newyorker--2020-05-25--How Baseball Players Became Celebrities

How Baseball Players Became Celebrities

Professional sports right now is a COVID-19 ghost town .
The games have vanished .
There are few events to cover and almost nothing to broadcast .
Yet , eerily , the industry lives on .
Reporters file stories and analysts hold forth even though the stadiums are empty .
Athletes are paid even though they are sitting around the house .
A chunk of your cable bill is going to Major League Baseball even though there are no major-league baseball games to watch .
M.L.B .
is selling Mookie Betts Dodgers jerseys and the N.F.L .
is selling Tom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knows when they will ever play for those teams .
In Las Vegas , you can get 3–1 odds on the Yankees to win the World Series .
It ’ s a reminder that the industry is much bigger than the games and , in a sense , only minimally needs them .
Sports sells newspapers , television shows , Web sites , as-told-to books , and exercise regimens .
Professional athletes make endorsements , get paid for appearances , take parts in movies , license their names to video games , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stars at the very top of their sports make more money from these things than they do from competing .
And , of course , there ’ s the gambling .
The idea of games in empty arenas is not as far-fetched as it sounds .
As long as you have stars and scores , you have an industry .
Hot-dog venders and parking-lot attendants will be out of work , but most of the business can go on .
The rise of sports as big business and the handling of athletes as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the year Mark McCormack founded the International Management Group , with Arnold Palmer as his first client .
McCormack saw that in sports , as in Hollywood , it ’ s the stars that sell the product , and he turned athletic success and good publicity into dollars .
Thanks to television , the number of available dollars for the clients of sports agents mushroomed .
But the possibilities had been glimpsed and the opportunities realized almost forty years earlier , by a man named Christy Walsh .
Walsh was born in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to college in Los Angeles .
He bounced around a little—worked as a sports cartoonist and a ghostwriter—but it was his background in advertising and publicity for automobile companies that prepared him to become the first sports agent in the modern mold .
He wasn ’ t just a promoter or a handler but someone who took charge of an athlete ’ s complete on-field and off-field package , who controlled the publicity as well as the contracts .
He signed his first client in 1921 .
And that client turned out to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day , or possibly , with the exception of Muhammad Ali , of any day : Babe Ruth .
Ruth didn ’ t just do what every ballplayer did but better .
On the field and off , he was in a class by himself .
Walsh began working for Ruth just as advertising was joining forces with the new “ science ” of public relations , a union that produced the entertainment-media-merchandising combine that supplies much of the content for contemporary American culture .
Walsh understood how that synergy worked , how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media feeds the sales .
Stories in the papers about Babe Ruth visiting an orphanage , say , are good for the Babe Ruth brand .
They raise the value of Ruth ’ s next endorsement deal .
But stories about Babe Ruth also sell newspapers , which then can sell more advertising space .
It ’ s in everyone ’ s interest ( including the orphanages ’ ) to make Ruth a magnet for public eyeballs .
All Ruth has to do is to keep hitting home runs and winning championships .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This multiplier effect is why the stars ’ incomes keep rising exponentially—why Tiger Woods , who has made about a hundred and twenty million dollars in prize money , is said to be worth close to a billion .
Everyone in the combine wants Tiger to continue to make money so they can continue to make money off Tiger .
As several writers , including Jane Leavy , in “ The Big Fella : Babe Ruth and the World He Created ” ( 2018 ) , and Thomas Barthel , in “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Celebrity Athlete ” ( 2018 ) , have explained , Ruth seems to have been the first athlete to leverage his success in this way , to make more money off the field than on it .
By 1926 , his twelfth year in the major leagues , Ruth ’ s salary was fifty-two thousand dollars , far more than any other ballplayer ’ s , but he made at least twice that much in outside income .
Shortly after ending the World Series that year by being tagged out trying to steal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ twelve-week vaudeville tour for which he was paid a hundred thousand dollars .
It ’ s no coincidence that the decade in which this entertainment-media-merchandising combine developed is known as the Golden Age of American sports .
When writers use that term , they are not talking only about the games .
They are talking about the stars , people like Ruth , Red Grange , Bobby Jones , Johnny Weissmuller , Jack Dempsey , Bill Tilden , Helen Wills , Gertrude Ederle .
They dominated their sports .
They set records .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Walsh did not invent celebrity product endorsements and appearance fees .
Before Ruth met Walsh , he had already endorsed a brand of baseball bat and of cigars , and a children ’ s book , “ The ‘ Home-Run King ’ ; or , How Pep Pindar Won His Title , ” had been published under his name .
Walsh simply widened the stream .
He arranged for Ruth to act in vaudeville and movies .
He put Ruth and some of his teammates on barnstorming tours , playing exhibition games around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ruth was paid to play from fifty to a hundred off-season games . )
Ruth ’ s endorsement appeared on more than a hundred products , including Quaker Oats and All-America underwear .
( The Baby Ruth candy bar was marketed without Ruth ’ s consent .
Ruth sued , but the courts backed the candy-maker . )
His face was on the cover of magazines from Time and Vanity Fair to Hardware Age and Popular Science .
In 1934 , when the Associated Press ranked the most photographed people in the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ahead of F.D.R.
, the Prince of Wales , and Adolf Hitler .
Walsh ’ s first deal for Ruth was a newspaper column , though the star never wrote—or likely even read—a word of it .
Ruth ’ s ghostwriters were usually reporters who travelled with the team , hung out with Ruth , and picked up enough odds and ends—Ruth telling the story of his most recent home run , for instance—to turn out a weekly column .
And the money was good .
In the first year , after Walsh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Ruth made fifteen thousand dollars .
Walsh went on to create a stable of more than thirty ghostwriters who produced columns under the bylines of athletes such as Ty Cobb , Dizzy Dean , Walter Johnson , and Rogers Hornsby .
Among them was a twenty-four-year-old first baseman named Lou Gehrig .
Gehrig ’ s name will forever be linked with Ruth ’ s .
They were the best hitters on the best team in baseball , the New York Yankees .
Between 1920 , the year Ruth started playing for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the owner of the Boston Red Sox , and 1938 , Gehrig ’ s last full season , the Yankees won ten American League pennants and seven World Series .
( Ruth also won two championships as a pitcher for the Red Sox , setting a Series record of twenty-nine and two-thirds consecutive scoreless innings , which would not be broken until 1961 . )

Professional sports right now is a COVID-19 ghost town. The games have vanished. There are few events to cover and almost nothing to broadcast. Yet, eerily, the industry lives on. Reporters file stories and analysts hold forth even though the stadiums are empty. Athletes are paid even though they are sitting around the house. A chunk of your cable bill is going to Major League Baseball even though there are no major-league baseball games to watch. M.L.B. is selling Mookie Betts Dodgers jerseys and the N.F.L. is selling Tom Brady Buccaneers jerseys even though no one knows when they will ever play for those teams. In Las Vegas, you can get 3–1 odds on the Yankees to win the World Series.
It’s a reminder that the industry is much bigger than the games and, in a sense, only minimally needs them. Sports sells newspapers, television shows, Web sites, as-told-to books, and exercise regimens. Professional athletes make endorsements, get paid for appearances, take parts in movies, license their names to video games, and have their own product lines. The stars at the very top of their sports make more money from these things than they do from competing. And, of course, there’s the gambling. The idea of games in empty arenas is not as far-fetched as it sounds. As long as you have stars and scores, you have an industry. Hot-dog venders and parking-lot attendants will be out of work, but most of the business can go on.
The rise of sports as big business and the handling of athletes as human capital are often dated to 1960, the year Mark McCormack founded the International Management Group, with Arnold Palmer as his first client. McCormack saw that in sports, as in Hollywood, it’s the stars that sell the product, and he turned athletic success and good publicity into dollars. Thanks to television, the number of available dollars for the clients of sports agents mushroomed.
But the possibilities had been glimpsed and the opportunities realized almost forty years earlier, by a man named Christy Walsh. Walsh was born in St. Louis in 1891, and went to college in Los Angeles. He bounced around a little—worked as a sports cartoonist and a ghostwriter—but it was his background in advertising and publicity for automobile companies that prepared him to become the first sports agent in the modern mold. He wasn’t just a promoter or a handler but someone who took charge of an athlete’s complete on-field and off-field package, who controlled the publicity as well as the contracts. He signed his first client in 1921. And that client turned out to be the greatest sports figure of his day, or possibly, with the exception of Muhammad Ali, of any day: Babe Ruth. Ruth didn’t just do what every ballplayer did but better. On the field and off, he was in a class by himself.
Walsh began working for Ruth just as advertising was joining forces with the new “science” of public relations, a union that produced the entertainment-media-merchandising combine that supplies much of the content for contemporary American culture. Walsh understood how that synergy worked, how the entertainment feeds the media and the media feeds the sales. Stories in the papers about Babe Ruth visiting an orphanage, say, are good for the Babe Ruth brand. They raise the value of Ruth’s next endorsement deal. But stories about Babe Ruth also sell newspapers, which then can sell more advertising space. It’s in everyone’s interest (including the orphanages’) to make Ruth a magnet for public eyeballs. All Ruth has to do is to keep hitting home runs and winning championships. The agent takes care of the rest.
This multiplier effect is why the stars’ incomes keep rising exponentially—why Tiger Woods, who has made about a hundred and twenty million dollars in prize money, is said to be worth close to a billion. Everyone in the combine wants Tiger to continue to make money so they can continue to make money off Tiger.
As several writers, including Jane Leavy, in “The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created” (2018), and Thomas Barthel, in “Babe Ruth and the Creation of the Celebrity Athlete” (2018), have explained, Ruth seems to have been the first athlete to leverage his success in this way, to make more money off the field than on it. By 1926, his twelfth year in the major leagues, Ruth’s salary was fifty-two thousand dollars, far more than any other ballplayer’s, but he made at least twice that much in outside income. Shortly after ending the World Series that year by being tagged out trying to steal second base, he went on a twelve-week vaudeville tour for which he was paid a hundred thousand dollars.
It’s no coincidence that the decade in which this entertainment-media-merchandising combine developed is known as the Golden Age of American sports. When writers use that term, they are not talking only about the games. They are talking about the stars, people like Ruth, Red Grange, Bobby Jones, Johnny Weissmuller, Jack Dempsey, Bill Tilden, Helen Wills, Gertrude Ederle. They dominated their sports. They set records. And the combine loves records.
Christy Walsh did not invent celebrity product endorsements and appearance fees. Before Ruth met Walsh, he had already endorsed a brand of baseball bat and of cigars, and a children’s book, “The ‘Home-Run King’; or, How Pep Pindar Won His Title,” had been published under his name. Walsh simply widened the stream. He arranged for Ruth to act in vaudeville and movies. He put Ruth and some of his teammates on barnstorming tours, playing exhibition games around the country. (Each year, Ruth was paid to play from fifty to a hundred off-season games.) Ruth’s endorsement appeared on more than a hundred products, including Quaker Oats and All-America underwear. (The Baby Ruth candy bar was marketed without Ruth’s consent. Ruth sued, but the courts backed the candy-maker.) His face was on the cover of magazines from Time and Vanity Fair to Hardware Age and Popular Science. In 1934, when the Associated Press ranked the most photographed people in the world, Ruth was No. 1, ahead of F.D.R., the Prince of Wales, and Adolf Hitler.
Walsh’s first deal for Ruth was a newspaper column, though the star never wrote—or likely even read—a word of it. Ruth’s ghostwriters were usually reporters who travelled with the team, hung out with Ruth, and picked up enough odds and ends—Ruth telling the story of his most recent home run, for instance—to turn out a weekly column. And the money was good. In the first year, after Walsh and the writers had taken their cuts, Ruth made fifteen thousand dollars. Walsh went on to create a stable of more than thirty ghostwriters who produced columns under the bylines of athletes such as Ty Cobb, Dizzy Dean, Walter Johnson, and Rogers Hornsby. Among them was a twenty-four-year-old first baseman named Lou Gehrig.
Gehrig’s name will forever be linked with Ruth’s. They were the best hitters on the best team in baseball, the New York Yankees. Between 1920, the year Ruth started playing for the Yankees after being sold to the team by the owner of the Boston Red Sox, and 1938, Gehrig’s last full season, the Yankees won ten American League pennants and seven World Series. (Ruth also won two championships as a pitcher for the Red Sox, setting a Series record of twenty-nine and two-thirds consecutive scoreless innings, which would not be broken until 1961.)
The 1927 Yankees have been called the greatest team in baseball history. With Ruth hitting third and Gehrig cleanup, the Yankees won a hundred and ten games, and lost only forty-four. Ruth batted .356 and hit sixty home runs, a single-season record that lasted for thirty-four years and has been surpassed by only four men, three of whom are widely believed to have been jacked up on steroids. Gehrig hit .373, with forty-seven homers and a hundred and seventy-three runs batted in—a record for R.B.I.s at the time and not an easy thing to do when the man ahead of you hits sixty home runs. In the World Series, the Yankees beat the Pirates in four straight.


newyorker--2020-05-25--The New Theatrics of Remote Therapy

The New Theatrics of Remote Therapy

These days , the advice frequently directed at New Yorkers with deep-seated psychological difficulties is to stop having them .
At a moment when every anxiety seems suddenly palpable , and every intimation of doom justified— “ Congratulations on the prescience of your neurosis ” is the suggested language of one therapist for patients who are obsessive hand-washers—it may seem indulgent to keep pursuing intractable dreams and dreads as though they were central to existence .
Nonetheless , in the city ’ s great tradition , New Yorkers continue to seek out their therapists , millennial youngsters as much as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ launched a mental-health hotline , recruiting psychotherapists to provide pro-bono phone sessions for every sort of citizen .
Therapy has become democratized : everybody needs an ear .
Despite vacant offices from the Upper West Side to Greenpoint , in the old haunts of classic Freudian analysis and in the newer clinics where a cognitive-behavioral approach reigns , the rituals of therapy go on .
Several truths emanate from what might be called the empty-couch community .
First , the new reality has altered the theatrics of therapy in ways that make both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much of psychotherapy is theatre to begin with .
Second , after the day ’ s anxieties are digested , what remains are the same anxieties as before , newly energized by the crisis .
And , finally , there are , in New York , concentric circles of psychic suffering : those at the greatest remove from the crisis are beset by anxiety that is free-floating yet intense ; those closer to the epicenter endure immediate economic concerns that , at least for now , may occlude emotional ones ; and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where the doctors and nurses and hospital attendants work , a cry-another-day morale emerges , deferring trauma until it becomes impossible to repress .
Various kinds of New York heads demand , as they always have , various kinds of shrinking .
“ It ’ s utterly different and exactly the same , ” says Barbra Zuck Locker , a psychologist and psychoanalyst who has been practicing on the Upper West Side for the past three decades .
“ We ’ ve been seeing a move toward remote sessions for years .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it already .
I remember , though it seems so long ago , people talking just a few months ago among themselves : ‘ Are you still going in ?
’ It was also generational—the younger people are much savvier .
People called you up on the way to the gym and said , ‘ Can we do the session during my workout ?
’ ” Locker has a soft , “ r ” -less New York accent and , in her combination of sweetness , solicitude , and sharpness , evokes Elaine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the old Nichols and May sketch “ Merry Christmas , Doctor.
” Like other therapists , the first thing that she mentions is not how differently she now sees her patients but how newly conscious she is of them seeing her .
“ Usually , I ’ m aware that my patients are largely looking down at my shoes , ” she explains .
“ And I ’ ve always made it a point not to have on what I call Maureen Stapleton shoes ” —the heavy , practical kind .
“ But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the analyst , and you have to take care of your upper half .
It ’ s sort of the Rachel Maddow syndrome.
” ( Just as viewers have speculated about what the television host is wearing from the waist down , clients wonder if their therapists are still half clad in pajamas . )
“ I ’ ve gotten dressed and undressed more than I ever have , ” another psychotherapist , Cynthia Chalker , says .
“ With my colors—I ’ m dark-skinned with short hair , have to be specific—I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on me .
‘ Does that green look O.K .
?
’ I check constantly with my wife.
” “ I spent a day doing my work and I wasn ’ t wearing shoes , ” the analyst Mark Gerald admits .
But , he realized , “ if you ’ re a psychoanalyst you know that whatever you are wearing or not wearing is somehow playing a part .
We ’ re the people who believe in the power of the invisible parts of the iceberg .
Anyway , some of my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while they ’ re on the phone .
It was part of their commitment .
So I put back on my shoes .
Shoes were a way of honoring the work.
” The theatrical side of therapy has always been essential to its efficacy .
“ As therapists , we try to hold a frame—same time , same meeting place , same ritual—and holding the frame is hard in teletherapy , ” Ricardo Rieppi , who works with Spanish-speaking clients , says .
“ There ’ s an embodiment that happens when you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ therapists , we use our own counter-transference , our watchful , hovering empathy , to do our work .
That ’ s difficult online .
All the minutiae , my going out , meeting them at the door , their taking a chair or the couch—you don ’ t have that anymore .
And I ’ m seeing the patients in their own home .
One patient greeted me in an undershirt.
” We feel better because of the therapeutic scene we ’ ve just enacted , and as the scene changes so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is also a photographer , is an expert on the significance of the empty offices .
Last year , he published a book of photographs documenting analysts ’ offices across the world .
Hovering around his photographs is the possibility that the psychoanalytic imperium , already faltering in New York under the twin pressures of skeptical insurance companies and changing intellectual fashion , may , in the face of the pandemic , be coming to an end—with all those offices soon to be abandoned , like forgotten Egyptian tombs .
“ I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ empty couch , ” Gerald says .
“ The psychoanalytic office is always a place of loss and impermanence .
There are so many common factors , in terms of design .
It ’ s a rare office that does not have a couch .
A rare office that doesn ’ t have books in it .
Rare not to have some kind of framed , non-suggestive art.
” He points out that most analysts ’ offices are tributes to Freud ’ s last office in Vienna , which was encyclopedically documented by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into exile .
“ A friend of his , August Eichhorn , enlisted a young Jewish photographer who owned a little studio , Edmund Engelman , to come to Berggasse 19 and photograph the birthplace of psychoanalysis .
It was a risky thing to do—there was a big swastika over the building Freud lived in—and Engelman came in with a camera under his trenchcoat , as Freud and his family were getting ready to leave .
Freud saw him , asked what he was doing , and when he explained Freud said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ passport pictures of myself , my wife , and my daughter.
’ ” Those photographs of Freud ’ s office , unseen until the nineteen-fifties , the high-water mark of Freudian hegemony in New York therapy , became a template for every office after .
“ There ’ s something very lonely and very sad about not being in one ’ s office , ” Gerald says .
“ When the coronavirus came , I think people were struggling to find precedents in life : When else was the world like it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ times and places , going back to other plagues .
But for an analyst one of the things that this brings up , strangely , is August breaks and vacations .
Now it ’ s like we ’ re in this long , accidental August , one that no one planned , and with no Labor Day return quite in sight .
”

These days, the advice frequently directed at New Yorkers with deep-seated psychological difficulties is to stop having them. At a moment when every anxiety seems suddenly palpable, and every intimation of doom justified—“Congratulations on the prescience of your neurosis” is the suggested language of one therapist for patients who are obsessive hand-washers—it may seem indulgent to keep pursuing intractable dreams and dreads as though they were central to existence. Nonetheless, in the city’s great tradition, New Yorkers continue to seek out their therapists, millennial youngsters as much as neurotic elders. Governor Andrew Cuomo has launched a mental-health hotline, recruiting psychotherapists to provide pro-bono phone sessions for every sort of citizen. Therapy has become democratized: everybody needs an ear.
Despite vacant offices from the Upper West Side to Greenpoint, in the old haunts of classic Freudian analysis and in the newer clinics where a cognitive-behavioral approach reigns, the rituals of therapy go on. Several truths emanate from what might be called the empty-couch community. First, the new reality has altered the theatrics of therapy in ways that make both sides of the encounter aware of how much of psychotherapy is theatre to begin with. Second, after the day’s anxieties are digested, what remains are the same anxieties as before, newly energized by the crisis. And, finally, there are, in New York, concentric circles of psychic suffering: those at the greatest remove from the crisis are beset by anxiety that is free-floating yet intense; those closer to the epicenter endure immediate economic concerns that, at least for now, may occlude emotional ones; and then, on the actual front lines, where the doctors and nurses and hospital attendants work, a cry-another-day morale emerges, deferring trauma until it becomes impossible to repress. Various kinds of New York heads demand, as they always have, various kinds of shrinking.
“It’s utterly different and exactly the same,” says Barbra Zuck Locker, a psychologist and psychoanalyst who has been practicing on the Upper West Side for the past three decades. “We’ve been seeing a move toward remote sessions for years. We have a sense of having adapted to it already. I remember, though it seems so long ago, people talking just a few months ago among themselves: ‘Are you still going in?’ It was also generational—the younger people are much savvier. People called you up on the way to the gym and said, ‘Can we do the session during my workout?’ ” Locker has a soft, “r”-less New York accent and, in her combination of sweetness, solicitude, and sharpness, evokes Elaine May’s legendarily maternal psychoanalyst in the old Nichols and May sketch “Merry Christmas, Doctor.”
Like other therapists, the first thing that she mentions is not how differently she now sees her patients but how newly conscious she is of them seeing her. “Usually, I’m aware that my patients are largely looking down at my shoes, ” she explains. “And I’ve always made it a point not to have on what I call Maureen Stapleton shoes”—the heavy, practical kind. “But now they see only the top of the analyst, and you have to take care of your upper half. It’s sort of the Rachel Maddow syndrome.” (Just as viewers have speculated about what the television host is wearing from the waist down, clients wonder if their therapists are still half clad in pajamas.)
“I’ve gotten dressed and undressed more than I ever have,” another psychotherapist, Cynthia Chalker, says. “With my colors—I’m dark-skinned with short hair, have to be specific—I’m conscious of what shows up on me. ‘Does that green look O.K.?’ I check constantly with my wife.”
“I spent a day doing my work and I wasn’t wearing shoes,” the analyst Mark Gerald admits. But, he realized, “if you’re a psychoanalyst you know that whatever you are wearing or not wearing is somehow playing a part. We’re the people who believe in the power of the invisible parts of the iceberg. Anyway, some of my patients are actually staying on the couch while they’re on the phone. It was part of their commitment. So I put back on my shoes. Shoes were a way of honoring the work.”
The theatrical side of therapy has always been essential to its efficacy. “As therapists, we try to hold a frame—same time, same meeting place, same ritual—and holding the frame is hard in teletherapy,” Ricardo Rieppi, who works with Spanish-speaking clients, says. “There’s an embodiment that happens when you’re with a person. As therapists, we use our own counter-transference, our watchful, hovering empathy, to do our work. That’s difficult online. All the minutiae, my going out, meeting them at the door, their taking a chair or the couch—you don’t have that anymore. And I’m seeing the patients in their own home. One patient greeted me in an undershirt.”
We feel better because of the therapeutic scene we’ve just enacted, and as the scene changes so does the work. Gerald, who is also a photographer, is an expert on the significance of the empty offices. Last year, he published a book of photographs documenting analysts’ offices across the world. Hovering around his photographs is the possibility that the psychoanalytic imperium, already faltering in New York under the twin pressures of skeptical insurance companies and changing intellectual fashion, may, in the face of the pandemic, be coming to an end—with all those offices soon to be abandoned, like forgotten Egyptian tombs.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the empty couch, ” Gerald says. “The psychoanalytic office is always a place of loss and impermanence. There are so many common factors, in terms of design. It’s a rare office that does not have a couch. A rare office that doesn’t have books in it. Rare not to have some kind of framed, non-suggestive art.” He points out that most analysts’ offices are tributes to Freud’s last office in Vienna, which was encyclopedically documented by a photographer just as Freud was forced into exile.
“A friend of his, August Eichhorn, enlisted a young Jewish photographer who owned a little studio, Edmund Engelman, to come to Berggasse 19 and photograph the birthplace of psychoanalysis. It was a risky thing to do—there was a big swastika over the building Freud lived in—and Engelman came in with a camera under his trenchcoat, as Freud and his family were getting ready to leave. Freud saw him, asked what he was doing, and when he explained Freud said, ‘Make yourself useful, take the passport pictures of myself, my wife, and my daughter.’ ” Those photographs of Freud’s office, unseen until the nineteen-fifties, the high-water mark of Freudian hegemony in New York therapy, became a template for every office after.
“There’s something very lonely and very sad about not being in one’s office,” Gerald says. “When the coronavirus came, I think people were struggling to find precedents in life: When else was the world like it is now? 9/11 and various parallels came—other times and places, going back to other plagues. But for an analyst one of the things that this brings up, strangely, is August breaks and vacations. Now it’s like we’re in this long, accidental August, one that no one planned, and with no Labor Day return quite in sight.”
In remote therapy sessions, with the loss of familiarly structured therapeutic spaces, a kind of staring contest takes place. Patients may be startled to see a therapist in her home, but it’s nothing compared with the surprise therapists sometimes feel at seeing how their patients actually live. Gerald says, “With a person I like very much and know came from a modest background and has difficulty dealing with their own flamboyance of wealth, I found myself distracted. This is a beautiful home, I thought.”
Therapists find that the screen changes the texture of intimacy. “Most treatment, after all, involves the careful budgeting of eye contact,” Barbra Zuck Locker says. “Patients look away, they look down, and finally focus, at a moment of intensity—a climax.” Leonard Groopman, a psychiatrist affiliated with Weill Cornell, puts it bluntly: “You’re full frontal now for forty-five minutes. It adds hysteria to an already hysterical situation.”


newyorker--2020-05-25--David Means on Small Talk and Love Stories

Your story “ Two Nurses , Smoking ” traces the budding relationship between two nurses , a man and a woman .
When did you start thinking about Marlon and Gracie ?
Did the smoking part of the title ( and the story ) ever give you any pause ?
Just about every day I walk past the hospital near my house and see a few nurses smoking on the sidewalk , hiding out around the bushes , and Marlon and Gracie came from watching the way they huddle close to one other , enjoying the ritual .
I noticed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each other , and I might ’ ve seen one who inspired Marlon .
I did think about cutting the smoking scenes , and the word smoking in the title , but it seemed too integral a part of the story—the pleasure in the form of something that might kill , the closeness of bliss and loss in a hospital setting .
Anyway , I ’ ve had huge struggles with a nicotine addiction myself , so I was sympathetic .
Gracie and Marlon meet up whenever she visits his hospital with “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she liked to call it.
” It ’ s a lithotripsy machine , which uses sound waves to break up kidney stones .
Were you ever surprised to find you were writing a story in which kidney stones play a supporting role ?
I suffered from a kidney stone a few years ago .
I was in the emergency room and the nurse came back with the results of the CAT scan .
She pointed at it and said , “ Get ready , you ’ re going to feel the most intense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She was right about that—it was mind-blowing pain , but it arrived in waves and , when it was gone , I felt this incredible bliss .
Then a friend of mine got one and he went through a horrible treatment .
Marlon and Gracie are strangers at the outset , getting to know each other as they discuss the news of a serial-killer nurse , yet there ’ s also a bond between them— “ a secretive energy , a conspiracy ” —that has its roots in their difficult childhoods .
Was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and forth between small talk and deep understanding ?
Small talk really isn ’ t small talk , at least not in fiction .
Small talk is how characters reveal internal thinking patterns to one other—their processing of the world—as they get to know one other .
Marlon and Gracie both had trauma in childhood , and that has given them a shared understanding , an unspoken language , a certain mutual loneliness .
When I started writing the story , my working title was “ A Happy Story.
” I was thinking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ story “ A Boring Story.
” Marlon is a veteran , who served in Fallujah .
He ’ s scarred by his time in Iraq , both physically and mentally .
Did you know from the outset he ’ d be a vet ?
From the start I knew that Marlon was a vet , and that , naturally , he was going to twist his experiences in combat around his everyday life .
Years ago , I had a student in a night class at a community college who was a Vietnam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of becoming an emergency-room nurse .
It made complete sense .
He was going to bring everything he learned in battle into another kind of battle situation .
“ Two Nurses , Smoking ” is a love story , and it has a more uplifting conclusion than some of your stories .
What it ’ s like to write about happiness ?
I ’ ve written love stories—but usually love that had to go through some trial , a betrayal of some kind .
From the start I felt this tenderness toward both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are of course entwined ; life is a helix of the two , and you can ’ t have one without the other—which is a cliché , of course , but also true .
The story is made up of short sections .
Each has a title , which also forms the first word or phrase of the opening sentence .
Why did you choose this structure for the story ?
I didn ’ t set out to break it up , but I began to understand , later , when I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ story about poking around in memory , and the way we look back at relationships through time , and I liked the destabilization that happened when I fragmented the opening line .
All I can really say is that it was the only way it worked .
As soon as I began to do this , the story began to unfold on the page .
The coronavirus crisis has made us all vitally aware of the dedication of medical workers and the danger they face .
This story isn ’ t set during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ changed the way you view the story and Gracie and Marlon ?
The crisis has made us see the way caregiving and carefulness are closely related—the complexities of nursing , wearing P.P.E.
, taking care to protect .
But nurses are constantly dealing with that , even when we ’ re not in a crisis .
If they make a mistake , it can be deadly .
Gracie and Marlon both have a dark survival humor about their work because they ’ re aware that lives are in their hands and they see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t see , or don ’ t want to see .

Photograph by Roberto Ricciuti / Getty
Your story “Two Nurses, Smoking” traces the budding relationship between two nurses, a man and a woman. When did you start thinking about Marlon and Gracie? Did the smoking part of the title (and the story) ever give you any pause?
Just about every day I walk past the hospital near my house and see a few nurses smoking on the sidewalk, hiding out around the bushes, and Marlon and Gracie came from watching the way they huddle close to one other, enjoying the ritual. I noticed that smokers seemed to stand closer to each other, and I might’ve seen one who inspired Marlon. I did think about cutting the smoking scenes, and the word smoking in the title, but it seemed too integral a part of the story—the pleasure in the form of something that might kill, the closeness of bliss and loss in a hospital setting. Anyway, I’ve had huge struggles with a nicotine addiction myself, so I was sympathetic.
Gracie and Marlon meet up whenever she visits his hospital with “ ‘the kidney pounder,’ as she liked to call it.” It’s a lithotripsy machine, which uses sound waves to break up kidney stones. Were you ever surprised to find you were writing a story in which kidney stones play a supporting role?
I suffered from a kidney stone a few years ago. I was in the emergency room and the nurse came back with the results of the CAT scan. She pointed at it and said, “Get ready, you’re going to feel the most intense pain you’ve ever felt.” She was right about that—it was mind-blowing pain, but it arrived in waves and, when it was gone, I felt this incredible bliss. Then a friend of mine got one and he went through a horrible treatment.
Marlon and Gracie are strangers at the outset, getting to know each other as they discuss the news of a serial-killer nurse, yet there’s also a bond between them—“a secretive energy, a conspiracy”—that has its roots in their difficult childhoods. Was it challenging to capture that movement back and forth between small talk and deep understanding?
Small talk really isn’t small talk, at least not in fiction. Small talk is how characters reveal internal thinking patterns to one other—their processing of the world—as they get to know one other. Marlon and Gracie both had trauma in childhood, and that has given them a shared understanding, an unspoken language, a certain mutual loneliness. When I started writing the story, my working title was “A Happy Story.” I was thinking a little bit about Chekhov’s story “A Boring Story.”
Marlon is a veteran, who served in Fallujah. He’s scarred by his time in Iraq, both physically and mentally. Did you know from the outset he’d be a vet?
From the start I knew that Marlon was a vet, and that, naturally, he was going to twist his experiences in combat around his everyday life. Years ago, I had a student in a night class at a community college who was a Vietnam vet and was studying with the dream of becoming an emergency-room nurse. It made complete sense. He was going to bring everything he learned in battle into another kind of battle situation.
“Two Nurses, Smoking” is a love story, and it has a more uplifting conclusion than some of your stories. What it’s like to write about happiness?
I’ve written love stories—but usually love that had to go through some trial, a betrayal of some kind. From the start I felt this tenderness toward both Marlon and Gracie. Happiness and unhappiness are of course entwined; life is a helix of the two, and you can’t have one without the other—which is a cliché, of course, but also true.
The story is made up of short sections. Each has a title, which also forms the first word or phrase of the opening sentence. Why did you choose this structure for the story?
I didn’t set out to break it up, but I began to understand, later, when I was revising, that this was partly a story about poking around in memory, and the way we look back at relationships through time, and I liked the destabilization that happened when I fragmented the opening line. All I can really say is that it was the only way it worked. As soon as I began to do this, the story began to unfold on the page.
The coronavirus crisis has made us all vitally aware of the dedication of medical workers and the danger they face. This story isn’t set during the pandemic, but has the crisis changed the way you view the story and Gracie and Marlon?
The crisis has made us see the way caregiving and carefulness are closely related—the complexities of nursing, wearing P.P.E., taking care to protect. But nurses are constantly dealing with that, even when we’re not in a crisis. If they make a mistake, it can be deadly. Gracie and Marlon both have a dark survival humor about their work because they’re aware that lives are in their hands and they see, daily, things that most people don’t see, or don’t want to see.


newyorker--2020-05-25--The Scholar Starting Brawls with the Enlightenment

Who could resist the title ?
László F. Földényi ’ s new book of essays is called “ Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts Into Tears ” ( Yale ) .
It sounds like something that might happen in a Dostoyevsky novel : cause and effect scrambled , reason abolished by extremity , the thunderclap of irrationality producing religious storms of weeping and abasement .
And behind it all something faintly farcical , deliberately exaggerated—another of Dostoyevsky ’ s self-consciously scandalous “ scenes.
” After all , who in world history has ever read Hegel and burst into tears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out that we don ’ t know if Dostoyevsky burst into tears , either ; Földényi is punting here .
But Dostoyevsky may well have read Hegel in Siberia .
His American biographer , Joseph Frank , tells us that in 1854 he wrote to his brother in St. Petersburg , imploring him to send Kant , Vico , Ranke , and the Church Fathers , and “ to slip Hegel in without fail , especially Hegel ’ s History of Philosophy .
My entire future is tied up with that.
” In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bogus charges of revolutionary conspiracy in St. Petersburg , and sentenced to four years of hard labor in a prison camp in the Siberian town of Omsk .
On his release , in the spring of 1854 , he was sent to Semipalatinsk , in southern Siberia , where he began several years of military service .
In effect , this was a further installment of exile : consignment to an “ Asiatic ” oubliette , a place unnoticed and forgotten , far from “ European ” Russia .
Földényi , in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sketches the town ’ s stark otherness—a gray , treeless outpost , surrounded by barren sandy plains , with a population of between five thousand and six thousand , “ half of whom were nomadic Kazakhs , for the most part living in yurts.
” An American journalist , visiting in 1885 , struck by the sight of camels and “ white-turbaned and white-bearded mullahs , ” likened the place to “ a Mohammedan town built in the middle of a North African desert.
” Hegel seems to have viewed Siberia similarly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actually see the place .
Philosophically , Siberia was flyover country , of no world-historical import .
In his “ Lectures on the Philosophy of History , ” published for the first time in 1837 , Hegel begins his discussion of Asia with a disclaimer : “ We must first of all eliminate Siberia , the northern slope of Asia .
For it lies outside the scope of our enquiry .
The whole character of Siberia rules it out as a setting for historical culture and prevents it from attaining a distinct form @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what fascinates Földényi .
What if , he hypothesizes , Dostoyevsky read Hegel ’ s lectures on the philosophy of world history while in Semipalatinsk ?
How would it have felt to hear the great German rationalist philosopher casting you out from the notice of history ( and thus from the narrative of European development as he tells it ) , even as your own country had similarly cast you out ?
How might that have compounded Dostoyevsky ’ s punishment and suffering ?
Földényi uses his essay to stage a broad metaphysical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this fierce , provoking collection ( expertly translated by Ottilie Mulzet ) .
He likes to set up the Enlightenment tradition as overweeningly rational and then to use a selected opponent ( Dostoyevsky , Heinrich von Kleist , Antonin Artaud , the Marquis de Sade , Mary Shelley ) as an antirational or otherwise “ Romantic ” hatchet .
Földényi makes Hegel his regal Enlightenment representative .
And Hegel had indeed argued that universal history , when viewed philosophically , is rational : “ Whoever looks at the world rationally will find that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; the two exist in a reciprocal relationship.
” Hegel concedes that , down at the level of particulars , history is a bloody mess , even what he calls a Schlachtbank , a slaughterhouse ; but he believes that , viewed from the right philosophical altitude , world history reveals itself as moving with purpose toward the realization and fulfillment of a Spirit—the universal idea of freedom .
“ Reason can not stop to consider the injuries sustained by single individuals , for particular ends are submerged in the universal end , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , history is not only rational but also providential : designed , purposive , teleological .
In Siberia , however , Dostoyevsky fell in love with something like the opposite : with the irrationality of miracle , with the impossible example of Jesus , and , in a sense , with suffering itself .
In “ Notes from Underground ” ( 1864 ) , Dostoyevsky certainly seems to be thinking of Hegel when his narrator , the Underground Man , concludes that anything can be said about the bloodbath and the mayhem of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ You ’ ll choke on the word.
” One of the great fictional ranters , the Underground Man mounts an all-out war against the dominant ideologies of nineteenth-century Europe : utilitarianism , scientism , liberal progressivism , communistic utopianism , and , above all , the prestige of rationality .
History is not rational , Dostoyevsky ’ s narrator says , because humans are not .
The human sciences are unable to account for our irrationality because they are unable to account for our desires .
We want too many strange things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” as Dostoyevsky wonderfully describes them ) , often in defiance of our apparent interests : we want to go to war , martyr ourselves for religious causes , take drugs , climb steep rock faces , have perilous affairs .
For Dostoyevsky , freedom is tortuous and fraught , in part because it also involves the freedom to abuse it .
Földényi , a scholar and critic who teaches the theory of art , in Budapest , is an intense , tendentious , often maddening presence .
Few books have as utterly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one has .
He is drawn to all that was violent and metaphysically reactionary in Dostoyevsky ; he admires the religious fist held up to the calm omnipotence of European reason and progress .
What is exciting about his title essay is the way he inhabits Dostoyevsky in his very unreason .
There is something beautiful in this ventriloquism .
Taking the fight to Hegel , Földényi speculates that perhaps history reveals itself not to rational people “ but to those whom it has cast out of itself.
” In a brilliant moment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing a kind of method acting—he jeers at Hegel ’ s proposal that whoever looks rationally at history will find that it looks rationally back at him .
Well , Földényi asks , when Dostoyevsky glanced into his small mirror in Siberia , what did he see looking back ?
Not a rational man .
Perhaps not even a man but an alienated other : “ Nobody looks back at us from a mirror .
We can try to bravely face ourselves : our gaze is engrossed in the eyeballs of a stranger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Not only does this stranger not look outward , he does not even look inward .
He is dead , numb—if we pay long attention—even haunting.
” The problem is that Földényi is not content to stage a merely imaginary struggle .
He edges toward all-out brawls , generally between highly armed simplicities .
On one side , there is Hegel , who is wielded by Földényi as the false god of everything most triumphantly repellent about Enlightenment rationality ; and on the other side there is Dostoyevsky , righteously suffering and properly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrogance .
Földényi sees Hegel , and by extension the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Enlightenment project , as a vast , disenchanting bulldozer , crushing God and mystery under the machinery of its rationality .
Hegel ’ s narrative of history , Földényi says , might look religious , but in fact God has been dethroned .
“ In the Hegelian interpretation of history , everything designated ‘ divine ’ is subordinated to something under the supervision of human beings , ” he writes .
Enlightenment rationalism proceeded “ in the name of God @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Confident that it could solve everything , it sought explanation for things that could never be explained , and failed to respect the mystery of what Földényi calls “ divine unboundedness ” and , elsewhere , “ the infinite and the transcendent .
”

Who could resist the title? László F. Földényi’s new book of essays is called “Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts Into Tears” (Yale). It sounds like something that might happen in a Dostoyevsky novel: cause and effect scrambled, reason abolished by extremity, the thunderclap of irrationality producing religious storms of weeping and abasement. And behind it all something faintly farcical, deliberately exaggerated—another of Dostoyevsky’s self-consciously scandalous “scenes.” After all, who in world history has ever read Hegel and burst into tears? Except of frustration?
It turns out that we don’t know if Dostoyevsky burst into tears, either; Földényi is punting here. But Dostoyevsky may well have read Hegel in Siberia. His American biographer, Joseph Frank, tells us that in 1854 he wrote to his brother in St. Petersburg, imploring him to send Kant, Vico, Ranke, and the Church Fathers, and “to slip Hegel in without fail, especially Hegel’s History of Philosophy. My entire future is tied up with that.” In 1849, Dostoyevsky had been arrested on bogus charges of revolutionary conspiracy in St. Petersburg, and sentenced to four years of hard labor in a prison camp in the Siberian town of Omsk. On his release, in the spring of 1854, he was sent to Semipalatinsk, in southern Siberia, where he began several years of military service. In effect, this was a further installment of exile: consignment to an “Asiatic” oubliette, a place unnoticed and forgotten, far from “European” Russia. Földényi, in the title essay of his collection, vividly sketches the town’s stark otherness—a gray, treeless outpost, surrounded by barren sandy plains, with a population of between five thousand and six thousand, “half of whom were nomadic Kazakhs, for the most part living in yurts.” An American journalist, visiting in 1885, struck by the sight of camels and “white-turbaned and white-bearded mullahs,” likened the place to “a Mohammedan town built in the middle of a North African desert.”
Hegel seems to have viewed Siberia similarly, except that he felt no need to actually see the place. Philosophically, Siberia was flyover country, of no world-historical import. In his “Lectures on the Philosophy of History,” published for the first time in 1837, Hegel begins his discussion of Asia with a disclaimer: “We must first of all eliminate Siberia, the northern slope of Asia. For it lies outside the scope of our enquiry. The whole character of Siberia rules it out as a setting for historical culture and prevents it from attaining a distinct form in the world-historical process.” This is what fascinates Földényi. What if, he hypothesizes, Dostoyevsky read Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of world history while in Semipalatinsk? How would it have felt to hear the great German rationalist philosopher casting you out from the notice of history (and thus from the narrative of European development as he tells it), even as your own country had similarly cast you out? How might that have compounded Dostoyevsky’s punishment and suffering?
Földényi uses his essay to stage a broad metaphysical melodrama between opposites that he pursues throughout this fierce, provoking collection (expertly translated by Ottilie Mulzet). He likes to set up the Enlightenment tradition as overweeningly rational and then to use a selected opponent (Dostoyevsky, Heinrich von Kleist, Antonin Artaud, the Marquis de Sade, Mary Shelley) as an antirational or otherwise “Romantic” hatchet. Földényi makes Hegel his regal Enlightenment representative. And Hegel had indeed argued that universal history, when viewed philosophically, is rational: “Whoever looks at the world rationally will find that it in turn assumes a rational aspect; the two exist in a reciprocal relationship.” Hegel concedes that, down at the level of particulars, history is a bloody mess, even what he calls a Schlachtbank, a slaughterhouse; but he believes that, viewed from the right philosophical altitude, world history reveals itself as moving with purpose toward the realization and fulfillment of a Spirit—the universal idea of freedom. “Reason cannot stop to consider the injuries sustained by single individuals, for particular ends are submerged in the universal end,” he wrote. In this sense, history is not only rational but also providential: designed, purposive, teleological.
Cartoon by Carolita Johnson Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
In Siberia, however, Dostoyevsky fell in love with something like the opposite: with the irrationality of miracle, with the impossible example of Jesus, and, in a sense, with suffering itself. In “Notes from Underground” (1864), Dostoyevsky certainly seems to be thinking of Hegel when his narrator, the Underground Man, concludes that anything can be said about the bloodbath and the mayhem of history except that it is rational: “You’ll choke on the word.” One of the great fictional ranters, the Underground Man mounts an all-out war against the dominant ideologies of nineteenth-century Europe: utilitarianism, scientism, liberal progressivism, communistic utopianism, and, above all, the prestige of rationality. History is not rational, Dostoyevsky’s narrator says, because humans are not. The human sciences are unable to account for our irrationality because they are unable to account for our desires. We want too many strange things (our “various little itches,” as Dostoyevsky wonderfully describes them), often in defiance of our apparent interests: we want to go to war, martyr ourselves for religious causes, take drugs, climb steep rock faces, have perilous affairs. For Dostoyevsky, freedom is tortuous and fraught, in part because it also involves the freedom to abuse it.
Földényi, a scholar and critic who teaches the theory of art, in Budapest, is an intense, tendentious, often maddening presence. Few books have as utterly engrossed and powerfully alienated me as this one has. He is drawn to all that was violent and metaphysically reactionary in Dostoyevsky; he admires the religious fist held up to the calm omnipotence of European reason and progress. What is exciting about his title essay is the way he inhabits Dostoyevsky in his very unreason. There is something beautiful in this ventriloquism. Taking the fight to Hegel, Földényi speculates that perhaps history reveals itself not to rational people “but to those whom it has cast out of itself.” In a brilliant moment of critical imagining—I think of Földényi as doing a kind of method acting—he jeers at Hegel’s proposal that whoever looks rationally at history will find that it looks rationally back at him. Well, Földényi asks, when Dostoyevsky glanced into his small mirror in Siberia, what did he see looking back? Not a rational man. Perhaps not even a man but an alienated other: “Nobody looks back at us from a mirror. We can try to bravely face ourselves: our gaze is engrossed in the eyeballs of a stranger, who stares fixedly into nothingness. Not only does this stranger not look outward, he does not even look inward. He is dead, numb—if we pay long attention—even haunting.”
The problem is that Földényi is not content to stage a merely imaginary struggle. He edges toward all-out brawls, generally between highly armed simplicities. On one side, there is Hegel, who is wielded by Földényi as the false god of everything most triumphantly repellent about Enlightenment rationality; and on the other side there is Dostoyevsky, righteously suffering and properly rebuking the European tradition for its secularizing arrogance. Földényi sees Hegel, and by extension the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Enlightenment project, as a vast, disenchanting bulldozer, crushing God and mystery under the machinery of its rationality. Hegel’s narrative of history, Földényi says, might look religious, but in fact God has been dethroned. “In the Hegelian interpretation of history, everything designated ‘divine’ is subordinated to something under the supervision of human beings,” he writes. Enlightenment rationalism proceeded “in the name of God, but lacking all divine spirit.” Confident that it could solve everything, it sought explanation for things that could never be explained, and failed to respect the mystery of what Földényi calls “divine unboundedness” and, elsewhere, “the infinite and the transcendent.”
As Földényi works away at this theme, his rhetoric becomes unguarded. Behind Hegel’s dismissal of Siberia, he tells us, “lies his secret wish to assassinate God.” European civilization has never been more convinced of its rectitude than it is now, and yet has never been more threatened, either. Heirs of Hegel, we are spoiled children, allowed to do whatever we want with our unchecked secular power. The true god of the modern age is technology; we are tremendously, imperially successful, but “we have murdered God with our ambition”:
And it is none other than our drive to find an answer for everything. When we began to seek solutions for things for which there are clearly no solutions, this ambition became transformed into hubris. In other words, it occurred when even transcendence itself turned into a practical question.
Földényi can sound much like Dostoyevsky at his most religiously reactionary, in the eighteen-seventies when he was writing his monthly columns, with titles such as “Slugs Taken for Human Beings” and “A Landowner Who Gets Faith in God from a Peasant.” Földényi’s title essay does more wild imploring than the rest of his book, which contains subtle, calmer pieces on Kleist, on Elias Canetti, on sleep and dreams, on happiness and melancholy. One clue to its extremity might be that he was writing about Dostoyevsky in 1997 (most of the other essays first appeared in the twenty-first century). Back then, as a Hungarian academic, he was still at the periphery of the confident European political project (Hungary didn’t join the E.U. until 2004), a mere voyeur of the Western world’s post-Communist self-congratulation, chafing at American-Hegelian predictions of “the end of history” yet hurtling toward an unknowable millennium. One can see how anxiety and skepticism might have led him to overidentify with a Russian sufferer cast out of history.
Still, the same strident argument keeps pushing its claw through even the milder pieces. It could be compacted into an aphorism by the Romanian-French philosopher E. M. Cioran: “We know a great deal about ourselves; on the other hand, we are nothing.” Földényi regularly quotes Cioran (though not this particular sentence), and perhaps sees himself joining what is now a busy tradition of European lament, negation, and anti-Enlightenment critique, most of it by conservatives (like Carl Schmitt and Cioran himself), though occasionally by radicals (Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault); some of it atheistic (Friedrich Nietzsche), much of it religiously grounded (T. S. Eliot, Charles Taylor).
Földényi’s version can be told like this: Enlightenment rationality not only displaced God and made a new god of reason—it redefined freedom as purely instrumental rather than metaphysical, as something humans can shape and control. But true freedom, Földényi believes, is “only achieved through that which surpasses (transcends) me”—what is beyond our powers, beyond our comprehension. If we renounce this otherworldly idea of freedom, we start building utopias on earth, which rapidly become dystopias. Here, Földényi closely follows Dostoyevsky, who had seen the Crystal Palace built, in London, for the 1851 Great Exhibition, and had shuddered with horror at this temple to capitalist triumphalism. Földényi’s version of the Crystal Palace is what he calls, in an essay that takes the phrase as its title, “the globe-shaped tower”—the Tower of Babel, built by hubristic rationalism but spherical, to represent the single, globalized market of Western capitalism. When “the Good” became limited to utility, advantage, and pragmatism, “the globe began to shrink.”


The Mail

I thoroughly enjoyed Anthony Lane ’ s ode to night trains ( “ Because the Night , ” May 11th ) .
I had the pleasure of riding the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express from Istanbul to Paris last summer , and thus feel compelled to contest Lane ’ s clever swipe at the types of passenger many believe to be on board this luxurious locomotive .
I had a twin cabin ; though expensive , it did not have the thirty-seven-thousand-dollar ticket price of the Cabin Suite .
And , happily , my conversations consisted of topics much more interesting than the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ retired fund manager , all the way across a continent.
” Far from being loathsome fat-cat financiers , many passengers had saved for years to take this trip of a lifetime , just as I did .
They ran the gamut from two longtime friends from Australia to a retired oncologist and his seriously ill wife ; a woman who worked on the 9/11 victim-compensation fund ; and a young man and his mother , to whom he ’ d given the trip for her fiftieth birthday .
It was an incredible experience @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sleeping-car trips in the future .
Lane ’ s love letter to the night train was enchanting .
I ’ ve crossed the United States twice and the Canadian border once on Amtrak , seated each time .
It ’ s a lot like camping : sleeping in uncomfortable positions , preparing instant noodles by moonlight , and approximating a shower using a water bottle and a sink .
Night-train journeys both whet our appetite for adventure and develop our sense of scale .
The trip from New York to San Francisco once @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you to winch your wagon down the granite slopes of the Sierras .
How miraculous is it that , today , you can travel cross-country relatively efficiently , but still stick your head out the window and let the desert wind whip your hair , or watch the moon rise over the snowy Rocky Mountains from the sightseeing car ?
For the planet ’ s sake , those of us lucky enough to have the means to travel don ’ t just need to find greener substitutes for flying ; we need to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ full of grandeur .
During these homebound times , Lane ’ s piece offered an important reminder about the power of travel , as well as a wonderful escape back into the wider world .
I read Jill Lepore ’ s analysis of the violence at Kent State , Jackson State , and elsewhere with interest and emotion ( Books , May 4th ) .
In 1970 , for a journalism course at Berkeley , I wrote a paper comparing the media coverage , in regional papers and national magazines , of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and in Augusta , Georgia .
I found , among other things , that the San Francisco Examiner gave more than three times as many column inches to Kent State , where four white students were killed , as it did to Augusta and Jackson State , where , collectively , eight black people were killed .
The students at Kent State had their biographies outlined all over the press , but , in a story about the Augusta and Jackson State shootings in Time ’ s May 25th issue , the six @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even named .
In summary , I wrote that “ the whites were mourned , the blacks merely mentioned , ” and concluded that “ in America , it seems , we will not grant equality even to the dead.
” As Lepore writes , we will go on not only suffering but suffering unequally “ until the shooting stops.
” Letters should be sent with the writer ’ s name , address , and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail @ newyorker.com .
Letters may be edited for length and clarity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medium .
We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we can not reply to every letter .

Just the Ticket
I thoroughly enjoyed Anthony Lane’s ode to night trains (“Because the Night,” May 11th). I had the pleasure of riding the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express from Istanbul to Paris last summer, and thus feel compelled to contest Lane’s clever swipe at the types of passenger many believe to be on board this luxurious locomotive. I had a twin cabin; though expensive, it did not have the thirty-seven-thousand-dollar ticket price of the Cabin Suite. And, happily, my conversations consisted of topics much more interesting than the “same anecdote, from the same retired fund manager, all the way across a continent.” Far from being loathsome fat-cat financiers, many passengers had saved for years to take this trip of a lifetime, just as I did. They ran the gamut from two longtime friends from Australia to a retired oncologist and his seriously ill wife; a woman who worked on the 9/11 victim-compensation fund; and a young man and his mother, to whom he’d given the trip for her fiftieth birthday. It was an incredible experience, and I look forward to more sleeping-car trips in the future.
Janet Paist
New York City
Lane’s love letter to the night train was enchanting. I’ve crossed the United States twice and the Canadian border once on Amtrak, seated each time. It’s a lot like camping: sleeping in uncomfortable positions, preparing instant noodles by moonlight, and approximating a shower using a water bottle and a sink. Night-train journeys both whet our appetite for adventure and develop our sense of scale. The trip from New York to San Francisco once took more than a year and required you to winch your wagon down the granite slopes of the Sierras. How miraculous is it that, today, you can travel cross-country relatively efficiently, but still stick your head out the window and let the desert wind whip your hair, or watch the moon rise over the snowy Rocky Mountains from the sightseeing car? For the planet’s sake, those of us lucky enough to have the means to travel don’t just need to find greener substitutes for flying; we need to once again allow cross-continental journeys to be full of grandeur. During these homebound times, Lane’s piece offered an important reminder about the power of travel, as well as a wonderful escape back into the wider world.
Sophia Kakarala
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Until the Shooting Stops
I read Jill Lepore’s analysis of the violence at Kent State, Jackson State, and elsewhere with interest and emotion (Books, May 4th). In 1970, for a journalism course at Berkeley, I wrote a paper comparing the media coverage, in regional papers and national magazines, of the incidents at Kent State and Jackson State and in Augusta, Georgia. I found, among other things, that the San Francisco Examiner gave more than three times as many column inches to Kent State, where four white students were killed, as it did to Augusta and Jackson State, where, collectively, eight black people were killed. The students at Kent State had their biographies outlined all over the press, but, in a story about the Augusta and Jackson State shootings in Time’s May 25th issue, the six men killed in Augusta weren’t even named. In summary, I wrote that “the whites were mourned, the blacks merely mentioned,” and concluded that “in America, it seems, we will not grant equality even to the dead.” As Lepore writes, we will go on not only suffering but suffering unequally “until the shooting stops.”
Nancy Roberts
Healdsburg, Calif.
•
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Wartime for Wodehouse

In June , 1941 , Wodehouse was released .
Civilian men were normally released at the age of sixty .
Wodehouse was four months shy .
It remains unclear why he was released early , but many well-placed American friends and journalists had lobbied on his behalf .
In Berlin , he was reunited with his wife .
Within days , he was asked by the German Foreign Office if he would record some radio broadcasts for American audiences .
He had already written and published a lightly comic account of his time in camp for The Saturday Evening Post @ @ @ @ @ @ @ broadcasts when they first aired .
But many English people heard that they happened .
A week after Wodehouse was released , the journalist William Connor , writing under the pseudonym Cassandra , suggested in the Daily Mirror that Wodehouse ’ s early release had been part of an unsavory deal .
The English reading public mostly defended Wodehouse : it wasn ’ t fair to speculate .
A few weeks later , Connor delivered a BBC broadcast , following the nine-o ’ clock news .
It called Wodehouse a traitor to England @ @ @ @ @ @ @ engaged in a quid pro quo for his early release .
There were angry letters to the BBC , calling the broadcast slanderous .
But the idea was now up for debate .
I have taught the Wodehouse broadcasts for several years now , in a graduate writing seminar on comedy and calamity .
The distance of time makes it difficult for students to imagine how the innocuous and honest Wodehouse voice of the broadcasts could get him into so much trouble .
He describes having ten minutes to pack a suitcase while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him to hurry up ; his wife thinks he should pack a pound of butter ; he declines , saying he prefers his Shakespeare “ unbuttered.
” He also forgets his passport .
His privilege and his political cluelessness are included in the joke : “ Young men starting out in life have often asked me , ‘ How can I become an Internee ?
’ Well , there are several methods .
My own was to buy a villa in Le Touquet on the coast of France and stay there till the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t do the broadcasts in exchange for being released .
But he did do them—he apparently received two hundred and fifty marks for his work .
British forces had suffered through Dunkirk ; London had been firebombed .
The United States was not yet in the war , and we now know that the German Foreign Office saw the release of Wodehouse , who was beloved in America , as propaganda designed to keep the U.S. out of the war .
The proposal for the broadcasts was part of a German plan .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ by most definitions , a traitor .
When he learned that the broadcasts horrified much of the English public , he recorded no more .
He wrote to a friend that “ it was a loony thing to do.
” Connor ’ s address on the BBC began , “ I have come to tell you tonight of the story of a rich man trying to make his last and greatest sale—that of his own country.
” Later , he described Wodehouse falling to his knees as Joseph Goebbels asks him to bow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wife had trouble getting out of Germany , but eventually moved back to France , then , after the war , to New York .
The scandal of the broadcasts didn ’ t diminish .
Some British libraries banned his books .
In 1946 , when the new Attorney General , Sir Hartley Shawcross , was asked in the House of Commons whether Wodehouse would be tried for treason , he answered that the question would be addressed if and when the writer returned to England .
“ I have no hesitation in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ realisation of what he is doing , ” a good friend of Wodehouse ’ s wrote to the Daily Telegraph .
“ He is an easy-going and kindly man , cut off from public opinion here and with no one to advise him.
” George Orwell , in his essay “ In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse , ” from 1945 , concluded , of Wodehouse ’ s broadcasts , that “ the main idea in making them was to keep in touch with his public and—the comedian ’ s ruling passion—to get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and former barrister , Major Edward Cussen , interviewed Wodehouse , he said that he had wanted to reach out to his American public , who had written to him and sent him parcels while he was interned .
Wodehouse said that there was also “ a less creditable motive .
I thought that people , hearing the talks , would admire me for having kept cheerful under difficult conditions but I think I can say that what chiefly led me to make the talks was gratitude.
” Later , Wodehouse wrote to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he didn ’ t understand why the broadcasts were seen to be callous : “ Mine simply flippant cheerful attitude of all British prisoners .
It was a point of honor with us not to whine.
” Wodehouse failed to understand how even a children ’ s bedtime story broadcast on Nazi radio could be a form of propaganda .
And yet , across time , Wodehouse ’ s naïveté seems the less extraordinary of his qualities .
There are lots of political fools .
Wodehouse had a rarer trait , too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ curious , even in a setting of deprivation .
His resilient happiness , to me , remains heroic , and more essentially who he was .
In his second broadcast , he writes of going to sleep on the floor of his cramped cell : “ My last waking thought , I remember , was that , while this was a hell of a thing to have happened to a respectable old gentleman in his declining years , it was all pretty darned interesting and that I could hardly wait to see what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s novels focus almost exclusively on the madcap troubles of the perilously leisured .
Many take place in country houses , and often turn on such events as the hope of extracting an allowance increase from a difficult uncle .
Wodehouse ’ s camp notebook , by contrast , shows an eye for occupation , and especially for occupational contentment .
“ Met cook and congratulated him on today ’ s soup , ” he writes .
“ He was grateful , because his professional pride had been wounded by grumblers saying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said he could have made it more by adding water , which would have spoiled it.
” Wodehouse had to write .
He was introverted , and , with the exception of schoolboy camaraderie , preferred to be at home , working .
One thinks—if one has been reading a lot of Wodehouse—of those ducks elegantly moving across the water , as their duck feet paddle furiously , unseen below the surface .
( I think that image may even come from a Wodehouse novel , but which one ? )
Even when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a couple of months , in 1944 , he worked on a novel .
He generally wrote one or two novels a year but published nothing in the U.K. between 1941 and 1945 .
It was the years of not being able to work—as opposed to internment—that must have been the real hell .
In 1938 , Wodehouse published the third of the Jeeves-and-Wooster novels , “ The Code of the Woosters.
” It came out serially in The Saturday Evening Post , and was the last of the books issued before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Woosters ” is perhaps the most madcap of them all .
There are several confused engagements , a plot to steal a police helmet , a lover of newts studying how to make bold speeches , a mustachioed Fascist named Roderick Spode .
Wooster relies on Jeeves to navigate the landscape , which at every moment threatens him with social embarrassment , at the least , and maybe with an engagement to a pretty woman he doesn ’ t much like , at the most .
It ’ s low stakes at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the supremely minor .

“Camp was really great fun,” the English comic novelist P. G. Wodehouse wrote to an old school friend. He was speaking of the forty-eight weeks between 1940 and 1941 that he spent in a series of German-run civil-internment camps. He lost nearly sixty pounds. He was separated from his wife. He slept on a straw-filled mattress, and tried to avoid scabies and lice. At Tost, in what is now Poland, the fourth of four camps, Wodehouse was offered his own room, on account of his fame, and maybe his age. Declining the offer, he shared a cell with sixty-three others. He was nearly sixty when he was released. The only privilege of which he availed himself was paying eighteen marks a month for a typewriter. The typewriter was housed in a room also used by a saxophonist and a tap dancer.
Wodehouse was the third of four children born to a British colonial administrator and his wife, who were based in Hong Kong. At age two, he was sent to Bath, to be brought up by a nanny; he went to boarding school at age seven. This was not unusual for the time. “My childhood went like a breeze from start to finish,” he wrote, half convincingly. “As for my schooldays . . . they were just six years of unbroken bliss.” In his final year at boarding school, his father told him that there were too many kids to educate, and that Wodehouse could not go to Oxford, where his brother was studying. Instead, his father arranged for him to work as a bank clerk in London. He wrote articles and funny bits for the newspapers on the side. He didn’t go out much. After two years, he decided that he could make a living by his pen alone.
The former bank clerk went on to write more than seventy novels and dozens of plays. By the time he was detained, he’d become a beloved national figure. While interned, he kept a journal. Here is a not untypical early entry:
August 27. I am on potato peeling fatigue. Sergeant comes among us, patting our pockets to see we aren’t pinching any! All very genial. One of the squad has an apoplectic fit and keels over. He had been smoking tea.
It is that “All very genial” that distinguishes Wodehouse from the irritable rest of us, while the observation of the fit from smoking tea shows that he isn’t oblivious, or deranged. He frequently writes about difficulties in his camp notebook, just never at much length. “Today the bread ration failed and we had small biscuits,” he writes, on August 12, 1940. “Many men with false teeth find it impossible to eat the biscuits in their natural state,” he notes six days later. “Bitter wind and snow,” he writes, in December. But, later in the same entry:
Instance of ingenuity in Camp. –Dutch barber is asked by man accustomed to dye his grey hair every month if he can dye it. Later, barber is seen crouching on his bed, holding lighted match under jam jar of water, soft soap and boot blacking. –He sells the stuff to man for 83 pfennigs and man is very satisfied.
The first time I read Wodehouse’s “Camp Note Book,” I kept waiting to see the bonhomie and the buoyancy flag. It’s a private notebook, after all. Maybe for the first weeks an illusion that internment was a brief change of circumstance would persist. It was a short situation comedy! But wouldn’t that feeling fade? “A wonderful day!” he writes on August 14th, sure, but that was only a month in, and it was summer. What would he be thinking by November?
The entry for November 14th begins, “I must make a note of this day as one of the absolutely flawless ones of my life.” Even if his private journal was a kind of performance—for himself? for future readers?—it was a very convincing one. (The pencilled journal pages can be read in the rare-books room of the British Library.)
Soon after his camp experience, Wodehouse paid dearly for his indomitable high spirits. Though, as in the twist of one of his plots, not in the way one might have expected.
Wodehouse’s most enduring literary creation is the duo of Jeeves and Wooster. The two men feature in novels and stories that make up more than a dozen books. Bertram (Bertie) Wooster is a hapless but sweet member of the English upper class; Jeeves is his laconic, dry, and brilliant valet. Wooster gets into tangles. Jeeves gets Wooster out of tangles. The tangles are perennially gentle: Wooster gets engaged to a girl he doesn’t want to marry, or is thought to have stolen a silver cow creamer that he has not stolen (though later will be pressured to steal). Sometimes Wooster dresses garishly—in a scarlet cummerbund, for example. Sometimes the stakes are even higher: Anatole, the master chef, is being hired away from Aunt Dahlia. Repeatedly, Jeeves makes tasteful interventions offstage, and the idyll of their lives—of all the lives, of all the characters—is restored. It’s like Holmes and Watson, but no one ever gets murdered; no one even goes hungry.
My first encounter with Wodehouse was as a teen-ager, as my hard-of-hearing father stood two feet away from the television, the volume turned up to maximum. The Jeeves-and-Wooster stories were made into a television series, which began airing on PBS in 1990. My father, who was born in September, 1939, in the British-mandated Palestine, and grew up in a collective-farming community, and who by the goofy wheel of fortune was now teaching classes in fluid dynamics at the University of Oklahoma, in Norman—my dad thought “Jeeves and Wooster” was hilarious. In my memory, he watched these episodes, all of them, while wearing a towel, fresh out of the shower. That not-losing-a-minute feeling remains. I watched the episodes, too. Or at least was in the room while they were on.
I aspired to find the show funny, but didn’t, really. We had a couple of the books in our house—“Right Ho, Jeeves” and “Joy in the Morning”—and I read them dutifully, more bemused than amused. Like that of many comfortable teen-agers, my reading taste was more for the moody, or the extreme. I didn’t fall for Wodehouse until I had passed through the inevitable losses, fears, disappointments, and embarrassments that even a fortunate person accumulates over the decades—only then did the Jeeves-and-Wooster books become essential comforts. These are not difficult modernist tomes. One favorite plot hinges on a banjolele. I don’t necessarily read them front to back, but pick them up more as someone would a whiskey-and-soda, or a hymnal. The books are cozier than cozy mysteries, and, like a mystery, they help take one’s mind off real calamities.
In June, 1941, Wodehouse was released. Civilian men were normally released at the age of sixty. Wodehouse was four months shy. It remains unclear why he was released early, but many well-placed American friends and journalists had lobbied on his behalf. In Berlin, he was reunited with his wife. Within days, he was asked by the German Foreign Office if he would record some radio broadcasts for American audiences. He had already written and published a lightly comic account of his time in camp for The Saturday Evening Post.
Very few English people heard the broadcasts when they first aired. But many English people heard that they happened. A week after Wodehouse was released, the journalist William Connor, writing under the pseudonym Cassandra, suggested in the Daily Mirror that Wodehouse’s early release had been part of an unsavory deal. The English reading public mostly defended Wodehouse: it wasn’t fair to speculate. A few weeks later, Connor delivered a BBC broadcast, following the nine-o’clock news. It called Wodehouse a traitor to England, and again claimed that he had engaged in a quid pro quo for his early release. There were angry letters to the BBC, calling the broadcast slanderous. But the idea was now up for debate.
I have taught the Wodehouse broadcasts for several years now, in a graduate writing seminar on comedy and calamity. The distance of time makes it difficult for students to imagine how the innocuous and honest Wodehouse voice of the broadcasts could get him into so much trouble. He describes having ten minutes to pack a suitcase while a German soldier stands behind him telling him to hurry up; his wife thinks he should pack a pound of butter; he declines, saying he prefers his Shakespeare “unbuttered.” He also forgets his passport. His privilege and his political cluelessness are included in the joke: “Young men starting out in life have often asked me, ‘How can I become an Internee?’ Well, there are several methods. My own was to buy a villa in Le Touquet on the coast of France and stay there till the Germans came along.”
“Yeah, I tried cutting my own hair.” Cartoon by Pia Guerra and Ian Boothby Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Wodehouse didn’t do the broadcasts in exchange for being released. But he did do them—he apparently received two hundred and fifty marks for his work. British forces had suffered through Dunkirk; London had been firebombed. The United States was not yet in the war, and we now know that the German Foreign Office saw the release of Wodehouse, who was beloved in America, as propaganda designed to keep the U.S. out of the war. The proposal for the broadcasts was part of a German plan. Wodehouse was a fool but not, by most definitions, a traitor. When he learned that the broadcasts horrified much of the English public, he recorded no more. He wrote to a friend that “it was a loony thing to do.”
Connor’s address on the BBC began, “I have come to tell you tonight of the story of a rich man trying to make his last and greatest sale—that of his own country.” Later, he described Wodehouse falling to his knees as Joseph Goebbels asks him to bow to the Führer. Wodehouse and his wife had trouble getting out of Germany, but eventually moved back to France, then, after the war, to New York. The scandal of the broadcasts didn’t diminish. Some British libraries banned his books. In 1946, when the new Attorney General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, was asked in the House of Commons whether Wodehouse would be tried for treason, he answered that the question would be addressed if and when the writer returned to England.
“I have no hesitation in saying that he has not the slightest realisation of what he is doing,” a good friend of Wodehouse’s wrote to the Daily Telegraph. “He is an easy-going and kindly man, cut off from public opinion here and with no one to advise him.” George Orwell, in his essay “In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse,” from 1945, concluded, of Wodehouse’s broadcasts, that “the main idea in making them was to keep in touch with his public and—the comedian’s ruling passion—to get a laugh.”
When an M.I.5 officer and former barrister, Major Edward Cussen, interviewed Wodehouse, he said that he had wanted to reach out to his American public, who had written to him and sent him parcels while he was interned. Wodehouse said that there was also “a less creditable motive. I thought that people, hearing the talks, would admire me for having kept cheerful under difficult conditions but I think I can say that what chiefly led me to make the talks was gratitude.” Later, Wodehouse wrote to the editor of The Saturday Evening Post that he didn’t understand why the broadcasts were seen to be callous: “Mine simply flippant cheerful attitude of all British prisoners. It was a point of honor with us not to whine.” Wodehouse failed to understand how even a children’s bedtime story broadcast on Nazi radio could be a form of propaganda.
And yet, across time, Wodehouse’s naïveté seems the less extraordinary of his qualities. There are lots of political fools. Wodehouse had a rarer trait, too: a capacity for remaining interested and curious, even in a setting of deprivation. His resilient happiness, to me, remains heroic, and more essentially who he was. In his second broadcast, he writes of going to sleep on the floor of his cramped cell: “My last waking thought, I remember, was that, while this was a hell of a thing to have happened to a respectable old gentleman in his declining years, it was all pretty darned interesting and that I could hardly wait to see what the morrow would bring forth.”


newyorker--2020-05-25--After COVID-19, Will Nature Take Over?

After COVID-19, Will Nature Take Over?

Hunkering down in New York City—with its once crowded streets , bridges , and offices now relatively empty—a canyon dweller at home could do worse than to read Alan Weisman ’ s “ The World Without Us.
” The book , a best-seller when it was published , in 2007 , sought to understand what Earth would look like if everyone vanished .
“ Say a Homo sapiens-specific virus—natural or diabolically nano-engineered—picks us off but leaves everything else intact , ” he wrote .
What then ?
Weisman , who is seventy-three years old , has been waiting out the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ western Massachusetts .
( The local farmers ’ stands now operate unmanned , on the honor code . )
When the outbreak began , he had been working on a book about hope amid ecological collapse , but his research plans—involving travel to Europe , Asia , and Africa—were put on hold .
Instead , he has been fielding questions from people who find “ The World Without Us ” oddly apt , and going on hikes .
The other day , the weather was crisp , and the sky blue , except @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the Rivulet Trail , which runs through one of New England ’ s few remaining stands of old-growth trees .
He had put on jeans , a hoodie , and hiking boots—all doused in permethrin to guard against ticks , which have appeared in the area as the climate has warmed .
He added a cap over his graying hair , a bandanna around his neck .
One of the most dramatic chapters in “ The World Without Us ” describes how quickly nature would reclaim New York City if humans were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from below .
Every day , the M.T.A .
pumps millions of gallons of water out of the subway system ; if the pumps stopped , within half an hour tunnels would begin to flood .
Soil under pavement would leach away .
Streets would buckle .
Within two decades , Lexington Avenue would likely turn into a river .
Grand Central might stand for centuries , but skyscrapers would soon topple .
Airborne seeds , deposited in bird droppings , would spread vegetation that could tear apart riveted steel high above .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ trees , would rip through pavement .
“ The unstated but absolutely resonant message throughout that book is how important maintenance personnel are to make sure that these things don ’ t fall victim to entropy , ” Weisman said .
He had veered onto a path called Pine Loop .
Since the pandemic began , people have been citing “ The World Without Us ” online—posting references to it alongside images of flowers pushing through cobblestone , deer in Grand Rapids , a coyote in Chicago .
Friends e-mailed Weisman clips of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and schools of fish visible in the canals of Venice .
A buddy in Colorado had heard reports of elk , moose , and mountain lions in Boulder and Denver ; another sent Weisman ’ s wife a photo of wild turkeys in a New Jersey housing project , noting , “ Your husband will understand.
” Weisman was particularly touched by people who reported that they were hearing more birds .
Someone in New Orleans had shared a recording .
“ It was a barred owl , ” he said.
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calling , but now you don ’ t have any cars making all that noise.
” ( Across the globe , the drop in traffic is seismically measurable : we are literally moving Earth less . )
He stopped in a clearing .
A pine had fallen , and was decaying amid a bed of sugar-maple and birch leaves .
“ I don ’ t think nature is avenging itself , ” he said .
“ We are having an impact in ways that we can ’ t predict , because there are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but until something happens we just keep forging ahead in a bubble of denial.
” The coronavirus , like deer ticks ( now found as far north as the Arctic ) , may prove to be one of many new invisible threats .
He glanced up .
“ It looks just like the blue sky when I was a kid , and yet there is thirty per cent more carbon dioxide above my head , ” he said .
Two other hikers appeared .
Their faces were uncovered .
Weisman raised his bandanna @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us to do that , ” he said .
The passing hikers silently half waved .
On the trail , there was a lookout with a plaque featuring a poem by William Cullen Bryant— “ The Yellow Violet ” —about valuing small natural wonders over “ the ways of pride.
” Stopping near the plaque , Weisman reflected on his new book project , and on how hard it is to sustain hope when environmental problems cast such a terrifying shadow over the future .
“ We ’ re going to have to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what happens next , ” he said .
Below him , in a ravine , a stream snaked among old cherry and white pine .
Taking in the glimmer of Earth ’ s untouched past , he said , “ Utterly gorgeous.
” ♦

Hunkering down in New York City—with its once crowded streets, bridges, and offices now relatively empty—a canyon dweller at home could do worse than to read Alan Weisman’s “The World Without Us.” The book, a best-seller when it was published, in 2007, sought to understand what Earth would look like if everyone vanished. “Say a Homo sapiens-specific virus—natural or diabolically nano-engineered—picks us off but leaves everything else intact,” he wrote. What then?
Weisman, who is seventy-three years old, has been waiting out the pandemic at his home, in rural western Massachusetts. (The local farmers’ stands now operate unmanned, on the honor code.) When the outbreak began, he had been working on a book about hope amid ecological collapse, but his research plans—involving travel to Europe, Asia, and Africa—were put on hold. Instead, he has been fielding questions from people who find “The World Without Us” oddly apt, and going on hikes.
The other day, the weather was crisp, and the sky blue, except for some wispy clouds. Weisman headed for the Rivulet Trail, which runs through one of New England’s few remaining stands of old-growth trees. He had put on jeans, a hoodie, and hiking boots—all doused in permethrin to guard against ticks, which have appeared in the area as the climate has warmed. He added a cap over his graying hair, a bandanna around his neck.
One of the most dramatic chapters in “The World Without Us” describes how quickly nature would reclaim New York City if humans were removed. The decay would likely begin from below. Every day, the M.T.A. pumps millions of gallons of water out of the subway system; if the pumps stopped, within half an hour tunnels would begin to flood. Soil under pavement would leach away. Streets would buckle. Within two decades, Lexington Avenue would likely turn into a river. Grand Central might stand for centuries, but skyscrapers would soon topple. Airborne seeds, deposited in bird droppings, would spread vegetation that could tear apart riveted steel high above. Down below, weeds, and then trees, would rip through pavement. “The unstated but absolutely resonant message throughout that book is how important maintenance personnel are to make sure that these things don’t fall victim to entropy,” Weisman said. He had veered onto a path called Pine Loop.
Since the pandemic began, people have been citing “The World Without Us” online—posting references to it alongside images of flowers pushing through cobblestone, deer in Grand Rapids, a coyote in Chicago. Friends e-mailed Weisman clips of goats taking over a town in Wales, and schools of fish visible in the canals of Venice. A buddy in Colorado had heard reports of elk, moose, and mountain lions in Boulder and Denver; another sent Weisman’s wife a photo of wild turkeys in a New Jersey housing project, noting, “Your husband will understand.”
“The great thing about napping is you don’t need much in an initial outlay to get started.” Cartoon by Barbara Smaller Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Weisman was particularly touched by people who reported that they were hearing more birds. Someone in New Orleans had shared a recording. “It was a barred owl,” he said.“They have always been there, always calling, but now you don’t have any cars making all that noise.” (Across the globe, the drop in traffic is seismically measurable: we are literally moving Earth less.)
He stopped in a clearing. A pine had fallen, and was decaying amid a bed of sugar-maple and birch leaves. “I don’t think nature is avenging itself,” he said. “We are having an impact in ways that we can’t predict, because there are so many variables in the ecosystem, but until something happens we just keep forging ahead in a bubble of denial.” The coronavirus, like deer ticks (now found as far north as the Arctic), may prove to be one of many new invisible threats. He glanced up. “It looks just like the blue sky when I was a kid, and yet there is thirty per cent more carbon dioxide above my head,” he said.
Two other hikers appeared. Their faces were uncovered. Weisman raised his bandanna. “The governor of Massachusetts wants us to do that,” he said. The passing hikers silently half waved.
On the trail, there was a lookout with a plaque featuring a poem by William Cullen Bryant—“The Yellow Violet”—about valuing small natural wonders over “the ways of pride.” Stopping near the plaque, Weisman reflected on his new book project, and on how hard it is to sustain hope when environmental problems cast such a terrifying shadow over the future. “We’re going to have to figure out how to make it through what happens next,” he said. Below him, in a ravine, a stream snaked among old cherry and white pine. Taking in the glimmer of Earth’s untouched past, he said, “Utterly gorgeous.” ♦
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