newyorker--2020-11-30--What Does It Mean to “Reimagine” an Orchestra Season?

To many musicians ’ ears , the word “ stream ” has an ugly ring : it suggests a utility that can be turned on and off with a faucet .
In recent years , concert halls and theatres have found renewed appeal as places of refuge where listeners can escape the addictive injection of data—e-mails , texts , notifications , feeds , alerts—and focus on a single event made by fellow-humans .
The near-total disappearance of live performance in the pandemic era has trapped us more than ever in front of screens , where distractions stretch out to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the psychic imprint of the real , the aura of shared experience : the moment they are done , they tend to evaporate from memory , leaving only ghosts of feeling in their wake .
Nonetheless , with no alternative in view , performing-arts institutions have decamped to virtuality .
They have done so not only to maintain contact with their audiences but , even more important , to keep their artists engaged .
Many American orchestras are delivering some semblance of a fall season , even if dimensions are reduced and ambitions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inactive , in light of the nearly insuperable epidemiological challenges of assembling soloists , a chorus , and an orchestra in one space .
Yuval Sharon ’ s drive-through “ Götterdämmerung , ” which Michigan Opera Theatre presented in October in Detroit , seems all the more staggering in retrospect : in any year , it would have been a formidable accomplishment , and in the midst of a pandemic it felt close to miraculous .
When , over the summer , orchestras began making known their fall plans , the operative word @ @ @ @ @ @ @ orchestras , from Albany to St. Louis , announced reimagined seasons .
Yet , because so many institutions were using identical language , it didn ’ t seem that anything particularly imaginative was going on .
A certain herd mentality also surfaced in the programming .
Even a welcome concentration on works by African-American composers , in recognition of Black Lives Matter protests , leaned too much on a few names , with wide swaths of Black music left unexplored .
One orchestra that avoided the “ reimagined ” label was the Detroit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : its programming was already livelier and more contemporary than that of most American ensembles , and for some years it has been in the habit of streaming its concerts .
In August , not long after Detroit emerged from lockdown , the orchestra began presenting outdoor chamber concerts .
These were charmingly intimate , neighborly affairs , with musicians providing spoken introductions .
Come fall , the ensemble moved back into Orchestra Hall , its longtime home , marshalling nearly thirty programs .
Jader Bignamini , Detroit ’ s gifted new music @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leader .
As with Michigan Opera Theatre ’ s “ Götterdämmerung ” —Detroit is dominating American musical life at the moment—several of the orchestra ’ s events would have warranted attention in any season .
In early November , the violinist Jennifer Koh came to Detroit to play in the world première of Tyshawn Sorey ’ s “ For Marcos Balter , ” which the composer has described as a “ non-certo ” —a concerto shorn of theatrical conflict and virtuoso features .
Sorey , a remarkable and unclassifiable figure in contemporary American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ avant-garde-leaning jazz drummer and has more recently built up a compelling portfolio of works for classical ensembles .
He has the cardinal virtue of being unpredictable : each new piece of his feels like a departure into fresh terrain .
Morton Feldman , the master of abstract quietude , also favored titles beginning with the preposition “ for , ” and “ For Marcos Balter ” opens in a very Feldman-like world , with shifting constellations of sustained tones , atmospheric dissonances , and wisps of quicker figuration ( a sextuplet on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through the first part of the work , and , as mysteriously gorgeous as it is , it risks becoming pastiche .
But then new patterns emerge : sustained tones , block chords , murmurs of recessed melody .
By the end , an increasingly charged , unstable mass of forces yields unexpected tension .
The coda is magnificent and ominous : the timpani thwack out a slow-rising sequence of notes , almost like a chopped-and-screwed version of the opening piano gestures .
As it happens , the Seattle Symphony streamed another major @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later : “ For Roscoe Mitchell , ” for cello and orchestra , with Seth Parker Woods as the soloist and David Robertson conducting .
It , too , takes off from the Feldman model , with tendrils of tone wafting across opaque chordal clusters .
Yet its narrative arc is dramatically different from that of “ For Marcos Balter.
” The cello fuses fragmentary motifs into long-breathed legato lines .
Toward the end , violins and violas pick up those songful patterns , as if preparing to break through into some collective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the form of grisly , dissonant quadruple-forte chords .
The cello descends deep into its bass register , in wounded retreat .
Both of Sorey ’ s imposing utterances come across as monuments to a tragic year .
I especially relished the work of the Cincinnati Symphony , which is thriving under the stylish , polyglot direction of Louis Langrée .
Cincinnati ’ s all-American season-opening concert included Jessie Montgomery ’ s 2014 piece for strings , “ Banner , ” which rings questioning variations on the national anthem ; Samuel Barber @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1915 , ” brimming with gauzy nostalgia ; and Copland ’ s “ Appalachian Spring , ” an emblem of New Deal idealism .
Angel Blue sang piercingly in the Barber , and Christopher Pell , the Cincinnati ’ s principal clarinettist , anchored an urgently glowing ensemble in the Copland .
A month later , the violinist Augustin Hadelich tore into the glittering Second Violin Concerto of the eighteenth-century Afro-French composer Joseph Bologne , who received much attention this fall ; the Detroit Symphony played his First Symphony , and the L.A. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Anonymous Lover.
” The most elaborate production of the fall came from the San Francisco Symphony , which had to scrap most of its plans to celebrate its new music director , Esa-Pekka Salonen .
Its online gala , on November 14th , encapsulated Salonen ’ s questing spirit nevertheless , with the conductor on hand to lead a movement from John Adams ’ s “ Shaker Loops.
” The major offering was the première of Nico Muhly ’ s “ Throughline , ” which makes a virtue of distancing and isolation .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the video of the performance integrates footage of players and ensembles in various locations , resulting not in an anonymous wall of Zoom boxes but in a seamless montage of closeup musical action .
Muhly ’ s dexterously racing score allows individual musicians to shine , and also serves to introduce eight of the collaborative partners that Salonen has gathered around him in his new role : the flutist Claire Chase , the guitarist-composer Bryce Dessner , the bassist-composer Esperanza Spalding , the soprano Julia Bullock , the A.I .
innovator Carol Reiley @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pianist-composer Nicholas Britell , and Muhly himself .
The “ Throughline ” video even has a silent part for Salonen : he is seen walking through the woods around his home in Finland .
The New York Philharmonic , the nation ’ s oldest orchestra , has been largely absent from the streaming marketplace .
Health regulations have prevented it from organizing even modest-sized recording sessions , although an exception was made for a recent online gala , which included Bernstein ’ s “ Candide ” Overture and Elgar ’ s “ Nimrod.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ make its presence felt in city squares and parks , in an initiative titled NY Phil Bandwagon .
This was the brainchild of the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo , who accompanied squads of players in more than eighty concerts across the five boroughs .
In October , I caught an event on a pedestrian island at Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street .
I ’ d never heard a program for countertenor and horn quartet , and may not hear one again .
A few dozen spectators took in “ Dripping Amber , ” a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pieces by Nikolai Tcherepnin and Alfred Diewitz ; and a strangely effective arrangement of “ Dido ’ s Lament.
” For the most part , only those who are actively searching out streaming concerts will find them .
The Bandwagon , which featured Costanzo singing from a bright-red pickup truck , caught the attention of many people who don ’ t otherwise attend concerts .
Although there was something dishearteningly marginal about the spectacle—most pedestrians paused only briefly before walking on—its very distance from the customary grandeur of classical presentations may do something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In any case , the series restored , if just for a moment , the psychic bond that a season of isolation has broken .
♦

To many musicians’ ears, the word “stream” has an ugly ring: it suggests a utility that can be turned on and off with a faucet. In recent years, concert halls and theatres have found renewed appeal as places of refuge where listeners can escape the addictive injection of data—e-mails, texts, notifications, feeds, alerts—and focus on a single event made by fellow-humans. The near-total disappearance of live performance in the pandemic era has trapped us more than ever in front of screens, where distractions stretch out to the crack of doom. Streamed events lack the psychic imprint of the real, the aura of shared experience: the moment they are done, they tend to evaporate from memory, leaving only ghosts of feeling in their wake.
Nonetheless, with no alternative in view, performing-arts institutions have decamped to virtuality. They have done so not only to maintain contact with their audiences but, even more important, to keep their artists engaged. Many American orchestras are delivering some semblance of a fall season, even if dimensions are reduced and ambitions confined. Opera houses have been mostly inactive, in light of the nearly insuperable epidemiological challenges of assembling soloists, a chorus, and an orchestra in one space. Yuval Sharon’s drive-through “Götterdämmerung,” which Michigan Opera Theatre presented in October in Detroit, seems all the more staggering in retrospect: in any year, it would have been a formidable accomplishment, and in the midst of a pandemic it felt close to miraculous.
When, over the summer, orchestras began making known their fall plans, the operative word was “reimagined.” At least twenty orchestras, from Albany to St. Louis, announced reimagined seasons. Yet, because so many institutions were using identical language, it didn’t seem that anything particularly imaginative was going on. A certain herd mentality also surfaced in the programming. Even a welcome concentration on works by African-American composers, in recognition of Black Lives Matter protests, leaned too much on a few names, with wide swaths of Black music left unexplored.
One orchestra that avoided the “reimagined” label was the Detroit Symphony, which had two distinct advantages: its programming was already livelier and more contemporary than that of most American ensembles, and for some years it has been in the habit of streaming its concerts. In August, not long after Detroit emerged from lockdown, the orchestra began presenting outdoor chamber concerts. These were charmingly intimate, neighborly affairs, with musicians providing spoken introductions. Come fall, the ensemble moved back into Orchestra Hall, its longtime home, marshalling nearly thirty programs. Jader Bignamini, Detroit’s gifted new music director, established himself as an incisive leader. As with Michigan Opera Theatre’s “Götterdämmerung”—Detroit is dominating American musical life at the moment—several of the orchestra’s events would have warranted attention in any season.
In early November, the violinist Jennifer Koh came to Detroit to play in the world première of Tyshawn Sorey’s “For Marcos Balter,” which the composer has described as a “non-certo”—a concerto shorn of theatrical conflict and virtuoso features. Sorey, a remarkable and unclassifiable figure in contemporary American music, first established himself as an avant-garde-leaning jazz drummer and has more recently built up a compelling portfolio of works for classical ensembles. He has the cardinal virtue of being unpredictable: each new piece of his feels like a departure into fresh terrain.
Morton Feldman, the master of abstract quietude, also favored titles beginning with the preposition “for,” and “For Marcos Balter” opens in a very Feldman-like world, with shifting constellations of sustained tones, atmospheric dissonances, and wisps of quicker figuration (a sextuplet on the piano). That elemental texture persists through the first part of the work, and, as mysteriously gorgeous as it is, it risks becoming pastiche. But then new patterns emerge: sustained tones, block chords, murmurs of recessed melody. By the end, an increasingly charged, unstable mass of forces yields unexpected tension. The coda is magnificent and ominous: the timpani thwack out a slow-rising sequence of notes, almost like a chopped-and-screwed version of the opening piano gestures.
As it happens, the Seattle Symphony streamed another major new Sorey work a couple of weeks later: “For Roscoe Mitchell,” for cello and orchestra, with Seth Parker Woods as the soloist and David Robertson conducting. It, too, takes off from the Feldman model, with tendrils of tone wafting across opaque chordal clusters. Yet its narrative arc is dramatically different from that of “For Marcos Balter.” The cello fuses fragmentary motifs into long-breathed legato lines. Toward the end, violins and violas pick up those songful patterns, as if preparing to break through into some collective epiphany; but a crisis intervenes, in the form of grisly, dissonant quadruple-forte chords. The cello descends deep into its bass register, in wounded retreat. Both of Sorey’s imposing utterances come across as monuments to a tragic year.
However constricted the streaming ritual may be, it lets the curious listener range across the musical map in a way that would be impossible under ordinary circumstances. From my well-worn office chair, I was able to make a remote tour of a dozen or more American orchestras. Members of the Chicago Symphony turned in a rich-hued account of the Dvořák Sextet. Franz Welser-Möst led the Cleveland Orchestra in a pristine rendition of Alfred Schnittke’s brooding Piano Concerto, with Yefim Bronfman as the soloist. The Dallas Symphony, under Fabio Luisi, organized a meaty night of Verdi excerpts, with thrillingly full-throated singing by Angela Meade, Jamie Barton, and Bryan Hymel. And a fifty-eight-player contingent from the Boston Symphony, under Ken-David Masur, gave a forceful reading of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, thereby breaking months of melancholy silence in Symphony Hall, one of the nation’s finest acoustic spaces.
I especially relished the work of the Cincinnati Symphony, which is thriving under the stylish, polyglot direction of Louis Langrée. Cincinnati’s all-American season-opening concert included Jessie Montgomery’s 2014 piece for strings, “Banner,” which rings questioning variations on the national anthem; Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” brimming with gauzy nostalgia; and Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” an emblem of New Deal idealism. Angel Blue sang piercingly in the Barber, and Christopher Pell, the Cincinnati’s principal clarinettist, anchored an urgently glowing ensemble in the Copland. A month later, the violinist Augustin Hadelich tore into the glittering Second Violin Concerto of the eighteenth-century Afro-French composer Joseph Bologne, who received much attention this fall; the Detroit Symphony played his First Symphony, and the L.A. Opera revived his comic opera “The Anonymous Lover.”
The most elaborate production of the fall came from the San Francisco Symphony, which had to scrap most of its plans to celebrate its new music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen. Its online gala, on November 14th, encapsulated Salonen’s questing spirit nevertheless, with the conductor on hand to lead a movement from John Adams’s “Shaker Loops.” The major offering was the première of Nico Muhly’s “Throughline,” which makes a virtue of distancing and isolation. In an astounding feat of editing, the video of the performance integrates footage of players and ensembles in various locations, resulting not in an anonymous wall of Zoom boxes but in a seamless montage of closeup musical action. Muhly’s dexterously racing score allows individual musicians to shine, and also serves to introduce eight of the collaborative partners that Salonen has gathered around him in his new role: the flutist Claire Chase, the guitarist-composer Bryce Dessner, the bassist-composer Esperanza Spalding, the soprano Julia Bullock, the A.I. innovator Carol Reiley, the violinist Pekka Kuusisto, the pianist-composer Nicholas Britell, and Muhly himself. The “Throughline” video even has a silent part for Salonen: he is seen walking through the woods around his home in Finland.
The New York Philharmonic, the nation’s oldest orchestra, has been largely absent from the streaming marketplace. Health regulations have prevented it from organizing even modest-sized recording sessions, although an exception was made for a recent online gala, which included Bernstein’s “Candide” Overture and Elgar’s “Nimrod.” The orchestra did, however, make its presence felt in city squares and parks, in an initiative titled NY Phil Bandwagon. This was the brainchild of the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, who accompanied squads of players in more than eighty concerts across the five boroughs. In October, I caught an event on a pedestrian island at Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street. I’d never heard a program for countertenor and horn quartet, and may not hear one again. A few dozen spectators took in “Dripping Amber,” a new piece by Jessica Mays; horn-quartet pieces by Nikolai Tcherepnin and Alfred Diewitz; and a strangely effective arrangement of “Dido’s Lament.”
For the most part, only those who are actively searching out streaming concerts will find them. The Bandwagon, which featured Costanzo singing from a bright-red pickup truck, caught the attention of many people who don’t otherwise attend concerts. Although there was something dishearteningly marginal about the spectacle—most pedestrians paused only briefly before walking on—its very distance from the customary grandeur of classical presentations may do something to change popular perceptions of the institution. In any case, the series restored, if just for a moment, the psychic bond that a season of isolation has broken. ♦


“Dietrologia”

“ Listen , in the debris field otherwise known as my life , I recall one funny thing—but when I say funny I don ’ t mean it was funny chuckle-chuckle .
It was horrible and obvious , but I didn ’ t have the capacity to see it then—that was a gift I developed later .
At the time , it was like when you ’ re in the water at the beach , say , staring at something floating in front of you , and your back is turned , and you don ’ t realize that a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you .
Maybe a little pink slipper , like yours , that someone lost is bobbing there in the water , distracting you , while the monster wave is coming up behind you—mannaggia !
Except it wasn ’ t a wave .
I was in my car .
It was after work , and I was tired from a long day .
And here ’ s the funny—not funny—thing .
Instead of going straight home , I drove around , not near my house but on back roads and through the woods , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then I didn ’ t go home .
Look , I didn ’ t want to go home .
I kept on driving , not in a hurry , keeping to the speed limit , on and on , into the darkness .
I did this for weeks—got out of work , set off in my car , and drove around , noticing things I hadn ’ t seen before .
People sitting on porches , chatting away .
Kids on bikes .
Man going into a house— ‘ Hi , honey !
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ scuffing along the sidewalk , holding hands—beautiful .
And , after a month of this driving around , it came to me , the not very funny thing : that the monster wave in the background was the state of my marriage .
My wife was the reason I was killing time , driving longer and longer , staying behind the wheel of my car .
I was putting it off .
See , I didn ’ t want to go straight home , because she was there .
That was my first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Frezzolini said , but remained seated in his rocker .
“ Now you can see that it was home—the idea of home—that I was resisting.
” “ Can I have a cookie , too ?
” the boy said .
“ And me !
I want a cookie !
” the smallest one , a girl , bawled , batting the air with her hand .
As Sal led them indoors , the boy said , “ Other people ’ s houses smell funny.
” “ True—and that ’ s also part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sal said .
“ By that I mean my state of mind .
I ’ m confused.
” “ Why are you confused ?
” the bigger girl asked , but Sal pretended not to hear , and made a business of removing the lid from the ceramic cookie jar and presenting each child with a cookie .
Then they padded out to the porch again , and he was back in his rocker , and they were crouched at his feet , chewing .
“ Home , ” he said , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notion of marriage , requires the illusion of being indispensable to someone .
And I didn ’ t have that illusion anymore .
I can ’ t honestly say I have it now.
” He fell silent , squinting past them , while they watched him , as though waiting for more .
But he was calm—spent and satisfied , benign again , relieved , liking the careless crunch , and the catlike way they licked the crumbs from their lips .
He wanted to confess to them , Usually I hate to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the way they chew their food , and swallow hard , looking disgusted .
Imagine having to look at that every day in the cafeteria of an assisted-living facility .
But your eating is beautiful .
He said nothing ; he watched the children with pleasure .
“ Uncle , ” the boy said .
“ Want to see me do wheelies ?
” “ Yes .
But tell me your name again .
I forgot it.
” They jumped to their feet and ran to the driveway and mounted their bikes—the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the gravel , skidding back and forth .
Kamana pulled his handlebars back and reared , balancing for seconds on one wheel and whooping .
Then they made for the gate and were gone .
He was facing away from his wife , smiling out the window at the driveway , in the direction they ’ d come , across the gravel , a fixed expression of welcome on his face , as though still seeing them .
“ My glasses , ” Bailey said , opening and closing drawers , slamming them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seen them ?
” He turned his smile on her , thinking of the children , but she went on with her clattering search , the noise she was making meant to remind him of her effort and her mood—these days more frenzied .
He knew why : he saw behind the noise .
“ On the counter , near the cookie jar , ” Sal said .
He was in his easy chair , under the lamp , a book on his lap , a drink in his hand , his usual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bailey to arrive .
She was still opening drawers and clawing their contents .
“ The cookie jar , ” he said , and , raising his voice , “ Behind it.
” In the silence that followed , he looked up and saw that she was wearing her glasses .
“ Obviously , ” she said .
She was staring at something in her hand—her phone , he saw—regarding it with pained concentration .
“ I thought we agreed that the cookie jar was going , along with all that other stuff.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ he ’ d heard her , but , instead of replying to that , he said , “ Those kids—they reminded me of that time when I was in Malabotta , that forest—my first year in Sicily , trying to be a poet .
I was on a path and heard it coming , the rain , the way it announced itself , as it swept through the trees , the sound of it hitting the leaves high up in the canopy , the edge of the storm approaching .
No water , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like running feet , foot soles hitting pavement .
And then the rain itself , the hard splash and the hiss of it , beating on the leaves , a deafening racket , the sky collapsing on me , with thunder and lightning .
In one sudden flash I saw a shed—open-sided , just a thatched roof on poles .
I ran under it and sheltered there and marvelled at how the bright afternoon had become crepuscolo , a tumbling creek of mud where the path had been .
And , as I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a small boy ran into the shed .
He held a big , floppy philodendron leaf over his head like a parasol .
He was wearing a yellow shirt , a sort of smock .
Thick black curls , and his wet face gleamed .
About the same age as our neighbor boy .
Nine or ten , skinny legs , barefoot , peering out of the shed at the water rushing down the path .
He ’ d found refuge .
Then another lightning flash , he dropped his big leaf , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each ear .
And , as the thunder rumbled over us , he saw me smiling at him and stumbled in alarm , stepping back .
I said something , and that was worse .
More lightning , more thunder .
But he was more startled by me than by the thunder .
Again he put his fingers in his ears and rushed into the storm , his yellow shirt jumping , terrified.
” Sal paused , hearing the thunder and , in the distortion of the lightning , catching a last glimpse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forest .
Bailey made a sound in her sinuses that he could not translate into words ; nor could he read anything in her eyes .
She had a way of snatching at the air with her fingers when she was agitated , and she was doing that now , her arms at her sides , one hand grasping , the other wagging her phone .
“ I don ’ t think I ’ ve ever told you.
” He felt fragile , the memory like an urgent confession .
“ That those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many times.
” But she hadn ’ t heard .
“ I ’ ve had an awful day .
The agent said she ’ d have an offer by this afternoon—but where is it ?
And I need to sign off on the unit.
” “ God , I hate that word , ” he said .
Bailey was walking away , the phone pressed against her ear , conspiring , he knew .
“ And we ’ ve got to do something about all those books .
You promised.
” “ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some more than once.
” “ The unit is twelve hundred square feet , ” Bailey said , perhaps to him , perhaps into the phone .
“ It ’ s not enough , ” he said .
But she didn ’ t wait for an answer .
I know , he thought , dietrologia .
The next day he left the gate open .
“ Uncle , ” the boy said , announcing himself .
They brightened and hurried to the stairs , jostling , and , as they mounted them , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as though to encourage them , too , to sit .
“ Let me guess your names , ” he said , and pointed .
“ Kamana.
” The boy was dark , with short , spiky hair and the face of a cherub ; his faded T-shirt read “ Toon Time , ” over a mass of big-eyed kittens .
The girl turned her red baseball cap back to front .
Her T-shirt , with the words “ Keiki Great Aloha Run , ” showed a stencilled image of a winged foot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knees , the cuffs turned up .
“ You ’ re Nanu , ” Sal said .
“ And your tongue is blue.
” “ Lollipop , ” she said , licking her upper lip .
When Sal laughed out loud at this , they looked alarmed and drew back a little .
“ What did you learn at school today ?
” Kamana began to speak , stammering badly , but Sal realized that the boy was mimicking his teacher , who ’ d reprimanded him for talking—imitating a scolding tone , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had a teacher like that , ” Sal said .
“ Miss Sharkey .
And you , Miss Bella , what did you learn ?
” “ Nothing , ” the girl said , twisting her face as though to show futility .
“ She doesn ’ t go to school , ” Kamana said .
“ I don ’ t have any cookies for you just now , ” he said , and saw that they looked defeated .
“ But I have a story .
You like stories , don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is true , ” Sal said .
“ Listen , I was in Italy a long time ago .
.
.
” He told the story of the sudden storm in the Sicilian forest , the way the raindrops smacked the leaves , sounding like running feet , the open-sided shed and the child in the yellow shirt holding a big leaf over his head .
Then the flashes of lightning , the thunder , the boy ’ s shock at seeing him .
Rising from his chair , Sal stood up and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ showed how the child had darted away into the thunder and rain .
The children sat before him , their faces fixed in concentration , as though hearing music—unfamiliar music but a melody they could follow .
They seemed to track its syncopation , nodding softly .
And their attention encouraged him to tell the story in greater detail , more slowly , with pauses .
Their listening was visible—he could see it in their faces , the progress of the story shining in their eyes , their lips moving with his .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ haole before , ” Kamana said .
“ That ’ s what I thought then , ” Sal said .
“ Afterward , I had to conclude that he was employing a sort of inbuilt dietrologia—that he knew he had to separate himself from me .
But it was a long time ago.
” The children jeered at the number , Kamana shouting , “ That ’ s silly—fifty years !
” Sal stared at their wonderment , thinking , They have just arrived on earth .
Time , which is everything to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It reassured him to think that for them big numbers were impossible .
“ Now can we have a cookie ?
” Bella said .
The cookies stilled them , seemed to tame them , made them more attentive , like the simplest sort of magic , or a drug .
“ Here ’ s a real poem , ” Sal said , and he recited : “ Yes , ” Sal said .
“ Like that little Italian boy.
” “ Because it ’ s in the poem .
And it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with this old hand.
” “ How old are you ?
” Nanu asked , her fingers in her mouth .
“ If we guess the right number can we have cookies ?
” “ All good guesses , ” Sal said , and led them into the house for cookies , which he dispensed in the usual way , tipping the jar , framing each cookie with his fingers , presenting it as though awarding a medal .
Kamana began to dance on the polished wooden floor , skidding and jumping , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nanu squatted and watched .
Sliding sideways , Kamana bumped a table and upset a large glazed plate that had been resting on a display stand .
Its smash silenced them , then Kamana began to shout at Bella .
“ You made me do it !
It ’ s all your fault !
” “ It ’ s O.K.
, ” Sal said .
“ I never liked that plate .
I ’ m glad you broke it.
” The boy laughed as Sal swept up the glittering shards and wrapped them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them and placing it in the trash bin .
Back outside , Sal said , “ I wish I could tap-dance .
I wish I could play the ukulele .
I wish I could fly .
Though I often fly in my dreams .
There are so many things I want to do before I get too old.
” “ I can fly , ” Bella said , and ran from the porch to her bike .
She mounted it and rode in circles , crunching the gravel .
“ Look at me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and he , too , skidded and howled , chased by Nanu , and soon they were gone .

“Listen, in the debris field otherwise known as my life, I recall one funny thing—but when I say funny I don’t mean it was funny chuckle-chuckle. It was horrible and obvious, but I didn’t have the capacity to see it then—that was a gift I developed later. At the time, it was like when you’re in the water at the beach, say, staring at something floating in front of you, and your back is turned, and you don’t realize that a monster wave is about to wash over you. Maybe a little pink slipper, like yours, that someone lost is bobbing there in the water, distracting you, while the monster wave is coming up behind you—mannaggia! Except it wasn’t a wave. I was in my car. It was after work, and I was tired from a long day. And here’s the funny—not funny—thing. Instead of going straight home, I drove around, not near my house but on back roads and through the woods, until it got dark. And even then I didn’t go home. Look, I didn’t want to go home. I kept on driving, not in a hurry, keeping to the speed limit, on and on, into the darkness. I did this for weeks—got out of work, set off in my car, and drove around, noticing things I hadn’t seen before. People sitting on porches, chatting away. Kids on bikes. Man going into a house—‘Hi, honey!’ Old man and old lady, scuffing along the sidewalk, holding hands—beautiful. And, after a month of this driving around, it came to me, the not very funny thing: that the monster wave in the background was the state of my marriage. My wife was the reason I was killing time, driving longer and longer, staying behind the wheel of my car. I was putting it off. See, I didn’t want to go straight home, because she was there. That was my first wife.”
“Uncle,” the girl said.
“Yes?”
“Can I have another cookie?”
“Sure,” Sal Frezzolini said, but remained seated in his rocker. “Now you can see that it was home—the idea of home—that I was resisting.”
“Can I have a cookie, too?” the boy said.
“And me! I want a cookie!” the smallest one, a girl, bawled, batting the air with her hand.
As Sal led them indoors, the boy said, “Other people’s houses smell funny.”
“True—and that’s also part of the ambiguity I feel now,” Sal said. “By that I mean my state of mind. I’m confused.”
“Why are you confused?” the bigger girl asked, but Sal pretended not to hear, and made a business of removing the lid from the ceramic cookie jar and presenting each child with a cookie. Then they padded out to the porch again, and he was back in his rocker, and they were crouched at his feet, chewing.
“Home,” he said, “the notion of home, like the notion of marriage, requires the illusion of being indispensable to someone. And I didn’t have that illusion anymore. I can’t honestly say I have it now.”
He fell silent, squinting past them, while they watched him, as though waiting for more. But he was calm—spent and satisfied, benign again, relieved, liking the careless crunch, and the catlike way they licked the crumbs from their lips. He wanted to confess to them, Usually I hate to see people eat, especially old people, the way they chew their food, and swallow hard, looking disgusted. Imagine having to look at that every day in the cafeteria of an assisted-living facility. But your eating is beautiful. He said nothing; he watched the children with pleasure.
“Uncle,” the boy said. “Want to see me do wheelies?”
“Yes. But tell me your name again. I forgot it.”
“Kamana.”
“And you?”
“Bella,” the bigger girl said. “And she’s Nanu.”
“Cookie!” the child howled.
“It means ‘wave,’ ” Bella said.
They jumped to their feet and ran to the driveway and mounted their bikes—the small girl on a tricycle—and wobbled on the gravel, skidding back and forth. Kamana pulled his handlebars back and reared, balancing for seconds on one wheel and whooping. Then they made for the gate and were gone.
“They were back again today,” Sal said. “When I keep the gate closed I don’t see them—they stay away. But when it’s open—even a crack—they take it as an invitation, and come right in, running on the stones, barefoot.” His face was lit with admiration. “It gives me hope that they’ll succeed, with an attitude like that. Curious—maybe a bit temerario. Nice.”
He was facing away from his wife, smiling out the window at the driveway, in the direction they’d come, across the gravel, a fixed expression of welcome on his face, as though still seeing them.
“My glasses,” Bailey said, opening and closing drawers, slamming them, and sighing. “Have you seen them?”
He turned his smile on her, thinking of the children, but she went on with her clattering search, the noise she was making meant to remind him of her effort and her mood—these days more frenzied. He knew why: he saw behind the noise.
“On the counter, near the cookie jar,” Sal said. He was in his easy chair, under the lamp, a book on his lap, a drink in his hand, his usual place in the evening, waiting for Bailey to arrive. She was still opening drawers and clawing their contents. “The cookie jar,” he said, and, raising his voice, “Behind it.”
In the silence that followed, he looked up and saw that she was wearing her glasses.
“You found them.”
“Obviously,” she said. She was staring at something in her hand—her phone, he saw—regarding it with pained concentration. “I thought we agreed that the cookie jar was going, along with all that other stuff.”
Sal clucked, to indicate that he’d heard her, but, instead of replying to that, he said, “Those kids—they reminded me of that time when I was in Malabotta, that forest—my first year in Sicily, trying to be a poet. I was on a path and heard it coming, the rain, the way it announced itself, as it swept through the trees, the sound of it hitting the leaves high up in the canopy, the edge of the storm approaching. No water, just darkness and that smacking sound, like running feet, foot soles hitting pavement. And then the rain itself, the hard splash and the hiss of it, beating on the leaves, a deafening racket, the sky collapsing on me, with thunder and lightning. In one sudden flash I saw a shed—open-sided, just a thatched roof on poles. I ran under it and sheltered there and marvelled at how the bright afternoon had become crepuscolo, a tumbling creek of mud where the path had been. And, as I stood away from the dripping eaves, a small boy ran into the shed. He held a big, floppy philodendron leaf over his head like a parasol. He was wearing a yellow shirt, a sort of smock. Thick black curls, and his wet face gleamed. About the same age as our neighbor boy. Nine or ten, skinny legs, barefoot, peering out of the shed at the water rushing down the path. He’d found refuge. Then another lightning flash, he dropped his big leaf, and he carefully stuck a finger in each ear. And, as the thunder rumbled over us, he saw me smiling at him and stumbled in alarm, stepping back. I said something, and that was worse. More lightning, more thunder. But he was more startled by me than by the thunder. Again he put his fingers in his ears and rushed into the storm, his yellow shirt jumping, terrified.”
Sal paused, hearing the thunder and, in the distortion of the lightning, catching a last glimpse of the yellow shirt twisting into the forest.
“Maybe his first straniero.”
Bailey made a sound in her sinuses that he could not translate into words; nor could he read anything in her eyes. She had a way of snatching at the air with her fingers when she was agitated, and she was doing that now, her arms at her sides, one hand grasping, the other wagging her phone.
“I don’t think I’ve ever told you.” He felt fragile, the memory like an urgent confession.
“That those neighbor children come by? Yes, many times.”
“Not that,” he said.
But she hadn’t heard. “I’ve had an awful day. The agent said she’d have an offer by this afternoon—but where is it? And I need to sign off on the unit.”
“God, I hate that word,” he said.
Bailey was walking away, the phone pressed against her ear, conspiring, he knew. “And we’ve got to do something about all those books. You promised.”
“I need them.”
“You never read them.”
“I’ve read all of them, some more than once.”
“The unit is twelve hundred square feet,” Bailey said, perhaps to him, perhaps into the phone.
“It’s not enough,” he said.
“How do you know?”
But she didn’t wait for an answer. I know, he thought, dietrologia.
The next day he left the gate open.
He saw them, their heads bowed in their usual peculiar listening stance, taking slow steps, pressing forward, their arms out, as though moving through deep grass and parting it, the boy in front, the bigger girl just behind him, the small girl dawdling at the rear. They were halfway to him when he went to the porch rail and greeted them. But even so they walked slowly, cautiously—was it because they were barefoot on the stony driveway?
“Uncle,” the boy said, announcing himself.
“Come on up,” Sal said.
They brightened and hurried to the stairs, jostling, and, as they mounted them, Sal moved back to his chair, as though to encourage them, too, to sit.
“Let me guess your names,” he said, and pointed. “Kamana.”
The boy was dark, with short, spiky hair and the face of a cherub; his faded T-shirt read “Toon Time,” over a mass of big-eyed kittens.
“And this is Bella.”
The girl turned her red baseball cap back to front. Her T-shirt, with the words “Keiki Great Aloha Run,” showed a stencilled image of a winged foot. Her jeans were torn at the knees, the cuffs turned up.
“You’re Nanu,” Sal said. “And your tongue is blue.”
“Lollipop,” she said, licking her upper lip.
When Sal laughed out loud at this, they looked alarmed and drew back a little.
“Would you say it’s more of a burning or a stabbing pain?” Cartoon by Paul Noth Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
“What did you learn at school today?”
Kamana began to speak, stammering badly, but Sal realized that the boy was mimicking his teacher, who’d reprimanded him for talking—imitating a scolding tone, peremptory but wordless nagging.
“I had a teacher like that,” Sal said. “Miss Sharkey. And you, Miss Bella, what did you learn?”
“Nothing,” the girl said, twisting her face as though to show futility.
“Nothing!” the small girl, Nanu, said.
“She doesn’t go to school,” Kamana said.
“Uncle,” Bella said. “Can I have a cookie?”
“I don’t have any cookies for you just now,” he said, and saw that they looked defeated. “But I have a story. You like stories, don’t you?”
“Miss Oshiro tells us stories,” Kamana said.
“This one is true,” Sal said. “Listen, I was in Italy a long time ago . . .”
He told the story of the sudden storm in the Sicilian forest, the way the raindrops smacked the leaves, sounding like running feet, the open-sided shed and the child in the yellow shirt holding a big leaf over his head. Then the flashes of lightning, the thunder, the boy’s shock at seeing him. Rising from his chair, Sal stood up and put a finger in each ear and showed how the child had darted away into the thunder and rain.
The children sat before him, their faces fixed in concentration, as though hearing music—unfamiliar music but a melody they could follow. They seemed to track its syncopation, nodding softly. And their attention encouraged him to tell the story in greater detail, more slowly, with pauses. Their listening was visible—he could see it in their faces, the progress of the story shining in their eyes, their lips moving with his.
“Ha!” Bella said. “He was afraid.”
“Maybe he never seen a big haole before,” Kamana said.
“That’s what I thought then,” Sal said. “Afterward, I had to conclude that he was employing a sort of inbuilt dietrologia—that he knew he had to separate himself from me. But it was a long time ago.”
“How long?” Bella asked.
“More than fifty years,” Sal said.
The children jeered at the number, Kamana shouting, “That’s silly—fifty years!”
Sal stared at their wonderment, thinking, They have just arrived on earth. Time, which is everything to me, is nothing to them. It reassured him to think that for them big numbers were impossible.
“Now can we have a cookie?” Bella said.
The cookies stilled them, seemed to tame them, made them more attentive, like the simplest sort of magic, or a drug.
“Did Miss Oshiro tell you a story today?”
Bella said, “Poem.”
“What kind of poem?”
“ ‘Itsy-Bitsy Spider.’ ”
“Here’s a real poem,” Sal said, and he recited:
If you’re senselessly unhappy
On a cloudy afternoon
And regard the hand that feeds you without wonder,
And say everything is crappy
As you blow it off the spoon—
May I please call your attention to the thunder?
Kamana frowned. “Are you afraid of thunder?”
“Yes,” Sal said. “Like that little Italian boy.”
“You said ‘crappy,’ ” Bella said.
“Because it’s in the poem. And it’s my poem. I wrote it with this old hand.”


newyorker--2020-11-30--Why New York’s Mob Mythology Endures

Why New York’s Mob Mythology Endures

You could still imagine that books debunking the Cosa Nostra , revealing a truth less glamorous if not more virtuous than what has been peddled , would be plentiful .
But , where you could not get a popular historian to repeat the story of , say , Clara Barton and the American Red Cross without much close squinting and revision , a book about the Mob in New York will happily repeat the same twenty stories already known , without probing the possibility that , given the Mob ’ s secrecy and need for self-generated storytelling , much of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be remotely true .
When revision does occur , it meets a stony response .
David Nasaw , in “ The Patriarch , ” his 2012 biography of the elder Joseph Kennedy , took on one of the hardier myths of the Mob in America : that , in the nineteen-twenties , Kennedy , Sr. , was a bootlegger with Mob ties , and that the ties continued into later years , playing a role in his son ’ s election and , perhaps , his assassination .
Nasaw dismissed this as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one at odds with Joseph Kennedy ’ s single-minded goal of making his eldest son President .
Kennedy , Sr. , knew what would work to his advantage and what would not—and Mob involvement would not .
It seems now that he was confused with another , Canadian Joseph Kennedy , who really was a bootlegger , and put his name on his bottles—with the confusion boosted by mobsters ’ natural temptation to claim collaboration with the powerful .
( “ Senator , we ’ re both part of the same hypocrisy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Nevada ; real mobsters love being able to say that , too . )
Nasaw ’ s conclusion , in turn , annoyed the Sinatra biographer James Kaplan , in his fine life of the singer : if the Kennedys weren ’ t involved with the Mob , then Sinatra ’ s role as a middleman with the Mafia recedes in importance , and , since Sinatra ’ s own Mob ties turn out to be largely ornamental , with no Kennedy connection he is merely another occasional hanger-on , a stickpin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sinatra interestingly sinister , Kaplan has to debunk Nasaw ’ s debunking .
We all , in other words , have a lot invested in the Mafia mythology .
You can still find the rare deflationary history .
Robert Lacey ’ s “ Little Man , ” a 1991 biography of the legendary Meyer Lansky , known as the Mob ’ s moneyman , made it plain that , while quick with numbers and a good casino manager , Lansky wasn ’ t a genius , or much of a mobster , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guys didn ’ t run Cuban casinos ; they opened Las Vegas hotels .
The average unnamed businessman who bought a strip mall outside Reno must have made more money than the legendary “ genius ” of the Mob .
Yet it is almost impossible to demythologize the Mob .
“ Wiseguy , ” the oral memoir of the small-time mobster Henry Hill which Nicholas Pileggi put together , and “ Goodfellas , ” the Scorsese movie it became , were intended to replace the myth of melancholic men of honor with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rats themselves became legendary , and even , in a black way , lovable .
Tommy DeSimone , the original of the Joe Pesci character in “ Goodfellas , ” was not a cute if murderous psychopath but a murderous psychopath tout court .
Yet even DeSimone has become so mythologized that you can far more easily find material about his life and death than about , say , the life of Abe Beame , a small man who was the mayor of New York around the time DeSimone was doing heists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need , it becomes infinitely adaptable : King Arthur probably began as a pan-Celtic hero , then got taken up by the people he had been fighting , then got made mystical and feminized by the French Grail romances , only to end up , in Tennyson ’ s hands , as a melancholic Victorian .
The point of a myth is to be mythical , and no amount of archeology can shake the fairy dust from its heels .
This story has the omnipresence in the Mob literature of flood myths in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one scrutinizes it , though , it smells , rather like the flood , utterly fishy .
The response of a teen-age gangster being told to fuck himself would be to be impressed by the other kid ’ s moxie ?
( And what did all the other kids in the gang think as Lansky dissed Lucky ? )
Even if there ’ s a shred of truth in this tale , we are in the presence of myth—meaning not simply a falsehood but some piece of reality shaped to supply a significant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The moral , in this case , is that brawn alone is not enough .
Every Luciano must have his Lansky .
In the magisterial 2005 history “ Five Families , ” Selwyn Raab , the Gibbon of the New York Mob , even quotes the Jewish Mob lawyer George Wolf remarking on the “ surprisingly good harmony ” between the two immigrant groups , “ the Italians respecting the Jews for their financial brains , and the Jews preferring to stay quietly behind the scenes and let the Italians use the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the emergence of the five Mob families , which New York children used to be able to recite in their sleep : Gambino , Bonanno , Genovese , Colombo , Lucchese .
All the famous incidents and players of the five families make their appearance in Sussman ’ s book in energetically neat outline form—each , one realizes , with a summary moral attached .
Frank Costello , the original of Vito Corleone , narrowly misses being assassinated in the lobby of his Central Park West apartment building by Vincent ( the Chin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fray , becoming one of the few important mobsters to die in bed , the moral being that discretion can be the better part of valor .
Joey ( Crazy ) Gallo breaks the rules of that decorum , shooting many gangsters , and then being shot himself , at Umbertos Clam House .
His life proves that crazy doesn ’ t pay .
The Chin returns , wandering the streets of Greenwich Village in his bathrobe , mumbling incoherently , in what turns out to have been an impersonation of psychosis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his underlings : crazy can pay , if you commit to it .
The preponderance of the Mafia stories that Sussman relates , however , have the simplest and oldest of lessons : pride comes before a fall .
Again and again , some mobster or another becomes infatuated with his clippings , and then gets clipped .
This leads eventually to the Theban plays of Mob tales , the long John Gotti cycle , a classic story of hubris duly punished .
Had Gotti been content to wait his turn ( i.e.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Castellano , the head of the Gambino family ) , or even , having whacked him , been content to appeal humbly for pardon to the other dons , he might have died at home .
As it was , he was left largely friendless and at the mercy of the F.B.I .
Like Oedipus , he had asked for it .
All of this takes place against a dubiously fact-checked background .
Part of the lore that Sussman repeats is that Luciano and Lansky collaborated to form the National Crime Syndicate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ judicial commission to oversee its disputes and rigid organizational discipline .
If you couldn ’ t get a hit authorized by the commission , you couldn ’ t do the hit .
This organization , over the decades , came to have a whiskered history of its own , with a supposed list of past bosses , like university presidents .
Yet some chroniclers reasonably wonder how real it ever was .
People like Lacey don ’ t deny that there ’ s collaboration among gangsters , but they suspect it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like collaboration among book reviewers in the “ New York literary mafia ” ( which was also sometimes called the Family ) in the fifties and sixties .
Lizzie loved Cal , who was protected by Bob , who was watching his back for knives from Philip—but there was never a secret yearly meeting , as those who were left out always suspected , where the editors of The New York Review of Books and Partisan Review got together to decide who was going to get whacked in their pages .
Mafias act @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than by actual conspiracy .
So , just like the conspiracies that paranoid ( read : all ) authors imagine are rampant among book reviewers , the arguments persist over why Tommy DeSimone got whacked .
Was it , as represented in book and film , because he had violated a cardinal rule by whacking a “ made man , ” Billy Batts ?
Or because John Gotti hated him ?
( “ DeSimone whacked two of my top earners , and I let it go for a long time , ” one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Now he wants to be made , and I ’ m not gon na sit quietly .
.
.
.
I wan na whack the bastard , and I want you to give me the green light.
” ) Or was it instigated by the Lucchese capo Paulie Vario , who shrewdly egged on Gotti because DeSimone had assaulted Henry Hill ’ s wife , with whom Vario had been having a secret romance ?
Or , as another source suggests , was DeSimone ’ s close friend Jimmy Burke—the De Niro @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tracks in a heist he ’ d masterminded ?
The answer may be : all of the above .
As with the reviewers of Norman Mailer ’ s later fiction , there was no need for a conspiracy .
Everyone separately decided to have him whacked .
It is certainly true of the masterpieces of the modern gangster movie— “ The Godfather ” and “ Once Upon a Time in America ” and “ Goodfellas ” —that the directors are all Italian while the producers are all Jewish , as if the New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Hollywood .
We use gangster mythology not just to tell stories about the mafiosi but to tell stories about ourselves .
We want the Jewish-Italian axis to be true of the streets because it gives a dramatic form to the corresponding , if much less epic , reality of our entertainments .
Indeed , one of the best ways to understand the “ Godfather ” movies is as an extended allegory of the rise and corruption of the Actors Studio , in New York , with Brando , the fading but formidable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and De Niro .
Here , the general moral narrative is that of the sellout of East Coast to West Coast—symbolically , of theatre to the movies .
So the elderly Brando weeps , really , at the surrender of his theatrical career , while Pacino had only a partial one , and De Niro never really had one at all .
The tale of corruption and idealism , with the Western half of the country ( Las Vegas , Hollywood ) luring authentic New Yorkers for what turns out to be meaningless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This process arrived at an inevitable twist in the television series “ Happy Days , ” where Fonzie , the Italian tough , is played by a Jewish actor , and the creator , Garry Marshall , is an Italian .
Beneath mythology and allegory is the shabby and sordid truth : the price truly paid by America for the Mob was the price paid by organized labor .
As all the books demonstrate , in the nineteen-twenties , the unions in New York made a kind of deal with the Devil , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Devil : the Devil takes the last trick .
The unions , turning to gangsters to protect themselves from strikebreakers , quickly discovered that the gangsters were just as willing to play the other side of the street for a better offer .
In short order , the gangsters controlled both sides .
The few brave union souls who continued to resist the Mob get a surprisingly cursory look in the mythologies .
Several movies have been made about Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters , with the mobbed-up Hoffa still presented as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact , the American labor movement did have working-class heroes , and Hoffa was not among them .
Hoffa has been played by Pacino and Jack Nicholson .
Walter Reuther , of the U.A.W.
, a genuine hero , has never been played by a star .
A better moral than usual might be found in a movie about the struggle , largely successful , to keep the Mob out of a key New York City union , the International Ladies ’ Garment Workers ’ .
We hear too little about , say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ union organizer who , in northern Pennsylvania , faced down thugs organized by the Mob boss Russell Bufalino—the mostly sympathetic character played by Joe Pesci in “ The Irishman ” —and maintained the integrity of the I.L.G.W.U .
in the region .
What ended the power of the Mob in New York ?
The standard answer , replicated in Sussman ’ s book , is the prosecution of the Mob bosses by Rudolph Giuliani and other Feds in the nineteen-eighties and nineties .
The F.B.I .
got a bug into an apartment above @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Social Club , and produced an incriminating series of tapes of the crew at work .
Add to this the creation of the RICO statutes that , with perhaps dubious constitutionality , made it possible to send a crime boss to prison for life for a pattern of racketeering , instead of having to nickel-and-dime the smaller charges .
A persuasive alternative account makes less of RICO and more of porno .
The former Mafia prosecutor John Kroger , in his 2008 book , “ Convictions , ” details his team ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with some chagrin , that the Mob was really defeated not by charges but by changes .
Crime battens on prohibition .
The lotteries stripped the numbers racket of its appeal ; Internet porn took a toll on the prostitution and smut business ; easily obtained credit cards robbed the loan sharks of their monopoly .
A more permissive society—with gambling , sex , and debt regularized—was a less Mafia-friendly one .
Being a criminal is always a bad career choice ; the risks are too high and the hours too long .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
You ’ re better off actually being in waste management than using it as a cover .
According to a new foreword to Selwyn Raab ’ s big book , however , the story of the Mob ’ s vanishing in New York may itself be another , newer myth .
There are signs that the Mob is holding on to life .
A new generation of mobsters stay well below the radar and pursue their little scams away from the headlines , with minimal attention .
The final irony there is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mob bosses of the eighties , modelled his own behavior on theirs without actually being sharp enough to play in their league .
National politics proved easier to con than the concrete Mob in New York .
He learned the tabloid truths without having the tough-guy stones .
If the old Italian Mob of New York fame is passing , one of its oddest legacies is the word itself .
Though the term is Sicilian in origin , everyone has a “ mafia ” now , including Russians , Colombians , Chechens , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book reviewers .
When moviemakers want to indicate pure evil now , they employ the Albanian mafia , as in the Liam Neeson movies—Albanians presumably being judged less likely to be offended than other nationalities , or at least less well organized in their offense .
Had the Mafia never left rural Italy for fame in New York , the world would have been deprived of the winning name for a universal concept .
It ’ s a peculiar American triumph .
♦

If some nativist in this country had warned in 1900 that mass Italian immigration would bring us vendetta-obsessed crime clans, capable of getting their tentacles on the public life (and budgets) of major American cities while also corrupting the American labor movement for most of the coming century, he would have been dismissed, correctly, as a bigot. The oddity is that something like this happened, and, on the whole, no one seems to mind. Quite apart from the overwhelming positives of the Italian presence—the usual parade of professional eminences, from attorneys to zoologists, along with many of the best ballplayers, most of the passionate actors, all the great rhapsodic movie directors, and nearly all the (white) singers worth hearing—the existence of those bad guys, far from being seen as an excrescence, has become another positive: it has supplied our only reliable, weatherproof American mythology, one sturdy enough to sustain and resist debunking or revisionism. Cowboys turn out to be racist and settlers genocidal, and even astronauts have flaws. But mobsters come pre-disgraced, as jeans come pre-distressed; what bad thing can you say about the Mob that hasn’t been said already? So residual virtues, if any, shine bright.
You could still imagine that books debunking the Cosa Nostra, revealing a truth less glamorous if not more virtuous than what has been peddled, would be plentiful. But, where you could not get a popular historian to repeat the story of, say, Clara Barton and the American Red Cross without much close squinting and revision, a book about the Mob in New York will happily repeat the same twenty stories already known, without probing the possibility that, given the Mob’s secrecy and need for self-generated storytelling, much of what we think we know may not be remotely true. When revision does occur, it meets a stony response. David Nasaw, in “The Patriarch,” his 2012 biography of the elder Joseph Kennedy, took on one of the hardier myths of the Mob in America: that, in the nineteen-twenties, Kennedy, Sr., was a bootlegger with Mob ties, and that the ties continued into later years, playing a role in his son’s election and, perhaps, his assassination. Nasaw dismissed this as a late-arriving myth propagated by aging mobsters, one at odds with Joseph Kennedy’s single-minded goal of making his eldest son President. Kennedy, Sr., knew what would work to his advantage and what would not—and Mob involvement would not. It seems now that he was confused with another, Canadian Joseph Kennedy, who really was a bootlegger, and put his name on his bottles—with the confusion boosted by mobsters’ natural temptation to claim collaboration with the powerful. (“Senator, we’re both part of the same hypocrisy,” Michael Corleone says to the senator from Nevada; real mobsters love being able to say that, too.) Nasaw’s conclusion, in turn, annoyed the Sinatra biographer James Kaplan, in his fine life of the singer: if the Kennedys weren’t involved with the Mob, then Sinatra’s role as a middleman with the Mafia recedes in importance, and, since Sinatra’s own Mob ties turn out to be largely ornamental, with no Kennedy connection he is merely another occasional hanger-on, a stickpin rather than a stiletto. To keep Sinatra interestingly sinister, Kaplan has to debunk Nasaw’s debunking.
We all, in other words, have a lot invested in the Mafia mythology. You can still find the rare deflationary history. Robert Lacey’s “Little Man,” a 1991 biography of the legendary Meyer Lansky, known as the Mob’s moneyman, made it plain that, while quick with numbers and a good casino manager, Lansky wasn’t a genius, or much of a mobster, or even very rich. The truly smart guys didn’t run Cuban casinos; they opened Las Vegas hotels. The average unnamed businessman who bought a strip mall outside Reno must have made more money than the legendary “genius” of the Mob.
Yet it is almost impossible to demythologize the Mob. “Wiseguy,” the oral memoir of the small-time mobster Henry Hill which Nicholas Pileggi put together, and “Goodfellas,” the Scorsese movie it became, were intended to replace the myth of melancholic men of honor with the reality of street-rat scrapping. Instead, the rats themselves became legendary, and even, in a black way, lovable. Tommy DeSimone, the original of the Joe Pesci character in “Goodfellas,” was not a cute if murderous psychopath but a murderous psychopath tout court. Yet even DeSimone has become so mythologized that you can far more easily find material about his life and death than about, say, the life of Abe Beame, a small man who was the mayor of New York around the time DeSimone was doing heists. Once a myth fills some imaginative need, it becomes infinitely adaptable: King Arthur probably began as a pan-Celtic hero, then got taken up by the people he had been fighting, then got made mystical and feminized by the French Grail romances, only to end up, in Tennyson’s hands, as a melancholic Victorian. The point of a myth is to be mythical, and no amount of archeology can shake the fairy dust from its heels.
Generally, in Mob stories, the cute bits are not real, and the real bits are not cute. Given that grim truth, there’s something to be said for just shutting your eyes and repeating the cute bits. In the new book “Big Apple Gangsters” (Rowman & Littlefield), Jeffrey Sussman repeats the genesis myths and exempla virtutis of the New York City Mob pretty much straight, no chaser. Sussman starts off with an obvious error—he thinks that Damon Runyon’s fictional version of Arnold Rothstein is Nathan Detroit, a small-time craps dealer, when it’s really a very different character called the Brain, whose sad demise closely imitates the gambler’s—and yet his dependence on received wisdom is the best feature of his book. He offers the familiar stories in almost fossilized form, in a manner rather like the “Golden Legend,” the medieval collection of saints’ lives. So we hear once again about Rothstein as the mother wolf of the Mob, the man who fixed the 1919 World Series, who suckled the organization’s Romulus and Remus, the street boys Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, who in the twenties jointly created the Mob as a kind of Italian-Jewish cross-immigrant compact. We hear about that first, rom-com meet-cute of the very young Lansky with the very young Luciano:
Luciano’s gang attempted to shake down the scrawny protection racketeer, who was short and skinny, hardly posing a potential threat to a gang of strong young Italian toughs. Yet, Lansky not only refused to retreat, but he also told Luciano to go fuck himself. Luciano was so impressed by the kid’s moxie that he invited him to join his protection racket. The two future crime bosses cemented an alliance that lasted until Luciano’s death in Italy.
This story has the omnipresence in the Mob literature of flood myths in the ancient Near East. The moment one scrutinizes it, though, it smells, rather like the flood, utterly fishy. The response of a teen-age gangster being told to fuck himself would be to be impressed by the other kid’s moxie? (And what did all the other kids in the gang think as Lansky dissed Lucky?) Even if there’s a shred of truth in this tale, we are in the presence of myth—meaning not simply a falsehood but some piece of reality shaped to supply a significant moral, a parable of the tenements.
The moral, in this case, is that brawn alone is not enough. Every Luciano must have his Lansky. In the magisterial 2005 history “Five Families,” Selwyn Raab, the Gibbon of the New York Mob, even quotes the Jewish Mob lawyer George Wolf remarking on the “surprisingly good harmony” between the two immigrant groups, “the Italians respecting the Jews for their financial brains, and the Jews preferring to stay quietly behind the scenes and let the Italians use the muscle needed.”
The legend continues with the emergence of the five Mob families, which New York children used to be able to recite in their sleep: Gambino, Bonanno, Genovese, Colombo, Lucchese. All the famous incidents and players of the five families make their appearance in Sussman’s book in energetically neat outline form—each, one realizes, with a summary moral attached. Frank Costello, the original of Vito Corleone, narrowly misses being assassinated in the lobby of his Central Park West apartment building by Vincent (the Chin) Gigante, and wisely recedes from the fray, becoming one of the few important mobsters to die in bed, the moral being that discretion can be the better part of valor. Joey (Crazy) Gallo breaks the rules of that decorum, shooting many gangsters, and then being shot himself, at Umbertos Clam House. His life proves that crazy doesn’t pay. The Chin returns, wandering the streets of Greenwich Village in his bathrobe, mumbling incoherently, in what turns out to have been an impersonation of psychosis as he secretly fired off orders to his underlings: crazy can pay, if you commit to it.
The preponderance of the Mafia stories that Sussman relates, however, have the simplest and oldest of lessons: pride comes before a fall. Again and again, some mobster or another becomes infatuated with his clippings, and then gets clipped. This leads eventually to the Theban plays of Mob tales, the long John Gotti cycle, a classic story of hubris duly punished. Had Gotti been content to wait his turn (i.e., not whack his boss, Paul Castellano, the head of the Gambino family), or even, having whacked him, been content to appeal humbly for pardon to the other dons, he might have died at home. As it was, he was left largely friendless and at the mercy of the F.B.I. Like Oedipus, he had asked for it.
“I can’t put it down! The characters are so richly developed!” Cartoon by Ellis Rosen Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
All of this takes place against a dubiously fact-checked background. Part of the lore that Sussman repeats is that Luciano and Lansky collaborated to form the National Crime Syndicate, established around 1929, along with a judicial commission to oversee its disputes and rigid organizational discipline. If you couldn’t get a hit authorized by the commission, you couldn’t do the hit. This organization, over the decades, came to have a whiskered history of its own, with a supposed list of past bosses, like university presidents. Yet some chroniclers reasonably wonder how real it ever was. People like Lacey don’t deny that there’s collaboration among gangsters, but they suspect it’s more implicit than highly orchestrated, rather like collaboration among book reviewers in the “New York literary mafia” (which was also sometimes called the Family) in the fifties and sixties. Lizzie loved Cal, who was protected by Bob, who was watching his back for knives from Philip—but there was never a secret yearly meeting, as those who were left out always suspected, where the editors of The New York Review of Books and Partisan Review got together to decide who was going to get whacked in their pages. Mafias act more by tacit collaboration over shared interests than by actual conspiracy.
So, just like the conspiracies that paranoid (read: all) authors imagine are rampant among book reviewers, the arguments persist over why Tommy DeSimone got whacked. Was it, as represented in book and film, because he had violated a cardinal rule by whacking a “made man,” Billy Batts? Or because John Gotti hated him? (“DeSimone whacked two of my top earners, and I let it go for a long time,” one source has Gotti telling a fellow-capo. “Now he wants to be made, and I’m not gonna sit quietly. . . . I wanna whack the bastard, and I want you to give me the green light.”) Or was it instigated by the Lucchese capo Paulie Vario, who shrewdly egged on Gotti because DeSimone had assaulted Henry Hill’s wife, with whom Vario had been having a secret romance? Or, as another source suggests, was DeSimone’s close friend Jimmy Burke—the De Niro character—behind it, intent on covering his tracks in a heist he’d masterminded? The answer may be: all of the above. As with the reviewers of Norman Mailer’s later fiction, there was no need for a conspiracy. Everyone separately decided to have him whacked.
In talking about the Mob, we airily use words like “mythological,” but there’s a sense in which the allegorical, rather than the strictly mythological, level of meaning is what makes the Mob irresistible. The Jewish-Italian connection is so central to the Mafia legend that one senses it must be operating on a kind of meta-level, where a larger conversation about Jews and Italians in American culture can get dramatized. We can readily convince ourselves that what might or might not be true about the Mob in New York—that the Italians have the passion and the Jews the production savvy—is true about movies in Hollywood, and we use the New York myth to heighten our understanding of the wider world.
It is certainly true of the masterpieces of the modern gangster movie—“The Godfather” and “Once Upon a Time in America” and “Goodfellas”—that the directors are all Italian while the producers are all Jewish, as if the New York Mob had replicated its ethnic synthesis in Hollywood. We use gangster mythology not just to tell stories about the mafiosi but to tell stories about ourselves. We want the Jewish-Italian axis to be true of the streets because it gives a dramatic form to the corresponding, if much less epic, reality of our entertainments.


newyorker--2020-11-30--The Brooklyn School Suing the C.D.C.

The Brooklyn School Suing the C.D.C.

A few weeks ago , Coney Island Prep , a charter school in Brooklyn , filed a lawsuit against Alex Azar , the Secretary of Health and Human Services , and Robert Redfield , the director of the Centers for Disease Control , for their handling of the pandemic .
The school and a few co-plaintiffs allege that the government ’ s incompetence is not just destructive—leaving people dead and making it hard for many others to do their jobs—but also illegal .
“ People are dying , and it ’ s our kids ’ parents , our kids ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ C.E.O .
of Coney Island Prep , said recently .
Most of the school ’ s thousand students are Black or Latino .
Many are poor .
When the pandemic hit , the school decided not to expect much help , and formed its own safety net .
It distributed about eight hundred laptops and tablets , a hundred and twenty-five thousand meals , and more than a hundred thousand dollars to parents , to cover rent and other expenses .
It ’ s also paying for fifty families ’ Internet .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ job , but that ’ s actually not what I need help with right now , ” Joseph said .
He wanted readily available tests , and reliable information , so that the school doesn ’ t have to keep ripping up its plans .
In October , four days before the school was to open , the governor declared the neighborhood a “ hot spot.
” The school was shut down .
“ It ’ s been like trying to swim against the current of the Pacific Ocean , ” Joseph said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and we were just going to try to keep swimming as long as we could.
” At issue in the lawsuit is the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act , which President Trump signed into law last year .
The act sets requirements for the executive branch , including running a federal testing-and-tracing program , releasing timely information about outbreaks , and soliciting input from the public .
If the school prevails , it will not win monetary damages , but the United States District Court would compel the government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ school ’ s taking on the C.D.C .
represent democracy in action ?
The other day , a handful of Coney Island Prep history students convened on Zoom to discuss .
A girl named Karema , who wore a sage-colored hijab , spoke up .
“ Coming from someone who is taking A.P .
U.S. history this year and just came out of global history , you learn a lot about the Renaissance and all these ideas of the social contract , ” she said .
“ And what happens when the government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Revolution happens !
Someone goes and starts beheading the entire royal family .
The French Revolution all over again.
” Heads nodded .
A girl named Ana , who had a blue streak in her hair , pointed out that the government wasn ’ t representing the will of the people .
Civilians weren ’ t doing so great , either .
“ So Halloween happens , ” she said .
“ We all know those who were posting on Snapchat , ‘ Hey , I was going to a party !
’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and a lot of people have been saying , ‘ You ’ re not going to stop me from seeing my grandma !
’ Well , guess what ?
Grandma ’ s not gon na be there if you ’ re gon na go see her !
” An assistant principal jumped in with a question about American exceptionalism .
A boy named Collins said , “ When you talk about power in America and American exceptionalism , I think of the police.
” His classmates agreed .
The power structure , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maskless officers she passed every day .
The conversation turned .
Students considered protest versus social distancing .
They discussed the Enlightenment .
The faithful execution of laws was weighed .
These were not theoretical ideas .
The longer the virus raged , the more the students suffered .
Ana ’ s father had lost his construction job because of the pandemic .
A girl named Jahdiel said that the virus had marooned her with cousins in New Jersey .
In the spring , a student ’ s father died of COVID .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the family fell behind on rent .
One student , Margarita , chimed in periodically ; behind her , young kids were playing .
“ This is a very small apartment , and there ’ s eleven people living here with six children , and everybody has to be in school , ” she said .
“ I ’ m responsible for my brother and my sister .
And it ’ s difficult for me to pay attention to my classes .
Sometimes I get really emotional—it ’ s just so overwhelming.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ She cooked him dinner when he returned late at night .
“ I wish the government would be doing something .
Like , I just wish they would be more focussed on helping people.
” ♦

Many Americans seem to have abandoned hope of a functioning government. The country is cresting its third Covid-19 peak; it hasn’t flattened any curves so much as stacked them into one ascending, surrealist staircase. The lame-duck President ditched the G-20’s pandemic-preparedness summit for a round of golf. Congress is hopeless. Elections are deemed fraudulent. Perhaps only one great national tradition remains viable: Americans can always sue.
A few weeks ago, Coney Island Prep, a charter school in Brooklyn, filed a lawsuit against Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, for their handling of the pandemic. The school and a few co-plaintiffs allege that the government’s incompetence is not just destructive—leaving people dead and making it hard for many others to do their jobs—but also illegal. “People are dying, and it’s our kids’ parents, our kids’ grandparents,” Leslie-Bernard Joseph, the C.E.O. of Coney Island Prep, said recently. Most of the school’s thousand students are Black or Latino. Many are poor. When the pandemic hit, the school decided not to expect much help, and formed its own safety net. It distributed about eight hundred laptops and tablets, a hundred and twenty-five thousand meals, and more than a hundred thousand dollars to parents, to cover rent and other expenses. It’s also paying for fifty families’ Internet.
“That should be the government’s job, but that’s actually not what I need help with right now,” Joseph said. He wanted readily available tests, and reliable information, so that the school doesn’t have to keep ripping up its plans. In October, four days before the school was to open, the governor declared the neighborhood a “hot spot.” The school was shut down. “It’s been like trying to swim against the current of the Pacific Ocean,” Joseph said. “We knew we were drowning, and we were just going to try to keep swimming as long as we could.”
At issue in the lawsuit is the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act, which President Trump signed into law last year. The act sets requirements for the executive branch, including running a federal testing-and-tracing program, releasing timely information about outbreaks, and soliciting input from the public. If the school prevails, it will not win monetary damages, but the United States District Court would compel the government to do its job.
Does a school’s taking on the C.D.C. represent democracy in action? The other day, a handful of Coney Island Prep history students convened on Zoom to discuss. A girl named Karema, who wore a sage-colored hijab, spoke up. “Coming from someone who is taking A.P. U.S. history this year and just came out of global history, you learn a lot about the Renaissance and all these ideas of the social contract,” she said. “And what happens when the government isn’t doing their job? Revolution happens! Someone goes and starts beheading the entire royal family. The French Revolution all over again.”
Heads nodded. A girl named Ana, who had a blue streak in her hair, pointed out that the government wasn’t representing the will of the people. Civilians weren’t doing so great, either. “So Halloween happens,” she said. “We all know those who were posting on Snapchat, ‘Hey, I was going to a party!’ And now the holidays are coming up, and a lot of people have been saying, ‘You’re not going to stop me from seeing my grandma!’ Well, guess what? Grandma’s not gonna be there if you’re gonna go see her!”An assistant principal jumped in with a question about American exceptionalism. A boy named Collins said, “When you talk about power in America and American exceptionalism, I think of the police.” His classmates agreed. The power structure, Ana added, was represented by the maskless officers she passed every day.
The conversation turned. Students considered protest versus social distancing. They discussed the Enlightenment. The faithful execution of laws was weighed. These were not theoretical ideas. The longer the virus raged, the more the students suffered. Ana’s father had lost his construction job because of the pandemic. A girl named Jahdiel said that the virus had marooned her with cousins in New Jersey. In the spring, a student’s father died of COVID. When a mother of four students died, the family fell behind on rent.
One student, Margarita, chimed in periodically; behind her, young kids were playing. “This is a very small apartment, and there’s eleven people living here with six children, and everybody has to be in school,” she said. “I’m responsible for my brother and my sister. And it’s difficult for me to pay attention to my classes. Sometimes I get really emotional—it’s just so overwhelming.” Her dad worked long hours. She cooked him dinner when he returned late at night. “I wish the government would be doing something. Like, I just wish they would be more focussed on helping people.” ♦


newyorker--2020-11-30--My Year of Making Lists

My Year of Making Lists

This February , I began obsessively making lists .
Songs with cellos .
Every book I read or every documentary I watched this year .
Different things that you can eat with ginger-scallion sauce .
Stories involving balloons .
I don ’ t usually make lists , although I will generally risk malware or worse to read other people ’ s rankings .
( Top ten N.F.L .
draft busts .
Worst movies set in Boston .
Fifty songs from the sixties that anticipated eighties techno . )
Right now , many critics are compiling their lists of the best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Most years , I tend to retain only a hazy grasp of my cultural diet , and it ’ s been possibly a decade since I contributed in any meaningful way to a ranked best-of poll .
Instead , I have an unaddressed e-mail draft where , every few months , I type things that I recently heard and liked , should anyone ask .
Years seem to be an increasingly random measure of time , especially when it comes to culture , where albums drop randomly , movies get pushed back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and our sense of pleasure rarely aligns with the calendar .
A song becomes a favorite when I can imagine enjoying it in the future , not just because I listened to it during a twelve-month stretch .
My list-making this year initially grew out of restlessness .
Maybe it would someday be useful to have a spreadsheet detailing how I spent my pandemic—every nineties movie I rewatched , everything I bought online .
I began organizing my listening habits into private playlists—more exhaustive than the ones I usually make—according to mood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a memoir about the nineties and ended up studying charts of the popular songs of 1998 to come up with a playlist for that year .
Was this playlist actually what listening to the radio in 1998 felt like ?
Not really , because nobody limits their listening habits to music that came out during an arbitrarily demarcated time span .
A more accurate reflection of the time were the lists I made that were loosely associated with my old addresses from back then : “ Ida Sproul , ” “ Dwight Way.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ sort , in which I began to sketch out universes I wanted to someday visit .
Songs with kalimba .
Artwork involving flowers .
These lists indicate nothing about my sense of taste .
But they suggest a compulsive awareness about time ’ s passage , a desire to displace anxious energy into nerdish ritual .
The most fastidious list I maintained collects all the books I read this year .
Looking back , it ’ s a reminder of how 2020 has felt less like a year than like a series of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There were two weeks when I read a lot of nineties satires of race and multiculturalism .
The week when I really got into artists ’ monographs .
A weekend when I read some soccer players ’ autobiographies .
Each cluster of books was a portal I wanted to escape into .
Lists make the world seem manageable , communicating the possibility of order .
They offer boundaries , a sense of finitude .
Keeping my tallies became a strategy for imagining some kind of forward momentum in a period of global @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Helen DeWitt ’ s “ The Last Samurai ” —in the month when I went back and read novels from the past fifteen or so years I remembered seeing on the front table of the local bookstore—I was as excited to learn where the young hero ’ s journey ended as I was thrilled to input another title into my spreadsheet .
Maintaining the list became part of a string of tasks meant to normalize a strange year .
Keeping it suggested the possibility of some day in the future when I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no longer feel compelled to dwell so deeply on how we were spending our time , and everything we would prefer to be doing .
When I received an invitation to contribute my fifty choices , I thought about the art of list-making—the populist favorites , the curveball , the choice that symbolizes something about your unique psyche .
Every choice seems like an opportunity for self-expression , communicating a relationship to other critics or some presumed consensus .
But , in this case , I just tried to fill out my ballot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that I could get back to reading .
Consequently , it was more like fifty albums that I liked enough to remember , rather than the fifty I would press upon everyone in my life .
I left out entire decades , whole genres of music that moved me .
When the list was finally released , there was some hoopla about what this update meant .
Marvin Gaye ’ s “ What ’ s Going On ” held the top spot , and the list was noticeably younger and more diverse than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Rather than enlisting just music critics , Rolling Stone invited a range of artists and influencers to vote .
People wondered whether this decision would lead to a new consensus or was just an overcorrection for decades that privileged the same boomer favorites .
Increasingly , canons don ’ t matter , and lists like these exist so that we have something to argue about .
It ’ s a way to pass the time .
The editors of the magazine admitted as much in the essay introducing this list , when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ previous “ Greatest ” lists had drawn to their Web site .
The Rolling Stone lists were very important to my father when I was growing up .
Previous versions of the magazine ’ s greatest-albums list were cherished objects in my household .
We had no Bible , but we had 1987 ’ s “ The 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years.
” He would sometimes transcribe the lists by hand to a notebook , then determine what to buy .
For him , these lists communicated a sense of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ How to respect the artists and traditions that had come before .
They offered guidelines for how to be cultured and eclectic .
As I filled out my own list , which privileged a narrow band of music from 1994 to 1998 , I thought about the times when I was a child and I accompanied him to the record store .
We would be in there for hours , immersing ourselves in new worlds .
Or maybe it was just minutes , and it felt like hours .
I remember how it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t remember any of the music at all .
The sounds I remember are the gentle rattling of a cassette , the soft plink of plastic on plastic as people thumbed through CDs , the whooshing of the heavy door each time a new person entered , searching for a new way to feel .

This February, I began obsessively making lists. Songs with cellos. Every book I read or every documentary I watched this year. Different things that you can eat with ginger-scallion sauce. Stories involving balloons. I don’t usually make lists, although I will generally risk malware or worse to read other people’s rankings. (Top ten N.F.L. draft busts. Worst movies set in Boston. Fifty songs from the sixties that anticipated eighties techno.) Right now, many critics are compiling their lists of the best movies or songs or books of 2020. Most years, I tend to retain only a hazy grasp of my cultural diet, and it’s been possibly a decade since I contributed in any meaningful way to a ranked best-of poll. Instead, I have an unaddressed e-mail draft where, every few months, I type things that I recently heard and liked, should anyone ask.
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
Years seem to be an increasingly random measure of time, especially when it comes to culture, where albums drop randomly, movies get pushed back according to studio whims or awards-season brinkmanship, and our sense of pleasure rarely aligns with the calendar. A song becomes a favorite when I can imagine enjoying it in the future, not just because I listened to it during a twelve-month stretch. My list-making this year initially grew out of restlessness. Maybe it would someday be useful to have a spreadsheet detailing how I spent my pandemic—every nineties movie I rewatched, everything I bought online. I began organizing my listening habits into private playlists—more exhaustive than the ones I usually make—according to mood and memory. I was working on a memoir about the nineties and ended up studying charts of the popular songs of 1998 to come up with a playlist for that year. Was this playlist actually what listening to the radio in 1998 felt like? Not really, because nobody limits their listening habits to music that came out during an arbitrarily demarcated time span. A more accurate reflection of the time were the lists I made that were loosely associated with my old addresses from back then: “Ida Sproul,” “Dwight Way.”
Other lists were placeholders of a sort, in which I began to sketch out universes I wanted to someday visit. Songs with kalimba. Artwork involving flowers. These lists indicate nothing about my sense of taste. But they suggest a compulsive awareness about time’s passage, a desire to displace anxious energy into nerdish ritual. The most fastidious list I maintained collects all the books I read this year. Looking back, it’s a reminder of how 2020 has felt less like a year than like a series of mini-epochs or eras, peaks and valleys. There were two weeks when I read a lot of nineties satires of race and multiculturalism. The week when I really got into artists’ monographs. A weekend when I read some soccer players’ autobiographies. Each cluster of books was a portal I wanted to escape into.
Lists make the world seem manageable, communicating the possibility of order. They offer boundaries, a sense of finitude. Keeping my tallies became a strategy for imagining some kind of forward momentum in a period of global stasis. As I neared the end of Helen DeWitt’s “The Last Samurai”—in the month when I went back and read novels from the past fifteen or so years I remembered seeing on the front table of the local bookstore—I was as excited to learn where the young hero’s journey ended as I was thrilled to input another title into my spreadsheet. Maintaining the list became part of a string of tasks meant to normalize a strange year. Keeping it suggested the possibility of some day in the future when I would no longer need it—when we would no longer feel compelled to dwell so deeply on how we were spending our time, and everything we would prefer to be doing.
This September, Rolling Stone released its latest version of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” The first version of this list was published in 2003, and an update followed in 2012. The magazine has long been in the business of canon-building, from its various special, decade-in-review issues of the eighties and nineties, to the prize of a Rolling Stone cover or lead review, to its era-defining books, such as “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll” or “The Book of Rock Lists.”
When I received an invitation to contribute my fifty choices, I thought about the art of list-making—the populist favorites, the curveball, the choice that symbolizes something about your unique psyche. Every choice seems like an opportunity for self-expression, communicating a relationship to other critics or some presumed consensus. But, in this case, I just tried to fill out my ballot in as little time as possible so that I could get back to reading. Consequently, it was more like fifty albums that I liked enough to remember, rather than the fifty I would press upon everyone in my life. I left out entire decades, whole genres of music that moved me.
When the list was finally released, there was some hoopla about what this update meant. Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” held the top spot, and the list was noticeably younger and more diverse than Rolling Stone as an institution often seems. Rather than enlisting just music critics, Rolling Stone invited a range of artists and influencers to vote. People wondered whether this decision would lead to a new consensus or was just an overcorrection for decades that privileged the same boomer favorites. Increasingly, canons don’t matter, and lists like these exist so that we have something to argue about. It’s a way to pass the time. The editors of the magazine admitted as much in the essay introducing this list, when they pointed out the astounding traffic that previous “Greatest” lists had drawn to their Web site.
The Rolling Stone lists were very important to my father when I was growing up. Previous versions of the magazine’s greatest-albums list were cherished objects in my household. We had no Bible, but we had 1987’s “The 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years.” He would sometimes transcribe the lists by hand to a notebook, then determine what to buy. For him, these lists communicated a sense of how to be a good listener. How to respect the artists and traditions that had come before. They offered guidelines for how to be cultured and eclectic. As I filled out my own list, which privileged a narrow band of music from 1994 to 1998, I thought about the times when I was a child and I accompanied him to the record store. We would be in there for hours, immersing ourselves in new worlds. Or maybe it was just minutes, and it felt like hours. I remember how it sounded in those stores, but I don’t remember any of the music at all. The sounds I remember are the gentle rattling of a cassette, the soft plink of plastic on plastic as people thumbed through CDs, the whooshing of the heavy door each time a new person entered, searching for a new way to feel.
2020 in Review