newyorker--2020-07-13--Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Stranger in the Shogun ’ s City , by Amy Stanley ( Scribner ) .
This history of nineteenth-century Japan follows Tsuneno , the daughter of a village priest , who learns that “ to be a woman is to grow up and leave for another household.
” But , after three failed marriages , she departs for the great city of Edo ( present-day Tokyo ) .
Tsuneno ’ s rebellious trajectory , preserved in her family ’ s archive , was unusual , yet even her most commonplace steps are absorbing .
Although her squabbles and triumphs ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new job as maid of all work to a samurai family ) can only be glimpsed , Stanley ’ s careful speculation fills the lacunae , evoking Edo ’ s back alleys and law courts , its fashion and food .
Tsuneno , with her world in flux—the shogun will soon fall—becomes just one person in the teeming city .
The Turnaway Study , by Diana Greene Foster ( Scribner ) .
The author led a ten-year study of a thousand women , comparing those who received abortions shortly before reaching a state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did not—because they didn ’ t learn early enough that they were pregnant , couldn ’ t travel to a provider , or couldn ’ t afford the escalating costs of a later abortion .
Drawing on her research and on first-person narratives , the book illustrates how women denied abortions were more likely to struggle financially , suffer domestic violence , and experience short-term anxiety , while women who obtained abortions tended to experience better physical and mental health .
One woman , reflecting on an abortion that enabled her to focus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ job , says , “ It ’ s an ordinary life , but it ’ s an extravagant , wonderful ordinary life.
” Hamnet , by Maggie O ’ Farrell ( Knopf ) .
Breathing life into what little we know about Shakespeare ’ s family , this exceptional historical novel is set in 1596 , in Stratford-Upon-Avon .
Hamnet , eleven years old , tries to help his plague-stricken twin sister , as their mother , Agnes , makes curative potions , and their father ( referred to obliquely as “ the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , writing plays .
O ’ Farrell ’ s account of the spread of the disease is all too timely , and there is an inspired scene in which the twins , in true Shakespearean fashion , trade places .
At the center is the grief-stricken Agnes , whose husband ’ s genius requires her to bear monumental loss alone .
“ The place in your head , ” she tells him .
“ You have gone to that place and it is now more real to you than anywhere else.
” Interlibrary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
Wolfe , a celebrated science-fiction writer who died in 2019 , stretched the genre ’ s boundaries in his rich and allusive work .
His final novel is set in a future North America , where libraries loan out clones of authors .
The protagonist , a “ reclone ” of a prolific mystery writer , is borrowed by an emotionally disturbed woman who hopes that he will help her solve the mystery of a “ treasure map ” she has stolen from her estranged husband .
Wolfe deploys sci-fi and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ house that builds itself—to explore the question that lies at the heart of many of his novels : What does it mean to be human and alive ?

Stranger in the Shogun’s City, by Amy Stanley (Scribner). This history of nineteenth-century Japan follows Tsuneno, the daughter of a village priest, who learns that “to be a woman is to grow up and leave for another household.” But, after three failed marriages, she departs for the great city of Edo (present-day Tokyo). Tsuneno’s rebellious trajectory, preserved in her family’s archive, was unusual, yet even her most commonplace steps are absorbing. Although her squabbles and triumphs (a dispute about a kimono, a new job as maid of all work to a samurai family) can only be glimpsed, Stanley’s careful speculation fills the lacunae, evoking Edo’s back alleys and law courts, its fashion and food. Tsuneno, with her world in flux—the shogun will soon fall—becomes just one person in the teeming city.
The Turnaway Study, by Diana Greene Foster (Scribner). The author led a ten-year study of a thousand women, comparing those who received abortions shortly before reaching a state’s gestational limit with those who did not—because they didn’t learn early enough that they were pregnant, couldn’t travel to a provider, or couldn’t afford the escalating costs of a later abortion. Drawing on her research and on first-person narratives, the book illustrates how women denied abortions were more likely to struggle financially, suffer domestic violence, and experience short-term anxiety, while women who obtained abortions tended to experience better physical and mental health. One woman, reflecting on an abortion that enabled her to focus on her teen-age daughter and find a job, says, “It’s an ordinary life, but it’s an extravagant, wonderful ordinary life.”
Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell (Knopf). Breathing life into what little we know about Shakespeare’s family, this exceptional historical novel is set in 1596, in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Hamnet, eleven years old, tries to help his plague-stricken twin sister, as their mother, Agnes, makes curative potions, and their father (referred to obliquely as “the tutor”) is off in London, writing plays. O’Farrell’s account of the spread of the disease is all too timely, and there is an inspired scene in which the twins, in true Shakespearean fashion, trade places. At the center is the grief-stricken Agnes, whose husband’s genius requires her to bear monumental loss alone. “The place in your head,” she tells him. “You have gone to that place and it is now more real to you than anywhere else.”
Interlibrary Loan, by Gene Wolfe (Tor). Wolfe, a celebrated science-fiction writer who died in 2019, stretched the genre’s boundaries in his rich and allusive work. His final novel is set in a future North America, where libraries loan out clones of authors. The protagonist, a “reclone” of a prolific mystery writer, is borrowed by an emotionally disturbed woman who hopes that he will help her solve the mystery of a “treasure map” she has stolen from her estranged husband. Wolfe deploys sci-fi and gothic elements—an interplanetary portal, a sentient house that builds itself—to explore the question that lies at the heart of many of his novels: What does it mean to be human and alive?


newyorker--2020-07-13--A Cop Flipped Him the Bird; He Joined the Police Academy

Officers of high rank in the N.Y.P.D .
wear white shirts , and Deputy Inspector Keiyon Ramsey looks good in his .
He is forty-three years old ( young for such an eminent position ) , broad-shouldered , and more than six feet tall .
Almost every day of his life has been spent in the Bronx , where he was born , grew up , went to college , and now serves as the head of policing in Police Service Area 8 , which consists of twelve public-housing projects with more than twenty thousand residents .
He speaks quietly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he says .
When Ramsey was a child , his grandmother , who raised him , told him that a Black household must never call the police .
As a young person , he did not like the police .
In his early twenties , he got arrested for spray-painting the name of his rap group on a school sidewalk .
He rapped under the names K-Black and Keiyon , worked as a security guard and as an Access-A-Ride bus driver , and went so far as to become a traffic agent .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but they don ’ t carry guns or make arrests .
One night , Ramsey was writing tickets when a cop car came by , driving slowly .
He waved at the cops , and the driver , a white officer , answered with the familiar one-finger gesture .
Ramsey ’ s partner at the time , a young Black traffic agent named Eric Murray , told him , “ Don ’ t let yourself be depressed about that .
You can change that.
” This advice struck him , so he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and entered the academy .
In 2005 , he graduated in the top three per cent of his class .
As a patrolman , an officer in the school-safety division , a transit cop , and a plainclothes officer on the street , he rose through the ranks to captain .
He became commanding officer of P.S.A .
8 in October , 2018 .
The following January , a rookie officer among the approximately two hundred police and civilians working under him died in a car crash on the way home from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hospital , consoled the family , and cried with them .
Then a shooting involving eight people , six firearms , and dozens of shots fired happened in his district .
He called for more plainclothes officers and stopped the violence from escalating .
In September , one of the plainclothes officers was shot and killed .
Ramsey found himself back at the hospital , in the same room , grieving for another stricken family .
In March , Covid hit .
Ramsey had ten sick officers under his command , then thirty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of his officers or staff died , but the department was losing as many as three officers a day .
For each victim , an e-mail , accompanied by a photo , was sent out .
One day , Ramsey checked his e-mail and saw Eric Murray ’ s photo .
Like him , Murray had become a cop , and the two had stayed friends .
“ When I saw his picture , I collapsed at my desk and cried , ” Ramsey said .
“ I never had a chance to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not long after he passed.
” After a moment , Ramsey went on , “ We ’ re a tight community .
In the police department we love and take care of each other .
The Covid deaths hit hard .
We were just getting back on our feet when George Floyd was murdered , and the protests started .
I totally , totally get the anger .
I told my officers who signed up for duty at the protests that at one time the police were the slave-catching patrols , and I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against Black and brown people .
I went all over again why people are so angry .
That night , my officers are on duty near City Hall and one of my lieutenants gets hit in the neck with a rock and goes down , and another guy gets a gash in his arm that needs seven stitches .
Later , my officers said to me , ‘ You said they were mad , but you didn ’ t say they were gon na hurt us.
’ “ This department has changed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adjusted .
Eric was right—we can change it .
There ’ s less stop-question-and-frisk .
We do policing better .
Last night , 3 a.m. , I got a call about a disturbance at the intersection of Claremont Parkway and Webster Avenue .
I drove over there .
At least a thousand folks were partying , drinking , listening to music , right in the street .
Traffic was stopped in both directions .
I had eight of my cops with me .
We went through the crowd telling people we understand they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with everything closed in the pandemic , but they can ’ t be here .
They knew they were in our house .
People understand when they ’ re doing wrong .
They dispersed .
We would ’ ve stayed there all night if we had to , flashers going .
The best thing on your side , if you ’ re the police , is time , and you ’ ve always got time.
” ♦

Deputy Inspector Keiyon Ramsey Illustration by João Fazenda
Officers of high rank in the N.Y.P.D. wear white shirts, and Deputy Inspector Keiyon Ramsey looks good in his. He is forty-three years old (young for such an eminent position), broad-shouldered, and more than six feet tall. Almost every day of his life has been spent in the Bronx, where he was born, grew up, went to college, and now serves as the head of policing in Police Service Area 8, which consists of twelve public-housing projects with more than twenty thousand residents. He speaks quietly and listens, and people do as he says.
When Ramsey was a child, his grandmother, who raised him, told him that a Black household must never call the police. As a young person, he did not like the police. In his early twenties, he got arrested for spray-painting the name of his rap group on a school sidewalk. He rapped under the names K-Black and Keiyon, worked as a security guard and as an Access-A-Ride bus driver, and went so far as to become a traffic agent. Traffic agents are part of the N.Y.P.D., but they don’t carry guns or make arrests. One night, Ramsey was writing tickets when a cop car came by, driving slowly. He waved at the cops, and the driver, a white officer, answered with the familiar one-finger gesture. Ramsey’s partner at the time, a young Black traffic agent named Eric Murray, told him, “Don’t let yourself be depressed about that. You can change that.”
This advice struck him, so he took the police exam, passed it, and entered the academy. In 2005, he graduated in the top three per cent of his class. As a patrolman, an officer in the school-safety division, a transit cop, and a plainclothes officer on the street, he rose through the ranks to captain. He became commanding officer of P.S.A. 8 in October, 2018.
The following January, a rookie officer among the approximately two hundred police and civilians working under him died in a car crash on the way home from a shift. Ramsey went to the hospital, consoled the family, and cried with them. Then a shooting involving eight people, six firearms, and dozens of shots fired happened in his district. He called for more plainclothes officers and stopped the violence from escalating. In September, one of the plainclothes officers was shot and killed. Ramsey found himself back at the hospital, in the same room, grieving for another stricken family. In March, Covid hit. Ramsey had ten sick officers under his command, then thirty, then more than fifty. None of his officers or staff died, but the department was losing as many as three officers a day. For each victim, an e-mail, accompanied by a photo, was sent out. One day, Ramsey checked his e-mail and saw Eric Murray’s photo. Like him, Murray had become a cop, and the two had stayed friends. “When I saw his picture, I collapsed at my desk and cried,” Ramsey said. “I never had a chance to thank him. I made deputy inspector not long after he passed.”
“Can’t I just stay here with you and Mom? I don’t like what I’ve seen of the real world.” Cartoon by Henry Martin Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
After a moment, Ramsey went on, “We’re a tight community. In the police department we love and take care of each other. The Covid deaths hit hard. We were just getting back on our feet when George Floyd was murdered, and the protests started. I totally, totally get the anger. I told my officers who signed up for duty at the protests that at one time the police were the slave-catching patrols, and I talked about the history of police violence against Black and brown people. I went all over again why people are so angry. That night, my officers are on duty near City Hall and one of my lieutenants gets hit in the neck with a rock and goes down, and another guy gets a gash in his arm that needs seven stitches. Later, my officers said to me, ‘You said they were mad, but you didn’t say they were gonna hurt us.’
“This department has changed,” Ramsey continued. “It has adjusted. Eric was right—we can change it. There’s less stop-question-and-frisk. We do policing better. Last night, 3 a.m., I got a call about a disturbance at the intersection of Claremont Parkway and Webster Avenue. I drove over there. At least a thousand folks were partying, drinking, listening to music, right in the street. Traffic was stopped in both directions. I had eight of my cops with me. We went through the crowd telling people we understand they got no place else to go, with everything closed in the pandemic, but they can’t be here. They knew they were in our house. People understand when they’re doing wrong. They dispersed. We would’ve stayed there all night if we had to, flashers going. The best thing on your side, if you’re the police, is time, and you’ve always got time.” ♦
Race, Policing, and Black Lives Matter Protests


newyorker--2020-07-13--Lexicon for a Pandemic

Lexicon for a Pandemic

Maskhole : An individual who wears a mask in a way that makes it completely ineffective—e.g.
, below the nose , under the chin , on the back of the head .
Face naked : The state of facial exposure that occurs when an individual declines to wear a mask in public .
For example , “ Pence went all face naked to the Mayo Clinic.
” Body mullet : What most people wear on Zoom calls : a nice top and , below the waist , underwear or less .
( “ Business up top , party down below.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ minutes after a too-close interaction with a maskless stranger during which you experience a thickness in your throat and a certainty that you ’ re dying .
This sometimes lasts longer if frantic hand washing , antiseptic gargling , and estate planning are not readily available .
Overdistancing : When the guy in front of you in line has a metric understanding of the six in six feet , allowing twenty feet to open up between him and the next person in line , which then allows others to interpret that next person @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to cut in front of you .
Domino distancing : When the person behind you in line stands too close , causing you to crowd the person in front of you , and on and on until everyone dies .
Emotional distancing : Deciding that now really isn ’ t the time to make big decisions about a relationship or , for that matter , to have a conversation about it .
Covideo : A short video featuring a quarantined individual ’ s child doing something adorable and/or profane , the public sharing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a cry for help .
Stockholm syndrome : The assumption that everyone would be just fine without any government restrictions .
Parenting : The ability to figure out why the PlayStation isn ’ t working with the Wi-Fi .
Body Zoom-morphia : Finding your own image on a group video call so unappealing that you are unable to focus on anything else .
Quorumtine : The minimum number of family members necessary to decide what to watch on TV .
Pan-demic : A potentially dangerous increase in the baking of bread in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; the amount of weight gained by an average adult during quarantine .
Sometimes related to a pan-demic .
Helter shelter : That moment in the quarantine day when everything seems dirty and chaotic and you feel like saying , “ Fuck it , let ’ s go outside .
I don ’ t care if we die and a bunch of other people do , too.
” Flattening the curve : Trying to fit into your jeans after three months of sweatpants .
( See COVID-30 . )
Germophobe : Formerly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) ; now everyone except crazy people .
Going viral : No longer used .
♦

Maskhole: An individual who wears a mask in a way that makes it completely ineffective—e.g., below the nose, under the chin, on the back of the head.
Face naked: The state of facial exposure that occurs when an individual declines to wear a mask in public. For example, “Pence went all face naked to the Mayo Clinic.”
Body mullet: What most people wear on Zoom calls: a nice top and, below the waist, underwear or less. (“Business up top, party down below.”)
The NOVID-19: The nineteen minutes after a too-close interaction with a maskless stranger during which you experience a thickness in your throat and a certainty that you’re dying. This sometimes lasts longer if frantic hand washing, antiseptic gargling, and estate planning are not readily available.
Overdistancing: When the guy in front of you in line has a metric understanding of the six in six feet, allowing twenty feet to open up between him and the next person in line, which then allows others to interpret that next person as the end of the line and to cut in front of you.
Domino distancing: When the person behind you in line stands too close, causing you to crowd the person in front of you, and on and on until everyone dies.
Emotional distancing: Deciding that now really isn’t the time to make big decisions about a relationship or, for that matter, to have a conversation about it.
Covideo: A short video featuring a quarantined individual’s child doing something adorable and/or profane, the public sharing of which falls somewhere between cute and a cry for help.
Stockholm syndrome: The assumption that everyone would be just fine without any government restrictions.
Someday, Noneday, Whoseday?, Whensday?, Blursday, Whyday?, Doesn’tmatterday: Days of the week.
Parenting: The ability to figure out why the PlayStation isn’t working with the Wi-Fi.
Body Zoom-morphia: Finding your own image on a group video call so unappealing that you are unable to focus on anything else.
Quorumtine: The minimum number of family members necessary to decide what to watch on TV.
Pan-demic: A potentially dangerous increase in the baking of bread in a quarantined home.
COVID-30: Formerly COVID-15; the amount of weight gained by an average adult during quarantine. Sometimes related to a pan-demic.
Helter shelter: That moment in the quarantine day when everything seems dirty and chaotic and you feel like saying, “Fuck it, let’s go outside. I don’t care if we die and a bunch of other people do, too.”
Flattening the curve: Trying to fit into your jeans after three months of sweatpants. (See COVID-30.)
Germophobe: Formerly, crazy people (e.g., Howard Hughes); now everyone except crazy people.
Going viral: No longer used. ♦
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-07-13--Why the Chicks Dropped Their  “Dixie”

Why the Chicks Dropped Their  “Dixie”

In late June , the Dixie Chicks dropped the word “ Dixie ” from its name .
The band ’ s statement was brief and elegant : “ We want to meet this moment.
” The Dixie Chicks were founded in Texas , in 1989 .
Back then , the band was a four-piece .
( The sisters Martie and Emily Erwin , now Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer , are the remaining original members ; since 1995 , the band has been fronted by the singer and guitarist Natalie Maines . )
They wore prairie skirts and fringed blouses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and traditional country—cowgirls with chops .
The band ’ s name was a riff on “ Dixie Chicken , ” a 1973 album by the chooglin ’ rock band Little Feat .
Sifting through early press coverage of the group , I couldn ’ t find a single critic who thought the name was repugnant .
Yet , among historians , there is little ambiguity about what the word “ Dixie ” communicates .
Its use as a doting nickname for the Confederacy was popularized by “ I Wish I Was in Dixie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ song published in 1860 and usually performed in blackface .
The song is credited to Daniel Decatur Emmett , a white man from Knox County , Ohio , though the scholars Howard and Judith Sacks have suggested that Emmett stole the tune from the Snowdens , a family of freed slaves who performed and farmed around Emmett ’ s home town .
“ Dixie songs ” —which typically expressed nostalgia for the antebellum South—continued to appear throughout the first decades of the twentieth century .
“ They were quite popular .
Irving Berlin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cox , a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the author of “ Dreaming of Dixie : How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture , ” told me recently .
She does not find the word to be merely descriptive : “ As a scholar of the South , I regard ‘ Dixie ’ as a term that not only refers to the states of the former Confederacy but is synonymous with segregation.
” Cox cited the Dixiecrats , the group formed in 1948 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who seceded from the Democratic Party because they disagreed with its support of civil rights .
“ These resonances are part of what the Dixie Chicks selected when they selected the name , whether they intended to or not , ” Gregory Downs , a professor of history at the University of California at Davis , said .
“ It ’ s important that they—and everyone who received that message of white Southern pride—think about what they took on.
” Within modern country music , tropes that address a kind of vigilante Southern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the deep moral purity of the Southern states—remain wildly popular , even rooted as they are in racial violence .
Yet country music itself owes an incalculable debt to the Black string bands and players—the Mississippi Sheiks , Gus Cannon , Frank Patterson , and Nathan Frazier , among others—who predated the proliferation of the phonograph .
( There are several compilations of the few Black string bands that did record ; two exceptional ones are “ Altamont : Black Stringband Music from the Library of Congress ” and “ Black Banjo Songsters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Early labels deliberately sold country and hillbilly 78s to white customers , and blues and jazz 78s ( or “ race records ” ) to Black customers , thereby enforcing a racial fissure along genre lines .
For the descendants of people subjugated under slavery , neither intention nor ignorance now feels like a reasonable defense of these tropes .
Yet white history is frequently marked by a kind of inherited blindness .
In “ Southern Accents , ” published last year , Michael Washburn dissects how , in 1985 , Tom Petty—a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ album about the South .
Washburn suggests that ideas of Southern heritage are frequently and purposefully divorced from the historical record .
“ We inherit , restate , sometimes re-inscribe these notions , and then represent these ideas to the world , ” Washburn writes .
“ If we push hard enough on just about any part of our life , we plunge through the surface into a history that ’ s unknown to us even as it structures much of how we live.
” Is it possible to love a place and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the place begin to disappear when its foundational myths are challenged ?
Washburn jokingly describes Faulkner ’ s oft-quoted line about the nature of time— “ The past is never dead , it ’ s not even past ” —as “ the first Southern-history meme.
” The Chicks have been at the center of controversy before .
In 2003 , nine days before the American invasion of Iraq , the band performed in London .
As Maines introduced the single “ Travelin ’ Soldier , ” she told the crowd that she was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States was from Texas .
When the backlash came , it was precipitate , catastrophic , and unrelenting .
The Chicks had recently become the only female band in any genre to have released two consecutive diamond-certified albums , signifying sales of ten million copies or more .
In our era of anemic chart numbers and fragmented attention , it ’ s difficult to reckon with sales of that magnitude .
There was a lot to lose .
Fans piled CDs in trash cans and set them ablaze .
Country radio—which was then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conglomerate Clear Channel—blacklisted the Chicks ’ music .
“ These are callow , foolish women who deserve to be slapped around , ” Bill O ’ Reilly said on Fox News .
Maines received one death threat so credible that the F.B.I .
recommended that the band cancel a show in Dallas .
( It didn ’ t . )
What happened to the Chicks in 2003 can be understood now as a foretelling of so-called cancel culture , in which controversial or problematic behavior triggers mass disgust and renunciation .
The Chicks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In 2005 , the band started writing “ Taking the Long Way , ” its seventh studio album , with the producer Rick Rubin .
It ’ s an angry , reflective record .
At the 2007 Grammys , the Chicks won five awards , including Album of the Year , Record of the Year , and Song of the Year .
Then the band went on hiatus .
Fourteen years later , the Chicks have a new album , “ Gaslighter.
” ( Its release was delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ record feature the band ’ s former name , in bright-yellow letters . )
“ Gaslighter ” is brasher and more pop-oriented than anything the band has done before .
Part of this shift feels germane to our era—the idea of genre , as it applies to contemporary music , is growing less and less relevant—but it also feels like a final repudiation of country music , and of a community that mostly failed to support or to understand one of its biggest acts .
Gaslighting is a kind of emotional manipulation in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the veracity of some plainly untrue claim , thereby causing the victim to doubt reality and , eventually , her own connection to it .
It ’ s not a stretch to consider the longtime framing of the word “ Dixie ” ( or any other paean to a South that was reliant on slaves ) as a type of gaslighting .
Americans have long been told that these representations of the South suggested one thing—some vague idea of regional heritage—when , in fact , they have always meant something else entirely .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Adrian Pasdar , and “ Gaslighter , ” much like “ Taking the Long Way , ” is a spiritual exorcism of sorts .
Maines is at her best when she ’ s harnessing the righteousness accorded the freshly wronged , and she sings with the vigor and the specificity of a woman who has no one left to please .
Perhaps this is what develops on the other side of a grievous public shaming—fearlessness in the face of collapse .

In late June, the Dixie Chicks dropped the word “Dixie” from its name. The band’s statement was brief and elegant: “We want to meet this moment.” The Dixie Chicks were founded in Texas, in 1989. Back then, the band was a four-piece. (The sisters Martie and Emily Erwin, now Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer, are the remaining original members; since 1995, the band has been fronted by the singer and guitarist Natalie Maines.) They wore prairie skirts and fringed blouses, and played a mixture of bluegrass and traditional country—cowgirls with chops. The band’s name was a riff on “Dixie Chicken,” a 1973 album by the chooglin’ rock band Little Feat. Sifting through early press coverage of the group, I couldn’t find a single critic who thought the name was repugnant.
Yet, among historians, there is little ambiguity about what the word “Dixie” communicates. Its use as a doting nickname for the Confederacy was popularized by “I Wish I Was in Dixie’s Land,” a minstrel song published in 1860 and usually performed in blackface. The song is credited to Daniel Decatur Emmett, a white man from Knox County, Ohio, though the scholars Howard and Judith Sacks have suggested that Emmett stole the tune from the Snowdens, a family of freed slaves who performed and farmed around Emmett’s home town.
“Dixie songs”—which typically expressed nostalgia for the antebellum South—continued to appear throughout the first decades of the twentieth century. “They were quite popular. Irving Berlin even wrote one,” Karen L. Cox, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the author of “Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture,” told me recently. She does not find the word to be merely descriptive: “As a scholar of the South, I regard ‘Dixie’ as a term that not only refers to the states of the former Confederacy but is synonymous with segregation.” Cox cited the Dixiecrats, the group formed in 1948, by Strom Thurmond and other Southern Democrats who seceded from the Democratic Party because they disagreed with its support of civil rights. “These resonances are part of what the Dixie Chicks selected when they selected the name, whether they intended to or not,” Gregory Downs, a professor of history at the University of California at Davis, said. “It’s important that they—and everyone who received that message of white Southern pride—think about what they took on.”
Within modern country music, tropes that address a kind of vigilante Southern swagger—an insistence on both the rebelliousness and the deep moral purity of the Southern states—remain wildly popular, even rooted as they are in racial violence. Yet country music itself owes an incalculable debt to the Black string bands and players—the Mississippi Sheiks, Gus Cannon, Frank Patterson, and Nathan Frazier, among others—who predated the proliferation of the phonograph. (There are several compilations of the few Black string bands that did record; two exceptional ones are “Altamont: Black Stringband Music from the Library of Congress” and “Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia.”) Early labels deliberately sold country and hillbilly 78s to white customers, and blues and jazz 78s (or “race records”) to Black customers, thereby enforcing a racial fissure along genre lines.
For the descendants of people subjugated under slavery, neither intention nor ignorance now feels like a reasonable defense of these tropes. Yet white history is frequently marked by a kind of inherited blindness. In “Southern Accents,” published last year, Michael Washburn dissects how, in 1985, Tom Petty—a Floridian—used Confederate iconography to promote a concept album about the South. Washburn suggests that ideas of Southern heritage are frequently and purposefully divorced from the historical record. “We inherit, restate, sometimes re-inscribe these notions, and then represent these ideas to the world,” Washburn writes. “If we push hard enough on just about any part of our life, we plunge through the surface into a history that’s unknown to us even as it structures much of how we live.”
Is it possible to love a place and to also disclaim its history? Does the place begin to disappear when its foundational myths are challenged? Washburn jokingly describes Faulkner’s oft-quoted line about the nature of time—“The past is never dead, it’s not even past”—as “the first Southern-history meme.”
The Chicks have been at the center of controversy before. In 2003, nine days before the American invasion of Iraq, the band performed in London. As Maines introduced the single “Travelin’ Soldier,” she told the crowd that she was ashamed that the President of the United States was from Texas. When the backlash came, it was precipitate, catastrophic, and unrelenting. The Chicks had recently become the only female band in any genre to have released two consecutive diamond-certified albums, signifying sales of ten million copies or more. In our era of anemic chart numbers and fragmented attention, it’s difficult to reckon with sales of that magnitude. There was a lot to lose.
Fans piled CDs in trash cans and set them ablaze. Country radio—which was then operated in large part by the media conglomerate Clear Channel—blacklisted the Chicks’ music. “These are callow, foolish women who deserve to be slapped around,” Bill O’Reilly said on Fox News. Maines received one death threat so credible that the F.B.I. recommended that the band cancel a show in Dallas. (It didn’t.)
What happened to the Chicks in 2003 can be understood now as a foretelling of so-called cancel culture, in which controversial or problematic behavior triggers mass disgust and renunciation. The Chicks endured the onslaught with relative poise. In 2005, the band started writing “Taking the Long Way,” its seventh studio album, with the producer Rick Rubin. It’s an angry, reflective record. At the 2007 Grammys, the Chicks won five awards, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year. Then the band went on hiatus.
Fourteen years later, the Chicks have a new album, “Gaslighter.” (Its release was delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, and some physical copies of the record feature the band’s former name, in bright-yellow letters.) “Gaslighter” is brasher and more pop-oriented than anything the band has done before. Part of this shift feels germane to our era—the idea of genre, as it applies to contemporary music, is growing less and less relevant—but it also feels like a final repudiation of country music, and of a community that mostly failed to support or to understand one of its biggest acts.
Gaslighting is a kind of emotional manipulation in which a bad actor vehemently insists on the veracity of some plainly untrue claim, thereby causing the victim to doubt reality and, eventually, her own connection to it. It’s not a stretch to consider the longtime framing of the word “Dixie” (or any other paean to a South that was reliant on slaves) as a type of gaslighting. Americans have long been told that these representations of the South suggested one thing—some vague idea of regional heritage—when, in fact, they have always meant something else entirely.
In 2019, Maines divorced the actor Adrian Pasdar, and “Gaslighter,” much like “Taking the Long Way,” is a spiritual exorcism of sorts. Maines is at her best when she’s harnessing the righteousness accorded the freshly wronged, and she sings with the vigor and the specificity of a woman who has no one left to please. Perhaps this is what develops on the other side of a grievous public shaming—fearlessness in the face of collapse.
This anger and self-possession make “Gaslighter” a thrill and a delight. “Boy I know exactly what you did on my boat!” Maines sings on the title track, a seething indictment of a failed romance. “I know I’m not crazy, that’s you / Gaslighting / You’re a lie-lie-lie-liar!” The song was co-produced by Jack Antonoff, now the default collaborator for A‑list pop stars, and it’s punchy and lush, buoyed by a rich, three-part vocal harmony. Maines’s boat is the album’s Chekhovian gun, reappearing later on. “You can tell the girl who left her tights on my boat that she can have you now,” she sings on “Tights on My Boat.”
Of course, beneath every bout of unfettered rage is a badly broken heart, and Maines doesn’t always excise the ache from her voice. Her lyrics are both the heart and the point of “Gaslighter.” At times, her vocal phrasing reminds me of that of Taylor Swift, another country-gone-pop superstar who trades in frank confessions and retaliatory choruses. A line like “I hope that when you think of me, you can’t breathe,” from “Tights on My Boat,” feels especially Swiftian in its exactitude and ferocity. (The Chicks made an appearance on “Lover,” Swift’s latest record, and Maines seems to have cleared a path, or at least provided a powerful point of inspiration, for Swift’s recent political awakening.)
Elsewhere, Maines’s vitriol is less autobiographical. “Lies are truth and truth is fiction,” she sings on “March March,” a thumping, echo-laden ode to protest. In an early verse, she references the activist Emma González, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting:
Standing with Emma and our sons and daughters
Watchin’ our youth have to solve our problems
I’ll follow them so who’s comin’ with me
The video, released in late June, features footage of protests from the past several decades. As the song’s instrumentation—banjo, slide guitar, fiddle—reaches a spare but frenzied climax, the video lists the names of people of color who were murdered by law enforcement, ending with Emmett Till.
Lately, I’ve caught myself referring to a lot of new releases as prescient—work that was written and recorded months or even years ago but feels designed to address the present moment. But good art is always prescient, because good artists are tuned into the currency and the momentum of their time. The Chicks are particularly well positioned to see what’s coming for America right now—how the past two centuries have delivered us to this exact moment, and how we should rise to receive it. ♦


“The Field”

Two people are asleep in a field .
The light is not yet up .
The air is cold , even though it is summer .
I can not get closer than where I am .
I know only so much about them .
I know they are not dead .
I know they are asleep because one of them has moved , just enough to show it is a movement you make in sleep , an adjustment of resting weight .
I don ’ t know if it is romantic that they are in this field .
Or if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this distance their clothes are black .
They are two men , or a man and a woman , or two women .
I am not near enough to learn what their bodies are , or how proximate or distant from each other .
It is the corner of my eye that has seen them , walking quickly past .
It is a corner of my mind that has seen them , a startled glance , then that glance widening .
They have no belongings , no things that speak of displacement .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , except where they have flattened it .
Have they been here the full length of the night , or just the previous hour ?
Who are they for whom the grass is a bed ?
Who are those others , elsewhere , sleeping in the open back of a truck , or on the ground behind a guarded fence ?
I am walking in the countryside , so maybe they are people of myth .
Or they are people of a labor I know nothing about .
There are birds singing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a big wheel rolling somewhere .
There are trees , as tall as parents , but they have not slept under them .
In the dark , alone , I went out to see the turn toward morning .
Then I saw them .
What the imagination would do with two people sleeping in a field is keep them where they are , unknowable , untouched .
The imagination also wants them to stir , to wake them back into their stories .
The day will be hot .
The smell of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the air , like the sweat of a body .
What would bring me to a field in the night and have me sleep there ?
Whose hand would I be holding , out of desire or fear ?
My pants ’ hems are heavy with dew .
I know how far away I am from everyone .
Am I a child again , am I old ?
Or am I only who I am now , astounded at the transport of the body from one end of time to another .

Audio: Read by the author.
Two people are asleep in a field.
The light is not yet up. The air is cold, even though it is summer.
I cannot get closer than where I am. I know only so much
about them. I know they are not dead.
I know they are asleep because one of them has moved, just enough
to show it is a movement you make in sleep, an adjustment
of resting weight. I don’t know if it is romantic
that they are in this field. Or if it is drunkenness or despair.
From this distance their clothes are black.
They are two men, or a man and a woman,
or two women. I am not near enough to learn what their bodies are,
or how proximate or distant from each other.
It is the corner of my eye that has seen them,
walking quickly past. It is a corner of my mind that has seen them,
a startled glance, then that glance widening.
They have no belongings, no things that speak of displacement.
The field is askew with untended grass, except where
they have flattened it. Have they been here the full length
of the night, or just the previous hour?
Who are they for whom the grass is a bed? Who are those others,
elsewhere, sleeping in the open back of a truck,
or on the ground behind a guarded fence?
I am walking in the countryside, so maybe they are people of myth.
Or they are people of a labor I know nothing about.
There are birds singing to the dawn. There is the sound
of a big wheel rolling somewhere. There are trees,
as tall as parents, but they have not slept under them.
In the dark, alone, I went out to see the turn toward morning.
Then I saw them. What the imagination would do with two people
sleeping in a field is keep them where they are,
unknowable, untouched. The imagination also wants them
to stir, to wake them back into their stories.
The day will be hot. The smell of yesterday’s heat
is still in the air, like the sweat of a body. What would bring me
to a field in the night and have me sleep there?
Whose hand would I be holding, out of desire or fear?
My pants’ hems are heavy with dew. I know how far away
I am from everyone. Am I a child again, am I old?
Or am I only who I am now, astounded at the transport of the body
from one end of time to another.


newyorker--2020-07-13--“Jack and Della,” by Marilynne Robinson

“Jack and Della,” by Marilynne Robinson

His father would say , “ You are not good for your own sake .
That probably isn ’ t even possible .
You are good as a courtesy to everyone around you .
Keeping a promise or breaking it , telling the truth or lying—these things matter to those around you .
So there is good you can do and can always do again .
You do not have to believe you are good in order to act well in any specific case .
You never lose that option.
” He said this from the pulpit , but he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , to distract him from the parsing of some recent mischief , had almost confided to his father that he had certain doubts about his soul .
This near-confession was probably meant to stir his father to the kind of gentle exasperation that meant he ’ d be brooding about Jack for a week and preaching to him on Sunday—it was another boyish prank , really , even though what he had told his father was true enough .
The whole congregation would have understood when his father said that good manners were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discipline that could lead to actual virtue , given time .
Jack could be terribly polite .
Everyone in that sanctuary who was old enough to be capable of the slightest cynicism would be thinking , Butter would not melt in that boy ’ s mouth !
He was great at setting teeth on edge .
They also understood that a minister had to find hope where he could , like anybody else .
Jack would sometimes stand beside his father , grinning , shaking hands as the flock filed out , much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s irritation and embarrassment would register as a tremor in the arm he put around him .
From all his father ’ s careful instruction this sermon on good manners was the one teaching that Jack had taken away .
Then a young Black lady in a lavender coat dropped an armful of papers on the pavement in a rainstorm and he crossed the street to help her gather them up .
Dozens of vocabulary tests .
“ Use each of these words in a sentence : stamen , stealthy , stencil.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ them scudding off , and he handed her his umbrella and ran a few steps to catch them .
There was laughter involved .
She said , “ Thank you , Reverend , ” out of respect for the dark suit he was honest enough to sell once it had dried out , so that he could stop deceiving people in that particular way .
He had bought it used for his mother ’ s funeral , but he knew he would not make it home , and , besides , he scrupled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were sometimes people ’ s better impulses had brought that word to mind .
There was little enough to be gained from the suit , in any case .
There was an unseemliness in asking a fellow for a dime or a smoke while wearing a suit like that one .
Being unshaved was no help .
Once or twice he heard out a tirade on the corruptions of the clergy by someone who had taken his actual , ordinary life for his secret life—had thought him a preacher on the bad side @ @ @ @ @ @ @ general dissolution .
That suit made a hypocrite of him .
Still , when the lady to whom he had been so courteous said , “ Thank you , Reverend , ” it was as if she thought she knew him , as if her opinion of him were favorable beyond the fact of his having lent her an umbrella—which he would have to have back , since the gentle candor of her expression made him certain he had to be rid of that suit , which was depreciating by the minute .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ hand and walked her to her door , enjoying the gallantry of the gesture , nicely balanced between apparent and real .
He had got his umbrella back without quite taking it from her .
And when they reached her door she had asked him in .
“ The rain might be letting up a little , ” she said , “ if you have time for a cup of tea .
.
.
.
” This was definitely bold of her , since he was a white man , though her mistaking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make this matter less .
He thought one of his sisters—Glory , maybe—would invite a stranger in off the street on the recommendation of a clerical look and a minor kindness , never thinking to ask whether he had , for example , been released from prison lately .
In a couple of dozen months he had acquired habits he knew he might never outlive .
Even then , taking a chair at a small table by a window , surrounded by the modest good order and general teacherliness of her apartment , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ word that rhymed with “ scruple.
” “ Quadruple.
” He was calming himself , which meant that he was nervous .
Jesus was there among the pictures on the upright piano , the only one in color .
“ Quintuple ” doesn ’ t rhyme .
How can that be ?
Sweet Jesus , don ’ t let me say anything strange .
So he said , “ What brings you to St. Louis ?
” She brought tea in an old-fashioned china pot with a chip in its spout .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ somehow commemorated Memphis .
Sunday things , because he was a minister .
He couldn ’ t see what her cup commemorated , but it was small and ornate like his .
Like the cups that lined a narrow shelf in the kitchen at home , at once pointedly and futilely out of his reach .
Those little handles break off so easily , and they can ’ t really be glued on again .
His sisters had tried and tried .
Hope , the musical sister , had hands like hers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Do you play ?
” “ Not really .
Not very well .
Do you ?
” “ ‘ Onward , Christian Soldiers.
’ ” She laughed .
Actually , the only part of prison he missed , besides a predictable lunch , was playing piano for chapel services , which were sometimes funerals .
He had worked up barrelhouse versions of some very solemn hymns .
She said , “ The piano belongs to the woman I share this place with .
Her mother left it to her .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either.
” He said , for some reason , “ I often regret .
.
.
” and thought it best not to continue .
She nodded .
“ My parents had a terrible time getting me to practice .
I told them I wanted to be a poet !
” Interesting .
“ Did you ever stop wanting to be a poet ?
” She shrugged .
“ I haven ’ t stopped yet .
I suppose someday I will .
I don ’ t have much to show for it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ I guess that gave me the idea .
I have a book he signed for her .
It was her treasure .
Now it ’ s my treasure.
” He said , “ That ’ s very nice , ” and he thought , Don ’ t show it to me .
Don ’ t put it down anywhere near me .
That old fellow dozing on a bench with his umbrella hooked over the back of it , and his cane , too , must have been waked up when the rain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ himself for his own trusting nature .
Then came that difficult algebra : Did the exasperation Jack had caused that man cancel out the kindness he had done under the inspiration of a handsome umbrella ?
A kindness done to this particular lady because he was ready to enjoy the courtesy that was so newly and fortuitously possible for him ?
She did have a sweet face , a warm laugh .
And he hoped he ’ d have helped her gather up her papers in any case .
But the umbrella made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hurried back to her she lifted it a little to include him under it .
Then he held it over her and walked her to her door .
She called him Reverend and offered him tea , and he stepped over a threshold into a world where there would , of course , be a hymnal open on the piano , the odds and ends of a grandmother ’ s china , no doubt a hundred trifling things not at all worth stealing that he could slip into his pocket , given the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ll show you that book.
” He almost said , “ Please don ’ t. ” But in a moment there it was , open on her two hands to the page with the signature .
Then she put it down on the table by the sofa and came back to her chair .
“ I ’ m always afraid I ’ ll spill something on it .
”

For two years, the clerk might not have known where Jack was or that he was alive, but he saved up half the money that Teddy left, which was notably honorable. When Jack appeared again, the clerk handed him a note from his father that said, “Your dear mother is failing. She yearns to see you,” and so on, and the note from his brother that said, “I can come for you. Or you can buy a bus ticket. At least try to come home in time for the funeral, which we expect will be soon.” So, the dark suit. Half an intention, fought to a draw by a dozen considerations, the chief one being that he no doubt still had something of prison about him, sullen acquiescence and the rest. They might expect him to see his mother in her coffin, maybe with his father looking on, which would confront him with the meaning of his life, which had no meaning at all but was terrible in its consequences. He had learned to seem hardened against rebuke, which would be unacceptable in the circumstances.
Terrible thoughts would get him out of bed, out into the weather, where the trees and the people were all, everything, indifferent to his sins and omissions. Why wash, why shave. He went to his bench by the bridge and dozed dreamlessly in the sun. Someone passed behind him and sat down at the other end of the bench. It was Della. He knew it before he had even opened his eyes, and he could hardly believe his eyes when he saw her, sitting there quietly, reading a book. Worse and worse. She glanced at his face, saw whatever she saw, and went back to her book.
He said, “I want to apologize.”
And she said, “No need.” It had to appear that they weren’t there together, so she turned a little away from him. “I was rude.”
A white couple passed arm in arm, talking together in those voices people use when they seem to want to be overheard. The woman—“I’ll tell you what I think!” The man—“I think I already know!” Laughter.
Then Jack said, softly, “No. Not at all.”
The bells struck up that great music of clash and clangor, and, when they were done, she said, “I have to go.” She put her book down on the bench, put a pen in her handbag, and walked away. He waited a minute or two, then leaned across the bench to pick it up. It was hardly in his hand when a colored boy in a ball cap grabbed it away. “You were just going to steal that lady’s book,” he said, and ran after her to give it to her. He saw Della thank the boy, saw him wave off whatever she was offering him from her purse, saw her walk away without a backward glance.
He had to think this through. She had known where to look for him because he had mentioned that bridge. She had brought a book for him. He thought he could let himself believe this. So that he could knock on her door and say, “I believe this is yours, Miss Miles?” Or there was a note in it, or something circled or underlined. He wished he had seen just the title of the book. It was slender, mossy green, worn-looking. It might have been poetry, something someone had read again and again. She had come looking for him on a Sunday morning, which meant she knew now he wasn’t the churchgoing type. It meant also that she might not be on time even for the last service at her own church. She had come a long way just to let him know that things were all right somehow, whatever “things” were, whatever “all right” could be. Since they could hardly manage a few words together. She would know he felt grief—that was what it was—at her disillusionment, since nothing less than grief would have made her come so far. To comfort him. That was what it amounted to. If there had been a note in the book that said, “You are a despicable fraud,” or words to that effect, even that would mean he had not ceased to exist for her when the idea she’d had of him perished. This was simply remarkable. Then she found him dozing on a bench like any bum, rumpled and dishevelled, and she had looked at his face so calmly, which in the circumstances meant kindly, and offered her apology and left her book. It was incredible that she would feel the need to apologize, but thank God she did, because what other pretext would have brought her there. Was it a pretext? Sweet Jesus, how he loved the thought.
What should happen next? Next. This was the language of consequence, lovely to him in this particular moment, because it meant there was an actual thread of connection between them. Knowing her in the particular way he did, he would also know how to answer her. What should he do next? This would take time, and thought, so he believed, but an answer began pressing itself on him immediately, because he had imagined something like it any number of times. He would ask her out to dinner. He had a dishwashing, floor-sweeping kind of familiarity with certain establishments, where mainly Black people but a fair scattering of white people came for the fried chicken or the pork chops, or maybe for the piano player. Any of them might seem rambunctious to a Methodist lady. But she wouldn’t mind! He knew that about her!
When he had once again collected Teddy’s money and put himself in order, and the weather permitted, he went to a street near Della’s house and loitered there, waiting for her to come home from school. When he saw her, he crossed the street and fell into step beside her. She only glanced at him, but she was smiling. He said, “Miss Miles, I’d like to take you out to dinner.”
She laughed. “Well, there’s a thought.”
“Seriously. I know a place. There’s always a mixed crowd. You might not go there for the food, particularly. But it could be, you know, a nice evening.”
She shook her head.
He said, “I understand.”
“You probably don’t.”
“I meant to say all right. No hard feelings.”
She stopped and looked at him. “I’d meet you there. You shouldn’t come here again. You’ll have me on the train to Memphis, if my family gets word.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I thought we should meet there. So I made a sort of map.” He took the folded paper out of his pocket. ‘‘You see, on this side, all the streets, clearly marked. And on the other side”—he turned it over—“the place itself. From across the street.” She laughed. “There are a few inaccuracies. I was mostly working from memory.”
“I take it you added the angels.”
“Angels, trumpets, harps. They are universal symbols of exceptional happiness. So I tossed them in. You can keep that if you like. Even if you don’t accept.”
She shook her head again. “How can I say no?”
“A weeknight? Not so noisy as the weekend.”
“All right. Thursday.”
“Eight?”
“Seven. It’s a school night.”
“Fine. Till then.”
“Yes. Go away now. If I’m not there, there’s some reason why I can’t be.”
“Understood.” He tipped his hat and walked on. It all went as he had hoped, knowing that his hopes, in the circumstances, had to allow for a certain reluctance, some caution. He thought, very briefly, about the risk to her they were always aware of, and then he put the thought aside. No doubt he would fall down a manhole or get hit by a streetcar before Thursday, before this unimaginable evening, fate intervening for her sake.
But there he was, Thursday evening, loitering a few doors away from the restaurant, watching the street. And then there she was, and wearing quite a pretty hat, considering that she was a Methodist and a schoolteacher, and very uneasy about drawing attention to herself.
He said, “Miss Miles,” and she stopped and smiled and he opened the door for her. The waiter, a Black man, knew him, raised his eyebrows, but showed them to a table with a mock formality that was pleasant enough.
“Out on the town tonight, I guess. With a lovely lady, too. You better take good care of this nice lady.” Jack tried to remember if this man had ever seen him sober. He hadn’t given this aspect of things enough thought. The waiter laughed. “Don’t mind me. I’m just here to say I hope you like pork chops, because tonight that’s what we’ve got.”
“Pork chops would be excellent.”
They had the place almost to themselves. They could talk in the ordinary way of conversation, at least till later, when the piano started up and the crowd came. He had spent days in the library thinking about what he would say to her, drawing the map and the heavenly host on the flyleaf of a big travel book that had not been checked out for years, since before the war, and then only twice. The page pulled loose from its binding very cleanly. Whenever his father had found one of his drawings, he’d say, “He’s the clever one. He’s going to surprise us all one day.” He heard his mother say once, “I guess you’re never going to give up on him.” His father seemed to consider, and then he said, “I’m just not sure there would be any point in it.” But the angels went well—they were fat and buoyant, cumulous. Della had to like them, he thought. And she did. Cleverness has a special piquancy when it blooms out of the fraying sleeve of failure. That was his experience, the magic trick he could usually play when he had to.
And here she was. He said, “New tie,” when he realized he was smoothing it.
She smiled and said, “New hat.”
He was in love with her. That did it. That hat brought out glints of rose in the warm dark of her skin. Women know that kind of thing. She, Della, wanted him, Jack, to see that particular loveliness in her. These thoughts interfered considerably with the efforts at conversation he should have been making.
She said, “That bridge you talk about really is handsome. Those huge stones. The walls of Troy must have looked like that.”
“I got your e-mail, but thought I’d just come over to talk.” Cartoon by Lucas Adams Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
“Yes. Herod’s temple.” Then he said, “Have you ever been to Bellefontaine?”
“The white cemetery? Why, no. I haven’t had much occasion.”
Of course. What a stupid question. He said, “I only ask because there is a tree there, a really huge old tree. I’ve probably walked by it a hundred times without noticing anything about it. But one time I happened to look back, and I saw blossoms all over it. Seriously. Big sort of golden-colored blossoms, each one upright, like it was floating on something. And I thought that was an amazing thing. The leaves hide them. But, from a certain distance, there they are. I thought that was interesting.” He didn’t think it was even slightly interesting now, listening to himself tell her about it, although at the time it had seemed startlingly wonderful, one of those self-erasing, soul-freeing moments when you might actually say, “I get the joke!” He had felt the lack of someone to describe it to. This quiet, smiling woman had had that place in his thoughts for weeks. And now he was reminded that the places he went and the things he saw, few as they were, were nothing he had in common with her. That musty, unvisited corner of the library, where he practically lived, was a place he had imagined telling her about. And now he realized that it would be unkind to mention it—the refuge of his poverty and his idleness and whatever else it was about him that brought him to skulk among forgotten books, hoping that old lady had remembered him when she was packing her lunch. Dear Jesus, what a life! And this lovely woman, whose hat was no doubt actually new, wouldn’t have the privilege of reading through all that pathos and pomposity and finding a line here and there worth reading to someone—she having been that someone in his thoughts for what seemed like forever.


newyorker--2020-07-13--The High-Finance Mogul in Charge of Our Economic Recovery

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin became concerned about the novel coronavirus toward the end of January , while attending the annual World Economic Forum , in Davos , Switzerland .
COVID-19 was spreading rapidly in China , and authorities had closed off Wuhan , the city where the outbreak started .
The theme at Davos was sustainability , but Mnuchin was surprised that no one was talking about the eleven million people under lockdown .
“ I was at a C.E.O .
dinner , and I actually brought it up , ” he recalled recently .
“ But , at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I did not see it travelling around the world.
” On January 31st , the Trump Administration announced that it would limit flights from China but did not implement either widespread contact tracing or testing for the coronavirus .
( Many early cases of COVID-19 were later shown to have come into the U.S. from Europe . )
In the following weeks , as Iran and Italy were overwhelmed by outbreaks , President Donald Trump continued to hold campaign rallies and accused Democrats of “ politicizing the coronavirus , ” which he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” In press briefings , he and Administration officials insisted that they were “ totally prepared , ” and assured the public that the risk of infection was low .
Government health experts , led by Anthony Fauci , the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , tried to persuade Trump to focus on COVID-19 .
At the end of February , when Nancy Messonnier , of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , warned the public of its seriousness , Trump sidelined her .
I spoke with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Washington , starting in late May .
In early June , he told me that , before the coronavirus outbreak , the possibility of a global pandemic “ was not a risk that was on my radar screen.
” He did not criticize Trump ’ s handling of the crisis , and was quick to deflect any blame .
“ I don ’ t think it ’ s fair to say in any way that the Administration should have been better prepared .
I mean , if anything , this issue is no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago , or eight years ago , or twelve years ago , ” he said .
“ This goes back to prior Administrations—I think the country should have had better stockpiles of critical items.
” Previous Treasury Secretaries , such as Timothy Geithner and Henry Paulson , had deep experience and public profiles before moving to Washington .
Mnuchin came to the role , in 2017 , with different credentials .
A Wall Street financier with a background in bond trading and bank management , he has known Trump for seventeen years , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his real-estate developments , in the mid-two-thousands .
Mnuchin has business relationships with some of the wealthiest people in the country—likely part of the reason that Trump asked him to join his Presidential campaign as its fund-raising chief .
Mnuchin , who is fifty-seven , is one of the few original Cabinet members remaining in the Administration .
He has developed a reputation for unflinching loyalty .
In August , 2017 , after Trump suggested that there were “ fine people ” among the crowds of neo-Nazis and other hate groups at a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in fact , Trump “ in no way , shape , or form ” had defended white supremacists .
That September , he supported Trump ’ s attack on the N.F.L .
players who knelt during the national anthem to protest racial oppression , saying , “ They can do free speech on their own time.
” Mnuchin has fended off congressional Democrats seeking Trump ’ s tax returns , and , in June , he denounced the former national-security adviser John Bolton for his scathing memoir about the President , saying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the truth and of the interests of the country.
” In the book , Bolton claims that , under Mnuchin , the Treasury Department had resisted or weakened sanctions on foreign adversaries , including Iran , Russia , and Venezuela .
Mnuchin told me that the Treasury Department had “ done more sanctions in the last three years than any of the previous Administrations combined.
” Mnuchin ’ s fealty serves as a kind of job insurance .
“ He ’ s almost part of the family , ” a former Administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mnuchin a lot more face time and an inside track .
I think it ’ s fair to say that the President is closer personally and socially to Mnuchin than to anyone else in the Cabinet.
” Mnuchin does not like to go into detail about his relationship with Trump , but he told me that he and the President were almost completely aligned .
“ Of course , on any specific policy there may be times where I give the President my views—and , again , I respect that he ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ But , in terms of his fundamental positions , I have a great appreciation of them.
” Straight-backed and inscrutable , with a pale complexion and ink-black hair , Mnuchin speaks with a breezy , imperious tone while managing to appear ill at ease in almost any situation .
He is often described by those who have worked with him as a pragmatist whose interest lies in searching out opportunities , brokering deals , and reaping the rewards .
“ He is not an ideological warrior , ” another former Administration official @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comes from working with people in the investment community—they generally don ’ t get overly wedded to certain situations .
They ’ re in it to make the transaction , and then they move on.
” Many fiscal conservatives and libertarians point to Ayn Rand and her philosophy of objectivism as an ideological grounding .
When I asked Mnuchin about Rand ’ s famous novel “ The Fountainhead , ” which he said he ’ d recently reread , there was a pause .
“ I liked the book—I think it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You shouldn ’ t necessarily think that ’ s my ideology.
” He went on , “ I think the government has a role , but I believe free-market economies have turned out to be the best way of lifting economic prosperity for everyone.
” He felt strongly that planned economies and “ huge ” government interventions were generally harmful , but he allowed that , “ at times like now , where we shut down the economy , of course you should have government intervention.
” In late February , a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic , Mnuchin travelled to Riyadh , Saudi Arabia , to attend the G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central-bank governors , and then spent three days in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar , where he had nine more meetings scheduled .
After he returned , on March 9th , the Italian government ordered a nationwide lockdown , which caused panic in world markets .
The U.S. stock market dropped almost eight per cent , its worst decline since the 2008 financial crisis .
Trump , who watches the market obsessively @ @ @ @ @ @ @ severity of the pandemic , and announced that he would encourage Congress to pursue a payroll-tax cut and draw up legislation to help workers who were losing their jobs .
During the next two and a half weeks , Mnuchin and members of the House and the Senate furiously negotiated the two-trillion-dollar CARES Act , one of the most ambitious financial-rescue operations in American history .
Mnuchin , as a senior official who can work productively with Democrats in Congress , is an anomaly in the Administration .
Beginning on March 10th , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ White House , the Treasury Department , and Congress .
He spoke dozens of times with Charles Schumer , the Democratic senator from New York , and with the House Speaker , Nancy Pelosi , as they tried to come to an agreement on the contours of the legislation , which was signed into law on March 27th .
Mnuchin struck Pelosi as respectful and businesslike , and certainly much more rational than Trump , who routinely berates her in person and on Twitter .

Mnuchin kept moving on. In 2003, he joined SFM Capital Management, a fund started by George Soros to invest in companies that had declared bankruptcy or were close to doing so. Soon afterward, he launched his own hedge fund, Dune Capital, with two Goldman alumni and a seed investment from Soros. Mnuchin said that he and Trump met in 2003, through mutual friends. Later, Dune invested in two Trump projects: the Trump International Hotel Waikiki and the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago. (In November, 2008, a day before a payment was due on the Chicago-tower construction loan, Trump sued his lenders, including Dune, demanding an extension.) In 2006, Dune and Soros were part of an investment group that bought DreamWorks studio’s film library, in a transaction valued at nine hundred million dollars. “I understood technology very well, and I understood what was going to happen with bandwidth to the home, so the idea was to build up a content library,” Mnuchin told me. Dune also invested in movies at Fox and Warner Bros., including “Avatar,” one of the all-time highest-grossing films at the international box office.
“This is it, boys, the moment you’ve been training for.” Cartoon by Edward Steed Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Early in 2008, as panic spread through the financial markets, Bank of America announced plans to buy the mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, which was on the brink of collapse. JPMorgan Chase, with government backing, executed an emergency takeover of Bear Stearns, which held billions of dollars of declining mortgage bonds. People waited anxiously for the next bank to fail. Throughout the housing boom, the Los Angeles-based bank IndyMac had been an aggressive lender. In 2006, the company had originated ninety billion dollars’ worth of mortgages, a high proportion of which had been made without proper verification of the borrowers’ incomes. Senator Schumer wrote a letter to banking regulators, which was publicized, expressing concern that IndyMac posed “significant risks to both taxpayers and borrowers.” In July, 2008, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures the nation’s bank deposits, seized the bank and briefly closed its doors. People rushed to IndyMac branches to try to withdraw their money, only to be greeted by signs that said the F.D.I.C. was “taking possession of the bank.” Aaron Glantz, the author of “Homewreckers,” a 2019 book about several financiers, including Mnuchin, who made money from the 2008 crisis, described the scene to me: “There are lines of consumers around the block pushing and shoving, people are passing out in ninety-degree heat, and it’s the beginning of what’s obviously a much, much bigger catastrophe. It’s reminding people of the Depression.”
The savings-and-loan crisis of the nineteen-eighties and nineties, when hundreds of banks collapsed after being deregulated, had shown that fortunes could be made in moments of desperation. Now federal regulators, eager to find private entities to take over failing banks, offered extremely favorable terms and minimal risk. Mnuchin contacted executives at Lehman Brothers, the investment bank working with IndyMac, to express his interest in potentially taking it over. The Lehman bankers asked him, Have you ever bought a bank? He hadn’t. Do you have a license to buy a bank? He did not. Many people were skeptical of Mnuchin’s endeavor until he recruited Warren Buffett to join him. Soon afterward, Mnuchin formed a consortium of five investors, including Michael Dell, the founder of Dell; John Paulson, who ran a hedge fund that had made fifteen billion dollars in 2007 by betting that the housing market would fall; and Soros. Buffett did not end up participating, but the group won the bid.
The F.D.I.C. imposed some conditions on IndyMac’s new owners—they had to modify, rather than foreclose on, as many mortgages as possible—but Mnuchin and his colleagues were free to keep any profits they made, and the F.D.I.C. agreed to cover most losses on deteriorating mortgage loans that they had inherited. They renamed the company OneWest, and, just a year later, reported a profit of $1.57 billion. OneWest showed profits from that point on, while the F.D.I.C. paid the company back for losses it incurred. In the course of five years, the F.D.I.C. paid out more than a billion dollars. In defending what seems like an absurdly bad deal for the F.D.I.C., Sheila Bair, a former head of the organization and a George W. Bush appointee, has pointed out that Mnuchin’s group was the only one willing to buy IndyMac in its entirety, and that, without Mnuchin’s initiative, the government would have lost even more money.
Mnuchin, who had reportedly invested at least ten million dollars in the deal, became the OneWest chairman and C.E.O. He moved to Bel Air and bought a twenty-thousand-square-foot house. He described OneWest as a “community bank,” but in the next five years it foreclosed on thirty-six thousand homes in California, many of them in low-income neighborhoods. Local activists began to call Mnuchin “the foreclosure king.” In October, 2011, about a hundred protesters gathered outside Mnuchin’s mansion, demanding that OneWest allow a state employee named Rose Gudiel and her parents to remain in their home, in La Puente, in the San Gabriel Valley. OneWest had started foreclosure proceedings after the Gudiels were late with a payment in 2009—Rose Gudiel later said that she’d tried for two years to secure a mortgage modification—and the family received an eviction notice. “Instead of working with people to modify loans, OneWest was running a foreclosure machine,” Paulina Gonzalez, the executive director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, a local group that advocates for fair housing for immigrants and minority homeowners, told me. Approximately seventy per cent of OneWest’s foreclosures were in neighborhoods where most of the residents were people of color, according to the C.R.C.’s data. Such trends were playing out nationwide, but, according to the C.R.C. and to Aaron Glantz, OneWest was one of the worst offenders.
In spite of the controversy, OneWest expanded throughout Southern California, and in 2015 Mnuchin sold the company to CIT Group, a large national lender, for $3.4 billion. (Mnuchin reportedly came away with several hundred million dollars.) To gain regulatory approval for the sale, he had to prove that OneWest was in compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 anti-redlining law encouraging banks to serve low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. OneWest had done almost no lending to Black and Latino families who wanted to buy homes as the economy recovered. (In 2019, the Department of Housing and Urban Development approved a settlement between OneWest and groups that alleged it had engaged in discriminatory lending practices.) Nevertheless, the company pledged to invest more in minority and low-income neighborhoods, and the sale to CIT received regulatory approval. (In 2017, President Trump appointed Joseph Otting, who had worked with Mnuchin at OneWest, to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Otting spent much of his time at the O.C.C. revising the Community Reinvestment Act to make it weaker. He left the agency in May.)
When I asked Mnuchin about the controversy surrounding IndyMac and OneWest, he said, “I think this whole thing about me and mortgage foreclosures isn’t fair.” Many of the souring home loans that IndyMac was servicing couldn’t be modified, he said, leaving the bank with no choice but to foreclose on owners who stopped paying. (Gonzalez said that IndyMac had also foreclosed on many owners with mortgages that could be modified.) “I never wanted to foreclose on those people,” Mnuchin said. “Having someone’s home foreclosed upon is a terrible experience.”
On April 19, 2016, Mnuchin was invited to a party at Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue, hosted by the Trump campaign, which was celebrating its victory in the New York Republican primary. Mnuchin and Trump greeted each other on the escalator and started talking, and Trump invited Mnuchin to join him onstage. Mnuchin stood behind him, grinning, during the victory speech. The next morning, Trump asked Mnuchin to be his national finance chairman. Glantz said that, for Mnuchin and certain other Wall Street figures, such as Wilbur Ross, an investor who became the U.S. Commerce Secretary, Trump presented an opportunity. “These are people who have made their careers placing bets on unlikely winners,” he said. In the case of Trump, Glantz went on, Mnuchin “got in on the ground floor. He bet big after the bust, flipped the bank, and made money off of that, and now he’s looking for a new project—and his new project is Donald Trump, getting him elected President.”
On Saturday, February 11, 2017, Mnuchin attended the seventieth-birthday party of Stephen Schwarzman, the co-founder of the seventy-billion-dollar private-equity firm the Blackstone Group, at Schwarzman’s home in Palm Beach. Schwarzman and his wife are known for hosting extravagant events, and this one featured acrobats, camels, fireworks over the Intracoastal Waterway, and a performance by Gwen Stefani, who sang “Happy Birthday” at midnight. Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and the incoming Trump Administration Cabinet members Wilbur Ross and Elaine Chao were among the guests. Two days later, Mnuchin was confirmed by the Senate, in a party-line vote of fifty-three to forty-seven. Shortly afterward, he walked into the Oval Office to be sworn in. He was accompanied by his fiancée, Louise Linton, a Scottish-born actress in her late thirties, and he listened politely as Trump faced a bank of news cameras. “Steven, I want to congratulate you,” Trump said, turning toward Mnuchin, who smiled nervously. “A lot of people wanted that position, Steven! A lot of people. A lot of very successful people. But I’ve known you for a long time, and I know how smart you are, and how great you will be for our country.” That summer, Mnuchin and Linton were married, in the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, in D.C., in a service officiated by Vice-President Mike Pence. Town & Country published a portfolio of the diamond jewelry that Linton wore at the wedding.
Andrew Mellon, the former Treasury Secretary, founded the National Gallery of Art, and the museum has a tradition of lending art works to senior Administration officials for their offices; Mnuchin chose five paintings by Mark Rothko for his. Some Obama-era Treasury staffers were understandably wary of the new regime, but when Mnuchin arrived they were relieved to discover that he was polite and professional. Mnuchin opened his first staff meeting by telling everyone that he was honored to be there. Then he said, “I am a micromanager, and I wear that term with pride.” Did his comment reflect a wariness of former Obama staffers, his new team wondered? It turned out to be an accurate description of how he worked. Mnuchin wanted to be involved in decisions from filling junior positions to picking fonts for the covers of reports. His chief of staff, a former Trump-campaign officer named Eli Miller, tried to manage his schedule, but Mnuchin preferred not to delegate, often popping into staffers’ offices to ask a question or calling them over to see him. Some colleagues had the impression that Mnuchin was trying to run the Treasury Department as if it were a small business. A former Treasury staffer referred to him as “minutiae Mnuchin.”
Under pressure from Congress, the Treasury had endured staffing and budget cuts for years, particularly to the I.R.S. According to some estimates, these cuts led to billions in lost tax revenue annually. Soon after Mnuchin’s arrival, the Office of Management and Budget, led by Mick Mulvaney, requested a ten-per-cent cut at the Treasury, which necessitated a hiring freeze and a reduction in personnel. Morale was low. Some of the most talented members of the department left for jobs in the private sector, where demand for their skills was high, and it was difficult to replace them. Former department officials say that this gradually resulted in a staffing shortage, the severity of which didn’t become fully evident until the coronavirus crisis hit.
Trump had won the election, in part, on promises to cut taxes and to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and replace it with “much better health care” that would cost less. On the day of his Inauguration, he signed an executive order that was intended to facilitate the new health-care legislation, but the bill, which did not specify an alternative provision, quickly got stuck in Congress. The press portrayed this as a humiliating loss for the new Administration, and Mnuchin went to work on assembling the most significant change to the tax system since the Reagan years.
Top department officials and tax-policy experts met daily to discuss the tax bill, but, a former Treasury adviser said, “the Administration didn’t really have a proactive agenda. During the Obama Administration, there was this relentless focus on the mission and things they could use government to do. And there was nothing like that. We got ‘tax reform,’ but there was nothing else. The whole building felt it. That and ‘Go pull out regulations for no reason.’ ”
In the end, the new legislation was based on two long-standing Republican blueprints, one from the former House Ways and Means Committee chairman David Camp, and the other from the House Speaker at the time, Paul Ryan. Mnuchin and others claimed that the new Trump tax bill would “pay for itself” by sparking growth in jobs, wages, and corporate profits, which would lead to greater tax revenues flowing back to the government. According to the former Treasury adviser, Mnuchin, hoping to find evidence to support this, relied on the analysts in his department “to run models that would somehow prove that out.” But it was clear to most tax experts that the bill was far from “revenue neutral” and would add significantly to the deficit. Democrats doubted that the cuts would lead to the promised wage increases for middle-income workers. Treasury Department analysts were also “skeptical, to say the least,” the former adviser said, although almost no one challenged Mnuchin. Eventually, analysts were able to model the answers he wanted. “They said, ‘If you put in these ridiculous growth numbers, you could spit out a result that says it arguably increases the baseline,’ ” the former adviser told me. “I never understood any of the models to show it paying for itself.” Justin Muzinich, a former Morgan Stanley banker and hedge-fund manager who was serving as a senior counsellor to Mnuchin, tried to assuage the analysts’ concerns, and told them that the department was simply testing out a wide range of different growth assumptions.