newyorker--2020-10-18--Sunday Reading: The Long Con

Sunday Reading: The Long Con

In 1939 , Janet Flanner , The New Yorker ’ s correspondent in Paris , wrote a profile of Marthe Hanau , a notorious con woman who defrauded the French financial markets during the nineteen-twenties and thirties .
Hanau , Flanner observed , “ was the greatest , brainiest , most convincing and comical confidence woman France ever produced.
” Her outlandish actions helped make Hanau a cause célèbre , even after it was revealed that she had defrauded investors of a hundred and fifty-five million francs ( more than seventy million contemporary dollars ) .
Her exploits were so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ helped spur the rise of the Popular Front and its attendant socialist reforms in France .
This week , we ’ re bringing you a selection of pieces on hoaxes , con artists , and infamous schemes .
In “ The Great American Quiz-Show Scandal , ” from 1959 , John Updike contemplates the cultural significance of the TV game-show scandals of the nineteen-fifties .
( “ We sat there , a nation of suckers , for years .
It ’ s marvellous how long it went on , considering the number of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to keep the cameras whirring.
” ) In “ The Runner , ” David Samuels considers the life of a twenty-nine-year-old drifter who transformed himself into an Ivy League track star .
Patrick Radden Keefe divulges how one man was able to amass an incredible collection of rare wines , and David Grann profiles Frédéric Bourdin , a French serial impostor who assumed numerous false identities .
In “ The Perils of Pearl and Olga , ” from 1953 , St. Clair McKelway chronicles how a former Manhattan salesgirl found herself embroiled in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Friend Game , ” Lauren Collins reports on an online hoax that led to a teen-ager ’ s tragic suicide .
In “ Crowded House , ” Tad Friend examines how a Chelsea photographer created an elaborate apartment-listing scheme .
( “ They couldn ’ t all rent the apartment , of course .
Unless they could !
” ) Elizabeth Kolbert explores the origins of the “ birther movement ” and other popular conspiracy theories , and Alec Wilkinson writes about a prolific art collector who donated dozens of paintings of mysterious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Finally , in “ Pedigree , ” Walter Kirn reveals how he was duped by a Rockefeller impostor .
We hope that the tales in this collection add a measure of suspense and adventure to your weekend .
Marthe Hanau , the greatest , brainiest , most convincing and comical confidence woman France ever produced .
We sat there , a nation of suckers , for years .
He woke up one morning and decided to become someone else .
How could one collector find so much rare fine wine ?
The many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complete strangers—until they were drawn into an enraged ex-husband ’ s terrifying plot .
Behind the online hoax that led to a girl ’ s suicide .
They thought that they ’ d found the perfect apartment .
They weren ’ t alone .
Rumors in an age of unreason .
Who was the mysterious man donating all the valuable art ?
My Rockefeller friend was neither a Rockefeller nor a friend .
Why was I taken in ?

In 1939, Janet Flanner, The New Yorker’s correspondent in Paris, wrote a profile of Marthe Hanau, a notorious con woman who defrauded the French financial markets during the nineteen-twenties and thirties. Hanau, Flanner observed, “was the greatest, brainiest, most convincing and comical confidence woman France ever produced.” Her outlandish actions helped make Hanau a cause célèbre, even after it was revealed that she had defrauded investors of a hundred and fifty-five million francs (more than seventy million contemporary dollars). Her exploits were so egregious, Flanner notes, that they helped spur the rise of the Popular Front and its attendant socialist reforms in France. This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces on hoaxes, con artists, and infamous schemes. In “The Great American Quiz-Show Scandal,” from 1959, John Updike contemplates the cultural significance of the TV game-show scandals of the nineteen-fifties. (“We sat there, a nation of suckers, for years. It’s marvellous how long it went on, considering the number of normal Americans who had to be corrupted to keep the cameras whirring.”) In “The Runner,” David Samuels considers the life of a twenty-nine-year-old drifter who transformed himself into an Ivy League track star. Patrick Radden Keefe divulges how one man was able to amass an incredible collection of rare wines, and David Grann profiles Frédéric Bourdin, a French serial impostor who assumed numerous false identities. In “The Perils of Pearl and Olga,” from 1953, St. Clair McKelway chronicles how a former Manhattan salesgirl found herself embroiled in a bizarre true-crime case. In “Friend Game,” Lauren Collins reports on an online hoax that led to a teen-ager’s tragic suicide. In “Crowded House,” Tad Friend examines how a Chelsea photographer created an elaborate apartment-listing scheme. (“They couldn’t all rent the apartment, of course. Unless they could!”) Elizabeth Kolbert explores the origins of the “birther movement” and other popular conspiracy theories, and Alec Wilkinson writes about a prolific art collector who donated dozens of paintings of mysterious provenance to a number of museums. Finally, in “Pedigree,” Walter Kirn reveals how he was duped by a Rockefeller impostor. We hope that the tales in this collection add a measure of suspense and adventure to your weekend.
— Erin Overbey, archive editor
Photograph from Keystone-France / Getty
Marthe Hanau, the greatest, brainiest, most convincing and comical confidence woman France ever produced.
We sat there, a nation of suckers, for years.
He woke up one morning and decided to become someone else.
Illustration by Benoît van Innis
How could one collector find so much rare fine wine?
The many lives of Frédéric Bourdin.
Photograph by Anthony Camerano / AP
They were complete strangers—until they were drawn into an enraged ex-husband’s terrifying plot.
Illustration by Laurent Cilluffo
Behind the online hoax that led to a girl’s suicide.
They thought that they’d found the perfect apartment. They weren’t alone.
Illustration by Eric Palma
Rumors in an age of unreason.
Who was the mysterious man donating all the valuable art?
My Rockefeller friend was neither a Rockefeller nor a friend. Why was I taken in?


newyorker--2020-10-18--Amy Coney Barrett’s Silence Is an Expression of Extremism

On the second day of Amy Coney Barrett ’ s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for a seat on the Supreme Court , she and Cory Booker had an exchange that indicated that both the Court and the country are nearing a precarious point .
Did she believe , Booker asked , that “ every President should make a commitment , unequivocally and resolutely , to the peaceful transfer of power ?
” Barrett raised her eyebrows , and chose her words carefully .
“ Well , Senator , that seems to me to be pulling me in a little bit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has said that he would not peacefully leave office , ” she said .
“ And so , to the extent that this is a political controversy right now , as a judge , I want to stay out of it and I don ’ t want to express a view.
” A President should absolutely make such a commitment ; it ’ s in the job description .
Yet , even when Booker reminded Barrett , who has described herself as an originalist and a textualist , of the importance of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the most she would allow was that America had been lucky that “ disappointed voters ” had always accepted election results .
To say that a disappointed President might have an obligation to do so was apparently too far for her to go .
What Barrett did offer was a study in the extent to which not giving an answer can be an expression of extremism .
Her demurrals were more , even , than those of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh , in their hearings , a measure of how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of our political culture .
It ’ s no surprise that the hearings would be characterized by some level of evasiveness : no nominee , particularly these days , wants to say something that will rally the opposition .
Barrett , as a member of Notre Dame ’ s University Faculty for Life , had signed an ad that called Roe v. Wade , the 1973 Supreme Court decision affirming a woman ’ s reproductive rights , “ infamous.
” But , in the hearings , she asserted that she really couldn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might be—the decision was controversial , and a case that threatened to overturn it might someday come before her .
She attributed the principle that nominees should not comment on potential cases to Ruth Bader Ginsburg .
But that principle doesn ’ t mean that the confirmation process should be a charade of non-answers ; Ginsburg , in her own hearings , in 1993 , acknowledged that she was pro-choice .
Barrett ’ s hearings weren ’ t just the latest reminder that the tiresome confirmation process is due for an overhaul ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , aspects of the evasions in her testimony .
The first was how many established principles she considers to be still open to debate .
When Kamala Harris pressed her on the reality of climate change , and its consequences , Barrett protested that the Senator was “ eliciting an opinion from me that is on a very contentious matter of public debate , ” adding , “ and I will not do that.
” More startling , Barrett seemed to suggest that core elements of our electoral democracy are up for grabs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Constitution gives the President the power “ to unilaterally delay a general election.
” The answer is no , but Barrett replied that she didn ’ t want to give “ off-the-cuff answers ” —that would make her a “ legal pundit.
” The scenarios that Barrett declined to address were not wild hypotheticals that the Democrats had dreamed up in an attempt to trick her .
Donald Trump has repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses .
He has also mooted delaying the election , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t trust , and said that he wants this Court seat filled quickly , so that his appointee can be on the panel deciding any election disputes .
What he ’ s proposing is a clear attack on American democracy and the rule of law .
Barrett , though , spoke as though the fact that the President tweets about something means that it is within the realm of reasonable constitutional interpretation .
What she conveyed throughout was not so much conscientiousness as a combination of deference to , alignment with , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And that was the second warning that emerged from the hearings : none of the Republican senators in the room seemed shocked at what the President deems possible , or interested in hearing what the Court ’ s role might be in countering any President who abuses his power .
Instead , they echoed Trump ’ s intimations of fraudulent voting , media lies , and left-wing plots .
Ted Cruz claimed that many Democrats had made a decision “ to abandon democracy.
” Thom Tillis said it was understandable that gun sales @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats , “ including people on this committee , ” had made Americans fear for their safety .
Josh Hawley appeared to think that the real problem was Hunter Biden .
It can be hard to tell whether the Republicans are extremists or opportunists , or have just retreated into passivity .
In one of the most notable exchanges in the hearings , the Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy tried , unsuccessfully , to get a straight answer from Barrett on whether a President could refuse to comply with a Supreme Court order , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ a threat to our constitutional system of checks and balances.
” A President defying the Supreme Court is the definition of a constitutional crisis , but Barrett would say only that the Court “ can ’ t control ” a renegade President .
The Constitution , though , offers a clear course of action in such an event : impeachment .
It seemed odd that Barrett , who spent much of her time commending committee members for their power as legislators—saying , repeatedly , “ That ’ s your job ” —didn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often adopt a posture of “ restraint ” that masks their tendency to be true activists , which is what Barrett was when , in a dissent last year , she called Wisconsin laws limiting gun purchases by felons unconstitutional .
Similarly , in suggesting that Justices , when faced with a President who rejects election results—or their authority—would just dither or shrug , she was making a radical statement , not a restrained one .
Perhaps Barrett believes that such a crisis will never come to pass , and honestly doesn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one did .
In which case it might be prudent for her to begin thinking about how she would respond .
The full Senate is on track to vote on her nomination as soon as October 26th .
Eight days later , Donald Trump will be watching the election results come in , and he may not like what he sees .
♦

Illustration by João Fazenda
On the second day of Amy Coney Barrett’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for a seat on the Supreme Court, she and Cory Booker had an exchange that indicated that both the Court and the country are nearing a precarious point. Did she believe, Booker asked, that “every President should make a commitment, unequivocally and resolutely, to the peaceful transfer of power?” Barrett raised her eyebrows, and chose her words carefully. “Well, Senator, that seems to me to be pulling me in a little bit into this question of whether the President has said that he would not peacefully leave office,” she said. “And so, to the extent that this is a political controversy right now, as a judge, I want to stay out of it and I don’t want to express a view.”
A President should absolutely make such a commitment; it’s in the job description. Yet, even when Booker reminded Barrett, who has described herself as an originalist and a textualist, of the importance of the peaceful transition of power to the Founders, the most she would allow was that America had been lucky that “disappointed voters” had always accepted election results. To say that a disappointed President might have an obligation to do so was apparently too far for her to go. What Barrett did offer was a study in the extent to which not giving an answer can be an expression of extremism. Her demurrals were more, even, than those of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, in their hearings, a measure of how thoroughly President Trump has moved the margins of our political culture.
It’s no surprise that the hearings would be characterized by some level of evasiveness: no nominee, particularly these days, wants to say something that will rally the opposition. Barrett, as a member of Notre Dame’s University Faculty for Life, had signed an ad that called Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision affirming a woman’s reproductive rights, “infamous.” But, in the hearings, she asserted that she really couldn’t say what her position on Roe might be—the decision was controversial, and a case that threatened to overturn it might someday come before her. She attributed the principle that nominees should not comment on potential cases to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But that principle doesn’t mean that the confirmation process should be a charade of non-answers; Ginsburg, in her own hearings, in 1993, acknowledged that she was pro-choice.
Barrett’s hearings weren’t just the latest reminder that the tiresome confirmation process is due for an overhaul; there were two novel, and alarming, aspects of the evasions in her testimony. The first was how many established principles she considers to be still open to debate. When Kamala Harris pressed her on the reality of climate change, and its consequences, Barrett protested that the Senator was “eliciting an opinion from me that is on a very contentious matter of public debate,” adding, “and I will not do that.” More startling, Barrett seemed to suggest that core elements of our electoral democracy are up for grabs. Dianne Feinstein asked her if the Constitution gives the President the power “to unilaterally delay a general election.” The answer is no, but Barrett replied that she didn’t want to give “off-the-cuff answers”—that would make her a “legal pundit.”
The scenarios that Barrett declined to address were not wild hypotheticals that the Democrats had dreamed up in an attempt to trick her. Donald Trump has repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses. He has also mooted delaying the election, or maybe excluding ballot tallies he doesn’t trust, and said that he wants this Court seat filled quickly, so that his appointee can be on the panel deciding any election disputes. What he’s proposing is a clear attack on American democracy and the rule of law. Barrett, though, spoke as though the fact that the President tweets about something means that it is within the realm of reasonable constitutional interpretation. What she conveyed throughout was not so much conscientiousness as a combination of deference to, alignment with, and, perhaps, fear of Trump.
And that was the second warning that emerged from the hearings: none of the Republican senators in the room seemed shocked at what the President deems possible, or interested in hearing what the Court’s role might be in countering any President who abuses his power. Instead, they echoed Trump’s intimations of fraudulent voting, media lies, and left-wing plots. Ted Cruz claimed that many Democrats had made a decision “to abandon democracy.” Thom Tillis said it was understandable that gun sales had increased in recent months, because Democrats, “including people on this committee,” had made Americans fear for their safety. Josh Hawley appeared to think that the real problem was Hunter Biden. It can be hard to tell whether the Republicans are extremists or opportunists, or have just retreated into passivity.
In one of the most notable exchanges in the hearings, the Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy tried, unsuccessfully, to get a straight answer from Barrett on whether a President could refuse to comply with a Supreme Court order, and whether such a refusal would be “a threat to our constitutional system of checks and balances.” A President defying the Supreme Court is the definition of a constitutional crisis, but Barrett would say only that the Court “can’t control” a renegade President. The Constitution, though, offers a clear course of action in such an event: impeachment. It seemed odd that Barrett, who spent much of her time commending committee members for their power as legislators—saying, repeatedly, “That’s your job”—didn’t emphasize that point.
Textualists often adopt a posture of “restraint” that masks their tendency to be true activists, which is what Barrett was when, in a dissent last year, she called Wisconsin laws limiting gun purchases by felons unconstitutional. Similarly, in suggesting that Justices, when faced with a President who rejects election results—or their authority—would just dither or shrug, she was making a radical statement, not a restrained one. Perhaps Barrett believes that such a crisis will never come to pass, and honestly doesn’t know what she would do if one did. In which case it might be prudent for her to begin thinking about how she would respond. The full Senate is on track to vote on her nomination as soon as October 26th. Eight days later, Donald Trump will be watching the election results come in, and he may not like what he sees. ♦


newyorker--2020-10-18--Alexey Navalny Has the Proof of His Poisoning

Navalny was one of the leaders of the mass protests against rigged elections that erupted in Russia in 2011 and 2012 .
Many of his fellow-members of the protest coördinating council are either living in exile , like the chess champion Garry Kasparov or the prisoners ’ -rights activist Olga Romanova , or dead , like the politician Boris Nemtsov .
The Kremlin has tried to shut down Navalny and his organization through a series of court cases and arrests .
But when Navalny was jailed in 2013 , sentenced to five years on flagrantly trumped-up embezzlement charges , thousands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When he was sentenced to house arrest , Navalny refused to comply , because the Russian penal code does not allow for such a punishment ; after a few months , the authorities gave up , although his brother , Oleg , remained behind bars for years on spurious charges .
Navalny ’ s activism and reach kept expanding—he even attempted to run for President—and for a few years he seemed invincible .
( In a piece for this magazine in 2016 , I wrote , “ The strangest thing about Alexey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Moscow , still.
” ) But , on August 20th , Navalny fell ill when returning to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk .
He was in a coma for twenty-six days , most of them in a hospital in Berlin .
Analysis performed by multiple European labs shows that he was poisoned with a previously unknown version of Novichok , a deadly Russian-developed chemical agent .
Navalny regained his ability to speak , write , and make jokes within ten days of coming out of the coma , but he has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the poisoning .
He spoke with me , over Zoom , from an apartment in Berlin , on October 8th ; through the screen , it was obvious that Navalny had lost a great deal of weight , but otherwise he looked and sounded as I ’ d always remembered him .
Our conversation has been translated from Russian and condensed .
How did you know what had happened to you ?
This is the hardest part .
The moment I knew that I ’ d been poisoned was the moment I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was experiencing up until then was a kind of incomprehension .
We can understand a heart attack or a stroke , but we can not understand the effects of cholinesterase inhibitors—evolution does not prepare us for this .
You are in this strange state of losing focus , and the strangeness keeps growing .
I ’ ve compared it to being touched by a Dementor in a Harry Potter novel—you feel that life is leaving you .
Let ’ s say I touch my own hand with my finger .
My brain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it out .
But Novichok makes it not get cancelled out , so it feels like I ’ m touching my own hand a million times a second , and every cell in my body goes berserk , and the brain understands that this is the end .
Let ’ s go back a second .
You have boarded a plane from Tomsk to Moscow .
You ’ ve opened up your laptop and started watching “ Rick and Morty , ” as is your habit .
And then— I started losing focus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see you on the screen .
I understand that Kira is here in the room .
[ Kira Yarmysh , who is Navalny ’ s spokeswoman , was present during our interview ; she was also seated next to him on the Tomsk-Moscow flight . ]
I understand this , but I can not see it and focus on it .
I have the strength to point at the screen .
I see the cat who has entered the frame .
But I can ’ t grasp the concept of “ cat , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point at the cat on screen , I ’ d have a very hard time .
On the airplane , I went to the bathroom and I realized that I would not be able to leave the bathroom on my own , and this was when I knew I ’ d been poisoned .
It was so difficult to open the door .
I could see the door , I could understand everything , and I was plenty physically strong enough—I would have been able to do pushups , if only , at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to grasp the concept of pushups .
I guess if I ’ d had sudden heart pain or abdominal pain , I would have realized even faster that I was dying , because this physical experience would have been familiar to me .
But this was worse than pain .
I ’ m trying to understand what you are describing , using my own experience .
Have you ever been sedated with opiates ?
Sure , I had my appendix removed .
And last month , too , I had the experience of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nothing like it .
Some people have compared it to a panic attack .
But I think I understand what a panic attack feels like : a sense of growing anxiety .
Anxiety is a feeling you can ultimately comprehend .
I came out of the bathroom .
I could still stand upright .
I saw my seat and realized I would probably never make it that far .
I thought I should probably ask for help , but I also thought that , by this point , it would be useless .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was about to die , right there on their plane , and I lay down .
On the floor .
And then they tried to keep you awake , right ?
They were saying , “ Sir , stay with us , please don ’ t lose consciousness .
.
.
.
” But I did .
Did you have a sense of the passage of time ?
I just felt indifference .
It was clear that this was the end .
I imagine that a person , when they are dying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , This is what I haven ’ t completed , or , What will happen to my children , or , What will my wife say ?
But I was finding it so difficult to think at all .
So those awful screams that someone recorded— I don ’ t remember those .
I might have been hallucinating .
And the next thing you remember was nearly a month later ?
For a while , I was convinced that I was in the hospital and I ’ d lost my legs and was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for me .
And my wife , Yulia , and Leonid Volkov [ Navalny ’ s closest associate in his political work ] and the doctors kept telling me that I ’ d been in an accident and they ’ d make me new legs , and I shouldn ’ t worry .
Obviously , there were no such conversations .
Gradually , I started making contact with reality , in which there was Yulia and I waited for her to come every day and adjust my pillow .
But I was still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ awful hallucinations that really got to me , like I ’ m in a jail cell and the cops won ’ t let me sleep , and they keep asking me to recite the rules for being in jail , interspersed with lyrics by the [ Russian rap group ] Krovostok .
Yulia and Volkov told me that there was a prolonged period when they would sit me up , and I would just stare , and they couldn ’ t tell whether I recognized them .
As I recall , I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imagination .
Yulia hung up a small flip chart and marked every day I spent in the hospital with a heart in magic marker .
I reacted to that flip chart and looked at it , but I don ’ t remember any of that .
I do remember the horrible feeling when you can ’ t speak or write .
What do you mean ?
The doctor says , “ Do you understand that you are Alexey Navalny ?
” I do .
“ Do you remember your age ?
” I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you are currently in Berlin ?
” I knew this , though I wasn ’ t particularly interested in why I was here .
“ Can you say a word ?
” I know I have a tongue , and I have lots of words floating around in my head .
But that part of the brain where a word takes shape and you pronounce it—that wasn ’ t processing .
I couldn ’ t say a word .
This was torture .
I probably looked like the cat in that scene in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but speechless .
I can ’ t say anything and I can ’ t even get angry , because I can ’ t remember how emotions work , either .
But this didn ’ t last long—about a week .
I don ’ t remember this , either , but Yulia and Volkov have told me that when I did start talking , I addressed everyone in English .
Then I discovered that I couldn ’ t write .
They ’ d give me a piece of paper , and I realized that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a line in the correct order .
Say , “ Masha.
” I remember what the word looks like .
I know that the first letter is “ M , ” followed by an “ A.
” I start writing—the first letter that comes out is “ S. ” Then I place the second letter below it—I ’ m writing in a column .
I can see that this is totally wrong .
I cross it out .
I start over , and the same thing happens .
This scared me , so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t calm down until I was sure that I could put letters in a line and that I could write out the word I ’ m asked to write .
I don ’ t remember being unable to read—they would sometimes turn on the TV to keep me entertained , and I understood the subtitles .
What was the first word you tried to write ?
I wanted to ask for water , but I couldn ’ t come up with the word .
I asked my doctor later—after all , many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have the same experiences ?
He said that , first of all , my coma was unusually long .
Also , it was overlaid with the poisoning by Novichok , and there is nothing to compare that to .
They say the same thing about my rehabilitation : they can ’ t tell me anything , because , as far as we know , there are barely any known cases of people who survived Novichok .
[ They include the former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia , who were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ] Plus , I was poisoned with a different kind of Novichok .

Alexey Navalny is the biggest thorn in Vladimir Putin’s side. A decade ago, Navalny, as a young lawyer in Moscow, started piecing together publicly available information to document corruption and abuse of power in the Russian government. At first, he used his blog to document inflated prices in government contracts, suggesting kickbacks; he moved on to documenting real-estate holdings, luxury cars, and cash reserves that government officials had registered in the names of relatives. Navalny’s one-man project grew into the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a multimedia production company with dozens of investigators whose tools have ranged from data mining to sending drones to film the estates of highly placed bureaucrats. One of Navalny’s biggest hits is a series of films about the then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s sneaker-collecting habits and estate, which included three helopads, a ski slope, cascading swimming pools, a hotel-style dormitory for staff, and a little lake house for ducks, which became an Internet meme. Russian authorities have been fighting to have the films removed from YouTube, where one of them has been viewed more than thirty-six million times.
Navalny was one of the leaders of the mass protests against rigged elections that erupted in Russia in 2011 and 2012. Many of his fellow-members of the protest coördinating council are either living in exile, like the chess champion Garry Kasparov or the prisoners’-rights activist Olga Romanova, or dead, like the politician Boris Nemtsov. The Kremlin has tried to shut down Navalny and his organization through a series of court cases and arrests. But when Navalny was jailed in 2013, sentenced to five years on flagrantly trumped-up embezzlement charges, thousands of Muscovites protested and secured his release. When he was sentenced to house arrest, Navalny refused to comply, because the Russian penal code does not allow for such a punishment; after a few months, the authorities gave up, although his brother, Oleg, remained behind bars for years on spurious charges.
Navalny’s activism and reach kept expanding—he even attempted to run for President—and for a few years he seemed invincible. (In a piece for this magazine in 2016, I wrote, “The strangest thing about Alexey Navalny is that he is walking around Moscow, still.”) But, on August 20th, Navalny fell ill when returning to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk. He was in a coma for twenty-six days, most of them in a hospital in Berlin. Analysis performed by multiple European labs shows that he was poisoned with a previously unknown version of Novichok, a deadly Russian-developed chemical agent. Navalny regained his ability to speak, write, and make jokes within ten days of coming out of the coma, but he has continued to experience significant physical effects owing to the poisoning. He spoke with me, over Zoom, from an apartment in Berlin, on October 8th; through the screen, it was obvious that Navalny had lost a great deal of weight, but otherwise he looked and sounded as I’d always remembered him. Our conversation has been translated from Russian and condensed.
How did you know what had happened to you?
This is the hardest part. The moment I knew that I’d been poisoned was the moment I realized my life was ending. What I was experiencing up until then was a kind of incomprehension. We can understand a heart attack or a stroke, but we cannot understand the effects of cholinesterase inhibitors—evolution does not prepare us for this. You are in this strange state of losing focus, and the strangeness keeps growing. I’ve compared it to being touched by a Dementor in a Harry Potter novel—you feel that life is leaving you. Let’s say I touch my own hand with my finger. My brain can perceive that signal and then cancel it out. But Novichok makes it not get cancelled out, so it feels like I’m touching my own hand a million times a second, and every cell in my body goes berserk, and the brain understands that this is the end.
Let’s go back a second. You have boarded a plane from Tomsk to Moscow. You’ve opened up your laptop and started watching “Rick and Morty,” as is your habit. And then—
I started losing focus. Say, right now, I see you on the screen. I understand that Kira is here in the room. [Kira Yarmysh, who is Navalny’s spokeswoman, was present during our interview; she was also seated next to him on the Tomsk-Moscow flight.] I understand this, but I cannot see it and focus on it. I have the strength to point at the screen. I see the cat who has entered the frame. But I can’t grasp the concept of “cat,” and if someone asked me to point at the cat on screen, I’d have a very hard time. On the airplane, I went to the bathroom and I realized that I would not be able to leave the bathroom on my own, and this was when I knew I’d been poisoned. It was so difficult to open the door. I could see the door, I could understand everything, and I was plenty physically strong enough—I would have been able to do pushups, if only, at that moment, I had been able to grasp the concept of pushups. I guess if I’d had sudden heart pain or abdominal pain, I would have realized even faster that I was dying, because this physical experience would have been familiar to me. But this was worse than pain.
I’m trying to understand what you are describing, using my own experience. Have you ever been sedated with opiates?
Sure, I had my appendix removed. And last month, too, I had the experience of coming out of sedation. This was nothing like it. Some people have compared it to a panic attack. But I think I understand what a panic attack feels like: a sense of growing anxiety. Anxiety is a feeling you can ultimately comprehend.
I came out of the bathroom. I could still stand upright. I saw my seat and realized I would probably never make it that far. I thought I should probably ask for help, but I also thought that, by this point, it would be useless. So I informed the flight attendant that I was about to die, right there on their plane, and I lay down.
On the floor. And then they tried to keep you awake, right?
They were saying, “Sir, stay with us, please don’t lose consciousness. . . .” But I did.
Did you have a sense of the passage of time?
I just felt indifference. It was clear that this was the end. I imagine that a person, when they are dying, thinks about important things, like, This is what I haven’t completed, or, What will happen to my children, or, What will my wife say? But I was finding it so difficult to think at all.
So those awful screams that someone recorded—
I don’t remember those. I might have been hallucinating.
And the next thing you remember was nearly a month later?
For a while, I was convinced that I was in the hospital and I’d lost my legs and was waiting for new legs to be made for me. And my wife, Yulia, and Leonid Volkov [Navalny’s closest associate in his political work] and the doctors kept telling me that I’d been in an accident and they’d make me new legs, and I shouldn’t worry. Obviously, there were no such conversations. Gradually, I started making contact with reality, in which there was Yulia and I waited for her to come every day and adjust my pillow. But I was still missing legs. And I had these awful hallucinations that really got to me, like I’m in a jail cell and the cops won’t let me sleep, and they keep asking me to recite the rules for being in jail, interspersed with lyrics by the [Russian rap group] Krovostok.
Yulia and Volkov told me that there was a prolonged period when they would sit me up, and I would just stare, and they couldn’t tell whether I recognized them. As I recall, I was having mind-blowing conversations with them in my imagination. Yulia hung up a small flip chart and marked every day I spent in the hospital with a heart in magic marker. I reacted to that flip chart and looked at it, but I don’t remember any of that. I do remember the horrible feeling when you can’t speak or write.
What do you mean?
The doctor says, “Do you understand that you are Alexey Navalny?” I do. “Do you remember your age?” I do. “Do you understand that you are currently in Berlin?” I knew this, though I wasn’t particularly interested in why I was here. “Can you say a word?” I know I have a tongue, and I have lots of words floating around in my head. But that part of the brain where a word takes shape and you pronounce it—that wasn’t processing. I couldn’t say a word. This was torture. I probably looked like the cat in that scene in “Shrek,” with intelligent eyes but speechless. I can’t say anything and I can’t even get angry, because I can’t remember how emotions work, either. But this didn’t last long—about a week. I don’t remember this, either, but Yulia and Volkov have told me that when I did start talking, I addressed everyone in English.


newyorker--2020-10-18--Trump Accuses New Zealand’s Prime Minister of Competently Handling the Coronavirus to Get Reëlected

JANESVILLE , WI ( The Borowitz Report ) —Calling New Zealand ’ s Prime Minister “ crooked and rigged , @ @ @ @ @ Jacinda Ardern of competently handling the coronavirus pandemic in order to get reëlected .
Speaking @ @ @ @ @ , Trump called Ardern ’ s use of public-health measures to mitigate the impact of @ @ @ @ @ “ a sleazy political move like you wouldn ’ t believe.
” “ This woman @ @ @ @ @ so she decided to go after the coronavirus and beat it , ” he said @ @ @ @ @ a disgrace.
” Ramping up his attack on Ardern , Trump accused her of securing @ @ @ @ @ listening to scientists.
” “ She was talking to scientists every day , ” Trump @ @ @ @ @ s all going to come out when we see her e-mails.
” In a final @ @ @ @ @ successful handling of the pandemic , Trump vowed , “ You ’ ll never see @ @ @ @ @ .
”

JANESVILLE, WI (The Borowitz Report)—Calling New Zealand’s Prime Minister “crooked and rigged,” Donald J. Trump accused Jacinda Ardern of competently handling the coronavirus pandemic in order to get reëlected.
Speaking at a rally in Wisconsin, Trump called Ardern’s use of public-health measures to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus on her nation “a sleazy political move like you wouldn’t believe.”
“This woman wanted to get reëlected, so she decided to go after the coronavirus and beat it,” he said. “This woman is a disgrace.”
Ramping up his attack on Ardern, Trump accused her of securing her election victory by “listening to scientists.”
“She was talking to scientists every day,” Trump charged. “It’s all going to come out when we see her e-mails.”
In a final denunciation of Ardern’s successful handling of the pandemic, Trump vowed, “You’ll never see me pulling something like that.”
Read More Satire from the Borowitz Report


newyorker--2020-10-19--How Saidiya Hartman Retells the History of Black Life

Hartman , who is fifty-nine , wore a blue batik tunic over slim black pants and plum-shaded ankle boots .
A professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia , she occupies a singular position in contemporary culture : she is an academic , influenced by Michel Foucault , who has both received a MacArthur “ genius ” grant and appeared in a Jay-Z video .
Hartman has a serene , patient demeanor , which the cultural theorist Judith Butler described as “ withheld and shy , self-protective.
” She speaks at what seems like precisely three-quarters speed , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ releasing them .
“ She definitely has a bit of that holding-your-tongue thing as a power mode , ” the artist Arthur Jafa , a friend and collaborator of hers , told me .
“ She carries the universe in her head , and you can feel it in her presence.
” But her best friend , Tina Campt , a professor of visual culture at Brown , called her endearingly “ goofy and awkward.
” On a recent trip to London , Campt told me , Hartman got lost returning to her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a block away .
At the museum , a tent had been set up in a courtyard , and a line of attendees snaked around it : artists , fashion people , writers , students , cool kids with their hair in topknots .
Thelma Golden , the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem , greeted Hartman with a hug and warned , “ Prepare for fan-girling.
” The event ’ s curator , Thomas Lax , was waiting inside the tent to show Hartman around .
( Hartman ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attorney , had stayed home in Manhattan to help their teen-age daughter study for finals . )
Lax had been a graduate student of Hartman ’ s at Columbia , and they remain in touch .
“ Once you ’ re in the circle , you don ’ t want to leave , ” he said .
Jafa , wearing a brocaded coat and gold-heeled boots , surveyed the crowd , which included the artists Glenn Ligon and Lorraine O ’ Grady .
“ Everybody ’ s here , ” he said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ essays , Hartman has explored the interior lives of enslaved people and their descendants , employing a method that she says “ troubles the line between history and imagination.
” Her iconoclastic thinking on the legacy of slavery in American life has prefigured the current cultural moment .
In 2008 , five years before Black Lives Matter was founded , she wrote of “ a past that has yet to be done , and the ongoing state of emergency in which black life remains in peril.
” Her writing has become a lodestar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increasingly , for politically engaged people outside the academy .
At the museum , Jafa screened footage that showed how Hartman ’ s ideas had “ infiltrated ” his art-making .
The choreographer and performer Okwui Okpokwasili sang a piece inspired by characters in her book : domestic workers , chorus girls , juvenile delinquents , and wanderers .
The artist Cameron Rowland read from a letter written by a South Carolina planter , detailing disobedience on his plantation—a litany of impudent acts that the planter seemed not to realize constituted a campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the letter evoked the “ legacies of Black antagonism that are part of what Saidiya calls ‘ acts of everyday resistance.
’ ” As Rowland read , the crowd erupted into laughter and cheers .
When the presentations were over , Hartman sat at a table at the back of the tent , where a line of people held copies of her book for her to sign .
One woman said that she was having a “ small crisis ” and was about to change her name .
Hartman , whose given name @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That ’ s O.K.
, ” she said .
“ Which name do you want it signed to ?
” Another asked for advice on graduate programs ; Hartman invited the woman to come see her at Columbia .
After the signing , a group of celebrants headed out to an Italian restaurant nearby .
Hartman sat in the middle of a long table , the reluctant center of gravity .
“ She ’ s royalty for us , ” Jafa said .
“ We ’ re celebrating her , but we ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s a victory dance for the marginal , edgy , weirdo Black nerds.
” Her mother , Beryle , grew up in Montgomery , among churchgoing activists ; she and her parents took part in the bus boycott of the nineteen-fifties .
During segregation , the family was proudly middle-class : one relative was among the first Black doctors in Selma , and another was a Tuskegee Airman .
Beryle went to Tuskegee University and then to Tennessee State , where she studied social work .
She was also schooled in propriety , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have male visitors in her dorm .
During college , Beryle met Virgilio Hartman , a private stationed at Maxwell Air Force Base .
Her parents did not approve ; Virgilio hadn ’ t attended college , and he didn ’ t come from the right kind of people .
His family , immigrants to New York from Curaçao , were hardworking strivers , but , Hartman recalled , “ there was less keeping up with the Joneses.
” In Brooklyn , Hartman ’ s parents ’ closest friends were a Jewish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the children of immigrants from Panama and Haiti .
Her mother took her and the neighborhood kids to the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art , and to see shows like “ For Colored Girls .
.
.
.
” Her father , a policeman , encouraged her to attend the highly competitive Stuyvesant High School .
Hartman , surrounded by people of varied ethnicities , considered herself a New Yorker first .
Audre Lorde ’ s daughter was a schoolmate ; she also hung out with “ privileged , disaffected white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ classical guitar , joined a physics club for a month .
She wore overalls , flannel shirts , and a “ wild Afro , ” to fit in with her leftist crew and also to reject the “ Black American princess ” image that her mother wanted her to present .
Hartman ’ s early experience of politics was “ simple and direct and radical , ” she said .
She joined socialist organizations and reproductive-rights groups .
While in high school , she interviewed the radical writer Amiri Baraka , and asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than poetry to bring about societal change .
“ Yes , ” he told her .
“ The gun.
” But her own inclinations were less combative .
A few years before , her parents had sent her to a Black-nationalist summer camp in Crown Heights .
On a camp trip to Pennsylvania , she accidentally stepped on the foot of a white boy and apologized .
A counsellor told her that she should never apologize to a white person , and to go step on his foot again .
Hartman made her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his foot with hers .
She vowed never to return to the camp .
Hartman ’ s mentors were working to erode the dominance of European perspectives .
Hazel Carby gave Hartman a Marxist view of African-American , Caribbean , and African histories ; Gayatri Spivak introduced her to post-structuralism , which holds that the truth of events is inextricably tied to the language used to describe them .
Hartman began thinking about the invisible framework that governed her ( relatively charmed ) life as a young Black woman .
“ I wanted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the world—even as I was feeling that it had not made anything impossible for me , ” she said .
She changed her name from Valarie to Saidiya , which is derived from the Swahili word for “ to help.
” The change , she wrote later , “ extirpated all evidence of upstanding Negroes and their striving bastard heirs , and confirmed my place in the company of poor Black girls—Tamikas , Roqueshas , and Shanequas.
” ( Her family called her by the new name reluctantly . )
Hartman was still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : following the rules down South , roaming free in New York .
“ I ’ m both a pessimist and a wild dreamer , ” she told me .
She imagined getting involved in radical politics , going to Grenada to join Maurice Bishop ’ s Black-liberation movement .
Instead , she went to graduate school at Yale , and studied voraciously .
The playwright Lynn Nottage , who met her there , recalled , “ At parties , I ’ d be rocking to the music , and she ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was happening .
I ’ d say , ‘ Just come into the party , ’ and she would be analyzing the lyrics to the song , how people are dancing , the gender and racial dynamics.
” For her doctoral thesis , Hartman planned to write about the blues .
But when she read Foucault ’ s work on the ways that people are subjected to power , she saw a chance to do something new .
Foucault , she realized , was “ not thinking about Black people or slavery in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how totalizing , violent domination had shaped the status and agency of enslaved people .
The result was “ Scenes of Subjection : Terror , Slavery , and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America , ” which argued , in dense and provocative detail , that Emancipation constituted another phase of enslavement for Black Americans , as they moved from the plantations to the punitive controls of the Black Codes and Jim Crow .
Hartman was illuminating what she calls the “ afterlife of slavery ” : limited access to health care and education , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ skewed life chances ” that Black people still face , and the furious desire for freedom that comes with them .
As Butler put it , “ The question she returns to again and again is : ‘ Did slavery ever really end ?
’ ” That question had been the subject of earlier scholarship ; Hartman ’ s book , with its compelling portrayal of lives caught between cruelty and resistance , helped move it toward the mainstream .
Frank B. Wilderson III , a former student of Hartman ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ studies at the University of California , Irvine , described her as quietly persuasive .
“ She ’ s not an ‘ angry Black woman , ’ ” he told me .
“ She ’ s not Assata Shakur .
But what they don ’ t know is that , where Assata Shakur will blow your head off , Saidiya has just put a stiletto between your ribs.
” Wilderson interviewed Hartman in 2002 for an article called “ The Position of the Unthought.
” In it , he criticized scholars of African-American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their evidence in order to propose some kind of coherent , hopeful solution ” ; he praised “ Scenes of Subjection ” for exposing the unrelenting violence of slavery .
Hartman agreed that turning that legacy into a narrative of uplift was “ obscene.
” But she has always been interested in portraying the agency of Black people .
In “ Scenes of Subjection , ” her subjects endure vicious circumstances through acts of imagination , making a way out of no way ; they evaded work on plantations and , after Emancipation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their former masters .
Hartman told me that her goal was to shift Black lives from the “ object of scholarly analysis ” to the basis for an “ argument that challenged the assumptions of history.
” Once , while she was discussing “ Scenes of Subjection ” with her class at Columbia , a student expressed surprise that she gave the words of a slave the same weight as those of Foucault .
“ Yeah , ” she responded .
“ Exactly.
” Hartman ’ s first teaching job was at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she received early tenure on the strength of her draft of “ Scenes of Subjection.
” The chair of the English department told her that , since she now had tenure , there was no need to finish the book .
Hartman was taken aback , but ultimately she found freedom in her colleagues ’ low expectations .
“ As a Black woman intellectual , I am at the bottom of the food chain , ” she said during a talk at the Hammer Museum , in Los Angeles .
But “ within @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seriously , there was also all this space to work.
” At Berkeley , Hartman wanted to reckon with the ways in which violence had been used to enforce social order .
She also wanted to write with a resonance that was uncommon in scholarly literature .
“ I wanted to be a Wailer , ” she said—a member of Bob Marley ’ s band .
“ What does it mean to describe Trench Town , in Jamaica , but be describing the world ?
What does it mean to have that kind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ poetry and beauty ?
”

On a clear night earlier this year, the writer and scholar Saidiya Hartman was fidgeting in a cab on the way to MOMA PS1, the contemporary-art center in Queens. The museum was holding an event to celebrate Hartman’s latest book, “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments,” an account, set in New York and Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century, that blends history and fiction to chronicle the sexual and gender rebellions of young Black women. Several artists planned to present work that illustrated Hartman’s influence on them. She was nervous just thinking about it. “I’m crying on the inside,” she said. “I’m this shy person, and this feels so weird.”
Hartman, who is fifty-nine, wore a blue batik tunic over slim black pants and plum-shaded ankle boots. A professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia, she occupies a singular position in contemporary culture: she is an academic, influenced by Michel Foucault, who has both received a MacArthur “genius” grant and appeared in a Jay-Z video. Hartman has a serene, patient demeanor, which the cultural theorist Judith Butler described as “withheld and shy, self-protective.” She speaks at what seems like precisely three-quarters speed, to allow her to inspect her thoughts before releasing them. “She definitely has a bit of that holding-your-tongue thing as a power mode,” the artist Arthur Jafa, a friend and collaborator of hers, told me. “She carries the universe in her head, and you can feel it in her presence.” But her best friend, Tina Campt, a professor of visual culture at Brown, called her endearingly “goofy and awkward.” On a recent trip to London, Campt told me, Hartman got lost returning to her hotel from a restaurant. The hotel was a block away.
At the museum, a tent had been set up in a courtyard, and a line of attendees snaked around it: artists, fashion people, writers, students, cool kids with their hair in topknots. Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, greeted Hartman with a hug and warned, “Prepare for fan-girling.”
The event’s curator, Thomas Lax, was waiting inside the tent to show Hartman around. (Hartman’s partner, Samuel Miller, a civil-rights attorney, had stayed home in Manhattan to help their teen-age daughter study for finals.) Lax had been a graduate student of Hartman’s at Columbia, and they remain in touch. “Once you’re in the circle, you don’t want to leave,” Lax said. Jafa, wearing a brocaded coat and gold-heeled boots, surveyed the crowd, which included the artists Glenn Ligon and Lorraine O’Grady. “Everybody’s here,” he said.
In three books and a series of essays, Hartman has explored the interior lives of enslaved people and their descendants, employing a method that she says “troubles the line between history and imagination.” Her iconoclastic thinking on the legacy of slavery in American life has prefigured the current cultural moment. In 2008, five years before Black Lives Matter was founded, she wrote of “a past that has yet to be done, and the ongoing state of emergency in which black life remains in peril.” Her writing has become a lodestar for a generation of students and, increasingly, for politically engaged people outside the academy.
At the museum, Jafa screened footage that showed how Hartman’s ideas had “infiltrated” his art-making. The choreographer and performer Okwui Okpokwasili sang a piece inspired by characters in her book: domestic workers, chorus girls, juvenile delinquents, and wanderers. The artist Cameron Rowland read from a letter written by a South Carolina planter, detailing disobedience on his plantation—a litany of impudent acts that the planter seemed not to realize constituted a campaign of sly subversion. Rowland said that the letter evoked the “legacies of Black antagonism that are part of what Saidiya calls ‘acts of everyday resistance.’ ” As Rowland read, the crowd erupted into laughter and cheers.
When the presentations were over, Hartman sat at a table at the back of the tent, where a line of people held copies of her book for her to sign. One woman said that she was having a “small crisis” and was about to change her name.
Hartman, whose given name is Valarie, responded soothingly. “That’s O.K.,” she said. “Which name do you want it signed to?” Another asked for advice on graduate programs; Hartman invited the woman to come see her at Columbia.
After the signing, a group of celebrants headed out to an Italian restaurant nearby. Hartman sat in the middle of a long table, the reluctant center of gravity. “She’s royalty for us,” Jafa said. “We’re celebrating her, but we’re also celebrating ourselves. It’s a victory dance for the marginal, edgy, weirdo Black nerds.”
Hartman grew up in Brooklyn, but her people on her mother’s side are from Alabama. According to family lore, their forebears were enslaved first in Mississippi, but a slaveowner sold one of them to an Alabama plantation, to pay a debt. As a girl, Hartman occasionally visited Alabama during the summer, and remembers long Baptist services and cold bottles of Coca-Cola; her great-grandfather took her on country drives, pointing out farms that had once been owned by Black folks. The drives “deeply marked me,” Hartman told me. But she also felt out of place in the conservative circles that her family occupied. “That Black social world was defined by a class and color hierarchy that was so extreme,” she said.
Her mother, Beryle, grew up in Montgomery, among churchgoing activists; she and her parents took part in the bus boycott of the nineteen-fifties. During segregation, the family was proudly middle-class: one relative was among the first Black doctors in Selma, and another was a Tuskegee Airman. Beryle went to Tuskegee University and then to Tennessee State, where she studied social work. She was also schooled in propriety, encouraged to wear white gloves and forbidden to have male visitors in her dorm.
During college, Beryle met Virgilio Hartman, a private stationed at Maxwell Air Force Base. Her parents did not approve; Virgilio hadn’t attended college, and he didn’t come from the right kind of people. His family, immigrants to New York from Curaçao, were hardworking strivers, but, Hartman recalled, “there was less keeping up with the Joneses.”
In Brooklyn, Hartman’s parents’ closest friends were a Jewish lesbian couple; her own friends were the children of immigrants from Panama and Haiti. Her mother took her and the neighborhood kids to the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art, and to see shows like “For Colored Girls. . . .” Her father, a policeman, encouraged her to attend the highly competitive Stuyvesant High School.
Hartman, surrounded by people of varied ethnicities, considered herself a New Yorker first. Audre Lorde’s daughter was a schoolmate; she also hung out with “privileged, disaffected white kids.” She wrote poetry, played classical guitar, joined a physics club for a month. She wore overalls, flannel shirts, and a “wild Afro,” to fit in with her leftist crew and also to reject the “Black American princess” image that her mother wanted her to present.
Hartman’s early experience of politics was “simple and direct and radical,” she said. She joined socialist organizations and reproductive-rights groups. While in high school, she interviewed the radical writer Amiri Baraka, and asked if there was a more effective way than poetry to bring about societal change. “Yes,” he told her. “The gun.” But her own inclinations were less combative. A few years before, her parents had sent her to a Black-nationalist summer camp in Crown Heights. On a camp trip to Pennsylvania, she accidentally stepped on the foot of a white boy and apologized. A counsellor told her that she should never apologize to a white person, and to go step on his foot again. Hartman made her way back to the boy and brushed his foot with hers. She vowed never to return to the camp.
Hartman was “questing,” she said. After high school, she spent a year at Wesleyan, and then a year in a film program at New York University—an unhappy experience at what she describes as “vocational school for white guys from Long Island.” Returning to Wesleyan, she sat in on a course on feminism, taught by Judith Butler. “She was so smart that I thought the windows were gonna blow out,” Butler, who now teaches Hartman’s books, said. “The quickness of her mind and the sharpness of her critique were breathtaking.”
Hartman’s mentors were working to erode the dominance of European perspectives. Hazel Carby gave Hartman a Marxist view of African-American, Caribbean, and African histories; Gayatri Spivak introduced her to post-structuralism, which holds that the truth of events is inextricably tied to the language used to describe them. Hartman began thinking about the invisible framework that governed her (relatively charmed) life as a young Black woman. “I wanted to understand the inequality that was structuring the world—even as I was feeling that it had not made anything impossible for me,” she said. She changed her name from Valarie to Saidiya, which is derived from the Swahili word for “to help.” The change, she wrote later, “extirpated all evidence of upstanding Negroes and their striving bastard heirs, and confirmed my place in the company of poor Black girls—Tamikas, Roqueshas, and Shanequas.” (Her family called her by the new name reluctantly.)
Hartman was still marked by the experiences of her youth: following the rules down South, roaming free in New York. “I’m both a pessimist and a wild dreamer,” she told me. She imagined getting involved in radical politics, going to Grenada to join Maurice Bishop’s Black-liberation movement. Instead, she went to graduate school at Yale, and studied voraciously. The playwright Lynn Nottage, who met her there, recalled, “At parties, I’d be rocking to the music, and she’d be standing back trying to interrogate what was happening. I’d say, ‘Just come into the party,’ and she would be analyzing the lyrics to the song, how people are dancing, the gender and racial dynamics.”
“Back to the office, sir? Or should I surrender you to the authorities?” Cartoon by Frank Cotham Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
For her doctoral thesis, Hartman planned to write about the blues. But when she read Foucault’s work on the ways that people are subjected to power, she saw a chance to do something new. Foucault, she realized, was “not thinking about Black people or slavery in the Americas.” Her thesis would examine how totalizing, violent domination had shaped the status and agency of enslaved people.


newyorker--2020-10-19--The Regular Guy Who Almost Challenged Georgia’s QAnon Candidate

In our two-party system , both parties are big tents .
The Democratic Party includes budget hawks and socialists , veterans and pacifists , scientists and Christian Scientists .
There ’ s also ideological diversity within the Republican Party : some are relatively moderate ; others believe that Donald Trump , Robert Mueller , and an anonymous intelligence agent known as Q are secretly working together to bust a global crime ring involving Hillary Clinton , Joe Biden , Tom Hanks , and hundreds of other prominent liberals , all of whom are actually pedophiles who routinely kidnap children , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ harvest their adrenal glands for occult rituals .
This , and much more , is the canon of QAnon , a bizarre , ever-expanding conspiracy theory that might be worth ignoring were it not for the fact that it has adherents in high places .
“ Q is a patriot , we know that for sure , ” Marjorie Taylor Greene said , on a Facebook Live stream , in 2017 .
“ There ’ s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles out , and I think we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Last year , Greene announced that she would run for Congress , as a Republican , in Georgia ’ s Fourteenth District , which was created about a decade ago .
In every congressional election since , a Republican has either run unopposed there or has won more than seventy per cent of the vote .
Greene co-owns a construction company ; apart from posting pro-Trump blandishments on the Internet , she has no political experience .
( She described the election of two Muslim women to Congress , in 2018 , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ) In one of her campaign ads , she sits cross-legged on the bed of a Jeep truck and uses a bipod-mounted assault rifle to blow up a placard labelled “ Socialism.
” She won the Republican nomination , in August , by double digits .
“ Congratulations to future Republican Star Marjorie Taylor Greene on a big Congressional primary win in Georgia , ” President Trump tweeted .
“ Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up—a real WINNER !
” ( Last week , during a town hall on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump to “ disavow QAnon in its entirety.
” He declined .
She asked whether he believed conspiracy theories about “ a satanic pedophile cult.
” He responded , “ I have no idea.
” ) Greene ’ s Democratic challenger , Kevin Van Ausdal , a thirty-five-year-old I.T .
specialist , has never held elective office either .
Not long ago , he hosted a Zoom town hall .
“ Glad to see everyone tonight , ” he said .
“ I see a lot of familiar faces , which is great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new ones , which is just as amazing.
” There were eleven people , eight of whom had their cameras off .
The three visible supporters were a woman named Amanda , who sat in front of a poster of a bald eagle ; a woman named Wendy , whose couch had a pillow embroidered with a kicking donkey ; and a man with a long white beard , identified only as “ iPhone.
” Van Ausdal , who plays a lot of video games , sat in front of an elaborate computer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He began with a spiel about why he was running ( “ We need someone who will represent our values ” ) and talked about growing up in Indiana .
Then he opened the floor for questions .
“ I am worried about your opponent , ” a woman typed in the Zoom chat .
“ She is working hard to appeal to the very far right that I find a bit frightening.
” “ It frightens me as well , ” Van Ausdal said .
( He described Greene ’ s beliefs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not go into detail . )
One supporter asked how she could help Van Ausdal win .
The candidate said that his campaign hadn ’ t organized any phone banks yet and encouraged her to use “ word of mouth.
” Later , in another Zoom discussion , someone asked him whether he had any chance of winning .
“ You never know , ” he said .
“ Surprising things do happen.
” Last month , Van Ausdal was at home cooking dinner when a police officer rang his doorbell and served @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that he and his wife had been having issues , but that “ the plan was to wait until after the election and then separate.
” ( The couple has a young daughter . )
The divorce papers required him to leave his house immediately .
He spent a few nights in a hotel , but soon ran low on cash .
His advisers , in consultation with the Federal Election Commission , determined that he could not use campaign funds to rent an apartment ; even sleeping on a friend ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ illegal campaign contribution .
So he drove ten hours , to Indiana , to stay with his parents .
Since he no longer lives in Georgia , Van Ausdal is now ineligible to represent the Fourteenth District , and he has suspended his campaign .
His advisers wrote to Georgia ’ s secretary of state , Brad Raffensperger , asking that Van Ausdal be disqualified , which would have allowed the Democratic Party to put forward another name .
Raffensperger , a Republican , did not grant the request .
Now Greene is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his sudden departure from the race was due to a coincidence , not a conspiracy .
♦

In our two-party system, both parties are big tents. The Democratic Party includes budget hawks and socialists, veterans and pacifists, scientists and Christian Scientists. There’s also ideological diversity within the Republican Party: some are relatively moderate; others believe that Donald Trump, Robert Mueller, and an anonymous intelligence agent known as Q are secretly working together to bust a global crime ring involving Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Tom Hanks, and hundreds of other prominent liberals, all of whom are actually pedophiles who routinely kidnap children, smuggle them across international borders, and harvest their adrenal glands for occult rituals. This, and much more, is the canon of QAnon, a bizarre, ever-expanding conspiracy theory that might be worth ignoring were it not for the fact that it has adherents in high places. “Q is a patriot, we know that for sure,” Marjorie Taylor Greene said, on a Facebook Live stream, in 2017. “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles out, and I think we have the President to do it.” Last year, Greene announced that she would run for Congress, as a Republican, in Georgia’s Fourteenth District, which was created about a decade ago. In every congressional election since, a Republican has either run unopposed there or has won more than seventy per cent of the vote.
Greene co-owns a construction company; apart from posting pro-Trump blandishments on the Internet, she has no political experience. (She described the election of two Muslim women to Congress, in 2018, as “an Islamic invasion of our government.”) In one of her campaign ads, she sits cross-legged on the bed of a Jeep truck and uses a bipod-mounted assault rifle to blow up a placard labelled “Socialism.” She won the Republican nomination, in August, by double digits. “Congratulations to future Republican Star Marjorie Taylor Greene on a big Congressional primary win in Georgia,” President Trump tweeted. “Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up—a real WINNER!” (Last week, during a town hall on NBC, the broadcaster Savannah Guthrie invited Trump to “disavow QAnon in its entirety.” He declined. She asked whether he believed conspiracy theories about “a satanic pedophile cult.” He responded, “I have no idea.”)
Greene’s Democratic challenger, Kevin Van Ausdal, a thirty-five-year-old I.T. specialist, has never held elective office either. Not long ago, he hosted a Zoom town hall. “Glad to see everyone tonight,” he said. “I see a lot of familiar faces, which is great, and I see a lot of new ones, which is just as amazing.” There were eleven people, eight of whom had their cameras off. The three visible supporters were a woman named Amanda, who sat in front of a poster of a bald eagle; a woman named Wendy, whose couch had a pillow embroidered with a kicking donkey; and a man with a long white beard, identified only as “iPhone.” Van Ausdal, who plays a lot of video games, sat in front of an elaborate computer setup, including a flashing keyboard. He began with a spiel about why he was running (“We need someone who will represent our values”) and talked about growing up in Indiana. Then he opened the floor for questions.
“I am worried about your opponent,” a woman typed in the Zoom chat. “She is working hard to appeal to the very far right that I find a bit frightening.”
“It frightens me as well,” Van Ausdal said. (He described Greene’s beliefs as “divisive,” but did not go into detail.) One supporter asked how she could help Van Ausdal win. The candidate said that his campaign hadn’t organized any phone banks yet and encouraged her to use “word of mouth.” Later, in another Zoom discussion, someone asked him whether he had any chance of winning. “You never know,” he said. “Surprising things do happen.”
Last month, Van Ausdal was at home cooking dinner when a police officer rang his doorbell and served him with divorce papers. Van Ausdal said that he and his wife had been having issues, but that “the plan was to wait until after the election and then separate.” (The couple has a young daughter.) The divorce papers required him to leave his house immediately. He spent a few nights in a hotel, but soon ran low on cash. His advisers, in consultation with the Federal Election Commission, determined that he could not use campaign funds to rent an apartment; even sleeping on a friend’s couch might be construed as an illegal campaign contribution. So he drove ten hours, to Indiana, to stay with his parents.
Since he no longer lives in Georgia, Van Ausdal is now ineligible to represent the Fourteenth District, and he has suspended his campaign. His advisers wrote to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, asking that Van Ausdal be disqualified, which would have allowed the Democratic Party to put forward another name. Raffensperger, a Republican, did not grant the request. Now Greene is running unopposed. Van Ausdal insists that his sudden departure from the race was due to a coincidence, not a conspiracy. ♦


newyorker--2020-10-19--Ghost the Trolls and Other Tips for Instagram Reels

She was addressing a Zoom room of more than two hundred burgeoning Black actors , musicians , and creative types who had been invited to a party to preview Reels and brush up on Instagram ’ s best practices .
( “ We wanted it to feel like some sort of production , ” Amoruwa explained , later .
“ Where people aren ’ t bored , where they ’ re not just reading a PDF.
” ) At the start of the event , she begged the attendees to mute their microphones .
“ We don ’ t need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she said .
She wore large hoop earrings and had her hair in a topknot .
Months of # challenges ( # blackouttuesday , # blackandwhitechallenge , # life ) had raised a question : What ’ s the best way to participate in performative , hashtag-based Instagram trends ?
“ Don ’ t try so hard , ” Sarissa Thrower , an Instagram communications manager , advised .
She wore a purple jumpsuit and had a chin-length bob .
“ You don ’ t have to be everything to everyone.
” Heads @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you will find your tribe.
” Amoruwa pressed Play on a video tutorial by Mark Phillips , a comedian with two million Instagram followers who operates under the handle @ supremedreams_1 .
“ You know how doctors got ta be best at their job at surgery or the person ’ s gon na die ?
That ’ s what you ’ ve got ta do with Instagram , ” he said .
“ Treat it like your job.
” Jump-cut to Phillips in a white coat , medical implements in hand , above @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the board game Operation .
His prescription : post as much as possible , all over Instagram .
“ The world is something else right now , ” Amoruwa said , during the “ Safety & Well-being ” portion of the event .
“ Make sure you block accounts that are being crazy , ” she went on.
“ My favorite trick is restrict , a.k.a .
ghosting .
When you restrict someone from your profile , only you and the person you restrict will be able to see their new comments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re living in their own world and you have nothing to do with it.
” Lala Milan , an actress with 3.4 million followers ( bio : “ I ’ m more than IG .
Check my IMDB ” ) , led a crash course on Reels .
Instagram , which is owned by Facebook , reportedly offered top TikTok personalities six figures to bring their business and sponsorship deals to Reels , which has caught on among such brands as Louis Vuitton and Red Bull .
“ This is your chance to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demonstrating how to synch a video up to a particular part of a song .
Sounds of audio rewinding and fast-forwarding were heard , then a line from Megan Thee Stallion : “ I ’ m sick of motherfuckers tryna tell me how to live.
” Milan said , “ Okay , so I chose the right part.
” After the singer Mikayla Simpson ( stage name : Koffee ) performed three songs with similarly of-the-moment lyrics ( “ I put your body on lockdown ” ) , John Boyega , an actor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appeared on the screen .
Amoruwa asked what advice he ’ d give to the aspiring stars in the Zoom room .
“ You ’ ve got to collaborate , man , ” he said , and then caught himself .
“ Sorry , I ’ m from the U.K .
When we say ‘ Big man ting , ’ ” he continued , “ we mean ‘ on the real.
’ ” He explained that the people who are creating obstacles for Black artists in entertainment “ collaborate with each other.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the “ Star Wars ” franchise , in which he plays Finn .
In September , he stepped down as the global ambassador of the fragrance company Jo Malone London after it replaced him in a Chinese ad campaign without his consent .
“ They take each other ’ s phone calls , they ’ re building new projects , ” he went on .
“ We need to really lean in to that.
” Although it seems oddly convenient for Reels to arrive as TikTok unravels ( in the U.S. , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ working on the platform for more than a year .
“ We started testing a much earlier version in Brazil last November , ” Tessa Lyons-Laing , Instagram ’ s director of product management for Reels , said after the party .
“ It ’ s more that the timing kind of coincided than that one influenced the other.
” Reels is not all amateur music videos and improbable outfit changes .
Amoruwa mentioned “ Smarter in Seconds , ” a Reels series in which the activist and author Blair Imani , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , offers advice on how to address a potentially sensitive subject .
Recent episodes include “ Pronouns Part 3 : But What if Someone Doesn ’ t Know What Pronouns Are ?
” and “ You Still Don ’ t Know What to Say Instead of ‘ Minority ?
’ I Gotcha !
” ♦

Besidone Amoruwa Illustration by João Fazenda
How long has the bell been tolling for TikTok? Long enough for Instagram to come up with a competitor. In August, days after President Trump threatened to ban the Chinese-owned short-form-video app from operating in the United States, Instagram rolled out Reels, a tool for creating similarly succinct music- and text-enhanced video. “I’m pretty sure everyone’s already gonna know how to use it, I don’t know why,” Besidone Amoruwa, a strategic-partnerships manager at Instagram, said the other day.
She was addressing a Zoom room of more than two hundred burgeoning Black actors, musicians, and creative types who had been invited to a party to preview Reels and brush up on Instagram’s best practices. (“We wanted it to feel like some sort of production,” Amoruwa explained, later. “Where people aren’t bored, where they’re not just reading a PDF.”) At the start of the event, she begged the attendees to mute their microphones. “We don’t need to hear your cat meowing,” she said. She wore large hoop earrings and had her hair in a topknot.
Months of #challenges (#blackouttuesday, #blackandwhitechallenge, #life) had raised a question: What’s the best way to participate in performative, hashtag-based Instagram trends? “Don’t try so hard,” Sarissa Thrower, an Instagram communications manager, advised. She wore a purple jumpsuit and had a chin-length bob. “You don’t have to be everything to everyone.” Heads nodded. “Be authentic, and you will find your tribe.”
Amoruwa pressed Play on a video tutorial by Mark Phillips, a comedian with two million Instagram followers who operates under the handle @supremedreams_1. “You know how doctors gotta be best at their job at surgery or the person’s gonna die? That’s what you’ve gotta do with Instagram,” he said. “Treat it like your job.” Jump-cut to Phillips in a white coat, medical implements in hand, above a friend laid out like the patient in the board game Operation. His prescription: post as much as possible, all over Instagram.
“The world is something else right now,” Amoruwa said, during the “Safety & Well-being” portion of the event. “Make sure you block accounts that are being crazy,” she went on.“My favorite trick is restrict, a.k.a. ghosting. When you restrict someone from your profile, only you and the person you restrict will be able to see their new comments. It’s like they’re living in their own world and you have nothing to do with it.”
Lala Milan, an actress with 3.4 million followers (bio: “I’m more than IG. Check my IMDB”), led a crash course on Reels. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, reportedly offered top TikTok personalities six figures to bring their business and sponsorship deals to Reels, which has caught on among such brands as Louis Vuitton and Red Bull. “This is your chance to blow up,” Milan said, demonstrating how to synch a video up to a particular part of a song. Sounds of audio rewinding and fast-forwarding were heard, then a line from Megan Thee Stallion: “I’m sick of motherfuckers tryna tell me how to live.”
Cartoon by Joe Dator Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Milan said, “Okay, so I chose the right part.”
After the singer Mikayla Simpson (stage name: Koffee) performed three songs with similarly of-the-moment lyrics (“I put your body on lockdown”), John Boyega, an actor and a Black Lives Matter activist, appeared on the screen. Amoruwa asked what advice he’d give to the aspiring stars in the Zoom room. “You’ve got to collaborate, man,” he said, and then caught himself. “Sorry, I’m from the U.K. When we say ‘Big man ting,’ ” he continued, “we mean ‘on the real.’ ”
He explained that the people who are creating obstacles for Black artists in entertainment “collaborate with each other.” He recently spoke out about being marginalized by the “Star Wars” franchise, in which he plays Finn. In September, he stepped down as the global ambassador of the fragrance company Jo Malone London after it replaced him in a Chinese ad campaign without his consent.
“They take each other’s phone calls, they’re building new projects, ” he went on. “We need to really lean in to that.”
Although it seems oddly convenient for Reels to arrive as TikTok unravels (in the U.S., at least), Instagram has been working on the platform for more than a year. “We started testing a much earlier version in Brazil last November,” Tessa Lyons-Laing, Instagram’s director of product management for Reels, said after the party. “It’s more that the timing kind of coincided than that one influenced the other.” Reels is not all amateur music videos and improbable outfit changes. Amoruwa mentioned “Smarter in Seconds,” a Reels series in which the activist and author Blair Imani, who is Black, bisexual, and Muslim, offers advice on how to address a potentially sensitive subject. Recent episodes include “Pronouns Part 3: But What if Someone Doesn’t Know What Pronouns Are?” and “You Still Don’t Know What to Say Instead of ‘Minority?’ I Gotcha!” ♦


newyorker--2020-10-19--Slide Show: New Yorker Cartoons October 26, 2020

“ You ’ re right—this town is big enough for the both of us .
”

“You’re right—this town is big enough for the both of us.”
Cartoon by Liam Francis Walsh


newyorker--2020-10-19--R. Kikuo Johnson’s “Shifting Gears”

R. Kikuo Johnson’s “Shifting Gears”

As COVID-19 infection rates have risen in New York , and the city braces for winter , it can be hard to see a reason for optimism .
For his latest New Yorker cover , R. Kikuo Johnson finds one : the welcome surge of cycling across the boroughs .
We recently talked to Johnson about biking , working from home , and one of his favorite views in the city .
This is such a lovely image amid dark times .
Was there a moment when inspiration struck ?
When I think of New York City , the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ view from the Williamsburg Bridge .
From the top , you see the whole city at once : skyscrapers , graffiti , at least four bridges , the Statue of Liberty , sweating crowds in a rush .
For as long as I ’ ve lived here , the bridge has been my gateway to Manhattan , and then my link back home to Brooklyn .
This isn ’ t the first New Yorker cover that flowed from my sitting on a bike saddle and making that crossing .
Were you already working @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for you , or are you feeling its toll ?
I ’ ve spent most of my adult life in pajamas , drawing in my living room and having my groceries delivered—I was very fortunate in being prepared for quarantine .
With fewer social demands , I ’ ve finally been making headway on a graphic novel that I ’ ve been wanting to do for years , so that ’ s been a silver lining .
How do you feel about the city being reshaped by the pandemic ?
The diminished traffic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ closed restaurants .
.
.
I ’ ve been reminding myself that New York will , hopefully , never be quite like this again , and I ’ ve been trying to take stock of the good changes : parks where every blanket has a picnic and an open bottle of wine , the outdoor dining that I always envied in Europe , and streets closed to cars and covered in chalk drawings .
When New York is back at full steam , I hope we ’ ll keep at least a bit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long got around the city on a bike .
How does it feel seeing so many new converts to two-wheel locomotion ?
I love that more people are discovering cycling .
New Yorkers are used to waiting in long lines , on subways , and in traffic , but bikes offer freedom from all that .
A few years ago , I moved away from the city for a bit , and , besides missing my friends , I thought I ’ d miss the restaurants , bars , and museums .
Instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A.M. , when Broadway was empty and I had the whole city to myself .
Hopefully , as more people discover that joy , the city will become even more accommodating to cyclists .
Are there seasons or occasions when you can ’ t use your bike ?
If so , what ’ s your backup means of transportation ?
I bike year round .
Years ago , when I first moved from my childhood home , in Hawaii , to Brooklyn , I made it five winters before I hit a breaking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being shut in and decided to never let the weather limit how I move through the world .
I bought Gore-Tex everything : coat , boots , gloves , pants , socks , gaiters .
I spent the rest of that winter biking forty-five minutes to work , in sleet and snow , with a deep sense of self-righteous satisfaction and painfully numb toes .
These days , if it ’ s raining , I ’ m taking the train .
See below for more covers featuring bicyclists :

As COVID-19 infection rates have risen in New York, and the city braces for winter, it can be hard to see a reason for optimism. For his latest New Yorker cover, R. Kikuo Johnson finds one: the welcome surge of cycling across the boroughs. We recently talked to Johnson about biking, working from home, and one of his favorite views in the city.
This is such a lovely image amid dark times. Was there a moment when inspiration struck?
When I think of New York City, the first image that comes to mind is the view from the Williamsburg Bridge. From the top, you see the whole city at once: skyscrapers, graffiti, at least four bridges, the Statue of Liberty, sweating crowds in a rush. For as long as I’ve lived here, the bridge has been my gateway to Manhattan, and then my link back home to Brooklyn. This isn’t the first New Yorker cover that flowed from my sitting on a bike saddle and making that crossing.
Were you already working at home? Has quarantine been productive for you, or are you feeling its toll?
I’ve spent most of my adult life in pajamas, drawing in my living room and having my groceries delivered—I was very fortunate in being prepared for quarantine. With fewer social demands, I’ve finally been making headway on a graphic novel that I’ve been wanting to do for years, so that’s been a silver lining.
How do you feel about the city being reshaped by the pandemic? The diminished traffic, empty stores and office buildings, closed restaurants . . .
I’ve been reminding myself that New York will, hopefully, never be quite like this again, and I’ve been trying to take stock of the good changes: parks where every blanket has a picnic and an open bottle of wine, the outdoor dining that I always envied in Europe, and streets closed to cars and covered in chalk drawings. When New York is back at full steam, I hope we’ll keep at least a bit of that spirit.
You’ve long got around the city on a bike. How does it feel seeing so many new converts to two-wheel locomotion?
I love that more people are discovering cycling. New Yorkers are used to waiting in long lines, on subways, and in traffic, but bikes offer freedom from all that. A few years ago, I moved away from the city for a bit, and, besides missing my friends, I thought I’d miss the restaurants, bars, and museums. Instead, I missed cycling home at 2 A.M., when Broadway was empty and I had the whole city to myself. Hopefully, as more people discover that joy, the city will become even more accommodating to cyclists.
Are there seasons or occasions when you can’t use your bike? If so, what’s your backup means of transportation?
I bike year round. Years ago, when I first moved from my childhood home, in Hawaii, to Brooklyn, I made it five winters before I hit a breaking point. I was fed up with being shut in and decided to never let the weather limit how I move through the world. I bought Gore-Tex everything: coat, boots, gloves, pants, socks, gaiters. I spent the rest of that winter biking forty-five minutes to work, in sleet and snow, with a deep sense of self-righteous satisfaction and painfully numb toes. These days, if it’s raining, I’m taking the train.
See below for more covers featuring bicyclists: