newyorker--2020-11-21--“I Hate Suzie” Is a Brutally Funny Unravelling

Lately , when I ’ m having a particularly bad day , I think about a scene from “ I Hate Suzie , ” an ingenious new show from Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper .
At the end of the first episode , Piper , playing an actress named Suzie Pickles , careens down the high street of a bucolic English village .
She has just finished a chaotic photo shoot at her home , nearby , and is wearing a black-and-white fur coat splashed with fake blood .
( The shoot is promotional ; there ’ s a Cruella @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s lipstick is smeared , and her mascara has formed rings around her eyes , which dart from side to side , furtively .
“ I just need a charger .
I just need a charger , ” she says to herself .
“ Have you got a charger , mate ?
” she asks a passerby , who quickly looks away .
“ I hate this , I hate this .
.
.
I hate this fucking place.
” She passes a church ( “ I hate the church ” ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pub ” ) .
Suddenly , she breaks into song ; her voice is startlingly light and sweet .
“ I hate seeing the stars at night , ” she sings .
“ I miss the smog and the rising crime !
” She does a dainty little twirl .
It ’ s exactly what having a crackup feels like .
“ I Hate Suzie ” follows the unravelling of its main character ’ s life in eight sharply drawn episodes , each named , more or less , after a stage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Denial , ” “ Fear , ” “ Shame , ” “ Bargaining , ” “ Guilt , ” “ Anger , ” and “ Acceptance.
” The series premièred in the U.K. in August to jubilant reviews ( “ Piper is nude , lewd , and joyously off the rails , ” the Guardian wrote ) , and arrived on HBO Max on November 19th .
Suzie ’ s breakdown is triggered when her phone is hacked and compromising photos are leaked to the press .
Nudity might not be so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an affair .
Her husband , a university lecturer and expert mansplainer , played with bitter condescension by Daniel Ings , immediately changes the locks .
In Britain , Piper is a household name , having achieved fame early , at fifteen , as a pop star , when her 1998 single “ Because We Want To ” débuted at No .
1 .
( Sample lyric : “ Why you got ta play that song so loud ?
/ Because we want to !
Because we want to !
” ) In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ following on television as Rose , the plucky sidekick on “ Doctor Who , ” and then as a high-end sex worker in “ Secret Diary of a Call Girl.
” Prebble , who wrote “ I Hate Suzie , ” is also a writer and co-executive producer on “ Succession.
” When she was in her twenties , she wrote the script for “ Secret Diary.
” “ The best thing about that show was meeting Billie , ” she told me recently .
“ That was the beginning of probably one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life.
” The other day , the two friends met me on Zoom to talk about “ Suzie.
” Piper , who is thirty-eight , arrived a little late in overalls and a slick blond ponytail .
“ You look very sexy , ” Prebble said .
Piper replied , “ I just got hair and makeuped.
” Prebble , who is thirty-nine , has chestnut hair and a chatty , buzzing energy , and was calling from a nearly empty office building in Brooklyn , where she has been working on Season @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you look fucking hot in your production office , ” Piper said .
Prebble first met Piper to pitch “ Secret Diary , ” which she had adapted from a real-life anonymous blog .
“ I was a bit intimidated , slightly , in a sort of celebrity way , ” Prebble recalled .
But Piper was on her own , which Prebble was surprised about , “ and we just chatted about womanhood and sex work and sexuality and being a woman , ” Prebble said .
Piper had read her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ preparation .
“ By the end of the conversation , I was , like , Oh , this is a real artist.
” But Prebble and Piper had little control over the final product .
“ I found myself constantly going , ‘ Hang on , I don ’ t feel like this is right.
’ And then a bunch of people would always say , ‘ No it ’ s fine , it ’ s fine , ’ ” Prebble said .
“ If you did go on set , you had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ You ’ re sort of brought on like you ’ ve won a competition .
They bring you a cup of tea , like , O.K.
, are you happy now ?
Go away.
” In 2012 , Prebble and Piper worked together again on Prebble ’ s play “ The Effect , ” about a couple involved in a pharmaceutical trial , at the National Theatre .
Afterward , they stayed in touch .
They were moving into their early thirties , a “ rude awakening , ” Piper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of time on the phone , counselling each other through those years .
They started keeping notes , exchanging written thoughts about their daily lives and ideas for the show in the form of long , brutally honest e-mails .
Many of these sentiments wound up in “ I Hate Suzie.
” “ We started to get turned on by some of our sort of awful , sad , hilarious shared emotions , ” Piper said .
“ And it became more obvious what we needed to do in the show.
” They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every day for several weeks to map out the show .
“ We would put everything up on the wall , ” Prebble said , “ story ideas , and character ideas , and thematic ideas.
” The trauma of a phone hack seemed to encapsulate the sense of personal crisis they wanted to invoke .
“ The idea of , What if that secret part of yourself was suddenly available to everybody ?
” Prebble said .
The namesake emotion of each episode tends to shape its style .
In “ Shock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Denial ” takes place away from Suzie ’ s home , mostly in a hotel room , because “ in denial , you go somewhere else completely , ” Prebble said .
“ It became really exciting to me to try and make every episode a bit different emotionally , ” Prebble added .
“ Not necessarily that continuous narrative with an A , B , and a C story that has clarity and consistency , but actually more like looking at a diamond or something , where you ’ re seeing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an episode titled “ Shame , ” a real-life incident that Prebble wrote to Piper about has made its way into the plot .
Suzie ’ s agent , Naomi , played with no-nonsense warmth by Leila Farzad , is on a train when she realizes that the man sitting next to her is furiously masturbating .
She looks away , pretending not to notice .
When she gets off , at a busy station in central London , she asks about reporting the crime , and learns it may take hours .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Web site , right ?
I ’ ll go to the Web site , ” she tells a transport worker , on her way out .
Prebble once had a similar experience ; she decided not to report it , and was plagued with guilt .
“ I ’ ve always thought , I bet that guy just went and wanked loads next to people , ” she said .
“ That ’ s something I ’ ve not heard anyone talk about before—the shame of not reporting something.
” Other episodes of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In “ Anger , ” a blisteringly comic episode , Suzie , in a bid to rebuild her reputation as a serious actor , takes part in a workshop for a new musical , “ The Party of Monica Lewinsky , ” by an up-and-coming theatre director who ’ s “ supposed to be stupidly clever.
” At the first rehearsal , the director speaks excruciatingly slowly , with long , painful silences between phrases .
When Suzie tries to explain that she needs to get home for her son ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blankly .
“ We both have our experiences in the theatre , and quite often the directors can be tricky , ” Piper said , diplomatically .
“ And , I mean , Lucy hates anyone who speaks slowly.
” “ I do not hate anyone who speaks slowly , ” Prebble said , indignantly .
In her work , though , she has sometimes observed “ an authority that was getting lost in the room from me as a writer , as an author , as a playwright , and often being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me.
” She paused .
“ And when I would go and work with the very silent man on my own , I ’ d be like , They just don ’ t know .
They haven ’ t got anything to say .
But that silence is being filled with a projection of authority.
” She ’ s noticed a similar phenomenon among friends who are attracted to a Mr. Darcy type : silent , brooding , possibly empty .
“ You want to shake them and go , ‘ All of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you have.
’ ” In their long , sometimes rambling , discussions , e-mails , and texts , and during the writing of “ I Hate Suzie , ” Prebble and Piper often returned to the theme of what it feels like to enter your thirties as a woman .
“ Pretty much everyone I ’ ve seen around me has a bit of an identity crisis , ” Piper said .
Prebble said she saw many women—mostly straight women—around her falling into two camps .
“ There were the women who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and did the thing , and then were , like , ‘ Oh , shit !
I want to get out of it !
’ ” And then , “ there were women who didn ’ t get married , didn ’ t have the kids , didn ’ t do the thing , who were like , ‘ Oh , shit !
’ in the other direction.
” Prebble continued , “ Your thirties is where , culturally , the expectation is , O.K.
, now enough of that .
Now you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called the notion “ bonkers.
” “ It ’ s crazy to imagine that you would be knowing exactly who you were , doing the job that you should always do , married to the person you ’ ll never leave , ” she said .
“ It ’ s crazy.
” “ That ’ s the conclusion we ’ ve come to , ” Prebble said .
“ Leave us alone !
”

Lately, when I’m having a particularly bad day, I think about a scene from “I Hate Suzie,” an ingenious new show from Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper. At the end of the first episode, Piper, playing an actress named Suzie Pickles, careens down the high street of a bucolic English village. She has just finished a chaotic photo shoot at her home, nearby, and is wearing a black-and-white fur coat splashed with fake blood. (The shoot is promotional; there’s a Cruella De Vil connection.) Suzie’s lipstick is smeared, and her mascara has formed rings around her eyes, which dart from side to side, furtively. “I just need a charger. I just need a charger,” she says to herself. “Have you got a charger, mate?” she asks a passerby, who quickly looks away. “I hate this, I hate this . . . I hate this fucking place.” She passes a church (“I hate the church”), and a pub (“I hate the pub”). Suddenly, she breaks into song; her voice is startlingly light and sweet. “I hate seeing the stars at night,” she sings. “I miss the smog and the rising crime!” She does a dainty little twirl. It’s exactly what having a crackup feels like.
“I Hate Suzie” follows the unravelling of its main character’s life in eight sharply drawn episodes, each named, more or less, after a stage of grief: “Shock,” “Denial,” “Fear,” “Shame,” “Bargaining,” “Guilt,” “Anger,” and “Acceptance.” The series premièred in the U.K. in August to jubilant reviews (“Piper is nude, lewd, and joyously off the rails,” the Guardian wrote), and arrived on HBO Max on November 19th. Suzie’s breakdown is triggered when her phone is hacked and compromising photos are leaked to the press. Nudity might not be so bad, but the pictures also reveal an affair. Her husband, a university lecturer and expert mansplainer, played with bitter condescension by Daniel Ings, immediately changes the locks.
In Britain, Piper is a household name, having achieved fame early, at fifteen, as a pop star, when her 1998 single “Because We Want To” débuted at No. 1. (Sample lyric: “Why you gotta play that song so loud? / Because we want to! Because we want to!”) In the early aughts, Piper developed a following on television as Rose, the plucky sidekick on “Doctor Who,” and then as a high-end sex worker in “Secret Diary of a Call Girl.” Prebble, who wrote “I Hate Suzie,” is also a writer and co-executive producer on “Succession.” When she was in her twenties, she wrote the script for “Secret Diary.” “The best thing about that show was meeting Billie,” she told me recently. “That was the beginning of probably one of the most important friendships of my life.”
The other day, the two friends met me on Zoom to talk about “Suzie.” Piper, who is thirty-eight, arrived a little late in overalls and a slick blond ponytail. “You look very sexy,” Prebble said. Piper replied, “I just got hair and makeuped.” Prebble, who is thirty-nine, has chestnut hair and a chatty, buzzing energy, and was calling from a nearly empty office building in Brooklyn, where she has been working on Season 3 of “Succession.” “Well, you look fucking hot in your production office,” Piper said.
Prebble first met Piper to pitch “Secret Diary,” which she had adapted from a real-life anonymous blog. “I was a bit intimidated, slightly, in a sort of celebrity way,” Prebble recalled. But Piper was on her own, which Prebble was surprised about, “and we just chatted about womanhood and sex work and sexuality and being a woman,” Prebble said. Piper had read her play “The Sugar Syndrome” in preparation. “By the end of the conversation, I was, like, Oh, this is a real artist.” But Prebble and Piper had little control over the final product. “I found myself constantly going, ‘Hang on, I don’t feel like this is right.’ And then a bunch of people would always say, ‘No it’s fine, it’s fine,’ ” Prebble said.
“You weren’t even allowed on set,” Piper added.
“If you did go on set, you had to be specially invited,” Prebble said. “You’re sort of brought on like you’ve won a competition. They bring you a cup of tea, like, O.K., are you happy now? Go away.”
In 2012, Prebble and Piper worked together again on Prebble’s play “The Effect,” about a couple involved in a pharmaceutical trial, at the National Theatre. Afterward, they stayed in touch. They were moving into their early thirties, a “rude awakening,” Piper said, and they spent long periods of time on the phone, counselling each other through those years. They started keeping notes, exchanging written thoughts about their daily lives and ideas for the show in the form of long, brutally honest e-mails. Many of these sentiments wound up in “I Hate Suzie.” “We started to get turned on by some of our sort of awful, sad, hilarious shared emotions,” Piper said. “And it became more obvious what we needed to do in the show.”
They rented a room in London and met every day for several weeks to map out the show. “We would put everything up on the wall,” Prebble said, “story ideas, and character ideas, and thematic ideas.” The trauma of a phone hack seemed to encapsulate the sense of personal crisis they wanted to invoke. “The idea of, What if that secret part of yourself was suddenly available to everybody?” Prebble said. The namesake emotion of each episode tends to shape its style. In “Shock,” Suzie bursts into song. “Denial” takes place away from Suzie’s home, mostly in a hotel room, because “in denial, you go somewhere else completely,” Prebble said. “It became really exciting to me to try and make every episode a bit different emotionally,” Prebble added. “Not necessarily that continuous narrative with an A, B, and a C story that has clarity and consistency, but actually more like looking at a diamond or something, where you’re seeing different faces in the jewel.”
In an episode titled “Shame,” a real-life incident that Prebble wrote to Piper about has made its way into the plot. Suzie’s agent, Naomi, played with no-nonsense warmth by Leila Farzad, is on a train when she realizes that the man sitting next to her is furiously masturbating. She looks away, pretending not to notice. When she gets off, at a busy station in central London, she asks about reporting the crime, and learns it may take hours. “I could just go to the Web site, right? I’ll go to the Web site,” she tells a transport worker, on her way out. Prebble once had a similar experience; she decided not to report it, and was plagued with guilt. “I’ve always thought, I bet that guy just went and wanked loads next to people,” she said. “That’s something I’ve not heard anyone talk about before—the shame of not reporting something.”
Other episodes of the show draw from their professional lives. In “Anger,” a blisteringly comic episode, Suzie, in a bid to rebuild her reputation as a serious actor, takes part in a workshop for a new musical, “The Party of Monica Lewinsky,” by an up-and-coming theatre director who’s “supposed to be stupidly clever.” At the first rehearsal, the director speaks excruciatingly slowly, with long, painful silences between phrases. When Suzie tries to explain that she needs to get home for her son’s birthday party, he looks at her blankly. “We both have our experiences in the theatre, and quite often the directors can be tricky,” Piper said, diplomatically. “And, I mean, Lucy hates anyone who speaks slowly.”
“I do not hate anyone who speaks slowly,” Prebble said, indignantly. In her work, though, she has sometimes observed “an authority that was getting lost in the room from me as a writer, as an author, as a playwright, and often being located in a very silent man near me.” She paused. “And when I would go and work with the very silent man on my own, I’d be like, They just don’t know. They haven’t got anything to say. But that silence is being filled with a projection of authority.” She’s noticed a similar phenomenon among friends who are attracted to a Mr. Darcy type: silent, brooding, possibly empty. “You want to shake them and go, ‘All of the things that you think he has, you have.’ ”
In their long, sometimes rambling, discussions, e-mails, and texts, and during the writing of “I Hate Suzie,” Prebble and Piper often returned to the theme of what it feels like to enter your thirties as a woman. “Pretty much everyone I’ve seen around me has a bit of an identity crisis,” Piper said. Prebble said she saw many women—mostly straight women—around her falling into two camps. “There were the women who got married, and had kids, and did the thing, and then were, like, ‘Oh, shit! I want to get out of it!’ ” And then, “there were women who didn’t get married, didn’t have the kids, didn’t do the thing, who were like, ‘Oh, shit!’ in the other direction.”
Prebble continued, “Your thirties is where, culturally, the expectation is, O.K., now enough of that. Now you are who you are forever.” She called the notion “bonkers.” “It’s crazy to imagine that you would be knowing exactly who you were, doing the job that you should always do, married to the person you’ll never leave,” she said. “It’s crazy.”
“It’s unrealistic,” Piper boomed.
“That’s the conclusion we’ve come to,” Prebble said. “Leave us alone!”


newyorker--2020-11-22--The Tennessee Solution to Disappearing Book Reviews

That national crisis came for the Volunteer State just over a decade ago .
Tim Henderson , the executive director of Humanities Tennessee , the state ’ s affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities , remembers noticing fewer book reviews and fewer publications , but also talking with struggling local arts and culture writers .
“ When we saw the disappearance of arts coverage across the state , it was obvious we should respond , ” Henderson said , “ but not how.
” Humanities Tennessee eventually created something called Chapter 16 : a part-digital , part-print publication @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the state by doing what almost any other outlet would—running reviews , profiles , interviews , and essays—but also by doing what almost no other outlet could afford to do : giving away its content for free , not only to readers but to any publication of any kind that wants to reproduce it .
“ We knew there was an audience for this , and we serve readers , not a bottom line , so we wanted to find a way to provide this free of charge , ” Henderson said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ as many as half a million people read something from Chapter 16 , and it is why , although the outlet calls itself “ a community of Tennessee writers , readers , and passersby , ” it offers what might be a model of sustainable arts coverage for the rest of the country .
From the beginning , Henderson and his colleagues hoped that Chapter 16 would become a template for other states and regions where arts coverage is disappearing but grants , donations , and , above all , readers still exist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should really be looking at , ” Serenity Gerbman , a program director at Humanities Tennessee , said .
“ We really think it ’ s the future of local journalism.
” Since 1989 , Humanities Tennessee had been running the annual Southern Festival of Books , in Nashville , and , for almost as long , it had been trying to figure out how to sustain that event ’ s audience during the other fifty-one weeks of the year .
When the Great Recession decimated newspapers and bookstores around the state , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s literary life—not only local authors with books in need of readers but Tennesseans in need of new things to read and critics with fewer venues for their work .
The nonprofit news outlet ProPublica was two years old at the time , and Humanities Tennessee thought something similar could succeed locally—only instead of focussing on investigative journalism , it would focus on books coverage , archived in a central place and distributed to as many outlets as possible , in order to provide the sorts of pieces that the local newspapers themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talent was there , and the readers were there , ” Gerbman said , “ and we felt like it was our responsibility to showcase it.
” Years before , Gerbman had driven the Tennessee novelist William Gay to and from a reading in Clarksville .
They got lost that night on the way home , and a long conversation turned longer ; in the course of it , Gay , who had spent much of his life hanging drywall and painting houses , and hadn ’ t published anything until he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talking about his sadness that Tennessee didn ’ t show as much pride in or offer as much support for its writers as neighboring Mississippi .
“ That struck me , ” Gerbman said , remembering Gay , who died in 2012 .
A few years later , she thought of his words again , when the novelist Inman Majors came home to Knoxville for a reading and confessed his disappointment that no newspapers in Tennessee had covered his book .
“ There are so many working writers here , publishing books and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was important for people to see that , ” Gerbman said .
The founders of Chapter 16 made it the publication ’ s mission to try to cover every book by a Tennessee author , every book about Tennessee , and every book by any author coming to Tennessee for an event at one of the state ’ s more than two dozen independent bookstores and nearly one hundred colleges .
Even their name reflected that regional pride : Tennessee was the sixteenth state to join the Union .
That mission makes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some ways , we ’ re extremely narrow , and other ways we ’ re extremely broad , ” Maria Browning , a fifth-generation Tennessean and the editor of Chapter 16 , said .
“ Maybe we ’ re covering an academic book or a genre book that no one else would review , but it was written by a Tennessee author ” or “ some big best-seller because the author is passing through Tennessee on their tour.
” Search the archive of Chapter 16 and you will find an interview with John @ @ @ @ @ @ @ musician ’ s songbook , “ Beyond Words , ” came out ; reviews of Karl Marlantes , Elizabeth McCracken , and Richard Powers ; and Q .
& A.s with the writer Kwame Alexander about basketball , with the Presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin about civic virtues , and with the historian Keisha Blain about working-class women who shaped the Black nationalist movement before Black Power .
When Chapter 16 started , its founders worried that there might not be enough books to cover .
It turned out that there were too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about them all , and so their editorial choices reflect the books they feel are of greatest interest to their audience ; there is no prohibition on negative reviews , but there is a preference for pieces that constructively criticize or thoughtfully celebrate .
“ We don ’ t trash books , ” Browning says , “ but we never lie .
We care about our authors , but also our readers , so we ’ re truthful.
” Within a few years , Chapter 16 had become a daily publication with at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Web site every weekday , forty-five weeks of the year .
Today , Browning says , most of those pieces run in print in at least one of the state ’ s major newspapers , and they sometimes appear in multiple outlets , including blogs , out-of-state dailies , or tiny local weeklies .
All of them are collected into a weekly digital newsletter that is sent out to a smaller group of subscribers .
For its media partners , the publication was an easy sell : free books coverage , written to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your city or authors from your neck of the woods , whether that is Memphis , Chattanooga , or anywhere else in the state .
For readers , it is a gift , although sometimes an invisible one : hundreds of thousands of people who read reviews or interviews syndicated from Chapter 16 in its regular partner publications—the Knoxville News Sentinel , the Memphis Commercial Appeal , the Nashville Scene , and the Chattanooga Times Free Press—may never notice the tagline indicating where it originated .
The first step was hiring Margaret Renkl @ @ @ @ @ @ @ job as book editor at the Nashville Scene .
An Alabama native , Renkl has lived in Tennessee since the eighties ; she knew the literary landscape well , and she knew that other writers were losing their writing gigs the way she was in a shrinking trade .
She spent six months planning an editorial calendar and putting together a roster of critics , most of them freelance refugees from publications that were scaling back or shuttering .
The editorial salaries have always been the largest expense , but Chapter 16 pays @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rates .
Still , Humanities Tennessee invests only around a hundred thousand dollars a year in the project , a fifth of what its annual book festival costs .
“ It ’ s such a good use of public money , ” Renkl said .
Now a contributing writer at the Times , she left Chapter 16 before publishing her own book , “ Late Migrations : A Natural History of Love and Loss.
” Wondering why other states have not followed Tennessee 's lead , Renkl said , “ It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reaches and helps.
” One of the most grateful of those constituencies is the state ’ s independent bookstores , since the coverage that Chapter 16 provides to its media partners helps drum up audiences for their store events , thereby selling books and cultivating a common literary culture across one of the longest states in the country .
For Star Lowe , who opened Star Line Books , in Chattanooga , a few years ago—she was forced to close the store this summer , after revenues fell on account of the pandemic—the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calls Tennessee ’ s other “ bookies.
” “ Memphis may as well be in Egypt if you hail from Kingsport , ” Lowe said .
“ It ’ s easy to feel a disconnect , so I love that I am able to feel linked to my neighbors across the state when I open my Chapter 16 newsletter.
” Another grateful group are the critics themselves .
Emily Choate , who started as an intern at Chapter 16 , has been contributing reviews for eight years now .
She lives just north @ @ @ @ @ @ @ White House , and told me that learning the art of criticism while interning for the editorial staff helped her build a freelance career , which sustains her life as a fiction writer .
“ To be a Southerner writing in Southern publications about Southern books—it ’ s a really beautiful responsibility , ” Choate said .
She also says the community around Chapter 16 is what inspired her to think locally , and made her want to be involved with other regional literary projects , like the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance , whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come from our personal podunks and gather in our common Peauxdunque.
” Not all of Chapter 16 ’ s writers are locals : Hamilton Cain was raised in Chattanooga but has lived in New York for three decades now , working first at the Strand , then in book publishing for a few houses , and now as a full-time book critic for magazines and newspapers around the country .
He found out about Chapter 16 when it reviewed a book he wrote , “ This Boy ’ s Faith : Notes from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s been writing for the outlet ever since .
( His writings include a review of my book , last year , before an event for Union Ave Books , in Knoxville . )
“ It ’ s great to be plugged into what I most love and miss about the South : its literary traditions , ” Cain said , connecting Chapter 16 to a long lineage of literary history in the Volunteer State , including the New Criticism , which grew out of a collective of writers at Vanderbilt University .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ not only for what it does inside the state but also its role as a beacon to those outside of it .
“ I think Chapter 16 has pushed back on the contraction in the industry , and on what people think about Southern culture , ” he said .
“ It says we ’ re cosmopolitan , we make things , beautiful and literary things , even though we ’ re not New York.
” Like Cain , David Dark , a lifelong Nashvillian , first learned of Chapter 16 when it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Sacredness of Questioning Everything.
” Two years ago , Dark , who teaches religion at Belmont University , wrote his first piece for the site , about the philosopher James P. Carse , in advance of Carse ’ s planned visit to Belmont ’ s campus .
It was one of many pieces about religion and politics that Dark would write for Chapter 16 .
At a cocktail party last year celebrating the publication ’ s tenth anniversary , Dark looked around the room and realized just how eclectic and creative a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one by one at events from across the decades and around the state , gathered together in one place .
“ I always tell my students to amplify the oracle , to amplify whatever thoughtfulness you find , to sponsor the culture you want to see more of , ” Dark said .
“ And that ’ s what Chapter 16 does .
”

Long before the coronavirus pandemic accelerated the devastation of newspapers and media outlets of all kinds, book reviews around the country had already started to disappear. Papers like the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post eliminated their standalone sections; the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Dallas Morning News let their book editors and staff critics go; coverage evaporated in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Orlando Sentinel. News outlets that once reviewed more than five hundred books every year—and, in some cases, three times as many—now rarely cover them at all.
That national crisis came for the Volunteer State just over a decade ago. Tim Henderson, the executive director of Humanities Tennessee, the state’s affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, remembers noticing fewer book reviews and fewer publications, but also talking with struggling local arts and culture writers. “When we saw the disappearance of arts coverage across the state, it was obvious we should respond,” Henderson said, “but not how.”
Humanities Tennessee eventually created something called Chapter 16: a part-digital, part-print publication that covers literature and literary life in the state by doing what almost any other outlet would—running reviews, profiles, interviews, and essays—but also by doing what almost no other outlet could afford to do: giving away its content for free, not only to readers but to any publication of any kind that wants to reproduce it. “We knew there was an audience for this, and we serve readers, not a bottom line, so we wanted to find a way to provide this free of charge,” Henderson said.
That is why, every week, as many as half a million people read something from Chapter 16, and it is why, although the outlet calls itself “a community of Tennessee writers, readers, and passersby,” it offers what might be a model of sustainable arts coverage for the rest of the country. From the beginning, Henderson and his colleagues hoped that Chapter 16 would become a template for other states and regions where arts coverage is disappearing but grants, donations, and, above all, readers still exist. “This is a model people should really be looking at,” Serenity Gerbman, a program director at Humanities Tennessee, said. “We really think it’s the future of local journalism.”
Since 1989, Humanities Tennessee had been running the annual Southern Festival of Books, in Nashville, and, for almost as long, it had been trying to figure out how to sustain that event’s audience during the other fifty-one weeks of the year. When the Great Recession decimated newspapers and bookstores around the state, they grew worried about the state’s literary life—not only local authors with books in need of readers but Tennesseans in need of new things to read and critics with fewer venues for their work. The nonprofit news outlet ProPublica was two years old at the time, and Humanities Tennessee thought something similar could succeed locally—only instead of focussing on investigative journalism, it would focus on books coverage, archived in a central place and distributed to as many outlets as possible, in order to provide the sorts of pieces that the local newspapers themselves no longer could. “The creative talent was there, and the readers were there,” Gerbman said, “and we felt like it was our responsibility to showcase it.”
Years before, Gerbman had driven the Tennessee novelist William Gay to and from a reading in Clarksville. They got lost that night on the way home, and a long conversation turned longer; in the course of it, Gay, who had spent much of his life hanging drywall and painting houses, and hadn’t published anything until he was in his late fifties, got to talking about his sadness that Tennessee didn’t show as much pride in or offer as much support for its writers as neighboring Mississippi. “That struck me,” Gerbman said, remembering Gay, who died in 2012. A few years later, she thought of his words again, when the novelist Inman Majors came home to Knoxville for a reading and confessed his disappointment that no newspapers in Tennessee had covered his book.
“There are so many working writers here, publishing books and doing good work, and we felt it was important for people to see that,” Gerbman said. The founders of Chapter 16 made it the publication’s mission to try to cover every book by a Tennessee author, every book about Tennessee, and every book by any author coming to Tennessee for an event at one of the state’s more than two dozen independent bookstores and nearly one hundred colleges. Even their name reflected that regional pride: Tennessee was the sixteenth state to join the Union.
That mission makes its contents unusually eclectic. “In some ways, we’re extremely narrow, and other ways we’re extremely broad,” Maria Browning, a fifth-generation Tennessean and the editor of Chapter 16, said. “Maybe we’re covering an academic book or a genre book that no one else would review, but it was written by a Tennessee author” or “some big best-seller because the author is passing through Tennessee on their tour.” Search the archive of Chapter 16 and you will find an interview with John Prine that his wife conducted when the musician’s songbook, “Beyond Words,” came out; reviews of Karl Marlantes, Elizabeth McCracken, and Richard Powers; and Q. & A.s with the writer Kwame Alexander about basketball, with the Presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin about civic virtues, and with the historian Keisha Blain about working-class women who shaped the Black nationalist movement before Black Power.
When Chapter 16 started, its founders worried that there might not be enough books to cover. It turned out that there were too many Tennessee-related books and events to write about them all, and so their editorial choices reflect the books they feel are of greatest interest to their audience; there is no prohibition on negative reviews, but there is a preference for pieces that constructively criticize or thoughtfully celebrate. “We don’t trash books,” Browning says, “but we never lie. We care about our authors, but also our readers, so we’re truthful.”
Within a few years, Chapter 16 had become a daily publication with at least one new piece posted on its Web site every weekday, forty-five weeks of the year. Today, Browning says, most of those pieces run in print in at least one of the state’s major newspapers, and they sometimes appear in multiple outlets, including blogs, out-of-state dailies, or tiny local weeklies. All of them are collected into a weekly digital newsletter that is sent out to a smaller group of subscribers. For its media partners, the publication was an easy sell: free books coverage, written to your specifications, tied to events in your city or authors from your neck of the woods, whether that is Memphis, Chattanooga, or anywhere else in the state. For readers, it is a gift, although sometimes an invisible one: hundreds of thousands of people who read reviews or interviews syndicated from Chapter 16 in its regular partner publications—the Knoxville News Sentinel, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Nashville Scene, and the Chattanooga Times Free Press—may never notice the tagline indicating where it originated.
The Institute for Nonprofit News has more than two hundred member media organizations, from East Lansing Info, in Michigan, to MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, in Memphis. Most of them focus on investigative reporting; Chapter 16 is one of only a few nonprofit media outlets in the country dedicated to coverage of the arts. Initial and ongoing funding came from the National Endowment for the Humanities, but Chapter 16 is also an independent affiliate of the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book, which has promoted literacy and libraries since 1977. Most states decided to open a physical center, but Humanities Tennessee opted to do something different: theirs would be a virtual center, so that anyone in the state, regardless of Zip Code, could access it at any time.
The first step was hiring Margaret Renkl, who was about to lose her job as book editor at the Nashville Scene. An Alabama native, Renkl has lived in Tennessee since the eighties; she knew the literary landscape well, and she knew that other writers were losing their writing gigs the way she was in a shrinking trade. She spent six months planning an editorial calendar and putting together a roster of critics, most of them freelance refugees from publications that were scaling back or shuttering.
The editorial salaries have always been the largest expense, but Chapter 16 pays all of its thirty contributing writers competitive rates. Still, Humanities Tennessee invests only around a hundred thousand dollars a year in the project, a fifth of what its annual book festival costs. “It’s such a good use of public money,” Renkl said. Now a contributing writer at the Times, she left Chapter 16 before publishing her own book, “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.” Wondering why other states have not followed Tennessee’s lead, Renkl said, “It’s unparalleled in how many different constituencies it reaches and helps.”
One of the most grateful of those constituencies is the state’s independent bookstores, since the coverage that Chapter 16 provides to its media partners helps drum up audiences for their store events, thereby selling books and cultivating a common literary culture across one of the longest states in the country. For Star Lowe, who opened Star Line Books, in Chattanooga, a few years ago—she was forced to close the store this summer, after revenues fell on account of the pandemic—the publication is a lifeline to what she calls Tennessee’s other “bookies.” “Memphis may as well be in Egypt if you hail from Kingsport,” Lowe said. “It’s easy to feel a disconnect, so I love that I am able to feel linked to my neighbors across the state when I open my Chapter 16 newsletter.”
Another grateful group are the critics themselves. Emily Choate, who started as an intern at Chapter 16, has been contributing reviews for eight years now. She lives just north of Nashville, in a town called White House, and told me that learning the art of criticism while interning for the editorial staff helped her build a freelance career, which sustains her life as a fiction writer. “To be a Southerner writing in Southern publications about Southern books—it’s a really beautiful responsibility,” Choate said. She also says the community around Chapter 16 is what inspired her to think locally, and made her want to be involved with other regional literary projects, like the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance, whose members gather under the motto “We come from our personal podunks and gather in our common Peauxdunque.”
Not all of Chapter 16’s writers are locals: Hamilton Cain was raised in Chattanooga but has lived in New York for three decades now, working first at the Strand, then in book publishing for a few houses, and now as a full-time book critic for magazines and newspapers around the country. He found out about Chapter 16 when it reviewed a book he wrote, “This Boy’s Faith: Notes from a Southern Baptist Upbringing.” He’s been writing for the outlet ever since. (His writings include a review of my book, last year, before an event for Union Ave Books, in Knoxville.)
“It’s great to be plugged into what I most love and miss about the South: its literary traditions,” Cain said, connecting Chapter 16 to a long lineage of literary history in the Volunteer State, including the New Criticism, which grew out of a collective of writers at Vanderbilt University. For Cain, the publication is essential not only for what it does inside the state but also its role as a beacon to those outside of it. “I think Chapter 16 has pushed back on the contraction in the industry, and on what people think about Southern culture,” he said. “It says we’re cosmopolitan, we make things, beautiful and literary things, even though we’re not New York.”
Like Cain, David Dark, a lifelong Nashvillian, first learned of Chapter 16 when it reviewed one of his books, “The Sacredness of Questioning Everything.” Two years ago, Dark, who teaches religion at Belmont University, wrote his first piece for the site, about the philosopher James P. Carse, in advance of Carse’s planned visit to Belmont’s campus. It was one of many pieces about religion and politics that Dark would write for Chapter 16.
At a cocktail party last year celebrating the publication’s tenth anniversary, Dark looked around the room and realized just how eclectic and creative a crew it was—people he had previously seen one by one at events from across the decades and around the state, gathered together in one place. “I always tell my students to amplify the oracle, to amplify whatever thoughtfulness you find, to sponsor the culture you want to see more of,” Dark said. “And that’s what Chapter 16 does.”


newyorker--2020-11-22--A Thanksgiving Dinner That Longs for France

Between 2008 , when I moved with my family to Lyon , and 2013 , when we moved back to New York , we celebrated Thanksgiving with a loose confederation of American acquaintances .
Many were there because they had fallen in love with a French partner and settled in the city .
Some had married people of other nationalities .
For us , the city was an appealing mix of what seemed like everyone from everywhere , and no Thanksgiving ever felt simply American , except , possibly , the one we hosted .
I had to order a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rarely eat turkey in November ) and planned an unapologetically kitschy menu , including classics from childhood : marshmallows on sweet potatoes , canned cranberry sauce ( which our son Frederick decided was the best food he had tasted in his life ) , and pumpkin pie made with Carnation condensed milk , bought at the nearby “ American ” bagel store ( where you also found Coke in a bottle , Froot Loops , and Welch ’ s grape jelly ) .
The pie troubled our French friends : a sweet tart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were also uncomfortable with so much cinnamon , a spice that they mysteriously loathed to the point ( in one case ) of gagging .
For many years , our son George didn ’ t understand why you would add cinnamon to anything .
Our other Thanksgivings never took place on the actual day ( Thanksgiving , obviously , is not a French holiday , and on the Thursday in question people work ) .
Our friends Victor ( American ) and Sylvie ( French ) hosted one on a Saturday night , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ principal language spoken .
My wife ’ s friend Bridget hosted another where she provided the turkey and asked guests to provide everything else .
The evening was relaxed—no stress about traditions or obligatory dishes or family members in a low-blood sugar moment ( although Frederick was disappointed not to have any jellied cranberry ) —and featured some extravagant displays of exceptional French cooking .
I have trouble remembering the exact dishes , though , because there was also an abundance of fine Beaujolais .
( We drove to the dinner ; we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my part , I arrived with three dishes instead of one , including pumpkin pie made with a butter pastry , a Port sauce for the turkey , and ingredients for whipping up buttery mashed potatoes in the style of the late , great chef Joël Robuchon .
My wife has ridiculed me to this day—was I trying to show off ?
But I had got excited by what France had taught me about cooking , and by the challenge of applying it to traditional American fare .
( And I was probably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this year ’ s Thanksgiving is one I could imagine making if we were in France now , hosting friends .
It is also informed by a longing to be there among them .
Since leaving Lyon , we have returned to visit every year .
This year we didn ’ t .
Also , after we returned to the United States my mother died , and , for my sister and me , her death has changed how we observe Thanksgiving .
Always a family holiday , at least theoretically , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with as many family members as possible , and with exuberant quantities of food and wine and game-playing and outright jubilation , as if to shout down our buried feelings of sorrow .
This year , we , like many others , won ’ t be seeing those relatives .
The menu I ’ ve devised is a lot for a family of four , and it is lavish ( it includes a truffle ! )
, because we ’ re celebrating nonetheless , and maybe , too , because we want to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ noise so that we don ’ t notice all the people who are not with us .
I ’ ve made food for six , though , just in case a pair of cousins happen , against all odds , to drop by .
Cranberry is one of the great American flavors , and the sauce made from it is perfect with turkey .
But it is also perfect with just about anything else you will cook this winter , including scallops , pork roast , even omelets .
If kept from being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in most recipes to counter the fruit ’ s sharp , sour bite with an excess of sugar ) , the sauce has a brightness and a zing that are like nothing else you will find easily on a winter plate .
It is also naturally gelatinous and surprisingly full in the mouth .
It is just an outright happy sauce .
Make it in abundance .
Make it for now and later and for February .
You can store it in containers in the freezer .
The French touch : a bottle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Banyuls is one of the several fortified sweet wines that you find in southeastern France .
The alcohol is high at 16.5 per cent , it costs fifteen to twenty dollars a bottle , and , like the cranberry , it has bright , zingy flavors .
( The cook also found it to be a perfectly sound refreshment while finishing the turkey . )
Vanilla is one of the fundamentals of the French palate , and not only in pastry ; perhaps only the shallot is more pervasive .
1 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Add to a saucepan .

You can’t really do a French version of pumpkin pie, and, even if you could dream one up, who would want to eat it? The pumpkin is as essential to Thanksgiving as the turkey, and, like the turkey, it has impressive credentials: they are both among the continent’s indigenous foods. You don’t mess with pumpkin pie.
But I did. I tweaked it Frenchily.
I added vanilla, which some pie recipes seem not to include. One of the ironies of this very American dessert is that its principal flavorings—cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, ginger—come from another hemisphere. So, absolutely: mine would have vanilla, some very French vanilla (which is to say, from Madagascar). I substituted the usual vegetable-oil flaky crust for one made with butter (a pâte brisée). Instead of a can of iconic Carnation condensed milk, which, despite its throwback appeal, is pretty sickly in its exaggerated sweetness, I used crème fraîche, with its welcome acidity. And I used coconut sugar instead of the conventional cane variety, which is not particularly French, but, with its subtle tropical flavors, seemed to complement the pie’s equatorial spicing.
Then there was the pumpkin. There is a popular view that what you get in a can is so reliable that you shouldn’t bother with the fresh. For my part, I like interacting with my pumpkin before I eat it—its size and slippery skin, which makes it a challenge to cut; the business with the seeds; the long roast and how it changes the texture and the aromas during cooking. Also, the draining. Pumpkins have a lot of water, and, once I cook the pulp, I drain it overnight in a sieve—and I like that. I get none of this from the contents of the can, which, frankly, look like dog poop.
I bought a sugar pumpkin, a variety recommended for eating, but then wondered (and felt that this was very French of me): is it really the best? I went to the pumpkin stand at Union Square Greenmarket to investigate. It wasn’t actually the pumpkin stand but was the one with the greatest variety of squash and gourd-like entities (hundreds!), run by JoAnn Banks, the pumpkin-obsessed proprietor of Bauma’s Market in New Jersey. Her view? “Sure, sugar pumpkins are popular because they’re called sugar pumpkins. But the best flavor is in the one that the canning factories like to buy up. This one.” She pointed to a bright orange, impressively round, impractically gigantic example. I made to lift it. It must have weighed twenty pounds. I wondered: how am I going to get it home?
And the name?
“I can’t pronounce it,” Banks said, and handed me a card for a “rouge vif d’Étampes.”
“French?” I asked. (Rouge vif means “bright red.” Étampes is a town outside Paris.)
“French,” she said.
“But pumpkins don’t come from France, do they?”
“Of course not.”
I bought it and roasted it, and the pulp, when cooked, was more pale pink than orange (or bright red) but had a wonderfully delicate texture.
I learned later that the rouge vif d’Étampes appears to have been introduced—or, I should say, reintroduced—to the United States from France. (Who would have thought?) It was popular in and around Paris in the late nineteenth century as the principal ingredient in a prized soup. Washington Atlee Burpee, one of America’s leading farm-seed cultivators, with a reputation for the variety and novelty of his products, “discovered” the rouge vif d’Étampes and, in 1883, brought it to the United States. Is it American or French? Well, both, maybe—or American, with, say, a French accent. (It is worth remembering that this wasn’t the first time one of our indigenous foods was imported here; many of “our” heritage turkeys were bred by British farmers in the sixteenth century.) And the pie? It was pretty good, although I couldn’t say exactly why. Was it the pumpkin or the crème fraîche or the vanilla or the pastry—or everything? But I do know that George loved it. Despite the abundance of cinnamon, he had three slices, eating them with his hands, like a pizza, and asked if we could have more every other week. (“Every week,” he said, “would probably be too much.”)
Ingredients
1 rouge vif d’Étampes pumpkin (for 1 lb. pulp after draining)
1 ¼ cups crème fraîche
2 eggs and 1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
2/3 cup coconut sugar (or substitute brown sugar)
Seeds of 1 vanilla bean
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
Small pinch of ground clove
Larger pinch of shaved nutmeg
Pâte brisêe (see recipe in last column, on apple tarts) in a 10-inch tart pan
Milk, for brushing pastry
Equipment
Hand-held blender or food processor
Pastry brush (or any brush)
Beans or pie weights, for blind-baking
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.


newyorker--2020-11-22--The Cryptic Crossword: No. 10

The Cryptic Crossword: No. 10

Some clues have been edited for clarity .
Subscribers can find explanations of the original puzzle ’ s answers in @ @ @

Some clues have been edited for clarity. Subscribers can find explanations of the original puzzle’s answers in our archive.


newyorker--2020-11-22--Sunday Reading: Voter Fraud

Sunday Reading: Voter Fraud

Voter fraud is exceedingly rare—but not in the headlines or in the mind of Donald Trump .
In 2012 , Jane Mayer published a profile in The New Yorker of Hans von Spakovsky , a Republican lawyer who would go on to serve as a member of the Trump Administration ’ s voter-fraud commission .
Spakovsky has created a cottage industry out of stoking fears about illegitimate voting .
He has also been instrumental , Mayer observes , in insuring that narratives about widespread voter fraud have become part of Republican orthodoxy , despite the scarcity of documented cases .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2005 , the government charged more Americans with violating migratory-bird statutes than with committing election fraud . )
As the late congressman John Lewis put it , Spakovsky and other voter-fraud activists are “ trying to create a cure where there is no sickness.
” The supposed cure also often amounts to efforts at disenfranchising minorities .
This week , we ’ re bringing you a selection of pieces about voter fraud and the many myths surrounding it .
In “ Stacey Abrams ’ s Fight for a Fair Vote , ” Jelani @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and chronicles her efforts to combat voter suppression .
In “ Trump and the Truth : The ‘ Rigged ’ Election , ” Jonathan Blitzer discusses Trump ’ s heated campaign rhetoric in 2016 about the electoral process .
( “ The election is going to be rigged—I ’ m going to be honest , ” he said .
“ People are going to walk in and they ’ re going to vote ten times , maybe.
” ) In “ Reënacting the Trial of a Black Woman Convicted of Voter Fraud , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dramatic reading , “ Why Would I Dare : The Trial of Crystal Mason , ” echoes Langston Hughes ’ s “ The Ballot and Me.
” Finally , in “ How Far Could Republicans Take Trump ’ s Claims of Election Fraud ?
, ” Jeannie Suk Gersen writes about how Trump ’ s allegations have eroded faith in the democratic process .
As we continue to watch events unfold in Washington , we hope you ’ ll take some time this weekend to delve into these eye-opening pieces .
The man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the polls .
As the 2020 elections approached , Abrams led the battle against voter suppression .
The idea of a “ rigged ” election doesn ’ t just give Trump ’ s ego the excuse it needs if his candidacy falls short—it also resonates with his backers .
“ Why Would I Dare : The Trial of Crystal Mason , ” a show about a woman accused of voter fraud , echoes Langston Hughes ’ s “ The Ballot and Me.
” Republicans are looking to strategies that might remain even after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ court .

Voter fraud is exceedingly rare—but not in the headlines or in the mind of Donald Trump. In 2012, Jane Mayer published a profile in The New Yorker of Hans von Spakovsky, a Republican lawyer who would go on to serve as a member of the Trump Administration’s voter-fraud commission. Spakovsky has created a cottage industry out of stoking fears about illegitimate voting. He has also been instrumental, Mayer observes, in insuring that narratives about widespread voter fraud have become part of Republican orthodoxy, despite the scarcity of documented cases. (One scholar notes that, in 2005, the government charged more Americans with violating migratory-bird statutes than with committing election fraud.) As the late congressman John Lewis put it, Spakovsky and other voter-fraud activists are “trying to create a cure where there is no sickness.” The supposed cure also often amounts to efforts at disenfranchising minorities.
This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces about voter fraud and the many myths surrounding it. In “Stacey Abrams’s Fight for a Fair Vote,” Jelani Cobb profiles the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and chronicles her efforts to combat voter suppression. In “Trump and the Truth: The ‘Rigged’ Election,” Jonathan Blitzer discusses Trump’s heated campaign rhetoric in 2016 about the electoral process. (“The election is going to be rigged—I’m going to be honest,” he said. “People are going to walk in and they’re going to vote ten times, maybe.”) In “Reënacting the Trial of a Black Woman Convicted of Voter Fraud,” Vinson Cunningham explores how a new dramatic reading, “Why Would I Dare: The Trial of Crystal Mason,” echoes Langston Hughes’s “The Ballot and Me.” Finally, in “How Far Could Republicans Take Trump’s Claims of Election Fraud?,” Jeannie Suk Gersen writes about how Trump’s allegations have eroded faith in the democratic process. As we continue to watch events unfold in Washington, we hope you’ll take some time this weekend to delve into these eye-opening pieces.
— David Remnick
Photograph by Lauren Lancaster
The man who has stoked fear about impostors at the polls.
Photograph by LaToya Ruby Frazier for The New Yorker
As the 2020 elections approached, Abrams led the battle against voter suppression.
Photograph by Charles Ommanney / The Washington Post / Getty
The idea of a “rigged” election doesn’t just give Trump’s ego the excuse it needs if his candidacy falls short—it also resonates with his backers.
“Why Would I Dare: The Trial of Crystal Mason,” a show about a woman accused of voter fraud, echoes Langston Hughes’s “The Ballot and Me.”
Republicans are looking to strategies that might remain even after rebuffs both at the polls and in court.


Biden’s Covid-19 Mission

The passage of time , in this pandemic , has been a hard thing to gauge .
To take one example , the phase III trials of COVID-19 vaccines , which scientists had warned may not be completed until the end of the year , are coming to blessedly rapid conclusions .
Last Wednesday , Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their vaccine appears to be both ninety-five-per-cent effective and safe , even for older people—a historic victory .
Moderna ’ s version , just a step behind Pfizer ’ s , appears to be effective , too , and other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trials forward , though , was the acceleration of the pandemic itself .
The positive cases in the control groups , which were given placebos , piled up so quickly that it became easier to see that the vaccines were working .
Still , the most torturous interval may be the one between now and Inauguration Day .
On January 20 , 2021—a year to the day since the first case of COVID-19 in the United States was confirmed—Joe Biden is due to be sworn in as President .
But , until then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for weeks in which , the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projects , the average number of deaths will rise to more than two thousand a day .
( On the day of Pfizer ’ s announcement , the number of new cases in the United States exceeded a hundred and sixty thousand . )
Thanksgiving , Christmas , and New Year ’ s threaten to become national superspreader events .
Biden will have to deal with a crisis that may still be escalating .
As a result , his coronavirus mission @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and a moral dimension .
Last week , at a virtual roundtable that Biden convened with frontline workers , Mary Turner , the president of the Minnesota Nurses Association , began to cry as she described staff shortages and how , even now , her colleagues have to “ beg ” for personal protective equipment .
“ You got me emotional , ” Biden said , close to tears himself .
Unlike Trump , he has no problem mustering empathy , but he must also make up for the President ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for getting supplies to hospitals , building a testing and contact-tracing system , and supporting health-care workers .
“ We nurses know that we are facing immense death and suffering in the coming weeks , ” Turner said .
“ And we will be there .
But we need to act now , we need to act quickly.
” Biden can undertake some immediate actions , like recommitting to the World Health Organization , by executive order .
For others , such as putting together a new COVID-relief package that will help individuals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ close , and states facing budget shortfalls , he will need Congress ’ s coöperation .
( And control of the Senate won ’ t be clear until after Georgia ’ s runoff elections , on January 5th . )
Biden has spoken of a nationwide mask mandate ; even with limits on federal power , he can use tools like incentives and persuasion to try to organize one .
He can also lend his authority to guidelines for targeted shutdowns and reopenings .
Trump and his crew , meanwhile , keep finding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Last week , when Gretchen Whitmer , the governor of Michigan , announced a three-week “ pause ” on certain activities in that state , in an attempt to halt the virus , Trump ’ s preferred coronavirus adviser , Scott Atlas , tweeted that Michiganders should “ rise up ” against the new rules .
( “ # FreedomMatters.
” ) Biden , asked about that comment , posed a pertinent question : “ What the hell is the matter with these guys ?
” Atlas ’ s remarks were particularly corrosive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost a hundred and fifty thousand votes , is one of the states whose election results Trump is baselessly contesting .
Trump is also withholding transition resources and intelligence briefings , and he has kept Biden ’ s coronavirus task force—which the President-elect has already assembled—from fully engaging with career public-health officials and scientists in the government , many of whom Trump has sidelined and belittled .
( As of last week , Dr. Anthony Fauci , whom Trump has called an “ idiot and a disaster , ” had not yet formally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve been unable to get access to the kinds of things we need to know , ” Biden said on Wednesday .
He mentioned the Strategic National Stockpile : it ’ s more difficult to make a plan for distributing supplies if no one will tell you what the government has at hand .
Most important , perhaps , Biden ’ s team needs to be part of the planning for vaccine distribution , which will involve the military .
Although many aspects of the pandemic response are managed on the state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ federal government that has contracted to buy a hundred million doses from both Pfizer and Moderna .
( Each person needs two doses . )
Only a fraction of those doses will be ready by the time Biden is inaugurated—innovation is fast , but manufacturing is stubbornly slow—and the logistics of getting them to the public is complex .
The Pfizer vaccine , in particular , can be stored in a commercial freezer for only five days , and otherwise must be kept at extremely low temperatures .
People refusing the vaccine may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country , but at first there will not be enough to go around—or even enough to protect health-care workers .
The same is true of advanced treatments , such as the monoclonal antibody cocktail that Trump received when he contracted COVID-19 .
He spent the final weeks of his campaign telling the mostly maskless crowds at his rallies that there is a “ cure ” for COVID-19 , which he would make sure they all got free of charge ; if that fails to happen , it is Biden who will have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distrust .
Trump also suggested that he might limit vaccine access to states , such as New York , that he does not regard as friendly .
When it ’ s Biden ’ s turn , his priorities will doubtless reflect different values ; nevertheless , there will be hard choices that everyone , even in his own party , might not willingly endorse .
( Which risk factors matter most ?
Should border guards be vaccinated before teachers ? )
Atul Gawande , a member of Biden ’ s Transition covid-19 Advisory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ magazine ) , argues that distribution must demonstrate that we can prioritize those who are more likely to be exposed , such as meatpacking and public-transportation workers , over members of the professional classes who can work via Zoom .
This would give Biden an opportunity to show that progressivism has immediate , practical meaning .
“ We ’ ve never put those people first in line , ” Gawande said .
Above all , the process will require transparency , decency , and the rebuilding of trust .
Biden has to move @ @ @ @ @ @ @ urge patience .
In January , the pandemic will still be demanding a great deal of us , and of him .
There are long days ahead .
♦

Illustration by João Fazenda
The passage of time, in this pandemic, has been a hard thing to gauge. To take one example, the phase III trials of COVID-19 vaccines, which scientists had warned may not be completed until the end of the year, are coming to blessedly rapid conclusions. Last Wednesday, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their vaccine appears to be both ninety-five-per-cent effective and safe, even for older people—a historic victory. Moderna’s version, just a step behind Pfizer’s, appears to be effective, too, and other vaccines will follow. What propelled the trials forward, though, was the acceleration of the pandemic itself. The positive cases in the control groups, which were given placebos, piled up so quickly that it became easier to see that the vaccines were working.
Still, the most torturous interval may be the one between now and Inauguration Day. On January 20, 2021—a year to the day since the first case of COVID-19 in the United States was confirmed—Joe Biden is due to be sworn in as President. But, until then, Donald Trump will linger in office for weeks in which, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projects, the average number of deaths will rise to more than two thousand a day. (On the day of Pfizer’s announcement, the number of new cases in the United States exceeded a hundred and sixty thousand.) Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s threaten to become national superspreader events. Biden will have to deal with a crisis that may still be escalating. As a result, his coronavirus mission must have an economic, an epidemiological, and a moral dimension.
Last week, at a virtual roundtable that Biden convened with frontline workers, Mary Turner, the president of the Minnesota Nurses Association, began to cry as she described staff shortages and how, even now, her colleagues have to “beg” for personal protective equipment. “You got me emotional,” Biden said, close to tears himself. Unlike Trump, he has no problem mustering empathy, but he must also make up for the President’s failure to develop a true national strategy for getting supplies to hospitals, building a testing and contact-tracing system, and supporting health-care workers. “We nurses know that we are facing immense death and suffering in the coming weeks,” Turner said. “And we will be there. But we need to act now, we need to act quickly.”
Biden can undertake some immediate actions, like recommitting to the World Health Organization, by executive order. For others, such as putting together a new COVID-relief package that will help individuals, businesses that may be forced to close, and states facing budget shortfalls, he will need Congress’s coöperation. (And control of the Senate won’t be clear until after Georgia’s runoff elections, on January 5th.) Biden has spoken of a nationwide mask mandate; even with limits on federal power, he can use tools like incentives and persuasion to try to organize one. He can also lend his authority to guidelines for targeted shutdowns and reopenings.
Trump and his crew, meanwhile, keep finding new ways to make things worse. Last week, when Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, announced a three-week “pause” on certain activities in that state, in an attempt to halt the virus, Trump’s preferred coronavirus adviser, Scott Atlas, tweeted that Michiganders should “rise up” against the new rules. (“#FreedomMatters.”) Biden, asked about that comment, posed a pertinent question: “What the hell is the matter with these guys?”
Atlas’s remarks were particularly corrosive because Michigan, which Biden won by almost a hundred and fifty thousand votes, is one of the states whose election results Trump is baselessly contesting. Trump is also withholding transition resources and intelligence briefings, and he has kept Biden’s coronavirus task force—which the President-elect has already assembled—from fully engaging with career public-health officials and scientists in the government, many of whom Trump has sidelined and belittled. (As of last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom Trump has called an “idiot and a disaster,” had not yet formally met with Biden.) “We’ve been unable to get access to the kinds of things we need to know,” Biden said on Wednesday. He mentioned the Strategic National Stockpile: it’s more difficult to make a plan for distributing supplies if no one will tell you what the government has at hand.
Most important, perhaps, Biden’s team needs to be part of the planning for vaccine distribution, which will involve the military. Although many aspects of the pandemic response are managed on the state or local level, it is the federal government that has contracted to buy a hundred million doses from both Pfizer and Moderna. (Each person needs two doses.) Only a fraction of those doses will be ready by the time Biden is inaugurated—innovation is fast, but manufacturing is stubbornly slow—and the logistics of getting them to the public is complex. The Pfizer vaccine, in particular, can be stored in a commercial freezer for only five days, and otherwise must be kept at extremely low temperatures. People refusing the vaccine may become an issue in some areas of the country, but at first there will not be enough to go around—or even enough to protect health-care workers. The same is true of advanced treatments, such as the monoclonal antibody cocktail that Trump received when he contracted COVID-19. He spent the final weeks of his campaign telling the mostly maskless crowds at his rallies that there is a “cure” for COVID-19, which he would make sure they all got free of charge; if that fails to happen, it is Biden who will have to deal with the resulting anger and distrust.
Trump also suggested that he might limit vaccine access to states, such as New York, that he does not regard as friendly. When it’s Biden’s turn, his priorities will doubtless reflect different values; nevertheless, there will be hard choices that everyone, even in his own party, might not willingly endorse. (Which risk factors matter most? Should border guards be vaccinated before teachers?) Atul Gawande, a member of Biden’s Transition covid-19 Advisory Board (and a writer for this magazine), argues that distribution must demonstrate that we can prioritize those who are more likely to be exposed, such as meatpacking and public-transportation workers, over members of the professional classes who can work via Zoom. This would give Biden an opportunity to show that progressivism has immediate, practical meaning. “We’ve never put those people first in line,” Gawande said.
Above all, the process will require transparency, decency, and the rebuilding of trust. Biden has to move fast. He will also need to urge patience. In January, the pandemic will still be demanding a great deal of us, and of him. There are long days ahead. ♦
More on the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-11-23--The Art of Building the Impossible

The Art of Building the Impossible

Straight lines are easy , curves are hard .
Most houses are just collections of boxes , Ellison says .
We stack them side by side or on top of one another , like toddlers playing with blocks .
Add a triangular roof and it ’ s done .
When buildings were still made by hand , the process would yield the occasional curve—igloos , mud huts , wigwams , yurts—and master builders earned their keep with arches and domes .
But flat shapes are cheaper to mass-produce , and every sawmill and factory spits them out in uniform sizes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tile .
It ’ s the tyranny of the orthogonal , Ellison says .
“ I can ’ t do the calculus on this , either , ” he added , shrugging .
“ But I can build it.
” Ellison is a carpenter—the best carpenter in New York , by some accounts , though that hardly covers it .
Depending on the job , Ellison is also a welder , a sculptor , a contractor , a cabinetmaker , an inventor , and an industrial designer .
He ’ s a carpenter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the great dome of the Florence Cathedral , was an engineer .
He ’ s a man who gets hired to build impossible things .
A floor below us , workers were shouldering sheets of plywood up a set of temporary stairs , sidestepping the half-finished tilework in the entryway .
Ducts and wires were going in here on the third floor , snaking under joists and along floorboards , while sections of a staircase were hoisted through a window on the fourth .
A team of metalworkers was welding them into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ air .
On the fifth floor , under the soaring ceiling of a skylit studio , some exposed steel beams were getting a coat of paint , while carpenters built a bulkhead on the roof and stoneworkers scuttled by on scaffolds outside , restoring the brick-and-brownstone façade .
It was the ordinary chaos of a construction site .
What seemed haphazard was in fact an intricate choreography of skilled workers and parts , scheduled months in advance and now brought together in a preordained sequence .
What looked like butchery was reconstructive surgery @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organs and circulatory system splayed open like a patient on an operating table .
It ’ s always a mess before the drywall goes up , Ellison said .
In a couple of months , I wouldn ’ t recognize it .
He walked out into the middle of the hall and stood there like a boulder in rapids , directing the flow without moving .
Ellison is fifty-eight and has been working as a carpenter for almost forty years .
He is a big man with heavy , sloped shoulders .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a bald head and fleshy lips that protrude over a ragged beard .
There is a bone-deep competence about him that reads as solidity : he seems built of denser stuff than other people .
With his gruff voice and wide-set , watchful eyes , he can seem like a character out of Tolkien or Wagner : the clever Nibelung , fabricator of treasures .
He loves machines and fire and precious metals .
He loves wood and brass and stone .
He bought a cement mixer and was obsessed with it for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
What draws him to a project , he says , is the potential for magic , the unexpected thing .
The glimmer of gems that veins the mundane .
“ Nobody ever hires me to do a conventional building , ” he said .
“ Billionaires don ’ t want the same old thing .
They want better than the last .
They want something that no one has done before , that ’ s specific to their apartment , and that might even be ill-advised.
” Sometimes this gives rise to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t .
Ellison has worked on homes for David Bowie , Woody Allen , Robin Williams , and dozens of others he ’ s not allowed to name .
His least expensive projects cost around five million dollars , but others can swell to fifty million or more .
“ If they want Downton Abbey , I can give them Downton Abbey , ” he said .
“ If they want a Roman bath , I ’ ll build that .
I ’ ve done some hideous places—I mean , disturbingly hideous .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ pony in the race .
If they want Studio 54 , I ’ ll build that .
But it ’ ll be the best Studio 54 they ’ ve ever seen—and it ’ ll have some extra Studio 56 thrown in.
” High-end New York real estate exists in its own microcosm , reliant on strange , nonlinear math .
It ’ s as divorced from ordinary constraints as the needle towers that have risen to contain it .
Even in the depths of the financial crisis , in 2008 , the ultra-rich @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at cut-rate prices and turned them into luxury rentals .
Or let them stand empty , assuming the market would recover .
Or acquired them from China or Saudi Arabia , sight unseen , thinking the city was still a safe place to park a few million .
Or just ignored the economy altogether , believing it could do them no harm .
In the early months of the pandemic , there was much talk of wealthy New Yorkers fleeing the city .
The market was down over all , but by fall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ firm sold twenty homes for more than four million dollars in the last week of September alone .
“ Nothing about what we do is sensible , ” Ellison said .
“ No one does what we do to an apartment for value or resale .
No one needs it .
They just want it.
” New York may be the hardest place in the world to do construction .
There ’ s too little room to build anything and too much money with which to build it , and the combined pressure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ glass towers , Gothic skyscrapers , Egyptian temples , and Bauhaus slabs rocketing into the air .
If anything , their interiors are even more exotic—strange crystals formed when the pressure is turned inward .
Ride a private elevator up a Park Avenue residence and the doors could open onto a French Country parlor or an English hunting lodge , a minimalist loft or a Byzantine library , its ceiling crowded with saints and martyrs .
No logic leads from one space to the next .
No zoning law or building tradition connects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Shinto shrine on twenty-four .
Their owners just like the way they look .
“ I couldn ’ t be employed in most cities in America , ” Ellison told me .
“ This job doesn ’ t exist there .
It ’ s too idiosyncratic.
” New York has its share of cookie-cutter apartments and high-rises , but even those may be lodged in landmark buildings or wedged into odd-shaped lots , set wobbling on sandbox foundations or perched on stilts a quarter mile high .
After four centuries of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a crazy quilt of structures and styles , and every era has its problems .
Colonial houses are handsome but frail .
Their wood wasn ’ t kiln-dried , so any original boards will be warped , rotten , or split .
Town houses from the eighteen-hundreds are good for their shells and not much else .
Their walls may be one brick thick , the mortar washed out by rain .
Prewar buildings can be nearly bombproof , but their cast-iron sewers are full of corrosion , their brass plumbing brittle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Kansas , you don ’ t have to give a shit about any of this , ” Ellison says .
A mid-century building may be the most reliable , but watch out for those built after 1970 .
Construction was a free-for-all in the eighties .
The crews and work sites were often run by the Mafia .
“ If you wanted to pass your job inspection , a guy would call from a pay phone and you ’ d walk down with an envelope of two hundred and fifty dollars , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be just as bad .
In the luxury apartment house in Gramercy Park where Karl Lagerfeld owned a unit , the façade leaked so badly that some of the floors rippled like potato chips .
But the very worst , in Ellison ’ s experience , was Trump Tower .
In an apartment he renovated there , the windows howled and had no weather stripping , and the electrical circuits seemed patched together with extension-cord wire .
The floors were so out of level , he told me , you could drop a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the flaws and foibles of every era is a lifetime ’ s work .
There ’ s no doctoral degree in high-end construction .
No Cordon Bleu for carpenters .
It ’ s the closest thing in America to a medieval guild , with a long and haphazard apprenticeship .
It takes fifteen years to become a good carpenter , Ellison estimates , and another fifteen to do the style of project he does .
“ Most people just aren ’ t up for it .
It ’ s too weird and hard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can be a refined skill in New York .
In most cities , a crew can just whale away with crowbars and sledgehammers and toss the debris into dumpsters .
But in buildings filled with wealthy , finicky owners , the crews have to work with surgical stealth .
Any dirt or noise could prompt a call to City Hall , and a single busted water pipe could ruin a Degas .
So the walls have to be carefully dismantled , the pieces packed into rolling containers or fifty-five-gallon drums , sprayed down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in plastic .
Just gutting an apartment can cost a third of a million dollars .
A lot of co-ops and luxury condominiums insist on “ summer rules.
” They allow construction only between Memorial Day and Labor Day , when owners are off in Tuscany or the Hamptons .
This ratchets up the already enormous logistical challenges .
There ’ s no driveway , back yard , or empty lot to leave materials .
The sidewalk is narrow , the stairwell dim and cramped , the elevator a tight squeeze for three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a ship in a bottle .
When the truck arrives with a load of drywall , it gets stuck behind a moving van .
Soon traffic is backed up , horns blaring , and the police are handing out tickets .
Then the neighbor files a complaint and the site gets shut down .
Even if the permits are in order , the building codes are a labyrinth of shifting passages .
Two buildings explode in East Harlem , begetting stricter gas inspections .
A parapet crumbles at Columbia and kills a student @ @ @ @ @ @ @ small boy falls from the fifty-third floor and henceforth windows in all apartments with children may open no more than four and a half inches .
“ There ’ s an old saying that building code is written in blood , ” Ellison told me .
“ It ’ s also written in annoying letters.
” When Cindy Crawford threw one too many parties a few years ago , new noise covenants were born .
And all this time , as crews navigate the city ’ s pop-up obstacles and the end of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ revising their plans , piling on complexities .
Last year , Ellison completed a three-year , forty-two-million-dollar renovation of a penthouse on Seventy-second Street .
The apartment had six floors and twenty thousand square feet .
Before he was done , he had to design and build more than fifty custom furnishings and mechanical devices for it—from a retractable television above an outdoor fireplace to an origami-like childproof gate .
A commercial firm might have taken years to develop and test each piece .
Ellison had a few weeks .
“ We don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” he says .
“ These people are desperate to get into the place .
So I get one chance .
We build the prototype and then they live in it.
” This was their first week back at the site in three months .
The last time I saw Ellison , in late February , when he was wrestling with the bathroom ceiling , he hoped to finish the job by summer .
Then everything crashed to a halt .
When the pandemic began , New York had forty thousand active construction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the city .
At first , the sites were kept open as essential businesses .
On some projects with confirmed COVID cases , the crews had no choice but to come to work and ride packed elevators up twenty floors or more .
It was only in late March , after protests by workers , that close to ninety per cent of the job sites were finally shut down .
Even indoors , you could sense the absence , like the sudden lack of traffic noise .
The sound of buildings going up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , hammering heartbeat .
Now it was dead silent .
Ellison spent the spring alone in his studio in Newburgh , an hour up the Hudson .
He made parts for the town house and kept tabs on his subcontractors .
All told , thirty-three companies were slated to work on the project , from roofers and tilers to ironmongers and concrete fabricators .
He had no idea how many would return from quarantine .
Renovation jobs tend to lag two years behind the economy .
The owner gets a Christmas bonus , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then waits around for drawings to be done , permits to be issued , and crews to shake free .
By the time construction starts , it ’ s usually too late to stop .
But now office buildings were emptying out across Manhattan and co-op boards were banning all new construction for the foreseeable future .
“ They don ’ t want a bunch of grubby , Covid-carrying workers walking around , ” Ellison said .
When the city resumed construction , on June 8th , it set strict limits and protocols @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had to take their temperatures and answer health questionnaires , wear masks and keep their distance—the state limited sites to one worker for every two hundred and fifty square feet .
A site like this one , with seven thousand square feet , could have no more than twenty-eight people on the premises .
Today , there were seventeen .
Some of the crew were still reluctant to leave quarantine .
“ The cabinetmakers , custom metalworkers , and finish carpenters fall into that camp , ” Ellison said .
“ They ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their businesses , have workshops in Connecticut.
” The prissier trades , he called them , jokingly .
Marelli laughed : “ Those with college degrees from art schools tend to be made of softer tissues.
” Others had left town weeks ago .
“ The steel guy went back to Ecuador , ” Ellison said .
“ He says he ’ s coming back in two weeks , but he ’ s in Guayaquil and he brought his wife with him .
”

And all this time, as crews navigate the city’s pop-up obstacles and the end of summer hurries near, the owners are revising their plans, piling on complexities. Last year, Ellison completed a three-year, forty-two-million-dollar renovation of a penthouse on Seventy-second Street. The apartment had six floors and twenty thousand square feet. Before he was done, he had to design and build more than fifty custom furnishings and mechanical devices for it—from a retractable television above an outdoor fireplace to an origami-like childproof gate. A commercial firm might have taken years to develop and test each piece. Ellison had a few weeks. “We don’t have time to prototype,” he says. “These people are desperate to get into the place. So I get one chance. We build the prototype and then they live in it.”
Ellison and his partner, Adam Marelli, were sitting at a makeshift plywood table at the town house, going over the day’s schedule. Ellison usually works as an independent contractor, hired to build specific parts of a project. But he and Marelli have lately teamed up to manage entire renovations. Ellison was in charge of this building’s structures and finishes—the walls, stairs, cabinets, tiles, and woodwork—while Marelli oversaw its inner workings: the plumbing, electricity, sprinklers, and ventilation. Marelli, who is forty, trained as a fine artist at N.Y.U. He divides his time among painting, construction, photography, and surfing the breaks in Lavallette, New Jersey. With his longish brown curls and slender-hipped downtown style, he can seem an odd match for Ellison and his crew—a whippet among pit bulls. But he shares Ellison’s obsession with craft. As they worked, their talk pinged amiably between blueprints and elevations, the Napoleonic Code and the stepwells of Rajasthan, with side discussions of Japanese temples and Greek vernacular architecture. “It’s all about ellipses and irrational numbers,” Ellison said. “It’s the language of music and art. It’s like life: nothing ever works out on its own.”
Ellison in his workshop in Newburgh, where the tools are simple and multipurpose. What he loves about carpentry is how it gives free rein to the body’s physical intelligence. Photograph by Dean Kaufman for The New Yorker
This was their first week back at the site in three months. The last time I saw Ellison, in late February, when he was wrestling with the bathroom ceiling, he hoped to finish the job by summer. Then everything crashed to a halt. When the pandemic began, New York had forty thousand active construction sites—almost twice the number of restaurants in the city. At first, the sites were kept open as essential businesses. On some projects with confirmed COVID cases, the crews had no choice but to come to work and ride packed elevators up twenty floors or more. It was only in late March, after protests by workers, that close to ninety per cent of the job sites were finally shut down. Even indoors, you could sense the absence, like the sudden lack of traffic noise. The sound of buildings going up is the city’s ostinato—its thrumming, hammering heartbeat. Now it was dead silent.
Ellison spent the spring alone in his studio in Newburgh, an hour up the Hudson. He made parts for the town house and kept tabs on his subcontractors. All told, thirty-three companies were slated to work on the project, from roofers and tilers to ironmongers and concrete fabricators. He had no idea how many would return from quarantine. Renovation jobs tend to lag two years behind the economy. The owner gets a Christmas bonus, hires an architect and a contractor, then waits around for drawings to be done, permits to be issued, and crews to shake free. By the time construction starts, it’s usually too late to stop. But now office buildings were emptying out across Manhattan and co-op boards were banning all new construction for the foreseeable future. “They don’t want a bunch of grubby, Covid-carrying workers walking around,” Ellison said.
When the city resumed construction, on June 8th, it set strict limits and protocols, backed by five-thousand-dollar fines. Workers had to take their temperatures and answer health questionnaires, wear masks and keep their distance—the state limited sites to one worker for every two hundred and fifty square feet. A site like this one, with seven thousand square feet, could have no more than twenty-eight people on the premises. Today, there were seventeen. Some of the crew were still reluctant to leave quarantine. “The cabinetmakers, custom metalworkers, and finish carpenters fall into that camp,” Ellison said. “They’re a little better off, own their businesses, have workshops in Connecticut.” The prissier trades, he called them, jokingly. Marelli laughed: “Those with college degrees from art schools tend to be made of softer tissues.” Others had left town weeks ago. “The steel guy went back to Ecuador,” Ellison said. “He says he’s coming back in two weeks, but he’s in Guayaquil and he brought his wife with him.”
Like many crews in the city, Ellison and Marelli’s were filled with first-generation immigrants: Russian plumbers, Hungarian floorers, Guyanese electricians, Bangladeshi stone carvers. The nationalities and the trades tended to go together. When Ellison first moved to New York, in the seventies, the carpenters all seemed to be Irish. Then they went home in the boom years of the Celtic Tiger and were replaced by waves of Serbs, Albanians, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Colombians, and Ecuadoreans. You could track the world’s conflicts and collapses by the men on New York scaffolds. Some came with advanced degrees of no use to them here. Others were fleeing death squads, drug cartels, or previous disease outbreaks: cholera, Ebola, meningitis, yellow fever. “If you’re looking for a place to work when shit goes wrong, New York isn’t a terrible place to land,” Marelli said. “You’re not on bamboo scaffolding, you won’t get beat up or cheated by a criminal state, and a Hispanic guy can fold right into a Nepalese crew. If you can follow masonry marks, you can work all day.”
This spring was a frightening exception. But construction is a dangerous business in any season. Despite OSHA mandates and safety inspections, a thousand workers die on the job every year in the United States—more than in any other industry. They die of electrocution and exploding gas, toxic fumes and ruptured steam pipes; they get pinned by forklifts, caught in machinery, and buried in debris; they tumble from rooftops, I-beams, ladders, and cranes. Most of Ellison’s accidents have happened while biking to sites. (The first broke a wrist and two ribs; the second, a hip; the third, his jaw and two teeth.) But he has a thick scar on his left hand where he nearly sawed his hand off, and he’s seen three arms lopped off at job sites. Even Marelli, who mostly sticks to management, almost lost an eye a few years ago. He was standing near a crew that was cutting some steel studs with a chop saw when three splinters shot out and pierced his right eyeball. That was on Friday. On Saturday, he had an ophthalmologist extract the splinters and clean out the rust. By Monday, he was back at work.
One afternoon in late July, I met Ellison and Marelli on the Upper East Side, on a leafy side street around the corner from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We were visiting an apartment that Ellison had worked on seventeen years earlier. A ten-room triplex in a town house built in 1901, it was owned by an entrepreneur and Broadway producer named James Fantaci and his wife, Anna. (They sold it in 2015 for nearly twenty million dollars.) Seen from the street, the building had a starchy, Beaux-Arts elegance, with limestone pediments and wrought-iron grillwork. But, once we were inside, its renovated lines began to soften into Art Nouveau, the walls and woodwork bending and folding around us. It was like stepping into a water lily. The door to the great room was shaped like a curling leaf, framing a swirling oval staircase behind it. Ellison had helped build both, and made sure that they matched each other curve for curve. The mantelpieces were made of solid cherry, based on models sculpted by the architect, Angela Dirks. The dining room had a glass catwalk, with nickel-plated railings and tulip-blossom finials that Ellison carved. Even the wine cellar had a vaulted pearwood ceiling. “It’s the nearest I ever got to everything being gorgeous,” Ellison said.
A century ago in Paris, building a residence like this took extraordinary skill. Today, it’s much harder. It’s not just that those craft traditions are almost gone, and with them many of the most beautiful materials—Spanish mahogany, Carpathian elm, pure white Thassos marble. It’s that the rooms themselves have been reinvented. What were once decorated boxes are now complex machines. The plaster is just a thin scrim hiding a welter of gas, electric, fibre-optic, and cable lines, smoke detectors, motion sensors, stereo systems, and security cameras, Wi-Fi routers, climate-control systems, and the transformers and housings for automated lights and sprinklers. The result is a house so complicated that it may need a full-time staff to maintain it. “I don’t think I’ve ever built a home for a client who was qualified to live there,” Ellison told me.
Home building has become the domain of the obsessive-compulsive. An apartment like this one could entail more choices than the space shuttle—from the shape and patina of each hinge and handle to the location of every window alarm. Some clients get decision fatigue. They just can’t bring themselves to decide on another remote sensor. Others insist on customizing everything. The granite slabs long ubiquitous on kitchen counters have spread, like a geological mold, to cabinets and appliances. To carry the weight of the rock and keep the doors from tearing off, Ellison has to redesign all the hardware. In one apartment, on Twentieth Street, the front door was so heavy that the only hinges that could hold it were meant for a jail cell.
As we walked through the apartment, Ellison kept popping open hidden compartments—access panels, breaker boxes, secret drawers, and medicine cabinets—each one cleverly fitted into the plaster or woodwork. One of the hardest parts of this job, he said, was finding space. Where to shoehorn all that complexity? A suburban house is full of convenient voids. If an air handler won’t fit in the ceiling, stuff it in the attic or the basement. But New York apartments aren’t so forgiving. “Attic? What the fuck’s an attic?” Marelli said. “People in this city are fighting over half an inch.” Between the plaster and the studs in these walls lay hundreds of miles of wire and pipe, wound as tight as a circuit board. The tolerances weren’t that different from those in the yachting industry.
In the Sky House, a steel girder serves both as a support and as a climbing pole. Photograph by Dean Kaufman for The New Yorker
“It’s like solving a giant puzzle,” Angela Dirks said. “Just figuring out how to design all the ductwork without driving down the ceiling or taking out crazy chunks of it—it’s torture.” Dirks, who is fifty-two, trained at Columbia and Princeton and specializes in residential interiors. In twenty-five years as an architect, she said, she’d had only four projects of this scale that allowed such attention to detail. At one point, a client even tracked her down to a cruise ship off the coast of Alaska. The towel rods in the bathrooms were being installed that day, she said. Could Dirks approve the locations?
Most owners can’t wait for an architect to untangle every kink in the ductwork. They have two mortgages to carry until the renovation is done. Ellison’s projects rarely cost less than fifteen hundred dollars a square foot these days, and sometimes twice that much. New kitchens start at a hundred and fifty thousand; master baths can run even more. And the prices tend to go up the longer the project lasts. “I’ve never seen a set of plans that were buildable as presented,” Marelli told me. “They either weren’t complete, defied physics, or had ambitions that the drawings didn’t explain how to achieve.” And so a familiar cycle begins. Owners set a budget but ask for more than they can afford. Architects overpromise and contractors underbid, knowing the plans are somewhat notional. Construction starts and a blizzard of change orders ensues. A project scheduled to take a year and cost a thousand dollars per square foot balloons to twice the length and price, and everyone blames everyone else. If it’s off by only a third, they call it a success.
“It’s just a crackpot system,” Ellison told me. “The whole game is set up so that everyone’s motivations are at cross purposes. It’s habit and bad habit.” For most of his career, he kept clear of the big decisions. He was just a hired gun, working for an hourly wage. But some projects are too complex for piecemeal work. They’re more like car engines than like houses: they have to be designed from the inside out, layer by layer, each component fitted exactly to the next. When the final coat of plaster is laid, the warren of ducts and wires beneath it has to sit perfectly flat, plumb to within a sixteenth of an inch over ten feet. Yet every trade works to different tolerances: steelworkers aim to be accurate within half an inch, carpenters a quarter of an inch, Sheetrockers an eighth of an inch, and stoneworkers a sixteenth. It’s Ellison’s job to get them all on the same page.