is based in New Jersey, returns for the Fall Style & Design Issue, which opens with a flash of color and a very big bird. We recently talked to Haynes about the role color and pattern play in her work.
Your images often display luminous colors. Do colors have a personality for you?
Yes, colors are the spirit of my paintings. They can both create a story and send a message; each one brings a new dimension to the paintings. I’m especially fascinated by the idea of dark and light existing in one image. When I was an undergraduate, I couldn’t find information on how to paint darker-brown skin tones, so I began painting my characters in a deep black. Since then, the color black has been the focus of my paintings. I want to challenge the notion that black represents evil and showcase how darkness can be positive and pure.
Your paintings tend to minimize facial expressions; you give figures collaged eyes and the outline of a plain mouth. Are you trying to give the body more expression by abstracting the face?
The eyes, which are collaged from photos, are the most realistic part of my paintings, but they’re rarely the focal point of a piece. The spirit of my paintings resides in color and in the positioning of figures. I simplify the face to draw attention to other parts of the image. Often, in Western society, our identity seems to lie in the color of our skin, but I strive to find identity in the colors we choose to surround ourselves with, the colors we’re attracted to.
You incorporate birds into many of your paintings. When did that start?
I’ve had an attraction to birds since I was a child—specifically hummingbirds. The hummingbird was my grandmother’s favorite bird; for her, it symbolized tranquility, beauty, and peace. She was born during a very harsh time in American history, but she still managed to thrive, and I like to honor her strength and legacy by showcasing birds in my work.
Where do you find inspiration for your images?
My inspiration comes from a wide variety of sources, from fashion on the runways to urban streetwear. I’m deeply inspired by the ways people from all walks of life adorn themselves. The patterns I see in nature—in botanics, cellular microbodies, or various surface textures—also trigger my creativity. And because my work focusses on the nuances of Black womanhood, I’m often inspired by the women I meet who live life on their own terms. Their aura is what I want to capture in my paintings.
See below for more covers that celebrate fashion and style:


newyorker--2020-08-31--Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Vesper Flights , by Helen Macdonald ( Grove ) .
The sixth mass extinction—the ongoing disappearance of countless species at a blindingly rapid rate , as a result of human activity—is the subject of this masterly collection of essays .
Macdonald , extending her decade-long attempt to redefine nature writing in order to capture a present that is as troubling as it is resistant to narration , trains her sights on how imperilled species , from peregrine falcons that circle skyscrapers in Manhattan to glowworms in Britain threatened by the “ sodium glow of the surrounding town , ” make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wonder of classic nature writing , while , ultimately , she finds that being attuned to nature now means “ opening yourself to constant grief.
” Lot Six , by David Adjmi ( Harper ) .
In this witty and intimate memoir , a celebrated playwright considers the path that led him to his art .
He delves into his prickly relationship with his Syrian Jewish family , who enforced “ no chores , no punishment or discipline or order—everything was hanging by a thread ” ; the agonies of yeshiva and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adult life as a gay man , which follows a childhood in which he regarded gay people as “ untoward.
” Through sensitive , insightful prose , Adjmi focusses on his love for his parents , his best friends , and the theatre , a thrilling and frightening object of affection capable of playing “ a magic trick , ” in which “ ugliness was made into something achingly beautiful.
” The Death of Vivek Oji , by Akwaeke Emezi ( Riverhead ) .
As a boy growing up in Nigeria , Vivek @ @ @ @ @ @ @ affecting novel of self-invention , begins to enter fugue states , or “ small-small blackouts.
” When in adolescence he grows his hair long , his family complains , but in secret he experiments with lipstick and women ’ s clothing .
His moments of discovery are contrasted with the pain those dearest to him endure after he dies , possibly the victim of a hate crime : that of his doting Indian mother , who feels that she has failed him , and his cousin , who , for different reasons , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ searching questions about gender and acceptance , among them one voiced by Vivek himself : “ If nobody sees you , are you still there ?
” Sisters , by Daisy Johnson ( Riverhead ) .
In this viscerally uneasy novel , two tight-knit teen-age sisters move to an isolated , decrepit house by the sea with their mother after an unspeakable incident occurs at their school .
At home , the girls , September and July , spend their days playing childish games and watching television , as their mother , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Soon the house and its surroundings become increasingly eerie , September ’ s moods grow more volatile , “ a darkening worry at the threshold of their good life , ” and her control over her younger sister intensifies .
As the boundaries between them blur , their entanglement occasions an examination of the indelible effects of grief , abuse , and love .

Vesper Flights, by Helen Macdonald (Grove). The sixth mass extinction—the ongoing disappearance of countless species at a blindingly rapid rate, as a result of human activity—is the subject of this masterly collection of essays. Macdonald, extending her decade-long attempt to redefine nature writing in order to capture a present that is as troubling as it is resistant to narration, trains her sights on how imperilled species, from peregrine falcons that circle skyscrapers in Manhattan to glowworms in Britain threatened by the “sodium glow of the surrounding town,” make do. Her book retains the essential wonder of classic nature writing, while, ultimately, she finds that being attuned to nature now means “opening yourself to constant grief.”
Lot Six, by David Adjmi (Harper). In this witty and intimate memoir, a celebrated playwright considers the path that led him to his art. He delves into his prickly relationship with his Syrian Jewish family, who enforced “no chores, no punishment or discipline or order—everything was hanging by a thread”; the agonies of yeshiva and the absurdity of graduate school; and his adult life as a gay man, which follows a childhood in which he regarded gay people as “untoward.” Through sensitive, insightful prose, Adjmi focusses on his love for his parents, his best friends, and the theatre, a thrilling and frightening object of affection capable of playing “a magic trick,” in which “ugliness was made into something achingly beautiful.”
The Death of Vivek Oji, by Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead). As a boy growing up in Nigeria, Vivek Oji, the central figure in this affecting novel of self-invention, begins to enter fugue states, or “small-small blackouts.” When in adolescence he grows his hair long, his family complains, but in secret he experiments with lipstick and women’s clothing. His moments of discovery are contrasted with the pain those dearest to him endure after he dies, possibly the victim of a hate crime: that of his doting Indian mother, who feels that she has failed him, and his cousin, who, for different reasons, feels the same. The novel poses searching questions about gender and acceptance, among them one voiced by Vivek himself: “If nobody sees you, are you still there?”
Sisters, by Daisy Johnson (Riverhead). In this viscerally uneasy novel, two tight-knit teen-age sisters move to an isolated, decrepit house by the sea with their mother after an unspeakable incident occurs at their school. At home, the girls, September and July, spend their days playing childish games and watching television, as their mother, who is depressed, leaves them largely unsupervised. Soon the house and its surroundings become increasingly eerie, September’s moods grow more volatile, “a darkening worry at the threshold of their good life,” and her control over her younger sister intensifies. As the boundaries between them blur, their entanglement occasions an examination of the indelible effects of grief, abuse, and love.