newyorker--2020-11-30--Using the Homeless to Guard Empty Houses

I wasn ’ t the first person to wonder what Evans was doing there .
A few weeks earlier , two sheriffs had knocked on the door around 11 P.M. and handcuffed him .
In his car ’ s glove compartment , they found a letter of employment and the cell-phone number of a woman named Diane Montano , who runs Weekend Warriors , a company that provides security for vacant houses .
Like many of Montano ’ s employees , Evans was homeless when he was hired .
Now he lives in properties that are being flipped , guarding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ open-house , and inspection periods .
In the past seven years , he has protected more than twenty-two homes , in thirteen neighborhoods around Los Angeles , almost all historically Black and Latino communities .
A McMansion in Fontana ; a four-unit apartment complex in Compton ; a “ baby mansion on the peak of the mountain ” in East L.A. , which had been left to a son who , according to the neighbors , borrowed so much against the equity of the house that he lost it to foreclosure .
Before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the drains .
Evans guarded the property as the plumbing system was replaced .
Empty houses are a strange sight in an area that has one of the most severe housing shortages in the United States .
L.A. has the highest median home prices , relative to income , and among the lowest homeownership rates of any major city , according to the U.C.L.A .
Center for Neighborhood Knowledge .
Renting isn ’ t any easier .
The area has one of the lowest vacancy rates in the country , and the average @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
On any night , some sixty-six thousand people there sleep in cars , in shelters , or on the street , an increase of thirteen per cent since last year .
The housing shortage was caused , in part , by restrictive zoning , rampant NIMBYism , and the use of California ’ s environmental laws to thwart urban development .
In 1960 , Los Angeles was zoned to house some ten million people .
By 1990 , decades of downzoning had reduced that number to 3.9 million , roughly the city @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2008 , the subprime-mortgage crisis struck , and in the years that followed thousands of foreclosed homes were sold at auction .
Because they had to be purchased in cash , many of them were bought by wealthy investors , private-equity-backed real-estate funds , and countless other real-estate companies , leaving less inventory for individual buyers .
In the end , the 2008 crash made housing in California even more expensive .
No .
265 , along with thousands of other homes in L.A. , was acquired by Wedgewood , a real-estate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ specializes in flipping homes , managing everything from lockouts and financing to renovation and staging .
In gentrifying neighborhoods , empty houses are sitting ducks , so companies like Wedgewood hire Weekend Warriors and other house-sitting services for cheap security .
Around Robinson Road , several properties had been broken into .
At No .
265 , a middle-aged Black couple had recently crawled in through the front window .
When Evans told them to leave , they apologized ; the man was a jazz musician , and they said that they were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ used to sleep in this house before Evans arrived .
The three went to the front porch and chatted while smoking cigarillos .
Evans , who was sixty-seven at the time , took me through the two houses on the lot .
He ’ d laid a blue tarp over the cream-colored carpet , and , in one room , he ’ d set up an inflatable mattress neatly made with a floral fleece coverlet .
A Haitian-flag baby blanket was wrapped around his pillow .
He liked his room warm ; when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crank up his space heater , then brew a cup of coffee and read and write—poetry , essays , screenplays—at a plastic folding table by his bed .
He was contemplating writing a memoir .
“ This is how I keep my sanity , ” he told me .
He had the run of both houses , but he kept to this one room , his life contained in several milk crates on the shelves .
He showed me his eighth-grade diploma and a picture of a poetry venue that he had opened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It closed after becoming a target of the Crips gang . )
Two of his screenplays were on the shelves , along with a book , “ The Thoughts of Augustus the Final Poet , ” which he had self-published in 2014 : “ Hey , Mr. Income / You ’ re my best friend .
/ My pockets are empty / Where have you been ?
” He ’ d saved a receipt from the Los Angeles Unified School District , which bought two hundred and eighty-five copies for its classrooms .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but when he wanted a change of scenery he sat in his S.U.V.
, a 2001 Infiniti , which he ’ d bought with his house-sitting savings .
Evans dreamed of living in the Robincroft Castle , a seven-thousand-square-foot historic landmark across the street , which sold for $ 1.39 million in 2016 and three years later was listed for $ 2.49 million .
And he took to caring for a colony of ants under a tree , feeding them chicken bones .
The bones disappeared quickly , so he kept watch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come by , and realized they weren ’ t just eating the bones but the ants and everything else .
Born to sharecroppers in the Arkansas Delta , Evans is the seventh of ten children .
He picked cotton until he was eleven , when his family hitched a ride on a hay truck to Tulare , California .
In school , the other children and teachers ridiculed him—for his accent , his coveralls , his lunches of fatback and collard greens .
He dropped out after the eighth grade .
At sixteen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cars at a gas station when a money-green Cadillac Eldorado rolled in and a Black man stepped out .
One of Evans ’ s cousins asked the man how he could afford such a car , and he told them that , if they came to Los Angeles , he could hook them up with a job that paid two hundred dollars a day .
That afternoon , the boys took a Greyhound bus to Venice , where they began selling little balloons of heroin out of their mouths for ten dollars each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drugs to an undercover officer .
He was arrested and sent to juvenile detention , where he joined the Nation of Islam .
His faith estranged him from his Christian family .
“ The old Muslim people , they brainwashed him , I think , ” his sister Ercell Murray told me .
When Evans was released , he moved to Compton , the heart of L.A. ’ s Black activist community .
In the seventies , he sold Amway products door to door and taught martial arts .
He wanted to open @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would give him a loan .
In the fall of 1983 , when Derrick Stevens , a friend from juvenile detention , asked if Evans wanted in on a bank robbery , Evans said yes .
“ I never thought of robbing a bank , but I did know that that ’ s the building with the money in it , and if you got a lot of money you could do anything you want in America , ” Evans told me .
On a late October morning , Evans , Stevens , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American Savings and Loan on Crenshaw Boulevard wearing rubber masks of Presidents Johnson , Nixon , Ford , and Reagan .
The men bagged two hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars and several exploding dye packs , in what was then the largest bank robbery in Los Angeles history .
( It inspired scenes in the movie “ Point Break.
” ) Three months later , Evans was caught in Tampa , Florida , just before boarding a cruise ship to the Bahamas , where he ’ d hoped to hide .
He spent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reading , writing , and preaching .
When he got out , it was hard to find work .
In 1998 , Evans rented a derelict office in South L.A. , across from the Magic Johnson Theatre , to work on his poetry and various business projects , including a short-lived toilet-paper-delivery service .
One day , he gave a CD of himself performing his poetry to a woman who worked in the salon downstairs ; he ’ d noticed her singing to herself as she braided hair .
“ She was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Evans told me .
“ I mean , she ’ s another Aretha Franklin , Patti LaBelle , Whitney Houston quality of a singer.
” Soon they got married and he moved into her small apartment in South L.A. , where they paid some six hundred dollars a month .
They had two sons , and eventually , afraid that their children would become involved in the local gangs , they moved with Evans ’ s mother-in-law and brother-in-law to Moreno Valley , a suburb with a fast-growing Black population .
They had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years , they rented homes that ranged from two thousand to four thousand dollars a month .
As the world eased out of the Great Recession , in 2010 , his wife told him that their differences had grown too great .
Although she had a talent for singing , she ’ d earned her nursing degree , but he was still holding on to the hope of becoming a famous poet .
“ You can ’ t just get stagnated and stuck on a dream that has not materialized , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finalized , he put his belongings in a trash bag and walked out , beginning a life of homelessness .
He got two weeks ’ worth of motel vouchers from General Relief , and when those ran out he headed toward Union Station , where he hoped to sleep on a bench .
He was crossing Normandie and Vernon when a couple he knew from the Black-consciousness community spotted him .
They took him into their store , a Caribbean gift shop called Bles-sed Love , and told him that he could sleep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the counter .
There was a windowless black-lit room in the back , with murals of Egyptian iconography on the walls and the solar system painted on the ceiling .
He slept there for nearly two years , waking at dawn for morning prayers and opening the store two hours later .
One morning , a customer told Evans that he supplemented his Social Security income by house-sitting for Weekend Warriors .
There were two types of gigs , he explained : 7 P.M. to 7 A.M. , which paid five hundred dollars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paid eight hundred dollars .
All you needed was an I.D .
Evans called Diane Montano at around 10 A.M. , and at 2 P.M. a van picked him up and took him to a house in Riverside .
The rules were simple : don ’ t leave , don ’ t host guests , and don ’ t talk to anyone—not contractors , property managers , real-estate agents , or prospective buyers .
If you were working a 24/7 , only short trips to the market or the laundromat were allowed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ at all times , or pay would be docked .
The driver supplied Evans with a mini-fridge , a small microwave , an inflatable mattress , and plastic floor coverings to protect the carpet .
The driver came by to check on Evans occasionally , always unannounced , photographing each room and sending the pictures to Montano , so that she could monitor Evans ’ s cleanliness and track the progress of the renovations .
By the time Evans was living at No .
265 , he had learned the rhythms of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wouldn ’ t come by at night or on Sundays .
When he could , he ’ d steal out to Moreno Valley , an hour and twenty minutes away , to visit his sons .
He kept loose change in a coffee cup in his car , and he ’ d give his youngest son all the coins he ’ d collected since his last visit .
“ They know Daddy has to work away from the house , ” he told me .
“ They ’ re big boys now.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the driver would deliver a check .
In seven years of working for Montano , Evans has never met her .
( Montano declined to comment for this article . )
Montano told Evans to leave for a couple of days , to escape the fumes .
Usually , he slept in his car ( as does about a third of Los Angeles ’ s homeless population ) , but a strong El Niño had brought heavy rain to California .
He accepted Montano ’ s offer to “ bunk up ” with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in South L.A. , where the city ’ s rents are rising the fastest and where Black residents are most likely to be homeless .
It ’ s also where many of the house sitters are assigned work .
Mansa Moosa-El opened the door and was surprised to find that his bunkie was Augustus Evans .
“ He has tremendous respect on the street , ” Moosa , who was born Adrian Rhone , told me .
He knew that Evans had walked with Louis Farrakhan in the early eighties , and he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I ’ m the fantastic immortal classic , ” Moosa , who is forty-nine and was born in Compton , told me .
“ He ’ s the one and only golden oldie.
” Whereas Evans dressed in trousers , blazers , and loafers , Moosa , a Black Panther , preferred a louder look : he wore a leather jacket , rose-tinted sunglasses , and African beads , and carried a staff with a black plastic snake coiled around it .
Learning that Evans was house-sitting made him feel less miserable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Evans through the small three-bedroom house , pointing out the lack of sinks , cabinets , hot water , and heat .
The only thing that functioned was the toilet .
Moosa ’ s life has been shaped by L.A. ’ s demographic trends .
As recent books like “ The Color of Law , ” by Richard Rothstein , and “ Race for Profit , ” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor , explain , a number of inner-city ghettos , like Compton , were formed by government policy .
During the Great Depression , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ class by encouraging homeownership through the creation of the thirty-year mortgage .
But restrictive covenants prohibited Black people from buying houses in certain neighborhoods , and further limitations were imposed by redlining , which barred prospective buyers in areas with large numbers of people of color from receiving federally insured loans .
During the Second World War , L.A. ’ s Black population almost doubled , as newcomers were drawn by factory jobs .
Residents of Compton , which was then nearly all white , protested new housing for the workers .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the neighborhood was moved to Watts , a racially mixed neighborhood nearby .
“ By 1958 , it was 95 % black , ” Rothstein wrote in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times .
“ Public housing policy was largely responsible for this segregation.
” It wasn ’ t long before white people fled Compton , where Moosa ’ s parents bought a house in the early seventies .
By then , L.A. had the fastest-growing Black population outside the Southeast , three-quarters of it concentrated in South L.A. Moosa ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the records library , and as much as a fifth of the Black population had solid manufacturing jobs .
But , by the eighties , those jobs had disappeared or gone overseas .
Moosa , like many Black Gen X-ers , fared worse than his parents .
The foreclosure crisis was ruinous to L.A. ’ s Black communities , in part because residents , after decades of being denied mortgages , had been disproportionately targeted for predatory loans and reverse mortgages .
When the bubble burst , Black people were seventy-one per @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lose their homes .
Last year , Black homeownership reached its lowest rate since 1968 , when housing discrimination was outlawed by the passage of the Fair Housing Act .

Wandering around Northwest Pasadena, I pressed my face against the window of a dingy pink stucco house at 265 Robinson Road. It was April, 2019, and in two blocks I had passed thirteen bungalows, duplexes, and multifamily homes that had gone through foreclosure in the past fifteen years. Twelve of them were still unoccupied. No. 265 had been in foreclosure for a year and a half, and the two small houses on the property had long sat empty. But now, inside the rear house, there was a gallon jug of water and a bag of peanuts on a Formica kitchen counter. The walls were a mangy taupe, but African-print sheets hung over the windows. As I walked away, I heard a genteel Southern accent from behind me: “Can I help you?” A Black man with perfect posture, wearing loafers and a black T-shirt tucked into belted trousers, introduced himself as Augustus Evans.
I wasn’t the first person to wonder what Evans was doing there. A few weeks earlier, two sheriffs had knocked on the door around 11 P.M. and handcuffed him. In his car’s glove compartment, they found a letter of employment and the cell-phone number of a woman named Diane Montano, who runs Weekend Warriors, a company that provides security for vacant houses. Like many of Montano’s employees, Evans was homeless when he was hired. Now he lives in properties that are being flipped, guarding them through the renovation, staging, open-house, and inspection periods. In the past seven years, he has protected more than twenty-two homes, in thirteen neighborhoods around Los Angeles, almost all historically Black and Latino communities. A McMansion in Fontana; a four-unit apartment complex in Compton; a “baby mansion on the peak of the mountain” in East L.A., which had been left to a son who, according to the neighbors, borrowed so much against the equity of the house that he lost it to foreclosure. Before leaving, he poured liquid cement down the drains. Evans guarded the property as the plumbing system was replaced.
Empty houses are a strange sight in an area that has one of the most severe housing shortages in the United States. L.A. has the highest median home prices, relative to income, and among the lowest homeownership rates of any major city, according to the U.C.L.A. Center for Neighborhood Knowledge. Renting isn’t any easier. The area has one of the lowest vacancy rates in the country, and the average rent is twenty-two hundred dollars a month. On any night, some sixty-six thousand people there sleep in cars, in shelters, or on the street, an increase of thirteen per cent since last year.
The housing shortage was caused, in part, by restrictive zoning, rampant NIMBYism, and the use of California’s environmental laws to thwart urban development. In 1960, Los Angeles was zoned to house some ten million people. By 1990, decades of downzoning had reduced that number to 3.9 million, roughly the city’s current population. Then, in 2008, the subprime-mortgage crisis struck, and in the years that followed thousands of foreclosed homes were sold at auction. Because they had to be purchased in cash, many of them were bought by wealthy investors, private-equity-backed real-estate funds, and countless other real-estate companies, leaving less inventory for individual buyers. In the end, the 2008 crash made housing in California even more expensive.
No. 265, along with thousands of other homes in L.A., was acquired by Wedgewood, a real-estate company, founded in 1983, that specializes in flipping homes, managing everything from lockouts and financing to renovation and staging. In gentrifying neighborhoods, empty houses are sitting ducks, so companies like Wedgewood hire Weekend Warriors and other house-sitting services for cheap security. Around Robinson Road, several properties had been broken into. At No. 265, a middle-aged Black couple had recently crawled in through the front window. When Evans told them to leave, they apologized; the man was a jazz musician, and they said that they were struggling with crystal-meth dependency and that they used to sleep in this house before Evans arrived. The three went to the front porch and chatted while smoking cigarillos.
Evans, who was sixty-seven at the time, took me through the two houses on the lot. He’d laid a blue tarp over the cream-colored carpet, and, in one room, he’d set up an inflatable mattress neatly made with a floral fleece coverlet. A Haitian-flag baby blanket was wrapped around his pillow. He liked his room warm; when he woke up, he’d crank up his space heater, then brew a cup of coffee and read and write—poetry, essays, screenplays—at a plastic folding table by his bed. He was contemplating writing a memoir. “This is how I keep my sanity,” he told me. He had the run of both houses, but he kept to this one room, his life contained in several milk crates on the shelves. He showed me his eighth-grade diploma and a picture of a poetry venue that he had opened in Compton in the nineties. (It closed after becoming a target of the Crips gang.) Two of his screenplays were on the shelves, along with a book, “The Thoughts of Augustus the Final Poet,” which he had self-published in 2014: “Hey, Mr. Income / You’re my best friend. / My pockets are empty / Where have you been?” He’d saved a receipt from the Los Angeles Unified School District, which bought two hundred and eighty-five copies for its classrooms.
He spent most of his time inside, but when he wanted a change of scenery he sat in his S.U.V., a 2001 Infiniti, which he’d bought with his house-sitting savings. Evans dreamed of living in the Robincroft Castle, a seven-thousand-square-foot historic landmark across the street, which sold for $1.39 million in 2016 and three years later was listed for $2.49 million. And he took to caring for a colony of ants under a tree, feeding them chicken bones. The bones disappeared quickly, so he kept watch and spied a cat and a possum come by, and realized they weren’t just eating the bones but the ants and everything else.
Born to sharecroppers in the Arkansas Delta, Evans is the seventh of ten children. He picked cotton until he was eleven, when his family hitched a ride on a hay truck to Tulare, California. In school, the other children and teachers ridiculed him—for his accent, his coveralls, his lunches of fatback and collard greens. He dropped out after the eighth grade. At sixteen, he and some cousins were washing cars at a gas station when a money-green Cadillac Eldorado rolled in and a Black man stepped out. One of Evans’s cousins asked the man how he could afford such a car, and he told them that, if they came to Los Angeles, he could hook them up with a job that paid two hundred dollars a day. That afternoon, the boys took a Greyhound bus to Venice, where they began selling little balloons of heroin out of their mouths for ten dollars each. Not long afterward, Evans offered drugs to an undercover officer. He was arrested and sent to juvenile detention, where he joined the Nation of Islam. His faith estranged him from his Christian family. “The old Muslim people, they brainwashed him, I think,” his sister Ercell Murray told me. When Evans was released, he moved to Compton, the heart of L.A.’s Black activist community. In the seventies, he sold Amway products door to door and taught martial arts. He wanted to open a martial-arts academy, but no bank would give him a loan. In the fall of 1983, when Derrick Stevens, a friend from juvenile detention, asked if Evans wanted in on a bank robbery, Evans said yes. “I never thought of robbing a bank, but I did know that that’s the building with the money in it, and if you got a lot of money you could do anything you want in America,” Evans told me.
On a late October morning, Evans, Stevens, and two other men walked into the American Savings and Loan on Crenshaw Boulevard wearing rubber masks of Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. The men bagged two hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars and several exploding dye packs, in what was then the largest bank robbery in Los Angeles history. (It inspired scenes in the movie “Point Break.”) Three months later, Evans was caught in Tampa, Florida, just before boarding a cruise ship to the Bahamas, where he’d hoped to hide. He spent the next seven years locked up, reading, writing, and preaching. When he got out, it was hard to find work.
In 1998, Evans rented a derelict office in South L.A., across from the Magic Johnson Theatre, to work on his poetry and various business projects, including a short-lived toilet-paper-delivery service. One day, he gave a CD of himself performing his poetry to a woman who worked in the salon downstairs; he’d noticed her singing to herself as she braided hair. “She was a vocalist out of this world,” Evans told me. “I mean, she’s another Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Whitney Houston quality of a singer.” Soon they got married and he moved into her small apartment in South L.A., where they paid some six hundred dollars a month. They had two sons, and eventually, afraid that their children would become involved in the local gangs, they moved with Evans’s mother-in-law and brother-in-law to Moreno Valley, a suburb with a fast-growing Black population. They had another son, and, over the years, they rented homes that ranged from two thousand to four thousand dollars a month.
As the world eased out of the Great Recession, in 2010, his wife told him that their differences had grown too great. Although she had a talent for singing, she’d earned her nursing degree, but he was still holding on to the hope of becoming a famous poet. “You can’t just get stagnated and stuck on a dream that has not materialized,” she told me. After their divorce was finalized, he put his belongings in a trash bag and walked out, beginning a life of homelessness. He got two weeks’ worth of motel vouchers from General Relief, and when those ran out he headed toward Union Station, where he hoped to sleep on a bench. He was crossing Normandie and Vernon when a couple he knew from the Black-consciousness community spotted him. They took him into their store, a Caribbean gift shop called Bles-sed Love, and told him that he could sleep there in exchange for some help at the counter. There was a windowless black-lit room in the back, with murals of Egyptian iconography on the walls and the solar system painted on the ceiling. He slept there for nearly two years, waking at dawn for morning prayers and opening the store two hours later.
One morning, a customer told Evans that he supplemented his Social Security income by house-sitting for Weekend Warriors. There were two types of gigs, he explained: 7 P.M. to 7 A.M., which paid five hundred dollars a month, and 24/7, which paid eight hundred dollars. All you needed was an I.D. Evans called Diane Montano at around 10 A.M., and at 2 P.M. a van picked him up and took him to a house in Riverside.
The rules were simple: don’t leave, don’t host guests, and don’t talk to anyone—not contractors, property managers, real-estate agents, or prospective buyers. If you were working a 24/7, only short trips to the market or the laundromat were allowed. The premises had to be kept clean at all times, or pay would be docked. The driver supplied Evans with a mini-fridge, a small microwave, an inflatable mattress, and plastic floor coverings to protect the carpet.
The driver came by to check on Evans occasionally, always unannounced, photographing each room and sending the pictures to Montano, so that she could monitor Evans’s cleanliness and track the progress of the renovations. By the time Evans was living at No. 265, he had learned the rhythms of the gig. He knew that the driver wouldn’t come by at night or on Sundays. When he could, he’d steal out to Moreno Valley, an hour and twenty minutes away, to visit his sons. He kept loose change in a coffee cup in his car, and he’d give his youngest son all the coins he’d collected since his last visit. “They know Daddy has to work away from the house,” he told me. “They’re big boys now.”
“You may be king of the jungle, Tim, but don’t forget—here you’re just another actuary.” Cartoon by Emily Flake Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Around the end of the month, the driver would deliver a check. In seven years of working for Montano, Evans has never met her. (Montano declined to comment for this article.)
At No. 265, two construction workers junked the decades-old kitchen appliances and Formica counters, tore up the carpeting, and laid down ash-wood laminate floors. By the end of June, the exterior was painted gray with slate-gray trim, the interiors a bright white. Shaker-style cabinets and granite countertops were installed in the kitchens. Edison bulbs hung from the ceiling in black metal light fixtures. Evans’s beat-up white microwave and mini-fridge looked incongruous. By October, the property was staged for showing, with wishbone chairs, reclaimed-wood tables, and woven wall hangings. In 2005, it had sold for four hundred and twenty thousand dollars; now it was listed for nine hundred and thirty thousand. A few weeks later, a termite tent went up to address bugs found during a home inspection, the final step in many L.A. real-estate transactions.
Montano told Evans to leave for a couple of days, to escape the fumes. Usually, he slept in his car (as does about a third of Los Angeles’s homeless population), but a strong El Niño had brought heavy rain to California. He accepted Montano’s offer to “bunk up” with another house sitter, in Compton, in South L.A., where the city’s rents are rising the fastest and where Black residents are most likely to be homeless. It’s also where many of the house sitters are assigned work.
Mansa Moosa-El opened the door and was surprised to find that his bunkie was Augustus Evans. “He has tremendous respect on the street,” Moosa, who was born Adrian Rhone, told me. He knew that Evans had walked with Louis Farrakhan in the early eighties, and he had seen him at community events. “I’m the fantastic immortal classic,” Moosa, who is forty-nine and was born in Compton, told me. “He’s the one and only golden oldie.” Whereas Evans dressed in trousers, blazers, and loafers, Moosa, a Black Panther, preferred a louder look: he wore a leather jacket, rose-tinted sunglasses, and African beads, and carried a staff with a black plastic snake coiled around it. Learning that Evans was house-sitting made him feel less miserable about his own situation. Moosa walked Evans through the small three-bedroom house, pointing out the lack of sinks, cabinets, hot water, and heat. The only thing that functioned was the toilet.


newyorker--2020-11-30--Paul Theroux on Making Sense of One’s Life

Lovely word !
I studied Italian in high school , I still speak it , my mother is Italian , my first job was in Italy—I was a teacher in Urbino , before I went to Africa .
I like the word for its slightly sinister quality , suggesting deep suspicion , bordering on paranoia as well as on the paranormal .
The word was in the story from the beginning , though my working title was “ Downsizing , ” a much duller word .
In the story , an old man , Sal , tells tales from his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children .
He can ’ t expect his audience to understand his stories , so why does he tell them ?
What seems like a conversation between an anxious old man and very young children becomes confessional—a relief to him to be able to tell these stories without interruption and sort of make sense of his life .
To the children , the stories are less like narratives than like songs , which become more enjoyable with repetition , even if the children don ’ t wholly understand them .
They seize on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do with songs and poems , and that becomes a form of understanding to them and a consolation to him .
What do the children see in him , aside from his generosity with cookies ?
The cookies are central ( “ I accept cookies , ” we are constantly tapping into Web sites ) , but it ’ s important , too , that the children have his sympathetic attention .
He asks them about school and so on , and he listens closely ; there ’ s a lot of back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which the children enjoy .
Some of the time he talks to them pompously , as though they were adults : “ Home—the notion of home .
.
.
” I find this funny and rather touching .
Like Sal , I often have trouble making sense of an experience until I ’ ve laboriously written it down , or turned it into fiction .
Sal is resisting his wife ’ s plans to move them both to a “ unit ” in an assisted-living facility .
Does he see a dietrologia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can see he ’ s happy in his big house filled with possessions , and , obviously , he ’ s resisting a big change , the move to a “ unit.
” He doesn ’ t want to move , or downsize—he still has plans .
He was a clerk , covertly writing poems ; he had a parallel life , and wants it to continue .
In his dietrologia , he sees that he would be miserable moving .
One of Sal ’ s memories involves an encounter , during a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who runs away from him , terrified .
Sal says that the boy unconsciously “ knew he had to separate himself from me.
” Was the boy right , as Sal implies , to be frightened ?
The Italian boy is more frightened of Sal the stranger than of the thunderstorm , and is probably right to be .
His running into the storm is something that impresses Sal in retrospect , and he remembers it later when he needs to choose how to act .
Sal is a lonely character , disappointed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ follow his desire to be a poet .
Instead , he was a claims adjuster .
You give us several of Sal ’ s poems , which he recites to the children .
How did you go about creating his poetic voice ?
Sal says , at one point , that he writes poems with his left hand .
I do , too , though I have never published them .
A fiction writer needs to be really brave to publish his or her poems—Borges was brilliant in his fiction and his poetry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so was D. H. Lawrence ; Virginia Woolf was good at both , too .
Mine are like Sal ’ s , I think .
But Sal ’ s a reader .
There are some allusions to his reading .
When he thinks about how children are “ near and mysterious , ” he ’ s remembering a Borges poem , “ John 1:14 ” — “ Who plays with a child plays with something / near and mysterious ” ( “ cercano y misterioso ” ) —and Sal ’ s mention of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from “ Huckleberry Finn.
” His final act is intended to protect the children—and spare him from having to move to the assisted-living facility .
Do you think it accomplishes those things ?
I hope both are accomplished .
The signs are there : he seems to see it all ; he believes he ’ s gifted that way .
His name is Salvatore , after all— “ savior.
” The great trouble for him is that he loses the children , but that would have happened anyway .

Photograph by David Clynch / Alamy
Your story in this week’s issue, “Dietrologia,” revolves around the term dietrologia—an Italian word meaning a hidden motivation or explanation behind something. (It is, literally, “behind-ology.”) How did you become familiar with the word, and was the story built around it, or did the use of the word present itself during the writing?
Lovely word! I studied Italian in high school, I still speak it, my mother is Italian, my first job was in Italy—I was a teacher in Urbino, before I went to Africa. I like the word for its slightly sinister quality, suggesting deep suspicion, bordering on paranoia as well as on the paranormal. The word was in the story from the beginning, though my working title was “Downsizing,” a much duller word.
In the story, an old man, Sal, tells tales from his life—tales that are psychologically complex—to three young children. He can’t expect his audience to understand his stories, so why does he tell them?
What seems like a conversation between an anxious old man and very young children becomes confessional—a relief to him to be able to tell these stories without interruption and sort of make sense of his life. To the children, the stories are less like narratives than like songs, which become more enjoyable with repetition, even if the children don’t wholly understand them. They seize on certain words, as we tend to do with songs and poems, and that becomes a form of understanding to them and a consolation to him.
What do the children see in him, aside from his generosity with cookies?
The cookies are central (“I accept cookies,” we are constantly tapping into Web sites), but it’s important, too, that the children have his sympathetic attention. He asks them about school and so on, and he listens closely; there’s a lot of back and forth, a kind of play, which the children enjoy. Some of the time he talks to them pompously, as though they were adults: “Home—the notion of home . . .” I find this funny and rather touching. Like Sal, I often have trouble making sense of an experience until I’ve laboriously written it down, or turned it into fiction.
Sal is resisting his wife’s plans to move them both to a “unit” in an assisted-living facility. Does he see a dietrologia behind her wish to move?
You can see he’s happy in his big house filled with possessions, and, obviously, he’s resisting a big change, the move to a “unit.” He doesn’t want to move, or downsize—he still has plans. He was a clerk, covertly writing poems; he had a parallel life, and wants it to continue. In his dietrologia, he sees that he would be miserable moving.
One of Sal’s memories involves an encounter, during a storm in Sicily, with a boy who runs away from him, terrified. Sal says that the boy unconsciously “knew he had to separate himself from me.” Was the boy right, as Sal implies, to be frightened?
The Italian boy is more frightened of Sal the stranger than of the thunderstorm, and is probably right to be. His running into the storm is something that impresses Sal in retrospect, and he remembers it later when he needs to choose how to act.
Sal is a lonely character, disappointed in his two marriages, unable to follow his desire to be a poet. Instead, he was a claims adjuster. You give us several of Sal’s poems, which he recites to the children. How did you go about creating his poetic voice?
Sal says, at one point, that he writes poems with his left hand. I do, too, though I have never published them. A fiction writer needs to be really brave to publish his or her poems—Borges was brilliant in his fiction and his poetry; Updike was an excellent poet; so was D. H. Lawrence; Virginia Woolf was good at both, too. Mine are like Sal’s, I think. But Sal’s a reader. There are some allusions to his reading. When he thinks about how children are “near and mysterious,” he’s remembering a Borges poem, “John 1:14”—“Who plays with a child plays with something / near and mysterious” (“cercano y misterioso”)—and Sal’s mention of religion as “soul butter” is from “Huckleberry Finn.”
His final act is intended to protect the children—and spare him from having to move to the assisted-living facility. Do you think it accomplishes those things?
I hope both are accomplished. The signs are there: he seems to see it all; he believes he’s gifted that way. His name is Salvatore, after all—“savior.” The great trouble for him is that he loses the children, but that would have happened anyway.


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newyorker--2020-11-30--Why the Assassination of a Scientist Will Have No Impact on Iran’s Nuclear Program

On Friday , the Muslim holy day , he was reportedly travelling with his wife , in a black Nissan sedan , from Tehran to visit his in-laws in Absard , a town famed for its apple and cherry orchards , about forty-five miles away .
Highways around the capital are notoriously clogged , but travel restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 crisis have meant far less traffic .
As Fakhrizadeh ’ s car neared a roundabout , a blue pickup truck parked near an electricity transmitter opened fire on the car and then exploded , cutting off local power , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cameras were disabled .
One account claimed that a dozen gunmen—one group jumped out of a parked S.U.V .
and another arrived on motorcycles , while snipers were hidden nearby—opened fire .
A separate account , by Fars , the nation ’ s semi-official news agency , reported that all the fire came from the pickup truck , which was remote-controlled .
Fars claimed that there were no human assailants at the scene ; the whole operation took three minutes , the agency said .
Both accounts said that Fakhrizadeh , hit multiple @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and bled out on the ground .
The Iranian media released photos of the bullet-riddled car and the blood stream .
By the time a rescue helicopter got Fakhrizadeh to Tehran , he was dead .
The attack provoked fury in Iran , breathless headlines around the world , and a lot of speculation about retaliation , which could , in turn , spark a mini-war .
No one claimed responsibility .
But the hit , which required detailed intelligence about a secretive official ’ s weekend plans , his timing , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Iranian nuclear scientists .
Carried out between 2010 and 2012 , the previous operations were widely associated with Mossad , the Israeli intelligence agency .
“ Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today , ” the Iranian foreign minister , Mohammad Javad Zarif , tweeted , on Friday .
“ This cowardice—with serious indications of Israeli role—shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators.
” Iranian leaders vowed revenge .
“ Iran ’ s enemies should know that the people of Iran and officials are braver than to leave this criminal act unanswered , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nationally televised cabinet meeting .
“ In due time , they will answer for this crime.
” Rouhani added , though , that the government would not rush into a hasty decision .
The glaring irony of the sensational operation is that it will probably have a negligible impact on Iran ’ s nuclear program .
“ No individual is crucial in a nuclear program like this anymore , ” Bruce Riedel , a former senior U.S. official who served in the National Security Council , the C.I.A.
, and the Pentagon , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Institution , told me .
“ The Iranians mastered that technology twenty years ago .
This guy was important , no question , but he was not crucial to it .
Nobody is crucial to it anymore .
That ’ s why describing this as a devastating blow is nonsense.
” • After the election , assaults on truth and the press continue .
• Lessons of failed power grabs , in America and overseas .
• Could banks bail us out of the climate crisis ?
Fakhrizadeh was pivotal in developing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the team to run it until 2003 , Ariane Tabatabai , a fellow at the German Marshall Fund and the author of the new book “ No Conquest , No Defeat : Iran ’ s National Security Strategy , ” told me .
But in 2003 , in a deal struck with the three major European powers , Tehran agreed to suspend its program .
By then , Iran had most of the know-how anyway .
Tehran has since shifted its focus to enriching uranium , the fuel needed for both atomic weapons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
has repeatedly concluded that Iran has not returned to weaponization .
Fakhrizadeh later moved to the Defense Ministry ’ s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research .
The crucial factor today is that Iran has the knowledge needed to fashion a nuclear device , but it lacks the material—highly enriched uranium or plutonium—necessary to build nuclear bombs , Daryl Kimball , the executive director of the Arms Control Association , in Washington , D.C. , told me .
“ Whatever role Mr. Fakhrizadeh has played in the Iranian nuclear program , his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iran ’ s capability to amass more enriched uranium , ” Kimball said .
The enrichment program falls under the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran , which is headed by Ali Akbar Salehi , an M.I.T .
graduate .
Salehi was a key player during the two years of intense international diplomacy that led to the Iran nuclear deal , in 2015 .
He and his organization were sanctioned by the Trump Administration , in January .
“ But since Iran now has the know-how , no single Iranian scientist is essential to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Tabatabai said .
Instead , that decision would be political , and would be made by the Supreme National Security Council , then submitted to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for his final approval .
This is the same decision-making process that led to agreeing to talks with the United States in 2013 and to the eventual nuclear deal .
The domestic fallout from Fakhrizadeh ’ s assassination could be more impactful than the operation itself , partly because of the humiliation .
The regime faces pressure to respond with bigger and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the past .
“ This is a truly serious blow to Iran , primarily in the eyes of the Iranian public , ” a leader of a Middle Eastern country , who asked not to be named , told me .
“ This has very profound implications to its internal dynamics .
Therefore , they may choose to retaliate to overcome the sense of embarrassment and vulnerability.
” Kayhan , a hard-line paper close to the Supreme Leader , urged the government to attack Haifa , the Israeli port city , as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the Israeli regime and its agents are by no means ready to take part in a war and a military confrontation.
” The Fakhrizadeh assassination follows the U.S. drone strike that killed Major General Qassem Suleimani , the commander of the élite expeditionary wing of the Revolutionary Guards , after he landed in Baghdad , in January .
Tehran has long charged that Washington and Jerusalem are in cahoots on Iran strategy .
The White House did not comment on Fakhrizadeh ’ s assassination , although President Trump retweeted a Times story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Hebrew—by an Israeli journalist who wrote that Fakhrizadeh ’ s death was “ a major psychological and professional blow for Iran.
” After the Suleimani assassination , Iran fired missiles at two Iraqi bases that also housed U.S. troops .
No Americans were killed , but more than a hundred American personnel suffered various degrees of traumatic brain injury ; more than seventy of the troops returned to duty within weeks .
Since it abandoned the nuclear deal and resumed punitive economic sanctions against Iran , in 2018 , the Trump Administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” campaign to convince the Islamic Republic to accept sweeping new provisions that cover its missile program , support for extremist movements , intervention in the Middle East , and human-rights abuses .
The Administration has sanctioned dozens of Iranian institutions , banks , foundations , and government ministries and ministers , and has threatened to sanction nations and third-party companies that do business with Iran .
So far , Trump ’ s strategy has failed .
Iran has demanded assurances that sanctions will be lifted in any new diplomatic arrangement .
Since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being asked in Washington and in the fragile Middle East is about motive : Was the attack , now widely assumed to have been orchestrated by Israel , intended to kill one expert , or was it more broadly designed to undermine an initiative by the incoming Biden Administration to reëngage diplomatically with Iran—or both ?
The President-elect has repeatedly said that he wants to return to the nuclear deal .
“ I think the three amigos—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo , Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , and Mohammed bin Salman , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ determination to prevent Joe Biden from reviving U.S.-Iran diplomacy and the nuclear deal , ” Riedel , the former U.S. official , said .
Earlier this month , Pompeo travelled to Israel and Saudi Arabia and reportedly facilitated a meeting with Netanyahu and M.B.S.
, which many experts believe focussed more on joint efforts against Iran than on normalization of relations .
Riedel said that the Trump Administration and Saudi officials are eager to thwart the type of diplomacy that was practiced during the Obama years .
“ When you think back to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his Iranian counterpart every week and spoke to him on the phone—it was extraordinary , ” Riedel said .
“ The Saudis and Israelis are desperate to prevent that from happening again .
How do they set up a situation where Biden is boxed in and can ’ t do anything about it ?
”

The roadside assassination, last week, of the Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was an elaborate intelligence operation that played out like a blockbuster thriller, according to unusually candid accounts by the Iranian media. Fakhrizadeh, who was around sixty and had a graying beard, and also a bit of a paunch, has often been compared to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of America’s atomic bomb, and A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program. Fakhrizadeh had enough secrets in his head that he was followed around by a team of bodyguards; he also held the title of brigadier general.
On Friday, the Muslim holy day, he was reportedly travelling with his wife, in a black Nissan sedan, from Tehran to visit his in-laws in Absard, a town famed for its apple and cherry orchards, about forty-five miles away. Highways around the capital are notoriously clogged, but travel restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 crisis have meant far less traffic. As Fakhrizadeh’s car neared a roundabout, a blue pickup truck parked near an electricity transmitter opened fire on the car and then exploded, cutting off local power, including to a nearby clinic; roadside cameras were disabled. One account claimed that a dozen gunmen—one group jumped out of a parked S.U.V. and another arrived on motorcycles, while snipers were hidden nearby—opened fire. A separate account, by Fars, the nation’s semi-official news agency, reported that all the fire came from the pickup truck, which was remote-controlled. Fars claimed that there were no human assailants at the scene; the whole operation took three minutes, the agency said. Both accounts said that Fakhrizadeh, hit multiple times, fell out of his car and bled out on the ground. The Iranian media released photos of the bullet-riddled car and the blood stream. By the time a rescue helicopter got Fakhrizadeh to Tehran, he was dead.
The attack provoked fury in Iran, breathless headlines around the world, and a lot of speculation about retaliation, which could, in turn, spark a mini-war. No one claimed responsibility. But the hit, which required detailed intelligence about a secretive official’s weekend plans, his timing, and his route, mirrored four previous assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Carried out between 2010 and 2012, the previous operations were widely associated with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. “Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today,” the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted, on Friday. “This cowardice—with serious indications of Israeli role—shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators.” Iranian leaders vowed revenge. “Iran’s enemies should know that the people of Iran and officials are braver than to leave this criminal act unanswered,” President Hassan Rouhani said, in a nationally televised cabinet meeting. “In due time, they will answer for this crime.” Rouhani added, though, that the government would not rush into a hasty decision.
The glaring irony of the sensational operation is that it will probably have a negligible impact on Iran’s nuclear program. “No individual is crucial in a nuclear program like this anymore,” Bruce Riedel, a former senior U.S. official who served in the National Security Council, the C.I.A., and the Pentagon, and who is now at the Brookings Institution, told me. “The Iranians mastered that technology twenty years ago. This guy was important, no question, but he was not crucial to it. Nobody is crucial to it anymore. That’s why describing this as a devastating blow is nonsense.”
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Fakhrizadeh was pivotal in developing the infrastructure for a weapons program and assembling the team to run it until 2003, Ariane Tabatabai, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund and the author of the new book “No Conquest, No Defeat: Iran’s National Security Strategy,” told me. But in 2003, in a deal struck with the three major European powers, Tehran agreed to suspend its program. By then, Iran had most of the know-how anyway. Tehran has since shifted its focus to enriching uranium, the fuel needed for both atomic weapons and peaceful nuclear-energy reactors. The C.I.A. has repeatedly concluded that Iran has not returned to weaponization. Fakhrizadeh later moved to the Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research.
The crucial factor today is that Iran has the knowledge needed to fashion a nuclear device, but it lacks the material—highly enriched uranium or plutonium—necessary to build nuclear bombs, Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, in Washington, D.C., told me. “Whatever role Mr. Fakhrizadeh has played in the Iranian nuclear program, his assassination will not have material effect on Iran’s capability to amass more enriched uranium,” Kimball said. The enrichment program falls under the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, which is headed by Ali Akbar Salehi, an M.I.T. graduate. Salehi was a key player during the two years of intense international diplomacy that led to the Iran nuclear deal, in 2015. He and his organization were sanctioned by the Trump Administration, in January. “But since Iran now has the know-how, no single Iranian scientist is essential to assembling that technology into a bomb,” Tabatabai said. Instead, that decision would be political, and would be made by the Supreme National Security Council, then submitted to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for his final approval. This is the same decision-making process that led to agreeing to talks with the United States in 2013 and to the eventual nuclear deal.
The domestic fallout from Fakhrizadeh’s assassination could be more impactful than the operation itself, partly because of the humiliation. The regime faces pressure to respond with bigger and bolder military action than it has in the past. “This is a truly serious blow to Iran, primarily in the eyes of the Iranian public,” a leader of a Middle Eastern country, who asked not to be named, told me. “This has very profound implications to its internal dynamics. Therefore, they may choose to retaliate to overcome the sense of embarrassment and vulnerability.” Kayhan, a hard-line paper close to the Supreme Leader, urged the government to attack Haifa, the Israeli port city, as a “deterrence, because the United States and the Israeli regime and its agents are by no means ready to take part in a war and a military confrontation.”
The Fakhrizadeh assassination follows the U.S. drone strike that killed Major General Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the élite expeditionary wing of the Revolutionary Guards, after he landed in Baghdad, in January. Tehran has long charged that Washington and Jerusalem are in cahoots on Iran strategy. The White House did not comment on Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, although President Trump retweeted a Times story about it and two tweets—in English and in Hebrew—by an Israeli journalist who wrote that Fakhrizadeh’s death was “a major psychological and professional blow for Iran.” After the Suleimani assassination, Iran fired missiles at two Iraqi bases that also housed U.S. troops. No Americans were killed, but more than a hundred American personnel suffered various degrees of traumatic brain injury; more than seventy of the troops returned to duty within weeks.


newyorker--2020-11-30--New Uses for Forgotten Office Items

New Uses for Forgotten Office Items

With most everyone working from home , many office items have gone unused for months .
But never fear !
@ @ @ @ @ to repurpose these relics from your nine-to-five days .

With most everyone working from home, many office items have gone unused for months. But never fear! Here are some useful ways to repurpose these relics from your nine-to-five days.


newyorker--2020-11-30--Trump Tries to Prove He Is Fitter Than Biden by Playing Fetch with Pence on White House Lawn

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —In an attempt to demonstrate that he is in better physical condition than President-elect @ @ @ @ @ Trump spent part of Monday morning playing fetch with Mike Pence on the White House @ @ @ @ @ was invited to the event , at which Trump , seated on a golf cart @ @ @ @ @ tennis ball at his Vice-President , who obediently retrieved them .
At one point in @ @ @ @ @ to praise his boss ’ s “ amazing stamina.
” “ Mr .
President , @ @ @ @ @ mental acuity was beyond compare , but I must say that your physical strength and @ @ @ @ @ miraculous , ” Pence said .
“ I can ’ t hear you with that @ @ @ @ @ , ” Trump replied .
After half an hour of fetching , Pence became winded @ @ @ @ @ Lindsey Graham .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an attempt to demonstrate that he is in better physical condition than President-elect Joe Biden, Donald J. Trump spent part of Monday morning playing fetch with Mike Pence on the White House lawn.
The press corps was invited to the event, at which Trump, seated on a golf cart, hurled tennis ball after tennis ball at his Vice-President, who obediently retrieved them.
At one point in the demonstration, Pence paused to praise his boss’s “amazing stamina.”
“Mr. President, I always knew that your mental acuity was beyond compare, but I must say that your physical strength and endurance are nothing short of miraculous,” Pence said.
“I can’t hear you with that tennis ball in your mouth,” Trump replied.
After half an hour of fetching, Pence became winded and was replaced by Senator Lindsey Graham.


newyorker--2020-11-30--Daily Cartoon: Monday, November 30th

Daily Cartoon: Monday, November 30th

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“After a nice long weekend, it’s so hard to get back into the swing of fearing the collapse of society.”


newyorker--2020-11-30--Tobias Menzies of “The Crown” Crashed on Helena Bonham Carter’s Couch Before Lockdown

Like Prince Philip , the actor Tobias Menzies , who plays him in Seasons 3 and 4 of “ The Crown , ” occupies prewar lodgings in London .
He shares his home not with Queen Elizabeth II but with a black cat named Bernie , who came to him as a stray .
“ My cat ’ s shouting at me , ” he said on a recent Zoom from his kitchen , as Bernie piped up in the background .
“ I might have forgotten to feed him.
” Menzies , forty-six , wore eyeglasses and an oxford @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exposing cookbooks and a toaster .
( “ A backstage view , ” he said , laughing . )
When lockdown began , he had just moved back into his flat , after renovations had required him to couch-surf .
“ One of the places where I stayed was with Helena , which was delightful , ” he said .
“ I was sort of an outer satellite of the Bonham Carter family.
” On “ The Crown , ” he and Helena Bonham Carter , as Princess Margaret , are both outer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Margaret has given Bonham Carter a chance to romp ( “ There was a young lady from Dallas !
” she says , trading limericks with L.B.J .
at a White House dinner ) , and the role of Philip has given Menzies a chance to invest a stolid figure with layers of intrigue .
“ What ’ s continually being unwrapped with Philip is this contradictory tension—quite a lot of emotion for the desire for things to be incredibly straightforward and unemotional , ” he said .
“ Even in interviews @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little away , there ’ s a hot emotionality that seems to pour off him , despite his best attempts.
” In the new season , which dives headlong into the eighties , Diana ( Emma Corrin ) comes on the scene , as does Margaret Thatcher ( Gillian Anderson ) .
“ That ’ s the last thing this country needs , ” Philip tells the Queen ( Olivia Colman ) , as they watch the news .
“ Two women running the shop.
” The Queen disagrees .
Menzies is tall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with grooved cheeks and a brow that creases with concern .
Whether he ’ s playing Brutus , on “ Rome ” ; the academic Frank Randall or his ancestor Black Jack Randall , whipping fiend , on “ Outlander ” ; or the nobleman Edmure Tully , on “ Game of Thrones , ” whose wedding ends in mass murder , Menzies conveys the sense that there ’ s much going on beneath the surface .
All actors , he said , “ come with a set of things that come for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part , where the unconscious aspects of you bump into the work.
” His might be “ a certain kind of .
.
.
” He trailed off , thinking .
“ Reticence.
” Early in the fourth season , Philip seals his son ’ s fate during a weekend at Balmoral , in Scotland , when Diana visits and flatters Philip on a stag-hunting excursion .
( “ Good shot , sir !
” ) Season 3 showcases Philip ’ s interior life , especially in a midlife-crisis episode , in which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( “ Extraordinary .
What men .
What courage.
” ) The camera lingers on his face as it cycles through quiet shades of disbelief , wonder , and amusement , his eyes brimming with tears .
Menzies was born in London , to a drama-teacher mother and a BBC radio-producer father .
Growing up , “ we never paid a huge amount of attention to the Royal Family , ” he said .
His parents separated when he was six , and he and his mother and brother moved to Kent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ In my teens , in the early nineties , my mum was taking me to see theatre , the best stuff that was going on in London , ” he said .
“ There was this explosion of visual theatre , dance theatre , movement theatre.
” ( He explored that realm himself , and hoped to attend mime school , but couldn ’ t afford it ; he went to drama school instead . )
As a teen , he saw Wallace Shawn ’ s “ mad , amazing ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the Edinburgh Festival .
“ This character goes through a fever of self-recrimination , class guilt , ” he said .
“ It always stayed with me.
” In 2015 , Menzies performed it himself , under the direction of Robert Icke , for a small audience , in a room at the May Fair hotel .
“ I remember feeling pretty sick to my stomach every night before I did it , ” he said .
But Shawn himself came— “ a great privilege ” —and “ seemed very delighted by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has given him time to reflect—not a Philip-style midlife crisis but a sharpening of focus .
He ’ d like to do some “ highly authored film work , ” he said— “ working with , you know , the Paul Thomas Andersons and the Joanna Hoggs , these filmmakers who I admire so much.
” His next project is a second season of Aisling Bea ’ s Channel 4 dramedy , “ This Way Up , ” in which he plays her potential love interest , a moody widower with a young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I ’ m not a great dad , and I ’ m pretty distant , ” Menzies said , smiling .
Another onion to be peeled , perhaps ?
“ So many onions , ” he said , laughing .
“ My eyes are watering.
” ♦ The title of an earlier version of this story misstated when Tobias Menzies stayed at Helena Bonham Carter 's house .

Tobias Menzies Illustration by João Fazenda
Like Prince Philip, the actor Tobias Menzies, who plays him in Seasons 3 and 4 of “The Crown,” occupies prewar lodgings in London. He shares his home not with Queen Elizabeth II but with a black cat named Bernie, who came to him as a stray. “My cat’s shouting at me,” he said on a recent Zoom from his kitchen, as Bernie piped up in the background. “I might have forgotten to feed him.” Menzies, forty-six, wore eyeglasses and an oxford shirt, an open cabinet behind him exposing cookbooks and a toaster. (“A backstage view,” he said, laughing.) When lockdown began, he had just moved back into his flat, after renovations had required him to couch-surf. “One of the places where I stayed was with Helena, which was delightful,” he said. “I was sort of an outer satellite of the Bonham Carter family.”
On “The Crown,” he and Helena Bonham Carter, as Princess Margaret, are both outer satellites of the Queen. The role of Margaret has given Bonham Carter a chance to romp (“There was a young lady from Dallas!” she says, trading limericks with L.B.J. at a White House dinner), and the role of Philip has given Menzies a chance to invest a stolid figure with layers of intrigue. “What’s continually being unwrapped with Philip is this contradictory tension—quite a lot of emotion for the desire for things to be incredibly straightforward and unemotional,” he said. “Even in interviews where he’s really giving very little away, there’s a hot emotionality that seems to pour off him, despite his best attempts.” In the new season, which dives headlong into the eighties, Diana (Emma Corrin) comes on the scene, as does Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson). “That’s the last thing this country needs,” Philip tells the Queen (Olivia Colman), as they watch the news. “Two women running the shop.” The Queen disagrees.
Menzies is tall, lean, and understatedly handsome, with grooved cheeks and a brow that creases with concern. Whether he’s playing Brutus, on “Rome”; the academic Frank Randall or his ancestor Black Jack Randall, whipping fiend, on “Outlander”; or the nobleman Edmure Tully, on “Game of Thrones,” whose wedding ends in mass murder, Menzies conveys the sense that there’s much going on beneath the surface. All actors, he said, “come with a set of things that come for free, that you bring to every part, where the unconscious aspects of you bump into the work.” His might be “a certain kind of . . .” He trailed off, thinking. “Reticence.”
Early in the fourth season, Philip seals his son’s fate during a weekend at Balmoral, in Scotland, when Diana visits and flatters Philip on a stag-hunting excursion. (“Good shot, sir!”) Season 3 showcases Philip’s interior life, especially in a midlife-crisis episode, in which he becomes fixated on the moon landing. (“Extraordinary. What men. What courage.”) The camera lingers on his face as it cycles through quiet shades of disbelief, wonder, and amusement, his eyes brimming with tears.
Menzies was born in London, to a drama-teacher mother and a BBC radio-producer father. Growing up, “we never paid a huge amount of attention to the Royal Family,” he said. His parents separated when he was six, and he and his mother and brother moved to Kent, where he attended a Waldorf school. “In my teens, in the early nineties, my mum was taking me to see theatre, the best stuff that was going on in London,” he said. “There was this explosion of visual theatre, dance theatre, movement theatre.” (He explored that realm himself, and hoped to attend mime school, but couldn’t afford it; he went to drama school instead.) As a teen, he saw Wallace Shawn’s “mad, amazing” one-man play “The Fever,” at the Edinburgh Festival. “This character goes through a fever of self-recrimination, class guilt,” he said. “It always stayed with me.” In 2015, Menzies performed it himself, under the direction of Robert Icke, for a small audience, in a room at the May Fair hotel. “I remember feeling pretty sick to my stomach every night before I did it,” he said. But Shawn himself came—“a great privilege”—and “seemed very delighted by what we’d done.”
Lockdown has given him time to reflect—not a Philip-style midlife crisis but a sharpening of focus. He’d like to do some “highly authored film work,” he said—“working with, you know, the Paul Thomas Andersons and the Joanna Hoggs, these filmmakers who I admire so much.” His next project is a second season of Aisling Bea’s Channel 4 dramedy, “This Way Up,” in which he plays her potential love interest, a moody widower with a young son. In the first season, “I’m not a great dad, and I’m pretty distant,” Menzies said, smiling. Another onion to be peeled, perhaps? “So many onions,” he said, laughing. “My eyes are watering.” ♦
The title of an earlier version of this story misstated when Tobias Menzies stayed at Helena Bonham Carter’s house.


newyorker--2020-12-01--I’ll Have Kids in a Few Years, When I’m Successful and Wealthy and My Life Is Finally Perfect

Thing is , kids are expensive .
You have to buy them strollers and diapers and top-rated car seats and high-quality baby food made of , like , blended-up , grass-fed , T-bone steaks .
I barely have a handle on my current finances , let alone the foresight to budget for all that stuff .
That ’ s why I need to learn how investments work and put an extra hundred thousand bucks in bitcoin and emerging-market index funds before I can afford kids .
I refuse to have a kid who doesn ’ t eat the best mashed-up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ full of joy and wonder .
But also so physically demanding !
Kids wake you up every single night for four years until you ’ re tired and defeated and your eyes are bloodshot like a frostbitten , nineteenth-century Alaskan gold miner ’ s .
I have friends with kids , and that ’ s how it went for all of them .
I really need to launch my movie career by writing , directing , and starring in a popular comedy before I have a kid .
I ’ ll do that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Then I ’ ll be successful and happy , and—BOOM !
My kid will have a movie-star father !
Honestly , kids sound great .
They ’ re just full of cute little surprises , like when they shout that a cloud looks like a butt , or they pronounce Neapolitan ice cream “ neopatoleyman.
” So adorable .
It would be amazing to experience that daily .
But kids really need a wise and worldly parent who ’ s already had his share of life-altering adventures .
That ’ s why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and spend a summer riding the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Mongolia before I even consider parenting a kid .
After I ’ ve been a blacksmith ’ s apprentice in Ulaanbaatar and learned to hunt wolves in the Gobi Desert , then I ’ ll get serious about having kids and teaching them self-reliance through smithing and wolf-hunting .
But am I even sure I want kids ?
Of course !
Once I turn forty-one .
And after I write my epic sci-fi novel about colonizing the solar system via quantum teleportation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dad , not an unaccomplished moron dad .
That ’ s why I am absolutely on board to have a kid immediately seven years from now , when my novel has been turned into a best-selling trilogy and an Emmy-winning Netflix series .
When I explain all of this to my friend Pete , he says , “ Man , I think your expectations are too high .
If you want kids , just go for it.
” And I ’ m , like , “ You son of a horse ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cent want a kid !
But after I turn forty-four , ski down the face of Everest , film a documentary about it , and dedicate it to ‘ the only mountain bigger than Everest : my future kid.
’ ” And then Pete says , “ That ’ s not reasonable.
” And then I say , “ No need for me to commit to a timeline right now !
I can keep kicking this can down the road until I ’ m , like , forty-five .
Yeah , forty-five .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ man up and decide to initiate my Child-Raising Decision Matrix for Maximum Happiness.
” And then Pete changes the subject .
I ’ m fortunate .
I ’ m young .
Well , sort of , vaguely young-ish .
I have a while , theoretically speaking , to rehash all my fears and ambitions in my head until a magical sense of calm about kids emerges .
Then I can have kids when I ’ m fifty .
Surely , by fifty , I ’ ll have achieved all the things I ever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the exact same things I “ knew ” at age twenty-five that I ’ d have definitely achieved by thirty-five .
But , truly , I can ’ t wait for some kids .
When I ’ m old and wise and I ’ ve read every book and untangled every paradox of human existence and my soul mate and I have traversed the farthest depths of space and seen wonders beyond wonders , then , and only then , will I be ready to raise some precious , beautiful kids .
Minor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whom should I have them with ?
I guess I ’ ll figure that out right after I master the arts of charisma and tantric sex and stage a global photo shoot for the perfect online-dating pic—though I need to do a lot of work on my mind-set and physique before I ’ m ready for something like that .

I think I’ll be ready for kids in about two years. Once I get my life sorted out and achieve a few of my big goals—which will definitely happen in my thirties—then I’m totally ready for a kid or two!
Thing is, kids are expensive. You have to buy them strollers and diapers and top-rated car seats and high-quality baby food made of, like, blended-up, grass-fed, T-bone steaks. I barely have a handle on my current finances, let alone the foresight to budget for all that stuff. That’s why I need to learn how investments work and put an extra hundred thousand bucks in bitcoin and emerging-market index funds before I can afford kids. I refuse to have a kid who doesn’t eat the best mashed-up T-bones!
Kids are incredible. So full of joy and wonder. But also so physically demanding! Kids wake you up every single night for four years until you’re tired and defeated and your eyes are bloodshot like a frostbitten, nineteenth-century Alaskan gold miner’s. I have friends with kids, and that’s how it went for all of them. I really need to launch my movie career by writing, directing, and starring in a popular comedy before I have a kid. I’ll do that by the time I’m thirty-nine. Then I’ll be successful and happy, and—BOOM! My kid will have a movie-star father!
Honestly, kids sound great. They’re just full of cute little surprises, like when they shout that a cloud looks like a butt, or they pronounce Neapolitan ice cream “neopatoleyman.” So adorable. It would be amazing to experience that daily. But kids really need a wise and worldly parent who’s already had his share of life-altering adventures. That’s why I should visit every country on earth and spend a summer riding the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Mongolia before I even consider parenting a kid. After I’ve been a blacksmith’s apprentice in Ulaanbaatar and learned to hunt wolves in the Gobi Desert, then I’ll get serious about having kids and teaching them self-reliance through smithing and wolf-hunting.
But am I even sure I want kids? Of course! Once I turn forty-one. And after I write my epic sci-fi novel about colonizing the solar system via quantum teleportation. My kid needs an impressive literary-science dad, not an unaccomplished moron dad. That’s why I am absolutely on board to have a kid immediately seven years from now, when my novel has been turned into a best-selling trilogy and an Emmy-winning Netflix series.
When I explain all of this to my friend Pete, he says, “Man, I think your expectations are too high. If you want kids, just go for it.”
And I’m, like, “You son of a horse’s ass, Pete! I one-thousand per cent want a kid! But after I turn forty-four, ski down the face of Everest, film a documentary about it, and dedicate it to ‘the only mountain bigger than Everest: my future kid.’ ”
And then Pete says, “That’s not reasonable.”
And then I say, “No need for me to commit to a timeline right now! I can keep kicking this can down the road until I’m, like, forty-five. Yeah, forty-five. That’s when I’ll man up and decide to initiate my Child-Raising Decision Matrix for Maximum Happiness.”
And then Pete changes the subject.
I’m fortunate. I’m young. Well, sort of vaguely young-ish. I have a while, theoretically speaking, to rehash all my fears and ambitions in my head until a magical sense of calm about kids emerges. Then I can have kids when I’m fifty. Surely, by fifty, I’ll have achieved all the things I ever wanted to do in life pre-kids—coincidentally, the exact same things I “knew” at age twenty-five that I’d have definitely achieved by thirty-five.
But, truly, I can’t wait for some kids. When I’m old and wise and I’ve read every book and untangled every paradox of human existence and my soul mate and I have traversed the farthest depths of space and seen wonders beyond wonders, then, and only then, will I be ready to raise some precious, beautiful kids.
Minor point: When I have kids, whom should I have them with? I guess I’ll figure that out right after I master the arts of charisma and tantric sex and stage a global photo shoot for the perfect online-dating pic—though I need to do a lot of work on my mind-set and physique before I’m ready for something like that.


newyorker--2020-12-01--The Best Books We Read in 2020

The Best Books We Read in 2020

Honoré de Balzac ’ s “ La Comédie Humaine , ” grand in both ambition and scope , comprises approximately ninety titles , over whose course the occasionally intersecting stories of nearly two thousand five hundred characters form a portrait of France in the first half of the nineteenth century .
In “ Balzac ’ s Lives , ” Peter Brooks—a professor emeritus of comparative literature at Yale—turns to nine of these characters to explore the author ’ s writerly obsessions with money and power , love and desire .
To treat fictional characters as so-called real people , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brooks notes , has been considered a naïve , even gauche critical approach—at least since the time of the Russian Formalists , who encouraged us to analyze characters for their function as literary devices , rather than for their adherence to the rules that might govern flesh-and-blood individuals .
But for Brooks , Balzac ’ s energetic , almost fevered attitude toward his characters—evident in their emergence and reëmergence over the course of many books , and in their dizzyingly varied social backgrounds , from courtesan to banker , baron to pauper—demands a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the book , I enjoyed Brooks ’ s sharp insights , which suggest the ways in which Balzac ’ s proto-modern world is not so different from our own .
But I also felt a more basic , visceral pleasure .
Though I consider myself a Balzac fan , I ’ ve read only a fraction of the author ’ s works , and so to be able to discover—or , in some cases , recall—what fates befall certain characters reminded me of the not unprimitive joy of tearing into a juicy morsel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s the kind that sends you on a mission to find out more—which means picking up a Balzac novel .
—Naomi Fry “ The Year of the French , ” by Thomas Flanagan I ’ m not a recreational reader .
I need a reason—usually , it ’ s something I ’ m writing—to read a book .
But the semi-lockdown last spring seemed to me , as it did to many people , a reason to read a book for no reason , other than pleasure or distraction .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ The Year of the French , ” by Thomas Flanagan .
The novel , published in 1979 , is about the invasion of Ireland by the French in 1798 .
France was revolutionary France , and Ireland was effectively a colony of Britain .
The French were hoping to combine forces with an Irish insurrection and liberate the island in the name of liberté , fraternité , and égalité .
It didn ’ t quite work out .
I was lucky that I knew nothing about this invasion , not even that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s method is to plunge the reader into a strange , wild , poetic , cruel , and finally hopeless world of Irish peasants , absentee British landlords , revolutionary terrorists , and men and women trying to hold on to what they have in a universe threatening to turn upside down .
You have to make your own way through this landscape , so the stranger everything is for you , the more adventurous the experience .
The story Flanagan tells makes our own dark times seem eminently manageable .
I wanted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book , and I was .
And there : I ’ ve written about it , too !
—Luke Menand “ So Long , See You Tomorrow , ” by William Maxwell During these long months of hiding out at home—of being thrown back upon recollections of the past , in place of new experience—I ’ ve been thinking about how to make literary use of memory .
How might one capture the way that images or encounters lodge in the imagination and become , over time , layered with meaning ?
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , stunning novel , “ So Long , See You Tomorrow , ” is a phrase that is said lightly but that comes to be freighted with tragedy ; the book itself , which was published in 1980 after being serialized in The New Yorker , is a virtuosic blend of memoir and fiction .
Maxwell , who was a fiction editor at this magazine for some four decades , and who died in 2000 at the age of ninety-one , drew in this book , as in a number of others , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Illinois .
In part , it is a true-crime narrative : a jealous husband murders his wife ’ s lover , who is also his best friend .
But the book is also about how that crime stays alive in the narrator ’ s memory , and how it becomes a means for him to explore his own experience of loss and of guilt .
This is a book filled with passages that I wanted to transcribe in a hedge against the failings of my own memory , among them this pronouncement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any part of the following mixture of truth and fiction strikes the reader as unconvincing , he has my permission to disregard it .
I would be content to stick to the facts if there were any.
” As well as encountering Maxwell on the page , I recommend listening to the audiobook , which was recorded in 1995 .
It ’ s beautifully read by the author , whose voice a listener can hear cracking with emotion upon reaching the novel ’ s final , breathtaking sentence .
—Rebecca Mead

“Cleanness,” by Garth Greenwell
The casual grandeur of Garth Greenwell’s prose, unfurling in page-long paragraphs and elegantly garrulous sentences, tempts the vulnerable reader into danger zones: traumatic memories, extreme sexual scenarios, states of paralyzing heartbreak and loss. In the case of “Cleanness,” Greenwell’s third work of fiction, I initially curled up with the book, savoring the sensuous richness of the writing, and then I found myself sweating a little, uncomfortably invested in the rawness of the scene. The cause was a story titled “Gospodar,” in which the narrator, an American teacher living in Bulgaria, hooks up with a man who begins by play-acting violence and then veers toward the real thing. The transition from fantasy to horror is accomplished with the deftness of a literary magician, and Greenwell repeats the feat even more unnervingly in a later story, “The Little Saint,” in which his likable narrator takes the role of the aggressor rather than the victim. These stories are masterpieces of radical eroticism, but they wouldn’t have the same impact if they didn’t appear in a gorgeously varied narrative fabric, amid scenes of more wholesome love, finely sketched vistas of political unrest, haunting evocations of a damaged childhood, and moments of mundane rapture. Tenderness, violence, animosity, and compassion are the outer edges of what feels like a total map of the human condition. —Alex Ross
“Stranger Faces,” by Namwali Serpell
In an age of totalizing theories, it’s nice to watch someone expertly pull a single idea through a needle’s eye. “Stranger Faces,” by Namwali Serpell, is one such exercise. The book’s catalytic inquiry—“what counts as a face and why?”—means to undermine the face, the way its expressive capabilities give it the cast of truth. We seek meaning in a shallow arrangement of eyes, nose, cheeks, and mouth, despite how often faces lie, or how often they cloak the world-ordering phenomena of race, gender, and class. Rather than depress or shame readers with these facts, Serpell delights in them. Unencumbered by truth, the face becomes interesting, motile—a work of art. (“Unruly faces” are especially intriguing, according to Serpell, because they invite viewers to sever ties with the placidity of an ideal.) Serpell, a Harvard professor and critic capable of close-reading people just as well as novels or films, includes a dancing range of examples. Her first essay considers the moniker given to Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, whose features aren’t, in fact, so elephantine; another essay, on Werner Herzog’s “Grizzly Man,” becomes a study of Keanu Reeves’s himbo appeal. Serpell can reanimate any subject, be it Hitchcock or emojis, and her bright, brainy collection is a model for how to surface the fun in a critical question. —Lauren Michele Jackson
“Want,” by Lynn Steger Strong
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
New York novels are as various as the city they describe. But “Want,” a subtly glorious new entry in the genre by Lynn Steger Strong, is set in a town whose qualities—unaffordable, unrelenting, unquittable—many readers will recognize. The book’s narrator is a writer who lives with her husband and two young daughters in a cramped Brooklyn apartment; to keep them in it, she teaches at a charter school by day and in an M.F.A. writing program by evening, though her half-hearted hustling doesn’t stop the family from capsizing into bankruptcy. (The husband quit a job in finance to become an artisanal carpenter, a phrase that would fit nicely on a Green-Wood Cemetery tombstone.) The virtue of this life is its being defiantly chosen. To counteract the claustrophobic privacy of subway commutes, and the slights of rubbing up against the city’s rich and oblivious, we get sticky memories of Florida, where the narrator grew up in a repressive, bourgeois household. There, her closest friend was Sasha, a beautiful, daring girl a year older, whose fate has been uncomfortably linked with hers ever since. Strong uses the friendship as a tether, returning to it to mark time’s passing; her technique is so sophisticated that the murk of the present and the sharply remembered past hold seamlessly together. Her biggest triumph is the transmission of consciousness. I loved the tense pleasure of staying pressed close to her narrator’s mind, with its beguiling lucidity of thought and rawness of feeling. There is much anxiety and ache to be found here—but also, when it is most needed, radiance, humor, love, and joy. —Alexandra Schwartz
“On Anger,” edited by Agnes Callard


newyorker--2020-12-01--Samantha Hunt Reads Yiyun Li

Samantha Hunt Reads Yiyun Li

Samantha Hunt joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “ A Sheltered Woman , ” by Yiyun Li , which @ @ @ @ @ of the magazine .
Hunt ’ s four books of fiction include the story collection @ @ @ @ @ ” which was published in 2017 , and “ The Seas , ” for which @ @ @ @ @ Foundation ’ s “ 5 Under 35 ” prize , in 2006 .

Audio available Listen to this story
Download a transcript.
Photograph by Joe Hagan
Samantha Hunt joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “A Sheltered Woman,” by Yiyun Li, which appeared in a 2014 issue of the magazine. Hunt’s four books of fiction include the story collection “The Dark Dark,” which was published in 2017, and “The Seas,” for which she won the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” prize, in 2006.


newyorker--2020-12-01--How to Draw a Wedding

How to Draw a Wedding

If people ever overheard one of the many heated conversations between Carolita Johnson and me on the subject of marriage and the wedding-industrial complex , they ’ d probably peg us as heartless Scrooges .
But I can assure you that ’ s not the case—few have a bigger heart than Carolita , matched only by her enormous sense of humor , a combo that makes her the perfect person to lampoon all that is hilarious about expensive , public displays of deciding to jointly file taxes .
And if you , too , have ever stifled a laugh at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or have found yourself vacuuming in your wedding gown just to amortize your initial taffeta investment , then I suggest you check out this video on how to take that fodder and make some cartoons from it .
—Emma Allen , New Yorker humor and cartoon editor Do you draw with your left or right hand ?
What art do you have hanging on your studio walls/above your drawing desk ?
On the wall facing my drafting table , I have a large painting by Michael Crawford , my late husband and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ away in 2016 , of a rock we used to meet at in Fort Tryon park every morning ; a framed print of my “ Do you have a minute for a problem whose solution has eluded humanity since the dawn of civilization ?
” cartoon to remind me when I ’ m feeling confounded that there ’ s work to be done in the world ; a Tom Toro original of “ I ’ m poison oak .
I ’ m pretty sure I ’ m poison oak .
Or is that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ swapped a drawing for ; and my “ Lunch Hour Birds of Central Park ” original .
Do you snack while you draw .
If so , on what ?
I can ’ t snack and draw at the same time—I ’ m too much of a klutz to have food near my drawings .
Do you listen to music or podcasts while you draw ?
If so , which ?
I keep either NPR droning or old movies playing in the background , because music just gets me singing and/or dancing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I find that old movies gently stimulate me linguistically with the funny , period slang , especially the film noir of the forties and fifties .
What object or setting do you absolutely hate drawing ?
Ugh , I ’ m terrible at perspective , so I curse myself when I get a cartoon idea in which I need to depict streets with cars and buildings !
What ’ s your favorite New Yorker cartoon trope or cliché ( e.g.
, desert island , Grim Reaper , Rapunzel tower , etc. )
?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ desert-island cartoons , prophet cartoons , and I love the guy crawling in the desert gasping for [ insert great idea here ] , because they ’ re all basically the same in that they depict despair , and I need to find what is laughable in my own despair .
If you could have dinner with one cartoonist , living or dead , tonight , who would it be ?
It would be Crawford , who I greatly miss trading humorous banter with .
To paraphrase “ Me and Bobby McGee , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of my tomorrows for one more yesterday—maybe two !
We had a lot of laughs together .
What would you serve ?
For Crawford ?
He loved my spaghetti bolognese , with a frisée salad topped with toasted goat cheese on baguette rounds , which I jokingly called “ boyfriend food , ” because I started making it for him as a joke after reading a Cosmo blurb about how you could snag a man by making him a pasta dinner .
What was your favorite cartoon ( strip or animation ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ funny , but during my younger years I accepted Charlie Brown as the only comic strip that existed , because my dad bought me all the paperback anthologies , and I absorbed and imitated them immediately—but really just going through the motions , wondering “ Why am I doing this ?
” Later , I became very impressed by the mysterious shmoos and the more virtuosic line drawings in “ Li ’ l Abner , ” and I think they ’ re what made me realize there was more to comics than cute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you spend your first New Yorker cartoon sale check on ?
If you had to get a tattoo ( or new tattoo ) right now , what would you get ?
I sometimes have to restrain myself from getting a two-hearts-stuck-together-with-one-arrow , and on one heart it says “ NEVER ” and the other says “ AGAIN , ” because I know , if I do , I will be cursing myself to getting married again in the “ famous last words tattooed on your body forever ” cliché .
I have a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instead .

If people ever overheard one of the many heated conversations between Carolita Johnson and me on the subject of marriage and the wedding-industrial complex, they’d probably peg us as heartless Scrooges. But I can assure you that’s not the case—few have a bigger heart than Carolita, matched only by her enormous sense of humor, a combo that makes her the perfect person to lampoon all that is hilarious about expensive, public displays of deciding to jointly file taxes. And if you, too, have ever stifled a laugh at a drunk uncle’s twenty-minute toast, or have found yourself vacuuming in your wedding gown just to amortize your initial taffeta investment, then I suggest you check out this video on how to take that fodder and make some cartoons from it.
—Emma Allen, New Yorker cartoon editor
Do you draw with your left or right hand?
Right. (I know—boring!)
What art do you have hanging on your studio walls/above your drawing desk?
On the wall facing my drafting table, I have a large painting by Michael Crawford, my late husband and fellow New Yorker cartoonist, who passed away in 2016, of a rock we used to meet at in Fort Tryon park every morning; a framed print of my “Do you have a minute for a problem whose solution has eluded humanity since the dawn of civilization?” cartoon to remind me when I’m feeling confounded that there’s work to be done in the world; a Tom Toro original of “I’m poison oak. I’m pretty sure I’m poison oak. Or is that poison oak?,” which I swapped a drawing for; and my “Lunch Hour Birds of Central Park” original.
Do you snack while you draw. If so, on what?
I can’t snack and draw at the same time—I’m too much of a klutz to have food near my drawings.
Do you listen to music or podcasts while you draw? If so, which?
I keep either NPR droning or old movies playing in the background, because music just gets me singing and/or dancing, which is not conducive to drawing. I find that old movies gently stimulate me linguistically with the funny, period slang, especially the film noir of the forties and fifties.
What object or setting do you absolutely hate drawing?
Ugh, I’m terrible at perspective, so I curse myself when I get a cartoon idea in which I need to depict streets with cars and buildings!
What’s your favorite New Yorker cartoon trope or cliché (e.g., desert island, Grim Reaper, Rapunzel tower, etc.)?
In order of preference, I love desert-island cartoons, prophet cartoons, and I love the guy crawling in the desert gasping for [insert great idea here], because they’re all basically the same in that they depict despair, and I need to find what is laughable in my own despair.
If you could have dinner with one cartoonist, living or dead, tonight, who would it be?
It would be Crawford, who I greatly miss trading humorous banter with. To paraphrase “Me and Bobby McGee,” I’d give at least one of my tomorrows for one more yesterday—maybe two! We had a lot of laughs together.
What would you serve?
For Crawford? He loved my spaghetti bolognese, with a frisée salad topped with toasted goat cheese on baguette rounds, which I jokingly called “boyfriend food,” because I started making it for him as a joke after reading a Cosmo blurb about how you could snag a man by making him a pasta dinner.
What was your favorite cartoon (strip or animation) as a kid?
It’s funny, but during my younger years I accepted Charlie Brown as the only comic strip that existed, because my dad bought me all the paperback anthologies, and I absorbed and imitated them immediately—but really just going through the motions, wondering “Why am I doing this?” Later, I became very impressed by the mysterious shmoos and the more virtuosic line drawings in “Li’l Abner,” and I think they’re what made me realize there was more to comics than cute dogs and mainstream humor.
What did you spend your first New Yorker cartoon sale check on?
The rent, baby!
If you had to get a tattoo (or new tattoo) right now, what would you get?
I sometimes have to restrain myself from getting a two-hearts-stuck-together-with-one-arrow, and on one heart it says “NEVER” and the other says “AGAIN,” because I know, if I do, I will be cursing myself to getting married again in the “famous last words tattooed on your body forever” cliché. I have a drawing of it stuck to my fridge instead.
Dogs or cats?
DOGS!


Some Fantasy Bras

This excerpt is drawn from “ Cheeky : A Head-to-Toe Memoir , ” by Ariella Elovic , out this December @ @ @ @

This excerpt is drawn from “Cheeky: A Head-to-Toe Memoir,” by Ariella Elovic, out from Bloomsbury Publishing.