newyorker--2020-11-16--Wikipedia, “Jeopardy!,” and the Fate of the Fact

There is still no artificial substitute for the ability to dunk .
It remains a valued and nontransferrable aptitude .
But today who needs to know the capital of South Dakota or the atomic number of hafnium ( Pierre and 72 ) ?
Siri , or whatever chatbot you use , can get you that information in nanoseconds .
Remember when , back in the B.D.E .
( Before the Digital Era ) , you ’ d be sitting around with friends over a bottle of Puligny-Montrachet , and the conversation would turn on the question of when Hegel published @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Unless you had an encyclopedia for grownups around the house , you ’ d either have to trek to your local library , whose only copy of the “ Phenomenology ” was likely to be checked out , or use a primitive version of the “ lifeline ” —i.e.
, telephone a Hegel expert .
Now you ask your smartphone , which is probably already in your hand .
( I just did : 1807 .
Took less than a second . )
And names and dates are the least of it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ suspected that one of your friends was misusing Hegel ’ s term “ the cunning of reason.
” So annoying .
But you don ’ t even have to be sober to straighten that person out .
As you contemplate another glass , Siri places in your hand a list of sites where that concept is explained , also in under a second .
And , should the conversation ever get serious , Hegel ’ s entire corpus is searchable online .
Interestingly , when I ask Siri , “ Is Dick Van @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says , “ I won ’ t respond to that.
” It ’ s not clear if that ’ s because of the Dick or the Dyke .
( He is , and he ’ s ninety-four . )
There is also , of course , tons of instant information that is actually useful , like instructions for grilling corn on the cob , or unclogging a bathtub drain .
And it ’ s free .
You do not have to pay a plumber .
Leaving the irrefutably dire and dystopian effects of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this is an amazing accomplishment .
In less than twenty years , a huge percentage of the world ’ s knowledge has become accessible to anyone with a device that has Wi-Fi .
Search engines work faster than the mind , and they are way more accurate .
There is plenty of misinformation on the Web , but there is plenty of misinformation in your head , too .
I just told you what the atomic number of hafnium is .
Do you remember it correctly ?
The most radical change that instant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ content .
There is no longer a distinction between things that everyone knows , or could readily know , and things that only experts know .
“ The cunning of reason ” is as accessible as the date Hegel ’ s book was published and the best method for grilling corn .
There is no such thing as esoterica anymore .
We are all pedants now .
Is this a cause for concern ?
Has it changed the economic and social value of knowledge ?
Has it put scholars and plumbers out of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ took off like a shot .
Within a month , it had a thousand articles , a number that would have been impossible using a traditional editorial chain of command .
Within three years , it had two hundred thousand articles , and it soon left print encyclopedias in the dust .
Today , Wikipedia ( according to Wikipedia ) has more than fifty-five million articles in three hundred and thirteen languages .
In 2020 , it is the second most visited site on the Web in the United States , after YouTube @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four hundred million more visits than the No .
3 Web site , Twitter .
The Encyclopædia Britannica , first published in 1768 and for centuries the gold standard of the genre , had sixty-five thousand articles in its last print edition .
Since 2012 , new editions have been available only online , where it currently ranks fortieth in visits per month , with about thirty-two million .
In the beginning , the notion that you could create a reliable encyclopedia article about Hegel that was not written by , or at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expert was received , understandably , with skepticism .
Teachers treated Wikipedia like the study guide SparkNotes—a shortcut for homework shirkers , and a hodgepodge compiled by autodidacts and trivia buffs .
The turning point is customarily said to have been a study published in Nature , in 2005 , in which academic scientists compared forty-two science articles in Wikipedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica .
The experts determined that Wikipedia averaged four errors per article and Britannica averaged three .
“ Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conclusion .
By then , many teachers were consulting Wikipedia regularly themselves .
The reason most people today who work in and on digital media have such warm feelings about Wikipedia may be that it ’ s one of the few surviving sites that adhere to the spirit of the early Internet , to what was known affectionately as the “ hacker ethos.
” This is the ethos of open-source , free-access software development .
Anyone can get in the game , and a person doesn ’ t need permission to make changes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ operating system Linux , released in 1991 , and much early programming was done in this communal barn-raising spirit .
The vision , which now seems distinctly prelapsarian , was of the Web as a bottom-up phenomenon , with no bosses , and no rewards other than the satisfaction of participating in successful innovation .
Even today , no one is paid by Wikipedia , and anyone can ( at least in theory , since a kind of editorial pecking order has evolved ) change anything , with very few restrictions .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wikipedia is “ copyleft , ” meaning that it can be used , modified , and distributed without permission .
No one can claim a proprietary interest .
There are scarcely any hard-and-fast rules for writing or editing a Wikipedia article .
That seems to have been what got hacker types , people typically allergic to being told what to do , interested in developing the site .
“ If rules make you nervous and depressed , ” Larry Sanger , the site ’ s co-founder , with Jimmy Wales , wrote in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them and go about your business.
” Wikipedia is also one of the few popular sites whose content is not monetized and whose pages are not personalized .
Nothing is behind a paywall ; you do not have to log in .
There are occasional pop-ups soliciting contributions ( in 2017-18 , almost a hundred million dollars was donated to the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation , headed by Wales ) , but no one is trying to sell you something .
Everyone who looks up Pierre , South Dakota , sees the same page @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no ads for drain de-cloggers and books by German philosophers .
Wikipedia has some principles , of course .
Contributors are supposed to maintain a “ neutral point of view ” ; everything must be verifiable and , preferably , given a citation ; and—this is probably the key to the site ’ s success with scholars—there should be no original research .
What this means is that Wikipedia is , in essence , an aggregator site .
Already existing information is collected , usually from linkable sources , but it is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most part , contextualized .
Unlike in scholarly writing , all sources tend to be treated equally .
A peer-reviewed journal and a blog are cited without distinction .
There is also a semi-official indifference to the quality of the writing .
You do not read a Wikipedia article for the pleasures of its prose .
There are consequently very few restrictions on creating a page .
The bar is set almost as low as it can be .
You can ’ t post an article on your grandmother ’ s recipe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But there is an article on duck à l ’ orange .
There are four hundred and seventy-two subway stations in New York City ; each station has its own Wikipedia page .
Many articles are basically vast dumping grounds of links , factoids , and data .
Still , all this keeps the teachers and scholars in business , since knowledge isn ’ t the data .
It ’ s what you do with the data .
A quickie summary of “ the cunning of reason ” does not get you very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” is thirty-seven years old under its host Alex Trebek , who died earlier this month , at the age of eighty .
But the show is much older than that .
It first went on the air in 1964 , hosted by Art Fleming , and ran until 1975 .
And the “ Jeopardy !
” genre , the game show , is much older still .
Like a lot of early television—such as soap operas , news broadcasts , and variety shows—game shows date from radio .
The three national broadcast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ radio networks , so those were genres that programmers already knew .
Shows like “ Jeopardy !
” were as popular in the early years of television as they are today .
In the 1955-56 season , the highest-rated show was “ The $ 64,000 Question , ” in which contestants won money by answering questions in different categories .
Soon afterward , however , a meteor struck the game-show planet when it was discovered that Charles Van Doren , a contestant on another quiz show , “ Twenty-One , ” who had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ face had been on the cover of Time , had been given the answers in advance .
It turned out that most television quiz shows were rigged .
The news was received as a scandal ; there were congressional hearings , and the Communications Act was amended to make “ secret assistance ” to game-show contestants a federal crime .
Whom did such “ assistance ” help ?
Mostly , the networks .
When a player is on a streak , audience size increases , because more and more people tune in each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last .
In the nineteen-fifties , there were usually just three shows to choose from in a given time slot , so audiences were enormous .
As many as fifty-five million people—a third of the population—tuned in to “ The $ 64,000 Question.
” It was the equivalent of broadcasting the Super Bowl every week .
The financial upside of a Van Doren was huge .

Is it still cool to memorize a lot of stuff? Is there even a reason to memorize anything? Having a lot of information in your head was maybe never cool in the sexy-cool sense, more in the geeky-cool or class-brainiac sense. But people respected the ability to rattle off the names of all the state capitals, or to recite the periodic table. It was like the ability to dunk, or to play the piano by ear—something the average person can’t do. It was a harmless show of superiority, and it gave people a kind of species pride.
There is still no artificial substitute for the ability to dunk. It remains a valued and nontransferrable aptitude. But today who needs to know the capital of South Dakota or the atomic number of hafnium (Pierre and 72)? Siri, or whatever chatbot you use, can get you that information in nanoseconds. Remember when, back in the B.D.E. (Before the Digital Era), you’d be sitting around with friends over a bottle of Puligny-Montrachet, and the conversation would turn on the question of when Hegel published “The Phenomenology of Spirit”? Unless you had an encyclopedia for grownups around the house, you’d either have to trek to your local library, whose only copy of the “Phenomenology” was likely to be checked out, or use a primitive version of the “lifeline”—i.e., telephone a Hegel expert. Now you ask your smartphone, which is probably already in your hand. (I just did: 1807. Took less than a second.)
And names and dates are the least of it. Suppose, for example, that you suspected that one of your friends was misusing Hegel’s term “the cunning of reason.” So annoying. But you don’t even have to be sober to straighten that person out. As you contemplate another glass, Siri places in your hand a list of sites where that concept is explained, also in under a second. And, should the conversation ever get serious, Hegel’s entire corpus is searchable online. Interestingly, when I ask Siri, “Is Dick Van Dyke still alive?,” Siri says, “I won’t respond to that.” It’s not clear if that’s because of the Dick or the Dyke. (He is, and he’s ninety-four.)
There is also, of course, tons of instant information that is actually useful, like instructions for grilling corn on the cob, or unclogging a bathtub drain. And it’s free. You do not have to pay a plumber.
Leaving the irrefutably dire and dystopian effects of the Web aside for a moment, this is an amazing accomplishment. In less than twenty years, a huge percentage of the world’s knowledge has become accessible to anyone with a device that has Wi-Fi. Search engines work faster than the mind, and they are way more accurate. There is plenty of misinformation on the Web, but there is plenty of misinformation in your head, too. I just told you what the atomic number of hafnium is. Do you remember it correctly?
The most radical change that instant information has made is the levelling of content. There is no longer a distinction between things that everyone knows, or could readily know, and things that only experts know. “The cunning of reason” is as accessible as the date Hegel’s book was published and the best method for grilling corn. There is no such thing as esoterica anymore. We are all pedants now. Is this a cause for concern? Has it changed the economic and social value of knowledge? Has it put scholars and plumbers out of business and made expertise obsolete?
In the early years of the Web, the hub around which such questions circled was Wikipedia. The site will be twenty years old on January 15th, and a collection of articles by scholars, called “Wikipedia @ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Revolution” (M.I.T.), is being published as a kind of birthday tribute. The authors survey many aspects of the Wiki world, not always uncritically, but the consensus is that Wikipedia is the major success story of the Internet era. A ridiculously simple principle—“Anyone can edit”—has produced a more or less responsibly curated, perpetually up-to-date, and infinitely expandable source of information, almost all of it hyperlinked to multiple additional sources. Andrew Lih’s history of the site, “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia,” published in 2009, is similarly smitten.
Wikipedia took off like a shot. Within a month, it had a thousand articles, a number that would have been impossible using a traditional editorial chain of command. Within three years, it had two hundred thousand articles, and it soon left print encyclopedias in the dust. Today, Wikipedia (according to Wikipedia) has more than fifty-five million articles in three hundred and thirteen languages. In 2020, it is the second most visited site on the Web in the United States, after YouTube, with 1.03 billion visits a month—over four hundred million more visits than the No. 3 Web site, Twitter. The Encyclopædia Britannica, first published in 1768 and for centuries the gold standard of the genre, had sixty-five thousand articles in its last print edition. Since 2012, new editions have been available only online, where it currently ranks fortieth in visits per month, with about thirty-two million.
In the beginning, the notion that you could create a reliable encyclopedia article about Hegel that was not written by, or at least edited by, a credentialled Hegel expert was received, understandably, with skepticism. Teachers treated Wikipedia like the study guide SparkNotes—a shortcut for homework shirkers, and a hodgepodge compiled by autodidacts and trivia buffs. The turning point is customarily said to have been a study published in Nature, in 2005, in which academic scientists compared forty-two science articles in Wikipedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica. The experts determined that Wikipedia averaged four errors per article and Britannica averaged three. “Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its scientific entries” was the editors’ conclusion. By then, many teachers were consulting Wikipedia regularly themselves.
The reason most people today who work in and on digital media have such warm feelings about Wikipedia may be that it’s one of the few surviving sites that adhere to the spirit of the early Internet, to what was known affectionately as the “hacker ethos.” This is the ethos of open-source, free-access software development. Anyone can get in the game, and a person doesn’t need permission to make changes. The prototypical open-source case is the operating system Linux, released in 1991, and much early programming was done in this communal barn-raising spirit. The vision, which now seems distinctly prelapsarian, was of the Web as a bottom-up phenomenon, with no bosses, and no rewards other than the satisfaction of participating in successful innovation.
Even today, no one is paid by Wikipedia, and anyone can (at least in theory, since a kind of editorial pecking order has evolved) change anything, with very few restrictions. In programming shop talk, all work on Wikipedia is “copyleft,” meaning that it can be used, modified, and distributed without permission. No one can claim a proprietary interest. There are scarcely any hard-and-fast rules for writing or editing a Wikipedia article.
That seems to have been what got hacker types, people typically allergic to being told what to do, interested in developing the site. “If rules make you nervous and depressed,” Larry Sanger, the site’s co-founder, with Jimmy Wales, wrote in the early days, “then ignore them and go about your business.”
Wikipedia is also one of the few popular sites whose content is not monetized and whose pages are not personalized. Nothing is behind a paywall; you do not have to log in. There are occasional pop-ups soliciting contributions (in 2017-18, almost a hundred million dollars was donated to the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation), but no one is trying to sell you something. Everyone who looks up Pierre, South Dakota, sees the same page. There is no age-and-gender-appropriate clickbait, no ads for drain de-cloggers and books by German philosophers.
Wikipedia has some principles, of course. Contributors are supposed to maintain a “neutral point of view”; everything must be verifiable and, preferably, given a citation; and—this is probably the key to the site’s success with scholars—there should be no original research. What this means is that Wikipedia is, in essence, an aggregator site. Already existing information is collected, usually from linkable sources, but it is not judged, interpreted, or, for the most part, contextualized. Unlike in scholarly writing, all sources tend to be treated equally. A peer-reviewed journal and a blog are cited without distinction. There is also a semi-official indifference to the quality of the writing. You do not read a Wikipedia article for the pleasures of its prose.


newyorker--2020-11-16--“The Old Man in the Piazza,” by Salman Rushdie

He takes his seat .
He is the audience , an audience of one .
The show is about to begin .
It is a piazza into which seven narrow roads debouch , one at each corner and one each at the midpoint of three of the piazza ’ s four sides ; only the side with the church is uninterrupted by a cobbled street .
It should be a quiet place , a sleepy provincial square , but it is not .
All around the piazza you can hear the loud sounds of people quarrelling , six days a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there are more people in the piazza than live in the locality .
It ’ s as if people came here , to this peaceful little square in this peaceful little town , to get into fights .
They drive fifteen kilometres from the big city to express their bad moods .
They raise their voices ; they pound their right fists into the palms of their left hands ; they stamp their feet ( doesn ’ t matter which foot—both are stamped equally ) .
If they sit astride motorcycles they sound @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drown out their adversaries .
If they are arguing while in adjacent motorcars with the windows down , they toot like the motorcyclists but also rev their engines and , when they are irritated beyond the point of endurance , they roll their windows up .
There is no end to their disagreements .
They quarrel about the likelihood of hurricanes , about the scandal of bribery behind the contentious awarding of the Summer Olympic Games to a city in the Arctic Circle , about the impossibility of love and the futility of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eminent Catholic priests .
They dispute the flatness of the earth and the efficacy of vaccines for measles , mumps , and rubella .
They disagree about the best flavors of ice cream , and have strong and irreconcilable opinions concerning the beauty of film actresses .
If they have read novels by writers who are also , or were at one time , married couples , then they vehemently take the side of one author or the other and will not be persuaded to change their minds .
It appears there is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ love of the quarrel itself , the quarrel understood as a public art form , as the defining heart of our culture .
The noise is terrible , grows louder as the day darkens into evening , and continues late into the night .
By midnight the populace has had a fair amount to drink and that makes the discussions in the piazza even more heated .
It is not unheard of for punches to be thrown .
The old man sits at the Café of the Fountain and listens .
Because he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he avoids the later phase of the day , when alcohol has had its effect , and fists start flying .
Sundays are quiet .
On Sunday , everyone stays home and eats , or goes to church , begs for forgiveness , then returns home and eats .
On Sundays , the old man does not come to the piazza .
Even our language—the language in which such great poetry has been written !
—was altered .
She was no longer permitted the word “ no.
” There was only “ yes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” : “ of course , ” “ certainly , ” “ for sure , ” “ absolutely , ” “ totally , ” “ no question about it , ” “ agreed.
” When some rash radical remembered the word “ no , ” it felt worse than shocking , worse than sinful .
It felt archaic .
A broken word from an ancient ruined time , like the remnant of a temple built to honor a god in whom nobody had believed for thousands of years .
The god of “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must have been !
At any rate , that was how it felt to many of us .
Our language , however , sulked .
She came to sit by herself in a corner of the piazza and often shook her head mournfully .
She became pedestrian .
She informed us that she was unwilling for the moment to fly or to soar , or even to travel by train or bicycle or bus .
She said that she felt leaden-footed and preferred to sit quietly and contemplate the things that languages contemplate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maltreated .
If she needed to move , she told us , she would plod .
Her attitude was forbidding .
She wore tight clothing that constrained her movements , and uncomfortable shoes .
We stopped approaching her .
Our language did not join the old man at the Café of the Fountain .
She sat alone in her corner .
They did not speak .
In the time of the universal “ yes , ” the piazza was quiet .
You could hear the songbirds , the larks , whose numbers had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parties .
In the center of the piazza there is a small fountain—the fountain , obviously , from which the café takes its name—and back in the old days the silence allowed you to listen to the water , and soothe your aching heart .
The old man was younger then , and his heart ached often , thanks to the repeated rejection of its sincerely offered emotions by young women with hair of different colors .
Even in those days when the word “ no ” was forbidden , those women were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for them were not requited .
“ You are so kind , ” they said , “ but on that evening I am having my yellow/brown/red/black hair done.
” What about another evening , then , he dared to ask , and they replied , “ I am deeply moved by your generosity , but I will be having my black/red/brown/yellow hair done every evening for the foreseeable future , except on Sundays , when I will stay home and eat , or , in some cases , will first go to church @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go home and eat.
” After a while the old man stopped asking .
He continued to come and sit , most afternoons , on his upright wooden chair at the Café of the Fountain and listen to the water flowing .
He grew old before his time , distressed , like faux-antique furniture , by his discovery that even the time of “ yes ” contained an unspoken “ no.
” His hair grew white , and he sat on his wooden chair and watched the world going by .
They were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Crap !
, ” for example , or “ Get lost !
” or even the excessively emphatic “ Go fuck yourself !
” —and this crudeness was perhaps regrettable , but these workmanlike , hard-edged words were effective , that has to be said .
They were like bludgeons or explosives , and as they hammered down around us they swiftly brought the reign of the “ yes ” to an unsavory conclusion .
The “ yes ” and its fellow-travellers ( the aforementioned “ of course , ” “ certainly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ absolutely , ” “ totally , ” “ no question about it , ” and “ agreed ” ) were hung up on meat hooks in the piazza , and that was an end to that .
That was when the age of argumentation began .
“ But !
” “ Rubbish !
” “ Tripe !
” “ Nonsense !
” “ Bullshit !
” “ Liar !
” “ Idiot !
” “ Don ’ t you dare !
” “ That is such ignorant bigoted shit !
” “ Just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to you !
” Who would have guessed that these unlovely words would take center stage in that moment—these , and not our language ’ s beautiful and justly celebrated poetry , to which we previously referred ?
Odes and sonnets , lyric and epic poetry stood ignored , striking attitudes and gesticulating impotently .
Our language remained in her corner of the piazza , watching , but she had cast off her corset and her disfiguring clogs , and her long hair and skirt flowed loosely around her .
The skirt went @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , so we could not see her shoes , although we sensed that she was tapping her feet to the beat of some private music .
The old man also felt the pressure of words struggling to emerge from within him .
He tried to contain them , for he was not sure what they might be or do or make possible or engender or destroy , but out they came , like vomit , words he hardly recognized as his own pushing through his lips , angry , contemptuous , blaming .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ or her version of the same phenomenon , so nobody was paying attention , and he himself soon forgot what those first words had been and settled back into his wooden chair to observe the life of the piazza as it now was .
Once the “ yes ” time had ended , the quarrels started up and drowned out the songs of the larks and the soothing plash of the fountain , which cared nothing for changes in society , and kept itself busy , in its insouciant way , with its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ old by sadness—no longer asked women questions of the heart , questions to which he already knew the answers , which could now be stated plainly without beating about the bush or claiming appointments at the hair salon .
At first , for a little while , he missed the silence of the five “ yes ” years .
There had been something heartening about being in a constant state of affirmation , eschewing negativity , accentuating the positive .
There had been something—what was the word ?
—something modest about declining to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the temptation .
And something infinitely relaxing about being excused from a life of objection , of critique , even of protest .
It had required a certain remodelling of the brain , that was true .
He had had to restrain his natural impulse toward dissent , toward sentences that began “ But on the other hand .
.
.
” or “ But isn ’ t it true that .
.
.
” or “ How can you possibly .
.
.
” Save your breath—that had been the instruction of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to yourself .
For a time he ’ d found a measure of comfort in accepting the “ yes.
” In saying the unutterable “ no ” to “ no.
” Our language is still there , in the corner of the piazza farthest from the old man ’ s chair .
These days she often has companions , and these companions are invariably much younger than her , young men of a physical beauty that is almost obscene .
These Byronic creatures plainly worship her , and perhaps , the old man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ravish her in private , on those occasions when she leaves the piazza for a while .
The companions change all the time .
It is possible that our language is promiscuous .
It is possible that her morals are exceedingly loose .
When this thought comes to the old man it is as if a devil were whispering in his ear .
But the thought doesn ’ t appear to have occurred to anyone else , or , if the devil has whispered it into other ears , the owners of those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a dismissive shrug .
Let her be whatever she wants !
Let her do as she pleases !
That is the general attitude nowadays .
The old man sees that he is in a minority , and holds his tongue .
In all these years they have never exchanged even the most perfunctory of greetings , the old man and our language .
There they sit , across the piazza from each other , he on his wooden chair and she on a little cushioned stool that was a gift from one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who fell into disfavor with her not long afterward and was erased from her consciousness .
Nothing of him remains except this stool .
Recently , however , it seemed to the old man that she , our language , had nodded in his direction once or twice .
But that may have been a trick of the light .
Facing the church across the piazza , on either side of the little cobbled lane that feeds into the piazza over there , are two structures that , if we were in Italy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with delicate pillar work and arches—and in these loggias the municipality has housed marble statues that imitate far more famous statues elsewhere , that copy those other statues to the extent that their makers ’ skills permitted .
We enjoy these facsimiles as profoundly as if they were the real thing .
In the absence of genius , imitation is an acceptable substitute .
Through these copies we pay homage to the masterpieces that we will never see .
Some of us go so far as to assert that the originals do not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these alleged replicas are , in fact , the great works themselves , and should be accorded the respect due to their greatness .
This is one of the popular subjects debated daily in the piazza .
It remains unresolved .
This , too , is the subject of many spirited discussions : Are mistaken notions harmful to the brain , to the community , to the health of the body politic , or are they merely errors to be tolerated as the product of simple minds ?
The fact that all those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ full of tosh and piffle does not make for productive debates .
The old man has the impression that at the end of each day people go home , drunk on wine and niggles , knowing less than they knew in the morning .
And yet , he tells himself , the tongue set free is an excellent thing .
Our language , sitting on her cushioned stool in the far corner of the piazza with the divine young men at her feet , is clearly happier than she was in the subservient @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” A day comes , however , when a certain argumentative twosome—it turns out that they are husband and wife , happily married for thirty years—descend upon the old man seated on his wooden chair and shout at him in unison , “ We can ’ t stand it !
You decide for us !
” Their disagreement , as it happens , is a small thing .
Where should they go for their summer vacation ?
To the sun-kissed island of A. , which isn ’ t very far away , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which would be a much more adventurous choice , but less restful .
“ We just can ’ t seem to agree , ” they chorus .
“ So we ’ ll do whatever you say.
” “ Very well , ” he says , and with those two words he abandons the neutrality of a lifetime , and the little wooden chair upon which he has spent decades being no more than a contented observer of the passing cavalcade is transformed—just like that !
—into a seat of judgment .
“ Very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In these times of strife and stress , I recommend a good rest .
Go and sunbathe on the sun-kissed island of A.
” The husband and wife stand very still .
Then they turn to look at each other .
“ Nonsense !
” they cry with one voice .
“ It ’ s a life of adventure for us !
” And off they go to that distant country of B .
Some weeks later they return and thank the old man for his judgment .
They have seen enormous crocodiles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and munch on them in the swamps , and giraffes that have grown to record heights , and giant axolotls .
They have heard languages they had never heard before and witnessed the most vivid of spectacles , an avalanche that buried an entire village and a military coup that littered the streets with corpses .
For a few days , while on safari , they were both transformed into hippopotamuses but that soon wore off and they were told that they should have read the instructions to travellers and been inoculated against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spreading numerous virulent strains of metamorphism .
They say , “ Never mind , it was quite an experience , so worth it !
So unique !
And rolling in mud—we could get used to that !
” In sum , they have had the holiday of a lifetime .
“ Thank you , thank you , ” they cry , and their gratitude is genuine .
The old man replies mildly that he proposed they go elsewhere for a quiet time , and they laugh prettily .
“ But that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Always !
We ’ re contrary !
We ask people what they think and then we do the opposite .
Call us perverse !
But it has worked for us , and given us thirty years of happy married life.
” Word spreads across the piazza that the old man sitting on the wooden chair at the Café of the Fountain is a judge with the wisdom of Solomon .
A crowd of people rush across the square to ask him to judge them , too .
The old man has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point in his long , uneventful life .
It is , he concedes , flattering .
He gives in .
He asks his petitioners to form an orderly line , and after that , every afternoon between four and six o ’ clock , when the heat of the day has passed , he hands down judgments , declaring in tones of growing authority that no , the earth is not flat , and no , most immigrants are not sex monsters , no more than you or I , and yes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and so do Heaven and Hell .

Audio available Listen to this story Audio: Salman Rushdie reads.
Every day, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, when the sun’s heat has begun to diminish, the old man comes into the piazza. He walks slowly, shuffling his feet, which are encased in dusty brown loafers. He is wearing, most days, a dark-blue jacket buttoned all the way up to the neck, and navy pants that fasten with a drawstring at the waist. His hair is white, and there is a beret on his head. He goes to the only café in the piazza, the Café of the Fountain, and sits on a wooden chair at a wooden table and orders a small, strong coffee. At 6 P.M., he orders a beer and a sandwich. At 8 P.M., he rises, wipes his lips, and shuffles away, presumably to his home. We do not need to know where he lives. Everything of any significance in his life has happened and will happen right here, in this little piazza.
He takes his seat. He is the audience, an audience of one. The show is about to begin.
It is a piazza into which seven narrow roads debouch, one at each corner and one each at the midpoint of three of the piazza’s four sides; only the side with the church is uninterrupted by a cobbled street. It should be a quiet place, a sleepy provincial square, but it is not. All around the piazza you can hear the loud sounds of people quarrelling, six days a week. On most of these days there are more people in the piazza than live in the locality. It’s as if people came here, to this peaceful little square in this peaceful little town, to get into fights. They drive fifteen kilometres from the big city to express their bad moods. They raise their voices; they pound their right fists into the palms of their left hands; they stamp their feet (doesn’t matter which foot—both are stamped equally). If they sit astride motorcycles they sound their horns in frustration, or to drown out their adversaries. If they are arguing while in adjacent motorcars with the windows down, they toot like the motorcyclists but also rev their engines and, when they are irritated beyond the point of endurance, they roll their windows up.
There is no end to their disagreements. They quarrel about the likelihood of hurricanes, about the scandal of bribery behind the contentious awarding of the Summer Olympic Games to a city in the Arctic Circle, about the impossibility of love and the futility of politics and the secret illegal affections of eminent Catholic priests. They dispute the flatness of the earth and the efficacy of vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella. They disagree about the best flavors of ice cream, and have strong and irreconcilable opinions concerning the beauty of film actresses. If they have read novels by writers who are also, or were at one time, married couples, then they vehemently take the side of one author or the other and will not be persuaded to change their minds. It appears there is nothing that unites our people except their love of the quarrel itself, the quarrel understood as a public art form, as the defining heart of our culture. The noise is terrible, grows louder as the day darkens into evening, and continues late into the night. By midnight the populace has had a fair amount to drink and that makes the discussions in the piazza even more heated. It is not unheard of for punches to be thrown.
The old man sits at the Café of the Fountain and listens. Because he leaves at 8 P.M., however, he avoids the later phase of the day, when alcohol has had its effect, and fists start flying.
Sundays are quiet. On Sunday, everyone stays home and eats, or goes to church, begs for forgiveness, then returns home and eats.
On Sundays, the old man does not come to the piazza.
This is how it has been in the square ever since the end of the so-called time of the “yes.” That dark age began forty years or so ago, a time when for a period of half a decade it was made illegal to argue. We were all obliged to agree, at all times. Whatever proposition was made, no matter how risible—that bread and wine could transubstantiate into flesh and blood, that the immigrant population transformed at night into drooling sex monsters, that it was beneficial to raise the taxes paid by the poor, that souls could transmigrate, or that war was necessary—it was forbidden to debunk it, even though immigrants ran the best bakery in the town and our favorite wine store, and even though most of us were poor, and none of us remembered any earlier lives spent as tortoises, or foreigners, or eels, and only a small minority of us were belligerent by nature. It was necessary at all times to assent.
Even our language—the language in which such great poetry has been written!—was altered. She was no longer permitted the word “no.” There was only “yes,” and variations on “yes”: “of course,” “certainly,” “for sure,” “absolutely,” “totally,” “no question about it,” “agreed.” When some rash radical remembered the word “no,” it felt worse than shocking, worse than sinful. It felt archaic. A broken word from an ancient ruined time, like the remnant of a temple built to honor a god in whom nobody had believed for thousands of years. The god of “no.” What a laughable god he must have been! At any rate, that was how it felt to many of us.
Our language, however, sulked. She came to sit by herself in a corner of the piazza and often shook her head mournfully. She became pedestrian. She informed us that she was unwilling for the moment to fly or to soar, or even to travel by train or bicycle or bus. She said that she felt leaden-footed and preferred to sit quietly and contemplate the things that languages contemplate when they are by themselves and feel maltreated. If she needed to move, she told us, she would plod. Her attitude was forbidding. She wore tight clothing that constrained her movements, and uncomfortable shoes. We stopped approaching her.
Our language did not join the old man at the Café of the Fountain. She sat alone in her corner. They did not speak.
In the time of the universal “yes,” the piazza was quiet. You could hear the songbirds, the larks, whose numbers had not yet been decimated by weekend shooting parties. In the center of the piazza there is a small fountain—the fountain, obviously, from which the café takes its name—and back in the old days the silence allowed you to listen to the water, and soothe your aching heart. The old man was younger then, and his heart ached often, thanks to the repeated rejection of its sincerely offered emotions by young women with hair of different colors.
Even in those days when the word “no” was forbidden, those women were able to inform him that his feelings for them were not requited. “You are so kind,” they said, “but on that evening I am having my yellow/brown/red/black hair done.” What about another evening, then, he dared to ask, and they replied, “I am deeply moved by your generosity, but I will be having my black/red/brown/yellow hair done every evening for the foreseeable future, except on Sundays, when I will stay home and eat, or, in some cases, will first go to church and ask for forgiveness, and then go home and eat.”
After a while the old man stopped asking. He continued to come and sit, most afternoons, on his upright wooden chair at the Café of the Fountain and listen to the water flowing. He grew old before his time, distressed, like faux-antique furniture, by his discovery that even the time of “yes” contained an unspoken “no.” His hair grew white, and he sat on his wooden chair and watched the world going by.
Five years passed. In the end it was our language herself who rebelled against the “yes.” She got up from the corner of the piazza where she had been meditating silently for half a decade and let out a long, piercing shriek that drove into our ears like a stiletto. It travelled everywhere, as fast as lightning travels. It contained no words. However, no sooner had it been uttered than all our words were unleashed. Words simply burst out of people and would not be held back. People felt great globs of vocabulary rising up in their throats and pushing against their teeth. The more cautious among us pressed our lips tightly together to stop the words from getting out, but the word-torrents forced our lips apart and out they came, like children released from single-sex boarding schools at the end of a long, dour semester. The words tumbled pell-mell into the piazza like girls and boys in search of happy reunions. It was a sight to see.
They were rough words, these first utterances—“Crap!,” for example, or “Get lost!” or even the excessively emphatic “Go fuck yourself!”—and this crudeness was perhaps regrettable, but these workmanlike, hard-edged words were effective, that has to be said. They were like bludgeons or explosives, and as they hammered down around us they swiftly brought the reign of the “yes” to an unsavory conclusion. The “yes” and its fellow-travellers (the aforementioned “of course,” “certainly,” “for sure,” “absolutely,” “totally,” “no question about it,” and “agreed”) were hung up on meat hooks in the piazza, and that was an end to that.
That was when the age of argumentation began. “But!” “Rubbish!” “Tripe!” “Nonsense!” “Bullshit!” “Liar!” “Idiot!” “Don’t you dare!” “That is such ignorant bigoted shit!” “Just go away! Nobody wants to listen to you!” Who would have guessed that these unlovely words would take center stage in that moment—these, and not our language’s beautiful and justly celebrated poetry, to which we previously referred? Odes and sonnets, lyric and epic poetry stood ignored, striking attitudes and gesticulating impotently.
Our language remained in her corner of the piazza, watching, but she had cast off her corset and her disfiguring clogs, and her long hair and skirt flowed loosely around her. The skirt went all the way down to the ground, so we could not see her shoes, although we sensed that she was tapping her feet to the beat of some private music.
The old man also felt the pressure of words struggling to emerge from within him. He tried to contain them, for he was not sure what they might be or do or make possible or engender or destroy, but out they came, like vomit, words he hardly recognized as his own pushing through his lips, angry, contemptuous, blaming. Fortunately, everyone else was experiencing his or her version of the same phenomenon, so nobody was paying attention, and he himself soon forgot what those first words had been and settled back into his wooden chair to observe the life of the piazza as it now was.
Once the “yes” time had ended, the quarrels started up and drowned out the songs of the larks and the soothing plash of the fountain, which cared nothing for changes in society, and kept itself busy, in its insouciant way, with its fountaining. The old man—the man made old by sadness—no longer asked women questions of the heart, questions to which he already knew the answers, which could now be stated plainly without beating about the bush or claiming appointments at the hair salon.
At first, for a little while, he missed the silence of the five “yes” years. There had been something heartening about being in a constant state of affirmation, eschewing negativity, accentuating the positive. There had been something—what was the word?—something modest about declining to be judgmental, no matter how great the temptation. And something infinitely relaxing about being excused from a life of objection, of critique, even of protest. It had required a certain remodelling of the brain, that was true. He had had to restrain his natural impulse toward dissent, toward sentences that began “But on the other hand . . .” or “But isn’t it true that . . .” or “How can you possibly . . .” Save your breath—that had been the instruction of the age. Keep your unattractive words to yourself. For a time he’d found a measure of comfort in accepting the “yes.” In saying the unutterable “no” to “no.”
All this happened quite a long time ago. Today, the old man—old now in years as well as in sadness—still sits at the Café of the Fountain, but he is calm, no longer afraid of the rush of forgotten words from his mouth. He watches our disputatious citizenry as one might watch a soap opera on television, or a three-ring circus, or a professional football game.
Our language is still there, in the corner of the piazza farthest from the old man’s chair. These days she often has companions, and these companions are invariably much younger than her, young men of a physical beauty that is almost obscene. These Byronic creatures plainly worship her, and perhaps, the old man thinks, she even allows them to ravish her in private, on those occasions when she leaves the piazza for a while. The companions change all the time. It is possible that our language is promiscuous. It is possible that her morals are exceedingly loose. When this thought comes to the old man it is as if a devil were whispering in his ear. But the thought doesn’t appear to have occurred to anyone else, or, if the devil has whispered it into other ears, the owners of those ears think nothing of it and react with a dismissive shrug. Let her be whatever she wants! Let her do as she pleases! That is the general attitude nowadays. The old man sees that he is in a minority, and holds his tongue.
In all these years they have never exchanged even the most perfunctory of greetings, the old man and our language. There they sit, across the piazza from each other, he on his wooden chair and she on a little cushioned stool that was a gift from one of the obscenely attractive young men, who fell into disfavor with her not long afterward and was erased from her consciousness. Nothing of him remains except this stool. Recently, however, it seemed to the old man that she, our language, had nodded in his direction once or twice. But that may have been a trick of the light.
The architectural elegance of the piazza cannot be denied. The Baroque façade of the old church is splendid, and many of the other buildings on the piazza—buildings of mixed use, with little stores at street level and apartments above—are handsome structures made of golden stone, with burgundy shutters at the windows. They are mostly old, the golden houses, and in some cases are not in the best state of repair, but there they stand, solid, attractive, with red barrel-tiled roofs, giving the piazza an air of faded grandeur, like an impoverished nobleman who has squandered the family fortune. To tell the truth, the piazza looks as if it belonged in a loftier environment than this little town. It feels as if it had been imported wholesale from one of our beautiful cities, perhaps even our capital city, just fifteen kilometres away.
Facing the church across the piazza, on either side of the little cobbled lane that feeds into the piazza over there, are two structures that, if we were in Italy, we would call loggias—covered outdoor galleries with delicate pillar work and arches—and in these loggias the municipality has housed marble statues that imitate far more famous statues elsewhere, that copy those other statues to the extent that their makers’ skills permitted. We enjoy these facsimiles as profoundly as if they were the real thing. In the absence of genius, imitation is an acceptable substitute. Through these copies we pay homage to the masterpieces that we will never see. Some of us go so far as to assert that the originals do not exist and never did exist, that these alleged replicas are, in fact, the great works themselves, and should be accorded the respect due to their greatness. This is one of the popular subjects debated daily in the piazza. It remains unresolved.
(A clarification is necessary. We are not in Italy. If we were in Italy, our language, sitting over there, would be Italian. She might look like Anna Magnani or she might look like Sophia Loren. But that’s not how she looks, because, just to repeat it, she is not Italian, and Italian is not the language we speak. This is our language, which we are speaking now, and we are here, not there. The old man in the piazza wears a beret, but that doesn’t mean he’s French. He’s one of us.)
Now that he has stopped missing the peace and quiet of the “yes” years, the old man has actually begun to enjoy the quarrelsomeness of his fellow-citizens. The vanity of certainty, which gives each finger-wagging debater his or her reason for her or his insistence on that or this dispute, strikes the old man as the very fons et origo of comedy. The fervor with which many people in the piazza hold opinions that are demonstrably untrue—the sun, madam, does not rise in the west, no matter how vehemently you may argue that it does, and, sir, the moon is not made of Gorgonzola cheese, and to say this is not to agree with your opponent, who describes it as an elaborate papier-mâché fake, nailed to the sky to make us believe that we live in a three-dimensional universe of stars, planets, and satellites, rather than upon a dish with a great lid over it, a lid like an inverted colander, with many holes through which, at night, shines the bright thing we have been deceived into calling starlight. The piazza is full of passionate nonsense such as this, and the old man thinks, Oh, let them go on, there’s no harm in it, after all.
“The unit comes with curtains to protect you from the ones that don’t.” Cartoon by Colin Tom Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
This, too, is the subject of many spirited discussions: Are mistaken notions harmful to the brain, to the community, to the health of the body politic, or are they merely errors to be tolerated as the product of simple minds? The fact that all those involved in discussing this question have heads full of tosh and piffle does not make for productive debates. The old man has the impression that at the end of each day people go home, drunk on wine and niggles, knowing less than they knew in the morning. And yet, he tells himself, the tongue set free is an excellent thing. Our language, sitting on her cushioned stool in the far corner of the piazza with the divine young men at her feet, is clearly happier than she was in the subservient, acquiescent days of the “yes.”
A day comes, however, when a certain argumentative twosome—it turns out that they are husband and wife, happily married for thirty years—descend upon the old man seated on his wooden chair and shout at him in unison, “We can’t stand it! You decide for us!” Their disagreement, as it happens, is a small thing. Where should they go for their summer vacation? To the sun-kissed island of A., which isn’t very far away, or to the distant country of B., which would be a much more adventurous choice, but less restful. “We just can’t seem to agree,” they chorus. “So we’ll do whatever you say.”
“Very well,” he says, and with those two words he abandons the neutrality of a lifetime, and the little wooden chair upon which he has spent decades being no more than a contented observer of the passing cavalcade is transformed—just like that!—into a seat of judgment. “Very well,” he repeats. “In these times of strife and stress, I recommend a good rest. Go and sunbathe on the sun-kissed island of A.”
The husband and wife stand very still. Then they turn to look at each other. “Nonsense!” they cry with one voice. “It’s a life of adventure for us!” And off they go to that distant country of B. Some weeks later they return and thank the old man for his judgment. They have seen enormous crocodiles that carry off several children a year and munch on them in the swamps, and giraffes that have grown to record heights, and giant axolotls. They have heard languages they had never heard before and witnessed the most vivid of spectacles, an avalanche that buried an entire village and a military coup that littered the streets with corpses. For a few days, while on safari, they were both transformed into hippopotamuses but that soon wore off and they were told that they should have read the instructions to travellers and been inoculated against the local mosquitoes, insects notorious for spreading numerous virulent strains of metamorphism. They say, “Never mind, it was quite an experience, so worth it! So unique! And rolling in mud—we could get used to that!” In sum, they have had the holiday of a lifetime.


newyorker--2020-11-16--Will Trump Burn the Evidence?

Will Trump Burn the Evidence?

Trump can not abide documentation for fear of disclosure , and can not abide disclosure for fear of disparagement .
For decades , in private life , he required people who worked with him , and with the Trump Organization , to sign nondisclosure agreements , pledging never to say a bad word about him , his family , or his businesses .
He also extracted nondisclosure agreements from women with whom he had or is alleged to have had sex , including both of his ex-wives .
In 2015 and 2016 , he required these contracts from people involved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of his “ Make America Great Again ” hats .
( Hillary Clinton ’ s 2016 campaign required N.D.A.s from some employees , too .
In 2020 , Joe Biden called on Michael Bloomberg to release his former employees from such agreements . )
In 2017 , Trump , unable to distinguish between private life and public service , carried his practice of requiring nondisclosure agreements into the Presidency , demanding that senior White House staff sign N.D.A.s .
According to the Washington Post , at least one of them , in draft @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I understand that the United States Government or , upon completion of the term ( s ) of Mr. Donald J. Trump , an authorized representative of Mr. Trump , may seek any remedy available to enforce this Agreement including , but not limited to , application for a court order prohibiting disclosure of information in breach of this Agreement.
” Aides warned him that , for White House employees , such agreements are likely not legally enforceable .
The White House counsel , Don McGahn , refused to distribute them ; eventually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of staff , Reince Priebus , pressured employees to sign them .
Those N.D.A.s haven ’ t stopped a small village ’ s worth of ex-Trump Cabinet members and staffers from blabbing about him , much to the President ’ s dismay .
“ When people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal , I don ’ t like that , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he tweeted , “ I am currently suing various people for violating their confidentiality agreements.
” Last year , a former campaign worker filed a class-action lawsuit that , if successful , would render void all campaign N.D.A.s .
Trump has only stepped up the fight .
Earlier suits were filed by Trump personally , or by his campaign , but , last month , the Department of Justice filed suit against Stephanie Winston Wolkoff for publishing a book , “ Melania and Me , ” about her time volunteering for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Wolkoff ’ s N.D.A .
is “ a contract with the United States and therefore enforceable by the United States.
” ( Unlike the suit against Trump ’ s former national-security adviser John Bolton , relating to the publication of his book , “ The Room Where It Happened , ” there is no claim that anything in Wolkoff ’ s book is or was ever classified . )
And Trump hasn ’ t stopped : last year , he required doctors and staff who treated him at the Walter Reed National @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hardly a day passes that Trump does not attempt to suppress evidence , as if all the world were in violation of an N.D.A .
never to speak ill of him .
He has sought to discredit publications and broadcasts that question him , investigations that expose him , crowds that protest him , polls that fail to favor him , and , down to the bitter end , ballots cast against him .
None of this bodes well for the historical record and for the scheduled transfer of materials from the White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ January 20 , 2021 .
That morning , even as President-elect Joseph R. Biden , Jr. , is ascending the steps of the Capitol , staffers from the archives will presumably be in the White House , unlocking doors , opening desks , packing boxes , and removing hard drives .
What might be missing , that day , from file drawers and computer servers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is difficult to say .
But records that were never kept , were later destroyed , or are being destroyed right now chronicle the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consequential Presidencies in American history and might well include evidence of crimes , violations of the Constitution , and human-rights abuses .
It took a very long time to establish rules governing the fate of Presidential records .
Trump does not mind breaking rules and , in the course of a long life , has regularly done so with impunity .
The Presidential Records Act isn ’ t easily enforceable .
The Trump Presidency nearly destroyed the United States .
Will what went on in the darker corners of his White House ever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there was no alternative for a departing President but to take his papers home with him ; there wasn ’ t really any place to put them .
Thomas Jefferson , “ having no confidence that the office of the private secretary of the President of the U.S. will ever be a regular and safe deposit for public papers , ” took pains to deposit many of his papers with his Cabinet departments .
In 1810 , Congress established a Committee on Ancient Public Records and Archives of the United States .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government were “ in a state of great disorder and exposure ; and in a situation neither safe nor convenient nor honorable to the nation.
” Congress took little action .
In 1814 , the congressional library burned to the ground .
Most of the papers of William Henry Harrison , the log-cabin candidate , succumbed to flames when that log cabin burned down .
Those of both John Tyler and Zachary Taylor were largely destroyed during the Civil War .
In 1853 , when Millard Fillmore left the White House , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Buffalo .
He died in 1874 , having made no provisions for the papers .
When Fillmore ’ s only son died , in 1889 , his will ordered his executors to “ burn or otherwise effectively destroy all correspondence or letters to or from my father.
” Only by the merest miracle were forty-four volumes of Fillmore ’ s Presidential-letter books found in an attic of a house , in 1908 , and only because it was on the verge of being demolished .
Chester Arthur ’ s son had most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ burned in three garbage cans .
“ The only place I ever found in my life to put a paper so as to find it again was either a side coat-pocket or the hands of a clerk , ” Ulysses S. Grant once said .
For years after Grant ’ s Administration , scholars were able to locate hardly any of his Presidential papers .
In 1888 , Congress urged the Library of Congress to collect the papers of the Presidents .
In the eighteen-nineties , the library established a Manuscript Division , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chief began lobbying for the establishment of a National Archives ; meanwhile , the American Historical Association formed a Public Archives Commission .
In 1910 , after the commission reported that “ many of the records of the Government have in the past been lost or destroyed , ” the A.H.A .
petitioned Congress to build a depository .
Congress authorized the funds , but no plan was undertaken until after the close of the First World War .
Grover Cleveland , during his two terms , preferred to communicate in person , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the records of his Presidency were his personal property and , in 1886 , refused to turn over papers that the Senate had demanded : “ if I saw fit to destroy them no one could complain.
” ( That is what , during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower , came to be called “ executive privilege.
” ) Cleveland ’ s contention became a convention : the President ’ s papers belong to the President , who can deny requests for disclosure not only from the public but from other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ McKinley was assassinated in 1901 ; his secretary held on to his papers until 1935 , when he donated them to the Library of Congress , where they remained under his , and later his son ’ s , tight control until 1954 .
In 1924 , a raft of papers from the Taft , Wilson , and Harding Administrations were found in the attic of the White House .
Warren Harding ’ s Presidency was riven by scandal ; after his death , his wife told the chief of the Manuscript Division @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had destroyed all his papers , although she had burned only those she thought “ would harm his memory.
” Most of the rest she left to the Harding Memorial Association .
The Library of Congress acquired a cache of those and other papers in 1972 , on the condition that they be closed to the public until 2014 .
( They turned out to include a thousand pages of love letters between Harding and his mistress .
“ Won ’ t you please destroy ?
” he wrote her in one letter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Calvin Coolidge instructed his private secretary to destroy all his personal files ; on Coolidge ’ s death , the secretary said , “ There would have been nothing preserved if I had not taken some things out on my own responsibility .
”

Donald Trump is not much of a note-taker, and he does not like his staff to take notes. He has a habit of tearing up documents at the close of meetings. (Records analysts, armed with Scotch Tape, have tried to put the pieces back together.) No real record exists for five meetings Trump had with Vladimir Putin during the first two years of his Presidency. Members of his staff have routinely used apps that automatically erase text messages, and Trump often deletes his own tweets, notwithstanding a warning from the National Archives and Records Administration that doing so contravenes the Presidential Records Act.
Trump cannot abide documentation for fear of disclosure, and cannot abide disclosure for fear of disparagement. For decades, in private life, he required people who worked with him, and with the Trump Organization, to sign nondisclosure agreements, pledging never to say a bad word about him, his family, or his businesses. He also extracted nondisclosure agreements from women with whom he had or is alleged to have had sex, including both of his ex-wives. In 2015 and 2016, he required these contracts from people involved in his campaign, including a distributor of his “Make America Great Again” hats. (Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign required N.D.A.s from some employees, too. In 2020, Joe Biden called on Michael Bloomberg to release his former employees from such agreements.) In 2017, Trump, unable to distinguish between private life and public service, carried his practice of requiring nondisclosure agreements into the Presidency, demanding that senior White House staff sign N.D.A.s. According to the Washington Post, at least one of them, in draft form, included this language: “I understand that the United States Government or, upon completion of the term(s) of Mr. Donald J. Trump, an authorized representative of Mr. Trump, may seek any remedy available to enforce this Agreement including, but not limited to, application for a court order prohibiting disclosure of information in breach of this Agreement.” Aides warned him that, for White House employees, such agreements are likely not legally enforceable. The White House counsel, Don McGahn, refused to distribute them; eventually, he relented, and the chief of staff, Reince Priebus, pressured employees to sign them.
Those N.D.A.s haven’t stopped a small village’s worth of ex-Trump Cabinet members and staffers from blabbing about him, much to the President’s dismay. “When people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal, I don’t like that,” he told the Washington Post. In 2019, he tweeted, “I am currently suing various people for violating their confidentiality agreements.” Last year, a former campaign worker filed a class-action lawsuit that, if successful, would render void all campaign N.D.A.s. Trump has only stepped up the fight. Earlier suits were filed by Trump personally, or by his campaign, but, last month, the Department of Justice filed suit against Stephanie Winston Wolkoff for publishing a book, “Melania and Me,” about her time volunteering for the First Lady, arguing, astonishingly, that Wolkoff’s N.D.A. is “a contract with the United States and therefore enforceable by the United States.” (Unlike the suit against Trump’s former national-security adviser John Bolton, relating to the publication of his book, “The Room Where It Happened,” there is no claim that anything in Wolkoff’s book is or was ever classified.) And Trump hasn’t stopped: last year, he required doctors and staff who treated him at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to sign N.D.A.s.
Hardly a day passes that Trump does not attempt to suppress evidence, as if all the world were in violation of an N.D.A. never to speak ill of him. He has sought to discredit publications and broadcasts that question him, investigations that expose him, crowds that protest him, polls that fail to favor him, and, down to the bitter end, ballots cast against him. None of this bodes well for the historical record and for the scheduled transfer of materials from the White House to the National Archives, on January 20, 2021. That morning, even as President-elect Joseph R. Biden, Jr., is ascending the steps of the Capitol, staffers from the archives will presumably be in the White House, unlocking doors, opening desks, packing boxes, and removing hard drives. What might be missing, that day, from file drawers and computer servers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is difficult to say. But records that were never kept, were later destroyed, or are being destroyed right now chronicle the day-to-day doings of one of the most consequential Presidencies in American history and might well include evidence of crimes, violations of the Constitution, and human-rights abuses. It took a very long time to establish rules governing the fate of Presidential records. Trump does not mind breaking rules and, in the course of a long life, has regularly done so with impunity. The Presidential Records Act isn’t easily enforceable. The Trump Presidency nearly destroyed the United States. Will what went on in the darker corners of his White House ever be known?
“The truth behind a President’s actions can be found only in his official papers,” Harry S. Truman said in 1949, “and every Presidential paper is official.” Truman became an advocate of archival preservation after learning about the fate of his predecessors’ papers. When George Washington left office, in 1797, he brought his papers back to Mount Vernon, but, loaned out, they were “extensively mutilated by rats and otherwise injured by damp”; eventually, they were carried by the historian Jared Sparks to Massachusetts, where Sparks threw out anything he didn’t like, scrapped what he found worthless, gave away much of the rest, and, beginning in 1837, published what he liked best as “The Writings of George Washington.”
For many years, there was no alternative for a departing President but to take his papers home with him; there wasn’t really any place to put them. Thomas Jefferson, “having no confidence that the office of the private secretary of the President of the U.S. will ever be a regular and safe deposit for public papers,” took pains to deposit many of his papers with his Cabinet departments. In 1810, Congress established a Committee on Ancient Public Records and Archives of the United States. It reported that the records of the federal government were “in a state of great disorder and exposure; and in a situation neither safe nor convenient nor honorable to the nation.” Congress took little action. In 1814, the congressional library burned to the ground.
Most of the papers of William Henry Harrison, the log-cabin candidate, succumbed to flames when that log cabin burned down. Those of both John Tyler and Zachary Taylor were largely destroyed during the Civil War. In 1853, when Millard Fillmore left the White House, he had his papers shipped to a mansion in Buffalo. He died in 1874, having made no provisions for the papers. When Fillmore’s only son died, in 1889, his will ordered his executors to “burn or otherwise effectively destroy all correspondence or letters to or from my father.” Only by the merest miracle were forty-four volumes of Fillmore’s Presidential-letter books found in an attic of a house, in 1908, and only because it was on the verge of being demolished.
Chester Arthur’s son had most of his father’s Presidential papers burned in three garbage cans. “The only place I ever found in my life to put a paper so as to find it again was either a side coat-pocket or the hands of a clerk,” Ulysses S. Grant once said. For years after Grant’s Administration, scholars were able to locate hardly any of his Presidential papers. In 1888, Congress urged the Library of Congress to collect the papers of the Presidents. In the eighteen-nineties, the library established a Manuscript Division, and a historian who later became its chief began lobbying for the establishment of a National Archives; meanwhile, the American Historical Association formed a Public Archives Commission. In 1910, after the commission reported that “many of the records of the Government have in the past been lost or destroyed,” the A.H.A. petitioned Congress to build a depository. Congress authorized the funds, but no plan was undertaken until after the close of the First World War.


newyorker--2020-11-16--Salman Rushdie on Being Free to Disagree

The truth : the old man had his origins in the crazy car chase that is the climax of the original “ Pink Panther ” movie .
As cars zoom past in every direction , the drivers wearing gorilla outfits , etc.
, a gentleman impassively watches the wild goings on .
I ’ d been thinking about him for a while , and then one day the character of our language arrived on the scene and I understood that I had the story .
I truly don ’ t know where she came from .
She just showed up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the “ Pink Panther ” movies have played a role in your literary/philosophical imagination .
Does the influence go beyond this story ?
The society where these two characters find themselves has gone through various periods : a “ yes ” time , in which it was impossible not to be positive and agree with others , and a time of constant argument and quarrels .
The story seems to favor the latter .
Do you , too ?
Yes , on the whole I ’ m in favor of arguments .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is like a town square , or a bazaar , or , I guess , a piazza , in which passionate disagreements are constantly taking place .
The ability to have such disagreements is what one might call “ freedom.
” In the time of the “ yes , ” citizens were required to agree , or at least not take issue , with propositions such as “ that bread and wine could transubstantiate into flesh and blood , that the immigrant population transformed at night into drooling sex monsters , that it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the poor , that souls could transmigrate , or that war was necessary.
” Some of these arguments are somewhat familiar here in the U.S. Should we be looking for direct parallels to our society in this story ?
I think all those parallels are there if you want to see them , yes .
But they don ’ t apply only to the U.S. , which is one of the reasons that ( see below ) I wanted the locale to be nonspecific .
What does it mean for the old @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for decades , to suddenly become the judge of everyone ’ s disputes ?
Why him ?
I was interested in the idea of someone who has been passive and nonjudgmental for his whole life suddenly discovering the pleasure , and the corruption , of becoming active and judgmental .
Why do you think he ’ s so seduced by the act of passing judgment , which is , as you say , out of character ?
Even the least dynamic of us can be terribly seduced by the prospect of a little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ story , you make clear that , although the story is set in a “ piazza , ” it does not take place in Italy .
You don ’ t tell us where it is set—perhaps because it could be anywhere ?
Or do you have a specific spot in mind ?
It sounds like a pretty Italian locale , I suppose , but I wanted it to be nonspecific .
( The little square in “ The Pink Panther ” is actually in the Italian town of Rocca di Papa , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as my unnamed town is from its nearby big city , so there ’ s that . )
I suspect that the story is , in part , an homage to Italo Calvino .
Is that true ?
Yes , Calvino , but also Donald Barthelme .
The tone of voice ended up being perhaps more Barthelmean than Calvinoid .
For some reason , I was thinking about Barthelme ’ s “ The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace , ” which is nothing like this story , of course .

Photograph by Benjamin Petit / REA / Redux
Your story in this week’s issue, “The Old Man in the Piazza,” revolves around an old man who, every day, sits at a café on the opposite side of a piazza from “our language,” who is female. How did this scenario find its way onto the page?
The truth: the old man had his origins in the crazy car chase that is the climax of the original “Pink Panther” movie. As cars zoom past in every direction, the drivers wearing gorilla outfits, etc., a gentleman impassively watches the wild goings on. I’d been thinking about him for a while, and then one day the character of our language arrived on the scene and I understood that I had the story. I truly don’t know where she came from. She just showed up.
I’m interested to hear that the “Pink Panther” movies have played a role in your literary/philosophical imagination. Does the influence go beyond this story?
I hope not.
The society where these two characters find themselves has gone through various periods: a “yes” time, in which it was impossible not to be positive and agree with others, and a time of constant argument and quarrels. The story seems to favor the latter. Do you, too?
Yes, on the whole I’m in favor of arguments. I’ve always thought that democracy is like a town square, or a bazaar, or, I guess, a piazza, in which passionate disagreements are constantly taking place. The ability to have such disagreements is what one might call “freedom.”
In the time of the “yes,” citizens were required to agree, or at least not take issue, with propositions such as “that bread and wine could transubstantiate into flesh and blood, that the immigrant population transformed at night into drooling sex monsters, that it was beneficial to raise the taxes paid by the poor, that souls could transmigrate, or that war was necessary.” Some of these arguments are somewhat familiar here in the U.S. Should we be looking for direct parallels to our society in this story?
I think all those parallels are there if you want to see them, yes. But they don’t apply only to the U.S., which is one of the reasons that (see below) I wanted the locale to be nonspecific.
What does it mean for the old man, who has been an observer for decades, to suddenly become the judge of everyone’s disputes? Why him?
I was interested in the idea of someone who has been passive and nonjudgmental for his whole life suddenly discovering the pleasure, and the corruption, of becoming active and judgmental.
Why do you think he’s so seduced by the act of passing judgment, which is, as you say, out of character?
Even the least dynamic of us can be terribly seduced by the prospect of a little power.
At one point in the story, you make clear that, although the story is set in a “piazza,” it does not take place in Italy. You don’t tell us where it is set—perhaps because it could be anywhere? Or do you have a specific spot in mind?
It sounds like a pretty Italian locale, I suppose, but I wanted it to be nonspecific. (The little square in “The Pink Panther” is actually in the Italian town of Rocca di Papa, which is about the same distance from Rome as my unnamed town is from its nearby big city, so there’s that.)
I suspect that the story is, in part, an homage to Italo Calvino. Is that true?
Yes, Calvino, but also Donald Barthelme. The tone of voice ended up being perhaps more Barthelmean than Calvinoid. For some reason, I was thinking about Barthelme’s “The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace,” which is nothing like this story, of course.


newyorker--2020-11-15--The Literary Frenzy of Werner Schroeter’s “Malina”

Movies about writers are almost impossible to do well—the revolutions per minute of a writer ’ s mind are nearly beyond the grasp of a camera , whereas the outward activities of writing are nearly inert .
( Similarly , writing about filmmaking is largely doomed , because nothing in the intricacy of a literary passage can rival the gestalt of a single image . )
Yet Werner Schroeter ’ s 1991 drama “ Malina ” ( long unavailable , and now streaming on MUBI ) is one of the few movies that rise to the achievement of the authors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ingeborg Bachmann , whose novel it ’ s an adaptation of , and the fictitious , unnamed writer ( played by Isabelle Huppert ) , the main character of the novel , whose life and work both the book and the movie depict .
The movie ’ s literary artistry is due , in part , to a second literary refraction that the novel underwent en route to the screen : Bachmann ’ s novel was published in 1971 ( she died in 1973 ) , and the script for Schroeter ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature .
“ Malina ” catches the profuse , prolific , prodigious , and prodigal imagination of its protagonist—the enormous energy of creation and clamor of thought that are inseparable from the writer ’ s moment-to-moment whirl of daily activity .
It does so with a surprising and canny economy of means that ’ s all the more remarkable given the torrential genius that Bachmann displays in the novel , which is a masterwork of rare imaginative power .
( The novel was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Philip Boehm ’ s revision of his own 1990 translation , with an introduction by Rachel Kushner . )
Like the movie , the novel is the story of an unnamed female writer ; unlike the movie , it ’ s narrated in the first person , and , as such , it ’ s one of the great portraits of a mind at work—of a woman ’ s mind , in urgent thought about the very implications of writing and living as a woman .
It ’ s a novel in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a different man—to her literary lover , Malina , who works at a military museum ; to Ivan , a younger , nonliterary man whom she seizes for sex and romantic banality ; and to her father , an abusive and violent ( and possibly incestuous ) monster , memories and nightmares of whom haunt her .
The novel is wildly fragmented , yet it remains tautly bound by its thematic and tonal coherence and by its protagonist ’ s overwhelming mental energy , a relentlessly forward-driving rush of creativity that assimilates disparate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the protagonist ’ s intricate and torrential narration of her daily life and her distant past , her letters ( which are a major part of her literary output ) , a long fable , a batch of tightly detailed dreams , an extended interview with a journalist , large and short chunks of her dialogues with Ivan and Malina , and shards of a music score by Schoenberg .
Her voice veers between exalted observation , scathing poetic insight , and day-to-day ordinariness of restaurants and food , clothing and street life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Austrian history and culture .
Amazingly , the movie “ Malina , ” though running a mere two hours , retains the sense of an overpacked and centrifugal inner life—and its fluid precision is itself a sort of onscreen inscription of images .
Like the book , the movie is a gathering of moments , progressing from a more contained chaos to an entropic catastrophe .
The movie ’ s poles are found at the start , in a pre-credit sequence showing the writer experiencing her father ’ s brutality in what may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and then , right after the credits , another sequence of the writer at her desk , typing poetry ( heard in Huppert ’ s voice-over ) and then preparing literary letters for the mail .
The camera glides probingly around her until , in a brusque dash , Malina arrives to supervise her output .
Huppert ’ s performance—one of her best—is similarly both contained and hectic .
Though Huppert is often seated or recumbent or totally slouched , even then she seems to be in reckless motion—and , when she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of frenzy is nonetheless infused with a sense of intellectual possession .
Her wild gestures and heedless behavior are tightly strung with her thoughtful concentration , and her poised contemplations and languid passions vibrate with the tension of her barely restrained emotions and the propulsion of her creative drive .
In the novel , Ivan is Hungarian , and the book is strewn with phrases in that language ; in the movie , he ’ s played by the Hungarian actor Can Togay , whose brusque and simple candor ( and choppy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ironic detachment of Malina ( played by the German actor Mathieu Carrière ) .
Like Bachmann ’ s novel , the movie fuses the writer ’ s nightmares , memories , and fantasies , theatrical performances and movies watched , with her ordinary life , which is bent toward the hallucinatory disturbances of her imaginative overdrive and over-cathected perceptions .
The writer gives interviews that glitter with her philosophical paradoxes .
She teaches philosophy and gives a classroom lecture that has the blood-sport enthusiasm of a bullfight .
She sits at her typewriter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sheet of paper piled up amid the chaos of her desk and then throwing it with casual fury into another scattering of pages on the floor .
She panics at a pay phone , despairs over telegrams , abuses pills ; she endures a summer vacation in a rustic castle , deals with Ivan ’ s young sons , sees to her wardrobe , supervises a secretary ( amazingly , named Fräulein Jellinek , as in the novel ) .
In each of these scenes , Schroeter—inspired by opera ( as in his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wolfsburg , ” about a Sicilian laborer who travels to Germany to work in the Volkswagen factory ) —creates baroque , swirling , floating , oblique , yet thoughtfully poised images .
They ’ re streaked with deep shadows , contrasting bright light , and lurid color ( thanks to Elfi Mikesch ’ s cinematography ) that coalesce with the varied array of opera arias heard on the soundtrack .
Jelinek ’ s script has a fierce literary authority that bears the mark of her own scarified confrontation with the novel .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tangled turbulence of the writer ’ s mind with an extraordinary discernment , capturing—and condensing—its elements to convey both stark juxtaposition and teeming accumulation .
Schroeter responds to Jelinek ’ s fiercely heightened compressions of the novel with an explosively varied array of images , ranging in tone from blunt to hectic to slashing to sharp-pointed .
( The condensation also turns several long , literally narrated sequences obliquely symbolic . )
And , where Jelinek retains the terrifying drift of Bachmann ’ s ending , she also leaves vast space for Schroeter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it far beyond the novel ’ s purview .
The last half hour of the film is a wild scene of creation and destruction , of the inner life rendered hyperbolically physical , of fantasies of blood that become real and dreams of devastation that come off as terrifyingly , absurdly normal .
It culminates in an amazing , extended conflagration—one of the most surprising and astounding scenes of fire that I ’ ve ever witnessed in a movie—and a game of multiplying and disappearing identities in mirrors that recalls the climactic funhouse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Lady from Shanghai.
” It suggests the very self-consuming passion of a soul in flames .

Movies about writers are almost impossible to do well—the revolutions per minute of a writer’s mind are nearly beyond the grasp of a camera, whereas the outward activities of writing are nearly inert. (Similarly, writing about filmmaking is largely doomed, because nothing in the intricacy of a literary passage can rival the gestalt of a single image.) Yet Werner Schroeter’s 1991 drama “Malina” (long unavailable, and now streaming on MUBI) is one of the few movies that rise to the achievement of the authors at its center—both the real-life one, Ingeborg Bachmann, whose novel it’s an adaptation of, and the fictitious, unnamed writer (played by Isabelle Huppert), the main character of the novel, whose life and work both the book and the movie depict. The movie’s literary artistry is due, in part, to a second literary refraction that the novel underwent en route to the screen: Bachmann’s novel was published in 1971 (she died in 1973), and the script for Schroeter’s film was written by Elfriede Jelinek, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
“Malina” catches the profuse, prolific, prodigious, and prodigal imagination of its protagonist—the enormous energy of creation and clamor of thought that are inseparable from the writer’s moment-to-moment whirl of daily activity. It does so with a surprising and canny economy of means that’s all the more remarkable given the torrential genius that Bachmann displays in the novel, which is a masterwork of rare imaginative power. (The novel was republished by New Directions in 2019, in Philip Boehm’s revision of his own 1990 translation, with an introduction by Rachel Kushner.) Like the movie, the novel is the story of an unnamed female writer; unlike the movie, it’s narrated in the first person, and, as such, it’s one of the great portraits of a mind at work—of a woman’s mind, in urgent thought about the very implications of writing and living as a woman. It’s a novel in three parts, each devoted largely to a different man—to her literary lover, Malina, who works at a military museum; to Ivan, a younger, nonliterary man whom she seizes for sex and romantic banality; and to her father, an abusive and violent (and possibly incestuous) monster, memories and nightmares of whom haunt her.
The novel is wildly fragmented, yet it remains tautly bound by its thematic and tonal coherence and by its protagonist’s overwhelming mental energy, a relentlessly forward-driving rush of creativity that assimilates disparate elements and incidents. The novel features the protagonist’s intricate and torrential narration of her daily life and her distant past, her letters (which are a major part of her literary output), a long fable, a batch of tightly detailed dreams, an extended interview with a journalist, large and short chunks of her dialogues with Ivan and Malina, and shards of a music score by Schoenberg. Her voice veers between exalted observation, scathing poetic insight, and day-to-day ordinariness of restaurants and food, clothing and street life, all infused with the context of Austrian history and culture.
Amazingly, the movie “Malina,” though running a mere two hours, retains the sense of an overpacked and centrifugal inner life—and its fluid precision is itself a sort of onscreen inscription of images. Like the book, the movie is a gathering of moments, progressing from a more contained chaos to an entropic catastrophe. The movie’s poles are found at the start, in a pre-credit sequence showing the writer experiencing her father’s brutality in what may be a nightmare or an irrepressible memory, and then, right after the credits, another sequence of the writer at her desk, typing poetry (heard in Huppert’s voice-over) and then preparing literary letters for the mail. The camera glides probingly around her until, in a brusque dash, Malina arrives to supervise her output.
Huppert’s performance—one of her best—is similarly both contained and hectic. Though Huppert is often seated or recumbent or totally slouched, even then she seems to be in reckless motion—and, when she’s in motion, the sense of frenzy is nonetheless infused with a sense of intellectual possession. Her wild gestures and heedless behavior are tightly strung with her thoughtful concentration, and her poised contemplations and languid passions vibrate with the tension of her barely restrained emotions and the propulsion of her creative drive. In the novel, Ivan is Hungarian, and the book is strewn with phrases in that language; in the movie, he’s played by the Hungarian actor Can Togay, whose brusque and simple candor (and choppy, accented French) contrasts with the lofty ironic detachment of Malina (played by the German actor Mathieu Carrière). Like Bachmann’s novel, the movie fuses the writer’s nightmares, memories, and fantasies, theatrical performances and movies watched, with her ordinary life, which is bent toward the hallucinatory disturbances of her imaginative overdrive and over-cathected perceptions.
The writer gives interviews that glitter with her philosophical paradoxes. She teaches philosophy and gives a classroom lecture that has the blood-sport enthusiasm of a bullfight. She sits at her typewriter, scribbling away in longhand on a sheet of paper piled up amid the chaos of her desk and then throwing it with casual fury into another scattering of pages on the floor. She panics at a pay phone, despairs over telegrams, abuses pills; she endures a summer vacation in a rustic castle, deals with Ivan’s young sons, sees to her wardrobe, supervises a secretary (amazingly, named Fräulein Jellinek, as in the novel). In each of these scenes, Schroeter—inspired by opera (as in his 1980 working-class epic, “Palermo or Wolfsburg,” about a Sicilian laborer who travels to Germany to work in the Volkswagen factory)—creates baroque, swirling, floating, oblique, yet thoughtfully poised images. They’re streaked with deep shadows, contrasting bright light, and lurid color (thanks to Elfi Mikesch’s cinematography) that coalesce with the varied array of opera arias heard on the soundtrack.
Jelinek’s script has a fierce literary authority that bears the mark of her own scarified confrontation with the novel. She rearranges it drastically; she distills the tangled turbulence of the writer’s mind with an extraordinary discernment, capturing—and condensing—its elements to convey both stark juxtaposition and teeming accumulation. Schroeter responds to Jelinek’s fiercely heightened compressions of the novel with an explosively varied array of images, ranging in tone from blunt to hectic to slashing to sharp-pointed. (The condensation also turns several long, literally narrated sequences obliquely symbolic.) And, where Jelinek retains the terrifying drift of Bachmann’s ending, she also leaves vast space for Schroeter’s singular cinematic sensibility to transform it far beyond the novel’s purview. The last half hour of the film is a wild scene of creation and destruction, of the inner life rendered hyperbolically physical, of fantasies of blood that become real and dreams of devastation that come off as terrifyingly, absurdly normal. It culminates in an amazing, extended conflagration—one of the most surprising and astounding scenes of fire that I’ve ever witnessed in a movie—and a game of multiplying and disappearing identities in mirrors that recalls the climactic funhouse scene in Orson Welles’s “The Lady from Shanghai.” It suggests the very self-consuming passion of a soul in flames.


newyorker--2020-11-15--Giuliani Arrives in Ukraine to Look for More Votes

KYIV ( The Borowitz Report ) —Now the mastermind of Donald J. Trump ’ s post-election strategy , Rudolph Giuliani @ @ @ @ @ in search of more votes for his client .
Speaking to reporters at the Kyiv @ @ @ @ @ Giuliani said that he expected to return to the United States with “ bags full @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Joe Biden is leading Trump by about sixty thousand votes in Pennsylvania , @ @ @ @ @ New York said .
“ The population of Ukraine is forty-three million !
You think @ @ @ @ @ sixty thousand votes in this country ?
Get out of here !
Get out of @ @ @ @ @ that he was confident that his quest for votes would be a success because “ @ @ @ @ @ Ukraine , I come away smellin ’ like a rose !
” Concluding his remarks @ @ @ @ @ would later announce the results of his mission at Kyiv Hilton Total Landscaping .

KYIV (The Borowitz Report)—Now the mastermind of Donald J. Trump’s post-election strategy, Rudolph Giuliani, has travelled to Ukraine in search of more votes for his client.
Speaking to reporters at the Kyiv airport, a highly animated Giuliani said that he expected to return to the United States with “bags full of votes” for Trump.
“Joe Biden is leading Trump by about sixty thousand votes in Pennsylvania,” the former mayor of New York said. “The population of Ukraine is forty-three million! You think I can’t find sixty thousand votes in this country? Get out of here! Get out of here!”
Giuliani added that he was confident that his quest for votes would be a success because “every time I go to Ukraine, I come away smellin’ like a rose!”
Concluding his remarks, he said that he would later announce the results of his mission at Kyiv Hilton Total Landscaping.