The Mail

I enjoyed Merve Emre ’ s piece on the academic Sianne Ngai ’ s book “ Theory of the Gimmick , ” and especially its closing critique : “ if the propensity for gimmickry is all around us , then it is also nowhere in particular ” ( Books , November 16th ) .
But I wonder whether Emre inadvertently reproduces Ngai ’ s tendency to overstate the gimmick ’ s purview .
As she points out , Henry James observes in his preface to “ The Wings of the Dove ” that exposure to death or danger makes a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s recognition of what Emre calls a literary gimmick doesn ’ t stop him from conferring a terminal illness upon one of the novel ’ s main characters , Milly Theale .
Indeed , the preface justifies the choice : “ Why should a figure be disqualified for a central position by the particular circumstance that might most quicken , that might crown with a fine intensity , its liability to many accidents , its consciousness of all relations ?
” For me , Milly ’ s illness is a heartbreaking conceit that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Jennifer Egan ’ s PowerPoint slides .
David Remnick , in his post-election Comment , contends that Vladimir Putin ’ s interference in the 2016 election was prompted by the Russian leader ’ s desire to be “ left alone , free of American intrusion in Ukraine , free of nato ’ s influence in the Baltic States and in Eastern and Central Europe , ” and that Putin wished for the U.S. to be “ tied up in its own internal tumult ” ( November 16th ) .
Unless Putin is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inherited the mad monk ’ s powers of clairvoyance , it seems unlikely that he favored Trump because he foresaw the internal tumult that he would cause as President .
From his perch in the Kremlin , Putin more likely viewed Trump simply as a buffoon incapable of nuanced , long-term strategies , around whom he could run rings in the geopolitical arena .
Still , I agree that Putin looks like a genius in the end .
Trump has done more subversive damage to U.S. institutions and to fundamental principles of democracy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have hoped to achieve .
Whether deliberate or not , that is the true result of Russia ’ s collusion .
James Wood , in his review of T. M. Luhrmann ’ s books “ When God Talks Back ” and “ How God Becomes Real , ” contrasts the “ loving ” God of the New Testament with the “ severe ” God of the Hebrew Bible , “ who , for instance , orders Abraham to kill his son ” ( Books , November 9th ) .
In including Luhrmann ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ austere , Wood repeats a misconception about the relationship between God and the Israelites .
The story of the Akedah , in which God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and , at the last second , stops him from doing so , is not proof that God seeks to punish .
Rather , the episode is a test of Abraham ’ s commitment to God , and establishes that God , in contrast to the deities that Abraham had worshipped before God spoke to him , rejects human sacrifice .
Reading the Old @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is rooted in the Christian tendency to privilege the New Testament over the Torah .
Non-Jews do not have a monopoly on a benevolent Deity .
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 , and may be published in any medium .
We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we can not reply to every letter .

The Doomed Heroine of Henry James
I enjoyed Merve Emre’s piece on the academic Sianne Ngai’s book “Theory of the Gimmick,” and especially its closing critique: “if the propensity for gimmickry is all around us, then it is also nowhere in particular” (Books, November 16th). But I wonder whether Emre inadvertently reproduces Ngai’s tendency to overstate the gimmick’s purview. As she points out, Henry James observes in his preface to “The Wings of the Dove” that exposure to death or danger makes a character inherently interesting. But James’s recognition of what Emre calls a literary gimmick doesn’t stop him from conferring a terminal illness upon one of the novel’s main characters, Milly Theale. Indeed, the preface justifies the choice: “Why should a figure be disqualified for a central position by the particular circumstance that might most quicken, that might crown with a fine intensity, its liability to many accidents, its consciousness of all relations?” For me, Milly’s illness is a heartbreaking conceit that has little in common with the gimmickry of Jennifer Egan’s PowerPoint slides.
Colton Valentine
New Haven, Conn.
Putin’s Genius
David Remnick, in his post-election Comment, contends that Vladimir Putin’s interference in the 2016 election was prompted by the Russian leader’s desire to be “left alone, free of American intrusion in Ukraine, free of nato’s influence in the Baltic States and in Eastern and Central Europe,” and that Putin wished for the U.S. to be “tied up in its own internal tumult” (November 16th). Unless Putin is related to Grigori Rasputin, and has inherited the mad monk’s powers of clairvoyance, it seems unlikely that he favored Trump because he foresaw the internal tumult that he would cause as President. From his perch in the Kremlin, Putin more likely viewed Trump simply as a buffoon incapable of nuanced, long-term strategies, around whom he could run rings in the geopolitical arena. Still, I agree that Putin looks like a genius in the end. Trump has done more subversive damage to U.S. institutions and to fundamental principles of democracy than any network of Russian agents could have hoped to achieve. Whether deliberate or not, that is the true result of Russia’s collusion.
Larry Deblinger
Monroe, N.Y.
A Benevolent Deity
James Wood, in his review of T. M. Luhrmann’s books “When God Talks Back” and “How God Becomes Real,” contrasts the “loving” God of the New Testament with the “severe” God of the Hebrew Bible, “who, for instance, orders Abraham to kill his son” (Books, November 9th). In including Luhrmann’s characterization of God as difficult and austere, Wood repeats a misconception about the relationship between God and the Israelites. The story of the Akedah, in which God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and, at the last second, stops him from doing so, is not proof that God seeks to punish. Rather, the episode is a test of Abraham’s commitment to God, and establishes that God, in contrast to the deities that Abraham had worshipped before God spoke to him, rejects human sacrifice. Reading the Old Testament’s God as primarily harsh is rooted in the Christian tendency to privilege the New Testament over the Torah. Non-Jews do not have a monopoly on a benevolent Deity.
Amy Ashe
Far Rockaway, N.Y.
•
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, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.


newyorker--2020-11-30--What Henry Adams Understood About History’s Breaking Points

Adams ’ s point of view in his Washington play-by-play remains elusive , since it was deeply vested in personal motives and relations .
He wrote about power “ from within , ” as David S. Brown puts it in his new biography , “ The Last American Aristocrat : The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams ” ( Scribner ) .
Adams approached that winter in Washington as some combination of reporter , satirist , historian , and political operative .
In his correspondence , his tone was frequently upbeat ( “ We ’ re chipper as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brother ) , and in his anonymous reporting he often channelled the moderate Republican positions he ’ d been fed in his father ’ s parlor .
But in the longer essay he was working on , not published until half a century later , Adams was less cautious .
“ The credit of the Government was tottering , ” he warned .
Adams feared that the Constitution , a document that his family had been arguing about for decades , had licensed a “ sectional power within the Government , ” which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ destroy that Government.
” The corruption of the outgoing Buchanan Administration seemed to him grotesque : “ The frauds discovered .
.
.
had begun to assume a vague and astonishing size , ” while “ public confidence and courage were shattered.
” Looking back on the period , in 1907 , Adams filled out the picture : the secessionists were “ unbalanced in mind , ” “ fit for medical treatment , like other victims of hallucination , ” “ haunted by suspicion , ” and prone to “ violent morbid excitement.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a caste affinity for Southern gentlemen like his college friend William ( Rooney ) Lee , Robert E. Lee ’ s son .
Adams had made a faster start in politics than even his distinguished ancestors , but his sentences imply that he already envisioned a different form of power .
He was constructing a sensibility that could organize a wide variety of information , “ a hodge-podge of world-fact , private fact , philosophy , irony , ” according to his friend William James .
His prose often made intricate beauty out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It was a style that could be written only from a front-row seat on the sidelines , since it made a show of both its access and its independence .
Anyone writing about Adams ’ s life has to trellis the narrative to “ The Education , ” written during Adams ’ s strange , Gnostic last period , under the influence of medieval stained glass and stonework , and not made public until after his death , in 1918 .
It is an astonishing performance in the key of autobiography , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ historical names and events stray .
A theme develops early : “ life was double.
” Childhood summers in Quincy , “ a two hours ’ walk from Beacon Hill , ” were peonies , the smell of hay , “ peaches , lilacs , syringas ” ; winters in Boston were “ cold grays ” and “ muddy thaws.
” Weakened by scarlet fever and smaller than his brothers , Adams noted in his “ character and processes of mind ” a “ fining-down process of scale.
” While men like his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pews ” since “ the glacial epoch , ” he found a kindred spirit in “ the Madam , ” his grandmother , Louisa Catherine Adams , who kept a quietly appointed life apart , and represented art and interiority : In these staged contests with the flinty , Adams always sides with the sumptuous .
He prefers women to men , the humidity of Washington to the cold of Boston , Paris to London ; in some real way that he needed to monitor carefully , he preferred the South to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both sets of values : his sentences mix long clauses with short quips , the leisurely punctuated by the terse , description by maxim .
Adams ’ s writing can be understood as his lifelong attempt to draw out the implications of his famous name .
Late in life , trying to escape himself , he travelled to Samoa .
But even there the locals , fondly recalling a visit from the U.S.S .
John Adams , knew who he was .
Adams may be the first American writer to have checked his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Brown ’ s term “ American aristocrat ” would have struck Adams as an oxymoron , but he took for granted a social position so fixed that it could be wielded against itself .
He enjoyed both what he called the “ safeguards ” of the Adams pedigree and the spoils of a large fortune inherited from his mother .
Brahmin was the name given by Oliver Wendell Holmes , Sr. , around 1860 to members of Boston ’ s Old Guard families , who , wealthy from industries whose economic miracle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trade , the railroads , manufacturing—began to supply themselves with heraldry and property .
More statesmen than merchants , the Adamses were secure enough in their status to break many of the Brahmin codes , but Adams concluded that he was “ held up solely by social position and a sharp tongue.
” That “ solely ” is a classic Adams note of overstatement : those two ingredients not only held him up but fed a lifelong literary project of situating a single human imagination inside concentric rings of historical time , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it spoke so grandly of its inconsequence , huge .
The title “ The Education of Henry Adams ” recalls novels like “ The History of Tom Jones , a Foundling.
” But its structure reverses the classic formula of a charismatic nobody rewarded , in a final turn , with his rightful wealth and pedigree .
“ Probably no child , born in the year , held better cards than he , ” Adams writes of himself .
Just like that , one very useful narrative structure , that of adversity overcome @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Adams tells the story of failing up : he notes , with each unearned success , the bankruptcy of the very distinction between winning and losing .
At Harvard , he carouses with Virginians , graduates in the middle of the pack , and is chosen as class speaker .
He meanders through Europe , fails to master German , loses interest in studying law , and is made his father ’ s chief Washington aide .
When Lincoln then appoints his father minister to the Court of St. James ’ s , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ role in keeping the British government neutral during the Civil War , while his brother Charles stays and fights with bravery in the Gettysburg campaign .
After a brief turn as a pundit calling for government reform , Adams is invited to teach medieval history at Harvard .
He protests , very honorably , that he knows nothing about the subject ; he is given the job anyway .
The pace of the book in its early chapters implies an even distribution of these life incidents across its length , as in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” is not conventional , and not even quite an autobiography .
Adams usually refers to himself in the third person , adding a grand study of failure to the library of volumes written about his family ’ s legendary statesmen .
Adams saw himself as a passenger in his life , riding his own name .
“ He accepted the situation , ” he wrote , “ as though he had been a party to it , and under the same circumstances would do it again , the more readily for knowing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Henry Adams resembles a persona , a little like the feckless antihero whom T. S. Eliot called J. Alfred Prufrock .
The sense that your life is happening not to you but to a kind of emissary dispatched into social and historical space is something many writers have felt .
Henry Adams writes sentences ; “ Henry Adams ” goes to soireés .
Adams ’ s choice makes “ Henry Adams ” the subject of gossip between the writer and the reader ; even more than before , Adams could claim to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trying to persuade myself that there is any such thing as me , ” he wrote to a friend in 1915.
“ More and more I am forced to admit that the whole show is a piece of idiocy.
” He published as a game of peekaboo—by half measures , back channels , and guises .
The obvious differences aside , he recalls Emily Dickinson , his contemporary , in the ways that he constructed alternative platforms for publication within an eager coterie .
His writing was sometimes cultivated , like a hobby @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s pastime .
When he published a novel , “ Democracy ” ( 1880 ) , anonymously , and another , “ Esther ” ( 1884 ) , under a pseudonym , their authorship fuelled speculation among readers , which Adams clearly enjoyed .
A serene book about the Middle Ages , “ Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres , ” was initially written as a gift to his nieces and privately distributed .
Adams ’ s strangest book was “ Tahiti : Memoirs of Arii Taimai , ” dictated to him by a Tahitian queen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appears nowhere on it or in it : he calls himself Tauraatua I Amo , the honorific given him by the clan .
“ The Education ” was initially circulated only among a small group of Adams ’ s friends ; when it was officially published , in 1918 , it appeared with a preface written by Adams yet signed by his old student and friend Henry Cabot Lodge .
The preface concluded that Adams , a “ small ” artist , had failed to find sufficient “ literary form.
” Adams ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , hiding out in the spotlight , is the focus of Ormond Seavey ’ s “ Henry Adams in Washington : Linking the Personal and Public Lives of America ’ s Man of Letters ” ( University of Virginia ) .
By 1880 , a tight circle of intimates , who christened themselves “ the Five of Hearts ” —the Adamses , John and Clara Hay , and the eccentric geologist Clarence King—had formed .
The group later incorporated officially , even designing its own china pattern .
Adams went to work every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ returning in the evening to the large house he and Clover rented on H Street to socialize with friends and famous callers , including Matthew Arnold on a U.S. tour sponsored by P. T. Barnum .
The Hays and the Adamses bought a parcel of land facing on Lafayette Square and hired the renowned architect H. H. Richardson , their old friend , to design a conjoined house in the Romanesque style , looking across the square at the White House .
The consuming work of this period was Adams ’ s nine-volume @ @ @ @ @ @ @ great-grandfather ’ s Administration , “ History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
” It was traditional for Adams men to lose themselves in the family papers , but Adams chose the careers of his ancestors ’ rivals .
To many , it is the greatest work of history written by an American .
In its opening survey of America in the year 1800 , Washington is seen as “ a fever-stricken morass , ” the “ shapeless , unfinished Capitol ” backed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ a government capable of sketching a magnificent plan , and willing to give only a half-hearted pledge for its fulfillment.
” For pages at a time , Adams ’ s “ History ” is a jigsaw design of juxtaposed facts and quotations .
It is hard to imagine the archival work necessary to write even a single one of its paragraphs .
Very few lay readers have delved in .
( When Elizabeth Hardwick was asked whether her divorce from Robert Lowell had been painful , she reportedly replied , “ Oh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of course , the usual intellectuals ’ quarrel over which of us should get Henry Adams ’ s History.
” ) It struck some at the time as a quixotic , monkish endeavor , or merely as a way of keeping a daily appointment with his desk at the State Department , where no doubt many other men of means scribbled their days away .
The volumes were published between 1889 and 1891 , but Adams ’ s interest in the project petered out .
“ As long as I could make life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” he remarked cryptically , when he was rounding the bend .
Indeed , “ The Education ” leaves out everything from Adams ’ s busiest and most productive period .
He abruptly hops off the time line in 1871 , leaping over his marriage to Clover as well as her tragic death , by suicide , in 1885 .
Clover ’ s name never appears in “ The Education.
” The story picks up in 1892 , with barely a note of explanation : suddenly , it ’ s simply “ Twenty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s fascination derives from this twenty-year black hole .
Though Adams may have intended “ The Education ” as a caution against biography , he had to have known the void would be filled .
Brown ’ s “ The Last American Aristocrat ” follows two multivolume biographies of Adams , by Ernest Samuels and Edward Chalfant , and a recent biography of Clover , by Natalie Dykstra .
The Adamses , Brown suggests , could not conceive a child ; Adams worked long hours , and Clover ’ s days settled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off from the world beyond their exclusive set .
Their barbs became too severe , their gossip too corrosive , the Five of Hearts too impenetrable .
Suicide and mental illness were so rampant in Boston ’ s ruling class that secrecy about it sometimes appears to be the key to the entire Brahmin code .
Clover once joked to her father , “ The insane asylum seems to be the goal of every good and conscientious Bostonian.
” ( In the years after Clover ’ s death , her sister , Ellen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ train , and her brother , Edward , jumped from a third-story window . )
Clover broke down on the Adamses ’ wedding trip , in Egypt , and again when her beloved father died , in the spring of 1885 .
Before she killed herself , she had been “ off her feed , ” Adams wrote , for months .
Clover had taken up photography and showed a real mastery of its rapidly developing technology , but her last photos , taken on a trip to West Virginia to buoy her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the warm scenes she ’ d once captured .
On the afternoon of December 6 , 1885 , Adams returned home from the dentist and found Clover dead , a vial of potassium cyanide , one of her darkroom chemicals , drained beside her .

Away we go into a Presidential transition, one of the most worrisome since 1860-61, when the unity of the nation hung in the balance. Henry Adams, not quite twenty-three, the grandson and great-grandson of U.S. Presidents, passed that season in Washington, serving as personal secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, a congressman from Massachusetts, while making the social rounds and working behind the scenes as an anonymous correspondent for the Boston Daily Advertiser. Adams was also drafting a magazine essay and sending voluminous letters to his brother Charles, in which he promised to supply “all the gossip.” These private letters were nevertheless intended, Adams wrote, to be read “a century or two hence,” as a “memorial of manners and habits at the time of the great secession of 1860.”
Adams’s point of view in his Washington play-by-play remains elusive, since it was deeply vested in personal motives and relations. He wrote about power “from within,” as David S. Brown puts it in his new biography, “The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams” (Scribner). Adams approached that winter in Washington as some combination of reporter, satirist, historian, and political operative. In his correspondence, his tone was frequently upbeat (“We’re chipper as can be,” he told his brother), and in his anonymous reporting he often channelled the moderate Republican positions he’d been fed in his father’s parlor. But in the longer essay he was working on, not published until half a century later, Adams was less cautious. “The credit of the Government was tottering,” he warned.
Adams feared that the Constitution, a document that his family had been arguing about for decades, had licensed a “sectional power within the Government,” which had now “raised its hand to destroy that Government.” The corruption of the outgoing Buchanan Administration seemed to him grotesque: “The frauds discovered . . . had begun to assume a vague and astonishing size,” while “public confidence and courage were shattered.” Looking back on the period, in 1907, Adams filled out the picture: the secessionists were “unbalanced in mind,” “fit for medical treatment, like other victims of hallucination,” “haunted by suspicion,” and prone to “violent morbid excitement.”
Adams was an antislavery Northerner with a caste affinity for Southern gentlemen like his college friend William (Rooney) Lee, Robert E. Lee’s son. Adams had made a faster start in politics than even his distinguished ancestors, but his sentences imply that he already envisioned a different form of power. He was constructing a sensibility that could organize a wide variety of information, “a hodge-podge of world-fact, private fact, philosophy, irony,” according to his friend William James. His prose often made intricate beauty out of the ironic arrangement of proprietary facts. It was a style that could be written only from a front-row seat on the sidelines, since it made a show of both its access and its independence.
Henry Adams was born in 1838, “under the shadow of Boston State House,” according to the famous opening sentence of his book “The Education of Henry Adams.” The “nest of associations” that surrounded him from birth put him within earshot of power from the start. He grew up tiptoeing around a man whom everyone in his family called “the President”: John Quincy Adams, his grandfather. He passed summer afternoons reading Sir Walter Scott on a bed of deteriorating congressional documents. His destiny was, he wrote, to be a “stable-companion to statesmen.” Early in his life, he documented their power. In old age, he recorded their inconsequence. Once, during the Wilson Administration, Adams welcomed the Assistant Secretary of the Navy to his home on Lafayette Square, which looked out on the White House. “Nothing that you minor officials or the occupant of that house can do will affect the history of the world for long,” he told his visitor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Anyone writing about Adams’s life has to trellis the narrative to “The Education,” written during Adams’s strange, Gnostic last period, under the influence of medieval stained glass and stonework, and not made public until after his death, in 1918. It is an astonishing performance in the key of autobiography, a kind of lucid dream through which historical names and events stray. A theme develops early: “life was double.” Childhood summers in Quincy, “a two hours’ walk from Beacon Hill,” were peonies, the smell of hay, “peaches, lilacs, syringas”; winters in Boston were “cold grays” and “muddy thaws.” Weakened by scarlet fever and smaller than his brothers, Adams noted in his “character and processes of mind” a “fining-down process of scale.” While men like his grandfather had sat in “the best pews” since “the glacial epoch,” he found a kindred spirit in “the Madam,” his grandmother, Louisa Catherine Adams, who kept a quietly appointed life apart, and represented art and interiority:
The Madam was a little more remote than the President, but more decorative. She stayed much in her own room with the Dutch tiles, looking out on her garden with the box walks, and seemed a fragile creature to a boy who sometimes brought her a note or a message, and took distinct pleasure in looking at her delicate face under what seemed to him very becoming caps. He liked her refined figure; her gentle voice and manner; her vague effect of not belonging there, but to Washington or to Europe, like her furniture, and writing-desk with little glass doors above and little eighteenth-century volumes in old binding, labelled “Peregrine Pickle” or “Tom Jones” or “Hannah More.”
In these staged contests with the flinty, Adams always sides with the sumptuous. He prefers women to men, the humidity of Washington to the cold of Boston, Paris to London; in some real way that he needed to monitor carefully, he preferred the South to the North. But he seemed to require both sets of values: his sentences mix long clauses with short quips, the leisurely punctuated by the terse, description by maxim.
Adams’s writing can be understood as his lifelong attempt to draw out the implications of his famous name. Late in life, trying to escape himself, he travelled to Samoa. But even there the locals, fondly recalling a visit from the U.S.S. John Adams, knew who he was. Adams may be the first American writer to have checked his privilege, as we would put it. Brown’s term “American aristocrat” would have struck Adams as an oxymoron, but he took for granted a social position so fixed that it could be wielded against itself. He enjoyed both what he called the “safeguards” of the Adams pedigree and the spoils of a large fortune inherited from his mother. Brahmin was the name given by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., around 1860 to members of Boston’s Old Guard families, who, wealthy from industries whose economic miracle depended on free or exploited labor—the China trade, the railroads, manufacturing—began to supply themselves with heraldry and property. More statesmen than merchants, the Adamses were secure enough in their status to break many of the Brahmin codes, but Adams concluded that he was “held up solely by social position and a sharp tongue.” That “solely” is a classic Adams note of overstatement: those two ingredients not only held him up but fed a lifelong literary project of situating a single human imagination inside concentric rings of historical time, a presence at once puny and, since it spoke so grandly of its inconsequence, huge.
The title “The Education of Henry Adams” recalls novels like “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.” But its structure reverses the classic formula of a charismatic nobody rewarded, in a final turn, with his rightful wealth and pedigree. “Probably no child, born in the year, held better cards than he,” Adams writes of himself. Just like that, one very useful narrative structure, that of adversity overcome, is ruled out. Instead, Adams tells the story of failing up: he notes, with each unearned success, the bankruptcy of the very distinction between winning and losing. At Harvard, he carouses with Virginians, graduates in the middle of the pack, and is chosen as class speaker. He meanders through Europe, fails to master German, loses interest in studying law, and is made his father’s chief Washington aide. When Lincoln then appoints his father minister to the Court of St. James’s, Adams heads to London and plays a role in keeping the British government neutral during the Civil War, while his brother Charles stays and fights with bravery in the Gettysburg campaign. After a brief turn as a pundit calling for government reform, Adams is invited to teach medieval history at Harvard. He protests, very honorably, that he knows nothing about the subject; he is given the job anyway.
The pace of the book in its early chapters implies an even distribution of these life incidents across its length, as in a conventional autobiography. But “The Education” is not conventional, and not even quite an autobiography. Adams usually refers to himself in the third person, adding a grand study of failure to the library of volumes written about his family’s legendary statesmen. Adams saw himself as a passenger in his life, riding his own name. “He accepted the situation,” he wrote, “as though he had been a party to it, and under the same circumstances would do it again, the more readily for knowing the exact values.” At times this Henry Adams resembles a persona, a little like the feckless antihero whom T. S. Eliot called J. Alfred Prufrock.
The sense that your life is happening not to you but to a kind of emissary dispatched into social and historical space is something many writers have felt. Henry Adams writes sentences; “Henry Adams” goes to soireés. Adams’s choice makes “Henry Adams” the subject of gossip between the writer and the reader; even more than before, Adams could claim to be the ultimate insider. “I am trying to persuade myself that there is any such thing as me,” he wrote to a friend in 1915.“More and more I am forced to admit that the whole show is a piece of idiocy.”
He published as a game of peekaboo—by half measures, back channels, and guises. The obvious differences aside, he recalls Emily Dickinson, his contemporary, in the ways that he constructed alternative platforms for publication within an eager coterie. His writing was sometimes cultivated, like a hobby farm, as a wealthy man’s pastime. When he published a novel, “Democracy” (1880), anonymously, and another, “Esther” (1884), under a pseudonym, their authorship fuelled speculation among readers, which Adams clearly enjoyed. A serene book about the Middle Ages, “Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres,” was initially written as a gift to his nieces and privately distributed. Adams’s strangest book was “Tahiti: Memoirs of Arii Taimai,” dictated to him by a Tahitian queen during his late-in-life travels. His name appears nowhere on it or in it: he calls himself Tauraatua I Amo, the honorific given him by the clan. “The Education” was initially circulated only among a small group of Adams’s friends; when it was officially published, in 1918, it appeared with a preface written by Adams yet signed by his old student and friend Henry Cabot Lodge. The preface concluded that Adams, a “small” artist, had failed to find sufficient “literary form.”
He was mercurial and restless, but he toyed with a respectable life in the Boston bubble and among the Washington élite. In 1872, at thirty-four, Adams married Marian Hooper, known to everyone as Clover, a witty “Voltaire in petticoats,” according to her childhood friend Henry James. (Clover famously said of him, “He chaws more than he bites off.”) Soon Adams resigned his job at Harvard and the couple moved to Washington in search of a social life. The scene in Cambridge, according to Adams, was like a “faculty-meeting without business,” so desolate that it would have “starved a polar bear.”
“His parrot goes everywhere he goes.” Cartoon by Sam Gross Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Adams’s life as a Bostonian in Washington, hiding out in the spotlight, is the focus of Ormond Seavey’s “Henry Adams in Washington: Linking the Personal and Public Lives of America’s Man of Letters” (University of Virginia). By 1880, a tight circle of intimates, who christened themselves “the Five of Hearts”—the Adamses, John and Clara Hay, and the eccentric geologist Clarence King—had formed. The group later incorporated officially, even designing its own china pattern. Adams went to work every day at the State Department library, returning in the evening to the large house he and Clover rented on H Street to socialize with friends and famous callers, including Matthew Arnold on a U.S. tour sponsored by P. T. Barnum. The Hays and the Adamses bought a parcel of land facing on Lafayette Square and hired the renowned architect H. H. Richardson, their old friend, to design a conjoined house in the Romanesque style, looking across the square at the White House.
The consuming work of this period was Adams’s nine-volume history of the fifteen years after his great-grandfather’s Administration, “History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.” It was traditional for Adams men to lose themselves in the family papers, but Adams chose the careers of his ancestors’ rivals. To many, it is the greatest work of history written by an American. In its opening survey of America in the year 1800, Washington is seen as “a fever-stricken morass,” the “shapeless, unfinished Capitol” backed by swampland. A visitor would see only “a government capable of sketching a magnificent plan, and willing to give only a half-hearted pledge for its fulfillment.”
For pages at a time, Adams’s “History” is a jigsaw design of juxtaposed facts and quotations. It is hard to imagine the archival work necessary to write even a single one of its paragraphs. Very few lay readers have delved in. (When Elizabeth Hardwick was asked whether her divorce from Robert Lowell had been painful, she reportedly replied, “Oh, not at all, except, of course, the usual intellectuals’ quarrel over which of us should get Henry Adams’s History.”) It struck some at the time as a quixotic, monkish endeavor, or merely as a way of keeping a daily appointment with his desk at the State Department, where no doubt many other men of means scribbled their days away. The volumes were published between 1889 and 1891, but Adams’s interest in the project petered out. “As long as I could make life work, I stood by it,” he remarked cryptically, when he was rounding the bend.
Adams alludes to his “History” only once in “The Education,” and only to disparage it:
He had even published a dozen volumes of American history for no other purpose than to satisfy himself whether, by the severest process of stating, with the least possible comment, such facts as seemed sure, in such order as seemed rigorously consequent, he could fix for a familiar moment a necessary sequence of human movement.
Indeed, “The Education” leaves out everything from Adams’s busiest and most productive period. He abruptly hops off the time line in 1871, leaping over his marriage to Clover as well as her tragic death, by suicide, in 1885. Clover’s name never appears in “The Education.” The story picks up in 1892, with barely a note of explanation: suddenly, it’s simply “Twenty Years After.” Part of the book’s fascination derives from this twenty-year black hole. Though Adams may have intended “The Education” as a caution against biography, he had to have known the void would be filled. Brown’s “The Last American Aristocrat” follows two multivolume biographies of Adams, by Ernest Samuels and Edward Chalfant, and a recent biography of Clover, by Natalie Dykstra. The Adamses, Brown suggests, could not conceive a child; Adams worked long hours, and Clover’s days settled into tedium. The couple walled themselves off from the world beyond their exclusive set. Their barbs became too severe, their gossip too corrosive, the Five of Hearts too impenetrable.


newyorker--2020-11-30--“Winter Song for One Who Suffers,” by Brenda Hillman

The stars stand up behind the day .
A known dove balances on its claw at the window .
A @ @ @ @ @ begun & a mild excess of beauty will be offered to the dead , which @ @ @ @ @ a hill the wise man serves the people , your thought splits in half when @ @ @ @ @ revolts , the return of apocalypse , motive & advancement .
A soul can crouch @ @ @ @ @ heart expands to reach its edges .
What is missing past the glitter of the @ @ @ @ @ chose to live .
How ?
You did .
So many choices , not just @ @ @ @ @ mystery of the sun , then the hurt was set aside , indeterminate chaos called @ @ @ @

Audio: Read by the author.
The stars stand up
behind the day. A known dove balances
on its claw
at the window. A cosmic incident
of darkness has begun
& a mild excess of beauty
will be offered to the dead,
which they will eat. On a hill
the wise man serves the people,
your thought splits
in half when he speaks of the old
revolts, the return
of apocalypse, motive & advancement.
A soul can crouch
a long time while the heart
expands to reach its edges.
What is missing past the glitter
of the harvest?
Friend, you chose
to live. How? You did. So many
choices, not just two, encrypted
behind the mystery of the sun,
then the hurt was set aside,
indeterminate chaos
called in by love.


newyorker--2020-11-30--What if You Could Outsource Your To-Do List?

In the matter of assistant-having , I was not ( as Titian might have said of Venus ) without models .
My introduction came the first time I answered a peer ’ s e-mail and realized with a start that we were not alone .
“ Julianne can help us find a time , ” my correspondent wrote .
Who ?
But here was this unknown person in the CC field , suddenly at my side like an attendant bearing Q-tips in a German men ’ s room .
I felt betrayed and then , immediately , envious .
Tuesday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I have one of these e-mail lurkers ?
I reflected for a moment and remembered that I couldn ’ t afford one .
This made me doubly a loser .
People usually get recognized and elevated for the achievements they have time to make , not for the hours they spend maintaining filing systems .
One answer to the primal question about Wonder Women and Men—how do they do it ?
—comes down to help : bookkeepers , housecleaners , lawyers , strategists , and nannies .
Many of the best have managed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be a highfalutin man , enjoyed the help of a private secretary and a butler ( named Claude ) .
Mother Teresa had personal assistants ( her good deeds seemingly did not extend to paperwork ) , and Malcolm X depended on a secretary whom he ’ d hired away from this magazine .
Highly effective people may share certain habits , but what they usually share more generously are tasks that get in the way of their being highly effective .
Odd , then , that , in an age of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the wane .
Over the past twenty years , the number of people in the U.S. employed as executive secretaries and administrative assistants has more than halved , according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics , which expects assistantship across industries to decline nine per cent by 2029 .
In part , that ’ s due to changes in the nature of the work : bits of what a secretary would have done thirty years ago are handled today by technology and by jobs with different titles .
But the shift @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are often among the first to go when companies cut costs , and financially strapped middle-class workers have less to spend on help outside the office , even if they need it more .
The problem of efficiency , productivity , and how to make a market out of some but not really enough disposable income is an obvious target for startup tech , and the brigades have already come through .
“ If you think about what exists in the movie ‘ Her ’ or ‘ Iron Man ’ —a super-powerful assistant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the world around you—it ’ s a really healing version of the future , ” the entrepreneur and venture capitalist Sam Lessin told me not long ago .
In 2015 , he co-founded a company , called Fin , that released a virtual-assistant app with actual humans on the other end .
The competition was weak ; the closest most of us have got to “ Her ” is Siri ( a known moron ) , Alexa ( a known snoop ) , or that officious paper clip from the nineties .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ultimately gave up on virtual assistance ( it now does data analytics ) , because the business turned out to be hard .
People anticipate human error from human assistants , but from tech they want perfection .
And the model was strained by employee management .
“ You end up hiring thousands and thousands of people to get the scale , ” Lessin said .
Faced with personnel challenges , some assistance startups have turned to poor nations abroad .
A wage that ’ s illegal in the United States will keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entrepreneurs have noticed .
Lately , some companies have sought to shift the burdens of a struggling American middle class to workers in Africa , South America , Southeast Asia , the Indian subcontinent , and elsewhere .
To manage the mundane tasks of their narrow worlds , the thinking goes , small businesses and busy parents can turn to the wider one .
Besides these savings , Invisible grew from two ideas , one about bigness and the other about smallness .
The bigness idea was that processes in a business or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one entity—a virtual super-assistant who can deal with anything .
The smallness idea was that complex processes can be broken down and run in bits .
Pedraza ’ s inspiration , on the latter point , was Henry Ford .
“ Every year , the price of Ford motor cars kept dropping and the quality kept improving , ” he said .
The key was separating production into simple tasks , such as screwing in a single lug nut , and then snapping those tasks together like Legos on the factory floor , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new teams , then tightened to the inch .
Pedraza has brown hair , streamlined into a short crop ; a long , chiselled face ; and a predilection for what he calls “ books by dead people.
” ( “ You should distrust the New York Times best-seller in the airport bookshelf , ” he told me .
“ Trust ‘ Self-Reliance , ’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson , because people are still reading Emerson today.
” ) When I met him , he had just heard of Philip Roth for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recently been alive .
Some of Pedraza ’ s colleagues amiably call him crazy .
He is known for saying uncommon things in surprising ways .
“ Ideas are almost like aliens trying to come into the real world , and we ’ re just pregnant with them , ” he has said .
He has published more than two thousand essays on his Medium blog , and during this summer of unrest he wrote against “ silencing all disagreement as evidence of oppression ” —a position that he also claimed for Socrates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prophets , Martin Luther , and Martin Luther King , Jr. Pedraza keeps a Roman gladius in his closet , for athletic practice , and speaks of “ human potential ” in the way some people talk about their favorite football team .
He sees Invisible as a tool for realizing that potential by breaking past the clutter of modern life ; he describes the company ’ s workflow as a “ digital assembly line.
” Compared with sprawling labor-for-hire marketplaces like the site Upwork , where users enlist jobbers for specific tasks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Invisible is about order and scale .
Most of the assistance it does is for entire companies .
For businesses of one—say , a hapless writer—it offers an “ executive support ” service , which connects an individual with a virtual character to whom he or she can assign wishes and tasks .
Pedraza named his own assistant character John Keats , for his favorite dead poet .
The character is not puppeted by one person : behind him is a team of people , which , unlike a real assistant , can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ once .
When Pedraza includes John Keats ’ s address on an e-mail—for example , an e-mail about meeting with me—a hidden system moves into action .
One meeting is broken into multiple tasks , appearing in a queue on the company ’ s proprietary delegation software , where they are claimed by workers around the world .
Someone in , say , Bangladesh goes into Pedraza ’ s Google calendar to find times ; someone else , maybe a few continents away , in Guatemala , compiles a briefing memo about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s case , the tasks are not strictly professional .
He recently had John Keats book him an elaborate laser hair-removal procedure he ’ d been hoping to get .
( “ There was some , you know , confusion about what , uh , areas were covered by this , ” he said .
“ Invisible just handled it for me.
” ) Sometimes , he has John Keats trawl through his first- and second-degree connections on LinkedIn for contacts who might be interested in Invisible , and begin corresponding with them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ name .
Some express interest , and meetings are set up .
Until Pedraza goes to those , the whole process churns on like a software update in the background of his life .
He likes to sign his e-mails ( or someone does ) “ Efficiently yours.
” The average pay for foreign workers at Invisible—known as “ agents ” —is five dollars an hour .
High-performing agents can make up to ten .
“ We are gathering all of their training data , all of their performance data , ” Pedraza @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an endless screen share , with superiors looking over their shoulders all the time to see what they ’ re doing and how long it ’ s taking .
Instead of replacing humans in slow parts of the assembly line with robots ( Ford ’ s practice ) , the company writes software to speed through rote steps once they ’ re set .
Offshore outsourcing , which included more than fourteen million workers in 2018 , has been linked to unemployment and wage stagnation in the American workforce : it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ competition abroad works for much less .
Pedraza often boasts that Invisible , which hires six per cent of applicants , is more selective than Harvard .
At the moment , in fact , Harvard ’ s acceptance rate is five per cent , and many people go there because it is thought to open wormholes to the world of the élite , while most agents at Invisible simply want a decent job .
Once , it was big companies such as Nike or Google that did most outsourcing .
But today the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Invisible ’ s revenue has more than tripled since the beginning of the year , and its agents in the developing world now handle some of the clerical work involved in setting restaurants up on several of the largest food-delivery platforms .
We hear a lot about changes to the American labor market during the pandemic , but this one is likely to linger when it ends .

Back when the world seemed bright and ambitious—another century, it might have been—I managed to convince myself, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, that what I really needed in my life was an assistant. This was December, the month when traditionally I can no longer outrun the clerical tasks that have stalked me since the middle of the year. I had weeks of crinkled receipts to expense: the year-end tax on negligence. I was halfway through the process of contesting the charge on a vaccine shot that my insurance company had refused to cover, and I had to transcribe hours of interviews before I could begin to write—the only use of my time which generates an income. As a moonless night wore on, filled with snacking and monsters, I futzed with the formulas in my sad expense spreadsheets and knew that these were hours of life I’d never get back.
In the matter of assistant-having, I was not (as Titian might have said of Venus) without models. My introduction came the first time I answered a peer’s e-mail and realized with a start that we were not alone. “Julianne can help us find a time,” my correspondent wrote. Who? But here was this unknown person in the CC field, suddenly at my side like an attendant bearing Q-tips in a German men’s room. I felt betrayed and then, immediately, envious. Tuesday or Wednesday? Why didn’t I have one of these e-mail lurkers? I reflected for a moment and remembered that I couldn’t afford one.
This made me doubly a loser. People usually get recognized and elevated for the achievements they have time to make, not for the hours they spend maintaining filing systems. One answer to the primal question about Wonder Women and Men—how do they do it?—comes down to help: bookkeepers, housecleaners, lawyers, strategists, and nannies. Many of the best have managed thus. Mark Twain, not thought to be a highfalutin man, enjoyed the help of a private secretary and a butler (named Claude). Mother Teresa had personal assistants (her good deeds seemingly did not extend to paperwork), and Malcolm X depended on a secretary whom he’d hired away from this magazine. Highly effective people may share certain habits, but what they usually share more generously are tasks that get in the way of their being highly effective.
Odd, then, that, in an age of harried two-income households, assistantship is on the wane. Over the past twenty years, the number of people in the U.S. employed as executive secretaries and administrative assistants has more than halved, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which expects assistantship across industries to decline nine per cent by 2029. In part, that’s due to changes in the nature of the work: bits of what a secretary would have done thirty years ago are handled today by technology and by jobs with different titles. But the shift is economic, too. Assistance positions are often among the first to go when companies cut costs, and financially strapped middle-class workers have less to spend on help outside the office, even if they need it more.
The problem of efficiency, productivity, and how to make a market out of some but not really enough disposable income is an obvious target for startup tech, and the brigades have already come through. “If you think about what exists in the movie ‘Her’ or ‘Iron Man’—a super-powerful assistant service that knows you and takes care of the world around you—it’s a really healing version of the future,” the entrepreneur and venture capitalist Sam Lessin told me not long ago. In 2015, he co-founded a company, called Fin, that released a virtual-assistant app with actual humans on the other end. The competition was weak; the closest most of us have got to “Her” is Siri (a known moron), Alexa (a known snoop), or that officious paper clip from the nineties. But Fin, like other companies, ultimately gave up on virtual assistance (it now does data analytics), because the business turned out to be hard. People anticipate human error from human assistants, but from tech they want perfection. And the model was strained by employee management. “You end up hiring thousands and thousands of people to get the scale,” Lessin said.
Faced with personnel challenges, some assistance startups have turned to poor nations abroad. A wage that’s illegal in the United States will keep you well fed in Kenya, American entrepreneurs have noticed. Lately, some companies have sought to shift the burdens of a struggling American middle class to workers in Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and elsewhere. To manage the mundane tasks of their narrow worlds, the thinking goes, small businesses and busy parents can turn to the wider one.
One of those companies is Invisible Technologies, which launched in 2015 and now has staff in thirty-five countries, from Malaysia to Ghana, Serbia to Pakistan. It emerged in part from the idea that great savings can be harvested from the developing world. “Labor is incredibly cheap, and the biggest arbitrage opportunity in the world is the fact that you’ve got the largest labor market in history, with people who are connected to the Internet, speak English, and have amazing attitudes,” Francis Pedraza, Invisible’s thirty-one-year-old C.E.O. and founder, told me. “The ability to tap into that and create things is infinite.”
Besides these savings, Invisible grew from two ideas, one about bigness and the other about smallness. The bigness idea was that processes in a business or a life ought to be managed by one entity—a virtual super-assistant who can deal with anything. The smallness idea was that complex processes can be broken down and run in bits. Pedraza’s inspiration, on the latter point, was Henry Ford. “Every year, the price of Ford motor cars kept dropping and the quality kept improving,” he said. The key was separating production into simple tasks, such as screwing in a single lug nut, and then snapping those tasks together like Legos on the factory floor, allowing processes to be built without hiring new teams, then tightened to the inch.
Pedraza has brown hair, streamlined into a short crop; a long, chiselled face; and a predilection for what he calls “books by dead people.” (“You should distrust the New York Times best-seller in the airport bookshelf,” he told me. “Trust ‘Self-Reliance,’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson, because people are still reading Emerson today.”) When I met him, he had just heard of Philip Roth for the first time, possibly because Roth had recently been alive. Some of Pedraza’s colleagues amiably call him crazy. He is known for saying uncommon things in surprising ways. “Ideas are almost like aliens trying to come into the real world, and we’re just pregnant with them,” he has said. He has published more than two thousand essays on his Medium blog, and during this summer of unrest he wrote against “silencing all disagreement as evidence of oppression”—a position that he also claimed for Socrates, Diogenes, Tiresias, the Jewish prophets, Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Pedraza keeps a Roman gladius in his closet, for athletic practice, and speaks of “human potential” in the way some people talk about their favorite football team. He sees Invisible as a tool for realizing that potential by breaking past the clutter of modern life; he describes the company’s workflow as a “digital assembly line.”
Compared with sprawling labor-for-hire marketplaces like the site Upwork, where users enlist jobbers for specific tasks such as copywriting or data processing, Invisible is about order and scale. Most of the assistance it does is for entire companies. For businesses of one—say, a hapless writer—it offers an “executive support” service, which connects an individual with a virtual character to whom he or she can assign wishes and tasks.
Pedraza named his own assistant character John Keats, for his favorite dead poet. The character is not puppeted by one person: behind him is a team of people, which, unlike a real assistant, can do an endless number of things at once. When Pedraza includes John Keats’s address on an e-mail—for example, an e-mail about meeting with me—a hidden system moves into action. One meeting is broken into multiple tasks, appearing in a queue on the company’s proprietary delegation software, where they are claimed by workers around the world. Someone in, say, Bangladesh goes into Pedraza’s Google calendar to find times; someone else, maybe a few continents away, in Guatemala, compiles a briefing memo about the participants. Often, in Pedraza’s case, the tasks are not strictly professional. He recently had John Keats book him an elaborate laser hair-removal procedure he’d been hoping to get. (“There was some, you know, confusion about what, uh, areas were covered by this,” he said. “Invisible just handled it for me.”) Sometimes, he has John Keats trawl through his first- and second-degree connections on LinkedIn for contacts who might be interested in Invisible, and begin corresponding with them from his e-mail account, under his name. Some express interest, and meetings are set up. Until Pedraza goes to those, the whole process churns on like a software update in the background of his life. He likes to sign his e-mails (or someone does) “Efficiently yours.”


newyorker--2020-11-30--The Treasure in Frank Zappa’s Secret Subterranean Vault

Alex Winter ’ s latest documentary began with a deceptively simple question , one that came up in a brainstorming session with his producer , Glen Zipper : Why hasn ’ t somebody made an authorized movie about Frank Zappa ?
Seeking an explanation , Winter contacted Ahmet Zappa , one of the late musician ’ s children .
The short answer , Ahmet told him , was Gail , the mother of Ahmet and the three other Zappa kids : Moon , Dweezil , and Diva .
During Frank ’ s life ( 1940-93 ) , Gail helped manage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ label and a home recording studio that Frank called the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen .
After his death , from prostate cancer , Gail closely guarded his copyrights and legacy , as well as access to a legendary vault , rumored to exist beneath the Zappa family home , in Laurel Canyon .
It held music that had never been released , drawings , videos , and Frank ’ s Stan Brakhage-style home movies .
Ahmet , forty-six , joined Winter , fifty-five , on a recent Zoom call to discuss the film @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Rodan , Godzilla ’ s flying frenemy and one of Ahmet ’ s middle names , was visible behind him .
( It was a gift from his buddy Johnny Ramone , who “ liked that I was named after a rubber monster , ” Ahmet said . )
He recalled that , when Winter approached him , “ I said , ‘ Look , we ’ ve gone through multiple directors who tried to get this done.
’ ” Gail had shut them all down .
“ ‘ I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but , I ’ ve got to say , my mother is a vibey , spiritual , super-smart person with a point of view.
’ ” “ I was scared of her before I ever walked into her house , ” Winter said .
But they met , they vibed , and Winter pitched .
He didn ’ t want to make a film about Zappa the rock god , whose epic shirtless guitar solos are readily available on YouTube .
He was interested in Zappa as a culture warrior in the Lenny @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a toilet in London ’ s Royal Garden Hotel in 1967 , the hero of free expression who was fêted in the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution .
The film ’ s main focus , Winter told Gail , would be Zappa the avant-garde composer , whose little-known orchestral music is sometimes ranked among works by Charles Ives , Edgard Varèse , and other seminal twentieth-century artists .
“ That ’ s how Alex got the movie , ” Ahmet said .
“ That was the thing Gail cared about.
” Gail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Winter ’ s acting career—he plays Bill to Keanu Reeves ’ s Ted in the “ Bill & Ted ” series—he ’ s made music videos and short rock bios , which led to two documentaries , “ Downloaded ” and “ Deep Web.
” In the course of interviewing rock stars , “ I ’ d heard a lot of bullshit spun , ” he said , and he assumed that the Zappa vault was similarly mythic .
“ Gail said , ‘ No , there ’ s literally a vault under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there , and it was like the end of ‘ Citizen Kane.
’ Filled floor to ceiling with media from his birth all the way till , like , yesterday.
” He was overwhelmed , and then cowed .
How to portray a man who began as the Dionysian leader of a Dada-esque band , the Mothers of Invention , and became a First Amendment advocate with a suit and tie and a haircut ( at least he kept the mustache ) , testifying in Washington against Tipper Gore ’ s call for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John Lofton on CNN ’ s “ Crossfire ” ?
Before Winter could start making use of the archived material , some of it had to be preserved and digitized ; the footage was deteriorating rapidly .
The filmmakers launched a Kickstarter campaign , which raised $ 1.2 million , a record amount for a documentary .
“ We said to the fans , ‘ We could take some of the money we raised for the doc , or we could take all of it and put it toward preserving the stuff in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ And they said , ‘ Look , we love you , but we ’ re here for Frank .
Please preserve the media in the vault.
’ ” Then , in 2015 , Gail died .
Ahmet and Diva had a falling-out with Dweezil and Moon over the estate and the use of the Zappa name .
The Laurel Canyon property was put up for sale , and Lady Gaga bought the house , the Muffin Kitchen , and the now empty vault , for $ 5.25 million .
Restoring the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and involved more than fifty specialists .
After Winter finished the documentary , he made the latest “ Bill & Ted ” installment , in which the eighties slackers are the fathers of two brainy and much cooler daughters .
Six years after the fateful brainstorm , Winter ’ s film , distributed by Magnolia Pictures , is in theatres and streaming online .
According to Ahmet , Gail would have loved it .
What about Bill and Ted ?
“ I think that Zappa might be lost on them , ” Winter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not be lost on their daughters.
” ♦

Frank Zappa Illustration by João Fazenda
Alex Winter’s latest documentary began with a deceptively simple question, one that came up in a brainstorming session with his producer, Glen Zipper: Why hasn’t somebody made an authorized movie about Frank Zappa? Seeking an explanation, Winter contacted Ahmet Zappa, one of the late musician’s children. The short answer, Ahmet told him, was Gail, the mother of Ahmet and the three other Zappa kids: Moon, Dweezil, and Diva. During Frank’s life (1940-93), Gail helped manage his business affairs, including an indie label and a home recording studio that Frank called the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen. After his death, from prostate cancer, Gail closely guarded his copyrights and legacy, as well as access to a legendary vault, rumored to exist beneath the Zappa family home, in Laurel Canyon. It held music that had never been released, drawings, videos, and Frank’s Stan Brakhage-style home movies.
Ahmet, forty-six, joined Winter, fifty-five, on a recent Zoom call to discuss the film, called “Zappa.” A poster of Rodan, Godzilla’s flying frenemy and one of Ahmet’s middle names, was visible behind him. (It was a gift from his buddy Johnny Ramone, who “liked that I was named after a rubber monster,” Ahmet said.) He recalled that, when Winter approached him, “I said, ‘Look, we’ve gone through multiple directors who tried to get this done.’ ” Gail had shut them all down. “ ‘I’m totally happy to make the introduction, but, I’ve got to say, my mother is a vibey, spiritual, super-smart person with a point of view.’ ”
“I was scared of her before I ever walked into her house,” Winter said. But they met, they vibed, and Winter pitched. He didn’t want to make a film about Zappa the rock god, whose epic shirtless guitar solos are readily available on YouTube. He was interested in Zappa as a culture warrior in the Lenny Bruce/Richard Pryor tradition—the icon photographed naked on a toilet in London’s Royal Garden Hotel in 1967, the hero of free expression who was fêted in the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution. The film’s main focus, Winter told Gail, would be Zappa the avant-garde composer, whose little-known orchestral music is sometimes ranked among works by Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse, and other seminal twentieth-century artists.
“That’s how Alex got the movie,” Ahmet said. “That was the thing Gail cared about.”
“You know times are tough when a rugged voice saying ‘We’re all in this together’ dubbed over footage of an S.U.V. snaking down a mountain road is comforting.” Cartoon by Lila Ash Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Gail mentioned the vault. During breaks in Winter’s acting career—he plays Bill to Keanu Reeves’s Ted in the “Bill & Ted” series—he’s made music videos and short rock bios, which led to two documentaries, “Downloaded” and “Deep Web.” In the course of interviewing rock stars, “I’d heard a lot of bullshit spun,” he said, and he assumed that the Zappa vault was similarly mythic. “Gail said, ‘No, there’s literally a vault under the house.’ They took me down there, and it was like the end of ‘Citizen Kane.’ Filled floor to ceiling with media from his birth all the way till, like, yesterday.” He was overwhelmed, and then cowed. How to portray a man who began as the Dionysian leader of a Dada-esque band, the Mothers of Invention, and became a First Amendment advocate with a suit and tie and a haircut (at least he kept the mustache), testifying in Washington against Tipper Gore’s call for warning labels on albums and arguing with John Lofton on CNN’s “Crossfire”?
Before Winter could start making use of the archived material, some of it had to be preserved and digitized; the footage was deteriorating rapidly. The filmmakers launched a Kickstarter campaign, which raised $1.2 million, a record amount for a documentary. “We said to the fans, ‘We could take some of the money we raised for the doc, or we could take all of it and put it toward preserving the stuff in the vault,’ ” Winter explained. “And they said, ‘Look, we love you, but we’re here for Frank. Please preserve the media in the vault.’ ”
Then, in 2015, Gail died. Ahmet and Diva had a falling-out with Dweezil and Moon over the estate and the use of the Zappa name. The Laurel Canyon property was put up for sale, and Lady Gaga bought the house, the Muffin Kitchen, and the now empty vault, for $5.25 million. Restoring the materials from the vault took two years and involved more than fifty specialists. After Winter finished the documentary, he made the latest “Bill & Ted” installment, in which the eighties slackers are the fathers of two brainy and much cooler daughters.
Six years after the fateful brainstorm, Winter’s film, distributed by Magnolia Pictures, is in theatres and streaming online. According to Ahmet, Gail would have loved it. What about Bill and Ted? “I think that Zappa might be lost on them,” Winter said. However, “he would not be lost on their daughters.” ♦


newyorker--2020-11-30--“Roadkill” Offers the Fantasy of Politics as Usual

On Election Night , I was on the live-streaming Web site Twitch , helping a French friend try to make sense of the incomprehensible for an audience of his compatriots .
It was two in the morning across the Atlantic , then three , then four , and still viewers stayed tuned .
“ This is better than a TV show , ” one commented , as we puzzled through various disaster scenarios that seemed equal parts outlandish and plausible .
Suspense , villainy , pettiness , infighting , gimmicks galore : the reality-TV politics of our reality-TV President have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attempt at a coup to dripping-hair-dye debacle .
Spare a sympathetic thought for television writers .
How can they hope to compete with the present ?
Such is the challenge faced by “ Roadkill ” ( on PBS ’ s “ Masterpiece ” ) , David Hare ’ s new political thriller in four episodes .
Watching it now is like chasing the double tequila shot of the real with a milky cup of tea .
The show is set in England , which Americans continue to imagine as a land of escapist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contrary .
“ You have to forget about Brexit , ” the Tory transport minister , Peter Laurence ( Hugh Laurie ) , tells a caller to the radio talk show on which he regularly bloviates .
“ It was a national trauma , as you call it , but it ’ s a trauma we came through .
It ’ s over.
” That reassuring fantasy of politics as usual is one that “ Roadkill , ” with its small-bore scandals and Victorian twists , faithfully upholds .
It ’ s risk-averse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of risk—comfortingly old-fashioned , at the cost of staying one cautious step behind the present that it aims to represent .
As the show opens , Peter has just had a triumph in court .
After a newspaper accused him of profiting from his government position—by consulting for an American lobbying group when he was a junior minister of health—he sued for libel and won .
Much like Brett Kavanaugh ’ s confirmation hearing , the Laurence case seems to have come down to a question of calendars ; Charmian Pepper ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrote a story placing Peter at the lobbyists ’ Washington , D.C. , headquarters , was forced to recant , after Peter ’ s team presented an official diary scrubbed of the offending visit .
“ They ’ re always the best cases , ” Peter ’ s young barrister ( Pippa Bennett-Warner ) brashly tells a colleague , as the courthouse crowd spills onto the sidewalk around her .
“ The ones you win when you suspect your client is guilty as hell.
” Peter ’ s victory , and the scandal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plot plate that Hare sets spinning .
Soon his trusty , bumbling aide , Duncan Knock ( Iain De Caestecker ) , spirits him to Shephill , a women ’ s prison , where an inmate ( Gbemisola Ikumelo ) insists that she must talk to him about his daughter .
The daughter who doesn ’ t speak to him , or the other one ?
Peter asks .
No , a third , the heretofore unknown offspring of a youth spent in drunken philandering .
Peter has just enough time to take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rush off to 10 Downing Street , where he squirms before Dawn Ellison ( Helen McCrory ) , the fearsome Prime Minister , who looks like a dyed tulip in her form-fitting powder-blue suit and has the air of a cat about to pounce .
A Cabinet reshuffle is planned ; Dawn dangles the possibility of a major promotion , and Peter , blinded by ego , steps obligingly into her trap .
“ Roadkill ” is a stylish show , with a handsome title sequence that calls to mind the great Saul @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Harry Escott , that casts a playful , mysterious mood .
We get lots of dark wood , dark suits , and dark corporate cars that glide , unimpeded , down glistening gray streets .
Much of the show ’ s appeal lies in its embrace of the familiar .
The gruff , macho newspaper editor ( Pip Torrens ) ; the fragile , neglected wife ( Saskia Reeves ) ; the chafing , unsatisfied mistress ( Sidse Babett Knudsen ) —we know them well .
But Hare , dazzled by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t keep himself from loading up his tray .
It ’ s not enough for Peter ’ s illegitimate child to claim his attention after twenty-odd years ; his bratty daughter Lily ( Millie Brady ) , resentful and entitled , must be photographed by the tabloids snorting cocaine .
Charmian Pepper , her name taken straight from Dickens ’ s reject pile , is given an alcohol problem to underscore her instability .
( One depressing rule of thumb for this sort of show is that the diligent journalist working @ @ @ @ @ @ @ truth must be a young woman , the better to be objectified by her bosses and prove her worth as a go-getter even as she trades on her sex appeal .
A second depressing rule of thumb is that she must be disposed of , preferably by means of a blunt collision—recalling the hurtling subway train that put an end to Kate Mara in “ House of Cards.
” ) We get riots in prisons , vodka glasses thrown at heads in the heat of domestic anger , and vague , faceless foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yemen , ” a conniving politico tells the Prime Minister .
Isn ’ t it always ?
What kept me watching was Laurie , who floats through the action with a bemused , obliging look on his wonderful lean , lipless face .
There is something gentle and appeasing about his Peter , who prides himself on his working-class background , and is susceptible to maverick pricks of conscience—he alienates his party , and seemingly all of Britain , by championing prison reform .
( “ The British like locking people up .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” the Prime Minister tells him—a line that makes an American feel a little less alone . )
In the street , Peter is accosted by selfie-seekers , but at home—where Hare , a seasoned purveyor of female melodrama , unsubtly surrounds him with a pack of women who peck and nag—he is merely baffled , wondering what he ’ s doing neck-deep in this mess .
Political reputations are made to be won and lost .
Private disgrace is harder to grapple with , now that it can be turned public with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violation of digital exposure is the subject of “ I Hate Suzie ” ( on HBO Max ) , a destabilizing , off-kilter show created by Billie Piper and Lucy Prebble .
Piper stars as Suzie Pickles , an actress who , like Piper herself , found teen-age stardom as a singer and is now entering the career descent of early middle age .
( Action shows in which she runs from Nazi zombies are her bread and butter . )
She lives in a cozy house in the English countryside with her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and their young son , who is deaf .
After her phone is hacked , nude photos of her are splashed all over the Web , in flagrante delicto with a man whose cob is visibly not Cob ’ s .
“ There is a penis of color in the pictures , ” she is informed by an indignant audience member at a sci-fi convention—an absurdist phrase , at once respectful and rude , that typifies the show ’ s tart tonal mix .
“ I Hate Suzie ” has a strange @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a surprising undercurrent of sweetness , like Scandinavian licorice .
At first , I was repulsed .
Then dislike turned to craving .
Each of the show ’ s eight episodes is named for a stage in coping with trauma : we start out with “ Shock , ” “ Denial , ” and “ Fear , ” before progressing through “ Shame , ” “ Bargaining , ” and “ Guilt ” to “ Anger ” and “ Acceptance , ” but the artificiality of that structure is undercut by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Berated by the furious , wounded Cob , Suzie goes off the rails .
Woozy camerawork and screeching , witchy strings take us into a mind altered by drugs , alcohol , and anxiety , but it is Piper ’ s raw , comical performance as a not so smart woman on the verge that stands out .
Suzie mumbles , makes excuses , and tells incompetent lies as the camera shows her aging face in merciless closeup ; she is a creature of haphazard instinct and ruinous libido .
One excellent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , flashing through an array of Suzie ’ s sexual fantasies as she and her savvy manager , Naomi ( Leila Farzad ) , analyze them together like critics at a screening .
“ We ’ ll sort it out like grownups , like in a Woody Allen film , ” her oblivious lover ( Nathaniel Martello-White ) tells her , a reminder that adulthood is itself a performance , however derivative and imitative , that Suzie , like the rest of us , must make her own .
♦

On Election Night, I was on the live-streaming Web site Twitch, helping a French friend try to make sense of the incomprehensible for an audience of his compatriots. It was two in the morning across the Atlantic, then three, then four, and still viewers stayed tuned. “This is better than a TV show,” one commented, as we puzzled through various disaster scenarios that seemed equal parts outlandish and plausible. Suspense, villainy, pettiness, infighting, gimmicks galore: the reality-TV politics of our reality-TV President have had us mercilessly hooked, from slow-rolling attempt at a coup to dripping-hair-dye debacle. Spare a sympathetic thought for television writers. How can they hope to compete with the present?
Such is the challenge faced by “Roadkill” (on PBS’s “Masterpiece”), David Hare’s new political thriller in four episodes. Watching it now is like chasing the double tequila shot of the real with a milky cup of tea. The show is set in England, which Americans continue to imagine as a land of escapist sanity, despite recent evidence to the contrary. “You have to forget about Brexit,” the Tory transport minister, Peter Laurence (Hugh Laurie), tells a caller to the radio talk show on which he regularly bloviates. “It was a national trauma, as you call it, but it’s a trauma we came through. It’s over.” That reassuring fantasy of politics as usual is one that “Roadkill,” with its small-bore scandals and Victorian twists, faithfully upholds. It’s risk-averse in a way that is itself a kind of risk—comfortingly old-fashioned, at the cost of staying one cautious step behind the present that it aims to represent.
As the show opens, Peter has just had a triumph in court. After a newspaper accused him of profiting from his government position—by consulting for an American lobbying group when he was a junior minister of health—he sued for libel and won. Much like Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, the Laurence case seems to have come down to a question of calendars; Charmian Pepper (Sarah Greene), the journalist who wrote a story placing Peter at the lobbyists’ Washington, D.C., headquarters, was forced to recant, after Peter’s team presented an official diary scrubbed of the offending visit. “They’re always the best cases,” Peter’s young barrister (Pippa Bennett-Warner) brashly tells a colleague, as the courthouse crowd spills onto the sidewalk around her. “The ones you win when you suspect your client is guilty as hell.”
Peter’s victory, and the scandal it conceals, is merely the first plot plate that Hare sets spinning. Soon his trusty, bumbling aide, Duncan Knock (Iain De Caestecker), spirits him to Shephill, a women’s prison, where an inmate (Gbemisola Ikumelo) insists that she must talk to him about his daughter. The daughter who doesn’t speak to him, or the other one? Peter asks. No, a third, the heretofore unknown offspring of a youth spent in drunken philandering. Peter has just enough time to take in this dubious revelation before he must rush off to 10 Downing Street, where he squirms before Dawn Ellison (Helen McCrory), the fearsome Prime Minister, who looks like a dyed tulip in her form-fitting powder-blue suit and has the air of a cat about to pounce. A Cabinet reshuffle is planned; Dawn dangles the possibility of a major promotion, and Peter, blinded by ego, steps obligingly into her trap.
“Roadkill” is a stylish show, with a handsome title sequence that calls to mind the great Saul Bass, and a traipsing score, by Harry Escott, that casts a playful, mysterious mood. We get lots of dark wood, dark suits, and dark corporate cars that glide, unimpeded, down glistening gray streets. Much of the show’s appeal lies in its embrace of the familiar. The gruff, macho newspaper editor (Pip Torrens); the fragile, neglected wife (Saskia Reeves); the chafing, unsatisfied mistress (Sidse Babett Knudsen)—we know them well. But Hare, dazzled by the buffet of tropes available to him, can’t keep himself from loading up his tray. It’s not enough for Peter’s illegitimate child to claim his attention after twenty-odd years; his bratty daughter Lily (Millie Brady), resentful and entitled, must be photographed by the tabloids snorting cocaine. Charmian Pepper, her name taken straight from Dickens’s reject pile, is given an alcohol problem to underscore her instability. (One depressing rule of thumb for this sort of show is that the diligent journalist working to uncover the politician’s dirty truth must be a young woman, the better to be objectified by her bosses and prove her worth as a go-getter even as she trades on her sex appeal. A second depressing rule of thumb is that she must be disposed of, preferably by means of a blunt collision—recalling the hurtling subway train that put an end to Kate Mara in “House of Cards.”) We get riots in prisons, vodka glasses thrown at heads in the heat of domestic anger, and vague, faceless foreign calamities. “It’s about Yemen,” a conniving politico tells the Prime Minister. Isn’t it always?
What kept me watching was Laurie, who floats through the action with a bemused, obliging look on his wonderful lean, lipless face. There is something gentle and appeasing about his Peter, who prides himself on his working-class background, and is susceptible to maverick pricks of conscience—he alienates his party, and seemingly all of Britain, by championing prison reform. (“The British like locking people up. It’s in our character,” the Prime Minister tells him—a line that makes an American feel a little less alone.) In the street, Peter is accosted by selfie-seekers, but at home—where Hare, a seasoned purveyor of female melodrama, unsubtly surrounds him with a pack of women who peck and nag—he is merely baffled, wondering what he’s doing neck-deep in this mess.
Political reputations are made to be won and lost. Private disgrace is harder to grapple with, now that it can be turned public with a click and a swipe. The violation of digital exposure is the subject of “I Hate Suzie” (on HBO Max), a destabilizing, off-kilter show created by Billie Piper and Lucy Prebble. Piper stars as Suzie Pickles, an actress who, like Piper herself, found teen-age stardom as a singer and is now entering the career descent of early middle age. (Action shows in which she runs from Nazi zombies are her bread and butter.) She lives in a cozy house in the English countryside with her husband, Cob (Daniel Ings), and their young son, who is deaf. After her phone is hacked, nude photos of her are splashed all over the Web, in flagrante delicto with a man whose cob is visibly not Cob’s. “There is a penis of color in the pictures,” she is informed by an indignant audience member at a sci-fi convention—an absurdist phrase, at once respectful and rude, that typifies the show’s tart tonal mix.
“I Hate Suzie” has a strange, strong flavor, a briny funk with a surprising undercurrent of sweetness, like Scandinavian licorice. At first, I was repulsed. Then dislike turned to craving. Each of the show’s eight episodes is named for a stage in coping with trauma: we start out with “Shock,” “Denial,” and “Fear,” before progressing through “Shame,” “Bargaining,” and “Guilt” to “Anger” and “Acceptance,” but the artificiality of that structure is undercut by the show’s genuine, exploratory weirdness.
Berated by the furious, wounded Cob, Suzie goes off the rails. Woozy camerawork and screeching, witchy strings take us into a mind altered by drugs, alcohol, and anxiety, but it is Piper’s raw, comical performance as a not so smart woman on the verge that stands out. Suzie mumbles, makes excuses, and tells incompetent lies as the camera shows her aging face in merciless closeup; she is a creature of haphazard instinct and ruinous libido. One excellent early episode looks at desire from within, flashing through an array of Suzie’s sexual fantasies as she and her savvy manager, Naomi (Leila Farzad), analyze them together like critics at a screening. “We’ll sort it out like grownups, like in a Woody Allen film,” her oblivious lover (Nathaniel Martello-White) tells her, a reminder that adulthood is itself a performance, however derivative and imitative, that Suzie, like the rest of us, must make her own. ♦