newyorker--2020-02-03--Anthony Veasna So on the Alienation and Comfort of Doughnut Shops

As its title suggests , your story “ Three Women of Chuck ’ s Donuts ” is set in a doughnut shop and is about a mother , Sothy , and her two daughters , Tevy and Kayley .
Did one of those elements—the family of women or the doughnut shop—come first or were the two entwined from the outset ?
I had been trying , and failing , to write a story about a Cambodian-owned 24/7 doughnut shop for three years , before I finally conceived the characters of Sothy , Tevy , and Kayley .
Back when I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my boyfriend and I regularly frequented a doughnut shop , which was , in fact , called Chuck ’ s Donuts , always between 1 and 3 A.M. , always inebriated or stoned .
Entirely in my own head , I had developed an intimate connection with the owner , who I was convinced was Cambodian ( though he always refused small talk ) , owing to the Cambodian posters on the wall , and owing to the fact that tons of doughnut shops are owned and operated by Cambodians-Americans , including my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ per cent of doughnut shops in L.A. are owned by Cambodians , many of these shops by an infamous figure dubbed the Doughnut King . )
I was an art-practice major studying drawing , photography , and printmaking , and this Chuck ’ s Donuts reminded me of an Edward Hopper painting , how the harsh artificial lighting fused with the natural hues of night , that vacant mysterious quality that evoked both alienation and comfort .
It felt sublime to me , almost otherworldly , and I was obsessed with claiming this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ language .
It felt like this urgent site of meaning that was distinctly Cambodian .
When I started writing fiction seriously , I tested different fictional characters and narratives that would fit within the tone of this image I had of Chuck ’ s Donuts .
The name Chuck ’ s Donuts stuck with me , so I couldn ’ t imagine writing a story with any other name ; everything else I wanted to be fiction .
I always knew the story would have a sort of Cambodian Bartleby figure—I imagine all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bartlebys—but I didn ’ t know much beyond that at first .
The original draft featured a thinly veiled fictional version of me having terrible solipsistic ruminations about my dad ’ s obsession with James Bond .
The second draft was straight-up campy , slapstick—it had a lot of screaming dialogue , too much banter .
I was going for Pedro Almodóvar ’ s “ Volver , ” but it ended up like a bad indie film that premières to lukewarm reviews at Sundance and is released straight to V.O.D .
Then in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s “ The Last Samurai , ” and felt like throwing out half my books because why would I ever need to read anything other than “ The Last Samurai ” over and over again , and for whatever reason , this led directly to me capturing the right voice , characters , and story .
Sothy , who has recently divorced , is running Chuck ’ s Donuts by herself , and her daughters are helping out over the summer vacation , spending every night at the store .
Tevy and Kayley @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all the time , too .
Was it hard to capture that kind of relationship or was it easy to fall into the rhythm of their squabbles ?
I have a pretty big family , with lots of cousins whom I grew up very close to , and we would always fight while still being , like , Yes , of course we will do every possible thing together , even absurd things , like watch our two-tape VHS copy of “ Titanic ” every day for a month one summer .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Kayley ’ s conversations came naturally .
However , it was difficult to write their bickering to escalate with every scene so as to create narrative momentum .
That required a lot of contemplation and texting my friends and boyfriend , “ What if this happens ?
” The sisters notice a repeat visitor , a man , who always orders an apple fritter he never eats .
They believe he ’ s Cambodian , as they are , and spend much of their time speculating about him .
Do you think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him if their parents ’ marriage hadn ’ t ended ?
Tevy and Kaley , in my mind , are naturally curious and would find the man strange regardless , but the demise of their parents ’ marriage does catalyze them toward taking action and interviewing him .
I do think that there are moments in your life , especially transitory periods , that require a massive restructuring of your relationships to people and places ( e.g.
, the girls are figuring out how to think about their father ) , in which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maybe even dangerously so ) to the world , when you are more susceptible to observation and action , versus inward critical thinking , as a means of philosophical rumination—you ’ re almost hungry for it .
I like writing characters who are in these transitory periods , when they are actively creating meaning and interpreting their surroundings and contexts , like the man ’ s presence in Chuck ’ s Donuts .
Sothy fears the man may be a gangster , sent by her ex-husband ’ s politically connected uncle in Cambodia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her then husband money to start the business , and her husband failed to repay the debt .
You mention a real murder in passing here—the death of the Cambodian actor Haing S. Ngor , who was killed in Los Angeles , in 1996 .
Obviously , you ’ re bringing this up in a fictional context , but why did you want to invoke the case of Haing Ngor ?
Part of my reasoning was that , in the context of Cambodian communities , it totally makes sense that Sothy would think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sympathizer had something to do with Haing S. Ngor ’ s death .
It looms over our collective psyche .
I remember watching “ The Killings Fields , ” in which Ngor plays Dith Pran , the real-life Cambodian journalist who is sent to a labor concentration camp during the Khmer Rouge regime .
Afterward , my dad excitedly gave me every detail of Ngor ’ s death—how the police determined that three reputed members of the Oriental Lazy Boyz gang were the culprits , but how this didn ’ t make sense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in his wallet .
Then , in 2009 , a former Khmer Rouge officer claimed that Pol Pot , the leader of the Khmer Rouge ’ s genocidal regime , had ordered Ngor ’ s death .
A genocide survivor himself , Ngor had used his Oscar-winning success as a platform to advocate for human rights in Cambodia , and Cambodian-Americans naturally thought that this placed a target on his back .
I wanted “ Three Women of Chuck ’ s Donuts , ” a sort of mystery story itself , to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conspiracies .
I very much feel that I come from a Cambodian-American world , not really an American one ( my home town , Stockton , California , has the third-biggest Cambodian-American population in the U.S. ) , so I find it important for my work to reflect that—for characters like Sothy to be drawing references and making connections through a Cambodian-American historical and cultural lens .
But other than my insistence that Sothy would think of Ngor , I am generally fascinated by Ngor ’ s role in Cambodian-American history .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ A Cambodian Odyssey , ” he dedicates several chapters to articulating the uncanny experience of reënacting his own trauma while filming “ The Killing Fields.
” He writes that “ It didn ’ t take much to set off my nightmares—the sound of water dripping from the faucet was enough .
It put me back in prison , looking up at water dripping from a hole in a bucket.
” And he explains that in order to get rid of his nightmares and officially “ start over , ” he decided to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actor and confront his past .
By referencing Ngor , I wanted this model of reënactment as a way of grappling with trauma to exist in “ Three Women of Chuck ’ s Donuts.
” Of course , I also wanted to reënvision the idea of reënactment so that it wasn ’ t limited to acting in a literal Hollywood movie about the genocide !
The man ’ s presence in Chuck ’ s Donuts forces Sothy , and , to a lesser extent , Tevy and Kayley , to confront and reënact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them to move forward .

Photograph by Chris Sackes
As its title suggests, your story “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts” is set in a doughnut shop and is about a mother, Sothy, and her two daughters, Tevy and Kayley. Did one of those elements—the family of women or the doughnut shop—come first or were the two entwined from the outset?
I had been trying, and failing, to write a story about a Cambodian-owned 24/7 doughnut shop for three years, before I finally conceived the characters of Sothy, Tevy, and Kayley. Back when I was doing my undergrad at Stanford, my boyfriend and I regularly frequented a doughnut shop, which was, in fact, called Chuck’s Donuts, always between 1 and 3 A.M., always inebriated or stoned. Entirely in my own head, I had developed an intimate connection with the owner, who I was convinced was Cambodian (though he always refused small talk), owing to the Cambodian posters on the wall, and owing to the fact that tons of doughnut shops are owned and operated by Cambodians-Americans, including my uncle. (Also, around eighty per cent of doughnut shops in L.A. are owned by Cambodians, many of these shops by an infamous figure dubbed the Doughnut King.) I was an art-practice major studying drawing, photography, and printmaking, and this Chuck’s Donuts reminded me of an Edward Hopper painting, how the harsh artificial lighting fused with the natural hues of night, that vacant mysterious quality that evoked both alienation and comfort. It felt sublime to me, almost otherworldly, and I was obsessed with claiming this image as part of a Cambodian-American visual language. It felt like this urgent site of meaning that was distinctly Cambodian.
When I started writing fiction seriously, I tested different fictional characters and narratives that would fit within the tone of this image I had of Chuck’s Donuts. The name Chuck’s Donuts stuck with me, so I couldn’t imagine writing a story with any other name; everything else I wanted to be fiction. I always knew the story would have a sort of Cambodian Bartleby figure—I imagine all of Hopper’s figures to be Bartlebys—but I didn’t know much beyond that at first. The original draft featured a thinly veiled fictional version of me having terrible solipsistic ruminations about my dad’s obsession with James Bond. The second draft was straight-up campy, slapstick—it had a lot of screaming dialogue, too much banter. I was going for Pedro Almodóvar’s “Volver,” but it ended up like a bad indie film that premières to lukewarm reviews at Sundance and is released straight to V.O.D. Then in grad school I read Helen Dewitt’s “The Last Samurai,” and felt like throwing out half my books because why would I ever need to read anything other than “The Last Samurai” over and over again, and for whatever reason, this led directly to me capturing the right voice, characters, and story.
Sothy, who has recently divorced, is running Chuck’s Donuts by herself, and her daughters are helping out over the summer vacation, spending every night at the store. Tevy and Kayley are clearly close, but they bicker all the time, too. Was it hard to capture that kind of relationship or was it easy to fall into the rhythm of their squabbles?
I have a pretty big family, with lots of cousins whom I grew up very close to, and we would always fight while still being, like, Yes, of course we will do every possible thing together, even absurd things, like watch our two-tape VHS copy of “Titanic” every day for a month one summer. So capturing the ebbs and flows of Tevy and Kayley’s conversations came naturally. However, it was difficult to write their bickering to escalate with every scene so as to create narrative momentum. That required a lot of contemplation and texting my friends and boyfriend, “What if this happens?”
The sisters notice a repeat visitor, a man, who always orders an apple fritter he never eats. They believe he’s Cambodian, as they are, and spend much of their time speculating about him. Do you think they’d be so interested in him if their parents’ marriage hadn’t ended?
Tevy and Kaley, in my mind, are naturally curious and would find the man strange regardless, but the demise of their parents’ marriage does catalyze them toward taking action and interviewing him. I do think that there are moments in your life, especially transitory periods, that require a massive restructuring of your relationships to people and places (e.g., the girls are figuring out how to think about their father), in which you are particularly vulnerable and open (maybe even dangerously so) to the world, when you are more susceptible to observation and action, versus inward critical thinking, as a means of philosophical rumination—you’re almost hungry for it. I like writing characters who are in these transitory periods, when they are actively creating meaning and interpreting their surroundings and contexts, like the man’s presence in Chuck’s Donuts.
Sothy fears the man may be a gangster, sent by her ex-husband’s politically connected uncle in Cambodia. He’d lent Sothy and her then husband money to start the business, and her husband failed to repay the debt. You mention a real murder in passing here—the death of the Cambodian actor Haing S. Ngor, who was killed in Los Angeles, in 1996. Obviously, you’re bringing this up in a fictional context, but why did you want to invoke the case of Haing Ngor?
Part of my reasoning was that, in the context of Cambodian communities, it totally makes sense that Sothy would think that a politically connected supposed Khmer Rouge sympathizer had something to do with Haing S. Ngor’s death. It looms over our collective psyche. I remember watching “The Killing Fields,” in which Ngor plays Dith Pran, the real-life Cambodian journalist who is sent to a labor concentration camp during the Khmer Rouge regime. Afterward, my dad excitedly gave me every detail of Ngor’s death—how the police determined that three reputed members of the Oriental Lazy Boyz gang were the culprits, but how this didn’t make sense given that twenty-nine hundred dollars were left in his wallet. Then, in 2009, a former Khmer Rouge officer claimed that Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal regime, had ordered Ngor’s death. A genocide survivor himself, Ngor had used his Oscar-winning success as a platform to advocate for human rights in Cambodia, and Cambodian-Americans naturally thought that this placed a target on his back. I wanted “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts,” a sort of mystery story itself, to be placed in a lineage of distinctly Cambodian-American conspiracies. I very much feel that I come from a Cambodian-American world, not really an American one (my home town, Stockton, California, has the third-biggest Cambodian-American population in the U.S.), so I find it important for my work to reflect that—for characters like Sothy to be drawing references and making connections through a Cambodian-American historical and cultural lens.
But other than my insistence that Sothy would think of Ngor, I am generally fascinated by Ngor’s role in Cambodian-American history. If you read Ngor’s memoir, “A Cambodian Odyssey,” he dedicates several chapters to articulating the uncanny experience of reënacting his own trauma while filming “The Killing Fields.” He writes that “It didn’t take much to set off my nightmares—the sound of water dripping from the faucet was enough. It put me back in prison, looking up at water dripping from a hole in a bucket.” And he explains that in order to get rid of his nightmares and officially “start over,” he decided to return to the refugee camps as an actor and confront his past. By referencing Ngor, I wanted this model of reënactment as a way of grappling with trauma to exist in “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts.” Of course, I also wanted to reënvision the idea of reënactment so that it wasn’t limited to acting in a literal Hollywood movie about the genocide! The man’s presence in Chuck’s Donuts forces Sothy, and, to a lesser extent, Tevy and Kayley, to confront and reënact their pasts, in ways that allow them to move forward.


newyorker--2020-02-03--Can Louis C.K. Spin His Troubles Into Art?

Sometimes , just for fun , I like to reread Norman Mailer ’ s 1957 essay , “ The White Negro.
” In this long , discursive piece , which covers a number of topics , from jazz to orgasms and the threat of atomic destruction , Mailer argues that the only way for a thinking white man to be is black .
It ’ s the black guys , he says , who embody a kind of pure existentialism and , thus , an intuitive understanding of the dissonant loneliness at the heart of modern life .
No matter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ triteness and bungling innocence at the heart of Mailer ’ s approach , his essay is fascinating to reconsider in this age of “ wokeness , ” when , in all probability , it wouldn ’ t be published at all , given that it involves a white man trying to describe blackness , and isn ’ t that part of the problem ?
Still , the idea of blackness as a barometer for authenticity has been a subject of debate in American culture since before Elvis sat at Big Mama Thornton ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mean , even to black artists ?
And when black artists say that a white artist is “ down ” enough to be black , are they judging by white criteria ?
Or , in a moment of race shame—you like whitey ?
—trying to justify their attraction to an authentic white artist ?
In “ Talking Funny , ” an inert 2011 HBO special , the comedians Ricky Gervais , Chris Rock , Jerry Seinfeld , and Louis Székely , whose professional name is Louis C.K.
, meet on a denlike set @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in with the predictable bro-dude ribbing are several exchanges that puncture the collegial , competitive atmosphere .
At one point , C.K .
says , in reference to one of Rock ’ s jokes , that when white people are rich they ’ re rich forever , whereas when a black guy makes money it ’ s a “ countdown until he ’ s poor again.
” They all crack up , and then Rock announces , “ This is the blackest white guy I fucking know .
And all the negative things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
cuts him off : “ You ’ re saying I ’ m a nigger ?
” It ’ s a destabilizing moment , and Rock , a little jarred and maybe upstaged , says , “ Yes , you are the niggerest fucking white man , ” before trailing off , as Gervais laughs maniacally and Seinfeld , looking pained , says , “ I don ’ t think he can do that .
I don ’ t think he has those qualities.
” What a comedian can or can not do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a compelling question , and one that ’ s being reëxamined as political correctness of all kinds targets the titillating foulness at the root of a lot of standup .
Since the days of Pigmeat Markham , not to mention Lenny Bruce , the comedian ’ s job has been to say the unsayable—to give voice to the things that stink or bite us in the heart .
And though , early in his career , C.K.
, who is now fifty-two , did some things that Seinfeld would consider wrong—using the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and so on—the title character of his hit show , “ Louie , ” which aired from 2010 to 2015 , wasn ’ t unflinchingly transgressive ; he was a sexy schlub , open to and part of the emotional diversity of the city .
Indeed , that diversity was mirrored in his family .
His two daughters looked white , while their mother , his ex-wife , was black .
In one episode , Louie even fell in love with a man .
That version of Louis C.K .
was a storyteller @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Louie ” was one that attracted viewers of color , because he didn ’ t seem to see color—he simply responded to individuals in all their sanity or madness with his own sanity or madness .
That didn ’ t last , however .
At some point in the series , Louie started hanging out with a loud and exhausting woman named Pamela ( Pamela Adlon ) who—much like C.K .
did on “ Talking Funny ” —punctured her companion ’ s reality by laughing at the idea of his white kids @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Doing so , she robbed viewers of the momentary fantasy that race wasn ’ t a defining aspect of life in America .
The Louis C.K .
I saw last month at Yuk Yuk ’ s comedy club on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls , where it seemed I was the only person of color in the audience , was actually two comedians : the Louis C.K .
of “ Louie , ” a brilliant observer of the small moments that go unremarked—one bit , for instance , was about his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crankiness at the cheery ting-a-ling sound made by the bell over the door—and the destabilizing Louis C.K.
, who can give even Chris Rock pause .
I had never seen him live .
But I am interested in performers who try to work through the difficulties in their own lives by addressing them in art .
In 2017 , five women accused C.K .
of sexual misconduct , which , in some cases , involved masturbating in front of them .
His current tour—which goes to Houston this week , then to Denver @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and other cities—is the first he ’ s undertaken since then .
Before he arrived onstage in the basement-like club , two male comedians came out to warm up the mostly male audience .
The jokes , such as they were , focussed primarily on the men ’ s dicks and on the unattractiveness of female genitalia .
That kind of routine is not unusual at a comedy club , but I wondered if it had extra weight , given that we were about to see an artist who was , at present @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as for his art .

Sometimes, just for fun, I like to reread Norman Mailer’s 1957 essay, “The White Negro.” In this long, discursive piece, which covers a number of topics, from jazz to orgasms and the threat of atomic destruction, Mailer argues that the only way for a thinking white man to be is black. It’s the black guys, he says, who embody a kind of pure existentialism and, thus, an intuitive understanding of the dissonant loneliness at the heart of modern life. No matter what, Negroes represent:
Knowing in the cells of his existence that life was war, nothing but war, the Negro (all exceptions admitted) could rarely afford the sophisticated inhibitions of civilization, and so he kept for his survival the art of the primitive, he lived in the enormous present, he subsisted for his Saturday night kicks, relinquishing the pleasures of the mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body, and in his music he gave voice to the character and quality of his existence, to his rage and the infinite variations of joy, lust, languor, growl, cramp, pinch, scream, and despair of his orgasm.
Despite the triteness and bungling innocence at the heart of Mailer’s approach, his essay is fascinating to reconsider in this age of “wokeness,” when, in all probability, it wouldn’t be published at all, given that it involves a white man trying to describe blackness, and isn’t that part of the problem? Still, the idea of blackness as a barometer for authenticity has been a subject of debate in American culture since before Elvis sat at Big Mama Thornton’s feet. What does black authenticity mean, even to black artists? And when black artists say that a white artist is “down” enough to be black, are they judging by white criteria? Or, in a moment of race shame—you like whitey?—trying to justify their attraction to an authentic white artist?
In “Talking Funny,” an inert 2011 HBO special, the comedians Ricky Gervais, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, and Louis Székely, whose professional name is Louis C.K., meet on a denlike set and talk about their work. Mixed in with the predictable bro-dude ribbing are several exchanges that puncture the collegial, competitive atmosphere. At one point, C.K. says, in reference to one of Rock’s jokes, that when white people are rich they’re rich forever, whereas when a black guy makes money it’s a “countdown until he’s poor again.” They all crack up, and then Rock announces, “This is the blackest white guy I fucking know. And all the negative things we think about black people—” C.K. cuts him off: “You’re saying I’m a nigger?” It’s a destabilizing moment, and Rock, a little jarred and maybe upstaged, says, “Yes, you are the niggerest fucking white man,” before trailing off, as Gervais laughs maniacally and Seinfeld, looking pained, says, “I don’t think he can do that. I don’t think he has those qualities.”
What a comedian can or cannot do onstage or in front of a camera is a compelling question, and one that’s being reëxamined as political correctness of all kinds targets the titillating foulness at the root of a lot of standup. Since the days of Pigmeat Markham, not to mention Lenny Bruce, the comedian’s job has been to say the unsayable—to give voice to the things that stink or bite us in the heart. And though, early in his career, C.K., who is now fifty-two, did some things that Seinfeld would consider wrong—using the word “nigger” in his act and so on—the title character of his hit show, “Louie,” which aired from 2010 to 2015, wasn’t unflinchingly transgressive; he was a sexy schlub, open to and part of the emotional diversity of the city. Indeed, that diversity was mirrored in his family. His two daughters looked white, while their mother, his ex-wife, was black. In one episode, Louie even fell in love with a man. That version of Louis C.K. was a storyteller, and the story he told in “Louie” was one that attracted viewers of color, because he didn’t seem to see color—he simply responded to individuals in all their sanity or madness with his own sanity or madness. That didn’t last, however. At some point in the series, Louie started hanging out with a loud and exhausting woman named Pamela (Pamela Adlon) who—much like C.K. did on “Talking Funny”—punctured her companion’s reality by laughing at the idea of his white kids coming out of a “black pussy.” Doing so, she robbed viewers of the momentary fantasy that race wasn’t a defining aspect of life in America.
The Louis C.K. I saw last month at Yuk Yuk’s comedy club on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, where it seemed I was the only person of color in the audience, was actually two comedians: the Louis C.K. of “Louie,” a brilliant observer of the small moments that go unremarked—one bit, for instance, was about his visit to an antique store and his crankiness at the cheery ting-a-ling sound made by the bell over the door—and the destabilizing Louis C.K., who can give even Chris Rock pause.
I had never seen him live. But I am interested in performers who try to work through the difficulties in their own lives by addressing them in art. In 2017, five women accused C.K. of sexual misconduct, which, in some cases, involved masturbating in front of them. His current tour—which goes to Houston this week, then to Denver, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and other cities—is the first he’s undertaken since then. Before he arrived onstage in the basement-like club, two male comedians came out to warm up the mostly male audience. The jokes, such as they were, focussed primarily on the men’s dicks and on the unattractiveness of female genitalia. That kind of routine is not unusual at a comedy club, but I wondered if it had extra weight, given that we were about to see an artist who was, at present, perhaps as famous for his cock as for his art.
Standup is nothing without grievances, and, in his previous work, C.K. made complaint and anxiety the center of the spectacle. In Niagara Falls, his opening remarks, which referred to the heavily touristed area around the club—“I’m happy to be here, in this room, but I don’t know what the fuck is out there. . . . I used to play arenas”—were bland and unfunny, but it didn’t take long to figure out that his low energy and flat delivery were likely due not just to his not being in an arena but to his need to cater to an audience that was new to him, a male-dominated crowd that showed no sign of finding fault with his dick or what he did with it. Indeed, C.K. spent time on that subject. After what had happened, “I thought I should leave the nation,” he said. Big laugh from the audience. “So I went to France. And I had a French girlfriend and we fell in love. Now we’re not. Whatever.” This got just as big a laugh, because the “whatever” told the audience that C.K. had, to some degree, given up on complications and ambiguity, and that was fine with them. The audience seemed less interested in narrative and nuance than in living out a kind of revenge fantasy against thinking. Attending the show was like looking at a sketch for a drawing. There were figures there, but against what background?
On the subject of his French girlfriend, C.K. told us that she had put a thermometer in her bum to take her temperature—and, when he looked surprised, she’d asked, was this not the way Americans took their temperature? Um, no. A few beats later, he talked about the look a dog gives you when you stick a thermometer up its ass. (Not good.) But what was the point of these jokes? Were they ass jokes or Americans-abroad jokes or something else? Eventually, he asked the audience, “So, do you want to talk about the thing?” He was referring, of course, to the accusations against him. The audience cheered. Somewhat wearily, he said, “I like to jerk off, and I don’t like to be alone.” More laughter. “So what can I tell you? I can offer you some advice. If you ask, ‘Can I jerk off in front of you?’—don’t do it! And if they say O.K., don’t do it!” The warnings weren’t exactly sobering or remorseful; they gestured at his actions without really acknowledging what he’d done or to whom or, more important, why. It was a nod in the direction of his troubles, but with no hard look at what those troubles meant. “Everybody has their thing sexually,” he said. “But when everyone knows what your thing is . . . now Obama knows what my thing is. Oh, God.”


newyorker--2020-02-03--The Pittsburgh Symphony’s Savage Precision

After listening to the Pittsburgh Symphony ’ s recent recording of the Bruckner Ninth Symphony for the tenth or eleventh time , I began planning a trip to Pittsburgh , in the hope of understanding how such a formidable achievement had come about .
The playing is , first of all , at a very high technical level ; the Pittsburgh musicians can withstand comparisons with their better-paid counterparts in Boston , New York , and Chicago .
Yet note-perfect performances are hardly unusual in an age of impeccable conservatory training .
What distinguishes this Bruckner Ninth is the rare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Savagely precise in detail , and almost scarily sublime in cumulative effect , it gives notice that the right orchestra and the right conductor can unleash unsuspected energies in familiar works .
The right conductor , in this case , is the sixty-one-year-old Austrian maestro Manfred Honeck , who has been Pittsburgh ’ s music director since 2008 .
Unlike such adventurous contemporaries as Simon Rattle and Esa-Pekka Salonen , Honeck has made his name with nineteenth-century classics .
In collaboration with the Reference label , he and the Pittsburgh Symphony have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Seventh symphonies , Tchaikovsky ’ s Sixth , Dvořák ’ s Eighth , and other meat-and-potatoes fare .
These releases are all worth hearing ; some , like the Bruckner Ninth , may become standards by which future efforts are measured .
David Allen , writing in the Times , is not the only critic to have compared Honeck to Carlos Kleiber , perhaps the most obsessively illuminating conductor of the late twentieth century .
How do Honeck and the Pittsburgh players do it ?
I wasn ’ t going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stopover , but a conversation with the conductor and a visit to a couple of rehearsals afforded some clues .
Honeck is a sunny-tempered man who grew up in a small alpine town and is devoutly Catholic .
His approach to the core Austro-German repertory is informed by a profound knowledge of the traditions from which the music sprang .
At the same time , as a former orchestral musician he finds practical solutions to the weighty questions he ponders in the scores .
( Before he took up conducting , he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) Like Kleiber , an idol of his youth , Honeck plies his players with minute instructions , yet his attention to detail is in the service of a cogent musical vision .
In an interview backstage at Heinz Hall , where the orchestra performs , Honeck summed up his philosophy .
He told me , “ When I do a recording , when I make any kind of performance , I want two things : to show the identity of the orchestra , and to show what I think about the content @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quote from Gustav Mahler : ‘ The most important thing in music is not in the notes.
’ What is the reason for this music ?
How can I understand what it means in the time in which it was written , and how can I transport this idea into our own time ?
With every bar , I have to think , Why ?
Why a half note here ?
Why held longer than before ?
Is it warm ?
Cold ?
If I don ’ t ask these questions , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ routine.
” Honeck likes to tell stories about the music that he conducts .
These are not of the clichéd “ Fate knocking at the door ” variety ; they often have to do with regional cultures and rituals .
He talks about the different kinds of Austrian and Bavarian Ländler dances , and determines which ones best apply to Bruckner or Mahler .
In the Scherzo of Schubert ’ s Ninth Symphony , he hears an echo of the Schuhplattler dance , in which participants slap the soles of their shoes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Seventh , he pictures a group of pilgrims singing “ Sancta Maria.
” Musicologists may not accept all of these ideas , but scholarly certitude is not the point .
The images are plausible and potent , and they help the musicians find focus in their playing .
On the Pittsburgh recording of the Seventh , the ostinato rhythm in the second movement takes on a distinctive vocal contour , with changing inflections from one note to the next .
The liner notes to the Reference releases , which are superbly engineered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which he lays out his reasoning on an almost bar-by-bar basis .
His reading of the Bruckner Ninth as a kind of symphonic Mass—a hidden Miserere text in the first movement , an Agnus Dei in the third , with a demonic Scherzo interceding—goes a long way toward explaining how the recording attains such scouring intensity .
During my visit to Pittsburgh , Honeck was preparing a concert performance of Beethoven ’ s “ Fidelio , ” the version from 1806—the second of three iterations of an eternally problematic opera .
Although @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from 1814 , remains the most dramatically persuasive , the earlier versions , both known as “ Leonore , ” have much to recommend them , particularly in the sometimes riotous inventiveness of Beethoven ’ s orchestration .
Honeck told me that he is especially fond of a duet , cut in 1814 , in which the characters Leonore and Marzelline are shadowed by a cello and a violin , respectively .
I watched a rehearsal with several of the vocal soloists—Nicole Chevalier sang the title role , and Eric Cutler portrayed Florestan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then a run-through of the complete score .
Honeck stopped many times to apply his passionate meticulousness .
In the scene in which Florestan finds Leonore unconscious , Honeck encouraged Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida , the orchestra ’ s principal oboe , to play more hesitantly , with groping phrases : “ He is insecure .
What is happening ?
Is she dead or alive ?
” After “ Dort sank sie hin ” — “ There she sank down ” —an F-sharp dominant seventh in the strings gives way to a G-major triad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this passing moment , coaxing the strings to let the first chord collapse into the second , without a break .
The result was a shiver of Wagnerian Liebestod .
The Pittsburgh recordings are full of such unexpected epiphanies .
In the Beethoven Fifth , a work almost impossible to play in a fresh-sounding way , Honeck establishes an explosive tension between the thunderous four-note motto and the sotto-voce dialogue that follows in the strings .
In the coda of the first movement , that motto blares forth from a seldom noticed inner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effect .
( This happens at 6:36 on the Reference disk . )
A similar juxtaposition of brutality and delicacy lends drama to Bruckner , a composer who is too often treated like a stone-faced monument .
The diabolical tendency that Honeck detects in the Ninth ’ s Scherzo is only heightened by passages of Schubertian lyricism and Mendelssohnian sprightliness .
The return of the hammering main motif feels all the more apocalyptically abrupt .
No conductor can exercise equal authority in all repertory .
Before observing the “ Fidelio ” rehearsals , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the orchestra played Bartók ’ s Concerto for Orchestra and Ravel ’ s “ Boléro , ” and accompanied the gifted young Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho in Liszt ’ s Second Concerto .
Everything was brilliantly executed , but the concert gravitated toward the kind of standard-issue orchestral virtuosity that Honeck generally avoids .
I remember more grit and fire in a rendition of the Bartók that the late Mariss Jansons elicited from this great orchestra in 2000 .
Honeck periodically leads contemporary music , yet there is no obvious pattern to his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the classical-music world is in need of conductors with broad horizons , who can guide audiences from a passive worship of the past to an active awareness of the present .
The rote repetition of Mozart , Beethoven , Brahms , and Mahler ultimately does those composers no favors .
But we also need conductors who know how to revitalize the grand tradition—and orchestras that can respond in kind .
At the moment , Pittsburgh is one of the few places on the international scene where that alchemy regularly happens .
♦

After listening to the Pittsburgh Symphony’s recent recording of the Bruckner Ninth Symphony for the tenth or eleventh time, I began planning a trip to Pittsburgh, in the hope of understanding how such a formidable achievement had come about. The playing is, first of all, at a very high technical level; the Pittsburgh musicians can withstand comparisons with their better-paid counterparts in Boston, New York, and Chicago. Yet note-perfect performances are hardly unusual in an age of impeccable conservatory training. What distinguishes this Bruckner Ninth is the rare and disconcerting expressive power of the interpretation. Savagely precise in detail, and almost scarily sublime in cumulative effect, it gives notice that the right orchestra and the right conductor can unleash unsuspected energies in familiar works.
The right conductor, in this case, is the sixty-one-year-old Austrian maestro Manfred Honeck, who has been Pittsburgh’s music director since 2008. Unlike such adventurous contemporaries as Simon Rattle and Esa-Pekka Salonen, Honeck has made his name with nineteenth-century classics. In collaboration with the Reference label, he and the Pittsburgh Symphony have recorded Beethoven’s Third, Fifth, and Seventh symphonies, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth, Dvořák’s Eighth, and other meat-and-potatoes fare. These releases are all worth hearing; some, like the Bruckner Ninth, may become standards by which future efforts are measured. David Allen, writing in the Times, is not the only critic to have compared Honeck to Carlos Kleiber, perhaps the most obsessively illuminating conductor of the late twentieth century.
How do Honeck and the Pittsburgh players do it? I wasn’t going to uncover any deep secrets during a brief stopover, but a conversation with the conductor and a visit to a couple of rehearsals afforded some clues. Honeck is a sunny-tempered man who grew up in a small alpine town and is devoutly Catholic. His approach to the core Austro-German repertory is informed by a profound knowledge of the traditions from which the music sprang. At the same time, as a former orchestral musician he finds practical solutions to the weighty questions he ponders in the scores. (Before he took up conducting, he was a violist in the Vienna Philharmonic.) Like Kleiber, an idol of his youth, Honeck plies his players with minute instructions, yet his attention to detail is in the service of a cogent musical vision.
In an interview backstage at Heinz Hall, where the orchestra performs, Honeck summed up his philosophy. He told me, “When I do a recording, when I make any kind of performance, I want two things: to show the identity of the orchestra, and to show what I think about the content of the score. I love this quote from Gustav Mahler: ‘The most important thing in music is not in the notes.’ What is the reason for this music? How can I understand what it means in the time in which it was written, and how can I transport this idea into our own time? With every bar, I have to think, Why? Why a half note here? Why held longer than before? Is it warm? Cold? If I don’t ask these questions, it becomes boring, a bad kind of routine.”
Honeck likes to tell stories about the music that he conducts. These are not of the clichéd “Fate knocking at the door” variety; they often have to do with regional cultures and rituals. He talks about the different kinds of Austrian and Bavarian Ländler dances, and determines which ones best apply to Bruckner or Mahler. In the Scherzo of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony, he hears an echo of the Schuhplattler dance, in which participants slap the soles of their shoes. In the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh, he pictures a group of pilgrims singing “Sancta Maria.” Musicologists may not accept all of these ideas, but scholarly certitude is not the point. The images are plausible and potent, and they help the musicians find focus in their playing. On the Pittsburgh recording of the Seventh, the ostinato rhythm in the second movement takes on a distinctive vocal contour, with changing inflections from one note to the next.
The liner notes to the Reference releases, which are superbly engineered, include lengthy essays by Honeck, in which he lays out his reasoning on an almost bar-by-bar basis. His reading of the Bruckner Ninth as a kind of symphonic Mass—a hidden Miserere text in the first movement, an Agnus Dei in the third, with a demonic Scherzo interceding—goes a long way toward explaining how the recording attains such scouring intensity.
During my visit to Pittsburgh, Honeck was preparing a concert performance of Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” the version from 1806—the second of three iterations of an eternally problematic opera. Although the final incarnation of the score, from 1814, remains the most dramatically persuasive, the earlier versions, both known as “Leonore,” have much to recommend them, particularly in the sometimes riotous inventiveness of Beethoven’s orchestration. Honeck told me that he is especially fond of a duet, cut in 1814, in which the characters Leonore and Marzelline are shadowed by a cello and a violin, respectively.
I watched a rehearsal with several of the vocal soloists—Nicole Chevalier sang the title role, and Eric Cutler portrayed Florestan, the heroine’s imprisoned husband—and then a run-through of the complete score. Honeck stopped many times to apply his passionate meticulousness. In the scene in which Florestan finds Leonore unconscious, Honeck encouraged Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, the orchestra’s principal oboe, to play more hesitantly, with groping phrases: “He is insecure. What is happening? Is she dead or alive?” After “Dort sank sie hin”—“There she sank down”—an F-sharp dominant seventh in the strings gives way to a G-major triad. Honeck lavished a few minutes on this passing moment, coaxing the strings to let the first chord collapse into the second, without a break. The result was a shiver of Wagnerian Liebestod.
The Pittsburgh recordings are full of such unexpected epiphanies. In the Beethoven Fifth, a work almost impossible to play in a fresh-sounding way, Honeck establishes an explosive tension between the thunderous four-note motto and the sotto-voce dialogue that follows in the strings. In the coda of the first movement, that motto blares forth from a seldom noticed inner voice in the horns, to stunning effect. (This happens at 6:36 on the Reference disk.) A similar juxtaposition of brutality and delicacy lends drama to Bruckner, a composer who is too often treated like a stone-faced monument. The diabolical tendency that Honeck detects in the Ninth’s Scherzo is only heightened by passages of Schubertian lyricism and Mendelssohnian sprightliness. The return of the hammering main motif feels all the more apocalyptically abrupt.
No conductor can exercise equal authority in all repertory. Before observing the “Fidelio” rehearsals, I attended a Sunday-matinée concert at which the orchestra played Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Ravel’s “Boléro,” and accompanied the gifted young Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho in Liszt’s Second Concerto. Everything was brilliantly executed, but the concert gravitated toward the kind of standard-issue orchestral virtuosity that Honeck generally avoids. I remember more grit and fire in a rendition of the Bartók that the late Mariss Jansons elicited from this great orchestra in 2000. Honeck periodically leads contemporary music, yet there is no obvious pattern to his explorations.
For the most part, the classical-music world is in need of conductors with broad horizons, who can guide audiences from a passive worship of the past to an active awareness of the present. The rote repetition of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler ultimately does those composers no favors. But we also need conductors who know how to revitalize the grand tradition—and orchestras that can respond in kind. At the moment, Pittsburgh is one of the few places on the international scene where that alchemy regularly happens. ♦


newyorker--2020-02-03--Did Lincoln Really Matter?

Did Lincoln Really Matter?

What are the most misleading , if plausible-seeming , metaphors that afflict our understanding of the world ?
Some come from incorrectly scaled expectations .
There is the idea that the economics of a nation are like those of a household—that debt will strangle you sooner rather than later , and that the national checkbook must be balanced .
There ’ s the notion that , because our little lives are ruled by intentions , evolution ’ s larger cycles must reflect them as well : the giraffe has a long neck in order to reach the highest branch .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ remains hard for us to internalize the truth that longer necks arrived through adaptive accident .
The most powerful of these seemingly self-evident yet specious metaphors may arise from the leakage of our physical organization into our conceptual categories .
Because we have ten fingers , we give far more significance to decades—the fifties were one way ; the sixties another—than they ever deserve .
( The “ sixties ” as a continuous cultural period began in 1964 , with the Beatles on “ The Ed Sullivan Show , ” and ended , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fall of the Berlin Wall to the sound of rock and roll .
Centipedes might see such truths more quickly . )
And because we have brains at the top of our bodies we are susceptible to the image of a “ body politic , ” where the head ’ s in charge , and the arms and legs and liver do as they ’ re told .
This idea of power simply emanating downward still animates apologetics for authoritarianism , but it also leads to excitement about top-down health-care programs that everyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fiat .
It inspires , too , the belief that there are “ diseases ” in the body politic , in need of a cure , rather than a multitude of interests and a plurality of means , always to be kept in balance .
If we were jellyfish , blobs of water and nerves , we might realize that political units aren ’ t really like human bodies ; they ’ re more like coral reefs , with lots of different kinds of life existing at once , competing and coöperating in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might realize that we would often be better off worrying about what the appendages in legislatures and localities are doing than about what some ultimate head is thinking , or might be made to think .
All these varieties of metaphor , and the confusions they engender , turn out to matter as one reads Fergus M. Bordewich ’ s new book , “ Congress at War ” ( Knopf ) —but it is the last that is the most striking .
Although the subject of the book is specific , its implications @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history of the Civil War , from the Northern side , told by the feet and the arms .
Lincoln gets pushed into the background as a largely confused and feeble figure , and the Radical Republicans in Congress take the foreground as the managers of the war and the architects of abolition .
Bordewich ’ s book has an aptly pugnacious subtitle : “ How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War , Defied Lincoln , Ended Slavery , and Remade America.
” This is popular history of a high order—Bordewich has a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of his chosen time—and it thoroughly reflects the larger revisionism of our day .
As recently as the nineties , Ken Burns ’ s Civil War series told the story of America ’ s near-demise as a tragic conflict of competing values between brothers .
Home and hearth and tradition on one side ; union and industry and modernity on the other .
Now we see that one set of brothers was fighting to keep still another set in a permanent state of property , to be bought and sold and worked as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long classed as unreasonable radicals , finally seem like moral heroes .
This was a long time coming .
Even in Steven Spielberg ’ s “ Lincoln ” —with an impeccably progressive Tony Kushner script—Thaddeus Stevens , the Pennsylvania congressman , played by Tommy Lee Jones , was shown as admirable but ornery , a peppery firebrand compared with Lincoln , a character of deep wisdom and soul and Weltschmerz .
Bordewich will have none of it .
In his account , Lincoln , far from being the steely-minded leader to whom all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He meekly endured General George McClellan ’ s rudeness—one night , the egomaniacal but incompetent “ young Napoleon ” kept Lincoln waiting downstairs in the parlor while he slept—leaving it to Congress to challenge McClellan ’ s insubordination and seeming reluctance to engage in warfare .
While Lincoln was still toying with absurd and insulting colonization schemes for freed blacks , Republicans in Congress were insisting on granting them political freedom and giving them guns to fight their oppressors .
Lincoln needed a big war but had no plan to pay for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contrast , found a way to finance the war , by employing an unprecedentedly large-scale sale of government bonds , raising taxes on luxuries , and imposing the first real income tax .
Lincoln was a photogenic free rider in a tall hat .
To be sure , the specifically anti-Lincoln polemic subsides as the book proceeds .
Bordewich is more concerned with magnifying his Radical Republican heroes than with diminishing old Abe .
He has two heroes in particular : Stevens and Senator Ben Wade , of Ohio .
It was Wade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tardy ” and soft-on-the-South McClellan , confronting him over his inaction and then urging Lincoln to fire him long before the President got up the courage to do it .
Wade increased congressional oversight and helped form the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War , which held various uniformed feet to the fire .
“ For most of the next four years , an invitation to the committee ’ s room .
.
.
was a summons dreaded by defeated generals , timeservers , and corrupt contractors , ” Bordewich writes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ witnesses don ’ t seem to have had the temerity to resist the summonses . )
Wade and the committee became “ the driving engine of congressional war policy , prodding and pressuring the president toward more decisive action against slavery and more aggressive military action.
” Wade especially hated what he saw as a cozy compact of officers trained at West Point , whose allegiance to the Union , let alone to antislavery causes , he thought shaky .
“ I am willing to carry on this war until , if it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to utter desolation , ” he announced in the Senate .
“ But not a war run by professional officers.
” Wade , whose portraits show him as one of the crusty Yankee-Ohio types whom Thurber was still portraying a century later , all spikes and certitudes , was also a snob about Lincoln ’ s antecedents , bluntly calling him “ born of poor white trash.
” Wade advocated mobilizing black regiments in the war and , even after the war , was the loudest voice for a permanent African-American presence in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later consider him as a Vice-Presidential candidate but seems to have been disinclined to have someone so combative so close .
If Wade was the motor of a more aggressive warfare , Stevens was the tribune of black emancipation .
When McClellan , a stone-cold racist , was opposing any steps toward emancipation , and Lincoln was still dithering , Stevens favored immediately freeing Southern slaves and arming them to fight against their masters .
At a time when even abolitionist Northerners , amid memories of Nat Turner , were nervous about black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
What , he asked , was to be feared more , “ a rebellion of slaves fighting for their liberty , or a rebellion of freemen fighting to murder the nation ?
” When , as late as August of 1862 , Lincoln could say , “ If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it , ” Stevens was consistently forceful about the moral point of the war : “ Let the people know that this Government is fighting not only to enforce a sacred compact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perfection the principles of the Declaration of Independence .
.
.
to strike the chains from four millions of human beings , and create them MEN ; to extinguish slavery on this whole continent .
”

What are the most misleading, if plausible-seeming, metaphors that afflict our understanding of the world? Some come from incorrectly scaled expectations. There is the idea that the economics of a nation are like those of a household—that debt will strangle you sooner rather than later, and that the national checkbook must be balanced. There’s the notion that, because our little lives are ruled by intentions, evolution’s larger cycles must reflect them as well: the giraffe has a long neck in order to reach the highest branch. A hundred-plus years after Darwin, it remains hard for us to internalize the truth that longer necks arrived through adaptive accident. The most powerful of these seemingly self-evident yet specious metaphors may arise from the leakage of our physical organization into our conceptual categories. Because we have ten fingers, we give far more significance to decades—the fifties were one way; the sixties another—than they ever deserve. (The “sixties” as a continuous cultural period began in 1964, with the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and ended, perhaps, in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall to the sound of rock and roll. Centipedes might see such truths more quickly.) And because we have brains at the top of our bodies we are susceptible to the image of a “body politic,” where the head’s in charge, and the arms and legs and liver do as they’re told.
This idea of power simply emanating downward still animates apologetics for authoritarianism, but it also leads to excitement about top-down health-care programs that everyone knows will never be enacted by executive fiat. It inspires, too, the belief that there are “diseases” in the body politic, in need of a cure, rather than a multitude of interests and a plurality of means, always to be kept in balance. If we were jellyfish, blobs of water and nerves, we might realize that political units aren’t really like human bodies; they’re more like coral reefs, with lots of different kinds of life existing at once, competing and coöperating in complex, multilevel emergent systems. We might realize that we would often be better off worrying about what the appendages in legislatures and localities are doing than about what some ultimate head is thinking, or might be made to think.
All these varieties of metaphor, and the confusions they engender, turn out to matter as one reads Fergus M. Bordewich’s new book, “Congress at War” (Knopf)—but it is the last that is the most striking. Although the subject of the book is specific, its implications are universal. It is essentially a history of the Civil War, from the Northern side, told by the feet and the arms. Lincoln gets pushed into the background as a largely confused and feeble figure, and the Radical Republicans in Congress take the foreground as the managers of the war and the architects of abolition. Bordewich’s book has an aptly pugnacious subtitle: “How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America.”
This is popular history of a high order—Bordewich has a terrific eye and ear for the details of his chosen time—and it thoroughly reflects the larger revisionism of our day. As recently as the nineties, Ken Burns’s Civil War series told the story of America’s near-demise as a tragic conflict of competing values between brothers. Home and hearth and tradition on one side; union and industry and modernity on the other. Now we see that one set of brothers was fighting to keep still another set in a permanent state of property, to be bought and sold and worked as wanted. The Republicans in Congress, long classed as unreasonable radicals, finally seem like moral heroes.
This was a long time coming. Even in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln”—with an impeccably progressive Tony Kushner script—Thaddeus Stevens, the Pennsylvania congressman, played by Tommy Lee Jones, was shown as admirable but ornery, a peppery firebrand compared with Lincoln, a character of deep wisdom and soul and Weltschmerz. Bordewich will have none of it. In his account, Lincoln, far from being the steely-minded leader to whom all eyes turned, was a weak temporizer. He meekly endured General George McClellan’s rudeness—one night, the egomaniacal but incompetent “young Napoleon” kept Lincoln waiting downstairs in the parlor while he slept—leaving it to Congress to challenge McClellan’s insubordination and seeming reluctance to engage in warfare. While Lincoln was still toying with absurd and insulting colonization schemes for freed blacks, Republicans in Congress were insisting on granting them political freedom and giving them guns to fight their oppressors. Lincoln needed a big war but had no plan to pay for it. The Republican legislators, by contrast, found a way to finance the war, by employing an unprecedentedly large-scale sale of government bonds, raising taxes on luxuries, and imposing the first real income tax. Lincoln was a photogenic free rider in a tall hat.
To be sure, the specifically anti-Lincoln polemic subsides as the book proceeds. Bordewich is more concerned with magnifying his Radical Republican heroes than with diminishing old Abe. He has two heroes in particular: Stevens and Senator Ben Wade, of Ohio. It was Wade who led the fight against the “tardy” and soft-on-the-South McClellan, confronting him over his inaction and then urging Lincoln to fire him long before the President got up the courage to do it. Wade increased congressional oversight and helped form the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which held various uniformed feet to the fire. “For most of the next four years, an invitation to the committee’s room . . . was a summons dreaded by defeated generals, timeservers, and corrupt contractors,” Bordewich writes. (N.B.: the subpoenaed witnesses don’t seem to have had the temerity to resist the summonses.) Wade and the committee became “the driving engine of congressional war policy, prodding and pressuring the president toward more decisive action against slavery and more aggressive military action.”
Wade especially hated what he saw as a cozy compact of officers trained at West Point, whose allegiance to the Union, let alone to antislavery causes, he thought shaky. “I am willing to carry on this war until, if it be necessary, the South was reduced to utter desolation,” he announced in the Senate. “But not a war run by professional officers.” Wade, whose portraits show him as one of the crusty Yankee-Ohio types whom Thurber was still portraying a century later, all spikes and certitudes, was also a snob about Lincoln’s antecedents, bluntly calling him “born of poor white trash.” Wade advocated mobilizing black regiments in the war and, even after the war, was the loudest voice for a permanent African-American presence in the Army. Ulysses S. Grant would later consider him as a Vice-Presidential candidate but seems to have been disinclined to have someone so combative so close.
If Wade was the motor of a more aggressive warfare, Stevens was the tribune of black emancipation. When McClellan, a stone-cold racist, was opposing any steps toward emancipation, and Lincoln was still dithering, Stevens favored immediately freeing Southern slaves and arming them to fight against their masters. At a time when even abolitionist Northerners, amid memories of Nat Turner, were nervous about black “rapine,” Stevens was unequivocal. What, he asked, was to be feared more, “a rebellion of slaves fighting for their liberty, or a rebellion of freemen fighting to murder the nation?” When, as late as August of 1862, Lincoln could say, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it,” Stevens was consistently forceful about the moral point of the war: “Let the people know that this Government is fighting not only to enforce a sacred compact, but to carry out to final perfection the principles of the Declaration of Independence . . . to strike the chains from four millions of human beings, and create them MEN; to extinguish slavery on this whole continent.”
The Stevens-Wade nexus in the House and Senate took advantage of the near-monopoly on power that the Republican Party had—the Southern Democrats having mostly seceded themselves right out of Congress—and reshaped the role of government in ways that proved permanent. If one sees the Civil War as a struggle, in part, between the Jeffersonian small-government, states’-rights strain and the Hamiltonian big-government federal strain in American politics, it’s clear how thorough the victory was. The Hamiltonians were the ones who believed in federal management of finances for the good of the whole country, in taxes and bonds, in deliberate, strategic debt, and in far-reaching directed development.
In 1862, in the span of just a few months, the congressional Republicans launched the first comprehensive homesteading plan for settlement in the West, providing land for anyone who would cultivate it; a project to build and support the transcontinental railroad; and a program to create “land grant” colleges—technical and agricultural, though still humanities-teaching, institutions subsidized through grants of land. As has occurred so often in American history, war, or the prospect of it, provided an excuse for national development. (Consider the not very convincing case in the Eisenhower era that national defense against Communism required superhighways through Boston and Philadelphia.) Bordewich refers to the railroad plan, which encouraged companies to build by giving them not just the land for the tracks but much of the land immediately around them, as “hothouse capitalism,” but one might as well call it subterranean socialism. Left to themselves, the railroad companies would never have built a fully national system, any more than a private post office would seek to guarantee the delivery of mail to every locality in the country.
The land-grant-college program may have been the most significant accomplishment of the congressional radicals. Over time, the program was almost entirely responsible for the emergence of American “state” universities, and proved, in the end, perhaps the greatest single lever of American prosperity. One recent study demonstrated that the land-grant colleges were key to the country’s surge toward economic dominance in the decades after the war.
Was Lincoln, in the end, the dispensable man? Well, no. However effective and even admirable the declarations and initiatives might have been, they needed the President to put them through. Executives execute. Wade pushed for a more aggressive war-making policy, but Lincoln was the one who had to hire and fire the generals. Although he might have acted sooner in several cases, the skills and the deficits of his generals could not have been as apparent to his eyes as they are, retrospectively, to ours. Robert E. Lee himself was reputed to have said, after the war, that McClellan was the best of the Northern generals whom he’d fought. If things had gone only a bit differently, McClellan’s tactic of delay might very well have been seen as sound.
Certainly, the best ally the Radical Republicans had in the conflict was Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, who shared their views on emancipation and arming freed blacks. But proximity of limb to head mattered: Stanton could act because he was one short breath away from Lincoln. On the question of emancipation, Stevens and his kind seem to us morally superior, and yet their orations and imprecations, however deeply felt, were also safely impotent. These men did not have to be concerned about the effects of their words on the troops the next morning, and on the fiendishly complicated battle-fighting formulas that Lincoln worked on every day. For Lincoln, words had to be weighed for their effect on, say, the citizens and soldiers in West Virginia and Tennessee who were pro-Union but far from abolitionist. Winning an argument and winning a war are two very different things.
More important, Lincoln understood the great truth of liberal-democratic policies: that it is the job of a political leader, in a time of crisis, to make the unthinkable imaginable, for then it will rapidly become possible, and soon essential. Bordewich, failing to grasp this truth, reads Lincoln’s words in ways that miss his purposes. He accuses Lincoln of looking past moral concerns when he is actually looking around corners. If you embraced an abolitionist general’s local emancipation order in Missouri, you might lose the far greater power of making a general emancipation proclamation later; on the other hand, if you made an emancipation proclamation for only territory under Confederate control, as Lincoln did, it would be perfectly clear to everyone that it was a preamble to a national proclamation. Lincoln had to see what was coming after what was coming came.
Bordewich complains that Lincoln’s proposed suffrage plan for educated black people and black veterans of the war—the subject of his last speech, delivered from a White House balcony on April 11, 1865—was painfully minimal, and paternalistic at best. He then mentions that John Wilkes Booth had been among those who heard the speech, but he doesn’t cite Booth’s famous summary of what he had just heard: “That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God, I’ll put him through.” Booth saw exactly what Lincoln intended: once ex-soldiers and the educated were allowed to vote, there would be no easy way to stop general enfranchisement. Lincoln’s words did mean black citizenship, even if, mindful of his opposition, he didn’t spell it out. It was not yet politic to do so—a term easily dismissed as, but not at all synonymous with, “cynical.”
Bordewich—like left revisionists generally—resists a political understanding of Lincoln’s political rhetoric. What Booth grasped in a second the revisionists tend to miss at length: that throughout the war Lincoln saw, as great politicians do, that opening the door to radical reform is the hardest part. Once the door is open, history rushes in. Lincoln was not some professional “centrist” politician who happened to find himself in power at the moment a civil war started. He was an antislavery proponent, a single-issue politician who came to power on that issue. He was not the most radical member of his party, but there wasn’t any doubt about his objectives. He knew that, as James Oakes explains in his fine book “The Scorpion’s Sting,” once slavery was confined, it was doomed. To draw a ring around the evil was to end it. John Stuart Mill, the sharpest foreign observer of the contest, grasped this logic perfectly: given the slaveowners’ need for new land for the production of cotton, as Mill wrote, one had merely to prevent the spread of slavery, and “the immediate mitigation and ultimate extinction of slavery would be a nearly inevitable and probably rapid consequence.”


newyorker--2020-02-03--No Impeachment Talk at Daytona

No Impeachment Talk at Daytona

At ten o ’ clock on the morning of January 25th , when Donald Trump ’ s lawyers started the clock on their defense at his impeachment trial , thousands of his supporters gathered at the Daytona International Speedway , two hundred miles north of Mar-a-Lago , for twenty-four hours of uninterrupted auto racing .
At the Rolex 24 , America ’ s only daylong endurance race—Michael Avenatti has competed in it , and Paul Newman won when he was seventy—thirty-eight cars drive laps around three and a half miles of hot asphalt through the night and into the next @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or crash .
The speedway ’ s seats were scantily filled ; most attendees camped in a micro-civilization of tents and R.V.s .
Some never leave the campgrounds to see the cars ; a sign at the entrance read “ Happy Hour 1:40 p.m.-1:40 p.m. ” Another sign , in the outfield , said “ Trump 2020 , the Sequel : Make the Liberals Cry Again.
” Despite the President ’ s tweet encouraging his followers to watch his trial on TV , there was no impeachment talk at the raceway .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wearing a neon-yellow T-shirt and drinking a large cup of Mountain Dew , said , “ The race is about fellowship.
” Nearby , the owner of an orange R.V .
with a Confederate-flag decal on its bumper explained the sticker ’ s provenance : “ It started with the Civil War , or whatever .
The North against the South .
And then there was slavery involved .
I don ’ t know the exact whole story .
They ’ ve turned it into a racist thing.
” An elderly British man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The first slaves in America were white English people , but we don ’ t go whining about it .
Get over it .
My buddy ’ s back hurts ” —he gestured toward a friend— “ and he ’ s not complaining.
” Scott Adkins , whose back hurt and who was smoking Swisher Sweets , responded , “ They took all your guns away in England .
” He went on , “ I ’ ve got enough guns to hold off the Mexican Army.
” ( Adkins is currently rereading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the seventeenth time . )
“ There ’ s not a place for politics in sports at all , ” Platt said .
“ I want to see fast cars passing each other .
That ’ s it.
” He continued , “ This is about noise , speed , and smell .
Men have always raced .
It ’ s fun time for boys : fires , generators , R.V.s .
Men like noise.
” “ Daytona is the only place where you ’ ll see a Lamborghini in a Super @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
Meanwhile , in the fan zone , the racetrack announcer mentioned the coronavirus and an upcoming Burns Night poetry reading .
Sponsors handed out earplugs .
A group of bachelor-party attendees in the stands surrounded the bachelor , who wore a shirt that read “ Same Pussy Forever , It Had Better Be Good.
” Outside the gates , signs advertised $ 8.99 Botox and affordable dentures .
Back at the campground , Wes Emmons , who met Sean Hannity “ when he was a nobody , ” handed out shots @ @ @ @ @ @ @ buddy Greg over there is the most liberal , left-wing hack , ” he said .
He pointed to a man wearing a Tito ’ s-vodka cap .
“ We agree on nothing .
But we have a great time .
I like Trump , but I wouldn ’ t want a whole string of Trumps .
It was a one-time ; hit the reset switch.
” One camp over , Rick Nichols , who has attended the race for the past nineteen years with his brother , John—a former military contractor who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , talked strategy : “ I maintain a consistent buzz .
I have a beer every twenty minutes.
” People traipsed back and forth between the camps and the track .
“ We do naps and shifts , ” Nichols said .
“ We go in later to see the carnage , ” his brother added .
After midnight , a woman in plaid pajamas wandered over with a tray of chocolate-covered-Oreo pudding shots , and a Florida Christian ministry dispensed coffee and doughnuts .
Nichols , standing on top of a generator @ @ @ @ @ @ @ race .
“ Keep your eye on just one car so that you don ’ t get speed hypnosis , ” he said , drinking a vodka-and-Fresca .
During hour nineteen , after a Lamborghini caught fire , Tom Klebeck , an international consultant and a regular racegoer , talked about how the race was a referendum on America ’ s greatness .
“ You have consumer confidence here , ” he said .
“ I bought a patriotic T-shirt here .
Made in America .
This makes me feel good about America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violent activity .
Everyone ’ s having a good time .
There ’ s a lot of money being spent here.
” ♦

At ten o’clock on the morning of January 25th, when Donald Trump’s lawyers started the clock on their defense at his impeachment trial, thousands of his supporters gathered at the Daytona International Speedway, two hundred miles north of Mar-a-Lago, for twenty-four hours of uninterrupted auto racing. At the Rolex 24, America’s only daylong endurance race—Michael Avenatti has competed in it, and Paul Newman won when he was seventy—thirty-eight cars drive laps around three and a half miles of hot asphalt through the night and into the next afternoon, or until they break down or crash. The speedway’s seats were scantily filled; most attendees camped in a micro-civilization of tents and R.V.s. Some never leave the campgrounds to see the cars; a sign at the entrance read “Happy Hour 1:40 p.m.-1:40 p.m.” Another sign, in the outfield, said “Trump 2020, the Sequel: Make the Liberals Cry Again.”
Despite the President’s tweet encouraging his followers to watch his trial on TV, there was no impeachment talk at the raceway. A man named Michael Hunt, who was wearing a neon-yellow T-shirt and drinking a large cup of Mountain Dew, said, “The race is about fellowship.” Nearby, the owner of an orange R.V. with a Confederate-flag decal on its bumper explained the sticker’s provenance: “It started with the Civil War, or whatever. The North against the South. And then there was slavery involved. I don’t know the exact whole story. They’ve turned it into a racist thing.”
An elderly British man named Barry Platt weighed in: “The first slaves in America were white English people, but we don’t go whining about it. Get over it. My buddy’s back hurts”—he gestured toward a friend—“and he’s not complaining.” Scott Adkins, whose back hurt and who was smoking Swisher Sweets, responded, “They took all your guns away in England. ” He went on, “I’ve got enough guns to hold off the Mexican Army.” (Adkins is currently rereading the “Game of Thrones” books for the seventeenth time.)
“There’s not a place for politics in sports at all,” Platt said. “I want to see fast cars passing each other. That’s it.” He continued, “This is about noise, speed, and smell. Men have always raced. It’s fun time for boys: fires, generators, R.V.s. Men like noise.”
“Daytona is the only place where you’ll see a Lamborghini in a Super 8- motel parking lot,” Hunt said.
“I think it was Fitzgerald who wrote, ‘The very rich are different from you and me.’ ” Cartoon by Sam Gross Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Meanwhile, in the fan zone, the racetrack announcer mentioned the coronavirus and an upcoming Burns Night poetry reading. Sponsors handed out earplugs. A group of bachelor-party attendees in the stands surrounded the bachelor, who wore a shirt that read “Same Pussy Forever, It Had Better Be Good.” Outside the gates, signs advertised $8.99 Botox and affordable dentures.
Back at the campground, Wes Emmons, who met Sean Hannity “when he was a nobody,” handed out shots of Crown Royal whiskey. “My buddy Greg over there is the most liberal, left-wing hack,” he said. He pointed to a man wearing a Tito’s-vodka cap. “We agree on nothing. But we have a great time. I like Trump, but I wouldn’t want a whole string of Trumps. It was a one-time; hit the reset switch.”
One camp over, Rick Nichols, who has attended the race for the past nineteen years with his brother, John—a former military contractor who now makes hotel-room locks—and their seventy-three-year-old father, talked strategy: “I maintain a consistent buzz. I have a beer every twenty minutes.” People traipsed back and forth between the camps and the track. “We do naps and shifts,” Nichols said. “We go in later to see the carnage,” his brother added.
After midnight, a woman in plaid pajamas wandered over with a tray of chocolate-covered-Oreo pudding shots, and a Florida Christian ministry dispensed coffee and doughnuts. Nichols, standing on top of a generator, explained his trick for watching the race. “Keep your eye on just one car so that you don’t get speed hypnosis,” he said, drinking a vodka-and-Fresca.
During hour nineteen, after a Lamborghini caught fire, Tom Klebeck, an international consultant and a regular racegoer, talked about how the race was a referendum on America’s greatness. “You have consumer confidence here,” he said. “I bought a patriotic T-shirt here. Made in America. This makes me feel good about America. You didn’t see any violent activity. Everyone’s having a good time. There’s a lot of money being spent here.” ♦


newyorker--2020-02-03--“Medea” and “Mac Beth” Reflect Modern Tragedies

By the end of two shows up now—a new “ Medea , ” starring Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale , at BAM ’ s Harvey Theatre , and “ Mac Beth , ” adapted from Shakespeare ’ s play and directed by Erica Schmidt , for Red Bull Theatre—the sheer untamable mess onstage might turn your mind toward logistics : Who is going to clean all this up ?
And how long is it going to take ?
While both audiences stood to hail the casts , I couldn ’ t help but send thoughts and prayers to the members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s set is , at the start , a blank , forbidding white , on the stage floor and both sides of the extended proscenium .
The effect is of a huge , three-dimensional whiteboard , waiting for a marker .
The background discloses no context of time or place , or any hint of the traumas to come .
By the play ’ s end , it ’ s smeared with elemental , ancient stuff : water and ash , the inevitable blood .
The all-female cast of “ Mac Beth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mulch of the stage at Hunter College ’ s Frederick Loewe Theatre ; their adolescent stomps and bangs and splashes often qualify as laugh lines , fully earned .
At one point , it rains real water , sprayed from unseen sprinklers near the ceiling—the actors ’ costumes go translucently soggy , the air in the theatre starts to feel tropical , and the puddles already onstage kick up glugs of water .
The floor , which is covered in turf and loose branches , becomes a finger-painted Rorschach ; people sitting in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Macbeth ’ s witches boil and bubble .
That ’ s life : the tabula rasa , rarely so clean to begin with , gets quickly soiled .
Both productions take “ woman ” —and maybe even the ideas of gender that encase it—as a category and muddy it up .
And , speaking of encasements , they use the familiar thrusts of these two dramas as swaddling clothes for more recent stories plucked from the news , which , in turn , reflect the reality in long-running theatrical archetypes : the blood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slaughter that roll forward from age to age .
In “ Medea , ” based on Euripides ’ classic , written and directed by Simon Stone , Anna ( Byrne ) and Lucas ( Cannavale ) are a married couple , both scientists by trade , reunited when Anna is released from a mental institution .
She was sent there after being caught trying to gradually kill Lucas by slipping trace amounts of poison into his dinner .
He ’ d get violently ill without knowing why , and she ’ d nurse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sweet alibi for slow murder .
Once confined , she was prescribed a battery of meds and assigned a social worker , who appears throughout the show as a reminder of how , these days , bureaucracy plays at the edges of even our most primal human states .
Returned home , Anna is anxious to win Lucas back , but her desire is delusional : this whole cycle started when Anna found a bouquet of sexts—to Clara ( Madeline Weinstein ) , the young daughter of Anna and Lucas ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ —on Lucas ’ s phone .
Now the furtive lovers live together , and , unbeknownst to Anna , are planning to be married .
The premise is based on the true story of Debora Green , a Kansas City doctor who , in 1995 , during a period of marital strife , began drinking heavily , poisoned her husband with ricin derived from castor beans , and burned down the family ’ s house , killing two of their three children .
Stone , in an act of clever dramatic architecture , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( the poisoning was revealed only after the arson and the murders ) and stretches it into an elegant causal chain .
There ’ s a hint of malice in Lucas ; Anna mentions in passing that he sometimes hit her as he thrashed around in his sleep .
In a moment of sudden intimacy , he seems able to access love only through a flash of violence .
This physicality makes Cannavale a natural fit to play him .
A solid , surprisingly graceful presence onstage , Cannavale moves like a linebacker @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lucas is a huckster—his stratospheric rise as a scientist was achieved by passing off Anna ’ s work as his own .
As he struts around in glasses , a chic suit , and expensive-looking boots , Cannavale , whose face flushes red at the first hint of perturbation , makes clear that attention to men ’ s-fashion blogs is no sign of deeper cultivation .
Who knows what , beyond the cheating and the intellectual theft , has driven Anna to the deeds that give this story its bloody end ?
Lucas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Gus .
For a school project , the boys are making an incredibly poorly timed documentary film about their home life .
They scoot across the stage , sticking the camera where it doesn ’ t belong , catching their parents in moments of worry and despair .
On a wide screen above the stage , the audience sees what ’ s flowing through the lens .
Via closeups , especially on Byrne , we follow the action more as a TV show than as a play .
The advantage of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subtly soulful comic performer Byrne is ( the first time I saw her onscreen was in the great buddy comedy “ Bridesmaids ” ) , with a classical clown ’ s range of facial expressions , zinging from doltish , glassy-eyed smiles to devastating droops around the corners of her mouth .
Hers is the kind of repertoire that is best picked up by a camera ; it ’ s especially interesting to scrutinize her this way given the play ’ s underhum of unease about how women ’ s rage is often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s fine to watch her closely , but listening is optional .
Unfortunately , the screen saps kinetic force from where it belongs , in the physical space onstage—attentive energy is zero-sum , no matter what the multitaskers tell you—and creates an awkward distance between two forms of acting , filmic and theatrical .
The divide does a disservice to both forms , and traps Byrne ’ s performance somewhere in the air above the first row .
The farther along the drama goes , the less Simon depends on the screen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Byrne !
The need to face both Lucas and the audience straight on , in the flesh , instead of by visual projection , makes her voice deepen and her physical aspect appear more grave .
( Maybe this is the point of the gambit with the screen , and its gradual recession : we go from a dark sitcom to something unfathomably more serious . )
Anna feels as real and as horrifying as the evening news , ready to do something she can ’ t undo , make a stain you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , two preteen girls lured a classmate into the woods on the pretense of everyday fun , and killed her .
They were under the occult influence of a fictional Internet character called Slender Man , and said that they thought they were making a sacrifice that would prove their faithfulness to him .
The story inspired Erica Schmidt to put the confounded anguish of “ Macbeth ” into the mouths of girls .
In “ Mac Beth , ” a group of schoolgirls in gray-and-maroon uniforms perform the drama in a junk-strewn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ friends .
Even as it becomes evident that everybody ’ s not quite playing the same game , it ’ s miraculous to see the play split in two , and performed like a duet in tight harmony .
Shakespeare ’ s still there , as lucid as ever—Schmidt ’ s poetically choreographed direction affects diction as much as movement , and her actors ’ speech grows out of fertile symbolic soil , carrying so much meaning .
But , as Shakespeare ’ s story unspools , we see the girls trying on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ old a strangely neat container for feelings—libidinal and sisterly at once—that they only faintly knew could be expressed .
When Lady Macbeth ( an ardent , intelligent Ismenia Mendes ) wishes to be “ unsexed , ” and Macduff ( Camila Canó-Flaviá ) , whose role makes her seem prematurely and genuinely doused in grief , declares a need to “ feel ” her child ’ s death “ like a man , ” we hear these as desires for yet more expressive range , as imagined extensions of what it means to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Macbeth .
Her every thought registers first in her body and next in her voice .
Meaning ripples across her like waves across a pond .
She ’ s got a hard job : she has to be the paranoid Scot and a nervously charismatic kid , an old mask and a naked face , fact and fiction , all at once .
She ’ s looking for the kind of control—a fleeting cleanliness—that we all grasp at , and fail to hold on to for long .
♦

By the end of two shows up now—a new “Medea,” starring Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale, at BAM’s Harvey Theatre, and “Mac Beth,” adapted from Shakespeare’s play and directed by Erica Schmidt, for Hunter Theatre Project—the sheer untamable mess onstage might turn your mind toward logistics: Who is going to clean all this up? And how long is it going to take? While both audiences stood to hail the casts, I couldn’t help but send thoughts and prayers to the members of the crew.
“Medea” ’s set is, at the start, a blank, forbidding white, on the stage floor and both sides of the extended proscenium. The effect is of a huge, three-dimensional whiteboard, waiting for a marker. The background discloses no context of time or place, or any hint of the traumas to come. By the play’s end, it’s smeared with elemental, ancient stuff: water and ash, the inevitable blood.
The all-female cast of “Mac Beth” makes a glorious physical and aural mulch of the stage at Hunter College’s Frederick Loewe Theatre; their adolescent stomps and bangs and splashes often qualify as laugh lines, fully earned. At one point, it rains real water, sprayed from unseen sprinklers near the ceiling—the actors’ costumes go translucently soggy, the air in the theatre starts to feel tropical, and the puddles already onstage kick up glugs of water. The floor, which is covered in turf and loose branches, becomes a finger-painted Rorschach; people sitting in the front row get thrillingly splattered as Macbeth’s witches boil and bubble.
That’s life: the tabula rasa, rarely so clean to begin with, gets quickly soiled. Both productions take “woman”—and maybe even the ideas of gender that encase it—as a category and muddy it up. And, speaking of encasements, they use the familiar thrusts of these two dramas as swaddling clothes for more recent stories plucked from the news, which, in turn, reflect the reality in long-running theatrical archetypes: the blood we keep spilling; the methods of slaughter that roll forward from age to age.
In “Medea,” based on Euripides’ classic, written and directed by Simon Stone, Anna (Byrne) and Lucas (Cannavale) are a married couple, both scientists by trade, reunited when Anna is released from a mental institution. She was sent there after being caught trying to gradually kill Lucas by slipping trace amounts of poison into his dinner. He’d get violently ill without knowing why, and she’d nurse him in bed as he trembled: a sweet alibi for slow murder. Once confined, she was prescribed a battery of meds and assigned a social worker, who appears throughout the show as a reminder of how, these days, bureaucracy plays at the edges of even our most primal human states. Returned home, Anna is anxious to win Lucas back, but her desire is delusional: this whole cycle started when Anna found a bouquet of sexts—to Clara (Madeline Weinstein), the young daughter of Anna and Lucas’s boss, Christopher (Dylan Baker)—on Lucas’s phone. Now the furtive lovers live together, and, unbeknownst to Anna, are planning to be married.
The premise is based on the true story of Debora Green, a Kansas City doctor who, in 1995, during a period of marital strife, began drinking heavily, poisoned her husband with ricin derived from castor beans, and burned down the family’s house, killing two of their three children. Stone, in an act of clever dramatic architecture, takes this tight knot of a story (the poisoning was revealed only after the arson and the murders) and stretches it into an elegant causal chain.
There’s a hint of malice in Lucas; Anna mentions in passing that he sometimes hit her as he thrashed around in his sleep. In a moment of sudden intimacy, he seems able to access love only through a flash of violence. This physicality makes Cannavale a natural fit to play him. A solid, surprisingly graceful presence onstage, Cannavale moves like a linebacker with a background in modern dance. Lucas is a huckster—his stratospheric rise as a scientist was achieved by passing off Anna’s work as his own. As he struts around in glasses, a chic suit, and expensive-looking boots, Cannavale, whose face flushes red at the first hint of perturbation, makes clear that attention to men’s-fashion blogs is no sign of deeper cultivation. Who knows what, beyond the cheating and the intellectual theft, has driven Anna to the deeds that give this story its bloody end?
Lucas and Anna have two sons, Edgar and Gus. For a school project, the boys are making an incredibly poorly timed documentary film about their home life. They scoot across the stage, sticking the camera where it doesn’t belong, catching their parents in moments of worry and despair. On a wide screen above the stage, the audience sees what’s flowing through the lens. Via closeups, especially on Byrne, we follow the action more as a TV show than as a play.
The advantage of the gimmick is that we see what a subtly soulful comic performer Byrne is (the first time I saw her onscreen was in the great buddy comedy “Bridesmaids”), with a classical clown’s range of facial expressions, zinging from doltish, glassy-eyed smiles to devastating droops around the corners of her mouth. Hers is the kind of repertoire that is best picked up by a camera; it’s especially interesting to scrutinize her this way given the play’s underhum of unease about how women’s rage is often medicalized rather than intently engaged: it’s fine to watch her closely, but listening is optional.
Unfortunately, the screen saps kinetic force from where it belongs, in the physical space onstage—attentive energy is zero-sum, no matter what the multitaskers tell you—and creates an awkward distance between two forms of acting, filmic and theatrical. The divide does a disservice to both forms, and traps Byrne’s performance somewhere in the air above the first row.
The farther along the drama goes, the less Simon depends on the screen for his effects. How liberating for Byrne! The need to face both Lucas and the audience straight on, in the flesh, instead of by visual projection, makes her voice deepen and her physical aspect appear more grave. (Maybe this is the point of the gambit with the screen, and its gradual recession: we go from a dark sitcom to something unfathomably more serious.) Anna feels as real and as horrifying as the evening news, ready to do something she can’t undo, make a stain you could never scrub out.
In 2014, two preteen girls lured a classmate into the woods on the pretense of everyday fun, and tried to kill her. They were under the occult influence of a fictional Internet character called Slender Man, and said that they thought they were making a sacrifice that would prove their faithfulness to him. The story inspired Erica Schmidt to put the confounded anguish of “Macbeth” into the mouths of girls. In “Mac Beth,” a group of schoolgirls in gray-and-maroon uniforms perform the drama in a junk-strewn forest clearing as a high-concept joke among friends.
Even as it becomes evident that everybody’s not quite playing the same game, it’s miraculous to see the play split in two, and performed like a duet in tight harmony. Shakespeare’s still there, as lucid as ever—Schmidt’s poetically choreographed direction affects diction as much as movement, and her actors’ speech grows out of fertile symbolic soil, carrying so much meaning. But, as Shakespeare’s story unspools, we see the girls trying on poses, finding in words several centuries old a strangely neat container for feelings—libidinal and sisterly at once—that they only faintly knew could be expressed. When Lady Macbeth (an ardent, intelligent Ismenia Mendes) wishes to be “unsexed,” and Macduff (Camila Canó-Flaviá), whose role makes her seem prematurely and genuinely doused in grief, declares a need to “feel” her child’s death “like a man,” we hear these as desires for yet more expressive range, as imagined extensions of what it means to act.
Brittany Bradford is astounding as Macbeth. Her every thought registers first in her body and next in her voice. Meaning ripples across her like waves across a pond. She’s got a hard job: she has to be the paranoid Scot and a nervously charismatic kid, an old mask and a naked face, fact and fiction, all at once. She’s looking for the kind of control—a fleeting cleanliness—that we all grasp at, and fail to hold on to for long. ♦
An earlier version of this piece misstated the production company that presented “Mac Beth,” and the outcome of the murder attempt on a preteen in 2014.